In recent posts and comments, I have endeavoured to advise against the
inclination of many fellow-libertarians to effectively stop the process
of building a positive theory of the state as a result of adopting a
largely normative theory that systematically selects aspects of the
state considered undesirable at the expense of a(n unbiased)
comprehensive picture of the state-society-nexus.
These recent comments can be read as a homage to James M. Buchanan, a classical liberal, to whose sober and incisive mind the state has been equally important and worthy of in-depth study (i) as a condition of liberty and (ii) as her antagonist.
My initial encounter with Buchanan was effected by reading his What Should Economists Do? - a paper that made him stand out vis-à-vis most of the economists I had hitherto studied. Exchange, not choice, he argues, not maximization, not allocation, is the most fundamental subject-matter of economics.
I still have the book with my tremulous underlining and lots of scrawly comments, some by pencil, some by ball-pen. Here is a passage I somehow felt urged to underscore with particular ardency, apparently first using pencil and then ball-pen:
Economics is the study of the whole system of exchange relationships. Politics is the study of the whole system of coercive or potentially coercive relationships.
Watch here Buchanan interview Hayek.
See also my Public Choice and Thinking Government Failure - James Buchanan, Father of Public Choice Turns 90.
