Michael Huemer - Anarchy, Capitalism, and Progress

The host introduces Michael Huemer as a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado with more than 70 academic articles and eight books, the newest an introduction to philosophy, Knowledge, Reality, and Value. The conversation centers on an earlier book, The Problem of Political Authority.

Huemer says the problem is philosophical: what is the basis of the government's authority? He means two things. First, people usually think the government may give commands and force obedience in situations where nobody else could, including commands to do things you were not already obliged to do. Second, people think you have a moral obligation to obey the law merely because it is the law.

His illustration is a charity. If he collected money for the poor, found voluntary contributions too low, and forced people to pay, that would be extortion. He would go to jail, and most people would say he should not do it and that nobody has to pay him. When the government does the same thing it is called taxation and social welfare, and most people approve and feel obliged to pay. Huemer concludes that people grant the government a special moral status that puts it above ordinary people, and he asks why.

why do they get to do all this stuff that nobody else can do?

The host asks why the clash between ordinary ethical intuitions and political intuitions should be resolved in favor of the ordinary ones. Huemer answers that most people, when the issue is raised, see that government authority needs an explanation. They then try to supply one, and he claims none of the explanations turns out to be any good. The host adds that this gives a second intuition, that authority requires explanation, which competes with the first.

Huemer argues the two sets of intuitions differ in how contested they are. Not stealing money and not threatening violence to get it are reactions any normal person would have, whether Democrat, Republican or libertarian. That the state has authority is not uncontroversial, because a significant number of libertarians do not have that intuition.

To explain why many people still favor the state, he points to chapter six of his book, which offers explanations drawn from psychology. The most obvious, he says, is bias toward the status quo, for which there is independent evidence. As an example, people in societies with very different customs each tend to think their own customs are superior, which suggests they are biased toward the way things are done at home. He applies the same reasoning to mistaken moral judgments about the state.

The host objects that it is not self-evident that anarcho-capitalists outnumber people who think a neighbor may make you pay for services you benefited from but never requested. Huemer grants that anarcho-capitalism, the extreme version of libertarianism, is controversial and has few adherents. He maintains that there are still a substantial number of libertarians and denies that most of them hold that the state has a unique authority.

In chapter seven, Huemer argues, libertarians are united by skepticism about authority, meaning they apply the same moral standards to the state as to ordinary people. He jokes that libertarians who deny this have not read his book. His example is state killing: libertarians call it murder, while partisans of conventional views say the state should not have done it but will not call the perpetrators murderers.

to kill one man is a capital crime

Huemer ends the book with a passage from the Chinese philosopher Mozi, which he dates only loosely, as something like a few thousand years ago. Killing ten men multiplies the crime tenfold and killing a hundred multiplies it a hundredfold, yet rulers praise the greatest crime, making war on another state. Mozi compares this to someone who calls a little black black but a lot of black white, and concludes that rulers cannot tell right from wrong. The host finds it interesting to imagine holding political leaders to account as we hold individuals.

The host raises the book's discussion of Stockholm syndrome, where abuse victims feel loyalty to the abuser, and asks whether fear of authority makes people loyal to the government despite their routine criticism of presidents and policies. Huemer recounts the original case as he remembers it: a bank robbery in Stockholm, probably in the 1970s, in which hostages bonded emotionally with their captors. They believed the captors were protecting them from the police, and at the end they did not want to leave without the kidnappers, fearing police would shoot them. He recalls that one hostage started a legal defense fund.

He says the phenomenon recurs in hostage situations, and that FBI negotiators are trained to expect it. The government is not literally kidnapping us, he concedes, but he proposes a broader tendency for people to side instinctively with those who have power over them. He offers an evolutionary reading: such bonding may be a survival mechanism. As evidence it can work, he says the Stockholm kidnappers reported considering shooting the hostages but being unable to because of the bond.

On why people nonetheless criticize presidents, Huemer's guess is that they distinguish the government from the current office holder. Wanting the other party in power does not feel disloyal to the government itself.

The host pushes on people who call the government systemically racist yet want it larger, asking why they feel free to question its legitimacy. Huemer doubts they are questioning legitimacy in his sense. For him that would mean saying the state should have no entitlements ordinary citizens lack, so that if citizens may not tax each other, neither may the state. He adds that he does not think left-wing critics believe exactly that, and that he is unsure what systemic racism means, including whether it implies anyone is actually racist.

The Stockholm analogy is offered as speculation and as an acknowledged looser parallel, not as demonstrated fact about citizens' psychology. The status quo evidence is mentioned rather than cited, and Huemer himself says he is not sure he understands the objection about systemic racism.

The host relays René Girard's observation that Western academic support for the Soviet Union declined after Stalin died. Girard's hypothesis was that academics supported Stalin because of his violence rather than despite it: authority and violence are charismatic. Huemer is unsure the academics knew about the murders and suggests they may not have known because they did not want to know. He adds that horrible people are often charismatic to ordinary people, and that Stalin was probably one, though he never saw him.

They admire power.