It’s not Austrian or libertarian reading, but I think everyone interested in politics and business needs to read The Prince and The Art of War.
Compare nations where government is in disarray (Somalia, Darfur, Revolutionary France) with most modern Western nations, and one easilly sees a correlation between the prosperity of society, and the stability of its legal, and political system. In fact, it is no random event that the industrial revolution first began in a society where a government with a stable legal system, by the use of enclosurment, created property rights as we know them today.
Show me a single example of a society prospering when its government is in dissarray.
Correlation is not causation. Next.
Pathetic responce. You cannot dodge the question: our knowledge of society is empicial, there is no way of rationalizing around it, and we cannot throw all human experience to the side when deciding the optimal form of society. What gives anarchy any weight whatsoever if society has only prospered in the past (which is what you concede) under a stable government?
Nope. What is pathetic is your lack of arguments.
You are postulating that you are less likely to be killed under a series of governments that caused the deaths of 170 million people in the 20th century alone then one in disarray?
Oh really? Property rights were created by the government? Well I will just have to thank them for doing such a thing.
So because we have had prosperity under violence, prosperity under peace is not possible?
Not precedented, and possibly horrendous for society (instant institutional change tends to have that result, after all).
Uh oh. The conservative ‘burkean’ conservative is invoking the bogeyman…
That presupposes that the status quo is sustainable and just.
That has absolutely nothing to do with my statement, nor do you have any statistics to back up your thesis, so I’m just going to reject it until you give me hard evidence. In addition, while in the “series of governments that caused the deaths of 170 million people in the 20th century” (may I add how your general aggregate only obfuscates the debate since it equivocates Gladstone’s England with Mao’s China, which is an utter fallacy) there has been long-term prosperity, the damage of bad rulers has been repaired.
Property “rights” are nothing but a social construct, but the government does ensure that anyone who violates your property “rights” will be legally persecuted. Property rights are not an objective quality of homo sapiens.
Methodological individualism fail.
You’re a Christian. Are you telling me that its acceptable to prosper under violence? I hate to bring your morality out in the open, but you have all of us at a disadvantage when you argue wertfrei, when you aren’t wertfrei.
And here I simply thought it was justly mine, but what I really need to do is wait for the Messiah Obama to call me up on the phone or maybe Biden and decree that what is justly mine is mine. He hasn’t called yet - should I be worried right about now?[:|]
My above point does not imply that, but rather that institutional change must be gradual, and piecemeal in a process of trial, and error.
You are just parroting the typical burke/hayek conservative stuff that ‘spontaneous’ tyranny is good and that ‘revolutionary’ and ‘rationalistic’ libertarian orders are bad, blah, blah.
Yawn.
You stated that rights are better protected under efficient nations.
‘In the twentieth century (or at least until 1985), Higgs notes, governments killed
approximately 170 million people who lived within their own borders’
Really? So property rights are based on the will of the masses?
‘Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice’ -William Lloyd Garrison
Yes, justice is something that is social, it has to do with the interactions of individuals, and not just the individual himself - justice is not possible in Crusoe’s world because there is no social interactions. In addition, what is bad for society is generally bad for the individual, and to speak of justice as if what is best for the individual is just then one enters an autistic world where “justice” could possibly be a single individual dominating the world because it is better for him. Instead, justice is the prosperity of society, of the environment in which individuals live, not just a single individual in society.
Of course I am, violence can be legitimate, and whoever beleives that Christianity does not needs to read the Old Testament, for it is the portion of the Christian Bible to speak of man, and his relationship to society. In fact, the message of Christ, and the New Testament is purely one about man, and his relationship with God - any political application of Christ’s teachings are those trying to replicate that relationship in society.
“Governments” is not just one category; in fact, it is a fallacy to argue as if, as I said before, Gladstone’s England is equivalent to Mao’s China. Indeed, if we generalize the category even more, then people with guns killed even more than 170 million people in the twentieth century, but does that mean that attempts to take away guns from society, not caring about whom one takes arms from, will that action reduce those numbers?
They are a metaphysical judgment of value: the belief that all individuals have the “right” to property. Indeed, any “right” to property does not exist when it is not enforced.
When?