Per Bylund

Business Scholarship with a Swedish-Austrian Twist

Per Bylund

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Anarchism or Minarchism?

This should be one of the most frequently discussed issues in the world libertarian movement. It is one of a few “great divides” in the movement, and correctly so. This divide, however, is much greater philosophically than it is practically or politically, even though it is not often recognized as such. Instead, minarchists and anarchists tend to often agree “more or less” on the goals and how to get there.

But the difference between minarchism and anarchism lies not in the details, the real difference is in the very tenets of the philosophy: how one sees man, society, and how liberty is valued.

I was recently attacked (yes, “attacked” is really the right word for it) by an objectivist who claimed to analyze an article of mine on his blog (in Swedish only). The analysis is the worst kind of crap one can ever think of within the category “analysis.” It is completely based on a strawman, and the interpretations of my viewpoints are nothing but far out, to put it mildly. As a matter of fact, he fails utterly to understand my perspective, and even though I took the time to respectfully comment on his “analysis” he would not back down. Contrarily, he claimed, cheered by the objectivist readers of his blog, my questions were either insults or attacks on him (rather than his ideas).

Even though this might sound like a very unimportant point (which is true), the “analysis” and following debate in the comments section really, at least implicitly and – probably – unknowingly, hits the bull’s eye. It is straight to the point, even though this particular objectivist really had no clue he was this close to the truth.

What is so interesting here is not the arguments and comments back and forth, even less interesting were the rather obvious misinterpretations of standpoints. The points of interest here is really the fact that there were misinterpretations, and that they were of such magnitude (read: far off).  This fact tells us a lot, even though we should understand that some of the misinterpretations were in part results of a need to satisfy the objectivist audience and in part the limitations inherent in being “true” to the objectivist lingo.

But nevertheless these misinterpretations along with the obvious unwillingness to understand contra-arguments tells us something: there is a huge difference between minarchism and anarchism. This difference is philosophical as well as political and practical.

So how can we bridge this difference between the two factions? How can we understand “both sides” and through it conduct a real, neutral analysis of the differences in assumptions and arguments?

The problem here is that the two views are of different paradigms – one is radical yet stands firmly on statist ground (minarchism), the other (anarchism) has gotten rid of all mental ties to government and the need for its monopolized services. The question is thus not how to understand the arguments, but how to communicate across the boundaries of paradigms.

In this world we are all, at least in the western world, born statists. This means we all set out on life’s journey with a mind fixed in the tenets of statism: that people cannot take care of them selves fully, that chaos will doubtlessly arise if there is no exterior power making people respect each other and each others’ rights.

This is a basic assumption in statist theory – that a market, a society, a family, any group of people will degenerate into a Hobbesian “war of every man against every man.” There is always, the thinking goes, someone who will use the fact that there is no superior power to punish evil deeds, and thus whoever can forcefully claim power will do so – in his or her own interest.

Many classical liberals and minarchist libertarians would probably not agree that their philosophical view of man and society is based on Hobbes. But the inherent threat from other people is an underlying fact in most of the questions asked, like in the most frequent question of all: how would it work? Or rather: how could it work?

Would this question be this interesting if individual liberty was really the number one priority? No. Man’s liberty is a fundamental principle, a guiding such, that should not be subjected to practical matters – the choice is liberty or force, not exactly how liberty “would function.” Asking how it would function means the principle of liberty is subjected to practical details, and focuses rather on the political structure of society rather than whether it is truly free.

What is demanded by minarchists when asking this question is really a structure. The emphasis in this question is not on “structure,” but on “a.” Somehow any explanation of competing “systems,” decentralized protection of rights, and a market solution to justice is disqualified. Whenever the anarchist tries to answer the structure question the minarchist responds with asking for the guarantees of the system. Yet again a system is assumed as the only possible outcome.

How so? Why would liberty only be able to exist in an environment consisting of one standardized system?

The reason must be that minarchism is statist, if not in many (or most) of its policies at least in a fundamental sense: there has to be a system.

Minarchists wouldn’t (ever) admit that this is so, and they might be right in claiming so. But that does not explain why the questions asked – and the “solutions” demanded from anarchists – all seem to imply a need for A System. Minarchists simply have a lot to explain if they are not to be, by anarchists that is, identified as statists or archists. For one thing, why automatically disqualify competing systems of justice, i.e. a market solution for justice protection, while the market obviously is advocated as the superior solution to any other problem?

The blogger mentioned above makes the exact mistake explained here – he demands (as if he was in a position to do that) answers: how would you (i.e. me) make sure this or that is secured and guaranteed? The obvious anarchist response is “I wouldn’t,” but that is hardly convincing for a minarchist – just as it isn’t convincing to liberals, conservatives, or socialists. Power (used in a certain way) is not only asked for and “demanded,” it is a fundamental assumption – a given – in the philosophy of statists.

This is just a premier identification of statism, I do know that I do not offer any convincing arguments that minarchists are really nothing but statists. But a lot of minarchists tend to think they have traveled far on the political map and thus left everything called statism behind, while they are fundamentally assuming a state and thus an exterior guarantee to whatever scheme they wish to uphold. Why is this so?

I will return to the study of anarchism and minarchism in a future blog post, but this identification will suffice for now. Please do comment on my thoughts.

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The Nuremberg Trials, Heraclitus, and Morality

They say history tends to repeat itself. In a sense this is probably true, people do tend to identify similarities of events in the now with events experienced in the past. But, on the other hand, human knowledge is based only on experience – never on what we will learn in the future. So how could it ever be differently? History repeats itself, at least to a great degree, simply because people have nothing but historic experience to base their assessment on when figuring out what is going on in the now.

But in another sense history does repeat itself. We are but human, and in this sense human action is forever repeated. Also, a society based on the kind of hierarchy that we are currently experiencing, which is really the same as the kind of hierarchy we’ve experienced at least since the stone age, must repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Some things should however not be the same. As Heraclitus identified already a century before the birth of Socrates, everything is “in flux”:

Everything flows and nothing is left unchanged

This basic knowledge, that nothing is constant except change, is easily applied on the theory of morality behind the well-known Nuremberg Trials after World War II. At least, applying what Heraclitus taught more than 2,500 years ago on the Nuremberg Trials makes an interesting point: public morality has fundamentally changed in the last 50-60 years.

The Nuremberg Trials, for those of you who are not familiar with them, were held after the end of World War II. The trials were officially a way of finding justice through trying those who were suspected of horrific war-crimes. Of course, the true purpose of the trials was really nothing but a way for the victorious “Allies” to legitimize the punishment (in many times death) of German war-criminals.

The interesting things with these trials, however, is how personal responsibility was defined, and what importance the courts gave obviously difficult circumstances. This tells us a lot of what morality was thought to be around this time, i.e. the general understanding of morality.

For instance, security guards of the concentration camps during World War II would be held guilty of their actions – even if the very actions were carried out on direct orders from their superiors. All individuals were simply assumed to have a rather big amount of moral courage. If a superior officer ordered you to do something that you found utterly immoral, you should have refused.

The first of the so-called Nuremberg Principles states exactly this, that the individual is fully responsible for his or her actions:

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

The interesting thing here is that this should, of course, always be the case. But it also shows obvious double standards at the time: the ones retroactively claiming war criminals should have refused to carry out immoral deeds are presumably the same people who demanded obedience of inferiors during the war. What is the standard approach at one time obviously isn’t the standard approach at another.

But this contradiction set aside, what if the Nuremberg Trials were held today? The public morality has changed in such a way with the welfare state that it would probably be acceptable to have carried out horrible deeds if they were ordered by someone of higher rank. As we can see everywhere in contemporary society, claiming non-responsibility due to “someone else” having ordered/asked you to do it is more than common. It is not only a commonly claimed reason for doing bad things, it is also very often considered an acceptable excuse. This was likely not the case in the 1940s.

This change does of course mean that the conflict that existed between first demanding obedience and then demanding moral courage has been wiped out. But it also means that the real morality of people, which has nothing to do with the morality of courts established to deal with actions already made, has changed. Heraclitus would have anticipated and accepted a change, but he would not have anticipated (or accepted?) what kind of change or how quickly it came about. After all, one does not easily change the morality of a whole world in half a century.

It is likely that modern-day Nuremberg Trials would not, at least not to the same extent as the real Nuremberg Trials, find the war criminals guilty. Instead, responsibility would be pushed up to the highest level – whoever actually gave the order resulting in the deed would be held responsible.

In a way this is partly justified, since whoever gave the order is responsible. But that responsibility ends with actually giving the order while assuming it will be carried out – ordering your inferiors to kill in war-time means the exact same thing as making someone carry out a murder on your behalf.

But it does however not mean the one(s) to actually carry out the murder cannot be held responsible. Responsibility, indeed a complex concept, must fall on all those involved to the extent they knowingly acted to do harm. Simply “following orders” is no real excuse to do harm, there is no “licence to kill” and from the perspective of the individual there never can be such a licence. There is also no licence to order someone to do the killing.

Even if we, as a society, haven’t degenerated as far as to not finding anyone at all except for Adolf Hitler himself guilty were the Nuremberg Trials repeated, we are surely heading that way. And this is not a pleasant thought.

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On the Effort to Push Back the State

I have a new article published today on Strike the Root, called Let’s Join Forces for Liberty, which discusses the impossibility of Ron Paul’s so-called Revolution:

As a former partyarch and political scientist I have been following the Ron Paul Revolution campaign closely – as closely as is possible on the Internet without actually participating. Even though I do not at all support party activism or political involvement, the extent of Paul’s grassroots support brings hope to the nation and the world. If so many support cutting back on government to a minimalist “core” doing only what the constitution explicitly allows, then there should be a chance for pushing the state back.

The problem is of course that pushing the state back isn’t realistic, at least not in the long term. The state will always find ways to increase its own power and thus to find new ways to oppress the slaves it calls “citizens” or “residents.” The latter are not, contrary to popular myth, the privileged majority included in the big family of the state. Rather, they are the ones forced to pay for their own oppression, which makes them true losers.

This means pushing back the state to its 1780s size doesn’t really help. Slaves will still be slaves and rulers will still be rulers, even though slaves don’t have to work as hard and rulers will be temporarily crippled or held at leash. A constitution offers no control, no matter how much we would like it to. The U.S. Constitution is a great example of this – the document calls for a minimalist government with clearly-formulated limited powers and a responsibility to honor people’s god-given rights. But it hasn’t stopped the government from expanding into a welfarist police state: imperialist America.

A constitution, after all, is but a piece of paper written by men.

Read all of it here.

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On the Failure of Welfare Schooling

On LewRockwell.com my new article, titled The Terrible Effects of Public Schooling, is now published:

There are many stories of Sweden being a Utopia: a high-tax, massively regulated and politicized, anti-capitalism, egalitarian socialist society that not only works – it thrives. Each and every one of them is nothing but a lie, even though there are many Swedes who will tell you how wonderful it is – they refuse to see the truth even though they live it everyday.

Recently yet another myth of the Swedish socialist supremacy was revealed to be completely untrue: the exquisite quality of Swedish public education. “Preliminary” statistics of the current state of Swedish public schooling made available by the Swedish National Agency for Education show the continuing degeneration of the so-called Swedish Model – and that it is ever increasing. After having spent nine mandatory years in school, 11.4% of Swedish children don’t meet the requirements to go to high school.

Of course, in other countries this might not be such a big deal. But it is in Sweden – a country where an education and a university degree is a human right. Also, the requirements to go to high school are set on such an absurdly low level that no one should be able to not make it.

For starters, in the requirement only three subjects actually count: mathematics, Swedish, and English. These are the “core” subjects, and you need to get a “pass” in all three in order to be able to go to high school. One would think this is not too tough a requirement.

However, it is much easier than it would seem.

Read all of it here.

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Illogical Free Market Logic

Matt Jenny of the Der freie Markt web site has translated one of my 2006 articles, originally published on Strike the Root, into German: Free Market Thinking: Not Applicable has become Denkweise des freien Marktes nicht anwendbar. 

Thanks to Matt I got a reason to go back and read this article, which is a rather short treatise on how “the free market” is used as argument in the political discourse. This topic is very interesting and extremely important, yet severely neglected in the libertarian discussion. Someone really should elaborate on it, so here’s a first attempt to do so.

The article mentioned above discusses a fundamentally important issue: what is the true meaning of “voluntary”? The immediate response to such a question would commonly be something like “a choice made according to the chooser’s individual interest (or apprehension thereof) without being restricted by other people using force.” Someone would plainly say it is whatever comes out of “free will.”

Well, to a certain extent I would agree. Most choices made according to the chooser’s own will would mean it is voluntary since it is a choice made without there having been force or threat thereof to make you choose it. In other words: if you would have chosen differently if you were allowed to choose freely, then it is not a voluntary choice. Most people would agree on this, but it really is the other side of the definition that is important: what you would not have chosen without being forced to.

Let’s say you have a number of options to choose from, what would constitute force in such a situation? What we’re looking at here is really what involuntary means, which might not necessarily mean the exact opposite of voluntary. I know how strange this sounds, but bear with me.

Choice, in its very essance, is always voluntary – having “no choice” does not exist in reality, only in our own minds. But from a political or philosophical this isn’t interesting. What is interesting is what there is to choose from. This is why we would say the choice was not voluntary if the most attractive options to the chooser are illegal, forbidden, or means you will get your ass kicked by that big guy over there.

Such involuntary choice-making does not necessarily mean there are fewer options available, but that the chooser’s ranking of the options has been forcefully tampered with. If someone says “go ahead and choose whatever you want, but if you choose number 32 I’ll kick your butt,” then that would mean there is an additional cost to number 32. That additional cost, in this case, is artificial since it is based on a rights violation – the person saying it is using the threat of force to make you choose in another way than you would have, had he or she not been there.

Thus, we could say involuntariness of choice exists where there is artificial, force-based cost added that will inevitably affect the way you rank the options.

An important part of this additional cost is often neglected: options that don’t even exist anymore, of which the chooser might even be ignorant, due to artificial, force-based cost added. What we have here requires a deeper analysis than the rather obvious definitions in the voluntary/involuntary discussion above. Could it be that a fully voluntary choice, i.e. a choice from a certain number of options made to 100% without added artificial, force-based cost to the decision, is still a forced decision?

The answer is yes if force has limited the options available to the chooser. This is where many free-marketeers often get lost: they argue a choice made with no force added to the direct choice-making must be voluntary. But the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises in this piece of reasoning. It is like saying you voluntarily chose to eat your food without knife and fork – because someone had stolen your cutlery. Are you voluntarily eating with your hands? Hardly.

This reasoning is fully applicable on the so-called free market logic argument. Yes, a choice might be voluntary and so it should be allowed and respected in the free market, but if the number of options have been forcefully limited the choice is not voluntary. In other words, choosing to work in a lousy job because all better options no longer exists due to government regulations means it is not a voluntary choice. It may very well be the best option available (that’s why you choose it), but it isn’t voluntary – it is made as an effect of rights having been violated.

This is where the left has it right, and the “free market” right has it wrong.

Champions of neo-capitalist globalization like Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism, frequently argue that globalization brings better choices to poor people of poor nations, and that there is nothing wrong with it. Contrarily, they argue, this is the great prosperity-creating power of capitalism – and it brings wealth to these people voluntarily.

I do agree that globalization has created a number of options for people in poor nations, and that these options often are better than the existing. But it still doesn’t mean that the choice to work for, for instance, Shell in Nigeria or Nike in Viet Nam is nothing but voluntary. Actually, the greatness of these opportunities is partly due to the immense regulation and taxation of all other options – the previously available options were simply what the state “allowed.”

The reason a job for Nike is so well paid in poor countries is because it is indirectly subsidized through the regulation of the local markets – were local entrepreneurs and businesses allowed to act freely in a freed market nobody would choose to work for Nike (the pay would simply be too low).

The fallacy of the argument is perhaps easier to understand when discussing the situation for most poor people in the western, so-called liberal democracies. These people are forced to take a number of lousy jobs without good pay in order to survive. Yes, they do choose to work hard for almost nothing in order to stay afloat and put food on the table for their families to eat, but a free market would not limit their choices to “take this shitty job and pay your taxes or live in a cardboard box in an alley.”

A freed market wouldn’t, to begin with, make people work for monetary payment so that they can pay their taxes. It would be perfectly possible to live off the land somewhere if that would be your choice – this isn’t possible today simply because you have to make money to pay for taxes. So what we have here is a regulated force-based economy that takes the self-sustaining live-off-the-earth option out.

The same force-virus injected in the economy by the state makes it literally impossible to go from practically nothing to something. It becomes much, much harder to “travel” from one class to another – the regulated economy provides so much fewer options to the chooser than a freed economy would, that some become so desperate from this situtation that they resort to crime.

So free-market logic isn’t necessarily applicable on the command economy we are experiencing. It would be perfectly alright to say that someone made a “voluntary” choice to take a job they don’t really like and that cannot really provide a sufficient salary from the options available. But as champions of the free market we must realize that this person would likely have chosen very differently had the opportunities of the freed market been available to him.

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The Importance of Illusions

After having spent 28 hours traveling I seem to remember most things in a kind of blur – they blend with each other in a haze, making it almost impossible to separate one event from another. One thing is however very clear, and that is, I’m afraid, the only memory that will remain weeks or months from now: security checks.

Copenhagen’s international airport Kastrup, where my journey started, is incredibly “secure” in the “many annoying checks of people and their properties” sense. I do not remember how many times I was checked or “sweeped,” my identity was in question, or my luggage was searched – but I know this happened many, many times.

Arriving at Atlanta international airport meant a few more checks, and to get to my connecting flight to St. Louis I, like everybody else, had to take off my belt and shoes to have them x-rayed. I reckon my carry-on was x-rayed four or five times going from Copenhagen in Denmark to St. Louis, my papers were checked five times, and I had to stand in line for hours (literally) only to get harassed by grumpy men and women in uniform.

The costs of this bid to make flying safe and secure can be nothing but enormous. It is, in a sense, flattering that so much time and money is invested to make my traveling between two cities safe. And with such extensive security one would have to feel safe and secure, wouldn’t one?

No.

The problem with these checks is that they are very costly while they at the same time are likely to be quite worthless. It does feel like security is “tight” when flying, but that is nothing but an illusion caused by the great number of stops where passengers and their luggage is checked.

There is no reason whatsoever to presume more terrorists (I assume terrorism is what they are trying to stifle with these check-ups) are stopped from carrying out their heinous deeds just because passengers’ luggage is check three or four times instead of one. Things don’t change simply because you decide to have another look at them – if there wasn’t a bomb in my bag a minute ago there won’t be one there two hours later either if I was in a controlled environment where it isn’t possible to find bombs. Also, my papers will be the same when checked by security officer #3 as they were when checked by security officers #1 and #2.

The only reason for having repeated checks is that the environment cannot be trusted – if someone is likely to get a bomb into the airport and give it to me, I would be able to have a bomb at security check #2 even if I had no bomb at security check #1. But this would also mean there is no reason to have security checks at all, since someone could pass a bomb to anyone at any time if this was the case.

So the security checks are really worthless unless the environment, in this case the airport, can be fully trusted to always be free of bombs (or whatever they are trying to be free of).

But this isn’t the only problem of these security checks – the real problem is that as soon as the checks are established, the real “bad guys” (whoever they are) will try other ways of accomplishing their goals (whatever they may be). It isn’t reasonable to assume a would-be hijacker will try to get a knife through the x-rays to hijack a plane – he or she would, if hijacking the plane is important enough (and I assume it is, otherwise they wouldn’t risk it), try other strategies.

If making a plane crash is the goal, getting explosives onto the aircraft might be a first thing to try. When it becomes harder to do this, other ways are tried. It might be easier to get a pilot and a fighter jet to shoot down the aircraft instead. And if that is too difficult one might try to shoot it down from the ground. Or the engines can be tampered with. Or the pilots can be fed a poison that will cause certain death in a certain time. If that doesn’t work, then one or many passengers could be infected with a virus causing nasty symptoms in a certain time frame that will cause panic on the aircraft.

The simple truth is: if there is a will, there is a way. Repeating the same procedure doesn’t make the procedure itself less likely to fail – it is rather the opposite: if a certain kind of control procedure is repeated, those wanting to avoid being spotted will have greater incentives to try other methods.

So what are the repeated security checks at airports really about – what or who are they for?

I think the increasing harassment of people traveling by air is nothing but a very expensive way of making people believe someone is doing something. There is fear involved in this issue on two levels: passengers’ fear of terrorism and the government’s fear of being accused for not doing enough.

Passengers’ fear of terrorism is based on the media’s over-reporting on the terror threats (you are, after all, many times more likely to die from a car accident or cancer than from terrorism), and this fear ultimately makes people call for security. Since airplanes were used in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, it is easy to think airplanes may be used in another such attack. This, in turn, makes the air transportation industry very exposed to threats that under normal circumstances could and should be ruled off. But if a greater part of the market fears there is a lack of security when flying great losses can result but from ill-founded rumors that “something” might happen. There is simply a lot at stake; a whole industry can die out.

This risk is of course of importance to those running and profiting from the airlines. But it is at least as important for the government, since a sudden drop in market demand for airline services means a huge technological retrogression in society (which means bad publicity for “the nation”) as well as increased unemployment creating a basis for increased social conflict and causing greater pressure on public finances.

It should thus be concluded that from the point of view of government and airline capital “something” must be done. It should also be concluded that it doesn’t really matter, at least not to the two interests mentioned, that this something is effective, but it must at least create a feeling of security when flying.

If everybody about to board an aircraft is stopped once and asked for papers, they will realize that something is done. But if they are stopped multiple times, when entering the airport, when approaching and entering the gate, and when boarding the plane, then the apprehension of these controls is not that the one and same thing happens over and over – what most people will feel as a result of repeated checks is that security is tighter than if they were stopped only once.

Looking at this from a different point of view, it becomes obvious that the “tightened security” at our airports is nothing but a costly attempt to create an illusion of security rather than a real strategy to make flying safe. The fact is that government-enforced security at airports is fundamentally a reaction to an event that has already taken place. There is no reason to believe the crooks will use the same method again even though it was, in their eyes, successful; they should be more likely to use another – and thus less expected – strategy next time.

What is needed is thus a proactive approach where intelligence efforts and knowledge of what these groups might do next should be important. Doing the same kind of routine multiple times at airports should have minimal effect on security.

But the illusion does serve a purpose: it creates an alibi for the government and the airline corporations. The latter could lose everything from another such attack while the former can gain a whole lot if people’s fears are translated into support for increased powers to “do something,” which means abolished limitations on government powers and restricted or repealed political rights of the citizenry.

The illusion of tighter security at airports is thus a result of mainly two things: the airline corporations playing on the defense to keep the industry alive, and government playing on the offense to gain powers. The costs of this are paid for by passengers spending hours having their bodies and bags searched and their privacy intruded, and taxpayers having to pick up the bill.

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Politics vs. Reality in Education

In one of my essays on LewRockwell.com this year, I discussed the fact that the Swedish government finances foreigners’ academic degrees. This is not to say that the government lets foreigners benefit from the tuition-less, i.e., taxpayer-financed, monopolized state university education. The student financing schemes available to Swedish citizens, which consists of a grant and a very beneficential “student loan,” is also available to all foreigners. There is no limit to what non-Swedish students get from Swedish taxpayers.

Some try to raise a discussion on this through advocating the instating of tuitions for students who are not Swedish citizens (and, since Sweden is a member of the E.U., citizens of other E.U. countries), but it seems the political establishment isn’t interested in this issue.

The reason there is no discussion, as I argue in my essay, is the fact that people advocating the high tax welfare state do not want to even discuss this matter. The main underlying reason for this is that if a discussion on tuitions for foreigners emerges, the rather ignorant “no one can afford to pay for the great Swedish education” goes down the drain. If foreigners are allowed, well: required, to pay for their education at Swedish universities quite a few things will become apparent:

  1. Very few will choose to attend Swedish universities to get a degree (they are only there because it is “free”), which will prove to the public Swedish university education isn’t the best in the world;
  2. Some will, no doubt, attend Swedish universities (for whatever reason) and thus obviously be able to afford 1) paying tuion and 2) living expenses. This will prove the fact that education can be paid for privately, and possibly that ordinary people (not only the filthily rich) can afford it.

These two points show very clearly that the Swedish state system of education is fundamentally based in two “welfarist legends”: that the domestic education system is the best in the world, and that such great education is too costly for people to pay themselves (and thus it needs to be “collectively” financed through levying taxes).

It is easy to understand the underlying reasons for these myths. If Swedish education isn’t the best in the world, i.e., if people from all corners of the earth didn’t choose to attend Swedish universities rather than American or British, there is no reason to accept the fact that it is extremely expensive. Also, if it isn’t a world class educational system there is no reason to prohibit private universities (except for the very few, very old private institutions like the Stockholm School of Economics, which is, by the way, dependent on government subsidies), since the public good universities obviously aren’t better than everything else.

The fact that Swedish universities aren’t the best in the world also means paying tuition to cover the real costs of running the universities would make education mediocre yet expensive. Thousands of students would simply choose to go to better universities abroad, while other would-be students would choose not to get an education at all. This would in turn put an end to the Swedish government’s plan to make everybody equal through supplying everybody with a university degree.

The economics of reality would thus call the great Swedish bluff and reality would then barge in havocing the glorious illusion of the superior Swedish way of doing things. Seeing it this way makes it rather “rational” for the political pushers and pullers to not want to discuss tuition for foreigners. It is, from their point of view, much better to let Swedish taxpayers finance everybody’s education than facing reality and risk smiting the political construction earning them a living.

What is interesting here is that this analysis, even though many may find it provocative and perhaps “too radical,” is very rational in how the incentives of political actors are analyzed. It is in the interest of the so-called “political class” to not let anyone publicly or authoritatively question the “public truths” about Swedish education. There is simply a lot – too much! – at stake here. A discussion on the educational system – no matter the outcome of it – would risk the whole system.

The analysis is, I agree, somewhat limited and seems very “simple” in the way I propose it. Yet there is reason to believe the excuses for not wanting to discuss an educational system falling apart are based in something else – something of greater value to the those refusing to discuss the issue at hand than the quality of public education. The question I am asking is simply: what could that value be?

Even though I might err to some degree in this analysis it is fairly obvious that what is happening is a typical “politics vs. reality” dispute. The choice is either politics or reality – the options are mutually exclusive.

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An Immigration Conundrum?

I just got an invitation from the Libertarian Party in Illinois to speak at their October convention on the immigration issue. This should probably be an effect of my Mises Daily Article on the Libertarian Immigration Conundrum. I still don’t know whether I will be able to fit the “LPI” into my schedule, but it is a very hot and very interesting topic – especially from a libertarian point of view (and, no doubt, in the libertarian movement).

In the article I describe the two main libertarian approaches to immigration: open borders, i.e., free migration, and border and immigration control as a legitimate means of protecting private property and securing the value of it. These two views seem to be each other’s very opposites: the former champions no borders at all and thus seems to imply there is no stopping of foreign invasions of immigrants; the latter makes use of the existing state and its violence to protect domestic private property from foreigners.

But as I argue in the article mentioned above, there is no real contradiction. The former doesn’t imply all sorts of invasions are welcome – there would still be property rights and the protection of those rights are at the very core of what a legitimate state (according to the minarchist argument) or the freed market for security and protection (the anarchist argument) would do. Does anyone really believe that libertarian proponents of the “open border” argument really mean immigrants should be allowed to live off other people’s property?

The latter utilizes the artificial, but existing, territorial borders of the state, and the fact that those very borders are “protected” by the state, as a first defense for private property, and thus refuses to accept foreigners into the realm of protected private property. This may sound strange, but the argument takes into account the history of the state as well as the current distribution of private property.

What this means is that the argument against open borders considers the effect of government over time: that the state for centuries has stolen “the people’s” property, thus the “property” of the state belongs to the people and should not be available to immigrants. It is not unowned property for the grabs, but property temporarily controlled by the state that should be returned to the rightful owners, who are definitely “citizens” (not foreigners).

These two approaches do emphasize different facts, but it does not necessarily make them opposite views. The “open borders” argument, for instance, stresses the fact that people (no matter their nationality) have the right to travel freely as long as they do not violate the rights to private property. The “controlled borders” argument clearly identifies the right of property owners to not have their property involuntarily seized or claimed by immigrants.

But the fact is that the conflict between these two approaches exists only if our point of departure is the welfare state: when the state hands out alms to whoever it deems “in need.” As long as there is a welfare state, the libertarian “controlled borders” argument has a point in saying foreigners are likely to be parasites on the property stolen from the citizenry by the state. Also, state laws limiting the right to people’s property through letting “everybody” make use of it also means foreigners get “something” out of “nothing” (they haven’t been oppressed by the state and thus have no legitimate claim on it, but still gain from the “benefits” or privileges handed out by it).

However, it should be equally troublesome to make use of that same state to enforce border controls and keep people out (and thereby violating their rights) of the “country” simply because the state has already stolen so much property. It is like allying with your mugger in order to make sure he or she doesn’t pass on your property to someone else.

The two approaches are both troublesome in that they are somewhat limited in their perspective. Where adherents of the “open borders” argument tend to discuss immigration from a macro perspective, “controlled borders” proponents discuss the topic from a very micro perspective. The problem exists in that the individual gets lost in a macro perspective, whereas immigration doesn’t exist in the micro view and thus cannot be discussed at all if that perspective is chosen (since immigration is an abstract and thus macro concept).

This discussion is likely to go on, perhaps forever. I elaborate on these points in the article mentioned at the beginning of this post: The Libertarian Immigration Conundrum. And I will further discuss the illusion of conflict at the LP Illinois convention, if I get there.

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Revenge of the Old Right?

US Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign to become the Republican party’s candidate for president in next year’s election has caused quite a buzz on the Internet. Paul is the number one presidential nominee on the Google search engine as well as on sites like YouTube and MeetUp.

This buzz, which was dismissed as “an Internet thing” by many a self-proclaimed political analyst, now seems to be spreading to the mainstream media. Not only local newspapers and regional tv stations report on Paul’s campaign, the national networks seem less unwilling and hostile to cover the success of Paul. Especially Paul’s recent report of having more cash on hand than so-called top runner John McCain (who is now more likely to quit the race than lead it).

Paul’s campaign has so far do doubt been extremely successful, he’s caused an enormous buzz compared to his fellow power-seekers, at least judging from the comparatively infinitesimal amount of money spent. His message of “constitutionalism” sticks out as a radical and new approach in the otherwise solidly “big statism” republican line-up. This revived “old rightism” of Paul’s (small government, free economy conservatism) obviously has a lot of followers in the party at the grassroot level. These grassroots, one would presume, probably consist mostly of the “old folk” (in age or mindset) of the Goldwater-Reagan style GOP, who are utterly tired of the neo-con rhetoric and policies, and the more radical historically oriented nationalist, i.e., constitution-loving, republican youth.

A problem for Paul’s campaign that has been widely discussed is the almost classic problem of moving from the digital to the real world. Internet-based businesses have rather unsuccessfully tried to overcome this problem since the dawn of Internet; being the number one supplier of goods or services on the “net” does not necessarily mean profits, even though the number of people connected to the Internet increases rapidly. So how do you take the step from “net” to “nature”?

The most common, and least impressive, means to do this is through using regular means of advertising: billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, tv commercials. This is where most Internet-based businesses fail: their business might be perfectly fit for the fast-moving low-cost digitally based market, but their margins are way too narrow to support costs of non-Internet marketing.

Ron Paul might already have overcome this problem without falling into the same “trap” as for-profit businesses (even though his campaign seems to have enough funds for advertising). The followers of the campaign are plenty and they seem quite eager to help. Reports show that a lot of people all around the nation spontaneously create signs and buy advertising space on billboards.

This spontaneous and decentralized type of “Hayekian” campaigning might be the key to a successful campaign, spreading the message far more effective than any standard presidential campaign. Also, since the number of whole-hearted Paul supporters tend to increase as he gets his message “out there” and people get to know of his existence, a reasonable guess is that this spontaneous grassroots “uprising” will increase in numbers and activity both as the number of supporters increase and the closer we get to the first primaries.

It may also, however, mean that literally millions of supporters will flee the remainder of the campaign following failure to reach a top position in Iowa January 14. There are both risks and opportunities with a large grassroots movement such as Paul’s; the grassroots are uncontrollable and unpredictable. Most presidential nominees, no doubt, would call the spontaneous organization of the Paul campaign “out of hand” or “chaotic.” Paul, however, as a free-market advocate, likely understands the true power of human action from the individual up (rather than the opposite and normal political approach: from the powerful down).

The crux of the campaign is not to find and establish sufficient support – it already exists and is growing literally on a daily basis – but to generate votes from it. As is the case today, it seems Paul’s support is based in at least three categories:

  1. different kinds of radicals who are not members of the GOP (but, rather, members of other parties, such as the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, etc.),
  2. since long passive “old style” republicans, and
  3. radical home-made republican constitutionalist theorists who regularly “meet” more nicknames on the Internet than friends in real life.

The first category of supporters cannot affect the outcome of the primaries, unless “reaching out” to new voters groups becomes a major issue. This category is, in this sense, already lost. These people might tip a presidential election over to a republican win over the democrats, but they are not necessarily a benefit in the primaries.

The second category of supporters could be a sleeper category, since they are members of the party and could, if they have nurtured and kept alive their networks of “friends” in the party, make a change. But the people in this category might not vote in the primaries: they are either old party folk who have lost their belief in both the party and the political system, or they are youngsters who have yet to gain real influence (but probably won’t because of their non-neocon convictions).

These people don’t vote in the primaries and probably haven’t since Reagan’s or Goldwater’s nominations. Will they again become active party people after decades of passivity? Only time will tell.

The third category is likely to be the greatest disappointment to the Paul campaign. These people, however many, are extremely active on the Internet and effectively “rule” (or, as Rush Limbaugh claims, “spams”) the political discussions and are experts at creating a buzz on numerous sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MeetUp. (Internet is their life, so why wouldn’t they know the “wheres” and “hows”?)

However, to be honest, a lot of these people might be very eagerly supporting Ron Paul and spreading his message digitally, but they are nothing but political philosophy and/or computer geeks. My guess is they don’t meet much people in real life (except, perhaps, for the pizza delivery guy and the people selling Jolt Cola at 7-Eleven), and so their influence on the political process is at best marginal.

There are of course quite a few individuals in each of these three categories who cannot be dismissed as easily as the stereotypic caricatures. Just because a large number of the Internet “Paulians” are computer geeks, it doesn’t follow that all of them are: there seems to be a great number of “real, ‘normal’ people” following and supporting Ron Paul. Most of them still fit in one (or two or three) of the categories outlined above, but they might not be as bad as I have chosen to describe them.

Actually, there should be a sub group of people of each category who are more than willing to support Ron Paul and to do it in a real way: through campaigning and party activism as well as voting in the primaries. The question is simply: how many are they? What is important here is: Are their numbers sufficient for winning?

As always in politics it is a winner takes all game, and Paul is still an underdog with (from the mainstream perspective) unexpected grassroots support with a campaign using the power of the Internet wisely. Can he win? It was highly unlikely, but it is less unlikely for every day that passes.

The reason? Paul’s campaign is utilizing the support in a very wise manner: the clearly formulated yet radical message of Paul makes headlines. As long as the campaign HQ can show real achievements on the Internet, and as long as the rooms where Paul is about to speak keep getting literally packed with supporters, reporters will realize there is real news about this guy from “nowhere.” As the the political shit hits the fan…

Also, so far the mainstream “big government” candidates have managed to increase Paul’s underdog and “challenger” image, which only makes him and his supporters stronger. As long as they, i.e., “Rudy McRomney,” stupidly refuses to debate Paul his followers will gain in numbers, get more active, and get even stronger. And the mainstream candidates will seem even less “of the people” and “for the people.”

The mainstream candidates have already lost the battle for “killing” Ron Paul. Whatever they do now can only make him stronger: keeping him out in the cold will cement the notion of Paul being a non-Establishment candidate, and suddenly welcoming him to the debates will inevitably make his message seem legitimate. No matter how the establishment decides to handle Ron Paul, they will lose.

But will they lose sufficiently for Paul to actually win? If Paul’s supporters are as many as they seem, they might be able to defeat the neocons and re-establish the Old Right in the Republican Party. But “If” should be written in bold capital letters – it is still a huge “if” and quite an accomplishment if done.

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Humble Collision Course?

I first thought of calling this blog Crash Course Commentary, since I intend to take opposite views to a lot of people’s ideas and seemingly sensible statements. I thought it would be cool, and the logo looked okay too with three capital Cs and a strike-through line.

However, my wife talked me out of that idea. She didn’t really understand what’s so “cool” about being aggressively opposed to someone or something. Also, she correctly noted, nobody ever gets anywhere being aggressive and “anti.” The only thing anyone can accomplish from having such a point of departure in each and every post, which such a blog name would demand, is to either sound like an immature teenager or simply make a whole bunch of enemies.

That is of course not the purpose of this blog, even though I have no problem with writing a little aggressively now and then.

Try a more humble approach, my wife continued, and be reasonable and respectful toward the people you criticize. That way you will be taken seriously, and your blog will be much more interesting than if it is a teenage rage blog.

Blog the way David D Friedman blogs – he’s always respectful, even when he’s really cross like [put something vulgar here].

What the [vulgar word again], I thought, she’s right (she usually is). That’s the way to do it. But I’m no David D Friedman (or whoever) and I don’t want to simply copy someone else’s blog concept, especially someone much more famous than I am – and he’s had his blog for years. What I needed to begin was what economists and business people would call a business concept or business idea – something uniquely Per Bylund yet not too weird or too hard to grasp.

So here we go, my own “business concept” for a blog.

I intend to keep the original thought of “crashing” against other people’s (or my own) ideas, theories and “sensible” statements. That’s who I am – I think in my own way and I don’t accept The Truth simply because someone tells me it is, really, The Truth. But I’m also taking my wife’s advice and doing it in a humble way. I want to discuss ideas, especially philosophical, political or economic such, but I intend to do it in an easy-to-understand, humble, and respectful, but still investigative, distrusting and skeptical manner.

Also, I really don’t want this blog to be another one of those “web diaries” with totally uninteresting and irrelevant posts about my personal life or posts that are only valid in the present. Since I intend to write about ideas I don’t think this will be the case, I needn’t worry about it. The world of ideas is everlasting and eternal, an idea is always alive and relevant no matter how crazy or who says it at what time.

Since “Humble Crash Course Commentary” sounds nothing but stupid, I’ve decided to call this blog Colliding Softly with the World of Ideas, or simply Colliding Softly. So let’s do it.

Please feel free to comment on the posts, or suggest new topics or ideas to disintegrate and analyze.

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