nskinsella

Agreed; nice piece by The Riggenbach.

I don't think this way. I'm not from California, after all. I'm from Europe and don't get the California joke. TIA for explaining. I'm mocking the California-esque new-agey touchy-feelly BS typical of liberal arts types, and contrasting it wiht my superior, down to earth, engineering-rationalist background. You seem to be reinventing the Misesian idea of demonstrated preference (which finds a mirror in Rand's concept of value as something you ACT to gain and/or keep -- there are many parallels, as I note in Mises and Rand (and Rothbard)). I think you underestimate the problem of how to deal with human aggression by putting it on the same level with insentient nature (tornadoes, diseases) and wild animals not remotely having the mental capacities of homo sapiens sapiens. I made no claim as to which was harder, nor that they are the same or "on the same level" whatever that means. but they are just technical problems, nonetheless; and no doubt there would be specialists for each. No. Aggression is initiated force. Combatting aggression is force in response to aggression--it is responsive, not initiatory. I discuss further in my What Libertarianism Is. This is, perhaps unintentionally, equivocation. the libertarian opposes aggression, meaning initiated force. (That's how Rand defined it too.) But you are using it here as a synonym for force. Yes, force is justified in some cases, but not aggression. The state may not be particularly efficient, but how is anarchy going to work? Criticizing one model as not functioning well does not automatically establish its contrary as functioning any better. Your asking or having a question aobut how anarchy is "going to work" is not a justification for aggression. correc,t this is why anarchists are not against property, law, order, rules, and defensive force. it's a technical question. Sometimes submit; sometimes die; sometimes fight and win; sometimes use arguments; sometimes call on negihbors; sometimes use locks; sometimes avoid situations.

Do you have a "top" (= supreme) value then? If yes, which is it? I don't think this way. I'm not from California, after all. Now it it would interest me what exactly you do (in that anarcho-capitalist utopia of yours) to make sure not to become the victim of aggression. Since you seem to reject the idea of a state as an institution watching over order, what do you do? Keep a loaded gun ready all the time? How to stop and combat aggression is merely a technical problem, like the problem of disease, wild animals, tornadoes, and the like. Not the demesne of political science. I don't think the state is particularly efficient at stopping private crime--in fact it causes more of it (e.g. the drug war) AND it adds to it to boot with its own crime (taxing people, bombing people, and so on).

Having a minimal order-keeping state is the lesser of evils. Paine and Hobbes give a good accounting for it. At its best, the State is a necessary evil. Ba'al Chatzaf Right. This is an honest view. Basically, it amounts to: I am in favor of the aggression that the state commits, because it is necessary to prevent even greater aggression that would exist in a stateless society. I think this argument is flawed, but at least it's honest. The problem is, in structure it's similar to the rationale given for aggression committed by criminals and tyrants: they *all* have some *reason* they are in favor of particular acts of aggression. As the victim of that aggression I have to say I don't much care what "reason" the aggressor has, whether it be a minimal state or common criminal. But at least, the reason you are in favor of small-aggression (as you see it) is to stop big-aggression; so I respect these arguments and understand them, even though they are misguided and ultimately lead to a state taht would never stay minimal. Even worse, minarchists usually defend the *current* American state even though it is obviously way beyond minarchist levels. even if it is obvious to you that you would prefer minarchy to anarchy, why is it so obvious you should prefer today's mammoth state to anarchy?

good to know you are figuring these things out *after* you wrote your book. Saying "anarchy is absurd" is a dishonest, disguised way of hiding the fact that you endorse aggression. See my What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist. You either oppose aggression, or you do not. If you do, you cannot "oppose anarchy" because to "oppose anarchy" means you favor a state; and a state, by its nature, commits aggression on a systematic basis--even a minarchy. (For a good definition of the state's essential attributes, see my post The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It.) If you are a "non-anarchist"--that is, you are pro-state--then the only way to avoid being in favor of aggression is to argue that the state does NOT employ aggression. The tricks I've seen Objectivists resort to here involve some kind of confused argument involving "context" and "needs" etc. Basically they say that "in context" to have rights you have to have ("have" to "have") a system to protect rights, which much be objective blah blah blah, and therefore, if you "need" such a system, it is incoherent to say that it contradicts rights--or something like this. Basically they argue that you need a government to have rights, therefore, whatever the gov't has to do to exist has to be okay. I mean this is ridiculous. OR, they pretend the problem away with some ridiculous social contract/everyone consents type argument, which is ludicrous, .... such as....: I don't consent. To suggest it is consensual is just false.

I agree with Mises more than I agree with Rand or Rothbard or probably any other leading authority. His recognition of the right of secession, and especially his reasons for recognizing it, make him far more politically astute than Rand. But also his recognition of the value and legitimacy of territorial integrity make him far more astute than Rothbard. I do not however fully agree with Mises. The right of secession does need to be granted to the individual, but that does not necessitate anarchy. Individuals have the right to consensually form territorial unions ("administrative units") that have integrity over time. If individuals want to secede from these units then they just have to leave the territory. There are very specific and very limited conditions on which these unions can justly be created such that statism is not the end result, I discuss these in my book. Incidentally, my view does not prohibit ancaps creating a territorial union within which ancap rules apply. On the contrary, it is the ancaps that are totalitarian: they would forcibly prohibit me and others from forming such unions. As one whose views are closer to Mises than are the ancaps, I think he would be very unhappy about how his name has been appropriated and associated with them. Shayne You have no basis for thinking this. Say most of the intellectuals at the Mises INstitute are Catholic--so wwhat? Mises was Jewish. Does that mean he would be upset that a bucnh fo CAtholics are appropraiting his name? No. they promose Austrian economcics; they expound on and research Mises's thought; they make his writings very available. And just like many of them are Catholic many are libertarian anarchists too. So? They never imply Mises was. They are honest. This is ridiculous, Shayne. WTF are you talking about.

You want my advice? Start with a very short one; my favorite by Mises; and one of his last written near the end of his life: Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. It's free on mises.org here. I think Mises would be extremely happy with the work Mises INstitute has done in his name. And it's not officially anarchist. Anyway, for more on the question of whether and to waht extent Mises's ideas were compatible with anarchism, see this post.

Depends on one's context. For those whom property rights (qua basic type of human right) are both sacred and not arbitrary, he was indeed denigrating it. No amount of "but he was taken out of context" is going to save that quote. Shayne Sacred is meaningless. As for arbitrary--he's not saying they are arbitrary. there is nothing wrong w/ Mises's quote.

"Should only be enforceable" is a priceless combination of contradictory terms. Since nothing can be enforced with a mere "should", Rothbard, by phrasing it like that, 'cuts off the bough he is sitting on', as we say in German). ;) You need a course in reading comprehension. It looks like you missed what I'm getting at. This was meant to be understood as the mere ouverture in a discussion with 'anti-statists' in whose minds private "property" resides as the ultimate, sacred value. And since in their minds, the violation of that sacred value seems to warrant the use of force, it is about getting them to show their colors by asking them how they are going to go about it. "So to anyone who says that a certain type of contract "should" be "enforceable", I'd continue: "Should" is a bit wishy-washy; it's like telling people they 'should' not steal or they 'should' pay their taxes. Therefore I'd suggest we leave the vague "should" floating up there; instead you can demonstrate with concrete examples what exactly you have in mind. Suppose John has bought a house from you but hasn't paid it off yet. He has still quite a few rates to pay, but suddenly the payments stop. You want to throw John out of the house (which as long as the last rate has been paid, is still your property), but John has no intention of moving out. What do you do? Get him to move out at gunpoint? In short, I want a concrete demonstration of how things are going to work in that libertarian paradise of yours where everything governmental is obviously considered as 'evil'. What if John has a gun as well and tells you he doesn't care about your considering property as sacred? What if John claims his right not to want any part of your personal value system?" In addition, the moral sanction of property as such is problematic when you consider the history of property itself: Ludwig von Mises writes: "Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had previously not been anybody's property. Again and again proprietors were robbed of their property by expropriation. The history of private property can be traced back to a point at which it originated out of acts which were certainly not legal. Virtually every owner is the direct or indirect legal successor of people who acquired ownership either by arbitrary appropriation of ownerless things or by violent spoilation of their predecessor." (LvM) https://mises.org/humanaction/chap24sec4.asp The quote by mises is not denigrating property at all--just talking about how it arises. As for your denigrating comment: ""property" resides as the ultimate, sacred value. " -- this is just a disguised way to say that you are in favor of aggression in some cases. Covering it up by saying you don't hold property as "ultimate" or something is just one way to avoid admitting you favor criminality. This is akin to conservatives who denigrate Objectivists and libertarians as upholding liberty as "the only" value, which is a lie. The conservative says sure, sure, we favor liberty--but we have other values too; liberty is just one among many. We have to balance them. Or whatever. This is just a way to disguise the naked aggression of their stance: that they are (for whatever reason--who cares?) in favor of violating liberty in some cases. The libertarian is never JUST a libertarian; liberty (property, rights, whatever) is not our "only" value. It is not even our "top" value, whatever that means. It is just that we oppose aggression--we believe aggression is unjust. Period. Those who say they ahve "other" values or "yeah, I favor property but it's not 'sacred'" are just trying to avoid saying that in some cases, they do in fact favor the commission of violence against innocent people. In this respect they are identical to criminals and totalitarians and socialists: all of whom believe in aggression for one reason or another. As a victim of it, i don't give a damn that your own justification is "beter" than that of another criminal.

Stephan, I found the post! Yea!!! I have a different perspective on what you are asking than what you implied. But before I go into that, let me say that within the context of current understanding about rights, I most definitely would use deadly force against a current slavemaster to free a slave. (We have to be careful of a really slippery slope here, though. Otherwise we will find ourselves justifying the invasion of Iraq. ) Now, about human nature. I believe before we go shooting someone, we should at least make sure of who we are shooting and why. Part of my criticism of your position is that you are willing to go back in time, so to speak, and condemn former slaveholders in modern terms. And this is where we get into fact and perception. Let's look a moment at perception of fact as opposed to the reality of it. Since I believe that the best proof you can offer someone for an idea is to present them with evidence they can observe themselves, I suggest you watch the following video. It is short--not even a couple of minutes long. I have come across similar information in my research on neuro-psychology, but nothing quite so in-your-face convincing. (The post where it appears is here and the thread is quite interesting.) The video concerns visual perception, but I believe the implications are far, far deeper with respect to how the human mind functions. <object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbKw0_v2clo?version=3"><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbKw0_v2clo?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbKw0_v2clo?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object> The interesting thing is that schizophrenics do not have this illusion. The illusion was created over countless visual referents implanting themselves on a neural pathway in our brains over our entire lifetimes. Although the article where this video came from (see here) does not mention it, I believe it is reasonable to assume that a person who has not seen human faces growing up--say like a person blind from birth and surgically provided with sight--would not have this illusion in the first years of being around people while seeing. Now, we can claim this top-down illusion from repetitious over-learning is specific only to vision. or we can claim this is an indication of how the brain works in general. I hold the second view (and other readings I have made seem to bear this out). Notice that this is a perception formed during all the years growing up and constantly reinforced thereafter. The fact is one, but the perception is another. So what do you think a white Southern person in ancient times who has grown up around slaves thought? I believe his bias (and illusion) were very similar to what goes on in our brains with the revolving mask. Notice also that this is a physical alteration of the brain in thickening the connections between dendrites and axons along a neural pathway. This is not just an abstract idea somewhere in mental-land. Do you blame a person for, say, evading, for seeing the back of the mask incorrectly? If not, would you shoot a person who has learned--all the while he was growing up--about human nature incorrectly and honestly believes black people are chattel? He had no prominent conceptual referents to tell him otherwise when the neural pathway was being formed. Granting my conclusion, what do you do with a person like that? 1. Your way. Shoot him dead. I don't believe that is fair because I don't believe he has guilt in the way he was brought up, nor guilt in the fact that his brain processed information in a certain manner. He obviously can do more about this as he gets older, but not everyone can or does. 2. Take the slaves away from him by force and not let him have any more. Having grown up around racists, I am glad we did this for the sake of the black people, but I am also certain this will not work to change him in his concept of black people (most of the time). His brain is set, so to speak. But he will die off over time and the new situation will give a shot for his children to perceive reality correctly. I believe this is what happened in the Civil War. And I believe racism was kept alive through the constant repetition of a racist conception--by people in this category--to their children and other family and community members. I believe racism in the South took (and is taking) so long to die off because people did not realize how such a concept gets so deeply embedded in the first place. 3. You can try to educate such a person and provide him with new neural pathways through a long hard road of providing him with constantly repeated new explanations and conceptual referents. 4. Or the unthinkable. You can let him get away with slavery. I don't have a legal solution to how to enforce peaceful freedom in light of this right now other than be glad slavery is abolished, and notice what has been done, and what has worked and what has not (and why). I have been thinking deeply about it since I believe that law for humans must reflect human nature. And how we think is a critical part of human nature. One thing is clear to me. If you try to outlaw something to people when they honestly don't think they are doing anything wrong, but doing right instead, you are setting your social structure up for failure. And if you try to shoot a person over something, when he honestly doesn't believe he is doing anything wrong, he will shoot back with holy righteousness, not just with retaliation and self-defense. I believe one of the glories of human history is that we actually were able to climb out of slavery--out of centuries of incorrect perception (and neural pathways) toward reality. The interesting thing is that I grew up around racists and heard the same things the rest of my family did. But I did not accept the racist concept while growing up, and most of them did. I think this has more to do with the way I process information than any moral judgment I volitionally made as a toddler. We learn things through our own experience, through what others tell us, and through what we conclude on our own analyzing elements from both. That's about it. In learning from others, I was extremely gullible as a child. I know people were always telling me wrong stuff to laugh when I tried to use it or make it work. But when strong emotion like mocking and hatred got attached to a message, my mind went blank. I laughed and so forth like any kid does. But information-wise, the object of the derision and hatred got put into a "check this out later and see why people hate it" category. I had no informational resonance inside me with what I was being taught. (Later, I made a point of involving myself with several black people--and they were lovely people, too. Part of my purpose was to answer this doubt from my childhood.) I believe other people do have such an information-emotion resonance as children. Actually we all do, but I am speaking specifically about learning major life-attitudes like racism. So maybe this is more of a degree thing than kind. But I do know that it feels more like a "kind" difference when I observe other people. I also know I feel a strong kinship with Ayn Rand (as I believe many Objectivists and libertarians do) because she was "different" in this manner while growing up and she talked about it. I certainly was "different." Everybody was believing one thing as the truth, and I was always on the outside looking in, wondering what they saw that I could not. Notice in Rand's fiction (say, Anthem) and in her journals, she refers to this difference as a "curse." This actually is a character trait--expressed in this term--in her notes for characters. The character sees what others do not and he cannot help himself. He sees it because he has to see it. No other real reason is given. Much later in her development of the philosophy, she tried. She generally called it a "choice to think or not think" and things like that. It further developed in the Objectivist world into really odd things like Peikoff's "premoral choice to live," but now I am meandering... Also, it is more than seeing one fact or another. It is a manner of seeing. I have no reason of my own to explain this right now except to go back to Rand's earlier way of expressing it and just noticing that it is. I was born processing information that way. Rand was born processing information that way. I believe you were, too (despite our disagreements). And I believe many around us ditto. How many times have you tried to explain how important the government's use of force is to a person, and it just passes by as if the person has not heard you say it? A total blank-out as Rand would say. I wager more times than you care to remember and I wager that this makes you weary (and often pissed off) when you encounter it. What if the person is literally not groking it? Not just blanking it out? Not groking from the ground up? This is what I believe happens. Not everybody, of course. There are still villains among us who knowingly choose brutal power and other forms of evil because it feels good to them and they have their own rationalizations. But what if persuasion toward nonviolent freedom were more than just rationally teaching people the idea? What if it involved literally teaching them how to see it from a blind state because of the way their brains worked? Wouldn't that make the intellectual battle different? I believe this is a far richer path than just shooting a person you see violating your own principles. Or making fun of the person. Or morally condemning the person. And so on. As a throwaway thought at the end here, I see this as extremely important in the current problem the West has in facing Islam. (To briefly elaborate, one of the items I have encountered in my research is that the subconscious processes the present tense a lot deeper than future or past. I suspect present tense processing creates stronger neural pathways that lead to illusion on encountering conflicting data. And the Qu'ran is all in the present tense. Think of the neural pathways this creates in people who pray from it five times a day.) I don't think just talking rationally about NIOF, or even human nature (for my argument), will be enough to penetrate that. It certainly hasn't worked for many other ideas inour culture, either. I believe there are ways to penetrate into these minds with a good message and in a good way--ways to offer different neural pathways and remove the illusions from the ones that exist--but I see a long, long road of study and writing ahead for myself. Michael I'll have to think more about this but the bottom line for me is of course a slave in 1776 had the right to use lethal force to free himself, right? You would not say he had an obligation to remain a slave just b/c his poor master was a product of the times. And if he can do it, others can do it on his behalf. And there were abolitionists back then, just as there are people now who are IP- and drug-war-abolitionists. I believe there is a human obligation to figure out morals before acting. Even in 1776.

Contracts are a type of communication. If Rothbard contradicts that then that's a good reason not to read Rothbard. All joint endeavors, including contracts, involve communication. Football requires communication, for example, but we wouldn't say that football is merely a type of communication. Similarly, joint criminal endeavors will involve some kind of communication, e.g., five guys who sit around a table to plan a bank robbery. But the aggressive act lies in the action of the bank robbery itself, not in the communication per se. Notions like "contract" and "principal-agent relationships" are moral and/or legal concepts . They involve communication, of course, but they are not merely types of communication. You must think in order to wage war. This doesn't mean that war is merely a type of thought. Why is it even necessary to explain any of this? Ghs B/c the Internet has allowed newbs to write books.

I'm well aware that Objectivism holds the "non-initiation of force" idea, I was not aware that this was "libertarianism" too. So I learned something, but still have to say that this makes no sense whatsoever. Don't you have to make all kinds of distortions to try to jam the "aggression" or "force" square peg in "deception's" round hole? Bob Bob, I dont know what to tell you. Objectivists and libertarians are oposed to aggression. We believe it is unjust. If you don't, you are not one of us, but what we would view as one type of criminal or socialist, in that you do not completely oppose aggression--just like criminals and statists. I mean do you oppoose aggression on principled grounds, or not? If you do, then you can't support a law that commits aggression. No, no, Wait a second. I agree aggression is unjust. I disagree where the "aggression" boundaries lie. Big difference. In fact, my aggression boundaries appear wider than yours, not narrower and are fully principled. Bob yes, libertarians disagree on how to draw the lines of where there is or is not aggressio. but if you agree that that's the issue, this is progress. But then you can't just use metaphors to say "harm" is aggresion. Which is it? harm or aggression? etc.

I'm well aware that Objectivism holds the "non-initiation of force" idea, I was not aware that this was "libertarianism" too. So I learned something, but still have to say that this makes no sense whatsoever. Don't you have to make all kinds of distortions to try to jam the "aggression" or "force" square peg in "deception's" round hole? Bob Bob, I dont know what to tell you. Objectivists and libertarians are oposed to aggression. We believe it is unjust. If you don't, you are not one of us, but what we would view as one type of criminal or socialist, in that you do not completely oppose aggression--just like criminals and statists. I mean do you oppoose aggression on principled grounds, or not? If you do, then you can't support a law that commits aggression.

Contracts are a type of communication. If Rothbard contradicts that then that's a good reason not to read Rothbard. Shayne Contracts are transfers of title. They are accomplished by the owner manifesting his consent to the transfer, which usually invovles some kind of communication.

Yes. We're in basic agreement with the standards here. That's what separates us from Objectivists -- we have an actual concern for cause and effect. I am not aware that Objectivists are against liability for, say, inciting a riot. The actual target of libel isn't reputation, it is what the reputation can claim, importantly: property, services, relationships. If a lie can cause destruction of these values, then there is a case for libel to be a crime. And yes, no one has made a case yet. Shayne "destruction" of "values": but libertarainism doesn't prohbit "destruction" it prohibits aggression. And there is no property right in values. You are equivocating.