Posted on 02/20/2006 6:24:40 AM PST by Shalom Israel
In a recent article, Carl Milsted uses Rothbard to argue it would be permissible to use force to make people pay for a service of which their benefit is at least double its cost. His conclusion is that it is reasonable, and even preferable, to establish a minimalist state if it is to people's advantage.
As has already been argued by N. Stephan Kinsella, he totally misses Rothbard's point. Furthermore, he fails to show why people would not choose to voluntarily pay for services which would benefit them double, as has been pointed out by Bob Kaercher.
Even so, I wish to offer another analysis of Milsted's reasoning. His article is a good example of why statists always seem to get it wrong — and why they always fail to understand what we're talking about. The bottom line is that they fail to realize the costs of force due to their unwillingness to see the state for what it is. I will therefore use Milsted's own example to shed light on his fundamental mistake.
Milsted takes the case of national defense, which is commonly considered an institution that would face the free rider problem if supplied on the market. Argues Milsted: "suppose the majority assesses a tax on everyone to spread the burden of supporting the new defense system. This is theft of the minority. However, suppose that the economies of scale are such that this tax is less than half of what people would have had to pay for defense on their own."
That's the argument, plain and simple. If it is morally permissible to steal when the victim is compensated double, the equation seems to fit. Well, let's look into this in more detail and see if it really does.
First, consider a situation where everybody benefits, say, $10,000 on a yearly basis from being protected by a national defense. That would mean, if the premise is correct, that it would be morally permissible to force costs of no more than $5,000 on everybody.
Were it a company supplying a service worth $10,000 to each of its customers paying only $5,000 for it, this would be easy. Anyone willing to pay the $5,000 would get the service, and the costs associated with administration and so forth would have to be covered by the $5,000 paid. But Milsted argues the $5,000 should be taxed, and that makes it much more difficult.
First of all, we know state-run businesses and authorities (especially if they are monopolies) tend to be much less efficient than private enterprises. That means people in Milstedistan would get less than they would in a free market society. But even so, there is still the cost of coercion totally neglected by Milsted in his article.
Forcing people to pay for a service means there will always be someone who tries to avoid paying or even refuses to pay. So "we" (i.e., the state) need to invest in collection services to get the money. Now, let's say Murray, who is one of the people we're trying to coerce, goes out to buy a rifle and then declares that he's "anti-government, so get the hell off my property." Perhaps he even threatens to kill the collection agents. Dealing with him would take a whole lot more out of the budget, meaning there is even less to provide for the defense (which is the reason we're in business in the first place).
But that's not all. Let's say Murray won't give us the money no matter how much we ask or threaten him. We will simply have to take it by force, so we need to invest in the necessary tools and we go out to hire a dozen brutes to do the forcing. (More money down the drain … ) It is already pretty obvious we're in a very expensive business; there will not be much defense left if there are a lot of Murrays in our society.
Now imagine our hired brutes go down the street to Murray's house and knock on his door. He sticks his rifle out the window and shouts something about having the right to his property and that he will shoot to kill. Anyway, the brutes try to open his door only to find it is locked and barred. They will have to break in to finally get their hands on Murray's cash.
Our small army goes back to their van to get their tools, then returns to break down Murray's door. Going inside, they manage to avoid all the bullets Murray is firing and they tie him up and put him in the closet. They eventually find that he does not have any valuables and that he keeps his cash in a locked safe. So they have to break it to get the money.
Now we have a problem. To make this operation morally permissible, the benefit to Murray, which we know is $10,000, must be at least double the cost forced on him. The cost is now a whole lot more than the cost of the national defense; it includes administration and collection costs, hiring the brutes and their tools, as well as the broken door and safe, and the time and suffering (and perhaps medical expenses) Murray has lost while we were stealing from him. How much do you think is left from the original $5,000 to invest in a national defense? Not much.
What if Murray suffers from paranoia and therefore had invested $1,500 in an advanced special security door and $2,000 in an extra security safe? Then the total cost of simply getting into Murray's safe would probably exceed the $5,000 we are "allowed" to steal. What then? Should we break in anyway since it is a mandatory tax, only to give him a check to cover what's above the $5,000 mark? That doesn't sound right.
But on the other hand, if we just let him be, more people would do the same as Murray only to get off, and we would have a huge problem on our hands. This is a typical state dilemma: it costs too much to force money from some people, but it would probably be much more "expensive" in the long run not to. It's a lose-lose situation.
Now, what if Murray is very poor and doesn't have the $5,000? Then we would have to take whatever he's got and make him work off the rest. We need to get the $5,000 to cover our expenses of the national defense, and we have the right to take that amount from him. It could, of course, be argued he couldn't possibly benefit $10,000 from a national defense if he has no money and no property. If we trust Austrian economics, that might very well be correct; the benefit of national defense would, like any other product or service, be valued subjectively and thus the benefit would be different for each and every individual.
If this is true, it means we have an even greater problem: the state can rightfully levy costs of a maximum of half the subjective benefit enjoyed. Well, that's a task that would keep an army of Nobel Prize winners busy for a while. If possible, I wonder how much that would cost in the end.
This is the problem statists face on an everyday basis when discussing philosophy and politics. It is easy to make nice equations and formulas, and theorize on great systems and cheap solutions neatly enforced by the state. But when consistently failing to realize the costs of coercion it makes their reasoning fundamentally flawed. Just scratching the surface reveals they really have no clue whatsoever.
Per Bylund works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Send him mail. Visit his website. Comment on the blog.
He wasn't an anarchist. He was a Democrat.
My tax bill doesn't come with line items. However, the morality of extorting money for protection is the same as the morality of extorting money to pay Rupert Murdoch big farm subsidies. You seem to believe that forcible taking of another's property is okie dokie.
In any case, if you want to argue for smaller government, you should definitely do so...
If we reverted to what the founders envisioned--not counting Washington--then I'd be so ecstatic I'd have no energy left to protest for further steps toward libertarianism. But it's worth realizing that I favor total respect for self- and property-ownership, even if you do not.
anarcho-capitalism is simply not on the table
I agree--as I pointed out forcefully on a recent crevo thread: anarcho-capitalism is impossible precisely because too many humans are exactly where you are: they haven't evolved beyond the conviction that they are free to impose their wills on others, as long as they believe the cause to be just. If government disappeared tomorrow, you and millions like you would immediately start setting one up--and you and millions like you would cheerfully shoot me for standing in your way. After all, you're trying to create a civilization here!
Well, it would be if you had actually established that there was someone out there who didn't need the army. There aren't, but there are a select few out there who prefer not to pay for the things they need, I guess. Actually, everyone would prefer not to pay for the things they need, given the choice, but most people - and by "most people" I mean "everyone", for all intents and purposes - are sensible enough to realize that it really is something they need, and therefore don't try to angle for a free lunch. The free lunch anglers, on the other hand, caucus at the Denny's on the corner of Third and Main, where they all order separate checks, and they all invariably fail to leave a tip.
I agree--as I pointed out forcefully on a recent crevo thread: anarcho-capitalism is impossible precisely because too many humans are exactly where you are: they haven't evolved beyond the conviction that they are free to impose their wills on others, as long as they believe the cause to be just.
One wonders how you manage to drag yourself out of bed every morning, facing the hellish nightmare of yet another day amongst the Neanderthals. Well, I guess we all have our crosses to bear, right?
Indeed it does. And since I selected my examples from the real world, and because the world whackjob index appears to be increasing rapidly, one must do more than "call into question" your idea of private defense -- one must reject it.
You keep developing amnesia, and forgetting that every soul in America is armed--with phasers, in fact--and will fight to the last man.
Aallllllrighty then. I'm outta here.
To quote Heinlein's obituary:
To the end Heinlein retained the libertarian notions on which he had been brought up, and believed that governments had no business to be meddling in the lives of individuals. Paradoxically, perhaps, he held the discipline of military life in some awe, and in his fiction, at least, had little time for incompetence or self pity.
He was a somewhat left-wing in the thirties, partly influenced by H. G. Wells's socialist ideas. By the 1950s he had become disenchanted with socialism, and wrote the strongly conservative "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?". This shift culminated in the strongly anti-communist "Starship Troopers" in 1958. He participated in the Goldwater campaign in 1964.
The phrase TANSTAAFL comes from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," a blatantly anarchist novel that was sometimes described as libertarian, or as the "Atlas Shrugged of SciFi", which expressed his political mindset at the time.
Overall his change from Democrat to Goldwater Republican to libertarian did not represent serious change in his viewpoint; rather it reflected the way that parties shifted around him over the years. Many democrats of the 1930s found themslves republican by the 1950s because, as Reagan said of himself over the same period, "I didn't leave the democrats; the democrats left me." Like Heinlein, Reagan's and Goldwater's views were slanted heavily libertarian. (Reagan's actions in office were a mix of libertarian and statism.)
But to make a long story short, Heinlein was essentially libertarian.
To quote Robert Heinlein:
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in the long run or turns out worthless.'
If America was the free lunch you want it to be, that's how it would have turned out. Worthless.
TANSTAAFL
Naturally; you are essentially without a rational reply. The point, which I made adroitly by mentioning "phasers", is that you're postulating a world in which the US has undergone a libertarian revolution, but in which nothing else has changed, including the other nations' governments, their policies toward the United States, their technology... nothing. You are also postulating that the dissolution of the military included the utter disappearance of all classified technology, which is on the face of it absurd. To consider this hypothetical even somewhat realistically, you must also consider at the very least the following:
The impact of massive declassification of unknown technologies, including but not limited to: powerful spy satellites; highly effective launch technologies; advanced aerospace technology; advanced encryption; etc.
The impact on other nations' policy of the US dissolving its expeditionary forces and withdrawing unilaterally from Germany, South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mogadishu, and every other darn place,
The impact on other nations' policies of sudden unrestricted free trade with the United States,
The disposition of the existing US nuclear arsenal and other military assets,
The effect of arming the entire populace of the US with (at least) small arms, and
The ready availability of, say, howitzers on the open market in the US.
When you say, with no preamble, "What about when China attacks?" You're assuming that the Libertarian Bloodless Coup had no effect whatsoever on the world stage except the demobilization of US armed forces. That isn't even vaguely realistic.
The examples with which I countered are, of course, wildly hypothetical, but they should at least jog you to a realization that many things would be different in this hypothetical scenario.
You idiot -- did you forget you're carrying a phaser? You don't need to bear no steenking cross if you're carrying a phaser!
Don't tell me you didn't get your phaser yet. I'd loan you mine, but it's, uhhh, in the shop. Yeah, that's the ticket.
To quote Robert Heinlein:
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can—and must—be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly—and no doubt will keep on trying.
I, uhhhh.... The insurance company says to tell you I didn't get my phaser yet.
Ahhhh, Heinlein was good, before he became obsessed with breakfast and incest (in no particular order).
“Conversely, the other party to this "social contract" is presumably government.”
No. (I was going to go do other things but I can’t let that one go.)
Government is only a tool, an agency, an artifice, a construct, a means “to secure these rights.”
A Social Contract is an agreement among people, though it’s not necessarily formal (and may even be hypothetical, reached through a sort of consensus). In short, it’s an agreement about what rules to follow in pursuit of whatever goals the people have in mind that they wish to pursue jointly. It is the basis for legitimate government and the basis for the legitimate use of government.
The people of the United States have had maybe three (Pardon me if I’m wrong, I’m not a historian) different national governments: The government of the Continental Congress, the government of the Articles of Confederation, and the government of the present Constitution.
All three were initiated by basically the same people who were in agreement that they should be in some type of society or association with each other but took three tries to come up with a type of governance for that society or association.
From Blacks Law Dictionary:
Social contract or compact. In political philosophy, a term applied to the theory of the origin of society associatedd chiefly with the names of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, though it can be traced back to the Greek sophists. Rousseau held that in the pre-social state man was unwarlike and timid. Laws resulted from the combination of men who agreed, for mutual protection, to surrender individual freedom of action. Government must therefore rest on the consent of the goverened.
I fear I've done poor service in explaining this tonight but the main thing I want to get across is that government is an outcome of the social Contract, not a party to it.
Friend, you're the one who wants a free lunch: you want to drive on roads, but you don't want to shoulder the full cost of your usage; you want police protection, but you refuse to assume the costs; you want defence, and all manner of government handouts, but you aren't willing to bear the actual cost yourself.
If you argue that you do, because you pay taxes, then think again. The probability is about 85% that I pay considerably more than you in taxes, yet our enjoyment of various services isn't nearly proportional to our relative tax burden. About 35% of all the cost is paid by one percent of the population, which almost certainly doesn't include you... you want a free lunch.
I'm ready, in fact eager, to pay the full cost of the things I enjoy, and to refrain from paying for things I don't want. I'll gladly pay for roads, water, trash removal, protection, travel safety, in proportion to my use of those things and commensurate with market prices. You scorn the very idea, and even more humorously, you call that a "free lunch".
Heinlein didn't write that bilge.
You obviously never read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." If you're going to sound off, you should do your homework first.
"Manuel, what is your political philosophy? ..."
"... For example, under what circumstances may the State justly place its welfare above that of a citizen?"
"Prof, as I see, are no circumstances under which State is justified in placing its welfare ahead of mine."
"Good. We have a starting point."
"Mannie," said Wyoh, "that's a most self-centered evaluation."
"I'm a most self-centered person."
...snip...
"Dear Lady, I must come to Manuel's defense. He has a correct evaluation even though he may not be able to state it. May I ask this? Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?"
"Uh. . . that's a trick question."
"It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes t o the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and a bides by all consequences knows where he stands--and what he will die for."
Wyoh frowned. "'Not moral for a member of the group--'" she said. "Professor. . . what are your political principles?"
...snip...
"... I believe in capital punishment under some circumstances. . . with this difference. I would not ask a court; I would try, condemn, execute sentence myself, and accept full responsibility."
"But--Professor, what are your political beliefs?"
"I'm a rational anarchist... I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame. . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world. . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."
Pretty creepy.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about.
There's a fourth, and probably the most important one: there was a period of near-self-government that grew up among the colonies while England was convulsed by civil wars and succession crises; which must be coupled with the formation of the various colonies founded on principles of religious dissent.
Moreover, there were numerous attempts to establish representative governments within the Colonies -- the House of Burgesses in Virginia being probably the most notable example.
Most conservatives do understand it. The problem is that the Libertarian Utopia simply couldn't exist, any more than any other type of Utopia. Without a National Defense some of your concerns will go away, but you'll also have a new set of problems. And I'm not entirely convinced that the new problems won't be worse than the old ones.
You're claiming I'm a party to a contract that I never agreed to, that you can't even state with any certain detail, that provides no clear enumeration of responsibilities nor specific provision of penalties for breach... in other words, a "social contract" is nothing like a "contract". If you beleive that society around me has some prior claim over me, then go ahead and say so--but don't bastardize the language itself by calling it a "contract". The term was coined to give an air of legitimacy to a dubious concept.
Your quote from Blacks was apropos. The very notion of a "social contract" is founded on Hobbes's deeply flawed idea that humanity in its natural state is a violent struggle of all against all, and that some smart people invented government to restrain man's natural impulses. The idea is self-contradictory; he asserts first that man is essentially a predator incapable of making agreements in good faith, and then he supposes that these humans somehow did that of which they are incapable. It is further flawed by the obvious fact that nature contradicts his silly theory: even chimpanzees manage to exist without endless conflict of all against all--it is essentially not debatable that a group structure of tribes, or prides, or families, existed among our ancestors prior to the emergence of the great apes, let alone homo erectus, let alone homo sapiens.
Viewed in that light, you're postulating a contract that was originally entered into, on my behalf, by creatures lacking even rudimentary sentience. Apparently man's "natural state", according to Hobbes, was never actually found in nature.
...which brings us back to this term "social contract." You use it specifically to imply that I'm a welsher if I reject some aspect of this "contract" I'm supposedly party to. It won't work.
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