Challenging, Bargaining, and Royalty: An Analysis of Libertarian Argumentation

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Challenging, Bargaining, and Royalty An
Analysis of Libertarian Argumentation

• By Daniel Klein, Economics, George Mason
  University, and the Ratio Institute

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The Hayekian Narrative

• Hunter-gatherer. Society as organization.
  Centrally planned, hierarchical. Shared
  experience and sentiment. Still in our genes.
• Settled hierarchy, organized society
• Commercial revolution, extended order
• Philosophy of liberty and spontaneous order
• Collectivist reaction, armed with democracy and
  stolen vocabulary
• Social-democratic hegemony, protracted cultural
  struggle

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Ideological Lock-in

• It is very rare that ones ideological
  sensibilities change significantly after the age
  of 30.
• To influence ideological sensibilities, you must
  reach the young.

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Ludwig von Mises

• It is impossible to understand the history of
  economic thought if one does not pay attention to
  the fact that economics as such is a challenge to
  the conceit of those in power.

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2 Classical-Liberal Character Types

• Classical liberals favor points within the left
  20 yd line
• Challengers and Bargainers Both privately favor
  positions left gt right, at least to the 20 yd
  line
• The difference highlighted here is not a
  difference in privately held policy views

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Challengers

• They say to the listener Speaker B is misguided
  because he is statist.

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Bargainers

• They say to the listener and to Speaker B
  Speaker B is misguided, and hence more
  interventionist than he should be.

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Intended effects
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Turn, turn, turn

• To every thing
• turn, turn, turn
• There is a season
• turn, turn, turn -- The Byrds
• How much one should turn depends on his abilities
  and the segmentation of his discourse situations

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• My take on challengers and bargainers started
  with
• Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character A
  New Vision of Race in America (1991)

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Not to Oversell It

• Some not categorized
• David Hume, JB Say, Richard Cobden, Herbert
  Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Albert Jay Nock,
  HL Mencken, Charles Murray, Johan Norberg, David
  Friedman
• To know how to categorize, it is not sufficient
  to read their works.

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Challenger Gallery

• Thomas Paine American revolutionary

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Challenger Gallery

• Frédéric Bastiat French libertarian economist.
  However, as B. Baugus points out, he also
  sometimes bargained.

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Challenger Gallery

• William Lloyd Garrison American abolitionist.
• Upon being reproached for the habitual severity
  and heat of his language, Garrison retorted, I
  have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains
  of ice about me to melt.
• (Rothbard Egal. p245)

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Challenger Gallery

• Ludwig von Mises Austrian political economist

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Challenger Gallery

• Ayn Rand Russian-American novelist and pop
  philosopher

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Challenger Gallery

• Thomas Szasz
• The Myth of Mental Illness

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Challenger Gallery

• Murray Rothbard Amer. libertarian polymath

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Challenger Gallery

• Robert Higgs Economist, editor The Independent
  Review

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Challenger Gallery

• Walter Williams American economist and columnist

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Bastiat

• Highlights that the essence of government action
  is coercion.
• When private citizens do what the state does, we
  call it crime
• There are people who think that plunder loses
  all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal.
  (p.29)
• The state is the great fictitious entity by
  which everyone seeks to live at the expense of
  everyone else. (p. 144)
• Makes plain that he is for the fundamental
  reform
• I confess that I am one of those who think that
  the choice, the impulse, should come from below,
  not from above, from the citizens, not from the
  legislator . . . (p.12)
• Makes categorical moral arguments against
  coercion
• and the contrary doctrine seems to me to lead to
  the annihilation of liberty and human dignity.
  (p. 12)

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• Scorns statism
• I do not know to what barbaric century we should
  have to return to find on this point a level of
  understanding comparable to that of the
  socialists.
• Suggests that human instinct and public opinion
  are systematically biased toward statism The
  whole argument about the seen and the unseen.
• Protests the general political culture of his
  society
• Good Lord! What a lot of trouble to prove in
  political economy that two and two make four and
  if you succeed in doing so, people cry, Its so
  clear that it is boring. Then they vote as if
  you had never proved anything at all. (p.11)

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Argues that statism is sustained by a number of
superstitions and taboos

• Need it be said that we may have been, in this
  respect, duped by one of the most bizarre
  illusions that has ever taken possession of the
  human mind? (p142-43)
• The inconsistent belief system consists in
  requiring everything from the state without
  giving anything to it . . . is chimerical,
  absurd, childish, contradictory, and dangerous.
  Those who advance it in order to give themselves
  the pleasure of accusing all governments of
  impotence and exposing them thus to your violent
  attacks, flatter and deceive you, or at least
  they deceive themselves. (p. 151)

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MISES

• Mises never had secure professional standing, and
  as the little he had disappeared, he became more
  and more challenger-ish.
• Highlights that the essence of government action
  is coercion.
• When private citizens do what the state does, we
  call it crime
• It is important to remember that government
  interference always means either violent action
  or the threat of such action. Government is in
  the last resort the employment of armed men, of
  policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards,
  and hangmen. The essential feature of government
  is the enforcement of its decrees by beating,
  killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking
  for more government interference are asking
  ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
  (p. 715)
• However, Mises does condemn natural law in the
  sense of a perennial standard of what is just
  and what is unjust (p. 716, see also 717)

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• Makes plain that he is for the fundamental
  reform
• Indicates that he favors laissez faire (p. 725)
• Makes categorical moral arguments against
  coercion (even though he would deny it)
• Laissez faire means Let the common man choose
  and act do not force him to yield to a
  dictator. (p. 12)
• Scorns statism
• the Santa Claus conception of government (p.
  846)
• Protests the general political culture of his
  society
• our age of passionate longing for government
  omnipotence (p. 725)
• Argues that statism is sustained by a number of
  biases
• All this passionate praise of the supereminence
  of government action is but a poor disguise for
  the individual interventionists
  self-deification. The great god State is a great
  god only because it is expected to do exclusively
  what the individual advocate of interventionism
  wants to see achieved. (p. 727)

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Challengers

• Offer the young reader esteem for his wisdom and
  courage
• This gives life to a mutual-admiration society
  gathered around the challenger
• Inspire bold and independent thinking
• Found movements
• Teach adherents what they are and how they stand
  apart

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Challengers

• The challenger tends to be self-centered.
• He tends to have a high estimation of his own
  importance and destiny.
• Importance not only in what he has to say, but in
  his believing it, because of his super acute
  wisdom or judgment.

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Bargainers

• Suppose Joe is a classical liberal and in a
  discourse situation is bargaining, arguing for
  Belief Y over Belief Z.
• On higher level issues, Joe might
• falsify his beliefs
• acknowledge his true beliefs
• remain mute or ambiguous

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Bargainer Gallery

• Friedrich Hayek Economist and philosopher

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Bargainer Gallery

• Aaron Wildavsky Amer. political scientist

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Bargainer Gallery

• Richard Epstein Amer. legal scholar

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Bargainer Gallery

• Tyler Cowen American economist

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Bargainer Gallery

• Virginia Postrel American author, journalist,
  editor

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Bargainer Gallery

• John Tierney
• NY Times columnist

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HAYEK

• Use of Knowledge article
• Disguises the voluntary/coercive distinction
• Use decentralization and competition rather
  than freedom or liberty p. 521, 523, 524
• Never says he favors fundamental reform.
• Claims that the disagreement is a matter of
  intellectual error, rather than fundamental
  commitments. Hence, persuasion of mature minds
  remains possible
• The differences can indeed no longer be
  ascribed to political prejudice. The remaining
  dissent seems clearly to be due to purely
  intellectual, and more particularly
  methodological, differences. (p. 112)

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• In CoL, he provides multiple vague definitions of
  liberty. Never makes clear that ordinary
  regulations like minimum wage are coercion.
  Hedges and fudges on fundamental policy issues.
  Avoids them, or treads gingerly.
• Eschews the word libertarian, using liberal
  instead.
• Later, following 1960, with waning status, Hayek
  becomes more challenger-ish. E.g., The Atavism
  of Social Justice, The Mirage of Social Justice.
  Starts using the word libertarian somewhat.

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Bargainers

• Inspire adherents to be persuasive and effective
  in meeting and joining and cooperating with
  power, to stand with others as colleagues in
  power but as something somewhat different from
  them.

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Turn, turn, turn

• If discourse situations were perfectly segmented,
  it would behoove the classical liberal to argue
  as best suits his abilities and the situation.
• Example I bargain more in teaching than in
  writing. I argue for vouchers, granting that
  education should be subsidized for public
  good/equity reasons.

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Prominence

• A key factor of segmentation is prominence.
• The prominent are more visible in all that they
  do. They more need to project a single persona.
• The less prominent can more effectively play it
  both ways.
• I think people turn too little, perhaps because
  they have an inflated notion of their own
  prominence and need for consistency.
• We often try to emulate our heroes, but our
  heroes were more prominent than we.

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Declining segmentation?

• The Internet etc may be making it harder to do
  this.
• Even lectures might find their way onto the
  Internet. Exposé.
• But vanity may lead us to over-estimate this
  constraint.
• A little inconsistency is no shame.

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Connection to Esoteric Writing

• We have assumed the bargainers criticism of
  Belief Z basically resembles that of one who
  sincerely believes Y.
• The Strauss dimension Apparent bargaining as
  esoteric challenging.
• Here the bargainers criticism of Z contains
  between the lines criticism of X and possibly W.
• For example, Hayeks explicit definition of
  liberty was really mainly a listing of correlates
  of liberty, while the true definition of liberty
  was between the lines.

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Royalty

• Enjoys establishment eminence
• Two aspects
• 1. Eminent among ones close circle of peers

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Royalty

• 2. That circle is recognized throughout society
  as eminent

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• Royalty enjoys a sense of ascendancy
• Royalty acts as though its ideas are or can
  become official establishment doctrine
• Royalty evades the distinction between the
  mature/powerful (speaker B) and the
  young/disempowered (the listener). Royalty acts
  like all can be persuaded alike.
• Royalty downplays any radical implications of
  what it might be saying.
• Often conceals or blurs their libertarian
  position on touchy issues.
• Resorts to inconsistency, vagueness, platitude,
  elision.

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Royalty Gallery

• Adam Smith

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Royalty Gallery

• Milton Friedman

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SMITH

• Enjoyed establishment eminence and ascendancy
• Explains that the world around us is a
  manifestation of his principles. His principles
  already reign. (Div of labor, spon order, etc.)
• Smith assures the reader that he does not follow
  the simple libertarian principle 100 (p. 289).
• Smith endorses several contraventions of natural
  liberty. One interpretation of this is that he
  actually believed in those contraventions.
  Another is that he is allaying concerns of his
  strict adherence to simple radical principles.
• In TMS, he praises gentle, pragmatic reform and
  compromise (p. 380)

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• Smith plays it both ways on natural liberty and
  justice Sometimes the two coincide, but
  sometimes he favors contraventions nonetheless.
  In the case of restriction on being a shopkeeper
  (which he opposes) he says is a violation, hence
  unjust, and then adds that it was also
  impolitic (both Stewart and Millar use
  expediency). So he adds another layer within
  which he can talk justice and yet refrain from
  libertarian positions.
• Inconsistency? As when he says school costs may
  be defrayed by tax-dollars without injustice
  (WN 815) Or when he restates the matter of
  desirable violations in back to back sentences
  (WN 324)

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• Honors the powerful
• he may assume the greatest and noblest of all
  characters, that of the reformer and legislator
  of a great state and, by the wisdom of his
  institutions, secure the internal tranquility and
  happiness of his fellow-citizens for many
  succeeding generations. (TMS, p. 378-79)
• Smith writes of party leaders fudging and
  dissembling. Irony?

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Friedman

• He enjoyed establishment eminence and ideological
  ascendancy.
• He explains that the world around us is a
  manifestation of his principles. His principles
  already reign. (Div of labor, spon order, etc.)
  (pp. 9-13)
• Writes of the progress of enlightenment following
  Adam Smith (p.33), and the achievement of a
  golden era (p. 35). But interventionist errors
  have since reappeared. Downplays how pervasive
  they are today (p.33).

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• Milton and Rose make the voluntary/coercive
  distinction. However, they blur the definition
  of freedom somewhat (p. 11), and they are vague
  about how strictly they adhere to the liberty
  principle. They fudge their way through the
  discussion of Adam Smiths three principles of
  natural liberty. They tell the reader that they
  do not uphold a rigid adherence to the principle.
• They honor the process and institutions of power.
  They affirm that we can all agree to fix the
  problems
• Our society is what we make it. We can shape
  our institutions. Physical and human
  characteristics limit the alternatives available
  to us. But none prevents us, if we will, from
  building a society that relies primarily on
  voluntary cooperation to organize both economic
  and other activity, a society that preserves and
  expands human freedom, that keeps government in
  its place, keeping it our servant and not letting
  it become our master. (p. 37)

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Two Issues

• Is royalty possible today?
• The relationship between Challengers and
  Bargainers

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Is Royalty Possible Today?

• I dont really think so, though we should try.
• Arguably, Epstein or Gary Becker is the closest
  case of royalty.
• Charles Murray has some royalty qualities.
• If Tyler Cowen got a Harvard econ appointment . .
  .

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Is Royalty Possible Today?

• We are still in the Social Democracy phase of the
  Hayekian Narrative.
• Academia is structurally pyramidal and culturally
  central. There is little prospective of real
  classical liberal ascendancy there.
• The centrality of academia may be declining.
• But the rest of the political culture is
  increasingly fragmented.
• Maybe cultural royalty is receding generally, not
  just for classical liberals.

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Friedman An aberration?

• His success is cause for hope
• However
• A special moment 1947-1990, say, was a period of
  classical liberal renaissance, and Milton rode
  the crest of a wave (which he helped to effect,
  of course). Many things, like textbook
  Keynesians, were ripe for revolt.
• The Chicago Econ Dept was a particular and
  remarkable thing.
• Friedman is a remarkable individual.
• Rose Friedman a big part of the story?

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• Friedmans attitude toward the economics
  profession
• He affirms the invisible-hand of the academic
  market, to utilize a position of royalty.
• He never criticized the economics profession.
• Yet he in fact broke out of the academic mode of
  thinking and acting.
• I think Smith never faced this kind of tension.

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Relationship between Challengers and Bargainers

• The main point
• They dont really disagree on substantive policy
  views. They just are playing different roles in
  the cultural struggle.

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How Bargainers can help Challengers

• Bargainers
• often show more intellectual flexibility
• often have more intimate knowledge of current
  policies and issues. Hence, bargainers can exert
  intellectual discipline on the challengers.
• often enjoy more mainstream stature, and can help
  challengers get an audience and respectability.

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How Challengers can help Bargainers

• Challengers can
• serve as the conscience of bargainers,
  reawakening them to more fundamental beliefs
• show how broadly the more basic ideas still hold
  up
• re-activate the bargainers authenticity and
  reconnect them to nobler pursuits, such as
  inspiring and edifying the young

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A delicate relationship

• A bargainer might help a challenger to get a
  mainstream hearing, but only if she can trust him
  not to become unduly glossy.
• The challenger must likewise trust the bargainer
  not to turn on him.
• Distrusting, they may shun team efforts
  altogether.

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Needful Cooperation

• There are gains in team productivity achieved by
  the division of labor.
• Being mindful of the larger common cause may
  encourage mutual contact and moral support.