Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Gene Callahan is a wise man...

...who understands that coercion is inherent in social life, and that true liberty is a minimization of coercion, but that this is not necessarily the same thing as a minimization of political decision making. This ought to be reproduced in its entirety:

"and a totally bogus way to describe your own political program.

Here's what happens in real politics: a bunch of people have different views as to how society should be governed. They hash these views out: preferably, by reason and persuasion, next best, by propaganda and voting, and worst of all, by civil war. Ultimately, one group comes out on top, and thus has the ability to enforce its view on others. The people who lost either grumble and go along, are dead or in prison, or move away.

That is the way politics has always proceeded. There really isn't any other possible scenario.

Except in the fantasies of some people who believe imposing their vision is actually not an imposition on anyone at all! Consider anarcho-capitalist Geoffrey Allan Plauché, who asserts of he and his cohorts that:

"We do not seek to impose centralized controls on 'society' but rather to remove them! We do not seek to impose our preferences on 'society' by force but rather to prevent certain members of society from imposing theirs on us by force!"

Of course, by "removing" controls, they mean "placing everything under the strict control of strong property rights." By "not imposing their preferences on others by force," they mean "imposing the property rights regime we like on others by force."

For instance, what would Plauché and his ilk say to, for instance, communists, who certainly do not agree to Plauché's preferred property rights regime? "Well," no doubt he would respond, "they are free to implement communism on their own property!" Of course, "their own property" and "Plauché's own property" are the very concepts that the communists don't buy into, so this response amounts to, "Once you have acquiesced to the private property regime we are imposing on you, we will let you have your little play communist islands within it... because we've won, and would like to be magnanimous."

Good God, this limp-wristed libertarianism makes me appreciate Hoppe, who at least has the cojones to say, "My political system is correct, and I damn well will enforce it on you given the chance, and boot your arse right out of town should you complain too much."

Politics is about deciding what the rules for a society will be. The winners must impose their favored controls on society, because otherwise we can only have anarchy in the sense of chaos, and not in Plauché's preferred sense of order without a ruler. Plauché, if he wins, means to impose his system of controls (rule by strong property rights) on society just as surely as any other political advocate does... he is just too timid to admit it
."

It's not just the presence of property rights either (although Gene makes a good point vis-a-vis the communists) - it's also exactly what those rights are. Property rights aren't just something that you turn on or off like a light switch. They're deeply embedded in institutions and they evolve over time. And they're also historically contingent - we don't enter life as blank slates. We enter this world in families that provide us with a more or less advantageous start, and they entered this life into older families that provided them with a more or less advantageous start. When we say "property" that's just the advantages that several generations have laundered into respectability and passed on to me which my fellow Americans have sworn to defend my title to. That's all it is. To say "I believe peoples' (presumably current, status quo) property rights should be honored" is only to say "I believe that the vicissitudes of history ought to be legitimated by the force of society - if not the state itself".

This isn't to complain about property rights, of course. I'm a big fan of property rights and so is Gene Callahan. It's only to complain about the people who are deluded into thinking that standing up for the status quo property regime is inherently the most liberal position to take, or that it distinguishes itself in being the "non-coercive option". All social organization is coercive, period. There is no non-coercive option. We can accept that, be liberals, and seek out the least coercive, most dignified option - or we can talk ourselves into a logically coherent but practically meaningless infinite loop by telling ourselves that there's a way to avoid coercion.

42 comments:

  1. Wow, apoplectic fit and everything.

    "All social organization is coercive, period."

    Or not.

    Hayek certainly doesn't think that; he views vast swaths of human life as being entirely voluntary in nature. I do as well. If indeed everything is coercion then everything is permitted; hey, it's coercion, just deal with it. The rule sort of swallows itself in other words, as does all pomo thinking I must add.

    "It's only to complain about the people who are deluded into thinking that standing up for the status quo property regime is inherently the most liberal position to take..."

    The reason the status quo is a good default is due to the suspicion of granting government discretion; Hayek goes into a lot of detail regarding the need for the "rule of law" and the rule of law is undermined by discretion. That doesn't mean that change cannot occur, it does mean that such change must have very, very broad agreement; not just 50% plus 1. Since democratic institutions generally suck at anything which doesn't have very broad agree its a good reason not to depend on them for anything but such areas of very broad agreement.

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  2. Also, I agree with Gene; politics is about deciding rules; that's precisely why the decision making power of the political classes (and the government) needs to be under a very, very tight leash and why discretion should rarely be granted to the government.

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  3. Or, to put it another way, I have no desire to live by the hobby-horses that either you or Gene put stock in, and vice versa I presume. The best way to keep from happening is to limit the scope of government, not to turn away from laissez-faire and classical liberalism. Modern liberals (and conservatives) always assume there are short-cuts based on the power of the state to get at some noble goal; what they fail to realize that in relying on said shortcuts they are undermining a whole host of other things they claim that they hold dear as well as create issues of path dependency of course too. They are still as deaf to these issues as they were in the 1940s.

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  4. 1. How in the world is this an "apoplectic fit". Lately you seem to define every expression of any thought you disagree with as a "fit" or hysteria of some sort.

    2. It doesn't "swallow itself" at all. Why do you say this? You may have reasons for saying certain things, but often you just randomly say things and it's hard to evaluate what you're getting at. "The rule" in question is "we should minimize coercion". Simply recognizing that coercion is all around us is not solutionless, and I'm not even sure it's helpful to brand it as postmodern.

    3. On the last paragraph of the first comment - I agree completely that the status quo property rights regime is a good default. But I'm under know illusions that it is anything other than a good default. We ought to be quite comfortable with the idea that real supporters of liberty are going to have to advocate a departure from taht default on many occasions. I agree with you on democracy too, but it's something of an odd point for you to make. We rarely actually see democracies for precisely the reason you cite. We've found that republics with strong democratic principles and traditions function much better than democracies and much better than any other alternative.

    4. I agree completely with your second comment and the first two sentences of your third comment.

    5. The rest of your third comment is a little odd. I'm not sure who thinks there are short cuts and what noble goal you have in mind, and you're certainly imputing a naivete to conservatives and liberals that perhaps demonstrates a lack of understanding of who you are criticizing.

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  5. All social organization is coercive, period. There is no non-coercive option. We can accept that, be liberals, and seek out the least coercive, most dignified option - or we can talk ourselves into a logically coherent but practically meaningless infinite loop by telling ourselves that there's a way to avoid coercion.

    Hey at least it's logically coherent right?

    I've always found the argument for a government self-defeating. We start at a normative position that there ought to be no coercion, right? Just like we don't consider a "little" adultery to be perfect, we consider NO adultery to be perfectly ideal. The ideal then is no coercion, not minimum coercion. Then, you sneak in a positive claim about what's likely (or rather - what you think is likely to occur) without a state without any justification.

    Your argument really goes:

    P: We should favor no coercion.
    C: We should build and support an institution that relies on coercion.

    The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. If you really want no coercion (or minimal coercion as you strangely put it), adopting a certain type of organization that GUARANTEES coercion (and a whole lot of it I might add - Rummel's work on democide is good) is totally bogus. It's logically incoherent and empirically unsupported.

    James makes a good argument here: http://n-k-1.blogspot.com/2010/07/please-put-these-away.html

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  6. How about:

    P: We should favor the minimization of coercion
    C: We should build and support an institution that minimizes coercion

    This gets around any tricky empirical questions about whether there really is "no non-coercive option".

    Who is that guy you linked to? "The only statistically likely arrangement is tyranny"? Or "If people tend to commit those resources at their disposal to their own selfish concerns, it's just wishful thinking to suppose that those same people, if organized into a state, would begin to commit the resources at their disposal to the resolution of economic inefficiencies"? Is this stuff compelling to you Mattheus? The first one is patently untrue, and the second one completely misses the point of broadening the franchise.

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  7. Mattheus,

    I think that you are being fair in your premise-conclusion axis above. In particular, it is missing crucial steps that would explain why "liberals" think the way they do (and aren't simply a bunch of illogical ideologues). How about:

    P1: We should favor no coercion.
    P2: Every form of societal organisation will entail some level of coercion.[*]
    C: We should therefore attempt to minimise coercion.

    From this, you would ask the obvious question "Which societal organisation will allow us to minimise coercion?". Now, of course, you may disagree with others over the answer to this question (e.g. democratic republic or anarchist state). However, there is no logical inconsistency in, e.g., "a democratically elected government" as a possible argument to the above.

    [*] You hint that you disagree with this, although I find the adultery analogy most unsatisfactory.

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  8. Eh. Ignore that last reply if you prefer. Just seen that Daniel had already made the same basic point above mine.

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  9. Cheese and rice, I'm having a 'mare here...

    Meant to say: I think that you are being unfair in your premise-conclusion axis...

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  10. stickman - I wrote up two premises initially, but isn't that just a special case of what I provided? Mattheus rejects my point that is captured in your version of P2, but this premise is unnecessary. What Mattheus and I both agree on is that we need to minimize coercion. If we can have no coercion, then great! That satisfies both our requirements.

    Mattheus was just wrong to attribute that bad logic to me - I never said that. Granted, your P2 takes the words he put into my mouth and makes it faithful to waht I said.

    Mattheus also offers an odd conclusion now that I think about it - or at least it's odd that he attributes this to me.

    His solution is coercive as well, after all - which means his premise and conclusions are precisely the same as what he attributes to me. And he even disputes your P2, which is the only thing that can make his illogical premise and conclusion logical.

    So it seems the only one being illogical here is Mattheus.

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  11. No - don't ignore it. I change Mattheus's premise - yours was probably better because it more fully reflects how Mattheus's incomplete rendition of what I'm saying introduces irrationality that does not actually exist in my full statement.

    btw Mattheus - this is an excellent example of why logic emerging from true, but incomplete premises or axioms can be very, bad logic. For example - the action axiom is true. But don't expect to get anything worthwhile from a deduction that relies exclusively on the action axiom. There are other relevant axioms potentially, and certainly there are other relevant premises.

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  12. And this is a relatively simple sentiment that's been bungled that I expressed in two paragraphs, with an assist from Gene in several more paragraphs.

    Do you really wonder why I demand a correspondence between theoretical claims and observed reality? Do you wonder why I have little faith in logic built up from a buffet-style selection of premises?

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  13. Daniel,

    ~How in the world is this an "apoplectic fit".~

    Because it be so damn shrill dude.

    ~"The rule" in question is "we should minimize coercion". Simply recognizing that coercion is all around us is not solutionless, and I'm not even sure it's helpful to brand it as postmodern.~

    No, the rule, as you state it, is that all social life or organization is coercive (tell that your wife or your parents next time you talk to her or them, BTW, see what she or they say about it). You've bought hook, line and sinker into a whole area of thinking associated structuralist and the post-structuralist school of thinking; one which, I will add, was able to glorify the take over of Iran by the Shah as an "authentic" form of social organization. Again, like all pomo, it swallows itself.

    ~I'm not sure who thinks there are short cuts and what noble goal you have in mind, and you're certainly imputing a naivete to conservatives and liberals that perhaps demonstrates a lack of understanding of who you are criticizing.~

    Just about everyone thinks that there are shortcuts; just about everyone is willing to give the government discretion in their hobby-horse area of interest. I don't have to impute a naivete to liberals and conservatives; they demonstrate such every day by their very practices. Local, state and the federal governments are littered with all manner of good meaning, but naive projects (we won't of course get into the bootleggers here).

    "We ought to be quite comfortable with the idea that real supporters of liberty are going to have to advocate a departure from taht default on many occasions."

    I love how you sneak in that bit of normative language; only a "real supporter of liberty" is going to agree with your position. LOL.

    stickman,

    "Every form of societal organisation will entail some level of coercion."

    That isn't actually what he says. It isn't a continuum in his language.

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  14. Take over of Iran by the Ayatollah --- need to preview.

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  15. I'm reminded of something Thomas Sowell said in his book "Intellectuals and Society." He objects to the notion of putting priority on a single value, regardless of the costs in other spheres of life. I'm quoting from memory here, so consider this a paraphrase, but it was along the lines of "If two things have value, then obviously one cannot be catagorically more valuable than the other. Diamonds may be worth more than pennies but enough pennies will be worth more than any diamond." The trick is to figure out the incremental trade off between values.

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  16. Can't spend much time on this today, but Gary I never said this: "only a "real supporter of liberty" is going to agree with your position."

    Although even though I never said what you accused me of, I should probably have said what I did say differently. Certainly genuine supporters of liberty can be in error and embrace the idea that they've struck on a non-coercive social order. I'm not doubting your or Mattheus's sincerity, in other words. Simply your understanding.

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  17. Kevin - that's a good one. Normally I'm not impressed with Sowell, but that's a good expression of marginal thinking which is precisely what a lot of society doesn't do.

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  18. Daniel - Sowell's older stuff is very much worth reading. "Knowledge and Decisions" and "A Conflict of Visions" are very insightful, and his "Marxism: Philosophy and Economics" is only equalled by Kolkowski's "Main Currents of Marxism" in my opinion. But much of Sowell's recent work - particularly his columns - make me cringe more often than anything else.

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  19. OK, DK.

    If forcing everyone to mind their own business is coercive...then I'm a coercive megalomaniac.

    You win.

    ???

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  20. John V -
    To use your words, its in the definition of "their own business" that the coercion inevitably lies.

    Look, I have trouble getting you to show some basic respect for me and have a reasonable exchange with me at Cafe Hayek. This particular topic seems like its one where that will be even harder. Click the "property" tag line on the post and you'll see several other things I've written that may clarify.

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  21. Mattheus: "The ideal then is no coercion, not minimum coercion."

    That is true only in the same sense that "Gee, would it be ideal if we didn't have to breathe air and we could live underwater" is true. Yes, it's a nice fantasy. In the real world, the ideal amount of coercion is certainly not none: it is the amount necessary to maintain a orderly, decent social life. Daniel is right about minimizing coercion in the sense that we certainly don't want MORE than is necessary, e.g., police brutalizing random drivers. But we also don't want LESS than is necessary, e.g., so that muggers feel free to operate where they will.

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  22. DK,

    You seem insulted for no reason. I didn't see my answer as hostile. I'm simply saying that if that's the shoe we are using then I'll gladly wear.

    That's not unlike what Gene's point was that you agreed with, isn't it?

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  23. BTW, DK,

    I'm always reasonable. And I always answer directly and frankly to your posts. I don't curse or use foul language. More than not, my most and direct posts with sincere questions are the one's left hanging with no response.

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  24. Gene,

    How is a certain level of coercion...or lack thereof going to change anything about muggers?

    I am assume that when you say that, you are not taking enforcement of property as a given?

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  25. John V -
    "You win ???" came across as dismissive/incredulous, which is not atypical for you - but perhaps I was too sensitive on this count.

    But you make a habit of questioning my integrity and even handedness, simply because I find less that is commendable in Don or Russ's posts than I do in Krugman or DeLong's. You take a disagreement between us that could be fodder for a productive discussion and repeatedly insist that it's a character flaw on my part. You're not "foul" as you say - but you're not someone I consider reasonable either.

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  26. "...or move away."

    Much harder to do with a large, centralized government that has jurisdiction from sea-to-shining-sea, isn't it?

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  27. DK,

    "but perhaps I was too sensitive on this count."

    Perhaps.

    I'm not questioning your integrity in this case. I'm agreeing with you.

    "but you're not someone I consider reasonable either."

    Oh of course you do. You'd love talking to me in person. ;)

    But yes, sometimes...or often...I do see you making too much of an effort to disagree in a pedantic way. It's not a character flaw. It's just what you choose to do because you want to.

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  28. Correction: Character flaws are things people choose to do because they want to. Unless you're suggesting he is mentally ill.

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  29. Although even though I never said what you accused me of..."

    Looks like to me you did. Pretty soon we'll be into "false consciousness" territory I am sure.

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  30. Gary, if that's the case quote me. This seems to be the sensible way out of this.

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  31. I already quoted you.

    "We ought to be quite comfortable with the idea that real supporters of liberty are going to have to advocate a departure from taht [sic] default on many occasions."

    In light of this we ought to consider how many departures we see on a daily basis in the U.S. already.

    * the drug war
    * the national security state
    * occupational licensing
    * eminent domain turned into "blight control" and now simply for the purpose of increasing the state's bottom line

    The quest for "distributive justice" (as well as that of "deviance control") is always anti-thetical to liberty, and corrodes any progress towards such made in the past.

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  32. And that is of course only a very small partial list of the so-called "departures."

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  33. I know I said that Gary. Where did I say that real supporters of liberty have to agree with me?

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  34. I should have added the "Four Loko Panic" as another departure.

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  35. Daniel, something you should read (I know, it is from a libertarian publication and all that): http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/04/a-grandstanding-attorney-gener

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  36. http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/24414/418583.aspx#418583

    Might generate some interesting discussion.

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  37. Gary - thanks. It's always good to see libertarians supporting liberty! What's been especially depressing about this is that it's happening at UVA, which here we perceive to be a sort of standard bearer for academic freedom inquiry in an enlightened society (when it was founded all the other schools were essentially royalist training camps, after all!).

    Anonymous - thanks - this is great discussion. Mattheus has a post up to. I may share these later today.

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  38. "I am assume that when you say that, you are not taking enforcement of property as a given?"

    Well, of course it is not a given! Work must be done to enforce property rights -- that enforcement does not drop out of the sky.

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  39. Enforcement does not drop out of the sky, and the rights themselves don't either.

    We could probably get somewhere talking about a "right to self" as axiomatic and perhaps a "natural right", but that's a fairly vague one, you cannot derive other rights clearly from it, and all other rights we think of when we talk about "property rights" are invented by human beings.

    Nothing about the social order drops out of the sky. It may be in our genes. It may be reasonably regarded common sense. But it is still artificial.

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  40. Daniel, this discussion involves an interesting transformation.

    I thought you were the kind to not take seriously those people who use rhetorical words like "theft" and "coercion" in their discussion.

    But now you have accepted your opponent's terminology and started to speak in terms of the "coercion" terminology they have established.

    Have you considered whether spending too much time talking to libertarians is putting some libertarian mutations into your thought? ;)

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  41. I do think this starts to get formulaic - I've almost put it into an optimization problem framework.

    That's not entirely a bad way to look at it, but it has gotten formulaic, and yes I'm suspicious of formulaic routes to political philosophy!

    But as for the word "coercion" itself, I'm not all that bothered. I use "coercion" where a lot of libertarians use "aggression", and I try to get past this tendency to narrowly define "aggression", fail to see that that definition is not convincing to others (ie - the perceived aggressor often sees the defense as the aggression). We can't abandon all terminology just because we're concerned about its abuse by some!

    I've registered my complaints iwth the misuse of words like "theft". If they want to challenge my understanding of coercion, they are welcome to :)

    I am thinking of it in the sense of Foucault, who talked about being caught in "the fine meshes of the web of power".

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  42. Jan Helfeld, in one of his bad interviews*, was asking Bernie Sanders if his belief in "government for people by people" could be taken to its logical end conclusion. Now, he messed the whole thing up by constantly badgering him with "Do you believe in initiating force?" questions, that only annoyed Sanders.

    It would have been far simpler for him to argue straight away that Sanders can't both support voluntary government AND implementation of social arrangements binding upon all.

    See, this confuses me too. You can try to rebut propertarians by saying that democratic decisions reflect all people's interests. Or you can try to say that democratic decisions reflect a less dangerous form of coercion.

    But you can't have it both ways.

    So by accepting that liberal democracy is a form of "minimum coercion", have you then agreed that democracy has nothing to do with voluntary government "by people and for people"?

    *Actually, they are all miserably bad failures at interviews.

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