Democracies, States, and Why It Matters

Gus diZerega - 12/10/2005

This repeats a post I just made above-

I just found Roderick's quotation of mine that taken literally says that anarcho capitalists supported Bush.

That was a grievous miswriting. The "support " part referred to conservatives and market liberals in general - and as I said later - anarcho capitalists have consistently been the best critics of American war making.

I regret the misstatement, and even more responding to Steve and all without noticing that Roderick caught it.

I wanted a debate and now I'm getting it - and I missed an important correction by Roiderick.

Gus diZerega - 12/10/2005

I just found Roderick's quotation of mine thattaken literally says that anarcho capitalists supported Bush.

That was a grievous miswriting. The "support " part referred to conservatives and market liberals in general - and as I said later - anarcho capitalists have consistently been the best critics of American war making.

I regret the misstatement, and even more responding to Steve and all without noticing that Roderick caught it.

I wanted a debate and now I'm getting it - and I missed an important correction by Roiderick.

William J. Stepp - 12/10/2005

I can't think of one anarcho-capitalist who supported the Iraq war. Could someone name one?

Gus diZerega - 12/10/2005

“Mr. diZerega's clarification on different types of rules is helpful, but I don't think they prove his point. The Constitution provides a set of procedural rules. All right. I don't think my original post says anything to the contrary, but if it does I retract it. The point I was trying to make was the same that Stepp, Casanova, and Long have been trying to make. Congress is a part of the US government, which has a legal monopoly on the use of force and ultimate decisionmaking within the territory it claims as its own, and thus in its domestic and foreign policy-making. It is an organization and not a spontaneous order.”

And I repeat, its administrative apparatuses are indeed organizations - just as corporations are organizations. But in both cases they are subordinated to procedural rules they do not control. Both coirporations and administrative agencies would generally like to free themselves from the constraints of these procedures and the uncertainties they produce. Unlike corporations, governmental organizations have more opportunities to try and subvert these rules - hence the warnings about “eternal vigilance.”

In this respect they are fundamentally different from undemocratic governments, that I term “states.”

“The manner in which some of the government's members (the politicians, not the bureaucrats) get selected might qualify as a quasi- or simulated spontaneous order, but it takes place within a fundamentally monopolistic context.”

As to monopolies, see my post to Roderick Long. The monopolistic context is unavoidable for some kinds of necessary decision making. Please offer a solution to the Missoula Gulch problem if you disagree.

“The choices are limited by force in a way that they are not between a customer and a business, in a way that they are not with regard to market forces, and similarly for common law and other genuine spontaneous orders.”

Interestingly, I've heard odd Zwyicki say that common law was imposed, over riding many local legal systems. If Zwyicki is correct this need not be an argument against common law - but it may give pause to anarchists using it to buttress their case.

“The electoral process, by contrast to these, is an artificial competition with artificially limited choices and procedures that must be followed, and which were set up for a specific purpose - to choose leaders for the organization.”

The same claim to artificiality can be made to ANY property right system. That is, we can always conceive of another that would work and that would generate a market. Indeed, we once had a functioning market in human beings. Norway has a market in private property in land, but the bundle of discrete rights included in that concept differs from the bundle here.

“It is just an organization, like a business (if anyone wanted to run a business like a democracy), that decided to have its top officers nominally chosen by election by its lower ranking members rather than by the founder and owner, a board of directors, or the CEO. That doesn't make it any less an organization. Mr. diZerega talks about democracies turning into states, but all currently existing democracies already are states, and as such, they are organizations and not genuine spontaneous orders.”

I wish you had read my book, which goes into considerable depth about co-ops and the point at which a co-op ceases to be an organization and becomes a spontaneous order. The argument is too long given my time, alas. But it answers your point quite precisely. Basically, when consumers and owners become the same, the coop ceases to be an organization and becomes a spontaneous order.

“As for evidence for or against the democratic peace thesis...well, I find the tendency among its proponents to redefine democracy to protect the thesis to be problematic.”

I consistently use the following common sense definition: Universal or near universal male suffrage (presence of women voters does not seem to matter here and would reduce the sample), basic political freedoms of speech, organization, regular elections, and so on, and at least one peaceful transference of power. Find me a case where two such governments fought please. If you are right, this should be easy to do.

“I also find the definition for war that is commonly used (1,000+ battle deaths) to be misleading.”

Why? I think it is high - I'd be inclined to say a war happens when a army from one country invades another, and a moderately high number of casualties occurs. But I am not doing statistics. I would not call the “Pig War” between the US and Great Britain a war, for example, though at the time GB was not a democracy, so it doesn't much matter.

I would want the total to be high enough to be able to say the conflict was intended by the invading side, and the other side fought back with the intent to expel them, and that the conflict was of sufficient scale or duration that the democratic process would get involved in a significant way. That is, it became a matter of public debate and discussion.

“I find the thesis itself by itself to be deficient. If the other elements of the Kantian Peace are added then the thesis is improved but remains flawed. I simply don't have time to explain why in detail, however, especially on a blog but the sources I cited do go into detail.”

And I have an article as well. My argument is NOT statistical, though many statisticians support it. And no, based on my reasoning, the democratic peace is not a cold war artifact and it also explains the most commonly produced so-called counter examples - the US Civil War, and small scale American interventions abroad, including some nations that can arguably be said to have strong democratic elements, or even be democracies (Guatemala, Iran).

(snip…)

As for the Hamilton quote... Dismissing Hamilton's argument as a mere opinion does nothing to address its validity. He makes an argument against the democratic (republican) peace thesis. Is it incorrect? Why?

Hamilton wrote at a time when there we no democracies other than the somewhat limited ones of the colonies and perhaps parts of Switzerland. So yes, it was an opinion, a judgment.

And let me take this opportunity to say that while there have been no wars between democracies, I am not arguing it is impossible. Only that democratic processes appear able substantially to reduce their likelihood, and that when both potential opponents are democracies, so far those processes have been sufficient to prevent such an outcome. Were a war to break out, I would expect such processes to reduce the duration and intensity of the conflict.

Gus diZerega - 12/10/2005

Very interesting criticism, Roderick. I hope my reply will carry weight with you.

As to the first part of your comments, I agree. That is why I am so deeply alarmed about current efforts to create a national political machine. The degeneration of the House into a body about as electorally competitive as the politburo, the creation of something approximating a European strong party without the checks that developed in European contexts against such parties (such as proportional representation) all are very worrisome.

If I saw a convincing alternative to having some kind of government, I would embrace it. Because I do not, I urge transferring as many public functions as possible to civil society, without ever having to second guess how far that can go. Using somewhat different and cruder terminology (because my understanding then was less), I urged the same in my book, which probably goes more closely to philosophically liberal anarchism than anything published in my field, perhaps anything published anywhere except by explicit anarchists.

As to secession issues, Madison did not quite define faction as you describe. His argument about faction has two dimensions.

CONSENT
First, the rules of governance should be based on consent. He also believed that perfect consent was utopian. A passage in the federalist explains his reasoning, reasoning with which I agree. He was responding to the objection that if tyranny of the majority was a problem, why not require decisions to be made by super majorities or unanimity even in the House and/or Senate.

He replied that having majority rule be the basis of most decision-making did mean that power would sometimes be misused. On the other hand, requiring super majorities led to the possibilities of minorities essentially black mailing the community as a whole in order to get its assent. Majority rule for him was not a sacred principle, but a compromise for the usual kind of decision-making. For really important things, like amending the Constitution, super majorities were required.

FACTION
Madison defined a faction as any group, large or small, united to injure some members of the community or the community as a whole. They had historically been the bane of popular government, which was why traditional democratic republican theory praised homogeneity in a society, in order to limit factions. But it never worked. Therefore Madison advocated having as many factions as possible, so they could not form majorities. The larger the unit, the more difficult it would be for a momentary faction to dominate.

He wrote before political parties (which ironically he helped organize later) but American parties did not much modify Madison's logic because they were very weak and decentralized organizationally. (That is why today's Republican Party is so worrisome.)

Small units might want to secede in moments of temporary pique and the like. They are almost guaranteed to be dominated by a faction, though if the faction approaches 100% and they can be viable and not exert serious negative externalities on their neighbors, I'd be inclined to say - good riddance.

A larger unit would want to secede because a wider variety of people had given up living in a given polity, almost certainly for a wider variety of reasons, and so in my mind both the original polity and the people in the new one would be better off if they separated.

For example, if I could vote for say the Blue Northeast or West Coast to leave the US at this point, I would. If the Red South wanted to leave instead, I'd say fine by me. I think the cultural differences between the lunacy that takes fundamentalist evangelical Christianity seriously as an answer to everything, and rational people be they religious or secular, are perhaps so great as to be unbridgeable. Look at the current stupidity on the right over Christmas.

A possible compromise would be strengthened federalism - but limited by the 14th amendment.

LOCKE
I read your essay, although admittedly quickly not due to disrespect but limited time. I apologize if I miss your point.

You quote Locke on equality - sentiments I agree with 100%. You then argue
Lockean equality involves not merely equality before legislators, judges, and police, but, far more crucially, equality with legislators, judges, and police.

You argue that as soon as a government is established, there is an inequality between people and rulers. Insofar as states are concerned, we agree. Insofar as democracies are concerned, it gets more complicated.

It is certainly the case today that such inequality exists. Police break into someone's home, shoot him to death, and then discover they have the wrong address. They go free. Criminal acts are protected because the “protectors” are the criminals. And the temptation of anarchism is strong. I will try and be firm in not trying to take on anarcho capitalism. When I did few took me up, most did so through repetition, and asking me to read their voluminous writings without every reading mine.

It is easy to see how a democratic polity can arise with the power of making binding decisions entirely within a Lockean framework. People living together peacefully discover that a problem has begin to arise. Let's call the area Missoula Guch, Missoula because that is where the example will come from, Gulch after She-who-must-not-be-mentioned.

The problem is an unexpected one. MG is cold in the winter, and the people use wood stoves. Even if they use other kinds of heat, they like fireplaces for aesthetic reasons. For many years this has not been a problem. But as population grows, the winter temperature inversion that heretofore had not been a problem, begins more and more noticeably to trap wood smoke in lower atmospheric levels, reducing the quality of air to breathe. Asthmatics are first injured. Perhaps particularly vulnerable ones die from complications brought about by bad air to other illnesses such as pneumonia.

What to do? An existing property right of burning wood to heat one's home that was quite reasonable for small populations becomes lethal for some when the population becomes larger. The cause of the problem is not just heating, which at least in principle has a technological solution, it is also aesthetics - the decorative fireplaces. Relations between people degenerate into bickering, sometimes worse. Finally someone calls a community meeting where all attend.

Let us say that the people there have had enough conflict and consequently are looking for a solution, and can agree on the following propositions:
1. Many like wood stoves, and many of these have lived there since before bad air was a problem
2. Many like fireplaces, and the same points apply as above.
3. The air is bad and getting worse due to increased burning of wood.
4. No single fireplace or stove contributes significantly, or even detectably, to the problem.
5. Conflicts arising from this problem are serious and may grow more so.

None of these points are unreasonable extrapolations.

So someone suggests that the community select by some means - lot, election, flights of birds, whatever - a group to meet and come up with a proposal or proposals for the community as a whole to vote on.

A group of anarchists objects. Let us say they are 5% of the total. The rest agree.

The rest of the community then does the libertarian thing for people who they see as a threat to their community, but who are personally peaceful. They shun them. Totally. Before long these folks have discovered that living elsewhere is more rewarding, and they depart. All do so peacefully with no rights violated.

Preliminary to the vote the people bind themselves to accepting the outcome. Perhaps several proposals are presented, with the ultimate winner under whatever set of voting rules you want to suggest being the one selected. You have now created a governmental action: a decision has been made with monopolistic claims over a given territory: Missoula Gulch. Missoula, Montana faced just such a problem, and the city came up with a apparent solution praised by some and deprecated by others.

If enough similar kinds of issues arise, there is no stretch of our imaginations to see two more things happening. First, lots of people get tired of meetings. Second, they therefore suggest selecting representatives to do that kind of thing on a more than case by case basis. In order to guarantee responsiveness, they can be recalled if their district so desires.

Is this better than anarcho capitalism? I don't want to go there. But it does perfectly reflect the kind of equality I see you praising in Locke. The representatives have no legal privileges to rule over anyone, No one's rights have been violated, and you now have a government.

Such a government will ALWAYS have people in it who will seek to carve out for themselves islands, ultimately continents, and in their fondest dreams, worlds of privilege vis-à-vis their constituents. Eternal vigilance is the only solution. But that such people exist and probably will always be successful to some limited extent is not in itself an argument that this system is inherently a violator of equality any more than the existence of fraud is an argument against the market.

It is important also to recognize that philosophically Locke operated within a Newtonian framework, a framework uniquely friendly to a very strong individualism. Property rights were conceived to be firmly defined with clear and defensible boundaries - though Locke limited the use of property in ways that those arguing in his name would find uncomfortable - as Nozick acknowledged in discussing the “Lockean proviso.” Yet even here, we got to a government without violating any conception of good sense.

My example of smoke is one of a great many where this Lockean model breaks down - that is, at scales very small and very large, neat property rights break down perhaps in a way analogous to how Newtonian physics breaks down in the very small and very large because, in both instances, a super individualistic “particle” model of people and reality fails to do justice to either, however useful it may be as a first approximation.

Geoffrey Allan Plauche - 12/10/2005

Looks like I accidentally C&Ped the link above twice and they melded together. This one should work: http://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-empirical-evidence-against.html.

Geoffrey Allan Plauche - 12/10/2005

As for the Hamilton quote... Dismissing Hamilton's argument as a mere opinion does nothing to address its validity. He makes an argument against the democratic (republican) peace thesis. Is it incorrect? Why?

Geoffrey Allan Plauche - 12/10/2005

My apologies if my original post seemed terse and was taken as condescending. It was not meant to be. It's just that time of the semester when a graduate student has papers to finish, final exams to take, and a lot of grading to do. My apologies also for the links not working. I'll have to check that out. It looks like Blogger may have changed the way it archives posts. Also, I don't doubt that Mr. diZerega has read more Hayek and Rothbard than I have, but I also don't think that fact at all proves what it seems to imply. Besides, I didn't even mention Rothbard, I mentioned Spooner.

Mr. diZerega's clarification on different types of rules is helpful, but I don't think they prove his point. The Constitution provides a set of procedural rules. All right. I don't think my original post says anything to the contrary, but if it does I retract it. The point I was trying to make was the same that Stepp, Casanova, and Long have been trying to make. Congress is a part of the US government, which has a legal monopoly on the use of force and ultimate decisionmaking within the territory it claims as its own, and thus in its domestic and foreign policy-making. It is an organization and not a spontaneous order.

The manner in which some of the government's members (the politicians, not the bureaucrats) get selected might qualify as a quasi- or simulated spontaneous order, but it takes place within a fundamentally monopolistic context. The choices are limited by force in a way that they are not between a customer and a business, in a way that they are not with regard to market forces, and similarly for common law and other genuine spontaneous orders. The electoral process, by contrast to these, is an artificial competition with artificially limited choices and procedures that must be followed, and which were set up for a specific purpose - to choose leaders for the organization. It is just an organization, like a business (if anyone wanted to run a business like a democracy), that decided to have its top officers nominally chosen by election by its lower ranking members rather than by the founder and owner, a board of directors, or the CEO. That doesn't make it any less an organization. Mr. diZerega talks about democracies turning into states, but all currently existing democracies already are states, and as such, they are organizations and not genuine spontaneous orders.

As for evidence for or against the democratic peace thesis...well, I find the tendency among its proponents to redefine democracy to protect the thesis to be problematic. I also find the definition for war that is commonly used (1,000+ battle deaths) to be misleading. I find the thesis itself by itself to be deficient. If the other elements of the Kantian Peace are added then the thesis is improved but remains flawed. I simply don't have time to explain why in detail, however, especially on a blog but the sources I cited do go into detail.

By the way, this link contains links to my other posts: http://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-empirical-evidence-against.htmlhttp://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-empirical-evidence-against.html.

Gus diZerega - 12/10/2005

Anthony Gregory writes:
"On the other hand, Professor Rummel, whom Mr. diZerega cites as someone with whom he shares substantial agreement regarding democratic peace theory, has been especially supportive of both Bush's imperial foreign policy and domestic suppression of liberty (such as in his calls to censor the media). . . . "

Yes. And the fact that I have opposed it 100% since before the Iraq invasion, and spoke at more than one antiwar rally before it started, suggests that, as with so many issues, there are a variety of ways to interpret the implications of an empirical finding. My interpretation is basically Hayekian, and the strength of that interpretation is that it explain the findings, explains similar data about democracies, and offers a way to evaluate more mechanical understandings of the phenomena.

1. One cannot restructure societies that have no foundation in the values the restructurers want to impart. This is a Hayekian argument akin to that against central economic planning. Many democratic peace theorists have a very nmechanical understanding of the relationship. In fact my Review of Politics piece criticizes some of them on precisely those grounds.

To this point, which I believe is sufficient unto itself, I add

2. Because innocent people will always be killed, it is always wrong to start a war that is not absolutely necessary.

3. War strengthens the least democratic element in the US government, the executive, thereby increasing the chances a democracy will become a state. This point is under appreciated by all too many democratic peace theorists.

Steve Horwitz writes:
"I think Roderick is right on the facts here. The anarcho-capitalists have been much more anti-Bush, and esp. anti-War, than have the minarchist or limited government libertarians. . . "

I have never written, suggested or even thought otherwise. They have even opposed interventions that I have reluctantly supported, like taking out the Taliban. My support for that war was reluctant because two of the points immediately above still apply and innocent people would still almost certainly be killed. I have since learned possible things about ebven that which give me pause as to whether I was right.

Even when I disagree with them on these issues, which is rare, I think they perform a vital service because war is a bandwagon that many people like to jump on early in the game and bad people like to take advantage of the furor to gain more power. Consequently nay-sayers in such instances can perform vital services to their country.

There has been no more consistent group of opponents to American imperialism than anarcho capitalists - and I honor them for that even if I think their solution to political institutions is flawed.

Remember, I started this thread saying I did not want to debate anarcho capitalism. I am not one, though I used to be, and elsewhere on this blog I have given my reasons for why I changed my mind. I am trying to stick only to explaining why the democracies are not states, that it matters that they are not, and that this thesis is important and far from incoherent.

Steven Horwitz - 12/10/2005

I think Roderick is right on the facts here. The anarcho-capitalists have been much more anti-Bush, and esp. anti-War, than have the minarchist or limited government libertarians. Whatever my other problems with the Mises Institute, there is no question they have been the most reliable and consistent anti-war voice among libertarians (though not always with arguments I'd use), and they are mostly anarcho-capitalists.

Anthony Gregory - 12/10/2005

On the other hand, Professor Rummel, whom Mr. diZerega cites as someone with whom he shares substantial agreement regarding democratic peace theory, has been especially supportive of both Bush's imperial foreign policy and domestic suppression of liberty (such as in his calls to censor the media).

In fact, Bush's foreign policy seems to have gained a lot of support from democratic peace theorists in general. But from my expericence, self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalists, with very few exceptions, have been very, very opposed to the Bush regime.

Roderick T. Long - 12/9/2005

Gus, you say you don't find Congress's monopoly of force irksome. But it's precisely that monopoly that -- well, I would say it's precisely that monopoly that makes it a state, but using your terminology, it's precisely that monopoly that makes it far better able than a private organisation to turn itself into a state.

Your claim that large geographical areas should be allowed to leave, but not small ones, suggests that in practice the system you advocate ends up enshrining "faction" in Madison's sense -- the interests of larger groups trumps the interests of smaller groups, which is exactly what the Madisonian system is supposed to avoid.

For me, the fundamental reason that what you advocate counts as a system of state domination is that it denies Lockean equality.

Roderick T. Long - 12/9/2005

> I will NOT discuss anarcho
> capitalism here. Generally
> they have been reliable
> supporters of the Bush
> administration in its grab
> for dictatorial power.
> “Liberals” are worse, they
> rationalize.

That seems empirically false. I can think of a handful of anarcho-capitalists who have been supporters of Bush's foreign policy, but most of the anarcho-capitalists I know of have been against it. And I don't know any anarcho-capitalists who have supported Bush's domestic policies. The view that Bush is better than the liberals is not common at all among anarcho-capitalists, as far as I can see. (It had somewhat more currency back before he became president, but even then I don't think it was at all a general view. In my experience any support that Bush gets from libertarian quarters is far more likely to come from non-anarchist libertarians than from anarcho-capitalists.

Gus diZerega - 12/9/2005

This is a great time to bring my conversation with you to a halt.

Read my book if you want to renew it., If you dont; that's fine by me.

Gus diZerega - 12/9/2005

Stepp quotes me as saying- “Certain kinds of issues disappear within this paradigm - such as certain conceptions of social justice or that there is a clear relation between the size of government in a democracy and the amount of freedom available to people.”

He then says “I don't know what you mean here exactly, but there is the term "social justice." I didn't know you had rejected it, but given your left-wing orientation re: economics (e.g., economic power and big business), I'm sure you can understand why I would think you might accept it.”

No I do not. I was referring explicitly to the notions of social justice Hayek criticized. I did not elaborate because it is at least possible that some kind of “social justice” might be different.

And only someone as blind to any position different from your own could call my attitude towards the market leftist. I am a left Hayekian, I guess, in the sense that I am less concerned about democracies degenerating into tyranny than Hayek because I consider them to be spontaneous orders, and I think public values are worth pursuing. But then, Hayek supported moderate welfare - perhaps he was another “leftist” who didn't like the market?

Stepp-
“Re: Madison, he was writing as a political partisan, not a scientist. He was trying to foist a government and a constitution on the rest of society. His theory of government--that it exists to serve the people-- is ridiculous; and as Spooner pointed out, he and his 54 other framers/38 other signers had no right to act on behalf of anyone else, let alone on behalf of unborn generations.
“They should have been frog marched to the nearest jail and interned for the duration.”

Gus-
I used Madison as shorthand for the ideas he presented in the Federalist, assuming that readers on this list might know something about the Federalist's arguments. You seem not to and to prefer invective.

Also, by the logic you apply to Madison, I can ignore your arguments. YOU are more aggressively partisan than he was, that's for sure.

I have read plenty of Spooner. To me, his analysis gets more facile with each reading - but I don't have enough interest in anarcho capitalism any more to want to discuss him.

Stepp-
“Your point about market liberals (allegedly) undermining the separation of powers would be news to members of the modern Federalist Society, at least those that haven't gone over to the Conservative qua Big Government proponent darkside. I think it's also news to people who post here.”

Gus-
I can name a hell of a lot of market liberals and small government market conservatives who long supported the Bush administration. And I always distinguished them from anarcho capitalists who, whatever their theoretical faults in my opinion, never degenerated to that level..

Stepp quotes me:

"... insofar as it [medicine] is a profession/trade it is no more a spontaneous order than is being a computer programmer."

And says in response “Here you're putting words in my mouth. All trades etc. are part of the spontaneous order known as the market, not SOs themselves, and I never said they were.”

Gus-
Here is what you wrote “As for spontaneous order, medicine, etc. are examples, but they have economic dimensions that are part of the market and, sadly, the government.”.

In the context of replying to a post where I listed a great many spontaneous orders, my interpretation is the obvious and reasonable one. You could have avoided my misreading, if misreading it was, by actually addressing my arguments or perhaps doing me the courtesy of saying I had made my case. I am willing to admit when I am wrong. Apparently this is a one sided courtesy.

Stepp- “The distinction between "small" and "big" businsess is irrelevant as a matter of economic and financial theory, which I think is a big problem for you, and betrays your lack of understanding of either.
"
'Small business' is definitely part of the market order, not civil society as you use the term (if I understand your use correctly).

You do not seem to.

Stepp- “Or put it this way, if SB is part of civil society, then so is BB. All business, S and B, is based on voluntary exchange within a framework of law (contract, etc.). Any demarcation between them that puts SB in the SC category but which excludes BB is wrong.

“Mutual funds are not required by law to maximize shareholder revenue, as you claim. Where on earth did you get that notion? Wipe it from your head--it's wrong.”

Gus-
You may be right on that and I misinformed. I am not a legal scholar and you were right about a point concerning Henry Ford in a past encounter where I depended on a source that turned out to be wrong.

However, in terms of the basic point I was making, that such behavior may not be required in law is irrelevant because those funds appeal to people to invest in them based on their rate of return. Other values are largely irrelevant unless they are specifically labeled as “green” or some other such category that limits the kinds of investments they can make at the cost of forgoing possible revenue.

As to the non-trivial character of the distinction I am drawing, I will offer one more example to demonstrate what I am getting at, Pacific Lumber was a family owned company in California. It was profitable, but not as financially profitable as it could be. They also, like many such companies, saw themselves as serving local communities, and the region in general. They were praised by environmental groups as examples of sustainable forestry. They were therefore members of civil society as I use the term.

They went public to raise more capital, resulting in their being bought out in an unfriendly take over by Charles Hurwitz and Maxxam. After doing so logging was rapidly increased. The firm became more profitable. It also did enormous damage to the land through landslides and the like, and shifted the company's reputation with many Californians, local and otherwise, from good to bad.

I am uninterested in debating with you whether this is actually good or bad. That is not the issue. The issue is that a profitable family owned company, upon going public, was taken over because it did not maximize money profits and instead served other values along with profitability. These other values were set aside in pursuit of only money profit. Maxxam operated in a more shallow moral universe than did the original family owners, and when they went public the company became vulnerable to incorporation into that universe in a way it had not been when it was owned by individuals who had a more than purely pecuniary relationship with it. That is all.

Stepp- “I realize that economic theory holds that profit maximization is the goal of the firm, but there's a problem with this in the real world.
Virtually every firm can do this the next quarter or two by cutting capital expenditures to the bone, which will increase and even maximize profits during these periods. Of course, the firm might have a problem next year when its plant and equipment start to fall apart, but it will increase its profits next quarter.”

I purposely did not discuss short run and long run profit maximization, in other words, what counts as profit maximization, and I explicitly said that these firms were organized to pursue these goals about as much as any human institution could be. Since they are run by human beings they will never perfectly fit the ideal, but the point is not particularly relevant to the one I was making.

Stepp- “Your crack about computer programs and stock trading showing "the ethically more shallow world of the market order compared to the human mind" is meaningless, as is your distinction between that order and 'the ethical world of actors in the market place.'"

(snip)

No it is not. I can make assertions as well. The difference is that I offered reasons and evidence for mine.

Stepp- “Re: your discussion of public and private values, Mandeville, Smith and others of the Scottish enlightment pointed out that the pursuit of private values is instrumental in attaining public benefits. This is a point Hayek elaborated.”

Of all the people who have challenged my arguments, you have expended perhaps the least effort at figuring out what I am trying to say. You missed this point by about as much as your strange comment about paradigms. That is, utterly.

The market serves public values. It is not simply good for individuals, It is also good for the society that relies on it for production. That you could think I was blind to this truth suggests to me that trying to understand what I say is and probably always has been far from your mind.

William J. Stepp - 12/9/2005

Interesting as a historical theory and museum piece, just as the phlogiston and wages fund theories are.
But as scientific truths, they were swept aside long ago.
Of course, there are academics who believe his theory, just as there are some who accept Marx as gospel.

William J. Stepp - 12/9/2005

Gus diZerega wrote:

Certain kinds of issues disappear within this paradigm - such as certain conceptions of social justice or that there is a clear relation between the size of government in a democracy and the amount of freedom available to people.

I don't know what you mean here exactly, but there is the term "social justice." I didn't know you had rejected it, but given your left-wing orientation re: economics (e.g., economic power and big business), I'm sure you can understand why I would think you might accept it.

Re: Madison, he was writing as a political partisan, not a scientist. He was trying to foist a government and a constitution on the rest of society. His theory of government--that it exists to serve the people-- is ridiculous; and as Spooner pointed out, he and his 54 other framers/38 other signers had no right to act on behalf of anyone else, let alone on behalf of unborn generations.
They should have been frog marched to the nearest jail and interned for the duration.

Your point about market liberals (allegedly) undermining the separation of powers would be news to members of the modern Federalist Society, at least those that haven't gone over to the Conservative qua Big Government proponent darkside. I think it's also news to people who post here.

You write:

"... insofar as it [medicine] is a profession/trade it is no more a spontaneous order than is being a computer programmer."

Here you're putting words in my mouth. All trades etc. are part of the spontaneous order known as the market, not SOs themselves, and I never said they were.

The distinction between "small" and "big" businsess is irrelevant as a matter of economic and financial theory, which I think is a big problem for you, and betrays your lack of understanding of either.
"Small business" is definitely part of the market order, not civil society as you use the term (if I understand your use correctly).
Or put it this way, if SB is part of civil society, then so is BB. All business, S and B, is based on voluntary exchange within a framework of law (contract, etc.). Any demarcation between them that puts SB in the SC category but which excludes BB is wrong.

Mutual funds are not required by law to maximize shareholder revenue, as you claim. Where on earth did you get that notion? Wipe it from your head--it's wrong.

I realize that economic theory holds that profit maximization is the goal of the firm, but there's a problem with this in the real world.
Virtually every firm can do this the next quarter or two by cutting capital expenditures to the bone, which will increase and even maximize profits during these periods. Of course, the firm might have a problem next year when its plant and equipment start to fall apart, but it will increase its profits next quarter.

Your crack about computer programs and stock trading showing "the ethically more shallow world of the market order compared to the human mind" is meaningless, as is your distinction between that order and "the ethical world of actors in the market place."

CS is no more (or less) free than business and the market order. They are both free to the extent they are not aggressed against and impeded by government.

Re: your discussion of public and private values, Mandeville, Smith and others of the Scottish enlightment pointed out that the pursuit of private values is instrumental in attaining public benefits. This is a point Hayek elaborated.

Gus diZerega - 12/9/2005

Wiliam Stepp writes: "Hayek explicitly rejected the notion of "social justice"; I know of no libertarians who accept it."

To the best of my knowledge I never brought the concept up.

He continues "If justice refers to anything, it means seeking justice after law.
So for example, if Smith steals from Jones, is found guilty of theft, then makes restitution in accordance with law, justice is served. To say this is social justice is, at the very least, a violation of Occam's razor."

I am often mystified how people with strong ideological beliefs find all sorts of things in arguments made by others while avoiding confronting the issues really raised. Please give me an example of where I advocated social justice - a concept I explicitly criticized in my final Critical Review article, and on Hayekian grounds I have always accepted.

He goes on "Any other concept of social justice, such as a "socially just" distribution of income, has nothing to do with justice the way Hayek used that term, and is based solely on someone's arbitrary taste or whim. "

Thank you for sharing. What does this have to do with anything I wrote?

Stepp then writes "As for spontaneous order, medicine, etc. are examples, but they have economic dimensions that are part of the market and, sadly, the government. Szasz's lead essay in the current TIR points out that physicians were once entrepreneurs, but that the practice of medicine was gradually highjacked by the state. An increasing portion of doctors' incomes have been funneled through the State."

There you go again - bringing in issues very far removed from what I have been discussing. Science is a spontaneous order. Medicine in so far as it is a science is also. But insofar as it is a profession/trade it is no more a spontaneous order than is being a computer programmer. Medicine is an interesting and complex topic because it has elements of both, but rarely in the same person.

Stepp adds "As for civil society and ecology, I think you make too much of the difference between CS and the market. After all, all institutions of CS have an economic dimension. . . .
"You haven't convinced me that democracy is a part of civil society. Democracy is a species of the genus government. Civil society is based on voluntary action; government, including democracy, is based on coercive force."

Let me begin by saying that everything in life uses resources, and in our society those resources produced by human beings are usually produced within the market. But science, for example, is not economics, no matter how dependent much of science is on the prosperity and technical skills developed within the market.

For me the concepts market place and market order help us distinguish between civil society and the market. They have very specific and different meanings. (Karl Hess, jr., and I developed the distinction some years ago. I think it is a vital one.)

Civil society is that vital realm where people enter into 100% voluntary cooperative arrangements on the basis of the complex value mixes that characterize individual human minds. The world of many small businesses is part of this realm because for many - and I was one for over 15 years - money is not the only reason I pursued my (profitable) business. There were frequently times when I gave up opportunities to maximize my money profit because of the influence of other values. I did not make these decisions in order to advertise or gain business in the long run, either. And of course civil society includes a wide range of activities that are not businesses, such as soccer clubs, the Audabon Society, the Masons, and so on.

The market order is that also vital realm that is overwhelmingly dominated by the impersonal market process guided virtually in its entirety by the price system and the need to maximize money income. This is its strength and its weakness. Corporations are one example of a market order institution. A corporate CEO, as Milton Friedman reminded us, is using other people's money to pursue his own values of he uses corporate money for charitable purposes or whatever. Further, shareholders increasingly do not even know what companies they “own.” They belong to mutual funds. The funds are required by law to maximize shareholder revenue. As much as human ingenuity can, these institutions are designed to eliminate all values other than maximizing profit. A CEO who did not do this would see share value fall, and even if he was profitable, would be in danger of a hostile take over by people seeing unmet money profit opportunities. In other words, allowing values other than money maximization to enter into decision making is penalized as a part of the system of exchange that exists there. The ethical complexity of ownership is simplified as much as possible into simply serving money values.

Another example of the market order in action is the effort to write computer programs for playing the stock market. That this can be done indicates the ethically more shallow world of the market order compared to the human mind. I wrote ethically shallow, not unethical. There is an important ethical dimension to the market order, but it is not the same as the ethical world of actors in the market place.

This is not a realm of freedom in the sense that civil society is the realm of freedom. Freedom of action is more circumscribed in that there are more severe penalties for not pursuing money values.

So, for me, civil society is the realm of freedom, and the market order is a realm of a more circumscribed freedom - but still lacking commands to act in certain ways such as is found in governments, democratic or undemocratic.

I think it is very clear if you reread my post that no where do I suggest that democracies are part of civil society, and that I emphasize the desirability of shifting as many public values as possible from the democratic context to that of civil society and that I even mentioned democratic forest trusts as a specific institutional example of this.

So you misunderstood me 100% on that issue.

Another way for me to try and make this point - democracies exist to pursue public values. In practice they pursue both public and private values. Their reliance on the capacity to compel obedience encourages rascals to use access to their decision-making institutions to give themselves and their supporters privileges at the expense of other citizens or the community as a whole - Madison's definition of a faction. These people are like parasites - the organism they infect could be very valuable, but it is weakened, sometimes severely, conceivably fatally by their presence. The US today has a serious political parasite problem, mostly with roots on the right.

Civil society is also able to pursue public or private values. A soccer club pursues private values until, say, its members decide to offer free coaching to poor kids. At that point they are seeking to provide values they deem good for the entire community. In many ways, if civil society can provide public values it is better they be provided there than by government because it is far less vulnerable to “parasite infection.”

I do not think all public values can be provided by civil society. But even if you do, this alternative framework is empirically richer and institutionally more creative than the simple market/state dichotomy that has its roots when liberalism arose against undemocratic states. Anarcho capitalism should distinguish theoretically between the market order and civil society - that move does not require giving up anything, and enables you to address public values questions, questions which your failure to address constitutes one reason why so many, myself included, do not take your position as seriously as you would like.

William J. Stepp - 12/8/2005

Hayek explicitly rejected the notion of "social justice"; I know of no libertarians who accept it.
If justice refers to anything, it means seeking justice after law.
So for example, if Smith steals from Jones, is found guilty of theft, then makes restitution in accordance with law, justice is served. To say this is social justice is, at the very least, a violation of Occam's razor.
Any other concept of social justice, such as a "socially just" distribution of income, has nothing to do with justice the way Hayek used that term, and is based solely on someone's arbitrary taste or whim.

As for spontaneous order, medicine, etc. are examples, but they have economic dimensions that are part of the market and, sadly, the government. Szasz's lead essay in the current TIR points out that physicians were once entrepreneurs, but that the practice of medicine was gradually highjacked by the state. An increasing portion of doctors' incomes have been funneled through the State.
As for civil society and ecology, I think you make too much of the difference between CS and the market. After all, all institutions of CS have an economic dimension. For example, non profits obtain resources, then spend them on charitable causes, medical research, etc. (Non profits are a function of the tax code, and would exist in a very different form without it.)
Wells and Huxley described ecology as "the extension of economics to the whole of life" (Donald Worster 2nd ed., _Nature's Economy_, 294).
You haven't convinced me that democracy is a part of civil society. Democracy is a species of the genus government. Civil society is based on voluntary action; government, including democracy, is based on coercive force.

Gus diZerega - 12/8/2005

There is no guarantee the consumer will have his or her needs filled even if willing to pay for them. The market is a discovery process. Someone needs to discover an unmet consumer need and market a product to satisfy it. No guarantees here. The same situation exists with respect to citizens.

The point is not to compete with Congress - Congress does not have policies. Congress is the place where policies are made. It is empty of concrete policy content. It could as easily vote to abolish the army as to vote to enlarge it. Congresspeople have policies, however, and you are free to compete with them.

Like corporations in the market, Congresspeople will seek to insulate themselves from competition. If they succeed they will be well on the way to creating a state. That is why gerrymandering and the like are so very dangerous.

By the way, one is also free to compete with Congress in the sense of advocating constitutional amendments or, if becoming a majority, of reorganizing it in fundamental ways.

The only way you cannot compete with Congress is to set up a competing organization claiming either the right to use violence against others who it deems to break laws it wants to enforce (your multiple competing protection organization option I find so unpersuasive) or claim that your group is not subject to its decisions. I do not find either point particularly irksome except in cases of secession, where large geographically contiguous areas should be free to leave.

One last point, yes, the market has the advantages you describe, thank goodness. But not all values are so satisfied, alas. I really wish they were. Look at my discussion of public values and property rights following Enright's post. Here this kind of gradation you describe is not possible. One size needs to fit all.

Gus diZerega - 12/8/2005

Michael Joseph Enright writes

“I think that there are two (or perhaps more) issues involved here. The first . . . may be reframed as to whether democracy is ideal, works well, satisfactory to libertarians--whatever. I thought this was where the essay was going.”

Not really. The American democracy is most clearly NOT working well. It is in fact in grave danger of degenerating into a state. And states are guilty of about all the things libertarians say they are.

Further, that public values can be handled by a democracy does not mean they are always best handled by a democracy. Civil society can accomplish some of these tasks better because it is purely voluntary and so much more difficult to hijack for other ends.

Enright also writes “The second issue regards centeralized executive power. This is a seperate issue. There is no reason that those who are anarcho-capitalists and believe that democracies are states (as opposed to "spontaneous orders") cannot oppose the centralized executive power that we see today. That whole thing about "a democracy is already a state so oh well" doesn't seem to be rigerous logic. There is no reason that we cannot oppose democracy in general and still oppose some democratic structures more than others.”

The first point is true, of course. But read my initial post again. I was referring to classical liberals and the like who are NOT anarcho capitalists. I will NOT discuss anarcho capitalism here. Generally they have been reliable supporters of the Bush administration in its grab for dictatorial power. “Liberals” are worse, they rationalize.

Miniarchists and the like who think of democracies as states generally think they need to come to power in order to impose an ideological agenda on the government. The most obvious way is through a strong president. If my argument is valid, this strategy suffers from two serious shortcomings. First, once power is centralized in a strong president it can be used by any who hold that position. A would-be Caesar like Bush will push it for all it's worth.

Second, that his rhetoric lulled miniarchists to support him demonstrates first the political naiveté of these people. Because they see democracies as already states, they did not appreciate the grave danger they were courting to try and subordinate its spontaneous order qualities to the program of a political party. This is trying to subject a spontaneous order to central (political) planning.

The strategy is suicidal. It could not possibly be more wrong.

Enright continues “However to suggest that a democracy is a "spontaneous order" (which would also seems to entail that taxpaying is "voluntary") seems bizarre.”

All that needs to be voluntary in a spontaneous order are general acceptance of the rules as fair, in the sense of treating all equally in an abstract sense, and in the choice of what projects to pursue within their framework.

This sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary is not valid.

I have repeatedly, without success, tried to get libertarians in general to grant that property rights are not self-explanatory, and that there has to be some determination made as to what is or is not such a right. Property rights are ethical concepts. When does an unwelcome intrusion constitute trespass, and when not? There are no clear principles to decide. Judgment and values must enter in, and people will NOT agree unanimously as to where these decisions lead. The only way to decide that is fair is to have fair rules. But in any given instance some will be unhappy with how those rules work out, and will still be coerced to accept the determination. It is part of life.

It is also what I term a public value. That is, a value that to be adequately expressed must be applied to a large group of people. Could be a small community or a large, but it cannot be adopted by some and ignored or violated by others, and still work well.

Democracies provide a forum for determining public values on the basis, ideally, of fairness for all involved. That existing democracies often do a poor job is beside the point. A job worth doing is often worth doing poorly rather than not at all. But I would agree that these tasks can often be done far better than they are - and that often they can be done better within civil society rather than democracy.

Gus diZerega - 12/8/2005

I will reply to Casanova and Stepp in the same post.

Lisa Casanova writes
“Perhaps I am unclear on the fundamentals here. In my college level political science class, one of the first things we learned was that the very definition of a state is an entity that holds a monopoly on the provision of law and the use of force to enforce it in a given geographic area. Democracies possess this attribute. How are they not states?”

A good question. You were taught a Weberian definition, and so let's look at what Max Weber wrote on the matter. But first, let's look at a relevant insight by Hayek.

Consider the term “economy.” As Hayek points out, we refer to the market as an “economy” and its study as “economics.” But a corporation or other business, as well as households, also have “economies.” Indeed, the term was first used (in Greek) by Aristotle to refer to the household economy, which is very far from a market.

But one refers to a spontaneous order - the market. The other to the resources controlled by an organization - be it a business or household, both of who exist within the larger economy. Hayek argued that such confusion arises from this ambiguity that he urged a different word for the market - a catallaxy. Needless to say, his suggestion did not catch on, and the confusion continues.

Exactly the same problem exists with another spontaneous order, though not a human one. An ecology as we use the term today refers to a spontaneous order. But originally it referred to “God's household” - an expansion of Aristiotle's concept of economy to encompass the world. We are not much discomfited by this today because most of us do not use ecology in this second sense. See Donald Worster, Nature's Economy (Cambridge), for a study of this point.

Now we can look at the question of the state.

The state arose as a term when no representative democracies existed. Direct democracies that did exist were small communities with very concrete similarities between citizens, communities considered as self-conscious groups organized to achieve very specific kinds of goals, a view strengthened by their military vulnerability so military organization was central to them. Consequently, the definition you use carries organizational characteristics by implication. They were assumed because no one knew of anything different.

We can see this point by looking at what Max Weber wrote in his essay Politics as a Vocation:


“Ultimately one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely the use of political force.

“4. 'Every state is founded on force' said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk.

“That indeed is right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, the concept of "state" would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as 'anarchy' in the specific sense of this word.”

Trotsky, of course, conceived of the modern democratic state as an instrument of rule for the capitalist class. That is, an explicitly organizational model.

After a bit more, Weber continues,
“Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

This is the basic definition you were taught. Note that it is in the larger context of seeing political entities as instrumental organizations, indeed of not even wondering whether alternatives exist. This is assumed before the definition is given.

Weber elaborates

“at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the "right" to use violence. Hence, "politics" for us means striving to share power, either among states or among groups within a state.

“ 6. Like the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be.”

Note again the use of terminology emphasizing a hierarchy of ruler and subordinate. Contrast this with Madisonian reasoning: the people are sovereign, THEY retain the ultimate right to use force, and delegate some of it to the government. But nowhere does Madison call the people the state.

In the Madisonian model the government does not dominate the people, it exists to serve the people. One of the most important political problems he described in the Federalist was how to keep the government from dominating the people. His solution was the separation of powers - further weakening any hierarchical element in the system. This of course is a vital issue, one that in my view those who have adopted the state model for thinking about democracy has led them unintentionally to undermine democracy in favor of hierarchy and domination, Hence the irony that market liberals have done more to create a real state in the US than most big government liberals.

Madison is clearly NOT describing a state once we leave a short seat of the pants definition that takes for granted a whole series of assumptions rooted in undemocratic experience and instead examine the unarticulated assumptions as to what the word means.

Now to Stepp's comments. What he adds is the following point:

“Gus diZerega claims in the essay at his website that a spontaneous order is a paradigm, but it's merely a descriptive term (a powerful one to be sure). Nor is it even an analytical tool, such as the law of supply and demand.
Newtonian mechanics and neoclassical economics are paradigms, unlike the idea of spontaneous order.”

I confess to considerable uncertainty as to what he is thinking of here, though I am grateful for his taking the time to read some of my stuff.

In Kuhn's sense, which is how I use the term, a paradigm is a theoretical model that among other things defines a research agenda and a way of answering certain kinds of questions about the world. Hayek developed the concept of spontaneous order to describe kinds of dynamic adaptive order that arise in complex situations where the patterns that appear are unplanned.

There are many kinds of such order. Hayek lists the following: market economies, common law, science, language, and evolution. I think he would also include civil society and ecologies. I would add democracy. Of those that exist in the human world, certain abstract features exist in common among them that do not exist within deliberately created orders, and I describe these in my initial post.

This paradigm organizes our perception in a very different way than does analysis that does not distinguish between spontaneous or emergent orders and constructed or instrumental orders. Note, the rules that generate such orders can be constructed or arise in an unplanned way but the resulting order is not constructed by deliberate intent. All that can be confidently predicted in such cases, Hayek writes, are patterns of relationships. But in the absence of patterns, there would be no order.

Certain kinds of issues disappear within this paradigm - such as certain conceptions of social justice or that there is a clear relation between the size of government in a democracy and the amount of freedom available to people.

Other issues rise to prominence, such as how do the different feedback systems of different spontaneous orders interact with one another, or what are the implications of the fact that feedback systems simplify the values that motivate particular actions within such systems or that what counts as a resource in a spontaneous order may not be equally important as a resource for every actor within the system? For example, market feedback reflects people's time preferences as manifested through the rate of interest. Ecological feedback reflects patterns of biological reproduction. There is little these two systems have in common, opening up possible problems of co-existence.

So I think the spontaneous order concept is not only a paradigm, it is one of the most promising in the social sciences, rooted fundamentally in the Austrian School of Economics, but extending much farther.

Roderick T. Long - 12/8/2005

I don't think the substitution works, because a) in a market, if the majority votes for Ford and the minority for Chevrolet, both sides get what they want, whereas in democracy everyone gets stuck with the majority's preference, and b) the market allows for constant, graduated, and selective feedback, whereas elections are priodic, all-or-nothing package deals -- a much blunter instrument for expressing consumer preferences. Finally, here's an excerpt from a previous post of mine on this subject:

The disanalogy between the occupants of business firms and the occupants of Congress, the White House, etc. is that in a free market I am free to start up in competition with a business firm whereas I will be shut down by force if I attempt to compete with Congress. So even Madisonian democracy is a condition in which the occupants of government office (along with those special-interest groups that manage to win their favour) constitute a minority faction, enjoying rights themselves that they deny to others -- which to my mind makes it a system of domination.

Gus diZerega - 12/8/2005

I mean Madisonian representative democracy.

As to your first reading assignment, I have probably read more Hayek and Rothbard than you, and knew the latter moderately well. As to the post from Roderick Long that you give, I agree 100% with every criticism, and disagree with the conclusion just as strongly.

To really cause some trouble and help to make a point, I will offer a modification of Long's statement:

"Given the minimal impact that any one consumer is likely to have on business outcomes, the minimal input consumers have in selecting the options available on the market in the first place, and the inability of consumers to determine what decisions entrepreneurs will actually make, the connection between the consumer needs and the actual result seems tenuous at best. “

These observations are also true - and do not matter much as a critique of the market. The market is such a wonderful institution in part because it operates independently of specific deliberate choices made by those acting within it. That is why it is called a spontaneous order.

What makes democracies different from states is the same characteristic.

You then write that I “overlook the fact that the US government . . . is an organization with an explicit set of rules and both general and specific, humanly planned, purpose(s). The democratic electoral process takes place within a centrally planned set of rules (see the Constitution as well as state and federal laws) . . . .”

I think you are making the same mistake made by those who say because people plan and organize all sorts of things within the market, the market is not a spontaneous order - a version of Higgs error. There are three kinds of rules that can get confused.

First, there are the plans and organizations people create to get specific things done. They are organized by rules tending to facilitate reaching a goal.

Second, there is the attempt to expand this kind of organization to encompass a complex order as a whole. This would be a planned economy - what used to be called socialism before the word became almost meaningless due to its abuse by supporters and detractors alike.

Third, there are purely procedural rules that are silent on how they will be used, or even if they will be used. All they do is tell you that whatever you want to do within a given institutional context - and that is entirely your choice - you must do it by following certain procedural rules. For example, signing a contract makes it more binding in many cases than simply making a verbal agreement. The market arises from people acting within such a set of rules.

The Constitution consists of this third kind of rules. It has had in the past two rules that require the community to pursue specific goals: slavery and prohibition. Both have been amended out of it. The rules that remain are compatible with pursuing a great many mutually exclusive projects.

As to your points about the democratic peace, I want to make three points. First, neither of the two urls you gave that might have addressed my point work. (The first and the second to last.) However, if you decide to pursue the issue, instead of giving me a working url, give me an argument. It should be very very easy to offer a possible empirical example that rebuts the democratic peace argument if the argument is false. There are some close counter examples, and the ones that come closest - such as the US overthrow of the Arbenz government of Guatemala, happened because for small weak countries, the President of the US is largely free of democratic political control - in no small part due to the efforts of conservatives and market liberals to strengthen the executive.

Second, none of the other arguments you make address the case for the democratic peace because neither my nor any other such advocates' arguments depend on Alexander Hamilton's opinion, or whether demagogues exist.

Third, regarding Hoppe and the other reading assignments you have given me, if I am expected to take the time to make arguments on this list, I expect those challenging me to take the time to make their arguments. I think my time is at least as valuable to me as yours is to you. I could say - read Rummel, read diZerega, read Ray, read Russert, read many others, and then come back. I do not because that is unreasonable in this context. But this point cuts both directions.

Michael Joseph Enright - 12/8/2005

I think that there are two (or perhaps more) issues involved here. The first one is whether or not a democracy is a "state". This issue may be reframed as to whether democracy is ideal, works well, satisfactory to libertarians--whatever. I thought this was where the essay was going.

The second issue regards centeralized executive power. This is a seperate issue. There is no reason that those who are anarcho-capitalists and believe that democracies are states (as opposed to "spontaneous orders")cannot oppose the centralized executive power that we see today. That whole thing about "a democracy is already a state so oh well" doesn't seem to be rigerous logic. There is no reason that we cannot oppose democracy in general and still oppose some democratic structures more than others.

However to suggest that a democracy is a "spontaneous order" (which would also seems to entail that taxpaying is "voluntary") seems bizarre.

William J. Stepp - 12/8/2005

Democracies are states and are not spontaneous orders for the reasons outlined above. Weber's definition of the state (or government) focuses on the monopoly of force. The other essential part of the definition of a state is that it gains its revenue by force.
Thus,
government = state =
pillage broker + protection racket.
As for political elections, which are a vital part of democracy, Mencken pointed out that they are a kind of advance auction sale of stolen property. He also defined government as a "broker in pillage."
When Rothbard referred to the State as a criminal gang, he meant all governments, including democratic ones.

Gus diZerega claims in the essay at his website that a spontaneous order is a paradigm, but it's merely a descriptive term (a powerful one to be sure). Nor is it even an analytical tool, such as the law of supply and demand.
Newtonian mechanics and neoclassical economics are paradigms, unlike the idea of spontaneous order.

Lisa Casanova - 12/7/2005

Perhaps I am unclear on the fundamentals here. In my college level political science class, one of the first things we learned was that the very definition of a state is an entity that holds a monopoly on the provision of law and the use of force to enforce it in a given geographic area. Democracies possess this attribute. How are they not states?

Geoffrey Allan Plauche - 12/7/2005

...by democracy you meant direct democracy with the explicit consent of every individual (i.e., unanimous consent).

If that isn't what you mean by democracy, then I suggest you read or reread Hayek and Spooner, and Roderick Long's essay in Social Philosophy and Policy Vol. 12, No. 2 (1995), entitled "Immanent Liberalism." I'll just cite one passage in particular from Long's paper that is incisive:

"Given the infrequency of elections, the minimal impact that any one voter is likely to have on electoral outcomes, the minimal input voters have in selecting the options available on the ballot in the first place, and the inability of voters to determine what decisions their representatives will actually make, the connection between the voter's will and the actual result seems tenuous at best. When one adds to this the severe negative externalities that majority rule creates for minorities, it seems inadvisable for liberals to assign much weight to the legitimizing role of the franchise." (12)

You overlook the fact that the US government and all other states, whether democratic or not, is an organization with an explicit set of rules and both general and specific, humanly planned, purpose(s). The democratic electoral process takes place within a centrally planned set of rules (see the Constitution as well as state and federal laws) and the politicians and bureaucrats that direct the coercive power of the state do so with a significant degree of independence from the will of the people. Sure, they can't stray too far from public opinion for fear of losing their positions of power, but they also have significant power to mold public opinion.

Every democratic country in the world today has a state and none are direct democracies resting on true consent. There are strong theoretical reasons for thinking that democracies are not inherently peaceful. First, there is the well-known problem of demagogues in democracies. I cover others in my blogpost here (http://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/03/triangulating-peace-or-two-foundations.html). The arguments in Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed and in the Mises Institute published books Myth of National Defense and The Costs of War are also telling.

You might also check out my blogposts here (http://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-empirical-evidence-against.html) and here (http://veritasnoctis.blogspot.com/2005/04/hamilton-vs-kant-on-war-and-peace.html) The former discusses empirical evidence against the democratic peace thesis and the latter cites a passage from Hamilton in Federalist #6 that argues against the democratic peace thesis.