Degrees of Freedom: Anarchy as a Product of Utilitarianism: Politics, Philosophy and Economics from a libertarian point of view.

Anarchy as a Product of Utilitarianism Wednesday, March 24, 2010

By recent study of praxeology by Menger and Mises, we have come to a fairly good understanding of the nature of human action and behavior. Because of specific traits in our species, we thrive when freedom is present. Ants, contrarily, do not. There is something uniquely human in which freedom is given such a high status. Freedom to some species is nothing. It is irrelevant. Their social apparatus excludes it entirely as a concept. There is no notion of freedom in an ant colony, presumably because they have not developed the cognitive capacity to understand it. To us, it is as indispensible as the air we breathe. Civilizations that have encouraged a large amount of freedom have, by and large, thrived compared to the civilizations that restricted it. Mises’ quote here is relevant:

“If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. . . . Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature.”

This much historical understanding and praxeological theory has shown us. Taking that humans act and that we prefer happiness to suffering as premises, he was able to construct a nearly perfect model for human economy. We understand our models of subjective value and private property because A) We observe the human species and in what environment it thrives; and B) That by the premises assigned to man, private property is the only form of social organization compatible. We arrive at anarchy by a priori and a posteriori methods.

Thus I present my case for anarchy under the banner of utilitarianism. I had written my thread on utilitarianism focusing mostly on how the majority of utilitarians do not, as Lord Acton, see liberty as an end in itself. They see the hospitals and churches and roads and conclude from some optimization that these produce the best result. They are missing that which is subtracted by infringing on the necessary human condition of freedom. In taxing to erect a hospital, presumably the community gains by some measure or the planners would have never built it at all. But they fail to see the intangible utility that was lost because human freedom had been undermined. Once again, Bastiat’s “That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen” comes to mind. On net, it will always be a negative sum because we know from aprioristic reasoning that humans thrive most under conditions of complete freedom. To contradict that in any fashion would be to question the premises of praxeology. Whether they need to be questioned or not is a subject beyond my grasp.

Taking our understanding of praxeology and its implications, and the historical understanding that freedom has played in our civilization, I conclude, by means of utility optimization that anarchy is the only compatible social system under Utilitarianism because it is the only system that does not betray our knowledge of the human condition. All manner of planning by means of aggression must necessarily result in less total utility than in a condition of zero aggression.

Edit: The previous discussion on natural law in the first post is completely unnecessary. Natural law is tautologically valid as it pertains to justice and human behavior.

6 Comments:

At Wed Mar 24, 12:42:00 AM EDT, Mattheus said...: I wanted it cleaned up. Hopefully we won't have further arguments on definitions.
At Wed Mar 24, 06:46:00 PM EDT, Taylor Conant said...: Mattheus,

I don't think the Utilitarians "fail to see" intangible utility. I think they can't actually calculate utility in the first place.

I'm not sure if you've made the case for anarchy on a utilitarian basis or not, because on that specific basis I don't think any case can be made, for anything.

We know from studying economic interactions that voluntary interactions produce wealth while involuntary interactions reduce wealth, and on this count anarchy is technically superior because it is a system of entirely voluntary interactions (ignoring private crime). But we can't "measure" the total utility of an anarchic society vs. a statist one so we can't compare the two on that particular basis.

Maybe James can clear this up for us.
At Wed Mar 24, 08:19:00 PM EDT, Mattheus said...: Taylor,

Caplan said something similar about Rothbard's philosophy.

Rothbard professes that anarchy will result in more utility, as all exchanges are voluntary. On the other hand, he makes the point that utility is ordinal and there is no way to compare utility on an interpersonal basis.

How then can we say X has lost more utility than Y has gained, even though Y is a government stealing money from X? He must be agnostic about government spending, not against it.

A similar claim is raised here. But I think the victory goes to the fact (that Rothbard also makes) that we can deduce changes in total utility given certain axiomatic assumptions. We may not be able to calculate that "society is 2,686,975 utils more prosperous" but I think we know that it is to some degree.
At Wed Mar 24, 08:25:00 PM EDT, Taylor Conant said...: Mattheus,

He must be agnostic about government spending, not against it

We can be agnostic about specific acts of spending, but not about government finance, which is theft. And because the spending would not occur without the theft, we can make assumptions about the quality of spending.

But more importantly, because the government can not properly observe the value scales it is attempting to satisfy, whereas individuals not only can but are the only people capable of observing such scales as they constantly create them, we can say that individual's spending of the money, as opposed to the government spending it for them, will always be superior.

As far as your last point is concerned... I think you misunderstand what Utilitarianism is all about. You are correct that from axioms we can come to the conclusion that there is generally "more" or "less" total utility, but this is not then a "Utilitarian" argument for anarchy-- Utilitarianism is a bit more specific and convoluted than that.

But, again, I offer the suggestion that perhaps James can better straighten us out on this.
At Thu Mar 25, 12:12:00 AM EDT, James said...: Mattheus:

I've never bought into utilitarian arguments for any sweeping claim because (among other reasons) their conclusions depend on what people happen to prefer. For example, if your neighbor happens to love statism strongly enough, then a utilitarian has to be a statist. No matter how much harm states do, if just one person feels strongly enough that statism is great, then a utilitarian has to bite the bullet and be a statist. If that one person gets hit by a bus, then the same utilitarian has to go back to being an anarchist. (I'm referencing utility comparisons strictly for the sake of argument.)

Also, utilitarianism belongs to a class of views which suggest that results justify processes. This is, in a very literal sense, logically indefensible in that logic is based on the idea that justification necessarily flows from process to results and not the other way around. Think about it: how do you show that an argument is logical? Do you point to the benefits of the conclusion? Or do you show that the conclusion was reached in a way that is consistent with certain principles?

Also, what masquerades as utilitarianism is really something else. Utilitarianism is supposed to be all about maximizing, so if utilitarians really practiced what they preached I'd expect that utilitarian arguments would resemble optimization studies found in "operations research" journals. In fact, I've never encountered a utilitarian that even bothered to define a choice set, perform sensitivity analysis, or any of the other very basic steps in solving an optimization problem.

That said, good results are strongly correlated with adherence to moral principles, so I'm not against using outcome-based reasoning as a guide in one-off cases where it's hard to decide what course of action is dictated by moral principles. E.g. If I borrow Bob's machete, I ought to return it as a matter of principle, but if Bob shows up drunk and drenched in sweat at 3:00am demanding his machete and cursing about his ex wife, I'll fall back to consequences for that case in recognition of the fact that I'm likely to err in my moral reasoning when I have to make a decision quickly about how to deal with an angry drunk guy on my porch at 3:00am. But I wouldn't attempt to reach any sweeping general conclusion on the basis of utilitarianism.

Re: natural rights, I happen to believe in natural rights, but I don't need to mention them to defend my political views. See this for an idea of where I'm coming from. Essentially, my position is that whatever ethics is really all about, any complete account of ethics must be consistent, at least. This leaves no room for particularist views like "the tax man may take my money but I must not take the tax man's money." Once you rule out such particularist ideas, statism really falls apart. You don't need utilitarianism or natural rights to see this. You just have to reject moral particularism.
At Thu Mar 25, 10:26:00 AM EDT, Mattheus said...: James,

Everything you said was right and I agree on a lot of points.

I guess the purpose of the thread was to say "Even if you don't believe in consistent ethics, anarchy is superior to a government."

That is - if someone were a utilitarian without principled ethics, they would still have to buy into anarchy because it "maximizes utility" anyway.