13 posts from March 2008

After you read the essay "Liberalism in America" by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn you might want to put this, as a follow-up, into your mp3 player and hit play. It is a broad and interesting speech. He speaks about, among related things, Mises, the Austrian School, liberalism in Europe, monarchy and democracy, freedom, and why aristocrats, and their important connection to Catholicism, are born anarchists (or, as he put it, "a liberal run wild").

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So What Does Democracy Have To Do With Liberty?

Democracy, contrary to left-liberal and neoconservative propaganda, has nothing at all to do with freedom, liberty, the rights of man, or security. Spreading democracy, Wilsonian-style, neither has anything to do with "making the world safe."

Democratic majority opinion of the generally unthinking and mostly feeling masses who parrot the current ethos, obtained from the educational system and the mainstream media, does not make a wrong a right. Voting therefore has nothing to do with liberty or morality. Those things should never be put up for a vote.

Under democracy legislation increasingly replaces the law implied in private property. Law becomes something that is "made" versus something to be discovered. The tradition of common law [pdf], which due to its spontaneous nature was largely libertarian, has consequently evaporated.

Man's perception of law then becomes that it is a something that is artificial; that law and ethics is nothing but relativistic. State legislation might say that one activity or action is legal today but tomorrow it might say that it is illegal. How then can there by anything really right or wrong? The answer is that there cannot be.

From this, culturally speaking, nihilism and moral relativism takes over man's minds and hearts. Economically, legal uncertainty raises time preferences and diminishes capital investment. The importance of status and function lessens. As the number of State made laws develop, the number of State defined crimes increases. A process of decivilization must occur.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn has asked [pdf] the question: Wasn't it democracy that killed Socrates and the Son of God?

It is true that I am not a monarchist, but I'll take a classical and traditional Christian monarchy any day over democracy (or a republic, which really is a democracy just the same). In that monarchy is more inline with private ownership and the incentives thereof it is closer to a purely private property society. It couldn't be any worse than what we have today; in fact, I'll say it would be a lot better.

Imagine an old time dynasty regulating by compulsion where people can and cannot smoke tobacco! In contrast, it is easy to imagine a majority gang-mob dictating that question by the barrel of the gun. It has happened and is happening. Moreover, most in the mob do not even see the freedom crushing methods to their madness.

To quote Mr. Lew Rockwell in his essay "Why Hate Monarchs?":

So many people associate democracy with freedom and monarchy with tyranny that any attempt to revisit pre-democratic systems of government is regarded as evil. ... Sheer nonsense. Freedom was nurtured in Europe under the decentralized monarchies of feudalism, which served as the political basis of decentralized federalism in the US. Unlike our own presidents, who are experts in passing the buck, the monarch tends to take personal responsibility for the fate of his domain. Upending a personal tyranny is much easier because you know whom to blame and whom to overthrow. ... [H]istory suggests we often have less to fear from monarchs than we do from democratically elected tyrants...

And as Dr. Hans Hoppe says, democracy allows "for A and B to band together to rip of C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, etc."

See: The Paleo Blog's "Are ---We--- the Government?", "Ideas, Consequences, and Libertarianism", "Freedom is the Answer --- Not Just a Return to the Constitution".

Incorrectly I gave the impression in this entry on The Paleo Blog that all concepts of reparations derive from an unjust starting point in ethical theory. Rather, reparations are purely libertarian and just, if applied and used properly. The differentiation is that, on the one hand, they avoid the "tribal revenge" collectivism from left-liberalism's concept of reparations and, on the other hand, they avoid conservatism's muddled understanding of private property rights.

Simply put: B₁ steals X property from A₁, and both later die. A₂ is the descendant and inheritor of A₁'s property and B₂ is also a descendant and inheritor of B₁'s property. Does A₂ have a right to take X from B₂? The answer would have to be yes. If A₁ had got back what was justly his when alive, then A₂ would have inherited it and the possession of X would never have had anything to do with B₂. B₁ had no just title claim to X and no claim to give it to anyone else. No real property title was past down. Equally, if X did not change hands from B₂ to A₂ and instead this was left to the descendants of them, the same standard would have to apply. Justice cannot have an expiration date if justice is to be justice. A₃ would therefore have a just claim, if he could prove it, to B₃'s holding of X. Likewise for the relationship of A₃ and B₅, or even, logically, A_n and B_n. But, clearly, the further we move in time the more difficult it would be to prove. So only in that sense is there a "statute of limitations."

Black slavery reparations consequently would be just if and only if it matched the above. For example, say B₁'s claim to X was produced on the back of A₁, B₁'s slave. Would A_n have a right to it and would B_n have to give it up (if it can be proven)? The right answer, if private property rights mean anything, would be yes.

Or, to look at a couple of different cases, say that the A family died out and there is no A_n alive in the present. What about X? Since B_n, where n >1, did not himself steal X (or be a part in the theft in any way) he can then be considered a just owner; an owner that nonaggressively "homesteaded" X from a state of nonownership. However, say that B₁ is alive but the A family is still gone. In this case it could not be said that B₁ justly owns X in any conceivable sense. He obtained X through aggression and can have no claim to it. Hence, X must be considered open to "homesteading" to nonaggressors.  (Not only does this comply with our intuition, it's also axiomatic-deductive in its justice. It seems just as absurd to say the opposite is true in these cases as it would be to say that self-ownership in man's physical body is false.)

It is worth adding, to conclude this blog entry, that the indefensibility of today's statist society is directly determined by an analysis of the justice and ethics of private property. Whereas utilitarian defenses are important to show how private property and free markets are the very source of civilization and that all statist interventions into the economy are counterproductive, pure utilitarianism is not enough to defend a free society. In practice, utilitarianism by itself leads to a defense of the status quo of the current composition of property title distribution, despite it being just or unjust. And who defines the status quo? The State! But it is not the State that makes something just or unjust. It is not that the State says that private slavery is wrong that it is wrong; anymore than when the State said private slavery was right and good that it was right and good at the time. Those that disregard self-ownership and private property rights, of homesteading and contractualism, are to fall into the trap of positivism-relativism and will end up at slavery.

Read: Chapter four, especially the section "Toward a Critique of Existing Property Titles," of Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature by Murray N. Rothbard. For further reading, see chapter nine of The Ethics of Liberty.

Edmund Burke

“We were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect, of anarchy [in Massachusetts] would instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges, without executive magistrates. . . ”

--- Edmund Burke, 1775 Conciliation With the Colonies speech

A young 27 year old Edmund Burke anonymously authored a book called A Vindication of Natural Society in 1756. Since then it has become a topic of dispute as to its original purpose.

As Burke was about to enter political life, and it was found out by the public that he was the author of this book, he claimed that it was nothing more than a work of satire. Most mainstream scholars have agreed. But Murray Rothbard thought otherwise. To him, it looked like a "very sober" and an "earnest treatise."

Why not, if it was indeed a satire, announce it in its original publication? And if it was not originally a satire, it would seem only appropriate that he would say that it was one because he was about to enter political life.

Why is that? The book argues for nothing more than private property anarchism: Society by itself is natural and good, but not "political society." Political society imposes, to young Burke, positive law, which is unnatural and hurts man, versus natural law, which is to be discovered by reason and not by law that has just been past down by tradition. Young Burke saw that the history of the relationship between States was a history of war and violence, and that violence was the foundation of all States, whether aristocratic, democratic or despotic. Conquest and coercion on a mass scale is what States are about.

As Rothbard describes the book, Burke goes through the bloody history of statism and reasons that over 36 million people have been killed by States from ancient times to his own. "For reasons of State" is enough justification for political rulers, but no private individuals could ever do what these rulers do and call it ethical or moral. Burke, who uncharacteristic of a older aged Burke used reason to build a defense of his words in Vindication, however, attacked those rationalists who thought that they could plan, run, and manage society from the top as a neutral scientist.

Was it really satire when first written, Rothbard asks?

Historians have stressed that the Vindication was written in imitation of the style of the recently dead Bolingbroke, and have taken this as proof of its satire bent. Yet these same biographers of Burke admit that, in his later writings, he continued to write in a similar style! . . .

Where, Rothbard also wondered, was the reduction ad absurdums of Bolingbroke in the book, if that was the point of the work?

Because I am not qualified to make an honest judgment one way or another, I have linked to some articles (yes, they may have some bias), including Rothbard's, below. One includes an article by Dr. Stromberg who, in his article, expands on the controversy and adds more reason to suspect that young Burke's work was more than mere satire. In Dr. Long's blog entry he says that young Burke was conflicted. He was "both resentful of and awed by the English establishment." And Mr. Sobran gives his own view.

But is it not interesting that there appears to be reason to suspect that, for a time, a young Edmund Burke flirted with the notion of a stateless society? That the grandfather of conservatism, a hero of Russell Kirk (who was typically a nemesis of ideology, rationalism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism), probably had these sentiments, to one degree or another?

It is my personal view that the best of traditional conservatism is a frame of mind and personal temperament. (This makes this kind of conservatism not a requirement or necessity to be "anti-anti-statist" in outlook.) That conservatism is a view of an ordered and structured setting of things, and a belief in a natural order. That there is a social order in society made up of various societal institutions, most fundamentally the family unit.* And that life is more than purely political, "ideological," or based on mere utility or utilitarianism. That there is a "spiritual struggle" for man and mankind, displayed, in part, in what Burke called the "moral imagination." A continuity is found in history. As the great Richard Weaver said, conservatism and libertarianism is based on realism. This is an understanding that "there is a structure of reality independent" of one's "own will and desire." One cornerstone to this, said Weaver, is praxeology [pdf].

Beyond this, and of which I would consider myself generally a traditional conservative in social and cultural topics (outside of politics), it is my more "radical" view that good conservatism, properly understood, should have nothing to do with the State. It is then that good conservatism (the very little that exists) falters and transforms into something ugly.

Articles to Read:

• “Edmund Burke, Anarchist” by Murray Rothbard
• “Rothbard and Burke vs. the Cold War Burkeans” by Joseph R. Stromberg
• “Burke’s Semi-serious Anarchism” by Roderick T. Long
• “Burke's Transformation” by Joseph Sobran

• “Anarchism, Reason, and History” by Joseph Sobran
• “Burke on Liberty” by Gary Galles (Quotes)
• “The Place of Laissez-Faire Economics in Edmund Burke’s Politics of Order” by Joseph Pappin III

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*[Lurking around the net' I have found a few left-libertarians attack "paleo" leaning libertarians, like me, for "worshiping," whatever that means in this context (I am not sure), the family. I quote "worship" the family place as a social institution in society no more or less than the market place. Private property, free markets, and capitalism are the foundation to society; to existence, actually. Without being able to own some property mankind would be long dead. (Not even States could exist without some environment of capitalism because all States live parasitical on it.) Are certain left-libertarians saying that this is not the case for family? Dissolve the family, then say goodbye to civilization. It is only foolishness that ignores the importance of the institution of family (or other intermediate institutions, for that matter) in society, including what its relationship would be to a free society. The breakdown of the family, much----probably the majority----of it due to various interventionisms, has lead to a host of unintended consequences. Children in fatherless homes, for example, increase the likelihood of drug use, crime, poverty, juvenility, etc. I hardly call that good for the future, or even for the market place. But, I guess, this is an area libertarians should not think about, or comment about. Nonetheless, instead of constraining myself to the problems of today's socialist economic market place, I will look at the other tangent problems too for a relatively more complete picture and awareness of a world that is greater than the economic dollar-sign-man who is lost in a fantasy of no relationships but that. Thankfully, great libertarians, like Murray Rothbard, fully understood that.]

Socialism's, in whatever degree or form, instrument is the State. As examined in the previous chapters of Dr. Hoppe's ATSC, socialism as such can be labeled as both uneconomic and unjust. It is uneconomic because the amount of wealth in society will by necessity be relatively less (if not in absolute terms). Socialism is also unjust, as covered in Hoppe's last chapter, because it cannot be defended as just by acting and arguing man in argumentation.

Socialism: Creation of Victims and Resistance

Capitalism: Characterized by voluntary contracting and exchanging.

• There is no 'winner' and 'loser.'
  
• Both parties are 'winners' because both expect to profit, otherwise one or both parties would not have agreed to it.
• It is voluntary.
  

Socialism: Characterized by expropriation and exploitation.

• There is a 'winner' and 'loser.'
• Like acts of individual-private theft, the taking away from a user-owner and contractor is to lessen his wealth and increase the wealth of the State.
• It is not voluntary, but done through coercion.

The State----by its very actions----actions that are necessary for it to be a State at all----create victims. It should be expected that there would naturally be some resistance because of this.

It can be assumed that resistance can change through time, be higher or lower, and be of greater or lesser threat to the institution of the State. States have invariably grown in size, enlarged their expropriation and exploitation of natural property owners, and have consequently enlarged the number of victims.

The question is then, why and how have States accomplished this? Those in the State, like most everyone else, have an interest in "stabilizing their current income" and increasing it. And, again, this means the number of victims will tend to increase upward over time, if those in the State are successful.

[Capitalist Enterprise: What Effects Size--->
---Consumer Demand---this limits how much money a business can make. Costs cannot be more than what consumers are willing to pay.
---Competition---consumers can go to competition. This requires any business to lower expenses and stay innovative. (In fact, competition is not just with those businesses that are making the same thing but with all businesses.)
Socialist Enterprise: What Effects Size--->
---Consumer demand NOT a factor---instead consumers are all uniformly forced into the relationship. Thus, States grow in spite of demand.
---Competition NOT a factor---States therefore do not need to operate at low costs. They do not have to worry and can work at high costs. Thus, States grow in spite of the fact that they are not fiscally conservative.]

Capitalism versus Socialism: Boycotts

Capitalism: Always allows boycotts, at any time.* Those affected by boycotts must suffer under them and cannot use violence to stop them.

Socialism: Never allows boycotts.
One that does not believe this is asked to try the following: Stop paying taxes and announce it. Or demand that "your future payments of taxes depend on certain changes." (No doubt you will not get that far.)

(Which system is thus more humane and ethical?)

Under socialism you cannot "cancel your membership" and proclaim your wish to be left alone (while, at the same time, leaving everyone else alone by not engaging in any aggression or invasion against anyone).

As Hoppe writes: "assumedly without having aggressed against anyone through your secession, this institution would come and invade you and your property, and it would not hesitate to end your independence. As a matter of fact, if it did not do so, it would stop being what it is. It would abdicate and become a regular private property owner or a contractual association of such owners. Only because it does not abdicate is there socialism at all."

*(Please note that this means, of course, boycotts can never be acts of physical aggression. This standard works both ways, unlike socialism. A boycott can consist of organizing people not to go to X store, for example. But this does not mean that a boycott-protest can happen right in the store. That would be trespassing, if the store owner told those people to leave. Nor does it mean that a protest can damage the property of the store.)

Growing Statist Ideas

The author writes that there are three general and basic reasons that have lessened resistance to State growth, despite an increased number of victims:

1--- The first is a prerequisite. All States require the backdrop of aggression. This way no one person can 'cancel membership.'
2--- To expand implies enlarging the number of victims. This must somehow be compensated by increased public support. States therefore work at "corrupting the public" by redirecting some of the expropriated property within civil society. I.e., by enlarging the public's number to be at the receiving end of State coercion.
3--- Furthering this process is to complete the ostensibly openness of the State. This is done by opening up mass participation in the State's works, especially to those that have above average desires to rule others. Given that these feelings exist with people, opening the State up will lessen feelings of hostility and correspondingly increase an acceptance of State dominion.

(1) The Continued Threat of Violence

This is the first requirement of the State to even exist.

For this reason this fact has been masked to the public: terms like "aggression" are replaced by words that appear neutral or positive. Regardless of words, the actions speak for themselves.

State Violence versus Private Self-Defense: The first is directed at innocence, i.e., one who has not aggressed or physically harmed anyone else. Taxation cannot be classified as anything but aggression. The second deals with man defending his person and property from an invader who is engaging in physical aggression.

Boycotts, as examined above, also show that the State uses aggression to stop legitimate boycotts where capitalism does not engage in aggression to stop them.

The State and the Need for Supportive Public Opinion

A State that only existed in redistribution from society to its direct hands would find much resistance in any expansion.

There is also a fundamental limit to any State's size: More interventionism and redistribution leads to an increasingly poor society. This also requires that the State itself be to a great extent smaller than society. It could not last if it was bigger.

It is hence a system where the few really rule over the many. That is, that a few have power and are in the position of this role. Redistribution could never be greater than the source it takes it from.

For those reason---the few rule----underlying threats of violence cannot be enough to hold socialism together. It also needs public support.

States, as a result, use considerable resources to sustain and grow favored opinion. For example, it might be claimed that socialism generates great wealth and is a just order in comparison to capitalism. Or, as in earlier times, propaganda might be that the rulers are appointed by God.

(2) Redistribution within Society and the Corruption of Ideas

But actions, Hoppe says, are more powerful than "verbal propaganda." So States have moved away as being purely parasitic and into the role of producing consumer goods and engaging in wealth redistribution within civil society.

Both, however, rely on violations of man's private property: The first takes from natural owners and uses the wealth stolen to produce consumer goods. The second takes from individual A and gives it to B (which includes a 'charge fee' that goes to the State).

This (1) generates support for the uses of these goods and the receivers of redistributed income. (2) creates a dependency. Both facilitate "strategic purposes" to secure statist-socialist ideology. They "break up resistance."

[Later, as these produced goods and redistribution services are assimilated into public opinion, it becomes as if it is impossible to imagine a world without the State doing these activities. (Effects of redistribution have been examined in previous chapters. The production of public goods will be dealt with in a later chapter of Hoppe's book.)]

There is also danger to the State: It can fail at certain tasks and public support can drop. Rulers must therefore plan ahead as best as they can. It explains why the State moves into some areas versus others...

Exploiting everyone equally would not make sense, for instance.

This would create a lot of resistance----resistance that would come from everyone. A fully equal redistribution of wealth would still have victims and "victims would still be victims." (Not everyone needs to be equally 'compensated' by redistributionist policies. Some need to be more than others. And some men could pose a greater potential threat than others.) Instead it is more prudent to "play [people] against each other." Small groups can be exploited for larger ones, which will compensate for more resistance and resentments from the former group. Giving favors to popular interest groups versus less powerful ones. Etc. This is the "art" of politics-----not the myopic "art of doing the possible."

More on Socialism vs. Capitalism:

Capitalist enterprises have the incentive to maximize voluntarily made profits, i.e., to calculate costs of production minus expected demand. State enterprise, on the other hand, seeks to maximize coercion by threat and select bribes.

The Discriminatory Aspect of Politics vs. Capitalism: The difference between this and other State discriminatory policies is that politics has the incentive to do such. Capitalism must bear costs. A business enterprise that does not sell to X group bears the costs and will be less competitive versus another business enterprise.

[More specifically, there are two general types of redistributions that will occur: (1) egalitarian and (2) conservative. The first deals with redistribution from 'haves' to 'have nots.' The second deals with the 'already haves.' This includes special benefits, in redistribution and regulation, to especially favor the upper classes and to freeze people into their current positions.]

State Services

States cannot do everything. Producing too much would result in a declining income. They must focus on producing that which is "strategically relevant" to increase their power.

1. Education: This would be a logical step to bring about desired pro-statist views. States can accomplish this by monopolizing education and setting up compulsory laws and/or controlling any and all private education institutions by making them license-approved.
   
2. Traffic and Communication: Militarily it has always been historically required to control these areas, directly or indirectly. This includes roads and coasts to telecommunication and the media.
   
3. Money: Monopolizing the money supply allows coin-clipping. Ending a free market in banking, introducing a central bank, and ending a hard-market money with backless paper would remove all major restraints so as the State can, at will, tax indirectly through inflation, while not having to raise taxes directly on people which is typically unpopular. [For a more detailed analysis, and one that expands this topic to international politics and economic imperialism, you can't do much better than reading this essay by Hoppe.]
   
4. Security, Police, Defense, Judicial Courts: This is the most important because the moment the free market is allowed entrance the State would, by definition, not exist. These services have been blended with the State, in the minds of the public, producing the idea that they are (falsely) "synonyms" in relation to the State.
   

Competing ideologies will suffer with governmental control over education and intellectuals.

Since internally there can be no competition on the services of "4.", there is also a tendency to disarm civil society, making them ever the more vulnerable and controllable relative to the State. [Obviously this increases the State's power and makes society weaker to it, but it also means greater dependency from civil society on them for protection from private criminals. Being more helpless as such will naturally make then more vulnerable vis-à-vis private criminals.]

Judicial courts could never have any direct competition, either. Public law is just one of "legalized aggression." The public would see right through a private and independent institution engaging in that kind of 'law' making. In addition, to have private law develop would show how unnecessary, counterproductive, and aggressive a statist society is. (Corruption is far more costly, and therefore less likely, in capitalism than socialism.)

Another State Limit: Beyond public opinion, a world with a multitude of States would put restraints on the growth of any one.

• One State cannot expand its control without sometime running into another State and its defenses.
• > 1 State also opens the possibility up for people to "vote with their feet." I.e., to move to a State that appears less internally aggressive.
• [Expansionism, Imperialism, and War: Which States will generally win out? All things being equal, there must not only be public support but lots of capital and resources to use. Since the States only exist parasitically on this, ones that are relatively less aggressive internally will win over those that are relatively more. Redistribution will have to adopt to serve this purpose. This requires less direct regulations and comparatively more taxation. Regulations stop transactions without direct benefit to the State while making society poorer. Taxation does the latter, but the State benefits. Thus, imperial States will have a relative shift from 'conservative' policies and regulations to 'progressive' ones.]
  

(3) Corruption via Democracy

Those in the State have the incentive to increase their position and wealth, but this desire to gain wealth via political means and the "lust for power" is also with many in the public. The State must deal with people that have this desire.

To deal with this it is in the State's interest to open positions up. The result will be to reduce "frustrated lust" and put the State in a position to expand greater than it would otherwise.

Hoppe quotes Bertrand de Jouvenel on the transition to democracy:

For the twelfth to the eighteenth century governmental authority grew constantly. The process was understood by all who saw it happening; it stirred them to incessant protest and to violent reaction. -- In later times its growth has continued at an accelerated pace, and its extension has brought a corresponding extension of war. And now we no longer understand the process, we no longer protest, we no longer react. This quiescence of ours is a new thing, for which Power has to thank the smoke-screen in which it has wrapped itself. Formerly it could be seen, manifest in the person of the king, who did not disclaim being the master he was, and in whom human passions were discernible. Now masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will. – But that is clearly a fiction. . . .

Empirically speaking, history has shown this to be true. The growth of statism has followed the democratization of power. Moreover, being States with more power, with more resources at their command, they have been generally more victorious in wars.

Some Inner Contradictions and Failings of Democracy

Majority Rule & Democracy as a Moral Value Fails:

• A majority that voted to replace democracy with something else (e.g., dictatorship) would force democracy to admit that it is not a moral value. Democracy that votes to end itself is a contradiction.
  
• Democracy as a moral value makes it acceptable for a majority to vote for the killing of some minority. Someone that does not accept this as a moral value would have to admit that democracy is not an ultimate moral value.
• Any restrictions of democracy (e.g., a constitution or a restriction on a democracy voting to end democracy) would admit that there these restrictions are more fundamental than democracy.
• Democracy does not answer the question: 'Who decides in democracy?' This group of people or that?
• Saying that larger majorities over smaller ones is the answer (which is what majority rule is all about) implies that national limits don't and cannot exist. Democracy must then push to its logical conclusion which is a world government.
  
• Otherwise, it must be considered acceptable for smaller groups to call for secession from larger ones in democracy. The logical end to this would allow individuals to call for secession. What would be left is a pure capitalist society and democratic ideology would internally destroy itself.
• Man saying that it is neither of these two admits that there are moral values more fundamental to democracy and that this moral value must be rejected.
  

[See 5.5 in Power and Market by Murray Rothbard.]

Power versus Liberty

How to win to liberty: Directly boycotting clearly will not work, as shown above. For liberty to win there must be public support.

There must be (1) a rejection of the temptation to accept State bribes (2) and a lessening for the desire of power. The desire of power within the quarters of the public is not written in stone, says Hoppe. There is nothing that says that these tendencies must go on forever.

[Blog Note/Message: I hope you all had a happy Easter!]

Lysander Spooner:

“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: 'Your money, or your life.' . . .

“The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

“The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a 'protector,' and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. He does not keep 'protecting' you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.”

The fairly new ISI web journal First Principles features a classic 1997 essay by the late aristocrat Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn on American liberalism.

It is worth reading.

The Meaning of $1,000 Gold: Ron Paul tells all.

Gary North on the Upside-Down Mortgages and Sinking Home Prices and Bernanke's Mortgage Market House of Cards.

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The Revolution: Mr. McCarthy on The Tory Anarchist blog provides a syllabus for Ron Paul libertarians. Check it out!

See also his recommendations for newbies to paleoconservatism and libertarianism.

Woods on NY Times' outrage over Ron Paul Republican Murray Sabrin.

There is a time and place for more scholarly and rigorous books, for example, Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism and Mises's Socialism, but there is also a time and place for more popular works. The Economics of Liberty edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is one of those books, filled with little treasures.

Mr. Rockwell in this 1990 book collected essays from a variety of authors, including essays authored himself. (His articles are a little more "punchy" than the normal article Rockwell writes today.) The essays range from "the truth about economic forecasting," "the source of the business cycle," "government garbage," to ending "the war on drugs." And for only $5 at the Mises Institute's online store it is a bargain.

Below are a few topics from the book, with an emphasis on the importance of why markets and its price system must exist.

Free-Rider
[“The Free-Rider Confusion” by Tom Bethell, pp 35-41.]

A common attack on free markets is the alleged "free-rider" problem. The irony is, however, when the issue is looked at wholly it clearly is a government problem dealing with collective, public ownership and areas of the market where undefined or ambiguous private property rights exist.

Certain goods, it is said, on the market produce "positive externality" because their benefit is difficult to restrict to those directly paying for them. They therefore produce free-rider problems, and State or collective ownership is claimed to be the solution.

What is never looked at or talked about in statist textbooks, argues Bethell, is how this condition applies in spades to collectivism, not capitalism. A community that is communally owned allows men to benefit from those communally owned goods while not contributing to production. They can "free-ride" at the expense of everyone else. This kind of community will make laziness less expensive and those inclined to be lazy will increase. Why work, if you can get the good for free?

In contrast, environmentalists complain that the overutilization of fishing lakes is a free-rider problem in the free market. But it is precisely that they are owned collectively that causes these kinds of problems. No one suffers capital loss if fish disappear. The only ownership of the fish is the fish one person or company takes right now. Someone that does not take as many fish as they can get now might not have the opportunity in the future. Thus, overutilization.

Solution? Privatize----"internalize the externalities." A private owner would then not just own the value he can derive from the lake in the present but also in the future. The incentive would then be to derive present income without destroying the capital (future) stock. It is only private ownership and private calculation that makes this possible.

Commercial radio gets along just fine in the market place, even though it would be classified as producing "positive externality." Lighthouses have historically been private, despite the misleading propaganda.

So instead of statist textbooks talking about market failure, why not government failure? Even, hypothetically, if it is a large problem in society, it seems the State can only compound the problem by doing what States do, i.e., collectivizing. Moreover, these textbooks often claim "market failures" using examples which are government failures: e.g., overutilization of fishing lakes---a clear government failure!

Road Socialism
[“What To Do about Traffic Congestion” by Walter Block, pp 207-211.]

Walter Block, no coward he of the free market, is the libertarian authority on privatizing the highways and streets. An entire book, by the way, on the subject is coming out from the Mises Institute this year by Block.

In Rockwell's book, Block argues that congestion "is not unique" to traffic. On the market we are dealing with different forms of congestion at different places all the time. When we go to a restaurant, bowling alley, movie theater, etc. we are dealing with congestion. So are the owners of these private establishments, who have to pander to consumer demand.

We have to choose between private establishments which offer low costs but high congestion of people to ones that offer low congestion but high costs. Most of them have "peak-load congestion." Meaning there are certain times of the day or days of the week where they are busiest. Bowling alleys, Block says, cut prices "during the less busy hours" to solve this. "The fast-food restaurant," he writes, "with long lines hires additional workers." A movie theater charges according to peak-loads. And if that is not enough to meet all of the consumer demand, the owner seeks additional profits by expanding it. There is always a drive to meet the needs, and then reap the awards, of consumers.

Thus for the free market, unlike governmentally run operations, "'congestion' is a golden opportunity for expansion of output, sales, and profits." The trouble with State roads is that they do not have to meet the demands of the consumers. There is no way that they can register those demands because there are no market prices or competition. Without this, it is impossible. There cannot be a real market test to see if there are some consumers that are willing to pay more for less congestion and see if some would be willing to save money by paying less for more congestion. And there is no way to see if running roads one way is more efficient (more profitable) than other ways.

Drug War
[“End the War on Drugs” by Sobran, “Drugs and Adultery” by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, “Would Legalization Increase Drug Use?” by Lawrence W. Reed, pp 221-234.]

There was a time, a freer time, when hard painkillers and other drugs were readily assessable to the public on the open (legal) market, and there was no discussion of any major national problem or crisis.

"Informal social sanctions, as always," writes Sobran, "did most of the work of governing society." Then the so-called "war on drugs" became a priority for the State. Like the war on poverty, it is only a "war" in an abstract sense. This gives it the benefit of eluding a definition of "victory." (Sound familiar?)

But now there is talk of a national crisis. And, despite trying, society is not a fairy tail where drugs can be waved away by the State or any other institution. "The choice," as Rockwell writes, "is not between a society that is drug-free or drug-ridden." A drug-ridden society is what we already have.

Instead of eliminating them, all the State has done is surged the price of these drugs making drug dealing artificially more lucrative. Even within prisons, the pure essence of socialism in action, the drug war has failed. A conservative or liberal seeking evidence of the futility of this war should look no further.

And the State will always fail, because its attack is on the supply side, to lessen drug usage because it is a demand problem. Because it is a demand problem attacking the supply side will only worsen the issue.

Prohibition did not evaporate the supply of alcohol, but instead pushed it into the black market, much to the delight of Al Capone and other friendly characters. Lawrence Reed, in the book, reports that in Rochester, NY the number of licensed saloons numbered 500 and during Prohibition the number of underground speakeasies was twice that. In Detroit, he says, "drunkenness arrests increased steadily."

Liquor was made "much more potent (as with drugs today)." "Alcohol-induced deaths," in addition, "increased." And, naturally, crime rates went up.

More or less it has been the same with today's Prohibition.

If the drug war were to be ended, then, in a free market, the prices of these newly legalized drugs would fall to their market price and move out of the black market's criminal aspect. That means away from the hands of gangs and thugs, and would restore a healthy hierarchy of wealth. Addicts would be less likely to enter the criminal world to get their "fix" with lower prices. (Wealthy drug users, Rush Limbaugh for example, generally do not enter criminal activity to pay for their drugs and are able to live productive lives.) This would also give them a greater chance to seek help.

Cutting crime down alone should justify ending this needless and evil war. Also note that the usage of such narcotic drugs generates less violence from individual users than alcohol. Narcotics lower these tendencies and alcohol raises them.

As for children, tobacco and alcohol often is more difficult for the young to get than hard illegal drugs. Reintroducing these drugs to the free market would likely bring the same (relative) result because the price would plummet making the risk of public backlash too high.

Finally, we must all understand that there is a difference between morality and legality. It may be immoral to waste one's life away using drugs (and it is), but this is true for other things as well which are considered legal. We cannot make all immoral acts illegal. This is a recipe for tyranny.

Enforcing morality, says Rockwell, should be "the job of families and churches" and not the State. The importance of their authority and responsibility should be restored. (Collectivizing it, I say, only leads to increased immorality, the "freeing" of the individual from these institutions into unnatural atomism, increased hedonism, and increased all-around social decay.)

(One question I have asked myself is if drug usage would increase. While I believe the answer, if history on the Prohibition, the market incentives against high time preference lifestyles and the increased role of intermediate institutions under less statism are to be any judge, is a definite no in the long-run; it is also true that there probably would be some initial "blowback" if the war were to be ended tomorrow. So short-term usage might indeed increase, but that is what happens when the State gets into this business in the first place.)

Civil Rights
[“Civil Rights and the Politics of Theft” by Joseph Sobran, pp 182-187.]

Civil Rights and its logical consequence, affirmative action, introduce a new type of discrimination. This makes voluntary discrimination the only kind of discrimination the left (and neoconservatism) hates. They are thus all for discrimination, as long as it is based on State compulsion.

Now granting some of the premises of the left, the left becomes all wet on the idea that somehow affirmative action can "correct a wrong." Something, for instance, that is truly evil----i.e., violence against man's person and property----is to be outlawed, period. Slavery, of course, was one of those things. It was a grand deficit in our originally classically liberal society. But the point is that we must end and not redirect evil.

Accordingly, when murder happens the murderer is gone after. We do not try to "correct a wrong" by redirecting evil to allow descendants of the victim to create a "balance" by murdering a descendant of the murderer.

Here we see the folly of the left's view. Their goal is not to "end" discrimination or something of this nature, but seek, what Sobran calls, "tribal revenge." Moreover, their attempt at redirecting what they consider evil is not even analogous to the murder example. Instead they wish this tribal revenge to be enforced collectively on those who do not all fit the permanents of this redirected revenge attack. And obviously trying to "correct" the truly evil history of slavery today could only be done on people who were born far after slavery.

Anti-Human Environmentalism
[“Government Garbage” by Rockwell, “The Environmentalist Threat” by Rockwell, pp 197-201 & 289-312.]

Recycling, to its most basic level, is a question of economics, which is the social science of human action and his allocation of finite resources. To separate or not to separate is a question of economics, nothing more. For the question to be answered there must be in place the pricing system to allocate resources in efficient ways. But, as you guessed, the only way this can be done is to privatize the whole operation first. So if it is best to allocate paper (or anything else) away from landfills and into recycling, then there will be a market price that shows it. It will show the costs involved---that is what is needed.

This is lost on environmentalists because their philosophy is socialist at heart.

The history of environmentalism and politics started with Teddy Roosevelt, according to Rockwell, with the help of special interest groups. "[T]imber and railroad interests associated with J. P. Morgan, Roosevelt's mentor," he writes, "cheered on establishing national parks because this, neighboring the lands of these interest groups, artificially increased their values."

Like all areas of life politics gets its hand into, this was not enough political involvement, and another Republican administration opened the door wider. This was Richard Nixon. By executive order he (unconstitutionally) created the Environmental Protection Agency. "Not surprisingly," says Rockwell, "the EPA's budge has been dominated by sewage-treatment and other construction contracts for well-connected big businessmen."

Different governmental programs, for example, the Clean Water Act, puts Mother Nature, the goddess Gaia, ahead of humans. Wetlands have been made sacrosanct by it, as an immigrant from Hungary found out. By buying some old junkyard land and putting topsoil on it, he "face[d] three years in prison and $200,000 in fines" because it has been "classified as wetlands under" this act.

The much talked about topic of conservation of resources is also an economic issue. Free markets act like traffic signals with their prices. Something that become scarcer, i.e., the supply lowers, results in higher prices signaling consumers to conserve. If oil (one of the most heavily regulated and statist areas of the economy, btw) is about to run out, then, without any statist interventionism, prices will go up and force consumers to be more fiscally wise and give businessmen an incentive signal to look for substitutions. That is to say, the market will direct people out of oil, if needed.

And no matter what the merit of, for example, acid rain as a subject, its primary causes, and its impact the issue of this and cases like this have to be dealt as private property issues. It was government and big business alliances that took pollution off the table as being an issue of property and trespassing. But government is the place that these environmentalists want to turn to?!

(Say, for example, that a stream of water runs through my property. Later a factory moves into town and then dumps waste in this stream. Now if this waste enters my property then the issue is one of trespassing. Likewise, if I am a farmer and then a factory moves into town and its pollution destroys my property [some of my crops], the issue comes back to being a property issue. But these natural property laws were deliberately changed by the State---the supposed solution to environmental issues.)

There is, however, one good thing about environmentalists, says Rockwell:

The environmentalists are forever telling us to be poorer and use less water, less gasoline, less toilet paper, etc. But if they reduce their consumption, it lowers the price for the rest of us, and we can use more. (P.S.: don't pass this on to the environmentalists; it's the one favor they do the rest of us.)

America First!
[“A New Nationalism” by Patrick J. Buchanan, “Time for An American Perestroika” by Robert Higgs, pp 363-368 & 211-216.]

Buchanan says that today we have an "extra-national" agenda from left-liberals and neoconservatives that extends our national interests into other nations and their internal affairs. It uses "our Republic as a means to some larger end." Instead, he says, we must return to a nationalism of the founding fathers.

The advice from George Washington, Ben Franklin, and John Quincy Adams was basically taken until the Philippines. Making the world safe for democracy led the U.S. to join the ranks of empire. The world wars came and went. Demands from the public called for the return to an America First position. Next the Cold War came.

That too ended and the justification of American troops in Europe diminished. Likewise in Korea---the South, FYI, "has twice the population, five times the economic might of North Korea." But troops are still there.

Economic resources continually bleed for empire, spending that includes bases in economically wealthy nations. Propping up dictators here and there also continues---a recipe for "endless conflict." Nonetheless, empire is still excused. A chief reason being the "democratist temptation."

"Like all idolatries," writes Buchanan, "democratism substitutes a false god for the real, a love of process for a love of country."

Even with the Cold War ended (which was when this book was published) empire was still pushed by special interests dependent on the war machine. Cutting back military spending, for them, would put them out of a job.

The "military-industrial congressional complex" (MICC), which includes congressmen, contracting firms that sell weapons and the military, could not have that, as Robert Higgs writes. . . . There must be a bogyman to justify the MICC!

The MICC is a statist operation. After all, it's fully dependent on the government and, hence, has nothing to do with the free market or capitalism. They give millions to the campaigns of politicians and do other special favors to those in power in their symbiosis relationship.

This has pushed defense spending out of genuine national security. No one, though, can say exactly to what extent or degree. Some money has been squandered into weapons that are not needed. There is money that goes directly into defense and other that just benefits the MICC. The result being a poorer society with rich and powerful special interest groups.

Obstacles to Liberty and the Path to It
[“Back to First Principles” by Sobran, “Why Government Grows” by Rockwell, “Breaking Up the Opinion Cartel” by Rockwell, “Mises’s Blueprint for the Free Society” by Sheldon L. Richman, pp 159-174 & 280-284 & 359-362.]

Ronald Reagan has been presented in public discourse, by both conservatives and liberals, as a revolutionary president who turned the tide of big government and its growth. Yet during his administration "Federal spending," Sobran writes, "had doubled across the board." There was not the hint, in action, of anti-statism. (Reagan was not an improvement from Carter, but deterioration.)

Nevertheless presenting Reagan as a "radical" was beneficial for the powers that be in two ways. First, it was beneficial for Reagan himself. He got the glory of being a radical who accomplished something. Reagan could also continue to lull the public with his pseudo rhetoric of limited government. Second, it was beneficial for the establishment of statists because now they had a "bogeyman." Someone that they could point to and say "additional" cutting (or deregulation) of any program would go too far and that there needs to be a cooling down period from the "radical" Reagan administration.

As a whole anti-statist ideology has become complacent with left-liberal philosophy, reasons Sobran. Supply-side economics is a perfect example. It presents the goal of lower taxation and increase government revenue. In this way anti-statist conservatism and libertarianism presents its ideology as a "superior methods for achieving collectivist goals."

Today a liberal program is matched by a conservative one. For this reason the goals of leftism are not challenged principally, and consequently conservatism has helped spread left-wing ideology and the growth of government. Instead what is needed is "an independent rival principle to collectivism."

(For those that want that, look no further than the tradition to be found in the libertarianism of Lew Rockwell and company.)

A number of other things have insulated the growth of statism, you will read in the book.

Earning wealth can happen in two basic ways: voluntarily in the free market or coercively through politics.

Special interest groups have chosen the second method so they can use the government to fund their own interests at the expense of everyone else. They will fight tooth and nail if their funding is to be cut.

Indeed, 8% of the money in politics goes to the poor directly and the rest goes to the politically well-connected and the bureaucrats in on the deal. (Power is a rich man's game, despite left-wing fantasies of a pure egalitarian State.) And that which does go to the poor, and (mainly) the bureaucrat managers, has created a dependent class, and, Rockwell writes, "[t]hanks to [this] welfare state, there is virtually no social mobility from the bottom."

Those filling the seats of bureaucracy want to increase their position, wealth, and power authority. But by not operating in a free market they do not need to respond to profit and loss. Overspending is not penalized. In fact, it is encouraged. So what is the expected result from that? Bureaucracy increasing in size!

States have also grown in power "thanks" to times of crisis.

Politicians can claim that they need more money and power from society and the public, looking for answers, is easier to be lulled in. Opposition is crushed, since power and money is on the side of the State and its friends. (Interestingly enough if it is an economic crisis, when people have less money on hand, the government demands more money! And when government fails to protect "its" citizens the government then demands a bonus of more money. Imagine if private enterprise worked that way.)

Obviously the media franchise, a pro-establishment franchise, is another contributor to the increasing power of the State, since they generally work hand-in-hand. Talking points and press releases they are dependent on. Government officials patronize the media outlets that give soft-ball interviews and who propagate statism.

Through the process of increased statization come distortions in the pricing system and a host of unintended consequences. Politicians then use this to call for more interventions. One intervention is followed by another.

And finally the trends of growth are shaped by the government in the education system. They are the masters of opinion making----education and State should then be viewed as a dangerous thing.

What must be done to fight for liberty?

Rockwell writes, that we (1) must relentlessly show all government crimes and abuses; (2) understand that compromise and moderation doesn't defeat evil, instead abolishment of government programs must be fought for; (3) support alternative news sources and not the mainstream media; (4) get free market thought in higher education.

The only way to beat today's "opinion cartel," displayed in the media, is to spread ideas around it.

It then might be possible to move to a truly (classically) liberal society.

What would that look like? For Ludwig von Mises, writes Sheldon Richman, this means an understanding that private property is the foundation to society.

As Mises wrote, "the program of liberalism . . . if condensed into a single world, would have to be property, that is, private ownership of the means of production. . . . All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand."

This means, as a necessary result, the freedom for man to interact with others in a voluntary setting.

In addition, a liberal society means the backdrop of peace and impartiality of law.  It is only under peace that a division of labor is possible. Tolerance must be a cultural trait. And for tyranny, from the left and right, to be limited a liberal society thrives at applying justice and law to all men equally.

Governance that goes beyond protection of property will let loose oppression, wrote Mises:

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail.

An argument exclusively based on utilitarianism is not enough to win everyone over to embrace a future capitalist society. Even though such a society would produce the highest amount of wealth for its members (for all classes) relative to any form or degree of socialism, there are many who will still subscribe to socialism for reasons that they believe outweigh the fact that theirs is an economically inferior system. They believe that "justice and fairness" must be balanced with economic wealth. That it is required to sacrifice economic wealth to obtain the former.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe in this chapter----"The Ethical Justification of Capitalism and Why Socialism is Morally Indefensible"----of ATSC deals with this. He persuasively shows that no system but capitalism is ethically justifiable. The question of what is ethically justifiable or not can only be determined in argumentation and that argumentation itself presupposes the natural theory of property. Any theory, then, against the natural theory is impossible to justify because the act of justification in argumentation already presupposes the natural theory. Man can attempt to justify anti-natural theories (and/or enforce such), but he will get caught up in a performative contradiction.

Of all the other essays I have read by Hoppe on this subject this chapter is his best defense. But it still feels incomplete, in my view, if not combined with reading "Four Critical Replies" in the appendix section to his book The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. You can read that online here.

Review: The Task of Ethics and Economics

Political philosophy and political economy overlap in the sense that both fields are fields of thought at all because scarcity exists.

In ethics, or political philosophy, the question of control over property can only come about when there is property. For there to be property there must be scarcity, otherwise everything would exist in superabundance, like in the Garden of Eden, and man's actions on anything tangible would have no repercussions on his present or future supply of it or any other man's present or future supply. Therefore conflict would not be possible. Conflict becomes possible with undefined property rights over scarce goods.

Economics deals with man's actions in a world of scarcity. What actions are and what they imply. How scarce resources with alternative uses are put into use. What happens if certain economic measures are institutionalized against property and voluntary exchange. Etc.

The "Emotivist" Claim

Following the empiricism-positivism of the last chapter, it is asserted that normative statements do not exist and instead only express preferences. They are said to be not "cognitive."

In the same way that empiricism-positivism is self-defeating so is the emotivist position. The above statement must be analytical, empirical, or "an expression of emotions."

If it is analytical, then it is word play and says nothing. If it is empirical, then it fails because the emotivist position can not only be true but also false. If it is an expression of emotions, then another's emotional interpretation would be just as valid as well. Taking the emotivist statement as a meaningful one is contradictory to its premise because it could never get to the point to saying what it says if it could not say it.

With that said, however, it must be meaningful in the sense that it proposes something and that it can be discussed.  This cannot be denied because it is impossible to deny that it cannot be discussed without discussing it.

Hence all propositions must be able to be argued by acting individuals and, furthermore, a rationalist approach for the subject of ethics must be taken.

Any claim of truth and validity must be argued. Denying this would make one caught up in a contradiction. Man cannot deny that he cannot argue because it is implicit in his denial.

This is the "a priori of communication and argumentation."

The Arrival of Ethics

The subject of ethics----of justice and injustice----comes about via man. It does not come about through the trees or animals. To decide what is just or not requires that man must be able to propose such propositions to other men. Their validity can only be interpreted and deduced through argumentation.

The source of rights, writes Hoppe, "is and must be argumentation as the manifestation of our rationality."

It should be further mentioned that this process comes about via individual man. Ethics, therefore, must be methodologically individualist. After all, only individuals can think and act. There exists no group mind or collective mind. Any 'group' that acts is nothing but individuals who are acting within a man-made, individual-made group.

The "a priori of argumentation" vs. the "a priori of action"

Hoppe says that these two aprioristic based axioms are "interwoven." Just like it is impossible to deny that man acts it is also impossible to deny that man argues. Action is more fundamental to argumentation in that to argue anything requires action first. It is a subclass of action. In an intellectual sense of discovery, however, argumentation is more fundamental to action epistemologically because discussing and understanding action is done through argumentation.

Augmentation is an Action

Being a form of action, since argumentation is "a practical affair," requires that norms exist. These norms make argumentation possible and must therefore be prerequisites for all propositions to be possibly validated as true.

Norms, as just described, must be regarded as existing. Arguing otherwise would presuppose these norms and destroy one's argument against what has thus far been said as true a priori.

These norms derive from argumentation.

Norms Implied in Argumentation

As in the "Golden Rule of ethics or in the Kantian Categorical Imperative," any norm proposals must be "universalizable."

Argumentation implies that all acting arguers, or potential/future ones, must be able to judge and debate the given norms. Any ethical proposition must apply equalized standards on everyone. Put in another way: they all must have equal access or authority, in a manner of speaking, in the course of arguing. One in the course of argumentation cannot say "I am bigger and so you cannot debate with me." That would not be a debate, by definition. (And there is no way to say a priori that one man versus another gets greater rights.)

Thus: Any ethical proposition that would apply different standards on different people would fail to pass the test of universalization.

This alone would destroy an infinite number of ethical propositions, but would leave open an infinite number that would pass this first test.

What includes this destroyed 'infinite number'? All forms of socialism. They already fail. Even ones which theoretically pass this test fail once they get put into practice.

"'I can hit you, but you are not allowed to hit me,' are at the base of all practiced forms of socialism." ---- As Hoppe says.

But there are "other positive norms implied in argumentation aside from the universalization principle," which is only the first principle and one that is "purely [a] formal criterion for morality."

Argumentation...
One: is a practical affair and not only cognitive.
Two: is a subset of action, which means it requires the use of scarce resources.
Three: is an interaction that is conflict-free.

Argumentation does not, so to speak, happen in heaven with floating spirits. It happens here in the 'real world,' a world of scarcity. It is a real and practical affair that takes place between men interacting in a world of scarcity. And argumentation can only happen in such an interacting plane, as far as we are concerned.

It is because of this fact that ethics exist. (In my heaven thought experiment there is no possibility because no conflicts are possible.) Scarcity is what changes this: the scarcity of man's physical body and the scarcity of resources. It then follows that any ethical theory must be a theory of property. Only when this is done can conflicts be avoided over scarce resources.

On the second point we must remember that action implies using certain means. Engaging in argumentation requires the ability to act to get there. There is an objective (i.e., arguing ethics) and, because of this, a means to get there, i.e., to engage in such an action. This is saying nothing less than there are praxeological prerequisites in argumentation and to get to that activity.

On the third point it is clear that arguing/debating can only take place if such a setting is in place. Someone arguing in favor of some proposition that beats up his opponent or enslaves him, by definition, is not intellectually debating or defending the validity of his claim