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Continued from here.
P011 Putting Parameters on Our Utopias from 01/09/2013
I question Buchanan's neat dichotomy, according to which
- economics is about human relations structured by voluntary exchange,
and
- politics is about human relations organised by dint of coercive arrangements.
What Buchanan misses is the all-important interpenetration of both fields. Implying the distinctiveness of economics and politics is the cardinal sin of classical liberalism in its dogmatic variant, which seeks to persuade us that the laissez faire of the spontaneous order of a free society is good, effective and morally commendable, in contradistinction to the use of human creativity in shaping the social realm.
Buchanan, like Hayek, builds his thinking on this false dichotomy.
This supports the wrong impression that the economy proper is a fine place devoid of coercion, while politics invades the peace by subjecting us to coercion. Giving the matter this slant is prone to make us look in the wrong direction, seeking more free exchange and less politics, when, of course, free exchange is the result of coercive structures such as property rights arrived at by political means.
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P012 How Much Destructiveness Can Man Afford? from 01/29/2013
I believe there is a link between my anthropological theory of man as
- the only animal that survives by creating and trying to satisfy self-discovered desires
and
- a long-term net resource creator,
on the one hand, and
- some of the basic features that man displays in his capacity as a political animal.
As an advancer of knowledge, later as a scientist, and as a producer of the means of his subsistence and convenience, from time immemorial, man has been constantly widening the resource base of his species. In fact, incessant betterment of our resource base is the distinguishing characteristic of mankind. Political behaviour may be interpreted as a way of partaking in this human tendency to broaden and improve the range of options from which man is able to choose means to make life richer with opportunities and conveniences.
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P013 Concerning Legitimacy from 01/20/2013
Proponents of radical liberalism claim that there is no difference between a criminal organisation and the state. Well, what is the difference?
I am amazed how little understood freedom is by those espousing a world view with liberty purportedly at its centre.
If we take the Mafia - as depicted in countless movies - for our standard of what a criminal organisation is like, it seems to be the opposite of the (modern, liberal-democratic) state in the following respects: purpose, membership and leadership of the state are publicly determined and subject to permanent monitoring, with requirements of accountability and other vital standards of legitimation being open to ongoing amendments and revision at the behest of the public - that is: participation in the determination and alteration of the governance rules of the state is not restricted to a closed circle but open to every citizen. Participation in monitoring and determining the rules of governing the state is voluntary, and everyone is free to withdraw from it at their own discretion at any time. In short: the state is an open-access organisation, whereas access to the Mafia is strictly limited to a minuscule and select minority, while the vast bulk of the population is shut out from it. In fact, excluding the vast majority of the people from the Mafia organisation is essential to its business model. Not to be subject to the monitoring of the general populace is the most essential precondition for the Mafia's core business proposition: subjecting people outside of its own circle to predation. Success, both reputational and in material terms, is defined in the Mafia by treating outsiders in ways (robbing, killing them etc.) that represent precisely the transgressions from which the state protects people by recognising them as being "free and equal."
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Continued here.
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