Well done. I know you are trying honestly to find common ground among the factions and you’re continuing this effort and improving along the way.
I use far more precise terminology(“Science”) than Rothbard (“Reason”) or Hoppe (“Rationalism), so because of that additional precision I am am forced to solve problems neither rothbard nor hoppe attempt to solve.
So I will ask you to try to solve, on their behalf, a behalf you wish to defend desperately, the remaining problem faced by libertarians of all stripes, and what separates my work (which by contrast I’ll use “Sovereigntarian” or borrow Duchesne’s “Aristocratic Egalitarianism”. And that question is this: we do not have means, opportunity, and motive to create the polity we choose. We have the means, motive and opportunity that COMPETING polities force us to choose. Polities compete by the production of commons. They compete in physical domains (war and territory), economic domains, political domains, and
It is only possible to construct a mental model as have rothbard(borderland jewish), and hoppe (continental catholic), if there exists empires (lithuanian/polish/russian or Catholic/French/Spanish/Italian) that defend your territory, but intentionally do not impose a more structured government upon you for the simple fact that it’s too costly to administer with too few returns – and you need these peoples as border colonies in order to keep out the even worse post-border peoples. The agreement to not conquer germanic princedoms in order to keep the east at bay, and the agreement to settle jews in the borderlands to hold territory unprofitable for trade, but too dangerous to house a competitor. And it is this mental model that gives rise to the fallacy of the Crusoe’s island argument, in which the sea is a metaphor for the distant empires at large scale, and the walls of the protected urban ghetto at small scale. Or by even longer term analogy, the ongoing battle between the farmer-hierarchical-technologists (aryans), and the pastoralist-equalitarian-socialists(everyone else other than the east asians). But in all cases one does not possess sovereignty, one possesses liberty-by-permission. And these are the only conditions under which liberty-by-permission has (or can) exist. There is only one condition under which Sovereignty can exist: and that is a militia – and it is the farmer-technolgical-militia from which the west was born.
The question instead, is how to defeat the Red Queens in all their forms: Military, genetic, familial, normative, Economic, Political, Religious, Informational, and Genetic competitions so that the maximum Sovereignty < Liberty < Freedom < Subsidy(Insurance) are provided the various classes. Is Rothbardian/Hoppeian (liberty, libertarians, liberty by permission) possible? Or is sovereignty possible? And what is required to defend such a polity from market failure in competition with other forms of government that place greater investment in those commons, particularly those military, genetic, familial, economic, political, religious, and informational commons, that render a borderland people uncompetitive?
You see, the west creates the most complex and deepest commons in history. Liberty is merely the means by which the deepest most complex and deepest military, genetic, familial, normative, economic, political, religious, and informational commons can be produced, and produce with the greatest and fastest means of adaptation to change.
I find it Ironic that a people who claim to make economic arguments, or claim to make legal arguments, rely on reason, rationalism, justification, and totally ignore military, genetic, familial, political, religious, and informational markets (competition, warfare) in order to justify (cherry pick) those forms of competition that they wish existed in isolation.
I leave it to religions to engage in fictionalism and cherry picking. It is the job of the science to produce full accounting and description. And that is why science wins in the market for information. The problem is, that the market for self deception (religion) nearly always outpaces the market for information.
if you can model a survivable rothbardian polity I will wait for it. I have never seen it. And as far as I know I have defeated every argument put forth by rothbard and hoppe. But no such model exists or can exist any more than we can expand childhood protection of our parents, into infantile incomplete adult protection from empires. We must eventually become men. And men burn calories and cellular damage against competitors in order to persist their genes – or they are conquered, enslaved, and exterminated by those who do. It’s just a question of the time scale that this process occurs within.
The military, familial, normative economic, political, religious, and informational institutions groups produce through organizing into interest groups, and the commons and produced by those interest groups, is determined by nothing more than the capital available in each of those dimensions that can be put to competitive use.
Good work. But you are not there yet. You will need to describe the minimum conditions for such a polity to produce in order to survive competition from other groups with different institutions. And when you do, you will find sovereignty, natural law of perfect reciprocity, an independent judiciary, monarchy as judge of last resort, a market for commons, a market for production, a market for reproduction, and a market for association and cooperation, with inescapable (mandatory) service in an ever vigilant militia to do so, and the institutional flexibility to vacillate between fascism (war), classical liberalism (growth), and redistributionism(windfalls) as necessary given the conditions.
Rule of law of reciprocity (non imposition against property in toto) in a distributed dictatorship of sovereign men (militia) with a judge of last resort is the only possible method of producing conditions of Sovereignty in fact, liberty by permission, freedom out of utility, and subsidy out of luxury. You don’t get a free ride. There is no borderland remaining other than the poles.