This is essentially where my refusal to accept government comes from: government is in every sense violent force and aggression, and as such I can never accept nor tolerate it. But my morality forbids me to take violent action as part of my resistance to being ruled. I believe Gandhi set a great example – peaceful disobedience, not violent action.
The way I would like to see a society without the state is a society based on respect and tolerance, where all actions and associations are strictly voluntary and physical force is never a solution. But I realize this might very well be a utopian dream on a national level, even though I think it is a fully attainable ideal in radically decentralized communities. In local, prosperous societies there is simply no need to resort to violence, as violence does not achieve anything or offer a solution. There is simply no reason anyone would do him- or herself the disservice of violently aggress on someone else.
In a free society the incentives for violent action are none and thus the violent actions taken in such a society would be at an absolute minimum, if not zero – unless one counts mining, wood felling or smithery as “violent.”
My principle for anarchism can thus be summed up as: do no harm. The reason I do not get out on nightly missions to destroy the illegitimate property of those who continuously aggress on me (read: government) is simply that such missions would cause harm – to both innocent and semi-innocent people. I am not violent by nature and I do not generally enjoy destruction; there is no reason for it and I don’t understand it. Which makes my insistence on the necessity for a free, stateless society even stronger and more deep-rooted.
This said, let me clarify: I am certainly not saying I accept government’s illegitimate rule of me or anybody else. And I would desperately like to see government wither away, be undermined, or even be torn down. But I do not engage in destructive measures directed at people or property; I do not find destruction fun, inspiring, or even necessary.
In this sense I would certainly call myself anarcho-pacifist. But I do not non-violence is a principle that must always be honored, paying for it with my life. I do believe in my right to defend myself, my loved ones, and my property. I do not think it my duty to be a passive bystander and observer of all evils going on. If I see grave injustice being done I am likely to act; it is just that I would probably not act with force unless it is absolutely necessary – and then only as the very last way out.
I do, in a way, believe in self-defense and I would not have a problem to get a gun. As society degenerates around us it is becoming increasingly urgent for all of us to learn how to use firearms and get a gun for protection. As anarchist there is no reason whatever to expect that government “protect” works and that the monopolized police force will actually come to my rescue if I were to face real danger.
In the long term, future (some say imminent) economic crises may bring about a social stress that could fire antagonisms and outright street fighting between a government run amok (in the mainstream sense) and a people brought to arms in utter desperation. If this were to happen there is no reason not to have a gun.
So perhaps I could call myself a “pacifist with a gun.” Well, if I had had one.
But let’s return to of self-defense, it is a quite interesting concept that is not not at all as simple as most people tend to make it. Those who advocate “natural” rights, for instance, generally conclude that a violation of right is a violation of right, which causes a situation of measuring the weight of rights.
For instance, a person owning property has the right to defend that right. But to what extent? Would it be okay to kill a murderer? A rapist? A blackmailer? A trespasser? Why? Why not? In each of these situations there is the right of the violated rights bearer against the right of the violator. Does the right of a violator carry less weight? Says who? It does not follow from the “natural” rights how such problems should be solved (which is why some conclude there is a need for government), so some add e.g. a theory of proportionality to regulate these shortcomings of the original rights theory.
I think “do no harm” is a sufficient principle of justice. When you act violently in self-defense it might be justified by the situation, but that still does not give you the right to do harm. You might have to in order to save your life, but it is still wrong to do harm. Your being assaulted does not give you the right to assault the assaulter.
This might seem like a difficult principle to implement, but I think it is very intuitive and the practical solution to conflicts arising from “violence and counter violence” is fairly simple: apply any market solution of your choice. Imagine a person trespassing on your property and thereby doing harm on your exclusive right to this property. You tell him or her that s/he is trespassing and need to leave immediately. If the person refuses you can simply remove him or her from your property – if s/he thinks this action was uncalled for you might face a trial hearing held by a private arbitrator you accept.
What this means is simply that if the parties disagree on whether the outcome of the situation was just, each of their violent actions can be measured by a “third” party to which they agree. The third party can then estimate damages to set things right.
This is a rather obvious market solution to a problem of two or more parties disagreeing on a situation: let a neutral party, to which the parties agree, decide who acted “most” in error and who therefore owes the other party/parties damages. Such a system would never face the philosophical problem of proportionality, since doing harm is always a bad thing and fault can always be established and estimated by a neutral party of choice – even though “harm” is always subjectively assessed.
That is the way I see self-defense. You have the right to act, but not to harm. If you wish or need to use violent actions in order to achieve some end you are responsible for your actions and should be held accountable for wrongdoing. This applies even though you might already have been violated by the other party. If someone trespasses on your grounds to pick berries and you shoot that person the both of you have done harm – but to different degrees. You should be tried for murder and convicted, however with your fault reduced with the fault of trespassing and berry-stealing.
This way all violations and conflicts can “easily” be settled by the market as in any situation where you destroy someone’s property or are guilty of breach of contract. And there is no need for a constitution or bill of rights – you do not have the right to do harm to anyone, and that goes for everyone and everything.
If I am assaulted I will, according to this principle, use violent action to resist and possibly escape the aggressor, but I will be very reluctant to use force. And if I use force I believe I am at fault to the degree of force applied and should be held responsible for that action – just as you, as my aggressor, should be held responsible for all your actions.
This principle is equally applicable on the thugs working for government – if they attack me they should be held accountable on a market for justice. (If I violently and forcefully resist, I am at fault to that degree even if I find it necessary.) When the state is finally abolished I believe representatives for government will face charges of forceful aggression and theft filed by millions of oppressed people.
The problem with government is however that it is not a person, even though it pretends to be a “legal entity,” and thus each of its representatives can hide behind an abstraction that can not be held accountable. But the way I see it each individual is responsible for his or her actions – it does not matter if these actions were taken following orders from someone higher up in the chain of command; a taken action is your choice and thus responsibility. So on the first day of freedom the thugs, goons, and imbeciles in government will be held accountable for their actions.
This is as far as my anarcho-pacifism goes. It does state a philosophical principle that nobody has a right to do harm, but it also provides a framework for assessing violations of this principle and how to regain a peaceful equilibrium. Force is never a solution, and aggressive such is even worse. But my believing in peace and non-violence does not mean I will accept your enslavement or your rule. It means I will resist to my greatest ability and practice disobedience as much as possible, and that I will take full responsibility for my actions.
And I demand that you do the same if you want my respect as a human being.
Ceteris Paribus for Dummies
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008Even so, certain so-called scientific models may require the ceteris paribus statement simply because we do not have powerful enough tools and lack sufficient knowledge of the interrelationships. It could make sense, in a scientific setting where some progress is the best possible (since aiming too high simply means no progress), to use simplified models of simplified relationships and interdependencies and conduct experiments with simple tools to try to increase our understanding of our complex social world.
This does not, however, offer an excuse for all those experiments claiming to provide models that can make very exact forecasts. All such claims, when the models on which these forecasts are made are ceteris paribus models, are at best ignorant if not consciously deceiving. An economic model accepting exact values and providing exact forecasts based on ceteris paribus reasoning is fraudulent.
But this should not be interpreted as if economics needs to be abolished or disregarded. Rather, what I am trying to say is that we should know that interdependencies and relationships in the social world are complex and often mutually constituting. The result from a model where one variable is changed while all other variables remain constant can tell us something, but it does not tell us much about the effect of changing that specific variable in the real world. We should anticipate that one change in a delicate system or social web of relationship as an economic market effectuates other changes. The outcome of the system as a whole is therefore not fully foreseeable.
Most people would agree with this statement, and at this point many might even smile haughtily when thinking of the economist with the simplified models. But that would be a rash reaction: most people seem to rely on ceteris paribus reasoning.
The economist, forced by the complexity of social systems, sometimes needs to rely on ceteris paribus reasoning in order to make progress at all. Perhaps this is the reason people in general, “dummies” in the title, reason this way; it should be easier and thus a lot faster to come to a conclusion if one does not consider all variables and parameters – even better if only one or two variables are considered.
Now, let me explain what I mean by saying people in general use ceteris paribus reasoning. Most people reading this blog are radicals of some sort, the majority likely consists of libertarians and anarchists. Being radicals, I assume most of you have approached a non-radical with your ideas only to get a seemingly “stupid” question back such as (if the argument is for less state): “but who will build the roads?”
Another “radical” thought would be to allow everybody to control their bodies and therefore decide what substances are inserted into the body. In other words, abolishing the repressive drug laws, a suggestion that usually rebuffed with something like: “but then everybody would become drug addicts and the drug lords would seize all power.”
These reactions are examples of ceteris paribus reasoning. Abolishing government does not mean roads disappear and it certainly doesn’t mean nobody would be willing to build roads. But roads are generally built and maintained by government or possibly by government contractors. A ceteris paribus effect of abolishing the state or drastically reduce its size could be that none of the government services would be supplied and thus that their infrastructure would dilapidate.
A more likely outcome of abolishing the state would be that people would acquire whatever infrastructure and services they need and find efficient ways to provide for these services on the market. But this requires a dynamic view and the analyst would necessarily have to consider multiple variables simultaneously and have at least a basic understanding for how people act and why they choose to act.
The same would be true for the drug example, where the abolishment of drug laws would likely strip the mafia of its powers while making quality on the drug market much more reliable. In other words: drug related crimes would eventually drop drastically, if not fully disappear.
But, again, to come to this conclusion one would have to consider a number of variable. In the drug example one would first need to identify the problems today through asking what are the real effects of the repressive laws. The laws create a black market that drives up prices while the civilized behavior required by suppliers in an open market would not be rewarded. In other words: the most brutal suppliers are able to create monopolies through terminating competition and buying off people representing the “authorities.” The artificially high prices for drugs provide artificially high profits and also enough funds to cover costs for violent behavior (which would not be the case in an open, competitive market).
The arguments supplied against deregulation disregard likely effects for the sake of fast and simple rejections. There are obvious advantages to be able to offer fast and simple arguments: most people would consider a fast response more credible than a response delivered after thinking about it, and simple arguments are much easier understood than more complex such. Also, time is an important factor: most people do not have the patience nor the interest to invest the time it takes to explain how e.g. drug prohibition causes problems and why the laws should be abolished – especially if the issue is not one of their great interests. Most people would accept the simple answer because of its simplicity, not because of its realism (a high degree of consistency with the complex social reality).
It is easy to see how a ruling elite could take advantage of this. Whether this tells us anything about economics is another matter.
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