Why I am not a minarchist libertarian

I've been reading Charlotte Gore's wonderful weblog, having being directed there by the sublime People's Republic of Mortimer.

Gore describes herself as a "libertarian liberal democrat." This is fair enough, but she is also a minarchist (and especially here):

I used to think - that the alternative to what we had was Afghanistan or some African style government.

I've changed my tune on that. The most important part of any Government is the rule of law - the ability to enforce contracts, maintain a monopoly on force and be subject to the rule of law themselves.

...

I'm not an anarchist. I want a state - I just want one that acts as nothing more than a framework to make free and honest trade possible and otherwise keeps out of people's lives. Upholding the rule of law is more important than anything - consider Iraq with democracy but without rule of law, for example.

I want this because free trade is the key to creating wealth, which improves the quality of our lives, advances technology and makes things cleaner and more efficient.

Free trade, you see, makes everyone richer because when two people trade in their mutual self interest both are made wealthier as a result.

It is this the implicit assertion that the actions of the state (in addition the maintaining the rule of law) cannot add to the wealth¹ of everyone that I intend to refute.

Consider the following two scenarios:

1. A person living in a minarchist, night-watchman state has a business idea. They know that if their business works they could change the world for the better; create hundreds of rewarding jobs; initiate a whole new industry; and make them famous and wealthy and respected for their inventiveness and brilliance.

But they're smart enough to realise that there is a risk their business could fail. They have a good job at the moment. They have a family to support. One of their children has a disease that, although manageable at the moment, could degenerate at any time into a much more serious condition that will require intensive, and expensive, medical care.

The prospective entrepreneur knows if they succeed they will get 95% of all the profits from their venture to keep for themselves, paying a small 5% tax on the gains to the night-watchman state.

2. A person living in a social democracy has a business idea. They know that if their business works they could change the world for the better; create hundreds of rewarding jobs; initiate a whole new industry; and make them famous and wealthy and respected for their inventiveness and brilliance.

But they're smart enough to realise that there is a risk their business could fail. They have a good job at the moment. They have a family to support. One of their children has a disease that, although manageable at the moment, could degenerate at any time into a much more serious condition that will require intensive, and expensive, medical care.

Taxation in this social democracy is high, to provide for the generous welfare payouts, state-funded R&D, high standards of education, and superbly generous national health service. The prospective entrepreneur knows he will have to pay at least 60% of all the profits he makes from his business to the state.

Now which of these two wannabe entrepreneurs d'you think is most likely to follow their dreams and set up their potentially wealth-creating business?

If you made your answer purely on the basis of their cost-benefit calculation then you probably agree with me that it would be the denizen of the social democratic state, but probably not for the same reason as I.

Do you think Steve Jobs is as rich as he is because he wanted to be a billionaire or because he loved making computers? Do you think Thomas Edison founded General Electric because he wanted some guy to take it over after he was dead and build the world's second largest company?

No! These geeks and misfits and entrepreneurs and Johnny Appleseeds did it for the love and adventure and sensawunda and because they couldn't help themselves.

Do you think Felix Dennis created Maxim magazine because he wanted a better skinmag for the sarky masses and also to make shedloads of moolah? Well yes, he probably did. But 60% of $240 million is $144 million more than 100% of nothing and a notebook full of good poetry.

A minarchist libertarian disputant would claim that I clearly know nothing of business: the individual entrepreneur may be doing it because they love it, but they need to get capital from somewhere. This will need to come from investors who want large returns to make up for the risky nature of business.

My answer to this is to be point out that in our hypothetical minarchist state where there is less propensity to start businesses there is less propensity to invest in the same. Why not stick it in a vault or buy land? Land isn't risky. Banks vaults are (no deposit insurance), but they're a damn sight less risky than investing in some nobody's idea for a business.

Further these libertarians might point out the bureaucratic monstrosity that social democracies inevitably end up as. The problem is that bureaucracy is not and has never been endemic to the public sector. Large corporations are as liable to it as anyone else.

At this point my hypothetical libertarian opponent might say that the only reason large companies are bureaucratic is because of state regulation. They might also throw in the point that bureaucratic companies will fail in the marketplace, as the costs of maintaining the bureaucracy lead to a lack of profitability.

To the first I say so be it. If bureaucracy is the price you pay for clean water and functioning aircraft then I'm fine with that. To the second I point out that if a company has to deal with particular regulations then so will all it's competitors.

At this point my assumptive adversary will presumably posit that the state is not accountable. Well, this is certainly true. But governments are (that's why they're called social democracies) and governments are nominally in control of the state. If bureaucracy really starts to irritate the people then they will elect a government that aims to put an end to it.

I'm all in favour of markets. They create wealth and foster innovation. And I'm all in favour of making markets as free as possible. But the notion that the state is always inimical to the creation and maintenance of free markets and innovative industry is nonsense. In many cases the state is necessary to foster industry in ways far beyond simply providing for the rule of law.

Look at South Korea in the last century. Look at industrial development in Britain during the Elizabethan period.

In both cases the state stepped in with tariffs and subsidy to protect industry at home².

Look at what came of ARPANET and the World Wide Web. Look at what came of Global Positioning System and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The idea that the state is somehow "getting in the way" of economic growth is absurd.

The state needs to support economic growth through the provision of extensive civil amenities just as a poorly-educated, under-insured, and uncertain entrepreneur is likely to fail whereas a well-educated, healthy, well-informed entrepreneur is likely to succeed.

1: I get the free market, I do. My argument is not that the free market is a bad idea, just that it is wrong to think that there is more to the creation of human happiness than the creation of wealth and more to the creation of wealth than free markets.

2: I also get globalisation and maximum advantage. I won't go into that now as it would be a long and involved conversation that is orthogonal to my main point: a minarchist state is not a state that enhances economic growth OR human happiness.

In praise of apathetic youth

Commenting on the undoubtedly cringe-inducing¹ video interviewing Future Leaders of the Labour Party (produced by The Guardian) Alix from The People's Republic of Mortimer makes a rather interesting comment:

Actually, I always feel slightly sorry for youngish politicians when journalists ask them - as they invariably will - about political apathy amongst the young, because their responses are so hopelessly inadequate. And no wonder, because they (charmingly uncognisant of this as they may be) are the weirdos who did get interested. You might as well ask a zebra why it thinks more of the horse family don’t have stripes.

As I've commented before I think there are three rather distinct uses of the word "politics" in common usage. Two of these, one concerning political traditions, and the other concerning how things actually work I am fascinated by.

But the tedious, tribalistic, mudslinging nonsense that might well be fun if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing-but-I-don't that is reported on the news on a daily basis is not something I or any other non-nerd would ever be remotely interested in.

The problem is that whenever da yoof are exhorted to "engage in politics" it is this tedious bottom layer we are expected to "engage" with. No discussion of Adam Smith or Plato or Marx. No discussion of the global balance of power or how computer chips are made.

And not even anything useful, like giving everyone under 25 a free bus pass.

Just tedious distracting talking shops like the Youth Parliament².

Y'see I'd say the reason otherwise quite engaged and well-informed young people such as myself (no really) aren't interested in this kind of politics is because it is boring. And also has very little relevance to how many of us live our lives.

Take, for example, the "90 day without charge" Terrorism Act later rehashed as the "42 days without charge" Counter-Terrorism Act. From an ideological standpoint it was an obvious attack on some fairly solid principles of freedom: namely you should not be imprisoned by the state without being told why you've been imprisoned ASAP and then given the opportunity to defend yourself.

But what did it actually accomplish? Sweet Fanny Adams is what. The chances of me dying in a terrorist attack are ridiculously minute in any case, but they haven't grown substantially smaller because the police can now hold suspects for a whole two weeks longer.

And even if that weren't the case what the hell is the point of being a liberal democracy if you let the bastards win by caving in to their terror tactics like this?

I keep an eye on what goes on in parliament. And if I see some way of making the world a better place by taking political action I will certainly do so. But I do not want to engage with this bunch of egotistical navel-gazing pishers³.

Political apathy amongst the young is probably a good thing as it will keep those with genuine talent out of career politics and place them in the real world where they might be able to do something useful.




1: Of course I haven't watched it and I have no intention of doing so. Partly for the reasons described above and partly because Alix does a wonderful job of summarising the Horror.

2: I suspect the Youth Parliament is a clever way of distracting and then proceeding to grind down anyone with even the remotest genuine interest in helping their fellow man. That or ensuring all the trouble-makers are kept in one place for easier observation /paranoia.

3: I can get enough of that online and in a more entertaining package.

Education in the UK

This started out as a commentary on an article by Johann Hari, but then spread into a more general ideological point (not that I'd ever pursue an ideological principle in the Real World directly, I'd only do so after a decision based on [very] basic ethics and available evidence).

After reading Johann Hari's excellent comment on equality, education and the estate tax I am inspired to add my own comment on education.

Freedom

I'm a liberal. I believe that individual freedom is both good and necessary.

Equality of Opportunity

People are not born equal. Because some people are naturally better than others at different things some people become more powerful than others. These people can exert power over their fellows, thus limiting their freedom.

Because of this it is impossible to create a truly "equal" society. However "equality" is not the same as "freedom."

What can be done is to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. So if they wish, and they are capable of doing so, they can increase their power, income, intellect, ability, comfort, compassion, number of friends, or whatever their personal measure of success is.

I don't mind inequality in society as long as everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Education

A good step towards establishing equality of opportunity is to ensure that everyone receives the same standard of education. In the UK today we have a three-tier school system:

1. The best schools are "private schools." These are schools where fees have to be paid for education.
   
2. The next level of schools are a mix of "grammar schools," which select on the basis of academic ability, "faith schools," which select on the basis of religion, and "good comprehensives," which select on the basis of where you live.
3. The lowest level of schools are called "bad comprehensives" or "sink schools." These are schools that are not very good. Because they aren't very good only the poorest people go there.

Because poor people have to send their children to bad schools poor children are more likely to receive a bad education, and are less likely to succeed in later life and therefore more likely to be poor when they are older.

Because rich people are more likely to send their children to private schools, the children of the rich are more likely to receive a good education than the children of the poor.

This runs counter to the principle of equality of opportunity. The freedoms of the poor are inhibited by their poverty.

Private Schools Should be Run as Private Businesses

In the UK private schools benefit from "charitable status." This means they don't have to pay as much tax as most private businesses.

I have no problem with private schools, but they must be run as private businesses, rather than as institutions subsidised by that state for the benefit of the rich.

Comprehensive Schools

In order to ensure equality of opportunity and the freedom of individual children then a truly comprehensive school system must be created. Such a system will be one where all children go to their local state-funded school.

There will still be problems whereby the lower quality-of-life of some poorer areas will have a negative impact on the quality of education in that area. But the problem will then become a (relatively) straightforward task of improving certain specific schools.

In this case the children in schools in poor areas will have access to the opportunities needed to leave poor areas if they wish to.

Collectivism vs. Individualism

I am not a collectivist, I believe in individual freedom, and that society, or the state, interfering in the lives of individuals is a bad thing. A representative government is the way our society has decided to pay for all the things that can't easily be provided by private companies or private individuals. But the state should not become too powerful.

It is important to realise that the state is not the only potential source of tyranny and enslavement. Monopolistic businesses, powerful individuals, ignorance, and poverty are also things that inhibit the freedom of the individual.

The Question of Private Schools

I believe that if someone believes that they can run a good business educating children for profit then they have every right to do so.

But what happens if the rich send their children to private schools? The children of rich people will then have an advantage relative to others, which contravenes the principle of equality of opportunity!

In this scenario the children of the rich will have a head-start by virtue of better education, and are therefore more likely to succeed!

The Imperfection of Life

Life isn't fair. However I believe that the objective of the state schools should be to improve, not remove competition from private schools.

In any case, without the unfair advantage of tax-exempt status enjoyed by private schools the number of private schools would fall. Also the cost of private school would increase.

By improving bad comprehensives, removing all the remaining grammar schools, and sending people to schools based on where they live or by a lottery there will be an incentive for all parents and politicians to lobby for all schools to be equally good.

It may seem like a limitation on the freedom of the parents to choose the best school for their children, but rather it is an enhancement of the freedom of poor people to succeed if they can or if they wish to.

In this case a clever child will still be more likely to succeed and exert power over those who are less driven or clever or ambitious or aggressive, but at least that child will have got to that position by her own ability.

The Rich

As I said before, it is likely that there will still be some inequality in the school system by virtue of private schools and home schooling and private tutors.

However the unfair or unequal advantages of the extremely rich can be compensated for to some degree by a 100% estate tax.

This would ensure that the children of the rich have the freedom to be their own person. They would not held as slaves to the tyranny of their parent's financial success.

They will still have significant advantages in terms of superior education, but they will then be free to make their own way in the world, unencumbered by inherited wealth.

Transhumanism

The ultimate expression of tyranny is that of our enslavement to our own biology. The enslavement of genetic predisposition.

I believe that once the relevant technologies are available then this problem should be addressed. Unfortunately the technologies of human enhancement are currently at a fairly limited stage.

To me there is no distinction between asking the following two questions:

• Why should someone have greater advantages at the start of their lives by virtue of their parent's money?
• Why should someone have greater advantages at the start of their lives by virtue of their genetic predisposition to intelligence?
  

I see transhumanism as the ultimate expression of the Enlightenment Project, extending individual liberty and self-determination to the logical end of controlling all aspects of your personal biology, gender, proclivities, beliefs, skin-colour, physical abilities and body-forms.

Freedom

I believe in freedom. I believe that in order to preserve the delicate balance required for individual freedom to flourish there are certain corrections that need to be addressed in society.

Education is clearly the area to start, and the closest thing to transhumanism we already have.

Morals and Markets with Robert Skidelsky

Economics boffin Robert Skidelsky has written an interesting article over at CiF about the morality of capitalism, this is my paragraph-by-paragraph response:

"...Because no social system can survive for long without a moral basis..."

This isn't really correct. Slavery persisted for centuries in the ancient world as the economic prime mover and yet was and is morally suspect.

"...It has often been claimed that capitalism rewards the qualities of self-restraint, hard work, inventiveness, thrift, and prudence. On the other hand, it crowds out virtues that have no economic utility, like heroism, honour, generosity, and pity..."

I think this depends on other cultural factors. Capitalism may encourage or discourage certain characteristics, but it doesn't mean these don't exist.

Also it isn't entirely true that honour and generosity are "crowded out" - good businessmen and businesswomen know the value of honour and generosity.

"...For quality of life, we have to rely on morals, not markets..."

This is very true.

"...But it is truer to say that the market economy is sustained by the stimulation of greed and envy through advertising..."

I wonder if it is useful to distinguish between capitalism and consumerism, and if it is useful to distinguish between "good" (buying organic, locally produced, low-CO2-profile vegetables) consumerism and "bad" (cigarettes) consumerism?

"...In a perfectly competitive market, with full information, models of the market show that all the factors of production receive rewards equal to their marginal products, ie all are paid what they are worth..."

As in the market, so in life. If everyone had "full information" we'd all be much happier. But because having "full information" is unfeasible it isn't useful to use this as a stick to beat capitalism with.

"...But no actually existing capitalist market system spontaneously generates justice in exchange..."

This is why liberal democracies have (democratically elected) representatives who control the state and who provide justice.

"...That is why the liberal theory of justice demands at a minimum equality of opportunity: the attempt - as far as is compatible with personal liberty - to eliminate all those differences in life chances arising from unequal starting points..."

Sorry, I should read down further before I comment. I agree completely.

"...Finally, the claim that everyone is - under ideal conditions - paid what they are worth is an economic, not a moral, valuation..."

Yes, I agree with this.

"...The simplest way of doing this is to restrict advertising. This would prune the role of greed and envy in the operation of markets, and create room for the flourishing of other motives..."

Governments do restrict advertising. "Re-moralising" wants is an interesting idea. But I don't see how "restricting" advertising accomplishes that.

Promoting morality is a difficult thing to do without being morally puritan and judgmental of other people's pleasures.

I would say that a good step would be to replace "RE" lessons in UK schools with "morality and ethics" lessons where students were taught about different moral and ethical structures and asked to consider moral and ethical problems.

Privacy

I tend not to get excited about issues of freedom and privacy, partly because I prefer not to rock the boat and partly because I feel privacy as baby-boomers understand it will soon be rendered impossible by surveillance technology.

However state-sponsored coercion? If the state wants to coerce me by targeting "young people who may be applying for their first Driving Licence" then the least they could do is stop documents like this leaking out.


Attempts to be paternalistic and authoritarian are not welcome, but incompetence is just embarrassing.

Later:

I'm now about on page 2 of 7 of the "NIS Options Analysis Document" and came across this:

This is fairly creepy. Also -- my tax money is spent producing this soulless, poorly written, overly long, wasteful document?

The audacity!

[of course as an unemployed dropout I don't pay taxes, but that is completely irrelevant]

There are two basic objections to the whole principle of any kind of compulsory national identity register - the pragmatic and the principle.

1. Pragmatic: The system will leak. Biometric technologies are only as secure as the media on which they are stored. Biometric data like iris scans and fingerprints and DNA profiles are all reduced to ones and zeroes on the databases and CDs on which they're stored.

As recent news reports have shown these CDs can be lost in the post, stolen, or otherwise mislaid.

So the argument that biometrics is a fundamentally more secure way of securing data is a canard.

A quick search shows plenty of examples of how RFID-based biometric passports have been subverted in various ways and how fingerprint scanners can be duped.

So the result of all this will be that millions of pounds of taxpayer's money will be wasted, law-abiding citizens will still be the victim of identity theft and criminals and terrorists will continue with business as usual.

2. The presumption that the state will control the identity of citizens is wrong. The state is the servant of the people.

The state is a transient and convenient way of ordering our affairs and has no place demanding anything that doesn't make us safer or that doesn't prevent harm to the people.

Later:

What a godawfully boring document. I prefer megalomaniacal police-state power-trips to have some style. Maybe an evil logo as a letterhead or clinical euphemisms like "liquidate" would have been more appropriate.

Still, I think it would be a good idea to sign the NO2ID pledge.

A Bit of Fry and Hari

Today my topic is one of problems. Problems are often defined as particular questions or sets of options. In the case of immigration the problem is usually phrased:

"How can we reduce or control immigration so that it becomes a positive force within our society rather than a negative force?"

And, as always, the way the problem is phrased begs the question: "Is immigration a negative force right now?"

Blurgh.

I don't really care about immigration. It's a Daily Mail issue and has been parsed entirely in terms of being something negative, despite the obvious fact that with an aging population it is entirely necessary that we import cheap, youthful labour to care for our elderly.

Many of the great debates in life, the universe and everything devolve to questions that are misapplied. When I say I don't care about debating about God or poetry or global warming or the the ethics of scientific research (empiricism and the scientific method in the real sense of the concept is/should be gloriously free of these considerations, that it clearly isn't is regrettable) I don't mean I don't care. I mean I don't care about the issue as it is usually expressed because I feel it has been misrepresented.

Take transhumanism and the closely related issue of AI. Putting aside the vast technical and scientific barriers to both, the debate is often put in terms of "should we pursue this line of research?" This is a ridiculously stupid question to ask. The appropriate response is:

We are already pursuing this research in a form you don't yet recognise as transhumanist research and AI research.

Even more succinctly, and with regard to transhumanism you could say:

We are already transhumans and could well be considered posthumans.

Consider: prior to the industrial revolution humans were essentially bright apes and they (or other organisms) provided the majority of the energy required to run civilization. We are approaching a period in human development where manual labour might well become obsolete. The key lies in the control mechanisms.

It is still massively cheaper to employ Chinese humans to make most things than to develop and manufacture a robot capable of doing the same job.

Similarly with construction: the problem here requires a robot capable of navigating a building site, following vague instructions, applying "common sense" to problems, drinking tea and reading The Sun: all of which are as yet beyond the capabilities of even the most complex (or simple-minded, in the latter case) non-biological machines.

The point is that I wear glasses and wear clothes and take drugs and read books and use a pocket calculator and function much better, and am much happier, than I would be if I did not do these things.

Scientists of many different disciplines have made it their business to model parts of the human brain and the neural structures of other animals and have been doing so for decades.

Meanwhile genetic engineering continues apace. If you're smart enough to identify the red lines that mark any particular area of research as being dangerous then you're probably smart enough to cope with the outcomes. If you can't identify the red lines then we're probably fucked anyway.

Fukyama's argument boils down to the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is flawed for all the reasons discussed by Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near, so I won't bother going into it.

Johann Hari's recent article touches on a subject dear to my heart: transhumanism. As a devoted absorber of the teachings of More, Kurzweil, et al, I am always happy to see reference to this interesting ideology in the national press.

(...as an aside, and due to the purchase of T-shirts and prints by myself and many others the sublime Dresden Codak is to be published weekly!)

Apart from a reference in New Scientist a few years ago and a few "eccentric American" stories in The Guardian and other newspapers this is the first serious reference to transhumanism I've seen in the Dead Tree Press. Doubtless more will emerge over time and it will begin to gain credence (or at least name-recognition, which is all you seem to need these days c.f. Boris Johnson) amongst the general populace.

Hari also makes an excellent point regarding the criticism of transhumanism by Francis Fukyama. The debate has been warped to fit the extremes. Either we ban all research that might lead to the creation of a separate posthuman species or we actively pursue such research to the end of creating such a species.

As Hari points out, bickering over creating new species of human is pointless and stupid. Evolution only seems static to us because it works on such a long timescale (but not unthinkably long - only about 40 000 years separate us from prehuman hominids).

I think, like Hari, it is much more sensible to concentrate on the possibilities to create smarter, faster, stronger, healthier, more long-lived people.

The Gattaca issue, that maybe one day humanity might be divided between haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor, between the upgraded and the legacy, between the Eloi and the Morlocks is also silly.

Human beings have always suffered inequality of health and ability due to inequality of wealth. The key to liberal democracy lies in all individuals being equal under the law (the problem of defining individals, particularly with regard to posthumans, is an issue for another day).

The issue for transhumanism is how to provide people with better lives and greater powers of self-expression and more opportunity for happiness. The issue is not the creation of a new species, although this might be a means to the end of creating more opportunity for happiness.

As always the problem is not as it is phrased, it is something altogether different. In the case of Stephen Fry's recent blog posting (which The Guardian has taken on as a series of articles) the issue as it is often phrased is "do you prefer looks/form to functionality?" in the context of consumer electronics.

Of course, as Fry points out, when it comes to a device you use every day form is very much tied up with functionality. For me beauty in consumer electronics stems from design, and design is also a key component of usability and hence functionality.

If a house is a "machine for living in" then that house should look aesthetically pleasing or it is not fulfilling it's function.

Anyone who claims that those who reject the existence of God are "close minded" is treading on thin ice. The debate should be not be: "does God exist?" The debate should be: "how did the universe begin?"

There are, I assert, ways of finding out if God exists. If God exists then presumably those who pray to God for help will achieve statistically higher in their endeavours than those who don't pray.

If there was a correlation between frequency of prayer ("faith" is difficult to measure) and say, salary, then you could begin to build a hypothesis for the existence of something that could be called God.

I'd be interested to see if any such research has been done and what the result was. I suspect as I am not aware of any such research then the results (if any) did not suggest God exists, as I'm certain the various Churches would be trumpeting it to the heavens.

Of course prayer is there as a comforter. I, as a secular humanist, choose to reject it as a piece of mental transhumanism that is not self-contained enough to be safe.

Faith in God or manifest destiny is too powerful and dangerous. Singularitarianism and transhumanism is as open to corruption as any ideology but, like liberalism, the fundamental precepts of the transhumanist meme are overwhelmingly positive.

Any corruption of liberalism would cease to be usefully described as such. So with transhumanism. Then it devolves to word games and Orwellian propaganda.

I feel it is much better to form a core of easily expressible beliefs and live by them. In the case of humanism this is all there is and I am alone.

This sucks. I'd like to do something to make this last longer and something to make me less lonely.

So transhumanism is the next logical step after humanism.