Gary Chartier offers an interesting challenge to the Hobbesian: namely, to identify at what point along the spectrum between Leviathan and free-market anarchism we supposedly lose whatever it is the Hobbesian claims is essential to social order.
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
I understand why an MNGS would uphold internal peace more efficiently and effectively, but why would they interact with each other more peaceful than one Leviathan with another Leviathan?
War is expensive. MNGSs have low taxes, plus if they try to raise them it’s easier to vote with your feet when you have many nearby states than when you have fewer and more distant ones.
That makes sense. Is that also the benefit of non-territorial MNGSs?
Yes, the cost of voting with your feet drops even more radically when you don’t actually have to move your feet.
See, for example, this.
Cool. I can imagine the non-territorial canton level in the 21st century–especially with the Internet. But what would the central power look like? I know you want it weak, and you want most activity on the canton level, but are you talking about a United Cantons-type institution?
I don’t think Roderick or I is talking about any sort of central institution. Why think one would be necessary?
Hey Gary! I was responding to an article Roderick wrote 15 years ago. I don’t think he was advocating a central institution as much as trying to reconcile anarchy and minarchy.
But since you ask: I don’t think one would be necessary. Though, I do like hearing the reasons that invasion and conquest would be unlikely.
Sorry—I was reading too quickly (something I notice I do too frequently when responding to blog posts). I think the notion of a virtual canton turns out to amount to much the same thing as what I meant to convey when talking about a non-territorial voluntary Leviathan (an ugly phrase I use here for its shock value [perhaps I should have employed it in the original post]).
Yeah, I was assuming you both were talking about something very similar. I love the “non-territorial voluntary Leviathan.” It has the same affect as Kevin Carson’s “free market anti-capitalism.” And Simon and Garfunkle’s “sound of silence.”
Yeah, the virtual-canton thing wasn’t my political ideal, but was offered to minarchists as a way of getting the least bad minarchy possible. (For a different compromise proposal, see here.)
I later worked out the virtual-canton proposal in more detail; see part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
Since I think the establishment of a libertarian society is likely to be more bottom-up than top-down, I’m not sure how much utility these constitutional proposals have. But there they are, for whatever they’re worth.
Unrelated question:
I just started watching Musical Minds on Nova. The first question–posed to Oliver Sacks–is whether music or language comes first.
I remember a lecture you gave (2004-ish) on how neither essence nor existence necessarily precedes the other–that we could say the question is meaningless or that they arise at the same time. I wonder if it’s best to do the same with music and language–to say that music is language and language is musical?
No language!
No language!
No language!
No language!
No language!
Ruwart-reference for the politically correct.
http://up01.ayame.jp/up/download/1243337656.zip
Interesting reading. Hebo-anarchism.
I assume that there’s a password that’s supposed to be entered here.