Why should 535 people in Washington?
Be entitled to issue, commands, to 300 million others.
And why should the others obey these questions?
As I argue in the following Pages, have no satisfactory
answers. Welcome to Keith's night.
Don't tread on anyone. That's an excellent quote from
this book. The problem of political
Authority, and examination of the right to coerce and duty to
obey. By professor at University of
Boulder, Colorado. Michael humor, mr.
Humor. Thank you for your time, sir.
Yes. Thanks for having me.
You to be here. So what is political Authority?
So, political Authority is a hypothesized, moral property
that the government would have which would explain why they're
entitled to force, everybody else, to obey their commands,
and would also explain why we would be obligated to obey their
commands in circumstances in which you would not have to obey
similar commands by anyone else. And no one else would be
entitled to enforce similar commands.
Now, we have a number of objections that I've come across
in sort of, in researching your opposition so to speak.
So, I'd like to present you with those arguments, and let me know
if you think any of these justify the existence of
political Authority, or what your response would be.
One of the major responses we get.
Is you mr. Humor.
Know the laws that exist in society, yet.
You choose to stay in this very Society, therefore, you consent
to it. If you don't like it, please
feel free to move. How do you respond?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean with this, this argument work for anybody else, right?
So, you know, let's say that I just go around to my neighbors
and I start just issuing commands to them and then
demanding money from them and say I've been doing this for a
while. So after I've been doing this
for six months, I say to all my neighbors, look it, you can
leave if you don't like what I'm doing to you, right?
And since You stayed in this place, where, you know, that I'm
exploiting you, that means that you've agreed to be exploited by
main. So now you have to do everything
I say and have to pay any money or whatever.
So, you know, they I mean it's superficially analogous to if
somebody is in your house and you say, Hey, you know, we have
whatever follow these rules. Otherwise, you have to leave,
you know, like no shoes in the house, right?
Take off your shoes. Otherwise, get out of my house.
You can say that, that's okay. But that's okay because it's
your house. You can't go over to somebody
else's house and then say hey, you got to take off your shoes.
Otherwise get out of your house and the government is like the
second thing, right? The government has just like
they're just here and they're just saying, you know, you can't
reside on your own property unless you agree to Big Book to
obey them, right? Yeah, that's not legitimate,
right? So the difference It is that in
one situation. It's just some guy showing up to
my house with government. We actually have debates.
We have public displays of whose ideas are what.
And then we, as a society vote, expressing our preferences for
what the rules should be there for.
The existence of voting is equal to us being represented in
society, which is an extension of our consent.
How would you And yeah, so you mentioned, two things that we
have debates and you know, discussions where all the
different ideas are able to interplay and then the second
thing you mentioned is that we vote.
So you get presumably the majority opinion right now.
This is oversimplifying a number of ways.
Okay, there are ways in which you can get laws that are
unpopular right which the majority of people do not agree
with that happens. Sometimes.
But you know, that isn't really the main point.
Anyway, anyway, the main point is how does the majority of
people get the right to force their will on the minority right
there. So I have a story that's an
analogy for this where I go to, I go to a restaurant with some
friends and you know graduate students and be at the end of
the meal after everybody's enjoyed the meal and the drinks
and whatever, we have a discussion about who should pay
right and I suggest everybody should pay for the stuff that
they ordered, right? And then a student says, I think
humor should pay for everyone. I go.
No, I don't want to pay for everyone they go.
Okay. Well, let's have a discussion of
this right? And then they have a debate
about whether I should be forced to pay for everyone.
Right? And I'm to be fair.
I'm allowed to participate in the debate rightful free speech.
So I give my objections to forcing you to pay everything.
But then in the end, the majority of the other people
vote that I have to pay for everyone.
Okay, and so question. Are they now entitled to force
me to pay? So, if I don't take out my
wallet and hand over the money. Can they now kidnap me and lock
me in a cage somewhere. Also.
Am I morally? Obligated to hand over the money
because, you know, the other people at the table, one
meteorite take it. The answer is no.
And you know, this is completely.
This is a completely Fair analogy to what the government
does, right. Okay, you might think it's a
little bit a little bit unfair because, you know, asking me to
pay for everyone. Maybe you think that's more
unfair than the things that the government usually does.
So if I change it to they forced me to pay for, you know, like
half of the entire bill or and I'm one of several people and
they're demanding that I should pay for half of it.
That's totally realistic. That's totally like what the
government does, right? They force a small minority of
society to pay the majority of the taxes, too.
Provide services to everyone else.
In fact, what it's really like is they want me to pay more than
the bills so that I can give Kickbacks to the poor students,
right? Who ordered food, but don't
don't have a lot of money. They want money from me.
So I pay like, you know, more than a hundred percent of the
bill and then the extra money goes to The Graduate students.
All right. Okay, and that's that's like our
system. Now I have a argument brought To
Us by Cass. Sunstein and Stephen Holmes in
their long essay titled, the cost of Rights.
Why Liberty depends on taxes. They say there are no legally
enforceable rights in the absence of Legally enforceable.
Duties. All rights are claims to an
affirmative governmental response.
So the reason you might see something as a - Eat me not
enslaving you. The very fact that I will be
stopped by the police. From enslaving, you is actually
a positive right? There are only positive rights.
The only reason we have any sort of semblance of peace is because
of the state, the state only exists because of taxes.
Therefore, taxes are morally and economically justifiable.
Yeah, I guess the main most obvious where I disagree with
that is that I'm an anarchist anarcho-capitalist.
So I don't think that enforcement of Rights depends
upon this state. I think it could be enforced.
They could be enforced by private organizations.
I also kind of think that this idea is confusing having rights
with the enforcement of Rights. So I think so if you have a
right, I think it's true that you have a right. 82, the
enforcement of that, but that's not a positive, right?
As so. If you have a right to
something, it's permissible for you to use Force to defend that
right. It's also permissible for third
party to use Force to defend that, right, but I don't think
that that means that you can force a third party to help you
enforce your rights. You can't do that.
Right? So like in that sense the
enforceability it's it's a negative, right?
Not a positive, right? Like you can't you can't demand
that other people enforce it just because it's, you're right.
You could, if you have a contract.
So if you hired somebody to enforce your rights, then you
can demand that they do that. But you know, that's just like,
all right, so it's not like, you know, the welfare rights, right?
That the, the left posits right now.
Does the government have an obligation to protect people?
Well, it does because it has an obligation.
It's based upon the it's other wrongful actions, right?
So the government has forcibly prevented private enforcement of
Rights. So I so they won't allow, you
know, private protection agencies to operate.
And so because they're doing that they're obligated to
provide the service to write and they're doing that doesn't make
it all. Okay, right, but, you know, it's
less bad than if they prevent you from getting private defense
and then refuse to defend themselves, right?
Now, one thing you are not appreciating is the benefits
that you reap from the state. The state has given us roads
highways schools, which educate millions of people which give
you an educated Society to live in.
We have foreign Justice. What the US military, we have
domestic Justice with the police there.
For taxation is simply a price you pay just like you would pay
anything else, but it's very hard to exclude some people when
they protect us. From the terrorists.
Therefore, the state is morally justified in coercing.
You because we don't have any economic way of excluding others
from these benefits. You and other anarchists are so
unappreciative of. Yeah.
Well, I mean so you mentioned four different benefits and I
think at least three of those are clearly not public goods, so
you mentioned roads, Schools Police and the military, well,
you You can exclude people from roads.
And what's the problem that? All right.
Just like, you know, just like any other land, you could like,
keep people off at. So, you know, we're not going to
say land is a public good now, right?
Schools. Yeah, you can easily exclude
people from school. So just don't let the students
enroll, whatever. Back, we do that all the time
and police protection. Well, I mean there is there are
spillover effects, like, spillover benefits from police
protection, but basically, yeah, you can totally exclude people
from that. So, Um, the police could say,
you know, you have to protect, you have to pay a certain amount
of money every month. Otherwise, you're not protected
and what that would mean is, if somebody commits a crime against
you, the government doesn't do anything about it.
So like that would be excluding people from the police
protection. Okay.
So like, you know, somebody is accused of committing a crime
against you and then comes out in court that you didn't pay
your bill, then they go case dismissed.
So like they can totally do that.
Oh, it's a private good. So there's no need to have the
government provide that these things, right?
Okay, what about the military? I mean, so some of what the
military is doing. I don't want them to do, right?
Actually most of what they're doing and is so, you know, the
amount of money that they're taking over this, right?
So I actually I don't know what the I don't know what the recent
figures are, right, but the u.s. Is the largest military spender
in the world by like the last time I checked which Years ago,
it was by a factor of six, right?
In other words. We were spending more on the
military six times more than the number two military spender.
And so, in my point, there is the overwhelming majority of
what they're doing is not necessary, right?
Because I think like, if you have the largest military in the
world, that's the most that you could conceivably say that you
need. And so anything that's above
being the largest, which means, you know, if your six times
larger than 56 of what you're doing.
Is that unnecessary at least right?
Anyway, okay, but still, they're probably doing, you know, at
least some of it is probably necessary.
Yeah, I mean, then we basically have to talk about how the
anarchist Society could be safe from Invasion, right?
You know, part of what the government is doing is
preventing non-government Solutions, right?
So I mean, you know, sort of like going digressing a little
bit but with the road schools on police, the reason why I only
the government is Is providing these things is that?
Well, they basically prevented other people from providing it
as so they don't prohibit private schools.
But at least at the pre college level, they the government gives
themselves a huge advantage. And the huge Advantage is people
have to pay regardless of whether they use the service.
Okay? Have a private company could do,
that would totally take over an industry, right?
Okay. Anyway, so like part of why I'm
not grateful is like there. Therefore their prohibiting, you
or otherwise or like interfering with you getting the good from
anyone else and then they say, you know, you should be so
grateful to us, right? That that we're providing this
otherwise, you wouldn't have it. Yeah, I wouldn't have it because
you won't let anyone else provided anyway, okay.
Back to the military. Now, there's kind of like
there's a long discussion that you have to have about how we
would have security without a government military in like the
anarcho-capitalist society which like, we don't have time to go
into all of that. I Say, you know, like one
interesting fact that you might not be aware of, is that there
are 15 countries in the world that do not have a military.
Right. So that's like just empirical
evidence that it's not the case that you're immediately taken
over. If you don't have a military,
right? The largest of these countries
is Costa Rica. Some of them are island nations.
So then, you know, like, you can kind of understand why there are
more secure than if they have other countries on the border.
Okay, but you know, other things to mention are the effectiveness
of Guerrilla warfare, right? Like people frequently today.
This happens in the gun control debate, people say like private
individuals cannot defend themselves.
Government, and then you remind them that that has happened
multiple times, right? Like very powerful government
militaries have been defeated by non-government forces.
Many times in 20th century happened to the United States.
In Vietnam. It happened to the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan happened to the French that happened to the
English. Okay, and I mentioned those
because our those are the four, most militarily powerful nations
in world history and they were all defeated by Guerilla
Warfare, right? Right by non-government
militaries. Okay.
Now you don't want that to happen.
Like you don't want to have any conflict at all.
Okay, so like going into guerrilla warfare is like a last
resort, but I'm just pointing out that it's not totally
infeasible. Anyway, there's a whole chapter
about this in the problem of political Authority about, you
know, military defense, which I think people should just read
that chapter in its entirety. Now I am so terrified that the
poor will not be taken care of in the absence of a state.
Currently. We have the state going to very
large extent to make sure that the poor have these things.
Whereas if we don't have a state, we might get large
portions of our society, not taken care of in the marketplace
as much as I like the idea of things being voluntary and
peaceful and all that. We have poor people who simply
need help. We won't have that help in the
absence of a state. Therefore.
The state is Justified on utilitarian grounds.
How do you respond? Yeah.
Okay, good question. I mean, you know, a few things
to point out. It's relevant to point out that
it's not totally obvious that the government anti-poverty
programs are helping rather than harming.
I think there's a non stupid argument that they might
actually be increasing poverty. This is argued by Charles Murray
and his famous book losing ground.
And I and what Murray says is well, you know, government
spending on social welfare programs dramatically increased
since the from the start of the 1960s.
And poverty did not go down. And in fact, you know, it looked
like maybe got worse great and his explanation for this
theoretical explanation is something like the government
poverty, programs. Make it easier in the short term
to engage in behaviors that are self-destructive in the long
term. All right.
So like they soften the cost of doing things, like, losing your
job, dropping out of school having children out of wedlock.
So that, you know, the government gives you money when
you do that. And but in the long term, this
is going to stop you from getting ahead in life.
Right? So like I think it's not at all
obvious that the government is helping the problem of poverty
and rather than making it worse. Anyway, the other thing to say
is so try to thought experiment. Let's say that I'm running a
charity. That helps the poor and let's
say that I feel like there's not enough voluntary contributions,
which is what people say about. Like, you know, when I say, hey,
you know, if you want to help the poor just donate to one of
these private Charities are the private Charities that are
helping the poor. Okay, and then people say, yeah,
but they're not going to get enough money.
Right? So let's say that I'm running
one of these Charities and I feel like I'm not getting enough
voluntary contributions. And so I just go out and I
started mugging people right? Like, you know, me people on the
street. May I say you look like you've
got some money and then point the gun at them hand over your
money. Don't worry.
It's going to the boy. Is this good behavior on my
part. Like, I think this, I think,
most people would agree. This is not good behavior.
Does not seem very good. Okay.
Now, if you're okay with that, like so there are some, you
know, like if you're a hardcore leftist, you might say, yeah,
that's totally fine. Do that.
Right? So, if that's your view than
this argument, didn't work on you.
Okay, but most people think No, you can't do that.
Okay. Well, if you can't do that, then
the government doesn't have any better reason for what it's
doing. Right?
What it's doing is kind of the same things.
Now, what we need to also assume as that in the absence of a
state, we would have drastic wealth inequality.
This would create a terrible imbalance of power.
We're a small group of individuals would have virtual
domination at in society, leaving us, sort of, at their
whim. They want something to be done.
They have all the money and resources, effectively enslaving
the rest of us does. Potential of drastic wealth
inequality justify the existence of political Authority, you
know, I mean, oh, that sounded like a very trenchant
observation about our society, right?
And you know, the group that has Total Domination is the
government. That's what they're called.
I saw like, okay, you know, let's have some group that has
Total Domination over Society in order to prevent that same thing
from happening is a little bit weird, you know, so I'm not I'm
not terribly worried about well. Athena quality per se.
I am more worried about power inequality, right?
Which is exactly why there's a problem with having government
because that's just like exactly what it is right now.
Why am I not worried about wealth inequality per se?
Yeah. I I don't think that there's any
intrinsic value to equality. I think that there's something
bad about people who are unable to meet their needs, right?
If you can't meet your basic needs, that's bad, but if you
can meet your basic needs, but Just don't have as much extra
stuff if somebody else has. So what I don't care.
Okay. Now I have discussions of this
in academic articles, right? I would say that I've proved
that equality has no intrinsic value.
Okay, but it's kind of take a while and it requires some
diagrams to show that to go through that argument.
So I will just like, you know, I'll just say dogmatically that
I don't think it has intrinsic value and then you can read my
papers on this, what else? Okay, sometimes people worry
that. That oh well wealth.
But wealth inequality leads to political inequality.
Like that's the problem with it. Yeah, but I mean, that's mostly
if you have a state right? And there I mean, the reason
that that's true is that you use your money to buy Congressman or
things like that, right? Okay.
That is you find the congressman who you think are going to serve
the interest of your company and then you donate to their
campaigns and stuff like that. Right?
And then, you know, you find congressman who you don't like
what they're doing and And you kind of like fund a primary
Challenger or something like that?
Okay. That's why wealth inequality
leads to political inequality. Like I don't see how it happens
if you don't have a state. Yes, the best example of this
is, you know, someone like Donald Trump.
It's like, but we weren't, we were bugged by him, you know,
10, 20 years ago, but we were never terrified that he was
going to start a war that he was going to steal trillions.
Annually that he was going to lie us and expand welfare
programs. He's drastically expanded the
money supply to the point where we're experiencing inflation
already. So we actually have a real world
example, of a billionaire, who while he had power.
It was nothing like political power.
This is I think this actually refutes the case almost
completely that we need to worry about market and equality.
Its political inequality, that really allows people to enforce
their evil. I mean private citizen, Henry
Kissinger or Chairman Mao can imagine.
They would commit their atrocities.
If we saw them as equals more or less about some example, right?
Like I mean, you know the, for all the People who hate Trump.
It's a great example, right? Because they were nowhere near
as upset or as worried nor should they be when he was just
a realtor? Just a real estate developer.
Yeah, in the predatory evil dog-eat-dog private sector.
Now, he serves us and only acts when we vote for him to do.
So, it's the opposite of what they tell us.
Okay, back to me being The Devil's Advocate corporations
need regulation if For this regulation people, in very high
positions of power would simply wreck the environment.
They have no incentive. They wouldn't protect their
employees who have much less wealth and are sort of, at the
mercy of their employer and Norwood consumers.
Be protected using a saw that could cut your hand off.
You could lose a finger, if we have a state.
However, we are able to curb their negative influence.
We're able to check their products and services before
they release them to the The public trying to profit off our
backs and our labor. Therefore, the state is morally
justified in so far. As it curbs imbalances of power
to make sure we have a general level of Safety and Security and
Society. Yeah, good.
So, you mentioned three, kinds of regulations.
There's environmental regulation, regulation to
protect workers and regulations to protect consumers.
And I think that there's an important difference Between the
first one and the other two, right?
The difference with environmental regulation is,
there's actually negative externalities.
So like, you know, if you're just putting pollution out into
the air, then you're imposing costs on just, you know,
everyone else putting a small cost on everyone else who
breathes and you don't have to pay for that cost.
And if you're you know, if you're a Libertarian rights,
there is you might even think it's a rights violation, I
think. The case of protecting workers
and consumers is different. Because just like, you know, in
a normal competitive market, there are forces to protect the
workers in the consumers, right? It's like in a, in an ordinary
competitive market, granted there are mistakes in the in the
real world. But you know in theory there's a
mechanism for protecting them which is well if your if your
job is really crappy and dangerous and so on, then that
go that It goes into the the desirability of you working for
your firm, which means like you have to pay more to get Workers
to work there. Then a firm that was more safe,
which means you have an economic incentive to not to make your
from reasonably safe, right? Not maximally safe, right?
But rather sort of you have the incentive to make it as
efficient as possible, Right? To make the safety improvements
that are worth it to the workers, right?
So if they would rather have more money and less safe
conditions than you do that, right?
Anyway, one of the things I think that people forget about
is, although it is within the government's power to fix a
bunch of problems. It is also within their power to
worsen a bunch of problems. So you have to think about well,
okay, so they have the power to regulate but are they going to
make only good regulations or will they be sometimes making
harmful regulation? Because they can do that too,
right? They can solve.
Good problems, but they can also create public bath so to speak,
right? Okay.
Well, I mean there have been studies of Regulation.
Right? So I would call, I'd like to
repeat this periodically. I recall reading an interview
with Ronald coase. This was in reason magazine.
I don't know the name of the interview anymore, but you can
probably find it if you search. Okay, so the interview Ronald
coase and you know, famous economist Nobel, prize-winning
Economist, and he was also the editor of I think it was the
Journal of Law and economics. Genomics for like 20 years.
Okay, and he says, during the interview that they published a
lot of studies of the effects of a variety of different
regulations, right? And they just kept turning out
to be bad. Right?
They kept turning out to be counterproductive or to just
have costs that were greater than the benefits.
Now, government Regulatory Agencies, regularly
prospectively estimate, large, net benefits from their
regulations, right? But Later, when economists,
study the, if the axial effects of the regulations, they usually
conclude that it was more harmful, right?
More harmful than beneficial and, you know, the interviewer.
So, but Co says, but I don't think that all regulations are
bad. I think we need some regulations
and the interviewer says, okay, so, can you give me an example
of a regulation? That was good.
And he's like, well, I there wasn't one.
Okay. Now, In fairness, probably, they
were only studying regulations, or there was at least.
Tobias towards regulations that were controversial, they
private. So he probably did not have
Economist studying regulations that were generally agreed to be
beneficial. We probably only studied if
there was a question about it. Okay, but so in such cases
though, it regularly turns out that it's harmful there are so
there are a lot of studies of individual regulations.
There's like a few articles and economics about kind of
regulation in general. Try to estimate the costs and
you get very large and that Okay, so there was one article
that estimated that it might have actually.
Now I've forgotten what the number was.
It was estimating that it had reduced GDP growth by other 1%
or 2% or something for a year. And then and the result of that
over the last 50 years is just a huge cost, right?
Like tens of trillions of dollars.
I think so, you know, like after sort of there's like the theory
of what government would do, if it was Angelic, but then there's
what it does. If it's staffed by just like
normal humans who are flawed and selfish and sometimes stupid.
And, you know, sometimes they don't know what they're doing,
and sometimes they just don't care that much about, you know,
the rest of society. And what happens in that
circumstance, which is reality is, you know, not that great,
right? I mean, we have also cases of
regulatory capture where Hank Paulson leaves Goldman Sachs to
become Secretary of the Treasury or we have OSHA regulations.
I believe it was OSHA where they stop, Elvis Summers and Jay
Austin. From building houses that would
cost about $1500 virtually solving the homeless problem
with total voluntary contributions.
So, yeah, looking at the secondary effects is is vital to
Ending the situation. Now, if we have no State, there
will be no final Arbiter in disputes that will arise in
society. So, this will lead to a constant
war of all against all, as Thomas, Hobbes correctly,
explained to us each one of us taking the Law into our own
hands. Each one of us having very
different opinions on how things should be.
This would render us into a state of chaos.
The state is therefore Because of a very real potential for the
existence of Chaos. Yeah, they're good.
So that the famous sort of hobbesian argument, right?
Which might be the most popular argument for the government.
I mean, basically the anarcho-capitalist view is we
need to privatize the functions of the police and the courts not
that we need to get rid of them. All right, and so like, I think
there's a problem that people don't know what the
anarcho-capitalist theory is. As soon as they hear that you're
an anarchist. They think that you had this
completely idiotic view right there.
Like, there should be no institutions and just everybody
does anything it. Talk about it.
That's not anybody's view. Right?
It's that you can privatize these functions.
All right, and by the way, like how Anarchy would go, depends a
lot on how it comes about. So if the government just
disappeared like that today with everything, you know else, the
way that it is, then there would be chaos in the streets, the
next day, right? But there are possible
transitions. That would make it go smoothly.
Right? So the government could start a
Outsourcing so to speak, right? That is, there are government
police patrolling, a lot of areas.
They could start Outsourcing that to private companies like
private security guards could start patrolling and then, and
the people who are living in a particular, small area, like a
an apartment building or a neighborhood of houses, they
could decide which among many competing security agencies.
They want to be patrolling their area.
Okay, so like this could start, you know, this is a good start
and spread gradually and then eventually It could be that all
or almost all of the police are private security guards, right?
And if this happens, I don't see the chaos breaking out, right?
Okay, and then you worry about the resolution of disputes,
right? We still need the government to
resolve disputes or like assess guilt or innocence of accused
criminals. And know they can Outsource that
to actually right there are private arbitration companies
right now and the government. Courts could start referring
more and more cases to pry. The arbitration, right?
Just say, you know, okay. We don't want to hear this.
Here's a list of arbitrators in your area.
You guys pick an arbitrary or anything, they could do that.
And then so then the court system could gradually shrink.
And if that's the way it comes, if that's the way that the
abolition of government comes about.
I don't see, you know, sudden chaos coming about Now, I'm
curious about what you think of the mindset of the person who
asks a question like this, because I don't think they're
really asking what you know, they say, when they say
something to the extent of who will provide Roads Courts,
police and military, how will this get done?
And who will provide it? Well, I mean, what are they
thinking? They're thinking like they have
no idea what the an artist is thinking, right?
So you see a bunch of That's provided by the government.
And then somebody says, let's get rid of the government.
And then like the first kind of like, the simplest reaction you
can have is, well, then everything, the government is
doing won't be done. I mean, there's a certain sort
of, like, obvious logic to that and then, you know, if you just
didn't think the next step is the next thing that you should
think. Is this person who is calling
himself, an anarchist does not seem retarded, and he also
doesn't seem insane. So he probably He doesn't
actually think the ridiculous thing that I just thought he was
thinking about it. Like, you should think that, but
anyway, but actually, I mean, this is very common that people
don't try to think what the other person's view.
I'd be like, okay, we are we must have some story about how
this gets were. Okay, but maybe then they're
thinking, okay, but what's the story about how its provided
like, okay? Now, I mean, it's not that hard
to think of it, though. Like, I mean, you know, Shirley
especially if you know the Russians are Libertarians.
Surely, they're going to say the market can provide it now.
I think there is some question. So for some Goods there is a
serious question about how the market provides it.
So, you know, when you have public goods, I think, you know,
there's a question about whether we can provide them.
The roads are a little bit hard to provide.
I mean, it's a little bit hard because like it's hard to get
adequate competition. I like, I don't know where the
hell you're going to have like five roads.
I do what stacked on top of each other by different companies or
something. Not sure like are next to each
other and then there's like a really inefficient land, use
their right you might worry about that.
I think that in the case of protection of the environment, I
think like that's a serious question because there's a
public goods problem. And so like yeah, we will not
will not get the optimal amount of Environmental Protection.
Like, I think that's just true and we are still going to have
global warming that's going to keep happening.
Okay. However, I would remind everyone
that we're getting that anyway, like that stuff is going to
happen. Anyway, even though we have the
government and in theory, the government could Stop global
warming. They could like reduce
pollution, whatever and they are doing some of it but they're not
doing the most efficient amount even though in theory is
possible for them to and we're not going to have the most
efficient amount without the government either.
But there are a bunch of other problems of the government
produces that we will not have. Right.
Exactly. And what I really like about
this book, the problem of political Authority and
examination of the right to coerce and duty to obey is
anytime you take a criticism. You say.
Yeah. That It's a really good
criticism. It's going to be hard to
distribute Justice in society, with hundreds of millions of
people, by the way, giving a group of people a coercively
funded Monopoly does not solve this issue.
In fact, it applies tenfold because they don't have the
incentive of. Hey, we might lose our funding
if we, you know, choked Eric Garner to death or if we kill a
bunch of churchgoers in Texas, or if we lie people into a Gulf
of Tonkin War based on an event that didn't even happen or they,
Why us into Iraq, I mean the idea that things are imperfect.
Therefore. This group has a coercively
funded Monopoly on Law and Order and Society.
It's like the greatest non-sequitur and I'm sorry, did
you want to respond to that? You know, so, I mean, I think
there's a problem that people kind of apply different ways of
reasoning to the market versus the government, right?
When their reasoning about the government, they sort of
idealize it and assume that the government is going to do.
The best thing that's within its power to do.
Something. And when they think about the
market, they think about how most people are selfish and
assume that agents in the market are going to behave selfishly.
And the second thing is correct. People are selfish, but what's
wrong is failing to apply that to the government.
And then when you when you realize that the government is
staffed by the same, kind of selfish entities.
Namely humans, as companies are in the market.
Okay, then you have to start thinking about the incentive
structure and the So structure with government is really bad.
They have a monopoly which means that if they totally fuck up,
you still have no one else to turn to they totally fuck up.
You cannot fire them and go to their competitor because they
don't have a relevant competitor, right?
And you know, and then you think.
Oh, yeah, but it's going to be fixed by democracy.
But then, if you spend some time thinking about the incentive
structures of democracy, you realize that that's totally
fucked up, right? You realize that the voters have
no incentive to pay attention. Because like my probability of
flipping the outcome of an election is like one in a
million between one and a million and one in 10 million or
something like that. Right?
So I'm just not going to spend any time, you know, trying to
research issues or find out what this politicians, real voting
record is and so on because I'm just going to get whoever the
majority of of ignoramuses elect anyway on the basis of like
who's better-looking, who spent more money on campaign ads and
stuff like that, right? Like that's the incentives on
the voters and then the incentives on the politicians
are well. Okay, that means that we don't
have to pay attention to what's actually good or bad.
Right? Because the voters aren't paying
attention. They don't know what we're
doing. Right?
And I use this illustration, you know, periodically for students.
I ask them if they can identify like the last vote that their
Congressman did first first. Can you identify who your
congressman is? And most people don't know that
if you don't even know the person.
Person's name, right? How are you?
Like, keeping that person in line, but then if I ask but you
know, like maybe half of the people know that person's name.
Okay, but I asked. Okay, and like what was the last
vote that he did in Congress? Like nobody ever knows, right?
Unless you ask this right after a really famous vote like, you
know, the impeachment vote. If I ask right after the
impeachment, on Trump vote, then substantial number of people
would know how their Congressman voted.
But other than that in the ordinary course of And people
have no idea what the person is doing, which means there's no
incentive for the congressman to be careful that they're serving
the interest of their constituents.
What would you say is the principal difference between a
state making laws that Citizens, need to follow or they get
punished versus a homeowner's association which has for
example, a no drinking alcohol policy.
Okay. So let's just use that.
What is the difference between the American president?
Outlawing alcohol, and prohibition versus an HOA.
Outlawing alcohol in their neighborhood.
Is it just sighs? Yeah, I mean, well, I assumed
we'd be talking about the legislator legislature.
Outlawing alcohol, or whatever. Yeah, what's the diff?
So, I mean, there are two important differences between
government and Market, provision of whatever, you know, of a
product or whatever. The differences are
voluntariness versus coercion and competition versus Monopoly.
Okay. So with a homeowner's
association, you have an actual contract, right?
Not the fictional. Track, like the social contract
but like, an actual literal contract where there's a piece
of paper that says the terms, and there's your signature on
the bottom of it. That's what I mean, like
contract. Not like somebody just said, you
have to agree to this or get out of your own house.
Okay. So and with a government, you
don't have a contract, right? You didn't agree that you would,
you're just born into it and then they just say you have to
have us like you have to obey us or else.
And then there's the difference of competition, which is There
are there's more than one homeowners association and
there's only one government right now.
That's like, you might say, well not exactly because you can move
to another country to get another government.
And also like you could move to another neighborhood to get a
different HOA. Okay.
So the real difference is that there's sort of like the
competition is more meaningful in the case of an HOA because
the cost of switching to the competitor are much lower.
There are costs like there are significant costs of if you
don't like your HOA and you want to get a different one, there
are significant costs. Like if you're a homeowner, you
have to sell your home and they're a big transaction costs.
Oh, okay. That's true.
So for that reason, HOAs can kind of screw up a fair amount,
right? But, you know, there is still a
limit because they can't screw up so much that it's worth it to
you to sell your house to get away from him.
Okay. Now, with the government also,
it is may be possible to move but the costs are way higher.
Do you have to leave behind your society?
Which means you might leave behind the whole culture that
you're familiar with and you have to leave.
Define behind your family and friends, you're going to have to
abandon your job in most cases, right?
Furthermore. You may not even be legally able
to move, right? Because all, or almost all
countries in the world, have immigration restrictions.
And so you have to try to find a country that will let you in.
And there may not be any country.
That doesn't have a tyrannical government that will let you in.
Right? So right so there's, it's just
that, there's a lot. Less competition among
governments there in some sense. There's competition, right?
Like companies can move operations overseas if they
don't like on the regulatory regime, or the tax regime or
whatever, but it's just like much higher cost than in the
case of moving from one neighborhood to another
neighborhood that has different HOA.
We're like, okay, I move three miles big deal.
Okay. Now I had to take the five
percent cost from selling my house.
Okay, so that's annoying. But not as bad as moving to
Mexico, right? Yes.
Now where the libertarian Anarchist position?
Falls short? Is it turns all human beings
that have inherent value simply into dollar signs?
If I can't make money off you and this voluntary libertarian
Society. I'm not going to interact with
you. If you don't buy any of our
court services, you don't get a court system.
The kind generous statist position allowed.
Us to make sure that we do not exclude, People based on the
arbitrariness of how much, how many Federal Reserve notes they
have? Therefore.
The state is position is morally superior to the anarchist
position, seeing not everyone as mere dollar signs to crank
resources out of but as inherently value human beings.
Yeah. Well, maybe it's seeing them as
voters, right? No, actually, I mean this sort
of idea reminds me of a remark by David Friedman.
There's this example, he gives where, you know, you're thinking
of taking an umbrella because it might rain, right?
And on the point that he makes is taking the umbrella does not
make it rain. Right.
So like it's just recognizing the fact that it's going to rain
and if it is and you take the umbrella and like if you decide
that you don't, you just hate the Thought of rain so much that
you just don't want to take the umbrella.
Then you just gonna get wet. Okay, and now, what does this
have to do with the government versus the market?
Well, capitalism doesn't make people selfish and government
doesn't make people altruistic, right?
What's the case is people are that way, they're either selfish
are altruistic already. But the thing is like,
capitalism uses the selfishness of people in order to produce,
right to produce goods and services and government just It
relies on people being altruistic.
So, like I'm because the idea of government is let's just give a
whole bunch of power to this one group and like, give them a
complete Monopoly on the protection and dispute
resolution and rulemaking services for society.
Like just give them power over everyone else.
Okay, so that does not make them nice people.
What that does is it makes it so that in order for society to
prosper those People have to be nice, right?
Or you know, they have to at least not be terrible.
Okay, and so and that's sort of like saying I don't like rain.
So I'm not going to take the umbrella, right?
I don't like selfishness. So I'm going to create a system
that only works if people are not selfish.
No, that's not going, right. You should be thinking I know,
like, well, yeah, I don't you don't like selfish.
Nobody like selfish. It's right, except Ian Rand, but
You know, you should be thinking, it's still a fact,
it's the reality. So how can we design the
structure of society? So that when people are being
selfish like they're going to it is less bad, right?
Then, you know alternative structures, right?
And that and the answer that is well don't have a monopoly of
force, right? Don't give one group power over
everyone else. Now.
I am very much convinced by your argument.
But I am so terrified of the state not being there to protect
me. I have not seen cases of this
working historically. Therefore.
I'm going to reject it on grounds that we first need to
see it actually working before we can Embrace this
philosophical ideology. So your thesis is illegitimate
because no previous examples have existed.
Yeah, unfortunately, if this is a good argument, then we'll
never see any examples, right? Or at least if that's if people
find that argument persuasive, right?
The only way to get to get, the evidence is to try it now, but
that doesn't mean that this is an unreasonable argument, right?
I mean like you might, you might think.
Yeah, we should never try. You'll never find out because
it's too risky and there are some things that are so risky
that you should never find out, right?
So fair point, I guess I would say Well, what we should do to
get more information is we should sort of gradually move in
the direction of anarcho-capitalism, right?
So as I was suggesting earlier, well, the government could start
Outsourcing some of its functions, right?
And we'll see how it goes. Right?
And if it goes, well, then they can do more, right.
So, and actually, there is some amount of this happening
already, right? So there are private security
guard companies. And there are actually more
private security guards than government police right now.
And you can just have like more communities using private
security guards instead of police right and see how that
happens. Like see I mean see how that
works. See if they shoot black people
as much as the police you've made and I think the answer is
going to be no. I think they're going to be
shooting fewer people and you know, maybe they'll be doing a
better job of patrolling and making people feel safe.
Now if I'm wrong then we could go back.
Right? So like so I mean, The
suggestion of moving gradually I think, is the answer to the risk
problem? Similarly, about the court
system. Right?
So we already have arbitration companies.
In fact, a lot of business contracts, have a clause that
say that says, if we have any disputes, they will be resolved
by arbitration by private company, instead of by the
government courts. And the reason why companies put
this in their contracts, like, and it's not to take advantage
of the other company, or whoever they're making the contract
with. It's like it's good for both
sides. It's because the government
course are incredibly expensive to use and right, and not that
reliable and they take forever to get cases resolved and so on.
And so, okay, actually, I mean, they've from the experience that
we have now, it seems to be working pretty well.
We could try expanding that and just like see how it goes.
Right? We could try having more and
more cases resolved by private arbitration.
If it doesn't go well, then we can move in the opposite
direction. If it goes well, and we keep
doing it until all of the courts are private are.
Trading screen. So I'm good.
Absolutely. Um, so all right, I'm done
playing the devil's advocate here.
I want to ask you why you think that there was so, little,
humility in political discussions.
I have taken so much time to read books.
Listen to speeches, watch videos, read opposing arguments,
and you realize how much depth there is to even the most things
that look totally ridiculous. On the outskirt.
I mean, like for For example, you know, someone's like the
government sprays chemicals and kills people and then it turns
out agent orange was openly used Vietnam Operation Sea spray.
So you realize how much depth there really is to humanity.
But the average voter has no humility at all.
They're very confident and things they know little about.
Why do you think that is actually?
I mean, so I'm not sure if that's true.
So I think we get an exaggerated impression of how many dogmatic
ideologues there are because it's the dog.
Like ideologues who are the loudest, like, and the people
who are reasonable are like sitting there, listening,
listening, quietly, and politely, and then like, you
know, the dogmatic people are just like posting all over and
tweeting all the time. Okay, and anyway, so like okay,
but why are some people dogmatic ideologues?
I mean, it's partly because they have no incentive to be
rational. So I mean, this is just like,
you know, the kind of the institutional structure of our
society. Be like Yeah, by thinking
rationally about politics. You don't get any reward and by
thinking irrationally, you might think, well, what's the reward
of thinking irrationally? Okay.
Well, there is, you know, sort of emotional rewards because if
you're irrational, you get to believe whatever you want to
believe, whatever that might be, because I people are going to
have different preferences and they're going to be different
beliefs that they enjoy, right? Like you, take pleasure in
certain political beliefs. And if that's the case, then
It's sort of it's in your interest.
So to speak to just like dogmatically cling to those and
dismiss any counter-arguments and so on because then you get
to continue having the belief that you enjoy.
So, I mean, I like that so that's the Bryan Caplan
explanation which you know seems plausible.
I guess, you know, other things you can say you can say like,
well, what about you know evolutionary psychology?
Like yeah, I mean most of the time It's it's good to think
rationally, like about things that pertain to your survival
and reproduction. But on the other hand if you
just have the he's like ideological beliefs.
Yeah, like natural selection wouldn't have designed us to be
accurate about philosophy or politics or religion because
like that didn't promote survival and reproduction in our
past. Right?
So like that could be a sort of connected explanation, right?
So Now you have a great chapter in this book, titled, the
psychology of authority. So you first, you know, have you
know, that opening quote of why is it okay that we have such
different standards for this group, called the state.
If I did what they do, I'd be seen as a psycho terrorist and
I'd be put in jail, but they do it openly and people pledge
their allegiance to them. I'm curious.
How do you think it is that the state has created this double
standard in the minds of millions of people for Thousands
of years. Yeah.
Well, I mean it's if you go back thousands of years people had
pretty terrible values and so like they thought that it was
fine to go and attack a neighboring tribe or I don't
know. I don't know what they thought
but that's what they did. But just pack a neighboring
tribe for no, no good reason. I was gonna say no reason but
their reason is they don't, I don't like those people.
They've got some stuff. I'm going to Take their stuff.
I'm going to kill something like and also if we attack them and
kill them and then we can kidnap the women to Great them.
And the reason why people with the explanation for why people
would do that is evolutionary, right?
Because people who did that left behind more offspring, and so
anyway, but anyway, that was like, so, whatever values people
had, it didn't stop them from doing that.
So they must have had terrible values.
And that's when the state arose, right in the period.
When people had terrible values and people's values have gotten
better over time. I'm but like once the state gets
established. It's hard to get rid of it.
So like that's part of what's happened.
Also, part of what's happened is this huge status quo bias.
So, the way that things are going in your Society, you just
have this kind of natural tendency to assume that that's
the way things are supposed to go.
Right? And the stage is just like a
very big prominent aspect of our society, right?
It's like our tradition and so you just think.
Okay, so that must be, okay, right?
And most people Don't really, they don't question the right.
The really big obvious aspects of how their society Works.
They question things that are sort of question things that are
new like some new law gets passed and they think is that a
really good idea and you know things that other people are
talking about you question, whether it's good or bad, but
it's something's just been going on for thousands of years.
It's like there's not that many people question it, you know,
other things the government does.
I mean it's kind of in your self-interest.
Just to believe that government is legitimate.
If you start disobeying the government then they come and do
nasty things to you. So like in a way you have a, an
interest in believing that you have to obey them.
Now, of course, you could just believe that you are obeying
them out of fear, right? Which is what I believe.
I believe that we're basically obeying the government because
we're afraid of them because they're going to fuck us up if
we don't know late, but that's not a very pleasant belief.
If so, what's more pleasant is to believe that we're doing our
Duty, right? Like when we give them the money
that they demand and we obey their rules.
And so on, we're doing our duty and that feels a lot better than
I've been extorted. Okay.
I think the truth is you've been extraordinary but you know,
there's this kind of cognitive dissonance right where you want
to believe the the positive thing about yourself and we also
definitely see this sort of psychological missing out or
not. In part of the cool popular
people because it's so hard to explain all these Concepts and
if it's at the cost of you looking like an idiot, well, you
know what? You're probably just going to
lie and say yeah, I'll vote after I watch the presidential
debates because the anarchist conversation is so in-depth.
I mean really good. Looking woman, walked up to me
and asked me to sign this thing and I just paused for like 10
seconds. I'm like, what am I going to?
We do give her speech. I run into her about every other
day, or I could just sign it. And I can get this off my back
and we never have to talk about it.
Again. It's amazing how shame this is
from Thaddius Russell. He says, shame is the health of
the state. I've heard many vegetarians say
that the fear of being shamed is what allows people to, you know,
kill what is it? Like Fifty seven billion animals
a year and stuff like that, which is just hard to curb.
Any thoughts on shame being the health of the state on top of?
They're actually going to kill you.
What one, more example is, we were at dinner and this guy was
a cop. And look, when you've taken an
oath to uphold the laws that are so, blatantly immoral.
I just have nothing. I have so much contempt for you,
but and I didn't think that, well, he's going to shoot me.
If I say, I don't respect the police.
It was just a shame thing. So thoughts on shame being the
health of the state on. Top of actual fear of violence,
being initiated against you. Yeah, that's good.
Yes, I mean, you know, I was suggesting part of why we're
being the state, a big part is we're afraid of what they're
going to do to us. But also, we're kind of like
afraid of what our fellow members of society are going to
think of us, right? And if you start acting weird,
then they're just going to like start avoiding you and they're
going to think that you're a weirdo and so on you won't have
friends and you know, won't get Bates and whatever.
Yeah, I think there's just like an innate tendency in human
beings to try to fit in with the rest of society.
And that's just because like this whole thing of us being
social animals, right? Our whole way of life involves
interacting with each other. And so like it's super important
that other people have good opinions of you and they want to
cooperate with you. You know, I had a blog post a
while back where I was suggesting that you know, it's
the fact that people are conformist and Like they they
don't listen to people with radically different ideas.
That's adaptive. Right?
Because so, I mean it's adoptive in one obvious way, which is, if
you align yourself with the minority, then you're likely to
not be so successful. And, you know, a way to align
yourself with the majority is to adopt the beliefs that they
would do. I have, right?
So that's adaptive Behavior, but also another thing is, most of
the nonconformists are crazy. That is most of the Time when
you hear an idea, that's radically different from what
most people believe. It's also radically wrong.
And the reason for that is well, you know, like there there's
just so many crazy ideas so many.
There's so many ways to go wrong.
Right? And so, it's actually adaptive
if you're not able to figure out what the truth is for yourself.
It's adaptive to ignore the people who have radical ideas
because most of them are wrong, you're going to be During the
truth, but you're also going to be ignoring a whole bunch of
horrible ICS, and so like, right.
And so, I thought about that, I thought.
Yeah, I actually like if people are not very smart and educated
and able to evaluate for themselves, whether my arguments
in, my book are correct. They should dismiss main like,
it's rational for them. Right?
Because like if they can't tell why my arguments are better than
those of a Marxist. Then it's better for them to
just dismiss. Both of us.
I hate just miss me and Marxist mode either going to people.
Okay. And so I say that, although, I
am actually correct. Like I actually have the correct
argument. I am, what are the very small
number of extremists who actually has better ideas than
the majority opinion. Now, I got two more questions
for you. I want you to tell me.
Either the most important thing you learned from this person, or
what you thought their greatest intellectual contribution was to
the academic Fields. Bryan Caplan.
What is the most important thing?
You learn from him or you thought his most best
contributions? Yeah, man.
So, you know, there are two answers.
So the answer to the first question is Bryan Caplan,
introduced me to Total is M. And so I don't know if you know
this story, right? We were at UC Berkeley.
So Brian, and I went to college at UC Berkeley at the same time
on. So that's where I met him and
then he introduced me to an cap and that's how I became an
anarchist of already libertarian, right?
And then he told me about this and I and my first reaction was
anarchism is crazy, but you know, and then he was able to
explain it and like it made me read Murray rothbard and David
Friedman. His biggest contribution to Just
like, you know, other than and cap which you know, he did
invent is of course the theory of rational or rationality,
right? So the book, The Myth of the
rational voter, right? That's like the, the big
statement of that also a bunch of papers.
But and, you know, I use that theory frequently, like I
invoked it in this discussion. And Jason Brennan.
Another one of my favorite philosophers.
What something you learn from him or thought was his best
intellectual contribution. Yeah, I mean Jason and I
basically have the same views like it's like, you know, on on
government and democracy and whatever and anarchism, although
it's not obvious in, I don't think it's come out in his
published philosophical, writings that he's an anarchist.
I think people, when people read him, they think that he's in To
stack rat, right? That is, you know, a person who
believes in the rule of the well-informed or something.
And I understand why people would think that, because, like,
so he has some good articles about this about how, you know,
you have a right to not be ruled by people who are totally
incompetent and and ignorant and stupid or whatever and are not
paying attention and so on. And so, you know, the suggestion
seems to be, okay, so we should just, we should be ruled by the
smart wise benevolent people or whatever.
But I happen to know that is actually was anarchism.
But anyway, so I mean, I think that is criticisms of democracy
are probably his biggest contribution, right?
And just, you know, pointing out.
I mean, like, it's well known how democracy is screwed up and
he's well known among people who look into that sort of thing,
not among the general public, who have totally incorrect use
about democracy, but, you know, like, besides explaining the
problems with incentives, right? I think, just like explaining
how it's totally immoral, right? The system that we have is
immoral because like, you know, Are your under the power.
Just like, you know without even being a Libertarian, right?
You can see that there's something wrong with you being
under the, under the power of these people who don't know what
the hell they're doing, and don't care.
Right? Like all of these voters, don't
care. They're not, they're not doing
research. They don't know what the issues
are right there. Just like taking some tweaks
that they heard whenever and and voting on the basis of who's
good-looking or stuff like that. Yeah.
Absolutely. Hey, mr.
Hume. More.
Thank you so much for your time. Again.
The book is the problem of political Authority, and
examination of the right to coerce and the duty to obey.
Please check it out. And thank you everyone for
watching. Keith Knight.
Don't tread on anyone. All right.
Thanks for having me.