The idea that freedom can be enforced is the biggest problem with pro-freedom activists on both the left and right. The contradiction of using violent solutions to solve the problem of violence. It’s a spiral. Here I present the best proposals of how freedom can be enforced and how minarchism and Ron Paul are no exception.
Growing up in France, political economy was common in school yard discussion during my late teens and later on campus when i went to Reims, well amongst my fellow students of economics and the social sciences anyway. Decentralised political systems seemed a universally preferred system over the current arrangement. Devolving power down the hierarchy giving departments more autonomy to the point where local government was more able to act and respond to local needs. Government employees living in the same area are then more able to satisfy their local constituency, and no doubt would feel more job satisfaction with the added power at their disposal. Indeed this is the way many large multi-national corporations work today, the Murdochs recently clarifying their decentralised autonomy-centric organisational model. Being the size they are, they wouldn’t be able to function at all without employing this method of organisation. So the decentralised state seemed the way to go. But Europe was growing. Superstatism. And the issue has become one of losing sovereignty to a higher power than the nation state. The trend is for individual nation states to lose autonomy and become more centralisatised. Decentralisation, at best, is not going to happen without more centralisation, breeding more problems for continued decentralisation to attempt to resolve. An unecessary and hugely cumbersome method of organsing.
But when we look at the geographic centre of the EU, there is a curious blank spot, Switzerland. Host of Leichenstein and Basel. This is a state with a very attractive economic and social record and it correlates well for decentralistion advocates because, after all this time, it is not a part of the EU. And the reason for this is Direct Democracy. Switzerland is not a perfect example of pure direct-democracy and it edges increasingly towards European political centralistaion nowadays, but as a properous example of decentralised democracy it proves the political middlemen to be definitely undesireable.
But democracy is what it is, regardless of wether it is representative or direct. Unless you have a unanomous vote either in favour or against, democracy is simply the oppressive dictatorship of the majority over the minority. There is no way round it, there is always an abused party under democracy, fostering resentment, rebellion and chaos.
Enter Minarchism. A nightwatchman constitutional republic. A defensive military, accountable police force and judicial system that swears an oath to follow some simple rules that guarantee freedom. Well, the americans tried that before and it seemed to work. But the infrastructure was consequentially weak. And easy to highjack and reform into something more of a democracy, and ultimately the world’s biggest and most violent entity ever in history. Something regressives and conservatives don’t get is that this is an irreversable trend. Any state’s objective is to grow and aquire power, democracy is the most modern and efficient form of violent governance and the constitutional republic took to it a like fish to water.
Enter Rothbard, who proposed that the state was entirely immoral and that there will be no freedom down the barrel of a gun. So how come, after Rothbard, a respected economist and esteemed devotee of the Austrian School, we find so many Austrians rallying around Ron Paul’s bid for presidency? A clue is in his son’s name. Rand. While her objectivism gives us long term arguments against the state, in her time, in practice she was a statist. Inconsistent with her ethical theory, she vocally rejected anarchism and was immersed in political activism against communism. If it wasn’t for the cult of Ayn Rand, libertarians could have become a unanimous group of anti-statists.
So while Austrians inherit the anarchist moral objection to the state, they also inherit Randroid fallacies against anarchism.
This will not teach people to be free or to love and seek freedom because you cannot force freedom, it has to be bottom up so to speak. Those upon whom you force it, will reject it, and moreover reject you for it. Mandatory freedom is a contradiction and to support Ron Paul is to philosophically appease democracy, politicians and aggression.
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Rothbard supported using politics to end the State and indeed even supported Ron Paul. I do not see anything inherently contradictory with such a stance.
it’s contradictory if you are an objectivist who holds that a monopoly on force is immoral. to vote for anything is to justify that immorality.
“To get on to voting, yes I believe that any legislator who votes for a tax or an aggressive law is illicitly participating in a criminal enterprise, but no I don’t believe that the citizen voter necessarily does so. There’s votes and there’s votes. One problem with your view is that, in an important sense, it is not anti-statist enough. There is no real sense that we are all of us, willy-nilly, enmeshed in State coercion. Take George’s [George Smith's] phrase, “The institution (the State) taints the individuals who work within it.” but dammit we’re all working within the monstrous matrix that the State has placed around us. I don’t mean to be frivolous or kamikaze but we do all walk or drive on State roads, fly on State-regulated airlines, shop at state-licensed stores, etc. We are not responsible for creating the State; it is there, we are within it, and our task is how to get this damn thing off out back. But I can easily carry your argument one step further: driving on government roads participates in State subsidy, it sanctions the State, etc. Using government mails does the same, etc. The state will not disappear if we ignore it (Spies, Konkin), non-violent civil disobedient is hopeless and has never worked, even unworkable laws must be repealed via political action, etc.
George writes as if citizen voting is constitutive, that is, that everytime we vote in an election this creates and constitutes the State. It is almost as if the State would not exist if we didn’t go out and vote. Nonsense! The State is there, and it gives us this area of partial choice with which to work. Even is everyone (except those running for office to work and their retainers) failed to vote, the State would keep rolling on.
There is one case, I believe, where a vote was constitutive in the United States: the vote for or against the Constitution. (Unfortunately, of course, the vote was not on the Constitution itself–it would have been beaten–but on delegates to state ratifying conventions.) Even though we did not have anarchism before, we had a much milder State, and anyone voting for the Constitution participated in the criminal act of setting up, instituting, a stronger government. Those who voted against the Constitution, on the other hand, were great.
Apart from that, I maintain that there have been no constitutive votes by citizens which should be considered criminal or illicit.
Furthermore, trying to push back voting by the legislator to voting by the citizen as criminal, gets into more difficulties. For how can, for example, Mr.Z who votes for a Libertarian candidate who loses be held responsible in any way for the criminal votes of a Democrat or Republican? Mr. Z tried his best to stop them. Which means, at least, pace Hummel that voting for a Libertarian candidate is perfectly moral so long as the LP candidate loses, since a losing candidate has no opportunity to do harm. But suppose that, by a fluke, an LP candidate wins. Then, it seems to me that there is no problem so long as the LP officeholder votes or acts purely libertarian–that is, votes against the budget, votes against all invasive laws, or if an executive, refuses to enforce aggrssive laws and taxes, etc. But if an LP officeholder can be a moral and licit officeholder, then so can the guy who votes for him, and the entire argument in principle against an LP or voting for the LP or holding office as an LPer falls to the ground. But what if, finally, the LP officeholder sells out, and votes statist? Then he of course is a criminal aggressor. But how about the guy who voted for him? I think not. Surely the most we can accuse him of is error, of failing to detect the betrayal of promises that would occur in the future. Surely not an indictable offense.
Finally, I acknowledge full well that political anarchism is definitively breaking with the glorious anarchist tradition, especially the individualist-anarchist one. Well, so be it. As a rationalist, while I think tradition is important, I can’t let it be my guiding star.”~Murray Rothbard