Bob, in this blog post you answer an objection to your Chaos Theory book, namely what would stop rich people from killing poor people with relative impunity: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/08/wouldnt-rich-people-go-on-murder-sprees-in-a-system-of-private-law.html
“And what about the pauper, who can’t afford bodyguards or setup trust funds? Well, who wants to kill such a person? Is it really worth $1,000?” This seems unconvincing to me. I can imagine plenty of motivations a rich person could have such that he’d value killing the poor person far more than the money he’d be losing.
Aside from anything else one could say about that post, how is this $1000 limit enforced in your hypothetical world? It’s an assumption that negates the entire point: the power of the rich to buy the “law”. Let’s just pretend by magic they can’t! This puts can-opners to shame.
Speaking of shame. Your point that the rich can buy justice now is brazen. Certainly the goal of blind justice is not fully met, and probably cannot be. But what you propose makes it worse. “In the open” has never been a downside for those who think of themselves as ubermenschen.
Come on, Ken B. Here’s the objection he was answering: “In Murphy’s vision, ‘crimes’ are actually codified contractually, and the punishments are typically monetary. So that means rich people could go on killing sprees, and just pay off the families of the victims.” That is a totally separate objection you are raising, I would have been highly disappointed if he had answered it there. I don’t want to read an entire book on anarcho-capitalism every single time I look at a single objection. There is no shame in answering a question. I think you know this.
If in the open is not better, then why do they spend so much money and effort hiding things from the public? I certainly don’t think it being in the open would solve the problem, but I can’t see how it advantages the rich for people to know that they are buying off the system.
The brazen bit is saying a flaw in our system is that wealth can influence verdicts whilst proposing a system to let wealth influence verdicts even more.
My first para points out that Bob’s argument sneaks in something like an impartial state to enforce the limit.
You have not addressed either of these points. As for openness, people naturally hide what they can be prosecuted by the state for. It’s prudence not shame at work. But Bob thinks shame and modesty will reign them in. I don’t.
Yes, I didn’t address your whole first part supposedly implied by one word. I actually thought that was leading to your openness argument. I highly disagree that the rich could influence the system even more in an anarcho-capitalist system. The system is currently structured to heavily favor the wealthy. Think about it this way:
In an anarcho-capitalist system, both sides would have to agree to the arbitrator. In the current system, there are really only two choices, generally decided on by a single side. One choice is a jury, which has numerous problems. In short, juries have no monetary incentive to make the right choice, are randomly selected (they do not have a comparative advantage in justice), have a free rider problem (to paying attention in court – that’s why empirically, 6 person juries appear to be no better than 12 – if interested, I would read “Jury Size and the Free Rider Problem” by Mukhopadhaya), have a time-value problem (many of them value their time more than sitting in the court, and will want to hurry the proceedings), and have the problem of rational ignorance (why learn about the justice system when your chance of being called and making a difference is so low? This is why a paper by Strawn and Buchanan found only 50% of Florida jurors thought the state had to prove the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt – also read “Junk Science and the Jury” by Peter Hubor). I think it’s clear that the more complex facts do not matter as much as portrayal in the case. Who will do better at that – the wealthy person’s well-trained lawyer or the poor man’s cheap lawyer? This is in addition to various corruption problems (the judge still has some influence and could be bought off and the person picking the juries can also be bought off – as well as perhaps the opposing lawyer). If that’s bad, the current judge system is even worse. Judges can be easily corrupted. They have taken about the same number of science and math classes as the average jury member (and much less than jury members that went to college – for this data, see Judges, Juries, and Scientific Evidence by Valerie Hans), so in many cases they have very little idea what is going on in the more complex evidence. This means, again, they can be very influenced by the better lawyer. Bruce Spencer attempted to measure the accuracy of both in “Estimating the Accuracy of Jury Verdicts.” He found that judges were slightly more accurate, but had a much higher Type I error rate (0.37 to 0.25). Both are embarrassingly high, if accurate. But we know error rates must be high, because we can look at rates of agreement between judges and juries (Spencer posts two different estimates there, both approximately the same). The rate of agreement is, at the higher value, 80% – the rate by chance would be 62% (because they are both more likely to prosecute). This is appallingly low when you consider “innocent until proven guilty” is how the system is supposed to work. In a market justice system, the judges would be limited by both sides getting a say. They would be limited by losing business when they make a bad decision. Agencies would no doubt emerge to try and catch a case where judges messed up. Judges would actually be chosen by their knowledge of similar cases rather than just being in a certain location. Because people would pay directly, the problem of rational ignorance (a free rider problem) would vanish. No longer would just the wealthy that can push a judge into office be informed. The citizens would rise up, and the current plutocracy would crumble.
Your first point was ridiculous. He was asked a question, and he answered it. Yes, the question assumed that there would be some sort of limit. But it also assumed that there wouldn’t be chaos under anarchy and a bunch of other things. It was a question, and he answered it. Did you read the question? Do I need to quote it again for you? As to why I didn’t address your point, it was because it had nothing to do with the post. Obviously.
Could you please quote where Bob said “shame and modesty will reign them in”? I think I missed that part. On openness: actually, no, they hide things clearly legal. Campaign donations are often funneled through PACs and stuff to avoid direct donations from politically damaging groups. But it isn’t illegal to get these funds directly, and in fact would in many cases give them more control over them (think of Super PACs here). Politicians make sure to have people in the media not reporting on stuff like this all the time. If you don’t like this, there are often settlement agreements where one of the agreements is to not talk about the allegations. Openness does more than modesty and shame. It allows for boycotts, for fund-raising for victims, etc. Look at Firefox just a few weeks ago. And Bob used this as an opening – it is better to have things open than closed. That is one advantage. He then went on to counter disadvantages and talk about other advantages. That’s what you do in an argument. You seem to think sometimes that if Bob says one thing, that is his entire argument. Economics is more complex than that.
It’s an assumption that negates the entire point: the power of the rich to buy the “law”. Let’s just pretend by magic they can’t!
How many times can the rich buy the law; And why are the poor going to continue to agree to patron an arbiter which is partial?
And why aren’t other arbiters able to compete?
The reason the rich can buy the law, today, is because the poor, themselves, mistakenly believe that creating government regulating agencies help the poor.
But since regulations, themselves, necessarily involve picking winners and losers, it’s the regulating agencies that are actually the source of the cronyism that you’re concerned about.
These two videos are good at addressing this issue:
Anti-Trust and Monopoly (with Ron Paul)
[www]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4gRRk2i-M
Dominick Armentano: The Case for Repealing Antitrust Laws
[www]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBT-fnJsfo0
If you can only watch one, I would suggest the second.
Yeah, the argument is between stiffing the poor by scam (what we do right now) vs stiffing them out in the open (the Rothbardian system is at least honest about it). Point is, however you define “poor” in your society, some people will end up in that situation, and it won’t be a desirable outcome for those people, so they will miss out on something. Wasn’t is Jesus who said the poor will always be with us?
Pay attention to how democracy works in Singapore, the wealthiest family tends to always win.
Well, I think it was an additional argument to others, not necessarily meant to stand alone. For example, insurance premiums would skyrocket for the rich person that killed someone and I’m pretty sure rich people would be a lot more socially hurt than poorer people.
But, I think there’s a real easy way the poor person could fix this, even sticking to the trust fund argument. As Bob said, in the victim’s will, they could have their money tied to being used to go after the person that murdered them. I think that could be expanded to the money received because the victim was killed. So, if the Jones estate received $1000 when Jones was killed by Bill Gates, that money could be tied to going after Bill Gates (essentially, the revenge money would have been collected from Bill Gates). If the rich person killed multiple people, this would clearly be an easy case.
Regarding the murder of poor people question raised by Keshav:
First of all, when people commit murder they usually try to make sure no one knows that they did it. Alternatively they might force (or pay) people who do know, not to tell.
It is quite rare for a person to murder someone and then tell everyone that they did it.
So the first point is: you need to find out who committed the murder before you can punish them. This can take a lot of time and resources, with investigations sometimes lasting years or even decades, and costing a fortune. Investigations can also on occasion be nationwide or transnational, rather than limited to one local area.
So the idea that if you murder someone, everyone knows that you did it and so you get fined and shunned is pretty silly.
If in Murphy’s World you were to kidnap a poor person and murder them quietly somewhere, what would happen? Who would people report the missing person to? Why would private law agencies or insurance agencies bother with trying to find them, or find out who killed them?
If it wasn’t profitable for them, they wouldn’t bother. So it seems that people could get away with murder quite easily, if the people they killed were relatively poor.
Another point is that seemingly separate crimes can often be connected. If one private agency is investigating one crime, and connected crime is being investigated by another, then they could fail to make connections and so miss crucial evidence. This is just another example of how splitting up law enforcement between separate competing companies could lead to inefficient and suboptimal outcomes.
You wouldn’t JUST have to be poor for someone to murder you without consequence. You’d have to be poor and have literally NOBODY who cared that you suddenly vanished. Most poor people still have friends and families, you know?
“Most poor people still have friends and families, you know?”
Yes I realize that. My point is it can take a lot of time and resources to solve serious crimes like murders, and it may not be worth the cost for companies if the murdered person is relatively poor.
I would argue that overall rich people benefit from buying protection more than poor people, thus overall wealthy people would be putting a lot of money into crime prevention.
The poor person can generally still get hold of a rifle, or a crossbow or a bomb because these things at cheap. The poor person has less to lose, usually lower education, and more likely to act on a grudge, or just out of envy. Thus wealthy people will be the typical targets and want to keep a police force around.
You may complain that those private cops will be biased because of where their pay is coming from, but that’s pretty much always the case.
Regarding the murder of poor people question raised by Keshav:
First of all, when people commit murder they usually try to make sure no one knows that they did it. Alternatively they might force (or pay) people who do know, not to tell.
It is quite rare for a person to murder someone and then tell everyone that they did it.
So the first point is: you need to find out who committed the murder before you can punish them. This can take a lot of time and resources, with investigations sometimes lasting years or even decades, and costing a fortune. Investigations can also on occasion be nationwide or transnational, rather than limited to one local area.
So the idea that if you murder someone, everyone knows that you did it and so you get fined and shunned is pretty silly.
If in Murphy’s World you were to kidnap a poor person and murder them quietly somewhere, what would happen? Who would people report the missing person to? Why would private law agencies or insurance agencies bother with trying to find them, or find out who killed them?
If it wasn’t profitable for them, they wouldn’t bother. So it seems that people could get away with murder quite easily, if the people they killed were relatively poor.
Another point is that seemingly separate crimes can often be connected. If one private agency is investigating one crime, and connected crime is being investigated by another, then they could fail to make connections and so miss crucial evidence. This is just another example of how splitting up law enforcement between separate competing companies could lead to inefficient and suboptimal outcomes.
Don’t the rich people of the world do that already by shipping nuclear waste to Somalia and finding reasons to block the development of fossil fuel resources in the third world? Worse, we hand guns to local dictators and pay them to repress their own people on our behalf, which they happily do.
One of the factors in Truman’s decision was the belief that the bomb would save lives. American lives obviously counted more, but saving Japanese lives as well. So even in Bob’s terms – Truman owning the Japanese – his point is weak, and if you, to be consistent, let Truman own the Americans as well then hid decision would be easier.
FDR and Truman firebombed virtually every city in Japan until they ran out of cities to firebomb so Truman nuked the last two. But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression which was caused by unrestrained laissez faire capitalism. That’s why FDR is appropriately the great hero of liberals.
They have odd ideas about that war here. One poster here claimed school children are taught that US casualties are what ended the depression. He had several in agreement.
Nobody ever claimed this Ken B. I normally try and defend you against accusations of being a mindless troll, but this is just a straight up lie and you know it.
There seems to be a strange fashion of commenting here, that goes something like this:
Person 1: Event A happened
Person 2: Actually, Event B didn’t happen
Ken B: [snide comment about Person 1 or people on this blog]. Unrelated Event C happened on this blog at some other time.
Technically, Person 2 and Ken B aren’t incorrect when they do this. But, it’s clearly slightly misleading. Here, Bob Roddis said bombing Japan was “good and necessary” in order to end the depression (presumably making fun of the common position that World War II ended the Great Depression). Person 2 said “the US didn’t go to war with Japan in order to end the depression” (note Bob Roddis never said otherwise). Ken B then said that “They have odd ideas about that war here.” and referenced something that there is no way I could find to see if it’s true.
Another example is on a post from Feb 27, 2014 (my first post here). Bob posted some video of Kennedy speaking, joe posted “Were the 9/11 attacks blow back or a false flag? Can’t have it both ways” (it turned out Bob never took a side either way) and then Ken B posted “Bob can. Have you seen his logical gymnastics on the region threads? Nadia Comaneci couldn’t twist like that.” A perfect fit of my theory.
(Note I don’t mean anything bad by “snide” comment – I couldn’t think of a better word to describe a comment that was meant to sort of make fun of other posters)
“FDR and Truman firebombed virtually every city in Japan until they ran out of cities to firebomb so Truman nuked the last two. But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression”.
No one has ever argued that firebombing and nuking Japan was necessary in order to end the depression.
“There are still Americans that are taught, and subsequently believe, that 1,076,245 American casualties and countless resources used on exploding/firing metal in Europe and the Pacific was what saved us from the depression.”
Btw, when Reece says there was no way for him to check? Well he posted on that page. He could try remembering. Or he could, like KP did, ask. Either would work.
These attacks were part of the war. I think that’s all he meant, that a lot of people think the war got the US out of the depression. Maybe he was thinking even further, and was saying that since some people think it was necessary to end the war, it was necessary to end the Great Depression in of itself (not even expanding the line of thought to the entire war). I don’t know, that wasn’t what I was commenting on. I don’t really agree with his statement any more than I did yours, I was really just responding to Ken B (that’s why I didn’t even put your name in).
I was only commenting on the phenomenon I was observing, which is true regardless of whether Bob’s statement was good sarcasm. Bob never claimed the US went to war with Japan to end the Great Depression, so it fits the weird trend I have been seeing.
Me posting at the very top of the page, once, hardly makes it likely I would read the entire comment thread.
Regardless, you missed my point. I didn’t care if that was true or not (which, it doesn’t seem to be – what about the “AND countless resources used on exploding/firing metal in Europe and the Pacific” part?). I was noting a continuing style of commenting, regardless of the truth of each individual comment.
Doing something “in order to” achieve a goal doesn’t generally imply the something was done to achieve the goal? If I say I had to turn the key to unlock the door, you don’t infer anything about why my hand made that twisty motion?
Doing something in order to achieve a goal does imply the something was done to achieve the goal, I think. If I said otherwise elsewhere, I’m sorry, I misspoke. I actually agree with you/Philippe that the comment should have been reworded, and that, as it stands, it is technically incorrect. But, I do see what he meant by it.
So now you are saying people don’t claim the war ended the depression just so you can twist meanings so you can insinuate aspersions generally. Nice one.
Okay, I see where I think you were going with that now Ken. No, it doesn’t work like that. He said, “But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression which was caused by unrestrained laissez faire capitalism.” That’s why it was “good and necessary” not why it was started. One of them is why people 70 years ago started a war and another is why people today think the war was good/necessary. Not even close, if that’s what you’re getting at. (If you mean something else, then I remain confused at what it is.)
Andrew, nowhere did I deny people say the war ended the depression. Lots of people say that. I objected to the tendentious and slimy claim that kids were taught *casualties* ended the depression. That’s just odious and false rhetoric. It’s the same as saying Bob wants the US out of Afghanistan so the taliban can blind schoolgirls with acid.
It’s possible that the US baited Japan into an attack on Pearl Harbor. And you could also claim that the reason they did so was because they believed a war would get the US out of a depression; and that they needed Japan to attack first to overcome a non-interventionist sentiment among the American public.
You could say that the US declared war on Japan in response to an attack on Pearl Harbor.
Thus, you could hold both positions simultaneously that the US entered the war with the belief that it would end the depression, and that the US entered the war because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
I don’t whether this is true or not, but they are not mutually exclusive positions.
I never got the message that the strict application of the NAP and the creation of violuntary communties required those communities to forgo retribution for various crimes and to rely exclusively upon monetary restitution. Or that they were required to adopt Rothbard’s musings on abandoning babies.
“Some readers may wonder how I can propose a replacement for the State’s “justice” system when I haven’t first offered a rational theory of the source and nature of legitimate property rights. The answer is simple: I don’t have such a theory. nonetheless, I can still say that a market system of private law would work far more effectively than the state alternative, and that the standard objections to anarchy are unfounded.”
Is it still the case that you don’t have “a rational theory of the source and nature of legitimate property rights”, or not?
I was under the impression that maybe you subscribed to the ‘homesteading’ theory of property rights.
Bob definitely believes in homesteading. I think he was saying that he doesn’t have a theory of why the Rothbardian libertarian view of property rights is correct, but I think he still believes that it IS correct.
Bob, on Tom Woods’ show you said that most establishments would require anyone who enters there to carry liability insurance, so that any damages they cause can be sufficiently compensated. But why wouldn’t they give the option to rich people of posting a bond (to be settled by a private judge) rather than having to buy liability insurance? And if they did so, wouldn’t that lead to problems in the risk pool of the liability insurance?
Also, insurance companies do some policing and investigation of their policy holders, but aren’t insurance companies notorious for their moral hazard problems? And don’t insurance companies systematically underprice tail risk?
Given that Bob claims to stand for liberty and freedom, it’s worth clarifying what he actually means by those terms. On page 21 of Chaos Theory, Bob writes:
“So we see that those without insurance would have their options, including their freedom of movement, greatly restricted.”
In other words, in Bob’s ideal world, if you don’t have insurance, you have no real freedom. You are effectively trapped in whichever private ghetto you happen to be stuck in. Or perhaps you could be locked out of society altogether, stuck out on the margins.
It follows that the better your insurance is, the more freedom you have. That is, the more money you have, the more freedom you have. No money = no freedom.
Rather than vaguely saying that he stands for “liberty” and “freedom”, Bob should instead make it clear that what he wants, is a world in which the extent of your freedom is determined exclusively by the extent of your wealth, i.e. a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom.
“Rather than vaguely saying that he stands for “liberty” and “freedom”, Bob should instead make it clear that what he wants, is a world in which the extent of your freedom is determined exclusively by the extent of your wealth, i.e. a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom.”
Why should he say that when that’s not what he or any libertarian believes? Philippe, it just may be that this Christian man doesn’t hate poor people, as you seem to imply, but that he cares about their plight and thinks his views are the best way to help them. But go ahead and just assume that people who disagree with you on political philosophy must hate poor people if you feel you must.
I’m not saying Bob hates poor people. I’m pointing out the logical implications of his arguments.
“Why should he say that when that’s not what he or any libertarian believes?”
Bob states on page 21 of Chaos Theory that “those without insurance would have their options, including their freedom of movement, greatly restricted.”
No insurance = no freedom of movement, among other things.
As such, in Murphy’s World, freedom is determined by the ability to purchase insurance. By extension, the extent of a person’s freedom is determined by the type of insurance they can afford.
Also, Philippe, you might not have meant to imply that Dr. Murphy hates poor people, but that is exactly what you did. You wrote that he should make it clear that HE WANTS what you proposed.
Philippe never said explicitly Bob hates poor people. You *think* he implied it. Well I don’t agree but let’s say you are rgiht and Philippe is trying a rhetorical trick, identifying a consequence with a desire. When I objected to this same thing being stated explicitly, no implication, and clearly in regard to casualties and WWII the blog was filled with outrage. Some I think but am too lazy to check, from you..
OK, Ken, even though this is typical trolling by you, I’ll modify my comment.
Philippe said that Dr. Murphy should instead make it clear that what he wants is a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom. I suppose it is possible that Philippe thinks Dr. Murphy should say he wants this because that is how you show love. But I think any rational, non-troll can see that there is nothing wrong with me saying that Philippe implied Dr. Murphy hates poor people.
Philippe, just so it’s clear, I think you probably didn’t mean to imply that Dr. Murphy hates poor people, but I’m sure you would admit that you worded things sloppily in your comment and that is how it would read to rational people.
My response to Ken was not meant as an attack against you. I’m just pointing out more absurd trolling by Ken.
His comment was not sloppily worded. Bob values not liberty but one notion of liberty. There are different ideas of what liberty is. Philippe thonks Bob should specify his kind more carefully, and notes a particular implication, one that many would dislike.
If Philippe thinks Dr. Murphy really wants people who have little or no money to have no freedom, then he is as dumb as you. Personally, I don’t think he is dumb enough to actually believe that.
l wasn’t saying that Bob hates poor people. But he says himself that in his ideal world, the freedom of people without insurance would be “greatly restricted”.
He asserts that “there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance”, but we have no idea whether that’s true or not. What we do know is that insurance costs money, so if you don’t have the money to purchase insurance your freedom will be “greatly restricted”.
It is logical to extrapolate and assume that more expensive forms of insurance would grant you a greater degree of freedom than cheaper forms.
Hence the logical conclusion that the extent of a person’s freedom would be determined by the extent of their wealth.
And as we have seen, also your access to police protection or to a fair trial. Anything where now we try to buffer or lessen market forces will be worse for the poor: freedom, liberty, emergency medcine.
Philippe, do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? If not, then you should’ve worded your critique differently. If so, then you’re like Ken, and there is no hope of having a rational discussion.
I mean you can say that you believe his views would cause poor people to have no freedom, and even though libertarians would obviously disagree, we could at least have a discussion over differing ideas. But when you say he WANTS poor people to have no freedom, then you are questioning motives in such an absurd fashion that I can’t believe you are even interested in having a discussion. If that is what you really meant to say then I’d just assume you were another troll who just wants to start fights online.
“do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom?”
Presumably Murphy wants his “private law” world to become reality. And he says that in this world, the freedom of people without insurance will be “greatly restricted”.
Given that insurance costs money, the freedom of people who can’t afford it will be “greatly restricted”, in Murphy’s ideal world.
People who can’t afford things like insurance tend to be poor people.
Still couldn’t give a yes or no answer. All right, I’ll assume you have the same purpose as Ken and proceed to not take you seriously anymore or just completely ignore you, as well.
Dan, as I said in my first response to you, I am pointing out the logical implications of Murphy’s arguments.
Do I think Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? No. He wants a system in which the freedom of people with no wealth, who can’t afford insurance, will be “greatly restricted”.
Do I think Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? Yes. He wants a system in which the freedom of people with no wealth, who can’t afford insurance, will be “greatly restricted”.
Is “greatly restricted freedom” the same as “no freedom”? Yes. No.
I would describe the wholesale privatization of public property and services, and the dismantling of state institutions, laws, and citizens’ rights, as an explicitly political action rather than as something to do with “market forces”.
While the initial act would have to be political, since any choice the state makes with respect to who to sell it to, on whatever basis, would not be a free market, it is still the case that over time, most land would come to be owned by those who are relatively the most productive.
This is true whenever history contains deceit, violence, and theft.
If you don’t want to live in on libertarian property, then you don’t have to. You can convince your fellow men who agree with you, to live on state controlled land.
Just don’t force your lifestyle on others against their will.
You are not merely “voting” for yourself when it comes to wanting a state controlled world. You are also voting to have others, the state, initiate force against others so that they live on state controlled land as well. So you’re being an aggressor.
What about that Iranian terrorist guy, where the US won’t let him into the country? His freedom of movement is being restricted because of some violent incident supposedly in his past.
Seems like a fair system to me. Why should any country invite terrorists? Bob is just going along with an established tradition and I don’t here you jumping up to have a problem when Washington does it.
By the way, if the same Iranian terrorist slipped up via the Mexican border Bob would be OK about that.
He asserts that “there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance”, but we have no idea whether that’s true or not. What we do know is that insurance costs money, so if you don’t have the money to purchase insurance your freedom will be “greatly restricted”
You guys are making this way too esoteric. Forget homicide insurance. Take water and food.
“In Murphy’s world, there would be no State to guarantee that everybody gets food and water. Murphy says these would be very affordable and that charities could take care of truly desperate people. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that food and water cost money, and so in Murphy’s world poor people would die within 3 days.”
Humans are by their nature imprisoned in their scarce, mortal, relatively frail bodies.
Freedom does not exist because it cannot exist. We do not have freedom until we become bodiless ghosts who are no longer contingent and dependent on the material world.
Freedom to Philippe is not freedom from coercion and violence in a social context. No, that’s not enough. Freedom means to have power. More power equals more freedom. Less power equals less freedom.
It’s the same old same old Hegelian disillusionment with the world.
Bob, the difference is that a right to roam free would be a negative right, whereas a right to food and water would be a positive right. So lacking the ability to roam free would be a more serious challenge to the claim that your vision is of a free society, at least according to certain conceptions of freedom.
You’re just hand-waving away problems by asserting that charities will solve everything.
First of all, the price of a fast food meal is less than the Federal minimum wage.
Food is extremely easy to come by.
In fact, the only real barrier for the poor is not finding ENOUGH people who want to make a profit off of them.
People with good intentions, who have been conditioned for so long by socialistic indoctrination in public schools, withhold jobs from the poor because they think they are taking advantage of them.
Second, there are MORE desparately poor under the interventionism of today than there would be in a free market because property taxes guarantee that you will never have a place that is truly yours; and because the police won’t allow you to sleep on the street if they see you.
If an individual didn’t carry insurance, other people would have no guaranteed recourse should the individual damage or steal their property. Such an individual would therefore be viewed with suspicion, and people would be reluctant to deal with him except for single transactions involving small sums. He would probably be unable to get a full-time job, a bank loan, or a credit card. Many residential and commercial areas would probably require that all visitors carried valid policies before allowing them to even enter.
So we see that those without insurance would have their options, including their freedom of movement, greatly restricted. At the same time, the premiums for basic contract insurance, at least for people without a criminal history, would be quite low. So there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance. It’s true, some people would still commit crimes and would have no insurance company to pay damages, but such cases are going to occur under any legal system.
I wouldn’t want complete strangers roaming around my home without my permission whenever they felt like it, even if it wasn’t my own property. Mainly for psychological reasons, such as wanting privacy, being afraid or suspicious of people I don’t know, etc.
However, if they had an urgent need to use my home, which couldn’t be solved in some other way, then I might see them as having a right to do so, depending on the circumstances.
It is clear that Philippe either can’t read or can’t comprehend (like another troll I know from visiting these parts).
Here is what Murphy says just before the line he has cited…..
If an individual didn’t carry insurance, other people would have no guaranteed recourse should the individual damage or steal their property. such an individual would therefore be viewed with suspi- cion, and people would be reluctant to deal with him except for single transactions involving small sums. he would probably be unable to get a full-time job, a bank loan, or a credit card. Many residential and commercial areas would probably require that all visitors carried valid policies before allowing them to even enter.
And, more importantly, here is the line that just follows what he has quoted.
at the same time, the premiums for basic contract insurance, at least for people without a criminal history, would be quite low.
There are many things to note in the sentence Philippe pulled out. First, Bob says that those without insurance would “have” their freedom restricted. He does not say that their freedom would be curtailed due to the initiation of force against them. He only states that since others would make decisions factoring in the cost of dealing with an uninsured person, he would be kept away from other people’s property. That by itself restricts his freedom to that space and those things that are not yet someone else’s property. Is Philippe claiming that property owners should not be free to keep specific people off their property? Or is he claiming that those people being free to thus restrict access to their property is a problem?
Second, the situation of restricted freedom is a result of a choice made by the uninsured. In the second sentence I have highlighted, it is clear that Bob is saying that the currently uninsured person can go ahead and buy insurance and improve on the state of his freedom. In fact, Bob’s point is that basic insurance would be pretty cheap. If he chooses not to take it, the fault is his.
Third, even if he does not have the property to offer to get the insurance, he can apply the only property he has – his own person – to exert labour, produce the property required to buy insurance, offer it in exchange and buy the insurance. Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault.
Philippe, as always, has no clue what he is talking of.
“Is Philippe claiming that property owners should not be free to keep specific people off their property?”
It depends.
But the point is that you guys want to privatize everything which is currently public and open-access. This will reduce people’s freedom of movement. For example, I live in a city and can roam freely all around the city without paying tolls and having to buy insurance and sign contracts all over the place.
“even if he does not have the property to offer to get the insurance, he can apply the only property he has – his own person – to exert labour, produce the property required to buy insurance, offer it in exchange and buy the insurance. Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault.”
So he is forced to work to have the basic freedom to move around. Otherwise he might be trapped in one little area, like a prisoner.
“Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault”
No, because people currently have the right to roam around freely. You want to take away that right.
Repeated misuse of the word “free”. That’s all I can see in your reply. You don’t really understand the word “free” at all when you say this…
So he is forced to work to have the basic freedom to move around.
“Freedom” does not include being free to smash another person’s face or his property. So, even today, he is not free to move around as he pleases. “Free” only means freedom from the initiation of force against person and property.
You are also misusing the word “forced”. No one is initiating force against him. He is forced by circumstances. Either your wording is extremely sloppy or your thoughts are muddled up.
because people currently have the right to roam around freely.
More of the same senseless assertion. He is NOT any more free to roam around now than he would be in a world of private property. Once again, first learn what the word “free” means in such discussions. You will then understand what a troll you are being.
“Freedom” does not include being free to smash another person’s face or his property.”
I didn’t say that it does.
You want to privatize and in many cases close-off land which is currently public and open-access. I don’t. I want to preserve my freedom to roam around on land which is public and open-access. I don’t want people like you to take away my freedom to do that.
“Ancient traces provide evidence of the freedom to roam in many European countries, suggesting such a freedom was once a common norm. Today, the right to roam has survived in perhaps its purest form in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Here the right has been won through practice over hundreds of years and it is not known when it changed from mere ‘common practice’ to become a commonly recognised right. A possible explanation as to why the right has survived mainly in these four countries is that feudalism and serfdom were not established there.”
Philippe, the kind of freedom you want comes at the costs of other people having their freedom reduced.
Your conception of freedom cannot be universalized for everyone. What you want, in effect, is not freedom for everyone, but only freedom for yourself at the cost of lack of freedom of others.
This is why you flock to mommy and daddy government.
“The state is the great myth where everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else.” – Bastiat
I live in a city and can roam freely all around the city without paying tolls and having to buy insurance …
You are forced to pay taxes for access to those streets (as well as those to which you don’t want access), and if you want to drive your own property, you in fact do have to buy insurance.
And if you don’t make enough to pay those taxes, the police aren’t going to leave you alone to set up a tent in a “public park” while you try to get back on your feet.
You just do not understand what your opponents are saying, do you?
But the point is that you guys want to privatize everything which is currently public and open-access.
The argument is not about “privatizing”. It is about whether the term “public property” makes any sense or not. The point simply is that the term “private property” involves a redundancy while the term “public property” is an oxymoron. Even jointly owned property is just that – jointly owned in a certain mutually and voluntarily agreed upon ratio under certain mutually and voluntarily agreed upon conditions.
This will reduce people’s freedom of movement.
More misuse of the word “free”. There is no problem with this reduction of “freedom” because it only means that they will have to be mindful of where the other guy’s property begins. That’s called civilised living.
I live in a city and can roam freely all around the city without paying tolls
You pay. It is just not tolls. The beauty of tolls is that he who uses more pays more. He who doesn’t use pays nothing. Brilliant, isn’t it? Or do you just want to parasite on other people who are forced to pay more than in proportion to their use of the same roads? That, incidentally, is the ugly truth behind your bald assertion.
BTW I’m sure I disagree with his solutions, but Matt Taibbi has some good anecdotes showing we’ve got a two-tiered justice system right now, where the rich get away with all kinds of stuff and just pay relatively light fines, while the poor go to prison for much more minor offenses.
No, I don’t believe it because we don’t live in a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world of Rothbardian brutalism and anarchy. We have a government, by golly, and it resolves disputes fairly and equitably, regardless of a person’s wealth.
He’s right too often. This claim has in fact the shortest known proof, two letters. (OJ). But this is an ill to be remedied, and it is not uniformly true. And it’s especially the case for crimes that shouldn’t exist, drug crimes, where an effective remedy is available.
What’s that? You’re against the state initiating violence and coercion against people for non-violent desires?
Oh that’s right, you don’t have a consistent foundation. My bad.
Throw people into cages, and shoot them if they resist, for non-violent desire of wanting to choose who to protect them, but let’s be all soft and compassionate for those who want to choose what to ingest.
With a powerful state you have a high value prize to attract special interest groups capturing that power. The smaller prize you have on offer, the less effort people will go to capture it.
This is why the most important step is to strongly restrict government ability to transfer wealth and boost any special interest groups. If we can achieve that, then half the problems go away.
It always amazes me that statists never seem to understand this reasoning. They rant and rave about how corporations are in bed with the government and get special treatment, yet somehow, they insist that this means the government needs even MORE power and the ability to hand out even larger favors. Yeah, that’ll fix it.
Minimizing individual power requires rules that maximize individuals incurring the costs of their own actions.
The more the rules for any institution allow for externalizing costs, the more that relatively lower valued activity (destruction) will become locally profitable at that institution.
The state is humanity’s largest and most egregious cost externalization institution ever created. Think about it. What other institution can transfer the costs of, say, the action of financing a murder, than one that spreads the costs over the entire country’s (working) population?
Also, how many state financed economists who spend all day researching about and finding ways to reduce externalities, apply it to their own careers? The costs of their salary is externalized not just on the students who attend and pay tuition, but millions of tax payers as well?
More and more lower valued activity can become profitable when the costs can be externalized over more and more people. This is why the state can do so many destructive things. None of the politicians or bondholders personally pony up the FULL costs. No, the taxpayers pony up the costs even for activities they are ostensibly against for moral or other reasons.
A private law society would make it much more difficult for lower valued, destructive activity to take place, because a private law society would maximize internalization of costs. And that is exactly what every statist parasite fears most in their subconscious.
I think the word “externalities” is another of those economics words that means what you want it to mean. He’s doing something I don’t like so “externalities” says I get to take something off the guy.
Without an empirical and measurable definition, it’s just a way for individuals to talk about their preferences.
Bob as I mentioned above, the primary purpose of the police is to protect wealthy people from poor people… and this has always been the primay purpose of police under all social systems. There is a very logical reason for this, the very poor don’t have much to lose, so their incentive for voluntarily complying with a system that keeps them poor is very small.
The Rothbardian system merely skips the step where we pretend to get all angsty over this, and tries to make it work as efficiently as possible.
It Philippe was genuinely upset by the plight of the poor he would be equally upset at all the crap our present day system has dumped on them: the war on drugs, minimum wage, expensive dead end schooling, all sorts of regulations that make it impossible to get a job, regulations that restrict supply to create artificial scarcity, and the multi-tier justice system, regulatory capture by big business, vote buying amongst both the major parties (yes the Koch bros send payments to Democrats),
“It Philippe was genuinely upset by the plight of the poor he would be equally upset at all the crap our present day system has dumped on them”
I am upset at the crap that gets dumped on people today. My point is not to excuse everything that goes on in the real world, but to criticize your vision of an alternative.
“war on drugs”. I’m not sure, but legalization and regulation might be better.
“minimum wage”. I’m not opposed to the minimum wage.
“expensive dead end schooling”. I don’t think the solution to problems in the education system is to abolish public funding for education.
“all sorts of regulations that make it impossible to get a job”. I think that stupid regulations should be got rid of. But I’d have to look at them separately to say what I think about them.
“regulations that restrict supply to create artificial scarcity”. A bit vague.
“the multi-tier justice system”. That needs to change, but I think a privatized law system would be worse. Money is power.
“regulatory capture by big business”. You’d have to specify what you mean exactly and give examples for me to say what I think about them. In general I don’t think that the solution to “regulatory capture” by big business is to get rid of all regulations on big business. I think that’s backwards logic.
“vote buying amongst both the major parties”. I agree that is a problem which is especially bad in the US and some other countries. It is a form of corruption in my book. But in your system the amount of “votes” you have depends entirely on how wealthy you are.
During the 1930s, there were a number of federal government interventions that changed the black employment picture. The first was the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which mandated minimum wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects. During the bill’s legislative debate, the racial objectives were clear. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., said he had “received numerous complaints … about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.” Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., complained: “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. … That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke of the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” American Federation of Labor President William Green said, “Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.”
…
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 broadened the number of workers covered by minimum wages, with negative consequences for black employment across a much wider range of industries.
Sure it is. The same economic reasoning still applies. Do you think all racism has vanished from society?
The minimum wage now serves the same function as it did back then, namely to guarantee employers the ability to make hiring decisions based on factors other than price. Do you recall Murphy’s previous posts regarding how, even if the total number of jobs stays constant, the specific mix of what sort of people are hired for the jobs changes?
When you’re forced to pay a wage that is normally demanded by white, middle-class college educated college graduates, guess what, that’s who these companies are going to hire. The minimum wage will continue to result in the most vulnerable and despised groups in society being deprived of the opportunity of gainful employment.
You’re missing the point. If an employer had the opportunity to decrease your wage rate, it is only because they know, or at least have a good reason to believe, that if you don’t accept the cut, that they will just find someone else who is willing to paid less than you.
As it stands, those other workers are not employed by your firm. You are. You are not actually fighting for your own wage to stay up, you are actually fighting to prevent your employer from firing you and hiring a worket who offers a lower price. For if those other workers did not exist, or if they did exist but offered a price higher than your wage, then your employer would not be able to fire you and make as much profit.
From another angle, your employer would also have a difficult time cutting your wages if other employers were willing to pay you those wages.
Minimum wages were called for by (politically connected) unions and other anti-market types in order to stop their employers from being able to seek lower cost labor from those willing to offer it.
You don’t have to see this specifically mentioned by any worker or union head before it is true. It is true because of an additonal knowledge of how the market process works.
No, not if YOU don’t also accept a lower wage. You get fired for refusing to accept a pay cut.
If there are two people looking for work, and there is only $10 available to pay wages, then both of you can work if each you accept $5.
Unions (original impetus for minimum wage) don’t want that extra worker competing with them. So they clamor for the state to enforce a minimum wage of $10, as well as “fair bargaining” which means “deal with us or else”. So the $10 goes to you, while the other guy remains out of work.
if in your example there was full employment, workers would demand and get higher wages, given their stronger bargaining position due to labor scarcity. The wage in your example would only stay at $5 if one person remained unemployed.
Bob, in this blog post you answer an objection to your Chaos Theory book, namely what would stop rich people from killing poor people with relative impunity:
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/08/wouldnt-rich-people-go-on-murder-sprees-in-a-system-of-private-law.html
“And what about the pauper, who can’t afford bodyguards or setup trust funds? Well, who wants to kill such a person? Is it really worth $1,000?” This seems unconvincing to me. I can imagine plenty of motivations a rich person could have such that he’d value killing the poor person far more than the money he’d be losing.
Aside from anything else one could say about that post, how is this $1000 limit enforced in your hypothetical world? It’s an assumption that negates the entire point: the power of the rich to buy the “law”. Let’s just pretend by magic they can’t! This puts can-opners to shame.
Speaking of shame. Your point that the rich can buy justice now is brazen. Certainly the goal of blind justice is not fully met, and probably cannot be. But what you propose makes it worse. “In the open” has never been a downside for those who think of themselves as ubermenschen.
Come on, Ken B. Here’s the objection he was answering: “In Murphy’s vision, ‘crimes’ are actually codified contractually, and the punishments are typically monetary. So that means rich people could go on killing sprees, and just pay off the families of the victims.” That is a totally separate objection you are raising, I would have been highly disappointed if he had answered it there. I don’t want to read an entire book on anarcho-capitalism every single time I look at a single objection. There is no shame in answering a question. I think you know this.
If in the open is not better, then why do they spend so much money and effort hiding things from the public? I certainly don’t think it being in the open would solve the problem, but I can’t see how it advantages the rich for people to know that they are buying off the system.
The brazen bit is saying a flaw in our system is that wealth can influence verdicts whilst proposing a system to let wealth influence verdicts even more.
My first para points out that Bob’s argument sneaks in something like an impartial state to enforce the limit.
You have not addressed either of these points. As for openness, people naturally hide what they can be prosecuted by the state for. It’s prudence not shame at work. But Bob thinks shame and modesty will reign them in. I don’t.
Yes, I didn’t address your whole first part supposedly implied by one word. I actually thought that was leading to your openness argument. I highly disagree that the rich could influence the system even more in an anarcho-capitalist system. The system is currently structured to heavily favor the wealthy. Think about it this way:
In an anarcho-capitalist system, both sides would have to agree to the arbitrator. In the current system, there are really only two choices, generally decided on by a single side. One choice is a jury, which has numerous problems. In short, juries have no monetary incentive to make the right choice, are randomly selected (they do not have a comparative advantage in justice), have a free rider problem (to paying attention in court – that’s why empirically, 6 person juries appear to be no better than 12 – if interested, I would read “Jury Size and the Free Rider Problem” by Mukhopadhaya), have a time-value problem (many of them value their time more than sitting in the court, and will want to hurry the proceedings), and have the problem of rational ignorance (why learn about the justice system when your chance of being called and making a difference is so low? This is why a paper by Strawn and Buchanan found only 50% of Florida jurors thought the state had to prove the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt – also read “Junk Science and the Jury” by Peter Hubor). I think it’s clear that the more complex facts do not matter as much as portrayal in the case. Who will do better at that – the wealthy person’s well-trained lawyer or the poor man’s cheap lawyer? This is in addition to various corruption problems (the judge still has some influence and could be bought off and the person picking the juries can also be bought off – as well as perhaps the opposing lawyer). If that’s bad, the current judge system is even worse. Judges can be easily corrupted. They have taken about the same number of science and math classes as the average jury member (and much less than jury members that went to college – for this data, see Judges, Juries, and Scientific Evidence by Valerie Hans), so in many cases they have very little idea what is going on in the more complex evidence. This means, again, they can be very influenced by the better lawyer. Bruce Spencer attempted to measure the accuracy of both in “Estimating the Accuracy of Jury Verdicts.” He found that judges were slightly more accurate, but had a much higher Type I error rate (0.37 to 0.25). Both are embarrassingly high, if accurate. But we know error rates must be high, because we can look at rates of agreement between judges and juries (Spencer posts two different estimates there, both approximately the same). The rate of agreement is, at the higher value, 80% – the rate by chance would be 62% (because they are both more likely to prosecute). This is appallingly low when you consider “innocent until proven guilty” is how the system is supposed to work. In a market justice system, the judges would be limited by both sides getting a say. They would be limited by losing business when they make a bad decision. Agencies would no doubt emerge to try and catch a case where judges messed up. Judges would actually be chosen by their knowledge of similar cases rather than just being in a certain location. Because people would pay directly, the problem of rational ignorance (a free rider problem) would vanish. No longer would just the wealthy that can push a judge into office be informed. The citizens would rise up, and the current plutocracy would crumble.
Your first point was ridiculous. He was asked a question, and he answered it. Yes, the question assumed that there would be some sort of limit. But it also assumed that there wouldn’t be chaos under anarchy and a bunch of other things. It was a question, and he answered it. Did you read the question? Do I need to quote it again for you? As to why I didn’t address your point, it was because it had nothing to do with the post. Obviously.
Could you please quote where Bob said “shame and modesty will reign them in”? I think I missed that part. On openness: actually, no, they hide things clearly legal. Campaign donations are often funneled through PACs and stuff to avoid direct donations from politically damaging groups. But it isn’t illegal to get these funds directly, and in fact would in many cases give them more control over them (think of Super PACs here). Politicians make sure to have people in the media not reporting on stuff like this all the time. If you don’t like this, there are often settlement agreements where one of the agreements is to not talk about the allegations. Openness does more than modesty and shame. It allows for boycotts, for fund-raising for victims, etc. Look at Firefox just a few weeks ago. And Bob used this as an opening – it is better to have things open than closed. That is one advantage. He then went on to counter disadvantages and talk about other advantages. That’s what you do in an argument. You seem to think sometimes that if Bob says one thing, that is his entire argument. Economics is more complex than that.
Oops – I meant “12 person juries seem to be empirically no better than 6.” But it goes the other way too, I suppose.
It’s an assumption that negates the entire point: the power of the rich to buy the “law”. Let’s just pretend by magic they can’t!
How many times can the rich buy the law; And why are the poor going to continue to agree to patron an arbiter which is partial?
And why aren’t other arbiters able to compete?
The reason the rich can buy the law, today, is because the poor, themselves, mistakenly believe that creating government regulating agencies help the poor.
But since regulations, themselves, necessarily involve picking winners and losers, it’s the regulating agencies that are actually the source of the cronyism that you’re concerned about.
These two videos are good at addressing this issue:
Anti-Trust and Monopoly (with Ron Paul)
[www]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4gRRk2i-M
Dominick Armentano: The Case for Repealing Antitrust Laws
[www]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBT-fnJsfo0
If you can only watch one, I would suggest the second.
Yeah, the argument is between stiffing the poor by scam (what we do right now) vs stiffing them out in the open (the Rothbardian system is at least honest about it). Point is, however you define “poor” in your society, some people will end up in that situation, and it won’t be a desirable outcome for those people, so they will miss out on something. Wasn’t is Jesus who said the poor will always be with us?
Pay attention to how democracy works in Singapore, the wealthiest family tends to always win.
“Wasn’t is Jesus who said the poor will always be with us?”
LoL
Well face it, 50 years of government “War on Poverty” have been an abject failure…
I can imagine plenty of motivations a rich person could have such that he’d value killing the poor person far more than the money he’d be losing.
It’s not in the interest of the rich to kill off cheap labor.
Well, I think it was an additional argument to others, not necessarily meant to stand alone. For example, insurance premiums would skyrocket for the rich person that killed someone and I’m pretty sure rich people would be a lot more socially hurt than poorer people.
But, I think there’s a real easy way the poor person could fix this, even sticking to the trust fund argument. As Bob said, in the victim’s will, they could have their money tied to being used to go after the person that murdered them. I think that could be expanded to the money received because the victim was killed. So, if the Jones estate received $1000 when Jones was killed by Bill Gates, that money could be tied to going after Bill Gates (essentially, the revenge money would have been collected from Bill Gates). If the rich person killed multiple people, this would clearly be an easy case.
Regarding the murder of poor people question raised by Keshav:
First of all, when people commit murder they usually try to make sure no one knows that they did it. Alternatively they might force (or pay) people who do know, not to tell.
It is quite rare for a person to murder someone and then tell everyone that they did it.
So the first point is: you need to find out who committed the murder before you can punish them. This can take a lot of time and resources, with investigations sometimes lasting years or even decades, and costing a fortune. Investigations can also on occasion be nationwide or transnational, rather than limited to one local area.
So the idea that if you murder someone, everyone knows that you did it and so you get fined and shunned is pretty silly.
If in Murphy’s World you were to kidnap a poor person and murder them quietly somewhere, what would happen? Who would people report the missing person to? Why would private law agencies or insurance agencies bother with trying to find them, or find out who killed them?
If it wasn’t profitable for them, they wouldn’t bother. So it seems that people could get away with murder quite easily, if the people they killed were relatively poor.
Another point is that seemingly separate crimes can often be connected. If one private agency is investigating one crime, and connected crime is being investigated by another, then they could fail to make connections and so miss crucial evidence. This is just another example of how splitting up law enforcement between separate competing companies could lead to inefficient and suboptimal outcomes.
You wouldn’t JUST have to be poor for someone to murder you without consequence. You’d have to be poor and have literally NOBODY who cared that you suddenly vanished. Most poor people still have friends and families, you know?
“Most poor people still have friends and families, you know?”
Yes I realize that. My point is it can take a lot of time and resources to solve serious crimes like murders, and it may not be worth the cost for companies if the murdered person is relatively poor.
If they had insurance, the insurance company would be contractually obligated to investigate and attempt to solve.
I would argue that overall rich people benefit from buying protection more than poor people, thus overall wealthy people would be putting a lot of money into crime prevention.
The poor person can generally still get hold of a rifle, or a crossbow or a bomb because these things at cheap. The poor person has less to lose, usually lower education, and more likely to act on a grudge, or just out of envy. Thus wealthy people will be the typical targets and want to keep a police force around.
You may complain that those private cops will be biased because of where their pay is coming from, but that’s pretty much always the case.
Regarding the murder of poor people question raised by Keshav:
First of all, when people commit murder they usually try to make sure no one knows that they did it. Alternatively they might force (or pay) people who do know, not to tell.
It is quite rare for a person to murder someone and then tell everyone that they did it.
So the first point is: you need to find out who committed the murder before you can punish them. This can take a lot of time and resources, with investigations sometimes lasting years or even decades, and costing a fortune. Investigations can also on occasion be nationwide or transnational, rather than limited to one local area.
So the idea that if you murder someone, everyone knows that you did it and so you get fined and shunned is pretty silly.
If in Murphy’s World you were to kidnap a poor person and murder them quietly somewhere, what would happen? Who would people report the missing person to? Why would private law agencies or insurance agencies bother with trying to find them, or find out who killed them?
If it wasn’t profitable for them, they wouldn’t bother. So it seems that people could get away with murder quite easily, if the people they killed were relatively poor.
Another point is that seemingly separate crimes can often be connected. If one private agency is investigating one crime, and connected crime is being investigated by another, then they could fail to make connections and so miss crucial evidence. This is just another example of how splitting up law enforcement between separate competing companies could lead to inefficient and suboptimal outcomes.
Don’t the rich people of the world do that already by shipping nuclear waste to Somalia and finding reasons to block the development of fossil fuel resources in the third world? Worse, we hand guns to local dictators and pay them to repress their own people on our behalf, which they happily do.
“Imagine if Harry Truman viewed Japanese civilians, not as his enemy, but as pieces of property. In that case, Hiroshima would never have happened”
if all humans lived in eco hippy communes and practiced peace and love, meditation and dope smoking then Hiroshima would never have happened.
I can make silly things up too.
One of the factors in Truman’s decision was the belief that the bomb would save lives. American lives obviously counted more, but saving Japanese lives as well. So even in Bob’s terms – Truman owning the Japanese – his point is weak, and if you, to be consistent, let Truman own the Americans as well then hid decision would be easier.
they thought the Japanese were practically subhuman. They would never have dropped the atom bomb on a European city. Racism was a major factor.
FDR and Truman firebombed virtually every city in Japan until they ran out of cities to firebomb so Truman nuked the last two. But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression which was caused by unrestrained laissez faire capitalism. That’s why FDR is appropriately the great hero of liberals.
http://beingliberal.org/
A few weeks ago, we went reviewed Lincoln’s legacy of racism and mass slaughter. He is also appropriately a great hero of the liberals.
the US didn’t go to war with Japan in order to end the depression, Bob.
They have odd ideas about that war here. One poster here claimed school children are taught that US casualties are what ended the depression. He had several in agreement.
Nobody ever claimed this Ken B. I normally try and defend you against accusations of being a mindless troll, but this is just a straight up lie and you know it.
Did the poster(s) mean that literally or rather that students are taught WWII (and the increased spending) ended the depression?
There seems to be a strange fashion of commenting here, that goes something like this:
Person 1: Event A happened
Person 2: Actually, Event B didn’t happen
Ken B: [snide comment about Person 1 or people on this blog]. Unrelated Event C happened on this blog at some other time.
Technically, Person 2 and Ken B aren’t incorrect when they do this. But, it’s clearly slightly misleading. Here, Bob Roddis said bombing Japan was “good and necessary” in order to end the depression (presumably making fun of the common position that World War II ended the Great Depression). Person 2 said “the US didn’t go to war with Japan in order to end the depression” (note Bob Roddis never said otherwise). Ken B then said that “They have odd ideas about that war here.” and referenced something that there is no way I could find to see if it’s true.
Another example is on a post from Feb 27, 2014 (my first post here). Bob posted some video of Kennedy speaking, joe posted “Were the 9/11 attacks blow back or a false flag? Can’t have it both ways” (it turned out Bob never took a side either way) and then Ken B posted “Bob can. Have you seen his logical gymnastics on the region threads? Nadia Comaneci couldn’t twist like that.” A perfect fit of my theory.
(Note I don’t mean anything bad by “snide” comment – I couldn’t think of a better word to describe a comment that was meant to sort of make fun of other posters)
“note Bob Roddis never said otherwise”
“FDR and Truman firebombed virtually every city in Japan until they ran out of cities to firebomb so Truman nuked the last two. But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression”.
No one has ever argued that firebombing and nuking Japan was necessary in order to end the depression.
Well K.P., judge for yourself
“There are still Americans that are taught, and subsequently believe, that 1,076,245 American casualties and countless resources used on exploding/firing metal in Europe and the Pacific was what saved us from the depression.”
You can see my remarks and the follow up. http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014/04/paul-craig-roberts-doesnt-expect-a-happy-new-year.html#comment-411342
Btw, when Reece says there was no way for him to check? Well he posted on that page. He could try remembering. Or he could, like KP did, ask. Either would work.
These attacks were part of the war. I think that’s all he meant, that a lot of people think the war got the US out of the depression. Maybe he was thinking even further, and was saying that since some people think it was necessary to end the war, it was necessary to end the Great Depression in of itself (not even expanding the line of thought to the entire war). I don’t know, that wasn’t what I was commenting on. I don’t really agree with his statement any more than I did yours, I was really just responding to Ken B (that’s why I didn’t even put your name in).
I was only commenting on the phenomenon I was observing, which is true regardless of whether Bob’s statement was good sarcasm. Bob never claimed the US went to war with Japan to end the Great Depression, so it fits the weird trend I have been seeing.
Me posting at the very top of the page, once, hardly makes it likely I would read the entire comment thread.
Regardless, you missed my point. I didn’t care if that was true or not (which, it doesn’t seem to be – what about the “AND countless resources used on exploding/firing metal in Europe and the Pacific” part?). I was noting a continuing style of commenting, regardless of the truth of each individual comment.
Doing something “in order to” achieve a goal doesn’t generally imply the something was done to achieve the goal? If I say I had to turn the key to unlock the door, you don’t infer anything about why my hand made that twisty motion?
Doing something in order to achieve a goal does imply the something was done to achieve the goal, I think. If I said otherwise elsewhere, I’m sorry, I misspoke. I actually agree with you/Philippe that the comment should have been reworded, and that, as it stands, it is technically incorrect. But, I do see what he meant by it.
So now you are saying people don’t claim the war ended the depression just so you can twist meanings so you can insinuate aspersions generally. Nice one.
Okay, I see where I think you were going with that now Ken. No, it doesn’t work like that. He said, “But it was all good and necessary in order to end the depression which was caused by unrestrained laissez faire capitalism.” That’s why it was “good and necessary” not why it was started. One of them is why people 70 years ago started a war and another is why people today think the war was good/necessary. Not even close, if that’s what you’re getting at. (If you mean something else, then I remain confused at what it is.)
Andrew, nowhere did I deny people say the war ended the depression. Lots of people say that. I objected to the tendentious and slimy claim that kids were taught *casualties* ended the depression. That’s just odious and false rhetoric. It’s the same as saying Bob wants the US out of Afghanistan so the taliban can blind schoolgirls with acid.
I guess I’ll have to take your word that that is exactly how it went.
I don’t know, have you approved that version of history through Paul Krugman? Make sure to ask if he’s REALLY joking.
do you think the US declared war on Japan in order to end the depression?
Or do you think they declared war on Japan for some other reason?
It’s possible that the US baited Japan into an attack on Pearl Harbor. And you could also claim that the reason they did so was because they believed a war would get the US out of a depression; and that they needed Japan to attack first to overcome a non-interventionist sentiment among the American public.
You could say that the US declared war on Japan in response to an attack on Pearl Harbor.
Thus, you could hold both positions simultaneously that the US entered the war with the belief that it would end the depression, and that the US entered the war because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
I don’t whether this is true or not, but they are not mutually exclusive positions.
Philippe,
Even though you are still trying to do what ken is always doing, the answer is quite possibly a maybe.
Have you read Keynes economic consequences of the peace?
Why do they even have to think they are doing something for a reason to in fact be doing it for that reason?
Dresden.
Some people suffering various types of psychosis claim to hear voices that constantly tell them how worthless they are.
I have you guys.
Not worthless Bob! A thousand bucks; we established that.
You’ve convinced me that there really is objective value in the universe. Your musings have no value.
*hug*
I never got the message that the strict application of the NAP and the creation of violuntary communties required those communities to forgo retribution for various crimes and to rely exclusively upon monetary restitution. Or that they were required to adopt Rothbard’s musings on abandoning babies.
If the state could just stick to the basics, geesh…
Bob Murphy,
on page 30 of Chaos Theory you write:
“Some readers may wonder how I can propose a replacement for the State’s “justice” system when I haven’t first offered a rational theory of the source and nature of legitimate property rights. The answer is simple: I don’t have such a theory. nonetheless, I can still say that a market system of private law would work far more effectively than the state alternative, and that the standard objections to anarchy are unfounded.”
Is it still the case that you don’t have “a rational theory of the source and nature of legitimate property rights”, or not?
I was under the impression that maybe you subscribed to the ‘homesteading’ theory of property rights.
Bob definitely believes in homesteading. I think he was saying that he doesn’t have a theory of why the Rothbardian libertarian view of property rights is correct, but I think he still believes that it IS correct.
Incentives is a good place to start. With bad ones you throw cows off of a desert where turtles aren’t really the underdog
that sounds a bit like a utilitarian argument
It might be plenty good enough.
The problem with the typical utilitarian is they use it as an excuse to be way dumber than they think they are.
For example, evicting cows off a desert to protect turtles who have been fine with cows for hundreds of years isn’t really utilitarian.
especially if the cows and turtles are friends.
Philippe! It’s a family blog!
Bob, on Tom Woods’ show you said that most establishments would require anyone who enters there to carry liability insurance, so that any damages they cause can be sufficiently compensated. But why wouldn’t they give the option to rich people of posting a bond (to be settled by a private judge) rather than having to buy liability insurance? And if they did so, wouldn’t that lead to problems in the risk pool of the liability insurance?
Also, insurance companies do some policing and investigation of their policy holders, but aren’t insurance companies notorious for their moral hazard problems? And don’t insurance companies systematically underprice tail risk?
Because government is. They subsidize and offer implicit and explicit bailouts.
That firms already do some of their own security and police work isn’t proof they’d do less if government stepped back.
The question is what public good and coordination problems are the current systems addressing at what cost and what level of effectiveness.
Given that Bob claims to stand for liberty and freedom, it’s worth clarifying what he actually means by those terms. On page 21 of Chaos Theory, Bob writes:
“So we see that those without insurance would have their options, including their freedom of movement, greatly restricted.”
In other words, in Bob’s ideal world, if you don’t have insurance, you have no real freedom. You are effectively trapped in whichever private ghetto you happen to be stuck in. Or perhaps you could be locked out of society altogether, stuck out on the margins.
It follows that the better your insurance is, the more freedom you have. That is, the more money you have, the more freedom you have. No money = no freedom.
Rather than vaguely saying that he stands for “liberty” and “freedom”, Bob should instead make it clear that what he wants, is a world in which the extent of your freedom is determined exclusively by the extent of your wealth, i.e. a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom.
“Rather than vaguely saying that he stands for “liberty” and “freedom”, Bob should instead make it clear that what he wants, is a world in which the extent of your freedom is determined exclusively by the extent of your wealth, i.e. a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom.”
Why should he say that when that’s not what he or any libertarian believes? Philippe, it just may be that this Christian man doesn’t hate poor people, as you seem to imply, but that he cares about their plight and thinks his views are the best way to help them. But go ahead and just assume that people who disagree with you on political philosophy must hate poor people if you feel you must.
I’m not saying Bob hates poor people. I’m pointing out the logical implications of his arguments.
“Why should he say that when that’s not what he or any libertarian believes?”
Bob states on page 21 of Chaos Theory that “those without insurance would have their options, including their freedom of movement, greatly restricted.”
No insurance = no freedom of movement, among other things.
As such, in Murphy’s World, freedom is determined by the ability to purchase insurance. By extension, the extent of a person’s freedom is determined by the type of insurance they can afford.
As I said below, quote in full context. You’re being slimy.
No insurance doesn’t = no freedom of movement. No insurance means that some people won’t let you have freedom of movement on their property.
Also, Philippe, you might not have meant to imply that Dr. Murphy hates poor people, but that is exactly what you did. You wrote that he should make it clear that HE WANTS what you proposed.
Philippe never said explicitly Bob hates poor people. You *think* he implied it. Well I don’t agree but let’s say you are rgiht and Philippe is trying a rhetorical trick, identifying a consequence with a desire. When I objected to this same thing being stated explicitly, no implication, and clearly in regard to casualties and WWII the blog was filled with outrage. Some I think but am too lazy to check, from you..
OK, Ken, even though this is typical trolling by you, I’ll modify my comment.
Philippe said that Dr. Murphy should instead make it clear that what he wants is a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom. I suppose it is possible that Philippe thinks Dr. Murphy should say he wants this because that is how you show love. But I think any rational, non-troll can see that there is nothing wrong with me saying that Philippe implied Dr. Murphy hates poor people.
Philippe, just so it’s clear, I think you probably didn’t mean to imply that Dr. Murphy hates poor people, but I’m sure you would admit that you worded things sloppily in your comment and that is how it would read to rational people.
My response to Ken was not meant as an attack against you. I’m just pointing out more absurd trolling by Ken.
His comment was not sloppily worded. Bob values not liberty but one notion of liberty. There are different ideas of what liberty is. Philippe thonks Bob should specify his kind more carefully, and notes a particular implication, one that many would dislike.
If Philippe thinks Dr. Murphy really wants people who have little or no money to have no freedom, then he is as dumb as you. Personally, I don’t think he is dumb enough to actually believe that.
Dan,
l wasn’t saying that Bob hates poor people. But he says himself that in his ideal world, the freedom of people without insurance would be “greatly restricted”.
He asserts that “there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance”, but we have no idea whether that’s true or not. What we do know is that insurance costs money, so if you don’t have the money to purchase insurance your freedom will be “greatly restricted”.
It is logical to extrapolate and assume that more expensive forms of insurance would grant you a greater degree of freedom than cheaper forms.
Hence the logical conclusion that the extent of a person’s freedom would be determined by the extent of their wealth.
And as we have seen, also your access to police protection or to a fair trial. Anything where now we try to buffer or lessen market forces will be worse for the poor: freedom, liberty, emergency medcine.
Philippe, do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? If not, then you should’ve worded your critique differently. If so, then you’re like Ken, and there is no hope of having a rational discussion.
I mean you can say that you believe his views would cause poor people to have no freedom, and even though libertarians would obviously disagree, we could at least have a discussion over differing ideas. But when you say he WANTS poor people to have no freedom, then you are questioning motives in such an absurd fashion that I can’t believe you are even interested in having a discussion. If that is what you really meant to say then I’d just assume you were another troll who just wants to start fights online.
“do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom?”
Presumably Murphy wants his “private law” world to become reality. And he says that in this world, the freedom of people without insurance will be “greatly restricted”.
Given that insurance costs money, the freedom of people who can’t afford it will be “greatly restricted”, in Murphy’s ideal world.
People who can’t afford things like insurance tend to be poor people.
So you honestly think Dr. Murphy WANTS poor people to have no freedom?
He wants a system in which the freedom of people who can’t afford insurance is, according to him, “greatly restricted”.
Dan, Bob wants a world in which X is true. That is not the same as saying Bob wants X. Agreed?
So when Philippe says “Bob wants a world where X is true” he is not saying “Bob wants X”.
I favor free speech. In a world with free speech you distort what people say. I accept that, but I don’t *want* it. Clear?
Philippe, can you give me a yes or no to my question? Why are you dancing around a simple and direct question?
Do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom?
If you can’t give me a yes or no then I’ll assume you are just trolling me like Ken like to do with everyone on this site.
Ken, Philippe said Dr. Murphy should instead make it clear that what he wants is a world in which those with little or no wealth have no freedom.
Go troll someone else.
“Do you think Dr. Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom?”
If that’s not what he wants then there is a problem with his ideal system.
Because according to him, if you can’t afford insurance, then your freedom will be “greatly restricted”.
So Murphy should clarify what it is that he wants.
Doubtful. He rarely responds to trolls, which is a good thing.
Still couldn’t give a yes or no answer. All right, I’ll assume you have the same purpose as Ken and proceed to not take you seriously anymore or just completely ignore you, as well.
Dan, as I said in my first response to you, I am pointing out the logical implications of Murphy’s arguments.
Do I think Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? No. He wants a system in which the freedom of people with no wealth, who can’t afford insurance, will be “greatly restricted”.
Do I think Murphy wants people with little to no wealth to have no freedom? Yes. He wants a system in which the freedom of people with no wealth, who can’t afford insurance, will be “greatly restricted”.
Is “greatly restricted freedom” the same as “no freedom”? Yes. No.
I would describe the wholesale privatization of public property and services, and the dismantling of state institutions, laws, and citizens’ rights, as an explicitly political action rather than as something to do with “market forces”.
I asked you whether you think Dr. Murphy WANTS poor people to have no freedom? That’s a simple question. Yes or no.
The comment above was in response to Ken B.
While the initial act would have to be political, since any choice the state makes with respect to who to sell it to, on whatever basis, would not be a free market, it is still the case that over time, most land would come to be owned by those who are relatively the most productive.
This is true whenever history contains deceit, violence, and theft.
I’d rather keep the rights I have than be sold down the river.
Personally I don’t particularly want to live in a right-wing libertarian world controlled by corporations and plutocrats, so I’ll be voting no.
Philippe:
If you don’t want to live in on libertarian property, then you don’t have to. You can convince your fellow men who agree with you, to live on state controlled land.
Just don’t force your lifestyle on others against their will.
You are not merely “voting” for yourself when it comes to wanting a state controlled world. You are also voting to have others, the state, initiate force against others so that they live on state controlled land as well. So you’re being an aggressor.
“If you don’t want to live in on libertarian property, then you don’t have to.”
Great, thanks. If you don’t want to use public property then you don’t have to. I guess you’ll be leaving the country then. Bye!
“You are also voting to have others, the state, initiate force against others so that they live on state controlled land as well”
No, you can go and live on libertarian land if you want. Off you go now.
What about that Iranian terrorist guy, where the US won’t let him into the country? His freedom of movement is being restricted because of some violent incident supposedly in his past.
Seems like a fair system to me. Why should any country invite terrorists? Bob is just going along with an established tradition and I don’t here you jumping up to have a problem when Washington does it.
By the way, if the same Iranian terrorist slipped up via the Mexican border Bob would be OK about that.
Phillipe wrote:
He asserts that “there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance”, but we have no idea whether that’s true or not. What we do know is that insurance costs money, so if you don’t have the money to purchase insurance your freedom will be “greatly restricted”
You guys are making this way too esoteric. Forget homicide insurance. Take water and food.
“In Murphy’s world, there would be no State to guarantee that everybody gets food and water. Murphy says these would be very affordable and that charities could take care of truly desperate people. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that food and water cost money, and so in Murphy’s world poor people would die within 3 days.”
QED.
It’s even more fundamental than that.
Humans are by their nature imprisoned in their scarce, mortal, relatively frail bodies.
Freedom does not exist because it cannot exist. We do not have freedom until we become bodiless ghosts who are no longer contingent and dependent on the material world.
Freedom to Philippe is not freedom from coercion and violence in a social context. No, that’s not enough. Freedom means to have power. More power equals more freedom. Less power equals less freedom.
It’s the same old same old Hegelian disillusionment with the world.
Hahaha
Bob, the difference is that a right to roam free would be a negative right, whereas a right to food and water would be a positive right. So lacking the ability to roam free would be a more serious challenge to the claim that your vision is of a free society, at least according to certain conceptions of freedom.
Positive right = slavery imposed on those who must provide the goods.
“Murphy says these would be very affordable and that charities could take care of truly desperate people”
You’re just hand-waving away problems by asserting that charities will solve everything.
You’re just hand-waving away problems by asserting that charities will solve everything.
First of all, the price of a fast food meal is less than the Federal minimum wage.
Food is extremely easy to come by.
In fact, the only real barrier for the poor is not finding ENOUGH people who want to make a profit off of them.
People with good intentions, who have been conditioned for so long by socialistic indoctrination in public schools, withhold jobs from the poor because they think they are taking advantage of them.
Second, there are MORE desparately poor under the interventionism of today than there would be in a free market because property taxes guarantee that you will never have a place that is truly yours; and because the police won’t allow you to sleep on the street if they see you.
guest, none of what you said above changes the fact that Bob is just hand-waving by asserting that charities will solve any and all problems.
Quote with full context next time.
“So there wouldn’t be very many people walking around without this type of insurance”
So there wouldn’t be many people whose freedom would be “greatly restricted” in Murphy’s World.
Only a small minority. Of poor people. If Murphy is correct.
Do you think anyone who wants should be able to walk into your house? If not, why are you in favor of restricting their freedom of movement?
“Do you think anyone who wants should be able to walk into your house?”
No.
Nor do I think people should have less freedom to move around than they do today.
When do you think people should be allowed to go onto other people’s property without permission?
I don’t want to privatize all public land like you guys.
Regarding private land, see, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
Not all “public” land is open to the public, so what is the difference?
Also, why do think you should be allowed to restrict people’s freedom of movement by not allowing them on your property?
I wouldn’t want complete strangers roaming around my home without my permission whenever they felt like it, even if it wasn’t my own property. Mainly for psychological reasons, such as wanting privacy, being afraid or suspicious of people I don’t know, etc.
However, if they had an urgent need to use my home, which couldn’t be solved in some other way, then I might see them as having a right to do so, depending on the circumstances.
Philip, have you tried starting with Hayek.
After that you can come back and try harder.
It is clear that Philippe either can’t read or can’t comprehend (like another troll I know from visiting these parts).
Here is what Murphy says just before the line he has cited…..
And, more importantly, here is the line that just follows what he has quoted.
There are many things to note in the sentence Philippe pulled out. First, Bob says that those without insurance would “have” their freedom restricted. He does not say that their freedom would be curtailed due to the initiation of force against them. He only states that since others would make decisions factoring in the cost of dealing with an uninsured person, he would be kept away from other people’s property. That by itself restricts his freedom to that space and those things that are not yet someone else’s property. Is Philippe claiming that property owners should not be free to keep specific people off their property? Or is he claiming that those people being free to thus restrict access to their property is a problem?
Second, the situation of restricted freedom is a result of a choice made by the uninsured. In the second sentence I have highlighted, it is clear that Bob is saying that the currently uninsured person can go ahead and buy insurance and improve on the state of his freedom. In fact, Bob’s point is that basic insurance would be pretty cheap. If he chooses not to take it, the fault is his.
Third, even if he does not have the property to offer to get the insurance, he can apply the only property he has – his own person – to exert labour, produce the property required to buy insurance, offer it in exchange and buy the insurance. Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault.
Philippe, as always, has no clue what he is talking of.
“Is Philippe claiming that property owners should not be free to keep specific people off their property?”
It depends.
But the point is that you guys want to privatize everything which is currently public and open-access. This will reduce people’s freedom of movement. For example, I live in a city and can roam freely all around the city without paying tolls and having to buy insurance and sign contracts all over the place.
“even if he does not have the property to offer to get the insurance, he can apply the only property he has – his own person – to exert labour, produce the property required to buy insurance, offer it in exchange and buy the insurance. Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault.”
So he is forced to work to have the basic freedom to move around. Otherwise he might be trapped in one little area, like a prisoner.
“Choosing not to do so is entirely his fault”
No, because people currently have the right to roam around freely. You want to take away that right.
Repeated misuse of the word “free”. That’s all I can see in your reply. You don’t really understand the word “free” at all when you say this…
“Freedom” does not include being free to smash another person’s face or his property. So, even today, he is not free to move around as he pleases. “Free” only means freedom from the initiation of force against person and property.
You are also misusing the word “forced”. No one is initiating force against him. He is forced by circumstances. Either your wording is extremely sloppy or your thoughts are muddled up.
More of the same senseless assertion. He is NOT any more free to roam around now than he would be in a world of private property. Once again, first learn what the word “free” means in such discussions. You will then understand what a troll you are being.
Bala,
“Freedom” does not include being free to smash another person’s face or his property.”
I didn’t say that it does.
You want to privatize and in many cases close-off land which is currently public and open-access. I don’t. I want to preserve my freedom to roam around on land which is public and open-access. I don’t want people like you to take away my freedom to do that.
“Ancient traces provide evidence of the freedom to roam in many European countries, suggesting such a freedom was once a common norm. Today, the right to roam has survived in perhaps its purest form in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Here the right has been won through practice over hundreds of years and it is not known when it changed from mere ‘common practice’ to become a commonly recognised right. A possible explanation as to why the right has survived mainly in these four countries is that feudalism and serfdom were not established there.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
Philippe, the kind of freedom you want comes at the costs of other people having their freedom reduced.
Your conception of freedom cannot be universalized for everyone. What you want, in effect, is not freedom for everyone, but only freedom for yourself at the cost of lack of freedom of others.
This is why you flock to mommy and daddy government.
“The state is the great myth where everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else.” – Bastiat
“the kind of freedom you want comes at the costs of other people having their freedom reduced.”
No it doesn’t. I don’t want to live in your crap utopia, that’s all. Build your crap utopia elsewhere.
Yes it does.
how?
I live in a city and can roam freely all around the city without paying tolls and having to buy insurance …
You are forced to pay taxes for access to those streets (as well as those to which you don’t want access), and if you want to drive your own property, you in fact do have to buy insurance.
And if you don’t make enough to pay those taxes, the police aren’t going to leave you alone to set up a tent in a “public park” while you try to get back on your feet.
Also, housing is expensive because we’re NOT free:
Defending the Undefendable (Chapter 20: The Slumlord) by Walter Block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhURIycWHRI
You just do not understand what your opponents are saying, do you?
The argument is not about “privatizing”. It is about whether the term “public property” makes any sense or not. The point simply is that the term “private property” involves a redundancy while the term “public property” is an oxymoron. Even jointly owned property is just that – jointly owned in a certain mutually and voluntarily agreed upon ratio under certain mutually and voluntarily agreed upon conditions.
More misuse of the word “free”. There is no problem with this reduction of “freedom” because it only means that they will have to be mindful of where the other guy’s property begins. That’s called civilised living.
You pay. It is just not tolls. The beauty of tolls is that he who uses more pays more. He who doesn’t use pays nothing. Brilliant, isn’t it? Or do you just want to parasite on other people who are forced to pay more than in proportion to their use of the same roads? That, incidentally, is the ugly truth behind your bald assertion.
“The argument is not about “privatizing”.”
Yes it is. You want to turn public land into private land.
“the term “public property” is an oxymoron.”
According to your particular ideology it is an oxymoron. Your ideology is an extreme fringe belief system. i don’t agree with it, nor do most people.
“There is no problem with this reduction of “freedom”
Yes there is. The problem is that people don’t want you to reduce their freedom in the name of your upside-down ideology of so-called “freedom”.
“it only means that they will have to be mindful of where the other guy’s property begins”.
But public property does not belong to one guy. In order for it to belong to one guy it would have to be privatized.
“do you just want to parasite on other people”
No. I just don’t want to privatize all public property like you guys. Sorry.
Most people are wrong about public goods.
Your ideology is an extreme fringe belief system.
Yeah, “extreme”, with maybe some exclamation points or something:
Sen. Schumer and Other Senior Dems Play Politics w/ Budget Crisis on Conf Call 3/29/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdYLnS73yk
here you go:
!!
BTW I’m sure I disagree with his solutions, but Matt Taibbi has some good anecdotes showing we’ve got a two-tiered justice system right now, where the rich get away with all kinds of stuff and just pay relatively light fines, while the poor go to prison for much more minor offenses.
No, I don’t believe it because we don’t live in a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world of Rothbardian brutalism and anarchy. We have a government, by golly, and it resolves disputes fairly and equitably, regardless of a person’s wealth.
He’s right too often. This claim has in fact the shortest known proof, two letters. (OJ). But this is an ill to be remedied, and it is not uniformly true. And it’s especially the case for crimes that shouldn’t exist, drug crimes, where an effective remedy is available.
What’s that? You’re against the state initiating violence and coercion against people for non-violent desires?
Oh that’s right, you don’t have a consistent foundation. My bad.
Throw people into cages, and shoot them if they resist, for non-violent desire of wanting to choose who to protect them, but let’s be all soft and compassionate for those who want to choose what to ingest.
Ah to be an illogical pedant. Must be fun.
With a powerful state you have a high value prize to attract special interest groups capturing that power. The smaller prize you have on offer, the less effort people will go to capture it.
This is why the most important step is to strongly restrict government ability to transfer wealth and boost any special interest groups. If we can achieve that, then half the problems go away.
It always amazes me that statists never seem to understand this reasoning. They rant and rave about how corporations are in bed with the government and get special treatment, yet somehow, they insist that this means the government needs even MORE power and the ability to hand out even larger favors. Yeah, that’ll fix it.
Minimizing individual power requires rules that maximize individuals incurring the costs of their own actions.
The more the rules for any institution allow for externalizing costs, the more that relatively lower valued activity (destruction) will become locally profitable at that institution.
The state is humanity’s largest and most egregious cost externalization institution ever created. Think about it. What other institution can transfer the costs of, say, the action of financing a murder, than one that spreads the costs over the entire country’s (working) population?
Also, how many state financed economists who spend all day researching about and finding ways to reduce externalities, apply it to their own careers? The costs of their salary is externalized not just on the students who attend and pay tuition, but millions of tax payers as well?
More and more lower valued activity can become profitable when the costs can be externalized over more and more people. This is why the state can do so many destructive things. None of the politicians or bondholders personally pony up the FULL costs. No, the taxpayers pony up the costs even for activities they are ostensibly against for moral or other reasons.
A private law society would make it much more difficult for lower valued, destructive activity to take place, because a private law society would maximize internalization of costs. And that is exactly what every statist parasite fears most in their subconscious.
I think the word “externalities” is another of those economics words that means what you want it to mean. He’s doing something I don’t like so “externalities” says I get to take something off the guy.
Without an empirical and measurable definition, it’s just a way for individuals to talk about their preferences.
Bob as I mentioned above, the primary purpose of the police is to protect wealthy people from poor people… and this has always been the primay purpose of police under all social systems. There is a very logical reason for this, the very poor don’t have much to lose, so their incentive for voluntarily complying with a system that keeps them poor is very small.
The Rothbardian system merely skips the step where we pretend to get all angsty over this, and tries to make it work as efficiently as possible.
It Philippe was genuinely upset by the plight of the poor he would be equally upset at all the crap our present day system has dumped on them: the war on drugs, minimum wage, expensive dead end schooling, all sorts of regulations that make it impossible to get a job, regulations that restrict supply to create artificial scarcity, and the multi-tier justice system, regulatory capture by big business, vote buying amongst both the major parties (yes the Koch bros send payments to Democrats),
“It Philippe was genuinely upset by the plight of the poor he would be equally upset at all the crap our present day system has dumped on them”
I am upset at the crap that gets dumped on people today. My point is not to excuse everything that goes on in the real world, but to criticize your vision of an alternative.
“war on drugs”. I’m not sure, but legalization and regulation might be better.
“minimum wage”. I’m not opposed to the minimum wage.
“expensive dead end schooling”. I don’t think the solution to problems in the education system is to abolish public funding for education.
“all sorts of regulations that make it impossible to get a job”. I think that stupid regulations should be got rid of. But I’d have to look at them separately to say what I think about them.
“regulations that restrict supply to create artificial scarcity”. A bit vague.
“the multi-tier justice system”. That needs to change, but I think a privatized law system would be worse. Money is power.
“regulatory capture by big business”. You’d have to specify what you mean exactly and give examples for me to say what I think about them. In general I don’t think that the solution to “regulatory capture” by big business is to get rid of all regulations on big business. I think that’s backwards logic.
“vote buying amongst both the major parties”. I agree that is a problem which is especially bad in the US and some other countries. It is a form of corruption in my book. But in your system the amount of “votes” you have depends entirely on how wealthy you are.
“minimum wage”. I’m not opposed to the minimum wage.
Race and Economics
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams95.1.html
During the 1930s, there were a number of federal government interventions that changed the black employment picture. The first was the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which mandated minimum wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects. During the bill’s legislative debate, the racial objectives were clear. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., said he had “received numerous complaints … about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.” Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., complained: “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. … That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke of the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” American Federation of Labor President William Green said, “Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.”
…
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 broadened the number of workers covered by minimum wages, with negative consequences for black employment across a much wider range of industries.
What some politicians thought in the 1930s is not really relevant to the issue of minimum wages in 2014.
Sure it is. The same economic reasoning still applies. Do you think all racism has vanished from society?
The minimum wage now serves the same function as it did back then, namely to guarantee employers the ability to make hiring decisions based on factors other than price. Do you recall Murphy’s previous posts regarding how, even if the total number of jobs stays constant, the specific mix of what sort of people are hired for the jobs changes?
When you’re forced to pay a wage that is normally demanded by white, middle-class college educated college graduates, guess what, that’s who these companies are going to hire. The minimum wage will continue to result in the most vulnerable and despised groups in society being deprived of the opportunity of gainful employment.
*facepalm*
The Minimum Wage reduces employment.
That’s WHY it was implemented.
Your quotes above do not indicate that those people wanted it to be implemented so as to reduce employment.
They indicate that those people wanted it to be implemented so as to stop wages from being driven down below the minimum level.
Anyway, as I said, what politicians thought about it in 1930 is not that relevant to 2014.
People don’t decide what to think about minimum wages based on what politicians thought in 1930. Well, not normal people anyway.
Philippe:
You’re missing the point. If an employer had the opportunity to decrease your wage rate, it is only because they know, or at least have a good reason to believe, that if you don’t accept the cut, that they will just find someone else who is willing to paid less than you.
As it stands, those other workers are not employed by your firm. You are. You are not actually fighting for your own wage to stay up, you are actually fighting to prevent your employer from firing you and hiring a worket who offers a lower price. For if those other workers did not exist, or if they did exist but offered a price higher than your wage, then your employer would not be able to fire you and make as much profit.
From another angle, your employer would also have a difficult time cutting your wages if other employers were willing to pay you those wages.
Minimum wages were called for by (politically connected) unions and other anti-market types in order to stop their employers from being able to seek lower cost labor from those willing to offer it.
You don’t have to see this specifically mentioned by any worker or union head before it is true. It is true because of an additonal knowledge of how the market process works.
“you are actually fighting to prevent your employer from firing you and hiring a worket who offers a lower price.”
If they fire me and hire an unemployed person, then total employment doesn’t increase, does it.
Philippe:
No, not if YOU don’t also accept a lower wage. You get fired for refusing to accept a pay cut.
If there are two people looking for work, and there is only $10 available to pay wages, then both of you can work if each you accept $5.
Unions (original impetus for minimum wage) don’t want that extra worker competing with them. So they clamor for the state to enforce a minimum wage of $10, as well as “fair bargaining” which means “deal with us or else”. So the $10 goes to you, while the other guy remains out of work.
if in your example there was full employment, workers would demand and get higher wages, given their stronger bargaining position due to labor scarcity. The wage in your example would only stay at $5 if one person remained unemployed.
I propose two novel technologies for this unique distopia Bob is proposing: I call them “fences” and “door locks”.