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The Calculus
of Consent Revisited
by
Professor Walter Block
Economics
and Finance Department
University
of Central Arkansas
Conway,
AR 72035
501
450 5355
and
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Professor
of Economics
Sllinger
School of Business and Management
Loyola
College in Maryland
Baltimore
MD 21210-2699
2
The
Calculus of Consent Revisited
Buchanan
and Tullock (1962, hence BT) have a reputation as radical defenders of
private
property, markets, free enterprise, limited government and libertarianism.
While this
account
is to some degree correct1, the present paper shall argue that it is exaggerated. It
will
show
that their supposed adherence to these doctrines and philosophies is at best a
moderate, not
a
radical, one, because of numerous errors with respect to their theories of
democracy, ruling
class,
constitutionalism, contract, voting, methodological individualism, and the
relation between
government
and private enterprise.
Linguistics
Let
us consider BT's2 unfortunate
misuse of language. The most basic distinction in all of
political
economy is surely the one between actions that are coerced upon unwilling
victims, and
those
that are undertaken on a voluntary basis. The latter BT categorize as
"private," reasonably
enough.
But the former they characterize as "collective," surely a misnomer.
For the word
"collective"
implies that a group of people join together, on a voluntary basis, and do
something
en
masse. Clearly, a better choice of words to highlight this differentiation
would have been
"private"
for voluntary contracts between two consenting parties, and
"coercive" for those
arrangement
where some people act under the duress imposed by others.
As
for "collective," this, too, is a legitimate word in the english
language, and must
therefore
have some use or other. The most meaningful referent would be to the actions of
three
or
more people which cannot be analyzed into several two-way pairings; e.g., a
golf party or
dinner
and a movie arrangements. The distinction between collective and private would
refer
merely
to the number of people involved in a decision. This is not a world shaking
difference;
rather
it is one barely worth making. In any case, the two distinctions yield a two by
two matrix:
Private
Collective
Voluntary
A B
Coercive
C D
Here,
A stands for private voluntary actions, such as the purchase of a newspaper for
$.50.
There are only two participants, hence the private characterization, and since
there is no
force
or the threat of force, it is categorized as voluntary. B is also voluntary,
but here there are
three
or more participants which are not based on numerous pair wise agreements. An
example
would
be where a large group of people start up a golf club, or decide where to go
for dinner and a
movie.
The case of the ordinary firm would be an example of A; even though there are
large
numbers
of people involved, each of them, the employees, has a contract with only one
person,
3
the
owner of the business.
In
C, the interaction is coercive and private. An example would be Crusoe enslaving
Friday,
or one holdup man robbing a single victim. D is equally coercive, but here
there are three
or
more people who participate. Examples include tyranny of the majority, where a
larger group
forces
its will on a smaller group.
The
important comparison is between the two rows. Whether an act takes place on a
voluntary
basis, or where one party, no matter its size, physically threatens another, no
matter its
size,
is a matter of supreme importance. In contrast, the separation between the two
columns,
however
important for some purposes, is of far less account, at least philosophically
speaking.
Whether
force is threatened is crucial; how many people are involved, is not.
According
to BT,
"Collective
action is viewed as the action of individuals when they choose to accomplish
purposes
collectively rather than individually, and the government is seen as nothing
more than
the
set of processes, the machine, which allows such collective action to take
place" (p. 13).
But
this is disingenuous. It glosses over the vital distinctions made above between
force
and
agreement. Collective action, when accomplished through the intermediation of
the state, is
no
longer merely collective. Due to the police power of the government, it becomes
turned into
coercive
collective action.
States
Hoppe (1993, pp. 18, 19):
"What
has commonly been overlooked, though, -- especially by those who try to make a
virtue
of the fact that a democracy gives equal voting power to everyone, whereas
consumer
sovereignty
allows for unequal 'votes' -- is the most important deficiency of all: Under a
system of
consumer
sovereignty people might cast unequal votes but, in any case, they exercise
control
exclusively
over things that they acquired through original appropriation or contract and
hence
are
forced to act morally. Under a democracy of production everyone is assumed to
have
something
to say regarding things one did not so acquire, and hence one is permanently
invited
thereby
not only to create legal instability with all its negative effects on the
process of capital
formation,
but, moreover, to act immorally."
Democracy
BT
ask, "How shall the dividing line between collective action and private
action be
drawn?"
(p. 5). This would seem to indicate either that they do not take cognizance of
the more
complex
two by two matrix discussed above, or that their concern is with what we have
called the
unimportant
issue.
4
The
proof of this is their continual interpretation of collective decision making
in terms of
political
or democratic elections. The point is, this belongs in the coercive, not the
voluntary
sector.
Why? How can it be claimed that democratic voting is coercive? The obvious
answer is
that
the minority is compelled to accept the wishes of the majority.
But
the other side of this debate is not without its reply. It claims that all
participants in
the
democratic process have agreed to be bound by its decision.3 Therefore, there is no
coercion
involved.
Indeed, there cannot be. It is just as if a person purchased a newspaper for
$.50, and
then,
after being given the paper, refused to pay the agreed upon amount of money. To
force him
to
disgorge the coins would not violate his rights. On the contrary, to allow him
to keep these
funds
would be a theft from the vendor. In like manner, if a person agrees to be
bound by
majority
vote, and then balks when he loses the election, to compel him to honor his
agreement is
not
to violate his rights. On the contrary, to allow him to do so would be coercive
to the
majority.
Now
let us consider the critique. On the one hand, Spooner (1966) is definitive in
his
claim
that, as a matter of fact, the minority did not agree to be bound by majority
decision
making.
All evidence seeming to the contrary (willingness to vote, to pay taxes, etc.)
can be
interpreted
not as agreement, but as a defensive measure attempting to make the best of a
bad
(coercive)
situation.
Second
is Schumpeter (1942), who remarks on the type of democratic views espoused by
BT
as follows:
"The
theory which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or the purchase of the
service,
of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences
is from
scientific
habits of mind" (p. 198).
In
the view of Hoppe (1993, p. 13):
"The
most prominent modern champions of Orwellian double talk are J. Buchanan and G.
Tullock.
They claim that government is founded by a 'constitutional contract' in which
everyone
'conceptually
agrees' to submit to the coercive powers of government with the understanding
that
everyone
else is subject to it too. Hence government is only seemingly coercive but
really
voluntary.
There are several evident objections to this curious argument. First, there is
no
empirical
evidence whatsoever for the contention that any constitution has ever been
voluntarily
accepted
by everyone concerned. Worse, the very idea of all people voluntarily coercing
themselves
is simply inconceivable, much in the same way as it is inconceivable to deny
the law of
contradiction.
For if the voluntarily accepted coercion is voluntary, then it would have to be
possible
to revoke one's subjection to the constitution, and the state would be no more
than a
voluntarily
joined club. If, however, one does not have the 'right to ignore the state' -
and that
one
does not have this right is, of course, the characteristic mark of a state as
compared to a club
--
then it would be logically inadmissible to claim that one's acceptance of state
coercion is
5
voluntary.
Furthermore, even if all this were possible, the constitutional contract could
still not
claim
to bind anyone except the original signers of the constitution.
"How
can Buchanan and Tullock come up with such absurd ideas? By a semantic trick.
What
was 'inconceivable' and 'no agreement' in pre-Orwellian talk is for them
'conceptually
possible'
and a 'conceptual agreement.' For a most instructive short exercise in this
sort of
reasoning
in leaps and bounds, see Buchanan (1977). Here we learn (p. 17) that even the
acceptance
of the 55 mph speed limit is possibly voluntary (Buchanan is not quite sure)
since it
ultimately
rests on all of us conceptually agreeing on the constitution, and that Buchanan
is not
really
a statist, but in truth an anarchist (p. 11.)"
It
is even possible to go further in this criticism. For suppose that BT were
correct and
Spooner,
Schumpeter and Hoppe are mistaken concerning their views of the original
contract.
That
is, people did at one time unanimously get together and sign a constitution,
obligating all of
them
to be bound, thereafter, by majority rule (or what ever other voting
requirements were
stipulated);
and that this was not done, defensively, as it were under duress, a la Spooner.
It still
does
not follow that this "contract" is binding upon anyone, even the
signatories, let alone their
descendants.
In order for this constitution to pass muster, it would have to overcome one
further
hurdle,
that set by Rothbard (1973, 1982) for contracts. In his view, consideration is
absolutely
imperative
if an erstwhile "agreement" is to qualify for the honorific of
"contract." Without at
least
some sort of consideration passing hands from one party to another, what we
have is merely
a
"promise," not a contract4. And, while it would be moral for a man who promises a
woman he
will
marry her to carry through on his promise, this is not legally binding. Nor
would the
establishment
of a government be legally binding, based on mere promises, even if it were at
one
time
unanimous.
Ruling
Class
State
BT in this regard:
"We
shall also reject any theory or conception of the collectivity which embodies
the
exploitation
of a ruled by a ruling class. This includes the Marxist vision, which
incorporates the
polity
as one means through which the economically dominant group imposes its will on
the
downtrodden.
Other theories of class domination are equally foreign to our purposes. Any
conception
of State activity that divides the social group into the ruling class and the
oppressed
class,
and that regards the political process as simply a means through which this
class dominance
is
established and then preserved, must be rejected as irrelevant for the
discussion which follows"
(p.
12).
Now
this is more than just passing curious. Had BT given reasons for their
rejection of
class
analysis, commentators could have agreed or disagreed with them, and, in so
doing, made a
rational
choice as to whether to support this theory or not. But nowhere in BT are such
considerations
to be found. Instead, they content themselves with the mere announcement that
they
have ruled such theories out of court. Is this due to a "revelation"
(see BT, p. 4) of some
6
sort,
not vouchsafed to the rest of us?
Just
because BT will not consider this sort of analytic framework is no reason for
us to
refrain
from it. On the contrary, we do well in this context to consider the class
analysis of John
J.
Calhoun, no Marxist, he, who bases his analytic framework on the tax-subsidy
system. In his
view,
society can be divided into those who, on net balance, pay more to the state
than they
receive
from it, and those who pay less to the state than they receive from it. The
former are net
tax
payers, or the exploited; the latter are net tax receivers, or the exploiters
(Lence, 1992). It
would
be one thing if BT were to criticize this perspective; it is quite another to
reject it out of
hand,
without being able to point to any counter evidence, or lapse from logic in the
case.
The
puzzle is that BT have also expressed themselves as if they were themselves
Marxists,
or
at the very least libertarian Calhounians, when they refer to "preventing
the undue
exploitation
of one group by another through the political process" (p. 22). But if
there are no
classes,
how can one group organize with the purpose of exploiting another?
State
and Market
In
the view of many commentators, the government is the only entity in society
with a
legal
monopoly of force. The Mafia, the Blood, the Crips, and the Hell's Angels may
all use
coercion
as part and parcel of their everyday activities, but the law does not
legitimize such
occurrences.
The state, too, uses force, but it alone has the legitimacy which only the law
can
provide.
In
sharp contradistinction, it is illegal for ordinary business firms to
"take the law into
their
own hands." If faced with a customer who cannot pay his bills, it is
impermissible for a
corporation
to send out "enforcers" or "leg breakers" to ensure that
this does not occur too often.
Instead,
the aggrieved business must petition the state for redress, given the latter's
monopoly
over
the use of coercion.
But
this is not at all the perspective of BT. Instead, they are firm believers in
the view of
the
state as part of the market. They maintain that:
"The
market and the State are both devices through which co-operation is organized
and
made
possible... The individual enters into an exchange relationship in which he
furthers his own
interest
by providing some product or service that is of direct benefit to the individual
on the
other
side of the transaction. At base, political or collective action under the
individualistic view
of
the State is much the same. Two or more individuals find it mutually
advantageous to join
forces
to accomplish certain common purposes. In a very real sense, they 'exchange'
inputs in the
securing
of the commonly shared output" (p. 19).
Say
if you will that government is just another business firm. But realize that it
is rather a
special
type of business firm, one which enjoys the police power. Under these
assumptions, there
7
are
two kinds of firms: one which features the legitimate power to initiate
violence against non
aggressors,
and the others, which do not. But this is rather awkward. Much simpler is the
ordinary
english language usage, eschewed by BT, according to which entities with the
police
power
are called governments, and those without it are called corporations.
Public
Service
BT
are on record with the quite reasonable view that when people enter government,
they
do
not suddenly sprout angel's wings; that on the contrary, they maintain the same
self
interestedness
they display as participants in the market sector. For example, they state:
"... the
average
individual acts on the basis of the same over-all value scale when he participates
in
market
activity and political activity." And they specifically criticise
political theorists whose
views
"have been grounded on the implicit assumption that the representative
individual seeks
not
to maximize his own utility, but to find the 'public interest' or 'common
good.'" (p. 20).
All
well and good. However, then, how can this sentiment be reconciled with the
following:
"...
both men (Robinson Crusoe, Friday) will recognize the advantages to be secured
from
constructing
a fortress. Yet one fortress is sufficient for the protection of both. Hence
they will
find
it mutually advantageous to enter into a political 'exchange' and devote
resources to the
construction
of the common good" (p. 19).
Will
neither Crusoe nor Friday engage in "opportunistic" behavior? Will
neither attempt
to
get the other to contribute the lion's share to the common good, while he
contributes as little
as
possible, and instead benefits as a free rider? BT's depiction, as quoted
above, sounds as if both
men
did sprout angel's wings.
Political
Markets
BT
are very serious about the analogy between markets and politics. They go so far
as to
talk
of the latter in terms of "political markets." But they go even
further than this, likening
Adam
Smith's invisible hand to coercive collectivism:
"Adam
Smith and those associated with the movement he represented were partially
successful
in convincing the public at large that, within the limits of certain general
rules of
action,
the self-seeking activities of the merchant and the moneylender tend to further
the
general
interests of everyone in the community. An acceptable theory of collective
choice can
perhaps
do something similar in pointing the way toward those rules for collective choice-making,
the
constitution, under which the activities of political tradesmen can be
similarly reconciled
with
the interests of all members of the social group" (p. 23).
Another
analogy between political and economic market is that both are forms of
8
exchange,
and in each case the presumption is that these exchanges are mutually
beneficial.
Here
is the BT claim:
"The
economic approach, which assumes man to be a utility-maximizer in both his
market
and
his political activity, does not require that one individual increase his own
utility at the
expense
of other individuals. This approach (the Public Choice perspective of BT, that
is)
incorporates
political activity as a particular form of exchange; and, as in the market
relation,
mutual
gains to all parties are ideally expected to result from the collective
relation" (p. 23;
material
in brackets supplied by present authors).
This
is why BT claim that "the political process ... may be interpreted as a positive
sum
game"
(p. 24). This is perhaps their most basic core fallacy. The very idea that
politics, like
economics,
would be a mutually beneficial endeavor! A brief look at what goes on in
Washington,
D.C.5
should disabuse
even the most superficial scholar of politics of that particular
notion.
To be sure, there are beneficiaries. As it happens, most of the richest
counties in the
U.S.
are located within a few mile radius of the nation's capital. But a large part
of the "business"
of
the denizens of this city consists of transferring vast amount of funds from
some (the exploited)
to
others (the exploiters), with a significant percentage of the proceeds finding
its way into the
pockets
of the "transferrers" (Hill and Anderson, 19xx; Osterfeld, 1988).
There
is little doubt that what goes on in markets is indeed mutually beneficial.
Trade is
always
beneficial in the ex ante sense, and usually so even in the ex post sense. That
is because
the
commercial arrangements are at all times agreed upon by both parties to the
exchange. The
political
"market," in sharp contrast, cannot boast of such mutuality. On the
contrary, it is
earmarked
with predation, where one party (the net tax beneficiary) gains at the expense
of the
other
(the net tax payer).
Charles
Beard
Happily,
BT do not rest content with mere assertion. They instead consider a theory
contrary
to their own, that of Charles Beard. In their criticism, they charge him with
"the failure
to
distinguish two quite different approaches to political activity, both of which
may be called, in
some
sense, economic" (p. 25). The first is their own.
"The
second approach assumes that the individual is motivated by his position or
class
status
in the production process. The social class in which the individual finds
himself is prior to,
and
determines, the interest of the individual in political activity. In one sense,
the second
approach
is the opposite of the first since it requires that, on many occasions, the
individual must
act
contrary to his own economic interest in order to further the interest of the
social class or
group
to which he belongs.
"Beard
attempted to base his interpretation of the formation of the American
Constitution
on the second, essentially the Marxist, approach, and to explain the activities
of the
9
Founding
Fathers in terms of class interest. As Brown has shown, Beard's argument has
little
factual
support, in spite of its widespread acceptance by American social
scientists" (p. 26).
But
this critique is not without flaws of its own. First of all, an economic
critique of U.S.
Constitutionalism
need not rely on the view that social class, rather than self interest, would
be
the
primary motivating force. One can borrow a leaf from the Calhounian notebook, and
interpret
self centered activity in the political realm not in support of group
interests, but in terms
of
individual ones. Second, social class can be seen as a proxy for self interest.
That is, one may
support
one's own group not out of love for it per se, but out of the belief that this
is the most
efficient
means toward self aggrandizement. Third, there is an internal contradiction in
this
analysis.
The BT view of men not sprouting angel's wings when they enter public service
is
compatible
with what BT have to say about Beard. So why are they criticizing him, given
that he
does
no more than BT do themselves? According to the logic of BT's critique of
Beard, their own
theory,
too, is "Marxist."
Let
us put this into other words: BT claim that their theory utilizes "the
individualisteconomic,
or
the utility-maximizing assumption about behavior in the political process"
(p. 27).
Well,
so, too, does Beard's, if we interpret him sympathetically. If we do not, we
may still rely on
the
Calhounian class analysis to make essentially the Beardian point, that the
"fix" was in, with
regard
to the creation of the U.S. constitution; e.g., that this process was a product
of utility
maximization
applied to the political process. This is what BT's theory is all about. Why do
they
so
strenuously object to the very same theorizing when it appears in the work of
Beard, or of
Calhoun?
Methodological
Individualism
BT
announce themselves as methodological individualists. By this they mean to
reject the
"organic
conception of the collective unit." They see methodological pluralism as
"essentially
opposed
to the Western philosophical tradition in which the human individual is the
primary
philosophical
entity." Moreover,
"since
we propose to construct a theory of collective choice that has relevance to
modern
Western
democracy, we shall reject at the outset any organic interpretation of
collective activity"
(p.
11).
This
is all well and good, not only because it is consonant with Western traditions.
There
is
also the obvious point that there is no such thing as a "group will"
or a "group mind." If the
social
sciences are to study group behavior, they will perforce have to do it by
analyzing
individuals,
as they interact with one another6.
What,
then, are we to make of BT when they refer to "the objectives of the group
as a
whole."
They do so in the following context:
10
"Insofar
as possible, institutions and legal constraints should be developed which will
order
the pursuit of private gain in such a way as to make it consistent with, rather
than contrary
to,
the attainment of the objectives of the group as a whole" (p. 27).
The
obvious rejoinder is to cite the BT of p. 11 against the BT of p. 27. The point
is,
there
are no objectives of the "group as a whole." Only individuals can
have objectives. The
group
as such cannot. Or, to put this in another way, any objectives that the group
as a whole is
supposed
to have can either be reduced to the objectives in the minds of the individuals
that
comprise
it, or are nonexistent and nonsensical.
The
reference of BT to "the objectives of the group as a whole" is
rendered even the more
puzzling
by a passage that occurs a few pages later. Here, they state,
"Are
we to consider the collectivity as the decision-making unit, and therefore, are
we to
scale
or order collective choices against some postulated social goal or set of
goals? Or, by
contrast,
are we to consider the individual participant in collective choice as the only
real
decision-maker
and, as a result, discuss rational behavior only in terms of the individual's
own
goal
achievement? It is evident from what has been said before that we shall adopt
the second of
these
approaches" (p. 31).
How,
then, to explain BT's "the objectives of the group as a whole?"
Rationality
BT
defend the neoclassical position on this issue:
"To
judge whether or not individual behavior is 'rational' or 'irrational,' the
economist
must
try first of all to place some general minimal restrictions on the shapes of
utility functions. If
he
is successful in this effort, he may then test the implications of his
hypotheses against observed
behavior.
"Specifically,
the modern economist assumes as working hypotheses that the average
individual
is able to rank or to order all alternative combinations of goods and services
that may
be
placed before him and that this ranking is transitive. Behavior of the
individual is said to be
'rational'
when the individual chooses 'more' rather than 'less' and when he is consistent
in his
choices"
(p. 33).
This
may well be the traditional stance in this regard, but it is highly
problematic. First of
all,
how will the economist know if he is successful in his effort to "place
some general minimal
restrictions
on the shapes of utility functions?" Is there an independent criterion,
over and above
"testing
the implications of his hypotheses against observed behavior"? (p. 33).
Secondly, why the
transitivity
requirement? Why can't a person prefer a}b, b}c, and then c}a? If these are
truly
independent
events there is no logical reason to suppose that this cannot occur. It takes
place,
11
continually,
in every day life: on day one a person prefers apples to oranges; on day two he
chooses
organges over bananas; and on day three he picks bananas instead of apples.
Thirdly,
"consistency
in choices" implies a denial of the fact that these pair-wise comparisons
are truly
independent.
The implication, here, is that there are not three separate events: choosing
between
a and b, b and c, and then c and a. Transitivity implies that they all occur at
the same
point.
But it is impossible to make more than one choice at any given time. Fourth, BT
must
implicitly
assume that the individual who does the ranking cannot change his mind. And why
not?
Solely, it would appear, so that we can "test" the theory. But this
is only a logical positivist
fetish
(Rothbard, 1962; Mises, 1963; Hoppe, 1988, 1991, 1992; Blanschard, 19xx). Why
should
be
allow the strictures of this philosophy to deny that which we full well know is
true, namely that
people
do indeed change their minds?
Trade,
Economies of Scale
According
to Buchanan and Tullock (1971):
"...when
individual interests are assumed to be identical, the main body of economic
theory
vanishes. If all men were equal in interest and endowment, natural or
artificial, there
would
be no organized economic activity to explain. Each man would be a Crusoe.
Economic
theory
thus explains why men co-operate through trade: they do so because they are
different" (p.
4).
This
appears as if it should be true, but it is not. Even under the conditions
posited by BT,
exchange
would still occur. This is because of economies of scale, and the benefits of
specialization.
Two people might have the same potential to be a concert pianist or a brain
surgeon.
If they each do both, they will achieve an indifferent level of success. In
contrast, if the
first
spends all of his time on the one, and the second on the other, they will each
become far
more
skilled. But if they specialize in this manner, they will have to trade, even
though they also
have
the same tastes, provided only that they wish to consume both services.
Political
Truth
In
like manner, their analysis of "political theorists" (p. 4) sounds
like a truism, but is no
such
thing. In the view of BT: "Political theorists, by contrast, do not seem
to have considered
fully
the implications of individual differences for a theory of political decisions.
Normally, the
choice-making
process has been conceived of as the means of arriving at some version of
'truth,'
some
rationalist absolute which remains to be discovered through reason or
revelation, and
which,
once discovered, will attract all men to its support."
There
are several problems here. First, it is unclear what an explanation for trade
has to
do
with "truth" in politics. Certainly the one does not logically imply
the other. That is, one may
take
BT's mistaken explanation of trade in terms of differences, and combine it with
their view of
"truth,"
or the very opposite. In neither case would there be a self contradiction.
Second,
12
revelation
on the one hand, and either rationalism or reason on the other, do seem to be
at least
somewhat
incompatible. One wonders at the juxtaposition of these two very different
epistemological
categories, unless of course revelation is merely being wielded to cast doubt
and
aspersions
on the possibility of achieving "truth" in the political realm.
Third, we hereby confess
to
having a soft spot for this very doctrine. It is our belief, perhaps naive,
that one day all those
calling
themselves rational will subscribe to the free enterprise philosophy. If BT
dismiss this as
blind
faith, so be it.
Conclusion
BT
fail utterly to distinguish between collectivism and coercion, one of the most
important
distinctions in all of political economy. They think, in effect, that when we
wish to do
something
collectively, that is, with many participants, we must of necessity initiate
aggression
against
non aggressors. This leads them into a series of errors concerning anarchism,
ruling class,
the
analogy between economics and politics, democracy, contracts, public service,
methodological
individualism and rationality7.
References
Blanschard,
Brand, 19xx
Block,
Walter, Another look at the Calculus of Consent, forthcoming A
Block,
Walter, Constitutional Economics and the Calculus of Consent, forthcoming B
Block,
Walter, "On Robert Nozick's 'On Austrian Methodology'," Inquiry, Vol.
23, No. 4, Fall
1980,
pp. 397-444
Bolick,
Clint, Grassroots Tyranny: The Limits of Federalism, Washington D.C.: Cato,
1993
Buchanan,
James M., and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of
Constitutional
Democracy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1962, 1971
Buchanan,
James M., "A Contracterian Perspective on Anarchy," Freedom in
Constitutional
Contract,
College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1977
DiLorenzo,
Thomas J., and Block, Walter, "Is Voluntary Government Possible? A
Critique of
Constitutional
Economics," forthcoming
Hill,
P.J., and Anderson, Terry, The Birth of the Transfer Society, 19xx
Hoppe,
Hans-Hermann, Praxeology and Economic Science, Auburn, Al.: Mises Institute,
Auburn
University, 1988
13
1.
Compared to many writers, of course, they are this, and more.
2.
All otherwise unidentified page citations refer to this book.
3.
According to BT, "Our theory of constitutional choice has normative
implications only insofar
as
the underlying basis of individual consent is accepted" (p. 7)
Hoppe,
Hans-Hermann, "Austrian Rationalism in the Age of the Decline of
Positivism," Ebeling,
R.,
ed., Austrian Economics: Perspectives on the Past and Prospects for the Future,
Hillsdale,
MI.:
Hillsdale College Press, 1991
Hoppe,
Hans-Hermann, "On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of
Epistemology and
Ethics,"
Herbener, J., ed., The Meaning of Ludwig von Mises, Boston: Dordrecht, 1992
Hoppe,
Hans-Hermann, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in
Political
Economy
and Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer, 1993
Lence,
Ross M., ed., Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun,
Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, 1992
Mises,
Ludwig von, Human action, Chicago: Regnery, 1963.
Nozick,
Robert, "On Austrian methodology," Synthese 36 (1977) pp. 353-392
Osterfeld,
David, "'Social Utility' and Government Transfers of Wealth: An Austrian
Perspective,"
Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 79-95
Rothbard,
Murray N., Man, Economy and State, Los Angeles, Nash, 1962.
Rothbard,
Murray N., For a New Liberty, Macmillan, New York, 1973.
Rothbard,
Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.,
1982.
Rothbard,
Murray N., "Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent," in Logic
of Action II,
Cheltanham,
U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997
Schumpeter,
Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper, 1942
Spooner,
Lysander, No Treason, Larkspur, Colorado, (1870) 1966.
Endnotes
14
4.
I am grateful to Stephen Kinsella for pointing out the necessity of combining
the Rothbardian
contractual
analysis with the theory of the origin of the state.
5.
Or in any of the state capitols, or, indeed, in the councils of most cities,
towns and villages
(Bolick,
1993).
6.
For a criticism of Nozick (1977) on this point, see Block (1980).
7.
See also DiLorenzo and Block, forthcoming; Block, forthcoming A; Block,
forthcoming B;
Rothbard,
1997