Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 01:33:18 -0500
> From: Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu>
> Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

> No government can protect individual rights.

That isn't a reasonable statement. There is nothing in the definition or
application of 'government' or 'individual rights' that preclude this. The
issue becomes in a practical sense how the practitioners of a government
system respect individual rights. If they are willing to do away with them
to protect them (as we seem to be moving toward in this country) then of
course there are no individual rights.

Of course, this implies there are no collective rights either.

>  The only way one could do
> so would be if it: (a) could predict the future, and act to prevent
> certain futures from happening; or (b) it controls every aspect and
> motion of each individual's life, thereby ensuring that nobody steps out
> of line.

What has that to do with protecting individual rights? Clarify please.

> All any state can do is threaten to "retaliate" against (why not just
> say "attack") people who disobey its edicts.  In order for this threat
> to be credible, the state must wield sufficient power to kill any
> individual (or group of individuals) who would stand against it.  If it
> does not have this power, it cannot govern.

This is a quaint and completely artificial distinction.

> citizens.  As often seems the case today, for example.

We also see quite a few situations where the opposite occurs as well.

> The system you suggest, which I assume consists of a state with a
> "minimal" amount of power, run by enlightened people, is in a state of

Anyone who assumes noble oblige is an idiot. There are no enlightened
people, intelligence and wealth no more prepare an individual for a
position in government than they prepare them for anything else.
Rich/intelligent people don't make less mistakes than those who aren't.

> extremely unstable equilibrium (if it is indeed in equilibrium).  If it

If you're talking of Hayek's equilibrium, it's nothing more than a
bastardization of a thermodynamics term to represent the status quo.
Equilabrium in the economic sense simply means that people do today what
they did yesterday. In general they do about as often as they don't.

> wields just enough power to enforce its will, that power can be used by
> evil men to increase its power.

Evil? Where did religion come into this at?

> Just look at what happened after the Constitutional coup took place in
> the fledgling USA.  Remember the Whiskey Rebellion?  When we lost the
> Articles of Confederation, we were taking the first steps down the road
> to the tyranny of today.  The anti-federalists predicted this, although
> they sorely underestimated how far it would go --assuming that it would
> be stopped by another revolution.

There have been several since then. The Civil War and the civil rights
movement in the 60's are two good examples (on the opposite end of the
'use-of-violence' scales).

> The minimalist state has been tried.

No, that was a non-federalist state where the individual states acted as
individuals in a collective. Because of the collective nature of the state
governments it didn't work. A minimalist state would be anarchy.

> The only truly free system is one in which there is no body of people
> calling itself a government which can enforce its will over the
> individual.  The only way people can seem to be free living under such a
> body is entirely dependent upon the good will of their masters, and this
> is a shaky assumption to make.

No it isn't the only way. The only way is to clearly define the duties of
each level of government and build a system of checks and balances that
prohibit them from moving outside their domains. A good first attempt at
this was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (in particular 9 & 10).
The problem is that there are individuals who don't want to be limited in
their authority. It's a person problem not a government problem.

> How about:  Any action that involves the initiation of force against the
> property of another person (the person belongs to himself, of course) is
> immoral.

Morality? Why do you keep bringing religion and individual beliefs into it?

A person is, they don't belong to anyone.

It should be:

Any act that harms a person or their property without their prior permission
is a crime. There are no exceptions other than immediate personal self
defence, which terminates upon the application of minimal force to guarantee
the threat will not reoccur (in many cases this means kill the attacker).
This should apply to all individuals participating in a governmental role as
well.

> This neatly tidies up the obvious question of exactly what "individual
> rights" are.  There's a partial list of them in the bill of rights, but
> it is not complete, by its own admission.

By it's own admission they are protected from denial by the 9th and 10th so
they don't need to be listed (unlike the 10th lists the duties of the
government system). The problem is conservatives and liberals alike don't
respect those boundaries. They want more.

>  Furthermore, the above
> definition excludes such dubious rights as the "right to an education",
> the "right to welfare", etc.

Now you're doing exactly what you are complaining about. Your defining others
rights when you don't want them defining yours.

People may very well have a right to welfare and an education (I believe
people have a civil right to medical and legal advice gratis - stems from
the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness). The issue isn't that. The
issue is *what are the duties of the government as defined in its charter*.
If those duties are not in there (and they're not) then it shouldn't be
doing it without an amendment from the charter.

> All of the above involve the initiation (or threat of initiation) of
> force.  Hence they are immoral, and the victims and any bystanders would
> be morally justified in using force against the initiators.  Of course,
> this would not be true in a governed society, where the state must hold
> a monopoly on the use of force, if only to maintain its own position. 
> Much less efficient.  

Go read the Constitution, it's true here in our governemnt though many
people don't want it to be so. As a result they find all kinds of childish
and inane reasons to deny the obvious.

Like it or not the federal governments panapoly of current powers are as
vacous as the king is naked.

It's like executive orders, unless you happen to work for the executive
branch they aren't worth the paper they're written on. Why? Because at no
point is the office of President given this authority over anyone other than
executive branch employees. He has no more authority to dictate general
behaviour via that mechanism than you or I do - zero. Per the 10th there is
not one sentence in the Constitution that delegates that authority to the
office.

> We've all got our pet peeves.  Would you like to live under mine?  Would
> I like to live under yours?  Can I trust you to be tolerant?  Can I
> trust your successors, 20 years from now?  Can my descendants trust
> subsequent successors, 200 years later?  Experience tends to show the
> contrary.

There is more at stake than toleration or trust. You paint with too narrow a
brush. If you're saying we should have anarchy then you're as kooky as the
people who don't literaly interpret the Constitution.

> The anarcho-capitalist free market is not one where "everything goes,"
> and there is indeed a strong concept of individual rights.  What is
> moral and not moral is defined by society on an individual basis.  The
> first and only rule is:

First, it is one of everything-goes because there is no mechanism that will
stop anybody from doing anything. There are NO concepts of *rights* in such
a system, let alone individual rights. If anything the only rights are who
has the capitalist backing to stave off the anarchic forces. That's not
justice, equality, or respect for rights.

> No one has the right to initiate force against another or another's
> property.

Attack me with your body and property and watch it happen junior.

> This is the fundamental and only "social contract" we make.  Anyone who
> disagrees with this is obviously antisocial, and nobody's going to want
> to live with him (or allow him to continue living, if he attacks
> someone).

Oh bullshit. There is much more involved like not stealing which isn't the
use of force and allowed by your anarcho-capatilism as well as your
definition of valid use of force above.

It's gibberish.

> >From this, morality follows.  If X does Y to Z, and if Y is perceived as
> immoral, then X is not going to be very popular with Z or anyone else,
> unless he can make amends.  No one will want to trade with him, be near
> him, etc.  This is a very strong motive to avoid doing immoral things.

Will you get religion the hell out of here please. Y is obviously popular
with X or else they wouldn't have used it. It further follows that there are
more than one X-type out there. So your premise falls down on its face in
the dirt.

> If Y is really nasty, such as the initiation of force, then X is going
> to be in *deep* trouble.

With who? In an anarcho-capitalist society as you paint it the optimal strategy
is to allow others to reduce your competition opening up the market for you.

Let's take an example. Imagine we live on a street and we notice a person
going from house to house down the other side of the street. What is our
optimal strategy? It isn't to call the cops (there aren't any) and it isn't
to immediately kill the intruder (it isn't our property after all) since
there is an opportunity to make a considerable gain here improving our
status in the society as a whole. The optimal strategy is to wait and let
this bozo kill our neighbors up to our house and *then* kill the intruder.
At that point we have just inhereted an entire street of houses and its
included properties. You put up a fence across each end of the street and
wallah, your own little fifedom. If you're really lucky something similar
will happen on the next street over and they won't be as lucky at killing
the intruder. Then after they are all dead and the intruder has consolidated
their gains (probably by fencing their street in) you can begin to scheme
ways of taking that property since its obvious yours is next.

>  Z may well shoot him out of self defense, and
> even if he survives his action, he'll have to pay a *lot* of restitution
> before people will trust him again, if ever.  Law enforcement by
> ostracism --read L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach", for a more
> detailed description.  

Wait a second, there is no law to enforce here outside of make money, obtain
property, keep somebody else from taking it.

> In summary, a free market is far from being an immoral market.  In fact,
> it is the most moral market there is, since there is no state which
> holds the "right" to initiate force.

In summary a free-market is a anarchy of kill or be killed, take or get
taken. He with the most goodies wins until somebody with a better strategy
comes along. There is nothing to moderate the use of force, especialy when
its the optimal strategy to increase ones holdings.

Your spouting gibberish.


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       To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.

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