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Over on The Austrian Economists blog, David Prychitko has a post about Habermas, where he writes:

I spent quite a bit of time reading, and trying to make sense of, Habermas’s works. That began in the late 1980s and continued up to a couple years ago. It was a difficult and time-consuming process, but I thought his effort in political economy (backed by his own methodology) was important, as a large cottage industry arose inspired by his work. Looking back, the opportunity cost was too high, but at least it did result in a Cambridge Journal of Economics paper that I and Virgil Storr co-authored. If any of you are interested –and I’m sure most of you are not — here’s a downloadable copy.

The paper is “Communicative action and the radical constitution: the Habermasian challenge to Hayek, Mises and their descendents.” Since this paper is by an Austrian, and grapples with Habermas’s communicative action ideas and its relation to Austrian praxeology, one would have thought it would least cite, if only to criticize, a fellow Austrian economist, who obtained his PhD under Habermas, and who has written a great deal on Habermas’s communicative action theories from a praxeological point of view–namely Hans-Hermann Hoppe. (See Hoppe: Habermas’s Anarcho-Conservative Student; Revisiting Argumentation Ethics; Discourse Ethics entry in Wikipedia (which yours truly started, and which has more on Hoppe and Habermas); Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics writings; my New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory; and my collection of Habermas-related material here.)

But Hoppe is nowhere mentioned. Nor is Karl-Otto Apel, for that matter, another German philosopher who “co-developed” “the theory of communicative action and discourse ethics … with his friend, colleague, and collaborator Jürgen Habermas.”

[Mises blog cross-post]

As noted here (see also here, here, here),

Texas Instruments has issued a DMCA notice to United TI, a group of enthusiasts. They had been cracking the keys that sign the operating system binaries in an attempt to gain access and possibly expand on the features.

Suing your own most dedicated fans of your increasingly outmoded device (its calculators), for trying to modify it to make it more useful to them. It’s hard to decide what’s more ridiculous: IP law, or the way companies use them.
[AM cross-post; mises cross-post]

A Baltimore startup with less than 5 employees, WhoGlue, is suing Facebook for patent infringement, based on a patent it previously–unsuccessfully–tried to unload at a patent auction. The patent, no. 7,246,164, is for a “Distributed personal relationship information management system and method”. In essence, they claim that Facebook infringes their patent by permitting members to send one another “friend requests” and sharing information online, tracking each others activities, and so on. I.e., they are claiming a state-granted monopoly on a crucial aspect of social networking.

WhoGlue wants to make it clear they are not a patent troll, heaven forfend. No,

“The patent is a key part of WhoGlue’s business, and the lawsuit is meant to protect his company’s livelihood, Hardebeck said. … “We didn’t patent something that we thought would be an opportunity to license” to other companies, he said. “We patented it because it was core to our business.”

So… they are not some nasty patent troll who is just suing Facebook for some invention they never practiced or sold. They just want to protect something that’s “core to their business.” Something so core they tried to auction it off (but failed).  But do they claim that Facebook copied this “invention” from them? I doubt it–it’s unlikely Facebook did copy it, and copying need not be shown to prove patent infringement anyway. And what does this non-troll want? “Unspecified monetary damages”–probably hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, if the Blackberry patent suit is any guide–plus a permanent injunction issued by the state preventing Facebook from using this “invention”. I bet Facebook is so glad WhoGlue is not some annoying troll. [continue reading…]

The way abortion is portrayed on TV and in movies is annoying. Because Hollywood is dominated by left-liberals, whenever a woman has an unplanned pregnancy, we always see the mom-to-be wonder “what she’s going to do,” making it clear that she has the option to abort. But they don’t say the word abortion, and the woman always exercises her choice to keep the baby. That way, Hollywood gets to help spread the image that “of course” pro-choice is the right position, but the woman makes the “right” choice so as to avoid alienating the pro-life “rubes.”

Well that’s not enough for some of them. The new CBS comedy Accidentally on Purpose is about a late-thirties single woman who gets pregnant after a one-night-stand with a 22 year old slacker, and decides to keep the baby and raise it as a single mother. It’s based on the true story of one Mary Pols, who is upset because the CBS sitcom doesn’t have the pregnant mom consider an abortion. Pols is okay with the decision to keep the baby; that’s what Pols did in real life. But Pols considered an abortion; so she’s upset that the sitcom didn’t at least show the mom wonder–out loud, for the benefit of the rubes in Red states, you see–“Should I have an abortion?” And maybe–in a network sitcom, natch–casually mention that she had had an abortion in her youth. After all, Pols had one–she’s “been down the college-girl abortion route”–what good liberal college girl doesn’t?; its part of the natural learning experience, you see; and Pols even says “it had broken my heart”–but not, she’s careful to note, to avoid the raised eyebrows of anti-choice feminazis, “in a I-shouldn’t-have-done-that way, but” only in a politically correct, acceptable, “I-wish-I-hadn’t-had-to-do-that way.” [continue reading…]

Related:

• On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing;
• Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons
• Rosalyn Higgins, “Dissenting Opinion of Judge Higgins, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1996 (I), p. 583,” in Higgins, Themes and Theories, ch. 9.8, p. 1129
• International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War;
• KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018)
• Book Review of Rosalyn Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (1994), Reason Papers No. 20 (Fall 1995): 147–153
  • Patrick Tinsley, “Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation, Monopoly, or Disarmament?“, Mises Wire (05/02/2025)
• In response to the simpleminded but common comment and legal positivistic sentiment that international law is not real or that international law does not exist, because there is no sovereign state and enforceable legislation, see, inter alia, Anthony D’Amato, “What ‘Counts’ as Law?,” in Law-Making in the Global Communkty, Nicholas G. Onuf, ed. (1982), Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 11-02, and many other treatises and papers. Also Is international law real? Professor José Alvarez weighs in (“almost all 0:18 states comply with almost all international law almost all the time. 0:22 Most people focused on the almost, but the fact is that they do comply it’s 0:28 just not front page news when they do”); International Law Explained | Kal Raustiala | Big Think; Philip Allott – The True Nature of International Law.

Lew Rockwell noted on his blog recently some tentative steps towards disarmament between the US and Russia; he’s right: blessed are the peacemakers. And at first glance, the recent UN resolution committing all nations to work for a nuclear weapons-free world might give some cause for hope–though the cynic would think that China, Russia, Europe, and America are simply solidifying their nuclear hegemony, while America is starting to build its case for potential future military action against “rogue” nations (note one purpose of the resolution is to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism”–shades of the buildup to the Iraq war!).

Granted, the UN raises concerns about centralization, one-world government, and socialistic resolutions ¹–but nowadays these concerns are very remote. There is little risk of the Powers giving up their sovereignty to the UN or forming a one-world government under anything but their own aegis; rather, the risk is they will just use the UN for cover to dominate and legitimize attacks on smaller states, as Bush deftly did with Iraq War (who said he’s stupid? he expertly used the international system to get what he wanted). Still, to the extent the UN is less restricted by positive law and legislation, it–in particular its International Court of Justice–is freer to follow traditional concepts of justice in declaring what international law “is”. For this reason, I’ve always had more hope in international law being potentially more libertarian than modern, legislated municipal law. There is no great barrier to considerations of natural law, for example, being drawn on to decide what international law is. That is, despite the (now remote) danger of centralization and one-world government, and despite its being used and manipulated by the Great Powers to dominate other nations, international law is, and should be expected to remain, more libertarian than the laws of individual states.

A case in point is the ICJ’s advisory opinion in 1996 (in response to a request by the UN’s General Assembly) regarding the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, which I noted on the LRC blog in 2003 (see also the companion case, Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflicts. See, in particular, the heroic dissenting opinion of Judge Weeramantry of Sri Lanka, which was (quoting from the unofficial summary): [continue reading…]

1. See note 29 of What Libertarianism Is. [↩]

My buddy Iceberg proposed a delicious test for IP proponents:

Here is a scenario to test a IP statists’ resolve–what would he say if one day aliens visited Earth to enforce intergalactic patents for devices which were patented 600 million years prior by that alien culture that mankind has been “stealing.”

Ha. That is indeed the logic of their position. Of course the IP advocates would find a slippery way to weasel out of it. They would say that this is another government–except the logic if their non-anarchist view implies one-worldism; and anyway, if something is real property, it’s property everywhere. They would say that they don’t believe patent rights should apply to independent inventors–even though patent systems have no such exception and would be largely declawed if they did.

[AgainstMonopoly crosspost]

My comment on a Mises blog thread:

Geoih, “I don’t consider myself an anachist because I think the idea is utopian and only attainable under the extreme conditions that all utopian ideals require.”

As I explain in What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist, to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it means you either condone aggression, or think the state does not necessarily commit aggression. As you say you are not an anarchist, can you please tell us which one describes you? Are you in favor of aggression (like socialists and criminals are)? Or, do you think the state does not commit aggression (like children brainwashed by government schools think)?

Interesting comments by Rothbard. I don’t completely agree, as I am partly indicted by this! Still, amusing and interesting:

David Gordon:

Again, in a manner that will delight Mrs. Virginia Postrel, Doherty remarks:

Advances in technology have made possible new wired worlds where governments might be unnecessary, new biological abilities have expanded our potential power over ourselves and our environments to almost godlike status. We may even be on the cusp of creating new societies off the surface of the planet itself. (p. 4)

Though he does later mention in passing Rothbard’s criticism of “space cadets,” he does not elaborate. The unwary reader would not guess that technological Titanism is not a universal feature of libertarianism. It is a particular point of view, again insinuated as part of a libertarian consensus when it is not.

And here:

Both the left libertarians and the devotees of technology find fault with Ron Paul. He is not cosmopolitan enough for them: he is so benighted as to defend the traditional family. Almost as bad, he is a genuine American patriot, who opposes NAFTA and similar agreements as inimical to American national interests. To me, these are virtues, not defects; but let us for the sake of argument assume that the values of the left libertarians and the technologists – those Rothbard termed “space cadets” – are correct.

And here:

I cannot think that Mrs. Postrel has advanced any arguments whatever against most of these reactionaries. If they prefer rooted societies with traditional morality and family farms, what is the matter with that? Is the difficulty that the reactionaries oppose change? But obviously they favor some changes, namely the ones that will get them to the society they want. Is it that they wish to control change? But why must they have this wish? Maybe they believe that people will naturally act in a manner to their liking, absent propaganda of space cadets of various stripes. Admittedly, Mrs. Postrel does raise a valid complaint against some of the reactionaries.

Raimondo:

Newt Gingrich is a fanatical space cadet, whose first book was about the necessity of tax-funded space colonies. In his infamous lecture series on American civilization, he praises the marriage of big government and big science. It’s “worth the costs.” Indeed, big projects are particularly suited to government control, provided they are “focused.”

And one more guy:

The Free State Project of Jason Sorens focuses on the conversion of a single U.S. state to liberal principles, by having a critical mass of voters move to the state. That critical mass is thought to be 20,000. However, this number is about equal to the number that migrate to the state for other reasons. And in spite of the appeal of the idea, so far only 8,234 have pledged and 518 have actually moved.

Finally in this broad category is the one who enfranchises his family or himself, moving opportunely anywhere in the world as he sees fit. This is the “Sovereign Individual” of James Dale Davidson, who proposed it after exasperation with the half-measures of the National Taxpayers Union, which he had founded. While we may discount much of what Rothbard derided as “space cadet” features of Davidson’s eponymous book – that is, the hyperbolic gushing that new technologies would transform and save everything – the principle works if you can afford it. Notably lacking in this kind of hyperbole is Bill Bonner, who is perhaps a better representative of the principle.

Update: see also L. Neil Smith, Space Cadets—For a Libertarian Future!:

As a veteran science fiction writer, I have been known to make a prediction of the future from time to time. I’ve made some embarrassingly silly misses, such as the booming popularity in America of Brazilian cars, or the advanced technology required for your car to have its own answering machine. But I also predicted the Internet, wall-sized TV/monitors, laptop and tablet computers, computer-aided forensics, and the massive acceptance of .40 caliber weapons.

One San Francisco weekend in the late 1970s, I was among a small handful of delegates (the names Feldman, White, and Grossberg come to mind) to the National Libertarian Party Convention made fun of by the late economist Professor Murray N. Rothbard for insisting that the subject of property rights—and the correlative responsibilities—in outer space needed mentioning in the National Libertarian Party platform. I knew Murray, who was often a short-sighted and toxic little man. He called us “space cadets” who were somehow damaging the dignity and believability of the Party with our irrelevant issue, and tried to laugh us off the National Platform Committee. Unfortunately for “Mr. Libertarian”, this was during the very week that that entire world was worried about whose head Skylab was about to come crashing down on. (It turned out to be Australia—wouldn’t want to hurt no kangaroo.)

See also Rothbard, The Menace of the Space Cult. Excerpt:

Since I was scheduled to give an update of my “optimism” speech, I was puzzled over the alleged absence of optimism in the convention program. What did they want? The answer surfaced soon enough: they want science fiction, they want “futurism,” they want eternal life, they want projections of visions of a technological fantasy-land. In short, they equate real world politics, indeed, the real world period, with gloom; “optimism” is only the loving contemplation of their own fancies.

“Libertarians have not come to promise human beings a technocratic utopia; we have come to bring everyone freedom, the freedom of each individual to pursue whatever his or her dreams of the future may be.”

But why? Why do professed libertarians of what we may call the “spacecadet” wing equate optimism with an eternal chewing of the cud of their fantasies, of their technocratic version of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Paradise which they see in their crystal-balls? If they are really libertarians, why isn’t the glorious prospect of freedom enough to motivate their actions as libertarians?

As the debate intensified, the answer to this puzzle became all too clear: these soothsayers and space cadets don’t really care all that much for liberty. They don’t in fact, care very much for the real world or reality. What motivates them is not the prospect of liberty but spinning phantom scenarios of the never-never land of Eden. They are interested in freedom only because they think it will help them reach their millennial paradise. As one of the space cadets admitted, when charged with promoting a religion instead of a political philosophy, “Yes, we want a religion!” The millennial religion of a thousand cults, the promise that wishing hard enough will make their vision of the Garden of Eden come true. All it lacks is a guru, a Messiah, a Moses, to lead the flock to the Promised Land.

But this is indeed a religion — it is not a political philosophy, and it sure as hell is not political action. Yet libertarians have not come to promise human beings a technocratic utopia; we have come to bring everyone freedom, the freedom of each individual to pursue whatever his or her dreams of the future may be. Or even to have no vision of the future. Libertarianism is surely not all of life; it brings the gift of political freedom to every person to pursue his own goals. His goals, not ours. To call — as a political party — for a specific vision of the future, the space-cadet vision, implies that that particular goal is going to be imposed on everyone, whether they like it or not.

This is not freedom: it is totalitarianism. Primitivists, after all, have rights too. They too should have the freedom, if they wish, to live unmolested on their own. Thus, neither primitivists nor space cultists should be given a forum within the Libertarian Party to promote and impose their own favorite level of technology.

To put it succinctly: the goal of libertarianism is freedom, period. No more and no less. Anything less is a betrayal; but anything more is equally a betrayal of liberty, because it implies imposing our own goals on others. To be a libertarian must mean that one upholds liberty as the highest political end not necessarily one’s highest personal end. To confuse the issue, to mix in any sort of vision — technocratic or futuristic or any other — with politics, is to abandon liberty as that highest political goal, and at the very least to destroy the very meaning of a political movement or organization.

Oddly enough, space and the space program — which the great revisionist historian Harry Elmer Barnes aptly termed the “moondoggle” and “astrobaloney’! — is precisely the area where the government has exercised total domination. Such futurist heroes of our “libertarian” space cultists as Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill are government-financed scientists and researchers whose projected “space colonies” will not be the “free space colonies” of our space cultists’ dreams but projects totally planned and operated by the federal government. Yet instead of engaging in sober critiques of the governmental space program, our space cadets embrace these state futurists as virtually their own.

As noted on LewRockwell.com, there’s a wonderful Rap video by a young libertarian rapper, Neema V (from Houston, so he’s my homie). See the video below, and a great short interview by him on FreeTalkLive, in which Neema V goes on about the influence Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and Butler Shaffer had on him (Shaffer’s book Boundaries of Order is featured in the video). This young man is intelligent, thoughtful, pleasant, interesting, and talented (amazing video and song for a home-made solo production). Go Neema V! FYNV!!

From FreeTalkLive:

09/20/09

FTL Interviews Rapper Neema V
We interview anarchocapitalist rapper Neema V about the liberty message and the rap community. Here’s the archive.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (17.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Or at least, my arm. I’ve noted before his nuggets of wisdom–his Rules of Thumb for Living. The latest concerns mouse usage. I’ve always had a bit of skepticism about people who whined about “carpal tunnel” syndrome. But over the last year my right arm has gotten worse and worse, from typing and mouse manipulation. Jeff told me to switch to my left arm for mouse usage. I briefly tried it, about 6 months ago, and gave up. But the problem got worse; Jeff told me again recently to switch to the left hand, and that his switch was one of the best things he’s ever done. So the last few days I’ve tried it, and have largely switched. At first I would give up and switch to the “good” hand when I got frustrated. But now I’m almost exclusively left-hand mouse. Still slower, and it’s frustrating, but already I’m feeling better. And one advantage: your right hand can do the arrow keys while left can do mouse at same time. Jeff: I love you, man!!!

Update: Jeff also highly recommends this task chair. [Update: he was wrong about that: it sucked]

Update: I now never use a mouse; only a trackpad on a Macbook. No carpal tunnel. [continue reading…]

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