18 posts tagged “ethics”
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, An and Bn. 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 An have a right to it and would Bn 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 An alive in the present. What about X? Since Bn, 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.
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! Argumentation would not be happening. In a correct conflict-free setting there might be disagreement between the arguers, but there can at least be agreement to the fact that there is disagreement.
With these points in mind----i.e., argumentation is conflict-free and is an action----self-ownership is implied. For how can man even begin to engage in argumentation if he does not own himself and therefore control himself to then propose such-in-such? And how can he be an arguer with another if a conflict-aggressive setting is present (which also would violate the right to self-ownership)?
How can the very first philosopher engage in argumentation for the first time in history with another if this is not implied from the very get-go?
Objections
A denial that self-owning individuals do not participate in argumentation would be impossible because in the denial itself it admits to its truth. Any objection to this would be a performative-contradiction.
Trying to say the opposite in regards to the prerequisite of conflict-free interactions, i.e., that everyone can aggress against everyone else, would also be a performative-contradiction because such a proposition can only be proposed in argumentation and hence would already presuppose such conflict-free norms.
Property 'Outside' of the Physical Body (external property)
In this scarce world conflicts can not only arise vis-à-vis physical bodies but also vis-à-vis all other scarce resources that are in existence. (Ethics must be concerned with all scarce goods in existence to rid conflict. This, after all, is the goal of ethics. We cannot just stop with physical bodies.) To formulate any ethical norms in regards to these it must be compatible with the norms examined above. They are formulated because goods are scarce and "not because they are particular kinds of scarce goods."
"Uniform principles" are required to rule out all potential conflicts over scarce goods.
This requires (and will be expanded on below) accepting the natural theory of private property: Meaning man has exclusive control over his body. It is his property. He can do what he wants with it or to it as long as he does not physically aggress (i.e., invade without voluntary consent) against another's property. He can also use his physical body to acquire more property, as long as no one else has put use to it into their own private ownership first, by transforming a state of nature into his own usage and therefore his own control. The only other (nonaggressive) way he can acquire property is by voluntary exchange with another man. This is by exchanging property titles from a previous-owner to a new-owner. The previous-owner himself either obtained his property (as long as it was nonaggressively) through acquiring it in a state of nature (i.e., homesteading it) or through voluntary property title exchange. If it is the latter, then someone down the line of exchanges himself acquired it via the former method.
Argument Against (alienable) Property: A universal ethic saying that man cannot own property except for his physical body would cause the extinction of man. Entering the field of ethics, and hence argumentation, would never come about.
It is only because such property must be acceptable to own that man can then enter such a field.
Acquiring Property is Objective Based on Action; Not Verbal Decree: It would only be possible to disregard man's acquisition of property and allow another man to take it as his own without the voluntary consent of the original owner if property could be obtained by verbal declaration. (Declarations on ethical questions require argumentation. But, again, action praxeologically comes before such.)
Accepting this as true would infer that man's self-ownership of his physical body is also based on mere declaration. But a man cannot just declare another body as his own! Instead his ownership of himself is based on his action. Action comes before any (true or false) declaration, and hence any declaration presupposes self-ownership.
Declarations fail because they do not resolve ethical problems. This is because they do not solve what declarations over ownership of scarce resources to be true. It thus creates rather than ends conflicts.
Likewise, the ownership of external property must be presupposed in ethics. Again, he must own such property to live and for the question of ethics to come about. The only way he can do that is by homesteading (and later, in a developed society, contractualism), which is an action. Hence to declare that homesteading is to be limited or restricted, and is not an absolute, is to fall into the above problems. The actions of appropriating property come before any declaration.
Man can only own property if he put such property into use before anyone else.
If homesteading restrictions were in place, they would mean nothing for the simple fact that if one man were to homestead to said restricted area nothing could be done about it because interference would imply the interferer now has (some form of) property rights in said area. The problem of ethics would not be solved because now an irresolvable conflict over scarce resources is in place. (I.e., who owns---legitimately controls---it?) To loop back to the previous point, furthermore the only way that this restriction could be put into place is by declaration. The action of homesteading a state of nature into property is universal and objective. It is not objectively breakable, so to speak. Interference would conflict with the original acceptance of homesteading.
[Accordingly, and if my interpretation is valid, it seems that recent critics of Hoppe's argumentation ethics are baseless. To say that, for example, man's arms are not empirically required, and hence a valid universal proposition can be argued that all arms should be cut off, in argumentation misses the point. Man comes into argumentation with his arms intact and is presupposed in ownership by his objectively discernible actions beforehand, if he wants to remain logically and praxeologically consistent and not fall into contradiction (and at the same time wants his arms----if he does not, nothing is stopping him from cutting them off)!]
[Being conflict-free, one can ask: What is the only way to obtain personal wealth without running into irresolvable conflicts? Of course, by homesteading, producing, and contracting private property. Anything else is expropriation. The moment one can take from another man's property ------ i.e., earn wealth by doing such, without the consent of this man ------ is to run into conflict of who owns X. If it can be said that the 'thief' owns X, then did the 'original' owner own it beforehand? If so, then nothing is said at all because everything can be proved and disproved. Like in mathematics, a theory that can do this is no theory at all. All that is left is conflict----not ethics. If not, then just-ownership must come about from the second user-controller, i.e., a late-comer who comes after the first. However, if this is the case, then how did the first person get to his position? It must be considered un-just if he does not get approval from the second just-owner. But how can we determine the second late-comer before the fact? And what about the second man's ownership claim relative to the next late-comer, i.e., a third man relative to the first? Logically one must ask this question for the third, fourth, fifth, ... person. Society would die out and ethics would not exist.
On the other hand, if X and all pieces of property are taken to be owned by 'everyone,' society will suffer the same fate. First, ethics is not solved by this 'solution' because conflict has not been taken off the table. On the contrary, it has been amplified. Second, to abide to the principle is physically and practically impossible. To get everyone's 'democratic' permission on the usage over scarce property would require all of mankind's consent. Man would be long dead before this task could be accomplished. And this task would be impossible to implement without consent already being there to do such a priori. It must assume a collective-mind and collective-ownership from the start. This is not reality. Instead to try to justify this ethics would require argumentation and argumentation is based on, and can only be based on, methodological individualism. (And, in a somewhat overlapping manner, cutting everyone arms off is a collectivist idea, too.)]
Rationalist vs. Natural Rights Approach
The natural rights approach takes the position that universal norms can be found of man by looking at his nature. Hoppe's more rationalist approach is narrower compared to the broader and more general approach of looking at man's nature. This gives it an large advantage.
[For a natural rights perspective, see Murray Rothbard's brilliant The Ethics of Liberty.]
"Ought" vs. "Is"
Is an "ought" being derived from an "is"? Argumentation ethics is filled with "is" statements: e.g., ethics is argumentative, a priori.
The a priori of argumentation does not imply that other (incompatible) rules of conduct cannot be enforced.
Man can get scientific facts wrong. He can also speak scientific facts which are not true intentionally. The same is true in ethics. Although, Hoppe writes, the ethics we are talking about is more fundamental than empirical scientific research because it is implied in acting and arguing man.
Man can say that 1+1=7, but that does not change the fact. He can also try to act as if it were 7, but that still does not change the fact that it is not 7 but 2.
Impossibility Proof vs. Refutations via Empiricalism...
Just because ethics is studied in an environment with institutionalized aggression (via the State) does not dispute argumentation ethics. The point is that man cannot do so without falling into internal contradiction to the very foundation of the science of ethics. (Any disprove of argumentation ethics, thus, is not to come about via empirical examples of argumentation happening in some kind of statist framework.)
Property: Capitalism, Socialism, Physical vs. Psychic Integrity, Prior-Later Distinctions, Contractualism
Physical Integrity versus Value/Psychic Integrity...
Aggression under socialism is an 'attack' on the latter. In that sense, socialism is but a form of conservatism because socialism must preserve the current values of property and justify them being where they are.
The value of private property does not just change by the actions of the individual owner ---- it also changes by the subjective preferences and actions of others. Preferences and actions are outside of an individual's control. Value is in the head of an individual.
In order to hold constant property values no one would be allowed to act in anyway. Because by acting it is implied that values will be changing. No one would know ex ante if his action would be viewed as 'good' or 'bad' for various people. In order to act, man must get the 'okay' from everyone. But everyone would be dead before that could be accomplished. (And how could such a task, which is an action, be done, anyhow?) From a more practical perspective of implementation, it would have to introduce physical aggression as an acceptable norm. But this, too, would get into contradiction with the foundation of ethics (argumentation).
Ethics deals with ending conflict over scarce resources. The subject would not exist if this were not the case. And the only way for man to enter ethics is that he can act to get there first. Actions, writes Hoppe, "must be allowed to be performed prior to any actual agreement or disagreement." They are implied beforehand. Given that man can do this, then there must be "objective borders of property," i.e., borders which can be objectively identified by man "without having to agree first with anyone else with respect to one's system of values and evaluations." Socialism, itself, must admit this.
(John Rawls and Robert Nozick... Hoppe notes that both figures support socialism's protection of values versus integrity. For Rawls, a man increasing his amount of wealth relative to someone else has 'aggressed' upon that person. This 'victimized' man has a claim to take property away from the 'aggressor.' The only way to justify this is to say that values must be protected. For Nozick, it is acceptable for a "dominant protection agency" to outlaw competition. Nozick also believed it is acceptable to outlaw "nonproduction exchanges" despite the fact that they might not be actual forms of aggression or threats thereof [e.g., blackmail]. He could only defend such a position by saying that property values must be preserved and not integrity.)
Private Property implies Prior and Later distinction...
Socialism also runs into troubles because it ignores the difference between prior and later in property ownership, which is implied in ethics. Instead it says that priority does not matter: late-comers have as much right as first-comers.
Problems: Like was covered above in the brackets, with such a rule no one would do anything! Mankind would die out with such a rule. It is only because man can acquire property "at a definite point in time" that he can do so at all. It is not a "timeless" act.
Also, it is only possible for exchange and contract to take place because acquiring property happens at definite points in time. For two men to make a voluntary exchange or contractual agreement there must first be recognition that each of them owns their respected property prior to any exchange or contract. Thus, as one man exchanges X to another there is, and must be, an distinction between prior and later.
Argumentation: Prior-later must be observed in argumentation for argumentation to take place. To say that late-comers and first-comers are no different from each other in any way no one would be able to say or argue anything.
Conclusion
In brief, for the above outlined reasons all forms of socialism (i.e., any form of aggression against private property, including man's physical body) fail. The only justifiable system must be a pure capitalist order, a.k.a. anarcho-capitalism.
Implied in such a private property framework is a theory of justice. Self-ownership implies the right to self-defense. Ownership of alienable property also implies man's right to defend such property from aggression, and also therefore implies man's right to recover stolen property. Etc. [See chapters 12 and 13 of The Ethics of Liberty for analysis.]
If Hoppe
is correct, then the truth of violence (private or public) being an
evil is right before our eyes and is the aprioristic basis of all
ethical theories. The task is to see this truth and convince the masses.
Recently, when I turned the television on, something struck me. It made me thing "Hmm. This is an important comment. It is a great way to defend libertarianism." Then, it soon hit me. The character on this television show made a point from Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethic or the a priori of argumentation. Only the character did not know it nor did the writers, of course.
Two characters were debating; it does not really matter what about. The point is they were debating and then one of them said (paraphrasing), "Well, hey. Am I not allowed to have my own opinion? This is America, is it not? Leave me alone."
This is actually a brilliant point. For how else can you have an opinion if you are not allowed to have it?
On closer examination you will see that there are limitations implied in this in regards to one's actions. In order to have an opinion, and for another person to have an opinion, you cannot have that right taken away from you. In the same way, you cannot take away this right from the person you are debating with.
If person A, say, believes that Linux as an operation system is better to use than Microsoft's Windows and person B believes the reverse, then they can debate until they are both blue in the face but they can at least agree to the fact that they disagree. After the debate is over they may now agree or they may still disagree (or may become unsure to agree or disagree), but they will leave it to that. They both must recognize that they are entitled to their respected views. This means that aggressing against the opponent is against this ethic. Starting a physical fight, without the approval of the opponent, is a violation on the right to have an opinion.
It is therefore this very ethic that rules out coercion as unjust against the person and property of man. Someone that has the opinion that it is within the rights that the State or a private criminal (or gang) has to coerce others is an opinion grounded in direct contradiction to having an opinion in the first place. That is to say, it destroys the very grounds or foundation to have an opinion. It destroys the requisites of opinion holding. As Hoppe says, it is the engagement of a "performative contradiction."
Reading Material:
One problem many men have with genuine anti-statist libertarianism is that it sometimes seems "harsh." Because, does not freedom allow men to do things which are cruel? That is to say, cruel in the sense of not violating another man's individual liberties but nonetheless cruel and perhaps wicked. Or is libertarianism quixotic in the sense of not being able to address real-world "lifeboat" situations? Is private property too parochial to deal with them?
Maybe it is best to step back a little. Another question that can be asked is, can the freedom to choose lead to very harmful choices?
Individual Freedom, Morality & Society
As for myself, I am a proponent of individual freedom (live-and-let-live) but at the same time I do recognize that certain actions or attitudes in freedom are more preferable to others. An attitude of lifestyle or cultural relativism in a society, in my view, is one that is deteriorating to the point of collapse. Here are some examples. Imagine if heavy narcotic usage somehow became the norm. That it became an equally acceptable lifestyle choice. Such a society would be committing a form of suicide. Or imagine if abortion became ever more popular and at the same time motherhood became ever less popular. Treating abortion in a high esteem would lead to the death of a society. (Just take it to its reductio ad absurdum conclusion to see the consequences of these Left immoral views.) The same would be the case if the idea of motherhood became unfashionable, which according to current trends it is becoming to an extent. Another example would be the acceptance of "alternative" lifestyles like homosexuality and homosexual coupling. The more society moved in that direction, the less strong the idea of "traditional" family would become and the less vital a society would become. The needed cultural ideal or image would be lost. Or take divorce. Beyond the fact that if divorce became increasingly common and looked as a "wonderful" thing and how this view would attack the institution of marriage, increasing divorces would breakup families which would leave scars on children and their mental health. There are infinite examples. Outside of cultural and social values, we can take the importance of freedom as it relates to diet. A society where people have adopted bad diets would lead to illnesses.
Is freedom a "dangerous" thing because of all the destructive choices that it can lead to then? Actually, the answer is a big No in the macrocosmic scale of things. A thing to keep in mind is that if the public at large has bad ideas about culture or social attitudes, then a freedom-killing machine such as the State is not going to be able to change things, especially if it be democratic. The answer to the question, however, is in the fact that freedom discourages destructive ideology and behavior. Take a business. A businessman that acts unwisely goes bankrupt and is gone from the market. The same is true about destructive behaviors. To become wealthy in a free market is going to push man to adopt more (traditional) conservative attitudes on life. For him to acquire capital and be entrepreneurial, he cannot live the life of a playboy hedonist. It requires him to have a low-time preference (i.e., the ability to save and hold off instant gratification for a more forward looking and conservative attitude) outlook and lifestyle. In a free market all it needs is a few far-seeing and wise men with this time preference. Such will put into a process for all men in society to adopt it or approach it. As far as family goes, in freedom a family must place more emphasis on itself as a unit because this building-block to society would not be substituted by statism in anyway. (See this for more analysis of why.) It would actually cause civilizational progress as the family institution requires low-time preferences. Therefore, freedom and capitalism will encourage more healthy "traditional" families. You can say the same thing about diet and health. Many often talk about the military-industrial-complex, but there is a health one too. Given the perversities of today’s statist health-"insurance," it actually has contributed to the moral hazard and bad diet habit of men. Today's statist food pyramid is an awful guide. Man prefers health to sickness, but today's statist system promotes the latter. It is another reason why man needs freedom and its natural incentives.
"Lifeboat" Cases versus Private Property
To loop back, then what of "lifeboat" cases?
Bob is hanging from a cliff. Joe walks by.
Does Joe have a positive obligation to help?
The question is not about the morality of Joe's choice but the legality.
By the same token, it might be moral for Joe to be friendly to people,
but that does not make it legally enforceable. Under libertarianism,
positive obligations are not enforceable. On the other hand, obviously,
if Joe pushed Bob to be in such a position, then he would be obligated
to help.
If Roberta is diabetic and does not have enough carbohydrates at home to keep her blood-sugar level from falling lower than its already very low level, then would the neighbor be legally obligated to give her high-carbohydrate food before she goes into a coma (and perhaps dies)?
A friendly emailer gave me the example of a couple who plays with candles and fire at home. What if, even though the case is unlikely, the house went up in flames and the only way of escape was through someone else's property and the owner of that property says no to the couple? Does this show problems with the ethical foundation of private property? My response was that this "lifeboat" example is that it is not a good one at all. They put themselves in the situation. A situation they had practically full control over. If a man is playing with fire in his house, then he better expect that there is the real possibility that his home, and he with it, could go up in smokes. He should know that the only one that he can ultimately depend on is him; not other people rescuing him.
The example fails to past the test to be a lifeboat example, in my view. A lifeboat situation must be a situation where the variables or factors that led to the event were fully or partially uncontrollable. Since in this example they had control of these variables or factors, it fails.
Natural law is about normal affairs, but they apply in the abnormal or extreme. Since lifeboat events are rare, and are increasingly rare in a market relative to a statist society because the free market does not produce or amply scarcity but rather helps to increase man's living standards and property choices to control, they should not be the basis to disprove Rothbardian libertarian ethics. I think it is wrong in denying natural rights and natural laws. It is the basis of an ethical system of personal ownership and property control. Not only is it from which lifeboat events become rare, but the foundation for capital and civilization in the first place. Relativistic moral values spiral into the acceptance of evil, i.e., of coercion and slavery. A "right to life," for example, is a "right" to "free" (a misnomer) healthcare, housing, immigration, voting, etc. It opens the door to evil. To quote Richard Weaver, a great conservative of the past, when you could find great conservatives, "relativism ... must eventually lead to a regime of force. The relativist has no outside authority, no constraining transcendent idea to appeal to or to be deterred by. For him 'all things flow.'"
However, say this example, or an isomorphic thereof, was common (relatively speaking), and in which the protocols that make a situation a real lifeboat example were there. Conditions would be forced to change to deal with this kind of event. People, knowing that it could happen to them, would make agreements with each to prevent such happenings. Businessmen would see a gap and try to capitalize on it. They have an incentive to do such. Fire insurance policies would do things to help prevent such happenings. People in their private law arraignments could have clauses that deal with it, as well. Set a million or billion minds free, and who knows what they will come up with.
Anyone can think of a "what-if" (and they are infinite in number), but many troubles happen today as well (infinite, too, in number). Many more problems and evils are unleashed with statism, in fact. Freedom gives men the "freedom to choose." It is a better arraignment because the individual and especially businessman knows better how to solve things than some far away politician, who is slow in response and has perverse incentives. The free market of freedom solves things through spontaneous order and has a market check to see it if it works with the current reality of things or not. The complexity of the world brings a complexity of possible "what-ifs." But that is why it is best localized to the individual property owners and to the free market.
For example, if I remember correctly, in For a New Liberty, Rothbard talks about if access to the roads would be a problem in anarcho-capitalism. This fear is easy to solve. (Not to mention that road owners have an incentive for customers to come to them.) Right now, when you buy a home, you want to look into the title of the property to make sure some other person cannot claim it. There are title insurance companies for this problem. Under freedom roads will be private. So what if people block you? Would this be a big problem? Well, easy. Men are not hermits nor wish to be. This will not change without a State. There will be, what another libertarian calls, access search. Say you buy a home. You hire someone to search for you, to make sure the roads you will use are contractual tied up so as to prevent such an occurrence.
Well, just here we could find potential answers to the above hypothetical situation.
Would
there be increased discrimination in the road example? Yes, but that is
an essential part of freedom. Business areas are to be expected to me
the most "open" (one reason to this would be for comparative
advantage), residential areas would be the most "closed" and secluded.
(On a private property society see this.)
In many ways the Mises Institute is ahead of the pack. Almost all of their books are online, for free, for anyone to download. It does not even decrease the sales of the actual physical books. In fact, they say, sales have gone up by doing this. If you think about it, it does not seem that surprising that this would be the result.
While The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard is not published by the Mises Institute itself, they do have it online at their website. Mr. Jeff Riggenbach, following Rothbard's For a New Liberty and What Has Government Done to Our Money?, has just completed making a online audio book of it.
The Ethics of Liberty
Online E-Book: Here.
Online Audio Book: Here. [MP3 Downloads]
CONTENTS:
Introduction to "The Ethics of Liberty" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe [Audio I, Audio II]
PART I: INTRODUCTION: NATURAL LAW
1. Natural Law and Reason [Audio]
2. Natural Law as "Science" [Audio]
3. Natural Law versus Positive Law [Audio]
4. Natural Law and Natural Rights [Audio]
5. The Task of Political Philosophy [Audio]
PART II: A THEORY OF LIBERTY
6. A Crusoe Social Philosophy [Audio]
7. Interpersonal Relations: Voluntary Exchange [Audio]
8. Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression [Audio]
9. Property and Criminality [Audio]
10. The Problem of Land Theft [Audio]
11. Land Monopoly, Past and Present [Audio]
12. Self-Defense [Audio]
13. Punishment and Proportionality [Audio]
14. Children and Rights [Audio]
15. "Human Rights" As Property Rights [Audio]
16. Knowledge, True and False [Audio]
17. Bribery [Audio]
18. The Boycott [Audio]
19. Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts [Audio]
20. Lifeboat Situations [Audio]
21. The "Rights" of Animals [Audio]
PART III: THE STATE VERSUS LIBERTY
22. The Nature of the State [Audio]
23. The Inner Contradictions of the State [Audio]
24. The Moral Status of Relations to the State [Audio]
25. On Relations Between States [Audio]
PART IV: MODERN ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF LIBERTY
26. Utilitarian Free-Market Economics [Audio]
27. Isaiah Berlin on Negative Freedom [Audio]
28. F.A. Hayek and The Concept of Coercion [Audio]
29. Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State [Audio]
PART V: TOWARD A THEORY OF STRATEGY FOR LIBERTY
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.
For those few readers of The Paleo Blog that take some kind of interest in this blog or the subjects it covers, you should go buy Richard Weaver's In Defense of Tradition. (Be sure to have Ideas Have Consequences alongside it.) This book collects his shorter writings into this magnificent whole of erudition. I have been learning a lot from it.
In this entry I will endeavor to display a few of Weaver's insights (with my feeble comments) on man and modernity, from the aforementioned book.
Humanism and Science
Weaver thought that most essential to mankind is its understanding of man. For where do we all go without understanding the nature of man? He thought it has been a grave mistake to have humanism take a back seat to scientism. Understanding nature and the physical universe is important, of course. But what good is it without that most essential backdrop? Where does man take off from? Are there limits?
Humanism studies man as expressed through his whole nature, including his motivation; and this is why it seems to some now, as it seemed to Socrates ..., to have a prior place in the course of inquiry.
It appears that mankind as a whole, says Weaver, knows less about "human nature than did the men of Socrates' day or the men of the Middle ages." I dare say Ricard Weaver was probably correct----and I dare say it is still true. Man has shifted from a more centered and grounded view of striving to understand the nature of man, to jumping straight (without grounding) to science. Science, then, becomes an end to itself.
In cerebration, does not the socialist come to one's mind as an illustration of this?
Society and the individual become a laboratory experiment. This springs the desire and the acceptability of the statist to engineer society. Social sciences then become empirically driven, and man is looked at as a sort of equation. Individuals are seen as pliant because they supposedly have no nature.
No wonder the Austrian school of economics, which Weaver supported, is not that popular in the statist left-neocon establishment. How could it with this ethos?
The great Richard Weaver thought that this attitude leads to the viewpoint that if it can be done, it must or should be done. Hence, the atomic bomb. As Weaver wrote in Ideas Have Consequences: "The bomb was an unparalleled means; was this not enough?"
Relativism
Relativism must follow this. One aspect of relativism is that one cannot make any kind of generalization. Weaver himself said that as he taught his class there would always be some negative reactions if he himself made a generalization.
(This reminds me, from what I read, of what happened to Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe a few years ago.)
All a generalization, writes Weaver, "is a standard idea or observation." Relativism, in spite, denies truths. With a relativistic frame of reference, there can no longer be any general truths or standards that transcend time or space. Everything becomes a haze. With this view, how can one learn anything from history?
An area that our late author elaborated on was how this turns many people in politics to "middle-of-the-roadism." There are several tangents we can take off from this interesting point.
But here is what Weaver thought explained the moderate:
How did the notion ever arise that the safest place is in middle of the road? I believe it arose from people who resent the very idea of logical clarity, because logical clarity always leads you to a principle. And a principle is resented because it is binding in the same way that a generalization or a standard is.
Hmmm... Now this is a great conservative (or "paleoconservative").
This leftist tendency has spread through the culture and even into language itself. He gives the example of much of the advertising language one finds. "One," he says, "finds in such language contradictory things predicated on the same article."
Relativism, says Weaver, is also very much linked to statism:
I am entirely convinced that relativism as a doctrine must eventually lead to a regime of force. The relativist has no outside authority, no constraining transcendent idea to appeal to or to be deterred by. For him "all things flow."
Individuality and Modernity
The above has a impact on the individual----if it be a man who throws self-reflection or reflection about the nature of man away; be it a man's embracing of relativism; be it a man's allegiance to a strict concept of "living in the moment"; or whatnot.
Our late author asks: Is not the man
we regard as having authentic personality ... possess a center, and everything that he does is in relation to this[?] ... When such a person performs an act, no part of his being seems uninvolved; what happens on the outer circumference is duly controlled by the integrating center. We sense, sometimes with a feeling of envy, that this individual is a unitary being and thus "in possession of himself."
I think Richard Weaver was on to something in his writings here. He is absolutely correct.
One thing he points out, and I think it is worth going aside a little by pointing out this here, is that we all must never disregard or dismiss a man. A casual glance or a casual conversation or two (in fact, the number could be much larger than two) can be highly misleading. Secondly, different individuals can have extremely strong points as well as weak points. IQ, while generally very useful--accurate---and so forth, is not the whole of a man. One can test much more highly in one area (e.g., reading) and less on another (e.g., mathematics), for example. (To clarify, there is nothing wrong with generalizations or group generalizations and things of this nature. But this is clearly not the point or subject here. See above.)
To focus the conversation back to the main subject, Richard Weaver says that for personality to form it needs independence free of "social coercion" and "complacence." We cannot treat man as a machine. Nor can society be treated that way. This means that we cannot have a mechanalism of man. He is an "organism!"
One of the popular sayings these days is that man must "live in the moment." This is faulty advice. It is true that man lives in the present. Man flows with time. However, with that comes the accumulation of one's individual history. We must all use that, to the best of our finite abilities. To quote Weaver:
The human being must live in a present that is enriched and sustained by a past; it is his experience stored up in the form of memory which enables him to be something more than an automation responding to sensory impingements.
Conscience gathers our history of our past. This memory is carried with us in the present. Action of man is with his conscience. It holds (be it very finite) together man's understanding of himself, the world "outside" him, and the structure or binding of himself, the world and his ideas.
It is thus nonsense to say to oneself to "live in the moment," as a philosophy, so to speak. Richard Weaver says that this idea leads to a deformed personality.
In other words, "Don't think about it." Let the present trend of society experience determine the attitude and the decision. Today's mass journalism, with its lively propagation, its weak reflection, and its addiction to sensational data, lends powerful encouragement to the habit.
Weaver quotes T.S. Eliot in his saying that "the presence of the past in the present" has much meaning to the personality of man. Man cannot "live in the moment." (Do you see how this ties into the above sections? They are all very connected.) As our late author says, man is more than "functional." He has also an "historicity." This is his status as a man----as an individual. He needs status and function.
The man of old age, for example, cannot function or perform as he once could. But one does not address him based on his current ability. People address him based on his complete self: i.e., his past accomplishments. We honor those.
Modernism, however, and leftism destroys this. This produces a loss, says Weaver, of the "sense of belonging." We feel detached and depressed with anxiety. Society needs social layers and hierarchy, as this is bonded as a requisite to such a society. Society, though it must be pointed out, he says needs "many different centers of authority, influence, and opinion, competing with one another..."
Another aspect of this is man's inner and outer life, and knowing how to balance the two. There is a difference between "public" and "private" life. One should know the difference and know how to act appropriately in both respected distinctions.
Democratic ideology blends the two and produces confusion. It has trickled down, says Weaver, even in architecture. How many of us have a place of private meditation (which is isolated, closed, and has no windows)?
Richard Weaver even says that, although one might dismiss at first without reasoning it out, that the income tax blends "public" and "private." More privacy is lost with it. The income tax produces a State in which we are all "under surveillance."
The decline of privacy, our late author reasons, makes man more "one-dimensional." (For an aside: that is almost always my reaction in watching the various television sitcoms. Imagine what these programs do to man's understanding of humanity!) Scientific abstraction, based on a false view of man, has also added to this.
Restoring the Health of Society
This is me speaking not Richard Weaver, but he would probably agree with a good portion-----since Weaver was very much an anti-statist figure (wanting to get rid of the income tax is a clear sign of that.....he was even for taken away the power of the federal reserve, among other things).
All of us have to return to the basics. We must do our best to have reborn a "moral imagination." But this is not just some war between cultural elites. As Dr. Paul Gottfried says in his book Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (see this entry for quote), the government itself pushes the buttons in education to impose values contrary to what is being typed about in this entry.
To go back to Weaver. Today's
pressure against the habit of contemplation and the displacement of the humanities from a central role in our eduction has worked against what are probably the two best means of getting to know the nature of the human being.
Education starts with us as individuals. We should all therefore attempt to educate ourselves, be it a lifetime task, to principles that Weaver spoke about. This goes double for our children.
Government----in particular the federal government----must be dismantled. For how else will men get a proper education? It is a common for one to say that "All politics is local." This is false. Today All politics is national. At the very least, it would seem to me, politics should be decentralized as much as possible. Leviathan must be caged, or better still killed. With this push, we all should not accept or be content with "middle-of-the-roadism." How about we take an anti-statist view to its full conclusion?
It also means restoring private property, what Weaver called the "last metaphysical right." The more decentralized power is, the more it goes into the hands of local communities. And the more decentralized it is, the more it goes into the hands, ultimately, to private property owners themselves. Natural outgrowths of private law can occur. Covenant relationships can occur. These covenants, versus any government, can actually fulfill the wants of a conservative or traditionalist community.
Frank Chodorov Wrote:
“The right to life, or the right to oneself, must mean the exclusive title to all the faculties which are identifiable with the thing called ‘me’: body, mind, appetites, aspirations, all the factors of personality. This peculiar bundle of flesh and soul is ‘mine,’ first, because it came into existence when ‘I’ was born, an act of God, and will pass out of existence when ‘I’ die; secondly, there is no way of transforming title to that personality to anyone who is not ‘me.’ That is the important point, that neither science nor politics is capable of devising a way of transforming ‘I’ into ‘he’ or ‘we.’ Oneself is oneself throughout life.
“Now, title to life is not merely metaphysical; its reality is the enjoyment of those things which, according to the dictates of nature, make life possible. Without them, ‘me’ disappears. The raw material for those things are all about ‘me,’ put there by the same intelligence that put ‘me’ on this earth. But it so happens that this profusion of life-giving materials serves ‘me’ inadequately until it is transformed into consumable shape. ‘Me’ must go to work on those things so as to make them contributory to life; and though ‘me’ finds labor wearisome and undesirable, so strong is the will to life that this aversion is overcome. Thus, some part of ‘me’ is invested in what ‘I’ wanted to enjoy; it would not have existed and could not be enjoyed unless that investment of labor were made. It is by virtue of this investment of ‘me’ that the desirable thing becomes ‘mine.’ It is ‘mine’ because ‘I’ made it.
“Title to things, or the right to property, enjoys moral validity, therefore, only when it rests on labor. Any other theory of property rights must begin by rejecting the right of the individual to himself and must assume that the successful use of force to separate the producer form his product is title enough. Putting aside moral considerations, title resting on the use of force is transitory, vague, and uncertain, because it must change with every change in the incidence of force. Thus, the salve owner chattel’s property only so long as he can exert force on the slave; when the slave overthrows his master, the title to property reverts to the former slave. The thief becomes an honest man and the honest man a thief according to which is stronger. Whenever we invoke a rule of property that does not recognize the relationship between the producer and his product, we are involved in contradictions; we are on transitory grounds and outside the field of principle.
“When we recognize the employment of force in acquiring property----that is, when our sense of reality has not been dulled by adjustment to its employment----we are quick to put upon it the stamp of inequality; we call it exploitation, confiscation, appropriation, thievery. It is a malum in se, an inherently evil at. In that way we assert the conviction that depriving the producer of the fruits of his efforts is an infringement of his right to life. It is an immoral act. And it is an immoral act even if it is sanctioned by law or is committed by a number of people acting in concert, for there is no multiplier large enough to make a wrong a right. When we consider the consequences of the substitution of a forceful (or legal) for a moral right to property, as we will, we shall see that the violation of principle cannot be done with impunity. But, on principle alone, regardless of consequences, any method, legal or illegal, by which title to property is shifted from producer to nonproducer, is essentially akin to the burglarizing of a house. Under letters of marque issued by the monarch, piracy becomes privateering, but in either case it was stealing; and when I am compelled against my will to support a school or a bureaucracy, under any pretext, I am being deprived of my property.”
See the Frank Chodorov Resource Center
Continuing the theme of justice and crime, another region of conversation I will dive into is so-called "hate crimes." Please pardon me for thinking that all crimes are "hate crimes" and that all crimes are hateful and evil acts. This not only includes a truly wicked and evil act of a white heterosexual murdering a black or homosexual. It includes a white heterosexual murdering a white heterosexual. Or a black homosexual murdering a black homosexual. (Whatever.) All of these acts are just as evil and hateful as the others. They are all "hate crimes," as far as I am concerned.
("Hate crimes" compared to "love crimes"? . . . Or "hate crimes" versus "not so hateful crimes"? How do we determine if a given criminal fits into the former, hate, or the latter, not so hateful? Read his mind, and to what arbitrary and fuzzy end?)
Many are furious, I see, that President Bush, according to the Washington Times
(8/7), "vows to veto hate-crime expansion for gays." Yes, it is the end
of the world as we know it. Heaven forbid. Please, Mr. Bush, please
pass more laws on the books that usurp state jurisdiction in place for
nationalization. These issues always make me wonder: Are all problems
and so-called "problems" to be "solved" at the dictator's president's hand? Must we always turn to politics as the (so deemed) "panacea" to everything?
Why does not the Left learn its lesson from the Bush administration?
You want to give all of this power of decision making to him? I guess
they have figured it out. Bush is one of the better administrations
they could have asked for.
"Hate crimes," be it for blacks or homosexuals (or any other minority or even majority groups), are not at all about justice or restitution. Far from. Crimes are crimes. And justice is justice----no matter who the given victim is (white, black, green) or the given aggressor is (white, black, green). Instead, what those who push for these types of laws are interested in, is the expansion of victim-hood between different groups, which is the promotion of victimization and conflict. They are seeking the wielding of state power to propagate multiculturalism and, as Paul Gottfried puts it, "the politics of guilt." What better way for the State to control more areas of life than to destroy any predominate cultural or social barriers? The majority culture does not need government support. That what it does not control, must be discouraged for what it does or can control. And what better excuse for the State to use to intervene and expand that interventionism in the lives of people?
As Murray Rothbard wrote in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, the ideology of egalitarianism has shifted into a new area of the idea of "oppression." This "oppression" does not even have to be actually coercive to be called "oppression." Today we have a group egalitarianism, he says. With victim groups and oppressors in a state of flux. The "victim" group deserves special privileges from government and special laws that benefit them at the expense of the "oppressor" group. Noticing or observing differences between groups is condemned (unless, of course, it is of condemnation of white heterosexual males). Political correctness has arisen.
What parameters do "hate crime" advocates propose? When a white kills a black, what justification do authorities have to exercise more punishment? Hypothetically, what if it could be somehow proven in a given case, where a white killed a black man, that the criminal killed the man not because of the color of skin? Or are advocates saying that this is not possible? Of course, they know it is possible. They know all of this. The point here is that the ability to determine if the murder took place based on skin color, or affected by skin color (or sexual preference, etc.) is fuzzy. Also why is skin color (sexual preference) just a determinate? Why not the color of the victim's eyes? How about the color of hair? How about height? Weight? Accent? Surely accent, for example, can be a distinctive characteristic of a person. And surely a criminal may have a deep grudge or hate of a person characterized with X accent. What gives one group special privileges versus another? The answer is that there is no rational way to determine that! Besides, even if one murdered someone because of one of these numerous factors or a combination thereof, that does not make the crime committed any more or less evil or monstrous.
Real justice demands that restitution, as far as humanly possible, occur to the victim who suffered an act of criminal aggression on his person and/or property. If the murder was the crime, the victim's family deserves justice as far as it is possible. What gives any minority so-chosen by the establishment (black, homosexual, whatnot) the verdict or earning more "justice" (or "rights") than majority groups so-excluded (white, heterosexual, whatnot). This belief is not a theory of justice, but one applying different sets of rights to different sets of people. This can only be done arbitrarily. Justice comes or derives from understanding property rights that all men have. All individuals have the same right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" or in summation, property. All justice derives from that. It is "hate crimes" that are muddled and inconsistent.
Ideological reasons above all motivate "hate crimes" and not any sense of legality, justice, or morals.
Furthermore, left-liberals do not even apply their idea of "hate crimes" consistently to the hard fact. Whites do not live up to this bizarre image of suppressing blacks or other minority groups at all time during the day, due to, I guess, having some deep secret hate of them. But, at the same time-----And who could deny this?-----whites, I suppose, that fill the government workforce apparently do not have this secret hate and disgust that the rest of the white public has, and therefore it is they that should regulate and control the behavior of everyone in society as in regards to race or other minority determinant criteria.
The left-neocon establishment makes sure that the only "hate crimes" that are covered and highlighted in the news is when a white does harm to a black------that is, when a majority person fitting XYZ criteria does harm to a minority person, so chosen by the establishment to be a victim group, matching ABC criteria. When it is a minority that does harm to a majority there is not as much outrage by the establishment. This is because it does not fit the politically corrected idea of whites suppressing blacks and other minority groups. "Hate crimes" today are only when whites aggress against so-chosen minority groups. If a black kills a white, this is not a "hate crime." Why, certainty this is a twisted view. All such acts as this, be it whatever people involved is evil just the same.
Even if we conceded, which I will not do, the point that there should be special laws for "hate crimes," they would have to be used entirely differently to actually correspond to the actual data. For convenient sake, to pull data off of Buchanan's syndicated article "The Washington Post and The Color of Crime," over at VDare.com (plus check out their blog), the reality is that black-on-white crime is far more common than the reverse. This is exactly the opposite notion that the establishment tells us and implies to us. Buchanan quotes figures from the book The Color of Crime: Race, Crime and Justice in America. The figures that are in this book come directly from FBI and Justice Surveys. "Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit violent crime against a white person than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery." "43 percent of the victims of violent crime from blacks are whites." "Black-on-white rape is 115 times more common than the reverse." And "in more than nine out of 10 cases, black victims are murdered by fellow blacks."
So, in conclusion, "hate
crimes" have nothing at all to do with real justice, which derive from
man's natural right to his person and property, but instead "hate
crimes" are driven entirely by ideological motives and some mysterious,
baloney "social justice" ethic that comes from the hate of property
rights. As Frédéric Bastiat said, laws exist because there is
property----not because law created property. Secondly, even if we say that
these extra laws should be imposed as for establishing "hate
crimes," we would then have to apply the notion of "hate crimes"
differently as in regards to how they are applied today because the
majority of so-termed "hate crimes" compared to non-"hate crimes" do
not fit the billing, and the establishment would have to act and report
accordingly.
Two other theories of justice are based on deterrence and rehabilitation, but the logic behind both of them falls short of being justifiable or ethical. The aged old retribution system of times past, on the other hand, is tried and true. It also applies a consistent standard to all men without being arbitrary and fuzzy. The other two fall apart, as we will examine with the help of Murray Rothbard and his book The Ethics of Liberty as a guide.
Proportionality, as we covered in a previous recent blog entry, is the theory that holds together. To recap... Two parties are subsets to all criminal activities. The criminal is one party and the victim is the second party. A victim is one who is attacked (or threatened to be attacked or any substitution thereof) by the criminal in a way that physically damages his person and/or property. These two parties is the requisite for there to be any crime at all. Once a crime is committed, and the given parties are determined to fit the roles that they do, it is the victim (or perhaps the victim's family) that deserves to be compensated as far as humanly possible. The criminal must compensate the victim and also lose his own rights in proportion to which he took away from his victim, at the victim's discretion. This theory of justice is inline with natural rights and also our intuition.
Deterrence is a theory of justice based not of natural rights, and natural rights' basis in a consistent theory applicable to all men and at all times, but on the arbitrary whims and instability of utilitarianism. This is a far cry from a theory. We must spell out the consequences to its uttermost to see if this theory is justifiable or not. Taken to its logical form, a crime in which men are less morally inhibited to commit would require a relatively greater punishment compared to one in which men are more morally inhibited to commit. Surely, the logic spelled out of deterrence is preposterous and thus must be rejected. Criminal activity that is generally less destructive to the person and/or property of another relative to that which is more destructive, the average man is less inhibited to commit.
Given the utilitarian nature of deterrence it would also, and since it lacks moral foundation, give a pass for the State to go after innocents, secretively to the public, for a public display of punishment for reasons of "deterrence" of XYZ crime. It would fit into the model of deterring crime, and it would help deter crime. Though, it is obviously goes against all standards of moral sense. Most everyone wants more than a theory of deterrence.
Murray Rothbard wrote: "The fact that nearly everyone would consider such schemes of punishments grotesque, despite their fulfillment of the deterrence criterion, shows that people are interested in something more important than deterrence."
Rehabilitation is also based on shaky grounds of arbitrary whims. Here again we have a theory that throws away more objective standards of proportionality and restitution for giving the powers that be full control over whether or not a given criminal is "rehabilitated," and by the necessarily subjective standards of what it means to be "rehabilitated." (Or the process and/or time it will take to make a given criminal "cured.") Following Rothbard's example, we can have a thought experiment of two criminals: One who seems incorrigible, but whose crimes are relatively petty (e.g., stealing candy), and another criminal who seems corrigible, but whose crimes are relatively much more severe (e.g., murder). Punishment ("rehabilitation") would have to be greater for the one deemed incorrigible. Like a theory of deterrence, the majority of people want something more than this. Very few consider this "justice served." In addition, rehabilitation gives arbitrary power, and hence potentially abusive power, to the judge in criminal matters. Equal treatment (and equal punishment) under the law would mean nothing.
Here is what Professor K.G. Armstrong says (as Rothbard quotes him):
The logical pattern of penalties will be for each criminal to be given reformatory treatment until he is sufficiently changed for the experts to certify him as reformed. On this theory, every sentence ought to be indeterminate – "to be determined at the Psychologist's pleasure," perhaps – for there is no longer any basis for the principle of a definite limit to punishment. "You stole a loaf of bread? Well, we'll have to reform you, even if it takes the rest of your life." From the moment he is guilty the criminal loses his rights as a human being…. This is not a form of humanitarianism I care for.
The idea that punishment is meant to exist for the cure of criminals is, in itself, a gross injustice to the victim. This theory of criminal justice warps punishment for the purpose of "curing." It links crime and mental disease and blends them together. Under this, justice becomes therapeutic in nature, and the crime gets lost. It gives reason for the class of psychotherapists to go after anyone deemed not "normal" before a crime has even been committed, because it places disease first and then crime. For the person not considered "normal" with XYZ personality (or whatnot) might as well be put in the "tender," or not to tender, hands of the psychotherapists. Any "disease" that the therapeutic class wishes to label as "disease" justifies it to control the masses. It denies freewill and applies unpractical and unworkable standards.
Neither deterrence and rehabilitation gives us a systematic, practical, or moral guide to what justice is all about. Statists ideas, moral and ethical relativism, and leftism in general have clouded our judgments. It has reached the most basic issue of what constituents a crime, how criminals should be dealt with, and the importance of attempting to correct the wrong done to victims.
See chapter 13 of The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard for more.
