Xero and Pragmatarianism Part 2

---In responce to my bringing up the paradox of tolerance, Xero said this,

I’m tolerating intolerance? Let’s consider what Kinsella wrote in that link you shared…

It simply means that the state-advocate does not mind the initiation of force against innocent victims — i.e., he shares the criminal/socialist mentality. The private criminal thinks his own need is all that matters; he is willing to commit violence to satisfy his needs; to hell with what is right and wrong. The advocate of the state thinks that his opinion that “we” “need” things justifies committing or condoning violence against innocent individuals.

You anarcho-capitalists are advocates for the victims. But who are the victims though? Taxpayers. In a pragmatarian system, if taxpayers felt like the IRS was initiating violence/force/aggression against them…then why would they allocate any of their taxes to the IRS? As Rothbard said…”In a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors.”
Regarding Mao, Hitler and Rothbard…who doesn’t have some sense of right vs wrong? The thing is… we are all touching different parts of an elephant. Therefore, no two people are going to always agree on right vs wrong. Therefore, the issue is 1. the willingness to make a decision for millions and millions of people and 2. our ability to truly understand the unintended consequences. As Milton Friedman strongly emphasized, “If we can’t persuade the public that it’s desirable to do these things, then we have no right to impose them even if we had the power to do it.” The difference between Rothbard and Friedman is the same difference between Conceit and Humility.
Regarding the invisible hand…you really don’t see Hayek’s partial knowledge in Buddha’s parable of the blind men and the elephant? It seems like they were both saying that we all have some information but nobody has all the information.
Consider this passage by Adam Smith…

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder. – Adam Smith, Theory of Moral

Every single one of us has our own unique principle of motion. These principles of motion are determined by the part of the elephant that we are touching. Given that we are all touching different parts of an elephant…then isn’t it self-evident that we’re all going to have different principles of motion? Buddha didn’t need to say anything about an invisible hand because how could anything else follow from his parable? You’re certainly not going to get the visible hand from his parable. You’re certainly not going to get Rothbard or Hitler or Mao pushing a button to try and impose their ideal society onto everybody else.

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James Rick said 1 week ago:

We’re kind of talking in circles here. Being humble doesn’t mean you concede everyone the right to abuse you simply because you’re not enitrly sure that abuse is wrong.
Again its about the theft, not what it is allocated towards afterwards. If a theif came to my house, stole the money I was going to donate, and donated it himself anonymously, it would still be theft. If I had rather kept the money at home, well, then the theft is just more annoying.

And of course, if someone’s perfect system of governance is different than mine, I won’t attempt to stop them from practicing it themselves. When it involves unwilling participants is when it is a problem.
I’m certainly no chess master, nor do I ever want to be. I do, however, reserve the right to condemn the chessmaster who coerces his pawns into place. Its not a matter of pride, its a matter of decency.
How would Rothbard have been imposing his will on everyone else by pressing the mythical button? They would have been free to form a voluntary system of governance afterwards. By not pressing the button, he would have been, in effect, condoning the behaviour of the state.
And I have to say, this relateing Buddha to YOUR ideal system of government is nothing but pure sophism. Historically he has nothing to do with it. I understand the point you’re trying to make but you’re trying to connect a very broad idea to a very specific issue of justified aggression. It’s like me saying that because Jesus once said “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword” he must have been an anarcho-capitalist because he clearly opposed agression; in fact I may have more ground in my statement due to its specific nature whereas the elephant parable is open to much more interpretation. Both are, nonetheless, absurd.
This concept that no-one truly understands his own fallibility who doesn’t agree with pragmatarianism is itself one of the highest forms of arrogance.

Thoughts on Pragmatarianism with Xero

Here is a short Mises.org discussion between me and Xerographica about tax-choice or pragmatism. It was a doctrine I was largeky unfamiliar with. It insists that people must pay taxes to the state but that they may choose to what government programs those taxes are spent. It differs from anarcho-capitalism in that it still believes in the coercive authority of the state. We ended up getting into a discussion on the implications of "the invisible hand" and Xero tried to convince me that the person who truly understands human fallibility would be the one who continues to support the coercive authority of the state to exist. I took issue with this and here is the conversation to date:

James Rick said 22 hours ago:

I like the idea, and I would certainly promote tax-choice in politics but I’d like you to tell me exactly what the real difference between anarcho-capitalism and pragmatarianinsm is. Is it only a conflict of means towards the same ends?
By my thinking, the U.S. government would exist in an anarchist society much the way the Catholic church exists now. The Church used to have crazy powers over a lot of things but now has almost no coercive power outside of the Vatican and is an institution capable of promoting social good. Could not the same happen with the institutions of government. In “Alongside Night” the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre says that government institutions will likely become workers syndicates in an anarcho-capitalistic society (agorism vs. ancaps aside).
Is the difference between this and pragmatism simply that pragmatist institutions would still claim some sort of official claim as representatives of the people rather the worker’s syndicates? Because I believe such pretentions to authority, even if people have the right to opt out, can be dangerous.

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Xerographica said 20 hours, 25 minutes ago:

Here’s the main difference…
Anarcho-capitalist: the state is not necessary
Statist: the state is necessary
Pragmatarian: the state may or may not be necessary
Buddha, Socrates, Smith, Bastiat, Hayek all argued that our perspectives are extremely limited. For example, if you came to me with a business plan…I could give you my opinion on your business plan but I couldn’t truly say whether your business was or wasn’t necessary. The only way to figure out if your business is necessary is to start it and see if anybody purchases your product/service.
Pragmatarianism sounds like a ridiculously good idea to me. But if nobody “buys” it then well…the markets have spoken. Ideas can always be ahead of their time.
There wouldn’t be any pragmatist institutions though. There would only be institutions in the private sector and institutions in the public sector. Given how limited my perspective is…there’s no way that I…or anybody else…can truly know which institutions would be in which sector. That would be up to the market to decide.
What would happen in an anarcho-capitalist system if you felt that an institution was becoming dangerous? All you could do was encourage people to boycott it and start up your own institution to try and compete with the dangerous institution. It’s the same exact thing in a pragmatarian system. If you felt the Dept of Defense was dangerous then you could encourage people to boycott it and then start up your own organization that had none of the same flaws as the Dept of Defense.
Call your organization the Bleeding Heart Militia and use it to stop genocide in Africa and I’m sure some people would donate money to your organization.

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James Rick said 20 hours, 6 minutes ago:

Right, and I’m a big fan of all those guys and thats the number one arguement I have with statist friends: “How do you know all this when the market doesn’t?” It’s funny because most of them will agree with Socrates that “all that I know is that I know nothing” but they will still insist that they are right on social issues like gay marriage and deny others the right to choose.
I’m just not sure you could call a pragmatarian idea “The State”. Do I have the right to opt out of it entirely and make no contributions to any sector of it, whatsoever?
Also, if I think an organization is dangerous I would boycott it, but if I have to chose between government organizations and the choice to opt out entirely is removed, then it isn’t a true choice.
I don’t know if youre saying I would or not be able to opt out entirely, thats why I’m asking, but your site’s by-line “make all governmental donations tax dedecutable” sounds like you have to donate to something.
From what I gather though, pragmatarianism sounds like a great “middle-way” or “golden-mean”. I can see why you brought the Greeks and Buddha into this. Of course Bastiat and Smith are there because, well, we are still libertarians, right?

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James Rick said 20 hours, 2 minutes ago:

I read the discussion again and I’m not sure you gave a satifactory answer to the question, “why be taxed at all?”
Do we have to put some money in, or is it okay to do nothing? It isn’t truly voluntary if I have to put a certain amount of money into at least one of a certain selection of organizations. The power to choose between two master does not make a slave free.

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Xerographica said 19 hours, 8 minutes ago:

Why be taxed at all?
If I said that taxes should be optional then I would be saying that the proper scope of government does not include forcing people to pay taxes. But if I said that then I would just be an anarcho-capitalist.
As a pragmatarian I say that the proper scope of government should be determined by taxpayers. So if taxpayers do not feel that forcing people to pay taxes is within the proper scope of government then they would just boycott the IRS out of existence.
If you get a chance you should check out my post on libertarianism and the free-rider problem….and my post on anarcho-capitalism vs civilization.

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James Rick said 18 hours, 51 minutes ago:

Right, thats what I thought and why I’m definately an ancap. If some people donate enough to the IRS to keep it in buisness, those people are exercising coercive power over me and are essentially filling the role of “the secretive band of robbers” which Lysander Spooner talks of in “no treason”. They are the voting class which controls the non-voting class, except its not by ballot anymore.
That is if you believe the ballot actually did anything, but thats not relevant here. What is relevant is that you’re still giving power to a coercive, large-scale democracy.

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James Rick said 18 hours, 38 minutes ago:

I like pragmatarianism as a stepping stone, but I don’t support the right of some people to fund the IRS. They may fund the IRS voluntarily but the IRS will be securing funds from others involuntarily. Even if they choose where in government those funds go.
Quick thought on your anarcho-capitalism vs civilization: I think you’re taking a bit of what might be called an ethnocentrist view of civilization. Alliegence to a tribe or religion rather than nation is in no way inferior to what you call “civilization” which is just about the most subjective term on the market. I agree with David Graeber in that sometimes we make this “us and them” distinction between “civilized” and “non-civilized”. Why would allegience to extended kinship relations, tempered with self-ownership and propert rights, be an undesireable thing. Compared to nationalism, it rocks.
I actually think of myself as a human being first, a Rick (my family) second, Cathagnostic (agnostic who supports the Catholic church for social justice and social solidarity) third, and a whole bunch of things after that. I’d say “American” (which to me is someone who who was born on either of the American continents) is pretty low. Involuntary member of the tax farm known as America might be up there, but that title would be gone in an ancap society.

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Xerographica said 18 hours, 14 minutes ago:

It boils down to fallibilism. Having lived in a stateless society for a year my best guess is that a state is necessary. But I could be wrong. Are you willing to admit that there’s a chance that you might be wrong as well? If you’re not willing to admit that there’s a chance that you might be wrong…then how are you any different than a statist?
Again…here we see Hayek’s Conceit vs Humility and Buddha’s parable of the blind men touching different parts of the elephant. Rothbard said that if there was a button that would instantly and entirely abolish the state then he would push that button until his thumb blistered. But what if his theory was wrong? Do you think Hitler and Mao thought that their theories might be wrong?
Having studied International Development Studies at UCLA I can tell you for a fact that brilliant brilliant people have no idea why some countries develop and other countries do not. They have their theories…but time and time again their theories have been proved wrong. By saying that the state is not necessary you’re saying that you know better than all those brilliant brilliant minds.
Maybe you know something that none of us do. Maybe you can actually touch the entire elephant. Therefore, maybe you’re the only blind man that can actually “see”. But isn’t that what all the blind men think? Throughout history…the only people who could truly “see”….Buddha, Socrates, Smith, Bastiat, Hayek, etc…were the ones who fully understood just how little they could actually see.

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James Rick said 18 hours, 3 minutes ago:

You’re assigning some sort of confidence to me that I clearly don’t have. I don’t think my ideas are infallible, hell most of em can’t even be considered “my” ideas. But I don’t think democracy or a pragamtist idea of allowing people to essentially pick their poison is any less fallible. I admit my fallibility, in fact I’ll swear by it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a stand on something I believe. After all, I could be wrong that murder is evil or genocide unacceptable, but that doesn’t mean I won’t stand against them with all I can.
In the same fashion I’ll stand against a coercion I think is wrong, though not to the extent that genocide is.
And the Rothbard, Hitler, Mao comparison is a little ridiculous. I get your point but try to use Hitler-relations sparingly.
Couldn’t we be wrong about “the invisible hand” anyway. Kevin Carson in “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisble Hand” how capitalism was largely a political change, resulting from the interests of the establishment, not a sponatneous market order. Sometimes libertarians do over-estimate our own liberal conceptions of the free-market and property rights or our ideas of “civilization”. Rothbard probably did. But couldn’t we be just a little wrong about how great the invisible hand really is. I mean Smith used the analogy like six times to mean six different things (I forget the exact number). Perhaps we shouldn’t base our entire moral philosophy on the idea that we are unworthy to have a moral philosophy?

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Xerographica said 17 hours, 12 minutes ago:

Saying that you’re an anarcho-capitalist is signalling that the state is unnecessary. If you’re not confident that the state is unnecessary then why call yourself an anarcho-capitalist?
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying that Rothbard was the same as Hitler and Mao. The difference is quite clear. Rothbard never had the opportunity to press the button while Hilter and Mao did have the opportunity. Maybe if Rothbard had had the opportunity then perhaps he would have thought twice about pressing the button.
You’re not quite catching my drift if you solely associate the invisible hand concept with Adam Smith. He just coined the term but the idea is really no different than Buddha talking about the blind men and the elephant. We all have different values and access to different information. Bastiat’s Seen vs Unseen covered the idea of different values and Hayek’s Conceit vs Humility covered the idea of different information.
So it’s all the same idea expressed in different ways from different angles. We all have extremely limited but unique perspectives… therefore.. .tolerance… cause there’s a really good chance that we might be wrong.
Now…personally I’m not smart enough to go down the path of being wrong about tolerance. I’m just smart enough to understand just how little we can truly know. That’s what makes me a pragmatarian.

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James Rick said 6 hours, 45 minutes ago:

I am fairly confident the State is unneccesary, and even if I wasn’t, it is possible to be a pessimistic anarcho-capitalist. See Kinsella:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella15.html
The difference between Hitler, Mao and Rothbard has absolutly nothing to do with the abilty to press the button. It has every thing to do with the application of violence. It’s about morals, not goals. Means, not ends.
I’d just like to bring up Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance”.
I’d say we’re both pretty humble people who accept a basic idea of the invisible hand that certainly transends Adam Smith (The problem is that in modern thinking the phrase is almost exclusivly associated with Smith and markets. Mostly becasue niether Jesus or Buddha ever actually said anything about an invisible hand. The ideas are applicable and worthy of thought, but they are still an idea, as infallible as the rest. Bastiat is a different story, and “the seen and unseen” is important here, but either way the invisible hand is percieved by most as a sort of Gordon Gecko “Greed is Good” thing).
Popper theorised that tolerance cannot completely by accepted because to do so would be to tolerate intolerance and hence, tolerance dies. The difference between us right now is that you are willing to tolerate some coercion. You will allow the taxpayer to choose to whom he is enslaved but he is still a slave. Therefore, I would say, in your humility, you are tolerating intolerance.
You are essntially, asserting your right to say that all people MUST donate to the state. This does not sound very tolerant to me. I don’t think there is any arguement whatsoever in the idea that a form of minarchism (like Pragmatrainism) is “more tolerant” simply because it allows the state to exist. That would be saying it is more tolerant because it tolerates intolerance, hence, Popper’s paradox.
It isn’t about our infallibility to know whether or not the state is neccesary, it is about our infallibility to control our fellow man through force and his infallibility to control us through force. I accept that Man is too infallible to do so, I also accept that it is deontologically, not just consequentialistly, wrong. I will not tolerate slavery simply because I may be wrong about the neccesity of it. As Stephan Kinsella argues in the link above, “crime may never disapper, but that doesn’t mean I have to support it.” (Paraphrase). It also doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it, due to my own infallibility.

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James Rick said 5 hours, 58 minutes ago:

Just a quick relation with the blind men and the elephant: (Although I remembered it as being mostly about religious tolerance, I looked it up again and realised it could be applicable to political theory as well):
A pragmatist is essentially saying, that because I know not the whole elephant, I must contribute my effort to support alternate interpretations of it. They would force the man who believes it is a wall to contribute to the man who believes it is a pillar.
An anarcho-capitalist would be saying, You should support others’ views of things, but no one is going to force you to.
It is the application of force which shows the governmentalist to be doing wrong, not the fact that I believe his social theory to be flawed.