He may have at one time or another said “no man may initiate aggression”. Just don’t forget that Rothbard did have to work out his ideas at some point. He wasn’t born a libertarian. He eventually settled into a standard use.
The point of initiation is that someone had to be the first to use violence. In one sense, a defender can intiate violence in response, but that is not the definition that Rothbard or libertarians in general use. Initiate is meant to be the first use of violence between two or more parties. A defender can become an aggressor if he uses more violence than the original aggressor. In other words, he is the first to use Y amount of violence, whereas the original aggressor was the first to use X amount of violence. But if the defender uses X amount of violence, then it’s definitely not aggression.
It’s the same with your trade example. If you and I are going to exchange some money for a car, one of us has to initiate the transaction. One of us has to say to the other, “Let’s do a trade”. Maybe at some point you may find two people who say it at the same time, but that is quite rare, and it doesn’t disprove anything about libertarianism, as libertarianism promotes trade. But if it were a conflict, if two people punched each other at the same time, then they both aggressed against each other, and so long as the aggression was equal, then that’s the end of it in terms of libertarian rights violations.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with libertarians promoting system Y instead of system X. In fact, every single libertarian will say that it is a good thing that libertarians promote libertarianism. It’s a total non-issue to libertarians. You will find it is a non-issue to pretty much anybody that X person promotes a system that he believes is good.
So I don’t really know what your point is, other than that you find all systems of law distasteful.
I advanced my point earlier, maybe you missed it: I agree with OP that private law is like statism, but OP’s argument was weak in my opinion. The problem isn’t that private militaries—excuse me, defense agencies—will war with each other. The problem is that it’s exchanging violent system of arbitrary morals enforcementX for violent system of arbitrary morals enforcement Y.
I think the problem most people have when trying to understand the privatization of anything that the govt currently (and especially historically) has nationalized is that they apply the same business model (I use this term loosely) to the entrepreneur as they do the bureaucrat. Like it or not, any business decision (including the decisions within the business of courts and law) will usually be made based on costs-benefits analysis. We cannot know how law will function in a free society, but we do know that business works this way - using cost benefits analysis. The calculation problem proved that govts cannot do this. Concordantly, mirroring what has already been said, competing private courts/protection agencies/insurance companies/whatever will not go to war because it would simply be cheaper to come to an agreement when a dispute arose. The state can only go to war when its monopoly on the courts is challenged and it typically does.
Also, the OP’s question implicitly assumes that public law systems somehow “work” now. They don’t, and there is plenty of data out there (not done by libertarians) that suggests that they don’t.
I’d also like to note one more thing. One f the first responders to the OP noted that “public courts” could be a legitimate response to aggressions of private courts - if they even occurred. One might think, “Public courts? Isn’t that what yu guys are against?” I just want to make it clear that “public” is used differently here. IT means a group of people VOLUNTARILY got together, pooled their money, and made one based on their own opinions of what good law is and they pay for it.
Libertarians are not against the govt and the state strictly speaking. We are against the initiation of violence and, for the state to exist, they must initiate violence, so we oppose it most openly. If a group of people voluntarily want to form a public court with their own money, they can do so. They just cant force the rest of us to use it.
Anyway I tend to side with nature, in the sense that whatever we have that has proven to be effective at persisting and proliferating is what I would call—to borrow your term—“healthy”. Preference for statism (hegemonic dominance hierarchies?) over non-statism in all the environments so far has proven to be embedded in our psychology and biology.
Private law may prove to be “healthy” for society some day, but it clearly isn’t right now, at least from that perspective. And that doesn’t mean I concede it’s an improvement over statism, which I maintain it isn’t, since they both rely on violence and arbitrary morals enforcement.
Do people have an inborn preference for statism? I don’t see that as the case. In fact, history is filled with people rebelling against the state. If you really want to go with predominant systems, then we must prefer social cooperation as the predominant system. And the state is socially adversarial in nature. So the state is a poison to the predominant system of voluntary exchange that is embedded in our psychology and biology.
I don’t see how whatever exists is necessarily healthy. Cancer exists in many people, and it is absolutely not healthy.
Anyway, it sounds like you have a distaste for law, and that is your arbitrary moral feeling.
War is really expensive. You have to pay your PDA employees extra pay, buy more equipment at a faster rate, etc.
Who says the jurisdictions won’t overlap? The free market breeds competition, and would do so with PDAs.
Third party arbitration is a much less expensive, much more efficient process than slugging it out with every other PDA. Besides, people wouldn’t stand for that kind of bullsh!t going on. When they see the company is trying to be tyrannical, they’ll just switch to another firm and collectively shut down efforts by the rogue PDA.
Without the perceived “authority” (i.e. right to rule), no organization can be thought of to be a state. States require the widespread perception of the authority to rule, along with illusory rights that no person or institution can logically possess. With PDAs, you can always switch firms. The PDA doesn’t have extra rights, it can only act as a representative in that it extends your negative rights against force, fraud, coercion, breach of contract, etc.
No, through solid rational thinking, anyone can come to the same conclusion. How these firms will act is unknown, yet we have historical examples of such firms in Ireland, Iceland, The (Wild) West, among others. We know how markets tend to work; we also know how public property and the state corrupt and pervert nearly everything they lay their hands on. At the very least, we can easily conclude that private law and private defense agencies would do the job better than government, at a lower cost.
First off, I’d appreciate it if you’d respond to all of my post, not just part of it.
Second, I thought I made it clear that I’m pointing out the differences between your semantics and those that most libertarians seem to have. Did I not say that I’m not saying you’re wrong?
What do you think is logically invalid about what I said before? If “war” is defined (at least for the sake of argument) as “a violent dispute between states”, and “peace” is defined as “the absence of war”, then to say “libertarians promote peace” means “libertarians promote the absence of violent disputes between states”, does it not? The logic is clear. So the question is whether most libertarians define “war” and “peace” that way or some other way.
If you really want to go with predominant systems, then we must prefer social cooperation as the predominant system. And the state is socially adversarial in nature. So the state is a poison to the predominant system of voluntary exchange that is embedded in our psychology and biology.
I’m not understanding how you and malachi keep ariving at this conclusion. Human action is driven by several factors, not just the drive toward social releations (which may or may not require cooperation and/or mutually voluntary exchange). For example, we respond to authority figures, see the Milgram experiments. A majority of people are willing to inflict fatal damage to people purely because an authority figure says to. Also the concept about ingroup loyalty and outgroup hostility. We acknowledge groups, and classify them in our brains as in or out within different contexts, and tend to behave accordingly. There’s self-deception, and how we tend to create myths about reality to feel better about factors that would otherwise make us uncomfortable. All of these and many more have culminated in a history and present and future of homo sapiens where we organize into hegemonic dominance hierarchies. Mutually voluntary exchange has persisted, and is widespread yes, within hegemonic dominance hierarchies (HDH’s?). The social arrangements that persist and proliferate are HDH’s—even prisoners can engage in mutually voluntary exchange.
When I said “healthy”, I made it clear that I mean healthy in the evolutionary sense: it’s responsible for the persistence and proliferation of what we see around us. We don’t see the biggest, most powerful, most persistent and prolific types of societies being based on rejection of HDH’s. What we do see is repeatedly, on different continents and throughout different times and cultures, homo sapiens organizing into societies of HDH’s.
First off, I’d appreciate it if you’d respond to all of my post, not just part of it.
Well then I apologize, because long drawn out posts get tiresome. If I saw several distinct key points in your post then maybe I’d approach each of them individually, otherwise for the sake of time and space I imagine we’re having a live debate. That means I can look at your whole post when responding to it, and acknowledge that there are several nuanced points, and yet try to respond to them as though they were as few distinct arguments as possible. I’m trying to avoid having posts that get consistently longer like what happened between Malachi and I (that would be a great band name). Hopefully we’re responsible enough to acknowledge to ourselves that there is more than one line of text in any post… If you feel I missed something critical, or failed to consider it within the context of my response to a different portion of your post, please remind me of the specific part.
What do you think is logically invalid about what I said before?
Red herring. I’m not looking for a logical inconsistency, because I simply refused to accept your premise that libertarians have to think in terms of strict definitions instead of being able to think dynamically about meanings within contexts. Peace may be “defined” one way (it’s not), but it can also be used in the context of peacevs violence, which I was advancing.
Social cooperation is the dominant form of human interaction. Period. Just go outside and interact with anyone. The vast majority of those interactions are not conflicts (they don’t resort to violence or the threat thereof). The Milgram experiment says nothing to disprove what I said.
So, I’m not understanding how you keep trying to dismiss social cooperation as the predominant form of interaction amongst humans.
So cancer is healthy in the evolutionary sense? I mean, seriously, you are on a forum of a website that promotes Austrian Economics, and you say things like “[the state is] responsible for the persistence and proliferation of what we see around us.” What hogwash! Just open any book on economics and you will see that this is nonsense. Humans are responsible. The division of labor is responsible. Property rights is responsible. The freer the market, the wealthier the society. The bigger the state, the worse things get. The US is seeing a slowdown and reversal in some cases of wealth. The US won’t be able to continue to ride on the existing capital for much longer if the state keeps going along the way it has been.
But seriously, just don’t say things like the state is responsible for what we have. It’s nonsense and you know it.
Social cooperation is the dominant form of human interaction.
You’re advancing a red herring. I already acknowledged that slaves/prisoners engage in cooperative/mutually voluntary behavior.
So cancer is healthy in the evolutionary sense?
What I’m arguing is that things which proliferate and persist better than things which don’t are more “healthy” to borrow your term. In the context of the overall organization of societies, hegemonic dominance hierarchies proliferate and persist better than societies which reject hegemonic dominance hierarchies. I wouldn’t necessarily choose to use the term healthy for cancer because it would probably convey the wrong meaning.
It’s not a red herring. It’s what we’ve been talking about. You say that X is the dominant system. I say that Y is the dominant system. Just because I say Y instead of X doesn’t make it a red herring. It means I believe you have your facts wrong.
You have yet to prove that social conflict is the preferred and “healthy” state of affairs, especially considering social cooperation is the predominant form of human interaction. And you even stated that whatever was preferred and persisted is healthy. Well, seeing as social cooperation vastly outnumbers social conflict, I cannot see how you can claim that people in general actually prefer conflict, when it is clear by their actions that this is not the case.
You have also yet to prove that social cooperation exists within social conflict. It does not. They are different types of interactions. If two people cooperate in order to kill another person, the cooperation wasn’t “within” the conflict. It is merely a description of the relationship between the two killers. The killers’ relationship with the killed is that of conflict. Neither exists within the other.
It’s the same with states. My cooperation with the cashier at the supermarket does not exist within the conflict with the state. They are separate relationships. The state is in conflict with me, and I am cooperating with the cashier. It’s the same with slaves. The slave owner and the slave are in conflict with each other. That is the nature of their relationship. If two slaves cooperation or fight, that is a separate relationship entirely.
I need you to define “proliferate”, “better”, and “healthy”. The standard definition of “proliferate” is “increase rapidly in numbers”. The standard definition of “healthy” is “the state of being free from illness or injury”.
I do not see how states are increasing rapidly in numbers. I also do not see how states are not injurious to society. By your own admission, you consider states to be injurious to society. So I fail to understand how you can say it is bad for society on the one hand, but then turn around and claim it is somehow good for society.
I see social conflict as I see cancer. It is injurious to individuals.
Look your post is too long. I’m not interested in responding to something like that. It’s not as complicated as you’re making it.
To be completely clear, I ALREADY AGREE that the majority of interpersonal relations are mutually voluntary. My point is that they take place WITHIN hegemonic dominance hierarchies. There’s no point in continuing this discussion until you make yourself familiar with the concept of dominance hierarchies. I can’t be held responsible for your ignorance on the subject. Once you make yourself acquainted with the subject, you’ll know what I’m talking about and you’ll see why the definitions game is ridiculous. A reasonable introductory book may be Human Evolution and the Origin of Dominance Hierarchies—although it’s by no means flawless, or the only source.
Beyond that the health comment isn’t very important. The word doesn’t have to be healthy, and if you familiarize yourself with natural selection you’ll know what I’m talking about.
@hashem, is there something in that book that explains your figurative use of the preposition “within”? Obviously you dont mean that these voluntary actions take place inside of a physical object called a “hegemonic dominance hierarchy.”
secondly, what do you think about cooperation between belligerents during wartime?
I haven’t read the book so I’m not sure. Within may be considered interchangeable with between members of, if that helps you grasp the concept until you actually take the initiative to learn about the concepts.
Sure, depending on your perspective. I’m saying mutually voluntary exchange occurs within hegemonic organization, you’re saying hegemony occurs within mutually voluntary organization. I think my perspective is a little bit more realistic, and is supported by evolutionary science, psychology, biology, anthropology, and other sciences. You think your perspective is the only correct one from any angle and is supported by…your opinion and semantic games.
