Alex Tabarrok has written what might very well be the stupidest thing I’ll read this year, about the Mexican Mafia. In it, he portrays their extortion as “taxes” because folks like him love to do the opposite and portray taxes as extortion. He takes it a little further than most, though, by claiming that the MM “became a kind of government” because some of their actions could be construed as protecting property rights or adjudicating disputes. Is that enough to make a government? Is it really equivalent to the torts and courts on which even the most free societies and markets depend? Does the MM provide anything equivalent to national defense – the one institution even the most radical government-haters seem to favor? No, they rely on prison guards, and beyond them the real military, for that. In fact, their whole enterprise depends on Real Government doing all the hard work of delivering victims by incarceration. Tabarrok concludes that the Mexican Mafia has “much to teach us about crime and governance” despite all this. I disagree. An unelected and unaccountable authority defined by ethnic homogeneity and engaging in “taxation” without representation would have no legitimacy as a government, and bears no resemblance to the one with which Alex is not so subtly comparing it. Even a meth habit doesn’t explain that kind of writing.
In other, slightly better, news, Radley Balko has finally figured out that the limited-liability corporation is really an exercise in political economy, and might not be truly compatible with libertarian ideals. Yeah, the “limited liability” part, unaccompanied by anything in return for that governmental favor, kind of gave that away. The corporate structure is to liability what an address in the Caymans is to taxation. Many people have recognized that for years. They’ve suggested that, if we’re going to break the relationship between profit and risk (which real free-market theory tells us is essential), we should at least try to limit or recover the losses that result. Do you suppose that whole careers spent attacking such people as socialist might explain why normal people see “libertarian” as nothing to do with free markets? Of course, the comments to Radley’s article make it quite clear that even asking an innocent question is viewed as heresy. Ours is not to question. Ours is only to accept our position below the New Aristocracy in Washington and Wall Street.
Ayup.
I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with you completely before. And I know those two critters’ past work very well indeed. Balko is a world treasure on civil liberties for all against the authoritarian state though; it’s just his economics that are stupid/insane. Tabarrok has exactly zero redeeming virtues.
Absolutely. I’m ambivalent about Balko in exactly the same way, but couldn’t have said it better than you did.
‘An unelected and unaccountable authority defined by ethnic homogeneity and engaging in “taxation” without representation would have no legitimacy as a government, and bears no resemblance to the one with which Alex is not so subtly comparing it.’
Without justice, kingdoms are merely great robber bands. – St. Augustine
To the man who has never seen any justice, robbers and governments are exactly equivalent.
“An unelected and unaccountable authority defined by ethnic homogeneity and engaging in “taxation” without representation would have no legitimacy as a government”
That sounds like a lot of governments throughout history. In fact, there are a decent number of governments now that don’t really qualify as democracies. China is the largest, and it has previously been a much scarier place, though throughout most of its history it has been much more developed than the Mexican Mafia.
The Mexican Mafia exists within prisons, sure. There have been criminal organizations which provided quasi-government functions outside of prison as well, with the most well known being the actual Mafia. And they often co-exist with government (in a place like Somalia used to be with no real government warlords could be thought of as either criminal gangs or the closest thing to government). There can be large governmental units which contain smaller ones, and it can be ambiguous whether to treat a unit as a mere appendage of the larger one or as autonomous. And if we step aside from states we can talk about “government” existing within private entities such as limited liability corporations, churches, clubs etc.
“An unelected and unaccountable authority defined by ethnic homogeneity and engaging in “taxation” without representation would have no legitimacy as a government, and bears no resemblance to the one with which Alex is not so subtly comparing it.”
I have issues with that argument. There are some governments out there that appear to conform to all of those parameters. Who elected King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? What sort of representation do women and minorities have in Pakistan, etc?
Possibly the term “government” is broad enough to encompass the Mexican Mafia even if you don’t see it that way? Admittedly the MM aren’t doing the entire job but they are small. Maybe it would have been better to call them an “agency of government” or some other diminutive term.
Meanwhile if you don’t understand this:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46360
then you don’t understand Mexico.
I have to disagree with your take on the LLC, and corporate structure in general. The point of an LLC is, indeed, to limit personal liability for corporate decisions. However, the existence of an LLC (or any corporate structure) should not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for criminal behavior. Nor, for that matter, should corporations be treated as people – that’s one of the biggest issues we’re facing now. Corporations don’t have a right of free speech (though clearly an individual’s membership in a corporate structure, through employment or stock ownership, should have no effect on that individual’s rights). Corporations don’t engage in criminal activity – people do. If a group of people, acting as a corporate entity, engage in crime, then the corporate assets are legitimate targets of those who were affected by the crime, but the people responsible are the ones that should be in the dock.