#F.A. Hayek

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Erec Smith

Published: Jun 13, 2023

In many social justice circles, especially ones dedicated to racial justice, individualism is considered a negative quality. Those who embrace this idea typically understand individualism as diversity, equity and inclusion consultant Tema Okun does: “a toxic denial of our essential interdependence and the reality that we are all in this, literally, together.”

Those who deem race a person’s primary characteristic may, either implicitly or explicitly, embrace and promote race essentialism: the belief that racial groups are monolithic, comprised of people who share the exact same values, beliefs, outlooks, fears and hopes. One’s status as an individual is secondary, tertiary or simply not taken seriously at all.

But Okun’s take on individualism is erroneous. Group identification devoid of true individualism is one of the main obstacles to real social justice because it suggests a dogma that, by definition, does not take into consideration the details and distinctions of an individual life. By extension, such group consciousness hampers our ability, as a society, to have generative conversations across ideological differences.

Fortunately, Okun’s take on this topic is not the only one. Classical liberals also have ideas about individualism. For example, what F.A. Hayek calls “true individualism” also includes the concept of interdependence, or the idea that each individual needs other individuals to some degree. No one can do it all on his or her own. Even a hermit living a reclusive life needs the surrounding ecosystem to survive. However, the fact that one can choose hermetic living over other lifestyles in the first place is a result of individual freedom.

In truth, Okun’s interpretation is the opposite of true individualism. The hyper-individualism she inveighs against is a strawman and not possible, even if people believe, contrary to their lived experience, that it is. Civil society would not work without acknowledging our interdependence.

Importantly, true individualism is not a rejection of group affiliation. It is a rejection of the idea that groups, especially racial groups, are necessarily monolithic and all-encompassing.

The main issue is “group consciousness,” but this concept should not be confused with an all-out dismissal of groups. As Duke University political scientists Paula McClain and her co-authors have written in a 2009 paper, group consciousness “is in-group identification politicized by a set of ideological beliefs about one’s group’s social standing, as well as a view that collective action is the best means by which the group can improve its status and realize interests.”

Most certainly, this is what Nikole Hannah-Jones meant when she tweeted there is a “difference between being politically black and racially black.” Although group consciousness applied to race is often called race consciousness, this is not what is meant by “racially Black.” Specifically, those who are race conscious abide by a particular ideology that involves in-group preference, out-group culpability for the in-group’s problems, and a disapproval of narratives and ideas that do not align with the group’s ideology.

What’s more, group consciousness is so ingrained that anything that happens to an individual in a group has, in effect, also happened to everyone in the group. Slogans like “I am Michael Brown,” for instance, exemplify this.

This is not to say that empathy is a bad thing, but existential identification with someone based on a trait like race is misguided and stifling, leading to what may be the most detrimental and erroneous aspect of group consciousness: linked fate. As McClain et al. explain, linked fate denotes the use of the social standing of a group as a proxy for one’s individual identity, i.e., an individual’s fate is inevitably and intricately linked to that of the group. Any individual that seems to escape this fate is considered an exception.

Sen. Tim Scott recently made headlines when he countered the idea of linked fate during his appearance on the daytime talk show “The View.” When confronted with the idea that successful Black people from downtrodden upbringings are an exception, he stated, “I believe America could do for anyone what she’s done for me: restoring hope, creating opportunities, and defending and protecting the America that we love. It’s such an important combination.” He concluded that the “exception” of Black fulfillment can be made into the norm through education.

“One of the ways that we can restore hope in this country is to focus on our education system. We have too many kids in poor zip codes trapped in failing schools. I want parents to have a choice so kids have a bigger chance.” Scott’s point is that one’s zip code is not one’s life sentence; fates are not existentially linked to such things. Sadly, for having such optimism about the power of individual gumption, he was sardonically labeled “Professor Positive” and someone who “doesn’t get it” by one of the show’s hosts, a well-to-do white woman.

In addition to politicians, like Sen. Scott, who denounce the idea of linked fate, the concept also has been debunked by behavioral science mainly because it relies on the idea that individuals who have the same skin color experience the world in the same ways. Scott’s insistence that Black achievement can be normalized regardless of background, combined with the critique from the behavioral sciences, illuminate the fallacious reasoning behind linked fate and group consciousness in general.

A salient difference between those who do and do not embrace group consciousness is a matter of what psychologists Dolores Albarracin and Amy Mitchell call “defensive confidence.” Individuals who feel they can confidently defend their ideas are less likely to embrace group consciousness strongly, if at all.

Those who do not feel confidence in defending their ideas may see group consciousness as a ready-made shortcut to thinking; the answer to critical inquiry or refutation is always already in some or all of the group’s ideological tenets, maxims and talking points. Those who embrace group consciousness do not have to think of ways to defend their ideas; the group does it for them.

Perhaps most importantly, people with defensive confidence seem more likely to entertain opposing ideas and, therefore, are more likely to understand and even potentially align with those ideas. Perhaps counterintuitively, individuals with the most defensive confidence are more likely to have their minds changed by opposing views simply because they are willing to engage them.

Not surprisingly, individuals who embrace group consciousness and enjoy a kind of group confidence are less likely to entertain opposing viewpoints. This suggests defensive confidence better ensures communication across differences than does group consciousness.

So individualism is not a symptom of a divided society but one of its remedies. It is more conducive to self-actualization (as opposed to group actualization), and it actually fosters communication across differences.

Defensive confidence—aligned with self-efficacy, agency, positive self-regard—is a kind of empowered individualism that, when not beholden to race or some other form of group identity, is more open to exploring possibilities ignored by those who fear scrutiny of their group-oriented outlook.

Such individualism is liberating and empowering, whereas group consciousness—even if it staves off fear and anxiety—is an ideological prison.

[classicalliberalleague]

fuck capitalism

Well, sadly I fear that is the depth of your intellect.

Capitalism is one of the single greatest accomplishments in history. It not only had reduced the number of people in poverty to one of it’s lowest levels in human history

But has created the most prosperity and growth in the standard of living.

Now is it a perfect system? No, nothing is, as long as people are involved nothing is perfect, but it is the situation with the least amount of suffering.

Are there problems like cronyism? Certainly, but such rent seeking behavior is seen in all other systems that have ever been tried and the exploitation and corruption seen there is always more harmful. (As you will find that there is loose relationship between corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index# and economic freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_economic_freedom)

Now, it’s hard to say that what you’re exact complaints are given the long and detailed nature of your complaint…but let’s go over some popular one:

1. You hate Trump and Trump=Capitalism…except no. An ideal form of capitalism (which like an ideal form of communism, I will admit will never exist) would be a place of absolute free trade. That is zero tariffs, open borders, few regulations, impartial government that does not seek to benefit your donors (and certainly not the executive’s pocketbook), and, my favorite very open borders. None of that is Trump. Trump is an eternal enemy of capitalism and I would be more than happy to see him tried for all his crimes against humanity and given a very final punishment.

2. You think there should be a bigger safety net to help the poor. The problem is that while there is some societal correlation in the past between those who advocated for lesser entitlement and capitalism and those advocated for greater entitlement and socialism there is no real reason these have to be correlated. The Gods of Capitalism F.A. Hayek (https://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Liberty-Friedrich-Hayek/dp/0226320847/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2RZQHLL2MN920&keywords=Constitution+of+Liberty&qid=1689567479&sprefix=constitution+of+liberty%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-3) and Milton Friedman (https://youtu.be/xtpgkX588nM) advocated for robust safety nets. Most recently Charles Muarry of AEI has advocated for the best option currently a strong UBI attached to universal health care voucher that would ensure all citizens are covered under the safety net (https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/-in-our-hands_105549266790.pdf). The problem is that when we talk about entitlement programs we need to look at them as to how large they are, how effective they are at helping people, and how efficient they are at moving dollars from tax revenue to dollars to help those who need it. Regrettably both he right and the left have focused their arguments mainly on size which has allowed for safety nets to become ineffective and inefficient…any educated reasonable capitalist (I can’t help moron how think capitalism means their bigotry even if it doesn’t) would want a highly effective and efficient medium sized safety net because it helps many people.

Now I could go on a lot of other things…but as you eloquent post has only two words, I feel you only deserve two points. Would you like to give a more detailed objection which I’m sure I can also refute?

Capitalism doesn’t solve every problem of humanity. No system will. But it has created vastly more prosperity than any other system ever conceived ever could, it has ended poverty for billions not created it, and until someone comes up with better variations it’s still the best option.

[nicklloydnow]

“Classical liberalism “had a good war.” In 1944, two seminal books in this tradition of thought were published. The first of these was F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, the other Omnipotent Government by Ludwig von Mises. They were complemented the following year by Karl Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies.

Hayek’s book soon became a classic, and it is still considered a force to be reckoned with. Mises’s book has been less fortunate. Yet it is an important contribution, for at least two reasons. On the one hand, Mises offers his explanation of what made German politics degenerate to the point of trusting her fate into Hitler’s hands.

On the other hand, Mises offers a complex understanding of the consequences of what he calls “etatism” in the international sphere. Mises uses “etatism” instead of statism because that word, “derived from the French état… clearly expresses the fact that etatism did not originate in the Anglo Saxon countries, and has only lately got hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind.”

(…)

The world parted from liberalism in two key ways. In a liberal world, “frontiers are drawn on the maps but they do not hinder the migrations of men and shipping of commodities. Natives do not enjoy rights that are denied to aliens.” One may think of perhaps the most extraordinary passage in Pericles’s funeral oration: Athens, he claimed, is open “to the world, and never by alien acts to exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality.” That sense of openness as an essential mark of a liberal polity is central to liberalism in Mises’s view (though of course he had a more inclusive understanding of political right). For him, embracing liberalism would be the only effective guarantee of world peace: any other solution than embracing free trade and open borders is bound to develop conflict between states.

(…)

If Omnipotent Government seems bitter, it does so because Mises thought “etatism” made conflict widespread and potentially unavoidable. “A democratic commonwealth of free nations is incompatible with any discrimination against large groups,” but modern politics thrive on such discrimination—which are apparent in trade and migration barriers. Etatism”must lead to conflict, war, and totalitarian oppression of large populations:” for Mises, it breeds conflict and thrives on conflict. “In our age of international division of labor, totalitarianism within several scores of sovereign national governments is self-contradictory. Economic considerations are pushing every totalitarian government toward world domination.”

Etatism breeds monism and intolerance. “The right and true state, under etatism, is the state in which I or my friends, speaking my language and sharing my opinions, are supreme. All other states are spurious. One cannot deny that they too exist in this imperfect world. But they are enemies of my state, of the only righteous state, even if this state does not yet exist outside of my dreams and wishes.”

(…)

While he was often dismissed as a laissez-faire ideologue, Mises’s explanation is historical and nuanced. He tracks the decline of the fortune of German liberalism and the rise of nationalism, trying to refuse easy and mistaken explanations. While he was deeply pessimistic about the spirit of the age (“It seems that the age of reason and common sense is gone forever,” he wrote to Hayek in 1941), his work attempts to be a logical, cold analysis of what happened.

(…)

Mises’s work is idea-centric: he attaches great importance to the fashions of the intellectual world. Politics is a matter of interests, but the dominant ideas in society make those interests intelligible to the very people who hold them. Ideas anticipate and draw the space of the politically possible. The prevailing ideas, in Germany, brought people to consider their nation as a “closed” economic system and to believe that its success depended upon other governments’ failures. “Etatism” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: “the most advanced countries of Europe have poor domestic resources. They are comparatively overpopulated.” As a trend “towards autarky, migration barriers, and expropriation of foreign investments” consolidates, they are bound to experience a severe fall in standards of living.

If “the old liberals were right in asserting that no citizen of a liberal and democratic nation profits from a victorious war,” when you introduce “migration and trade barriers” everything changes. The economy becomes a realm of conflict, not of co-operation. “Every wage earner and every peasant is hurt by the policy of a foreign government, barring his access to countries in which natural conditions of production are more favorable than in his native country. Every toiler is hurt by a foreign country’s import duties penalizing the sale of the products of his work.”

Had Germany adopted free trade and liberalism, these ideas would have gained center stage in continental Europe. But not only it did not happen: the fact that the entire world of politics was openly anti-liberal determined that possible opportunities to move in a liberal direction were never grasped.

A turning point was the end of WWI. “The main argument brought forward in favor of the Hohenzollern militarism was its alleged efficiency.” For Mises the First World War “destroyed the old prestige of the royal family, of the Junkers, the officers, and the civil servants.” By late 1918 “the great majority of the nation was sincerely prepared to back a democratic government.” But the Marxist elements of the Social Democratic Party withdrew their support for democracy, hoping to hasten towards the Revolution. Yet that created the impression that “as the conservatives had always asserted, the advocates of democracy wished to establish the rule of the mob.” Thus “the idea of democracy itself became hopelessly suspect.” For Mises, “the nationalists were quick to comprehend this change in mentality.” Very quickly German politics degenerated into a sort of war between “extreme” groups, Marxist and nationalist: “there was no third group ready to support capitalism and its political corollary, democracy.” Those who thought they were opposing nationalism were “fanatical supporters of statism and hyper-protectionism. Bt they were too narrow minded to see that these policies presented Germany with the tremendous problem of autarky.”

Such an ideological climate, together with the Marxists flirting, made for “a spirit of brutality” that gave “political parties a military character.” “If Hitler had not succeeded in winning the race for dictatorship, somebody else would have won it.”

(…)

The Nazis conquered Germany because they never encountered any adequate intellectual resistance. Mises insists that this happened because “the fundamental tenets of the Nazi ideology do not differ form the generally accepted social and economic ideologies.”

(…)

For Mises, what consolidated Nazism was the fact that statism was the hegemonic ideology in the Western world too. Instead of being inclined towards international cooperation and trade, other countries faced Germans in the way the Nazi expected—and that allowed them to grow consensus.

(…)

Mises’s liberalism in this book is, as always, adamant. “It is a delusion to believe that planning and free enterprise can be reconciled. No compromise is possible between the two methods. Where the various enterprises are free to decide what to produce and how, there is capitalism. Where, on the other hand, the government authorities do the directing, there is socialist planning.” But it will be wrong to take this for an uncritical endorsement of “real world capitalism.” He sees the emergence of a businessman’s syndicalism (crony capitalism, we would call it) as “something like a replica of the medieval guild system. It would not bring socialism, but all-round monopoly with all its detrimental consequences. It would impair supply and put serious obstacles in the way of technical improvements. It would not preserve free enterprise but give a privileged position to those who now own and operate plants, protecting them against the competition of efficient newcomers.”

Omnipotent Government may be seen by some as an overly economistic attempt to make sense of totalitarianism. Indeed, there was more to Nazis than their system of price controls. But it is precisely for this reason that it is such a fascinating read. Brutality, hatred and the pride some political groups take in aggression are traced back to a flawed understanding of the world, propelled by their rejection of liberalism. Omnipotent Government is a testimonial to the power of the economic way of thinking and to Ludwig von Mises’s analytical power.”

“Back on Feb. 16, the New Hampshire Bar Association held its annual mid-year meeting. This year the program was a little different. Instead of the usual continuing legal education event, the bar brought in two historians, Anne O’Rourke and Willliam Meinecke Jr., from the United States Holocaust Museum to look at how German lawyers and judges responded to the destruction of democracy and the establishment of the Nazi state.

Their presentation showed that the worst horrors of the Nazi regime did not arrive full-blown. Rather, the road to fascism was taken in gradual incremental steps, each one preparing the way for the next.

While German lawyers and judges might have opposed Hitler’s authority and the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, they failed to do so. Not only did they fail, they collaborated and interpreted the law in ways that broadly facilitated the Nazis’ ability to carry out their agenda.

(…)

O’Rourke and Meinecke pointed to a number of decrees by the Nazis that they used to consolidate their power and advance their program. After the February 1933 fire in the Reichstag, the German parliament, the Nazis suspended critical provisions of the German constitution, including right to assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

They also removed all restrictions on police investigations. They rounded up political opponents, particularly communists, socialists and social democrats, holding them in preventive detention and sometimes disappearing them altogether. Relying on the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Nazis held people without specific charges. Defendants had no right to appeal, no access to a lawyer or right to judicial review.

The German Supreme Court did not balk at the new power arrangement. Sadly, the court failed to challenge or protest the loss of its judicial authority.

Less than one month after the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Nazis enacted an Enabling Act that allowed them to promulgate and establish laws that violated the Weimar Constitution. Under the Enabling Act, they did not need the approval of then-President von Hindenberg or the parliament. The passage of law had previously required a two-thirds majority vote in parliament.

The Nazis prevented their parliamentary opponents from taking their seats, detaining them in camps. They stationed their thugs in the parliamentary chamber to intimidate remaining representatives.

The German Supreme Court did nothing to challenge the Enabling Act. The court saw itself as a loyal state servant, owing allegiance to Hitler. Law became a means to serve the Aryan race. What was defined as good for the race became good law.

In July 1933, the Nazis enacted another new law against the founding of new political parties. With this law, they outlawed all other political entities and made themselves the only allowed party in Germany.

When President von Hindenberg died in August 1934, Hitler assumed power as Reich chancellor and fuhrer. The oath of loyalty for all state officials was changed. Rather than pledging loyalty to the German constitution, a new oath required loyalty to the fuhrer.

(…)

By April 1933, the state ministries of justice suspended from duty all Jewish judges, public prosecutors and district attorneys. Also all professors of law who were Jews and those few who were not conservatives were driven out of universities and dismissed.

About this time period, the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg wrote: “A lawyer necessarily had to face at every turn the critical question of harmonizing peremptory measures against Jews with law. In fact this alignment was his principal task in the anti-Jewish work. Yet in the end lawyers, no less than physicians, mastered those mental somersaults.”

It is impossible to know what degree of ambivalence or conflict German lawyers and judges had with the Nazification of the law. Hilberg wrote that the Nazis were obsessed with a need for legal justification. Even with the death of due process and any semblance of individual rights, the Nazis craved the appearance of legality.

Years before the Holocaust, the German judiciary had already rationalized the absolute debasement of law at the service of the Nazis. Considering the early years, what came later cannot be too surprising. There was never any outrage about the systematic removal of Jewish lawyers and judges from the German legal world.

So what lessons can we learn from the German experience? Why did the lawyers and judges turn out to be so weak, pliable and accommodating?

First, I would cite the failure of critical thinking by both lawyers and judges. They offered themselves up to the Nazis to do their bidding. The legal profession proved to be either too conformist or careerist to take chances and rock the boat. Lawyers and judges played it safe to try to get ahead.

By going along, they gave the Nazis a big gift, what the historian Timothy Snyder has called “anticipatory obedience.” If lawyers and judges had said “no” that would have caused significant problems. The Nazis desperately wanted at least the appearance of lawyer/judge buy-in to give themselves legitimacy.

Sadly, as Snyder pointed out in his book On Tyranny, most of the power of authoritarianism was freely given. The Nazis’ rise to power relied on zealous support from German conservatives and nationalists in the courts.

There was a massive failure of professional ethics. Somehow doing the right thing was replaced by subordination to a demagogue. We should remember that lawyers were vastly over-represented among the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen were the death squads of Nazi Germany who were responsible for mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, Polish elites, communists and the handicapped.

The experience of German lawyers and judges shows the need for a genuinely independent judiciary, regardless of what political party holds power. Without genuine independence, justice as an ideal disappears. What is left is glorification of power.

In all that has been written about the Nazis, I find it surprising how little attention has been paid to the collaborationist role of lawyers and judges. In an allegedly rule-of-law state, the Nazis needed lawyers and judges. For Americans today, the German experience provides a sobering example of how a nation’s legal and judicial systems can be made to aid and abet a rogue regime’s gradual descent into barbarism.”

[zee-man-chatter]

Here is a really cool site depicting what happened when the US went off the gold standard. You can clearly see how using inflation, money was stolen from workers and moved over to the ultra rich. It also shows you what things cost back then relative to wages. Lot’s of graphs, but very informative!

[liberty1776]

To most people the issue of freedom of speech is a constitutional issue and a civil liberties matter.  But a number of free-market economists have written about it while insisting that one cannot separate political and economic freedom when it comes to freedom of speech.  Among them are F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. Friedman In a 1979 article entitled “The Economics of Free Speech”[1] Milton Friedman declared that “there is a clear and direct relationship between economic arrangements, on the one hand, and free speech on the other.”[2]  In a very Austrian-sounding argument, Friedman begins … Continue reading →

[loverofpaperwork]

F.A. Hayek Road to Serfdom

A sometimes quoted gospel of the conserative base in America is F. A. Hayek's work Road to Surfdom, usually quoted alongside other problematic works like the Black Book of Communism or Thomas payne's numerous works calling for separation from England. Problematic in the sense of being a highly persuasive text rather than academic. I would point out that Hayek disagrees with many aspects of American politics, especially the parties.

Hayek was born in Austria in 1899 and graduated from the college of Vienna after the First World War. He would later go to London for education in economics. I only point this out that he experienced England at the height of its colonial power, and Europe during a time of great political turmoil. His theories are likewise shaped and molded by the great maddening of the world. Communism itself would become popular in much of the world during this time and perhaps he saw it as a threatening force to the liberties of many of his countrymen.

His work is not a refutation of any government system, but a critique of government power. He believes that any rights enshrined to the people will naturally be surrender to the government in the course of business. That governments inherently require a subjugation of the rights of individuals in order to function.

So my issue with his theory is that he cannot model the behavior of thousands of different groups. His assumptions are invalid because people do not have inherent rights other to think for themselves and to die. All other privileges are social constructs, which is why countries have to keep spelling them out. What he calls the road to serfdom is *check notes* paying taxes? owning property? being able to use a bank? employees washing their hands after using the bathroom?

Hayek's extreme libertarian views undermine the value his work has. Economics theories are both mathematical formulas that explains markets, and legislative suggestions to politicians. I find it wise to ignore the proscription side of economics and focus more on how the math works, its assumptions are more important than its conclusions.

Every person performs complex economic value statements every day with how they spend their time and their money. A wise rule of thumb is that people do not act in their own best interest. Another rule is that when left alone, people tend to maximize happiness in the short term. Applying these two assumptions to government, then we can understand that long term projects must needs be influenced by the countries government. A group of individuals will not build hospitals, roads. factories, etc. if they can get something more useful now. This is one of the many reasons billionaires suck ass. They only act for their own best interest in the short term, like buy twitter, launch cars into space for no reason, build a metaverse that doesn't work, scam bitcoin, scam people looking to lose weight. The list goes on. But the actual important stuff is being done by the government.

What hayek calls the road to surfdom is just how human nature works. It isn't a bad thing. When I read it I thought it was going to be some sort of Ayn Aand kind of thing, and yep, it is basically academic Atlas Shrugged. it doesn't know what it wants to say, and it meanders all over the place. The funny thing is that Hayek had literal servants in London, and wrote a book about the road to servitude. I don't think he asked them about why they serve. Its capitalism at its finest being exercised in a class system. People serve because they want to survive, not because they surrendered rights to the government. Maybe that is what it looks like when examining multiple generations of people, but individuals when put to the sword often choose to live. Serfs existed in Europe and England as landless tenants living off the welfare of the lord, welfare being taxed most of their property every year. As landless individuals they had very little rights, but they weren't slaves. The lord controlled marriages, and often had exclusive rights to claim their children as servants/concubines.

So what did each individual surrender to the government on their own road to surfdom. According to Hayek, specific rights, but in reality, they choose to live instead of being slaughtered, or starved. They had a choice between life and death. This is what Hayek ignores in his book. He uses such a whitewashed version of what serfdom is and British history that the books message is lost. But to be fair it was inpolitic to talk about these kind of things in 1940's Europe, what with what was going on.

[bunkerblogwebradio]

Cypherpunks

Nos anos 1990 e no início dos 2000, os Cypherpunks, um grupo de criptógrafos, matemáticos, cientistas da computação e ativistas, muitos dos quais tinham influências libertárias (ou do tipo), trabalharam para criar um mundo melhor por meios pacíficos através da matemática e da programação. Embora a identidade do criador do Bitcoin permaneça desconhecida para o público, é amplamente conhecido que essa moeda digital apátrida é um resultado direto do trabalho dos Cypherpunks.

Em 1992, Timothy C. May, um autodeclarado criptoanarquista e membro fundador dos Cypherpunks, publicou um ensaio chamado “Libertaria in Cyberspace”. May escreveu que “será mais fácil formar certos tipos de sociedades libertárias no ciberespaço que no mundo real e físico das nações” e que “essas ideias ‘criptoanárquicas’ irão reduzir o poder dos Estados de taxar e coagir seus habitantes”.

May citou várias influências fundamentais dos Cypherpunks, entre elas os economistas F.A. Hayek e David D. Friedman, assim como a filósofa Ayn Rand. Mas a criptoanarquia como ideologia política já era um tema recorrente, e Ayn Rand era, segundo May, “uma das principais responsáveis” por isso. Ele escreveu que “o que [Rand] queria fazer com a tecnologia material (os refletores do Vale de Galt) é muito mais fácil de se fazer com a tecnologia matemática”. Mas a mudança social que eles desejavam fazer não era apenas algo passivo ou reativo. “Cypherpunks escrevem códigos”, escreveu Eric Hughes, outro membro do grupo, em seu “Manifesto Cypherpunk”.

A ideia de se criar um Vale de Galt criptoanarquista no ciberespaço era uma ideia intrigante. Em 1998, o engenheiro de computação e Cypherpunk Wei Dai escreveu um ensaio explicando como uma moeda criptografada, que ele chamava de “b-money”, poderia funcionar. Na primeira frase do ensaio, ele escreveu que era “fascinado pela criptoanarquia de May”, e que nessa ciberutopia criptográfica o governo era “permanentemente proibido e permanentemente desnecessário” porque “os participantes dela não podem ser vinculados aos seus nomes verdadeiros ou localizações físicas”.

Nick Szabo, outro Cypherpunk e cientista de computação, descreveu o Vale de Galt como um lugar onde “seria possível formar sua própria comunidade independente, declarando independência de instituições corruptas”, um lugar com sua própria moeda privada, onde a propriedade privada é protegida por meios não violentos e os contratos são garantidos.

Como o desenvolvimento de uma moeda digital emitida privadamente era o objetivo dos Cypherpunks, e como foram bastante influenciados por Ayn Rand, sabendo que ela falou muito sobre dinheiro, vale a pena rever alguns de seus escritos para deduzir o que ela teria pensado sobre o Bitcoin.

Anarquia

Conforme mencionado, o Cypherpunk Timothy May descreveu sua visão de um Vale de Galt no ciberespaço como uma “criptoanarquia”. Mas Rand descartava a anarquia como um sistema político, chamando-a de “uma abstração flutuante ingênua”.

Então, embora Rand e alguns dos mais influentes Cypherpunks imaginassem como seria uma sociedade mais livre – que apreciasse tanto o livre comércio quanto a interação voluntária –, eles certamente não teriam concordado acerca do nível mínimo de coerção para financiar, digamos, os tribunais e a segurança. Logo, se consideramos uma moeda digital privada como uma parte essencial da visão criptoanarquista, é difícil imaginar que Rand a apoiaria. Mas, analisando mais de perto as visões de Rand sobre direitos de propriedade e a moeda em si, podemos ter uma perspectiva mais aprofundada.

Direitos de propriedade

Rand escreveu que é apenas por meio dos direitos de propriedade que qualquer outro direito pode existir – “não há outra forma de resolver ou evitar um caos irremediável de visões, interesses, demandas, desejos e caprichos incompatíveis”.

No Bitcoin, conhecer algo (sua chave privada) é essencialmente possuí-lo. É possível, claro, confiar suas chaves privadas a um terceiro (em uma troca, por exemplo), mas isso não é só totalmente desnecessário quanto profundamente desestimulado entre os bitcoiners, como resumido no lema: “Se não são suas chaves, não são seus Bitcoins”. Então, embora seja possível obter Bitcoins forçando alguém a liberar suas chaves privadas, a natureza da funcionalidade do Bitcoin força a parte violadora a se esforçar muito para poder expropriar. Como tal, o Bitcoin muda radicalmente o equilíbrio de poder entre o indivíduo e o Estado, já que o Estado não pode bater de porta em porta tirando violentamente as informações das cabeças das pessoas sem falsificar a imagem pública que promove para si como um “fornecedor benevolente de bem-estar social”.

Indo mais longe, a portabilidade do Bitcoin permite que a riqueza se mova de um lado para outro do planeta sem limites. Também permite que donos de propriedades atravessem fronteiras fisicamente e levem suas riquezas consigo, já que Bitcoins não ocupam espaço físico, e suas chaves privadas podem ficar guardadas em suas mentes.

Em suma, o Bitcoin serve como uma forma radical de direitos de propriedade, e, como tal, é difícil imaginar que Rand seria contrária a ele.

Dinheiro

Quando Rand escreveu sobre dinheiro, sempre se referiu ao valor de criá-lo ao criar valor para os outros; distinguia entre dinheiro obtido por meios justos e dinheiro obtido por meios injustos (p.ex.: por meio de conexões políticas). Ela também nos deu uma indicação de que tipo de dinheiro considerava estável:

O dinheiro é a ferramenta dos homens que atingiram um nível elevado de produtividade e um controle de longo prazo sobre suas vidas. O dinheiro não é meramente uma ferramenta de troca: muito mais importante, é uma ferramenta de poupança, o que permite atrasar o consumo e comprar tempo para a produção futura. Para cumprir esse requisito, o dinheiro tem que ser uma commodity material que é imperecível, rara, homogênea, facilmente armazenável, não sujeita a amplas flutuações de valor e sempre procurada entre aqueles com quem se negocia [ênfase minha].

A partir disso, podemos concluir que ela teria apreciado a escassez do Bitcoin (com 21 milhões fixos de hard cap), o que facilita sua função de reserva de valor, mas teria criticado a volatilidade de seu poder de compra.

Em A revolta de Atlas, o personagem fictício Francisco d’Anconia fez um discurso apaixonado sobre o dinheiro, afirmando que “o dinheiro é feito – antes que possa ser saqueado ou distribuído – pelo esforço de todo homem honesto, cada um de acordo com sua habilidade. Um homem honesto é aquele que sabe que não pode consumir mais do que produziu”. Aqui novamente refletimos sobre a escassez real do Bitcoin, já que ninguém consegue produzir Bitcoins do zero para pagar por favores políticos (uma prática comum com as moedas fiduciárias).

O ouro é um tema recorrente na obra de Rand sobre dinheiro. Em seu livro Capitalismo: o ideal desconhecido, Alan Greenspan escreve um artigo intitulado “Ouro e liberdade econômica”. Ele escreve: “Ouro e liberdade econômica são inseparáveis...”. E “gastos via déficit são simplesmente um esquema para o confisco ‘oculto’ de riqueza. O ouro impede esse processo insidioso, tornando-se um protetor dos direitos de propriedade”.

Conclusão

Então, Rand teria gostado do Bitcoin? É difícil dizer. Ela faleceu em 1982 – muito antes de a maioria de nós ter ouvido falar da internet. Qualquer que seja sua opinião sobre Rand, não há como negar sua grande influência sobre os primeiros Cypherpunks que “escreviam códigos” em uma tentativa de décadas de criar uma versão do capitalismo laissez-faire no ciberespaço que ela firmemente defendia no mundo real.

Rand tinha coisas importantes a dizer sobre dinheiro e qual seria a forma moralmente justificável de obtê-lo (criá-lo). De fato, ela defendia suas visões sobre dinheiro de forma tão firme a ponto de orgulhosamente usar o símbolo de dólar ($) no peito. Se estivesse viva hoje e entendesse como o Bitcoin é uma solução técnica para o problema político de uma classe privilegiada que vive às custas daqueles que produzem, ela poderia adotar orgulhosamente o símbolo de Bitcoin (₿). Suas ideias inspiraram os próprios indivíduos que tornaram o Bitcoin realidade. Gosto de pensar que ela poderia se orgulhar disso.

Emile Phaneuf III

Possui mestrado (duplo diploma) em Economia pela OMMA Business School Madrid e pela Universidad Francisco Marroquín, bem como mestrado em Ciência Política pela Universidade de Arkansas.

[essayly]

Case Studies

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