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Oct. 27th, 2005 12:40 pmThe Cato Institute's Doug Bandow suggests that the free market, and not democracy, is the true road to peace.
And if i believed it was possible to actually have a free market, i might agree.
Ivan Eland suggests that the key to peace is not democracy but liberty, which he doesn't define in this essay, but which we can presumably take to mean the absense of authoritarian domination.
Okay, i'll agree with that. A truly libertarian society would be relatively peaceful, because it wouldn't have the means or inclination to build an imperial war machine.
However, a truly libertarian society is not sustainable, for the same reasons that a truly free market is not sustainable -- because it has no defense against the welling-up of oligarchical collectivism. Without anything to stop it from happening, there will inevitably rise up an aristocratic class who work in lock-step to secure their privilege, following the ages-familiar pattern of exploitation.
Freedom, it would seem, requires cooperation so that it can be defended. On many levels, we find that constraints can allow for greater freedom in new degrees than you'd have without the constraint. In political science this observation can be traced back at least to Hobbes.
Hobbes was one of the primary influences on those who founded the American government. Their solution to the problem of aristocratic exploitation was to make protecting the free market and personal liberty a duty of a democratic government. The theory goes, a government whose authority is granted freely by the people (rather than taken by an elite and enforced by a monopoly on violence) and who governs for the benefit of the people, can fairly and justly protect personal and market liberty from the grasp of tyrants.
However, the democratic republic has turned out to have several weaknesses. The success of this system counts on its citizens to be rational and reasonably well-informed. Those who in previous eras formed an aristocratic cabal and took privilege by wealth and force now do so by employing spin doctors to sway public opinion in their favor (even when it is not in the public's best interest), securing jobs for cronies on regulatory boards and courtrooms, and undermining the impartial news media.
A similar problem has befallen attempts at socialism and communism. Centralization of public oversight creates too much temptation and opportunity for those who figure out how to undermine it.
In general, there is a tendency for social institutions created as solutions for one generation to become problems for the next generation. I'm not sure whether it is inevitable, but i lean towards it being a strong likelihood.
In the absense of people taking collective and personal responsibility for civic invovlement, there is no foolproof system. You have to have things like protection of free speech, but even with that protection, there is no safety against tyranny if people are apathetic or are not paying attention. Thomas Jefferson recognized this when he wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be." A capitalist democratic republic or socialist state might work if its citizens remain engaged, informed, open and honest, and compassionate. To ensure freedom, culture that promotes character and involvement is a necessary counterpart along with a fair political system.
And if i believed it was possible to actually have a free market, i might agree.
Ivan Eland suggests that the key to peace is not democracy but liberty, which he doesn't define in this essay, but which we can presumably take to mean the absense of authoritarian domination.
Okay, i'll agree with that. A truly libertarian society would be relatively peaceful, because it wouldn't have the means or inclination to build an imperial war machine.
However, a truly libertarian society is not sustainable, for the same reasons that a truly free market is not sustainable -- because it has no defense against the welling-up of oligarchical collectivism. Without anything to stop it from happening, there will inevitably rise up an aristocratic class who work in lock-step to secure their privilege, following the ages-familiar pattern of exploitation.
Freedom, it would seem, requires cooperation so that it can be defended. On many levels, we find that constraints can allow for greater freedom in new degrees than you'd have without the constraint. In political science this observation can be traced back at least to Hobbes.
Hobbes was one of the primary influences on those who founded the American government. Their solution to the problem of aristocratic exploitation was to make protecting the free market and personal liberty a duty of a democratic government. The theory goes, a government whose authority is granted freely by the people (rather than taken by an elite and enforced by a monopoly on violence) and who governs for the benefit of the people, can fairly and justly protect personal and market liberty from the grasp of tyrants.
However, the democratic republic has turned out to have several weaknesses. The success of this system counts on its citizens to be rational and reasonably well-informed. Those who in previous eras formed an aristocratic cabal and took privilege by wealth and force now do so by employing spin doctors to sway public opinion in their favor (even when it is not in the public's best interest), securing jobs for cronies on regulatory boards and courtrooms, and undermining the impartial news media.
A similar problem has befallen attempts at socialism and communism. Centralization of public oversight creates too much temptation and opportunity for those who figure out how to undermine it.
In general, there is a tendency for social institutions created as solutions for one generation to become problems for the next generation. I'm not sure whether it is inevitable, but i lean towards it being a strong likelihood.
In the absense of people taking collective and personal responsibility for civic invovlement, there is no foolproof system. You have to have things like protection of free speech, but even with that protection, there is no safety against tyranny if people are apathetic or are not paying attention. Thomas Jefferson recognized this when he wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be." A capitalist democratic republic or socialist state might work if its citizens remain engaged, informed, open and honest, and compassionate. To ensure freedom, culture that promotes character and involvement is a necessary counterpart along with a fair political system.
