By the far the most significant error with any political, social, economic or philosophical discourse today is that all questions, issues and problems are posed by starting not from the individual but from the collective as the most significant unit in the discussion. Time and again, even among liberal and libertarian circles, hot topics are posed as any of the following: “Should we do V?”; “Should society allow X?”; “Should the Government intervene in Y”? “Should everyone be forced to do Z?”
Such a way of tackling these problems assumes that there must be an answer that is applicable to everyone. That, for everyone, either one of A or B must apply but individuals (those selfish, unfeeling, heartless and greedy morons whose interests must always be subjugated by the “good of the people”) are never able to choose which one of those they might prefer. Indeed, for libertarians and liberals to accept the false dilemma by entering these discussions results in them conceding the basic assumption of the statist opposition, that is that the individual is subordinate to the collective.
Here are some common examples. Please note that the discussion of each is not intended to resolve the issue at hand, merely to demonstrate the correct way of posing the question.
1. Should we intervene in other countries’ affairs?
Anyone attempting to answer this question is invited to argue, in the face of brutal oppression or of invasions of countries elsewhere, that either everyone must be forced to pay for or participate in “our” intervention or everyone must not. In short, a more honest way of stating the question is “should the Government confiscate the fruits of our productivity (i.e. tax) us to pay for military aggrandizement abroad?”
But why should we all have to intervene or all not have to intervene via the Government? If I believe so strongly that the aggressive violence on the part of state leaders or armies overseas is so unjust and must be repelled then what is stopping me from sending my financial help with money that I have earned to this cause? Indeed, what is stopping me from resigning from my current life and flying out to act as a freedom fighter in defence of the helpless civilians? On the other hand, if I believe that whatever is going on abroad is none of my business or I have (in my view) much greater pre-occupations at home and that my financial resources are best devoted to these why should I be taxed to fund a cause that others find important but I do not? What right does anyone else have to money that I have earned but they have not? Further, actions always speak louder than words. If you believe so strongly in something then you should be able to put your own money where your mouth is. If you are only willing to do so with other people’s money then perhaps it isn’t that much of a just cause after all?
In short, the problem should be discussed as follows. If the individual wants to support a cause abroad should he be prevented from doing so if it inflicts no violence or aggression on any other individual? If he does not wish to support such a cause then should he be forced to do so when his antipathy is similarly free of violence and aggression?
2. Should we allow the buying and selling of organs?
Again, the question is not “should we permit or ban the trade of organs?” It’s “should I be prevented or permitted by you from trading what is a part of my person or property with another individual on terms agreeable to ourselves that inflicts no violence or aggression on anyone else?” Answers on either side must therefore be directed to the question of what justifies one individual or group of individuals being able to violently enforce their point of view on others who do not share this point of view.
3. Should we regulate industry X?
The story is always the same. Something terrible happens, a plane crash, a building falls down, or someone loses their life savings through the collapse of some hair brained investment scheme. The clamour is always for us to regulate more, usually in the name of safety, to prevent such disastrous consequences from ever happening again. In practice what this means is that the Government should be permitted to tax all of us in order to more closely supervise industry X, industry X being whichever industry is deemed to have caused the unfortunate event.
As tempting as it is to launch into a discussion of the fact that regulation itself consumes valuable resources and hence is also a part of the market process, plus that regulations are often the very cause of the problems that they seek to ameliorate (or at least the existing regulations fail to detect problems that should have been obvious within their existing scope – Bernie Madoff for instance), we shall stick to the problem of how these questions should be posed correctly. If I think that industry X should be regulated then why can’t I pay, with my own resources, a consumer watchdog to keep an eye on industry X and report to me any potential problems? Or, as would more likely be the case, why do I not just refuse to purchase products from industry X and insist that, before I return as a paying customer, they must conform to the standards laid out by regulator Y? (Underwriters Laboratories is a good example of this arrangement). Should my desire to see industry X regulated allow me to command the resources of people who wish to have nothing to do with industry X, or are happy to accept its products unregulated at the price for which they are on offer?
4. Should we ban smoking in public places?
The loaded phrase in this question is “public places”, a good definition of which is as follows:
“Generally an indoor or outdoor area, whether privately or publicly owned, to which the public have access by right or by invitation, expressed or implied, whether by payment of money or not, but not a place when used exclusively by one or more individuals for a private gathering or other personal purpose.”
The problem is that most premises that are within the scope of this definition of “public place” in various pieces of legislation are not places that are paid for and maintained by public money (taxes). They are privately owned and operated places to which members of the public usually do not possess a right to enter but rather are invited to do so in order to carry out trade. Shops, bars, restaurants, gyms, etc. are all good examples of this kind of premises that are categorised as a “public place”. No one is forced to enter these places, to purchase products that are sold there or to pay for their upkeep. In short all activity that goes on there is entirely voluntary.
The question, therefore, is not whether “we” should ban smoking in “public places”. It is “should I, as an owner of private premises into which the public are invited, be forced by you and others to allow or prevent my invited visitors from smoking when you have no obligation to enter, pay for or maintain these premises?” Alternatively “why if I prefer or prefer not to smoke when I am an invited visitor to certain premises should I be not able to find premises that suit my desire accordingly when you need not enter, pay for or maintain these premises?”
In conclusion, the common element running through all of these questions is the absence of violence and aggression involved in the acts concerned. In short all of the questions can be posed as “Should X prevent Y from doing activity Z when Y carrying out activity Z inflicts no violence or aggression on X?” Posing the questions in this way strips naked all collective thinking and exposes it for what it really is: the violent enforcement of the values, tastes and morals of some people upon people who do not share the same.
Finally, the words of Ludwig von Mises in these regards are instructive:
Individual man is born into a socially organized environment. In this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is-logically or historically-antecedent to the individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty or nonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society’s autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors.
The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the uitimate end, and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless. Action is always action of individual men. The social or societal element is a certain orientation of the actions of individual men. The category end makes sense only when applied to action. Theology and the metaphysics of history may discuss the ends of society and the designs which God wants to realize with regard to society in the same way in which they discuss the purpose of all other parts of the created universe. For science, which is inseparable from reason, a tool manifestly unfit for the treatment of such problems, it would be hopeless to embark upon speculations concerning these matters. (Human Action, Scholars Edition, p. 143)
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Natural Selection, Capitalism and Government Intervention
October 31, 2012
Duncan Whitmore Commentary/Review, Morality and Ethics, Short Posts Capitalism, Choice, Consciousness, Desire, Economy, Evolution, Government, Human Action, Hypothesis, Natural Law, Natural Selection, Policy, Political Philosophy, Politics, Positivism, Science, Theory Leave a comment
The Oxford Libertarian Society, after a brief hiatus, has recently launched its “Hayek Discussion Group”, which seeks to “encourage graduate students and scholars alike to submit abstracts. We are looking for interesting and innovative works which challenge the contemporary thinking about how society should be ordered”. Below is the first submission offered by Justin E Lane, D.Phil. student in the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, followed by some comments.
Topic: “Evolution and governmental policies: How the process of natural selection can serve as a basis for fiscal policy.”
Abstract: Many scientific theories can, and have, been used to inform political thought. I would like to propose that evolution by natural selection can inform the formation of policies in capitalist economies. As the basis for this argument, I would defend that capitalist free markets are the most “well-suited” or “natural” forms of economies as they are operational analogies to natural processes. This knowledge of evolution can be particularly informative in discussions of authority and law, but this discussion will concentrate on its theoretical application to the idea of “the free market” and how, if left alone, it will act in a naturally selective manner not unlike evolutionary processes in the animal kingdoms. I would also like to raise the question, when-or if-, it is appropriate for governmental bodies to ever step in to guide this process in a more controlled selection process. In conclusion, the interplay between fiscal policy –including energy policy and resource allocation- inform national security interests and how a similar foundation can begin to inform these issues as well.
Given that Lane has not had a chance to fully elaborate these thoughts it is appropriate that the initial comments are relatively brief. Unfortunately brevity cannot mask the flaws in this attempt to justify capitalism.
At the foundation of the capitalist economy is the individual human, the being that desires, chooses and acts. He is conscious, thinking, discriminating, preferring, reasoning and the content of all of these aspects in his mind can change from one minute – nay, one second – to the next. Indeed, the processes of production, trade, consumption, saving and investment are all synonymous with progress, that they are entered because the acting individual views the result as a greater or more valuable thing than what existed before.
Natural processes, however, lack all of these features. They are purposeless, occurring and repeating while being empty of any desire or conscious thought behind them. There is no achievement or progress in moving from one stage to the next, and there is no one to say that the latter stages are any “better” than the original. Events may be regular, they may be measurable and they may be predictable or non-random but they are neither valuable nor achieving anything.
Evolution is precisely one of these inherently purposeless processes. It is neither “good” nor “bad” that natural selection occurs; it is merely an unconscious unfolding of events initiated by unmotivated influences. It doesn’t lead to anything “better” or “higher” than what proceeded before – it takes a desiring, choosing, acting human to determine this. Selection in the market economy is therefore entirely unlike natural selection – it is the result of choices motivated by desires, to achieve something that is inherently better than what preceded it.
Any justification, therefore, of a capitalist economy that relies on its alleged process of “natural selection” simply raises the question why should we desire the outcomes of these selections? Why are these outcomes “better” than any other and for whom are they better? In short, the theory presented in this abstract merely restates the very starting point of political discourse – is individual, uncoerced action “better” than action coerced by the state? This is a question that Lane, in his penultimate sentence, appears to introduce as a mere secondary issue when in reality it is the crux of the entirety of political philosophy; indeed, his position is akin to that of an historian who says “Oh I would also like to look at what happened in the past”. As he provides no justifiable answer whatsoever to the all-important issue we are very firmly still at square one.
Lane’s second error lies in the belief that scientific theories may legitimately inform political thought. If it is accepted that theories applicable to unconscious, purposeless matter are also applicable to thinking, desiring, choosing and acting humans then one accepts that other such theories and analogies may, in principle, be valid. Hence, as Lane’s abstract provides us with no reason to accept the contrary, why should they not be tried and tested?
It is the opening of the Pandora’s Box of such positivist methodology that has led to some of the most horrific and overwhelming conquests of the individual by the state. Not only did the Communist experiment in the former USSR take an eye-wateringly drawn out seventy years to be “proven” false at the cost of tens of millions of lives, but we are continuingly plagued by constant testing and tampering by so-called economists who, in their hubristic ignorance of the correct methodology for their science, continually expect the results of their interjections into human behaviour to be qualitatively and quantitatively inline with their hypotheses. And if not then why not just adjust it slightly and try again and again and again until something “works”?
Perhaps Lane is scratching the surface of a natural law justification for private property and free enterprise – that the free market is the only way that an individual can truly flourish according to his nature? May be so, but his way of describing it in the abstract is, at best, confused and, at worst, simply incorrect. If he wishes to proceed with justifying capitalism in the same vein then he should call for a swift denouncement of positivism and any analogising of the market economy to scientific or “natural” processes and turn his attention instead directly to the natural law tradition.
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