Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Our Lord said, “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Mt 12:16) And, clarifying what he meant, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Mk 9:35) Are the rich people who are successful businessmen and entrepreneurs first on this earth or last? A naive answer is that they are first, and that’s true, but only if we mean first in achievement or impact they made on the world. But in another sense they are clearly last, because they have created and are continuing to create much value for the consumers, while themselves refraining from spending all of their cash. They are humble servants of the public, but they themselves do not avail themselves of the fruits of social cooperation to the greatest possible extent, e.g., by dying broke. One doesn’t eat dollar bills. Normally, their money goes to finance productive activities, pay wages, and create goods for the consumers, which the businessmen themselves do not bid away from the less prosperous, thereby keeping prices low. To repeat the Mises quote found here, “the clerks and workers who boast of their moral superiority deceive themselves and find consolation in this self-deception. They do not admit that they have been tried and found wanting by their fellow citizens, the consumers.” (Human Action, 314)

Thus, those who have served their fellow man by taking an active part in building a civilization while themselves being at least somewhat ascetic should be glorified here and will for sure be glorified in the hereafter.

It may be true that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mt 19:24) But the same holds for smart people, gifted people, great artists, political leaders, etc. As Aquinas writes, “Science and anything else conducive to greatness, is to man an occasion of self-confidence, so that he does not wholly surrender himself to God. The result is that such like things sometimes occasion a hindrance to devotion; while in simple souls and women devotion abounds by repressing pride. If, however, a man perfectly submits to God his science or any other perfection, by this very fact his devotion is increased.” (ST, II-II, 82, 3, ad 3)

Entrepreneurial foresight and cunning are perfections; insofar as a person who has become rich has not spent all the profits of his company on himself but, for example, plowed them back into other businesses and finally contributed to philanthropic causes, he has not received his reward in full and is due for a reward from the Father (Mt 6:2-4).

If we look at my 3, we will see that a human being is a combination of essence, accidents, and subjective well-being or happiness. These correspond to his powers, habits, and acts. A distinctive ethics can be built by looking at any of these three things. If we choose to look at happiness/acts, we will come up with a 4-sided ethical theory, consisting of (1-2) rule utilitarianism and (3-4) what I have tentatively decided to call “artistic integrity.” (I have yet to work out the latter half.) But we can examine human powers in isolation from their purpose, namely virtuous acts. If we do that, we will arrive at something very close to the Rothbardian natural law ethics. I will try to show how.

In examining human powers we are struck first and foremost by the primordial fact of one’s control over one’s body. I write that “the soul commands the body as a crane operator commands his machine, infallibly; while a human master commands his human slave through mere incentives of fear and reward.” In fact, in order for a master to control his slave, he, the master, has to control his own body first, because only through it can he influence the slave. Moreover, in order to execute the master’s command, the slave, too, has to control his own body! Now a master-slave ethics is not universalizable: it divides humanity into two arbitrary groups: those who control others and those who obey. Whatever it is, it is not an ethic for man as man.

(At this point we may ask, Why is this control a good thing? And answer, Because it allows one to tend to his needs, satisfy his desires. But this would be going away from the analysis of powers and into the ethics based on happiness/acts. So, we won’t be doing it here.)

If my body is being handled or attacked by another, then I am being used as a tool or an inanimate object, while the aggressor retains his humanity. This is again not an ethic for man as such. So, this kind of coercion must not be allowed; it is immoral. It is a very reasonable deduction to enshrine the goodness of self-ownership into law, to make illegal the immoral use of force. We are led immediately to the normative evaluation that one ought to own one’s own body so as to obtain a legal recognition of the natural exclusivity of his control of it. Now controlling the body allows one to control the external environment by moving particles of matter to and fro. Therefore, controlling objects requires a person to exclude others still more, lest the controller fails in his project, that is, fails in the exercise of his powers. Thus, one comes to own things, beside his body, which he uses for some purpose to mold the world according to his designs. If the thing that a person wants to appropriate is unowned, then he harms no one in taking ownership of it. But if it is owned, then one way for him to acquire it is to take it away from its current possessor by force. But this harms the current possessor. Hence the doctrine of initial appropriation of unowned goods: whoever comes first may lay claim on something in the state of nature (for what are the alternatives?), and subsequent transfers of ownership must be by his consent. In other words, all property must be justly acquired. And on we go deriving natural rights and duties in the manner of The Ethics of Liberty.

I’d like to move a little beyond Rothbard now and propose some precepts of human nature as it is constituted by its powers. For more power is metaphysically better than less power; power is a “great-making” property; it is something that makes its possessor good or noble or magnificent or even worthy of worship. The precepts are as follows:

1) Stay healthy, so that your body serves you well. Rothbard writes of Crusoe’s eating poisonous mushrooms: “If Crusoe, on the other hand, had known of the poison and eaten the mushrooms anyway — perhaps for “kicks” or from a very high time preference — then his decision would have been objectively immoral, an act deliberately set against his life and health.” (32) This judgment can be cashed out as involving a contradiction similar to what seems to happen in a suicide, and Rothbard proceeds to do precisely that. But an alternative view is that failing to look after one’s health is a “sin,” because it diminishes one’s power over oneself and nature. One becomes metaphysically worse.

The health in question is both 1a) of the controller, the mind, and 1b) of the controlled, the body.

2) Develop technology. Note that I do not say “develop your talents,” because that is a precept for good habits, while we are talking about powers. Technology is an extension of your body, enhancing its powers. For example, no matter how strong I am, I cannot uproot a large tree. But with a chainsaw, felling a tree is easy. Technology will be both natural and social. In the latter case we learn how best to use not merely physical objects but each other for our own goals. It might be argued that one might want to enhance his power by enslaving a lot of people. But I would reply that this is inappropriate social technology, in that it stupidly treats human beings as tools and machines, failing to squeeze much of them. The most efficient way for an arbitrary person to take advantage of other people is through a laissez-faire free market economy where slavery is simply not recognized. E.g., today “industry supplies the consumption of the masses again and again with new commodities hitherto unknown and makes accessible to the average worker satisfactions of which no king could dream in the past.” (Human Action, 605) In other words, slavery “does not work.”

3) Accumulate capital. Whereas technology represents “recipes” or means-ends connections, capital is the actual means to our ends. The more productive capital we as a society have, the greater our power over nature is.

Thus, given that power is the principle of all action, increasing human power over the world is a glorious endeavor and is for that reason a moral imperative for all human beings.

“Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly ‘reforming’ their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they’re always busy ‘reforming’ is an implicit admission that they didn’t get it right the first 50 times.”

In previous posts I have made two statements:

1. Rule utilitarianism is a practical concession to the limitations of our intelligence.
2. Suppose you are an act utilitarian (AU). You strive to maximize happiness, and one day you notice that your actions follow a pattern; they are lawlike. You can be said thereby to be a rule utilitarian (RU), such that the rules describe what you actually do. … On the other hand, if the acts in AU do not obey any regularities, then it is an impossible ideal. No man can calculate the consequences of his actions in a Godlike manner.

So, the reason for RU is two-fold. First, we just can’t calculate beyond our own noses. The best we can do is evaluate rules, practices, character traits, and suchlike, and even here, as Hayek argued, we must often defer to tradition, such as the common law, the reasons for which we might not fully understand. Second, even if we could foresee the future as God does, we would still find it advantageous most of the time to follow the moral law, doing which would happen to promote, for a number of reasons, the greatest good for the greatest number. A society of omniscient individuals would enjoy perfect coordination, but it, too, would involve, for example, a lawlike respect of contracts.

In Roderick’s terms, then, following rules is an internal and indispensable means to happiness. Widespread law-breaking leads only to misery, which is why society is advised to suppress criminal activities (note again the social focus of utilitarianism). He writes, “[E]ven when I choose to act morally, my choice commits me to rejecting morality in counterfactual situations… where immorality would be a more effective means to the end, and this commitment is a blot on my character now.” If by this statement he refers to lifeboat situations, then we can say with Rothbard that “a lifeboat situation is hardly a valid test of a theory of rights, or of any moral theory whatsoever.” (The Ethics of Liberty, 149) For example, Yeager quotes Richard Epstein to the effect that one of his “simple rules for a complex world” is “limited privilege in cases of necessity (’take and pay’),” such as the case of “the man who breaks into a pharmacy closed at night as the only way to get medicine to save his dying wife.” (Ethics as Social Science, 272) One would be hard-pressed to consider the man’s actions “immoral.” Illegal, sure. But no judge would throw the book at him.

If Roderick refers to cases such as described in my Secrecy and Utilitarianism, then the reply is “What are we supposed to do? Enlighten us, o great moral teacher.” Yeager replies, wisely, that “[o]ne must accept guilt for one action or another, and in accordance with one’s own moral character, but without brooding excessively about it. A moral person will accept the guilt without letting it destroy him.”

Morality in relation to utility, then, is like a box of chocolates: on the one hand, it is a producer good, because it is merely a means to enjoying the taste of chocolate, and you have to advance it further toward a consumer good by eating the candy, etc. On the other hand, it is clearly a consumer good, because it is so close to being the final good, and because it is a sine qua non for enjoying the taste.

Rothbard goes on to say that “In any sphere of moral theory, we are trying to frame an ethic for man, based on his nature and the nature of the world — and this precisely means for normal nature, for the way life usually is, and not for rare and abnormal situations.” So, normally, obeying the rules which have been tuned so as to promote overall happiness and its another internal and indispensable means, social cooperation, will end up as the most beneficial thing to do.

Suppose that the federal government enacts a bill with the purpose of “weaning us from the dependence on foreign oil” ordering everyone, instead of going by car, to fly to where they want to go by flapping their arms. Is this law valid? Legal positivism would say yes. It is made by the legitimate sovereign, using the proper procedures, it does not seem to be contrary to the Constitution or any “higher” positive law, so what’s the problem? Of course it is valid and therefore commands obedience.

The obvious absurdity of this law, however, can be picked up on by natural law theorists. Interpreting “natural law” literally as “all the causal regularities put in service to human ends,” they will say that it is impossible for humans to fly around in the prescribed manner, and since ought implies can, they ought not to fly. Now if the positive law is higher than natural law, then natural law is to be set aside and positive law enforced. But this opinion begins to look suspect when prisons start running out of room for new law-breakers. It is more plausible to suppose that natural law outranks positive law, and therefore the requirement to fly by flapping one’s arms is no law at all.

Ludwig von Mises said that the chief function of an economist is telling the government what it can’t do. Now this lack of ability does not mean any kind of legal limitation on the power of the state, useful as such things are, but the limitations of the economic law itself. For example, the government supports a banking industry which generates credit expansions. But if we want to be prosperous, credit expansion leading to business cycles is precisely the wrong thing to allow. The question is, then, must we obey the (1) legal tender laws, (2) laws forbidding banks from issuing their own notes, (3) laws giving banks immunity for keeping fractional reserves? These artifices fail to lead us to what we want, namely, a successful society. The connection is a bit more subtle than in the case of flying by flapping the arms about, but it is essentially the same. The means to our common end are inappropriate, and therefore not even the state can override the natural law linking the means to the end. The laws in question therefore lose their status as valid laws. They remain in power only because most people do not perceive them to be contrary to reason, impoverishing society and them personally, and because of the government’s ability to crush those few who do realize their pernicious nature.

Finally, consider a new law ordering all the redheads to report to concentration camps where they are to be gassed. Must the redheads obey like lambs to the slaughter, and must the police round up those who will not go voluntarily? Positive law, knowing no limit other than, perhaps, the laws of physics, must needs say yes. But everyone not corrupted by legal positivism will say that the moral law, “Thou shalt not kill,” overrides the government dictate, making it null and void.

I agree with the positivists, however, that in all these cases, while the laws being evaluated are wicked and invalid and ought to be repealed, they retain their character as human laws. It’s just that whichever non-man-made laws we pick, natural (physics, chemistry), social (economics), or moral (self-ownership, the Golden Rule), it is clear that they sit in judgment over the human law and its makers. In other words, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Note that the puzzle is that utilitarianism seems to sanction or even mandate genocide. Yet utilitarianism is a respectable moral theory. So, what goes wrong? Here are several suggestions:

1. That genocide of “inferior” people is legitimate is a dangerous rule. It is a distinct possibility that the people of Ruritania may themselves split into hostile groups (such as the redheads and the redheads-haters), such that it will be demanded that one group (”we”) exterminate the other (”them”), too. Logically, this process of mutual slaughter need not stop until only one person remains.

2. In particular, the rule that the smart can rightfully kill the stupid is easily generalized into the permission or even duty for smart Ruritanians to kill stupid Ruritanians. This is ominous, as it entails also that the smartest Ruritanian has the right to liquidate everyone else in Ruritania.

3. We can accuse the philosopher of not knowing the law of comparative advantage / association. On the free market the “strong” or “smart” do not prey on the “weak” and “stupid”; the strong will benefit from dividing labor with the weak even if he is better that the weak at the both or however many tasks being divided.

4. Violence need not be involved in the process of colonizing Waldavia. If the land and resources are unowned, as would likely be the case with only hunters-gatherers inhabiting Waldavia, then Ruritanian businessmen can exploit its land without asking anyone’s permission. If they are owned, then they can be bought from the Waldavian tribes, possibly cheaply, and, again, developed without violating anyone’s rights to life and property. And, once again, killing to steal is a bad and decivilizing rule, as it habituates the aggressors to do the same with their fellow Ruritanians, as well. In fact, it is likely that the Ruritanians have achieved their level of civilization precisely by scrupulously adhering to universal moral laws. If they had been predatory, then they would not be “smart” as the puzzle postulates.

5. Whose welfare do we care for? Utilitarianism takes benevolence as a given. Whatever the group (which may be everyone in the world) we love, (rule) utilitarianism recommends institutions, practices, character traits that will maximize general happiness over that group. It may thus be objected to the philosopher’s argument that we value the happiness of the present occupants of Waldavia, as well. Hence killing them will be contrary to his own moral theory.

6. If it is replied to (5) that the disutility of removing the Waldavians will be outweighed by the utility (experienced perhaps by as yet unborn people) of colonizing their land for reasons described, then we may refer back to (1)-(4). But in addition, if the Waldavians really are stupid, then they will enjoy lessened income in the integrated Ruritania-Waldavia economy. (Though the Waldavians will still benefit tremendously from being part of social cooperation.) Therefore, given also their small numbers, their claim on social resources will be vanishingly small. There is therefore no need to wipe them out even from the Ruritanian philosopher’s point of view; the market economy will naturally assign to the Waldavians a lower place in the social hierarchy, such that they may be quite invisible to the Ruritanian common man.

This puzzle can be rephrased in a stark way. Let A be the actual world, and P be an actual person within A with IQ / virtues / happiness equal to some number n, assuming contrary to reason that these things can be measured. Now let W be a possible world which is exactly like A except that P is replaced with Q whose IQ / virtues / happiness are equal to 2n. (Of course, replacing even a single person is bound to upset and reconfigure the entire existing society and production structure. So, the differences between A and W may be far greater than it would seem at first glance. But let’s put that point aside.) Two questions need to be considered here. First, is W better in some sense than A? Second, if W is indeed better, can we get from A to W by killing P and having some couple have another child who will grow up to be Q?

I think the answer to the first question is yes, and to the second, no, for two reasons. First, more sophisticated utilitarianism will not argue that utility can be increased in this manner. Some of the reasons why not I outline above. Second, suppose you have a kid who is, say, 15 years old or even a pet cat you’ve had for awhile; and let someone offer you a deal: he will kill your child or your cat and give you instead a better (in some sense) one. Would you accept? Of course not! You love that child, that cat for what they are. They are genuinely irreplaceable. So, if even utilitarianism commends charity and love for our fellow men, we cannot start killing people we love to replace them with better versions of themselves. That would devalue our love, substituting for it a kind of eugenics program, wherein we do not value people for their own sake nor think of them as subjects but seek to satisfy some aesthetic view of society, e.g., by allowing only “beautiful people” to live, thinking of people as mere objects, means to ends.

In addition, the problem of replacing people in this manner with regard to total (though not average) happiness could only arise in practice when the human population is at its optimal level, such that either to increase it or decrease it would yield less (overall) utility. But that limit has not been reached and will not be reached for a long time (if ever), given our commitment to freedom and capitalism.

Let there exist two countries or territories bordering each other, Ruritania and Waldavia. Let the Ruritanians be “smart” and let them have developed a high civilization. On the other hand, let the Waldavians be “stupid” and remain primitive hunters-gatherers.

Finally, let a Ruritanian philosopher (and there are philosophers in Ruritania, so sophisticated its culture has become) publish an article in which he advocates a wholesale genocide of the Waldavians, which he justifies on the following grounds. The Waldavians, he says, are a miserable people; for goodness’ sake, they walk around practically naked in their forests. They are barely rational and therefore barely human. They should be ashamed of themselves and of their own disgraceful way of life. Let us, that is, the Ruritanians, put them out of their misery. It may naively be objected that it is wrong to commit murder. But, our philosopher counters, once the Waldavians are gone, the Ruritanians can take their land, develop it, and consequently civilize it. The glory of Ruritania will be spread far and wide. Most important, the Ruritanians will colonize the land and have many children, until the total population becomes equal to what the combined total of the Ruritanians and the Waldavians was prior to the genocide. The population will then be the same, but the total and average happiness will be far greater. Being a good utilitarian, the philosopher argues that it is our (the Ruritanians’) duty to wipe out the Waldavians.

Where is he wrong?

Update. Since a modern capitalistic society can support far more people than a primitive one, after awhile there will be many more Ruritanians in Waldavia than there were Waldavians in it before the war, boosting total happiness even more.

That they can is the suggestion of Stefan Molyneux, a righteous libertarian crusader. I disagree with him for three reasons:

1) It depends crucially on high technology. The information on a criminal’s misdeeds or on his “credit rating” needs to be disseminated widely throughout the world. Even if this is possible now, it was not always so. So, the ability to banish a person from polite society is contingent on there existing a tightly connected network of individual history- and profile-keeping companies, no restrictions and easy access to background checks, etc. Perhaps elements of this global system exist already, and perhaps the state prevents some of them from arising, but, again, that Stefan’s idea is implementable is not true a priori.

2) Lowering the credit score of a murderer or a deal breaker or any kind of criminal may not be sufficient punishment. Now I suppose that a credit score can be negative, and hell or -infinity is the limit, so to speak. But still, even a -1,000,000 rating on a serial killer does not seem like a tough enough penalty. Also, in daily life doing a background check is often impossible. You don’t get investigated when you go to a restaurant or a grocery store. Technology might be able to solve this problem in a purely anarchist society; e.g., a store might require a thumbprint as a condition of entering its property. The print will be instantly checked, and if the credit rating is lower than some store-set amount, entrance will be denied. Still, it’s hard to speculate: e.g., a serial killer may be a scrupulous in paying his debts.

Stefan also needs to come up with some idea of how one’s social rating can be repaired.

3) Suppose that I have in my hand a judicial verdict against my opponent ordering him to pay me restitution or levying some sort of punishment. If he refuses to surrender, and I can’t force him to, then I derive no benefit from my actions of notifying the credit agency to lower his trustworthiness index or whatever; doing so is a public good. Now it’s true that people seem to enjoy rating their business partners — witness, for example, eBay. But it is unclear if people will do something similar if the costs of rating negatively those who aggressed against them exceed a few mouse clicks.

It seems to me, therefore, that my insight that the executive branch, unlike judicial services, cannot be privatized is of genuine value.

Update. There is a fourth simple yet powerful reason why ostracizing criminals from society is a very imperfect solution. If a person cannot even get food at a supermarket or a fast food place because of his low social rating, then he is permanently branded an outcast and will have to resort to further crime to survive. And the more he goes awry, the more his rating decreases, creating a vicious circle. At least in prison he gets food at regular times. O’Henry’s short story The Cop and the Anthem illustrates the problems involved. So, at the very least, some ways of allowing a criminal to find a way back into the general public’s graces must exist. We can say more. While deterrence seems served by this system, given that rehabilitation is also one of the four theories of punishment, it, too, must be given some authority. And it is association with good folks that rehabilitates, so ostracism will need to be qualified.

Alternatively, there may arise a network of businesses catering to the underworld, e.g., highly secured markets. In this case we may see a whole legal but still underground economy which may have the effect of efficiently linking criminals together with dire consequences for the rest of societry. Then ostracism will fail even to deter.

Mt 18:23-35; substitute “secession” for “debt.” There is also a question of political philosophy here. Just as Georgia had the right to become independent from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so South Ossetia has the right to be independent of Georgia, if its citizens choose so. But the interesting question is, should Russia have intervened to crush the anti-secessionist Georgia? I think that if there was a defense pact between Russia and SO or if SO wanted to become part of Russia, then a case can be made that Georgian attempts to conquer or keep SO constitute aggression and a defensive action is justified. But war maneuvers should be restricted to the territory of SO; the Russian troops should not be allowed to invade Georgia but merely to push all Georgian troops out of SO and permanently ensure the safety of that country, e.g., by building a base or series of bases within it staffed with Russian and South Ossetian soldiers. It is both imprudent and morally wrong to start a major war over the rights of a small region, however inalienable.

For example, if some sort of world government existed during the War between the States, having the world military attack the Northern states in order to allow the South to secede would probably have been a bad idea.

1. Timothy thinks there is no evidence that Jefferson thought that the Congress could demand that a state comply with its laws or secede or leave the Union. Well, it is a very reasonable interpretation. My point is that secession is a double-edged sword. A state can threaten to secede, but the other states can, with the help of their agent, the federal government, threaten to kick a state out of the Union, unless it complies. It’s freedom of association in action. Jefferson lived in less PC times than we do, and that freedom was cherished throughout the realm.

2. Suppose it’s true that “the people reconsidered their sovereignty, and created a new institution, wiping the slate clean, more or less, and instituting a sovereign federal government, while vesting other elements of their sovereignty in state governments.” This simple statement does not attempt to prove that those “other elements of their sovereignty” do not include the legal Constitutional right to secede. But we can say more. The Constitution enumerates certain particular limited powers that the federal government has. The Bill of Rights is in principle unnecessary, because the freedoms secured therein could be deduced from the text of the original Constitution. Where in that document does it say that the “more perfect Union” can only expand and never contract in territory, member states, or people? The Union was certainly not called “perpetual” or anything like that. So, where does the Constitution say that the feds can or must preserve the union by preventing any and all secessions?

Here is another argument. The Constitution had to be ratified by nine out of thirteen states, and any amendment must be agreed to by 3/4th of state legislatures. Before that 2/3rd of the Senate must also vote for it, Senators being chosen by state legislatures until the 17th amendment was passed in 1913. Speaking of Madison, he also wrote that “it appears, on one hand, that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act.” (F #39) A clear case can be made that the Constitution is in part a creature of the people and a creature of states.

In other words, Timothy can point to the Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” But I can point to the Postscript: “Resolved, That the preceding Constitution… should afterwards be submitted to a Convention of Delegates, chosen in each State by the People thereof, under the Recommendation of its Legislature, for their Assent and Ratification… Resolved, That it is the Opinion of this Convention, that as soon as the Conventions of nine States shall have ratified this Constitution,” etc.

3. Timothy has misunderstood my point about individual secession. His argument is that the Constitution was not a compact between the states but between the people living on the territory to be overshadowed by the future federal government. Therefore, no state could lawfully secede. But if secession by states is to be considered illegal for that reason only, then secession of individuals should be perfectly legal, precisely because the federal government resulted from a compact between them. Any person who made a compact could break it; otherwise, he and his children would be slaves in perpetuity, and as Rothbard well demonstrated, one cannot alienate his will. Surely, then, I should be able to form my own nation where my house stands. But what if I am able to convince the majority of my fellow Ohioans to join forces with me in declaring independence of the United States, that is, forming a new country with themselves and their private properties ? If I can do it alone, then that majority can do it, too, without physically leaving the United States or being imprisoned for “treason.” There, you have your perfectly legal secession of a state.

4. If Timothy does not advocate massive wars to punish bribe-taking officials, then neither should he defend a military assault of the North on the South to punish slave-owners or to fight for the rights of slaves.

5. Sumter, Shmumter; there is evidence that Lincoln provoked the South into firing the first shot. At any rate, that’s just one of the many INUS causes (an insufficient but necessary component cause which is a part of an unnecessary but sufficient total cause) which sparked the war. There were a whole bunch of reasons for the Civil War, and both slavery and economics were still more INUSes.

I have mentioned before that in my view the judicial system of any administrative unit can without difficulty be privatized (unlike the executive branch). In what follows I consider five objections to this thesis.

1. Judges serve the abstract “justice” for the sake of the whole society rather than particular individuals; private judges will sell their services to the highest bidder.

Reply: Private judges will sell their services but to the highest bidders. Whenever two people come before a judge to settle a dispute, neither of them is convinced that he will lose. Both parties think their chances to win the legal battle are good. Hence it is in the interest of both the future winner and the future loser to present their cases. If one person knows he will lose and refuses to appear before a judge, he can be tried without his being present and lose even more certainly. As Rothbard writes, “In a libertarian society, the plaintiff would notify the defendant that the latter is being charged with a crime, and that a trial of the defendant will be underway. The defendant would be simply invited to appear. There would be no compulsion on him to appear. If he chose not to defend himself, then the trial would proceed in absentia, which of course would mean that the defendant’s chances would be by that much diminished. Compulsion could only be used against the defendant after his final conviction.” (The Ethics of Liberty, 84)

2. The monopoly executive branch will have to license judges somehow and supply a “rule of recognition” of who is a legitimate judge. Then law schools will have to licensed, etc. This will restrict supply, thereby leading to a cartel and diminished competition.

Reply: Privatizing dispute resolution will probably be accompanied by political decentralization, so there will be numerous communities and plenty of competition among their political systems. This competition will keep judges on their toes. Each community will allow judges with different qualifications to work there which will lead to a diversity of certifications, law school exams, significances of reputation, etc.

3. A judge will feel bound to his family/clan/race, etc. and will not judge impartially.

Reply: Judges can always be sued for incompetence or favoritism or fraud or taking bribes and, if found guilty, be punished like any other person. Not every judge will be crooked.

4. Roderick Long considers an objection (#5) that within the private judicial industry there will be no “final arbiter of disputes.”

His reply: “Now, it is true, that in the Platonic sense of an absolute guarantee of a final arbiter — in that sense, anarchy does not provide one. But neither does any other system. Take a minarchist constitutional republic of the sort that Bidinotto favors. Is there a final arbiter under that system, in the sense of something that absolutely guarantees ending the process of dispute forever? Well, I sue you, or I’ve been sued, or I am accused of something, whatever — I’m in some kind of court case. I lose. I appeal it. I appeal it to the Supreme Court. They go against me. I lobby the Congress to change the laws to favor me. They don’t do it. So then I try to get a movement for a Constitutional Amendment going. That fails, so I try and get people together to vote in new people in Congress who will vote for it. In some sense it can go on forever. The dispute isn’t over.”

5. What if what is a crime on one territory not a crime on another? How can a verdict be enforced if the defendant flees from the jurisdiction in which he is guilty to the jurisdiction in which he is not guilty?

Reply: This objection touches on enforcement of verdicts not on whether private judges can successfully do their job. Even today there are numerous jurisdictions with varying laws, yet chaos does not result.

To Mises the state is epitomized in its executive branch:

An anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order. This power is vested in the state or government.

He even uses the same word I do: “crush”:

State or government is the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. It has the monopoly of violent action. No individual is free to use violence or the threat of violence if the government has not accorded this right to him. The state is essentially an institution for the preservation of peaceful interhuman relations. However, for the preservation of peace it must be prepared to crush the onslaughts of peace-breakers. (Human Action, 149)

Again, “the old Romans were more realistic in symbolizing the state by a bundle of rods with an ax in the middle,” (719) clearly denoting the executive branch of the government. Neither in these passages nor, to my knowledge, anywhere else does Mises explicitly assign the tasks of law-making and arbitration of disputes to the government.

Let’s stick with the pattern that the judicial branch of any government can be fully privatized; the legislative branch, partially privatized, becoming an appropriately limited in powers “legislator of last resort,” whenever private law-making efforts have gotten nowhere; and the executive branch must remain monopolized, lest chaos (and not anarchy) reign.

Roderick’s 7th objection is that under anarchy organized crime will take over. He replies: “Well, it might. But is it likely? Organized crime gets its power because it specializes in things that are illegal — things like drugs and prostitution and so forth. During the years when alcohol was prohibited, organized crime specialized in the alcohol trade. Nowadays, they’re not so big in the alcohol trade. So the power of organized crime to a large extent depends on the power of government. It’s sort of a parasite on government’s activities. Governments by banning things create black markets. Black markets are dangerous things to be in because you have to worry both about the government and about other dodgy people who are going into the black market field. Organized crime specializes in that. So, organized crime I think would be weaker, not stronger, in a libertarian system.”

Observe, however, that while governments indeed produce black markets by banning things and erecting barriers to trade — incredibly stupid and wicked policies for the most part, I agree — those very governments also produce normal markets by enforcing contracts and prosecuting torts. Unless it is possible for an average man to subdue any criminal and force restitution and punishment (note that I am not saying that the criminal commits a crime against society; I am just arguing that society as whole must carry out the ruling obtained by the plaintiff), there will be no markets at all, either black or white.

This point is different from Roderick’s objection #6, “Property Law Cannot Emerge from the Market.” I largely agree with his analysis, though I still see some subordinate place for public, that is, government-made, law. What I am saying is that judicial decisions regarding property rights cannot be enforced by the market.

Our author’s 8th objection is that “the rich will rule” under anarchy. I think that’s true, but my version of the argument is different. Consider a big corporation like Microsoft. I personally think it’s an awesome company. But suppose anarchy suddenly arrived. We all, including the owners and employees of Microsoft, are good people, habituated to obey the law. But it could happen that a thought enters the head of Mr. Ballmer, somehow out of the blue, that it might be nice if he were to hire some goons and explosion experts and blow up the headquarters of, say, Sun Microsystems! Under normal circumstances this would be merely a pleasant if malicious fantasy. But seeing that no one seems powerful enough to retaliate, Mr. Ballmer can’t shake the thought. Why not, if he can get away with it? A few days later the CEO of the destroyed Sun, Mr. Schwartz, is wondering amidst the ruins of his corporation, contemplating a scheme of murdering Ballmer and taking his place as head of Microsoft. Not so awesome now, is it?

Hoppe has identified the transition from monarchy to democracy as a step towards decivilization, in particular, because (1) the monarch owns and is interested in preserving both the capital value of his “property” and its current income stream, while a democratic ruler owns only the latter and therefore has an incentive to devalue long-term prosperity; and (2) the various positions of enforcers are in a democracy open to all. On the second point Hoppe writes: “Yet while entrance into the position of king and a promotion to the rank of nobility is systematically restricted under a monarchy, in a publicly owned government, anyone, in theory, can become a member of the ruling class — or even president. The distinction between the ruler and the ruled is blurred, and the class-consciousness of the ruled becomes fuzzy. The illusion even arises that such a distinction no longer exists: that with a democratic government no one is ruled by anyone but everyone instead rules himself. … Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened.” (Democracy: A God That Failed, 26) A move from democracy to anarchy in enforcement would be the final nail in the coffin of any society. In a democracy a man intent upon entering the ruling class must at least convince the majority that will uphold the Constitution, the laws, etc. Under anarchy, anyone can, of his own free will, round up a few of his buddies, grab machine guns, and start shaking down the local businesses. A gang, aka “private defense company,” in contrast to both monarchy and democracy, owns neither the capital value of the properties they are robbing nor the income derived from it in any legal sense. So, the incentive to them is to kill everyone and take everything.

In practice we will end up with territories partitioned among gangs, gang warfare which will include murders and robberies of the individuals and businesses “belonging” to a rival gang, etc. The idea that the gangs will enforce “justice,” a highly abstract concept, for their “customers” seems quaint. Eventually, one of the following two things will happen: either the gangs become the official rulers of their territories, creating local government monarchies, or the long-suffering people will elect the police and drive the gangs out, creating local government democracies. Either way, anarchy will disappear.

It might be objected that a kind of anarchy exists between traders of different countries. But I think that the reason why relationships between foreign businessmen are so orderly is not only that the laws governing their relations are similar across countries but also that results of arbitration in the case of a conflict are guaranteed to be enforced by the executive branch of whatever state has jurisdiction. A market in violence will bring about a true war of all against all.

As I argued below, private property anarchists need to demonstrate that private solutions will work for each branch of government to be privatized. The interesting thing is that each branch presents its own unique challenges. Let’s start with law-making. I have defended the view that morality is intersubjective; it works only when there is agreement on what is right or wrong. But at the same time no more is required. Agreement need not presuppose identical moral theories. Nor does it cause relativism; some moral systems and sets of rules are better than others. But if morality, then so is law. First, private — an in, subjective — law is an oxymoron. If you think that doing drugs is permitted, and I think it should not be permitted, then no judge can adjudicate our differences: there will be a war to the death as I try to knock the crack pipe from of your hand, and you (perfectly righteously, from your point of view) defend yourself. We must agree on what is right and what is wrong. But, again, we may come from very different directions. A may think using drugs should be permitted, because the natural law says so. B thinks the same, because he is a pragmatic and is skeptical of the success of any drug war, though if he could prevent people from doing drugs at 0 cost, he’d do it. C may be a utilitarian and believe that government paternalism is, as a rule, absurd. The government is not, C thinks, the guardian of the ignorant and stupid populace. And so on. Now the question is, how to establish agreement on a wide range of issues among the citizens of a town or country? Only two ways suggest themselves: either through voluntary negotiation or arbitrary legislation. If culture so permits and the administrative unit is small enough, rules are best established through custom, common law trial-and-error, natural law a la Rothbard, or economic analysis of law. But it can be that no agreement can be reached in this manner. Then the state can be useful in imposing law according to, say, majority rule. Even if some disagree, they have to persuade the majority and go through the motions of amending the legal code. At the very least, the law will be uniform over some population, something absolutely crucial to a functioning society. A combination of private and state solutions may be in the stars.

But once the law is however determined, I see no obstacles to competing private judges and arbitration agencies. Reputation will be key. In contracts a particular jurisdiction and judge could be specified. In torts, both parties can agree on a decent judge. It’s no accident that ancient Israel, once it was given the “law,” did not require the king but had judges only. An elaborate system of private lower and higher courts, appeals courts, specialized courts dealing with everything from disputes between financial companies to farmers’ quarrels, rules of recognition, Consumers Digest reviews, advice from industry experts, etc. will likely arise and will be able to supplant the present regime completely. The state judicial system we have now will disappear.

The final stage of any legal process, viz., enforcement, however, is, in my view, impossible to privatize. Once the question of what law is has been settled, and a judicial verdict, rendered, the offender must be overpowered, crushed (not in terms of the severity of punishment, of course, but in the sense of carrying out the sentence reliably). Only society as a whole, organized and represented by the executive branch of the state, can do so without fail. The community as a whole inflicts the punishment. Here the mayors/governors/etc. are merely tools of society ensuring that the (private) judges’ efforts are not wasted. For the offender broke the law governing the behavior of an entire people, and as far as judges are trusted — and why wouldn’t they be, unless there is (infrequent) corruption — everyone must be united in executing the sentence imposed on the criminal or tortfeasor.

This analysis suggests that in many disputes anarcho-capitalists and minarchists talk past each other, because they fail to disentangle the different problems posed by each of the three branches of government.

Update. In short, in a city, for example, I envision a government consisting of a part-time city council and a full-time major in command of a few tough deputies.

The city, Hoppe says, is a creation of merchants. It is a trading center, a marketplace. As such, it entails a mixing of people of different races, ethnicities, tribes, etc. who would otherwise have stayed with their own kind. In big cities “the most elaborate and highly developed system of physical and functional integration and segregation will arise. It will also be in the big cities where, as the subjective reflection of this complex system of spatio-functional allocation, citizens will develop the most highly refined forms of personal and professional conduct, etiquette, and style.” Because of this Hoppe denies that it is best that a single government rule a community even of the size of a city. “To maintain law and order within a big city, with its intricate pattern of physical and functional integration and separation, a great variety of jurisdictions, judges, arbitrators and enforcement agencies in addition to self-defense and private protection will come into existence. There will be what one might call governance in the city, but there will not be government (state).” (Democracy: The God that Failed, 176ff)

The merchant elite is the most likely group of people to tolerate and even encourage mixed marriages, though even such marriages will be among the perceived equals. This causes genetic “luxuriation,” as the inborn talents of different racial, ethnic, etc. elites are combined.

With the introduction of the state the form of which, Hoppe predicts, will most likely be a democratic republic, the one-size-fits-all coercive apparatus will cause forced integration between the city and countryside and within the city. This will cause only unnecessary strife (e.g., as a result of “monopolization of ‘public’ streets — whereon everyone may proceed wherever he wants”), and “all forms of ethnic, tribal, or racial tensions and animosities will be stimulated.” (180) This process of the creation of a monopoly of force within a city begins with the prospective monopolist’s playing the “race card” in order to “raise the racial, tribal, or clanish consciousness among citizens of his own race, tribe, clan, etc. and promise, in return for their support, to be more than an impartial judge in matters relating to one’s own race, tribe, or clan…” (178) It is not clear exactly, however, how this is supposed to lead to the establishment of a unified city government.

At the same time, Hoppe says, the decivilization set about by the government will cause mixed marriages among lower classes, leading to “genetic pauperization, a tendency furthered by the fact that government welfare support will naturally lead to an increase in the birthrate of welfare recipients relative to the birthrate of other members, in particular of members of the upper class of their tribe or race.” (180) (I don’t understand, however, why Hoppe thinks that mixed marriages are OK for the elites but not for the masses.) Conflict among classes will be encouraged by the now popular government. The elites, finding themselves outgunned, will head for the suburbs. As a result, “one of the last remaining civilizing forces will be weakened, and what is left behind in the cities will represent an increasingly negative selection of the population: of government bureaucrats who work but no longer live there, and of the lowlifes and the social outcasts of all tribes and races who live there yet who increasingly do not work but survive on welfare.” (182) As arbitrary state legislation is substituted for natural law, marital and intergenerational ties within families will be weakened. “After the race and the class card have been played and done their devastating work, the government turns to the sex and gender card, and ‘racial justice’ and ’social justice’ are complemented by ‘gender justice’.” Vices such as moral relativism, high time preference, dissolution of the family, hatred of the other run rampant. “Rather than centers of civilization, cities have become centers of social disintegration and cesspools of physical and moral decay, corruption, brutishness, and crime.” (184)

Conclusion. Hoppe’s point is that big cities are inherently, by their very nature, ungovernable by a single monopoly state. As always, our author’s solution is decentralization and market anarchy even within cities.

“Well, let’s just hope we’re lucky.”

But it’s interesting that Friedman writes that “One of the first things I realized when visiting Iraq after the U.S. invasion was that the very fact that Iraqis did not liberate themselves, but had to be liberated by Americans, was a source of humiliation to them.” Ah, indeed. The difference between Ron Paul and the rest of them is that Paul thinks that America should be a final cause of the liberty around the world, and McCain and others propagandize (and only propagandize, because they couldn’t care less about freedom, either at home or abroad) that America should be an efficient cause of liberty.

This philosopher’s talk translates as follows: according to libertarians, we should make ourselves as beautiful and free as possible and by means of that serve as an example for others to imitate. According to warmongers and killers of every stripe, on the contrary, we should violently interfere into random countries’ politics in order to bring about the results desired by the state. The former is a recipe for prosperity and peace and indeed, liberty. The latter, for endless war and misery.

Of course, the America’s impact on Iraq can hardly be characterized as “liberation.” But regardless, Friedman’s quote nicely illustrates the point that paternalism cannot be a permanent strategy either with individuals (because it fails to soul-make) or with countries (because ideology which ultimately controls the political system cannot be imposed by force but only adopted via voluntary learning).

Natural rights are those human rights respecting which promotes social cooperation, general welfare, and human flourishing and happiness; and results in the fastest improvement in the standard of living of the immense majority of the population. In other words, natural rights emerge from the body of natural law as elucidated by natural and social sciences, especially as it pertains to human happiness.

Obeying natural law makes human actions as successful as they possibly can be relative to the society’s level of economic and technological development. Natural rights are the rights which, if respected, are most conducive to such success. In this sense natural rights can be likened, perhaps surprisingly, to rule utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism will then be the form or spirit of the human laws, while the matter of letter of the law can be filled in in the way Rothbard does it in The Ethics of Liberty. Although Rothbard seemingly berates utilitarianism for its subjectivity, for taking values as given and considers ethics to be a science of “true” happiness, there is no reason why we can’t use the term “rule utilitarianism” in this narrower sense to mean the requirement to create laws following which normally maximizes that true happiness over some group of people (such as, indeed, everyone). In other words, utilitarianism demands (1) that laws promote or be means to human “true” well-being and (2) that it be specified the well-being of which humans we are concerned with. Surely, this is uncontroversial. (Rothbard also chastises utilitarianism for taking all present property titles to be legitimate, but that criticism, if at all valid, applies to act utilitarianism only not rule utilitarianism.)

For example, just because every man naturally owns himself does not mean that he ought to own himself, unless you argue that slavery of whatever sort is evil, because it retards flourishing and happiness.

Two objections can be made here, now that I am remembering Rothbard. First, the ethics which allows some people to own the bodies or fruits of the labor of other people fails to be universalizable. “Thus, if someone claims that the Hohenzollern or Bourbon families have the ‘natural right’ to rule everyone else, this kind of doctrine is easily refutable by simply pointing to the fact that there is here no uniform ethic for every person: one’s rank in the ethical order being dependent on the accident of being, or not being, a Hohenzollern.” (43) The subjects, says Rothbard, are veritable subhumans as compared to their rulers, and this “violates the initial assumption that we are carving out an ethic for human beings as such.” (46) On other hand, “Universal and Equal Other-ownership” fails because it leads to mankind’s disappearing from the face of the earth. “Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyone else in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on earth.” (46)

Second, we can argue that the soul commands the body as a crane operator commands his machine, infallibly; while a human master commands his human slave through mere incentives of fear and reward. The reason to acknowledge self-ownership then is the far greater intimacy of the connection between the owner and the owned in the case of self, the far easier and more direct control by the soul of the body than by a master of his slave. In addition, a man can know himself by direct introspection which is a greatly superior way of learning than any way a master can learn of his slave. So, any person is suited to own himself in a more robust manner than he is suited to be owned by another. This is because ownership of oneself is of a different nature than ownership of another: the union of the soul and body is far closer and deeper than the union of the master and the slave. It’s much more “efficient” for each person to own himself.

Here.

So, Timothy writes that he “did not say that slave labor is equally efficient or even close to equally efficient.” He must hold the opposite view, namely, that slave labor is vastly more inefficient that free labor. That’s good to know, and I may have misunderstood him.

I agree that slaves are considered to be capital goods, that is, machines, rather than labor. Their welfare is neglected. But by “more efficient” I mean more efficient for the free common man. Consider two isolated from each other societies: F, in which all labor is free, and S, in which much of the labor force is enslaved, starting out at the same level of development. I contend that in, say, 100 years F will be far more advanced than S, given that “industry supplies the consumption of the masses again and again with new commodities hitherto unknown and makes accessible to the average worker satisfactions of which no king could dream in the past.” (Human Action, 605) In other words, just as private ownership of the means of production is not a privilege of the capitalists and entrepreneurs, because it is to the benefit of everyone, even workers; so slave ownership is, on the contrary, a legal privilege given to slave owners which retards economic progress. (And not even them, as in the long-run masters don’t benefit from the institution of slavery at all; only slave hunters do.)

Timothy continues:

So do we mean “slavery produces goods and services that are more expensive and or of lower quality to the consumer than are the goods and services produced by free labor”? This too is false. Although some abolitionists like Lydia Maria Child tried to boycott slave-produced products like sugar, the fact is that such products were much cheaper than products produced by free labor. After all, in countless instances, American consumers chose to purchase slave produced products over products produced by free labor.

The point is not that some products made with the help of slave labor will not be cheaper than identical products made by means of free labor. In fact, those articles whose making involves simple primitive physical labor, like that of pack animals or beasts of burden, might compete successfully with free-market produced items. Sugar might indeed be such an article, if tending to and processing it is work that is so undemanding in terms of intellectual input that absolutely any human being who is physically healthy can do it for 8 hours per day or however long. In other words, such work may decently suit slave labor. But consider the invention and mass production of something like microprocessors. Does Timothy really think that those feats can be accomplished by slave labor? That would be an outrageous claim. In short, our hypothetical society F will end up with computers, and S will still cling to its cotton farms. And if F and S were finally to meet after the hundred years of separate development, then I suspect that a lot of people, including many slave owners themselves would immigrate into F.

Our author quotes Kenneth Stampp who writes that “the [slave] system did not prevent masters from offering tempting rewards for the satisfactory performance of assigned tasks.” Indeed, and insofar as it did not, it was not a slave system but a system of quasi-free labor (by which I mean that slavery imitated certain features of free labor without quite giving the slaves freedom, rather like the various schemes of market socialism try to imitate, poorly, the real free market). This very fact shows that slave labor is woefully inefficient; otherwise why offer “tempting rewards” which are equivalent to paying for higher productivity, exactly the very advantage that free labor enjoys?

To see how Mises would have evaluated the American Civil War, we will need two passages; here is the first:

In the political sphere resistance to oppression on the part of the established government is the ultima ratio of those oppressed. However illegal and unbearable the oppression, however lofty and noble the motives of the rebels, and however beneficial the consequences of their violent resistance, (1) a revolution is always an illegal act, disintegrating the established order of state and government. It is an essential mark of civil government that it is in its territory the only agency which is in a position to resort to measures of violence or to declare legitimate whatever violence is practiced by other agencies. A revolution is an act of warfare between the citizens, it abolishes the very foundations of legality and (2) is at best restrained by the questionable international customs concerning belligerency. If victorious, it can afterwards establish a new legal order and a new government. But (3) it can never enact a legal “right to resist oppression.” Such an impunity granted to people venturing armed resistance to the armed forces of the government is tantamount to anarchy and incompatible with any mode of government. (Human Action, 286n)

Here is the second:

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, (4) by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, (5) their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

…the right of self-determination of which we speak is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of (6) every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations… (Liberalism, 109ff)

So, if the United States before the War between the States was a voluntary union of the states, and if each state had rights against federal encroachments, and if in addition those rights included a legal right to secede, then according to (1) the federal government aggressed illegally on the seceding territories. The feds had no right to assist the blacks in “resisting oppression,” or so Mises argues in (3), by overthrowing the legitimate government. Further, slavery or not, the Southern states had a moral right to secede, according to (5), and if moreover secession was conducted in harmony with (4) (which it was), and the Confederacy was sufficiently large and was in fact for all intents and purposes a distinctive nation and culture as per (6) (which again it was), and finally if the rules mentioned in (2) were not followed (which they weren’t), then those states were in the right, and the Northern states were initiators of a violent and barbaric revolt against which the Southerners had every right to defend themselves.

Now it may be replied that the North was an avenging angel against the slave-owning Southern scumbags. Illegal or not, murderous or not, revolutionary in terms of destroying the voluntary nature of the Union or not, utterly hypocritical with respect to the real reasons for the war or not, etc., the war helped to free the slaves. (i) Only consequences matter; (ii) the evil means were justified by the good end; and (iii) no peaceful solution was in sight. I beg to differ. Will my readers disagree?

See also: A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy.

Sandefur writes: “The child has a right not to be, so to speak, falsely imprisoned in a mental asylum due to the parents’ superstitions — and the state has the legitimate authority to defend that right, again, within certain (often vague) boundaries set by a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of a child.” That seems to entail the view of the child’s rescuer, the state, as coldly rational, dispassionate, and scientific; as a kind of perfect NT who sees all and will instead of superstitions impart into the child truths. Now a decision could be defended to take a child away from an intellectually suffocating environment in some particular case. Maybe even under market anarchism a private judge would rule that Child Savers, Inc. was in the right to steal some kid from his parents. But, in keeping with Sandefur’s entirely praiseworthy opposition to public schooling, we should qualify that and say that the state’s own schools in which children are supposed to be taught “truths” are far from adequate. My own view is that the only truths the state should be charged with telling is found in its investigations of violent crimes. Elsewhere, even on the level of a city, it is an unreliable arbiter.

But God bless Sandefur’s mission to defend and restore private property rights.

He is wrong on Ron Paul, though. “Racism” is now a meaningless term. So, the question is, was Paul or whoever wrote that correct? Exactly what in the polemic to which our author links is false? Or must our brains rot with PC crud? We have indeed, as the article argues, failed to convey to blacks that they should know their place as allotted to them by a laissez-faire free market economy lacking both the welfare state and any legal privileges for any race. As Mises points out, for example, “The market… directs each individuals’ activities into those channels in which he best serves the wants of his fellow-men.” (Planning for Freedom, 72) Why shouldn’t blacks be a normal part of the market process? Don’t secure property rights require the legal right to “discriminate” as the owner sees fit and freedom of association? Moreover, Paul is a spectacular proponent of free trade — he wants to unilaterally eliminate all trade barriers erected by the US government, including war-inducing sanctions. As for the other accusations, they reflect a split in opinions between the Cato and Mises Institutes. Sandefur should study these views in detail rather than just wave a whatever-color flag for Cato. E.g., Paul is also great on property rights. The subtlety is, he is very skeptical of the utility of a higher-level government’s, especially the feds, dictating policies to and arbitrating disputes within the territory of lower-level governments, such as cities and states. He is consistent; for example, he does not like the UN determining or even influencing US policy. I’m with him on this. When in doubt, decentralize. Unless Sandefur is not in doubt.