The actual contractionary phase of the Great Depression lasted from 1931 to 1933 in New Zealand, and the country experienced a contraction in real GNP of 14.6% from 1929 to 1932 (Rankin 1992: 61). The country left the gold standard in 1931, as the UK did, and its experience of the depression was not as severe as the US, since New Zealand had no collapsing asset bubble in 1931-1933 that had been driven by high levels of private debt. Hence it escaped the severe type of debt deflationary spiral that destroyed the US, though New Zealand’s farmers and mortgage holders did in fact suffer a lesser form of debt deflation. One of the major causes of the collapse was the fall in the prices of export commodities from New Zealand on world markets (a major part of GDP), as this spilled over into falling earnings for the primary commodity sector in dairy products, meat and wool (Hawke 1985: 127-128), and into falls in private consumption and investment spending.
The centre-right United-Reform coalition that ruled New Zealand pursued a severe contractionary policy from 1931, cutting government spending and balancing the budget (Wright 2009: 48–49). The economic contraction worsened and debt deflation affected mortgage holders (Wright 2009: 49–50), and by 1933 around 30% of the labour force was unemployed, representing some 240,000 people completely unemployed or severely underemployed (Rankin 1995: 13; Wright 2009: 43).1
After the actual contraction, unemployment began to fall as a recovery began in 1934 after Joseph Gordon Coates, the Minister of Finance, devalued the currency in January 1933 (promoting some export-led growth), introduced a Reserve Bank for New Zealand (established from 1 August 1934) and a public works program (Wright 2009: 54; Easton 1997: 62; he also restructured some mortgage debt, see Sinclair 1990: 216). The fiscal stimulus was greatly expanded by the new Labour government elected in November 1935 under Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage (whom you can see in the photo below).
Michael Savage presided over the introduction of the welfare state in New Zealand, and the introduction of a universal health care system. His government also introduced a highly expansionary fiscal policy with public works and social spending in 1936, 1937 and 1938. The state of government expenditure and unemployment can be seen in the table below (the data is from Dimand 2002 [1946]: 198).
One can see above how government spending was cut from 1930 to 1933. Increases in expenditure began in 1934 as the recovery ensued. The government deficits were covered by bond sales but also by direct central bank money creation (or “central bank credit”):
“The extensive use of central bank credit ... [sc. in New Zealand was] extremely unorthodox; and the amount involved was, for such a small country as New Zealand, substantial.” (Plumptre 1940: 289).In fact, the central bank money creation bears obvious similarities to policies advocated by Modern Monetary Theory, and the state credit was used in public works spending and state housing.2
After New Zealand adopted strong fiscal expansion, employment fell very rapidly after the stimulus was introduced in 1936: the number of those on relief programs fell from 38,000 in 1936 to only 8,000 by December 1937 (The New Zealand Official Year-Book, Volume 94, Govt. Printer, 1990). By the estimate of K. Rankin, real GNP soared by about 18% in 1936, 5.4% in 1937, and 7% in 1938 (Rankin 1992: 61), driving real GDP back to its trend growth path by 1937 (Wright 2009: 43; 57).
New Zealand created valuable public infrastructure in government public works programs, and that infrastructure significantly aided the private sector in its creation of wealth in the form of production of goods and services:
“... public works [sc. in New Zealand] may to a large extent be called both an industry in their own right and a powerful aid to industry and commerce in general. Public works have, of course, been used for many different purposes.In addition, the government helped to finance home loans via central bank credit (Wright 2009: 57) which created a large stock of housing.
During the depression they were, among other things, part of an elaborate system of unemployment relief. In the hands of the Labor government in 1936 onward they became an instrument for organizing economic recovery by the injection of purchasing power in the community, while at the same time resuming their basic function of developing the resources of the country. Within a couple of years of Labor’s return to office the Public Works Department had been thoroughly re-equipped and was employing over twenty thousand men, with an annual expenditure in the region of twenty million pounds. The range of work done by the department is very wide, the main items being roads, railways, public buildings, land improvement, and hydro-electric development. This last has been, indeed, one of the state’s main direct contributions to the country’s industrial progress.” (Wood 1944: 121).
All in all, New Zealand’s recovery shows the success of Keynesianism in action.
Footnotes
(1) New Zealand’s population in 1933 was only 1,547,100.
(2) These policies might have inspired the New Zealand Social Credit Party (1953– ), which, however, is probably not very appealing to left-wing people owing to that movement’s association with the right.
Update:
Reading the original post again, I thought I left out some important economic data. So I have updated it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapple, S. 1994. “How Great was the Depression in New Zealand? A Neglected Estimate of Inter-war GNP,” New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (Inc), Wellington.
Dimand, R. W. 2002 [1946]. Origins of Macroeconomics. Vol. 10, Routledge, London.
Easton, B. 1997. In Stormy Seas: the Post-War New Zealand Economy, University of Otago Press, Dunedin.
Hawke, G. R. 1985. The Making of New Zealand: An Economic History, Cambridge University, Cambridge and New York.
Plumptre, A. F. Wynne. 1940. Central Banking in the British Dominions, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Rankin, K. 1992. “New Zealand’s Gross National Product: 1859–1939,” Review of Income and Wealth 38.1 (March): 49–69.
Rankin, K. 1995. “Unemployment in New Zealand at the Peak of the Great Depression,” University of Auckland, Working Papers in Economics No. 144.
Sinclair, K. 1990. The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand (new edn), Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wood, F. L. W. 1944. Understanding New Zealand, Coward-McCann, New York.
Wright, M. 2009. “‘Mordacious Years’: Socio-Economic Aspects and Outcomes of New Zealand’s Experience in the Great Depression,” Reserve Bank of New Zealand: Bulletin 72.3 (September): 43–60.
You should popularise your blog more through twitter or leaving links around or something. I think quite a few people read it now, but however many it is, it isn't enough.
ReplyDeleteNo mention of economic calculation, no mention of profit and loss, no mention of costs, no mention of coercion, no mention of individual subjective preferences, no mention of anything economics related.
ReplyDeleteJust myth based, state religion nonsense that the state is benevolent, knows all, plans awesomely, and solves all economic problems if only they print money and spend money on themselves and their friends.
Wow.
The government in reality can only use violence, it does not produce anything, it does not have full knowledge to effectively plan an economy, and LK is lapping it up totally devoid of sound economic principles.
How surprising. You would have been a great court jester in the Soviet System. After all, as Keynes noted in the preface in the German edition of his GT:
"Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."
LK is just another yahoo internet statist who acts functionally as a state cheerleader because he hates freedom, he hates capitalism, and he hates economics.
"state religion nonsense that the state solves all economic problems if only they print money and spend money on themselves and their friends.
ReplyDeleteOh, I see. All those unemployed people emploeyd in government programs was just a wicked and corrupt plan by some state planner/planners to employ his /their "friends". LOL.
"Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, ...
ReplyDeleteFunny how New Zealand is not now and never has been a totalitarian nation. Its experience with Keynesian stimulus then and later occurred while it was a pluralistic democracy.
This pete is crazy as a loon. He's probably dangerous. Somalia is currently experiencing a famine due to competing tribes fighting it out over resources.
ReplyDelete"Thousands of Somali refugees are making perilous journeys of hundreds of miles to seek assistance: 54,000 people crossed into Ethiopia and Kenya in June alone. Levels of serious malnutrition amongst newly arrived children in Ethiopia are exceeding 50 per cent, while in Kenya levels are reaching 30 to 40 per cent"
"Reports suggest that young children are dying as families wait to be registered.
"People are making incredibly gruelling journeys: some are walking for more than 20 days without food or water, facing attacks from armed groups or wild animals," Andrew Wander, Emergency Media Manager for Save the Children, told The Daily Telegraph. "Children are most vulnerable upon arrival after the strain of the journey."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/07/07-0
"NAIROBI, Kenya — The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5, according to U.S. estimates, the first time such a precise death toll has been released related to the Horn of Africa crisis.
"The United Nations has said previously that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, a statistic that suggests the death toll of small children will rise.
"Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia. That number is based on nutrition and mortality surveys verified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
"Tens of thousands of refugees have fled south-central Somalia in hopes of finding food at camps in Ethiopia, Kenya and in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/04-5
Since Ludwig Mises was a racist, you have to wonder if these people at the Mises Institute go around talking crazy in order to encourage systems that are killing thousands of Africans as we speak -- in much the same way AIDS denialist go around promoting conspiracies to see how many people they can harass. You never know how the psychotic mind works.
As the quotes I posted from historians show, Russia experienced severe excess deaths AFTER they reformed to capitalism -- so that UNSCOM estimated that 500,000 children were dying a year. There are ways to combat this in a capitalist system, and all capitalism is "statist."
"And across the country the situation is no better. A rapid assessment conducted by the Education Cluster, which is co-led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children, warned that the number of children out of school, especially in southern and central Somalia, could double. The report noted that with an estimated 200,000 school-going Somali children have moved from their homes to other places in search for food.
But for more than 20 years, only 30 percent of Somali children have been able to go to primary school. It is the lowest enrolment in the world. This compares very poorly with its neighbour, Kenya, which has an enrolment rate of 92 percent in primary schools. However, primary education in Kenya is free while in Somalia it is not and many children have to get financial support from their communities to attend school."
http://www.ips.org/africa/2011/08/somalia-massive-school-dropouts-as-famine-continues/
Notice this Austrian says "data" can't refute theories -- even though no discipline at all works anything like that. Meanwhile, people are dying due to these ideas.
--successfulbuild
"state religion nonsense that the state is benevolent, knows all, plans awesomely, and solves all economic problems"
ReplyDeleteSince the state = people who work in the state and act, whether they act "benevolently" depends on your theory of ethics and the behaviour of the people in question. Yes, such people may not act benevolently. One must look at individual cases.
Undoubtedly, and in fact by a large number of ethical theories, New Zealand government officials and policitians acted benevolently to to alleviate human suffering, unemployment and hardship.
And it doesnt need to solve "all" economic problems. That is a caricature. It can certianly act benevolently and effectively on some occasions.
Pete has said no empiricism refutes Austrian economics, and indeed, there is none that supports it.
ReplyDeleteIs there an example of a single civilization collapsing solely because of a fiat currency? I have heard of countries restructuring their currencies, but that is not the same as a COLLAPSE -- which means a drop in the population of a country and a severe deterioration of living standards.
Collapses usually become because of a society's response to environmental problems, trade with neighbors, etc.
So if "printing money" is dangerous, where is the evidence for this?
--successfulbuild
"Since Ludwig Mises was a racist,... "
ReplyDeletesuccessfulbuild,
I have to say that I have not seen any evidence of that. Are there any sources you have for this?
"No mention of economic calculation, no mention of profit and loss, no mention of costs, no mention of coercion, no mention of individual subjective preferences, no mention of anything economics related."
ReplyDeleteThe economic calculation debate applies to socialist systems without prices and where all production and consumption is planned centrally.
New Zealand was an economy where most commodities were produced privately and with a functioning price system. The government programs did not involve abolishing a price system or planning all production and consumption centrally.
And, anyway, even the idea that "planning" systems can't work is rubbish. The UK, Canada, and Australia also had command economies during WWII, with many prices admimistered (e.g., by John Kenneth Galbraith in the US in WWII), although production decisions on many goods were made by state planners and even decisions on consumption. These advanced capitalist nations showed that their type of command economy was extraordinarily successful – in fact they won the war for us. We owe our freedom from German and Japanese fascism to central planning of production and the way the economy was run in those years. They showed a highly successful ability to produce what they planned.
And, just as the Post Walrasians note,
ReplyDeletewe have an economic world of slow price adjustments and sometimes false price signals: the assumption of instantaneously or significantly and reliably adjusting prices is a myth, and once it is rejected we see there is no guarantee at all that decentralised market systems will coordinate economic activity to create full employment.
Prices and wages are often inflexible in the real world. This is why thegodl stdnard didn;'tworkproperly: the assumption of smoothly adjusting wages and prices in response to money supply changes is nonsense.
Somalia is currently experiencing a famine due to competing tribes fighting it out over resources.
ReplyDeleteYou're obviously lying, because Rothbard said laissez-faire nations like Somalia always economically calculate themselves into optimal productivity. Why do you hate freedom?
I have to say that I have not seen any evidence of that. Are there any sources you have for this?
ReplyDeleteThere's some evidence that he was not as socially progressive as the average 21st-century academic. Not sure why that should be surprising.
http://mises.org/humanaction/introsec3.asp
"It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science."
Since Mises was not trained in the academy during the 1980s or later, he would not have known that such a statement was a misstep, no matter what the context. Still, not racist.
These advanced capitalist nations showed that their type of command economy was extraordinarily successful – in fact they won the war for us. We owe our freedom from German and Japanese fascism to central planning of production and the way the economy was run in those years.
ReplyDeleteRubbish. The market clearly would have won the war faster and more efficiently. We just would have waited until the Germans and Japanese invaded the mainland on foot, because otherwise it would be immoral violation of private property. I don't have to give you any evidence for any of my claims because it's a priori true. It's a pity we can't go back and try it again with a pure laissez-faire system, because that would be impossible, but clearly everything I've said can be derived from "man acts" without a single additional observation or any other empirical evidence. If you don't believe me you're an irrational thieving monster.
"Negroes and whites differ in racial-i.e. bodily-features; but it is impossible to tell a Jewish German from a non-Jewish one by any racial characteristic" (Mises, 1944, p. 182).
ReplyDelete"It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science."
These two statements are politically incorrect, but not necessarily racist.
"One can say that "some men are more gifted by birth than others"; that men differ in their physical and psychic qualities; that "certain families, breeds, and groups of breeds reveal similar traits"; and that "we are justified in differentiating between races and in speaking of the different racial qualities of individuals" (p. 289). There are even "considerable bodily differences between the members of various races; there are also remarkable although less momentous differences between members of the same race, sub-race, tribe, or family, even between brothers and sisters, even between non-identical twins" (Mises, 1957, pp. 326-27). And "it is a historical fact that the civilizations developed by various races are different," for example (p. 322). It is "unassailable" that "some races have been more successful than others in their efforts to develop a civilization" (p. 334)."
This certainly is racist. The belief that we are justified in distinguishing between the various races is at the core of racist doctrine. Furthermore, it asserts that races are successful or not successful based on their racial characteristics. This is not necessarily the case, however, as Russia would be as advanced as all of Europe when in fact they are a third-world country but predominantly white. Furthermore, Africa has experienced massive colonialism and so on, that may have affected their ability to grow.
Since Austrian economics is "a priori," it seems Mises didn't give a reason as to why it's a matter of race and not other factors that "some races have been more successful than others in their efforts to develop civilization."
"It may be assumed that races do differ in intelligence and will power, and that, this being so, they are very unequal in their ability to form society, and further that the better races distinguish themselves pre-cisely by their special aptitude for strengthening social cooperation." (Mises)
"It may be admitted that the races differ in talent and character and that there is no hope of ever seeing those differences resolved. Still, free-trade theory shows that even the more capable races derive an advantage from associating with the less capable and that social cooperation brings them the advantage of higher productivity in the total labor process". (Mises)
Clearly racist.
"We should not be misled "into skipping lightly over the race problem itself. Surely there is hardly any other problem whose clarification could contribute more to deepening our historical understanding. It may be that the way to ultimate knowledge in the field of historical ebb and flow leads through anthropology and race theory." "There exists true science in this field. . . ."
Racism is a science.
--successfulbuild
"We must not close our eyes to the fact that such views meet with the consent of the vast majority. It would be useless to deny that there exists a repugnance to abandoning the geographical segregation of various races. Even men who are fair in their appraisal of the qualities and cultural achievements of the colored races and severely object to any discrimination against those members of these races who are already living in the midst of the white populations, are opposed to the mass immigration of colored people. There are few white men who would not shudder at the picture of many millions of black or yellow people living in their own countries."
ReplyDeleteHow does he know that men who are notice the contributions of the other "races" are opposed to the mass immigration of colored people? What research did he conduct?
His statements are racist.
--successfulbuild
Ad hominem attacks don't help strengthen your case, Pete...
ReplyDeleteP.S. This is Blue Aurora, with a Google account!
"You're obviously lying, because Rothbard said laissez-faire nations like Somalia always economically calculate themselves into optimal productivity. Why do you hate freedom? "
ReplyDeleteWell, given the comments above -- do the Austrians think they cannot have the peaceful, equilibrium anarcho-capitalist society because of their race?
If that is the case, how come anarchy experiments in white civilizations, that became anarchistic within a capitalist country, failed as well? Because because capitalism is not something that can exist in the wild.
---successfulbuild
The full Mises quote:
ReplyDeleteIt is necessary to study this form of the race theory and to ask how it stands in relation to the theory of social co-operation which has here been developed.
We see at once that it contains nothing directly inimical to the doctrine of the division of labour. The two are quite compatible. It may be assumed that races do differ in intelligence and will power, and that, this being so, they are very unequal in their ability to form society, and further that the better races distinguish themselves precisely by their special aptitude for strengthening social co-operation. This hypothesis throws light on various aspects of social evolution not otherwise easily comprehensible. It enables us to explain the development and regression of the social division of labour and the flowering and decline of civilizations. We leave it open whether the hypothesis itself and the hypothesis erected on it are tenable. At the moment this does not concern us. We are solely concerned to show that the race theory is easily compatible with our theory of social co-operation.
When the race theory combats the natural law postulate of the equality and equal rights of all men, it does not affect the free trade argument of the liberal school. For Liberalism does not advocate the liberty of the workers for reasons of natural law but because it regards unfree labour—the failure to reward the labourer with the whole produce economically imputed to his labour, and the divorce of his income from the productivity of his labour—as being less productive than free labour. In the race theory there are no arguments to refute free trade theory as to the effects of the expanding social division of labour. It may be admitted that the races differ in talent and character and that there is no hope of ever seeing those differences resolved. Still, free trade theory shows that even the more capable races derive an advantage from associating with the less capable and that social co-operation brings them the advantage of higher productivity in the total labour process.
Mises, L. von. 1951. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (trans. J. Kahane), Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala. pp. 325-326.
Not pretty. He does, however, seem to express scepticism about the race theorists at the beginning of the subchapter:
But so far, attempts to find somatic characteristics of racial relationships have had no result. At one time it was thought that a racial characteristic had been discovered in the cranial index, but now it is clear that those relations between the cranial index and the psychic and mental qualities of the individual on which Lapouge's anthroposociological school based its system do not exist. More recent measurements have shown that long-headed men are not always blond, good, noble, and cultured, and that the short-headed are not always black, evil, common and uncultured. Amongst the most long-headed races are the Australian aborigines, the Eskimos, and the Kaffirs. Many of the greatest geniuses were round-heads. Kant's cranial index was 88. We have learnt that changes in the cranial index very probably can take place without racial mixture—as the result of the mode of life and geographical environment.
It is impossible to condemn too emphatically the procedure of the "race experts."
And he does of course say "We leave it open whether the hypothesis itself and the hypothesis erected on it are tenable. At the moment this does not concern us", which might suggest he leaves open the question whether the vile sentiments he expressed at the beginning and end are true.
Still, the opening words and at the end do suggest he believed in racism in the extreme 19th century sense: that groups of humans beings are significantly different in intelligence and other qualities (like will power, morality) on the basis of genetics or heredity.
In response to the last post by SuccessfulBuild, that man you quoted was joking.
ReplyDeleteHe was agreeing with you.
He was just making a sarcastic statement, which is pretty obvious given the "Why do you hate freedom?"
Come on! How did you not catch that?
I don't understand why commenters on economics blogs get hostile to people on the same side as them.
I also don't understand why people on economics blogs don't have a sense of humour and often don't catch an obvious joke like that. It's like everybody on economics blogs has a severe case of Asperger's Syndrome (by the way, this is just a joke, don't take this one seriously too!).
Even though he expressed skepticism, he still believed racial theory was a science:
ReplyDelete"The dilettantism that pervades the writings of our race theorists should not, of course, mislead us into skipping lightly over the race problem itself. Surely there is hardly any other problem whose clarification could contribute more to deepening our historical understanding. It may be that the way to ultimate knowledge in the field of historical ebb and flow leads through anthropology and race theory. What has so far been discovered in these sciences is quite scanty, of course, and is overgrown with a thicket of error, fantasy, and mysticism. But there exists true science in this field also, and here also there are great problems. It may be that we shall never solve them, but that should not keep us from investigating further and should not make us deny the significance of the race factor in history."
Notice how he is certain that there is a "true science" in the field of race theory, and this contributes to our understanding of history. Furthermore, the race factor has been significant in history.
This all assumes that there are various "race" and that they are different from one another.
--successfulbuild
I also don't understand why people on economics blogs don't have a sense of humour and often don't catch an obvious joke like that.
ReplyDeleteGod, more humour is needed, alright.
I frequently think that many of the more balmy comments I read here are just made in jest.
The economic calculation debate applies to socialist systems without prices and where all production and consumption is planned centrally.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that is true in the sense that the Keynesians dishonestly wish to avoid debate. The issue of economic calculation is the central issue of the Austrian critique of Keynesian money dilution and is central to the explanation of how distortions of economic calculation caused by Keynesian schemes induce the unsustainable Keynesian boom.
"The issue of economic calculation is the central issue of the Austrian critique of Keynesian money dilution ....
ReplyDeleteThat is only true if ABCT is valid. It is not.
Explain how your mythical Rothbardian fantasy world attain this non-inflationary state with no unique Wicksellian natural rate.
All "real" theories of the interest rate and equilibrium rates are utter rubbish anyway. A rate conceived where loans are made in natura is a world of pure barter.
Just because there is no fractional reserve banking and 100% reserves does not mean businesses can't cause inflationary pressures bidding away resources for their investments.
Money in loanbale funds does not necessarily tell businesses anything about what resources are available or idle.
"LK is just another yahoo internet statist who acts functionally as a state cheerleader because he hates freedom, he hates capitalism, and he hates economics. "
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about libertarians is that you don't have to put in absolutely any effort at all if you want to make them look caricatural.
"The issue of economic calculation is the central issue of the Austrian critique of Keynesian money dilution ....
ReplyDeleteThat is only true if ABCT is valid. It is not.
No, economic calculation is the central issue of the Austrian critique of Keynesian money dilution. ABCT is based on economic calculation. Economic calculation is not based on ABCT. Economic calculation is more fundamental to the economy and would apply in ALL monetary economies. It is a logical category of human action.
Explain how your mythical Rothbardian fantasy world attain this non-inflationary state with no unique Wicksellian natural rate.
Free market in banking.
Explain how your mythical Keynesian inflationist economy can produce wealth if aggregate demand can be made up of 100% consumption spending.
All "real" theories of the interest rate and equilibrium rates are utter rubbish
anyway.
No, they are not rubbish. Interest is a result of time preference, and time preference would exist in any economy, money or not.
A rate conceived where loans are made in natura is a world of pure barter.
A rate conceived where loans are made in money is a world of monetary calculation.
Just because there is no fractional reserve banking and 100% reserves does not mean businesses can't cause inflationary pressures bidding away resources for their investments.
Yes, it does. Inflation cannot exist if there is 100% reserve. There would only be money production. In Austrian theory, inflation is money growth that exceeds the growth of what would exist in a non-fraudulent free market, which in other words means a precious metals standard.
Money in loanbale funds does not necessarily tell businesses anything about what resources are available or idle.
It's not supposed to tell which specific resources are available or idle. The price system does that. Interest rates tells investors how much consumers are saving and how much they are consuming. It tells investors whether consumers want more goods in the future or more goods in the present.
"Free market in banking."
ReplyDeleteSo you are a free banker? Is that correct? You support fractional reserve banking and fiduciary media?
And yet you complain above that money spent by government created by a central bank has not been "earned" by prior production.
But that is true of fiduciary media created by loans in fractional reserve banking from demand deposits.
In fact, it is also true of bills of exchange used as a means of payment that was the foundation of the payments system in commercial/mercantile Western capitalism for centuries from the 16th century onwards.
"state religion nonsense that the state is benevolent, knows all, plans awesomely, and solves all economic problems"
ReplyDeleteSince the state = people who work in the state and act, whether they act "benevolently" depends on your theory of ethics and the behaviour of the people in question. Yes, such people may not act benevolently. One must look at individual cases.
You're ignoring the fact that in general, the state cannot act at all unless it taxes and declares itself monopoly in security and protection. Since taxes are collected by force, it means taxes are theft. Yes, if your ethical theory is not itself immoral, you would consider theft to be immoral.
Undoubtedly, and in fact by a large number of ethical theories
That pre-approved list of ethical theories you keep referring to are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. One cannot adhere to all of them. You're essentially claiming that we should throw darts at a board and adhere to just one of them, while consciously and purposefully rejecting natural rights theory. That is absurd. It is absurd to say that someone has to purposefully reject one theory, but then blindly adhere to one in a pre-approved list.
New Zealand government officials and policitians acted benevolently to to alleviate human suffering, unemployment and hardship.
No, they also violate individual property rights. They also initiate violence against innocent people.
And it doesnt need to solve "all" economic problems.
Then why do you always, always, always, always, always devote your policy posts to what the government can do, what the government can spend, what the government can inflate, what the government can pass in laws, what the government should have done, what the government did do, what the government must do, etc?
That is a caricature.
YOU are a caricature.
It can certianly act benevolently and effectively on some occasions.
Define "benevolently". If an individual in the state acts "benevolently", that is, they do not initiate force or coercion against innocent people as a minimum, then they aren't acting state-like. They are acting in accordance with natural rights.
"That pre-approved list of ethical theories you keep referring to are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. One cannot adhere to all of them. "
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't. I am a consequentialist in ethics.
"No mention of economic calculation, no mention of profit and loss, no mention of costs, no mention of coercion, no mention of individual subjective preferences, no mention of anything economics related."
ReplyDeleteThe economic calculation debate applies to socialist systems without prices and where all production and consumption is planned centrally.
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE.
It also applies to ANY economy where the price system is manipulated or distorted away from voluntary exchange. Central banking in an otherwise market oriented economy can be critiqued in light of economic calculation. Economic calculation is GENERAL. It is not ONLY applicable to socialist economies. It applies to any economy. Economic calculation applies to free market economies all the way down to socialist economies, and everything in between.
Central banks fixing interest rates, governments spending money, these can both be judged from a standpoint of economic calculation.
"Free market in banking."
ReplyDeleteSo you are a free banker? Is that correct? You support fractional reserve banking and fiduciary media?
Fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, and a free market in anything cannot be fraudulent. So no, I am 100% reserve, not fractional reserve.
And yet you complain above that money spent by government created by a central bank has not been "earned" by prior production.
It is immoral and economically destructive.
But that is true of fiduciary media created by loans in fractional reserve banking from demand deposits.
That's one reason why fractional reserve is immoral.
In fact, it is also true of bills of exchange used as a means of payment that was the foundation of the payments system in commercial/mercantile Western capitalism for centuries from the 16th century onwards.
If the bills were just promisary notes and fully backed by specie, then it's not fraudulent.
"No, they also violate individual property rights. They also initiate violence against innocent people."
ReplyDeleteLOL..
Which people exactly? They announced their plans for economic stimulus and public works in teh 1935 election. they own a landslide.
Tell me: which people did they initiate "violence" against?
(1) their bonds were mostly issued to private sector investors in Australia and the UK, who freely bought them, just as domestic insvestors freely bought them.
"That pre-approved list of ethical theories you keep referring to are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. One cannot adhere to all of them."
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't.
Then why do you recommend those ethical theories you don't even approve of, to others all the time when the topic comes up?
Why not just recommend "consequentialism"?
I am a consequentialist in ethics.
Consequentialism is not an ethical theory. It is a CLASS of ethical theorieS.
What SPECIFIC consequentialist ethic to you adhere to?
"Then why do you recommend those ethical theories you don't even approve of, to others all the time when the topic comes up?"
ReplyDeleteTo underscore that there are many serious ethical theories proposed by philosophers outside of propertarian natural rights/argumentation ethics that are compatible with a state, progressive taxation, and remedial govenrment intervention.
"No, they also violate individual property rights. They also initiate violence against innocent people."
ReplyDeleteLOL..
Which people exactly?
Those which do not consent to the government and want to opt out of dealing with them. This includes those who don't pay taxes, those who refuse to obey laws that punish victimless crimes.
They announced their plans for economic stimulus and public works in teh 1935 election. they own a landslide.
Which means there is a minority that did not approve, but they were FORCED to pay and obey anyway.
It would be like me saying that owners of Wal-Mart didn't initiate force against those who don't want to shop at Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart "won a landslide" in a town of people that chose where to buy their goods. Wal-Mart captured 80% market share, but they still took money from the remaining 20% and imposed rules on them anyway. According to you, Wal-Mart acted morally and justifiably against the minority of people who did not want to deal with Wal-Mart.
Tell me: which people did they initiate "violence" against?
AGAINST THE MINORITY.
(1) their bonds were mostly issued to private sector investors in Australia and the UK, who freely bought them, just as domestic insvestors freely bought them.
The PAYBACK of those bonds is paid back INVOLUNTARILY through taxation or inflation.
It would be like you "voluntarily" lending money to me, and I pay you back by robbing other people's money.
Your ethical worldview is depraved and absurd. It literally CONDONES violence against innocent people if they happen to be minorities.
My ethical theory is an INDIVIDUAL HUMAN ethic, not a group ethic like yours that would condone theft of the minority if it means the majority voted for it. You're sick in the mind.
"Then why do you recommend those ethical theories you don't even approve of, to others all the time when the topic comes up?"
ReplyDeleteTo underscore
Translation: to evade...
that there are many serious ethical theories proposed by philosophers outside of propertarian natural rights/argumentation ethics that are compatible with a state
"Serious" according to what standard?
progressive taxation, and remedial govenrment intervention.
All immoral.
See, your problem is that you want one ethical theory to be adhered to be some people, but a different ethical theory to be adhered to by other people. You don't want some people to steal money, but you want others (individuals calling themselves government) to steal people's money. You don't want some people to counterfeit money or declare monopoly over money production, but you want others (individuals calling themselves government) to counterfeit money and declare themselves monopoly over money production.
You don't want some people to impose laws unilaterally on others, but you do want others (individuals calling themselves government) to impose laws unilaterally on others.
Your ethical worldview is, then, not a human ethic, but an ethic for a master and slave society.
"Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, ...
ReplyDeleteFunny how New Zealand is not now and never has been a totalitarian nation.
That's because they have practiced to some semblance of a degree in accordance with natural rights athics of private property.
They have not consistently practiced the core of your violent worldview. Your worldview justifies violence against innocent people, if they are in the minority. If in a society of 10 people, 9 want to steal from the 10th, your worldview would justify it. Your worldview has no criticism against it. That's how I know it is wrong. Any ethical theory that condones violence solely because "many people" want it, must have made an error somewhere in the premises.
And, just as the Post Walrasians note,
ReplyDeletewe have an economic world of slow price adjustments and sometimes false price signals: the assumption of instantaneously or significantly and reliably adjusting prices is a myth, and once it is rejected we see there is no guarantee at all that decentralised market systems will coordinate economic activity to create full employment.
Austrian theory does not presume instant price changes to reflect new information. Austrians hold that prices TEND towards reflecting new information. Coordination is possible because of that tendency.
I adhere to that version of consequentialism that holds we should aim at more ends than just utility/happiness such as
ReplyDelete(1) preservation of human life where the people in question in wish to continue to live (the man dying of disease in a privatised system of health care, the starving human being who is unemployed and who finds no private charity).
(2) minimising suffering, especially where this can be done with redistribution of resources that are relatively abundant
(3) aiming at the end of respecting certain individual rights where not doing so would harm the fucntioning of society significantly.
These additions to conseuqnetialist ends aimed at overcome most of the traditional objections to utilitarianism.
You also fail to understand that there is in fact a very high degree of compatiblity between a number of modern consequentialist theories.
E.g., preference consequentialism (held by Peter Singer) combines easily to two-level preference consequentialism as held by R. M. Hare.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/06/ethical-theories-classification.html
And even the incompatiblity of consequentialism with other theories is exagerrated. Many forms of consequentialism are compatible with the difference principle of Rawls.
"Which means there is a minority that did not approve, but they were FORCED to pay and obey anyway"
ReplyDeleteCorrect. Coercion that is justified under consequentist principle (2) above and in cases where people are dying from starvation even (1), just as coercion of a child/wife/friend/random person by grabbing them when they are about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. and be killed is justified to save their life.
Complaining that it is "theft" or uses "force" is a pointless exercise. The consequentist says the force is justified.
The argument then just collapses into a deabte about whether competeing ethical theories rejecting that ragument are valid.
Rothbardian propertarian natural rights and Hoppe's argumentation ethic lack any convincing justification.
"That's how I know it is wrong. Any ethical theory that condones violence solely because "many people" want it, must have made an error somewhere in the premises. "
ReplyDeleteModern versions of consequentialism do not justify violence "solely because 'many people' want it". That is a pathetic, ignorant caricature. Instances of coercion and especially violence must be justified. The crude, simple end of maximising happiness on its own belongs to the Benthamite versions of utilitrianism that are rejected by modern consequentialist theories.
On the most basic consequentialist principle, there must be more than one end we must aim because happiness/utility is NOT the only desireable thing.
On basic consequentialist principles I have already sketched above murder, genocide, arbitrary theft etc. are ALL ruled out even if the majority of people want them, because consequentialism does not say that just because many people want something it would be moral.
In particular rule consequentialism long ago overcame the ridiculous charge you make
ReplyDeleteLK,
ReplyDeleteFantastic essay. I was not aware of this bit of history, and am very glad to have learned about it.
"It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science." Amusingly, this is not not PC. I could see Chomsky saying something like this. MC ADBTWPITLTHY & Austrian ES. A pox on both your houses. :-)
ReplyDeleteI've got to say, having read a boatload of comment threads on many econ-blogs: The MMT comment trolls are setting a new standard for issue advocacy comment trolling. Their comments are on-topic, concise, and mostly coherent and consistent.
ReplyDeleteRothbardian comment trolls, such as Pete, are really sucking it up lately. There's an unflattering tendency towards excessive word counts.
Not only that, but will you please give up on the "Fractional Reserve is a Fraud" meme? It makes you look like a cult. Do you have to take some version of that Jesuit oath binding you to call white black if Murray said it were so?
Finally, please lay off the "initiation of force crap". Let's say for the moment that me and my hippie friends don't believe in private property in land. The only way to get us off your lawn or out of your meth lab is by initiating force against us (while we peacefully enjoy the view from 'your' barcalounger . I'm not sure why you think your voluntary private property system should extend to me, since I think it's a crappy system.
I agree with ArgosyJones.
ReplyDeleteEverytime I visit Krugman In Wonderland blog, I am amazed by how "AP Lerner" is at the top of his game and how William L. Anderson keeps driving back and forth in the same ditch of the same arguments and supporting them with pure personal testimony.
I have caught "AP Lerner" on one obvious mistake of seeing fall in quality for the same price as a sign of deflation, when it is other way round. Still, he is ready and on his guard with newer, fresher, and better arguments. Ironically, he made me stop visiting that blog, because I realized Anderson had nothing to offer. Anderson is simply no Bob Murphy, period.
PS: Anyone think Bob Murphy may eventually lean a little to the Post Keynesian/MMT side of things? He once used to be a Bush Republican, but shifted greatly away from that. Now, he may shift again just as soon?
I won't hold my breath on Austrians "converting".
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am very surprised how Murphy holds a monetary theory of the interest rate and writes extraordinary sense on ABCT.
I adhere to that version of consequentialism that holds we should aim at more ends than just utility/happiness such as
ReplyDelete(1) preservation of human life where the people in question in wish to continue to live (the man dying of disease in a privatised system of health care, the starving human being who is unemployed and who finds no private charity).
If preservation of human life is what you are aiming at, then peaceful cooperation is the optimal means of doing so, because it maximizes people's ability to think, plan, critique, and conceive of solutions to solving biological needs such as medicine and food.
Since your asinine worldview is so irrationally short sighted, all you can consider is using violence, so that existing produced wealth, which is the byproduct of peaceful cooperation and exchange, is transferred. This is not a productive ethic, it is an unproductive ethic. It is a political strategy, that is, a strategy on how to organize and maintain violence to acquire wealth from those who produce it.
Wealth is maximized in a free market, not only in exchange, but in charity as well. The richest country in the world, the US, is by far the most charitable in the private charity sector, which can be explained with libertarian ethics, which means your caricature of "men dying of disease in a privatised system of health care" and "starving human being who is unemployed and who finds no private charity" are the opposite of what happens in reality.
(2) minimising suffering, especially where this can be done with redistribution of resources that are relatively abundant
You cannot compare suffering, or more generally utility, across individuals. You cannot say that because one person was sacrificed to help 10 others, than "suffering was minimized". Humans are ends in themselves, they are not means to the ends of some aggregate statistic of "collective utility".
"Relative abundance" is not concrete. It is arbitrary and of course is required in your immoral worldview so that you have an escape clause to ad hoc define what is "relatively abundant" and what is not, so that you can believe violence against innocent people is justified.
(3) aiming at the end of respecting certain individual rights where not doing so would harm the fucntioning of society significantly.
"Certain" and "significantly" are again arbitrary and non-concrete concepts that are required in your immoral worldview so that you can have yet another escape clause to again ad hoc define which "certain" rights are to be respected and which are not, arbitrarily, and to again ad hoc define what constitutes "significant harm" as opposed to "insignificant harm," so that you can again believe violence against innocent people is again justified.
These additions to conseuqnetialist ends aimed at overcome most of the traditional objections to utilitarianism.
You arbitrarily define what is "traditional objections" so as to pre-emptively ignore and reject "non-traditional" criticisms before even considering them, which is sloppy and not rigorous.
You also fail to understand that there is in fact a very high degree of compatiblity between a number of modern consequentialist theories.
ReplyDeleteFalse. You fail to understand that there are incompatible principles in the laundry list of ethical theories you keep claiming are the only justified theories, and you fail to consider the epistemological foundation and logically implicit principles of them.
You cannot reconcile incompatible principles.
E.g., preference consequentialism (held by Peter Singer) combines easily to two-level preference consequentialism as held by R. M. Hare.
How in the hell can a single ethic "combine" into anything else? Two or more theories combine, but only if there are no incompatible principles. Peter Singer's ethics are irrational because it accepts any preference whatsoever, no matter how crazy it is and no matter how many people get hurt. In addition, his ethics are ultimately founded upon a Marxian materialist philosophy, which makes his ethics mystical and not rational. R.M. Hare's ethics are also irrational because he held that ethics are merely emotional appeals, and not cognitive propositions.
And even the incompatiblity of consequentialism with other theories is exagerrated.
I am not talking about what others are saying. I am talking about what I am saying.
Many forms of consequentialism are compatible with the difference principle of Rawls.
That's because Rawl's difference principle IS a particular ethic in the greater class of consequentialist ethics.
"Which means there is a minority that did not approve, but they were FORCED to pay and obey anyway"
Correct. Coercion that is justified under consequentist principle (2) above and in cases where people are dying from starvation even (1)
(1) leads to individual liberty, not short sighted violent transfers of produced wealth.
(2) above, as shown, is utterly fallacious. "Minimizing suffering" only makes sense at the individual level. You cannot claim that harming one person to help another increases some "social" happiness. Gains and losses are only relevant for individuals and they cannot be compared across individuals.
just as coercion of a child/wife/friend/random person by grabbing them when they are about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. and be killed is justified to save their life.
ReplyDeleteIt is not justified if they are doing that to kill themselves. Since the physical force you claim is justified is based on an assumption, a guess, as to what the other person's preferences for themselves are, and since one cannot claim that a valid ethic is based on one's personal guesses as to what others desire, it means that your ethic is not only irrational, but woefully incomplete. For it does not even consider the actual desires of the individual in question, but rather your own preferences regarding their life.
In other words, your ethic presupposes that you have a right to use physical force against others, but others do not have a right to use physical force against you, even while you use physical force against others. It's do as a I say, not as I do.
Furthermore, if you claim that you have a right to use force to push them out of the way based on your guess of what they desire, then another would have the right to use physical force against you based on their assumption of what they believe is justified, including not just the times you try to use force in the train/boulder scenario, but also during the times that you are eating unhealthy food, or engaging in very risky, potentially lethal activities, such as sky diving, rock climbing, and whatever else has the potential to end one's life. Your shit ethics would therefore hold it as justified to initiate violence against people and put them into a vegetative state if it means they will have minimal risk of death due to their own actions.
Why doesn't your ethic include a learning process and discovery mechanism of what other individuals want for themselves? Why does it make blanket statements as "maintaining biological functions" regardless of what the individual wants for themselves concerning their biology and their preferences?
Complaining that it is "theft" or uses "force" is a pointless exercise. The consequentist says the force is justified.
Complaining that theft and force are justified
is what is a pointless exercise. It is a self-contradiction, for you are utilizing a peaceful ethic in practice when arguing that ethic. HERP DERP argument ethics is flawed but I won't say why DERP!
The rationalist says force is not justified.
The argument then just collapses into a deabte about whether competeing ethical theories rejecting that ragument are valid.
Not so fast. You still have to justify the consequentialist ethic, which you have not done.
Rothbardian propertarian natural rights and Hoppe's argumentation ethic...
ReplyDeletehave convincing justification. Consequentialist ethics does not.
"That's how I know it is wrong. Any ethical theory that condones violence solely because "many people" want it, must have made an error somewhere in the premises."
Modern versions of consequentialism do not justify violence "solely because 'many people' want it".
But that is what you argued above. I am critiquing your arguments, not the arguments of others.
You clearly claimed that some moron New Zealander politician "won by a landslide," which if taken as a premise clearly shows that you claimed that "majority will" is a premise that justifies the violent actions of the politician.
Instances of coercion and especially violence must be justified.
In order to justify your call for violence against innocent people, yes, you have to find someone, somewhere, saying something that would justify violence against innocent people. Such a justification is a "must", because obviously people reject violence initiated against them, and without brainwashing them, they won't accept it and your worldview collapses. In other words, people have to be ignorant and dumbed down in order for them to adopt your ethic that clearly wishes them to be sacrificed for the sake of others.
The crude, simple end of maximising happiness on its own belongs to the Benthamite versions of utilitrianism that are rejected by modern consequentialist theories.
ReplyDeleteFalse. Bentham does not have a monopoly on such an ethic, and saying "modern" does not mean the ethic is rationally justified.
On the most basic consequentialist principle, there must be more than one end we must aim because happiness/utility is NOT the only desireable thing.
That is a rank contradiction. You are clearly displaying a preference/utility for that ethical claim, which means you cannot say that utility is not the only desirable thing. What is "desired" IS by definition a utility based concept. You're essentially spewing out that it is desirable to desire what is not desired. An absurd and muddleheaded confusion that is a product of the irrational foundation of your immoral worldview.
On basic consequentialist principles I have already sketched above murder, genocide, arbitrary theft etc. are ALL ruled out even if the majority of people want them, because consequentialism does not say that just because many people want something it would be moral.
Hahaha, notice how you said murder, not arbitrary murder, and you said genocide, not arbitrary genocide, but for theft, you say "arbitrary theft" and not theft. In other words, your ethics is clearly an economic based plea for systematic violations of individual economic freedom, i.e. a socialist directed ethic that holds government control as preferred and desirable for its own sake.
This is a textbook example of a confused victim of trying to reconcile incompatible ethical theories. Majority rule-based rights is incompatible with individual-based rights, and so you are forced to retreat to arbitrary claims that democracy rules, except when it doesn't rule, and it doesn't rule, except when it does rule. You want democracy because it enables you to attack capitalism, and you want individual rights, so that you have something to attack the logical consequence of your ethics and hence claim the logic of your premises does not lead to what you know is totalitarian. You're like a poker player who wants to bluff a royal flush when he only has a high card hand.
Since socialism and capitalism are incompatible economic systems (your whole nonsensical ethical worldview is based on an irrational desire to justify state intervention into the economy at the end of the day), you cannot reconcile your conflicting premises.
Preference consequentialism does not say anything concrete about murder or genocide. It only says that if they are desired, it is justified, but of course according to some arbitrary limitations that themselves are not founded upon preference consequentialism. R.M. Hare even writes, regarding murder, that "the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others."
In particular rule consequentialism long ago overcame the ridiculous charge you make
ReplyDeleteSo what is it? Preference consequentialism? Rule consequentialism? Up consequentialism? Down consequentialism?
Consequentialism is a class of ethical theories. Which SPECIFIC ethic to you adhere to? Or are you again going to evade it out of fear that your ethical worldview will again be exposed as fallacious, this time even more acute than before?
argosyjones:
I've got to say, having read a boatload of comment threads on many econ-blogs: The MMT comment trolls are setting a new standard for issue advocacy comment trolling. Their comments are on-topic, concise, and mostly coherent and consistent.
Hahahaha. MMT is full of economic fallacies. Hey, no wonder you adhere to it! It's attacking Austrians. It must be right! LOL
Not only that, but will you please give up on the "Fractional Reserve is a Fraud" meme?
No, I will not give that up. FRB is a fraud. It is a fraud because it violates traditional legal principles of property, and it generates the business cycle, which harms innocent people.
Finally, please lay off the "initiation of force crap".
No, I will not stop bringing that up either. It's immoral and the source of all that is wrong in the social world.
Let's say for the moment that me and my hippie friends don't believe in private property in land.
Then you would not mind me taking whatever hippie commune you form with your friends and claim to be yours and nobody else's. Bye bye.
Prateek Sanjay:
I agree with ArgosyJones.
Translation: I agree with the enemies of my enemy.
Everytime I visit Krugman In Wonderland blog, I am amazed by how "AP Lerner" is at the top of his game and how William L. Anderson keeps driving back and forth in the same ditch of the same arguments and supporting them with pure personal testimony.
AP Lerner makes constant errors on both Anderson's blog and Murphy's blog.
"Anyone think Bob Murphy may eventually lean a little to the Post Keynesian/MMT side of things?"
ReplyDeleteHmmm... Well, I think RPM is not a dogmatist on economics, so depending on the course of world events, I think he might change his mind on a lot of things, but there's a pretty huge gulf between him and the MMT groups as regards the role of government in society, ensuring full employment, etc.
Hmm... I think that he might embrace certain elements of MMT, as far as it is a model of the operations of a fiat-currency issuing government, but that's not the same as embracing the use of monetary or fiscal policy to regulate the economy.
"R.M. Hare even writes, regarding murder, that "the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others."
ReplyDeleteThat sentence comes from Singer, not Hare, and you take it out of context:
Even for preference utilitarianism, the wrong done to the person killed is merely one factor to be taken into account, and the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others.
And reading the content in the book this sentence is about killing, not murder - a dishonest confusion - and it is related to issues like euthanasia desired by the terminally ill or abortion.
If a severely sick human being of sound mind who is terminally ill and in a great deal of pain wishes to end their life by physician assisted suicide, then by Singer's preference utilitarianism, of course, the "preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others."
Anyway, I don't subscribe to Singer's version of preference utilitarianism.
"It is not justified if they are doing that to kill themselves. ... etc. "
ReplyDeleteLOL... What a red herring.
What if they do NOT wish to die? What if my brother/child/friend who I have known for years and know does not have suicidal thoughts (since he has said so) is in such a situation?
Your ethical theory says that no coercion can be used to save his life?
Anyway, as is known, many people who commit suicide are suffering from some kind of identifiable mental illness by mental health care professionals.
Acting to stop strangers trying to kill themselves would be justified to help ascertain whether they are in fact suffering mental illness and require treatment, just as a person suffering severe mental illness and about to harm themselves or others requires some coercion to stop that behaviour.
"R.M. Hare even writes, regarding murder, that "the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others."
ReplyDeleteThat sentence comes from Singer, not Hare, and you take it out of context:
Even for preference utilitarianism, the wrong done to the person killed is merely one factor to be taken into account, and the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others.
That doesn't add any context that makes the original quote any more or less valid than it already is.
"Sometimes" is not a rational standard.
And reading the content in the book this sentence is about killing, not murder - a dishonest confusion - and it is related to issues like euthanasia desired by the terminally ill or abortion.
Murder is but one form of killing. If the Singer/Hare claim applies to killing, then it must apply to murder, if the preference utilitarianism is to hold consistent.
If a severely sick human being of sound mind who is terminally ill and in a great deal of pain wishes to end their life by physician assisted suicide, then by Singer's preference utilitarianism, of course, the "preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others."
But he would not be a "victim" of killing in that scenario. He would be a willing "customer" of such an act. Singer spoke of the "wrong" done to the victim of killing. Clearly if a person wants to die, and gets help for it, he isn't done "wrong", he is done "right" because his preference matches what happens to him.
Anyway, I don't subscribe to Singer's version of preference utilitarianism.
Right, you just introduced it as a red herring.
"It is not justified if they are doing that to kill themselves. ... etc. "
LOL... What a red herring.
What if they do NOT wish to die?
You're missing the elephant in the room. You're missing the argument I am making. The point is YOU DON'T KNOW what their preference is unless they reveal their preference to you in some way. Epistemologically, you must learn of their preferences in some way, but your ethical worldview contains no basis of learning at all, only blind assumption and guessing. It is not rational. You merely assumed that someone who is heading towards a cliff should be stopped by physical force. 99/100 your assumption would probably be right, but if we speak purely in terms of logic and rights, you can't claim to have the right to use physical force to stop them on the basis that you observe them heading towards a cliff. Does this mean that we should all just encourage and welcome people to tumble over cliffs? No, because no mention is made of what people ought to do in those cases in what has just been said. We must learn of their preference before we can KNOW what they are willing to consent to in terms of you touching them.
You might believe this is "dangerous", but it's no more dangerous than a first aider presuming to believe that a car crash victim wants help, because the first aider could kill the victim accidentally because they did something wrong in the course of their "help." This has happened many times and in those cases, the first aiders were (rightfully) judged as guilty.
Assumptions based on lack of knowledge cannot serve as an epistemologically rational foundation for ethical behavior.
My ethical theory, since it is epistemologically rational, does not rest on blind assumptions.
What if my brother/child/friend who I have known for years and know does not have suicidal thoughts (since he has said so) is in such a situation?
ReplyDeleteYOU CAN'T CLAIM TO READ PEOPLE'S MINDS. Just because someone did not kill themselves yesterday, that doesn't mean they won't kill themselves today. See, this is just your crude and fallacious inductive way of perceiving human action. You incorrectly believe that past choices and past actions of people, somehow "prove" something about what they will do tomorrow or next year, the way past behavior of the tides can tell us something about the tides in the future.
Many people who have killed themselves have taken their families and friends by total surprise, because the families and friends believed the person was happy and not suicidal at all.
Since your ethical worldview is ultimately based on mysticism, you cannot help but base what are considered to be "just" actions by referring to guesses, whims, and otherwise foundationless, irrational beliefs.
Your ethical theory says that no coercion can be used to save his life?
No, my ethical theory is that I must first LEARN of his intentions, and what he consents to have happen to his body from the likes of myself and others. If his intention is to kill himself, then I can only learn of it by observing his actions, namely, his act of killing himself.
I consider it to be a gross violation of individual rights to use force to stop someone from treating their own body the way they want to be treated. Now I can anticipate you being scared and fearful at such a thought, but that's just because you're a weak minded demagogue who can only deal with his mental weakness by physical, not mental solutions, i.e. violence, and in your case, violence by living vicariously through the violence from the state because he is also too mentally weak to practice what he preaches for others. You (probably) won't steal people's money, but you want the individuals in the state to do it. You won't counterfeit money, but you want the individuals in the state to do it. You won't tell business owners what to do with their means of production, but you want the individuals in the state to do it.
Anyway, as is known, many people who commit suicide are suffering from some kind of identifiable mental illness by mental health care professionals.
And many people are not. Just because many people are suffering from some mental illness, that doesn't mean that you can base your claim that is it is just to use coercion to stop suicide on the fact that "the majority" of suicidal individuals would not have done so if they were doped up on some chemical that alters their behavior.
Acting to stop strangers trying to kill themselves would be justified to help ascertain whether they are in fact suffering mental illness and require treatment, just as a person suffering severe mental illness and about to harm themselves or others requires some coercion to stop that behaviour.
You do not have a right to know what other people's preferences are. Knowledge is a privilege, not a right. You don't have a right to have information on other people you police state worshiping freakshow.
It's immoral and the source of all that is wrong in the social world.
ReplyDeleteYou find the 'non-aggression principle' useful because it presumes your conclusions.
Then you would not mind me taking whatever hippie commune you form with your friends and claim to be yours and nobody else's.
Hope you don't plan to use force to take 'property' from us. That would be immoral by your own standard. Without force, how can you "take" it? Meanwhile you ignore the question. Without initiating force, how are you going to get me out of 'your' barcalounger and stop me from destroying your crackpipe, Pete? Keep in mind that I am a master of the death touch, and I'm willing to use it in self-defense to prevent you from coercing me. I'm a free spirit.
"FRB is a fraud. It is a fraud because it violates traditional legal principles of property, and it generates the business cycle,
'a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual': That's the definition of fraud, Pete. Learn it, love it. People have a natural respect for comment trolls who manage to use words according to their ordinary definition.
MMT is full of economic fallacies. Hey, no wonder you adhere to it! It's attacking Austrians. It must be right! LOL
I only said they have by far the best comment trolls. Not that I adhere to their theories. You could learn A thing or two from 'AP Lerner' He's forgotten more about comment thread trolling than you'll ever know.
"Prateek Sanjay:
I agree with ArgosyJones.
Translation: I agree with the enemies of my enemy."
Correct. Prateek and I disagree on a lot, but we both hate lowbrow trolls, and appreciate classy, sophisticated trolls, such as 'AP Lerner'. They really have refined the art form to a considerable degree: the best of their comments are light years ahead of the top Austrian comment trolls. They must read a lot of Hemingway.
The point is YOU DON'T KNOW what their preference is unless they reveal their preference to you in some way. Epistemologically, you must learn of their preferences in some way, but your ethical worldview contains no basis of learning at all, only blind assumption and guessing.
ReplyDeleteThere's broad range of subjective personal preferences which can be respected, but some can't. If a person wants to kill themselves, but an ordinary person in the same situation would not, then it's unethical to NOT force them into treatment. The same is true of anyone engaged in or contemplating serious self-harm. I've had to take a friend's keys and throw them out of sight to keep him from driving drunk; his faculties were clearly impaired and he thanked me for it later, but I suppose an anarcho-capitalist would say I was violating his rights.
You might believe this is "dangerous", but it's no more dangerous than a first aider presuming to believe that a car crash victim wants help, because the first aider could kill the victim accidentally because they did something wrong in the course of their "help." This has happened many times and in those cases, the first aiders were (rightfully) judged as guilty.
ReplyDeleteFalse. In most jurisdictions in the United States, Good Samaritan Laws provide a defense against tort liability provided that the responder exercise 'reasonable care'. In fact, in many cases there's a positive 'duty to rescue'. There's also 'implied consent' to respond for anyone who is unconscious, intoxicated, or is believed to be impaired.
There are some cases where the rescuers were negligent, resulting in bodily harm, and of course the law provides a remedy for that. There are even more cases where someone like yourself is found liable because of a breach of duty to care. (variously by jurisdiction - pulling over on a highway to check on someone but not providing care; being a witness at the scene of an accident and not calling 911; not reporting certain kinds of violent or suspicious behavior to the police, especially if it ends up resulting in a crime; etc.)
It's also surprising that you would bring up the law in any of your arguments, when you are so clearly against any form of state power. Do you not realize that the law and the state are inseparable? There's even a constitutional amendment making income taxes compulsory, and eminent domain and adverse possession are long-standing legal principles. So, how is it that the law isn't completely poisoned, in your mind? Is it just 'obvious' to you which laws are 'right' and which ones aren't, despite the fact that every legal system is so intertwined with itself that even expert legal theorists can't make sense of it all? That's the kind of hubris I'd expect from an internet rothbardian.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteVery nice comments - not to mention that in instances when, say, it is obvious that a child/wife/friend or just some random person about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. has clearly NOT seen the danger coming, it is just idiocy to complain, "you can't coerce them, they may be trying to commit suicide!"
Highly unlikely when they're clearly oblivious to the danger.
I would expect that most voluntary Rothbardian neighborhoods/cities/regional areas would have their own legal and ethical code which would cover things like potential suicides and other emergencies. All parties would be in explicit or implied contractual privity.
ReplyDeleteThe only issue here is voluntary relationships vs. forced relationships imposed by SWAT teams and/or invading armies. It just isn't that complicated.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteFalse. In most jurisdictions in the United States, Good Samaritan Laws provide a defense against tort liability provided that the responder exercise 'reasonable care'. In fact, in many cases there's a positive 'duty to rescue'. There's also 'implied consent' to respond for anyone who is unconscious, intoxicated, or is believed to be impaired.
I wasn't talking about the laws in various states, I was talking about the fact that in many cases, first aiders were judged as guilty in such cases, which is true. The caveat of course is "reasonable care". It's not always judged to be there.
There are some cases where the rescuers were negligent, resulting in bodily harm, and of course the law provides a remedy for that.
These are what I was referring to.
There are even more cases where someone like yourself is found liable because of a breach of duty to care. (variously by jurisdiction - pulling over on a highway to check on someone but not providing care; being a witness at the scene of an accident and not calling 911; not reporting certain kinds of violent or suspicious behavior to the police, especially if it ends up resulting in a crime; etc.)
But I am someone who is of the type that would almost certainly help, as long as my own life does not come into danger. The fact that you believe I am not the type to help is proof that you believe in the caricature myth that being against violence-backed "help" somehow means you're not supportive of helping other people, and being in favor of violence-backed "help" somehow means you're supportive of helping people, as if only violence advocates can claim monopoly over wanting to help others.
You're totally ignoring the concept of voluntary charity, which I would expect from a statist, you who are so ignorant that you believe only guns make people help others.
It's also surprising that you would bring up the law in any of your arguments, when you are so clearly against any form of state power.
I didn't bring up any laws. I brought up ethical principles. You just conflated ethical principles with state laws, when they can and do diverge. Any overlap is inconsequential to my ethics based argument.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteDo you not realize that the law and the state are inseparable?
Oh, no wonder you're confused. You believe in yet another myth that laws imply the state. Now it makes sense. I bet you conflate society with government as well.
No, you're wrong. The law and the state are in fact separable. Private production of defense, anarcho-capitalism, is pro-law, but anti-state.
It does not follow that laws imply the state. The state is in fact the destroyer of rational common and private law.
There's even a constitutional amendment making income taxes compulsory, and eminent domain and adverse possession are long-standing legal principles.
These are examples of the state violating rationalist ethical principles.
So, how is it that the law isn't completely poisoned, in your mind?
The laws are poisoned yes, but there are laws consistent with rationalist ethical principles, which is the only reason why you see wealth generation around you on large scales.
Is it just 'obvious' to you which laws are 'right' and which ones aren't, despite the fact that every legal system is so intertwined with itself that even expert legal theorists can't make sense of it all?
Rational ethical principles are not obvious at all. They are based on self-evident propositions, but not in the psychologically evident sense, but in the logically evident sense. Hundreds and even thousands of years can pass through human history with these propositions remaining out of reach to scholars.
That's the kind of hubris I'd expect from an internet rothbardian.
You mean what you just said right? What you just said is hubris? Yes, I agree. It's a hubris I would expect from an internet statist.
"But I am someone who is of the type that would almost certainly help, as long as my own life does not come into danger. The fact that you believe I am not the type to help is proof that you believe in the caricature myth that being against violence-backed "help" somehow means you're not supportive of helping other people, and being in favor of violence-backed "help" somehow means you're supportive of helping people, as if only violence advocates can claim monopoly over wanting to help others."
ReplyDelete"Help" in what sense?
If your child/wife/friend or just some random person was about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. has clearly NOT seen the danger coming, would you use force/coercion to save them or not?
If so, how do you justify your use of force without consent given?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteVery nice comments
It's plainly clear now that the standard for judging arguments is how much they go against Austro-anarchist-libertarian politics/economics/ethics, regardless of the errors made and regardless of the straw man set up. Now it all makes sense.
Your whole ethical worldview is just a denial of rationalism, nothing more.
not to mention that in instances when, say, it is obvious that a child/wife/friend or just some random person about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. has clearly NOT seen the danger coming, it is just idiocy to complain, "you can't coerce them, they may be trying to commit suicide!"
How is it "idiocy"? We were talking about rights and only rights. You're just too intellectually ill-equipped to understand the concept of rights. That 99/100 you might end up helping someone who is going to kill themselves by some action, through some form of short term physical force on your part, does not at all mean that these historical facts can provide you with a foundation of whether or not you have a right to do it.
Rights, it seems, is something else that you are totally clueless about.
Rights are not based on historicism or on statistics. Rights are based on rationalism, on logic, on self-reflection as a thinking and acting entity.
Highly unlikely when they're clearly oblivious to the danger.
You didn't even ask me if I would in fact use physical force against someone who is heading for a cliff or for a boulder strike. If you asked me what I would do, I would probably more than likely try to stop them, first by persuasion, and if there isn't time, then by force. I can't say for sure because it would depend on the circumstances.
This position of mine does not mean that I am declaring that I have a RIGHT to do such a thing, for I could potentially be violating their individual rights, and so I would accept that they would then have the right to use physical force against me, as prevention or as punishment, if I was violating their individual rights.
You want to believe that one's ignorance of another's intentions, or historical statistics and percentages, can be used as a foundation for establishing rights. They cannot. Rights are not founded upon what we don't know, they are founded upon what we do know. If you don't know someone's intentions, then you cannot claim yourself to have a right to use force against them, if they are not threatening your own life.
That you might save a life by using force against someone heading for a cliff, does not mean you have a right to use force against them, any more than the fact that you might also save a life by strapping an individual to a table and force feeding them vegetables because they are going to kill themselves by eating too much bad food.
This is most likely way over your head, but rights are not based on how many lives you can save. This is because even life itself is a choice for people. You cannot claim to have a right to force other people into moving in accordance with a certain choice, when they do not stand as a threat in initiating violence against you, on the basis of "I am guessing that they are not doing it on purpose so I will use force."
Yes, go ahead and use force, but in terms of rights, you must accept that they would have the right to use violence against you if you're wrong. If that is a chance you're willing to take, and you realize that you didn't have a right to do it, and that they do have a right to use force against you if you're wrong, then you will be closer to understanding the concept of rights.
"We were talking about rights and only rights. You're just too intellectually ill-equipped to understand the concept of rights. etc."
ReplyDeleteThere are (1) no natural rights and (2) no absolute rights derivable from any argumentation ethic.
This is just reduces to argument about the validity and soundness of natural rights or argumentation ethics.
"But I am someone who is of the type that would almost certainly help, as long as my own life does not come into danger. The fact that you believe I am not the type to help is proof that you believe in the caricature myth that being against violence-backed "help" somehow means you're not supportive of helping other people, and being in favor of violence-backed "help" somehow means you're supportive of helping people, as if only violence advocates can claim monopoly over wanting to help others."
ReplyDelete"Help" in what sense?
Help in the sense that an individual has final authority over what happens to their own bodies. That means I will not "help" people by hurting people. If there is a road side accident of multiple cars, then I can say for sure that even if a hurt driver engaged in a sophisticated way of suicide, he nevertheless did so by violently risking other people's lives, so that means he "lost" his right to not have force used against him, which means, and this depends on the circumstances, I would most likely use force against the drivers to help them if they are in physical danger.
If they are unconscious and in danger, I would use force to get them away from the wreckage. If they are conscious, then I would first get their permission to apply first-aid to them (I have been a qualified advanced first aider for the last 15 years). I have used it in practice probably 10 times or so, and only 1 time was the person dead or unconscious, and in that case, I found myself not moving them at all because I suspected a back/neck injury.
If your child/wife/friend or just some random person was about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. has clearly NOT seen the danger coming, would you use force/coercion to save them or not?
I most likely would use force if I valued their existence and there was no large risk to my own life. But I will not claim that I have a RIGHT to do it. They are of no threat to me.
What you are actually asking me is whether or not an individual has the moral right to help others who are in danger. My answer to that is an emphatic no. Why? Because it would lead to sacrificing the lives of innocent people for the sake of others, which is exactly what underlies social evil.
The claim that one individual has the moral right to help others in need is what underlies the US government sacrificing the lives of Americans to "help" women and children in the middle east who represent no threat to the Americans being sacrificed. It is what underlies Nazism and Stalinism. It is what underlies the forceful harvesting of organs from people to save the lives of those in need of transplants. It is what underlies theft, murder, rape, fraud, and every other action that most rational people would consider as social evils.
If so, how do you justify your use of force without consent given?
I cannot claim that my potential actions of force are justified in terms of rights. They would not be rightfully justified. I might learn after that had the individual had the opportunity, they would have asked for my help, but that is not yet known by me beforehand when I must make the choice to help or not, and I cannot base what I have a right to do against them on my own ignorance and my own assumptions, since they are no threat to me by their actions.
Should my judgment become clouded by emotion during a stressful time, say a car crash, and I end up trying to help someone without getting their consent, and I end up hurting them instead, then I would of course accept that the victim or their family would have the right to seek recompense against me. I think this regardless of the positive law that happens to exist in the country.
I, and everyone else, do not have a moral obligation to help anyone in need, because each individual is an end in themselves, not means to the ends of others.
"We were talking about rights and only rights. You're just too intellectually ill-equipped to understand the concept of rights. etc."
ReplyDeleteThere are (1) no natural rights and (2) no absolute rights derivable from any argumentation ethic.
There are (1) natural rights and (2) absolute rights derivable from argumentation ethic.
This is just reduces to argument about the validity and soundness of natural rights or argumentation ethics.
Rights can only be natural to the human species, not artificial or whimsical. Rocks don't have human rights, and humans don't have rabbit rights. Human rights are natural to the human race.
If your child/wife/friend or just some random person was about to step in front of speeding car/falling boulder etc. has clearly NOT seen the danger coming, would you use force/coercion to save them or not?
ReplyDeleteIf so, how do you justify your use of force without consent given?
I'd assume the intelligence of the "victim" and the legal system to recognize a harmless AND helpful de minimus "violation" of rights. There might be some odd places that would punish such actions and it would be smart to avoid them at all costs.
English common law already recognizes the basic outline of the non-aggression principle. Keynesianism is clearly a latter-day "progressive" exception to the basic rules that most people already understand.
Further, one cannot predict a priori that statists will draft and enforce more "reasonable" rules of behavior that voluntary associations. As always, statists confuse statism with rules of living as Pete has explained ad nauseum.
Since a Rothbardian society in practice could not exist without the cooperation and approval of a large percentage of the population, it can be justified on utilitarian grounds alone. "We're going to do this because we like it and we plan to leave everyone else alone and in peace".
ReplyDeletePete@September 26, 2011 11:39 AM
ReplyDelete"I most likely would use force if I valued their existence and there was no large risk to my own life. But I will not claim that I have a RIGHT to do it. They are of no threat to me."
Bob Roddis@September 26, 2011 11:52 AM
I'd assume the intelligence of the "victim" and the legal system to recognize a harmless AND helpful de minimus "violation" of rights.
LOL... In other words, you would act immorally by the standards of your own ethical theory, and you are also shown to be inconsistent and a moral hypocrite. An ethical theory that requires you to violate it in practice is incohrentand unsound.
The bankrupcy of the argumentation ethic or natural rights theory (whatever it is either of you subcribe to) or your interpretation of them is exposed for all to see.
An ethical theory that says that it's immoral for force to be used to save a person's own child from a life-threatening accident/danger that the child clearly hasn't even seen is a ethical theory fit for morally depraved individucals or people whose opinions are indistinguable from those who are stark, raving mad.
I don't believe that it's immoral to save my own child from a life-threatening accident or danger. Considering how rare the problem you suggest would come up vs. the murder and depravity that accompanies socialist democracy, I'll stick with the non-aggression principle. BTW, there's not going to be perfection in this world.
ReplyDelete"I most likely would use force if I valued their existence and there was no large risk to my own life. But I will not claim that I have a RIGHT to do it. They are of no threat to me."
ReplyDeleteLOL... In other words, you would act immorally by the standards of your own ethical theory, and you are also shown to be inconsistent and a moral hypocrite.
I didn't say I would. I said I likely would, which means I cannot say what I would do in all such cases.
At any rate, how is this any different than the fact that you Keynesian statists will act immorally by the standard of your own ethical theory you hold on others? You hold counterfeiting and theft on the part of the private sector to be immoral, but you are willing to advocate that the individuals in government do just that.
An ethical theory that requires you to violate it in practice is incohrentand unsound.
But I didn't claim that the ethical theory I espouse REQUIRES me to violate it. I said I would have no right to violate it. You asked me what I would do, which is different than what I ought to do or what I have a right to do.
The bankrupcy of the argumentation ethic or natural rights theory (whatever it is either of you subcribe to) or your interpretation of them is exposed for all to see.
Not at all. You're only displaying your own gross ignorance of the concept of rights.
My position is that nobody has the right to initiate force against others who do not or did not themselves initiate force. This is absolute.
Epistemologically however, humans do not have perfect information. So to ask me what I would do in a given example, where I do not have enough information, it is absurd to demand that I give you a universal ethic for it.
An ethical theory that says that it's immoral for force to be used to save a person's own child from a life-threatening accident/danger that the child clearly hasn't even seen is a ethical theory fit for morally depraved individucals or people whose opinions are indistinguable from those who are stark, raving mad.
You keep saying "clearly" as if such knowledge is present in all cases. It's not.
As for this latest straw man attempt, when it comes to saving children, things are not the same as before. With children, who do not have a fully developed faculty of reason, the ethics change. Here, the parents must act as the child's legal guardian and make decisions on their behalf, without of course initiating violence against them. Stopping a child from drowning is not an initiation of force, provided the child is young enough to not understand the meaning of suicide, or rights.
You have the order backwards. When it comes to rights, you do not have the moral obligation to help anyone who is in a life threatening situation. By that logic, it would be moral for me to steal everything you own save that which you need to stay alive, in order to save the lives of children starving to death in Africa.
Your ethical theory would make any violence against innocent people justified, as long as there is someone, somewhere, starving or in an otherwise life threatening situation. That is what is stark raving mad.
It would not be immoral in my worldview for a parent to use force to save their own child, because the child does not have a fully developed reason.
Reason is the proximate foundation for natural rights. It's why we don't respect the rights of a person who is braindead, but rather the rights of their family or guardian. It's why we respect the rights of parents to have final authority over what happens to their small children, rather than the children themselves. It's why we don't respect the rights of snails and fish, but rather the human owners of those snails and fish.
"It would not be immoral in my worldview for a parent to use force to save their own child, because the child does not have a fully developed reason."
ReplyDeleteI see. So if your 11, 12 or 14 year old were in such a situation (assuming they have "developed reason"), it now becomes immoral to use coerion to save their life in the same circumstance??
Do tell, please.
"It would not be immoral in my worldview for a parent to use force to save their own child, because the child does not have a fully developed reason."
ReplyDeleteI see. So if your 11, 12 or 14 year old were in such a situation (assuming they have "developed reason"), it now becomes immoral to use coerion to save their life in the same circumstance??
Only if they do not consent, which is now possible due to their developed reason. In 99 times out of 100, they will consent to someone saving their life. This is the odds that I would play in using force against them. But it does not mean that the saver has the right to use force against them. Using force against them is only possible if the other person does NOT consent.
"Force" implies the individual does not consent. They way you are using the term however is grossly misleading, because it's not force if the individual consents, but you are presuming that the individual does consent.
It all depends on the consent of the individual. If the individual does not consent, then you have no right to touch them. If the individual does consent, then you have a right to touch them.
In 99 times out of 100, a child would consent to having someone saving them by touching them in some way. So 99 times out of 100, the universal ethical claim of "save all children from death" would not be a violation of the child's rights when practiced.
But every so often, a young person who is in a life threatening situation actually does want to kill themselves (see the recent story on the 14 year old homosexual who was bullied at school). In these very rare cases, your universal ethic of "save all children from life threatening situations" would be a violation of individual rights, because you would be going against their preference for themselves.
The concept of rights is based, in part, on the concept of consent. If consent is not present, no right to touching people exists. That is universal.
Oh, no wonder you're confused. You believe in yet another myth that laws imply the state. Now it makes sense. I bet you conflate society with government as well.
ReplyDeleteOf course not. I can sit here and make a list of pronouncements that I think people should follow, and there's no reason to expect anyone to take them seriously. In order for them to be laws, they must be enforceable under threat of violence, which requires a de facto state by definition.
Society doesn't necessarily require such a thing, because there's a hypothetical scenario where individuals live together voluntarily and never disagree on anything substantive. Sure, why not.
"Only if they do not consent, which is now possible due to their developed reason. In 99 times out of 100, they will consent to someone saving their life. "
ReplyDeleteThey will consent to save their life? They don't have time.
"Force" implies the individual does not consent. They way you are using the term however is grossly misleading, because it's not force if the individual consents, but you are presuming that the individual does consent.
So, in other words, my action would also be justified retrospectively if the people in question gave their consent.
All your endless rubbish above about not being able to act because I can't know if the person is committing suicide collapses like a house of cards.
And now your retrospective justification argument now applies with equal force to saving people from suicide, if they - after treatment or help from friends, family, mental helath care professionals etc. - now decide that their attempt at suicide was in error and give you retrospective consent, there is no problem.
Whole swaths of your comments above are now worthless.
"Only if they do not consent, which is now possible due to their developed reason. In 99 times out of 100, they will consent to someone saving their life. "
ReplyDeleteThey will consent to save their life? They don't have time.
Then you can't claim that they have a right to touch their bodies. You can't claim to have knowledge of a right if you don't have knowledge of consent.
"Force" implies the individual does not consent. They way you are using the term however is grossly misleading, because it's not force if the individual consents, but you are presuming that the individual does consent.
So, in other words, my action would also be justified retrospectively if the people in question gave their consent.
If they give their consent, it's not force, and it's not a violation of their rights.
All your endless rubbish above about not being able to act because I can't know if the person is committing suicide collapses like a house of cards.
I didn't claim that you are not able to act. If nobody is initiating violence against you, then you are able to act.
Again, you don't understand the concept of rights. I said that you cannot claim to know you have a right to act if you don't have knowledge of consent. That is different from saying you don't act, or don't have the ability to act.
If you don't have knowledge of their consent, then you cannot make any claim to having knowledge of having a right to help them or knowledge in whether they want to kill themselves.
Rights are based on knowledge, not ignorance.
And now your retrospective justification argument now applies with equal force to saving people from suicide, if they - after treatment or help from friends, family, mental helath care professionals etc. - now decide that their attempt at suicide was in error and give you retrospective consent, there is no problem.
In those cases, yes. But then that would be a new decision on their part to not killing themselves. Yes, suicide is a one shot deal. You better be sure before you do it. Some people are sure, others are not so sure. Some people who are stopped, go right ahead and kill themselves after. Some people who are stopped, do not try it again.
In terms of rights, you violated their rights if they did not give you consent. Whether or not they want to seek justice is quite another thing entirely. For some people, who had their right to kill themselves violated by another, does not take action against the "aggressor" because they changed their mind and want to live. That happens. Other times, people who had their right to kill themselves violated by another, do take action against the aggressor, because they have not changed their minds and still want to die. That happens to.
I am not making an argument on how to predict what people want in the future. I am only speaking of rights, which is not predictive at all, but prescriptive. It enables us to know what proper behavior is between individuals. Consent, and knowledge of consent, are paramount. Without them, practicing ethical behavior is impossible. But we can still use logic to make propositions on what WOULD be moral and immoral behavior, based on abstracting consent into theoretical propositions.
Whole swaths of your comments above are now worthless.
ReplyDeleteNot at all. You only WANT them to be worthless because you have no way of refuting them through critical analysis.
You want to believe that because it is possible that touching someone in danger based on your ignorance, can potentially lead to consistently moral behavior that does not violate individual rights, can somehow mean that it is wrong to make universal claims about force and rights. It doesn't work that way. You cannot claim that my statements are wrong by basing your claims on potential human error, or potentially correct guesses.
Yes, it is possible to not have knowledge of someone's consent, and still touch their bodies, and end up having done the right thing. This is because guesses can of course be correct. But we can't make any judgment on rights until we KNOW consent. THEN we can say whether their rights were violated. And again, we can also still make propositions like "given you have their consent, then it is rightfully just to touch them." Whether we have knowledge of someone's consent is a separate question.
Since a Rothbardian society in practice could not exist without the cooperation and approval of a large percentage of the population, it can be justified on utilitarian grounds alone. ... I'll stick with the non-aggression principle. BTW, there's not going to be perfection in this world.
ReplyDeleteYou go ahead and stick to your non-aggression, form your voluntary rothbardian neighborhood, and I'll come in with my larger totalitarian neighborhood and take your things. Haven't we been through this before?
History has shown that states form spontaneously, political power becomes concentrated, and the people follow strong leaders; the chances of a stable 'anarchy' existing without some overarching state protection are slim. The chances of a rothbardian pseudo-state being more militarily capable than a different kind of state are close to zero.
If there is no practical, realistic way to form your neighborhood and maintain its existence, then the underlying ideal is more ephemeral than utilitarian.
I don't want to live in a world where I have no practical way to defend myself from a larger aggressor. The libertarian home-defense fantasy of a man and his shotgun is laughable at best; when the free-market Pinkertons are at the door, there's no escape. If the invading hordes come through town and the voluntary non-aggression society has emergently decided for me that a military is an unnecessary expense, we're all enslaved or killed and history reboots.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"Oh, no wonder you're confused. You believe in yet another myth that laws imply the state. Now it makes sense. I bet you conflate society with government as well."
Of course not. I can sit here and make a list of pronouncements that I think people should follow, and there's no reason to expect anyone to take them seriously. In order for them to be laws, they must be enforceable under threat of violence, which requires a de facto state by definition.
Non sequitur. It does not follow from enforcement of laws that a state is required. You are ignoring private law enforcement.
A state is a territorial monopoly on taxation, and security and protection. Security and protection are not, however, necessarily territorial based. They are individual human based, and humans can move around and live in diverse groups across a spectrum of private property regions. If you can lump people together into the concept of "citizenry" and say laws mean the state over the citizenry, then I can lump the individual property owner with himself and say laws mean the private protectors over that individual property owner.
That law enforcement is decentralized, does not mean that communication shuts off, or that commonality in laws won't be the incentive to self-interested individual property owners.
"Yes, suicide is a one shot deal. You better be sure before you do it. Some people are sure, others are not so sure. Some people who are stopped, go right ahead and kill themselves after. Some people who are stopped, do not try it again."
ReplyDeleteAnd yet another part of your argument comes crashing down.
Above you claim that someone without "fully developed reason" can in fact be subject to coercion on account of that fact.
Many people who committ suicide may well in fact be mentally impaired or mentally ill.
By your own exception for those without "fully developed reason" above, there is now obviously an equally valid justification for coercion to stop suicide to ascertain whether such people are fact in need of medical / mental health care treament.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYou might like to read this moral paradox for the Rothbardians about the hypothetical defence of their community:
http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2011/07/thought-experiment.html
A state is a territorial monopoly on taxation, and security and protection.
ReplyDeleteFalse; a state is a monopoly of force. Anything that operates as a monopoly of force is a state. Most states engage in taxation and other things, but those are not strictly necessary.
"Yes, suicide is a one shot deal. You better be sure before you do it. Some people are sure, others are not so sure. Some people who are stopped, go right ahead and kill themselves after. Some people who are stopped, do not try it again."
ReplyDeleteAnd yet another part of your argument comes crashing down.
Above you claim that someone without "fully developed reason" can in fact be subject to coercion on account of that fact.
Yes.
Many people who committ suicide may well in fact be mentally impaired or mentally ill.
If they are brain damaged, and they don't have reason, then of course their guardians are the ones with the relevant rights. But being mentally ill does not mean one does not have reason.
By your own exception for those without "fully developed reason" above, there is now obviously an equally valid justification for coercion to stop suicide to ascertain whether such people are fact in need of medical / mental health care treament.
Only if it can be proven that an individual is brain damaged and does not know what it means to kill oneself. Again, this is based on knowledge of their preferences, and thus you cannot claim to have a right to stop them if you don't know what they consent to.
The fact that you are relegated to falling back on individuals without any reason to support your claim, only supports and emphasizes my ethical foundation of reason.
If an individual is mentally impaired, but is of no threat to others, then force would not be justified against them if they wanted to kill themselves. Nobody has the right to stop them. Whether they have knowledge of the implications of what they are doing, is something that has to be found out because one can be said to have acted justly towards them. If they give their consent, then you acted justly. If they do not give their consent, then you acted unjustly.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteA state is a territorial monopoly on taxation, and security and protection.
False; a state is a monopoly of force.
False. A state is a territorial monopoly on taxation, and security and protection.
Anything that operates as a monopoly of force is a state.
Then an abusive parent is a state if he holds a monopoly of force in his home. You sure?
Most states engage in taxation and other things, but those are not strictly necessary.
Yes they are necessary. Without confiscating resources from the people, states are unable to implement their plans.
You might like to read this moral paradox for the Rothbardians about the hypothetical defence of their community:
ReplyDeleteHah, of course it would be unethical in that system to stop the disclosure. I hope they like croissants.
I know that the case of the free-market police force has been covered here before, but I want to bring this up again: nobody has sufficiently explained how competing forces would NOT simply consolidate power into an effective monopoly. I'm sure it's my lack of imagination, so I hope someone here can help me out.
"If an individual is mentally impaired, but is of no threat to others, then force would not be justified against them if they wanted to kill themselves. Nobody has the right to stop them. "
ReplyDeleteA laughable double standrad has now opened up.
One the one hand, you say people
without "fully developed reason" can be subject to coercion in the relevant circumstances, but "mentally impaired" can't.
For logical consistency, you owuld have to say
"If an individual is without "fully developed reason", but is of no threat to others, then force would not be justified against them if they wanted to kill themselves. Nobody has the right to stop them."
"I know that the case of the free-market police force has been covered here before, but I want to bring this up again: nobody has sufficiently explained how competing forces would NOT simply consolidate power into an effective monopoly."
ReplyDeleteYes, that argument is explored by Holcombe, R. G. 2004. “Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable,” Independent Review 8.3: 325–342.
See here:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/12/different-types-of-austrian-economics.html
Then an abusive parent is a state if he holds a monopoly of force in his home. You sure?
ReplyDeleteAny parent that holds a monopoly of force in the home is a state to the child, yes. Parents are prototypes of state power. I'm not sure why you had to include 'abusive', unless you want to emphasize that a rothbardian considers parental coercion over children to be unethical?
False. A state is a territorial monopoly on taxation, and security and protection.
Twisting and reframing basic definitions and concepts seems to be a staple of Austrians, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
"If an individual is mentally impaired, but is of no threat to others, then force would not be justified against them if they wanted to kill themselves. Nobody has the right to stop them. "
ReplyDeleteA laughable double standrad has now opened up.
One the one hand, you say people
without "fully developed reason" can be subject to coercion in the relevant circumstances, but "mentally impaired" can't.
No, that's not what I said. I said that reason is what underlies rights, and without reason, a person does not have rights. I also said that a mentally impaired person has their reason, and so it is not justified to use force against them without their consent. I said that a brain damaged person, or a person who is brain dead, they don't have rights, their legal guardians do.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"Then an abusive parent is a state if he holds a monopoly of force in his home. You sure?"
Any parent that holds a monopoly of force in the home is a state to the child, yes.
Well, it's clear now that your definition of a state is much too loose to identify the difference between the US government, and merely violent individuals.
By your treatment, if a petty thief used coercion against someone else in a back alley, then at that time at that place, the thief is a state.
And if the victim should fight back, and turn the coercion around, he becomes a state.
Someone walks up to someone else and randomly punches them? They're a state. A child picks up a gun and shoots someone? They're a state.
Your definition is way too vague and does not get at the key aspects of statism. You're using a definition nobody else uses. SO when you say:
Twisting and reframing basic definitions and concepts seems to be a staple of Austrians, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I giggled out loud. YOU are twisting and reframing basic definitions, not me.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"I know that the case of the free-market police force has been covered here before, but I want to bring this up again: nobody has sufficiently explained how competing forces would NOT simply consolidate power into an effective monopoly."
False. They have sufficiently covered it. Read Rothbard, Hoppe, and other anarcho-capitalist writers. Merely ignoring them is not a proper argument.
If there is "no reason" why private security institutions won't consolidate power, then there is "no reason" why a minarchist state or any other less than totalitarian state won't consolidate power.
If people are too evil not to form totalitarianism, then surely any form of statism cannot be justified for the same reason.
You might like to read this moral paradox for the Rothbardians about the hypothetical defence of their community:
ReplyDeletehttp://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2011/07/thought-experiment.html
The answer is no if he is not contracted into secrecy, and yes if he is, just like it would not be justified to initiate force against someone in a statist society who intends to reveal the plans of a statist defense if he is not contracted to keep it secret.
There is no "paradox."
Your definition is way too vague and does not get at the key aspects of statism. You're using a definition nobody else uses.
ReplyDelete"The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave."
-Ludwig von Mises
The only element Mises is missing is the moral basis of the use of force. A parent is justified in using force to compel his or her children to "behave otherwise than they would like to behave." The state is presumed (by statists) to also be justified in its use of force. None of your examples are even remotely relevant, because nobody here is arguing that a child with a gun or a petty thief are justified in using force.
If people are too evil not to form totalitarianism, then surely any form of statism cannot be justified for the same reason.
ReplyDeleteFalse. That is the entire point of constitutional government. Have you never studied history or politics?
The answer is no if he is not contracted into secrecy, and yes if he is, just like it would not be justified to initiate force against someone in a statist society who intends to reveal the plans of a statist defense if he is not contracted to keep it secret.
There is no basis in anarcho-capitalism for the use of force to compel contractual obligations. It only allows for market forces to correct behavior. So, your only choice is to not purchase secrecy from that person again. A minimalist libertarian state is the closest system which provides for actual remedies for breach of contract, but does not even normally provide for injunction.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave." -Ludwig von Mises
"A state is a territorial monopolist of compulsion, an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the exploitation of private property owners through expropriation, taxation, and regulation." - Hans-Hermann Hoppe
"There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others...I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the "economic means" for the satisfaction of need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means"...The State is an organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery." - Franz Oppenheimer.
The only element Mises is missing is the moral basis of the use of force. A parent is justified in using force to compel his or her children to "behave otherwise than they would like to behave." The state is presumed (by statists) to also be justified in its use of force. None of your examples are even remotely relevant, because nobody here is arguing that a child with a gun or a petty thief are justified in using force.
They are relevant because they follow from your own definition of the state. You cannot propose an argument, then deny what logically follows from it on the basis that "nobody would accept it." Appeals to random unnamed people is an argumentative fallacy.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"If people are too evil not to form totalitarianism, then surely any form of statism cannot be justified for the same reason."
False.
No, it does follow. If you claim that there is no reason why private agencies would not consolidate, then there is no reason why a less than totalitarian state would not consolidate. If you say a piece of paper can limit a state, then pieces of paper can limit private security agencies as well. If you say pieces of paper cannot limit private security, then it cannot limit states either.
That is the entire point of constitutional government. Have you never studied history or politics?
Well, if a piece of paper can limit a monopoly government, then surely pieces of paper can limit private security providers. "That's the entire point of private constitutional defense agencies. Haven't you ever studied history or politics?"
"The answer is no if he is not contracted into secrecy, and yes if he is, just like it would not be justified to initiate force against someone in a statist society who intends to reveal the plans of a statist defense if he is not contracted to keep it secret."
There is no basis in anarcho-capitalism for the use of force to compel contractual obligations.
False. There is a basis for the use of force to compel contractual obligations. The basis is reason, and the institutions are private defense agencies.
It only allows for market forces to correct behavior.
False. It allows for ideology to guide private defense agency behavior, just like ideology can guide a state's behavior.
So, your only choice is to not purchase secrecy from that person again.
The same thing holds true for those who have secrets in statism.
A minimalist libertarian state is the closest system which provides for actual remedies for breach of contract, but does not even normally provide for injunction.
No, an anarcho-capitalist society is the closest system which PROVIDES protection, rather that systematically violating it like in statism. Contracts can be enforced using private security.
The same thing holds true for those who have secrets in statism.
ReplyDeleteLOL wut. Leaking state secrets is treason, which is a good way to get executed, sometimes preemptively. That seems a tad bit different than "Oh well, I guess we won't contract with you again."
There is a basis for the use of force to compel contractual obligations. The basis is reason, and the institutions are private defense agencies.
Back to the good old days of feudalism! Seriously, why did we ever change? I apologize if the distinction between the state and private security providers is too sophisticated for you; I'll be sure to use smaller words and simpler ideas if I ever feed your trolling again.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteLOL wut. Leaking state secrets is treason, which is a good way to get executed, sometimes preemptively. That seems a tad bit different than "Oh well, I guess we won't contract with you again."
Way to miss the argument entirely. I didn't say that people won't get charged for treason in statism if they leak secrets. I said that the same thing in statism holds true as it does in anarchy, which is to not to give that person secrets anymore. Yes, in our statist society, there is also a charging of treason and possible execution, but that doesn't make it "better" than an anarchist society.
Only if you hold executing people for leaking information as justified, can you say that statism is superior to anarchy without such execution.
What if the laws in an anarchist system are the same as they are in statism when it comes to leaking information?
Back to the good old days of feudalism! Seriously, why did we ever change? I apologize if the distinction between the state and private security providers is too sophisticated for you; I'll be sure to use smaller words and simpler ideas if I ever feed your trolling again.
It's not feudalism. Feudalism is not a system of private property owners. Feudalism is a system of government ownership and control of all land property, such that the land are controlled by stewards of the state, who are not allowed to sell their land on the open market, but to retain it within a "monarchical bloodline." In addition, those individuals born on a feudal lord's land are essentially the property of the feudal lord, who are not allowed to freely move from land to land buying and selling land, or renting land, but coerced into remaining on the land they were born on, where they must work for whatever that feudal lord pays them.
A system of private property is entirely different.
Why did we change from feudalism? We changed because enough people realized the gains that can be made through private property ownership as opposed to government ownership, and were willing to fight back at the tyranny in order to get it.
The only thing you need to apologize for is for being ignorant. The distinction between private property, and state property feudalism, is a distinction between moral and immoral human behavior.
And learn the definition of a troll. A troll is not someone who disagrees with you. It is someone who uses inflammatory language with the intention of getting an emotional reaction from others. If you can point to where I used inflammatory language against you, then by all means, prove it. Otherwise, get a dictionary.
Only if you hold executing people for leaking information as justified, can you say that statism is superior to anarchy without such execution.
ReplyDeleteI do consider it justified.
What if the laws in an anarchist system are the same as they are in statism when it comes to leaking information?
It isn't possible for an anarchy to have laws, because any system which enforces laws is a de facto state by definition.
I'm also amused by your confusion over historical facts. Feudal land was the free (allodial) property of the lord and was frequently bought and sold for liquidity, traded, or bequeathed. The subjects were not property, they were free to leave, but often remained voluntarily for the protection provided by the lord. They also had their own property interests in land that they tilled, but were required to pay from their harvest or other fruits of their labor for the protection provided. The history of the common law is rich with stories of ordinary people from this period, I recommend checking it out. Many lords were abusive according to modern liberal standards, but the alternative was to take your chances in the open. We don't even have the option of subsistence living anymore, so in a sense we're less free.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete”Only if you hold executing people for leaking information as justified, can you say that statism is superior to anarchy without such execution.”
I do consider it justified.
On what basis?
”What if the laws in an anarchist system are the same as they are in statism when it comes to leaking information?”
It isn't possible for an anarchy to have laws, because any system which enforces laws is a de facto state by definition.
False. A state is not just an enforcer of laws. A state is an enforcer of laws AND IS ALSO a monopoly on law enforcement and it has the “legitimate” authority to tax, i.e. steal from, private property owners. A decentralized system of private production of defense contains individuals who do not have the legitimate authority to tax anyone, n0r impose a monopoly on legal jurisdiction.
If you call a decentralized system of private law and order a “de facto state”, then so be it. You’d only be calling two very different things the same word.
I'm also amused by your confusion over historical facts. Feudal land was the free (allodial) property of the lord and was frequently bought and sold for liquidity, traded, or bequeathed. The subjects were not property, they were free to leave, but often remained voluntarily for the protection provided by the lord. They also had their own property interests in land that they tilled, but were required to pay from their harvest or other fruits of their labor for the protection provided. The history of the common law is rich with stories of ordinary people from this period, I recommend checking it out. Many lords were abusive according to modern liberal standards, but the alternative was to take your chances in the open.
You don’t understand feudalism. Feudal lands were “bought and sold” yes, but they were not sold in the open market. The King or Queen retained final authority over which feudal lord was master, and if there were going to be any changes, they had to give their approval. Under no circumstances could a feudal lord buy and sell land on his own recognizance to the highest bidder in the open market, especially not to the serfs.
Second, serfs were NOT free to leave. They were free to leave their homes, but not the feudal territory, unless the lord granted permission. Yes, life was so harsh that in some cases, serfs chose to stay rather than to fend for themselves where other feudal lords were even more brutal.
Third, the serf’s “ownership” of land was nominal only, much like in fascism. At any time, the feudal lord could boot a serf off “his” land.
We don't even have the option of subsistence living anymore, so in a sense we're less free.
Who’s we? It can’t be everyone.
You don’t understand feudalism.
ReplyDeleteSince you're having trouble with the big words, I found something with simpler language and pictures:
The Feudal contract
A system of private property is entirely different.
The greatest property interest anyone can hold is a fee simple, which is not any different than a freehold. So technically, the government still owns all the property. How is this different?
Nevermind, I don't want to listen to more of your Austrian whaaarrgarbl. There's literally nowhere in the world that has a system of private property which meets your criteria, so I'm sure it's all equally tyrannical.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"You don’t understand feudalism."
The Feudal contract
Doesn't constitute a response.
"A system of private property is entirely different."
The greatest property interest anyone can hold is a fee simple, which is not any different than a freehold.
Not if the sellers don't sell to those the state deems worthy, and sells to those the state deems unworthy
So technically, the government still owns all the property. How is this different?
Non sequitur
Nevermind, I don't want to listen to more of your Austrian whaaarrgarbl. There's literally nowhere in the world that has a system of private property which meets your criteria, so I'm sure it's all equally tyrannical.
It does exist in the real world. Voluntary contracts based on legitimately acquired property does exist in the real world. And even if it didn't, that alone would not constitute an argument against the justice of it.
Although I have no strong knowledge either way I would have thought that the timing, his age and his Labour background makes it more likely that Savage was implementing Gesellian policies rather than Keynesian ones. Is it not more likely that in 1936 Savage was more familiar with the former than with the latter?
ReplyDelete