http://www.dejasay.org/

Can you point me to the De Jasay work you’re speaking of? Sounds interesting - I remember being very intrigued by an essay of his I once read, but I never followed up on it.

Surely counter-economics and counter-institutions are the forms of direct action that hold the most promise. Indeed, these forms of “secession from the system” allow for a market, not only in anti-state approaches, but also analyses - the kind of ambidexterity that you and I seek. I also hope they will deny the establishment institutions the stability in which they thrive, thwarting the rationality of the social system to the point where management and planning are impossible.

Brad:

I really liked your answer to Araglin. At some point, we have to hope that the moral calculus of deciding on reform strategies becomes too expensive, and people are willing to liquidate the old system’s obligations to themselves and seek fundamental reorganization. Call me a radical, but I do think that attacking primary privilege is the quickest way to destroy popular buy-in to the system, where people see that there is no point to operating under the old rules and give up looking for justice under it.

Thanks for your response. I certainly agree with your analysis insofar as the exercise of the privilege iself involves the violation of the rights of others, but where “exercising the privilege” simply amounts to incumbents continuing to engage in their lawful, non-rights-violating business (now perhaps more profitably or with greater bargaining power due to the erection of legal barrier to entry), I would want to argue that any constraints on how incumbents may engage in their business could only be rightly applied against those culpable for the creation or continued existence of the exclusionary privilege.

To continue with your example, unless the act of selling pharmaceuticals within the context of a cartelized market can be classified as per se an instance of the actual or threatened initiation of force, it’s not clear how the the repeal or evasion of secondary, ameliorative measures requiring that pharmacists sell birth control or whatever (imposed on all incumbents, not just “guilty” ones) could be considered an unambiguous “increase in statism.”

Thanks,
Araglin

Thanks for the link. For all I know, Roderick may be working under some constraints imposed by the Copyright Nazis.

I think the principle would still apply even to the kinds of people you mention, because the secondary intervention would only affect them insofar as they were beneficiaries of privilege. It would be a constraint specifically on the exercise of a previous privilege granted by the state. Whether or not they were complicit with the earlier grant of privilege, or even opposed it, does not alter the fact that to the extent they exercise that privilege a constraint on its exercise is not a net increase in statism.

You’re probably right. The difference probably corresponds to C. Wright Mills’ upper and middle levels of the power structure. The top level is the Power Elite per se, and tends to be both long-term and cohesive (along with the Fed and finance capital, I’d include Thomas Ferguson’s entire coalition of “capital-intensive, export-oriented” firms that’s dominated American politics since FDR). The middle level is more ad hoc, and corresponds more closely to the liberal idea of interest group pluralism.

I’m not real familiar with Roepke. The sentiments expressed in the linked article sound a lot like the Catholic Distributists. I certainly agree that large institutions are not conducive to freedom or genuine democracy. That’s one reason the founding generation in this country so feared standing armies. It wasn’t just because of the tyrannical use they could be put to domestically. It was because of their internal culture. At the time, they were one of the few (and by far the most prominent) large-scale, hierarchical institutions in a society made up almost entirely of self-employed farmers and tradesmen. The internal culture of hierarchy and obedience in a standing army was a breeding ground for what they regarded as utterly “un-American” kind of authoritarianism. In their view, a free society couldn’t be preserved by a population taking orders from other people. Kind of ironic, then, that most Americans today earn their livelihoods in a way that involves taking orders from a superior for almost half their waking hours, and have to pee in a cup on command. I don’t really think the boys with the flintlocks at Lexington Green would even have considered political arrangements worth fighting over in a society with such economic arrangements. With civil society organized on such an authoritarian basis, who even needs political tyranny?

Don’t mistake my predilection for rational choice/game theory as a modeling framework for advocating Statist reform. Indeed, it was De Jasay’s work and his Rational Choice critiques of contractarianism that utlitmately led me to abandon belief in minarchism and “beltway libertarianism” in the first place.

That being said, I’m not at all hostile to dialectical methodology in terms of libertarian class theory and state capitalism expoitation. It’s just that I don’t think it’s fully explanatory or predictive. Truth be told, both frameworks have limitations. If you are a libertarian theorist, it would be profitable, I believe, to be “ambidextrous” in terms of methodology. JMHO.

In terms of getting “radical,” i would argue that appealing to dialectical arguments to reform Statist institutions out of existence have little chance of succeeding, at least in any applicable time frame. Achieving a critical mass of “class consciousness,” or relying on a “glorious day of revolution,” or waiting on some Malthusian Level Event(Peak Oil) to collapse the State all exhibit a degree of passive-aggressive traits. The only direct action is “counter-economics.” This is where Konkin get’s it right, IMO. Counter-economics can have a broad meaning, to include Counter-Institutions. There is nothing stopping people from opting out of the State and organizing under their own anarchist institutions. The problem is when the State comes calling to crush it with force. Protection against the state is one good that markets seem to have trouble supplying.

Regarding:

“If one is the recipient of what Kevin is calling a primary privilege, may one (consistent with the canons of left-libertarianism) seek to evade a secondary, ameliorative measure?”

That’s an excellent question. What I would suggest is that case by case uncertainty over this set of concerns will (and ought to) be treated as economic risk — both analytically and in terms of crafting personal responses.

One “may” do as one wishes. Perhaps we ought to be asking which behavior is smarter rather than what is “allowed”. Everything I want to do revolves around making smarter behavior cheaper for as many peopleas possible. Everything else is elaboration on that.

I suppose you’re right about how Revolution would have the felicitous effect of solving some of the thornier questions of prioritization and scheduling, but until that glorious day comes, won’t the same problems reproduce themselves when we, as actors operating within the current, state-capitalist system, attempt to engage in practical reasoning as to which measures we may licitly evade via counter-economic direct action and the like?

If one is the recipient of what Kevin is calling a primary privilege, may one (consistent with the canons of left-libertarianism) seek to evade a secondary, ameliorative measure? And, does the answer to the foregoing question depend to any extent upon whether one bears any moral responsibility for the imposition and/or continued existence of the primary privilege?

@Dain

Thanks for your kind words. I’ve rarely if ever managed to say everything I wanted to say, let alone what someone else wanted to say.

WorldCat link for the book:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/38566023

But yeah, Roderick should really put it online for real.

I remember hearing about how in Holland, women who choose to have babies and stay out of the work force are thought to be “stealing” from the state which has educated them; presumably they ought to do something more with their lives, to “give back”. Under this dialectical libertarianism, is the answer to indeed encourage them somehow to compensate “society” for this privelege?

Assume for a moment there was no compulsory schooling in the above situation.

And, of course, the state crowds out alternatives, which has the effect of moving people toward statist “privelege” such as student loans, etc.

David Friedman has a point, insofar as the social choice dimensions of the politicized society encourage people to seek pre-emptive privelege because they know others will if they don’t. A depressing situtation.

I’m reposting this comment, in somewhat modified form, from Charles Johnson’s post which you referenced. Unfortunately, I made this comment initially after the threat had more or less died, and wasn’t able to get any substantive response. I’d be interested to know your thoughts:

One further nuance that I would want to add to your analysis of the “shackles”/”cruches” problem and the upshot thereof on strategy and the proper sequence of repealing various unlibertarian laws:

As you mentioned, it is often the case that a second coercive measure will be imposed so as to “correct” for the harm done by the first coercive measure. For example, let’s suppose that certain employers are complicit with the passage of a piece of legislation which cartelizes their industry making it harder for new entrants to break into the market. This then, makes it easier (based upon the improved bargaining position for all incumbent employers within that industry) for such employers to pay workers less and/or sell their products for higher prices.

Proper evaluation of subsequent legislation imposed in order to “restore” the balance of employers vis-a-vis workers or consumers requires a piecemeal approach. In principle (and considered in a vacuum)the second piece of legislation would be illicit under libertarian principles; however, as applied in certain circumstances, the second piece might be perfectly in accord with the libertarian conception of justice. That is, it might be perfectly acceptable for aggrieved workers and/or customers to try to achieve partial redress by invoking the second piece of legislation against those employers who were complicit in the initial passage of the first piece of legislation.

However, it would be improper for them to do so against the inadvertent, innocent beneficiaries of the first piece of legislation (i.e. other incumbent employers who were in no way responsible for the passage and retention of that legislation). While these innocent beneficiaries might be in a possession to non-coercively exploit workers and/or customers based on the legal privilege created by the first piece of legislation, that would not justify those exploited thereby in using the second piece of legislation to coercively end that exploitation…

The upshot of this point is that, when considering the repeal of the secondary measure, it is not possible to consider those benefited from the primary measure as a homogeneous, uniformly-culpable class — therefore, to repeal the secondary measure would at the same time be an “increase of statism” and a “decrease in statism,” depending upon which particular interactions would be subjunctively effected be the proposed repeal. The only case in which one could consider the repeal of a secondary measure an unambiguous “increase in statism” would be if there were no innocent beneficiaries of the primary measure. Would you still be as keen on mandating that a particular pharmacist provide even drugs about which he has some ethical issue when that same pharmacist also is a tireless supporter of the dismantling of the cartel apparatus from which he inadvertently benefits?

Thanks,

Araglin

Similarly, there’s no reason for institutions to fundamentally change when they can simply adopt a policy and retain their essential structure and ends. Because of this, I think the radical position simply maintains a fundamental threat that allows for the greatest possible change, with the final goal being the destruction of these institutions as self-perpetuating fiefdoms (even if that means playing nice). At some level, we have to ask whether the institutions are even designed to serve us, or whether that service is a grudging price they pay to maintain power and control. And if it’s the latter, why have it as our end goal to keep them around?

If one is determined to approach this issue in a radical sense - and this seems to be what Carson is suggesting vis a vis class analysis - then rational choice is just not sufficient, IMHO. It treats institutions as a given, rather than what their proper position in society is: an ultimately arbitrary, pragmatic solution to a common problem, nothing more. Radicals must appeal to individuals as the constituents of these institutions who must exercise their sovereign power to dissolve them and render them empty abstractions at will.

That said, there’s bound to be a mix of agendas in any anti-establishment movement, and I agree with accomplishing what’s possible. If some people want to restructure existing institutions to better fit in a free society, I say let them. What I don’t agree with is limiting the analysis and the goal simply because that’s the most achievable. Radicals set the direction that things move, and moderates follow.

And personally, I think we could do a lot worse than attacking formal institutions as such, but I acknowledge the creeping primitivism of that sentiment some find distasteful.

Beyond that, though, there are a lot of junior partners who resemble David Friedman’s description. Pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, eco-warriors, gender warriors, etc. all take their shots at controlling the beast, but I don’t think that they all qualify as part of the ruling class, even though some (like doctors) clearly are net beneficiaries of state intervention. I don’t think that most of them are conscious of the nature of the beast - the core group most certainly is.

What would be your assessment of the economic ideas outlined in this article from John Zmirak?

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/imagining_a_future_for_conservatism

Are you very familiar with Wilhelm Ropke?

As I had posted previously, I was somewhere at the nexus of Anthony De Jasay and Left-Rothbardianism, which, I guess, technically, means I would tend to favor Rational Choice/Game Theory as a framework for modeling libertarian theory as opposed to a purely dialectical treatment of libertarian class theory. I’m not an ideologue on the matter, but a purely dialectical framework would tend to gravitate toward “conspiracy theories” IMHO. LRC is the perfect example, I believe, of “dialectical libertarianism” in full force.

In the Social Sciences, Rational Choice/Game Theory has gained in popularity at the expense of the “dialectical method” for modeling social institutions and interactions.

Nevertheless, there is merit in a dialectical treatment of libertarian class theory. Rothbard’s fusionism with the New Left is an example of this. However, I believe it’s a mistake to rely purely on a dialectical framework for libertarianism.

Then again, not being a professional academic, is it naivety to think I can go, say, 2 parts Rational choice/1 part Dialectical to synthesize my own framework of libertarianism, in the process, convincing no one but myself…?