Get a Compound

And here I thought the Free State Project was one big effort to make an entire state into a libertarian compound.

Alright, that’s enough snark out of me.

Governments deliver what people pretend to want. Free markets deliver what they actually want.

Funny, when I was young, I thought revealed preference was amazing, finally getting around the hypocrisy of people’s words.

Now, I am not nearly as certain that more choices always means increased welfare. People seem to be driven to do a lot of things that simply don’t seem to make them happier and that they regret doing even as they are doing them. In human “want” is multi-dimensional.

“If someone does something, this must be what they most want to do” is not the tautology that many economists would like to claim (although it’s got a healthy dose of truth).

People do choose to live in compounds. They’re called cities.

Isn’t the point with the “rent is too damn high debate” that people pay huge premia to live in community like east coast cities where zoning regulation prevents the decentralized equilibrium from prevailing?

Maybe when communities become too large, they get called governments and are perceoved as oppressive..

Bryan-

Doesn’t the existence of Chinatowns, Little Italys, and Russian Districts in cities provide evidence that there is something of a “compound mentality”?

Jon Murphy, good point.

“Koreans comprise the majority (52%) of the population of the borough of Palisades Park” (10,000 out of 20,000 residents)

Sounds like a compound.

Also, Utah is over 60% Mormon. Surely, many suburbs, small towns, and neighborhoods exceed this figure.

@ Chris, exactly, and this applies to virtually every other political organization as well–some good examples upthread. The question is not “why don’t more people live in Platonic ideals of strong communities?”, the question is “why don’t FEWER people demonstrably prefer to live around people like themselves?” Lots and lots of Christians live in mostly Christian neighborhoods. Lots and lots of Greens live in mostly Green (or Green-friendly) neighborhoods. Most of America, geographically speaking, is an American nationalist neighborhood; Bryan’s bubble (which, of course, is also a compound of sorts!) is the exception, not the rule. People don’t need to live in communities that were planned to be homogeneous, because the market produces unplanned homogeneous communities very effectively–and those are the communities in which we live, for the most part. See also the Schelling segregation model.

If you want to live on a compound, your main problem isn’t that you’ll get sued by hostile elements trying to crash your party.

I’m sorry but this is simply a false statement; there are government entities the entire purpose of which is to crash any such party with devastating lawsuits.

Excuse me, but this has to be by far the weakest, least convincing, and indeed outright absurd post Caplan has ever made. The obvious critiques have already been commented by others. It’s clear that people actually *do* tend to clump together with people who resemble them, so the whole thing makes it appear that Caplan lives in a hole in the ground. Why did he use the example of religion? It’s worth noting that a common conservative critique of modern society is its large scale secularization. You’ll see far more clumping along lines of professional and social status than along faith communities. That’s not a sign that people don’t long for community; it’s a sign that faith is less and less important to their sense of belonging. This is indeed troubling to religious thinkers, but Caplan seems to think it proves something about human nature. In reality, all it says is that modern life is a lot different from the way things used to be.

It’s not surprising at all that Caplan is oblivious to these things. I’ve been irritated many times by the way he glorifies hard core individualism. Not all of us libertarians are weirdos without any need for a greater sense of belonging than just ourselves and our families. This kind of post is the kind of anti-political philosophy that turns away so many intelligent people from the important features of libertarianism that the world needs.

Bottodorff:

Many of the comments, including mine, do not call for government imposition of community. What we are doing is pointing out government obliteration of community, and that, in this case, a particular libertarian doesn’t have all the facts.

This reminds me of the local movement, which of course doesn’t have good economic sense, but does have good intuitive sense. Transportation costs are just one cost among many and economies of scale are important right? Well, if achieving economies of scale has anything to do with making marginal revenue equal to marginal cost, what does government regulation/costs do? They make companies larger than they otherwise would be.
The local movement could be fertile ground for the libertarian movement, especially since they tend to learn stuff when they try to start a local business. But, no, libertarians are usually pretty damn tone deaf about this and just equate large corporations with good economies of scale.

Or look at how many mainstream libertarians are all for GMOs. Why? Shouldn’t it be consumer choice?

And for that matter, why not a little kick back against the anti-racists? Why not point out they should have been making government smaller so that they wouldn’t have to be afraid that the sky is falling if Trump gets in?

Community is damn near impossible. The closest approximation is a upper middle class consumer luxury good- an excuse to have dinner parties and perhaps do some charity work. If it becomes unpleasant, well they’ve got the money to avoid it too.

I am not sure about the revealed preferences argument here, but the last paragraph sums up for me the best reason for a “light on top” government power distribution. I even have a weakness towards world government because of it. I would love it if all people had the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/property”. What holds back that enthusiasm is the expectation that that world government wouldn’t stop at that.

I think much more important challenges to simple Libertarian policy solutions are 1) externalities (a market equating supply and demand for accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere), 2) collective consumption (living in a society with a more equal income distribution might be a desire for a kind of collective consumption), and 3) second best considerations (if lots of other prices are not equal to their fist best optima, is it a Pareto improvement to move price X toward its first best optimum?).

A strange post. As others have already pointed out, one can feel a sense of community with certain other people without living in a building or neighborhood made up exclusively of such people. And there is *a certain amount* of flocking together by birds of a feather: e.g., retirement communities, as well as some housing arrangements that exist only through the weak enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. I suppose your point is that the desire for deep belonging, while it exists, is *relatively weak* (and exists alongside conflicting desires, such as the desire to interact occasionally with diverse, even exotic, others).

You do provide a wonderful aphorism: “Governments deliver what people pretend to want. Free markets deliver what they actually want.”

Monasteries and nunneries.

Two points about them:
1. Many lasted for centuries, showing a revealed preference for strict communal living.
2. They became much less popular as living standards increased, showing the limits of that revealed preference.

Necessity is the mother of communalism.

Max L.

Isn’t there a large literature on assortive… everything?

People sort by race, educational achievement, income, etc. In terms of where they live, who they marry, where they send their kids to school…

So why would people build a literal compound when they can simply live in a certain neighborhood and accomplish more or less the same thing? Metaphorical walls (marriage, locally funded school districts, zoning restrictions, assortive everything) appear to be enough.

(See also Bryan’s piece on building and living in a “bubble.”)

Markets are superior not just to governments but also to charitable organizations, for the latter deliver (or pretend to deliver) what the donors, responding to social-desirability pressure, pretend to want for others.