time-evolving states of nature
I've been meaning to blog about this sort of thing ever since I read Hayek's Constitution of Liberty, but a recent post by Jim Manzi on a paradox of libertarianism inspired me to sit down and write it. That and a new resolve to not be such a lazy blogger.
Manzi talks about dividing libertarians up into 'liberty-as-goal' and 'liberty-as-means', where the former view liberty (however they define it) as the be all, end all while the latter view liberty as a tool for discovering those forms that enable a society to prosper.
"Liberty-as-means libertarianism sees the world in an evolutionary framework: societies evolve rules, norms, laws and so forth in order to adapt and survive in a complex and changing external environment. At a high level of abstraction, internal freedoms are necessary so that the society can learn (which requires trial-and-error learning because the external reality is believed to be too complex to be fully comprehended by any existing theory) and adapt (which is important because the external reality is changing). We need liberty, therefore, because we are so ignorant of what works in practical, material terms."
This is the real difference between how I think about political philosophy now compared with how I thought about it in my anarchocapitalist college years. I used to spend far too much time thinking about how a just social organization could arise out of a 'state of nature' where people had some kind of 'natural rights'. This line of thinking was very satisfying in the way I could construct a pleasingly consistent theoretical world. (I remember taking a 'philosophical consistency' quiz online and scoring perfect; no contradictions, but the quiz did warn me I was biting a few bullets.)
But this was so much idle masturbation, because there is no state of nature. We're plains apes with an evolved set of cognitive biases and inherited moral sentiments and behaviors who never in a million years thought of 'rights'. Not until after we'd progressed from hunter/gatherer bands to clans to tribes to budding statelets did we think of rights, natural, unalienable, or otherwise. By the time anyone, anywhere in this progression started thinking about rights or just ways of organizing society or the legitimacy of authority, she'd already inherited (in addition to biology) a culture with norms and institutions and a generally accepted legal/authority apparatus. My old favorite, earnest question of how any authority attains legitimacy is just squashed by the brute fact of This is how things are done. If there is such a thing as a state of nature, it currently includes such modern niceties as the welfare state, representative democracy, legally protected civil liberties, and global capitalism.
This allows me to adopt a Zen-like acceptance of an evolving state of nature and to avoid a lot of conundrums that clever, bullet-biting libertarians often find themselves in. Suppose charity won't take care of blind, paraplegic Grandma, and she has no health insurance or retirement savings. Will you let her die in the gutter because 'taxation is theft'? Different kinds of libertarians will approach this ethical dilemma in different ways, but I say Ha! There's no use in answering that hypothetical, because a tax-sustained welfare state is just the way things are and it's 1) probably for the best and 2) not ever going to change (and that's okay).
Incidentally, I think a liberty-as-means attitude is how a mainstream libertarianism could work, and how libertarian elements have worked (when they have worked). Accept shifts in political equilibria, and tweak the excesses and blind spots of the liberals. I say liberals because I don't usually think of conservatives as pushing cultural evolution 'forward'. While working on this post I stumbled upon this essay for Cato Unbound by Tyler Cowen, who says pretty much what I mean to say.
Sorry if this post is incoherent. I wrote it over a few days and it went off in several different aborted directions before I decided I finally needed to post the damn thing.
Manzi talks about dividing libertarians up into 'liberty-as-goal' and 'liberty-as-means', where the former view liberty (however they define it) as the be all, end all while the latter view liberty as a tool for discovering those forms that enable a society to prosper.
"Liberty-as-means libertarianism sees the world in an evolutionary framework: societies evolve rules, norms, laws and so forth in order to adapt and survive in a complex and changing external environment. At a high level of abstraction, internal freedoms are necessary so that the society can learn (which requires trial-and-error learning because the external reality is believed to be too complex to be fully comprehended by any existing theory) and adapt (which is important because the external reality is changing). We need liberty, therefore, because we are so ignorant of what works in practical, material terms."
This is the real difference between how I think about political philosophy now compared with how I thought about it in my anarchocapitalist college years. I used to spend far too much time thinking about how a just social organization could arise out of a 'state of nature' where people had some kind of 'natural rights'. This line of thinking was very satisfying in the way I could construct a pleasingly consistent theoretical world. (I remember taking a 'philosophical consistency' quiz online and scoring perfect; no contradictions, but the quiz did warn me I was biting a few bullets.)
But this was so much idle masturbation, because there is no state of nature. We're plains apes with an evolved set of cognitive biases and inherited moral sentiments and behaviors who never in a million years thought of 'rights'. Not until after we'd progressed from hunter/gatherer bands to clans to tribes to budding statelets did we think of rights, natural, unalienable, or otherwise. By the time anyone, anywhere in this progression started thinking about rights or just ways of organizing society or the legitimacy of authority, she'd already inherited (in addition to biology) a culture with norms and institutions and a generally accepted legal/authority apparatus. My old favorite, earnest question of how any authority attains legitimacy is just squashed by the brute fact of This is how things are done. If there is such a thing as a state of nature, it currently includes such modern niceties as the welfare state, representative democracy, legally protected civil liberties, and global capitalism.
This allows me to adopt a Zen-like acceptance of an evolving state of nature and to avoid a lot of conundrums that clever, bullet-biting libertarians often find themselves in. Suppose charity won't take care of blind, paraplegic Grandma, and she has no health insurance or retirement savings. Will you let her die in the gutter because 'taxation is theft'? Different kinds of libertarians will approach this ethical dilemma in different ways, but I say Ha! There's no use in answering that hypothetical, because a tax-sustained welfare state is just the way things are and it's 1) probably for the best and 2) not ever going to change (and that's okay).
Incidentally, I think a liberty-as-means attitude is how a mainstream libertarianism could work, and how libertarian elements have worked (when they have worked). Accept shifts in political equilibria, and tweak the excesses and blind spots of the liberals. I say liberals because I don't usually think of conservatives as pushing cultural evolution 'forward'. While working on this post I stumbled upon this essay for Cato Unbound by Tyler Cowen, who says pretty much what I mean to say.
Sorry if this post is incoherent. I wrote it over a few days and it went off in several different aborted directions before I decided I finally needed to post the damn thing.