Author: Curt Doolittle

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT? OR, CAN RIGHT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT MIGHT?

(profound)

Property rights have been, and must be, instituted by the organized application of violence to prevent free riding, fraud, theft and violence.

And while most would argue that fraud, theft and violence are intolerable acts, the majority of private sector theft in the world is perpetuated by acts of free-riding, fraud by omission, fraud by obfuscation, and theft by externalization.

The majority of public sector or state theft in the world, is created by rent seeking, extortion, using procedural and legal obscurantism.

So, in this sense, we who desire property rights, use our wealth of violence, as a threat, to institute property rights over the will of those who would engage in private sector theft. However, by doing so we create the opportunity for public sector theft. Public sector theft centralizes free riding and rent seeking and forces the majority of people into the market for goods and services now that their work products are extracted, and their opportunities for free riding and rent seeking have been eliminated. (*Profound*)

The fact appears to be, that it’s not so much that government does good, but that all action that forces us into the market rather than to rent seek and free ride is in fact ‘good’.

Now, our problem, since we have centralized free riding and rent seeking in government, is to drive GOVERNMENT into the market for goods and services AS WELL.

If we have natural man, for whom honest competition is hard work, and now have deprived him of the ability to commit theft by free riding, various frauds, theft and violence, by forcing his criminality into the state, and his efforts into the market, there is no reason we cannot force all the free riding and rent seeking from government into the market.

I won’t disagree that there are certain circumstances where totalitarian or at least very strong government is necessary to purge systemic theft from the population and drive the population into the market. Nor will I disagree that forcible literacy and education is merely self defense. Nor will I disagree that the use of government to create infrastructure as the only possible means of preventing privatization and free riding of common investment, is necessary – only because it can enforce the prohibition on free riding, privatization and socialization.

But that does not mean that these activities must be pursued as a monopoly. They don’t. There is no reason why government must be more than rules and courts, and a vehicle for the construction of contracts between groups. The reason that we relied on government is that we failed to articulate all the various means of involuntary transfer, such that any individual could use the courts to prosecute any other individual or group.

The government for the provision of goods, need only be a market for exchange between classes. But the extractive classes use the monopoly power of government and their freedom from suit as an income stream.

So this problem – of forcing theft into the market – is not unsolvable.

It isn’t even that difficult.

Displacing the people in the vast rent seeking and extractive government is what’s difficult. They have every incentive to stay. And displacing them by revolution is expensive and risky.

Nullification eventually deprives them of power and costs nothing, and forces them to use violence to change it. Secession immediately deprives them of power, and forces them to use violence to change it. Insurrection destroys a lot of capital, but effectively makes funding the state and the ability to govern impossible.

Forcing your opposition to attack you is always beneficial. It puts you on the moral high ground.