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 Austrian economic theory describes how purposive action by fallible human beings unintentionally generates a grand, complex, and orderly market process. An additional ethical step is required to pronounce the market process good. Economic theory per se cannot recommend but only explain markets. This is what Ludwig von Mises meant when he insisted that Austrian economics is value-free. Anyone of any persuasion ought to be able to acknowledge that economic logic indicates that imposing a price ceiling on milk will, other things equal, create a shortage of milk. But that in itself is not an argument against the policy. Mises assumed the policymaker would have thought that result bad, but the economist qua economist cannot declare it such. As Israel Kirzner likes to say, the economist’s job in the policy realm is merely to point out that you cannot catch a northbound train from the southbound platform.
– Sheldon Richman writes about How Liberals Distort Austrian Economics
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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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Statists cannot imagine any course of action that does not involve a role for state coercion in solving a problem.
Indeed, state action is always the preferred, if not only, solution that these one trick ponies can envision.
Collectivists cannot imagine any situation in which the individual should be considered as more important than the collective. It is this fundamental mindset that makes them collectivists.
As a recent author pointed out, there is no true limit to the role of the coercive, collective state apparatus in this view of society.
And, if one considers state action to be a positive good, why should there be?
The other important point that is alluded to briefly in the larger article, which I just read from a link at Instapundit, is that actions do not necessarily have to turn out well just because they are based on individualistic actions.
People are fallible, error prone, emotional, and often venal. They make stupid mistakes, are stubborn and arrogant, and often become obsessive in a course of action, ignoring all contrary opinions or facts.
The designers of the constitutional structure understood that, and a major part of their purpose was to prevent the all too human tendency to dominate one’s neighbors by the use of state power.
The entire purpose of those who have spent the last century trying to promote the progressive agenda by unravelling that structure is to facilitate the very domination it was so clearly intended to prevent.
The good intentions of those who have engineered the leviathan state are frequently cited as its justification.
By necessity, therefore, they must distort and disparage the reasoning of the Austrian school as it points out repeatedly that their policies have negative consequences, and that good intentions don’t rule out failure, and even the worsening of whatever problem the policy was intended to correct.
The same people who will tell you endlessly about the evil, greedy, mean and nasty spirits of the terrible individuals who engage in commerce, suddenly forget about all those traits when they propose placing even more power in those same hands by giving them state positions and wide ranging powers over their fellow citizens under the color of law.
The inexorable reality of cause and effect is anathema to the collectivist. They must deny it, or the results of their policies will trump all their alleged good intentions.
Better to blur, distort, and obfuscate. And they have done their jobs very well.
Those who advocate for the rights of the individual must be every bit as diligent and persistent, as well as much better informed.
We are at a great crossroads, as the collectivist state totters around the world, exhausted from decades of corruption and mismanagement.
When the crises become more and more acute, the panicky calls for increased state action will rise to a crescendo.
Only steadfast and determined advocacy of the rights of the individual will prevent the sirens from leading us all onto the rocks, and into the chaos that will inevitably follow.
And so, to paraphrase a great man, let us steel ourselves to our duty, so that the age of the individual might last a thousand years, and lead us to the stars.
Here, on earth, under collectivism, are only graves.
I don’t think a price ceiling does create a shortage of milk. The shortage of milk already exists, there is more desire for milk than the supply can match.
A price ceiling merely changes who gets the milk and in what quantity.
A troubling constant in these discussions is the tendency to phrasing: “What Government does…” rather than “How Government is operated …” or “The Ends to which Government is operated…”
Governments don’t do anything, people do, whether through the mechanisms of Government, institutions, or instrumentalities.
A change of phrasing will bring us to the why and how Governments are operated to create the effects that have been so well noted by the Austrian School.
Of course Mises’ Human Action gives clues as to how forces act through Governments – and that’s “Austrian.”
@ Very Retired:
Tremendous overview!
Collestivism, by determining arbitrary objectives and arbitrary selection of means to those objectives, attempts to supplant the values found in commonalities that individuals seek and find through voluntary cooperation and self-directed objectives.
“A price ceiling merely changes who gets the milk and in what quantity.”
Not quite. At the market price the amount of production and the demand at that price tend toward temporary equilibriums.
If the ceiling is set well above that price, their is basically no effect since it sells for less anyway.
If the ceiling is set well below that price to the point of no profits producers start going out of business regardless of demand and how much they produce.
If the ceiling leaves some profit but very little then expansion of new production is very slow regardless of demand resulting in shortages.
If the ceiling is set very close to the natural market price then their isn’t much effect, but then what is the point.
I have to say I didn’t find Richman’s article terribly convincing. A Keynsian would say the same thing about his theory, after all. He would say that Keynes’ theory doesn’t come with any policy prescriptions, it merely predicts that there are certain circumstances under which it is difficult for markets to return to equilibrium on their own, and that under these circumstances wealth can vanish, but that the government can restore the old equilibrium by either creating demand or debasing the currency. We would not accept the Keynsian’s claim that this was merely an observation and not a normative statement; we would say that the prescription he supports is implied by the theory, that the theory was invented as a kind of argument for the prescription, in fact.
The same is surely true of the Austrian theory. Pointing out that cheap credit creates an artificial boom that must be eventually counterbalanced by a contraction as a result of an accumulation of malinvestments pretty explicitly says that government interference with currency and credit slows the accumulation of wealth over the long term. You can claim that this is not a normative statement, but only by assuming that it’s an open question whether we favor or oppose wealth accumulation. In reality, we don’t – everyone serious favors accumulation.
thanks Steve,
my understanding was wrong price ceilings set too low produce shortages because producers either go out of business, sell into a black market or find more profitable things to do.
The mention of the black market above is a critical factor often missed or badly underestimated.
I read an article a few weeks ago about the “shadow economy” around the world which was startling in its conclusions as to the size and importance of the various black markets in labor, products, and services in many, many places.
The insanely profitable drug economy, based on prohibited products, has deeply penetrated the governments and economies of a host of countries, but it is merely a highly publicized segment of the total.
When the state prohibits something people want, in any area, someone, somehow, will find a way to supply the need. The true histories of the authoritarian/totalitarian societies are replete with stories of flourishing underground economies which provided much of that which was officially unavailable.
Also, it should be noted that defending liberty in economic matters is not just a defense of corporations, as the statists and their ilk are quick to claim, but also opposed to the endless petty tyrannies of the corrupt official, the inspector who expects an envelope each month, or the local police force which exists more to extort license fees and permit charges than to prevent crime or apprehend criminals.
For many years after WW2, the true currency of Romania was Kent cigarettes, exchanged instead of the worthless local paper money.
It was noted by many people who escaped the soviet or chinese workers’ paradises that nothing ever happened without the ubiquitous “gift” of a bottle of vodka, some cigarettes, fruit, or another desirable commodity that was in short supply at official stores.
Rent “Moscow On the Hudson” just to get a taste of what it is like to live with endless shortages, having to scavenge for the simplest everyday items.
I try to explain this to my younger kids, who were born into a world in which Russia was merely a major part of the “ex-soviet union”, and they look at me as if I’m speaking Russian.
As I have mentioned in past comments, one of our major problems is the simple fact that many of our people cannot imagine living in a society of scarcity after having been born in the land flowing with milk and honey.
If the collectivists have their way, future generations will have a very hard, close look at what life is like when the milk dries up, and the honey bees abandon their hives.
Fear not V.R., more individuals than collectivists are born every day.
I’m afraid I disagree, RRS.
Respect for the individual is an anomaly in human affairs. The collective is the norm in many cultures, including a large segment of our own.
Within my lifetime we have seen too many examples of whole societies marching off to disaster in honor of the race, or the blood, or the nation, or the god-king, or the latest incarnation of pharoah, whether he is called “Dear Leader” or something equally absurd.
As we write these congenial words back and forth in friendly debate, an alliance of religious lunatics and anti-democratic ideologues are conniving as much trouble for all of us as they can possibly manage.
Today, the marching masses under the crooked cross or the hammer and sickle look as ludicrous as the marches of the KKK back in the early 20th century.
Evil never dies. It constantly mutates, like the newly discovered TB virus that is impervious to antibiotics.
We got lazy, and careless, and the richest civilization in the history of humanity totters on the brink of insolvency.
Do not become too cavalier about the potential of that situation to beckon a man on a white horse, who would be all too happy to save us from ourselves.
People are, for the most part, what they have been taught to be, they think what they have been taught to think, they believe what they have been taught to believe.
It requires truly gruesome and painful experiences to disabuse the vast majority of their illusions, ala the survivors of Castro, or the former SU.
We have allowed our cultural teaching to be commandeered by those who glorify the state and the collective, and vilify the individual at every opportunity.
This, above al else, is the tragic legacy we must surmount, and replace, with the ideals of individual liberty and freedom, and the rights of man.
We have faced much worse odds and prevailed.
And so it must be again, if we are to walk into the sunlit uplands. But if we fail…
More individualists may be born every day, RRS, but more collectivists are made. That’s why every major state controls education.
I guess price controls wouldn’t create shortages if the milk producers were acting as a cartel and deliberately restricting supply, what stops this happening in a free market?
George: new entrants to the milk market.
@Laird & V R:
For the very reason you cite, of individuals becoming collectivists, or caught up in collectivism, I did not say individual ist. There is no way to know what any individual will become.
What are the elements (weaknesses, if you will) of individual motivations that preserve or extend the ability of those who deploy collectivism for particular ends? Over 75 years ago (at around age 12 during the extended Depression) I noted and discussed with an equally observant friend the rising tendencies to avoid responsibilities. Perhaps that came because so many could not meet or deal with their responsibilities, for reasons outside their control.
By why has that gone on? My conjecture is that it results from the institutions (mostly governmental) that grew out of instrumentalities evolved in reaction to dealing with those responsibilities that people could not meet.
Until we circumvent, instead of trying to reform, the institutions that have congealed since 1914, collectivism will remain a tool for the political class, and to some degree for economic exploitation in many societies.
George, cartels cannot long survive without governmental support. There is always internal pressure among members to increase market share by violating the cartel’s rules, and external pressure from new (or potential) market entrants. That is why antitrust laws make absolutely no economic sense: they serve primarily to increase the power of government (in the guise of pretending to serve the “public interest”).
In addition to Alisa’s answer, also the possibility of betrayal. If we conspire to sell above market value and maintain this for a year or two, either of us can easily make a killing by suddenly undercutting the other without warning. If I slash my prices in half suddenly and have quietly amassed the supply to match, people will buy my things and yours will rot on the shelf, and I will have cornered the market while you find yourself unable to meet your production costs.
Aargh! Smited, and for no apparent reason.
“To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee, o Smitebot!”
I agree, but I would add to this that individualist cultures are almost universally wealthier than collectivist ones (possible exception: Japan does quite well), and that for this reason I expect the process of history to keep collectivism at bay. That said, I think this is a slow process peaks and troughs, and we’re currently on one of the descent paths.
RRS, I think your observations about responsibility are key to the entire issue.
People like to be comfortable in their lives. But comfort levels differ greatly across the spectrum of humanity, obviously, and a vast number of ordinary people feel most comfortable when they are surrounded by like- minded people who look and think as they do.
Those of us who are insistent on maximizing individual freedom often fail to realize that such a condition is not attractive to a large segment of the population, and, as we continue developing a truly global culture, there is enormous resistence to the concept of “others” being allowed to operate from a different playbook than the local or national norm.
Growing up in a culture that emphasized individuality, it was a true shock for me when, as a young man, I realized that this idea was very unusual to much of the rest of the world.
For most of human history, we lived in small groups of similar people, outsiders were rare, and foreign ideas and foreign ways were to be resisted.
Orthodoxy was the rule, and rigidly enforced.
Then along comes western culture of the enlightenment, the rights of man, the free-wheeling social and economic ideas that said there were no aristocrats, no divine right of kings, no government without consent, no taxation without representation, and, most importantly, no one set of beliefs, no state religion, no enforced orthodoxy except for the bare minimum.
This was freedom at an unheard of level, to be sure, but also a claim of personal responsibility to make one’s own way in life far beyond the historical norm.
The fact that millions of people uprooted themselves from all that they knew, and sailed off on uncertain seas, is a very valid metaphor for the movement to the new world, and the movement into a new way of living.
We fail to realize how frightening and threatening this type of culture is to a great many people who don’t have these traditions, and, in fact, don’t want them, if it means strangers can enter their land, pray to gods they don’t accept, do things in new ways that endanger their livelihood, and disrupt the old ways.
Further, many people don’t like the idea that they are on their own, responsible for themselves, expected to think and act and work without someone explaining everythng for them, and, in many cases, telling them what to do.
Picard resisted the Borg because the collective submerged and obliterated all individuality, but, for some, that immersion is a feature devoutly to be wished.
I would submit that the primary reason that so many huge government entitlement programs have such a fervent level of support among the general populace is the simple fact that it means someone will take care of them when they stumble and fall, just like family or clan or tribe or village or church would have done a few generations ago.
Collectivists play upon this all too real, and human, fear of abandonment, which is why they must so relentlessly mischaracterize a free society as uncaring, or atomized, or dog-eat-dog.
If they were to admit that free people are actually more likely to care for and support the unfortunate, as numerous studies of this question have repeatedly found, then a great prop for their entire world-view, and assertions of the continuing necessity for ever expanding state programs to care for every conceivable group suffering any misfortune, has been taken away.
We must begin again to teach the fundamental belief that ordinary people can, and should, be responsible for their own lives.
We have allowed the opposite sermon to be preached unopposed for far too long, and as we approach a cliff over the abyss of economic and social collapse to which collectivist ideology has led us, there is no time left for gentle persuasion.
We must join together to generate the will to vote their advocates out, and believers of individual rights in, and begin to dismantle the grotesque monstrosity of the modern state.
The wolves no longer howl distantly in the far woods, but are at the door, rattling the knob.
The time to act is now.
V R:
We have begun to see in the U S, Canada, and to some degree in the U K, a breaking of the ice of Passivity but no general thawing.
The time is not yet here.
What can begin, that may lead to thawing, are attacks to disclose the objectives of collectivists, how and why the objectives have been determined. So far, attacks on the means selected for those objectives have not been enough, and have absorbed most of the countervailing energies – but, of course, sapping those means will be essential.
I do not expect to see more than such attacks in my lifetime, absent some natural catastrophe or apocalypse.
On the “milk question” – trying to reduce the price of milk (by passing an edict) will reduce the future PRODUCTION of milk. Thus making it in shorter and shorter supply (and increasing the black market price over time).
As for humans and collectivism…….
The collectivist (the savage hunter-gatherer pack) instincts of humans can be overcome by their reason.
THE VERY EXISTANCE OF CIVILIZATION PROVES THIS.
Hayek (and others) stress the importance of custom and tradition in supporting what the trial and error of experience has shown to be correct.
However, when under attack from false philosophy of various sorts (and all civilizations face such attacks) custom and tradition are NOT ENOUGH.
The only good reply to false reasoning is true reasoning. Which is why Hayek’s conception of humanity is not only wrong, but is also self defeating.
If Hayek’s (David Hume without the irony?) view of humans was correct then the world would indeed be without hope – there would be no hope at all.
Although, of course, if Hayek’s view of humans (that they do not make real choices – that there is no reasoning “I”) was correct, it would not matter if humans were enslaved (indeed, strictly speaking, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to “enslave” them).
Any more that it matter that this computer is (or can be) “enslaved”.
It is only wrong to enslave an agent (a reasoning I) – indeed it is only POSSIBLE to enslave an agent (a conscious being).
It is not an imoral act to prevent a river running – by building a dam.
And would not be an imoral act to put a human being in chains – if they were not actually a “being” at all (just a flesh robot – with no capacity of self awareness, no capacity of CHOICE).
It is only wrong to prevent choices if one is dealing with a BEING – i.e. something that can make choices.
Of course, above I am only pointing at the F.A. Hayek of some philosophical writings (such as some sections of “The Constitution of Liberty”), NOT of his political writings (such as “The Road to Serfdom” – and some other sections of the “The Constitution of Liberty”).
However, it is a problem for a thinker if their philosophical and political writings are in contradiction.
“But what of the Sensory Order?”.
Well what of it?
“He who breaks a thing, to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom” (rarely a good idea to go against the words of Gandalf).
In the sense of “breaks” or “denies/violates” a PRINCIPLE.
One does not learn “why” murder is wrong by mudering people.
And one does not understand the concept of “I” (the self) by trying to “explain” it – i.e. EXPLAIN IT AWAY.
The “I” (the self) exists in-its-self – it is not an “illusion” (who would be having the illusion – another “I”?) and it is the foundation – it can not be explained away in terms of other things.
Choice exists – it is REAL.
The CHOOSER (the “I”) is REAL.
All virtue, all morality, all that is important about being human (about being a being) is bound up in this line…..
YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN TO DO OTHER THAN YOU DID.
Once that is denied everything collapses – and is worthless anyway.
The very fact of our existence (our self knowledge as a reasoning “I”) indicates our status as a CHOOSER – i.e. our status as BEINGS.
“You sound like Descartes”.
In this Descartes was correct.
Nor (contrary to Hayek) is there any collectivist political implication in accepting that humans are beings (i.e. can choose – something that the “Castesians” had in common with the Aristotleian Schoolmen, and with Ralph Cudworth, and also with the later “Common Sense” school).
For an example of the actual opinions of Descartes on political economy, see his letter to Elizabeth of Bohemia of 6th October 1645.
“God has so established the order of things, and has joined me together in so close a community, that if everyone were to relate everything to himself and had no charity for others, he would still work for them as much as was in his power. provided he exercised prudence, and especially if he lived in a age in which morals were not corrupted”.
The “he” is not God (as fools suppose – please look at the above paragraph carefully) the “he” is individuals themselves.
They can not choose to do things that are physically impossible and actually do them – physical reality does exist (God’s universe).
Also unintended consquences exist – a careful businessman may only intend his own benefit, but as long as the principle of justice (to each his own) is followed then his work (if he chooses to be prudent) is for the benefit of all.
This is because it is (for example) not in the interests of the butcher to poison his customers (and so on).
Descartes did not “invent” these things (any more than Adam Smith more than a century did), they are the correct results of human reasoning.
Just as it is rational that an economy will be more efficient if morals are not corrupted (if you can rely on a person’s handshake – rather than do everything with an army of laywers, or armed retainers at your back).
Jon Huntsman (senior) knows that as well as any philosopher.
Belief in human agency (in the existance of human BEINGS) neither implies a denial of the physical existance of the material universe (and the limits this places on what humans can achieve), or any denial that there are unintended consequences of human action.
But there are INTENDED consequences of human action also.
The reasoning I – from Aristotle, to Bastiat. to Menger to Mises.
Man, I wish there were a way to lift those comments of Paul Marks right off the site, without re-typing.
Not that I concur fully. We probably have separate interpretations of the Books of Hayek, like those of Bible students.
The … principle [?] of justice given as (to each his own) seems a bit off the Marks (pun intended). Despite admiration for the scholarship and articulation of J S Mill, Hayek does not sound out for Max Utility nor as a Utilitarian. Prudence is not enough.
True – Hayek is not a strict follower of J.S. Mill, just as Mill was not a strict follower of J.B.
Hayek seems more like a follower of David Hume – but of a Hume interpreted as meaning everything he wrote. Perhaps he did, but then……
Such a Hume is not a good guide.