Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Does your argument against anarchy prove too much in the sense that globally different nations have anarchic relations with each other, and they can’t enforce a monopoly on each other, but they can coordinate to punish bad actors in the way you want protection agencies to do? Right? Like we can sanction North Korea together or something. I think that’s a very good point and a very good question, but I would rephrase my argument. You could say it’s my argument against anarchy, and it is an argument against anarchy, but it’s also an argument that says anarchy is everywhere. So within government, the feds, the state governments, all the different layers of federalism, there’s a kind of anarchy. There’s not quite a final layer of adjudication, the way you might think we pretend there is. I’m not sure how strong it is internationally. Of course, how much gets enforced by a hegemon, how much is spontaneous order? Even the different parts of the federal government are in a kind of anarchy with respect to each other. So you need a fair degree of collusion for things to work, and you ought to accept that. But maybe in a Straussian way, where you don’t trumpet it too loudly. But the point that anarchy itself will evolve enough collusion to enable it to persist, if it persists at all, is my central point. My point is, well, anarchy isn’t that different now, given we’ve put a lot of social political capital into our current institutions, I don’t see why you would press the anarchy button. But if I’m North Korea and I can press the anarchy button for North Korea, I get that it might just evolve into Haiti, but I probably would press the anarchy button for North Korea if at least someone would come in and control the loose nukes. Yeah. This is related to one of those classic arguments against anarchy, that under anarchy, anything is allowed, so the government is allowed. Therefore, we’re in a state of anarchy in some sense.…

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