Even on its face, the notion that a reduction in the regulatory power of government would inversely increase the power of businesses is mistaken. If businesses thought they could maintain, let alone increase, their market monopolies and cartels in the absence of government intervention, businesses would not put so much effort into supporting greater controls on the market and maintaining existing regulatory privileges, which inevitably come with strings of their own. Those privileges are only attainable through government’s unique authority on the legal use of force. Just as railroad corporations were able to use the United States military to steal Native American land and slave owners employed the Fugitive Slave Act, government intervention multiplies the influence of corrupt businesses and makes their exploitation more efficient, because those businesses do not have to pay for the full costs of their dirty deeds; the costs of enforcement are socialized among taxpayers.

What left-liberals, for the most part, do not realize is that big business and big government are not opposed, but symbiotically aligned to support one another. A portion of a businesses’ ill-gotten gains are diverted back to the politicians who support those government interventions, which in turn funds more interventions. Without any callous intent, well-intentioned laws are implemented in ways so that any reforms reinforce the regulator’s and regulated’s co-dependence, as alternative decentralized business models challenging the exigency of that relationship are choked off.

In actuality, government props up existing oligopolies by erecting barriers to entry (with the use of occupational licenses, monopoly protection, capital start-up requirements, zoning regulations, enforcement of so-called intellectual property and abandoned property rights, business permits and legal tender laws) and by aiding existing businesses (with the use of transportation and other subsidies, fiat currency, bailouts, restrictions on organized labor, price controls, purchase and loan guarantees, bankruptcy and limited liability protections, capital-favored accounting and tax practices, regulatory favoritism, “Open Door Imperialism,” protectionist trade policies, eminent domain seizures and general cronyism) in ways that suppress inexpensive market alternatives like self-organizing mutuals and co-ops for community services and decentralized production models for private goods and services. Concentrated corporate power exists because government protects it, and does so deliberately. Governments benefit from this concentration of wealth because it leaves most helpless to resist the tyrannous seizure of property, the expansion of government authority and restrictions on free speech, privacy and self-defense.

The reason for all those interventions is because big businesses cannot compete on the open market. A big business suffers, albeit on a smaller scale, from the same inherent structural flaw that doomed state socialism, as identified by the Misesian calculation argument: the informational diseconomy of scale. Together with the invention of electrical machinery, the total cost of production for most goods on an open market would be more expensive in centralized factory production than it would in home-based or community-run workshops.

The second half of the left-liberal argument is at best a fantasy. A government is not necessarily more responsive to the will of anyone. Residents who live in the country without the government’s permission and other foreign permanent residents cannot vote; neither can most felons. When people interact with government-supported businesses, at least they get something in return. Of those who vote every two years, only half the people get their way. Even when an election turns in their favor, voters have no guarantees. Politicians do the bidding of people who fund their elections and who take care of their family and friends. Seeing how each is dependent upon the other, regulatory bodies understandably become captured by the regulated. Seeing how big businesses have been so successful in capturing the regulatory state for their own benefit, this should be apparent by now. According to noted liberal historian Gabriel Kolko, virtually every aspect of the Progressive Era regulatory state was enacted at the behest of corporations to cement the private trusts that could not be sustained in the presence of a modicum of competition. The core problem with a government is that the costs of enforcing special privileges are dispersed among all taxpayers, but the benefits of enforcement are directed to a very few. Eternal vigilance or not, the game is stacked in favor of people who want to exploit that asymmetrical relationship for their own good, effectively making unjust laws a well-funded private good and just laws an underfunded public good that comes about precisely because of the existence of government power. There is no way of getting around that fact except to reduce the role of government or eliminate it altogether.

When politicians do propose a solution to a problem they enabled, it is not in their interests actually to solve the problem. They can always blame the opposition for not fully implementing their solution, which provides for them a fundraising issue in the next election. That is why troops remained in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay was kept open despite clear Democrat majorities to put an end to those crimes. When Republicans ran the show, nothing changed. As Noam Chomsky said in his recent book, “[Republicans] don’t want a small government any more than Reagan did. They want a huge, massively intrusive government, but one that works for them. They hate free markets.” The solution offered by left-liberals to these problems is to implement campaign finance reforms that provide public funding of candidates. As history has shown, campaign finance laws further entrench politicians and make them less accountable. For those libertarians who do not seem much difference between politically motivated corporate power and political power, in and of itself, they are opposed to monopolistic power in general, regardless of who wields it. We want to be free.

The last point that businesses are primarily focused on short-term profits and maximizing shareholder wealth is entirely a consequence of government meddling. Publically traded companies are required to report earnings quarterly, and their shareholder mandates and corporate governance structure are prescribed by law.

It is not some accident that big businesses act through the government, because they are virtually indistinguishable. To quote Kevin Carson, “Far from the system of ‘countervailing power’ hypothesized by [John Kenneth] Galbraith, the large for-profit corporation, large government agency, and large non-profit in fact cluster together into coalitions.” Government magnifies those in power. It entrenches them, shields them, and they in return become a tool of the government. Quoting Chomsky elsewhere, “Any form of concentrated power, whatever it is, is not going to want to be subjected to popular democratic control or, for that matter, to market discipline. Powerful sectors, including corporate wealth, are naturally opposed to functioning democracy, just as they’re opposed to functioning markets, for themselves, at least.” There is nothing egalitarian or progressive about bestowing one class of people with authority over another. The ironic thing in my eyes is that well-meaning left-liberals, not libertarians, are the stooges for big business.

• Committing Genocide — In the first book of the Bible, God decides Man is so evil that almost all living things must be killed in a worldwide flood, including children and animals. There is little discussion of why such a step is taken, and no convincing explanation is offered. Also left unanswered is why it was necessary to kill so many animals, which could have provided some value to the poverty stricken people of that time. It is inconceivable that it could be. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time God was responsible for the premeditated murder of children.

  In Egypt, the Israelites were being held as tax slaves to the state. Following a series of plagues that God commanded in an effort to besiege the pharaohs into freeing the Israelites, God concluded by killing the firstborn child of Egyptian families. By comparison, the American government’s economic sanctions and illegal invasion of Iraq, which together have resulted in more than a million deaths, seem tame.

• Condoning Chattel Slavery — I have never heard of a respected living conscious being that has ever condoned slavery, save for God. Surely, he must have seen the shift in public opinion coming.

  Throughout the Bible, though, slave owners are told how to conduct themselves but not that slavery is evil, that the pretense of the ownership of another person is evil. Sickeningly, slaves are even told to obey their masters.

• Enforcing Inherited Guilt — A central tenent of Christianity is that everyone is evil as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden. The early parts of the Bible display cases of people being punished for the sins of the father. Really, what sense does that make?

  Morality is a matter of choice. To say that human beings are inherently evil (or good) would mean that they are not responsible for their decisions. It would be like a doorman forcing me into a casino to play craps only to find out during my roll that I have no choice but to play with the trick dice provided by the casino. I then have to pledge my unquestioned support and offer remuneration to pay off the inevitable debt I have incurred. The whole idea is mad and undermines a proper conception of morality.

• Punishing Victimless Crimes — For not supporting god, according the the Bible, I can expect eternal punishment. The belief as to what exactly such a punishment consists of spans across a wide spectrum. Some believe this punishment will consist of unspeakable torture, while others say an unbeliever remains in an oblivious unconscious rest.

  A central tenant of a civilized legal theory is that a crime has only occurred when a non-consenting individual has sustained an articulable injury to one’s person or property. Refusing my allegiance to the Bibilical god can in no way be an injury to a living person, much less to an immaterial entity. For example, even if I refused to acknowledge that Michael Jordon existed or if I believed that he was a terrible basketball player, I am not causing an injury to his body or property. A further difference is that Michael Jordon exists in material reality, while believers in the concept of god concede that god exists only in an immaterial supernatural realm that I presently am not able to experience.

  Since I can pose no possible injury to a god, I have a pretty strong case of being a victim of extortion since this almighty god has purposefully made such an ambiguous threat of eternal torture against me.

These are just some of the more egregious moral failures of the Biblical god. Even for those who believe the concept of god is valid, the tyrannical god described in the Bible could very well be a test of a believer’s moral code. So even if we played Pascal’s wager, there is at least as much reason to not lend your support for such a vile creature.

For minarchists, constitutionalists, and so-called patriots, their primary path for reigning in the abuses of the federal and state governments has been through the conventional political process — electoral politics, lobbying, and petitioning. It’s been a long path too, since 1787, when the nation’s second constitution was formulated.

More precisely, limited-state supporters have tried to scale back the powers of the federal government since President George Washington marched conscripted troops on Pennsylvania whiskey tax resistors in 1794. Many look back at the early days of the federal government with starry-eyed vision of a glorious republic that was the hallmark of what a government ought to be. Never mind that, at the time of its inception, there was never a common interpretation of the what the constitution meant or how far the federal powers reached. What they forget was that while, yes, the government was relatively small and insignificant in most people’s lives, that was because it was a new government. It was paying off a tremendous war debt and was biding its time to gain legitimacy. As Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton noted, the purpose of the whiskey tax had less to do with paying down the debt than “to advance and secure the power of the new federal government.”

Long Odds, Losing Payoff

Despite over 200 years of trying to reform the system, government at all levels continues to grow at an ever-expanding pace. Since the likes of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, advocates of limited government have failed to restrain government to its self-imposed, self-enforced, and self-interpreted constitution. Today, over half of Americans “now receive significant income from government programs,” according to one study. (That estimate is understated because even those who work in the private sector and have nothing to do with government contracts can also ride on the government’s dime if they support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. They get to shift the costs of those wars onto future generations through deficit financing.) The figure above has nearly doubled since the 1950s, when just over a quarter of Americans relied on government for significant support. With aging baby boomers set to retire in the coming decade, the number is only going to increase. Limited-state advocates were unsuccessful 50 years ago, when government had far less influence. Now, with a 100 percent fiat printing press at its fingertips and 12-year indoctrination camps under its control, the chances of rolling back government by using government are even bleaker.

With data like this, is there any reason to believe that Americans who directly or indirectly receive government handouts are going to support limiting those handouts? After all, Social Security and government heath care recipients, who represent the largest direct beneficiaries, “earned” their entitlements.

Anecdotally, I know someone who believes a clandestine band of government officials orchestrated the 9/11 attacks for the fortune of the military-congressional complex yet actively sought and attained a position at one of the largest military contractors in the world. When asked to reconcile this belief and taking a job with a believed co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, it was “for the benefits,” I was told.

The election process requires 50 percent of the vote plus one. The odds of electing small-government advocates en mass is even longer considering those who receive government support are more likely to participate in the electoral process than others. Also consider that those who receive government support have family and friends. Is it reasonable to expect people, no matter how principled, to vote to dump their loved ones off Social Security or deny their grandparents access to a Medicare doctor? In my heart, if I had to cast the deciding vote, I could not do it. Maybe I am a hypocrite (fair enough), but I don’t think I’m much different from traditional voters. The social and familial pressures I’d face would be unbearable.

When I talk to people about reducing or eliminating a government program, it’s always the same objection. “What about the poor and the elderly?” I have no doubt that they would be cared for since nearly everyone has the same objection and government actively creates poverty. (I would be a little concerned if no one expressed concern for their well being.) Those concerns are appeals to our decency and ethics. Yet, the most prominent case being made for smaller government is on teleology grounds, a utilitarian argument, in effect conceding the ethical high ground to violence and theft. How backward.

A possible reason most limited-government supporters do not make a deontological (or ethics-based) case for liberty is because it would reveal their logical contradiction. They cannot support liberty, peace and a limited state, which necessarily is based on aggressive violence by its very existence, as any non-consensual territorial monopoly would be. Limited-state supporters and maximum-state supporters, thus, have already agreed that aggressive violence is necessary to solve social problems. The only disagreement is over how much violence is necessary.

Ignoring Imaginary Giants

As I see it, electoral politics is our Quixotic imaginary giant. It’s a distraction. No matter how many laws are on the books, all that matters is government currently has the legitimacy and the power to enforce them. If we undermine its legitimacy, its power won’t matter. They will still hold the gun in the room, but we will all know they have no bullets. We don’t need to convince a majority of our ideas either. We need a determined minority who will withdraw their consent in spirit and in practice. Many already have. It’s easy to get started. They practice their trade outside the strictures of government regulation, enjoying the benefits of an unregulated open market. Others can do the same and in such a way as to build trusted, decentralized networks of traders and entrepreneurs who directly and immediately benefit from these ideas.

I don’t propose abandoning the electoral process entirely. So long as a majority of people give the concept of democracy some weight, it provides a free soap box to spread our ideas. I wouldn’t look to electoral progress as a sign of our influence either, as the conventional political process is a lagging indicator of intellectual progress. Part of the reason that conventional politics can only be practiced marginally is because it demands “compliance with, acceptance of, and payment to its institutions,” as Samuel Edward Konkin III said.

Government enjoys the tacit approval of Americans to belligerently harass them and confiscate their wealth so the military and government-founded corporations can belligerently attack and confiscate the wealth of poorer peasants in other countries. There is nothing redeeming about it. It is extortion. But people put up with it because the devil they know is better than the devil they don’t know. We can cast a light on the possibilities of what freedom looks like by practicing it ourselves and leading by example. What could be more libertarian?

If we want to win, we’ve got to stop playing by the government’s approved rules. “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” as Emma Goldman quipped.

Instead of trying to free an entire country, we begin somewhere we have control — ourselves — making steady pragmatic progress individual by individual, and eventually social institutions will reflect these values we hold.

Disclaimer: This note is not meant to devalue or discredit the work that has already been done by activists in the GOP. Any action in this liberty movement is much appreciated. It is also worth noting that everything in this note applies to those from the left attempting to use the Democratic Party as well. Myself and many others are merely trying to point out the damage that can be done to the movement if we adopt the “restore the GOP” strategy as our primary means of affecting change in this country.

1. We give up our leverage as the majority maker.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm“:

“There is a branch of game theory called coalition theory. It ponders questions like the following: if we have 3 groups, with 49, 49, and 2 ‘votes’ respectively, all seeking to win an election with 51 votes total, which of these 3 can be said to have the most ‘power’? And the answer is (drum roll): they all have equal power, because any one of them that wishes to win must make a deal with some other group.

“In this little theoretical truism lies a possible answer to the riddle of how a dedicated and united cadre might wedge and manipulate two bloated, corrupt ‘superpowers’ like the Democratic and Republican parties. What is required isn’t a majority, but rather a minority substantial enough that both powers must continuously bargain with this third group to gain its temporary allegiance. Of course, the two superpowers could always come out in open alliance with each other once and for all — but that in itself would be a victory for the good guys with immense ramifications.

“The difficulties in launching and sustaining a viable third party are well documented; what is called for probably isn’t another political party. Indeed, such a thing would likely be undermined, as have the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and similar entities of the left, e.g. the Greens. But while a third party is probably untenable, it’s clearly suicide to remain in this abusive relationship with the Republicans.

“Why? Go back to coalition theory. By trying to ‘reform’ the Republican Party, our movement COMPLETELY SURRENDERS THE LEVERAGE IT HAS AGAINST THE TARGETS OF SAID REFORM. There is a shockingly naive assumption in all this, as the criminal elements in the GOP get away with political murder. It’s believed that somehow they will surrender their authority because they ‘need us.’ Some coalescing may indeed happen, but expecting those who run the GOP to just ‘come around’ to our way of thinking because they’re in the process of getting the crap kicked out of ‘em flies in the face of repeated experience. Most people in 1976 wouldn’t have given the GOP another shot at the presidency for 12 years at least; yet they were right back in the saddle in 1980, with a ‘revolution’ … of sorts.”

2. We will never be able to ignite the mass movement necessary to enact genuine change as we will always be plus-or-minus 50 percent of the voting postulation. We will always be trapped in a reactionary paradigm against the other half of the FALSE left-right paradigm.

Which leads to 3 ….

3. The party in power will inevitably waver on its principles if only to maintain its position as the dominant party.

From “A Disquisition on Government” by John C. Calhoun:

“A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers. Being the party in possession of the government, they will, from the same constitution of man which makes government necessary to protect society, be in favor of the powers granted by the constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them …. The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard them [the restrictions] as essential to their protection against the dominant party …. But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left them would be a strict construction of the constitution …. To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction …. It would be construction against construction — the one to contract and the other to enlarge the powers of the government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be, against the liberal construction of the major, when the one would have all the power of the government to carry its construction into effect and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing its construction? In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful. The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered …. The end of the contest would be the subversion of the constitution … the restrictions would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.”

4. The party will shape the change agents more than the change agents will shape the party.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm”:

“This brings us to the very disturbing turn Paulism has taken: the invocation of that same ‘Reagan Revolution,’ the ‘Robertson takeover’ and the like, to ‘sell’ Paulism to the GOP ‘conservatives.’ Groups like the Republican Liberty Caucus are even openly equating Ron Paul with Ron Reagan – with REAGAN, super neoconservative, warmongerer extraordinaire, the most profligate spender the nation had ever seen (until the record was broken by a certain successor), a man that sold out so-called conservative principles so profoundly, that Ron Paul himself quit the Republican Party in disgust and ran as the Presidential candidate for the LP in 1988!!!

“What a long, bitter history the movement for LIBERty has when it tries to be ‘conservative!’ And yet, because we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve nowhere else to go, we find ourselves chanting this mantra: ‘we really are conservatives, we are real conservatives, be a conservative like us.’ And always in this equation of the movement with ‘conservatism,’ ALWAYS, there is a softening of the anti-war, anti-empire stance. And so one wonders, vis a vis this GOP ‘takeover’ – who’s zoomin’ who, hmmm?
The signs are all around the paleocon ‘surge.’ It isn’t only that Ron Paul is being equated with Reagan and Goldwater (can you hear that…? it’s the sound of Rothbard turning over in his grave). We have Bob Barr as the nominee for the LP – Barr, ex-CIA, who voted for the Iraq ‘War’ and the Patriot Act. And the rising star in the LP is Wayne Allen Root – note his initials, ‘WAR,’ and rest assured that ‘peace’ will never be his middle name. It seems the deeper we commit ourselves to this dysfunctional ‘conservative’ assertion, the more we are moved toward the ‘libertarianism’ of Neil Boortz – not the other way around.”

5. The hierarchical structure of the two major parties is easily susceptible to co-option, as only those at the top would need to be compromised in order to steer the party. This is evidenced by the current state of both parties.

Potential solution?

Remain a tight united libertarian cadre which works on single issue coalitions at a local and state level all the while applying the philosophy of liberty in a manner which will cause those of the statist persuasion to appreciate the consistency of libertarianism and question the hypocrisy of their collectivist mindset. Eventually the tight united cadre will grow as those beginning to appreciate liberty more and more will be picked off from the fringe of the parties.

All the while we must begin to build and create parallel institutions based on mutually beneficial voluntary associations so that we may offer an alternative to the people when the current system inevitably collapses. We must be prepared to offer an alternative as our enemies surely will be. [Editor's note: A few edits have been applied to Bush's note to conform to the punctuation style on this site.]

My take is that the Libertarian Party is largely a waste, save as a protest vote or an education tool. Participating in the primary elections of the major parties leverages the most impact from voting, which is still about as equivalent to a suggestion box on a slave plantation. Bush has said he is “beginning to explore the revolutionary possibilities associated with agorism, counter-economics, and the creation of parallel institutions which will rival and compete with the state.” I wholeheartedly agree; we should be spending our time agitating and organizing, not begging the state.

He is also beginning to take some heat from Ron Paul apologists (not all Paul supporters, including myself, are apologists) for questioning Paul’s support of welfare-warfare Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). For as beneficial as Paul is at spreading the message of liberty, it is just as important that liberty activist hold themselves accountable to at least the same standards by which they hold others. I believe attempts to confine or marginalize different opinions shows a lack of confidence is one’s own ideas. To paraphrase “Zeitgeist: The Movie,” take truth as the authority, not authority as the truth.

While anarchy may be viewed as a Utopian state, so long as a single individual wishes to undermine the rights of their (sic) neighbor, the response will always be a de facto government. As soon as you have de facto government, you will have those that will advocate that the role of that government extends out into providing services that are viewed to be not efficiently achieved individually.

I think that is a fair point. I like rules, and those rules need some governance to be implemented. If that is called a government or a dispute resolution organization, I don’t mind. It’s like when Frederic Bastiat said just because he does not want the state to raise grain that does not mean he wants to go hungry. I don’t agree it is necessary for a single organization to claim a monopoly by force on the enactment and enforcement of rules that others must follow. That is an imposition of a positive non-consensual obligation on the individual.

The knock that a stateless society is utopian because it is believed neither practical nor achievable is commonplace. Yet, we wouldn’t say that a law against murder is utopian even though no one thinks it could prevent all murders. And if I am at fault for holding grand, immaculate goals for what is possible in this world, that is how I would rather spend my short time on Earth.

Total liberty as a function of society is therefore not achievable and the degree of liberty achievable is reliant on the morality of those that control government’s decisions.

I think the breakdown begins in our meaning of liberty. For me it is simple, the absence of coercion. Hayek and Rothbard differed on the meaning of coercion, but that is a much simpler disagreement than trying to divine the meaning of 200-year-old colloquial phrases in the constitution. When I speak of complete liberty, I don’t mean that everyone in society lives in peace. That is probably unattainable given human history. However, it is the norm that most individuals live a condition of complete liberty with one another every day. I only seek to abolish those institutionalized usurpers of our liberty — when people are ready for it.

Another interesting point raised is who controls the government. I contend that the actual reason for establishing a state is for a tiny minority to impose its will on the majority. I’ll explain my thinking below because it ties into how a stateless society might resolve conflicts between different legal standards, an important point of concern.

“… it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

To advance a state of anarchy is to advance that man has another alternative for the protection of life, liberty and property. Time and time again, man has come to the conclusion that only laws will protect and therefore has rightfully rejected anarchy.

No genuine consent can be given, as Lysander Spooner argued and I cited before, just as a payment of taxes and voting is done under duress.

I do think there is another process, the marketplace, which serves as the bridge among differing people. I understand the appeal to moderation, that some government is necessary to protect our liberties. However, just because something has existed for a long time does not mean it is valid. And even if it were valid, there would be no reason for it to be implemented by force unless those who did not agree were using force. Slavery was considered a natural part of the human condition, too, for thousands of years. We wouldn’t say the slaves approved of slavery just because there had always been slaves. I mean, what’s with all the whips and chains? The fact that the majority of people believe something is irrelevant as well. After all, it is no coincidence they support government since most everyone went to the same 12-year indoctrination camps to stunt their imagination and curiosity in favor a deference to authority.

Better yet, I don’t understand how it is accurate to say that the majority of people believe laws are necessary to protect them. There are laws to prohibit stealing, to take property by force or the threat thereof. But some are given an exemption to steal and call it taxation. Max Stirner said, “The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individual, ‘crime.’ ” If laws are our means of protection, then why are those with grossest history of abuses not governed by them? The state conclude that stealing is both morally necessary and emphatically evil. The state is hypocrisy, for it allows a tiny minority to steal but punishes the masses for the same behavior.

If that is the way people choose to live, saying morality is relative and not universal, who am I to say they shouldn’t? But the state is about imposing one set of values over others. If the argument is that might makes right, then I don’t understand how a state is necessary either. The costs of maintaining the state and checking its growth is terribly expensive and a waste of resources to impose it by force if most everyone supports it. The state is actually composed of a number of special interests minorities seeking to impose their own values on others. They could never exercise control without it. Bastiat said as much: “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” The foolhardy thing is that everyone thinks they are getting the best of everyone else.

Libertarians are also a tiny minority, so why haven’t they gotten their way? First, for libertarians to gain control that would mean that everyone else would have to relinquish theirs. Liberals would have to give up their economic planning schemes and social welfare experiments. Conservatives would have to stop imposing their own cultural preferences on everyone. So there is a lot of resistance to libertarianism. Second, most importantly, strict libertarians have no power to lend to others. Electoral politics works like a buddy system, where enough people support each other’s projects to get them all passed. Strict (principled) libertarians aren’t willing to do this, so they never get traction. That is why electoral libertarianism, even with all the evident failures of government, has made no material progress as the state marches on. Libertarianism proper has made measured progress, meanwhile, in the areas of education and circumventing the controls of government.

A Possible Solution for Conflicting Legal Norms in a Stateless Society

It is important to recall that under today’s conditions, the state subsidizes aggression with taxes on consensual behavior like earning an income or trading goods. For example, wars are very costly and they are financed with money from income taxes or through Federal Reserve debt. If only the neo-cons who supported the Iraq war had to pay for it, they might have a little more humble and judicious foreign policy. However, they get to shift the costs on everyone else, including future taxpayers. That is why you see a steady escalation in the size of government. Only a few thousand might benefit from a post office in rural Kansas, but legislators work in concert to support each other’s projects and everyone pays for them. Then, they are left to create subsidiary laws to finance their plunder and restrict competitors.

The way I imagine a stateless society functioning is that people would join dispute resolution organizations (DROs) for their protection and see to it that their contracts are honored. You might even have after-the-fact DROs that provide assistance only once coercion has occurred. One concern is that people might contract with DROs that are really aggressive. They hunt down people with little or no evidence of guilt, go after political enemies, and cause general mayhem in the community. Basically, they would act like every other government.

The important point to remember is that DRO policies are just some means to an end. Each policy provides a cost and benefit of implementing. If you’ve got a bunch of extraneous policies that you want to impose, then someone has to be paid to enforce them. In a stateless society, people who want to practice aggression will face the full expense of that decision. An additional burden of enforcing excessive or aggressive policies is going to the lack of reciprocal relationships with other DROs willing to enforce them. The reason e-mail is a valuable services is because service providers have adopted the same protocol standards necessary to transmit messages across servers. So the more people who use it, the more value the service provides — like how credit cards can dispense cash around the world in local currencies. This could be true for dispute resolution. If a DRO is so burdensome that other DROs are unwilling to deal with it, then its customers are limited to confidently trading with the number of people in the same DRO. This will not immediately dissuade all DROs from implementing highly onerous regulations, but the price mechanism will limit their reach. A framework to this could be reputation rating services and insurance providers. There really is no telling with the dynamism of the market system. How this might come about is up for debate. Might it come about by supplanting the government policing apparatus, as agorism prescribes? Or might it come about through the gradual dissolution of government as its credibility is shattered? A lot of it is speculation, which is necessary to evolve beyond institutionalized coercion.

It makes sense to assume that most people don’t favor using open violence against others, so they would not support DROs that did either. If I am assuming wrong, then a government won’t help because those same people who favor aggression will most likely control it. In fact, it would be worse because the victims would in some way be forced to fund their own oppression. It’s an easy trap to be caught in. If we can’t think of a way to resolve conflicts consensually, then we need immaculate violence to obliterate conflicts. The truth is we don’t need it, no more than slaves needed their masters.

Division of labor

Capitalists do not claim that specialization should be forced on anyone. To the contrary, we claim that the division of labor, the highest form of cooperation, is naturally occurring and cannot be centrally planned. I don’t know how I logically could claim to support free trade and then turn around saying that someone shouldn’t be able to freely trade his or her labor.

That is the very type of state planing the classical economist railed against. And it’s the very reason that free traders consider these agreements (NAFTA, ect.) as nothing more than impersonations of the real thing. They attempt to gain controls over imports and exports, exchange rates, and any number of regulations. They’re a start, but genuine free trade wouldn’t be in the form of international agreements. It would look like the trade that exists among the 50 states.

I’m interested in reading McNally’s book, although I suspect I won’t agree with his conclusions. We can both agree (I think) that prosperity and peace are unattainable without the corresponding protection of private property and the rule of law. If nothing else, McNally’s book could go to show just how meaningful and often overlooked those last two are in developing countries.

Child labor

DarkStar, you’re right that the 40-hour work week is a new phenomenon. For thousands of years, people had faced starvation even during the good times. Now critics blame laissez-faire capitalism for giving people more than they need. And this is with only a partial adoption of capitalism for some of its citizens.

And if you look to history of labor unions, they have been the biggest supporters of discrimination, and not only in terms of race. That is because it is in their best interest to keep the labor supply very small in skill jobs. A business faces the exact opposite incentive. They want to have the largest, most open work supply possible.

Capitalism

The core principle of laissez-faire capitalism is political freedom, not competition. Sure, competition may result (depending on the nature of the product), but it comes only as the result of the freedom to produce and consume.

But the more important lesson is that Darwinism does not say the weak are eliminated through competition.

Instead, they are eliminated by force, one killing the next. That is far different than a third party, a consumer, voluntarily picking among competitor for his favorite slice of pizza. And as for saying someone is irrational because they work for less money, that is nonsense.

Even as an outsider, I can see that people working for SW have a lot more going for them than just salary: namely, more job security than any other airline can offer.

One last thing, laissez-faire capitalism doesn’t seek to drive emotion out of human beings. In fact, the emotion of motivation is one of the prime factors for the material and aesthetic pleasures enjoyed today.

No competition

Are you saying that companies should be “forced” to compete? If so, I’m impressed by how you got around from saying just that. But unfortunately, you’re not advocating laissez-faire capitalism, but some form of mercantilism, which Republicans and Democrats seem to agree with. Capitalism allows for people to flourish, but also fail. And consumers decide who does which.

Capitalism causes war

One of my favorite economic fallacies is that laissez-faire capitalism promotes and is dependent on warmongering or an interventionist foreign policy. But on the contrary, war (and the preparation for it) is wasteful and would only be done when absolutely necessary in a capitalist country to defend the nation from attack or an imminent attack. But still in that case, the country would still be worse off even if it won.

During a war, the productive sector of an economy is devoted to things precisely designed for the destruction of society. For sure there are war profiteers (defense contractors, for example), but the majority of people are worse off, if not killed, no matter what the reason for conflict.

But the ones who control whether or not war takes place are politicians, the biggest winners in all this. They turn laissez-faire capitalism on its head, with merchantilist policies (devaluation of money, protective tariffs, corporate welfare) that only antagonize other countries.

But you also said that laissez-faire capitalism destroys “basic values,” which I assume to mean yours. But people are free under laissez-faire capitalism to do what they want and screw what others think, aren’t they?

What is freedom?

We seem to be having a disagreement over the meaning of freedom. I take it that you mean freedom from want, when it actually means freedom from the initiation of force.

Laissez-faire capitalism is, ultimately, an expression of freedom, protecting the weak against the strong, granting choice and opportunity to those who once had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politicos and their enforcers. The high value placed on women, children, the disabled, and the aged- unknown in the ancient world-owes so much to laissez-faire capitalism’s productivity and distribution of power.

Ethics and fraud

“All people want to be loved and needed and respected.” I generally agree. But they have to deserve to be loved, needed or respected. They don’t have it by default. They gain it or lose it by there actions.

Further, you are criticizing how people are treated. It is a question of ethics — would exist no matter what economic/political system was in place. I’ll tell you why.

Every society experiences fraud and theft. But let them rear their head under socialism and it goes unnoticed or is attributed to the capitalist thinking. Let these vices appear in a largely free economy, and the cry goes out: punish us all and put the state in charge!

Yet, I’m still more interested in what alternatives to laissez-faire capitalism you endorse. I doubt it will be socialism, probably something about making capitalism transparent — saving it from itself. Oh, how thoughtful?

Soldier’s sacrifice

Mr. Bishop, I whole heartedly disagree with some premises in the article “Peace and Sacrifice are One In The Same.” From the reading, you were saying that the soldiers should consider it a sacrifice to end a brutal, tyrannical regime. There is no question that Americans and Iraqis are better off now that Saddam is out of power.

But that is also no reason to consider those actions a sacrifice. After all, what does it say about a soldier who considers it a personal sacrifice to save his family by taking a threat out of power?

Just because something is difficult and a victory is not guaranteed, that does not mean it is a sacrifice. The liberation of Iraq and the broader war on terror is in every moral American’s best interest. You shouldn’t be afraid to defend those people and things you love.

Contradictions of capitalism

Laissez-faire capitalism is built on the principle of individual rights. And one of the corollaries of owning your own body is the freedom of speech — and yes, even for speech that seeks to undermine that freedom altogether. You can’t stomp out an idea; it has to be refuted on the intellectual battlefield.

Inequality

Jak, you think laissez-faire capitalism created inequality? It inherited it.

In feudal Europe, what separated people was who ate and who starved. Now the divide is who drives a Benz and who drives a used Ford, who eats steak and who eats quarter-pounders.

It is a mistake to look at income as the measuring stick for equality. Instead look for what you can actually buy with that income. When ever you find a an high-priced product, there is bound to be a much cheaper alternative.

But you are right in one regard. There are two sets of people: those who serve the needs of consumer and those who don’t.

And if you wish to discuss slavery, then understand that it was the mechanization of agriculture under capitalism that exposed the inefficiencies and wastefullness of involuntary servitude.

Capitalism leads to discrimination

I don’t get it. How is capitalism tied to patriarchy and racism? Capitalism increases the costs of discriminating on any factors that’s unrelated to productivity. Strip clubs are one exception, I guess, but the overwhelming number of times race and sex aren’t related to productivity.

Show me a business discriminating on the basis of race and sex, and I’ll show you a business down the street with a competitive advantage over its competition.

Eminent Domain

In a legitimate capitalist economy, businesses make their profits by voluntary market dealings. “Public-private partnerships” in which the government gives some businesses special benefits by violating the rights of other people are characteristic of a corrupt economy, not a free one.

Socialism great in theory?

“Socialism is great in theory, but in practice it cripples the main incentives for productivity, innovation, and trade.”

Socialism is doomed because without the private ownership over the means of production, economic calculations are impossible to make. Socialism can still provide incentives, but its planners cannot know how much to give.

That is not to say errors and judgment can’t occur under capitalism. Prices can only provide a tool for deciding on means and ends. That would not be possible if not for their origin in private property.

Balance of power

“However, it [capitalism] can lead to destructive imbalances of power such as monopolies.” So how does a company become so powerful that it controls the market? In an unhampered market, they do it by satisfying the most consumers, by meeting people’s needs better than anyone else.

But in the overwhelming number of times, this is not how monopolies are formed. In most cases, a company is issued protective privileges (guaranteed loans, bailouts, import restrictions, or bans of competition all together, for example). So the solution to prevent monopolies is to keep the government from handing out special favors.

And under capitalism, powers are divided much more evenly. The richest man in America controls less than one-half of one percent of the total wealth. In Eastern Europe, the divide that split the poorest and the richest was deciding who ate and who starved. Today, we ask who drives Mercedes Benz and who drives a used Chevy, and who eats prime ribs and who eats a quarter-pounder?

Is capitalism the enemy?

What most people don’t distinguish is that it wasn’t capitalism that was the danger, but instead the intervention of government, the mixed economy, that encouraged all the trouble.

The multinational wasn’t trying to develop goods and services to sell to consumers, but giving political contributions and gaining governmental influence to get its way.

But I think you said it. “… the real culprits seem to be in the corporate boardrooms and legislative cloakrooms.”

War good for the economy

War is the destruction of capital? be it human or mechanical. In a war, the resource of a country are diverted to destruction, not production.

Take it from William Sumner during the Civil War: “The mills, forges, and factories were active in working for the government, while the men who ate the grain and wore the clothing were active in destroying, and not in creating capital. This, to be sure, was war. It is what war means, but it cannot bring prosperity.”

Trade agreements like NAFTA are, in fact, nothing more than mercantilist policies. Free trade wouldn’t require 14,000 pages of regulation. And it cannot exist until the government ends farm subsidies and the like.

Mutual trade is the best recipe for peace and prosperity. People don’t kill their customers (on purpose).

Adam Smith

The case for free markets didn’t begin and end with Smith.

If you read “The Wealth of Nations,” then you’ll find some faults with his ideas: the labor theory of value, especially. He also gives little importance to uncertainty and the role of the entrepreneur. And yes, he did consider tax redistribution a means to benefit the public. But that is nonsense. Taxes are taken by force. The hidden costs (lost opportunities) of taxes weren’t considered by Smith.

Richard Cantillon is more aptly the founding father of modern economics, not Smith. If you want to get “up to date,” then read “Capitalism” by George Reisman. That will give the best ideas behind it.

But if you propose that there is a “third way” (a mix of capitalism and socialism), then read FA Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.”

Road to serfdom

It is about explaining why the best people “get on top” under capitalist and the worst “get on top” under socialism.

Corporations

A corporation, or any other entity formed by individuals, has rights on the basis of the individuals who make up the corporation. True of a corporation, a marriage, or a social club, they have freedom of speech, association and ownership of private property whether a government recognizes it or not. They are inalienable rights.

People have the inalienable right to form a marriage with any consenting adult who wishes to join. The government may restrict that right or may not recognize it. But it cannot be taken away, much less granted.

And if you dislike the corrupt people who run corporations, then understand that under capitalism those people are punished financially and criminally. But in the absence of corporations, those same people would most likely enlist in government and then have the police power at their calling and be exempt of prosecution.

The overwhelming amount corporate corruption that takes place exists because they are granted privileges by government at the expense of restricting the rights of others. So precisely because laissez-faire capitalism does not exist, what under normal circumstances would be considered criminal action (like using eminent domain to seize property and build a casino, Donald Trump, or a superstore, Wal-Mart) is condoned.

Consumerism

What you’re calling consumerism is one of the most unappreciated aspects of capitalism. It’s even criticized.

In precapitalists societies, it would take decades or centuries for the luxuries kings had come to enjoy to be used by the poorest subjects. Now, with only a partial adoption of capitalism, that time span is almost non-existent.

In a short amount of time, luxuries limited to the richest soon become adopted by the majority. You would think people who call themselves progressive would like that.

Conservatives not capitalists

It’s a mistake to call the religious right in fact capitalists. They support statism as much as their opponent on the left.

Both sides are nuts. Walter Williams puts in best: “Republicans and right-wingers support taking the earnings of one American and giving them to farmers, banks, airlines and other failing businesses. Democrats and left-wingers support taking the earnings of one American and giving them to poor people, cities and artists. Both agree on taking one American’s earnings to give to another; they simply differ on the recipients.”

Consumerism

I was reacting to an overall message of consumerism in the original post, so I could have missed some other points you made. Anyhow, consumerism is not a problem. I told why in the first post. This criticism stems from contempt for the independent actions others.

When I said, “In a short amount of time, luxuries soon become adopted by the majority,” I had actual physical consumer goods in mind.

I sometimes don’t like what’s on TV too. You may not like the outcome, but blame the consumer?who is in charge?not the system. When someone says commercialism decreases our sense of community, what they mean is it decreases our control over others. Some people don’t like that. And those are who commercialism is at the expense of.

Capitalism and slavery

Regarding slavery, capitalism and involuntary servitude of any kind is incompatible with the social system of capitalism for denying the rights of individuals held in bondage. Understand that despite what Marx said, capitalism has only existed as an economic model since the late 1700s. It was after mercantilism and feudalism, just to name a few. The point is, slavery had long existed even before the age of modern civilization.

Meanwhile, capitalism exposed the wastefulness and inefficiencies of bandage for various reasons, including a lack of incentive for a slave to improve production. The mechanization of agriculture, which couldn’t have happened without entrepreneurs and capital accumulation, made slavery unworkable. Capitalism killed slavery.
Regarding the environment, the human nature is that people care more about what is theirs than what is not. That is perfectly fine. From the lessons of public property, this bears out. Former Soviet natural resources are some of the most polluted in the world.

I readily admit that a free-market solution is not as successful when unaccounted externalizes enter the picture. But the lessons of capitalist economics has something to say about how to solve the problem.

Benefits of outsourcing

The best real world example is in every commuter’s home. Each day at work, most Americans companies outsource at least some of their labor from different cities. Now, this is what happens, only on a larger scale, among each city, each county, each state, each country. They are all political borders. An even more micro-study could be made of the outsourcing and trade deficit in each person’s home. (Chevron’s trade deficit with me is very lopsided, for example, but I don’t propose making my own gasoline because of the opportunity costs of doing such).

Think what would happen if you were restricted to only working in your own city. Your options would be severely restricted to what occupations you could take up. And if any businesses activity still existed in the city, how much less power would you have in setting the terms of employment? And with a smaller pool of qualified employees, how many high-skill jobs would go unfulfilled?

One of the greatest ideas of the Founding Fathers was to set up this free trade zone in America, the largest in the world and as a result the riches as well. And if actual free trade existed among nations, America is what it would look like. There would be no need for the 10,000 pages NAFTA and GATT regulations. The government would simply drop all restrictions and declare any agreements null and void.

But Tom, you’re glossing over the point of why people work in the first place. For example, we all would like to own a car, but not all of us would enjoy the actual job of building a car. In fact, we (happily) pay others to do that. We’re after the fruits of the labor, not the labor itself. It’s important to keep this in mind because without outsourcing, your dollar wouldn’t go as far.

The hard facts: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, professional jobs will grow by 30% by 2012. In the past 20 years, manufacturing has increased 93%. Superior productivity by employees has been the reason for a decreased base in manufacturing workers. Output in manufacturing has increased over 100% in 20 years. So goods are getting cheaper and better for the consumer. Despite outsourcing, IT jobs are expected to grow by 30% by 2012. The technology that allows for outsourcing to India also proves for increased productivity and growth. The result: wealth and health.

A wealthier nation can more afford to fight a global war on terror. And remember free trade promotes peace; people don’t bomb their customers.

Censorship

No. Sorry. Wrong.

Censorship is the use of force (or the threat of it) to prevent free expression. Governments have done this all the time. In some cases, individuals have censored others by threatening someone’s property or self.

It is not censorship when that free expression harms a person’s status or when a person looses his job. That is the free expression of the person doing the firing.

Export jobs

Your question stems from your own misunderstanding of what a commodity is. In the most basic sense, they are goods. And because of that, people pay for them. Just because something has demand and supply does not make it a commodity.

In the case of a job, the person doing the demanding is who gets paid. With a commodity, the person demanding is who pays. In the case of a job, the person doing the supplying is who pays. With a commodity, the person supplying is who gets paid. Simple enough.

As for infinite needs, you are discounting the needs of future generations.

Having established that jobs are not goods, it is proper to say that a job is the act of creating a good. Only goods and services (labor) can be exported.

You should really consider getting off that Keynesian booster seat before you hurt somebody.

Waste

You forget that waste is in the mind of the individual.

Wastefulness

To most, a leaky faucet is wasteful. But to someone who can’t afford a plumber, it would be more wasteful to hire someone to fix it. They conclude that they could spend the time and money in a better fashion.

In fact, it is private ownership that allows for someone to judge the cost/benefit problem. But to someone who doesn’t own that property, it is impossible to figure costs. However, benefits can be estimated somewhat.

Wealthy

I read your “Vote Anti-Capitalist Sam For Mayor” press release on the web. And I was surprised to learn that for all the work they do, the wealthiest 187 in the country increased their bank accounts by less than $5 billion in the past year.

That is a sign that people like what they have to sell. I only wish this year they can do better. Their wealth is the result of the buying power of the masses at work. And I say good job.

I think back to precapitalist times and see that the divide separating the richest and the poorest was who at and who starved. Now with only a partial adoption of capitalism, the divide is who eats steak and who eats hamburgers. Not so dramatic after all.

Your mistake is measuring how much people take home after work. But you’ve failed to look at what they can actually buy with their income. And capitalism has done more to provide even the poorest people a low cost alternatives to what the wealthiest enjoy.

Export jobs

Yes, it does undermine his argument. The assumption in his argument is that more jobs create more wealth. He had said, “One easy solution to fix a sluggish economy is to give people descent jobs that pay a living wage.” I was trying to show that it is not a job in and of itself that creates wealth, but the results of a job. If there the cost of providing that job does not outmatch the benefits, then it has done nothing but waste resources.

Carried to the end conclusion of what he said?that more jobs creates more wealth?then politicians should pass a law demanding the destruction of all bridges, for example.

Just imagine all the new jobs that would spring up to ferry people across rivers. But would the nation as a whole be better off than before. Frederic Bastiat satirically petitioned to outlaw the sun because all the good-paying candlemaker jobs that the sun had put out of business.

Now if these laws were passed, some people would be better off. But it would be the poor who didn’t get those jobs that suffered most because of those laws. They would lose out on all the jobs that weren’t created or vanished altogether.

But then again, I would be satisfied if Brian had just used the term “shifted” instead of “exported.” But that would spring up a whole new set of questions about how the government has artificially increased the cost of employing someone in America.

Recession

Brian, my above critique applies for when creating any job through government intervention. Though, there are cases that jobs created to protect citizens from danger can be helpful.

Spending doesn’t stimulate the economy anymore than a shot of caffeine gets you through a day. The initial shock is seen, but the crash from that high is much worse. You’ll find that even New Keynesians agree with that.

What increases wealth is increased productivity by way of well-timed capital investment. New Keynesians won’t agree with that.

The problem is the Federal Reserve. As it is now, savings rates are artificially lowered, so credit expands to build capital-intensive goods. But the artificial rates also encourage consumers not to save. All is fine until the Fed slows down credit expansion due to the increased inflation, and businesses find that consumers don’t have the money or the credit to afford the big-ticket items.

Credit is tapped out from before, and there is a mismatch of supply and demand. More and more business fail and more and more people lose their jobs. That is why manufacturing is hit the hardest, and light consumer goods are always strong.

Bailing out airlines or extending unemployment increases the recession’s impact. Tax cuts makes the opportunity costs of investing cheaper, but we still face the same Fed problems as before.

Private property rights/Hernando de Soto

On balance, de Soto has a good book. But he uses a circular utilitarian/social contract argument for his defense of private property, which he not once offers a formal definition of.

This leads him into some errors, especially those half-dozen pages of praise on Marxist class conflict theory. I also disagree with him that prosperity will naturally follow from respect for private property. What it does do is allow for the best possible chance of growth.

Wealth creations only possible with mind

Mr Krugman, I understand that there is not much physical labor in investing money, yet investment income is no less earned. Choosing where to invest, for how long, and for how much are all decisions that each investor must answer. And this requires the use of the mind, or at least enough intelligence to know who to hire on your behalf.

Writing and teaching — your professions — are by themselves no more exhausting than digging ditches, yet they can be much more valuable. The same is true of investing.

So by downplaying the importance of the mind in creating wealth, you’ve done a disservice to you colleagues and yourself. So go get a shovel.

Voluntary association

Well, good news. You can form any voluntary association you wish under capitalism, which is what is taking place at the Olympics. The only reason I can think you must hate that is if you have your own plan for how to run the world.

From the line “we can do a much better job of organizing humanities endeavors,” I think you do. Please, just don’t implicate me with the use of “we,” as if though I would have a choice.

Creation of property rights

He talks about why they are important in the case of distribution of resources, with labor being one of them. But he has the best explanation for the creation of property rights. He said that if you own your own labor, then you should also own whatever you combine it with. So when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, he couldn’t claim ownership for himself or on behalf of the United States. Only the portions on which he applied his labor (purposefully altered the land for some benefit) and defined a property line (fenced off) is what he could claim.

If you sell your labor, then the person buying the labor gets the property. Therefore, people claiming to sell land on the moon are illegitimate. To make a long story short, that is why the world is not shared.

LLCs

Even if limited liability were eliminated as a characteristic of a corporations by government. A business could still take up contracts with its debtors and creditors to allow for limited liability. It would just be more costly. That’s not even addressing the overwhelming merits of LLCs.

As for the shareholder idea, employees are already stakeholders. Considering an employees aversion to risk and other preference, wanting a company to do good now is much more rewarding than a claim on future profits. And combined with your first idea, I can’t see how anyone would even consider going to work for the majority of American business if they face such downsides. But then again, maybe that’s your goal.

I could go on, but those three suggestions aren’t trying to free people from the coercion of government. Instead they are binding them to it.

Social Contract

Phil says “society has the right.” But let’s get one thing straight, for starters. The concept of society is a metaphor, not an actual acting entity. Only individuals act, independently or in cooperation. Now to the major point:

If rights can be given and then taken away by the whims of society, based on a false collective conscience or for any excuse, then those are no rights at all. Instead they are permission slips. His claim is that a majority can rescind the rights of an opposing minority. Yet that is precisely what the political functions of rights are meant to prevent. As for myself, my existence is not up for public debate or compromise.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote “The Social Contract,” said, “Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.”

He didn’t consider freedom to be independence from the state, rather a complete obedience to it. I contend that rights are provable requirements (actions that must be protected by the government) for a person to live among other people. I have the same rights as any Iraqi or Iranian, and as any man or woman, whether a government recognizes them or not. The purpose of forming this government was to see that it does.

If nothing else, Phil has exposed his true intentions with the line “Of course we will not all agree, so we need a mechanism to reach a compromise.” Yea, a firing squad; that’s the mechanism. The only debate will be over which caliber to use.

Origin of Property Rights

To clarify, this is Rothbard’s ethical argument for the origins of property rights, not his economic argument for their use.

I would agree that Rothbard uses too many assertions in the argument. Nonetheless, it is the best starting point I know of.

The one mistake I see you’ve made is starting from a belief that labor or anything for that matter has intrinsic value. The labor theory of value is an intrinsic theory.

Coal buried in the side of a mountain has no value if no one knows it’s there, for example. It only achieves value once someone attempts of retain it or claim it. In the case of labor, it may have no value if it is used improperly. In fact, it could possibly have a disvalue when used in error. If I go digging for gold in my backyard knowing full well that there is none, then that labor is useless.

Also, value is a subjective, not objective as an intrinsic theory would state. To say something has value, assumes then that there is a valuer and the valuer’s goals. To say otherwise is to claim that a good has value and more must be better, no matter the context. On its face this is not true. The right amount of oxygen (about 20% in the atmosphere) is good, but too much oxygen in the environment can be deadly.