Proposition: The Regulatory State Is The Greatest Evil In Economics

[Brant Gaede]

4 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 the 'right' to drive a truckload of nitroglycerin   at 80 mph through a residential neighborhood.  But that is not a 'right' you say?  Why isn't it a "right"?  Because the law forbids it.

Like I said--you have no understanding of individual rights' philosophy. Law follows philosophy not philosophy follows law. That's just for starters. This cart before the horse can result and has resulted in the codification of any evil. In your literalness you will now state, "It's not evil to drive a truck filled with nitro through a residential neighborhood?" (Why, BTW, does the law forbid it? Because it's evil. Why is it evil? It violates both property rights and the right to life of many people. True, those who came up with HazMat transport regulations likely think as you do, but the regulations are correct and do not violate anyone's rights for there is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods, not that any driver would be stupid enough to take that gig. Yes, you can state this is an example of regulating the economy, but we've already discussed that and you've not answered. In the context of the original discussion regulation is above and beyond and contra rights' philosophy. The alternative can only be anarchy--your position--if there is no operative rights' philosophy in the first place. And, of course, we don't start with anarchy; we start with what is, so we don't in any case end up with it, but with the operative statism.)

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Like I said--you have no understanding of individual rights' philosophy. Law follows philosophy not philosophy follows law. That's just for starters. This cart before the horse can result and has resulted in the codification of any evil. In your literalness you will now state, "It's not evil to drive a truck filled with nitro through a residential neighborhood?" (Why, BTW, does the law forbid it? Because it's evil. Why is it evil? It violates both property rights and the right to life of many people. True, those who came up with HazMat transport regulations likely think as you do, but the regulations are correct and do not violate anyone's rights for there is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods, not that any driver would be stupid enough to take that gig. Yes, you can state this is an example of regulating the economy, but we've already discussed that and you've not answered. In the context of the original discussion regulation is above and beyond and contra rights' philosophy. The alternative can only be anarchy--your position--if there is no operative rights' philosophy in the first place. And, of course, we don't start with anarchy; we start with what is, so we don't in any case end up with it, but with the operative statism.)

--Brant

Just as I said.  There is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods

 

[BaalChatzaf]

Legally warranted and executed punishments are a form of regulation.  So if we have governments and law and enforcement of law  we consequently have regulation.

 

[jts]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Just as I said.  There is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods

 

You contradict yourself. Earlier you gave that as an example of a conflict of rights.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

48 minutes ago, jts said:

You contradict yourself. Earlier you gave that as an example of a conflict of rights.

 

You misread what I wrote.  The word conflict does not appear in what I wrote.

 

 

[jts]

13 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

You misread what I wrote.  The word conflict does not appear in what I wrote.

He has a right to drive thru the residential area but that endangers the people living there. That is a conflict of rights even if you did not use the word. You gave that as an example of a conflict of rights. You were trying to prove that there is no sharp division between legit government regulation and over-regulation.

Then you changed your mind and said he has no right to endanger people.

 

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Just as I said.  There is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods

And who said otherwise?

--Brant

straw man

[Wolf DeVoon]

On 11/27/2017 at 9:13 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

There is no right to transport nitro through residential neighborhoods

It does happen, you know. You can argue in favor of licensed professions including hazmat transport, excavation, tunnel engineers, mining, doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, or whatever, but government itself is the greatest polluter, creates truly horrible hazards on the ground and in the air, compared to private actors. The ultimate question is whether government should have a monopoly on strategic weapons. I've argued in favor of Galt withholding strategic technology from idiot government.

[BaalChatzaf]

On 11/28/2017 at 6:44 PM, Wolf DeVoon said:

It does happen, you know. You can argue in favor of licensed professions including hazmat transport, excavation, tunnel engineers, mining, doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, or whatever, but government itself is the greatest polluter, creates truly horrible hazards on the ground and in the air, compared to private actors. The ultimate question is whether government should have a monopoly on strategic weapons. I've argued in favor of Galt withholding strategic technology from idiot government.

Even if  a technical whiz True Capitalist withholds technology from the government, there are enough people who will work for the government, directly or as contractors to provide the government with more "nasty"  technology than it sanely needs.  You may bet a year's income that the government has nasty disease pathogens  being kept alive  in its vaults, for example.  The fact that "John Galt"  withholds will not prevent the government from having enough bad stuff to hand,   to kill the world ten times over.

[Brant Gaede]

The brains will tend to do what the money says and the government controls a lot of money. As this is contra brainwork, the brainwork tends to deteriorate over time.

John Galt is not the way of the world but the end of the world. That's what happened in the novel. Emphatically that's not the way of the human world. The point Rand wanted to make was made with an unreal man or a man realer than real like Michelangelo's statue of David. But Galt was not heroic; he turned his back on Goliath and walked away to demonstrate the impotence of evil meme of her philosophy ignoring the impossibility and lack of desirability of seeking and achieving human perfection, for Galt could only be perfect. That's contra free will. This dresses out and demonstrates the basic contradiction running through her fiction and philosophy and why the original Objectivist movement of the 1960s came a cropper: Students of Objectivism couldn't make perfection work.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

On 12/6/2017 at 8:53 AM, Brant Gaede said:

The brains will tend to do what the money says and the government controls a lot of money. As this is contra brainwork, the brainwork tends to deteriorate over time.

John Galt is not the way of the world but the end of the world. That's what happened in the novel. Emphatically that's not the way of the human world. The point Rand wanted to make was made with an unreal man or a man realer than real like Michelangelo's statue of David. But Galt was not heroic; he turned his back on Goliath and walked away to demonstrate the impotence of evil meme of her philosophy ignoring the impossibility and lack of desirability of seeking and achieving human perfection, for Galt could only be perfect. That's contra free will. This dresses out and demonstrates the basic contradiction running through her fiction and philosophy and why the original Objectivist movement of the 1960s came a cropper: Students of Objectivism couldn't make perfection work.

--Brant

That is a very clear eyed and clear minded  observation. Well done!

 

[Peter]

On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 12:54 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

That is a very clear eyed and clear minded  observation. Well done!

 

I am not sure why I am getting extra spaces between the lines. John Galt temporary anarchist? I have been thinking of the term, “socially demonstrable,” from an individualistic, Objectivist viewpoint. A free vote fits under that banner, and so does propaganda unfortunately. And I think it that potentially biased freedom is necessary for the longevity of a free land. Up until Fox News, our dilemma was that a free, and a freely biased press was dominated by leftists. Peter

Robert J. Bidinotto wrote in “The Contradiction in Anarchism”:  . . . .  Anarchists think the "invisible hand" of the marketplace will work in the place of government. But read what Adam Smith had to say about businessmen in that famous "invisible hand" passage. Smith knew that government was a precondition of the market, and of the working of the "invisible hand." Without government, the "invisible hand" becomes a closed fist, wielded by the most powerful gang(s) to emerge. Why? Because government prevents competing forces from defining -- and enforcing -- their own private "interests" subjectively and arbitrarily.

Even if 99 percent of "protection agents" behave rationally, all you'd need is one "secessionist" outlaw agency, with its own novel interpretation of "rights" and "justice," tailored to appeal to some "customer base" of bigots, religious fanatics, disgruntled blue collar workers or amoral tycoons with money to burn. Do anarchists care to argue that outlaw agencies -- given our current intellectual and philosophical "marketplace" -- would have no such constituencies? Dream on. Oops -- did I say "outlaw?" Under anarchy, there is no final determiner of the law." There would be no final standard for settling disputes, e. g., a Constitution. That would be a "monopoly legal system," you see. That's because anarchists support the unilateral right of any individual or group to secede from a governing framework. (After all -- wrote anarchist Lysander Spooner a century ago -- I didn't sign the Constitution, did I?)

. . . .  Put another way: the anarcho-capitalist position amounts to the demand that one's own use of force be immune from the moral evaluation and response of others. It is a demand for the right to secede from the judgments of other people concerning the validity of one's own use of force. It is a denial that there is a basic need to subject any use of force to objective -- that is, socially demonstrable -- standards. end quote 

[Wolf DeVoon]

9 hours ago, Peter said:

Under anarchy, there is no final determiner of the law.

Dear Peter and other interested parties,

Without much scholarship you will discover that U.S. constitutional principles have morphed repeatedly. I don't want to be didactic, but I'll mention three constitutional changes that everyone should study and understand. (1) Congress ceded power to an administrative state insulated from review by civil service protections. (2) The Supreme Court ring-fenced a handful of vague "personal freedoms" that afford little protection, subject to cultural and judicial whimsy, while abolishing all "economic freedom" of every kind. (3) Our military has been wasted, bureaucratized, outsourced, and hamstrung. Compared to entitlement spending and debt service, national defense will soon become a very small fraction of government spending. The U.S. Constitution became a dead letter determining nothing fixed or final. There was no effective opposition to Barack Obama concluding an "executive agreement" with Iran and EU heads of state that, formerly, would have been deemed a treaty subject to ratification by the Senate. Executive orders are an obscenity, winner take all, and it is a certainty that socialized medicine will deepen and metastacize, no different than defacto monopoly public education K-12, state universities, and student payola. I trust you know that commercial and community banks do not hold mortgage paper, that everything they originate is sold to Federal agencies led by political appointees who issue junk debt -- the specific, exclusive cause of the 2008-09 crash. If one were to describe anarchy as feckless, irresponsible and brutish, that would be Uncle Sam and the big metropolitan cities owned and operated by a corrupt Democrat feeding machine, with zero interest in or concern for justice, due process, or common law as the Founders understood it.

Ancap is a simple proposition. Historically, it was known as liberty.

 

[Peter]

The Preamble to the Constitution states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Wolf wrote in “Freeman’s Constitution,” The Freeman's Constitution does not claim sovereignty in a geographic area, but rather the world at large, affirming that you have an inalienable constitutional right to innocent liberty which no state may lawfully abridge. This bedrock principle of justice is not reiterated in the detailed provisions which follow. Instead, it is the legal standard by which all of the provisions of The Freeman's Constitution must be interpreted and measured in practice.

Interestingly The Founders were talking about 13 former British Colonies and Wolf is talking about “the world at large,” but he then describes a “city state” in his Freeman's Constitution.  I see no conflicts between the size of the geographical areas. In fact the areas under those guiding principles could extend into the far regions of the galaxy.

Peter  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert Malone gets it.

Atlas Shrugged indeed.

And in Germany at that.

Who knows? Maybe philosophical awareness from Atlas Shrugged will prevent a new Hitler from arising over there.

 

Michael