We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day However, like most political slogans, the rhetorical appeal and simplicity of “smash the onion” can easily divert us from thinking about the reality of rolling back the state. Rather than an onion, let’s think about the state as a ticking time bomb. Libertarians are the bomb squad called in to defuse it before it goes off. We could argue for simply yanking out all the wires, or even “smashing the bomb,” but either option is likely to cause the bomb to explode. Defusing a bomb often requires careful thinking about how the bomb was constructed, which parts are linked, and what all those wires do. In other words, safely defusing the bomb requires snipping those wires in the right order.
– Steven Horwitz
Discuss 😉
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I have had arguments with Libertarians over methodology and strategy many times over the past few decades. A classic one is how to correct a housing market distorted by rent control and zoning laws.
I have always argued that removing zoning laws first allows the market to meet demand, which will then make rent controls irrelevant, and easily removed at a later date. The propertarians refuse this idea and demand the removal of rent controls first so that landlords can raise rents to market levels and drive demand.
The problem with removing rent controls first is that there are far more tenants than landlords, so it would be a futile effort at best resulting in a backlash from tenants when rents skyrocket, and a disaster for libertarian policies in general when it fails. Imagine the sudden removal of rent controls in New York City, City of London, San Francisco and other highly restricted markets, without first increasing the supply of rental units.
Order of operations is important in so many aspects of life.
Problem is that the bastards are adding wires faster than we can yank em out.
Sometimes the only thing that works is to let the thing blow and pick up the pieces. Not that I am advocating that, but to the best of my knowledge it is the only thing that has ever significantly rolled back the state in history.
I’ve used the metaphor that we got lost hiking and are standing on a cliff looking down at our car in the lot below. Just because that is where we should be doesn’t mean the direct route is the best way to get there.
In the case of the US we should start by repealing the 16th amendment by directing that 16th amendment sourced revenue be reduced as a share of total government revenue by 10% of initial share per year until gone. IOW, if it is 80% of gross revenue initially, then it would be lowered to 72%, 64%, 56% etc until 0%.
Even more importantly perhaps, repeal the 17th amendment without qualification and let the states’ governments once more exercise a competitive check on the federal government via appointing the Senate side of the federal legislature. If individual states cannot settle on a choice, that is their problem and that state can remain unrepresented until they resolve their own domestic disputes.
The third amendment should be to make clear that any form of immunity violates the ‘titles of nobility’ clause. If a private citizen is forbidden to do something, so is a government employee. This would have the flip side of meaning that private citizens could seek warrants for probable cause and pursue investigations independently from the police/prosecutor apparatus. Perhaps even against police and prosecutors.
In the UK, the elimination of life ‘peerages’, and of the law lords. Require several generations of hereditary standing before being eligible to serve in the HoL.
How to rein in legislative usurpation of long established common law, I have no idea. I am trying to confine ideas to ones that would be simple to do, leave apparatus in place to absorb the consequences of the change, and not directly harm a large tranche of voters outside of government employees.
Midwesterner,
In light of the almost total capitulation of the Tea Party on matters of fiscal policy following its nearly unprecedented surge in the 2010 election, could you please inform me how this is a viable policy in the short, medium or long-term? When the Tea Party can hardly slow the rate of growth of federal spending while holding veto power through the right-wing party over increasing the debt limit following one of the most right-wing elections in modern history, I just don’t see abolishing or phasing out the income tax as in the cards.
Perry,
I followed the link and think Steven Horwitz is spot on.
The modern bureaucratic, regulatory welfare state took about a century to create and will likely take as long to dismantle – and doing so will be a long, arduous process. Opponents of libertarianism will fight us every inch of the way and, even if we succeed, we’ll constantly have to maintain our guard, to stop them making a comeback.
Libertarianism has two problems, one theoretical and one practical; I’m not sure which is the bigger.
The theoretical problem is that it is a counterintuitive ideology. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. That the Earth is round is a counterintuitive idea which just happens to be true.) But it does make libertarianism a hard sell for people who are only marginally engaged politically. It also makes it easy for statists to argue that, under libertarianism, it will be every man for himself and the poor will die in the gutters. Overcoming that will not be easy.
The practical problem is countless people, not just civil servants, now depend of the state for their livelihoods, an example being employees of nominally private organisations whose main, or only, client is the state. Another is the millions of people who, offered the option of living on state benefits, have chosen to do so. There will be no support from either group if they think they will be worse of under libertarianism.
Perhaps the best way forward is choosing which battles to fight. For example, the health food types tend to be liberal/left, but a lot of them have been angered by the laws in many jurisdictions which prevent them from buying raw milk, which they think is better than the pasteurised variety. Others have been upset by federal rules, here in the US, effectively forcing the closure of local community slaughterhouses. Although traditionally left wing, some of them just might now be more receptive to the idea that the state is not necessarily their friend.
Libertarians also need to choose which battles not to fight – at least not for now. One good example is minimum wage laws. I agree with those who argue such laws destroy jobs, for all the usual reasons cited. But they are hugely popular with the public and arguing against them is, I feel, the intellectual equivalent of a cavalry charge into cannon fire. It enables statists to depict libertarians as cruel / uncaring / on the side of the rich / whatever. Best save that battle for another day, after we’ve actually won a few others.
The blue social/economic/cultural model is now tottering so badly that even its most enthusiastic supporters fear for its future, as evidenced by their hysterical reaction to anything which seems to question the progressive state, or threatens it by pointing out its incompetence and corruption.
The deranged responses to the tea party in the last election cycle, or the current venomous hostility to “Trumpism”, defined by the terrified elites as hate speech because it questions so many tenets of the conventional wisdom that make the PC multi-culties feel good about themselves, are inspired in great part by the explicit threat to start taking apart the progressive administrative and cultural edifice which has been slowly built up over the last century.
It is a nice little daydream to imagine some climactic moment when it will all go “boom”, and the good guys can just step in and put things back together the right way, but that is all that idea is—a daydream.
The reality, and severity, of the situation demands that those who prefer individual freedom over the collective of a progressive state and society must commit themselves to a long, difficult, and gritty campaign of defeating and rolling back the statist’ assertions and rules at every opportunity, in every venue and forum, no matter how small or tedious, until their ideas are thoroughly refuted, and the superstructure of the progressive construct which has been built on the comatose body of the representative polis can be dismantled.
Throwing up one’s hands and crying about how difficult and complex such a task will be is not an answer, merely a tantrum. It is up to the adults who grasp the deadly nature of the collectivist’s folly to summon the energy and the will to defeat them, and prevent the collapse of what was once a reasonably free society into another replay of the inevitable collectivist nightmare of repression, poverty, and cultural disintegration.
This is the challenge free people face in this era. There will always be challenges, just as there have been, repeatedly, in the past.
The very concept of individual freedom, rights, and personal liberty is a the most revolutionary idea that humanity has ever developed. It challenges, at the most fundamental and comprehensive level, one of the primal urges in the human psyche—the lust for power over others to ensure one’s own status and influence. It is, therefore, a stage in the moral and intellectual evolution of humanity that is in direct conflict with a deeper, reptilian level of the primate brain.
Just as empiricism has shown itself superior in developing improvements in human well-being when compared to past mysticism and superstition, so too freedom has shown itself clearly superior to the long history of autocratic repression in promoting the creativity of independent minds to develop new and superior forms of economic and social enterprises which enhance human life instead of impoverishing it.
We are at a great crossroads in our historical development. Down one path is the frustration and anguish of simply enduring the collapse of a great civilization, while wishing for some magical moment to occur in which it will all go away, and all sorts of good things will suddenly appear, just because we want them to. This is the road to an inevitable disaster.
The other path seems harder, even grimmer, in some respects, but offers a reasonable hope of victory for the independent mind, and freedom for the creative human spirit.
Of course it will be difficult, involving many defeats as well as victories, and the unglamorous, slogging work of monitoring an endless variety of meetings, election contests, intellectual debates, and other forums in which decisions are made, policies formulated, and the direction of future energies and resources determined.
But it was by such unrelenting effort that the organizers of the progressive state built the monstrosity we now confront. And it will take an equal, indeed greater, effort to reverse, and then dismantle, the course of the collective enterprise.
Or did you have something more important than winning the future to do?
Veryretired,
In a recent Samizdata thread I made the argument that Libertarianism derives from the same original philosophical stream of thought as Progressivism.
This paragraph from veryretired – and I mean no offense by this – makes this argument for me in several ways.
1. The observation that freedom, personal liberty is a revolutionary concept – true and suggests that libertarianism is itself generally aligned with revolutionary projects historically.
2. The contention that primal urges of the human psyche can be tamed by mere ideas – false and indicative of the spiritual mindset that informs political Progressivism.
3. The assumption that humanity evolves morally or intellectually – false and a component of the perspective on humanity that comprises Progressivism.
I’d argue that the best place to start is getting rid of corporate welfare and the corporate income tax. Step 2 might be to transfer those unconstitutional departments (education, etc) back to the states without funding (let the states raise taxes if they want them, otherwise the depts are dead). Step 3 might be to make all federal regulations advisory, and require that they be affirmed by a vote of Congress. Beyond that it gets fuzzy.
This is why I find it hard to take you all too seriously: the attempt to use ‘guilt by association’. And moreover it is so tenuous and weak a link that it is probably foolish of me to think it even warrants a reply. It is a bit like suggesting that as Hitler was a vegetarian, vegetarianism derives from same original philosophical stream of thought as National Socialism. Well perhaps you do think that, it would hardly surprise me 😉
Yeah, if we were all God, or dictator we could surely unwind the state. But of course if I were that I’d have a few other priorities first, you know like the castle, and the vast army of minions to do my bidding. Once I own a perfect replica of the Colosseum made of ice cream, which I will eat with my friends, I might consider getting around to liberty for all you plebeians.
Which is to say that not only do you need a sequence of items to dismantle you need some way to actually achieve that politically. And to the best of my knowledge that only ever happens through economic collapse or massively violent revolution. Which isn’t to say that little changes don’t happen, Thatcher, for example, did make positive changes in Britain (though with a mini war in the country and another one outside the country if I remember rightly.)
Oh, and BTW, economic collapse or violent revolution are a dice roll. It can easily go the other way too.
However, honestly, I think the most practical solution is in the school system. The privatization of the school system, and its release from government control is surely the only way. Because the real problem is that most people actually want this big regulatory state. Not that I am a fan of democracy or anything, but if 90% of the people want a big regulatory state (even if they all want a slightly different one) you ain’t getting rid of it. And why do they want it? Well because he who pays the piper calls the tune. And the piper is piping his own tune in the ear of every little child entrusted to the loving arms of our government school system.
So privatize the school system, which would be extremely difficult, is, AFAIK the only way to roll back the state in any significant manner. How? Tax credits for educational expenses up to the regular cost of school. Many people hate their school and giving them that sort of control would delight them. Of course there is always the danger that that would lead to the private school industry becoming an adjunct of the mass of state education. But I don’t have all the solutions, and I am still waiting for my giant ice cream cake.
Remember Harrah’s Casino, late 70’s?
Sometimes there is no way to defuse the bomb.
Perry,
Haha.
Well, the three points I made with respect to veryretired still stand. I guess it’s convenient to deride my observations as simply an “attempt to use guilt by association” when said observations are less than convenient. In any case, I don’t intend to rehash the many other similarities between Progressivism and Libertarianism in this thread.
With that said, I accept Austrian Economics, believe personal autonomy to be a good thing, and consider small government to be desirable. I just think that libertarians, minarchists, Tea Partiers, old whigs, classical liberals, etc make certain assumptions that will forever render their various but related goals of small government (or even just smaller government!) elusive to their determined and beneficent efforts.
SM—
Unsurprisingly, I disagree with your last two points very much.
The entire process of civilization on the grand scale, and the personal process of socialization on the individual level, is the concerted effort of those who desire a peaceful solution to the problem of restraining our primate/reptilian heritage. In the past, the perceived solution was conformity and repression, as that gave the best illusion of a non-chaotic society endlessly convulsed by violent inter-action.
I say illusion, because as we look back at our history, ancient and modern, it is clear that violence by the state, however defined, is more constant, and infinitely more deadly, than any private violence by disordered individuals.
The revolutionary nature of individual rights lies precisely in its overturning of the ancient concensus that the individual was dangerous, and must be repressed in both thought and deed, for the well being of all.
Instead, and it is clearer now after a century of collectivist experimentation across the globe than ever before, it is the collective which is dangerous to any and all, and the individual which is the well spring, not only of all political rights and liberties, but of the gloriously creative energy which was claimed by both the aristocracy and the church, but was, in fact, possessed by neither.
Several archeological and historical studies have documented the gradual reduction in violence over the centuries, even as the rise of the various flavors of collectivism in the last century has amply demonstrated the true source of mass social violence.
Humans evolve in every sense of that term. We do not, and never will, achieve some sort of Vulcanian perfection, in which all our irrational impulses are suppressed and controlled, but we can learn, both intellectually and morally, which parts of our human heritage to value, and which to strive to place under our control, both personally and socially.
I have four children. Each was born an unprincipled savage, totally self-absorbed, with no concept of self-discipline, either for their own benefit, or out of the respect due to the rights of others. Each is now a responsible, disciplined, independent, productive adult. Each has evolved, if you will, from a cave dweller to a modern person who attempts to live a decent, productive life in a free society.
And the ultimate struggle, at every level, from the individual to the social to the mass cultural, is to promote and defend that ability, and to control those who, in thrall to primal urges, seek to pervert and destroy it.
Within that effort, we must structure both the external, I.e., the structure of our political/social system, and the internal, the values and cognitive content of the citizen of that polis, in the format which best assures human freedom, creativity, and development toward a peaceful, independent life free from privation, repression, disease, and all the other shocks that flesh is heir to.
The song says, “teach your children well…”. The future is in our hands. Seize it, and make it, by example and by lesson, one which cherishes and protects the rights and liberties of the human mind and soul. Your children, down through the generations, as they wage their own struggles with the irrational and the collective impulse, may then look back upon us and say, ” this was their finest hour.”
All men and women will eventually have an epitaph for their lives. What better than this?
For every libertarian eager to cut back the state there are probably a hundred middle class administrators, regulators and people doing non-jobs on the public payroll.
Then there are probably another hundred middle class teachers, lecturers, social workers and medical staff etc on it too.
State employment serves these legions very well indeed, and I can’t see a few libertarians making any real dent in their numbers.
I fear it is a case of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and I’ve advised a couple of recent graduates to get on the gravy train.
Veryretired,
On a certain level I’d tend to agree – certainly, civilization restrains the violent tendencies of mankind to some extent. But are you contending that civilization is something man created? I don’t think man is capable of creating civilization. I think it comes about in accordance with divine provenance; or, if you prefer a more secular rephrase, I think it comes about “naturally”.
The notion that there is less conformity today than in the past genuinely baffles me. How does one support such a notion in light of the striking uniformity of philosophical thought that plagues the modern Western world? What has always struck me is how little 99.9% of people consider how political views have changed only leftward since the dawn of the Enlightenment and how these same 99.9% are unable to entertain any philosophical notions that were popularized during/since the Enlightenment or as progenitors of said Enlightenment. This 99.9% encompasses 95% of political “science”/philosophy professors as well, by the way.
I suppose there is significant diversity in dress code, at least in some cities. That societies centuries past possessed not the technological advances to render diverse dress codes financially affordable for the vast majority of their inhabitants may be a bit of a confounding variable. With that said, the Cavaliers (my side) famously dressed far more colorfully and in a varied manner than did the Roundheads.
As far as repression, I genuinely believe that the monstrous NSA would never have been conjured up by most hereditary monarchs for the simple reason that it’s not in the national interest to divert enormous funds, energy, and personnel towards surveilling a whole population. Such schemes are drawn up in democracies primarily for two reasons: a) creating employment where there is no productive work to be done and b) to fulfill an ideological perspective.
A number of problems here.
First of all, you cite no evidence.
Second of all, when you do cite evidence such as mortality rates by violence there will be the slight confounding variable of improved medical technology. When someone was stabbed a few centuries ago what was the chance he would survive as compared to today with cell phones, ambulances, paved roads, hospitals, and healthcare services to treat the gunshot/stabbing wound and nurse back to full health?
Third of all, when someone attempts grand larceny a few dozen times and is released from jail after each attempt – is the government accountable for that crime being committed at least partly? I hope you see where I am going with this point. Old school governments couldn’t afford such lenience and would surely consider our policy to render the government complicit in some of the crimes.
Fourth of all, is the IRS confiscating your money considered violence in your book?
Fifth of all, it’s critical to differentiate between orderly violence and disorderly violence. See the Joker in Batman – nobody panics if you say you are going to blow up X but if you say one of 1,000 Xs will be blown up everyone (rightfully) loses their shit. Now, this is an exaggeration of a fundamental truth – that orderly violence is vastly preferable to disorderly violence. Another example that hopefully is closer to everyone’s reality – business leaders would often trade low taxes for slightly higher taxes as long as those tax rates are locked in for a decade or more instead of subject to the whims of the voting public and their representatives. Orderly violence > disorderly violence.
Individuals are dangerous. Individuals cooperating can be even more dangerous.
Oh how i wish the individual were the wellspring of political liberties! What a blissfully pure world we would live in.
The mobile, modern aristocracy of money that supplanted the hereditary aristocracy of land largely during the Enlightenment owns our democracies, our currencies, our propaganda, our politicians, and in some respects, effectively, our lives. This may not be the creative energy to which you refer, but it is the power that restricts, channels, and incentivizes all creative energies, to which no man is immune.
As far as the Church no longer having power they claimed. Again, a new Church has replaced the old one. The new Church is the modern academy, the intelligentsia. They tell us what to think. You may disagree, but their views, not yours, are propagandized in all major newspapers, major news networks, cable television shows, advanced in mainstream political platforms, and taught to mostly all children in public schools. There are surges against the tide but these are isolated and temporary rebukes against the overwhelming tide of political history since the Enlightenment.
The Catholic Church has been supplanted by a Cathedral (as per Mencius Moldbug) that persecutes for heresy with ostracism insofar as is necessary. Keynesian economics, positive rights, human-caused global warming, feminism, environmentalism, etc are some of the key pillars of this ideology.
See points above regarding the so-called decline of violence overtime.
I’m with Mencius Moldbug on understanding the 20th century. In other words, I think hardly anyone these days understands it. Partly this is because of how recent it remains.
Anyway, the violence of the last century was caused by the unleashing of the individual. There is a reason WWI was called the first democratic war. Were it not for nuclear weapons the world would look very, very, very different today, I assure you.
I’ll quote Mencius Moldbug
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/carlyle-in-20th-century-fascism-and.html
Nice words. Too bad the the road to hell is paved good intentions.
I thought by evolve you meant something more fundamental than basically just learn to act in a disciplined and socially respectable manner. With that said, I suspect we disagree on the means by which this is attained; towards elucidating my view on this path, I can do nothing better than ask you to please read and deeply consider the inherent truth of these words written by the Great Joseph de Maistre
I had a characteristically long & snobby reply to veryretired all typed out and when I hit post comment it died somehow. Ah well. Will re-reply later.
Progressive policies create winners. The civil servants, benefit recipients etc. They like their positions in society and would like to stay there. Makes change very difficult. The losers are many but spread out. Conservative policies need to be so popular that they become irreversible. School vouchers that can be topped up was mentioned. A guaranteed win with parentsteachers. Likewise, vouchers for private healthcare would be very popular no doubt. Expensive in the short run but eventually you will have enough supporters for more radical change.
And yet in actual bomb disposal, it is very often the safest and most practical thing to do is to destroy the bomb with methods that do not detonate it. Busting them is way easier than trying to fiddle with the wires.
Most real-world EOD/UXO technicians *blow up* the bombs in a controlled detonation, not “cut the red wire” like on TV.
@pete
> For every libertarian eager to cut back the state there are probably a hundred middle class administrators, regulators and people doing non-jobs on the public payroll.
This is an important point. I think of it every time I have the misfortune to go to an airport here in the USA. At Midway Airport, here in Chicago, when you go in the security line they have this method of splitting people into two lines. They have something like an iPad that has a big arrow pointing left or right depending on which way you go, just a queuing thing. There is a guy there who’s job is the push the button to switch the arrow from left to right and back.
Can’t put that guy out of a job. Civilization would come to an end.
The point is that even if the TSA proved to be totally worthless, useless and ridiculously burdensome (just imagine such an improbable thing if you will … grin) then it would be utterly impossible to shut them down. The number of jobs lost would lose any party the election.
Fraser Orr,
True. This is why changes must be systemic, not topical. Forget about changing anything specific. Changing the balances of power, for example bringing the state governments back into the power equation via revoking the 18th – which is something that could plausibly gain popular support – and pushing the tax burden from income taxes on the vast middle class back onto that amorphous collection of levies that fall outside the 16th, are the best chance to bring about changes. What voter doesn’t hate paying income taxes? What state legislature wouldn’t like the power to appoint Senators? Don’t forget that by revoking the 17th, a legislative body would be (re)created that is capable of rejecting popular whims and federal spending while not answering to the popular vote. Their loyalty would be to state governments who are in direct competition with the federal government.
Whenever you try to change something specific you will run up against the rational ignorance of voters equations. The vested interests have far more at stake than Average Voter. Changing systemics will actually be easier than achieving lasting change to specific sacred cows. Not to mention far more durable.
Sequestering the ticking time bomb of the state and detonating it in a reinforced environment so it won’t hurt others might be a valuable tactic if it weren’t for the others willing to rummage through the debris in the aim of creating better and more destructive bombs which they could unleash in the future when it would best suit them… Every opportunity for smashing this monster must
be undertaken immediately, no matter how inconsequential it may seem.a
Look, when Antarctica is icefree, because of global warming, then Liberatrians should colonise the place, and kick any other colonists off! Start from scratch, without any pesky Indians or Aborigines to put into reservations!
Very Retired –
Regarding your initial comment, I absolutely agree with most of what you say.
However. In implementation.
The actual battle for truth (reality) can be quite simply won.
I have found in my work some decades ago, that if the simple truth, untarnished by any personal motivation is presented, it is welcomed by most people.
Sure, the battle in that situation is to get it to most people because those who wish to control have very simply identified that in order to control they must control the media.
And they do.
The internet has allowed forums such as this (Samizdata) to come about, but it is all very ‘in-house’.
One needs to get the simple truth to people.
They are cleverer than the elites-that-would-control would have us think. Which is perhaps why they would have one despise the masses.
And those elites, in order to promote their deceit, have to spend a vast fortune to overturn the truth.
Those who would promote the truth can do so quite simply and cheaply if they are willing to discipline themselves to be utterly honest with themselves.
Is how I see it.
How about splitting up the bomb so many times it’s a mere fire cracker? Or in the real world, devolve everything we don’t like to the county level, then the constituency level etc… Whatever system works best and doesn’t go bankrupt wins.
I agree with Fraser Orr. As long as the State is in some semblance of working order it will grow. If you fix a few things and it works better the likely result is not more libertarianism but more statism in other areas. Best to let the whole thing blow up. Personally, I think a crack-up boom with a spectacular collapse of the state would be preferable to slow suffocation. Although, I admit slow suffocation is the likelier route.
My thoughts on this echo Buckminster Fuller’s:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
and:
“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
I think the mistake is that we are focussed on the bomb. Perhaps we should focus on what it might damage, and move this away from the blast radius?
Which is to say, we do not need to destroy government. We need to make it irrelevant – and we are on the way to do this, using this here internet thing amongst many other technologies and innovations. The Roman Empire never fell remember (well, perhaps when Napoleon ended the German manifestation of it…), but it ceased to be relevant. The Church has never been permanently defeated, but its influence is waning anyway. The focus on government here ignores the fact that government as we have it is in fact a (late-)twentieth-century phenomenon, and like all such things it will pass; the flaw with any analysis where ‘all else remains equal’ is that nothing does…
And it is worth looking at the quality of those arguing for government. They are clearly declining – I might not have liked or agreed with many of the socialist and statist thinkers of the past, but they were certainly good thinkers (if only they had been tolerant, a night at the bar with them would have been fun). Now they think in labels and have to follow the teachings of others without the ability to criticise them. The true intellects are working elsewhere.
Tomsmith,
Yes you did. And yes I did. 🙂 Both happened in the famous “On Immigrants” thread
http://www.samizdata.net/2015/09/on-immigrants/
The post is correct.
“Leaving the state alone” is not a safe option.
Anyone who thinks it is should take a good look at the “Debt Clock” for the United States (or any other major Western nation).
The “Unfunded Liabilities” of the Welfare States are out of control.
The monetary side is no better than the fiscal side…..
The financial system is now utterly dependent on the credit-money flow from the Central Banks (the governments).
And anyone who thinks that this is sustainable…..
Well you are wrong.
Fiscal chaos, monetary chaos, and….
Cultural chaos – as the state corrupts the culture (via the education system and so on).
“Leaving this alone and just getting on with life” is not an option.
But how to deal with it?
Take the American Presidential election.
Candidates who come out with careful plans to roll back the government (at least a bit) get nowhere.
People such as Senator Rand Paul are on only a few percent in the polls.
I do not often agree with the Economist magazine – but I agree with them that voters (not just Republicans as they sneeringly claim) prefer “vaguely defined persons”.
People who make speeches about how they will make life better for “the little people” – with only “the rich” or “big business” suffering from any change of policy.
Rather than people who are honest about the threats (the ticking bombs) and suggest painful, but necessary, reform.
Hope?
As far as I can tell – there is none.
Both analogies (onion and bomb) have a common flaw: they treat government as a stand-alone entity whereas in reality it’s now intimately connected to everything in society and the economy. A better analogy would be removing a defective part from a running machine. Can it be done without stopping the machine? It depends on how fundamental it is to the machine’s operation. To take the example of a piston engine: the crankshaft is almost by definition impossible to remove while running since the definition of running is “turning the crankshaft;” an auxiliary system, such as a fuel pump or water pump, would be much easier to remove with the engine stopped, but still fairly straightforward to remove while running, especially if that was planned for in the design — such as with a constitutional amendment process.
A lot of people probably do see government as like the crankshaft. And a lot of effort in some areas of political theory has gone into arguing that it is. But it’s probably not hard to convince most people that it’s closer to an auxiliary system, such as a governor (pun intended).
In this and similar discussions pessimists always seem to outnumber the optimists.
The pessimists are troubled that the majority of people in the developed world are reasonably content with the status quo.
The pessimists are not impressed that our political systems in the last couple of centuries have provided, and continue to provide unprecented good times for an increasing proportion of the world population.
Google, Julian Simon and Hans Rosling.
Perhaps the general population is instinctively in-tune with Simon and Rosling, and therefore more optimistic than the pessimists, who are so concerned with current politics.
If the topic is the promotion of Libertarianism by libertarians then faith in human nature would seem to be a given.
The State is rather like a mouse infestation in your garden, tolerable, some even find them cute, or adorable, some may even laugh at their antics. However, once the mice get into your house, and nibble your food, scramble around in the night, and defecate and urinate anywhere and everywhere, then it is no longer a laughing matter, and of course, they breed quickly. However, many wish to feed the mice, others may wish on their neighbours a mouse infestation, and for them to be left alone. They rarely get quite what they wish for.
Sometimes the mice might gang up on rats from neighbouring properties if the rate are seeking to muscle in on ‘their’ territory, your house, and many applaud as the mice nibble away at the far more unpleasant invaders, but they are still mice, but whilst there are rats around, the mice may be tolerable.
Sometimes, the mice grow to giant size and devastate those sharing their environment.
@Midwesterner
> Changing the balances of power, for example bringing the state governments back into the power equation via revoking the 18th – which is something that could plausibly gain popular support
Why do you think that would have popular support? To most people it is a technicality, and I suspect to the people in power it is quite undesirable, they’d rather use the massive incumbency advantage rather than being subject to the whims of a small group in the state legislature. Even so, even were the change to be made how exactly do you think things would be different? It would still be driven by party rather than policy. In a sense this particular thing is already in place. The local parties mostly choose their senators and are offered to the voters that way. So really perhaps not the legislature but the party does already pick the senator (and the two groups are largely the same people.)
> What voter doesn’t hate paying income taxes?
About half of voters don’t pay any income tax, and many of then pay negative income tax. So yeah, many, many voters don’t hate paying income taxes. And the plain fact is that the tides of public opinion are in the opposite direction — namely a more steeply progressive tax to take money from these outrageously rich people. So I don’t think so.
And add to that that both the changes you suggest require a constitutional amendment, which is by design extremely hard to do. So you need an overwhelming consensus to make it happen, and you simply don’t for either change.
Love a lot of the thinking here.
@ Midwesterner, who wrote:
‘The third amendment should be to make clear that any form of immunity violates the ‘titles of nobility’ clause. If a private citizen is forbidden to do something, so is a government employee. This would have the flip side of meaning that private citizens could seek warrants for probable cause and pursue investigations independently from the police/prosecutor apparatus. Perhaps even against police and prosecutors.’
Not a hope in hell of this making any difference unless you also disconnect the warrant process from its incestuous relationship with the police and prosecutors – IOW, find a way to disconnect judges and magistrates from the police and public-prosecutor complex.
The UK system of Justices of the Peace has some promising aspects, although of course in our current egalitarian age the idea of lay magistrates who are able to donate several days a week to public service for no more than gas money is going to be a problem. I once heard a suggestion (at the firehouse) that warrant approval should be a public service, like jury duty – a panel of 5-10 citizens, drawn from the jury pool, who spend a week reviewing warrant applications. Maybe with a salaried lawyer to advise them on criminal law, like a justice’s clerk. That way, you can’t judge-shop your warrant application, and the judges issuing warrants don’t get prejudiced by continually dealing with the same people.
Also, need to weed out those parts of the CJS which lead to policing-for-profit and process-as-punishment. That’s a harder challenge. Far too many people making a comfortable living at it.
llater,
llamas
I like your way of thinking, llamas. In Wisconsin, our judges are all (I think) elected. The incestuous relationship you refer to is in part a product of the police and prosecutors having the monopoly on law enforcement and criminal prosecutions. It is reasonable to expect that if privately brought prosecutions and the elimination of immunity for prosecutors as well as police were factors in their courts and in their reelection campaigns, judges might respond to that shift in the balance of power.
I like your justice-of-the-peace contemplations and have often wondered where our grand jury system went so badly wrong or if it was designed to operate as it currently does. It seems like a good idea in theory but why is the defense and the judiciary banned from the process? Those two factors sound like a huge design flaw.
Fraser,
First, a rather humorous typo. I typed 18th when I meant 17th. No I am not talking about the prohibition, thank you for listening to what I meant, not what I said.
Because the ratification process’s most difficult hurdle is getting a super majority of the states’ legislatures to ratify the amendment. In this case, those very state legislators would be voting to take control of the US Senate. It is generally safe to expect politicians to be amenable to power grabs.
That makes the biggest hurdle in this case, getting super majorities in the US House and US Senate. That will be more difficult but not without precedent. Remember that when the 17th was passed, it was ratified by the state legislatures that were giving up that appointment power. The popularity of the US Senate is on average the lowest it has been since the 17th was passed. The popular emotion to punish the bastards is not without substantial support.
The House might happily sacrifice the Senate to the voter gods and look forward to taking the rhetorical moral high ground as the new Senate shoots down their vote buying legislative schemes. That means the only tough sell would be to get a super majority of Senators to vote themselves out of office. Allowing them to continue to run against their state legislatures might sway them. Every six years they would be on the ballot against ‘Legislative Choice’.
I do not think repealing the 17th would be as difficult as most believe if it were attempted with good strategy and tactics.
The process is the punishment is probably much more of a factor than you think. A great many of those people who aren’t required to pay any taxes still hate the process of proving it. While the tides of popular opinion are forever demanding greater taxes and soaking the rich, most people if given the opportunity will vote in the privacy of the booth to eliminate their own taxes and filing requirements. I believe this includes a great many of the upper income left. Whether that private sentiment would translate into their states’ ratification decisions is not obvious.
I agree with Midwesterner that the repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments* would be the best means of gradually devolving power to the states, but I also agree with Fraser about how difficult that would be to accomplish. One would think that state legislators (who, after all, go into politics in the first place because they are attracted to power) would favor the restoration of their power to appoint US senators and exercise greater control over the federal government. But that doesn’t seem to be the case; certainly I have never seen any appetite among them for repealing the 17th, or (generally) for exercising any sort of nullification at all. Undoubtedly a proposal to repeal the 17th would be met with howls of disapproval as being “undemocratic” (which it certainly is), but that could be countered by an education campaign explaining that the House represents the people and the Senate represents the states as sovereign entities.
In my opinion repealing the 17th Amendment is the single most important thing which could be done to restore the proper balance of power in our federalist system of government.
* Those two Amendments were ratified, and the Federal Reserve was created, in 1913. That was probably the single most disastrous year in American history.
Laird, particularly on the left, there is a very wide distance between popular opinion, what they say when the mics are on, and actual conduct. Given the opportunity, I suspect state legislators could and would rationalize their ‘yes’ votes on many different grounds. The biggest argument would be “to get the money out of politics”. In deep blue states they would do it to get rid of popular Senators that don’t toe the party line. In red and purple states, they would still find ways to pitch as “good for the people of the fine state of …”
Politicians can always be counted on to do what they want and rationalize it for the good of the people.
Shlomo Maistre (9:55 pm), I love your “characteristically long & snobby reply to veryretired” 🙂
Veryretired,
My reply to you has appeared. See September 20, 2015 at 9:55 pm.
Cristina,
Thanks, appreciate it 🙂
Midwesterner,
True.
The problem here is that you are not accounting for how politics works in reality. On paper, it would appear that many stakeholders would stand to gain much by returning the right to appoint Senators to the states. This sort of change, however, would face stringent opposition even from those people who on paper stand to benefit from such a change – because of how the business of horse trading favors actually works. Most state-level Senates/houses are filled with low-level politicians who owe favors to more senior politicians in their states. The powers that be will never let the few politicians in each state that actually pull the strings to permit low-level politicians to take back powers long since lost to their station.
The business of trading behind-the-scenes favors is the primary currency politicians trade in. Accumulating diplomatic capital is the overall goal of politicians; the manifestation said capital takes the form in is favors. The mere appearance of power is largely what low-level politicians must content themselves with and very few are ever willing to trade what little appearance of power they have for the long-shot chance of fulfilling a pipe dream ideological goal that directly threatens those who vested them with what meager diplomatic capital they possess and which suffers from more coordination problems than I care to count.
Sure – and sometimes their rational opposition.
Changing systemics that actually matter – such as state-appointment of Senators – is exceptionally difficult to achieve and is generally far more challenging to achieve than is simply reducing the rate of growth of federal spending, which the Tea Party has largely failed at anyway.
I think that’s the biggest problem by a country mile. The draw of collectivism has always been that people who aren’t very educated and haven’t put a lot of thought into society as a system can understand it. “People are hungry? Well, if we all pitch in a tiny bit we can feed them. The end.” This has been a pretty easy thing for the Marxists in universities to take advantage of, too, since for students it’s the path of least resistance.
@Eric
> The theoretical problem is that it is a counterintuitive ideology.
I don’t agree at all. I think liberarianism is a very natural thing, it is just that we have jigged it up with so much jargon and bla bla bla that it sounds complicated. I mean what is simpler that “Leave people the hell alone to live their lives, and only interfere when they start fucking with other people’s lives.” I think an very large percentage of people would agree with that in principle, though they might get bogged down in the details.
> I think that’s the biggest problem by a country mile. The draw of collectivism has always been that people who aren’t very educated and haven’t put a lot of thought into society as a system can understand it.
I don’t much agree with that. In fact I think almost the opposite is true. I think the real problem is the basic principle that is inculcated into kids that the government is the only righteous way to act collectively, is really the most basic problem. I mean for sure when you see kids starving if everyone pitched in a little then the kid would be able to eat. But the societal assumption is that “everyone pitches in” means “the government takes from people forceably” is the most basic problem here.
The idea that the government is charitable is one that, without a couple of decades of brainwashing and indoctrination, would be laughable on its face.
Again, as I have said before, if you want to see the country turned back to a freedom loving country it is in the schools that it must start. And it must start by getting the government out of schools as much as possible.
There are ways to do that I think, because many families are at the coal face of schools with their children and are horrified at the naked reality of what government means in the face of the dreadful situation in many public schools. And the primary vested interest against this is the school unions. The picture of militant teachers abandoning their charges to strike for more money in their own pockets is not one that looks good to the general public.
I don’t know how to light the fire, but there is, in the school system, the potential for rescuing liberty, for our children and children’s children, if not for us.
Laird,
Oh, an education campaign. Right.
The system by which Senators are currently elected benefits the power that be in too many ways for them to permit any systemic changes. But even if your sought after education campaign were fully funded, they would not need to prohibit such systemic changes because to get to them you first need the people on your side and nothing to the people is more holy or beyond reproach as sacred democracy – not even “the states as sovereign entities”. So it won’t ever even get to that point.
The situation is hopeless. Enjoy life.
BTW, a point about this discussion that is worth considering. Those of us who believe in voluntarism might wonder why the solutions being proposed are all government solutions — that is to say changing constitutions, the functions of government and so forth. I really think that is backward. The solution is to start with the people themselves. Make a case for freedom with them. The government structures will follow for sure.
Shlomo it can’t be that hopeless. In nod to Frasier if if the overwhelming consensus gets to have so much influence that politicians can’t neglect it , even better … wez’ve got to keep plugging away… If we don’t everyone is screwed forever!!
The place to start is at the doctors office – we need more of them.
I think it to be too simplistic to pin either individualism or collectivism as the defining attribute of human nature – both are inherent to it, to degrees varying among individuals. For a moment and for the sake of the argument, lets avoid the nature-vs-nurture debate by making the simplistic presumption that people are born collectivist or individualist. That granted still would not mean that individuals with even very pronounced collectivist personalities cannot be expected to empathize with and respect the individualist mindset of others – it has been known to happen, and not as rarely as one may think. The key to making this happen is in cultural change(in what Perry calls ‘the metacontext’), which in turn means the change must begin early, in the education system. IOW, what Fraser said.
And this, too:
No matter how much progress is made in moving to a small state society, civil libertarianism is largely an Anglo-Saxon construct. There, however, the internet is of use, particularly as cryptography becomes better and better.
Xenosystems, which is across the red pill rubicon from Samizdata, has a post up today that’s very much related to this thread.
As I largely agree with the well-known British philosopher Nick Land (whose blog is Xenosystems) on this point, I’ll just quote it
Key word is direction.
Re Simon’s call for Direct [Medical] Care: If you live in The Provinces, the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, AAPS, is a national group with chapters in several states of doctors who provide just that. They were founded in 1943 (a year of some personal importance to me). They are, at least mostly, conservativish-libertarianish. Their Home Page:
http://www.aapsonline.org/,
where there are links to many videos of presentations presented at the organization’s various conferences. These I find interesting, as they give considerable knowledge about how different doctors have built their practices, the services they provide, the costs to patients, whether or not they take insurance or medicare (most don’t, I think; instead there’s a monthly membership fee, which entitles one to free or relatively inexpensive care depending on the practitioner).
There is also a table of available physicians, and where they are located. And more.
. . .
Alisa: Yes indeed. I do think that normal humans have an innate need for autonomy as well as one for sociability, wanting to be part of some “society,” however small. Then, as Life Happens, we respond by developing each trait — self-determination and reliance on the group — to some degree or other.
It seems to me that another trait varying from “slim” to “lots” is risk-aversity, not to mention out-and-out tendencies to be fearful or less so. And those would also affect whether we tend to be more individualistic or “individualist-minded” or more desirous of feeling a preponderant need to be part of a group and perhaps to protect ourselves by protecting the group. Does a given person tend to identify strongly with some group? Or do groups, however much he may enjoy them, also make him a little nervous? And so on.
. . .
And I too agree with Alisa’s quote of Fraser. The question is, how to get ‘er done.
Still, Fraser also writes,
I thought so too, right up until a week ago yesterday, when in a get-together with four friends I hadn’t seen nor really even communicated with since we graduated in 1961, I discovered that they they all take it for granted that a libertarian, that is, a person who thinks people don’t have any business ordering other people around, doesn’t see any value in “society.” I was lectured upon how humans need society, and therefore we should try to do what’s best for society. Naturally, I remarked that obviously humans are “social” (i.e., sociable) creatures, and that this includes libertarians.
I mentioned that schooling and charity don’t have to be run by The Gov, and that history shows this. Response: “I don’t believe that.”
And these are bright, fairly independent-minded folks.
What a disillusioning educational experience. :>(((
“The reality of intellectual and political change is that coalitions have to be built by persuading people of the ideas in question. Working on areas where we can find agreement with a broad group of people who aren’t already libertarians is one way to do that.”
importing ignorant peeps won’t accomplish that
@Shlomo Maistre
> You don’t need a revolution to escape the system. You need secession. You need a withdrawal of support for the existing systems. … the secret of liberty is to de-fund the existing centralized order.
Can you offer a historical example of where this has actually worked?
Many years ago, before he became libertarian candidate for US president, Harry Browne wrote a great book that, essentially, advocated this: “How I found freedom in an unfree world.” I remember reading it with great enthusiasm only to be left disappointed since most of the strategies he advocated had subsequently been made illegal by the government.
As another example Bill Freeza wrote about how the Internet would send the government into a large degree of irrelevance in a great article called “The Crucible of Radical Capitalism.” You can google it. It was written as the Web was beginning to penetrate the public consciousness. However, that beast has been tamed and brought under the whip of government too. Not that it hasn’t done a lot of good, because it has. But crucible of radical capitalism? Hardly.
The problem here is not the politicians or political systems. Every society has produced horrible people who want to rule over others. The problem is the great mass of people who support them, as Julie found with her little group of friends.
Although I have no historical examples of where the school system has been privatized, what I do see is some hope there. The dynamics are such that it favors some degree of autonomy and accountability for the schools. Parents see the jejune educational experience our government provides and crave more for their children. And they are repulsed by the radicalization of the teaching professions, and greatly inconvenienced when teachers strike to line their pockets. So I see an opportunity there, but, as I said, I don’t know how to light the fire.
Oh yes, Julie, fears. I have increasingly come to the conclusion that the very original source of most human problems – at the personal level, where it really matters after all – lies with various fears. Not that there is anything wrong with fear per se – quite the contrary in fact, but only as long as both the trigger for the fear and the corresponding reaction to it are rational. Which too often is not the case.
Fraser Orr,
Worked towards achieving what end? The advice to defund the system works for individuals to enjoy more of the personal liberties. I have no comment as to whether said strategies are in fact legal or not, as I’m neither a lawyer nor a criminal.
As I’ve said before, the situation is basically hopeless and most people are best advised to simply enjoy life to the best of their ability.
With that said, the means by which ordered liberty will reemerge (if it does) is by way of a restoration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration#End_of_the_Shogunate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_(England)
Restoration becomes more viable as more people enter into the secession mindset (and especially if they act on said mindset) for a variety of reasons. See Mencius Moldbug’s explanation, for example, as to how the “outer party” (the party that adopts the policy positions of the inner party of 5 to 50 years ago depending on the issue) does much of the work required by the “inner party” by making democracy appear to be a contest of ideas when, in fact, it’s the gradual erosion of freedoms via the manufacturing of consent.
In the USA, the outer party is the GOP while the inner party is the Democrats. Conservatives, Labor in UK, etc.
Anyway, to summarize:
1. To get back ordered liberty on a societal scale requires restoration.
2. To get back individual liberty on a personal level requires secession.
3. Revolution is completely counterproductive.