You may also take pleasure in noting that I do not actually call the thing “Constitution”, except as an attention-grabber.
Except that’s a lie. “not as a private contract (constitution) amongst free individuals.”
A constitution is not a private contract. Even from your definition - it is a social contract. What in the world is the point of using a term that is associated with such, and trying to re-define it.
You 'd be better off substantiating your claims, especially when you accuse me of lying: Lie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
A lie (also called prevarication, falsehood) is a known untruth expressed as truth.
You claim (again unsubstatiated) that a constitution is NOT a private contract. It is true that no such constitution exists today, hence one could easily be led to draw such a conclusion. However, you must prove that a constitution CANNOT be created through private contract to invalidate my proposed Covenant.
You are right that the Covenant can also be descibed as a “Social Contract”, a piece of paper (if you print it), Constitution, Private Contract, …
Social Contract: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.
My understanding is the bold underlined interpretation. There seem to be nothing which implies that such a Social Contract CANNOT be voluntarily agreed to, and written down on a piece of paper and sworn to by all that so desires (although that never has happened before)
Not at all, however I ask you recall that I started from Terra Nullius, hence presumably my concern is not disarming the US Army, just merely preventing that it comes into existence.
And I haven’t forgotten. And yet the exact same question remains - “And how does a piece of paper change that?”
It may help nipping the weed in it’s infancy by explicitly eliminating the first sprouts. However, the real issue of concern is not it the proposed Covenant will ensure good things to happen, but if it could cause bad things to happen. That is are there reasons to believe that the proposed Covenant would lead to the formation of a State, this is really what you must argue to refute the proposal of a voluntarily agreed to Constitution/Social Contract (or whatever you want to call it). You must show that it would be evil, not simply show that it may do no good. I think you may have a case here, but so far you have not argued it.
“Even so you seem to believe there IS “a single set of laws binding everyone”, namely natural law which I am trying to include in the written “Compact and Covenant of Rothbardia””
There is, but within that people can opt out and make voluntary agreements for specific gated communities etc.
Well at least we agree on the existence of Natural Law, now I don’t quite see how you defend “opting out” of that, but that is a different discussion.
The above makes it seem like murder is OK unless I signed a contract with the victim to the contrary.
No it doesn’t. How about you alleviate your ignorance and read the rest of the doc.
Much appreciate you concern for my ignorance, and will obey, o’master!
(The Compact and Covenant of Rothbardia would constitute such a contract, but since you are violently opposed to such a contract…)
Call it the Rothbardia Insurance Company, or Arbitration Agency.. which is merely one of many competiting firms in the market for defense etc. and that this is simply your attempt at a contract for customers to sign, then fine. No worries. You’ll need to drop your nation nonesense though.
I don’t think I need to drop the nation-concept, only the State-concept (and I am not offering security, just diplomatic services), from Rothbard (off the links I included above):
Let me say from the beginning that I define the State as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. Any institution, not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a “State”.
The “nation,” of course, is not the same thing as the state…
The “nation” cannot be precisely defined; it is a complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups, or religions.
One goal for libertarians should be to transform existing nation-states into national entities whose boundaries could be called just, in the same sense that private property boundaries are just; that is, to decompose existing coercive nation-states into genuine nations, or nations by consent.
Hence, I am clearly NOT establishing a STATE (by Rothbard’s clear definition), however I could call it a nation (but haven’t), since it would fit into the description of “form of community” (being in this case made up of those thas subscribe to the Covenant (ie a fairly anarchistic lot). It would also fit with his ideal of “nations by consent”!
Agree, unfortunately such persons are in short supply.
And yet they wouldn’t be if there was a free market in defense, law.
True, unfortunately Terra Nullius will have to import people from areas where such conditions do not exist. Although it is likely that Rothbardia will atract a high proportion of such people it would by no stretch of imagination ONLY atttract such people.
Hilarious, but no - that isn’t Rothbard on the question at hand. You see a constitution anywhere there? That’s him referencing the concept of a nation, minus the nation state - which already has an existing culture etc… terra nullius, then no it doesn’t.. and hence is irrelevent to the question at hand.
Rothbard is always hilarious, but seldom irrelevant. True Terra Nullius such as Antartica could ofcourse not become a nation as it has no people to form the nation. However Rothbard does NOT refer to a common culture, race, language as a REQUIREMENT to form a nation.
As is clearly stated in the covenant I must get people into Terra Nullius before the “nation” is formed. If you’d only bother to read the document it starts with “We, the people of Rothbardia, finding ourselves in a Territory abandoned…” which should make it pretty clear that the conditions are ripe to form “a nation by consent”
Now directly to the qoutes you selected, they seem to support my argument, not yours:
The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person’s or community’s land area.
Were did these “prohibitions” arise from if not a “Constitution”, at the very minimum it could be described as a “Social Contract” (voluntary contract between the people forming the community).
While statists who have the itch to impose their values on everyone else would be disappointed, every group or interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflicts, it would at least provide a “second best” solution that most people might be willing to live with.
It would seem that he defends the Covenant of Rothbardia
