"Why has there never been a coup within the United States?"
"Because it's the only country in the world with no US Embassy."
I see the things going on in Tunisia. I see the things going on in Egypt. I saw the things that went on in the former Yugoslavia and in the Caucasus. I saw even more of that in the Middle East. I know from history all the things that went on in South-East Asia, Central and Latin America, Korea, and the Caribbean. So far only Europe, Antarctica, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa have been more or less safe (although of course most of these places are being occupied by US troops to some extent).
Recently everyone here in America has been on a crazy rampage to promote "democracy" and "stability" in the Middle East - latest targets being Tunisia and Egypt.I recently read an article posted on MEP Daniel Hannan's facebook page (here). As much as I love and admire Mr. Hannan I could not help myself and responded to this article thusly:
Dear Mr.Hannan,
Democracy actually causes instability in regions which reject Western systems. Aside from the fact democracy is bad in principle, it is especially bad in places like Egypt, Tunisia, or the Middle East in general. Usually strong leaders can keep law enforcement functioning while democracy causes extreme factions to gain power (like in modern-day Iraq or Afghanistan - does anyone think those countries' governments wouldn't collapse if foreign troops left right now?). In Western countries democracy is also an affront to human rights unless it allows for secession (anti-state democracy). I am always on the side of Lord Acton on this issue - Democracy is tyranny of the majority.
I wrote this short comment because I sincerely believe in the Rule of Law. Where there is democracy there can be no Rule of Law. The two are mutually exclusive. In a country like Egypt democracy can lead only to the worst of consequences. As moderate and relatively peaceful that country is (largely because of Western influence), democratic initiatives could prove disastrous. After all Muslim majorities are not known for being very tolerant, and such a majority would certainly not be a (to paraphrase Lord Acton once more) benevolent dictatorship. I in no way want to cause offense to Muslims by this comment, but even observing Shi'a-Sunni relations gives some reason for pessimism in this situation.
We already know that in Tunisia it is Mr. Mohamed Ghannouchi who will take over power from the ousted President. Is this a good thing? This guy was Prime Minister under the old regime for many years and didn't seem to have a problem with it. Is he any less corrupt than his predecessor? That is to be seen, but I highly doubt it. I am always a skeptic where democracy is involved because I have as of yet never seen the masses make a right and informed choice when electing an official (sometimes the mob makes a good choice by chance - it just votes for the opposition because the government is so bad). I will make one exception to this rule - before women were allowed to vote socialists had little chance of getting into power (I do not want this to be interpreted as a sexist comment, it is just a fact of life...).
Immanuel Kant wrote back in the 18th Century that "Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty". Democracy is quite an evil institution - as I never fail to point out on this blog. But I also have a question for my great democratic friends, especially fans of universal suffrage: When will children finally be granted the right to vote? You seem to be overlooking this discrimination...
First, Kant supported a Republican government (read Perpetual Peace) in which there was no such thing as universal suffrage. He was referring to direct democracy, not a democratic Republican government, which is what we have.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, children will get the right to vote the day all children are emancipated from their parents. :)
Thirdly, Solidarity started in 1980. It wasn't until 1989 when reform began to occur. Give the Middle East time.
Anarchy does not resolve anything and is an unnecessary reaction to humanity's problems. Secession is not the same as freedom, and independence is not the opposite of oppression (oppression is not the same as dependence).
Whether or not you like it humanity has adopted a utilitarian approach to governing. Absolute monarchies rejected it, and as a result they were eventually overthrown by their citizenry. France, Russia, and Iran have experienced it, and Saudi Arabia will eventually, either through gradual reform or revolution. These natural elites are done with and it will have ended probably by the end of this century. Sorry, but its been the trend for the last 5 centuries.
As for gold:
http://buying-gold.goldprice.org/2008/01/what-happened-to-gold-price-in-1980.html
"In January 1980 gold was fixed at a record 850 USD an ounce while high inflation, strong oil prices , Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as well as the impact of the Iranian revolution prompted investors to heavily buy the metal.
Adjusting for inflation, meant the 1980 record high price was actually $2,079 an ounce at 2006 prices, while, according to precious metals consultancy GFMS, the real average price in 1980 was calculated at $1,503."
And finally something completely random from a band I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RUeMCZL3Q
"He was referring to direct democracy, not a democratic Republican government, which is what we have."
ReplyDeleteIf you knew what Republic government was you would know this is not true. It is a democracy with technocratic components ruled by lobbies just like European countries. It is nothing like what the founding fathers created (there are no inalianable for either states or individuals).
As for gold, it is prone to speculation as any commodity. However, in current circumstances there is no way it is anywhere near its potential value. The potential value is, of course, determined by how fast the Fed retards inflate.
"If you knew what Republic government was you would know this is not true. It is a democracy with technocratic components ruled by lobbies just like European countries."
ReplyDeleteThat is what I was referring to. Thank you.
Also, everyone knows the Fed already rules the world. At least for now. :)
Finally, you've convinced me of something in this respect: I agree with Kant on one issue: Natural rights do not exist as self evident (purely a priori), but rather are derived through reason (asserted with a posterior as always being synthetically a priori). This goes back to his blending of rationalism and empiricism.
Also, Natural rights are also alienable. There is no right you cannot sign over voluntarily or involuntarily, therefore rights are not inalienable. This is actually a really good web page on different axioms regarding rights:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
But I'm sort of surprised by some of Kant's writings. Of course, he shared the views of his time including scientific racism:
"In the lands of the black, what better can one expect than what is found prevailing, namely the feminine sex in the deepest slavery? A despairing man is always a strict master over anyone weaker, just as with us that man is always a tyrant in the kitchen who outside his own house hardly dares to look anyone in the face. Of course, Father Labat reports that a Negro carpenter, whom he reproached for haughty treatment toward his wives, answered: “You whites are indeed fools, for first you make great concessions to your wives, and afterward you complain when they drive you mad." And it might be that there were something in this which perhaps deserved to be considered; but in short, this fellow was quite black from head to foot, a clear proof that what he said was stupid. In the hot countries the human being matures in all aspects earlier, but does not, however, reach the perfection of those in the temperate zones. Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them and at the lowest point are a part of the American peoples."
People have their prejudices regardless of their philosophy.
You keep contradicting yourself. A while back you were telling me how you believe in inalienable rights and now you don't? I just don't understand how you can always just keep switching views all the time.
ReplyDeleteNatural rights are actually derived through reason and something that is derived through reason cannot be wrong. So how does this make natural rights any less strong than before? Nobody wakes up and suddenly realizes a priori that he has the right to free speech. But he knows there are certain synthetic a priori truths from which he can derive this right - so I don't exactly know what your point is? It's just like physics. Nobody wakes up knowing the law of gravity. But everybody can look at the basic principles around us and derive it directly from a priori. This is exactly how philosophy works - all of metaphysics is based on this way of thinking. We take certain premises and develop reasoned Laws which follow from them.
"A while back you were telling me how you believe in inalienable rights and now you don't?"
ReplyDeleteYou are right. You've convinced me that rights are not inalienable and because of that I've changed my mind. Rights are neither inalienable or natural. Nature is "might makes right." I have the natural right to kill, to rape, etc. And no one can take that right away from me, although I can be punished for it. Rights are a social construct.
"[F]undamental ethical conceptions are unanalysable, inasmuch as there is no criterion by which one can test the validity of the judgments in which they occur....[T]hey are mere pseudoconcepts. The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, "You stole that money," in a particular tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks."
"Rape is physically possible; if we derive natural rights from anything which can be done in a state of nature we could just as easily say there is a right of rape as to claim there is one of self-defense. Yet in our society we lock up anyone who acts on this belief. But I challenge anyone who believes there is a natural right of self defense to explain to me why there is no right of rape."
Again, I have the natural right to kill or rape. Anything which should be forbidden under a human rulebook (such as aggression) therefore cannot be a natural right, even if it is physically possible and can be justified by the same arguments used to support the idea of natural rights. But of course, anarchy does not "forbid" anything...
No, you do not have a natural right to kill or rape Rob, you just may or may not have the ability to do that.
ReplyDeleteYou have a very strange system of thought which I don't think I've ever seen anyone have. In today's world we have progressed at least past the sort of barbarism you speak of and have governments which are supposed to be based on natural rights as developed by the liberal philosophers. These right have of course been distorted due to socialist influence on the liberal movemement toward the end of the 19th century and mistakes in application, but no one would be evil enough to claim people have no natural rights. The American legal system is supposed to be founded on natural law, as was its British predecessor.
You obviously don't understand how natural law is derived - you seem to think it has something to do with "might makes right". Natural law is universal and has nothing to do with people's abilities, needs, or wants. It has nothing to do with the distribution of power in society (with people being smarter, wealthier, or stronger). It is like the law of gravity (I keep using this example but you don't seem to get it).
Natural rights are derived from absolutes of human action (solitary) and human interaction (communal). They have are an absolute measure of how the world around us works.
"It is like the law of gravity (I keep using this example but you don't seem to get it)."
ReplyDeleteYou seem to not understand how perfect this anarcho-capitalist world is, how little consequentialism, determinism, and other factors would play into it.
I am with Kant on this. There is no such thing as natural law (Kant characterized universal maxims as being derived through categorical imperatives, but did not make the mistake of causation in universal as being natural) as you have. You are throwing us back to the times of Aquinas.
"In today's world we have progressed at least past the sort of barbarism you speak of and have governments which are supposed to be based on natural rights as developed by the liberal philosophers."
This barbarism is anarchy. A person infringes upon your property. You find a local trusted arbiter (judge). He decides that the violated can be aggressive (in the name of justice) upon the violator in an "eye for an eye" fashion. And justice is delivered. The violated was raped. The violator will be raped too, etc. Actually the violator has lost all rights, so the local trusted judge can allow the death penalty, and he can be stoned...
"The sign of a natural law must be the universal respect in which it is held, for if there was anything that nature had truly commanded us to do, we would undoubtedly obey it universally: not only would every nation respect it, but every individual. Instead there is nothing in the world that is not subject to contradiction and dispute, nothing that is not rejected, not just by one nation, but by many; equally, there is nothing that is strange and (in the opinion of many) unnatural that is not approved in many countries, and authorized by their customs."
But screw what consequences would happen under this system. You violated my property (whether it was my mailbox or my person, it does not matter because it was still my ownership), after all, so you have no rights to begin with. Night.
"You obviously don't understand how natural law is derived - you seem to think it has something to do with "might makes right"."
ReplyDeleteMight does not make right. Right does not make might. Therefore we are left with nothing to conclude, as both statements are immoral. But then you make the jump of absolute measures of human action to natural law, like Decartes made the jump of "something comes from something" to God.
Also, your entire life after birth is predicated on the determined actions of others whether you like it or not (your parents raising you, society liking you or me enough to be inclusive) If you lived on your own property and no one around you allowed you to traverse their properties, you would die. You free will and ability to act has been reduced to the voluntary whims of others, who can determine whether or not they like you enough to cross let alone whether or not you have enough money. You could build a driveway, but nobody wants their roads to connect to yours.
Anarchy is just another form of natural selection, only based on socio-economic factors, and far more brutal. It could only occur in a state of close to perfect competition, where every consumer was rational, every person knew of the risk in purchasing it, and every person had equally free access to the market. And that is why it is called perfect competition. Because it collapses when based on human action in nature due to imperfections. You could say natural law=perfect competition and we should strive for that, but that assumes natural law and perfect competition can be measured. It cannot.
"The Austrians were the first to offer a good reason for the non-neutrality of money. Expansion of the money supply will lower (short-term) interest rates and therefore make investments more attractive.
ReplyDeleteThere’s an obvious implication about the (sub)optimality of market outcomes here, though more obvious to a generation of economists for whom arguments about rational expectations are second nature than it was 100 years ago. If investors correctly anticipate that a decline in interest rates will be temporary, they won’t evaluate long-term investments on the basis of current rates. So, the Austrian story requires either a failure of rational expectations, or a capital market failure that means that individuals rationally choose to make ‘bad’ investments on the assumption that someone else will bear the cost. And if either of these conditions apply, there’s no reason to think that market outcomes will be optimal in general.
A closely related point is that, unless Say’s Law is violated, the Austrian model implies that consumption should be negatively correlated with investment over the business cycle, whereas in fact the opposite is true. To the extent that booms are driven by mistaken beliefs that investments have become more profitable, they are typically characterized by high, not low, consumption.
Finally, the Austrian theory didn’t say much about labour markets, but for most people, unemployment is what makes the business cycle such a problem. It was left to Keynes to produce a theory of how the non-neutrality of money could produce sustained unemployment."
Also,:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/mises-praxeology-critique.html
First of all you are not with Kant on this. Also now you seem to have switched from liberalism to outright totalitarianism where nobody has rights and everybody is a slave. You're not even hiding it behind a veil of right like most modern neo-cons and neo-libs do.
ReplyDelete"This barbarism is anarchy. A person infringes upon your property. You find a local trusted arbiter (judge). He decides that the violated can be aggressive (in the name of justice) upon the violator in an "eye for an eye" fashion. And justice is delivered. The violated was raped. The violator will be raped too, etc. Actually the violator has lost all rights, so the local trusted judge can allow the death penalty, and he can be stoned..."
I think I pointed out to you earlier that this is how the American justice system sadly works. For example through eminent domain laws which give one person's private land to another private person because the second person can increase "overall utility". Where is the morality in that? It is exactly how you describe anarchy to be in the abover paragraph!
"Right does not make might."
True. But wouldn't you say that whatever comes out of doing the right thing is justice?
"But then you make the jump of absolute measures of human action to natural law, like Decartes made the jump of "something comes from something" to God."
Nowhere do I make any such jump. I am nowhere trying to prove the existence something immaterial which cannot be seen. You could use that argument and say: "You keep make the jump from observing falling objects to the law of gravity. This is like Descartes when he tried to prove existence of God." Your reasoning seems silly to me there.
"Anarchy is just another form of natural selection"
No Rob, LIFE is another form of natural selection. Anarchists just want a level playing field for the people trying to survive - with no privileges for anyone!
I don't know where you get from Natural Law to perfect competition. One is a market model which does not exists (well it does in the delusions of neoclassical economists) and the other is a Law of the world like Newton's laws. There are no parallels between the two.
I realize it is hard to understand that there are some things logic can tell us about the world. But not everything which is at work out there can be seen. There is indeed an "Invisible Hand". That hand is just the universe seeking equilibrium in accordance to its Law. As I said before, I can fully reply to all your faulty criticisms. But you cannot pretend my replies are not valid and remain living in your bubble of illusions. The world is not man-made and its laws are not man-made either. We are not independent from processes which effect plants, animals, molecules, and planets. Everything is part of that intricate design. That is just the structure of reality. We cannot comprehend a disorderly universe because such a thing does not exist. There are laws guiding everything and we must discover them for out own sake.
You think eminent domain is bad? Wait until anarchy...
ReplyDelete"Right does not make might."
"True. But wouldn't you say that whatever comes out of doing the right thing is justice?"
So your morality is "right makes might" when that is through justice. So then either justice is immoral or "right makes might" is moral. Take your pick. That is exactly what I have been saying when you claim that my morality is "might makes right" and I say "right makes might" and you say I am wrong either way. In your view I have no option but to be wrong because you've already determined that either choice is morally wrong. Thus, there is no choice for me to make that is valid.
"First of all you are not with Kant on this. Also now you seem to have switched from liberalism to outright totalitarianism where nobody has rights and everybody is a slave. You're not even hiding it behind a veil of right like most modern neo-cons and neo-libs do."
In your view, we all living in a totalitarian society right now because we all slaves and we cannot vote with our feet because we will always be slaves in any governance where we don't agree with the social contract. So what's the point of discussing this further. Classical liberalism is enforced through a social contract. A person goes to a country voluntarily, has a child, the child is already a slave to that social contract. There is no point to distinguish between minimal government and maximal government because they are both inherently more evil in your world view to the alternatives. You leave no other option between anarchy and a slippery slope descent into totalitarianism, so there is no point.
"I am nowhere trying to prove the existence something immaterial which cannot be seen."
Yes, you are.
"There is indeed an "Invisible Hand". That hand is just the universe seeking equilibrium in accordance to its Law."
The reason why it is invisible is because it does not exist and you only use the assumption that it does because you confuse human action (by nature imperfect), with physical law action (by nature perfectly absolute). The invisible hand only exists in perfect competition, I cannot stress this enough, where human beings have ideal access, absolute knowledge of all risks in any product purchase, and a number of other factors.
"The world is not man-made and its laws are not man-made either. We are not independent from processes which effect plants, animals, molecules, and planets. Everything is part of that intricate design. That is just the structure of reality. We cannot comprehend a disorderly universe because such a thing does not exist. There are laws guiding everything and we must discover them for out own sake."
You keep conflating man made actions as universal with physical actions in the universe as universal. But also, we can comprehend a disorderly universe because it does exist within our own, with many dimensions, many time space continuums, and many multi-verses beyond that are not bound to specific design even though they are not independent and often overlap. The universe is deterministic, devoid of any free will. The existence of light is not part of some intricate design, it is amoral as Kant would say. It does not exercise some part in an intricate design, unlike man who molds the surface of the world to his liking in intricate designs. The universe is amoral, not striving for any structural reality equilibrium in accordance with some moral law. You conflate human action in free market economics as striving for some balanced moral equilibrium in "Law" (buying the commodity of gold, or silver, or might as well potatoes as anyone is more moral or valid than another fiat currency), when it does not. The laws that guide human action and physical action is like comparing 1+1=2 to "The Gold (or silver or copper or potato or oil) Standard is moral."
"I realize it is hard to understand that there are some things logic can tell us about the world."
ReplyDeleteYour praxeology methodology derives all economic rational thought based off several a priori statements with imported, existential fallacies and one action axiom in particular. And any derivative from that derivative from that derivative must always be true. If that was the case, nobody in the world has ever earned a dime without being illogical or immoral because they refute the Austrian model. Your only argument is that any argument derived from authority is invalid (as you've said, like a baby stamping his feet at his parent) so I shouldn't cite this fact anyway. If a government exists, then the market is never free where the government exists, so any problems encountered are inadvertently the government's (that is always the anarchist argument). If the government did not exist, everything including the free market would be better. That is perfect competition, assuming humans are not imperfect in any one action they will otherwise receive a natural free market outcome where everybody will always be freely and fairly voluntarily employed and unemployment and inflation are non-existent and justice is administered in an ultimately subjective fashion.
"So your morality is "right makes might" when that is through justice. So then either justice is immoral or "right makes might" is moral. Take your pick."
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your point. Yes, if no rights are broken then the result cannot by definition be unjust. I don't know where you see "might" coming into this. Respecting other people's rights does not make you mighty all of the sudden. Indeed respecting rights is always moral and breaking rights is always immoral. That's the whole point of rights - they cannot be justly broken.
And if you think the law of human action is in any way not absolute then I'm sorry, you just don't understand what it is. I also think you don't understand what an absolute axiom is. It is a statement describing an aspect of the universe and cannot be contradicted by definition. There are very few of these Laws out these which are truly absolute. One example is the famous Kantian "all bodies are extended". You cannot conceive of a body which does not take up space, correct? The definition of a body is something that takes up space! So this is an axiom which says something about all bodies in the universe. Likewise Mises's action axiom speaks about all human action. I do not know where you get all this reasoning about action being "imperfect" limiting the axiom in any way. This axiom is true for all action however imperfect the action may be (and since all action is imperfect I think it's a redundancy to speak about "imperfect action" at all).
Also the "invisible hand" exists all the time. You saying that it only exists in perfect competition is like me saying that gravity only exists in a perfectly uniform universe where there are no other imputs. But gravity always exists, it is a property of all objects which have mass. Human actions have nothing to do with the actual law of nature. For example, evolution exists despite the fact we might want to genetically alter outselves at some point in the future. The existence of artificial stimuli would not all of the sudden make natural processes which impact on living beings vanish. It is clear to me that you really think the universe has no laws. Newsflash: we humans cannot change the laws of the universe! They exist, deal with it!
ReplyDelete"You saying that it only exists in perfect competition is like me saying that gravity only exists in a perfectly uniform universe where there are no other inputs. But gravity always exists, it is a property of all objects which have mass."
ReplyDeleteNo, the self correction mechanism in the invisible hand concept only exists in a state of absolute and perfect freedom (market anarchy or perfect competition) where all customers are assumed to be and have several things (like you assume natural law or private property rights do not apply to "primitives"). The invisible hand is determined by the actions and reactions of imperfect human beings with imperfect knowledge. Human beings do not determine through their actions what they want their gravity to be.
Man you really don't understand economics. I though you at least took some intro classes by now? The laws of economics ALWAYS work. That is just how the world works. For example supply and demand. Just because we have a mixed-economy now doesn't mean the law of supply and demand has been suspended. If I suddenly produce millions of watches, the price of watches will fall. Thus it will be less profitable to make watches and investment will leave that industry (or at least no new investment will come in). That is what the "invisible hand" is. Austrians, neoclassicals, and Keynesians all acknowledge this as correct. So your claim that the self-correction mechanism does not exist in our world is plainly false.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, what is this fixation you have with "perfect competition"? I never talk about such nonsense because it does not exist. It cannot exist in our world. So why even bother to mention it?
"Human beings do not determine through their actions what they want their gravity to be."
Wow, you wrote that. That is what I have been telling you all along since our first debates! So, since humans cannot change gracity, they cannot change economic laws like supply/demand either.
"Austrians, neoclassicals, and Keynesians all acknowledge this as correct."
ReplyDeleteNo they don't. I can cite Friedman, Keynes, Roubini, and Stiglitz for starters. In fact, here is Rothbard:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard104.html
You confuse the laws of supply and demand with the invisible hand. You misunderstand how the term "invisible hand" is used, just look it up. The invisible hand is not what encompasses simply supply and demand. You do not understand the tragedy of the commons. You do not understand that the invisible hand of supply and demand is not invisible. It never was.
"Second of all, what is this fixation you have with "perfect competition"? I never talk about such nonsense because it does not exist. It cannot exist in our world. So why even bother to mention it?"
Anarcho-capitalism has many (not all) identical constructs and (your Spencerian) presumptions in perfect competition.
"Anarcho-capitalism has many (not all) identical constructs and (your Spencerian) presumptions in perfect competition."
ReplyDeleteNo, you obviously don't understand the difference between a social system (like aristocracy, monarchy, or democracy) and a market model (like mixed economy, laissez-faire, or communism). Anarcho-capitalism is not any more hypothetical than democracy or communism. It has absolutely nothing to do with the way economist use the term "perfect competition".
Also, it seems you still don't know what the invisible hand is. The invisible hand are the collective rules of the marketplace (like supply and demand) which are unchangable. You cannot change the law of supply and demand - it's impossible! You don't cite anyone on this issue (unlike what you claim). I can cite multiple economists, Austrians or not, who agree with my definition. Everyone across the spectrum of economic science, from very axiomatic Austrian school economists to extremely mathematical economists, agrees with me. Just find me one definition of the "invisible hand" which does not describe it as a self-regulatory property of the market arising from inherent economic laws.
"You don't cite anyone on this issue (unlike what you claim). I can cite multiple economists, Austrians or not, who agree with my definition. Everyone across the spectrum of economic science, from very axiomatic Austrian school economists to extremely mathematical economists, agrees with me. "
ReplyDeleteOn the invisible hand (this is as mainstream of an economist as you can get):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/dec/20/highereducation.uk1
Your axiomatic presumption of what constitutes the "invisible hand" is built on the assumption that inherent market failures (such as natural monopolies) could never occur without government and just in the private sector. Keynes has already rejected the position that markets are self-adjusting (i.e. they adjust naturally because of some invisible hand in the private sector). That is the entire point of Keynesian economics, because markets do not entirely regulate themselves in the private sphere to reach maximal or optimal efficiency and often fail to do so.
"You cannot change the law of supply and demand - it's impossible!"
Keynes didn't do that either. He recognized the non-existence of the invisible hand in allocating efficiency in markets in every single occasion. That is where his interventionist policies arose from, because he recognized the inefficiencies of the private sector early on. Keynes did not have this free market fundamentalist dogma of absolute "invisible hand" self-regulatory inherent economic laws. Even the Pareto efficiency scale is the basis for welfare economics.
"It was never Adam Smith’s view to assume that the markets were self-regulating or that you don’t need any institution other than the markets. He thought the markets did a terrific amount of work and he was right. But it can also lead people astray and it leaves a lot of things undone, and I think if you look at the crisis, the causation of the crisis is connected with people being led astray. And the severity of the suffering from the crisis comes also from the fact that, quite often, the institutional structures to supplement the market were very underdeveloped and for ideological reasons which need correcting."
-Amartya Sen
Ah, Joseph Stiglitz. This guy wouldn't know the difference between his forefinger and his thumb. Taking aside the fact that argument from authority don't convince me anyway - I thought you were a big fan of Friedman not Stiglitz? And Friedman is probably the biggest proponent of the "invisible hand" in the 20th Century. If Stiglitz is so smart that he thinks "irrationality" can over-ride individuals' seeking their self-interest then good for him, it seems idiotic to me. And honestly it should seem idiotic to anyone. If people were on average irrational, the world market system would collapse immediately. I might pay $500 for a pair of socks tomorrow and a refuse to pay $1 for a Mercedes, true? But nobody does that kind of stupid thing. On aggregate people would still buy the Mercedes and pass up the luxury socks. I don't understand how anyone can be stupid enough to think people don't have their own interest in mind. I in fact never met anyone stupid enough (and I have even met communists and democrats of all kinds) not to be able to judge which groceries they can afford or can't afford. The market is not a chaotic structure. If it was, all models and predictions would be useless. There would be no trends and all data collected would be instantly unreliable the moment it was analyzed.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry you subsribe to views which have been considered obsolete by both people with a left wing (Adam Smith) and a right wing (Catholic economists) agenda for the past 300 years or so.
Personally I put my trust on most non-monetary issues in Milton Friedman. Even on the monetary issue Mr. Friedman came around toward the end of his life and conceded that the gold stadard's initial disadvantage - growing the money supply took resources and time - was incorrect because all the economists working at Central Banks earn far more money than it would cost to obtain the gold.
The problem with people like you is not that you believe in delusions - a lot of people believe in delusions and that is perfectly fine with me. The problem is that people like you think they have acquired the knowledge to make themselves better than others and micromanage the entire economy for everyone else. Well let me tell you something: EVEN IF YOU WERE CORRECT YOU STILL WOULD NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CONTROL MY LIFE AND THE LIFE OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE. I hope you take that to heart.
"Keynes didn't do that either. He recognized the non-existence of the invisible hand in allocating efficiency in markets in every single occasion."
And look where it go us. Get your head out of the clouds and look at how the world looks today because of Keynesian policy.
"I thought you were a big fan of Friedman not Stiglitz?"
ReplyDeleteThat was the day of my conversion :). But in any respect, Friedman still advocated monetary wise that the Fed should insure deposits in private banks as opposed to private insurers who would go under in a run on of the bank. And monetary policy is was Friedman is known for.
"If it was, all models and predictions would be useless. There would be no trends and all data collected would be instantly unreliable the moment it was analyzed."
Do you want me to cite more Keynesian economists (Roubini, Steve Keen, Robert Shiller, etc) who correctly predicted years in advance (going back to 2002) the Financial Crisis?
"The problem with people like you is not that you believe in delusions - a lot of people believe in delusions and that is perfectly fine with me."
What delusions? The minute there is a contrary methodology to Austrian you say it is somehow deluded anyway? Your delusion is that you believe anarchy could work and be sustainable and that any methodology, no matter how little you study it, outside of the Austrian school is automatically wrong and should be disregarded (like Hoppe).
"EVEN IF YOU WERE CORRECT YOU STILL WOULD NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CONTROL MY LIFE AND THE LIFE OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE."
This is babyish. Billions of people do not have the heightened oversensitivity. Most people are not concerned about a government existence because they are concerned with producing, not complaining. Its like "I want the right to my nuclear bomb because Obama has one too. I have a right to buy one." I hope you understand how negative externalities are dealt with in humanity, or how the tragedy of the commons prevents us from effectively privatizing the land surface of the Earth.
No, what I am concerned about is the height of a speculative commodity, food and oil boom driven in part by irrational fears of American hyperinflation for the last five years, a 10% demand increase worldwide in the last three years, a debt crisis, a cutting back of supplies due to weather patterns from Australia to Russia to China, and central banking policies in emerging and developed markets.
But go ahead, just keep blaming the Keynesian and central banking for all the world's economic problems. They're all socialists in one way or another. Even without a central bank they are socialists. Road socialists like Hayek (or as Hoppe put it "a Swedish socalist". Statist socialists like Friedman. Etc, etc, etc,...
I have a 5 page paper due midnight, so I'm closing this off. My main point: Why do governments exist? Because anarchy does not function well, unless you are using Xeer in Somalia and everyone is living with their own gun or defense firm. And anarchy does not increase the individual's productive capabilities. It has the opposite of the intended effect. As Mises called it, anarchy is a world of "saints and angels." And he wasn't talking about anarcho-socialists.
"This is babyish. Billions of people do not have the heightened oversensitivity."
ReplyDeleteThere is not much else I can say to you. I am glad I was able to explain to you what freedom and individual liberty are all about. I am very sorry that this explanation made you a follower of tyranny and aggression - the opposites of liberty and peace. I do not think you are wrong in your moral stance logically speaking. After all, if you accept the legitimacy of aggression and tyranny as orignal premises then all your conclusions are also correct. I am deeply troubled that a person like yourself could exist in our modern civilized world, but I guess that is just a flaw of human nature - some animalism and justification of brute force still remains.
"My main point: Why do governments exist? Because anarchy does not function well"
Making such a point is absolutely absurd. Anarchy functions perfectly well, it had for thousands of years until powerhungry violent individuals established the state as an organized apparatus of aggression. They then gave this artificial creature legitimacy through flawed theory trying to prove that "free" men accept government as necessary. You have, of course, rejected even this Hobbesian explanetation in favor of pure oppression (at least this is what I assume by your rejection of Natural Law philosophy).
The state as we know it has only existed a few hundred years. In feudal times no such thing was ever even conceived of. Please do not quote Mises in order to defend your position since you have already rejected his theory as false. I follow Mises, he was correct. He advocated secession of even the smallest units of society down to tiny communities of a few dozen people. I have nothing against this. My family (we are certainly more than a few dozen people) could in a Misesian world just secede and create our own government. You, with your advocation of tyranny, would force them to obey your will and not permit them to leave. As such it your philosophy which is violent and aggressive because it legitimates the use of force against ENTIRELY PEACEFUL AND INNOCENT AGENTS. Your views would not stand up to critical analysis by any ethical standards held today. Mine may be considered extreme and at some level not practical. My solutions to practical problems may be ridiculed or proven wrong in practice. But your system would die as soon as its description left your lips! No one would acknowledge any such violent system as moral in any way. So in this way, I still have the upper hand in persuading other people at least.
You also wrote that:
ReplyDelete"Your delusion is that you believe anarchy could work and be sustainable"
I acknowledge this may be a delusion. The difference between you and me is that I do not believe I have the right to use aggression to force others into my delusion (which I do not think is a delusion in the first place, of course). You, on the other hand, support fully the use of coercion and force on non-violent pacifist resisters who simply do not want to obey your will.
"You, on the other hand, support fully the use of coercion and force on non-violent pacifist resisters who simply do not want to obey your will."
ReplyDeleteIts like you think liberals are fascists. No we use reason to explain why the alternatives are worse. I've got to remind you that you are not Gandhi. You would use violence against any government official and say it is perfectly justifiable. The tax clerk, the accountant, the secretary, the president. After all, all are infringing on your rights, so if you didn't have to worry about self preservation, why not?
"You, with your advocation of tyranny, would force them to obey your will and not permit them to leave."
No, you can leave at any time as would anybody else. That is what Friedman termed "voting with your feet."
"He advocated secession of even the smallest units of society down to tiny communities of a few dozen people. My family (we are certainly more than a few dozen people) could in a Misesian world just secede and create our own government."
Matt, does your family really want to? Or is it just you and four other twenty year old guys? Does an entire community really want to? Or is it just one individual at Villanova? You are not your own community and you have no followers of anarchy here. You can join a community that wants to like I could join a community that wants to and begin a movement. Just use civil disobedience and don't resort to saying you have a right to kill a tax collector (even though out of self preservation you don't), because no one will ever listen to you and everyone will justifiably voluntarily ignore your ideas on this.
"No more than 5% of Americans need to stop paying their income taxes before a government can change, if not collapse."- youtube video of Reagan.
If there is one thing I agree with Objectivists about anarcho-capitalists, its this:
"Most Libertarians have learned, appropriately, to hide their anarchist streak. But one can still see their ideologies seeping through on some of their political stances. One issue in which you can see the anarcho-capitalist ideology play out is in regards to foreign policy. Anarcho-capitalists, and indeed most in the Libertarian party, are extreme non-interventionists. “I don’t hit you; you don’t hit me.” Be assured that no history, examination, analysis, or military expertise went into deciding this philosophy. It is based entirely in ideology. The Objectivist stance on the other hand is to design a foreign policy with American self-interest in mind. Take for instance the issue of a terrorist regime building nukes to destroy America. The Libertarian stance would be to wait until the nuke is dropped, and already killed thousands of people, until one is allowed to take action. The Objectivist believes, with proper intelligence, it is morally mandatory to take out the nuke before it kills millions. This is why Ayn Rand referred to the anarcho-capitalist follower as no more than "your average teenage hippie who hides behind a few slogans that overlook epistemology, metaphysics, and the history of ethics in favor of an abstract utopia."" -Ayn Rand Institute.
"Anarchy functions perfectly well, it had for thousands of years until powerhungry violent individuals established the state as an organized apparatus of aggression." -you
And then Ayn Rand herself:
“If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages."
"However, if an anarchist community is ever created and then the police attack and invade it, those people will have a right to self-defense Rob."
ReplyDelete"I WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING AGGRESSIVE."
I know you wouldn't. But I understand human nature. You wouldn't do it. The world would. Armed gangs or thieves, knowing you were not protected, voluntary or otherwise, would. And I could only sit on my property and watch it happen to the neighbor next door who was stupid enough not to voluntarily apply for defense. At any opportunity these thugs would vie for it, whether or not you were protected by a firm. Rothbard thinks rational natural law (theories) would be more appealing to humans than raw human nature. Not for 99% of humanity. That is also my main criticism of the idea of the invisible hand. It assumes rational expectations equilibrium as integral to human existence, such as trusting the average Joe with handling his own private nuke correctly. 99% of humanity follows a mob mentality, not an individualistic mentality. And anarchy would only draw that out even more so, and it would do so far more violently than ever seen.
"You would use violence against innocent people who have hurt no one."
If you are innocent your entire life, and say to me that you plan to kill me in my sleep one night, then I take preventative actions against you. I do not wait for you to kill me before anybody should respond. That is self-defense, even if there has been no immediate action against me but planned action. It is the same when a lone nut says he is going to assassinate the president or blow up a city. Do you want to wait until he goes from being innocent to being guilty and killing millions and then respond accordingly? Or do you want to prevent him from accessing a nuke by regulating its sales? After all, it is not the private firm's fault for selling a product, it is the lone nut's. So if the lone nut legally purchases a nuke, then who is going to stop him from freely using his product unless you take out his access to the nuke? You are like Rothbard on this: well let's first establish an anarcho-capitalist world and then we will see (same criticisms by Rothbard of Nozick.) Yes, we will...
When I'm talking about being a liberal, I'm talking about modern American liberalism, modeled after the central banking policies of Hamilton (not "Jefferson or Spencer" liberalism). Since government exists, it will always affect the economy directly or indirectly through its existence, and rather then destroying it Democrats and even Republicans accept it. Even the American libertarian organizations draw the distinction between "needing" to abolish the Fed and abolishing government. You are way, way, way too right wing for there to exist the word "moderation" in your vocabulary in terms of ethics (you're not an Aristotelian). I'm sorry, but there is nothing left to be resolved. You cry abolish government, and then you jump to the unicorn in the room as an alternative. Governments are necessary and inevitable, they have nothing to do with preserving your understanding of self-ownership, which seems to be that everything, including man's ownership, has a price to it you can stipulate in a contract, including his ability to exercise his free will. That was also a confederate argument.
Again, you are far, far, far too right wing. There is nothing that can be resolved.
"The world would. Armed gangs or thieves, knowing you were not protected, voluntary or otherwise, would. And I could only sit on my property and watch it happen to the neighbor next door who was stupid enough not to voluntarily apply for defense."
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly your problem. You think you are "protecting people" whereas in reality it is YOU and people like you who are that very gang of thieves you speak of. If you're such a crusader, why don't you protect me from yourself? You assume anarchists would be defenseless for some reason. Our community would have the weapons necessary to defend ourselves. And if not, that life. If it turns out that I was foolish then I would pay for it and Darwinism would win out in the end. But you cannot attack people in order to protect them. That is just some silly oxymoronic behaviour. It's acting like those people in Africa who think sex with virgins will cure AIDS. They think they are benefiting everyone and in reality they are raping and infecting innocent people. That is what the totalitarian state does when it forces people to buy its protective services "for their own good". Once you admit that acting "for people's own good" is legitimate, you have made the greatest error in human ethics. Why would it then be illegitimate to have socialized healthcare. And then to ban unhealthy food. And then to force people to exercise three times a week. All these things are "for their own good". The problem is that you cannot objectively state what is good for a person. Some people live by the motto "live free or die". One of my personal heroes is Kazimierz Pulaski who, as a American revolutionary officer, decided he would rather die from his wounds than be interned at a British hospital and become a POW.
Would you like me to tell you what do do all the time and everywhere? Make you eat only healthy snacks and exercise all the time? Ban all the things you find pleasurable, but which do not contribute to increasing the "utility" of society? This is what you are advocating and it is evil beyond words. I am not an animal to be herded, fed, and housed to other people's liking. I will never accept being such a thing, a simple animal living an animalistic existence.
"Again, you are far, far, far too right wing. There is nothing that can be resolved."
ReplyDeleteIt's not a debate about right or left. It's a debate about what basic human rights are. Once we know what they are, we will know how to protect them best.
ReplyDeleteI believe in the rights as defined by classical liberals and Catholic scholastic theologians:
1. Right to life.
2. Right to liberty.
3. Right to property.
As the great Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"I am not an animal to be herded, fed, and housed to other people's liking."
ReplyDeleteYou are already. And it would be the same if not worse in the private sector. Utility is what private sector employers use everyday. You have marginal utility, you have total utility, and you have the law of diminishing marginal returns, based on utility. It has nothing to do with government, and governments only uses it because the private sector uses it. Utility is used to determine in the private sector what the customer wants more or less of to be produced in society, from McDonald's to Home Depot to Toyota self-regulation. Take an advanced economics class.:
http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics5.asp
You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don’t initiate a recall.
If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don’t recall.
"You are already. And it would be the same if not worse in the private sector."
ReplyDeleteYour point of view makes me somewhat sick. How can you even compare the voluntary sector to the force sector? They have nothing in common at all. You don't even understand how government works. The government has socialized most of the private sector already. It works with utility not because of the private sector, but because it has its own agenda of growing its power over time. You don't even understand that if a car manufacturer calculates in such a way without informing the potential buyers of any defect then they are liable to be sued by each and every victim for an amount of money that would bankrupt them.
At least listen to Friedman before you make a fool of yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg
"How can you even compare the voluntary sector to the force sector?"
ReplyDeletePrivate courts would not work effectively. You could have 250 million different private courts with no objective standard, ruling in different ways under the same circumstances and set of facts.
Matt, justice is a force sector. Private courts or private judges assert justice through force. If you poke out my eye, a judge forces your eye. This happens even worse in anarchy. A kicks B, the local private judge says I have lost all my human rights from the aggression, and enforces stoning me to death. Another judge could decide I get kicked back. Another judge says I should just pay a fine. This is what happens in anarchy. There is no objective penalty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg
Matt, I've already told you I reject Friedman's premise of the invisible hand and rational expectations behavior. I had already seen this clip long before I wrote the last blog.
"You don't even understand that if a car manufacturer calculates in such a way without informing the potential buyers of any defect then they are liable to be sued by each and every victim for an amount of money that would bankrupt them"
Matt, you do not understand how negative externalities are dealt with by companies. If you have ever worked or been involved with a major company, like I have in construction, you would understand. In the end, it is all about one thing: MC=MB. Companies are not forced to reveal their risks in purchasing the product by the subjective desires of the consumers. They do not have to. If you got cancer from the environment, you do not know which room with asbestos you got it from, or whether it was from toxic smoke half way around the world. You smoke, everyone else smokes, I get lung cancer from second hand smoke, I can't sue because neither you nor I own the air. This is the tragedy of the commons. Austrians refuse to believe negative externalities cannot be internalized in the free market. They can be, but that depends on the consumer's rational expectations, which is as subjectively universalized as 250 million privately owned courts.
"You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don’t initiate a recall.
If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don’t recall."
That is what car companies use to calculate their profits. MC=MB. I did not make this up. Every major auto company uses this. This is why people are cynical about the pure "goodness" of consumerism.
"The government has socialized most of the private sector already."
This is the sort of ignorance I'm talking about by right wingers.
You are switching the topic again. This is what I mean. In debate we have to resolve one issue before moving onto the next. Functionality of private courts is something you cannot prove right or wrong until it is implemented. I can, on the other hand, prove that public government courts do not perform their function. So for me this would be a win-win debate.
ReplyDeleteYou should really think about what your values are. Whenever I challenge you on this topic you refuse to justify your viewpoint. I'm guessing this is because you yourself find blatant aggression against peaceful agents undefendable. You like to say I am not a Ghandi. Well if you admire Ghandi so much - why would you legitimize violence against such a man? Would all people who peacefully resist be destroyed in your idea of a good state? I think they would be imprisoned or killed on sight. In a libertarian structure they would not be attacked or aggressed against in any way. It was liberalism that freed Ghandi, not government tyranny which he fought against.
I am not f-ing switching topics. You say:
ReplyDelete"Your point of view makes me somewhat sick. How can you even compare the voluntary sector to the force sector? They have nothing in common at all."
And I respond by citing courts, and then you say wait until anarcho-capitalism is implemented and that it is a win-win because you cannot be proven wrong (this is Rothbard's criticism of any critic of anarcho-capitalism about proving it could not exist). Well, I can't prove unicorns don't exist either, and I can't prove they don't function well together in a unicorn heaven either. And we all like to believe in natural unicorn law too. And you know who came up with that: L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology around the same time as Rothbard founded anarcho-capitalism. 99% chance it would not exist for humanity, but there is always that 1% chance and it is a perfectly moral and non-contradictory foundation of existence.
"Would all people who peacefully resist be destroyed in your idea of a good state?"
No they wouldn't. That is what I share with other Americans and I am no different from Obama or McCain or even Bob Barr on this. An absolute monarch would just execute peaceful communist protesters in his private property kingdom. You would just hope that all protests would be minimized in an anarchist world.
"You should really think about what your values are."
Matt, the existence of government has very little if anything to do with morality, although it should be as moral as humanly possible. It is about necessity and inevitability arising out of human nature. That is what I've been trying to get at. And the corrupting forces of government arise out of individuals, and must be corrected by government's own self-regulation enforced by people individualistically and collectively. People's lack of caring about government responsibility is what is known as apathy, and this apathy exists in both the private and public sectors. I disagree with you on everything else as well, natural law, ideas of rights, free will, mind/body relationship, ideas of equality and liberty being oppositional in nature, the invisible hand, rational expectations, human nature, market failures, a priori axioms in human behavior, self-ownership, private property measurements, Lockean Homesteading, inalienability, and a lot more. And our methodologies of going about it are completely opposed to one another because I recognize the necessity of government existence to all other alternatives and I recognize the legitimacy of a separate "public" as well as a separate "private" sphere, and how the two should rarely ever overlap (private driveways overlap into public roads, insuring private deposits in private banking overlaps with the FDIC). By de facto existence, a government has both negative and positive influence in any economy, and that is the furthest extent I agree with the Austrians on this (well, the Austrians only acknowledge the negative part).
I have other stuff I need to do, so I'm closing off.
Rothbard did not found anarcho-capitalism. He just invented the name. Private Law society existed already in the middle-ages (albeit in a feudal form). Furthermore the first anarcho-capitalist societies were written about by liberals like Molinari. Secessionism of the Jeffersonians (founding Fathers in general) and Spencer is pretty much anarcho-capitalism since secession allows for units to break from the whole without military action.
ReplyDelete"Matt, the existence of government has very little if anything to do with morality"
Why do you think the government has nothing to do with morality? The government has EVERYTHING to do with morality! First of all it a body the existence of which can itself be morally evaluated (and has been by millions of anarchists throughout the centuries). Secondly, there has never been a government which has not legislated morality! Everything in life is about morality. Every action of every single human being in all of history can be evaluated through ethics.
" disagree with you on everything else as well, natural law, ideas of rights, free will, mind/body relationship, ideas of equality and liberty being oppositional in nature, the invisible hand, rational expectations, human nature, market failures, a priori axioms in human behavior, self-ownership, private property measurements, Lockean Homesteading, inalienability, and a lot more."
I will now take it upon myself to tell you that nobody else in the whole world agrees with you. I know this is an argument from authority and is therefore silly, but you seem to be into this kind of thing (you always tell me how no one agrees with me). The standard theory of government in today's world is based on all those things you have listed above. I am not kidding, look it up.
I just don't understand how you would want society to be organized. If there are no human rights is killing fine? What if everyone just started killing each other, would that be okay? I just don't understand how you can live in a world with no morality or ethics. This is what I mean by asking about your personal views - my question is driven by curiosity not any sort of contempt. I just don't understand how a world like you advocate could function in any way. I know you are averse to such examples, but how would you be able to say that what the Nazis did was wrong if you didn't have an objective moral standard?
On this objective moral standard.
ReplyDelete1. Right to life.
2. Right to liberty.
3. Right to property
Now according to your view, numbers 1 and 2 cannot exist without number 3. I reject that. I reject how you define "self" in self-ownership and I view all three rights entirely as independent and separate. I do not reject the actual rights, but your methodology of how they are characterized. Now, you say right to life and I agree. How do you define right to life in terms of functionality? Everybody has a right to life. Therefore, at the moment of birth, everyone has the right for their life to be protected. Do you see where I am going here? So, everyone has the right to have their health protected, from the moment of birth to death, because everyone has the right to have their life protected and have a right to life. Again, do you see where I'm going with this? Right to life is logically extended to right to health: if you do not have any health you are dead and you have no life. This is where the whole controversy of health care comes in. When a constitution guarantees right to life, does that mean right to health as well? If you have no health, you have no life and you are a corpse. It is a slippery slope. You could say government has the right to collect revenue, but that is a slippery slope from 20% tax to either 0 or 100%. I advocate a voluntary public option through a government trust fund (where no other funds or debt are used from other programs or taxes) on top of strong private competition where protective barriers are removed, but that is a slippery slope as well like in taxation. "Right to life" is a guarantee in the constitution, and you have to find a right balance as to how your government guarantees right to life, otherwise that guarantee could become either totalitarian or anarchic in nature.
"Nazis did was wrong if you didn't have an objective moral standard?"
Nazis could argue "right to life" is guaranteed only by the government, as written in their constitution as an objective moral law that must be protected and guaranteed. But I am not going to jump to the opposite logical extreme, which is just no overarching objective law that is enforced (i.e. anarchy).
When a person says certain unalienable rights, that implies some certainty in how they are defined, something human beings cannot agree upon in terms of governance. You claim that all rights are derived from natural law, and that natural law is defined through property rights, but then self-ownership is not inalienable to begin with, because you can contract it over at any time through a voluntary slavery. There are certain inalienable rights that exist, just like there are certain rights that are universal. But it is not an all or nothing realm, where either all rights are inalienable or all rights are alienable, or that all rights are property rights or no rights are property rights (even Rothbard believed that "self-ownership" is a certain inalienable right, while Block said that was logically inconsistent, as all rights are either alienable or not.) Well, because I disavow the original premise of all rights stemming from property rights, I disregard Block's logical consistency derived from what I consider a bad fundamental premise.
Anarchy does not resolve differences unless everyone follows an objective standard (such as non-agression or non-violence). Nobody would follow this under anarchy in order for anarcho-capitalism to arise. Anarchy would not allow for anarcho-capitalism to arise. On top of this, every other anarchist calls for the destruction of capitalism, so they would attempt to destroy it before it could arise and they would SUCCEED in preventing capitalism from flourishing, they would not fail. Their main motto shouting in Greece, UK, Spain, and Portugal is "Kill capitalism before it kills you" on top of "Kill the state that protects capitalism." They would institute violence against any aggressor (state) that protects private property. This applies to anarcho-primitivists, anarcho-syndicalism, anarchist communism, collectivist anarchism, insurrectionary anarchism, etc. And they would revolt in revolution to abolish all private property, including your own, and would never acknowledge your property as your own and in this they would call for arming themselves and attacking against private property protectors.
ReplyDeleteThe most broad consensus that mankind can achieve, which is neither entirely moral or entirely non-contradictory but inevitably necessary, is:
"Liberal democracy (bourgeois democracy or constitutional democracy) is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, the elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive. Political pluralism is usually defined as the presence of multiple and distinct political parties.
A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms: it may be a federal republic, as the United States, India, Germany or Brazil, or a constitutional monarchy, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada or Spain. It may have a presidential system (United States, Brazil), a parliamentary system (Westminster system, UK and Commonwealth countries), or a hybrid, semi-presidential system (France)."
Communists on the extreme left and absolute monarchies on the extreme right have failed to address the issues of mankind, and more violent bloodshed between the two extremes is what characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. Even the Chinese have adopted private property laws in 2007 and have voided "the abolition of private property clause" in their constitution. Ultimately, what defines a liberal democracy is competition between parties, and if that is denied by a figure such as a Nazi, it is no longer a liberal democracy. There is no way you can prevent extremism (such as Communism) in the world from arising through liberal representative democracies, because it is the only functional system that tolerates all sides existence and right to live (monarchs historically denied it to communists, vice-versa). An Islamic fundamentalist who wins popular elections must respect the rules he was elected through, and if he destroys them by dismantling any possible future election, then he never respected the very rules of liberal democracy that gave him the platform to rule. Only if competition for power in government is allowed does a liberal democracy exist. But your idea of privatizing that competition is far more worrisome and I think, far more deadly in a world of anarchy.
"everyone has the right for their life to be protected"
ReplyDelete"everyone has the right to have their health protected"
Those aren't rights. I wrote about this in a blog post about "right to stuff". I am sorry to burst your bubble, but you do not have the right to confiscate other people's things in order to provide yourself with protection and good health. This is called stealing. Unless you have the consent of the people (i.e. they enter into a contract with you) you can't take their things. This is why private property is a right. If you accept these things as rights, then you can logically extend that to everyone having the right to food, water, electricity, shelter, a couch, a TV set, and a bed. It is just idiotic to think that anyone would have a right to something they did not work for. You do not gain a special privilege just because you were born! You may be a thief, but I certainly am not! Therefore I refuse to accept any theft as legitimate, whether it is done by a single individual, a group, or an organized agency.
You reject my "methodology" (I don't know why any human being would reject logic, but okay) and yet you don't really have a different methodology to contrast it with. What you call "rights" are some sort of strange things legitimized only by your feelings and emotions.
"violent bloodshed between the two extremes is what characterized the 19th and 20th centuries."
Yes. I don't know if you noticed, but this is the "age of democracy". Democracies are the most violent states in the history of mankind. Liberal democracy is incompatible with my system of beliefs - that is why I reject it. Some people reject the Church because it is incompatible with their beliefs (they are atheists). The difference is that I can't just ignore the "liberal democracy" monster. It goes after me if I try to.
"It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one. But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even "conventional" aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.
ReplyDeleteThis is why the old cliché no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake. And if we will indeed use our strategic intelligence, we will see that such disarmament is not only a good, but the highest political good that we can pursue in the modern world."
-Rothbard
You see, even he makes an exception. When he says right to bear arms, he excludes some weapons as being rightful to bear because of the degree of possible harm that can be done, whether it is the government or the individual. Again you have the right to bear arms, except when it can possibly cause indiscriminate killings. Now Block would say that is logically inconsistent to say you have the right to bear some arms and not others, as it is ultimately determined by the individual. But I agree with Rothbard on the objective of worldwide disarmament.
"Yes. I don't know if you noticed, but this is the "age of democracy". Democracies are the most violent states in the history of mankind."
ReplyDeleteYou really don't understand history, like Hoppe you reinterpret it. Anyway, today, is Brazil at war with Peru. Is Denmark at war with Germany. Is Japan at war with Indonesia. Is Australia at war with South Africa or New Zealand. You do not understand that the 19th and 20th centuries that was not the age of democracy. That was the age of extremists fighting and saying other people (such as communists) did not have the right to live. That was the age of extreme right wingers and extreme left wingers trying to take down liberal democracies for their own ideologies. And that is why they are voluntarily ignored by society today, not because the government forces society to ignore them.
"Liberal democracy is incompatible with my system of beliefs - that is why I reject it."
Matt, the drinking age is incompatible with my system of beliefs, but I do not reject government because of it.
"The difference is that I can't just ignore the "liberal democracy" monster. It goes after me if I try to."
Matt, mankind would go after you if you tried to hide in a cave or on an island or be a recluse on your own property. And you would be dead by then anyway in anarchic state of nature.
Even Liechtenstein, a liberal democracy, is among the most violent states in the history of mankind just because it is a liberal democracy. You are way too, too, too right wing, and you hope for a utopia that has no fruition.
Why are you changing the subject again? We were talking about how you would justify using force against innocent individuals like Gandhi.
ReplyDeleteAs for nuclear weapons, I fully agree with Rothbard and Hoppe. This is why private protection agencies under anarcho-capitalism would likely not use such weapons (they cannot be targeted precisely at the perpetrator of a crime).
"Matt, the drinking age is incompatible with my system of beliefs, but I do not reject government because of it."
ReplyDeleteWell then you are making a grave mistake. You are letting other people enslave you. Obviously you do not value freedom.
"Matt, mankind would go after you if you tried to hide in a cave or on an island or be a recluse on your own property. And you would be dead by then anyway in anarchic state of nature."
This is a stupid statement because it has no proof in theory nor in historical fact.
"You do not understand that the 19th and 20th centuries that was not the age of democracy."
You obviously had some bad history teachers. In the 19th and 20th Centuries democratic states waged war against all other states. They continue to do so now. I don't see Cuba or Russia invading anyone while the USA and the UK are doing so all the time. Also using example is kind of stupid. I could say that, well, in the 15th Century there was no war between Italy and France. So what? This would not prove anything anyway. Historical fact are not proofs, they are illustrations at best.
"As for nuclear weapons, I fully agree with Rothbard and Hoppe. This is why private protection agencies under anarcho-capitalism would likely not use such weapons (they cannot be targeted precisely at the perpetrator of a crime)."
ReplyDeleteThis is your utopianism again. Try dealing with a group of Islamic fundamentalists who want to suicide bomb Tel Aviv or Norway or Liechtenstein in a state of anarchy before anarcho-capitalist protection agencies are established (they never would, but lets assume).
"Why are you changing the subject again? We were talking about how you would justify using force against innocent individuals like Gandhi."
Matt, I am not justifying government taxes as moral. I told you this the very beginning. I keep explaining this and you keep disregarding it.
And on this issue of Gandhi, I'd like to remind you it was Clement Attlee, a liberal, who authorized India's decolonization and met with Gandhi to address his grievances after Churchill refused to.
I have a lot of work to do, so I'm signing off.
"This is your utopianism again."
ReplyDeleteHaha, this is funny, I just wrote a post on utopianism.
"Matt, I am not justifying government taxes as moral"
You have been justifying taxes as moral since we began talking. The state = taxes. Without taxes the state could not exist. If you think the state is legitimate then you also think taxes must be legitimate. At least Ayn Rand "had the balls" to admit taxes must be made voluntary.
"Clement Attlee, a liberal"
You actually wrote this phrase. I think I wrote a post once about Clement Attlee. He was the biggest socialist in the history of Prime Ministers of the UK. Take a hint - he was a memeber of the Labour Party which is officially a socalist party.
And liberalism is the opposite of socialism.
"This is a stupid statement because it has no proof in theory nor in historical fact."
ReplyDeleteYou really don't understand human nature in theory or historical fact.
"They continue to do so now. I don't see Cuba or Russia invading anyone while the USA and the UK are doing so all the time."
The USA and the UK are not invading each other. That is the point of democratic peace, that democratic countries almost never go to war with each other.
"Matt, the drinking age is incompatible with my system of beliefs, but I do not reject government because of it."
"Well then you are making a grave mistake. You are letting other people enslave you. Obviously you do not value freedom."
The only way you can value absolute freedom is for their to be no currently existing government of any kind. That could only exist in a vacuum. And that is why anarchy has been rejected. I don't see any point in continuing this anymore, as you will never value any freedom as long as it exists in a government constitution or social contract. Society has voluntarily moved away from your misguided directions of what is a de facto form of utopianism.
"To allow 'freedom' in the sense that no-one finds themselves in a non-consensual condition as a result of transactions, would require
* the effect on all persons is known (predictability), or at least the risks to all persons are identified
* all those affected are informed, and
* all those affected consent.
Even in a small village with a barter economy these conditions are impossible, they are certainly impossible in a global economy. Libertarians must know that free markets are not 'pure' transactions in a social vacuum. The voluntary and informed nature of a contract can, in reality, never extend beyond the contracting parties. But its effects can. Even if every single transaction is voluntary and informed, the resulting society might disadvantage everyone. If, and only if, all its members have contracted to accept any and all outcomes of all transactions both individualistically and collectively, can it be a 'free society' in the sense implied by Murray Rothbard. Otherwise, the image of the voluntary transaction as a metaphor for society, is false and propagandistic."-Ayn Rand institute.
"Again, you are far, far, far too right wing. There is nothing that can be resolved."
"You really don't understand human nature in theory or historical fact."
ReplyDeleteWhat don't I understand about human nature? You can't just throw pejoratives at people - explain yourself.
I think you are the one who doesn't understand many things. Mainly, you don't know what anarchy is. Anarchy is NOT the lack of government, or a lack of politics, or a lack of organized society. Anarchy is the lack of COMPULSORY government, politics, or organized society. Anarchists reject authority not as leadership (I will gladly follow a great charismatic leader), but as tyranny (being forced to make the choice "follow me or die").
I still do not see how you would explain socialism and Nazism being evil. I think you are actually a National Socialist (although you just don't realize it). You certainly are a Nationalist (a statist who is willing to hurt innocents to preserve and strengthen his country) and a socialist (you do not oppose government interference in the economy).
Anarcho-capitalist are not utopians - far from it. It is statist who are actually the utopians. "Leave it to the government and if democracy works everything will be okay" is the silly motto of people like you. Napoleon was democratic. Hitler was democratic. Compulsory government is NEVER okay.
I love how you compare everyone who is not an anarchist to being no different in ideas then what a Nazi would be. Matt, you are more of a nationalist then I will ever be.
ReplyDelete"Hitler was democratic."
"...democracy is fundamentally not German: it is Jewish...this democracy with its Jewish majority decisions has always been without exception only a means toward the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership"- Hitler
Matt, taxes should be voluntary, but in any government even an Objectivist one that is rarely the case (and that is why any government is not inherently moral, because you cannot get 100% of any population to agree voluntarily on anything). The IRS takes the tax protester into account and 99% of the time does not attempt to force or audit a tax protester to paying (such as opposition to the Iraq war). About one tenth of one million Americans who have to pay taxes ever year do not and nothing happens to them. The rest of Americans choose to do. You think they are all brainwashed. They say they choose to pay and its voluntary on their part. You say it is propaganda. They say they have chosen to. You say they are oppressing you. They ask why. You say anarchism is the only moral alternative. And then they voluntarily ignore you, as they would ignore your self proclaimed property rights in anarchy.
"(being forced to make the choice "follow me or die")."
Don't follow anarcho-capitalism in an anarcho-capitalist world and you will die off quicker. Follow anarchy to achieve anarcho-capitalism and humanity will not have to follow anything objective unless the anarcho-capitalist states what an objective is. And it will fall on deaf ears, as human nature is not invisibly guided by natural law, but by nature.
You fail to understand what liberal democracy is. And that even the Tea Party can dissolve it if they truly believed they should. But not even they are as right wing as you. Not even the Patriots were as right wing as you, because they did not respect the rights of loyalists (either follow me or get out).
In fact, from wikipedia:
When their cause was defeated, about 20% of the Loyalists fled or were driven out of the US to resettle in other parts of the British Empire, in Britain or elsewhere in British North America, especially East Ontario and New Brunswick, where they were called United Empire Loyalists.
Most were compensated with land in Canada or through British claims procedures after their land was seized by the Revolutionary armed militias and the Patriots that refused to offer compensation.
The Jay treaty eventually came.
"You fail to understand what liberal democracy is"
ReplyDeleteEnlighten me. As far as I'm concerned liberal democracy is only a civilized system if it allows secession. And if it allows secession then we already have an anarcho-capitalist social order! Holding people in bondage against their will is just evil. I don't know how you can hope to legitimize it. That is why the "social contract" illusion was created. It tries to legitimate government by way of voluntary contractual agreement. Every theorist of government starts with the social contract because without acknowledging it as true all states would be seen for what they are - slave enclaves. The slaves can be sad (like in Cuba) or they can be happy (like in the USA), but they have all been equally brainwashed.
"Don't follow anarcho-capitalism in an anarcho-capitalist world and you will die off quicker"
Anarcho-capitalism doesn't kill people. If you want to have a state no one prevents you. Anarcho-capitalists just want to be left alone, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this to you.
And if you think the state is gentle with tax-protesters, tell that to Peter Schiff's father, Irwin Schiff, who got a murder-length sentence for so-called "tax crimes". This treatment is a very good example of government tyranny.
If you think taxes should be voluntary then say it openly and be consistent in your positions. But sometimes you talk to me and advocate rampant government tyranny - for example you reject property rights like only the most leftist communists do.
First of all taxes should be voluntary. George Washington even thought so when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Shay's rebellion led congress to enact the constitution after the failure of the articles of confederation to collect tax revenue for paying off war debt.
ReplyDeleteSecond, read the actual case file of what Irwin Schiff was convicted off. He is not the martyr you think of (he insulted the judge personally several times) and like Peter Schiff and Celente he is deluded in believing that IRS income tax law contradicts or runs contrary to the constitution.
"When confronted with contradictions in his conclusions, Schiff either
ignores the challenge or moves on to new exhortations of what the law
is and his omniscient 'expertise' on the meaning of income, taxable
income, the court's applying the wrong satndard, banking and/or
money."
"Schiff's belief system appears to be completely circular: within that
system Schiff is right, the government and the courts are wrong and he
remains impervious to rational discussion."
"Stints of incarceration for years, IRS levies for hundreds of
thousands of dollars, substantial sanctions and fines imposed by (1)
the Second Circuit for bringing frivolous appeals and (2) the United
States Tax Court for presenting groundless and frivolous arguments
demonstrate that Schiff's belief system is impervious to negative feed
back. Schiff's expectation seems to be that someday the federal courts
will experience an epiphany and acknowlege that he has been right all
along."
Dr. Patricia Rimbauld, Ph.D, who was Mr. Schiff's psychiatrist from 1987-1994, has stated: "This persecutory complex, given Schiff's history of manic depression and admittance into psychiatric wards as early as 1982, has only further reinforced Schiff's beliefs."
"On January 21st, 2004 Schiff filed a brief in the District Court of Nevada Civil Case CV-S-01-0895-PMP (LRL) claiming “Insanity” in his defense for failing to pay his Federal Income Taxes. He contends he "suffers from a mental disease or defect and exhibits symptoms of chronic severe delusional personality disorder"."
But I imagine she's part of a government conspiracy too. Like Peter Schiff said, the government makes up anything it wants to at any time and has been cooking the books for 40 years (and we should have had hyperinflation, Zimbabwe style, by now).
"The slaves can be sad (like in Cuba) or they can be happy (like in the USA), but they have all been equally brainwashed."
All I can say to that is I feel very sorry that you believe this. And with this master/slave mentality so ingrained in your psyche, there is very little that can be done.
And I do not reject property rights. Only your definition of them, like Schiff's definition as income tax only applying to corporations and not to persons or the "deflation always good, inflation always bad" caveman mantra.
Thoreau was a martyr for protesting the injustice of African American slavery and the cruelty of the Mexican American war. Like tens of thousands of people who did not pay their taxes for the Iraq war (and did not go to jail, I point out), I respect him. What Schiff did was realize he was logically wrong about the constitutionality of income tax, and then sneak his way out of his felony with a lesser penalty.
Insulting the judge who is sentencing you by breaking your human rights is not wrong. That judge was evil because he was enforcing evil laws.
ReplyDeleteOf course all "criminals" are psychotic, right? In the USSR they even had a "syndrome" like this and put people in mental hospitals for "denying the obvious achievements of the party". You just don't understand that the problem here is not how many people they throw in jail, but that they can throw anyone in jail for this.
"And with this master/slave mentality so ingrained in your psyche, there is very little that can be done."
You even acknowledged earlier that all my views are perfectly logical! Something that is discovered by means of reason cannot be a delusion or a mentality. It is simple FACT.
In addition I don't think you have any idea of proper economic science. Since Austrian economics is the only economics that relies on logic and reason it is the only legitimate science. The other stuff is just babbling Newspeak.
I find it hard to believe you think taxes should be voluntary because I don't see any theoretical backing for that idea in your theories so far. On what basis do you say taxes should be voluntary?
Now if you say it is because people should not be forced to give up their property against their will, you will get yourself in a lot of trouble because such a view would contradict all your earlier opposition to my ideas :)
"In the USSR they even had a "syndrome" like this and put people in mental hospitals for "denying the obvious achievements of the party". You just don't understand that the problem here is not how many people they throw in jail, but that they can throw anyone in jail for this."
ReplyDeleteMatt, read the individual case file (it has more than 350 attachments and I've gone through a lot of it). He was not thrown into a mental hospital or jailed because of this. As the judge said, the logic is perfectly consistent if he ignores the constitution or the codified law for his own interpretation of what constitutes a "wage" (note: his case was based on the fact that income can not be taxed on persons, only corporations, and the Supreme Court has already ruled that corporations have the equality before the law of the rights of persons.)
"You even acknowledged that all my views are perfectly logical! Something that is discovered by means of reason cannot be a delusion or a mentality. It is simple FACT."
Matt, your premises of self-ownership are screwed up. As for Schiff, he did not use reason derived from the premises of the law. He ignored the law and derived his logic from his own premises that were outside codified law. Peter Schiff doesn't want to admit this about his Dad, but its true. I read Chapter 1 of The Federal Mafia online, and he has his own premises for what constitutes "income" that can be taxed.
"The other stuff is just babbling Newspeak."
This is getting to the point now where I can just no longer take you seriously. I started to realize this with the Hitler is democratic comment and it has been going downhill since. From now on, I'm just not going to comment on your blogs anymore. Anything I say to the contrary of yours on these issues is Newspeak to you. I don't find it worth my time as you just keep referring to the "Wow, aren't you ignorant?" line to the rest of the world who doesn't see the unicorn in the room as a viable alternative to the horse and you think that I am just unknowingly, slavishly repeating the same immoral and illogical Newspeak party lines in the end as is the rest of the world to the benefit of the world's own medieval self-delusion. It has come to the point where I recognize this.
"One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
ReplyDeleteYou know who said this? A socialist, Martin Luther King Jr. So laws like the income tax not only can be disobeyed, IT IS OUR MORAL DUTY TO DISOBEY THEM.
You should not judge me as person, but instead look at what I am writing. If it logical, it cannot be incorrect. Think about your own views for a minute. Are they logically consistent? If not, they are false. No matter what the premises are, you cannot defeat logic.
"You should not judge me as person, but instead look at what I am writing."
ReplyDeleteI am not judging you as a person. You keep judging me, mind you, by calling me immoral, cruel, violent, and a lot more throughout the last few months, while the most I have ever said is how one idea of yours seemed stupid. I have tolerated all your insults up until this point. I am judging what you are writing. And I keep telling you, the very necessary and inevitable existence of government has very little to do with morality and non-contradiction, although it should be as logically consistent and moral as possible. You do not accept the premise of any state unless 100% of its citizens agree 100% of the time on every single law implemented, which is theoretically close to impossible. If you think the social contract is immoral because it is presupposed at birth, then you have no responsibility to follow any established government like your parent has no right to do anything to you. This is how much the level of discourse has devolved. Again, this blog post is the last I will comment on.
If you think I insulted you, I apologize. My aim was not to show that you as a person are immoral, cruel, or violent, but that your ideas lead to a world where immorality, cruelty, and violence are legitimate processes of human interactions.
ReplyDeleteMatt, you still don't get it. You never will. You are absolutely blinded by your own ideology to recognize any faults with it as anything other than being the most perfectly moral and logical system to come into fruition.
ReplyDeleteThis is the simplest critique I can give of the Austrian school, the only non-Newspeak form of economics in existence (your ideology, not mine).:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm
You can read the entire thing or dismiss it as Newspeak (as I imagine you would), because obviously nobody in this world is as rational as the twenty year old Austrian and the world is stifled in its own self-delusion. And of course anything I say to the contrary legitimizes immorality, so there is no point in having a rational discussion with you as much as there was no point in having a rational discussion at the politics club.
There is always a point to having a rational discussion. But it has to be just that - RATIONAL. And something which is internally inconsistent cannot be rational. This is the main idea behind all logic. This is why I have been challenging your views, they appear inconsistent to me and therefore they cannot by definition be rational.
ReplyDeleteIf our logic just came from different premises then we could just as well "agree to disagree". However, I do think your logic is often flawed - but perhaps I am only confused on what you are trying to say. This is the main theme in all our discussions. Either your are illogical or your premises contradictory or I just don't understand what you have been getting at.
I reject your very fundamental premise behind your entire philosophy, of which all of your logic is derived. This is the word of "self" in self-ownership as an axiom on which Hoppe, Block, and Rothbard base much of if not all of their ideas on. I have researched it tremendously, and I have found Hoppe's perfomative contradiction clause to be invalid as an arguementative ethic and reason assertively proving the validity of it, as well as Rothbard's premise of a universal ethic to be severely misguided especially when justifying the equilibrium between self-ownership and property rights. I have read the arguments for it, and then the responsive criticisms, and then the rebuttals to the criticisms, and then the criticisms of the rebuttals on a number of different fronts all outside of this website and though I have great respect for all the aforementioned thinkers fidelity to mankind's hopes, the word "self-ownership" in relation to any human right or natural law or even any right does not exist. In the most basic sense that I disagree with you, liberty is control over ones self. Property is control over something other than oneself. The self as defined is not property that can be owned. This conclusion is based on philosophy, and "self-ownership" is actually an unintended internal philosophical oxymoron. In fact, logically extending the premise of the existence of self-ownership to the furthest extreme, Rothbard, Hoppe, and Block reach different conclusions not because they disbelieve in the idea as being self-evident, but their understandings of how it is defined differ (voluntary slavery and inalienability is just two logical extreme among which the men differ, but there are plenty of others). Even so, however, it is at the least ill conceived and ill defined and at the most contradictory, and to accept the premise is like accepting Kant's premise that suicide is contradictory to one's self because the self can only be defined in terms of self-love.
ReplyDeleteMy final words are this:
"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward."
"Spend when it will do the most good. Tax when it will do the least harm. For any good from taxes that harm was never a good at all."
“. . . an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world . . .” – on Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”
“I can be influenced by what is justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie, even at the expense of my head at the end of a guillotine.” after reading "The Communist Manifesto"
“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.”
They were all made by John Maynard Keynes. And he was not contradicting himself as you and libertarians would love to believe. Keynes position is very nuanced and very complex and only aims for increasing aggregate demand in times when it drops dramatically, for instance, depending on the multiplier effect, he advocated lowering taxes as more effective in times then spending. I am not even a Post or New Keynesian but that is beside the issue.
This is just one Hoppe critique, but there are literally thousand of others, and this is just one of the Austrian school. I suggest, since I have read far more of Rothbard then you have of Keynes, that you read at least the 1st article entirely.:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=311
Regardless, there is no point in debating anymore because I have just listed one of many premises I disagree with you, and I am not going to spend the rest of my time on these issues because quite frankly I don't care that much and it is not worth my time if you are going to say that the rejection of self-ownership is immoral or illogical or inherently self-contradictory or communistic because then we are going to be debating on two completely separate planes reaching no end with opposing conclusions. I also befriended a communist when I was in Ukraine (he was a nice guy like you, but he was purist who believed in a stateless, classless, society of pure communism, with no government communism or democracy), who believed in the opposite of capitalism, and after a lot of debating I never got anywhere with him either because both you and him would always assert the abolition of all governments and a better alternative has been proven viable to exist, only it has not been truly established yet and because truly free and better societies that could exist have been replaced by governments. That is one thing extreme leftists and extreme righties agree on when they believe in the purity of their ideology. And that tyranny, as you call it, is the Fascist States of America.
ReplyDeleteIndeed I guess we are arguing on different planes, the problem is I never understood your point of view. I don't understand how I can exist without my "self". Philosophers, theologians, and psychologists of all schools have always recognized the Ego exists as a consciousness of a person. If you are unconscious (without "self") how can you think or act or do anything beyond simple instinct? I think people have the capacity to reason which is different from animalistic instinct. Without your "self" there is no you. It would be just a body - like a robot. If that was true all human beings would be exactly the same in all mental regards. They would have no individual opinions, likes, or dislikes.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot tell me that a "self" does not exist. It is the very basis of human existence. In order to classify as a person you need to be self-conscious. And you can't be self-conscious without a "self"!
And it is obvious that my "self" controls my body. I decide to move my arm and therefore I do it. Then I decide to go read a book and my body complies.
Self-ownership is the idea that this control exercised by my mind over my body is rightful and moral. If someone would disagree they would have to say why it is immoral for my "self" to tell my body what to do. Does my body have special rights seperate from my "self"?
"If you are unconscious (without "self") how can you think or act or do anything beyond simple instinct?"
ReplyDeleteNo. Unconsciousness is not defined being in a state without self (it is by Hoppe, not Rothbard or Block or any neurologist or anybody else I've read).
"In order to classify as a person you need to be self-conscious."
No. There is a conflation here between self-awareness and self-consciousness. The latter comes after the former for most people (not autistic people, for instance, who in extreme cases unfortunately lack any of it even in old age and death).
"And it is obvious that my "self" controls my body. I decide to move my arm and therefore I do it."
There is a difference between stating it is obvious and creating an axiom for it, as Hoppe did. There is a complex field of neurobiology that proves that the self is not defined by any self-consciousness of it's orders or actions yet is still far beyond any sort of state of the most evolved non-human animal or its instincts.
"Self-ownership is the idea that this control exercised by my mind over my body is rightful and moral."
There is a distinction here, where Hoppe, Rothbard, and Block conflate property rights into self-ownership. Self-ownership implies that an entity can be owned by itself, which is impossible given the definition of "ownership," which explains the relation between two different entities, a subject and an object. Thus it would mean that one human is both the owner and the owned at once and therefore turning self-ownership into an oxymoron where there is an arbitrary separation between the mind and body. Again, the word "ownership" is in no related to the self. In other words, you own yourself. Yourself owns Yourself. And it keeps regressing into an ad infinitum circular argument fallacy that in any case is in no relation to morality. On another issue, given the definition of ownership, it would imply that an intangible entity (the mind) would own a tangible entity (the body) that is metaphysically impossible in reality (a thing without a tangible existence cannot act on a thing with a tangible existence, that is one of premises of not just metaphysics but of all philosophy and science).
"Self-ownership is the idea that this control exercised by my mind over my body is rightful and moral."
No.(Hoppe, Block, and Rothbard state otherwise to justify the equilibrium of private property and self-ownership). There is no other adverb, adjective, or noun attached to the word self, and in it of itself it has nothing to do with morality. (I a dress the issue of morality and self later on, however).
And on the issue of this equilibrium.
"Self-ownership manifests a property rights concept and then defines self-ownership on the basis of those property rights. However it is simultaneously the case that self-ownership tries to justify the existence of property rights as if they are stemming from it. This in effect creates a circular argument fallacy. To put it short, if property rights justify self-ownership, then the latter cannot be used to justify the former on the basis of someone owning the result of their actions (their earned labor or property outside of the self). If self-ownership is used to justify property rights on the other hand, then a different justification must be found for the concept of self-ownership itself does not rest on people owning themselves (thus presupposing property rights of ownership)."
"Does my body have special rights seperate from my "self"?"
No. The self is your autonomy. Because there can be no greater autonomy in existence, there can be no greater liberty.
As Ernest Hemingway said:
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
Matt, there are other premises I disagree with you on, but this debate is probably going to go on forever and I just don't have the time anymore and we will just keep at it. What you view is that the world can in essence be privatized. People are not perfectly informed about risks. People are not completely rational. People are mostly motivated by short term interests rather than long term ones (kicking the family and/or national problem down a generation until it explodes, like my uncle). If these were to hold untrue then I would I agree with you on ideas such as market anarchy or anarchism, but I don't because of the limits of imperfect competition. Perfect competition assumes that people act in their own rational interests (which as Keynes said is true in the short term but not necessarily true in the long run), and that people have access to information about risks in purchasing products, and that informational asymmetry is as little as possible. We can keep going on with this but I really find it quite pointless to keep doing so. Hoppe's criticisms (I call them rants, not essays of any importance) of the flaws of any government especially democracy ("liberal democracy") are utterly trivial, childish, and minute compared to any alternative of anarchy in nature. He underestimates its benefits and overestimates its flaws, and the only thing he has in common with Marx is that he believes democracy must always collapse into some form of communism. His rants are actually quite amusing, amazing, and childish all at once, especially how social security institutionally weakens family values. They are like an extreme right wing version of what an anarchic lefty would say:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe12.html
In any case we will never agree.
I agree that I guess we will never agree, but that is only because you cannot create any coherent rational theory which we could dispute. For example when you write:
ReplyDelete" Hoppe's criticisms (I call them rants, not essays of any importance) of the flaws of any government especially democracy ("liberal democracy") are utterly trivial, childish, and minute compared to any alternative of anarchy in nature."
I could say you are just plain silly for saying something that ridiculous. Not long ago someone might have written the same about criticisms of slavery (and in fact this is exactly what was done). After all if something does not yet exist (like equality under the law for all in the past) people are bound to call such a world flawed and impossible to live in.
IT'S NOT IMPORTANT WHETHER SOMETHING IS NOT PRACTICAL (OR YOUR IMAGINATION CAN'T FATHOM IT), WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS WHAT IS RIGHT.
Compulsory labour was wrong and therefore compulsory anything is wrong. If compulsion is fine, then compulsory labour is also fine. But I dare say, slavery is not fine, and neither are compulsory taxes or compulsory laws.
Social security does weaken family bonds. This is not only proven by theory, but also can be illustrated by historical facts. It's as simple as that.
And as for self-ownership. If you do not own yourself, then I guess I can own you. Whatever is unowned is up for grabs after all. It is the mind that is inablienable, not the body. You can't sell your mind, but you can sell your body if you want. After all you do that all the time when you sign any contract to hold a job. If you didn't own your body then all such contracts which require use of your physical attributes (including your brain) would be null-and-void. I don't understand your criticism of self-ownership because it makes no sense. I don't think anyone would accept then fact they are owned by other people ("society" or whatever you would choose to call it). Also there is no way in which self-ownership is an oxymoron, so you are wrong there as well - you use some strange definition of ownership which again you must have made up yourself because the dictionary is on my side.
"If you do not own yourself, then I guess I can own you.Whatever is unowned is up for grabs after all. It is the mind that is inalienable, not the body. "
ReplyDeleteYou're so lost that I could spend an entire blog responding to this but I am not going to. All I can say is that, if you own the body, then you own everything that comes with it. By de facto, you are arguing the opposite extreme (you don't like this but you are an extremist), that you can own the mind which is as inalienable as the self (it should also be noted that Block thinks this, not Rothbard. I could elaborate further but its not worth it.
"Social security does weaken family bonds. This is not only proven by theory, but also can be illustrated by historical facts."
You like Hoppe believe this about any welfare, even unemployment insurance which both of us will likely be on at least once in our lives.
"you use some strange definition of ownership which again you must have made up yourself because the dictionary is on my side."
Matt, you ignore a whole area of philosophy which disproves your theories and just go to the "Anything else is just Newspeak babble" routine.
"But I dare say, slavery is not fine, and neither are compulsory taxes or compulsory laws."
I never said compulsory taxes were fine. Let me make this clear: Compulsory taxes are immoral. But I know that 99.999% of the American population is not forced to pay them, but voluntarily accepts paying them as part of being a citizen of this nation (Schiff argued income tax is unconstitutional, he was wrong). And those who do not want to pay any taxes do not have to be a citizen and can just be one of 20 million illegal immigrants here
Your world of ethics is one without government. Even if the rest of the world were to voluntarily boycott you in your own newly established private property colony and you were to starve to death, you would be arguing to me how you would be more free than not.
"but that is only because you cannot create any coherent rational theory which we could dispute. For example when you write: (about democracy)"
For God's sakes, I spend a hundred comments in months discussing your premises that nobody else agrees with (slaves or masters or both-"public sector workers") and you say there is no other rational coherent theory other then anarchy that is moral. This is like having a discussion with a communist and I'm somehow supposed to debate him based on his premises, only rational people usually walk away sooner, within the first five minutes. I was stupid enough to keep going on like this and responding to the comments even now.
"you don't like this but you are an extremist"
ReplyDeleteI am an extremist, and a fundamentalist to boot! I stand for extreme logic and extreme reason as the foundation of human beings and their actions.
"you ignore a whole area of philosophy which disproves your theories"
There is not such thing as a "disproof". When something is proven then it is an established fact. My mind exercises will and controls my body. I think this relationship is both RIGHTFUL and FUNCTIONAL. In fact no other system can exist. You have as of this moment not presented any other possible proof of a system which is rightful and functional. So once again I ask, if you do not own yourself, who owns you? God? Society? The President of the United States?
"Your world of ethics is one without government"
I fully support government, but not LEGALIZED AGGRESSION. If government can exist without legalizing aggression, as it easily could in conditions of anarchy, then I have nothing against such an entity.
Matt, what I truly worry about is that if you were among the natural elites advising a King about a man advocating for liberal democracy, or even lets say communism, how my life would end if the King's property was the world.
ReplyDeleteApart from the fact you are changing the subject again, you misunderstand my position on Monarchy. I have stated many times I do not support absolute Kings, they are only a lesser evil when compared to democracy because they have equal tyrannical power. I support contractual societies which are established for security purposes, such as Feudal societies. A feudal King would not have the power to, as you say, effect how your "life would end". You would be in full control of your own life. If the King passed a law you did not like or even did something you did not approve of, you would simply withdraw support for him and switch to a different one. The best leader is that man who is chosen voluntarily, not a tyrant (whether kingly or democratic).
ReplyDeleteYou are in your own dream world. And it a well predicated one at that, with some components scarily based on the past wonders of feudalism.
ReplyDeleteI could say exactly the same thing about you. Except I would say you glorify components which are clearly tyrannical and espoused in all systems of slavery. The only thing is, I have reason and logic on my side!
ReplyDeleteSelf-ownership is true.
ReplyDeleteTherefore all those who deny it are unknowingly contradictory, immoral, illogical, or communistic.
Yeh, I get your world.
Throwing around pejoratives and acting contemptfully towards others does not make you right. It only makes you cynical. If you had a consistent argument which could work in the real world I would honestly agree with you. But if you can't answer the questions I pose, why do you expect me to answer yours (despite the fact I have been vigorously responding to all your criticisms)?
ReplyDeleteYou are living in denial. And denial of the truth does not make truth any less potent. I do not see why you can't have a reasonable argument with me. It is very simple, just present a theory which is logically consistent and valid - that is all I would ask of anybody. I have always had a lot of success in helping people understand libertarian ideals. Back in England many of my friends were communist-anarchists. We debated a lot, but they always presented their paradigm in a logical and systematic manner. I know it must be frustrating for you to not be able to do so for yourself (your ideas are not yet fully developed and you still have conflicts within your theories), but I was the same way as you once.
In fact I will admit I am still confused about many things, some of which are the very basis of natural rights. I always thought debate was a great way to foster and develop ideas, and you have helped me much in this regard (I'd like to think I also helped you a bit). But when debating academic issues you must keep your mind open to the fact you are wrong and when you are faced with a accurate proof you must be able to acknowledge its importance.
Once again I say, if you have any other viable system to offer, come forward with it any time! I will listen and maybe agree with you! In the past week, for instance, I have been forced to concede a couple of important points to another friend of mine who is a follower of Max Stirner's egoism. I consider you a good friend and I am sometimes a bit concerned that our debate, instead of being polemic and academic, is effected by emotions. And emotion is the opposite of reason.
"Throwing around pejoratives and acting contemptfully towards others does not make you right."
ReplyDeleteI spend an entire set of comments explaining self-ownership in a lucid manner and then you say I have my own strange definition and that you "have the dictionary on [your] side." Its not worth the effort of being serious anymore. Its like I cite my economics book: "Externalities and market failures result from property rights that can never be fully defined and delineated or result from the difficulty of enforcing property rights in certain situations outside of government regulation or authority." and you say it comes from authority and is not necessarily valid or it is propagandist and not based in rationality about human irrationality.
"If you had a consistent argument which could work in the real world I would honestly agree with you."
"Once again I say, if you have any other viable system to offer, come forward with it any time!"
There is none. If you keep thinking I'm cynical you are right, I'm as cynical as the founding fathers. The debate isn't about democratic republican or monarchical government, this is about government or no government.
This entire time I have not been arguing morally defending many of the actions of a government, such as war (especially a feudal one let alone a democratic one, although I like accept the terms of my citizenship but that's another issue). What I have been arguing is that any alternative of no government would consequentially result in a world less moral, "i.e" what human nature would be: "might makes right." If you think I'm being silly, then I truly do not believe you know how humans act in nature.
You keep flaunting this as a viable system without realizing the implications that no one else would follow an objective standard, and that your only alternative would be to establish a convoluted private property ("natural") law that defines anything and everything based on the self-ownership axiom (which is not even self-evident if it were to be true, which its not).
And I am living in denial about what? That taxation is slavery. If I consent to the social contract of citizenship then I am still a slave apparently, because I have no other alternative then to leave for another social contract. That is not denial. That is the viable alternative for the existence of some coherent civilization that is not defined by the era before government, mostly pre-historic savagery.
And do not confuse the 19th or 20th centuries as the age of liberal democracies. That era (this scares you) has not even come into fruition yet. But please do not just say "New World Order Newspeak" slogans in response.
I have nothing against maximizing the individual liberty of one citizen and asserting its authority over the state, but please do not tell me that I am a utilitarian in response.
"your ideas are not yet fully developed"
Because I do not take my ideas to the utmost logical extreme, unlike you, Hoppe and other extremists. I mean really, what is the difference between the government rightfully banning nuclear weapons and banning soap? What is the difference between building government courthouses and welfare payments in a liberal democracy? What is the difference in human nature ("might makes right") between distinguishing an objective rule and a subjective one in anarchy when there are no rules one's ego must abide by? (unless of course an anarcho-capitalist hypothetical scenario has already been established, which would only occur after anarchy was created, which could only implode on itself before anarcho-capitalism was created).
And yes, I am emotional and I don't take this as some academic college paper. I am concerned about the implications of anarchy, especially with regards to violence (not violence you would commit, but others from your ideas) as being justifiable against any government("kill the IRS agent" motto, "kill the private property motto" by anti-capitalist anarchists) and not being done only for "self-preservation" sake. This is where taking something to the logical extremism becomes concerning, by the government or against it. An anarchists would say in justification: "Give me liberty or give me death" not realizing that even Patrick Henry later became a Federalist.
ReplyDelete"I am concerned about the implications of anarchy, especially with regards to violence"
ReplyDeleteThe state kills many more people than any anarchist organization could hope for. Let's start with the millions killed by your American troops overseas. Or how about the 40,000 a year who die on government highways? Or how about the thousands who die in the 1000+ daily drug raids in this country? They all deserve death in your opinion?
It is you who endorses violence and death ON A MASS SCALE, not anarchists. Just compare statistics - how many people have anarchists killed in the last century compared to statists? I think you will find all the proof you need there.
The Founding Fathers were not, as you say, cynical. They were in fact idealists. Most of them were indeed corrupted at one time or another by politics because, as Lord Acton pointed, power corrupts. There is little cynicism to be found in their writings: in the Decleration, or even in the Federalist Papers.
"And do not confuse the 19th or 20th centuries as the age of liberal democracies. That era (this scares you) has not even come into fruition yet. But please do not just say "New World Order Newspeak" slogans in response."
I do not really know what you mean by this. The only liberal democracy that has existed was the early United States. Currently no country aspouses liberalism, only mixed socialist-capitalist systems enforced by positive laws exist. If you really think American liberals are liberals, then you are a silly man. They masquarade as liberals - but their ideals and values are socialist. They don't come out of the closet because of PR.
"If you think I'm being silly, then I truly do not believe you know how humans act in nature."
Clearly you do not understand the difference between humans (reasonable creatures) and animals (irrational creatures). I recommend you re-read Locke's Second Treatise on Government where he explained the distinction.
"If you really think American liberals are liberals, then you are a silly man."
ReplyDeleteSilly man- cute, very cute. Like the "You're so ignorant" line, only more mild.
Matt, I submitted a comment describing the difference between American liberalism and classical liberalism when referring to Clement Attlee as a liberal when in America, but strangely enough it never appeared to be posted.
"Clearly you do not understand the difference between humans (reasonable creatures) and animals (irrational creatures)."
Look at a map of the world circa 1600, and see where it was considered to be barbaric and where it was considered to be civilized. Or better yet a map circa 100, or even better a Greek map circa 500 BC of the known world.
"mixed socialist-capitalist systems enforced by positive laws exist."
Look up the term "liberal democracy" and scroll down. It is the least of all evils regarding how a government exists.
"Or how about the thousands who die in the 1000+ daily drug raids in this country?"
Really? I'd like to see your citation.
"Or how about the 40,000 a year who die on government highways?"
And I'd suppose the millions around the world who die from car accidents were also on government highways too?
"The Founding Fathers were not, as you say, cynical. They were in fact idealists. Most of them were indeed corrupted at one time or another by politics because, as Lord Acton pointed, power corrupts."
They recognized the failure of the articles of confederation and adopted the constitution. But I'd suppose you say George Washington became corrupted too.
"It is you who endorses violence and death ON A MASS SCALE, not anarchists. Just compare statistics - how many people have anarchists killed in the last century compared to statists? I think you will find all the proof you need there."
And how many anarchists societies have existed in the last century? And on what scale? I could point to the millions of "primitives" prior to 1600 who slaughtered each other on 90% of the world's land mass outside of Europe. Or I could point to the 99% of the world's population that lived outside of Ancient Greece in 500 B.C. and the mass slaughters that occurred by these tribal communities, as Aristotle told, these "barbarians" outside of the Greek City states. But I imagine you'd say 99% of the world was primitive in that era, so they weren't really rational or could really be classified as human beings.
"Silly man- cute, very cute"
ReplyDeleteYou say you never insult me, and yet you have been insulting me repeatedly by making me look like I am foolish. I don't know where you learned debating, but this is not really the way to go.
If decided to accept your definitions of "liberal" and "liberal democracy" it would mean the left has highjacked those beautiful concepts. I do not use the same definition as you because there is nothing liberal about American liberals and nothing liberal about today's liberal democracy. "Liberal" means "freeing" and today people are much less free than 150 years ago - in the hayday of liberalism on earth. By objective standards today people are less free then in the middle-ages which you so denounce.
"But I imagine you'd say 99% of the world was primitive in that era, so they weren't really rational or could really be classified as human beings."
Being a person has nothing to do with culture, location, time period, gender, age, or race. If you'd think so, you would be a racist. Again - read Locke and you will know what a human being is and how to treat those who act like animals. I assume you did not have enough time to look up the source I suggested - The Father of LIBERALISM John Locke. I really wonder what you would call him since he and Attlee were exact opposites - a socialist perhaps? Anyway here is what a real liberal wrote:
"to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security"
In other words, aggressors must not be treated as men, they must be treated like the wild beast which they have become.
"Liberal" means "freeing" and today people are much less free than 150 years ago"
ReplyDeleteNo, the world was mostly enslaved 150 years ago. And I do not mean slavery as in taxes, I mean slavery as in ownership of another human being, not just his labor. Only this occurred on a larger legalized and illegal scale on 6 continents.
"Being a person has nothing to do with culture, location, time period, gender, age, or race."
That was not my point. I am already familiar with Locke's Property within our person perspective.
"But I imagine you'd say 99% of the world was primitive in that era, so they weren't really rational or could really be classified as human beings."
I was being sarcastic to how you toss the word "primitive" around.
"You say you never insult me, and yet you have been insulting me repeatedly by making me look like I am foolish. I don't know where you learned debating, but this is not really the way to go."
I am not insulting your intelligence. I'd just hope your phrasing of my idiocy would be more particularly articulate, not simply dismissive.
"In other words, aggressors must not be treated as men, they must be treated like the wild beast which they have become."
I profoundly disagree. If a human being agresses upon another he/she should be treated as a human being, not a wild beast. I would have told Aristotle the same with regards to his barbarian slaves.
Matt, I cannot keep responding right now.
"No, the world was mostly enslaved 150 years ago"
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you get your statistics from, but people in today's liberal democracies are much less free. Do you really think I am more free than a normal inhabitant of London was 150 years ago? You would be crazy to say that.
"Matt, I cannot keep responding right now."
Neither can I, I have class!!
"If a human being agresses upon another he/she should be treated as a human being"
ReplyDeleteWell then I guess no punishment is possible. After all you cannot legitimately hurt human beings physically nor enslave them (as you said before) so prisons and any corporal punishment are out of the question...
Also I would really like to see what happens when an animal aggresses against you. Do you also treat it nicely and talk to it before using physical force?
If a being is unreasonable, it does not matter what species it is. It is simply defined as an aggressor and Locke's comparison is very apt!
"Do you really think I am more free than a normal inhabitant of London was 150 years ago?"
ReplyDeleteIn everything other then taxes and
No liberal democratic government can exist without an inherent contrarian aspect already built in as its safeguard, which is what distinguishes it from monarchies and direct democracy. If you don't believe me, look at arrow's impossibility theorem and the liberal paradox and how it applies to liberal democracies.
"In everything other then taxes"
ReplyDeleteThis is seriously a very stupid thing to say. There is not one thing you can name in which I am more free now than I would have been in 1860 London. The freest time and place in the history of the world was probably more like 1800 London, but even in the 1860's the freedoms were still substantially greater than they are now IN EVERY REGARD.
Switzerland really represents the most tyrannical form of modern day liberal democracies. After all, even Charles Dickens has been silenced.
ReplyDeleteAgain instead of using any real argument or evidence you write some kind of strange nonsensical statement. Finish one discussion before you start another. In what way AM I AS A PERSON more free now than I would have been in 1860?
ReplyDelete"In what way AM I AS A PERSON more free now than I would have been in 1860?"
ReplyDeleteYou are free to walk around naked in the streets.
Matt, I am not going to start picking and choosing different freedoms because this is becoming absurd. You keep romanticizing the Victorian era because you probably think it would be nice to be living among the 1% "natural" aristocratic elite, not among the other 99%, during that era in which the law did not protect, like child laborers. Or a number of other factors that Dickens wrote about that he hated about Victorian law.
There is not such thing as "picking and choosing freedoms". You either have them or you don't. Today the richest man is less free than the poorest man in the times of Dickens. It is you who keeps romanticizing about an illusionary world in which you say the government can fix all problems by magic. Newsflash to you, magic does not exist. Charles Dickens was not a prophet, he was an eloquent writer but knew nothing about how the world works. He saw poor people and wrote about them. I could do the same today. This does not legitimize socialism. Technological and economic advance has nothing to do with what freedom is. Freedom is what you are allowed to do. And I guarantee you in every regard a Victorian era peasant was more free than you are.
ReplyDelete"You are free to walk around naked in the streets."
Nice try at making fun of me. But, in case you don't know, if I tried walking around naked in public I would be arrested.
"This does not legitimize socialism."
ReplyDeleteSocialism is always evil. Well, except for voluntary socialism. So socialism is always evil except when its voluntary. No wait. There are no exceptions! So socialism is always evil. Like agression and force is always evil. No wait. Agression and force are always evil, except when it is "retaliatory, restitutive or defensive."
"It is you who keeps romanticizing about an illusionary world in which you say the government can fix all problems by magic."
I'm sorry you actually think people actually believe this, especially about outlawing such things as Victorian aristocratic colonization and child labor. Well, I guess human beings would have become civilized enough as to realize these societal problems would be solved in the market place.
"if I tried walking around naked in public I would be arrested."
"Technically, there is no law against being nude in public in the United Kingdom. Simple nudity is not illegal. However,using nudity to "harass, alarm or distress" others is an offence against the Public Order Act of 1986. This law is often only enforced in regards to public exposure to children."
In any case, I can give you the addresses of many nude beaches. :)
"There is not such thing as "picking and choosing freedoms". You either have them or you don't."
ReplyDeleteYou can't. Governments can, especially the Victorian colonial government who denied any freedom to any non-citizen of the Kingdom in ways that were far more horrific and a far larger scale then Abu Ghraib.
"Socialism is always evil. Well, except for voluntary socialism. So socialism is always evil except when its voluntary. No wait. There are no exceptions! So socialism is always evil. Like agression and force is always evil. No wait. Agression and force are always evil, except when it is "retaliatory, restitutive or defensive."
ReplyDeleteIt's not my fault you do not understand basic concepts. Let me just tell you that "socialism" is not longer "socialism" when it is voluntary. Just like "slavery" is no longer "slavery" when it is voluntary. And "aggression" is no longer "aggression" when used in self-defense, then it is just self-defense.
I think maybe you should read the wikipedia article on anarcho-capitalism or something. They have a pretty good explanation of many things there.
"In any case, I can give you the addresses of many nude beaches"
The nude beaches are like being nude in my house. It is simply true that when I go on the street naked and a policeman sees me, he will arrest me on sight.
I am not condoning excesses committed by the Victorian government outside its borders, just like I do not condone excesses by the United States outside its borders today which are exactly the same in all regards. But I do see that actual citizens of Victorian England were a lot more free than I am today. It is a simple fact.
"The nude beaches are like being nude in my house."
ReplyDelete"Most beaches around the world, including nude beaches, are on public lands. That means that though private resorts and hotels that adjoin a beach may enclose their property behind fences with controlled access, most countries do not allow private ownership of the actual beach area. Thus, while a resort can control access and set clothing standards on its property, these standards would not necessarily apply to the beach itself, which remains subject to local laws or customs, and public access to the beach itself usually remains unrestricted. This applies, for example, to the islands in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Florida. On the Seven Mile Beach in Negril, Jamaica, for example, though the beach is lined with private resorts with fences down to the sand/waterline, the beach itself is open to the public. Though actual clothing standards vary from resort to resort, the beach area is officially designated as "topfree", and public access is unrestricted."
Sorry I just found this funny.
Next time we get into any debate we need to agree on some definitions. It seems most of the time we just banter back and forth because what you consider freedom is not freedom for me or what I consider liberalism is not liberalism for you. If we agreed on a set standard of terms then we could get a real argument going.
ReplyDelete"most countries do not allow private ownership of the actual beach area."
I know you found this funny :) But there are some inklings of tyranny even in funny things!
I know, I thought you'd say this is segregation. Like the fact that there are both unisex and single gender bathrooms in the White House.
ReplyDeleteThe White House is public property, they need to cater to everyone equally. What I don't like is government mandates to how large a toilet bowl has to be or what my shower pressure is.
ReplyDelete"The White House is public property, they need to cater to everyone equally."
ReplyDeleteNude public beaches- Separate but equal. Just like old segregation days.
I don't understand why having nude beaches is segregation. It's just catering to an interested constituency - I know a lot of people who go to nude beaches in Britain.
ReplyDeletehttp://theyoungmonarchist.blogspot.com/2010/11/seperate-but-equal-bad.html
ReplyDeleteNeither do I.
I completely don't understand what your last 3 comments were about... I thought you were trying to say nude beaches are segregation of some kind...
ReplyDelete"It has come to my attention that rampant government controlled discrimination still exists throughout our modern democratic societies. Last night I went to the cinema and there had a small popcorn, a packet of Skittles, and a large Coca-Cola. Following the completion of the showing of my film, I felt a sudden need to use the lavatory. When I was directed towards these public amenities I realized (to my horror!) that there were two doors behind which nearly identical rooms were located. One was marked with a little circle and the other with a triangle. When asked about this phenomenon I was told it was not indeed a fata morgana, but a consciously created separation meant to segregate men from women. When I enquired further I was told this was the norm throughout the entire western world. I do not condone such procedures. "
ReplyDeleteJust like public nude beaches. After all, why should they be separated, with some public beaches designated as nudist ones, and others are not? This is not even private discrimination. This is government discrimination!!! Tyranny!
"I don't understand why having nude beaches is segregation. It's just catering to an interested constituency "
"The White House is public property, they need to cater to everyone equally."
Separate but equal! Just like segregation, of course. Only in a liberal democracy...
First of all I don't think this has anything to do with anything we were talking about earlier, so I don't know why you brought it up (Can you tell me?).
ReplyDeleteSecondly I don't think you understood that the entire post I wrote on male/female segregation was ironic and meant to mock political correctness and inconsistency of people who were against racial segregation.
And thirdly, I don't know where you draw a parallel between nude beaches and restrooms for both sexes. In what way are they alike?
"I wrote on male/female segregation was ironic and meant to mock political correctness and inconsistency of people who were against racial segregation."
ReplyDeleteJust like "no nudity allowed" public beaches and "nudity allowed" beaches. Just like Apartheid South Africa.
"I don't know where you draw a parallel between nude beaches and restrooms for both sexes. In what way are they alike?"
Dear Matt,
You are what I call a "nudest," one who detests nudity of people outside of their homes and one who would boycott private businesses simply because of your "nudest" bias.
You are also one who is a "genderist," one who advocates for segregation rights for males and females in private businesses restrooms.
I am therefore calling for the emancipation of nudists and male/female segregation from their perpetual slavery and suffering under this system of discrimination.
But... Even if you were correct - which you are not - how "stupid" would the consequences of your theory be if used for private businesses? Imagine the anarchists actually having the right to do what they did! Now that is what I would call crazy. If you tried to be consistent with your theory you would get much worse results than those I am proposing for this small problem with nudists and male/female discrimination. And no matter what you say, violence is violence, especially enforcing nudists separations, or male/female segregation by anarchists private property owners and not giving these discriminated and hurt minority any rights to freely go as they wish.
If I wanted to be precise I would call you an "Nude-genderist." This is the same superstition which existed in regard to Blacks and Asians ("racism") or women ("sexism"). Any such beliefs are strictly irrational on all levels. People may have different abilities and faculties, but they all have the same rights and this is just another form of private widespread segregation. I call all your ideas of sanctioned discrimination by these anarchists against other people "evil."
But as Milton Friedman(a statist classical liberal!) famous stated: "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results." Thus I do not judge you by the intentions of your ideas (which I fully believe are good), but by their results (the abuses and violence they entail).
Okay, I don't know how sleepy you are right at this moment, but everything you wrote above makes no sense whatsoever. You don't even know the difference between private property and public property, nor do you understand that I am not against any kind of discrimination.
ReplyDelete"Thus I do not judge you by the intentions of your ideas (which I fully believe are good), but by their results (the abuses and violence they entail)."
Again you must be half-asleep or very high, because I have never advocated violence anywhere. It is you who has been advocating violence against innocent secessionist all along.
If you want to publish serious comments on my blog please do so, but if you just want to make fun of me (while in reality making yourself look mighty stupid), please restrain yourself. You have somehow managed to twist my ideas (THE NON-AGGRESSION AXIOM) in your head into something which creates violence. I have honestly never heard such a horrendously warped understanding of it in my life - and I have discussed it with multiple communists and other leftists during anarchist cauceses in the UK.
Once again, there is no parallel between nudist beaches and segregated restrooms. Neither is there violence involved in either case. So I don't know what your problem is.
"Again you must be half-asleep or very high, because I have never advocated violence anywhere."
ReplyDelete"Thus I do not judge you by the intentions of your ideas (which I fully believe are good), but by their results (the abuses and violence they entail)."
Once again, I never said you advocated violence. Just anarchy.
"Neither is there violence involved in either case."
In Apartheid South Africa, public beaches were designated for whites, and other beaches were designated for "colored peoples." Some public beaches are designated nudist only, and other public ones are not.
"nor do you understand that I am not against any kind of discrimination."
Of course you aren't.
I am therefore calling for the emancipation of nudists and male/female segregation from their perpetual slavery and suffering under this system of discrimination.
"It is you who has been advocating violence against innocent secessionist all along."
Well, you must be high as well. According to your logic Southern Sudan should have been bombed by now.
"You have somehow managed to twist my ideas (THE NON-AGGRESSION AXIOM) in your head into something which creates violence."
Who would follow the axiom in a world of anarchy, before anarcho-capitalism arrived to save the day? And anyway, if someone enters a restaurant who is white, and the policy is "no whites allowed" then the restaurant owner is entitled to use whatever means necessary to purge that violator from his private property.
"You don't even know the difference between private property and public property"
"The White House is public property, they need to cater to everyone equally."
"nor do you understand that I am not against any kind of discrimination."
What a great world anarchy is. I mean after all, why should white businesses be forced against their moral conscious to cater to black people, or why should businesses not institute their own segregationist policies all the time for anybody and not just for males and females. You have to be logically consistent for all segregationists after all, unlike the politicians who are using logic "inconsistent of people who were against racial segregation."
"Who would follow the axiom in a world of anarchy, before anarcho-capitalism arrived to save the day?"
ReplyDeleteThis is the same as me asking: Who would follow laws in the United States today?
Of course everyone would follow, because if they did not, they would end up in jail or worse. In fact, punishments nowadays are only a fraction of what they should be and would most likely be in an anarchist world. There any attack could be potentially punished by anything including torture or death.
"I mean after all, why should white businesses be forced against their moral conscious to cater to black people, or why should businesses not institute their own segregationist policies all the time for anybody and not just for males and females."
I agree completely! My house is my house, and your house is your house. I don't require you to let me into your house and you don't have right to require me to let you into mine. Simple and easy!
"I mean after all, why should white businesses be forced against their moral conscious to cater to black people, or why should businesses not institute their own segregationist policies all the time for anybody and not just for males and females."
ReplyDelete"I agree completely!"
You keep thinking the market place will solve issues such as segregation. That's like saying: Men in Saudi Arabia should have the right to beat women who wrongfully enter the restaurant where other men are.
"There any attack could be potentially punished by anything including torture or death."
This is a world of fear. This is just as rational as selling guns to 5 year old children.
"My house is my house, and your house is your house."
You keep simplifying the consequences of anarchy based on this "my island is mine, your island is yours" world. If everybody else in an anarcho-capitalist world voluntarily boycotts building a road connecting to your property, and you are not allowed to cross anybody else's property without fear of death, then the simple answer is you will starve to death in your house, yet you will have always been free from government influence, so its worth it. And you'd still be telling me we'd all be better off.
"This is the same as me asking: Who would follow laws in the United States today?"
"Of course everyone would follow, because if they did not, they would end up in jail or worse."
No they don't. I don't. You don't. Most of the kids at this school don't. And everybody but you seems to live in fear. And that fear is not justified as being negated or lessened by the alternative.
"You keep thinking the market place will solve issues such as segregation. That's like saying: Men in Saudi Arabia should have the right to beat women who wrongfully enter the restaurant where other men are."
ReplyDeleteFirstly, market capitalism does solve problems or racism, sexism, and such others. Secondly even if it did not, I DON'T CARE. You have a right to be racist and I have a right to be sexist or whatever we choose to be. If I have a restaurant for "men only" which is clearly marked outside and a woman enters, then she is liable to be punished in any way that is agreed upon by any overarching political organization we are part of. She clearly violated an apparent ban and trespassed on my property.
"No they don't. I don't. You don't. Most of the kids at this school don't. And everybody but you seems to live in fear. And that fear is not justified as being negated or lessened by the alternative."
This is exactly what I mean. Nobody follows these laws because they are not really laws, they are just the will of a few upper-class rich white guys who enforce it upon all of society. I do not respect then as an authority and clearly neither does anyone else, including yourself. So maybe you should stop pretending they are good and moral people who want the best for us all.
"So maybe you should stop pretending they are good and moral people who want the best for us all."
ReplyDeleteWhen did I ever say that government had anything to do with morality. Oh, that's right, never. I don't care if the president is a polygamist orgy lover (like Jacob Zuma). Why don't we just lower the legal drinking age to 2, since 21 is just as arbitrary as 18, or why don't we just all tax everyone 100%, since its just as arbitrary as 5%. Why don't we just allow every child his or her own gun if he/she voluntarily wills it and can afford to buy it, and allow every child their own rpg or nuke, since you really don't need an age limit. I vote 3 years old. No, wait, I'm still violating another's rights. And no wait, I live in a feudal kingdom, so my feudal king says 7.
"And that fear is not justified as being negated or lessened by the alternative."
That alternative fear is anarchism.
"Firstly, market capitalism does solve problems or racism, sexism, and such others."
Free market capitalism, like stateless communism, does not solve any sort of social hierarchy unless YOU EXIST IN PERFECT COMPETITION. And you know how others would react to the non-aggression axiom (besides every other anarchist)? Allah Akbar.
"When did I ever say that government had anything to do with morality. Oh, that's right, never. I don't care if the president is a polygamist orgy lover (like Jacob Zuma). Why don't we just lower the legal drinking age to 2, since 21 is just as arbitrary as 18, or why don't we just all tax everyone 100%, since its just as arbitrary as 5%. Why don't we just allow every child his or her own gun if he/she voluntarily wills it and can afford to buy it, and allow every child their own rpg or nuke, since you really don't need an age limit. I vote 3 years old. No, wait, I'm still violating another's rights. And no wait, I live in a feudal kingdom, so my feudal king says 7."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this completely except for the absurdity at the end where you mention that a feudal King has the right to create a law and impose it on you. This is not true, you don't have to obey his laws unless he is an absolute Monarch.
I also don't know why you keep mentioning perfect competition since I already told you this thing does not exist. It is in fact the statists, including all the Fed economists, who use perfect competition as a model for all their ridiculous calculations. Economics has nothing to do with morality, however, and anarchy is a moral doctrine, not an economic one. So stop mixing one up with the other.