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Stephen Davies delivers the third Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture

Indeed, and here he was just before delivering it, earlier this evening, to the assembled friends and supporters of the Libertarian Alliance, at the National Liberal Club:

SteveDaviesCRTlecture.jpg

His subject was Public Goods and Private Action: How Voluntary Action Can Provide Law, Welfare and Infrastructure – and Build a Good Society.

Academics who are supportive of the free market and the free society tend to be economists. Such thinkers might have based an argument like that one on economic theories concerning the alleged possibility and desirability of such arrangements. But Dr. Davies is a historian, with a wealth of knowledge concerning how such arrangements did exist, and accordingly might again. It is hard to argue with any persuasiveness that voluntarily funded policing, or unemployment insurance, or roads or railways cannot exist, if the fact that these things actually did exist is widely known. The current crop of fiscally disastrous and morally destructive social and infrastructural policies depend for their continuation on perpetuating ignorance of how such voluntary alternatives existed in the past. (Hence in particular the importance of voluntarily organised and voluntarily funded education.)

Dr. Davies argued that the current fiscal crisis of the modern state, not just in Britain but everywhere, means that an historic opportunity now exists to revive such ideas as these.

A fellow Samizdatista asked, during the Q&A that followed Dr. Davies’s lecture: Will the text of it be published? Answer: yes. I await this text with eagerness, as do many others. All to whom I spoke afterwards agreed that this was an outstandingly effective and informative lecture.

66 comments to Stephen Davies delivers the third Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture

  • I wish I could have attended. I’m sure it was excellent!

  • Voluntarily funded policing? Here, in the Banana Republic of Ecuador, you might ask: is there any other kind?

    Two winters ago a group of local residents in our barrio decided to club together and pay some guy to walk up and down all night in a long plastic mac whistling at odd intervals to prove to anyone who was awake that he was too. Naturally he also carried some sort of weapon in case any burglars were spotted. It worked for a while but in the end the rain and the mud were too much for him and he gave up, also complaining that one or two households hadn’t paid him the previous week. Still, it was the closest we ever got to any kind of community policing. In Ecuador, it’s generally understood that the state police are only there to club people on demonstrations. (The one time my house was burgled, they initially refused to come and look into it, and then demanded that I pay their petrol if they did. The petrol cost turned out to be 7 bucks for about half a mile’s drive. Fuel-efficient those cop cars sure ain’t.)

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Excellent talk by Stephen, as always.

    The core of his message is that however “generous” the modern Welfare State might be (with the money of the very people it supposedly dispenses), it has corroded the self-reliance, and ironically, genuine fellow feeling, of many people. His analysis, in other words, is different from the more normal, “rightwing” attack on Big Government. Like some of the more thoughtful folk on the left, he realises that the modern state has been a disaster for the working class.

    The Tories are fumbling towards such an understanding by their “Big Society” concept, but that still is too full of statist BS to really go very far.

  • Paul Marks

    In case anyone thinks that Ecuador discredits free market policies – it has a socialist government (and I am sure Endivio Roquefort could tell us a few things about how bad it is).

    Most of Latin America has had wildly interventionist and inflationist governments since at least the 1930’s – but the “mainstream” media (and academia) prefer to spread the legend of ultra free market policies leading to a society dominated by a few rich people with everyone else in terrible poverty…..

    This is similar to the legend that “lack of regulation” caused the current crises, or that the way out of it is “proper regulation” a “bank levy” and “getting the banks lending again”.

    Still enough of IDave – or “Obama lite” (however that is going too far – Cameron is just a corrupt politicians who believes in nothing apart from getting into office, he is not a life long Marxist).

    Dr Davies looks as old as me – I suppose he is. Baldness really is the mark of Cain – his hair means that Brian Micklethwait looks younger than either of us.

    On policy I have always been a minimal state man – rather than an anarchist (or anarchocapitalist), but my reformism has utterly failed (pretending it has not does alter objective reality).

    So it looks like the anarchocapitalists may get a chance.

    The international elite (academic, political, media and YES financial) are determined to create their de facto world govenment – with endless regulations and bailouts.

    And yes it will end in tyranny and chaos (not opposites) as civil society breaks down.

    Will anarcho capitalism be viable in this terrible situation?

    I do not know – but I wish anarchocapitalists the best of luck. I certainly hope they have better fortune than timid reformers like me have had.

    I would make one distinction – between ordinary law and order and war.

    Ordinary law and order (contrary to the doctrine of the “night watchman state”) is OFTEN not done by the government.

    For example, till 1856 many rural areas in England and Wales had no state police. And before 1835 many large towns did not – oddly enough people did not tend to go round eating each other.

    However, war is a different thing.

    What does a decent (or reletively decent) place do when threatened by the military forces of a state?

    For example, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are less statist than Britain – yet they tend to cave in to British government demands.

    “That is because Britain is just so much bigger than these islands Paul – having a state military would not save them”.

    What about India and China?

    They have a similar population – but let us say that India turned its back on statism (sadly, although it has deregulated, it has also gone in for welfare schemes).

    What is to stop China using its military forces (such as its nuclear missiles) to attack India?

    Why should it do this? Why not?

    After all the Chinese government already supports various movements in India that kill people every day (oh dear was that a secret?), they do this (basically) because they “like doing stuff like this”.

    Can private protection companies really stand up against the Maoist movement in India (or the Islamist movement – which also kills people most days). I say no. ALTHOUGH I WOULD BE HAPPY TO BE PROVED WRONG.

    And, certainly, getting rid of “gun control” (so farmers and others can defend themseleves against Maoist attacks without violating firearms regulations) is vital. Even the best military can not be everywhere at once – it can take on the large formations of Maoists, but the people themselves will have to fight to defend their property against individuals and small gangs.

    And what about full scale invasion? After all this has already happened (1962).

    Again – I have no faith in private protection companies defeating an invasion by the Chinese military.

    So the “Sword of State” is needed (terrible although it inevitablly is) indeed a “Sword of State” (in missile defence and so on) actually BIGGER than the one India already has.

    Where will the money come from?

    Well there are those welfare programs the government is so proud of…….

    Remember I am talking about defence (real defence) – not “nation building” in Iraq or other nuttyness.

  • Brian, has Stephen Davies written on the subject?

  • Alice

    “So the “Sword of State” is needed (terrible although it inevitablly is)”

    Paul — you have put your finger on something that troubles me a lot about libertarianism. Libertarianism can seem a lot like pacificism — a wonderful philosophy, as long as ever single human being on the planet simultaneously embraces it wholeheartedly.

    Back in the real world, a man alone does not stand a chance (to bowdlerize Hemmingway). There will always be a need for a state-like organization. The question is how to contain the beast.

  • Alice, Libertarianism and Anarchism are different things. Libertarianism simply is a desire to achieve the greatest practical liberty. Anarchism focuses on something different; the abolition of the State, and pushes the search for liberty off the stage in the process. I wrote a posting at Cats here to illustrate (IMV) the logical flaws in the search for a utopian, er, state of statelessness. The conclusion I reached is that in fact, the anarchists are trying to prove that all the bad things a state can do can be provided by the private sector, which isn’t much of a result for liberty, when you think about it.

    Fans of “private sector law” generally appeal to various historic polycentric systems, but gloss over the fact that these systems have always had some hegemonic authority woven into them- they may be tribal, or clan-based, or religion-based systems. People are put under the thumb of their tribe, clan or religion, and thus forced into the legal system, even though at a higher contextual level they may appear “polycentric”. So, there might be some place where (this is an imaginary example) Jews, Christians and Muslims all have separate legal systems, so it is polycentric by that definition. But each citizen is actually being held inside “their law” by tradition and/or force (if you try to leave, somebody will kill you etc). Somalis are famous for having a clan based polycentric law; but you are born into a clan, and your membership of that clan is drummed into you from day one of your life, and thus the law has the same hegemonic force as any state law.

    IOW, private action can provide (in theory) any service except law itself, which is at a “metalevel” above the people, and has to be. Policing could, in theory, be private, and sometimes is. But you can’t purchase law on the free market, because law isn’t something you buy for yourself. It is something that you require be imposed upon others. A woman needs the law against rape to be used against potential rapists; it’s not an individual purchasing decision that her potential rapists can be allowed to opt in or out of. The whole anarcho-capitalist idea falls apart at that point, because without some hegemonic, collective imposition, nobody can agree what is and what is not against the law.

    I think it was Pa Annoyed here at Samizdata who described anarchism as a kind of thought experiment of trying to make a system bootstrap itself, and I think that was a fair assessment.

    So after all that waffle, that’s why I’m a libertarian, not an anarchist. I want a state, with laws against murder, theft, rape and Britney Spears, and those laws must apply to every person in the land. I’ve thought long and hard about this stuff, and am certain that there is no logical way, let alone practical way, around the inherent problems with the proposed “free market law” systems described by anarchists.

  • “In case anyone thinks that Ecuador discredits free market policies – it has a socialist government (and I am sure Endivio Roquefort could tell us a few things about how bad it is).”

    Indeed. However, the current president is a self-declared admirer of Chavez, so rather than have me tell you about Ecuador, you’re probably better off reading about Venezuela instead. That way you get two countries for the price of one. Venezuela is Ecuador’s future, except they have more oil than we do.

    “Most of Latin America has had wildly interventionist and inflationist governments since at least the 1930’s – but the “mainstream” media (and academia) prefer to spread the legend of ultra free market policies leading to a society dominated by a few rich people with everyone else in terrible poverty…..”

    Economically, it’s mercantilism. Politically, it’s populism. Ecuador has scarcely known anything else. I have first hand experience of trying to set up a business in this country and finding myself sinking into the quicksand of a regulatory and bureacratic nightmare, oozing with corruption, bureaucratic delay and cronyism. Never again.

  • Further to my above comment, I should add that I’ve just skipped through Brian’s link to “Private Supply Of…Public Goods” and I’m not arguing against it- it was nice also to read in that a point I keep banging on about, which was that the Victorian State started mushrooming due to moral panic, as it still does today.

    My point was that the law itself has to be a hegemonic state institution. That is, where he rightly points out that the pre-Victorian private prosecution agencies did the job the police do today, they were nonetheless applying a single standard law, the English Common Law, which was itself supplied by the state; and it is that last part that I think reason tells us is unavoidable.

  • Ian, your basic premise that there has to be law is flawed, IMVHO. All there needs to be is mutual agreement. In fact, I would argue that even today, it is not the law that keeps the (relative) order we enjoy, but that same mutual agreement. People who don’t kill, steal and rape wouldn’t do it regardless. People who do, do it regardless as well.

  • Thank you for the links, Brian.

  • Alice

    Alisa argued against the utility of law, stating: “People who don’t kill, steal and rape wouldn’t do it regardless. People who do, do it regardless as well.”

    Alisa, let’s get off the David Cameron topic. 🙂

    More seriously, while you are undoubtedly right that internal morals are more important than external laws in ensuring a liveable society, there is still that pesky question — What do we do with all those murdering thieving rapists?

    It seems that is where law comes in. An agreed eye for an eye. Or these days, substantial monetary compensation for the Englishman who is interrupted while pursuing his right to break into another Englishman’s castle.

    The problem is that modern law has become twisted into a travesty. Surely this is a “mend it, not end it” situation for law?

  • Alice asks:

    What do we do with all those murdering thieving rapists?

    Well, obviously, the same things we are doing to them now (on those lucky occasion when the system is actually working), only probably more efficiently and with less corruption (but I repeat myself).

    An agreed eye for an eye.

    (emphasis mine) Exactly my point.

  • Paul Marks

    Isolated murderers or rapists are not a problem that Civil Society can not deal with (I repeat such things as the government police are quite recent in Britain – only about one and half centuries old in most of England and Wales) – if people are allowed to deal with them, if the government comes around (as it does in both Mexico and India) taking firearms away from ordinary people – then YES both rural and urban areas may be dominated by criminal gangs (who will, of course, not respect “gun control”).

    But that is because of government action – taking away the ability of ordinary people to defend themselves, and to defend other people.

    Even as I type this the evil people in the Whitehouse and Congress plot to “register” all private ownership of firearms in the United States, by international treaty via the United Nations. Once this would have been called “paranoid” – now they openly state their plans (as they do with international financial regulations, tax agreements and other world government things).

    There have always been evil people – but now they not only control such things as the government of the United States (the cynical would say they always had some influence in such things), and are so CONFIDENT that they feel they can speak about their desires and put them into concrete political steps (after all the “mainstream” media and the “education system” will not expose or oppose them).

    Yet WAR remains (the threat of invasion) and I do not believe that anarchocapitalism has an effective reply to this.

    So the question of Alice “how to you cage the beast” – how does one keep limited government limited.

    The pat reply is “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” a common saying when Edmund Burke was still a boy (who knows who first said it – I do not). And certainly the F.A. Hayek position (that liberty just emerges without it being the deliberate intention of people and exists out of habit – not constant struggle) is wrong – utterly wrong, absurdly wrong, contradicted by the history of humanity (in fact the Hayek position is in fact one of David Hume’s paradoxes – that human freedom comes from no free exercise of human powers and is not maintained by free will either because free will does not exist).

    Human freedom (setting limits upon government power) can only be achieved by constant effort (by sweat and tears if not blood) and can only be maintained by continual deliberate (purposeful) effort. Should a single generation lose interest in maintaining their freedom – then all may be lost (and has been – often in human history).

    But this does not mean that formal Constitutions can not help – it is quite true that the United States Constitition has been “interpreted” almost to death (almost – sometimes it still acts as a limit), but we now know (having the benefit of two centuries of experience) the lose wording at key points that have allowed vile people to do their vile work.

    There are actually only two areas of weakness – the words in the preamble to Article One Section Eight, the bit about the following powers being for the “common defence and general welfare” the words “general welfare” have allowed the men of power to pretend that there is a “general welfare spending power” allowing them to spend money (the money of other people) on anything they feel like – thus making a nonsense of the listing of specific things that the Congress can spend money on in Section Eight (and making a nonsense of the Tenth Amendment).

    Also there are the words “regulate interstate commerce” (also in Article One, Section Eight) if those words had been “there shall be free trade between the States” (which is what the Founders thought they were saying) then a lot of things would be very different – regardless of the ill intent of collectivists.

    Sorry but there is no substitute for being “paranoid” when dealing with a Constitution. One must write it ASSUMING that wicked people will try and twist every word to carry out their evil plans (a relaxed David Hume style attitude, an attitude that held for example that there was no constitutional difference, or no difference to be really interested in, between France and Britian in the 18th century is FATAL – TOTALLY FATAL).

    It is no accident that the Constitution of Alabama is the most hated Constitution in the United States (hated by the academics and other “enlightened” folk) – and it is not hated because it was written by racists (many Constitutions were written by racists).

    It is hated because it is paranoid – every detail is gone into with the basic attitutde that politicians, administrators (and so on) will try and increase the spending (and so on) of government without the active consent of the people of the State of Alabama.

    It assumes that politicians (and judges and so on) are corrupt, power obsessed, scumbags.

    And this is the correct assumption to make.

    One last point – of course judges should be elected and regularly up for reelection (in open ballots where anyone can challenge them).

    Or randomly selected JURIES should decide Constitutional cases.

    Remember lawyers are taught “case law” in the Constitutional law classes at Law School for the express purpose of leading them away from the principles of limited (let along minarchist or mininmal government).

    “Do not study the text or the intentions of those who wrote it – just read the words of lots of people centuries later”.

    That was the attitude (put into more blunt language by me, I admit, but his own language is too long winded) of the Dean of the Harvard Law School and others of his type.

    To sum up.

    Be armed, be active and be “paranoid” (for there always are people out to destroy your liberty).

    That is the only way a people can become free or stay free.

  • Paul Marks

    By the way, for the innocent minded, “registration” schemes for firearms are always the preperation for confiscation schemes.

    Either by direct confiscation – or by indirect “Nudge” (thank you Cas Susteen – sooner or later you will burn in Hell) methods.

    In the case of firearms thinking of such methods is not hard.

    “Do you have a proper gun cabinet”, “when was it last inspected”, “did you pay the inspection fee”, “did you fill in all the forms”…..

    And on and on and on.

    “Nudge” methods can be used to destoy liberty in any area (not just firearms) without people (who are not deeply “paranoid”) understanding what is happening.

    That is why I mentioned that C.S. will burn in Hell – if there is such a place.

  • Beaten to the punch – oh well. On the subject of law in anarchy I’m with Alisa and against Ian’s view as expressed here:

    “The whole anarcho-capitalist idea falls apart at that point, because without some hegemonic, collective imposition, nobody can agree what is and what is not against the law.”

    Ian’s argument makes a lot of sense if you consider the power structure of a minarchy or anarchy in hypothetical abstraction and pin it down with one or two empirical weights.

    But as Alisa says all there needs to be is mutual agreement – the fact that people may fail to do something is of itself no proof that it was something they actually could not have done. I still think most people are capable of reasoning their way to the ethical principles requisite for them to live together as free individuals both in respect of dispute resolution and a comparative lack of disputes in the first place.

    I think that how successfully a culture inculcates and perpetuates principles of right and wrong action would have to have far greater import for the survival of freedom than the institutional form in which those principles would be codified in law.

    However, everything Paul says about war is like a gunshot right behind someone straining to hear butterfly noises. I keep telling people here in Taiwan that the government in Taipei should rip out the island’s entire welfare system (which includes all of the Universities, the entire health “insurance” scam and much of the Army) and spend it on defence R&D and military procurement. I’d be happy to voluntarily pay more than what my company pays now in taxes and other nonsense for that.

  • But as Alisa says all there needs to be is mutual agreement

    And there’s your fundamental problem. Criminals aren’t going to give their mutual agreement. You cannot even hope to get everyone who seeks to be a “good” citizen’s agreement about what the law should precisely state. If you are to offer a “free market” in laws, you face an inevitable conflict between freedom of choice and coercion.

    As a hypothetical: imagine Anne and Bob have an argument in the pub, and Bob insults Anne and Anne slaps Bob. In Anne’s law insults are against the law, and she had the right to retaliate. In Bob’s law, insults are not against the law, and her slap is an unjustified aggression. Now what do you do?

    Take Bob’s side: he says she must now attend court and be punished (e.g. fined). Anne says that she has not broken her law, and will not attend. Now what can Bob do? He can demand they find an independent arbitrator and abide by their decision. Anne says no. She’s done nothing wrong. Sod off, Bob.

    Now Bob has to call a gang of thugs private protection agency to enforce his will. From his view, she is being arrested. From her view, she is being kidnapped. From his view, his court fines her for a crime. From her view, she’s being held against her will, and mugged.

    The simple fact is, at some point, somebody is going to have to coerce somebody else, regardless of what that person personally considers the law to be. You simply cannot get around this. An-caps tend to talk of protection agencies, as if there are some small number of “official” agencies to choose from. But the logic of the situation is that if you abide by principle, and have no coercive apparatus, anybody at any time can simply declare themself not subject to somebody else’s law (that is, be an “agency of one”) and at that point you either have to violate their right of self-determination or accept that “your” law isn’t going to be enforced at all (since it is always in the interests of the “criminal” to opt out). You simply cannot enforce “mutual agreement” without violating one principle or another.

    I deliberately chose a trivial crime btw because it’s more illustrative than something “everybody” is against, like murder or rape[1] but the same principle applies. The one person whose mutual agreement you will not get is the perpetrator.

    That is why legal systems have invariably been hegemomic- using some other force such as the state, religion, clan membership etc to impose their will upon potential criminals, with common declarations of what the laws are applied to all their subjects.


    [1] Both of which crimes have had significantly different statuses to the ones they have in the modern world in different times and places, as it goes.

  • Ian, two points:

    One is that you keep clinging to the premise of law, which precludes you from even considering my premise.

    The other is that you fail to make a distinction between criminals and regular people, and between crimes and civil disputes among regular people. Criminals aren’t giving their mutual agreement as things are now, and neither do they abide by the existing laws. So we are not talking about them: as I said to Alice, we punish people who kill, rape and steal pretty much the same way we do now. But these are the only things we punish, all the rest (including Bob and Barb and what’s-their-names) are civil disputes and can easily be handled through arbitration, formal or not.

  • Alice asks:

    What do we do with all those murdering thieving rapists?

    String ’em up. It’s the only language they understand.

    I ‘ad that George Monblot in the back of the cab once.

  • Then I don’t know what your premise is, Alisa. “Law” is simply that which defines what is criminal.

    How hard do I have to hit you before it stops being a civil matter and becomes a criminal matter? Why is grievous bodily harm merely a matter of “arbitration”? Who is to decide these boundaries and definitions?

  • How hard do I have to hit you before it stops being a civil matter and becomes a criminal matter?

    As hard as you can practically get away with (just like today), but it’s the wrong question anyway. The question should be are you and I in some kind of explicit or implicit agreement not to hit each other? Forget that – do we even know each other?

    Why is grievous bodily harm merely a matter of “arbitration”?

    Why not?

    Who is to decide these boundaries and definitions?

    Individuals. You present law as a means to overcome disagreements. It does not overcome them, it merely displaces them – a process which more often than not creates additional and totally unnecessary disagreements. The only way to overcome disagreements is voluntary, through – guess what? – mutual agreements. Which, of course, is not to say that all disagreements can be solved.

  • Alisa, you’re talking in generalities and aspirations. How do I form mutual agreements with the other 170,000 people in my town, or 60M in my country, or 6Bn in the world?

    I think one way to look at it is that we live in stranger societies. A tribe is made up of a group of acquaintances, closely related. They can settle matters by quite informal means (and often, like families today, have common property, common obligations). Then there is the semi-stranger society of the clan, which uses hegemonic clan systems to maintain order. “Law” is the same kind of system, the same system which at a small local level is “mutual” extended to vast societies of strangers, in which most interactions are between people with no prior knowledge of each other whatsoever.

    You simply can’t talk about mutual agreements at that scale, unless you want us all back in villages we hardly ever leave to avoid stranger societies existing.

    I need to know what the rules of conduct are for you, and everybody else in general, because I don’t know you before interacting. That’s why law has to be common. Whatever mutuality you may start with, it naturally evolves to the structure we call “law”.

  • Ian, you are looking for a solution to a non-existing problem. As I pointed out, we already live in a world where what I am suggesting have always worked (to various degrees*), and is, believe it or not, still working (albeit to a much smaller degree which is decreasing as we speak*): most law is superfluous to civil society. As Paul put it, people are not going around eating each other alive not thanks to law, but despite it. *While, at the same time, the more law there is, the less civil society and reliance on mutual agreements.

    I need to know what the rules of conduct are for you, and everybody else in general, because I don’t know you before interacting.

    Really? Are you really saying that the only reason you are not going to rob me and kill me the first time we meet only because it’s against the law?

  • Alisa, the primary cause of male death in primitive societies is murder. Even Moses had to spell out that it was against the law. Laws regarding personal and property rights arise in all cultures for the same reason.

    Crime is an act which only happens occasionally, and is only perpetrated by a few. If nobody wanted to engage in criminal acts, we would need no law. But it is that minority that ruins it for everybody else. You may as well be arguing against handrails, because most people don’t fall off staircases most of the time. It’s the few cases when they do that require the handrail.

  • Richard Garner

    Ian B writes

    A woman needs the law against rape to be used against potential rapists; it’s not an individual purchasing decision that her potential rapists can be allowed to opt in or out of. The whole anarcho-capitalist idea falls apart at that point, because without some hegemonic, collective imposition, nobody can agree what is and what is not against the law.

    The strawman here is the assumption that anarcho-capitalists want some sort of opt-out to a law against rape, so that a law against rape would not be imposed on rapists that do not want rape to be illegal. Anarcho-capitalists are perfectly happy forcing people to obey the law.

  • Richard, to me combination of ‘anarcho’ and ‘law’ is an oxymoron.

    Again, law is superfluous. People who are not rapists agree among themselves to do their best to prevent rapists from raping in the first place, and failing that – to prevent them from raping again. Same with murder and theft. They also agree on what they see as the best means towards that end. Law is the manipulation and ultimate co-opting of these voluntary mutual agreements between private individuals, by people who have absolutely no business in the matter..

  • The strawman here is the assumption that anarcho-capitalists want some sort of opt-out to a law against rape, so that a law against rape would not be imposed on rapists that do not want rape to be illegal. Anarcho-capitalists are perfectly happy forcing people to obey the law.

    You’re not quite addressing the point, Richard. I admit I used the phrase “opt out” as well, but the moral/ideological/philosophical question is, where do you get the right to opt others in to your law?

    Rape is probably a misleading example because we all (I would guess) would have a strong agreement on it at a gut level, which obscures the question of what is to be counted as illegal, on what basis.That is why I chose the more trivial assault of a slap in my initial example. Bob may desire slapping to be against his law, but on what basis can he opt Anne into his law?

    And to follow on to Alisa’s point: Alisa, you may consider murder theft and rape to be crimes against you. But (taking as read your obvious right to try to avoid them), presume a crime (in your opinion) has been committed against you. Where do you get your justification “to prevent them from raping again.” Are you taking it upon yourself to be judge, jailer and executioner? Where did you get that right from? Force of arms alone? Your own moral certainty?

    Suppose I steal your lawnmower. What actions are you entitled to take against me? Whatever action you wish, up to execution or torture to death? Who decides?

    These are the fundamental issues.

  • A very good question Ian. Answer: I don’t assign any moral significance to the concept of ‘crime’ – IOW, the word ‘crime’ is no even in my vocabulary for the purpose of this discussion, neither are words such as ‘just’ or ‘right’. In this context* I don’t consider rape, theft or murder as crimes, I consider them as acts highly undesirable from my perspective. Luckily for me, AFAIK most people feel the same way from their own perspectives (i.e., they don’t want to be raped, robbed or murdered either). This means we can cooperate. People who are not willing to cooperate are enemies and are therefore “fair game”.

    *There is another context, namely that of personal morals. But it is not a premise in this discussion, precisely because it is personal and therefore subjective.

  • Here in Ecuador there are villages – you hear them called “communities”, and their inhabitants, “indigenous peoples” – who when the abominable new Constitution was framed, got to opt out of the Law of the Land, and instead were awarded the right to continue carrying out “traditional” “native justice”. This usually consists of a smallish crowd of village worthies, mostly old women, decreeing that a presumed thief should be stripped, beaten with nettles and/or canes, and have icy water intermittently thrown over him (it is usually, though not always, a him). Occasionally someone is tied to a stake and has his feet burned to goo, or is made to lug a sack of rocks up a hill. This evening on the Early Evening News we were treated to an item about a man who lived with his wife and a girlfriend, quite peaceably, but, apparently, in violation of “village customs” (which decreed that you should only have one wife, not two). Both the man and his two wives were beaten, icy-watered, then made to walk a few miles in their birthday suits (I’m assuming this because of the telltale pixelation) carrying sacks of rocks.

    It strikes me, Alisa, that what you say here:

    I consider [a supposed crime or immoral act] as acts highly undesirable from my perspective. Luckily for me, AFAIK most people feel the same way from their own perspectives […]. This means we can cooperate. People who are not willing to cooperate are enemies and are therefore “fair game”.

    is precisely what those villagers would say. They have agreed to cooperate in enforcing their idea of what is “undesirable”. It also strikes me that punishing people for having two wives is not very libertarian. Or even very nice, really.

  • Nuke Minarcapo Gray

    Alisa, sometimes personal morals can be communal standards, as in the Golden Rule- deal with all other people as you would like to be treated. Isn’t it a libertarian idea that it is wrong to deal with others in ways they don’t like? I think a good definition of ‘Evil’ is someone who treats others as being below him (or her). Mafiosos demand more respect from you then they grant to you. Is there any other standard of evil?
    Whilst a crime would just be a breaking of a law (and some laws can be bad or stupid- let’s not forget those civil servants who let a woman die whilst waiting for the ‘right’ equipment in Scotland, a few weeks back), an evil reduces someone else’s life, or quality of life.
    P.S. I label myself a Minarcho-Capitalist, since I think we should still have minimal local counties run on democratic principles to own and maintain public roads and parks. I have a foot in both camps.

  • “Where do you get your justification “to prevent them from raping again.” Are you taking it upon yourself to be judge, jailer and executioner? Where did you get that right from? Force of arms alone? Your own moral certainty?”

    My own answer to that question would be simply yes – my own moral certainty. Force of arms is only relevant in so far as it gives me a greater choice of action, but what I would have to bear in mind in acting against a thief or rapist or … a slapper… would be the nature of the context in which it occurred and the possible consequences. If I got slapped by a woman in a pub, I’m not going to be reaching for a weapon for god’s sake. If someone broke into my apartment and say, raped my girlfriend or beat my dog, then they’d have another thing coming.

  • Endivio: yes. In SA Arabia they chop off thiefs’ hands, in other places female “adulterers’ are publicly flogged. Some people are evil/stupid, and make mutual agreements based on their evilness/stupidity (let’s pretend for a second that in SA etc. it is all based on mutual agreements, because as far as I understand the public is mostly happy with these arrangements). What else is new?

    Nuke: sure.

  • Endivio, I now see where the misunderstanding may be lying: you seem to think that I am arguing from a libertarian POV, but if you read the thread, you’ll see that I am not – I am arguing from an anarchist one.

  • And as I concluded in my Cats post linked in earlier comment, anarchism and libertarianism are actually incompatible, which puts the kibosh on the common idea from anarcho-capitalists that anarchism is the logical conclusion of libertarianism.

    A libertarian seeks the maximum individual liberty. That is, the greatest exercise of their negative rights. Anarchism does not actually achieve that; in fact it has nothing to say about liberty. The only result it produces is absence of a State (with the State generally narrowly defined in a western-institutional form), but then has nothing to offer as regards the degree of (negative) liberty in the resultant society; except that in the anarcho-capitalist form it attempts to prove that all the harmful effects of the (abolished) State (coercion, violence, abritrary (private) “law”) will be provided by the private sector/mutual arrangements.

    Or another way of putting it, is an anarcho-capitalist happily watches one tribe massacaring another, and applauds, simply because the massacre has not been perpetrated by a Prussian-model State.

    My conclusion in the article was that one must choose either anarchy or liberty. I choose liberty, and am thus a libertarian.

  • an anarcho-capitalist happily watches one tribe massacaring another, and applauds, simply because the massacre has not been perpetrated by a Prussian-model State.

    And what exactly does a libertarian do in such a case?

  • Not to mention the obvious point that the anarchist is perfectly free to support one tribe over the other if he wishes to do so.

  • We us our police force to arrest the attacking tribe, then we punish the bastards. Because a minarchy has hegemonic force to do so. If we can.

    If we can’t stop it, at least we don’t pretend it was a Good Thing on ideological grounds.

  • I don’t pretend it was a good thing on ideological grounds – straw man (but what else is new).

    So how is your libertarian action different from my anarchist one in this particular case?

  • Because the action is behaving in a territorially defined state with a law against murder. In an anarchy, it’s just down to strongest gang wins. You can see this working in any mafia setup, tribal situation etc. Very high murder rate. Very high indeed.

    I didn’t say that you, personally, think it a good thing on ideological grounds. I was referring to my general logical argument, which shows that anarchism legitimises such situations. You probably need to read the full argument over on Cats.

  • But anyway, we’re already drifting off the point again, which is that if you want anarchy, fine. Go ahead. But it isn’t liberty. They are demonstrably different, and incompatible, outcomes to seek. You have to choose which of the two you prefer.

  • In an anarchy, it’s just down to strongest gang wins.

    So it is in libertarianism or in any other system. If your minarchist state is not strong enough, it can do precious little to enforce it’s law.

    But anyway, we’re already drifting off the point again

    I don’t think so: the original post was on Stephen Davies’ talk. Oh, you mean we are drifting off your point again…

  • I didn’t say that you, personally, think it a good thing on ideological grounds. I was referring to my general logical argument, which shows that anarchism legitimises such situations.

    Right. I was doing the same, and only used myself as an example that it does not, at least not necessarily. So still a strawman.

  • “Or another way of putting it, is an anarcho-capitalist happily watches one tribe massacaring another, and applauds, simply because the massacre has not been perpetrated by a Prussian-model State.”

    Or still another way of putting it:

    The ancap decides to do whatever he can to stop it on no other authority than his own, whereas the libertarian sits around waiting for his government to do something about it for him quite irrespective of those who may happen to disagree with this use of their stolen productivity. Of course only the libertarian gets to be all bean-countery smug about “greater liberty”.

  • But now you’re back to the problem of how you justify intervening. Now you’re going to use force against somebody else to impose your will on them. That’s what I mean, you can’t get a consistent picture. All you can say is that it’s a rule of force, which is fair enough if you want that, but it’s precisely what liberal thought has always been trying to get rid of. You’ve thrown away liberty, you’ve thrown away declared “natural” rights, and all you’re left with is, “you can hit them back if you’re hard enough”. Well, we knew that already thanks. The whole problem for liberalism is the person who isn’t strong enough to fight back.

    It just isn’t libertarian or classical liberal or anything else like that. It’s just a system of unrestrained superior force, which was the whole problem that liberal thought set out to reduce/eliminate!

    You may think I stole your cow and thus have the right to summarily kill me. That’s why I demand that you be forced to prove that I stole your cow in a fair court of law and that there be a hegemonic agreement in place that cows are property and thus that “theft” exists, and then agreed compensatory or punishment systems. We need shared definitions and we need shared procedures. Which is why laws exist. Without that, everyone can choose the law for themself, and you can take it upon yourself to kill me because I knocked your pint over or looked at your girlfriend in a funny way. I accept that you may prefer that, but I don’t, because my primary interest is liberty, which is by (at least my) definition the maintenance of negative rights.

  • “You’ve thrown away liberty, you’ve thrown away declared “natural” rights, and all you’re left with is, “you can hit them back if you’re hard enough”. Well, we knew that already thanks. The whole problem for liberalism is the person who isn’t strong enough to fight back.”

    I haven’t thrown away anything – not even my patience with you (yet). If you aren’t strong enough to fight back yourself, then you’ll have to trust in the vigilance of good people who can fight back to intervene freely on your behalf – as per my re-working of your example (and as I recall your possibly misguided example elsewhere of yourself on the Underground).

    At the end of the day, your State essentially requires those same good and capable people to fight back on behalf of the weak. Except other people get forced into paying for them.

  • Alice

    “If you aren’t strong enough to fight back yourself, then you’ll have to trust in the vigilance of good people who can fight back to intervene freely on your behalf”

    The sometimes necessity for collective action. The Achilles Heel of anarcho-capitalism. The mad aunt in the attic of libertarianism.

    One thing is clear from this discussion — there is no point in pretending that the problem of necessary collective action does not exist. Solve this problem, and it may be possible for anarcho-classical liberalism finally to gain broader acceptance in the world of common sense folks.

  • Don’t ignore the point mike. We can all lose patience. You have thrown away something. You’ve thrown away the natural rights and the liberty. That’s inescapable. You’ve given up libertarianism in the dogmatic pursuit of the single issue of anti-statism. You have a choice between property rights, or “you may keep whatever property you are strong enough to capture and subsequently defend”. Choose.

    As I keep saying, if you want that second one, fine. But it’s not liberty.

  • “You’ve thrown away the natural rights and the liberty. That’s inescapable.”

    Nonsense. Natural rights and their consequent natural law are simply the ideas necessary for individuals to live together freely in society and as such do not depend on the presence or absence of a State. Look: whether or not there is a government to punish thieves, and whether or not a thief goes unpunished, theft will always naturally be a crime against the free individual. Abolishing the monopoly over the terms of legal proceedings does not equate to abolishing natural crimes against the free individual. Natural rights, unlike the variability of human culture on whose general recognition their enforcement depends, just are what they are and are not subject to any man’s opinion at any time. They may be ignored or their implications left unattended and unenforced, but that doesn’t alter what they are.

    Your argument that shopping around for different kinds of law is daft because people disagree about what is right and wrong is a very good one up to a point. But what are we talking about here*? Murder, theft, rape, arson, assault, fraud etc are obvious wrongs that are generally only accepted as legitimate acts by a minority of sociopaths, mislead simpletons, Islamic Jihadis and Newcastle supporters. That such acts must be punished occurs to most people quite naturally because they can immediately recognize the implications for their own lives.

    So would there really be much variety in any market for law, given that (a) the single largest cause of conflict – the power of the State – would have been removed, (b) the sociopaths will always be a minority and (c) the prohibitions of natural law, even now three hundred and eleven years after Locke’s “Two Treatises”, are still obvious to most people…?

    On the collective threat of a belligerent State: the threat must be met with force of arms and this must be paid for somehow. But again, this is obvious to most people and those who would not contribute somehow to the general defence would be ostracized surely? In Taiwan, worry about the military threat from China is very common and popular support for military defence is widespread. I personally would happily contribute more to the Air Force and Navy than what is currently taken from my company in taxes and other associated costs. It isn’t necessary to force me to do this, and I doubt it is necessary to force most Taiwanese to do this either. Tomorrow me and my girlfriend will, along with probably hundreds of other people, be going to a public show of one of the Navy’s La Fayette frigates they bought from the French.

    On the collective threat of contagious disease: forced inoculation really ought not to be necessary in a rational culture but if it is, it is surely justified on self-defence grounds. Given that biological infection can be objectively demonstrated, I don’t see that issue bringing about the chaos of civil war or the collapse of an An-Cap society.

    It’s not simply the abolition of the State that is the issue here for me, so you can put the “dogmatism” away. The issue is just as much the anti-individualist ethics and anti-rational mentality inculcated in the culture – this is what makes the State possible and this is what the State itself facilitates in symbiosis. You know this.

    Could I put up with living under your Minarchist Utopia? Absolutely yes – at least for as long as the people were vigilant enough to prevent its’ infiltration by sociopathic puritans. And that is where you have the same problem as me – you need good people who agree about the fundamentals of right and wrong just as I do. Demanding a monopoly to enforce these fundamentals indicates, understandably to be sure given the weight of human history, a lack of confidence in the intelligence and basic goodness of other people.

    I understand why your position makes a lot of sense because I can easily imagine the possible dangers of an An-Cap society. I could even concede that yours may well be the most likely to provide the greater liberty, but I just don’t think that it necessarily is.

    *I think that argument becomes more interesting when you consider less unambiguous acts like say, adultery.

  • Alice, there is absolutely no such problem. Individualism by no means precludes collective action, as long as it is voluntary.

  • Alice

    Alisa – if collective action has to be voluntary, then it will some day fall short. Especially when a purely voluntary society comes nose to nose with a more organized collective action state.

    We can look back into human history, when the State was only a shadow of the intrusive organization it is today. Choose almost anywhere on the face of the planet, and that history is fairly bloody. Libertarians are just as likely as pacifists to find themselves roadkill on the highway of history.

    There is sometimes a need for collective action to make individual liberty possible in the real world. I don’t have an answer to how we square that circle. The discussion above suggests that even people who have thought long and hard about it don’t have an answer either. That may be why most citizens regard libertianism as a vaguely amusing crackpot theory.

    It’s time for libertarians to fix that problem.

  • Alisa – if collective action has to be voluntary, then it will some day fall short. Especially when a purely voluntary society comes nose to nose with a more organized collective action state.

    Alice: you take it as a given that a voluntary collective action must be less organized than a coercive one, and I don’t see why.

  • Alice

    Alisa – Just look at history. Both World War I and the American Civil War could be considered existential struggles. Both started off with at least one side having purely voluntary service. Both ended with all participants having conscription.

    It is at least arguable that, if one partipant had continued to rely on purely voluntary service, that participant would have been defeated. The nature of that defeated society would have been changed drastically.

    The paradox of the occasional necessity for collective action to preserve individual liberty — it is real.

  • Alice, the ‘alternative history’ dilemma aside, you keep conflating collective action with a compulsory one – the two are different and separate.

  • Alice

    Well, Alisa, how did President Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” work out?

    I agree with you there could be a society in which collective action is not compulsory. I also think there could be a true pacifist society. I just don’t think that either of those societies would last very long in the real world.

  • I absolutely agree about a pacifist society. As to a non-compulsory one, I already know that you think that – would you care to support this assertion with an actual argument?:-)

    What does Bush’s anything have to do with, well, anything?

  • Richard Garner

    Ian B asks

    You’re not quite addressing the point, Richard. I admit I used the phrase “opt out” as well, but the moral/ideological/philosophical question is, where do you get the right to opt others in to your law?

    The same place that your minimal state does, presumably. I honestly don’t see what difference you think there is. Under your minimal state, a group of people, using simply their own moral certainty, force legal judgements on others. If there is something wrong with doing that, then say so. If there is not, then why object to it happening under anarchy.

    One difference, of course, is that the person I suspect of being a rapist may hire his own police force to protect him against arrest or punishment by me, or my police force, so, if I wanted to avoid conflict with him, we would have to reach a mutually agreeable settlement on some third party arbiter. I could choose not to avoid punishment and simply seek to crush him by force of arms (also you could ask why the court would have to be mutually agreeable, or why I couldn’t just force him into the court of my preference. The answer is that if I could do that, then I could force my punishment on him without needing to bother with the court in the first place), thereby imposing my views on him. Would I be presumptuous, though, in suspecting that you don’t necessarily have a problem with that? After all, I doubt you would ask a rapist’s permission to be bound by laws against rape.

  • Laird

    “Look: whether or not there is a government to punish thieves, and whether or not a thief goes unpunished, theft will always naturally be a crime against the free individual. . . . Natural rights, unlike the variability of human culture on whose general recognition their enforcement depends, just are what they are and are not subject to any man’s opinion at any time.”

    Nonsense on stilts. The whole anarcho-capitalist argument rests on the presumption that there exists some universally-accepted body of “natural” laws and “natural” rights. And that’s just wrong. Any “crime” you can name was not considered a crime in some society, at some time, somewhere. Murder? Try human sacrifice. Rape? Regularly practiced as the right of the the victors in ancient warfare. Slavery? Ditto (as well as the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants who happened to be on the wrong side of the city walls). Theft? No such thing if you’re a serf, and you and all your possessions are the property of your master. No “crimes” here.

    The argument that somehow a just and free society could arise absent some overarching body of universally applicable laws is simply wishful thinking. It has never happened in the long span of human history, and never will as long as humans remain what they are. And the fact that such laws don’t affect most of us in most of our daily activities is no argument against them; laws (good ones, anyway) by their very nature apply only at the margins. Which, of course, is precisely where they are needed.

    Anarcho-capitalism is premised on tautology. Ian B has expressed that well; it’s just that some of you are so invested in your argument that you won’t listen.

  • Laird, unlike Mike, I do not believe in natural rights, neither do I believe that “somehow a just and free society could arise”, because the word ‘just’ doesn’t even make sense outside of the subjective view of an individual. The only thing I believe is that ‘absent some overarching body of universally applicable laws’ a society has a chance at being freer than otherwise, that’s all. In other words, I entertain none of the illusions people like to ascribe to anarcho-capitalists.

  • Richard Garner

    Laird writes,

    The whole anarcho-capitalist argument rests on the presumption that there exists some universally-accepted body of “natural” laws and “natural” rights.

    Do you have any citations or references for this? I only ask because I can’t think of a single anarcho-capitalist writer who has said that the laws that protection agencies enforce should be “universally accepted.” Speaking personally, I don’t care whether or not rapists think that forcing unwilling people to have sex with them should not be illegal – I am happy to see them punished for such actions regardless of whether or not they accept laws against them.

  • Laird

    Richard, you just don’t get it, do you? I can see why Ian B gave up. Every argument you’ve made here has been premised on there being some sort of universally-applicable “law”; you just refuse to call it that, and instead insist that people should be punished for their actions if you think they’re wrong. Forget that in many other times and places and circumstances other human beings every bit as intelligent as you and me didn’t consider those actions “wrong”; Richard Garner is now the supreme arbiter. You “know” what is right and wrong with certitude and universal applicability, and you feel justified in forcing your code upon everybody else. Well, the only difference between that and an actual body of “laws” is that in the latter case the rest of us have the opportunity to participate in the collective decision about what is considered a crime and what is not (as well as determining such ancillary things as the rules of evidence and the appropriate punishment for transgressions). But that’s not good enough for you: you want to be legislator, judge, jury and executioner. I don’t like your world.

    Let’s make this really simple. I live in the United States, and over here we drive on the right side of the road. There’s nothing inherently morally superior about driving on the right versus the left; it’s just what we have decided to do. If you come over here from England, and choose to continue driving on the left, you will be commiting a crime and will be arrested. I have no interest in your arguments that left-side driving is somehow superior, and I won’t negotiate with you about it or seek your consent. You’ll drive on the right or we’ll use the force of the state to put you in jail. End of discussion. We couldn’t do that in your stateless, anarcho-capitalistic society, because you would insist on your supposed “right” to individually negotiate highway rules with every other driver.* And the end result would be heartache of one sort or another, the best being the forcible imposition of the rules on you by collective action of the rest of us. Which, from your perspective, would be no different than actual laws, except that it’s much less efficient, predictable or fairly applied.

    I don’t care if you call them “natural laws”, “natural rights”, or something else entirely. They’re the functional equivalent of “laws”, and if you claim the right to require everyone else to observe them or face consequences you have implicitly decreed that they have universal applicability. Whether or not someone else “accepts” them, by your own statements you have claimed the right to impose them on him by force.

    I don’t much like the state, either, but I prefer a formal albeit minimal government to your rule of force. In that I agree with James Madison: “It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”

    * I know; you’ll argue that your negotiation would be with the owner of the road, not the other drivers. But even in your stateless society not every road would be privately owned; historically most roads were common rights-of-way, even when private turnpikes existed. That wouldn’t change.

  • Laird

    “The only thing I believe is that ‘absent some overarching body of universally applicable laws’ a society has a chance at being freer than otherwise, that’s all.”

    Not a chance in the world, Alisa. The entire history of the human race is a series of chiefs, warlords, strongmen, kings, priests, bosses, etc., asserting power over their brethren. I don’t care how “free” your ideal stateless society may start out, in short order it will devolve into a heirarchical power structure and competing clans. If you choose to live among other humans you’ll never be totally “free”. The best you can hope for is a structure which is flexible enough to allow you a reasonable amount of freedom yet sturdy enough to give you some protection from the depredations of your neighbors. We call that “government”.

  • Lot’s of (unintentional?) strawmen Laird – got lots of work, so later.

  • Richard Garner

    Laird,

    Every argument you’ve made here has been premised on there being some sort of universally-applicable “law”; you just refuse to call it that, and instead insist that people should be punished for their actions if you think they’re wrong. Forget that in many other times and places and circumstances other human beings every bit as intelligent as you and me didn’t consider those actions “wrong”; Richard Garner is now the supreme arbiter.

    Yes, every argument I have made is premised on there being “some universally applicable law.” So what? Where have I denied any such thing? And, yes, you are correct that this simply means me forcing my views on others. So what? that is what law is, isn’t it? Unless you are saying that everybody ought to universally agree to be bound by any law before that law can be enforced against them (would failure to do so be a crime? Under what laws?) then you are left with one bunch of people forcing others to accept their laws, with person A punishing person B for doing what is illegal under what person A thinks the law should be.

  • Well, the only difference between that and an actual body of “laws” is that in the latter case the rest of us have the opportunity to participate in the collective decision about what is considered a crime and what is not (as well as determining such ancillary things as the rules of evidence and the appropriate punishment for transgressions).

    You can still do that. The only real difference is that if you don’t, you are not forced to finance this “law enforcement” and are basically left alone, provided you are not bothering anyone.

    But that’s not good enough for you: you want to be legislator, judge, jury and executioner.

    Said who?

    I don’t like your world.

    Well, like I said: you can opt out.

    Let’s make this really simple. I live in the United States, and over here we drive on the right side of the road. There’s nothing inherently morally superior about driving on the right versus the left; it’s just what we have decided to do. If you come over here from England, and choose to continue driving on the left, you will be committing a crime and will be arrested. I have no interest in your arguments that left-side driving is somehow superior, and I won’t negotiate with you about it or seek your consent. You’ll drive on the right or we’ll use the force of the state to put you in jail. End of discussion. We couldn’t do that in your stateless, anarcho-capitalistic society, because you would insist on your supposed “right” to individually negotiate highway rules with every other driver.

    Again, said who? Why would the situation be any different from what it is now, even if both the US and the UK (or only one of them) were anarcho-capitalist?

    I don’t care if you call them “natural laws”, “natural rights”, or something else entirely. They’re the functional equivalent of “laws”, and if you claim the right to require everyone else to observe them or face consequences you have implicitly decreed that they have universal applicability. Whether or not someone else “accepts” them, by your own statements you have claimed the right to impose them on him by force.

    I cannot speak for Richard, but personally I don’t believe in rights and laws, natural or otherwise. I only believe in my personal preferences (like being alive and left alone). All I’m trying to do is seek out, socialize and cooperate with people who’s preferences are similar to mine, and to stay clear of all others. I have no problem with those others, as long as they leave me alone.

    If you choose to live among other humans you’ll never be totally “free”.

    Of course not, and neither do I want to be totally free. It’s just that I want more control over my freedoms and unfreedoms.

    The best you can hope for is a structure which is flexible enough to allow you a reasonable amount of freedom yet sturdy enough to give you some protection from the depredations of your neighbors.

    Absolutely.

    We call that “government

    . I prefer cooperation with like-minded individuals.

  • “The whole anarcho-capitalist argument rests on the presumption that there exists some universally-accepted body of “natural” laws and “natural” rights. And that’s just wrong.”

    Laird – you quoted me saying that the truth of natural rights did not depend on any man’s opinion and then – in the same breath – you attributed to me precisely the contrary view.

    And then further down in the same comment we are treated to this:

    “…some of you are so invested in your argument that you won’t listen.”

    I laughed, but it’s not that funny really is it?