You have assumed, as Rothbard did, that the legal code is so obvious that it need not be considered monopolistic. But this is pure fallacy, since by even attempting to call a private court ‘rogue’ - you have to appeal to a single legal code as “the” true law code.
In essence Rothbard advocated a system in which the law was monopolistically decided but not enforced in the same manner - he attempted to create a absolute point of reference with out any sort of backing. As was mentioned earlier, Rothbard was incorrect by claiming that his version of anarchy did not posess a monopoly on law (or at least valid law).
The debate is between a monolithic law code vs. polycentric law.
libertarianism is not ‘obvious’, it is true and correct. or maybe you disagree and are not a libertarian?
of course, the declared opinions among human beings differ as to the correctness of libertarianism, is this alone disproof? has this disproof turned you authoritarian, or collectivist? or something else? of course, that people disagree over whatever that is must make you wrong about that also…
this is wrong. does a logician, codifying the law of non-contradiction in a logic textbook advocate a system in which logic was ‘monopolistically decided’?
I’m rather curious whether some of the contributors to this thread who express an inability to determine ‘rogue’ law providers from ‘legitimate’ law providers can distinguish present day governments from either aforementioned categories…
I’m still trying to understand what you mean by “should only flow one way”.
Or maybe you could answer the question I posed to Wilderness. Do you see a distinct difference between say Rand’s theory of property rights (not quite correct) and say a socialist theory of property rights (incorrect, not even close) - or is it all just a matter of degree?
when you look at a shopkeeper paying protection money to the mafia. the bribe is flowing the wrong way. it is unjust. i hope you would not condone such a hegemonic and charade of ‘exchange’ as being compatible even with your own conception of property rights…
when you look at a citizen paying taxes to the state and federal government, the bribe is flowing the wrong way. to be just, if the state wants to have laws about who can smoke dope, they should offer bribe money to citizens in the hope of inciting the citizens to bond themselves in prohibition of the act of drug taking against the state which pays them to not do drugs that year. that is if a legitimate means of ‘outlawing’ drug taking is sought…
I’m afraid I don’t understand you. they are different kinds of wrong.
yes, they are different. who would assert that they are without distinguishing features..?, i recognise that they are different, yet they both share features, not least along the dimension of ‘correctness’; they both fail.
Because we believe that we must have a monopolistic legal code. It is is only way to determine rogue law providers from legitimate ones. I am opposed to polycentric law.
I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been asking everybody but nobody has an answer. I think it’s trival to focus on a half sentence in an epilogue of a book about a dialogue between two people in which nobody knows what the full dialogue was about. But the key for me is half sentence when the rest of Rothbard’s writings have nothing to do with how some posters are interpreting that half sentence. The context of Rothbards writings lead to a whole other different interpretation. One that doesn’t include monopoly, one that does include free market competition, and one in which the individuals own ultimate-decision making pertains to said individual (negative liberty). These are explained in detail in all of his writings so a half sentence undeterminable definition of what “legal code” might even mean can only be understood in the context of what Rothbard discussed and NOT in isolation. The fallacy of isolation not only works in economics but logically in this case too.
I don’t know. If other principles are discovered, then the existing principles would still remain, but the theorizing to various degrees will minimally or maximally change. The principles would have to fit still, but how the theory would incorporate the principles would definitely be interesting if it happens. That’s how science works.
I haven’t assumed otherwise. I completely understand this and I haven’t said otherwise. Is there something specific you are talking about cause you made two hugely broad statements here?
Rothbard theorized using the current principles and empircal facts. That’s the way it goes in science. Provide me with another theory that includes these known principles and facts but somehow the theory dramatically changes the understanding and then the dialogue can continue but as of now you haven’t provided me with any new knowledge.
I don’t see a narrow monolithic v. polycentric law code debate. I don’t know how those that would violate the property of others would not in turn have property owners enact just self-defense (I’m not talking about a pacifist that doesn’t defend their own property cause it is still their own property that they do not defend). Explain all these various laws that conflict with property rights. Identify them. Let me know. Give me knowledge.
indeed, having knowledge of right and wrong, just and unjust is a requisite for determining just law from unjust law, just act from unjust act.
i am opposed to moral relativism, yet the provision of just law can best be provided by competing agencies guided by consumer demand for justice. actual justice. if the consumers don’t demand justice, but injustice, then with a stroke they will not have either a free market, or justice. so hurray for a polycentric legal order, and a society, not of utopian humans…, but human beings that know justice from injustice and act in accordance.
I am a fan of free markets and justice, what say you people?
two line summary:
consumers demand justice.
provided by a monopoly, the incentives are to not provide the demanded justice as efficiently as under the pressure of competition. indeed if the monopolist wants injustice then consumers get injustice. heck, its a monopoly.
2)consumers demand injustice
if the monopolist wants justice the consumers get it even if they are dissapointed that they can’t get all the injustice they are demanding.
if the monopolist wants injustice then i call that ‘poetic justice’ against the injustice demanding consumers
is there a comprehensible context of theorising about ‘free market’ provision of injustice? the attempt of free-market agencies to provide demanded injustice on a wide scale, will either be self defeating, (if there are sufficient consumer demanders of justice to fight them off), if there is not, then people get what they want. injustice reigns. injustice precludes the free-market from operating, the injustice that arises from consumer demand for it, is as much a product of a socialised community (no private property). This is like a weird paradox…
I know this was posted to Nir, but I wanted you to know: I thought maybe you have come across another legal code that (1) includes property rights but somehow dramatically changes how those property rights are interpreted (‘mine and thine’ is the shortcut understanding I have of understanding property) (2) somehow doesn’t include property rights but does not violate them either. That would mean there is a more universal principle that would therefore have to incorporate this ‘other law’ and ‘property rights’; also to have kept property rights and this ‘other law’ distinct and remain in affirmation with each other.
As a side note: And somebody that doesn’t thoughtfully recognize property rights but still doesn’t violate property rights remains adherent to property rights. And anybody that says they don’t recognize property rights - but they say that - obviously they have identified what they are and if they go on to say they still reject them but don’t violate them - they identify what they reject but don’t violate therefore they are not violating property rights but affirming them.
Would perhaps an example of a disincentive be something not like “If you kill redheads something undesirable will necessarily happen,” but rather, “If you support a legal system that allows discriminatory killing of any person who has not harmed another, something undesirable will happen: namely, you increase your risk of being in the next category that people decide it’s OK to kill.”?
For a familiar example, just change the interpretation of what constitutes “aggression” and “property.” But you do address this below…
With this insight, it seems it’s just a matter of degree - between a different legal code and a different interpretation of the legal code. Interpretations can be pretty disparate - think Commerce Clause, or Hasnas’s article (The Myth of the Rule of Law).
He seems to be saying that property rights (as he conceives of them) will come about organically on the market, and through human reason. I would say this, though, allows for Mises’s version of utilitarianism, where reason can help us determine which kind of system of law works best for our aims. This I can agree with.
This doesn’t address the point I was making. To recap, Rothbard said, “Any discussion of policy is inherently normative. You can’t have free markets unless you have property rights.”
However, property rights in Rothbard’s statement only applies to de facto (Rothbardian) rights, not normative ones. But even if we must have de facto Rothbardian property rights in order to have free markets, that does not imply that Rothbardian property rights are normative. Hence the quote seems to be a glaring non sequitur.
In your reading of Austrian economics, you will from time to time come across the term “psychic profit.” This is the term some Austrian social thinkers use to signify the increase in happiness (or simply, the happiness) an actor experiences upon attaining his end (satisfying is want, reaching his goal, etc…)
The opposite of this “psychic profit” is, let’s say, “psychic loss.” But this just means unhappiness.
The question is whether there is any necessary link between ethical actions such as murder, coercion, and dishonesty—and any unhappiness that an actor undertaking these acts must experience. If a link can be established between these kinds of ethical acts and a “psychic loss” to the individual undertaking them, then a disincentive has been demonstrated. I.e., to lead a more happy life, avoid XYX kinds of acts…
This is what R. Long is trying to do with Eudaimonia ethics in my opinion. But he is trying to do it via Ayn Rand, Aristotle, and objective ethics, rather than through Austrian formal analysis utilizing methodological individualism, theoretical subjectivism (Mengerian theoretical exact science, Misesian praxeology, etc.).
In your example, I’m not clear on the distinction between “will necessarily happen” and “will happen.”
In my understanding, the distinction to be made in formal/logical science is between “will necessarily happen” and “might happen.”
Your example states an act and a consequence:
Act: “If you support a legal system that allows discriminatory killing of any person who has not harmed another”
Consequence: Then…“something undesirable will happen: namely, you increase your risk of being in the next category that people decide it’s OK to kill.”
The questions would be, 1) whether these definitions can be made rigorous, and 2) whether a necessary relation can be demonstrated such that if one happens the other must happen. If not, then we have to substitute “might” for “will” in your consequence…
I meant no distinction between “will happen” and “will necessarily happen,” but in any case I wasn’t trying to formulate an exact law. What I wanted to ask is whether the former or the latter was more the form of exact law you had in mind.
However, changing the topic to actually creating exact laws, what difference is there between “Action X is likely to cause Y to happen” and “Action X will necessarily increase the chances of Y happening”?
It’s subjective. I don’t like the idea of adulterers being stoned. Some people are equally put off by the idea of adulterers not being stoned. In the same way, don’t like monopolies of force. Words like “rogue” and “legitimate” are either (1) appeals to objective morality, which I reject, or (2) inexact conventions of speech, which I use myself to save time when I know people I’m talking to share my subjective views. I could call a monopoly “rogue” or “criminal,” but if I were speaking precisely I’d simply say, “I don’t like it” or “It’s not helpful to my aims.”
Now I know we’ve been over the subjective/objective debate, and we differ on that, but I think without agreeing on that we cannot really talk fruitfully about this issue either.
Then use the word “monolithic.” Such quotes showing that Rothbard understands that the market will decide the law only show him to be curiously inconsistent, as I will explain below. But we don’t need to argue about that, because we already have established that Rothbard does in fact advocate a single base code based on natural law, even if it could be “interpreted” in different ways. The problem with this notion of “interpretation” or “variations on a theme” is that there are really only two possibilities:
The basic legal code cannot be interpreted in such a way as to make it substantially different from Rothbard’s conception (e.g., “adultery is a property violation” is not a possible interpretation)
OR
The basic legal code can be interpreted in such a way as to make it substantially different from Rothbard’s conception (e.g., “adultery is a property violation” is a possible interpretation)
If #1, then it is truly a monopolistic or monolithic conception. It says, “You can choose which legal system you want, as long as I get to define the scope of the options.”
If #2, there is no reason to even propose it in the first place, nor to develop the theory of natural rights, property rights, homesteading, etc. etc. Also no reason for Hoppe’s attempt to prove argumentation ethics, Long’s constitutive means, Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s attempt to prove natural rights, etc.
I found this vaguely disturbing. What does hatred have to do with scholarship? Yes, of course we don’t like the State, but here Rothbard seems to imply that a good libertarian scholar should “hate [the State] deep in his belly.” It’s as if he hates the fact that his own rejection of the State is only his opinion. As if he hates the fact that natural rights are only persuasive concepts (very good ones!), but not logically necessary ones. Hence the overreaching with the flawed “proofs” of self-ownership, which I believe do a tremendous disservice to the whole libertarian cause by opening it up to easy logical criticism from the outside.
And the interpretation IS about meta-aggression and meta-property for these two latter are metaphysical facts. What the facts and data mean is what science/episteme is always trying to interpret. That’s old bag.
It’s not a matter of degree. There are property rights. You haven’t given me any legal code that conflicts with property rights. There are different interpretations and applications of property rights. These have been brought up and are nothing new. Some of them are heavily debated and others everybody agrees upon. The debate is the competition in the free market, meaning, the debate is argued peacefully between individuals at a coffee shop and decisions are made as to which side of the debate an individual inclines upon when they step into a particular store that sells a particular brand/interpretation/application of property rights. Some of the property rights are not even debated anymore except by ‘extremists’ ie. murder and rape, etc… They are wrong. I don’t know of anybody outside of what is known as a criminal that advocates that murder and rape are good. Even criminals may say they are wrong but can’t control themselves or simply like doing wrong things so they enact these crimes. Other interpretations on how to apply property rights, at least in this forum, become a bit controversial ie. IP, aboration, etc… These, like any interpretations of property rights are debateable amongst all people and this may very well be the creative angles different courts, stores, what have you, sell their product. One store may offer this kind of IP protection. Another store a different kind of IP protection. But I don’t see how any store gets around trying to sell “Murders or Rapists for Hire”. That debate is over. It’s a no-seller.