03/18/07
Anarcho-Capitalism and Statist Lock-In -
Categories: Libertarian Theory, Anarchism -
twv
@ 06:37:32 pm
Economist Bryan Caplan conjectures on why monopoly governments have dominated the political landscape, considering that competing governments would be more economical. Economies of scale, he says, likely favored monopoly provision of justice services (government) in the early days, and lock-in set in, leaving us (by path dependence) stuck with monopoly government.
This is interesting, but seems too narrowly catallactic to me. Molinari's explanation (dimly remembered) strike me as better. But since my memory is so poor on Molinari's work, I'll just offer a few points that I'll ponder for a few weeks:
The origin of the state is not in goods offered on a market; pretending this is how states originate seems silly. States originate, usually, through conquest. Sometimes by the accession of several groups claiming hegemony over others. None of this looks like a market for services.
What it looks like is a demand for benefits gained from plunder and compulsion. So, a look at the demand for government services must also incorporate a demand for crime. Early governments take hold, sometimes, simply because everyone tries to get the upper hand.
Justiceas in protection and the like, is merely an excuse, at best a sometimes-produced by-product of government-as-it-usually -is, which is: Injustice.The deep desire of people to hurt others, to not trust them with their lives, but to rule them, is one of the most dominant elements in the human psyche. Government grows from it. The idea of justice only evolves out of many conflicts, and then begins to constrain the acts of government.
There are many hierarchies of human talent. The ability to engage in combat, to kill, runs from the strongest man down to the weakest babe and oldest, frailest woman. The origin of government is in the
naturalascendancy of the strong man. The cleverest strong man takes over, and rules generation after generation. Then it is the clever of mind who gains ascendancy over the strong of bone and muscle. And all this is done within a monopoly system, as it has been from time immemorial. It's not people contracting for services of these men. Or, not usually. Why? I think Molinari suggested that it was simply the natural dominance of the strong man. He was strongest, his friends were stronger, his enemies they left dead, and they greedily and naturally took as many spoils as possible.This tradition of monopoly government was born of the greed of the early strong men, and kept in play by the greed of the clever.
Breaking that cycle will be difficult. If possible at all.
People are still creatures of hierarchy. And the greed and fear of large populations, each trying to gain some foothold in a world of conflict . . . none of this easily comports with the idea of explicit contracts made with
government serviceslike police and courts.
I'm not saying our ideas of politics shouldn't be rationalized by explicit contracts rather than ceaselessly futzed with (dishonestly) in the political arena. But I am saying that most people are much more primitive in their politics than what libertarian anarchism suggests. They want power, position, plunder. Libertarians do not offer them these things. So . . .
The world is much nastier than is painted by anarchocapitalists.
Isn't it?
Caplan might come up with an even more perceptive explanation for the dominance of monopoly governance were he to add the criminal dimension, and see the idea of justice and contract in an evolutionary context rather than game-theoretic and state-of-nature perspective.
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