by daniel klein george mason university [email protected] 1 band-man: red on the inside
TRANSCRIPT
Degovernmentalize now!2
That’s Bryan’s central message.How does that happen?
Government has at least one important and necessary function:
Dismantling other governmental functions!
Democracy the least bad system …But why don’t voters call for
degovernmentalization?
The Hayekian Narrative3
1. The EEA => Upper Paleolithic2. 10,000 years ago: Agriculture, settled society, 3. Rise of liberalism: 1400-1900.
Liberal heyday 1759-1863.
4. Social Democratic Cultural Reaction:1848-1970. Atavism: Reassertion of stage 1.
Liberalism shattered
5. Cultural struggle ...
Hayek texts4
Collectivism as atavistic:
“The Atavism of Social Justice,” New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, 1978.
Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, 1976, esp “The Discipline of Abstract Rules and the Emotions of Tribal Society.”
“The Three Sources of Human Values,” Epilogue to Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol 3: The Political Order of a Free People, 1979.
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, 1988, esp “Between Instinct and Reason”
Essay on David Hume, in Studies volume, 1967.
5
The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation
6
Our genes haven’t changed much in 10,000 yrs
Small groups, 20-100 people An organizationSome hierarchy in allocation (“alpha male”)But otherwise quite equal, consensus-
oriented, democratic: A gang “Anybody can kill anybody.”
No growth, no trade with others
Selected mentality (following Rubin)7
No appreciation of tradeNo conception of innovation or growthResource access is zero-sumEnvy and suspicion of consuming more than
one’s shareNo comprehension of consequences on
modern scale
Epistemic instincts of the small band8
I know everyoneEveryone knows meNo privacyOur alphas govern allCommon experienceEveryone knows THE WAY THINGS ARE.
Common knowledge.
Ethos of the small band9
TogethernessBelongingEncompassing sentiment, encompassing
cooperationSocial organismSolidarityDemocraticValidation in the group
Fit in or be visited by smack-down.
Group survival depends on expelling the misfits.
Intentionality makes an effect seen10
In the simple familiar society, social outcomes are intended or tolerated by the leader. Social outcomes are amenable to principles of justice.
In organizations, actors usually achieve their intended goals. The intended is the seen.
Encompassment is focal
The coordination of sentiment would have encompassed all of those of any moral standing.
Evolution may have selected for the yearning not merely for sympathy, for coordinated sentiment, but that it encompass all of “the people.”
“We” was simple and unambiguous. People still carry a vestigial penchant for
encompassment?
11
Hayek
“The events to which the group could adapt itself, and the opportunities it could take advantage of, were only those of which its members were directly aware. Even worse the individual could do little of which others did not approve.” (1978, 59)
12
Hayek:
“[M]an’s instincts … were adapted to life in the small roving bands or troops … These genetically inherited instincts served to steer the cooperation of the members of the troop, a cooperation that was, necessarily, a narrowly circumscribed interaction of fellows known to and trusted by one another. … These modes of coordination depended decisively on instincts of solidarity and altruism—instincts applying to members of one’s own group but not to others.” (1988, 11-12)
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Modern statism as atavism
“[T]he whole of socialism is a result of that revival of primordial instincts.” (1979, 169)
“Their demand for a just distribution in which organized power is to be used to allocate to each what he deserves, is thus strictly an atavism, based on primordial emotions.” (1979, 165)
14
Hayek:
“[T]he demand to restrict one’s action to the deliberate pursuit of known and observable beneficial ends … is in part a remnant of the instinctual, and cautious, micro-ethic of the small band, wherein jointly perceived purposes were directed to the visible needs of personally known comrades (i.e., solidarity and altruism).” (1988, 80)
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Voluntary versus Political Romance16
Sentiment coordination
Club romance
The People’s
Romance
Among a group
Encompassing the people
Does TPR help explain history?
The cycle of
government-defined-groupand
group-finds-focal-points-in-government
May help to explain ascension of collectivist notions around 1890. Sanctification of the democratic creed of popular sovereignty, and the genre and technology of The-World-is-Watching photographic journalism.
Democracy and nationalism.
17
Rise of liberalism18
Liberty: a logic of property and consentNegative: Like grammar, not like the rules for
beautiful writingLike a great “operating system”
Highlights of liberalism19
John LockeScot. Enlight: Hutcheson, Hume, Smith etc.The American founding, Paine, Mason,
JeffersonAmerican AbolitionistsEuropean 19th cent. liberals (many!)Social reform thru 19th century
Liberalism and democracy
“It is today fairly generally recognized that the programme of nineteenth-century liberalism contained two distinct and in some ways even antagonistic elements, liberalism proper and the democratic tradition. … The uneasy partnership which the two ideals kept during the nineteenth century should not lead us to overlook their different character and origin.” (Essay on Hume, Studies, 120).
Old Regime, Liberalism, and Social Democracy
21
The Social Democratic Cultural Reaction: The soft version of the
reversion22
Band-man loves society-as-organization, but he does not like hierarchy or dominance.
How do they square the circle?
Democracy: de Tocqueville23
“Our contemporaries are ever a prey to two conflicting passions: they feel the need of guidance, and they long to stay free. Unable to wipe out these two contradictory instincts, they try to satisfy them both together. Their imagination conceives a government which is unitary, protective, and all-powerful, but elected by the people. Centralization is combined with the sovereignty of the people. That gives them a chance to relax. They console themselves for being under schoolmasters by thinking that they have chosen them themselves.”. Thus, citizens “are turned alternatively into the playthings of the sovereign and into his masters, being greater than kings and less than men” (694).
Revolts against liberalism24
RousseauMarxRomantic, nationalistic, conservative,
socialist, and communist writersSocial democrats, progressives
The Mind of Band-man sees…
Society as… Intentional order Or organization
Ownership of the polity’s resources as… Public or collective
Society as proceeding on the basis of… Common knowledge
Society as… Spontaneous order
Ownership of the polity’s resources as… Private individuated
Society as proceeding on the basis of… Disjointed knowledge
RATHER THAN…
The Mind of Band-man…
Yearns for… The people’s romance
Sees fairness in society as a matter of… Social justice
Yearns for…. Club romance
Sees fairness in society as a matter of… Procedural or
commutative justice
RATHER THAN…
Evolved instincts no longer applicable27
We have an evolved instinct for sweets.That instinct no longer applies.We learn to subdue it.We have Weight Watchers.
We have evolved instincts for band ethos and mentality.
Those instincts no longer applies.Do we learn to subdue them?(We need State Watchers.)
Hayek
“It was the Rousseauesque idea of democracy, his still thoroughly rationalist conceptions of the social contract and of popular sovereignty, which were to submerge the ideals of liberty … It was Rousseau and not Hume who fired the enthusiasm of the successive revolutions which created modern government on the Continent and guided the decline of the ideals of the older liberalism and the approach to totalitarian democracy in the whole world.” (Essay on Hume, Studies, 120.)
Hayek:29
“The traditional conception that the process of legislation was especially hedged about with all kinds of limitations was conceived to be a limitation only on the arbitrary powers of the sovereign. These controls and limitations seemed unnecessary once these powers had all been placed in the hands of the duly elected democratic assembly. And all the wisdom assembled over many centuries about the necessity of placing restrictions on the power’s ultimate legislator was completely forgotten. Once this had been achieved, power had been put in the hands of the people and therefore it can no longer be abused. We are now certain that the self-interest of the people will not allow them to pass any laws which restrict their liberty.” (Side A, FEE tape)
Language subversion30
Schumpeter : “As a supreme if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its name.” (1954, 394)
Hayek speaks of “that pseudo-liberalism which in the course of the last generation has arrogated the name.” He describes their thinking as “profoundly antiliberal.” (1976, 44)
The subversion of liberal semantics31
The language changers were explicit and conscious about it. “New Freedom”, “New Liberalism”.
The true liberals were very conscious and disturbed.
Undermining of language32
Confucius (as dubiously quoted by Hayek):
When words lose their meaningpeople lose their liberty.
Subverted words33
FreedomLibertyLiberalismJusticeRightsLawRule of lawEquityEqualityPropertyContract
Example: justice34
Justice Violation Form
1. acted unjustly against
2. committed the following unjust act:
3. The act of violates the following principle (or rule) of justice:
Scott Peterson Laci Peterson
Scott Peterson murder
murder
Self-ownership
“Social justice”35
“Homelessness is a growing social injustice in the United States.”
Doesn’t work as a system of justice.
Managing our instincts36
Our genetic inheritance is all we have to work with.
The expression of an instinct is atavistic only if it doesn’t fit the modern context.
UP WITH Private, voluntary communion Private, voluntary solidarity Private, voluntary distributive justice
Managing our instincts37
Learn to accept and appreciate:Disjointed knowledgeUnintended consequencesCommutative justicePrivate ownershipSpontaneous order
Learn to be wary of:The people’s romanceSocial justice
The end38
Thank you for your attention.