I Believe in Government

[Martin van Staden]

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-01-11-i-believe-in-government/#.VpQIC_l96Uk

There really is no such thing as a free market, there never has been, nor can there ever be such a thing. The very concept of an economy that is independent of government and political institutions, is a stark utopia. It is unrealisable, and efforts to bring it into being are doomed to fail, and inevitably have dystopian consequences.

A recent report by Dirk De Vos published on these pagessuggested that I held some philosophical, ideological, theoretical or practical position that is opposed to government. I should make it clear that I hold no such views. It is unfortunate that I feel the urge to lay out my intellectual beliefs and values, when intelligent readers ought to be able to work things out. Then again, I prefer not to be misrepresented on matters close to my heart. Let me, then, nail my colours to a mast, as it were.

I believe in government for very many reasons, least of all for the provision of public goods and services, and to ensure effective distribution of resources through taxation and investment in health, education and housing for the poor, the marginalised, and those whose lives have been disrupted by injustice or violence. I also believe that the state has, historically, played a significant role in innovation and entrepreneurship; from mobile phone technology to internet communications, or medical research, the state has played a founding (though not exclusive) role in innovation, research and development. The state is, then, of greater use than merely for the enforcement of contracts and protection of private property. None of this matters, of course, to market fundamentalists who are quite unable to provide evidence of where, in recent memory, and when, exactly, completely free markets existed for any length of time – other than in Somalia, since the early 1990s.

I agree with Karl Polanyi that there really is no such thing as a free market, that there never has been, nor can there ever be such a thing. Polanyi considered the very concept of an economy that is independent of government and political institutions, as a “stark utopia”. It is utopian because it is, actually, unrealisable, and efforts to bring it into being are doomed to fail, and inevitably have dystopian consequences. I agree that markets are necessary for a functioning political economy, but the entire thrust to establish a “market society” is deeply troublesome, and fundamentally threatening to human society. In this sense, I agree with Polanyi that the market is simply one of many, among a range social institutions. There is a real danger in subjecting all real commodities, like cars or cameras to the same governing and “market” principles as things that make human (social) life possible; things like clean air, education, health care and rights to choice, and to earn a livelihood. When these (the latter) public goods and social necessities, Polanyi’s “fictitious commodities”, are treated as if they were commodities produced for sale on “markets” and not as protected rights, the social world is endangered, and major crises become inevitable.

So, unlike the world shaped by the imaginary dreamscape of free markets, unfettered choice, market equilibrium and rational utility maximisation, I am much more comfortable living, working and thinking in the real world. To the extent that I even have a vague interest in challenging the free market fundamentalism raised in De Vos’s report, I share (for a lot more than fun) Friedrich Hayek’s rejection of positivism, and prefer a methodology that abandons notions of equilibrium and instrumental rationality, and which rejects the price mechanism as the final arbiter of all knowledge and human agency. Equilibrium, in this sense, is a convenient theoretical fiction. In sum, I have no great faith in individuality, rationality and self-interest as the defining features of human beings. So much of market fundamentalist belief relies on the concept of homo economicus, (which Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises rejected) and a contiguous belief in Economics as the only way to explain or understand the world. Hayek, himself, opposed this when he declared (somewhere in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics): “He who is only an economist cannot be a good economist. There is hardly a single problem that can be adequately answered on the basis of a single special discipline.”

But let us leave this aside, for now.

The column that prompted the response was about South Africa’s nuclear build. The concerns I rose were not anti-government, nor was the column about role of the state, in general; it was about secrecy, lies, censorship, withholding of knowledge and information. With particular reference to South Africa, it was about incompetence; the lack of skills; the absence of a culture of responsibility, accountability and of consequences; issues like misconduct, maladministration and graft, all of which have become culturally embedded in South African politics and governance. It was, also, about the deceitful habit of always blaming others for one’s own problems.

In the case of South Africa, we always have whites, settler colonialists, colonialists, empire-builders, and racists in remote villages of eastern Finland and the hip new conversation-stopper, “whiteness”, to blame for all our problems. Parenthetically, there is a scientific study which found that people in eastern Finland are the “whitest” people in the world. South Africa’s identity brokers will have a conniption just knowing that….

But seriously, in my original post on South Africa’s nuclear build, I tried to make the point that when things go wrong – from cost over-runs, to maladministration, work stoppages, theft, technical mishaps, disappearance of funds or structural flaws - we will have no-one to blame but ourselves. Jan Van Riebeeck has had no say in the decision to build nuclear power plants, and the apartheid state – founders of our first nuclear age – is no longer around. A note to the hysterics: This is not a denial that racism exists, or that whites are privileged, or that structural and spatial iniquities continue to determine outcomes in South Africa’s political economy. It is simply an acknowledgement that we have to take responsibility for our actions, in this case it is building nuclear power stations, and start to accept that building and running a nuclear power station requires a lot more of us, than running a post office. We know, of course, that Europeans established the first postal service in South Africa in about 1500 – which makes them responsible for the problems with our postal service in 2016. We don’t have that excuse with the nuclear build. This was the argument I tried to make, apparently unsuccessfully, in the original post. DM

Thoughts? 

[Stephen vJ]

Ludwig von Mises once gave a set of lectures in Argentina. After or in one of those lectures, someone asked him if he was completely against government per se i.e. if he was an anarchist. He said that he was not against government just like he was not against petrol. Petrol is a very great thing; it gives us cars, aircraft and ships that sail even when there is no wind. But to drink petrol is a very bad idea and will kill you. So he said, he was going around telling people not to drink petrol, but that did not mean he was against it, just that it should not be put to certain uses. Government, according to Mises, could have legitimate uses, he simply told people that growth, prosperity, equality, fairness, stability, etc. were not those uses. Mises did not give any of those supposedly legitimate uses for government that he said should exist in theory... and after more than 20 years of active searching I have failed to find a single one. I now challenge you to provide even one legitimate use for government and will happily wager a large amount of money that you will not find one. Go back into the archives of this forum too - you will see dozens of attempts at finding it with not a single positive result.

S.

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[Jaco Strauss]

Thanks Stephen. Personally I couldn't even get through the 3rd paragraph. And even that wasted 5 minutes I would never get back...

J

[Garth Zietsman]

I would start by suggesting "keeping the peace or keeping us in liberty from each other".  No doubt you will regard that as illegitimate because you know "competing private security firms" but I find that argument very unconvincing theoretically and empirically completely lacking support.  On the other hand government has a good record of containing inter-individual or factional violence among people it governs.  Nonetheless I am considerably less pro government than Martin appears to be and think it should be contained a lot more than it is, even in liberal democracies.

[Jaco Strauss]

Garth, these are not the views of Martin - he merely posted the article by ISMAIL LAGARDIEN

[Stephen vJ]

No, in that case I don't buy the private firms solution either, but feel that it is in every case where people were sort of free, their limited government which eventually expanded back into a nanny state. This is the main issue I have with minarchism - it is like saying a little bit of cancer is good. Whatever the short term virtues of a tumour, in the end it will kill you. The solution is a people weary of authority and suspicious of all government, with a well armed militia consisting of volunteers to back it up.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Garth Zietsman]

Apologies to Martin.  

Stephen I don't quite buy your cancer metaphor.  I think it is more like lithium for bipolar problems.  Lithium is a godsend for bipolar at the right dose but if the dose is even just a little bit too high you end up with Steven-Johnson syndrome which is often lethal.  

I agree that minarchism always carries the risk of expanding, like our genes always carry the risk of being switched on so as to become cancerous. Nonetheless you don't want to do without genes for that reason.  You would rather accept the risk and try to prevent it, or cure it if it happened.

[Stephen vJ]

Again, I challenge you to come up with a single thing that can be done better by government than without them i.e. a justification for the use of force by one force-monopolist. Taking lithium in small doses is not immoral and damaging, so the analogy is less correct than my cancer one.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Trevor Watkins]

I suspect that in the 14th century no one could give an example of a structure that worked better than kings and serfs, or chiefs and subjects.

Trevor Watkins 

[Humphry Hamilton]

Stephen, I think you are basically correct.  We could do everything that governments do and more importantly not do a whole lot of things that they presently do that is pointless and/or counterproductive.

 

The problem is that governments do not grow from say a minarchist origin into what we have at the moment because it makes sense.  They do so because 80% of the population want to be told what to do and so a minority takes advantage of this condition and progressively takes more and more control. 

 

This is human nature, you will never avoid this.

 

As I have said before, the only solution is to get on a yacht and watch it all from afar.  I am pretty sure I wouldn’t miss the candy floss, etc. but there is only one way of finding out.

 

Best Regards

Humphry

[Gavin Weiman]

Hi

Its all fine and well to speculate about how 'thing done by the state' can be done better.

Better comes in two categories 

a) better by an ‘other than a state’ process and

b) better 'by a state' process.

Then you must decide wether you wish to speculate about

a) things that might be possibly be in a "world that might be” or

b) things that could actually be in the "world as it is”.

The only purpose of a) is brainstorming to see what could be used in b)

The human narrative (the subjective ‘belief s’ most people) currently has governments in it committing to do various things. The only way to get to a libertarian world is to change the human narrative. This narrative has taken 200 000 years to get where it is. The part that interests us is more modern how the narrative of feudalism changed to the nation state and the narratives wishing the nation state as to the functions of the government. Anarchism is within this narrative no critical mass has faith in it. 

Libertarians need a winning narrative that can start changing what is towards a libertarian vision.

Gavin

[Frances Kendall]

Yes, the big advantage for government is that it is the product of our evolution.

Sent from Frances iPhone

[Garth Zietsman]

Stephen I already gave you one example in my first post - namely "keeping the peace and keeping us in liberty from each other".

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Ok, I'll accept purely logical and reasoned out examples too. Keep in mind that for several decades light-houses were used as examples of public goods in economics textbooks, until Mark Skousen questioned and researched it and then found that most lighthouses through history going back to 200 B.C. were in fact run & funded privately, even though Paul Samuelson, notorious economics textbook guru's assumptions to the contrary. Just because you don't know of the examples, does not mean they don't exist. I would for example argue that the Irish in 1400's or Icelandic people in the 1700's would have found the notion of kings and barons quite foreign and Libertarianism face-slappingly obvious. There are numerous examples of less government making things better, but not a single one that I am aware of in which more government made things better - neither actual or theoretical... assuming theoretical must be at least grounded in logic and rationality, not rhetoric and wild assumptions as to the nature of man as is the case with Marxism.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

No, it does not happen because it makes sense or because people want it that way. It happens because a little bit of government is like cancer which uses propaganda to paint illogical and fanciful pictures to lure people into taking little nibbles at the bait, but make no mistake, at the other end of that bait is a big fat hook, a very big stick and a power-hungry politician.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Like wisdom teeth and an appendix... except they recently found that the appendix does in fact have a use.

S.

On 12 January 2016 at 12:19, Frances Kendall <fken...@mac.com> wrote:

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

An I rejected that on the grounds that we can better protect ourselves from each other without government. We already do through the rules of our residential estates, policies & procedures of our employers, disclaimers by stores, malls and providers, etc... just imagine what ways of regulating our interactions we could have come up with, had government not dictated or crowded out vast sections of our arrangements ! Saying "keeping the peace" is like saying "roads" or "hospitals" or "schools" - you will need to do an awfully large amount of justification for us to accept such a statement. As to "keeping us in liberty", that is a huge contradiction / oxymoron. That is like saying we need a king to prevent us from having kings. That can't be.

S.

[Trevor Watkins]

@Humphry

I have a yacht. It currently requires 6 pieces of government paper before I can take it off the mooring. I grant you, there might be fewer rules once out at sea, but it is a hard trade-off.

Trevor Watkins 

On 12 January 2016 at 11:50, Humphry Hamilton <hwham...@icon.co.za> wrote:

[Colin Phillips]

This isn't my example, Stephen, but it fits your criteria of: "a justification for the use of force by one force-monopolist".  

Coordination problems are cases in which everyone agrees that a certain action would be best, but the free market cannot coordinate them into taking that action.   
As a thought experiment, let's consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.
But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let's say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.
A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month - still a respectable sum.
But one farmer (let's call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.
Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he's not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.
Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month - less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying "Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone's productivity goes down."
Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let's call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit...
A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.
The most profitable solution to this problem is for Steve to declare himself King of the Lake and threaten to initiate force against anyone who doesn't use a filter. This regulatory solution leads to greater total productivity for the thousand fish farms than a free market could.
The classic libertarian solution to this problem is to try to find a way to privatize the shared resource (in this case, the lake). I intentionally chose aquaculture for this example because privatization doesn't work. Even after the entire lake has been divided into parcels and sold to private landowners (waterowners?) the problem remains, since waste will spread from one parcel to another regardless of property boundaries.

The only way to have a stable equilibrium (where no one farm is tempted to change their strategy of filter/no filter) while still maintaining the best total overall profitability of the lake is by somehow forcibly removing the filter/no filter decision from the individual, and place it in the hands of the group instead.  The simplest, easiest, and most understandable way of doing so is by the community designating a force-monopolist who is justified in enforcing the group filter/nofilter decision, to the detriment of the individual.  It's theoretically possible to build an arcane, rube goldberg style set of interlocking voluntary agreements to apply social pressure (e.g. boycotts), but not only are these not necessarily robust, but sometimes they are not particularly effective.  

So, Stephen, does this answer fit your criteria?  I think it does.  The most effective way of reaching the optimal solution is the use of force by a force-monopolist.

It's from here:

http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html

Everything has both costs and benefits.  I like libertarian ideas, but that does not mean that libertarian ideas have only benefits and no costs.  The major cost of libertarianism is the use of force - it is a very effective and powerful tool, easy to wield, with dramatic results, and libertarianism requires that we give it up, or, at least, use it only in certain specific conditions.  This comes with many valuable benefits, but it is undeniably a cost.  Therefore, we should not be surprised that there are some situations for which the cost of foregoing that tool outweighs the benefit of a society without the tool.  On average, I think the trade-off is worthwhile.  Minarchism is the idea that we should only use the tool in situations where the cost of foregoing the use of the tool outweighs the benefit of foregoing the use of the tool.  It's a logical idea, resting on the assumption that we can get that calculus right more often than wrong.

Colin

[Garth Zietsman]

I once used the Irish and Iceland examples in a discussion with a friend who was a history prof at Wits until he retired last year.  It turns out that yes doing without kings was quite positive but that isn't to say liberty abounded and everything worked hunky dory. Freedom from violence and extortion was nowhere near what it is under liberal democracies today.

One could persuasively argue that smaller government is generally better relative to current government levels but it doesn't follow that zero government is ideal.  Anyway if you look at the tax as % of GDP table Leon posted yesterday it should be obvious that countries with lowest figures are hardly those you would want to live in.

[Trevor Watkins]

This is a standard commons scenario, which I remember dealing with way back in 1985 at the very first libsem. 

Remove the complexity, it is just window dressing. 3 libertarians lost in the desert come upon a water hole. They all drink from it. One of them decides, for whatever reason, to take a dump in the waterhole, rendering it undrinkable. What is to be done? Depending on the depth of their principles the other 2 will band together and either

1. Beat the offender to death

2. Forcibly restrain him by tying him to a tree

3. Guard the waterhole and forcibly prevent him from going near it.

4. Try him before a jury of his peers (the other 2), and if found guilty, relieve him of his 1/3 share in the waterhole by way of restitution. In future, he must buy water from the other 2 by performing useful tasks.

5. Sit him down and give him a stern talking to.

The first instinct is to always resort to the easy option, violence, and to betray one's principles. Option 3 and 4 may involve violence if the offender resists, but he will then be the initiator of such violence. The other 2 did not need to form a government, or elect a king, or appoint a chief of police. They just needed to resist consent violation when it occurs.

Trevor Watkins

[AHN]

Colin,
I grant you that your scenario could happen, but there are also a thousand different scenarios possible.
What if the original seller of the lake wrote in a deed restriction making future upgrades mandatory so that he could sell the lake for a higher price?
What if the free market filtering system does not cost $300/month, but the waste can be captured and resold as fertilizer for a profit of $300 per month.
What if 999 fish farmer each pitched in $100 and bought out the culprit.
What if the 999 fish farmers admit they made a mistake and could never profitably farm this lake anymore and decide to sell their portion to a nuclear waste facility to use as a dump site - leaving the holdout unable to be stubborn-headed about not filtering his water.
You cannot prejudge all the millions of possible outcomes the free market would offer.
Albert Nelmapius

[Colin Phillips]

Trevor,

Assuming the offender doesn't want to be spoken to, all of your options involve the use of force by a force-monopolist.  The force monopolist happens to be the other two people.  

The point is that the use of force IS the easy option - the most effective, most easily implemented, and most immediate solution.  It's easy because in that limited situation, unilateral force is actually the right tool for the job.  There are other tools, which involve no unilateral force, but are less effective, less immediate, and more difficult to implement.  But libertarians prefer these other solutions anyway, because of "principles".  The idea is that the long term global benefit of principles outweighs the extra effort and expense, a lower quality and reliability of results, that results from applying these principles in the short term local situation.  

Stephen seemed to be saying that there is no conceivable situation where the overall benefits of the unilateral application of force outweigh the costs.  That's a strong claim.  What I provided was a scenario where it is obvious that unilateral application of force provided more benefits than any other approach to the problem, and did so more reliably than any other approach.  You provided a second such example.  This suggests strongly (although does not prove) that there are multiple scenarios where the unilateral application of force provides a large amount of benefit, with the only cost being to that of principles.  And, as is obvious, most people value their principles at such a low value that they are willing to sell them for any slight perceived benefit or convenience (most libertarians pay taxes, after all).  

In the aggregate, I believe that the libertarian principles are a benefit (or, for utilitarians, lead to benefits) which outweigh the costs of giving up the tool of unilateral force.  But the claim that not using a tool always leads to a better outcome than using the tool is too strong.  I much prefer to say that the extra cost burden of our principles is worthwhile, rather than pretend to ourselves that the cost does not exist.

Colin

[AHN]

Garth,
We've had this discussion before. I understand your point of view but we need to keep discussing it further.
At least I am glad to hear you took the trouble to discuss my points about Iceland and Ireland with your history professor. I suspect you would not have done that if you did not think the argument had some merit.
So statists,  like the quote in the beginning of this thread, always challenge us anarchists with the question: so give me an example of anyone ever living for an extended period of time without government.
When we give examples the retort is always "well things were not so hunky dory under those circumstances." Well the challenge was not give me an example of a "perfect" civilization. Back in the day NONE of the forms of government were perfect or hunky dory. Disease pestilence, crime, oppression, horrible sanitation, short lifespan etc. was common amongst ALL forms of government. You cannot compare a primitive anarchy with a modern  democracy- not apples to apples. Even in today's modern communist regimes and dictatorships and kingdoms, conditions have vastly improved, not because of but in spite of bad government.

There is no point in comparing living standards amongst states with variable taxation levels. You need to compare living standards amongst variable state interference and regulation levels.
Albert Nelmapius

[Trevor Watkins]

Key error: you refer to the unilateral application of force. Although it seems a fine point, it is the basis of libertarianism in my opinion. We do not believe in the initiation of force, but have no problem with the use of force in retaliation or defence.  Just so long as we don't initiate force, our principles remain intact.

Trevor Watkins 

[Colin Phillips]

Hi Albert,

Certainly if you add in complications to the thought experiment, the situation becomes more complex.

The question is not "what situations are possible", the question was ""s there at least one situation in which "the use of force by a force-monopolist" was justified"?  I think the answer is obviously yes - the fact that you had to introduce changes to the thought experiment to avoid that conclusion supports the point quite well.

The free market is a valuable, powerful, and important tool.  Its benefits vastly outweigh its costs, on both philosophical and pragmatic levels.  But it is not a panacea.  

Colin

[Erik Peers]

It is naive that in the absence of a political power that that vacuum would just stay like that and everyone would cooperate. If there was no government a self interested person would most likely occupy the position without paying any heed to free market principles.

The rest of the population would then have to oust him some way by banding together.

This is called politics.

Over many years democracy has developed to resolve the situation until a better competing solution comes along.

...

[Colin Phillips]

Hi Trevor,

Whosoever is the first to make use of the tool of unilateral application of force is the initiator of force.  In your own example, the water in the water hole was not owned by anyone, so you don't even have "violation of property rights is initiation of force" as a fallback argument - all you have is one man being hurt by two other men because he took a dump, and the other two thought he shouldn't be so close to water.  I'm sure the other two men told themselves afterwards that they did not initiate force, that they were justified by this or that principle.  But at the end of the day, one man got hurt and the other two didn't.

We can't pretend that there are no situations in which the initiation of unilateral force is not the most effective, efficient, or robust solution to a problem.

I mean, we obviously can pretend.  But we shouldn't.

Colin

[Humphry Hamilton]

Steve probably gets a friendly visit and if he continues to give the community the finger then surprisingly he has some bad luck one day.  After that we all get the message and make sure that our filter systems are in tip top condition.

 

This may seem a bit harsh but it works; we do not need government to teach us how to behave properly. 

 

In most cases the government needs to be taught how to behave properly.

 

Humphry

[Humphry Hamilton]

Trevor, I know, it is not perfect.  I spent 3 weeks in August trying to get a yacht out of Turkey and back in again, it was a nightmare and it was 40 degrees centigrade.  The disadvantages are numerous and one of the major ones is how do you earn a living besides running drugs.

 

The advantages are that you are a permanent tourist i.e. non-resident and so when democracy takes a nasty turn in your local marina it is very easy to pull up the anchor and go and find another.  To me this is a great advantage as I have very little faith in democracy i.e. rule by mob.  I see the similarities between democracy and the financial markets except that financial markets are more efficient as we vote every day.  Both are worlds made up of lemmings!

 

So when 80% of the population is saying to various governments “Tells us what to do” and vote that way, do we really want to be part of that system?

 

But I doubt I will end up on a yacht as probably the time to do it was a decade or so back.  I suspect we have reached “peak government” and the power of governments will generally recede from here on but probably not without a fight i.e. revolutions will probably become common place.  The next crisis which may already be underway is likely to be a sovereign debt crisis and this will be the first nail in their coffins i.e. it will put an end to their seeming ability to continue to borrow money without any intention of ever paying it back.  With luck they will all end up like Mugabe i.e. lacking the ability to print money as they will not “own” the currency.  I also suspect that black democratic rule in South Africa is going to struggle and likely come to an end, it is just unaffordable.  It really is the most ridiculous state of affairs that the majority is able to inflict affirmative action on the minority, it has to implode.  The process is probably going to be uncomfortable to say the least and the trick is probably to “keep your head down” until the dust settles.

[Gavin Weiman]

And therefor “Consent” to retaliatory or defensive coercion must also become irrelevant

Gavin

[Trevor Watkins]

@Colin

Not so. We can implicitly assume that each man had a 1/3 stake in water hole upon arrival. After dump incident, other 2 convene, decide to confiscate offender's 1/3, present him with fait accompli. No initiation of force so far. Offender may choose to accept or resist sentence. If resist, ie make use of water hole, use of retaliatory force may follow. It is possible to behave in a civilised, principled manner without initiating force. 

Trevor Watkins 

[Erik Peers]

Ok, there is this lovely land of Libertonia where everyone trades freely. Then I come along and tell everyone to pay me 10% of the or income otherwise I will use force. I have collected a band of enforcers who are well paid. Who stops me? I just ignore the courts. And the consent axiom. And Facebook posts.

[Colin Phillips]

@Trevor,

You can call that civilised and principled if you like.  From the perspective of one man though, it looks like this:

• I wash up on an island with two other people.  They seem nice.
• I implicitly establish my claim to 1/3 of the water by drinking from the hole in front of the other two people
• I'm so exhausted that when uncontrollable diarrhea hits while I'm drinking, I can't even make it to the bushes, and just collapse to the ground next to the water. How embarrassing!
• I wake up the next morning from passing out to find the other two people standing over me threateningly.  They warn me that while they choose to recognise my 1/3 stake in the water they have unilaterally decided to confiscate that stake for their own use.  From now on, if I want to drink the life-sustaining water which was mine, I have to do demeaning and menial tasks for them to be able to drink, and therefore live.  They present this as a fait accompli,  I'm too sick to resist this theft of my property.
• They are bigger and stronger than me, if they work together, and so I am effectively a slave.  I'll die if I don't get water, and they'll murder me if I try to get to the water hole.  It's "rightfully" theirs now, they say.
• As I'm fanning them to keep them cool, so as to earn back the water which I believe was rightfully mine, I hear the other two people crow about how civilised and principled they are, because they waited for me to have diarrhea before they stole from me.  How noble!

We can of course colour any action or state of affairs any way we choose. That's half the problem.  The fact that 2 out of 3 people claim they are justfied in their actions does not prove that they are right, or wrong.  The fact that the tool of initiation of force is only threatened by the 2, and did not actually need to be used to have the intended effect does not mean that the tool was not present.  I'm not saying that the 2 are wrong to do what they did.  I might have done the same.  What I'm saying is that without all 3 continuously buying in to precisely the same worldview and precisely the same interpretation of events and precisely the same conception of justice (even when it doesn't suit them), there are some situations where the initiation of unilateral force is, if not the only tool available that has a chance of solving the problem, then, the tool which has the best chance of solving that particular problem the most efficiently, effectively, or robustly.  Sometimes, we will choose not to use that tool, because a different, less appropriate tool (such as the free market) has other side benefits (philosophical or pragmatic) that we want to have more than we want the best possible solution to the current problem.  But that doesn't diminish the value of the most effective, efficient, or robust tool.

Colin

[Garth Zietsman]

Albert  I figure you can compare them to today's democracies in terms of peacekeeping and general liberty.  There are a couple of absolute monarchies in existence today.  As far as I can remember if you discount technical progress the Irish and Icelandic examples were probably better than the absolute monarchies of both yesteryear and today, and also better than various dictatorships today.  They did suffer from local warlords and faction warfare but not to the extent Europe suffered from local lords before centralized power, but perhaps with enough time they would have.  I cannot say.

All I can say for sure is that centralized government has undoubtedly reduced violence and liberty violations between citizens wherever and whenever it has occurred.  (See Pinker Better Angels of our Nature, Acemoglu & Robinson Why Nations Fail? and Morris War, what is it good for?)  To be sure governments have waged war on each other and have also been mean to their citizens but we have learned over time to curb those excesses somewhat e.g. via citizen resistance, democracy and especially capitalism, and hopefully we will continue to find new ways.

 

A point I have made before is that I don't think today's liberal democracies are all that bad with respect to liberty.  While they are hardly perfect in that regard they are an immense improvement on what came before and according to various liberty indices they have continued to improve over the last generation or two.  Looking at tax as % of GDP (a rough measure of government size) who of us would prefer to live in any country in the bottom 30 rather than one in the top 30?  Small government in itself does not seem to move countries toward greater liberty or anything else that's good.

BTW by liberal I mean "the recognition and protection of individual rights" and not leftist or welfarist economic policies.

What I am saying is that one cannot honestly assert that all the evidence points to government being bad in principle and/or practice.  There is plenty of evidence that the institution of government has done some good along with the bad.  There are also reasonable arguments to suggest that some level of government is necessary for liberty.  I don't think it good practice to pretend that the evidence and arguments simply don't exist.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

So what you're saying is tragedy of the commons and you assume that a free market solution will never be for a monopoly to exist ? I don't buy it. This is a simple public goods issue where the lake is properly public i.e. non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Technically then the lake would have to have an infinite size with an infinite supply of fish... but let's bend the rules a bit in your favour and say that it is impossible for a person to own the entire lake AND that it is impossible for fish substitutes to be developed AND for the fish stocks to dwindle with no corresponding rise in price / revenue AND that none of the smaller players can fail i.e. that they are all absolutely uniform in their operations... then I still don't see how it is un-libertarian for one farmer to wait for the others to fail and then take over the whole thing. Then, on top of that, I fail to see how forcing everyone to contribute to a filtration system will improve even on a monopoly over the long-run. I think I'm being generous when I say this example is bogus.

S.

On 12 January 2016 at 15:56, Colin Phillips <noid...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

If a free society was perfect, we would not need a well armed militia, so that was never my argument. You are starting to move in the direction of making an argument for small government when you say there are some places you'd not like to live despite their low % government to GDP ratio, but you need to take it a step further in order to convince me. For example, if Sudan is in that category, I will object; the collapse of a government or a low % tax to GDP over the past year leading to or resulting from recent turmoil is a very poor argument for some government is okay. Maybe if we wait a decade, those same places will do just fine with little or no government - you should discount the recent shedding of government and the associated restructuring first. The USA certainly was not a nice place to be in the years immediately following the declaration of independence, but ultimately it was worth it and because if it, it became one of the best places to live for two centuries thereafter. Sure, there could be a hockey-stick effect where less government is better up to a point and then less government is worse... show me one such case or explain logically & rationally how it can happen or even just argue how some government can be better (not perfect) than what a free market can do.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

It occurs to me that I am a human being, doing my best to make a living honestly, to care for my family in a moral and ethical way, to stay out of trouble with neighbours and the societies & organizations that I interact with on a daily basis. Most other people around me do that too and the exceptions are often best dealt with through avoiding them and letting them carry the natural consequences of their bad actions or attitudes. Nature has no rewards or punishments, only consequences.

So, here I am, sitting in front of my well deserved television set having my well deserved dinner, when I hear a knock on my door. It is a group of representatives of the church of minarchism and they want to talk to me about government. Have I heard about government and all the great things it can do for me, like protect me from evil and oppression, provide me with enlightenment, care for me when I am ill, open the path to righteousness for me, they ask ?

Really, I say, you want to give me national defence, public education, universal healthcare and a road to the local strip mall ? Okay, but where is the catch. Oh, you have to give up half your earnings, they say, and then also in some cases pay for those services at the point of consumption or be in some other way rationed, for example long queues or shortages or load-shedding. No, say I. No, nope, nopedy nope. I respectfully decline your offer, since I can get all of those things through hard work and then paying a much lower price for it.

Oh, but you have no choice, says them. But, isn't that immoral, I ask. Well, thinking that it can be otherwise is merely an illusion, the one called Gavin says. It evolved with us and is part of our very being, the one called Frances says. It is good for you in small doses, says the one called Garth in a tone reminiscent of my local homeopath. Okay... but none of that makes it moral or explains credibly why I don't have a choice or convinces me that I cannot do better without it, says I.

After indulging hours of debate with an open mind, I say, you know what, I am not a member of this church, I reject it's teachings and the burden of proof is on you to persuade me. So far I have only heard bad things. It seems harder to leave this church of small government, it seems to me, than to pass through the eye of a needle. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have my dinner and watch my TV. Perform some miracle in the name of your god and I might be swayed, but honestly, I'm even more skeptical now than before.

S.

On 12 January 2016 at 12:08, Gavin Weiman <gavin....@icloud.com> wrote:

Hi

Its all fine and well to speculate about how 'thing done by the state' can be done better.

Better comes in two categories 

a) better by an ‘other than a state’ process and

b) better 'by a state' process.

Then you must decide wether you wish to speculate about

a) things that might be possibly be in a "world that might be” or

b) things that could actually be in the "world as it is”.

The only purpose of a) is brainstorming to see what could be used in b)

The human narrative (the subjective ‘belief s’ most people) currently has governments in it committing to do various things. The only way to get to a libertarian world is to change the human narrative. This narrative has taken 200 000 years to get where it is. The part that interests us is more modern how the narrative of feudalism changed to the nation state and the narratives wishing the nation state as to the functions of the government. Anarchism is within this narrative no critical mass has faith in it. 

Libertarians need a winning narrative that can start changing what is towards a libertarian vision.

Gavin

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

I don't subscribe to the non-aggression principle. If anyone trespasses on my property at 2am, they will get one very short and clear warning before meeting maximum aggression. Non-aggression is called pacifism, not libertarianism. Libertarianism has to do with consent and if someone trespasses, they non-verbally consent to the natural consequences of their actions, which in the case of my property is a small courtesy and a big thump in the nuts or other soft tissue, depending on lighting conditions and the amount of sleep I have had thus far that night. There are cases where aggression and violence is justified, for example self-defense. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am only referring to government as we currently understand the word i.e. if at some point in the future my residential estate and its many rules becomes known as "government", then I would have no problem with their monopoly on force, sanction and penalty. My direct involvement in the selection of the representative management and my ability to be subject to other rules by means of a fairly cheap and easy move, would make that acceptable. Like someone choosing to remain in a mildly abusive relationship rather than be alone or move to a more abusive one or an unknown & uncomfortable one. This is NOT the same as national borders though and is NOT how we currently use the word "government".

S.

On 12 January 2016 at 16:50, Colin Phillips <noid...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Stephen vJ]

How on earth could this establishment of a natural monopoly occur in politics to the point that it is apparently the default outcome, but nowhere else for example competing social structures such that the absence of government apparently always and everywhere "leaves a void" ? Really ? If government completely disappeared, I would still have to contend with rules imposed by my employer, wife, residential estate, circle of friends through peer pressure, various standing contractual agreements, and so on and so on. There will most definitely not be a void.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

Hence our well armed militia. Don't bother giving us 5 minutes to mobilize - we are already at the scene.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

I can agree with all but your last paragraph, Garth. Please share that evidence, because I don't see it. I am open to the idea of a hockey stick effect, but think we are a very long way away from it, if it exists... unless you can show me how & where.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Colin Phillips]

@Stephen,

You seem to be arguing against a much stronger point than the one I am making.  My point stands without any of the assumptions you think are required. I agree, one potential solution to the fish farming example would be for all farmers to play the waiting game, hoping that they are the last to run out of capital and be forced to sell.

Let's say this takes 6 months.  

This would not violate any libertarian principles (Benefit!), 

and would result in a monopoly that could run as efficiently as mathematically possible, once those 6 months are over (Benefit!).  

But, for those 6 months, 1000 farms that each could have been earning $700 per month, all earn $0 (plus or minus noise, which can be ignored in thought experiments).  So that's a loss of $42000 (Cost!), in order to create the conditions of monopoly, in order to be able to run things in the most efficient way.  

And, now that we have a natural and unassailable local monopoly (in fish) and a local monopsony (in labor - there's only one employer of fisherman in town), there's increased potential for nastiness and abuse (Cost!).  

Contrast this with an otherwise identical town in which the sheriff makes a rule that all 1000 farms must filter.  

Betrayal of libertarian principles -> Cost! 

But, we get to the most efficient solution (minus the sheriff's pay) in 0 months, not 6  -> Benefit!

And, all the farmers get to keep owning their own fish farming business, free to experiment with new cost saving techniques (and different types of filters, as long as they keep up the eusocial behaviour of filtering) -> Benefit!

My point is not that there is no libertarian way of doing certain desirable things - if that was my claim, the burden of proof would lie with me, to demonstrate why libertarian solutions were impossible, rather than merely less efficient, less effective, or less robust than conceivable non-libertarian solutions.  Rather, my claim is that all solutions, libertarian or not, have multiple dimensions of costs, and multiple dimensions of benefits, and therefore every choice is a trade-off.  Some trade-offs may be obvious, some are not.  The fish farming thought experiment is one that is not obvious, by design - it serves only to demonstrate that situations that do not have a clear an unambiguous "best" solution can exist in a multi-objective world, and the actual "best" solution depends on your values - which are subjective.

Therefore, it's entirely believable that an entire town's worth of people would choose solution B over solution A, if their values show that paying a sheriff to enforce the common sense best practice is the best solution available to them, even despite some uneasiness about principles and slippery slopes.  That town, then, unanimously establishes the role of sheriff, to have a designated agent for a "justifiable use of force by a force-monopolist".  They do this to solve a problem that, according to their values, there was no better way of solving than via government.  I'm not saying no other solutions exist, just that none of the other potential solutions are better than this solution in every single respect that matters to the people who have the problem.

Colin

[Colin Phillips]

In case anyone is interested, the Property and Environment Research Centre has what they call a "Free Market Environmentalism" (FME) approach to fisheries:

http://www.perc.org/articles/property-rights-fish

The basic idea is that rather than having a property right in a particular patch of water, or a particular fish, your property right is in a proportion of all fish of a species caught in a particular habitat.  The government sets an upper limit on how many can be caught, though.

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Individual_fishing_quota

Colin

[AHN]

There is "evidence" that the mafia actually benefit some members of society.
There are claims (made by them) that had it not been for the Irish Mafia and the Italian Mafia et al., that those nationalities might have been completely eliminated from the US business scene.
Some of today's mafiosi are on average MUCH better off than some in the last century. That is not proof that those are desirable organizations.
Evidence of some positives is not proof that as a whole these organizations are a net benefit to society.
There is no evidence possible to prove what would have happened if they were not there. Would the average citizen (including the oppressed like Jews, blacks, Irish, Italians, Ukranians, Nigerians) be better off or worse off if property values and legal contracts were enforced.
Albert Nelmapius

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

That was my point - the various fisherman are not equal and will not all suddenly fail on day 278 and it is a central assumption of your argument and calculations, which is completely linear with a sudden stoppage right at the end. Some fisherman will fail on day 1, some on day 5, others on day 13... as they fail, the amount of fish caught will reduce and price will rise, thus also the break-even points of the remaining fishermen, incentives to invest in them, interest rates on capital loans, etc. There should be a point well ahead of the last man standing, where a large number of fisherman have failed and the remaining ones are the most efficient and thus most worthy to survive. This is already a huge benefit to the market - having... filtered out... the poorer fisherman. They will at some point realize that their continued livelihood depends on some kind of cooperation, possibly through the futures market in fish stocks or simply the smell of the water or maybe trends spotted in their catch tracking spreadsheets. At that point, long before a monopoly comes along, they should cooperate. But who knows, they might be a bunch of right-wing authoritarians who declare nuclear war within the first minutes of the first one failing... from my experience those types of fools are all sitting in IT Project Management already though.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

So here is my standard argument against government in general, applied to this example:

1. If the upper limit of fish allowed to be caught set by government is higher than where the market would have put it, then we are losing out on fish that we could have had otherwise. The government is being over-protective, because prices would have risen to protect the fish... or substitutes would have legitimately allowed the fish to go extinct... in any event, government is telling is to catch less than we would have.

or

2. If the upper limit of fish allowed to be caught set by government is lower than where the market would have put it, then the government level means nothing - the market is going to enforce its own limit, regardless of what government said... or it won't and then more fish will be caught than otherwise would have been the case because government said it is okay and the market believed them. Much like toxic bonds in 2007.

There are only two levels at which government can set any limit - too high or too low. The market makes approximations too, but at least it happens on a trade-by-trade basis rather than a once-in-a-century decree way.

Let's take speed limits as another example. The government says we should drive no more than 120km/h on the N1. In no case is that ever the optimal speed for anyone. During peak traffic, things just naturally slow down to about 100km/h in the fast lane and probably closer to 70km/h right around 17:00... so no need for the limit, which is now set way too high. As soon as an accident happens, traffic stops... despite the limit set by government being 120km/h. Silly to say it that way ? Obvious ? Uh, yeah - that's what I've been on about the whole time. But let's also look at it the other way around...

At 23:30 on a Wednesday evening returning from LibDin, there is nobody else on the road... so how fast am I going to go ? I stayed much longer than I should have an my wife expected me home 20 minutes ago and I live in Pretoria... so I'm going to do 120km/h right ? NO WAY ! The ONLY reason for doing that is fear of the state and their uniformed storm troopers. The 120km/h level is seriously sub-optimal for me at that point and sticking to it leaves me late, frustrated and unhappy.

Ok, I had a lot to drink, so what speed am I going to do ? You're saying 120km/h is safe whether I've had 1 x R&C or wether I've had 8 ? Cannot be. If I've had 8 x R&C's, I probably need to be doing 60km/h or possibly not driving at all... but the government says it's okay to do 120km/h, so guess what ? Moral hazard ! Whoohoo !

If you're doing 120km/h on the N1 or if you stop fishing when you hit the government mandated limits, then you know one thing for certain - you are operating at a sub-optimal level.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Oh, sorry, I forgot --- my point is that the sheriff telling everyone to contribute to a filter is sub-optimal for the same reason.

S.

[Colin Phillips]

@Stephen

The actual date on which each farmer goes bankrupt and must sell his farm to survive is irrelevant to the example, the point is only that not all farmers go bankrupt immediately on day 0.  6 months was just an example, and just an average.  As I said, this is a thought experiment - in reality the farmers would have debt along a continuum, and would have skill along a continuum, sure.  That's not relevant.  As one farmer sells to another, the total number of farms in operation stays 1000, only the ownership changes.  So the amount of fish caught doesn't change, the amount of pollution doesn't change, and the incentives don't change.  If you are the first farmer to buy a neighbour's farm, then you have four possibilities:

• No filters - you earn $0 from farm 1, $0 from farm 2, every other farm earns $0
• Filter on farm 1 - you earn -$299 on farm 1, $1 on farm 2, every other farm earns $1
• Filter on farm 2 - you earn -$299 on farm 2, $1 on farm 1, every other farm earns $1
• Filter on both farms - you earn -$298 from each farm, every other farm earns $2

Not using farm 2, letting it lie fallow, isn't an option - fish move.

So yes, in theory, you could swallow a large monthly loss, and simultaneously benefit your competitors.  But you won't.  At best, you will organise a consortium of other farmers, each chipping in as much as necessary to buy the farms one by one as they go on sale.  Each farmer will hope for some stroke of luck to be able to outlast the other farmers.  And sooner or later, eventually whichever consortium is bigger and better managed will be able to buy out the smaller competition (assuming there are no holdouts who like the idea of owning their own farm), and from that point on you can run efficiently.  But that takes time.  It doesn't happen on day 0.  And for however long it takes, every month that a farmer holds on, the cost of this solution continues to grow.

My point is not that the consortium can never win.  I think it will win.  Eventually, in a year or two, when interest rates rise and farmers run out of savings en masse.  But making a regulation and a sheriff wins now.  Today.  Day 0. And if the sheriff can be persuaded to be a volunteer, working for free, then the sheriff solution is (in the confines of the thought experiment) unbeatable - it is operating at the theoretical optimum, from the start.  The free market will get there, sure, maybe, one day, assuming no holdouts.  The free market is a wonderful tool.  But if the town for some reason needs to get there today, on day 0, or even month 0 or year 0, they are going to go for the sheriff, every time, because you haven't got an alternative that achieves the desired result.

Colin

[Stephen vJ]

Since when does the market react more slowly than people in positions of authority. When the tsunami hit Japan a few years back, the market immediately dropped 12% and then over the course of 24 hours trudged back up 8% for a total drop of 4%. Officials, banks and insurers started surveying the damages, processing claims and taking stock... three months later, they came to the conclusion that the impact on the economy added up to about 4% of GDP. I'm sure the market took into account the time wasted in unnecessary paperwork about to be flushed by bureaucrats.

Below; cashflow and market share are important. So are economies of scale, opportunity cost, subjective values and more. There is no way that a sheriff can beat the market at this, unless the sheriff is Chuck Norris. Then, sure, go with the Texas ranger.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Trevor Watkins]

@Colin
I guess this is the most graphic illustration of the "tough shit" principle ever!

[Colin Phillips]

When the decision before people in authority is obvious, and the incentives for the market flow in the wrong direction, the authority is faster than the market to reach the solution.  That's what I am showing above, for each individual farmer, every change he can make works against his own self interest, so every farmer tries to do as little as possible waiting for someone else to make the first move.  If you're the last person to give up, then you win by default.  And you're not going to tell other people how long you can last.  In this particular thought experiment, the market process is a negative sum game.  Individuals can win or lose, but on the whole, the longer you play, the higher the total losses.

On the other hand, the sheriff only has to make one decision:

• Enforce filtering, giving each farmer in the community an income of $700 per month, and have a stable happy society, or
• Don't enforce filtering, giving each farmer in the community an income of $0 per month, and have an unstable society for an indeterminate amount of time until we can put 999 out of 1000 independent business owners out of business to enable one firm to establish a monopoly on the lake which is the town's livelihood.

In "old west" situations, the sheriff can make that call in a single town hall meeting, whereas the alternative relies on people acting against their own incentive for sustained, indeterminate periods of time, in the hopes that they are the lucky 1 in 1000 that outlasts the others.

Remember that the "market" and the "people" are the same set of people - the town of fish farmers.  They all want to run profitable farms as quickly as possible, and they already know the answer.  The answer is for all 1000 farms to be running filters.  We can achieve that by either consolidating all farms under a single monopoly via ownership, or by consolidating the filtering decisions of all farms under a single regulator via coercion, but that is the answer, by construction.  If those people cannot agree on who should be sheriff, then they play the waiting game, and see who starves the least.  If, however, they can agree on a sheriff who can enforce the decision they can all see is the right obvious, optimal answer, then they get the solution as soon as the agreement is made.

The point is that if there is some reason why going from an income of $0 per month to $700 per month for all farmers is important and time sensitive, then there is a strong reason to think that the fish farmers will prefer to institute a sheriff rather than wait for the desperation of their fellow man to solve the problem for them.  Therefore, they will have "justified the use of force by a force-monopolist" to themselves.  

Colin

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Your assumption that the sheriff has better information and the authority to make a decision which binds all the farmers to their obvious short-term detriment is quite a stretch. Secondly, this is cute as a thought experiment, but I fail to see how this could ever happen in reality, given your very generous assumptions w.r.t. to isolation of the lake, the limited scope of the market, the size of the market in the absence of all alternatives, the complete lack of substitution... and the apparent desirability of the equal distribution of money. If the lake ends up owned by one person, the fish being practically extinct and the rest of the former farmers bankrupt, which I'm saying is extremely unlikely and illogical, even then, how is that outcome not valid ?

S.

[Trevor Watkins]

Colin has made a good case for why an appeal to force so often trumps an appeal to principle in the lives of men. He makes the mistake of trying to justify it as the correct decision, as well. As Hayek has said, you cannot rely on rationality because the world is too complex. It is a spontaneous order in which you can only cling to universal principles of equal application to all, if you wish to achieve a great society, as opposed to a merely efficient one.

Trevor Watkins 

On 13 January 2016 at 09:19, Colin Phillips <noid...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Colin Phillips]

I'm not at all saying that the sheriff has better information.  He doesn't.  Every single participant in this scenario has perfect information, including the sheriff.  Information is not the issue.  Authority is not the issue - authority is one of the proposed solutions.  The issue is incentives.  Every farmer has the information that filtering is the eusocial optimum.  Every farmer also knows that not filtering when someone else is filtering is the optimal solution for them, in a game theory sense.  So the stable Nash equilibrium is for no farmer to filter.  Think of it as a prisoner's dilemma with 1000 prisoners.

I don't know why I'm seeing such resistance to the idea of thought experiments.  The idea is that they are a model to illustrate a concept.  Sure, you can always add extra complicating factors, like, the price of fish changing, or the price of beef changing, or whatever, but thought experiments are usually granted the allowance of ceteris paribus.  I don't require that the lake is completely isolated or any of the other assumptions you added.  Certainly, adding those assumptions makes the conclusion more and more obvious, but they are by no means required.

That being said, this is not just a thought experiment.  This is empirical reality.  Here's a real world example where the market failed to co-ordinate a large group of people caught in a negative sum game with perverse incentives in time.  You'll notice that there are many complicating factors, but the chief cause of the initial problem was the incentives faced by the players of the game.  This is what is meant by a co-ordination problem. http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery  Here we had a situation where the fish ended up practically extinct and the former fishermen ended up bankrupt, despite each and every single fisherman knowing that this was extremely illogical.  It's not that unlikely, apparently, since it actually happened.  There are other examples you can google.

I didn't claim that the libertarian solution is not valid.  That's not the point I'm making.  The reason I brought up this example was in response to your call for examples which justify the use of force by a force-monopolist.  You claimed that no such example could exist, and I provided such an example.  All co-ordination problems are examples, depending on what you mean by "justified".  In this case, "justified" means providing the 1000 farmers with a workable strategy for co-ordinating themselves to the mathematically optimal solution, something which the free market can fail to do and has failed to do in the past.  Some of them can be partially mitigated by external complicating factors.  Some an be completely mitigated by these complicating factors.  But not all.

To me, being a libertarian is not about pretending that these problems don't exist.  Rather, I think the libertarian position is two-fold.  For the deontologists, the principles of libertarianism have high value in themselves.  That value is high enough that we are willing to accept the wholesale destruction of species of fish in order to keep them.  For the utilitarians, the free market is the right answer for such an overwhelming majority of problems, that standardising on using the free market for all problems, even those where initiation of force is the more appropriate solution, yields such massive benefits (and allowing the government a foothold yields such massive risk) that we would be willing to accept the wholesale destruction of species of fish, because the benefits so outweigh the costs.  But we must be honest, and acknowledge that these costs do exist.  

Colin

[Colin Phillips]

@Trevor,

Thank you.  I didn't mean to imply that the use of force was the correct decision, only that it was justifiable, because it provided a set of benefits (and also costs) that the free market could not.  All I am saying is that it is one of the possible decisions, and that all decisions come with both costs and benefits - so there are cases in which there is no one clear correct decision.  We can assume our conclusion by automatically excluding all solutions which violate our principles, but this would not be honest.  We could ignore all the benefits of other proposed solutions, and ignore the costs of our proposed solution, but this would not convince others who are aware of those benefits or costs that we are ignoring. 

I'm glad that you mentioned two points:

• There is such a thing as "tough shit" - every now and again situations arise in which the principles on which we stand are unavoidably violated.  We accept that this is the reality that we live in, but we cling to our principles nonetheless.  Whenever it is possible to apply our principles, we do so.  This is what makes us moral animals.  But sometimes the tough shit principle overrides us.  
• Spontaneous order - this is a very important point.  While it's fun to try to design solutions that neatly fall within the constraints imposed by our principles, and I believe this is important to do, we must accept that sometimes people will come up with solutions which do not match our particular preferences or principles exactly.  The concept of a sheriff is one example of this - in "old west" scenarios, the concept of a sheriff is a product of the spontaneous order of people coming together and collaborating to provide the best solution they could come up with.  It doesn't fit squarely within the bounds of libertarian principles, but it is a solution - especially if all the townspeople voluntarily agree to allow the sheriff to enforce the rule of law.

This has been fun, thanks.

Colin

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

That sad things happen under a free market and meteorites keep falling from the skies does not convince me that government would make it stop. If you say that cod in actual fact went extinct under the free market (which I would have to look into, having recently found that the extinction of the dodo was 100% caused by regulation intended to save other wildlife and to gain a strategic but short-lived military position), then I would still want to hear how you propose the immoral use of force would make it better or solve the problem. How would government have prevented cod from going extinct without detriments to society or demonstrably less detriment than the loss of the cod. That cod went extinct is only part of the story - how government would fix it is still an open question for me. And, it is a purely utilitarian argument it seems, because the moral one is out the door by the very definition of government. I don't have a problem with thought experiments, but when one is set up in such a way as to not allow any other conclusion than the one you are punting, then it changes from a thought experiment to a straw man i.e. imagine here is a drowning baby and the only person around to save it, is a government official - should government intervene ? Well, that is a dumb thought experiment which proves nothing.

S.

[Gavin Weiman]

The only thing is - If you are so difficult to persuade that we DO need government?  How are we to persuade 5 billion people that we don’t?

Gavin

[Stephen vJ]

I'm not trying to impose my life, views or desires on others. I'm a libertarian.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Gavin Weiman]

Really?

Does the label matter - aren’t you just a Stephen. 

If you are a Libertarian but to no end but yourself what’s the relevance of the label?

And why should you care if you wish no impact on life? If its to have no meaning?

Gavin

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Correct - I am just a Stephen. In fact, I think I have previously said that within this group, I am not strictly speaking a Libertarian. So point conceded.

As to the meaning of life, of course I influence people and have an impact... but persuading 5 billion, implies some use of force and I may persuade, but not impose those views on others.

S.

[Gavin Weiman]

But why attempt to persuade or influence at all? The only reasons I can think of for wanting to do so is 

a) to improve your lot or the lot of others you may care for or 

b) to amuse yourself.

If you joined the ANC and could get some relaxation in tax or labour law promulgated this would be a great help to many people. If you participated in a Libertarian Party (you might want to call it something else like a New Liberal Party) that was pro-government (something the the 5 billion people are mostly in favour of already) and sought a better (less intrusive to human liberty) set of coercive policies - and you actually helped this party win an election and implement some relative ‘minarchy’ and then you could keep moving worst parts of the state out of people lives - you would really be helping yourself and many other people 

But just being a Stephen is to maximise your ineffectiveness and to minimise any effect you can have on improving the world?

If you do not seek to improve anything but merely to amuse yourself fine …

Gavin

[Stephen vJ]

Oh, ok - I misunderstood your question, so let me try again. Persuading people of stuff is simply in my genes. I can't help it - it is who I am. There is no purpose to it, I just do it. As to what I can do for society, that is a whole different and separate matter.

Prices are very complex and dynamic little things which provide us with very compact and powerful bits of information. For example, if I am offered R50 plus ingredients to bake a cake or R500 to manage a team of packers at a factory for a couple of hours, assuming that the two jobs are approximately equally hard & difficult, it means that society through the complex workings of supply and demand have concluded that supervising at a factory is worth MORE than 10 times TO SOCIETY what the baking of a cake is. More, because if it was just equally so, there would be no reason to trade the one for the other.

Now, you can bring in any number of complexities and caveats, but in the end, prices, even prices distorted by government interventions, are at least a strong indicator of how the rest of society values and prioritizes the application & consumption of scarce resources. So I am given a clear message - do this for R50 or that for R500 and I don't even need to understand the underlying economics at work or grasp what society is telling me - I will be naturally inclined to go for the R500, even though I have a marginal preference for baking. Society has thereby persuaded me without actually persuading me and without ever knowing that they did so.

To answer your question; a) we all influence the world and the actions of people around us and even on the other side of the world through our economic actions and financial dealings and trades, since that impacts on prices and prices determine the outcome of choices like resource allocation or career paths.

Plus b) the best thing I can possibly do with my time, the thing that will make the biggest contribution to society as decided by society itself, is that thing which pays me the most. Not painting a wall at an orphanage in 67 minutes once a year, but rather whatever society values the highest and thus rewards with the highest price - i.e. my job. By taking a day off work and painting the orphanage wall, you would be making society WORSE OFF. Rather go to work.

If I could find something of greater value to society than my current job, I would do that, because it would pay more. Currently, that is IT project management. By the way, I hate it. I'd like to do almost anything else. But society has, through simple figures called prices / wages, persuaded me that this is the thing of greatest value to those around me and incentivized me thoroughly to do it, despite my own preferences. I would far rather be a politician or an economics lecturer or a retail store manager, but apparently society does not value those contributions nearly as much as having me project manage IT projects. My preference for those jobs is not as big as society's preference for this one. Apparently, according to society, this is the thing of highest possible value I can do... and believe me, I am wide open to other suggestions.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Worth reading in the context of this exchange:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

We were told by David friedman at the ISIL conference in Bali that he's been doing lots more research on anarchic Ireland, especially the nature and evolution of law, which will be the subject of a forthcoming book

Leon Louw

work:  +27-11-884-0270

mobile:  +27-84-618-0348

www.freemarketfoundation.com

If you want to know who has power over you, ask who you cannot criticize.

[Garth Zietsman]

Albert if you think the outcome of 'mafiosa' is good then the 'mafiosa' must have been a good thing at the time.

I referred to evidence that government increases liberty from our neighbors (presumably something we libertarians think is good).

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

If I had to choose between freedom from government and freedom from my neighbours, I would choose freedom from government. My worst neighbours have always been a lot less scary than the best government.

S.

[Garth Zietsman]

How sure are you that your neighbors wouldn't be scary if they weren't being kept in line?  After all a while ago neighbors were very scary indeed.

[Trevor Watkins]

@Leon

The similarity between Icelandic law and some Consent Axiom proposals is startling. And this from a system that lasted 100 years longer than either the British or the American empires.

Trevor Watkins - Base Software
bas...@gmail.com 083 44 11 721 - 0631 949394 - Skype base37 -  (fax)0866 532 363 - libsa.wordpress.com
PO Box 3302, Jeffreys Bay, 6330

On 14 January 2016 at 01:26, Leon Louw (gmail) <leon...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Jaco Strauss]

It is a good point as is the one made by Frances regarding the outcome of evolutionary advantages.

You take any group of people - a marooned party, a bridge club, a group of disgruntled employees, anything and you would see a yearning for "strong leadership". In fact the ones that would survive would be the ones with recognized leadership, while the ones without it would probably fail. Chances are that the rugby team with the strong captain would beat the more talented team playing without one.

Unfortunately humans want to follow somebody. In fact you can see it happening even among informal gatherings where for e.g. a group of drinking buddies would have a natural leader emerge. I suspect, the same would even happen in an anarchistic commune where that leader, or a successor, would eventually usurp more power than we would naturally be comfortable with.

How do we mitigate effectively against human nature?

J

 

 

Jaco Strauss
Kaapstad

[Gavin Weiman]

Hi,

I think that the same ‘human nature’ the seeks leadership ‘maximises’ utility in most other areas as well - is responsible also for the division and specialisation of labour etc.

In other words is not a flaw its a feature.

The way to do this is to improve classical liberal checks and balances, constitutionalism etc

Gavin

[Trevor Watkins]

On 14 January 2016 at 10:15, Jaco Strauss <jacos...@gmail.com> wrote:

How do we mitigate effectively against human nature?

By defining sensible principles and sticking to them. Hayek has done most of the work for that already.

Trevor Watkins

[Stephen vJ]

I am 100% positive. For many years, I worked in places where the police was too scared to go, with prisoners who had nothing to lose because they were already locked up, in a boys school where blokes cared more about maintaining their ego and place on the pecking order than staying alive... I once accompanied a friend to a house where he had killed a dog a few nights before, to apologize to the owners. He was fleeing for his life at the time and killed the dog so that it would not bark at him and give away his position, after having earlier accidentally walked in on some criminal activity and the gang thinking that he might split on them to the government. Situations like that and many other situations of complete government absence convinced me that no government is better than some government and in many cases less government is worst of all.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

By letting the market balance that power, through competition and evolution. Remember, when we say government should not provide schools and hospitals, we are not saying that we don't want schools and hospitals - on the contrary, we want government out because we want better schools and hospitals. We don't want government out of leadership because we don't want leadership - we want them out exactly because we want better leadership.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Gavin Weiman]

You will also get better schools if you provide a demand side subsidy and let the market delivery, content and standards. 

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

There are cases where the same quantity of cancer in a different part of the body kills more slowly, yes.

S.

[Jaco Strauss]

"Government" is also just another word for a certain type of "leadership". You have a bunch of plebs yearning for a leader and one they get one, that leader could easily also be called "government"....

[Jaco Strauss]

In your scenario the three libertarians conveniently stumble upon the watering hole simultaneously, but what if they explored the place separately and the dumpster found and claimed it first.

Now you sit with the unhappy situation of the owner taking a dump in his own watering hole and it so happens that it is also the only watering hole on the island. I suspect it will not take terribly long for the other two libertarians to "initiate" a little old fashioned violence against the property owner...

2016-01-12 16:25 GMT+02:00 Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com>:

This is a standard commons scenario, which I remember dealing with way back in 1985 at the very first libsem. 

Remove the complexity, it is just window dressing. 3 libertarians lost in the desert come upon a water hole. They all drink from it. One of them decides, for whatever reason, to take a dump in the waterhole, rendering it undrinkable. What is to be done? Depending on the depth of their principles the other 2 will band together and either

1. Beat the offender to death

2. Forcibly restrain him by tying him to a tree

3. Guard the waterhole and forcibly prevent him from going near it.

4. Try him before a jury of his peers (the other 2), and if found guilty, relieve him of his 1/3 share in the waterhole by way of restitution. In future, he must buy water from the other 2 by performing useful tasks.

5. Sit him down and give him a stern talking to.

The first instinct is to always resort to the easy option, violence, and to betray one's principles. Option 3 and 4 may involve violence if the offender resists, but he will then be the initiator of such violence. The other 2 did not need to form a government, or elect a king, or appoint a chief of police. They just needed to resist consent violation when it occurs.

Trevor Watkins

--

Jaco Strauss
Kaapstad

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

So maybe my gripe is not with government, but with authority... specifically authority imposed on me without any recourse, consent or choice in the matter.

My residential estate and employer have at times more onerous rules & regulations than government, but that doesn't bother me at all.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

... so you're saying there is a person with a universal monopoly on a critical and absolutely indispensable commodity... and rather than profit from 100% market share, he takes a dump in it ?

Ok.

S.

[Jaco Strauss]

Well in the original scenario we had  a person with a 33.3% share of a universal monopoly on a critical and absolutely indispensable commodity... and rather than profit from 100% market share, he takes a dump in it ?

As what percentage shareholding did it stop being a worthwhile mind exercise?

J

[Stephen vJ]

Pi. The answer is always pi.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Trevor Watkins]

We have had lots of shit in this thread, did you have to bring pi into it too?