I think it self-evident that people accept being governed (yes, by stationary bandits writ large, whatever their pretensions) is protection from criminals who are worse and other governments which are worse (which would otherwise conquer).
And on the record of those who have had their governments fail, whether in a primitive band or an ancient nation or a modern state, they're right: the alternative *is* worse.
That still leaves abundant room for the state to be *amazingly* bad.
I believe Rothbard (edited from erroneous “Rothman”; I beg the pardon of each) is right that people are (I would say “almost”) entirely mistaken in believing, as they usually do, the legitimacy myths of their respective governments.
I believe you are right that this does not reflect the influence of current intellectuals, or current officeholders; but Keynes may be right that long-dead intellectuals may have great influence, and that may also be true about half- or entirely legendary founders.
But mostly I think it’s a matter of human psychology. We want to belong to a group, and to love the group. The evolutionary roots of this are a great “just so story.”
Expanding on your point that 'In Western democracies, rulers and intellectuals rarely get rich off the public', I find that Rothbard often seems to anthropomorphize the state as an entity that is greedy or power-hungry in and of itself. Obviously this is just shorthand and not meant literally, but I think that kind of language obscures the incentives and ideological drivers of the actual people who make up governments.
Also, “government” Is not some free-standing thing - it’s a tool for collective organisation and action. Specifically, a society cannot put in mechanisms around Law and War that are in any sense scalable without ending up with something that looks & smells like “government”. Also, infrastructure & mega-projects are hard to achieve without “government” buy in.
If a society doesn’t create a locus of power it has none. If it does then this becomes attractive to those who like power. The choice is never “government” or “no government”. It’s “government, while trying to manage the trade offs”.
He really relies a lot on the conscription metaphor. The more I read Rothbard, the more he seems like a creature of his time, that the US has politically sidelined by stopping the draft.
If you just think about taxation, the argument is much weaker. Sure, the US takes some percent from any financial transaction that happens in the US, but Apple also takes a 30% cut of the app store. American taxes, even California taxes, seem like a pretty good deal for what you get. It would be nicer if those taxes were lower, or weren't spent so stupidly, but that isn't really the angle that Rothbard is going for. Abu Dhabi might charge me zero taxes but I still prefer to live in the US.
Or security. I wonder, in the modern day, would Rothbard be a supporter of "defund the police"? Private security sucks. Look at South Africa. Poor-on-poor crime has a way of spilling over and causing suffering for everybody else around.
Rothbard is a prime example of Chesterton's Fence. Something universal and he can not find a single utility in that thing. How does he even answer Hobbes and Locke?
It's not simply that the salaries are nice as a minion of the ruling class; in most cases (especially for office drones) the work is not so tough, there are high levels of job security, and the connections one can make (especially if one is higher up in the hierarchy of bureaucratic minions, political staffers, etc.) can open a lot of doors to more remunerative opportunities. "Revolving door" career tracks, kickbacks from skimming by non-profits, and the brokerage of favors to special interests have institutionalized corruption at the higher levels of formal state power.
Just as importantly, there is hardly any real accountability to the voters in terms of what a bureaucracy does; leaving it free to pursue its own interests. Auditors can keep track of how the money is spent and make sure rules are followed in that respect, but there is no market test for the results being produced. Occasionally a Freedom-of-Information-Act request or a discovery in a civil lawsuit can generate a minor bureaucratic panic, but bureaucracies adapt to such threats of public accountability by stuffing their files with CYA memos and generating CYA statistics to bamboozle everyone. The insidious thing about the state is the spontaneously-ordered nature of bureaucratized exploitation of taxpayers even in the absence of their ruling class masters-of-the-universe meeting in fancy ski resorts in the Rockies or the Alps to coordinate their plots to intensify our enslavement.
Bryan is also seriously underestimating how important the manufacturing of consent is to the ruling class and how influential it is in shaping the attitudes of the subject class. Opinion-molders do matter in that respect, and there is a vast non-libertarian literature about the mechanics of shaping public attitudes (going back a little over a century to the founding fathers of psychological warfare, Bernays and Lippman) that is worth exploring. Rothbard is only giving the barest outlines of the problem.
Under what conditions do two people have the right to do to a third person that which all three persons agree no one has the right to do as an individual? This is essentially the question that professor de la Paz puts to Wyo in Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. The answer, of course, is there are no such conditions.
Rothbard (and I think BC) are correct. Government operatives are nothing but a gang of immoral individuals who compel others with force, threat of force, and fraud. I agree with BC that Rothbard goes further than necessary or useful by suggesting exploitation. Still, it takes a certain sort of individual to seek out becoming a government operative. Most humans want nothing whatsoever to do with it. They just want to be left free to engage in human flourishing, which is what I want as a libertarian.
I fault Rothbard for referring to government operatives as the "State." We all know there is no such existent, that the word "state" is just a collective noun. We all know that it is individuals who act, not the "state." Why bother with the same sort of drivel common to shallow thinkers about politics? Rothbard had no need of such drivel; he was a really smart guy with bedrock understanding of Austrian economic thinking.
BC writes, "In Western democracies, rulers and intellectuals rarely get rich off the public. Sure, they draw nice salaries, but if money is their goal, there are easier ways to get it." I'll push back. Just the opposite is the case. If you are not careful, you will trip over a politician who has become way more than having just a nice salary.
By the way, becoming wealthy without using the power of compelling others is not so easy. If it were, lots more people would be wealthy. It doesn't take much digging in the history bin to turn up hundreds of examples of wealth built primarily through the exercise of compelling others with the power of government.
How do disputes get settled? Either by violence or by arguments. We may prefer arguments but arguments can only proceed to conclusion when premises are shared.
And this is what States provide-- shared premises over a territory. No individual can do so. So the whole argument of Rothbard falls. States provide an essential service that no individual on his own can provide and in return States can do things that individuals can not..
That's is the question, of course. I would answer that State is just another term for the state of law. A state of affairs existing in a territory where people resolve their disputes by reasoning from shared premises,.
I would answer that the state is a small collection of individuals and nothing more. People that comprise that small collection are government operatives and nothing more.
I think it self-evident that people accept being governed (yes, by stationary bandits writ large, whatever their pretensions) is protection from criminals who are worse and other governments which are worse (which would otherwise conquer).
And on the record of those who have had their governments fail, whether in a primitive band or an ancient nation or a modern state, they're right: the alternative *is* worse.
That still leaves abundant room for the state to be *amazingly* bad.
If that's the story, why do most humans express so much love for their countries - and so rarely distinguish their countries from their governments?
I believe Rothbard (edited from erroneous “Rothman”; I beg the pardon of each) is right that people are (I would say “almost”) entirely mistaken in believing, as they usually do, the legitimacy myths of their respective governments.
I believe you are right that this does not reflect the influence of current intellectuals, or current officeholders; but Keynes may be right that long-dead intellectuals may have great influence, and that may also be true about half- or entirely legendary founders.
But mostly I think it’s a matter of human psychology. We want to belong to a group, and to love the group. The evolutionary roots of this are a great “just so story.”
In the case of Somalia, the alternate possibility of government appears to have been even worse https://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
Expanding on your point that 'In Western democracies, rulers and intellectuals rarely get rich off the public', I find that Rothbard often seems to anthropomorphize the state as an entity that is greedy or power-hungry in and of itself. Obviously this is just shorthand and not meant literally, but I think that kind of language obscures the incentives and ideological drivers of the actual people who make up governments.
Yes, though the idea that most people in government want more power for themselves explains a lot!
I know there has been a Public Choice model where bureaucracies try to maximize their size, but my understanding is that political scientists who look into it find otherwise https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/public-managers-dont-maximize-like-private-ones/
Also, “government” Is not some free-standing thing - it’s a tool for collective organisation and action. Specifically, a society cannot put in mechanisms around Law and War that are in any sense scalable without ending up with something that looks & smells like “government”. Also, infrastructure & mega-projects are hard to achieve without “government” buy in.
If a society doesn’t create a locus of power it has none. If it does then this becomes attractive to those who like power. The choice is never “government” or “no government”. It’s “government, while trying to manage the trade offs”.
He really relies a lot on the conscription metaphor. The more I read Rothbard, the more he seems like a creature of his time, that the US has politically sidelined by stopping the draft.
If you just think about taxation, the argument is much weaker. Sure, the US takes some percent from any financial transaction that happens in the US, but Apple also takes a 30% cut of the app store. American taxes, even California taxes, seem like a pretty good deal for what you get. It would be nicer if those taxes were lower, or weren't spent so stupidly, but that isn't really the angle that Rothbard is going for. Abu Dhabi might charge me zero taxes but I still prefer to live in the US.
Or security. I wonder, in the modern day, would Rothbard be a supporter of "defund the police"? Private security sucks. Look at South Africa. Poor-on-poor crime has a way of spilling over and causing suffering for everybody else around.
Apple doesn’t throw people in jail for only developing apps for Android.
"State is ordained of God"
Russell Kirk
Rothbard is a prime example of Chesterton's Fence. Something universal and he can not find a single utility in that thing. How does he even answer Hobbes and Locke?
It's not simply that the salaries are nice as a minion of the ruling class; in most cases (especially for office drones) the work is not so tough, there are high levels of job security, and the connections one can make (especially if one is higher up in the hierarchy of bureaucratic minions, political staffers, etc.) can open a lot of doors to more remunerative opportunities. "Revolving door" career tracks, kickbacks from skimming by non-profits, and the brokerage of favors to special interests have institutionalized corruption at the higher levels of formal state power.
Just as importantly, there is hardly any real accountability to the voters in terms of what a bureaucracy does; leaving it free to pursue its own interests. Auditors can keep track of how the money is spent and make sure rules are followed in that respect, but there is no market test for the results being produced. Occasionally a Freedom-of-Information-Act request or a discovery in a civil lawsuit can generate a minor bureaucratic panic, but bureaucracies adapt to such threats of public accountability by stuffing their files with CYA memos and generating CYA statistics to bamboozle everyone. The insidious thing about the state is the spontaneously-ordered nature of bureaucratized exploitation of taxpayers even in the absence of their ruling class masters-of-the-universe meeting in fancy ski resorts in the Rockies or the Alps to coordinate their plots to intensify our enslavement.
Bryan is also seriously underestimating how important the manufacturing of consent is to the ruling class and how influential it is in shaping the attitudes of the subject class. Opinion-molders do matter in that respect, and there is a vast non-libertarian literature about the mechanics of shaping public attitudes (going back a little over a century to the founding fathers of psychological warfare, Bernays and Lippman) that is worth exploring. Rothbard is only giving the barest outlines of the problem.
Um, if “rulers and intellectuals don’t get rich” from public service, how do Congressmen retire with 8 figure net worths?
Under what conditions do two people have the right to do to a third person that which all three persons agree no one has the right to do as an individual? This is essentially the question that professor de la Paz puts to Wyo in Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. The answer, of course, is there are no such conditions.
Rothbard (and I think BC) are correct. Government operatives are nothing but a gang of immoral individuals who compel others with force, threat of force, and fraud. I agree with BC that Rothbard goes further than necessary or useful by suggesting exploitation. Still, it takes a certain sort of individual to seek out becoming a government operative. Most humans want nothing whatsoever to do with it. They just want to be left free to engage in human flourishing, which is what I want as a libertarian.
I fault Rothbard for referring to government operatives as the "State." We all know there is no such existent, that the word "state" is just a collective noun. We all know that it is individuals who act, not the "state." Why bother with the same sort of drivel common to shallow thinkers about politics? Rothbard had no need of such drivel; he was a really smart guy with bedrock understanding of Austrian economic thinking.
BC writes, "In Western democracies, rulers and intellectuals rarely get rich off the public. Sure, they draw nice salaries, but if money is their goal, there are easier ways to get it." I'll push back. Just the opposite is the case. If you are not careful, you will trip over a politician who has become way more than having just a nice salary.
By the way, becoming wealthy without using the power of compelling others is not so easy. If it were, lots more people would be wealthy. It doesn't take much digging in the history bin to turn up hundreds of examples of wealth built primarily through the exercise of compelling others with the power of government.
How do disputes get settled? Either by violence or by arguments. We may prefer arguments but arguments can only proceed to conclusion when premises are shared.
And this is what States provide-- shared premises over a territory. No individual can do so. So the whole argument of Rothbard falls. States provide an essential service that no individual on his own can provide and in return States can do things that individuals can not..
What is the State?
That's is the question, of course. I would answer that State is just another term for the state of law. A state of affairs existing in a territory where people resolve their disputes by reasoning from shared premises,.
I would answer that the state is a small collection of individuals and nothing more. People that comprise that small collection are government operatives and nothing more.
And what are "government operatives"?
Arnold Kling has defined State in terms of "roles and rules".
Your "small collection" captures nothing of peculiar properties of this particular collection of individuals.