Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • What Are Rights? The “Final Word” on Rights

    1) RIGHTS: A “right” is a claim against other members of a contract, wherein each party grants the other party something (a right) in exchange for somthing else (an obligation). Each person then has ‘rights’ as agreed upon in the contract, as well as obligations. This is the meaning of the term ‘right’. A right is something that you obtain from others in exchange for granting them something. There is no other logical meaning of the term, unless you invent a god or demon, or some equivalent that you are supposedly in contract with. (Although the term ‘right’ is abused by way of analogy and metaphor, which I will explain below.) 2) CONTRACTS: A contract can be discreetly created, such as a handshake, a promise, or an agreement. Or a contract can be written as a note, a written contract, or a constitution. A contract can be created by habituation as a “norm”, such as manners, ethics and morals. While very few people understand this, ethical and moral statements are those that compensate for asymmetry of information between members of a contract for norms. This contract for norms is we call a society. Manners are promises that you will respect ethical and moral norms. Ethics are rules that we follow to make sure that there are no involuntary transfers of prooperty due to asymmetry of information in an exchange. Morals are general rules that we will follow to make sure there are no involuntary transfers from others who are outside (external to) any action or exchange. (Having a chid that you cannot pay for, and expecting others to support it, is an involuntary transfer from others. That is why it’s generally been considered immoral.) One can voluntarily enter discreet contracts. But normative contracts are a necessity because people cannot peacefully and productively cooperate without them. One can generally move between groups with different normative contracts (societies, and communities) but it is all but impossible to avoid them entirely, and it is entirely impossible to exist in a community without adhering to that contract – usually people are excluded from opportunity, punished, imprisoned, ostracized, or deported, for violations of the normative contract. 3) NATURAL RIGHTS: Some contract rights are both necessary for humans to engage in contracts, and possible to grant in contracts. Such as surrendering our opportunity for violence theft and fraud, from those with whom we are in contract. If we surrender our opportunity to use violence theft and fraud, we define this set of forgone opportunities “property rights’. Because these rights are necessary for peaceful cooperation, and necessary for contracts to function, we call these necessary rights ‘Natural Rights’ – in an effort to limit the ability of governments to violate the contract rights that are necessary for human cooperation when they make laws. If we define our minds and bodies as our property. And we define those objects, that we freely obtained through exchange as our property, then there is only one natural right and that is property. It is the only right necessary, and the only right universally possible to grant to one another – because we must refrain from something, rather than do something. In this sense, there is only one possible human right, and all other rights derive from it. 3) HUMAN RIGHTS: Some contract rights are not necessary but beneficial. These rights generally can be categorized as forms of ‘insurance’. They cannot be direclty exchanged without an intermediary institution acting as the insurer. People cannot equally contribute to their costs. We call these rights ‘Human Rights’. 4) PRIVILEGES: Sometimes we attempt to seek privileges not rights – a privilege is something that unlike insurance, is something we are likely to obtain, and which comes at a cost to others, without our providing something else in exchange. These are not rights, but privileges at the expense of others. 5) RENTS (Corruption) In contemporary politics, unscrupulous people attempt to label privileges as rights, so that they can obtain something from others at no cost to themselves This is not seeking rights but seeking privileges. It is a form of corruption, which is just an indirect form of theft. In economics, seeking privileges from government is a form of corruption called ‘rent-seeking’. (Which admittedly, is an old and confusing name. In previous centuries, people would seek to obtain an interest in land so that they could collect rents on it.) Today, people seek an interest in tax revenue so that they can collect income from it. This is Rent-Seeking. The government, in practice, if not in theory, owns all land, and we rent it from the government by taxes. If you cannot pay your taxes, you cannot keep your land. Taxes today, are no different from taxes under feudalism. We have just replaced private landowners with a political bureaucracy. In both cases we are renting our land, and in many cases the homes we build, from the government. Taxes are our rents. And people who seek to own part of taxes are rent-seekers. 6) DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION) if you obey norms (manners, ethics and morals) and obey natural rights (property), you do so at a cost to you. If you think of society as a business (it is, because it must be), and the business is to grow the local market (it is, at least to maintain it), because everyone in the local market will profit from it. (they do). Then these businesses (societies) grow through phases, just as businesses do (or really, business go through phases like society does, just a lot faster because they’re smaller), and in certain early phases(startups) they require a lot of investments from their shareholders (citizens), and in other phases they produce tremendous surpluses (mature, commoditized businesses), then we can see that most of the problem we deal with in politics, is who makes what contributions, and who collects what dividends, and how those dividends are used. PROBLEMS WITH DETERMINING DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION) It is very hard to argue against dividends (redistribution) if people respect (adhere to) manners, ethics, morals, and natural rights (property rights), as well as whatever arbitrary laws are created that affect all people equally. The general argument, which is true, is that by adhering to maners, ethics, morals, natural rights and arbitrary laws, you earn the right to participate in the market for goods and services. And that dividends are a due only to those people who provide goods and services in the market. The problem with dividends (redistribution) is not the logical requirement for dividends (redistribution), but the problem with how to determine what a dividend is, how to collect them, who has earned them, and how to allocate them, and how to distribute them. But I will have to leave that discussion for another time.

  • Do Convicted Criminals Deserve Human Rights Since They Willingly Deprived Someone Else Of Theirs?

    When someone violates NATURAL RIGHTS (life, liberty, property, by fraud, theft or violence) we punish them by removing their NATURAL RIGHTS, by  imprisoning them.   Natural rights are NECESSARY RIGHTS to engage in cooperation via exchanges within society: life, liberty, and property.

    We pay for our natural rights by forgoing our opportunity for fraud, theft and violence. 

    We also pay for access to opportunities to interact with others by paying the cost of effort to deonstrate manners, and the cost of forgone opportunities for stealing from others by respecting ethics and morals. 

    For violations of normative laws, we are ostracized from opportunity (boycotted) rather than punished or incarcerated. But we retain our natural rights as long as we can find someone to voluntarily exchange with us who does not refuse to boycott us because of our manners, ethics and morals.

    However, we do not remove anyone’s HUMAN RIGHTS any longer for any reason.  This is in no small part, because we are wealthy enough that deprivation from society and consumption alone are enough to coerce people into respecting both natural laws, and for normative laws.

    The international declaration of human rights was created in no small part to control the abuse of individuals by communist countries. It is a DESIRED list of rights.  This DESIRED list of rights is a CONTRACT between GOVERNMENTS. This contract is a TREATY.  This treaty demands that member countries hold governments accountable for the treatment of individuals, and to sanction those countries if they do not. Even to the point of replacing a government for their abuses of their individuals.

    It is important that we understad that this charter is a treaty by governments that like a treaty for the promise of mutual defense, binds other countries such that they are required to use legal, financial and economic sanctions against countries that violate the rights that the charter agrees all people in all countries, regardless of government, possess.

    In effect, as a worldwide treaty, it is a worldwide constitution for that limits the powers of governemnts.  This is waht RULE OF LAW means: it means that governemtns, and the people in them,  are limited to the actions that are allowed in their constitutions.  Rule of law does not mean that there are laws. It means that the government itself is bound by law.

    The Charter of human rights is a very simple document. It is vaguely divided into sections. The first few are restatements of NATURAL LAW. After that there are a variety of prohibitions against the government, that require that all people in society must be treated equally before the law.  That they have the right to live ordinary lives, marry,  have a family, make friends, earn a living, 

    Articles 23, 24, 25, and 26, were necessary to gain the support of the socialist and communist countries, in the same way that the north was required to allow slavery in order to gain the signatures of the south during the american civil war.  This is the primary problem with the declaration of human rights: is that these are not possible, not testable, and not achievable except in rare circumstances and for short periods of time – and they create a moral hazard as well as perverse incentives.  These are POSITIVE rights. And positive rights can only exist as preferences, not rights. 

    Article 29 specifies how you PAY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, and that is by granting them to other people equally.  Rights require exchange. Without exchange the term ‘rights’ is meaningless.  One does not HAVE human rights as if they fall from heavens. One is granted them by others, and pays for them over one’s lifetime by granting the same rights to others.

    Otherwise the document is not terribly different from the American Bill of Rights.

    What I hope to get accross here is that these are not divine rights, nor necesary and therefore natural rights, they are human rights, and human rights are those that we choose to require, by threat of force and economic punishment, that all governments must hold to.

    https://www.quora.com/Do-convicted-criminals-deserve-human-rights-since-they-willingly-deprived-someone-else-of-theirs

  • If We Ever Cloned Hominids, Would They Have Human Rights?

    Rights are the product of an exchange where terms are specified in a contract. For rights to exist a contract must exist – stated or written, or assumed.

    If we cloned hominids, and cloned them sufficiently well that they could negotiate agreements with us, it is very likely that we would have to grant them NATURAL rights – because we cannot create contracts without natural rights. 

    The definntion of human right is fungible.  They are a preference.  Meaning, they are not necessary right, and as such not natural rights.  They are aspirational rights, or desired rights, that while not necessary we have asked all other people to respect.  If these clones were able to understand those rights, and consent to them, then we could grant them rights if they would grant them to us. This would be a contract for exchange, and therefore each side would have rights.  Even if these rights are not written or spoken, but just understood and adhered to.

    Animals cannot have rights because they cannot conduct an exchange with us. We treat animals as if they have rights, because we have an agreement with others to treat animals as if they have rights.  But they do not have rights.  We simply have obligations to other people to treat animals as if they have rights. Our obligation is to other humans, not to animals.

    Animals only have rights by analogy.  But human beings like to feel that rights come from somewhere supernatural, and others don’t understand the construct of rights, so they anthropomorphize animals.  This is a simple mistake, but the majority of people make it either out of ignorance or for ideological reasons.

    I hope this helps.

    https://www.quora.com/If-we-ever-cloned-hominids-would-they-have-human-rights

  • What Is The Best Way To Learn Monetary Policy?

    I will give you a little help. There is nothing much to it.

    It is cursory in textbooks for a reason. It’s just no more complicated than maintaing a supply of money that’s high enough that interests rates are low enough, the people spend to consume and spend to invest. And not too high that you cause inflation and destroy everyone’s savings.  That’s it.  That’s all there is.  Lastly, it certainly appears that no matter what governments’ do, when you add money to an economy, you distort the information carried to everyone in the data we call prices. This distortion of information appears to exacerbate the boom and bust cycle. So no matter what you do there are consequences either way.

    The complicated part of monetary policy is that money moves through the economy through a very flexible and very complex network, and every single person in that network has some incentive or other.

    So what there is to understand about monetary policy, isn’t the monetary policy itself, which is really quite simple. It’s how money moves through the network of central banks, investment manks, common banks, investors, business, and consumers. 

    If you start with the treasury issuing notes, and follow the money through to the consumer, then back into the banking system, you will understand it. You will only really understand it though, when you understand human nature pretty objectively.

    If you can overlook the ideology the best book that you will find is Rothbard’s The Mystery of Banking.  That’s how it works.

    Monetary policy is not a problem of macro.  Macro is very simple.  The problem is the multiplicity of routes that money moves through an economy, and the various incentives people have, when all of them possess only fragmentary information and understanding of the entire process. 

    The truth is that we are still in the process of discovering how that process works. Very few people know. And when people think they know, in the end it turns out that they’re often wrong.

    Most of the nonsense you see on television or read in the news is just that.  If you read Mandelbrot, you’ll understand that most activity is noise, not signal, and almost all noise is speculation as changes in the discount rate propagate through the economy.  If you study economics long enough, or read Taleb for that matter, you’ll realize it’s a lot of noise.  Almost all economic activity is a function of demographics, property rights, and education – all of which are amplified by credit.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-learn-monetary-policy

  • What Is A “right”?

    1) RIGHTS:
    A “right” is a claim against other members of a contract, wherein each party grants the other party something (a right) in exchange for somthing else (an obligation).  Each person then has ‘rights’ as agreed upon in the contract, as well as obligations. This is the meaning of the term ‘right’.  A right is something that you obtain from others in exchange for granting them something.  There is no other logical meaning of the term, unless you invent a god or demon, or some equivalent that you are supposedly in contract with.  (Although the term ‘right’ is abused by way of analogy and metaphor, which I will explain below.)

    2) CONTRACTS:
    A contract can be discreetly created, such as a handshake, a promise, or an agreement. Or a contract can be written as a note, a written contract, or a constitution. A contract can be created by habituation as a “norm”, such as manners, ethics and morals.

    While very few people understand this, ethical and moral statements  are those that compensate for asymmetry of information between members of a contract for norms.  This contract for norms is we call a society.  Manners are promises that you will respect ethical and moral norms.  Ethics are rules that we follow to make sure that there are no involuntary transfers of prooperty due to asymmetry of information in an exchange.  Morals are general rules that we will follow to make sure there are no involuntary transfers from others who are outside (external to) any action or exchange.  (Having a chid that you cannot pay for, and expecting others to support it, is an involuntary transfer from others. That is why it’s generally been considered immoral.)

    One can voluntarily enter discreet contracts.  But normative contracts are a necessity because people cannot peacefully and productively cooperate without them. One can generally move between groups with different normative contracts (societies, and communities) but it  is all but impossible to avoid them entirely, and it is entirely impossible to exist in a community without adhering to that contract – usually people are excluded from opportunity, punished, imprisoned, ostracized, or deported, for violations of the normative contract.

    3) NATURAL RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are both necessary for humans to engage in contracts, and possible to grant in contracts. Such as surrendering our opportunity for violence  theft and fraud, from those with whom we are in contract. If we surrender our opportunity to use violence theft and fraud, we define this set of forgone opportunities “property rights’.  Because these rights are necessary for peaceful cooperation, and necessary for contracts to function, we call these necessary rights ‘Natural Rights’ – in an effort to limit the ability of governments to violate the contract rights that are necessary for human cooperation when they make laws.

    If we define our minds and bodies as our property. And we define those objects, that we freely obtained through exchange as our property, then there is only one natural right and that is property. It is the only right necessary, and the only right universally possible to grant to one another – because we must refrain from something, rather than do something.  In this sense, there is only one possible human right, and all other rights derive from it.

    3) HUMAN RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are not necessary but beneficial. These rights generally can be categorized as forms of ‘insurance’. They cannot be direclty exchanged without an intermediary institution acting as the insurer. People cannot equally contribute to their costs.  We call these rights ‘Human Rights’.

    4) DEMANDED RIGHTS:
    Now this is not to say that you have no control over your rights. You can for example (and we all do) demand additional rights in exchagne for our compliance with manners, ethics, morals, norms, laws that are levied equally against all. These rights are not human rights, they are not natural rights.  They are rights that you demand for your compliance.  THe problem is, that means that they are just a preference.  That’s all.  You must get a right in exchange even if you demand it, it cannot exist until there is a contract for it, somehow. And we can cause discomfort, economic friction, and political resistance. Or we can offer to contribute more somehow in exchange for additional rights.  In this sense, most arguments are in favor of demanded rights, in the form of FREE RIDING, PRIVILEGES, RENTS, and DIVIDENDS.

    5) FREE RIDING (CORRUPTION)
    Free riding is letting other people pay for something that you enjoy. Voting for a tax that you don’t have to pay is free riding.  Living off your parents is free riding.

    5) PRIVILEGES (CORRUPTION):
    Sometimes we attempt to seek privileges not rights – a privilege is something that unlike insurance, is something we are likely to obtain, and which comes at a cost to others, without our providing something else in exchange. These are not rights, but privileges at the expense of others.

    6) RENTS (CORRUPTION)
    In contemporary politics, unscrupulous people attempt to label privileges as rights, so that they can obtain something from others at no cost to themselves   This is not seeking rights but seeking privileges. It is a form of corruption, which is just an indirect form of theft.

    In economics, seeking privileges from government is a form of corruption called ‘rent-seeking’. (Which admittedly, is an old and confusing name.  In previous centuries, people would seek to obtain an interest in land so that they could collect rents on it.)  Today, people seek an interest in tax revenue so that they can collect income from it.  This is Rent-Seeking. The government, in practice, if not in theory, owns all land, and we rent it from the government by taxes. If you cannot pay your taxes, you cannot keep your land.  Taxes today, are no different from taxes under feudalism. We have just replaced private landowners with a political bureaucracy. In both cases we are renting our land, and in many cases the homes we build, from the government. Taxes are our rents.  And people who seek to own part of taxes are rent-seekers.

    7) DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)
    if you obey norms (manners, ethics and morals) and obey natural rights (property), you do so at a cost to you.

    If you think of society as a business (it is, because it must be), and the business is to grow the local market (it is, at least to maintain it), because everyone in the local market will profit from it. (they do). Then these businesses (societies) grow through phases, just as businesses do (or really, business go through phases like society does, just a lot faster because they’re smaller), and in certain early phases(startups) they require a lot of investments from their shareholders (citizens), and in other phases they produce tremendous surpluses (mature, commoditized businesses), then we can see that most of the problem we deal with in politics, is who makes what contributions, and who collects what dividends, and how those dividends are used.

    PROBLEMS WITH DETERMINING DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)

    It is very hard to argue against dividends (redistribution) if people respect (adhere to) manners, ethics, morals, and natural rights (property rights), as well as whatever arbitrary laws are created that affect all people equally.

    The general argument, which is true, is that by adhering to maners, ethics, morals, natural rights and arbitrary laws, you earn the right to participate in the market for goods and services.  And that dividends are a due only to those people who provide goods and services in the market.  The problem is that a market can’t exist without consumers, and that consumption is equally as important as production and distribution.  You can’t have one without the other.  So this argument is at best, empirically weak.

    The problem with dividends (redistribution) is not the logical requirement for dividends (redistribution), but the problem with how to determine what a dividend is,  how to collect them, who has earned them, and how to allocate them, and how to distribute them.

    But I will have to leave that  rather lengthly discussion for another time. 🙂

    This is very close to the ‘final word’ on rights. It is extremely hard to criticize this series of statements using any form of rational argument.  I will be happy to engage literate people on the topic but ask the moderators for their help.

    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-right

  • Values And Principles: Has The Fact That The Us Has Never Apologized To The Innocent People It Has Imprisoned And Tortured Affected Our Society?

    What has affected our society was the world wars, and our loss of self confidence that resulted from it.  Our civilization has spent time, treasure and blood to drag the rest of humanity kicking and screaming out of universal ignorance, mysticism and endemic poverty. And we are still dragging the one primitive civilization remaining, kicking and screaming, out of ignorance and poverty.

    Why havent the communists apologized for murdering 100 Million people in the last century?  Why haven’t the socialists apologized for the suffering they caused? Why hasn’t the rest of the world created ‘Western Civilization Appreciation Day” for saving them from disease, hunger, murder, ignorance and mysticism?

    I don’t know.  But that is what has affected our society. That is its malaise.

    https://www.quora.com/Values-and-Principles-Has-the-fact-that-the-US-has-never-apologized-to-the-innocent-people-it-has-imprisoned-and-tortured-affected-our-society

  • What Examples Are There Of Libertarianism In Practice Failing?

    There have been very few ‘libertarian’ societies, and those that we have examples are are actually under the protection of some larger entity (iceland/denmark). 

    Various small seasteading efforts have been started.  But they have all been failures because there is insufficient economic incentive and value to these places.

    Libertarianism in the formal sense, was developed by Rothbard as an ideological resistance movement. As were most of the liberty movements of the postwar and great society periods.  I am not sure it’s arguable that it was not in practice an institutional model but an argument against institutional models.

    Libertarianism, has been an ideological failure because his ethics were intolerable to too much of the population, just as Marxism, libertarianism’s opposite, is intolerable to most of the population.

    The anarcho capitalist research program is attempting to find solutions to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy’s deterministic recreation of the totalitarian state.  As a research program it’s been fruitful. And it is arguable that it’s possible to create a Hoppeian Private government.  Even if not possible to create an anarchic society.

    It may be possible to replace the bureaucratic monopoly state at some future date if we complete this intellectual exercise.

    But at present, prospects are dim, because the intellectual work has not been sufficiently completed that it presents a viable social and economic alternative to the nation-state.

    Curt

    https://www.quora.com/What-examples-are-there-of-libertarianism-in-practice-failing

  • Can Socialism/marxism/communism Work Without The Forced Coercion Of The Productive And The Abrogation Of Private Property?

    You are getting terrible answers here, and your question is a bit confusing. So lets clarify terms a bit first, and see if we can get you a decent response:

    1) Socialism is defined as the state ownership of property, and central management of production and distribution.

    2) Communism is the absence of private property.

    Which is why your question seems odd. Instead I think  you mean ‘socialistic’ which is what we have in westen democracies today:

    3) Democratic redistributive socialism is private control of property with heavy progressive taxation of profits. This is what we do in most countries today. It preserves both the ability of individuals to conduct economic calculation and the incentives necessary for them to act in concert to fulfill the desires of others for purely selfish reasons.  THe general argument is predicated on the idea of Pareto Efficiency: that you can take something from someone and give it to something else, as long as it does not make him worse off.  Which in political terms means that the individual does not lose his incentive to produce at the same level as he does prior to the theft of his property by the government for redistribution to others.   The logic of this is that for businesses to grow and expand, consumers must have money to spend and that more additional money is made when they spend it, and so, at least in the end result, everyone is always getting better over time.  … I will not follow the entire economic cycle here but in theory and practice, to a limited extent, it is not a bad idea even if it feels immoral to many of us.

    WHY THE SOCIALIST NON-ECONOMY DOES NOT WORK

    1) Prices are an information system that tells people what they need to do to satisfy the needs of others.

    2) Without prices it is impossible for humans to plan the production of complex goods.

    3) Without prices people cannot have the information needed to have the incentives to engage in productive activity.

    4) any attempt to use computers and static means of production would be forced in to autarkic production (a need to be totally self sustaining) by relative decrease in productivity, followed by constant impoverishment (See Cuba).

    It does not work outside of the family, and only works within the family, because of parental dictatorship, and our instincts for consanguineous cooperation and care-taking.

    The world has abandoned both communism and socialism, and has assumed highly redistributive consumer capitalism   Which is ‘socialistic’ but not technically socialist.  This maintains prices, and incentives, and the ability to plan complex production while taking as much profit as possible from producers without destroying incentives.

    It appears that outside of the west, most countries have or will, adopt totalitarian consumer capitalism, which in practice, in China for example, is an oligarchy running major state industries and finance, and redistribution in the form of easy credit and public services to ‘everyone else’.   This seems to be the pattern. It is not any different from what we have in the USA,  it’s just more obvious.

    But no, since communism is the abandonment of private property, no it is not possible, ever, under any circumstance, which is why it’s been abandoned.

    Socialism cannot exist either because it is not possible for people to operate an economy without money, prices and property, becasue neigher economic calculation nor incentives can exist.

    But that has not stopped the desire for it.  Any more than people have stopped the desire for the absurdity of divinities and afterlife.  These ideas are a religious need, a spiritual need, in many people.  SO this is why they have turned to the religion of Postmodernism as the newest reformation of socialism.

    POSTMODERNISM

    In response to the total failure of the Communist and Socialist agendas, both in theory and in practice, most of the left intellectuals have adopted Postmodernism which is where the idea that

    Forgive the long quote here in exchange for its value:

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.  Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.” – Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (2004)


    COMMUNISM->SOCIALISM ->POSTMODERNISM ARE RELIGIONS

    “Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism). Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism). Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation). Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).” – Hicks.

    CHOMSKY IS THE ONLY LEFT PHILOSOPHER
    Because he has mastered the art of using untrue language.  That is his contribution to the new religion of Postmodernism. He invented linguistic tricks that could deceive human beings.

    Cheers
    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-Socialism-Marxism-Communism-work-without-the-forced-coercion-of-the-productive-and-the-abrogation-of-private-property

  • Libertarianism: In A Stateless Society Based On Private Property Rights, How Would You Avoid Imprisonment By Another Individual Purchasing All The Property Surrounding Your Property?

    A stateless society based upon property rights is a broader definition than Rothbardian Libertarianism, which would argue that you must compete via price for access to your land.

    But that is a relatively silly thing to say given the logic at hand:

    The questoin is, if you have property and it’s capable of being locked, then how did you get there? Were  you stealing access already?   Did you sell your land to someone without thinking of preserving that access?  Or lastly, did someone buy your access somehow and now desire to charge you for it?

    The problem is, that this circumstance actually doesn’t arise, unless you were committing an act of theft or rent in the first place.  And if that is the case, then you have obtained access to your property at a discount and as such must now pay full price for access, and pay the cost of your discount.

    I am not really sure this is a libertarian argument. it’s pretty ancient common law. Generally speaking most societies allow free passage on land boundaries just to avoid this problem.

    The libertarian argument doesn’t make instinctual moral sense to people because it sounds like an involuntary transfer without added value or compensation.  But the truth is that the circumstance can’t really occur unless you were obtaining access at a discount in the first place.

    https://www.quora.com/Libertarianism-In-a-stateless-society-based-on-private-property-rights-how-would-you-avoid-imprisonment-by-another-individual-purchasing-all-the-property-surrounding-your-property

  • What Examples Are There Of Libertarianism In Practice Failing?

    There have been very few ‘libertarian’ societies, and those that we have examples are are actually under the protection of some larger entity (iceland/denmark). 

    Various small seasteading efforts have been started.  But they have all been failures because there is insufficient economic incentive and value to these places.

    Libertarianism in the formal sense, was developed by Rothbard as an ideological resistance movement. As were most of the liberty movements of the postwar and great society periods.  I am not sure it’s arguable that it was not in practice an institutional model but an argument against institutional models.

    Libertarianism, has been an ideological failure because his ethics were intolerable to too much of the population, just as Marxism, libertarianism’s opposite, is intolerable to most of the population.

    The anarcho capitalist research program is attempting to find solutions to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy’s deterministic recreation of the totalitarian state.  As a research program it’s been fruitful. And it is arguable that it’s possible to create a Hoppeian Private government.  Even if not possible to create an anarchic society.

    It may be possible to replace the bureaucratic monopoly state at some future date if we complete this intellectual exercise.

    But at present, prospects are dim, because the intellectual work has not been sufficiently completed that it presents a viable social and economic alternative to the nation-state.

    Curt

    https://www.quora.com/What-examples-are-there-of-libertarianism-in-practice-failing