Minarchism is theft

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 9:23pm

Ummm…Cartman, what the hell are you talking about?

Juan · September 22, 2009, 10:07pm

Dondoolee, none of the the definitions you quoted say anything about ‘social cooperation’ - thanks for making my point.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 10:09pm

Something it seems just flew over your head, oh well.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 10:26pm

Aha. So what were you talking about? You’re going to have to actually state it. You can’t rely on innuendo that only you get.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 10:34pm

That there is more to a just society than merely the “meting out of the earned”. Perhaps, I could even go as far as to state that “meting out the earned” already presupposes the existence of social cooperation, and by doing that is an unsound criterion for justice.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 10:39pm

You said “justice”, not “just society”. Please don’t shift the goalposts.

Although if everyone individually meted out the earned, then “society” would be just.

You could, but you’d be wrong, given that individuals do cooperate. And that you have a warped view of justice, involving more to justice than what actually is.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 10:46pm

I’m not shifting the goal posts whatsoever: what is justice? Is it some platonic ideal? Or does is it contained in a just society? I would answer that there is no justice whatsoever without society; thus, the use of a “just society” instead of “justice” is completely correct.

And how is that done?

Social cooperation does not happen everywhere, and it is a goal of justice to ensure that cooperation happens in the first place.

Theory and History by L.v. Mises:

The Idea of Justice

One of the motives that impel men to search for an absolute and immutable standard of value is the presumption that peaceful cooperation is possible only among people guided by the same judgments of value.

It is obvious that social cooperation would not have evolved and could not be preserved if the immense majority were not to consider it as the means for the attainment of all their ends. Striving after the preservation of his own life and health and after the best possible removal of felt uneasiness, the individual looks upon society as a means, not as an end. There is no perfect unanimity even with regard to this point. But we may neglect the dissent of the ascetics and the anchorites, not because they are few, but because their plans are not affected if other people, in the pursuit of their plans, cooperate in society.

There prevails among the members of society disagreement with regard to the best method for its organization. But this is a dissent concerning means, not ultimate ends. The problems involved can be discussed without any reference to judgments of value.

Of course, almost all people, guided by the traditional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremptorily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Social institutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judge them merely according to their fitness to attain definite ends, however desirable these ends may be from any other point of view. What matters first is justice. The extreme formulation of this idea is to be found in the famous phrase: fiat justitia, pereat mundus. Let justice be done, even if it destroys the world. Most supporters of the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as extravagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not more absurd, merely more shocking, than any other reference to an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearly shows the fallacies of the methods applied in the discipline of intuitive ethics.

The procedure of this normative quasi science is to derive certain precepts from intuition and to deal with them as if their adoption as a guide to action would not affect the attainment of any other ends considered desirable. The moralists do not bother about the necessary consequences of the realization of their postulates. We need not discuss the attitudes of people for whom the appeal to justice is manifestly a pretext, consciously or subconsciously chosen, to disguise their short-run interests, nor expose the hypocrisy of such makeshift notions of justice as those involved in the popular concepts of just prices and fair wages. The philosophers who in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme value to justice and applied the yardstick of justice to all social institutions were not guilty of such deceit. They did not support selfish group concerns by declaring them alone just, fair, and good, and smear all dissenters by depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes. They were Platonists who believed that a perennial idea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty of man to organize all human institutions in conformity with this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to man by an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions of this doctrine did not ask what the consequences of realizing the schemes they called just would be. They silently assumed either that these consequences will be beneficial or that mankind is bound to put up even with very painful consequences of justice. Still less did these teachers of morality pay attention to the fact that people can and really do disagree with regard to the interpretation of the inner voice and that no method of peacefully settling such disagreements can be found.

All these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehend that there is, outside of social bonds and preceding, temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing to which the epithet “just” can be given. A hypothetical isolated individual must under the pressure of biological competition look upon all other people as deadly foes. His only concern is to preserve his own life and health; he does not need to heed the consequences which his own survival has for other men; he has no use for justice. His only solicitudes are hygiene and defense. But in social cooperation with other men the individual is forced to abstain from conduct incompatible with life in society. Only then does the distinction between what is just and what is unjust emerge. It invariably refers to interhuman social relations. What is beneficial to the individual without affecting his fellows, such as the observance of certain rules in the use of some drugs, remains hygiene.

The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to the preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust. There cannot be any question of organizing society according to the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of justice. The problem is to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends which men want to attain by social cooperation. Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation.

Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society. Utilitarian philosophy and its finest product, economics, reduced these apparent antagonisms to the opposition of short-run and long-run interests. Society could not have come into existence or been preserved without a harmony of the rightly understood interests of all its members.

There is only one way of dealing with all problems of social organization and the conduct of the members of society, viz., the method applied by praxeology and economics. No other method can contribute anything to the elucidation of these matters.

The concept of justice as employed by jurisprudence refers to legality, that is, to legitimacy from the point of view of the valid statutes of a country. It means justice de lege lata. The science of law has nothing to say de lege ferenda, i.e., about the laws as they ought to be. To enact new laws and to repeal old laws is the task of the legislature, whose sole criterion is social utility. The assistance the legislator can expect from lawyers refers only to matters of legal technique, not to the gist of the statutes and decrees.

There is no such thing as a normative science, a science of what ought to be.

Spideynw · September 22, 2009, 10:47pm

It’s a tough pill to swallow. But welcome to the ranks! It really is the only consistent political philosophy.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 10:57pm

Yes, you are.

The concept of meting out the earned.

The use of “just society” in place of “justice” is erroneous, for you need to know what justice is before you can have a “just society”.

English is your third or fourth language, isn’t it?

No, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean anything, really.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 11:02pm

I’m not unless you believe that there can be justice without society; I, for one, do not believe so.

According to what mechanisms? Does that mean that one person can claim all that is earned for himself, and be just in doing so?

Without society, “justice” is nothing.

Can you detect rhetorical questions?

Actually, it means everything, read the quote of Theory, and History if you want to know why.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 11:12pm

Non sequitur. Justice is an abstraction. You need to learn such words.

That isn’t germane.

You really need to learn what the word “abstraction” means.

Yes. Feel free to write one.

No, it doesn’t. It means no more than saying we don’t have anarchy everywhere.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 11:18pm

No, justice is not something that one can hold up as a platonic idea. Instead, justice is something very real, and it is only in society can one give the epithet “just” to anything.

Abstracting justice from society is to have the concept of justice loose any of its meaning.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 11:25pm

Good thing no one is. And justice isn’t ontologically real; it’s conceptually real. Learn. The. Difference.

laminustacitus · September 22, 2009, 11:27pm

The entire notion of “justice” is incomprehensible without society, so any attempt to idealize it beyond society is absurd - the questions: “What is justice”, and “What is a just society” are one, and the same. Learn. That. Fact.

Knight_of_BAAWA · September 22, 2009, 11:29pm

The notion of a “just society” without having defined “just” is absurd on the face of it.

Learn. That. Fact.

Laughing_Man · September 23, 2009, 8:52am

Well what do you consider ‘society’, two people? Ten people? thousands?

And how can ‘society’ have traits such as ‘justice’? How can ‘society’ be ‘just’? Or unjust for that matter? Do you believe that an abstraction can actually be personified?

Conza · September 23, 2009, 10:49am

Because if he was to come out & say he was an anarcho-capitalist, what do you think would happen? Talk about destroying the movement, lol. By the way, he has never defended the state, which is something worth pointing out. He favors civil disobedience when it comes to taxation.

Anyway, all that would needs to be done by the establishment is tar him with the anarchist (traditional socialist) label. Scare tactics, he’d lose support by those still stuck in the statist mentality, and they’d be cut short before they could possibly get into Austrian Economics. Possibly lose his position in Congress, there goes the only radical abolitionist for Liberty in modern history, who is following the Rothbard Libertarian Caucus points to the letter. No more 434 votes to 1. No more spokesperson who gets on the House floor and tells it like it is. No more beacon of hope for millions, nor a relevant iconoclast pushing the important issues in the news and mainstream media (when he is able to penetrate it). No more “honest politician”. No more filtering tens of thousands to the LvMI, no more spreading the message to millions around the world and giving people their “political education”… and thus no more opposition to the new world order.

Wraith · September 23, 2009, 11:49am

I thought Ron Paul was a constitutionalist, is that incompatible with an-cap?

Can one person be both?

Spideynw · September 23, 2009, 12:05pm

Yes.

No.

Poptech · September 23, 2009, 6:10pm

to elaborate…

A Constitutionalist would be a limited government libertarian (Minarchist) like Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt and Friedman.

Anarcho-Capitalists do not support any government including one based on a constitution.

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Minarchism is theft

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