Right to Privilege?

The natural historical state of humans is poverty. Thus, poverty is not what needs to be explained, but wealth.

The natural historical medicine available to humans has been local herbs and magic. Modern medicine is a recent technological development, and it is a wonderful development that has given us longer and better lives. But like all technological advancements that improved our lives, it is a privilege to have it. Does it make sense to argue that one has a right to a privilege?

Justice vs. Social Justice

A good piece on Justice versus Social Justice. Hayek argued that social justice is a non-concept. Leonard Read argued that it's the very antithesis of justice. They are probably both right. It is a non-concept because it is incoherent, yet it is used to destroy justice. Why? Because there is no such thing as collective or social justice -- there are only unjust acts committed by an individual against an individual. There is no excusing "I was only doing my duty" or "It was my job." To knowingly enforce an unjust law (which was conceived of by an individual and voted on by individuals and enforced by individuals) is immoral. To obey an unjust law is immoral. To advocate unjust laws under the guise of social justice, too, is immoral.

A Few Thoughts on Racism

Shawn Darling, a very left-wing Facebook friend, believes I have not spent enough time on this blog discussing racism. I have pointed out to him that I do not do so because race is not something I am particularly concerned with. I am interested in a wide variety of things, and while I consider racism to be evil, racism has nothing to do with many of the things I regularly write about, such as free market economics, so I don't really discuss it that much. But just for Shawn, I will discuss the foundation and evolution of racism.

Humans are biologically xenophobic. Our closest relative, the chimpanzee, goes to war against other troupes, killing all the male members (and even the female ones at times). To the chimpanzee, the out-group chimpanzee is one who can be killed and even eaten.

Humans are similarly programmed. It makes evolutionary sense. Those who were racist killed those not related to them when they saw them, which would include any non-racist people. Since the non-racist people wouldn't kill anyone, while the racist people would kill anyone who was not like them, any non-racist people would have been wiped out. What is left is a fundamentally racist foundation for human behavior.

If this is the case, how did we get to the state we are in, where racism is seen by many as a despicable world view? Well, there are several factors at work. The first is the emergence of trade, which encouraged people to trust others. This probably emerged first between tribes that were related, then expanded to less and less related tribes. The other is not entirely unrelated, which involves the splintering of groups that retained cultural identity. As more and more people had the same cultural identity, it became harder and harder to identify in a concrete way who was not a member of one's tribe. Symbols emerged to facilitate this -- but when expansionist religions emerged, into which people could convert, people were able to become symbolic members of one's tribe. Since there was a shared ideology, racism decreased. What was once racism was converted into more expansive forms of tribalism, such as religious discrimination. (One can see just how much this is true by the absurd accusation of anti-Jew Arab Moslems of being "anti-Semitic" when Arabs are Semites -- what is meant is that the Arab Moslems are anti-Jew, but the religion has been confounded with the race.)

The expansion of the idea of who is in your tribe continued until it reaches its pinnacle in classical liberalism, which considered all people, regardless of race or sex, to be equals. Of course, that attitude took time to spread (as did ideas of expanding tribal membership to those who practice the same religion), but spread it did. Now racist attitudes in places where liberalism has been dominant for a long time are increasingly rare. However, this does not mean that they are gone. In fact, since racism is a kind of collectivism -- where you consider not the individual, but the group -- collectivist thinking has a tendency to lead people down the path to racism. Historically, socialists were anti-Semites, since Jews were associated with the banks and finance. National Socialism, of course, took this attitude to its logical conclusion, making anti-Semitism at least officially unpalatable for the anti-liberal left since the end of WWII.

Of course, none of this addresses specific issues of race. Rather, it deals with the fact that racism is a fact of human psychology and history. Racism is the standard way of thinking of humans, and it takes effort to overcome it as a species. By raising our children among other races, our children learn to see them as "self" rather than "other," and thus is racism overcome. But this does not mean that other "others" may not arise. We distinguish ourselves in a variety of ways, and we do so in ways that are similar to how others do so. Thus, it is possible for collectivists to come along and insist that this or that group is inferior or superior. For Marx the proletariat was superior to the bourgeoisie. We have those who think the poor superior to the rich, the rich superior to the poor; politicians superior to businessmen (or the average person); left superior to the right, right superior to the left, both superior to liberals, liberals superior to both (which would in fact be anti-liberal for a liberal to think); etc. The racism present today may be less obviously racist, since it is not tied to ancient notions of race, but to other groups. But collectivism is collectivism -- such thinking posits "us" vs. "them," with all the consequences thereof.

As for the specific racial problems of the present day in the United States, one can certainly begin with slavery -- as one should. Afterwards, we had the rise of racist laws to prevent racial minorities from competing with the majority. (Anti-competitive laws are of course anti-market.) These laws were designed to keep a variety of groups from competing, be they black, Hispanic, Irish, Chinese, etc. Unions in particular pushed for these laws, to protect white union members from competition. They no longer do this explicitly, but instead push for increased minimum wage laws, which have the same effect, negatively impacting youths and minorities, particularly blacks and Hispanics. Their push for trade and immigration restrictions are similarly motivated. (It is ironic, then, that the unions do not support the GOP more, since the GOP wants immigration restrictions that would benefit the unions.) Anti-immigrant and anti-trade attitudes have their source in humans' residual racist attitudes. Even well-intentioned programs, such as affirmative action, are based on a racist belief that minorities cannot get ahead without the good, wise white man ensuring their path on the race is all downhill. (This is also based on the primitive belief that the world is a zero sum game, that where there are winners, there must be losers.) Welfare falls too into this category -- less so in places like Europe, perhaps, but certainly targeting blacks and Hispanics in this country. The more our government has tried to "help" minorities (outside of eliminating racist laws -- which amounts to the elimination of an evil once perpetuated by the government), the worse off they have typically become. Those who have refused the help and rather chose to participate in what little bit of a free market economy we have left are those whose lives have in fact improved. In fact, this situation is so apparent that those who have chosen the economy over government -- people like the Chinese, Indians, and Japanese -- now face discrimination by our government against them and in favor of those who have turned to that government rather than to the economy. Of course anybody who knows anything about public choice is not in the least surprised by this fact. Of course, "benefit" is a generous term, since the only way the government can ensure a group continues to support them is if they make sure the group thinks they need the government. Keep them poor so they still need to be helped. (This is why I would never vote for anyone who considered the poor to be their constituent -- it is in the best interest of any politician to expand their constituency!)

Notwithstanding the occasional return to fundamentally racist collectivism, the trend has been away from racist attitudes precisely because we have been expanding our ideas about who is in our tribes. This has been driven the most by free markets and free trade, which make people have to interact with each other to such a degree that they learn that the other is in fact a person, just like them. Thus, those who are anti-market oppose this development.

Culture, Markets, and Patterns in Psychology, Society, and History

I have written previously on Gravesean psychology, most recently here (at which there are links to more of my musings on the subject). To recap the theory: individuals' psychologies undergo increasing complexity -- when there are enough with that level of psychological complexity, a new kind of society emerges -- those new life conditions allow for the emergence of yet more complex psychologies -- etc. The theory further states that these psychosocial states go from collectivist to individualist to collectivist, etc. Collectivist tribalism to heroic individualism (think Homeric heroes and society) to collectivist authoritativism (think Medieval European society) to individualistic liberalism (pro-market, etc.) to collectivist egalitarianism (Marxism, etc.). There are more psychological levels beyond this, but these do represent the societies we now see. Further, there are mixtures. The transition from Medievalism to liberalism passed through the Renaissance, the guild system, and mercantilism. One could see fascism/crony capitalism/corporatism as the Hegelian synthesis of liberal and egalitarian economics (proving that the dialectical movement is not necessarily progressive), once egalitarianist economics proved untenable (at best).

I am now reading Arthur Pontynen and Rod Miller's Western Culture at the American Crossroads, in which they discuss Philip Rieff's idea from My Life Among the Deathworks

that there are three ontologically distinct modes of culture, each with its own methodology. What he calls FirstWorld cultures are pagan, in which human struggle to reconcile knowledge with fate and the gods. SecondWorld cultures seek via reason and faith to obtain wisdom, the realization of which results in a sacred order. ThirdWorld cultures center on power and self-interest. Rieff associates postmodern cultures with that view. (46)

Rieff thus seems to argue that there are three cultures, which I would argue map onto each of the collectivist social levels. But what, then, do we make of the individualistic social levels?

Let me restate the situation. The collectivist social levels are social orders approaching equilibrium/stasis (note I say "approaching," as true equilibrium is impossible). The individualist social levels are in fact far-from-equilibrium states that emerge in the transition from one equilibrium to another. As Stuart Kauffman points out in The Origins of Order, though, such states are in fact stable. One can see this if one understands life itself as being in such a state. Among the features of the far from equilibrium state is that it is both individuating and creative.

This then brings me to another book I am reading, Keith Roberts' The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets. Roberts' book is about the earliest evidence of economic activity -- which happens to have emerged during the heroic individualist era. More, his story ends right when the Medieval world emerged. Why? The final chapter's title says it all: "The Downfall of Ancient Business." I would argue that it is no coincidence that ancient business ended in a real sense when the Medieval world view became dominant. Stasis is anti-economic. More, the very feature of a market economy is that it is creative. That requires it emerge during creative periods, which I have already identified with far from equilibrium states. The dream of socialism is the dream of stasis, of equilibrium. Nothing new is created, only what has already been invented is produced.

Of course, the more complex a society, the more likely there are to be many people of different levels, and the more likely there are to be subcultures of different social levels. This in fact makes it more difficult to have a pure system -- socialism is impossible for many reasons, among which is the fact that not everyone is at the psychological level necessary for its acceptance. Nor will everyone be, since we have to pass through each level to get to the next. There is no jumping levels. More, the egalitarian level is not the final one, meaning people are going to evolve beyond that, further disrupting the stasis such people desire. Thus society is increasingly in a state of disequilbrium, with areas of equilibrium and far from equilibrium. The complexity is growing more and more.

To return to Pontynen and Miller, their thesis is that the SecondWorld culture is preferable to ThirdWorld culture, so we need to return to it. However, they modify this recommendation by also recommending the Anglosphere's emphasis on society as a spontaneous order -- which really results in a culture somewhat closer to that which emerged in the Liberal era (though they complain about this era, and identify it as the beginning of the problems we now face culturally). I argued that this model describes the eras of stasis -- which in essence seems to argue that times of business are times we move away from culture, while moves back toward culture are times that are anti-business (suggesting Nietzsche was right to criticize the market economy in his consistent support of culture). Of course, this only applies if we are talking about culture as a stable social condition. If that is how we identify a culture as being a culture, then far from equilibrium eras are culturally disruptive and are thus not cultures in this sense. They are periods of transition from one culture to the next. Many have discussed the current state of the arts, observing that nobody is doing anything new. Well, that's the main feature of a stable culture. Not many people were doing much "new" during the Medieval era in Europe, either. The transition -- which is in a far from equilibrium state -- is going to result in many new things, a proliferation of new forms, styles, etc., until a new stasis is achieved. We are now in that stasis, and thus have achieved culture in the sense being discussed.

In integrating the ideas of these writers, I think I have discovered some interesting historical patterns. They are patterns however are more like those found in a spontaneous order, meaning they are complex and not really predictable in a real sense. We can predict kinds of patterns -- the emergence of collectivist and individualist thinking -- but not how they will be realized. Further, we can predict whether there will be pro-market or pro-culture attitudes, and see why. These are mostly preliminary thoughts, but I think I'm onto something.

We Should All Observe the Sabbath and Keep It Holy

I am reading a wonderfully dense, incredibly complex and difficult book ostensibly on art, but which lays out such a through philosophical world view first that they have yet to get to art per se (by pg. 45, Ch. 3). It is Western Culture at the American Crossroads by Arthur Pontynen and Rod Miller. I will probably write more on this book as I'm reading it (and as soon as I pin down exactly what they are arguing -- they have managed to first make me sure of where they are going, only to then make a statement that makes me no longer sure, a sufficient number of times that I know better than to say what they are saying until I am finished with the book), but I wanted to note something that has particularly struck me for some reason. Consider the following:

culture is the product of leisure and the object of our thoughts.

The Puritan refers to such leisure as the Sabbath, a day not just of rest but of reflection as well. The Sabbath, or leisure, is associated with the rise of culture because it permits us the time to reflect on the world and our place in it. The Puritan thus democratizes participation in the liberal arts, once the privilege of the aristocratic class. Active reflection on the purpose of life makes possible responsible freedom by the exercising of conscious deliberate choice as such it is deemed the finest activity humans can engage in. Such reflection is self-conscious, a realization that we think, we live, we experience death---and perhaps more. Between life and death occur guilt about the past, boredom with the present, and anxiety about the future. Self-conscious reflection has an object: to understand what meaning, what hope and joy, transcends guilt, boredom, anxiety, and even death. That transcendent goal is the ground for the liberal arts, the arts of the Sabbatical mind, and responsible freedom. (26-7)

Several things come to mind. First, their point about the Sabbath democratizing culture -- the arts -- supports my contention that the arts are now a spontaneous order in their own right, since equal access is an essential feature of spontaneous orders. Second, the point about the importance not just of leisure, but of a particular kind of leisure -- one that allows for contemplation -- is very suggestive. How many of us have that kind of leisure? We fill our time with work, "leisure activities," family, friends, noisy protests, social networks, endless chatter. We keep busy, busy, busy, and thus have no time to sit and think. As a culture we no longer have a day of contemplation. Thus, we are moving back toward more elitist culture -- only the elites are in many ways self-selected. It thus becomes aristocratic, but not necessarily in the sense of aristos meaning "the best" (though those with Ph.D.'s in the humanities may think otherwise of themselves). Rather, the ones who rise to the top are the ones best able to parrot what everybody already knows -- thus is true contemplation discouraged, lest one come to different conclusions. Better to fill one's time with endless chatter, avoid contemplation.

Of course, there are different kinds of contemplation. The average person needs time alone to think. No T.V., no radio, nobody talking to him. Someone like me needs time alone to think, with a pen and paper at hand. The scholar should be contemplative in this active sense, writing down the thoughts, thinking those thoughts through, revising thought thoughts, revising revisions. The scientist, the scholar, the artist all need time to contemplate if they are going to do anything other than what has already been done, if they are going to think new thoughts, if they are going to add to the world. And we need to be joined by everyone else. Everyone needs to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy -- in thus contemplating, one will find oneself, improve oneself, and, improving oneself, find the energy and virtue to understand and improve the world.

Failure Is Not an Option

John sat in the visitation area across from his father, Carl.

"Well, son, was it worth it? They're going to execute you tomorrow. Was it worth it?"

John leaned forward across the table. "I think so," he said. "You know, I was doing what I loved, and if failing at it resulted in this, then so be it. I was doing what I loved."

"That seems an odd thing to say. You were greedy, son, and that's what got you here."

"No, not greedy. Ambitious. I was ambitious. I wanted to be in charge, and I was in charge. I wanted to succeed, and I succeeded . . ."

"Until you didn't."

"Yes, until I didn't." John leaned back and looked at the gray ceiling. "But until then, it was glorious. I was the best, and that's why I made it. I was the best. I have no regrets."

"What about your family? Your wife? Angela and Adam? Your mom and me?" A tear ran down Carl's cheek. "You were selfish. You are selfish. They're going to lose their father."

John leaned across the table and almost whispered his reply. "Dad, I'm not the one who made the law that if you fail, you lose your life. Everyone supports you so long as you succeed. Nobody, not even you, accused me of being greedy or selfish for as long as I was succeeding. You said you were proud of me when they made me coach. As well you should have been. You don't get to take all that back now that I'm in this situation. You knew as well as I did the consequences of failure. We lost. We lost, so here I am. And tomorrow . . ."

"And tomorrow I can't even bury you, because they won't let you be buried."

"I lost the championship. I failed. That's how it goes. You know you can't fail in this country. You succeed, or else. No do-overs. Ever."

"It's not fair."

"I suppose not. But would it have been fair if I had won and been declared a national hero? I surely wouldn't have turned down the trophy, the accolades, the parades, and lord knows what else. Refusing to turn down all that, how can I turn down the consequences?" John sat up straight in his chair. "It is my destiny. It is the consequences. I did not enter this ignorant of the consequences. I can't complain now."

A guard approached. John looked up at him.

"Well, dad, looks like I have to go. Give my love to mom, Barbara, Angela and Adam. I understand why they couldn't come."

John stood. Carl remained seated. The guard grabbed John by the arm and led him out of the visitation area, the first to leave. The room echoed with continued murmuring. Carl watched in silence as he watched John disappear with the guard through the iron door.

FSSO 2011

This weekend I presented a paper, "The Theater of Tensions," at the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders. It was a fantastic conference, with a wide variety of ideas and world views -- it was a broad swathe of classical/traditional liberal thinking. The people were great -- it is nice to be able to have discussions with people with whom one disagrees where the level of respect nevertheless remains high. This doesn't mean that there weren't heated arguments, or that there weren't misunderstandings of positions or arguments, but even if someone unfairly misattributed an argument against, say, socialized medicine, as an argument for the current system, such misattributions were quickly and clearly settled, and thus the real argument was able to take place. (This is something we all do: we meet someone who is against X; we know people who are against X and for Y; therefore we assume that new person is for Y, even though it is possible to be against both X and Y.)

Respect. It was observed at the conference that respect is an ur-value, underlying rights. We respect our friends. We respect our family (in healthy families, anyway). We extend respect to strangers -- and in so doing, extend rights to them. We have moved from a species that killed strangers to one that traded with strangers, and thus extended respect to him. Respect was central at the conference, both topically (unstated and, later, stated) and in our disagreements. Sadly, we see less and less of this in civic society -- if you disagree with me, you aren't just wrong, but evil! (and I of course could never be wrong!). One should be able to get into even a heated discussion of ideas, and at the end of the day, shake hands, wish each other well, and be happy to see each other next time around. But of course, this also requires people to be more interested in learning what the truth really is rather than in being seen by everyone as right, whether you are in fact right or not. And that is one of the advantages of such a conference, where everyone there was a scientist first, and an ideologue second (though sometimes a close second). We were there to try to understand spontaneous orders better, and to try to understand whether they are in fact better for humans to live in than other social systems. Such questions are of course going to raise questions and result in heated debate (such as whether or not spontaneous orders were "natural," and if not, why we were "advocating" them). Naturally, our arguments resulted in some convergence, divergence, greater certainty, and greater uncertainty. Which is as it should be. If you don't come back from a conference without all of those things happening, it wasn't very valuable for you.

On Choosing Not to Choose

One of the great benefits of slavery is that you don't have to make any choices and you don't have to make any distinctions (without distinctions, you don't have to make choices). All the choices are made for you. It is a great psychological relief.

Freedom, on the other hand, means you have to make distinctions and choices. That is the joy and curse of freedom. It can be psychologically taxing at times.

Sartre once said one of his favorite times was when he was in the German prison camp when he was captured. He said he loved the camaraderie in the camp. It was why, he said, he became a communist. He became a communist because he loved prison life? That is perhaps the most honest reason ever given by anyone. Removed from him was choice, the need to make distinctions. One simply had to exist. To Sartre, this was glorious.

Beware anyone who argues we should not make distinctions.

Beware anyone who wants to take away your choices.

They are arguing for slavery -- and intend to be the slave masters.

Not all slavery is explicit, obvious, clear. There are many, more subtle, versions of it. One can even be free in one area of life, but enslaved in another. And choosing to restrict one's choices voluntarily (such as, say, though entering into a contract with someone) is not the same as slavery, as you always have the choice to get out (if you can't get out, it's not a contract). Thus, there is no such thing as "wage slavery" in a free market economy. It only exists under socialism in it various guises. Like with the socialists' constant accusations of "materialism" on the part of market supporters, the accusations of "wage slavery" is simply projection on their parts. They are the worst things that they claim to fight.

Humans' Love For Collaboration Gives Rise to Spontaneous Orders

One of the things that distinguishes humans from other animals, including our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, is that we like to collaborate, while chimpanzees do not -- even though chimpanzees obviously do collaborate when necessary (they are social mammals, after all). The big difference, though, is that humans prefer to collaborate than to work alone (a few of us artists notwithstanding -- but even then, we like to hash out ideas with others, get feedback, etc.). This preference for collaboration makes our social orders far more complex than chimpanzees'. Indeed, without this trait, there would be no such thing as spontaneous social orders, which both make use of our natural tendency to cooperate, and help us to better coordinate our activities, making us increasingly social.

Where Fault Lies in the Recession or, Why We Will Never Get Justice

According to Austrian business cycle theory, artificially low interest rates create bad information which causes people to make bad decisions even as they are acting rationally given the information they have. We can see this in the housing bubble, and we can see it in the education bubble, with low-interest student loans driving it. Cheap money creates false signals. Distorted prices cause people to make what turn out to be bad decisions, made worse when the bubble bursts.

Now, if a business were to do this, were to misinform people about what they were getting, this would be considered fraud, and the business would be held responsible, not the victim of the fraud. However, we have people who were defrauded into buying houses and getting educations that have turned out not to have the value they thought they did, who bought houses and educations with cheap money, thinking they would have the value advertised, and who have seen that value disappear -- along with their jobs in many cases -- but who now are told that they "should have been responsible" and not gotten things they couldn't afford. But what if they could afford them at the time? Circumstances change. And, worse, they were able to afford something, at the time, that was said to have more value at the time than it turned out to have, while now they cannot afford this same thing that has decreased in value, but whose costs must still be paid. They have been defrauded -- but who is paying for it?

The Occupy Wall Street crowd think they have the answer: banks and Wall Street. However, these are but the secondary players, the secondary cause. They were acting rationally given their own bad information -- not to mention pressure from the primary players. It does no good to protest the secondary cause -- we have to protest the primary cause, the government and Federal Reserve which actively worked to create artificially low interest rates and have pushed for more higher education and more people in houses. To get what they wanted, the government created false price signals, including cheap money, to get the behaviors they wanted. Thus, they are responsible for this mess. And they should pay, and they should be the ones made to get us out of our bad situations -- again, something the OWS crowd have intuited to some degree, but without much economic understanding behind it.

The problem is of course that the government does not have its own money. It must tax or borrow (and tax in the future) to get the money needed to make things right. And of course everything they have done to date has done nothing more than maintain the status quo and continue to distort prices. Thus, in a financial sense, one cannot hold the government responsible for its idiotic behavior, because all we would be doing would be taking water from one end of the pool to pour it into the other end. Further, there is the problem of moral hazard, as people would begin to think that every so often the government will bail them out when they have made bad decisions (assuming everyone has made the same bad decisions, which only takes place when the government distorts prices). Of course, the banks are in such a moral hazard situation, knowing that the government will bail them out whenever there's a downturn. This makes it such that the banks are less interested in trying to overcome price misinformation, and are often willing partners in it.

Further, the government has screwed us over on being able to get out from under debt. Don't try to get out of either credit card or student loan debt, because it's not going to happen. Bankruptcy won't save you. And the government has made it harder and harder for the average person to declare bankruptcy, all to the benefits of the banks. This is something that has to change.

Those who have made what turned out to be bad decisions because they were lied to because of distorted prices (and, sometimes, directly), deserve justice. But the government, which is supposed to be where justice is meted out, is the culprit. Where, then, does one turn to justice?

The Inevitable Triumph of Spontaneous Orders

Timothy Ferris argues in The Science of Liberty that it was the emergence of the spontaneous order of science that laid the groundwork for the emergence of economics as a spontaneous order and of liberal democracy. Naturally, he does not quite use these terms, but if you have read Butos and McQuade on science as a spontaneous order, there is no question what Ferris is talking about. Further, the democratic spontaneous order, by valuing spontaneous orders themselves, keeps science a spontaneous order, thus keeping it alive. Dictatorships such as Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism/International Socialism try to turn spontaneous orders into organizations and, thus, destroy them. This includes science. Scientists in the scientific order combined with entrepreneur/inventors in the economic order create more and better technology -- something that is gradually lost in socialist systems such as those listed above. As a result, countries with such systems fall farther and farther behind, and are continually outstripped by spontaneous order societies. The fact that the U.S. and Britain were both spontaneous order societies allowed them to defeat Fascism/Nazism and, later, Communism. To the extent that we are liberal spontaneous order societies, we will continue to grow and succeed; to the extent that we move away from such a system, we face continued degradation.

An Open Letter to the Millionaires and Billionaires Expressing Support for the Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Dear Millionaires and Billionaires Expressing Support for the Occupy Wall Street Protesters,

Why don't you hire us and shut up. You have money to invest, so invest it. Arguing for raising taxes on the rich will, as you well know, do nothing more than remove money from your competitors. There is nothing worse and more pathetic than envious rich people trying to get the government to take more money from other rich people just to make them worse off than yourselves. If you are a millionaire or billionaire who supports Occupy Wall Street, I have some debt -- including mortgage debt -- you could pay off for me which would free up a lot of money for me to spend in the economy. Do feel free to contact me, and I will tell you how large a check to write for me. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Troy Camplin

Instincts, Game Theory, and Spontaneous Orders

Social scientists would do well to learn more than a bit from animal behavior studies. Take for example Robert Sugden's article Spontaneous Order. He tells about a practice on the Yorkshire coast where there was an unwritten rule about collecting driftwood on the beach. The first to collect the wood and put two stones on them got the wood, so long as they retrieved it within two days, after which time, it belonged to whoever came to get it. Sugden uses game theory to explain how this came about, which is good as far as it goes. He essentially argues that there is a hawk-dove mixed strategy at work, but this strategy is not just a product of spontaneous orders, but has deeper origins than that. As it turns out, it is a general rule of any territorial species to default Hawk when protecting one's own territory, and to default Dove when entering another's territory. This prevents most conflicts. It thus turns out that this pre-human instinctual behavior is what underlies the emergence of these kinds of property rights rules -- including the emergence of property rights themselves. Certainly this does not negate the use of game theory, as evolutionary biologists have made use of it for many decades now -- but it may suggest that our use of it may need to go deeper than we usually go with it. Game theory explains how a set of behaviors emerged, but natural selection explains how a set of behaviors gets set in as instincts, creating a platform for more complex behaviors -- which, if it turns out to have long-term benefits, is likely to become internalized as an instinct, allowing it to emerge more quickly, and any learning associated with it to occur more quickly. Citing John Maynard Smith's work, Segden does approach this insight, without quite getting there. I do believe more work needs to be done on the connection between our instincts and our different spontaneous orders.

On the Wall Street Protestors -- The 99% Who Don't Understand Economics

Someone needs to tell the Occupy Wall Street protestors that, while it may make some sense to be upset at the banks, etc. that were involved in the actions that led to the economic crash, that these were but secondary players. They ought to be protesting the primary cause, the primary players who created this crisis. That would be Washington, D.C. That would be the federal government and the Federal Reserve.

To believe the protestors, greed magically and suddenly, for no reason anyone can discern, surged all at once, and we ended up in an economic crisis. It is more likely that the amount or level of greed remains the same across time, meaning it cannot explain the crisis. What one has to seek out, then, is why so many people acted exactly the same way at the same time. How is it possible that everyone can be misinformed in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time?

More than that, the protestors also have to explain why and how it is that "greedy corporate fat cats" can benefit from a bad economy. Poor people can't buy as much as wealthy people. Thus, greedy businessmen want more wealthy people, as that means more people buying their stuff, meaning more profit. Only a complete idiot -- or a believer the economy is a zero-sum game -- believes otherwise. The protestors must believe this nonsense, or they would not be out protesting corporations now, three years into the crisis, rather than in 2008. What they do not realize is that it is not the corporations per se that are at fault for the continuing economic crisis, but the government because of the bailouts and stimulus plans and continued distortion of information. The markets try to adjust, and the government keeps feeding people bad information. Thus, it cannot adjust. The protestors ought to be blaming the people who are giving out the bailout money more than the people who accept it (who doesn't want free money? -- other than the banks that did not want to participate, but were threatened and forced to by the Bush administration, which are the same banks, ironically, being protested against now). Of course, these same protestors are asking for their own government handout -- so it's not that surprising they are not protesting their potential benefactors.

In other words, this protest is confused precisely because the protestors do not know what happened, do not want to protest those who caused the problems because they want those same people to give things to them, and because they do not have the least understanding of economics. They are the 99% alright. They are the 99% who don't understand economics (but, because they buy and sell things, think they do).

Property as a Spontaneous Order

Larry Arnhart has an excellent post on property rights. Of note is his observation that "the property claims of the [California gold] miners moved through three levels--natural possession, customary rules, and formal laws. This manifests the general structure of Darwinian social order as the joint product of natural desires, cultural practices, and deliberate judgments." This is spontaneous order in a nutshell.

It Is Not Virtue to Use Force

It is not virtue to first use force, or even first to threaten force, to try to reach one's goals. To do so is to act just like a child does -- the two year old who cannot say too much, and pushes others thinking that will get his way; the spoiled brat who throws a fit as threat so she can get her way. These tactics are not virtue; these tactics are what children have before they have the social skills and language needed to live a life of virtue. To go to force or threat to get your way is to act like a child at best. There is no virtue in it.

As Aristotle says, for one to act with virtue you must first aim for the beautiful. The beautiful is both variety with unity, the golden mean's creative ratio. To aim thus at the beautiful is thus to aim at a society with great complexity -- that's unified and various, that uses limits proper to make healthy growth. But force or threat of force does not make social bonds -- these only break our social bonds and make us have a simpler society. It's one thing to appreciate the differences among us all as individuals and as subcultures and as cultures, too, but it's another to divide us all with but the purpose of division and destruction. Factions are not virtuous as difference with respect must truly be.

To act with virtue, then, you have to understand the true path to a truly beautiful society -- society where social bonds are made, where growth and creativity is present, where force and threats of force are not the first, or second, third or fourth or fifth on any list of how to deal with anything. Force is how you deal with force, and that is all -- the actions of an undeveloped child must be met on their terms -- but when you have a person who can reason, reason is the way to deal with them, the path of virtue. Are we adults or children? Will we allow ourselves to put mere children, whose first thoughts are force or threats, in charge of us? Will we resort to children's actions first? Or are we all adults, whose choice is virtue and whose aims are always for the beautiful?

Variety Necessary for Social Change

One of the most dangerous things that can take place for a species is for it to become a "monoculture," meaning it has very little if any genetic diversity. When this happens, the species is in danger of becoming extinct, from either disease or environmental change. Cheetahs, unfortunately, are a genetic monoculture.

For natural selection to work, there has to be variety from which to select. And there is no telling what may be needed or useful, so it is important (as least as far as the species is concerned) that all sorts of varieties emerge from which selections can be made. The choice is extinction or evolution into something else. Extinction means the complete loss of all the potential of that genetic line.

With the exception of the last line, all of this is equally true at the social level for humans. A healthy society is one with a high level of variety, from which options can be selected. Without options, there are no choices (this seems obvious, but it appears not to be so for many who advocate monopoly-creation, whether through government takeover of government preferences/barriers to entry/etc.). Thus, without options, there is no social evolution. A monoculture may be productive for a time, but it does not take long before it grows stagnant, and even dies. A society needs variety -- a variety of cultures and subcultures, a variety of educational opportunities and styles and outcomes, a variety of scientific theories, a variety of arts and literatures, a variety of entrepreneurs, a variety of people starting firms, a variety (even) of quality. Without variety, we have no options, and no social evolution can take place.

Is it not ironic that many of those who say they are for social change in fact support few ideas/programs/policies that would in fact support and promote in social change, but would in fact give rise to social stagnation worse than even the conservatives want?

Rousseau, Sociopath?

From everything I have read of Rousseau's biography, one has to come to the conclusion, based on the latest work on sociopathology, as summarized by Martha Stout in The Sociopath Next Door, that Rousseau was a sociopath. What other philosophy can a sociopath create other than one that is itself sociopathological? Is it any wonder, then, that the romantic leftism he spawned has always been sociopathological? -- i.e., the French Revolution, the various communist revolutions.

This is hardly an ad hominem attack. I am not saying that one cannot recover from even a sociopath legitimate ideas -- the Montessori method was inspired by Rousseau, after all, even if the disaster that is U.S. education was/is as well. But do we really want to base society, or a view of man, on that of a sociopath?

Impeach Obama!

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. -- 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. -- 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

These two amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America were violated by the President of the United States, Barack Husein Obama, in the assassination of the naturally-born American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. He was not killed in battle, nor even in a war zone. He was targeted for assassination in a foreign country rather than arrested and tried, as is the right of every American citizen, according to two amendments in our Bill of Rights. Anwar al-Awlaki was tried, found guilty, and executed by one man, the President of the United States. This is an impeachable offense, and the President should be impeached, convicted, and imprisoned for this crime against the American people in this direct violation of the Constitution, which he swore to uphold. Anyone who defends this action is in direct and unambiguous opposition to the Constitution of the United States, and is thus not fit for office and should resign immediately.

Everyone who agrees with me, spread this message far and wide. Lovers of liberty, defenders of the Constitution, and anyone who does not want to live in a country where the political leaders are allowed to assassinate their own citizens must stand against this act of tyranny.

Happy Birthday Mises!

Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the great defenders of freedom, one of the great theorists of classical liberalism, Ludwig von Mises. He is one of the clearest, most persuasive free market thinkers who has ever written. I don't know how anyone can read Human Action and not come away with both a much clearer understanding of economics and persuaded of liberalism. His methodology is, to my mind, well ahead of its time. Indeed, that has been part of the problem with Austrian economics, that its way of understanding the economy is so far ahead of the rest of economics that it is not really understood at all by mainstream economics. The good news is that, with the introduction of complexity, self-organization, complex adaptive systems, etc. into mainstream economics, the mainstream is in fact moving more and more toward where the Austrian school is already. Which is a nice gift for such a great man.