Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
"You have to have some swagger, for crying out loud. ... Not good.
ReplyDeleteSo we see that there is yet another problem with democracies. Because of their periodic elections, even relatively stable States such as the US temporarily lose their footing."
Bob, this seems a bit muddled.
You want Obama to have more swagger, why? To better scare off bad guys abroad, OR to better manipulate the American people into supporting huge diversions of wealth to friends in the defense industries?
And you suggest that democracies are more likely (than autocratic regimes?) to "lose their footing" (by supporting a waste of taxpayers' funds on defense? Sure we have a huge problem in the US that is noticeable worse over the Bush administration. But how can you with a straight face suggest that the problem is LESS under an autocratic regime, which would tolerate much less internal criticism to diversions of wealth used to keep themselves in power?
Bemoan our easily manipulated tribal instincts for hostility and chest-beating all you like, but please don't wish more of it, AND more autocracy as a cure, on us.