Displaying posts with tag Interventionism.Reset Filter

Oct 08, 2022 05:54 pm

Public post

The Ethics of Interventionism

The ongoing war in Ukraine has, once again, raised the question of the rights and wrongs of military interventionism.

In discussing this topic, we should start off by noting that, when it comes to conflicts between states – entities which are unethical and unjust by definition – it is difficult to make neat categorisations between aggressor and victim. States are fundamentally aggressive by definition, and so it is difficult to talk about them as if we are discussing the rights and obligations that arise between private individuals and entities. As such, any acts by states can often be judged not in terms of right or wrong but only of what is better or worse for the freedom of the citizens who must suffer from their rule.[1] In fact, the Russia/Ukraine/NATO conflict is an exemplar of this. Moreover, much interventionism that feigns to be defensive tends not to be so – the Iraq war being a prime, recent example.

However, if we ignore this complication by assuming that the assessment of a given situation provides a clear distinction between an aggressor state and a victim state, what can we say about interventionist efforts by third party, non-aggressing countries to either prevent or quash the act of aggression?

To be a libertarian is to believe that the initiation of force against the person or property against another is inherently unjust. This belief proscribes neither the right to self-defence of one’s person and property, nor the right to provide defence services towards someone else who is the victim of aggression. There are two key elaborations to make to this principle.

First, libertarianism itself does not state that someone must defend himself or rush to the defence of other people. One may, by another standard, incur a moral obligation to do so, but such an obligation cannot be enforced by the law, as this would itself breach the non-aggression principle. Indeed, one is perfectly entitled to live as a pacifist, eschewing any kind of force whatsoever. It is quite consistent, therefore, to state that someone should choose to aid a victim of aggressive violence but that he should not be forced to do so.

Second, if you do decide to respond to an act of aggression then you do not have the right to inflict aggressive violence on an innocent party in the process, either by forcing them to assist you or by making them the victims of so-called “collateral damage”. One would not, for instance, launch a nuclear warhead, slaughtering the population of an entire landmass, in order to neutralise a single murderer.[2]

Knowing this, we can summarise the basic position libertarian position on these matters as follows:

No person has the right to initiate violence (aggression) against any other person in any circumstance;
Where a person is the victim of aggression he has the right to defend himself;
Where a person attempts to defend himself he has no right to initiate violence against innocents during the act of doing so, including their enforced participation and causing “collateral damage”;
Where a person attempts to defend himself, other people have no right to initiate violence against him in order to stop him from doing so;
A person has the right to solicit, contract with or otherwise co-operate with third parties in furnishing his defensive capabilities;
Third parties, likewise, have the right to provide their funds and resources towards defence, either through a negotiated contract (security services) or charitably;
Third parties providing defence services have no right to initiate force against innocents during the act of doing so; this includes forcing others to contribute towards the same, and causing “collateral damage”;
Where a third party provides defence services it not may be forcibly stopped from doing so by others;
Whether the injured party or a third party should or should not act to defend the former against an act of aggression, or whether such an act of defence is a “good” or “bad” thing by some other moral standard may be debated; however, the conclusion may not be enforced violently on any party that is not committing an act of aggression.

When it comes to the mainstream debate of the interventionist efforts of our governments, the question tends to be presented as all or nothing: should we all – via our government – intervene, or should we all not intervene. But, in light of the summary we have just outlined, there is a distinct problem with each of these holistic responses from a libertarian perspective.

Those who answer in the affirmative have rightly recognised that defensive force may be used in such a situation because the non-aggression principle has been violated by another party. However, they are overlooking the fact that the funds to be directed towards military intervention are extracted forcibly by the state through tax revenue – in other words, people are being forced to fund the interventionist venture. They are mistaking the right to intervene on the one hand with a violently enforceable obligation to do so on the other. But this violently enforceable obligation is itself a breach of the non-aggression principle, and is, therefore, anti-libertarian and unjust. These advocates of interventionism are most welcome to criticise other people from the point of view of moral standards that are separate from, but compatible with, libertarianism. Indeed they are most welcome to contribute their own legitimately earned wealth (if they have any) and that of anyone whom they can persuade to join them voluntarily in the venture towards defending the victim country. But what they do not have is the right to force other people to the same, either by extracting funding through taxes or by enforcing conscription.

Those, however, who answer in the negative – that we should not intervene – may recognise rightly that we cannot force people to participate in intervention. But now they seem to be making the opposite mistake of preventing people who want to intervene from doing so – especially if their justification for that denial is that there are “better” things that “our” taxes should be spent on. As we just mentioned, if someone is genuinely outraged by the infliction of violence (believing that his assistance against such heinous acts is a worthwhile devotion of his own funds) then he is quite within his rights to contribute those funds accordingly. In fact, he may even decide to join a voluntary defence force, providing personal support for the victims. To stop someone from doing this if that is what they want is as much an affront to the non-aggression principle as forcing their assistance if they are reluctant. Once again, we must emphasise that it may not be a good thing, by some standard exogenous to libertarianism (e.g. pacifist morality), for a person to engage in intervention; but that does not mean that this person may be violently prevented from doing so.

All of this points towards one conclusion: that, given the unjust nature of the way in which the state could carry out its interventionist efforts, states should never intervene overseas – even for ostensibly just and noble causes. Whether such causes should be either supported or ignored is a matter for each, private citizen.

Such an outcome is bolstered by the fact that “war is the health of the state”. Never matter the reason why it is carried out, war hands to the state on a silver platter every excuse it needs to swell its power through an almost limitless list of outlets: forced redirection of the economy towards the war effort overseen by vast bureaucracies (which often form the model for subsequent peacetime, bureaucratic management); censorship of the press and of speech; endless propaganda; the possibility of conscription; rationing of basic goods. All of this is before we even mention the direct effects of death and destruction that war brings in her wake. The avoidance of war is, therefore, one of the highest priorities for anyone keen on preserving the liberty of the individual.

Thus, from both a theoretical and a strategic perspective, libertarians can find little, if any, justification for the interventionist efforts of states, and they should be opposed in each circumstance.

---
Notes

[1] See here for a detailed explanation of these difficulties.

[2] The only exception to this rule is if the actions of an aggressor have made it reasonably impossible for the victim to take defensive actions without harming the third party. For instance, if P steals Q’s car to run over R, R is entitled to shoot at Q’s car in order to stop P. In this case, P, not R, would be responsible for compensating Q for the damage to the car. For a more detailed explanation of this, see part of this essay.

War Interventionism Military Invasion Armedconflict Nationaldefence

Comments (0) loading...

Like(0)

Life and Liberty

Sep 13, 2022 05:40 pm

Public post

Free Choices or Forced Choices?

The “nanny state” is one of the most irritating traits of statism affecting people’s daily lives directly, and one that has been growing ever more matronly over the past generation or so. In fact, if you think it is bad today, The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (which, apparently, presents a "united front" of the medical profession) was complaining nearly ten years ago that doctors were seeing the consequences of unhealthy diets. Needless to say they recommended whole raft of interventionist measures to curb this apparent problem:

A ban on advertising foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt before 9pm;
Further taxes on sugary drinks to increase prices by at least 20%;
A reduction in fast food outlets near schools and leisure centres;
A £100m budget for interventions such as weight-loss surgery;
No junk food or vending machines in hospitals, where all food must meet the same nutritional standards as in schools;
Food labels to include calorie information for children.

For the purposes of this article, we will ignore the question whether these medical mandarins have, in fact, managed to identify the “right” choices for people to make with their own bodies. (As we saw with COVID-19, our current, materialist society always seems to hold bodily preservation as the highest possible value; however, it is by no means obvious that a statistically longer life devoid of innocent pleasures should be preferable to a shorter life that is more enjoyable.)

Instead, the problem we wish to address here is rather more grievous: that whenever members of the public make supposedly “bad” choices there is the ever present assumption that, as these choices are made with apparent freedom, that it is the free market that has “failed” in preventing the emergence of the "undesired" outcomes. What is never discussed, or even raised, is the possibility that people's choices are influenced by existing state interferences into that market. If that should be the case, it is impossible to say that the same choices would be made in a genuine free market. Worse still, if the state itself is the ultimate cause of the undesirable choices, then any call for more state intervention is likely to either exacerbate the original problem or lead to the emergence of entirely new problems in the future.

The present author has examined in detail why socialising healthcare will lead to greater ill health in the long run. There is little need to repeat all of this here except to say that people tend to prefer doing that which comes at a lower cost, all else being equal. Lowering or removing the cost of becoming ill will tend to lead to more people leading lifestyles that will result in poorer health. As such, it is state control of healthcare that is causing people to do things that are likely to make them sicker. But the same ignorance of the state’s role can be seen in many other cases where the proximate cause of a problem is people's apparent free choices. Let's examine some of the most popular.

"There is not enough food in the world! If the free market has brought such widespread hunger then states much intervene!"

The allegation here is usually some variant of the rich world refusing to “share” its wealth with the poor world. Leaving aside the fallacious, zero-sum belief that if one person has wealth another person must have gone without it, just why is it that we have widespread poverty in the age of the smartphone?

The plight of poor nations has nothing to do with the absurd suggestion that they cannot “understand” technological development, nor, in most cases, are they unable access to raw materials. Rather it stems from the lack of capital investment per head of the population compared to the developed world. Richer nations have more machines and better tools that can churn out more and better goods per person than can be done in poor nations. So in one sense, it is true that investors and capitalists have not invested in poor countries. But the precise reason why the West has benefited from the wealth produced by capitalist investment is that it has long cherished institutions that have allowed the free market to flourish, in particular, strong legal rights to private property and relative political freedom. These are precisely the conditions that tend to be lacking in poorer nations, conditions that cause entrepreneurs to seek other havens for their investments.

To make matters worse, poorer nations began to model themselves on their Western counterparts just at the point that the latter started to turn away from a social order based on private property towards interventionism, welfare and redistribution. The result is that the wrong lessons are being implemented in poorer nations as they develop policies and institutions that can only retard rather than enable economic progress. This is in addition to direct interventionism, for their own benefit, of large and powerful nations in the affairs of foreign nations, stifling the domestic prosperity of the latter.

The persistence of poverty and hunger is therefore a failure of the state, not of the free market.

"The forests are disappearing! The free market, seeking ever greater profits, is decimating our natural resources! The government must stop it"

Let's go even farther than this complaint by adding to the list of depleting resources fish stocks, elephants, whales, and any other of the countless number of "endangered" species that you like. Yes, there is a tremendous problem, and yes, looking at the issue at face value, it appears that capitalists are running down these resources.

However, if the free market is responsible for having decimated all of these things, then it raises a pretty obvious question: why has the “greed” of capitalists not created similar shortages of other resources? The dairy industry, for instance, exploits cows for profit but we never hear of a shortage of cows, nor do we seem to be in short supply of chickens to supply us with eggs for our breakfast plates. So why is it only some resources that seem to be in danger of depletion? What is the difference between the endangered groups and all the others?

The reason is that people are not permitted to own the capital value of forests, parts of the sea, elephants, tigers, etc. If an entity is able to own the capital value of a resource then exploiting it for present revenue has to be balanced against the loss of capital value in doing so. For instance, extracting copper from a copper mine will reduce the amount of copper left available to be extracted in the future, thus reducing the mine’s capital value. The firm operating the copper mine has to ensure that this reduction is offset by sufficient revenue from selling the mined copper, otherwise it will make a loss. If the copper does not sell for a high enough price, then it indicates that too much copper has been extracted. Thus, a signal is sent to the owner of the mine to reduce its mining operations, conserving more for the future.

If, however, an entity does not own the capital value of a resource then its only concern will be for the present revenue it can extract; there is no cost incurred as a result of exploiting resources to their fullest now. In fact the only cost is that someone else might get to the resource before you can, taking it for himself. Thus, in the absence of any balancing mechanism, resources are depleted far quicker than they otherwise would be. So instead of instituting a myriad of state restrictions and regulations in order to "cure" alleged free market greed, all that is needed is to extend full private property rights to endangered resources, and they will be conserved in line with the present and future preferences of consumers. Once again the problem is not too much free choice but the fact that people have been prevented by the strong arm of the state from having a reason to make the "right" choices.

Finally, let us conclude with the most pertinent of all alleged market failures, the phenomenon of "boom and bust":

"Free market greed has caused capitalists to invest in wasteful projects! Clearly they need the Government to give them speed limits!"

Once again, looking at only the proximate causes of boom and bust will reveal that entrepreneurs invested too heavily in a particular sector, inflated a bubble which, once it pops, leads to widespread misery and unemployment. In the 2007-8 financial crisis – the effects of which have still not been resolved – a summary of the charges is that greedy bankers lent money to people who could not afford to pay it back. End of story. But what is not told by peddlers of this narrative such as Paul Krugman is the moral hazard created by the so-called "Greenspan put" which had the effect of financial institutions expecting their profits to be retained while their losses to be borne by an influx of monetary liquidity during any risk of collapsing asset prices (i.e. paid for by inflation). If one can keep one's profits and socialise one's losses is it any wonder that people took wild risks? If there is only ever an upside then wouldn't you have done the same? This is before we consider the fact that credit expansion is the cause of the business cycle in the first place; by falsifying societal time preference rates, the result is a plethora of unsustainable investment projects that must be rendered wasteful as soon as the inflation stops.

Therefore, next time you read that the "free market" has caused this problem, that problem, or some other societal ill, stop and think as to precisely which options the free market participants were presented with. More often than not you will trace the source of a bad decision to some kind of state interference.

Nannystate Welfarestate Interventionism Statism Socialism Poverty

Comments (0) loading...

Like(0)

Life and Liberty

Jun 27, 2022 05:06 pm

Public post

Against Exceptionalism

Fighting the State's Hypocrisy

The Western condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has once again served to highlight the exceptionalist attitude of the West, and of the United States in particular. Whichever standards other countries and governments are held to, the West believes that it is permitted to deviate from, or even obliterate those standards, labelling its own interventionist feats with some other, innocuous term, while utilising a half-baked moral justification in order to promote its acceptability.

For instance, what is, for other countries, an illegal invasion of a sovereign state is, when the West does it, an act of “liberation”. When someone else organises a rebellion against a foreign government it’s a violation of “sovereignty” and of “international law”; but the West only “spreads democracy”. When other states commit horrendous acts of torture or indiscriminate murder they are “war crimes”; for the West, they are the “enhanced interrogation” and “collateral damage” necessary to fulfil a just and noble cause.

One does not have to endorse any of the motives or methods of the Russian state vis-à-vis Ukraine in order to point out this out; indeed, the precise details of this whole affair are outside the scope of this article. However, we might as well note that Russian concern over its Western border region is likely to be far more pressing than any interest that the West has either there or wherever else it has poked its heavily armed nose, such as Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. This serves merely to magnify the West’s unrelenting hypocrisy.

While the attitude of exceptionalism is, no doubt, bolstered by faith in the values which furnished the West with an untold level of prosperity, it is not something that is necessarily restricted to the West, nor is somehow born out of the Western psyche. Rather, the real root of exceptionalism can be found in how the state operates domestically.

If people steal from each other, it is called “theft” and is criminalised; but when the state steals, this is permitted, and is referred to as “taxation”. If a company dominates an industry it is called a “monopoly” and must be broken up; but if the state does it, we can call it “nationalisation” (“for the people” etc. etc.). If a fraudster takes cash from customers to pay returns to previous investors, it is called a pyramid or “Ponzi” scheme, and he is locked up; when the state does precisely the same thing it is called “Social Security”. If the mafia forces you to pay tribute in return for security it is called a “protection racket”; but when the state forces you to contribute to its armies, navies and air forces it is called “national defence”.

In conjunction with all of this, the state necessarily conditions its operatives to believe that they are exempt from the common standards of morality to which all other human beings must adhere. This would be bad enough if such an attitude was restricted to acts taken within an official capacity. But the level of corruption in our state apparatus is now so grave that the private malfeasance of favoured, high profile state operatives is also swept under the carpet.

None of this is different from exceptionalist attitudes on the international scene; such attitudes gain traction when a particular state, or group of states, becomes the de facto most powerful government on Earth. So in just the same way as the state does not have to behave in the same way as its citizens, neither does the most powerful state have to behave like any other state.

In recent decades, that has been the US, although, as the Russian challenge is demonstrating, the era of American global dominance is coming to an end. However, the US is not an historical anomaly in this regard, having been preceded by other wealthy and heavily armed states such as Ancient Rome, and the British Empire. Of course, many beneficiaries of this dominance will be well aware that they are engaging in outright plunder and pillage. But it is not unusual for them to become blinded by the hubristic belief that, as representatives of the pinnacle of “civilisation” in an otherwise barbarous world, their acts are somehow qualitatively different from those of others. St Augustine relates an anecdote of a pirate brought before Alexander the Great. When prompted by the undefeated conqueror to explain his actions, the pirate delivered a bold but truthful reply: that what he, the pirate, was doing, was exactly the same as that which Alexander was doing; the only difference was that Alexander terrorised the seas with a “great fleet” and was styled an “emperor”, while the pirate did so with a "petty ship" and was thus brandished a “robber”.[1]

The conquest, therefore, of the exceptionalism of the most powerful nation can be achieved only by eradicating that exceptionalism at home – in domestic government and domestic policies. All human beings, whether they are “public” or private citizens, must adhere to the same common morality, and must be held to the same moral standards. Better still, eradicate the state completely so that its political caste – together with the divisions it creates between itself and those of us less exalted – will disappear. Only then can we hope for a peaceful world in which all humans are equal before the law – both nationally and internationally.

-
Notes

[1] St Augustine (tr. Rev. Marcus Dods), The City of God, in Phillip Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, Vol. II, WM B Eerdmans Publishing Company (1886), Book IV, Chapter 4, 165.

Exceptionalism War Internationalrelations Interventionism Statism

Comments (0) loading...

Like(0)

Subscription Tiers

Features

Posts

The Ethics of Interventionism

Free Choices or Forced Choices?

Against Exceptionalism

Star Stats

Goals

Other stars

Your Privacy Choices