To the extent that Rothbard has made statements supporting voluntary segregation, it seems there’s no conflict between the two of you. His city state might be a little more tolerant or bazaar ethics than yours, but beyond that, I don’t get the conflict. Perhaps you’re not here addressing his acceptance of voluntary segregation and are instead addressing the ethics he claimed were universal. Is that it? — Roman,

Partly.

  1. Yes, it’s an argument against universalism. But more importantly, it’s argument against whether ANYONE, in practice, would make the rational choice to live in a world of very high transaction costs (unethical and immoral), instead of a world of very low transaction costs but very high costs (prohibition on all parasitism). So, I’m saying that a ghetto can exist as an offshoot of more advanced polities (most surviving hunter gatherers were outcasts from their civilizations for example.) But you cannot build a civilization out of a ghetto. It’s not historically evident that it’s possible. And it’s not praxeologically rational that you could.

  2. Yes, we can make a claim that a group’s reproductive strategy, in order to be competitive, requires that they engage in parasitism.(That’s rothbard’s strategy.) We can claim that another group in order to suit its reproductive strategy, would suppress ALL parasitism. We can, as with the extended and inbred family, preserve familial parasitism as a form of insurance, and actively advocate external parasitism.

  3. It is extremely hard to demonstrate why anyone would live in the ghetto who had a choice to live in the palace. BUT i am not sure what the difference is between a prison system and a ghetto other than the victorian and progress era illusion of reform.

  4. I pair voluntary segregation with the right of ostracization. I think ‘voluntary segregation’ on its own is another attempt to justify rothbardian parasitism (ghetto ethics).

NET NET

Since any group of people will rationally choose to reduce transaction costs via a monopoly government even if it is high cost to them. The only POSSIBLE outcome of rothbardian ethics is not a voluntary society, it’s a voluntary ghetto. A ghetto that is also the refuge of those we reject through ostracization. And within that ghetto a certain set of skills will develop and certain individuals will benefit from parasitic competition against other parasitic peoples.

It should become clear at this point where rothbard got his ethics from.

Habituated, adapted, cultural memory of the ghetto.

Rothbardian ethics are parasitic.