Malcolm Ocean's roamblog

the ways in which coercion is a necessary solution (at least at present)

created 2024-08-01 · edited 2024-08-01 · open in Roam

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July 31st, 2024

  • the ways in which coercion is a necessary solution (at least at present)
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      • The Conservation of Coercion
        • > Any social equilibrium will be unstable unless it contains some way of punishing antisocial behavior, otherwise the most selfish individuals with the shortest time horizons will prosper and prompt a general race to the bottom. A state can enforce its norms with fines, imprisonment, and execution. Civil society, on the other hand, has only “voluntary” tools like shunning and boycotts available. If it is difficult to imagine such measures having the same deterrent effect as prison, that is precisely the problem! With the possible exception of our immediate families, it is rare for us deracinated moderns to be part of a community so all-encompassing and vital to our identity (or simply our socioeconomic lives) that the threat of being severed from it takes on the same cast as the threat of prison. There are advantages to this rootless condition; for instance, it makes us far less susceptible to certain kinds of abuse. But it also means we must rely on the state to police and punish a wide range of behaviors that would once have been dealt with informally.
        • > These aspects raise an uncomfortable possibility for libertarians: is there a sort of law of conservation of coercion in well-functioning societies? A community with a minimal state can only function if it is thick enough and homogeneous enough to enforce sanctions for antisocial behavior that are almost state-like in their severity, and, furthermore, can make them stick. Freeing individuals from their smothering parochialisms will lead to a compensating increase in the scope and reach of the state as people search for a new solution to social dilemmas formerly handled via informal means. Conversely, attempts to suddenly curtail state power may lead to chaos in the intervening period when social institutions have not yet reasserted themselves. Principled libertarians might still have good reasons to prefer the non-state forms of compulsion—among them the arguments from public choice economics and a federalist preference for decisions being made at the lowest feasible level, where actors are most likely to have relevant information. But “increased freedom” may not be one of them.
        • > In the absence of trust, every private commercial or social interaction becomes just a little bit more expensive, a little bit less efficient, and a little bit less likely to happen at all.