Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism


Those who weren’t able to read it when it was behind a paywall might be interested to know that my recent Claremont Review of Books essay “Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism” is now accessible for free.

As I noted before, the essay is a companion piece of sorts to my recent Heritage Foundation lecture on “Socialism versus the Family.”  My recent post on post-liberal conservatism is relevant too.

At Catholic Culture, Thomas Mirus comments on my views on libertarianism.

22 comments:

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    1. BalancedTryte,
      Even Nozick who was a minimalist state libertarian was not an anarchocapitalist and wrote detailed arguments against anarchocapitalism. And Hayek and Feser argue for a larger role for the state than did Nozick. So calling Hayek and/or Feser anarchocapitalists is ridiculous.

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    2. Posting an ancap ball meme on the Feser blog? This place has truly peaked.

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    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    4. @BalancedTryteOperators I wasn't being sarcastic.

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  2. Feser please make a “conservatism round-up”

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  3. Tragic is truly the right word. Seems like Hayek realized that on a naturalistic worldview we don't really have a reason to expect much happiness(being the result of chance and having no final causes and all). It reminded me of your post on Freud.

    Also, since we are talking about austrians, did you ever interacted with Hoppe Argumentation Ethics?

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    1. No, I don’t believe Dr. Feser has directly. But David Gordon, himself a libertarian like Hans Hoppe, had a lecture raising devastating objections: https://www.slideshare.net/misesinstitute/libertarianism-and-the-modern-philosophers-lecture-6 (See slide 17+. Note that Hoppe’s version of argumentation ethics claims there is a performative, logical contradiction. Dr. Gordon shows this is not the case.)

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    2. Seems like Hayek realized that on a naturalistic worldview we don't really have a reason to expect much happiness (being the result of chance and having no final causes and all).

      You have no reason to expect happiness incarnate, but you could settle for the Norzick experience machine. So as long as you are a psychopath you can be happy, because psychopaths are completely detached from reality already.

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  4. "Those who would overthrow traditional morality wholesale and replace it with some purportedly more rational alternative exhibit the same hubris as the socialist planner who foolishly thinks he can do better than the market."

    I always wonder how this argument, which I've encountered in various forms, is affected by the fact that "actually existing", organically evolved morality is now quite different from traditional morality. We can no longer appeal to G.K. Chesterton's common man.

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    1. Didn´t MacIntyre touch on that topic in "Dependent Rational Animals"?

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    2. Maolsheachlann, while it is true that actual practices in the concrete are in the process of changing what had been long-standing customary usages, one may be surprised at how firmly some of those older customs remain at least partially if not completely involved. Take, just for example, customs dealing with marriage. While our post-modern millennials might decry the need for "a piece of paper" or the acceptance of some government official in order to validate his love for his spouse, and claim that "marriage" is an empty shell, still and all it remains true that by far the majority of people seem to feel that a passage from a state of state of "good friends, with benefits" to something more "official" warrants a big party and even a ceremony of sorts. (Every little girl is taught to hope for a big beautiful wedding, and being taught in college that sex is unrelated to marriage doesn't eradicate that longing.) Socially, the idea of the WEDDING so far survives in spite of the ongoing demolition of the concept of marriage. It will be some decades still, (if not longer, given that human nature itself really does call for marriage) before social practices make weddings and some official recognition of marriage null.

      Given that morality has its roots in human nature, there will always remain SOME tendrils of pull toward the basics of that morality even in societies that want to pretend morality is relative and "a personal matter".

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    3. Tony, I agree, and perhaps we are only looking at a snapshot of time anyway, and the equilibrium reasserts itself before long. However the decline in traditional morals (sexual and otherwise) seems to at least date to World War Two at this stage.

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  5. Just as market prices encapsulate economic information that is not available to any single mind, so too, the later Hayek argued, do traditional moral rules that have survived the winnowing process of cultural evolution encapsulate more information about human well-being than the individual can fathom.

    Ed, this is a great line, and a great thought. Humans - whether we like it or don't like it - DO IN FACT come to exist in the midst of communities (actually, in the midst of interlocking layers of communities) which necessarily have a past, and which past necessarily holds out both practical and moral constraints on us.

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    1. It's a line that is thoroughly in line with Burkean conservatism, and very problematic. It's a social view that does not take into account Original Sin as it should. The social past provides societies with many useful codes, but these are also mixed in with aberrations. The "social wisdom" provided by history is mixed with all sorts of wrongs and the only way to ensure that man lives according to his nature is to accept the Church as final arbiter of natural law. Burke rejected this as "imposed dogma".

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  6. Thanks for this. Always wondered what the issues you had with Hayek were. It makes sense... there is a mean between being ruled by a small number of minds and a large number of passions. What would your prescription be for the 2nd problem? Higher emphasis on civics and national history in public education?

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  7. Hi Dr. Feser,

    Speaking of political theory, have you thought about writing a book, article or essay that criticizes contemporary social justice theory (like Critical Race Theory or Feminism)? Of course, aside from some of your posts.

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  8. Moreover, the functioning of the market economy depends on adherence to rules of behavior that abstract from the personal qualities of individuals. In particular, it depends on treating most of one’s fellow citizens not as members of the same tribe, religion, or the like, but as abstract economic actors—property owners, potential customers or clients, employers or employees, etc.

    It seems to me that this notion, while applicable to some concepts of "the market" (at least, to an idealization of it), such thinking is actually rather limited and parochial. In the modern west, we have seemingly pushed a model of market efficiency that abstracts from personal qualities: the "stock share" that will sell for $32.47 to any comer, the box of Fruit Loops with "the" price listed on the shelf, a price applicable to any buyer today. But this should be viewed as ONE SORT of a market efficiency for one sort of social and price modeling.

    Another sort could be suggested from other sorts of marketplace interactions, viz, that of the personal negotiation / bargaining. You go to the market plaza looking for a necklace for your sister to make up for treating her poorly last week. You reject the offerings of several merchants as not quite special enough for her, knowing (as you do, her tastes), but finally locate a necklace that is just right. You start negotiating with the jeweler: First he mentions a price of $6,000, but then he comments about your clothes and your grooming, belittling you because, while he would like to sell the necklace, he wouldn't want his product to be seen on the likes of you, so he ends up saying "for you, $7,000".

    You disparage his family and his past, to score points and justify offering $3,000.

    He responds "At least, Jaime, I don't go around bad-mouthing my sister to the neighbors. Nothing less than $5,000."

    You realize "Oh, I guess you heard about that?" Taken aback, you hang your head a little in shame, and go on to say "well, that's kind of why I wanted this - to make it up to her."

    "Ahhh, he says, for herrrr?, well, that's a horse of another color! I wouldn't mind seeing my work on your lovely sister, that's something a good jeweler should aspire to - she is a gem, she is. In that case, Jaime, I will let it go for only $4,000. But if I find you giving it to that silly girlfriend of yours, I will slice your left hand off!"

    Personal interaction in order to set a price.

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    1. There is absolutely nothing improper (in terms of free marketplace theory) about such a thing. It is just that in the west we have gotten away from that for so long now, and we (especially in America) have had so little daily interaction with it for generations now, that we have even forgotten it as a viable concept. But it is perfectly legitimate for a shop owner to sell his product for one price to Jaime, and for another price to Petruchio, based on his personal regard for them. In terms of market theory, this is just allowing a person to price personal qualities. There is, certainly,a COST to having such a time-consuming process, but that too is just a matter of pricing what is valuable to people. I can guarantee that if it weren't for LAWS in the US against store owners refusing to sell to people "just because I don't like them", shop owners would indeed readily spend time and effort in changing the price for at least SOME customers. This implies that THEY think it is worth it - the very essence of market forces. It is, then, an unnatural arrangement that we have government, i.e. by force, constrain what would otherwise be free market pricing.

      There are, still, a few places where we see such personal haggling and the entry of personal qualities into pricing. Take, for example, the process of an investor either buying out a small start-up that is poised to expand exponentially: the owner-entrepreneur will usually make a big part of his decision on the basis of his personal interactions with the investor - how he seems about handing "his baby", that new little company. The same also occurs with mergers where two companies are similarly sized and similarly entirely controlled by one man: after the bean counters for both sides go over all the pluses and minuses, there is inevitably a significant window of doubt and debate about how much cash for how many shares should be exchanged, and the resolution of that window to a specific agreed price is ALWAYS due to some degree of personal trust or personal confidence in the other guy, resulting in a deal that you wouldn't have made with any other guy. It's personal.

      And it is a bit of a fraud for market theory to denigrate this aspect of pricing as if it were an essentially disordered aspect of the "ideal" marketplace, something that should be eradicated if possible. Quite the opposite, an argument can be made that laws making the ordinary shop owner not having the right to do this, when the big CEO honchos do it in every big deal, is an unjust rule, preferencing big business over small.

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  9. Nevertheless, the Church (and Thomism) has never defended the free market as understood in Burkean ideology and successors. Church teaching on Social Justice is definite and includes the notion of a just price and the protection by government intervention of the vulnerable, all concepts which were alien to Burke.

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  10. Hi Ed,
    Dr. Nigel Cundy has interacted with your work on the A and B-theory of time here - http://www.quantum-thomist.co.uk/my-cgi/blog.cgi?first=56&last=56 I think it would be good to interact with him given that he is both a thomist and skilled in the philosophy of time, as well as having a PHD in physics.

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