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A Christian Libertarian View on Environmental Protection

I’ve just finished reading “Faith Seeking Freedom – Libertarian Christian Answers to Tough Questions“. The authors are Dr. Norman Horn, Doug Stuart, Kerry Baldwin and Dick Clark.

It covers 12 different subjects, plus one chapter on “Christian misconceptions on Libertainism”.

Here, I’m just going to concentrate on chapter 12: “What about the Environment and Creation?”

Here are a few quotes from that chapter:

The natural world in the beginning [of Genesis] is described as a garden. Gardens are meant to be worked, and that work inherently means that the garden is incomplete.

Therefore, the destiny of the whole earth is not pure wildland, but cultivation by its inhabitants.

Now, that does not mean we should be utterly wasteful and foolish with those resources, but it also means we do not have the right to assume we know better than our neighbor how he can use those resources that he rightfully owns.

As we use the resources that God has seen fit to grant us, we should use them as mindful stewards of a divine blessing (Matt. 25:14-30). The righteous take care to leave something of value for future generations (Prov. 13:22)

When property boundaries are clear and unambiguous, neighbors can more readily hold each other accountable.

Too often, in a system where environmental regulation is provided through government, political decision making can lead to wasted resources. Under modern environmental regulatory regimes, polluters and other bad actors may even be able to defend their harmful actions legally by pointing to government licensure and compliance with relevant regulations.

In a free society, property owners would have a better chance at holding others accountable for the environmental damage that they cause.

It is important to point out that governments do not just fail to protect the environment; in fact, they are among the worst polluters. A 2020 report concluded that the United States military is the “largest single institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world”.

Private property owners have a strong incentive to conserve their privately owned resources. Unfortunately, when government owns and manages natural resources, there is an incentive for private parties to attempt to get as much as they can until the resource is exhausted.

It is rational to maximise profits, and for as long as human beings live in a fallen world with scarce resources, they will seek to do so.

We must recognize that some pollution is inevitable simply because of entropy.

The bigger concern, though, is hazardous waste. [Whoever damages] someone else with their pollutant, they are liable for those damages in form of a tort (a civil lawsuit). The polluter would have to pay restitution for those damages and resotre the property (or health) of the claimant.

Models of the future are massively uncertain, and their predictions of global climates and the need to “fix” the predicted issues are dangerous at best and unjust to billions at worst.

Encourage efforts that move land and resources into private hands rather than the state.

A review of “The Total State – How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies”

(Book by Auron MacIntyre, review by Gregory Hood)

Excerpts:

The author [Auron Macintyre, of the new book “The Total State”] is a former journalist and writes that “watching firsthand as journalists completely altered events and details to fit their pre-selected narratives” was “eye-opening.” He accuses them of not just twisting their subjects’ words but making them up or outright lying (11). My own view is that the media are the regime because shaping public opinion from the top down is what democracy now is. Mr. MacIntyre says that whatever was happening in politics, and whatever theory said about the way government should work, “the media narrative seemed to dominate all other priorities, shaping people’s actions in ways I had never thought possible.” This is not just another book whining about a “biased” media; it explains that willful deception by journalists is the tip of the spear for the entire system.

This system serves power, but it is not a simple command-and-control model like a “fascist” organization. “No shadowy cabal of overlords was handing down marching orders; no editorial meeting was held confirming an anti-Trump direction, but every low-level propogandist with a journalism degree suddenly thought it was their solemn duty to destroy the orange menace,” he writes. “No falsehood was too great, and any and every distortion of the truth could be justified in the name of damaging what these zealots saw as the second coming of Adolf Hitler.” (12) Conservatives must understand the cruelty of “the press and the ruling class they represented” and their eagerness to “exploit and destroy what they saw as backward hicks for fun and profit.” Yes, they really do hate you, and yes, what is being done to you is done on purpose.

The book answers many questions: Why did the Constitution so completely fail to limit government action during the COVID pandemic? Why were some Americans forbidden to attend church or go to meetings while others got free reign not just to rally but to riot? Why does the GOP refuse to take up even popular causes? Conservatives must wake up; their beloved constitutional republic does not work.

Who is the “ruling class”? Mr. MacIntyre answers in terms of its institutional role — an answer of “what” rather than “who.” This is one way of approaching the problem, but some will see it as unsatisfactory.

The “who” is important. Mr. MacIntyre repeatedly asserts that power always seeks to centralize. We know that the federal government tries to limit what is discussed online, to the point of demanding that specific people be deplatformed. The New York Times pushed the “1619 Project” to give Black Lives Matter an academic veneer. “When Harvard comes to a conclusion on an issue of public policy,” writes Mr. MacIntyre, “Yale is soon to follow, the media quickly reports the findings, government bureaucracy implements them, and schools are teaching them in short order.” (29)

[. . .]

Mr. MacIntyre is right that modern progressivism is essentially religious. Paul Gottfried called our system a “secular theocracy” in 2004 in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, and it may not even be accurate to call it “secular” after 2020, when churches of all denominations prostrated themselves before George Floyd. Mr. MacIntyre identifies universities as the “churches” of the new regime and cites Curtis Yarvin’s model of the “Cathedral” — a “decentralized network of organizations and individuals responsible for manufacturing a cultural consensus” inside universities, the media, public education, and the bureaucracy. Mr. MacIntyre argues that because progressivism is a kind of religion, no conspiracy is needed because “those who manufacture the narrative of our civilization” all “go to the same house of worship.” 

[. . .]

Not long ago, even if we admitted that elites ruled, and “democracy” was a polite fiction, it did not mean we lived under a “total state.” Elites did not need to control all opinions, just enough to maintain power. However, the internet gave everyone a microphone and thus turned everyone into a potential threat.

Quoting Curtis Yarvin, Mr. MacIntyre writes that we are in a total state because “everyone and everything is infused with power” and thus “everyone is either a collaborator or a dissident.” There can be no private life, not just because the personal is political, but because the internet gives everyone the theoretical ability to turn personal views into a political force.

Despite the growth of government, the average person feels “liberated” because government took over the social obligations people once had to family or to intermediate institutions such as churches or guilds. Mr. MacIntyre argues that the modern state confiscates more taxes, imposes more surveillance, and commands more obligations than any absolute ruler of the past, but “so long as this is done while freeing the individual from traditional social obligations, not only do its citizens not feel oppressed, they see themselves as liberated.” (37) The desire to impose “neutrality” in government instead of personal rule does not lead to freedom, but builds a bureaucracy molded by incentives (including measures such as DEI) until it becomes monolithic. The absolute “liberation” of the individual leads to absolute subjugation to the state. Today, we see attempts by academics, media, and the state to “liberate” children from their families in the name of “transgenderism.” Ultimately, the more people are “liberated” and atomized, the more power flows into the hands of bureaucrats, politicians, media, and teachers.

It is a chicken-and-egg question whether such material interests cause an ideology of “liberation” or whether the ideology leads to a class that benefits from such a system. Either way, progressives love ever-expanding social engineering that overwhelms conservative appeals to equality before the law or institutional rights.

[. . .]

The Constitution will certainly not save us: “Relying too heavily on a written constitution simply incentivizes a nation’s leaders to become skilled at twisting and shaping language in order to circumvent the restrictions created by the formal meaning of the words.” (57) “Wokeness,” filled the metaphysical void left by Americans trusting in the ability of a document permanently to solve existential political questions.

Mr. MacIntyre cites Carl Schmitt on the existential nature of politics, which is ultimately about identity. A mainstream conservative citing Carl Schmitt (albeit regretting his “deeply unfortunate” involvement with Nazism) is a milestone. Yet it is necessary, and even the most liberal professor (until recently) would acknowledgment Schmitt’s importance. He dynamited the theoretical premises of liberalism, particularly liberalism’s promise to remove the friend/enemy distinction from politics by reducing it to a friendly debate in the marketplace of ideas where all parties have rights. In reality, because it is impossible to remove the friend/enemy distinction, what actually results is an “ever-expanding ideological empire,” with those who “serve to strengthen the power of the state” becoming friends and “those who seek to compete with or restrain it” becoming enemies. The “myth of the neutral institution,” or “value-free” institution lets the total state “obfuscate the advance of its own values inside the key structures of civilization.” (64)

[. . .]

“[In theory] the people rule, and so there is less need to think about who wields supreme authority,” he writes. “Which is very convenient for those who actually do wield supreme authority.” (65) Similarly, because (in Schmitt’s view) politics derives from theology, the state becomes essentially a god and “exceptions” — when normal laws are suspended — are like miracles. Much as a miracle shows the power of God, the state of exception shows who is sovereign and whose interests are served. The Enlightenment conceit that personal leadership is a problem and politics can be reduced to a neutral system is no protection against tyranny. Instead, trusting in a mere system advances tyranny by disguising sovereignty and concealing the truth that people wield power.

Mr. MacIntyre insists that there is no definable conspiracy or group we can point to that oversees the total state. However, citing Vilfredo Pareto and Machiavelli, Mr. MacIntyre offers a functional definition. Leaders can be classified as “lions” (conservative, capable of wielding force, favoring order) or “foxes” (skilled in manipulation of ideas, socially liberal, favorable to change). When societies mature, foxes tend to replace lions because the need for overt force declines. Mr. MacIntyre again destroys illusions by arguing that our “modern aversion to overt force” can mislead because all society rests on a monopoly of force. It may be more dangerous for people to pretend that they are exempt from this rule than bluntly to exercise power. Most people fear the truth.

Furthermore, just because “foxes” do not often use direct force does not mean that they do not use it. They rule through “deceit” and the “manipulation of systems along with the subtle control of information and data to maintain order.” (75) Democracy makes us more vulnerable to force by “obfuscate[ing] the source of power” away from a definable sovereign to a “nameless, faceless, ever-shifting process” that can never be held accountable. I have argued for years that no society can be meaningfully “free” if there is no awareness of who is sovereign. In contrast, we are ruled by an elite that uses control of information to govern both private and public institutions, ruthlessly vets bureaucrats for ideological conformity, and selectively enforces laws depending on political agendas.

[. . .]

The surface “diversity” preached by elites only undermines the real diversity of nations and peoples, much as the “diversity” on a college campus strengthens ideological uniformity. One can invent new sexual or gender identities or promote “pride” in various non-white races, but all these are varieties of consumerism. Instead of social mobility through independence, such supposedly diverse constituencies become client groups of the total state, its “social justice movements,” and justify ever-expanding government programs and NGO-based education programs.

[. . .]

Mr. MacIntyre credits Paul Gottfried with the concept of the “therapeutic state” — the way the managerial elite creates a continuous moral panic to justify its existence. War, crime, poverty, and other social problems cease to be part of the human condition and instead become pathologies that arise from flawed social institutions not yet under expert control. Mr. MacIntyre also quotes Sam Francis, who noted that “whether sincere or not,” the real effect of managerial political and social reforms is to ” ‘liberate’ the masses from the tyranny of bourgeois or prescriptive institutions, and to homogenize the mass population and bring it under the discipline of the mass organizations.” (94–95, quoted from Sam Francis in Leviathan) In other words, this is why almost every news story, education program, or government initiative ends with a call for more bureaucratic control and more funding.

Humans are not all identical, so it is not always easy to control them. The state will therefore “actively seek to shape the private and public lives of its citizens in order to homogenize influences that could introduce variance an instability.” This includes replacing sin and punishment with “medicalization of deviance.” What a prior generation would call evil can be fought through therapy, treatment, and programs, with a new clergy of professors and scientists replacing priests. “Under the total state’s model of behavior,” Mr. MacIntyre writes, “humans are inherently good, with the possible exception of straight white Christian males.” Education solves every problem — which means that traditional solutions, which tell men to behave with grace and honor in the face of eternal evils, are morally suspect and a surrender.

This means there are no inevitable tradeoffs — only errors of judgment, which encourage totalitarian rage against dissenters who stand in the way of progress. Of course, “the science” can be self-contradictory because it follows expedience, not facts. Why are sexual preferences supposedly inherent, but sex is no longer bound by biology? Why do genes set sexual orientation, but in-group preference is “racist”? Why are pedophiles “minor attracted persons” suffering from a tragic inherent misfortune, but men who desire fit, attractive women are morally deficient? Dissenters must never state an opinion, because we lack the credentials to be part of the “new priestly caste [that] will always favor the political priorities of the total state.” (102) So shut up, bigot.

From this perspective, compulsory state-funded education looks increasingly sinister, because it is the most effective way to break children away from family ties and inherent loyalties. Nothing is inherent or sacred because everything is a question of applying the proper technique to achieve the best social outcome. “A thoroughly secularized therapeutic culture would create the narrative justification for constant state intervention through the bureaucratic application of scientifically developed courses of treatment,” Mr. MacIntyre argues. “By stripping away the natural human preference for particular cultures, religions, moral systems, and aesthetics, social engineers can create subjects that are far easier to manage.”

[. . .]

It is not merely that institutions lose track of their founding principles as time passes and systems grow more complex. It is that the mere fact of opening up foundational principles to debate serves to undermine them. “Once the core values of a social organization are up for debate, they are over.” “Once the foundational axioms of an organization have entered the realm of open discussion, it will always and inevitably move to the left.” This is true. To open discussion undermines what was once unchallengeable. Thus, even for those of us friendly to “free speech” as a principle, allowing free speech or open admissions in our own organizations may doom them. “Anyone who is not defending, maintaining, and gatekeeping the things they love and care about will watch them decay and eventually be destroyed,” Mr. MacIntyre argues. Even the most stalwart gatekeeper will fall to entropy, because chaos is inevitable. Conflict is eternal.

[. . .]

The interest of a bureaucrat within an organization is his own position, not the organization’s. Promoting conflict within an organization or developing a new power base leads to new opportunities for advancement. It is thus not surprising that the consistent cry in everything from politics to business and even to entertainment is that existing citizens, customers, or fans must be replaced by new “underrepresented” constituencies. The decision by a Bud Light executive to promote transgenderism to working-class beer drinkers may seem bizarre, but that executive might have made the right career move for herself.

[. . .]

Modern managers may not be adding value to our current institutions. “Both James Burnham and Samuel Francis would recognize that managers are essential for the operation of massified organizations, but [Alasdair] MacIntyre asserts that most modern bureaucracy is simply a product of the cancer-like growth of the managerial class and does not actually produce notable increases in efficiency,” the author says. “These layers of bureaucratic management exist only for the purpose of facilitating power.” DEI is the most obvious example. We are oppressed, but by impotence rather than power.

[. . .]

It is also the most miserable, neurotic, and unhappy Americans who are the greatest supporters of the system. Young liberal women have high rates of depression and mental illness, but this is what makes them such reliable political soldiers. Our author reminds us of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel about the price of hubris, but my fear is not that we are tempting judgment, but that there is no one to inflict it.

[. . .]

Our author considers three possibilities. First, that life will continue to get worse as the system hobbles along. I think this is the most likely, but he considers it least likely. The second alternative is Caesar, perhaps not a soldier, but a civilian. It is not unheard of in our time; we have only to look to El Salvador. With a clear sovereign who actually does the peoples’ wishes, the masses will not be obsessed with politics and thus free from propaganda. However, Mr. MacIntyre argues that the permanent progressive bureaucracy will remain, and still be at war with human nature. Unless that is abolished, a change at the top will not fix the problem.

Instead, our author contends the most likely scenario is a gradual collapse. The managerial bureaucracy will be unable to meet the core functions of the total state. Outlying regions will gain more autonomy as the system becomes more openly authoritarian. The opportunities for conflict will increase between federal and local authorities. This will not necessarily be good for normal Americans. The quality of life will decline, but this will hasten the fall of centralized power and the return of local, organic organization. Thus, those who wish to take advantage of this transition must discipline themselves now, organizing and forgoing luxury. “Consolidating local power that is capable of resisting the authority of the total state is essential.”

[. . .]

I believe Mr. MacIntyre is understating the difficulties. He has written a whole book that tells us the system is capable of mobilizing malcontents to further its own power, using a devastatingly powerful propaganda machine to remake humanity itself, appealing to greed and irresponsibility to convince people that slavery is freedom. Unless a decline were steep, who would choose an alternative? One of the key characteristics of Third World life is that most people tolerate chaos and dysfunction; an increasingly diverse America may adjust to continuous decline without reaction. In response, we may get even more social control and left-wing politics.

Yet, there is hope. The media have shed credibility and millions of Americans do not believe anything they say. The war in Gaza has divided the once united Cathedral. Some elites, notably Elon Musk, seem to be breaking from the social consensus of the Total State. The possibility President Donald Trump could return also introduces an element of chaos and disruption that could prove useful.

What is clear is that we will not be able to meet the future if we don’t understand how the system works. Millions must be made to understand this, and — to be blunt — no one in our movement can do this. Even Sam Francis could not, not because he lacked the knowledge or skill, but because he was Sam Francis. It takes a mainstream conservative to puncture myths that have crippled conservatism and to do so in an approachable, erudite, and compassionate way. It is a subtle art to tell people their most cherished beliefs are wrong. It is even harder to show them you are still on their side, are one of them, and can lead them to a better future.

Auron MacIntyre has done this.

Addendum: Tom Woods interviews the author here. (48 min)

Vaccine regulator failed

Presentation by Dr John Campbell about the MHRA (18m). Basically, this is a case of regulatory capture.

Quote from the video description:

We feel compelled to conclude that the MHRA has indeed become an enabler for the pharmaceutical industry, with patient safety no longer being its primary concern. Medicines regulator failed to flag Covid vaccine side effects, and must be urgently investigated. All-party parliamentary group, (APPG) on Pandemic Response and Recovery, believe MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues, in February 2021, but did not highlight the problems for several months

The World’s dumbest Harvard graduate

Donates $300 million to the prestigious university

Writes Tom Woods in his newsletter of 11/04/2023:

As a Harvard alum, I’m on the university’s mailing list. Here’s an excerpt from an email we all received yesterday:

Today, we are delighted to announce that Ken Griffin AB ’89 has made an unrestricted gift of $300 million to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences….

In recognition of Ken’s commitment to our mission, Harvard will rename its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) in his honor. For the past 150 years, GSAS has nurtured and expanded the ambitions of students who have changed the world through their vast and varied scholarly pursuits. Now, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will do the same.

Now here’s an interesting fact about ol’ Ken Griffin: he’s a backer of Ron DeSantis for president.

Try to get inside the brain of someone like that.

He wants a GOP president, and not just any GOP president: specifically one who ostentatiously resisted the public health establishment, and much of the political establishment.

And at the same time, he gives $300 million to that very establishment.

Maybe — maybe — there was a time when we might have thought: Harvard has its problems, but it is still a world-class institution full of smart people doing important work.

That time is long over, if indeed it ever existed.

Imagine having $300 million to throw around, looking at the state of America, and thinking: the best place for this money is in academia, and particularly in an institution that has been at war with people like me for as long as I can remember.

One thing we can credit the left for: they’re not politically stupid. They know what they want, and they devote their time and resources to getting it.

The right, by contrast, has been full of people like Ken Griffin: they don’t have the guts to withstand being hated, so they delude themselves into thinking that if they just ingratiate themselves with the establishment by doing X or Y, maybe they can yet be liked.

Dear reader, if you have $300 million and are tempted to — of all things! — donate it to Harvard blankety-blank University, please write to me first and I’ll help devise a strategy to use that money more wisely — like lining animal cages with it.

Covid, imaginary pandemic of the brainwashed

James Delingpole doubts the lab-leak theory

Writes James Delingpole:

Most of those defending the existence of the Covid virus do so on the basis of the personal health experiences I invoked at the beginning. I’m not disputing that they may have felt all the exotic and unpleasant symptoms they describe, nor even that these were quite unlike any they had had before. What I am questioning is the logical leap which leads them all to infer that these were definitely the result of a novel virus. How could they possibly know? There are any number of other potential causes for these symptoms: radiation or chemical poisoning; the effects of 5G; a fairly routine brand of flu rebadged as Covid – and escalated in their imagination through groupthink into something much worse; terrain theory . . .

I remain open-minded on the cause of those symptoms, as I do on ‘virus theory’ versus ‘terrain theory’, or whether maybe it’s a mixture of both. But it seems evident to me that certain facts about the supposed pandemic of 2020 are now beyond dispute: it was a ‘pandemic’ only because the WHO changed its definition of the word; mortality rates were not above normal; the PCR tests were fraudulent; SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated; the pandemic was wargamed in 2019 at Event 201, and heavily promoted by vested interests (most funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) in the media, academe, the bio-medical establishment and client governments. Given the scale of the dishonesty surrounding this fake crisis, it would hardly constitute an extravagant leap to infer that the ‘virus’, like everything else, was just another fabricated part of the psyop.

And you don’t need to plump fully for terrain theory for this to be the case. Nor are you required to believe that China is a force for integrity and goodness, nor that Fauci and Daszak are stand-up guys, nor that there aren’t lots of black-budget-funded labs experimenting with pathogens. All you need to do is accept that the weight of evidence thus far shows that Mike Yeadon, and brave souls like him, are justified in their scepticism about the existence of a novel, possibly man-made virus called SARS-CoV-2. And the fact that in 2020 you had a nasty dose of flu-like symptoms is really neither here nor there.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

An exciting new project arising from Jordan Peterson's ideas, arguments and presentations

It’s called ARC, alluding to Noah’s Ark and the arc of a person’s life – and maybe even to the Ark of the Covenant.

Here is their launch announcement.

Quotes from that announcement:

“New International Alliance Announces Major Conference to Enhance Global Prosperity, Challenge Declinism and Revitalize our Understanding of Human Flourishing”

“The ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ (ARC) will provide an alternative to “the claim that decline is inevitable.””

“The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is being established as an international community with a vision for a better world where every citizen can prosper, contribute and flourish.”

The website is here. At the top, it says:

We are seeking answers to some of our day’s most fundamental questions, grounded in our core belief that everyone has intrinsic worth and something to contribute, and humanity has an extraordinary capacity for innovation and ingenuity.

Jordan Peterson presents the reason and ethos of this new organisation in a Youtube podcast. Here’s the main text of what he says in written form in full: My Vision for ARC.

Excerpts:

Despite all this good news, this undeniable progress, a shadow has emerged, an adversarial challenge to this state and process of expanding abundance; an emergent crisis of meaning and purpose. God is dead, or so the story goes, and the future is uncertain. Five centuries of ascendant reductionist Enlightenment rationality have revealed that this starkly objective world lacks all intrinsic meaning. A century and a half or more of corrosive cultural criticism has undermined our understanding of and faith in the traditions necessary to unite and guide us.

In the midst of this existential chaos, the false idol of apocalyptic ideology inevitably beckons.

We find ourselves, in consequence, inundated by a continual onslaught of ominous, demoralizing messages, most particularly in the form of environmental catastrophism; the insistence that we confront a severe and immediately pending emergency of biological destruction, causally associated with our degenerate social structures and their excess and destructive industrial production.

The narrative generating these messages, quasi-religious in its structure and intensity, paints a dismal existential picture: the individual is a rapacious, predatory, parasitical consumer; society—even the little society of the family—an oppressive, tyrannical despoiler; and nature, herself, a hapless, fragile, virginal victim.

[…]

A deep, worldwide, social, economic and environmental revolution is therefore allegedly at hand; those who dare suggest otherwise are blind, if not malevolent, and must be silenced.

The results of such theories? The consequences of such proclamations?

The increasing and increasingly compelled imposition of severe, involuntary limits to material abundance and growth; the resultant artificially-inflated prices, particularly for energy, that most truly punish the poor.

The fraying of our social fabric into a chaos of alienated polarization; simultaneously, and in predictable lockstep, the extension of reach and control over even the most private details of our lives by increasingly gigantic and centralized organizations, governmental and corporate alike.

The spread, particularly among the young, of a demoralizing and socially-divisive doubt and hopelessness.

[…]

We have therefore initiated the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new movement of hopeful vision, local, national and international in its aim and scope, aimed at the collective, voluntary establishment of a maximally attractive route forward. The ARC will open itself up to widespread public membership, as rapidly and extensively as is practically manageable, at as low a cost as is possible and desirable, so that everyone interested can aid in voluntarily formulating this story and strategy, and to discuss how its implementation might be encouraged.

[…]

The sheer complexity of the world, and the genuine diversity of individual ability and preference means that distributed decision-making is a necessity, not a luxury: no elite technocracy is capable of knowing best and then determining how we should all move forward as individuals and communities.

It follows from this that policy requiring compulsion, let alone force, rather than the voluntary assent of the participants, is bad policy.

We offer for the contemplation of those potentially interested in our invitation six fundamental questions, the answers to which might form the basis for a vision that is voluntarily compelling, motivating, stabilizing and uniting.

  • Vision and Story: What destiny might we envision and pursue, such that we are maximally fortified against anxiety and despair, motivated by faith and hope, and voluntarily united in our pursuit of a flourishing and abundant world?
  • Responsible Citizenship: How might we encourage individuals to reflect and to act so that they adopt full voluntary responsibility for themselves, present and future, as well as their families and communities?
  • Family and Social Fabric: How might we effectively conceptualize, value and reward the sacrificial, long-term, peaceful, child-centered intimate relationships upon which psychological integrity and social stability most fundamentally depend?
  • Free Exchange and Good Governance: How can we continue to gain from the genius of unbridled human innovation and the productive reciprocity of voluntary production and free exchange, while protecting ourselves against the tendency of successful organizations to degenerate into a state of wilfully blind and narrowly self-serving authoritarianism?
  • Energy and Resources: How do we ensure provision of the energy and other resources crucial to our shared security and opportunity in a manner that is inexpensive, reliable, safe, efficient and widely and universally accessible?
  • Environmental Stewardship: How might we properly pursue the environmental stewardship that most truly serves the needs and wants of all individuals today, tomorrow and into the foreseeable future?

Concluding words

We at ARC do not believe that humanity is necessarily and inevitably teetering on the brink of apocalyptic disaster. We do not believe that we are beings primarily motivated by lust for power and desire to dominate. We do not regard ourselves or our fellow citizens as destructive forces, living in an alien relationship to the pristine and pure natural world.

We posit, instead, that men and women of faith and decisiveness, made in the image of God, can arrange their affairs with care and attention so that abundance and opportunity could be available for all.

Those who present a vision of inevitable catastrophe in the absence of severely enforced material privation are not wise seers of the inevitable future, but forlorn prisoners of their own limited, faithless imaginations. Those who scheme to lead using terror as a motivator and force as a cudgel reveal themselves by definition unfit for the job.

We hope to encourage the development of an alternative pathway uphill, out of both tyranny and the desert, stabilizing, unifying and compelling to men and women of sound judgement and free will.

Welcome aboard the ARC.

I intent to formulate my own answers to the above questions, which I will post on the ARC website survey page and on this blog.

Birthday of a great economist

Murray Rothbard

Today would have been the 97th birthday of Murray Rothbard, considered by those who know of him and his writings as the greatest economist of the second half of the 20th century. (The greatest economist of the first half was Ludwig von Mises. There is a great organisation dedicated to the work of both of them and other economists of their “Austrian” school of thought.)

On this occasion, Allan Stevo writes in a newsletter:

Never heard of him?

There’s a reason for that.

Sometimes the establishment wants you to hear about the losers, the court jesters, and court economists who will doubtless serve the interest of the establishment.

To hear from someone who gives you recipes for success and freedom alongside basic principles for using economics to enfeeble government — well, the establishment doesn’t want that. They do not want you strong.

If you’ve never heard of Rothbard and have a favorite economist, I can almost guarantee you that your favorite economist is a buster, a court jester, a court economist, someone who will only take the argument so far.

That is not Rothbard.

​Confined to a no-name school in an outer borough of New York for part of his career and then sent out to the deserts of Las Vegas to teach economics at UNLV for another portion of his career (the best American school that would accept this incredibly intelligent and prolific economist), the man was blackballed by academia for not having off limit topics.

​

Why do people think and act diametrically different?

Jeff Leskovar has some interesting answers

From Jeff Leskovar’s article (from 4th December 2021):

Individuals have three main parameters by which they constrain their decisions: property, time, and social hierarchy. Social hierarchies apparently exist to reduce conflict among individuals as do property rights by allowing individuals to know who should defer to whom with regard to each other and physical objects. An individual’s decisions are delimited by these three dimensions, time (time preference), space (property), and social hierarchy. Social hierarchy exists in the minds of individuals so it is like the imaginary plane in the field of mathematics.. We have the real dimensions of time and space along with the dimension of social hierarchy or status. These control the majority of human behavior in the quest for survival and reproduction.

Time preference and social hierarchy are fundamental to understanding the “why” of human action. Putting social hierarchy front and center is especially useful in political science, since politics is the pursuit of social status, as well because it explains why people seem to fall into two different political groups, the left and the right. This theory explains a long list of behaviors engaged in by the left but not the right. Here are some examples:

  • Declining to debate
  • Engaging in ad hominem or using other logical fallacies if they do attempt to debate
  • Becoming emotional if one disagrees with them
  • Refusing to grant the right of free speech to people they disagree with
  • Refusing to associate with people on the right
  • Unfriending people on social media because of political disagreements
  • Marching in the street
  • Living in big cities

Why do leftist seem to have no curiosity about how they may be wrong or why other people may have different opinions? Why do leftist always assume evil motives on the part of those who disagree with them? Why are leftists so hostile to people who disagree with them? Applying considerations of social hierarchy explains all those leftists behaviors and answers all the above questions.

The answer, in short, is that “leftism” is the modern version of tribal, collective, “follow the herd” (which actually means “follow the leader”) thinking, while everyone else to some extent use their faculty of reason to try to figure out what exactly is going on and act on it for their benefit. Both strategies of action are necessary for survival. But they are mutually exclusive. We can engage in both, but not at the same time.

That means inevitably that, in any given circumstance, those choosing one basic survival-strategy will deem those who at the same time choose the other strategy as either “stupid” or “evil”. “Stupid” because they don’t seem to see the danger they are in, or “evil” because they are endangering others – “knowingly”.

Leskovar doesn’t say this, but I think he implies that the “follow the leader” types are much less inclined to discuss their action than the “let’s think this through rationally” types.

In addition, there is a strong incentive for those close to the top of the hierarchy to prevent others from climbing higher. Thus their incentive is to make everyone else a) follow the leader(s) and b) do things that will make it difficult if not impossible for the leaders to be replaced by others. In other words: Leaders are inclined to enhance and support “follow the leader” type behaviour, which will surprise exactly nobody who stops to think about it.

Leskovar explains:

By making some basic simple assertions about human nature and society and then building logically from these statements we can find explanations for many puzzling features of human society, especially politics. These assertions are the following:

  • “Human society always has a natural hierarchy
  • In any moment of decision for human action there are two different fundamental heuristics that can be used to make that decision. One method of decision making is to observe what everyone else is doing and doing the same. The other is to observe reality and use reason to decide how to act at any given moment. These two ways of decision making are fundamental survival strategies. These can be restated as thinking for yourself versus following the crowd. One uses reason and the other does not.
  • It is a fundamental human drive to seek belonging in the group and to seek to rise in the hierarchy. Human decision makers weigh the potential impact on social status at all points in the decision making process.
  • The strength of that drive for status and social belonging varies among people with some having a low drive and others a high drive for improved status. The status drive seems to intensify in people as they rise in status.
  • It is natural to be disdainful of people of lower status and this natural reaction varies in its intensity among individuals. The amount of disdain correlates with the status drive meaning people with a high status drive are probably more likely to disdain lower status people with more intensity than those with less status greed.
  • People tend to worship those of higher status. The intensity of this varies among individuals and probably intensifies as status increases.
  • Since the pursuit of social status is a zero sum game with all gains in status meaning a relative decrease in status for others, people tend to want to prevent lower status people from achieving higher status. Envy is the emotion that tends to trigger action to prevent others from achieving higher social status.”

Leskovar was given an interview with Tom Woods recently, in which he pointed out something highly interesting (prompted here). Namely that ‘Christianity said to people: “Don’t treat the low-status people badly. They are all equal in the eyes of God.” That could have a big part in explaining the rise of Europe. For a thousand years or more, people at the top of the hierarchy were less likely to oppress low-status people. I think that is now going away, and I think we’re getting the fruits from that from this Covid thing, which was very oppressive.’

The host, Tom Woods, doesn’t explore this aspect further, but the whole interview is worth listening to nonetheless.