Why not? What would be your take on the matter?
His name is right there.
Wait, are you saying I’ve been absurdly dishonest?
Whose name?
The fellow who said “we objectively define where property rights come from.” Ask him.
Ok. Angurse, where do property rights some from?
Why are you asking me?
You told be to ask the guy who said it.
Have I told you to read before?
Were the scare quotes just to scary? Bob Murphy said it, and he was just paraphrasing Stephen Kinsella.
Oh, OK. Sorry for derailing the thread. I did a quick scan to try to find it earlier. I’ll be more thorough next time.
As I said, I think that different government can exist within the same territory. Different interpretations and implementations of basic legal rights as well. For this to be possible, people would have to have an understanding of “whats yours is yours, whats mine is mine”. Even if they disagreed with it, I think that people follow social norms in general just to get buy, Property rights (whatever they may be) allows people to allow one another the ability to remove themselves from one another. They can then associate freely with who they want not just as vagabonds, but also as owners within the context of that system
How can we have a market without property? If the norms in society are “everyone is no one’s, or everyone’s is the kings”, then how can anyone restrict anyone from their stuff? If they can’t restrict others from their stuff, then instead of trade we get perpetual looting.
I said that the rhetoric was dishonest. I don’t know you.
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What in the world is the market of human action?
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This is a whole other discussion.
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Yes, and part of that cooperation being easier comes from a clear understanding and respect for what someone’ stuff is. Societies where people’s property rights (whatever they may be) are regularly disrespected, the have less cooperation of the kind I am talking about.
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All of austrian theory is a priori. Economics has to be, because we can’t do experiments.
The market of human interaction simply means that ideas compete in a market, much in the way industries compete in a market, or genes compete in a market. Ideas that are found to be advantageous by individuals will obtain a larger “share” of the available individuals.
Hey, I didn’t bring it up.
Again, I would contend your assumption. It’s simply a value proposition. If I wanted something of yours, there are lots of ways to aquire it. I could trade something for it, I could attempt to take it, I could kill/incapacitate you (assuming I had the tools) and then take it. All of these have consequences, if I trade, I will have to give up something I already posses, if I attempt to take it, it may lead to conflict, and if I fight you for it, I may lose, and get hurt, or if I kill you, others may seek revenge. Barring any other external modifiers of the decision, I would probably attempt trade, or decide the item isn’t worth any of these cost. It may help modify your decision one way or the other, but I don’t see how respect of your right to property is a requirement.
Agreed, we can’t do laboratory expiriments, but a priori judgements would be completely arbitrary without knowledge, gained through empirical observation, to narrow the scope of sensible means to your end. Praxeology itself is simply series of “if… then…” statements, or scientific hypothesis.
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Hasn’t sateism won in the market of human action then?
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I don’t know what you mean by value proposition. Do you think I am arguing an ethical opinion? I am not… its more sociology.
I am saying that people’s willingness to respect another’s property, the utility that they see in respecting one someone’s property is what leads to a market. All of the alternative actions have major consequences because other people see utility in enforcing these “rights” as well.
I don’ t think there are actual property rights, just like I don’t think that monogamy is objectively better somehow to polygamy. I do think that people understand that there are consequences for the widespread practices of polygamy and monogamy, just like there are for the practices of property.
- I don’t think praxeology is just a bunch of statements that can be refuted later at any time.
This isn’t all true. Mises took a different view of others on the validity of a priori laws. The “empirical” that these others (myself included) use as justification differ from that of the positivists. From general statements such as the action axiom are deduced further laws. Laboratory experiments are replaced with Gedankenexperiment (thought experiments). Through verbal logic we can suppose that a certain factor (ex. supply) is held constant, and then reach conclusions as you said. Since man differs from other dead and living matter in that he acts the options available differ from that of the natural sciences. The mechanistic approach simply doesn’t apply to man. The certainty of praxeological laws is actually, if anything, greater than those reached through the natural sciences. The evidence of the failure of econometricians and positive economists is all around us as well.
Yes, it has thusfar managed to convince people it is in their best interest to perpetuate the state.
First, it was pure despotism, “obey me or I’ll smash your head in”. After the number subjects began to grow under this powerful warrior, he could no longer just threaten them. He coluded with the preists, and the message changed, “God told me to rule you. If you don’t obey me, God will punish you”. So the masses listened for a while, but people’s conception of God became softer (compare the jealous, violent, and insecure abrahamic storm-God with the internal, non-interventionist almost superfluous “kingdom of heaven lies within” God of Paul’s letters), fear of holy retribution wasn’t effective in maintaining the Priest-King’s monopoly of control. Thus, God was dead, and his Earthly mouthpieces deposed. The kingdom extinct, replaced by the nation-state. Now how would these ambitious new leaders of these nation-states maintain the power of the crown? Invent a new God! This one would be called Man. Much more down to Earth than God, and much more flexible. Humanity, mankind, French, American, your country, the greater good, the volk; Man wears many hats. This new deception also had a great new method of control. Elections. Now the state must be “subject to the people”, making this its greatest strength, and its only weakness. Strength, because now the questioner of the state becomes a questioner of “the people”, the people have been decieved into the ultimate stockholm syndrome. They will defend their prisoners to the death! But elections are also the state’s achilles heel. If enough individuals begin to realize the deception, then they can vote against the state. It will have no choice but to dissolve, or expose its actual goal of eternal perpetuation.
Whoa, kind of went on a tangent there, sorry.
I mean, the actor weighs his options when deciding how to act, depending on how much or little they matter to him.
What do you think it is? I’m not really all that well versed in AE. Mr. Knott, maybe you can shed some light?
Wouldn’t these exercises be completely arbitrary without prior experience?
It sounds like you are saying “people should get to decide for themselves what system they live under”.
Is it possible that everyone can live in the system that they want to live in? Maybe if we had anarcho-socialist “nations”, or zones, and AnCap “zones”. I have no idea how that would work though.
As for explaining AE, I can’t do it justice. I think you said you were reading human action. I will give you a brief example of a though experiment.
Mises’s method from what I have gathered goes something like this…
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Is the statement consistent, and can someone attempt to argue against it without implicitly affirming it? Or is the statement derived logically from a statement of the previous type?
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What are the implications of the statement?
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For further proof of the statements truth, let us imagine what the world would look like if the statement was not true. This usually ends up describing a vaguely comprehensible and absurd world.
exactly