WEBVTT NOTE Anarchism as a Research Paradigm (video) 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 The Theory of Money and Credit 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:45.960 Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for inviting me. And if I seem a little bit out of it, it's because 3 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:57.280 I just flew in this morning all night from California. And I'm still drunk, too. Today 4 00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:02.840 Today I want to talk about this new edited volume that I edited, Anarchy, State and 5 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:09.940 Public Choice, and this book is basically a response to two volumes published in the 6 00:01:09.940 --> 00:01:16.600 early 1970s by the Center for Public Choice at Virginia Tech, Explorations in the Theory 7 00:01:16.600 --> 00:01:21.440 of Anarchy and Further Explanations in the Theory of Anarchy. 8 00:01:21.440 --> 00:01:27.240 The original volumes contain articles by people like James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock and Patrick 9 00:01:27.240 --> 00:01:43.240 Patrick Gunning, and this book reprints the major essays from those earlier volumes, and then it contains new responses to each of the chapters by some of the people who I went to graduate school with at George Mason a few years ago. 10 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:53.240 And then it contains also some additional commentary by people like Peter Betkey and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. 11 00:01:53.240 --> 00:01:59.240 So just to give you an idea about the background of the original public choice book, 12 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:05.240 if you ever step foot on George Mason campus or hear James Buchanan talk, 13 00:02:05.240 --> 00:02:11.240 he speaks very highly about the original project, and I'll just read a quick quote here. 14 00:02:11.240 --> 00:02:15.240 He says, Winston Bush galvanized our interest in the theory of anarchy, 15 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:19.240 an organizational alternative that had never been seriously analyzed. 16 00:02:19.240 --> 00:02:26.240 What were the descriptive features of Hobbesian Anarchy? Could something like an anarchistic equilibrium be defined? 17 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:38.240 Bush was instrumental in organizing a series of weekly workshops in 1972 during which each participation in turn presented papers on differing aspects of the theory of anarchy. 18 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:43.240 As revised, these papers were published in Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy. 19 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:56.240 Those weeks were exciting because never before or since have I participated so fully in a genuinely multiparty ongoing research effort, one that we knew to be relevant in some ultimate sense. 20 00:02:56.240 --> 00:03:04.240 For me this brief period of research activity was important because it gave me a new focus on my whole enterprise. 21 00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:18.240 So he credits this project with influencing him on limits of liberty and also Tullock as well on some of his later work. 22 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:25.240 Now that was the good part about the project. I think it's great that people were studying anarchy. 23 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:35.240 The bad part, in my opinion, is the original books had a lot of arguments which I did not find at all convincing. 24 00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:40.240 Actually, some of them are... Tom, maybe you can back me up. You were at BPI at the time. 25 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:43.240 Some of these arguments I thought were kind of silly, actually. 26 00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:53.240 So pretty much all of the original contributors were very pessimistic about whether cooperation is possible in absence of the government. 27 00:03:53.240 --> 00:04:03.240 and they all conclude that anarchy is not stable and it's going to need to be replaced by a state. 28 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:10.240 The general idea by Winston Bush and others is that under anarchy there's going to be too many prisoners, 29 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:18.240 dilemma situations, cheating, predation would become rampant and then people then are going to want to agree 30 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:26.040 to have a constitution. That's their arguments. Me, on the other hand, I had 31 00:04:26.040 --> 00:04:30.360 the good fortune of coming after them. I was born after the original books were 32 00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:33.320 published and I had the good fortune of being able to read people like Murray 33 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:42.840 Rothbard or Dr. Hoppe or Bruce Benson and to me there's a lot of arguments that 34 00:04:42.840 --> 00:04:46.200 needed to be revisited here. 35 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:51.960 At George Mason at the time, however, the public choice ideas were basically revered 36 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:54.120 by everybody. 37 00:04:54.120 --> 00:04:58.400 People had to think, yes, this is the right way of doing things. 38 00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:03.520 But since it was not satisfactory to me, I came up with the idea of creating this new 39 00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:04.520 volume. 40 00:05:04.520 --> 00:05:09.800 I said, Murray Rothbard never had a chance to respond to explorations in the theory of 41 00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:10.800 of Anarchy. 42 00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:15.240 But luckily now there's a lot of young people who can do that. 43 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:22.400 So I basically rounded up the Austrian graduate students at George Mason and I said, look, 44 00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:26.560 let's smash this book. 45 00:05:26.560 --> 00:05:31.200 And keep in mind that George Mason, for many years, most of the Austrians, all they would 46 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:37.520 talk about is Lachmann's theory of the market process or Kirzner's theory of the market 47 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:38.520 process. 48 00:05:38.520 --> 00:05:48.520 To me, none of that was very interesting, I think it's kind of a waste of time, so I said, let's do something important, let's write about this. 49 00:05:48.520 --> 00:05:59.520 Kids, make sure you do this at home. 50 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:10.520 Okay, so I basically got the anarchist grad students and I said pick a chapter from the original book and criticize it. 51 00:06:10.520 --> 00:06:15.520 I don't have time and I'm not going to spend time going through all of the arguments in the book, 52 00:06:15.520 --> 00:06:23.520 but I do just want to spend a couple minutes highlighting some of the chapters to give a preview of what's in them. 53 00:06:23.520 --> 00:06:30.520 The first most influential chapter in the original book was by Winston Bush who also 54 00:06:30.520 --> 00:06:36.520 published a version of this in Journal of Economic Theory, if I'm remembering correctly. 55 00:06:36.520 --> 00:06:42.200 And he basically argues that under anarchy, the prisoner's dilemma is going to lead people 56 00:06:42.200 --> 00:06:47.960 to predate too much in absence of external government. 57 00:06:47.960 --> 00:06:55.240 Jason Osborne, on the other hand, says, look, even if one-shot prisoners' dilemmas exist, 58 00:06:55.240 --> 00:07:00.200 in the real world there's other factors. There's certain things that people can do to try and 59 00:07:00.200 --> 00:07:06.800 get around the prisoners' dilemma situation. So he basically talks about a motto, whereas 60 00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:13.360 if you can communicate, not even talk, but just signal with other people whether you're 61 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:18.960 Trustworthy, then there's not going to be as much defecting. 62 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:21.600 Actually, there's an interesting study recently. 63 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:26.040 It says that ugly people are more likely to be criminals. 64 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:28.800 So it's true. 65 00:07:35.520 --> 00:07:40.040 In Gordon Tullock's chapter, he argues similar arguments. 66 00:07:40.040 --> 00:07:58.040 He says that without government, there's only going to be certain types of interaction that can take place that, for the most part, most trade cannot take place unless you have an external enforcement agency. 67 00:07:58.040 --> 00:08:03.040 Chris Coyne of George Mason, now at Hampton Sydney, responded to that and he said, 68 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:12.040 And he said, look, it might be true that you might need external enforcement, but why do we need to assume that that must come from government? 69 00:08:12.040 --> 00:08:23.040 There's many private law enforcement agencies out there that enforce contracts in ways such as arbitration agencies do today. 70 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:29.040 So just because you need external enforcement, it doesn't mean it needs to be monopolized. 71 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:37.040 Another chapter in the original volume I found particularly puzzling was by Patrick Gunning. 72 00:08:37.040 --> 00:08:45.040 He argues, he says, even if trades are expected to be infinitely recurring, okay, so the idea, this is actually from Adam Smith. 73 00:08:45.040 --> 00:08:48.040 He says, there's discipline of continuous dealings. 74 00:08:48.040 --> 00:08:55.040 If you're dealing with someone every day of your life, you're not going to want to cheat because if you cheat today, you might not want to deal with you. 75 00:08:55.040 --> 00:09:02.340 But Patrick Gunning says, even if trades are expected to be infinitely recurring, there may be no trade. 76 00:09:02.340 --> 00:09:09.340 He gives an example of two individuals. Actually, one is a pygmy and one is a giant. 77 00:09:09.340 --> 00:09:15.840 And he says, they are probably not going to be able to engage in trade unless you have an external agent. 78 00:09:15.840 --> 00:09:20.840 And he says, what's the solution? He says, all they have to do is sign a contract with, 79 00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:29.840 And I'm not making this up with a super giant who can come in and make sure that everything's right. 80 00:09:29.840 --> 00:09:33.840 It's just a simple solution. 81 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:48.840 Peter Leeson, now of West Virginia University, has a great response and he points out that there's many contracts in the world today 82 00:09:48.840 --> 00:09:54.440 today that take place where there's basically no external enforcement at all. 83 00:09:54.440 --> 00:10:00.520 Relying on third parties might be a good idea in certain circumstances, but in many circumstances, 84 00:10:00.520 --> 00:10:07.560 even in the best court system, relying on a third party is often too costly or impossible. 85 00:10:07.560 --> 00:10:14.120 So people basically have to find ways to make their dealings, their contracts self-enforcing. 86 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:18.680 And he goes into some good examples in there. 87 00:10:18.680 --> 00:10:24.440 James Buchanan, getting back to the original one, he followed Winston Bush and Gordon Tullock. 88 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:33.160 He also argued strictly Hobbesian assumptions. He says, men are bad, and because men are bad, you must have government. 89 00:10:33.160 --> 00:10:41.000 And Ben Powell, who he and I were on the same flight now, he's passed out in the hotel room. 90 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.880 I'm up here. I don't even know where I am. He had a great chapter, though. 91 00:10:45.880 --> 00:10:50.780 Actually, it was a horrible chapter. Since he's not here, I can say that. It was a horrible chapter. 92 00:10:50.780 --> 00:10:55.640 He got all the good ideas from me, the few in there. 93 00:10:55.640 --> 00:11:02.740 He says, look, if men are so bad, and this is not unique to him, but if men are so bad, 94 00:11:02.740 --> 00:11:08.380 how can we think that government setting up an external monopoly on the use of force, 95 00:11:08.380 --> 00:11:12.840 how can we assume that that's going to eliminate the problem? 96 00:11:12.840 --> 00:11:17.960 So the thing I don't understand about gunning is, for example, with the supergiant, right? 97 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:21.600 If you've got the pygmy and the giant fighting with each other, and you say, 98 00:11:21.600 --> 00:11:25.440 okay, well, let's give all the guns to the supergiant, right? 99 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:29.800 Well, what's to stop the supergiant from misusing his force? 100 00:11:29.800 --> 00:11:39.200 So Powell basically accepts, he says, accepting these Hobbesian assumptions, we do not... 101 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:44.200 He says, I don't see how government is going to solve them. 102 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:51.200 Now, the most empirical chapter in the original book was by Thomas Hogarty. 103 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:56.200 And he actually, I do appreciate this, tried to give some case studies of anarchy. 104 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:02.200 And he tried to show that anarchy could not work by giving some examples. 105 00:12:02.200 --> 00:12:08.200 And the first example he gives of anarchy is brown rats. 106 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:23.200 Brown rats don't have government, and they bite each other, so therefore we need government. 107 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:27.200 Second example, Lord of the Flies. 108 00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:33.200 Lord of the Flies, there was no government in Lord of the Flies, and, well, there was chaos, okay? 109 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:35.200 We need government. 110 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:48.200 And this final example of how anarchism cannot function as a system is Andersonville prison camp during the Civil War. 111 00:12:48.200 --> 00:12:55.200 Now, is this just, is it me? 112 00:12:55.200 --> 00:13:02.200 Prison is anarchy? Okay, so kind of interesting arguments. 113 00:13:02.200 --> 00:13:18.200 Virgil Storr has a very amusing chapter where he questions how applicable it is for anarchy to look at brown rats removed from their home, how a children's novel or a POW camp are anarchism. 114 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:36.200 Another interesting chapter in the original volume, and these are all reprinted here too, was by Warren Samuels, who basically spent his chapter criticizing Murray Rothbard's view of anarcho-capitalism. 115 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:42.840 He says that Rothbard is simply replacing government coercion with market coercion. 116 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:49.160 And if anybody knows, I actually am curious if anybody knows whether Rothbard responded to this, 117 00:13:49.160 --> 00:13:55.640 but I haven't seen any evidence that he was able to respond to this. 118 00:13:55.640 --> 00:14:03.320 So Scott Boullier, now of Mercer University, was able to respond and to defend Rothbard's system, 119 00:14:03.320 --> 00:14:11.200 I'm saying that Samuel's definition of coercion is so elastic that it basically, he says markets, 120 00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:17.240 if you trade, one person refuses to trade, he says that's coercion. 121 00:14:17.240 --> 00:14:25.920 And Bollier says that it's so elastic that his definition of coercion is pretty much meaningless. 122 00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:29.880 He says the real thing that we need to be concerned about is minimizing coercion. 123 00:14:29.880 --> 00:14:37.080 And the best way to minimize coercion is to not have a centralized government. 124 00:14:37.080 --> 00:14:45.320 And lastly, from the original 1974 volume, Further Exploitations in the Theory of Anarchy, 125 00:14:45.320 --> 00:14:51.680 there was one chapter which actually was supportive of anarchism by Lawrence Moss, and he outlines 126 00:14:51.680 --> 00:14:57.680 how Rothbard's libertarian anarchism has a long history in America, and he talks about 127 00:14:57.680 --> 00:15:03.320 about some of the early individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker. 128 00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:10.760 Moss does in this chapter have some criticisms of using Rothbard's positive welfare economics 129 00:15:10.760 --> 00:15:16.660 to defend anarchism, which actually I don't think Rothbard attempted to do this. 130 00:15:16.660 --> 00:15:27.340 But anyway, Moss concludes this chapter, pretty good conclusion, he says, property anarchism 131 00:15:27.340 --> 00:15:34.620 is American as apple pie, so, like that. 132 00:15:34.620 --> 00:15:39.940 Now the interesting and good news about all this is I got these manuscripts together and 133 00:15:39.940 --> 00:15:47.980 I gave the entire, the entire first draft of the entire manuscript to Buchanan and Tullock 134 00:15:47.980 --> 00:15:54.220 when I was at George Mason and they both wrote responses which are included in this book 135 00:15:54.220 --> 00:16:11.220 Buchanan's response is my favorite. Does he say, I'm right, you're wrong? Or does he say, no, actually you guys are right, I admit defeat? Instead what he says, he says, actually you guys are misinterpreting your work. 136 00:16:11.220 --> 00:16:26.220 Our work is not about political philosophy. It's not about government. It was about how, during the 1960s and 1970s, there was disorder on campuses and colleges. 137 00:16:26.220 --> 00:16:32.220 And so there needs to be more rules on colleges. 138 00:16:32.220 --> 00:16:35.220 So I think this is a good interpretation. 139 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:48.820 Basically, we can now throw out all of constitutional political economy and call it campus economics. 140 00:16:48.820 --> 00:16:56.420 Tullock's response and Jeff Hummel's response to Tullock are also very, very amusing. 141 00:16:56.420 --> 00:17:02.420 Jeff Hummel, just to give you an example of his thing, he says, 142 00:17:02.420 --> 00:17:11.420 Gordon Tullock's rebuttal offers up a model of both profoundly serious and amazingly silly objections to a stateless society. 143 00:17:11.420 --> 00:17:16.420 So he's got some great, great zingers in there against Tullock. 144 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:21.420 And Tullock too, he's got, you know Tullock, he's an interesting guy. 145 00:17:21.420 --> 00:17:28.420 He says at the end of his chapter, he says, I anticipate a vigorous but not very well reasoned response. 146 00:17:28.420 --> 00:17:58.420 After that, finally, at the end of the book, after Hummel's response, we have a chapter written by Peter Betke, George Mason, entitled Anarchism as a Progressive Research Program in Political Economy, where he says this is a worthwhile endeavor that we should be studying 147 00:17:58.420 --> 00:18:03.420 And he concludes that governance can be solved, 148 00:18:03.420 --> 00:18:11.420 the puzzle of governance can be solved in a volunteeristic manner rather than by the coercive nature of the state. 149 00:18:11.420 --> 00:18:18.420 Work along these lines is not only valuable at a fundamental theoretical level, 150 00:18:18.420 --> 00:18:26.420 but also of practical significance as well as we attempt to wrestle with the great social transformations of our era. 151 00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:37.420 So this is just a sampling, but for you young George Mason people, I want to see continued explorations in the theory of anarchy. Thanks.