If the learner made an error, the teacher would administer an electric shock to the learner by remote control, pressing a button on a control console. Each electric shock administered would be stronger than the one before. FULL ARTICLE by Jeff Riggenbach
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/13779/the-milgram-experiment/
The Milgram Experiment
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“..why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?”
It’s as though the entire article was addressed to me, your house statist.
I feel the burden of responsibility, to provide you with what I believe is an accurate answer. Nearly everyone, in any nation under any government, at any time, when faced with the choice of living under a government reserving to itself the powers to curb serious dissent or living in a state of anarchy, prefers living under a government. And when faced with the choice of living under a government of dictators and one with established laws and protections, will normally prefer the latter.
The exceptions are the charlatans and thieves, who prefer a government full of holes, or a collapsing government, or none at all. Such states furnish opportunity for such people.
Very few among us believe that the absence of all governmental control will lead to a new era of peace, brotherhood and universal happiness under the inexorable laws of some economic theory. They understand all too well what happens during periods when order is disrupted.
And so those who want to bring down the Almighty State can anticipate meeting great public resistance to the creation of their ideal world… much as was the case back in the late 19th century, when anarchy was a new political ideal.
Nearly everyone would find particularly offensive and uninformed, the idea that the state is either 100% good or 100% bad. They’d consider such thoughts to be dangerously simplistic, and would want the duly constituted authorities to keep a close eye on the activities of such individuals.
I would hate to see us get to the point where Camp Northwoods came out of mothballs. But I can see such an event happening, if there is ever a serious domestic scare. Popular sentiment would be behind any such crackdown, as being in the interests of their protection from anarchy and disorder.
You are correct that many people seem to follow a herd-like mentality and just want everyone to get along, no matter what that may mean to certain individuals (as in this article). Unfortunately, this means that groups like the Nazis, barbaric police states like in Southern US of old (as one example), religious organizations that function as overlords, or a massive government intent on robbing its citizens, all exist for long periods of time, while invoking considerable harm on individuals. This is the danger is this type of groupthink behavior. In some ways, people have to overcome natural tendencies, as I think following the herd is – some sort of primal survival mechanism.
Michael:
There have been several instances in human history where peaceful anarchy did exist. A notable one mentioned on this site is during the founding of colonial Pennsylvania (http://mises.org/daily/1865). More currently today is the near anarchical state of Somalia. Though there is still tribal/gang warfare in pockets, overall the citizens enjoy a better standard of living, higher birthrate and more freedom overall than from their previous dictatorial govt. propped up by the UN.
But it is true that for anarchy or complete non-aggression to work, then it’s members must be truly mature adults who recognize that they must be full self-governing and take responsibility for their actions. And any public institutions deemed necessary must be handled privately and without restriction or regulation and open to competition. The book, “A Market for Liberty” by Linda and Morris Tannehill, outlines solutions for this type of society in a very clear manner.
I’m not surprised that the earliest settlers in Pennsylvania might have been able to form an ideal society. They were tiny, isolated, off in a strange land, very far away from the world. It would be like a Moon colony today, one that could order its affairs easily by common consent.
Not quite so easy in today’s interconnected world. There are 309 million of us, and we disagree on just about everything. Find a place where all the austro-libertarians can form a colony away from the rest of the world and I guarantee they’ll have as much good fortune creating their perfect society as did the Pennsylvanians of yore. But put it down somewhere in America and there will be trouble.
As for Somalia, you clearly read different stories than the rest of us. Over the past few years the “Somali government” controls no more than a section of downtown Mogadishu. Al Shabab, a fundamentalist faction of Muslim extremists, controls most of the territory. And enforces sharia law with quite a degree of brutality.
There are no jobs, there is no production, trade is primitive and disorganized. There IS no Somalia. Young men have so few opportunities they must turn to piracy to exist. Remember those pictures of “Somali pirates”? They’re so skinny one can see they’re starving.
The official line is that we are “assisting the Somali government”. But it’s the same fiction we see in Afghanistan, where the Karzai government is weak, corrupt and very limited in its control of even the urban centers. Here’s a sample story of Somalia today:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2013649,00.html
>>Very few among us believe that the absence of all governmental control will lead to a new era of peace, brotherhood and universal happiness under the inexorable laws of some economic theory. They understand all too well what happens during periods when order is disrupted.
Ridiculous. This kind of comment is the typical lie and fear-mongering that statists use to convince people that the State must continue to exist. Or, perhaps, they are just rationalizing their own immoral behavior, trying desperately to convince themselves that they are not hideous sacks of crap. Either way, it is patently stupid, and patently dishonest.
If the State focused on preventing wholesale marauding, the rise of warlords and your general Mad Max scenario, that would be one thing. But, where in the prevention of the total collapse of civilization does one derive the justification for the scheme to fix the prices of corn, milk and sugar? The scheme to control of what doctors can and can’t charge for an MRI? The scheme to control how bonds are rated? The scheme to control how cable TV companies get to operate?
It’s obvious to everyone with a functioning sense of ethics that governments are organized crime rings, and the US government is the kingpin of them all. You pay the kingpin for the privilege of doing business, or somethin’ bad happens to your business.
>>And so those who want to bring down the Almighty State can anticipate meeting great public resistance to the creation of their ideal world… much as was the case back in the late 19th century, when anarchy was a new political ideal.
You mean the 19th century when the US government was launching its genocidal campaigns against the natives? When it was erecting trade barriers? When it was invading former member states that withdrew? When it was spending unprecedented millions in corrupt make-work railroad projects to nowhere, turning their friends, cronies and insiders into multi-billionaires with fat government contracts for steel, railroads and oil? When it was re-writing case law to permit industrialists to pollute other people’s land and water?
Is that the ideal of “anarchy” the 19th century US government was following?
Haha, nice Phinn. I can smell the burning embers of michael’s torched arguments from here!
It’s certainly your privilege to believe that, Phinn. But this is not just some notion I’ve got in my head, it’s what the American public thinks. The closest we’ve gotten to any kind of revolution has been some labor extremism back in the late 19th century. But by 1919 all those dreams were toast. Americans have too much to lose to take any interest in handing over their fortunes to revolutionaries.
You should probably ask a few. Go downtown and choose a random sample of people you don’t know. Ask the first dozen if they have any strong interest in doing away with the US government. See what they have to say about the thought.
“But, where in the prevention of the total collapse of civilization does one derive the justification for the scheme to fix the prices of corn, milk and sugar? The scheme to control of what doctors can and can’t charge for an MRI? The scheme to control how bonds are rated? The scheme to control how cable TV companies get to operate?”
This goes very far afield from anything I was saying. I did not address the many problems we have with specifics of government policy. People here are not interested in just bringing it down altogether. THAT was my point.
Twenty years ago I was one of those people ‘downtown’ who would have said we still need a government, even given its many ‘problems.’
Today I realize it is government itself that is the source of those ‘problems.’ The fact that most people don’t realize that yet doesn’t dissuade me a bit from trying to explain why that is the case.
It is important to recognize that most people do not agree with the idea of anarchy. That is hardly a reason for one not to make the case for it. I hope that is not (also) your ‘point.’
Make the case all you would like. It’s a free country. I’m just suggesting that you’ll find serious opposition, the more the public becomes aware of your agenda. And by serious, I mean they will be in favor of suppression.
You guys will scare people. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because no one knows about you.
Dude, you scare me. You scare the crap out of me.
Michael’s correct that most people are so wrapped up in the public sector in some way (social security, military, govt. employment, etc.) that the thought of rolling back too much is scary. We are walking toward a cliff, unfortunately; when everything collapses around us, people will start to see how the government was only being propped up by theft, loss of liberty, and scare tactics. This is why the system, which only increases in size and scope each year, will fall someday.
“It’s a free country.”
You’ve just nearly exhausted yourself in explaining
how it isn’t and shouldn’t ever be.
“But if Ireland (http://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf) was essentially an anarchistic (or libertarian) society, how was law and order maintained? How was justice secured? Was there not incessant warfare and rampant criminality?
To answer the last of these questions first -of course there were wars and crime. Has there ever been a society statist or otherwise – without war and crime? But Irish wars were almost never on the scale known among other civilized* European peoples. Without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars, until the last phase of the English conquest in the 16th and 17th centuries, were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards.
The contemporary Irish historian, Kathleen Hughes, has remarked that one reason why the English conquest, begun in the 12th century under Henry II and completed only under William III in the late 17th century, was so long in being achieved was the lack of a well organized State in Celtic Ireland.
A people not habituated to a Statist conception of authority are incapable of considering a defeat in war as anything more than a temporary limitations upon their liberty. Submission to the enemy is viewed as no more than a necessary and temporary expedient to preserve one’s life until opportunity for revolt and recovery of liberty presents itself. The English, of course, considered the Irish notorious in their faithlessness (they repeatedly repudiated oaths of submission and allegiance to their English conquerors); they were repeatedly characterized by English commentators as natural-born, incorrigible rebels, barbarians, savages who refused to submit to the kind of law and order offered by the English State. The Irish, unfettered by the slave mentality of people accustomed to the tyranny of the State, simply refused to surrender their liberty and libertarian ways.”
Sounds like a rosy existence, Conza. You could all decide to return to a neolithic way of life like the aboriginal Irish… if you could find a place to do it in.
The American experiment was only possible because they had a whole new continent to populate. So they could try out there new idea, democracy, on ground where it could take root. There were only some ignorant savages there, akin to the Irish with their {pitiful raids and cattle brawls”, to be cleared along with the buffalo so the land could be owned and planted.
Libertarians could do the same thing with their ownership society, and total individual freedom. But you’d have to find another new continent to do it in. This one’s kind of full of people who have a different idea.
Is that how those who used to live under the Soviet system eventually ‘escaped’ it? By moving to a new continent?
Good point, Richard. In fact in some ways Russia today is probably closer to a state of anarcho-capitalism than anyplace else on earth.
It’s also a police state with absolute control over its people. In many ways, nothing changed except that Communism fell.
There’s money in it for you if you provide the whereabouts of the anarchists.
You really do make every effort to make yourself look like a clueless hack, don’t you? It’s blue. And it’s not blue!
Yeah. Just zip it.
Putin and Inquisitor both: postcommunist russia is not in any state of anarchy… but it gives us a sterling example of anarcho-capitalism at work. I’m comparing conditions there in the 1990s to the definition of the term given here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Everything was given over to market forces once the State withered away. And all assets of the State were quickly sold to that handful of people who became known as the Oligarchs for pennies on the dollar, before anyone else had the opportunity to bid on them. So the vast assets once held by the Soviet state overnight became private property.
I’ll admit, this is free market capitalism more in the mold of Milton Friedman than of Murray Rothbard. But still, it’s closer to your ideal than what we can find anywhere else.
The Soviet state, a giant welfare state, disappeared overnight. Pensions and stipends disappeared. State employment disappeared, and most of the workers were informally furloughed. That is, no one showed up to tell them to stop working and go home… but no one showed up to pay them either. And thanks to Gorbachev’s imprudent policy in shrinking the money supply, back when the USSR still had a government, everyone’s ruble savings were wiped out by a monumental monetary correction. Between the devaluation and the recalling of all notes in excess of some tiny quota, most people saw their life’s savings wiped out… making Gorby the most hated of any czar in the past five centuries.
90% of the population saw living standards fall drastically from even their pathetic late Soviet level. Starvation, tuberculosis and even diphtheria reappeared.
Meanwhile the miracle of wealth creation proceeded. The top dozen oligarchs, people like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, became multi-billionaires overnight, each of them owning more in assets than the typical mid-sized nation. On the next level below, hundreds of ambitious mafiosi murdered each other to pick up the remaining crumbs on the table. It was market freedom at its wildest and wooliest.
Once the new round of musical chairs began to settle down, V. Putin came in the restore order. He kicked out the feckless drunk Yeltsin and set the FSB firmly down on top of the country. He took back the major media, stamping out press and television freedom, reinvaded Chechnya on the flimsiest of pretexts (some apartment house bombings instigated by his own FSB and blamed on who else? terrorists), put the oligarchs under house arrest and confiscated their fortunes in a sudden reshuffling of the wealth deck, and either blatantly shot the best known dissidents in the face one day when they answered the door (people like Anna Politkovskaya) or frightened them into silence.
So force is back, all right. In spades. But it was made possible by that briefest of interludes, the era of total market freedom. The public was hopeful at the new era, and had let its guard down.
That was my point. In fact the scenario was much the same during that earlier revolution, the one back in 1917. Freedom was breaking out all over post-czarist Russia, and local soviets of factory workers and peasants were trying to establish local rule with which to replace the old central state.
Then the Bolshies came through, restoring order once more in 1921. It always plays out the same way, just when you think you’ve won.
Michael,
what happened in Russia and many other formerly communist countries wasn’t “giving stuff over to market forces”. It was the collapse of formalised institutions, not of methods of dealing with people. The methods more-or less remained. The alleged contrast between oligarchs and state is laughable, the are the same: territorial monopoly on the initiation of force. Often, it is not only the same phenomenon but exactly the same people. State = mafia + propaganda.
Malcolm X on Michael & Russ:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ
Peter: thanks for a coherent comment: “what happened in Russia and many other formerly communist countries wasn’t “giving stuff over to market forces”. It was the collapse of formalised institutions, not of methods of dealing with people. The methods more-or less remained.”
But when the USSR fell it wasn’t just the people who changed, It was the governing philosophy. The CP was out, along with all its supporters. And the new people who came in all considered themselves to be market capitalists in the neoliberal mode; radical privatisers. The architects of this new movement were people like Yegor Gaidar, a radical reformer who overturned the entire Soviet system. Instead of state control there was chaos. Instead of legal ownership by the people and actual control by the apparat (the Party nomenklatura) there was the enshrinement of private property, and informal interim rule by powerful individuals. The methods changed, from those of a tightly controlled State to those of a power vacuum.
So the two systems were entirely different, and the cast of characters entirely different.
“The alleged contrast between oligarchs and state is laughable, the are the same: territorial monopoly on the initiation of force. Often, it is not only the same phenomenon but exactly the same people. State = mafia + propaganda.”
Except that the oligarchs were individuals existing in a world they owned, while even powerful Central Committee members were beholden to the consensus among the rest of the CP leadership. And in that interim period the army was at parade rest, not seeking to exert any kind of authority. And government itself was vestigial.
It was as close as any major state has gotten in recent decades to a complete power vacuum. In the gap between the disposal of one rule of law and the creation of some new body of law, there was essentially no rule of law. Thus no use of force, other than that of the battling mafias trying to take loose assets from one another. It was the Wild East.
Russia didn’t change significantly. There are some quantitative changes, there is more competition and the crassest oppression is gone so there is somewhat more freedom. But that’s it. Privatisation? Do you have any idea what privatisation in a post-communist country is like? Power vacuum? Do you even know what that means? You must be talking about some other Russia then.
“Russia didn’t change significantly.”
Peter, you sound as though you’ve looked at Russia’s history. You must know, then, that there’s always been a strong dynamic between absolutist central rule and anarchy… and that anarchy has always come with such attendant terrors that the citizenry strongly prefers the yoke. True? Or not true?
If so, how can you say there’s been no change? They just went through one full cycle between the extremes.
“There are some quantitative changes, there is more competition and the crassest oppression is gone so there is somewhat more freedom. But that’s it.”
You don’t think they went through two distinct phases? The Yeltsin period saw total competition in an anarchic environment, with total freedom and no control. And the Putin period saw many freedoms rescinded, the re-imposition of strong central control and the curtailment of free-wheeling capitalism to make it again subservient to central governmental control..
Today the most reviled figures in recent Russian history are Yeltsin the Fool and his henchman, Gaidar the Wrecker. People hate that period, in retrospect. They went through the collapse of 1998 under those capitalist policies.
Whereas Russia’s most popular leaders ever have been Ivan, Peter, Stalin and Putin. All of them despots. May I rest my case?
“Privatisation? Do you have any idea what privatisation in a post-communist country is like?”
It was a free for all. A nationwide jump ball.
“Power vacuum? Do you even know what that means?”
Likewise, a free for all. The most highly evolved power structure, the security service, reestablished control after a brief interim of disorganization where it had been identified with the outgoing Party. They are the siloviki.
“You must be talking about some other Russia then.”
Obviously. Tell me about yours.
Michael,
while I do not consider myself an expert in Russian history, I think I know more than you. The swings from more oppression to more freedom and back have been present at least since 1917. Lenin nationalised, then he introduced НЭП. Then Stalin (oppression), Khrushchev (freedom), Brezhnev (oppression), Gorbachev (freedom). Why this happens I can’t tell you, I don’t have any special insight into the Russian mind. But your claim that the periods with more freedom lead to more violence and therefore people demand more oppression is nonsense. In my humble opinion, it has more likely to do with economic insecurity and envy than fear of violence. Or it could be that the people realise that much oppression is counterproductive, but subsequently they don’t like freedom either.
A privatisation in post communist countries is typically a scam. Due to the high level of corruption, the process tends to be rigged, sold to pre-selected buyers under the market price. The buyers are often people who have were bred by the former political system. The dichotomy you are trying to present is false. As I said previously, the difference is in the level of formality of the process.
Whenever the leader (first secretary/president/whatever) in Russia resigned or died, there was always a struggle for a successor. I fail to see why you present struggles that the country undergoes after 1990 as something different. Same phenomenon, less formal.
So, what is actually your argument? I don’t get it. On one hand, you claim that anarchy increases violence. On the other one, you refer to examples where there is no significant difference in violence (at least not in the direction you claim), and indeed the same processes occur, the only difference being level of formality. Of course, it is possible to interpret anarchy vs. state as the difference in the formality level. It is actually a quite useful approach in some cases. But that alone does not explain why either of them should be preferred. You need to make additional assumptions, or compare other criteria.
Not bad, Peter. But the standard interpretation of Russian history has been that from the time of Genghis Khan to the present, Russians have banded together to survive. And done best when they are under a strong, ruthless leader. They’re a recalcitrant lot, and feel they need sternness to keep them from squabbling and dissolving into chaos. So they welcome an Ivan to lead them to victory over the Turks, or the Mongols, or the Germans, or whoever they see galloping across the plains to destroy them.
They love leaders like Stalin. The more ruthless he was, even at the height of the Yezhovshchina in 1938, everyone who escaped arrest felt thankful he was finally getting rid of the wreckers and the plotters.
The other aspect is what happens when there is chaos and freedom. They hate it, and yearn for the next strong leader to lead them from freedom. This is the history that Russians tell themselves. They still fear the Time of Troubles, even though that was 350 years ago. And they hated the Yeltsin years… mostly because they never knew what was going to happen next, but also because nearly everyone grew much poorer. Life was less secure than under Communism. They welcomed a man like Putin.
As for the progression between “Stalin (oppression), Khrushchev (freedom), Brezhnev (oppression), Gorbachev (freedom)”… it may be more apparent from a distance than it is up close. Alexander rips the lid off this scam in A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. He was an insider, being a long serving member of the Politburo, and he knows how the scam is conducted.
Every Soviet leader is responsible for such crimes that on his death, the next leader apparent blames him and his personality cult for all the crimes of the State. And the public breathes a sigh of relief, that that terrible period in their history is finally over. And the march can go on toward the glorious socialist state.
Then the new leader repeats the process, becoming despotic and cruel himself. His chapter on Gorbachev in this regard is definitely not what we Americans are expecting to read.
You mention Lenin’s NEP as an example of the state modulating toward freedom. It’s an apt example of letting up on the boot to let the prisoner catch a breath of air, but it’s not at all the same thing as the Russian’s fear of a collapse into anarchy. The NEP was instigated precisely as a way of preventing anarchy.
War Communism was so brutal that Russia stood on the cusp of a second revolution. The new Bolshevik state was within months of being torn down by the various anarchists, trade unionists, left SRs, right SRs, Mensheviks, peasants’ parties and Social Democrats in revolt. They couldn’t just defeat them all militarily, so they had to give the people what they were demanding: foremost, the ability to conduct trade between the country and city, but a host of other issues like forced conscriptions, land theft, a terrible allocations system and the failure to end War Communism with its severe hardships. People were dying of starvation. Lenin relented.
It was only more of that same old good cop- bad cop treatment. But it was only a phase, not a permanent shift toward a humane policy. The Party existed to serve itself, and had more troubles in store for the people once Stalin consolidated power.
Some more good reading, about the transition from War Communism to the NEP: Kronstadt 1921, by Paul Avrich. Thanks for engaging.
I almost forgot:
“A privatisation in post communist countries is typically a scam. Due to the high level of corruption, the process tends to be rigged, sold to pre-selected buyers under the market price. The buyers are often people who have were bred by the former political system. The dichotomy you are trying to present is false. As I said previously, the difference is in the level of formality of the process.”
Do you think a large privatisation in any other country would go any differently? I think you underestimate the criminality of those kinds of capitalists that congregate whenever extremely large sums of money are on the table.
That’s why I fear the consequences if this country ever undergoes a period of anarchy. Whether or not it’s the same criminals that rise to the top, we can be sure of this: it will be the most vicious and unprincipled of men, and the ones best at the game.
We won’t be prepared for it. Unlike the Russians, we’ve never seen a real period when there was no law and no authority, and the money in circulation was worthless. It does bad things to human beings.
And finally “So, what is actually your argument? I don’t get it. On one hand, you claim that anarchy increases violence. On the other one, you refer to examples where there is no significant difference in violence (at least not in the direction you claim), and indeed the same processes occur, the only difference being level of formality. Of course, it is possible to interpret anarchy vs. state as the difference in the formality level. It is actually a quite useful approach in some cases. But that alone does not explain why either of them should be preferred. You need to make additional assumptions, or compare other criteria.”
This is a jumble, a thought that didn’t get off the ground. You’re trying to create a theory, and there’s no theory for this.
One: during a Time of Troubles, the wolves rule. It’s awful, and ordinary people get swept under foot as millions contend for survival.
Two: during an absolute dictatorship, such as Stalin’s reign, horrible excesses get committed of some internal necessity for the State to survive. Millions are sacrificed for a goal that in the end consists of one faction’s need to stay in power– and not be tried for atrocities against the public.
With the Russians, they’ve seen plenty of both. They prefer Stalin to no one. Americans have had neither experience. We live in a big baby carriage, which the mommy state pushes us around town in. We love mommy… even when she doesn’t feed us on time.
Michael, I explained exactly where the errors in your arguments are. Instead of responding to the claims of your opponents, however, you ignore them, and talk about whatever you want. You pretend that you have an argument, although you do not actually provide any. I’m not playing this game.
Also, on a side note, I noticed another recurring feature of your posts: the use of the royal we. To me this indicates that, whether you are aware or not, you are a part of the propaganda. Even if I wasn’t aware of this however, it’s still would be a pointless move, because I’m not an American.
Of course you could say that “those” didn’t escape a thing. They just happen to live during the end of the Soviet system and the rise of the new Russian system.
Hm. You realize that England had already been a democracy for about 400 years before anyone went to America to “try out there(sic) new idea”, and that most of them didn’t go there thinking democracy was a good idea anyway, right?
Hm. English people first successfully colonized America in 1607 (I’ll be fair, and not count Roanoke; it was hardly successful). If we subtract 400, we get 1207. So you must be thinking of the Magna Carta, which was signed in 1215? Do you really consider post-Magna Carta England to be a democracy in any serious sense? I wouldn’t consider England to be anything approaching a serious democracy until the First Reform Act of 1832.
I don’t know what the big deal with the Magna Carta is. It’s just a document where the king ceded some control to barons.
Michael, Just a short reply. First of all democracies have been tried out before the American experience. Second, Madison and company did not establish a democracy. I believe they call it a constitutional republic or a representative republic. The new idea was not whether it was a republic or a democracy. The new idea was that the United States was the first moral society in history. It was the subordination of society to moral law. “The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system–as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection aganst the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right.” Ayan Rand, Capitalism: The Unkown Ideal. What Madison and company did was limit the power of the government. The Constitution speaks to the specific limits of the federal government. Most libertarians that I know agree with a limited government. Unfortunately, the limited government that Madison created is not so limited anymore.
Good call, Joe. We were too large for a true democracy, even back in 1789. The Greeks could do it nicely, in a polis the size of one city-state. What we needed was to invent a workable representative democracy, according to Enlightenment principles. And the men whop did it did a pretty good job. Still warning us, though, that it would take constant maintenance not to devolve back into despotic rule. They cut a fine line, according to ideas of the day, between allowing the masses to have a say and permitting aristocratic rule. It was rule by free men of property.
But now we’ve even outgrown those confines. It may be that what we’re staring in the face is societal collapse. Because rule by the mob and intelligent rule still remain antithetical principles.
“It may be that what we’re staring in the face is societal collapse. Because rule by the mob and intelligent rule still remain antithetical principles.”
Yes, and a lot of that is because sound economics tends to be non-intuitive, whereas socialism is intuitively appealing to most (especially those lower on the socio-economic totem pole).
Nice flag waving, Russ. But it seems obvious to me that the problem posed by economics is for how the human race might be able to provide minimal food, shelter and health care for all individuals in a cohesive society. Thus it is a distributional problem as well as a motivational problem (in getting people to work toward society’s common goals).
If the problem were how to allow some individuals to most easily profit from the needs of others, ABCT would be the perfect solution. Society would be seen as one’s prey, and freedom would be seen as freedom from their power to effectively retaliate.
Don’t regard this as an advertisement for force. When I say “getting people to work toward useful goals” I think the carrot of profit is much more useful than the stick of regulation. It’s easier to allow people to profit from useful behaviors than to prohibit destructive ones.
It’s also inherently more productive to devise win-win solutions.
“The human race” is made up of individuals and is not, contrary to your statement, a cohesive unit. The same is true in regards to “society”.
“Health care” in the modern context did not exist for centuries if not millennia. Shelter, food, and health care are hardly the only human wants. If you truly desired for only these things to be fulfilled you’d be consistent, sell everything you have beyond the minimum and go out to serve the poor with the food and medicine you had bought in it’s place.
You aren’t doing it for the same reason I’m not, that whole “cohesive unit” of society doesn’t exist. You are an individual who cares about yourself and your own family. You may care somewhat for your fellow man outside that (as most do), but you certainly do not behave as a member of “the whole society.”
This is all very important because if there is no “society” then the question begins to be about how individuals can have the ability to attain what they need and want. Individuals can do this by farming, hunting, gathering, stealing, etc.
Individuals can use force to attain their ends themselves (stealing) or they can use no force. Individuals can work with others to reach goals they have in common, and they can trade with others to meet each other’s needs.
When human beings collaborate without violence they take those actions which best benefit themselves. No person is going to trade if he doesn’t feel he’s going to gain from it, without the threat of force. The primary human action preventing the well being of other individuals is force that gets in the way of mutually beneficial trade.
Beyond this, there is certainly the matter of scarcity. Food, water, and “health care” are limited in quantity and quality. But scarcity is a natural problem and not one we can fix, except by furthering the division of labor and increasing production. Distribution is a matter of consumer preference. By spending here or there consumers increase profits or losses for business. This information is important for business to know how best to meet customer needs.
There is then the matter of charity. As production increases people have more that they can contribute towards those who are mentally handicapped or have severe physical problems. I have no doubt at all that people will be charitable as regards those near them without government. Charitable giving is still very strong, despite the influence to believe such things are government problems. Most government welfare leads to dependency and causes huge problems rather than solving anything, because they can’t possibly know every individual situation as well as those close to it.
“If the problem were how to allow some individuals to most easily profit from the needs of others, ABCT would be the perfect solution.”
ABCT = Austrian Business Cycle Theory… and it has nothing to do with this. I think you mean “anarcho-capitalism” here, or perhaps “austro-anarchism”
The nature of trade is that both individuals profit in their own eyes as it relates to the trade, if no force is involved. Outside force can cause that trade not to occur, causing both individuals to be unable to make themselves better off (in their own eyes). It certainly isn’t any positive at the individual level.
It’s only when someone starts believing in this “whole society” that he starts believing he can control it all because he sees aggregate changes of certain kinds as beneficial despite individual trades being prevented.
Once he rises to the level of the “whole society” he imagines that his use of force is no longer like an individual robbing another individual. He calls this “taxation” and his redistribution of the money “social justice.” When he regulates he imagines that he knows everything about any industry he’s messing with and that nothing he does can cause problems. And if problems are caused… it wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of not having enough money or enough regulation or the right people doing the job.
“It’s also inherently more productive to devise win-win solutions.”
Absolutely, and trade has a built-in win-win. Unfortunately, some desire to discourage certain trade in order to reach other “societal” goals.
I’ll have to disagree with your disagreement, Matthew. There is certainly an integral human race, both genetically and culturally. And we share certain minimum goals in common, as exemplified neatly in the UN;s Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Plus, the best overall strategy for reducing human conflict (especially in an age such as this, with increasing populations and decreasing natural resources) is to work cooperatively, not competitively. One thing your political faction consistently overlooks is that competition is inherently based on force: the taking of resources by those with greater financial or political power. Cooperation is an innately gentler approach, one not requiring armies and advanced weaponry (nor the expense necessary to acquire them) to effect.
We have spent more effort and gold on mutual destruction, in ten thousand years of human history, than we have on preserving and disseminating those riches we have been able to gather. And as a result, nearly all of our material wealth accumulated during that time has long since been destroyed, in violent contests of domination.
“If you truly desired for only these things to be fulfilled you’d be consistent, sell everything you have beyond the minimum and go out to serve the poor with the food and medicine you had bought in it’s place.”
Surely you realize the weakness of that argument. Were I to liquidate my worldly wealth and buy medicine with it, plus a one-way ticket to some distant locus of need, it would perform a very impermanent good at the cost of erasing my margin of survival.
The only approach that might have lasting value, for me, would be to educate more people on the need for voluntary cooperative endeavors. And here, sadly, I may be wasting my time even communicating with the chorus here. In ten years I’d be unlikely to gain a single convert; my excuse, though, is that I find this dialog or multilog to be educational.
For example, I find you and others here to feel actually threatened by the idea that there might be such a thing as ‘society’. It’s scary stuff to you, to think that other people might actually feel some degree of solidarity. When obviously, human culture didn’t arise just from individuals each living in their own little ‘owned’ caves, defending against one another in the war of all against all. It arose from cooperation, trade and human bonds.
What, on the other hand, have we gained from wars and dissension? I think you realize as much when you applaud the nonviolent collaboration between individuals for mutual benefit. The sum total of those actions can be defined as human society.
“Beyond this, there is certainly the matter of scarcity. Food, water, and “health care” are limited in quantity and quality. But scarcity is a natural problem and not one we can fix, except by furthering the division of labor and increasing production.”
Problems of scarcity are amenable to solutions from human ingenuity. One either increases total production or decreases total population. The division of labor is not, in my mind, any panacea. Since the modern trend of dispossession of the peasantry and their migration to the cities in search of employment has proceeded, only a fortunate fraction of the world’s poor have materially benefited. Most are less secure now than they were when employed in subsistence agriculture. They live a degraded existence in the alleys of the world’s teeming slums, cheating and robbing one another to stay alive. The wonders of globalization offer an enticing tale, but not one that has produced great results in reality.
“And we share certain minimum goals in common, as exemplified neatly in the UN;s Universal Declaration of Human Rights”
So we all agree with the UN now? Or have we just redefined the word “share” to include those of us who by compulsion are forced to support the UN via taxation?
“One thing your political faction consistently overlooks is that competition is inherently based on force: the taking of resources by those with greater financial or political power.”
Only if you redefine the term force is competition “inherently based on force.” Force is taking action against another person or his property against his will. People do not have to steal or trespass.
It is force that prevents both cooperation and non-violent competition.
“The only approach that might have lasting value, for me, would be to educate more people on the need for voluntary cooperative endeavors.”
Since when are taxation and minimum wages “voluntary cooperative endeavors”? Or did you stop believing in those things and switch to anarcho-communism recently?
“Problems of scarcity are amenable to solutions from human ingenuity. One either increases total production or decreases total population.”
How does one increase total production with human ingenuity without convincing individuals that it is also to their own benefit?
“The division of labor is not, in my mind, any panacea. Since the modern trend of dispossession of the peasantry and their migration to the cities in search of employment has proceeded, only a fortunate fraction of the world’s poor have materially benefited.”
That “small fraction” being the developed nations? You seem to believe that these people benefited only at the expense of the “peasantry” but it is in fact because of the differences in how we work that this has occurred. For hundreds of years humanity has all existed at the level of meager subsistence.
It was only through the industrial revolution that any of us got out of that. Admittedly, this was only the minority but that is because only the minority took the path towards prosperity by allowing individual freedom and accumulation of wealth and capital necessary to advance.
You seem to seek to thrust us all back into the dark ages in this part of your response.
“Most are less secure now than they were when employed in subsistence agriculture.”
Prove this. They are certainly not secure, but they are not less secure either. And the insecurity exists is not because of the development of other nations, but because they never developed…
“They live a degraded existence in the alleys of the world’s teeming slums, cheating and robbing one another to stay alive.”
And they did not do this centuries ago?
“The wonders of globalization offer an enticing tale, but not one that has produced great results in reality.”
Globalization is only helpful if the people are given the freedom to take it’s advantages. A clear example of this is Hong Kong. It’s only productive if the governments honor property and allow the accumulation of capital and the use of people’s resources and abilities to enhance their own lives.
Unfortunately, these governments do nothing of the sort. They take in huge amounts of foreign aid which is used not for those who need it first, but to sustain the power of the existing regime.
As far as your other points go, if you are now an anarcho-communist and no longer in support of the state and it’s controls then I suppose I have no personal objection to that. I think it’s untenable on a large scale but I certainly believe it has worked in some scenarios and you are welcome to trying to convince whomever you can to go that route.
michael,
“we share certain minimum goals in common, as exemplified neatly in the UN;s Universal Declaration of Human Rights”
How exactly would you know this? Have you asked everyone in the entire world?
“the best overall strategy for reducing human conflict (especially in an age such as this, with increasing populations and decreasing natural resources) is to work cooperatively, not competitively.”
Have you ever heard of something called the Austrian School of Economics? They’re big supporters of working cooperatively. You might find their writings interesting.
As for competition, do you mean violent competition (such as predator-prey relationships) or peaceful competition (such as competing firms)? I would assume you mean the first, but you don’t specify.
“The sum total of those actions can be defined as human society.”
The danger is in personifying that aggregate. Society consists of individuals and has no independent existence. If society thinks something, it is because individuals think that something; other members of society may disagree. If society does something, it is because individuals do that something; other members of society may act differently. Society is not a monolith.
“The division of labor is not, in my mind, any panacea.”
Very true. Clearly defined and well protected private property rights are required.
“But it seems obvious to me that the problem posed by economics is for how the human race might be able to provide minimal food, shelter and health care for all individuals in a cohesive society. Thus it is a distributional problem as well as a motivational problem (in getting people to work toward society’s common goals).”
The problem here is that you want to distribute other peoples’ stuff. Only if “we” all “own” everything in common is distribution justified. And people don’t have all goals in common, of course. This is another big assumption of “communitarianism” that I find offensive.
“And we share certain minimum goals in common, as exemplified neatly in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights”
Having just read the Declaration at the link you’ve provided, I can definitely say that I do not share all of those goals; from 22 onward, they are definitely pushing socialism.
“It’s also inherently more productive to devise win-win solutions.”
Oops, sorry, I missed this one before. Free trade is inherently a win-win situation, Michael. If it weren’t, then one party would not have freely partaken of the trade. Redistribution, on the other hand, is inherently not win-win; the people who get their wealth “redistributed” are definite losers.
Thank you, Russ.
“The problem here is that you want to distribute other peoples’ stuff. Only if “we” all “own” everything in common is distribution justified. And people don’t have all goals in common, of course. This is another big assumption of “communitarianism” that I find offensive.”
No I don’t– in fact I belong to a society that shares my goals and values: the American people. We want to contribute, as a matter of personal choice, toward the realization of those goals we hold in common. We have no desire for either your money or your presence as a complainer.
Besides, none of us cares to “own everything in common”. That’s a big red herring. What we like to do is (a) contribute toward effecting common goals requiring expenditures in common, and (b) keep to ourselves those things we own individually. I know that’s hard to wrap your head around.
(michael) “And we share certain minimum goals in common, as exemplified neatly in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights”
(Russ) “Having just read the Declaration at the link you’ve provided, I can definitely say that I do not share all of those goals; from 22 onward, they are definitely pushing socialism.”
You should feel free to opt out. Find someplace like Hong Kong or Singapore, where you will not be asked to contribute toward the welfare of others.
michael,
“No I don’t– in fact I belong to a society that shares my goals and values: the American people. We want to contribute, as a matter of personal choice, toward the realization of those goals we hold in common. We have no desire for either your money or your presence as a complainer.”
First, “the American people” is not a monolith. The people living in America have differing values and contribute to your goals to varying degrees, some not at all. Second, if you don’t want Russ’s money, then why do you support taxing him and others?
“What we like to do is (a) contribute toward effecting common goals requiring expenditures in common, and (b) keep to ourselves those things we own individually.”
So do we. We just want to be allowed to determine which common goals to support as individuals.
“You should feel free to opt out. Find someplace like Hong Kong or Singapore, where you will not be asked to contribute toward the welfare of others.”
If I may rephrase, “Your choices are to be looted or to leave.” Yes, these are the alternatives currently available. Some of us object to that. You, on the other hand, present it as a justification for your looting–it is not. Please explain why this dichotomy is good and worth preserving.
michael wrote:
“No I don’t– in fact I belong to a society that shares my goals and values: the American people.”
The only problem is, a great number of the American people don’t share your goals. If you want to see how many, support a law that would allow people to opt out of paying that portion of their taxes that goes towards redistribution.
“We want to contribute, as a matter of personal choice, toward the realization of those goals we hold in common.”
Ahhh, so it’s a matter of personal choice. Of course, if I make the wrong personal choice, then I will have the right one chosen for me? That’s a collective choice, and if every choice is made collectively, then everything is owned collectively.
“Besides, none of us cares to “own everything in common”. That’s a big red herring. What we like to do is (a) contribute toward effecting common goals requiring expenditures in common, and (b) keep to ourselves those things we own individually. I know that’s hard to wrap your head around.”
No, actually it’s not a hard idea for me to wrap my head around, because I’m not an anarchist. I’m a classical liberal who favors a limited republic. The problem with the above quote of yours is that there are very few things that really qualify as “common goals”, that everybody can truly benefit from. These include a military, a legal system, maybe basic infrastructure, and …. hmmmm…. I think that’s about it. Redistribution of wealth due to some cornball economic theory like yours does not benefit everyone, and not everybody is for it, so it shouldn’t be counted as a common goal, but as something that should be done by private individuals or private organizations.
If instead of this you favor the idea that the people get to choose how much money people can keep, and how much money gets taxed away to be given to others (social democracy), then nobody really owns anything except at the sufferance of the collective. I.e. the collective really owns everything. This, unfortunately, seems to be the situation we are in today.
“You should feel free to opt out. Find someplace like Hong Kong or Singapore, where you will not be asked to contribute toward the welfare of others.”
I think I should be free to opt out of redistribution while staying right where I am. I was born here. What right do you have to tell me I can’t live here if I don’t give you and your ilk a bunch of my money, you extortionist compassion fascist?
Michael,
What the founding fathers did was unique to the world. They limited government and made it subserviant to the individual. They did give freedom to the masses. Yes even these rich white property owners sealed their own fate. How do you have a document like the the Declaration of Independence declaring equality of man and all individuals have the their rights of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.
The ideas of the Constiution and the Declaration of Independence would over time give greater freedoms to all citizens of this nation. The words could not be taken away. Over 600,000 people lost their lives in the Civil War because of those words. The white property owners turning into the multi-ethnic property owners. Oh, and the white guys even gave the ladies the right to vote.
The states created the federal government and the founders understood that the masses had to be convinced that they were not going to retry the old European BS for the last 6,000 years. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay understood this and that is why they came out with the Federalist Papers. Talk about a sales job. Well guess what it worked.
Oh yes, Benjamin Frankin did say something to the effect that you have a republic and good luck in trying to keep it. Yes even Ben understood something about human nature and that power, greed, and all those things that make humans human would have an effect. Madison tried his best to slow down the creeping majority rule. Would Madison ever had thought that the “Commerce Clause” would allow a corrupt Supreme Court to allow the government to have unlimited power?
Anyway Michael, when the Socialists come to take you away because you are not an individual but part of a “society” don’t be afraid they mean well and we all know that anyone that is in the higher echelon of the socialist movement is intelligent and caring.
“There were only some ignorant savages there, akin to the Irish with their {pitiful raids and cattle brawls”, to be cleared along with the buffalo so the land could be owned and planted.”
A real human rights nut, this guy.
In any generation, as an analogy, it is as if a sturgeon had birthed 500,000 roe and 5 became adult fish. There ARE those humans who do not “administer shocks” or another equivalents; they have become adult. They have overcome one or more of the many possible ways to be programed and have earned the awareness to avoid what harms the soul. In any generation, they are few.
Children are taught to obey the parents from a young age. A good parent makes children feel secure and raises psychologically healthy adults. But most people never outgrow that desire for a parent. When they become parents, they should see that they now have the ability to take care of themselves, but most don’t and don’t want to. They trust the guv as they trusted their parents. The guv replaces parents, and just as people don’t want anyone trashing their parents, they don’t want anyone trashing the guv.
I’m often surprised by the level of anger that criticism of the guv can cause in most people. Criticizing the guv for most people threatens their entire world view, identity and security. But they distrust all other members of society in the same way they distrusted their siblings as they were growing up. And they want the guv (as the parent) to make the siblings stay in line.
In a nutshell, it’s a matter of growing up. Libertarians are fully grown and self-actualizing adults; socialists are immature.
Sorry, but is this pseudo-psychology of yours backed up by any praxeological tenets or scientific data? I’m not sure if your broad sweeping generalizations of children and parents used to deduce that its all simply a matter of growing up is supposed to be taken seriously or if this is just a huge joke thats flown past my head.
“Children are taught to obey the parents from a young age. A good parent makes children feel secure and raises psychologically healthy adults. But most people never outgrow that desire for a parent.”
Exactly. If it’s nurture, not nature, we can be very hopeful because we can change it… education is the key.
Teaching self reliance and independance is as important as weaning a child.
…
Some of it is nature (see me post above). Luckily, variation in biology is high, so some people don’t have these tendencies, and some can over come them.
Well this article was depressing.
I think there is less to this question than meets the eye. Every human organization is pyramidal because:
A complex system such as the economy
and its surrounding culture has to
have initial conditions. What are those
initial conditions? They are most likely
few and simple. In fact, I think there are
only two (maybe only one). First is the instinct to group.
Grouping leads to safety and the availability
of sexual partners. The second is
the instinct for stability. In other words,
protect the group at all costs and keep
changes to a minimum. Why? Because
it takes about 15 years to find a mate,
give birth, and raise a child to maturity
so he can care for himself. Thus the
culture formed by these two initial conditions
is very sticky, very difficult to
change no matter how dysfunctional it
may appear to outside observers.
Related…
From Why We Fight (the Power) at Roderick Long’s blog…
And one of my favorites from Glen Allport: The Abolitionist Argument in 35 Seconds (Allport uses the label “abolitionist” instead of “anarchist”).
A whole new light is shone onto the La Boetie-Milgram problem by the findings of evolutionary biology of the last twoor three decades. This is the realization that the bulk of fitness selection social mammals (including ourselves) and many other species is performed mainly (repeat mainly)by the selection of a particular male by the female as her genetic partner. She does so by choosing the best possible male she can perceive from those males immediately available.
This necessarily develops rank ordering among males in any species which lives in social groups. This in turn necessarily leads to the certainty of one male who becomes the group leader. When a leader’s abilities start to fail then a re-ordering takes place. Once this occurs then it is of relative survival benefit to any group (in savinf energy or damage) vis-a-vis competitive groups that further disorder becomes quiescent and that the decisions of the holder of the new top position is fully obeyed until such time as he, in turn, becomes weak enough for a clear replacement to be chosen. Once again a new period of group obedience and quiescence follows.
The instinct for both leadership and deference, like a great many other instincts, might involve a complex coalitions of genes but they don’t arrive at a decision by ‘opinion polling’ within the DNA but by simple on-off switching (now known to be initiated by the non-coding part of DNA). Young males in a group establish one-to-one unambiguous status relationships which then become semi-permanent and the subsequent rank-ordering goes right to the top.
La Boetie’s preplaxity of the tyranny-acquiescence phenomenon in humans is actually no different from what occurs in a great many other species. The best possible example is that of our closest DNA cousins, the chimpanzee.
Finally, I would urge that the Austrian school of economics — for which I have a great respect and to which I ally myself — should now up-date its canon with modern evolutionary biology. New findings have a great deal to say about several important aspects of economic theory, including the motivations of consumer demand.
It’s not psychology. Economics starts where psychology stops and vice versa. That isn’t to say it dismisses psychological findings. Just that Praxeology takes preferences as given, regardless of how they form, which is the province of psychology. So there really isn’t any updating to do. It’s not a psychological school.
“Praxeology takes preferences as given, regardless of how they form, which is the province of psychology.”
I’m puzzled. I thought praxeology was the study of the logic of human action. That is, the study of choice. How does that differ from psychology?
Psychology is more of the study of how and why people’s values form. That is, it’s concerned with what specifically brings satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the forming of beliefs, the emotional needs of individuals, etc, etc.
Praxeology doesn’t really touch any of this. Praxeology is only concerned with working out the logical consequences of the fact that every individual has a scale of values and that each acts in accordance with those values.
Excellent point Keith – I think evolutionary biology have much to say about these issues and, more in general, about economics.
Anyway I have to object to your specific claim. If this sort of “innate obedience” was mainly determined by the phenomena you mention, then female members of our specie would have to be less obedient than males. I mean, if obedience in humans is the stable result of one specific evolutionary strategy (that is, one alpha male reproduces, the others wait and obey), why do females equally share this selected behavioral trait? Should not the average woman be a bit more of rebel than the average macho? I am serious here, I am not making fun of your idea.
Also, how come dogs obey their owners? I hope here sexual selection is not involved – in spite of the possible zoophilic passion of our ancestors, there has been no genetic flow to contemporary doggies.
Maybe then we can give another biological explanation. Maybe obedience have more to do with the achievement of goals requiring socially organized behaviors. All social animals must show some sort of obedience and the capacity to recognize authority. If you have to coordinate your actions with other members of your group in order to reach a certain end, then it is reasonable to assume that it is better for all of them to have a vast sub-group of obedient subjects. This is true for wolves, dogs, hunters, human gatherers and merchants. Imagine to perform a big hunt with everybody stubbornly trying to realize their own strategies and nobody inclined to accept instructions passively. We would probably be still naked under the trees, catching crippled rats and bugs for food, if obedience did not show up in our ancestors.
I think myself that Austrian theory of economics would really benefit from such biologically-oriented explanations. I hope more orthodox Austro-libertarian fellows won’t kill me for this – but, well, I am a libertarian and I see things this way.
Andre said: “All social animals must show some sort of obedience and the capacity to recognize authority.”
If obedience means recognizing that some people are more competent in certain endeavors than
others and that therefore those people are generally recongized as having authority in these endeavors I have no problem with being obedient to the authority. That’s how I view my car mechanics. That’s how I view von Mises or Rothbard in economics, or Nabakov or Dostoevsky in
literature.
The question posed was “why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?” This is not resolved by the Milgram experiment, which instead deals with how some people operate. I submit that people choose their leaders & policies on the basis of their moral and intellectual beliefs. Does anyone think that if people believed that statism were immoral and counterproductive, people would elect statists and support their policies?
If we wish to counter statism, we must present a vision that is more moral and understandable. It would conclude that: governmental theft, fraud, & irresponsibility cause economic problems, which are corrected by allowing responsible behavior to be rewarded, while punishing criminal activities
I think the child-parent analogy is apt. I would submit that people choose their leaders on the basis of wishful thinking, often in partial if not full denial of reality. For every abused child that runs away, a thousand stay. Even if you were to “present a vision” to those thousand children, most would not leave their parents, and would remain in denial of the parental irresponsibility.
A recurrent progressive theme, which Obama uses, is to propose that solutions must come from collectivism (and associated sacrifice). The implication is that the problems are “our fault” and we will be punished, by even worse problems, for our selfishness if we don’t chip in. It is the same method abusive parents use to maintain control, and is the very process that keeps the child from achieving maturity and independence. An immature parent, like the state, derives its power from manufacturing the dependency of others
Children of the state seek the love and approval of the state, and the security it offers. They take the bait, and bite the hook. Good luck explaining to all the fish that that’s not really dinner on the end of the string.
Noah, the child-parent analogy cannot hold because when people compete to be leaders, they are the peers of those who empower them. (You can think of a ship landing on a desert island, where some of the passengers strive for leadership. Those who become leaders need have no more a parental status than did Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.)
What do you mean “enslavement”? Tax slavery? Wage slavery?
“Martin’s answer was that they’re born that way.”
He’s probably right. It;s probably why people would rather hand over their money to a robber than risk fighting him. Or people would rather go on living than try to overthrow a government. Or work for a business owner than start their own business. And so on. This is the basic notion of the Hobbesian contract – weak people agreed to protection by strong people and work for them than take their chances on their own.
“But the problems of anarchism are equally insoluble.”
He’s clearly talking about socialist anarchism though, which is against all authority – is he not? Anarcho-capitalism isn’t against “authority” i.e the boss etc.
Anarcho-capitalism is clearly the solution. The problem is getting there.
My thoughts too…
Here’s some basic thinking you no doubt have done, Aubrey and Inky. Once you reduce, by some means either violent or nonviolent, the US government to a blubbering mass and confront the fearful crowd, you will find that in the absence of a powerful authority, everyone will hasten to construct their own versions of powerful authority– to replace the security they lost and, most importantly, to prevent the visions of other people from taking over.
Those powerful authorities that constitute themselves first and obtain arms will duke it out in a ruinous civil war. The process has happened many times, and has never unfolded differently than this. The outcome will be that the last army to remain standing will rule over a pile of rubble and hungry people, and will have to impose authoritarian rule or fall under the waves of desperate humanity. My guess is that they will elect option A, draconian rule to B, extinction.
So let’s reexamine the anarcho-capitalist tenet about authority in a free society: “if competition in security provision were allowed to exist, prices would be lower and services would be better according to anarcho-capitalists.”
What this means is that those who want security under your guidance will support your army… while those who want security FROM you will support the other army. And my guess is that those Americans who support you will be fewer in number than those who fear you. We are not a nation of anarchists in spirit. We are a cautious, prosperous people who prefer comfort and safety to the pursuit of radical dreams of economic and social disruption.
I expect you will answer that you don’t entertain the thought of some actual, physical revolution– and that instead you believe that if you just explain to everyone your miraculous vision they will flock to your support.
Good luck with that. It’s worth a try, certainly.
Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom is a valuable commentary on the problem of humankind’s willingness to surrender individual freedom to powers outside ourselves.
Yes, I agree! First time I’ve seen someone else refer to it, it’s a very interesting book, well worth reading.
fwiw, you can find the fromm work on the torrents.
Those people volunteered! They went to the experiment. That speaks volumes.
Go watch the BBC doco, The Experiment. (Discussed here: https://mises.org/Community/forums/p/8701/224504.aspx)
The essential thing to consider is people ONLY conform to ROLES if they associate with them. I.e Prison guards wouldn’t abuse their authority, unless they personally identified with the role.
This “experiment” doesn’t say anything about mankind or human nature AT ALL, only for those who volunteered and were involved.
Go FORCE someone to sit down and participate (leaving the option open of refusal i.e civil disobedience) and the result would change.
Problem with that link, Conza.
Nevertheless, I agree with you. The so-called experiment is flawed on so many levels. And the stretched extrapolation based on the faulty configuration, poor assumptions, and skewed subjects makes it barely worth mentioning at all, even if I do agree that the worldwide slave mentality needs eradicating.
The people who volunteered for the experiment didn’t know what the experiment was until they were already there. They were most likely just normal folks like anyone else who needed some extra cash. A pretty (though not truly) random sample. So while there may be some problems with it, conza’s identification observation isn’t one of them.
“They were most likely just normal folks like anyone else who needed some extra cash.”
It was most likely folks who have little better to do with their time (consider opportunity costs) than to do a “psychological experiment in return for a small payment”. I wonder what kind of people that would attract? Some how ‘normal’ folks don’t really come to mind.
Maybe folks who are interested in psychology? A very broad stroke I’m applying here but from the people I know who are doing degrees in it, they’re generally the ones with the issues.
@ Franklin; thanks. http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/8701/224504.aspx
I agree. Such people are hardly the norm.
“I wonder what kind of people that would attract?”
College students? Many college students need money.
I was forced to take part in a psych experiment when I took Psych 101, as a condition of getting credit for the course. But I didn’t get paid. (And no, I didn’t have to torture people or take mind-altering drugs.)
Even if it -did- involve normal people (I’d imagine some of them were, I mean these experiments are advertised as virtual money giveaways), there’s so many loaded assumptions that you can’t take this to constitute much proof of anything, certainly not that people have it ingrained in their genes to act this way. It’s an interesting experiment that merits further research but it’s just a start…
Inquisitor: You don’t find it to be significant that we observe on a real-life basis that whether it’s soldiers guarding POWs, police interviewing suspects and petty bureaucrats dealing with citizens people possessing power over others mostly act the same way? When in positions of power they start to consider the person they’re dealing with less than fully human, and treat them in a careless and beastly manner.
And that when a psychologist did the experiment, using people who were not actually in a position of power, but instead consciously taking part in an experiment, the subjects treated their own personal friends in a beastly and inhuman fashion? Just because of the social context?
It appears to be something innate in human nature, that we treat other people according to our relative positions in the power structure. Like most other social animals, we tend to treat our superiors obsequiously, our inferiors with contempt and our equals with respect. That’s the way social mammals, particularly the primates and most particularly man, are wired.
It was a necessary and illuminating experiment. You’re welcome to research behavioral studies further. I know of none that support the idea that in a power situation we tend to attempt to treat the other as an equal. It’s normally as an adversary, with one holding the advantage over the other. And if he has been issued a stun gun, with authority to use it as he deems necessary, the other guy stands a serious risk of being zapped. Even when they’re just play acting.
The “teachers” were told they weren’t harming the other person when they showed concern. Not to mention most people would reckon the scientists don’t have a “get out of jail free” card if a participant were to die. Then again there are board games where you can shock fellow contestants (like something out of a early “The Simpsons” episode).
In this golden age of technology and democracy run by what I consider as rule based legal machinery, no Libertarian or anyone else has persuaded me through logic that self-rule is better than government. I suspect that is because self-rule *is* government. The word government you bandy around is in fact anyone who takes charge of the situation.
In a household we have the luxury of allowing everyone to have a say in the running of that household. In the United States of America we are such a big household that it is impractical to have a town meeting with its adult population of what, 250M people? So we vote. And because so many vote, as from the beginning of voting, if our side loses an election it’s because someone “fixed” or “rigged” the election! Duh? If it weren’t fixed, our side would win. If we’re democrats, Obama won so all is right. If McCain had won with Palin second in command, all would have been right for Republicans. The losing side always figure the winning side cheated. I’m being facetious because the part that anti-government proponents assume, I believe in error, is that people who support government fit the profile of this article! Taxpayers are dumb smucks who lack an education… and MIT graduates who invented the next cure to some major disease? Well, they didn’t get a degree in political science, which expains how such educated folks could erroneously support government!
You may say I’m deluding myself, or stand as a minority, when I say to you that without the democratic government I support in the U.S., I would be at the mercy of my neighbors. If someone wanted my house, they would simply shoot me (or torture then kill me if they were in a bad mood that day) then take the house. Those who wanted to occupy dwellings would have to hole up in those dwellings. The world of “Mad Max” and its sequel “Beyond Thunderdome” comes to mind!
I don’t have to like the deplorable human condition to know it’s improved exponentially since the 1500′s when the dark ages shrouded the globe. Comparing government then to government now, is like comparing apples to oranges (perhaps more accurately, apples to excrement?). Even though Uncle Sam is a spendthrift with the money collected by the IRS (not intending to get some of you started!) we do need a stash of cash to run a monetary based government. If nobody paid taxes then we would have dirt roads and decaying infrastructure (but hey, tax opposers have quickly pointed out to me it’s morally wrong, wrong, wrong to force them to pay for highways, healthcare for the elderly, waste disposal and the modern standards of living Caesar insists on foisting on them).
Why should anyone be forced to live in a modern society, with high living standards? People got along just fine for the past several thousand years! The U.S. is in an appalling state of affairs, shamefully boasting the highest living standard in human history, thanks to government forcing cleanliness, health care, sanitation and other non-essentials down our throats. Those tax dollars stolen from anarchist minded folks even fund a militia to protect those who deplorably bask in the glory of such high standards of living, thumbing their noses at their ancestors who made their living off the sweat of their brows behind oxen, women dying in child birth (and to think our tax dollars might have helped end that misery, the disgrace of it all) and kids rightfully out in the fields instead of in government mandated schools. Those were the good old days.
I was pleased that you used this scenario:
“I would be at the mercy of my neighbors. If someone wanted my house, they would simply shoot me (or torture then kill me if they were in a bad mood that day) then take the house.”
Thank you. Now go back to work because your property taxes have come due. And if you don’t pay those taxes, whether you like it or not, the cops will come and take your house. Shooting you is an option, depending on your response.
great neighbours! maybe they’re telling you something.
People didn’t get along for thousands of years. City walls were invented because people didn’t get along.
Sure. And proto-Germanic tribes used to bury people up to their necks, cover the head with honey, and leave them for the sun and insects (most probably the insects given the climate) to finish them. Nietzsche set out in some detail what pains were taken to impose a new moral system on a species which spent 99% of its evolutionary history in hunter gatherer tribes to accomodate the switch to settled agrarian communities. What’s your point?
You pretty much are deluded. Yes.
Your rant assumes government financing of certain things (they could be bads as much as they are goods) is the only way to procure supposed goods. It’s not. Nor is it legitimate. Though continue to wallow in intellectual cowardice thinking there’d be no roads absent the government. It’s amusing. It’s also interesting to note you think cleanliness must be forced on people by the government. I guess with out it you and other headless chickens would live in a pig sty. Fitting in some ways.
“It’s also interesting to note you think cleanliness must be forced on people by the government.”
As a historical fact, it was. In places like London and New York, early places that put public health programs into place, there was a great need for cleanliness as people, left to their own devices, lived in filth.
The core issue is that public space exists. People may live in private dwellings but the spaces in between are for public use. And those are exactly the places everyone used to throw their filth, disposing of it easily and at no cost.
It was left to the impositions a benign government chose to impose on the populace to make the streets we walked on safe and sanitary. And the wells and streams we drew our water from to be safe from contamination. Oh, those statist ogres! Imposing their values on us!
Michael wrote:
“The core issue is that public space exists. People may live in private dwellings but the spaces in between are for public use. And those are exactly the places everyone used to throw their filth, disposing of it easily and at no cost.”
So your solution is to steal wealth from people to fund the cleaning up of these public areas?
I have an alternate solution. Can you guess what it is?
“So your solution is to steal wealth from people to fund the cleaning up of these public areas?”
In fact it isn’t. Such a comment is moronic, and doesn’t address anything I said. Should the public find it has common goals, such as maintaining the cleanliness of public areas, there must be a public fund created… unless you posit some selfless philanthropist, with no direct interest in the outcome.
“I have an alternate solution. Can you guess what it is?”
I have no idea, but would like to hear it.
You seem to want to change people’s behaviour. How about instead we assume that mankind’s inherent nature cannot be changed and instead change the system to conform to the nature of man.
If “public areas” did not exist, then the problem would not exist. If everything is privately owned, then people wouldn’t have anywhere to dispose of their filth at no cost.
I’ll ignore the ad hominem for now. It’s not your fault you’re a bit slow. You seem to be oblivious to the fact that your “public fund” is fundamentally created through the threat of violence. Therefore it’s not your fault that you cannot differentiate between the violent and non-violent solutions to a problem.
In fact it isn’t. Such a comment is moronic, and doesn’t address anything I said. Should the public find it has common goals, such as maintaining the cleanliness of public areas, there must be a public fund created… unless you posit some selfless philanthropist, with no direct interest in the outcome.
No there mustn’t.
Let’s assume for a moment that all streets and sidewalks are owned by private individuals/entities who engaged in a voluntary exchange (using money they earned, not stole) to obtain the property — as all land should be.
Is it in the best interests of this street owner — who gains his income because of this street, which people walk and drive on, and businesses pay rent to have their storefronts on, etc. — to allow his street to become filthy and unsanitary? Or is it in his best interests to keep his street clean, and to seek restitution from those who make his property filthy, by littering, dumping, etc?
This is not to say that because a street (or any other land) is private property, that it will be kept immaculate and in perfect condition. But I believe that the superior solution (to maintaining “cleanliness”, among other things) is private property. I’m guessing that’s what Jay’s “alternative solution” is as well, but I could be wrong.
lol Patchwick
It seems we were both replying at the same time and I got in before you
lol Patchwick
It seems we were both replying at the same time and I got in before you
Ha ha.
michael,
Your response is, as usual, hilarious at its best and downright stupid at its worst.
Inquisitor said
” It’s also interesting to note you think cleanliness ? must be forced on people by the government. ”
and you respond by saying
” As a historical fact, it was ”
How is this a valid response? What you needed to give was a reasoning that explains why it must so. To do so, you need to use reasoning to eliminate other possibilities or why your preferred option is the only one that can work. Merely saying “In that era, A happened and B did not happen. Hence, for B to happen, non-A must be done” is not an argument. Correlation is not causation.
Give an argument, for a change, rather than repeating facts accompanied by your opinions parading in the guise of legitimate theories.
That’s the difference between you and me, Bala. For you, what I need to do is to find some reason explaining why it must be so (that government has to clean up public areas rather than rely on private enterprise to get the job done). For me it’s sufficient to point to the fact that for so long as sanitation was left to individual initiative, the streets got filthier and filthier. Smallpox and cholera were endemic, as were diseases born of septic conditions, like diarrhea and TB.
Until the City of London imposed sanitary standards as a matter punishable by law, episodes of cholera were recurrent in the city. Have you never read about the Broad Street Pump Outbreak?
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/broadstreetpump.html
It was not until public health officials created standards for sanitation and punished offenders that things got better, and cholera in London became a thing of the past. The private initiative approach never worked.
What you have offered is your unsupported opinion. And I have countered with historically verifiable evidence. Your move, Bala.
What you have offered is a dim-witted analysis that mistakes correlation for causation. Once again, A occured and B occured DOES NOT IMPLY a causal relationship between A and B. It could mean that a 3rd factor, say C, caused B. This, incidentally, is your persistent error.
Bala: In this instance, your hypothetical is really dumb. B did not happen for thousands of years. People continued just dumping their filth in the commons (the streets). Then once A happened (public health services were formed with powers to impose rules of behavior) the environment became cleaner and healthier. There’s a clear causative link.
You just don’t want to admit anything I say is true. That kind of approach can be taken to ridiculous lengths.
Going along with my response to you above…
Well if the waterways and streets were public space, why would you expect the “private initiative approach” to work?
In order for the approach to be truly “private”, the waterways and streets would have to be private property.
Is it in a private water company’s best interests to allow its water source to become contaminated by waste or pollution — causing a large portion of their customer base to die — or is it in their best interests to do whatever possible to keep it’s water source clean?
Also, according to Wikipedia (don’t know how accurate this is):
Since the cesspools were overrunning, the London government decided to dump the waste into the River Thames. This action contaminated the water supply, leading to the cholera outbreak.
The River Thames was public as well, I believe.
michael,
Maybe the causal link you claim is valid is valid. Maybe it isn’t. But what you haven’t established is that a system of pure private enterprise will necessary lead to unhygienic living conditions in urban areas.
You haven’t established that yet. Your anecdote is not from a regime characterised by pure private enterprise. So, any claim that you have established the “causal link” is hollow.
My point is that it is government intervention that caused the problem in the first place. If Patchwick’s wikipedia reference is correct, my contention seriously damages your claims. Your move now.
Fly, my pretty, fly!
The core issue is that public space exists. People may live in private dwellings but the spaces in between are for public use. And those are exactly the places everyone used to throw their filth, disposing of it easily and at no cost.
Interesting. So people disposed of their filth in public spaces — that is, spaces they did not, and could not, own (and therefore had little incentive to keep clean).
Perhaps the problem, then, is the idea of “public” spaces?
In 1975, CBS did a play on the Milgram Experiment called “The Tenth Level” – William Shatner played Stanley Milgram. You can find it on YouTube
There is at leat one other reason why people prefer to obey than to set them free. People are generally worried of being alone, of being different from the others (I refer here to the Spiral of silence theory by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann). So, if everyone obey, they obey.
Actually, there are moments in history in which a mass of people overthrow the tyrant, but just as a mass, not as individuals. Because, at that very time, being similar to the others means to being against the tyrant.
Christian theology calls the problem our sin nature. In other words, people are born uncivilized and must learn to fight it. All proposals for government should start, “Given that we are all evil people . . . .”
Human nature, influenced by environment, encourages the individual to adapt to structure; i.e. social and/or religious, etc. This is consistent with survival. Anarchy, on the other hand, is based on the compulsion to challenge structure; i.e. authority and/or rules, etc. Anarchy can only survive within structure, but rarely accomplishes anything. Anarchy is a state of mind, an attitude, not thoughtful and reflective, with goals that are accomplished. Anarchist are “against” rather than principled. They lack the qualities of leadership and true bravery found in revolutionaries.
I wrote a college paper on the three types of genious. Those that create; those that study those that create; and, those that study those that create and create themselves. I’ve always felt that the first were the most fortunate because creating for them came easily. The last worked the hardest and are, in my mind, the greatest of them. The second type is the one I am personally least impressed with. Like any common groupy, they idolize those that went before them, but add nothing, or very little. Their lives are spent convincing others that they walked in the shadow of greatness. To my mind, a pathetic existence.
I also argued with my professor, who was clearly from the second type, about freedom. He never accepted the fact that his freedom of choice came, in large part, through a paycheck from a university, not his knowledge of Elizabethan World Culture. I would have been more empathetic to his argument had he written Hamlet instead of quoting from it.
anarchism, volontarism, call it what you will, isn’t against authority per se, only against the its imposition. most social organizations are highly structured; dissenters are free to start up competing bodies with different rules.
Exactly, Newson, it’s about instilling a mentality which will result in far *more* authority in the world. We wish to reverse all of the predominate trends of the last hundred years or so, we wish for everyone to take authority over their own lives.
The FED propagandist above said: “You guys will scare people.” Damned straight, but they sure as hell shouldn’t be more afraid of themselves than of W, Obama and the FED.
“Anarchist are ‘against’ rather than principled.”
No. Libertarians hold to the non-aggression principle and apply
it universally.
What principle of action do you hold to?
“No. Libertarians hold to the non-aggression principle and apply it universally.”
No, some libertarians do that. Others are less rule-bound, and are not opposed to disobeying the NAP where they think that this will result in less total rights violations (more total freedom). I.e., some think that a minimal government will result in more freedom than anarchism, and so are opposed to blindly following the NAP, no matter what. It’s not that minarchist-libertarians are less principled than anarcho-libertarians are; it’s that they have different principles or beliefs.
I’d say that most anarcho-libertarians believe that following the NAP always will result in more freedom. I differ with these people in beliefs, but not in principles. I believe these people are true libertarians; I just disagree with them on details. Then there are some who are so hide-bound that they would advocate following the NAP even if they believed it wouldn’t result in more freedom than some other way. These people I differ with in terms of principles. I don’t consider this type a libertarian at all. I call them NAPsters, since they’re more concerned with a rule than they are with freedom per se.
I don’t disagree with your points Russ. In fact, I think they are great points. I haven’t found a good argument yet, however, for why a monopoly on force makes us more free. In fact, not so many months ago I came here as a minarchist. (And only a couple of years before that I’m not proud to say that I was a neo-conservative).
The argument you make reminds me of why GPL proponents have always believed that the GPL is “more free” than the BSD license despite the fact BSD offers the most immediate freedom to developers (the GPL requires developers to share their code if they use GPL code).
The slave in the kitchen who gets to wear nice clean linens believes more in liberty than the slave who ran away and is now crawling through brambles.
probably a fake story about fake learners faking shock.
I think it is also interesting to note the subjects responses when asked to justify their actions. The majority stated that it was
“for the good of science”
or something along those lines. which is precisely the old socialist argument for cracking eggs to make an omelet.
guess who’s got a soft spot for eggnog.
Guns guns guns
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/in-depth/arrest-warrants-issued-to-south-australian-parents-not-having-paid-school-fees/story-fn3o6nna-1225914293878
Guns guns guns
I realised that along time ago when learning about evolution. Its not suprising that the majority of people would actively want to follow in their own slavery, not for any logical reason, but just because thats the way the brain is wired. A good book which explores this is called “god wants you dead”.
How infinitely depressing is this article.
And the comments aren’t much more encouraging.
Mac – a despairing libertarian
ABC did a similar study just recently. They went to a grocery store, had someone go up to a person at randon and flash a badge that was purchased on the internet for ~$20. They then told the person that a woman in the store (an actor) was thought to have kidnapped the baby she was with, and asked them to go in and either take the baby when she wasn’t looking, slip something in the woman’s drink so as to make it easier for her to be caught, or distract the woman while the “officer” himself ran in and grabbed the baby….depressingly, everyone helped the authority figure in some way. Only one person (out of 22), someone who had, at random, happened to have a pleasant conversation with the woman just minutes before, even asked questions about the plan. He refused to go steal the baby himself, but did stop the woman from coming after the “officer” when he took the baby.
Nice article, as far as it goes. This effect is well captured in this cliche, which is no doubt familiar to anyone old enough to remember the Holocaust:
‘I voss chust following orders, Ja?’
I am susprised though that the writer did not refer to Philip Zimbardo’s work, which has much relevance to this effect.
Milgram’s results were subsequently complemented and made all the more chilling in Zimbardo’s 1970′s experiments with a large cohort of (mostly ‘liberal’) students, who participarted in a protracted simulation of prison conditions after being randomly assigned warder and prisoner roles.
The abusive behaviour of the ‘warders’ eventually became so extreme that he had to step in and stop the project. Decades later, the Abu Gharib debacle prompted him to revisit the experience in his book ‘The Lucifer Effect’, in which he outlined, with some hindsight, how easy it is for even the nicest most principled person’s moral constraints on violent behaviour to get stretched, and even wholly rationalised away, when that person is armed with institutionally-sanctioned power over others.
I can highly recommend Zimbardo’s book, but I can’t say it’s enjoyable reading, given the subject matter.
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