"The first is self interest. The market is an amazing vehicle for channeling self interest towards constructive and mutually beneficial ends - but it is not perfect. Man is irrational. And jealous. Moreover, the interests of one man often conflict. If the benefits of the market are not obvious and immediate, or if the man in question is simply stupid, lazy, or otherwise disadvantaged, or if he believes that his interests are in conflict with those of another, it is all to easy for him to slide into behavior less virtuous than the mutually beneficent market transaction. Six million years of evolution has preconditioned us to lie, cheat, thieve and murder. And all too often these things offer a reward that outstrips the treasurer made by juster means."

A couple of things: markets aren't perfect, but it isn't because the mechanism of voluntary trade isn't perfect. The principle of two parties coming to peaceful, mutual agreement IS, in fact, perfect. Markets as a whole are imperfect only because information is not. Let's say I buy a trinket in Chinatown for $10 because I didn't know someone a block away is selling the same thing for $9. That's not a failing of "the market," but of my failure to have all information. And it may not have been a failure anyway. Maybe I'm in a hurry and the other one is out of my way, and the dollar was less important than saving several minutes to search and backtrack.

One of the most important points of Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan's public choice theory, contradicting the naive notion of "public service," is that people remain just as self-interested when they go into government work. Everything you've said here about human nature is why governments begin in the first place. Those people who don't, or cannot, live in peaceful cooperation with others must employ force to get what they want. In fact, this negative behavior is amplified, for government officials (elected or unelected) can get more than they could as individuals, and any dirty work (e.g. arrests and the underlying use of force for not paying taxes) is done for them.

Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 9, 2010 12:15 PM

Perry-

Never said that government should provide for the sick, stop drugs, prevent crime, etc. My point was that once communities lose the capacity to deal with these challenges on their own the government tends to step in and deal with it for them. It follows that those concerned with size and largess of our government should do all in their power to strengthen community institutions, associations, and social mores, thus pre-empting the role the state claims as its own.

To say it another way: if people are already caring for Welfare Juanita because they believe it is the right thing to do, because they face social censure if they do not, or because there are private charities devoted to such causes, force will never enter the equation.

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I concede that "The principle of two parties coming to peaceful, mutual agreement IS, in fact, perfect." I also agree that lack of information impairs markets systems. I have but one thing to add: even if information was perfect and complete the potential for imperfectness would remain. Data collection is not enough; we also must interpret the data we receive. As humans are prone to force new information into preconceived categories and narratives and use their reasoning abilities to confirm what they want to believe the potential for errors in interpretation are huge.

This is an argument against government as much as it is against markets, however. At its base it is an argument against power. If we cannot count on man to make rational decisions, it is best to ensure that any one man's decisions will impact the smallest number of people possible.

Is anarchism the best way to do this?

I remain unconvinced. The main example you call upon is the early American colonists - but they were not anarchists in any meaningful sense. They were subject to plenty of laws that would make modern libertarians balk: fines for missing Church; stockades for public displays of affection; pillories for drunkenness.

The early colonists were "free" in the TR's sense of the word: self-reliant and autonomous. They did not need London's help to build barns, plant crops, or protect themselves from Indian raids. But they were far from living without government.

You said earlier:

Everything you've said here about human nature is why governments begin in the first place. Those people who don't, or cannot, live in peaceful cooperation with others must employ force to get what they want.

And this is why I have little faith in anarchism's ability to distribute power or preserve liberties. Perhaps my view on this is colored by my recent readings - I am midway through Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It tells the story of the Han dynasty's dissolution and the kingdoms that rose from its ashes. The first 500 pages of the book are nothing but intrigues among the generals and officers who served the Han. Bribes here, poisonings there, battles everywhere - slowly we watch a small group of hungry-power men attract other men just as viscous and cruel as themselves to their cause, conquering and killing until one war lord is strong enough to defeat all others and impose his will upon the land. And do you know who the winner is? The villain. The book is based on real history; Luo Guanzhong could not change the fact that his heroes, wise and virtuous to a man, are eventually defeated by the warlords most willing terrorize their way to victory.

Who prevailed in the anarchy of the French revolution? Or a century later, what type of men came to power when the Russian tsars were deposed? Real anarchy, particularly when inflicted upon a people grown accustomed to serfdom (as have our fellow subjects in the USA), is the playground of tyrants and terrorists. What promise can it hold for our future?

Posted by: T. Greer at September 9, 2010 3:58 PM

Never said that government should provide for the sick, stop drugs, prevent crime, etc. My point was that once communities lose the capacity to deal with these challenges on their own the government tends to step in and deal with it for them.

Governments don't come into existence on their own. Governments come into existence because people -- minority or majority -- form them. Whether it's a king, or a community deciding to forcibly extract resources

You're saying, essentially, "Well, it happens." Fine, but do you say that it's right?

It follows that those concerned with size and largess of our government should do all in their power to strengthen community institutions, associations, and social mores, thus pre-empting the role the state claims as its own.

And a fat lot of good that does, when people have things like the right to vote for redistributing my property to themselves. It's easier for them to sit back and rely on a government, instead of talking to me and getting my consent. So it comes back to the problem that there is any form of government in the first place.

To say it another way: if people are already caring for Welfare Juanita because they believe it is the right thing to do, because they face social censure if they do not, or because there are private charities devoted to such causes, force will never enter the equation.

Good luck with that. If there's any political apparatus that doesn't require people to exert full effort, then they simply won't. Government started to condition people into believing that it could "supplement" what private individuals couldn't do, and so private charity did less.

It works on the receiving end also. Obviously, when there's no government to take care of her, Welfare Juanita will be encouraged to a job and/or have fewer kids. She might not necessarily, but she won't have the forced support of Other People's Money.

I concede that "The principle of two parties coming to peaceful, mutual agreement IS, in fact, perfect." I also agree that lack of information impairs markets systems. I have but one thing to add: even if information was perfect and complete the potential for imperfectness would remain. Data collection is not enough; we also must interpret the data we receive. As humans are prone to force new information into preconceived categories and narratives and use their reasoning abilities to confirm what they want to believe the potential for errors in interpretation are huge.

This is getting into Israel Kirzner's economic theory of the Kirznerian entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is a risk-bearer, as Schumpeter said, but also has a comparative advantage in information. The successful entrepreneur is better prepared to receive information as well as be right about how to use it, and it's through his self-interested actions that a market is pushed toward equilibrium.

This is an argument against government as much as it is against markets, however. At its base it is an argument against power. If we cannot count on man to make rational decisions, it is best to ensure that any one man's decisions will impact the smallest number of people possible.

Consider what you're saying here. People can and do make plenty of rational decisions all the time, though. Strictly speaking, a "rational" decision is one that was not made with systematic error. Let's say I'm really busy and have just 15 minutes to grab lunch and be back at my desk, so it's not the monetary cost of this Italian restaurant but that lunch there would take an hour. Thus getting Chinese or halal food is a rational decision. Irrational is if government required me to take an hour, no matter what, so that I couldn't get a quick lunch and keep working. If my employer made the irrational choice of forcing me to take an hour, then I wouldn't finish my work, and the market would eventually take care of it. There's no such possibility with government.

And how do you propose to limit a person's influence on others? That can be accomplished only by force, and that means someone decides "how much is too much." What about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, whose innovations affected the whole globe? Those affected me positively. What about OPEC cutting production, which affects me negatively though doesn't force me in any way?

If you're talking about negatively affecting others, you cannot actively prevent harm to others. You can only punish it, and the threat of punishment becomes a deterence.

Is anarchism the best way to do this?

The alternative is government, and you cannot have a government if you want a truly free people. Or do you care to admit that you don't really believe in full rights to life, liberty and property? Government is inherently all about taking away someone's freedom for the sake of others. If that person being taken from had been willing, then the government wouldn't have existed in the first place.

I remain unconvinced. The main example you call upon is the early American colonists - but they were not anarchists in any meaningful sense. They were subject to plenty of laws that would make modern libertarians balk: fines for missing Church; stockades for public displays of affection; pillories for drunkenness.

You're talking about Puritans, who hardly sought free societies. Schoolchildren are taught that they sought "religious freedom," which was about subjugating others to it.

Murray Rothbard recounted the anarchy of Pennsylvania, when people refused to pay taxes for several years yet still seemed to get things done. Heaven forbid Penn would have had to get honest work himself, instead of demanding tribute from others.

The early colonists were "free" in the TR's sense of the word: self-reliant and autonomous. They did not need London's help to build barns, plant crops, or protect themselves from Indian raids. But they were far from living without government.

Outside of religion-based cities, colonials did live in anarchy. Because they were used to it, and because their children grew up living in freedom, they were more than unused to the various governments that the Crown established over them.

And this is why I have little faith in anarchism's ability to distribute power or preserve liberties. Perhaps my view on this is colored by my recent readings - I am midway through Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It tells the story of the Han dynasty's dissolution and the kingdoms that rose from its ashes. The first 500 pages of the book are nothing but intrigues among the generals and officers who served the Han. Bribes here, poisonings there, battles everywhere - slowly we watch a small group of hungry-power men attract other men just as viscous and cruel as themselves to their cause, conquering and killing until one war lord is strong enough to defeat all others and impose his will upon the land. And do you know who the winner is? The villain. The book is based on real history; Luo Guanzhong could not change the fact that his heroes, wise and virtuous to a man, are eventually defeated by the warlords most willing terrorize their way to victory.

China is hardly an apt comparison to us. For all its thousands of years of civilization, it has never had a tradition of liberty. It also has never had a tradition of the people keeping themselves armed, so that they could resist tyrants.

So you're going to have anarchy where, yes, the evil strong will still try to prey on the weak. This ignores those who are good and also strong, who will defend the weak because they want to. What's the alternative? A government where it's legitimized that the strong will prey on the weak.

Who prevailed in the anarchy of the French revolution? Or a century later, what type of men came to power when the Russian tsars were deposed? Real anarchy, particularly when inflicted upon a people grown accustomed to serfdom (as have our fellow subjects in the USA), is the playground of tyrants and terrorists. What promise can it hold for our future?

That's utter horseshit. Neither revolution was anarchy, but one set of tyrants seizing rule over the previous one.

Re-read the three paragraphs from Bastiat, then get back to me. What right do my neighbors have to form a government and take my property, when they cannot do that themselves as individuals? Call it "practical" or "pragmatic," but it means that I am not truly free. Even the most limited of governments means that I must give up at least a little of my property, against my will, so that others can redistribute it.

No believer in peaceful anarchy, whether you call it anarchy-capitalism or rational anarchy, ever tells you it'll be a perfect world. But it's not like we live in a peaceful, perfect world anyway, right? Don't you want at least a fighting chance to live life on your own terms, instead of accepting a little bled from you in exchange for someone's promise of security that can never be delivered anyway?

Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 10, 2010 1:34 PM

This is a place-holder. I will be really busy for the next 2 days so I probably will not get the chance to reply until then.

With that said, thanks for linking to the Mises article on Pennsylvania. It was interesting. I recommend all the others here read it too, if they have not already.

-T. Greer

Posted by: T. Greer at September 10, 2010 4:41 PM

Nice work, gents. What a joy to have this level of serious discussion. If I have not thanked everybody around here lately, let me do so.

I will share one story in favor of anarchy. Stossel showed a small city in the UK that had spent £800,000 on a computerized traffic system. They soon learned that traffic moved better during power outages. And finally consented to shutting it off. In the environment where we most expect structure, spontaneous order prevailed.

And yet, I can only sign on for limited anarchy. Which could be better called libertarianism or limited government.

I did enjoy the Rothbard Pennsylvania piece. But

I think it speaks to my side more than Perry's.
If for most of 1684-88 there was no colonywide government in existence, what of the local officials? Were they not around to provide that evidence of the state's continued existence, which so many people through the ages have deemed vital to man's very survival? The answer is no. The lower courts met only a few days a year, and the county officials were, again, private citizens who devoted very little time to upholding the law. No, the reality must be faced that the new, but rather large, colony of Pennsylvania lived for the greater part of four years in a de facto condition of individual anarchism, and seemed none the worse for the experience. Furthermore, the Assembly passed no laws after 1686, as it was involved in a continual wrangle over attempts to increase its powers and to amend, rather than just reject, legislation.

Missing was revenue for Wm. Penn and new legislative activity. But there were courts, there were local officials. So we are talking about extremely limited government but nonzero government.

The other maybe-too-obvious point is that this only lasted a few years and saw several attempts to ramp up control even in that short period. It seems the uncertainty of that would be difficult. And in the end, it became Bob Casey Jr.'s and Ed Rendell's Pennsylvania.

Posted by: jk at September 10, 2010 7:55 PM

I will share one story in favor of anarchy. Stossel showed a small city in the UK that had spent £800,000 on a computerized traffic system. They soon learned that traffic moved better during power outages. And finally consented to shutting it off. In the environment where we most expect structure, spontaneous order prevailed.

This is similar to stoplight-free areas in Europe. Roads were designed so that they curved and merged, which took a little getting used to, but traffic moved better.

This isn't to say that stoplights aren't effective. Someone who owns a big piece of land and allows (charges) people to travel his roads could set up a stoplight system as he sees fit. People would then be free to travel his roads, or someone's design that eliminates stoplights.

And yet, I can only sign on for limited anarchy. Which could be better called libertarianism or limited government.

But in all this time, you cannot get around the one reason any amount of government is against freedom: someone, if only one person, is being forced to participate. If every last person in my town wanted the government, but I didn't, I'd still be forced to pay into a system I don't want.

Once again, a government exists for the simple fact that at least one person will not give up his rights to life, liberty and property. You can argue any point you want about this or that part of government being necessary, but you are arguing that I don't have, in fact that I can't be permitted to have my full rights. In arguing that any amount of government is necessary, you are saying that someone must be compelled to give up his life, liberty and property to the decisions of others.

Missing was revenue for Wm. Penn and new legislative activity. But there were courts, there were local officials. So we are talking about extremely limited government but nonzero government.

If you read it again, these were private individuals who served in official capacities but not as government employees. They weren't voted in. They gave up their own time to serve. They wielded no authority over others that had an inherent backing of force. This is the private council I've been talking about, where everyone involved has voluntarily agreed. They had no authority (and claimed none) over anyone who chose not to participate and was harming no one.

The other maybe-too-obvious point is that this only lasted a few years and saw several attempts to ramp up control even in that short period. It seems the uncertainty of that would be difficult. And in the end, it became Bob Casey Jr.'s and Ed Rendell's Pennsylvania.

Because, as Jefferson said, "The natural order of things is for Liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Today, people just aren't vigilant about liberty. Back then, people were more vigilant, but the Crown was too strong. Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 13, 2010 8:01 PM