5 posts tagged “libertarianism”

“Intellectual Property” is not Property

I am against so-called "intellectual property" (e.g., patents and copyrights) because it results in the theft or the coercive control over the scarce and physical properties we have legitimately homesteaded or acquired via voluntary trade (e.g., our papers, computers, audio recordings, video recordings, even our physical bodies and brains, etc.).

Things that are scarce, physically controllable, and discernible we treat as private property because otherwise there would be---chaotic and irresoluble---conflict, and quite possibly violence and bloodshed, over who controls what: Do I own this computer or do you? Who has legitimate control over it?

But ideas are not scarce. They are infinite. I can sing a song, for example, again and again without disallowing anyone else from singing the same song. There is no chaotic conflict. To say that I "own" the song says that I can control you and your property. However a song is not property because rules of exclusivity do not need to exist and if they are present they are entirely, artificially imposed from the outside by the backing of the government. If I am the first man to say "hello," it makes no sense to say that I own it and that you need to get my permission to say the word.

Ideas (e.g., songs) are by their very nature nonphysical but with "intellectual property" are artificially treated as if they were indeed physical. Though ideas can of course be applied to property----and they always are----they are still per se detached from property. A man can transform via production the property he acquired through homesteading or exchange (e.g., clay) into what he perceives as a better state (e.g., pot). This transformation of his property, nonetheless, does not alter the nature of his ownership. The physical components are the same, what has changed is the arrangement of those owned components. In addition, because ideas are always applied to property, from a practical point of view it would be impossible to consistently and non-arbitrarily enforce such idea "ownership." The whole concept of this "property" is consequently spurious.

With the introduction of "intellectual property" the logical detachment between ideas and their relationship with the scarce, physical world is ignored, and involuntarily and unilaterally the private properties we have acquired are violently delimited in their use.

Private Property brings Order

The whole notion of exchange and contract between specific individuals work because acquiring property from nature happens at specific points in space and time by specific individuals.* Socialistic-nationalistic notions of property can only be artificially and aggressively imposed after the fact. Before a trade can take place between two men, there obviously must be something to trade. They, or specific men before them, must therefore have acquired something from nature beforehand in a non-socialistic way. And only then can a trade take place where the specific property of a specific man can be exchanged for the specific property of another specific man.

To have any real concept whatsoever of liberty, liberty must have an exclusive as opposed to an inclusive nature for men. Or else there would be no domain for man to have liberty to actually do something and control something, and to do so without running into conflict with another man and his abilities to control things and do things with these things. Here we find the only way for men to have---to possess---liberty. (In our day of course the focus of "liberty" is not exclusivity but inclusiveness. This idea is internally filled with contradictions and thus cannot be upheld consistently. [My blog post "Paradoxes of Liberalism" partly displays this erroneous view.]) Without exclusivity, liberty does not exist and is hence illusory: I have no liberty if my physical body did not exist as my private property. I have no liberty if I cannot own the fruits of my labor's homesteading and exchanging of property. Hence, the fountainhead of liberty is private property.

Restricting a man, for instance, from using a super-atomic bomb to kill every man on the planet is clearly not restricting his liberty. A man's liberty is to his private property, i.e., his physical body and the property he acquired through homesteading or through voluntary exchange from a previous (non-thief) owner. This implies that private property delineates borders between specific properties belonging to specific men. Man A's exclusive control over his private property prevents man B from taking it for himself and at the same time prevents man A from using his own property in a way that trespasses upon the private property borders of man B's. In addition, conflicts are eradicated from the get-go in the creation of property borders. The property borders of man C's land are created when he homesteads this land. Because he does this before any other man, there is no conflict and the borders that were created prevent conflict in the future. Insofar as man recognizes the borders of private property, conflict can be prevented and order can be pervasive across society.

Saint Thomas Aquinas was one scholar to recognize some of the basic principles spelled out here. Not only do men take care of what is theirs better, any kind of "common" ownership leads to confusion and tension (ST, II-II, q.66, a.2). The dominion of the earth was given to man by God (Genesis 1:28). To control and own private property is in our nature.

*(Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics presents the case that because property must be acquired in such a manner, it is impossible to argumentatively justify any ethical norm that contradicts such facts. "Otherwise," he writes, "it would be impossible for anyone to ever say anything at a definite point in time and space and for someone else to be able to reply. Simply saying, then, that the first-user-first-owner rule of the ethics of private property can be ignored or is unjustified, implies a performative contradiction, as one's being able to say so must presuppose one's existence as an independent decision-making unit at a given point in time and space." As those familiar with his work can see, my analysis here has been heavily influenced by Dr. Hoppe. On the other hand, one of the main differences here is my analysis does not use argumentation ethics as a starting point. While I am endlessly fascinated by it, I personally think it is somewhat a shaky and incomplete idea. But I do think his analysis is more powerful, especially in terms of highlighting prior-later distinctions, than Rothbard's analysis of disproving the alternatives to private ownership (e.g., collective ownership and master-slave ownership.)

“But no man can own land!”

OK. So, you don't mind if your neighbor dumps some garbage into "your" lawn?

Also, why stop at land? If man's homesteading of land does not make him the (legal and just) owner of it, why not say that his homesteading of any "external" thing does not make him the owner of it?

In such a case, man would only be a possessor. But then the only thing that would matter about property is who the possessor is. It would not matter who was the prior or later possessor. Theft would be non-existent, etc.

That would be a world of conflict and chaotic anarchy.

If land is to be used at all----and it must be if mankind is to survive----and if we are to avoid chaotic and irresoluble conflict, we must say that one can control land and therefore own land. The distinction of who the first possessor is in comparison to later possessors, who either have become possessors compatibly or not with the prior man's possessing ownership (which allows man to homestead and later trade without conflict), cannot be gotten rid of. And, to iterate, how can man own the fruits of his labor on land (and fruits which are derived from land) if he cannot own land? "Georgism" (Geoism) is incoherent.

Respecting Man’s Liberty = Peace, Prosperity, & Civility

For it is in the nature of things that when I eat my apple that I exclude all others to it. Any "common" ownership is impossible once these consumer goods are employed or used. To say that this is untrue is to talk nonsense. It is in the nature of all things to be privately owned. The original appropriation of property to be used as a consumer good or capital good is always and by necessity acquired in a private (Lockean-like) manner. Our physical bodies, too, are naturally, individually our own. We are the first and only user to (directly versus indirectly) control our physical body. Furthermore, just as man must have property prior to exchange, man must produce before he can consume. This logical chain cannot be broken. All that can happen is that it is artificially diverted afterwards into destructive and parasitical ends that are incongruent with this logical chain.

The appropriation or homesteading of a specific location of virgin land, before any other man, into a specific man's control and hence property ownership is beneficial, ex ante, to him and at the same time does not infringe upon, or trespass upon, the property of any other man. The voluntary trading of specific goods by specific men, correspondingly, are by their very nature, in the ex ante sense, mutually beneficial for all parties involved and at the same time do not violate any man's property.

Here we find the road, as Murray N. Rothbard wrote, to "multiply ... resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange." Instead of fighting over the existence of scarcity, men cooperate with each other and recognize private ownership rights. They homestead, produce, and exchange private properties. Trading leads men, who are naturally different and unequal vis-à-vis each other, to specialize in the division of labor. To expand wealth upward and upward, men develop technologies so as to produce round-about methods of production. Profit and loss continuously moves the production of goods and services from those who produce less well to those who produce better. Men start to save, i.e., not to consume present consumer goods, and invest in capital goods with the aim of enlarging the amount of consumer goods in the future. Salaries begin to reflect this and, with salaries on the rise, young children and mothers can exit the labor market. Capitalism as a result becomes geared to stronger families. And so on.

Peace between men, and hence respect for private property, requires us to think about how we can better serve our neighbors, since a man must use the goals of others as economic means to achieve his own goals. It is therefore untrue, as many dullards claim, that the free market promotes egotistical selfishness. The diminution of the division of labor would help to accomplish that. The very rich man, in a free market, gets rich by making the masses rich. As men learn to gain wealth at no one's expense, hostility, violence, and war between men diminish and mutual respect, sympathy, and tranquility between men increase. Thus men become more invested in the rule of law. Moreover, private property makes men more interdependent, and hence reduces perverse forms of "radical individualism." This interdependency requires men to have trust, faith, confidence, and loyalty in others. Otherwise, no one would do business with another. And since socio-economic mobility is flexible, these positive values and feelings between men are promoted to all. On top of this, as wealth increases, there is more time for the arts, community, charity, spiritual development, etc. More material wealth produces a tendency for men to invest in non-material wealth. The latter's marginal utility increases and the former's decreases.

Practical wisdoms and common sense, what is more, spread. With more dependency, mobility, competition, and interactions, such things as politeness and punctuality increase (as far as humanly possible). Punctuality, for instance, makes interactions stronger and results in greater wealth (materially and non-materially). Similarly, education spreads. And very destructive practices and traditions that diminish civilization and men's interactions will tend to diminish in the common ethos. Virtues like charity increase. Without private property, after all, men could not practice it and there would hence be less cultivation of this virtue. (It is only through liberty that a man can individually cultivate virtues!) Thrift, prudence, fortitude, and conservative discipline increase as they are rewarded on the free market. Long-term thinking and planning (both linked to familial management as well) become more common as they are necessary in capital production.

Society becomes somewhat hierarchical. Entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, natural authority figures, saints, etc. build society upward as they rise above the common man. Not everyone can be a manager or a captain of industry, for example. This further becomes reflected in family and community relationships. No man is a social or economic atom. Private property (which is inegalitarian, hierarchical, exclusive, undemocratic, etc.), outside of our physical body, is not a "given" to us as we are born into the world. We must earn it and therefore must work within the framework of families and authorities in civil society. Most interactions in civil society are communal or institutional and therefore "pure" autonomy, so to speak, of the individual is absent in this regards. Likewise, the shaping of ideas and cultural attitudes are social phenomena. Civilized society knows of no isolated, detached man. With greater peace, the union, the cooperation, between men is stronger.

Not Respecting Man’s Liberty = Violence, Poverty, & Incivility

Peaceful coexistence between men means accepting the principles of liberty. It depends on knowing that aggressing against your neighbors' properties destroys peace. Given that civilization and its advancement depend on the existence of the division of labor and the private ownership of the means of production, it thus depends on the recognition of self-ownership and the homesteading principle.

Society is not an end to itself; it is a means. Men come together to do things together. Peace must be in the heart and mind of men. True fraternity---brotherly love---is something that can only develop when peaceful cooperation is established. It is the fruit of peaceful cooperation. It is based on peace, not war. Peace, as Ludwig von Mises would say (contra Heraclitus), is the father of all things. War, theft, rape can never develop fraternity. Men under such an arrangement would see all other men as enemies. No feelings of friendship could develop under this arrangement, said Mises. Wealth and therefore prosperity can only come from peace, and peace can only come from respecting property.

But the State is institutionally configured to be a war making institution. "[I]f we look at the State naked, as it were," wrote Rothbard, "we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even non-libertarians concede are reprehensible crimes." It is a monopoly of violence that exploits and expropriates life and property. Without the consent of a specific property owner, the State can seize property from this specific owner in full or in part.

The State is not a real producer. It obtains its revenues parasitically from those who actually produce wealth and improve society. Private property is logically prior to government. Government is a parasite. And, given a legitimate owner can do what he wants with his property (because it is his) as long as he does not aggress against another's (because such property isn't his), any contract he makes with another is only a contract if it is voluntary. But, recall what has been said in these mini-essays, the government makes no legitimate contracts with anyone. Contracts are entered into by specific men and their specific property. Government is thus a criminal organization that (ironically) has monopolistic power to define what "criminal" is and is not. In addition it becomes a legalized channel for crimes, i.e., it institutionalizes crime, and is therefore the most dangerous institution and is hence more dangerous than any other criminal person, group, or institution. Historically, this is statistically confirmed. States have murdered the greatest number of men.

With the introduction of "political means" to obtain wealth, which is based on looting and exploiting men's private properties, men are ever less required to think about improving the well-being of their fellow men. Civility and respect become less important in life. Dependence on the "economic means" to obtain wealth, through peacefully respecting the private properties of others and by non-parasitically producing wealth, for men lowers and fraternity diminishes. Social interdependence is depressed and the costs of incivility and atomistic-individualistic action is socialized and therefore increased. Cultural degeneration is the result, and it snowballs when the political means become increasingly more attainable for men. As this happens a tragedy of the commons is produced and a "war of all against all" occurs.

The State that does X activity necessarily does it at the expense of other things. It is absolutely impossible to judge if alternative Y or Z or A or B, or a combination of them, is more or less wanted and needed by the public----a public that is heterogeneous. There is no way to tell if the resources that go into X activity turns those resources into something that is better than not doing so. The only way to tell, however, is if there is a profit, but this would require that X be done through peaceful, voluntary activity which respects private property. Being cost-efficient is hence impossible. Waste and loss is hence implied in all statist activity. Neither can a proper conservation of resources happen. Nor is a State directly dependent on changing consumer demands, since it can easily expropriate property. States, for these reasons, do not have to directly serve their constituents well in the things that they supposedly need to provide. In fact, even if they wanted to, they can't.

Officials in the State naturally have a basic interest in expanding their wealth like any other man, but they can expand their wealth by not serving voluntary consumers directly in the free market, which would prove that their services are serving them well versus competitive alternatives, but by expropriation and exploitation, which proves that State officials are in fact obstructing consumers by destroying their "sovereignty" and thereby destroying competitive alternatives.

The less private property is respected, the more poverty and incivility. Homesteading, producing, and exchanging decline. The structure of round-about capital production is temporally shortened. Thriftiness, self-restraint, prudence, and other conservative values decline. Men become atomistic and detached. And as they shift into becoming political animals to greater degrees, they become more antagonistic toward each other. In the context of this discussion, it should now be clear, peace (market) and violence (power) are the two fundamental poles that advance and hinder the division of labor, the overall wealth in society, and civilized life in general.

***

And if theft is wrong, then it is wrong. Taxation and the like doesn't make it right in some cases. Any kind of relative ethics destroys the very foundation of ethics. Relativistic notions destroy man's reason----and cannot be defended because these notions self-contradictorily intend that they per se are true in a non-relative sense. Even the use of violence to stop a man from doing something that is immoral is unethical and illegitimate if this man is not invading another's property. The ends don't justify the means and two wrongs don't make a right. Clearly, we cannot make all immoral personal acts illegal by State fiat. This is a recipe for tyranny.

There is a reason, by the way, why democratic-republican governments are not filled with hundreds of Ron Pauls. An institutional bias is present against a Ron Paul being able to govern in a high office. Now it is true that public opinion can theoretically make a democratic government be filled with hundreds of Ron Pauls, but this utopian scenario is institutionally unstable and would unlikely last for long. Democracy favors anti-Ron Pauls for the simple reason that it pays to be one. Those men who use the democratic apparatus to its fullest extent possible get further ahead than those who do not. Once the political means to obtain wealth exist, the incentive is to develop the characteristics that define a typical politician of today. No reforms are possible; those who value peace must "strike at the root."

Democracy is a powerful ideology. It cloaks slavery. "Republicanism permits," wrote Albert J. Nock, "the individual to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that State action is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and when it is glorified he is glorified." The masses play a Ping-Pong game in electoral democracy. This helps to furnish the obfuscatory idea that the masses rule themselves and gives the illusion that there is always an "opposition" party standing by. When things go wrong, there is always a particular party to blame and a particular party to take over. But the statist establishment itself is left intact, instead of it being looked at as the true villain.

“But without a State, we would have anarchy!”

In one sense, there will always be "anarchy." At the present there is international anarchy between the various nation-governments because there is no world government. More fundamentally, all nation-governments are in "internal" anarchy because there is no outside government making it anarchy free within itself. Obviously, such a task would be impossible to truly fulfill (unless, theoretically speaking, there is a dictator). Notwithstanding this internal anarchy present in the government, it is able to maintain law and order within itself. If anarchy were per se unstable, this would be impossible; hence, anarchy is feasible in terms of producing law and order.

And if one claims that peace cannot be had under anarchy, Murray Rothbard would point out that it seems to follow that it cannot be had with different nation-governments. So, if someone thinks there must be government, he must think there must be a world government. Accepting the idea that smaller governments could form and thereby break off from a world government, while additionally proclaiming this process would uphold moderately stable peace under such increasingly anarchistic international relationships, has no logical end point in terms of these new and smaller governments being similarly broken up, leading to the obliteration of all governments. Moreover, Hans Hoppe, echoing Rothbard, points out that the anarchistic relationships between governments holds for the anarchistic relationships between men of different governments. Not surprisingly, the latter anarchistic relationships are more peaceful, historically speaking, than the former.

(Plus the idea of a world government is the most dangerous of ideas! Briefly: The larger the territorial government, the more it can afford, and get away with, imposing lots of intrusive and anti-capitalist laws on its subjects without too much adverse consequences to it, itself, directly. Conversely, ceteris paribus, the smaller a government is territorially, the less this is true. When you think about this more and more, it should become more and more clear that greater anarchy, ceteris paribus, produces better conditions. Now put this in the context of the above paragraph.)

When disputes do happen between two men of different governments, these cases are generally resolved even though there is no world government. A sovereign is not required and this is why the free market can provide judicial functions. In addition, international trade is yet another example of anarchistic relationships. There are several examples of anarchistic trading partners using non-governmental means (e.g., privately created law and arbitration) to keep the trade as honest as possible.

Other questions come to mind: Who will protect us from our "protectors"? Who will protect the "protectors"? The next reasonable question is this: Why is there not "a war of all against all" between the "protectors" and the "protected"!? It seems to follow that if the theory is true about the need for a sovereign government to prevent chaos between men, the relationship here between these two "classes" would nevertheless be chaotic. Accordingly, anarchistic chaos does not exist not because of the State but despite it.

Some Blog Entries that Expand on These Topics: “You Want Justice? Don't Make Me Laugh;” “Debunking Deterrence and Rehabilitation Justice Theories;” “Reparations and Private Property;” “Some Analysis on the Logic of Private Property;” “Don’t Give the State Consent;” “Are ---We--- the Government?;” “Does Freedom Come From The State?;” “Power Destroys Civil Society;” “The Market for Liberty --- Privatize Everything;” “Aggression, Defense, and State.”

Quite a few essays that have been written by prominent libertarian thinkers can be recommended here, not only to acknowledge my very, very large intellectual debts, but perhaps more importantly to have those interested explore. But because most of the above blog posts have such links, I will not do so here.

My advice is to simply read the works of Spooner, Nock, Rothbard, Hoppe, Block, Kinsella, and others.

I.

One of the purposes of a book like Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block is to apply radical libertarianism into the more "extreme" scenarios of life. By doing this it makes libertarianism all the more powerful because if man can apply libertarianism to "hard" cases all the more true will it apply to the "easy" cases.

This is what makes Dr. Block call libertarianism "beautiful," like the beauty one hears from listening to a Mozart symphony or the beauty a mathematician sees in a complex mathematical proof. Libertarianism is a bracing and rigorous theory in political philosophy and justice (ethics). It attempts to build a concretized theory based on solid axiomatic-grounds bringing out a consistent and whole system deducing self-ownership, property, liberty, and justice.

Even under the most extreme and direr scenarios does liberty provide a path to peaceful relationships and future economic advancement, if only men have the wisdom to see it. We just need strong citadels of liberty, escaping from the traps of the statists of the left and right.

II.

Like a past Paleo Blog entry, I would like to apply libertarianism to  "extreme" lifeboat cases. A reader asked me what I thought about the following case. So let me please share some of my own thoughts on it.

Imagine a man became shipwrecked and landed on a very small island in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of rescue for the foreseeable future. Two men live at this island. Say it is a given that they homesteaded the entire island. One man owns half the island on one side and the other man owns the other half on the other side. They are "isolationists" and want no contact with the outside world.

The two islanders agree that this unlucky shipwrecked man can stay with them respectively, but want to impose (literally) brutal laws and rules on him. Is there a limit to how far they could go? And, if so, what are those limits?

Before I directly address the issue I would like to preface my response and relate this thought experiment to the "real world" of complex societies filled with many people, write a little about "implied" or "implicit" contracts, and then move directly into the thought experiment and apply some economic-utilitarian analysis.

III.

When I first thought about this thought experiment I was thinking about how this fits into the bigger picture of the "real world," and how someone might try to (falsely) discredit libertarianism. However, the truth of the matter is, as I see it, that this kind of thought experiment in reality is not apposite to the real world and normal situations. It has virtually no practicability and applying it to the real world would misunderstand general societal tendencies in a free and complex division of labor.

Envisage, if you will, that tomorrow a brutal idea (such as, cutting off body parts as a requisite to be a citizen of a nation) was adopted by the majority of Americans, excluding you the reader and myself, living under a State. A statist society could not solve this problem, especially a democratic one, if it occurred anymore than if such immoral and stupid ideas took hold in a free society. But a free one has less chance of this occurring and less chance that one (you and me) will be pushed into this idea or association rule simply because it is a free society and has no monopoly in law making. Thus no matter how bad it could get in a free society it will only be worse in an un-free one.

Tomorrow they might also, say, decide that interaction with other households in any division of labor is "evil" and stop doing it. But is it likely? The answer is no. In regards to this, most of the population would die out. (I'll side-note here that the farcicality of protectionist ideology should be clear.)

And with this kind of thought experiment we must keep in mind that today, in a statist world, there are plenty of places you would not want to be stranded at. Would you, or the shipwrecked gentleman, want to be stranded at certain places in Africa with little to no hope of escape? My guess would be no. In addition, there would probably be fear for one's life, not to mention some theoretical or hypothetical immoral association rule.

IV.

Now the more interesting thing about this whole topic----and which might be forgotten or overlooked in the ethics of private property----is implied or implicit contracts. It has nothing to do with this thought experiment per se, but I think it is worth exploring quickly.

Pretend that I own an airplane and invite you on it. Up in the air I say I do not want you there anymore and ask you to leave. You obviously cannot, not without jumping out to your death. My reasoning is that I own it and have a right to push you out. But do I?

The answer is I do not have any such "right" in a case like this. This is because implied contracts exist, so to speak. It is implied that I will not physically aggress against you (or your privately owned property, besides your physical body) on my property. If you enter someone's home, it is implied that he will not take out a gun and kill you. That would most obviously be murder. Likewise for the airplane: It was implied that when I invited you that I would not do such a thing. That is to say, an implied contract existed for not being kicked out in midair. (The only way that kicking you out would be possible is if I told you in advance that I might do this and, I venture, had you sign a notarized paper in writing for any future judge to see.)

Okay, on to the original thought experiment.

V.

We must first recognize that an entire island, even a moderately small one, would most likely have "virgin" land. The islanders could claim to own everything, but if they did not actually homestead everything they do not. And, clearly, just walking through virgin land is no real ownership claim! The islanders could not apply any private rules or laws to land like that. It seems to me that the chance they owned all of it combined would be low. The only way to own land and have the ability to apply private rules and laws----like rules a man can apply to his own legitimately, privately owned house----is to the land that was actually homesteaded into private ownership. (See Murray Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty on homesteading.)

Since it is a given that they do, then my answer would be that if the shipwrecked gentleman is on their legitimately owned land they do have a right to impose all the rules and laws that they like----even insane, immoral, and stupid ones. But this does not mean that their law can implement slavery as it is strictly and technically defined. (Hence any owner cannot force a guest to stay on their property or anything of this nature. That kind of rule/law is incompatible with making contracts in the first place.) So this truly is a very bad luck case---what can I say?

However, even in a case like this there are natural forces that will tend for this not to happen.

VI.

In a horrible situation like this I would suggest that the gentleman see if he can "pay off" the inhabitants in some way. That is, the guest can agree to work for them to avoid dumbfounded laws and rules. Or he can just tell them that they should drop their dumb rules and cooperate in a small division of labor, for their mutual benefit. After all, it is the division of labor that is our friend----including in this case, because even under conditions of hostility between peoples can self-interest alone mend fences in a division of labor of social cooperation.

From a utilitarian perspective in terms of economics and private law, the two inhabitants, for sheer self-interest, would not want to put too many rules or private laws on the man because that would lower his productive capabilities to produce things. (How wealthy can they be all alone!? Not very! They could use all the help they can get.) Therefore even if you consider the man a servant (or even a fake quasi "slave"), the islander owners, if they had any interest in their own wealth and if they had any intelligence, would not want to be brutal to him. They would want him productive because this would benefit them more than if he was unproductive. In a symmetric way the same is true for the gentleman. He wants to be less imposed on and to benefit from a mini-division of labor. This is not only true for the "short term" but is also true, and even more so, for the "long term."

Furthermore in a case like this the gentleman would probably be better off----minus the fact that capital wealth will be no doubt much lower and other considerations of this nature----in terms of the rules and laws that would likely (on average) be imposed on some private island than those imposed (on average) in public law by some State. This is because the State does not have these peaceful and non-intrusive incentives. Being a slave to the State would bring less and less incentive to impose fewer laws. The State could afford imposing lots of intrusive and anti-capitalist laws----spreading them out and collectivizing them, so to speak----on lots of people without too much adverse consequences to them qua State rulers directly. This is most profoundly true with a democratic government. The incentive with this type of State is to loot as much as you can get away with. Capital (i.e., long-term) value of "its" citizens, in a manner of speaking, would not exist. A temporary elected ruler, unlike a hereditary king, would have the incentive to loot what he can loot now in the present because he might not get a chance to do so in the future. The more they flail the public, the better for them and their buddies. Just as importantly, he cannot sell what he extracts from the public and he cannot sell any of the operations of the State to the open, free market. As a result, even the functions of the State will be overcapitalized, grossly inefficient, and as operations themselves abusive to private citizens. Opening the State up would make it so that if something is not looted now someone else might loot. As it turns man into a political animal we truly see a Hobbesian world.

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:

• "Rothbardian Ethics" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• "The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic"
• "From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism"
  

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.)

Where is the justice in today's current criminal system? There is none. The United States has the world's largest prison population, overflowing with individuals who engaged in no wrong against the person and/or property of any other individual. Where is the justice in that? It is these individuals who deserve justice! As the great Lysander Spooner said, "Vices Are Not Crimes!"

A genuine criminal is one who engages in activity that directly and physically harms, or threatens to harm, another's person and/or property. It is when man A violates the rights of man B. These rights all men have. It is the right to one's own person and justly acquired property via homesteading (i.e., taking and transforming into one's own a state of nature before anyone else) and voluntary exchange (which, of course, includes gifts). The violation of rights is when A engages in a criminal action of destruction against B's person and/or property (which includes contractual property title relationships). It is therefore that violence against the non-violent is and can only be called un-ethical. This is what makes something such as the "war on drugs" entirely illegitimate. Doing violence against a narcotics user is doing violence on par with doing violence against a non-narcotics user. Hence it is only justifiable to "go after" and engage in the action of restitution and retribution when the criminal is a genuine criminal. After all, the idea of restitution and retribution can only come into real and actual being when another's rights have been violated.

But even when dealing with cases of genuine criminal activity we cannot look to today's system for justice. The victim gets little to no justice in today's statist society with our socialist police and court system. Say that A steals a large amount of money from B. A uses it up. Later the governmentally-run court system finds that A is guilty. What then? Is A himself forced to give back, to be forced to work to pay back, the amount that he has stolen from B back to B, at the very least? No. But it is worse than that because now B, along with other individuals who have done no wrong, have to pay for all of the government bills that handle and detain A. B is thus done a double wrong. Everyone else is also done a wrong in this process. This is a far cry from genuine justice. As a hero of mine said, it is justice that the libertarian is chiefly concerned with.

In Murray Rothbard's essay "Why Be Libertarian?," he said this:

It is our view that a flourishing libertarian movement, a lifelong dedication to liberty, can only be grounded on a passion for justice. Here must be the mainspring of our drive, the armor that will sustain us in all the storms ahead, not the search for a quick buck, the playing of intellectual games or cool calculation of general economic gains. And, to have a passion for justice, one must have a theory of what justice and injustice are----in short, a set of ethical principles of justice and injustice which cannot be provided by utilitarian economics.

To continue:

The genuine Libertarian, then, is in all senses of the word, an “abolitionist”; he would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasion of liberty, whether it be, in the original coining of the term, slavery, of whether it be the manifold other instances of State oppression. He would, in the words of another libertarian in a similar connection, “blister my thumb pushing that button!” The libertarian must perforce be a “button-pusher” and an “abolitionist.” Powered by justice, he cannot be moved by amoral utilitarian pleas that justice not come about until the criminals are “compensated.”

In a libertarian society, then, justice would be the very first thing on one's mind. Who but the victim (besides, possibly, his family) deserves justice? Society cannot magically claim that "it" deserves or needs justice. In our above example, it is B that deserves justice. Not "society" or anyone else. In fact, operations on the actual handling of criminal aggressors use to mirror more closely libertarian principles, where the victim was the one who was brought justice and compensation.

Here is what Rothbard had to say in The Ethics of Liberty:

The idea of primacy for restitution to the victim has great precedent in law; indeed, it is an ancient principle of law which has been allowed to wither away as the State has aggrandized and monopolized the institutions of justice. In medieval Ireland, for example, a king was not the head of State but rather a crime-insurer; if someone committed a crime, the first thing that happened was that the king paid the “insurance” benefit to the victim, and then proceeded to force the criminal to pay the king in turn (restitution to the victim’s insurance company being completely derived from the idea of restitution to the victim). In many parts of colonial America, which were too poor to afford the dubious luxury of prisons, the thief was indentured out by the courts to his victim, there to be forced to work for his victim until his “debt” was paid. This does not necessarily mean that prisons would disappear in the libertarian society, but they would undoubtedly change drastically, since their major goal would be to force the criminals to provide restitution to their victims.

In fact, in the Middle Ages generally, restitution to the victim was the dominant concept of punishment; only as the State grew more powerful did the governmental authorities encroach ever more into the repayment process, increasingly confiscating a greater proportion of the criminal’s property for themselves, and leaving less and less to the unfortunate victim. Indeed, as the emphasis shifted from restitution to the victim, from compensation by the criminal to his victim, to punishment for alleged crimes committed “against the State,” the punishments exacted by the State became more and more severe.

In a libertarian society, said Rothbard, "the criminal, or invader, loses his own right to the extent that he has deprived another man of his." The victim thus is not only entitled to get back the loot that was stolen, but the offender also loses the same proportion of rights that he took away from his victim by his act of aggression. So as Walter Block says, "two teeth for a tooth" is the going order. However, "the proportional principles," wrote Rothbard "is a maximum, rather than a mandatory." It is obviously up to the victim if he wishes to pursue his rights to the "maximum." The victim is also entitled to any other losses that resulted from being assaulted. For example, he may have lost a full day's pay of work. Thus, in a libertarian society, it is the criminal that is to be charged the bill of police and court services; not the victim (or anyone else----doing so would create more victims).

Reference: The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard, see chapter 13 in particular.