can there be a free market and government?

[mangr3n]

I must have somehow appeared to you to be new to libertarian ideas. If I need to I guess I’ll go there first.

I started getting out of my own personal reading, and began participating in online discussions here back in 2002-2005 or so. I can’t seem to get in and find it but I spent a lot of time hashing through a lot of both economic, philosophic and political stuff there. An article I wrote that came out of those discussions is Government? Why?

So having spent a lot of time for many years in the books of Rothbard and Mises, Spooner and Thoreau and Spencer, Rand, Nozick. Reading Walt Williams, Lew Rockwell, etc., etc. for at least 10+ years now, its a little demeaning to have someone suggest that I go watch some beginner’s videos on politics.

In the end, in the Ethics of Liberty one thing sits wrong with me. To get there, you have to start however, with Praxeology and Mises. It all begins with the ought/is dichotomy. The source of IS statements (or truth) is Reality. Meaning to make statements of fact, is to say something that’s true. But ought statements, the normative arises from man. It arises from intentionality, from purposeful behavior, from human action. Mises understood this, and got what it really means. Mises provided a value-free science of human action. He called it praxeology. He makes truth statements about the a priori categories that arise from the category of human action. Praxeology doesn’t make Capitalism right. The “rightness” of Capitalism is a value judgment each man makes on his own. All praxeology gives us is value-free analysis of the consequences of private property and voluntary exchange, such a system is called the Free Market, or Capitalism.

But the science of Praxeology is incomplete. Mises recognized that he had a value-free science that was the mother science from which all social science flowed, but something was missing :

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science -

Now, I can’t read Polish, so I’m left to wonder what happened to this work. I’ve looked and I can’t find a continuation. But when I found this line in my most recent reading of Mises work, I was left wondering if I hadn’t hit on something in my previous article on ender’s website.

There is a metaphysical real occurence of men acting with plans that cannot both be implemented in reality and both achieve their end.

Feeling I’d hit on something I wrote “All Human Science starts with Praxeology”, I make this argument :

He made it abundantly clear to me that one needs to be clear about dividing between value-free theory (or science) and purpose driven application of theory (or technology). And what’s missing in modern political science, is science. In particular it’s not a value-free science rooted in praxeology. Liberalism, Natural Property Rights, Voluntarism, Socialism, Communism, etc. are technology. In some cases people are able to get away with the political equivalent of divining rods (socialism, democracy, anarcho-communism), and it’s because we don’t have a value-free scientific theory of politics. We can’t even give the boundaries of the problem domain.

So, newbie links… ummm… ok.

@John James

@David B

Force and power are implicitly evil or never acceptable means to any end in this context. But as soon as presented with an idea of self-defense, in the case of bodily harm, we immediately say, well that’s a legitimate use of force. While I agree, it’s also force.

This is why many anarcho-capitalists are more careful with their terms. If you have a problem with Per’s use of the word “force”, just play your definition game that you talked about in the first part of the post and pretend he said “aggression” (as understood as “the initiation of force”).

You’ll notice Adam Kokesh is quite eloquent and precise when he speaks on this subject. Here’s a great example.

You’re assuming a technical solution to an underlying problem. Kokesh can be as eloquent as he’d like to be, and I happen to have been making these same argumetns and having these same discussions for years. That doesn’t solve the problem I’m pointing out.

@John James

The devil is in the details. So, when a purely ideological anarchist, or anarcho-capitalist (like I want to be, but am struggling with) says things like “any involuntary subjection is always comparable to the end of the world.” I’m stuck trying to understand how and who will interpret and arbitrate the inevitable confusions and conflicts that must arise because it’s just not that simple to see the property->owner relationship.

Give some examples of where this relationship is not (or cannot be made to be) easily seen (or at least easily enough), and these conflicts that “must” arise.

I don’t see them being many, or that significant.

Then you fail to understand and recognize the enormous importance of the existence of law. Not that law is the right solution to the social phenomena which gives rise to it, but that it’s existence in and of itself points to a significant and important social phenomena that bears analysis and explanation. Because the source of law is human action, praxeology is the starting point for understanding the entire political sphere, of which law is part.

@John James

acting like states aren’t one type of solution to that problem is ridiculous.

K. Acting like shooting you in the face isn’t a solution for you looking at me funny is ridiculous.

I mean, it solves the problem, does it not?

Good you get my point. There’s nothing inherent in the action, or in our current definition of human action (Praxeology in Mises work) that explains or defines what makes any action right or wrong. In fact it can’t, nor should it.

Ask then the source of the objection? I don’t want you to hit me, you want to hit me. Why am I right and you’re wrong? The social norm is that it’s “wrong” to hit another man. I can give you good praxeological analysis of why that convention in society exists, we might even find good biological explanations of why such aversion to violence might be a part of the way the human brain works. But reality doesn’t give us that rule. It’s a choice that we make, a norm we adopt and choose. Reality reinforces it through the necessary side effects. But right and wrong have as their source purposeful action. Human action is the source of the normative, you cannot place it into the underlying reality. But I can place the field of politics into a reality that has human action, and do it without asserting any speciic norm about what man should or shouldn’t do. Norms about right and wrong behavior are a political solution(technology), to an underlying metaphysically necessary occurence(understood by theory), and this is the point I’m making and have been. Theory explains how a technological solution to conflict (laws, norms, political institutions) will necessarily impact the individuals and the actions and interactions of the members of society. Public ownership for example leads to the “tragedy of the commons”. Praxeology explains why that’s so. Praxeology doesn’t say it’s a wrong solution. It just has necessary side effects.

@John James

The only issue I have with states, is the implicit non-compete clause they claim exists.* Someone’s going to stake a claim to be a legitimate user of force. If you want stolen property back, you either suck it up like Gandhi (not a bad idea necessarily), or you or an agent operating on your behalf has to go and get it back.

I would definitely recomment checking out the relevant links at The Ultimate Beginner meta-thread, in particular,

What Libertarianism Is

Courts/Law, Security/Defense (Free Society reading list & threads)

And overall,

Beginner videos (politics)

I hope I don’t need to explain why I feel a little disrespected by the rest of that?

For some more thoughts of mine on these issues look here, that’s probably the best post I’ve participated in. In particular this, this, this, and this

A Praxeological category of conflict is the necessary root of a praxeological science of Politics, here and here are some of posts on that topic.

So in interpreting what I have to say, understand I reject the normative content of liberalism as truth statements. I personally affirm as my own goals the goals and techniques of liberalism which is to me a technology for addressing the conflicts that arise in social human action.