See also:
- C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” and Misesian Dualism
- Engineers’ Syndrome
- The Trouble with Libertarian Activism
Mises blog. Archive comments below.
In my 2006 article The Trouble with Libertarian Activism, I criticized the views of minarchist “Libertarian” Carl Milsted. He has a followup piece, “Bridging the Two Libertarianisms,” in Liberty magazine’s December 2009 issue.
In my earlier piece, I had stated:
In any event, the appeal to utilitarianism is problematic on several fronts. It is, first and foremost, ethically bankrupt because it is an unproven, and indeed, false, assertion that it is justifiable to rob one man if the robbery benefits others. It is also economically incoherent because the subjective and ordinal nature of value makes it impossible even in principle to ever determine whether a given invasive action results in a “net” benefit or “surplus” (see on this Rothbard’s Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics).
In his recent article, Milsted disagrees with this. Why? Because “empathy exists.” Wow. Demonstrating his lack of understanding of Austrian economics or its dualist view of the nature of science, mired in the scientism and monism of engineers‘ syndrome, he writes:
There is no neatly ordered set of preferences. Indecision and buyer’s remorse are common phenomena. Successful advertisers and car salesmen build their careers on exploiting this limitation of human thought and praxeology. So why should I reject common sense in favor of an abstract philosophy based on demonstrably flawed premises?
The fact that there is empathy, and that people are more or less successful at understanding the motives and values of their fellow men does not mean that “The Austrian model of ordered preferences and diminishing marginal utility … is a crude model of human decision making.” Nor does it imply that “common sense” is somehow opposed to the basic and undeniable insights of Austrian economics into the logical structure of human action.
Milsted goes on:
But even were I to accept the anarcho-Austrians’ argument and reject all asymmetric moral calculations, I would have to reject the Zero Aggression Principle as well and opt for pacifism. Self-defense is usually an asymmetric application of force. Restraining a shoplifter is not the equivalent of shoplifting. Pulling a gun on a burglar is not equivalent to burgling.
I am not opposed to “asymmetric” moral calculations–I realize that it is impossible to ever have a “symmetrical” one and even if you had one, or one in which the beneficiaries gained more than the victim of a given redistributionist poilcy, that would not make it just: theft is immoral, even if the recipient of it gains. Prohibiting aggression does not imply pacifism. It permits force used in self-defense and retaliation. But it does not permit the aggression that Milsted wants the state to commit.
[Mises cross-post]
Comments (13)
PirateRothbard
“Prohibiting aggression does not imply pacifism.”
I’m just curious, do you have any writings on pollution?
It seems to pollution is one area where agression is justified. I drive a car, spew toxins in the air and they end up in your lungs.
But as tough as that is, the alternative is to abandon industry completely. So while it may always be wrong to steal, even if you plan on doing some restitution, I am not sure it is always wrong to pollute if you are willing to restitute.
Published: October 21, 2009 3:55 PM
Ohhh Henry
If you rob one person in order to benefit another then even if it could be morally justified and if it could be proven that there is an overall benefit to society, it is still a dead-end strategy. The robbed persons eventually stop acquiring wealth peacefully because to do so is to invite robbery. They either join the robbers, they flee, or they go underground. The former beneficiaries of the stolen wealth end up worse off than before because once there is no more stolen loot to live off of, they find themselves without the skills, the attitude or the contacts needed to improve their lives.
Therefore, there is no utilitarian justification for robbery, even if you ignore the objections of Rothbard.
In practice this means that once you start confiscating a little bit of wealth, it causes a small number of the victims to slow down or stop acquiring wealth. To restore the cash flow to the welfare programs it requires an increase in the level of confiscation. And so on until the wealth of the society is entirely exhausted through a combination of taxes, inflation, brain drain, capital flight, and war.
I think this can be seen in the history of the city of Rome. The number of recipients of free bread became greater and greater, accompanied by greater and greater taxes, inflation and war until there was no more source of government revenue which could keep the population of Rome in the lifestyle to which it was accustomed and the city was sacked and became almost completely depopulated.
Published: October 21, 2009 3:58 PM
J. H. Huebert
Milstead’s piece says we need government to use aggression sometimes where the costs outweigh the benefits. Here’s his attempt to illustrate why we need government aggression sometimes:
Milstead gives no reason to believe that these situations actually exist, or at least that aggression is the best way to solve them. How could he not know that human starvation, where it exists, is the product of governments, not of insufficient taxation of rich people? How could he not know that private owners of nuclear plants would have more than sufficient incentives to avoid a disaster given the destruction of their own property this would cause and the tort claims they would face?
Even if he could think of some legitimate tough cases — where it seemed like the use of aggressive force would avoid some harm that somehow seems much greater — this wouldn’t mean we should have a government empowered to use aggression in those cases. Of course government will see every case as a case in which it must intervene for the greater good. It would never limit itself to the rare (?) cases where Milstead deems it appropriate.
Published: October 21, 2009 4:01 PM
Inquisitor
Seems like a faux-intellectual to me. If he think empathy refutes Austrian premises he is dumber than a block of wood.
Published: October 21, 2009 5:03 PM
Slim934
There is no neatly ordered set of preferences. Indecision and buyer’s remorse are common phenomena.
This is correct. It is impossible to quantify preferences.
Successful advertisers and car salesmen build their careers on exploiting this limitation of human thought and praxeology.
This is true insofar as we assume that advertisers/car salesman can constantly fool people all the time and no one wises up to the scam. We have no theoretical reason to assume this is always the case, so we should not assume it to be the rule.
So why should I reject common sense in favor of an abstract philosophy based on demonstrably flawed premises?
Hummina what? Where the heck did this come from? His premises do not in the least lead to his conclusions. It is true that people make wrong decisions; that demonstrated preference does not mean an actor always makes a choice he is happy with. But how on earth does it follow that utilitarianism automatically becomes more reasonable than subjectivism? His argument makes no sense.
Published: October 21, 2009 7:30 PM
Peter
Given a choice between taxing a billionaire and letting poor people starve, I’ll choose the tax.
But why does he only apply this to poor people in the same political jurisdiction as himself? E.g., there are plenty of poor people starving in Bangladesh, for instance; if the choice is between taxing billionaires and “letting” people starve, surely the billionaires should be taxed sufficiently to feed everyone on Earth…but then there’d be no more billionaires, and you’d have to start taxing the millionaires, and then the thousandaires…and pretty soon Milstead would be one of those starving poor people…
Published: October 21, 2009 7:34 PM
Jay Lakner
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Given a choice between taxing a billionaire and letting poor people starve, I’ll choose the tax.
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The shortsightedness of people who use examples like this really gets under my skin. On the face of it, it sounds very convincing. However if you look at the total effects of a taxation like this you realise it’s not so simple to determine whether there is any net value gained.
First let’s look at the ‘seen’ effects: (note: B was left blank intentionally)
A. You tax a billionaire $X to give to starving people.
B.
C. The starving people spend $X on food.
D. The producers of that food receive $X in revenue.
E. The profits gained allows the producer to hire more employees and to boost production.
F. More people are employed.
G. More items are produced.
Sounds great doesn’t it? You feed the starving, create employment and increase the number of goods in society. People who advocate taxing billionaires to feed the poor use exactly this sort of justification for their proposal.
However, if we look at the ‘unseen’ effects, things suddenly don’t seem so clear:
1. You tax a billionaire $X to give to starving people.
2. That’s $X less the billionaire has.
3. That’s $X less the billionaire will invest.
4. That’s $X less a productive business will recieve for its operations.
5. Less people will be employed.
6. Less goods will be produced.
The net effect on society is virtually impossible to determine at this point.
Now let me go back and place in point B for the ‘seen’ effects:
B. The government hires employees who take the $X from the billionaire and redistributes it to the starving people.
Let me expand on this:
– The extra government employees need to be paid $Y for their services.
– Their payment is extracted out of the $X being collected.
– The starving people therefore end up receving $X-$Y.
So now let me go back and revise points C through G:
C. The starving people spend $X-$Y on food.
D. The producers of that food receive $X-$Y in revenue.
E. The profits gained allows the producer to hire more employees and to boost production.
F. More people are employed.
G. More items are produced.
In the ‘seen’ effects, $X-$Y goes towards extra employment and production.
In the ‘unseen’ effects, $X goes towards extra employment and production.
The taxation of the billionaire results in less productive employment and also less production of needed goods. Therefore, now there are even more poor people in society and less total goods produced to share around (which means the poorest will have to miss out).
The existence of paid government employees to oversee the taxation and the redistribution to starving people automatically ensures that the net effect on society must be negative.
(Of course, the billionaire could have made a poor investment decision, but that is unlikely – billionaires become billionaires in the first place because they make far better investment decisions than everyone else)
However, even in the absence of these government administrative costs (for example if the billionaire freely donated his money to feed the starving), it is still virtually impossible to determine if there is any net benefit to society.
The amount of money he donates to them is precisely how much less money is available to businesses that would give those starving people permanent employment. (which could result in the eradication of the starving people problem)
I simply cannot see how the proposed taxation can be economically justified.
Rather than forcibly confiscating the property of individuals, a better policy would be to abolish minimum wage laws so that society always sits on close to full employment at all times. Everyone would have an income and therefore nobody would starve.
I’m guessing that Milstead doesn’t even consider the question of whether starvation would even exist in the absence of such laws.
Published: October 21, 2009 9:14 PM
J. H. Huebert
Peter says: “But why does he only apply this to poor people in the same political jurisdiction as himself?”
Well, he doesn’t. (This is the problems with talking about a piece that isn’t online.) He thinks we need to send troops into Darfur, for example. But you make a good point — why stop there? He has no principled reason for doing so, as far as I can tell.
He also seems to presume that his proposed interventions will succeed, not create bigger problems than they solve, etc.
Published: October 21, 2009 9:27 PM
David Bratton
@Slim934
“There is no neatly ordered set of preferences. Indecision and buyer’s remorse are common phenomena.”
“This is correct. It is impossible to quantify preferences.”
But that’s not precisely what he said. No doubt he knows that preferences cannot be quantified. But he is also claiming that preferences cannot be ordered, and in that he is wrong. Perhaps he is missing the insight that the only preferences which matter in an analytical sense are those that have been demonstrated through action. Indecision doesn’t factor in once a choice has already been made.
Published: October 21, 2009 9:58 PM
Matthew
PirateRothbard,
Walter Block has done a lot of work on free market environmentalism. He’s written a book and articles, and you can find MP3s and videos about it on Mises.org.
Published: October 21, 2009 11:04 PM
Ribald
I had an economics professor at one time that informed the class that the free market is both optimally efficient and optimally fair, but that the definitions of efficient and fair are different within the scope of free market theory than the casual definition we are familiar with.
Efficient means Pareto efficient, which means that it is impossible to make one party better off without making another party worse off. This is often the subtext, if not the text itself, of objections to market intervention. Tax the wealthy, and all you’re doing is playing a shell game and paying for the game on top of it….or so the argument goes.
Fair? In the scope of economic theory, fair means that demand and supply are balanced. Those who are not willing and able to purchase goods do not contribute to demand, regardless of how much they need goods. It has simply been assumed that their needs would be met by charity, absent market intervention.
Good arguments exist that contest both of these assumptions. We know that the economy is not a zero-sum game; there are plenty of places where moving money from one party to another will result in a net benefit to the economy, even after the expense of managing the enterprise (which is why we have such a thing as a financial industry). That the economy is already Pareto efficient is a poor argument against intervention. Rather, say that a freely operating financial sector is a more competent money-mover than the government can be.
Can charity meet the needs of the have-nothings in a completely free market? It’s difficult to make this assumption or to show that it is a bad assumption to make, except to say that, as of now, charity is far too little to meet their needs.
Lastly is the ever-nagging issue of security in the free market. Both Milsted and Kinsella acknowledge that self-defense is a necessary use of force, but one must acknowledge that there are those without the means to defend themselves, and that there is no innate moral code by which self defense is moderated. There is also a clear need to enforce the terms of contracts by some force, or else such agreements would be empty and meaningless. This is an area where arguments have been particularly thin and insubstantial, despite the supposed nuance of opinions held.
Published: October 22, 2009 12:55 AM
Jay Lakner
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Can charity meet the needs of the have-nothings in a completely free market? It’s difficult to make this assumption or to show that it is a bad assumption to make, except to say that, as of now, charity is far too little to meet their needs.
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This line of logic completely ignores the question of whether or not charity is even required in a completely free market.
In a completely free market, minimum wage laws do not exist. If a starving individual was desperate enough for food, would they not walk into the closest cafe or restruant and offer to wash dishes for a day just for a couple of cheap meals?
I really find it difficult to see how anyone could actually “starve”.
Offer a business labor for virtually no pay and you will get hired.
In a free market, unemployment is virtually zero.
I could imagine desperate people offering their services for very low wages just to get by. If they continue looking for better employment, they should be able to get by until they find a reasonable wage somewhere. Afterall, if unemployment is zero, then businesses will be in competition for labor.
The fact that charity *does* exist is an added bonus to those who are desperate. But I fail to see why the assumption needs to be made that charity needs to exist in the first place.
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Lastly is the ever-nagging issue of security in the free market. Both Milsted and Kinsella acknowledge that self-defense is a necessary use of force, but one must acknowledge that there are those without the means to defend themselves, and that there is no innate moral code by which self defense is moderated. There is also a clear need to enforce the terms of contracts by some force, or else such agreements would be empty and meaningless. This is an area where arguments have been particularly thin and insubstantial, despite the supposed nuance of opinions held.
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Advocates of anarchy do not need to demonstrate how defense will work in their system. Nobody truly knows how society will solve their security needs. Enough arguments have been made about how it *could* possibly work to show that it is indeed plausible.
I am certain that any arguments made about what clothing fashions will be in style for the next 50 years would also be particularly thin and insubstantial. Nobody truly knows what fashions will take society’s fancy. But is that a reason to elect a clothing czar or a delegation of clothing experts to determine what everyone should wear for the next 50 years?
Central planning simply does not work. Yet many critics of anarchy insist there should be some infallible centrally planned out solution to the security question before you could consider anarchy as a viable possibility.
Does security effectively work in the current system?
In my opinion, no.
Does one therefore need to prove that it would work in an anarchic system before anarchy can be considered viable?
In my opinion, no.
Published: October 22, 2009 6:27 AM
George
Just curious; what do you think of Heathian anarcho-capitalism or a minarchy where there are no restrictions on the right to leave to another minarchy?
Published: October 22, 2009 10:32 AM