Theme: Crisis

WHAT IF LIBERTY IS TRANSITIONAL?

(uncomfortable idea) (interesting analysis)

What if, bias toward the market, is a transitional phase, where the opportunities from participation in the market are greater than the opportunities from rent seeking and free riding?

What if, say, Todd is right, and that the stagnancy, ignorance, poverty, and low trust of the middle east, is the natural line of maturity in human civilizations? What if the greeks were in fact, the originators of inbred paternalism as a means of protecting against diversity created by democracy?

Again, then (and I keep running into this problem), liberty is an unnatural state that must be forcibly held against the common will by force of arms, by a minority unwilling to let society return to its natural state of maximizing free riding and rent seeking?

Liberty is unnatural. It is unique to the west. It is a contractual benefit exchanged between those willing and able to fight to create it against the general tide of free riding pervasive in all societies.

Just as spears and other weapons, allowed a group of men to organize to control or kill dangerous alpha males within the band or tribe, the combination of advanced weapons and domesticated animals allowed the concentration of wealth and violence, so that free riding could be suppressed.

In this sense, the struggle for civilization, is the effort of liberty seeking males to suppress free riders and rent seekers by forcibly creating the institution of private property, so that the majority of males will seek to imitate that wealth, and as such, the minority is constantly refreshed with new members who are likewise incentivized to use violence to maintain private property.

This was the second falsehood of the enlightenment: men do not desire liberty. They desire consumption.

Since the number that can, and desire to compete, is limited in any population, then so will be the number of liberty seekers. It is not rational that without belief in success, that individuals should desire to compete only to fail, in a population where they are anonymous.

Then, liberty and private property, must be forcibly held, by those who desire it. And it is non rational, and immoral, to force those who do not desire liberty, and who cannot or are unwilling to compete to do so. This means that the multi-house form of government was the only known solution to political cooperation. The aristocracy can choose liberty and private property, and the rent seekers and free riders can choose to communalize their efforts, and effectively charge the aristocracy for access to the market of consumers that consists of communal rent seekers and free riders.

I can’t see an argument around that, which doesn’t violate the both the lower standard of NAP, and the higher moral standard of Propertarianism.

And moral claims about the virtue of liberty are nonsensical. They are an attempt to obtain a discount without paying the high cost of suppressing free riding and rent seeking – an probably fraud as well.