Theme: Coercion

ALL FULL OF SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING.

How can you state that liberty – defined as absence of loss of satisfaction caused by the actions others – can be implemented via formal institutions that will allow the formation of a voluntary polity?

If liberty is synonymous with the absence of such dissatisfying experiences as satisfaction, then what actions can bring about a state of liberty without those undesirable experiences?

Why is your theory of liberty not merely a description of the experiential state of liberty, and while a true statement, just a restatement of subjective value, expressed from the subjective rather than objective point of view – and therefore not just tautological hand waving without consequence?

You can claim that your theory of experiential liberty is a solution to the arguments positioned in your paper followed by a criticism of libertarians who are describing institutional rules for construction of liberty, instead of the experience of liberty – but you have not demonstrated either that you have solved the problem of determining the scope of actions that we MUST consider a violation of liberty and those that do not, or why the experiential point of view adds value to the extant proposition that value is subjective, and that the institutional question we are debating is that of the scope of property that we agree to resolve conflicts over, under law?

The question libertarians ask is how to eradicate need for the state. The problem is that we debate the scope of property rights because we have no non-arbitrary, rationally derived means of knowing the answer. What scope of violation constitutes a lack of imposition of costs?

Because such violations can include those that are observable and those are not; those that are tolerable and those that are not; those that are errors and those that are not. All libertarians make the same argument that you do, but the contention remains one of how we judge the truth of a claim that one has experienced such a subjective experience of dissatisfaction, so that disputes can be resolved?

Aren’t you just hand-waving? Isn’t your work irrelevant because it is both obvious, and because it does not solve the problem which you claim that it does? Isn’t your ridicule of libertarians in itself an absurdity? Your definition of, or “theory” of, experiential liberty tells us nothing about resolving the conflict over what actions are and are not permissible, under your self-stated assumption that a state of liberty is that in which we maximize liberty, assuming a state of subjectively maximized liberty is desirable. Isn’t the problem how we maximize liberty? And how does subjective value (an increase or decrease in satisfaction resulting from action) differ from your restatement?

How does the meaningless term ‘maximizing liberty’ help solve the problem of determining what scope we implement in the rule of law? And how is that any different from the evolutionary progress of the common law ‘s constant discovery of new means of criminal, unethical and immoral conduct?

Hoppe is correct. The only question we must answer in order to construct a condition of liberty is the scope of property we define as adjudicable under law. His argument (as I believe I understand it), is that intersubjectively verifiable property (prohibition on criminal offenses against extant entities), is the minimum universal scope of property necessary for liberty, and that above that scope, all other possible forms of property so covered under the law are a matter of contractual choice by the polity – not a logical necessity. This limit mirrors Rothbard’s Non-Aggression Principle and the scope of property he defines in The Ethics Of Liberty.

My criticism of Hoppe’s argument (and of Rothbard’s ethics, and of the fallacy of Non-Aggression reflects a moral proposition), is that the local transaction costs of daily life under intersubjectively verifiable property (mere criminal prohibitions), are sufficiently high that people will prefer an authoritarian state that either imposes additional rules, and/or which suppresses retaliation, because people ACT as if their property has been violated whenever they experience criminal, unethical, immoral or conspiratorial actions. And they will retaliate against them unless the law provides an organized means of restitution, or the state aggressively suppresses retributions. As such only high trust polities that suppress nearly all violations of property as defined by demonstrated human actions. And therefore that non-aggression, and intersubjectively verifiable property are irrelevant because they are insufficient to construct a condition of liberty.

As such, the definition of property articulated in law must mirror the violations of criminal, ethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions that people will retaliate against. And a low trust, Rothbardian polity where the minimum scope of property rights is defined as that which is intersubjectively verifiable, is impossible. And that the minimum scope of property is that which people will not desire to retaliate against its violation. That minimum scope of property appears to include not only the intersubjectively verifiable that can be transgressed against, but also unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions.

So your position your theory as a solution to libertarian confusion – however it is merely a restatement of the obvious and already extant: of the invisibly subjective and experiential rather than the observable, objective, and institutional; when subjective value has been stated for a century, and the question remains one of the scope of observable criteria for dispute resolution necessary for the formation of a polity that does not demonstrate demand for a state. We cannot agree on the scope of property and the means of violating it.

In other words, in your paper “The main philosophical problem with libertarian liberty” (a) you incorrectly state the cause of libertarian confusion as merely a linguistic problem of meaning, (b) and your proposed solution is a mere verbalism: restating the objective description of subjective value as subjective experience, (c) and you have not added clarity nor justified your ridicule, (d) and that the cause of confusion remains: what scope and conditions are permissible and not. 🙂

I conjecture that (a) the solution to the problem is empirically measurable, (b) that measure will prohibit unethical and immoral impositions, in addition to merely criminal impositions, and (c) the possibility of a condition of liberty increases with normative homogeneity of the polity, and (d) likewise that possibility increases the smaller the family size (the closer to the absolute nuclear family).

I make this conjecture because (e) transaction costs make liberty non-rational unless nearly equal to kinship transaction costs (trust), (f) tolerance for free riding decrease with kinship distance, and (g) shared norms are perceived as kinship signals.

It is possible to empirically falsify this argument. And I think that given the evidence it will be very hard to do that.

I will save my criticism of your misunderstanding of, and abuse of critical rationalism for a later date.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine