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33 sats \ 6 replies \ @elvismercury OP 11h \ parent \ on: The Archipelago econ
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It's a fair point to not want to argue about vague prognostications about "them" or what "they" say or believe, whoever "they" are -- I hate when people do that.
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However, I think the "individual is foundational over the group as a unit of concern" belief set is deeply held by many, and wrong enough (and consequential enough in its wrong-ness) to be interesting that it is called out explicitly here.
You are under no obligation to agree with me, obviously.
I think @SimpleStacker articulated a view that I share. The individual is the level where we know decisions are made (if they're made at a group level, we don't have first hand experience of that) and the individual is the level of qualitative experience (again, if that exists at the group level we aren't privy to it).
That makes the individual a meaningful unit of analysis for both economics and ethics. I also think it renders groups meaningful units of concern only to the extent their constituent individuals are affected by things. That extent can be quite significant, though, and I do agree that many libertarians (particularly the new young ones) are prone to overlooking that.
I think his point is fundamentally false, though. We aren't required to fit into a complex supply chain. That's just the most appealing option to almost everyone. Other people certainly do determine our choice sets to an enormous degree. Each person can go off and try to fend for themself in the wild, but they don't because that choice sucks.
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I'm not sure what one should do from a legislation standpoint, but we have evidence of emergent entities comprised of individuals all around us; Apple has transcended the primacy of any of its particular CEOs and is a living organism in its own right, metabolizing resources, acting in its own interests, turning over the earth, excreting wastes. Tim Cook will give way to whoever he gives way to just as individual cells in your blood will give way to others. In a Margaret Thatcher sense, there is no you, there is only the cells that compose you, yet I'm guessing you might object to that characterization.
Each person can go off and try to fend for themself in the wild, but they don't because that choice sucks.
If you're not free to fly, are you really free?
The most practical implication, in my mind, of the ideas in this article is that an inexorable force pulls toward the collective that is not captured by the atomic view; and so the expectation that some folks persistently cling to -- that one day, if only we are virtuous enough, we will organize ourselves into small autonomous clusters, and the state will evaporate -- is unsound, not just in that it hasn't happened yet, but that our nature rebels against the idea.
And if that's true, the question on my mind is: which exact ideological baggage must one buy into to believe that bitcoin will endure?
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The most practical implication, in my mind, of the ideas in this article is that an inexorable force pulls toward the collective that is not captured by the atomic view; and so the expectation that some folks persistently cling to -- that one day, if only we are virtuous enough, we will organize ourselves into small autonomous clusters, and the state will evaporate -- is unsound, not just in that it hasn't happened yet, but that our nature rebels against the idea.
I think this is also where I depart from the libertarians. I don't think we'll ever eliminate the state, and if we do I don't think it'll be a desirable situation.
As for what ideological baggage one must buy into to believe Bitcoin, I don't even think libertarianism needs to be part of it. If you simply believe that fiat money is more easily corruptible than Bitcoin, and leads to undesirable phenomena like the Cantillon Effect, then that should be enough to understand and support Bitcoin.
The reason bitcoin is so associated with libertarianism is simply that libertarians are predisposed to distrust anything associated with the state, including fiat currencies. But libertarianism is by no means a precondition to supporting bitcoin
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You certainly don't have to believe we'll ever eliminate the state to be a libertarian. You don't even have to believe it would be desirable; some people hold the "necessary evil" view after all.
Libertarianism basically just says that the same moral principles we apply to everyone else also apply to the state. If it is not morally legitimate for you to take your neighbors stuff, then it's not legitimate for some group to do so either. That doesn't mean you can't think the end result of stealing from your neighbor would be more desirable.
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I think I can get on board with most of that. Would libertarians object to all forms of taxation, though? Would it matter whether the taxation is done by a democratically elected government or a dictator, or a divine right king?
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the expectation that some folks persistently cling to -- that one day, if only we are virtuous enough, we will organize ourselves into small autonomous clusters, and the state will evaporate
In Human Action, Mises makes the point that we study individuals because trying to understand economics from the primitives of physical forces is intractable. Presumably, it could be done with sufficient knowledge, but we lack that. In the same way, we can try to model organizations like Apple as their own entity with goals and such. Maybe that works well and maybe it doesn't. It's a practical question. We have no way of knowing if Apple really makes decisions or has experiences, but we each know our own experiences and extrapolate onto others like us the same quality.
I would push back on the equivocation of collective and state, but I more or less agree that the people you're describing are misguided. We're social animals and the state keeps emerging. That doesn't mean it's good, but it might mean we're stuck with it.
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