Note: 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).
But I’ve tried to note a few of late. Latest notable terms from recent episodes of the Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page, which keeps a running collection of the terms from this series of posts). [continue reading…]
Funny parody of technology using real fruit, from The Beeb’s The One Ronnie (h/t Peter Surda):
From Mises Daily today:
January 10, 2011 by Mises Daily
I’ve already taught one Mises Academy course (Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics) and have another one starting later this month (Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society). For those interested in this budding private initiative, the goal of which “is nothing short of reinventing economics education,” I thought I would recount some of my thoughts on my experience with it so far.
First, I have to say that the IP course was a pleasure to teach. I was a bit intimidated at first by how to approach it — Should I wear a suit? What if my dogs bark? How much time should I leave for questions? I pestered Tom DiLorenzo and Bob Murphy and Peter Klein with questions on how they had approached their courses. They gave me helpful advice, tips, PowerPoint templates, and so on. It turns out that suits are not needed! DiLorenzo told me he may do a lecture in one of his courses from the beach. That is how cool and amazing this technology and system are.
I learned the technology easily with the help of Jeffrey Tucker and Daniel Sanchez, both involved with Mises Academy. Mises Academy currently uses the DimDim web-meeting service, which permits the professor to flip through a slideshow that all the students see — or even to share other media like YouTube videos (which I used a few times to show the students some of Nina Paley’s Minute Memes videos). DimDim also provides a student-chat-room window open on the side, which the students use to chat with each other or to pose questions to the teacher or the teaching assistant. (For a good example, see “Nullification: An Overview,” below; my first lecture, “Intellectual Property in History,” is also below, but it shows only the slides and audio.)
I had originally planned to ignore the chat window and take up questions in a Q&A session at the end of the lecture. However, I found that I was able to scan the chat window while I was lecturing and see an occasional question pop up among the students’ chatter. They were usually on topic; there was no reason to wait till later — so I would pause to address that question or to clarify. It was very similar to a student’s raising his hand in class during a lecture to make a brief and pertinent comment, to ask a clarifying question, or to request elaboration on a given point. It worked very well. During the 90-minute period, I would usually lecture for about 50 minutes and take questions for 30 or more minutes (with a short break between) — and we often went past 90 minutes; I usually stayed until the questions petered out.
It was gratifying to see the students typing things like the following at the end of the lectures (these are from the actual IP-lecture chat transcripts):
And, at the end of the sixth and last lecture, “Thanks for a great course!”
These heartfelt and spontaneous comments reminded me a bit of times past, when students would applaud at the end of a good lecture by a professor. In this sense, and contrary to what you might expect with the coarsening of manners and the increase of informality in typical Internet fora, for some reason the new, high-tech environment created by Mises Academy seems to foster a return to Old World manners and civility — which is very Misesian indeed! Perhaps it is because these students are all 100 percent voluntary, and they want to learn. They are much like students decades ago, who were grateful to get into college — before state subsidies of education and the entitlement mentality set in, turning universities into playgrounds for spoiled children who often skip the classes, paid for 10 percent by parents and 90 percent by the taxpayer.
I noticed this civility in the chat room: there was no sniping, negativism, or incivility. None. The students were respectful and polite; friendly to and jocular with each other; youthful and exuberant (though not all were young); obviously eager to learn; appreciative of my lectures and my responses to their questions (in the course evaluation one student noted, “The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked”); and they are even appreciative of their fellow students’ answers to their peers’ questions.
What was remarkable, also, was that the IP course had 70 students from 15 countries (and students from 6 countries are already signed up for my upcoming Libertarian Legal Theory course, with more sure to join). The old guard pooh-pooh new-fangled technology and the Internet, ebooks, MP3 music, etc. They say that online courses are not as good as real college; ebooks are not as good as paper books; people are not “communicating” now like they used to. They miss the static-ridden vinyl LPs or cumbersome CDs, and they bemoan the “reduced musical quality” or “digital harshness” of MP3 music.
This is a the-glass-is-one-fifth-empty way of looking at it. The glass is, instead, four-fifths full. Ebooks are an additional choice; paper books will be around as long as people want them. Digital and Internet-available information is good and is helping to spread the word, and the Mises Institute’s open-information approach is wildly successful.[1] People are blogging, emailing, and chatting — that’s communicating. They are making friends and networking on Facebook.
And, as the Mises Academy experience shows, aspects of the university and classroom experience can be found in a digital setting — with some advantages and, yes, some disadvantages. But so what? Trade offs are part of life. True, the students are not with each other or the teacher in person. But they communicate in different ways, make friends in other countries, and — for a very low price — are able to attend and take a course that is targeted at their interests (and available in recorded form for missed lectures), all with 100 percent free, online reading materials. Some of the criticisms of the Internet, social networking, digital music, and online teaching remind me of the condemnations by opera snobs of the live, HD streaming of opera and other concerts to movie theaters around the world — a great boon for those who otherwise would be unable to experience the performances at all.
There were even a few technical glitches the first few lectures, but the students, amazingly, didn’t mind or complain at all. They were cheerful — a real pleasure to interact with.
Now that I’ve done it once and am familiar with it, I am really looking forward to doing it again. I know I will improve, with the benefit of what I learned last time, and the technical aspects of the web hosting service will continue to upgrade and improve as well.
It was, all in all, a great experience. I can’t wait to see how the Mises Academy grows and improves over time. It already offers courses in a diverse range of departments (see “Messages from the Professors“):
This is going to be a great year for the Mises Academy!
From The Libertarian Standard, Jan. 8, 2011
I’ve always liked the idea–which I’ve heard from Albert Jay Nock and Leonard Read–that your primary task is to improve yourself–to strive for excellence in yourself. Then you become a bright light that attracts people; they see you are good, and successful, and worth emlating or listening to–so you win people over by the power of attraction. They come to you, and then you have more success spreading the ideas of liberty than if you go around being a boor.
[Update: see also Living a Life of Excellence and Liberty and The Golden Age of America is Now]
See the following excerpts from Nock and Read:
From A stroll with Albert Jay Nock by Robert M. Thornton:
Albert Jay Nock was not a reformer and found offensive any society with a “monstrous itch for changing people.” He had “a great horror of every attempt to change anybody; or I should rather say, every wish to change anybody; for that is the important thing.” Whenever one “wishes to change anybody, one becomes like the socialists, vegetarians, prohibitionists; and this, as Rabelais says, ‘is a terrible thing to think upon.’” The only thing we can do to improve society, he declared, “is to present society with one improved unit.” Let each person direct his efforts at himself or herself, not others; or as Voltaire put it, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
From Frederick A. Manchester, Apropos of the Presidency:
The Remnant that Saves
It would appear, then, that if we want to have leaders of high quality, Presidents among them, we, the American people, shall have to increase our understanding in politics and related fields. It is fortunately not necessary that all of us should become thus educated, but only a sizable minority—the remnant that saves. But how are we to build up this sizable minority?
Begin, says Mr. Read in the document I quoted at the beginning of these remarks, by genuinely enlightening ourselves, as individuals—morally as well as socially, economically, and politically. Thereafter, if I understand him correctly, he would have us trust mainly to the power of example. “The power of attraction—of attracting others follows all self-improvement,” he says, “as faithfully as does one’s shadow.” In thus asserting this power he undoubtedly has behind him traditional wisdom. “Example,” says Burke, comprehensively, “is the school of mankind; it will learn at no other.”
The Manchester article, from a 1959 issue of The Freeman, is apparently quoting “Wake Up—It’s Tomorrow” by Leonard E. Read, Notes from FEE, January 1959, which I cannot find; similar thoughts appear to be in Read’s How To Advance Liberty: A Learning, Not a Selling, Problem, which is available in text here and in audio and video here (and below):
From Ronald F. Cooney’s Nock: An Appreciation:
True Reform Begins with Self-Improvement
Nock knew that the great appeal of reforming movements is their promise of an instantaneous and observable improvement in conditions. People are drawn to them because they hold out the hope, however slight, of the quick and easy alleviation of social problems by modifying what Nock called the “mechanics” of society. But he knew also that the only reform worth the effort, and the only one with any chance of final and lasting success, was the difficult and painful task of each person to first reform himself:
The only thing that the psychically-human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit. In a word ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individualist method which Jesus apparently regarded as the only one whereby the kingdom of Heaven can be established as a going concern; that is, the method of each one doing his very best to improve one.
That statement sums up rather neatly the Nockian philosophy as a whole. I suppose that, in strictly academic terms, Nock would not be considered a philosopher at all. He didn’t construct any complicated system which proposed to answer all the universal questions. He would, no doubt, be thought of as too commonsensical. The strange thing about common sense, however, is its ever-increasing rarity. It is a compliment to Nock to say that he possessed common sense to a quite uncommon degree. His sharp and diamond-like prose refracted his thought to a high brilliance. In his works, one finds a great amount of heat, but no less amount of light.
One finds also a complete absence of what Mencken called the “messianic delusion.” Nock wrote only with the aim of saying what he thought, and not swaying great masses of people or bludgeoning them into believing as he did. There was a serene integrity in Nock’s character which shows through every word he wrote. Nock wrote of “the remnant,” a group of people bound together by nothing more than their desire to achieve self-reformation, and practice of independent and disinterested thought. Nock would not have sought to be the remnant’s “leader” but the title belongs to him nonetheless. For his life and work embodied the admonition that must stand as the remnant’s motto: “Know thyself.”
From Leonard Read’s The Essence of Americanism:
I am not at this level but I am aware of it and know some of its imperatives. One imperative is the awareness that the higher the objective is, the more dignified the method must be. If we aspire to such a high objective as advancing individual liberty and the free market, we can resort to no lesser method than the power of attraction, the absolute opposite of using propaganda, indoctrination, and half truths. A good way to test how well one is doing on the objective we have in mind is to observe how many are seeking his counsel. If none, then one can draw his own conclusions!
The sole force that will turn indifference into acceptance is the power of attraction. And this can be achieved only if the eye is cast away from the remaking of others and toward the improvement of self. This effort demanded of each individual is not at all a sacrifice, but rather the best investment one can make in life’s highest purpose.
Well, where can we find such individuals? I think we will find them among those who love this country. I think we will find them in this room. I think that one of them is you.
Update: From LeFevre’s Fundamentals of Liberty, introduction by R.S. Bradford:
“The essence of LeFevre’s philosophy he called autarchy, and his message was that self-improvement is the only means at our disposal for improving the world. Characteristic of LeFevre’s world-view was his contention that mankind is still in a state of “high barbarism,” in which we condone innumerable assaults upon our fellow man daily. The long march to civilization lies still ahead, along a path that is inaccessible to those who consider others to be their tools, or victims, or masters.
When asked whether he voted, LeFevre would smile and reply that he used neither the ballot nor other forms of violence to compel others to act as he thought they should. His books are passionate appeals to reason, nonviolence, and the intellectual (as opposed to physical) rejection of the state, as an instrument suited only to the mindless exploitation of one class by another.
“Being a libertarian,” LeFevre wrote in his Journal in 1974, “to me means a revolutionary approach to the age-old problems affecting property and social organization. The distinction that I see between the libertarian and all others is that he accepts private ownership and management of property, and accepts the fact that although he might be able to influence others, he has control over himself alone. He sees all efforts to control others, whether by direct force, political methods, or threats, as elements of coercion. And being libertarian, he resolves not to be a party to any kind of coercion, even for the benefit of others…
“Every body of thought with which I am acquainted proposes (through various methods) to compel others to acceptance. Their views are to be applied externally. The libertarian position that attracts me is to be applied internally. For the libertarian recognizes that the laws of reality dictate his own control over himself and no others. So he proposes to practice liberty regardless of what others may or may not do. He knows that by taking this course of action he is accomplishing the one, vital thing of which he is capable. He is establishing liberty within the area of his own competency.”
See also Bastiat, from The Law:
“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”
“Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory,” Mises Daily (Jan. 3, 2011) was the introduction to my 2011 Mises Academy course on this topic, Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society. See KOL018 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society, Lecture 1: Libertarian Basics: Rights and Law” (Mises Academy, 2011).
January 4, 2011 at 5:04 amLooks very interesting. But here’s a conundrum. How do you deal with a race of savages who commit crimes at such appalling rates that applying an individualist standard to each instance of their criminality becomes most onerous for the law abiding members of other races?
Let’s consider American blacks (though we could consider black criminality across the planet; same behavior obtains everywhere). While not every black is a criminal, an inordinate (from a “white” standard of judgment) number of them are. Moreover, blacks must be the most racist race of all, they have no conception of individual rights, and everything they do (politically or ideologically) is accordingly based on their perception of what is good for their race, not what is abstractly good, just, proper, etc. We saw this with the OJ Simpson case, with the 96% of blacks who supported Obama in 08 (and continue to support him today), with the absolutely racist and perfectly predictable voting patterns of the Congressional Black Caucus (where, btw, is the Congressional WHITE Caucus?!), etc.
White America would be far better off in public order terms if we could remove blacks from US soil. This seems inarguable. Fewer blacks, safer streets. How does this fit into a libertarian legal framework, with its naive overemphasis on the rights of the individual?
My point is that that framework, like the Constitution and its protected liberties, was meant for whites only (literally, legally, at the time, but also metaphysically and morally). There is a world of anthropological fact underlying a libertarian society, which unfortunately, most libertarians are virtually congenitally incapable of recognizing. Liberty works -for white people, with their mostly (well, ideally, at their best) individual dignity-oriented outlook. It does not work in multiracial or nonwhite majoritarian environments (eg, the New South Africa, where very gentle white supremacy has given way, predictably, to horrific black savagery, endemic black corruption, and ever-worsening standards of civilization, first and foremost for our white brethren, but finally for the black majority itself).
Libertarian theorists have barely begun to incorporate sociobiological realities into their thinking.
January 4, 2011 at 5:49 am“How do you deal with a race of savages who commit crimes at such appalling rates”
Please explain the causal relationship between ‘race” and the “rate of crime” or something like “propensity for crime”. Just bear in mind that correlation does not imply causation.
January 4, 2011 at 10:06 amCorrelation does not imply causation, of course, but you’re not seriously disputing the crime statistics, are you? The rate at which blacks commit *violent* crimes (I’m not talking about vices which should not be illegal) is something like eight times that of whites, and something like 20-30 times the rate of North Asians (I’m going on memory here, but I believe these numbers are accurate). How can you deny that biology plays some (certainly not an exclusive) role in explaining these discrepancies?
January 4, 2011 at 10:16 amWhile I do not dispute the crime statistics, I am questioning the claim that biology is the biggest determining factor. Frankly, it is the responsibility of those who make such a claim to establish it.
How does anyone who makes such a claim eliminate all the other factors that lead to a higher crime rate among blacks than among other races? Unless the makers of these claims provide solid explanations, their claims shall have to be deemed unjustified.
I am pretty surprised you (BTM) are making or even supporting this outrageous claim.
January 4, 2011 at 10:34 amWhy is it any more outrageous than claiming biology plays a role in our actions? E.g., it’s not simply a matter of will that we get tired, hungry, horny, whatever.
January 4, 2011 at 10:50 amWhat’s a matter of will is how we react when we get tired, hungry, horny, whatever.
January 4, 2011 at 11:32 amYes, but that’s not the point. The point is, the conditions of action can be (and often are) will-independent, and biological factors are just such conditions.
January 4, 2011 at 7:57 pm“The point is, the conditions of action can be (and often are) will-independent, and biological factors are just such conditions.”
I just don’t get this. Please explain if you have the time and energy.
January 4, 2011 at 8:29 pmI mean that the conditions confronting acting man often do not depend on his will. A hungry man confronts different conditions than a well-fed man. These conditions play a role in how acting man ranks the possible ends he can try to realize. It is probably true that by sheer will power a starving man can decide to try to write a symphony rather than seek out sustenance, but extremely unlikely. And the hungrier a man is, the less likely he is to think calmly and coherently about what to do next. We are rational beings, no doubt, but we do have partly an animal nature. There is an interplay there, complex for sure, but a purely binary position (rational only vs animalistic only) does not seem sensible to me.
Not just ends, but means too are often beyond our will. A low-IQ man has inferior means relative to a high-IQ man to be able to successfully attain his ends. One can surmise that groups with lower IQs will identify crime as a better way of acquiring goods than using intellect. This doesn’t mean they will act on this observation, only that it is an observation available for them to make. And as a sociological matter, inasmuch as cooperation under the division of labor is far more productive than isolated production, and the greater the extent of this division the more fruitful the results, we can also surmise that groups who value tribalism (and we all do to some extent, eg only an insane or evil person values the welfare of strangers over that of his own family) more than other groups will probably display less advanced economic development. (The Jews are an obvious exception here, but IQ doubtless explains a large part of their success, along with their well-established record of collaborating with the State.)
January 5, 2011 at 1:41 am“One can surmise that groups with lower IQs will identify crime as a better way of acquiring goods than using intellect.”
How?
“groups who value tribalism”
Are we talking of individuals or of collectives? I am getting confused.
“We are rational beings, no doubt, but we do have partly an animal nature.”
That’s why I always use the phrase “rational animal with a volitional consciousness” when I try to define the concept “man”. The “animal” part is already included. My approach is therefore not binary.
“And the hungrier a man is, the less likely he is to think calmly and coherently about what to do next. ”
How does this say anything at all about any particular individual who is hungry? While it is possible that the rate of crime among the entire class of hungry men might be higher than that among the class of men who manage to eat well, it does not say anything at all about the individual hungry man. Are we mixing up class probability and case probability?
Finally, even if you are correct, how does it have any consequences for libertarian law and in particular for Leon’s statements on immigration?
January 5, 2011 at 9:18 am“How does this say anything at all about any particular individual who is hungry? ”
It says, absent *other* information about how this particular individual behaves (eg, knowledge of his overall temperment and character), that predicting he will seek out food is a superior prediction than, say, predicting he will play music. It’s a question of conditional information. We rarely have complete (or even thorough) knowledge of other individuals, we have to generalize to some extent. It’s simply unavoidable.
January 5, 2011 at 10:02 am“It says, absent *other* information about how this particular individual behaves (eg, knowledge of his overall temperment and character), that predicting he will seek out food is a superior prediction than, say, predicting he will play music.”
While this is true, the information does not tell us that he will have a higher propensity to engage in a criminal activity. That’s all I wish to say. Hence, it gives us no basis for preventive action like “removing all the blacks from US soil” (You didn’t suggest it. Leon did.)
January 4, 2011 at 10:24 amTalking as an Indian who has a fairly good idea of the circumstances under which my fellow Indians come to the US, their education levels, the purposes they come for, the economic and social strata they come from and into which they end up fitting, I would not be surprised if Indians are among the populations with the lowest crime rates (counting only real crimes) in the US.
I am just using an example I know to indicate that the propensity to engage in criminal activity is probably more related to socio-economic conditions than it is to genetics. I would in fact go on and say that it is very unlikely that genetics has a role to play at all.
January 4, 2011 at 10:37 am” I would not be surprised if Indians are among the populations with the lowest crime rates” Perhaps if you wish to ignore the Air India bombing or the fact 80% of the whiplash cases in British Columbia [Canada] happen to be East Indian when they only comprise 7% of the population!
January 4, 2011 at 10:53 amI doubt if you understand the background of the bombing of the Kanishka. That was done by Sikh separatists fighting for a separate nation called Khalistan. These were people who saw themselves as fighting the repressive Indian State and directed their attack on a symbol of the Indian State – the national air carrier. I am not justifying the bombing that killed innocents but just explaining that the people behind that act are not the people I referred to as migrating to the US from India.
January 4, 2011 at 11:01 amThis puts blacks in a bad position. If all that is wrong with them is somebody else’s fault…
January 4, 2011 at 11:34 am“I am just using an example I know to indicate that the propensity to engage in criminal activity is probably more related to socio-economic conditions than it is to genetics.”
This begs the question: are the socio-economic conditions completely unrelated to biology? You seem to think so, but it’s clear there is some feedback here. Keep in mind the issue is not just crime as such, but various social pathologies that black display at differing rates from say whites. Crime is but one manifestation of present-orientedness. Do you doubt children, say, are more present-oriented than adults, and that biology plays a role in explainig why?
January 4, 2011 at 12:01 pmI don’t have the data handy, but it should be pointed out that the crime gap does not disappear when adjusted for socio-economic status.
January 4, 2011 at 6:14 pmEven if you had the data handy and even if that data showed the patterns that you claim it does, I don’t see how it proves anything at all, least of all your claims.
January 4, 2011 at 7:08 pmIt would prove that your claim, that the differential crime rate is primarily due to socio-economic factors, is false.
January 4, 2011 at 7:56 pmYou still miss my point. With no underlying theory except a fairy tale, the data cannot prove or disprove anything at all. At the very base of it, your hypothesis is that blacks aren’t human. That’s what makes it fairly preposterous.
January 4, 2011 at 8:17 pmThis is ridiculous; you are really going overboard here. If I point out to you that men commit far more crime than women, and attribute it primarily to biological factors, do you think I’m claiming that women are less human than men? C’mon.
But let me ask you: do you really doubt that biology explains why men commit more crime than women?
January 4, 2011 at 8:34 pmThere is nothing ridiculous in my argument. If you say that a man’s actions are primarily under the control of biological factors, you are essentially saying that man is not a rational animal with a volitional consciousness. On the other hand, if you insist that man is a rational animal with a volitional consciousness, then living beings whose actions are primarily under the control of biological factors cannot be men. My statement was just a logical deduction that led me to what I think are your basic premises. If those premises look plug ugly, that’s not my fault.
“do you really doubt that biology explains why men commit more crime than women?”
Could you please show how biology “explains” the phenomenon?
January 4, 2011 at 8:38 pmI never said biology “primarily” explains actions, only that it plays a role. And at issue is not action as such, but why one group (blacks) displays greater social pathologies than another group (whites). The question concerns differential patterns of action, not action as such.
We can explain action in two ways: the Misesian, counterfactual approach (eg, I did this one thing instead of all the other possible things I *could have* done, every action has an associated [unseen] alternative), and a factual approach (eg, I ate this sandwich *because* I was hungry). You disagree?
January 4, 2011 at 8:39 pm““do you really doubt that biology explains why men commit more crime than women?”
Could you please show how biology “explains” the phenomenon?”
You’ve never heard of testosterone?
January 4, 2011 at 11:29 pmFrankly, I was about to mention testosterone, but thought I’ll wait for you to mention it. A testosterone-based explanation of human behaviour does not provide any justification for an immigration policy that prevents people belonging to particular races from entering a territory.
On the other hand, if you say that it justifies people discriminating on the basis of race and barring, for instance, blacks from entering their private property, I’m with you. Racial discrimination can at best be the basis for individual action, not for law. That’s all I was trying to say.
January 5, 2011 at 9:13 am“A testosterone-based explanation of human behaviour does not provide any justification for an immigration policy that prevents people belonging to particular races from entering a territory.”
I’m not sure I said it did. I was only making the point that biology does play a role in our actions. You appear to agree to a large extent, so it’s becoming a bit unclear what we’re arguing about.
“On the other hand, if you say that it justifies people discriminating on the basis of race and barring, for instance, blacks from entering their private property, I’m with you. Racial discrimination can at best be the basis for individual action, not for law. ”
Much of this I agree with, however I would say the objective should be to replace State law with private law. In which case, what is really wrong with discrimination as a public policy? Until we move to a purely private property society, the State must be run in *some* way. I think it should be run, as much as possible, in a manner consistent with how private property owners would operate it. We can dispute whether discrimination qualifies in this manner, but it’s certainly not inherently obvious that it doesn’t. In particular, it’s hard to see how the multiculturist ideology underlying Western immigration policy (fomented largely but not exclusively by Jewish liberals) can lead to social cohesion and peace. Biology can of course in good part explain why this lack of cohesion should persist, but of course not entirely. Sociologically, no one wants multiculturalism. Blacks certainly don’t; they support policies that grant them access to the property of whites they would be otherwise excluded from, but they certainly have no love for whites (again, see their actual statements, and not some theoretical construct of how they would behave if certain State laws were repealed).
January 5, 2011 at 9:57 am“so it’s becoming a bit unclear what we’re arguing about.”
I agree. That’s why at one point I said that I am surprised you were supporting Leon’s ideas. My objection was mainly to Leon’s painting individual blacks black based on statistics that pertains to the overall black population and to his claim that liberty is something only whites understand and support. That claim was what I found absolutely preposterous which was the reason I entered this discussion with the question I raised.
“Until we move to a purely private property society, the State must be run in *some* way.”
The State will be run in “some” way but no amount of explanation is going to get it around to work in a manner similar or even comparable to the working of a society based on private property. I therefore see such a discussion as a huge waste of precious time and energy.
“In particular, it’s hard to see how the multiculturist ideology underlying Western immigration policy (fomented largely but not exclusively by Jewish liberals) can lead to social cohesion and peace.”
There are 2 parts to this. On multiculturalism, I have to agree with you. There is no sense in saying that every culture has something to contribute. Some are advanced and worth learning from and some are just plain savagery (like I think Islamic culture is).
On immigration, however, all I would say is that any immigration policy other than a hands-off policy is a violation of the principle of liberty. The only way any policy other than the hands-off one can work is by engaging in aggression against peaceful people. Hence, i don’t think libertarians should be discussing anything other than an open-immigration policy.
January 4, 2011 at 2:06 pmI would not be surprised if Indians are among the populations with the lowest crime rates (counting only real crimes) in the US.
Clearly, it’s the curry.
January 4, 2011 at 6:18 pmMaybe it’s the millions of gods they worship.
January 4, 2011 at 7:18 pmIt has to be the curry.
I can tell you from personal experience that I am least in the mood to commit crimes when I’m eating delicious food, and Indian food is some of the best (though the very best thing you can eat is bahn-mi, which is a Vietnamese sandwich on french bread).
Another important food for peace is pork. It’s no accident that people are the angriest in places where they don’t eat pork. If I couldn’t eat pork, the dis-utility of wearing an exploding jacket would be just a little lower. On the margin, non-pork consumption is lethal.
January 4, 2011 at 9:35 amSounds like you have no idea how libertarianism, liberty, individual freedom, society and class struggle works.
January 4, 2011 at 9:54 amAlthough Leon Haller’s tone is somewhat harsh, his statements are subtantially correct. Have any of his critics bothered to listen to actual, real-world blacks (not the kind that are supposed to exist if only minimum wage laws, drug laws, welfare, etc are repealed [don’t get me wrong, these things and many more *should* be repealed]) discuss politics? It almost always comes down to one thing: what is good for blacks. In other words, like other minorities in the West (hispanics, Jews especially) they are highly particularistic in moral outlook. How, exactly, are they to coexist in a libertarian society which by its very nature is universalistic in outlook? This is a very difficult question, but the shrieks of outrage over raising it will not sweep it under the rug.
January 4, 2011 at 12:15 pmDo “they” want to live in a libertarian society? Or are you going to force them? And who is “the black people”?
January 4, 2011 at 12:24 pmCase in point.
January 6, 2011 at 5:37 amYou make black people sound much like most white people I’ve ever heard talk about politics as well.
Sure, blacks in general may not be “compatible” with the libertarian view on society, but I don’t see how this is because of any racial feature since very few people in general, regardless of race, are “compatible” with libertarian society. (Ie, they don’t want it.)
January 6, 2011 at 6:44 am“You make black people sound much like most white people I’ve ever heard talk about politics as well.”
Since no white could ever talk publicly in a racially conscious manner (as blacks commonly do) without being demonized, and since most whites are sufficiently brain-washed that they wouldn’t do so privately anyway, I’m calling BS on your story here.
The point is that blacks don’t support libertarianism because they reject universalism, unlike whites who support universalism but reject libertarianism for other reasons (e.g., ignorance, they like govt goodies, etc).
January 7, 2011 at 5:29 amWell, I’m sure I can’t prove to your satisfaction that the whites I’ve known have been racists, that was not the point I was making in the story either.
In my homeland, we “southerners” are always in competition with the easterners, northerners and westerners, and when my white southerner friends talk about politics, they talk about it in the same framework as the blacks you described. Ie, how will this benefit “us southerners”. Because “we southerners” don’t want to produce all the wealth and see it blown on those damn easterners.
Now obviously this can’t be racially based because we’re more or less homogenously white. (Of course we don’t want to blow our cash on immigrants or foreigners either.)
Now, if the “southerners” vs “rest of them” situation isn’t racial preference then what is it? I’d say it’s cultural and class preferences.
I see no reason why it should be any different in the case of blacks.
January 6, 2011 at 6:59 amThe real problem is this insistence that there is such thing as a race. There isn’t. Racism is a learned behavior. Libertarianism removes those cues to learn it.
Actions influence people in orders of magnitude more than words. We live in a legal system that may *SAY* things about being inclusive, but constantly goes out of its way to treat certain individuals as inferior. Our system is no different today than it was 100 years ago, the methods just changed. Instead of overtly telling everyone that people who look a little different are inferior, the system instead provides “help” through things like welfare and Equal Opportunity. It’s just a different way of saying everyone is inferior. All the various programs today created to “help” only tell everyone that those individuals are so incapable and incompetent that they’re unable to survive without the assistance of a superior “race”. That without the generosity of the “white man’s” welfare, the “black man” will go extinct. Only inferior people need a hand out or a hand up.
“Leveling the playing field” only reinforces the notion that there is such thing as a race and that one is better than the other.
All of these are government constructs. Just like how the Jim Crow laws forced on the South by the North during Reconstruction were put in place because the people were stubbornly refusing to be racist, and how segregation was a State-law because businesses weren’t segregating voluntarily, racism is a Government created concept in a mixed community.
Our family is the least influential part of growing up, the outside world in which we interact daily is the most important. Libertarianism removes the State-created imbalances that impress upon children that differences exist among the people they interact with on a daily basis. Would kids even grasp what racism was if it wasn’t for teachers teaching about it and seeing kids of a certain color populating the State subsidized lunch line?
“Blacks” are being taught this stuff through our own government. Our government gives them freebies for looking a certain way. Our government creates laws that force other entities to create special treatment. Our government creates policies that reward lesser importance because appearances are somehow important to the decision process of hiring. It teaches an entire subgroup of the nation that they’re different, inferior, and that it’s all because of some past wrong that other members of society must bear even though they’re not responsible for it.
No one wants Libertarianism because it’s bad for the existing government. And who teaches everyone in society? The existing government.
January 6, 2011 at 9:02 am” Libertarianism removes those cues to learn it.”
Spoken like a true liberal.
January 6, 2011 at 9:47 amOur family is the least influential part of growing up, the outside world in which we interact daily is the most important.
So we could take kids from their families and put them in a classroom eight hours a day, teach them the same subject matter, use the same pedagogy, administer the same tests, and we’d get equality of outcomes between different racial groups, right?
‘Race’ has become crimethink in our gnostic, politically correct society instead of what it really is: a very large, extended family, and one which has been around a lot longer than the secular, propositional State.
It is the State which insists “there’s no such thing as race” and that biological families don’t matter, and which passes hundreds of laws and spends billions of dollars to maintain the delusion. The day we wake up without the State, it’s back to Family faster than you can say blood is thicker than water. This is the trend globally, as the multicultural democracies collapse from fiscal and imperial overreach.
January 6, 2011 at 9:55 amUm, if the State insisted there was no such thing as race, then why are there hordes of laws and regulations concerning race, class, income, disability, gender, sexual preference, etc? The last entity on the planet to insist there is no race is the State. It thrives on people thinking there is a race becuase it has something to use to gain power. If the State thinks there is no race, then there wouldn’t be an Equal Employment Opportunity Council or Affirmative Action.
January 6, 2011 at 10:03 amAll those laws are based on the premise that racial differences do not exist, i.e., that race is only about skin color. Therefore, the multicultural State is necessary to assure equality of outcomes rather than the disparate impact inflicted by the market.
January 4, 2011 at 3:17 pmTake away the State and people have to sink or swim pretty quickly: no more compulsory association, no more ‘civil rights,’ no more public defenders and other socializing the cost of criminal behavior on the law-abiding. Restive minorities will adopt the mores of the market-dominant majority or find themselves in exile.
January 5, 2011 at 12:36 amLeon Haller,
OK, I get it. You’re playing troll. To embarass middle-aged, middle-right, middle-American white males. I’ll play along.
You wrote,
Let’s consider American blacks (though we could consider black criminality across the planet; same behavior obtains everywhere). While not every black is a criminal, an inordinate (from a “white” standard of judgment) number of them are…
.
.
.
…with the absolutely racist and perfectly predictable voting patterns of the Congressional Black Caucus
.
.
.
(where, btw, is the Congressional WHITE Caucus?!).
ANSWER: The “Congressional WHITE Caucus” is almost everyone in Congress but the Congressional Black Caucus. The CWC is the causus responsible for nearly all of the socialism of the red (e.g. Marxism and immediate relatives), nearly all socialism of the brown (national socialism), nearly crony capitalism, and 50 titles of the U.S.C. with its thousands of pages of writing that are “all about limited government”.
So also is the “Congression WHITE Caucus” responsible for sending Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, etc., hereafter to be referred to as “tools of an international crime syndicate”, throughout the world to stir up trouble, to destroy private property, and to give the thugs and goons of the Chicago PD an excuse to hassle the liberal when the liberal reminds the domestic thugs and goons with whom they are allied.
This “criminality across the planet” of the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” “obtains everywhere” and has been going on for centuries. Sure enough, just like any band “of savages who commit crimes at…appalling rates”, they have their excuses. I judge “from a ‘white’ standard of judgment”.
“While not every” member of the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” is a “criminal, an inordinate…number of them are.” “This seems inarguable.”
White America would be far better off in public order terms if we could remove blacks from US soil.
REPLY: White America would be far better off in private terms if the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” were removed from the USA, in the geographical sense of the term, perhaps by a garbage barge to depart from NYC. If nothing else, people would eventually stop buying Treasury bonds and bills, provided that no one were foolish enough to vote for new members to replace the “Congressional WHITE Caucus”. Why? Because there ‘d be no quorum.
“This seems inarguable.”
Since whites would not vote for new members of a new “Congressional WHITE Caucus” “who commit crimes at such appalling rates”, either all the “tools of an international crime syndicate” would have to come home when their supplies ran out or whites would have to vote for blacks. Maybe wannabe members of a new “Congressional WHITE Caucus” would pander to the black vote with promises that
Conservatism is all about limited government, peaceful cooperation, and the American Dream.
Now, Leon, wouldn’t you be a lot more comfortable Playing the Violence Card over at American Thinker?
January 5, 2011 at 10:16 amThat makes no sense at all.
January 6, 2011 at 11:58 amAntiknowner,
“The ‘Congressional WHITE Caucus’ is almost everyone in Congress but the Congressional Black Caucus.” In fact, at one time the only “caucus” in Congress was the “Congressional WHITE Caucus”.
[Why get into the shark cage when all one needs to do is to rap it a few times with a fishing rod?]
January 6, 2011 at 12:01 pmThis “criminality across the planet” of the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” “obtains everywhere” and has been going on for centuries. Sure enough, just like any band “of savages who commit crimes at…appalling rates”, they have their excuses. I judge “from a ‘white’ standard of judgment”.
Yep, that, too, makes sense.
January 6, 2011 at 12:02 pm“While not every” member of the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” is a “criminal, an inordinate…number of them are.” “This seems inarguable.”
Yep, that, too, makes sense, Antiknower.
January 6, 2011 at 12:04 pmREPLY: White America would be far better off in private terms if the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” were removed from the USA, in the geographical sense of the term, perhaps by a garbage barge to depart from NYC.
Now, what sensible person person does not think that shipping the “Congressional WHITE Caucus” out to sea by barge would leave “white America…far better off in private terms”?
January 6, 2011 at 8:47 am“The fallacy of Leon Haller’s argument is in the application of libertarian legal theory, which is individualist by nature, for the purpose of collectivisation. Libertarianism recognizes no borders except those between private land owners and hence, there is no “country” to speak of except as a collection of plots of land. And the property owner has every right to restrict others’ use of his land.”
My views are far beyond this. I perfectly understand your point. Indeed, I helped formulate it in conversations with Hans Hoppe two decades ago. But, two responses. First, we do not live in the purely private society imagined by anarchocapitalists. I do have to walk public streets also open to violent minorities (esp blacks). Fear of being criminally victimised by them limits even my freedom, let alone that of my girlfriend and other women, the physically feeble, etc – any decent person who has to fear crime. Why should we? And, to whom do those public streets belong? Who decides who gets to use them, and under what conditions? (Open borders jackasses have no response to this, and never will. Open Borders = Open Invasion.)
(Another example is airports. Yes, they should be private, with their own security procedures. What if those procedures were maximally rational, and thus involved racial and ethnic profiling? I assume you and other liberals here would be indifferent to that? But, we do not have private airports – and still require security procedures. How things might be arranged without the State is not relevant to the existing situation.)
Second, I am concerned with Really Existing Liberty. You know, in America (my home), in the Real World. In the Real World, blacks, as both criminals (compared to whites), and as socialist voters, massively detract from my REAL liberty. My liberty, not to mention personal safety, would thus be enhanced by the removal of blacks from my country. My point is that a race which behaves in a racist / collectivist manner as blacks do, within a democracy, has a massive advantage over a race disproportionately committed to individualism. You people really haven’t understood this point, let alone offered any evidence for the proposition that racial integration and multiracialism do not negatively effect the amount of liberty enjoyed by whites (esp, white Americans). Our liberty is reduced as ‘diversity’ increases. If we were so assinine as actually to implement “open borders”, the liberties (and wealth) of whites would vanish in less than a single year. Deny this, and you reveal your ignorance and ideological fanaticism.
January 6, 2011 at 11:55 amFear of being criminally victimised by them limits even my freedom, let alone that of my girlfriend and other women, the physically feeble, etc – any decent person who has to fear crime.
The fear exists in your head and only in your head. Well, in that and in your mind, too. It is nothing other than your own mental errors that limit your freedom. As for the remarks about “girlfriend…other women…the physically feeble”: you’re just rationalizating with a bit of posturing and, I have no doubt, intent to pander, mixed in for special efffect.
I grew up in Detroit. White. Was born there not long after the riots. Was raised on Bedford, in a neighborhood that transformed itself in just a few years from a haven for the naive children of city employees to a place where you get knives held up to your face and your friend knocked off his bike while he’s right in front of you. (We were riding on the sidewalks.)
Now, why don’t you stop making excuses for your malice? C’mon on now, it’s time for leon to grow up. And find yourself a woman with a pair. Ask her to loan you one of that pair.
How things might be arranged without the State is not relevant to the existing situation.
Kvatch. Half of your mind is half-trapped in a parallel universe where “your ignorance and ideological fanaticism” have trapped that half. First, there is no such thing in physical space as “the State”, as you put it without deliberate intent to be pretentious. Second, there exists in this world individuals. Political theorizing is about how they ought to interact with one another. Political theorizing is about ethics.
In your imagination, however, ethics is about making up excuses for lashing out violently at every hobgoblin and boogeyman, even the ones that pose to you no immediate danger and which never would if you’d mind your business, zip your mouth, and turn off your computer. When you can’t identify a hobgoblin or boogeyman near to you, you project your [ahem] ethics as needed on to whatever persons you do find nearby in order to imagine that you have evidence to continue believing as you already do.
You’re the twenty-five y.o. punk who goes to the bar [e.g. Harrington’s, on N. Halsted St.] with a chip on its shoulder, gets into a staredown with some other guy there, and then, sure enough, ends up in a fight outside, in the middle of the street. (You banged the other guy’s head on the pavement in self-defense.) Of course, like the scar on the corner of your mouth, the conflict wasn’t your fault, not even when you baited him by shouting and pointing at him while he was getting into a cab. You see, “leon”, that other guy is bascially just you, and I lived with your for nearly a year and have known you for many more than that afterwards.
So also are you the niggers, barbarous blacks, with whom you are so eager to get into a fight. Between you and them is about foreskin’s worth of differnce. Of course, not all blacks are barbarous, as you claim yourself.
Now that you’re in middle age, or later, you drive around at night with a gun in your lap fancying yourself a savior of “girlfriend and other women, the physically feeble, etc – any decent person who has to fear crime”. You remind me of a kook in a movie with Sean Connery. (Connery wasn’t the kook, who while out on patrol encountered two people having a swordfight in an alley.)
Now, why don’t you stop making excuses for your malice? C’mon on now, it’s time for leon to grow up. And find yourself a woman with a pair. Ask her to loan you one of that pair.
My point is that a race which behaves in a racist / collectivist manner as blacks do, within a democracy, has a massive advantage over a race disproportionately committed to individualism.
There you go again, leon, revealing “your ignorance and ideological fanaticism.” A race is a term for which could be substituted set without loss of meaning, and so long as the context is clear, we can use “set” to refer to “blacks”, by which you mean Africans, although in N. American those called blacks frequently have fairer skin than those in India.
Now, the members of the set exist in physical space. Not so the set. This is how liberals know that your expression “a race which behaves” is just a crude a setup for the fig leaves with which you offer to hide your shameful motives, which include assault, battery, enslavement, homicide, etc.
If Hans Hoppe shared in your forumulation, then he, too, needs to be discredited.
January 8, 2011 at 7:39 amDetroit? Here is a discussion with pictures of its ruins (caused by government, or too many blacks?):
January 4, 2011 at 4:57 pmCan someone give me their opinion on a definition that I don’t think makes sense?
In Chapter 4 of HA, Mises starts the second paragraph with
“A means is what serves to the attainment of any end, goal or aim. Means are not in the given universe; in this universe there exist only things….”
And goes on in more detail. Then the 5th paragraph is
“Means are necessarily always limited ie. scarce with regard to the services for which man wants to use them. If this were not the case, there would not be any action with regard to them. Where man is not restrained by the insufficient quantity of things available, there is no need for any action.”
These two paragraphs together don’t make sense to me – I don’t understand why you get “Means are necessarily always limited” from the earlier description of what a means is. It is the goal or end itself which must be limited (and therefore require human action) – i don’t see why we conclude from this that the means itself (a thing that “serves to the attainment of any end, goal or aim”) must be limited also.
January 4, 2011 at 5:58 pmKid, enjoy reading your posts, nice to see a thoughtful mind at work on this
site. In answer to your question, if the means were unlimited then by extension
those unlimited means would be employed to satisfy all ends desired.
Yours Truly, the heretic and poor lost soul,
Sy Akhplart
January 5, 2011 at 12:58 pmI can also say that I very much enjoyed your check-kiting scenario post and the various replies.
January 4, 2011 at 8:39 pmKid Salami,
Substitute ‘air’ for means, and other places as appropriate:
“Air is necessarily always limited ie. scarce with regard to the services for which man wants to use air. If this were not the case, there would not be any action with regard to air. Where man is not restrained by the insufficient quantity of air available, there is no need for any action.”
Now, recall the passage you quoted:
In Chapter 4 of HA, Mises starts the second paragraph with
“A means is what serves to the attainment of any end, goal or aim. Means are not in the given universe; in this universe there exist only things….”
Well, now, let’s think about that. If “[m]eans are not in the given universe”, then how could it be the case that…
Means are necessarily always limited ie. scarce with regard to the services for which man wants to use them.
ANSWER: Equivocation.
Human Action will give your mind a thorough workout. It will also help you to develop your thinking. Others, too, have struggled with it. For example, see Bryan Caplan’s autobiography in Walter Block’s new book, I Choose Liberty, which just became available for download.
Yuri M., do you recall what I said on that Friday evening late in April of 2010 about electronic constrictor devices being installed in the throats of humans? That would stop the tragedy of the commons, wouldn’t it? But who will manage the constrictor devices in event of someone not paying for his or her share of air?
Neither I nor any friend of mine.
January 5, 2011 at 12:07 pmHuman Action will give your mind a thorough workout? so it isnt really true???
January 6, 2011 at 7:04 pmPerhaps I undersold it. It would have been a little better to write, “it will help you to develop and to improve your thinking, esp. about the study of human action and the science of exchanges”.
Now, what does it mean to say that Human Action “isn’t really true???”. Consider the following two statements.
(1) Human Action is true.
(2) Human Action is not true.
One of these must be correct, where “is true” means that every statement in the book is true; that every argument construed as valid is indeed valid; that every inference is logical, asf. To agree that it “is true” is to affirm that there’s nothing in there that ought not to be. So, if there is in Human Action so much as a single error of the type I’ve mentioned, then how could it be that “Human Action is “really true”?
Wouldn’t it be astonishing to find such a book? And what should one do if an error is found in Human Action or if someone else shows you that it has an error? Cast it aside, then begin a new search for an errorless book or collection of papers? If you did so, I think you’d be searching for a very long time if not also for a very short book.
January 5, 2011 at 4:59 amHi Kid Salami,
I don’t understand why you get “Means are necessarily always limited” from the earlier description of what a means is.
I can’t be completely sure what Mises thought, but I think the point he was making earlier here:
Means are not in the given universe; in this universe there exist only things….
is that means is an interpretation of a “thing”, not something separate from the “thing”. Things are, based on previous analysis, scarce. Means are therefore scarce too. Exercising some means (changing states of some things) results in other means becoming unavailable (other states of some things becoming unavailable).
January 5, 2011 at 8:34 amThanks for the replies. I have to think about this a bit more….. there appears to me to be something circular about the reasoning, but I can’t pinpoint what it is.
January 5, 2011 at 12:55 pmI’m still not quite sure about this. Rather than try to explain, let me ask: can we reasonably refer to a unit of fiat currency that I use (via my debit card) to buy a bottle of milk as a “means” in this sense? It is, essentially, an entry on a spreadsheet and theoretically unlimited – limited by potential insolvency or whatever yes, but not by any physical scarcity.
It “serves to the attainment of [my] end, goal or aim” of a bottle of milk. And it is “not in the given universe; in this universe there exist only things” eg. cows and milk and wallets and debit cards and bankers (and politicians and thieves). But in what sense is it limited? I’m looking for the vocabulary to describe this non-physical concept which is clearly something people use to obtain things.
January 6, 2011 at 6:28 amA shipwrecked man in a lifeboat wouldn’t trade a loaf of bread for a bucketfull of seawater.
Money is an end only insofar as it is useful. When money is unlimited, attaining it is as easy as breathing.
In such a case noone will want trade a loaf of bread for a bucketful of seawater.
Every time I try to explain it further than that I end up saying everything three times in order to be precise, which is a problem I’ve been having with the Human Action audio book.
January 6, 2011 at 7:42 amI don’t think you are addressing the problem, although this could at least partly be because I’ve not sufficiently clear. You say “When money is unlimited, attaining it is as easy as breathing.” In what sense is money “limited” now? The Fed is doing its best to prove that there is no limit. You might be talking about a limit on the “rate” of increase, not in the final amount?
Fine – but Mises doesn’t go into this. If he meant this, why didn’t he say it? Before I think Mises made a mistake, I’d rather assume I made one and understand exactly what he IS saying.
To me, the concept “unit of fiat currency” has a function – it is one of a number of such “entities” whose existence is essential for the chain of events which are connected causally which, taken as a whole, are the “action” of me buying a bottle of milk (I can think of many other examples as well but let’s stick with this one).
So, if the concept of “unit of fiat currency” was removed then I would have to act in a different way. It seems reasonable that this concept “unit of fiat currency” has something in common with, say, the physical coin – they are both required for the transaction to take place and for me to obtain the milk. What is the word that describes all such essential “entities” in an action? Mises elaborates on “means” a lot but appears to say that “unit of fiat currency” is not a “means” as it is unlimited, so we can’t use that can we?
January 7, 2011 at 5:40 amFor the fed, it isn’t limited. For you it is. You can’t create unlimited amounts of dollars. The Fed can. (As long as noone finds out.)
Now, the problem as I understand it is that you don’t understand how means must necessarily be limited.
Ie: your understanding is thus:
1. Ends must be limited in order for us to want them.
2. Means have no need to be limited.
Am I correct in this?
January 4, 2011 at 5:59 pmKid, sorry, left something out; ends, goals and aims are not limited. Humans
always have unsatisfied desires, that is why unemployment in a free market is
transitory.
Yours Truly, the heretic and poor lost soul, Sy Akhplart
January 5, 2011 at 11:59 amThe fallacy of Leon Haller’s argument is in the application of libertarian legal theory, which is individualist by nature, for the purpose of collectivisation. Libertarianism recognizes no borders except those between private land owners and hence, there is no “country” to speak of except as a collection of plots of land. And the property owner has every right to restrict others’ use of his land.
January 6, 2011 at 8:46 am“The fallacy of Leon Haller’s argument is in the application of libertarian legal theory, which is individualist by nature, for the purpose of collectivisation. Libertarianism recognizes no borders except those between private land owners and hence, there is no “country” to speak of except as a collection of plots of land. And the property owner has every right to restrict others’ use of his land.”
I perfectly understand your point. Indeed, I helped formulate it in conversations with Hans Hoppe two decades ago. But, two responses. First, we do not live in the purely private society imagined by anarchocapitalists. I do have to walk public streets also open to violent minorities (esp blacks). Fear of being criminally victimised by them limits even my freedom, let alone that of my girlfriend and other women, the physically feeble, etc – any decent person who has to fear crime. Why should we? And, to whom do those public streets belong? Who decides who gets to use them, and under what conditions? (Open borders jackasses have no response to this, and never will. Open Borders = Open Invasion.)
(Another example is airports. Yes, they should be private, with their own security procedures. What if those procedures were maximally rational, and thus involved racial and ethnic profiling? I assume you and other liberals here would be indifferent to that? But, we do not have private airports – and still require security procedures. How things might be arranged without the State is not relevant to the existing situation.)
Second, I am concerned with Really Existing Liberty. You know, in America (my home), in the Real World. In the Real World, blacks, as both criminals (compared to whites), and as socialist voters, massively detract from my REAL liberty. My liberty, not to mention personal safety, would thus be enhanced by the removal of blacks from my country. My point is that a race which behaves in a racist / collectivist manner as blacks do, within a democracy, has a massive advantage over a race disproportionately committed to individualism. You people really haven’t understood this point, let alone offered any evidence for the proposition that racial integration and multiracialism do not negatively effect the amount of liberty enjoyed by whites (esp, white Americans). Our liberty is reduced as ‘diversity’ increases. If we were so assinine as actually to implement “open borders”, the liberties (and wealth) of whites would vanish in less than a single year. Deny this, and you reveal your ignorance and ideological fanaticism.
January 6, 2011 at 8:50 amNote: my comments are not getting posted now. What happened to free speech on this website? Apparently, the Mises Institute has succumbed to political correctness. Do you censor Marxists, socialists, Keynesians, etc – or only racial realists? Shameful!
Leon Haller
January 6, 2011 at 12:10 pmAs far as I’ve been able to discern, only Leon Haller and other “racial realists” are censored here.
When the webmaster figures out how to construct a db index on the name and IP of Leon Haller, a racial realist, he’ll be frozen out for good.
January 6, 2011 at 12:39 pmWhen trying to make sense of a legal theory advocated for adoption by many persons, many problems can be solved by remembering to ask just one question.
QUESTION: In what way does a corporation do its “existing”?
Now, Blaise Pascal was on to something important when he made his remarks about clarifying concepts and the words and symbols used to indicate them. You can find some of those remarks on method in W. Stanley Jevons’ Elementary Lessons in Logic, available for free from the LvMI. At the end of “Lesson XIII, PASCAL AND DESCARTES ON METHOD.”, Jevons suggests,
Read Locke’s brief Essay on the Conduct of the Un-
derstanding, which contains admirable remarks on
the acquirement of exact and logical habits of
thought.”
So, how can this advice be applied to answer my question, “in what way does a corporation do its ‘existing’?”. My Latin dictionary has a quote which will yield good fruit if that defintion is borne in mind always while discussing the word “corporation”.
corpore*us -a -um adj. physical, of the body; corporeal, substantial; of the flesh
Feminists, you might wish to arrange your dictionaries consistent with the following:
corpore*a -us -um adj. physical, of the body; corporeal, substantial; of the flesh
Surely the relatively minor revision, mostly a matter of housekeeping, would reduce the confusion experienced by beginners. Further, it would be more consistent with the tables of declension endings one finds in a guide to Latin grammar, hence the reduction of confusion among beginners.
To be continued…
January 6, 2011 at 11:19 pmLeon, ” First, we do not live in the purely private society imagined by anarchocapitalists. I do have to walk public streets also open to violent minorities (esp blacks). Fear of being criminally victimised by them limits even my freedom”
Having to walk public streets in itself both limits and extends your freedom. If that street were private property, you may not have the freedom to walk there. Since this is now a part of the commons, you have a right to walk there, as do others who share in the same commons by virtue of their citizenship.
Your argument that “My liberty, not to mention personal safety, would thus be enhanced by the removal of blacks from my country” is not just racist, but positively despotic. To achieve an enhancement of your liberty would entail using the coercive powers of the state machinery, followed by a backlash against civil society, more simmering hatred, and more loss of freedom for everyone.
Even advocating such a stand would mean that you have to disavow your belief in libertarianism and embrace authoritarian government as the fixer of all society’s evils. And once such an argument is used to unleash a monster, variations of that same argument will be used effectively by other groups to exile all sorts of so-called races.
It is with such arguments, which gain the sanction of the voters, that dictators are unleashed. And once they taste power, there’s no way to stop them except for more violence. In the real world, such actions as you advocate would therefore result in a loss of liberty, go against the grain of anarchocapitalism and liberalism, and strengthen state control over society.
A liberal in lakeview,
Ad hominem attacks are unbecoming, and reveal your inadequacy to argue your position logically. You’ve spewed quite a lot of horse manure with your inane comments.
From today’s Mises Blog:
Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory
January 3, 2011 by Mises Daily [edit]
Libertarianism is both old and new. It is rooted in ancient ideas of natural justice, fairness, peace, and cooperation. You could even say that any civilized society is already somewhat libertarian. After all, civilization requires peace and cooperation. FULL ARTICLE by Stephan Kinsella
For more on the course, see the linked picture below:
[TLS]
From a recent facebook conversation:
Question: What do you think of selling nothingness? For example, ebay no longer allows you to sell your soul (though you can sell a contract for your soul). But ebay policy aside, what do you think of the legal status of selling nonexistent things?
9 hours ago · · · See Friendship
That said, there can also be unilateral contracts: A transfers money to B based on the occurrence of an uncertain (or even certain) future event (called aleatory in civil law). This is how I view all service “sales”–there is not really a sale of service, but rather the performance of the service by B is the trigger that causes the unilateral transfer of the money from A to B.
Now, I suspect that these selling-soul or whatever things can be reclassified as really service contracts: A agrees to pay B $100 IF B performs specified actions (like signing a piece of paper that purports formally to transfer a soul). If that is really all that A and B are specifying as the service or action to be performed, then that would trigger the money. It depends on what they meant. If they mean some formal actions B has to go thru and that is sufficient, then it would suffice. If it means actually handing over a soul to A, then it would not trigger the transfer of money from A to B.
I always put myself in the position of third parties (including judges). The soul-thing is obviously not at issue; only the money is. They need to know who owns it: A or B. Now, either A or B is the possessor. Maybe A handed it over; maybe not. Whoever holds it, the other one may dispute it and claim it: maybe A wants his payment back when he realizes what a stupid deal he made; maybe A refuses to pay and B demands payment. Third parties need to know who is the owner. Maybe a judge is asked to decide. These third parties can only look at objective evidence and how it conforms to customary standards of contracting. If A and B are dumbasses and engaged in such a mess of contradictory, confusing communications of their “intent,” what is a third party to do? At some point they throw their hands up and resort to some default rule of thumb, like, “the current possessor wins” or maybe “A gets to keep the money if the contract is too confusing or vague.” Whatever the third parties decide, I don’t feel sorry for the loser of A and B; they caused this screwed up situation.
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]
From LRC:
Tom, you’re right that military spending should not be based on GDP. Unfortunately, and somewhat paradoxically, as Hoppe has argued, countries (especially larger countries) that have relatively liberal internal economic policies tend to be richer, and thus their states tend to be more militarily powerful, and thus more aggressive, than states of developing or smaller countries. Only the US, with a $14 trillion GDP that could only result from a large, relatively free internal market, could afford to squander $3 trillion on the Iraq war (on top of untold trillions for the recent bailouts), for example. This doesn’t mean we should hope the state destroys the economy, though I suppose its ensuing reduced ability to wage war would be a silver lining; but it does provide another reason why decentralization is good: it leads to smaller states, with a reduced ability to wage war.
Update:
Here is the Hoppe quote, explaining why the relatively rich, Western countries, which have relatively liberal internal economic policies, would tend to be militarily more powerful, and thus more aggressive, than developing states:
The need for a productive economy that a warring state must have also explains why it is that ceteris paribus those states which have adjusted their internal redistributive policies so as to decrease the importance of economic regulations relative to that of taxation tend to outstrip their competitors in the arena of international politics. Regulations through which states either compel or prohibit certain exchanges between two or more private persons as well as taxation imply a non-productive and/or non-contractual income expropriation and thus both damage homesteaders, producers or contractors [i.e., those that cause wealth to come into existence]. However, while by no means less destructive of productive output than taxation, regulations have the peculiar characteristic of requiring the state’s control over economic resources in order to become enforceable without simultaneously increasing the resources at its disposal. In practice, this is to say that they require the state’s command over taxes, yet they produce no monetary income for the state (instead, they satisfy pure power lust, as when A, for no material gain of his own, prohibits B and C from engaging in mutually beneficial trade). On the other hand, taxation and a redistribution of tax revenue according to the principle “from Peter to Paul,” increases the economic means at the government’s disposal at least by its own “handling charge” for the act of redistribution. Since a policy of taxation, and taxation without regulation, yields a higher monetary return to the state (and with this more resources expendable on the war effort!) than a policy of regulation, and regulation with taxation, states must move in the direction of a comparatively deregulated economy and a comparatively pure tax-state in order to avoid international defeat.
See also Hoppe, The Paradox of Imperialism:
This explains, for instance, why Western Europe came to dominate the rest of the world rather than the other way around. More specifically, it explains why it was first the Dutch, then the British and finally, in the 20th century, the United States, that became the dominant imperial power, and why the United States, internally one of the most liberal states, has conducted the most aggressive foreign policy, while the former Soviet Union, for instance, with its entirely illiberal (repressive) domestic policies has engaged in a comparatively peaceful and cautious foreign policy. The United States knew that it could militarily beat any other state; hence, it has been aggressive. In contrast, the Soviet Union knew that it was bound to lose a military confrontation with any state of substantial size unless it could win within a few days or weeks.
A few weeks ago my wife and I tried this Williams-Sonoma recipe: Slow-Cooker Shepherd’s Pie. It’s really good. We have some family coming to visit from Louisiana, so we are making it tomorrow for Christmas day.
For Sunday we have more family and friends coming over for dinner, and are going to cook Amarone Osso Bucco, and some wild mushroom risotto. For appetizer: Ralph & Kacoo’s Stuffed Mushrooms–super delicious. I used to go to Ralph & Kacoo’s in Baton Rouge when I was in high school and college and eat that as a meal. My favorite stuffed mushrooms. For dessert: Mississippi Mud Pie.
And for brunch Sunday we will make Michael’s Breakfast Casserole.
Some of my other favorite recipes:
My LRC post:
I’m getting this new book, The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, for my 7-year old for Christmas. What’s interesting is how we are approaching some of the horrid aspects of communist Czechoslovakia. From the Publisher’s Weekly review:
Starred Review. Born out of a question posed to Sís (Play, Mozart, Play!) by his children (Are you a settler, Dad?), the author pairs his remarkable artistry with journal entries, historical context and period photography to create a powerful account of his childhood in Cold War–era Prague. Dense, finely crosshatched black-and-white drawings of parades and red-flagged houses bear stark captions: Public displays of loyalty—compulsory.
Like the Pledge of Allegiance many kids are forced to recite. Like the oath of loyalty to the Constitution lawyers have to give to get admission to practice law. Like the obligation to put your hand over your heart at sporting events when they sing the Star Spangled Banner. Like the way the glassy-eyed brainwashed masses Proudly Stand Up! when the cloying, horrible Lee Greenwood song God Bless the USA is played on the 4th of July in the South. [continue reading…]
As noted in my post Kinsella Speech at Students for Liberty – Texas Conference (Austin), on “Intellectual Freedom vs Patent and Copyright”, last month I delivered the speech “Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright,” for the 2010 Students For Liberty Texas Regional Conference, University of Texas, Austin.
As noted on the website of the Foundation for a Free Society, the video of my talk is now available. See below. Here is the audio file.
Update: here is an edited transcription: Kinsella, “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright,” Economic Notes No. 113 (Libertarian Alliance, Jan. 18, 2011) [The Libertarian Standard version]
(Youtube version 2 with improved audio.)
Update: podcast version: KOL062 | “Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright” (2010)
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), and International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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