25 Mar 2015

Does Silk Road Refute Rothbardianism?

private law, Shameless Self-Promotion 44 Comments

My latest at FEE. Incidentally, as Jeff Tucker’s comment at the end of the article reminded me, I should have issued a disclaimer: I am stipulating that the message logs are accurate, for the sake of argument. I wanted to show that even if Dread Pirate Roberts did everything that the logs purport, then it is not the death blow to Rothbardianism that people allege. An excerpt:

The most obvious problem with Farrell’s essay is that we’re only having this debate because the state outlaws peaceful markets in marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and other such drugs. Furthermore, the state also prohibits competing, professional agencies for the private production of defense services — this is why DPR thought he had to deal with such unsavory characters. DPR didn’t have the option of, say, taking his case to a reputable private-sector judge and getting a verdict levied against the people attacking Silk Road, because the state renders everything in the Rothbardian vision illegal. Thus, the Silk Road murder-for-hire episode shows what happens when the state interferes in the markets for drugs and law enforcement. In this respect, Farrell’s argument is akin to watching Luke’s tauntaun die on the ice planet Hoth, and then remarking, “This just shows why the galaxy needs an emperor.”

BTW, in case you think, “Yeah yeah, legalize drugs and violence goes way down, I got it,” I promise that’s not the main thrust of my article. I chose the above quote because of the Star Wars line.

44 Responses to “Does Silk Road Refute Rothbardianism?”

  1. S.C. says:

    DPR didn’t have the option of, say, taking his case to a reputable private-sector judge and getting a verdict levied against the people attacking Silk Road…

    “Private-sector judges” constitute kritarchy, i.e., not anarchy!

    • Major.Freedom says:

      Private sector judges constituting a territorial monopoly, demanding payment from those residing on or doing business with them, and outlawing all competition in judging, would be kritarchy.

      Private property rights as absolute, with individuals being free to compete for traders who want judging, is not kritarhy but anarchy.

      • S.C. says:

        No, you just have a very bizarre and utterly idiosyncratic concept of government.

        • Bala says:

          No. His definition of government is quite cogent. Yours is lost in figures of speech and reification of the zero.

      • S.C. says:

        Your distinction between “monopoly” judges and “competing” judges is nonsense. There are are only judges. It doesn’t matter if they are working independently. They still constitute government.

        • Major.Freedom says:

          No, you just have a very bizarre and utterly idiosyncratic concept of government.

          Seriously though, if you define competition between judges as a government, then logically there cannot be anything other than government. No matter what anyone does in the realm of adjudicating, to you it’s government.

          In other words, your definition of government is vacuous. It is not distinguished from anything. A monopoly, or no monopoly, or anything else, it is all government.

          That is not what the creators of the phrase kritarchy had in mind S.C. They created the phrase so as to distinguish one form of monopoly from other forms of monopoly.

          Absence of monopoly cannot possibly be a kritarchy as the phrase was established and defined.

          Just ask yourself, if even competition in judging disputes constitutes government, then can there be an absence of government using your definition of it? In my definition there can be, but in yours there cannot. Hence my definition is superior to yours in terms of practical usage. You van define government any way you want, but by demanding I use your definitions, you would be just be engaging in the argumentative fallacy of linguistic prescriptivism.

          It is obvious you’re just trying to paint Murphy and Rothbardians in general in a bad light by using words as a weapon rather than for understanding.

          • S.C. says:

            No, “competition” has nothing to do with the definition of government.

            • Major.Freedom says:

              It is precisely the legality of competition that excludes there being a government.

              • S.C. says:

                Monopolism was never part of the definition of government until your crew came onto the scene.

              • guest says:

                “Monopolism was never part of the definition of government …”

                Since monopolies can only persist under violations of the individual rights of would-be competitors, this isn’t true.

                It is also the case that it was never the problem it was made out to be:

                [Time stamped; #9 of 15 claims he’s addressing]
                Thought Controllers Call Ron Paul “Extreme”
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FFhSr1A1do#t=12m23s

                [Time stamped; Focusing on the Predatory Pricing issue, including of the chain store form]
                The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Lecture 8 | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
                Myths and Facts About Big Business
                [www]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGeA1Sbd4XM#t=12m01s

                Extra resources on the Austrian view of Monopoly:

                Anti-Trust and Monopoly (with Ron Paul)
                [www]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4gRRk2i-M

                Dominick Armentano: The Case for Repealing Antitrust Laws
                [www]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBT-fnJsfo0

              • S.C. says:

                Since monopolies can only persist under violations of the individual rights of would-be competitors, this isn’t true.

                Holy question begging, Batman! This is a crap load of uncommon assumptions.

              • Major.Freedom says:

                Not question begging, and the statistical prevalence of assumptions does not improve or degrade the logical and evidential quality of them.

              • Major.Freedom says:

                “Monopolism was never part of the definition of government until your crew came onto the scene.”

                Irrelevant. “Your crew” just didn’t want to admit the monopolistic truth to government, so in the historical sense it originally did not get included in the definition of government.

                But monopolistic the government is, if we go by the common definitions of both terms.

              • Tel says:

                Monopolism was never part of the definition of government until your crew came onto the scene.

                Oh gosh, our crew were the first to think of it!

                http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/hist/eia/documents_archive/eic.php

                And further of our especial Grace, certain Knowledge and mere Motion, we have condescended and granted, and by these Presents, for us, our Heirs and Successors, we do condescend and grant unto The said Governor and Company of merchants of London, Trading into the East-Indies, and their Successors that we, our Heirs and Successors, during the said Term of fifteen Years, will not grant Liberty, License or Power to any Person or Persons whatsoever, contrary to the Tenor of these our Letters Patents, to sail, pass, trade or traffick, to the said East-Indies, or into or from the Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Towns or Places aforesaid, or any of them, contrary to the true Meaning of these Presents, without the Consent of The said Governor and Company of Merchants of London, Trading into the East-Indies, or the most Part of them

                OK, not exactly the first but, you know, a little bit first.

                Mostly first.

                Ish…

  2. Transformer says:

    A Bit of a side issue, but I’m curious.

    “If Joe discovers that Dave is cheating on his wife, Joe might be a jerk if he demands money from Dave to keep quiet, but he’s not violating anyone’s rights if he does so.

    But the Silk Road user “FriendlyChemist” was threatening to expose the identities of 24 Silk Road drug dealers and thousands of buyers if DPR didn’t pay him $700,000. This threat isn’t akin to publicizing photos of an affair, or even threatening a restaurant to reveal the ingredients of its secret sauce. In addition to ruining Silk Road as a business, FriendlyChemist threatened to expose thousands of peaceful people to potential arrest..”

    If Dave’s wife is known to be likely to kill Dave if she finds out , would that make the blackmail illegitimate ?

    If not, what is the difference between that and “FriendlyChemist”’s blackmail ? In both cases a third party (Dave’s wife or the state) will be the ones committing a crime, not Joe or “FriendlyChemist” who are just offering to sell information they have.

    • Ben B says:

      Transformer,

      How is it “likely known” that Dave’s wife will kill him upon learning some information provided by Joe?

      Does Dave’s wife have a long history of killing her disobedient husbands when they refuse to accept her non-contractual, unilateral decision-making in the establishment of the rules which regulate the use of their own person and property?

      Has Dave’s wife forced Dave into a hegemonic relationship with her? Is their “marriage” based on aggression? Does Joe know this? Does Joe possess information that he knows will show Dave broke a non-contractual rule in which Dave almost always suffers aggression/violence from his wife? If Dave decides to defend himself against his wife’s aggression, will his actions be supported by the legal system or will it favor his wife?

      So unless: Dave’s wife has a history of killing her husbands; it is known that she has used systematic aggression/violence to establish and maintain her relationship with Dave; Joe knows that the information he possesses will inform Dave’s wife that Dave has broken one of her non-contractual rules in which she almost always reacts to with aggression; and it is known that no arbiter would ever consider Dave’s actions of self-defense to be justified; then I don’t see how Dave can reasonably assume that his wife will use violence against him. So, absent of these factors, Dave would have a hard time justifying a decision to use violence against Joe for allegedly aiding the criminal activities of Dave’s wife.

      On the other hand….with regards to the state, these conditions do hold and thus it is reasonable for one to assume that the state, upon learning certain information, will use violence against these peaceful individuals.

  3. Dan says:

    Dang, those Nixon quotes are crazy. What a psycho.

  4. Josiah says:

    I’m glad to learn that murder for hire is immoral at least according to Bob’s value code. But trying to compare the number of people killed by the DPR vs the U.S. gov overlooks the fact that there are about 28 million businesses in the U.S. but only one government. If the murder rate per business under anarchtopia was even within a couple of order of magnitudes of the Silk Road, it would dwarf anything governments have done.

    • Major.Freedom says:

      “I’m glad to learn that murder for hire is immoral at least according to Bob’s value code.”

      Since when were you anti-state Josiah?

      What did you think “the majority” needed from the “elected representatives” as ultimate backing for what they want the minority to do with their bodies and property? Politely suggest a set of norms that the minority can choose to disregard and go about their non-aggressive business? No, it boils down to murder for hire. The majority hires murderers to impose what the majority wants on everyone else.

      You should expand the range of your consciousness.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Josiah wrote:

      But trying to compare the number of people killed by the DPR vs the U.S. gov overlooks the fact that there are about 28 million businesses in the U.S. but only one government. If the murder rate per business under anarchtopia was even within a couple of order of magnitudes of the Silk Road, it would dwarf anything governments have done.

      What’s 28 million times 0?

      • Josiah says:

        Bob,

        Is the idea that businesses will try to kill millions of people but they will be so incompetent at it that they’ll never succeed?

        • S.C. says:

          If that is the case, then it’s hard to see how they could also be competent at other jobs.

        • Reece says:

          I think the relative size of the businesses is pretty important, as well as the fact that this business was legitimately threatened and the other problems Bob mentioned in his post. The amount of time is also useful; there have only been a couple of cases despite the silk road being a few years old.

          There were over a million transactions on the site. The vast majority of businesses aren’t remotely close to that.

  5. Bala says:

    I am somehow unable to view a drug lord’s killing of a State informant as anything other than killing in self-defence. The initiation of force comes from the eventual victim, not the drug lord. Killing a potential State informant is a little more of a grey area as the initiation hasn’t happened. However, the threat of initiation has been unleashed and that should qualify the drug lord’s actions as self defence.

    Absent The State and its criminalisation of legitimate acts, these situations would not exist. There would be nothing for the informant to inform. There would be no one the informant could inform. There would be no one threatening the drug lord based on the information the informant would have provided. I therefore fail to understand what the cogent argument is to Bob’s point.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Bala, you’re *making* my point–or one of them–so I don’t understand why you “fail to understand what the cogent argument is to Bob’s point.”

      What I said was that it was plausible DPR acted within Rothbardian legal theory by trying to take out FriendlyChemist, for exactly the reasons you cite. But at least one of the other would-be victims was merely someone who had stolen from Silk Road in the past; that guy (as I understand) wasn’t threatening to inform.

      • Keshav Srinivasan says:

        I think what Bala meant that he fails to see what cogent argument there is against your point.

    • S.C. says:

      I am somehow unable to view a drug lord’s killing of a State informant as anything other than killing in self-defence. The initiation of force comes from the eventual victim, not the drug lord.

      This is psychotic. You’re defending murder.

      • Major.Freedom says:

        No, you just have a very bizarre and utterly idiosyncratic concept of murder.

        It is psychotic to support the existence of the state, which is based on the very aggressive violence that you accused Bala of supporting.

        Tell me S.C., suppose I engaged in civil disobedience and refused to deal with anyone in the state. Suppose that I adopted the ethical principle that I will only use force if force is first initiated against me, no matter who initiates it.

        In order for the statesmen to act as statesmen, my actions above, which are not aggressive, only defensive, would have to be taken as justification for statesmen to murder me.

        Your psychotic definition of murder would exclude states killing citizens who engage in civil disobedience in a way that does not initiate violence against anyone. But to you statesmen are justified in initiating violence, up to and including murder of those whose only “crime” is acting peacefully in ways that you don’t like.

      • Bala says:

        No. You’re the psychotic one, if any. I was explaining that a killing of a certain kind is properly classified as “self-defence”. Time to take off the tin-foil hat and realise that not all killing is murder. For instance, killing a person who is INITIATING force against you, especially when said force is certain to snuff out your life, would NOT be called murder by sane people. Of course, there is no accounting for the psychotic ones like you.

  6. Keshav Srinivasan says:

    Bob, I’d like to understand your thinking on this FriendlyChemist issue. If you lived in a society where people often tried to kill racists, and you called someone a racist, would that be a violation of the non-aggression principle?

    Or to take another example, if you were living in Nazi Germany and you let a Jew hide in your attic, and the Nazis came and asked you whether there were any Jews there, would it violate the non-aggression principle if you answered yes (e.g. out of religious scruples)? I’m not a libertarian, but these don’t seem like violations of the non-aggression principle at all, and yet they seem analogous to the FriendlyChemist case.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      OK Keshav but what if a mob boss calls a contract killer and says, “I’ll give you $50,000 if you go shoot this guy.” I mean, it’s not aggression to hand someone $50,000 right? The killer is obviously committing aggression, but is the mob boss?

      I’m not saying I just blew you up, but I’m pointing out that these situations fall on a spectrum.

      • Keshav Srinivasan says:

        It looks like Rothbard agrees with you about there being a spectrum:

        http://mises.org/library/right-self-defense
        “Should it be illegal, we may next inquire, to “incite to riot”? Suppose that Green exhorts a crowd: “Go! Burn! Loot! Kill!” and the mob proceeds to do just that, with Green having nothing further to do with these criminal activities. Since every man is free to adopt or not adopt any course of action he wishes, we cannot say that in some way Green determined the members of the mob to their criminal activities; we cannot make him, because of his exhortation, at all responsible for their crimes. “Inciting to riot,” therefore, is a pure exercise of a man’s right to speak without being thereby implicated in crime. On the other hand, it is obvious that if Green happened to be involved in a plan or conspiracy with others to commit various crimes, and that then Green told them to proceed, he would then be just as implicated in the crimes as are the others—more so, if he were the mastermind who headed the criminal gang. This is a seemingly subtle distinction which in practice is clearcut—there is a world of difference between the head of a criminal gang and a soap-box orator during a riot; the former is not, properly to be charged simply with “incitement.””

        It seems intuitively clear that the second case is morally worse than the first case. But I don’t see any principled way to distinguish these two cases in libertarian theory.

        • Harold says:

          “It looks like Rothbard agrees with you about there being a spectrum:”
          On the contrary, it seems to me that Rothbard is denying a spectrum- the two cases are clearly different, he says. Rothbard agrees with you that in the racist case and the nazi case you had not been the aggressor. If the others chose to kill the racist or the Jew, that is their business. All you did was exercise your free speech.

          Rothbard says if the person was involved in the plan, then he is guilty of aggression. By paying the person, one is involved in the plan, and is aggressing. There is no spectrum, there is simply aggression or not aggression.

          His mistake possibly lies here “This is a seemingly subtle distinction which in practice is clearcut.” But is it actually clearcut whether someone is “involved”? If I say “Go! Riot!” I am not involved, only speaking. If I say “here is $50,000, go get a mob together and destroy that Walmart shop” I am involved. I think there are places in between where it is not clear if I am involved or simply speaking out loud. This may seem like nit-picking, but it is a crucial distinction. If there is a spectrum rather than a clear distinction, then the NAP cannot be used as a basis for ones moral system. It becomes a practical guide, possibly a very useful one, but not a founding principle.

  7. Jua Manuel Perez Porrua Perez says:

    I never understood this: If I have a defense agency and you have another, but an arbitrator says that I have to pay 100 dollars to you, why can’t I simply refuse to pay, and negotiate with my defense agency to pay them 90 dollars to keep you and your defense agency away from me?

    • Darien says:

      Turf wars are very bad for business. They cost a ton of money and generate basically nothing. Only a very short-sighted defense agency would accept your offer, and it wouldn’t stay in business very long (we’ll except from this brief analysis the odd limit case in which you command such truly immense wealth as to be able to dwarf the rest of the market). In addition, defense agencies which ignore rulings from arbitration agencies would find themselves in a difficult position when they in turn require arbitration, thus applying still more pressure. Add to that the fact that a misbehaving defense agency would likely find itself “at war” with not just one agency but several — as the turf war is bad for everybody’s business — and you have a proposal that’s really a pretty rotten deal for $90.

      Incidentally, this is related to one reason why anarchists hold that a stateless society would have very little if any war: war is a massive money-loser. It’s profitable only if you can get a whole bunch of suckers to pay for it for you.

  8. Darien says:

    Once again we see (in the comments on FEE) the bizarre utter hostility from other ostensible libertarian folks toward pacifists. What on earth is it that grinds people’s gears so much?

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Darien wrote, “Once again we see (in the comments on FEE) the bizarre utter hostility from other ostensible libertarian folks toward pacifists. What on earth is it that grinds people’s gears so much?”

      I guess the guy just really has it out for pathetic subhuman slave beings, you know?

  9. Major.Freedom says:

    Do states refute statism?

    http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/03/26/government-report-finds-dea-agents-had-sex-parties-with-prostitutes-hired-by-drug-cartels/

    See what happens when we allow states to form? Obviously statists the world over will be consistent and say yes, this is proof states refute statism.

    Anyone? Beuller?

    • guest says:

      Liberty breathes through those holes …

  10. Marc says:

    It might be fun to see Pepsi execs killing Coke execs, but not reall so just legalize it.

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