http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma50/EnglishFinally, some positive sentiment toward monarchy. I wish we had kings and queens again. “Monarchy: In case of upheaval, break glass, install monarch, rebuild your society..” Monarchy is the only form of government humans fully understand. It is the most successful and most durable form of government that the world has ever known. Democracy is ‘The God That Failed’.
Source date (UTC): 2011-05-06 12:57:00 UTC
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/21/trump-i-screwed-gaddafi/The point he’s making is that we are getting ‘screwed’ around the world all the time, and that we need to stop giving away our future.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-22 09:07:00 UTC
I’ve read Hayek’s The Constitution Of Liberty twice again lately while editing it so that I could convert the text to spoken audio. The resulting audio is imperfect — because my editing of the multitude of optically recognized characters is imperfect — but for personal consumption it’s works just fine. But editing a text forces you to read it more carefully than casual reading does. The first time I read it I did not really appreciate the book’s depth of reasoning. I don’t even remember when I did read it the first time. I was probably in my early thirties? But it’s more than that. Because one needs considerable knowledge of the field, it is not apparent to the casual reader that he is making logically NECESSARY arguments – especially given Hayek’s gentle, advisory, tone. Hayek felt that the writer should show sympathy for his opponents. A technique which is very useful in engaging the reader, but a tone that is also prone to misinterpretation of the underlying purpose of his arguments. I have, and so have others, said, that Hayek’s great failing was in failing to defeat Keynes. He left that task for history because he thought it so obvious. But he did not understand the attractiveness of the positivist methodology when opposed only by the conservative libertarian framework that solves for freedom as an absolute good.
[callout]Freedom is intuitive as an experience, but counter-intuitive as a process.[/callout]
FREEDOM IS INTUITIVE AS AN EXPERIENCE, BUT COUNTER-INTUITIVE AS A PROCESS Besides being both an [glossary:appropriated term], and an [glossary:expanded term], Freedom is a proscription against the political input of actions for the purpose of obtaining unspecified (and promissory) output actions. And as such Freedom is logically inconsistent to the human mind, whose action orientation finds such systemic solutions all but impossible to believe, and in retrospect finds the relations between cause and effect, deterministic or accidental, rather than the result of a policy of restraint – “not acting”. While the cause of our tradition of freedom is to be found in the military tactics of western chieftains and their retinue, and their distrust of the concentration of power, and the social status accorded those who rose as leaders by merit in commerce and war, it bears noting that the rarity of Freedom as a sentiment is in no small part due, to the fact that the very idea of unorganized action is illogical to the human mind. HAYEK SOLVES FOR FREEDOM Hayek is ‘solving’ for freedom and western civilization. I think the assumption is that by solving for these things, we create great wealth. But human beings do not solve for freedom, they solve for gaining experience and certainty of gaining them at the lowest cost and risk. While different social classes solve for different TIME frames in which they gain those experience, and how they perceive risk, we all solve for experiences. We call this acquisitiveness, which is a vulgar commercial way of expressing the same series of concepts. Solving for that which is incomprehensible as an input, and which cannot logically be connected with outputs assumes that the reader agrees with the proposition that freedom is a ‘good’ in the first place. SOLVING FOR UNEMPLOYMENT They Keynesian prescription is to solve for unemployment and use monetary policy, despite the fact that doing so exaggerates booms and busts. They Hayekian prescription is to solve for productivity and prices, and then unemployment will maintain natural levels. The social democratic prescription (which is the only option available to smaller states) is to solve for high taxation and high redistribution that pays the unemployed to stay home. The Poor Totalitarian prescription (in china) is to employ everyone in some productive capacity and redistribute via state control of capital. The Poorer Socialist prescription (India) is to pay the private sector to accomplish what the state lacks the resources to do. (Which I’m a fan of.) The worst solution is solving for unemployment because it distorts the economy. NOTE: While I use the term Freedom here, I use the term “Sovereignty” in my work because Freedom is an appropriated and expanded term that has lost meaning. Liberty likewise, holds a similar problem. These terms too often describe experiences rather than necessary causes. Sovereignty means that you have a monopoly over yourself and your property. Freedom means the absence of coercion. And that is too loose a definition. Monopoly over one’s self and property is much clearer. It means that the individual is the only state.
An End To Nato, “Mike DiBaggio” from The Paleolibertarian Digest
There was once a time when the US hated piracy so much they went to war over it, but that time has obviously come to an end. Israel’s attack on the Turkish aid ship has generated little obvious outrage in the US, but then again neither did the assault on the USS Liberty. Meanwhile the rest of the world is pretty upset, and Turkey especially. Supposedly, the Turks have vowed to send naval escorts with their ships in the future. The problem for Israel then is that Turkey is a member of NATO. If their ships are attacked again, they it stands to reason that they will try to invoke Article V and call for military retaliation against Israel.
I agree in principle. However it appears that NATO is a parallel political organization that allows more stable relationships and stronger intelligence gathering and processing than do democratic societies and their fleeting party fashions. NATO functions as a weak imitation of monarchic relationships (which were military alliances) and NATO is providing the material value that was traditionally provided by monarchic relationships. There is no NATO, other than the US military. There really hasn’t every been a NATO other than the US military. The europeans are not capable of projecting power outside of their coastlines. The only material value nato has is to allow the US power in trade negotiations and to increase US debt capacity because of the demand that trade power places upon the dollar. So, while Mike’s logic is accurate given the NAME of NATO, it’s not quite right given the FUNCTION of NATO. The monarchic militaristic social order and social class still exists in the west. It is just nearly invisible because of the predominance of popular representative democracy. Just as the upper class is invisible to society, the military is in visible, and it’s very crucial, very useful, very capitalist relationships and culture are invisible. This is one of the benefits and dangers of democratic systems. They make the real problem of maintaining trade routes and enforcing contracts, and preventing shifts in power by military means, into the art, artifice and entertainment of redistributive government. This distracting entertainment makes the population entirely incognizant of what every poorer country’s citizens understand very clearly : that the purpose of the government, if there is any purpose at all, is to establish and pool investment within a geography so that citizens can compete in, or even participate in, the market. And that this is possibly the only legitimate purpose of government other than territorial defense, and the resolution of differences over property. And the demonization of the military is propaganda for taking political control from the monarchy and transferring it to the middle class under the system of classical liberal republican government. (Just as political control moves to the masses under the system of democratic socialist secular humanism.) Schumpeter didn’t go far enough. Socialism isn’t the only problem we must guard against. Its losing the entire reason why people coordinate in groups: to compete in the market. Or to fail to and return to poverty. Schumpeterian processes might not end in a slowly declining socialism, but a catastrophic end of a society, by ending its comprehension of the market.
Germany Moves East Germany and Russia are now more politically aligned because they are now economically aligned. Europe will have: 1) the German-Russian block, which will reclaim the eastern block countries. 2) the France and PIGS block (latins – portugal, spain, italy and greece over whom it can feel superior) 3) The UK trying to figure out if it’s part of the Anglo-american, French or German block, and becoming irrelevant unless it simply becomes the world version of switzerland -weak but trustworthy with your money. The European left-coast lost. And the USA can’t protect anyone any longer.
Stratfor has released an article today that suggests that German and Russia have more to offer each other than does the rest of Europe. Russia has intelligent labor, and resources, but it has a terrible capital structure and little technology. Germany has technology, a terrific capital structure, but needs resources and labor. Better yet, the labor can stay where it is: in Russia, rather than immigrating into Germany and further burdening its infrastructure and creating additional civil unrest. France will have little chance but to follow germany into the relationship, because it is not powerful enough on its own to unify the Club-Med states (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the Pigs). What I find most humorous about this pairing, especially given the pro-german position I’ve taken in the Anglo-German European civil war, is that despite being defeated by the Anglo coalition, Germany once again has proven that it is a more prosperous and hard-working and innovative culture than its local competitors. It has risen from the ashes so to speak. And left England in the distance. I can’t think of anything I find more attractive: a unified germany and russia. After all, the south and west have contained Germany for two and a half millennia. The world wars were only the most recent instance of german containment. Now, this has broader implications for Byzantine civilization. Germany and northern europe are protestant christian civilizations with a positive ethic. Byzantine civilizations are nominally christian, but have a nihilistic ethic. How will cooperation change either of these ethics? How would europe change if the PIGS are left to their own devices? Stratfor has suggested in the past that Turkey is in the likely heir to islamic power, but not byzantine power. A German-Russian alliance that built byzantine power would be superior at keeping the mandatory-ignorance of Islam at bay, and might resurrect Byzantine civilization, and restore Russia to a leadership position. This kind of talk would have been heresy during the cold war and the possibility of communism. But post-communism, in a world of universal capitalism, it seems like a win for Germany, Russia, eastern Europe, the rest of Europe by consequence, and humanity by implication.
Today, on United Liberty, the daily Jefferson quote was:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush (1800)
Freedom is created by, and maintained by, the use of violence, and a man’s capacity for violence is his political wealth. The promise he will use his violence to create freedom, is met with the lack of his need to use it for any purpose whatsoever. It is a wealth sparely spent with high returns.
Over on Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux attacks Arizona’s policy, and in doing so, falls into the abyss of economic tyranny: the justification of economic outcome over freedom and sovereignty.
By demonizing immigrants, these politicians exploit voters’ misinformation about the economic consequences of the alleged devils.
My response was:
Don,
You’re confusing the priority of people’s perceptions of their economic consequences with the priority of people’s perception of their political and cultural sovereignty, as well as their perception of their associated status. These people [Arizonians] have been wronged. They have been wronged by a loss of sovereignty, and a reduction in cultural dominance, and wronged by an ongoing diminution of their status. And people will act far more passionately to defend their social position than they will to an abstract economic benefit. That was, and is, the entire reason behind nationalism. Or did you forget?
When the use of economic outcomes becomes the primary criteria that one uses to determine all policy, then the economist makes a fundamental error because he ignores the most important of ‘animal spirits’: status and sovereignty. And then the methods of economics become either a religion, or the error of intellectual myopia, or of intellectual vanity.
Otherwise, economic policies are the tools of tyranny, and the justification of tyranny.
Prior to an important meeting of prominent advocates of freedom, Mises stated roughly, that:
1) Laissez-faire means ‘let the consumer decide’, it does not mean chaos prevails.
I translate this more clearly and accurately as ‘a responsible parent forces her child to make decisions’ so that inter-temporal decision making becomes one of the child’s most adept skills. The civic republican tradition states that if a man is successful in life his duty is to help parent, ie: manage and govern, the society, thus spreading his wisdom to others in the community. This is quite contrary to the democratic religion of secular humanism that states that all men have equal merit in political actions.
2) Hayek’s plan relies upon the support of that segment of the population that is comfortable as they are, but not willing to muster the political effort to preserve the freedom that gives them that comfort.
I state this fact more simply: ‘Freedom is, has been, and will be, the desire of the creative minority.’
Civilizations are ruled by minorities willing to use violence or fraud to maintain their positions. Since fraud is expressly what the creative minority seeks to avoid, because trade without recourse to violence requires refraining from fraud, the creative minority can retain it’s freedom only by force, or be constrained by the force or fraud of others.
It is because violence is both meritocratic and epistemologically fruitful when combined with the need to enfranchise sufficient numbers of the minority to maintain rule. That is why the creative, competitive, and military class built western society. Secular humanism is simply a system of fraud that seeks to transform those costs for maintaining social order into a system of fraud or financial coercion. Violence that is used to defend the system of voluntary trade we call Laissez-Faire, is the most honest of human actions. Pacifism and monotheistic religion are simply a cost reduction effort on the part of the ruling class so that fraud can be supplanted for violence.
The purpose of the creative class then is to maintain sufficient capacity for violence that it can maintain sufficient capacity to rule, and as rulers, preserve their freedom.
The use of violence is necessary in order to create the freedom needed to unleash the societies’ creative forces while oppressing its tendency to corruption. Corruption is the normal human response to lower risk and labor in an effort to circumvent the market economy while forcing others to participate in the market economy.
Violence applied to preserve freedom, that is, voluntary trade and property, is not only honest, it is constructive, and it is the optimum method for human prosperity and cooperation.
One need not force all men to be free. One need only have sufficient force that he is free.
I’m going to say something. It will only take a moment. And my time is at least as valuable if not more so than the state’s, the court’s, or that of the officers’. You see, I understand something very important. I understand that the state’s only power is violence. That power comes from its claim to a geographic monopoly on violence. That is what a state is. A group of men who lay claim to a monopoly on violence. All actions which compel a person to do other than he wishes in the use of his property, his body and his time in the peaceful and honest exchange of goods, services, information and affection, are acts of violence. Consequently, there is no action that a state needs to take, and therefore no action a state can possibly to take, by the application of law, that is not an act of violence no matter the form or ceremony the state drapes over such actions. A state is the administration of organized violence. A court and its servants dispense violence. The state exists, and possesses that monopoly on violence, because men like me, grant their capacity for violence to the state, so that it may dispense it as needed from a judicial bench. By granting our violence to the state we remove from ourselves the daily administrative responsibility of parenting society, defending life and property, and resolving conflicts over property, so that we may devote ourselves to the pursuit of specialization in our division of knowledge and labor, and thereby develop our skills so that we can achieve our ambitions, and amuse ourselves, in whatever way we see fit, while decreasing the cost for others to do the same. By the act of granting our violence to the state, we assume that our violence is justly dispensed on our behalf. That is the term of our agreement with the state. It is what makes a man a citizen by choice rather than a subject or slave. We are all capable of violence. It can never be taken from us as long as we live. We carry it with us as a constant potential. It grows, it matures, and it dissipates with age. It is not a right, or a privilege, because rights and privileges are things we give to each other. Violence is not given, it simply exists in all men at all times. Some of us are wealthier in violence than others. Some men are capable of very little violence, some men are capable of physical violence, some men capable of organized rabblery and protest, and some of us, men like me, capable of revolution and civil war. As such, we do not contribute our violence to the state in equal measure. The state’s power to organize society by way of its laws, institutions and processes is an illusion constructed by the accumulation of habits in the citizenry; habits which are perpetuated by the daily use of those habits, and where those habits are reinforced by small and instructional displays of violence by the state, so that it may maintain the illusion of a monopoly on violence, and therefore encourage among the citizens, the retention of those habits. The potential for violence within the citizenry vastly outweighs the limited violence that can be distributed by the state. It is a credit to our habits that so little violence need be distributed at any one time that the illusion of the state monopoly can be preserved so cheaply, by so few people, and using so little violence. The actors in the state, in whatever capacity, who make use of my violence on our behalf, are few and comparatively weak. And the state can only dispense my violence, on my behalf, from a judicial bench, because of the illusion of strength that comes from the presence of those habits, and its promise of enforcement by the grant of violence from citizens. As long as any agent of the state justly parents individuals to reach their greatest potential, as long as any agent of the state justly resolves differences in property, as long as any agent of the state protects life and property — any agents of the state have my consent to maintain that illusion of strength, and to dispense my violence on my behalf to maintain those habits, and that illusion, so that all men may continue to participate in productive exchange, or in humble amusement in the activity of their daily affairs. But if for one moment, you seek to treat me unjustly, and you begin to believe your own illusion, and you forget that you are dispensing my violence on my behalf, and you seek to treat me not as a citizen who bestows upon you my violence, to be justly administered, but a subject who must obey rules, and if you believe and act as though the law exists not as a convenient tool for the resolution of differences between peers, but a scripture that I must obey as a subject, then it is not only my right, but my duty to myself and others, to take from you my given violence, and to remind you if I can, and teach you if I must, that the source of that violence is in its citizens; so that the state understands those habits, their cause, and purpose. If I must remind the state, I hope it is by this simple, gentle oratory. If that will not suffice, I will not resort to the display of petty personal violence, nor to the disorder of rabblery and protest. Because that is not the capacity of violence that I gave to the state. I will instead raise an army and show you what violence it is that I do restrain, so that you are once again reminded that you are an actor on my behalf, and that of my fellow citizens, and nothing more. And if you doubt for a moment that I can do such a thing, I will be only so happy to prove it to you, by starting in this very room, on this very day, if necessary. This duty is what it means to be a citizen. To grant your violence to the state so that it may be justly administered. And to dismantle that state should it unjustly use your given violence. Foolish men find comfort in the sameness of life, without understanding that such constancy, and the illusion of control we have over our daily affairs, can be rapidly changed by one small spark, one man’s choice, one seemingly random act. Foolish men believe habits and rules are truths rather than conveniences, that their power is divine or systemic, and that their methods and rules are wise and scientific, rather than the accidental, pragmatic and convenient efforts of simple men fitfully crafting an edifice in anticipation of the turbulent events of an unknown future. These rules and ideas are nothing more than the limited judgements, habits and fantasies of such men, however well their intentions. And if at any point such foolish men lose sight of the fact that these convenient methods and tools are less important than, and subservient to, the men whose lives are affected by the use of my violence on my behalf, or if such foolish men forget that rules have no wisdom of their own, without the wisdom to interpret them, and that the use of them must result in the betterment of each man, then, they have forgotten the purpose of those rules. That purpose is the perfection of each individual man, and in that perfection, to parent each generation that follows so that it may reach it’s greatest potential. The perfection of man is our only just purpose, not the perfection of our methods and tools, or the ease and efficiency by which we administer them. The man is important, not the rules. And I will not allow my violence to be misused against any man. And in particular I will not allow the abuse of my fellow citizens or of myself for no other than methodological or procedural reasons, so that another man, an agent of the state, whose only power comes from my given violence, may be absolved of the difficulty and effort expended in justly administering the violence I so entrusted to him. I will not permit men to suffer for another man’s laziness, when it is my violence at the expense of my fellow men, that he wields in order to obtain such leisure. And when a citizen is abused by the criminalization of administrative rules, of petty regulatory processes and efficiencies, or of manners and disrespect of the court so that it can maintain its illusion and habituation, or when he is abused by prosecutors who are the worst ideological acolytes and to whose advantage these rules are biased, or when he is abused by the state’s staff, composed of common people endowed by procedure with powers incommensurate with their abilities, and the ability to abdicate responsibility for treating citizens with manners and good service, the state engages in the most heinous form of laziness, and the most intolerable misuse of our violence on our behalf. Revolutions are not made from single heinous crimes, but from the compounded layering of administrative abuses of citizens. It is not only citizens that must develop habits, but the state, for it is the state who must use greater manners when dispensing our violence, whether that violence is dispensed from the court, the prosecution, the staff, the police, and especially when doing so inspires the understandable and desirable disgust and displeasure of those men unjustly victimized because of the state’s laziness and irresponsibility with our violence. If the state’s ambition is restitution of property, or the collection of collection for contract violations, even social contract violations, or procedural errors, for which such fines are simply a form of restitution, then this is its duty, so granted by us. But if it is punishment rather than restitution that the state seeks to render, then I do not, and no citizen should, permit any man to punish me, and will return that punishment in kind. Restitution is the means by which we correct errors, selfish weakness, and human frailties among peers and is the only reason we give our violence to the state to administer on our behalf. Punishment is the submission of slaves to an authority. If you seek to punish me, or my fellow citizens, rather than to give restitution, you seek to enslave us. And I will not suffer your enslavement, nor tolerate the enslavement of my fellow citizens. Foolish men have come to believe that rule of law, is likened to the laws of physics: that they are tools that override our wisdom and senses, and which if followed produce scientific results. But this is an error. Laws are principles for wise men to refer to, no different from myths, traditions, and stories, to make use of in resolving conflicts among men, providing restitution in the case of loss, so that we may exchange property instead of violence, cooperate peacefully in doing so, and develop specialization so that we may increase productivity in safety, decrease the cost of goods and services to each other because of specialization and competition, and therefore improve the quality of our lives, at lowest cost and risk. I say this because I love life. I love mankind. I love my fellow citizens. I love each one of them. Fit or not, wise or not, young or old, wealthy or poor, healthy or ill. And I would gladly give my life in their defense, rather than allow someone, in his foolhardy and misguided illusion, to use my violence against them unjustly. And it is that statement, its passion, and conviction, and its promise of consequence, that makes me a citizen and no other. So, I ask you to understand this appeal: I do not fear you. And you need not fear me if you are just, and care for my people. But if you are unjust, and do not understand what I have said, then fear me. If you do not fear me then I must make you fear me. I must teach you the accountancy of the state, and its currency of violence. So that you never forget the origin of the violence you wield on our behalf, and in doing so abuse or enslave me or my fellow citizens. The state must fear its citizens. It is the duty of citizens to maintain that fear. That fear is fear of violence. I am a citizen by the granting of my violence. The violence that we give to the state, the violence that we possess as men, and is only granted to the state under the condition that it be administered justly, on our behalf, to parent the society, to protect life and property, to resolve conflicts over property, and to administer restitution for conflicts over property. For those reasons and no other. Curt Doolittle April 2009