10
Aug
2010
One-Hour Talk on Private Law and Defense
Even those of you who are well-read in the anarcho-capitalist literature may enjoy this talk from Mises U, as I think I came at these issues from a slightly different angle. For example, I came up with the analogy (starting around 24:00) of baby-killing and using the passive voice, on the fly. And really, how many people use analogies involving baby-killing and the passive voice?
I think this talk serves as a good commercial for my upcoming Mises Academy class on private law and defense. The full infomercial comes out on Friday.
This is a very interesting talk. I just finished listening to it, and I thought it was pretty informative, and you presented a lot of good reasons as to why such a system would be more peaceful and work better than governments.
I actually had a question, which is kind of related to what you talked about. Would a trial by jury be required in an anarcho capitalist society to mete out punishment? Like, suppose someone knew of a person who committed murder, but nobody believed him. Would he be allowed to take the law into his own hands and take the guy out? I’m not asking about whether this would be widespread in society. I understand that such behavior would be discouraged in society, because people wouldn’t want to live in an area which allowed that. I’m asking from the moral point of view. Like, from an anarcho capitalist point of view, would vigilantism be wrong (assuming that the vigilante knew for sure that the person committed the crime, and meted out fair punishment)? Thanks and keep up the awesome lectures.
This is probably one of the most important gaps in anarchist theory. Oftentimes, the minarchist objection to full-blown anarchism is that in an anarchic society there is no institution by which to protect individual rights. The anarcho-capitalists need a rigorous theory on private defense. Unfortunately, I think that one of the problems regarding development of this theory is how the notion of individual rights are approached. You mention in your lecture that Rothbard and Hoppe took a natural rights approach. I propose, rather, that “natural rights” exist insofar as the individuals are interested in protecting their self-interest. It’s this inherent rationality, rather than this more arguable notion of “natural rights”, which should provide the basis of any theory regarding private defense.
I’m not asking this with hostility or scorn, but I hear this view a lot and I want to inquire: How is your position different from somebody who says, “There’s no such thing as rights. Whoever has the most guns wins.” ?
With the same disclaimer, I’d ask what your response is to that ‘argument.’ Does the existence of “rights” disprove the assertion that whoever has the most guns wins? If rights do exist, how do they stop those with the guns from winning? (apart from redefining “winning” to mean gaining riches in the afterlife for respecting natural rights)
Of course, I’m sure we’d all agree with Mises and others that it is not necessarily the number of guns, but the ideological support for those holding the guns. Appealing to natural rights, then, can persuade quite a few people to end their support for those who do improper things with the guns. But this really only works for those who already accept the premise that there exist natural rights. I personally don’t think “rights” exist in any meaningful sense, but still have many reasons to believe those with guns ought not to use them to aggress against others.
In my opinion, the natural rights view has nothing to do with whether those with guns win. Anarcho capitalists believe that the initiation of force or fraud is immoral. That’s it. Whether or not those with the most guns win is a completely different question. If the people with most guns go around and initiate force against people, we would just say, ‘that is immoral.’
we believe that moral rules exist whether or not people choose to follow them. how do we make people follow moral rules? that is a completely separate question.
To be clear, that was very much my point: one’s views regarding rights has no bearing on whether those with guns wins. Bob seemed to be denigrating those who reject natural rights, because if they believe there is no such thing as rights, then it sounds like they also believe those with the most guns wins. But claiming that those with the most guns wins is not endorsing the actions of those with the most guns, or saying it is a good thing that those with the most guns wins, just as it would not be contradictory for a Rothbardian rightsist to make the same claim. It’s for this reason that I’m not really sure what it is Bob is insinuating.
And of course moral rules exist, just as religious rules exist. But do they exist outside of society? Are they set and fixed for all societies? Are they the product of anything but men interacting within society?
I think that question makes sense, and it is very complicated to answer. I will leave two points, which may seem to contradict each other, but are meant to really work in conjunction with one another.
1. Progress depends on security. A stateless society, rather than live by the gun, it is far more rational for individuals to cooperate. Even in present societies were there are defined property rights (take Spain, for example), there are thieves who succeed in stealing because they have a superior handle of force. Whether this is morally right or wrong, in my opinion, is really irrelevant in the real world. But, for the majority of people it makes more sense to cooperate. My family could not produce the amount of olives it does if we consistently had to worry about our neighbors trying to take our land by force. The state doesn’t protect us, a long tradition of arbitration and cooperation protects us.
2. To one extent or another, the fact that the state came into existence goes to show that those who had the most guns did win. I am no expert on the origins of the state, but it seems to me that these roots are in prehistoric tribal society. If one man, or a group of men, were bringing in the most food, and the survival of a tribe of peoples depended on these men, it would make sense for others to surrender some of their self-interests (those with less utility than survival) in exchange for handing these hunters extraordinaire some power.
From there, I derive that the state and force becomes less relevant as the division of labor grows, and this ties in with point #1. As the division of labor grows, as does specialization, the amount of choices for protection of one’s self-interests begins to increase. In a more primitive society, those who have a larger handle on force can extract more concessions from those they terrorize, but in a society with greater specialization and therefore a greater amount of people who can focus on handling force, the demands these people can make to those who require their protection become lesser and lesser.
No contribution to the discussion. Rather, I just want to applaud the quick joke at the beginning of the talk from Mises U. Hilarious!
Great speech 🙂
Y.,
What does it matter what anarcho-capitalists believe something or other, if nobody else believes in it? In any case, how are these beliefs objective in any sense? Like I said above, this type of arbitrary declaration of natural rights has no bearing in the real world. The code of ethics that a free society would follow don’t exist objectively. They would be introduced through arbitration over a period of time.
Jonathan,
“In any case, how are these beliefs objective in any sense?”
I’m not claiming that these beliefs are objective or that we have some way of figuring out if such natural rights actually exist. I’m just saying that this is what anarcho capitalism says.
“What does it matter what anarcho-capitalists believe something or other, if nobody else believes in it?”
i’m not sure i understand the question exactly, but i’ll try to answer:
well, it depends what it matters for. i agree with you, it doesn’t matter as far as the real world results are concerned with that you are talking about, which is preventing the people with the guns from taking over and such. but i guess it would matter in terms of “just doing the right thing”, if there is such a thing.
i’m not sure i understand exactly your theory of ethics. is there some article or book which lays out your theory of ethics and explains the differences from the natural rights approach?
I’m not sure. I arrived at my opinions on ethics myself, although I’d like to think that they are similar to Mises’s (who did not believe in natural rights, either, as far as I know).