De facto law (rights) refers to law (rights) that are actually enforced. The excerpt you posted doesn’t address that.
Again, “You can’t have free markets unless you have property rights” only necessarily refers to de facto rights. This implies nothing about anything normative.
I simply observed that most readers here don’t like the State. I think it’s clear I’m not trying to say anything on anyone’s behalf.
Because I think I would be happier in a libertarian society, and that most people would probably be happier as well (which would make me even happier). Passion for liberty is good, I agree. That’s a positive emotion.
For me, it’s two steps different from that: 1) I don’t reject absolute truth, but universal ethical truth; and 2) It’s not that a system that professes to be the universal ethical truth is “monopolistic,” it’s that its enforcement in the legal system for “all courts” (or even the basis thereof, if that basis has any real unalterable substance at all) would be monopolistic. Naturally, if the basis for the legal system can be interpreted so radically as to become absolutely anything, it would be meaningless in the first place (and then it would cease to be monopolistic).
No. A monopoly is enforced by initiated coercion. Liberty is the absence of initiated coercion. Therefore, liberty is absolutely not a monopoly.
And you have been saying all laws are of property rights - thus property rights are a universal ethical truth pertaining to the specie ie. justice, of this genus ie. universal ethical truth. All = universal.
Again name a different law other than property rights that do not conflict with them and are distinctly different than property rights ie. mine and thine.
AJ, your use of words is inconsistent to what your are seemingly trying to convey and pulls the dialogue back to points already discussed that you ought to know very well by now. Please clarify better.
As I’ve said and implied several times now, this is a non sequitur given that the definitions of property rights are wildly different among various legal systems.
That involves property. Name one that doesn’t violate property rights and is distinctly not in need of them. Keep the eye on the ball. This is about liberty and the free market. A law that would differ yet exist side-by-side with property rights. You brought up it. Give me knowledge.
I’ve often wondered whether economics is truly a normative science. There seems to be subtle ethical assumptions in regards to the basis of terminology.
And those who are not libertarians? Of course Mises version of utilitarianism has nothing to say when individuals consider the praxeological arguments and go against them, and it has nothing to say as to why individuals should behave morally / ethically.
“You can’t have free markets unless you have [PRIVATE] property rights”
“The key to the theory of liberty is the establishment of the rights of private property for each individual’s justified sphere of free action can only be set forth if his rights of property are analyzed and established.” - Preface Ethics of Liberty
Oh no, the excerpt DOES address that. Every de facto/ legal right has a set of NORMATIVE “ought to” propositions within it. Here it is again, to refresh yours and others memories.
Law as a Normative Discipline - Murray Rothbard
If ethics is a normative discipline that identifies and classifies certain sets of actions as good or evil, right or wrong, then tort or criminal law is a subset of ethics identifying certain actions as appropriate for using violence against them. The law says that action X should be illegal, and therefore should be combated by the violence of the law. The law is a set of “ought” or normative propositions.
Many writers and jurists have claimed the law is a value-free, “positive” discipline. Of course it is possible simply to list, classify and analyze existing law without going further into saying what the law should or should not be.[2] But that sort of jurist is not fulfilling his essential task. Since the law is ultimately a set of normative commands, the true jurist or legal philosopher has not completed his task until he sets forth what the law should be, difficult though that might be. If he does not, then he necessarily abdicates his task in favor of individuals or groups untrained in legal principles, who may lay down their commands by sheer fiat and arbitrary caprice.
Thus, the Austinian jurists proclaim that the king, or sovereign, is supposed to lay down the law, and the law is purely a set of commands emanating from his will. But then the question arises: On what principles does or should the king operate?[3] Is it ever possible to say that the king is issuing a “bad” or “improper” decree? Once the jurist admits that, he is going beyond arbitrary will to begin to frame a set of normative principles that should be guiding the sovereign. And then he is back to normative law.
Modern variants of positive legal theory state that the law should be what the legislators say it is. But what principles are to guide the legislators? And if we say that the legislators should be the spokesmen for their constituents, then we simply push the problem one step back, and ask: What principles are supposed to guide the voters? Or is the law, and therefore everyone’s freedom of action, to be ruled by arbitrary caprice of millions rather than of one man or a few?[4]
Even the older concept that the law should be determined by tribal or common-law judges, who are merely interpreting the custom of the tribe or society, cannot escape normative judgments basic to the theory. Why must the rules of custom be obeyed? If tribal custom requires the murder of all people over six feet tall, must this custom be obeyed regardless? Why cannot reason lay down a set of principles to challenge and overthrow mere custom and tradition? Similarly, why may it not be used to overthrow mere arbitrary caprice by king or public?
As we shall see, tort or criminal law is a set of prohibitions against the invasion of, or aggression against, private property rights; that is, spheres of freedom of action by each individual. But if that is the case, then the implication of the command, “Thou shall not interfere with A’s property right,” is that A’s property right is just and therefore should not be invaded. Legal prohibitions, therefore, far from being in some sense value-free, actually imply a set of theories about justice, in particular the just allocation of property rights and property titles. “Justice” is nothing if not a normative concept.
Notes
[2] Ronald Dworkin, however, has pointed out that even positive legal analysis necessarily involves moral questions and moral standards. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), chaps. 2, 3, 12, 13. Also see Charles Fried, “The Law of Change: The Cunning of Reason in Moral and Legal History,” Journal of Legal Studies (March 1980): 340.
[3] The Austinians, of course, are also smuggling in a normative axiom into their positive theory: The law should be what the king says it is. This axiom is unanalyzed and ungrounded in any set of ethical principles.
[4] Again, these modern, democratic variants of positive legal theory smuggle in the unsupported normative axiom that statutes should be laid down by whatever the legislators or the voters wish to do. [Or market? Like redheads, eh? For what are consumers but more than one vote eh?]
"De facto law (rights) refers to law (rights) that are actually enforced."
Why must the law be obeyed or enforced? If the law requires the murder of all people over six feet tall, must this be obeyed regardless? Why cannot reason lay down a set of principles to challenge and overthrow mere custom and tradition? [or legal positivism] Similarly, why may it not be used to overthrow mere arbitrary caprice by king or public?
Within those statements are normative ones.
Passion for justice. Do you have a conception or theory of justice? What is it?
How is that at all relevant, given what I wrote? You quote me as saying that “all laws are of property rights” and then you ask me to name another law besides property rights. You’re not making sense.
That I did and nothing has changed; they all still apply. It flows. The Natural law approach determines what they should actually be; that is why the above definitions / clarifications appear in the context under the title: Natural Law’s function: guidance, not protection
What it is without any guidance, normative statements that have nothing to do with Liberty, nor Natural Law are smuggled in and called ‘value free’ when they are in fact not. As is highlighted and explained in the excerpt you didn’t address.
Normative Rights → Legal Rights → Defacto Rights
Natural Law → Natural Rights → Natural Justice
It would be good if you could address the other questions.
In economics, each proposition consists of “if X, Y”. To use that information to form a political ideology, you must add an explicit or (more often) implicit assumption of “I want Y” or “we want Y”.
If X, Y.
We want Y to exist.
Therefore, we should want to cause X.
The “normative” aspect exists outside economics. The “normative” aspect involves the determination of what “we” want.