Is up!

Guy Kedem sent me a link to his article Dialogical Libertarianism: Ultimate Foundation of Ethics, which is a Hebrew-language discussion of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics and my estoppel theory of libertarian rights.

For more on argumentation ethics, see my “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” Mises Daily (May 27, 2011) (includes “Discourse Ethics and Liberty: A Skeletal Ebook”). For more on estoppel, see “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12:1 (Spring 1996): 51. Both approaches, and other, related theories, are discussed in my “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12:2 (Fall 1996): 313-26.

From The Meaning of Morality.

As I write in an upcoming paper (“The Ethical Case Against Intellectual Property,” Griffith Law Review, Symposium on Law and Anarchy: Legal Order and the Idea of a Stateless Society (Symposium Editor, Gary Chartier; forthcoming 2012)):

First, as Professor Hoppe has argued, the assignment of ownership to a given resource must not be random, arbitrary, particularistic, or biased, if the property norm is to serve the function of conflict-avoidance.[1] This is because any possible norm designed to avoid conflict must be justified in the context of argumentation, in which participants put forth reasons in support of their proposed norms. The norms proposed in genuine argumentation claim universal acceptability, i.e. they must be universalizable. Reasons must be provided that can in principle be acceptable to both sides as grounded in the nature of things, not merely arbitrary or “particularistic” rules such as “I get to hit you but you do not get to hit me, because I am me and you are you.” Such particularistic norms or reasons are not universalizable; that is, they are not reasons at all, and thus are contrary to the purpose and nature of the activity of justificatory argumentation. B’s claim that he owns his own body and also owns A’s body, while A does not get to own his own body, is an obviously particularistic claim that makes arbitrary distinctions between two otherwise-similar agents, where the distinction is not grounded in any objective difference between A and B.

I’ll be appearing tomorrow on Agora I/O? The Liberty Unconference, at 2pm EDT, at the channel “Open Source Agorism: Prosper Without Patents or Copyrights.” Tune in!

Update: Just finished. The video(s) are below. Here is what is amazing. I was set to do the show, using Justin.tv, but for some reason neither of my MacBooks would work with the Justin.tv interface. I saw an option for “mobile device.” It was 5 minutes to showtime. I quickly downloaded Justin.tv app on my iphone, got out a little iPod tripod I had never used, signed in, hit the record button, and walla–I was on Justin.tv streaming live, using my iphone. I was using my MacBook to watch it live, and to monitor questions typed on a facebook stream by the 45 or so participants. Quite amazing. (There are three videos b/c I had a couple of glitches/crashes and had to re-start my iPhone stream twice.)

Watch live video from Agora I/O: Peaceful Evolution on Justin.tv

Watch live video from Agora I/O: Peaceful Evolution on Justin.tv

Watch live video from Agora I/O: Peaceful Evolution on Justin.tv

This Friday, Sept. 23, at 6pm Easter time, I’ll be teaching a Mises Academy Webinar discussing the America Invents Act, signed into law last Friday by President Obama. I discuss this webinar in a Mises Daily article today: Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?.

In the webinar, I will:

1. summarize the basic problem with patent law from a free-market perspective;
2. present a series of real patent reforms that could make significant improvement in patent law (short of abolition);
3. explain and critique the relevant changes made by the America Invents Act;
4. briefly summarize other imminent IP legislation and treaties on the horizon; and
5. respond to questions from attendees.

As both proponents and opponents of patent law recognize, these issues are of crucial importance for innovation and our economy. If you are interested in learning about the current direction of patent policy, you may find this class of interest.

P.s.: If you are interested in taking this course but cannot afford it, please email me at nskinsella@gmail.com.

uFollow has created a page to index and follow my articles and blogs at Mises and my personal page here: http://www.ufollow.com/authors/stephan.kinsella/. Nice service. I have asked them to update some info and add feeds to my blog posts at C4SIF and The Libertarian Standard too. I dimly recall that I also occasionally blog at other places (Libertarian Papers, Against Monopoly, HansHoppe.com, Property and Freedom Society, KinsellaLaw.com), but let it pass.

As I noted last post, due to some career changes and other things, I’ve been unable to keep up with Slate podcasts as much as in the past (mainly because my commute has largely disappeared). So I’m listening to fewer podcasts but Slate’s Culture Gabfest is still just about my favorite one so I still listen almost every week. I’ve just fallen behind in blogging their, as Metcalf calls them, “SAT words” (BTW one thing that annoys me is–usually yankees–who call that test “the SATs”, plural, instead of “the SAT”).

In the most recent episode, which I listened to today, I noted two words that I was thinking about blogging about–not because they were SAT words but because, it seemed to me, the hosts mispronounced them. The first was “presages,” used by Dana, and pronounced “pree-sayj”, I think. I always thought it was “pres-ij,” and this is the favored pronunciation in the dictionary, though “pri-seyj,” which is close to Dana’s, seems to be an alternate.

Then later in the show, Metcalf mispronounced “desuetude” as “de-SOO-eh-tude” (it should be “deh-SWAY-eh-tude,” as Julia rightly notes). I think I already knew desuetude from its legal usages, and vaguely recall it has an international law usage as well; and I am pretty sure I remember my law professor in London, Rosalyn Higgins (later judge at the International Court of Justice), pronouncing it the proper way.

Anyway, right after Julia corrected Steve, Dana said “here comes the Gray Croissant.” So now I feel self-conscious, but I promise I was gonna blog it before they said that! I thought it was funny Dana joined in the chorus about this response to Steve’s mangling of desuetude, when I had already noted her “presages” use. Heh.

(Here I keep a running collection of the terms from this series of posts.)

• desuetude [SM, CG03-30-11] (mispronounced)
• presages [DS, CG03-30-11] (possibly mispronounced)

As I noted in H.C. Andersen Sculpture, the image at left accompanied my Mises Daily article How We Come To Own Ourselves. I just loved it. Someone at Mises chose it but when I inquired, no one could remember who had done it or where the picture came from.

I started trying to find out more about it. The image file name was something like “andersen father and son”, so some googling finally revealed this to be the work of  sculptor H.C. (Hendrik) Andersen. I have a libertarian book in the works and thought a better picture of this statue might make good cover art for the book. I think it nicely evokes liberty, humanity, freedom, cooperation, love, the natural order, the whole bit. I see it as man becoming man, becoming a self-owner, a homesteader, a rights-bearer. And it’s classical yet modern, and beautiful.

I could not find any better pictures of this statue, but eventually found a few others (see below).

Turns out Anderson’s sculptures are in a special Andersen museum in Rome. I had my friend Roberta Modugno, an Italian scholar, contact the museum for me. She got me the basic info. I then had a Canadian lawyer friend, Daniel Roncari, who speaks Italian, translating for me as I communicated with the museum. Initially I tried to find out if I could purchase a photograph of the sculpture, but they had none. They provided me with a list of approved photographers, and with Roncari’s help I finally hired one. I first paid the museum a fee, then paid the photographer for his services. A few of the photos are below:

Anyway, it turns out the child is a girl, not a boy, and the official name of the sculpture is Nudo maschile con bambina sulle spalle (Male nude with girl on shoulders).

I then decided that instead of using the photograph itself for the cover, to get a stylized painting done based on it–similar in some respects to the style of the art on the cover of Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom, which I had always liked. So I asked my good friend John Wax to do a painting for me. A few months later–it arrived in the mail. Now I’ve had it scanned–see below–and plan to use it for my book cover later this year or 2012.

I was a guest on The Medical Freedom Report Podcast, with host Michael Ostrolenk, earlier this month; it was just been podcast. See below.

Patents & Copyrights: intellectual property rights or monopoly control of ideas?

[27:03] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Why are medical devices protected by patent law while medical procedures are exempt? And what about the government’s use of compulsory licenses to force pharmaceutical companies to produce certain drugs like CIPRO. These are two medical-related examples in a long list of arcane exceptions and arbitrary details written in to intellectual property (IP) law. It is commonly believed that IP rights, such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks are necessary to foster innovation and protect the interests of the people and companies that create new products and ideas. Patent attorney Stephan Kinsella of the Mises Institute, holds an opposite view, and in this podcast with Michael Ostrolenk, discusses the growing movement that views IP law as not only anti-competitive and a barrier to innovation, but also as incompatible with true property rights. Michael and Stephan also talk about the evolution of IP from laws like the 1709 Statute of Queen Ann, an attempt by the monarchy to control the output of book printers, the influence of which carried into the copyright and patent provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

My article, Rethinking IP, was published yesterday on Mises Daily. It details the content and purpose of my upcoming Mises Academy course, “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics,” Mises Academy (March 22, 2011 – April 29, 2011).

This is a 6-week course and will run starting March 22, 2011 (on Tuesday evenings, 9pm EST) and will provide an overview of current intellectual property law and the history and origins of IP. This is the second time I’ve offered this course (the first offering, during Fall 2010, being very successful), and my third Mises Academy course (I am currently teaching Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society). Click here to read my reflections on teaching the Rethinking IP class the first time.

Here is some feedback provided by past students of this course:

“The class (everything) was perfect. Content wasn’t too deep (nor too shallow) – the reviewed material was just brilliant and the “tuning” was great for someone like myself (engineering background – no profound legal/lawyer experience). It provided all the material to really “understand” (instead of “just knowing”) all that was covered which I find always very important in a class.”

“Instruction was very comprehensive and thought provoking. The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked.”

“Learned more then i expected, the professor seemed to really enjoy teaching the class, and the readings provided were excellent. Overall for the cost I was extremely satisfied.”

“Very interesting ideas I was not exposed to. Inexpensive, convenient, good quality.”

“It is a very fascinating topic and I was quite eager to learn about what I.P. is all about. I thought that Professor Kinsella was able to convey complicated issues to us clearly.”

“Professor Kinsella’s enthusiasm and extra links posted showed his true knowledge and interest in the subject. Great to see.”

As noted, live online lectures will be Tuesdays at 9pm EST, with Office Hours later in the week, probably at 7pm London time.

Sign up!

http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/lawliberty/symposia/index.htm

I’ll be a panelist on the “Intellectual Property Law and Policy” panel of Symposium: “Plain Meaning in Context: Can Law Survive its Own Language?”, being put on by New York University School of Law/Journal of Law and Liberty (February 18, 2011). Details below:

The Journal of Law and Liberty is excited to announce our Spring 2011 Symposium entitled “Plain Meaning in Context: Can Law Survive Its Own Language?” will take place on February 18, 2011 in Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South.

Please register here. 7.0 CLE credits will be available to those that attend the full symposium. This program is appropriate for newly admitted attorneys.

Keynote address by Professor Richard Epstein
“Plain Meaning Mostly, Right Mostly: A Modest Theory of Interpretivism”
This talk will address the attitudes toward interpretation that should be taken with constitutional, statutory and contractual materials and argue that the underlying linguistic problems should drive the analysis, and that efforts to tailor rules of interpretation to institutional settings may be useful dramatic flourishes, but in the end only detract for understanding how and why language works.

Panel 1: Generalist Panel
In our introductory panel, discussion will be focused on the broad question: when does plain meaning break down as a concept? Most lawyers and judges agree that the plain meaning of a text can do most, if not all of the interpretive work most of the time. Thus, another question is: why does plain meaning work most of the time? Finally, panelists will be encouraged to provide suggestions for how legal practice can be improved to avoid these interpretive dilemmas.

Moderator:
Professor Burt Neuborne
New York University Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties & Legal Director, Brennan Center for Justice

Speakers:
Professor Scott Soames
University of Southern California Distinguished Professor of Philosophy

Professor Lawrence Solan
Brooklyn Law School Don Forchelli Professor of Law

Professor Peter Tiersma
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Professor of Law & Hon. William Matthew Byrne, Jr. Chair

Panel 2: Administrative Law Panel
In the administrative law context, much work is done resolving ambiguity in statutory authorization for agency action. This panel will be addressing the question: does the Chevron line of cases provide meaningful vindication of Congressional intent. Furthermore, does a Chevron-like solution make any sense in determining the plain meaning of an authorizing statute? More broadly, this panel will address the institutional question of whether courts are uniquely-positioned semantic detectives, or whether they are on an equal footing with other possible actors.

Introduction: “Why Chevron Doesn’t Matter”
Professor Samuel Estreicher
New York University Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law
Director, Center for Labor and Employment Law
Co-Director, Dwight D. Opperman Institute for Judicial Administration

Moderator:
Professor Roderick Hills
New York University William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law

Speakers:
Professor Hanah Volokh
Emory University School of Law Visiting Assistant Professor

Professor Glen Staszweski
Michigan State University College of Law A.J. Thomas Faculty Scholar, Associate Dean for Research, and Associate Professor of Law

Panel 3: Intellectual Property Law Panel
One of the areas where context for meaning seriously matters is in intellectual property. The precise meaning of a symbol has huge implications for interpreting patent scope, for deciding when to enforce trademarks, and in determining whether or not something is “fair use” for copyright purposes, in the art context and elsewhere. This panel will focus on areas in IP where determining the plain meaning of a symbol is difficult, with suggestions for how to improve and clarify existing law, and thoughts on which institutional actors are best suited to make interpretive determinations.

Moderator:
Professor Amy Adler
New York University Emily Kempin Professor of Law

Speakers:
Professor Barton Beebe
New York University Professor of Law

Mr. Stephan Kinsella
Ludwig von Mises Institute Senior Fellow, Libertarian Papers Founder & Editor, Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom Founder & Director and Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. General Counsel

Professor Kristen Osenga
University of Richmond Associate Professor of Law

Schedule of Events:

8:30 – 9:00 Registration and Breakfast
9:00 – 9:15 Opening Remarks
9:15 – 11:00 Panel 1: Generalist Panel
11:00 – 12:30 Panel 2: Administrative Law Panel
12:30 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:00 Keynote Address by Professor Richard Epstein
2:00 – 3:30 Panel 3: Intellectual Property Law Panel
3:30 – 4:00 Closing Remarks

Yesterday I was a Guest panelist on Denise Howell’s This Week in Law, Episode 97, entitled “God Creates. We Patent.” TWiL is part of Leo Laporte’s impressive and growing private TWiT (This Week in Tech) netcast network (I regularly listen to the TWiT network’s This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and TWiL, in addition to my some of my other favorite podcasts, such as Mises podcasts, Lew Rockwell, and the Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest.)

In addition to Howell and me, there were two other IP/tech lawyers. We had a very civil and wide-ranging discussion of a number of topics, from the Google vs. Bing “search cheating” dispute, Internet access rights as “human rights,” abolishing IP and gene patents, defensive patent publishing, lawyers as vigorous representatives of their clients’ interests, and more (most of the topics we discussed are linked on Howell’s Delicious bookmarks page for that episode).

I already knew Howell was a very good host, having seen the show before, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how tolerant and even libertarian-leaning the other lawyers were of my very radical anti-state, anti-IP views. We had a very good conversation and the other panelists were very receptive to my outspoken libertarian stance. Maybe there is hope!

The video is below; it’s also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show.

[Mises crosspost]

The Mises Institute has just published I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (compiled by Walter Block; Mises Institute 2010). It contains my own entry, “Being a Libertarian” (previoulsy published as How I Became A Libertarian, December 18, 2002, LewRockwell.com).

[TLS crosspost]

Re: U.K. Fee-Rise Vote Passes Amid Student Protests. Protesting what? Having to pay a higher percentage of their subsidized “education”? Screw that. Tuition should be raised until the local college bars start shutting down. Then we know students are really hurting.

This was a Texas Lawyer piece from early 2009 concerning an interesting development at the beginning of my legal career in 1991-92, as a result of the last recession. Wait, make that three recessions ago. This explains how I ended up getting an LL.M. in London.

Past, Present and Future: Survival Stories of Lawyers

By Brenda Sapino Jeffreys and Miriam Rozen

Texas Lawyer

April 27, 2009

Thompson & Knight partner Paul Comeaux Image: Mark Graham

Editor’s note: These are grim times for law students and associates, with Texas firms laying off lawyers, cutting summer associate programs and deferring start dates for incoming first-year associates due to a troubled economy. So Texas Lawyer decided to talk with attorneys who have experienced tough economic times in the past and those dealing with the current fallout to put a face to what’s happening in the legal employment market.

BigTex firms have scaled back before because of economic conditions. In 1991, for instance, Dallas firm Jackson Walker asked a number of its incoming first-year associates to consider a one-year deferment in

Stephan Kinsella, general counsel at Applied Optoelectronics Inc. in Sugar Land Image: Courtesy Stephan Kinsella

exchange for a stipend. Two lawyers who took the firm up on that offer say it turned out to be a positive experience and helped boost their careers. But does the past offer lessons for today’s associates? We talked to a lawyer laid off from a BigTex firm

who’s hunting for a new job, as well as to a Bracewell & Giuliani associate who transferred to the New York City office when she noticed her Houston corporate practice was slowing down. Here are their stories.

Europe or Bust

Friends Paul Comeaux and Stephan Kinsella were preparing to graduate from Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1991 and start work as first-year associates at Jackson Walker in Houston when they received a tempting offer from the firm: If they deferred their start date for a year, the firm would pay them $21,000.

While $21,000 doesn’t sound like much today — and it was only a net of $14,000 because it included a $7,000 acceptance bonus — Comeaux notes that his first-year starting salary was $55,000. That’s about a third of the current starting salaries for first-year lawyers at BigTex firms.

“They had too many lawyers coming in,” Kinsella says, noting that Jackson Walker wanted up to 15 of the incoming associates to take the deferment, and he recalls that about a dozen did.

Kinsella says he and Comeaux discussed their options, and both decided to take the deferment and use the time to get an LL.M. degree in international law from King’s College at the University of London.

“We both jointly decided to take the deal, but we were afraid for our jobs. We were afraid that if we didn’t do something productive, we didn’t know what would happen,” Comeaux recalls. “What finally made the decision for me was, ‘Do I want to be a lawyer 20 years from now, or practicing for 19 years and having spent a year in London?’ ”

After graduating from law school, Comeaux says he and Kinsella spent a month backpacking around Europe and then took classes in London from September 1991 through July 1992.

They both took out extra student loans to pay for the advanced degree. Comeaux recalls it was about $15,000.

“It was a great year. I made a lot of friends,” Comeaux says.

Both lawyers started work at Jackson Walker in the fall of 1992. Comeaux, a real estate lawyer, says he left the firm after he started dating a lawyer at Jackson Walker’s Dallas office who later became his wife. Because of the firm’s anti-nepotism policy, he took a job in 1996 at Thompson & Knight, where he is now a partner.

Kinsella also started at Jackson Walker in 1992. But after moving to Philadelphia in 1994 where his wife had a job offer and eventually working as an associate with Duane Morris there, he moved back to Houston in 1997 and opened Duane Morris’ Houston office. In 2000, after making partner at Duane Morris, Kinsella, an intellectual property attorney, became general counsel at Applied Optoelectronics Inc. in Sugar Land.

Comeaux and Kinsella each say they made the right call in 1991. Both also say they would advise lawyers facing a mandatory deferment today to take advantage of the time to improve their skills.

But Comeaux says he probably wouldn’t do the same today, because the economic conditions are different from the early 1990s recession, and many firms are suffering more than Jackson Walker did back in 1991 when too many students accepted first-year associate offers at the firm. Back then, Comeaux says, firms were feeling the pinch of a slowdown in real estate work, but other sections were busy then, which isn’t necessarily the situation today with the tepid lending and deals market.

“My advice would be [do] not take the deferral, and take the job, and work real hard. . . . It’s hard to tell whether a big law firm is going to look the same three or four years from now. It makes more sense to jump in and get the experience now,” he says.

Kinsella says, “Well, when you get the call from the firm, you kind of freak out. You have the choice: Do I start work on time and let 10 other people take the offer? Or do I take the offer and take a year off and make myself more marketable? . . . In my mind, if you can afford it, you definitely should do it, but you probably should do something to make yourself a little more marketable.”

From Maternity Leave to Layoff

When an associate with more than five years of experience took maternity leave from her BigTex firm in Dallas in September 2008, the nation’s economy didn’t prompt worries for her growing family. Just a month earlier her lawyer-husband had felt secure enough about their household finances that he had quit his job at a smaller firm and launched a solo practice.

But by November 2008, when she was still on maternity leave with her new baby and also caring for her first child, a 2-year-old, the associate heard disquieting news from the office: Associates were being asked to leave. By the time she completed her maternity leave and returned to work in January, “The environment was very different than when I had left,” recalls the associate, who requests anonymity.

On her first day back at work, colleagues told her about rumors of additional layoffs. “Several people told me that hours were being looked at very carefully,” she says.

Some of the firm’s lawyers who previously were laid off warned her, “If there is some work, you best be the first one in line to get it.”

Then, in early March, two partners from her finance and banking practice group came to her office door to tell her the firm no longer needed her services. Not entirely surprised by the layoff, the associate says, she recalls saying to the two partners: “Thank you for the information,” followed by, “Do you know of anybody who is hiring?”

She had a month’s pay coming, and the firm didn’t care if she came to the office during that month or just stayed home. She decided to go to the office because she thought it would be a good place from which to network and look for work.

As of Texas Lawyer ‘spresstime on April 23, she had finished her last day at the firm and gone to five interviews. She has no full-time, salaried job yet, but she is working part-time on an hourly basis for a solo practitioner who handles hedge fund regulatory matters, a growth practice these days.

Her story resembles that of other laid-off lawyers in Texas, where firms such as Houston’s Andrews Kurth and Dallas’ Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, Gardere Wynne Sewell, and Winstead have sent attorneys packing over the past four months.

But long before she was laid off, the associate says she had developed a realistic view of her future at her firm, one of the largest in the state, and one which had its financial fortunes slip in 2008.

“I knew I wasn’t on the fast track for partnership,” she says. She had spent her entire career at the firm, working in the finance and banking department. She liked the transactional work and “the people in her section,” but she knew the practice historically had been slower than others at the firm.

“Through my career, we have been light on hours,” she says. “We had a lot of clients, but that doesn’t mean they send us a lot of work.”

At present, her full focus is on finding employment.

“I have two very young children, and I am the primary breadwinner, and I supply the health benefits,” she says.

The evening after her layoff, she began polishing her résumé. In the past, she had talked to headhunters who called, even though she wasn’t looking for a new job, but she says she had noticed since about January that the headhunters had stopped calling. Now she was calling them.

She also received help from soon-to-be former colleagues.

The day she was laid off, one of the partners at her firm called a friend who is a partner in another firm to ask about opportunities there for the associate. The other firm’s partner called her back the next day and said, “What are you doing right now?”

“Working,” she told him.

“No, you are not,” he replied. “You are worrying. Why don’t you come over here right away, so we can talk about a job?”

Believing she couldn’t afford to turn him down, she agreed to make the appointment, hung up the phone, then panicked.

Wearing clothes appropriate for casual Fridays, she wasn’t dressed for a job interview at a firm. She decided to improvise and popped her head into a colleague’s office to ask if she could borrow the black jacket hanging on the back of her door.

The colleague agreed and several other female co-workers, including one partner, offered to swap clothes. One took the dress shirt off her back to give to the associate, another loaned her the dress pants she was wearing and a third offered jewelry.

“There really are a lot of really great people that have helped me,” she says.

The interview did not lead to a job. Now the former associate is looking for an in-house position. She has had four interviews and has been called back for a second interview at one company. She hopes to get an offer soon.

At her interviews, she has relied on the truth.

“I have been very honest about the fact that I was laid off and why,” she says. “Just about everybody has been very receptive to that. I don’t think people have held that against me.”

Her husband, she says, has tried to pick up the slack, taking cases as a solo that he might have rejected if she hadn’t lost her job. “He is looking at everything,” she says. So is she.

In a New York Minute

Shannon Weinberg, a fourth-year associate with Bracewell & Giuliani, is a Texan who had never lived anywhere else until the economic downturn. She graduated from the University of Texas in Austin in 1997 and earned her law degree from South Texas College of Law in 2005. After graduation, she joined Bracewell’s Houston office.

But a slowdown in her corporate practice area in February made her think about creating a different future in New York City.

Mark C. Evans, Bracewell’s managing partner, says a combination of the slow times recently in Houston’s corporate practice and the still-robust work in the firm’s New York office led him to agree to Weinberg’s request that she move north.

“She had expressed an interest in moving to the people she worked with, and they were busy there and slower here. I think it’s working out very well,” he says. “Over time, she might recruit some others.”

Weinberg says she has taken a shine to the Big Apple despite the snowstorm that greeted her on her first day. The firm gave her time to study for and take the New York state bar examination and gave her a pay increase to offset Manhattan’s higher cost of living. She found a place to live easily, she says, which shows how much the financial crisis has changed the New York real estate market. She sold her car, which was useless in Manhattan, and is using firm-subsidized Metropolitan Transportation Authority tickets on the subways.

In Houston, she worked largely on transactions for public companies in the capital markets. In New York, she has kept busy with private equity acquisitions of distressed assets. “It’s extremely busy here,” she says.

Will Evans send more associates from Houston to New York? Maybe, but not immediately, he says. As it happens, the firm’s corporate practice in Houston has begun to hum again. He has found that in New York, where many local firms laid off hundreds of associates, Bracewell has attractive hiring opportunities. He says the firm recently hired a former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom associate who, like Weinberg, was a fourth-year associate. But lucky for Weinberg and her big-city dreams, Evans says, there is enough work in New York to keep Weinberg and the former Skadden associate busy.

My two recent LRC posts. For other posts on the antics of the hilarious Objectivists, see here and here.

Re: The Latest Objectivism Schism: Peikoff vs. McCaskey

The Latest Objectivism Schism: Peikoff vs. McCaskey

Love this LRC ad. LOVE it. Would love to buy this tee-shirt.

In Sam Harris is Nonsensical in Principle, one “Joel Grus” writes:

In my younger days, when I was full of libertarian bluster, I used to formulate arguments in terms of “Natural Rights.” Murder was Wrong (with a capital ‘W’) because it violated your “right to life.” I used to go on like this all day, until finally my friend Cesar (I think) kindly pointed out that I was full of shit.

I’m still full of libertarian bluster, I suppose, although you’d never in a million years catch me arguing based on “natural rights,” which (after my youthful indiscretions) I came to realize represent either religious (“they’re the rights god gave us”) or pseudo-religious (“they’re self-evident!”) attempts to create an “objective” basis for one’s policy preferences. (As a general rule, if most people refuse to agree with a proposition even after you’ve made your best case for it, it’s not “self-evident.”)

There’s no shortage of people who want an “objective” basis for their policy preferences. It turns them from opinions (e.g. “it’s my opinion that we should pay teachers more”) or hypothetical imperatives (e.g. “if we want to make teaching a more attractive profession, we should pay teachers more”) or self-interest (e.g. “speaking as a teacher, we should pay teachers more”) into “facts” (e.g. “it’s a fact that we should pay teachers more”) and “morals” (e.g. “if you don’t think we should pay teachers more, you’re a moral reprobate”). You can argue against opinions, but you can’t argue against facts! You can rail against self-interest, but not against morals!

It’s a nice sleight of hand when you can pull it off. Unfortunately, you usually can’t. Neither can Sam Harris, who has a new book out claiming that “science has a universal moral code.”

This, to me, shows one problem with the natural law type thinking about libertarianism, just as it shows, by analogy, what is wrong with self-delusional rah rah cheerleading of the typical political activist. If you adopt the idea that libertarianism is only worth holding if you can Prove Natural Rights, then you are vulnerable to dejection and relativism if you start to see problems with arguments for natural law. (And there are significant problems with natural law/natural rights arguments, the is-ought gap being one of them; the diffuseness of human nature being another.)¹

Far better, in my opinion, to simply recognize that one can only be a libertarian if one for some reason values the grundnorms that lie at its base. No matter how powerful are argument for why you should value the libertarian grundnorms, if you do not value them, you will simply not be a libertarian. So what makes you a libertarian is the fact that you do adopt and have certain core values, principles, beliefs, and preferences. Arguments for them are only a partial causal factor, and only for some people–that is, for some people, a good argument for natural rights may be why they do value them, but it is their valuing them that makes them libertarian, not the arguments–some people have these values without the arguments being the reason, and some people are aware of the arguments but reject libertarianism anyway. Arguments are neither necessary nor sufficient for someone to adopt libertarian meta-values. It is adopting them that matters, and, really, in a sense, all that matters.² If you recognize this and face it frontally without blinking or being a whiner who wants some safety net or cosmic figure or argument to hold your hand, then you won’t be dispirited if you see that there may be problems going from ought to is; your very identity and character is defined by being someone who happens to value peace, civility, cooperation, prosperity, fairness, decency, and so on. If someone says to me that there is no good proof for why I should value peace, I yawn–I don’t care. I am libertarian because I choose to be.³

Likewise, if you are an activist because you have been given false hopes that we can win soon, etc., as soon as you start to see reality you are more prone to just tossing it all and becoming a cynical and maybe even anti-libertarian.⁴ If you are an activist for property Rothbardian reasons–short-run pessimist, but “long run optimist,”⁵ then you can stick with it in the long run; you do it because its part of who you are: you are a person who loves justice and wants to fight on its side even if you don’t have a concrete victory assured on the morrow.⁶ You are like the man who would die to save his family, or the captain who would go down with his ship. You are a person of integrity and lasting values, not someone pouring their energy into helping the Republicans get the Contract With America enacted.

Returning to Grus: one reason he may have the views he does is that he seems to have a crude and naive scientistic monism. He adopts the prevailing view about what true “science” is–it’s empirically testable and falsifiable claims about causal law only; thus, economic, morality, etc. are all “unscientific”:

If you believe that science can make a statement that (say) child abuse is wrong in some absolute sense, then you’re tacitly accepting that new evidence might reveal that child abuse is not actually wrong. If you’re not open to that possibility, then you’re not doing science. You can call it science, but it’s not science.

Maybe he [Sam Harris] doesn’t care. (Or maybe he’s open to the possibility that child abuse might be “moral,” but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.) Maybe he’s only interested in the name:

But whether morality becomes a proper branch of science is not really the point. Is economics a true science yet?

I’m not sure whether economics is a “true science.” But most honest economists are forthright that the scientific part of what they do is only the positive part. Economics can tell you which allocation rules satisfy certain “fairness” criteria. But it can’t tell you which criteria are the correct ones.

Look, I think murder is awful. But I don’t pretend that this is some sort of scientific judgment. It’s my opinion, and luckily most everyone else agrees with me.

You know what else is awful? Putting people in jail because they like to use drugs. It’s wicked, it’s evil, it’s barbaric, it’s disgusting, it’s shameful, it’s every bad adjective you could apply to it. This is as plainly obvious to me as is my feeling that murder is awful. And I’m not just talking marijuana. I’m talking heroin, cocaine, opium, you name it. Somehow, though, most people disagree with me. Most scientific people disagree with me. Of course, I’m right and they’re wrong. But science is powerless to settle this dispute. Science tells you what drugs do and what happens when you mix them and how to get a better high. Science tells you the likely consequences of your policy of throwing drug users in prison. But science doesn’t tell you whether it’s evil to throw drug users in prison. Science can’t tell you whether it’s evil to throw drug users in prison. Science can’t tell you how to find “peaks” on a “moral landscape” because there’s no such thing as a “moral landscape.”

Economics is of course a science–at least, genuine (Austrian) economics is. In fact, it’s a “harder” science than even physics is since it yields apodictically true knowledge whereas physics and the natural sciences yield only tentative, incomplete, never-final, always-subject-to-revision knowledge about causal laws. If it is true that Hume’s is-ought dichotomy prevents the strict derivation of moral principles and norms from pure facts, recognizing the nature of norms as having to rest on more fundamental norms still leaves open a logical and rigorous science of interpersonal ethics, to-wit: in economics we start with certain incontestable (apriori) propositions (related to human action and its categories), and we explicitly introduce certain contingent facts to make the inquiry interesting (say, we posit a society with money instead of a barter society).

1. See The Trouble with Feser (on Libertarianism); Woods, Fleming, Chronicles Discussion; Slavery, Inalienability, Economics, and Ethics; and my comment in the post “Intellectual Property and the Structure of Human Action”; on the is-ought gap, see Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 163.
2. For my views on libertarian grundnorms, see What Libertarianism Is, in particular n. 14 and associated text; also “The Division of Labor as the Source of Grundnorms and Rights” and “Empathy and the Source of Rights“; also see The Twelve Virtues of Rationality; Utilitarianism vs. Consequentialism.
3. See my Why I’m a Libertarian — or, Why Libertarianism is Beautiful; also The Irrelevance of the Impossibility of Anarcho-Libertarianism and its cross-post on my site
4. See my The Trouble with Libertarian Activism.
5. See Rothbard’s Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty
6. Again, see my Why I’m a Libertarian — or, Why Libertarianism is Beautiful; also The Irrelevance of the Impossibility of Anarcho-Libertarianism and its cross-post on my site

I’m looking for a few good examples of how the US has pushed various emerging economies to adopt Western/American style statist measures in the guise of teaching the benighted states how to set up a modern “capitalist” economy. The examples that come to mind (but I don’t have clear examples/refernces for all of them) include:

• antitrust law
• income tax withholding
• anti-bribery laws
• narcotics regulations
• IP law/ACTA/WTO

I have in mind the way the US has “helped” Iraq “rebuild,” as well as various measures such as the Marshall Plan and strings attached thereto; strings attached to international loans; various programs to “help” the former Soviet/communist countries after 1991 or so such as the ABA CEELI program, BISNIS, etc. where they are encouraged to adopt the Western “rule of law” (sic).

I’m looking for American-style state practices pushed on other countries, where because of the conflation of the US as a modern capitalist society, the statist measures foisted on other countries could be erroneously attributed to or blamed on capitalism instead of American statism itself.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

From Jan. 1996, when I lived in Philadelphia (related stories: Breakin’ the Law; Poodles Bite; Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me; also Ben-Gay and Things not to say to a first-time mom):

Tonight, Wednesday night, around 1 1 : 30 p.m., I took Muffy [our Cocker Spaniel] out the basement door to walk her before going to bed. It was very dark out, as you can imagine, and was very quiet, and there was white all around, since the yards have been covered with snow since the last snowfall a couple weeks ago, which hasn’t yet melted. Well, I’m down there waiting inside the door (since it’s cold out), and Muff’s not back yet. So I peer outside and see her sort of straining and clambering on the snow just a few inches from the patio, but on the sloping incline of the yard, as it starts its pretty steep slope way down to the fence at the treeline about a 100 feet down. She was slipping on the surface of the (hardened) snow, and was trying not to slide downhill, and couldn’t make progress uphill even over the little flower bed (itself also covered with icy snow) to the patio. The Muff was stranded.

I was in my flannel pajamas–new green-blue plaid ones Skid and Smidge got me this Xmas–and only my socks, so I couldn’t go out to get her and help her in. So I called to her, and she tried a couple times to climb up but failed, and finally gave up, just standing there. So I went upstairs and put on these snow boots I tramp around in when I need to run outside, and went back down to the basement to get her. And as I got to her, my feet started to slide. It seems like my entire back yard has turned, this afternoon and evening (perhaps with a light freezing drizzle) into a solid sheet of ice. Not snow, but ice. So here I am, 11:30 pm, with a bad cold or perhaps bronchitis, freezing outside, dark, in Yankeeland, in my fucking flannel pajamas, and I land on my ass and start sliding down my back yard. I am rolling and twisting, trying to upright myself, but every time I do this I try to use my hands, which are subjected to very rough treatment by that hard ice zipping by. I knock down a small treelet sticking up out the snow. The ice surface is sort of rough, like very rocky sandpaper, and I could feel it through my PJ’S on my butt and back. I finally give up and sort of ball up and slid all the damned way down the yard like a turtle on its back till I almost hit that fence at the bottom, at least 100 feet from the top.

So I get up and think to myself, “look at this shit.” Muffy ‘s standing up there on the ice still, by the patio, probably looking down at me, thinking “and you’re gonna rescue me?” I consider yelling for Cin–’cause I, too, am stranded now–but it won’t work, it won’t help, and plus my chest hurts too much to yell. Plus I might attract the neighbors: “Evenin’, Mistah Spitzah! Might ye be so kind as to fetch that boy with the wench and fo’ wheel drahv and haul me up outta mah back yahd? ” “Eric, darling, it’s that poor Southern boy confounded by our Northern snow again.” No way!

So I considered walking way ’round the perimeter of the low area at which I was in till I got to some perhaps travelable area. Or, yes, maybe, I could sneak over there to that corner with the woods, and follow the woods up, and maybe dash across the short relatively level part of the yard up by my air conditioner unit, and then grab Muffy and hop onto the patio.

But I wasn’t ready to admit yet that I couldn’t just walk up that damned hill. The ice had cracked a little under me where I stood, leaving a rough footprint. So, I stomped my left heel real hard, made an indention, and advanced a step; and repeated this with the right, left, so forth for a few steps. I got about half way up the hill, the ice getting harder to break with each step, more like stomping on plywood. Finally the ice got hard enough or my stomping legs got tired enough, and I stomped but made no indention–just my flat boot on slippery ice, and again! I slid down that fucking yard. Arms flailing wildly–say , that’s a pretty, dark sky above, look at all the stars–cold Yankee wind in my ears, hands flayed by the icy bumps and pits rushing by. The palms of my hands and tips of my fingers are almost bleeding now, and I can barely feel these keyboard keys as I type this.

So then I tried my alternate route–up by the woods, by the a/c, and that finally worked. I grabbed the Muff–still waiting patiently for rescue–almost slipped but jumped to the patio, and after furtively looking around to make sure no neighbors had spied me, I dashed inside. Muffy can wait till the morning to crap.

Good stuff: Open Letter to Journal Reviewers.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for taking the time to serve as a reviewer for the journal to which I have submitted my paper. Thanks, too, for agreeing to serve as the reviewer of my submission in particular. When we serve as reviewers, we do the profession a great service. The integrity of our profession in large measure depends on competent and conscientious blind review. So, once again, I thank you very much.

However, I have noticed in recent years a marked decline in the quality of the referee reports I have received in response to my journal submissions. Now, of course, maybe the way to explain this is that the quality of my work has declined in recent years. I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think this could explain the phenomenon– I’ve seen and received high-quality reviews of poor submissions. These are reviews that, despite the ultimate negative judgment regarding the submission, nonetheless do a good job of explaining the weaknesses of the paper, point to definite defects, raise well-targeted objections to actual claims made in the paper, and give a detailed assessment of where the paper’s argument stands vis-a-vis the state of the art in the literature. In short, a high-quality review is a review of the submitted paper, not an opportunity for the reviewer to react to or muse over the paper’s topic.

So I offer a few simple steps that I urge you to consider taking in preparing your review:

1. Give a definite judgment. If the paper is hopeless, say so. If the paper needs significant revision before it could be even in the ballpark of publishibility, say that. If the paper is out of touch with the current literature, say (roughly) what that literature is. If the paper is sound, but not that interesting, say it. And be clear about whether you recommend R&R rather than conditional acceptance. And so on.

2. Before launching into your critical analysis of my paper, provide a paragraph summary of what you take to be its main thesis and argument. This is easy to do, and it’s a great help to the author (I suspect it helps the editor as well). It helps the author to see whether your ultimate judgment regarding the paper is based on a sound reading of it. It helps the author to gauge whether he or she has been clear enough in writing it. Sometimes reviewers reject papers that they misunderstand, and sometimes this misunderstanding is due to the author’s carelessness in framing the paper. Sometimes reviewers misunderstand the paper in such a way that their critical comments are entirely beside the point. Sometimes a R&R decision is based on reviewers who misunderstood the paper; in this case, their suggestions for revision are really suggestions for writing a different paper. And it takes authors a lot of time to figure out how to interpret a reviewer’s comments. A lot of time could be saved if you just state up front what you understand the paper to be about. It’s easy.

3. In giving your critical analysis, you should of course be as forceful as possible, no matter what ultimate decision you recommend. But please be as specific as possible. When you attribute to the author a claim that you think is objectionable, identify the place in the paper where the author makes the claim. And whenever possible, quote what the author actually says. Do not relay on your impressions or your rough sense of what the author claims.

4. Review the paper that the author has written. Whether you believe that some other approach than the one the author has taken is superior is irrelevant. In fact, it’s not clear what one means by terms like “approach,” “methodology,” “discourse,” or “tradition.” It is not clearly a criticism of a paper to say that the author “should consider joining a different conversation.” Nor is it yet a criticism of a paper to say that the author “is dealing with a narrow range of interlocutors.” These remarks are little more than cryptic snobbery unless you say something about how the range of interlocutors is unduly narrow or that the “conversation” that the author is engaging in has been exhausted or proven fruitless. In other words, resist the compulsion to go “meta.” A review for a journal submission is not the place to take out your aggressions concerning the state of the profession. If you can’t do this, you should decline invitations to review.

It seems to me that these steps don’t demand too much. They can be easily satisfied in the usual a three to five paragraph review.

Sincerely,

Author

No, not Obama: Bill Clinton, who was, after all, the nation’s first black president. Here he is, as I predicted here.

From my facebook status: “Now that Sen. Byrd, who apparently never held a real job, has assumed room temperature, I hope Obama says something nice about his fellow state-critter, so that we can do a blogpost with the headline FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT EULOGIZES KLANSMAN.”

I chimed in too:

***

Klein has an excellent point. Röpke is right that we just have to be careful when we use the term. We have to distinguish it from crony-capitalism or corporatism. Clearly “capitalism” denotes an important aspect of the economy of an advanced libertarian social order. We need words and concepts to understand and discuss this.

See also Jeff Tucker’s Why Klein’s Book Is an Event to Celebrate. From Klein’s blog:

The Capitalist and The Entrepreneur: Available Now!

13 May 2010
| Peter Klein |
My new book, The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets (Mises Institute, 2010), is now available. For a limited time, you can get it for just $15 — a bargain at half the price! Actually, the resource-constrained among you can read the Full Monty here, free of charge. A PDF version is also available. A promotional essay appears today on Mises.org.

The editorial and production staff did a terrific job, and I’m thrilled with the volume’s look and feel. The contents aren’t bad either!

Order two or more and I will personally send you a set of Ginsu knives.

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I was a guest on the May 9, 2010 episode of BlogTalkRadio’s show Anarchy Time, hosted by James Cox. Other guests included C4SS Development Specialist Mariana Evica, Wilt Alston, and Stefan Molyneux. (Local MP3.)

TokyoTom, enviro-global-warming anti-corporation libertarian, in Risk-shifting, BP and those nasty enviros, has some criticisms of Lew Rockwell’s Feel Sorry for BP?

1. “It should be obvious that BP is by far the leading victim, but I’ve yet to see a single expression of sadness for the company and its losses.”

BP is the leading “victim”? Victim of what/who? Sure, they’re a target (1) for all manner of evil people whose livelihoods or enjoyment of their property or common property are directly or indirectly affected by the spill, (2) for evil enviro groups (relatively well-off citizens who profess to care about how well/poorly government manages the use of “common resources” by resource extraction industries), and (3) for evil governments and politicians looking to enhance their own authority/careers. But these are all a consequence of the accident, and not a cause of it. Has BP been defrauded, tricked or strong-armed into drilling anywhere? Is BP the “victim” of its own choices?

Even if one concedes that some criticisms of BP will be unfair, how can BP possibly be cast as the LEADING victim – as opposed to all of the others whose livelihoods or property are drastically affected by this incident, which they had no control over whatsoever?

BP is a victim in the sense that a terrible tragedy just happened to it, and it’s gonna cost it dearly. It’s the leading victim assuming the others damaged are going to be compensated from BP. The point is it’s a bad thing that’s happened to it.Why not feel sorry for them?

2. “The incident is a tragedy for BP and all the subcontractors involved. It will probably wreck the company”

The incident will certainly be costly for the firms involved, but the firms will survive the death of employees, and there is certainly very little risk indeed that BP will be “wrecked” by the spill. Far from it; it is unlikely that BP will even bear the principal costs of cleanup efforts, much less the economic damages to third parties that federal law apparently caps at $75 million.

Have you not heard of “INSURANCE”? A little thinking (and Googling) would tell you that BP (and its subcontractors) has plenty of it. To the extent BP is NOT insured, it has ample capability to self-insure, unlike all of the fishermen, oystermen and those in the tourist industry who are feeling significant impacts. Insurers will bear the primary burdemn, not BP.

Obama has threatened BP and they have caved in, agreeing to pay above the $75M cap. And the cap was in exchange for a tax on oil companies to be put into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for such emergencies–do you think that BP will be able to get that tax refunded? Naah.

3. “we might ask who is happy about the disaster: 1. the environmentalists, with their fear mongering and hatred of modern life”

Sorry, but this is perverse: enviros might feel that they have been proven right – and you might be annoyed that they can make such a claim – but they certainly aren’t “happy” with any of the loss of life, damage to property or livelihoods of the little guy (or of bigger property owners), or to a more pristine marine environment that they value.

Aren’t happy? Have you seen, say, Spill Baby Spill, Boycott BP! ? And another tolerant, caring liberal on Slate’s Political Gabfest Facebook page said, “I don’t get the calls for pity. Boohoo another oil giant might have bankrupted itself.” These misanthropic sickos oppose nuclear power, which makes fossil fuels necessary. They act like they hate BP. Why? For making a mistake? Mistakes are inevitable. For drilling for oil? Why? We need oil.

Your projection of happiness at damages to common resources/private property and hatred of modern life is especially perverse, given your own explicit recognition that government ownership/mismanagement of commons, and setting of limits on liability both skew the incentives BP faces to avoid damage, and limit the ability of others (resource users and evil enviros) to directly protect or negotiate their own interests. Why is the negative role played by government any reason to bash others who use or care about the “commons”?

No libertarian is in favor of liability caps. What is he talking about?

We have seen Austrians – sympathetic to the costs to real people in the rest of the economy – rightly call for an end to a fiat currency, central banking and to moral-hazard-enabling deposit insurance and oversight of banks. In an April 9 post by Kevin Dowd on the financial crisis, we even had a call “to remove limited liability: we should abolish the limited-liability statutes and give the bankers the strongest possible incentives to look after our money properly” – but Dowd’s comments simply echoed in the Sounds of Silence. Why do you and others refuse to look at the risk-shifting and moral hazard that is implicit in the very grant of a limited liability corporate charter – not only in banking, but in oil exploration and other parts of the economy?

Removing artificial caps on liability has nothing to do with the limited liability of passive shareholders in a corporation. Their liability is limited simply because they are not causally responsible for the torts of employees of the company in which they hold shares.

6. Finally, like BP, you have understated the degree of the oil leakage; BP initially estimated 1000 bpd, but later agreed with estimates by others that the leak is at least about 25,000 bpd, with risks of an even larger blowout.

So what? It is what it is.

Good enough for Rothbard, good enough for me.

The movement that I’m in favor of is a movement of libertarians who do not substitute whim for reason. Now some of them do, obviously, and I’m against that. I’m in favor of reason over whim. As far as I’m concerned, and I think the rest of the movement, too, we are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can’t really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism.

My posts Left-Libertarians Admit Opposition to “Capitalism” is Substantive and Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism stirred up the left-libosphere–see posts by “Brainpolice” (most lefties like to use nyms), The Public Face of Libertarianism and Chris George’s Against Libertarian Sectarianism. George asks, “who made you King of Libertarianism?” Well, a smart-ass answer might be, I’m the guy who kicked Bill Maher out of the libertarian movement, that’s who. A more serious answer is–well, I’ve written well-received and influential works on a variety of areas of libertarian theory (rights, punishment, property theory, contracts, causation, IP); I’ve been a libertarian for over 25 years and have been publishing and active for about 20; I have the respect of people associated with the Mises Institute, arguably the most important set of free market and libertarian thinkers on the planet, and in fact am a Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute, as well as a member of the Advisory Panel of the Center for a Stateless Society; I helped found the Property and Freedom Society (and created and run its website); I created and run the sites of Walter Block and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, two seminal Austro-libertarian thinkers; I was book review editor for the Journal of Libertarian Studies; I founded Libertarian Papers; I helped start The Libertarian Standard; I helped get Reason Papers online; I won the Alford prize. I’ve devoted a good deal of over half my life to the principles of libertarianism. But other than that, not much. Not as much as Chris George, to be sure.

But a real answer is: I have no more authority than any other self-proclaimed libertarian. I have my opinions; they have theirs. We all have opinions on various issues and approaches.

Two more replies were those of Roman Pearah, aka “Neverfox”: More Things, Horatio and Hmmm…No, Sir. I Don’t Like It. I’ll reply here to the former, briefly:

I was asked by a few interested people to expand on my last post. There was also some discussion that took place on Facebook around Stephan Kinsella’s reply. At one point in that discussion, Stephan asked me a question that I think gets at the heart of the matter. I thought I would answer it here (with Stephan’s blessing) to kill two birds with one stone.

When we are careful to define capitalism in a non-crony, non-corporatist way, to refer to private ownership of the means of production — and you say you are STILL against it, how can this not be construed as unlibertarian? Please explain.

-Stephan Kinsella, in conversation on Facebook

The short answer is that it should be obvious from the fact that I call myself a “free market anti-capitalist” that I’m not against “private ownership of the means of production,” assuming it entails what I think it entails.  What I’m against are some of the things that you think it entails. But rather than this meaning that we have two different visions of capitalism, I’m assuming that you wouldn’t call my vision capitalism at all.

Imagine a private property market economy where everyone is self-employed (individually or jointly) in their workplace;

First off, we have to be careful not to over-rely on state classifications; “employment” is somewhat arbitrary. See my post The Over-reliance on State Classifications: “Employee” and “Shareholder”, where I discuss the perils of relying too much on state definitions of ownership. Marriage, shareholder, owner, adult, citizen, money, bank, employer, employee, hobby, …. — so many things are keyed off their classifications. It irks me when libertarians build up their arguments and concepts based on these, as if they are objective and valid distinctions. See also Legitimizing the Corporation and Other Posts.

So in a free market, whether I am a “independent contractor” or “employee” may not have much economic significance. They are both similar. I can hire someone to maintain my computers in my company, or I can outsource it to geeksquad. I can hire HR people, or I can outsource it to Administaff. It doesn’t matter what name you put on it. The basic idea is the same: the company/business pays other people for their services. The degree of oversite may vary; so what. This is a difference in degree.

absolutely no one rents their labor to owners of capital

“rents”? What does this mean? You are already veering into crank ideas. You don’t rent. You sell. If you are “self-employed” presumably you might sell things you make, or services you perform, to other people. If you’re a masseuse then your customers are like your boss. If you’re a doctor, same thing with your patients. Suppose Michael Jackson retains one doctor to stay at his side all the time. There is no fundamental difference between him and the doctor who has hundreds of patients. It’s all just part of a spectrum of people exchanging on the market. To think that there would be no firms, no “employment” type relationships, is groundless and bizarre. Still, I grant you it’s not logically impossible.

(even though there are still owners of capital who sell and rent their goods, i.e. there is still technically “private ownership of the means”); and labor “(in the sense of all the people, managers and blue-collar workers, who work in the firm) receive the profits left from the revenues after the costs are covered.” Would you still call such a society “capitalist”?

Well, I think this is a crankish and false notion of how any advanced economy could function. I suppose you could have a primitive subsistence economy that is free market but there is little capital accumulation, so it’s not very “capitalist”–though what capital there is, is privately owned, so in a sense it’s still “capitalist,” but at the edges, I would think. In the picture you paint above, I am not sure exactly how it’s organized. If there are firms and managers etc., presumably we have factories, mass production, productivity–and that requires capital: factories, machinery, equipment, and so on. Someone owns it. Presumably it’s privately owned. So I guess I’d call that some version of capitalism, but not the normal or expected type.

In any case, as I have said many times, I try to use “capitalism” to refer to an important aspect of an advanced market economy of a free society. If society adopted some kind of bizarre model with no firms, no division and specialization of labor, no significant accumulation of capital, I guess I would not call it capitalist. But so long as it’s free market and libertarian, that’s fine. I just think this is unlikely to occur, and that it would not be very prosperous (which is why it’s unlikely–people would use firms and other institutions for greater productivity).

If you would, then I have not given you enough credit. I’ve obviously misjudged how committed you are to your proposed definition. I will no longer make that mistake with you. I would still think you are making a rather extraordinary claim. I don’t expect many anarcho-capitalists

You may note I call myself an anarcho-libertarian not anarcho-capitalist.

would follow you down that path and I think there is a good reason for that. As David Ellerman put it, “When…the suppliers of capital…are not hiring the workers…it would be odd to call that arrangement a variant of ‘capital-ism.’” For that reason, I wouldn’t start calling myself a capitalist on your account unless I wanted to be widely misunderstood by other anarcho-libertarian capitalists.

I agree with you. But such a society still has private ownership of capital, right? And you need cooperation and specialization and numbers of people to work a lot of this capital, right? So who hires the workers, if not the suppliers of capital? Someone hires them, or pays them–I don’t care if you call it “hiring” or not. And someone private owns the capital, even if it’s the workers themselves. So what? This is a different model than traditional capitalism, I’ll grant you, but both visions of how the free market would be run, how people would exercise their property rights, are compatible with libertarianism.

If I’m correct that you would balk at calling this economy “capitalist,” then it will turn out that your definition is only necessary and not sufficient to capture what you mean by “capitalism.” What I think you mean by “capitalism” is private ownership of the means of production and certain “features…that would…accompany” it, e.g.

the various catallactic aspects of a libertarian society, such as: division and specialization of labor, firms, (non-state-chartered) “corporations,” bosses, hierarchies, private ownership of the means of production (whatever label you guys will finally let us use for this), international and long-distance trade, industrialism, commerce, profit motive, “absentee ownership,” and the like…

Stephan Kinsella, comment on “Should Libetarians Oppose ‘Capitalism’?”

Even here, “private ownership of the means of production” is one thing in the list.

Right. The rest is what we can reasonably expect to develop when people are free. If you don’t think so, then we just have an economic disagreement.

This makes plenty of sense because the phrase is simply too static and one-dimensional to do the work you want it to do. It’s like the tip of an iceberg. You have to unpack a lot of stuff about contract theory, legal theory, ethics etc. Only then do you have the picture of a full-blown system. By accepting this reduction, you create a false choice for the left-libertarian:

But to be clear: qua libertarian I only oppose non-private ownership of capital–that is, state ownership; or a system with no respect for property rights so that there is no private ownership. So long as it’s privately owned, that satisfies me as libertarian–both traditional capitalism, and your (syndicalist?) model. But what I object to is people on your side who say they oppose traditional capitalism as libertarians. To do this they have to sneak in some thickish notions, which is improper IMO. You are free to have a preference for self-sufficiency, non-alienated coop living, antipathy for “bosses,” whatever. You are free to predict that this syndicalist (?) model would arise given freedom. You are wrong, but that is fine. Your preferences are bizarre, to my mind, but whatever. But when you say capitalism (not corporatism–just pure capitalism on a free market) is unlibertarian, you are wrong. That is what I object to.

We need some word for “private ownership of the means of production”. What would you propose?…I think “capitalism” suffices…But the only reason I can think of for a left-libertarian to be reluctant to come up with a term we can use is (a) he thinks “private ownership of the means of production” is not a crucial aspect of any advanced free market order; or (b) he thinks, with the anti-private-property leftish “anarchists” that “private ownership of the means of production” (whatever you call it) is incompatible with libertarian-anarchism.

Stephan Kinsella, comment on “Should Libetarians Oppose ‘Capitalism’?”

Why can’t the left-libertarian simply refuse to let you smuggle in assumptions about the kinds of economies that are compatible with private ownership?

Because they are of course compatible with it. There is nothing unlibertarian about firms, employment, the division of labor. Nothing whatsoever. Even if you don’t like it. Even if, somehow, your worker-system would be more efficient.

Why can’t they think that “private ownership of the means of production” is a crucial aspect of any advanced free market order while at the same time rejecting some or all of the “various catallactic aspects” you listed?

What do you mean, “reject” it? Think it’s unlikely? Okay. Think it’s unlibertarian? Wrong.

The example society above has private ownership as the only kind of ownership yet it doesn’t have the traditional employee-employer relationship or “capitalist” firm. Doesn’t this mean that I can say I’m anti-capitalist without thereby committing myself to rejecting private ownership?

Let’s try to be clear here. Why are you “anti-capitalist” just because you painted a picture of a self-employment society? Are you saying this is what you want? What you predict? Why is it “anti-capitalist” to prefer to be self-employed? Why is it anti-capitalist to think that a self-employment based economy is more (efficient?). I’m not anti-kibbutz. I’m not anti-coop. I’m pro-property. I’m pro-rights. Pro-liberty. I’m also pro-prosperity. I think trade and capital accumulation and productivity are good things because I am not a misanthrope; and I think that given freedom and free markets and property rights, the productive power of people would be unleashed. I think in an advanced economy there would be lots more diversity–and more wealth. People would have more ability to choose a calling over a career. They could be self-employed if they wanted. But I think it’s risible to say there would be no employment, no division and specialization of labor, and so on. Personally I think these things are good. I think the hand-wringing of anguish about “alienation” etc. is Marxian insanity and the sign of a contorted psyche. But to each his own. I think an obsessive desire for everyone to be free of “hierarchies,” “bossism,” etc., an obsessive antipathy towards the business world, is psychologically stunted and almost deranged. But again, to each his own; I think similar things about religious people. So, so what.

Rothbard described Mencken as “The Joyous Libertarian,” a label that could also be applied to Rothbard himself, called by Justin Raimondo “the happy scholar-warrior of liberty.” Yet Rothbard also famously said “hatred is my muse”. By this he meant, I think, hatred of the state and all manifestations of statism. Anti-statism is an essential aspect of libertarianism–anarchists oppose the entire state, root and branch, while minarchists oppose all of the modern state save for a tiny core of vital functions.

One of the most important thinkers on the nature of the state was Franz Oppenheimer, who distinguished between the economic means and the political means, and defined the state as the organization of the political means. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains in his superb Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography:

Franz Oppenheimer is a left-anarchist German sociologist. In The State he distinguishes between the economic (peaceful and productive) and the political (coercive and parasitic) means of wealth acquisition, and explains the state as instrument of domination and exploitation.

As Oppenheimer wrote in his classic work The State:

I mean by [the "State"] that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra economic power. And in contrast to this, I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man …. [from the Introduction]

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. … I propose … to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others “the economic means” for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.” … The state is an organization of the political means. [Ch. 1]

Rothbard was also heavily influenced by Oppenheimer, writing in The Ethics of Liberty:

If the state, then, is a vast engine of institutionalized crime and aggression, the “organization of the political means” to wealth, then this means that the State is a criminal organization.

He goes on (in ch. 22):

But, above all, the crucial monopoly is the State’s control of the use of violence: of the police and armed services, and of the courts—the locus of ultimate decision-making power in disputes over crimes and contracts. Control of the police and the army is particularly important in enforcing and assuring all of the State’s other powers, including the all-important power to extract its revenue by coercion.

For there is one crucially important power inherent in the nature of the State apparatus. All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as “taxation,” although in less regularized epochs it was often known as “tribute.” Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.

If, then, taxation is compulsory, and is therefore indistinguishable from theft, it follows that the State, which subsists on taxation, is a vast criminal organization far more formidable and successful than any “private” Mafia in history. Furthermore, it should be considered criminal not only according to the theory of crime and property rights as set forth in this book, but even according to the common apprehension of mankind, which always considers theft to be a crime. As we have seen above, the nineteenth-century German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer put the matter succinctly when he pointed out that there are two and only two ways of attaining wealth in society: (a) by production and voluntary exchange with others—the method of the free market; and (b)by violent expropriation of the wealth produced by others. The latter is the method of violence and theft. The former benefits all parties involved; the latter parasitically benefits the looting group or class at the expense of the looted. Oppenheimer trenchantly termed the former method of obtaining wealth, “the economic means,” and the latter “the political means.” Oppenheimer then went on brilliantly to define the State as “the organization of the political means.”

As Hoppe noted, Albert Jay Nock was also “influenced by Franz Oppenheimer. In Our Enemy, The State he explains the anti-social, predatory nature of the state, and draws a sharp distinction between government as voluntarily acknowledged authority and the State. Nock in turn influenced Frank Chodorov, who would influence young Murray Rothbard.” Nock, thus, likewise drawing on Oppenheimer, wrote:

The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means.

and:

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.⁴ On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could possibly have had any other origin.⁵ Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class-State. Oppenheimer defines the State, in respect of its origin, as an institution “forced on a defeated group by a conquering group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the conquerors, and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by the victorious group.”

And along the same lines, Jesus Huerta de Soto refers to the state simply as “the body with a monopoly on institutional aggression” and “the sole agent of institutional coercion,” in his “Classical Liberalism versus Anarcho-Capitalism,” in Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Mises also focuses on the state’s use of violence as a defining feature:

The total complex of the rules according to which those at the helm employ compulsion and coercion is called law. Yet the characteristic feature of the state is not these rules, as such, but the application or threat of violence. [Omnipotent Government]

Hoppe provides a characteristically rigorous and accurate definition of “state” as follows:

Let me begin with the definition of a state. What must an agent be able to do to qualify as a state? This agent must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory be brought to him for ultimate decision-making or be subject to his final review. In particular, this agent must be able to insist that all conflicts involving himself be adjudicated by him or his agent. And implied in the power to exclude all others from acting as ultimate judge, as the second defining characteristic of a state, is the agent’s power to tax: to unilaterally determine the price that justice seekers must pay for his services.

Based on this definition of a state, it is easy to understand why a desire to control a state might exist. For whoever is a monopolist of final arbitration within a given territory can make laws. And he who can legislate can also tax. Surely, this is an enviable position. [See Hoppe, Reflections on the Origin and the Stability of the State.]

For further commentary on the nature of the state and anarcho-libertarianism, see also Anthony de Jasay, The State; John Hasnas, The Obviousness of Anarchy (also the author of The Myth of the Rule of Law, a modern classic); Roderick Long, Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism; Alfred G. Cuzán classic article Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy? (see also his Revisiting “Do We Every Really Get Out of Anarchy?”); and my article What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist.

Libertarians, “Government,” and the State

Now, given this understanding of the state, it is quite clear why libertarians hate the state. We libertarians are proponents of human liberty and freedom and individual rights. And we recognize that aggression is the only way to violate rights. We thus condemn aggression as criminal and unjust. We oppose not only private crime, but also institutionalized crime (see my What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist and What Libertarianism Is). If there is an agency that commits institutionalized aggression then we oppose it because it commits aggression. The state just is “the agency that commits institutionalized aggression.” (Incidentally, the concept of the state in international law is this: The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.)

When the state is defined in this manner, then the various debates among minarchists and anarchists about whether “government” is libertarian or not become purely semantic (see, e.g. my post Machanarchy). If by “government” the minarchist means a (small) state, then it is criminal and unlibertarian. If by “government” they mean merely the non-state institutions of law and justice in a free society, then we are not opposed to it because such institutions are not inherently aggressive. In other words, when minarchists talk about government, the question is not how we classify it or what the best words are for state, government, etc., semantically: but rather: the question is: does the “government” that “minarchists” (?) favor engage in institutionalized aggression, or not? If not, it’s not a state, and it’s not unlibertarian. If it does, it’s merely a type of state.

Coercion, Socialism, Capitalism, and Semantics

While we are sorting out some semantic issues here, let’s mention a few others. First: this is a minor issue, but as I noted in The Problem with “Coercion”, the word “coercion” technically just means forcing someone to do something by means of a threat. As such, it may be justified (as when it’s used to deal with a criminal) or it may be aggression. Yet libertarians often use “coercion” as a synonym for “aggression.” This is a mistake for two reasons. First, as noted, coercion need not be aggressive. Coercion is like a type of force: and force used in defense is legitimate, while initiated force is not. Second, even if coercion were always aggressive, aggressive-coercion would only be a subset of aggression: shooting someone is not coercing them, it’s just aggressing against them. Threatening to shoot them if they don’t join your army is coercing them.

Now. On to “capitalism.” As I noted in Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism, there is undoubtedly baggage associated with the word “capitalism,” but it is still useful to describe a significant aspect of the free market economy of a libertarian society–so long as one is careful to distinguish it from crony capitalism and corporatism. Yet it’s probably not a good synonym for libertarianism, both because of the baggage and bad connotations, and because, at best, it has to do with only part of the economy of a free society. So, the words has its limited uses but we have to be careful.

What about “socialism”? Some left-libertarians (such as Kevin Carson and Gary Chartier) go so far as to argue that socialism is libertarian. While the word could be re-defined in a libertarian-compatible way, there are obviously too many statist-connotations associated with “socialism” for this project to even be attempted. If left-libertarians think there is too much baggage with “capitalism” for it to be a synonym for libertarianism, “socialism” faces far worse problems. In fact, if we understand socialism in its classical meaning–state control of the means of production–then we see that socialism and statism imply each other. As Hoppe argues,

There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state. [A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, pp. 148-49; emphasis added (From Re: Is the Vatican a State?)]

As I noted in What Libertarianism Is, Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added). In other words, although the term socialism is usually narrowly restricted to public ownership of the means of production, from a political or ethical standpoint there is nothing special about “capital”; what is important about it is that it is a type of private property. Thus the essence of socialism is simply institutionalized aggression against private property. In this broader sense, any state action that infringes on property rights is socialistic.

This definition seems to get at the essence of what socialism is; it is basically public, or institutionalized, crime. Applied literally, any state at all, even a minimal one, is “socialistic” to a certain degree, since states necessarily commit aggression. Therefore, according to this definition, anyone other than an anarcho-libertarian is to a degree a socialist–even a minarchist. Certainly all those outside the anarchist/minarchist camps are advocates of socialist policies and institutions, to a degree.

Mythologizing America

Given our radical view of the state, I believe it is time for libertarians to stop glorifying early America, the Founders, the Constitution, etc., as proto-libertarian. All states are illegitimate, including America’s. For further reading, see my blog posts Goodbye 1776, 1789, Tom; Jeff Hummel’s “The Constitution as a Counter-Revolution”; Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power; Bill Marina (R.I.P.) on American Imperialism from the Beginning; Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!; Revising the American Revolution, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army; The Declaration and Conscription; ‘Untold Truths About the American Revolution’.

Our Enemy, The State

Let me conclude with Lew Rockwell’s stirring words in his article The Enemy Is Always the State:

Let me state this as plainly as possible. The enemy is the state. There are other enemies too, but none so fearsome, destructive, dangerous, or culturally and economically debilitating. No matter what other proximate enemy you can name – big business, unions, victim lobbies, foreign lobbies, medical cartels, religious groups, classes, city dwellers, farmers, left-wing professors, right-wing blue-collar workers, or even bankers and arms merchants – none are as horrible as the hydra known as the leviathan state. If you understand this point – and only this point – you can understand the core of libertarian strategy.

A Tea Party-sympathetic friend sent me a link to a video, Tax Day Tea Party Racists Caught Saying N-Word!!, which mocks the people accusing the Tea Party of racism (the host can’t find anyone who will say the N word).

My 6 year old was watching over my shoulder and says, “Dad, what’s the N-word?”

I said, “It’s a bad word you don’t need to know.”

“Come on, Dad. Tell me. I won’t say it.”

So I look at him, and tell him. He says, “What’s that mean?”

I said, “It means black people.”

“But that’s not a bad thing!” he retorts, mystified why the N-word is bad if the referent is not bad. I say, “Well…. it’s hard to explain. It sort of means ‘you’re a trashy person because of your skin color.’”

From his post Against Libertarian Nostalgia (linked in Preference Falsification: A Case Study):

I’m sure that David [Boaz] would be happy to add genocide against American Indians to the list of historical crimes that libertarians ought never forget.  But I wonder whether he’d join me in condemning the American Revolution itself as yet another unjust war that yielded nationalist – not libertarian – fruit.

Caplan is right, as I noted in various posts linked in Boaz on Hornberger and Slavery, such as Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power, The Declaration and Conscription, Revising the American Revolution, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army, Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!, Jeff Hummel’s “The Constitution as a Counter-Revolution”.

My reply to Roman Pearah’s blogpost:

You have to refer to property rights and force to define aggression. “using someone as a means” won’t cut it. In fact it’s perfectly okay to use people as means: see my discussion in Causation and Aggression–the section “COMPLICATING THE PICTURE: CAUSATION, COOPERATION, AND HUMAN MEANS” on p. 101.

Aggression is simply the unconsented to (or uninvited) change in the physical integrity (or use, control or possession) of another person’s body or property–as Hoppe puts it, it’s aggression if someone “uninvitedly invades or changes the physical integrity of another person’s body and puts this body to a use that is not to this very person’s own liking”. I elaborate on this in What Libertarianism Is, particularly notes 9 and 11. So of course what aggression is depends on what property rights there are. So what makes libertarianism unique is our unique view of aggression, which is unique just because of our unique property assignment rules. As I wrote in the article noted above, “Protection of and respect for property rights is thus not unique to libertarianism. What is distinctive about libertarianism is its particular property assignment rules: its view concerning who is the owner of each contestable resource, and how to determine this.”

And this, I submit, is the Lockean view of homesteading, more or less. This is precisely why I object when left-libertarians veer from this with either ambiguous, vague, non-rigorous standards as you are doing here with this “means” talk; or when they adopt non-Lockean rules like the mutualist occupancy rules or crankish Georgist-related rules.

My comment to Michael Barnett’s post Anti-immigration libertarians are treading in dangerous waters, where he linked to my article “A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders“:

Mike, my article was to provide a simple argument against unrestricted immigration. I did not imply that I agreed with it. I was trying to emphasize a few points: that the real owners of public property in (say) the US are the taxpayers, not outsiders; that there is no way for the state to manage the property in a way that satisfies all owners, short of returning it; that if an outsider is prevented from using the public property held by the state but owned by US citizens, this does not violate the rights of the outsiders, any more than if the natural owners were to forbid them use of it. But it’s an argument about second- or third-bests, and one meant to focus on the main point: some private people (victims of the state) are the natural owners of or claimants to the property; the state is the legal owner, but should not be. Ideally it should dissolve itself and return the property to the real owners; but if it does not, the question arises as to what rules it should set if and so long as it does legally control the resource. I sought to tie in some implications of this notion to the immigration issue.

In any case, let me be clear that I completely oppose any state laws or action that restricts immigration.

See Roderick Long’s blogpost Left Cop, Right Cop. In my view, this just gives further support for the contention that we libertarians should associate ourselves with neither right nor left. Both are corrupt and statist.

I have spoken.

After all, I hate crime.

My 6 year old loves when I have deep conversations with him. Well the other night we got into one about heat/cold, light/dark, good/evil. I started out with the physical things to lead him into the latter conversation, which was my main goal because of something he said about good and bad when we were reading a book together.

So I pointed out for him that some people conceive of heat and cold as independent “things” and to make it hotter, you add more heat; to make it colder you add more cold. But I said that implies you could potentially make it as hot as you wanted–just add a bit more heat, and it gets hotter. There is no upper limit. And that if cold was some “thing” then you could keep getting colder forever, just add more cold. But then I asked him, what if there is just one thing, and the other is the absence of it? Which one is the real thing? So he says, “heat!” and I said, right–you can keep adding heat to make it hotter; but to make it colder you remove heat (then we digressed into a discussion of negative numbers: how you can do subtraction by adding a negative number to a positive one; and so on). That’s why, when you have removed all the heat there is, you can’t make it any colder: it’s absolute zero. (That led to a tangential discussion of the Fahrenheit, Celsius, Centigrade, and Kelvin scales.)

So he got the idea right away. Then we explored others: light/dark, etc. I tried to find examples of where this works and where it doesn’t. One that works is speed (as a scalar)–once you stop, remove all speed, you can’t slow down any more. (This led to a tangent about relativity: I explained that for speed while you can keep adding more, and go faster each time, there is an upper limit: c, the speed of light; although you approach it asymptotically so that in a sense you can always increase your speed a bit more.)

Then I went to the realm of ethics, in particular good and evil. We toyed with the idea that good is the real thing, and evil is just the absence of good. And that God, likewise (or Heaven), is the real thing, but “Hell” is just the lack of being with God. That lead to a tangential discussion of a passage in Lewis’s The Last Battle, where, during armageddon, Lewis illustrated the animals confronting Aslan (Jesus) at the gates to Aslan’s country (Heaven), and if they saw his face and smiled, they went in; if they were afraid, they became dumb animals and fled into the dark wilderness. Here is the idea that Hell is just the absence of being in God’s presence, which is one of the metaphorical I was taught in Catholic school religion class. So here, too, is a case of the idea of one real thing: heaven/God/love, and you either have it, or not: there is not actual evil force or thing or substance. (This is also in a way what Rand believes as exemplified in Atlas Shrugged: the idea that evil is basically impotent.) (This Narnia excursion led us to go grab The Silver Chair and re-read my favorite passage from all of Lewis’s books, which we had read together months earlier, but which I re-read from time to time.)

Anyway, I’m getting to the point. When we were talking about this idea, that Hell is not a real place, but just means the absence-of-Heaven, of course we discussed the conventional view: good people die and go to Heaven; bad people die and go to Hell. My boy said, well, what happens? I said, well, Satan tortures them. My son says, “Why?” I said, well, Satan is bad, so he likes to torture people, I guess. My boy said, asking a question that struck me because I had never thought of it this way before: “But I don’t get it. Why would he torture people on his team?” And I have to say, he sort of stumped me.

I love the minds of children.

Direct link.

Cato’s David Boaz in recent weeks generated controversy in the libersphere when, in his Reason article Up from Slavery, he  chastised conservatives and libertarians, such as Jacob Hornberger,  for failing to condemn or acknowledge slavery when they celebrate aspects of antebellum America:

I am particularly struck by libertarians and conservatives who celebrate the freedom of early America, and deplore our decline from those halcyon days, without bothering to mention the existence of slavery. … Take a more recent example, from a libertarian. Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation writes about the decline of freedom in America: …

Hornberger replied, in Up from Serfdom, acknowledging that in his article, he had “failed to except American slavery from my reference to the freedom enjoyed by early Americans,” that he “made a mistake and neglected to include the slavery exception in my article”–although he notes that in the past, he has “always made a point of mentioning that tragic exception when discussing the history of American freedom. (See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)” Boaz replied with Up from Slavery, Continued.

Of course, as everyone knows, there was slavery, and it was horrible and unlibertarian. But in my view, it’s no great crime to fail to explicitly mention the existence of slavery every time one says something about early America, since it’s universally known, indisputed, and condemned. Likewise, it’s quite obvious to everyone that libertarians oppose slavery.

From my point of view, the main problem with glorifying the Founders, the Constitution, and so on and treating these as proto-libertarian is that they are not–because of slavery, and other reasons to boot (see Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power, The Declaration and Conscription, Revising the American Revolution, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army, Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!, Jeff Hummel’s “The Constitution as a Counter-Revolution”). It seems to me to be American chauvinism in equating early American institutions and practices with libertarianism (see my post Boaz on Libertarianism and “Government”). Be that as it may, certain aspects of early American society were undeniably more libertarian–for white males, at least–and there is no good reason to pretend otherwise. (By the way, I hereby acknowledge slavery existed and condemn it. I’m also not a neo-Confederate, in case anyone needs to know.)

Another piece by Boaz himself helps illustrate why his argument is flawed. Just a few days after Boaz’s initial piece in Reason, he posted Are Libertarians Anti-Government?, in which he wrote:

… how should we describe the libertarian position? To answer that question, we need to go back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I don’t see the word “slavery” in this article. So Boaz seems to be “celebrat[ing] the freedom of early America, … without bothering to mention the existence of slavery.” He appears to be violating his own rule. Granted, this was a reprint of something written in 1998, but the introductory comments could have taken the time to denounce slavery. Boaz’s failure to denounce it here does not give anyone cause to think he denies there was slavery or to think he condones it. This leads me to think Boaz’s proposed rule is unwarranted.

***

Aside: On another matter: Boaz wrote recently: “If Republicans make big gains in 2010 with libertarian votes, we could be hearing about a ‘libertarian revolution.’” I am skeptical that Republicans are our natural allies. I will not agree with left-libertarians that the left is, but the right is not, either. We are neither left nor right. Both Republicans and Democrats are horribly opposed to freedom.

On a couple of facebook discussions (here and here, if you are friends with the right people), several people had some interesting and vigorous discussion of David Boaz’s article Are Libertarians Anti-Government? An edited version of some of some of my comments is appended below:

Boaz’s piece implies that libertarians are all minarchists. This is simply wrong. It’s fine if he’s a minarchist but he’s wrong to imply that the standard or only libertarian view is minarchist. His piece also implies that early America was some kind of proto- or quasi-libertarian system, that the Constitution is legitimate and that a written constitution is necessary and a good idea. Nonsense. The Constitution was just a centralizing power grab of a coup d’etat (see Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power). It has predictably led to the centralizing tyranny we have now. To hold up the Constitution as some kind of libertarian-compatible document is a mistake. The Constitution is just PR used by the state to delude the people into thinking it’s limited and legitimate, so that it can get away with even more pillaging and plundering of the people–the sheeple who say “we are the government”.

Second, I think he’s equivocating in his use of “government.” Some minarchists, like Tibor Machan, start out like this: observing that libertarians, even anarchists, don’t oppose “government”–defined, as Boaz does, as “a set of institutions through which we adjudicate our disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs. It derives its authority, at some level and in some way, from the consent of the governed.” Note how Boaz carefully words this here so that it possibly includes non-state institutions. What he should have done next is say that some libertarians think these institutions have to be a (minarchist) state; while others think that it can/must be totally stateless. Then he could have argued that the minarchist version of this has to have certain constitutional limits, etc.

A third problem is his promotion of the Constitution as if that is libertarian. I’m getting tired of libertarians equating “early America” with proto-libertarianism. He says, “how should we describe the libertarian position? To answer that question, we need to go back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” But this implies the libertarian view is defined by the Constitution, and that we are pro-Constitution. Not true. (The case for the Declaration being quasi-libertarian is not as difficult to make. But the horrible Constitution?!)

He says: “the form of government and the limits on its powers should be specified in a constitution”. This is not a libertarian view. It is the American mentality of how to set up states. Britain has an unwritten constitution. They don’t need to be written.

On a more substantive issue, a commentator on the thread wrote, in defense of Boaz: “This suggests that unless you really have good reason to think most of your property is pretty safe from being taken, you don’t really have a private property economy.” I agree. And that’s why they say that no man’s property is safe while the legislature is in session. Of course, the existence of the state and legislation simply makes property rights less secure and increases uncertainty. See my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, section III.B; Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization—From Monarchy to Democracy.

Update: I just came across a passage that supports the notion that the standard connotation of “government” is as a rough synonym for state, despite the somewhat tortured efforts of minarchists to sometimes argue that “government” is not necessarily compulsory/statist: Roderick Long, in his excellent Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism (ch. 9 of Long & Machan, eds., Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?):

A legal system is any institution or set of institutions in a given society that provides dispute resolution in a systematic and reasonably predictable way. it does so through the exercise of three functions: the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. The judicial function, the adjudication of disputes, is the core of any legal system; the other two are ancillary to this. The legislative function is to determine the rules that will govern the process of adjudication (this function may be merged with the judicial function, as when case law arises through precedents, or it may be exercised separately), while the executive function is to secure submission (through a variety of means, which may or may not include violence) to the adjudicative process and compliance with its verdicts. A government or state (for present purposes i shall use these terms interchangeably) is any organisation that claims, and in large part achieves, a forcibly maintained monopoly, within a given geographical territory, of these legal functions, and in particular of the use of force in the executive function.

Now the market anarchist objection to government is simply a logical extension of the standard libertarian objection to coercive monopolies in general. …

Facebook is cool. It helps bring back forgotten memories. A good example follows. I attended St. George Elementary in Baton Rouge for 8 years, and since joining facebook I’ve reconnected with several of my former classmates. Someone posted this picture of our sixth grade class (I’m sitting on the far right, front row). One of the girls, Rebecca Stewart, had the following (lightly edited) exchange with me today:

Rebecca: Hello SGS class of 1979 friends! Stephan – what r u doing? Do you remember when Julie Burroughs had you demonstrate the difference between LIE and LAY? I think of you every time I hear the stupid song with the lyrics that get it wrong.

Me: Rebeccca, god my memory is bad. I only vaguely recall that–who is Julie Burroughs… a teacher? I remember I think a Ms. Burroughs? What was the lie-lay incident? You have me curious now, do tell!

Rebecca: Yes Ms. Burroughs was a teacher, and I assume she taught English. She asked if anyone wanted to demonstrate the verbs lie and lay. Of course you know who volunteered. For LIE you stood in the front of the class and said, “Michelle Lorio has blue hair.” For LAY you laid (or lied?) down on the floor in the front of the classroom. That was right in front of my desk, and Ms. Burroughs was trying not to totally lose it so I guess that’s why it stuck in my memory. There were a few other Stephan Kinsella moments filed away with that memory. Mostly humorous!

Great illustration of the logic of MAD: the infamous “guillotine” cartoon:

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the very same weapons. The strategy is effectively a form of Nash equilibrium, in which both sides are attempting to avoid their worst possible outcome — nuclear annihilation.

I blogged a year ago about the “Secret intellectual property treaty [that] could profoundly change life on the Internet.” At the time, the text was still secret but it was believed that the treaty: “seeks to set forth standards for enforcing cases of alleged copyright and patent infringement.” Now, as Cory Doctorow notes in How ACTA will change the world’s internet laws, the text has been leaked. This thing is bad. America and the west have long tried to extend the reach of their mercantalist IP laws — they use the WTO to twist the arms of other countries, etc. (see, e.g., my previous posts Hatch’s “International IP Piracy Priority Watch List”; IP Imperialism (Russia, Intellectual Property , and the WTO); Russian Free Trade and Patents; Bush Wants More Jailed Citizens in Russia and China; China, India like US Patent Reform).

The ACTA is also similar to another arcane law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, under the guise of protecting “property rights,” snuck in provisions that criminalize even the mere possession of technology that can be used to circumvent digital protection systems (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). Likewise, under the guise or protecting property rights in inventions and artistic works (patent and copyright), it “seeks to provide legal authority for the surveillance of Internet file transfers and searches of personal property”. As one group notes, “ACTA goes way, way beyond the TRIPS (the copyright/patent/trademark stuff in the World Trade Organization agreement), creating an entirely new realm of liability for people who provide services on the net”. More invasion of personal liberty and property rights in the name of false, artificial property rights.

So the ACTA is like a hybrid of previous efforts: it is as abusive and insidious as the DMCA, and covers patents as well as copyrights. And it will apply worldwide. This is culmination of America’s efforts use of the WTO to extend western style IP rights worldwide. As Doctorow notes, this is “a radical rewriting of the world’s Internet laws, taking place in secret, without public input. Public input? Hell, even Members of Parliament and Congressmembers don’t get a say in this. The Obama administration’s trade rep says that the US will sign onto ACTA without Congressional debate, under an administrative decree.”

For detailed comments on the ACTA, please see the following report:

James Love, Comments on ACTA Provisions on Injunctions and Damages (pdf), KEI Research Note (Knowledge Ecology International, April 6, 2010).

[cross-posted at Mises blog and The Libertarian Standard]

Fellow guest Becky Akers and I discussed anarchy, the role of education in fighting statism, and related matters, with host Don Cooper on his Qaoss Talk Radio show, April 10, 2010. The show is archived here (local MP3).

Great Cato podcast interview with Billy Murphy of HBO’s great show The Wire on police, race, the drug war–he has some great comments on why the police have gotten worse, in part because of police mobility; why judges tend to “believe” police; and the disparate treatment given to minorities by cops and the legal system. Outstanding interview and comments.

My brother and I hosted a very nice dinner party for my parents for their 50th Wedding Anniversary in February; my wife and I assembled some of the pictures into a nice photobook using iPhoto. It’s here (35MB). Apple’s iPhoto photobooks sure come out nice–amazing. They look professional.

The photographer was John Lewis, who was excellent and reasonable in his charges–and he gave us the full digital files, which we insisted on ahead of time (other photographers balked). Below is the video I prepared using Animoto and played at the party for them and their guests–which included 3 couples who have been friends of our parents for decades who showed up as surprise guests.

During our recent Spring Break trip to Rosemary Beach with another family, the Khans, we had photos taken by a photographer we used last year–Steve Wells, who is also excellent, reasonably priced, and was willing to provide the digital files. Again, we made a photobook using iPhoto, which is here (18MB).

An LRC search yields several entries in this series:

1. My Libertarian Life by Roderick T. Long

   Jan 4, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. My Libertarian Life. by Roderick T. Long. I’ve been fortunate enough to …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long2.html – Cached

2. It All Began With Fred Schwarz by Gary North

   Dec 16, 2002 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. It All Began With Fred Schwarz. by Gary North …
   www.lewrockwell.com/north/north145.html – Cached – Similar

3. Walter Blockized by Peter Walters

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Walter Blockized. by Peter Walters. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/walters1.html – Cached

4. Libertarian in Reverse by Daniel McCarthy

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Libertarian in Reverse. by Daniel McCarthy. It may be a bit bold of me to submit my …
   www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy39.html – Cached

5. A Libertarian Odyssey by Ken Schoolland

   Oct 9, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Libertarian Odyssey. by Ken Schoolland by Ken Schoolland …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/schoolland1.html – Cached

6. How I Became a Libertarian by Roy Halliday

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Libertarian. by Roy Halliday. The first one to influence my thinking in …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/halliday1.html – Cached – Similar

7. A Student of Mises and Rand by George Reisman

   Jan 22, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Student of Mises and Rand. by George Reisman …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/reisman1.html – Cached – Similar

8. The Loneliness of the Long-time Libertarian by John Hasnas

   Dec 23, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. The Loneliness of the Long-time Libertarian. by John Hasnas …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/hasnas1.html – Cached – Similar

9. Rothbard and Hayek: A Personal Memory by Ronald Hamowy

   Jul 3, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Rothbard and Hayek: A Personal Memory. by Ronald Hamowy …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/hamowy1.html – Cached – Similar

10. How I Became a Libertarian by Stephan Kinsella

    Dec 18, 2002 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Libertarian. by Stephan Kinsella …
    www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella9.html – Cached

1. How I Became a Libertarian by Chris Matthew Sciabarra

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Libertarian. by Chris Matthew Sciabarra. Growing up in Brooklyn, …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/sciabarra1.html – Cached

2. On Becoming a Libertarian by Allison Brown

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. On Becoming a Libertarian. by Allison Brown. I have a slightly different take on the …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/brown2.html – Cached

3. A Political Odyssey by James Ostrowski

   Dec 10, 2002 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Political Odyssey. by James Ostrowski …
   www.lewrockwell.com/ostrowski/ostrowski37.html – Cached – Similar

4. Confessions of a Practicing ‘Socialist’ by James V. Schall

   Jun 20, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Confessions of a Practicing ‘Socialist’. by James V. Schall …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/schall1.html – Cached – Similar

5. How I Became a Christian Libertarian by Steven Yates

   Dec 22, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Christian Libertarian …
   www.lewrockwell.com/yates/yates87.html – Cached – Similar

6. Austrian Economist by Accident by Fernando Zanella

   Feb 28, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Austrian Economist by Accident. by Fernando Zanella …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/zanella1.html – Cached – Similar

7. How I Became a Libertarian by Robert Stewart

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Libertarian. by Robert Stewart. Unlike many of your other contributors, …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/stewart4.html – Cached

8. Being Libertarian — I Only Seek the Truth by Ernest Hancock

   Dec 26, 2002 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Being Libertarian – I Only Seek the Truth. by Ernest Hancock …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/hancock1.html – Cached – Similar

9. Looking Back and Forward by Spencer Heath MacCallum

   Dec 19, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Looking Back and Forward. by Spencer Heath MacCallum …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/maccallum1.html – Cached – Similar

10. A Lasting Encounter by Alvin Lowi, Jr.

    Jan 8, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Lasting Encounter. by Alvin Lowi, Jr. My social “enlightenment” (such …
    www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/lowi1.html – Cached – Similar

1. The Accidental Libertarian by Richard A. Epstein

   Jul 12, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. The Accidental Libertarian. by Richard A. Epstein …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/epstein-richard1.html – Cached – Similar

2. Another Path to Libertarianism by Bruce L. Benson

   Jan 18, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Another Path to Libertarianism. by Bruce L. Benson …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/benson2.html

3. Against the Grain in Agricultural Economics by E. C. Pasour, Jr.

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Against the Grain in Agricultural Economics. by E. C. Pasour, Jr. by E. C. Pasour, Jr. …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/pasour1.html – Cached

4. My Path of Reason by Tibor R. Machan

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. My Path of Reason. by Tibor R. Machan. For me, being a libertarian has a lot to do with …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig/machan12.html – Cached

5. How I Became a Liberal by Alejandro Chafuen

   Dec 19, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became a Liberal. by Alejandro Chafuen by Alejandro Chafuen …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/chafuen1.html – Cached – Similar

6. My Life as a Libertarian by D. T. Armentano

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. My Life as a Libertarian. by D. T. Armentano by D. T. Armentano …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig/armentano5.html – Cached

7. How I Didn’t Become a Libertarian by Gordon Tullock

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Didn’t Become a Libertarian. by Gordon Tullock by Gordon Tullock …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/tullock1.html – Cached

8. Homegrown Libertarian by Mark Thornton

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Homegrown Libertarian. by Mark Thornton by Mark Thornton. Geneva is a small town in the …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig/thornton9.html – Cached

9. Studying Under Murray by Doug French

   Dec 24, 2002 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Studying Under Murray. by Doug French …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/french2.html – Cached

10. What? Libertarian? by Robert Klassen

    The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. What? Libertarian? by Robert Klassen. Isn’t it curious how so many individuals arrive …
    www.lewrockwell.com/klassen/klassen34.html – Cached

1. A Libertarian from the Womb by Karen De Coster

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Libertarian from the Womb. by Karen De Coster …
   www.lewrockwell.com/decoster/decoster71.html – Cached

2. The Legacy of Two Jewish Men by Michael Miles

   Jan 3, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. The Legacy of Two Jewish Men. by Michael Miles …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/miles3.html – Cached

3. In the Spirit of Murray Rothbard: Austrian, Libertarian and …

   Feb 8, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. In the Spirit of Murray Rothbard: Austrian, Libertarian and Thomist …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/meng2.html – Cached

4. To Be Conceived in Liberty by Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard

   Jul 31, 2003 … The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. To Be Conceived in Liberty. by Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/klitgaard1.html – Cached

5. Libertarianism and the Old Right by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Libertarianism and the Old Right. by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. …
   www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/oldright.html – Cached – Similar

6. Free-Marketeer at the Fed by Robert Formaini

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Free-Marketeer at the Fed. by Robert Formaini. I grew up in a JFK-democratic household …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/formani1.html – Cached

7. Reflections on Becoming an Austrian Economist and Libertarian, and …

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. Reflections on Becoming an Austrian Economist and Libertarian, and Staying One …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/boettke1.html

8. The Reluctant Anarchist by Joseph Sobran

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. The Reluctant Anarchist. by Joseph Sobran. My arrival (very recently) at philosophical …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/sobran-j1.html – Cached – Similar

9. A Short Intellectual Autobiography by Mary Ruwart

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Short Intellectual Autobiography. by Tyler Cowen. When I was very young, about ten, …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/cowen1.html

10. My Journey to Libertarianville by Marc J. Victor

    The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. My Journey to Libertarianville. by Marc J. Victor. I’ve always been a loud mouth. …
    www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/victor1.html

1. A Journey in Libertarianland by Eric Mack

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. A Journey in Libertarianland. by Eric Mack. In a way, it all began with Boswell’s The …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/mack1.html

2. How I Became an Austrian School Libertarian by Sam Bostaph

   The following story is part of Walter Block’s Autobiography Archive. How I Became an Austrian School Libertarian. by Sam Bostaph. I grew up in Fort Worth, …
   www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/bostaph1.html – Cached

From my comment to my post Machanarchy:

“Incidentally, I see in David Miller’s lengthy review of the Machan/Long book on Amazon, he highly recommends Hasnas’s and Long’s contributions to the book, which are: John Hasnas, The Obviousness of Anarchy; and Roderick Long, Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism. These papers are really good.”

Hasnas is also author of the fantastic paper The Myth of the Rule of Law.

Who to side with on this issue: left-libertarians, who advance the confused hypothesis that “left” is better than “right”; or the great Henry Hazlitt? Here is what he wrote in the preface to his wonderful novel, Time Will Run Back: “as ‘capitalism’ is merely a name for freedom in the economic sphere, the theme of my novel might be stated more broadly: the will to freedom can never be permanently stamped out.”

Ortega y Gasset, writing in 1937:

“Ser de la izquierda es, como ser de la derecha, una de las infinitas maneras que el hombre puede elegir para ser un imbécil: ambas, en efecto, son formas de la hemiplejia moral.”

(“To be of the Left is, as to be of the Right, one of the infinte number of ways available to people for choose how to become an idiot; both are, actually, forms of moral hemiplegia”).”

Leonard Read: “Neither Left Nor Right: There is No Simplified Term to Distinguish Libertarians,” The Freeman, 1956.

Walter Block: “Libertarianism is unique; it belongs neither to the right nor the left: a critique of the views of Long, Holcombe, and Baden on the left, Hoppe, Feser and Paul on the right,” Journal of Libertarian Studies (Forthcoming, 2010)

From Shenandoah with Jimmy Stewart (see also Grigg’s great piece The Draft-Nappers Are Stirring):

Stewart plays Anderson, a Virginian farmer with six sons, whose land is surrounded on all sides by Union armies.  He refuses to participate in the war, at least at he beginning of the movie.  Johnson, a Confederate soldier comes to him to recruit Anderson’s sons.

Johnson: There’s a Yankee army breathing down your neck, Mr. Anderson. I don’t think you realize —
Anderson: You’re town-bred aren’t you?
Johnson: I don’t see what that has to do with —
Anderson: I’ve got five hundred acres of good, rich dirt here.  As long as the rains come and the sun shines it’ll grow grow anything I have a mind to plant.  And we pulled every stump.  We’ve cleared every field.  We’ve done it ourselves without the sweat of one slave.
Johnson: So?
Anderson: So?!  So, can you give me one good reason why I should send my family that took me a lifetime to raise down that road like a bunch of damn fools to do somebody else’s fighting?
Johnson: Virginia needs all of her sons, Mr. Anderson.
Anderson: That might be so, Johnson, but these are my sons!  They don’t belong to the state.  When they were babies I never saw the state coming around with a spare tit.  We never asked anything of the state and never expected anything.  We do our own living — and thanks to no man for the right.

***

The Patron Saint of the “Leave Us the Hell Alone” Caucus: Charlie Anderson (James Stewart), the Individualist hero of the film Shenandoah.

In The Unidirectionality of Conversions, I noted that most political conversions regarding libertarianism are toward it, and rarely away from it–an indication that it’s a basically sound, correct doctrine. Of course, there are exceptions that prove the rule, especially among libertarians who fall prey to leftism and nihilism. Left-libertarians have done some good work in pointing out the perils of corporatism (which standard libertarians are already aware of, of course), but ultra-leftist ideas about egalitarianism, labor, alienation, class battles, workers and capitalists, land, property, and associated kooky economics can lead to error and confusion. Case in point is a leftist, former libertarian (if he ever was one) who thinks he’s scoring points by … accusing me of believing in self-ownership. Uh, guilty as charged. I … confess. He writes:

“Self-ownership” is nonsense, but let us be clear on the goal of such a concept. Self-ownership is a capitalist attempt to justify individual freedom in a world where property reigns.

Self-ownership is not nonsense at all. It means that you have the right to control your body, not someone else. What else could be more simple, intuitively obvious, or libertarian?

What is striking here is that we have a former libertarian, taken in by leftist delusions and confusions, proclaiming that only capitalists believe in self-ownership. In arguing that only capitalists believe in self-ownership, he’s making a damn good case for why people should be capitalist! I dunno. Maybe he’s a capitalist double agent. More likely he’s just confused.

Then he accuses me of favoring self-ownership so that I “can promote the repulsive and unjust doctrine of parental privilege? What utter nonsense from Kinsella, the king of the Misesian dunces.” Let me get this straight: I argue for the right of people to own their bodies, to be sovereigns; and for children to become adults and own themselves … in order to justify the “repulsive and unjust doctrine of parental privilege”? Say what? I have to say it’s a bit embarrassing to have such pathetic critics.

From my journal 1993:

BIG ENOUGH

Oktoberfest Munich 1991, with Paul Comeaux

I wrote this poem related to why I don’t believe in God (atheism) or government (anarchism), and why I think these views are complementary and consistent, and both correct as well. When I went to the Oktoberfest in Munich in 1991 (3 Oct. 1991, I believe it was), one night we met several folks at one of the beer halls. One of the waitresses was a girl named Bettina, whom I talked with for quite a while. She ended up sitting down and talking philosophy with me for about 30 minutes or maybe longer, even though that meant she was missing out on tips. She was Austrian, beautiful, and a student. And a feminist type who hated waiting tables–despite the fact that she did it voluntarily and was well paid. She thought it degrading etc. Well she was interested in a philosophy book I happened to have with me that night in my fanny-pack, called From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest, by T.Z. Lavine. And I recommended some other books for her to read. Well, being European, of course she was a socialist (and even admitted it), but she at least had the good sense to be an atheist. I asked her why she was an atheist, and she said, “because it’s too easy to believe in God.” I thought about it, and really liked that reasoning, skimpy though it was.

From 1990, the year before, with Paul Comeaux and Tony Tramontana

So I told her, “Yes, but don’t you see that it’s also too easy to believe in government?” Which she didn’t grasp, again validating my theory above that socialism is inferior to capitalism. But anyway, it inspired me to write a poem, called “Big Enough. ” I actually think of it more as a song, sung by Edie Brickell of the New Bohemians. Here it is:

Big Enough

You know it’s hard to believe
[tab]That so many believe
[tab]What they believe

It’s so hard to believe
[tab]What they believe

And it’s hard to believe
[tab]It’s so easy to believe

It’s too easy

It’s too easy
[tab]To believe in God and Government
Oh, the fools who believe
[tab]In the God of Government
To believe
[tab]It’s too easy

The world is big enough
[tab]To believe in it
And I am big enough
[tab]To believe in me
You are big enough–
[tab]Are you big enough?–
[tab]To believe in you
Are you big enough
[tab]For me to believe in you?
[tab]It’s not that easy . . .
It’s not too easy to believe
[tab]To believe in the fools
[tab]Who are not big enough

It’s too easy

The Government of God
[tab]Is not big enough
[tab]It’s smaller than the world
[tab]The world is smaller than me
[tab]If you are smaller than the world
[tab][tab]You are not big enough
[tab][tab]You’re too easy

The God of Government
[tab]Is not big enough
[tab]To believe in
[tab]It’s smaller than the Government of God

Where is your size?
[tab]Where lies?

I am bigger than–
[tab]If you are bigger than–
[tab][tab]Then it’s all easy

More or less explicitly libertarian/Austrian: Amy Allen’s “Revolution”; Neema V’s rap “I Own Myself”; and John Papola’s Hayek Keynes rap “Fear the Boom and Bust”. Libertarian-related include “Peace” by the Luminaries and others linked in this post.

I spoke earlier this month at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 on the Author’s Forum about Property, Freedom and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mar. 11, 2010). The audio and video files are here; the YouTube below.

(See also Auto mechanic for President – The phony populism of Stephan Kinsella, reproduced below)

Palin “Reeks of Local” — The Dumb, Dumb Demonrats

It’s long been my contention that if the demonrats would just jettison the relatively small elitist wing of their party–the condescending limousine liberals, the middle-America and normalcy-hating “urbane” and cosmpolitan condescending types–and just have a mildly populist, redistributionist, soft-socialist but culturally conservative platform, they could clean house and recapture all the inexplicably Republican Joe Sixpack types who are their natural constituency (but who are alienated by Barbra Streisand’s screeching). (See my How the Democrats Could Win.) But their stupidity knows no bounds. Why they need to anchor their image to the vapid Hollywood and libertine types is beyond me. Apparently abortion is all that matters to them.

Their inexplicable self-destructive behavior is on fully display in their reaction to the Sarah Palin VP nomination. A few choice quotes and examples below:As I noted here, after Hillary Clinton’s speech during the Democrat convention, Susan Estrich admitted that because of female demonrat disappointment over Hillary’s loss to Obama, if McCain just picks a woman VP, “it’s Cha-Ching” (i.e., he’ll rack up many female votes that otherwise could have gone to Obama). So, she said, “As a democrat, I hope McCain doesn’t pick a woman VP.” So she wanted McCain to discriminate against women. Nice.

In this post on HuffPo, David Sirota explains why Palin “is a pretty smart choice”:

1. Putting a woman on the ticket is McCain’s best hope to peel off some disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. …

2. Palin comes from an energy state, and specifically, an oil and gas state. With Democrats’ pathetically (yet predictably) tepid behavior on the drilling issue, the GOP senses an opportunity to exploit it, and you can bet Palin will be making the drilling case, with first-person narratives and anecdotes.

3. It will be difficult — though not impossible — for the Obama campaign to make an experience argument against Palin. Even though Palin is probably the most inexperienced candidate for vice president in contemporary American history, the Republicans have spent months attacking Obama’s supposed lack of experience. So when gnats like Rahm Emanuel issue silly, over-the-top press releases about Palin’s career, they re-open an experience debate that John McCain probably wants to have with Obama.

4. As the Nation’s Chris Hayes reports, Palin is a die-hard right-winger who could help McCain solidify the Republican base.

Sirota fails to mention, however, another important factor: the condescending the way the left is sure to react–is already reacting–belittling normalcy, middle class, “beauty queens,” “small” states is also going to hurt them.

A good example of liberal condescension (and hypocritically sexist, at that) from Jane Smiley: “If the red phone rings in the middle of the night and she’s breastfeeding, will she answer it?” The contempt for normal America–the bizarre, sneering sexism–just oozes out of this liberal vitriol, doesn’t it? Think middle America won’t pick on up on this? Why vote for those who feel they are superior to you and who relegate normalcy to peon status?

And another, by “Michael Seitzman”:”She’s never actually used the word Shiite in a sentence before. She’s never had to. She’s never given any thought whatsoever to nuclear proliferation. She’s never had to. She’s never thought about Israel, Russia, Korea, or Iran. She’s never even thought about Mexico.”

How in the world does he know? He’s implying that unless you are a federal politician, or some savvy DC Denizen, you haven’t “thought” about …. Russia, Korea, etc. Hell, even mere state governors are peons and not worthy to sit at the table with the benighted Beltwaytarians–if you are only governor of “small state”, that is. Gee, I wonder what citizens of, say, most states outside Yankeeland, California, and DC think about that snub? These condescending attacks on Palin, small-town america, “small” states, and normalism are just amazing to behold.

And what’s that say about, say, housewives and career women? I guess they’ve never “thought about” these weighty matters either? I guess they’re too busy breastfeeding or running in beauty pageants or merely being mayors of “small” towns.

Hell, Alaska is even more backward and lacking of culture and interesting people than Auburn, Alabama. And forget about liberals for a sec–how could the Kochtopus support this ticket? Listen to these cackling hypocrites. Is dissing Alaska as some hick backwater supposed to help them with voters?

Seitzman continues: “There is not a fireball’s chance in Alaska that Sarah Palin could make that argument in a debate with Joe Biden. She lacks the gravitas, she lacks the knowledge, she lacks the experience. If she were a news anchor we’d say she reeks of local.”

Read that again: She REEKS OF LOCAL? Oh my God, if only I were a Republican so I could enjoy this self-immolation. These clueless condescending nabobs are going to just bury themselves, the condescending, these “cosmopolitan”, “urbane,” “hip” morons!

As a friend noted, “I must admit I found the statement about “mayor of a town of 9,000? particularly stupid. If somebody could pull out a map for me and show me where, precisely, they intend to pick up electoral votes with such a statement, I would be thrilled. In fact, if ever a party were determined from the outset to find a way to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college, it would look an awful lot like what the D’s are up to these days. Of course, maybe they are trying to lose both – here I had thought that the popular vote was a foregone conclusion, but Obama, et al. are trying to lose even that.”

Finally, see this collection of demonrat comments on Palin. It’s just incredible. As a friend of mine might say, LOL Democrats!

Update: S.M. Oliva notes in a post on the Mises blog: “… it seems to me that “experience” is more about the possession of certain credentials then time spent furthering the evils of the state. Mr. Obama may not have any particular legislative achievements or “executive” experience, but he does possess an undergraduate degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard. Mrs. Palin, in contrast, has only an undergraduate degree from the University of Idaho – her fourth stop in an extended college career – financed partially through her winnings as a beauty pageant contestant. She is, as one Democrat told me yesterday, one step removed from white trash.”

Update 2: See Stefan Karlsson’s post Democrats Fall Into Trap:

Stephan Kinsella has an interesting post of how McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin will lure Democrats into showing their contempt for anything outside the small post-modernist libertine elite of the Party, and most specifically people with traditional values in rural America. Or in other words, the white working class “Reagan Democrat” types which the Democrats need to win over to win the election, and could have won over if they weren’t so patronizing against them. Obama’s gaffe about bitter rural Americans clinging to guns and religion in front of San Francisco donors was a prelude to this. While the Obama campaign has so far been smart enough to abstain from repeating this gaffe after Palin’s nomination, his media backers have not been so smart. Kinsella mentions several examples of this, and then there is also this piece by Obama supporter Robert Reich that heaps contempt upon her for having lived her life and had actual leadership experience in a small town in a rural state. If Democrats keep expressing this contemptuous attitude towards Middle America, McCain-Palin will actually win in a year that given the state of the economy “should” be impossible to win for a Republican ticket.

See, e.g., this comment by a liberal reader of the Reich blog post linked by Karlsson: “If McCain gets elected, whats next? Walmart check out clerk nominated for Sec. of Labor? NASCAR driver for Sec. of Transportation.”

Yet another enlightened liberal tells us, in a crass, hypocritical, sexist comment dripping with contempt for normalcy:

OK I’m gonna be rude here – Palin has nice hooters. This choice is beyond briliant. Only Mrs Clinton could have outdone this. I can’t help but belive that the Dems would win in a landslide with Hil as VP. Unless the Dems can exploit Palin’s scandals quick enough, her hooters will carry her to office. Yes they will, I’m sorry to say. We’re dealing with the American electorate here, not a bunch of geniuses.

See also Scott Horton’s post, “I don’t know ya’ll, it really is a tough one“

Are the Democrats more stupid or condescending? I know it’s a difficult choice, but if there was a gun to my head, I guess I’d have to say… Condescending.Hey Democratic Party, I know I speak for literally dozens of people when I say, go and f*ck yourselves. (You don’t realize this, so I’ll tell you: Actually, it turns out, it’s us average “white trash” Americans who work for voluntary pay rather than parasitically sucking off the state our whole live like you, who are the sh*t, while you are simply… sh*t.)

Personally, I kinda hope you lose, just so that when John McCain starts a nuclear war I’ll be able to remind you that it wasn’t anything good about him, but rather decent Americans’ widespread distaste for you, which allowed him the power.

Update: Re Palin “Reeks of Local” — The Dumb, Dumb Demonrats: One “Susan Reimer” writes: “You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down syndrome child.” Wow. How disgusting.

She goes on: Palin is a “car-pooling supermom who went from PTA activist to mayor of her tiny (population 9,000) Alaskan town.” Note the sneering, condescending epithet tiny. All the liberals are working that one in. I guess they got their marching orders.

And then this horrendous comment, which would be attacked as sexist if uttered by a normal person: “The jokes started immediately: She won’t be able to hold her own against Joe Biden in a vice presidential debate. But wait until the swimsuit portion of the competition. …
Can you at least make a choice that doesn’t have Rush Limbaugh panting? (He called Palin a “babe.” It was another memorable moment in the ascent of women in this country.)”

I.e., she’s too pretty. We feminists don’t like pretty women.

Update: Wendy McElroy has two good posts on Palin: My Take on Sarah Palin and Smart Politicians Worry Me. From the latter:

This is exactly what Palin needs to do — embrace the you

ng man as family and publicly glow about the expected grandchild as wonderful news. Make the liberals (and not the conservatives) be the ones to cry out “OMG, a teenager had sex! The horror! The horror!” Make them look petty and ridiculous, anti-family and anti-forgiveness. Let them take the rap for politically exploiting the sex life of a 17-year-old; let them be the ones to smirk with glee or foam with faux outrage over a child that is wanted and welcomed. Meanwhile, as long as Palin’s daughter carries the fetus to term and marries the father, will show compassion and applaud the manner in which a commonplace — albeit unfortunate — situation is being handled. This kid’s pregnancy is a plus for the GOP.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Palin literally embraces Johnston on the GOP convention stage. What a photo op that would be! Not that Palin needs to draw media attention by dangling enticements. The woman has accomplished a near-impossible feat. She’s made Obama 2nd-page news.

***

Auto mechanic for President – The phony populism of Stephan Kinsella

PatroonPosted under Academia & Conservatism & Education & Election 2008

One of the stupidiest things that has ever appeared on Lew Rockwell.com’s website is this blog post by Stephan Kinsella. I never would have thought the editors would fall for the phony populism but they did hard in this case. Yes they were trying to defend Sarah Palin from attacks by the Democrats but are doing using the same wore-out old “snob/elitist/arugula-eating” arguments popularized by their supposed enemies, the necon Republicans.

You don’t have to go to Starbucks, which I don’t by the way, to wonder if someone who’s only served two years as governor of Alaska and who over a decade ago was on the Wasilla city council, is cut out to be president. Sarah Palin may make a very good vice president, but one of the pre-requisites of the job is being capable of filling-in in case something bad happens to head man. I need not remind anyone that politicans who are not ready for the prime-time stage can hurt themselves badly. Remember Dan Quayle? As much as Jimmy Carter’s “outsider” image was appealing, his lack of Washington experience really hurt his administration. In retrospect, he would have been better served running for Congress and winning in 1966 than running for Governor of Georgia that year and losing.  A couple years in D.C. would have helped. Certainly a George W. Bush II who spent some time in his father’s administration, might have better resisted the bad advice given to him by Dick Cheyney and the neocons.  It takes a fox to know where the jackels are.

But according to Mr. Kinsella, we cannot question Ms. Palin’s experience. To do so, is “elitist” because Ms. Palin is a “woman” of the people” and only such people are qualified for national office because they are of “the people.”  Education means nothing. Skills mean nothing. Experience means nothing. Connections mean nothing. Only those who are authentically “of the people”, meaning they can shoot guns and ride snowmobiles, are qualified to hold high office. If you happen to like classical music and went to four-year university, then you are considered a snob and enemy of the “real people” like Sarah Palin, and therefore not qualified.  I didn’t realize we lived in a communist state.

I hope Mr. Kinsella was in his bib overalls when he wrote this dreck with his degree from the two-year community college right next to him taped to the wall. I have no love for cosmos having dealt with the conservative and libertarian kind and I have no doubt that liberal/Hollywood cosmos look down on Palin as “too local.”  (Why are the Dems enthralled to them Mr. Kinsella? Because they give them money, end of explanation.) I don’t concern myself with what they think. But I get really, really REALLY tired of fellow elitists (and I doubt if many truck drivers read Lew Rockwell.com) trying to identify themselves with “the people” in a spasm of phony populism.  If they really wanted to be with “the people” they would quit blog writing and take a job in a factory, work on a farm, drive a truck or work in a mine and hang out after work not at some trendy sports bar but a roadhouse dive with deer heads on the wall and posters of scantily clad women selling Budweiser. Do I have any volunteers? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It’s amazing this post would even appear on Lew’s site because every time I go there all I see are screeds against two of the most middle class occupations in the nation, the police and the military. Are they not just as parasitic as say, a social worker or a teacher? Or is it because they carry a gun that makes them less snobbish, right? I’m confused. And so long as we’re talking parasites here, the Scott Horton’s of the world better watch out because in small towns and rural areas where the ”bitter” people live, you will find that the biggest employer is: The parasitic  goverment! Yes indeed all the municipal workers, all the firemen, all the cops and prison guards and the highway department workers, they’re the only holding up the middle class as we know it.  You’re not going to find a lot of factory workers anymore because most of the factories have closed and moved overseas thanks to the free trade polices the “populist” Von Miesans support. You’re not going to find too many farmers because they’ve been driven off the land thanks to the cheap food economics the Von Miesans support. That just leaves government employees. And as Arnold Schwartzenegger found out the hard way, trying to cut costs on the backs of these government employees carries political consequences. Oh by the way, where does the military get most of its employees from?

If we’re really in search of authenticity in the White House, why don’t the Republicans, instead of nominating the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals (Gosh dang another gov’t employee!) this week, just nominate an auto mechanic at a garage down the street from the Xcel Energy Center. Then we can go to a nearby beauty shop and name one of the hairdressers vice-president (After all we have to have a woman on the ticket!)  And then we can go to a neighborhood bar on the east side of St. Paul and pick their cabinet from the patrons on the stools. Now that’s authenticity! I mean, aren’t we looking for people to elect we can all hoist a beer with? Well, these fellows know how to hoist a beer all right.

One would have thought after eight years of another well know beer hoister George Bush II, perhaps hoisting beer should not be a prerequiste of public office. But alas, not only are the Dems suckered by their elitism (which is a natural make-up of the people who support them, the well educated professional class), the GOP is too.  It’s just that theirs is the phony type. I’ll take the honest crowd any day of the week, because it seems that one of the pre-requisties to being one with the people is being anti-intellectual, anti-education and anything to do with intelligence of any kind. Book readin’ is for sissies apparently.

I’m not saying Governor Palin is stupid, far from it. But there’s no way she’s going to know everything there is yet because she hasn’t had a chance to. She’s is like most local office holders, she knows what she needs to to do the job.  I think she would benefit from a copy Ron Paul’s book, or maybe Russel Kirk’s The Conserative Constitution, or something from Von Mieses assuming she knows who he is. Otherwise she simply going to support whatever is politically expiedent without reagard to principle or reason. And that’s where conservative and or libertarian policy is ultimatle betrayed. Don’t believe me? Go ask David Stockman. Or look what happen to the intellectual Newt Gingrich. He was dumped in favor of Tom DeLay. And the intellecutal Dick Armey was out shortly thereafter to be replaced by the brillant John Boehner and Denny Hastert.

 You would think Republicans are getting awfully tired of promoting people who are not intellectually serious.  You have to go back to Nixon and Reagan. Richard Nixon was a very smart individual but he let a corrosive populism descend itself into paranoia which destroyed his administration and that was a course he set for himself since he was first elected in 1946. In the end his vengence against his class enemies only hurt himself. Ronald Reagan had no class prejudices and was at least intellectually curious, but ultimately politics wrecked what ideas his administration was trying to promote because, as one wag put it “It’s not that Ronald Reagan lacks principals. It’s that he doesn’t understand the ones he has.” Dr. Fleming told of his concern about electing an actor president and was hushed up for his trouble.

What was nice about Ron Paul was that he was a genuine autodiadic. He learned Austrian economics on his own and grew intellectually from there. Barry Goldwater, though not an intellectual, was not afraid to surround himself with such people who provided the basis for his candidacy. Reagan combined elements of both men. This country was built by such persons, the learned farmer for example, or the country squire or the prairie intellecutal. Bobby Byrd was the son of West Virginia butcher and Gene McCarthy grew up on a Minnesota farm in Watkins and both became learned men. Hell, even Abraham Lincoln grew up reading books by the fire in his log cabin.

Have we become so needy of the “people’s” approval,  that we’re afraid to realize that maybe they’re not all they’re cracked up to be? Or better yet, if you feel that years of education in the ”government schools” has wrecked so many minds, why then would you want any candidate feel the need to be “authentic” for such ruined brains? Think about it and next time save the class warfare for the socialists.

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27 Comments »

27 Responses to “Auto mechanic for President – The phony populism of Stephan Kinsella”

1. Stephan Kinsella on 01 Sep 2008 at 1:26 pm #

   Sir: I believe you misread me. Just because I note that it is stupid for the liberal left to condescend to and show contempt for middle American normalcy does not mean I think that all elitism is wrong. My point, in part, is that (a) this will hurt the demonrats; and (b) it is hypocritical of them. Did you see the crass, hypocritical posts of democrats that I posted?

   In general, I would not say that education etc. “does not matter”. However, for VP or President, this is primarily a political or policy post. Harping on the candidate’s “experience” or whether they are “ready” is a way of quietly taking for granted that the state is legitimate. From the libertarian point of view, “the purpose” of a President is simply: it is to ensure that the executive branch abide by the Constitution, if not libertarian rights. This requires first and foremost a correct and principled understanding of the Constitution and the nature of the state. In short, I would rather any given libertarian–regardless of experience–as President, than any “experienced” mainstreamer.

   As for supporting Palin–I do not, and LRC does not. See Lew’s post http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022585.html where he notes Palin “has sworn a blood oath to the neocons, Wall Street, and the military industrial-complex, to be Vice Sauron in Mordor.”

2. Michael L. McKee on 01 Sep 2008 at 1:31 pm #

   “Much ado about nothing.”

3. Filmer on 01 Sep 2008 at 2:01 pm #

   Both parties have elitist elements. Note the reaction in some Republican quarters against Huckabee.

   Default anti-intellectualism isn’t helpful, but it is understandable. In the past higher learning taught you about Western Civilization and why it was worth preserving. Today, higher learning teaches you why Western Civilization is the scourge of humanity and must be destroyed. That “Joe Six-pack” is skeptical about people who are too much the product of it is understandable.

   In today’s climate, anti-elitism is largely helpful as long as it is not completely unthinking. This is evidence of our upside down times, because conservatism has historically defended a certain type of elitism.

4. Patroon on 01 Sep 2008 at 7:03 pm #

   Stephan, who do you think made this comment?

   “At this point, ordinarily, I would say something about the problem of white backlash being worse than the anti-white racism of Obama. But there is no backlash to speak or complain about. Bubba has got better things to worry about than his second-class status. There’s the new truck, American Idol, and, if he is really ambitious, a meth lab.”

   Why it was Dr. Thomas Fleming over at Chronicles (http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=706). Is this an elitist statement? Is it any worse than what’s been said at HuffPost? Hmmm?

   So liberals don’t like Sarah Palin and are saying bad things about her? What else is new? As I said, I don’t concern myself with their nonsense. What bothers me is hypocriscy, people who supposedly are opposed to class warfare and practice it everyday on people of their own class just so they can feel “one with the people.” People they never meet nor live next too. It quite easy because they exist only in abstract and I’m sure it makes on feel good.

   As Dr. Fleming points out, and I too as well, what you may think of as “the people” is not what you may believe. Now we hear Sarah Palin 17-year old daughter is pregnant. It looks like the abstinence-only education didn’t work with her. I think you’ll find the teens who get pregnant tend to be from poorer areas than the Upper East Side. Now this doesn’t mean that Sarah Palin’s a bad mother or would make a bad vice-president. But it does mean one should refrain about the weighing the moral habits of Red States and Blue State. Hollywood may very well be about wild parties, drugs, and affairs and lies and such but at least they never claim to have moral standards unlike some people in Nixonland who apparently don’t quite know how to follow them.

   I read your post perfectly Stephan. You think the libs and dems are condesending and snobbish towards Sarah Palin. They may very well be (although I don’t see why, she’s more a free spirit than most GOP church ladies). But to say that questioning her experience is off limits because she’s one of the people is silly. Do we attack Ron Paul then because he served so many years in Congress? Does that legitimize the state? Do think Gov. Palin the role of the executive branch in regards to the Constituion? That’s an open question. I know you have to start somewhere, I just wish Palin had some more time before this all exploded upon her. Now you’re going to see the results and it could be ugly. I hope not, but it could be.

5. polemicscat on 01 Sep 2008 at 7:04 pm #

   Patroon provides more heat than light. Why so much ad homenim
   rhetoric?
   Filmer has it right.

6. Patroon on 01 Sep 2008 at 7:20 pm #

   Filmer does have it right which is why I’ve always found the “we’re the real people because we know how to bowl” rhetoric pretty silly and irritating.

7. Stephan Kinsella on 01 Sep 2008 at 8:38 pm #

   Patroon: “I read your post perfectly Stephan. You think the libs and dems are condesending and snobbish towards Sarah Palin. They may very well be (although I don’t see why, she’s more a free spirit than most GOP church ladies). But to say that questioning her experience is off limits because she’s one of the people is silly.”

   I personally think “experience” is irrelevant, if not a negative. I don’t want someone “competent”, who is “good at running” the machinery of the state. I want someone who sees it for what it is and respects the Constitution (not saying Palin does). But if “experience” is necessary, she is the most qualified of the bunch–being a mayor and governor is more relevant than being a Senator.

8. Filmer on 01 Sep 2008 at 10:05 pm #

   I agree with Stephan re. experience, and I have been banging that drum at a couple of different blogs. That people are fretting about her experience reflects the current unconstitutional view of the President as CEO, General and Heaven forbid, “leader of the free world.” How much experience does it take to veto unconstitutional legislation which is the primary thing a constitutional President would do. (That there is some skill set that experience may enhance when it comes to actually having all those vetoes sustained is a different question.)

   I agree with Patroon that her freshness on the scene may make her malleable. That sort of experience could help. Her running from her support of Buchanan is already evidence of that.

   Re. populism, in an ideal world people would be proud of who they are and neither envious of or condescending to others. Snobbish elitism drives me nuts, but faux populism isn’t much better.

9. Weaver on 02 Sep 2008 at 6:30 am #

   Filmer,

   There’s perhaps nothing wrong with being mildly condescending to those groups that are less virtuous. I find virtue to be an excellent measure of worth, and peer pressure can be a powerful force of social restraint.

   The federal government isn’t going away overnight. It’d be reckless to veto every bit of legislation – such might create chaos. However… it might well be better to have a president who does that than the alternative we have today.

   Ideally we’d want someone who understands the Constitution, knows people in Washington (and understands how to get things done), and has a plan for working towards a smaller government – a plan more sensible than one of Stalin’s 5-year plans.

   I have my doubts whether people would even vote for a smaller government nowadays though. The best I hope for for the Presidency is a populist big spender who’s anti-war and anti-free trade/mass immigration – someone like Lou Dobbs.

10. Weaver on 02 Sep 2008 at 7:13 am #

    Or that someone like Palin inherits the throne and surprises us. There’s a minute chance of such happening, but there’s an infinitesimally small chance that a libertarian will win outright, and nearly as small of a chance for someone who’s only a strict Constitutionalist like Baldwin.

11. Patroon on 02 Sep 2008 at 1:01 pm #

    This reminds me of the old P.J. ORourke joke, “Republicans tell everyone that government doesn’t work and then get elected to prove it.”

    I’m sorry, I guess I’m just not nilhistic enough to advocate someone’s election so they can smash the state with their incompetence because they don’t know what they are doing. Yes I do believe there is Cult of the Presidency, but even the Constitution allows for a chief executive and I would think this person shoudl at least be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

12. roho on 02 Sep 2008 at 3:07 pm #

    Will she continue the Alaska vs United States law suit, that charges that it is Alaska’s oil to drill in Anwar if they so wish?

    Or, will the VP assume that she herself as Governor was wrong?(Closed door GOP deals anyone?)

13. Andrew T. on 02 Sep 2008 at 5:31 pm #

    “The best I hope for for the Presidency is a populist big spender who’s anti-war and anti-free trade/mass immigration – someone like Lou Dobbs.”

    I truly doubt that a populist would be any step in the right direction. If anything, he and his style of governing would be popular (!) and therefore legitimize the State tenfold.

    Free trade and mass immigration aren’t just two sides of the same coin, you know.

14. Weaver on 02 Sep 2008 at 7:51 pm #

    Andrew,

    Like Burnham I’m not entirely an isolationist but to me war, trade, and immigration are all three interrelated.

15. Andrew T. on 02 Sep 2008 at 8:02 pm #

    I’m not an “isolationist” either, whatever that means. Visiting your neighbor or buying bricks from him is certainly a lot better than throwing a brick through his window.

16. Weaver on 02 Sep 2008 at 10:07 pm #

    Isolationist would be to minimise all contact with said neighbor. The ideal is to figure how to maximise the long-term durability of one’s society and loved one’s and act accordingly with trade as with other things, without going outside morality. One’s society doesn’t necessarily have to be the dominant power in one’s land, so I don’t mean defending the US government as it is today.

    If you don’t trade with him as much, you won’t be as tempted to interfere. War’s often about profit for someone.

17. Andrew T. on 03 Sep 2008 at 2:33 am #

    “If you don’t trade with him as much, you won’t be as tempted to interfere. War’s often about profit for someone.”

    In fact, this is exactly false. It is vastly more difficult to justify going to war with a country (especially ideological wars) if the two nations share a trade relationship.

18. Weaver on 03 Sep 2008 at 6:55 am #

    In von Misean theory, sure. In von Misean theory, nations would be at each other’s mercy due to dependence in trade.

    The reality is that if America trades with China, every policy affects America and so America has an interest in Chinese politics, policies, etc. And the American government is lobbied by business as well, so the result is oligarchy. In von Misean theory, businesses don’t use force. In reality, force is used where it’s beneficial, and those who use force, or bribe another for force, often have an advantage. Just look at the gangster Oligarchs in Russia – why trade freely when you can make more by taking?

    It’s funny, Raimondo calls Burnham a neocon, a claim that is intellectually void for Burnham is no globalist and was only an interventionist because of his justified concern of communist aggression, and yet the libertarians are far closer. While Burnham falls into the category of traditional conservative who rejects globalism, Raimondo, von Mises, and all the rest are just more globalists, with more in common ideologically with the neocons.

    Free trade is meant to bring about an interdependent global society, something Burnham would have likely rejected.

19. Weaver on 03 Sep 2008 at 7:06 am #

    To be clear, interdependent global society is Orwellian for empire. Someone always has the upper hand and the option of using said power. The libertarian ideal is, de facto, empire even if in theory it’s a peaceful group of trading hamlets.

20. Andrew T. on 03 Sep 2008 at 2:56 pm #

    Weaver,

    A free society requires a very specific mentality. America during its secession from Britain is a good example.

21. Weaver on 04 Sep 2008 at 12:39 pm #

    As someone put it recently: globalisation leaves all nations vulnerable to exploitation by others. It brings about unnecessary conflict, quite the opposite of how von Mises had dreamed.

    Btw, I wish America had remained with Britain. Post-secession, it seems to have decided it’s “not a real nation”. The roots weren’t deep enough it seems.

22. Weaver on 04 Sep 2008 at 12:57 pm #

    Not to make contradictory statements:

    both empire and vulnerability to exploitation are issues, and similar ones at that.

    Reg. empire: The barriers to empire are many and include trade and ethnic barriers.

    Reg. vulnerability: man has throughout history exploited others. It’s in his nature to fall for this temptation. However, he’s at least less likely to exploit those he cares for and has some attachment to, and the only way to enjoy any sort of order, peace, and yes freedom is to defend our own people in more rooted societies, as well as to provide an environment where virtue can flourish among those natives. Even natives will be more likely to exploit if they’re allowed to be corrupted.

    Humans don’t like truth though. They prefer symbols and ideals founded in fantasy. I don’t have a fantasy ideology to replace libertarianism, so I can’t win an argument here. All I have is the truth revealed behind its mask: human nature is what it is, and all we can do is pursue a slightly better world for loves ones and kin.

    The ideals of freedomism will never be realised but chased in perpetuity, and the results of its pursuit often seem to bring about the opposite of what the believer believes he desires, e.g. again trade as well as legalised prostitution, drugs, and gambling etc. That this destroys society and brings about less freedom doesn’t matter.

    For libertarians it’s the pursuit that’s important, results and reality be damned.

23. Andrew T. on 04 Sep 2008 at 5:42 pm #

    It was good that America seceded from Britain. The British monarch threatened our freedoms and our means of living healthy lives, so we told them where to put their muskets. Sort of like what I think people should do now. As if the geographical distance between us (certainly then even as now) wasn’t enough by itself.

24. Weaver on 04 Sep 2008 at 6:40 pm #

    Immigration into the US tipped the scale in favor of secession.

    The newer immigrants, especially the Presbyterians and French, favored it, and so it happened.

25. Andrew T. on 04 Sep 2008 at 10:13 pm #

    Well, so it is.

    Note how you can’t countenance peaceable trade between individuals, but armed imperialism and taxation without representation (by a European country) is desirable.

26. Weaver on 07 Sep 2008 at 8:22 am #

    Things weren’t bad then relative to today. That European country was America’s chief originator anyway.

    Btw, the “revealing the truth” phrase I used was admittedly a little odd. It’s really what I associate with this area of thinking, not a sign of megalomania on my part haha. I could probably have reworded it better, though it does convey the idea of a nonideology well. And an elitist view point is going to sound… elitist haha. Anyway, just pointing that out.

27. Andrew T. on 07 Sep 2008 at 2:21 pm #

    “Things weren’t bad then relative to today.”

    You know, Weaver, in a way I would have to disagree with you. Technological improvements make us safer, healthier, more entertained and more educated than we have ever been. Our moral integrity and our politics? Not so much.

]]> http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/palin-reeks-of-local/feed/ 0 http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/fleming-on-woods/ http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/fleming-on-woods/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:34:52 +0000 Stephan Kinsella http://www.stephankinsella.com/?p=4830

Related posts:

• Fleming on Woods
• The Trouble with Feser (Feser on Libertarianism)
• Luker on 10 Most Harmful Books
• Minarchists as Statist-Aggressors

Fleming on Woods

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 23, 2004 11:34 PM

As Tom Woods recently noted, though he was too polite to name names, Thomas Fleming and others at Chronicles (related posts: 1, 2) have attacked his published views on Austrian economics and some economically illiterate pronouncements of certain popes.

Woods’s exquisitely brilliant and eloquent response speaks for itself. But Fleming, who is genuinely brilliant on some issues, like other conservatives (no offense, Pat Buchanan) sometimes flails when he goes out of his depth, as here:Fleming writes:

Even major economic thinkers on basically the same side—say Friedman, Rothbard, and Stigler—disagree on many things. How does a non-economist—like Woods, his mentor Lew Rockwell, or me—decide which of their writings is Holy Writ, which is apostolic apocrypha, and which is arrant heresy? I don’t know and neither do they.

He continues,

Science is a slippery term because in English we use it primarily to mean a hard science like physics and chemistry or microbiology. Sociology and economics are only metaphorically sciences in this strict sense. Of course any disciplined body of knowledge is also a science, as theology and literary criticism are sciences, but these looser sciences do not presume to dictate absolute rules on the order of 2+2=4. Aristotle settled this question long ago, and it is one of the prime mistakes of the modernists since Descartes to pretend that there can be an absolute science of human behavior or society. If Woods were consistent in his logic, he would have to set all the teachings of the social sciences against the teachings of the Church. He would of course argue that economics is somehow different, but who would agree with him?

Several problems here. First, he implies Lew Rockwell is not an economist. As Misesian James Yohe told me one time over beers in Auburn, and with which I agree–Lew is one of the top ten economists in the world, easy. Second, Fleming is appealing to authority; as if having a PhD in economics entitles you to pronounce on economics–which is untrue due to the corruption and scientism of modern economics and which contradicts Fleming’s own condemnation of economics qua disclipline.

Third, Fleming is simply incorrect to think that economics is not a hard science; or to imply that it matters how many people “agree” with this whether it is so or not.

I fear that Fleming’s comments leave an impression of ultra-traditionalist denigration of reason and skepticism which imply that a primary reason to be a Christian–a Catholic–is that we are all helpless idiots and need the authorized instruction of priests before we even know how or what to know. Of course something along these lines can be argued in the field of morals. But on the topic of economic advice, Woods rightly points out,

By any standard, the issue of (for example) whether free trade or a system of protective tariffs is more effective for a developing country – obviously a matter of legitimate disagreement among Catholics – is not one on which the Pope may appear to make a morally binding judgment.

Woods continues,

Bad economic advice does not magically become good economic advice just because a pope or even a series of popes have offered it, any more than poor architectural advice would become good architectural advice for the same reason.

Fleming states that Woods champions “the social sciences over the magisterium”. He imples Woods denies the Tradition of the Church. This is not true. Woods points out quite sensibly that simply because something is uttered by a pope or a line of them does not mean it is infallible. This is elementary, and Fleming no doubt knows this.

Fleming tries a clever analogy to argue against Woods:

One of the sources of Woods’ confusion is that he does not distinguish between economics as an analytical tool subject to verification and economic philosophy, which is a branch of ethical and political theory. These are quite distinct, just as distinct as evolutionary theory and social Darwinism. I might generally endorse Adam Smith’s analysis of markets, as I do, while repudiating his moral philosophy (The Theory of Moral Sentiments), as I also do. Put simply, a mathematician has the right to instruct the Church on the rules of geometry, but he has no right to tell the Pope how those rules are to be applied, for example, in the construction of a Church. To take a trivial example, the sphere might be a perfect shape, mathematically considered, but it is hardly the right shape for a Church.

This analogy is inapt and disingenuous. Woods and Austrians do not say, qua economist, that it is the “right” type of economy. What they say is, if you want to increase wages, or increase economic prosperity, then a private property order is the ticket. Now surely Fleming would not say the Church’s goal is to increase impoverishment. Therefore his only argument can be the economic proposition about the best means to achieve prosperity. But as Woods points out, the Church ” may not say that the state has to be employed to bring about better working conditions, because she is incompetent to pronounce upon the best way to bring about better working conditions, just as she is incompetent to pronounce upon whether, assuming their production involves nothing immoral, I should use aspirin or ibuprofen for my headache.”

So using Fleming’s analogy, the Austrian would not say that a building should be sphere-shaped simply because a sphere is “perfect”; rather, he would say, if, for some reason, you want to construct a container having a minimum surface area for a given volume, then the container should have a spherical shape. If a pope enunciated this goal, then he would simply be incorrect to insist on using a cube- or barrel-shaped container; the means advocated is simply not the best way to achieve the stated goal. It’s one or the other: cube-shaped container; or one having minimum surface area. It’s not the mathematician’s fault for pointing out this unavoidable tradeoff.

Likewise, if your goal is to achieve peace and prosperity, then consistent private property rights are absolutely essential. If a pope advocates any deviation whatsoever from a pure private property order, he is to that extent advocating conflict and impoverishment, which surely contradicts moral goals sanctioned by the Church.

Fleming also states that

What Woods and Rockwell are arguing for, however, is not merely the limitation of the state to protection of their interests. No, they are explicitly denying the moral order and, because that argument has limited appeal, they attempt to fool their followers by pretending to champion economic freedom against its enemies, whether those enemies are Marxists or collectivist Catholics.

But it is quite untrue that they are “denying the moral order”, whatever this loosey-goosey, non-rigorous, overly-impressed-with-himself liberal-arts-major type term means; it is untrue in fact; and it is untrue, beyond cavil, that it is implied by their economic comments qua economists. As Woods writes,

if you want wages to rise, then eliminate all taxes on capital, just for starters, and get the state out of the way of private investment. The resulting increase in investment will raise the productivity of labor; that, in turn, means more goods, lower prices, and increased purchasing power for everyone. The kinds of tax, wage, and other economic policies that the Storck school recommends as a faithful reflection of Catholic social teaching will do the opposite, and can therefore be expected to have precisely the opposite effect. Why should I not be permitted to say this?

Simply pointing out the economic consequences of a proposed policy is not denying the moral order. Surely the popes, like good Austrians, are in favor of peace, prosperity, and cooperation. But since these things are achieved only by respect for individual rights, including property rights–and all the consequences of this, including that governmental regulations are inconsistent with this and concepts like “‘economic justice” are quite literally nonsense–then any pope who advocates any of these things is simply incorrect; he is advocating policies that undermine his own (perhaps divinely inspired) goals of peace and prosperity. That Fleming would use an irrational, incoherent, manipulable, loosey-goosey, even evil, term like “economic justice” with a straight face, as if it were coherent and accepted and just and noncontroversial, is a sad indication of the true gulf between liberty-, rights-, and justice-seeking libertarians, and ultra-traditionalist conservative types who can no longer even pay lip service to the elementary teachings of the science of economics.

Can it be “immoral” for an employer to pay his employees too little? Who knows. Austrians do not speak on this issue, qua Austrians. The point is, if a pope advocates the state outlawing the payment of a certain wage (i.e., the imposition of a minimum wage), then the pope is simply incorrect if he thinks this will improve the lot of workers or will not cause unemployment and impoverishment.

Economics per se is about means; the best means to achieve ends. Although economics is in a sense value-free, it should be no blemish on real, human Austrian economists that they, like most normal, decent human beings, happen to also prefer, qua humans, peace and prosperity; and thus tend to recommend the private property order, which is, in the end, the only means of achieving the desired goals.

In the end, the disagreements of Fleming and Storck are economic disagreements. It is monstrous to use the cover of the Church’s magisterium to give credibility to one’s secular, economic arguments. Woods is right when he writes, “Sooner or later the substance of my argument will have to be addressed.”

The bottom line is: are the irrational, incorrect, even immoral pronouncements of popes on technical economic issues infallible? Of course not.

A priest comments on Chronicles versus Tom Woods

Posted by Norman Singleton on June 23, 2004 09:23 PM

Last night, I had dinner last night with a friend of mine who was recently ordained as a priest. We discussed the Tom Woods-Chronicles exchange. My friend pointed out that if the Chronicles folks were right then Pope John Paul II could not have revised previous Papal statements on economics and embraced capitalism.

Blessed Is the Fast Writer

Posted by Lew Rockwell on June 22, 2004 12:02 PM

Especially the fast, good writer, of which LRC has a number. Yesterday afternoon, I saw Thomas Storck’s June 17th attack on Tom Woods and the free market. I forwarded it to Tom, and in a few hours, he sent me today’s terrific essay.

Tom has a forthcoming book — much needed — on economics and the church, and another just out from Columbia University Press, The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals and the Progressive Era.

Woods, Storck, Fleming et al.

Posted by Lew Rockwell on June 24, 2004 09:15 AM

Writes Professor Michael King of Benedictine College:

Stephen Kinsella hits the mark with his conclusion that the disagreements of Fleming and Storck are economic disagreements, and it is “monstrous to use the cover of the Church’s magisterium to give credibility to one’s secular, economic arguments.”

One thing that struck me when reading Storck’s piece was the sense that he was almost desperate not only to win an economic argument, but to end the debate.

To wit, consider this important claim made by Storck:

“What can one say in reply to Woods, then? First, that since a whole series of popes has taught certain moral truths connected with economics which they believed was entirely within their competence, it is monstrous for anyone claiming to be a Catholic to argue against this teaching, and second, that what Woods represents as the teaching of economics is in fact simply one economic view among many, and that thus it is not the science of economics that is at odds with Catholic doctrine, but simply one school of thought representing ultimately the fallible reasoning of human beings.”

This passage only makes sense if Storck is claiming that when popes write on economics, they are teaching “certain moral truths” rather than “simply one economic view among many.”But he betrays himself later in the piece with these two revealing comments: “In fact, the Austrian school, to which Woods adheres, is a minority school of economists.” [emphasis original] and “…but there are other schools of economic thought whose finding harmonize well with Catholic social thought.”

Hmmm. Sounds to me like Mr. Storck is using the “cover of the Church’s magisterium” to score points for his own line of economic thinking. To paraphrase Tom Woods, is it not a weird coincidence that most who speak or write on Catholic social teaching support heavy interventionism?

And, is it not surprising that as their policies sink deeper into failure, they seek further cover under the authority of the popes.

Re: Woods, Storck, Fleming et al.

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 24, 2004 10:45 AM

Regarding Professor King’s comments on my post, another thing comes to mind. Suppose a person interested in economics also adheres to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. This means you believe when the Pope speaks ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter), solemnly defining a dogma concerning faith and morals to be held by the entire Church, it is impossible for the pronouncement to be incorrect. Thus, it may be relied upon concerning one’s own moral conduct.

Now, clearly some pronouncements by the Pope are, under this doctrine, infallible; others are not. How do we know whether a given pronouncement is ex cathedra or not? There has been much written on this, but wouldn’t it be reasonable, to recognize that a given pronouncement cannot be, indeed must not be, one of the ex cathedra, infallible pronouncements, if it is known to be false? If I, as a mathematician, know that pi is greater than 3.14, and the Pope declares it to be exactly 3.14, then I know not only that the Pope is incorrect; but also that his statement was not ex cathedra.Likewise, if the Pope makes some statement based on fallacious economic reasoning–e.g., he espouses some kind of socialist system as being more efficacious or efficient than capitalism at achieving prosperity–then this statement also cannot be infallible. The point is, if we know something is false, we know it cannot be infallible; so having knowledge, gained through reason, can be used as a simple test to determine whether a statement is ex cathedra or not.

No doubt there are more sophistocated, established tests for determining when a papal decree or teaching is infallible or not. But this is a simple one, useful in some circumstances. Storck et al., by claiming that obviously false propositions are infallible, are in fact undermining the idea of infallibility.

In any event, they are trying to take a shortcut to establishing truth–trying to use authority, rather than grapple with the substance of Woods’s economic views. They do not even mount a serious argument trying to show that or why socialistic-economic pronouncements of certain popes are indeed ex cathedra; they just seem to assume this, because it would shut up Woods.

And this is the tactic modern socailists are increasingly adopting: the “shut up” tactic. As the collapse of communism and spectactular failures of the welfare state have become more visible and manifest, it has become ever more difficult for liberals to argue for outright socialism with a straight face, and increasingly difficult for them to justify their socialistic policies such as affirmative action, antidiscrimination laws, minimum wage, political correctness, and so on. Therefore–since they have virtually no arguments left anymore; the failure of their policy prescriptions has become too obvious– they have increasingly, in their desperation, increased their tone and resort to ad hominem and attempts to literally silence the opposition by force. Thus, the modern phenomenon of being labeled racist or anti-semite at the slightest, mildest challenge to prevailing mainstream orthodoxy (to the extent where if someone is called a racist or anti-semite, the prima facie conclusion has to be that the person is probably not), and the resort to antidiscrimination laws and their penumbras and emanations which indeed exert a severe chilling effect on free speech. The “liberals” are the biggest threat to free speech, yet have the chutzpah to pretend to be defenders of liberalism.

Re: Re: Woods, Storck, Fleming et al.

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 24, 2004 09:32 PM

In response to recent posts concerning Tom Woods and the folks at Chronicles, Scott Richert, Executive Editor of Chronicles, wrote to tell me that I was incorrect to “have claimed that Storck, Fleming, and I regarded papal encyclicals on Catholic social thought to be ‘infallible.’ None of us has said that; we do not believe it.”

He then asked that I “withdraw” my claim and to “make a public apology for misrepresenting our position.”While I find this entire exercise a bit too over-indulgent, I’ll try to respond. But let me first emphasize that I respect Fleming and Chronicles, and none of this is meant personally.

Now it seemed to me obvious that when Storck and Fleming attacked Woods’s pro-capitalist views on the grounds that they are somehow incompatible with Church “teaching”, the Church teaching in question was supposed to be some kind of unchallengeable, established-as-true Catholic dogma–i.e., infallible. It seems to me that unless the “Church teachings” in question are indeed infallible, then the dispute between Storck/Fleming and Woods is merely economic and has nothing to do with the Church. Therefore I assumed Fleming and Storck view the Church teachings that Woods disagrees with as ex cathedra.

According to Richert, none of them hold this view. But his demand for apology is unwarranted, for no harm was intended if I indeed did, mistate their view; at worst, their own ambiguity led to their view being misconstrued. I have no idea what it means to “withdraw” something already said–it’s not as if there is some big statement-deed-registry office in the sky who keeps track of these things–but I will be happy to state “for the record”–if any of these gentlemen do not “regard papal encyclicals on Catholic social thought to be ‘infallible,’” then I retract stating this as a fact.

Yet it seems to me they are trying to have it both ways. For their attack on Woods is based not on economic substance or arguments but on the incompatibility of (pure) capitalism with certain Church teachings. This only carries weight only if the Church teachings have some kind of authority to guarantee they are right. To my mind, this must be infallibility. I am unware of some intermediate “infallibility-lite” status. Yet Richert denies they are saying the teachings are infallible.

So which way is it, guys? Are the teachings infallible (in which case, show how they are matters of faith or morals); or if not, what’s the big deal with contradicting these teachings? After all, if you say something true that contradicts a non-infallible, possibly-false “teaching,” you are in the right, no? So the question then simply becomes, are Woods’s economic-related views correct, or not? Are they sound? No appeal to authority makes any sense at that stage of inquiry.

Now far be it from me to accuse them of holding a view which an editor of a magazine with which they are associated insists they do not. But I may be excused for quoting some comments of theirs that can perhaps excuse my error. Storck writes,

the hallmark of dissenters and heretics throughout the ages has been precisely to take some human science, theology or philosophy often, elevate it above the teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church and pose the false quandary: If I accept such and such a teaching of the Church I must go against my God-given reason. But since reason is from God, I cannot contradict it. Therefore I must reject this teaching of the Church.

Storck here mentions the “magisterium” of the Church; and implies that a Catholic should not go against the “teaching of the Church”, which, to me, implies the teaching must be infallible. If Storck does not mean this, then he is speaking of non-infallible teaching, in which case, there is nothing at all wrong, from the point of view of Catholicism, with Woods disagreeing with it. I for one would be happy to see Storck clearly and explicitly state precisely what is the basis of his critique.

As for Fleming, in his piece he writes,

Second, the issue is not about Papal infallibility, and those who say it is are, as usual, lying. Popes make mistakes all the time, and, as I pointed out in my column, even Councils of the Church have had to reverse direction from time to time. The basic question is whether or not the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit over time. If it is, then the foundational principles of the Church in theology and ethics are true. If not, it is time to find another religion.

[...]Catholicism requires a certain amount of patience and humility, and if I am going to be asked to reject the infallibility of the Church, I am certainly not going to replace it with the infallibility of non-professional economists.

Now Fleming first denies it’s about infallibilty. However, he then implies that the Church’s teachings on economics–even the non-capitalist oriented ones–are “guided by the Holy spirit”; foundational principles of ethics that are true. I am not sure what this is; it seems to be some kind of intermediate “infallibility lite” standard. And what can it mean when Fleming implies that adopting free market economics means “reject[ing] the infallibility of the Church” As with Storck, I regret if I have mistated or am misstating Fleming’s views; but if so, I am not quite sure what they are, in this respect.

Some final comments (some drawn from private correspondence with Woods). Fleming et al. say these teachings are not infallible. However, if they’re saying it represents 2,000 years of traditional thought, then almost by definition that makes it infallible by virtue of the ordinary Magisterium. For example, Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, on contraception, is not ipso facto infallible — nowhere does he say, “As Pope, I bind you all with this infallible statement” (that would be the extraordinary Magisterium at work) — but because it follows an uninterrupted line of thought, it is considered infallible.

Additional knowledge has come to light over the years that must influence these questions. Fleming is not quite correct when he says that the usury teaching changed only because conditions changed. Theologians had begun to realize that certain factors made certain loans not immoral; these factors became more and more numerous until finally, the prohibition essentially withered away. That is what Woods is suggesting should happen here.

Consider the case of Galileo: Fleming’s views here would justify Urban VIII’s treatment of Galileo. Hadn’t 1500 years of tradition opposed Copernicanism? Hadn’t all the Fathers interpreted the Bible to imply a stationary earth?

In a follow up, Fleming writes,

I am still waiting for a libertarian to respond to my challenge. Can they show that their liberal-individualist ethic is represented either in the New Testament or in the authoritative teachings of the Church? In the Beatitudes, for example, or in Christ’s admonition to the rich young man, in the writings of Augustine and Thomas on the obligations of charity? If they were not sunk in the mire of 19th century liberalism–a dead tradtion of thought, if ever there was one–they might be able to understand what the issue is. Come on, boys, we are waiting for a single rational argument that is not simply a recital of liberal platitudes.

I personally don’t base my libertarian principles on statements in the New Testament, but rather on the simple notion that committing violence against other individuals requires justification; on the idea that peace, cooperation, civilization, and prosperity are preferable to their opposite–war, mayhem, strife, struggle, animal-like hand-to-mouth life, rape, murder, theft, conflict. I don’t care to see if I can find statements justifying this in the NT; but it seems to me Jesus would choose the former over the latter.

The bottom line is if someone “opposes” libertarianism, that means he does endorse the propriety of aggression–the initiation of violent force against peaceful neighbors–in some cases. It’s that simple. Fleming writes:

Third, the issue is not about economic liberty or private property. The Church has consistently defended both. But it is only in the Modern Age that property rights became absolute, while other moral considerations had to be bracketed as matters of private opinion–a position to which the Church has never subscribed.

My first comment is–the Church never subscribed to absolute property rights? What about Roman law?

In any event, note here, Fleming apparently thinks property rights are not “absolute,” presumably because “other moral considerations” outweigh them or something. But this is just euphemistic or sterile language to disguise the naked truth, which is simply, that Fleming is in favor, in some cases, of institutionalized aggression against the bodies and/or private property of peaceful, innocent individuals. (If he is not, then he is a libertarian.)

Why Fleming thinks there is some kind of burden of proof on those who endorse, advocate, and strive for peace, cooperate, prosperity, and civilization to prove that it is morally permissible to be in favor of these things is beyond me. It’s reminiscent of the Randian’s hand-wringing attempts to find some basis for benevolence–as if you should feel guilty for wanting to be nice to your neighbors unless you can prove it’s permitted. Rather, the view of those consistently in favor of peace and cooperation and prosperity is not really that those willing to commit, or endorse, aggression have the burden of justifying it; rather, their view is that criminals, like animals, disasters, disease, and forces of nature, which, while unfortunate and a cause of tragedy, misery, and impoverishemnt, are merely technical problems that those who oppose aggression must try to find ways to combat and protect against.

]]> http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/fleming-on-woods/feed/ 0 http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/feser-on-libertarianism/ http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/03/feser-on-libertarianism/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:06:21 +0000 Stephan Kinsella http://www.stephankinsella.com/?p=4824

Related posts:

• Fleming on Woods
• The Trouble with Feser (Feser on Libertarianism)
• Luker on 10 Most Harmful Books
• Minarchists as Statist-Aggressors

Reply to Feser on Block

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on July 13, 2006 03:41 PM

Ed Feser’s recent Contra the Rothbardians yet again: A Reply to Walter Block is the latest entry in the author’s growing separation from libertarianism.

I’m sure Block will reply, but I jotted a few notes down when reading his piece, and assemble some of them here.

Large Scale Public Actions and Contract Enforcement. Feser writes:

I wrote only of large-scale public actions of a political or commercial type that have an inherent tendency to further the public legitimation of behaviors contrary to traditional morality.

A couple comments in response to this. First, this view would seem to argue that even private contracts between gays that attempt to mimic some of the legal rights married people have–such as rights of inheritance, custody of kids, visitiation/hospital rights, power of attorney, including medical power of attorney and living wills, and co-ownership of real estate, etc.–would not be enforceable. The courts would be justified in both monopolizing law enforcement and justice and courts, and in refusing to enforce even private civil agreements between gays. I guess they get to hold hands, and that’s about it. But as I have argued, private contracts between gays ought to be enforceable.The Trouble with Minarchy

Second, as indicated above, even if Feser’s moderate limitations on standard libertarianism are limited to very visible/large-scale behavior, and limitations thereon by a local government–his views seem to require a state, at least at the local level. After all, in anarchy, how is he going to say that a local government could in some cases be justified in restricting some publicly immoral/corrupting behavior? In other words, Feser’s views necessarily entail the existence of the state; so to that extent they are not libertarian, because libertarianism rejects aggression, and states require aggression. See my What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist; Gene Callahan, The Most Crucial Gap in Politics. (NB: I think even when Feser was a libertarian he was a minimal-state type, not an anarchist.)

On Reluctant Aggressors

In my view, it’s a bit curious that Feser has renounced libertarianism but then seems not to like it when implications of this–such as not being completely opposed to all forms of aggression (for this is what it means to be a libertarian)–are pointed out. I have noted this many times. Those who are not pure or complete libertarians are of course impure because they do not oppose aggression 100%; they condone it in some cases. This is why they are not libertarians; if they did oppose aggression consistently, they would be libertarians. But they say they are not libertarians, yet bristle at having it pointed out that they actually do in some cases condone aggression.

I’ve seen this many times. For example, see some of my posts on the nature of aggression here, such as Feser’s reply to one of my replies (which was deleted from the L&P blog when I was banned for a while–but thank goodness for Google cache, eh?–see 1, 2, 3), and my The Trouble with Feser (on Libertarianism).

See also my post Minarchists as State-Aggressors; and similar interchanges with or comments on non-libertarians such as: Scott Richert and Thomas Fleming et al. (Fleming again) [note: see archived version below; also Economics, Catholic Social Teaching, and Dissent]; one Ralph Luker; Jonah Goldberg. Notice how Richert et al. wriggle and squirm, trying to deny that they actually do condone aggression. It’s kind of amusing.

On Taming Our Beasts Feser writes:

UPDATE: It occurs to me that some readers might wonder whether what I say above about a community prohibiting “large-scale public actions of a political or commercial type that have an inherent tendency to further the public legitimation of behaviors contrary to traditional morality” would entail the banning of books, political speech, and the like that defended liberal moral attitudes. The answer is no. As my JLS article makes clear, the context of my discussion was the question of what might, from the point of view of traditional morality, be detrimental to the moral development of a child. A thoroughly “pornified” popular culture, from which, as any parent knows, it is extremely hard to shield children without withdrawing from society altogether, is arguably detrimental in this way. But the existence of books and speeches arguing for a certain anti-traditional moral point of view is not. The former sort of thing has an inevitable impact on the sensibilities and inclinations of people exposed to it over time. The latter doesn’t.

This seems a bit naive. Does Feser think that people are so nuanced? I am reminded of one of my favorite Mises quotes:

No socialist author ever gave a thought to the possibility that the abstract entity which he wants to vest with unlimited power—whether it is called humanity, society, nation, state, or government—could act in a way of which he himself disapproves.

Local Government

the question I was concerned with in the article was simply that of whether the thesis of self-ownership per se automatically rules out all governmental measures by which a local community might seek to uphold a genteel “Main Street U.S.A.” ethos. It was not a defense of any particular policy, much less of any sort of draconian paternalism.

Again: note how Feser assumes that there is a local government, that is itself compatible with self-ownership. I would grant you: if this is so, then yeah, maybe it is legitimate for it to further infringe on self-ownership. The reason is government itself has to violate rights (self-ownership) just to exist; and if you grant this is okay, then where does it end? but the point is, he has to assume the legitimacy of the state to make his arguments; so if libertarianism is not compatible with the state, then you can’t argue that various measures that require a state for enforcement, could ever be compatible with libertarianism.

Libertarians and Socialism. Feser writes (in comments):

This is one reason — by no means the only one — why I am no longer a libertarian. Fusionism, I now think, is an illusion. Genuine conservatives who also think of themeselves as libertarians should therefore abandon libertarianism. Indeed, I would say that real libertarianism, when thought through consistently, is really “left libertarianism,” a view that at its heart is simply incompatible with the basic natural law and conservative conviction that authority does not ultimately derive from contract or the consent of the individual, and that we have obligations that we did not consent to and can have no natural right to neglect. So much the worse for libertarianism, then. It is, I now think, on all fours with socialism, egalitarian liberalism, and all the rest — just one modern “rationalist” (in Oakeshott’s sense) ideology among others, which a conservative ought to oppose.

Oh really? Isn’t this a bit strong, even for Feser? To claim that we are on all fours with socialism? Come on. Feser with his careful nuances–distinguishing between laws regulating promotion of homosexuality (okay) and those restricting gay handholding (bad?)–can at least grant us, even if he thinks libertarianism is too rationalistic, that we are not “on all fours” with socialism?!

In fact, if anything, Feser’s non-libertarianism (whatever you might call it) is more on all fours with socialism. We may share rationalism with socialists (arguably) but he shares the advocacy of the state and therefore of institutionalized criminality, as opposed to we anarcho-libertarians who on principle oppose aggression of any form from any source.

In any event, even if he thinks libertarianism has gone astray, is it really plausible for a former libertarian and conservative to maintain we are on all fours with socialism? Is its persistence, or origin, our fault? Come on. We are its most vocal critics.

Libertarian Obsession with Rights:

Classical liberalism — the tradition of Locke, Smith, and Hayek — is a more interesting and plausible view, and less obviously at odds with conservatism. (I reject the assimilation of classical liberalism and libertarianism — the latter is really a kind of classical liberal “heresy,” a grotesque distortion that arises when one focuses obsessively on rights and ignores the other elements of the more nuanced sort of moral theory to be found in the great classical liberal theorists.)

But we only focus on rights when people like Feser or others advocate or condone or use force or violence. In other words, Feser is in favor of aggression, in some cases, just like a socialist, dictator, or petty criminal. We are said to have an “obsessive” focus on rights–i.e., our pointing out every case where there is aggression, that violates rights; could it be, perhpas, because non-libertarians have a remnant of conscience that makes them uncomfortable having it pointed out that they advocates aggression? They don’t like being called on it, I think.

The Future and Libertarianism

I don’t think “political liberalism” or “political libertarianism” have a hope in hell of working. And yes, I think that things are going to get much worse. I say this with nothing but the deepest regret. I’ve got three children, and I do not like the world I fear they are going to inherit.

Again, this is overwrought. Even if he thinks we are too principled or too much against aggressioon–does he really think that this bad world we have coming is because of … libertarians?? This minority of harmless radical academics who have very few adherents? When all the dangers we face are from institutionalized aggression coming from the state? A state which is based on the idea that some agggression is justified–an idea Feser himself shares. Not us.

Libertarian Rigor.

Let me say also that I think Eric [Mack] is an excellent philosopher, from whose work I’ve learned much. Indeed, since the kind of libertarianism based on self-ownership is the kind I used to be attracted to — there are other kinds — and since Mack’s is, in my view, the most sophisticated version of self-ownership based libertarianism around today, I would recommend to those interested in these matters that they read his work. It’s a little hard to get a hold of, scattered as it is among various journal and book articles, but well worth the effort. And much, MUCH more interesting and philosophically rigorous than the stuff most Rothbardians are putting out.

Rigorous–I call to Feser’s attention, e.g., Hoppe’s magisterial A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Res ipsa loquitur.

Natural Law and Intrinsic Morality:

libertarians draw (what now seems to me to be) the grotesque conclusion that we can have a natural right to do something even if it is intrinsically immoral: addict ourselves to heroin, commit suicide, let a starving man die, and so forth. Yes, they (including my younger self) hedge this by saying that it might still be against other moral principles — e.g. wisdom, charity, or kindness — to do such things, but even to make the sort of claim at issue is to go way beyond anything the classical liberals would have said.

Feser maintains that if something is “intrinsically immoral” there can be no (natural) right to do it. Personally, I think his error here is over-reliance on natural law theory. Let me splain why.

First, I tend to agree with Hoppe “that the concept of human nature is far “too diffuse and varied to provide a determinate set of contents of natural law”. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, n. 7, p. 235 (quoting Gewirth). Feser’s gut might tell him something is intrinsically wrong, but it’s really not possibly to rigorously demonstrate this (after all he apparently cares about rigorous arguments now).

Second, I think this helps to highlight the semi-positivist notion that rights flow from anything, even natural law. I think it shows the danger of relying on natural law as the “source” or “grounding” of rights. I personally think you don’t need to really rely on “natural law” to ground rights. No space go go into this in detail here–and I plan to write more about this in the future–but I think we need to recognize that aggression is not defined in terms of rights, but rather the other way around. So Feser gets it wrong when he writes, “what counts as ‘aggression’ depends on what rights we have”. I don’t blame him here; I think many libertarians are confused on this. Again, no space to elaborate: but in my view, pure deductions of rights from natural law all stumble on the is-ought dichotomy: you can’t derive an ought or ethic, from an is or fact, Rand’s flip comment that what a thing is, determines what it ought to do, notwithstanding. Rather, rights are merely a convenient conceptual description of situations when the use of force is, and is not, justified or legitimate (which may be said to correlate with the concept of aggression). So, in cases where force may be used in response to X, X is aggression, and there is a right to not have X happen. And to find out when force is justified, one must appeal to a pre-existing and shared ethical system. That is, interpersonal/political ethics (what our rights are) has to be a hypothetical undersaking, based on presupposed ethics shared by all civilized people who are part of the inquiry. The fact that some savages or outlaws or criminals outside the civilized system do not accept civilized ethical norms is utterly irrelevant. (Even Rand’s system is really based on a hypothetical base: the amoral choice to live; see also Part III of this paper by Khawaja.) This is why I see the appeal of theories of rights that rely on undeniable ethical presuppositions of relevant parties to the discussion; see, e.g., my New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory.

In sum, I think Feser et al. can’t show most of what they want to is really “intrinsically immoral”; and even if they could, it has nothing to do with rights, which need not be based on natural rights theory. In my view this is one danger of overuse of the idea of “natural rights”. They should just be rights. Defended with reason, not with appeal to basically traditional religious moral views which opens the door for a Feser to step in and seize control of the spigot or source of rights. Elaborations on the dangerous legal positivism inherent in natural law theories of rights will have to await another blogpost. Stay tuned, y’all.

The Trouble with Feser (on Libertarianism)

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on July 27, 2004 10:38 PM

Ed Feser’s recent article, The Trouble with Libertarianism (blogged here by Stephen Carson), like your boy Jonah Goldberg and one-hit neocon wonder Francis Fukuyama, has to misconstrue libertarianism in order to attack it. He sets up straw men that are easily knocked down. But the libertarianism that he attacks is not the libertarianism I know.First, note his definition:

“Libertarianism” is usually defined as the view in political philosophy that the only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens’ dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous.

This is not too far off, but I would say libertarianism is, at its essence (2), simply based on the preference for peaceful interaction and opposition to violent conflict with our neighbors. In short, it is opposed to aggression, the initiation of force against others; or worded differently, the unconsented to use or invasion of the borders of the bodies or property of others. As a consequence of this, we naturally oppose institutionalized aggression, i.e., the state, or at least seek to keep the state within strict limits and to only a few, narrowly-defined functions.

But what makes Feser’s argument an attack on a straw man is his insistence that libertarianism is correct because it is “genuinely neutral between diverse moral and religious worldviews.” Not only tradition or natural-law based versions of libertarianism, but also contractarianism and utilitarian strands of libertarianism “fail to be neutral between moral and religious points of view.”

I find this utterly bizarre. Of course libertarianism is not “neutral.” True, we support a political ideal that does permit individuals freedom to pursue a diverse variety of modes of life. But it does not permit, say, axe-murdering, if that happens to be your gig. No, we aren’t neutral about that, sorry to say. It of course is opposed by its nature to those who want to use the institutionalized force of the state to outlaw non-aggressive behavior that they don’t like.

Libertarians are opposed to aggression. We favor voluntary, peaceful, cooperative interaction between people. So we are not neutral as between the entrepreneur and the criminal, the saint and the socialist , the victim and the aggressor, the civilized man and the savage. We are not neutral at all. I, for one, am not. I hate the latter, and love the former. I would stamp out the latter, for the sake of the former. The criminals are a wretched excuse for humanity, but really just a technical problem. Our fellow, civilized kith and kin are what life is all about.

To emphasize: note that nothing Feser says about us not being “neutral” in any way justifies the initiation of violent force against one’s peaceful neighbors.

Re: The Trouble with Feser (on Libertarianism)

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on July 28, 2004 10:22 PM

Mr. Feser replied to my earlier blogpost. His reply, reprinted below (with permission), and my response to it, follows:

Dear Mr. Kinsella,

A friend directed me to your reply to my article. Unfortunately, like others who’ve criticized it, you don’t seem to have read it very carefully. Some comments on your comments:

1. I didn’t “attack” libertarianism. Rather, I attacked the claims that (a) libertarianism is neutral between comprehensive doctrines, and (b) that there is a common core to all the main theories usually classified as “libertarian.” All of this leaves open the possibility that some doctrine usually classified as “libertarian” is true; indeed, I am personally inclined to accept some version of Aristotelian-natural law based
libertarianism, combined with insights drawn from Hayek (though these days
I’d probably prefer the label “classical liberal” or, with Hayek, “Burkean
Whig,” to the label “libertarian,” which, partly for the reasons I discuss
in the article, is often extremely misleading). Moreover, someone familiar
with my other writings on libertarianism — as I know you are, since you
once sent me a nice note about one of my articles — would realize that
“attacking libertarianism” wasn’t quite what I intended.

2. Yes, I realize that no libertarian claims that his view is neutral between _every single_ worldview, however bizarre, any more than Rawls does. (Obviously, ax-murdering is, as you say, out.) What I said was that libertarians generally take their view to be neutral between the main worldviews represented in contemporary pluralistic societies: this sort of thing is usually what is meant by the claim that a view like Rawlsian liberalism or libertarianism is “neutral,” and it is this claim that was my target. (For an example of this sort of libertarian claim to “neutrality,”
think of Nozick’s concept of the minimal state as a “meta-utopia” in which
different visions of how society should be ordered can be tried out.)

3. It is simply no good to say that “non-aggression” etc. is the core to all versions of libertarianism, because the real question is what counts as “aggression” — after all, NO ONE, libertarian or otherwise, claims to be in favor of aggression, so what is the point of appealing to “non-aggression” as if it answered all questions? In fact it doesn’t answer anything, because what counts as aggression can only be determined once we’ve first determined what rights we have and why we have them. Does abortion count as aggression? Does refusing to legalize same-sex marriage count as aggression? Does outlawing stem-cell research count as aggression?
Different versions of libertarianism will give very different answers to
these questions, because they have very different conceptions of rights.

The point of my article was to suggest that the differences between these versions of libertarianism are often far more important and interesting than the similarities. Libertarians of a Lockean, Aristotelian, or Hayekian bent are, in my view, miles away from libertarians of the contractarian or utilitarian type. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that the latter are closer to modern liberals and the former closer to modern conservatives than the two camps of libertarians are to each other. That many
libertarians don’t see this is, I think, a consequence of their not paying
sufficient attention to the very different implications that the foundations
one gives libertarianism might have for what _counts_ as “libertarianism.”
(If you want to see just how radically different the Aristotelian-Hayekian
sort of libertarianism is going to be from other varieties, once its
implications are consistently drawn out, you might find of interest my
article “Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children,” forthcoming
in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.)

Best,

Ed Feser

My reply is as folllows. First, let me make it clear that I meant no disrespect to the Fesenator, nor that I uncharitably construed his words. But after all, his article was entitled “The Trouble with Libertarianism,” hardly something a diehard, hardcore, irascible libertarian like me can be expected to resist responding to (see, e.g., my responses to previous attacks on libertarianism by Jonah Goldberg and Francis Fukuyama).

I do not think it matters much whether Feser’s argument is characterized as an “attack” on “libertarianism” per se or not. The main question for me is: has Feser set forth any arguments that show that the main libertarian case is wrong? If he does not, his title is inapropos and frankly, I am (qua libertarian) completely uninterested. If he does not assert or maintain that libertarianism is flawed or incorrect, then I withdraw my response.

If, on the other hand, he does for whatever reason claim that libertarianism is flawed, then I feel compelled to take issue with this. I disagree with this. Now the question in this case is, what is his argument? As I said in my previous post, his main argument seems to be that libertarianism somehow rests upon the idea that it is “neutral between comprehensive doctrines” and also “that
there is a common core to all the main theories usually classified as ‘libertarian.’”

I’ll be honest that this country boy’s eyes glaze over when philosopher and humanities types use terms like “neutral between comprehensive doctrines” or even “common core.” In fact this makes my trigger finger itch. Just kidding.

I went right to what I saw as the heart of the matter, when I read this, so I’m sorry Feser thinks I didn’t “seem to have read it very carefully.” The bottom line to me is: does Feser mount a