spontaneous order

What if we have already been ruled by an Intelligent Machine – and we are better off being so?

Federico Sosa Valle Philosophy , , , , , , ,

Common people and even reputed scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, have been worrying about the very menace of machines provided with Artificial Intelligence that could rule the whole human genre in detriment of our liberty and welfare. This fear has two inner components: the first one, that the Artificial Intelligence will outshine human intellectual capabilities; and the second one, that the Intelligent Machines will be endowed with their own volition.

Obviously, it would be an evil volition or, at least, a very egotistic one. Or maybe the Intelligent Machines will not necessarily be evil or egotistic, but only as fearful of humans as they are of machines – although more powerful. Moreover, depending on their morality on a multiplicity of reasonings we cannot grasp, we could not ascertain whether their superior intelligence (as we suppose the feared machines would be enabled with) is good or evil, or just more complex than ours.

Nevertheless, there is still a additional third assumption which accompanies all the warnings about the perils of thinking machines: that they are a physical shell inhabited by an Artificial Intelligence. Inspired by Gilbert Ryle’s critique of Cartesian Dualism, we can state that the belief of Intelligent Machines provided with an autonomous volition rests upon the said assumption of an intelligence independent from its physical body: a self-conscious being whose thoughts are fully independent from the sensory apparatus of its body and whose sensations are fully independent from the abstract classification which its mind operates by.

The word “machine” evokes a physical device. However, a machine might as well be an abstract one. Abstract Machines are thought experiments compounded by algorithms which delivers an output from an input of information which, in turn, could be used as an input for another circuit. Theses algorithms can emulate a decision making process, providing a set of consequences for a given set of antecedents.

In fact, all recent cybernetic innovations are the result of the merging of abstract machines with physical ones: machines that play chess, drive cars, recognize faces, etc.. Since they do not have an autonomous will and the sensory data they produce are determined by their algorithms, whose output, in turn, depends on the limitation of their hardware, people are reluctant to call their capabilities “real intelligence.” Perhaps the reason of that reluctance is that people are expecting automata which accomplish the Cartesian Dualism paradigm of a thinking being.

But what if an automaton enabled with an intelligence superior to ours has already existed and is ruling at least part of our lives? We do not know of any being of that kind, if for a ruling intelligent machine we regard a self-conscious and will-driven one. But the ones who are acquainted with the notion of law as a spontaneous and abstract order will not find any major difficulty to grasp the analogy between the algorithms that form an abstract machine and general and abstract laws that compound a legal system.

The first volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty by Friedrich A. Hayek, subtitled “Norms [Rules] and Order” (1973), is until today the most complete account of the law seen as an autonomous system, which adapts itself to the changes in its environment through a process of negative feedback that brings about marginal changes in its structure. Abstract and general notions of rights and duties are well-known by the agents of the system and that allows to everyone to form expectations about the behaviour of each other. When a conflict between two agents arises, a judge establishes the correct content of the law to be applied to the given case.

Notwithstanding our human intelligence -using its knowledge about the law- is capable of determining the right decision to each concrete controversy between two given agents, the system of the law as whole achieves a higher degree of complexity than any human mind might reach. Whereas our knowledge of a given case depends on acquiring more and more concrete data, our knowledge of the law as a whole is related to more and more abstract degrees of classifications. Thus, we cannot fully predict the complete chain of consequences of a singular decision upon the legal system as a whole. This last characteristic of the law does not mean its power of coercion is arbitrary. As individuals, we are enabled with enough information about the legal system to design our own plans and to form correct expectations about other people’s behaviour. Thus, legal constraints do not interfere with individual liberty.

On the other hand, the absolute boundary to the knowledge of the legal system as a whole works as a limitation to the political power over the law and, thence, over individuals. But, after all, that is what the concept of rule of law is about: we are much better off being ruled by an abstract and impersonal entity, more complex than the human mind, than by the self-conscious -but discretional- rule of man. Perhaps, law is not at all an automaton which rules our lives, but we can ascertain that law -as a spontaneous order- prevents other men from doing so.

The Political is about to disrupt the crypto-currency scene -or at least they say so.

Federico Sosa Valle Current Events , , , , , ,

According to this Financial Times report, Bitcoin is at the verge of a critical decision.

The implications of the chosen terms (“existential crisis,” “decisive leadership,” “political flaw”) are not casual. It looks like the market that crypto-currency had carried from the beginning contain the germ of its own destruction. As in an Escher’s drawing, Bitcoin has unraveled its political strand and its whole existence is, now, dependent upon a moment of decision of the sovereign: the assembly of miners. The decisionist narrative would be fulfilled if the political decision had to be taken by acclamatio instead of voting.

Nevertheless, the decision by acclamation would be still possible: the ones who want “Bitcoin Core” might follow one direction and the other ones, who choose “Bitcoin Unlimited,” might follow their own way. After all, no existential crisis can be solved by voting.

So, which is inside of which? Is the market framed in a system depending upon a political decision of the sovereign? Or does every decision need to be taken inside a spontaneous framework of rules?

We are used to praising Bitcoin for its independence from any political factor: Bitcoin supply depends on a set of rules which allows the public to form expectations about its value with a high degree of probability of proving to be correct.

Taken in isolation, Bitcoin emulates the market. Nevertheless, being independent of political institutions is not enough for being “the market.” The attractiveness of Bitcoin is that it operates in an open system of competition of currencies. In this system, there are many other crypto-currencies, and there might be several variances of Bitcoins as well –in esse or in posse.

Imagine, for example, that Bitcoin effectively splits into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited. Which of the two will prevail over the other? It does not matter. What really matters is that there will be several variances of currencies in competition. The factors that determine the selection of the prevailing currency depends upon a higher level of abstraction that impose an absolute limit to our knowledge.

So, is Bitcoin in an existential crisis? Does a political decision need to be made? Maybe.

But that does not imply that “The Political” will take over the reins of the crypto-currency market. Moreover, opposite political decisions are the linkages which the spontaneous selection process -in this case, of currencies- is made of. In this sense, “Bitcoin Core” and “Bitcoin Unlimited” are attributes of a competitive system and the final prevalence of one variance among other alternatives will not be the result of a deliberate decision but of an abstract process of evolution.

Nazism: left or right?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events , , ,

One of the greatest controversies on the Brazilian internet these last few days was to define Nazism as either left-wing or right-wing. I even wrote something about it in Portuguese, and although I really tried my best not to be controversial, I was amazed by how divisive the issue seems to be. So here is my view on this issue, now in English.

Is Nazism a left or right wing political movement? The first thing I believe we need to consider to answer this question is what is right and left? The answer (surprisingly simple in my view) is that right and left are words. Words are signs we use to describe things, but as (I guess) most linguists will say, words don’t have any objective connection to the things they describe. For example, there’s no special connection between the word “cat” and that fluffy animal that drinks milk and chases rats. It is just a convention that in the English language we call that animal “cat,” and not “alligator” or “hot dog.”

However, when we say that there is no objective connection between words and stuff, that doesn’t mean that words are simply random. Words only work in a linguistic context, so there is no use calling a cat anything else if you want to communicate properly. The English language (as any other language, except for Esperanto) was not invented by any specific person. Languages are actually a spontaneous order, something that economists in the Austrian School really enjoy talking about. So, if you want to communicate well, you have to join the party (or the conversation).

With all that said, we need to admit that the word most often used to describe Nazism politically is right-wing. Actually, far-right. The point in discussion (that so many people in Brazil just don’t seem to get) is if this description makes any sense. You see, other groups classified as right-wing are conservatives and liberals (classical liberals, to be more precise). So the question is: why are conservatives, liberals and Nazis all classified as right-wing? What do all these groups have in common? Going back to the example of the cat, there is a reason why you can call both a lion and a tiger a cat (or a feline): they both share several characteristics. It may be just at the eye of the beholder (although evolutionary biologists will say something different), but a lion has much more to do with a tiger than with a frog. So it seems fair to include lions and tigers in a small group where frogs don’t belong. So, the question is: is it fair to include conservatives, classical liberals and Nazis in the same group? Why?

I know there are reasons why all these groups are generally classified together. I know that left and right are terms that go back to the French Revolution. I know how these terms are generally used. All I’m saying (with Friedrich Hayek, David Nolan, and many others) is that we should reconsider the way we typically classify political groups.

Dinosaurs were classified as reptiles. And then people realized they were closer to birds. I guess it was a shock when someone first said that a Velociraptor has more to do with a chicken than with a Komodo dragon, but it seems to me (as an outsider of paleontology) that this is common wisdom now. Similarly, maybe we should have the courage to reconsider the way we classify Nazis. Leftists, of course, won’t like this. But neither do conservatives like being called fascists. Are leftists tasting their bitter medicine? Maybe. But I believe they should give us a good explanation why Nazis should be considered right-wing. I haven’t heard any.

Adam Smith on the character of the American rebels

Brandon Christensen Books, Liberty , , , , , , , , , , ,

They are very weak who flatter themselves that, in the state to which things have come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone. The persons who now govern the resolutions of what they call their continental congress, feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen, and attornies, they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world. Five hundred different people, perhaps, who in different ways act immediately under the continental congress; and five hundred thousand, perhaps, who act under those five hundred, all feel in the same manner a proportionable rise in their own importance. Almost every individual of the governing party in America fills, at present in his own fancy, a station superior, not only to what he had ever filled before, but to what he had ever expected to fill; and unless some new object of ambition is presented either to him or to his leaders, if he has the ordinary spirit of a man, he will die in defence of that station.

Found here. Today, many people, especially libertarians in the US, celebrate an act of secession from an overbearing empire, but this isn’t really the case of what happened. The colonies wanted more representation in parliament, not independence. London wouldn’t listen. Adam Smith wrote on this, too, in the same book.

Smith and, frankly, the Americans rebels were all federalists as opposed to nationalists. The American rebels wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom because they were British subjects and they were culturally British. Even the non-British subjects of the American colonies felt a loyalty towards London that they did not have for their former homelands in Europe. Smith, for his part, argued that losing the colonies would be expensive but also, I am guessing, because his Scottish background showed him that being an equal part of a larger whole was beneficial for everyone involved. But London wouldn’t listen. As a result, war happened, and London lost a huge, valuable chunk of its realm to hardheadedness.

I am currently reading a book on post-war France. It’s by an American historian at New York University. It’s very good. Paris had a large overseas empire in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean. France’s imperial subjects wanted to remain part of the empire, but they wanted equal representation in parliament. They wanted to send senators, representatives, and judges to Europe, and they wanted senators, representatives, and judges from Europe to govern in their territories. They wanted political equality – isonomia – to be the ideological underpinning of a new French republic. Alas, what the world got instead was “decolonization”: a nightmare of nationalism, ethnic cleansing, coups, autocracy, and poverty through protectionism. I’m still in the process of reading the book. It’s goal is to explain why this happened. I’ll keep you updated.

Small states, secession, and decentralization – three qualifications that layman libertarians (who are still much smarter than conservatives and “liberals”) argue are essential for peace and prosperity – are worthless without some major qualifications. Interconnectedness matters. Political representation matters. What’s more, interconnectedness and political representation in a larger body politic are often better for individual liberty than smallness, secession, and so-called decentralization. Equality matters, but not in the ways that we typically assume.

Here’s more on Adam Smith at NOL. Happy Fourth of July, from Texas.

Immigration, Cultural Change, and Diversity as a Cultural Discovery Process

Zachary Woodman Culture, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

I have spent a couple of posts addressing various spurious economic and fiscal arguments against looser immigration restrictions. But, as Brandon pointed out recently, these aren’t really the most powerful arguments for immigration restrictions. Most of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric revolves around strictly alleged cultural costs of immigration. I agree that for all the economic rhetoric used in these debates, it is fear of the culturally unfamiliar that is driving the opposition. However, I still think the tools of economics that are used to address whether immigration negatively impacts wages, welfare, and unemployment can be used to address the question of whether immigrants impact our culture negatively.

One of the greatest fears that conservatives tend to have of immigration is the resulting cultural diversity will cause harmful change in society. The argument goes that the immigrant will bring “their” customs from other countries that might do damage to “our” supposedly superior customs and practices, and the result will be a damage to “our” long-held traditions and institutions that make “our” society “great.” These fears include, for example, lower income immigrants causing higher divorce rates spurring disintegration of the family, possible violence coming from cultural differences, or immigrants voting in ways that are not conducive to what conservatives tend to call “the founding principles of the republic.” Thanks to this insight, it is argued, we should restrict immigration or at least force prospective immigrants to hop through bureaucracy so they may have training on “our” republican principles before becoming citizens.

There are a number of ways one may address this argument. First, one could point out that immigrants face robust incentives to assimilate into American culture without needing to be forced to by restrictive immigration policies. One of the main reasons why immigrants come to the United States is for better economic opportunity. However, when immigrants are extremely socially distant from much of the native population, there a tendency for natives to trust them less in market exchange. As a result, it is in the best interest of the immigrant to adopt some of the customs of his/her new home in order to reduce the social distance to maximize the number of trades. (A more detailed version of this type of argument, in application to social and cultural differences in anarchy, can be found in Pete Leeson’s paper Social Distance and Self-Enforcing Exchange).

The main moral of the story is that peaceable assimilation and social cohesion comes about through non-governmental mechanisms far more easily than is commonly assumed. In other words, “our” cultural values are likely not in as much danger as conservatives would have you think.

Another powerful way of addressing this claim is to ask why should we assume that “our” ways of doing things is any better than the immigrant’s home country’s practices? Why is it that we should be so resistant to the possibility that culture might change thanks to immigration and cultural diversity?

It is tempting for conservatives to respond that the immigrant is coming here and leaving his/her home, thus obviously there is something “better” about “our” cultural practices. However, to do so is to somewhat oversimplify why people immigrate. Though it might be true that, on net, they anticipate life in their new home to be better and that might largely be because “our” institutions and cultural practices are on net better, it is a composition fallacy to claim that it follows from this that all our institutions are better. There still might be some cultural practices that immigrants would want to keep thanks to his/her subjective value preferences from his or her country, and those practices very well might be a more beneficial. This is not to say our cultural practices are inherently worse, or that they are in every instance equal, just that we have no way of evaluating the relative value of cultural practices ex ante.

The lesson here is that we should apply FA Hayek’s insights from the knowledge problem to the evolution of cultural practices in much the way conservatives are willing to apply it to immigration. There is no reason to assume that “our” cultural practices are better than foreign ones; they may or may not be, but it is a pretense of knowledge to attempt to use state coercion to centrally plan culture just as it is a pretense of knowledge to attempt to centrally plan economic production.

Instead of viewing immigration as a necessary drain on culture, it may be viewed as a potential means of improving culture through the free exchange of cultural values and practices. In the market, individuals are permitted to experiment with new inventions and methods of production because this innovation and risk can lead to better ways of doing things. Therefore, entrepreneurship is commonly called a “discovery process;” it is how humanity may ‘discover’ newer, more efficient economic production techniques and products.

Why is cosmopolitan diversity not to be thought of as such a discovery process in the realm of culture? Just as competition between firms without barriers to entry brings economic innovation, competition between cultural practices without the barrier to entry of immigration laws may be a means of bettering culture. When thought of in that light, the fact that our cultural traditions may change is not so daunting. Just as there is “creative destruction” of firms in the marketplace, there is creative destruction of cultural practices.

Conservative critics of immigration may object that such cultural diversity may cause society to evolve in negative ways, or else they may object and claim that I am not valuing traditions highly enough. For the first claim, there is an epistemic problem here on how we may know which cultural practices are “better.” We may have our opinions, based on micro-level experience, on which cultural practices are better, and we have every right to promote those in non-governmental ways and continue to practice them in our lives. Tolerance for such diversity is what allows the cultural discovery process to happen in the first place. However, there is no reason to assume that our sentiments towards our tradition constitute objective knowledge of cultural practices on the macro-level; on the contrary, the key insight of Hayek is it is a fatal conceit to assume such knowledge.

As Hayek said in his famous essay Why I’m Not a Conservative:

As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such, while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead. There would not be much to object to if the conservatives merely disliked too rapid change in institutions and public policy; here the case for caution and slow process is indeed strong. But the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about. It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance.

As for the latter objection that I’m not valuing tradition, what is at the core of disagreement is not the value of traditions. Traditions are highly valuable: they are the cultural culmination of all the tacit knowledge of the extended order of society and have withstood the test of time. The disagreement here is what principles we ought to employ when evaluating how a tradition should evolve. The principle I’m expressing is that when a tradition must be forced on society through state coercion and planning, perhaps it is not worth keeping.

Far from destroying culture, the free mobility of individuals through immigration enables spontaneous order to work in ways which improve culture. Immigration, tolerance, and cultural diversity are vital to a free society because it allows the evolution and discovery of better cultural practices. Individual freedom and communal values are not in opposition to each other, instead the only way to improve communal values is through the free mobility of individuals and voluntary exchange.

Rules of Warfare in Pre-Modern Societies

Kevin Kallmes History, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

As my first foray into NOL blogging, I figured I would bring up a recent debate I had liberty, war, and peace that lingered in my mind: how have rules of war been maintained throughout history without a central enforcing agency? This question is fundamental to the understanding of the nation-state in IR theory, and is also an astonishing example of spontaneous order in an anarchic and chaotic scenario.

The quandary exists because even the laudable negative rights of life, liberty, and property ownership, as Eric Mack discusses in his essay on Just War Theory, require a positive enforcement by others. Similarly, “rules of war”–such as refraining from attacking non-regulars, not attacking neutral parties, abiding by the terms of treaties, treating prisoners of war with respect, etc.–are, theoretically, difficult to establish and dependent on positive enforcement. This is because if Party A respects these rules, they provide a perverse incentive to Party B to take advantage of Party A’s restraint, and if doing so gives Party B the upper hand, they can enjoy the benefits of betraying the rules of war with impunity. This is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, and if it generalized across many nations, the theory of rational choice would lead us to expect a coordination problem, in which those using the strategy of Party B would dominate the Party A’s.

I am certainly not the first to identify this, and the literature on overcoming coordination problems through iteration of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, regime collaboration, and international organizations and treaties is incredibly thorough (just for a taste, you can see James Morrow’s book, F.V. Kratochwil’s book, and articles by Duncan Snidal, Arthur A. Stein, and even James Buchanan and Victor Vanberg). However, I thought it would be interesting to examine the historical evidence of effective rules of war, particularly from the premodern period. Because global communication technology and networks, international courts, treaties, and organizations, and deterrence based on the terrifying weapons of modern war were lacking in antiquity and on through roughly the 18th century (open to argument on that one), premodern societies seem to be the best test of the effectiveness of rules of war and their mechanisms. I won’t discuss any in detail, and I am skipping many rules of war for which their effectiveness is not discernable (such as the Mahabarata, Deuteronomy, and the Quran), but here is a list of interesting examples for discussion:

  • The archaic Greek poleis:
    • As Victor Davis Hanson argues in his influential book, the Western Way of War, the incentive to focus on agricultural production and the fact that citizen-warriors were personally responsible for military service made the costs of long-term campaigns, especially given the lack of siege technologies and the difficulty in laying waste to wheat fields and olive trees, higher than the potential benefits. However, there were still disputes to be resolved, and raiding was still harmful to the agriculture of polis that was raided. In order to limit costs to both invader and defender, the poleis developed the hoplite warfare strategy, in which citizen-soldiers met for decisive conflicts in traditional, if not previously agreed, locations, in which limited territorial gains were afforded to the victor. While this does not describe every aspect of 7th-5th century warfare in Greece, this strategy pervaded the Greek mainland and allowed disputes to be resolved with minimal collateral damage and investment.
  • Thucydides’ Athens:
    • Though Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is seen as the invention of realism based on its “the strong did what they could, and the weak suffered what they must” representation of self-interest in foreign policy, his narrative as a whole shows an important constraint in war: if a military power makes war with the expressed intent of empire-building without casus belli, they will entrench their enemies, alienate neutral states, and cause divisiveness on the home front because they have lost the moral high ground. Thucydides notes that the majority of Greeks opposed Athens on the grounds of their selfish empire-building, and because of their inability to convince Sparta of their just motives, brutality to neutral states, internal dissension during the Sicilian expedition, and many other misfortunes of war (plague, death of Pericles, Persian intervention), Athenian power was broken. The lesson: Party B (from above) must consider the international reaction to abusing Party A, and at least make a public showing that the war is just. Also, if Hitler had only read his Thucydides, he might have known that marching through Belgium may be tactically sound, but he was risking the same reaction that the Athenians risked in the Melian massacre.
  • POW’s and ransoming in antiquity
    • Several rules of warfare were maintained through the mutual benefits to combatants, the most notable being the conventions concerning ransoming. From at least 5th century Greece (in the Sphacteria incident) to Caesar, citizens could be ransomed following a battle—and there were even conventional levels of payment for these POW’s. This was a benefit specifically afforded to “civilized” foes, and Roman practice increasingly became enslavement rather than ransom, but this convention was widespread for centuries, possibly showing that ransoming enemies is an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
  • Ancus Marcius and Just War Theory:
    • Along the same lines as the Thucydides example, the Romans engaged in the ritual of the fetiales, including the enumeration of the just cases for war, before invading an enemy. This limited war to official disagreements with neighboring states, and other religious conventions were maintained that limited certain tactics in war (a noteworthy passage of the Aeneid shows that putting on the armor of your enemies for stealth purposes would be doubly punished by the gods). These conventions included looking down on poison as woman’s weapon and on taking some religious statuary as booty, and though Roman generals still poisoned wells or robbed cities of their gods, they received negative reactions by their contemporaries.
  • Hostage policies throughout antiquity:
    • Another problem with the rules of war is the enforcement of treaties, which have credible commitment problems. Both Greeks and Romans made imperial gains by breaking treaties, but it was common practice to overcome the credible commitment problems of both alliances and treaties to end wars that hostages, usually the children of influential citizens or nobles, were exchanged. Whether they were exchanged both ways (more common in alliances) or passed only one way (usually from the defeated to the victorious), hostages were used at least 250 times by Rome and countless times by other ancient civilizations to ensure the enforcement of treaties.
  • Carthage’s “Truceless War”:
    • While we often think of ancient war as anarchic and based on the whims of generals, wars that completely lacked conventions or limitations were rare. In fact, following truces that allowed for collection of the dead, ransoming of both the living and the dead, and supplication for one’s own life go back at least as far as the Iliad, and wars that lacked such conventions were shocking to ancient historians. Such wars occurred when one side broke a general convention, usually the convention of allowing enemies to surrender alive and be ransomed. Because of this betrayal, their opponents would also stop following any rules of war, and such wars became not about achieving strategic goals but annihilating the opponent entirely. Carthage, following their loss in the First Punic War, fought a truceless war with their former mercenaries due to lack of payment that featured escalations in mutilation and crucifixion until the mercenaries were wiped out, at great cost in men and money to Carthage.
  • Roman 3rd party arbitration or intervention:
    • The Romans, after they gained international prominence but before they ruled the whole Mediterranean, took an interest in wars between their neighbors. While this sometimes included imperialism, in several instances they served as a 3rd party arbitrator of peace, and even as an enforcer of peace in Antiochus IV’s invasion of Egypt.
  • Blood feuds:
    • While mentioning blood feuds brings up images of Hatfields, McCoys, and senseless brutality over generations, blood feuds were actually a mechanism for limiting violence through threat of reprisal. While the effectiveness of this mechanism may be debatable, its intention as a limitation of violence is notable in several pre-modern societies, especially the Scots and Slavs.
  • Chivalric codes:
    • We should be careful of romanticizing this example, but from the 12th to 14th centuries, chivalry established rules of conduct for how knights should treat knights on and off the battlefield. Much of the conception of chivalry comes from poetic fictions about historical figures that were vicious or corrupt in many ways. However, it was actually the battlefield codes, such as ransoming rather than killing noble foes, that were actually practiced the most often, a trend that saw a brutal reversal in the War of the Roses. One might point out that neither the chivalric codes nor the earlier Roman codes of war included avoidance of harming civilians. This shows that, while rules of war were effective in practice at many points in history, they did not always have the same conceptions of what these rules were made to protect.
  • The Roman Catholic Church:
    • Catholicism influenced the rules of war in two ways: like the fetiales of the Romans, it established the grounds on which war was justifiable (and was influential on the ideals of chivalry), and the pope himself, through the power of excommunication, could limit the warring impulses of kings and lords. While many popes used their power to cause conflict, the church still had both moral influence and bargaining power, and was a powerful international institution for centuries that forced treaties on Christian rulers, provided a court of arbitration, and, several times, that tried to unite these leaders in war against non-Christians. The influence of Catholic peacekeeping measures waxed and waned from Charlemagne onward, but the Peace and Truce of God was one of the earliest attempts to protect non-combatants in wartime

This very incomplete list represents a lot of the more conventional examples of this phenomenon (sorry, but I am very conventionally educated). I would love if those who have other examples, especially from outside of Greece, Rome, and the Western World, would bring them up in the comments so I can expand my knowledge of the history of the rules of war!

The many iterations of rules of war in pre-modern societies shows the effectiveness of spontaneous order in creating systems that promote liberty and peace. These rules did not eliminate violence, cruelty, or imperialism, but they forced self-interested parties to check their selfish impulses. This is not an argument that international organizations with the goal of limiting war are unnecessary (and the Geneva Conventions are a laudable example of voluntary self-enforcement), but rather a demonstration of the wide reach of both Smith’s invisible hand and Hayek’s spontaneous order: even in the most anarchic of trades, long-term individual self-interest can support general interest, and a certain level of order is imposed on the chaos of war through the unplanned conventions of societies.

 

ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ οἱ παῖδες τοὺς πατέρας θάπτουσι, ἐν δὲ τῷ οἱ πατέρες τοὺς παῖδας

In [peace], sons bury their fathers, but in [war], fathers bury their sons.

–Herodotus, The Histories, 1.87.4.

Fight for your economic right to party

Nick Cowen Current Events, Economics , , , , ,

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Two months ago, London’s iconic Fabric nightclub was shut-down by Islington Council on the dubious grounds that it had failed to adequately search club-goers for drugs. Fabric, a sprawling multi-level concrete venue, is dear to the heart of many Londoners. Its dramatic closure came as a shock. David Nutt blamed our hypocritical drug laws, while others spied conspiracies to turn the venue over to housing developers. In response to the public outcry, this month, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has appointed Amy Lamé as ‘night tzar’ (some use the even grander title Night Mayor) with the task of reviving London’s nightlife and especially trying to save venues like Fabric.

Tzars sound great in theory but tend to fail in practice. They are meant to break-up bureaucratic silos and join-up policymaking so that it conforms to a grand plan in a particular policy area. Rather than following rules regardless of outcomes, they have an outcome that the executive asks them to pursue remorselessly. However, I argue that this is precisely the opposite of what you want if your goal is a sustainable, thriving night-life culture. London night-life has suffered because of its politicization, not from a lack of it. The answer is strong rights for entrepreneurs to provide entertainment to willing consumers. This means reforming of government powers to license venues and prohibit development on arbitrary grounds. While ending drug prohibition is of deep importance, here the drug-use excuse was the face of a more pernicious power that local governments have to shut down successful businesses on arbitrary grounds.

In the United Kingdom, land development and property-use decisions have essentially been nationalized since 1947. While building still takes place, it only happens following detailed, expensive consultation with local planning authorities with significant input from local residents. As a result, the supply of building amenities has become unmoored from demand. The most noticeable impact has been rising house prices and rents in areas where the economy is growing. This is a boon to landlords lucky enough to own property in areas of high demand. But it causes those without property to suffer significantly higher living costs. It has led to bizarre developments such as it being easier to open a new golf course in the South-East than to start a new housing development.

While the majority of people feel the strain primarily through higher rents, less visible is the impact on businesses who are equally constrained by planning laws. They struggle to find suitable buildings for their commercial activities. Competitors and local residents can use the planning process to block new construction or changes to lawful uses for particular venues. Businesses lack legitimate expectations about where they will be allowed to expand. Those that do succeed need to invest heavily in lobbying and legal support. The result is that people end up travelling further to get to shops and to their places of work.

Club venues face a number of additional biases in this process. Local officials are more likely to be blamed for noise and crime associated with clubs but not praised for their fun and economic benefits. This fosters risk-aversion amongst local policymakers. At the same time, club-goers may outnumber local residents but most are not able to vote in local council elections. Residents might well have originally moved into a central London location precisely to experience fun, exciting nightlife. But once there, perhaps especially as they get a little older, their priorities change. They realize that they may want to live in an exciting city, but just so long as their particular neighborhood is a little less exciting. Rather than move to a quieter area, they express their preferences through the political process and demand that venues that have been around a lot longer than they have be closed.

Unfortunately, if too many residents in the city come to the same conclusion, you end up shutting down historic clubs on the slightest pretext. When it comes to hosting unlawful activities, businesses can be presumed guilty, with no secure way of ever proving their innocence.

In this context, having a tzar is an understandable response as a counter-balance to the call of the NIMBYs. But it doesn’t solve the core problem which is a system that cannot adequately represent revelers but augments complaints. The tzar can champion venues but will be silenced once these entrenched interests turn up the noise. Instead, we need a system that recognizes the presumptive right of businesses to market entertainment to willing consumers. Only provable nuisance should be cause to fine or eventually close venues. Once established, entertainment venues should not have to regularly prove their social worth to a licensing committee (the fact that they have willing customers is sufficient warrant for that).

Most importantly, complaints from recent arrivals against historic venues that have always hosted loud parties should be discounted. This works in a fashion in Tokyo, where mixed development is widely permitted (no one stops people from taking up residence in an otherwise commercial district) but without any assumption that those residents can then alter the make-up of their community through the political process.

Sweet Skateboard Tales

Jacques Delacroix Culture, Liberty , ,

The words “skateboard” and “sweet” are seldom found together. Skateboarders tend to have a bad reputation because they are mostly male, because they act too male, and because of their lamentable fashion sense. Yet, many or most are both athletes and artists. They do things in the middle of my street of such perilous inventiveness that I am not brave enough even to think about them.

So, the other day, I  am watching the ocean on West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz. Now, West Cliff is a sea-hugging street with a million dollar view of Monterey Bay. (I mean this literally: Move the same house that has the ocean view one block inland and its value drops by a cool million or more.) West Cliff is a good place for spotting whales but it’s mostly used by many Santa Cruz residents as a walking venue and a place to ride their bikes.

Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I spot a man on a skateboard. Skateboarders seldom use West Cliff. It’s often crowded, it’s too ordinary, and it offers few opportunities to do tricks. This skateboarder is a bit older than most, perhaps in his early thirties. He is moving quite fast, I think. A six year-old is clinging to his left leg, a four year-old to his right leg. It’s stunning and it’s adorable. The next day one who knows more than I tells me that it must have been an electrically propelled skateboard. I love living in California. The inventiveness here is bracing.

Not a day later, I am standing in from of the Post Office shooting the breeze with my pal, Dennis the Homeless. (Dennis is homeless, not brainless; he knows a lot and he makes bamboo flutes.) My mind can’t believe what my eyes see. If I had been asked, I would have said it couldn’t be done. A boy and a girl are skateboarding together, each with his own board but holding hands. The harmony, the intuitive synchronicity! Ah, young love! The sweet music they must make in bed. Again, I don’t know where else I would be treated to this kind of spontaneous, charming show.

On Robots and Personal Identity

Federico Sosa Valle Liberty , , , , ,

When I came across this documentary on robots and their ability to carry on a conversation between each other, the well-known ideas on the spontaneous emergence of language inevitably crossed my mind. The resemblances to Hayek’s Sensory Order are obvious as well, notwithstanding his later remarks on negative feedback processes, which involve spontaneous orders that are borrowed, precisely, from cybernetics. But what grabbed my attention the most was the importance attached to the fact that the robots had a body. According to the documentary, the shape of the body of the robots allows them to develop certain patterns of classification for facts and behavior that would be different if their bodies were different as well. In this sense, “to have a body” is a requisite characteristic of the robots to make possible artificial intelligence; to evolve following a process of negative feedback.

That brought me back the works of Peter Geach on personal identity. He confronted John Locke’s notion of personal identity as mere memory and stated, instead, that the body was essential to the said concept. Memory and human body are, in order to develop an individual personality, inherent to each other.

This is relevant to our discussions about the definition of individual freedom. If the body is inherent to our personal identity, there are not much place left for Spinoza’s freedom of thought, or inner liberty, as the ultimate definition of individual liberty. Besides freedom of thought, we need freedom to move in order to be regarded as free individuals, and our sphere of individual autonomy should be extended to our body and its surroundings. Moreover, it would be impossible to exercise any freedom of thought and expression if such individual liberties are not protected.

Some thoughts on the Olympic Games and cosmopolitanism

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

Right now my city, Rio de Janeiro, is hosting the Summer Olympic Games. It is in many ways a great moment, and it is especially good to see people from so many parts of the world together in relative harmony. In other words, a good example of cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitanism in the city today reminds me of the attempts of multilateralism that marked Brazilian (and world) foreign policy in previous governments, but that now seem to fade away. The two terms, cosmopolitanism and multilateralism, are not exactly synonyms, but are closely related: multilateral policies should work in bringing peoples together in a more cosmopolitan world. Concerning that, I think of a multilateralism that does not work in bringing people together through cosmopolitanism, and one that can work in that way.

When the Cold War was over, multiple theories were presented to explain what would happen to a world without the tension between two superpowers. Some suggested that the US would reign as a lone superpower; others that it would embrace some form of benign hegemony, in a New World Order. Others still believed that US power was in decline, and that the World would see more multilateralism in the 21st century. This last view was especially dear in Brazil, but as the 21st century progresses, it does not seem to hold as much water anymore.

One great example of multilateralism substituting American hegemony was the integration of Western Europe, but that does not seem to be the case anymore. It is true that beginning shortly after WWII European countries experienced growing levels of regional integration, culminating with the European Union and the Euro in the 1990s. But even then, economists warned politicians and the general public that such a level of integration was not possible, at least not without a central government in Europe. Successive economic crises, Brexit, and the harsh questioning of immigration policies show today that economists were right back then.

Another example of multilateralism celebrated in the 1990s was the growing importance of the UN. Successive humanitarian missions and interventions in several countries suggested that that UN could now surpass the dawn that marked the relationship between USA and USSR in the previous period. Optimism went so far as to discuss themes such as the ‘obligation to intervene’, substituting previous understandings of state sovereignty. But as the years go by, cases like Haiti, Rwanda, Sudan, and many others show that the optimism was at best too high.

Finally and more recently, Brazil and other underdeveloped and developing countries focused greatly on South-South Cooperation, trying to substitute the more standard paradigm of North-South Foreign Aid. This materialized in initiatives such as UNASUR and BRICS. Although presented as a new development, that was actually very reminiscent of The Non-Aligned Movement, The Group of 77, and other initiatives from the 1960s and 1970s. Now, as Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Turkey, China, Russia, and several other countries face growing levels of economic and political hardship, attempts to “overcome American hegemony” seem but preposterous.

New forms in multilateralism in Europe, the Global South, and even the World (in the UN) did not work because they are not really democratic, as they claim to be. Behind a rhetoric of democracy, empowerment of the poor, and so on, they are just new forms of mercantilism: political elites trying to control the economy, not just at the national level, but the international one as well. The point was never to actually bring people together, but to maintain the status quo by avoiding real competition.

The multilateralism that can bring about cosmopolitanism, and that somewhat shows in the Summer Olympic Games in Rio, is one characterized by spontaneous order. People do come together: that is the natural ways of things. The desire to trade spontaneously brings different peoples closer to one another, and as they are closer they realize how much they have in common, and also what can be learnt from the differences. It is not always a peaceful dealing, but the more people are educated to tolerate the differences and to benefit from them, the more cosmopolitan they become.

A top down approach to cosmopolitanism is just a deformed clone of the real thing. Even if some results appear, they always seem to fall somewhere in the uncanny valley, and anyway, the results do not last very long. A bottom up cosmopolitanism is the real thing, and if only elites let it be, it can grow stronger, bring more wealth, and even a little more peace to the world.

What sort of “Meritocracy” would a libertarian endorse, if he had to?

Federico Sosa Valle Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , , , ,

The first attempt to answer this question should say: “none.” Notwithstanding that this is the correct approach, we can’t help but feel uneasy about it. Libertarians have had to deal with this uncomfortable truth for so long. In respect to my own personal experience, I remember where I was when I read, for the first time, “Equality, Value, and Merit,” the title of Chapter 6 in Friedrich A Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. I was attending a weekly reading group about that book, and we were gathered in a cafê in Buenos Aires. The number of attendees was enough to find every kind of reader you could expect (and not expect) to meet in such a group:

  • There was the one who had already studied and condensed each chapter and then was re-reading and re-assessing the whole book; the one who did his “homework” without any effort;
  • the one who the embarrassment of failing to accomplish the reading requirements for the meeting overcame the pleasure of any type of procrastination (i.e. me, mostly because I was one of the promoters);
  • and the one who gave to the group the enthusiasm to last for six months in a row and finish the whole book. The latter, in this case, was a truly “natural Libertarian,” the one who had the pure Libertarian position for each subject by not showing an excessive regard for what Hayek was actually saying.

I remember that I arrived to the “Equality, Value, and Merit” meeting with a feeling of uncertainty. Hayek argued that there is no merit to acknowledging in a market process, none of any sort, a just compensation for the value of one’s apportation – a value whose magnitude depends on the relative scarcity of the marginal product. The reader who always accomplished his reading duties without any effort shared my sentiment of awe. Almost the whole meeting was conducted by our companion who was reading the book for a second – or perhaps third – time. In effect, Hayek left no place to meritocracy, since it is impossible to decide democratically among any scale of merit (remember Kenneth Arrow’s theorem on the impossibility of democracy, cited later on the third volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty), so retributions based on value enable the system to adapt spontaneously to the changes in the environment with more efficiency. The explanation was a bit of an unpopular one, but accurate. Not without reluctance, almost all of us accepted it. All of us but one: our true spontaneous Libertarian. She would under no condition surrender her convictions on the merit of the retributions that the market process assesses spontaneously to each one in accordance to the marginal value of their activity. While we acknowledged no merit to the results of the market process, she was prone to endorsing a moral value to the blinded results of the allocation of goods adjusted to the changes in their relative scarcities.

Many years after our debate took place, I am now starting to acknowledge that there might be a particle of truth in the statements of our natural Libertarian and, what is most outstanding, that these statements could be deducted from other chapters of the same book (The Constitution of Liberty), particularly the one which concerns on the definition of liberty (“Liberty and Liberties”). I said a particle of truth, not the whole truth, but at least that particle which is needed to start an intellectual quest.

In The Constitution of Liberty, written in 1960, Hayek made a quick outline of the different notions of liberty that were popular at that moment in time. Positive liberty, negative liberty, inner liberty, individual liberty, freedom from, freedom to, and freedom of were some of the categories mentioned. He made it clear that an in-depth discussion of each notion was not his main aim, but instead that was trying to make a quick account of them in order to give a conceptual frame to the one of his choice: a variant of the individual negative liberty defined as “the absence of arbitrary coercion.”

Slavery is the subjection to the will of another person, without boundaries of any kind. A slave could be subject to a good master who allows him to keep a normal life, but he could lose all of his freedom on a whim of his master at any time. On the other hand, the boundaries to the freedom of a free man are imposed by abstract and general laws and by contracts and the judicial decisions based on those contracts. The ordinary experience of a man enables him to discover principles and patterns of what would be regarded by others as just conduct, and to form in such way expectatives on how a given conflict could be solved. This concept of individual liberty as an absence of arbitrary coercion stated by Hayek in 1960 finds a strong resemblance today in the notion of liberty as an “absence of domination” by contemporary republican authors such as Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and, here in Argentina, Andrés Rosler.

The outcome of such a system is that every individual is enabled with a set of possible actions to be taken at his sole will, which we call an “individual sphere of autonomy.” In principle, these spheres are delimited by general and abstract laws and any controversy on the limits between two of them will be solved by an impartial court whose decision will be based on principles expressed by these norms. These judicial decisions would be in accordance to the patterns of just conduct that everyone had previously formed by ordinary experience, so they will prove correct the expectatives of most people and then will be regarded as non-arbitrary.

Of course, we could find that some judicial decisions would be taken by equity or that some administrative decisions would be based on expediency. But such a system could stand some exceptions, most of them aimed to solve an unexpected situation. Some of these new “precedents” are compatible with the principles which inform the existing laws and then their formulation will be a sort of “discovery” of new norms that until that moment were “implicit” in such a normative system. A criterion to distinguish the discovery of new norms from a decision based on expediency might be that the universalisation of the former brings about stability to the system; it makes the law work as a negative feedback system while the universalisation of the latter would only cause an increasing process of disorder.

Friedrich Hayek developed his theory of law – savagely summarised in the previous paragraphs – in Law, Legislation and Liberty and it provides us with an accurate modelization of how it would work a legal system that could not be experienced as “arbitrary” by the individual. In Hayek’s legal model, the fulfillment of the law would imply the respect of individual freedom as the absence of arbitrary coercion, since all boundaries to one’s will are previously known or reasonably expected and, then, our individual plans are conceived and accomplished regarding such limits.

After such a long digression we may come back to our initial enquiry: if a Libertarian had to “do meritocracy,” what sort of meritocracy would it be? The usual answer is, as we noted above, “none.” But I suspect that the wrong statements of some intuitive Libertarians carry within them a kernel of truth: the assignment of functions and subsequent retributions are expected not to be arbitrary, because even the changing value of the marginal products implies (1) some sort of predictability, (2) an impersonal process, and (3) a learning feedback system that fosters increasingly correct pattern predictions.

If we state that liberty is one, be it political, economic or social, we cannot use a definition of liberty in the political realm and another notion of it in the economic one. The “none answer” implies just plain individual negative liberty (absence of coercion) in political economy issues, while our definition of individual liberty is “absence of arbitrary coercion,” and this should be applied to the definition of economic liberty as well.

Therefore, I dare to state that a non-arbitrary distribution of functions and its subsequent remunerations should be a central problem to economic liberty, if we define it as “absence of arbitrary coercion.” Since our spheres of individual autonomy are delimited by a system of norms of just conduct, general and abstract, which distinguish arbitrary from just coercion, the economic liberty is expected to be found in such a framework.

Usually, the legal framework of a free market is regarded to be a neutral one: general and abstract rules, whose source could be the legislation sanctioned by an assembly of deputies of the people and notable citizens or the customs acknowledged as mandatory by the judiciary courts. In any case, general and abstract rules that are not conceived by a single will but have the impartiality of a plurality of legislators or juries. In this sense, “absence of arbitrary coercion” is identified with “absence of coercion by discretionary powers of the state.” Nevertheless, we consider that this is not enough: we should be conceptually endowed to do an evaluative judgement about the outcome of such economic system. We need to determine if the result of a neutral legal framework produces a non-arbitrary distribution of functions and retributions.

A neutral legal framework works like a peaceful, predictable, and secure Lockean Civil Society – i.e. the opposite of a Lockean Civil Society. Since we accept that legal norms express rules of just conduct whose obedience brings about a rightful delimitation of each individual sphere of autonomy, the remaining normative conflicts will be related to moral and social norms. But these normative conflicts will not occur among competitive orders, such as legal order against moral order or against social order, since we acknowledge the preeminence of the rule of law over any other source of obligations. Modernity relegates moral and social norms to the inner of each individual sphere of autonomy or, at most, to conflicts among different individuals which will never escalate and balloon into physical violence. That means that morals and social customs will not bring about an alternative order to society, but that they will enable the individual with an order to rule the inner aspects of his personality and a limited scope of his interactions with other individuals. These sets of moral and social rules will not integrate the formal institutions – to use the categories coined by Douglass North – but will be embodied in “packs of precepts of life” that we usually name “virtues” (a term cherished by the republicans mentioned above and by libertarian authors such as Deirdre McCloskey.)

These “virtues” are expected to contribute to the fulfilment of most individual plans in a system of inner stability. What we regard as good and wrong are a set of received values accrued after generations of trial and error processes. “Being honest,” for example, might be considered as a pack of precepts of life which successfully spread all over the members of the society structured by a neutral legal framework. The unit of evolution is neither the society nor even the individuals, but the “virtues” that are spread among the individuals that compounds that society.

At this stage, we must admit that what we regard as “neutral” is just an analytical category that means a set of fixed elements that work as a framework for other elements which change their respective relative positions. This framework is what Hayek named “order” (we can find in his Sensory Order the most accurate definitions of this concept: more than one). These notions allow us to do a clear distinction between the concepts of “evolution” and “change.” Change occurs among the relative positions of different elements given a stable framework – a Hayekian “order” – while “evolution” – in our terms – is related to a modification in the framework where the ordinary events occur. In the words of Douglass North, “evolution” is an incremental change in opposition to a disruptive change – or revolution. Notwithstanding this use of the terminology at hand, only Hayekian orders “evolve,” while their elements (or events) simply “change” their relative positions.

Nevertheless, to use an Arthur Schopenhauer image, events are the eyes of the blind machine which is the spontaneous order. Given a certain abstract order, the population with some types of virtues extended among the individuals will prevail over other ones. For example, Max Weber, in his Protestant Ethic, showed how the habits of frugality, self-confidence, hard work, and so on, were once considered by most people as eccentric but eventually took over whole communities and changed the meaning of good and evil in a process that ended up in an “iron cage of liberty”: the dissolution of the transcendent values that had previously given a religious sense to those habits into a neutral framework of standard moral duties immanent to the social system.

Another classical book that illustrate a process of “natural selection” of virtues might be The Prince by Nicoló Machiavelli: from the very beginning, the author warns us that a different set of virtues would be needed to be develop in a Republic and that he treated that matter in another book, The Discourses on the First Decades of Titus Livius. The Prince, instead, is focused on determining which virtues is a Prince to be enabled with in order to survive in a realm where no one has the sense to be bound by any moral or legal obligation, i.e.: in a set of non-cooperative games. The whole book can be read as a succession of mental experiments about which virtue could make the Prince survive over his competitors. In Richard Dawkins terms, the ones which are competing are the virtues, and the politicians who struggle with each other are the “vehicles” of those virtues. A very well-known example shows how the population of the ones who seek to be feared at the risk of being hated will displace the population of the ones who seek to be loved at the risk of being scorned. To put this another way: in the “ethical pool” the trait “seek to be feared” will outshine the trait “seek to be loved.” Finally, at the last paragraph of the book, the very virtue of the Prince rules supreme among the other ones: the initiative.

Besides the fact that The Prince – as Quentin Skinner pointed out – should be regarded as a satire (but see Barry here and here for a contrary account) , the emergence of the virtue of the initiative as the inner quality of a political leader of a non-republican system scraps any moral sense of the term “virtue.” Virtues are a compound of personality traits that conditions the agent’s decisions from the inner. But certain virtues depend on the legal framework to spread over the “ethical pool.” As we have said, the virtues that will prevail in an authoritarian regime will be different from those which flourish in a republic. The “republican virtues” described by Machiavelli in his Discourse on the Decades can only proliferate among people within a given set of procedural rules. A similar distinction was made later by David Hume: “natural virtues,” such as empathy, can emerge at any given circumstances, as they are embodied in human nature, but artificial virtues such as “justice” will depend upon a determinate legal framework.

Virtues will erode or shore up a formal institutional framework by incremental change (D. North), yet this will occur only as a response to the change in the environment (virtues as the eyes of the blind machine of the spontaneous order). For example, Gutenberg’s press discovery allowed the evangelical movement to gain force since anyone could then start to count with a Bible. Within the Evangelical movement took place a Puritan one, which at its turn changed the sense of morality in the people for whom it took place. This resulted, for example, in the anti-slavery political movement in certain states of the US or cities of the UK such as Bristol, even at a price of high economic cost.

Nevertheless, while spontaneous changes in virtues lead to incremental political and legal change, a disruptive change of the latter could bring about a dramatic shift in uses and customs of the people involved. This need not to be a violent revolution, since democratic institutions are enabled to issue the required laws to make a significant change for the good – or for the bad – in the said virtues to spread among the society. Sound money is a condition for the virtue of frugality to appear, for example. On the other hand, the Adam Ferguson’s book When Money Dies shows how the people change their main traits due to the phenomenon of hyperinflation.

Since virtues are – in the definition stated here – a mere pack of ethical traits that condition the individuals who are their vehicles from the inner, allowing them to survive and pass their virtues to the next generation of individuals, on what basis should we endorse some virtues over other ones? Our theory cannot provide us with a normative answer by itself, since it leads us to the conclusion that what we regard as good and evil comes from a process of blind evolution. As we have said, a learned libertarian would not endorse a meritocracy of any kind.

However, the complex order compounded by the legal framework and the moral and social virtues extended in society might be “neutral” for each individual involved in such society, but the legal framework will not be neutral to the moral and social virtues that are spread in that society. Different types of frameworks will deliver different sets of virtues to be spread. An authoritarian regime will deliver the set or virtues described by Machiavelli in The Prince, while a republic will spread the virtues of The Discourse on the Decades of Titus Livius. Moreover, the difference between the former and the latter is found in the proportion of decisions taken on the basis of expediency and the ones taken on the basis of principles. The whole message of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom might be exemplified in the transition from a system of public decisions based on principles (i.e.: a republic), to a system of public decisions based on expediency. Each system will deliver a different set of “virtues.”

Thus, we are now in a better position to answer the question “what sort of meritocracy would a libertarian would endorse, if he had to?” A natural libertarian will expect that the distribution of functions and retributions will correlate with the virtues most expected to be found in a legal and political system in which most decisions are taken on the basis of general and abstract principles. Such a system of norms and values will be experienced by the individual as “non arbitrary” and then the ideal of negative individual liberty as “absence of arbitrary coercion” will be achieved, not only in the political realm, but also in the economic and social ones.

In a “Keynesian turn,” we could point out that a system whose decisions are taken purely on the basis of principles is an “especial case” and that we usually find mostly the opposite. In most constitutional systems the “macroeconomic policy” is not a matter subject to the courts and we have to acknowledge that the spreading of some virtues over other ones are more conditioned by monetary or tariff policies than by a neutral legal framework. Nevertheless, this reality is not a reason to disregard the value of the virtues that would arise should those policies be neutral (i.e. not being policies at all, but legal norms). Moreover, these objections just pointed out are good reasons to claim for a republican system of liberties as a fairer system.

To summarize: natural libertarians are not so wrong when they aim to achieve a special kind of meritocracy – the one in which the functions and retributions would correlate with the virtues spread in a society where liberty as absence of arbitrary coercion is respected. In such a system, most political decisions will be taken on the basis of general and abstract principles. After all, the dissatisfaction manifested by a natural libertarian when most of the wealth of a society goes to the rent seekers is rooted in a well founded claim for a “free and virtuous society.”

Another unintentional argument for Hayek’s spontaneous order

Brandon Christensen History , , , ,

The institutionalization of the Standestaat did not proceed smoothly. It was the result of almost continuous internal and interstate conflicts. Its ultimate beneficial results in strengthening the independence of towns and in providing a legal-constitutional basis for state power were neither anticipated nor necessarily desired by many of the participants in the conflicts, who would have preferred to gain absolute power. But benefits there were: Arbitrary government power was reduced; separation of powers between church and state were formalized; disruptive local feudal lords were controlled; highly specialized legal codes to regulate economic and fiscal exchanges were developed; and finally there began to emerge a loyalty to state structures which went beyond faithfulness to any particular king or ruling house. (186)

This is from sociologist Daniel Chirot’s 1985 article (pdf) “The Rise of the West” in the American Sociological Review. Hayek is not cited in the bibliography. I am reminded of this old tweet by economist Bill Easterly…

The selfish meme

Rick Weber Culture , , , , , , , , , ,

There are two senses in which to consider the phrase.

  1. The sense in which memes enter or exit our minds.
  2. The sorts of behavior encouraged by our memes.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about:

A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem)[1] is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”.

Richard Dawkins introduced the idea in his famous book: The Selfish Gene. The bulk of his book discusses examining the gene as the basic unit of analysis in evolutionary studies. He introduces the idea of the meme as a different form of replicator. Both genes and memes will only be reflected in the outcome of biological and cultural evolution if they exhibit fitness–if they are able to survive.

So the cultural traditions that helped hunter-gatherer societies survive droughts or harsh winters tended to survive and spread. Over time a culture accumulates this sort of practical, tacit knowledge. (Side note: this week’s Econtalk has Cesar Hidalgo who does really interesting work trying to indirectly measure the presence of such tacit knowledge in market economies.) And if culture is made up of memes, the same way organisms are made up of genes.

Looking at genes as the unit of analysis (as opposed to the organism) explains some otherwise mysterious behavior. It provides a plausible explanation of altruism: we care for our children more than anyone because 50% of their genes are our genes. A nephew is still precious, but not as important to us because the expected ratio of shared genes between the two of you is 25%. A gene that prompts you to protect your children is likely to survive longer than a gene that doesn’t prompt you. (And genes that hang around with such kin-protects genes are also more fit than their competition.) A gene that prompted you to be kind to neighbors makes sense when you live in small groups. But a gene that prompted you to be kind to total strangers might be a liability in a world where strangers were dangerous.

Cultural evolution certainly makes sense as a gradual mutation of different cultural practices merging together to make what is called (and perceived) as a unique body of culture. It’s a complex of knowledge, ideas and basic assumptions, social interface protocols, and it’s deeply embedded in how we engage in the world. (Perhaps we can’t remember our infancy because we didn’t have a cultural lens through which to reference anything to anything else…) One thing that I’m sure we’ve all noticed is that it can be almost painful to have to reject a cherished belief. It’s even difficult to see one of these memes challenged.

Now genes don’t have to be small bits of genetic code. They can be something simple like “make this enzyme when you get a chance.” But as a unit of replication, you should consider the smallest discrete chunk of genetic coding that replicates itself. If a particular pattern isn’t fit, it will leave the gene pool, while the fit collections of genetic instruction spread. So you might end up with long complex strings of genetic material akin to a computer program. Initially simple scripts might gather as successful collections of genes that work well together. The “produce stomach acid” gene works well with the “produce a stomach” gene and soon the two are virtually inseparable. They’ve become a simple script: “Do this, then that, then maybe this other thing.” Scripts gather into multi-cellular organisms with different functions that can respond differently to different stimuli. Soon you’ve got a complex set of code as your replicating unit.

More complex genes are necessary to prompt more complex behavior. It’s worth noting that Dawkin’s theoretical framework sometimes looks like a hyper-rational economics model. Evolutionary Stable Strategies are a Nash Equilibria that are robust to invaders. They occupy a niche and survive. But this evolution is happening in the context of increasing complexity. The system is learning*. This isn’t an instantaneous process**, but it is gradually becoming more sophisticated.

A complex gene will get bugs due to random mutation, but as long as it’s still generally fit, it will survive. And over time, more subtle and sophisticated programs identify new niches. And we get plant genes surviving by filling the “eat sunlight” niche and animals in the “eat plants” niche, and bacteria co-evolving with animals’ digestive systems.

Slowly working through this long, blind, random process genes surviving this hostile environment develop behaviors that help them flourish (the “four F’s of evolution: Fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproduction”). Gradually they stumble into opportunities, and an important one was social behavior.

More and more complexity, round and round, until we start to get our first little bits of sentience. I’ve been watching a chinchilla hop around my apartment for a couple weeks now and I’m astonished by how much effort she puts into genuinely exploring her world. She tests objects for structural integrity and learns what she can and can’t jump on. She tests boxes with her teeth, I don’t know what for. She’s distinctly learning and not merely existing or surviving. She’s comfortable and does not know fear (I’ve seen her scare one particularly wussy cat). That sort of behavior requires a great deal of complexity which requires a great deal of genetic material.

I’m noticing as I write this that the biggest gene (i.e. discrete, replicated set of genetic code) must be that very large collection of genetic patterns that must come together in order for a one’s offspring to simply be the same species.*** I’ve heard that humans and chimps share 94 percent of our genetic material. That overlap tells me that some larger percentage than that is what makes us actually a human. The difference between any two individuals, then, must be among a very small portion of their total genetic makeup. This small portion is where genetic competition occurs in the arena of sexual reproduction.

In any case, our first memes (behaviors) seem to be transmitted biologically. Later, with more complex genes, we are able to replicate more complex behaviors. Eventually, we get complex enough to build up a sense of consciousness****.

A complex enough gene might have a subroutine that sets off an error; something like the pain our consciousness experiences when things are going poorly*. And likewise for a meme. Though more likely is that the error is being returned by our psychology. (If our genes are assembly language, our psychology is the operating system, and culture is the mess of basic programs that makeup our desktop environment.)

When we think of memes as self-replicating units, interesting questions arise: what sort of patterns will be robust to competition? Which will occupy what niches? What happens when incompatible memes come together in one mind? What sort of eusocial behaviors are possible? How much do our memes govern our behavior? (This is where nature and nurture overlap.)

Obviously one possibility is a “selfishness meme,” or a culture that hits an equilibrium of distrust. But there are many others, and how they combine matters. At this level we’re essentially asking questions about psychology, culture, and institutions. The fodder of all the social sciences comes together here. Different memes will be transmitted in different ways (which is perhaps what defines the disciplines), but any of these memes may be complex enough to have a defense mechanism that involves activating various processes (including other memes, perhaps) and perhaps making people feel anger and related emotions when someone questions our beliefs and may even push people to fight with their life for their memes.

*We’re computers, markets are computers, societies are computers, the ecosystem is a computer, Earth is just a big giant computer. It processes data and creates new data.

** The next Hayek rap should include the phrase “it’s spontaneous order, not instantaneous…”

*** I could imagine it as made up of some set of smaller genes in some complex, rather than one monolithic gene but I don’t have the language to communicate that idea concisely.

**** And it must be noted that this consciousness is built out of parts designed for the poop-and-panic machines that were our evolutionary ancestors. It’s like building a super computer* out of a truck load of Pez dispensers and a warehouse full of chainsaws. And yet, how else could it be done.

Lao Tze, The First Libertarian

Chhay Lin Lim Liberty, Philosophy , , , , ,

Lao TzeFrom the very first moment I read into Taoist philosophy, 5 years ago, I had grown extremely fond of Taoism. It also bears many similarities with the political philosophy of libertarianism. In this post I would like to trace the libertarian concept of Spontaneous Order to the Tao.

Lao Tze (~6th century BC) is regarded as the founder of Taoism. He is also the writer of the Tao Te Ching, one of the most translated books in history, which consists of 81 short chapters about leadership, modesty, and how to live in accordance with your own nature.

From the perspective of a personal philosophy of life, the Tao Te Ching teaches you to flow with life and to be in touch with your inner self so that your actions never contradict your personal being, and so that you can live a truly authentic and enriched life. This may sound too lofty to some, but reading the book one will realize how practical the philosophy actually is. To illustrate the practicality of Taoism, I have written about an interesting application of Taoism in Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do – the martial arts that Bruce Lee had developed – in this post of mine.

One can also read the Tao Te Ching from the perspective of political philosophy. Taoism proposes a society in which there is little or even no central authority (government), since the government is counterproductive and the grand source of social misery. Taoism is therefore libertarian, and stands very much in contrast with Confucianism with its multifarious laws and regulations. Mr. Libertarian, Murray Rothbard, had recognized that Lao Tze was the first libertarian intellectual who saw the government as “a vicious oppressor of the individual, and ‘more to be feared than fierce tigers’” (Rothbard, 1995, p. 23). Taoists and Libertarians believe that society functions most efficient and most just when the government does not meddle and regulate the people.

The skeptics may ask: how can there be order without a central authority? Some modern philosophers, like for example Hobbes, have referred to this anarchistic state as the ‘state of nature’; a state of “a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things” (Hobbes, 1651, p. 34). Taoists and Libertarians however, believe that this view is wrong. They believe that it is in the nature or instinct of individuals to be collectivist, because the person who lives in solitude is hardly able to survive in nature. In order to survive, human beings will naturally develop collective customs and laws to work out their disputes. The collective coordination of human beings has therefore always “depended decisively on instincts of solidarity and altruism” (Hayek, 1988, p. 12).

What, according to the Taoist and the Libertarian encourages society to become well-functioning? The Taoist calls it the ‘Tao’, and the libertarian calls it ‘Spontaneous Order’.

Tao and Spontaneous Order

The two concepts, Tao and Spontaneous Order, are similar to one another. Spontaneous Order is a spontaneous emergence of self-organized order out of seeming chaos. One can find such examples in language, the internet, the free market etc. Without any central authority we have realized language, internet, and productive orders that are so complex that not a single person would have been able to create by himself. No one can predict how the order will look like, because it is forever in flux. It can therefore only be experienced and observed. From our observation we can find that the Spontaneous Order is better than any artificial human construct.

Likewise, the Tao is an underlying natural order of the universe whose essence cannot be described in words, but which can only be experienced and observed in nature. In the first verse of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tze writes:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1).

The Tao is neither a thing nor a substance. It is a universal trend that flows in the natural world. According to the Taoist, one can be in touch with the Tao and achieve most when one does not act against the nature of things (‘wu wei’). Lao Tze therefore writes:

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsil him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 30)

Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and lords observed this,
The ten thousand things [world] would develop naturally. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 37)

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men’s weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.

Therefore the sage says:
I take no action and people are reformed.
I enjoy peace and people become honest.
I do nothing and people become rich.
I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57)

Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.
Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.
Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.
Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 75)

The Taoists have this concept called ‘mutual arising’, which means that order comes into being through a harmonious interplay of different forces. This is expressed as follows by Lao Tze:

The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three.
And three begot the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
They achieve harmony by combining these forces. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42)

We, human beings, are incapable of understanding how these forces play out against each other. Every time we interfere with the Tao, unintended consequences will happen. Since we cannot apprehend what forces have led to the unintended consequences, we will create more unintended consequences by trying to offset the previous unintended consequences. Man can therefore fall into a state of perpetual interference with nature and become evermore unnatural. Is that not the state we are in right now; the state of unnaturalness due to our thousandfold petty laws that attempt to regulate our conduct, relationships, and ethics?

Is it realistic to have no central government and expect spontaneous orders to emerge?

It certainly is realistic. Bruce Benson has written an insightful book called The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State (2011) in which he discusses historic examples of how law and order emerged spontaneously. Many scholars are currently acknowledging that during the time of the expansion of the American frontier, those areas where people moved faster westward than the central government was not wild or lawless. It was actually more peaceful than modern day America. For an interesting read into this issue, see Anderson & Hill’s ‘An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West’ (1979).

See also this talk of Thomas Woods on the ‘not so wild, wild west’:

Bibliography

Anderson, T.L. & Hill, P.J. (1979). An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 3, 1, 9-29.

Benson, B. (2011). The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State. San Francisco: Independent Institute.

Hayek, F.A. (1988). The Fatal Conceit: the errors of socialism. London: Routledge.

Hobbes, T. (1651). De Cive. (H. Warrender, Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.

Lao Tze. Tao Te Ching. Retrieved from http://www.schrades.com/tao/taotext.cfm?TaoID=1

Rothbard, M.N. (1995). Economic Thought Before Adam Smith: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought Volume I. Retrieved from http://mises.org

E. O. Wilson and Spontaneous order

Rick Weber Economics , , ,

Jump right to the 17:28 mark if you don’t care to spend some quality time with a delightful old man.

http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/2365572374?chapter=1

“We share with insects the mysterious instinct to build complex societies… [talks about an ant colony filled with concrete then dug out of the earth…] Here was a labyrinthine web of underground highways, mini-colonies, gardens, and garbage dumps. But it was the scale of it that was breathtaking. This was an ant metropolis, a Manhattan of the insect world.

“Now, how could an animal with a brain smaller than a pinhead possibly construct and maintain a city of this size and complexity?”

Because spontaneous order! This view is why Don Lavoie cites E.O. Wilson so much. Both are fascinated (as we all should be) with systems where the interaction of its constituent parts yields outcomes more complex than any subset of those constituent parts could come up with. These complex outcomes result from relatively simple information transmission mechanisms so that behaviors of each part influence and are influenced by the rest of the system.