The Disagreement to End All Disagreement?
Ever run into an agreeable libertarian? Don’t you
non-libertartarians feel too bad; they’re always
disagreeing with each other too. So figure that is
why they have elected maybe a whole dozen local
officials and state representatives since their party
was founded in 1972, and that amidst widespread
discrediting of government.
Rather precious few of them even get as far as the
lament of the Epistle, the good I wish to do, I do
not. Their basic idea is to replace a society of
coercion with one based on agreement. But how do you
get a society of agreement when its advocates disagree
with everyone and everything?
Unfortunately, for libertarians and everyone they
disagree with, agreement is pretty much taken for
granted. Agreements are routine in daily life. You go
into a store, select your items, and pay on the way
out. Or a restaurant, get your order, and pay on the
way out. No one really thinks about it, but these are
agreements. Once in a while it does not work, the rare
exception, actually. And if you disagree, you rarely
need to make a scene; you merely take your business
elsewhere.
Agreement in politics is routine too, to a certain
extent. There is even a "false consensus effect," per
Oxford dictionary of pychology, the assumption of
agreement beyond what actually exists. Politics is
ridden with the false consensus effect. Welfare and
warfare statists both have common if not fully
articulated understandings. They spout their political
lines and blithely expect the world to beat a path to
their door, whether they build a better mousetrap or
not. At least they have their own small gaggles of
active sympathy and blithe, passive assent beyond.
Disagreements are just as routine, for three reasons.
First, the common, prevailing idea of government is to
do things without seeking everyone’s agreement in
advance, in other words, to use force, however genteel
and institutional. Second, government is a monopoly on
the use of force; you cannot just take your business
elsewhere, unless you go elsewhere altogether. Third,
there are numerous approaches to government, largely,
as it turns out, over who gets the bennies.
And if you blithely disagr ee, you and your smaller
gaggle wind up disagreeing with every-thing. So, the
disagreement to end all disagree-ment, and really
passive assent beyond, but with the false consensus
effect still in full effect.
Is this hard-wired into human nature? See Leakey and
Lewin, People of the Lake: Mankind and Its Beginnings,
on the evolution of the human emotional and
psychological make-up over some two million years, in
bands of about two dozen.
To make food sharing work, there had to be
sympathetic emotions to impel mutual aid and
aggressive emotions to deal with cheaters, who are
reduced to tears by the band’s moral aggres-sion
(index entries under "altruism, reciprocal")
Figure primitive religion is largely fertility and
warrior cults, or collective sympathetic and
aggressive emotion. Figure, too, today’s welfare and
warfare states are essentially these same primitive
impulses in modern secular guise.
So, then, we supposed moderns are trying to run
diverse, far-flung institutions by group fiat, as if
they were close-knit hunter-gatherer bands of about
two dozen. And one little gaggle would undo this by
disagreeing with everything, trying to reduce the rest
of the world to tears with the same primitive moral
aggression that impels the mess in the first place.
For all the capitalism it espouses, it is oblivious to
the old business adage, "Win an argument and lose a
sale." Einstein said the bomb changed everything
except the way we think, libertarians too.
More’s the pity, too, since it is selling short its
own explicit philosophy, a society of contract between
willing parties, not of status, of willing party over
unwilling party. It is the non-initiation of force, to
use force only in self-defense.
It even has an extensive literature, that a society
of contract is more just and practical than a society
of status, on willing relationships being incomparably
superior to unwilling relationships.
One classic is Frederic Bastiat, The Law, that
redistribution of wealth fosters perpetual strife over
the bennies, a cconcept betrayed by perpetual
libertarian strife.
Is it like belling the cat, then, to put this into
concrete practice? Is there any way to rise above the
present impasse? Or can mere moral aggression undo
moral aggression?
Is there any way to cultivate agreement itself,
something beyond mere disagreement with coercion, or
with everyone and everything?
What sane, decent person really wants to coerce
others, anyway? Push welfare or warfare statists and
they proclaim force an unfortunate necessity, the only
way to get anything done and keep society on an even
keel. Only the purple people want coercion for its own
sake.
Agreement does not just happen, however, beyond the
false consensus effect. It is nowhere as spontaneous
as libertarians think, or take for granted.
Non-routine agreements take much work, much more than
spouting some political line and expecting
sympathisizers to come out of the wood-work. Not only
do you have to build a better mousetrap, but you have
to market it properly.
It means actively searching for areas of agreement,
in turn, understanding what is on other peoples’
minds. And, indeed, what is on one’s own, well enough
to redefine it and express it in other terms when
necessary. It means dealing with contrary opinions and
people with contrary opinions, not just preaching to
the choir. It takes "integratve intelligence," as
Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids:
Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, calls it:
"... A student has to know how to distill a body of
material to the essence or to put the pieces together
into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete
thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth
perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires
the ability to see things from at least two points of
view...." (p166)
Agreement is much more difficult when long habitual
practice is challenged. Unlearning is much more
difficult than learning and unteaching more difficult
yet. It is hard work indeed when common understanding
is lacking. It is not done by a mere process of
elimination, howevermuch has to be eliminated. And, of
course, it is certainly not done by mere petulant,
dead-end disagreement.
Not, to be sure, that it will ever be possible to
agree with everything. No one can possibly agree with
all the conflicting propositions out there.
Disagreement, however, cannot be a resting place or a
final destination, as it is for precious, peevish
political activists. It has to be a springboard or
steppingstone to something better, to the fullest
possible exploration of possibilities.
An agreement is a meeting of minds. How do we get a
meeting of minds when everyone in political life is
just trying to get his own way, whether by the usual
coercive, fraudulent government institutions, or by
mere abstract, disembodied moral aggression? To wit,
that libertarian classic, "Get your laws off my body!"

Do libertarians, or, for that matter, everyone they
disagree with, really, consciously think the rest of
the world is trying to make them happy or has some
obligation to beat a path to their door, whether they
have sold their better mousetrap or not? Or is this
just implicitly assumed, the proper way to spell
assume being a-s-s-u-and-me?
Or is it this just a hard-wired proclivity for social
fiat, whether forcible or not?
How many libertarians does it take to change a light
bulb? It doesn’t take any; the market will take care
of it. But the "market" is not some amorphous,
over-arching, impersonal power like the welfare and
warfare states are taken to be, impelling society on
their own extra-personal, super-human power. The
"market" is individual human beings seeking agreement
of some sort.
We need a new approach to human nature. Your fellow
human being is not some mere sap to be browbeaten into
coming out of the woodwork. His motivation is
something more than the rodeo steer that the cowboy
bulldogs. He is, instead, someone to be coaxed,
sometimes bluntly, into agreement. He is, in
capitalistic terms, a potential customer.
What does it take to cultivate him? As the judge told
the rapist, the difference between rape and rapture is
salesmanship. Rapture to one faction is rape to
another. Yet the professed goals of each are largely
worthy. How to reconcile them? That is the monumental
challenge .
People are constantly trying to get what they want,
to substitute the more preferable for the less
preferable, according to the central premise of
libertarian economics. Preferable to whom?
To political activists, libertarian or not?
Get what they want, but how? Hard-wired moral
aggression? People learn from experience, says a
theorem of the Austrian School, but it can take a
while, at least for political activists.
Maybe we have to start young. Child labor in the
family store is a superb way to instill the art of
agreement, a wonderful formative experience, per Shuli
Eshol and Roger Schatz, Jewish Maxwell Street Stories.
As for not knowing how good the water is until the
well runs dry, see Judith Wallerstein, et. al., The
Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, and Elizabeth Marquardt,
Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of
Divorce. We learn to relate to others, or not, by
seeing our parents relate to each other, or not.
There is much more to it than simply getting elected.
Meeting of the minds has to be a way of life. Cast
your whole vote, wrote Thoreau, not a strip of paper
merely. A minority is helpless when it conforms to the
majority, but is irrestable when in clings with its
whole weight.
While you have the psychology dictionary out, look up
"confirmation bias," the tendency to believe what one
already believes. Also see
"egocentrism,""individuation," and "deindivid-uation."
How do rugged individualist but morally aggressing
libertarians stack up on those?
Agreement is indeed work, but indeed incom-parably
superior to all the others. We need a new term and
concept to practice it: contractarian.
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