Theme: Constitutional Order

CONTRA JAN LESTER’S THEORY OF LIBERTY? I AM NOT SURE YET.

(edited and expanded for clarity)

The history of the term liberty and corresponding concept of liberty is what it is. The history of property is what it is. The history of law is what it is. The history of cooperation, family and production are what they are. The history of criminal, unethical and immoral behavior are what they are. We define these terms many ways but the common element that they share is the prohibition on free riding (morality) or the prohibition on involuntary transfer (various forms of fraud and indirection), and prohibitions on the imposition of costs (various forms of crimes against life and property).

The only difference between the criminal, ethical, and moral spectrum, and the historical definition of liberty, is whether the actions are criminal, unethical, and immoral violations precipitated by non-government actors against whom we can retaliate or request resolution of the dispute, OR whether they are precipitated by members of the monopoly we call bureaucracy, government and state, against whom we cannot retaliate.

We can define liberty as it has been throughout time (freedom from governmental interference in our thoughts, actions, relations and property.) I think attempting to redefine it is merely an attempt at verbalism. Rationalism has nothing to add but justification.

At this point, I am still stuck with the same problem I have been since Lee Waaks suggested Jan Lester’s work to me: that I see that he has correctly identified the causal property of morality as imposed costs. (But costs imposed against what?) But that I don’t really see that his ‘theory of liberty’ holds any meaning or if it’s an empty verbalism (confusion and conflation). But then again, I am not sure that I understand his point.

For example, I think this is a nonsensical statement: Lester’s theory of liberty –“is pre-propertarian because we need a theory of liberty *before* we can know how society should be “arranged” to maximize liberty.”–

That’s like saying we need the head of a coin before we can have a tail of it. It’s not possible. You cannot have a coin with one side anymore than you can have good without evil, morality without property, and liberty without a state.

We evolved property prior to government and the state – we had to. Otherwise cooperation is not evolutionarily beneficial but parasitic. Which is why our instincts and cognitive biases are so exaggerated in such cases.

Liberty cannot exist without government – only morality can – unless you are redefining liberty as morality. Which I suggest that he is doing as a word game to avoid addressing that morality and property evolved prior to the state, and as such prior to liberty.

Liberty is a state in which we experience the the absence of immoral action by state actors, just as a condition of morality is the a state in which we experience the absence of immoral action by non-state actors. Immorality and morality are instinctual biases that evolved along with cooperation. Immorality and Morality can and must refer to in-group actors violating the necessary terms of cooperation: the prohibition on parasitism (imposed costs, free-riding, involuntary transfer).

In order to state a cost is something to bear, we must state what it is bears the cost. We cannot bear a cost unless we possess property. We may, prior to the state, define property normatively rather than legally, and we may not even produce a name for it (although all languages I know of contain the idea of possession) but legal definitions again exist post-government and post-state, but property exists prior to state, or cooperation is not possible – and it clearly has been.

I am fairly sure this set of assertions is irrefutable. Which is why I assume that I do not understand Lester’s argument. Otherwise I would outright criticizing him for empty verbalism – word games, if not simply conflation and confusion.

It is unscientific of me to assume I am correct, and that he errs, rather than to assume I fail to understand. However, logic and evidence are what they are: unless he can answer this objection he is using rationalism for precisely the reasons I am trying to reform the use of rationalism in politics and ethics: because it is too easy to employ rationalism as a means of obscurantist justification of presumed conclusions. Actions (operations) are the only means of avoiding word games. It is still surprising to me that a theory of human action should be expressed in rationalism, the purpose of which, as far as I know, is, and always has been, justification.

His argument, at least in my current state of ignorance, appears to be a series of errors of verbalism, and my criticism remains: that there is nothing to be had here other than that he has correctly identified morality and is merely confusing morality with liberty, where morality must, as property must, be antecedent to any concept of liberty. I mean must, as in it is impossible otherwise.

The question is not liberty but morality. How do we get state actors to act morally?Otherwise the properties of individual moral action and the properties of state action are not identical. Since the state consists of individuals this seems illogical, and therefore a mere verbalism.

Maybe I don’t understand. Maybe there is something I don’t see. I just think it is unlikely. I am pretty sure my arguments are bulletproof (as usual lol).