Libertarians of course believe in the free market; if you find someone who favors the government provision of medical care or education, e.g., you know immediately that he is not a full-fledged libertarian. But how far can one take the free market? Can it handle absolutely all the essential services of society, including defense and justice? Here libertarians split. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/8865/the-state-debate-some-or-none/
The State Debate: Some or None?
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Gil,
how large of a geographical area do you fear an onerous private property owner will obtain on the free market? I contend that the less onerous a property holder is, the more likely his holding will increase. Market forces will work to reduce the holdings of bad managers limiting the distance that tenants would have to move and reducing the number of tenents over whom the bad manager may live out his regulatory excesses. This is in direct opposition to the nature of the state, which expands without regard to the liberty of its subjects. Hoppe has shown that personal liberties are less important than economic liberties for the expansion of states. Under a private property regime, respecting economic and personal liberties would be essentially tied to the success of a landlord. States are, due to their nature and status, capable of insulating themselves from these feedback mechanisms to a great extent. A large component of its ability in this regard is a result of the general population’s exception to the violation of rights provided to the state.
Toolkien (I like your moniker for its symbolism regarding this debate), your argument seems to be that we will never succeed in getting rid of a state, so it’s pointless even to think about it, but that when a state gets too egregious, we may have to revolt to bring it back within bounds, quite likely repeatedly. That repeatedly bears some thought since blood, sweat and tears are involved each time. I’d ask Jefferson, as I’ll ask you: if we didn’t get it right the first time in 1789 (as I’ve come to the sad conclusion that we didn’t–see http://mises.org/daily/2874 for some keen insight in this regard), why not get it right the next time instead of repeatedly trying to get something to work that ain’t never gonna work morally and therefore satisfactorily, namely a state–which is a flawed concept, most fundamentally because it isn’t built on a moral foundation. It’s built on the same mental concept ultimately as a criminal protection racket.
The interesting thing to me in this is that pretty much the same elements are required for a successful revolt to bring the state back within bounds, as for a successful revolt to replace the state (at least within a given geographical area) and establish a basis for a given society to work together morally, prosperously and safely, stateless. Almost surely, less blood, sweat and tears would be required for the latter than for the former, with more likelihood for success (in the revolt, or secession, as the case may be). Because with the former you have to address the entire geographical area of the state, whereas with the latter you can bite off bite size pieces of geographical area at a time.
But the same elements are required for both, and the three most fundamental are:
One. A thoroughly thought through program based on moral principle in all particulars.
Two. A critical mass of committed, unified thinkers achieved within the given geographical area.
Three. Rules of engagement just as thoroughly based on moral principle.
Unless all three are developed before engaging, and adhered to thereafter, almost certainly it’ll be a case of going from the frying pan to the fire.
Jeffrey Tucker, it is the individualist anarchist’s conviction that real crime, most emphatically including those You have specified, will be tremendously more effectively minimized in a society without a state (anarchist society), than in a state (a government having a monopoly on the use of coercion in a given geographical area). That is because being a monopolist of coercion including the power to tax (now unlimited on the US federal level), the state will be found to constantly be increasing the prices (taxes) for its protection services while diminishing their quality (by virtue of approaching all of its tasks on a political basis), and for the same reason will concomitantly be found to be augmenting predation instead of protection. A poor bargain.
The position that Paul Kautz thinks Narveson really intends is much more more plausible than the one Narveson actually states. He does indeed adopt the “wildly implausible” thesis I attributed to him. If Mr. Kautz disagrees, he needs to support his view with evidence from Narveson’s text, not conjectures about what he must have meant.
Maturin, you say there is a need “to account for…our essential primate survival social instincts,” speak about an instinct for turning to a strongman for resolution of disputes, assert “That humans could peacefully coexist without such a force-based power structure, or ‘state,’ is in my view a fantasy that ignores our fundamental primate nature,” and that “a true anarchist utopia …has never existed yet in human evolution.”
But man is reasoning man and acting man, able to use reason and the accumulated wisdom of the ages (if we will) to do better than confine ourselves to our instincts and turn to strongmen and demagogues for dispute resolution. And we cannot achieve anything that we do not first lift up as an ideal toward which to strive. If we limit our ideals to what we have so far experienced in our lifetimes and to what we have so far read about in history, then our spirit and our experience will be poor indeed.
Paul Kautz,
You must be careful when you say that state has an unlimited power to tax, for this is not true. The state may tax only to the point where it still retains the tacit consent of the majority. This is, despite being much greater predation than liberty lovers would be willing to accept, a figure much below that of a true unlimited taxing power. This same limitation ultimately restricts all of the actions of the state. I agree as would probably every participant in this discussion that this level of state power should be reduced and the acceptance of the populace to these injuries should be scaled back through education and moral persuasion (it is the extent to which where there is disagreement).
Stanley Pinchak,
You are correct of course, for the federal power to tax is clearly finite and not infinite. At the very least I should have put virtually in front of unlimited. However, I’m really not sure to what extent your phrase ‘tacit consent of the majority’ applies to the situation, because the hidden, widely unrecognized, seldom acknowledged inflation tax is never voted on by either the people or the Congress, except indirectly through spending bills. Then whatever difference there is between total spending and regular tax receipts is ultimately covered by the inflation tax. And then for every piece of spending there will be a special interest constituency resisting any diminution of that spending.
This tax of course occurs by the inflation of the money supply, which means the depreciation of the value of the fiat paper money which everyone, whether rich or poor, uses by virtue of the legal tender laws. Even those who, for example, pay no income tax, feel the impact of the inflation tax as the paper money progressively and continuously buys less, although perhaps most people do not recognize that a major reason for the higher prices they pay is because their dollars are worth less. It occurs so gradually from day to day, when and how and to whom do you register withdrawal of consent, tacit or otherwise? And how do you make a withdrawal of consent stick? Washington is more and more flagrantly and frequently ignoring expressed preferences of the people.
The orchestrator and executor of the depreciation of the money isn’t even a part of the government. It’s owned and controlled by the big private banks comprising the Federal Reserve. Congress can’t even agree to audit the Fed. Perhaps the real limit on this taxing power though is the end of the cycle, which is hyperinflation followed by collapse of the financial system, such as is occurring in Zimbabwe just now, where it takes millions of units of their money just to buy lunch. And still Mugabe, the orchestrator of this particular inflation, is in power.
But why, it may be asked do I call inflation of the money supply a tax? Because it eats into real people’s spending ability, just as thoroughy as more obvious taxes do, and it’s the only reason the exorbitant spending levels at the federal level can be accomplshed, and that’s a major reason the Fed was established in 1913 to begin with–to free up the federal government’s ability to spend.
David Gordon:
On November 2, you said, “If Mr. Kautz disagrees, he needs to support his view with evidence from Narveson’s text.” I now have Narveson’s chapter in front of me.
He makes 3 points in his paragraph which is concluded by his A B C and x scenario. 1. It is claimed by some that “the ownership of almost everything is called into question by past sins”; 2. He
illustrates this claim by the hypothetical case (mistaken, per Narveson) that I owe you something because my grandfather stole something from your grandfather; 3. He offers as further illustration his A B C and x scenario. You say, “He does indeed adopt the ‘wildly implausible’ thesis I attributed to him,” [that thesis being, "Innocent buyers fare especially well on Narveson's view. They have no duty to return the stolen property and may also proceed against the thief to get back the money they have paid for this property."] I am still not convinced this is Narveson’s intended meaning.
First let me deal with a couple of ancillary points. 1) I feel it was perfectly appropriate for you to quote just the scenario from Narveson’s chapter, because it is indeed, in my view, a stand alone scenario, the surrounding context not contributing to its interpetation. 2) The first two sentences in the paragraph following the scenario, where he says we aren’t “all responsible for everyone’s injustices,” continues his line of thought, but doesn’t, in my view, explicitly apply to the interpretation of the scenario.
So, since I don’t find any evidence for the intended meaning of the scenario in the surrounding context, I find I have to look to the internal evidence of the wording of the scenario itself. First clue is the word ‘obvious’ when Narveson says, “..it’s not obvious that C does [owe B something].” If it’s not obvious, this at least implies there may be something unobvious that C owes B. Narveson doesn’t directly say what this is, but in his last sentence, as it appears to me, he says elliptically, in effect, that if C were to be required to return x to B without reimbursement of any kind [the "debt that he had no reason to think he owed"], that would not be ‘on’ [fair]. Meanwhile, Narveson already has A owing C something, “C’s money back, for instance.” This would indeed be ‘wildly implausible,’ if A (and any others involved in the resolution of the affair) expected C to then keep x, but would be entirely reasonable if there were an agreement of some kind that C would get his money back and B would get x back. If C was indeed expected (by A and others) to keep x, it would make more sense for A to give the money to B, but this resolution would be inadequate justice for B, and would leave C at least in bad odour–for keeping stolen goods once he knew they were stolen.
Why should we conclude a wildly implausible intended meaning when there’s a possible plausible intended meaning, even if Narveson conveyed that meaning obscurely, poorly and without sufficient clarity? This plausible meaning is consistent with Narveson’s expressed views prior to and following the scenario–namely that we do not owe others harm to ourselves for something we have not personally or intentionally done.
It has been brought to my attention that Tibor Machan believes that I have misrepresented his position. I wrongly suggest, he thinks, that he endorses a government monopoly of force. As he views his position, he does not not do. Just as a competing department store cannot do business in Macy’s, clients of the same agency grouped together in a territory leave no room for competing agencies within that territory.
This note is not the place to debate the issue, but I think that this position, as I far as I understand it, does not differ from standard minarchism: it does grant government a monopoly of force in a given territory. But, to reiterate, this is not how Professor Machan views his position. In brief, when I said in the review that he defended standard minarchism, this was my assessment of his position, not his own. I am sorry if my review left this matter in doubt.
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