Don't You Wish It Could Really Be This Way?

Earlier on the Wonkette blog, Ken Layne posted this piece of hilarious anti-libertarianism:



I'm sure that the majority of libertarians who watch the video will be vaguely offended, or even seriously offended, and will think that Layne is just an idiot who has bought into the propaganda of mainstream politics. "Clearly he doesn't understand libertarianism; he's just a statist parrot!" Yea, yea.

But I want to take a moment to offer an alternative perspective. I'll start with a pair of observations. First, Layne is advocating on behalf of secessionism. That's not to say that he thinks it's a good idea; he seems to think that it's a really stupid idea and that only really stupid people (like we friendly libertarians) would want to do it. But he does seem to think that if a group of people really wants to leave the larger group of which it is a part, and that there doesn't seem to be a basis for resolving the disagreement at the root of that desire, then it would be appropriate for the groups to part ways in peace (though perhaps not in friendship).

Second, he seems to be on board with the idea that if a group of people wants to organize themselves according to their own views about what would be best, then they should be free to do so. Of course, he's saying that as if he thinks that he knows better, but he's not suggesting that the people in question be prevented from following their own plans.

So I guess the point I'm making here is that even though Ken Layne apparently thinks libertarians are dumb, he's actually vaguely libertarian himself. He's just vaguely libertarian while apparently wanting to live in a society run by an enormous, bloated, overreaching bureaucratic monstrosity with its hands deep in other countries' business and a penchant for getting involved in citizens' lives far beyond the point that could be reasonably seen as necessary to ensure that social interrelationships can occur in a safe and equitable environment. And he apparently doesn't understand why anyone would think that his way is a dumb way to live. So be it.

If anything, it seems to me that this sort of thing represents a problem with the way that libertarians have gone around marketing their ideas. Instead of being a philosophy of mutual respect, self-determination, and decentralization, libertarianism has been sold as what basically amounts to "a more consistent conservatism." If people like Ken Layne can go through the hassle of producing an elaborate anti-libertarian screed that is based entirely on a fundamentally libertarian argument, it means that we've screwed up somewhere along the way. That's our argument. Let's make that clear.

The Yin and the Yang: An Approach to Publicizing Broadly Libertarian Ideas

I had an idea today for a new way that one might go about spreading some of our (well, at least my) ideas to the public. The idea is to use the familiar imagine of the Taijitu -- the yin yang symbol -- to offer a nuanced articulation of difficult concepts that sometimes end up being articulated sloppily with other approaches. The concept of yin yang is that mutually opposing forces can be seen as interconnected and even as interdependent, so that each gives form and substance to the other. I can immediately think of two examples of how this approach would be useful:

Unity and Separateness

On one hand, we need unity in order to have things like property rights, right-of-way conventions, procedural rules, and arguably collectivized programs where burden-sharing is important to us. On the other hand, we need separateness in order to plan and lead our own separate lives according to our own values and goals. But sometimes our best successes as communities come from living and letting live, and sometimes our best successes as individuals come from putting aside our own interests and being good neighbors. When we understand unity in the light of separateness, and separateness in the light of unity, we can achieve each more fully than we could if we pursued either on its own.

Knowledge and Ignorance

We know a tremendous amount about the world in which we live, and our knowledge can enable us to do wonderful things. But one of the most important things that we know is just how ignorant we are. A little bit of knowledge can be an extremely dangerous thing, and sometimes the wisest action is to admit that we not know for sure what would be best. Sometimes when we allow for an open-ended result, we find out that we end up with something better than we would have been able to design ourselves.

These are just two examples, and both are clearly in need of development. But I'm finding this way of thinking to be very satisfying and elegant; you pose two seemingly conflicting values against each other and show how each helps give the other its shape. And I think that as a vehicle for getting people to think about complicated philosophical issues that are integral to the advancement of liberty (like the knowledge problem, reasonable pluralism, the separateness of persons, the nirvana fallacy, etc.), it might be helpful to use this tool to explain things in a way that can resonate with anyone. Plus, I think it opens the door for a libertarianism or liberalism that is softer, more understanding, and more reflective than the kinds of views that so often come from our camp. Leave it to the notoriously wishy-washy, hand-wavy guy to come up with something like this...but I like it.

A Little Bit of Blasphemy: A Reply to Onorati

Over at the FreedomWorks blog, my good friend Joseph Onorati wrote a post in condemnation of protectionism and in favor of free trade. As you can guess, I am in general agreement with Joseph on this one. But because I am a wicked troll, I had no choice but to post a scathing counterargument on the blog. I figured it might be of interest to some of you, and I'd love to help draw attention to Joseph's work and the FreedomWorks site. So check it out!

I also wanted to offer a few counterarguments to the counterargument I presented on the FreedomWorks blog in case anyone suddenly feels uncomfortable about free trade in light of something I said there (I wouldn't want to actually make someone advocate protectionism, of course; I was just poking fun at Joseph!). So here are, as I see them, the three points which together make liberalizing trade a coherent position to advocate for in national policy debates:

1) The particular values which we might seek to promote through protectionist policies are not universally shared across the country. In fact, it's not even close. A respectful society would not impose coercive policies which are inescapably designed in a way that impoverishes the general populous in order to promote goals which are not necessarily supported by those who will be affected.

2) As Joe correctly noted, the free market -- with its power to spontaneously coordinate the pursuit of constantly changing and often competing ends without the direction of a conscious designer -- is the most powerful mechanism we know of for creating wealth and prosperity. Nothing else even comes close. So by allowing the market to function, we can be relatively confident that people will be generally better off than they will be under more consciously coordinated regimes which aim to mold society to a particular static vision.

3) Centralized decision-makers are ill-suited to making effective protectionist policies. They are subject to lobbying pressure and a set of incentives which often lead them to make decisions for reasons other than their beliefs about what would be in the best interests of the people, and even when they are acting on good intentions, they often lack the knowledge and understanding that would be necessary to carry out their plans with any degree of precision and effectiveness.

For those three reasons (and not only one of them by itself), I think it's reasonable to support free markets in national-level policy discussions. To be clear, I don't always think that's the right call for more localized and tightly unified policy-making groups. But where policies are going to be imposed in broad strokes on a country of over 300 million people, I can't bring myself to support putting any power of that sort in the hands of any bureaucrat or politician, no matter how much they want the best for the country.

Who Said Anything About Legitimacy?: A Long-Winded Reply to Brainpolice and Michael

Over on the Polycentric Order blog, Brainpolice has written up a response to my post rejecting the simple argument that taxation is theft. In the comments section of that earlier post, a fellow identifying himself as "Michaek" (which I assume to be a typo-ed "Michael") also left some remarks in disagreement with my arguments. I wanted to offer some thoughts on what both had to say, and will do so in this post. There are a number of themes running through the commenters' responses, and I will do my best to isolate them and address them separately. They are: a) There is a double standard problem in supposing that government officials can justify doing things which no ordinary person would be justified in doing; b) My goal is to offer a blanket justification for the State; c) I do not offer a coherent account of why a government should have any claim to its territory; and d) By arguing that the government has some claim to its territory, I am presupposing that the government is a legitimate institution without offering a compelling reason for thinking this.

I. There is a double standard problem in supposing that government officials can justify doing things which no ordinary person would be justified in doing

Brainpolice started his reply with the idea that our commonsense moral beliefs would lead us to condemn many of the kinds of things done by state agents if they were done by ordinary citizens. But as collective decision making power is centralized and expanded, people come to embrace a double standard between themselves and state officials. This leads them to condone actions on the part of state officials which they would decry if performed by ordinary citizens. Brainpolice therefore explains that the libertarian position is that state officials do not gain new rights as a result of their positions, and that if these rights are to be ascribed to them, the burden of proof should be on those who are invoking new rights, and not on those who simply insist that our commonsense ethical beliefs be universally applied. He writes:

...given certain nearly universal social norms (such as the shunning of murder, theft, arson, rape and kidnapping), if one wants to be consistant with those norms then one must aknowledge the degree to which the state contradicts those norms...

Now, one possible response is discussed by Lester Hunt in his essay, "Why the State Needs to be Justified":

Of course, someone might say, there is a sense in which our intuitive, pre-theoretical use of our moral ideas clashes with our intuitive, pre-theoretical application of our political ideas. When I think about myself, my next-door neighbor, or my uncle Harry, I think that, whenever any one of us promotes his or her goals by using coercion against someone who is not bothering anybody, we are doing wrong. When I think about a tax collector or an immigration official, I think pre-reflectively that they are right to go after the tax-evader and the Mexican immigrant, even though the tax evader and the Mexican are not bothering anybody. I think of the immigration official as if they were on a different plane from me, from my neighbor, from my uncle Harry. But why isn’t each way of thinking perfectly okay, on its own plane?

Like Hunt, I do not accept this kind of argument. So up front, here it is: I acknowledge that in many instances, the agents of the state do things which are completely impermissible by any coherent moral standard. The fact that they often get a pass simply because of their position is inexcusable. I don't think anything I said in my earlier post suggests that I believe that government officials deserve different kinds of treatment, but it bears repeating that moral standards are based on treating people the way that they deserve, and they don't deserve anything less when the person on the other end is wearing a uniform.

II. My goal is to provide a blanket justification for the State

This next point appears in both commenters' counterarguments, and focuses on the idea that I'm somehow trying to offer a blanket justification for "the State" or "a State." But there's an important point to be made here: I'm not trying to "prove" that any State is legitimate. What I'm saying is that in communities where the central decision-making apparatus is widely embraced, and where libertarians have moved into those communities by their own volition, it's not clear that they have a very strong case to back up their claims that they are being robbed through taxes.

Things would be very different, I think, if the members of a community generally did not approve of its government apparatus, and wanted to dissolve it. In such a situation, I think it would be reasonable for the community to ask for separation from the overarching State system, and I think that it would be appropriate for the State to grant that separation. I think it's incompatible with the attitude of respect for others' individuality and a full recognition of the fact of reasonable pluralism to seek to control of groups of others who do not want to be associated with you. In the same way, it would be inappropriate for the State to want to follow an individual out into the forest and to demand continued participation in the face of dissent, as I suggested in my original post.

But as Brainpolice points out:

...the "love it or leave it" argument is an epic fail because it presumes the legitimacy of the territorial dominion to begin with. It does nothing to explain why the state has such an arbitrary claim and why the individual must leave the state's dominion rather than the state leaving the individual's dominion.

If I think that the State should allow communities to secede without leaving their established locations, and that the justification for this applies equally to individuals, then it would remain to be explained why I don't think that individuals should be able to secede from their communities without leaving their existing land property. And on this I concede, if an individual wanted to secede from her community, it would be inappropriate for the community to demand that she stay involved, or leave the town. However, it's important to acknowledge what this would entail. The community, I think, would be perfectly justified in insisting that their new territorial boundaries be respected, and that the seceding individual confine herself to her own property. So if someone wanted to separate from the community and to live on her own without leaving her land, the community would ostensibly be justified in confining her there. It seems much more reasonable to think that a person would be best suited by simply leaving, and trading her land to someone who would like to be a part of the community.

III. I do not offer any coherent account of why a government should have any claim to its territory

But on what basis can centrally ordered communities justify their collectivistic existences in the first place? Brainpolice argues that:

...one must put foreward at least something resembling a theory or meta-theory of property in order to examine and explain the state's territorial claim and the individual's claim, and one must put foreward a theory of how states form (and not just some mythical fantasy). How did the state really acquire all this land, or didn't it? How would and individual or group manage to acquire an entire country? Endless absurdities arise in the attempt to legitimize this territorial claim.

Is it so absurd, though, to suppose that in an incorporated town or city which was established by charter (as, it is my impression, most towns and cities are), and which is populated by people who freely acknowledge their membership in their community, that the method of governance explicitly set out in the charter by which the community was established is an acceptable way for the community to administrate its affairs? It sounds like what Brainpolice is looking for is a theory of legitimate original appropriation which would allow a town or city to be considered the just holder of its territory. But as others have pointed out, there is no bulletproof theory of legitimate original appropriation for individuals, much less groups. The specific form taken by a society's institutions ultimately must be defined by the way that people choose to live together in a given community or region. Property rights give us a tool for determining who gets the right of way with regard to the use of certain resources. They allow us to say, "This belongs to me, so leave it alone." But they also allow us to say, "This is ours, and this is how it is to be used." As David Schmidtz writes in his essay, "The Institution of Property":

Private property...is the preeminent vehicle for turning negative sum commons into positive sum property regimes. However, it is not the only way. Evidently, it is not always the best way, either. Public property is ubiquitous, and it is not only rapacious governments and mad ideologues who create it. Sometimes it evolves spontaneously as a response to real problems, enabling people to remove a resource from an unregulated commons and collectively take responsibility for its management.

It seems reasonable to me that in the case of a chartered town or city, there is a pretty clear social convention which says that when the town or city was incorporated by its original settlers, the territory on which the settlement existed was to be administered as a municipality. And that's how the people who have lived in that territory ever since have chosen to live together. Surely, as I alluded to in my earlier post, there are good reasons to question whether this is really a wise way to do things. But that doesn't eliminate the fact that it's the dominant form of social organization in our present society. And once a set of institutions becomes generally accepted as the way things are done, then that's just that. There's no mysterious "social contract," to be sure, but rather a strong and widely accepted "social convention,"established by the community's first settlers and passed down to its current constituents. It's much the same principle that says that even though in America, a lot of the land people currently live on was violently expropriated from the Native Americans, today's society is governed by a set of conventions which recognize the current holders of that land as having a rightful claim to it, and that's the end of the discussion. It's just the way things are done.

IV. By arguing that the government has some claim to its territory, I am presupposing that the government is a legitimate institution without offering a compelling reason for thinking this

It's here that Michael's main objection comes to the fore:

The way I see it, the "love it or leave it" argument is circular: if we're trying to prove the legitimacy of the State, we cannot simply assume it to be legitimate. In asserting that libertarians must leave if they don't like the government, statists are assuming that the State's claim to territory is legitimate; but this is exactly what they have to prove!

So why am I starting with the idea that governments are legitimate institutions? Precisely because most people think that they are. I ask my readers to keep in mind that I'm a libertarian, and certainly don't think that the way that most societies are run is appropriate. But a whole lot of people out there think that they live in a perfectly healthy society, and that their existing institutions are just fine. Why, then, would we want to fundamentally disturb their lives by forcing them to swallow our particular brand of freedom? Ultimately, the sense in which someone is free is at least partly impacted by what he is free to do. And for a lot of people, the best use of their freedom would be to get on with their lives and not have to deal with the radical social change that would be precipitated by the dissolution of the state. To the extent that people are generally happy with the way things are, the status quo is an acceptable way to run things.

It's when people insist that everyone live the way that they want to live that I start to object. But that goes both ways! Libertarians who insist that loyal citizens must disband their governments are in a lot of ways just as bad as the statists to whom they're responding. Statists should feel no need to control the way that libertarians want to live their lives, and so if libertarians want to go establish a community somewhere according to their own ideals, that should be totally fine -- we shouldn't have to move to Somalia to do it. But libertarians also shouldn't want to control the way that statists live their lives. If the statists want to have centrally organized communities, where rents are collected in order to sponsor public programs, they should be able to do that.

So hopefully this extremely lengthy response has been helpful and thought-provoking. If not, sorry for putting you through it. I look forward to any further comments anyone may have!

It's Worth a Shot!

So apparently the Republican Party is having an identity crisis, and a bunch of Republicans have put together a website asking for suggestions about new directions for the party. I have no illusions that this will produce any noticeable change in any direction that I would support, but this might be a pretty good opportunity to get some good ideas out into the public discourse. Accordingly, I wrote out the following suggestion, titled "Focus on decentralization and pluralism":

Republicans know that the federal government can't solve all of our problems. But this has all too often come across as a view that the problems that Democrats seek to solve are not worrisome, or do not deserve to be addressed in an organized way. Standing in opposition to humanitarianism and compassion is a sure recipe for failure.

So instead, a different way of saying the same thing is to focus on decentralization and pluralism. Basically, the idea here is that the federal government doesn't need to be the one to solve social problems, and in fact it shouldn't be. Federal planners necessarily lack specific knowledge of particular circumstances in different areas of the country, and this often hamstrings their capacity to make decisions that reflect the specific needs of different communities. And as different regions of the country are often characterized by very different values, some policies which are seen to be morally necessary in some areas might be thought to be unacceptable in other areas.

By adopting a position centered on embracing differences between cultural groups, and acknowledging difficulties faced by even the most well-meaning officials, the Republican party could stake out a clear distinction between the central planning-oriented policies of the Democratic party without discounting the humanitarian elements of those policies. In fact, because a program like the one discussed here would actually promote the Democrats' goals better than would their own policies, it seems like a win-win strategy. Further, a focus on decentralization and pluralism would embody the promotion of competition and limitation of government scope that have traditionally characterized the Republican party.

If anyone actually reads this, it would be kind of cool if a bunch of people went over to the site and voted for this suggestion. It might be an effective way of getting our ideas out to the general public, and if it doesn't work, who cares? It's worth a shot!

But What About the Poor? (Education Edition)

On the LvMI message board, a common question was posed:

Hey guys just a basic question. How would the really really poor afford school for their kids under a complete free market system?? I mean what if a family was extremely poor?? It seems to me that this is a tough question to answer when I am asked it.

The conversation had already started by the time I saw the question, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents (which, of course, had expanded to about $3.50 by the time I was done). I thought it might be worthwhile to re-post my response here:

Well one way people could be provided for would be through voluntary community organizations aimed at ensuring certain kinds of social outcomes. For example, a home-owners' association could design a policy by which members who could not afford to send their kids to school would be granted financial support. Or individuals might participate in mutual aid societies which could perform similar functions.

As others have noted, we might also imagine the emergence of charitable institutions designed to help needy children afford an education, and it would be surprising to find schools failing to offer financial assistance in a decentralized educational system, given that most private schools already do so today.

Additionally, some children might be able to secure financial assistance for an education more directly aimed at preparing them for success in the workforce, where the ability to repay loans would likely be better and the education itself less costly. I have in mind here vocational schools with less emphasis on a broad liberal arts education and more emphasis on technical skills that would help children participate in the work force.

What we might find, however, in a radically decentralized system is that in communities that didn't place a high value on children receiving a broad liberal arts education, many children would end up going without one. It is somewhat reasonable to expect that given the sheer financial profitability of some level of education for a child, most families would be able to afford to have their children educated to some extent. But some facets of a liberal arts education may not be profitable in a financial sense, instead producing value for the child in the form of a rich life and improved intellect.

A proponent of radical decentralization would need to ask herself: In the event that charitable individuals and organizations in a community did not feel that a broad liberal arts education for needy children was worthy of supporting, and such an education would simply fall outside of the means of some families, would it be permissible to coercively take money from some individuals in order to ensure a liberal arts education for all children? If so, who would be justified in doing so, and how would they have to administer the support? Further, is failing to support a liberal arts education for poor children a violation of a duty, such that it would be morally impermissible to defend yourself against someone coercing you to do so?

I think that a case can be made on both sides in this debate, but ultimately I would expect to see the issue to be a moot point in most communities. As mentioned above, there are a number of mechanisms by which education could be supported in a decentralized system, and I would be surprised if we really ended up with communities where parents wanted to send their children to school, but simply couldn't find a way to afford it. It could be that in some communities, poor children might end up with more "practical" (i.e. market-participation-oriented) educations, which could be very regrettable. But the upshot is that these children would likely grow up to be able to afford better educations for their own children. And I would imagine that many communities would offer the kinds of assistance necessary to ensure that all children received a broad education, regardless of financial background.

Ultimately, though, what's needed is not an immediate abolition of the current educational system, but rather a movement away from centralized planning and towards more decentralized, competitive provision. Once we commit to that trend, we can start debating about the intricacies of a radically decentralized system. For now, we should focus on the area on which I think we share common ground: this is not an issue in which the federal government needs to interfere.

A Polycentrist Party?

In starting, I want to make something very clear: I am very uncomfortable with the idea of participating in electoral politics (and also, that I apologize for the poor quality of the writing in this post; it's like 1 AM). I believe that a free society will always be characterized by reasonable disagreements about even the most foundational issues, and that in most cases, the proper response to this state of affairs is to work towards peaceful coexistence rather than to attempt to find some sort of consensus or majority opinion and then impose it on the group. If this is so, then a model of governance which gets everyone together for a vote, and then imposes the results on everyone, is fundamentally flawed. This, I think, is true even of groups like the Libertarian Party, which too often seems to advocate removing important mechanisms for collective decision-making from people's lives, whether or not those individuals value those mechanisms or the outcomes that they promote, on the basis of a particular view about the appropriate role of government in the lives of citizens which many of those citizens do not support. The idea of imposing a solution on everyone is objectionable, even if the solution might foster certain elements of the kind of society I might ideally like to live in.

That being said, a few things seem worth acknowledging:

1) Most people do not question or critique the institutional framework in which they live beyond the point where these issues are debated in the realm of national politics.

2) If we can all agree that violently overthrowing the government is out of the question, the likely mechanism by which institutional change will be affected will be through national politics in one form or another.

3) If we do not participate in electoral politics, it is likely that those who will participate will continue to behave in opposition to our beliefs.

4) Our government has, in recent history, been characterized by a two-party system. But one of those parties seems like it might be falling out of favor, as a particularly collectivistic and vulgar brand of Rawlsianism has seemingly taken hold, and people are increasingly moving towards the idea that a just society includes mechanisms for supporting those who are less fortunate. (I don't mean to suggest that Rawlsianism is an unacceptable view, or that a just society would not include mechanisms for promoting the wellbeing of the least well-off; my objection is to the idea that redistribution and planning by a centralized authority is an appropriate mechanism for operationalizing these ideas.) If the Republican Party falters -- particularly if this represents an increasing appeal to the more anti-intellectual and religious groups within the party's constituency -- a vacuum will be created in national politics which could potentially be filled by a third party.

Accordingly, I think we are faced with a genuine quandary. Those of us who seek polycentric solutions to life's problems are understandably hesitant to participate in electoral politics. However, if we don't participate, our goals will be very difficult to obtain. Further, we find ourselves at a peculiar point in history where it may actually be possible to affect real change, and without having to fundamentally dismantle our core beliefs in order to be heard over the roar of the traditional two-party system.

A Polycentrist Party could exist to promote the decentralization of collective decision-making away from the federal level. This would need not happen by removing government from the lives of citizens in areas where most people thing government should be involved. Rather, the Party could focus on working with state and local governments to facilitate a transition from nationally-administered programs to more polycentric ones, and from state-administered programs to programs administered at the local level (or, of course, not administered at all).

This strategy would make sense for two core reasons. First, decentralized political action would to avoid some of the most obvious knowledge problems associated with political action (how can someone make a proper decision for 300 million people?), and would encourage competition between policy-making regimes. This would enable the party to appeal to people from a range of different perspectives -- even those who see a large role for government involvement in solving social problems -- without compromising the integrity of its position. The whole idea, after all, is that we'd be trying to promote a view which seeks to accommodate different views about the ideal form of social organization without demanding a one-size-fits-all solution.

Second, and perhaps most importantly for the kinds of people who I have in mind in writing this, a decentralized system of collective decision-making would likely be more amenable to secession and division. It seems reasonable to expect that for a town, opting out of a county program would be easier than opting out of a state program, and much easier than opting out of a national program. And for an individual, or group of individuals, opting out of a town program might actually be possible, where opting out of a national or state program seems all but impossible in today's world.

So what about it? Thoughts and criticism would be greatly appreciated here.

Check Out My New Article on the FEE Website!

My article on pluralism in education has been posted on FEE's website. Take a look if you get a chance!

Just a personal note: This was my first experience having one of my articles edited, in this case by Sheldon Richman, and it was really interesting to see the kinds of changes he made. You'll notice that my usual wishy-washy style is absent in the article: pretty much all of the "I think"s, "It seems to me"s and "perhaps"es have been removed. The result is, I think, more direct and to the point. But I think that some of the softness that I try to infuse into my writing is gone, with the result that I sound a little more like Bastiat than I'm used to. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly something I'll have to get used to!

Law and the Knowledge Problem, a First Glance

Update at the bottom of the post

Here's an interesting quote from Hayek's essay, "The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design," from his book, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics:

"...the natural law concept against which modern jurisprudence reacted was the perverted rationalist conception which interpreted the law of nature as the deductive constructions of 'natural reason' rather than as the undesigned outcome of a process of growth in which the test of what is justice was not anybody's arbitrary will but compatibility with a whole system of inherited but partly inarticulated rules" (101).

This does seem like a relatively accurate positive assessment of how law has evolved over time. But it does beg the question, then, of whether or not a centralized attempt to administer justice, which would rely on some understanding of what people will accept as just, would be akin to trying to plan an economy. The idea, in other words, is that if our recognition of justice relies on a partly inarticulated set of internalized rules, and those rules change over time and are sometimes contradictory, then the acceptability of any legal judgment will be in some some sense bound to the circumstances in which that attribution was made, and will necessarily fail to reflect the unanimous will of the people. If that's true, then it would seem almost impossible to determine what would be the proper standard of justice within a society at any given time, and so would be impossible to administer justice "properly" in much the same way as it's impossible to allocate resources "properly" through a centralized method of planning.

To make my case, I'll draw on a number of different quotes which I think paint a better picture of the issue than I might be able to do myself (especially given the "reason as I go" approach that generally characterizes these posts). First, from the beginning of David Schmidtz's book, Elements of Justice:

"I have become a pluralist, but there are many pluralisms. I focus not on concentric "spheres" of local, national, and international justice nor on how different cultures foster different intuitions, but on the variety of contexts we experience every day, calling in turn for principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, and need. I try to some extent to knit these four elements together, showing how they make room for each other and define each other's limits, but not at the cost of twisting them to make them appear to fit together better than they really do. Would a more elegant theory reduce the multiplicity of elements to one?" (4).

I jump over to the beginning of Rawls' Justice as Fairness: A Restatement:

"...I believe that a democratic society is not and cannot be a community, where by a community I mean a body of persons united in affirming the same comprehensive, or partly comprehensive doctrine. The fact of reasonable pluralism which characterizes a society with free institutions makes this impossible. This is the fact of profound and irreconcilable differences in citizens' reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical conceptions of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to be sought in human life" (3).

And with that, I jump back to Schmidtz, a few pages later:

"In effect, there are two ways to agree: We agree on what is correct, or on who has jurisdiction - who gets to decide. Freedom of religion took the latter form; we learned to be liberals in matters of religion, reaching consensus not on what to believe but on who gets to decide. So too with freedom of speech. Isn't it odd that our greatest successes in learning how to live together stem from agreeing on what is correct but from agreeing to let people decide for themselves?" (6).

And back to Hayek, this time in his essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society":

"The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess" (519).

He continues:

"In ordinary language we describe by the word "planning the complex of interrelated decisions about the allocation of our available resources. All economic activity is in this sense planning; and in any society in which many people collaborate, this planning, whoever does it, will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which people base their plans is communicated to them is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the economic process. And the problem of what is the best way of utilizing knowledge initially dispersed among all the people is at least one of the main problems of economic policy--or of designing an efficient economic system" (520).

And more:

"Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place" (521).

Just like how attributions of justice are contingent on a set of partly inarticulated rules, economic actors make their decisions according to their personal interpretations of circumstances, in light of their own value systems. And as they are inarticulated and often contradictory, they cannot be aggregated to form a "social" standard. Hayek writes:

"...the sort of knowledge with which I have been concerned is knowledge of the kind which by its nature cannot enter into statistics and therefore cannot be conveyed to any central authority in statistical form" (524).

So we've sort of gotten to the point I'm trying to make. Basically, if society's acceptance of certain things as just is, as Hayek says, based on compatibility with an internalized, partly inarticulated set of rules, and if these sets of rules are subject to reasonable pluralism and continuous flux, then it's as impossible to get law perfectly right through central planning as it is to get an economy perfectly right through central planning. But then the question becomes, so what? In looking at the economy, Hayek writes:

"We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization" (524).

But is this the right answer for law? That's something I'll have to leave for another day.

Update:

Hahahahahahahaha! So this post was written in a sort of "Ah hah!" moment while reading Hayek's "The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design," causing me to jump up from the book and hammer out the above. Turns out that if I had kept reading, I would have discovered Hayek making a nearly identical point in the essay itself. So I'd almost say to forget about this post and go pick up the book.

The Pitch (a First Draft...)

On a fundamental level, political philosophy exists to pursue a better understanding of how society ought to be organized. So it is rather unsurprising that students of the subject tend to view themselves as proponents of a certain kind of social order: socialists, social democrats, minarchists, anarcho-capitalists, etc. And to some degree, within communities of political philosophers and those who seek to emulate them, it makes sense to adopt these comprehensive positions and to debate their merits with those who advocate opposing views.

But in a world where most people do not think in terms of any coherent and complete political paradigm, this kind of approach to advancing one’s ideas makes less sense. It is, in a sense, like trying to get a person to buy into a particular diet as the objectively correct diet for human beings. Even if there were such a thing, most individuals would not even know how to begin to evaluate the idea being presented to them. They would immediately search for flaws, and cling to any lack of clarity or certainty as reason to reject the diet completely. And tellingly, we might expect this from someone whose existing diet is in all likelihood a really bad diet by any reasonable standard!

In advancing the cause of liberty, we have all experienced exactly this sort of thing. People don’t understand certain features of our standpoint, and accordingly reject the whole thing. I submit that this is not because of some flaw in our argument, or a persistent indoctrinated stubbornness on their part. Rather, it is simply a normal part of dealing with people who are not, and do not want to be, political philosophers.

Up to this point, I think that libertarians have largely focused on the idea that central governments should not be involved in various parts of our lives. The justification for these positions generally takes two forms, often advanced simultaneously in the same argument. First, there is a moral position that argues that there is something unjust about using the State mechanism to bring about a desired solution, and that people must realize this fact and respond accordingly. The second is a pragmatic position which points out that central governments are inherently ill-suited for dealing with the kinds of tasks with which they are entrusted, and accordingly, we should be not rely on them in the capacity under consideration.

It occurs to me that by making these two positions part of the same argument, libertarians have created a major hurdle for themselves. This is because the moral position they have been advancing is one which requires one to put herself into the role of political philosopher, and ask what sorts of principles ought to govern our social relationships. Most people are inherently ill suited for this kind of thing, and will too often either become recalcitrant or brainwashed.

Ultimately, neither is desirable. But by making the moral position a part of the core of their viewpoint, libertarians have created a set of circumstances where practically the only lay-people who acknowledge the other part of the core – the practical position – are the people who are on board with the moral argument. Those who reject the moral argument overwhelmingly seem to be ignoring or rejecting the practical argument.

There are a number of reasons why this is a regrettable state of affairs. Perhaps most significant of these is the fact that the practical part of the core is completely consistent with almost every other viewpoint. It is uncontroversial even among socialists that we cannot always know the best policy solutions to social problems, and that there are problems with entrusting centralized governments with the reigns of society. It is therefore perfectly in line with everyone’s viewpoint to consider the possibility that decentralized action might be the best way to deal with social issues, by their own standards. And if libertarians are right about the idea that decentralized solutions are more effective than centralized ones, this will appeal to everyone.

This leads to another critically important reason why the current state of debate is unfortunate. In a world where people understood that decentralized decision-making is often superior to central planning, we could reasonably expect people to be substantially more open to the possibility that freedom to determine one’s own course of action is a good thing. The person that says, “There’s no objective solution to this problem, so let’s try and work something out together,” is going to be someone who can easily be shown that imposing solutions on other people is a problematic way to deal with social problems. Essentially, what I am saying is that coming to terms with the practical part of libertarianism is actually a really effective way to get people to see the virtue of the moral part.

So what I’m proposing is that we organize ourselves to study how decentralized solutions can be found for social problems, and how government action is not necessarily the best way to deal with things. This seems like something that can appeal to people way outside of the libertarian circle, and I think we should take full advantage of that fact to bring the discussion into the mainstream arena. What I have in mind, essentially, is something like an Institute for the Study of Decentralization.

The appeal here, again, is twofold. First, it would serve the cause of liberty by helping to foster a mindset which seems likely to bring people closer to being open to the philosophy of freedom as a moral position. And second, it could help to bring a core part of the libertarian agenda – getting central governments out of their roles in social decision-making – into the mainstream policy arena, where it could form a basis for consensus between libertarians and even their most bitter opponents.

To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that we could do this as a sneaky way to get people to be more vulnerable to being converted. My point is that we can legitimately argue that even if we’re wrong in our moral positions, our practical ideas are important and deserving of consideration. And further, we can say without controversy that once people come to appreciate our practical ideas, they’ll probably be able to see why we take the moral positions that we do.

Directions for Research on Decentralization

From a conversation elsewhere:

I think it's absolutely relevant to explore the ways in which social problems can be solved without a centralized decisionmaker. Ultimately, so-called "market-anarchists" are rejecting the state model for social organization, and are suggesting that it be replaced with a model which relies on decentralized decision-making. Accordingly, it seems worthwhile to discuss some of the ways in which that model can be expected to function, if only to educate the market actors who are being expected to make the system work. After all, keep in mind that anarchy can only function in an ideological atmosphere where people don't want a state. If they do want a state, or don't know how to make things work without one, then they will have a state: you can bet on that.

So as philosophers, economists, etc., it's our job to show why centralized decisionmaking entities like our national governments provide inferior mechanisms for social organization. There are several parts of this argument which need to work in concert in order to truly convince people that decentralized decisionmaking is a truly better alternative. Relying on only one, and leaving out the others, will leave many people unsatisfied, as we're clearly seeing here. As I see it, those in favor of decentralization need to show the following:

1) The model of social organization which holds that everyone needs to get together and find the right answer, and then apply the right answer in the right way, is flawed. There is no "right answer" to social problems which can be discovered, even if we get the smartest, most creative, most honest people together to work on them, and even if there were, there would be no "right way" to implement it that could be instituted by coercing individuals to play their "part" in the solution. As David Schmidtz wrote in his book Elements of Justice, "In effect, there are two ways to agree: We agree on what is correct, or on who has jurisdiction - who gets to decide. Freedom of religion took the latter form; we learned to be liberals in matters of religion, reaching consensus not on what to believe but on who gets to decide. So too with freedom of speech. Isn't it odd that our greatest successes in learning how to live together stem not from agreeing on what is correct but from agreeing to let people decide for themselves?" (6). The advocate of decentralization takes this idea to its extreme, and needs to justify that position. Was John Rawls correct when, in his book Justice as Fairness, he suggested that there are "...profound and irreconcilable differences in citizens' reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical conceptions of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to be sought in human life" (3)? And if so, why is decentralization the proper response?

2) Decentralized solutions can effectively solve social problems, or perform comparably well compared to centralized solutions, or have benefits which make them more desirable than centralized solutions, in spite of their comparative weaknesses. Most people believe that a system of social organization should be judged, at least in part, by its capacity to bring about desirable social outcomes. Economics teaches us that in the absence of cooperation, markets can fail: free riders, externalities, collective action problems, tragedies of the commons, and prisoners' dilemmas can lead individuals acting separately to undesirable outcomes by the standards of all involved (see on this James Buchanan's essay, "Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy"). Advocates of decentralization need not only satisfy the alleged "statists" and "collectivists", who see government as a perfect substitute for a necessarily imperfect market, but also more reasonable objectors who see centralized solutions as having at least some potential for bringing about solutions in instances of prohibitive transaction costs. For example, in his essay, "Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: Substitutes or Complements?," Peter J. Hill writes:

Market solutions are superior to coercive ones because voluntary exchange offers the assurance that social interactions are mutually advantageous. However, transaction costs prevent some potentially profitable voluntary exchanges from taking place. Through the use of appropriate rules, government can provide feasible alternatives. In the standard examples of roads and national defense, the transaction costs of individual exchange are high and the free-rider problem is substantial. Thus, there is at least some potential for using tax-financed provision of these public goods as a corrective mechanism. Of course, government provision of public goods is fraught with numerous problems, and one ought not to be overly optimistic that government will get it right. However, we should not automatically rule out all government intervention (389).

Advocates of decentralization need to show that actually, we should automatically rule out the kinds of solutions that can be produced through government intervention, or that decentralized solutions are capable of effectively emulating government intervention, so we don't lose tools from our policymaking toolkit when we move towards decentralization, or that decentralized solutions can actually produce solutions which work somewhat like government interventions, but are either inherently or more likely to be better suited to solving the problems with which they are charged.

3) Disputes can be resolved effectively and without violence in the absence of centralization of authority. In many ways, international law, corporate and industry dispute resolution, private arbitration, and private security companies set the stage for this conversation. But on the other hand, state imperialism, genocide, human rights violations, and the ineffectiveness of the UN (which lacks sovereignty) bring up questions which demand answers. Advocates of decentralization need to explain how a system without a central authority could bring about the settlement of disputes between individuals and groups effectively and predictably. And further, they need to show that such a system would be adequately resistant to things like bribing, corruption, and caprice, as well as being capable of enforcing rulings effectively. Failing this, decentralists would need to present the case that a decentralized system is more desirable for reasons which are not generally appreciated, perhaps because it would better preserve freedom of choice, it would recognize a lack of objective standards of justice (particularly procedural justice), or it would be better on balance than a centralized solution because of some flaw in the latter.

4) A decentralized system would be beneficial for those members of society who are less advantaged. Any "solution" which explicitly consigns people to death by starvation, exposure, or lack of routine medical care will simply be unacceptable to many people, and for good reason. Advocates of decentralization need to show how disadvantaged groups would benefit or at least not be made worse off by decentralization. And it will not do to demonstrate that those in need can be expected to be generally better off than they would be in other systems. Decentralists must show that there is no reason to worry about the fate of the disadvantaged in a decentralized society, at least any more than we worry in our current society. Alternatively, a case needs to be presented in substantially more convincing fashion that concern about the fate of those in need is misplaced.

5) There is historical precedent for effective decentralized decision-making. This one seems pretty self-explanatory, but ultimately it will not be the advocates of decentralization who actually go out and create the decentralized order which they are promoting. As the saying goes, there is no plan for freedom. Accordingly, it will be important to show that individuals who were not philosophers or "anarchists" have been able to successfully make decentralized decision-making mechanisms work for them, ideally without even realizing that they were doing it. Perhaps more importantly, it will be desirable to demonstrate why the failures of certain ventures in decentralized decision-making do not demonstrate a failure in the general idea.

And personally, I don't think that's such an unreasonable research program. I actually think there's something in there for almost everyone. And luckily, there's a lot already out there to start from. I've actually been toying around with the idea of putting together some sort of association of people working on these issues, and would love to hear from anyone who's interested in joining the effort.

Social Policymaking and the Libertarian Party

[It occurs to me that the beginning of this post is very poorly written, and does not convey the idea that I was trying to get across. I apologize. Feel free to read it anyway, but feel even freer to skip down a little until the next bracketed comment.]

I take it that most libertarians acknowledge that society does need certain institutions and rules in order to operate, and that these rules would require individuals to abide by agreements which might end up with outcomes that they don't particularly like, but have to abide by because of the agreements. For example, if I voluntarily enter into a living arrangement in an incorporated city which is governed by a set of laws, then I must abide by those laws so long as I continue to live in the city. Going further, it seems reasonable to believe that in such a living arrangement, part of my agreement would include a mechanism for deciding on new rules which could be enforced. For example, if the members of my community wanted to employ a lawn mowing service, perhaps we could somehow get together and decide to be bound to contribute to the lawn mowing fund.

Now, what I've just described is a public policy. This public policy would be one that I could advocate for some reason like "I think we can all agree that it would be nice to have mowed lawns in our town, so we should have lawn mowing," or "It seems to me that people aren't motivated to mow their lawns, but would be glad to pay the price of mowing their lawn if for that price they knew they would get their lawn mowed and also get to live in a town of beautifully manicured laws." And given that I would be living in a community where all the members had agreed to abide by the rules turned out by some rule-making procedure, it seems like such a policy would be perfectly consistent with the ideals of anarcho-capitalism.

Hearing this, it might occur to some members of our current social order to suggest something like the following: What's the point of being an anarcho-capitalist if that's what you're going to end up with? If you have a vision of what society should be like, you should try to convince enough people that you're right, and then you can direct the political process towards implementing that vision. That's how democracy is supposed to work, and you just need to get out there and let your voice be heard!

It is this sort of thinking, as far as I can tell, that leads to the idea that a Libertarian Party can be successful. The idea, then, is that if Libertarians get their message out, they can make the government give us back our freedom and stay out of our lives. Society, under such a government, would then be able to decide whether to disband the State entirely or to attempt to maintain a smaller, more limited State. And perhaps both. After all, what's most important is that we start working towards a point where such a conversation could even be possible on a national level.

But notice an interesting feature about what I've said so far about taking a position on social issues. First, I talked about anarcho-capitalism as a starting point, and then talked about public policies that I would personally advocate for implementation in my own society, which I had voluntarily entered, and where the other members could only be bound by rules produced by a procedure that they had directly agreed to. By contrast, the capital-L Libertarians, it appears to me, leave out the first step. Their objective is to determine what rules they would want to govern their society, and then to attempt to have those rules implemented (this manifests itself in some sort of private property regime where there are very few socially enforced rules besides respect for property).

[If you just read the above, see what I mean about me not talking sense? Yea...sorry about that, I wrote the beginning of this post at 2AM last night, and didn't notice how bad it was when I resumed writing today. What follows is the main idea of this post, and hopefully makes sense on its own.]

This difference is not insignificant. To illustrate why, imagine that there is a fraternity, Alpha Beta (AB), which throws a huge party every year with a sorority, Chi Upsilon Zeta (XYZ). Let's say that a member of Alpha Beta, Chad, decides that he doesn't like the XYZ parties and no longer wants to contribute to them, but the other members of AB are willing to use force if necessary to get the money from Chad if he refuses to pay and doesn't leave the fraternity. Chad first considers leaving AB to go live elsewhere, but unfortunately, all the housing with access to his college's campus belongs to the Greek system, and all the other fraternities on campus do things that Chad finds equally lame, but would be forced to contribute to. His situation, I take it, is somewhat analogous to the one in which libertarians find themselves today (though of course Chad could transfer or drop out, but whatever).

Now, if Chad were to pursue the sort of plan I outlined in the beginning of this post, what would he need to do? Essentially, he would have several options. He could attempt to convince the other AB's (or the members of another fraternity) to allow him to build a shed on part of their lawn to sleep in. While in his part of the yard, the fraternity's rules would not apply to him, including the one which forced him to help pay for the party with the XYZ's. Second, he could purchase a patch of yard from the AB's (or another fraternity) which would belong exclusively to him, where he could make rules for himself, and would not need to contribute to any kind of fraternity organization. Third, Chad could claim a patch of lawn for himself and defend it with force of his own if anyone tried to make him contribute to any fraternity programs. There are probably a bunch of other things Chad could do instead. But the common theme here is that what Chad is doing is entering a non-affiliated state of affairs.

I should note that Chad would be an idiot to do this alone, especially if doing this would prevent him from any sort of social cooperation with anyone in the fraternity system. I don't think any reasonable anarcho-capitalist would contend that non-affiliated status would "work" if it meant that people would be out on their own. Being on your own is awful--worse, I think, than being subject to unreasonable and involuntary rule. But this is besides the point of this post.

Now let's contrast the above strategy to the kind of thing that Libertarian Party libertarians are trying to do. Imagine if instead of looking for a way out of the fraternity system, Chad thought to himself, "Well, I don't like the parties with the XYZ's. So what I should do is get AB to stop throwing the parties; if people really want to throw the parties, they can get together and organize the party voluntarily. The AB fraternity shouldn't be involved in the party; the members who want the party should be the ones to organize it." Chad would then try to popularize this idea, and get enough people in AB to agree to stop funding the party to bring about a change in the fraternity's rules. If Chad were like the Libertarian Party, he would go about this goal by trying to convince the youngest and most impressionable members of the fraternity about why the party wasn't so great, and why it would be really great if everyone who wanted the party just got together and had it without involving any of the people who didn't want to have it. Eventually, if Chad were successful, enough of AB would be filled with this new generation of Libertarian AB's, and the fraternity government would be withdrawn from involvement in throwing the party.

See how that's a very different way of getting things done? Consider, for a moment, the consequences for the AB member who is perfectly happy with the XYZ parties, and is glad to pay the dues to fund them. In the first scenario, where Chad goes out of his way to leave in a way that does not disturb the AB system of governance, the members of AB who are happy with their fraternity government still get to have their party, and without any perceptible change except for the one we want them to feel, which is that now Chad no longer has to pay for something that he doesn't want, and they have to deal with the consequences of that. If the party was only worth it to them because they could make Chad help pay for it, then perhaps they would stop having the party, and that's a good thing. But otherwise, the remaining members of AB would get to continue living the way that they were living, and it would be on Chad to figure out a way to make his new life work outside of AB.

By contrast, in the second scenario the mechanism by which the XYZ party was formerly thrown has now been denied to the AB members who have always depended upon it in the past, and if they want to have their party, it will now be contingent on them to get together and negotiate a new deal. If AB were an extremely large fraternity, and the members did not have a very good way of communicating and negotiating with each other, this might be incredibly difficult for the AB's to organize. Certainly they would have an incentive to figure it out. But that doesn't mean that they would figure it out, and figuring it out would certainly involve opportunity costs that could be very significant to them.

The difference can be summed up like this: In the scenario I've advanced, where Chad separates himself from what he takes to be an oppressive system and strikes out to pursue his own goals, what Chad does is to remove himself, but to leave the existing system intact for those who want it to remain that way. He changes nothing for anyone except so far as others were depending on him to help further their own ends (using him as a means). In the scenario in which Chad embodies the Libertarian Party, on the other hand, the entire system of government by which the other AB's are used to coordinating their activities is disabled, and they must take it upon themselves to coordinate the party in its stead. As I've suggested, this might not be particularly easy for them to do, especially if the fraternity is extremely large and communication is difficult, and lots of coordination is required to get the XYZ party off the ground.

As I see it, the former strategy is the one most consistent with the ideal of just wanting to be left alone. The latter, it seems to me, effectively stops the other AB's from imposing things on Chad by creating a coordination vacuum, which could have seriously unpleasant consequences for the AB's. It's stopping an imposition on Chad by essentially imposing something else on the AB's: the responsibility to throw a party for which they had gladly delegated the responsibility away to their fraternity government.

Essentially, this is what I think that the Libertarian Party is trying to do. It's trying to take a government entity that many people rely on and that many people believe must be involved in certain areas of their lives, and destroying its ability to fulfill the tasks that these people are looking for it to fulfill. Sure, it's probably true that these people will be able to adapt to their new circumstances and perhaps be better off than before. But the point is, people who are not libertarians don't want to live in a society that reflects libertarian ideals. They would gladly submit to a coercive government if the alternative were trying to make all the decisions necessary to decide on what kind of life they want to live. To paralyze their government, I take it, would be to do these people a profound disservice. And because I like these people, I will advocate nothing of the sort.

Rather, I will advocate what I consider to be the high road. I would gladly endure greater oppression under the state, and gladly make greater sacrifices in order to bring about a world in which secession from our statist friends is a feasible solution for libertarians who no longer want to live under the state system, rather than advocate the destruction of the state system to serve my ends, at the great expense of those who very much want the state system to remain in place, and who have no interest in giving anarchy a shot.

I want to qualify that by saying that I'm finding it hard not to want to see McCain run this country into the ground in a spectacular fashion so that Americans will have reason to critically reexamine the ideas on which they base their social order. But I think that's sort of different from wanting to force people to act like libertarians: I want them to see how stupid their system is and change their minds, as opposed to wanting them to have to act as though their minds were changed when they really hadn't been.

Climate Change and Market Definition of Property Rights

A fellow named Gregory responded to my post, "Can the Free Market Solve the Problems Posed by Climate Change?" with an argument which I think deserves to be discussed in some depth. Gregory wrote:

If the market has not arrived at an efficient means regulating itself (compensating those damaged) then a government certainly will not be able to affect such a regulation efficiently. The cost of the regulation must be weighed against the benefit it provides. If economic growth is retarded by inefficient regulations, do we not harm future generations more than by waiting for the market to develop a mechanism to efficiently distribute justice?

Gregory highlights the fact that the market has not yet developed an efficient way to enforce the property rights involved in discussions of climate change. I agree that on some level, to indict the free market for this fact would be problematic. In his essay, "Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: They're Not the Same," Roy Cordato wrote

...environmental problems are not an unavoidable side effect of a free-market economy. Instead, they occur because the institution setting--the property rights structure--required for the operation of a free market is not fully in place. Because, in all modern societies, government has taken nearly complete responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of this institutional setting, environmental problems are more appropriately viewed as manifestations of government failure, not market failure.

Mark Pennington bolsters this view in his essay, "Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values: A Hayekian Defense of Free-Market Environmentalism," when he writes, "Transaction costs are not the sole preserve of the market system...and we commit the "nirvana fallacy" if we suggest the alternative to an imperfect market is a government immune from the same sort of problems."

I completely agree with these two authors, and Gregory, in saying that ill-defined and unenforced property rights are at the root of most (if not all, depending on your definition of "property rights") of the problems associated with climate change.

Further, I agree that the free market can solve some of the inadequacies in the process of enforcing justice, but often only if allowed to work without interference. Pennington writes:

Although proponents of free-market environmentalism recognize that environmental markets have limits owing to the prevalence of transaction costs, they contend that these problems are more like to be overcome within an institutional framework supportive of private contractual arrangements. In this perspective, all environmental externalities represent potential profit opportunities for entrepreneurs who can devise ways of defining private-property rights and arranging contracts (via technological innovations, for example) so that those currently free riding on collective goods or imposing negative external effects (for example, water pollution) on their neighbors are required to bear the full costs of their actions.

That being said, I do think that we oversimplify if we simply suppose that the market will find a way to handle the problem in an acceptable manner, and leave it at that. In issues of justice, the "There are many ways to skin a cat" approach taken by the free market might not be acceptable. Improper conceptions of property rights are not simply inefficient, they are unjust. In his speech, "Another Take on Free Market Environmentalism: A Friendly Critique," David Roodman highlighted this idea when he said:

Fine, I own my car. And you own your lungs. Property rights are allocated, seemingly. So now can we reach happy agreement about how to resolve the conflict? Fat chance. More likely, thousands of drivers and breathers will end up suing each other and then the problem will end up in the lap of the court, which would have to decide precisely where the right to free enjoyment of one's car stops and the right to free enjoyment of one's lungs starts.

Later, he quipped, "Judges did not free the slaves; in fact, they tightened the bondage."

I don't mean to imply that libertarian judges would be unable to come up with a decent solution. I'm only suggesting that the answer might not be as simple as Rothbard made it sound when he wrote, in chapter 13 of his Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Human Nature:

...it would not be a very difficult task for Libertarian lawyers and jurists to arrive at a rational and objective code of libertarian legal principles and procedures based on the axiom of defense of person and property, and consequently of no coercion to be used against anyone who is not a proven and convicted invader of such person and property. This code would then be followed and applied to specific cases by privately-competitive and free-market courts, all of whom would be pledged to abide by the code, and who would be employed on the market proportionately as the quality of their service satisfies the consumers of their product.

The problem, in addition to the simple fact that this could be difficult to do, is that this group of Libertarian lawyers and jurists would need to arrive at decisions somehow. Either they could do so in accordance with majority opinion or some other procedural way, or (as I suspect Rothbard is aiming at) they could do so in accordance with the true principles of justice. If the former were the case, then I see no reason why we would call the result "rational and objective." And if the latter, then we should be able to replicate the activities of these lawyers and jurists on our own. But as those who have been keeping up with my work have undoubtedly seen, the task is not quite as simple as Rothbard makes it sound.

One approach would be to take a somewhat left-libertarian angle and say that climate change represents injustice due to an over-enclosure of the atmospheric commons. Edwin Dolan took this approach in his essay, "Science, Public Policy, and Global Warming: Rethinking the Market Liberal Perspective." Dolan wrote:

Liberalism in America, in particular, grew up in a Lockean state of nature where it was really true, or at least seemed true, that homesteaders, loggers, grazers, and industrialists could take what they needed while leaving "enough and as good for others." What the environmentalist side of the global warming debate is telling us is that we no longer live in such a world.

Because those responsible for climate change have, according to Dolan, taken more than their fair share, they must be subject to the demands of justice. He insists, "Defending the rights of property that has been unjustly acquired is a conservative position, not a liberal one."

But this approach has its difficulties. One problem is the fact that the atmospheric CO2 sink is not really a limited resource. The problem is not that "...the atmospheric commons - namely, the Earth's carbon absorbing capacity - are finite and depletable," as Tariq Banuri and Erika Spanger-Siegfried characterized it in their essay "Equity and the Clean Development Mechanism: Equity, Additionality, Supplementarity." As far as we're concerned (though technically this isn't true), we can dump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as we want. It's not like one day we'll light a fire and the CO2 won't go into the atmosphere. The thing that's available in limited quantities is the atmosphere's capacity to absorb CO2 without causing any harm.

In light of this fact, the right way to allocate the resource in question is somewhat unclear. In a world in which we do exceed the total CO2 emissions we could release without causing objectionable climate change, what is the real significance of the amount of CO2 which we could have emitted without causing harm? This, I think, is a problem which reflects the fact that climate change is an emergent problem, and is therefore sort of different from other problems we normally face.

Of course, even if we figure out the significance of this "harmless sink capacity," there still remains a boatload of work to do in order to determine exactly who is responsible for what emissions, what rights are violated by climate change, whether non-rights-violating actions can be justly interfered with, what exactly we should hold people accountable for, who should bear what burdens, what accountability entails, what our accountabilities to future people are and how they should be enforced, and how we should administer all of this (I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out). Never mind the scientific uncertainty plaguing every step of the process!

At the end of the day, we can talk all we want about the market figuring out the answers to climate change through incentives for the enforcement of justice, but someone's going to have to figure this stuff out. If it can be done, hopefully I'll be able to figure out how, or at least set the process in motion for other people. I really hope that answers your question somehow!

Can the Free Market Solve the Problems Posed by Climate Change?

When confronted by the possibility of climate change, many libertarians default to the position that the free market, with its ability to mobilize the ingenuity of the economy for the satisfaction of the desires of the people, will provide the solutions we desire. I want to discuss this view, because I think it is the result of a mistaken understanding of the nature of the free market. For an example of this view, consider George Reisman's comments in his essay, "Environmentalism in the Light of Menger and Mises":

The appropriate answer to the environmentalists is that we will not sacrifice a hair of industrial civilization, and that if global warming and ozone depletion really are among its consequences, we will accept them and deal with them--by such reasonable means as employing more and better air conditioners and sun block, not by giving up our air conditioners, refrigerators, and automobiles.

In his essay, "Global Warming Is Not a Threat But the Environmentalist Response to It Is," Reisman elaborates:

...if global warming is a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with - that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired.

He goes on to say that global warming

...would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.

Reisman makes an important point. When it comes to allocating resources efficiently, the free market is unparalleled in its effectiveness. In his essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," Hayek explained:

...knowledge of the circumstances...never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all...separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources--if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality.

Hayek points out that

...there is...a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others in that he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation.

He concludes:

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization.

This decentralization is the free market. Hayek explains that

...in a system where the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the parts of his plan.

And indeed, it's been demonstrated in practically every instance that the free market has the capacity to satisfy the wants of the population better than centrally organized alternatives. So I think Reisman is largely right in saying that when it comes to adapting to new problems, the market does do great work.

But when we talk about the free market, we generally have two things in mind. The first, which Reisman focuses on, is a system in which property titles are traded voluntarily in a mutually beneficial way, resulting in a continuous progression towards a more efficient allocation of resources. But the second, which underpins the first, is a system in which rights are enforced, so that individuals who infringe on the rights of others are punished, and those whose rights are infringed are compensated for the harm they suffer. It is my contention the Reisman's argument breaks down by completely brushing off this second feature of the market.

Imagine if we were trying to discuss the proper social response to a particular theft. It might be true that of all social systems, a victim of theft would be best equipped for dealing with her loss in a capitalistic free market. She would not need to consult a central planning board in order to replace the things that were taken, and her higher purchasing power, enabled by her participation in a thriving market economy, would enable her to afford the replacement with comparative ease.

And yet we would obviously not be satisfied with this "solution." The reason is simple. The thief did something wrong, and therefore, the thief ought to be held responsible for fixing it, never mind that we should perhaps have tried to stop the theft from happening in the first place. Accordingly, by suggesting that we simply allow the free market to operate so that adaptation will be easier, Reisman is smuggling in the claim that we do nothing wrong to the victims of climate change.

This seems obviously contentious. The question should not be, as Reisman seems to want to make it, whether or not the free market is the best system for facilitating adaptation to changing conditions. The question is whether we do something unjust by contributing to climate change. To be fair, Reisman briefly addresses this issue, as I discussed here. But my point is that by glossing quickly over the issue of justice, many libertarians have completely missed the point. If the free market is to be relied on to provide a "solution" to climate change, it must be through a strict adherence to the principles of justice. If we simply ignore injustice, and define fairness in terms of mere participation in the market, then we cannot claim to be advocating libertarianism.