Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

LIBERTARIANISM AND INSTITUTIONS

The mysterious criticism that libertarians decry all institutions is a false one. And if it were true, it would be self contradictory. Property is an institution, even if only an informal one. One cannot both argue that institutions are unnecessary, or universally malicious when property itself is an institution.

And morals are institutions too, even if they are all, in the final analysis derivations of the institution of property as it is implemented by different groups. This fact helps us understand why some moral codes are superior to others: private, several property both allows more calculation of opportunities, and provides the incentive to act upon them

Formal institutions are not contrary to liberty. Tribal leaders who resolve conflicts, and independent judges are institutions. A code of common law is an institution. A network of banks, and the practice of interest are institutions And perhaps the least intuitive to westerners who live within these institutions, the informal institution of objective truth, its implementation as truth telling, as well as the institution of ethical universalism by which we forgo opportunities to benefit self, family, and tribe, and restrict ourselves to actions that can be subject to the market – a counter-intuitive concept which we live every day, is the source of the germanic west’s limited corruption by comparison to other cultures. And the realization that our ethics is governed by the market rather than self, family or tribe, is alien to westerners who cannot conceive of any alternative way of thinking.

If a group of people create a homeowners association, or found a new city, o even a new country, as long as they deprive no one else of property, either directly or indirectly by doing so, even if the formation of a such a contract is one to which all members and their guests and progeny must adhere, is not a violation of liberty. Even if they, like shopping mall owners, require that visitors and new members abide by that contract.

These are all forms of institutions. So, institutions are not prohibited by the desire for liberty. It is not institutions themselves that eradicate liberty, since liberty is the result of the institution of property. It is human beings functioning within a bureaucracy that comprises an institution that eradicates liberty. Bureaucracies must of necessity, out of a lack of choice, act for the purpose of perpetuating the institution itself, or for the purpose of simplifying the job of its members. And both self perpetuation and self service are caused by the monopoly power granted to these institutions, when they are insulated from competition.

Because while rules are abstractions which of themselves have no self interest to express, people are real things, and in the midst of complexity, have no cognitive choice but to rely upon simple rules of thumb, instinct, self interest and moral judgement.

And those moral judgements, because of genetic necessity, vary. To argue otherwise is simply advocating totalitarian eugenics, while making the error that we are in fact materially equal, rather than equal in our right to property. That is, by the extension of enfranchisement to the lower classes, those with alternative allocations of property rights, those with habits of familialism and tribalism, and in particular, with the addition of women to the pool of voters and to the market for consumption, production and trade, – for whom males possess a polar reproductives strategy, all have quite different moral codes. Ad those moral codes are a gene expression. We have given those with alternative moral codes, the freedom to alter the western definitions of property rights to favor their preferred method of gene expression. And the more natural one. Aristocracy, that is, meritocracy, is a rarity. Just as are truth telling, and universalism.

Bureaucracy was created to enforce homogeneity. And we are no longer homogenous. Any bureaucratic institution that exists to create homogeneity is by definition immoral, and enforcing not just self service, but self service by forced involuntary transfer from some to others, which in turn violates not just our property rights but our genetic composition and rights of reproduction. Rather than a bureaucracy of homogeneity, the only rule a population needs is several, personal, property, and the means by which to resolve conflicts over its transfer, and the willingness of some individuals to use their capacity for violence to maintain that right to personal property.

So it is bureaucracy that is the threat to our freedom. When we criticize government broadly, we are making a mistake that confuses people outside the movement. A government is a set of institutions that assist people in cooperating in a division of knowledge and labor. It is the institutions that allow us to express and make use of the institution of property. As such a government is not necessarily bad, as Rothbard’s diasporic voluntarism, and Hoppe’s private government have show us. Is not government in the abstract then that is systemically corrupting of man. It is the abrogation of property rights and the very existence of a bureaucracy within a bureaucratic state that sap our liberty and all that follows from it.

-Curt