Philosophy

From the Comments: An embarrassment of riches, a stable full of straw

Brandon Christensen Comments, Liberty, Philosophy , , ,

Below are some more thoughts on “total liberty” and bad faith.

My argument in the threads with Marvin has intended to be one that displays two points of view, rather than to be one of persuasion. Due to his responses to Dr Foldvary’s argument, I realized that he was uninterested in having an honest debate. I also realized that persuading him would be futile. So I instead have tried to illustrate – to readers and curious passersby – how Marvin’s arguments are fallacious (dishonest) and what to do about them by exploiting Marvin’s position. In order to do this I have kept it simple and tried to argue on Marvin’s terms (“speaking past one another”). Rick has an insightful, must-read summary of our arguments, and he also furthers our understanding of freedom in the process.

I am not quite done, though. I am still unsure if I have accomplished my task of exposing Marvin’s arguments as fallacious. I want to be sure that readers don’t take him seriously in the future should he decide to continue trolling the ‘comments’ section. Marvin states matter-of-factly that:

The problem is that I have a better handle on the truth than you do.

Now, in the interest of honest debate, I hope that everyone can see how Marvin’s assertion shows how he is being dishonest. I have pointed out his straw man fallacies for a while now, and I want to get the point across that Marvin’s characterizations of libertarian ethics are based upon the above-quoted viewpoint.

Given that Marvin believes he has a better handle on truth than I, how can I (or you as a reader) expect to get an even-handed argument from him? If you believe that I have mischaracterized Marvin’s arguments (as he has done to mine and Dr Foldvary’s and soon-to-be [?] Dr Weber’s), please point out where in the ‘comments’ thread.

Again, my task is much more simple than Rick’s. I wish to merely show how Marvin’s argument is based on falsehoods. I think his comments elsewhere suggest my hunch is right. (Rick, by the way, has been much more generous to Marvin than I, a position for which he has been rewarded by being called a homosexual with an unhealthy obsession for Marvin (“My name can’t stay off of Rick’s lips,” according to Marvin the Truthspeaker).)

Marvin’s main error in reasoning, in my judgement, is that he creates positions that nobody has made and then draws conclusions from those created positions. Sometimes he restates arguments that nobody has contested as if they were contested and then proceeds to explain why libertarians should not (or do) contest such an argument. This is sophistry at its most vulgar.

Does everybody follow? Dr Amburgey?

His last response to me in the ‘comments’ is a good example of what I mean. Marvin writes:

Brandon [quoting me]: “Society A (the one with no rules prohibiting murder) does not have total liberty because its members do not have freedom from unwarranted aggression.”

[Marvin:] If a society has a consensus that murder should be punished then it effectively has a rule prohibiting murder whether the rule is explicitly written down or not.

Yes, and what exactly does this have to do with my argument? With Fred’s? With Rick’s? With Hank’s? Marvin continues:

If a society has no agreement that murder is wrong then its sense of justice either presumes any murder is justified or is indifferent to it until it affects them personally.

Again, this may be true, but what exactly does this have to do with my argument that “Society A (the one with no rules prohibiting murder) does not have total liberty because its members do not have freedom from unwarranted aggression”? Where does it follow from this statement that rules prohibit total liberty? It’s almost as if Marvin is talking to himself rather than to a group of people. There is nothing wrong with thinking out loud, but it seems to me – based on this response and on past responses – that Marvin thinks he is replying to an argument somebody else has made rather than thinking out loud.

Marvin continues to pummel me:

(b) The meaning of “liberty” is “freedom to”, not “freedom from”. “Freedom to” means you can pursue your happiness with minimal restrictions (“total freedom” would imply no restrictions at all, a liberty to do what you please without fear of punishment).

Marvin goes on and on (and on) from there. However, this is simply wrong. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good summary of the ‘freedom to’ versus ‘freedom from’ distinction. Basically, the ‘freedom from’ folks look at external factors (such as government) that inhibit liberty, whereas the ‘freedom to’ folks look at factors that are internal to individuals (such as class). I don’t want to get into the details here, but suffice it to say this is not Marvin’s understanding of the distinction. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem explaining this misunderstanding, but given Marvin’s track record I’m going to skip out on doing so (unless somebody wants me to).

I’ve got one more example I’d like to use to hammer home my point that Marvin is not interested in having an honest debate. He writes:

Brandon [quoting me]: “Your attempt at distinguishing “private punishments” within Society A from “punishments of society” is also fallacious. Is society composed of numerous factions – most of them private – or is it a monolithic, dissent-free, homogeneous unit.”

[Marvin:] A consensus is not monolithic. If everyone had to agree to everything then nothing would be possible. To make cooperation possible, we created a democratically elected government with many checks and balances. And we agreed to respect the authority of the laws it creates, even laws we may disagree with, because we would expect others to respect the laws that we do agree with that they don’t. And the democratic process may correct or remove an unsuccessful law in the future. I may win the case today and you may win the case tomorrow.

My argument is that Marvin’s assumption about society is monolithic, not society itself. If you read my argument with an eye for understanding it you can easily see that. If you read my argument from a position of Truthspeaker it may be harder to do so.

One last point I’d like to mention is that Marvin also has a habit of changing definitions to suit his argument. Often he simply provides his own. This, of course, helps him to have that “better handle on truth” that nobody else at NOL seems to have.

Has this cleared anything up? Muddled it further? Am I coming off as an ideologue or somebody who is trying to weed out falsehoods?

There are plenty of rules in a libertarian society. The fact that there are rules does not mean that ‘total liberty’ is lost because of it. Such a characterization is the epitome of a straw man. Rick takes the idea of total freedom to the next level (so read up!), so all I’m trying to do here is make sure that everybody understands Marvin’s sophistry. I think understanding sophistry is important because it tends to mellow people out: If you can understand the falsehoods in an argument you can craft up a cooler response.

My Thoughts on Marvin

Rick Weber Liberty, Philosophy , ,

Addendum: I’m sure Marvin is sick of Marvin the Martian references by this point in his life but I’m keeping the picture because Marvin the Martian my favorite WB character, and is apropos enough…

Other than that, please understand that this post is made with respect to Marvin, and made public in order to offer an organized presentation of some recent exchanges here on Notes On Liberty.

Man, things are really heating up on NoL!

The outsider…

It begins…

I suspect the totally free society is where all civilizations started. Then someone stole something from someone else, and the people got together to deal with the problem of theft. The consensus decided that there should be a right to property, and they reached an agreement with each other to respect that right for each other and to come to each other’s aid when necessary to defend that right.

… with Marvin contemplating Buchanan’s constitutional moment. He continues with an amusing story of a quasi-voluntary provision of police, and an ad hoc ideological opposition from the first hold-out. He continued with a near analogous argument by a would be thief.

But I’m not going to follow that argument. For me, the interesting thing here, the pivotal term that tells us something meaningful about Marvin is “totally free”.

For Marvin, freedom means a lack of punishment for a given action. Therefore total freedom means no socially sanctioned punishment for any action. That state of affairs is one lacking in governance. The only person who remotely approaches that is Kim Jong-Un, but even he is ultimately constrained by (the apparently unlikely) possibility of revolution, and his near-total freedom is only within his borders. This contrasts with Brandon’s idea of mutually consistent freedom which depends on individuals having the right to not be subject to coercion.

Following Marvin’s commentary has been confusion over the terms liberty, freedom, and rights. What we all think of when we hear the term “free society” would not have what Marvin calls total freedom. This in turn has lead to dispute over the term law. Let me offer my own clarifications, focusing on the issue of law and rules.

When Dr. Foldvary used the term “truly free” he had in mind a situation with governance, but without top-down intervention. Marvin, I suspect, has confused this for a situation entirely lacking governance, or at least effective governance. I think this has roots in his belief that competition for scarce resources, as directed through the profit and loss system, will lead to unchecked cheating (e.g. pollution) in the absence of some disinterested third-party to enforce rules that reasonable people, if they’re being honest, would agree to. There are two problems with this:

First, the unmentioned one, is that the government isn’t a disinterested third-party and rules aren’t set behind a veil of ignorance (ensuring honest agreement among reasonable people). Marvin starts with the Hobbesian Jungle and arrives at the position that there is something like a social contract whereby we all (implicitly) agree to rules (restrictions on our choice set) for our mutual betterment. I don’t disagree that rules restrict our choice set and can (can!) be for our mutual betterment. What’s missing is the appreciation for the distinction between constitutional and post-constitutional rules (but that a can of worms unto itself). Beyond issues of incompatible incentives, there are also significant information problems.

Second, the government isn’t the only source of governance. Brandon and Marvin both use the term “law” in an all-encompassing way. I prefer Hayek’s distinction between law and legislation. Law, is the set of informal institutions that underlie (we hope) formal legislation. Law is emergent, but legislation is static (although it does change, just in punctuated equilibria). When government is responsive legislation will simply codify law, but when the two diverge it sets the stage for upheaval.

With that in mind, let me briefly respond to Marvin’s question:

In response to the loss of lives in the mining and manufacturing industries, government regulation requires safety precautions and inspections, like under OSHA. Should this type of regulation be eliminated to make the market “truly free”?

First off, nobody here is advocating for an unbound choice set. “Truly free” should be understood to mean “free from external [i.e. government] coercion, rule-setting, and back-room politics that are enforced at gun point.” With that in mind, the basic regulatory framework will be based on property rights and voluntary choice. Mines that acquire a reputation for being unsafe will soon be unable to find workers, unless they increase their wages. If we see poor working conditions at low pay, it doesn’t mean an injustice is being done, it means that the people working there see it as their best available option.

Final thoughts:

I think Brandon and Marvin have been largely talking past each other, but despite that the conversation has been interesting. I would like to see them engage in a debate on some particular topic. I propose that we find a topic agreeable to both, they both respond to that topic, open comments ensue for a few days, then each writes their final thoughts in a second blog post. I will summarize their points here.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Philosophy , , , , , , , ,
  1. Missing from President’s Day: The People They Enslaved
  2. The Left Still Harbors a Soft Spot For Communism from Cathy Young at Reason
  3. Tyler Cowen on practical gradualism vs. moral absolutism, for immigration and revolution; see also Dr Delacroix’s very relevant “If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely” article [pdf] in the Independent Review
  4. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman reviews the results of Obama’s stimulus package five years on
  5. Theologian and philosopher Eric Hall on Confusing Confucianism with Collectivism

Italy overturns ‘absurd’ drug law equating marijuana and hard drugs

Adam Magoon Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , ,

Italy overturns ‘absurd’ drug law equating marijuana and hard drugs

The title really gives all of the details. Libertarians are usually quick to celebrate these kinds of liberalizations of government authority but I always take these times to reiterate and oft forgotten fact.  Italy has not “given more rights to drug users”.  I hear this so often and strangely enough almost universally from more “left” policies such as gay marriage “Massachusetts has given the right to marry to homosexuals.”  This is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth.  The right of self-ownership is universal and each and every person already has the right to consume any drugs they please or to marry whomever they choose.  Government action has taken away those rights and them removing that restriction is not the same as giving away rights.  Rights cannot be granted, they are innate and inalienable.  Rights can only be removed by force.  Two forces in this world deny rights to others.  Criminals and the Government.  Most libertarians do not make a distinction between the two.

A Belated Warm Welcome

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Philosophy , ,

Readers,

Allow me to introduce notewriter Matthew Strebe to the team:

Matthew Strebe is a senior undergraduate student at the University of California in Santa Cruz, double majoring in Philosophy and Classical Studies. His areas of interest include political and ethical theory from antiquity to the present, particularly concerning the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus and the classical philosopher Aristotle, along with the modern philosophers Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. He considers political labels unnecessarily stifling, and contrary to a spirit of open exchange and inquiry, but nonetheless will provide a few: he is a member of Young Americans for Liberty, a registered libertarian, with viewpoints that are conservative to some and liberal to others. If you really want to know what he thinks, it is best to ask.

His debut post can be found here, and his most recent post is here. Please join me in giving him a warm welcome, and – as our small community is apt to do – be sure to keep him on his toes in the ‘comments’ section.

Kant och kapitalismen

Jesper Ahlin Economics, Philosophy

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) är en av de mest framstående filosoferna genom tiderna. Han skrev bland annat inom etiken och kunskapsteorin, men också inom den politiska filosofin. Jag tänker här inte redogöra fullständigt för hans tankar utan endast snudda vid några av de huvudsakliga dragen.

Anledningen till att jag skriver om Kant är att jag den senaste veckan har mötts av tre av varandra oberoende misstolkningar, ja, rena missbruk, av Kants filosofi. Man har mot bakgrund av ett av hans mest kända påståenden hävdat att Kant var antikapitalist. Så var inte fallet. I sin bok Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals skriver Kant såhär:

“All handel, alla hantverk och alla skickligheter har gynnats av arbetsfördelningen, alltså då en person inte gör allt utan att varje person begränsar sig till en specifik uppgift som skiljer sig markant från andra i sättet det utförs, så att hen erhåller förmågan att utföra det så perfekt som möjligt och med största lätthet. Där arbete inte är så avgränsat och fördelat, där alla är sin egen allt-i-allo, förblir handeln barbarisk.”

(Stycket är fritt översatt från engelska, avsnitt 4:388, Groundwork.)

Kant var samtida med moralfilosofen och ekonomiteoretikern Adam Smith, som bland annat är känd för sin redogörelse av arbetsfördelningen som Kant skriver om. Som stycket visar, tillsammans med Kants vurm för frihet (se nedan), påstod Kant att andra system än det som vi idag kallar för marknadsekonomi är barbariskt (”greatest barbarism”). Den som påstår att Kants filosofi är antikapitalistisk måste förklara sin ståndpunkt väldigt väl.

Antikapitalistiska tolkningar av Kant bygger ofta på det välkända ”agera så att du använder mänskligheten (inklusive dig själv) som ett mål i sig, och aldrig endast som ett medel” (förkortat och omformulerat från avsnitt 4:429). Den antikapitalistiska tolkningen brukar då heta att när folk byter varor och tjänster med varandra använder de sina medmänniskor som medel för sina egna ändamåls skull, vilket ska strida mot Kants filosofi. Vad denna tolkning förbiser är att i en marknadsekonomi använder båda parter frivilligt varandra för att tillsammans uppnå ett tillstånd som de båda anser är bättre än det föregående. Ett brott mot moralen uppstår endast om denna ömsesidiga överenskommelse förvandlas till exploatering genom att den ena parten tvingar den andre till ett byte.

I det efterföljande avsnittet skriver Kant att principen enklast förstås om man föreställer sig ett ”angrepp på andras frihet eller egendom” (”freedom and property of others”, 4:430). Det ska alltså bli tydligt och lätt att förstå, menar Kant, att det moraliska ligger i fullständig ömsesidig respekt om man tänker sig kapitalismens två grundpelare – frihet och privat egendom. När någon bryter mot dessa ska man omedelbart se att handlingen är omoralisk.

Det finns goda skäl att kalla Kant för kapitalist. Han skrev ju också om institutionen att låna och låna ut saker till varandra. Om man inte lämnar tillbaka det man är skyldig faller tilliten sönder. Kant förespråkade alltså kapitalismens motor – arbetsfördelningen; dess två grundpelare – frihet och privat egendom; och dess klister – tillit och ömsesidig respekt. Vill man göra ett case av Kant som antikapitalist får man bita hårt i böckerna. Det mesta tycks tala åt motsatsen: laissez faire, laissez faire.

UK considering long prison terms for file sharers

Adam Magoon Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Philosophy

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-considers-throwing-persistent-internet-pirates-in-jail-140123/

Up to ten years in fact.  While there is debate in the libertarian community over intellectual property laws I think that I would be hard pressed to find many libertarians that think downloading a movie should put an “offender” in prison for a similar amount of time as stealing a car. 
 

David Theroux’s latest on Secular Theocracy, Part 2

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Philosophy , ,

“Duck Dynasty and the Secular Theocracy, Part 2”

Part 1 can be found here. For more Secular Theocracy as a concept, start here. David founded the Independent Institute, a highly-regarded think tank in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the summer after my first semester of college (2009; I started college in Feb of 2009 after hanging out in Ghana – long story!) I had the opportunity to attend the Independent Institute’s summer seminar for students.

In fact, that summer I attended four seminars put on by various libertarian think tanks and the Institute’s was the first of the summer. I really, really enjoyed it and was able to make some lifelong connections. For example, Dr Foldvary – the co-founder of this blog – was one of the lecturers there. Here is the Institute’s main web site.

Frihet eller rättvisa?

Jesper Ahlin Philosophy

På sjuttiotalet formulerade Robert Nozick ett argument mot så kallade ”rättvisa resursfördelningar”, alltså politiska åtgärder som tar från en person och ger till en annan för att samhället ska uppnå ett mer rättvist resursinnehav. Argumentet har sedan slipats på av bland andra Eric Mack och lyder nu ungefär såhär.

Anta ett samhälle där privat egendom finns och får säljas, köpas eller bytas helt fritt, men först efter att den har arrangerats om politiskt enligt ett visst fördelningsschema. Fördelningsschemat kan vara exempelvis att alla får precis lika mycket eller att en andel tas från de rika och ges till de fattiga. Du, läsaren, får välja vilket slags fördelningsschema som ska användas och bestämma alla dess detaljer. Oavsett hur det ser ut ska det vara avsett att generera ett rättvist tillstånd av resursinnehav som kallas för D1.

Säg nu att detta fördelningsschema genomförs så att tillstånd D1 råder. Säg också att invånarna i samhället efter fördelningen byter resurser med varandra för att på egen hand uppnå ett tillstånd de själva föredrar. Müsli byts mot corn flakes. Kvällsskift byts mot lördagspass och en hundralapp byts mot åtta folköl. En duktig basketspelare erbjuder en halv miljon människor att komma och se henne spela för bara tio kronor per person och tillfälle, och blir därmed mycket rikare än de flesta andra i samhället. Saker och ting byts helt enkelt så att alla blir lite mer nöjda än vad de var tidigare. Det tillstånd som uppnås av att folk frivilligt byter saker med varandra kallas för D2.

Resursinnehavet i tillstånd D1 var rättvist. Det har uppnåtts genom det fördelningsschema som du, läsaren, själv har valt. Men D1 strider med D2, vilket var tillståndet som invånarna föredrog. Eftersom D1 är rättvist kan inte D2 vara det, för då hade du valt D2 redan från början när du utformade ditt fördelningsschema. Vad är det med fri byteshandel som medför orättvisa från D1 till D2?

Argumentet fångar någonting om essensen i marknadsekonomin. Först och främst är dess enkelhet en fingervisning åt svårigheten i att på politisk väg skapa ett ”rättvist” tillstånd. Den som bestämmer måste fördela resurserna så bra att ingen längre vill byta någonting (vilket socialismens kalkyleringsproblem visar är väldigt svårt, eller helt omöjligt). Men framför allt visar argumentet att ett fördelningsschema som är avsett att uppnå rättvisa är oförenligt med frihet. Om människor använder sin frihet till att byta saker med varandra rubbas det du kallar för rättvisa. Ett samhälle kan alltså inte ha både frihet och ett ”rättvist resursinnehav” samtidigt.

Läs mer:

  • Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, kapitel 7, sektion 1
  • Eric Mack, ”Self-ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism”, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, vol. 1, no. 1, 2002

Is free trade an expediency?

Brandon Christensen Philosophy , , , , ,

Jacques Delacroix makes an odd argument over at his blog Facts Matter:

Free trade is not a moral principle, it’s an expediency; violating the principle just costs money.

This argument comes after he admits that he would be very, very open to protectionism because of Mexico’s recent decision to denationalize its oil and natural gas industries.

Before I continue, who does Dr Delacroix think would benefit from a protectionist union with the United States?

Would he really advocate denationalizing the Mexican energy sector simply to force resources north of the border through a protectionist union? This seems to be the implication of his argument. If expediency is indeed Dr Delacroix’s excuse for free trade, then he automatically loses the argument to mercantilists (what, for example, sounds more expedient to you: A nationalized energy sector or free trade?).

It is precisely because of this automatic defeat that an 18th century moral philosopher (Adam Smith) decided to write a book on the moral superiority of free trade over protectionism (The Wealth of Nations). At its core, free trade is about the freedom of the individual to do what she pleases so long as no force nor fraud is involved. Once this underlying moral argument is understood, free trade can easily be seen as the natural outgrowth of such a philosophy.

Here is something to look out for as you read arguments put forth in the press: The moral argument. If an argument claims to have no moral underpinning it doesn’t mean there is no moral underpinning. It just means that the proponent of a said argument does not care for opposing or alternative arguments.

Ugh, this is getting convoluted so let me see if I can use an example. Suppose a politician or an academic is making an argument in favor of a policy (the policy itself is irrelevant). Suppose the proponent of this policy argues that the best reason to show support for his policy is because it will make everybody better off (it doesn’t matter how). Suppose further that this politician or academic claims that his policy is expedient rather moral, and that this in and of itself is one of the policy’s main features.

Would you support it?

Because throughout history most people have. This support is why we see a stagnation – of incomes, of years lived, and of innovation – for thousands of years in human history. The impact on mores that the expediency-over-morality outlook had on humanity can also be reflected in our utterly violent past.

I point out the difference between arguing from a moral standpoint and arguing from an expedient one because of the consequences that each of these approaches tend to produce. For example, Dr Delacroix also advocates military adventurism abroad in the name of expediency rather than morality. Can you guess why he still defends the actions of the Bush administration? But the Iraqis held elections, right guys? Right?

The moral thing to do – secure the lives and liberties of individuals first and foremost – is usually also the hardest thing to do, especially when people continually wave expedient choices in the faces of those who must choose. Yet I think that when and where this simple moral principle is able to gain a foothold in the minds of enough people, the rewards are ample.

Speaking of rewards, the ‘comments’ section at Dr Delacroix’s blog is currently inundated with speculation about whether or not Santa Claus was (was) really white-skinned. One reaps what one sows, after all!

The Pope, Capitalism, and los Yanqis

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics, History, Philosophy , , , , ,

Below is a comment that seems to me to be missing about Pope Francis’ current grasping for the Nobel in Economics. It’s beyond the simple observation that what he said recently about capitalism re-affirms the simple fact that princes of the church want to do good but have not understood simple economics, ever. And, by the way, there is nothing new to what the Pope said. I heard the same when I was growing up in a progressive Catholic parish in Paris, a long, long time ago. (And no, I was not molested, except by that older girl-scout, another story obviously.)

The current pope is a member of the Jesuit order. In the Catholic world, the Jesuits enjoy a reputation for intellectualism. It’s true that almost all have advanced degrees. (This pope appears to be an exception.) It’s also probably true that the many schools the Jesuits run, including universities, are not allowed to fall below a certain minimum level of competence. Beyond this, 25 years of close observation tell me that their good reputation only holds in a relative sense. Only the widespread ignorance of the Catholic church and of its other religious orders makes the Jesuits look good. They are quite tightly wrapped in their prevailing ideology and largely blinded by it. That ideology happens to be left wing right now. (Jesuits used to be fierce right-wingers of the most ignorant, closed-minded kind.) I don’t expect any Jesuit to be an intellectual giant although a few are.

The Pope is also an Argentinean, a provincial Argentinean. He did not suddenly free himself from the associated intellectual burdens upon his election. Like many, nearly all (I have not done a count, I confess, Your Holiness) of his compatriots he has had to struggle all his life with the following question:

Why isn’t Argentina Canada, with a constant high level of prosperity and political institutions that guarantee stability and peaceful alternance in power?

A subsidiary question: Why does Argentina become rich every thirty years only to plunge back into poverty?

Confounded by the brutal reality of the fact that there is no response that does not point straight at themselves, Argentinean intellectuals have developed a short, undemanding answer and a long-winded complicated one, both of which hold them innocent of their plight.

The short answer is this: It’s because of los Yanqis.

Of course, there is a problem in the fact that Canada with many more and tighter economic and political links to the US performs splendidly on any measure of economic or social welfare.

I spent a good deal of my scintillating youth debunking the second, long answer to the query described above. They came out of Argentina in the late fifties as a narrative production called “Teoría de la dependencia.” It later morphed into something called “World System Theory” under the influence of an excellent book by an American.

To make a long story short the theories’ main allegations about Third World poverty were that the more economically tied poor countries were to major developed economies, (such as the American economy) the poorer they became. Those allegations finally did not hold up under the scrutiny permitted by computers handling large amounts of archival data. (See my own co-authored piece for example: Delacroix, Jacques and Charles Ragin. 1981. “Structural blockage: a cross-national study of economic dependence, state efficacy and under-development.” American Journal of Sociology. 86-6:1311-1347.) The modern empirical research performed in the US and other part of the English-speaking world utterly destroyed Latin fantasizing in that area.

Pope Francis did not get the news apparently. Few Latin Americans did. Proudly innocent of any understanding of statistics, they cling to their beloved narrative as tightly as they did in 1965. They may cling to it even more tightly than they did then since they tasted the dust of South Korea’s and even of India’s economic development. (I am deliberately not mentioning China’s real development and its fake relationship to “socialism” because I don’t want to have to write another ten pages.) It’s not my fault; the Pope is older than me. He never sat in my classroom or in any of my former students’ classrooms. We never got a chance to straighten him out.

You have to think of every one of Pope Francis’ economic pronouncement with the understanding that he would probably not receive a B in the Econ. 101 class of a good public university. (In a good private university, in a Jesuit university for example, there is a good chance he would be made to achieve a B by any means necessary, including legitimate means.)

I don’t blame the Pope or the Catholic Church much. The old Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) is still esoteric reading to many of our contemporaries, including college graduates, including most college professors, I would guess, including many who tango on in the media. (Just listen to National Public Radio.)

Cell Phones on Airliners?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , ,

The FAA recently decided, tentatively, that cell phone use would be OK on commercial airplanes. But forthwith, moans went up from near and far and the FAA backed off. Lots of travelers understandably dread the prospect of captivity to loud conversations by boors seated inches away from them. It’s unclear at this time what the final decision will be.

Why does it never occur to anyone to let the owners of the airplanes decide this issue? They could experiment with various policies ranging from outright bans to unlimited use with all sorts of possibilities in between. Following Amtrak and some commuter railroads that have quiet cars, they could establish a no-talk section of the airplane like the non-smoking sections of yore. Or they could try pleading with talkers. Soon enough they will discover what their customers want and competitive pressures would force all airlines to fall into line.

That sort competitive experimentation works quite well in many market segments, as a moment’s reflection will confirm. So why do we hear nothing about this simple solution for the cell phone problem? Part of the answer, I fear, is that so many people are resigned to letting bureaucrats set the rules for practically all of life. An extreme example of this attitude is the kind of message that appears in my spam folder with a subject like “Obama lowers re-fi rates.” Of course this is nonsense but it suggests that a good many people think Obama has the power to set re-fi rates and worse: that it’s perfectly OK for him to wield such dictatorial powers.

Back to cell phones on airplanes: the whole issue came about as a result of determinations by the FAA technical staff that cell phone signals don’t really interfere with airplane communications as had been feared. That suggests a more difficult question: suppose there were credible evidence that cell phone use really was a threat to airplane communications. Should the FAA be empowered to ban cell phone use? I suggest that it does not. The airlines have an enormous incentive to avoid interference problems. If they were free to make their own decisions about this (again, assuming there was credible evidence of a real problem), their lawyers would be all over them about instituting their own prohibitions. The owners of the control towers (I’m envisioning a privatized FAA) would have strong incentives as well. Many passengers would be aware of the issue and would press for bans.

We have here another example of what a tough job we face, those of us who advocate free markets. The general public, Mencken’s “booboisie” if you will, hasn’t the mental horsepower to envision even modest deviations from the command and control paradigm that is smothering our society.

A (very) Quick Primer on Natural-Rights.

Adam Magoon Philosophy, Religion , , , , , , , , , ,

by Adam Magoon

The first step in understanding natural rights theory is to ask a simple but profound question.  Do you own yourself?

Well, let’s start with the definition of ownership.  Dictionary.com gives us “the act, state, or right of possessing something.” Digging deeper we find the definition of possession as “the state of having, owning, or controlling something.” The last part of that definition is key; controlling.  There is a modicum of truth in the old adage possession is 9/10ths of the law.  Nine times out of ten to own something is to control it.

Now getting back to our original question: Do you own yourself?  Well do you control your own body and mind?  We do not need to delve into psychology to answer this question.  I alone can move my arms up and down, I can choose to stand, walk, eat, think, write, create, or to do nothing at all.  I alone am in control over my body.    This is an indisputable fact.  The very act of questioning this fact proves it true; for if you do not have control over your thoughts and actions how could you possibly disagree?

Self-ownership is the cornerstone of libertarian natural rights philosophy and what the libertarian means when he uses the term “natural rights”.

To quote Murray Rothbard: “The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that each person must be a self-owner, and that no one has the right to interfere with such self-ownership”

Under this philosophy of self-ownership there are two important subcategories that I will just touch on for further elaboration at another time.

The Non-aggression Principle: is an ethical stance which asserts that “aggression” is inherently illegitimate. “Aggression” is defined as the “initiation” of physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property.

This is why the threat of violence cannot be used to negate the concept of self-ownership.  Holding a gun to my head and telling me to raise my arm does not mean you own the right to raise my arm any more than a thief owns the jewelry he stole.  Ownership cannot be transferred through violent means.

And the concept of homesteading which is best explained by John Locke:

“[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to. . . .

He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then when did they begin to be his? . . . And ‘tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? . . . If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that ‘tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, whichbegins the property; without which the common is of no use”

Very quickly I will also mention a couple of the more common arguments that arise when natural rights are discussed.

First, natural rights do not extend from god or any other supernatural or theological forces.  They are based on rational and philosophical thought.  They are what is known as an “a priori”  argument.  To put it simply, natural rights are a logical deduction based on a number of easily recognized facts, primarily the concept of self-ownership.

Second, governments do not, and indeed cannot, grant any rights that natural rights have not already granted.  Let’s look at a current event that everyone always seems to think about backwards; the legalization of drugs for personal consumption.  Because of the right to self-ownership each and every individual already has the right to do whatever they choose with their own body as long as they do so with their own property and do not violently harm others in the process.   Even if the U.S. government “legalized” the use of drugs tomorrow, they are not granting anyone the right to do drugs, they are merely removing their own restrictions on something that is already a right.   The idea that law comes from the state is known as ‘legal positivism’  and proponents are hard pressed to defend actions such as slavery and extermination that were made legal by many nations throughout the course of human history.

 

Recommended Reading:

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

Equality and Fairness

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Philosophy, Politics , , ,

Yesterday, President Obama gave a stirring speech on income inequality and he declared war on it. The President is a rich man who was abandoned by his drunken immigrant father. He was brought up by his hippie mother. She had a doctorate. It took her twenty years to earn it. (I don’t mean to say that she was idle during most or any of these twenty years.)

I am an immigrant myself. I came to this country with no money (that’s NO money), no degree, no skill, nothing. (I was white, it’s true, still am.)

(By the way, about half the people with African blood in the US have zero American slave ancestry. Yes, like the president. They are descendants of immigrants like me, people who volunteered to come to this allegedly racist country.)

I have an American doctorate too. It did not take me twenty years.

Fifty years after reaching this country , I live modestly but with no serious wants. And I live in a very desirable place, even by world standards.

I bet you filled in the blank: “Poor guy, poor immigrant worked hard all his life, blah, blah…”

But I didn’t. Nearly every time I found myself at a crossroad, I chose the other path; I selected psychic income over money income; I wanted more free time rather than a bigger car, or a bigger house. Now, does President Obama mean that I should feel bitter toward the other guy in initially similar circumstances who chose the income, who put in fifty hours weeks, and who is now worth several times what I am worth?

Does the President mean that I should be bitter because so many men my age are richer than I am ? Men who live in Cleveland and such?

Does President Obama really mean that I should enlist the services of government to take that other old guy’s money by force to give it to me? And next, will they take from me, equally by force, my golden memories of the three months I spend spear-fishing on the Caribbean coast of Mexico?

That would be fair, or would it?

And do we prefer to live in a society that gives even a poor immigrant the kind of choices I had or in a society where nearly everyone gets about the same regardless of personal preferences?

Is there such thing as Conservative Liberalism?

Rick Weber Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , ,

A friend sent me an email expressing confusion at the idea of Conservative Liberalism, which is apt because it combines two frequently misused words in a confusing way. Let me offer my views/definitions of important political terms to shed some light on this. This post will almost certainly raise more questions than it answers so disagree with me in the comments!

Hayek contrasted conservatism with liberalism and socialism, though a restatement would replace socialism with interventionism. My views are roughly in line with Hayek’s on what these terms mean, with an important caveat (below).

Conservatism is a support for the status quo, and is inherently anti-radical. But that status quo is a historical phenomenon and so conservatism isn’t per se pro- or anti-liberalism. So Conservative Liberalism is possible, just not in America today.

Liberalism is almost synonymous with goodness. It’s a big concept and trying to describe it adequately requires a whole library. All forms of liberalism are essentially concerned with freedom (from the latin Liber, i.e. liberty).

Interventionism is a belief that the government can usefully intervene in society and/or the market. Be that outlawing homosexuality or regulating hotels, this view has a distinctly illiberal flavor, though it’s essentially an orthogonal concept.

Hayek describes these categories as though distinct ideal types and with good reason. There are recurrent divisions along these lines that support thinking of politics in three dimensions, and lead to the formation of three groups (libertarians, conservative Republicans, and liberal [though not classically so] Democrats in the U.S., and similar factions elsewhere). However, I think it makes more sense to think of these as dimensions than ideal types. This adds some vagueness and makes it more difficult to put people in boxes. There can be Conservative Liberals (just not following the last few increasingly illiberal decades), and modern liberals can be understood as being descendant from classical liberal. Ideally everyone would be happy with this vagueness and instead of using labels as short-hand we’d discuss these sorts of things in depth.

But alas, it’s not so easy and even three dimensions is too many for most people, so we’ve got Left and Right wings. Us versus them! Good and evil! Which puts libertarians in the awkward position of not quite fitting in with Democrats on the left or Republicans on the right. I think the Nolan Chart is a step in the right direction. It makes Libertarians (top of the chart!) equidistant from left and right, but not really centrist either. It strips out political labels and gets to the principles at hand. And it’s ahistorical so it leaves room for radicalism and conservatism.

But then we’re left with a tricky situation because we’ve just eliminated an important dimension! And that leads to confusion when we discuss left and right because the ideas aren’t quite as simple as just particular bundles of policies, and that’s especially obvious in a two dimensional graph. If someone asks a libertarian if they’re left or right they should respond “freedom top!” and a neo-con should respond “power bottom!” I view Leftism as being an approach that is radical (i.e. anti-status quo) and Rightism as being pro-established interests. But it isn’t as simple as that either because the historical origins of the terms, and every day practice involves self-identification. The Tea Party is definitely in the Right but their views are typically radical (either radically small-government-liberal, or radically socially-conservative). There are right-wingers who are pro-market (a liberal position) and those who are pro-business (a pro-established interest position). 

So what’s the solution? Libertarians would probably like to see an accurate taxonomy that accounts for a wide variety of political and moral dimensions, but left/right has adequate for many for so long. I think the Nolan Chart is a good first step to breaking this false dichotomy, but I also think that using terms like classical liberal is a good choice when it invites conversation with people who aren’t familiar with these ideas. And Conservative Liberalism? It’s a paradoxical term that would also invite discussion, but it’s irrelevant since in the current historical context, the status quo is illiberal.