Theme: Incentives

THE FALLACY OF ROTHBARDIAN OPTIMISTIC CONSEQUENCES – ANOTHER HACK OF PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM

—“The entire basis of Anarcho-capitalism is that reputation networks will convey information “—

That fallacy is a hack of pathological altruism. It is neither logically nor empirically true. The reason being that production and consumption decrease rapidly due to the increased transaction costs without the necessity of reputation (knowledge) in a market that exists precisely because of anonymity (complexity and ignorance). And empirically we cannot find evidence to the contrary. So as long as you cannot run out of customers to cheat, it is cheaper and more rewarding to cheat customers than engage in production. (rothbardian ghetto ethics again). The state need not regulate the market, however, to create competitive economic velocity the law must prohibit ‘cheating’. Or better stated, the legal prohibition on parasitism that violates the incentive to cooperate (thereby increasing transaction costs and decreasing economic velocity), expressed as a requirement for productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality of the same criteria, must expand with inventions of means of parasitism. The sequence of parasitism from the most direct and to the most indirect is: murder, violence, theft, fraud, extortion, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, genocide. As the division of knowledge and labor and the complexity of production increases, anonymity increases, and new opportunities for parasitism are invented, requiring the common law to respond with new prohibitions on parasitism. Well functioning markets with adequate suppression of parasitism increase trust. Poorly functioning markets function poorly because of inadequate suppression of parasitism.

If we say that we desire freedom from a parasitic government (liberty) how can we logically claim not to desire freedom from parasitic individuals (morality)? The only logical answer, if one claims both liberty, and opportunity for parasitism, is that one seeks to cheat both the commons and cheat others. As such one is simply a parasite identical to those of that populate the state and justify their parasitism with claims of the common good.

Rothbardianism is, like neo-conservatism, and socialism, a hack of our western gullibility due to pathological altruism. It’s one of the great deceits. Not as great as Socialism and particularly (pseudo)scientific socialism, and not as great in success as neo-conservatism, but certainly as well articulated as the former. IF we desire existential liberty it cannot be obtained by fallacy. It can only be obtained the only way it has been in the past: the reciprocal insurance against all parasitism by the promise of violence to suppress it. This is the operational definition of liberty, just as liberty: the constraint of state actors to the morality of interpersonal conduct, is the descriptive definition of liberty, just as freedom from imposition is the experiential description of liberty.

All ‘optimistic consequences’ argued in Rothbardian libertinism are false. That is because the optimistic consequences increase the expense of suppression of parasitism with ongoing diligence, that never ends. There is no end to policing against parasitism. There is only the necessity of non-interference in the common law, which offers the most rapid means of suppression of parasitism: making new inventions of parasitism illegal with the first suit adjudicated.

**Liberty: Every man a craftsman. Every man a merchant. Every man an investor. Every man a sheriff. Every man a Judge. Every man a Legislator. Every man a warrior. This is the only known means of constructing liberty.**

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev Ukraine