Yeah, it does violate the NAP, but that doesn’t really bother me, it’s a minor infraction, nothing to cry about.
Also, I decide what is limited.
So you consider yourself a Libertarian even though you are in favor of acts of aggression?
Could the most Liberal (in the modern sense) person not say that believing in social programs X,Y, and Z, are minor infractions of the NAP?
Would you consider the Liberal person a Libertarian if they used the same statement as you?
I consider myself a minarchist. Whether that falls into the bounds of libertarianism is really irrelevant to me. It’s obviously a matter of contention between two different schools of thought, as Block points out. Can someone be in favor of aggression and still be a libertarian? I don’t know or care tbh, it’s not that important. A progressive could argue that their social programs are minor infractions yes. Whether or not anyone would buy that is another question entirely. I don’t really care about that either. In other words, what’s different between myself and progressives is the degree of aggression to be used, not whether or not aggression should be used at all. We argue about it constantly, let me assure you.
"Another inner contradiction of the theory of laissez-faire government deals again with taxation. For if government is to be limited to “protection” of person and property, and taxation is to be “limited” to providing that service only, then how is the government to decide how much protection to provide and how much taxes to levy? For, contrary to the limited government theory, “protection” is no more a collective, one-lump “thing” than any other good or service in society. Suppose, for example, that we might offer a competing theory, that government should be “limited” to supplying clothing free to all of its citizens. But this would scarcely be any sort of viable limit, apart from other flaws in the theory. For how much clothing, and at what cost? Must everyone be supplied with Balendaga originals, for example? And who is to decide how much and what quality of clothing each person is to receive? Indeed, “protection” could conceivably imply anything from one policeman for an entire country, to supplying an armed bodyguard and a tank for every citizen—a proposition which would bankrupt the society posthaste. But who is to decide on how much protection, since it is undeniable that every person would be better protected from theft and assault if provided with an armed bodyguard than if he is not? On the free market, decisions on how much and what quality of any good or service should be supplied to each person are made by means of voluntary purchases by each individual; but what criterion can be applied when the decision is made by government? The answer is none at all, and such governmental decisions can only be purely arbitrary.
Secondly, one searches in vain in the writings of laissez-faire theorists for a cogent theory of taxation: not only how much taxation is to be levied, but also who is to be forced to pay. The commonly adopted “ability to pay” theory, for example, is, as the libertarian Frank Chodorov pointed out, the philosophy of the highway robber to extract as much loot from the victim as the robber can get away with—scarcely a cogent social philosophy, and at total variance, of course, from the system of payment on the free market. For if everyone were forced to pay for every good and service in proportion to his income, then there would be no pricing system at all, and no market system could work. (David Rockefeller, for example, might be forced to pay $1million for a loaf of bread.)11
Next, no laissez-faire writer has ever provided a theory of the size of the State: if the State is to have a compulsory monopoly of force in a given territorial area, how large is that area to be? These theorists have not given full attention to the fact that the world has always lived in an “international anarchy,” with no one government, or compulsory monopoly of decision-making, between various countries. And yet, international relations between private citizens of different countries have generally functioned quite smoothly, despite the lack of a single government over them. Thus, a contractual or a tort dispute between a citizen of North Dakota and of Manitoba is usually handled quite smoothly, typically with the plaintiff suing or placing charges in his court, and the court of the other country recognizing the result. Wars and conflicts usually take place between the governments, rather than the private citizens, of the various counties.
But more profoundly, would a laissez-fairist recognize the right of a region of a country to secede from that country? Is it legitimate for West Ruitania to secede from Ruritania? If not, why not? And if so, then how can there be a logical stopping-point to the secession? May not a small district secede, and then a city, and then a borough of that city, and then a block, and then finally a particular individual?12 Once admit any right of secession whatever, and there is no logical stopping-point short of the right of individual secession, which logically entails anarchism, since then individuals may secede and patronize their own defense agencies, and the State has crumbled.
Finally there is a crucial inconsistency in the proffered criterion of laissez-faire itself: limiting the government to protection of person and property. For, if it is legitimate for a government to tax, why not tax its subjects to provide other goods and services that may be useful to consumers: why shouldn’t the government, for example, build steel plants, provide shoes, dams, postal service, etc.? For each of these goods and services is useful to consumers. If the laissez-fairists object that the government should not build steel plants or shoe factories and provide them to consumers (either free or for sale) because tax-coercion had been employed in constructing these plants, well then the same objection can of course be made to governmental police or judicial service. The government should be acting no more immorally from the laissez-faire point of view, when providing housing or steel than when providing police protection. Government limited to protection, then, cannot be sustained even within the laissez-faire ideal itself, much less from any other consideration. It is true that the laissez-faire ideal could still be employed to prevent such “second-degree” coercive activities of government (i.e., coercion beyond the initial coercion of taxation) as price control or outlawry of pornography; but the “limits” have now become flimsy indeed, and may be stretched to virtually complete collectivism, in which the government only supplies goods and services, yet supplies all of them." - MNR, TEOL Chp 23.
O god, I knew this would happen, I’m out of here, we’ve gone through this before.
Thanks one more time. We should be pals.
Yes, I find it difficult to talk with people about economics. Most of the time they resort to arguments that you made earlier in the thread, “The government needs to act as a referee to ensure a level playing field.” When I explain why they’re wrong they just make baseless claims to the contrary and no progress is made. Statism is a religion to some people.
Well, according to a friend here I am a minarchist. You will at least have a reasonable chat with me if we ever get to talk about economics. I hate all forms of religion as well as all forms of radicalism. In order to live among fellow humans we have can think as we like but we have to act in the “center”.
“When people call themselves moderates, ask yourself: ‘Moderate—about what?’ Since the basic question today is freedom versus statism, or individual rights versus government controls, to be a moderate is to advocate a moderate amount of statism, a moderate amount of injustice, a moderate amount of infringement of individual rights. Surely, nobody would call that a virtue.”
-Ayn Rand
I was given an F on an English paper and an F for the class (although my cumulative average was still a B even with the F on the paper) because my thesis was that economics is not merely a financial study, but that it deals with the human endeavor of valuation and therefore it is the mechanism by which the question of society’s response to the threat of global warming will be answered.
Our professor assigned Al Gore’s Inconvient Truth as a reading assignment. The book is a coffee table book with not a single citation of any sort whatsoever, a picture book. We were expected to write about the need for science rather than economics to be employed in creating environmental policy.
I quoted Mises in my paper who said (paraphrase) that natural sciences can tell men how to do something such as build a bridge, but fall short in telling them whether or not to do so. Human valuation is expedient in making such decisions.
I gave the example of a farmer who takes a deep interest in preserving the long-term capability of his land to produce and mentioned that it was not any natural science that gives him this desire, but his own human values. Natural science can only assist him in his endeavors after he has decided to preserve the land.
To condense further, my conclusion was that economics is precisely the study of the system by which man will come to formulate environmental policy, natural science is totally insufficient.
That won me an instant F.
I retook the class the following semester and got an easy A.
My economics professor told the class that Ben Bernanke is a Keynesian economist. She had not heard of Monetarism.
Boys and girls, don’t expect your professors to know, understand, or appreciate the great wisdom cherished by the Misesians.
-adrian
Josh: thank you for taking your time to debate with me. However I only talk about economics here, I hate philosophy.Specially those I smell as radicalism and/or idealism.
Thanks.
I feel you. I did not get an F. I got an A but everyone, including my instructor, thought I was nuts.
So you make a philosophical statement, “In order to live among fellow humans we have can think as we like but we have to act in the ‘center’.”, but when I counter it with another philosophical statement you suddenly hate philosophy? Convenient.
You are right. I was trying to put an end to the philosophical debate. I only talk about economics. Economics is “Social Science” …Social for society"…some guys confuse economics with philosophy…even worse…they philosophy about economics.
Why do you assume that umpires are analogous to government? Would you want one umpire to force himself on every game played in a given area?
There is more than plenty of room in anarcho-capitalism for umpires… they’re just not monopolists.
Sure…only in books. However I dont care what anarcho-capitalists think.
This doesn’t seem to be replying to my post.
Why can’t rules emerge in an environment where there is no monopolistic, compulsory, legal institution?
Probably not the best forum to start with this.
Sure they can…Ever heard of survival of the fittest ???
Could you stop evading every question asked to you?
Why can’t Natural Law (And you know what I mean by Natural Law) emerge where government is non-existant.
Why do you think, in the absence of government, I will turn into a chaotic barbarian unable to respect property rights?