SURE, MANY PEOPLE ABANDON LIBERTINISM (ANARCHISM). BUT DOES ANYONE ABANDON LIBER

SURE, MANY PEOPLE ABANDON LIBERTINISM (ANARCHISM). BUT DOES ANYONE ABANDON LIBERTY OR LIBERTARIANISM, REALLY?

(from a series of comments on Matt Zwolinski’s page)

It is very difficult NOT to abandon anarchy – other than as a research program. Anarchism is an exceptionally fruitful research program for analysis of institutions, but it is reliant upon intentionally excluding variables: the demonstrated behavior of man. But abandoning anarchism is not the same as abandoning liberty or libertarianism.

As far as I know we all go through a similar cycle: exploring the limits and returning to some means of producing commons in the classical liberal model. The anarchic model has been a fruitful research program in investigating alternative means of producing commons, but the assumption of persistence without institution, myth and ritual seems to fail.

When you say ‘someone is, or was, a libertarian’ do you mean (a) giving higher preference to liberty as a moral intuition, or (b) using libertarian institutions to achieve some other moral intuition, or (c) both.

As far as I know a lot of people in (a) explore and abandon anarchism. A lot of people in (b) do not possess intuition (a). And an individual that possesses intuition (a), and studies institutions (b), seems extremely unlikely to abandon (a).

So I can’t think of anyone who abandons or abandoned liberty. As far as I know it’s a cognitive bias. We merely change our institutional preferences. I can think of many people who seek an means of justifying non-libertarian moral biases, who then gives up on them.

Anyone who works at the problem long enough, as one of formal institutions over demonstrated behavior of man, will eventually follow the same path. If one’s ambition is mere verbal rebellion, we can’t qualify that as political science – it’s just elaborate moral indignation, or a distraction from other strategic intentions. Either anarchism is existentially possible or it’s not. Liberty is achievable in the sense that moral constraints expressed as the total prohibition on violations of property, whether by individual or organization, regardless of the organization, can be made enforceable by an in-group third party. But no case can be made that I know of that can survive without a monopoly definition of property, a monopoly definition of property rights, the common law to adjudicate them, universal standing, an exclusive territory, a militia to defend the boundaries, the people, the assets and the law, some ritual that propagates intuitionistic persistence of the rule of law, and at least one individual as a decision maker for undecidable propositions – not the least of which is to call up such a militia to restore those rights.

Liberty provides decidability to moral propositions by requiring consent to transfers. Progressivism favors consumption and conservatism favors accumulation – of human capital in particular. But neither requires consent.

Of the three criteria for decisions only liberty provides operational decideability, and only operational decideability under voluntary exchange makes full use of the knowledge of the other two dimensions.

Humans function as a moral division of labor, and we libertarians are the moderators – the market makers: we demand voluntary exchange between the three axis.

(Although that might take a bit of pondering to grasp.)