makemore

Ludwig von Mises is, from what I have read, most known as in favour of a minimal government. Rothbard coined the term anarcho-capitalism but I don't think he managed to persuade von Mises to change his opinion on politics. On economics though they are much the same, and to dismiss Rothbard on economics just because you don't agree with him on politics is a bit silly in my opinion.

Thanks for that one Bearster! First of all I can assure you that I dont prescribe to "Hegelian dialectics" and thus I also dissagreas with the idea that there is "no absolute standard for truth". What I wanted to say with the above words is that I belive that it is good practise to test ones conclusions, to make sure that they really are compatible with the other ideas one holds. If they shouldnt be compatible this could indicate a slip in ones reasoning or even that some of ones underlying premises are wrong. It could happen that ones reasoning is perfect but the premises one bases it on is wrong, and this might not always be obvious to oneself. To prevent situations like this its good to have dialogs with other people who can explain how they view your reasoning and perhaps help you in furthering it. Since peoples lifes can be very different it can be of value to oneself to trade experiences with others. Now I can admit that the wording "its the road to wisdom" might be read as "the ONLY road ..". To be more precise I should probably have said: "its ONE of the roads to wisdom" or "its A road to wisdom". And I choose to use the word wisdom instead of knowledge since knowledge is more easily interpreted as understandings of provable facts, then understandings of peoples opinions. Part of my interest in debating with other people is to learn how they view things. This is knowledge that can be of use to me. So I belive you have been a bit to hasty in forming your conclusions about the text.

I think you must change your meaning of what is "doing anything", you seem to have a strict belief that one must do physical labour to receive money, but that is not the case. Simply letting someone take a photo or paint a picture of you qualifies as labour too, and these trades are similar to the organ selling that you described as a passive act. And in all these scenarious you are doing things, you are making a decision to stand still infront of the painter or getting your organ removed, and in this act reason is involved.

Some people give their organs away to help someone they value so why shouldnt it be possible to do it for money? Money is often not an end in itself but a means to other ends.

I didnt know about the plagiarizing issue so I decided to do a google search on "rand rothbard" and I found this essay http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/stromberg4.html that is an answer to yours. The author claims that the ideas that Rothbard was accused of having plagiarized, originated from Thomistic philosophy. Further down it mentions that Branden threated Rothbard with a lawsuit over the dispute, but it turned out to be an idle threat. Which perhaps was unfortunate because a test of this in a court would probably had been the best way of resolving the issue.

I belive that Rand and Rothbard was pretty good friends earlier, and shared many common views. However the dispute that later started between them I think was about that Rothbards wife was a christian and Rand demanded that he should seperate from his wife because of that. Rothbard disagred with Rand on this, and they went seperate ways after this. I belive that it was pretty much an ultimatum from Rand. If Im wrong on anything of this please correct me. I havent read through the whole article "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult" by Rothbard and Im not really interested in doing it either. I did some briefly reading and it appears that the text is written with a bitter emotion behind it, as is often the case in these personal feuds among people in the Objectivism movement, unfortunatly. However I do belive that Rothbard is more bitter with the movement of Objectivism then the philosophy, even if you can probably spot some attempt at attacks on the philosophy itself. I have the felling that there are quite a lot of people that are dissapointed of some of the actions the movement has taken. I mainly think of the excommunications that I belive has done more harm then good, and given the unfortunate appearence of Objectivism as a "cult" rather then a philosophical movement. These personal feuds is probably the biggest reason why I havent subscribed to any organisation that promotes Objectivism (such as ARI, TOC). My main interest is the philosophy and I feel that I dont have to be a part of an organisation to learn and practise it, on the contrary I belive it to be good to learn it on your own feets, it builds up your individualism and indepence.

I could make a try to define minarchism in a way that people will understand what is meant with minimal: Why one belives in minarchism is because one belives that voluntary actions between people is a good thing and should be encouraged. However the minarchist belives that there are some areas where voluntary relationship just cant work (market failures), laws is the most common one but others might belive that roads and pollution-controls are impossible aswell. Thus its because one see some voluntary relations between people as (unfortunatly) impossible that one calls himself an minarchist.

Since I used the term minarchy in another thread I felt that MinorityOfOne's post was indirectly adressed to me. I see that you use the term big-L-libertarian. One usually uses small or big L depending on the meaning of libertarian one is adressing. libertarian = the movement Libertarian = the party See libertarian on wiki for more info. Yes, many libertarians views the government as a neccesary evil. Why do you think they do it? This is important to know if we should judge if they are wrong or not. I belive they think that the enforced-monopoly issue contradicts individual rights. Thats why one might want to emphasize on the synonym "night-watchman" if one belives that "minimal" is to fussy. Night-watchman: (courts, police, prisons, defence forces), this is what Rand advocated is a governments proper function. See minarchy on wiki. I've seen disputes about this in the Objectivist movement too. The libertarian position is that a government doesn't have any other rights then those of its citizens. So the relationship between governments works the same as between individuals. A government acts as an agent for an individual who has delegated his right to it, thus it can retaliate for this person. So if a person in another country delegates his rights to this government then it could also take action for him, even if this would mean a conflict with another government. It is the same relation as between individuals if one cryes for help because hes being attacked. Morality is however a thing that could differ a libertarian government from an Objectivist one. This is because libertarianism doesn't subscribe to a specific moral system, but an Objective moral system and libertarianism is compatible so this difference doesn't have to exist. Although it is questionable whatever a government would declare war on another one on a moral basis. If a person does something that is moraly wrong we dont usually punish him, it is when he brakes a law that actions will be taken. Moral is something that cant be enforced because it has to be a choice. Finally any government that starts to talk in collectivist terms such as "in the nation's best interest" should be treated very suspectibly. A Government must never step on any of its (or others) individuals rights and must therefor take every individual into account instead of society as a whole.

R said "interested in reading and evaluating", not "required".

Im impressed with your history in the movement, and you out performe me on that part. But our views on what the word libertarian means differs, and there lies our dissagrement Its not hard to understand that this can happen, since the term libertarian is a pretty broad term. However the impression I've got from my studies is that libertarianism is not used to mainly refer to anarchists, but more to people who advocates a limited state (minarchism). Thus the term anarcho-capitalist, market-anarchist and such was created to differ the two appart. But anarcho-capitalists and libertarians are very closely related, and it wouldnt surprice me that anarcho-capitalists is involved in libertarianism since they are practicly the same with different views on the state. I think the schism between them is the same as the one in the Objectivism movement. I did some searches on libertarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian this site states that libertarianism has an history of being a synonym for anarchism but in the '"Libertarian" as "classical liberal"' section this can be found: However, in the US since the 1950s, the word libertarian has been massively used by classical liberals, only a few of them being anarcho-capitalists. on the same site is also a reference to the Cato institute which is refered to as libertarian. Although Cato says that they see problems with all kinds of labeling there mission states: The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. And on the site: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Libertarian can also this be found: Synonyms: Free-marketer, objectivist, classical liberal, strict constructionist, laissez-faire, Lockean. which implies a relationship with classical liberalism which is not considered anarchism as far as I know. I wouldnt be surpriced if you can find sites that says the opposite, but I have tried to pick some famous ones as to get my point across. Enough writing for today!

You are missreading me. The message in my post, including the one you quoted was not aimed at everyone on this board, but instead to the people, which I also quoted and named. That is: GreedyCapitalist and Capitalism Forever. If someone thought that I did a generalisation of everyone on this board, and got offended, Im sorry, that was not what I meant, infact part of my message was that these generalisations was dumb-downs of the subject their addressing, and therefor unfortunate on this discussion board. I also did write "And to you too.", that you left out in your quoting of me, as to imply that I was answering to the persons. It might be that these two people I adressed are well educated on the libertarian position, but I didnt get that impression from their posts: These arguments to me appeard as narrow-sighted and more as mocking then as rational arguments. Austrian economics is a moving target, as is all economic science more or less today. Still I belive that it is the school that best continues where Rand stopped on her political writings. For those who are interested in how a laissez-faire society would look and act, the writings in the libertarian movement has alot to offer. Sure Austrian economics was originaly based on Kant subjectivism (Mises), but despite this it comes to the same conclusions as Objectivism. The main things Im thinking of are the three no-no's in libertarianism, that is non-initiation of force. These are: - No physical aggression towards another (including property). - No threat of force towards another. - No fraud towards another. These are the core of libertarianism, and that core can be provided by Objectivism. I think some Objectivist has a tendency to throw out the whole concept to hastly when they see some little detail that opposes Objectivism instead of applying the wisdom they have got from Rands philosophy. I have found that Objectivism has a great ability to answer these quirks. So I dont recommend Objectivist to ignore libertarianism because that is to ignore alot of useful work by alot of people.

Can you state some facts that back up this accusation, on the Libertarian Party website also please (www.lp.org). I have never seen that the Libertarian Party is pushing an anarchist agenda. And besides your response to the prevous guy (kgvl I think) is even evading some obvious facts. Most parties elects there leaders (and I think the Libertarian Party do too), so there is nothing that says that an Objectivist can't be a leader of the Libertarian Party, quite the opposite in my opinion, an Objectivist has alot to offer the Libertarian Party. And besides its not like the leaders have unlimited power, you are talking about probably the most individualistic party on the american political scene.

I can only agree. It sounds an awful lot like the worst of bad propaganda. Why dont you actually study some of the libertarian litterature that exist out there. Anatole seems to be much more informed on the subject than you. Libertarianism is a position that is shared by many different people with different underlying philosophies on how to reach the points libertarianism advocates. Guess what, in the libertarian movement you will find people that advocates anarchism but you will also find minarchist and even aristotalian natural-rights people such as Objectivists. Why you chose to generalise that all libertarians are anarchist is beyond my grasp, as well as the fact that you try to build up huge walls against them, when in fact you probably have alot in common with them. And if there is some things that you disagree with them, why dont you discuss it with them, instead of trying to build false generalisations of them. And to you too. Why dont you read some libertarian litterature instead of just plotting scare-pictures of libertarians with your friends. You could start with Ludwig von Mises. I saw an article about this subject that was published some days ago. Perhaps it can be useful: Can the Ideas of Mises and Rand Be Reconciled? http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Younkins/Ca...econciled.shtml

Sure, and if I use my flashlight to shine on someone elses property that too could be called a property violation. It could even be debated that sounds from my mouth that reaches an unconsenting ear is a violation. Where the limit is is up to the people involved to decide. What decides the limit is if its economicly reasonable or not for the violated to press charges against the violater. By the same principle that you would deal retribution in a case where someone punshes another person, by the an eye for an eye principle (shouldnt be taken literaly). The retribution should be weighted to as closely as possible undo the violation as if the victim would never have been violated. Well its really more about objective answers then "absolute answers". In the case about retribution for an example an absolute compensation, in the meaning that absolute means: WordNet ® 2.0 adj 1: perfect or complete or pure; .. 5: without conditions or limitations; .. might not always be possible. For an example if someone mutilates another person in a fight the physical damage might not be able to be undone perfectly. But the damage can be undone as good as possible including retribution for suffering. May it be that the facts are not always self-evident, so, then we will just have to take the facts that aren't self-evident into account aswell. Or are you trying to imply someting else?

Have you accounted for that property rights also includes water in your example? An example is that if you live in a house next to a river, and someone up-streams decides to dump waste (or do any other action that affects the water) that impacts your use of the water negatively. That is an infringement of your property right to that water and you can take legal action against the polluter.