Assuming you're interested in a serious discussion of this point, there is a difference between consent by implication (as by prior existing business relationship, for instance) and tacit consent. The state's general standards of establishing consent in contracts require some affirmative act to accept an obligation in order to form a bilateral contract, although that affirmative act may have occurred at some point in the past, and may have only been a minimal acknowledgment. The idea of "tacit" consent is not the idea that consent can be implied in the ordinary course of business, it is the idea that one can consent (v. give permission for something to happen) without ever doing anything. Insofar as the so-called social contract (created by the "consent without ever doing anything" standard) is the contract authorizing the state, then, the state does not apply its legal standards of contracts consistently. Moreover, the application of "consent without ever doing anything" as a principle of acceptance of an obligation is absurd on its face, and utterly unworkable in any normal commercial context.

This is the exact argument I already addressed: the idea that any discrepancy between model and reality is explained by people not acting according to model. It just means that you need to refine your model - which Coase and other economists attempted, with notions of transaction costs, etc. It simply doesn't mean that reality is somehow flawed and people need to change the way they behave.

Btw, we already know that the model's completely flawed - it's way too simple. It doesn't deal with multiple, shifting preferences, changes in populations, cultures, consciouness/agency at levels below and above individuals, effects of bargaining on behavior and preferences. Importantly, it's not reflexive - in reality, everything is influenced by everything else. It makes little sense to take some incredibly simple, known-to-be-flawed model of human behavior, isolate a few variables and use them to prescribe change in our behavior. It would be like an economist arguing that not only should prostitution not be illegal, but all sex should be preceded by a round of bargaining to arrive at an explicit price. If you ignore transaction costs and all other interactions between variables, like the model does, this would indeed be the most efficient way for people to have sex. To understand flaws in a model like this, one ought to ask, what would the world have to be like for everyone to act in accordance with the model?


But if you do, the predictive power of your model is lost and you need to come up with an alternative model for meta-efficiency. Efficiency, when it comes to economic models, isn't a substitute for some kind of general normative goodness. Efficiency is that which the model predicts that reality will reach, with certain assumptions. In this sense, reality is by definition efficient if you have the correct model of reality.

Thus, any efficiency criticism, is 1) model is better than reality 2) a business idea or 3) a point-of-view criticism, where something that is efficient when behavior is considered at at the level it actually occurs, is inefficient, because for some normative reasons, one believes efficiency should be considered at another level.


I've already offered possible explanations. The burden is on the person making an absolute claim to explain why these aren't possible. From a purely mathematical standpoint, if people aren't acting according to your model, you simply don't have a good model for human behavior. If you don't have a good model for human behavior, it's impossible for you to claim that you know what will happen, if you fix a few random variables.


This doesn't help you any more than saying that inefficiency comes from stars being aligned the wrong way. What model do you have for explaining how and why "imposition of certain legal bargains on unwlling non-parties" occurs in the first place? Because your model is, in a way, saying that it shouldn't arise - yet it did. How do you stop this from occurring in the long run? Note that statism versus ACism has nothing to do with this - ACism isn't about not imposing legal bargains on unwilling parties, but rather about imposing a different set of legal bargains on them. Based on this line of reasoning, there's no reason to assume that any human society will be more "efficient" than any other.


Once again implicit consent versus explicit consent distinction is entirely unrelated to the Statism versus AC debate. The notion of "normal conditions" only exists culturally and has no real descriptive purpose in a meta-model for human behavior. To the extent that human interaction can be modeled as bargaining, the only clear thing is that we find certain types or modes of bargaining distateful, not that we can find an easy way to distinguish between "normal" bargaining and "abnormal" bargaining.


What distinguishes defensive violence from offensive violence is a matter of perspective. I already explained that according to ACist principles, the determination of exactly who initiated of violence cannot be made without knowing who owns what. Which is purely subjective even if everyone could agree to the ACist set of rules, because history cannot be objectively determined.


Why are they assumed to be unwilling? States, cities and counties in the US have very little power to compel individuals to live where they are. Abiding by local laws isn't that different from abiding by building rules. The only major difference is that your landlord (and you) has outsourced the contract enforcement aspect of his business. People know what the rules are and can choose to be elsewhere if they want to.


Scale is irrelevant - they also benefit very few. The correct way to think about this is, how much oppression happens at the familial level and how much oppression happens at the federal level - and what's the relationship between the two? The level of domestic violence is fairly high, for instance, and historically the situation used to be much worse with weaker governments.


I'm opening to hearing about some of those paternalistic laws at the federal level. Pretty much all "unnecessary" laws I ever hear about are state/local laws. It's rare that I hear ordinary people complain about oppressive federal laws other than ones involving income tax. What are some ridiculous federal laws that aren't found at the state/local level in this country? I can think of drug laws, but they exist at the local level as well.


Have you not read some of those ACist posters saying that it's a good thing that we're in a crisis because the Us government collapsing under its own weight is a good thing?


This has been done, though it generally elicits handwaving arguments about how their position is proven rigorously using praxeology or something like that. I've certainly defended the Fed, various tax laws, welfare programs, labor laws, spending on research, etc, in painful detail, only to be met with, "but if it was so good, it would be done in a free market." It's impossible to debate substance with those whose understanding is entirely rhetorical. Most ACists here don't understand economics or politics on a meaningfully substantive level and the words they use are divorced from the conceptual understanding they represent. Substantial understanding of these topics take a certain level of detachment, focus and motivation. To paraphrase their own argument, it's hard to understand something when your emotional comfort depends on not understanding it.


Except that they are condescending towards other politics posters who are likewise engaged in similar fantasies, only with a more conventional liberal or conservative viewpoint. Furthermore, if this is indeed what they are engaged in, they cannot possibly believe this to be a basis for criticism of specific individuals involved in policy, whether Barack Obama or Ben Bernanke. Don't forget that it is they, not others, who claim to that their arguments are based on logic or whatever. I'm a bit more accepting of conventional political rhetoric that also lacks rigor, because that's usually a product of socialization, apathy, sense of superiority and misery as opposed to misanthropy, sense of superiority and misery.


This restates my (hypothetical) argument for the validity of social contracts and implicit consent. You're saying that those who disagree with the ACist notion of human rights can be treated as though they have no human rights. Thus, the ACist notion of human rights is valid even without explicit consent. This is simply a restatement of my idea of social contracts - you just want different things in those contracts. This isn't a counterargument of any sort, but a moral-relativistic justification for all possible status quo.

The only reason I can think of for you not to see this as being analogous to my argument earlier is that you're taking the ACist norms as absolute. But if you don't (or alternatively treat any set of social norms absolute within that context), there's no difference between your argument and mine. You're offering a way to justify imposing social norms on those who do not consent. Either you consent or there's nothing else that grants you the right to object to any consequences.

Exactly what I was going to say.

To be fair, you probably would have described the proponents of the Austrian position a little more... colorfully .

I fear we may be talking past each other at this point, because you're repeating the comment from your last post that seemed to me by far the least on point. As I stated, I'm not attempting to model reality with Coase's ideas; on the contrary, it was you who suggested that understanding the relationship between transaction-cost structures and the persistence of highly centralized providers of governance was critical to understanding modern states. I took your remarks at face value and downloaded Coase's paper, "The Nature of the Firm," and read it. As Coase himself says, his general thesis regarding transaction costs and the persistence of planning in otherwise market economies could be true, but nevertheless an alternative explanation of some subset of the planning the economy could be available. This happens when people value control over others for its own sake. If your criticism is of the simplicity of Coase's idea of how reality works, of how well his model depicts reality, take it up with Coase - indeed, take it up with yourself, for it was you who held this idea out as critical to the explanation of modern states. My concern has been merely to illustrate how the ideas you pointed to could be both tractable and largely correct, but nevertheless even within that framework, it is clear that criticism of the size and scope of the government is possible. I sought simply to trace logical implications within the framework of the model presented; it matters very little to me whether this or any other model is ultimately correct.

I would emphasize that I express no view on the general viability of the model - its completeness or accuracy. Indeed, many of the criticisms you raised here seem to me entirely valid, because the vast complexities of human culture and human psychology are in excess of the model's parameters. In particular, Wittgensteinian underdetermination and incompleteness of rule-structures seems very important to me here. It is in many cases not possible for agents to say why they do what they do. To the extent that Coase's ideas are flawed, I do not wish to endorse them as my own. It is quite right for you to say "one ought to ask, what would the world have to be like for everyone to act in accordance with the model?" This seems to me to recast one of Wittgenstein's favorite aphorisms, "don't think, look!" But it seems to me strange to invoke the model's explanatory powers with regard to the existence of states and then to reject it for its inability to mirror the world in detail. If the model does not explain the existence of modern states, what does?

Interesting points. I see where the misunderstanding may find its genesis now. I am saying that within the framework provided by the model, i.e. to the extent that it is accurate, criticisms of both the first and second types are available with regard to certain state actions. If the model is erroneous, so much the worse for the model, but again, it seemed to me that you intended to invoke its explanatory powers with regard to transaction-cost structures with respect to the reason that modern states existed. My point was that, even granting arguendo that a Coasian model is the correct way to view the world, there is another way to explain the existence of modern states.

What absolute claim? I made a qualified, localized claim granting certain assumptions - that's all.

It occurs because the people who want it to occur use force or the credible threat thereof to ensure that it does, naturally. I didn't think it necessary to provide an explanation of that fact given some of our previous discussions. They consider this act worth whatever its costs are because they really value imposition of norms. They are able to engage in such actions by amassing and controlling the apparatus of physical power over others. "My" "model" (which, as I've already clarified, isn't what I'm discussing) isn't saying it shouldn't arise - it's observing that it did and attempting to explain why. It's giving an answer to the question, "Why do such behaviors persist in society?" The answer isn't, "high transaction costs;" it's "strong desire to impose norms."

No, you're forgetting the framework of the discussion. The idea of "normal conditions" here refers to an ordinary commercial context in the real world - a consumer-merchant transaction of the most mundane kind, say, buying bread at your local bakery, though any number of others would work as well. The questions I asked were also not about implicit vs. explicit consent, but about so-called "tacit" consent vs. explicit consent. Under what conditions do real human actors acknowledge the validity of obligations generated only implicitly? Why do they acknowledge these? What is the resemblance of these cases to explicit consent? How does that compare with the model of state-citizen transactions suggested by the tacit consent view? Why are the ordinary requirements, those people apply to themselves in other cases, waived in this case? Perhaps a cognitive explanation of a particular mode of philosophical discourse is available?

As elsewhere, if you think this is a criticism of my views, you're mistaken. I have sharply criticized others on almost precisely these grounds before.

They aren't assumed to be unwilling; I'm assuming that there exists some number of people who are actually unwilling. Those are the people that interest me. Their dissent is what's salient.

Federalism is irrelevant then. What you mean is that the level of domestic violence, and the general level of stupid law-making, is significantly lessened in the presence of a powerful, central enforcer against such acts. I agree with this, and I think it has nothing to do with whether statism or ACism is superior, unless you have merely decided that there can be no powerful, central enforcer against such acts in conditions different from the status quo.

Federal securities laws. Federal laws concerning firearms. Federal labor and employment laws. Federal anti-discrimination laws, especially including claims such as hostile work environment. The administrative state as a whole, including welfare agencies, the EPA, etc. Immigration and Naturalization Services. Pretty much the entire Code of Federal Regulations. Parts of the Bankruptcy Code. The Tax Code. The alphabet soup agencies and their massive control over agriculture. I could probably keep going for a while if you'd really like, but I'll stop there for now.

I suppose not. I'm sure it's true, though. I agree this is a silly view.

Fair points, but it's important to take your last sentence seriously. You elicit very strong emotional reactions from some people, so perhaps taking some rhetorical steps toward acknowledging that your opponents may be raising valid points, but are still misunderstanding why, in present conditions, what they are proposing cannot work, is worthwhile.

I pulled out this quote because it seems funny to me that you're more accepting of one than the other. What difference does it make to you?

What exactly makes a person an expert, in your eyes?

The wikipedia definition:

"An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain."

should be more or less adequate for the purposes of this discussion.

So do people with doctorates in economics qualify, or are they just random laymen as well?

Sure, most people with doctorates in economics qualify. I certainly couldn't pin down a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for someone to be considered an expert in a field, and this should be fairly obvious from how the notion is defined. Of particular relevance (bolded): "... is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain." Is someone with a doctorate in economics but who has suffered severe brain damage since obtaining it considered an authority by their peers and the public? Probably not. However, I am pretty comfortable saying that most people with doctorates in economics would qualify.

Well, then surely you are aware that there are many individuals with doctorates in economics that happen to subscribe to the very school of economics you said was "long dismissed by experts."

Many relative to what?

Many relative to zero.

Even if it were just a handful, it would invalidate his claim.

Fine. If it's so important to you, I'll amend my statement to "dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts" rather than going with the shorthand of "dismissed by the experts". It's not much of a concession, considering you can probably find some non-zero number of experts supporting almost any fringe position.

And for what it's worth, while there might exist some Austrian economists who have have the respect of their peers (certainly there were in the past, though I'm less confident that this remains true now), I was careful to qualify my admission that a doctorate in economics makes you an expert because it's quite apparent that most economists do not respect Austrian economists in the least.

Besides that, the argument that unpopular positions often become popular isn't particularly helpful to Austrian economics because the timeline doesn't resemble past instances of this happening.

In the past when this has happened, the timeline has been similar to:
current prevailing theory --> expert introduces new, controversial theory; initial resistance to theory --> new theory is debated, no consensus reached --> theory gets adopted by the expert community --> theory gets adopted by laymen

In the case of Austrian economics, that process has already happened, and the insights that it had to offer have already been incorporated into the modern economic theories that have since superseded it. Since then, Austrian economics has been forgotten by most experts and embraced by laymen. If Austrian economics were to regain popularity among experts in the future, it would be entirely unprecedented.

The point is, that this simple hand-waving dismissal of Austrian economics on the basis of its "non-mainstreamism" isn't a sufficient critique of it. Instead of actually addressing the arguments themselves, this tactic is used all too frequently.

You do realize Austrian economics isn't just some static thing, right? It is a tradition of thought, not some single theory that is incapable of new insights.

On this, we agree. That being said, if I recognized myself as a non-expert in a field and observed that all the experts in that field disagreed with me, Bayesian probability would compel me to seriously consider the possibility that I'm missing something. I wasn't the one who brought the argument up, for what it's worth -- what prompted me to respond was that someone posted the 'ideas that are now accepted were once unpopular' defense which I believe to be an incomplete description of the process of ideas gaining popularity.
Sure, but in this instance the entire Austrian approach has outlived its relevance. In particular, the resistance to the use of mathematics has been dropped in every other school of economics. Of course, in the absence of the mathematical tools necessary to describe complex economic theories, the Austrian approach was much more understandable. However, the notion that the use of verbal reasoning over mathematics is somehow a feature rather than a serious drawback is preposterous.

Well, to be fair you can still be a "non-expert" in some subject and be well informed. I mean it isn't as though it is usually a bunch of toothless hillbillies living in some shack arguing for this stuff (well idk, maybe they do debate that kind of thing at their jug and washboard parties).

There are also things that can account for the lack of Austrians in mainstream economics profession.

I know you didn't bring it up, but I was responding to your post.

I think it is a bad analogy as well, but for slightly different reasons than you, I think.

These "complex economic theories" you are referring to, do you mean predictive models?

The Austrian tradition has a very good reason for resisting the use of mathematics in such a manner. Namely, it tends to start from false assumptions and leads to fallacious inferences that do not represent reality, among other things.

I've yet to see an adequate counter Mises' own argument against the "mathematical method" of economics.

That being said, there are a few within the Austrian tradition that have attempted to incorporate mathematics into their work, so it isn't as though Austrian approach = complete rejection of mathematics in all cases or anything like that.

This is a very fair response to the analogy, imo.

The problem is that land rights will never really be comparable to a record store, hot dogs or anything else. The state or the individual who defines themselves as a sovereign over land or resources is inherently aggressing towards others.

So you are saying Austrian economics is at least as reputable as intelligent design or cosmologies that say the Earth is 6000 years old? A pretty low bar if 0 is all you have to clear.

textbook strawman, imo

Nice strawman. Learn to read better, imo.

Ludwig von Mises Institute · 518 West Magnolia Avenue · Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528

Please elaborate.

OMG RACISIZM!!1!!1!1!!!!



Sure. For one, governments don't really like to be told that the best economic policy is to stay the **** out. A large percentage of jobs for economists are government related. There is an obvious interest in the state and academic institutions (who derive a lot of their funding from the state) into promoting pro-interventionist economic thought (and I say this full well knowing you will charge me with believing in conspiracies or some other **** like that).

Second, mainstream economics has, for a long time now, been plagued with the idea that if something uses math, it must inherently be scientific and correct/better than using intuition and verbal logical reasoning. Also, positivism has manifested itself in various forms throughout different fields of academia and economics is no exception.

This, coupled with the fact that mainstream economists are rarely really exposed much to the Austrian tradition during their academic studies leads many to mischaracterize and misunderstand it. It really doesn't take much to be considered an economist these days. There is no legally required educational requirement (for the government you only need to have taken a few courses in economics to be considered an "economist").

I think your explanation there makes my point pretty neatly, so thank you.

Let me guess. Your point was "something something claims of conspiracy something something" right?

Does your hand ever get tired of waving all the time?

I'd say the vast majority of academic economists make the the model-reality distinction error with regularity but in this case, you are persistently taking models that illustrate specific concepts and extrapolating them well past their usefulness. From what I can gather, you're not making much of an effort to understand the concepts. You appear to be trying to find what in the literal words you read supports the narrative you already believe in.


Forget the model, understand the concepts. Btw, you were talking about Coasian bargaining within the standard microeconomic framework before I brought up the the theory of the firm and this is what I meant by your model - the theory of the firm is for obvious reasons discussed and theorized within the same framework, but that's just how it is.


This is just an attempt to avoid learning. Models in economics largely serve as a pedagogical tool to illustrate specific concepts, as opposed to an attempt to faithfully replicate reality. It's obviously possible for you to misunderstand what the model is saying, miss the concepts and come up with a convoluted, misleading explanation that is consistent with the model on a mathematical level that is epistemologically possible from your perspective. You can't convince "alternative scientists" studying paranormal phenomena that the various equations describing physical laws don't have hidden codes that justify their crazy theories either. Obviously, if they believe it, it must make sense on some level for them.


As a minarchist, you are arguing that less government at the present moment is a good thing both in the short run and in the long run, are you not? If so, you're making an implicit claim regarding the autocorrelation in government size over time.


First, these transactions occur with the force of the rule of law in effect, thus it suffers from the problem that one may be consenting only because of implicit threats Second, conflicts cannot be solved in this manner so whatever rhetoric that allows for the subjugation of one party's interest to the other's, or both to some some of compromise is necessary in any society. I don't know what this has to do with anything. ACism offers no solution to this obvious problem.


Then why do you keep bringing these up as a reason for the inefficiency of governments?


First, it's a rebuttal to the minarchist/ACist argument that reducing apparent government size is the same thing is reducing actual government effect. Second, historical analysis of similar situations, common sense and ample theoretical research indicate, generally, that only institutions that are value-driven will be compelled to interfere in other entities' internal affairs. To the extent that domestic violence results in successful oppression of individuals within the family (or any other unit), outsiders cannot gain economically from bargaining with those other than the controlling power. This is slightly simplified, but there's generally no compelling economic reason for a profit-oriented institution to care about the battered wife. They represent whoever pays them, or whoever already has the power in the relationship. Cultural norms, of course, follow economic reality. Extend this idea beyond that of the family and you're looking at a feudal arrangement. Subversive power dynamics in situations where you have layers of representation or management are reasonably well-understood.


And are you well-informed on the practical effects these laws have on the society at large to comment on their efficacy one way or another? And practically all those kinds of laws exist in various forms at the local/state level.


I'm not sure why this would be worthwhile. If I wanted to convert them or something, I would not have taken the rhetorical stance I did. To the extent that political extremism is a coping mechanism, I have no real interest in replacing it with an alternative form of therapy. As it is, I feel bad that they chose a form of therapy that is far too intellectually demanding and socially isolating. Learning even more about economics and politics may further constrain their beliefs in an unhealthy way, as long as the underlying emotional issues remain unresolved.

Consider the following three factors. A) Emotional needs; B) Cognitive capacity; and C) Topical understanding. The greater A is, the narrower the range of your potential beliefs, since whatever you believe has to be emotionally compatible. Likewise, the greater C is the narrower the range, since whatever you believe has to be compatible with what you know. The greater B is, the wider the range, since you can more easily find beliefs that fit. It is when beliefs are severely constrained, whether due to too much A and C or not enough B, that you see emotional outbursts towards contrary beliefs. At that point, it's rational for them to reject additional knowledge, since it's frankly dangerous to their mental health - each bit of additional knowledge may require them to question their more fundamental assumptions regarding reality, since their belief system is already too constrained. This isn't just politics or economics of course, you see people literally not seeing very obvious truths about social reality (or themselves) all the time to avoid emotional discomfort. There's not much you can do to help without being able to address underlying emotional issues.


Take the two lists, remove common elements and compare.