Ten Reasons Why Statism Is (Nearly) Universally Accepted and a Brief Note on Why It Matters to Know Them

It seems scarcely an exaggeration to say that today’s inhabited world is almost universally statist. Thus, the task facing libertarians remains comprehensive and formidable. Since the shape of social reality is ultimately determined by the ideas people hold, undermining the influence of any given doctrine requires prior understanding of the reasons for both its active espousal and its passive acceptance. Consequently, in order to oppose statism effectively, it is necessary to get a grasp of the factors that make the societies of the world endorse or at least consent to the existence of centralized monopolies of aggression, violence and coercion. What follows is my attempt at compiling a succinct list of what appear to me to be the main driving forces behind the phenomenon just described.

1. Intellectual propaganda. The statized education system managed to accomplish a formidable task of creating a number of very potent mental viruses – the theory of social contract, the theory of public and collective goods, the theory of political obligation, various theories of monopoly and other “market failures,” various theories of “positive legislation,” the doctrine of the divine right of kings, etc. The examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. To non-intellectuals, these propagandist concoctions oftentimes seem to be serious, rational justifications for obeying the dictates of monopolies of force. To intellectuals, on the other hand, even if they see the (quite flagrant) logical inadequacies of these sophistical constructions, their adoption and propagation usually appears to be one of the safest ways to secure permanent, lucrative and influential job positions.

2. Emotional propaganda. People whose life is by their own admission bland and uninteresting often turn their attention to the antics of various celebrities. Statism never fails to jump on this opportunity to make people emotionally attached to public figures by trying to confer as much notability as possible on politicians, bureaucrats and other high-ranking representatives of the apparatus of institutionalized violence. As a result, the majority of the state’s subjects fall prey to the large-scale version of the Stockholm Syndrome, feeling genuine sympathy for their oppressors even if they do not belong to their immediate electoral clientele.

3. Self-deception. It would seem quite natural to suppose that for the majority of right-minded, decent people the realization that one is being systematically robbed and threatened with severe violence in case of non-subordination is abhorrent to the point of being psychologically unbearable. And yet, since this is precisely what happens under statism, a natural psychological self-defense mechanism for such people is to engage in self-deception and attempt to justify the systematic depravities inflicted upon them. Thus, they are browbeaten into accepting the double “morality” that every rationalization for the ethical distinction between the rulers and the ruled has to rely on.

4. Simple ignorance. It is a sad testimony to the quality of intellectual perspicacity of the majority of the human race that in principle statism can flourish even in the absence of any additional intellectual propaganda on the part of its adherents. As was acutely observed by Bastiat (and reiterated by Hazlitt), it is enough for people to look only at the short-term consequences of a given action, or only at its consequences for a given group, to accept the notion that the apparatus of institutional coercion can create prosperity for some without destroying the prosperity of others. It is of course imperative for the statists to exploit these widespread cognitive deficiencies to the utmost extent.

5. Fear. This element could be understood in a twofold manner. On the one hand, it is fear of responsibility for one’s own life and its shape, which culminates in the conviction that it is desirable to be able to have recourse to an institution capable of forcibly shifting this responsibility onto others. On the other hand, it is a more general horror vacui – fear of independent thinking and acting, fear of living in a world devoid of any ultimate temporal disciplinarian, whose final, indisputable argument is the authoritative argumentum ad baculum, the ability to subordinate a recalcitrant reality by means of legalized (or even sanctified) coercion. After all, it might be quite dispiriting to realize how difficult it would be to accomplish one’s wishes were they not aligned with those of the unquestionable institution just mentioned.

6. Laziness. Drawing on Oppenheimer’s distinction between the economic means and the political means, it can immediately be noticed that using the former to earn one’s bread is time- and effort-consuming, whereas the latter – as soon as the apparatus of institutionalized violence is already in place – can be utilized relatively quickly and effortlessly. Modern-day social democracy epitomizes the redistributive function of the political means. If one can regularly “vote himself” the property of others rather than obtain it through voluntary exchange of independently produced, valuable goods, why shouldn’t he – in the absence of any inhibiting scruples – opt for the former alternative and support the system that enshrines it?

7. Envy. The egalitarian ideology of modern statism, based on the coercive demand that the stream of politically redistributed goods and valuables flow specifically into the hands of those who did nothing to deserve their acquisition, is exceptionally useful in channeling envy and dog-in-the-manger resentment into support for the system that institutionalizes these low and base instincts. Unlike meritocracy, whose results come about through the medium of the totality of voluntary interpersonal interactions, egalitarianism needs to marry statism in order to achieve its envy-driven aims. And since envy is unfortunately a very widespread characteristic, we should not be surprised by the level of backing for the monopolization and centralization of force that it generates.

8. Lust for power. There might be good evolutionary reasons for the contention that human beings are naturally prone to trying to dominate their fellow brothers and sisters. Perhaps noticing that others enjoy a higher standard of living, and consequently higher chances of passing their genes into the future, creates in many an instinctive eagerness to gain similar opportunities in the most convenient manner, even if that means forcibly appropriating someone else’s resources. Be that as it may, we should not forget that a rational morality can be argued to be precisely the tool for disposing of some of the more questionable elements of our putative evolutionary inheritance.

9. Habituation. Statism and its destructive offspring – war, slavery, expropriation and intellectual corruption – have proven themselves to be very resilient and long-lived social plagues. Consequently, it is relatively easy for statists to describe these phenomena as historical, civilizational or even metaphysical necessities. Furthermore, the apparent robustness of monopolies of force allows its rulers and employees to depict non-statist social arrangements as, at best, a radical an precarious unknown, and, at worst, a system prone to endless conflict of everyone against all. Under such conditions, becoming aware and convinced of the viability of voluntarist alternatives, as well as working towards their implementation, is all the more difficult.

10. Resignation. The ultimate goal of statism is to throw every single individual into the state of passivity and lethargic inaction as regards the efforts to shake the parasitic classes off one’s back. This goal is exemplified by fostering the all too known “taxes and death” attitude. Thus, even those unconvinced of the moral or economic necessity of the existence of monopolistic apparatuses of coercion, or even those actively opposed to their existence on intellectual grounds, are supposed to reconcile themselves to the fact that their doubts and objections have absolutely no influence on the shape of binding social arrangements, neither today nor at any time in the future.

Having clearly identified the above factors, libertarians should be able to pursue their fundamental aims with much greater efficiency. As I emphasized at the outset, social reality is ultimately shaped by the ideas held by its inhabitants. Pinpointing the most prevailingly pernicious among them should make it far easier for the supporters of freedom to counter their symptoms and fight their root causes successfully.

[Reprinted from Strike-The-Root.com]

Rejoinder to Block's Defense of Evictionism

The present paper is an attempt to show that Walter Block’s defense of the ostensibly libertarian character of evictionism against my original criticisms is unsuccessful, though certainly informative and thought-provoking. In my exploration of Block’s counter-criticisms, I focus in particular on the role played in his account by the principle of proportionality, as well as on the putative disanalogy between cases of abortion and child abandonment on the one hand and my airplane thought experiment on the other hand.

[Read More]

My Academic Publications

Below is a list of my publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, academic monographs, and book chapters:

43. “Hayek a gospodarka informacyjna”, in Hayek wielkim ekonomistą był, ed. Benedyk, M., Instytut Misesa, Wrocław (2026), 145-56.

42. “Proactivity in Economics: Between Resourcefulness and Entrepreneurship”, Routledge (2026).

41. “The Two Faces of Realism in Austrian Economics”, in Walter Block – Anarcho-Capitalist Austro-Libertarian, ed. Popescu, G. H., Nica, E., Addleton Academic Publishers, New York (2025), 55-8.

40. “The Economics and Sociology of Global Totalitarianism”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 31, 2 (2025), 7-20.

39. “Evictionism in the Light of Praxeological Economic Theory”, Studies in the History of Philosophy 16, 1 (2025), 101-110.

38. “The Proactive Society: an Introductory Exposition”, in Transition Economies in Central and Eastern Europe: Austrian Perspectives, ed. Sielska, A., Routledge, London-New York (2023), 133-39.

37. “The Ethical Structure of Production”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 28, 1 (2022), 25-38.

36. “Economics and Ethics: Neither Independent nor Intertwined, But Mutually Relevant”, in Defending Liberty: Essays in Honor of David Gordon, ed. Rasmussen, D. B., Wiśniewski, J. B., Ludwig von Mises Institute (2022), 227-52.

35. “Defending Liberty: Essays in Honor of David Gordon”, ed. with Rasmussen, D. B., Ludwig von Mises Institute (2022).

34. “The Capital Structure of Libertarian Production”, Studia Humana 11, 2 (2022), 1-9.

33. “Przedsiębiorczość jako fundament dynamicznej analizy gospodarczej”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 27, 2 (2021), 63-80.

32. “Spontaniczność instytucji a współpraca społeczna”, in Niech żyje rewolucja: 150 lat zasad ekonomii Carla Mengera, ed. Sielska, A., Wydawnictwo UwB, Białystok (2021), 129-38.

31. “Austrian Economics as a Paradigm of Golden Mean Thinking”, New Perspectives On Political Economy 16, 1-2 (2020), 39-51.

30. “Is Statism an Amoral Philosophy?”, Studia Humana 9, 2 (2020), 121-26.

29. “On the Impossibility of Intellectual Property”, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 23, 1 (2020), 33-45.

28. “Dobra i zła interdyscyplinarność w ekonomii”, in Ekonomia jako dyscyplina naukowa i kierunek kształcenia. Aktualne trendy i pożądane zmiany, ed. Rutkowska-Tomaszewska, E., Kwaśnicki, W., Difin, Warszawa (2020), 94-105.

27. “Wpływ teorii makroekonomicznych na etyczną jakość praktyki finansowej”, Annales. Etyka w Życiu Gospodarczym / Annales. Ethics in Economic Life 22, 4 (2019), 7-20.

26. “Austrian Welfare Economics: A Reply to Wysocki and Megger”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 25, 3 (2019), 25-8.

25. “Word, Action, and Entrepreneurship”, Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 57, 1 (2019), 161-74.

24. “The Economics of Law, Order and Action: The Logic of Public Goods”, Routledge (2018).

23. “Etyka gospodarcza jako refleksja nad jakościowym potencjałem działalności ekonomicznej”, Annales. Etyka w Życiu Gospodarczym / Annales. Ethics in Economic Life 21, 1 (2018), 47–56.

22. “Legal Polycentrism and Contractarianism”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 23, 2 (2017), 75–82.

21. “Repugnancy, Marginalism, Transitivity, and Population Ethics”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 21, 3 (2015), 21–37.

20. “A Note on Collective Action, Cooperation, Collusion, and Voluntary Production of Public Goods”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 21, 2 (2015), 55–8.

19. “A comment on the concept of desire satisfaction and the Mises-Hayek dehomogenization debate”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 21, 1 (2015), 63–8.

18. “Legal Polycentrism, the Circularity Problem, and the Regression Theorem of Institutional Development”, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 17, 4 (2014), 510–8.

17. “Defense as a Private Good in a Competitive Order”, Review of Social and Economic Issues 1, 1 (2014), 3-35.

16. “The Methodology of the Austrian School of Economics: The Present State of Knowledge”, Ekonomia - Wroclaw Economic Review 20, 1 (2014), 39-54.

15. “Legal monocentrism and the paradox of government”, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 16, 4 (2013), 459-78.

14. “Non-excludability, Externalities, and Entrepreneurship – An Overview of the Austrian Theory of Common Goods”, Journal of Prices & Markets 1, 1 (2013), 57-68.

13. “Nonrivalness, Subjectivity and Capital – An Overview of the Austrian Theory of Club Goods”, New Perspectives On Political Economy 9, 1-2 (2013), 24-37.

12. “Abortion, Libertarianism, and Evictionism: A Last Word”, Libertarian Papers 5, 1 (2013), 153-62.

11. “On Regime Uncertainty and Legal Entrepreneurship”, Independent Review 17, 2 (2012), 253-6.

10. “A Note on Being Healthy”, Diametros 31 (2012), 133-5.

9. “Irreducible Holism”, Diametros 30 (2011), 76-92.

8. “Do Moral Dilemmas Tell Against the Consistency of a Given Moral System?”, Reason Papers 33 (2011), 44-59.

7. “Robust Political Economy and the Question of Motivations”, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 14, 1 (2011), 56-65.

6. “Well-Being and Objectivity”, Libertarian Papers 3, 7 (2011).

5. “Response to Block on Abortion, Round Three”, Libertarian Papers 3, 6 (2011).

4. “Rejoinder to Block's Defense of Evictionism”, Libertarian Papers 2, 37 (2010).

3. “A Critique of Block on Abortion and Child Abandonment”, Libertarian Papers 2, 16 (2010).

2. “Well-informedness and rationality: a philosophical overview”, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 12, 3 (2009), 43-56.

1. “Free Will and Preactions”, Libertarian Papers 1, 23 (2009).

Collective goods theory vs Rothbardian welfare economics and vice versa

My fellowship presentation on Rothbard's welfare theory, its criticisms and counter-criticisms, delivered at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (Auburn, AL) on July 22.

Libertarianism and Its Impersonators

The distortion of reality begins with the distortion of the words used to describe it. That is why, whenever one notices that a word one thinks of positively experiences an upsurge in popularity, one should remain cautious. It is certainly possible that such an occurrence indicates a genuine increase in the appreciation for and understanding of the ideas that the word in question signifies. But it is equally possible that it indicates an attempt on the part of some relatively popular interest group to dress its members’ own ideas in what they take to be an attractive and fresh-looking costume. This, in turn, allows the groups openly hostile to what the original term stands for to launch their polemics against straw-men and caricatures, which allows them to wage the battle of ideas more effectively without displaying any genuine logical superiority over their intellectual opponents. Hence the necessity to keep the terms that constitute any well-established and well-developed intellectual tradition faithful to their original meanings if any sensible and fruitful discussion of them is to remain possible.

Libertarianism – perhaps on account of its principled and clear-cut character – has been a relatively frequent target of such attempts at hostile appropriation by means of semantic distortion. In what follows, I would like to describe a few positions masquerading as the original doctrine under consideration and point to the dangers they pose to the message of liberty. Consequently, my suggestion is that the values it carries can be preserved only by sticking intransigently to its intellectually pure and unadulterated version. Having made the above brief introduction, let me now move to enumerating the aforementioned approaches:

1. Utilitarian or Coasian “libertarianism.” According to this theory, the primary function of property rights is to reduce transaction costs – that is, the costs associated with finding the person with whom we wish to transact, coming to a mutual agreement with her, drawing up a requisite contract, enforcing its terms, etc. And while it is praxeologically true that the recognition of property rights is absolutely indispensable for overcoming some of the fundamental so-defined transaction costs (e.g., the costs stemming from otherwise irresolvable ownership conflicts, the costs associated with the inability to perform economic calculations and thus rationally allocate resources, the costs relating to the absence of the signaling function of prices, etc.), it is not necessarily the case that any given pattern of originally appropriated and contractually acquired property titles is bound to minimize the total amount of more detailed, circumstance-specific transaction costs. Imagine, for instance, that someone owns a parcel of land that constitutes a pass through an otherwise nearly impassable mountain range separating two merchant colonies. It would be highly beneficial for the inhabitants of both of these colonies if a road could be made through this pass, but the original owner refuses to sell his land to any of the road-building companies since it has been in the possession of his family for centuries and it has a sentimental value to him. Obviously enough, making detours around the mountain range is bound to generate significant transaction costs (measured in terms of market revenue, not in terms of psychological utility) as compared to the counterfactual scenario in which the road is built through the pass. In such cases, the recommendation of utilitarian “libertarianism” is to expropriate the recalcitrant owner and then offer him an “adequate” monetary compensation, corresponding to the anticipated market value of the road. But there is clearly nothing even remotely libertarian about such a recommendation – it involves an exercise of coercive force against the life and property of an independent, self-owning individual. It conceives of individual liberty as subordinate to collective money-making efficiency. Thus, even putting aside all the value-free, economic objections to the feasibility of making interpersonal comparisons of utility, the belief in which underlies the approach in question, it fails the essential moral test of paying unconditional respect to private property rights in one’s own body, labor and the fruits thereof.

2. Minarchist or militarist “libertarianism.” These are in fact two conceptually separable positions, but there are good theoretical and empirical grounds for claiming that acknowledging the legitimacy and desirability of the former invariably leads to the deadly excesses of the latter. I think it is fair to characterize the adherents of the approach under consideration as subscribing to the following catchphrase: We hold liberty to be the supreme value, but we realize that in order to secure the maximum feasible amount of liberty, some of it has to be sacrificed to the necessary evil of the monopolistic apparatus of coercion. In other words, unless one consents to the abrogation of some of his private property rights, one will not be able to enjoy any private property rights at all. The literature countering this claim on economic grounds is vast (see, e.g., here), so it would take too much time to even summarize it here. Instead, let me ask in this context just a couple of short, critical questions of mainly moral and psychological nature. Is it reasonable to assume that statist coercion is necessary to enforce contracts, but the alleged “social contract” that is supposed to establish the state needs no meta-state to enforce it, thus effectively becoming a self-enforcing anomaly? Is it prudent to expect that ceding the task of maintaining justice onto an entity that is both monopolistic and coercive will not lead to it continually perverting justice in its favor? Is it sensible to claim that an institution that forcibly imposes its protective services on others, unilaterally determines their price and excludes all competition in this area will not attempt to benefit from initiating conflicts or letting them develop rather them resolving them or preventing their occurrence? If one is ready to answer these questions in the negative, and it seems to me that there exist very good reasons for doing so, then one should not be puzzled by the suggested slippery slope from minarchism to militarism. And one should not be surprised by the contention that neither holds much promise for preserving individual liberty.

3. Anything goes “libertarianism.” This approach suggests that any social, political or economic change that lightens the burden of statism in even the most infinitesimal way should be considered libertarian and those who bring it about should be regarded as libertarian-minded. In other words, if a political party reduces the income tax by one percentage point or repeals one out of a hundred thousand regulations, its members should be thought of as fundamentally decent people and sincere supporters of personal freedom. Such an attitude, of course, trivializes libertarianism and induces its putative followers to rest on their laurels much too easily. If a communist system is replaced with a social democratic one, this is surely a welcome change, but it seems a grave abuse of language to call it libertarian. If a band of local highwaymen decides to lower the tribute it regularly extorts from the other inhabitants of a given area, should it be praised as a group of committed individualists and voluntarists? What use can there be in such semantic equilibristics other than to shift the spectrum of intellectual discourse in the direction opposite from that pointed to by the original and properly radical version of the discussed theory? It does not help a good cause to try to subsume every acceptable development under a program aimed at advancing it. The more inclusive a given position gets, the more it runs the danger of becoming meaningless. In order to avoid that danger, let us bear in mind the crucial difference between the changes that, relatively speaking, move us towards the libertarian vision and the changes that are also consistent with its principles.

4. Countercultural “libertarianism.” This particular doctrine puts paramount emphasis on the necessity of liberating social customs from the shackles of violent paternalism and coercive moralizing. And while this is certainly an effort worthy of support, since the acceptance or rejection of any given set of social customs should be entirely voluntary (here I am obviously, though implicitly, treating the non-aggression principle as something much more than even the most respectable custom or convention), it has to be borne in mind that liberty in matters social and customary is a natural and inevitable consequence of liberty in matters moral and economic, but not necessarily the other way around. Hence, the priorities of countercultural “libertarianism” turn out to be badly misplaced – its adherents strive to secure a single beneficial result, whilst overlooking the need to trigger (or even openly spurning) the only cause capable of bringing it about (together with many other essential human values). That is why it should not be surprising that the original countercultural “libertarianism” of the 1960s was hardly a movement for private property rights and unhampered freedom of economic activity. If any modern form of counterculture is to become a better ally of genuine individualism and voluntarism, it has to reassess its priorities on a fundamental level and put property rights at the very center of its positive program for change.

5. Anti-hierarchical “libertarianism.” As the name suggests, the cornerstone of this position is the rejection of hierarchies, in this context meaning arrangements of people in which they are represented as being “above,” “below,” or “at the same level as” one another according to some specified criterion. Again, this appears to be a reasonable attitude to take insofar as any such criterion is forcibly imposed on a given person, which results in her coercive subordination to the relevant hierarchy. Modern democratic statism, for instance, violently subordinates hundreds of millions of people to the hierarchy of political influence and the accompanying ability to amass and utilize large-scale aggressive force. In sum, anti-hierarchism is perfectly justifiable on libertarian grounds to the extent that it is aimed against coercive hierarchies. However, the doctrine under consideration, especially in its so-called “left-anarchist” incarnation, is aimed against all sorts of hierarchies, including the voluntary ones (existing in, e.g., firms, clubs, churches, scholarly associations, etc.), thus effectively contravening the basic libertarian principle of unhampered freedom of association. Insofar as left-anarchism regards a hierarchy stretching from the owner of a non-state-subsidized company to its lowest paid employee as inherently oppressive and hence suitable for forcible liquidation, its followers are indistinguishable from ordinary statists, whose final argument is always the use of their truncheon. In conclusion, it is very difficult to conceive of these outright opponents of private property rights and natural inequalities as reliable advocates for liberty.

As was perceptively noted by Murray Rothbard, human rights are property rights – either to one’s body, one’s mind, one’s labor, or the fruits thereof. Thus, libertarianism can convincingly lay claim to being the only position that genuinely champions human rights. The same does not apply, however, to all the doctrines that try to capitalize on libertarianism’s good name while leaving out its most important element – an unflinching and unconditional endorsement of private property rights. Let us never forget that fact whilst seeing the word libertarianism passed around more and more generously.

[Reprinted from Strike-The-Root.com]

Dwadzieścia jeden powodów, dla których etatyzm jest radykalną i radykalnie niespójną teorią

Po napotkaniu twierdzenia, że pewne stanowisko nieetatystyczne (np. anarchokapitalizm) jest praktycznie niebezpieczne z uwagi na swój radykalny charakter, warto wskazać na rażący radykalizm każdej formy etatyzmu. Następnie, po zasugerowaniu, że to nie radykalizm danej teorii stanowi jej problem, jeszcze bardziej warto wskazać, że etatyzm jest teorią nie tylko radykalną, ale też radykalną w swej niespójności. Wydaje się to odpowiednim opisaniem stanowiska, które twierdzi, między innymi, że:

1. Jedynym pewnym sposobem obrony przed agresją, przemocą i przymusem jest podporządkowanie się ogromnemu, monopolistycznemu aparatowi agresji, przemocy i przymusu.

2. Jedynym pewnym sposobem obrony swoich praw własności jest podporządkowanie się przymusowemu podmiotowi którego reprezentanci nie posiadają żadnego z aktywów składających się na ten podmiot, a mimo to przypisują sobie prawo wywłaszczenia dowolnego prywatnego właściciela dla celów, których wartość i użyteczność wyceniają wyłącznie oni sami.

3. Gospodarka wolnorynkowa, której uczestnicy – chcąc prosperować – muszą zaopatrywać się wzajemnie w produktywne dobra i usługi, a także ponosić pełną odpowiedzialność za swoje potencjalne niepowodzenia, może przetrwać wyłącznie wtedy, gdy podda się ją regulacji monopolistycznej grupy osób bezproduktywnych, które zawsze mogą obciążyć osoby produktywne kosztami swoich błędów i porażek.

4. Państwowy przymus jest niezbędny do egzekwowania umów, a mimo to rzekoma „umowa społeczna”, mająca ustanawiać państwo, może zostać wyegzekwowana bez udziału jakiegokolwiek meta-państwa, tym samym stając się samoegzekwującą się anomalią.

5. Zarządcy dowolnego monopolistycznego aparatu przemocy i przymusu używają go z pobudek dobroczynnych, ale jeśli mieliby zaprzestać używania metod opartych na przemocy (tzn. działalności politycznej) i zwrócić się w kierunku metod opartych na dobrowolności (tzn. działalności rynkowej), to ich altruizm natychmiast zamieniłby się w nikczemny, powodowany chciwością egoizm.

6. Państwa, instytucje odpowiedzialne za 200 milionów okrutnych śmierci w samym tylko wieku XX-tym, mają zapewniać ochronę przed “prywatną przestępczością”, która nawet w swej najbardziej zorganizowanej formie międzynarodowych sieci mafijnych nie zdołała zebrać nawet najmniejszego promila etatystycznego żniwa śmierci.

7. Stan anarchii pomiędzy jednostkami, z których każda może finansować swoje działania zasadniczo wyłącznie z własnej kieszeni, doprowadziłby do niedopuszczalnej eskalacji przemocy i rozlewu krwi, ale stan anarchii pomiędzy państwami, z których każde może obciążyć kosztami swoich działań (również działań wojennych) prywatne jednostki, jest znośnym i stosunkowo bezpiecznym układem.

8. Brak zewnętrznego, monopolistycznego podmiotu egzekwującego umowy pomiędzy prywatnymi jednostkami doprowadziłby do niekończącej się serii konfliktów, ale brak zewnętrznego, monopolistycznego podmiotu egzekwującego umowy pomiędzy poszczególnymi organami państwa nie uniemożliwia im współpracowania w sposób skuteczny, a nawet dobroczynny.

9. Scedowanie zadania podtrzymywania sprawiedliwości na podmiot, który jest działającym w oparciu o przemoc monopolem, nie doprowadzi do regularnego wypaczania sprawiedliwości tak, aby służyła ona sprawie rzeczonego podmiotu.

10. Pojęcie równowagi sił, zgodnie z którym rządzący kontrolują rządzonych, a rządzeni rządzących, nie stoi w sprzeczności z zasadą brzytwy Ockhama, sugerującą, że rzeczoną równowagę mogłaby z powodzeniem zachowywać pojedyncza grupa jednostek samorządnych.

11. Rządzeni są wystarczająco kompetentni, by wybierać swoje władze, ale nie dość kompetentni, by wybierać sposób wydatkowania swoich pieniędzy.

12. Para podróżników, którzy natknęliby się na siebie w środku odludnego lasu, nie skoczyłaby sobie natychmiast do gardeł tylko z powodu strachu przed państwowymi sankcjami.

13. Instytucja, która siłowo narzuca swoje usługi ochronne innym, jednostronnie ustala ich cenę i delegalizuje wszelką potencjalną konkurencję w tej dziedzinie, nie będzie starała się czerpać zysków z wzniecania konfliktów i umożliwiania ich rozwoju, nie zaś z ich rozwiązywania lub niedopuszczania do ich zaistnienia.

14. Przymusowa konfiskata nieruchomości prywatnego właściciela nie musi być koniecznie uznana za naruszenie czyjegokolwiek prawa (pod warunkiem, że wywłaszczonemu przekazana zostanie “adekwatna rekompensata pieniężna”), ale niezgoda na odebranie sobie części samodzielnie wytworzonego lub zdobytego na mocy dobrowolnej umowy dobytku jest jednoznacznym przestępstwem.

15. Prawa polityczne poprzedzają prawa własności, co przypuszczalnie oznacza, że osoby zawierające rzekomą “umowę społeczną” spisały ją na ścianie jaskini przy świetle ogniska, chyba że warunki świata sprzed zawarcia wspomnianej umowy umożliwiały (przynajmniej) wytworzenie kapitału niezbędnego do zakwaterowania uczestniczących stron oraz zaopatrzenia ich w papier i atrament w jakiś tajemniczy, bezwłasnościowy sposób.

16. Fakt posiadania wystarczająco dużej klienteli przekształca coś, co zwyczajowo uznaje się za rabunek, w coś, co przyjmuje się jako część niezbędnej służby społecznej.

17. Stosunkowo mała grupa ludzi jest w stanie posiąść więcej wiedzy i podejmować bardziej kompetentne decyzje w kwestii kierowania czynnościami danego społeczeństwa, niż cała reszta rzeczonego społeczeństwa.

18. Pojęcie równości wobec prawa dopuszcza istnienie funkcjonalnych przywilejów.

19. Bezwarunkowy szacunek dla zasady nieagresji jest ‘absolutystyczny’, ale bezwarunkowy szacunek dla państwowego ustawodawstwa taki nie jest.

20. Powszechne występowanie etatyzmu świadczy o pożyteczności etatyzmu, tak jakby tego samego nie można było kiedyś powiedzieć o astrologii, niewolnictwie czy usankcjonowanej prawnie dyskryminacji rasowej.

21. Każde z powyższych twierdzeń jest rzetelnie uzasadnione, zarówno teoretycznie jak i empirycznie, podczas gdy zaprzeczenie któregokolwiek z nich leży zasadniczo poza granicami rozsądnej dyskusji.

Po wymienieniu powyższych (lub innych) powodów, warto skonfrontować etatystę z zadaniem obrony rzekomo umiarkowanego charakteru doktryny, którą wspiera. I nawet jeśli przełknie on podaną mu gorzką pigułkę i uzna radykalizm etatyzmu, warto wówczas natychmiast skonfrontować go z kolejnym, równie trudnym zadaniem – z zadaniem udowodnienia domniemanej spójności etatyzmu. Jeśli nasz rozmówca przyzna się do porażki również na tym polu, nie powinniśmy być intelektualnie zaskoczeni, ale możemy być przynajmniej taktycznie usatysfakcjonowani.

29 kwietnia 2010

Ten Briefly Described Problems of Egalitarianism

I tend to agree with Isaiah Berlin and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn that liberty and equality do not naturally go hand in hand. In fact, more often than not the choice between them is an either/or one. Let us make no mistake here – I am not referring to the kind of equality than no libertarian would hesitate to endorse, that is, the equality of possessing the natural rights to life, property and the pursuit of one’s conception of happiness within the bounds drawn by the principle of non-initiation of force. I am referring to coercive, redistributive equality of wealth, whose promotion forms the backbone of the doctrines grouped under the name of egalitarianism. In the following text, I would like to offer a brief description of what I take to be the ten most flagrant problems with the doctrines under consideration.

But before I move on to their enumeration, let me deal first with the question of whether a libertarian society could not voluntarily implement the goals of wealth egalitarianism. It appears that on a conceptual level there is no necessary incompatibility between the two – it is possible to conceive of a community in which people endowed with superior profit-making skills retain for themselves only that portion of their income which suffices for living a modest life, while committing the rest to various charitable endeavors. However, since there is also no guarantee that entrepreneurially skilled people in a free society would act in such a manner, egalitarians take it upon themselves to ensure that they do by making society sufficiently and relevantly unfree. Furthermore, even in the society of the good Samaritan businessmen, the people in question would still have to wield a substantial amount of capital if they were to be capable of generating huge streams of wealth ready for charitable distribution. In other words, even such a society would have to remain distinctly inegalitarian. Thus, the traditional opposition between liberty and (wealth) equality is, as far as I can see it, real and substantive.

Having commented on the above attempt at reconciling the two values under consideration, let us now proceed to the gist of the text, namely, to a concise list of what I take to be some of the main weaknesses of egalitarianism, and hence, by implication, some of the major strong points of libertarianism:

1. Simple egalitarianism, i.e., the doctrine that one should strive to make everyone’s resources unqualifiedly equal, can easily lead to straightforwardly disastrous consequences. Imagine the following scenario: there are five mortally ill people and 20 vials of medicine ready for distribution (let us assume that they belong to a charitable institution committed to fighting mortal diseases). In order to be cured, one needs to drink five vials. Now, if the distribution of vials were to be left to a follower of simple egalitarianism, he would give four vials to each of the ill, thus saving none of them. In light of the above, it might be argued that the egalitarian exhibited the virtue of impartiality, leaving all the persons involved to an equally bad fate, but it would be absurd to argue that his brand of egalitarianism is in any sense geared towards helping the needy or expanding the range of social opportunities.

2. What about a more sophisticated and at the same time more mitigated form of egalitarianism, claiming that what matters is not equalizing people’s resources simpliciter, but lifting everyone to a position of sufficient financial security? Although in my opinion clearly more reasonable than the previous proposal, this particular approach remains highly problematic. First of all, it still involves a forcible imposition on the whole society of a single vision of how to solve the problem of poverty. As a result, it undermines the efficiency of a variety of voluntary, cooperative methods aimed at achieving the same goal, as well as discourages people from utilizing such methods in the first place. More specifically, it undermines the spontaneously emergent institutions of family, neighborly kindness and general human charity, while encouraging dependence, inaction and even parasitism.

3. Furthermore, it involves a forcible imposition on the society of a single vision of what constitutes a (sufficiently) good life, an act which I deem as incapable of escaping the objection of moral arbitrariness. After all, one does not have to be an egalitarian (or even a sufficientarian) to care for the plight of those who are dying of hunger (predominantly due to being subject to the rule of political regimes with equality of wealth on its banners), but I presume that no self-conscious non-egalitarian would be willing to make a pronouncement that, say, homelessness is a phenomenon to be unconditionally fought with by means of compulsory wealth transfers. In other words, I presume that every self-conscious non-egalitarian would be capable of comprehending that for some people homelessness may be a distinct and valuable way of life (which, incidentally, has a distinguished religious tradition known under the name of itinerant asceticism), and therefore refrain from exploiting the homeless as a source of excuses for one’s coercive meddling with the lives of others.

4. In connection with the previous point, it has to be noticed that as soon as it becomes clear that there is no non-arbitrary (or, equivalently in this context, no non-subjective) standard of what constitutes a sufficiently good life, sufficientarianism turns out to be a dog-in-the-manger doctrine, based on the coercive demand that one should unconditionally get for free what someone else acquired through his socially useful work or through a third party’s voluntary display of good will. Unhampered transactions between consenting agents hardly need moral justification (provided they do not involve aggression towards third parties), since they are mutually accepted as utility-increasing. Consequently, meritocracy is a natural, morally justifiable arrangement of social relations, in which those who manage to engage in the greatest number of the abovementioned transactions are, unsurprisingly, those who acquire the greatest number of their socially valuable fruits. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, turns the order in question on its head by demanding that the stream of goods and valuables flow specifically into the hands of those who did nothing to deserve their acquisition. If the sole reason for enacting such a flow were to be thought of as an attempt to increase the psychological satisfaction of the undeserving, then it is difficult to conceive of this process as anything else than a symptom of institutionalized envy.

5. But what if the “deserving” mentioned in the previous point do not really deserve their success? If, pace Rawls, free-market deserts and entitlements result from “the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance”, then is it obviously morally justifiable for the most effective market participants to keep all the fruits of their labor to themselves? There are two issues to be remarked upon here. First of all, even if we were to accept the doctrine of absolute genetic determinism and conclude that the notion of desert is therefore devoid of substance, it would not imply that the market distribution of wealth is in any sense unjust. After all, nature does not use anybody as a means for the attainment of its own (or anyone else’s) ends, while the same cannot be said about egalitarian-minded politicians and bureaucrats. Thus, at the very least, even given absolute genetic determinism, the consequences of everybody’s using their natural endowments in a society based on voluntary interactions are just in the Kantian sense (which is not a totally unimportant point in the context at hand, since Rawlsianism is considered to derive its inspiration from Kantianism). Secondly, if the notion of desert is to lose its force (since all achievements are ultimately traceable to unearned genetic advantage), then the poor no more deserve their position of welfare beneficiaries than the rich deserve their position of the social elite. If the poor do not deserve their poverty, then why should they deserve welfare payments forcibly extracted from the equally undeserving rich? In sum, as soon as we buy into Rawlsian genetic determinism, every argument for coercive compensatory redistribution of wealth fails by default.

6. At this point, one might suggest that the fundamental Rawlsian insight does not refer to how things are in the actual world, but to how they would be like in the hypothetical world in which any deliberation as to what constitutes just rules of social organization would involve placing its participants behind the “veil of ignorance” (i.e., in the situation in which they are unaware of their natural endowments, inherited wealth, etc.). The decisive problem with this suggestion is that the whole concept of deliberating behind the veil of ignorance appears to be straightforwardly self-contradictory. After all, how could people in such a scenario start to deliberate in the first place if they were to be unaware of the extent of their reasoning skills and the shape of their psychological dispositions? Claiming, as Rawls does, that under such hypothetical conditions people would decide to create a coercively egalitarian social safety set requires assuming that they would be equally and highly risk-averse, as well as equally prone to statist rather than voluntary solutions, which is both a flagrant petitio principii and a violation of his own theoretical premises. Furthermore, to the degree that the actual world resembles the Rawlsian “original position”, his assumptions concerning people’s risk-aversion, intellectual courage and active self-reliance are falsified – after all, every entrepreneurial decision is made from behind a partial veil of ignorance, and it is certainly not the case that people (entrepreneurs and wage earners alike) do not often embark on highly risky (and sometimes highly successful) ventures.

7. By advocating the creation of a monopolistic, redistributive apparatus of coercion (it has to be remembered that egalitarianism, in almost all of its varieties, is an essentially statist doctrine), egalitarians support the establishment of a fundamentally inegalitarian order – i.e., an order in which a select group of people hold the socially legitimized power to use initiatory violence against others, while the latter have very little practical possibility of defending themselves, let alone effectively abolishing the legitimacy of the former group’s control over their lives. What egalitarians routinely seem to overlook is the fact that monopolized coercion, far from equalizing wealth or any other value, is uniquely suited for undermining and ultimately destroying every value apart from its own lust for control. Hence, even if the endorsement of full-blown redistributive statism were to carry any hope for genuine equalization of wealth, the accompanying danger of opening the door to practically unlimited use of initiatory violence should give pause to even the most ardent supporters of compulsory transfers of income.

8. Even if egalitarians were to succeed in imposing their project on society and effecting massive, regular redistributions of wealth from the supposed haves to the supposed have-nots, they would still have to reckon with the very likely possibility that the latter group will upset their preferred pattern of wealth distribution simply on account of its representatives still being individuals with different and fundamentally unequal needs, preferences, hopes, ambitions, etc. This, coupled with the fact that the haves possess superior skills with regard to satisfying those needs, preferences, etc., would very probably initiate the process of reverse redistribution, which could be stopped only by equalizing (read: forcibly narrowing down) the set of spending opportunities that the have-nots would be free to pursue.

9. It is often claimed that one of the most persuasive rationales for egalitarianism stems from the law of diminishing marginal utility, i.e., from the fact that a marginal dollar is worth much less to a millionaire than to a pauper. However, even though the law in question is indisputably true, it does not justify egalitarian policy prescriptions. Three points should be made here. Firstly, utility is a purely subjective, psychological magnitude, measurable only on an ordinal scale and only from the first-personal point of view. As a result, utility cannot be aggregated interpersonally and translated into any social welfare function. Secondly, no external observer can determine whether a marginal dollar accruing to a given person does not make her cross a utility threshold, meaning that this marginal dollar, qua being the final element of a unit belonging to a new class of goods, is worth more to this person than the previous one (as an illustration, think about the difference between the 99th and the 100th element of a collection comprising 100 elements). And thirdly, even if it were possible to perform interpersonal comparisons of utility and forcibly redistribute wealth to the greater benefit of society as a whole, it seems more than likely that repeated use of such a procedure would drain the entrepreneurial energy of the market, while at the same time encouraging dependence, flippancy and laziness, thus eventually decreasing social utility in the long run.

10. Finally, it has to be realized that a society organized around the libertarian principle of unrestricted freedom of association can contain all sorts of voluntary, egalitarian enclaves (communes, cooperatives, neighborly networks, monasteries, etc.), but not the other way around. In other words – libertarianism is compatible with voluntary egalitarianism, but coercive egalitarianism is incompatible with libertarianism. And since nearly every currently fashionable form of egalitarianism is essentially coercive, while there is by definition no coercive version of libertarianism, we can get quite a clear picture of the motivating forces behind these respective doctrines. It is no good claiming that a free society would not voluntarily endeavor towards achieving valuable egalitarian goals and therefore needs to be forced to do so. After all, given such a view of human nature, why should the coercers be thought of as any more egalitarian-minded than the coerced? Furthermore, why not morally require of egalitarians that they finance the implementation of their goals out of their own, rather than someone else’s income? Again, if, in contrast to everyone else, they are supposed to be exempt from the requirement of financing one’s activities out of one’s own, contractually acquired money, then such an exemption would have to be part of a flagrantly inegalitarian order.

This concludes my list of the ten most conspicuous flaws in the doctrine of egalitarianism. If they can be remedied, then I am open to reconsider my skeptical assessment of its feasibility and desirability. But until then, I will continue to regard libertarianism as the only game in town.

[Reprinted from Strike-The-Root.com]