A comfortable violence
Political ·Friday November 13, 2009 @ 18:56 EST (link)
This piece is by Elliott Prechter, via the Austrian Economics Discussion list at work. I'm forever curious as to what makes non-libertarians, especially big-government supporters, tick. Why are they not libertarian? What do they have against freedom? I tend to get two kinds of answers: one involves greed, and the other involves fear, sometimes for themselves as Elliott describes so well below, and sometimes for hypothetical groups, frequently "poor people", who will imaginably (usually counter to fact) be so much worse off in a truly free society.
I think a lot of people don't want liberty. At a deep level, many voters want good, kind, motherly totalitarianism—so they can feel safe and secure. I understand where they're coming from on an emotional level, but it's just that I don't believe such a thing as "good despotism" exists, or has ever existed. Freedom isn't perfect, but history has shown it to be the best system we've got—as Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
As an example of many people's natural draw towards big government, many survivors of Communism—who faced imprisonment, poverty, starvation, death—said they still believed the system to be good, but just that the people in charge just happened to be evil and greedy. In their minds, with the right people in charge, despotism would have been paradise!
I think one fundamental reason that despotism has never produced paradise is that it is a system based on coercive violence rather than voluntary action. Violence will tend to escalate due to the perverse incentives in such a system. For example, in a voluntary system starting a business, employing people, and producing wealth is beneficial to the self. Under Communism, this incentive does not exist. However, the incentive to seek bureaucratic control over others—by entering the government—is the only path towards wealth and individual "success". So such a system will encourage more and more corruption because corruption is so immensely rewarded, and virtuous activity (i.e. wealth producing) is punished. It is ironic that the insatiable desire of individuals to better their own lot (which is the common cry against freedom and capitalism) is what causes despotism to fail, and conversely it is this same incentive that powers the immense wealth-producing capacity of capitalism. The only difference is that in the former case force is chosen as the primary means of dealing with one another, whereas in the latter all human interaction is mutual.
The U.S. is very far from despotism of course, but we can still clearly see elements of the "escalation of violence" already in effect as government power grows. Take Goldman Sachs as an example. Under a voluntary, non-coercive system, they would be spending their time innovating and researching to produce better products, which would in turn help everybody and increase net wealth. However, since the US has a large non-voluntary component to our society (namely the massive U.S. government), they are instead using resources, time and effort to get "friends" into government that can bend the rules in their favor; such rule bending (and even outright theft) destroys wealth rather than creates it. This trend—rewarding those who seek to use violent means to control others, rather than rewarding those who work hard and produce wealth—is dangerous for the long-term health of any country. I don't particularly mean to single out Goldman (it's just a great example at present) since this type of corruption occurs all over the world in every government—some more than others.
My main point here has nothing to do with any particular specifics of any political party's agenda—the battle between freedom and despotism is not primarily about details such as healthcare, or firearms, or abortion, or education, or any other specific debates and issues that divide the nation, but rather primarily that the long-term effects of institutionalized violence are to destroy wealth and prosperity, thereby rendering all specific political debates about how to "split the pie" meaningless once everyone is equal in poverty.
A key element of this piece is 'I don't believe such a thing as "good despotism" exists.' Whenever people rule over others, even elected by a system such as ours, they will use violence for advantage. The best system is one where power is fully distributed to individuals and all transactions voluntary, with use of force limited to stopping or punishing initiation of force. Rather than a central government guaranteeing a Republican form of government, how much better if the states made a confederation to mutually guarantee to each other a non-coercive form of government?
DVDs finished: The Puppet Masters.
