Fairly self explanatory, a spinoff from my “A few problems” thread.
Would black markets even exist in an Objectivist society or would everything be legal? (prostitution, “consensual” child sex, jet fighters, atomic bombs, whatever you wanted to buy. Yes that is inflammatorily worded to show the extremity of the concept and to discourage someone from just saying its all legal in a drive by post without thinking.)
Would the black markets of a libertarian society be different than an objectivist society?
Would the police in an objectivist society handle black markets differently than current mixed economy police practices? Even if we throw out an obvious trouble causing concept like the stupid drug war, i’m sure there would still be a market for contract murder from jealous lovers or weapons for looters or most likely of all some hostile external force trying to pervert the Objectivist society so that it could be looted like all other nations have been, and then that market would be filled by organized crime, as it is in every society. Also see spinoff post on organized crime. I’m not saying a command and control economy is better, laissez faire capitalism would probably alot less crime than we have in places of government corruption, punishing the producers, artificial scarcity to control populations (I read a book somewhere on communism where they actually WANTED the long lines and shortages to make people feel more dependant on the state), victim disarmament, confiscatory taxation, wealth redistribution to nonproducers, victimless crimes, entitlement mentalities, dumbing down the populations to make them more pliable to social engineers, etc etc etc but crime would still exist in some form even if primarily from outside hordes probing the system for weaknesses. So i’m wondering if Objectivism has any unique solutions to these problems.
(this is in relation to my initial fears of a “police state” objectivism, as being a necessary response to outside hostile forces attempting to subvert and destroy an objectivist society, I fear it would have to degrade into that, and even if the blame for the failure of that society would be on the looters who raided it that doesnt mean its prevented from degrading to that.)
Repeated again is my question, where and when and why should markets ever be regulated, or should two people be prevented from carrying out a contract they made freely due to risks/dangers/costs of either harming others or even bringing down the whole society?
Fairly self explanatory, a spinoff from my “A few problems” thread.
Would black markets even exist in an Objectivist society or would everything be legal? (prostitution, “consensual” child sex, jet fighters, atomic bombs, whatever you wanted to buy. Yes that is inflammatorily worded to show the extremity of the concept and to discourage someone from just saying its all legal in a drive by post without thinking.)
Would the black markets of a libertarian society be different than an objectivist society?
Would the police in an objectivist society handle black markets differently than current mixed economy police practices? Even if we throw out an obvious trouble causing concept like the stupid drug war, i’m sure there would still be a market for contract murder from jealous lovers or weapons for looters or most likely of all some hostile external force trying to pervert the Objectivist society so that it could be looted like all other nations have been, and then that market would be filled by organized crime, as it is in every society. Also see spinoff post on organized crime. I’m not saying a command and control economy is better, laissez faire capitalism would probably alot less crime than we have in places of government corruption, punishing the producers, artificial scarcity to control populations (I read a book somewhere on communism where they actually WANTED the long lines and shortages to make people feel more dependant on the state), victim disarmament, confiscatory taxation, wealth redistribution to nonproducers, victimless crimes, entitlement mentalities, dumbing down the populations to make them more pliable to social engineers, etc etc etc but crime would still exist in some form even if primarily from outside hordes probing the system for weaknesses. So i’m wondering if Objectivism has any unique solutions to these problems.
(this is in relation to my initial fears of a “police state” objectivism, as being a necessary response to outside hostile forces attempting to subvert and destroy an objectivist society, I fear it would have to degrade into that, and even if the blame for the failure of that society would be on the looters who raided it that doesnt mean its prevented from degrading to that.)
Repeated again is my question, where and when and why should markets ever be regulated, or should two people be prevented from carrying out a contract they made freely due to risks/dangers/costs of either harming others or even bringing down the whole society?
See my comment here. One thing you need to grasp about Objectivism is that concepts have specific meaning and a “market for murder” is not meaningful use of the concept market. You’re concrete-bound “problems” are not things that anyone bases a social system on and certainly not what one needs to consider when judging a social system.
… should two people be prevented from carrying out a contract they made freely due to risks/dangers/costs of either harming others or even bringing down the whole society?
The law has to figure out when such risk is significant enough to be a violation of the rights of a third-party. Your examples are very mixed. For instance, prostitution – as such – does no harm to third parties, so that’s not in the same category. Also, “consensual” child sex is a contradiction is by “child” we mean “legally deemed to be a child”. If someone is legally deemed to be a child, then they cannot consent. One can argue about the age at which to draw the line, and other intricacies, but that is a separate issue.
Your next example is the sale of arms. If some country is clearly an objective threat, and if selling arms to that country could reasonably be expected to pose a danger then it could be declared illegal, in principle. There could be a lot of argument around the specifics.
The murder example is clear-cut. Government exists to protect individual rights. Therefore murder ought to be illegal. the right to life is the most fundamental one. If murder is allowed how can one claim any shred of legitimacy.
How does this belong in the debate forums? You haven’t really posited a position for debate, just asked a bunch of questions. What is your position on this? Or should I move it to the Questions forum or the Politics forum?
In an Objectivist society, anything that doesn’t violate someone’s rights would be legal. So, say, narcotics would be legal because you taking them doesn’t violate anyone’s rights. There’s some argument as to whether some extremely powerful weapons might constitute a violation of rights simply by their possession (there’s no legitimate DEFENSIVE use to which an individual could put an atomic bomb or an anti-aircraft tower, so having one just means they’re a more or less permanent threat to their neighbors and or passing aircraft), but that’s only for true heavy weapons.
Other things like child pornography would be illegal because children are not able to legally consent to sexual acts (defining who is and is not a child and so forth is a separate issue) or portrayals of them engaged in sexual acts any more than they are able to form contracts. Since some people do seem interested in this sort of thing to the point of neurosis, however, a black market in child porn may continue to exist in an Objectivist society. However, since massive police resources might be freed from having to deal with such non-crimes as carrying 9/10 of an ounce of marijuana in your bag, it may be easier to crack down on REAL criminals, so the profitability of the black market will likely be substantially decreased and thus the incidence of such crimes will go down.
The reduction of scope for the black market also decreases the power and cash in the hands of organized criminals. If prostitution is legal (which it would be–it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights even if you consider it disgusting), the cash earnings from such activities will not automatically funnel into the hands of people willing to break the law and thus increase their ability to break more laws and get away with it.
So, while the black market would not cease to exist in an Objectivist society, it would likely be extremely marginalized and also far more “black” than it is nowadays, since it caters equally to pedophiles and desperate people looking for a liver transplant. And the more reprehensible an entire category of activity is, the easier it is for law enforcement to combat, I expect. I could be wrong, though.