Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/08/libertarianism_3.html(libertarian must-read)

YOU CAN’T OWN YOUR TERMS: “OVER-LEARNING” AND “SPECIALIZATION”; WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS MORAL SPECIALISTS?

(An attack on Caplan’s Progressive Libertarianism as organized privatization of the commons.)

Bryan Caplan tries yet another attempt at framing. This one partly successful. But like many of his arguments, partly a failure – for moral reasons he cannot seem to grasp.

This exceptionally good post, from August, positions libertarians as moral specialists because they ‘overlearn’ that morality. Now, he seems to not like my redefinition of his pseudo-objective label ‘overlearning’ as ‘specialist’. (At least in a PM to me that is what I gathered.) But I just view this

[quote] “The fundamental difference between libertarians and non-libertarians is that libertarians have over-learned common-sense morality. Non-libertarians only reliably apply basic morality when society encourages them to do so. Libertarians, in contrast, deeply internalize basic morality. As a result, they apply it automatically in the absence of social pressure – and even when society discourages common decency.”[end]

I’m going to rephrase that ‘authorization to steal’ that Caplan is trying to justify, and say that non libertarians place a greater concern on externality. The Caretaker left sees her as exploited, and resorting to prostitution out of desperation. (Something I agree with, but only in the minority of cases.) The Tribal Right sees her as corrupting the family that is the core of society (something I agree with but also only in the minority of cases). As far as I can tell, prostitution serves the needs of two groups of people who have too few alternatives. But that is different from saying that it’s either a ‘good’ or should be visible. I mean, sex is undeniably pretty awesome, but I don’t’t want to see people doing it in public. Or any other terribly hedonic activity for that matter. The public is the market and the rules of conduct are no different from a shopping mall – because the ‘public commons’ is a shopping mall. It’s just a very large one.

[quote]: “For example, non-libertarians routinely say, “A woman has a right to use her own body as she likes.” But it never even occurs to them that this implies that prostitution should be legal. Why? Because non-libertarians only apply this principle in the exact situations where their society encourages them to do so. They learn the principle without over-learning it. Libertarians, in contrast, can’t help but see the logical connection between a woman’s right to use her own body and the right to have sex for money.”[end]

Of course, I think this is a perfect example of the difference between ‘progressive (jewish) ghetto libertarianism’ and ‘conservative (european) aristocratic libertarianism’. That is. that in aristocratic ethics, we are responsible for externalities created by our actions. In jewish (Rothbardian) ethics of the ghetto, we are not. Our responsibility ends at the voluntary exchange.

In fact, if we look at history, the more external consequences to ghetto ethics, the better, and the fewer external consequences to aristocratic ethics the better. That every time we do NOT take advantage of an opportunity to profit from an externality, or profit despite externality, we are creating the commons of the high trust society, where morals and norms are our primary form of capital, is not understood. But it is the reason for the western high trust society.

In the context of a woman’s rights to her body, It is not that prostitution is not a woman’s choice. It is whether we can see and hear it, and are aware of it, and therefore it becomes part of the normative commons, or whether it is an invisible interpersonal activity that is not visible in and part of the normative commons.

We westerners hold that normative capital is material capital, and that obtaining a discount on your personal for-profit activities, cannot privatize (steal) the commons. It’s not that you don’t have the choice to engage in prostitution. It’s that you don’t have the right to create a hazard in the commons.

Conservatives don’t know how to EXPRESS that. They just say it’s wrong or immoral. but that’s because conservative property rights are 4500 years old, and, over that period of time, they’ve been habituated as traditions and norms to such a degree that they are ‘over-learned’ – precognitive.

So I’ll go on record as correcting Bryan Caplan, and say that in fact, he’s correct that libertarianism is a moral specialization. He may be correct in that libertarians over learn it. He may be correct in that libertarians use autistic applications of those rules.

But he is very, very wrong, in advocating theft from the normative commons. It is IMPOSSIBLE to construct property rights as a norm that must not be violated in any degree, while at the same time saying that norms are not property. This is logically inconsistent, and it’s demonstrably false.

We need to criticize, ridicule, and eliminate the progressive libertarian fantasy brought about by Rothbard, and drawn from the anti-social ethics of the ghetto, and restore liberty to its cultural origins in aristocratic western culture. You have property rights as, because you respect others property. And the normative commons is property, It costs us to respect property. It costs us to respect norms. We pay for private, common, and normative property by our actions.

And that is what we have done with propertarianism. Propertarianism is a universal descriptive ethical system for describing and rendering commensurable all ethical models by making transparent all voluntary and involuntary transfers.

And using propertarian reasoning, makes visible that the progressive libertarian argument is in fact, advocating theft from the normative commons as a means of privatizing an existing public good. It is theft.

End Progressive Rothbardian Libertarianism as the same as progressive leftist theft. Progressives leftists want to steal your physical assets and prevent development of the normative commons. Progressive libertarians want to steal the commons and make it impossible to have a normative commons.

The uniqueness of the west is its high trust normative commons which extends familial altruism to all, in all exchanges by forbidding involuntary transfer in all means in all conditions, in all forms, of all forms of property whether private, common or normative. Period.

So it is all well and good that we have progressive libertarians trying to make self-congratulatory terminology to obscure their advocacy of theft of the hard won commons. but it is even better that we end this divisive campaign and focus instead on uniting aristocratic libertarians with aristocratic conservatives. Because that way we can restore the normative commons and the high trust society that Progressives on the left and progressive libertarians are out to destroy.