Liberty

Freedom of Speech on Campus

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

Much controversy rages over campus speech these days. Examples abound; here’s one from George Washington University about students hanging flags from their dorm windows. What legitimate free speech rights do students enjoy on campus? The answer is: it depends.

Before examining the dependency, let’s distinguish natural rights from contractual rights. Natural rights are entitlements that stem directly from our humanity. It’s often said that freedom of religion and freedom of speech are natural rights but they aren’t. The only genuine natural rights are property rights: control of our own body, control of our own material and intellectual creations, and control of things we have acquired through voluntary transactions.

Contractual rights arise from an exchange that plays out over time. If I’m a student at GWU, a private University, I may have been promised that in return for my tuition, I will acquire a number of entitlements including freedom of speech on campus, within limits (no yelling “fire!” in a crowded lecture hall). That’s the only freedom of speech I have on campus. If GWU should want to forbid pro-Israel speeches on campus, for example, and I accept that as a condition of admission, then I have no right to lobby for Israel on campus.

Things get complicated when the institution is publicly owned.[1] Who owns San Jose State University? Not “the people”—that would be meaningless. The owner is the person or group who has final say over campus property and policies. That might be the Board of Trustees of the California State University, but how much of their control have they relinquished to what other parties? Hard to say, and in particular it’s hard to say who gets to set restrictions on campus speech—and of course all manner of such restrictions are necessary if the business of the University is to go forward. No blocking hallways, no disrupting classes, etc.  In the case of a public university, somebody has to decide what sort of speech is allowed, usually according to what is politically palatable to the loudest voices.

 

To repeat, the only genuine natural rights are property rights. Freedom of speech or religion are not fundamental rights but are contingent on the ownership of property involved in any particular speech or religious activity.

[1] “Public ownership” is actually an oxymoron because ownership means some people are excluded while public means everybody is included.

Why Few ‘Social Justice Warriors’ Actually Care About Social Justice

Chhay Lin Lim Liberty , , ,

I notice that many people love to defend ‘equality for the sexes’, ‘equality for all ethnicities’, because ‘everyone is beautiful… everyone is awesome… everyone is sacred’. All these sound extremely good, noble and well, but I have realized throughout the years that most of these so-called ‘social justice warriors’ do not truly care about social justice at all as one cannot truly stand for justice without an inquisitive mind.

These people repeat everything that sounds good, but barely put any effort in understanding the issues at hand. They lack the critical faculty to subject ideals to severe critical scrutiny. For this reason, they are extremely susceptible for ideals that at first sight seem wonderful, but that are actually rotten and damaging. They also do not possess enough modesty in how little they know. Most social justice warriors are therefore irrationally and vehemently defending a cause they do not truly understand. The worst thing is that many of them refuse to explore the issues of social justice, to look for underlying evidence to support their arguments, to read, and to learn. Many of them are self-deceivers, and discussions with them often turn out to be a vexation as it is impossible to appeal to their reason.

I agree with Michael Huemer that actually most people who fight for a ‘noble cause’ “are chiefly moved, not by a desire for some noble ideal, but by a desire to perceive themselves as working for the noble ideal – not, for example, by a desire for justice, but by a desire to see themselves as promoting justice” (Huemer, 2012, p. 19). The ultimate test to find out whether a social justice warrior truly cares about justice is to have a rational conversation about issues of justice and see whether he is willing to defend his noble ideals rationally and whether he is open for learning.

Reference
Huemer, M. (2012). In Praise Of Passivity. Studia Humana, 1, 2, pp. 12-18.

To Pledge or Not to Pledge

Warren Gibson Culture, Current Events, Liberty, Politics

I attended a public meeting last night as I do from time to time. It’s a bad habit I can’t seem to shake. Like many of the more formal public meetings in this country, it started with the Pledge of Allegiance. (Foreign readers may not know that this is a 31-word quasi loyalty oath of allegiance to “the flag.”) When the time comes, everyone is supposed to stand, put their heart on their hand, face the flag, and recite the Pledge in unison, which is drummed into all schoolchildren.

My policy during the last several years has been to stand and remain silent with my hands at my side. I don’t make a spectacle of myself by staying seated, but I’m not willing to say the Pledge, for several reasons.

  • It’s too much like religion, and not just because of the “Under God” phrase
  • I don’t like feeling like a sheep following the herd
  • I don’t like the implication that we should bow and scrape to our rulers

Plenty of people would brand me a traitor for my attitude, an ingrate who doesn’t appreciate the benefits of living in the good ol’ U.S.A. In fact, I am quite grateful that I live in the U.S.A. because

  • I grew up in this culture and feel a part of it (omitting rock “music”)
  • The land is beautiful
  • Our politicians are less rapacious than in some other countries
  • We still have a reservoir of individualist sentiment that resists the “Progressives” and the neocons and their relentless push for a made-in-America brand of fascism
  • The libertarian movement has grown enormously in the years since 1971 when I signed on

I do indeed feel some kind of loyalty to the land and the people. But not to the government. And to swear allegiance to the Constitution, as the newly elected councilmen did last night, is a farce because the Constitution was shredded years ago, starting with Abraham Lincoln and perhaps earlier. At the federal level, they swear allegiance to the Constitution and then turn around and spit on it.

But wait, you might say, if you’re loyal to the people you have to be loyal to the government because we elect our leaders. But that’s a slender thread indeed. The government is controlled by unelected bureaucrats and powerful special interests. The government is not “the people.”

So, with only the mildest misgivings, I’ll go on boycotting the Pledge.

Which countries are of US interest?

Michelangelo Landgrave Liberty , , , , , , ,

I was reading my news stream when I noted a blog post from the Cato Institute discussing the silliness of adding Montenegro to NATO. I don’t disagree per se. I certainly don’t see the value of adding Montenegro to NATO, if the purpose of NATO is to protect the US. Nor do I disagree with the general US-libertarian belief that the US has over extended itself in terms of military alliances.

I do wonder though what countries US-libertarians should desire to maintain a military alliance with. A North American military alliance, ranging from Canada to Panama and including the Caribbean, makes sense to me. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are our greatest defenses, but I welcome military cooperation from our geographical neighbors.

Beyond there though it gets tricky. Western Europe is certainly rich enough to protect itself. The main reason I am hesitant to leave NATO altogether is the nuclear question. France and the UK are the only European powers with nuclear weapons, but several others are part of NATO’s nuclear sharing program. Should the US leave NATO would these countries seek nuclear weapons for themselves? Would the UK/France provide substitute weapons? Ending military ties with Europe would likely be the easiest option in terms of cutting down on allies.

Japan and South Korea are likewise rich countries, but here too the nuclear question arises. Japan has a cultural aversion to nuclear weapons that I do not see it overcoming in the foreseeable future. South Korea may be willing to use nuclear weapons, but its strained historical relationship with Japan leaves me concerned about the future possibility of a Korean-Japanese alliance to counterweight China PRC. I believe that Japan should be encouraged to modify its constitution to allow its military greater freedom in action and to consider acquiring nuclear weapons of its own. Other nations in the region, such as the Philippines, are outmatched in conventional weaponry or, in the case of Australia, too far away geographically to be of much use in restraining China PRC’s influence in east Asia.

I am hopeful that within my lifetime China PRC will transition to a liberal democracy, but till then I am skeptical about allowing it free reign in east Asia. For the foreseeable future it is hard for me to consider an east Asia without a significant role for the US. Nor would I be particularly against offering South Korea and/or Japan statehood in a United States of the Pacific.

Thoughts? I admit that international politics is not my area of expertise and I more than welcome other’s thoughts on the matter. I also admit that I am not viewing these issues from a pure libertarian perspective but with a splash of nationalism.

As readers may know our own Brandon is playing around with creating a NOL foreign policy quiz similar to the Nolan libertarian quiz.

El Día que los Argentinos Superamos el Cinismo

Eliana Santanatoglia Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , ,

Hace una semana que Mauricio Macri (Cambiemos) es el nuevo presidente electo de Argentina y ya todo parece distinto. A pesar de muchas y muy perjudiciales medidas del gobierno kirchnerista saliente (nombramiento de personal, sanción de leyes controvertidas, emisión de dinero, endeudamiento de último momento) la mayoría de los ciudadanos nos sentimos optimistas respecto del futuro en Argentina. Incluso ya nos hemos puesto a debatir acerca de las ventajas y desventajas de tal o cual ministro elegido por Macri, como si viviéramos en un país normal.

El domingo pasado, cuando ya era seguro que Macri había ganado las elecciones y estaba dando su discurso, lloré. No era un llanto triste, ni siquiera un llanto de emoción, era un llanto de alivio. Luego algunos amigos y familiares me confesaron que también habían llorado. Sentí (sentimos) que nos habían sacado el pie del pecho, que nos ahogaba desde hacía mucho tiempo.

Macri ganó en una segunda vuelta contra Daniel Scioli (Frente para la Victoria), candidato del gobierno kirchnerista. Pero no es la figura de Macri ni las propuestas de políticas públicas de Cambiemos (coalición del partido de Macri -Propuesta Republicana-, la tradicional Unión Cívica Radical y el partido de Lilita Carrió, Coalición Cívica) las que nos hicieron saltar las lágrimas. Era el sentir que, finalmente, podíamos descomprimir, que podíamos proyectarnos, planear; que, después de mucho tiempo, podíamos opinar sin miedo.

Y creo que esa emoción estaba conectada, a su vez, con la sensación de que los argentinos (o la mayoría al menos) habíamos dado un primer paso hacia la superación de un profundo cinismo que tiñó la política, e incluso todas las relaciones sociales en la Argentina los últimos años y que el modelo kirchnerista supo explotar y profundizar, enseñando con el ejemplo.

¿A qué me refiero con el cinismo?

Mucho se ha hablado del resentimiento argentino pero, a mi entender, el cinismo es un paso posterior y más profundo de este sentimiento. Al resentimiento lo entiendo como un derivado de la envidia en su aspecto más negativo. Es decir, como el deseo de tener lo que el otro tiene o de estar en una situación (más privilegiada) en el que el otro se encuentra y que uno no puede alcanzar. Es algo así como la suma de la envidia y la impotencia. El resentido prefiere que nadie goce de aquel “privilegio” del que él no puede gozar. Lo más insólito es que en Argentina el resentimiento se da en todas sus variedades, no sólo de los pobres a los ricos, de los viejos a los jóvenes, de los feos a los lindos, de los gordos a los flacos, sino que uno puede encontrar una persona joven, linda, flaca y rica que sea tremendamente resentida (porque los padres no lo quisieron, porque creen que no tienen las oportunidades que tendrían en otros países, porque no encuentran motivación en nada, porque quiere que alguien lo admire y no encuentran quién, etc.).

A pesar de esto, encuentro en este sentimiento todavía un resabio positivo: el resentido entiende, todavía, que alguien puede llegar a algo bueno a través de medios legítimos u honestos. No descree totalmente de la posibilidad de que a alguien (no a él) le haya ido bien, se haya hecho rico, sea admirado o tenga algún talento por derecho propio. El resentido sólo siente que él no es capaz de tal proeza y, por lo tanto, preferiría que nadie lo pueda lograr.

Creo que el cinismo implica un paso más, aquel que sostiene la idea de que nada puede ser obtenido legítimamente, de buena fe. Que no existen caminos honestos, legítimos, correctos, meritorios u honorables que nos puedan llevar a un bienestar personal o material. Para el cínico todo es engaño, trampa, privilegio o arbitrariedad. Así, se sospecha que toda persona que tiene dinero, lo obtuvo de forma ilegítima, como producto de una actividad ilegal (corrupción, negociado), o de alguna trampa o subterfugio (no pagar impuestos, estafar) o que, meramente, es una persona de suerte (herencia). Incluso si esta persona no ha realizado ninguna actividad inmoral o ilegal, probablemente la haya realizado su antecesor (padre, abuelo) o alguien por él. Pero esto no se aplica sólo a la fortuna material, el cínico argentino ya no cree que se pueda lograr nada (título, puesto, premio, honores) de forma legítima. Es seguro que detrás de ello ha habido contactos, favores, negocios ilegales, trampas.  Lo peor es que, finalmente, lleva adelante una vida plagada de mentiras, trampas y violación de las reglas, creyendo que está justificado, que así son las cosas. “Es lo que hay” reza una de las frases más horribles del vocabulario argentino actual.

El cinismo, así, se ha independizado ya del resentimiento y cuenta ahora con fuerza propia, sosteniendo toda una estructura de creencias y relaciones. Si llevamos esta cosmovisión a la política, vemos cómo ésta se ha concebido últimamente sólo como el medio particular donde se busca desembozadamente el poder (y la riqueza mal habida) y donde se habilitan todos los medios para llegar a este objetivo. En definitiva, la política representa una forma velada de violencia que ya no es quizás, física, pero si es psicológica, social, institucional. De esta manera, aquellos que (por fuerza o por azar) obtienen la mayoría, pueden, entonces, hacer lo que quieran, interpretando las reglas a su favor e incluso cambiándolas cuando no les convengan. Estoy segura que durante mucho tiempo, muchos argentinos no criticaban las formas autoritarias y, en muchos casos, delictivas del gobierno porque consideraban que, de ellos estar en su lugar, hubieran hecho lo mismo. Esto representa, en mi opinión, el sumun del cinismo. Ya no se tiene confianza ni siquiera en la constitución moral de uno mismo.  Esto nos ha llevado a la situación penosa en la que nos encontramos, no sólo de pobreza material (a causa del delito público y privado) sino de fragilidad institucional, en la cual nadie puede crear expectativas, planear, crecer, cooperar o siquiera, coordinar con los demás.

El triunfo de Macri puede leerse de muchas formas pero, independientemente de sus características como líder, hubo un gran número de personas que lo eligieron porque preferían votar cualquier candidato al candidato del kirchnerismo, Daniel Scioli. Éste, aunque al principio parecía mucho  más abierto al diálogo y  moderado que la familia Kirchner, terminó representando al “modelo” kirchnerista, un paquete muy pesado compuesto por una forma muy autoritaria de ejercicio del poder, un embrollado conjunto de consignas y prejuicios y una forma muy sospechosa de hacer negocios.

Macri se presentó como un candidato de “buena fe” (lo repetía siempre que podía) y el mero hecho de que mucha gente haya creído posible que nos gobierne una persona que se presente de esta manera ya significa, para mí, un gran paso hacia el abandono del cinismo.

Varios elementos más se suman a este panorama: más allá de las críticas, todos los candidatos de Cambiemos hicieron un gran esfuerzo por no contestar los agravios que, desde la “campaña del miedo” de Scioli, no faltaban ni un solo día. Además, la imagen franca y honesta de María Eugenia Vidal y su victoria como gobernadora de la provincia de Buenos Aires (tradicionalmente gobernada por caudillos peronistas) dejó entrever que los ciudadanos tienen un límite respecto de cuánta agresión, falta de gestión y maltrato pueden soportar. Por último, el macrismo ofrece gestión, dialogo, equipos, aprendizaje, todo un vocabulario ajeno al debate político nacional de los últimos doce años.

Por una vez, muchos votantes comenzaron a pensar que tal vez tanto descreimiento en sí mismos y en las instituciones –que, en definitiva, son el fruto de las interacciones de los individuos-, nos habían llevado a la pobreza e inseguridad en la que vivíamos.  Que quizás ya era momento de abandonar la sospecha constante, el enfrentamiento sin cuartel, la resignación frente al delito, el abandono de la libertad y el gobierno del miedo.

No sé cómo gobernará Macri a nivel nacional pero le auguro lo mejor a él y a su equipo. Ya llegará el momento de analizar sus decisiones y planes de acción. Mientras tanto, me alegro de que gran parte de los argentinos, de una vez (y espero que para siempre) hayamos comenzado a abandonar el cinismo y a creer en los caminos de esfuerzo, talento, trabajo, confianza, cooperación. Por último, espero que este camino nos lleve a confiar más en nosotros, en nuestras capacidades y valores y que gocemos del valor de ejercer nuestra libertad.

The Incredible Bread Machine (R.W. Grant)

Chhay Lin Lim Economics, Law, Liberty , , , , ,

This is a legend of success and plunder
And a man, Tom Smith, who squelched world hunger.
Now, Smith, an inventor, had specialized
In toys. So, people were surprised
When they found that he instead
Of making toys, was BAKING BREAD!

The way to make bread he’d conceived
Cost less than people could believe.
And not just make it! This device
Could, in addition, wrap and slice!
The price per loaf, one loaf or many:
The miniscule sum of under a penny.

Can you imagine what this meant?
Can you comprehend the consequent?
The first time yet the world well fed!
And all because of Tom Smith’s bread.

A citation from the President
For Smith’s amazing bread.
This and other honors too
Were heaped upon his head.

But isn’t it a wondrous thing
How quickly fame is flown?
Smith, the hero of today
Tomorrow, scarcely known.

Yes, the fickle years passed by;
Smith was a millionaire,
But Smith himself was now forgot
Though bread was everywhere.

People, asked from where it came,
Would very seldom know.
They would simply eat and ask,
“Was not it always so?”

However, Smith cared not a bit,
For millions ate his bread,
And “Everything is fine,” thought he,
“I am rich and they are fed!”

Everything was fine, he thought?
He reckoned not with fate.
Note the sequence of events
Starting on the date
On which the business tax went up.
Then, to a slight extent,
The price on every loaf rose too:
Up to one full cent!

“What’s going on?” the public cried,
“He’s guilty of pure plunder.
He has no right to get so rich
On other people’s hunger!”

(A prize cartoon depicted Smith
With fat and drooping jowls
Snatching bread from hungry babes
Indifferent to their howls!)

Well, since the Public does come first,
It could not be denied
That in matters such as this,
The Public must decide.

So, antitrust now took a hand.
Of course, it was appalled
At what it found was going on.
The “bread trust,” it was called.

Now this was getting serious.
So Smith felt that he must
Have a friendly interview
With the men in antitrust.
So, hat in hand, he went to them.
They’d surely been misled;
No rule of law had he defied.
But then their lawyer said:

The rule of law, in complex times,
Has proved itself deficient.
We much prefer the rule of men!
It’s vastly more efficient.
Now, let me state the present rules.

The lawyer then went on,
These very simpIe guidelines
You can rely upon:
You’re gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it’s unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.

A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don’t try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that’s monopoly!”

Price too high? Or price too low?
Now, which charge did they make?
Well, they weren’t loath to charging both
With Public Good at stake!

In fact, they went one better
They charged “monopoly!”
No muss, no fuss, oh woe is us,
Egad, they charged all three!

“Five years in jail,” the judge then said.
“You’re lucky it’s not worse.
Robber Barons must be taught
Society Comes First!”

Now, bread is baked by government.
And as might be expected,
Everything is well controlled;
The public well protected.

True, loaves cost a dollar each.
But our leaders do their best.
The selling price is half a cent.
(Taxes pay the rest!)

A Victory for the Big Center

Federico Sosa Valle Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

“To my left, the wall,” Argentina’s President Cristina Fenández de Kichner (CFK) had expressed some months ago. Many of her detractors agreed with her on this opinion, while some others doubted where exactly to place the wall -and how far. The label of “Populist” might be subject to controversy as well, but everyone will at least agree on one single definition: her political strain could be everything but centrist.

Notwithstanding “Peronism vs anti Peronism,” “Populism vs Rule of Law,” “Left vs Right,” “Kirchnerism vs anti Kirchnerism” were some of the terms articulated along the presidential campaign whose run off has just had been won by Mauricio Macri, from the challenging front “Cambiemos” (Let’s Change), the decisive point of discussion of the past election was “Big Center vs Hegemony.”

The Big Center could be defined as the coalition of the Center-Left and the Center-Right in order to preserve a political system which allows the competition between both wings from the menace of a radical hegemonic force. That is why it would be a mistake to characterize the winning coalition as a Center-Right or a non-Populist political party. “Cambiemos” (Let´s Chance) has won the election with the support of both Centre-Right and Centre-Left voters and both Populist and non-Populist strains. Its political platform contains an orthodox monetary policy as well as the continuity of the policies on helping to alleviate poverty. Mauricio Macri won in the main cities with European ancestry population, such as Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, and also won in the Province of Jujuy, where he finished his campaign with a ancient ritual salutation to the Pachamama, one of the most important pre-Columbian deities.

By the width of “Cambiemos” coalition one could imagine how much was at stake. Which will be the final turn of the new government is something that generates no concern among its supporters. It is clear that it will remain circumscribed to the “Big Center.” Perhaps the definition will depend upon the ability of the Peronist Party -from now on in the opposition- to reassess its political strain: to turn into a Center-Right party, or into a Center-Left one or to insist on becoming a radical force. Given that “Cambiemos” has been delimiting its political discourse as a mirror of the “Kirchnerism,” we can expect the former to place itself in the political spectrum in reaction to its opposition. Nevertheless, all of us are convinced that Argentina’s political language will return to the categories of the Modern democracies.

Book Review: Hans-Hermann Hoppe – Economic Science and the Austrian Method

Chhay Lin Lim Books, Economics, Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I decided to read Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Economic Science And The Austrian Method (1995) in order to grasp a deeper philosophical understanding of the Austrian School’s methodology of economic inquiry. I was especially interested in Immanuel Kant’s influence on Ludwig von Mises and how Mises had used Kant’s epistemological insights to construct praxeology, the study of human action (economics included) that is purely deductive in nature.

Those who are acquainted with scientific methodologies in the field of economics may have heard of the controversies surrounding praxeology. Living in an empirical age, many people may be inclined to question the validity of a science that claims to arrive at economic laws from pure deduction whose validity can be established independently from observations. Praxeological propositions are indeed much more “like those of logic and mathematics, a priori” (Mises, 1966, p. 32). Such a science may strike the skeptics as being disquietly dogmatic.

In this book review, I will firstly give a brief discussion why it is important at all to discuss the epistemological foundations of economic science. Thereafter, I will discuss Hoppe’s thesis. I will describe the philosophical aspects of praxeology that can be traced back to Kantian epistemology. I will moreover summarize Hoppe’s critique of empiricism and historicism, and why Mises believed that economics is essentially praxeology. Lastly, I will give my personal thoughts on the book.

Why should we discuss the epistemological foundations of economic science?
The most immediate answer to this question is that different epistemological foundations lead to different methodologies and different theories, which can lead to different interpretations of real-life phenomena. Take for example the interpretation of an historical economic event, the Great Depression. Murray Rothbard, because he is working within the context of praxeology makes use of the praxeological Austrian Business Cycle Theory. This theory focuses on the expansion of the money supply as an explanation of the onset of the ‘boom’ in the 1920’s which eventually resulted in the ‘bust’ in 1929. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A Monetary History Of The United States (1963), while not applying the ABCT, have focused only on the contraction of the money supply and the resulting higher interest rates in 1928 as the main cause of the Great Depression. Their application of different economic methods has led them to look for different possible historical causes of the Great Depression which has effectively resulted in different accounts of the same historical event. It therefore matters what economic methods are employed in economic research.

Now that we have established the importance of inquiring epistemological foundations and methodologies of economic science, I will turn to Hoppe’s thesis.

Kant and synthetic a priori propositions
Working within the rationalist tradition of Leibniz and Kant, Mises attempts to present the proper way through which economic science – a science that according to Mises falls within the broader science of human action, praxeology – should be conducted. He resorts to the Kantian conception of the nature of knowledge and explains praxeology in terms of Kantian terminology. Hence, Hoppe firstly directs the reader to Kantian epistemology.

Kant had developed the idea that all propositions are either analytic or synthetic and either a priori or a posteriori. The difference between analytic and synthetic propositions is that the former is true by virtue of their meaning or as Kant would have phrased it himself, “the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A” (Kant, 1781, A:6-7). Take for instance the following proposition: “Bachelors are unmarried.” This proposition is analytic, because the predicate, ‘unmarried’, is part of the concept of a bachelor. Analytic propositions are regarded as tautological propositions; they simply restate the definition or a concept incorporated within a word and therefore they do not tell us anything meaningful about the world. A synthetic proposition on the other hand is a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in the subject’s concept. It could therefore express something meaningful about the world. An example of a synthetic proposition is: “All bachelors are unhappy.” The concept ‘unhappy’ is not contained within the definition of ‘bachelor’, and expresses something meaningful about ‘bachelors’.

The distinction between a priori and a posteriori is as follows: a priori propositions are propositions whose justification does not rely upon experience, but solely on logical reasoning. The justifications of a posteriori propositions on the other hand, do rely upon experience. Examples of a posteriori propositions are “Some bachelors I have met are unhappy” or “Siddharta Gautama left the palace.”

The big question is: do synthetic a priori propositions exist? Kant certainly believed that they do exist, “and it is because Mises subscribes to this claim that he can be called a Kantian” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 18). In Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant contended that synthetic a priori propositions do exist and as an example he took mathematics (Kant, 1781, p. 55). The statement “7 + 5 = 12” is not dependent on experimentation and the concept 12 is not contained in either the definitions of 7 or 5. According to Kant, a priori propositions are derived from self-evident axioms. We can find such axioms by reflecting upon ourselves and understanding ourselves as knowing subjects. However, how can truth claims derived from reflection in our mind have any basis in reality? Is Kant here running into the problem of idealism – a notion that it is the mind that constructs reality and superimposes itself upon reality in such a way that it fits within the mind’s necessary laws?

According to Hoppe, Kant had not given a satisfactory response to this issue and future thinkers would have to take on the challenge of solving this problem. Hoppe believes that Mises had done so successfully when he had averred that action provides the link between mind – body and between mind – external world: “[W]e must recognize that such necessary truths are not simply categories of our mind, but that our mind is one of acting persons. Our mental categories have to be understood as ultimately grounded in categories of action” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 20). It is through action that the mind and reality are related: “[A]cting is a cognitively guided adjustment of a physical body in physical reality” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 70).

Another issue that arises with regards to the possibility of synthetic a priori propositions, and which I have found quite confusing myself is the following: does Hoppe suggest that we can arrive at knowledge without any experience of ourselves or the external world at all? No, according to Hoppe “the truth of a priori synthetic propositions derives ultimately from inner, reflectively produced experience” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 19). This experience is phrased by Stolyarov II as “the mind’s identification of facts about actually existing entities, including the identifier himself” (Stolyarov II, 2007, p. 53). In this sense, the action axiom is experientially-derived, but it is not subjected to the empiricists’ narrow view that all knowledge must be testable, verifiable, or falsifiable.

Empiricism, Historicism, and Praxeology
When Mises systematically constructed the foundations of praxeology, he faced a double-challenge; (A) empiricism which was quickly becoming the main influence in the economics discipline, and (B) historicism which was then a prevailing ideology at German-speaking universities.

(A) Empiricism
Empiricism is the “philosophy which thinks of economics and the social sciences in general as following the same logic of research of that, for instance, of physics” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 28). Hoppe writes that empiricism is governed by the following two related basic propositions:

(1) that empirical knowledge, knowledge about reality, must be subjected to falsifiability and verifiability by observational experience;
(2) and that empiricist research formulates their explanations in terms of causality, i.e. “if A, then B”. (Hoppe, 1995, pp. 28-29)

Hoppe continues to write that the validity of empirical statements

can never be established with certainty… The statement will always be and always remain hypothetical… Should experience confirm a hypothetical causal explanation, this would not prove that the hypothesis was true. Should one observe an instance where B indeed followed A as predicted, it verifies nothing… Later experiences could still possibly falsify it. (Hoppe, 1995, p. 29)

Empirical knowledge is hence contingent on historical facts. Neither confirmation nor falsification by observational experience can prove that a relationship between phenomena does not or does exist. By emphasizing that our knowledge of reality must stem from observational experience, they directly deny a science that avers that a priori knowledge can give us any meaningful explanation of real phenomena. However, as Hoppe and Mises point out, the statement that meaningful synthetic a priori propositions cannot exist is itself a synthetic a priori proposition. Mises has put this empiricist contradiction the following way in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962):

The essence of logical positivism [logical empiricism] is to deny the cognitive value of a priori knowledge by pointing out that all a priori propositions are merely analytic. They do not provide new information, but are merely verbal or tautological, asserting what has already been implied in the definitions and premises. Only experience can lead to synthetic propositions. There is an obvious objection against this doctrine, viz., that this proposition that there are no synthetic a priori propositions is in itself a … synthetic a priori proposition, for it can manifestly not be established by experience. (Mises, 1962, p. 5)

Hoppe mentions a second contradiction of empiricism which regards historical events. Empiricists believe that particular events may cause any particular human action. They attempt to find such causal relationships in order to explain historical events. However, in order to do so, empiricists must assume that causality within historical sequences exists through all times. This assumption itself is not based on experiential observations, and must presuppose a priori knowledge that “time-invariantly operating causes with respect to actions exist” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 36). In addition, Hoppe identifies a third contradiction with respect to social phenomena. The empiricists believe that in order to confirm and falsify hypotheses, one must be able to learn from historical and social experience. If one would deny this, then why should one engage in empirical research at all? This however presupposes that “one admittedly cannot know at any given time what one will know at a later time and, accordingly, how one will act on the basis of this knowledge” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 37). Admitting that humans learn from historical and social experience, one cannot deny that empirical causal constants in human action do not exist. “The empiricist-minded social scientists who formulate prediction equations regarding social phenomena are simply doing nonsense” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 38). Predicting human action is not a science according to Hoppe.[1]

The empiricists are mistaken in applying the methodology of the natural sciences into the fields of social science in order to predict human actions. Unlike natural elements, human beings can and do act differently under equal conditions. Thus, social history cannot yield any knowledge that can be employed for predictive purposes. Relating this to the quantity theory of money; if the money supply for instance increases, one can still not predict whether the demand of money will change as this is entirely dependent on human action. Nonetheless, one could assert that if the demand for money stays constant and the money supply increases, then the purchasing power of money will fall (Hoppe, 1995, pp. 44-45).

(B) Historicism
Historicism, the second challenge that Mises had to face, does not take nature as its model but literary texts. Historicists believe that there are no objective laws in economics, and that “historical and economic events are whatever someone expresses or interprets them to be” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 54). Historicism is therefore extremely relativist. However, according to Hoppe also historicism is fundamentally self-contradictory. If there are only interpretations and hence no constant time-invariant relations, then there is also no historicist constant truth about history and economics. If historicism does not give us any reason to believe in its doctrine, why should we adhere to its epistemological philosophy if its proposition implies that they themselves may not be true?

Next to his refutations of empiricism and historicism, Mises had hoped that he could demonstrate the existence of true synthetic a priori propositions. Such propositions would (1) not be derived from experience, and (2) they must yield self-evident axioms so that when one tries to deny it one is involved in self-contradiction. Mises believes that these two requirements are met by the axiom of action – the proposition that human beings act and display intentional behaviour (Hoppe, 1995, pp. 60-61). According to Mises, purposeful human behaviour exhibits a person’s pursuit of an end which he attempts to reach through the employment of particular means (at least time and body). The fact that a person pursues a particular goal with his action reveals that he places a relatively higher value (preference) on the goal than any other goals of action that he could have thought of at the beginning of his action. Human action also happens sequentially, implying that the actor can only pursue one goal at a time in which he has to forego other valuable goals temporally. Action therefore also implies choices and costs. An action furthermore implies loss (and profit), because every action accompanies a certain degree of uncertainty, whether the goal achieved has resulted in the value one has expected can only be known in retrospect. All these categories of action – values, ends, means, choices, preferences, costs, profit, loss, and time – are at the heart of economics (Hoppe, 1995, pp. 61-63). This insight establishes economics as a science of human action. Or as Hoppe asserts more precisely,

all true economic theorems consist of (a) an understanding of the meaning of action, (b) a situation or situational change – assumed to be given or identified as being given – and described in terms of action-categories, and (c) a logical deduction of the consequences – again in terms of such categories – which are to result for an actor from this situation or situational change (Hoppe, 1995, pp. 63-64).

The existence of the categories of action is derived a priori from the axiom of action, and not through observation. Any attempt to disprove it is futile, since “a situation in which the categories of action would cease to have a real existence could itself never be observed or spoken of, since to make an observation and to speak are themselves actions” (Hoppe, 1995, p. 63).

My thoughts on Hoppe’s book
The book serves as an excellent summary of praxeological philosophy and is a must-read for anyone who wants to start learning more about the subject. Reading the book, one feels that it is extremely concise (around 80 pages), but also dense. Hoppe directly discusses the essential philosophical aspects that one must know in order to understand praxeology as developed by Mises, and fortunately he leaves many footnotes for further reading.

I believe that Hoppe has skillfully shown that economics is part of praxeology, and that it indisputably deals with such categories of human action as values, ends, means, choices, preferences, profit, loss, time, and causality. He has furthermore provided a well-reasoned critique of the empiricist and historicist-hermeneutical interpretations of economics by showing that they are necessarily self-contradictory.

Understanding that economics should not be conducted within the methodological framework of the natural sciences has severe implications to the ways we should deal with data of real world phenomena. If, like praxeologists claim, we cannot predict human action then there is also little reason to believe that effective social engineering is possible. The fundamentals of the praxeological methodology are therefore also immediately relevant within discussions on the roles of the state in planning the economy.

Footnotes
[1] Hoppe calls it entrepreneurship.

Bibliography
Friedman, M. & Schwartz, A.J. (1963). A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hoppe, H.H. (1995). Economic Science and the Austrian Method. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Kant, I. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. (W.S. Pluhar, Trans.) Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Mises von, L. (1942). Social Science and Natural Science. In R.M. Ebeling (Ed.) Money, Methods, and the Market Process (pp. 3-15). Retrieved from http://mises.org
Mises von, L. (1966). The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. Retrieved fromhttp://mises.org
Stolyarov II, G. (2007). The Compatibility of Hoppe’s and Rothbard’s Views of the Action Axiom. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 10, 2, pp. 45-62.

Gifts for Professors

Michelangelo Landgrave Liberty

I welcome NoL writers to continue the discussion on the attacks in France, the refugee crises (note: plural form), and general mayhem in the middle east.

On an infinitely lighter note – what do NoL readers think is an appropriate gift for students to give to their Professors? Like Brandon I am applying to doctoral study this cycle. I ordinarily have given small gifts (e.g. thank you cards, sweets, etc.) to my teachers at the end of the year, but I’m stumped on what to do for those Professors who have agreed to be my letter of recommendation writers.

Is a nice bottle of wine fine? What’s an equivalent to wine if said professor is a Muslim and/or Mormon? Is it considered rude to give a ‘bigger’ gift to LOR writers than other professors?

All thoughts are welcome.

Small Thought On The Terrorist Attack in Paris, France

Chhay Lin Lim Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

What the attack in Paris has made clear to me is that there is a deep hatred amongst people against the west. I believe that much of this hatred stems from the same roots from which my discontents with the west had also grown – western interventionist policies with foreign nations. I also sense such discontents among the few people that I know from Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, and Serbia.

My displeasures with the west originate from the personal stories of my parents who, before they became victims of the Khmer Rouge, were also victims of American bombings of Cambodia – a fact that is not widely known. The bombardments that started in 1965 ended in 1973, and had killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. Indeed, before the Khmer Rouge took power over Cambodia in 1975 and before they sent all people to the rural areas to grow foodstuffs for ‘Angkar’ (the Organization/the State), there were already widespread famines and scores of displaced people due to the bombings. It had created a chaotic climate in which the anti-western, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist propaganda of the Khmer Rouge found their way into people’s minds – mostly into the minds of those poor rural Cambodian people that were suffering most from the secret bombings. Ben Kiernan writes in ‘Bombs over Cambodia’ (2004):

Years after the war ended, journalist Bruce Palling asked Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge officer, if his forces had used the bombing as antiAmerican propaganda. Chhit Do replied:

“Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched . . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge.”

Cambodia, together with Laos, still remains one of the heaviest bombed countries in the history of the world.[1] My parents were just 7-8 years old at the advent of the secret bombings. Imagine that a drone would bomb the school of your child or the hospital in which your loved ones are, would you not feel enraged? Would you not want to take revenge on those that are responsible?

A pre-moral person looks at the consequences of the actions. He sees the attacks, he acknowledges the dead, he becomes emotional and judges firmly. A moral person withholds his judgements and attempts to comprehend the causes of the attackers’ actions. I do not want to justify the killings of the French people, but I would like to emphasize that if we were really to honor the victims, we should reflect on the question why there are people that hate the west so fiercely. Maybe our society itself is part of a larger machine that is the origin of foreign hatred against the west. We must not only realize that religious fundamentalism is a danger to the world, but that there is a more contemptible false idol which is democratic fundamentalism – the uncritical acceptance that democracy is equal to liberty, that it is always superior and that, if necessary, it should be spread with violence.

As long as we, as a society, fail to reflect on ourselves and the political system we participate in, we will never find a fundamentally peaceful solution.

Footnote
[1] See Ben Kiernan’s ‘Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light On US Air War’

Goose Pimples and Hypocrisy

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , , ,

This is a micro alert. Be careful, reading this might make you uncomfortable.

It’s a November afternoon, a rather nice November but November all the same. There is a wedding on the little lawn on the cliff right above Steamer Lane. (Note for my overseas friends in Germany, Turkey, and Illinois: Steamer Lane is a famous cold water surf championship spot in Santa Cruz, California. The whole area, on the Monterey Bay, is exceptionally beautiful.)

The bride is late; surprise! The groom’s buddies are milling around in their comfortable enough tuxedos.* The bridesmaids are sitting and flocking together in their bareback, bare-arms, low-cut long dresses. A cool sea breeze is blowing, of course. Anyone could have predicted it. The ladies are obviously cold, as they should be. Anyone would be. Exemplary social scientist that I am, I make it a point to pass close enough to verify that goose pimples prevail. This goes on for at least an hour. It’s true nippling weather. Maybe that’s the point and I am just missing it.

I don’t know why no one in charge of the women of the bridal party planned for this weather. I don’t know why the bridesmaids’ uniform could not have included a tasteful shawl. Frankly, I don’t know if any of them would have used a shawl in preference to shivering though. (One young woman in my entourage says, “No way!”) At any rate, it’s difficult to take seriously the claim that women are tired of being considered sex objects. Those women, and the women of every American bridal party I have ever seen are bravely and determinedly on display. It’s not an intellectual display; it’s not a talent show; it’s not an IQ contest. I would swear they are disturbed, possibly enraged at the thought of not being considered sex objects on this occasion, after so much effort. The chasm between public discourse and reality has rarely been so wide since the Victorian Age. In the long run, political correctness is sure to induce some sort of collective schizophrenia, it seems to me.

Just to be painfully clear: I am not criticizing the bridesmaids’ behavior – bless their hearts! I hear that young men are ever more reluctant to commit. And you don’t catch flies with vinegar. And there must be a reason why Mother Nature placed women’s breasts on their chests rather than on their backs. (It’s so they can watch men watching them and take it from there.) I am not deriding the women in the bridal party at all. Female exhibitionism has been an attractive part of my worldview ever since I can remember (maybe since three or four years of age). I am just not becoming used to the grossly hypocritical denial that forms today the social context of such displays. It even bothers me worse than ever.

Someone has to shout, “Bullshit!” I wish older women would do it. In their regretted absence, here I am! You can count on me.

* “How gauche,” my snobbish Parisian side is thinking. Tuxedos are evening attire; they should never see the sun.

‘The Bitcoin Gospel’ and its Critiques

Chhay Lin Lim Liberty , , , , , , ,

Last weekend, November 1st 2015, a Dutch television network broadcast a splendid documentary on Bitcoin entitled ‘The Bitcoin Gospel’ (Het Bitcoin Evangelie). It started off with Roger Ver, also known as Bitcoin Jesus in the Bitcoin community for his active promotions of the cryptocurrency, who is standing in his living room in Tokyo sending Bitcoins to the value of 100 Euros into the living rooms of the Dutch. The first person who scans the QR code of the ‘private key’ gets access to a Bitcoin wallet which holds 100 Euros worth of Bitcoins. At the moment of writing, that same amount of Bitcoin has more than doubled to 217.28 Euros. It is a powerful demonstration of how easy currency flows from one side of the planet to the other. If he would have made the transaction through the traditional way, it would have taken several days and it could have cost him up to 30 Euros. Using Bitcoins, he could send the money practically costless, and almost instantly without the need of any intermediaries.

You can watch the full documentary here:

If I could point out my two most favorite scenes, it would be the beginning scene (0:00 – 2:14) in which we can see Roger Ver’s impressive demonstration of Bitcoin transactions and the ending scene (43:43 – 48:24) where the myth making of its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, is discussed and where an emotional and teary-eyed Roger Ver talks about the subversive nature of Bitcoins against political injustices.

The documentary however, also featured critics of the cryptocurrency – hence providing a balanced perspective of Bitcoins. Its main critic was Izabella Kaminska, a financial blogger at the Financial Times. She has offered several interesting critiques to which I would like to respond in this article.

1) The first critique that Kaminska offers is that Bitcoin prices are too volatile.
Kaminska reminds the viewers of the turbulent swings in Bitcoin prices. Indeed, if one would take a look at the price chart one would see that Bitcoin did rise 800 percent from $129.46 to $1,165.89 in the three month period from September to November 30 in 2013. Within the next four months, the price would plumb to $344.24. The value of Bitcoin is still extremely volatile – it has ranged between $184.32 and $481.51 in the year 2015.

Bitcoin Chart

In my opinion however, Bitcoin’s volatility is not necessarily deplorable. Its volatility is due to its small market and the experimental phase it is still in. The total market capital of Bitcoins currently stands at $5,676,100,709. It effectively means that only a small amount of money flows into or out of the market can already have huge implications for its price movements. It is therefore only natural that its price is still volatile. Volatility also offers prospects of possible gains, hence attracting more capital from investors. Total investments into Bitcoin related projects in 2015 is already more than double that for 2014. (Coindesk, 2015) The more investments are made into Bitcoin related projects, the greater the chance that Bitcoin will be widely accepted so that eventually in the long run products and services can be denominated in Bitcoins. Hopefully, this will make Bitcoins gain the same relatively low-volatility attribute of many fiat currencies.

2) Kaminska’s second critique is that buying Bitcoins does not benefit the economy as it is not loaned out to provide entrepreneurs with investment capital.
Kaminska contends that Bitcoins are simply sitting idly in people’s wallets – it has no interest, it has no yield, and she even claims that the persons who hold them believe that they have “a right to future income flows as if they are investing.” The statement that those who hold Bitcoins think that they have a right to future income flows is quite bold. Bitcoins are like any other investments in that they are always subjected to uncertainties. No serious investor believes that he has a right to profits. The Bitcoin investor is like an entrepreneur – he knows that he can only make a profit if he anticipates future conditions correctly. The notion that one should not hoard Bitcoins or cash or gold corresponds with the false notion that

“Unspent dollars means reduced sales, and as sales decline, profits drop, layoffs increase, and the total social income decreases, making less money available for consumption. Hoarding induces more hoarding as the economy sinks into a downward spiral.” (Smith, 2009)

What this notion does not take into account is that hoarding is an expression of people’s freedom to achieve personal goals or to deal with economic uncertainties. As George Ford Smith (2009) writes in ‘The Case for Hoarding’, the increased demand for money also makes prices fall. Those who are not hoarding are therefore actually benefitting from the decline in prices.

3) Kaminska’s third critique is that Bitcoin has transferred power from the existing elite to the new 1% of the Bitcoin economy, thereby going against the ‘democratization’ effects of Bitcoins that has been preached by its prononents.
In my view, it is only justified that those who have done the research into Bitcoins and who have taken the high risk to invest in new inventions also have a higher rate of return. Similarly, those who were pioneers by investing in Facebook or Microsoft during their inception period also deserve potentially higher rates of return as these companies were running higher risk of failures. If the first adopters of Bitcoins would not have had the opportunity to make enormous amounts of money, they would not have had investment incentives, it would not have got this successful and this critique of Kaminska would not even have been possible.

4) Kaminska had also argued that the Bitcoin community is extremely absolutist and driven by political ideology which is thrusted on everyone else.
She maintains that when she is paying for coffee she just wants the benefits of a working payment network and smooth transactions, not support for a certain political ideology. The idea that payment systems can be apolitical is an illusion. Governments have always had vested interests in the moneys of its citizens as its existence is entirely dependent on taxation and money creation. Any decision to meddle with the government’s schemes of taxation and manipulation of the money supply is hence always politically charged. It seems to me that she is holding an idealized view of our society if she believes that using USD does not support any political-economic system. Her statement that the Bitcoin community is thrusting their political ideology on everyone else is highly arguable as well. The government is an institution that holds the unjust power to determine which currency can serve as legal tender and which goods – including currencies – can be traded or should be outlawed. Unlike governments, the Bitcoin community does not hold the power to initiate force upon the people. It cannot thrust the adoption of the payment network on all citizens. Indeed, Bitcoin is a free market invention that allows, but not forces, anyone to join the payment network voluntarily.

Kaminska is right, when one uses Bitcoins one is supporting the libertarian political ideology. If one pays with Bitcoins, one is supporting a decentralized payment network through which transaction costs have virtually fallen to zero and through which it is much more difficult for governments and banks to track one’s financial transactions. The really relevant question however is not whether you are supporting a political ideology. The question that should be asked is: should we prefer to give our governments, and central banks the power to manipulate the value of our currency or should we prefer the separation of state and money?

References
Coindesk, (2015). State Of Bitcoin. Retrieved from http://www.coindesk.com/research/state-of-bitcoin-q3-2015/
Smith, G.F., (2009). The Case For Hoarding. The Free Market. Retrieved from https://mises.org/library/case-hoarding

The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

Chhay Lin Lim Liberty , , , , , ,

Crypto-anarchism is a subversive philosophy that extends anarchism into the world of cyberspace. Crypto-anarchists attempt to protect their privacy and political freedom through the use of information technologies. Timothy May, one of the co-founders of Cypherpunk and writer of the ‘Crypto Anarchist Manifesto’, describes Crypto-anarchism as

“the cyberspatial realization of anarcho-capitalism, transcending national boundaries and freeing individuals to make the economic arrangements they wish to make consensually.”

In this article I would like to post Timothy May’s ‘Crypto Anarchist Manifesto’, which was first spread among like-minded tech-anarchists in mid-1988 at the “Crypto ’88” conference. The Manifesto was also discussed at the first physical Cypherpunk meeting in 1992. Most people have never heard of Cypherpunk, but they might know their most notable member: Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.

See here the full Manifesto:

A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.[1]

Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re- routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.

The technology for this revolution–and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution–has existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification. The focus has until now been on academic conferences in Europe and the U.S., conferences monitored closely by the National Security Agency. But only recently have computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient speed to make the ideas practically realizable. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas economically feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips now under development will be some of the enabling technologies.

The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.

Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

Footnote

[1] This is clearly a wordplay on the opening sentence of Karl Marx’ and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto which reads: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”

Assessing Elections in Poland and Argentina in the Context of Populism and Liberalism in Europe and South America II (liberalism in the classical sense of course).

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

The Argentine election was for the state president, who is head of government as well as head of state. An expected first round victory for the Peronist party (formally known as the Justicialist Party) candidate Daniel Scoli disappeared as he failed to clear 45%. He is clearly ahead of Mauricio Macri, Mayor of Buenos Aires, running on behalf of a three party centre-right alliance which contains the less statist, and populist elements of Argentine politics, but at least the hope exists of a second round triumph over the Peronists.

The third candidate is also a Peronist, showing the difficulty of overcoming that legacy and why even just turning the Presidential election into a competition between a Peronist and a non-Peronist is a victory of some kind. The sitting President Christine Kirchner pushed at the limits of the Argentine constitution, which prohibits more than two terms for any President, by alternating in power with her late husband Nestór Kirchner. If he had not died in 2010, we might now be looking forward to a fourth consecutive term in power for team Kirchner.

Peronists or the army have run Argentina almost constantly since the 1940s. The periods of army rule give a good indication of how successful Juan Perón and his widow Isabel (the third wife) were in stabilising Argentine society and political institutions. Nevertheless the Peronists have been the only party with a record of electoral success in Argentina and have improved from the chaos that Juan and Isabel instigated in more recent appearances in government.

As such a dominant party they have relatively centrist technocratic elements (most notably ex-president Carlos Menem) as well as the hard core statist populist nationalists. The Kirchner years have tended increasingly towards the more populist end, stoking nationalist sentiment over the islands in the south Atlantic known in Argentina as the Malvinas and in the UK, which has sovereignty over the islands, as the Falklands.

There has been economic growth under the Kirchners, but it has now very much slowed as policy has tended towards high inflation, currency controls, confrontation on debt owed to foreign creditors and increasing budget deficits. There has been social liberalism, most obviously, on attitudes to the LGBT communities, but in a context of nationalist sovereigntist politics. At least we can hope that if Scoli wins, he will feel obliged to shift towards genuine economic sustainability and a less populist politics.

In general, this adds to a feeling that South America has passed the peak of leftist populism which has influenced most countries outside Colombia in the last two decades. The more respectable end of that spectrum in Brazil’s Workers’ Party, which had been fairly successful economically, appears to be declining under the weight of corruption scandals, economic recession and incapacity in delivering on the more populist side. On the less respectable side, Venezuela has lost its status as model for the world’s radical left as corruption, economic decay, state brutality, election rigging and persecution of the opposition has become too extreme to ignore, particularly since the state socialist hegemony no longer has Hugo Chavez as a charismatic frontman.

Brazil and Venezuela were the models of the left, reformist and revolutionary respectively, and no longer have that status. If there is a model now it is the Evo Morales Presidency in Bolivia, which in some respects is radical left, but not consistently enough to get the kind of model status previously accorded to ‘Lula’ (now caught up in corruption scandals as his successor Dilma Rousseff) in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela (whose successor Nicolás Maduro is a blatant and charmless neo-Stalinist thug-apparatchik). The Morales regime has received some cautious support from those inclined towards liberty on the grounds that he has pursued an overdue reduction of the power of traditional rent seeking elites in Bolivia and engaged in an economic pragmatism certainly distasteful to former Chavez admirers, and not even entirely comfortable for former admirers of Lula.

The leftist populist tide in south America has not entirely receded, but is now discussed with increasing nostalgia and an increasingly elegiac tone by left socialist observers, and as it has receded has tended to leave only embarrassments for the socialist left or reformist pragmatist examples of at least some interest to the liberty community. We are not looking at a strong shift towards liberty in all its forms in that region, but at least we see some shifts opening the possibilities of new movements towards liberty in markets, rule of law, individual rights, and social openness.

Assessing Elections in Poland and Argentina in the Context of Populism and Liberalism in Europe and South America I (liberalism in the classical sense of course).

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

Election results I’ve seen today from weekend elections in Argentina and Poland and the more general thoughts they have inspired. Rather longer than I anticipated so posted in two parts, though not separated in time given that I am articulating immediate reactions.

The Polish parliamentary election has been bad news for those who share the perspective of Notes on Liberty in that Law and Justice, a social-national-religious sort of conservative party with strongly statist and populist inclinations, has taken over from the more open market/open society inclined Civic Platform. However, a new party, Modern (strictly speaking ‘.Modern’, but I’ll ignore that in the future as too likely to be mistaken for a typo, it is at least worth noting as suggesting a technocratic commitment to a digital age, reminiscent of the development of the e-state in post-Communist Estonia) which leans towards liberty in economic and social spheres, in comparison with most of Civic Platform and even more in comparison with Law and Justice, has entered the National Assembly, compensating for some of the votes lost by Civic Platform to the populist right.

We might at least hope that the next election in Poland produces a coalition government between Modern and Civic Platform, and hope that Law and Justice does not do too much harm during the coming years in which it will control the government and the (non-executive) presidency on its own.

The Polish political party structure has been confusingly variable since the end of Communism, with names of politicians reappearing from now extinct parties in new parties gathering a different if overlapping spectrum, and with different international partners. Modern’s leader, Ryszard Petru, is at least connected with the early phase of post-Communist politics as a disciple of Leszek Balcerowicz, who played a leading role in the transition to market capitalism and the earlier phase of liberal-centrist politics. Both Petru and Balcerowicz are ‘Europeanist’ in the sense of taking a positive attitude to the European Union, which is also the outlook of Civic Platform. Balcerowicz is even director of the College of Europe, a postgraduate institution in Bruges, Belgium, which educates many of those working in European institutions and in their general atmosphere.

This illustrates a major claim I put forward here about European politics, that is of a drift of market liberals, classical liberals and libertarians towards advocacy of the European Union, and an increasing tendency of the ‘Eurosceptic‘ right, even those with some libertarian-conservative history, to be caught up with hardcore populists even if some of the Eurosceptic right has pro-liberty inclinations. That part of the European right has always been more libertarian-conservative than libertarian-cosmopolitan.

The leading ideologue of libertarian-conservative Eurosceptics in Britain, Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament, Dan Hannan is very touchy about suggestions of backward looking nationalism and chauvinism, emphasising a cosmopolitan family background. However, despite these protestations, Hannan is a great believer in the superiority of British (and Anglosphere) ways, and in addition has always been for ‘democratic controls on immigration’, i.e. populist limitations on the market in labour and individual rights to mobility. The second leading British ideologue in that spectrum, and previously a close associate of Hannan, Douglas Carswell has joined the the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which has unmistakably populist inclinations in economic and social policy beyond restrictions on immigration. Hannan prefers to praise UKIP as ‘patriots’ rather than confront this.

Hannan engineered the formation of a eurosceptic right group in the European Parliament after David Cameron was persuaded that leaving the main centre-right group (European People’s Party) was a necessary price for keeping Tory Eurosceptics acquiescent with his leadership. Hannan’s European Conservative and Reformists Group does not include Modern or Civic Platform, but it does include Law and Justice, which gives a good idea of what part of the European political spectrum it appeals to, i.e. not those inclined to social and cosmopolitan liberty. Most disturbingly associate members include the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, i.e. the AKP of Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan associated with corruption, police brutality, politicisation of the judiciary, social media blocks, attacks on the media and all free speech, along with the demonisation of anyone not part of the more conservative parts of majority Turkish culture.

The idea that liberty can be combined with Eurosceptic discourse is declining, though it has been influential in some libertarian circles, particularly in the UK and Slovakia to be the best of my knowledge. There has been a recovery of pro-EU views (if highly qualified by the wish for reform) amongst the Greek liberty community, even after the recent Euro currency disasters. The Slovak eurosceptic libertarians seem to have collapsed. The Czech hero of European right wingers of that tendency, Vacláv Klaus, has turned out to be a harsh social conservative and Putin fellow traveler of a type obnoxious to the anyone of genuinely pro-liberty tendencies, leading to his exclusion from polite libertarian circles as seen in the loss of his Cato fellowship. A warning there surely about the perils of regarding the sovereigntist eurosceptic right as natural allies of liberty. Personally I believe the same applies to the Republican right in the US. That is of course another story, but just look at Donald Trump’s ascendancy and think about that. The German Free Democrats are making a come back after a period it seemed they might lose the most economically free market part of the electorate to AfD.

Small indications in some cases, but it all adds up to an overall and increasingly dominant picture (though course with exceptions) in which consistently pro-liberty forces support the European Union, which is very much the case in Turkey, even if desiring considerable reform. The strengthening of the populist right (Northern League in Italy, National Front in France, Swedish Democrats, Golden Dawn in Greece, Freedom Party in the Netherlands etc as well as those already mentioned) together with a populist-socialist surge has pushed those engaged with a consistent politics of individual rights and cosmopolitan openness towards a pro-EU centre.

The left populist surge has already receded in Greece where Syriza is in transition to standard social democracy while still using a more radical rhetoric, but has some energy elsewhere in Europe: Podemos in Spain, two left of social democracy parties in Portugal, Sinn Fein in Ireland, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in Britain. The left populist surge is less strong than its right wing equivalent and despite what the socialist intelligentsia in the UK believe the socialist surge within the Labour Party does not reflect a broader shift in British public opinion. Anyway, we are in a period where pro-liberty forces are coalescing with centrist forces in defence of a continuing EU of some kind, with some limitations on national sovereignty, not completely closed to refugees, not in thrall to an enclosed defensive traditionalist, legacy Christian identity politics.