me:
>> I would say that there will be no spontaneous order unless people have great
>> feelings of solidarity with each other.<<
David Shemano:
> Hayek's favorite example of spontaneous order is language. No need for
> solidarity. <
Language usually (almost always??) doesn't involve scarce resources,
so no solidarity is needed to promote its common use. The key cases
where Hobbesian disorder raises its ugly head involve scarcity.
In the real world language and solidarity aren't totally separate
phenomena. Instead, they interact with each other: all else constant,
having a shared language promotes solidarity, while all else constant,
solidarity promotes use of a common language. Of course, outsiders may
suffer as a result (cf. Arizona).
(BTW, it's strange -- if not outré -- that Hayek would emphasize a
situation where scarcity doesn't play a role. Usually economists of
his ilk emphasize scarcity über alles, even defining economics in
terms of it.)
> But in any event, you simply disagree with Adam Smith when he says "It is not
> from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect
> our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." You reject, a
> priori, the notion that if we drop the butcher, the brewer, and the baker on
> a deserted island, they will manage to get along with each other even if they
> don't like each other, because you don't believe that mutual self-interest
> can be the basis for successful human relations without the coercive arm of
> the state pointing guns at everybody's head to make sure they follow the
> rules. I fundamentally disagree, in that I think mutual self-interest, by
> itself, is sufficient motivation for beneficial exchange between the
> overwhelming number of individuals and situations.<
The actual result is very hard to predict. Economists are pretty good
at predicting individual actions (assuming, of course, that people
have some simple number such as profits or "utility" to maximize) and
actions by large numbers of people (as in a market, whether perfectly
competitive or not). Even when it's assumed that people are maximizers
with clearly-defined maximands, two people interacting together can be
very unpredictable (as under duopolies), while trying to understand
three people in interaction is like the three-body problem of physics.
In the last case, it's impossible to come to a deterministic
conclusion.
I'd guess that if you were to throw these folks on a desert island,
they'd fight (not necessarily in a violent way) until they formed a
state to manage their common concerns, including the management of the
use of force and the creation and enforcement of individual rights.
That state might be a one-person dictatorship (if one of them can
figure out how to hog all the weapons), a two-person tyranny over the
the third (more likely) or a three-person democracy. But laws and
rights do not drop from the sky and enforce themselves.
With only three people, favorable conditions, and normal
(non-Trumplike) personalities, I'd guess that the three-person state
is most likely (and that the initial fight over what to do would end
quickly). But the point is that they'd have to come together to
regulate each individual's behavior (and to decide when such
regulation isn't needed). Again, laws and rights are not innate in the
mind; nor do they enforce themselves.
A three-person democracy would likely be akin to "primitive communism"
of socialist lore, with the democratic state, the society, and the
economy merged into a single institution instead of each one of the
individuals setting up a stand and engaging in trade without any
collectively-decided laws or order. Trade would likely be more a
matter of what Polanyi called "reciprocity" instead of market-style
exchange: it would involve people doing things to help others because
they expect the others to help them. "Market" interaction is
intimately intertwined with (and constrained by) social linkages and
political cooperation, so that it would be almost impossible to
separate these three "spheres" of human interaction from each other.
Solidarity, rather than individualistic greed, would prevail. In fact,
feelings of solidarity help a society get over the initial phase of
creating collective organization.
me:
>>> The operations of the capitalist social system is based on and encourages
>>> greed. If we assume that a capitalist system prevails (as it does), then
>>> this "Hobbesian statement" is accurate....<<<
David:
> Again, whether we call it greed or self-interest, you reject, a priori, that
> mutual sef-interest directed at market activity can be the basis for
> successful human relations, because you equate such a state with a Hobbesian
> war of one against the other in the absence of a coercive apparatus. <
Actually, if all economic transactions and social interactions could
be totally reduced to relationships between pairs of individuals, then
greed does promote mutual self-interest to be directed at market
activity, which in turn "can be the basis for successful human
relations." But serious economists know that the rub with this Ayn
Randian (or Rand Paulian) utopia is that individualization of all
human life -- with only one-on-one links -- is unrealistic, even with
markets.
1) First, there are a lot of what economists call "externalities"; one
textbook says that they are "ubiquitous." I'm a baker, I'm not just a
seller of bread. I also might be polluting the water and the air
(keeping my costs as low as possible, as profit-maximization demands).
If a small percentage of society controls the productive non-human
resources, they can use that power to exploit the rest (what's called
a "pecuniary externality").
2) There are also so-called "public goods" that cannot be provided by
individual action alone: it the US paid for its legal system
(including the system of property rights) totally from voluntary
contributions rather than from taxes, the legal system would be
totally under-funded as long as people cling to classical American
individualism. Either coercion (i.e., taxes) or social solidarity
(which encourages voluntary contributions) is needed to deal with this
problem.
3) I could go further, but won't.
> But I completely disagree, in that I see a world governed by mutual
>self-interest directed at market activity as completely different than Hobbes'
>state of nature for the overwhelming number of people (there are always
>exceptions), ...<
Let's do an experiment to see if this theory works: abolish the state
and its enforcement of contracts and see what happens. Do you have
President Obama's phone number? Maybe he could arrange the experiment.
> ... I would add [that this] is Hobbes' position, in that Hobbes viewed
> society as a game theory problem in that most people preferred to live
> peaceful lives engaged in market activity, but could not do so because of
> initial distrust, etc. so a strong coercive state was required to level the
> playing field and provide security.<
That game-theory story doesn't differ from what I said. The problem is
that with anarchy (i.e., no state) combined with very weak social
solidarity (so that standard-issue capitalist individualism reigns),
individuals would jockey for position and would discover that having
more weapons allows them not only to defend themselves but also to
make sure that their rivals don't get too much power (by threatening
or hurting them). This produces Hobbes' war of each against all....
> BTW, if you read your Leo Strauss, you will learn there is no real difference
> between Hobbes and Locke, except that Locke was a much more careful writer in
> order to avoid trouble with the authorities. Both Hobbes and Locke advocated
> market activity as a positive outlet for human energy and passion, as opposed
> to religious conflict, war, glory seeking, etc.<
Strauss is a very controversial political theorist. Large numbers of
political theorists reject his conclusions. But I'm not an expert on
his work, so I can't reject it out of hand. I do worry that his
finding of secret meanings in these thinkers' works (always fitting
Straussian political preconceptions, natch) is akin to the
interpretation of the Bible that says that the world is ending next
week. (BTW, just in case, I've got my fallout shelter ready and
stocked with Pinot Grigio.)
Anyway, Locke did assume a lot of Hobbes' analysis to be true. Either
he was fuzzy-headed or he was afraid to be associated with Hobbes
(which fits with Strauss) -- or both. But his theory of property
rights (the issue we're talking about) is totally un-Hobbesian.
Rousseau was a better student of Hobbes: both he knew that property
rights are not "natural" but societal creations.
> Where is the society, ancient, feudal, pre-capitalist, capitalist, communist,
> post-capitalist, that did not have fundamental rules against theft and
> recognizing property rights? <
A case can be made that property rights are universal in human
society. But that's only when there's no civil war or the like going
on; it's a mistake to look only at ordered societies. All we can say
is that a society _needs_ property rights to avoid civil war and the
like, which is one thing that Hobbes said (in effect).
Even if we presume that property rights are in place, there is no
single universal form of property rights. In some countries,
businesses are allowed to trespass on our lungs with pollution without
paying acceptable compensation (as profit-seeking dictates). In other
countries, property rights are restricted so that they can't do that.
Etc.
>The notion that mine is mine and yours is yours is pretty basic and obvious to
>4-year olds. ... but in the overwhelming number of societies coercion is not
>necessary to enforce basic morality as commonly understood. <
_Of course_, even 4-year olds know about what's _mine_. That's why,
when there are two or more kids around, there has to be a grown-up in
the room to make sure that the 4-year olds don't get into fights with
each other. Put another way, Rousseau distinguished between
"possession" (control) and "property" (legally-sanctioned rights).
Kids may know about "what's mine" (possession) but they know nothing
about "property" until the adult makes it very clear.
(Actually, it depends on the kid: many 4-year olds also have a sense
of solidarity with each other. Toddlers can be annoyingly generous!
[*] But at other ages, market-style individualism takes hold,
especially in a society that promotes those values.)
> It is only when we get to statist and/or socialist states, where economic
> activity is centrally directed and market activity is criminalized, where the
> entire market economy is a black economy, that we see the need for a large
> coercive apparatus to enforce economic rules and decision-making.<
I have no brief to make for undemocratic state-socialist ("Stalinist")
societies.
But it's easy to think of capitalist societies which have large
coercive apparatuses (the spell-checker won't accept the Latin
plural). Look at all of the cops in the US, along with the FBI, the
National Guard, etc. And that's a rich country. Look at the court
system -- and the jails -- that enforce the laws. Look at the private
security forces that corporations have. (Hobbes would add: look at all
the locks and security systems that people have in their houses and
apartments.) The US does not rely on the goodness of human beings
(their ability to channel greed into to pure buying and selling
activities the way David seems to be doing) to defend property rights.
And when the Chilean junta imposed its version of the Ayn Randian/Rand
Paulian utopia on their country, they didn't abolish themselves and
the rest of the state, getting out of the way so that individual
genius and creativity could blossom in the marketplace. No, they
arrested, tortured, and/or killed large numbers of people. They
imposed a hard-core dictatorship of Chile. As Rousseau said in a
different context, people have to be forced to be free.
(Of course, it's possible that they really weren't pushing for
Friedmaniac "free markets" as much as defending (in alliance with the
CIA and Henry Kissinger) the power of the wealthy, both those in Chile
and the US. But why would a kind, noble, and wise person like Pinochet
lie?)
> In your view, the roadways would be a Mad Max anarchy<
You claim to know my opinions better than I do? At the personal level,
it's this kind of prideful attitude that encourages Mad Max anarchy.
> if people did not have fear of the highway patrol. I see roadways as a
> spontaneous order, in that the overwhelming number of people manage to safely
> get from point A to point B with no central direction, motivated not by fear
> of the police, but by a mutual interest with all other drivers to safely and
> efficiently get where they want to go. In fact, I would go so far as to
> argue that if we removed substantially all roadway rules and regulations,
> including the highway patrol, there would be little difference in roadtrip
> safety. ...<
The highway patrol, as I said, provides the backbone that allows the
"spontaneous order" of the highway to prevail. (I am reminded of a
left-wing anarchist who admires the traffic in Rome as an example of
self-organization!) But if the backbone is needed, it's not
spontaneous order.
Of course, there are a lot of laws that aren't needed. Similarly,
there are a lot of needed laws that don't exist. That point has
nothing to do with the need for law and order to be imposed (or social
solidarity).
BTW, social solidarity doesn't substitute completely for laws and
their enforcement. Solidarity makes it easier to enforce laws (so that
they almost enforce themselves), while the laws help people organize
their solidarity. Democracy is needed to unite these. That means that
a state (monopolizing generally-accepted use of force) is needed. But
to make this system work, the state must be subordinated to the
majority of the people rather than vice-versa (as in the US).
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
[*] I've heard that psychologist Alfie Kohn uses evidence about
toddler behavior as proof that we are all moral under the skin, just
as many or most money libertarians argue that we are all capitalist
greed-heads by nature.
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