Rock the Non-Vote, Part Two

I’ve often been mistaken, as I would guess most published writers have, about the level of response a particular article of mine will elicit. There have been times when I was convinced that some column would really strike a chord with readers, only to receive almost no feedback after its publication. On the other hand, I have written pieces that I feared were too esoteric or obscure to draw much interest, but whose public debut elicited a flood of comments.

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Introduction (1904) to Gustave de Molinari’s

It is fortunate for the modern world that there is a considerable number of persons who have time, inclination, and ability to inquire how human communities may best secure a prosperous existence and ultimate salvation from disasters or even annihilation. It is fortunate that the necessity is so widely felt of making such inquiries, and that there is so great an accumulation of facts, and of arguments based thereon, as to enable thinkers to arrive at a complete knowledge of the dangers which menace society, and of the best way of dealing with them. We greatly need light from men who are capable of giving answers to such questions as the following: “What should be the definite aim of all human societies? Whither tend the communities and nations now in existence? What are their special dangers, and how can they best be averted? What should be the true ideals of every people, so that they may be kept clearly in view and realised?”

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The Use of Knowledge in Society

What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

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Anti-trust, Anti-truth

Joel Klein, the third-rate lawyer/political hack who is in charge of the government’s Microsoft persecution, recently tried to rationalize the lawsuit by saying that it was in keeping with the long history of consumer protection regulation, beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In reality, the history of antitrust has been a history of politically-inspired witch hunts launched against America’s most innovative and entrepreneurial businesses.

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America’s Great Depression

Study of business cycles must be based upon a satisfactory cycle theory. Gazing at sheaves of statistics without “pre-judgment” is futile. A cycle takes place in the economic world, and therefore a usable cycle theory must be integrated with general economic theory. And yet, remarkably, such integration, even attempted integration, is the exception, not the rule. Economics, in the last two decades, has fissured badly into a host of airtight compartments—each sphere hardly related to the others. Only in the theories of Schumpeter and Mises has cycle theory been integrated into general economics.

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A Primer on Jobs and the Jobless

With the economics of employment and unemployment constantly discussed on the business pages and political campaigns, let us turn our attention toward fundamentals and root out some fallacies.

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Democracy: The God That Failed

On the most abstract level, I want to show how theory is indispensible in correctly interpreting history. History – the sequence of events unfolding in time – is “blind.” It reveals nothing about causes and effects. We may agree, for instance, that feudal Europe was poor, that monarchical Europe was wealthier, and that democratic Europe is wealthier still, or that nineteenth-century America with its low taxes and few regulations was poor, while contemporary America with its high taxes and many regulations is rich. Yet was Europe poor because of feudalism, and did it grow richer because of monarchy and democracy? Or did Europe grow richer in spite of monarchy and democracy? Or are these phenomena unrelated?

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The Only Path To Tomorrow

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.

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The Problem with Natural Rights

With this mention of liberalism, though, we are getting ahead of our story again. Instead, we need first consider still another point that is relevant to the newly emerging natural rights doctrine of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For so far as these doctrines go, one key question remains: granted that Hobbes may have been right, that on the basis of the new scientific conception of nature in general and of human nature in particular, the natural condition of men is one of ceaseless and ever proliferating appetites and desires; and granted that man’s overriding passion is thus one of self-preservation in the gratification of these appetites and desires; still, why should such a natural concern on man’s part be considered as being in any way a “right”?

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Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth

If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

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Origins of the Welfare State in America

Standard theory views government as functional: a social need arises, and government, semi-automatically, springs up to fill that need. The analogy rests on the market economy: demand gives rise to supply (e.g., a demand for cream cheese will result in a supply of cream cheese on the market). But surely it is strained to say that, in the same way, a demand for postal services will spontaneously give rise to a government monopoly Post Office, outlawing its competition and giving us ever-poorer service for ever-higher prices.

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Molinari and the anti-statist liberal tradition

This article first appeared as an Honours thesis presented as part of an Honours degree at Macquarie University in 1979. It was subsequently published in three parts in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 5, nos. 3 and 4 and Vol. 6, no. 1. Thanks are extended above all to Leonard Liggio, then at the Institute for Humane Studies, Menlo Park; Murray Rothbard, editor of the JLS; and Mark Weinburg, Senior Research Associate, H. C. Wainwright & Co., Economics, for his assistance in the translation of quoted passages from their original French. The author would also like to thank the Cato Institute for a grant which enabled him to research this essay.

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Equality: The Unknown Ideal

All men are created equal.

When Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, set out to enunciate the philosophical principles underlying the American Revolution—the principles of ’76, as later generations would call them—that’s the one he put down first, as the foundation and justification of all the rest. Equality—not, as one might expect, liberty.

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Pennsylvania’s Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690

In the vast stretches of America, William Penn envisaged a truly Quaker colony, “a Holy experiment…that an example may be set up to the nations.” In his quest for such a charter, Penn was aided by the fact that the Crown had owed his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, the huge sum of 16,000 pounds for loans and back salary. In March 1681 the king agreed to grant young William, the admiral’s heir, proprietary ownership of the lands west of the Delaware River and north of the Maryland border in exchange for canceling the old debt.

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Market Socialism

Can a suitably designed market economy satisfy the moral aspirations of a socialist? The motivation behind this proposal is the conviction that planned economies have not succeeded on economic grounds alone, even if one ignores their obvious failures to achieve the democratic ideal. Planned economies failing to coordinate production with demand thus result in surpluses of unwanted goods and black markets; nor have these economies produced the quality of goods attained in market economies. In addition to these obvious failings of planned economies, the works of contemporary political philosophers (Robert Nozick and John Rawls) compel us to reexamine the supposed incompatibility of socialist aspirations and a market economy.

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State vs Society

In his Politics, Aristotle confuses and shifts equivocal meanings of polis or city-state. Failing to discriminate the distinct concepts of polis1 (the state as a coercive political agency monopolizing law and force over a given territory) and polis2 (the larger community which includes both the coercive state and the various voluntary social institutions such as family, religion, schools, friendship, and commercial associations) misleads him into conflating both notions of polis. This semantic error results in the Stagirite’s faulty argument that polis1 (the coercive state) should not merely protect individual rights from force or fraud but also, confusedly assuming the functions of polis2, should make men good, moral, and virtuous—by force. Aristotle’s confusion about polis as state and polis as community blinds him to the valuable contributions to political justice and the proper limits of state activity offered by an ancient Greek version of libertarianism.
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Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution

The historian must be more than a chronicler, a mere lister of events. For his real task is discovering and setting forth the causal connections between events in human history, the complex chain of human purposes, choices, and consequences over time that have shaped the fate of mankind. Investigating the causes of such a portentous event as the American Revolution is more, then, than a mere listing of preceding occurrences; for the historian must weigh the causal significance of these factors, and select those of overriding importance.

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The Case Against Government

Robert Nozick’s attempt to refute anarchism in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is invalid and fails to justify the state’s coercive monopoly of force in a given territory. Nozick creates bogus “rights” when he invokes “procedural rights” (each person’s right to resist, in self-defense, if others try to apply to him an unreliable, unfair, or risky procedure of justice). But even if such “rights” were valid, they would not justify the state monopolizing the protection of these “rights.” In fact, individuals could claim “procedural rights” and apply them to judge the state’s “risky” procedures. This would seem to bolster the anarchist case.

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The Anarcho-Statists of Spain

The Spanish fascists used barbaric methods throughout the Spanish Civil War in order to establish a brutal dictatorship.[1] The Spanish Communists used similar wartime measures in their failed effort to give birth to an even more totalitarian regime.[2] But many discussions of the Spanish Civil War overlook, minimize, or apologize for the atrocious behavior and tyrannical aspirations of perhaps the most powerful faction of the Spanish Republicans: the Anarchist movement.

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Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos

I wrote recently that government should be abolished. Among the responses to the article were objections of the sort shared by most who encounter for the first time the prospect of living without forcible government. The most common objections are fundamentally similar to each other: Violence would rule the day; corporations would run over us little people; foreign governments would invade; big neighborhoods would pillage small neighborhoods; etc. The books I linked in the previous article answer these objections, but since most of us (myself included) might not buy a book online – and then be sure to read it – every single time we surf the net, I’ll address those objections briefly here, and provide links to online articles wherever possible.

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A libertarian as conservative

I agreed to come here today to speak on some such subject as “The Libertarian as Conservative.” To me this is so obvious that I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. I’d have preferred a more controversial topic like “The Myth of the Penile Orgasm.” But since my attendance here is subsidized by the esteemed distributor of a veritable reference library on mayhem and dirty tricks, I can’t just take the conch and go rogue. I will indeed mutilate the sacred cow which is libertarianism, as ordered, but I’ll administer a few hard lefts to the right in my own way. And I don’t mean the easy way. I could just point to the laissez-faire Trilateralism of the Libertarian Party, then leave and go look for a party. It doesn’t take long to say that if you fight fire with fire, you’ll get burned.

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Natural and Artificial Aristocracy

The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an Ethical, rather than a political object. The whole piece is a moral “exhortation”, {parainesis}, and this passage particularly seems to be a reproof to man, who, while with his domestic animals he is curious to improve the race by employing always the finest male, pays no attention to the improvement of his own race, but intermarries with the vicious, the ugly, or the old, for considerations of wealth or ambition. It is in conformity with the principle adopted afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by Ocellus in another form. {Peri de tes ek ton allelon anthropon geneseos} etc. — {oych edones eneka e} {mixis}. Which, as literally as intelligibility will admit, may be thus translated:

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Society without a State

In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense of or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state.

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The Utopia of Liberty

We are adversaries, and yet the goal which we both pursue is the same. What is the common goal of economists and socialists? Is it not a society where the production of all the goods necessary to the maintenance and embellishment of life shall be as abundant as possible, and where the distribution of these same goods among those who have created them through their labour shall be as just as possible? May not our common ideal, apart from all distinction of schools, be summarised in these two words: abundance and justice?

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An Introduction to Value Theory

With interest in the “Austrian School” of economics increasing, it may be helpful to indicate some of the aspects of the value-concept which is so central to the theories of this group. The term “School” as used here refers, not to any institution or corporate set of buildings, but to a body of economic theory developed largely in Austria during the 1870s and 1880s. This term can be misleading, however, because similar concepts of value had been developed earlier and other individuals were coming to similar views at the same time as the Austrians. Preceding the “Austrian” concept of marginal utility analysis — the basis for saying that price determines cost rather than vice versa or that they are mutually determined — much the same idea had been formulated in the 1600s and 1700s in an elementary form by some French and Italian economists. Subsequently, leading English economists wandered off on bypaths of theory until the “Austrian School” brought it back again.

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War Loses, Again

More than three years ago, George Bush unleashed the dogs of war on Iraq, perhaps hoping that he would take his place among the “great” war presidents. It’s strange how these guys imagine themselves written about in history books in the manner of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, rather than Truman, Johnson, and Nixon. It’s been more than 50 years since war immortalized a president, and yet they keep trying.

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Murray Rothbard on War

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) was just one man with a typewriter, but he inspired a world-wide renewal in the scholarship of liberty. During 45 years of research and writing, in 25 books and thousands of articles, he battled every destructive trend in this century socialism, statism, relativism, and scientism – and awakened a passion for freedom in thousands of scholars, journalists, and activists.

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Thomas Paine: Rights Of Man

The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not as to principles of government, but as to time. For my own part I think it equally as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger, as to push them on too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in fourteen or fifteen years, I may believe practicable in a much shorter period. Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.

 

 

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Muhammad Cartoons: A Libertarian Analysis

There are several perspectives now making the rounds regarding those cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. For those who have been in Rip Van Winkle land, they first surfaced in Denmark and are now being reprinted all over the world. The libertarian claim is that these caricatures did not constitute fraud, force, or the threat of initiatory violence; therefore no physical sanctions should be visited upon the cartoonists, or those who reprint their work. This does not mean that such artistic acts were nice or moral or appropriate or considerate; they were not, in my personal opinion. They hurt the feelings of vast numbers of people, Muslim and non-Muslim. But, as long as private property rights and freedom prevail, such initiatives should be legal.

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Federalism

Is France justified in invading New York City to force the latter to get rid its rent control legislation? Would it be compatible with libertarianism for California to forcibly prevent the US government from imposing a draft on California citizens? The federal government physically attacks Mississippi in 1950 for its Jim Crow legislation; Mississippi resists. Which side does the libertarian root for?

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