Politics (3) -- (3) Rights Based on Affirmative Political Action & Politics More Fundamenal and More Powerful Than Markets & Anti-Politics Is Political -- Literature Review of My Work on Politics and Freedom

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Continued from here.

I.

The below posts is of particular interest to me, because the late Armen Alchian managed to wake me up from my dogmatic slumber with this short and simple phrase:

"After all, property rights are what the rest of society will enforce for me."

In other words, property rights (and other rights) do not drop from heaven, nor does it suffice to feel they are morally indubitable and practically necessary for the good society to come into existence. This is all idle talk and wishful thinking unless "the rest of society will enforce" the desired rights. That is to say: we need to engage in civic action so as to make sure our rights are recognised, put into practice, and appropriately upheld and defended. The kind of action required to achieve this end is in large measure what we call politics.

No affirmative action on behalf of rights - no rights. Affirmative action means political action. No political action - no rights. No rights - no freedom. No politics - no freedom.

I suppose this was the moment when I began to recognise that politics deserves our respect as a cornerstone of liberty.

II.

I know of no way to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking, but I do know ways to reduce the rewards to market-oriented capitalist competition.

I seem to remember the above quote appeared to me of great significance, because I concluded from it that politics is more powerful than are markets. So, if we are to ensure and safeguard freedom, we must do it by political means. Again, politics proves to be absolutely vital to the establishment and maintenance of liberty.

Admittedly, I believe, Alchian would have put a different spin on the matter - a more pessimistic one. Lust for power trumps the honest efforts of those engaged in free market activities. Once you are sold on such a view, the brevity of our life spans and the hurt from not getting one's way encourages pessimistic extrapolation - i.e. a feeling that everything is going down the drain.

That, however, is refuted by human history. And, I suspect, it will continue to get refuted, not least because dystopian conclusions are easily drawn from the political battles going on around us, especially, when we feel to be on the receiving end. The error however lies in the propensity of the unsatisfied partisan to overlook that we are all permanently engaged in political efforts to get our interests recognised. What is wrong is the assumption that the difference is between a world with and a world without politics. There is no world void of politics.

Of course, when one subscribes to Alchian's pessimism, it is almost obligatory to forget the multifarious arrangements in a democratic culture that make sure what Alchian is saying is wrong:

I know of no way to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking, but I do know ways to reduce the rewards to market-oriented capitalist competition.

Clearly, there are ways "to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking." Alchian only needs to read the American constitution, or he may want to return to the history of the common law that he so enthusiastically refers to in the below video.

 ★

P-005 Property Rights from 11/02/12

"The state" has never been decreed into existence, and it will never be decreed out of existence; relations and relationships of power, fiat, coercion imposed and agreed are the substratum in which liberty and markets are enmeshed. Out of this substratum we must form markets and liberty, if they are to be.

I know of no way to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking, but I do know ways to reduce the rewards to market-oriented capitalist competition. Political power is dominant in being able to set the rules of the game to reduce the rewards to capitalist-type successful competitors. It is rule maker, umpire, and player: by taxes, regulations, controls, national planing and directives, lawsuits, etc. But I have been unable to discern equivalently powerful ways for economic power to reduce the rewards to competitors for political power! Each capitalist may buy off a politician, but that only enhances the rewards to political power.

The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian, Volume 2, p. 604

The part of the below Alchian-interview that I find especially interesting begins at time mark 05:00.

Toward the very end of the video, Alchian offers a momentous proposition;

"After all, the property rights are what the rest of society will enforce for me. If the rest of society say they're not going to enforce rights any more. Okay, if that'll happen, they're gone."

★

Continued here.