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nicklloydnow · 7 months ago

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“The Axioms of Agorism

A free society is the goal of many people, not all of them agorists or even libertarians. Agorists can see nothing but a free market in a free society; after all, who or what will prevent it?

The First Axiom of Agorism: the closest approach to a free society is an uncorrupted agora (open marketplace).

An axiom is a principle or premise of a way of thinking. It is arrived at by insight, induction, and observation of nature. Theorems are arrived at deductively from axioms. A "zeroeth" axiom of agorism might be "there are no contradictions in reality and theory must be consistent with reality." Commonly known axioms in philosophy are "existence exists" and "A is A." Well-known mathematical axioms are "things equal to another thing are equal to each other" and "a statement leading to a contradiction with a theorem or axiom is false."

The first six chapters of this "primer" preceded the actual presentation of agorism to give you, the reader, enough understanding of economics, Counter-Economics, and libertarianism to see from where the insights that produced agorism were derived. They were not chosen arbitrarily but rather as a result of years of bitter experience and, in some cases, furious battles and acts of resistance. The "hard core" agorists had to have something worth dying for, and, far more impor-tant, worth living for.

The Second Axiom of Agorism: the agora self-corrects for small perturbations of corruption.

This axiom leads us to a far more detailed picture of what our nearly free society would look like. It means simply that free-market entities will defend the free market. People have to choose to do it, of course, but the incentive (offering of subjective-value satisfaction) will be present to motivate them to do so and will be sufficient to motivate enough people to do so. Occasional criminals will be discovered, sought, found, apprehended, tried, sentenced, compelled to deliver restitution, and (if possible) deterred from further actions.

The Third Axiom of Agorism: the moral system of any agora is compatible with pure libertarianism.

This axiom means that life and property are safe from all those who act morally in this society. We will describe this in the next section. But let us complete the axioms first.

The Fourth Axiom of Agorism: agora in part is agora in whole; to a workable approximation, the corruption of an agora raises protection costs and risks.

This axiom's use will become blindingly clear when we deal with the path.

Agorism has more theory, but it is derived from these axioms. For the professional logicians tripping across the theory for the first time, I need to add a fifth axiom for completion: agorism qua theory is an open system. This simply means that we may discover and add on other axioms, then check to see how consistent they are with what we already have.” - Samuel Edward Konkin III, ‘An Agorist Primer’ (2008) [p. 76 - 78]

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nicklloydnow · 9 days ago

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“Mises' disciple Murray Rothbard complained that conservatives' adoption of Mises occluded the more radical portions of the economist's thinking: elements that were antistate, pro-peace, pro-immigration, even critical of the Christian tradition. In a 1981 essay in The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Rothbard griped that too many of Mises' right-wing fans "have unwittingly distorted [his views] and made them seem at one with the modern conservative movement in the United States," as though Mises were "a sort of National Review intellectual."

(…)

Yes, some conservative mandarins mistrusted Mises, fretting that his rationalistic, utilitarian focus on economic liberties failed to stress the importance of, as Russell Kirk put it, "supernatural and traditional sanctions." But a Misesian take on the benefits of private property and minimal economic interference was one of the three legs of the American intellectual right from the rise of Buckley's magazine to at least the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency (the other two being Judeo-Christian traditionalism and militant anticommunism). Mises' intellectual dominance was rooted in his masterfully detailed defenses of 19th century classical liberalism and free market economics, and also in his influence on other libertarian intellectual giants, such as Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand.

Among the most damaging changes Trumpism has wrought on conservatism has been the rejection of core elements of Mises' thought—the parts that undermined the idea that a "national interest" should supersede individual choice and freedom in markets.

Mises was an ardent free-trader. President Donald Trump promotes autarky and calls himself "Tariff Man." Mises was a devoted anti-inflationist, a promoter of hard currencies that government could not create and manipulate at will. Though Trump has given lip service to private cryptocurrency as part of his larger antiestablishment coalition, he also demanded in his first term that the Federal Reserve expand the money supply to goose the economy and give him a short-term political benefit. In his 1944 book Omnipotent Government, Mises condemned forceful territorial expansion as one of the causes of Europe's terrible 20th century wars. Since the election, Trump has publicly mulled territorial seizures around the globe. Trump ardently supports a restrictionist immigration policy. Mises believed the free flow of people, goods, and capital were linchpins of the ideal international system. Trump favors industrial policy, in which government planners intervene to assist selected domestic industries. Mises understood that would lower, not raise, overall prosperity.

And when Trump's interventionist policies fail, that will mean more danger—for as Mises pointed out, failed government interventions often lead to still more intervention. Bureaucrats stubbornly continue to try to achieve their desired results through more interventions that also fail, spinning increasingly complex webs of ineffective controls. That dynamic made Mises deny the possibility of a viable "third way" between free markets and socialism. Once you start down the socialist road, he wrote, you tend to go further and further from freedom.

(…)

What free markets did that the socialists didn't understand, Mises explained, was reduce comparisons between incommensurable objects to a common denominator: a price. Without that common denominator, it would be impossible to make rational and efficient decisions about what to produce and in what quantities to meet demonstrable human needs. For instance: What if you possess a warehouse full of steel, but need food to eat, and wish to exchange it in the manner that would benefit you the most, commensurate with your trading partner's desires? In a market economy, prices tell you what everything is worth in relation to everything else. If steel sells for $120 a pound, and apples for $3 a pound, you know a pound of steel is worth 40 times more than a pound of apples.

With private property and people's ability to keep what they earn by buying and selling, market prices are likely as close as possible at any moment to how people actually value things. Why? Because "wrong" prices create entrepreneurial opportunities to raise or lower them until they do reflect people's actual desires. This continuous market process never results in the modern economist's perfect model of an equilibrium where trading becomes irrelevant. Thus, the combination of prices and private property comes as close as any social process could to reflecting true social desires about what should be made and what it should cost.

(…)

Free market prices spread information about everyone's subjective valuations of what they want and what they are willing to pay for it. In doing so, they depend, as Hayek especially emphasized, on individuals' unique personal awareness of local circumstances that no central planner could ever know, except through the very market prices the planners think they can either eliminate or invent. This makes any version of the sort of "pro-American" industrial policy Trump promotes ultimately nothing more than using political force to push privileged groups' interests at the expense of every other American worker or consumer.

After Socialism, Mises wrote Liberalism in the Classical Tradition(1927), a brilliant explanation of his social philosophy. Mises' liberalism is materialistic; "it has nothing else in view than the advancement of [man's] outward, material welfare." It is capitalistic, but it recognizes that a truly liberal capitalist system has as its engine not capitalists' whims but consumers' desires. It is democratic, but only pragmatically so; democracy largely ensures the peaceful turnover of state power. It is utilitarian; Mises advocates economic and personal liberty not from a metaphysical belief in rights but because liberalism delivers the greatest wealth and abundance.

Mises' liberalism requires peace for its fullest flowering: When everyone can benefit from everyone else's ideas and productivity through universal free trade, we are more likely to avoid the demands for colonialism and lebensraum that triggered the 20th century's hideous wars. Mises' liberalism is also a doctrine of maximal tolerance: "Liberalism proclaims tolerance for every religious faith and every metaphysical belief, not out of indifference for these 'higher' things, but from the conviction that the assurance of peace within society must take precedence over everything."

Mises' liberalism is rooted in private property: If property is protected by law, he argued, the other aspects of his liberal vision will likely result. Mises saw his worldview as a continuation of the liberal philosophy of the 19th century, which had been eclipsed in the 20th by bloody statist doctrines such as socialism and nationalism.

Mises' 1933 book Epistemological Problems of Economics explained the connection between economics as he understood it and libertarianism. Before the development of economics, he wrote, "it had been believed that no bounds other than those drawn by the laws of nature circumscribed the path of acting man. It was not known that there is still something more that sets a limit to political power beyond which it cannot go….In the social realm too there is something operative which power and force are unable to alter and to which they must adjust themselves if they hope to achieve success."

Thus, government must remain humble in its goals in the face of economic reality and realize that most attempts to shape the economy through intervention are bound to fail, even by the standards of those who advocated the interventions. For example, those who institute price controls want goods to be abundant and cheap; but such controls inevitably make the goods more scarce and expensive as people refuse to sell at losses or for profits lower than they prefer.

(…)

Meanwhile, in a sign of Mises' low status in American academia, as of 1949 his salary was paid not by the university but mostly by the Volker Fund, the sole libertarian funding foundation in existence at the time. When Mises was seeking an American academic berth in the 1940s, his star was so low that "we felt lucky to find some place that would take him," the Volker Fund's Richard Cornuelle recalled. "It was more than contempt they felt for Mises. They thought he was dangerous. They thought he was pushing a vicious, inhuman position that appealed to capitalists but didn't deserve any encouragement."

As Trump conquers the American right, Mises' ideas are still dangerous to the regnant forces of both major parties, each offering different culturally coded approaches to managing Americans' choices and limiting Americans' liberties. The MAGA movement's many violations of free market principles break with the wisdom of a man the right honored for decades, an economist whose sophisticated, far-ranging understanding of markets and freedom reveal the folly of so much of Trumpism.”

“Trump’s salient characteristic as a political figure is anti-intellectuality. Because Rand saw this mentality as on the rise (she called it the anti-conceptual mentality), she had a lot to say about it, and it’s illuminating how much of it fits Trump.

In Rand’s terms, to be intellectual is to sustain through life the conviction that ideas matter. This means that knowledge, abstract principles, justice and truth are of personal importance to you, embedded in everything you value and informing your every action. “To take ideas seriously,” Rand says, “means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.”

This is a demanding responsibility. To be intellectual requires real independence of judgment and enduring honesty and integrity.

It’s not just that Trump lacks these virtues; in comparison to, say, Jefferson, Washington or Madison, most of today’s politicians do. It’s that Trump projects disdain for these virtues.

(…)

Trump makes no distinction between truth and falsity, between statements backed by evidence and statements unsupported by any evidence. This is why you can’t catch him in a lie. He doesn’t care.

(…)

Closely connected to this disdain for the truth is a complete amoralism. “The normal pattern of self-appraisal,” Rand observes, “requires reference to some abstract value or virtue,” such as “I am good because I am rational” or “I am good because I am honest.” But the entire realm of abstract principles and standards is unknown to an anti-intellectual mentality. The phenomenon of judging himself by such standards, therefore, is alien. Instead, Rand argues, the “implicit pattern of all his estimates is: ‘It’s good because I like it’ — ‘It’s right because I did it’ — ‘It’s true because I want it to be true.’”

(…)

The self-centeredness that an amoralist exhibits, Rand holds, is centered on self-doubt; he therefore exhibits a constant and pathetic need to be loved, to be seen as a big shot and as the greatest ever. Observe Trump’s steady refrain that he’s accomplishing feats no other president has or could, Washington, Madison and Lincoln included. One suspects that the fake Time magazine with him on the cover hanging in Mar-a-Lago was as much to assuage Trump’s anxieties as to impress the gullible and sycophantic among his guests.

The place that loyalty to abstract standards occupies in a moral person’s mind, Rand argues, is typically replaced in an anti-intellectual mentality by “loyalty to the group.” Observe Trump’s special focus on this. Loyalty is desirable — if it has been earned. But Trump demands it up-front. As former FBI Director James Comey and others have remarked, a pledge of loyalty was among the first things Trump asked of them.

The wider phenomenon this demand for loyalty represents is a profound tribalism, a world divided into the loyal and the disloyal, insiders and outsiders, us versus them. To get a flavor, listen to any Trump rally.

Rand argued that in a period of intellectual and cultural bankruptcy, if the anti-intellectual mentality is on the rise, tribalism will be ascending culturally and, politically, a country will drift toward authoritarianism and ultimately dictatorship.

(…)

During the 2007–8 financial crisis, sales of Atlas Shrugged soared, in part because people wondered how Rand could have foreseen America’s economic collapse. Sales should be soaring again — because the book is not primarily about economic collapse, but about cultural and intellectual bankruptcy.

At the novel’s start, we witness a crumbling world, with posturing intellectuals who have long ago abandoned the intellect but who continue to preach irrational, shopworn ideas, which everyone mouths but no one fully believes — or dares challenge. Part of the point of the story is that these pseudo-intellectuals will eventually be replaced by their progeny: people who more openly dispense with the intellect and who are more explicitly boorish, brutish and tribal, i.e., by anti-intellectual mentalities.

(…)

The only way to prevent this kind of political and cultural disintegration, Rand thought, was to challenge the irrationalism, tribalism, determinism and identity politics at the heart of our intellectual life, propagated by the so-called left and right and by too many others as well. We need to realize that whether the appeal is to ethnicity or gender or faith or family or genes as the shaper of one’s soul and whether the demand is to sacrifice the rich to the poor, the poor to the rich, the able to the needy, whites to blacks, blacks to whites, individuals to the nation or sinners to God, all of it is corrupt. We are rational beings, who are capable of choosing a logical course in life and who should be pursing our own individual happiness.

Unless we are ready to radically rethink our culture’s fundamental ideas, with the same intensity of thought our Founding Fathers exerted in rethinking government, our long-term trajectory is set and will play out. But the choice is ours — this is the message of Atlas Shrugged.

Thus I think Rand would have said that a President Trump is a predictable outcome, but not an inevitable one.”

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