Well, are they?
Nah, they’re not hiding. 
Are Albert Jay Nock, H. L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov and Henry Hazlitt closet apologists for Stalin?
Nope.
Nice troll thread>?
You should probably realise making it all the way to anarchism, isn’t everything. Do you Hate the State?
My opinion of that article is pretty much summed up by LibertyStudent:
Leftism rests on emotionalist arguments (“Without government, who will X!!!”). You can’t beat them at their own game. It’s a hell of a lot more persuasive to hear, rather than “Government policy X is bad because it is coercive”, “Government policy X does not accomplish it’s intended objectives and the private sector is better equipped to handle this situation because [A, B, C]”.
Let me guess. You don`t hate the state.
That they do and so does the Right. And that’s a non sequitur. Socialists of all stripes constantly make the claim for the moral high-ground, people like you give it to them. That’s why they win.
Can’t beat them? Tell that to Thomas Paine & Ron Paul.
No, it’s not. I guess you wouldn’t push the button?
What would your platform have been for slavery? Gradualism? Economic arguments?
And what are your objections when government policy DOES accomplish it’s intended objectives? Let’s say “The Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, Section 1-7” your argument would be that the private sector is better equipped to handle this situation?
I’ll take that bet.
Was that a serious question or a humorous rhetorical one? Sarcasm is difficult to determine on the Internet.
If it was meant to be serious then.. I think your question is a red herring. I was pointing out that utilitarian arguments are much more effective, not that ethical statements are deficient in and of themselves. For example, saying “Mandatory health insurance is slavery” and “Mandatory health insurance will result in malinvestment and malallocation of resources, as the result of government interfering with price signalling from consumers via the introduction of artificial demand”. Both are true, but one is much more detailed and much more likely to be convincing to most people.
Humorous yes. Rhetorical no.
It’s easy to remove detail, when you’re the one doing so.
More to the point - what’s so good about detail? You think more details would help at convincing the masses? rofl.
I guess you’re just not very good at using the Socratic method?
Why are Ron Paul’s idea’s taking hold? Because evidence for them is rapidly piling up before the masses very eyes with the current economic recession and the effects of Federal Reserve action. It is not moralism or Constitutionalism that is raising his ideas up into the fold, it is a combination of dissastisfaction with the existing political mainstream in US politics and the utilitarian demonstrations of recessions, such as those done by George Reisman or that late great utilitarian, Ludwig von Mises himself. See my response to slavery in regards to Thomas Paine.
Can you actually give any response other than “No, it’s not” to my point on persuasiveness? What would you be more convinced by if you were, say, a smoker, a priest telling you it was a sin against God or a person with a hole in their neck telling you what smoking does to your life?
In response to your first point, at what point in time would I push this hypothetical button? I’m on the fence regarding minarchy\anarchy in any case.
In response to your point regarding slavery, these were different times. Modern Westerners live in a secular age where moral relativism is, unfortunately pervasive in our culture. In the times of the abolitionists, America and the world was far more religious and culturally grounded than it is today. These days, arguing it’s “morally wrong” will get most people rolling their eyes at you like a Christian evangelist at an atheist convention. Modern economic arguments are made primarily on the basis of utilitarian benefit, of net benefit to the group, not on the basis of moral argument.
That’s just silly. The Nuremberg Laws were enacted for the purpose of satisfying the Nazi racial ideology. Modern issues are over things like rent and wage controls which are (ostensibly) enacted to enable access to a basic level of income and housing for all citizens, which is not a bad thing. Nazis have a mix of good (opposing communism and providing prosperity for Germany) and bad ends (eliminating people of certain races) and bad means. Leftists have bad means and a mix of good and bad ends
In fact, you can even make some way with those types, by arguing that current anti discrimination laws would be removed under your political system, enabling them to set up their silly White’s Only clubs and monoracial communes. You probably shouldn’t for public relations reasons (look at the smears against Ron Paul on much thinner ground with Stormfront), but that’s not to say even these people have their avenue utitilarianly.
You can argue with socialists till you are blue in the face as to whether the ends justify the means, especially if their beliefs are religiously rooted. Take a look at what Tom Woods is doing in regards to Catholic social teaching. He’s arguing that the best way to achieve the means proscribed by it is through free market capitalism, not that the Church are a bunch of Marxists for wanting to help the poor.
Honestly, this whole “Anyone who isn’t a Rothbardian natural rights adherent is a Keynesian commie socialist statist fascist” screda reminds me of Christian fundamentalists who insist anyone who isn’t a member of their sect is a devil worshipper. If you can accept minarchists, why can’t you accept utilitarians (which I am not among, incidentally)?
Emotional arguments are way more effective at convincing people.
People don’t care and they don’t have time to listen.
So how the f*ck are you going to convince someone that don’t listen to you by using logic? You have to make them care first and that is done by emotional arguments.
My guess is, most emotional arguments go like this:
Socialist (S): We need rent control to provide the BASIC RIGHT of housing, especially to the CHILDREN!
Liberal (L): You commie fascist, rent control is coercion. Down with you and your statist comrades!
S: It is for the GREATER GOOD! All is justified by the GREATER GOOD!
L: The greater good can bite me. I’m an individual, not a slave of some imaginary collective.
S: You are just an antisocial selfish loner who doesn’t pay his fair share. You should be grateful government provides you with a retirement and a plethora of social rights!
Cue 5 hours of endless unproductive arguments as to whether the ends justify the means
Ehm, emotional arguments is not the same thing as moral/ethical arguments. You can still be very logical and analytical about ethics, simply pointing out that something is coercion is not an emotional plea.
The best libertarian emotional arguments usually have to do with pleas for people to reclaim there sense of pride and dignity.
You can also use emotional arguments very effectively to debunk animal rights people, especially when they oppose hunting of predatory animals.
There was an outcry over wolf hunting here and starting to cry about poor Bambi that shouldn’t have to live in fear of wolves was far more effective then cold analytical arguments on why ethics don’t apply to animals. Ofc the latter is alot of fun cause they people get so upset and can’t counter it logically so they just get even more upset and start calling you the worst human being on the planet…
Because he’s a radical & told it like it was. He uses both natural rights and utilitarian arguments (since natural law, i.e absence of initiation of violence - lines up with good consequences) you on the other hand want to dismiss the most important part.
It didn’t require any more than that. It first requires you provide justification for it.
Smoking is voluntary. Time to come up with a non-fallacious analogy.
So you’re a still a statist? haha… that figures. That’d be forgivable if you were a radical, but you are clearly not. Now, how exactly can you be on the fence - what is holding you up, you wanting to be value free? Here is what is meant by pushing the button:
"If liberty is to be the highest political end, then this implies that liberty is to be pursued by the most efficacious means, i.e., those means which will most speedily and thoroughly arrive at the goal. This means that the libertarian must be an “ abolitionist,” i.e., he must wish to achieve the goal of liberty as rapidly as possible. If he balks at abolitionism, then he is no longer holding liberty as the highest political end. The libertarian, then, should be an abolitionist who would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty. Following the classical liberal Leonard Read, who advocated immediate and total abolition of price-and-wage controls after World War II, we might refer to this as the “button-pushing” criterion. Thus, Read declared that “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release all wage-and-price controls instantaneously I would put my finger on it and push!” The libertarian, then, should be a person who would push a button, if it existed, for the instantaneous abolition of all invasions of liberty—not something, by the way, that any utilitarian would ever be likely to do.5
Anti-libertarians, and anti-radicals generally, characteristically make the point that such abolitionism is “unrealistic”; by making such a charge they hopelessly confuse the desired goal with a strategic estimate of the probable path toward that goal. It is essential to make a clear-cut distinction between the ultimate goal itself, and the strategic estimate of how to reach that goal; in short, the goal must be formulated before questions of strategy or “realism” enter the scene. The fact that such a magic button does not and is not likely to exist has no relevance to the desirability of abolitionism itself. We might agree, for example, on the goal of liberty and the desirability of abolitionism in liberty’s behalf. But this does not mean that we believe that abolition will in fact be attainable in the near or far future.
The libertarian goals—including immediate abolition of invasions of liberty—are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on them, and that, if achieved, the resulting libertarian system would be viable. The goal of immediate liberty is not unrealistic or “Utopian” because—in contrast to such goals as the “elimination of poverty”—its achievement is entirely dependent on man’s will. If, for example, everyone suddenly and immediately agreed on the overriding desirability of liberty, then total liberty would be immediately achieved.6 The strategic estimate of how the path toward liberty is likely to be achieved is, of course, an entirely separate question.7
Thus, the libertarian abolitionist of slavery, William Lloyd Garrison, was not being “unrealistic” when, in the 1830s, he raised the standard of the goal of immediate emandpation of the slaves. His goal was the proper moral and libertarian one, and was unrelated to the “realism,” or probability of its achievement. Indeed, Garrison’s strategic realism was expressed by the fact that he did not expect the end of slavery to arrive immediately or at a single blow. As Garrison carefully distinguished: “Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend.”8 Otherwise, as Garrison trenchantly warned, “Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.”
No, they’re not. These times are right here, right now.
Why We Couldn’t Abolish Slavery Then and Can’t Abolish Government Now by Robert Higgs
You can’t have a free market without a theory of property rights. And for that my utilitarian friend, the economist cannot escape a judgment on.
Justice & Property Rights - Chapter 4 | Egalitarianism Revolt Against Nature
No. It’s deadly serious. Millions of lives kind of serious.
The Nuremberg Laws - initiation of aggression, like all state policies. Modern issues involve - the initiation of aggression, like all state policies.
Nice strawman.
I accept minarchists who are radical abolitionists. Those who hate the State, who want to abolish - not reform. CATO, Republican lites and the beltway like Bobb Barr don’t get any support or respect, nor acceptance from me.
Egalitarianism is a Revolt Against Nature. The calculation argument isn’t the only one that shows socialism is impossible.
That’s great. And totally irrelevant. So when are you going to address axiomatic-deductive objective ethics?
I didn’t think you were good at the socratic method. I guess this confirms it?
A Handout For Statists - Stefan Molyneux
Did that take 5 hours? ;p Also what happened to your platform on slavery? Would you support socialism if it was more efficient?
Not trying to troll. Point is how can one really be an effective proponent of the free market while accepting that the government ought to take care of some services. I mean if you’re a you’re a minarchist and believe that defense is the responsibility of a minimal state then why shouldn’t the state take care of other services such as health care, or highways?
Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken were both anarchists.
I think that for the most part minarchists believe that government must exist to maintain rule of law, and as such although they are proponents of the free-market they believe there are limitations. Take the Rahn Curve as an example; without some taxation, economic productivity reaches “zero”—that’s the belief. It probably has to do with the limitation of foresight. That is, the inability to see how such systems would work in a private market, and therefore the opinion to not give the free-market the benefit of the doubt. We all know, for example, that health care could work in a free-market (well, obviously not everybody, but at least most minarchists), but something as extreme as the rule of law ( which nobody today has ever experienced a free-market in, really) is more difficult to imagine.
I also dislike that article, but because Rothbard fails to apply his own criteria for radicalism. He writes that being a radical means “being in total, root-and-branch opposition to the existing political system and to the State itself.” But somehow he goes on to label our “classical liberal forbears” (“the Levellers, Patrick Henry, Tom Paine, Joseph Priestley, the Jacksonians, Richard Cobden”) as “genuinely radical”.
Hold up! Minarchists cannot be genuinely radical, because they only oppose the branches of government, and not the root. Minarchists support a monopolistic legal system, and so can only qualify as branch-strikers. Striking the root means being an anarchist.
Rothbard writes: “Tom Paine’s radical hatred of the State and statism was and is far more important to the cause of liberty than the fact that he never crossed the divide between laissez-faire and anarchism.”
Really? I’d say Molinari is far more important to libertarianism than Paine, because Molinari identified the root problem. Since minarchism is branch-striking, it is strategically bankrupt; addressing the root problem is the most important step in bringing about a libertarian society.
On the issue of visceral vs cerebral libertarianism: Obviously there’s something right about both positions. A libertarian shouldn’t rely solely on gut instinct and emotions; nor should they rely solely on cost-benefit calculations. So we don’t have to choose between emotional and analytical arguments (which are not the same as moral and utilitarian arguments); we can use both.
That is not what Rothbard says. The state is to be hated not because our gut tells us so. The state should be opposed because it is immoral and stands in defiance of a rights based order. But once an individual has established that the (existing) state is immoral (or at least inefficient for utilitarians) then a radical libertarian can not help himself but to deeply hate it, for a radical libertarian is someone who has a deeply ingrained regard for justice (or efficiency for utilitarians) and can not stand injustice.
Obviously we can see there must be a great divide between those who identify injustice and hate the fact that it forms the basis of the established order, and those who identify injustice (or inefficiency) but stay more lukewarm about it. The latter will proceed to in action and in style of writing accept the status quo to a much greater degree than the former thus they are much less likely to influence changes in the status quo for the better. (And also we can see that it is far more easier for a natural rights libertarian to be a radical, than for a utilitarian.)
In short Radicalism is not about why you oppose the status quo (instinct vs analysis). Radicalism is about to what extent are you up in arms against the status quo (absolutely bloody hate it vs oppose it merely as a form of mental exercise).
I think the best one is “So if I oppose X(welfare,etc) I should be shot?”
Hunting wolves creates problems. Pragmatic evidence: when wolves were reintroduced to yellowstone. Hunting deer doesn’t make these problems. The wolf population is derived from the deer population, and they are the only thing that keeps the deer from overeating and then dying of starvation.