February 2012
36 posts
For the aspiring Austro-Libertarian: What to read? #3
I thought I would recommend some of the not so well known but nevertheless mind-blowing journal articles that should be read by everyone in the movement, especially by those outside it. This is the third in a series of many.
“Causation and Aggression” by Stephan Kinsella and Patrick Tinsley
Sections:
- Praxeology and Legal Analysis: Action vs. Behavior
- Aggression and the Implicit Concept of Causality
- Complicating the Picture: Causation, Cooperation, And Human Means
- “Mere” Speech-Acts And Aggression
- Cause-In-Fact, Proximate Cause, And Action
- Reinach and Causation
In the context of legal analysis, one important praxeological doctrine is the distinction between action and mere behavior. The difference between action and behavior boils down to intent. Action is an individual’s intentional intervention in the physical world, via certain selected means, with the purpose of attaining a state of affairs that is preferable to the conditions that would prevail in the absence of the action. Mere behavior, by contrast, is a person’s physical movements that are not undertaken intentionally and that do not manifest any purpose, plan, or design. Mere behavior cannot be aggression; aggression must be deliberate, it must be an action.
Here Stephan Kinsella clears up and clarifies some advanced aspects of libertarianism. Some questions to investigate:
- Why we should concern ourselves with A’s intent? If we objectively determine that A’s actions caused the death of B, what should it matter what A intended to do—or whether A intended to do anything at all?
- Consider the following case in which an aggressor employs an innocent human as one of his means. A terrorist builds a letter-bomb and mails it to his intended victim via courier. The courier has no idea that the package he is delivering contains a lethal device. When the addressee dies in an explosion after he opens the package, whom should we hold responsible?
- What about the defense that speech cannot be aggression since it does not actually invade others’ property borders?
- The same question is asked in a variety of situations: did the general kill people, using his troops as means to this end? Did the manager use his employee as a means to attain some end? Did the wife kill her husband by using her lover (or a hired hit-man) as the means to attain this goal? If some one votes in favor of socialism (or speaks out in favor of it), are they a cause of the ensuing acts of aggression by state agents?
“[S]tatistics are, in a crucial sense, critical to all interventionist and socialistic activities of government…. Statistics are the eyes and ears of the bureaucrat, the politician, the socialistic reformer. Only by statistics can they know, or at least have any idea about, what is going on in the economy…. Cut off those eyes and ears, destroy those crucial guidelines to knowledge, and the whole threat of government intervention is almost completely eliminated.”
—Murray N. Rothbard, The Logic of Action Vol II, pp. 182-83.
Jeffrey Tucker just posted a video on Facebook from your YouTube account!
“Hoppe on Justifying Libertarianism”? Haha, I saw that! JT follows on twitter, so I assume he’s taken a few looks at the videos. The Mises Institute recently posted the video: “Rothbard on the ‘Best’ US President”, as did Thomas Woods awhile ago (which was also on Lew Rockwell). They also posted the “Ron Paul on Sexual Freedom and AIDS” video a few weeks ago as well.
Going back awhile there is “Ron Paul Hits it Out of the Park” (Which got on C4L, DailyPaul, RPF, LRC etc. Back when Digg was big I spread it around & we managed to get it to the front page & no.1 in all topics. A few more: “Ron Paul on Socialism, Inflationism and the Death of the Dollar”, “Ron Paul: The People’s Champion“… nothing special as they’re all non-originals I was just fast, put them up first and in the right places. The originals I made did well, but a few have been caught by the IP clowns which is a total pain as they’re sitting there not viewable in most countries.
Just saying you guys get it hot of the presses here haha, and I’ve got some good projects that are still being worked on :).
Play
The Meaning of War
A suggestion from Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence and pioneer psychiatrist.
Signs of War
In order more deeply to affect the minds of the citizens of the United States with the blessings of peace, by contrasting them with the evils of war, let the following inscriptions be painted upon the sign, which is placed over the door of the War Office.
- An office for butchering the human species.
- A widow and orphan making office.
- A broken bone making office.
- A wooden leg making office.
- An office for creating public and private vices.
- An office for creating a public debt.
- An office for creating speculators, stock jobbers, and bankrupts.
- An office for creating famine.
- An office for creating pestilential diseases.
- An office for creating poverty, and the destruction of liberty and national happiness.
In the lobby of this office let there be painted representations of all the common military instruments of death, also human skulls, broken bones, unburied and putrefying dead bodies, hospitals crowded with sick and wounded soldiers, villages on fire, mothers in besieged towns eating the flesh of their children, ships sinking in the ocean, rivers dyed with blood, and extensive plains without a tree or fence, or any other object, but the ruins of deserted farm houses.
Above this group of woeful figures, let the following words be inserted, in red characters to represent human blood: “National Glory.”
The above is excerpted from Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush, edited by Dagober D. Runes, published in 1947 by the Philosophical Library, Inc., New York, N. Y.
“While the purely free and laissez-faire society arises unselfconsciously where people are given free rein to exert their creative energies, statism has been the dominant principle throughout history. Where State despotism already exists, then liberty can only arise from a self-conscious ideological movement that wages a protracted struggle against statism, and reveals to the mass of the public the grave flaw in its acceptance of the propaganda of the ruling classes. The role of this “revolutionary” movement is to mobilize the various ranks of the oppressed masses, and to desanctify and delegitimize the rule of the State in their eyes.”
—Murray N. Rothbard, Capitalism versus Statism
“How can it (i.e. the government, the state) know whether to build road A or road B, whether to invest in a road or in a school — in fact, how much to spend for all its activities? There is no rational way that it can allocate funds or even decide how much to have. When there is a shortage of teachers or schoolrooms or police or streets, the government and its supporters have only one answer: more money. Why is this answer never offered on the free market? The reason is that money must be withdrawn from some other uses in consumption or investment … and this withdrawal must be justified. This justification is provided by the test of profit and loss: the indication that the most urgent wants of the consumers are being satisfied. If an enterprise or product is earning high profits for its owners and these profits are expected to continue, more money will be forthcoming; if not, and losses are being incurred, money will flow out of the industry. The profit-and-loss-test serves as the critical guide for directing the flow of productive services. No such guide exists for the government, which has no rational way to decide how much money to spend, either in total, or in each specific line. The more money it spends, the more service it can supply — but where to stop?”
—Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market, p. 176.
Objective or Subjective... Truth for who?
This is an excerpt from Action-Based Jurisprudence: Praxeological Legal Theory in Relation to Economic Theory, Ethics, and Legal Practice by Konrad Graf, pg 44. Understanding this helps comprehend the structure of reality and its categories. Certain fields of knowledge fall within certain sectors.
Note on “objective, intersubjectively ascertainable”
The term “intersubjectively ascertainable” mentioned in Hoppe’s work and also employed by Kinsella, might appear synonymous with “objective,” with which it is often paired. However, these terms carry an important, but subtle distinction. It is helpful here to refer to Wilber’s four-quadrant model (2006, 18–26), which I will now briefly describe, relate to Misesian concepts, and apply to this distinction.
In this model, an interior–exterior axis crosses with an individual–plural axis to create four quadrants of possible perspectives. These are the interior-individual (subjective), interior-plural (cultural), exterior-individual (objective), and exterior-plural (social/natural-science/systems). Various fields of knowledge are most at home in particular quadrants, while each quadrant is associated with distinctive forms of knowledge. In this view, human beings, for example, stand as both wholes and parts (“holons”)—both individuals and components of plurals—with both exterior and interior aspects. These aspects are both discrete and inseparable—all of them must be present for us to be the kind of beings that we are.
For the aspiring Austro-Libertarian: What to read? #2
I thought I would recommend some of the not so well known but nevertheless mind-blowing journal articles that should be read by everyone in the movement, especially by those outside it. This is part two of the series.
“The Role of Subscription-Based Patrol and Restitution in the Future of Liberty” by Gil Guillory & Patrick C. Tinsley
Market anarchists are often keen to know how we might rid ourselves of the twin evils institutionalized in the state: taxation and monopoly. A possible future history for North America is suggested, focusing upon the implications of the establishment of a subscription-based patrol and restitution business sector. We favor Rothbard over Higgs regarding crises and liberty. We favor Barnett over Rothbard regarding vertical integration of security. We examine derived demand for adjudication, mediation and related goods; and we advance the thesis that private adjudication will tend to libertarianly just decisions. We show how firms will actively build civil society, strengthening and coordinating Nisbettian intermediating institutions.
The present paper explores the possible historical consequences of the successful establishment of a subscription patrol and restitution business sector. In support of the story we posit, we first address a number of topics to set the tone and clear up misconceptions about what is meant by free market provision of defense and law.
An outline follows:
- Entrepreneur as Agent of Social Change
- The Law Enforcement Paradigm and Vertical Integration
- Search and Arrest
- Does Free-Market Adjudication Provide Justice?
- Development of the SPR Model—Social Strength and Derived Demand
- Crisis and Liberty
In a sense, it is essentially a business plan for liberty. Normal customers (people not specifically interested in philosophy & non radicals) paying to read about voluntarism, surely not?!
The Valentines Countdown
Working on the vague theme of ‘love’ this is probably best viewed from the page, not your dash. Describing music is generally pretty hard. However, I really enjoy sharing songs I like. * Indicates a film-clip, otherwise it’s just audio. Youtube is easier to embed than soundcloud. The below songs are a mix of different genres that even I find hard to categorize; indie-dance, chillwave, house, disco-house, luvstep and who knows what other genres get made up. I hope you enjoy.
[10] | Silicon Love (Original Mix) by Lifelike | Download.
*A great film clip which matches the music pretty perfectly.
[9] | No Guns And Horses, Just Make Love by Ellie Goulding, Daft Punk & Monsieur Adi | Download.
“No stranger to sophisticated remix work, producer Monsieur Adi recently created a mashup between his rendition of Ellie Goulding’s “Guns And Horses” and Daft Punk’s “Make Love”. As usual, Adi utilizes electrifying strings arrangements and couples them with the British songstress’s soothing voice and adds a little mellow electronica to the blend.”
[8] | All The Time We Were In Love (Sohight remix) by Cosmonaut Grechko | Download.
Click the bold for the soundcloud link. A real great smooth song, chill’d but uplifting disco house.
[7] | Love on a Real Train (SymbolOne remix) by Tangerine Dream | Download.
*Another fine video here. A real classic.
[6] | I Love U So (TROWA Remix) by Cassius | Download.
A different kind of dubstep. Luvstep.
[5] | Make Love Tonight (Lifelike Re-Edit) by Roman d’Amour | Download.
French house. Lifelike turns things to gold.
[4] | Cosmic Love (Short Club Remix) by Florence and the Machine | Download.
Mellow, but builds… beautiful. A song hard not to fall in love with, maybe a cosmic love then. Wonderful Florence and the Machine track that with this wonderful remix makes me want to love the whole cosmos.
[3] | Love Will Guide You (Edwin Van Cleef Remix) by Shinichi Osawa | Download.
Edwin van Cleef, one of my favorites. “An electro-pop killer which fans of indie-disco a la Kitsuné will die for.” - Juno
[2] | So Much Love To Give by Thomas Bangalter & DJ Falcon | Download.
Classic French House. Thomas Bangalter - half of Daft Punk. Prepare for this to get in your head… maybe due to the length.
[1] | In Love With You by The Paradise | Download.
Another French House classic. The Paradise is Alan Braxe. I consider this pretty much timeless.
These were quickly whacked together. If you’re looking for music geared towards an actual mixtape for a special occasion this might be something worth checking out.
“
In short, man’s will is here severely limited by the workings of - to use an old-fashioned but still valid term - natural law. But injustices are deeds that are inflicted by one set of men on another; they are precisely the actions of men, and, hence, they and their elimination are subject to man’s instantaneous will.
Let us take an example: England’s centuries-long occupation and brutal oppression of the Irish people. Now if, in 1900, we had looked at the state of Ireland, and we had considered the poverty of the Irish people, we would have had to say: poverty could be improved by the English getting out and removing their land monopolies, but the ultimate elimination of poverty in Ireland, under the best of conditions, would take time and be subject to the workings of economic law. But the goal of ending English oppression - that could have been done by the instantaneous action of men’s will: by the English simply deciding to pull out of the country.
The fact that of course such decisions do not take place instantaneously is not the point; the point is that the very failure is an injustice that has been decided upon and imposed by the perpetrators of injustice - in this case, the English government. In the field of justice, man’s will is all; men can move mountains, if only men so decide. A passion for instantaneous justice - in short, a radical passion - is therefore not utopian, as would be a desire for the instant elimination of poverty or the instant transformation of everyone into a concert pianist. For instant justice could be achieved if enough people so willed.
” —Murray N. Rothbard, Why Be Libertarian?