While aristocratic egalitarian liberty is among the greatest inventions in human history, I see rothbardianism as a failed amateurish pseudo philosophical ideology, rejected by all but a meaningless minority, disproven by even the least talented of philosophers, contrary to all evidence in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, anthropology and history, and economically irrational on praxeological grounds alone. And any chance we have of obtaining liberty whatsoever requires that we start with what we have that is supportable: that all rights are reducible to property rights, that the struggle for prosperity is the universal responsibility to suppress parasitism in every possible form, thereby forcing all human cooperation into the market for productive voluntary exchange. – and in doing so reconstruct liberty on its historical aristocratic grounds, such that it is not amateurish, contrary to the evidence, and irrational. No titleRothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding. IF PEOPLE ARE IN FACT, PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL ACTORS, ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE SELF CONTRADICTORY, AND NON-RATIONAL — EXCEPT AS A MEANS TO JUSTIFY PARASITISM.

Only in the justification of parasitism are they rational. There is nothing of ‘market virtue’ about parasitism. Ether the NAP is an inadequate test of ethical action, or rothbardian private property is insufficient in scope. But it is not praxeologically arguable that it is rational to trade high transaction costs for statism. It’s not rational. Under no terms. That is. Unless your objective is to justify parasitism.

Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding.

Crusoe’s island is an obscurant argument. We do not start the development of ethics on an island where the ‘government’ is provided by the sea.

Instead, we start in a tribe of consanguineous relations all of whom engage in free riding – and we must use violence, shame or remuneration to stop them from free riding so that we can accumulate capital.

Property is what’s left as you increasingly suppress various forms of involuntary extraction. Property is not the cause. It is the consequence.

Liberty is on life support. Rothbard gave it cancer. And I’m out to cure it.