A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years
– Lysander Spooner
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Samizdata quote of the dayFebruary 5th, 2012 |
 27 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Good quote.
Permalink doesn’t work.
James Bovard, an American, once called elections ‘reverse slave yards’, where we bid for the fairest master.
Emma Goldman said “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
I’ve always thought that was stupid looking at the history of the UK. People voted for Clement Attlee’s nationalization then for Thatcher Privatization when that didn’t work out. Those were massive changes in society brought about by voting. Maybe it was true in her day but for 80 odd years in the UK voting has changed alot
Yeah, it sounds good, but actually voting makes a huge difference. One day, I want to write a partial defence of democracy, to explain why it does, relatively, quite well compared to straight despotism. And it does.
A particularly interesting thing about democracy is how it makes life. if not better, then at least non-catastrophic for really quite small minorities let alone substantial ones. Why? Because you create a majority by assembling minorities, all of whom have to be thought about. Pure (so to speak) despots don’t think like this nearly so much.
I never actually thought about it quite like that, Brian – good point…
Voting clearly does change things, but not necessarily in the direction of liberty. The good and bad thing about democracy is that it tends to abhorr extremes, at least as seen from the perspective of the median voter. In addition, there is a limit to how totalitarian a democracy can become whilst still remaining valid as a political system in the eyes of suppressed minorities (e.g. libertarians), and hence successful as a system of peaceful government.
Quite a lot of ground could be accomplished by making our democracy better rather than try and find some alternative system. In the UK at least, the main thing is to disenfranchise the political class – no mean feat!
Nice points by PeterT:
Though I would look to a reduction of the excessive ‘franchise’ of the political parties, rather than ‘disenfranchising’ them (whatever that use of franchise might actually mean).
Best regards
Funnily enough, I have been debating with fans of Hans-Herman Hoppe who are enamoured of his argument that monarchies are better than democracies. Which all rather depends on who happens to be the monarch at the time. Some bewhiskered, music-loving old codger in Vienna might be okay, but Vlad the Impaler? Herod? Various Russian Czars? Kaiser Bill? (the one that helped start WW1?).
Apparently, the Hoppe argument is that voters in elections have a higher time preference for things than kings and queens (the voters want stuff NOW while a monarch thinks longer term, according to Hoppe). That argument surely only works if a sovereign can sell a country in a market to realise its increased value, as an investor in a long-term business plan might want to do. Without such a market, how does the “time preference” point make any sense, since the territory is not something in a market?
My dear friend Mr. Free Market points out that in terms of the human condition, the monarchy has had roughly equal results vis-a-vis democracy: i.e. that while monarchs have had their occasional stinkers, so have elected politicians, in roughly the same ratio.
The essential difference is that (absent revolution), democratic stinkers are term-limited by relatively short terms (four or five years, to give the US/UK examples), whereas monarchical stinkers are only term-limited by their longevity.
Spponer was a thoughtful man, but occasionally (like in the quote referenced), he went off the deep end into insane purism.
Brian, I’d like to read your “partial defense of democracy”, but not in comparison to “straight despotism” (that’s a straw man argument), but rather to a constitutional monarchy. Johnathan got to that in his last post, but I don’t think he makes the case. Sure, individuals matter (but note that Vlad the Impaler is still revered in Romania as a national hero, having terrorized the invading Turks), but on balance an hereditary ruling class has a vested interest in the long-term health of the country, not so it could be “sold to market” (a silly argument; not even all business plans envision a sale of the company, merely its long-term profitability) but for the benefits to them of political stability, economic prosperity and the resulting high tax revenues.
“[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10
“Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either… There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.” – John Adams
Smoten. No doubt because I dared write something mildly critical of the Great God Spooner.
Succinct, but is it true? If an actual slave could elect to leave one master for another, doesn’t he have some control over the first master’s behavior? And doesn’t that nugget of control make him less of a slave?
You do know its a bot, yes?
Laird at February 6, 2012 05:07 AM: Emma Goldman said “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
True, from her point of view, which was that only the establishment of full-on socialism was real change. Since that was never going to happen through elections, elections were meaningless, and the only way to “change anything” was coercive violence.
True, Rich, but it’s still a good quote. “A stopped clock” and all that . . .
‘Smoten’ – I had to look up the conjugation of this verb, because I wasnt sure myself. I think it should be ‘I have been smitten.’
Conjugation Link
Laird writes:
Silly? Hardly. It may be true that not all business envisages a sale to market and just wants to stay profitable without any end point for the owner(s), but to do that, there needs to be a way for a business to value what it does and for its services to be valued. In short, it needs to operate in a market. By contrast, if a monarch runs a country as a private fiefdom (ie, monopoly extracting rents from people), the monarch will only know if his or her rule is going to generate something of value for his/her descendants if there is some way of valuing the realm by reference to the possibility that that realm could, if need be, be sold off, in the same way that my dad was able to know that he could (as he did) sell his farm to someone else, rather than just rely on his sons taking over.
Tom Palmer(Link), of CATO, has pointed out that is rather glaring fault in HHHoppe’s argument of the supposed superiority of monarchy to democracy. Here is a paragraph worth quoting in full:
I should have thought that this point about possession, which Palmer makes, is absolutely critical.
FWIW, I am a big fan of Spooner. He was, by the way, a strong defender of intellectual property.(Link)
I disagree, Johnathan. A perpetuity has real value, even if you can’t sell it. If a kingdom generates at least X currency units per year, that’s all a king needs to know in order to pass along the crown to his heirs with confidence. And if he can contrive to manage his affairs so as to increase those revenues, so much the better. The same is true with any subsidiary nobles: if they have landed estates which generate revenues, it’s in their interest to maintain and increase those revenues even though the holdings may be, ultimately, at the sufferance of the king. All of which can benefit everyone else, too.
As to Palmer’s argument that “there is not much of a market for the buying and selling of monarchical ‘Besitz’ “, Paul Marks could speak to this better than I, but it is my understanding that landed estates were regularly bought and sold in the middle ages. One held the property at the sufferance of the king, but as long as you remained on reasonably good terms with him your holdings were safe.
As to the rest of his point, “mere” possession does indeed have value. Possession is one of the “bundle of rights” which comprise the definition of “property”, and while it is not the whole of that bundle it is a very important component. One can sell a leasehold, or even borrow against it (via a leasehold mortgage). You couldn’t do either if it didn’t have value. And for the duration of your tenancy you derive all of the benefits of the property, which most certainly gives you an incentive to maintain and improve it (at least until your term is nearing an end, but that’s not really a concern with a perpetual holding under a royal grant). So I don’t agree that the point about possession is “absolutely critical”. As long as the term is long enough there’s very little practical difference between “Besitz” and “Eigentum”.
Oh, and I forgot to add that the way (one way, at least) to value a business is to capitalize its earnings stream. You don’t need to be able to sell it to do that.
The issue is not some esoteric argument about german terminology, it is about resilience.
It is well known that the founders of the US despised democracy as open to mob rule and unbridled passion, both of which ideas horrified and disgusted Enlightenment rationalists such as themselves.
That is the reason they turned to a structured and limited republic with a constitutional system designed to inhibit the government and leave a wide field for individual freedom.
Does it work perfectly? Of course not—it is a profoundly human instrument, subject to all the faults and failings of any human invention.
But that is the very foundation of its genius—it is designed for fallible humans to live with, and modify, and interpret, as the well being of the polity seems to require.
It is well to remember that during the 20th century, when it seemed the entire world was falling down the rabbit hole into a nightmare world of collectivist insanity and totalitarianism, it was the few representative democracies who not only consistently opposed the dictators, but, in the end, put together and maintained the coalition that defeated the most warlike group of them.
Representative government does not guarantee perfection, but it does allow resilience and corrective action when problems become openly threatening.
We paid a price for the mobilization that was required in the 30’s and 40’s, and allowed to continue far too long, due to the cold war. The dislocations brought about by that level of ever increasing statist action are now reaching a critical point.
The result, as seen in the last few years, is an increased citizen militancy against entrenched power, and the seemingly unfettered state putting more and more burdens, and fetters, on the citizenry.
As I have said before, a century of ill-advised collectivist and statist experimentation cannot be overturned with one election or one politician. Each ratchet turn toward state power must now be matched by another turn away from it toward the individual, and the restoration of his freedom of action and autonomy.
There was a story told of the former soviet union, that one was always careful not to buy an product made on Friday, when the quotas had to be fulfilled, and extra slapdash methods were used to push the cars or stoves or whatever out the doors and get them counted.
The example I remember was using a hammer to drive screws, simply because it was so much quicker, and all that mattered was numbers turned out.
Well, we’ve had a century, and more, of progressive, statist, collectivist hammers slamming together one political product after another, until we are now faced with an economic and political system which doesn’t seem to function much at all, except to enrich pols and their cronies, and bedevil honest, working men and women.
But, while authoritarians around the world topple, whether from arab springs or just garden variety coups, we may very well see the turning of the collectivist program on its ear in the US next November by the power of the ballot.
While I fully expect to see some sporadic violence over the election season, after all, the storm troops have been practicing in their occupy camps these last several months, the final judgement will be by the voting public, for well or ill.
I do not find any other alternative preferable to that, nor more likely to bring about a more felicitous result. We’ve had millenia of authoritarians of one stripe or another, and the last century was a global laboratory for failed collectivist ideologies.
I think I will stick with the much maligned shop keepers and farmers et al. I find them much more pleasant fellows all the way around.
The corollary of choosing your master is then that you have less excuse to reject him, or to try to run away. This is why deomcracies have more credibility than other types of government.
The best way around the whole democracy versus monarchy argument would be to have time-share government- where every adult, who chooses to be a citizen, would join a part-time branch of the public service (militia, community service, volunteer emergency services, etc.), with the reward that for one month of each year, they would be the government of their autonomous county, with longer-serving members becoming councillors and mayors. If we all regularly swap roles of masters and mastees, then government is not something apart from us.
Laird, if a King has a monopoly ownership of a piece of terrain, and leases it to his lords (as happened after the Norman Conquest in the UK), that creates a power structure that is ultimately at odds with full property ownership, and unless held down by brute force, is unlikely to last very long. Quite how this would square with the most vague of liberal conceptions of society would be a mystery.
Also, as we liberals ought to know, monopolies tend to invite abuses. A kind who demands to hold a whole country as his property and take his cut from the tenants is in a position of a monopolist, with all the abuses that can come with that. It was only when such tenants started to flex their muscles and impose restrictions (Magna Carta and all that) that this noxious state of affairs was ameliorated.
Of course, the folk at the bottom of this heap of kings and nobles – the serfs – did not exactly enjoy the fruits of liberty. In some countries, a serf’s only real chance of liberty was fleeing to a town. They were more or less owned by their lords. And no doubt the situation was even more wretched for Roman slaves or slaves held in the Old South of the US, although no doubt very profitable for the creeps that owned them.
I know that “mere” possession has value, but it is a lot less valuable than possession and control and the right to dispose as one wants. After all, in modern Britain (and many other countries), private owners are placed under all sorts of restrictions, some of them by the State, as to what they can do with their property, such as external changes to a historic house, etc. These are restrictions, and as such, can be said to reduce the value of such properties in some ways.
Hoppe’s attempt to show that monarchies are generally better than democracies (although one needs to ask what kind of democracy) is in my view, a failure.
Hoppe makes many highly questionable claims. He sees the ‘natural’ state of affairs in the absence of state enforced integration as people splitting into spatially separate racial/ethnic communities that exclude The Different…. yet all you have to do look around most major UK cities to see that integration and miscegenation is actually the natural progression, not dis-affinity, when people are allowed to just get on with things themselves.
Spooner’s argument might be opposed if at least some of the “mainstream” candidates (i.e. with media access and so on) actually offered smaller government (i.e. people being more free – less “under a master” – but normally they do not).
For example, the overwhelming majority of Americans were opposed to bailing out the banks in 2008 – yet it was done.
Both Barack Obama and (after a period hesitation when it looked like he might oppose it) John McCain, signed on for the whole thing.
As so often, the election was not a real choice – it was a “choice of masters”.
I.E. “Which person do you want at the top of a government, that will order you about and do things you do not want it to do.”
It was the same in Britain.
Very true: we are a bunch of merry miscegenators. Just lately I’ve been suggesting, purely as devilry, that the need to preserve ‘diversity’ in education gives government a valid reason to have anti-miscegenation laws: we can’t be diverse if everyone’s Tiger Woods, after all.
So far, nobody’s bit. The Left are a spiritless lot, I fear.
The question is – what does “intergration” mean?
Does it mean (for example) Turkish immigrants becomming Bavarians – becoming Christians, wearing traditional Bavarian costume for the October Fest (and so on).
This is not a small matter – culture, and religion and politics (in the sense of the PRINCIPLES people believe in) are important.
If it does mean the above – then GOOD FOR INTERGRATION.
It does not matter to me if Bavarians of the future have darker eyes (and so on) – and it should not matter to anyone else.
Or does it mean “intergration” as we see it in Britain?
Where (supposedly anyway) no one believes in anything (apart from random sexual intercourse and using lots of drugs) and the underclass of welfare dependents (and the credit bubble playing corporate rich as well – for they also are welfare dependents, Bank of England welfare) becames the norm?
That will not work – for it is a vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum. Such a “society” (actually the ruins of a society) invites crushing by Islam. It would not be the “fault” of Islam – for such a Britain (if the above is to be the future) would not deserve to survive anyway.
But is a society like Bavaria (or Texas or….) any more likely to survive in future?
Let us have less vague talk about “intergration” and more hard facts.
How many Turkish immigrants convert to Christianity? Do their children do so?
Remember lack of belief is not a belief system – it is a vacuum. Some forms of athiesm are indeed a belief system (Randian Objectivism springs to mind) – but one does not find many Randian Objectivists on a British housing estate.
What about Texas?
Are immigrants from Mexico identifying with Texas AGAINST Mexico?
Is the Alamo a sacred place to them? And for the right reasons? After all some hispanics died defending the place (although it was mainly an “Anglo” stand).
Do not reply by saying “they are not interested in stuff like that – they have lives to live”.
That is just a cop out – an evasion.
Are the Mexican immigrants to the United States politically and culturally loyal to the United States or not? Do they welcome the defeat of Mexico in 1836 and 1848 – or not?
I am not interested in colour of skin – I am interested in attitudes of mind.
Ditto do Turkish immigrants to Germany adopt German BELIEF SYSTEMS.
I mention Texas and Bavaria because these are areas of relatively strong traditional belief systems.
Obviously a place like Berlin or California is doomed – that goes almost without saying.
But I do not know whether everywhere is doomed.