The anarcho-capitalist blog (and Elite Eleven member), no third solution, has declared philosophical jihad against a remarkably silly website called the “Non-Libertarian FAQ.” The NLF, a horribly written gaggle of circular, assume-the-answer gobbledygook laced with sophomoric name-calling, uses contrived libertarian talking points (e.g., “Taxation is theft.” “Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the Mafia.”), and then tries (and fails) to refute them in a sentence or two. One must read it in its entirety to get a feel for just how poorly the author, Mike Huben, presents his views.
Anyway, no third solution is, as I mentioned, crafting a detailed point-by-point refutation of (most of) the NLF blurbs. I would like to focus on only two.
First:
“If you don’t pay your taxes, men with guns will show up at your house, initiate force and put you in jail.”
This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big deal of “men with guns” enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact that “men with guns” are the basis of enforcement of any complete social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to “don’t commit fraud or initiate force”, they would still enforce with guns.
Note that NLF doesn’t actually refute the premise — because the premise can’t be refuted. If you don’t pay your taxes (and are sufficiently open and notorious about it), then men with guns do indeed come and use force against you. That is not a paranoid delusion. That is the IRS (and its state and local counterparts.)
But that’s okay, we are told, because the IRS is not “initiating the use of force” but is merely enforcing an “explicit social contract.”
Except of course that it’s not explicit, not social, and not a contract.
It’s always dangerous to invoke an author — in this case John Locke (or Hobbes or Rousseau or Rawls; it doesn’t really matter) — without actually having read him. (For the purists, Huben is clearly a Hobbesian contractarian — which makes his views only 350 years stale.)
The “social contract,” of whichever flavor, is a strictly hypothetical construct — an “as if.” Anyone who argues otherwise (i.e., that the social contract is “explicit”) has clearly never read Locke or any other social contract theorist. There never was, there is not now, nor will there ever be a “social contract” (explicit or otherwise) any more than there ever was, is now, or ever will be, a “veil of ignorance.”
Moreover, the context of social contract theory has long been lost on modern discourse: It was a response to the then-dominant theory of the divine right of kings. To the extent that the “social contract” fiction has any use today, it is to refute excessive government power as it is manifested today — the supposed “divine right of mobs,” and the notion that “when the government does it, it’s not illegal.”
Finally, a key conclusion of (Lockean) social contract theory was actually the exact antithesis of NLF’s (Hobbesian) thesis, namely that government can indeed “breach the contract first” — and when it does, the people are free to reclaim their natural rights, up to and including by revolution.
The names “Locke” and “Hobbes” appear nowhere in the NLF — probably because Huben has no idea who they were. But my guess is that if we, being good little Hobbesian drones, put it to a vote, then Locke would win — even among those who reject contractarianism outright.
Funny thing about democracy: sometimes your candidate loses.
Second:
Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract.
Some libertarians make a big deal about needing to actually sign a contract. Take them to a restaurant and see if they think it ethical to walk out without paying because they didn’t sign anything. Even if it is a restaurant with a minimum charge and they haven’t ordered anything. The restaurant gets to set the price and the method of contract so that even your presence creates a debt. What is a libertarian going to do about that? Create a regulation?
Put aside the infantile snark of using “steenking.” Put aside also the pesky fact that no libertarian seriously makes a “statute of frauds” defense against social contract theory (i.e., “if only it were in writing…”).
Focus instead on the (rather useful) restaurant hypothetical. A competent consenting adult voluntarily patronizes a restaurant, makes a voluntary selection from the menu, and voluntarily chooses either to pay the agreed upon price, assert a defense to having to pay (e.g., fraud or failure to perform), or face the (proportional) consequences of defiance (i.e., a small claims lawsuit and maybe a modest criminal fine).
Under taxation, a incompetent child is involuntarily conscripted into a “social contract,” forced to involuntarily patronize the conscripting government, has no voluntary choices regarding what she does or does not receive from the conscripting government, and faces men with guns if she attempts defiance.
But other than that, they’re exactly the same thing! Don’t you feel stupid, you silly libertarians?
All government is, at the end of the day, men with guns — the majoritarian mob, two wolves and a sheep, choose your analogy. All taxation is, at the end of the day, coercive. The social contract was originally meant, and remains to this day, a fiction meant to illustrate the absurdity of coercive government, not an “explicit” (good grief) fact meant to legitimize any and all actions by coercive government.
Government claims the moral high ground in one way and one way only: By striving, to the greatest extent possible, for inoffensiveness. To imagine a social contract so benign that no reasonable person could object to pretending that it exists.
Possible to attain? No. Possible to strive for? Absolutely.
The United States today? Not even close.
All else is, it bears repeating, glorifying the notion of men with guns.
5 responses so far ↓
Link Terrence Watson // Jan 24, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Kip,
Well said, especially this part:
"Moreover, the context of social contract theory has long been lost on modern discourse: It was a response to the then-dominant theory of the divine right of kings"
Anyone who doubts this should take a look at Locke's FIRST treatise.
Huben's FAQ is silly, but I have heard some libertarians say the things he criticizes. At the same time, charity usually behooves us to examine the stronger arguments for a position, not the ones that can be "refuted" in sentence or two.
Link David Z // Jan 24, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Excellent addendum, Kip! Thanks for the linkage.
It's unfortunately necessary to refute these idiotic arguments, from time to time, if only because they are so widely accepted.
Link no third solution » Blog Archive » Comments on Comments #33 // Jan 24, 2009 at 8:30 pm
[...] Kip Esquire of A Stitch in Haste contributes an excellent addendum to my reply in "On Taxes, Guns, and Restaurant Bills". [...]
Link Mike Huben // Jan 25, 2009 at 9:34 am
Ho hum. Another twit who thinks that because he can make an argument, no matter how stupid, he is the master of the webiverse.
Let's see: the stupidity starts with:
"Note that NLF doesn’t actually refute the premise[...]"
Rewritten to make it obvious, the statement is missing premises that would be required to make logical syllogisms.
P1: If you don’t pay your taxes
[missing premises]
C1: then men with guns will show up at your house and put you in jail
[more missing premises]
C2: then this is initiation of force
Now, if Kip had any reading comprehension, he would notice that I was denying the second conclusion, not the first. Kip defends the first unnecessarily. We also can note that Kip doesn't explain why libertarian enforcement with guns is any better than government enforcement with guns.
The second conclusion is the unconvincing one: because libertarians have no coherent way of defining when initiation of force occurs. Instead, they simply call all government force and any other force they don't like "initiation". Libertarians also have an excuse for force by which they claim it is not initiation: when it is for enforcement of rights, including contractual rights. And so libertarians should accept enforcement of government contractual rights. Read the FAQ for further explanation.
Kip also states (entirely without support, and as if he hasn't read my FAQ) that:
"[the explicit social contract is] not explicit, not social, and not a contract."
Now if only Kip would grant me the courtesy of assuming my conclusion like that!
Kip's ignorance on social contract is even more comical when he babbles about Locke and Hobbes when I'm plainly using social contract in the Madisonian sense. You know, the guy who wrote the US Constitution. If he had taken the trouble to read the wikipedia article on it, as any school child would, he might have noticed. Madison was perhaps the most important classical liberal: not only did he correct many mistakes of his forebears, but he put liberalism into practice.
Kip's "analogy" to the restaurant example is ridiculously changed. First, he misses the point that in the real world, you WILL be arrested by men with guns for failure to pay your bill. Shopkeepers themselves in the US are permitted significant powers of armed arrest as shoplifters will tell you, and they need only summon police to have the police do the work for them. Then Kip compares adults to children, not noting that many entrants to the US do come voluntarily as adults and not noting that many adults voluntarily emmigrate out of the US. And if he had read my FAQ, he would have noticed that I do point out that children's choices are made by their parents, not by the state.
"Put aside also the pesky fact that no libertarian seriously makes a “statute of frauds” defense against social contract theory (i.e., “if only it were in writing…”).
Now that is where Kip looks REALLY stupid. A 5 second search with google for signed libertarian "social contract" turns up 8500+ hits, and many of them are libertarians making exactly the claims he denies.
I'll be adding the "no third solution" criticism to my list of criticisms of my FAQ. Like the other criticisms, it is rather sad and pathetic, not really any better than Kip's stupidity. I haven't had to revise it in 15 years: no libertarian has come up with a decent criticism. Even the most intelligent libertarians (such as David Friedman) resort to criticizing definitions or making counter claims instead of actually addressing my points.
[Kip replies:
Thank you for going out of your way to demonstrate to my readers your puerile writing style and kindergarten approach to political philosophy.
Even the men who invented the fiction of the social contract emphasized the fact that it was indeed a fiction. Your inability to grasp that simple idea is obviously an impenetrable barrier to explaining the rather rudimentary errors in your arguments.
What I find especially informative is your total failure to respond to my hunch that you have in fact never read Hobbes or Locke, have no real grasp of social contract theory beyond your high school civics notes, and are likely completely stunned to learn that Lockean contractarianism (which is far and away the dominant form of contractarianism today) actually contradicts everything you base your entire political worldview upon. Especially informative indeed.
Cheers.]
Link Kel // Jan 26, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Mr. Huben:
I'm afraid that simply plugging your ears against your critics is not equal to having no decent criticism. Though it's my policy to never feed the trolls, I unfortunately can't help myself in this instance.
You're correct in that the initiation of force statement is indeed missing a premise. We need to first establish that a social contract exists, before we can determine that the non-tax payer is the initiator of force. I contend – and I would imagine most other people – that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim for existence.
I find your "libertarians cannot define initiation of force" quite puzzling, as I imagine most libertarians have an extremely easy definition for it. In it's simplest terms that definition is: the use or threat of violence against a person who had previously made no use or threat of violence against you. I think you may be confusing definition with investigation – that is, while the definition of what IS the initiation of force is quite easy, discovering WHO was the initiator of force isn't always so.
You seem to have missed the point of the restaurant analogy completely. Libertarians aren't against the use of police force in defense of property. What you have failed to ask in these situations is who the initiator of force in either situation. If you walk into a restaurant, eat a meal provided by them, and then attempt to leave without paying, NO ONE would argue that the restaurant initiated the force. In the social contract scenario, again, you are right IF AND ONLY IF you can prove the existence of the social contract.
Sadly (for you at least), poor comparisons to restaurant dining do not a social contract theory make.