It is ironic and embarrassing to be the victim of your own success. Well, it happens all the time. And people fight hard to ensure they and others do not notice the odd own-goal.
Economics, in so far as it is the theory of a free economy, is probably the best studied and most powerfully established and insightful part of all the social sciences - the views of the majority of state-adulating economists notwithstanding.
At least, I have convinced myself in long years of hard study: capitalism not only works, it even works beautifully, and utterly deserves to be praised, promoted, and spread the world over.
Now, what I am not saying is that the foundations, the preconditions of capitalism represent anything nearly as close to a smooth operation as capitalism itself.
And it is on this delicate issue that (many) libertarians and (it seems all) anarcho-capitalists are kidding themselves, to use the American colloquialism.
The mythology that equally inspires and emaciates libertarianism derives its strength from the idea that freedom-based economics works beautifully, as I joyously acknowledge myself, and extends it to the heroic assumption that if we make things work like the free economy does, we shall get them, of whatever nature they are, to be right and properly working and morally satisfying.
In that delusive theory, there appears a term that summarises everything that seems to halt the ideal and natural solution inherent in the concept of a free society: THE STATE.
I will have a lot more to say about THE STATE in future entries. For the time being, let me conclude by pointing out that THE STATE has been, is, and will be part of the overall interaction among human beings. THE STATE does not exist outside nor above that infinitely complex universe of interactions. It is as much subject to it as is any individual human being.
In this spirit I wrote in a comment to an entry at Cafe Hayek:
While Marx did analyse the state very carefully, at times, and still
drew the wrong conclusions about how to deal with it, I have the
impression that many of my fellow-libertarians think they have drawn the
right conclusions about the state to begin with (perhaps by the magic
of Rothbardian apriori) and therefore refrain from emitting the
duplicating waste of analysing it carefully.
I recommend "State
Building and Late Development" by David Waldner for anyone to get an
inkling of just how complicated the forces are that shape the seeming
monolith we call "the state".
I also strongly recommend Joel Migdal's
"State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another."
See also my posts: Why Politics Will Always Be With Us, Why the State Persists, More Thoughts on the State. And my second comment here.
Happy head scratching to all.
PS
Truth to tell, having discovered just how dogmatic my fellow believers (outside of our circle here at RedStateEclectic) can be, I am having a ball tickling their taboos. Into the bargain, it is great to be utterly serious about something and, at the same time, having chunks of fun just being that serious.
"I am having a ball tickling their taboos. Into the bargain, it is great to be utterly serious about something and, at the same time, having chunks of fun just being that serious."
Funny, isn't it, how some of us just enjoy the game? I find that the older I get, the more fun it is to watch others spinning out of control.
Posted by: Laura | 12/17/2012 at 08:19 AM
As much as I agree that the State has a powerful niche in society that is forever in demand, most of the State serves destructive and negative impulses. We would be better served if society had fewer State catered demands. Yet, it does feel like the negatives and positives ascribed to the State is largely a reflection of society. The difficulty of anarchy is the value system that must underpin such a society to make it stable. Achieving such a value system over a large population would be very difficult and we'd have to get rid of anyone with political ambitions.
Posted by: TanGeng | 12/17/2012 at 06:16 PM
TanGen, I am basically with you, though I would not want to underestimate the problem of counting objectively "negatives and positives ascribed to the State." One runs into all sorts of problems, beginning with the interpersonal commensurability of utility assessments to disentangling the web of joint functions (and their individual efficieny levels) assumed by the state. These tasks are so huge and complex that in practice people revert to what is called politics, competition for and exercise of power. You could just as well try to stop the art of narration or the resourcefulness with which humans come up with more or less testable/scientific hypotheses.
Posted by: Georg Thomas | 12/17/2012 at 07:13 PM
Sorry for double posting - having technical difficulties, added the end piece, where I say evil things about Laura:
TanGen, I am basically with you, though I would not want to underestimate the problem of counting objectively "negatives and positives ascribed to the State." One runs into all sorts of problems, beginning with the interpersonal commensurability of utility assessments to disentangling the web of joint functions (and their individual efficieny levels) assumed by the state. These tasks are so huge and complex that in practice people revert to what is called politics, competition for and exercise of power. You could just as well try to stop the art of narration or the resourcefulness with which humans come up with more or less testable/scientific hypotheses.
We can make progress at debunking silly hypotheses, thus advancing the open-ended project of science, but we cannot stop the onslaught of false or unassessed hypotheses - if this is an analogy you could accept.
There is no objectively ascertainable optimal structure of society, we have to find out about the possibilities all the time anew.
We can't get rid of Laura Ebke, I mean the political scientist, I mean the guys who study the mess.
Posted by: Georg Thomas | 12/17/2012 at 07:23 PM
so beautiful.parajumpers
Posted by: Guaiwo | 12/18/2012 at 05:10 AM