And, one assumes, that the immigrants and their patrons cannot offload the costs of immigration on others, which is what mass, indiscriminate immigration does. With that qualifier, I would agree that Mises (and myself) would support open immigration.
BTW, private property lines are imaginary too.
Bingo.
That’s only true if “civilized” means “accustomed to a market society.” I assure you that most members of a market society would be ill suited to being able to function in alternative social orders as well. I suggest that you guys actually do some research into how “non-market” societies function and functioned. These people weren’t like cattle. Most “non-market” societies are quite well developed, but just hold different worldviews than we do.
In some cases in the past (and perhaps in the present), they might not have any concept of exclusive individual rights. So by “trading glass beads for land,” it’s possible that they thought they were selling people the right to use their land, but perhaps also possible that they never understood that the land would then be off limits to them.
It’s also possible that the history we have of these sorts of incidents is unfair and one-sided, perhaps due to prejudices on the part of the recorders against native cultures, or perhaps due to the possibility that the historical accounts were ideologically tainted in the direction of justifying the actions of the “civilizing” group. I don’t find it at all difficult to believe that force, or the threat of force, was often left conspicuously out of the stories we’re told about how everything happened.
And further, it’s possible that the native sellers of the land did not understand the kinds of motivations that drove the foreign settlers to buy the land. For example, in a society which sees life as relatively cyclical, rather than progressive, it’s not unreasonable to think that the natives might have thought that the settlers simply needed a place to live, and that on some level, it would be wrong to deprive them of that. An offering of beads as a token of goodwill might seem like a perfectly reasonable thing for the natives to have expected in return. Perhaps if they had understood that the settlers’ goal was to take over the entire country, pushing the native residents out of their land, they would not have done what they did.
I see why someone might think that such “naivity” would reflect some “inadequacy” on the part of the natives’ mindset, but I don’t think that’s particularly fair. We all live in a culture where certain customary “rules” are a part of our expectations, even though they are not legally enforced or necessarily even articulated. If people act on motives which are alien to our culture, it’s not always easy to deal with them in a marketplace. That has nothing to do with a level of civilization. But it does have to do with exposure to people with different cultural backgrounds, which would explain why the natives would not be well suited to deal with them. So unless you’re saying that being an globally integrated culture is a necessary condition for being “an adult” or being “civilized,” I don’t think it’s fair to talk the way you guys have been about people whose cultures are different from ours. To be perfectly frank, they’d probably look at our childish materialism and the consuming desire for physical comfort, lack of responsibility, and selfish atomism, and conclude that we’re simply not mature enough to exist in their cultures. And in fact, I’ve heard that accusation leveled relatively consistently from individuals who represent their native cultures in discussing the modern market society.
That’s not to say that I don’t think that a market society is a good thing. As Mises put it (a little too simplistically) in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality:
I’m just saying that when we call the “Buddhist mendicant” names like “uncivilized” or “childlike,” we betray ourselves as ignorant bigots, completely convinced of our own superiority, and completely unaware of the reasons other cultures have for living the way that they do.
applause Such elitism has no place in a liberty movement - especially this idea that the mere alleged “backwardness” of a culture means that one can legitimately simply “take over” as if such people don’t have rights by virtue of being “backwards”.
And anyway, partial endorsements of polylogism or of a thesis asserting a great many individuals cannot function by market principles (implying their non-naturalcy) only lends credence to the rantings of the like of Karl Polanyi - writings which have not held up too well in the passage of time.
-Jon
If that’s what they thought then they’d insulate themselves even more tightly in their traditions, but they don’t. Instead they are victimized by pornography and alcohol.
The Buddhist mendicant or the Amish elder has made a conscious choice to reject technology. The aboriginal Australian or Amazonian does not regard it as a matter of choice–he simply exists as a part of the environment, and lives or dies accordingly.
The market is a phenomenon associated with rational beings capable of a certain level of abstract thought. The overwhelming majority of life forms on earth do not participate in market exchanges.
You can only have the rights that you appeal for. In a society that has not even developed writing, members of this society do not understand rights. They will most likely attempt to fight off the colonists, and be easily defeated.
The idea that the North American tribes were scammed into trading away their land is a myth. Two centuries after Manhattan was sold, there were still tribes, now armed with guns, in America. They still didn’t practice private property and were busy stealing each other’s land until most of them had either integrated the colonists’ society or had died off.
Yes, but I am referring to Karl Polanyi’s argument that a great deal of primitive and ancient societies lacked a market order.
-Jon
Byzantine, the Native Americans you clearly seem to be referring to were not only treated disrespectfully in the past: they were brutalized, murdered, and dispossessed of their land. That their culture was unable to survive is no more telling about them than it is telling about indigenous African cultures that the African-American community in America has had a difficult time integrating and generating a culture of success and productivity. Even by the most heartless of libertarian standards, the European settlers’ treatment of the indigenous peoples of this continent was unacceptable.
On the idea that members of “non-market” societies do not choose their lot in life, I’d point out that neither did you. You never had the opportunity to live the way that they live, and if you tried to do it now, you’d almost certainly fail without considerable assistance. I don’t see how that’s important. You’re still talking as if you think that your culture is good and theirs is unreasonable.
Stranger, I have no idea what point you’re trying to make in suggesting that more economically developed communities would probably win in a fight with less developed ones if the latter tried to defend themselves against invasion. Anarchist Somalia would probably lose in a fight with the United States. Does that mean we should take them over?
Regarding the second paragraph of your comment, could you provide some evidence for those claims? I never suggested that the Native Americans were “scammed” into selling their land, only that it’s fully conceivable that they did not completely understand the nature of the transaction, that force or the threat of force may have been involved, and that there might have been cultural misunderstandings which might have led to some objectionable elements in the transactions. On your latter claims, I’ve never heard anything like that, so again, some evidence would be nice.
American Indians did understand and practice private property rights. Granted, the Indian idea of property did vary from time and place, but when resources became scarce, Indians would shift away from communal property systems to more established private systems in order to conserve valuable resources. In fact, many tribes in the Pacific Northwest had established comparably advanced systems of territorial fishing rights.
Another true libertarian thought, a human being needs to be civilized enough - by whose measure- to be free. Very cool. Marx had similar ideas, and the german racists too.
They all wher up to “create” the new man that was worth living in their societies. You seem to think in that direction.
Have you ever heard about any human being that has not learned to walk and speak - assumed no health defects? I haven’t. So now you want to tell us that the easy steps needed to understand trade is more of a challenge than learning to speak? Hogwash. Any society is capable of learning in a snap what is needed to cooperate. And if they do not want to trade that does not mean they are “Untermenschen” and can be killed like flies.
It is just absurd.
That is just survivor bias. The societies that did not learn this are long wiped-out by stronger tribes. The Iroquois drove out the Algonquin. The Sioux pushed against the Crow. This happened after the Europeans showed up to write it down for the record. Who knows what kind of warfare was happening beforehand? In the end, the Indian tribes never adopted capital ownership and were thus starved out of existence.
No one can say their land was stolen, because none of them ever owned it in the first place. In cases where the idea of property is not even understood, force is the only way to produce homesteads.
Oh, I see, thanks for eduacting me that freedom is just a bias.
Yes, and part of my family was probably a bit to biased to survive the “civilized” germans.
I will not get into the discussion on this thread again, as I can’t see any solid argument. I only got upset over your “elitist” mind and the fact that you cover it with a libertarian sugar coat. However, the evil effects of your pill won’t go away from that.
You see sometimes I even get upset enough to post to such nonsense you write.
Anyway, you can spill your venom in this thread without being annoyed again by me.
Be well
If such tribes and people were incapable of rational argument, considering rationality is the basis for most libertarian theories of rights, would such people still have rights?
You can only have the rights that you ask for.
Have a great weekend
A right is not granted by anyone. And no libertarian theory i am aware of has rationality as a basis of rights. The basis of rights is the human being, not something that some other human beings grant them based on whatever measurement they choose.
Right are not granted, rights are “inalienable”.
Ah hah. So children, the insane, and the severely mentally handicapped don’t have any rights? By that do you mean that there is nothing that we could do to them that would disrespect their individuality?
No. Disputes over them generally involve next-of-kin.
Okay, but then the rights aren’t their rights, are they. They’re the rights of the next of kind to have those individuals treated a certain way, much like how I have a right that you not shoot my dog.