Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Talking with Bob at lunch on Saturday, I realized that our differences on matters political can be boiled down to a single question: "If one is morally certain that a collective action problem exists but can be solved if someone is granted the power to enforce a solution, is it moral to enforce that solution?" For instance, if there were an asteroid heading towards a destructive collision with the earth, would it be moral to tax people to blow it up? I say the answer is clearly "yes": someone resisting paying such a tax is acting immorally . And coercing someone to prevent them from acting immorally is moral.  Put another way: no one has a right to act immorally. (Nevertheless, it may not always be right to prevent them: I am not in favor of coercing people to be polite, for various reasons, but if it could be done in a way that would actually make them genuinely polite, it would not be immoral.)

but because they are empowered to solve collective action problems.

Phil Magness tries to debunk Will Wilkinson's argument that perhaps libertarians should support Bernie Sanders by claiming: “Such a sweeping and systemic move, if attempted in the U.S., would immediately encounter several deeply entrenched political interests that simply make it an untenable proposition. And if, by some miracle, it were ever able to overcome those already entrenched interests, it would then succumb to new political appropriation by further interest group capture, leading to the perversion of its original stated goals.” As Magness is a libertarian, he has a problem here: this same argument completely undermines any policy suggestion for trying to put libertarianism into practice: however good the idea may be in theory, if Magness is right, attempting such a "sweeping and systematic move" will guarantee that what gets implemented instead will be a completely perverted version of what libertarians want. Meanwhile, Wilkinson is just saying that on th...

Not some kinky threesome: instead it is a preview of my forthcoming paper in Cosmos and Taxis , where I respond to Walter Block's critique of my paper, "Liberty Versus Libertarianism": ________________________ Professor Walter Block has done me the honor of penning an extended critique of portions of my paper, “Liberty Versus Libertarianism.” His response which addresses my comments on the work of the professor himself, and on his mentor, Murray Rothbard. A vigorous attack being a much more complimentary response to a paper than is a placid indifference, my thanks are sincere. Nevertheless, I think Block has misunderstood the essence of my thesis, particularly in his contention that I am only arguing “utilitarian” points, and I contend that his reply would have been more cogent had he paid more attention to the other parts of my paper. In writing this response, I hope that I can motivate a mind as sharp   as Professor Block’s to actually engage with my en...

Although I am often critical of libertarians here, that does not mean they don't make plenty of excellent points. In fact, if they didn't make plenty of excellent points, they wouldn't be worth criticizing! (That's why you don't see me spending any time on, say, people who claim the moon landing was faked, or young earth creationists.) One such point was brought home to me at my son's high school graduation, when people kept thanking the Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer (our keynote speaker) for all the money she had "given" to LaGuardia High School. It was as though she had dipped into her savings account for the new theater lighting system! Of course Brewer expended some political capital directing taxpayer dollars in one direction rather than another. But the students ought to be reminded frequently that the taxpayers bought them that new lighting system, and almost everything else at their school as well. (There are private donors.) Fa...

Here : "'Smart property,' for example, refers to physical property whose ownership is registered in the blockchain and thus controlled by whoever has the private key. In other words, property rights can be cryptographically defined and self-enforced by code. The owner can sell it simply by transferring the private key to another party." Sure Ronald! When some men with guns show up to take my land, I can show them my "cryptographically defined" property rights, and they will say, "Ooooohhhh! We didn't know you had a private key showing you own this land! Well, we'll just scurry off then." Imagine if Native Americans had only had "cryptographically defined" property rights: the Europeans would have just sailed on back home, wouldn't they? UPDATE: In the comments, rob has made me wonder if Bailey only meant "self-enforcing" in reference to things like a computer or automobile, that could be rendered inoperativ...

Libertarians often suggest that using ostracism is a "non-aggressive" was of responding to actions or speech one doesn't like. And this is tied in an interesting way to the metaphysical error at the heart of liberalism. Here is a good (if harrowing) New York Times article about what has happened to the lives of people ostracized by social media thought police for minor missteps in Tweets, etc. These people's lives were shattered by these "non-aggressive" campaigns: they would have been harmed far less if the government had jailed them for a week for a "hate speech" crime. Liberalism à la Hobbes and Locke starts with an atomic individual as fundamental. That individual then may (or may not!) enter into a "social contract" and so voluntarily take part in society. But this is nonsense: no such individuals have or could exist. Humans are inherently social animals, and membership in a society is integral to our very being. Short of ki...

Here . Note the libertarian in the comments. He never addresses Bruenig's argument, because he can't: it would make nonsense of a view central to his self-image. So what he does do is keep changing the subject: "You haven't put forward a better theory," etc.

Whenever you point out something particularly bad being done by a corporation or an industry to a libertarian and ask if the free market might have had a part in it, you are told "The free market does not exist: we are living in a world where markets are plagued by a myriad of interventions!" But this free-market that does not exist whenever one is pointing to a problem, suddenly pops into existence whenever a libertarian wants to take credit for some improvements that have gone on in the world: "and peaceful solutions (the free market) have emancipated more people from grinding poverty than any other force in the history of the world." Sorry, the exact same mixed economy that has produced crony capitalism and pollution has produced the economic growth that has lifted people out of poverty, since that is the only sort of economy we have had during the time Woods is discussing. You don't get to call it your beloved free market whenever it produces somethi...

It is obvious that citing the NAP as making the case for libertarianism doesn't work at all: it is only convincing to people who are already libertarians, and not even to all of those. So why is it still clung to so tightly? In the comments, Matt wins the cigar: " It's an appealing thing for some to believe, so they choose to believe it."

Reading David Simon (see previous post) got me thinking about the meaning of "capitalism." Typically, when someone of the right hears our current woes blamed on capitalism, what they say is, "But we don't have real capitalism, what we have here is crony capitalism." But by "real capitalism," what these people mean is a social system which has never existed anywhere . Any actually existing capitalism has looked to some degree or another like what we have today: Government intervenes in the economy for the benefit of capitalists. (Note: this is certainly what Marx meant by capitalism.) It is as though a group of villagers are complaining they have a problem with tigers, since tigers are eating their children. However, there are "tigertarians" who tell them they have nothing to fear from tigers: "You see, those are not real tigers. Real tigers are the theoretical tigers described in our books, and those real tigers would never hurt anyon...

I know a guy who is kind of troubled. His mother was the town whore where he grew up. His father could have been any of hundreds of guys. He really feels uncomfortable about these facts, so I decided the other day to comfort him. "I know the solution to your problems!" He looked hopeful. "Here's what we do: We pretend your mother was a virgin! And we pretend your were conceived when Zeus visited her in the form of a swan. There: don't you feel better now?" "What?! Are you nuts? I know that wasn't the way it happened. So how does that fairy tale help me?" Well, I guess it doesn't, does it? My tale is a lot like the stories some libertarians tell themselves about property. A story where someone finds a little plot of land that is entirely unused, fences it with his own labor, and begins to farm it, is a lovely tale. But it has nothing to do with our world, where every property title is sullied by centuries of theft, murder, conques...

"The success of a society depends on traditions that politicians can hardly change but easily harm. That has happened. The Right tended to win the economic arguments, and the Left tended to win the social arguments, even though they ran against established traditions. Indeed, there seems to be an unholy alliance between international greed and Leftist ideas about personal fulfillment and liberation." -- Charles Moore (Hat tip Rod Dreher.) And it is called...

"Although emphasizing the importance of economic liberty, the American founders were not property rights absolutists. The framers would have been dumbstruck by the idea, common among later libertarians, that property must never be impinged, regulated, or taxed by the government in any way. Instead, the framers thought the government could intervene in the economic sphere for a variety of social purposes." -- John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness , p. 14