The divine right of kings theory was based on, well, the divine right of kings. Kings could take your property because they had the power of gods and all property was theirs. Keynesian interventionism, being based on (mistaken) Keynesian analysis, is based on the notion that tampering with the market will produce more utility for all. Yes, the analysis is flawed, and many of the terms don’t even make sense, but there is a substantial difference. By arguing that Kings are not divine, we can defeat the first of these claims, but not the latter. To defeat the latter, we need to either delve deeper into property theory, or critique the economic claims.
And interventionists can do the same thing because the state is seen as having absolute power - it is the very same kind of political superstition, as Herbert Spencer put it. I think the comparison made by LibertiORDeth was rather insightful…
I don’t know the best way to counter keynesianism, but underlining its irrational underpinnings is not a bad idea in my opinion.
Which doesn’t make it the same as divine rights. Plus, that’s not really what they think. Ask your friendly neighborhood interventionist if the state would be permitted to, I don’t know, eliminate gays or blacks. They’ll likely say no, so it can’t be that they hold that the state as absolute power. They just hold it should have certain powers which we deny.
It seems to me that our friendly interventionists think that people who try not to pay taxes, or who don’t obey green regulations or any other socialist policy, should be eliminated - they see nothing wrong if the state kills people who don’t submit - sorry but that’s reality.
If you want an easy topic to write on, choose the minimum wage. It’s maybe not as glamorous, but it’s really easy to explain. There’s also a video debate with Walter Block avaliable on this site where he explains the minimum wage that you could watch if you need arguments. He’s an excellent speaker.
Actually, I’m not sure they think that at all. I work with a lot of very statist liberals. Want to give me odds on the answers I’ll get if I suggest the death penalty for non-payment or violating green regulations?
Besides, you haven’t done anything with the fact that they oppose eliminating all blacks, not just being they don’t feel like it, but because they don’t think the state ought to have the power to do that. So again, they think the state should have a lot of power, but not absolute power.
There’s also a Ronald Reagan point to be made here. Reagan, if I recall correctly, thought that Copenhagen was in Norway. In truth, Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark. It doesn’t follow that Reagan thought that the capital of Denmark was in Norway. Similarly, interventionists believe certain things A, which logically imply or rely on things B. But that doesn’t mean that the interventionists believe B.
So…You don’t comply with regulation ‘A’. You are fined. You don’t pay. The gov’t tries to collect using force. You resist. You are dead.
Actually both right-wing and left-wing statists believe that dissenters should be eliminated. I wasn’t picking on leftists. Both leftists and rightists believe that if you don’t obey you can be ‘lawfully’ killed.
Again, I’d give the Reagan example. They hold a position which entails what you say, but haven’t thought it through far enough to see that, and don’t agree with what you attribute to them.
Well it fails by its own standard, doesn’t it? It may be a bad standard, an impossibly stupid one, but that is still an indictment of the theory is it not?
Anyway, I agree that this topic is way over the OP’s head. He ought to pick something simpler, more limited. The topic he has chosen could easily make a college level essay, and that’d be scraping the surface.
-Jon