Tectonic Ch Ch Ch Changes

A comment on Fred Foldvary’s column here “Tectonic change is what we need.”

Perhaps we should take some perspective from the great philosopher David Bowie in arguably his greatest work, “Changes.” He suggests we first “turn and face the strain.”

Sound counsel. To make change, we must do it one day at a time. Change necessarily means identifying what does not work, finding solutions to undo what does not work, and institute new models that do work.

Don’t get me wrong, tectonic change along the lines that Foldvary suggests would be grand. There is some danger in overreaching, as the points advocated sound distant and unachievable in the short or even intermediate term.

Bowie metaphorically offers us a different attitude. We can’t, he notes, “trace time.” A challenging epistemological notion, that, but time can’t be traced because time happens moment by moment.

So, yes, we can easily dismiss the presidential political pabulum of being for “change,” or pronouncements like “I am the change agent.” Hollow, tinny stuff, that. But for there to be tectonic change, there needs to be consensus and leadership. Leaders with few followers are inconsequential. Consensus without leadership is aimless, and therefore inconsequential, too.

And, so, we drift. Bowie tells us that’s OK, too. “Pretty soon you're gonna get a little older.”

-RC

Logical Atomism and Truth Claims

At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen explains his differences in analysis with those of his colleague Robin Hanson:

[Robin] likes to focus on one very central mechanism in seeking an explanation or developing policy advice. Modern physics and Darwin hold too strong a sway in his underlying mental models. He is also very fond of hypotheses involving the idea of a great transformation sometime in the future, and these transformations are often driven by the mechanism he has in mind. I tend to see good social science explanations or proposals as intrinsically messy and complex and involving many different perspectives, not all of which can be reduced to a single common framework. I know that many of my claims sound vague to Robin's logical atomism, but I believe that, given our current state of knowledge, Robin is seeking a false precision and he is sometimes missing out on an important multiplicity of perspectives. Many of his views should be more cautious.

I find this to be the difference between myself and Rothbardian libertarians whom I encounter. The desire to use basic principles (axioms) to inform an entire system of answers to all of life's choices and ethical dillemmas is appealing, In this framework, liberty and the free-market are favored because it is always wrong to initiate force. This is a good general rule. But, I favor liberty as a key value mainly because I believe the government lacks the knowledge to provide for the betterment of all. Similarly, as a Hayekian, I don't believe anyone has the knowledge to provide for the betterment of all. The free-market and its spontaneous order find the efficient solution where no one person could have known it ahead of time. I don't believe it is possible for anyone to hold a philosophy which holds all the answers to all questions.

In a (non-political) conservative manner, I find the more radical truth claims, made by anarcho-capitalists to be overly reliant on the power of liberty to solve all problems. There is wisdom in society for not immediately jumping on the no-government bandwagon. I believe this is the main reason why the Libertarian Party cannot become more successful without becoming less radical.

/KDR

The Transitory Nature of Partisan Hacks

Thanks much to Norm Singleton for his post, "Who's Not Who on the Right" Too often, people want to be identified with who's hot at the moment regardless if those people are articulating coherent ideas, or lasting principles. No matter if they teach or deceive, as long as they sell, they seem to attract fauning admirers.

I thought this line of the New York Times article was especially telling:

"Newt came and went rather fast but didn't leave hard fingerprints," Mr. Buckley said. "The quote, unquote conservative politicians have a pretty short lifetime in encyclopedia usage.

The fact is, that many of our "leaders" are merely cheerleaders with whom everyone wants to sleep. You don't necessarily become popular by having the right idea or the correct solution.

The propensity to confuse the ideology of conservatism with support for whatever the Republican party does is a problem for members of the conservative movement, as well as America as a whole. Simply because there is overlap in some areas, does not mean that one must define the other. In fact, conservatism and Republicanism (in its partisan sense) are both amorphous entities and are composed of competing sections. To think that even one alone could define itself without contradiction is absurd, and even more so that one could define the other.

As individualist thinkers, we must not confuse the whole for its parts, nor the parts for the whole. And we should not delude ourselves that simply because there is similarity there is symmetry. Ideas must stand on their own merits. It is one thing to agree to be a part of team, compromising some values to further others, as a part of an overall strategy of achieving correct ends, and it is another to conflate the ends with the means. To say that Republicanism is the goal of conservativism is to undermine the latter for the former.

And I write all of this, not as a member of the conservative movement, but as a member of the libertarian movement -- a movement I believe desperately needs to move towards building a bigger tent with people who are not ideologically in line with all of the libertarian program. I hope that libertarians might be as sucessful as conservatives, but without losing the intellectual muster which libertarians have attained.

The libertarian problem today, is exactly the opposite of the conservatives. We are all ideology and no politics. I believe transpartisan thinking may hold some of the answers. The transpartisan vision is to meld ideology with utility, utopia with reality. We need to be able to see the values inherent in our opponent's position without abandoning our own rationality and our own principles.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Don't Quote Me on that...

Sometimes political folks are afraid to quote from, or acknowledge ideas from people who are perceived to be on the other side. We fear that we will be associated with their entire image and philosophy if we even agree with a single truth they utter. I wrote previously on this subject here. It seems clear that a systematic refusal to say any good things about the other side leads to the ugliest kind of partisanship which we see in politics so much today -- opposition based upon anger and blame rather than any kind of coherent principle.

Casey Lartigue, notes a different aspect of the same problem on his aptly named blog, " What Would You Say If You Weren't Afraid?" He notes the problem of fearing to say a particular truth because of who might agree. Instead of fearing who we quote, we may also fear who will quote us.

Lartigue uses the example of black politicos not wanting certain white politicos to appropriate their words:

In 1993 Washington Post columnist William Raspberry wrote a column about readers concerned about conservatives occasionally quoting from his writings. Raspberry began the column with a question from a reader, frantically calling him: "Did you know that Rush Limbaugh has been talking about your column on the radio?" The caller was really concerned because Limbaugh had favorably quoted a Raspberry column on former president Clinton's stance on gays in the military.

Raspberry cited another example or two. He was being told the same kind of thing that La Shawn Barber and many other blacks are being told: "I shouldn't say such things in print lest I provide ammunition for those who don't like us."

This is completely wrong as Lartigue notes:

There's an old saying that an idea isn't responsible for who believes in it. It would seem to make sense that the same would be true of people--a writer or speaker isn't responsible for the people who agree with him (or her). If you've got an opinion, why would you hold it back because of who could agree with you? And if that person changes his mind, are you supposed to change yours, too?

Henry George would be proud. "He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it."

I'm sure Mr. Lartigue won't change his opinions one bit now that I've quoted him.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

The Seen and the Unseen

Robert Kaercher, at Strike-the-Root, has responded to Carl Milsted’s “The Need to be Anarchists,” disputing Milsted’s assertion that establishing anarchy now is risky. Kaercher extrapolates from the fact that we see peaceful transactions in our day-to-day lives proves that anarchy could work.

“Anarchy works every day, to the extent that it is allowed to work. Thousands, perhaps millions, of various transactions—of goods, services and ideas both philosophical and spiritual—take place every day between individuals and voluntary associations with nary a government bureaucrat or law enforcer in sight.”

There are two problems with this argument. The first is that it confuses free market activity within the context of a welfare-state and rule of law, with the conditions which might prevail in the absence of government. Peaceful transactions should not themselves be defined as anarchy. The attribute is not the system.

Second, the argument assumes that more “anarchy” is always better. It suggests a linear relationship between “anarchy” and peaceful interaction – that increasing amounts of “anarchy” always lead to increasing amounts of human happiness. This misses the possibility of diminishing marginal returns to “anarchy” and that at some point it may become negative. Anyone who has gone on an all night drinking binge can testify to the superiority of the first few drinks to the last few.

Frederic Bastiat wrote about the seen and the unseen. He described how many people only see the things which government produces and not the lost opportunities that were the cost of government action.

“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen,” wrote Bastiat.

This should apply to the creation of government programs as well as their destruction. We libertarians always see the bad things that governments do, but never question whether we are failing to see any positive aspects. In advocating the reduction in government we see the removal of costs without addressing whether we are also losing some benefits. We cannot see the peaceful aspects of our current society without wondering if the rule of law plays some part in fostering them.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Theory and Consequences

Carl Milsted, Bob Capozzi, and Stephan Kinsella are having an important debate on the role of the state and the possibility of anarchy as the best way to organize society. It is important for the libertarian community to challenge itself to have the best ideas it can – otherwise, it may be offering an inferior product compared to competing ideologies.

Kinsella brings an important question to the fore – should we concern ourselves with the “workability” of the ideas we promote? That is, does it matter what happens as a result of those ideas being implemented?

As Richard Weaver observed, “Ideas have consequences.” That is primarily why we care about obtaining them, using them, and improving upon them. Parents discipline their children to give them the “idea” that aggressive behavior is unacceptable in a free society. We use ideas to discern between moral options, and to navigate our day-to-day experiences. Should I walk into oncoming traffic? No, because my theory is that I will die if a speeding car hits me. Aircraft designers want to know if a new plane will be faster and stealthier than previous models. If their idea is incorrect, they can lose millions of dollars after building a series of lemon fighter jets.

Should we not include the consequences in our formulation of our political ideas? Does it matter whether we exert our intellectual energies towards ideologies which can improve the world, versus harming the world? There is no intellectual or moral difference between a car designer who markets a car that will not run and a political theorist who suggests solutions which cannot work.

I am not saying that anarchy could not work. I don’t know if it could or not. It would be quite interesting to see it tested on a small scale to give us some data to base our decisions on. But, suggesting that it does not matter what happens as a result of our ideas is dangerous. If libertarians adopt this view that it is acceptable to divorce theory from reality, it removes their moral standing to demand that policies promoted by socialists and statists provide “workable” solutions rather than needless despotism and suffering.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

If a Tree Falls in the Woods…

…and nobody sees or hears it, an environmentalist still sheds a tear.

Bob Capozzi wrote several weeks ago about Richard Weaver’s old adage, “Ideas have consequences.” Bob objects to the importance of this statement, arguing that without being “true, well articulated, developed, and then put into action,” ideas aren’t likely to have much consequence.

However, the phrase itself embodies a consequential idea. Weaver is reminding us to be careful of the ideas that we promote, because they are dangerous weapons. He is saying that we cannot be concerned only with intent, but that the content of ideas is also important. For example, when we realize that communism, fully-implemented, leads to the death of millions of innocents, we are less prone to speak gleefully about it. And our own ideas must be solid to successfully repel the bad ones.

Consider the exact opposite, “Ideas do not have consequences.” What would happen if most people adopted it as a guiding truism? Individuals would have no ability to successfully navigate through life – they would constantly be denying the possibility that recognition, classification, decision-making, or planning could make a difference to them. These are ideas and therefore, as ideas, they couldn’t effect change. The juror could flip a coin on whether to convict a murder defendant, and it would make no difference in honesty, as evidence, motive, and opportunity become mere diversions, and life and death are as indistinguishable as Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.

Logically, another possibility is available – “Some ideas have consequences.” I think this is closer to the truth, but I think it misses an important point – ideas “happen” in the mind, an event just like a tree falling in the real world. It may not seem to have tremendous or relevant effects upon our lives, but it happened – it had physical, chemical, and biological effects on the surrounding area. In a small way it contributed to the balance of the ecosystem and the health of every living thing on Earth. Similarly, even those ideas which are later discarded, must have some effect on our own minds, even if they never leave the space between our ears. Just as the eco-system as a whole is important, the sum total of our ideas matter for our own lives.

So, perhaps the most accurate statement would be, “Ideas have consequences; some ideas have greater consequence than others.” The ones which are “true, well articulated, developed, and then put into action” will likely be ones of greater consequence. Richard Weaver’s idea is one of these ideas that have great effect, because it meets these very criteria. Its lasting appeal is demonstrated its use by persons such as Nobel laureate James Buchanan and we should be thankful for its longevity. Rarely is so much said with so few words.

-- Kevin D. Rollins