Political Economy is not just an old label for 'Economics'

Political Economy is not just an old label for 'Economics'

Part 6 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

Political Economy, like Classical Liberalism, is not a conceptually tidy term, and though I'm using it here to refer to that small slice of time leading into our Founders' era, and culminating with Jean Baptiste Say, deTocqueville, and Frederic Bastiat, you should understand that it is typically applied to those whose ideas were very much opposed to theirs, including J.S. Mill, who wrote a great deal about it. The origins of Political Economy lay in the somewhat seedy doings of the French royals & Physiocrats, as well as some devilry from the always vile Jean Jacques Rousseau, as Jean Baptiste Say said

"...the sect of "Economists" of the last century, throughout all their writings, and J. J. Rousseau, in the article "Political Economy" in the Encyclopedie, lie under the same imputation."

Rousseau used Political Economy as a means to develop and justify his idea of a 'General Will', which held that it was necessary for the state to have the power & authority to 'shape' and improve society for the 'greater good',

"...Heavy taxes should be laid on servants in livery, on equipages, rich furniture, fine clothes, on spacious courts and gardens, on public entertainments of all kinds, on useless professions, such as dancers, singers, players, and in a word, on all that multiplicity of objects of luxury, amusement and idleness, which strike the eyes of all, and can the less be hidden, as their whole purpose is to be seen, without which they would be useless. We need be under no apprehension of the produce of these taxes being arbitrary, because they are laid on things not absolutely necessary...."

, which is a sentiment that tyrants from Robespierre to Marx and beyond, have appreciated the utility of, ever since.

However, leading into the Founders' era, people like Richard Cantillon, and later Adam Smith, began seeing that history for what it was. Adam Smith regarded such matters derisively as a form of 'state craft', which was very much opposed to the 'Science of Wealth' or 'Natural Liberty', that he had begun to discover the need of:

"...the expression ‘political economy’ consistently refers to those systems of economic policy and analysis which are being opposed and criticized."

, and yet Smith was eventually able to describe political economy on his own terms, as:

"Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. [WN IV. Intro. 1]"

From my POV, that's still a bit problematic in the powers it implicitly concedes to government, but then those pioneers who lead the way to a new discovery, should be forgiven, rather than canceled, for not discovering every danger that lurked behind the real benefits of what they had discovered.

Footnote from Say's 'Treatise on Political Economy':
"From οικος a house, and νομος a law; economy, the law which regulates the household. Household, according to the Greeks, comprehending all the goods in possession of the family; and political, from πόλις, civitas, extending its application to society or the nation at large.

Political economy is the best expression that can be used to designate the science discussed in the following treatise, which is not the investigation of natural wealth, or that which nature supplies us with gratuitously and without limitation, but of social wealth exclusively, which is founded on exchange and the recognition of the right of property both social regulations."

Others soon came along to improve on that pioneering vision, such as Jean Baptiste Say, who Thomas Jefferson praised as being clearer, and much briefer than Adam Smith, and was himself followed by one who succeeded better than most others in marking out the best paths & vistas upon the maps of what Smith & Say had blazed, which was Frederic Bastiat.

Bastiat later observed that the approach and understanding that was consistent with Smith's ideal of 'Natural Liberty', was as distinct from the Socialist and later 'Economic' views, as astronomy is from astrology, or chemistry is from alchemy, in that:

"...What separates, radically and profoundly, the two schools is their difference of methods. The one school, like the astrologer and the alchemist, proceeds on hypothesis; the other, like the astronomer and the chemist, proceeds on observation...."

Bastiat understood that just as two astronomers could observe the same fact and disagree for a time about its cause or meaning, yet because they were both aiming at understanding what is real and true, once the matter became better understood, their views would eventually come to an harmonious agreement as to what is valid and true. This was very much in line with what Thomas Reid had said earlier:

"...While the parties agree in the first principles on which their arguments are grounded, there is room for reasoning; but when one denies what to the other appears too evident to need or to admit of proof, reasoning seems to be at an end; an appeal is made to common sense, and each party is left to enjoy his own opinion...."

, but as Bastiat noted:

"... between the astronomer, who observes, and the astrologer, who imagines, the gulf is impassable...."

As Bastiat saw it, like the Astronomer, the job of Political Economy was less to advise actions for governments to take, than to make observations that enabled facts and principles to guide people and governments away from acting upon those ideas and practices that lead to confusion and waste, and to provide them instead with the knowledge that would lead their society towards prosperity and harmony. But like the astrologers & alchemists, those who promote Socialism/'Economics' (and yes, they belong together) see their job as being to use their influence to urge policies that imposed upon people's lives which they justified on the basis of their dire or wonderous predictions for the future, no matter what facts or principles need to be ignored or denied in doing so (or concern for what the future actually holds).

Our task here & now, is to select between those interested in understanding reality and pursuing happiness, and those interested in pushing economic narratives in pursuit of power, by examining the systems they support, starting with those of the Pre-Classical Economists (Ooh! so close to finding a usable label!) which 'economics' supplanted.

Here's a few basic questions that should be actively considered before affixing any labels:

• What is an economy?
• How do you measure the state of an economy?
• What's involved in making adjustments to an economy, and at what cost?
• Are such actions justifiable?

A) What an economy actually is, is at least the material effects of every aspiration, concern, effort, expectation, and goal, of every person living within the geographical expanse it references, as well as everyone and everything outside of it which interacts with it.

Seems rather large, doesn't it?

B) And how does one go about measuring the state of such an... everything? While Political Economy would say an economy's health is best measured by what obstacles its members face in acting and trading within it, economics would have you believe that there are a number of widely agreed upon economic indicators that more than suffice to measure & direct this & that indicator and the ratios of them, to divine which actions and directions are necessary to take in order to improve 'the common good' of ... all of that.

Unfortunately if that gives you the impression that such key 'economic indicators' as the Federal Reserve's Interest Rate, GDP (Gross Domestic Product), CPI (Consumer Price Index), Unemployment Rate, etc., were actually objective indicators of the state of those 'economic realities', which enable 'those who know best' to divine our economic course into the future, instead of the arbitrary listings of politically motivated 'indicators', I'm sorry to say that you've been misled.

Yet they'll tell you very authoritatively that the advice of 'those who know best' is sufficient to guide society in making those adjustments (adjustments which 'those who know best' are in wild disagreement over) based upon 'recognized indicators', which they insist are necessary and sufficient to best 'manage' the course of our lives, in their society.

C) Even more misleading than indicating that those indicators are objective measurements for objective purposes, is the scope of what's involved in making such 'adjustments to the economy' that those indicators are used to legitimize. The willingness of the 'economically minded' to imagine that they can adequately comprehend an 'economy'(let alone 'correct' it) is what, IMHO, true arrogance looks like - much like what Adam Smith described way back when:

"...I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, He can judge of this much better than the statesman. and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would no-where be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it....."

The innumerable decisions, motivations, and judgements that go into making up an 'economy' (AKA: what you and everyone you know does, and why), is something that no one could ever even adequately identify, let alone 'manage'. I'd say that 'Folly and presumption' is an apt characterization for how 'Economists' gin up their formulations for the various measures and 'distribution curves' they claim to guide the actions that must be taken to 'guide' our economy, to say nothing of the truly dangerous nature which he noted was inherent in even attempting such a project, as even that necessitates infringing upon, and outright violating the individual/property rights of *some* (all) members of the community, in order to separate them by means of percentages, from everyone else in the community, by some such label as 'the wealthy'.

That my friends, which is what it is that 'economics' seeks to do, is a key 'tell' of the 'Economic' mindset, in that it's naturally inclined towards using power to divide people on inherently collectivist lines of favored and unfavored groupings, for purposes of its own.

A possibly apocryphal quip from Harry Truman “Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say ‘on the one hand...’, then ‘but on the other...’”, expresses the frustration of seeking economic advice of more objective value than an opinion.

D) Perhaps worst of all, is the fact that even economists don't claim to objectively know what will result from their efforts, and yet the advice they give to those in positions of power, is derived from the various probabilities that follow from their disputed theories, which will result in concrete actions being taken, and the only thing that can be said for certain is that whatever actions are taken, will - for better or for worse - directly impact each and every one of us.

IOW: Economics presumes that it's appropriate to use political power to experiment with the lives and livelihoods of those living in 'their economy', for the good of the economy, rather than for those it is made up of.

Bringing those issues up, however, is likely to get you and me labeled as being either overly individualistic (which you're intended to associate with the heads & tails 'lone wolf' imagery that J.S. Mill & Dewey both peddled) and with being too concerned with property, and Individual Rights, or in some other way at odds with the common good, such as my xTwitter friends admonished me.

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...competing rights claims require Law that has the Common Good as an end..."
"..."Just laws" depend upon consideration of the public welfare and not simply of individual rights in discerning ..."
"...Imo rentiers have to be eliminated through policy so that productive investment, circulation and stability is promoted..."

Note the term that one of my xTwitterers' used, 'Rentiers'. That is a favorite label of the economically minded, which this reference provides a few different common dictionary definitions of:

• "A person who lives on income from property or investments.
• One who has a fixed income, as from lands, stocks, or the like.
• An individual who receives an income, usually interest, rent, dividends, or capital gains, from his or her assets and investments.
• someone whose income is from property rents or bond interest and other investments

, meaning that the term encompasses everyone from those who bought a property to fix up and rent out, or is retired and living on investment income from their 401k, all the way on up to the wealthy, all of whom depend upon the same individual right in property, which the economically minded believe should [should?] be 'eliminated'.

Have you noticed that 'Economic Thinkers' often use the word 'Common', and then in the next breath single out demographics such as 'rentiers' from the common populace, for uncommon treatment?

To speak of a 'Common Good' that isn't common to all, or of a 'Public Welfare' that counts upon damaging the welfare of some members of the public, is as ideologically-snowed blind, as deliberately destroying the individual bricks within a wall in order to save the wall which has been built from them. As the Inigo Montoya meme would say 'You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means'.

And sorry, but if you think that 'they only mean millionaires!', the fact remains that utilizing the law to violate the rights of one person, means abandoning the principle of respecting everyone's rights under the law. Sure, you might not feel the effects of such efforts immediately, but what's common to all with their enactment, is that everyone has been immediately deprived of the full support of the Law in regards to that right (and others), and as happened with the income tax, your tax bracket too will eventually feel the particular effects of its impositions.

"But Van, we don't mean targeting either rich or poor individuals, but only corporations and Big Businesses!"

See 'Wickard v Filburn' for one famous instance out of thousands that confirm this, where SCOTUS decided that a single family farmer raising a small crop for his family's use only, was 'Akshually' an interstate-commerce violation of the FDR administration's 'New Deal' laws.

, and again, no, although that's how such actions are usually sold, they're implementation says otherwise, no matter what words are said or conveniently left unsaid. Our own history says otherwise as well, loudly, over and over and over again - almost as if an important lesson of history has been deliberately left untaught, so that we'll continue repeating the same mistake over and over again, which we will continue doing, so long as we evade paying attention to the lessons that history is trying to teach us.

And yet 'economic thinkers' persist in justifying their 'Economic actions' as being *objective* measures for improving the 'common good' - so what is this notion of a 'Common Good' that they they speak of? One of those xTweeting with me answered gamely:

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"The common good represents the conditions that allow individuals within a society to flourish"
, and then muddying the waters,
"The Common Good with respect to political economy is simply the necessary conditions of liberty."

Ah. Ok then. Human Flourishing and *Liberty* (using which definition?). Right. Well then. Somehow their use of those words makes me wonder about what they think is meant by them.

• Do they mean that understanding of 'Liberty' which Western history and literature led America and its laws to be established upon during our Founders' era, in order for America to flourish?
• Do they mean something similar to the flourishing that people like Adam Smith understood would follow from refounding Political Economy upon natural liberty (The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776)?

, or do they mean to use familiar terms like flourishing, *Liberty*, and the *Common Good* as understood by the Founders' sense of those terms, to entice popular support for the very different meanings that became associated with those words a half century and more after our Founders' era, by 'Classical Liberals' and the 'social science' of 'Economics'? The sense of 'common' which most comes to mind from that, is that of common thieves.

One Classical Liberal that took liberties with Life, Liberty, and Happiness - J.S. Mill

One Classical Liberal that took liberties with Life, Liberty, and Happiness - J.S. Mill

Part 5 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

If any of what was pointed out in the previous post on 'Classical Liberalism' surprises you, you may be even more surprised to learn that the many quotable lines of the popular essay 'On Liberty', that was written by the shining star of the 'Classical Liberals', J.S. Mill, was an early example of liberally employing words that were commonly used in our Founders' era, in ways that shared little more in common with them than their spelling.

Those differences in meaning become less surprising once you note that J.S. Mill was not only a Utilitarian, whose founder, Jeremy Bentham, had infamously expressed the Utilitarian view that 'rights are nonsense upon stilts', but that J.S. Mill was raised and educated as an experiment in applied Utilitarianism (which is presumed to have led to his youthful nervous breakdown) by Mill's father, who was a friend and admirer of Jeremy Bentham.

"But Van! Now you're labeling!"

No, I'm not labeling him, I'm identifying his ideas, with the difference being that where the one shields, the other reveals, and the latter is done by refusing to allow the trite answers we're given, to abort those questions that are so important for us to consider, whenever we're presented with an unquestionable answer, such as J.S. Mill being a meaningful proponent of 'Liberty!', as it was widely understood in our Founders' era.

In growing up and developing his own understanding of Utilitarianism, Mill found it necessary to alter or repurpose the meanings of a number of common words from how they had been understood, to suit his beliefs as a materialist Utilitarian - a few of which that come to mind are 'Life', 'Liberty', and 'Happiness'. One view he didn't much change from Bentham's views though, was that of 'Rights', which presents a problem for those who're reading our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, and J.S. Mill's thoughts on Liberty.

Of course, Mill wasn't the only one, or the first, involved in altering the meaning of the words we commonly use. Before going further into what key words Mill altered the meanings of, we should at least glance at what made it possible for those new meanings to be so easily spread, which was by way of Ideology.

The term 'Ideology' was coined in 1793 by Destutte deTracy, a Scottish born French noblemen, military man, philosophe (and possibly Freemason, and certainly influenced radicals like the Carbonari), as the name for what he intended to be a new 'science of ideas', as an empirical & very 'Science!ish' method of thinking that would pointedly avoid (reject) the use of metaphysical concepts & ethical judgement (which, BTW, has a lot in common with Utilitarianism) in order to make our thinking 'more efficient'. For different reasons, both Napoleon & Marx hated it (while embracing key aspects of it), while Thomas Jefferson admired some aspects of it enough to personally translate & publish it in America, and it became exceedingly influential in his time.

Unfortunately the consequence of ignoring metaphysics & ethics in our thinking, is that the words and terms being used 'more efficiently', soon lose their depth, as their subsurface meanings become more assumed than actually understood, they are transformed from conveying substantial meaning, to becoming shallow labels that are loosely associated with multiple and often conflicting positions, most of which are not very well thought out. And so one practical problem with Ideological thinking, is that it leads people into believing that they're in agreement with each other because they're using the same words, without realizing that they aren't in agreement on what they mean by them. That shallow sense of apparent agreement is a big part of what often propels an ideology to a rapid growth in popularity, until, that is, its followers attempt to put those ideas into practice, and begin discovering that they disagree on what it is that they actually mean by the words & terms they're using. And because they begin from seemingly similar positions, rather than from a shared understanding, that leads to 'purity tests' and '_ In Name Only' labels (for instance, ask a few lefties what they mean by 'liberal', or conservatives what they mean by 'conservative'), which displays the other trait that Ideologies are well known for, their highly fractious nature.

It's up to each of us to decline to be distracted from asking those metaphysical and ethical questions that we should all be asking, as it's only from doing so that we can become able to see firsthand how easily our apparent agreement with a label's positions, can mislead and divert us from the reasons behind the various positions that've become associated with them, much like how J.S. Mill, for instance, can appear to be supportive of a subject, such as a Free Market, when the two are essentially incompatible.

Those who read Mill's ideas today, without being in the habit of asking those questions, are unlikely to realize that what they assume his words to mean, are unlikely to be what J.S. Mill had in mind when writing them, and so whether or not Mill meant to engage in verbal embezzlement or semantic deception, his alternate meanings have been gradually smuggled into popular assumptions & practices, which have become more and more confused and even destructive, without most people ever even realizing it. Such people are often filled with a zeal for their 'new!' ideas, and believing that their support for something - a Free Market for instance - would be helped by supporting what seems like just another name for seemingly similar positions - 'Free Trade!' for instance - actively voice their 'principled!' opposition on 'economic' grounds to political tactics like tariffs, declaring their support for engaging in 'Free Trade!' with the likes of the Communist Party of Red China, which is eager to subvert and destroy every aspect of what such trade and liberty depend upon. The shallow use of words progressively turns their well meaning efforts into contributing to destroying the very thing that they'd originally supported - which is how we came to wave goodby to what had once been a beacon of judicial, political, and economic liberty: Hong-Kong.

The more depth of meaning that's lost to shallow understanding, the greater damage will be inflicted, and the more understanding that rests upon a word or term, the more widely the effects from undermining it will be felt. We only need to look at a handful of key words that Mill differed with our Founders on the meaning of, to get a glimpse of how far reaching the negative impact those differences have been, and perhaps the best one to start with, is: Principles.

Mill was very big about writing extensively about his 'principles!' of this, and 'principles!' of that, and of course we hear a great many fans of Mill's 'On Liberty' today, shouting about what they will and won't do because of their 'principles!', but what do they understand that term to mean? In our Founders' era, 'Principles' had been generally defined as:

" ...one of the fundamental tenets or doctrines of a system, a law or truth on which others are founded" comes the sense of "a right rule of conduct" (1530s)."

, and were understood and used to convey wise and ethical truths, and standards of behavior as with principles of freedom of speech, and principles of an objective Rule of Law, and principles of virtuous and ethical conduct.

What Mill meant by Principles, OTOH, was not moral concepts of what is good, right, and true - as a utilitarian empiricist, he would not entertain such thoughts - but he instead intended them as quantitative 'measures' of behaviors in various scenarios to determine the degree of usefulness of something:

"I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being. "

IOW, what Mill meant by 'principles', had less to do with philosophic principles of behavior, than with devising formulas for generating rules derived from 'scientific' measurements, and tweaking the ingredients and measures as needed to maximize its utility.

However encouraging that might sound at first, the problem is that what he meant by 'Science!', had more to do with the new 'Social Sciences', than with legitimate experimental sciences like chemistry, where rules & principles were derived from exactingly quantitative measures of factual physical characteristics, as observed under controlled experimental conditions, and based upon measurable consequences, were revised as needed by further observations.

One problem with equating one 'science' with the other, is that such quantitative measurements of physical attributes, cannot be made of qualitative concepts of human traits and interactions - you can't put issues of Trust, Virtue, Friendship, etc., on a ruler to measure them by, or hold either despair or joy up against a scale to weigh them with.

The IEP (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) described Mill's approach, this way:

"...suggesting that basic principles of logic and mathematics are generalizations from experience rather than known a priori. The principle of utility—that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness”—was the centerpiece of Mill’s ethical philosophy..."

And so when J.S. Mill speaks of 'Principles', he doesn't mean 'a priori' fundamental truths for guiding our judgement of Right & Wrong, Good & Evil, etc., but something more like weighted averages of popular responses that've been associated with one 'factor' or another. So when Mill's 'social scientist' claimed to have 'measured' something, that 'measurement' was typically the intensity of the measurer's own feelings about an action, combined with their opinion of what brought it about (very much like today's 'lived experiences'), which were then artfully assembled along with numerous other such observations, into a statistical format to be presented and treated as if it were no different than the objectively measured ingredients and outcomes of repeatable laboratory experiments, as performed upon material substances.

Armed with that, as a chemist might tweak an ingredient here or there in his laboratory, Mill, in reference to various scenarios from trade to personal relationships, advised mitigating or deviating from his 'principles' as needed in his laboratory of society - your life and mine - to vary those 'outcomes' he sought to support or suppress, in reforming society closer to his heart's desire (read him, it's obvious).

What necessarily follows from following Mill's idea of 'principles!', is routinely being led into advocating for what would have been recognized in our Founders' era as being unprincipled behavior.

What also comes as a surprise to most casual fans of 'On Liberty', is that what Mill typically wanted, and vocally endorsed, was to use the power of the state to 'manage the economy' which transforms 'economics' into a euphemism for state involvement and control over any or all of the day-to-day decisions and actions of those in society, in every aspect of their lives. Key to his means of doing so, was the liberal use of those 'principles' and other words & terms that he'd repurposed through his Utilitarian philosophy, to convey very different meanings and purposes than had been understood or intended by them, just a short while earlier in our Founders' era.

One fine example of that has to do with his attitude towards 'Life'.

Whether J.S. Mill thought human life was a value in and of itself, or just another material commodity whose value was to be measured by its usefulness to the economy (hello: 'Utilitarian!'), is something he made clear towards the end of his essay 'On Liberty', where he wrote of his concerns over the common people being permitted to have too many children all willy-nilly and unregulated like.

Mill, making very clear what the meaning of "I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions" actually is, expressed his desire for the state to intervene by writing laws to restrict how many babies people should(!) be allowed to have, so as to prevent an excess population from negatively impacting the economy by reducing workers' wages:

"... in a country either over-peopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number,[Pg 206] with the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labour..."

Just think, Classical Liberal J.S. Mill was a century ahead of Communist China's 'One Child Policy' - can't ya just smell the liberty!?

Speaking of which, 'Liberty' is another word that reveals real differences between what was understood during our founding era, and what J.S. Mill meant by it a half century later. Liberty had been defined as,

"state of being free from arbitrary, despotic, or autocratic rule or control"

, and so they understood that liberty was what resulted from living in a moral and law abiding community that respected the rights and property of each citizen.

J.S. Mill upended that understanding with his very different Utilitarian belief that liberty is little more than,

"...freedom from restraint..."

, which you should note is less a concept, than a physical condition that neither requires nor presumes qualities of character or responsibility. Say hello to Rousseau's 'noble savage'.

Mill of course goes on to say many very fine sound things about this liberty, that:

"This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of[Pg 23] each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived."

, which does sound very fine indeed (though more resembling lists of ingredients, than guiding principles), until, that is, you recall to mind what Mill meant by 'principles', and what he said all such 'principles' are subordinate to:

"...I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense... "

, and the question that ought to bring to mind, is what that might mean if your life & liberty aren't thought to be of use to 'Those who know best', like Mill? Say hello to Rousseau's ideal Legislator, who believed, like Mill, that the state 'ought' to have the power to enforce the 'General Will' and 'force them to be free', as being the ideal of 'Liberty'.

If you think I exaggerate, I have to ask if (or when) you've actually read 'On Liberty', or anything else that Mill has written? Because Mill's use of the word 'Principle' is based upon his positions, rather than their being derived from a conceptual understanding of what is real, good, and true, he finds that he has to justify his preferred positions over and over again with words to the effect of: "Yes, our principles do say that something is evil, but... sometimes circumstances demand that society engage in a lil' bit of evil, for the common good... because success is what matters...", as Mill does here with what he considers to be the fundamental determiner of liberty, 'restraint':

"...all restraint, quâ restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them...."

The fact is that Utilitarianism entails the idea that the ends justify the means ('principles', doncha know), and his philosophy transforms 'principles' into a veritable blank check for authorizing society to trample over the lives and choices of individuals, for the greater good.

The problem with looking to J.S. Mill for advice on liberty, is that as a Utilitarian, he sees Liberty as nothing more than 'the absence of restraint' (an opinion shared by Vladimir Lenin, BTW), and with that materialistic conception of 'Liberty' in mind, he finds that the next step that anyone must make is, as Mill did, that:

"...All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs;..."

IOW Mill's idea of what he calls 'liberty', begins with how force 'should' be imposed, either in forcibly restraining others so you can do whatever you want, or by submitting to some restraints so as to strike a bargain to 'allow' each other to do some of what each desires - not because it's right and good, but because it's useful in satisfying your desires, AKA: Utilitarianism.

In a nice irony for today's Libertarians who wave copies of Mill's 'On Liberty' about and claim to be all about liberty and 'Free Trade!', Mill thought that:

"...the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade..."

, for you see, in Mill's idea of 'Liberty!', "...trade is a social act...", which means that 'those who know best' - experts like J.S. Mill - should be the ones who determine what rules would be most useful for society. You can almost hear a piratic "These Principles be more like suggestions, argh".

SoOooo much liberty.

The fact is that in J.S. Mill's effort to 'define principles of Liberty', there are no principles as were recognized in our Founders' era, to be found, no principles of individual rights nor any principled basis for liberty to justify defending the individual against tyranny, and in place of principles, Mill presents only varying technical formulas for dealing with the various complexities of issues of the moment, from moment to moment, in which Those Who Know Best must be empowered to pick and choose which particulars must be sacrificed (meaning you, and your concerns), so as to serve what they decide to be the 'greater good', in that particular scenario.

It's not surprising that his idea of 'liberty', led him to lament:

"...When we compare the strange respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable[Pg 207] right to do harm to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to any one..."

Mill's idea of Liberty did not begin with what a good life is, and how best to live it, or even with what is real and true, but with either how 'best' you can get away with doing some of what you most desire to do to yourself and others, or with stopping others from doing what they most desire to do to themselves or to you.

What's a shame, is that his own low opinion of both man and liberty didn't cause him to question his understanding of either, or how he came to them. As a result, that conception of Liberty that J.S. Mill had in mind, is, IMHO, one that is unfit for a life worth living, let alone for '... the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'.

And if you expected something different with his notions of Happiness, sorry, but no.

As was understood in our Founders' era, Happiness was defined in Dr. Johnson's dictionary:.

"...that estate whereby we attain, so far as possibly may be attained, the full possession of that which simply for itself is to be desired, and containeth in it after an eminent sort the contentation of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection."

, or as put by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, the motive force behind SCSR (Scottish Common Sense Realism) put it:

"...The happy man, therefore, -is not he whose happiness is his only care, but he who, with perfect resignation, leaves the care of his happiness to Him who made him, while he pursues with ardour the road of his duty. This gives an elevation to his mind, which is real happiness. Instead of care, and fear, and anxiety, and disappointment, it brings joy and triumph. It gives a relish to every good we enjoy, and brings good out of evil..."

, so that 'Happiness' was understood in our Founders' era, to be what could result from steadily adhering to a moral and virtuous compass, so as to live a life well lived.

But 'Happiness' meant something very different to J.S. Mill, as he put it in his essay on 'Utilitarianism', 'happiness' was concerned with the pleasing conditions and sensations of the immediate moment, in that:

"...By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain, by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure."

IOW: an amoral 'if it feels good, do it!' is what he advocated for which some at the time referred to as 'social hedonism' or 'the maximizing of pleasure over pain', as being the measure of the 'Greater Good'.

How significantly & consequentially Mill's interpretations of these words differed in all of their aspects, from what they were understood to mean in our Founders' era, is perhaps most starkly demonstrated by the actions of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The delegates well understood what might follow from signing a declaration against King & Country, and yet they adhered to their principles. With a principled understanding of what the words of the Declaration meant, and what they understood was right and good to do - which in their minds were not separable and could not be overridden by the 'utility' of the moment - they signed it,

"...with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor..."

, and did so in an exceedingly meaningful service to liberty and happiness for themselves and for their community.

"But Van, we don't look to Mill for philosophy, but for sustaining a market economy!"

Right. About that. That brings us to another word that our Founders' understood to be rather central to both markets and economy: Property, which was best expressed by James Madison, here, as with:

"...He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights...."

In his Principles of Political Economy, vol 1., in his chapter on Property, Mill begins by noting that private property isn't as bad of a thing if it's earned by direct labor, but after much discussion of the noble ideals of various aspects of socialism and communism, he declares that he disapproves of the right to private property when it's not produced by direct labor. He wasn't just talking about inheritance, but about the property of investors, and of business owners, owning and profiting from their business, while the pitiful 'workers':

"...For example (it may be said) the operatives in a manufactory create, by their labour and skill, the whole produce; yet, instead of its belonging to them, the law gives them only their stipulated hire, and transfers the produce to some one who has merely supplied the funds, without perhaps contributing anything to the work itself, even in the form of superintendence...."

Mill then scolds that such a set of conditions:

"...does not promote, but conflicts with, the ends which render private property legitimate...."

, and he ends his chapter on Property after haven spoken throughout of his favorable feelings towards the French Socialist Fourier, whose Fourierism he thinks strikes an admirable balance between Socialism, Communism, and Private Property, to note in his closing paragraph:

"...It is for experience to determine how far or how soon any one or more of the possible systems of community of property will be fitted to substitute itself for the "organization of industry" based on private ownership of land and capital..."

If that's not clear enough for you, in book 2, under "2. The case for Communism against private property presented", while noting there could be problems with communism, still though,

"If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with all its chances and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism, would be but as dust in the balance."

And as frosting on the poop-brownie, J.S. Mill:

• championed the spread of 'useful' aspects of German Idealism,
• was a sympathetic friend and fan of August Comte, who founded Positivism with the intention of creating a secular and *scientifically* socialist religion of the state as a replacement for Christianity.
• used German Idealism to bolster his support for central banking and to oppose any limiting of a central banks' ability to print money
• supported education reform aligned with a "National Education to imitate the “spirit of the Prussian government,";
• led the squashing of Thomas Reid's Scottish Common Sense Realism (SCSR - which arguably had as much or more influence on our Founders' thinking than even John Locke);

Add to that the fact that J.S. Mill was always in sympathy with those socialist ideals that he only later in life openly declared himself to be in support of, is what, IMHO, puts both his ideas, and his notions of 'Economics', in the category of what I term to be Pro-Regressive - that which is for leading us back to a more primitive social & political framework as existed prior to our Founders' era, so as to enable 'those who know best' to wield the power to do with 'the people' as they deemed to be best, for whichever 'good' ('Greater', 'Common', 'The Nation', etc. ) will seem easiest to sell to the public at the time.

It's not too much to say that the sad state of Britain today, which in recent decades has gone from abandoning Hong Kong abroad, to jailing people at home for their comments and memes, is the fruition of J.S. Mill's thoughts 'On Liberty', having been put into practice.

My concern with using "Classical Liberalism" as the go-to label for positions on principles of life, liberty, and happiness, is that too many of those who identify as 'Classical Liberals' today - especially those doing so in a pious openness to 'other' ideas - do so without regard for which sense of the term they are embodying (James Madison or J.S. Mill? Thomas Reid or David Hume?), seemingly unaware that equating J.S. Mill's ideas on liberty and property, with James Madison's brilliant and incredibly brief essay on Property, is like comparing vomit to a gourmet dinner, or worse, to recommend mixing them.

But what 'those who know best' seem to understand best, is that the utility of dialectally laundering how those principles that were understood by Thomas Reid's SCSR and America's Founding Fathers during their period, with those of the latter period in which J.S. Mill has the status of being the leading light of 'Classical Liberalism', transforms the term into a conceptual 'skin suit' for giving aid & comfort to rationalizing morality and reality away.

Those whose thinking most aligns with mine today tend to identify as being 'Classical Liberals' who also imagine 'Capitalism' to be a system that aligns with Free Markets and Free Minds (which is an excellent alignment to have), but many of them also tend to think of the likes of J.S. Mill as being a supporter of that ideal, and by doing so they are elevating what Mill actually intended to do, which was to subvert and squash the SCSR of Thomas Reid, and to subvert and corrupt Adam Smith's concept of Natural Liberty and Free Markets.

That is what Mill intended to, do and that is what Marx repurposed the term 'Capitalism' to serve as - that being a label that is easily derided ('Capital' ='Money'='the root of all evil'='heartless & greedy rich people'), so as to portray 'Capitalism' and Capitalists as an assortment of low-minded people and positions who're divorced from principle (just ignore the fact that both Mill & Marx had no use for Principles).

THAT is what should be kept in mind the next time you see any of J.S. Mill's catchy quotes from 'On Liberty'.

So now, having pushed the more obvious labels aside, we're almost in a position to dig into the 'Economic System' itself, but to get the clearest perspective on that, and to be able to identify whatever 'flaws in my economic theory' I might have, we need to take a closer look at what their system took the place of, and why, which is: Political Economy.

The wishful thinking of the 'Classical Liberal' label

The wishful thinking of the 'Classical Liberal' label

Part 4 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

So now with the preceding posts in mind, let's move onto a label which many in my no-label-to-call-home position tend to gravitate towards, as I once did, with thinking that 'Classical Liberal' is the right fit.

At first glance it does seem to be a very nice fit, at least in the sense of what most people imagine that 'Classical Liberalism' refers to, as being all about respecting sound science, valuing individual rights, property rights, liberty, free markets, and appreciating our Founders' era as the culmination of the greatest period of actual societal progress in a thousand years, as noted by people like James Lindsay, and @ClassicLibera12 (but in a good way). That period, after all, succeeded in binding governmental power down with the constraints of constitutional law, for the purpose of upholding & preserving justice and liberty for every individual, and their putting those ideas into practice is what enabled the prosperous fruits of political economy (see Adam Smith, Jean Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat) to be enjoyed by all, and made the life-saving and enhancing scientific and technological progress we enjoy today possible.

What's not to like in something so admirable, right?

Well... just the fact that it's not true that 'Classical Liberalism' refers specifically to that.

What? Nope. 'Classical Liberalism' refers to those ideas generated across a period of time that extends roughly from the early 1600s to the mid 1800s, and spans thinkers as poles apart as Hobbes and Locke, Descartes and Thomas Reid, Rousseau and our Founding Fathers, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and produced such radically contradictory ideas as range from Natural Law (which our constitution was derived from), to Positivist Law (which the administrative state depends upon).

So you tell me, if that's the case - and it is - how does identifying as a 'Classical Liberal' actually identify only the popular sense of it that I agree with, or even identify any one aspect of it?

"But Van, 'Classical Liberalism' just refers to the culmination of that period of thought!", and I initially assumed that to be the case as well, but that period we value was not the culminating point of the 'Classical Liberal' period. Following the close of our Founders' era, there was still at least a half-century more to go in the span of time which the term refers to, and those ideas and doctrines which seek to undo and repeal the real progress that was made during our Founders' era, came to prominence during that closing period and that is what those who revile what we revere, cite as being the culmination of 'Classical Liberal' thinking, and it's from that standpoint that they roll their eyes at what we value, as being naive and undeveloped. And so, worse than the term not identifying anything clearly, by promoting the label of 'Classical Liberalism', we assist our opposition in misidentifying, misleading, and subverting, the very ideas which those of us with no-label-to-call-home, value most.

A quick look at the timeline of what we're considering here, is in order. The period typically referred to, opened up with Sir Francis Bacon ('knowledge is power', or so his secretary Hobbes tells us), and began to hit its stride as the Science of Issac Newton lit up popular imagination and the political philosophy of John Locke's Two Discourses on Civil Government which put that spirit into words. Not long afterwards the Scottish Enlightenment (which itself spans such irreconcilable philosophical poles as David Hume & Thomas Reid), ushered in Adam Smith's Political Economy, and culminated politically with our Founders' Era in the last quarter of the 1700s, which brought the Free Market to its high point with the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s.

That period which began immediately after our Founders era and carried 'Classical Liberalism' forward roughly from the1820s to its close in the 1850s, while benefitting from the prosperous effects of a nearly Free Market that were clearly seen by all, began undermining the ideas that had made that prosperity possible, through a new set of ideas in philosophy & academia, whose implications went mostly unseen by the public. Behind the scenes of the financial pages, the intellectual current was being turned against the tide of the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian West, by drawing heavily upon the thinking of Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Comte, etc., and the period became dominated by the 'classical economists' such as J.S. Mill, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. As they promoted the philosophically corrosive schools of German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel), it saw the advent of the 'Social Sciences', and the 'new' (old authoritarianism rebranded) theories of Positivist law, that were the anti-thesis to the Natural Law that our Constitution was derived from.

It was with that altered telos, new direction, and with those 'new' ideas in hand, that the latter 'Classical Liberals' progressively transformed the reality based liberalism and SCSR (Scottish Common Sense Realism) of our Founder's era, into an idealistic form of illiberalism, which actively sought to disrupt that earlier framework of philosophy, education, and political economy, which had made the real progress of our Founders' era possible. Worse still, those involved, who reviled the ideals that we value, were promoting these new ideas by using the same terms that were common to both periods (you've heard the phrase "They shared their vocabulary, but not their dictionary", which when done intentionally, is now called Semantic Deception), so that words that were spelled the same - words like Liberty, Education, Progress - were being used to convey very different meanings & purposes between those 'in the know', which gave cover to the regressive movements which they desired, and which they called 'progress!'.

Perhaps the most consequential product of the latter period of 'Classical Liberalism', was the new field of 'Economics', which was the lovechild of proponents of Positivist Law and the Social Sciences, through their shared fondness for Marxism and Fabian Socialism. Those latter day 'Classical Liberals', and especially the 'Classical Economists', aggressively promoted the rise of their new field, and by as early as 1900 it had rapidly risen to eclipse all serious references and concerns for the Political Economy of our Founders' era and enabled them to usher modern Socialism & Communism onto the world stage, as the respectable and welcomed heir to 'Classical Liberalism'.

Do you see my problem with the label? To expect that a term which applies to such a wide span of time, and which contains such a contradictory range of ideas, to bring to mind only that particular subset of ideas and positions which were reflected in the founding of America, is counting on far too many questions not being asked, by people who are often unable or even piously unwilling to identify what is real and true, in the name of what they think of as being 'Classical Liberalism'

What results from that is worse than being only a distraction, as it enables far worse to go forward under cover of the same heading, and I suspect that academics, the press, politicians, and crony-capitalists alike, secretly rub their hands in glee, whenever we profess ourselves to be 'Classical Liberals'.

The Wastefulness of *Economics* requires labels

The Wastefulness of *Economics* requires labels

Part 3 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

No doubt there are a number of other labels from systems of 'economic thinking' leaping up for your attention right about now - 'Capitalist', 'Socialist', 'Marxist', 'Communist', 'Fascist', etc., - which we're all expected to get into the game and favor or oppose, but... is there a value in that for you?

What is that value?

No, I'm not asking for the arguments for why one of those labels is better than the others - though I'm pretty familiar with each of their arguments for those, that's not what I'm trying to bring to your attention here. Also keep in mind that I'm not in favor of any form of anarchic, minarchic, syndicalist, etc., system, I'm simply asking you to consider what value there is for you, in a system that seeks to manage 'an economy'?

Again, I'm not looking for your opinion on the various labels within the system of 'Economics', neither am I trying to dismiss the many valid principles of economics ('good money drives out bad', 'no free lunch', 'inflation is a tax', 'quantity theory of money', 'uniformity of profit', and the more technical ones too...), what I'm drawing a bead on is the 'Economic System', as a system.

When you peak beneath the surface of their arguments, what you begin to notice is that these labels that we are expected to pick and wear, are less about conveying an understanding of either the terms themselves or of the individuals being labeled by them, than with drawing us all into positions within the system where we can be more easily manipulated in a much larger game that's being played (think MLB, rather than the Dodgers or Yankees). In that larger game, each label adds to the contradictory turbulence that's generated within the whole (think Dodgers vs Yankees), and does so within the 'unquestionably' legitimate category of the modern's most favored label of all: Economics.

So to see what that larger game is, let's start with the usual basic answer given for what 'Economics' is, from a site that's appropriate to the subject, Wikipedia (yes, that's snark), which says:

"Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services."

Which is true enough - especially as it identifies 'Economics' as a Social Science, which is a field that was devised and defined by utilitarians and positivists who believed that 'experts' should be given the 'might to make right', as the basis of their 'scientifically' measuring 'social actions' through a lens which excludes philosophy & morality (what they meant by 'science', is very likely not what you mean by Science), and focuses instead on particular quantitative details of narratives that are especially suited to support their perspectives on how to 'fix' Society. Meaning: You, me, and everyone we know.

If you were to overlook both the source and lens of 'Economics', you might conclude from Wiki's sentence that its meaning is similar to how 'economics' is identified by some of the better economists, such as Thomas Sowell, who define the subject as:

"Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses."

, but that sense is more reflective of the limited purposes and scope of the field of Political Economy (which we'll get to below) which preceded 'Economics', and which became focused upon studying and identifying what conditions and circumstances most promote or interfere with individuals' ability to produce value, from the bottom up, and the intended and unintended consequences of political efforts to aid politically useful aspects of that process, from the top down.

The wiki meaning, OTOH, embodies the top-down 'systems view', in which the unstated presumptive ends of 'Economics' institutional purpose, is, as expressed here as 'Applied Economics' from Investopedia, beginning somewhat vaguely as:

"Applied economics is the application of economic theory to determine the likely outcomes associated with various possible courses of action in the real world...."

, and more revealingly in its conclusion, that:

"...As a result, applied economics can inform a "to-do" list identifying steps that can be taken to increase the probability of positive outcomes in real-world events."

Things xTwitter'rs tell me:
"..."You aren't adressing the fundamental tension between individual rights & public welfare because you're being ideological. I don't know who is informing your economic theory but it is flawed..."

, which is justified as being for the 'Comon Good'.

Maybe it's just me, but I notice that whatever the "... probability of positive outcomes..." it is that they're betting on, the reality of playing the odds with their 'to-do list', is that at least some of us living here in the real-world are going to suffer the negative 'outcomes' from those actions they take, and those imposing these 'economic policies' will offer no further concerns or assurances to those of us living in 'their economy', than to say: 'may the odds be ever in your favor'.

Just sayin'.

So then, considering that there's a 100% probability that the economic policies implemented by those in positions to impose them upon us, will follow from the advice given to them by some economists - never all economists, of course, because 'economics' is less a science than a means of playing dice in our lives with - on how best to manage 'their' economy. And since it's true that they will implement their policies, despite the fact that neither of those parties - state or economist - have first-hand knowledge of those conditions affecting your day-to-day decisions on how best to 'manage scarce resources', and despite the fact that they are not the ones who will bear the brunt of the scarcity of resources you may encounter as a result of the unintended (?) consequences of those failed policies that they imposed (do you remember when store shelves used to be well stocked?), and despite the fact that they will bear nothing more than token political responsibility for those policies at some point long after the effects of them have been felt by you in your life...the question I'm asking you, is, where is the value in that system, for you?

I'm not singling one of those labels out here - try not to get sucked into defending the positions you associated with the particular label you favor - look at the systemic thinking that all of the labels are a part of. What I'm talking about are the consequences of utilizing government power to implement systems "...to determine the likely outcomes associated with various possible courses of action in the real world..." which will force you to try to manage your own scarce resources by juggling time, bills, profits, and losses, within 'their economy', and then ask yourself: Where is the value in having that system imposed upon you, and me, and everyone we know?

Adam Smith was a pioneer, rough around the edges, got some things wrong, but the essence of the concept he first brought to light for all to see, which is a concept that has unfortunately become alien to us today, is that the 'Natural Liberty' he described did not involve creating or managing 'an economic system' of government policies (he did not propose 'Capitalism' as a system, Marx did that). What he observed instead, was that by eliminating those governmental policies that interfered with the individuals' ability to manage their own scarce resources, would enable them to better earn a living for themselves, and is what ultimately serves to increase 'The Wealth of Nations'.

Whatever else he may have gotten wrong, what he got right was that the society which values 'Natural Liberty', is one that respects what you value, and enables you to be productive for yourself, and for those you engage with, and for your entire community, which encourages people to seek after living lives that are worth living.

A system which looks at what you value, as a means to sustain its 'economy' for the 'common good', is one that is fundamentally wasteful towards what you value, and towards you yourself, because you and what you value, are not what that system values, which is reflected in the lives of those living within that 'their economy'.

What I want to show for you, and me, and everyone we know, is that 'Economic Systems' are inherently wasteful - some moreso than others - but they are all inherently wasteful to all but those favored few which the system itself must cater to, and no, that's not (necessarily) the 'richest 1%', and no, it's not 'the jooos!' either. Who is it the system caters to? For now, let's just call them 'they', and we'll gradually see who 'they' are, as we go along.

Once you begin to consider our 'economic system' from that perspective, you begin to realize that the nature of those 'economic policies' that 'they' are managing 'their economy' with (no matter which 'they' currently makes up 'their'), have the very real potential to become as 100% relevant to your life right here & now, as those living in our Founders' generation felt the exceedingly real and very unintended consequences which followed from Adam Smith's advice to Lord North, that to solve the revenue issues of Britain's mercantile system, he only needed to raise taxes on the colonies.

One of the least bad economists that there has been, Henry Hazlitt, wrote a famous little book entitled "Economics in One Lesson" (which I highly recommend), whose one lesson he stated could be summarized in one sentence, as:

"The whole argument of this book may be summed up in the statement that in studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone."

, and while that is very true... it is not the whole truth, and taking that as a complete answer, diverts us from the much more fundamental questions that should be asked first, and when we fail to ask them, we're subtly led into making every one of the fallacies that his book exposes so well, and make no mistake, 'they' encourage it.

Obviously I've poked at quite a bit here involving these labels, positions, and systems, and we'll dig into every bit of it, but before doing so, let's first look at one of the better efforts that people recently began to identify with, 'Classical Liberalism', in order to escape from the existing systems, and why it is that it can't fully succeed in that.

The Questionable Label of 'Libertarian'

The Questionable Label of 'Libertarian'

Part 2 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics
Previewed at CORRESPONDENCE THEORY (updated here)

Now sure, I can see how a couple of my tweets could lead someone to think I sound "Libertarian", as with noting that von Mises & Hayek were correct in what they had to say about many technical aspects of an economy - especially as regards inflation. But as I'd quickly replied to not only deny that I was, but also followed it up by noting that where those two strayed from the narrower technicalities of their economic fields - as with Mises philosophical trainwreck of 'On Human Action' - their ideas become muddled and even harmful to liberty, and that their fellow traveler, Murray Rothbard, was, IMHO, an absolute crank and an overt threat to liberty (what any criticism rests upon is what 'liberty' is defined as, which should involve a lot of questions, which, IMHO, libertarians too often assume, rather than ask, and are usually inadequately answered. We'll touch on those questions down below).

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...You advocate for a limited government that refrains, entirely, from intervening in the economy. The state is primarily concerned with "protecting individual rights", limited to ensuring personal and property security etc. This aligns with libertarianism..."

At that point, if they were looking to identify what I was thinking, rather than trying to contain it, you'd think they might question the appropriateness of their labels, but nope.

Their intentions became doubly questionable for anyone who looks just a bit further into the reasons for my positions - which my xTweeter's claimed to have done - which will reveal numerous passages from posts that I've blogged over the last 15 years (such as this series of posts), to the effect that:

• the futility of treating liberty as utility,
• that treating 'choice' as a principled decision is juvenile,
• that voting libertarian in a general election is generally unprincipled,
• that Intellectual Property is the root of all Property and Copyright Law strengthens individual rights and property rights and results in a boon to inventor and society alike (in principle, if not always in practice),

Those are just some of many problems I have with 'Libertarianism', and trying to label me as a Libertarian is not only something that just won't stick, but any libertarian who bothered looking past their label's positions, and into the reasons for them that've led me to not trust our Liberty with 'Libertarians', would leave most of them looking my way and saying 'Nope, he's not with us!'.

It doesn't take many questions to find that the answers given are too shallow to support what they claim to explain. Take the aggressively casual truism that libertarian's state as an unquestionably self-evident presumption, that 'taxation is theft!' (what's your reaction to that statement? Hold that thought), and if you do question it, you're typically labeled as a statist. And as that sounds a lot like an answer that's intended to kill off our questions... let's ask a few:

• Q: What is Theft? A: Taking what you have no permission or right to.
• Q: What is Taxation? A: The usual means of funding govt.
• Q: What defines theft, protects against it, and provides the means of punishing those who steal? A: Govt is the public's means of defining the laws that apply to all, the means of enforcing and adjudicating them, as well as the means of defending the nation's borders, etc.,

And so given the very real values that good government (with 'good' being a rare and essential qualifier) provides - without which a Free Market could not exist - it would seem that there's at least a case to be made against the statement that taxation as such, is theft. And isn't there a question about what label best fits those who'd seek to partake of the benefits that good govt enables, while evading or refusing to fund the means of sustaining them?

I'm not arguing for either an answer or against 'Libertarianism' here, but only to point out that there are questions that should be considered before asserting that the 'science is settled!' on what has been labeled as the answer.

Yes, there are unjust forms of taxation (income tax comes to mind, property tax too), and yes you could easily have a govt staffed with thieves - but that problem has more to do with the form of govt, the people who formed it, and those they staffed it with, than with the means of funding what it cannot exist without. Taxes aren't the problem, what they're used for, is. Taxation is a means (what other means there may or may not be, is a question worth pursuing) to an end, but it's the nature of that end, that warrants more of your attention, than does the standard means of getting there.

Those questions, and what becomes understood through pursuing them, is what will be developed as we go in this post, but what I want to point out at this point, is that whether muttered in stompy-footed exasperation, or stated as an actual position, the least important aspect of the libertarian truism that 'taxation is theft!', is whether or not the statement itself is true or false. Not only does focusing on such positions minimize the very real evil that is likely to have prompted the sentiment in the first place, but by diverting our attention from the greater issues facing us, such answers effectively abort a number of questions that libertarians, and other political and economic labels and labelers, are exceedingly uncomfortable with raising.

I think that's worth noticing.

Almost the last person of consequence to take notice and identify what those greater issues facing us are, was Calvin Coolidge, who did so up through the early 1920s. By beginning from the perspective of what the purpose of Government is - to preserve and defend the liberty of its people - he wasn't diverted by the less consequential aspects of how government obtains its funding, and so was focused instead upon what government was doing with its citizen's money, and why. And with that perspective in mind, it follows that the only actions that government can legitimately use its citizens tax dollars for, is to serve its central purpose, and that any other actions it takes, would necessarily be working against that purpose, and its citizens.

What that perspective also readily reveals, is that when the citizenry feel that taxation has become a burden to them, it's most likely because their government has betrayed its purpose by doing what it should not do, which means that, as Coolidge clarified in his speech back in 1924, your government is transforming itself into an instrument of tyranny:

"...A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude. One of the first signs of the breaking down of free government is a disregard by the taxing power of the right of the people to their own property. It makes little difference whether such a condition is brought about through the will of a dictator, through the power of a military force, or through the pressure of an organized minority. The result is the same. Unless the people can enjoy that reasonable security in the possession of their property, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, against unreasonable taxation, freedom is at an end. The common man is restrained and hampered in his ability to secure food and clothing and shelter. His wages are decreased; his hours of labor are lengthened...."

, which is a far more consequential issue than theft.

Now you tell me, when I asked you to check your reaction to the 'taxation is theft!' statement above, was that the kind of issue that entered your mind... or was your attention focused on the lesser issue of theft?

See what I mean?

There are similar issues with most other political/economic labels as well, such as the other Big Two Political labels, Liberal and Conservative, beginning with the labels themselves:

• If what was actually meant by 'Liberal' still meant those who value individual rights/property rights, the Rule of Law, and upholding liberty for the individual within society, I'd label myself as that myself. But as those are no longer thought of or practiced as being anything fundamental to the positions that a modern 'Liberal' holds (advocating for 'hate speech' laws as our current leftists do, torpedo's that notion), their label doesn't even begin to identify with what I understand my positions to be. At. All. SoOooo... nope there as well.


• Similarly with 'Conservative' - while I very much value conserving those principles that the West in general, and America in particular, are founded upon, as the 'Conservative' label today embraces other positions that are antithetical to those foundational principles (*saving* Social Security, *reforming* education, *improving* the economy), leaves me as a big nope on that label too.

Yes, politics often requires us to agree on positions while differing on each other's reasons for them. Fact. But behaving as if those various positions are in meaningful agreement, is the practice of tossing a Ptolemaic epicycle onto the discussion, which inevitably serves to produce a slew of question killing answers.

Whether or not anyone agrees with my thinking is not the issue here, the point is to notice that when a person's thinking does not agree with the labels being applied to them - we should ask ourselves why those labels are being applied. And if the labeler shifts into affixing another label, based upon another position that's been taken, while pointedly looking no further into the reasons given for those positions... that's a case of using an 'answer' to abort your questions. And that problem goes far deeper than any particular label itself, and reveals much about us that most people today would rather leave unexamined.

Although I picked on Libertarians here, each of our popular political & economic labels today have their own easy and often trite answers that are on a par with 'taxation is theft', all of which serve to abort the far more important questions that we should all be asking, asking often, and pursuing deeply - which is what we'll be getting into in this post.

On the bright side, if you can manage to not let their answers kill your questions, their misapplied labels will fall away of their own dead weight. The most effective way to get to that point, the Western way of getting to that point, is by reviving the underlying questions that the labeler's easy answers most want to kill:

• What is meant by the label (Metaphysics)?
• How well does it apply (an epistemology of Causality and Logic)?
• Is it appropriate (Ethics)?

, and turn them back on the label, the labeler, and the systemic thinking that both serve.

Labeling - applying answers to abort your questions

Part 1 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics
Previewed at CORRESPONDENCE THEORY

Labeling - applying answers to abort your questions
Earlier in the year I began re-engaging on xTwitter again, and it quickly brought back to mind a couple of the frustrations I had with xTwitter from the start. Of course a big frustration for me being a blogger in the xTwitterverse, is limiting my comments and replies to 264 characters, or even a thread, or two, or three of them. I initially had some sympathy for those I was commenting back & forth with - honest, anonymous, and troll - who were trying to find a label to fit what I was saying, into a political & economic framework they'd recognize (I've had the same problem for decades). But then it became apparent that the issue had less to do with my squeezing an accurate description into a limited number of characters, than with something more fundamental to the economic positions that most people see their world through.

Thankfully my own labeling issue was recently resolved with the help of an online friend (read on and you'll see how), but my problem had always been with finding a label that adequately accommodated the essentials of the philosophy that underlies our political and judicial systems, which are what an economy is able to develop from, without getting entangled in positions operating just under the surface, that are ultimately incompatible with those essentials (Hi GOP!).

But their problem, is only with who or what can take the shiny surface objects that command their attention (GDP, Inflation, Interest Rates... etc.,), and juggle them as needed to make their economic numbers add up. In their minds, those are just givens that require no depth or visible means of support to be explained, or consequences to be concerned with - so long as what or who they support can make them 'add up', they're satisfied that the 'common good' is being served.

Part of what makes this situation possible, is that the standard labels we have, of Liberal, Leftist, Conservative, Neo-Liberal, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Progressive, have all lost whatever meaning they may once have had, and serve mostly as a convenient means of associating an assortment of hot-button positions, under the handy heading of a recognized label (or two).

The problem isn't just that the standard labels simply don't fit - though they don't - but that because they revolve around positions, rather than the reasons for having them, these labels that people accept, serve less to inform, than to subtract from what others are able to know about each other, and their world. So when someone adopts one of these labels which communicate little more than a list of positions associated with them, it's like taping a 'kick me' note to their back, and then they're surprised as people begin kicking them for wearing that label, even as everyone else, is kicking everyone else, as we all make our way kicking & screaming down the halls of social media.

Many of these label people know extensive details about how the pieces and parts of these economic systems fit together. But what I find with just a little questioning, is that it seems that what it is that they know of their systems, is known to them in the way that a student knows the info they've spent the weekend cramming to pass a test on - they know the answers to the questions they expect, and neither know nor care about any deeper implications that actions taken on what 'they know' might have - and it's irrelevant to them. If pressed on such concerns, they'll sidestep and reference other positions and labels, which they ultimately expect the artful use of force and power will fix, in ways that a thought for those depths they ignore, would have taught them that force and power cannot accomplish.

One tell-tale sign that you're dealing with a label person in a discussion over what they associate with labels like 'Leftist', 'Libertarian', or 'Conservative', is that they become frustrated if the discussion leads to your pointing out how their position involves what they associate with other labels, and then they blame you for being 'inconsistent' and confusing how they expect their labels to fit together. And rather than reconsidering their premises to resolve that inconsistency, they typically resort to appealing to authorities & their lofty ends, to nudge their numbers and answers back into place, by explaining away what cause it is that they presume to be orbiting around which effects.

Sorry, but when you've adopted labels which have the reasons you give for them, orbiting around the positions that leads to them, inconsistency is what you'll experience, and when that's the case, getting your numbers to agree, isn't going to make anything meaningfully add up.

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...Even Adam Smith advocated for taxing rentier privilege..."

What the labelers are involved in doing, though far less innocently, is what the old astronomer Ptolemy found the need to resort to from time to time, which was to fabricate an epicycle (a fudge factor) to toss into his calculations, so as to explain Mars' path through the night sky as it orbited around the earth (or so he thought). Of course you can do that if you'd like, but you should understand that your pointing out how 'accurately' your numbers track your favorite shiny objects (GDP, Inflation, etc.,), isn't something that's going to persuade me to believe that your positions are correct, any more than the 'accuracy' of Ptolemy's numbers could persuade me into believing that Mars, let alone the Sun, are revolving around the earth. It's not me who's being inconsistent here, it's you.

At some point we all reach a point where our prized positions don't actually fit with the reality they attempt to explain - that's a normal part of learning. The real lesson to be learned, is whether you're going to be the kind of person who then pauses to reconsider and ask other questions, or who doubles down on asserting still more answers to kill off any questions that threaten your positions.

Consistency requires acknowledging both that John Locke & Adam Smith were admirable pioneers in the understanding of liberty, and not hesitating to acknowledge that both also had flaws & errors in their theories. John Locke expressed truly revolutionary ideas on individual rights in a polity, and yet his sometimes nominalist notions of human understanding and education, helped set the stage for disastrous 'advances' in skepticism and idealism. Adam Smith was a true pioneer in political economy (he didn't use the term 'Economics' as is done today, or 'Capitalism'), and while I very much appreciate his idea of 'Natural Liberty' as being the true 'Wealth of Nations', whose fruits increase as the state refrains from interfering in their people's efforts to earn a living, that shouldn't keep anyone from pointing out what he got wrong, not least of which was his advising Lord North that the best way to fix Britain's finances, would be to impose taxes on the colonies (Whoops!).

When they turn their labelmaker on you, the question you should ask is do you really want to engage in a manner of thinking that gets triggered by daring to notice that it's possible to have the right answers for the wrong reasons, and vice versa? Giving credit where credit is due, and pointing out where it isn't, is what advances our understanding of the world and our place in it; doing so is admirable; chiding & rebuking what has been misidentified, made misleading and/or corrupting to our ability to gain that understanding, is warranted, and failing to do either, fails your discussion, and who and what is being discussed.

The larger issue to be developed in this post - which I'm making into a single extended post, instead of a series of separate posts - is that this narrative habit of putting positions over reasons, and adopting labels in place of actual understanding, isn't simply a flaw, it's the visible feature, of a deliberate strategy, for using an answer to kill off uncomfortable questions.

When it becomes difficult for someone to admit that someone else got something wrong, there's a good chance that they're more involved in contriving new epicycles of their own to throw upon your discussion, and not to increase its accuracy and value, but to further whatever narrative it is that they've associated with that particular label. Worse still, failing to pay equal attention to both the good and bad deeds of notable figures, too easily leads us into the fallacies of arguing either from authority, or ad hominem, or both, and leads us progressively away from an objectively valuable understanding of the issues at hand.

Difficult questions get you further than easy answers
Seeking after easy answers, rather than giving due consideration to difficult questions, is a strategy that's has been made into a habit of thinking (for instance, by such means as training students for 12+ years to anxiously scan textbooks & worksheets for answers to be memorized for getting 'good grades'), which routinely results in our reducing what meaning another person's comment might have, to a static, inert, material 'answer' that, just as an epicycle, is sure to suppress worthwhile questions, and raise distracting reactions that help divert our conversations into the thoughtless flowcharted paths of ideological thinking (AKA: 'Critical Thinking', but that'll have to wait for my next series of posts).

What I hope to do here, is help people to kick the habit of looking no further than the labels that've been assigned to issues or persons - or you - which I think is best begun by peeling up the edges of those positions they favor, with a few well placed questions. Of course, as doing so begins revealing those reasons that underlie the positions they're promoting, that's when the 'people of the label' begin cranking up their label-makers, as did my x-Twitterer friends, as they began verbally taping their 'not humble', 'passive aggressive', 'ignorant', 'arrogant', labels to my back. The labels themselves aren't the issue - they tend to fall off fairly quickly - it's the habit of labeling itself, whether in accepting or assigning them, which encourages a pattern of thinking that reflects something other than reality, it misleads people into ideas that jeopardize themselves and the world we inhabit together, which is a habit that's worth breaking.

It's important to see that having answers without questioning your way to them, is useless.

It takes a few well-placed questions - the kinds that a zinger of a label is meant to kill - to get someone to look further than the ready answers they have at hand. Calling me arrogant back when I definitely was arrogant, isn't what got me to recognize that I was arrogant (and oh, yes indeedy I was). What worked on me, was when the questions a friend asked me about the statements of knowledgeable authorities that I'd been repeating & defending as if they were unquestionably true, led me to recognize that... they just weren't so. And worse for those labels that I'd taken pride in wearing, once I began following those questions that he'd raised, it didn't take long to realize that those authorities I was turning to next, for help in defending the first ones with, weren't any better.

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...You're not humble- based on a previous conversation my understanding of the nature of reality exceeds your own....",
"... You describe your opinion as humble and display passive-aggressive behaviour...."

That unpleasant experience of discovering that it was possible that 'what I know just isn't so', was acutely embarrassing, and yes humbling too. But discovering that an uncomfortably well-placed question can lead you into gaining a better understanding of what is real and true - and what isn't - which no amount of memorizing the most authoritative 'answers' ever could, was incredibly valuable to me, and is what led me, decades ago now, to become a 'Blogodidact'. That experience prodded me to go back to Homer and begin reading my way forward in time through the original sources myself, pointedly questioning (not doubting, mind you, questioning) what had been said and done by those who had actually said and done it, and then asking the same questions of my own conclusions and reasons for thinking them, so that 'I' wouldn't again become the biggest barrier to my gaining a better understanding of what is real and true.

I don't claim that experience made me humble, but it absolutely seared an unpleasant awareness into me of the dangers of arrogantly assuming that any position of mine is unquestionable - and that answers that go unquestioned are more likely to be meaningless, than meaningful - and since that unpleasant moment I've welcomed any questions that I may not have considered - that, IMHO, is 'The Way'.

Granted, when I state 'In My Humble Opinion' (IMHO), I'm keenly aware that it's not exactly a sign of humility to offer someone a conflicting assessment of what they think is real & true. But it is a continuation of that process of actively questioning answers - theirs and mine - which is what I committed myself to way back when, in hopes of being shown a perspective I hadn't considered a matter from, and raising questions I might not have thought to ask. That's gold.

That's also why I don't enter into 'comment battles' with either label guns blazing, or by being either passive aggressive (or aggressively passive), but by asking questions. It's only after the other person demonstrates that they're being deliberately obtuse, evasive, and/or deceptive in their answers, that my slow boil (mistake that for passivity if you like) will give way to whatever cheerfully aggressive barbs or dismissals seems to me to be warranted within the context of the discussion [see the message above my blog's comment box]. I don't do so because I believe I have the 'right answer!', but because they've shown me that their answers have little or no connection with the questions that we should both be asking.

Since for the labeler, the point of 'the label' is to be 'an answer that kills the question' in you, when you realize that you're being given an answer that you're not meant to understand, you need to remember to ask those questions that lead to understanding:

1. What is it (Metaphysics),
2. How do you know it (an epistemology of Causality and Logic),
3. Is it appropriate (Ethics)

, which are the very things that such 'answers' are typically asserted to distract you from considering.

What I hope you'll come to see from peeling back these labels, is that they serve more to obscure, than to clarify your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The issues we'll find with such labels, both the narrow personal ones my xTweeting friends were taping to my back, and with the larger and 'more inclusive' labels such as 'neo-liberal' and 'libertarian' (egads!), is not just that they don't apply to me, but that the reasoning for them are so wide of the mark, that they pass beyond honest ignorance, and into the contrived pretenses & pretexts for positions which no legitimate reasoning can support.

Once you see that, I think you'll agree that the political and economic labeling process not only shouldn't be applied to you, me, or anyone else, but that its real purpose has less to do with simply winning arguments, than with capturing minds on both sides of the supposed argument, and that's something that's worth seeing and being able to recognize.