2 posts tagged “bastiat”

Once a society has the majority view that the State is the fountainhead of freedom, freedom becomes to mean whatever the State gives us. A State that gives us freedom is one that defines what man's freedoms are and are not. The Bush administration suspends habeas corpus, big deal then. Freedom comes from Bush, does it not?

If you are in the school of thought who believes in the genuine Liberty of man's natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which come from the Creator, then you see that the Bush gang or the Clinton gang are not above these natural rights----these natural laws. It is this tradition that rejects positivism. State made "law" is made in defiance of these natural, human inherited rights. Because "government made it so" or "said it to be so" does not give the government a pass. Such a pass is just tyranny.

All of us as individuals know in our hearts that theft is wrong and murder is wrong. It is part of the nature of mankind. No one needs to tell us this. Man is as man is, yes. But despite all of man's individual and numerous imperfections or imperfectability (our Original Sin), man intuitively understands that such action against another man or his property is truly criminal and monstrous. For man----any man----to live life he must own himself. That is, he must control his own physical body. The connection between I and myself is unbreakable. Who but I own me!? It is not as if I can just hand over my control over myself to another man. I am inalienable (including you----indeed, everyone is inalienable). Conversely, a programmable robot is alienable. Its ownership and control can be voluntarily transferred from one man to another.

For man to even have come out of the cave, he has had to own himself. It is impossible for mankind to have taken off without first acting. This action must presume self-ownership. How could it not? However, man cannot live as a self-contained agent. He must use what nature has provided him. He must have the ability to own what of nature he has come to control. Once again, how can man not own what he as transformed of nature ("homesteaded")? For the caveman to flourish he has had to use nature to live. To live requires him to own what he has transformed into his use. This, too, one has to presume. It is man----as an individual----who transforms what nature has provided. It is he, as the first user (not a late comer) or homesteader, who comes to own what he has homesteaded as property. He must own property to live! Obviously, he needs to have the ability to own food. To begin to act, he must have this implied ability. He could not act otherwise, and he could not use the land. It is a praxeological requirement.

This remains true once man, a rational or intelligent agent (at least potentially so! ... I do wonder, though) unlike mere animal, searches for his nature or seeks to build any kind of ethical system. These prerequisites----individual ownership of one's body and being the property owner of what has been transformed of nature into his own before anyone else----are the basis for any such a search. The nature of man is transcendent and constant. It remains true with the first actions to the end of time. Proposing an ethical theory is done through propositional exchange among men, i.e., argument. And is not any such engagement one that is, by definition, done through conflict avoidance? Property rights infer that one has no right to physically damage another's property. The building of an ethical system, too, must be done through this means. Because how can one propose anything without first owning himself? How could it be possible for anyone to engage in propositional exchange if no debate occurs but war instead? For man to argue a certain ethical proposition and then base his argument in direct contradiction to the prerequisite of such an action is to disprove his proposition. And any such engagement in ethics or in a search for the nature of man must come from distinct individuals. There is no "mass" or "collective mind." No "universal communism" is possible.

Frédéric Bastiat, a classical liberal economist, said in his famous essay The Law [pdf] that law exists because property exists. It is not that law created property.

It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Men can come together to enforce this in a division of labor. Entrance into a division of labor is the result of man being indeed not just an island to himself, isolated away. Likewise, in the production of services in the defense of property, men can come, and would come, together in the free market. They can derive law and orderly arrangements from this----from private property and voluntary contract.* However, that "collective whole," so to speak, is a whole derived from those individuals (actually, in most cases, family households) coming together. This "collective whole," because it works in unison with its derivation, cannot contradict its premise. Its entire basis, rightfully understood, is of private property. Any formation of a system (or of multiple formations of such systems) to deal with robbers, murders, con-artists, and others must be created via these means.

*One example of law enforcement mechanism would be through convent relationships, housing associations, or some such things. That is because people would want to enter into these types of relationships to avoid bad neighbors that could lower property values. For example, many family households could enter into agreements not to have garbage in one’s front lawn. The link between family and property is one thing that could be strengthened in such arrangements. Beyond these types of relationships among family households, police and court systems would have to develop. See end of this blog entry for details.

It also should be mentioned that a utilitarian argument (of maximizing wealth and prosperity for the public at large) fits right into the natural right ethics of private property. Since a society without private property, or with very little compliance to the natural ethics and enforcement of private property, would be chaos and starvation. If there is little to no division of labor for social cooperation, such a society would be doomed. Natural rights of private property are not only natural to mankind, but because they are so natural they are also essential for mankind to exist beyond and above a cave-like or animal-like existence. A division of labor makes possible specialization in the production of goods and services. It allows higher levels of food production, for example. Instead of each man to himself producing his own food, he can now engage in a complex division of labor. It frees up activity and allows mankind to grow, to the extent that mankind or a particular society can grow. There is no hyperbole in saying that capitalism is the engine of society. It is the essence of a "living" and "breathing" society! It is a vehicle to society, if only man uses it for the good. You cannot disconnect property rights, and such subsets as property title contracts, from society. Even the most despotic (socialist) governments need to depend on its allowance of some minimal market place in the backdrop.

But paving the way towards tyranny is the ideological underpinnings of the statism of left-liberalism or conservatism. Statism of the left and right must be rejected.

Men fall prey to corruption once man sees it is acceptable to place governance into the monopolistic and coercive State. It is whence the State becomes the law-maker and, at the same time, makes the law while it itself lies outside of the law it makes. The formation of a State gives it ultimate jurisdiction in a given territory. By which it must coercively disallow any peaceful market alternatives for jurisdiction.

Now there is a great variegation of the definition of the word "anarchy." It means different things to different people. But if one defines it as meaning a society with zero laws that are absolutely pliant or a term describing a disorderedly society in a haze in its relationship to law, "anarchy" seems to fit the parameters of describing the operation of States. What is wrong yesterday is "right" today because government said so. Today, because the State said so, it is "alright" for it to engage in such-in-such activity; but yesterday it was considered a wrong. Talk about "anarchy!"

Moreover, and to a previous crucial point, men that fill the State are the ultimate judges, which include, as great libertarians like Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes of, cases which directly involve it, itself. How could States not become more aggressive or provocative as a result? They will be able to get away with more and to externalize their costs. The tendency will then be one of decreasing quality, increasing of fiscal irresponsibility, and increasing costs to the public which is forced to comply with it and only it. Even moreover, as the State lays down and enforces (sometimes) the natural private property laws that forbid, for example, theft, it, itself, engages in the very operation. This operation is masked into being called "taxation." States are supposedly meant to exist to protect property, but it is in the (political) business of liberty extirpation.

As the wonderful Murray Rothbard wrote in The Ethics of Liberty (of which many of the points in this blog entry come from): "But if the State cannot obey its own legal rules, then it is necessarily deficient and self-contradictory as a maker of law."

No way exists to make State operation----besides ideological corruption of the masses into acceptance and compliancy of its operation against private property and free markets (i.e., accepting of illegitimacy or evil)----a legitimate activity. It is just as illegitimate for one, two, three, or x individuals to engage in the activities that the men of the State engage in, as it is for those men of the State. Theft ("taxation") does not become voluntary gift because the State agents proclaim so. A lie does not become truth because of State. Mass murder does not become an acceptable act if done by the State. White does not turn black. Pi, as an absolute constant (an absolute ratio for circles) in pure mathematics, does not turn into the inverse of pi or some other number.

Democracy certainly does not make this criminal institution un-criminal. Mass democracy is the gross immorality of gang-like majority rule. If the majority decides to kill off some minority, it becomes acceptable with the so-called morality and greatness of democratic States. A democratic State that decides to lock a man up for defending himself and/or his property is not part of some "we" of democracy. There is a clear line between the rule and the ruled. To quote Hans Hoppe:

Under democracy, everyone is equal insofar as entry into government is open to all on equal terms. In a democracy no personal privileges or privileged persons exist. However, functional privileges and privileged functions exist. As long as they act in an official capacity, public officials are governed and protected by public law and thereby occupy a privileged position vis-à-vis persons acting under the mere authority of private law, most fundamentally in being permitted to support their own activities by taxes imposed on private law subjects. Privilege and legal discrimination will not disappear. To the contrary. Rather than being restricted to princes and nobles, privilege, protectionism, and legal discrimination will be available to all and can be exercised by everyone.

(In fact, such an "opening up" can only turn a State, and its ability to seize wealth through political means, into a larger Leviathan. Hence, monarchy is relatively better than any form of democracy.)

Representative government neither is compatible with freedom. To hire a representative is one thing, but to force it onto others, and to be stuck with this representative without the allow-ment of firing him or being held libel for this actions onto others in your name, is quite another. Violating man's liberties is violating man's liberties----under whatever name.

Neither can this statist operation be turned into a "neutral" operation. Net tax payers and net tax consumers (tax eaters) cannot become neutralized. Host and parasite are two separate creatures. As this proper analogy relates to the State, it displays the necessity of the State to be smaller than the host it lives off of. Since its revenues can only come through coercive robbery of those engaging in free market activities, if the subset of men fitting the role of parasite is greater than the subset of men fitting the role of host then it becomes clear that the host (and, as a result, parasite) will not live much longer. But the fact is, the two separate roles will always have to exist if a State exists. The only way to have "neutral" statism is if everyone had to pay x percentage of income taxation and of which would go directly back to the respected individuals. This is as if one were to take one's wallet from one pocket to put into the other pocket. Obviously, that produces no State. By definition, if such standards of neutrality are to be upheld, it could not exist.

(It should also be noted, to take off on a point made by Walter E. Williams:
Economist Williams is someone who I admire, and when he guest hosts on The Rush Limbaugh Show it is generally very refreshing to listen to-----surprising as that might be, but his reasoning is muddled in terms of the existence of the State. He argues on the program that the Welfare State is robbery because it is the taking of money from Bob to give to Joe. He, however, accepts muddled reasoning as it applies to the State itself. To correctly say the Welfare State is robbery is to say that the State itself is based on robbery too. One cannot have it both ways.)

In the same regards it is impossible to produce a "neutral" State judicial system. The only way to have a neutral judicial system is to have a free market, competitive environment, where there is no ultimate judge who is dependent on political pull or such considerations. Well, this brings us back to a stateless society.

Any form of statism is the rejection of man's self-ownership, private property, and of free market capitalism. It lets the cat out of the bag, one can say. This happens as soon as men accept the existence or necessity of the State. Men can preach on the subject of natural God-given rights and their attitudinal devotion to such rights, but accepting even a "limited" State is contradictory to facilitate that eulogy. This big crack or hole left open can only become larger as time progresses. It creates an additional un-natural way to get hold of wealth for oneself. The natural one----that is, the one in promotion of peaceful and voluntary cooperation between men----is based on self-ownership and private property. It promotes the production of capitalism. It promotes the engine of society. Using economic means man gains wealth not at the expense of someone, but to the benefit. This is why voluntary trade occurs between men. They do it because they, at that moment, expect to benefit. Mutual benefit occurs in economic actions, as a result. It is economic production that is through original appropriation (homesteading), production (transferring a good into a subjectively higher valued one), and voluntary trade.

Statism, however, introduces the method of obtaining wealth via political means. That is, using the means of the State----including taxation. These methods fly in the face of private property and markets! They in fact work to destroy natural rights and the market. (Looting does not create wealth! It redistributes it, and lowers production, diverting resources.) Such schemes result in less capital and consumer goods, and less wealth. Because things happen in time, less current original appropriation, production, and trade will happen. In the future, less will occur as well. Production and consumption becomes more present-oriented. Consumption and leisure increases; production falls. The cost of performing market production activities increases, and the cost of political means to extract wealth decreases. A shift from the former to the latter will then occur. This----the State----, then truly is a parasitic institution.

It also destroys communities and families. It takes away any naturally arriving (voluntary) authorities-----including churches, for example. Atrophy will occur to all competing centers of authority; since any form of competition (direct or indirect) will limit the State's activity. Community becomes meaningless since statism centralizes power monopolistically. Forget about law being enforced in local communities (i.e., truly originating from). Instead of having natural market, social, and cultural bonds (i.e., social-cultural conservatism); society only has a State bond, whereby atomization of the individual occurs. Social and cultural relationships and institutions must deteriorate as statism gets a hold of these things. As Lew Rockwell says: "It skews the culture toward decadence and trash." There exists no better way to destroy family then to have the State takeover its necessary functions.

The very first notion of some "limited" constitutional State will quickly be eroded away, seeing that no chains confine its unique power of coercion. Rothbard wrote that "The crucial point is that in the utopia of limited government and laissez faire, there are no institutional mechanisms to keep the State limited." A free market enterprise, on the other hand, is limited. It is limited because its existence dependence on individuals' voluntary relationship with it. Something which can be cut off from one's voluntary relationship with (and where one can find another competitor to take its place). Furthermore the market is limited because there is open entry in the line of competition. Both of these two things a State lacks and must lack to be a State. Joe Sobran is known for saying: "the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government." The only enforcers of the constitution, which is meant to limit the federal government, are those that fill the State. A document or contract written to oneself, so to speak, is not enforceable. Any of us can write a contract to ourselves, but it is meaningless in legal enforcement. "Divided" government cannot limit the State, either. The executive, congressional, and judicial branches instead gang together for ever more power. They have an incentive to do that. Paramount to debunking "divided" government is that the different or divided branches are part of the very same coercive institution. Such limits are only illusionary.

What then is the solution? First and foremost, the public at large must recognize the criminal nature of statism. That it is irresolvable to the principles of self-ownership and private property. In logical form it should be almost obvious. This also implies that the public at large must understand the principles of self-ownership and property, and what they spell out. Thirdly, it requires the understanding that an alternative does indeed exist, and in fact has existed in the world closely to anarcho-capitalist principles. The State is not only an evil, but an unnecessary one at that.

One of the points made by scholars, such as Hoppe or the late Rothbard, is that this development cannot come about through those intellectuals or scholars that are today in the chair of power. Such positions are positions given to them by the State. It is the State that has the ring of power. It follows then that they (with only very rare exceptions) will only echo statist ideology. It is also important to understand that such ideas---ideas of liberty, for example---do not come about through a group of average individuals. Only egalitarianism says otherwise. It comes about through a few. It is they that can attempt to combat statist propaganda. This can lead to a mass public change of opinion through spontaneous order. As H. L. Mencken wrote, freedom requires a natural aristocracy: "The capital defect in the culture of These States is the lack of a civilized aristocracy, secure in its position, animated by an intelligent curiosity, skeptical of all facile generalizations, superior to the sentimentality of the mob, and delighting in the battle of ideas for its own sake..."

Things to Read:

• The State versus Liberty by Rothbard. A brilliant and devastating critique of the State, excerpted from his book The Ethics of Liberty. As it relates to this blog entry, this book not only has this penetrating analysis on statism but also (among other things) shows the important link between having an ethics of liberty, of property property, in its relation to capitalism.
• Rothbardian Ethics by Hoppe. This essay was included in his wonderful book, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. A good reason to buy this book is not only for a unique philosophical defense of libertarianism, but also for its economic analysis showing how essential a private property society is. For example, he completely destroys taxation and "public" goods. There are also some discussions on money and banking.
  
• The Market for Liberty - Privatize Everything --- from The Paleo Blog. How can markets produce law and order? How can it deal with criminals and punishment of criminals? This entry will give some answers. It is based on the book The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill.
• Just Say No To Commie Roads! --- One attack against anarcho-capitalism is that people believe, because government is providing this or that service, no one else can. This entry looks into the roads and why they can be (and were in the past) handled in the market, and why it would be more efficient.
  
• Debunking Deterrence and Rehabilitation Justice Theories / You Want Justice? Don't Make Me Laugh.
  

Mr. Sobran is of course brilliant. Read his latest piece available online, "The Nixon I Didn't Know," by clicking here.

"Hey, Neocon": Paleos are winning on the web.
(Plus see A Few More Thoughts)

Paul Gottfired talks about his new book, Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right . . .

--- The Neoconning of the American Right at LRC.
--- Buy Making Sense Of The American Right! at VDARE.
--- My Book at TakiMag.

Lew Rockwell on War Without End.

Justin Raimondo: Vietnam, Again.

War With Iran? It has already started, says Raimondo.

An Acid Trip Gone Bad by Fred Reed.

A Political Theory of Geeks and Wonks by Jeffrey Tucker (Which are you? Geek or Wonk?)

"Fair Tax" Scam.

Who Was Bastiat? ---- Jeffrey Tucker Interviews Mark Thornton For the Answer.

(I did take the time to watch this, despite a slow connection. Great interview! And a very nice look inside the wonderful Mises Institute and its, from all I have seen, delightful atmosphere and, dare I say, culture.)

Download The Bastiat Collection [PDFs]

Volume I & Volume II
And Buy Here.