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

  • 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

  • Is Libertarianism The Same As Anarcho-capitalism?

    The other answers are not quite correct.  Hopefully I will do this subject justice.

    Konkin’s History of the Libertarian Movement Is an accurate record of libertarianism.  But there are many terms that derive from the root word ‘liberty’ and the preference for liberty.

    DEFINITIONS.

    LIBERTY: all other things being equal, a preference for private property rights, and the grant of reciprocal freedom from coercion  – of the body, actions and property.

    LIBERTARIAN:

    1) Libertarian as an instinctual desire. A biological predisposition in favor of new stimuli expressed as freedom from constraint in obtaining new stimuli.

    2) A moral sentiment: A moral bias giving higher preference to liberty than competing moral sentiments, the most dominant of which are (a) Harm/Care and (b) Loyalty, Respect, Proportionality and Purity.  Left (communalists) is singularly biased toward (a), and right (aristocratic egalitarians) toward (a+b), and libertarians toward (c) Liberty and Proportionality.  Although Proportionality is considered differently by right (paternalistic) and left (maternalistic) factions.

    3) Libertarian as a Political Preference: A preference for the least government intervention in the economy as possible.  There are many thinkers and groups that fall into this category, including most conservatives, as well as classical liberals. The point of demarcation between social conservatives (conservatism) and economic conservatives (libertarians) is whether it is necessary to enforce norms by threat of law, or (as libertarians argue) the market is a sufficient means of enforcing normative ethics.)  

    BTW: Libertarians are empirically wrong on this subject, and conservatives simply lack a means of articulating the conditions under which it is permissible to altern norms – such as homosexuality, now that we know it is a biological factor not a choice. They  have no exit, even if they would adapt if they could.  So the libertarian and conservative groups remain divided. (Which I am admittedly trying to change.)

    Furthermore, the right uses an ancient, well-known and well-understood tactic of rebellion against oppression: religion, and the use of metahorical rather than secular rational language. It is the same religion that the simple people used to resist roman norms and culture while finding community in the newly mobile mediterranean world created by Rome.  It is the same technique used by the germans to free themselves from mediterranean trade, tax, government and morals.

    This is also the strategy in use by the Religion of Postmodernism and the institution of the Democratic Socialist State. Having demonized mystical religion in favor of the religion of ‘scientific socialism’, when Communism and Socialism were demonstrated to be failures in both theory and practice it  became necessary to resort to Chomskyian ‘framing’ in order to replace religious mysticism with contra-rational falsehoods and contra-factual impossibilities that can be constantly repeatedin contradictory contexts thereby creating an alternate reality of non-rational but contextual associations by way of chanting – just as islam does through daily repetition, christianity and judaism do through rituals and prayer.

    All religous systems bring people into groups to evoke the sense of spirituality, which is our pre-human desire to surrender our minds and wills to the elation of the running pack (yes, that is what spirituality is caused by),  and then to repeat mantras and narratives in this circumstance. 

    Tribal peoples in the tropical belt do the same thing by chanting and dancing – its’ all the same process.

    Western heroicism was accomplished by repeating some variation of either the prehistoric Indo-european, Homeric, Roman, Carolingian, or Arthurian legends around the feast’s fire pits. Americans repeated the narrative of the Cult of the Revolution around hearths, churches and schools, and in books, pamphlets and speeches.

    It is the same process in every human society. It works. We evolved to run down game together. That is why we look different from apes, and act like wolves. We are very efficient at running and dissipating heat. We can run down any animal on earth. We do not have to fight them. Just chase them as a pack until they are exhausted.  Watch a video of Masai crossing a plain. That is human biological advantage.

    The process of repeating ideas within a context allows us to create intuitive associations and therefore intuitive responses, instead of depending upon our demonstrably frail reason.  It is our pre-rational system of learning. We use it still today.

    And because nearly all of our decisions are made intuitively. So these intuitions end up with greater expression than those of our reason.  In the case of postmodernism (progressivism), and christianity  (social conservatism), these narratives are irrational by false logic and fact (progressivism) or arational by mystical allegory (conservatism).

    4) Libertarianism as a Political Philosophy:
    As articulated by Rothbard, libertarianism it is a rigorous, analytically stated ethical and political philosophy originating with natural law. The ethical system is based on very smple rules: your body and those things that you obtain by voluntary exchange, are yours, and you have a monopoly on the use of them. Don’t steal, dont commit fraud, and don’t initiate violence, and you have respected the same of others.

    The state is a corporation of shareholders who we call bureaucrats, who extract unwilling fees from hard working people, in order to fund their own indolence rather than do the equally hard work of taking risks in the market. Norms are unnecessary because the market for competition and reputation will instill the proper commercial normative respect for property without the intervention of a government (something privately owned), or a state(something abstractly owned).

    Libertarianism was designed to create an opposition religion to the marxist, socialist, and postmodernist religions. It is an ideological system based upon the jewish rebellious ethic of the ghetto. The primary content of this ethical system is a very limited concept of  property rights, where those property rights are absent the prohibitions on involuntary transfer by asymmetry and externality, that are necessary to fund investments in the commons of high trust norms.  It is the ethics of the low trust society. This is why it is a demonstrated failure outside of a narrow niche of americans.  Because the rest of americans, while they cannot articulate these ideas in rational terms, correctly intuit that rothbardian libertarianism is immoral.  Because it is. It is a means of rebellion. It is a religion.  And its ethics are immoral. 

    5) Libertarianism as a Political Ideology : Having observed the methodology of Marxists in propagating ideas,  Libertarianism has been promoted by the Mises institute into an ideology. An ideology is a set of memes that attempt to obtain power for a body of people in a political system.  Ideology is  different from philosophy in that the larger community relies upon representatives (intellectuals, priests, symbolic individuals) and argues by analogy, rather than making use of the precise arguments of their philosophy, if they oculd rationally master and articulate it.   That these short narratives are the equivlaent of mythic narratives is not material since the purpose is to motivate people emotionally to action, not intellectually to agreement. If you understand this then you will understand the purpose of most political ideology: motivation to act.

    ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
    6) Anarcho-capitalist branch of libertarianism:  Anarcho Capitalism is one of a number of monikers representing different factoins within the libertarian political, moral, sentimental movements.  This moniker was necessary in order to distinguish those followers of rothbard and mises, from those who also used the term libertarian, and had other rationales and arguments – and leadership.

    Anarcho-Capitalism is a more specific, and very thoroughly articulated, extension of libertarian philosophy to include the works of additional thinkers, the most important of which is Hans Hoppe. Hoppe’s insight was technical: that we could solve the problem of the natural behavior of monopolistic bureaucracies by replacing mandatory bureaucracies with private insurance companies, provide for defense, justice, and policing with private organizations.  Since there is only one ‘law’ in anarcho capitalism – private property – then the constitution doesn’t need to be written, or modified.  Intellectuals (myself included) consider Anarcho Capitalism one of the most interesting and successful political research programs.  Others treat it like an exetension of libertarian philosophy, and others practice it as an ideology.  But this is a description of the different rhetorical abilities of practitioners and little else.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-libertarianism-the-same-as-anarcho-capitalism

  • Are There Any Absolute Unrestricted Rights?

    RIGHT
    A right is a universal, contractual obligation, reciprocally granted to others by voluntary consent to the agreement of all parties.

    NATURAL RIGHT
    A natural right is a NECESSARY right that we must have in order to form a cooperative division of labor – largely by avoiding violence, fraud, and theft.  The only natural right is property and all other rights derive from that one. Because the only possible rights you can reciprocally grant regardless of circumstances are those that do not require material resources from you:

    1) property rights (safety and freedom of your body, your children, your spouse and your things),

    2) Charity under temporary duress (mutual insurance to the extend of your capacity) 

    3) kindness without material cost (manners that signal safety and that you will respect both 1, and 2.) 

    Since these require no resources from you other than those at your disposal in a temporary emergency, then these are the only rights that all people regardless of condition can grant to others, and they are the only necessary rights in a division of knowledge and labor.

    HUMAN RIGHTS
    A Human RIght as we use the term, a statement of moral ambition.  They are aspirations, because very few things can be both necessary and reciprocally granted.  We call these aspirations rights in an effort to pursuade all governments to implement these aspiration with the force of law, thereby making the aspirations into contractual rights for all people within a polity. 

    The universal declaration of human rights consists almost entirely of derivations of property rights.   Where they do not, they suggest that we must work together to raise people out of poverty (but we cannot stop them from breeding – which is what would achieve it.)

    SUMMARY
    There is a very great difference between what is possible to possess as rights that are guaranteed by others, and those that we desire to have guaranteed by others. If it requires others act, then that is very difficult. If it requires others refrain from acting, that is somewhat easier. In current western governments we ask people to refrain from consumption by taxing them so that others may consume. So far this is the only possible way we have found to solve the problem of inequality of ability and circumstance in solving material disparities, even if immaterial disparities (no fraud theft or violence) are possible without material cost.


    PART II – ANSWERING ALL QUESTIONS ON RIGHTS
    (Added in response to the question: “Yes or No?”

    The problem is the wording of the question. It is either dishonest, misleading or erroneous.  But it is so common that it is worth answering:

    “Are there” is a play on words – a deception.  Are there where? Where are they? if they exist, where are they? If you cannot find them, then how do they exist? How do they come into being? If you can ACT to create  them, then you can make them exist by your actions. If many people act the same way, for some reason, and they require others to act the same way or they will ignore, ostracize or punish them, then that action is called a ‘norm’.

    So, if you say that some rights are required for us to cooperate, or at least, avoid violence, then if we want to cooperate we must act to create those rights. And by our actions, create a habit, that is a norm.

    One of the ways to create a habit is force (law). But most laws are the contractual codification of norms, in order to justify, and clarify, and create equal punishments for, violation of those norms.

    All rights are contract rights.  That contract can be temporary and conditional mutual consent. It can be habit within the group. It can be norm within society. It can be codified with the force of law.

    That some set of normative contract rights are NECESSARY for human life, in order to make cooperation POSSIBLE, is true.  Without some portfolio of property rights it is not possible to develop a division of knowledge and labor. It is not even possible for people to live together in tribes or families.

    That some OTHER set of normative contract rights is ADDITIONALLY necessary if we want to achieve other things in society, we need only develop the means of communicating and enforcing them.

    So, again, the original question is an erroneous play on words. A contract right cannot exist without someone else’s participation in an exchange of rights.  And normative contract rights require most people grant them and that they somehow punish offenders.  And legal rights require that most people have hired specialists (politicians and judges) to specialize in enforcing their legal rights.

    As such, there are  normative contractual rights that are necessary for human life in a polity EVEN IF there is no force of law.  These rights are commonly called NATURAL RIGHTS. Living in the natural world requires that we have them.

    Beyond necessary (natural) contract rights, there are PREFERRED normative contract rights that become possible ONLY because a market society is generating enough excess production through the division of knowledge labor and capital, that it becomes possible to MAINTAIN the norm of natural rights, while granting, conditionally, assuming the resources exist, those PREFERRED contractual rights.  In this case, these PREFERRED rights are not necessarily granted by individuals directly, but through the corporation we call the government, and its members – the bureaucracy. Thus creating a third party, albiet an organizational party, to the contract.

    Pareto efficiency is the idea that you can take some amount of taxes from group A and distribute those funds either directly (good) or via services (bad), to group B, without causing the producers of taxes in group A to stop working, or to slow their working, thereby making the act of taxation counter productive.  And, when, above, I say, that we can gant additional, not necessary, but preferred, contract rights to people, if we can, we are limited in their willingness to maintain the norm of NATURAL contract rights.

    Human (contract) Rights, in the sense that they have been written as a document called the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights,  include both NECESSARY and PREFERRED contract rights.  The additional rights that are preferred, are preferred because conditions must exist to make them possible, and those conditions are greater than any individual can grant to any other individual. Therefore human rights are a political, governmental, and legal contract right.

    The only necessary rights are property rights: Life, body, action, time, and property. Which means avoiding theft and violence.

    The necessary rights for the high trust society also appear to include (a) prohibition against fraud (fraud by misrepresentation), (b) requirement for fully informed symmetry of information in any exchange (fraud by omission) (c) warranty as a defense against fraud and asymmetry, (d) requirement of action to earn profit, (e) prohibition against free-riding, privatization (corruption), profit by impediment.  The net of these rules is that all exchanges are voluntary and that all competition takes place only in the market for goods and services.

    I believe that this answers all questions on the cause and difference between rights as contract rights, (necessary) natural rights,  and (preferred) human rights, and how they can be used as temporary (truce), normative (culture), and legal (political), and economic (positive) contractual rights.

    I could edit this a bit. But it is very close to the final word on rights as we understand them.

    https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-absolute-unrestricted-rights

  • 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