Per Bylund

Business Scholarship with a Swedish-Austrian Twist

Published Articles

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On Government-Sponsored Schooling

[ad]I have received quite a few comments on my latest article published on LewRockwell.com. In the article I discuss a reason for concluding government-sponsored schooling has failed that isn’t usually discussed: the fact that there are some individuals, after nine or twelve years of schooling, who still do not share the values of the so-called mainstream.

As I claim in the article, the diversity in values and beliefs should be much greater among the kids entering the school system than is showing among the same kids when they have “finished” their education. The reasons for this homogeneity in values, thoughts, and views on the world could be many. It is reasonable to assume people are likely to adopt each others’ views when interacting, especially when interacting in small groups for a long time (such as in school classes). It is also reasonable to assume kids 7-15 years old have not yet established a “fixed” world view yet, which means the difference between the individuals’ values as 7-year-olds and then as 15-year-olds might not be a good variable to analyze. (It should however also be true that 15-year-olds generally are often at the hight of their development to being adults, and thus even more confused and “unknowing” than they will ever be.)

However, these problems set aside it should be possible to study what happens with people’s values and convictions when they are educated. In our thoroughly statist western societies it is not unlikely that the state’s interest in schooling as well as in the media has propaganda reasons. There is reason why dictators take over the media and schools among the first things they do – there is value to them in doing so, they get the upperhand in educating the grown-up population and its children, they get to say what is truth and what is lie.

So one does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand some of the drivers for states to control education; at least one of them (if not all) is about ensuring and increasing control and power.

But the article is not about the “why’s” of government-sponsored and government-run schooling. It is about how this schooling is failing and how we can most easily see that it is in fact failing. Many libertarians have pointed to the fact that some people go through school without learning the essentials, thus telling us the state is inefficient and ineffective and therefore shouldn’t run schools. This is true, but we should perhaps be glad this is so.

Assuming it is true that there is a reason for the ruling class to monopolize education so that they can make sure their power is not questioned, there is reason to appreciate the fact that some people are forced to spend nine or twelve years in class without learning what is being taught. It might not make sense to say it is a good thing that some people don’t learn to read and write even though teachers try to teach them for a decade. To be able to read and write is of course a quality, and it is necessary in our western societies to have this quality.

However, if schools fail to educate children in the most basic knowledge taught, there is reason to assume schools also fail in other areas: they should fail to brainwash students to the same degree as they fail to teach people to read and write.

This is one of the points in my article, and it is an important point to make. If people have the same views and beliefs when graduating – then something is wrong. People shouldn’t have the same ideas, values, views, and beliefs. If schools really only teach knowledge and do not try to teach our kids how to be “good citizens,” there should be a bunch of kids graduating every year with a great variety of world views. People grow through forming their own beliefs and values – with or without the help of others. If this is really what is done in government schools, then people should come to different conclusions.

So why don’t they? Is it because government has found The Truth and therefore has the right to make us believe it? Or is it that government has reason to make us believe certain things?

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On the Peace Prize and Politics

In my recent Strike the Root article I discuss the true nature of the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from an apparent error in the beginning of the article (Nobel dedicated most of his fortune to the Prize, not all of it), the article truthfully tells a story of the Prize based on simple economic analysis based on investigating “who benefits”. In a way, the analysis is based on Public Choice, since it necessarily, however indirectly, includes analyzing the Norwegian national parliament and how its interests (rather than those of Alfred Nobel) affect the appointing of members to the Peace Prize Committee.

The problem stressed in the article is general, even though it uses an explicit example: the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice President Al Gore. The generality of the problem lies in the fact that politics tend to make things worse rather than guarantee an emphasis on the public good as opposed to private goods (if there is such a conflict at all). Actually, politics always act degenerating while most people tend to believe in political rather than private solutions. Why is this so?

One obvious reason is the common myth of democracy: that the people “rule themselves” and that public officials thus are public servants. There is however no reason to believe this is the case, and there are no empirical facts confirming that guardianship (with respect to individual citizens’ rights and interests) is what guides individual action in the political apparatus or the bureaucracy. It is however prevalent in the rhetoric, which seems to fool even some scientists that there is an unselfish dedication to what is right inherent in public bailieship.

It should be interesting to point out that the latter is a conscious mechanism or means in politics to cause the former. Guardianship rhetoric is often used by public officials in order to make the state appear as a guardian of the common interest, since that is clearly in the interest of the official. (This is however not considered a very interesting fact to analyze in political science.)

Back to the point. What does political action inherently bad as a means compared to any other possible means? It is not the fact that individual interests in the contemporary administration that makes politics itself a bad solution, even though such interests and actions [when not controlled] add costs to the solution. We know that government solutions are often or always more costly than any private enterprise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all solutions are bad. And it also doesn’t sufficiently show or explain how this is so.

We need to accept the fact that politics is not essentially a construct to achieve certain societal ends, even though many theorists in history, as well as currently, desperately line up unfounded claims that this is in fact the case. Politics is not a means to structure a body so that it efficiently can create value. Politics is also not an arrangement to provide a basis for action or change in an organization. Rather, politics is a construct to satisfy a need for some to control, constrain, and command.

In political science speak, politics has the purpose and ability to concoct and superficially “create” a common interest from aggregating the interests of many.

As we know, it isn’t possible to measure interests or values and it also isn’t possible to satisfy two distinctly different interests through offering a “middle way” solution. In such a solution both interests are left essentially unsatisfied, rather than only one of them in a winner-takes-it-all game. (In a market solution, of course, no interest need be left unsatisfied, since the market can offer multiple solution to a problem. But this is not the topic of this post.)

The interests that always lose in a game of politics is the the interests of the public. The reason for this is that “the public” isn’t a whole and thus does not ever have one distinct interest in any issue. There are multiple interests, often as many as there are individuals, and they cannot be satisfied at once in the legal framework of a state.

One could argue the duty of public officials is to find the solution that is “best” according to a certain set of values arranged hierarchically. The best way of doing this would of course to simply enforce majority rule: satisfy the interests of the majority in every issue and thus maximize the number of satisfied interests in society.

The problem of this approach is of course the well-known problem of utilitarianism: what if interests are not equally valued by the individuals holding them? Utilitarianism cannot be subjected to a game of statistics since a person could feel very strongly about a certain issue whereas a lot people may have a slight disinterest in that very issue. Do you judge in favor of the single person at the “expense” of the others? Or do you add the “slight disinterest” of many people together and claim this is “more” than the “strong interest” of the individual? What ration needs to be satisfied in order to make this conclusion? And perhaps more importantly:

How do you measure interest?

The utilitarian solution is simply not a solution, which leaves us with the “middle way” solution. In a two-interest world the task should be fairly simply; just document the interests and offer a solution where parts of both interests are satisfy, and make sure advocates of both parties accept the solution as “better than status quo.”

But the simplicity of this solution is deceiving. Even if we assume that the interests can easily be documented and measured (which is a requirement here too!), the solution doesn’t apply to politics. Many great minds have mistakenly assumed the state takes on the role of objective negotiator between interests, and that the state’s [negotiator’s] job is simply to find a “best fit” solution. This is not the case.

In a real negotiation the parties generally agree on who is to negotiate for them. Also, the parties pay the negotiator(s) for his or her services – they might even pay him or her for successfully suggesting a solution acceptable to both parties. This is certainly not the case for the state: it doesn’t get paid for taking on certain conflicts of interest and it also doesn’t have an interest in being objective.

Also, the state shouldn’t be denoted “it”- it is not a person or a tight organization dedicated to achieving a certain goal. Rather, “it” consists of a number of people with interest in satisfying their own interests first, be it the power of their formal position or their personal wealth. Thus, adding the state in this case simply adds an interest to the equation – our two-interest game is suddenly, in the simplest possible case, a three-interest game after adding the state!

It should be much more difficult finding an acceptable solution to a three-interest conflict, especially if the third interest is added after the conflict already exists! Adding to this that the third interest gets veto power to any suggested solution, and that it effectively has the power to force all other interests to comply with the solution of its choice, makes it impossible to find a winner among the original conflicting parties.

And what about the incentives of payment? The state, again talking of it as “an it,” has the power to charge whatever it wants actually supplying whatever it wants. This is called taxation – there is no connection between payment and delivery.

This is a major reason why the state tends to make things worse rather than offer a solution to problems. A market solution would presumably offer a wide range of negotiation and arbitration services (in fact it already does) by companies and individuals that make profits through supplying non-biased solutions to conflicting interests. And it isn’t difficult to assume some of them may even choose to charge the parties only for accepted solutions.

The Norwegian parliament represents 169 individual sets of interests (not counting interests of parties, special interest groups, etc.) that will affect who will be appointed to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and the individuals in the committee will have further opportunities to satisfy their own interests when awarding the Prize.

As is asked in the article, Is there really no one in the world who has done a better job for peace during the last year? There should be many. But the right question to ask is: who can be awarded the Prize in order to maximize the satisfaction of the interests of the individuals in the committee and the Norwegian parliament? The choice to award the IPCC and Al Gore suddenly makes a lot more sense.

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On Blinded by Hatred

Psychology is an interesting field of science that potentially can explain how people behave, why they behave that certain way and what triggered their action. In essence, psychology tries to map out the mental mechanisms of a human being’s brain, and thereby increasing our collective knowledge of who we are and what we could expect of ourselves as well as other people.

In this sense, psychology offers a framework for studying man that is not present in other social sciences, even though the basic assumption in economics covers the aggregate of these mechanisms in a formal and simplified way. Psychology should be interesting to us, since it strives to understand and explain why certain people develop a passion for justice whereas others have “no problem” with working as concentration camp guards. The mechanisms of the human psyche is the direct cause of such personalities and convictions, not genetics.

Whether psychology can explain and make us understand how and why people adopt certain political views we will find out. It is however likely that there are mechanisms in our minds that trigger certain beliefs and thus that these beliefs are products of something. My personal passion for justice, as a basis for my conviction that liberty and nothing but liberty is the natural right of all men and women, has to come from somewhere. To some extent it is a conscious choice, but it is presumably to a greater degree a product of my mind valuing logic over emotion and a certain sense of justice over other kinds of justice.

If psychology has the potential of explaining why people take on certain ideas and develop convictions and beliefs, it also has a potential of explaining how people in great numbers tend to adopt a single, aggregate view that does not necessarily fit with the principles held and championed by the individual.

In a new article published today on LewRockwell.com I discuss such a phenomenon: pro-war libertarians advocating a continued war on Iraq and even wars on other countries. As libertarians, they should have a distinctly individualist view of man as well as the world, yet pro-war libertarians tend to argue “we” have a responsibility to protect “our values” and “our way of life”.

Who are the people included in this “we”? Obviously, the pro-war libertarian includes him- or herself, but only in an indirect sense. When demanding that “we” do something about the threat to “our culture” by the peoples of the Middle East, they are not the ones signing up for service in the US army or navy. Rather, they invest their precious time to argue the importance of other people sacrificing their lives for the common good – a view naturally scarce among libertarians.

The fact that many of these pro-war libertarians are non-Americans yet call for the United States government to carry out their deeds, is interesting in many ways. These individuals adopt a rights-based-sounding argument, yet who are really rights-bearers and who are simply subjected to the rights of peoples, nations, or other aggregates?

The view expressed, and the arguments put forth, are in essence individualist reasoning applied on states, nations, and cultures. The “we” used in the arguments is but a trick to include the listener in the victim of the presumed conflict, and thus make him or her more prone to “understand” why it is important to “fight back”. In reality, this “we” means “I” but in the sense only a statesman uses it: meaning “I, the nation” in a very Louis XVI sense.

What is under attack, and thus needs to be protected by waging wars, is the concept of “our nation” or “our culture” – and this ultimately includes you and I, and makes us responsible for whatever is going on in the world. This point of view implicitly, but necessarily, subjects the individual to the collective and even makes the individual essentially worthless: the collective needs and values must be protected and fought for.

This is where psychology could really make a difference through finding the mechanisms in our brains causing some people, who are (or, at least, were) fully convinced libertarian individualists, to adopt a very opposite viewpoint yet keeping the principles intact through ignoring the inherent contradictions in the arguments put forth. Many pro-war libertarians have not changed their principles or convictions, but the fact that they identify a threat they find personally terrifying has made them adopt a contradicting set of arguments, which they incorporate in their libertarian set of values.

The pro-war libertarian, at least the ones who are symptoms of this phenomenon, embed their new nation- or culture-based convictions in a hard-core libertarian lingo so as to make them appear as true libertarian arguments. Whether this is a mechanism of the brain to protect itself and the person from identifying the conflicting views adopted, or whether it is a means for justifying a change of heart is yet to find out.

Read the article Blinded by Hatred? On So-Called Pro-War Libertarians. Comments on this blog post as well as the article are appreciated. Submit them on this blog or e-mail the author.

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On Real and Fake Anarchism

In a recent article published on Strike the Root called Real and Fake Anarchism I argue it is important to use the term “anarchism” to describe one’s ideals. (At least if one is an anarchist.) Because not doing so means distancing yourself and your personal interpretation of anarchism from other anarchists today and in previous times. There are many great anarchist thinkers throughout the anarchist tradition of thought who gladly – and proudly – used the term to denote their convictions.

Anarchism as an ideal is the very opposite to that which most people think of when hearing the word. As we know, people think of destruction, chaos, and war. But anarchism as an ideal has always been about the right for every individual to lead his or her life as he (or she) sees fit. Every man, woman and child has an inviolate right to self – life, liberty, as well as possessions – and that right needs to be respected. Since the state, by its very existence, violates the rights of individuals, the state must be abolished.

This destructive property of the state is inherent – it is an organization that by definition is based on the use of force, and it is hierarchical and seeks to centralize power in society. Force, hierarchies, and power are not compatible with individual freedom, and therefore the state as well as statism are examples of the very opposite of anarchism. Anarchism seeks peace and harmony through liberating people from oppression – force and power are the opposites of anarchism, and whoever has, seeks, or advocates such are thereby disqualified from being anarchists. Rather, they would be enemies of anarchists.

This definition of anarchism makes any attempt to label as “anarchists” people burning property or violating people nothing but ridiculous. But it is also, in a sense, a sad attempt by antagonists of the anarchist tradition to denigrate anarchism, to make anarchism seem like a (or the) bad alternative. It is nevertheless a widely used tool for those with power to work over anarchism.

How to best denigrate each individual’s right to life and liberty? To make it appear as the worst possible alternative.

“Lawlessness” is sometimes used to define anarchism. Even though it is true, at least in the sense that anarchism does not allow for government-enforced laws, there is nothing in the concept of lawlessness that without a doubt makes it chaotic, destructive, and war-like. Why would the lack of rules set and enforced by a centralized power entity mean chaos and destruction?

To draw such a conclusion one will have to embrace the thesis that man is inherently bad, and would willingly kill, rape, and plunder were it not for a superior power forcing him not to. Yet, the champions of this strange philosophy fail to show how a society of such bad people become a peaceful and orderly society when all are subdued by a single, centralist power – and how that power, run by men, does not degenerate into terror and destruction. After all, if man is inherently evil, there is nothing we can do about it – and it certainly rules out making some of those inherently evil folks the rulers of others.

Anarchism does not, however, claim that man is inherently good – that only harmony is possible. If this were true, then there would be no wars, no problems, no terror. But there are an awful lot of bad things happening in our world – and bad things have always happened, throughout history. Anarchism does not claim man is inherently good or bad, only that man is – and that is every man’s right to live his life as he sees fit.  The argument for anarchism is different depending on the individual anarchist’s perspective, but it always boils down to this: people have a right to be free, and that freedom is only limited by other people’s equal right to their freedoms.

How can this be chaotic, destructive, and a cause of terror?

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On the Old Right and Neo-Conservatism

My latest article on Strike the Root discusses the philosophical roots of the two warring factions in the GOP. The point is not to make an in-depth analysis of the real opinions expressed by the proponents of each side, but rather to analyze the fundamental moral conviction of the so-called Old Right, on the one hand, and the “neocons,” on the other.

What is interesting about the GOP is that these two factions are so different, yet both of them seem to feel they belong in the republican party. As I write in the article:

A political party based on a certain kind of ideology shouldn’t be able to attract people with views fundamentally contradictory to the ones expressed in the party program. So we should be able to assume that the Old Right and Neo-conservative factions of the party must agree on a majority of the fundamental points, however not necessarily on the political agenda, the priorities, perhaps not even the end goals.

This should be the assumption people tend to make; it is the assumption that is closest at hand when discussing one single political party – the political party currently enjoying the presidency – since a party has a common set of values and a common program. Politics in some kind of democracy, after all, is a quest for enough of the people’s support to gain power and realize the political program.

This should mean that if you have ideas that are fundamentally contradictory to the ones proposed by the party in its program and by its leaders, then what are you doing in this party? Yet people tend to stick around – this has been the case in the GOP for the last three decades, as well as for the last decade or so in British New Labour, and for only a few years in the Swedish conservative party Moderaterna.

In the three parties mentioned the fundamental ideas championed by the party apparatus has changed. The GOP and Moderaterna have accepted an accepting, efficiency-seeking pragmatic view of politics. The republican party after Ronald Reagan has become “neocon,” which essentially means they have adopted a completely new way of seeing the State and the individual – and the inherent conflict arising between them.

Moderaterna has done the exact same thing, even though it is a process that started some 25 years later. Sweden, of course, is not a super power and therefore imperialistic waging of wars is not on the agenda. But ideologically the party, under Fredrik Reinfeldt, has accepted the legacy of the hegemonic Social Democratic party and thereby erased most of the individualist values previously cherished. The new government under Reinfeldt consists solely (almost) of apparatchiks following whatever orders are issued by headquarters. The old ideology and set of values that created and united the party have suddenly evaporated.

The New Labour has made a journey in the opposite direction if we accept the left-right dimensions of party politics – from the left to the right. In their case, the situation was to some degree the same as it had been for the Swedish Moderaterna. The conservative party of the UK had had power for a very long time, and the conflict-laden Labour party simply didn’t have power within reach. Something needed to be done.

I am not sure to what degree this scenario of political futility experienced in a situation where the greatest competitor is a hegemonic power is applicable on the GOP. But something has made the neocons rise after the rather successful presidency of Ronald Reagan. Or it could simply be the evil legacy of the presidents Bush…?

These three parties are great examples of how warring factions within a political party seeking power of government tend to stay in the party long after the battle would reasonably seem lost. The libertarians in Moderaterna, the socialists in New Labour, and the Old Right in the GOP all share the same fate: they quickly became minorities and approached extinction, at least as far as representation in the party goes.

Ron Paul, previously discussed on this blog here and here, has managed to in some sense awaken the people of the Old Right in the GOP, and that makes it a very interesting situation. If he is successful he might very well create a renaissance for the old-style conservatism of people like Albert J. Nock, just like Gösta Bohman was able to successfully make somewhat libertarian ideas and ideals a natural part of Moderaterna in the 1970s.

Perhaps charismatic people like Bohman and Paul are able to create ideological tipping points within parties. This is a very interesting issue to study, at least if one is interested in organizations and institutions in society. What makes it so extraordinarily interesting is the fact that these tipping points, if they exist and are generated, seem to be “tipping” the core values of a political party from one end to another.

As is discussed in the article mentioned above, the difference between the Old Rightism and Neo-Conservatism – as well as between the factions in both New Labour and Moderaterna – is fundamental. As I summarize the differences in the article:

The Old Right is a conservatism that begins and ends with the individual – from this follows that whatever government “needed” is a necessary evil to protect the individual’s rights. Neo-conservatism claims universalist principles and subjects the means as well as the individual to what is necessary to get there.

The differences in real politics might not be as great as I describe them here, but that is a matter of inconsistency among the champions of both sets of values. The “old righters” might be able to get along with the “neocons” in most issues, but that is simply an effect of people generally being ignorant of the values they cherish – and what they really mean.

From a moral-philosophical point of view there is no common ground on which the people of the Old Right can accept the Neo-conservatives, and vice versa. The former have a deontological worldview which supplies them with arguments for the individual and against the State. From their point of view it isn’t conceivable to wage war in order to spread an ideal, since that would necessarily violate individual rights of both the attacked and the attackers.

From the neocon perspective, the goal is of greater value than the means and thus it is not only possible – but desirable – to enforce their superior way of life. At the barrel of a gun, if necessary.

Read the article here.

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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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