I’ve said this many times, but given what I’ve read today, I’ll say it again: Per Camus, the first question of philosophy is ‘Why don’t we commit suicide?’ That one question is one of philosophy’s most informative riddles. But I have another riddle that adds just as much insight as Camus’ does to philosophy, into political philosophy: That is: “Why don’t I just kill you and take your stuff?” ((Or “Why don’t I just kill you and prevent you from taking my stuff?”)) If you can answer that question, all those questions that follow become non-neutral. By which I mean, that arguments over property are not those which you can walk away from. Political disputes are not conducted over matters of taste. They are matters of property or we would not debate them.
Source: Original Site Post
-
Proudhon’s Crusoe Presents A False Moral Dilemma
In reference to What is Property? Dual Meanings from Punk Johnny Cash at Gonzo Times, where the author uses the artificial moral dilemma put forth by Proudhon, where a castaway arrives upon a Robinson Crusoe island and is left to die because there are not enough resources to keep two men alive. Crusoe’s Single Man On An Island problem is a reductio argument. It is a false moral dilemma. It is an argument to extremes. Property is an argument to norms, not extremens. In almost all most cases, an additional hand will dramatically increase production, so that the productivity of two is higher than the productivity of one. That’s why we have a division of labor. Because more hands make light work, we like increases in populations. because there is no way for any individual to know the limit of the land within some geography that is much more complex than a small island, the institution of property allows us to tell whether we can breed or not, based upon whether we can afford to support our offspring or not. That’s what property, money and prices do for us. A more accurate example, is that there are many islands, and each island has evenly distributed spaces on it occupied by an individual. And that each increase in population means less space for others. If the land has a productive limit (all land does) then you have a maximum population. That is why there was an Irish Potato Famine. Irish land is capable of supporting one or two people per acre. Except that is, if you plant potatoes. So the peasants bred up to over a dozen people per acre, and when the blight arrived, they died in vast numbers because there was no substitute. Property exists to regulate our behavior – including our breeding behavior. The fact that industrial productivity is so much higher, and the fact that our ability to capture and make use of hydrocarbons is so prolific, that we have been able to multiple the world population by six in over the past century, does not mask the reality, that we must at some point have productive land and resources, and a means by which we cooperate, plan and produce using the scarce resources at our disposal. When someone breeds what they cannot support, they then steal by the most stealthy means possible, from everyone else who IS regulating their behavior. We already know that impulsivity among the less intelligent is an exceptional breeding strategy. That’s why the fertility of the proletariat tends to chase the productivity of the productive. The only time that there is a conflict over property is when fertility exceeds productivity of the resources available. The real question is, why did the proletarian’s parents breed a child who could be kept off Crusoe’s island, when they were unable to provide for him? The only questions of property that arise are due to the excess of human population over the productivity of the technology at hand. Property is malthusian. At some point, on any bit of land, the productivity is no longer capable of supporting additional population without tradeoffs in deaths. Our vast population booms are due to increases in the productive technology that we make use of. Our impoverishment is due to a lack of property rights: that is, that those who breed but are unproductive, are stealing from those who breed but are productive. In that sense, anti-propertarians are saying that the first right is the right to bring children into the world. Property, like money, and prices, is part of an information system by which we regulate our actions. And those societies that do not regulate them, are impoverished. Those societies that have poor property definitions, poor cultural contracts, and poor institutions for calculating the use of resources, remain poor. That is the most likely reason why colder populations have higher IQ’s – the environment is more hostile to the fringe’s breeding. What we have done since the beginning of the 20th century, is to subsidize overbreeding by the unproductive. We have exchanged property rights which limit overpopulation for birthrights at the expense of property rights. Why is it that it is acceptable to ask one set of people to do with less, so that others may breed? Why is that a moral position? Isn’t that the whole reason we have the problems of exploitation and over consumption that the left so often rails about? Why is it immoral to require that people have the economic means of supporting children, before they can bear them? That’s the right question. Not whether we should respect property rights.
-
EVERYTHING FRENCH IS BAD EXCEPT THE FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE
A quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe:
Hoppe also condemned the French revolution as belonging in “the same category of vile revolutions as the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazi revolution,” because the French revolution led to “Regicide, Egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, hatred of all religion, terror measures, mass plundering, rape and murder, military draft and the total, ideologically motivated War.”
Let’s add to that a condemnation of French philosophers who twisted and then ruined the concept of English freedom by converting what had been a practical and empirical philosophy into an evangelical, ideological, verbally-empty absurdity which they used to justify taking power from and destroying both the monarchy and the catholic church — and by consequence they created the body of work that Marx would use to compose his irrational economic plague and pseudo-religion which in turn caused 160M deaths. Hitler is laughing in his grave. The Deutch Mark simply had to dress in Euro clothing in order to accomplish in only 20 years, profitably, and without firing a shot, what he had hoped to accomplish with his expensive purges and war. If you could to travel in time and kill only one religious philosopher in history at birth, it’s a tossup whether that should be Zoroaster, Abraham, Mohammed, Rousseau or Marx.
-
Classifying People By Their Government Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The Expansion Of State Power
Today, Krugman yet again argues that there is a lack of demand. Yes, there is a lack of demand, I agree. There is a lack of demand because our lower classes are unproductive in comparison to their peers in the world. There is a lack of demand for their labor. Since there is a lack of demand for their labor, there is a lack of money for them to spend. A state is merely one means of classifying people, and it’s a convenient one for statists, whose only purpose is to justify expansion of the state. In a world of relatively free trade, people are citizens of their occupational sector. The American upper classes have moved ahead with the rest of the world economy, and the American lower classes have not. And the reason for that failure is state policy, and in particular, state policy on education. State policy on education is more concerned with achieving political unity between disparate races and cultures than it is in creating productive citizens who can compete in the world market, and therefore create demand. Harrison Bergeron writes for TheTimes.
-
Four Reasons For The Long Term Decline In Violence
Regarding Pinker’s new book on the decline in violence in the world over time. I would argue that there are the following reasons for the worldwide decline in violence. 1. The Abstraction Of Property Stated by an unnamed commenter on The Economist: Odd that no mention is made of the most obvious point: that when one can abstract wealth (for example, into bank accounts and physical property) violence declines proportionately. In some parts of Africa where wealth is largely a function of how many cattle one has, violence is quite prevalent. This is because wealth can be captured by violent means – the risk/reward ratio is favorable. But in the West, what can a mugger hope to get? A few pounds or euros or dollars. The victim’s wealth is largely inaccesible. So only the most desperate resort to violence – far better to become a Wall Street banker and steal billions quite legally without needing to use any physical force at all. The correlation between violence and the abstraction of wealth is well understood so the omission of this fact is quite surprising.2. Increases In the Likelihood of Punishment. Contrary to liberal desires, it turns out that longer, and harsher sentences are in fact a deterrent. That’s the data. That’s the fact. Plain and simple. 3. Increasing real wealth Obviously a deterrent. 4. Cheap Entertainment A bored male is a dangerous thing.
-
List of 20th Century Genocides
The worst genocides of the 20th Century (160 million killed) – Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000 – Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine’s famine) – Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) – Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) 8,000,000 – Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII) – Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20) 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20) – Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 – Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1,600,000 (purges and concentration camps) – Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000 – Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000 – Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000 – Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000 – Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000 – Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987) 570,000 – Sukarno (Communists 1965-66) 500,000 – Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39) 500,000? (Chinese civilians) – Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000 – Mullah Omar – Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000 – Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000 – Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) 300,000 (Bangladesh) – Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000 – Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ? = Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000
-
Honduran Experiments In Creating The Libertarian Paradise
Over On The Economist, an unnamed author writes that the Hondurans are sponsoring a libertarian experiment:
, libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the Honduran government to develop them.
Then references this chart which lists other attempts at libertarian utopias.
But they only serve to illustrate the futility of these paradises. The biggest problem for any libertarian venture, is that the cost of developing an economy on anything other than LAND that contains human beings who may act as consumers is simply too high for an economy to form. The sea is, so to speak, infertile soil. The cost of prohibiting rent-seeking is equally high. Libertarianism states will be created by the application of violence against those who do not wish to possess freedom, and maintained only by the application of violence against those who would steal freedom. Silly anarchic fantasies to the contrary. Monarchy. Rule of the One-Law Under Common Law. Private government. Freedom. Violence is the source of freedom. Do not surrender your violence without demanding freedom in exchange.
-
Pravda Rails Against Fox News Without Realizing That They’re Looking In The Mirror.
Over on Pravda, the popular, nationalistic and jingoistic Russian news agency, Fox News is attacked for it’s nationalist sentiments. I replied:
Fox news is not exactly a minority business. It’s the most popular cable news channel. A better point of view, would be that Fox caters to the same audience that Pravda does: Nationalists. Just as Russians feel they are a threatened minority, so do white americans. And from that perspective, both the Jingoism of Pravda and Fox news serve the wants of their audiences. FWIW: Americans were against communism, not Russians, or even a Russian empire. And frankly, if Russians would rebuild their empire, if for no other reason than to secure their borders, the world, and the west, would be a better place. However, forming an alliance of any sort that would assist Iran in becoming the core state of islam, by uniting Syra, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan into a military-political block, is not going to help either Russia or the west. Islam is a political system not just a religion, and it is naturally more despotic than even the byzantines.
-
Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’.
The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the envelope calculation that has simply been increased by the inflation rate since the 1960s. There are many other ways of calculating the poverty rate that could either raise the poverty threshold or reduce it. Another problem is that one’s social class is a function of both income and wealth. There are many among the elderly who have little income but may have fairly substantial wealth by, for example, owning a home free and clear. At the other end, there are those with high incomes who are, nevertheless, deeply in debt, perhaps even having a negative net worth.
It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment. “Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place. Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax. I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find. But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.
-
Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’.
The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the envelope calculation that has simply been increased by the inflation rate since the 1960s. There are many other ways of calculating the poverty rate that could either raise the poverty threshold or reduce it. Another problem is that one’s social class is a function of both income and wealth. There are many among the elderly who have little income but may have fairly substantial wealth by, for example, owning a home free and clear. At the other end, there are those with high incomes who are, nevertheless, deeply in debt, perhaps even having a negative net worth.
It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment. “Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place. Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax. I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find. But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.
