by ?Daniel Jordan?
A simple historical oversight? Or blinded by axiomatic first principles of ethics?
The distinguishing factors between Hayek and even Friedman in terms of ideas vs Rothbard, Mises, Rand is that they understood the importance of rule of law.
Yes they wanted a limited government and distributed power but they wanted that government to be very well funded in its appropriate roles, judiciary, military, police, penal system.
I think Friedman got it except on one thing – he was right to say that mass immigration with a welfare state is a bad idea but he didn’t realize that mass migration even without one would also pose a threat. The challenge here is that the benefit of a wealthy and functioning, lawful society produces commons of such value that this cannot be demarcated neatly from what we commonly label as ‘welfare’. It’s still a free rider problem even if some individuals can contribute on the whole. The longer the time horizon stretches out the more uncertainty there is.
I wonder how receptive these individuals would have been to looking at history through a biological framework.
Mises, Rothbard, and Rand, all had their insights but that crucial element of not understanding that rule of law had to precede the advent of market capitalism means that their ethics of non aggression principal were built on a foundation of quicksand.
When we look at history from a natural scientific perspective it makes more sense and we don’t have to assume as much and can explain a lot more to say hey, rule of law (backed by force) was a further refinement and distribution of power among the polity that came after its even more primal stage of ‘law of rules’ arbitrary, came from ‘God’ and then used monarchs as a transition.
We had ‘markets’ from the beginning, it didn’t bring the innovation or the wealth because the powers that be did not stamp out parasitism, the powers that were, were a form of parasitism. Our laws were the whims of who was in charge.
Modern markets and wealth, and sovereignty are what happens when order is established. Force predates wealth. Historically and practically. If we don’t regard this as a natural phenomena we are going to forget what really formed the west.’