mrocktor

Exactly. On one hand, the victim who personally saw a the thief and followed him home to get his wallet back has all the evidence he needs. But his testimony is not enough for a court of law. Thus my difficulty in untangling the issue to my own satisfaction. Well, the citizen is ultimately answerable to the government - at least if the government is set up along the lines I mentioned above, and a law base capable of dealing with this scenario is created - which would require solving the issues David raised. The goevrnment, on the other hand, is answerable only to the constitution - to the law itself. That is the big difference. So, the same thing that stops the government from becoming a tyranny by taxation, regulation and everything else is what stops it from becoming a tyranny by not following due process. And the government stops individuals from using unwaranted force. But the government stopping an individual from using legitimate force - that is what bugs me. And this legitimacy has to be defined by the individual's absolute rights, not by permission. That I can shoot a guy when I am being threatened is undisputed since the police are not around 100% of the time. But can I run inside, grab a gun, jump in the car, find him and shoot him down 4 blocks away to recover my wallet? Can I gun down a criminal if there happens to be a police officer on the scene? I certainly have a right to recover my property and to defend myself, but most people here would probably argue that from the instant my life is no longer at risk I don't have a right to do it personally. The argument being that I can call the police and let them do it. This, in my opinion, is dangerously close to saying that you may only use force in defense of your rights because you need to. This is contrary to the principle that you have an absolute right to defend yourself and your property by force. Naturally, for most people and in most cases using force personally is a dumb decision. But the government does not exist to force you to be smart.

Another point made by that excellent article is that if immigration is free, only criminals have a reason to attempt entering the country in places other than the designated entry points. It makes it much easier to have a "trespassers will be shot" border policy when you are not dealing with innocents.

I'm struggling with this issue myself, as I tried to indicate in the previous post. At the moment I have the following things in mind: - Peaceful coexistence, or "life as man" in society, requires objective law and a monopoly in jurisdiction. In other words, there has to be only one law and this law must be right. This means there can be no "my law, your law" issues or competing "enforcement agencies" as anarchists like to envision. Competition in the "force market" has a name: war. There must be one government and one law within a given area. - The government derives its "rights" from the citizens. This delegation of rights has to be voluntary. There is no "social contract" where everyone agrees to delegate their right of self defense just by being born. Nor can one argue that "society needs" you to give up your right to retaliate. In my view, the government has to prevent you from commiting crimes - including crimes against criminals. How does one determine to what extent the use of force against a criminal is just retaliation and at which point it becomes a crime in itself? The only standard to judge by is the law. Now, the law will stipulate a "due process" by which suspects are investigated, tried, convicted and punished. Of course a vigilante will not follow this process. The thing is, there is no right to due process - it is a restriction on the government not on individuals. The individual right to self defense is not limited. On the other hand, vigilanteism is an act of force. As Account Overdrawn mentions in his preceding post, I also consider it entirely fitting to require the vigilante to prove that his act was justified (i.e. the burden of proof lies with him once he is objectively deterined to have perpetrated the act of force). It is important to note that all of this does not add up to "anarcho-capitalism", since the monopolistic government will still persecute everyone who uses force. It is still the final arbiter. Still, I have not managed to come to a clear conclusion on how a proper government should deal with this issue. I am not comfortable with criminalizing an individual's exercise of his right to defend his life and property by force nor with the compulsory delegation of these rights.

Anarchists hold this position based on two flawed arguments. I found them stated boldly and reiterated in Murray N. Rothbard's "The Ethics of Freedom" (which is gospel to many libertarians) but I do not know if that is their original source. Fallacy #1: Government is always coercive because it is financed by taxes A simple package deal. No Objectivist defends taxation, a government does not have to be supported by taxation. End of argument. 90% of Rothbard's anarchist argument falls to the ground by rejecting this simple and painfully obvious package deal. Fallacy #2: Government must initiate force in order to maintain its monopoly on the use of retaliatory force This one is actually quite prickly, and I think many Objectivists have not given it the amount of thought it deserves. In essence, if a government uses force against innocent, non aggressive individuals (such as forbidding them to own a tank), it is in fact initiating force in order to maintain its monopoly. Also, it is arguable that if an individual who is the victim of a crime pursues the criminal and by force extracts reparation - within the criteria of the law - it would be an initiation of force against him if the government treated this action as a crime. Of course both these objections, even if granted, do not negate the possibility of a non-coercive government. In the first case, the government can simply retaliate when the individual actually uses his property to threaten others, whether intentionally or by negligence, imprudence or incompetence. This is retaliatory force, and thus legitimate. In the second case, the government could simply prosecute the victim that "took justice into his own hands" and hold him up to the standard of the law. Did he have adequate evidence? Did he use the proper level of force? Did he extract the proper amount of compensation from the criminal. If so, and only so, he is innocent of crime. Frankly, I don't see how that standard could be met (the item about evidence, in particular) - but it gives an objective means to judge the vigilante's transgression. In this way the government remains the ultimate arbiter, the government's objective law the only standard by which people are judged. And the monopoly on force is maintained without initiating force.

More fundamental are the principles involved. First, we have peolpe arguing that it is rightful for the government to use force against an individual because this individual has the means of challenging the government's monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. This is the view expressed by those people arguing that the police has no anti-tank weaponry and other similar arguments. This view contradicts the principle that the initiation of force is forbidden to the government, as well as to individuals. To avoid the interference from any other considerations, let us assume that one man owns a fully functional tank and ammunition for it. he keeps it on acres of his own land and never loads the gun. If the government used force to take this man's property, on the excuse that he could use it to challenge the monopoly on the use of force, this government is initiating force. Second, the view that owning weapons is allowed by the government as a result of the individuals need to defend himself. This is the idea being defended when it is argued that you don't "need" a bazooka to defend your home, or that when criminals are driving panzers, only then is it ok to own a tank. This view is flawed because it inverts the direction rights "flow". Every individual has the right to defend himself by force. This right is not constrained to "proportionality", an individual has every right to blow a guy away with a bazooka if he invades his property and threatens him with violence of any sort. It is the individual who delegates his right to use retaliatory force in "non emergency" situations to the government, not the government who grants the individual a limited right to defend himself. Third, the view that certain things present an inherent threat. This is the idea that certain things, such as nuclear material, biological hazards or large amounts of conventional explosives represent a threat to others by simply being there. The metaphor between a gun and a bomb where the bomb is like a gun pointed in every direction is an example of this argument. This view has some merit, but also some issues. First, it is evident that a nuke, a stockpile of nerve gas or a large amount of explosives is a risk to people nearby. But is it a threat? The gun metaphor plasters over a very significant distinction: to point a gun at someone indicates intent, precisely because the gun can be targeted. This is the reason (or at least a major part of the reason) why pointing a gun is a threat. With a bomb, although it is "pointed at every direction", you cannot assume that the owner intends to point it in any direction. To assume otherwise would mean you would have to consider a man with a holstered firearm to be threatening anyone who happens to cross the weapon's line of fire. The intent to use force is a necessary component of a threat. Simply having the means to threaten is not a threat in itself. The government cannot simply forbid people from owning things because it makes maintaining a monopoly on the use of force easier (the reductio for this would be total disarmament). The government cannot legitimately constrain people to owning only the things they "need" to defend themselves. The government can't simply declare that owning something is a threat in itself - a threat has a necessary volitional component. Where does that leave us? If the owner of the tank is actually training his gun on other people's houses or telling them he will blow them up if they don't comply with some wish of his - this is an objective crime, and no one here would argue about it. In my opinion, the problem of owning hazardous materials or military grade weapons has more in common with drunk driving than with pointing guns at people. As with drunk driving, someone who has a backyard culture of ebola or a basement nuclear warhead may not have the intent to cause harm to others - but the likely outcome of his acts may nonetheless be the violation of other's life and property. It is not the driving that is a crime, though the driving itself creates a risk, but doing it in a condition where one is not reasonably expected to be capable of containing the results of one's actions on other's lives and property. The fundamental issues, in my view, are: Is the owner in control of the risk posed to other's lives and property? 1000kg of TNT is perfectly under control in the middle of a few acres of land, it is unlikely that it could be kept in a town house with any amount of safeguards. Fissile nuclear material is perfectly under control inside a nuclear powerplant's reactor, it would require the same level of containment if an individual wanted to keep the same amount is his home. Is the owner threatening anyone with this material? Threats may be overt or implicit, if in any way the item in question is used to threaten or intimidate anyone, that is a crime. Of course this applies to the baseball bat in the exact same way it applies to the grenade launcher. To sum it up, the government must stop you from threatening other's lives and property intentionally or puting them at risk by negligence, imprudence or incompetence. It must not, however, violate your property rights because someone feels threatened or because someone does not think you "need" or "have a legitimate use" for it.

Bravo.

If it is rational, it has rights. Whatever "it" is. This does not mean that "it" is human, since that word denotes our particular species. This is the reason I think Ayn Rand should have developed her ethics using the term "rational being" in place of "rational animal", since our animality is a non-essential in this context. Contra what too many Objectivists say in these discussions (no doubt because of Rand's famous illustration), machines are not immortal. They are destructible like anything else. The fact that a hypothetical rational machine could live indefinitely does not mean they are immortal - just as humans will not become immortal when finally someone figures out how to stop aging.

Re. MV = PQ, this article pretty much sums up why I don't like the "velocity of money" idea as relevant to inflation. Basically: the velocity of money has to follow the velocity of goods - it's not an invalid concept but it can't be central to the issue of inflation.

This is your problem. Current gold prices do not reflect the value of gold as currency - because it is not. If gold comes back into circulation (by whatever means), its dollar price will be adjusted by the market. In fact, it is reasonable to look at the issue as the gold price of the dollar (i.e. today the dollar is worth 0.001oz of gold). You don't need any determinate amount of gold in order to use it as currency - prices simply will reflect its relative abundance or scarcity. Yes, there would be constant price decrease as the economy outruns gold mining in productivity - but that is not a problem. If gold prices become so low that coins would have to be made in milligrams, a switch to a more abundant metal (most likely silver) would occur by market forces.

You are confusing yourself into believing that something can be "owned by everyone", your alternative is to say "government property".

I can't say that this is clear to me. For instance, what is the package deal in the anti-concept "public property"? It is an anti-concept by virtue of being internally contradicting. Property means ownership, onership means exclusive control, "public" contradicts this since a group cannot have exclusive control - only individuals can. This anti-concept atacks the concept of property itself. This much is clear. Where is the package deal though? What am I being asked to accept beyond the idea that people can collectively own something? A clear example of package dealing is the typical libertarian concept of government. "All government is coercive because government is supported by taxation". The packaging is between government (the organization holding a monopoly on retaliatory force) and theft by taxation - something that is not in the nature of government per se (though all current governments do it). I can't see such a package in the "public property" example.

Libel and slander do not violate any rights. They are not crimes and, therefore, should not be made illegal. If someone makes untruthful statements about you, your right to life is not violated. Even if you are in a neighborhood populated by black people, he convinces them you are KKK and they proceed to murder you, he has not commited a crime. Unless he actually incites them to kill you, telling the lie is not the crime. The crime is the murderer's alone. In other words, people who act on false information are not automatons. No amount of false information should lead anyone to violate another's right to life. The exception to this rule is when the lie causes people to believe there is a state of emergency. The cry of "fire" in a theater is an instance of this. Since as a reaction to a state of emergency individuals may morally act in violation of others' rights, the creator of this false emergency is responsible for the results. If someone makes untruthful statements about you, your right to freedom is not violated. You remain capable of acting in any way you choose, so long as it does not violate the individual rights of other people. While other people may, as a result of the false information, choose not to associate with you, you don't have a right to that association in the first place. Finally, if someone makes untruthful statements about you, your right to property is not violated. Everything you own remains under your complete control. Now, others may value the goods and services you can provide differently as a result of the lie. But you don't have a right to a job, a wage or the monetary value of wharever you might wish to sell. You only have a right to use your property as you see fit, and conduct mutually agreeable transactions. This right is in no way violated by libel and slander. A doctor may suffer great financial harm due to a false accusation. But he loses nothing he owns, only what he might have gained otherwise. There is no right to future or potential property, only to actual property. In sum, one does not have a right to a reputation. That would be a right over the content of the minds of others. If they are misled, that is their problem. A reputation must be earned, and kept. In a country without anti-defamation laws, people would be a lot more skeptical about accusations, demanding a higher standard of evidence before believing anything they hear. The reputation of whoever makes the accusation, be it private individual or media source, would also be on the line - with everyone elses. An exposed false accusation is as damaging to the accuser as to the accused. Probably more, if known or suspected to be intentional.

Thanks. I still dislike the name, but I can accept the concept.

Good points. It is the relative supply of money to transactions involving money that matters. If the stock of goods remains constant but they are traded more, that would be a relative decrease in the supply of money. If the stock of goods were reduced, that would be a relative increase in the suply of money. In a free capitalistic economy, one can make the assumption that the stock of goods will be continuously expanded, and that the amount of transactions will remain fairly proportional to the stock of goods (I hate the name "velocity of money"). Under these conditions, only increasing the stock of money can cause inflation.

To solve this apparent contradiction, you need only to look at your definition carefully. What does "representative" mean in that phrase? Representative of what? The only truly "representative" set of goods, when speaking of an economy as a whole, is the lot of them. Taking all the goods as your "representative" set, your definition of inflation coincides with the Austrian one (i.e. the prices of ALL goods can only rise by an increase in the supply of money). If you are not speaking of the whole economy, then the use of the term "inflation" is innapropriate. If specific prices are rising, such as the "cost of living" (however you arbitrarily define that set of goods), then it is just that: rising prices. Only by looking at the money supply can you break down how much of the rise is inflation and how much is actualy just higher prices.

This is a dangerous mistake. The factory owner derives the right to concentrate and control so much wealth because he made it, not because he maximizes productivity, not because he maximizes pay, not because he minimizes prices and most importantly not because he helps to acheve a "common good". While all those consequences are true, they are not the basis for his right. To argue so is utilitarianism, a form of pragmatism where whatever "works" is right. Such a moral theory is flawed, how do you determine what "works" means if you depend on it to define what is right, and therefore good? Objectivism derives the right to property from man's nature and means of survival. The right is not limited in absolute or relative amount. The right to property is merely proper regard for causality. The factory exists because the factory owner made it, that is why it is his.

Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, by Leonard Peikoff (a.k.a OPAR) is my suggestion to anyone who really wants to understand Objectivism.

"Expanded" is not the word I would use. "Perverted" is. Menger derives concepts from observation, principles from concepts. Mises proposes concepts based mental gymnastics, derives principles from them and then tries to explain what he observes. Luck and an implicit Epistemology much better than his explicit one explains why Mises gets so much right.

In its simplest form: the "threat" of not giving you a value is not the same as the threat of removing a value you already have. The first is not coercion, the second is. I wont give you my x unless you do/give me your y is not coercion. I am stipulating conditions under which I will give you a value. I will take your z unless you do/give me your y is coercion. I am stipulating conditions under which I will refrain from causing you a disvalue. In the first case you have to choose between "no change" and "gain x and lose y". In the second case I am making you choose between "lose y" or "lose z". Obviously the second type of transaction depends on the use of force, or you would simply choose "neither".

This is very relevant. Personally, I find Carl Menger (arguably the founder of the school) to be excellent. His Epistemology is spot on, his statement and derivation of basic economic concepts true (and revolutionary, for the time). The Epistemology of subsequent austrians takes a dive, bottoming out in the complete rationalism (thought unconnected to reality) of von Mises. Interestingly there is an economist who's Epistemology is even better (or better stated) than Menger: Jean Baptiste Say. Reading the introduction of his "Treatise on Political Economy" there are several passages one could think came straight from Objectivist canon (except, of course, for the fact that he was a little over a century too early for that). In economics itself, I found Say's treatise somewhat poorer than the Austrians' (excepting his masterful identification of what has become know as "Say's law" - that production is demand). But that Introduction was a joy to read.

Wrong adjective, but good company.

Microsoft rejects the fine imposed by the EU and demands their right to do as they please with their products be recognized. Cancellation of all MS product licenses in the EU to follow otherwise, funds for the recall and un-installation of said products already approvisioned. If only...

FunDunn, Exploring another relevant issue that may help you to understand the economics of trade (of which international trade is just an example): Money is essentially worthless in itself. Even with commodity based money (such as gold), the greater part of the currency's value is due to it's "tradeability" and not to the commodity itself. With modern-day fake-money, the money is litterally worthless - except in trade for something else. Why is this important? Your concern about "money leaving the country" is irrelevant. Wealth is not measured in money, it is measured in goods - stuff that actually serves human needs. When Kenya buys food for money, it is getting goods in exchange for paper. If the trade is free, one can assume that both parties benefit (i.e. the importer values the food higher than the cash, the exporter values the cash higher than the food). Looking at the importation itself, there is no loss - but a gain for Kenya (strictly speaking, for Kenyans). Which leads us to the second point (which has already been touched uppon). What does the exporter do with the cash? He can't eat it or use it to directly satisfy any human need - its only value is in trade. Assuming a national fake-currency, the only use for that cash is to buys stuff from the same country he just sold the food to - Kenya. The money may go through a hundred money-traders, but it has to end up being used to buy stuff from that country. Assuming a commodity money (such as gold), things are a little more indirect. Gold, unlike national fake-money currencies, actually can be used to directly satisfy human needs or even in trade with other countries. It need not ever return to Kenya. But what happens if Kenya continuously exports gold in trade for food? Little gold will be left in Kenya, gold prices for all Kenyan goods will lower (since everyone has less gold) creating an irresisible magnet for international traders - Kenya becomes the best place to get goods for their gold (due to the low gold prices). Which in turn brings gold back into the coutry. As you can see, the whole thing tends towards stability - even with commodity currencies. Money leaving the country is never a problem, when the goods entering the country are worth more - which they will always be if trade is free.

First, not helping someone is not a crime. Even if they die. Even if you could have saved them. If someone creates an antibiotic or antiviral, they are under no moral obligation to give it to anyone. Thus the whole discussion is moot, the creator of the drug owns it and should be free to do with it whatever he wants. If he makes it available in such a way that resistant strains become common, he has just destroyed the value of his creation. No one is worse off than before he created it. That is the principled argument. Now for a little conjecture (the example only illustrates the point, the above argument is true in itself): I manage a drug company. I have just spent 10 billion dollars of my shareholder's money to create "murderallbacterioxicin" of which a proper dose is 99.99% lethal to all existing strains of bacteria. Do I: 1. Distribute it freely so every Tom, Dick and Harry can buy it at a street corner and take it as he pleases thus promoting the rise of bacterial strains resistant to my (ex-)wonder drug and destroying my product's market value; 2. Create a system of distribution that guarantees (by contract) that patients who use my drug will take the full course of medication thus killing off the damn bugs and preserving the medicine's potency. Hmm, tough choice... As expected, with the proper system in place (individual freedom of action, property rights), the good is promoted. The moral is the practical.