When Spontaneous Orders Attack, Part 2

By On July 20, 2012 · 6 Comments · In Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Liberty, Social Justice

The second installment of the C4SS Mutual Exchange on Spontaneous Order continues with my contribution, Invisible Hands and Incantations: The Mystification of State Power.

Summary: while spontaneous-order mechanisms are often invoked as a benign alternative to state power, there are reasons for thinking that state power itself depends for its maintenance on spontaneous-order mechanisms – mechanisms that function primarily to render the oppressive nature of the state invisible.

 

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  • http://twitter.com/dL_1337 dL

    excellent essay/paper….

  • Sean II

    Thanks for that. I’ve always struggled to understand how the same Ayn Rand who so brilliantly captured the antics of rent-seeking crony capitalists in the early going of Atlas Shrugged, and then gave us an allegory for rebellion by political withdrawal, could also be the Ayn Rand who inspired her followers to run around worshipping the “business strategies” of Jack Welch and the foreign policy of Paul Wolfowitz. That never made sense to me.

    I do have one question. In passing you mentioned Walmart and Microsoft as especially egregious examples of corporatism grown massive. I understand how Walmart fits into that picture, but what’s the argument with respect to Microsoft? I can’t quite see how that firm has benefited (more than others) from the power of the state. Is it perhaps something to do with intellectual property?

    • http://twitter.com/radgeek radgeek

      Roderick is anti-copyright and anti-patent, so in his view more or less the entirety of Microsoft’s business model depends on more or less aggressive enforcement of a portfolio of government-granted monopolies. (Of course, other businesses also get, and also enforce, and also depend on, copyright monopolies. But the point is presumably that Microsoft is an especially egregious example because it is an especially large and especially hard-driving exploiter of the legal privileges it has. No doubt you could mention other companies in its place; I think if anything AAPL has become a more aggressive and more threatening company in that particular captive market over the course of the past few years.)

      • Sean II

        Okay, so I was at least in the ballpark then. I don’t know much about the Austrian case against intellectual property. Perhaps I should start learning.

        • http://twitter.com/radgeek radgeek

          I don’t know if it’s an “Austrian” thing exactly (a lot of anti-IP libertarians these days are also into Austrian economics, but not necessarily because of something distinctive in the Austrian tradition — the present strength of the Mises Institute party line against IP notwithstanding, prior to the 1990s nobody much working in Austrian economics was particularly closely associated with an anti-IP position. (Rothbard opposed patents but supported copyrights, Hayek and Mises didn’t take any strong stance either way, etc.) But in any case, if you’re curious about Roderick’s position, he lays it out in The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights.