Magic Poriferan
^He pronks, too!
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2007
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A major ethical error common to libertarians and anarcho-capitalists.
Not all, but nearly all libertarians seem to subscribe to some form of symbolic, deontological ethics, which means they are profoundly apathetic toward ethical consequences, usually meaning they don’t examine any of their policies in terms of cost-benefit analysis. They are more concerned with maintaining procedures associated with arbitrated rights that whether or not the result of doing so is constructive or destructive.
One specific way this usually manifests for libertarians and anarcho-capitalists is that they support individual freedom and oppose violence. Accordingly they refuse to accept a legitimate monopoly on violence by any entity, which they usually decry as coercion (which it is). The problem is simply that humanity is vastly better off for having these violence monopolies because they make a large range of utilities possible. For example they make taxation possible, which in turn is the only thing that makes much of what we take for granted in modern life possible. They refuse to accept this on the grounds that it offends their symbolic, deontological principles. The result is that they get to maintain their principles and everyone gets to have a lower quality of life.
The few libertarians I come across who are ethical utilitarians tend to hold some rather uncharacteristic policy positions as well and are in general much more reasonable in conversation. I’ve yet to encounter an anarcho-capitalist that was an ethical utilitarian.
Now a list of common practical errors common to libertarians and anarcho-capitalists.
I’ve never met one who did not commit at least one of these errors. The great majority commit several of them, and the rare butterfly commits them all.
1: Failure to address the free rider problem.
“Road systems could be developed by for profit organizationsâ€
No, because the inability to prevent non-paying consumers means the project will never be financially sustainable. It will only be maintainable with a source of revenue not confined to its rate of use by consumers.
2: Disregard for the effect of externalities on market behavior.
“Pollution will be corrected before becoming a critical problem because markets have self-correcting signalsâ€
No, because the generation of pollution in and of itself is assigned no financial value by firms. In general, imperfect information and imperfect competition will always create externalities that undermine the markets’ ability to self-regulate.
3: Assertion that a complex probabilistic system is unmanageable.
“The economy is too unknowable for people to usefully manage itâ€
No, because probabilistic systems can be probabilistically influenced to good effect, which we do all the time like with the field of medicine.
4: Assumption that humans beings are reliably rational.
“People will never let an inferior producer succeed because they will abandon it for a better producerâ€
No, because, do I need to even explain this one? Let’s say there are mountains of evidence that human beings are quite irrational. Most people in this example may choose to stay with the inferior producer for reasons that make no economic sense.
5: Evaluating decision making entirely in terms of rationality and not at all in terms of knowledge/awareness.
“People may not always be rational, but you can’t make decisions for them because nobody monopolizes rationality, especially for an individual’s own choicesâ€
No, because it misses the fact that people can possess a larger share of knowledge, and can do so in relation to another less informed individual’s interests, creating a legitimate basis for authority over someone else’s decision.
6: Disregarding the inevitability of power aggregation, assuming power vacuums will persist.
“A free market will settle into a state of fair competitionâ€
No, because success brings power which increases the ability to attain more power which will lead to at least one competitor becoming powerful enough to then intentionally end fair competition.
7: Underestimating the cost of transaction management and incompatibility issues.
“Competing profit seeking firms would manage law enforcement more efficiently.â€
No, because the process of sorting out the interaction between each law enforcement agency and overcoming obstacles of non-standardized policy will become prohibitively expensive.
8: No plan for economies of scale with high entry costs.
“we’d have been better off leaving something like the highway system to entrepreneursâ€
No, because the initial cost of the project was likely beyond what any private firm possessed or speculated to gain, and the high, immediate cost vs the long delayed and gradual return would not be appealing to a profit seeker.
9: Asserting that self-reliant individuals are more productive.
“social spending is wasted on dependents who drain the economyâ€
No, because the more a person is responsible for their own problems, the more afraid they are of taking a risk, and the more time a person spends maintaining their standard of living, the less time they have to innovate, and the more they have to spend on daily existence the less they consume. Taking risk and innovating are significant long-term factors in the advancement of society and consumptive spending is a major factor in economic growth. If citizens were as self-reliant as many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists seem to want them to be I imagine our society would be stagnant to the point of mortality.
And here's bonus composite error (this is true because of several of the previous truths)
+: No acknowledgement of the existence of natural monopolies.
“There could never be a monopoly without the governmentâ€
No, because some projects become more effective the more inclusive they are and the larger the share they have, which means that as one private firm grows the biggest, the rational decision for consumers of other firms will be to leave and join the larger one instead, which inevitably trends toward monopoly. Furthermore, this process gives the largest firm greater power to not only be competitive but anti-competititve. Such enterprises would include law enforcement, national defense, and almost all hard infrastructure.
Even now I'm betting this list is incomplete.
Not all, but nearly all libertarians seem to subscribe to some form of symbolic, deontological ethics, which means they are profoundly apathetic toward ethical consequences, usually meaning they don’t examine any of their policies in terms of cost-benefit analysis. They are more concerned with maintaining procedures associated with arbitrated rights that whether or not the result of doing so is constructive or destructive.
One specific way this usually manifests for libertarians and anarcho-capitalists is that they support individual freedom and oppose violence. Accordingly they refuse to accept a legitimate monopoly on violence by any entity, which they usually decry as coercion (which it is). The problem is simply that humanity is vastly better off for having these violence monopolies because they make a large range of utilities possible. For example they make taxation possible, which in turn is the only thing that makes much of what we take for granted in modern life possible. They refuse to accept this on the grounds that it offends their symbolic, deontological principles. The result is that they get to maintain their principles and everyone gets to have a lower quality of life.
The few libertarians I come across who are ethical utilitarians tend to hold some rather uncharacteristic policy positions as well and are in general much more reasonable in conversation. I’ve yet to encounter an anarcho-capitalist that was an ethical utilitarian.
Now a list of common practical errors common to libertarians and anarcho-capitalists.
I’ve never met one who did not commit at least one of these errors. The great majority commit several of them, and the rare butterfly commits them all.
1: Failure to address the free rider problem.
“Road systems could be developed by for profit organizationsâ€
No, because the inability to prevent non-paying consumers means the project will never be financially sustainable. It will only be maintainable with a source of revenue not confined to its rate of use by consumers.
2: Disregard for the effect of externalities on market behavior.
“Pollution will be corrected before becoming a critical problem because markets have self-correcting signalsâ€
No, because the generation of pollution in and of itself is assigned no financial value by firms. In general, imperfect information and imperfect competition will always create externalities that undermine the markets’ ability to self-regulate.
3: Assertion that a complex probabilistic system is unmanageable.
“The economy is too unknowable for people to usefully manage itâ€
No, because probabilistic systems can be probabilistically influenced to good effect, which we do all the time like with the field of medicine.
4: Assumption that humans beings are reliably rational.
“People will never let an inferior producer succeed because they will abandon it for a better producerâ€
No, because, do I need to even explain this one? Let’s say there are mountains of evidence that human beings are quite irrational. Most people in this example may choose to stay with the inferior producer for reasons that make no economic sense.
5: Evaluating decision making entirely in terms of rationality and not at all in terms of knowledge/awareness.
“People may not always be rational, but you can’t make decisions for them because nobody monopolizes rationality, especially for an individual’s own choicesâ€
No, because it misses the fact that people can possess a larger share of knowledge, and can do so in relation to another less informed individual’s interests, creating a legitimate basis for authority over someone else’s decision.
6: Disregarding the inevitability of power aggregation, assuming power vacuums will persist.
“A free market will settle into a state of fair competitionâ€
No, because success brings power which increases the ability to attain more power which will lead to at least one competitor becoming powerful enough to then intentionally end fair competition.
7: Underestimating the cost of transaction management and incompatibility issues.
“Competing profit seeking firms would manage law enforcement more efficiently.â€
No, because the process of sorting out the interaction between each law enforcement agency and overcoming obstacles of non-standardized policy will become prohibitively expensive.
8: No plan for economies of scale with high entry costs.
“we’d have been better off leaving something like the highway system to entrepreneursâ€
No, because the initial cost of the project was likely beyond what any private firm possessed or speculated to gain, and the high, immediate cost vs the long delayed and gradual return would not be appealing to a profit seeker.
9: Asserting that self-reliant individuals are more productive.
“social spending is wasted on dependents who drain the economyâ€
No, because the more a person is responsible for their own problems, the more afraid they are of taking a risk, and the more time a person spends maintaining their standard of living, the less time they have to innovate, and the more they have to spend on daily existence the less they consume. Taking risk and innovating are significant long-term factors in the advancement of society and consumptive spending is a major factor in economic growth. If citizens were as self-reliant as many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists seem to want them to be I imagine our society would be stagnant to the point of mortality.
And here's bonus composite error (this is true because of several of the previous truths)
+: No acknowledgement of the existence of natural monopolies.
“There could never be a monopoly without the governmentâ€
No, because some projects become more effective the more inclusive they are and the larger the share they have, which means that as one private firm grows the biggest, the rational decision for consumers of other firms will be to leave and join the larger one instead, which inevitably trends toward monopoly. Furthermore, this process gives the largest firm greater power to not only be competitive but anti-competititve. Such enterprises would include law enforcement, national defense, and almost all hard infrastructure.
Even now I'm betting this list is incomplete.
