Provided that “those who possess the power to transfer property from the state” don’t act as an state themselves. The attempt to reduce libertarianism to a mere economic theory makes no sense unless you provide a coherent justification for property.
The Ethics of Liberty on bribery
Let us consider in this light the question of bribery of government officials. We saw above, that, in a free society or free market, the briber is acting legitimately, whereas it is the bribee who is defrauding someone (e.g., an employer) and therefore deserves prosecution. What of bribery of government officials? Here a distinction must be made between “aggressive” and “defensive” bribery; the first should be considered improper and aggressive, whereas the latter should be considered proper and legitimate. Consider a typical “aggressive bribe”: a Mafia leader bribes police officials to exclude other, competing operators of gambling casinos from a certain territorial area. Here, the Mafioso acts in collaboration with the government to coerce competing gambling proprietors. The Mafioso is, in this case, an initiator, and accessory, to governmental aggression against his competitors. On the other hand, a “defensive bribe” has a radically different moral status. In such a case, for example, Robinson, seeing that gambling casinos are outlawed in a certain area, bribes policemen to allow his casino to operate—a perfectly legitimate response to an unfortunate situation.
Defensive bribery, in fact, performs an important social function throughout the world. For, in many countries, business could not be transacted at all without the lubricant of bribery; in this way crippling and destructive regulations and exactions can be avoided. A “corrupt government,” then, is not necessarily a bad thing; compared to an “incorruptible government” whose officials enforce the laws with great severity, “corruption” can at least allow a partial flowering of voluntary transactions and actions in a society. Of course, in neither case are either the regulations or prohibitions, or the enforcement officials themselves, justified, since neither they nor the exactions should be in existence at all.2
I said that government doesn’t own the land, so it can’t sell it. You can’t sell things you don’t own. It has nothing to do with bribery.
What Robinson does is paying the mafia, or government, (they are the same thing of course), in order to have the ‘privilege’ of operating a casino. While it’s true that Robinson is in a way being taxed, it’s also true that government is restricting competition and granting Robinson a monopoly of sorts – I fail to see how securing such a a monopoly can be considered a ‘legitimate’ and moral case of self-defense.
Right, it can’t sell it, it can only relinquish its claim to possession in exchange for payment.
Spare me the newspeak please.
Because nobody elses rights are being violated, simple.
Great. So monopolies enforced by the mafia are consistent with libertarian principles. I think I’ve learn something today.
It’s as if you didn’t even read the Rothbard quote and went directly to petty indignation.
Excuse me, I did read the Rothbard quote and made an objection to it. Besides, my original point was that government doesn’t own the land. Instead of addressing that you introduced the subject of bribery.
Yes they are. The rights of all the people who want to setup a casino and can’t do so unless they pay a ‘bribe’ are being violated.
They are not party to the transaction and are unaffected by the bribe-payer’s action.
The bribe payer and the bribe collector, that is, the protected ‘entrepreneur’ and the government/mafia that protects him (from competition), are both acting in concert in order to restrict…competition. You can use as much newspeak as you want but the facts won’t change.
I would like to see some kind of settlement of the original issue expressed on this post abouth the national parks. Here I expose my conclusions based both on my original statements and on the thoughts impressed upon me by my fellow forum users.
An old adage says “don’t fix what ain’t broke”. If a National Park system functions reasonably well, I would leave it on the hands of the state.
If its administration or conversation policies are substandard, I would consider privatization. However I did not see so far a satisfactory method to ensure that such privatization would be competitive, as in a tender, rather than the most commonly used method of arbitrary allocation.
The success or failure rate on the government administration could be assessed by the park users: hikers, conservationists, and the general public.
Some threads suggested that the government did not own any portion of the National Parks in the first place. So who would become the rightful owner? The very first one who arrives, as if it were a land conquest or battle?
National Parks, in my opinion, were created because of a desire of many individuals who agreed to leave that land alone for the recreational and environmental benefit of their great-grandchildren. Placing those protected areas under private control would facilitate logging and erosion due to the profit motive.
You didn’t actually read the quotation did you? Rothbard explicitely states that if the bribe payer is using the government/ mafia to restrict competition he is acting immorally, as then all he is doing is delegating the use of coercion to the state/ mafia. But that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re talking about the case in which the bribe payer pays the bribe collecter in order to allow his buisness to operate and in doing so increases competition, the only party left worse off is anybody else paying a bribe to the bribe collector to allow his buisness (or to restrict others), not the consumer.
I think the point is that the state don’t run national parks particularly well. Of course, the problem is (to my knowledge anyway) that states have always been in charge of running national parks (if anyone knows otherwise could you provide a source, I’d be interested to know) and we don’t really have anything to compare state owned national parks with, in this respect it’s similar to roads and armies I suppose.
In any case, as these parks are funded through coercion calculation is impossible. Essentially governments don’t have the knowledge of how to run national parks, where to run them etc. whereas a private owner would.
Why would it not be competative as opposed to every other industry, in any case if it weren’t competative I don’t see how giving the state monopoly would sove this.
But how? Ultimately if it doesn’t face the threat of going out of buisness none of this matters.
Not necessarily no. If the individual that owned these areas thought it could make greater profit through charging money for people to see it or through donations than he could through logging that’s what they’d do, or perhaps the owner of this area has a special attachment himself to these trees or national park and no amount of money will force him to do. The point is that the price system is the only way to determine this. The price system determines whether people will value the wood that comes from cutting the trees down, or the view of trees more. The only reason that logging is so widespread as it is, is the result of the poorly defined property rights.
I don’t really see how national parks alone would be enough reason to justify the taxation that would be necessary to support them anyway, so the issue is irrelivant.
We think that by the government controlling the parks, they will keep them pristine. I think these flaws emphasize the point. It takes one policy decision to wreck all the hope you place in a national park system. One decision made at the beginning of a new administration can have effects that last 4 or 8 or more years. I’d like to point out that one of those flawed decisions was the one to fight all fires in the parks. We saw what happened to Yellowstone in the 1988. Rather than letting small fires burn over the past 100 years, the parks accumulated a lot of unburned fuel which led to a hugh conflagration that lasted months.
I read it three times – and I don’t agree with Rothbard.
So A pays B to restrict competition.
So A pays B to be allowed to benefit from restricted competition.
Both the ‘mafia’ and ‘robinson’ have a right to operate a casino, a right which is being violated – both pay the state in order to be able to operate a casino. Both benefit from restricted competition. There’s no substantive difference between those two scenarios.
The thing is, business owners are being taxed, BUT they also benefit from the ‘protection’ the state provides. From the point of view of the consumers both the casino run by the mafia and the casino run by good old Robinson are protected businesses.
Now, let’s imagine that a cop finds out you’ve a bottle of whisky – the cops says : Sir, owning whisky is a crime punished with death…but maybe I could look the other way if you gave me one of those chickens you’ve there…Paying in that case sounds like a defensive bribe to me, although the whole concept of defensive vs. offensive bribes is a bit far fetched I think.
Besides, the subject was not bribes, but ownership of the so called national parks. Now, Rothbard says at the beginning of that same chapter…
Read TEOL. Rothbard explains homesteading there. See this too.
-Jon
Of course there is. The mafia is bribing the state to allow only their casino to operate, and in doing so the mafia restricts competition. Robinson on the other hand is only bribing the state to allow his casino to operate under the already restricted competition, hence creating more competition.
The point is that the mafia’s bribe is coercive in the sense that it violates people’s property right, Robinson’s isn’t because it does not delegate the coercion to the state and does not result in a violation of anybody’s rights whose rights weren’t already being violated.
If we take the state out of the picture and assume that the mafia kill anybody who attempts to open a casino you wouldn’t dispute the fact that this is coercion. Now if Robinson spent money employing a PDA to protect his casino, would this be coercion?
No. The state restricts competition – the state is holding the guns and doing the coercing – the mafia or Robinson, or casino owner Jones all benefit from being monopolists, but they are not coercers, technically speaking.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble but Robinson is not creating more competition. The amount of phony competition is set by the government – they give Robinson the chance to setup a new casino if he pays. And, whatever Robinson pays as bribes he’ll recoup it by charging his customers a higher price.
A bribe is not coercive. The coercion in this case comes in the form of the state preventing its subjects from entering the casino market, and that restriction exists regardless of bribes being paid or not.
So, supposedly the mafia is actively seeking a monopoly and ‘delegating’ coercion to the state ? What’s that even supposed to mean ? If that’s the case, then the mafia and the state are basically the same entity.
Again, rights are being violated by the state regardless of bribing. And Robinson or any other casino owner indirectly benefits from this violation of rights.
Of course not. But if that’s the case, then the mafia is the state. It’s a mere substitution of names.
How is he going to do that ? We’re talking about an area controlled by a state.
Anyway, I think that my point stands. The state does not own the ‘national’ parks. This discussion about ‘good’ bribes vs. ‘bad’ bribes is not directly related to the proper way to privatize unowned land usurped by the state.