Hudson Valley LP Blog

Many have noted how presidential conventions today have little or no resemblance to those before the 1970's. Primaries now determine the presidential candidate; the convention is a scripted event. This is a victory for the little guy. The individual voter has more control over the process than previously. As a result, there is more interest in primaries and the news surrounding them than previously. This continues a historic shift towards empowering individual citizens: consider the direct election of senators, women's suffrage, and of course the abolition of slavery.

On the other hand the changes have not apparently resulted in an improvement in the quality of government itself. The Bush II administration has brought us to a new low in individual rights, freedom from excessive taxes and debt, and freedom from war. This year's candidates give little cause for optimism in any of these areas.

In fact a simultaneous counter-trend can be observed: the deficiencies in our governmental structure have become more pronounced, more evident, yet more often tolerated as inevitable by the electorate. Incumbent candidates are ever less often removed in an election. Legislation is driven by campaign contributions from, and favors to, special interest groups, not by the interests of individual voters.

Perhaps we are repeating the ancient Greek experience: democracy leads to tyranny and finally to autocracy.

Clearly, self-rule is a work in progress. Libertarians have at least some advantages over others engaged in the political scene. We tend to know more about the advantages of the market and of individual choice in governing our daily affairs. We can thus propose real alternatives to the status quo.

One term used for the status quo is representative democracy. Some libertarians such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe have focused on the limitations of democracy. Let me instead focus here on the first word, representative. I seriously doubt that direct democracy would give special interests much power over law-making. It is precisely because we use representatives that law-making has become a factory process, endlessly grinding out laws to satisfy every group constituency while leaving the individual citizen ever more enslaved by these laws.

This is not to say that I regard democracy, in the sense of majority rule, as harmless. Even a direct democracy cannot be expected to protect minority rights absent the will to do so on the part of most citizens. Nor has the majority often exhibited such a will. That is why we have relied on a Bill of Rights to protect our rights, with limited success. Alternatives to even direct democracy must be considered.

To sum up, three things that we can do as observers and activists are:

(1) Make use of the historical trend towards empowering the grass roots;
(2) Identify and expose the causes of the deficiencies in our system;
(3) Propose specific alternatives that make greater use of micro-economics and individual choice in government, with a reduced use of force.

Vacationing and family reunions have kept me from posting recently. There has been much activity elsewhere, though. Two items I found particularly interesting:

A Foundation for Panarchy

Global Warming, Global Myth

I have made comments along the lines of the panarchy idea, calling it polyarchy. It turns out that both words have been used before, and panarchy, not polyarchy, best conveys my intended meaning.

Libertarians tend to be divided on certain hard questions: abortion, national defense, immigration, and anarchy vs. minarchy are some of these. This last question is addressed by the panarchy idea.

Recall that the idea is for legal jurisdictions to be privately organized. An individual could engage a corporation to indemnify him against the misbehavior of others. The company would be both an insurer and prosecutor of crimes and torts against him. These companies' operations would often overlap geographically, so that the analogy with states within our union would not apply exactly. Among the advantages of this system: competition would tend to lead to efficiency; each jurisdiction could police the others, so that even the enforcers would have to obey the law; there could be diverse approaches taken to controlling crime, so that competition could lead to improvements in the means employed.

The legal underpinning to all of this would be contract law. An individual joining a jurisdiction would have to agree to abide by decisions taken against him by his own organization, and thus could know in advance the sorts of penalties or confinement to which he might be subject if convicted of a misdeed.

But let's ask the hard questions: why should all of these companies cooperate with each other? And what is to prevent one of them from becoming far stronger than the others and intimidating everyone? These are questions that the proponents of anarchy must confront.

Here is a suggested answer, release 1.0. First, as to why they should cooperate. I suggest that there be a one-branch government, consisting of a judicial branch with no real enforcement powers. Popular vote and judicial precedent would be used to provide a body of law to be used by arbitrators handling disputes between different jurisdictions. To the extent that different jurisdictions are able to agree to use different rules to settle a given type of dispute, they would be released from review by the courts. The possibility of such review would hang over them as an incentive to agree to their own solutions.

Second, why should any private jurisdiction take the central courts seriously if the courts have no real power? I use an analogy here. Our laws work as well as they do primarily because we consent to follow them. This works so long as the laws reflect a consensus view within society. There is not enough power within the police to control citizen behavior when the gap between law and popular will becomes too large: witness the drug war. By the same token, if virtually all of the corporate jurisdictions understood the need for central courts to handle knotty disputes that evade consensus, and stood willing to confront any rogue jurisdiction that refused to acknowledge a court's ruling, then no additional enforcers would be needed.

But what if one jurisdiction became so strong that it could face down all of the others? This is another hard question, I think. I do not think that we could rely on individual or corporate behavior to prevent this; it happens all the time. Who would lose the most when this occurred? The courts themselves, I think. They would be embarrassed to lose their authority. They would be like a king confronting a particularly strong general. Kings have traditionally played off one general against the others to prevent any one of them from becoming too strong. In the same way, the courts might be given one additional role: to limit the size of individual jurisdictions, in terms of membership and of total budget. Again, their limits and orders would be enforced by the other jurisdictions.

Would all of this work? I don't know. Let's not try it until we have tried to perfect it. Maybe by release 5.0 we may have something.

At a recent family gathering, the host described how impressed he was by a book he had read recently on the Pilgrims: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. I gathered that he was impressed how much more difficult everything was for the settlers than he had been previously been taught, and that he had been brought up short by the disparity between this account and his earlier school history lessons.

A brief history of Thanksgiving may be found here .

An experience such as that of my host may reach the level of a significant emotional experience. It was such an experience during the period of stagflation of the late 1970's that made me feel betrayed by my college economics courses of the 1950's. Samuelson's Economics, based on Keynes ideas, did not contain the word stagflation. Even more, the book had exuded confidence that every problem faced by the economy as a whole could be successfully addressed by some appropriate government action. During the 1970's, many more people than I were awakened to the reality that this was nonsense. This was the event that started my own journey to libertarianism.

A project management course I once attended included some psychological content thought to be useful to managers. I particularly remember the lesson that adults do not readily change their habits and beliefs; that in order for change to occur in an adult, the person must have a "significant emotional experience". It seems to me that many such experiences faced by adults take the form of a betrayal. A common reason for the feeling of betrayal is the realization that one has been deliberately deceived.

Every LP member must feel the weight of the uphill battle that we wage. Political change requires a change of heart by vast numbers of adult voters. Such change requires, then, a great many significant emotional experiences; at least one per voter. But the issue is clearly not hopeless, for there has in fact been a tremendous amount of deliberate deception in our education as well as in what we have heard and read since we left school.

Many of our libertarian writer-heroes have written books addressed to the ordinary reader, and other books designed to help us insiders appeal to outsiders. A few of these are Harry Browne, Mary Ruwart, David Boaz, Murray Rothbard, Morris and Linda Tannehill, Michael Cloud, and many others. I invite you to add your favorites in the comments. It would be presumptuous for me to try to add much to what they have said. Let me repeat a comment from one of my best teachers, however. He found value in the Socratic method of instruction. As he described it, it involves letting the student discover, "remember", or believe that he has discovered or remembered the truth. In other words, it is not simply instruction or argumentation, but a more subtle game. The main gambit is to ask questions of the student. A superior teacher can, in this way, lead the student towards discovery. A truth discovered by oneself makes a much deeper impression than one heard second hand.

One example: I recently asked someone "Why is monopoly considered to be a bad thing in the private sector but a good thing in the public sector?" I doubt that Socrates would have been impressed with me, but I can report that the question was more effective than most of the statements that I have made in similar circumstances.

A recent entry on LewRockwell.com may cause some people to reach the level of betrayal I am discussing.

Don't Talk to the Police
Don't Talk to the Police (2)

These two videos are well worth the time they require, even if you already know that they are right. Two experts will convince you that saying anything whatsoever to the police about your actions would be a mistake, and is frequently a BIG mistake.

Nowadays it is even worse. These videos do not mention that lying to a government agent, police or not, is now a federal crime. Some states may have similar laws. Using the arguments given in the videos, then, we may conclude that to talk to the police about the actions of anyone may equally be a mistake. My own rule of thumb is that I would not talk about anyone's actions to authorities without consulting an attorney first. I might even get a second opinion.

This is a long way from the childhood lesson that the policeman is your friend.

At some point, nearly every adult will be disillusioned about some aspect of government. If you happen to reach that person at the right time with an appropriate reference to the right material, that may be more effective than anything else you could have done.

Missouri was once known as the "show me" state. Its residents were supposed to be skeptics who needed reasons before they would accept the claims of others. They might be in trouble when conversing with simple folk who expect every statement that they make to be immediately accepted as gospel. When such people sense doubt in the listener they may ask "Are you calling me a liar?" and ask him to step outside to settle the issue with fists.

Public skepticism seems out of favor today. The cult of democracy has overtaken truth itself. When a majority believes something, it is now bad form to continue to express doubt in public. Ron Paul, for example, has been silenced both by the press and by his own party, and yet his message has that ring of truth that cuts through the din of propaganda.

As a minority, libertarians need to understand how truth is established and communicated. Persuasive arts are also helpful, but these do not take the place of philosophical underpinnings. I must take issue with a few of our own heroes in this respect: I find the a-priorism Mises, Ayn Rand and Hoppe wanting. As I have mentioned before, the modern tradition from Kant through A. J. Ayer and Karl Popper seems to me both more defensible and more useful to libertarians, as I will try to explain.

Suppose it is our task to comment on the merit of some claim. Truth is established in various ways depending on the intended meaning of the claim. When dealing with mathematics or with board games, the objects under discussion are symbolic. Truth is defined by formal proof, using premises and rules. These are accepted by all participants at the outset, or the game cannot proceed. I reserve the word "proof" for truth in this context. It is here that the greatest degree of agreement among participants is achieved. Mathematicians can nearly always agree as to whether a proof is valid, and chess players can similarly agree as to who won a game. The realm of the symbolic and the imaginary has been known since Kant as the a priori.

When a claim is made about physical reality, such as whether a crime has been committed, or whether fire requires oxygen, things are quite different. Logic and proof may play a role, but only a partial role. Evidence is also required. Truth beyond doubt is rare here. No matter how obvious it is that 9/11 involved highjacked planes crashing into buildings, there will always be doubters with other explanations. Physical reality is the realm of the a posteriori.

Our method attempts to benefit from the clarity of statements residing in the a priori. To isolate that part of a claim that lies in the a priori, imagine for a moment that you are writing a fictional account of a real occurrence. In order not to offend real people, you change all of the names of people and places. You may change many more details, both to improve the story and to avoid lawsuits. The logical progression must be retained, so that the point of the story is not lost. You will attempt to make as many points as possible by the use of logical deduction within the fictional account, since proof is more certain than evidence.

But now suppose that you are a trial attorney, and you want to use this fictional account as part of your courtroom argument. You must connect the characters of the story to the real world, give them real names, obtain testimony from or about them, obtain physical evidence to convince a jury that the story is not only non-fiction, but is "true beyond a reasonable doubt". If you are a defense attorney, you may create doubt by offering an alternative story that also seems consistent with the evidence. The jury decides, a verdict is rendered. Justice may or may not be done. Sometimes the guilty are acquitted or the innocent convicted. Welcome to life in the real world.

Scientists also deal in the a posteriori, but they have an advantage over lawyers. They usually deal not with isolated incidents like crimes, but with classes of phenomena. Scientists do not require that others believe what they have found in their laboratories; rather, they invite these others to duplicate their findings in their own laboratories, or to fail to do so. Even if the results can be duplicated, the claims are not proved. A better word is verified. As Popper famously pointed out, an a posteriori claim cannot be proved, it can only be falsified through counter-evidence.

A few examples: Newton's laws of motion were introduced both with a rich story that included the differential and integral calculus, and rich evidence both from astronomy and from experiment. Darwin delayed publishing until he had both a story and rich evidence compiled during his voyage on the Beagle. Neither of these two examples satisfied all critics. Newton was challenged to account for action-at-a-distance and Darwin for the variation within species on which his theory depends. Every explanation, however successful, seems to raise new questions that it is unable to address.

Accounts of abduction by aliens sometimes have elaborate stories, but offer little or no evidence. A massive double-blind experiment to test a new drug has in the end a very small story, consisting of a few numbers in a table, attached to the hugely expensive evidence.

Now for some more topical applications of these ideas.

Von Mises Approach to Economics

Von Mises clearly preferred an a priori approach to economics. He felt no obligation to perform endless real-world studies to justify his conclusions. To obtain his conclusions through a priori reasoning without data from the real world, he had only to formulate assumptions or axioms which, together with his theory, would produce the conclusions that he wanted. Then critics could criticise these assumptions, but there would be no philosophical dispute. His assumptions regarding human action might be of this sort: businessmen tend to make market choices, within the limits of their knowledge and time constraints, in such a way as to minimize their expenses and maximize their income. Most people probably would find this assumption reasonable, though critics of the free market have spent considerable effort to show that people often make irrational market choices. I doubt that Mises was much troubled by such studies. Reason is available to everyone who wishes to use it.

The Need for Liberty

Government uses law to govern the real world. Our commentary on the application of law to the real world has two parts: considering laws as referring to a make-believe world described by the laws themselves, and applying laws to real-world situations. Logic is used in the first endeavor, evidence in the second. We agree with Popper that certainty cannot be obtained in the second endeavor. If no one can know a posteriori truth with certainty, then in particular government cannot know it. Therefore, people must always be left free to advance current understanding. If they are bound by law to current fashion, progress will stop. Truth is a moving target. Skepticism and liberty are required in order for progress to occur.

Same Sex Marriage

Some proponents of same sex marriage insist that marriage is a civil right, and that no other term, such as civil union, will suffice to satisfy the need. Shakespeare asked "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Why then the insistence on the word marriage?

Andrew Sullivan has admitted that one motive is financial. Law is written in words. If a gay couple is legally married, then the social security and other laws governing married couples (presumably) must be applied. No other word will accomplish this.

Other proponents avoid making this connection. They insist that marriage (only with that designation) is a desirable state that is being denied to them. They seem to say that the real-world nature of a relationship can be affected by the (abstract) word used to name it. This appears to contradict our story vs. evidence approach to meaning.

Would society be disadvantaged if the word marriage were used? I think so. Just as the civil rights laws of the 1960's passed for the benefit of black Americans gave rise to demands by every conceivable minority group to be given equal status in victim-hood, I see a philosophical error being committed here that could have equally negative consequences.

Words are attached to things by common usage over time, not by legal fiat. When we have evidence of a distinction in the real-world, we invent distinct terms to distinguish those things in the world of language. For legislation or a court decision to compel the use of the same term for situations widely perceived to be distinct is novel. The unfortunate lesson would be this: use political power to reshape the world by changing the meaning of our words. If in the future a group were unable change the laws, it might try to get the same effect by changing the meaning of the words in the laws. A future President Clinton might actually be able to change what the meaning of is is.

Would this controversy occur in a more libertarian society? If there were no social security, or better yet, if marriage were simply a private contract with no affect outside the family involved, no dispute would arise. In that case, gay couples could probably use the word marriage without complaint from anyone. Dictionaries might begin to list an additional meaning after the traditional one. Over time, the meaning of the word would change.