I dutifully studied von Mises, Hayek, the Austrian school generally, and classical liberal and libertarian writers early and contemporary.  In time I developed an interest in exploring the outer edges of classical liberal thought, the issues that were currently arising, such as environmental concerns, or those where the empirical evidence seemed shaky such as the claim democracies would degenerate into totalitarian states if they acquired large social welfare systems. Initially I did so as a loyal libertarian seeking to make contributions to the “war of ideas.”

I was surprised that almost no one seemed interested. (Ludwig Lachmann sent me a letter explaining that I had his sympathies, but I did not yet know what he meant.  I learned soon enough.)  It turned out that more than a few were hostile to exploring these topics.  Later, when my Ph.D. became a book applying Hayek’s ideas to democracies, not one single classical liberal or free market organization or publication reviewed it. Not even one on which I sat on the academic advisory board. Yet this was based on a dissertation from one of the top three ranked graduate schools in my field in the country!

For years I was both perplexed and angered. Didn’t ideas matter?  If so, shouldn’t we try and get them right?  And didn’t we get them right by a process of research and criticism?

Over the past few months I have begun to shift my understanding of this issue.

The problem lies not in hypocrisy and careerist opportunism as I had long thought, but in how the issue of ideas’ importance is framed. These frames help us make sense of how of how our ideas fit into a larger context.  The “War of ideas” is a very flawed frame of what we are engaged in, at least those of us who take ideas seriously.

The War on Drugs

A good analogy to what is wrong is to consider the “War on Drugs.”    Those who accepted this frame saw themselves as “warriors” and therefore began using their positions and arguments as weapons in a struggle with the “other side” of “drug abuse.”  Ideas about drugs and their effects were important as weapons in a war in a battle for supremacy but not as tools for understanding the world. Efforts to blur distinctions between the extremes of open use and suppression were rejected as disloyal.  As a result, drug warriors do not understand the world of drugs use very well, have inadvertently caused many needless deaths, have retarded medical and psychological research, contributed to the rise of new sectors and groups of organized crime, and wasted enormous amounts of money while making America have the not very admirable record of imprisoning more citizens both in numbers and percentages  than any other major country on earth. And drugs are still easy to get.

If drugs were considered a problem to be understood instead of an enemy to be conquered, wqe would not have made such a mess of things.  When I propose X and you propose Y as alternative means of dealing with a problem, that encourages intelligent examination, not breast beating and moral posturing and lectures that one or the other of us is “weak” or “defeatist.

The terminology of the war of ideas has enabled those using it, be they classical liberals or libertarians or Marxists, or anyone else, to insulate themselves from learning from the “other side” except, perhaps, for tactics to sell their point of view. Ideas become commodities and tool of power, not of understanding. This gets it wrong.

Science

The terminology of war is entirely inappropriate for describing how ideas shape and respond to human experience.  Yes, I think ideas are every bit as important as I was taught so many decades ago. But not as weapons of war. They are tools of inquiry and understanding.

Science, as F. A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi emphasized, is a discovery process.  We do not know what the true picture is, and the best we can do in finding it is to subject our hypotheses to being able to be critically examined and tested.  A theory that cannot be rebutted is not science. In fact, it is the antithesis of science.

Historically science has advanced in any field through a process of conjectures and refutations and then new conjectures that open up new areas until they in turn encounter results that refute them.  The result is never truth, or if it is we have no way of knowing it, but as John Ziman puts it, “reliable knowledge.”  This wonderful term reminds us that reliable does not equal certain, and that new knowledge might be even more reliable than what we currently have.

This is not the language of war, it is the language of exploration, often competitive exploration, but still exploration. It is like the market process not like war.

Those of us engaged in the study of emergent phenomena need to be particularly aware of the differences between science as a discovery process and the “war of ideas” because this error has retarded so much scholarship in the past. I hope this journal never rejects a paper due to someone’s judgment that the conclusions are wrong or “defeatist” or help “the other side.”

This symposium features scholarly commentary and analysis on Dr. Wagner’s book from a variety of noted scholars (including Bruce L. Benson, Peter Boettke, Paul Lewis, Roger Koppl, and Adam Martin), as well as Dr. Wagner’s response to the issues raised by the contributors. Studies in Emergent Order is pleased that this symposium serves as an important addition to the literature on the nature of economics as a social science.

Studies in Emergent Order (SIEO) is an open-access journal dedicated to fostering research, discussion and publication concerning the roles played by and implications of emergent order phenomena, particularly in society but not excluding other areas.”

The Scientist reports  that In December US Representatives Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill into the House to abolish the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy requiring published research funded by the NIH be submitted to the publicly accessible digital archive PubMed Central upon its acceptance for publication . Issa and Maloney’s bill would also outlaw other agencies pursuing similar open access policies.

This blow against the free flow of scientific research is supported by the corporate publishers of academic journals.  In the market order scarcity plus demand leads to value.  In science abundance plus demand leads to value. They pull in opposite directions. This point is not just theoretical.

For example, the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology  created what it terms a “knowledge hub”  where papers presented at their annual meetings are put online by 5 pm the last day of the meeting, to be made available free to anyone in the world.  Within a few years the Knowledge Hub was visited millions of times by doctors and scientists around the world, enabling the latest scientific research to be easily available in every corner of the world.  No corporation made a dime, but the Academy grew to be the largest such organization in the world, and having a paper accepted made a person the world expert on the topic for that year.

This innovation grew out of Dr. David Hardwick’s work in emergent order theory and practice, by the way, and many who have attended our conferences have met him.

Science was enriched immeasurably even as corporations lost profit opportunities. Interestingly, “free market” advocates in Congress seem to be doing their best to make sure science is subordinated to corporate profits, regardless of the damage done to scientific research. In terms of the paper I gave this fall, soon to appear in this journal, I hope, this is a clear example of the distinction I made between capitalism and the market, with only the latter a part of a free society.

Dave Valliere, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship & Strategy and Director of the Entrepreneurship Research Institute at Ryerson University. Marko Hrelja is an Associate of the Entrepreneurship Research Institute at Ryerson University.

Studies in Emergent Order (SIEO) is an open-access journal dedicated to fostering research, discussion and publication concerning the roles played by and implications of emergent order phenomena, particularly in society but not excluding other areas.

This symposium features scholarly commentary and analysis on Dr. Chamlee-Wright’s book from a variety of noted scholars (including Daniel P. Aldrich, Bruce Caldwell, Art Carden, Christopher J. Coyne, Steven Horwitz, Emily C. Skarbek, Josh McCabe and Daniel Sutter), as well as Dr. Chamlee-Wright’s response to the issues raised by the contributors. Studies in Emergent Order is pleased that this symposium serves as an important addition to the growing literature on recovery and social order.

Studies in Emergent Order (SIEO) is an open-access journal dedicated to fostering research, discussion and publication concerning the roles played by and implications of emergent order phenomena, particularly in society but not excluding other areas.

From a traditional classical liberal perspective the terminology of “redistribution” implies that there was an initial non-redistributed pattern of wealth that political means re then possibly employed to change.  Most on the left use a similar perspective.  I think this way of looking at these questions is mistaken and goes some distance in sidetracking the resulting discussions into fruitless avenues.

Let us look at an issue even more basic than market exchanges and the patterns they create, the issue of property rights.  For in the absence of property rights there can be no markets, although primitive exchanges might take place. The definition of property rights precedes the existence of markets.

In terms of markets there is no “property,” there are property rights, bundles of possible relationships into which I may enter either with others or with what is owned.  How they are defined determines the range of possible entrepreneurial possibilities that might emerge.  Their definition also powerfully influences what effects of their employment will be considered externalities and which are internalized.

“Property” does not objectively turn into a particular group of rights.  Defining what will count as a right and what if anything will not is a political and moral issue.  Only subsequent to these concerns is it an economic one.  The economically relevant boundaries concerning exchangeable rights can take many possible forms. In addition, the case for any particular determination can change over time.

Consider property rights and air quality in Missoula, MT.  As the city grew rapidly in population activities that once were harmless became more worrisome.  Widespread heating by wood burning stoves and fireplaces eventually resulted in dangerous build ups of pollutants during certain common atmospheric conditions.  People could begin dying who had not earlier been at risk, be forced to move, or wood burning could be regulated or banned.  How to respond at this level was a moral issues, not an economic one.  (To reduce it to economics is itself first a ‘moral’ decision about values.)

Rightly I think, Missoula chose to regulate wood burning.  At this level a wide range of options still existed other than the one the city took.  No matter how the city decided, even if it decided to do nothing, hitherto absent entrepreneurial possibilities were created while others were foreclosed.  Income was redistributed by any of these decisions.

Any person or business affected by a proposed redefinition would reasonably be expected to want to influence the outcome in its favor.  It would be strange were it otherwise. Those willing and able to employ the most resources in influencing the final decision will, all else being equal, disproportionately influence its outcome.

Again, all else being equal, every time property rights are redefined or initially established, those who employ the most resources to influence the outcome will benefit disproportionately from the decisions made. This means that those with the most resources and willingness to employ them will be able to disproportionately game the system even if the formal rules treat everyone equally.

This insight is invisible to all who begin by assuming property rights and then initiating their study and it is invisible to all who treat the conditions preceding a proposed redistribution of resources as the “natural” or pure market state of affairs.  There is not and has never been such a state of affairs.

My observation means “the market” can never simply be assumed to express the values of equals exchanging with one another on equal terms.

The issues raised by discussions of redistribution are therefore legitimate ones and the truly basic question here, for me at least, is what institutions, including what definitions of property rights, are most conducive to the indefinite flourishing of societies and individuals.

A libertarian activist was sentenced to prison for refusing to remove a couch from his back yard, and for an escalating series of problems that arose from the initial charges.   Based on what I have read, what is happening is an abuse of law by the courts in Keene, New Hampshire.  The guy appears to be getting screwed over.  But there is another issue here that goes to the core of the coherence of the libertarian argument the free market is the measure of freedom and individual choices. It is this issue I want to explore.

Apparently under Keene’s municipal ordinances, it can be illegal to have a couch in your back yard.  Unreasonable?  I think so, but let’s think of another example.  A homeowners’ association makes rules as to what is and is not acceptable outside a member’s home. It decides a couch is not acceptable.  I know many times outdoor clothes lines are not acceptable, so it is easy to imagine them not accepting a couch.  Are they in the right?  It is a contractually organized association and no one had to buy a home there.  I cannot imagine a free market advocate coherently objecting.

A lot of interesting issues arise from this possibility, but I will concentrate on only one.  Clearly the homeowners’ association as well as the town of Keene objected to couches and clotheslines because they could be seen off the property.  Photons depicting these objects crossed boundaries and invaded the vision of un-consenting others.  Photons cross boundaries all the time, but sometimes their crossing is ruled a trespass and sometimes not. There is no objective line to determine when a trespass has occurred and when not.  The same issue applies to sound with the added problem that sound waves are not even physical in the sense that photons can be.

If Keener were a homeowners’ association, libertarians would likely agree with its right to make a rule about what can or can not be visible from off-property.  Their objection to Keene’s rules would have to rely not on the rules themselves, but on the fact that Keene is a democratic political body, not a market rooted homeowners’ association.  And yet this distinction will not bear the weight such an argument places on it.

Boundaries must be discovered

Clearly boundaries do not define themselves.  They must be determined, and when people disagree as to what the boundary is, it must be determined in a way that guarantees at least one person will disagree with the outcome.

The choice is either force or a procedure where even the loser agrees the outcome was arrived at fairly.  In this latter case it is analogous to a game where the ultimate loser plays by rules that will lead to his or her defeat, but which were agreed to in advance as fair. The requirement that all agree on a fair procedure leads us to some version of majority decision because at the minimum no one would accord a heavier weight to another when by doing so they increase the likelihood of losing on future decisions of some importance to them.

At this point we arrive at the principle of one-person-one-vote as an essential aspect of the process if it is to be regarded as fair.  In itself it may not be enough, but it must be a part of the process.  This principle helps establish a procedure for discovery of common rules.  As part of a discovery process neither this principle nor any other can guarantee success in any given instance, but no discovery process be it the market or science can make this guarantee.

Nevertheless, even with the possibilities of error, the process must be employed and attempts made to discover public values that at least a majority of citizens will approve as either good in themselves or fairly made.

The definitions of property rights are public values.  They cannot be decided by market mechanisms because those mechanisms work only after property rights have been defined.

The libertarian homeowners’ association presupposes that property rights have already been defined.  Even if they had initially been defined through custom, as conditions change new problems arise, and even if the courts rely on common law to make a ruling, the presupposition of fairness remains or else the losers will simply be coerced.  As an economy develops people are linked together with greater intensity, boundary issues continue to arise (no one wanted to put a muffler on a horse), and more rules must be made.  This is one reason why there are more limitation on some kinds of behavior in cities than in the country side, yet cities allow for a richer life with more choices than the countryside.  There is no one-to-one correlation between the amount of liberty a person enjoys and politically discovered and governmentally enforced rules that limit some kinds of actions.

A further step then opens up.  Property rights as is now pretty universally acknowledged are bundles of discrete rights.  Some kinds of private property have different bundles than do others.  I think all reasonable people would grant that I do not have a property right to torture and dismember my cat or dog. Hiwever I can chop up my couch.  “Private property” constitutes different bundles in these two cases.  This leads to another insight:

Property rights are rights to enter into a range of relationships with others and with what is owned.  Regarding what is owned, that relationship may be “despotic” in Blackstone’s sense of “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.”  Or it may be limited, as Blackstone himself apparently did in practice.

If we have fair and equal procedures for determining what constitute the appropriate relationships into which we may enter with others, we have left the realm of economic theory and entered into political theory.  I am not discussing here what might be the best institutional framework for instituting fair democratic rules (government, co-op, or something else) nor whether they should be simple majority decision-making or whether other procedures ultimately rooted in that principle, such as a bill of rights, might be superior.

Here I am only arguing that even the most devoted of libertarians, once they face the actual problems of living together, cannot avoid those issues, nor can they avoid the argument that at its root a rule based on the equal voice of all must play a crucial and foundational part of this process of discovering the public values that a given society will live by.

In a brief nutshell, I argue that when we understand democracies as spontaneous orders important light is shed on the dramatic narrowing of liberal thought in Europe after the French Revolution, a narrowing that shifted liberalism from being a philosophy of freedom for all to increasingly a philosophy justifying the domination of societies by the bourgeoisie.  I examine Lord Acton’s critique of the North during the Civil War as an example of this ideological narrowing that ultimately often left the advocates for universal freedom in Europe in  illiberal hands.

Clarifications

After being away from my article for some months I read it with new eyes, and as I did two paragraphs seemed more unclear than I would like.  So, for readers of this blog interested in the article, I am posting those two more-obscure-than-I-want paragraphs and their page number in the journal. Both clarifications ap[ear in the subsection “Spontaneous Order and Democracy.”  The clarifications appear in italics.

p. 179:

“Classical liberals’ error in confusing democracy with the sovereign state is analogous to the Marxists’ error in confusing the tasks accomplished by the market economy with those pursued by an instrumental organization – an error from which the Marxists wrongly infer that an economy is amenable to central planning. They [classical liberals] assume a greater objectivity of public values than in fact exists. . . .”

Last paragraph on p. 181:

“Because everyone’s vote counts equally within complex polities, the existence of time constraints and our unreliability in judging our own cases fairly combine to prevent the practical use of unanimity rules. Instead democracies adopt decision-making rules that range from majority rule to various qualified majorities intended to increase the level of agreement without sacrificing the ability to make decisions that must be made.”

There are two ways to view the US Constitution: as a document of rule by a particular point of view and as a document setting forth procedural rules that citizens must follow if they want to participate in a democratic process.  The first conceives the constitution as a document that sets forth the organizing principles of what Hayek called a constructed order or an organization, or what Michael Oakeshott called an “enterprise association.”

The second conceives the constitution as a spontaneous order that established procedural rules which any citizens may use to recommend policies and representatives, which the political community as a whole can then discuss and decide upon, either directly or indirectly through representatives.  This is much closer, though not identical, to what Oakeshott would term a civil association.

One reason the constitution is so short is that it was almost entirely created in harmony with this second conception: as a document delineating procedural rules to  facilitate self governance by a community of equals.  It exists to promote “the general welfare” without trying to define what that might be. The general welfare is discovered and then decided through citizens utilizing neutral procedural rules.  As with any discovery process there is no guarantee that false leads will never be pursued nor that mistakes will not be made, but on the other hand there is no better way by which free individuals might be able to pursue their visions of possibilities before them.  The few provisions that injected concrete values around specific interests, such as its protection of slavery and giving slave interests disproportionate representation in the House of Representatives and in choosing the president, were sources of discord and ultimately of civil war.

The constitution is such a document not because the Founders understood spontaneous orders, but because they were in a position where the document had to be accepted by a majority of every state that would join.  To accomplish this it had to be perceived by them as fair. This meant it either could try and protect an exhaustive list of the important organized interests of the time – which is likely what would happen today were it rewritten – or it would set forth fair procedural rules.  The one powerful organized interest, slaveholders, did get their protection, and we see where that led us.

Ironically, libertarians such as Ron Paul treat the constitution as the principles of an organization, as a document of rule by some over others. It is a document whereby Paul’s conception of what a property right is, is imposed on anyone who disagrees – and the police and military back him up.  In this it is a completely constructivist vision of freedom: freedom is doing what the wise ‘philosopher’ thinks is freedom, and those who disagree are out of luck.  Unless of course they can get it amended, whereby a different set of philosophers impose their constructivist vision on everyone else.

To say this is ironic is an understatement.

She also pointed out that May 8 is his birthday.