Samizdata

The problem I see with the libertarian pro-war position is that libertarians don’t have recourse to the most powerful argument for the war: that it made the world a better place. Non-libertarians can yammer on about freeing poor Iraqis who were crushed under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, and that’s definitely a benefit. But Libertarians don’t believe it is OK to steal money via taxes and spend it on other people. Hence they can’t use this argument.
– Patri Friedman

There has been a lively discussion in the comments section of Johnathan Pearce’s article here on Samizdata.net When libertarians disagree. It has thrown up so many interesting points that I felt a new article on the issues might be a good idea. It is pleasure to see so much intelligent discussion of strongly held views without the acrimony and name-calling that so often characterises debate on the internet.

We have a problem that the label ‘libertarian’ sometimes it does not really inform as to what a person thinks, something which September 11th 2001 brought starkly into view, and I am not just referring to the more absurd uses of the term. For example a frequent commenter here on Samizdata.net, Paul Coulam, is a prominent libertarian and anarchist, well known in pro-liberty circles in London. He is also a friend of mine and has been known to get plastered at Samizdata.net blogger bashes. I too am fairly well known in the same circles and describe myself as a ‘minarchist’, or social individualist or ‘classical liberal’ or a… libertarian. I see Paul as a ‘fellow traveller’ of mine but clearly we have fairly major disagreements of where we would like to end up. We just agree on the direction we need to move from where we are now. I regard the state as probably indispensable, albeit a vastly smaller state than we have now, whereas Paul sees no state as the final destination.

In my view the minarchist ‘classical liberal’ view to which I subscribe means the only legitimate state functions which can be funded via some form of coercive taxation are those which can only realistically be carried out by a state, and which are essential to the survival of several liberty. The military seems a fairly clear cut example of that to me (with the proviso I would like to see the state military as only ‘first amongst many’) and possibly a very limited number of other roles, such as (maybe) a centre for disease control function to prevent plagues, and some form of superior court function.

So once you get over that core issue of small state or no state (no small feat), the rest is arguing over magnitude (also not a trivial issue), rather that whether or not you even have a military funded by some form of coercive action: that also means ‘how you use that miltary’ is an argument over degree rather than existence. In short I see the difference between a ‘libertarian’ (or whatever) of my non-anarchist ilk, and sundry types of non-libertarian statist as being one of the degree to which the state is allowed to accumulate coercive power. → Continue reading: Making the world a better place?

The case of Gayle Laverne Grinds highlights one of the most important issues of our time.

I wonder how many adverts for fatty, calorie-laden food this woman viewed during the six years she spent on the sofa in front of the television. I suppose the free marketeers would claim that exposure to these commercials had no bearing on the foods this woman consumed during her six years on the couch, and that she had the “personal responsibility” to choose not to eat them and to choose not to soil herself every day. But public health experts predict that by 2010, one person in three will die this way, and that 72 per cent of all schoolchildren will be one with sofas of their own. With increased funding for public education on the dangers of sofas and junk food, those rates could be substantially reduced. As it is, the government departments in charge of such education are criminally underfunded – and still the right-wingers and libertarians cheer on as tax cuts for the wealthy kill us and kill our kids.

The real question is this: How many innocent people have to die after spending six years on the sofa, eating unhealthy food, defecating and sitting in a mound of their own filth before we put big business in its place and tell these fast food and junk food companies that they cannot continue to run roughshod over the public?

The thing I find most unsatisfactory about the debate over gay marriage is the widespread misunderstanding about the law as it is presently configured.

Of course, I cannot speak about the law in other countries but here in Britain same-sex marriage is not illegal it is void. There is a world of difference in those two positions.

Allow me to explain. If two men (or two women) in the UK decide that they wish to wed then they are perfectly free to engage in any type of marriage ceremony they desire accompanied by confetti, bridesmaids and any number of drunken, embarrassing relatives reeling around the dancefloor while the band plays ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree’.

Nobody is going to a lift a finger to stop them nor will they ever be subjected to any form of official censure or arrest or prosecution. However, the state will not issue a licence for that marriage and, as far as the law is concerned, there was no marriage. It never happened, it does not exist and the participants remain as two single people. → Continue reading: Markets are a many splendid (and unsplendid) thing

My last posting has provoked a storm of comment, which I hope relfects the controversy of the issue and not any inflammatory tone on my part. I tend to let the commentators discuss the issue, because frankly they do a very good job!

However, adam raises a very interesting point:

Isn’t this kind of argument fallacious, as you’re assuming the phrase “assumed consent” has the same moral status in all circumstances?

Compare with other phrases, eg “killed”. “I killed him cause he got in my way” – moral status = bad. But, “I killed the rabid dog because otherwise it would have eaten those poor babies” – moral status = good.

Now this could invalidate my argument if I had used euthanasia as an example of ‘presumed consent’, because then the motive for killing becomes central.

However, I was pointing out that someone having sexual intercourse with a minor or a person with diminished mental faculties would want to defend himself of herself of the charge of ‘rape’ by claiming ‘presumed consent’.

The point is that sexual intercourse is not a criminal offence, despite the attempts of puritans of both Left and Right to make it so. Therefore it is the question of consent that is central, and whether a person’s inability to give consent allows other people to take decisions for them. Because minors and persons with diminished mental faculties are generally unable to give their consent, we have a presumption that consent is not given in such cases, hence the notion of ‘statutory rape’.

The main moral issue about statutory rape is that an age of consent will not protect some immature adults whilst unreasonably assuming a lack of moral faculties for fast-devlopers.

To blur the distinction between a crime based on the lack of consent (rape) and an abhorrence of sex to create the concept of (sex crime) is something straight out of Orwell’s nineteen eighty four.

I find it fascinating that a commentator should jump from sex to murder. One is a crime. The other is not.

I always knew there was something fishy about the Spectator. My suspicions were confirmed by the article which surfaced for air last week (but which I have only just got around to reading).

The author is very troubled by the apparently catastrophic collapse in fish stocks:

In a single human lifetime we have inflicted a crisis on the oceans, comparable to what Stone Age man did to the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, what 19th-century Americans did to the bison and the passenger pigeon, what 20th-century British and Norwegians did to the great whales, and what people in this century are doing to rainforests and bushmeat. This crisis is caused by overfishing.

The emotionally overdone analogies (integral to any discussion concerning wildlife or the environment it seems) could well tempt me into dismissing his entire thesis. But that would prevent me from making what I regard as a more important point so, for now at least, I am willing to play along with the proposition that fish stocks are, indeed, under some degree of threat. In any event, I have no evidence to the contrary.

But at this point the author of the article and I part company, as the former goes on to lay the blame for impending eco-disaster on the proliferation of celebrity chefs with their apparently insatible appetites for exotic fish dishes. A conclusion so absurd as to be almost worthy of satire.

In common with every other ‘opinion former’, the author draws on what he regards as an unarguably correct and obvious equation: if some species of fish are dying out it can only be because we greedy, selfish humans are eating too many of them. Not once does it seem to occur to the author that if that equation were true then we surely would have chomped cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens into extinction long ago.

The dwindling numbers of marine animals is a ‘tragedy of the commons’ arising from the fact that the high seas are insufficiently owned. Apart from some nationalised coastal waters, fishermen are pretty much at liberty to trawl for as much fish as they can lay their hands on anywhere they please, anyhow they please and as often as they like. There is simply nothing to stop them.

In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that they fail to husband or manage the species they live off. There is no incentive for them to do so. However, if stretches of sea were owned in the same way as land is owned then not only would the owners be able to bar trespassers but (as with land farmers) they would have an commercial incentive to find ways to breed as much edible marine life as possible for human consumption and resultant profit. Hence the countless millions of farm animals in the world despite the prodigious rate at which we humans kill and eat them.

Until such times as the oceans are parcelled up into ‘watersteads’, stocks of marine animals will continue to decline. If you want to save the seas from becoming a watery grave, privatise them now.