Re: Jackson LaRose,
You’re objecting to my arguments right now, yet you don’t think you have a right to object to your murder?
You’re confusing rights with physics. Of course rights are not PHYSICAL IMPEDIMENTS. Would you NEED to have some natural physical restraint to stop you from murdering someone? Are you a mere animal?
I’ll PM my response
Actually, just keep an eye on the What is a Right? thread
Is your belief in a person’s “right to life” the only thing stopping you from murdering someone? Or is it possible that there exist more than two reasons to avoid murdering others?
I also think there’s an important difference between believing you ought to be allowed to object and believing you have a “right” to object. (though Jackson’s act of objecting, resulting from his preference for life over death, is distinct from whether he thinks others should be allowed to voice their objections)
Re: Michael J Green,
Do I need another reason on top of that one? Can’t I as a reasonable person determine that murder is wrong as people have a right to keep their lives?
You need MORE reasons? I don’t.
I don’t think in terms of “ought” (a reason why I buy insurance). I know I have a right to object as I am free to object. I have a right to my life as I am free to defend it. I have a right to my property as I am free to possess and act upon it. I do not have a right to someone else’s life as I am not free to take it (oh, I COULD take it, but that does not mean I am FREE to do it, as taking something that’s not mine involves COERCION, AGGRESSION, and RESISTANCE. If I have to COERCE, is because I am NOT free to have or take it; if I have to rely on AGGESSION, is because I am NOT free to take it or have it.)
By this definition a right is just an ability to act in a certain way. Yet you claim it is more than just an ability.
Although the particular words are different each time, what you (and Hoppe, and Rothbard) do is to constantly equivocate between right=able to and right=should be able to, and when pressed on what “should” means you say it just means able (in this case you chose the word “free[dom]”).
it got deleted? I did want to add this, which I know isn’t exactly what anyone here wants to hear…but it is worth considering, especially if you oppose it, I suppose. [I don’t intend trying to persuade anyone, nor to argue the point, and I don’t mean to attempt to derail your Miseian musings…I only called here to ask some questions…so I’ll shutup…]
In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx’s reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour, which we will explore below…
Intriguing, no?
Stirner tore Bauer apart. And Marx, for that matter.
What good is political freedom in a material world where I have to weigh my bills and pocketbook in general, versus my health. And decide between my rent and risking losing a falange (i currently have gangrene)… Real wages have fallen, and inefficiency has increased. The State is the cause as much as the corporations that seek its aid. Like everyone agrees, mostly every institution or organization of people, is intrinsically power-grabbing.
I doubt you have any data on these things but it really should come into account when analyzing products and housing.
Your charts show housing prices have fallen. I think they remain almost constant as the quality in home building has really come way down. I have bought and renovated two houses so far. One from 1975 and one from 1929. 100% of the construction in my 1929 home far exceeds the quality in the 1975 home. Now you cannot use technology in this example because my 1929 home was built with about equal to the 1975 homes wiring and plumbing technological advances of their reflected times.
Also your comparison between apple computers is ridiculous as the Imac is hardly state of the art of this time compared to the old Apple of it’s time. You would want to compare it to something like the “Origin”(brand), “The Big O Gaming Rig”(model) which starts at $8000 and can be decked out to the max to $16,000. This shows that specialty items do not drop in value. To me it appears to have remained a constant.
Also any data you have on the correlation between the household income and household hours worked would be splendid. I only ask because 30 years ago most women were not as career minded as compared to today.
I ask this out of curiosity and truth seeking. The apple comment was in fact a poke at your comparisons though.
The Apple comparison is innacurate. the 1984 Apple was a cutting edge machine of it’s day. the Imac of 2010 is not. Please change your comparison so it shows two cutting edge machines. perhaps the 1984 Apple and the Origin (brand) “The Big O Gaming Rig” as these would be a more accurate depiction of equivalancy.
If I understand correctly he’s saying :
Being free to stay away from those you dont like is nice, but being free to associate with those you do is even better.
But where and when has this second freedom been curtailed?
Can you exapnd on this more? If, “humanity is incapable of attaining “perfect” knowledge, therefore is incapable of developing “perfect” reason, therefore is incapable of divining “perfect” laws of conduct.” as you claim, then assuming you are a human how can you assert this as true using your own “imperfect” reason.
Also what is “perfect” knowledge? Something is either true or false right? So what is “perfect” truth mean in comparison?
In another post you mentioned how man is infallible but that in and of itself is not evidence of error so this idea that you can’t know anything because your fallbile seems pointless and self defeating considering you would also have to apply it to your own claim.
As long as people have free will there will be disagreements no matter how innocent and honest they may be and for that reason alone you need rights protection.
Also the idea that rights create isolation is misguided. Human community can exist just fine within the context of individual rights. It just means interactions are voluntary and people can’t be coerced.
I used the rising total compensation argument, but he countered that it says nothing of to whom the compensation is going. He doesn’t deny that compensation is growing, but rather that it is mostly/only going to the rich. They use this graph for their argument:
Your thoughts?
I think if you did an inflation adjusted graph with a percentage value of specific goods out of the average salary then take in to consideration the increase quality and value for money that technology has brought us. I think we will find that there has been growth in spite of the socialist burden on the productive half of the economy. There is no knowing how much more growth we could have seen if we did not have the (poorly) managed currency and banking industries.
Yeah, it’s a really old post but I’ll respond anyway because this sort of trickery comes up often when arguing with charts.
Scrooge, those charts are meaningless to the argument you were having. The question was “is real compensation rising”. First, income is only a subset of compensation so that chart is immediately useless on its own. More importantly, percentage of the total income pie says absolutely nothing about the total size of the pie. The top decile can go from 32% to 42% of the total income (as it did in the chart) and everyone else could still have higher real income.
I think if you did an inflation adjusted graph with a percentage value of specific goods out of the average salary then take in to consideration the increase quality and value for money that technology has brought us. I think we will find that there has been growth in spite of the socialist burden on the productive half of the economy. There is no knowing how much more growth we could have seen if we did not have the (poorly) managed currency and banking industries.
Sure there’s a way. Look at inflation adjusted growth per capita during the Gilded Age and compare to now. There’s no denying that the rate of growth today is much lower than it was back then.
I used the rising total compensation argument, but he countered that it says nothing of to whom the compensation is going. He doesn’t deny that compensation is growing, but rather that it is mostly/only going to the rich. They use this graph for their argument:
Your thoughts?
Following income by class gets us nowhere as the compensation of classes changes yearly. See a blog post I recently wrote for some evidence as to the extent of the problem.
http://teconom.blogspot.com/2011/05/problem-with-following-income-trends.html
An egg in 1900 is not the same good as an egg today (or dozens, as they are commonly sold). Not because they are larger or packaged differently (though modern packaging is likely superior in protecting the eggs from breaking). Pastured eggs (as they mostly were in 1900) are nutritionally superior:
The comparison should be between pastured eggs from 1900 to the present. The failure to account for such an important factor means the graph is that much less informative. The same can be said of many food products which differ nutritionally when one compares them: grain-finished versus grass-finished beef, milk from grass-fed cows, and so on.
But empirical data have no place in economic theory anyway.