Kantian Universality (from his book on Law) is just a restatement of Confucius’ Golden Rule.
It is part of all coherentist philosophies, say Brand Blanshard’s (although he thought ethics and morals do exist–his example, which is not quite correct, that people dying in gladiator fights for entertainment is immoral–Mises would counter death cannot ever aid division of labour, hence it is immoral, not for any other reason).
It does not mean that you must not lie to a murderer. You can always choose to lie to a murderer, and always choose to tell the truth to non-murderers.
If you accept mathematical postulates are reality, a priori, as Mises did, you are implying coherentist and universalist principles of ethics. E.g., Hazlitt and Mises: anything that aids division of labour is “good”, if the word is to exist at all; everything else, ethically “bad”, because a priori, only division of labour is a general rule to increase pleasure irrespective of particular preferences–its true for whatever preferences you have.
Insightful. Add to that the monetary machinations and manipulations of the Prince and his rent-seeking entourage (the “Establishment”) and it is easy to see how people begin to view money as a problem in itself. It never ceases to amaze me how widespread the Venus Project nonsense is on the Internet. I run into it everywhere from blogs to debate forums (that have nothing to do with money or economics) to even comments on online news articles.
Because rocks can’t fight or argue. If you and me get involved into a dispute and we are roughly peers, how can I reasonably expect you to agree to a resolution of the dispute that I would not, in principle, agree to if the situation was reversed? This is where universalizability applies. I think the problem with the metaphysical treatment of universalizability - ala Kant’s CI - is that it is not tied to the real world of human affairs… costs, benefits, human emotions and motives, etc. This is how you end up at the absurd state of affairs where rocks have the same right to exist unmoved as any man has. But if you start from human disputes between peers* and consider what are the realistically possible resolutions to such disputes, you quickly realize that some sort of universalizability must hold.
This line of reasoning does, however, lead to the uncomfortable (for me) conclusion that the State is no more illegitimate than the human family. Both involve some level of coercion, extortion and redistribution. However, I think there are some “methodological deficiencies” in the legal systems of the world that, if corrected, could result in a drastically reduced State footprint and a dramatic improvement in the human condition. One of these methodological improvements is removing the conflict of interest in permitting the Prince’s courts to rule in disputes between the Prince and his subjects. A second methodological improvement would be the (re-)emergence of competitive production of court services. My specific proposal is to eliminate the idea of a “World Criminal Court” and instead permit those whose convictions are upheld by the highest court in a land to appeal to the court system of another nation. For example, if I’m convicted of some crime in the United States and my appeals fail all the way to the Supreme Court, I should be able to take my case to the courts in another nation because perhaps the courts of the United States are themselves biased and I am being convicted as a result of a systemic problem. The World Criminal Court suffers from the same absurd conflict of interest as any territorial legal monopolist but if I can appeal to competitive jurisdictions, perhaps I stand a chance of getting a fair hearing.
Clayton -
*This is an important point, disputes between non-peers, e.g. between the Prince and one of his subjects, do not obey the same dynamic
It never ceases to amaze me how widespread the Venus Project nonsense is on the Internet. I run into it everywhere from blogs to debate forums (that have nothing to do with money or economics) to even comments on online news articles.
A friend of mine is a very libertarian fellow by nature and had a lot of interest in the Venus Project. I easily got him to come 'round to my view that their moneyless economy was nonsense, though we both agree that the concept of applied hypertechnology is quite appealing.