[W]hile aristocratic egalitarian liberty is among the greatest inventions in human history, I see rothbardianism as a failed amateurish pseudo philosophical ideology, rejected by all but a meaningless minority, disproven by even the least talented of philosophers, contrary to all evidence in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, anthropology and history, and economically irrational on praxeological grounds alone. And any chance we have of obtaining liberty whatsoever requires that we start with what we have that is supportable: that all rights are reducible to property rights, that the struggle for prosperity is the universal responsibility to suppress parasitism in every possible form, thereby forcing all human cooperation into the market for productive voluntary exchange. – and in doing so reconstruct liberty on its historical aristocratic grounds, such that it is not amateurish, contrary to the evidence, and irrational. [callout]Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding.[/callout] IF PEOPLE ARE IN FACT, PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL ACTORS, ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE SELF CONTRADICTORY, AND NON-RATIONAL — EXCEPT AS A MEANS TO JUSTIFY PARASITISM. [O]nly in the justification of parasitism are they rational. There is nothing of ‘market virtue’ about parasitism. Ether the NAP is an inadequate test of ethical action, or rothbardian private property is insufficient in scope. But it is not praxeologically arguable that it is rational to trade high transaction costs for statism. It’s not rational. Under no terms. That is. Unless your objective is to justify parasitism. Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding. Crusoe’s island is an obscurant argument. We do not start the development of ethics on an island where the ‘government’ is provided by the sea. Instead, we start in a tribe of consanguineous relations all of whom engage in free riding – and we must use violence, shame or remuneration to stop them from free riding so that we can accumulate capital. Property is what’s left as you increasingly suppress various forms of involuntary extraction. Property is not the cause. It is the consequence. Liberty is on life support. Rothbard gave it cancer. And I’m out to cure it.
Form: Mini Essay
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Liberty Without Rothbard’s Ghetto: A Return To Aristocracy
[W]hile aristocratic egalitarian liberty is among the greatest inventions in human history, I see rothbardianism as a failed amateurish pseudo philosophical ideology, rejected by all but a meaningless minority, disproven by even the least talented of philosophers, contrary to all evidence in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, anthropology and history, and economically irrational on praxeological grounds alone. And any chance we have of obtaining liberty whatsoever requires that we start with what we have that is supportable: that all rights are reducible to property rights, that the struggle for prosperity is the universal responsibility to suppress parasitism in every possible form, thereby forcing all human cooperation into the market for productive voluntary exchange. – and in doing so reconstruct liberty on its historical aristocratic grounds, such that it is not amateurish, contrary to the evidence, and irrational. [callout]Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding.[/callout] IF PEOPLE ARE IN FACT, PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL ACTORS, ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE SELF CONTRADICTORY, AND NON-RATIONAL — EXCEPT AS A MEANS TO JUSTIFY PARASITISM. [O]nly in the justification of parasitism are they rational. There is nothing of ‘market virtue’ about parasitism. Ether the NAP is an inadequate test of ethical action, or rothbardian private property is insufficient in scope. But it is not praxeologically arguable that it is rational to trade high transaction costs for statism. It’s not rational. Under no terms. That is. Unless your objective is to justify parasitism. Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding. Crusoe’s island is an obscurant argument. We do not start the development of ethics on an island where the ‘government’ is provided by the sea. Instead, we start in a tribe of consanguineous relations all of whom engage in free riding – and we must use violence, shame or remuneration to stop them from free riding so that we can accumulate capital. Property is what’s left as you increasingly suppress various forms of involuntary extraction. Property is not the cause. It is the consequence. Liberty is on life support. Rothbard gave it cancer. And I’m out to cure it.
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Liberty Without Rothbard's Ghetto: A Return To Aristocracy
[W]hile aristocratic egalitarian liberty is among the greatest inventions in human history, I see rothbardianism as a failed amateurish pseudo philosophical ideology, rejected by all but a meaningless minority, disproven by even the least talented of philosophers, contrary to all evidence in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, anthropology and history, and economically irrational on praxeological grounds alone. And any chance we have of obtaining liberty whatsoever requires that we start with what we have that is supportable: that all rights are reducible to property rights, that the struggle for prosperity is the universal responsibility to suppress parasitism in every possible form, thereby forcing all human cooperation into the market for productive voluntary exchange. – and in doing so reconstruct liberty on its historical aristocratic grounds, such that it is not amateurish, contrary to the evidence, and irrational. [callout]Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding.[/callout] IF PEOPLE ARE IN FACT, PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL ACTORS, ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE SELF CONTRADICTORY, AND NON-RATIONAL — EXCEPT AS A MEANS TO JUSTIFY PARASITISM. [O]nly in the justification of parasitism are they rational. There is nothing of ‘market virtue’ about parasitism. Ether the NAP is an inadequate test of ethical action, or rothbardian private property is insufficient in scope. But it is not praxeologically arguable that it is rational to trade high transaction costs for statism. It’s not rational. Under no terms. That is. Unless your objective is to justify parasitism. Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding. Crusoe’s island is an obscurant argument. We do not start the development of ethics on an island where the ‘government’ is provided by the sea. Instead, we start in a tribe of consanguineous relations all of whom engage in free riding – and we must use violence, shame or remuneration to stop them from free riding so that we can accumulate capital. Property is what’s left as you increasingly suppress various forms of involuntary extraction. Property is not the cause. It is the consequence. Liberty is on life support. Rothbard gave it cancer. And I’m out to cure it.
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Liberty Without Rothbard’s Ghetto: A Return To Aristocracy
[W]hile aristocratic egalitarian liberty is among the greatest inventions in human history, I see rothbardianism as a failed amateurish pseudo philosophical ideology, rejected by all but a meaningless minority, disproven by even the least talented of philosophers, contrary to all evidence in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, anthropology and history, and economically irrational on praxeological grounds alone. And any chance we have of obtaining liberty whatsoever requires that we start with what we have that is supportable: that all rights are reducible to property rights, that the struggle for prosperity is the universal responsibility to suppress parasitism in every possible form, thereby forcing all human cooperation into the market for productive voluntary exchange. – and in doing so reconstruct liberty on its historical aristocratic grounds, such that it is not amateurish, contrary to the evidence, and irrational. [callout]Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding.[/callout] IF PEOPLE ARE IN FACT, PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL ACTORS, ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE SELF CONTRADICTORY, AND NON-RATIONAL — EXCEPT AS A MEANS TO JUSTIFY PARASITISM. [O]nly in the justification of parasitism are they rational. There is nothing of ‘market virtue’ about parasitism. Ether the NAP is an inadequate test of ethical action, or rothbardian private property is insufficient in scope. But it is not praxeologically arguable that it is rational to trade high transaction costs for statism. It’s not rational. Under no terms. That is. Unless your objective is to justify parasitism. Rothbard got it backwards. We don’t start with property rights as an assumption – a given. We start in a state of nature, with the need to cooperate, while preventing pervasive free riding. Crusoe’s island is an obscurant argument. We do not start the development of ethics on an island where the ‘government’ is provided by the sea. Instead, we start in a tribe of consanguineous relations all of whom engage in free riding – and we must use violence, shame or remuneration to stop them from free riding so that we can accumulate capital. Property is what’s left as you increasingly suppress various forms of involuntary extraction. Property is not the cause. It is the consequence. Liberty is on life support. Rothbard gave it cancer. And I’m out to cure it.
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American Policy In A Nutshell : Talking About The Carrot of Choice, But Not The Stick of Accountability
AMERICAN POLICY IN A NUTSHELL [A]merican policy (frustratingly) demonstrates rather than explicitly states, that you may have any government you willingly elect. But if you willingly elect a government that does not adhere to the charter of human rights both internally and externally; or if that government acts as a bad citizen in the network of finance and trade, then you and your government will be punished for the choice of the government you have elected, and you will be punished repeatedly and severely until you choose to elect a government that respects the charter of human rights and acts as a good citizen in the network of finance and trade. They only talk about the carrot, but not the stick. They don’t do much distribution of carrots, but they distribute sticks all-the-live-long day. That paragraph should be required as a warning label on all US diplomats, messages, goods, commercials, movies, passports, tickets, whatever we export. Just like we require warnings on cigarettes. [T]he USA is not a country. It’s a corporation. That corporation runs an empire. That empire controls the finance and trade system worldwide. We are all consumers of that system. In the main, it’s a better system than most that have existed. But the quality of that system is declining rapidly.
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American Policy In A Nutshell : Talking About The Carrot of Choice, But Not The Stick of Accountability
AMERICAN POLICY IN A NUTSHELL [A]merican policy (frustratingly) demonstrates rather than explicitly states, that you may have any government you willingly elect. But if you willingly elect a government that does not adhere to the charter of human rights both internally and externally; or if that government acts as a bad citizen in the network of finance and trade, then you and your government will be punished for the choice of the government you have elected, and you will be punished repeatedly and severely until you choose to elect a government that respects the charter of human rights and acts as a good citizen in the network of finance and trade. They only talk about the carrot, but not the stick. They don’t do much distribution of carrots, but they distribute sticks all-the-live-long day. That paragraph should be required as a warning label on all US diplomats, messages, goods, commercials, movies, passports, tickets, whatever we export. Just like we require warnings on cigarettes. [T]he USA is not a country. It’s a corporation. That corporation runs an empire. That empire controls the finance and trade system worldwide. We are all consumers of that system. In the main, it’s a better system than most that have existed. But the quality of that system is declining rapidly.
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Choice Words Against Socialism
In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”. The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each. Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning. Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception. So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible. The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably. The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception. The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants. The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production. Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience. If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.
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Choice Words Against Socialism
In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”. The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each. Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning. Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception. So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible. The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably. The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception. The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants. The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production. Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience. If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.
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AS ADAPTATION TO CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION I wanted to respond to J
http://johnquiggin.com/2014/02/15/the-tooth-fairy-and-the-traditionality-of-modernityMYTHOLOGY AS ADAPTATION TO CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION
I wanted to respond to John Quiggin’s wonderful post on the ‘traditionality’ of modernity.
–“The traditionality of modernity: It’s striking, if you’re not aware of it already, to observe that Christmas, as we now know it, was invented in the 20 years or so between 1840 and 1860, However, what is even more striking that it’s barely altered in the succeeding 150 years. Even the complaints haven’t changed in decades.
And what’s true of Christmas is true of most of the favourite examples of invented tradition. Clan tartans were invented out of whole cloth (as it were), as soon as the actual clans had been destroyed by the Clearances, but this process was pretty much complete by 1850, and the system is now as inflexible as if the Scots wha’ wi’ Wallace bled had done so in defence of a dress code. Moreover, at 150 years or more of age, these traditions really can claim to be ancient (at least in the eyes of a non-indigenous Australian).
A variety of cultural niches, once subject to the cycles of fashion, seem now to have been filled once and for all. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean have all been dead for decades, but all are more instantly recognisable than any putative successor.
More significant institutions show the same kind of stability. Political systems and national boundaries are becoming more stable over time, not less. The collapse of the Soviet Empire led to the breakup of some federal states, but nothing like the wholesale resurgence of irredentist claims predicted by many.
One obvious factor assisting all this is technology. Just as printing has fixed languages once and for all, radio, TV and recorded music and video have a powerful effect in fixing cultural traditions of all kinds. Of course, this is the opposite of the usual story in which technology drives us to a postmodern condition of constant change. But that’s enough for me. It’s time to see what’s on at the (75-year-old) Commonwealth Games.”–
MY RESPONSE
1) The Structure of Production (Industrial Revolution) determines demand for mythos, morals, ethics.
2) The high point of English civilization (Victorian) looked to the past for a new identity and found it’s pagan origins (starting with the collection of ancient fairy tales)
3) The Germans as well tried to create a new mythos (example is Nietzsche and Wagner).
4) These two efforts almost succeeded in reversing the christianization of Europe. And would have, had the communists, socialists and marxists not produced a greater incentive to build a new mythos around the state.
5) Christmas evolved and was commericalized with santa clause because people celebrated their new ability to consume cheap industrial goods. Christmas will likely persist as long as this does not change, because all the incentives for it to persist remain.
5) Elvis etc: These characters have no durability, and will not survive past the 100 year marker (the roman Saeculum). However, the mythos that they represented, again was an alteration in the structure of production: the addition of the middle and upper proletariat into the consumer class in the postwar era.
6) My long term bet is that your last comment on boundaries is wrong. Those boundaries were made possible by the finances of the nation state, during a period of rapid change in world power structures, and the invention of industrialized total war. I am pretty sure the englightenment and socialist programs are coming close to an end, becuase the experiments with democracy and social democracy conflict with heterogeneous populations. If, as northern europeans had outbred,our large corporate-states (to distinguish them from nation states) outbred, then that would mean these boundaries will persist. However, it appears that not only do populations fail to integrate, but that the friction overwhelms the democratic political process wherever we try to use it. (We failed to understand that europeans have been a genetially homogenous people for thousands of years, and our ‘differences’ marginally indifferent so to speak.)
So my rough guess, is that starting between 2020 and 2025, (or, it’s starting now) we will see rapid alteration of borders and governments for a period of as long as one hundred years.
AT that point the incentives that were created by the industrial revolution, and the relative wealth of that made less social friction possible, will have been exhausted by the near elimination of the value of labor, and pervasive demand for the restructuring of status signals, politics, and the legal structure that supports production in that new context.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-15 05:46:00 UTC
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Against Ideal Worlds
1) I think it is a philosophical error (or at least naivety, and possibly profound arrogance) to think in terms of ideal worlds. I tend to think in terms of improving the world we live in, without causing externalities that negate the improvement. It is the latter part of that statement that changes philosophy from an interesting parlor game to one of consequence. 2) I think the purpose of philosophy is to integrate expansions in scientific understanding into our current understanding of the world, such that we improve our ability to reason and act in such a way as to take superior advantage of the difference between our rate of change and the universe’s suite of constant relations. 3) I think value claims are normative. In my work, I have found that if one looks at a) the structure of production b) the structure of reproduction (family) c) the class and status of the extended family d) the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the polity. e) the gender and generation of the individuals. That moral biases are predictable portfolios that reflect our reproductives strategies. 4) I think we can agree on means but not ends. And if we could agree upon ends, we increase fragility and risk. But that said, it is non-rational to expect one group to sacrifice its reproduction for another group’s reproduction. And people demonstrate this universally in all polities (at least over time.) As such I see the only ‘good’ as creating sufficient prosperity, and maintaining it, so that we are all wealthy enough to obtain what we desire individually or in small groups, but certainly not en masse. And neither equality nor diversity assist us in this objective. And that is demonstrably empirical, and very difficult to refute without selective reasoning. If it stands that women are at maximum density in one sector or other the economy, then that is the optimum best for all, because any other arrangement, whether prohibited from their potential, or prohibiting some male from his potential, is detrimental to the fulfillment of all potentials. That is, unless, you feel one of the luxuries that we can afford, is false status signals. An that is a valid preference. It may be that we prefer to create certain false signals because we are wealthy enough to do so. The problem is in anticipating the externalizes (consequences) of such false signals. And whether one or many have the right to involuntarily cause others sacrifice for self benefit.