Two Horns, One State

Weapons of Dialectical Destruction (WDDs) and the burgeoning market for liberty...

“The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” 

~ Jim Morrison 

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...

Many and varied are the rhetorical devices by which the well-intentioned public is hoodwinked by their conniving political overlords. Today, we take a look at a classic Weapon of Dialectical Destruction: The False Dilemma. 

Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke...  

A man is driving through the Irish town of Belfast during “the troubles.” At a traffic light he is confronted by an armed bandit who asks him: “Are ye a Protestant…or are ye a Catholic?”

Choosing his words carefully, the man answers: “Neither. I’m an atheist.”

The bandit considers this response for a second before asking: “Aye, but are ye a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?” 

The realm of human affairs is notoriously messy. Rarely do we abide by such neat and tidy categorizations, especially when it comes to that most problematic of earthly undertakings: politics. 

It is sometimes said that those on the so-called “left” assume those on the right have no heart...and that those on the so-called “right” think those on the left have no brain.

Libertarians, meanwhile, tend to agree.

The Market for Liberty

In countries around the world, card-carrying “conservative” politicians have been blasting holes in their countries’ budgets for decades. As for “inclusive” progressives, witness the disemboweled remains of any number of canceled liberal apostates, who failed to conform to the latest groupthink nomenclature of the day.

Meanwhile, when it comes to dropping bombs on people they will never meet in sh!thole countries they hope never to visit, the Uniparty is unanimous in its bloodcurdling chant: War for all and all for war!

The obvious question, therefore, is why sensible, private individuals put up with such a sorry parade of shrieking lunatics and profiteering psychopaths? Is there no other option? As our election-weary American readers are lately discovering, must every election descend into a rabid Tweedle-Dumb vs Tweedle-Dumber mud wrestle? Only to rinse... and repeat? 

Known variously as the either-or fallacy, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses or, more colloquially, plain ol’ black and white thinking, the false dilemma is both deceptive and destructive. First, because it lures unsuspecting minds into a misguided belief that their choices are limited to those offered and, second, because it attacks the creative process by which new ideas “come to market,” by slamming the door closed on alternative possibilities.

Consider the unlettered babble from the senator for Massachusetts, Elizabeth “2% Cherokee; 98% Harpy” Warren:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Implied here is the false notion that, without roads built by The State...there would be no roads. Without schools constructed by The State...there would be no education. Without the “unbelievable American system”...creative individuals wouldn’t be allowed to thrive.

In other words...

• Choose The State... or choose illiteracy.

• Choose The State... or choose dirt tracks on which to haul your goods.

• Choose The State... or nobody will help you...nobody will cooperate with you...and you will be alone, unable even to survive, much less thrive.

Textbook false dilemmas, each and every one.

Circular “Thinking”

Nowhere is a free market alternative presented. And it’s little wonder why. At the precise point the free market ends, the tyranny of The State begins. Nowhere do the twain meet. (And no, crony capitalism, state-sponsored corporatism, mixed market economies and the rest of the Frankensteinian abominations are NOT free markets.) 

As diametrically opposed forces, it is clearly in The State’s interest to see that free market activity is marginalized as far as possible, in order that The State itself might occupy ever more space in people’s minds and, by extension, in the economies we lowly proles are “allowed” to build.

So profoundly have certain false dilemmas bored their way into the soft cranium of the collective, that supposedly able-minded individuals have stricken the very possibility of free market cooperation from their mental map.

Indeed, some confused people even contend that, were we to ignore the iron-fisted directives of The State, we would promptly descend into a Mad Max-style dystopia, in which gangs of unchecked territorial monopolies roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wished.

Strange then that those same people would “remedy” this apocalyptic nightmare by supporting The State...that is, gangs of unchecked territorial monopolies that roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wish.

These individuals are sorely misled...fallen prey to the classic false dilemma. They are so misled, in fact, that they find themselves circling back to a position that sees them fervently supporting an entity that tirelessly labors to turn their worst fears into harsh reality. Worse still, they continue to mislead others by repeating such vapid nonsense.

Unlike The State’s obedient apologists, free market advocates don’t need to pretend to know the best solution to each and every problem – something F.A. Hayek called the pretense of knowledge. Rather, they humbly cede the discovery process to free individuals acting in their own self-interest. (And yes, that includes voluntary cooperation.) 

Moreover, the best among them pay close attention to unfettered market signals – price, profit, margin, competition, etc. – to exploit aberrations in the market to their own (and their customers’) advantage. 

Spontaneous Order

Argentine president, Javier Milei, described just such a process at the recent WEF coven, citing the important work of Austrian School economist, Israel Kirzner, in front of the witches and vampires gathered around Darth Schwab’s bubbling cauldron. Kirzner (still going strong after 93 years) comprehended the market as a dynamic process of continuous discovery, rather than a perfected, static equilibrium arrived at by means of some enlightened central planning committee. 

Market conditions change, Kirzner recognized, as new and improved processes impact the individual needs, desires and preferences of its participants. “The future’s uncertain,” as the American Poet Jim Morrison once observed, “and the end is always near.” 

When confronted with a problem deserving of our finest attention, therefore, voluntarists first ask, “Is there a peaceful, market-based solution here? Might, for example, freely-associating individuals work together to build schools, roads and bridges? Might free competition stand guard against coercive monopolies? Might the market process of creative destruction weed out inept and/or corrupt businesses, rather than reward them with stolen property?”

Like the election process itself, in which well-intentioned voters saddle themselves with the misguided obligation to choose the “lesser of two evils,” the false dilemma lulls individuals into thinking there is no alternative, no preferable option, no choice that does not, at least to some degree, rely on compromising their values and morals. No choice that does not involve the hired gun of The State.

No choice, in other words, that does not render them party to evil.

Voluntarism as an apolitical philosophy invites us to see beyond the iniquities perpetrated by the so-called political left and the right. Instead of a system based on force and coercion and violence, instead of extracting money from people for “services” by threatening to put them in cages, instead of ideas so popular they must be made mandatory… peaceful, cooperative individuals learn in time to welcome and celebrate a system of unscripted dynamism, such as here described by Hayek:

“Spontaneous order is a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation and trial and error.”

When it comes to political false dilemmas, we need not slavishly impale ourselves on one of The State’s two horns, but only to open our eyes to alternative possibilities. And where political revolution brings us, by definition, back to our point of origin... it is apolitical evolution that finally sets us free.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman