Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

NOT THAT Y’ALL AREN”T DOING A GREAT JOB, I THOUGHT I’D CHIME IN AND SEE IF I CAN HELP YOU IMPROVE YOUR ARGUMENTS A TAD.

(from reddit)

—“They insert themselves into Rothbard’s framework and make accusations that it wouldn’t work because it lacks their burdening collectivist auxiliary morality of social conformity, segregation and hubris.””—

Rothbardian ethics are copied from dualist (poly-moral, poly-logical) ghetto ethics: the ethics of the medieval ghetto of the diasporic jews. His ethics is limited to physical (intersubjectively verifiable) property because diasporic, pastoral, and trading peoples only POSSESS such property, and are unaccountable to and unavailable for retribution by the locals once they trade goods and move on.

For all intents and purposes this is identical to gypsy ethics except that gypsies – due to much lesser abilities – also practice theft, gambling, violence and prostitution.

Whereas agrarians must live with people that they have lied, cheated, defrauded, exported costs onto, and imposed various land costs upon, without paying the normative, monetary, physical, and martial costs of holding that territory, and carry blame and guilt for lying, pastoralists and semi-pastsoralists (Russians, Jews, Gypsies, Arabs, Iranians, Some Turks, and other steppe and desert tribes) universally demonstrate heroism for successful deceit, and blame the victim for his folly. They by consequence possess low trust polities with constant conflict and universally stunted economies.

Rothbard’s ethics seeks to preserve usury, blackmail, extortion, lying and cheating, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, rent seeking, and fraud.

He seeks to preserve justification for parasitic and unproductive exchanges. Again, this is not possible for landed people who will retaliate against offenders, and certainly not participate in or construct juries, nor tell the truth to, nor even tolerate in their midst.

Rothbard’s application of levantine pastoral dualist ethics to the liberty created by european aristocratic landed agrarian universalist ethics is merely another cover for preserving separatism and the parasitism that is advocated under dual ethical systems, and avoiding the costs that accompany holding territory from invaders who would impose alternative allocations of property, and alternative property rights, norms, laws, and status hierarchies upon them. These are costly arrangements to produce. Rothbard’s ethics seeks to avoid them. (See Walter Block’s justifications of all sorts of things humans demonstrably retaliate against because of the externalities produced by them.)

Rothbardian ethics CANNOT Produce an anarchic (voluntary, contractarian) polity because low trust societies universally and empirically demonstrate demand for authority to either suppress retaliation, or mandate rules of behavior. Instead, the definition of property necessary for the formation of a voluntary polity is that in which retaliation is suppressed. For retaliation to be suppressed, the law must protect all property that people will choose to retaliate against impositions upon. That means that ANYTHING people bear a cost to construct must be protected under a common law.

So no, rothbardian ethics cannot produce an anarchic polity, they can suit only gypsies and parasitic groups who seek to avoid the payments necessary to hold territory from competitors while at the same time engaging in parasitism on the host.

(continued…)

—“They use that criticism to propose a complete deconstruction of the Non-aggression principle, which they justify based on several lines of reasoning like differences among groups of individuals and economics. It looks like they try to overwhelm anyone with a wide array of topics.”—-

The NAP is a convenient Rothbardian lie (a half truth). One cannot aggress unless we define what one aggresses against. Rothbard defines property as that which is intersubjectively verifiable, and in doing so prohibits the formation of not only property rights themselves, which are a commons, but any and all commons. Yet at the same time, western civilization’s competitive strategy, is that by total suppression of parasitism, we force individuals into the market for production of goods and services, even to the extent of absolute nuclear families effectively abandoning their offspring upon maturity. So Rothbard seeks to advocate levantine pastoral morality which demonstrably demands authoritarian regimes, fosters constant internecine warfare, low trust, and poverty, while abandoning the high trust that makes commons and the multipliers that commons produce impossible. At the same time he legalizes unproductive transfers, and institutionalizes low trust and parasitism.

So the non aggression principle is a lie. Another bit of emotional fodder for useful idiots. It is true that aggression against ALL demonstrated property (that which humans defend) and all property that humans bear costs to acquire, is synonymous with the prohibition the imposition of costs that is necessary for the rational pursuit of cooperation in preference to conflict and predation, but for non aggression not be a rothbardian deception it must be defined as non-aggression against demonstrated property or as I refer to it “property=en-toto” not ‘intersubjectively verifiable property’. For this reason I (we) criticize the NAP as a deceitful half truth that relies upon western ethics to assume scope of property, while at the same time specifically licensing in law every possible means of theft other than physical takings and violence. The NAP as stated means NAP/IVP, whereas the only test of aggression as a basis for a social order is NON-Aggression against Property en toto (demonstrated property), that people will retaliate against the imposition of costs upon. (…continued)

As such the only ethical and moral rule by which we can preserve rational cooperation is that of the productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange of property en toto, free of externalities of the same.

The only anarchic polity that is either rational or possible is that in which the common law prohibits impositions against a sufficient scope of demonstrated property that it is rational to choose an anarchic polity over an authoritarian or democratic humanist one.

The suite of Cosmopolitan movements include the left/Socialist, the right/neo-conservative, and the center/Libertine. All three of these movements have been a failure, and all are composed of half truths and half lies that prey upon western pathological altruism.

Westerners here the half truth and intuit it in their context. Libertines here the half and are aware the other half is an opportunity for parasitism.

The only liberty that is possible is the reciprocal insurance of property en toto under the common law, rule of law, property en toto, an independent judiciary and a jury of peers

—“Their supposed Aristocratic society seems more like a very restrictive set of moral rules applied to everyone according to gender and status, many of them related to reputation. They are very hostile to the Non-agression principle, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they propose expropriation or execution for people converting to other religions or marrying a foreigner.”—

The only restriction is that you may not act parasitically upon others, and must engage in productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality of the same criteria – the total prohibition on parasitism, and that you must pay the price of holding the territory from competitors who would alter those rules, property allocations, and structures of production. If you do not want to do that why should others either (a) permit you in their midst, or (b) not just kill you if you are such a parasite? It is hard for you to answer this question without admitting that you are a parasite with predatory preferences.

—“They are never straightforward to what their alleged Aristocratic society would look like. And they are ignorant how Anarcho-capitalism deals with reputation, public goods and general preferences of morality.”—

I don’t know how more straightforward you want us to be. Aristocracy: the reciprocal insurance of property en toto to all who would enter, and the prohibition on institution of government by other than that self same law.

Furthermore, there are no moral preferences. Morality is a universal and necessary rule under which it is rational for humans to cooperate: non parasitism: the non-imposition of costs on property en toto. We can circumvent this rule by contractual exchange, but a moral exchange renders the agreement moral. Morality is a universal rule, not a preference. Property en toto is both empirically observable, an evolutionary necessity and logically consistent in all cases. For morality to be preferential means that you wish to license parasitism upon others. Which is precisely what ghetto ethics evolved to do.

The first question of politics is why I prefer to cooperate rather than kill you. That is all that exists. If at any point cooperation is less beneficial than killing you, then killing you is logically preferable to cooperation. That is the origin of ethics: the preservation of cooperation. (which is a long discussion in itself.)

—“If anything, it seems like they develop a theory of how to attract people to a society based on social inequality, and they profoundly resent Rothbard for not enshrining social excellence higher than private property.”—

You attract people to a voluntary polity the same way we have attracted them to the west: through the formation of a high trust polity that prohibits all parasitism, from all walks of life, regardless of ‘preference’ or ‘strategy’, and in doing so produces disproportionate economic velocity, security, and prosperity.

To make that high trust polity we must eliminate demand for the state. To eliminate demand for the state requires only that the common law suppress all impositions of costs upon others property en toto obtained by moral means.

We merely remove the statist era, return to the judicial, and prohibit violations of property en toto just as we did in the pre-state era.

One need not CONVINCE anyone to join a high trust polity. One need BELIEVE nothing. Because people just demonstrably FLOCK to it. Peers and parasites alike. Because a high trust community with pervasively useful commons defeats all competitors at least in the long run.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute,

Kiev Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)