(interesting)
We cannot, like mathematicians tried to do, define something into existence. We can define rules of deduction, but not define something into existence. Truth consists of correspondence and cause, not definition. Definitions are our choice. Truth is not. That is the entire purpose of ‘truth’ – that which we cannot choose.
So, if instead of some artificial scheme, we understand that PROPERTY is nothing but what remains, after we suppress all possible DISCOUNTS, by every means possible. Then, does that mean that the conservatives were right all along?
That, since discounts, as a spectrum, are suppressible by a spectrum of actions which include the organized threat of violence, ostracization, boycott, reduction of opportunity, and the consequential limits on consumption, then the conservatives, correctly value NORMATIVE CONFORMITY TO SUPPRESSION OF DISCOUNTS, and that the model of property articulated by rothbard, taken as it was from the low trust society he was familiar with,
In effect, Rothbard’s ethics are an attempt to preserve ‘cheating’ as a viable means of profiting from others, whereas conservative, aristocratic, ‘high trust’ ethics are an effort to suppress ALL cheating. Rothbard masks this cheating by stating that competition will suppress such cheating. But empirically, and praxeologically, this is demonstrably and logically false. So what are we left with no possible conclusion that either he committed a significant error or, that Rothbard’s ethics are an attempt, intentionally, to preserve cheating: which is precisely what the left correctly argues – albeit in their amateurish terms.
The formation of a government, which is a monopoly that suppresses violence and theft, and then by taxation, suppresses free riding on the government’s suppression of violence, then, as a consequence, because of its monopoly, only displaces free riding with rents.
The formal question remains the same, which is that rule of law, or liberty, is a prohibition on discretionary compulsion, but is only possible by the prohibition of all discounts. And the only possible means of both suppressing discounts, and preventing the conversion of free riding into rents, is to rely on competition for the suppression of these discounts.
That is, I think, the fundamental equilibrial analysis of political order.
The sequence is:
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Suppression of discounts results in property rights.
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Property rights lead to the division of labor, and prosperity.
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Property (capital) and prosperity lead to greater opportunity for discounts.
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The cost of suppressing discounts increases demand for specialized suppression.
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The specialized suppressing discounts leads to free riding (fee avoidance)
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The specialized suppression of free riding (taxation) leads to opportunity for rent seeking.
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Opportunity for rent seeking leads to bureaucracy.
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Bureaucracy leads to subjugation and expropriation.
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Expropriation leads to circumvention (Religiosity, black markets, tax evasion, nullification, secession and revolt and revolution)
10 (fragmentation)
The only solution is rule of law: no state, merely laws, and judges who resolve disputes. Governments must be local and under direct democracy. Everything else provided competing firms.
CHEERS