My name is Tyler. I am a radically moderate, non-dogmatic libertarian espousing radically moderate, non-dogmatic libertarianism.
Michael Huemer, the professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that people have a prima facie (at first value) right to immigrate where ever people please (including the United States).
There are a few audio problems occasionally so please don’t blare this while listening on your headphones. I don’t recommend blaring it at all.
Be that as it may, the ability of government to aid the poor is one reason that may be offered for preferring a governmental system over anarcho-capitalism. What is my response to this? Two responses: First, though government has the power to help the poor, it is not so clear that, if we have a government, it actually will, on balance, aid the poor in the way progressives would like. It is not clear that even the best governments in the world, which I take to be the liberal democracies, actually do more to aid the global poor than they do to harm the global poor. (For discussion, see Thomas Pogge’s World Poverty and Human Rights as well as Bryan Caplan’s last post in this discussion.) Now, statists might respond, “Well, we just need to reform the government.” What makes this response unsatisfying is that the reasons for the failure of states to do what they are “supposed to” do lie not merely in bad luck or the personalities of a few bad actors, but in the nature of the governmental system and the incentive structure built into it. The U.S. government, for example, just has no incentive to help the global poor. Second response: the desire to aid the poor, worthy as that aim is, is not generally taken, in common sense morality, as an adequate justification for coercion. You can’t kidnap and imprison someone because they refused to donate to your anti-poverty charity. This would generally be considered wrong. So I don’t see why the state should be ethically entitled to behave in that manner. And I just do not see where Hassoun has addressed this point. The following passage appears to be intended to address it: Assigning the obligation to protect, promote, and fulfill rights to states may help ensure that people can be free within states’ rules without failing in their moral obligations. This may support the claim that states can legitimately do some things that individuals cannot do—like tax people to support the poor. But I do not see how this addresses the challenge I raised. Sure, if the state forces me to give money to be used to aid the poor, then I can be free within the state’s rules, without failing in my moral obligations (sc., my obligation to give to charity) – that’s true simply because the state’s rules include a rule that I have to give over money for charity. But it’s also true that, if my neighbor Joe forces me to give to charity, then I can be free within Joe’s rules without failing in my moral obligation to give to charity. I don’t see how any disanalogy between Joe and the state has been identified.
— Michael Huemer in his reply to Nicole Hassoun.
The first argument against anarcho-capitalism seems to be that the situation of Somalia shows what “anarchy” is like. To clarify my earlier response to this: my response is not “theoretical arguments, in general, are better than empirical arguments.” My response is more like this: just as there are different forms of government, there are different forms of non-governmental social arrangements. Those who support liberal democracy do not have to defend the North Korean government, because it is not the kind of government they support. Similarly, those who support anarcho-capitalism do not have to defend other non-governmental social arrangements that are not, and have never attempted to be, anarcho-capitalist. (Why the “attempted to be” qualifier? Well, if the attempt to implement some social system regularly results in disaster, we might fairly take this as a reason for rejecting that social system as an ideal, even if the successful implementation would have been desirable.) While Somalia might be described as a form of “anarchy,” I don’t think anyone would claim that it is an example of an anarcho-capitalist society, nor was there ever any attempt to make it one.
— Michael Huemer in his response to Nicole Hassoun.
This month has been a great read for anybody interested in anarchism.
Cato Unbound has had a discussion on anarcho-capitalism for the past month featuring Michael Huemer (whom wrote the lead essay), Bryan Caplan, Tom Palmer, and Nicole Hassoun.
Cato Unbound is a very awesome format. First, there is a lead essay. In this case, Huemer’s “The Problem of Authority”. Next are the reply essays, which in this case is Caplan, Palmer, and Hassoun. Once they each submit one reply, there is a discussion where all reply to each other.
This is a discussion that you will not want to miss because Hassoun is a positive rights philosopher, whereas most libertarians are not. This makes it a very interesting discussion. I hope all of you will read it!
Many find the anarcho-capitalist vision a troubling one, chiefly due to a distrust of corporations. I will just make one suggestion for reflection. Imagine that someone proposed that the key to establishing social justice and restraining corporate greed was to establish a very large corporation, much larger than any corporation hitherto known—one with revenues in the trillions of dollars. A corporation that held a monopoly on some extremely important market within our society. And used its monopoly in that market to extend its control into other markets. And hired men with guns to force customers to buy its product at whatever price it chose. And periodically bombed the employees and customers of corporations in other countries. By what theory would we predict that this corporation, above all others, could be trusted to serve our interests and to protect us both from criminals and from all the other corporations? If someone proposed to establish a corporation like this, would your trepidation be assuaged the moment you learned that every adult would be issued one share of stock in this corporation, entitling them to vote for members of the board of directors? If it would not, is the governmental system really so different from that scenario as to explain why we may trust a national government to selflessly serve and protect the rest of society?
— Michael Heumer in his essay, “The Problem of Authority” in which he defends libertarian anarchism by appealing to common sense morality. As mentioned before, he is second to none when it comes to libertarian philosophy. His book is available, although the price is steep. It’s well worth the read, though.
The use of “good” and “bad” is not meant in the moral context, rather it is meant the efficiency in which the policy pursued accomplish the policy goals. This is not an argument against arguing things for moral purposes. This assumes the person believes that we should pursue policies of prosperity.
In order to know the difference between a good policy, and a bad policy, one must know a good bit about the subject at hand. For instance, if Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have two different economic plans, in order to know which plan is the better one, the voter must have a good knowledge on economics, particularly the topic the policy is most related.
If somebody does not have a good knowledge of the subject at hand, then somebody cannot know which policy is better or worse. If somebody cannot know which policy is better or worse, then they should not vote. Politics affects too many people to simply guess about. In order to differentiate a good policy from a bad policy, one must know a good deal about the subject of the policies. If one does not have a good deal about the subject of the policies, then one, if voting, is guessing about which policy to endorse. Someone should not vote if he/she does not know a good amount of information on the subjects of the policies because it affects too many people to gamble on.
If you have a younger friend who likes either Barack Obama or most politicians, this argument should succeed because most people don’t know about ALL of the subjects including the effects of foreign policy, or how intervention effects the economy. They may know a little bit about one, but not the majority. Or they may know a lot about a little bit. Yet, most people do not know everything about everything. And because the lives of people that are affected by government policies, people should not simply endorse one politician based on the limited knowledge they have of one particular subject.
1. If morality is objective, then it is applicable to all individuals.
2. Government is an entity that is made up of individuals.
3. If it is wrong for an individual to take from one individual to give to to another, then it is wrong for a government to do it as well.
I expect most people will accept the premises, but most will reject the conclusion. Intuitively people will say that a private citizen running around demanding money from people in a neighborhood because he/she has been “protecting” them from bad guys is not a moral action. Yet, for some strange reason, it’s okay when government does it. People have been, in a way, indoctrinated to believe that government is unquestionably legitimate. For instance, last night was the State of the Union address. The importance is overrated. The president gets up in front of a room full of people in suits, some sitting in giant leather chairs, with millions watching on television. Yet, he does not say anything particularly of importance. There is nothing that is said that could not be said over the television in the privacy of the White House. The inauguration is another example of unnecessary prestige. It does not stop just at federal government, it goes all the way down to local governments. The rituals, and the teachings, and the intuitions all give appearance to government legitimacy, but government is no more legitimate than a vigilante extortionist. The premises to my argument are simple. They do not rely on any utilitarian, or deontological arguments of ethics. If something is moral, than the government is bound to the same morality as any individual, because the government is a group of individuals. To put it simply;
‘It is permissible for the state to prohibit some action if and only if it would be permissible for a private individual to use force to prevent or retaliate for that sort of action’.
I highly recommend, what is, in my opinion. the most important, and best book on anarchism. The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer (whom is, again, in my opinion, the best anarchist philosopher within the libertarian community). Here is an excerpt from the introduction:
My political philosophy is a form of anarchism. In my experience, most
people appear to be convinced that anarchism is obvious nonsense, an idea
that can be refuted inside of 30 seconds with minimal reflection. This was
roughly my attitude, before I knew anything about the theory. And it is also my
experience that those who harbor this attitude have no idea what anarchists
actually think–how anarchists think society should function or how they
respond to the 30-second objections. Anarchists face a catch-22: most people
will not give anarchists a serious hearing, because they are convinced at the
start that the position is crazy; they are convinced that the position is crazy,
because they do not understand it; and they do not understand it, because they
will not give it a serious hearing. I therefore ask the reader not to give up
reading this book merely because of its conclusion. The author is neither
stupid, nor crazy, nor evil; he has a reasoned account of how a stateless society
might function. I cannot promise that you will find the account ultimately
convincing. But it is very likely that you will find it to have been worth
considering.
1. We ought to maximize freedom
2. Natural rights
The first being that it could end up back firing. For instance, it is the case that welfare could actually increase overall freedom. How? The problem is in thinking that freedom is a black or white issue, rather than what it really is. As an example, welfare, it could be said, increases freedom because it increases the freedom of a person who is not well off more than it decreases the freedom of someone who is much more well off. This does not seem controversial. People who make more tend to have more freedom. If that were not the case, then why are there not more people who aren’t well off on a golf course? Even people in the middle class have much more freedom than someone who is poor.
This is not to say that freedom is a virtue, it just is not the sole virtue that libertarianism is based on. Or, at least, it shouldn’t.
The second being natural rights. While I do believe we have a certain amount of natural rights, it is not a very convincing argument to others, not should it really be. Even Ayn Rand had to fall back on different arguments. For instance, it is much more effective to argue to somebody that, say, minimum wage or the drug war are counter productive than to say, “well, nobody should be forced to do anything that isn’t harming somebody else.”
It’s important to note that I am not saying that these are untrue (well, maximizing freedom is not a true argument for libertarianism), but it’s to try and make arguments for libertarianism more effective. I have not heard a better argument for libertarianism, or even more so, anarcho-capitalism, than Michael Huemer’s book, The Problem of Political Authority, which I highly recommend to everyone.
My political philosophy is a form of anarchism. In my experience, most people appear to be convinced that anarchism is obvious nonsense, an idea that can be refuted inside of 30 seconds with minimal reflection. This was roughly my attitude, before I knew anything about the theory. And it is also my experience that those who harbor this attitude have no idea what anarchists actually think–how anarchists think society should function or how they respond to the 30-second objections. Anarchists face a catch-22: most people will not give anarchists a serious hearing, because they are convinced at the start that the position is crazy; they are convinced that the position is crazy, because they do not understand it; and they do not understand it, because they will not give it a serious hearing. I therefore ask the reader not to give up reading this book merely because of its conclusion. The author is neither stupid, nor crazy, nor evil; he has a reasoned account of how a stateless society might function.
— Michael Huemer - The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey
Enter Michael Huemer.
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the one who turned me into an anarchist. I was not really convinced by Rothbard or, from what I had read, Friedman. I believe that Huemer’s upcoming book, The Problem of Political Authority, will be the best work on anarcho-capitalism. If not the best, at least legen-wait for it-dary. Please take a look at the table of contents and read the first chapter!
