Dziesięć powodów, dla których nawet najbardziej amoralny leseferyzm jest lepszy niż kierująca się nawet najlepszymi chęciami socjaldemokracja

1. Szczera pogoń za zyskiem jest zawsze lepsza niż szczere przypochlebianie się zazdrości i zawiści.

2. Pokojowy egoizm jest zawsze lepszy niż napastliwy altruizm.

3. Merytokratyczna nierówność jest zawsze lepsza niż zadufany w sobie egalitaryzm.

4. Dobrowolna segregacja jest zawsze lepsza niż przymusowa integracja.

5. Ostentacyjnie rozrzutny miliarder jest zawsze lepszy niż polityk popierający w dobrej wierze wydatki deficytowe.

6. Nieczuły fabrykant-wyzyskiwacz jest zawsze lepszy niż moralnie zaangażowany wyborca-ignorant.

7. Bycie nieżyczliwym wobec drugiego jest zawsze lepsze niż bycie życzliwym wobec drugiego przy użyciu zagrabionej własności trzeciego.

8. Żądza pieniądza jest zawsze lepsza niż żądza władzy nad cudzym pieniądzem.

9. Mizantropiczna ironia jest zawsze lepsza niż humanitarne pustosłowie.

10. Droga do piekła nie jest wybrukowana samolubną obojętnością.

If You Want Peace, Stop Loving War and Violence

This link leads to the list of people known throughout history as "The Great". This link leads to the list of winners of Gallup's annual most admired man and woman poll. The overwhelming majority of people on those lists are rulers - kings, emperors, tyrants, dukes, tsars, presidents, and prime ministers - that is, professional wielders of institutionalized violence, aggression, coercion, subjugation, expropriation, and oppression, as well as professional peddlers of propaganda, demagoguery, and tribal hatred.

If you ask why people can't just get along and cooperate peacefully, without wars, enslavement, genocide, tribal prejudice, and ceaseless attempts to grab each other's property, then here is the answer: they actually like all these things, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

In a world where there are so many individuals to respect, admire, and emulate - entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, artists, thinkers, and humanitarians - the majority of people consistently lavish the greatest praise and admiration on warlords, warmongers, tyrants, oppressors, propagandists, and demagogues. In conclusion, it's no surprise that the world is undersupplied with liberty, peace, and cooperation, since the greatest demand among people has consistently been for their very opposites.

Collective Action, Cooperation and Collusion

One of the more sophisticated challenges that libertarians are sometimes confronted with says the following: assuming that voluntary cooperation can successfully solve the collective action problem, it has to be capable of solving it regardless of the moral qualities of the motives that drive the solution. Thus, if it is possible to successfully produce public goods on a voluntary, decentralized basis, it must also be possible on the same basis to create stable cartels capable of reaping monopoly gains and frustrating consumer sovereignty. Conversely, if harmful cartels are to be thought of as inherently unstable and thus short-lived, it must also be concluded that the temptation of underselling one's competitor will thwart any attempts to successfully produce public goods on a voluntary, decentralized basis.

And yet, there is a good reason to believe that there is a fundamental asymmetry between the viability of beneficial and malevolent cooperation. In short, the former is normally profitable both in the short and the long run, while the latter is profitable only in the short run. And conversely, opposing the latter is normally profitable both in the short and the long run, while opposing the former is profitable only in the short run. If X bundles the production of private goods with the production of public goods, his offer is more attractive than the offer of those who focus exclusively on the production of private goods, thus generating short-term profits for him. But apart from tangible profits, such a business approach also generates favorable reputation, which gives X additional competitive edge and makes his business even more profitable in the long run.

Conversely, cooperating with a cartel generates short-term profits for its members, but it by the same token makes their activities very disreputable, which further aggravates the inherent instability of their association, makes them subject to social ostracism, undermines their trustworthiness and thus reduces the number of their potential business allies, gives outside competition extra incentive to put the cartel out of business, etc. Breaking the cartel agreement, however, allows the breaker not only to gain short-term profits by underselling his erstwhile partners, but also to gain a favorable reputation, the reputation of an honest businessman who opposes collusion, which is likely to generate additional long-term profits for him.

In sum, overcoming the collective action problem to benefit oneself by harming others pays in the short run, but backfires in the long run, while overcoming it to benefit oneself by benefiting others pays in the short run and in the long run. Thus, there is a good reason to believe that, on the whole, voluntary cooperation can not only successfully solve the collective action problem, but also make the effects of the majority of voluntarily undertaken collective actions unambiguously beneficial.

Libertarianism, Coercion, and Lifeboat Situations

Is libertarianism a deontological or a consequentialist theory? It can be either, but it can also be both, which, as far as I'm concerned, is the best way to think about it. Does libertarianism say that it is immoral and criminal to use coercion against peaceful individuals in the so-called "lifeboat situations" (e.g., unless I threaten you with a gun, thereby coercing you to row a boat, we will all drown)? Yes, it does. But does it say that it is not moral to try to save people's lives in lifeboat situations by coercing them to do certain things? No, it does not. In effect, what it does say is that while it is always immoral and criminal to use coercion against peaceful individuals, it is likely that in most cases reputable private arbitrators would treat being in a lifeboat situation as an extenuating circumstance sufficient to pardon the coercers, provided that, in hindsight, the coerced agree that the consequences brought about by the act of coercion were positive.

The same principle applies to much more mundane situations as well - think, e.g., of a defense agency that initiated coercion against a suspected burglar, who eventually turned out to be innocent. In such a case, what the agency did was certainly criminal according to the libertarian law, but that does not change the fact that its initiation of coercion against the suspected burglar was required by the contractual obligations that it entered vis-a-vis its clients, thus potentially becoming fully pardonable, provided that the wrongly coerced person is sufficiently compensated.

In conclusion, while libertarianism allows for pardoning acts of coercion against peaceful individuals, it by the same token refuses to decriminalize such acts, thereby recognizing their very limited and highly qualified applicability and tolerability. In other words, it says that individual rights are inviolable, but in certain extreme situations their violations can be retrospectively pardoned by the affected parties in view of their overwhelmingly positive consequences. Thus, libertarianism is perfectly capable of dealing adequately with lifeboat situations and other dilemmatic scenarios involving irresolvable conflicts of values without sacrificing any of its core tenets.

The Free Market is the Only Real Public Good

The free market is the only real public good, since, as the sum total of voluntary interactions between people, it is the only good whose creation and perpetuation meets the criterion of strictly unanimous, and thus genuinely public acceptance.

There Are No Such Things as Positive Rights

There are no such things as "positive rights". Rights, by definition, are universal, meaning that everyone can exercise them, even simultaneously. But since exercising a "positive right" means coercing another to provide one with a specific good or service, everyone attempting to exercise a "positive right" simultaneously results in no one being able to exercise it, since where everyone wants to take, there is no one left to take from. Thus, "positive rights" are either logical contradictions or disguised privileges.

What Makes Anarchy Peaceful or Violent?

Imagine a world in which all members of the ruled class - that is, ordinary individuals who do not belong to the structures of power - suddenly disappear without a trace, the only people remaining being the members of the ruling class - politicians, bureaucrats, and their enforcers. Now, since in order to be a ruler, one needs to have someone to rule over, those people, logically speaking, could not be considered as rulers any more. Thus, they would end up in a state of anarchy vis-a-vis each other, but since, qua former rulers, they would be accustomed to earning their living through coercive exploitation rather than through production, free exchange, and entrepreneurship, they would likely start fighting with each other until a victorious group emerged and turned the losers into a new ruled class. In this particular case, anarchy could be truly said to lead to conflict and chaos.

Now imagine a different world - a one in which it is the rulers who disappear, not because the propensity to coercively control others was eradicated, but because the ruled class, to use la Boetie's phrase, "resolved to serve no more" and, to use another popular phrase, successfully "starved the beast". Unlike in the previous case, the state of anarchy that they would subsequently find themselves in would be unlikely to result in a conflict over power vacuum, because, to quote Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, "the same social consensus, the same institutions, and the same ideological imperatives that had gained them liberation from their own state would be automatically in place to defend against any other states that tried to fill the vacuum".

Thus, it turns out that what prevents peaceful coexistence from degenerating into violent conflict is, contra the Hobbesian myth, not the presence of rulers, but precisely their absence.