Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Imagine how people would flourish if they gave up their misplaced belief in eating! After all, ten percent of our GDP goes to food purchases: think of all of the wealth that would be freed up if people just stopped eating! Furthermore, over 40% of the land in the United States it Is devoted to food production, a truly shocking amount, and all that land would be freed up for other purposes if we were food-free. Finally, food kills: every year, millions of people are made ill, and thousands die, directly do to food they have ingested. And millions more die from diseases related to long-term patterns of food consumption. It is completely clear how horrid food is: In the present circumstances, most human beings come nowhere near their potential, because they are shackled by the mistaken belief that they must constantly acquire and consume food. "But Professore," you complain, "we know that if people don't eat food, they die. Just look at all of the horrible fam...

And thus it is a terrible confusion to imagine that accepting the existence of the state necessitates a moral double standard. (Someone like Machiavelli posited one, sure, but it isn't necessary to do so!) Anarchists sometimes say things like, "The state's agents are allowed to collect taxes, while you would be arrested for doing the same: therefore,, there must be two different moralities at work." Well, so what? Pilots are allowed to fly commercial airliners while I am not. Professional baseball players are allowed to play at Yankee Stadium but not me. My doctor operates on me but not I on him. The priest hears my sins but I do not hear his. When I was a child, my father could send me to my room, but the stranger across the street could not do so. These are roles in the social division of labor. If the law says, "Joe Smith may collect taxes for himself, but Gene Callahan may not," there would be something fishy going on. But that is not what happen...

In the comments section of this post , Bob Murphy writes, "There is clearly a meaning to the phrase 'spontaneous order.' I'm not saying you have to be an anarchist if you like the idea--Hayek himself wasn't an anarchist. But it is an abuse of language to say the state is an example of spontaneous order." Yes, indeed, to claim the state is a spontaneous order would be stupid. Which is why I never said that, nor anything even very close to that. But Bob's confusion is understandable, given all the ideological baggage that has been heaped upon these concepts, and others may partake of it, so let me explain this at the top level, rather than in the comments. Set aside for a moment the matter of the state, and let us turn to the firm. The firm is (largely) a planned order. But, 1500 years ago, no one said to himself, "You know, let me invent an economy full of firms!" No the firm is a (largely) planned order that arose spontaneously. As must...

The other day, I saw a poster on Facebook showing a quote from Jeff Tucker to the effect that "most of our lives take place under anarchy." (I quote from memory.) This is similar to the question one sees that, since spontaneous social orders appear with great regularity, what the heck do we need government leaders for? Let's examine this idea a bit further and see what is going on. There are many phenomena in the world, life being one of the most notable, that are referred to as self-organizing. (I would prefer saying that they are organized by an inner principle, but no mind, we will use the popular term.) No one has to construct a bacterium: they emerge spontaneously from other bacteria. Let us say someone notices this, and decides it is a lovely thing, all this inner-directed activity, a beautiful anarchy, let us say. But they notice one exception: certain creatures, humans foremost amongst them, have developed brains, organs of top-down control, that direct the a...

Here : "Under ordinary circumstances, if we’re planning an evening out and discussing what movie to see, it’s understood that if we cannot reach agreement on a particular film there is always the possibility of cancelling our plans and heading off to separate movies. The possibility that, in the event that consensus is not achieved, one of us might simply compel the other, by force or the threat thereof, to go to a particular movie is simply not contemplated. Discourse and persuasion in the legislative arena, by contrast, take place under the shadow of the truncheon and the gun; these conversations have a winner, and the losers are conscripted into the winners’ projects. The whole process of discussion has as its aim and presuppositon the externalisation of the costs, and internalisation of the benefits, winners’ favoured schemes. Legislation – at least the kind of legislation practised by states – is not an alternative to violence but is rather a mode of violence." OK...

Every false doctrine contains a germ of truth, otherwise no one could ever come to believe it. I think Marx's postulate that value is based on labor (it was not a "labor theory of value": he explicitly postulated this) clearly falsifies reality, but its plausibility rests on the fact that labor clearly has some connection to value. Realistic "statists" have always recognized that there is a similarity between the state and a dominant gang, but also that there are many differences as well. Consider the "statist" Augustine : Regimes, including Rome for Augustine, can make at best a partial claim for justice, which makes his own claim that a just war is about punishing a transgressor questionable, or at best tentative, because the identity of the original transgressor, if such an entity can be said to exist, is unclear (something of course he realized, though did not always state explicitly) when political societies are so frequently founded in bl...

In the comments to this post , Jonathan Catalan writes: "It sounds less ridiculous [to say that the market can provide law] when you acknowledge that when a lot of people say 'markets' they mean spontaneous order (of which market institutions are oftentimes a product of)." It is quite true that humans are capable of spontaneously evolving an institution to handle law. Over several thousands of years, starting from a situation in which all humans lived in small bands with custom but no law, without anyone planning its appearance, humans spontaneously arrived at... the state! It is true that at times states have tried to plan the economic order, but nobody ever sat down and said "Let's create the state!" The state may impose planned orders, but the state itself is a spontaneous order . If what you want is a spontaneously evolved institution to handle the provision of law, you've got it already.

So how can its rules possibly be binding on me? And you know what else I never agreed to? The distribution of property that existed when I was born. The grammatical rules of the English language. The institution of money. The custom of wearing clothing. The practice of shaking hands with one's right hand. Driving on the right-hand side of the road. Having screws go in clockwise and come out counter-clockwise. Who would get to raise me. What days would be celebrated as holidays. Of course, social arrangements are subject to amendment. People can decide, say, "Treating other humans as property is not a good thing." But "I never agreed to it" is an extremely childish reason for demanding some social arrangement be eliminated.