Rothbard’s Argument for Natural Rights and the Absolute Right to Private Property is Totally Flawed

And it is easy to demonstrate so, and I expand below on an old post of mine.

First, Rothbard did not attempt to justify his natural rights ethics by means of theology (Rothbard 2002: 4), so this need not detain us.

Rothbard used a non-religious or secular justification for natural law and natural rights, and he presents his case for natural rights in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (2nd edn; 2006 [1973]):

“Let us turn then to the natural-rights basis for the libertarian creed, a basis which, in one form or another, has been adopted by most of the libertarians, past and present. ‘Natural rights’ is the cornerstone of a political philosophy which, in turn, is embedded in a greater structure of ‘natural law.’ Natural law theory rests on the insight that we live in a world of more than one—in fact, a vast number—of entities, and that each entity has distinct and specific properties, a distinct ‘nature,’ which can be investigated by man’s reason, by his sense perception and mental faculties. Copper has a distinct nature and behaves in a certain way, and so do iron, salt, etc. The species man, therefore, has a specifiable nature, as does the world around him and the ways of interaction between them. To put it with undue brevity, the activity of each inorganic and organic entity is determined by its own nature and by the nature of the other entities with which it comes in contact. Specifically, while the behavior of plants and at least the lower animals is determined by their biological nature or perhaps by their ‘instincts,’ the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. Violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’; it violates the natural law of man’s needs.” (Rothbard 2006 [1973]: 26–27).

There are severe problems here, as follows:

(1) It is untrue that “since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values.” Rothbard is claiming a moral necessity here. He is deducing a morally necessary “ought” from an “is,” a deduction which, as Hume showed, is impossible to justify. But putting that aside for the moment (more on it later), even his reasoning is faulty.

Take a clear example: all human beings begin life as children and nearly always subject to the coercion of their parents who impose rules, deprive them of the freedom to do anything they want, and at the same time choose to impart knowledge and values to their children.

Children can and do survive and flourish while being subject to quite severe parental constraints and rules. For example, if one is raised Catholic, one did not give one’s consent when a child to be raised with Catholic values and religion: the choice was made by the parents, but one may well become a moral, successful, and prosperous human being, despite that parental coercion in knowledge and values.

There are even adults who prefer to let others choose their ends.

Certain mentally impaired human beings can survive and even flourish even though they are subject to strict control by their carers.

(2) Rothbard’s statement is wrong:

“Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life.”

On the contrary, human beings do possess “automatic instincts”: hunger, thirst, and a vast range of genetically determined behavioural traits. To take one example: human children have a genetic predisposition to acquire language as naturally as a bird grows its feathers.

(3) Rothbard and the “is-ought” problem of David Hume.
The central passage where Rothbard attempts to deduce a human being’s natural right to be free from violence or coercion is here:

“the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. Violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’; it violates the natural law of man’s needs.”

This is subject to Hume’s “is–ought problem,” or at least one important interpretation of it that is compelling.

When a person argues that some moral “ought” statement is necessarily true and entailed by some prior descriptive facts, there are insuperable difficulties with defending such moral necessity.

Remember that the “ought” here entails a necessity in the truth of the moral statement.

How is it possible to deduce with necessary truth the prescriptive/normative statement “violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’” from mere descriptive statements?

To see how unconvincing this argument is, one only needs to make some changes to it to see the absurdity of the underlying type of argument:

“the nature of a leaf under the influence of gravity is to fall to the ground, such that each leaf must, in order to fall, be free from obstruction and interference when it detaches from the tree. Possessing no automatic instincts, each leaf must be subject to gravity, and fall to the ground; to interfere with and cripple this process by using interference to stop the leaf falling to the ground goes profoundly against what is necessary by the leaf’s nature. Violent interference with a leaf’s nature is therefore profoundly ‘antileaf’; it violates the natural law of the leaf’s natural action.”

Just because the nature of a leaf (or really its propensity to do certain things under natural laws) is to fall to the ground under the influence of gravity, it simply does not follow that we have deduced with necessary truth that the leaf has any moral right whatsoever to fall to the ground.

Hume’s “is–ought problem” is a profound and devastating one for natural rights theorists and indeed for anyone who thinks that he can necessarily deduce moral truths from natural facts.

(4) Rothbard’s argument for the “right to self-ownership” is flawed.
Rothbard’s defence of the “right to self-ownership” is as follows:

“The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the ‘right to self-ownership.’ The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to ‘own’ his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation. Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.” (Rothbard 2006 [1973]: 28).

The first problem with this argument is that ownership and private property in the sense defined by Rothbard (and this point is crucial) are not even natural concepts. You do not naturally “own” your body in the sense in which Rothbard defines the word: but you do possess/have a body as a consequence of genetic and biological processes.

But ownership rights and private property rights even as moral concepts are socially constructed concepts and, in any sufficiently complex society, legal concepts too, not natural concepts.

Let us turn to Rothbard’s justification for absolute self-ownership to expand on this point:

“The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to ‘own’ his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference.”

This is just another instance of Rothbard’s reasoning being utterly unconvincing because it is subject to Hume’s “is–ought problem.”

That human beings qua natural human beings (and not malformed or severely injured human beings, for instance) possess bodies is an empirical fact, as we have seen.

It is clear that Rothbard uses “own” in a special moral sense here. For if “own” merely means “possess” or “have,” then one can no doubt say that human beings who possess bodies own (= possess or have) bodies, but this is a tautology and a trivial truth.

But it does not follow from his descriptive natural fact that humans beings must with necessary moral truth own their bodies in the sense of being able “to control that body free of coercive interference.”

Furthermore, Rothbard’s claim that there are only “two alternatives” to denying each man the right to own his own person is manifestly false, as is shown by Edward Feser (“Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009).

In fact, there are a number of possibilities that Rothbard does not consider, as Feser notes:

(1) no human actually owns himself or herself;
(2) a divine, creator being owns all human beings;
(3) one group of human beings might have a right to partial ownership of another group;
(4) all human beings have a partial and/or unequal ownership of everyone else.

Again, we must remember that the word “own” here means the absolute, morally necessary natural right “to control a human body free of coercive interference.”

It is (1) that is right: no human being or any living thing owns itself in the sense of having some absolute, morally necessary natural right “to control its body free of coercive interference.”

Does this mean that human beings can have no moral rights? It does not: for there are many ethical theories apart from Rothbard’s natural rights theory that can overcome or evade Hume’s “is–ought problem.”

First, it is a mistake to think that morality requires absolute necessary truth, like the truth of a valid analytic statement such as “all bachelors are unmarried” or “1 + 1 = 2.”

For example, some types of consequentialism argue that morality aims at certain ends, and that the logic of moral argument can only be an inductive logic, not a necessary deductive logic.

That is to say, it is correct that no moral “ought” statement is necessarily implied by descriptive facts, but a statement urging certain actions to achieve certain ends may well be inductively implied by descriptive facts in a probabilistic sense only. What we call “ethics” is essentially the inductive logic of arguments about how to achieve certain ends. Even the ultimate ends that we should aim at can be justified with rational argument, empirical evidence and inductive argument (and I have sketched my own consequentialist ethics here, on the basis of the theory called prescriptivism).

So what is the consequentialist view of human rights and rights to property? Under consequentialism, what human beings can have is a non-necessary moral right to a high, but not absolute, degree of freedom from coercive interference and a high, but not absolute, degree of freedom of control over external property. In order to achieve certain ends, we must accept restrictions on both personal property rights and behaviour.

Let us now turn to Rothbard’s natural rights argument for absolute ownership of external objects or external property rights:

“We have established each individual’s right to self-ownership, to a property right in his own body and person. But people are not floating wraiths; they are not self-subsistent entities; they can only survive and flourish by grappling with the earth around them. They must, for example, stand on land areas; they must also, in order to survive and maintain themselves, transform the resources given by nature into ‘consumer goods,’ into objects more suitable for their use and consumption. Food must be grown and eaten; minerals must be mined and then transformed into capital and then useful consumer goods, etc. Man, in other words, must own not only his own person, but also material objects for his control and use. How, then, should the property titles in these objects be allocated?

Let us take, as our first example, a sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials; and let us waive, for the moment, the question of original property rights in the clay and the sculptor’s tools. The question then becomes: Who owns the work of art as it emerges from the sculptor’s fashioning? It is, in fact, the sculptor’s ‘creation,’ not in the sense that he has created matter, but in the sense that he has transformed nature-given matter—the clay—into another form dictated by his own ideas and fashioned by his own hands and energy. Surely, it is a rare person who, with the case put thus, would say that the sculptor does not have the property right in his own product. Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material objects of the world in order to survive, then the sculptor has the right to own the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality. He has placed the stamp of his person upon the raw material, by ‘mixing his labor’ with the clay, in the phrase of the great property theorist John Locke. ....

As in the case of the ownership of people’s bodies, we again have three logical alternatives: (1) either the transformer, or ‘creator’ has the property right in his creation; or (2) another man or set of men have the right in that creation, i.e., have the right to appropriate it by force without the sculptor’s consent; or (3) every individual in the world has an equal, quotal share in the ownership of the sculpture—the ‘communal’ solution. Again, put baldly, there are very few who would not concede the monstrous injustice of confiscating the sculptor’s property, either by one or more others, or on behalf of the world as a whole. By what right do they do so? By what right do they appropriate to themselves the product of the creator’s mind and energy? In this clear-cut case, the right of the creator to own what he has mixed his person and labor with would be generally conceded. (Once again, as in the case of communal ownership of persons, the world communal solution would, in practice, be reduced to an oligarchy of a few others expropriating the creator’s work in the name of ‘world public’ ownership.)

The main point, however, is that the case of the sculptor is not qualitatively different from all cases of ‘production.’ The man or men who had extracted the clay from the ground and had sold it to the sculptor may not be as ‘creative’ as the sculptor, but they too are ‘producers,’ they too have mixed their ideas and their technological know-how with the nature-given soil to emerge with a useful product. They, too, are “producers,” and they too have mixed their labor with natural materials to transform those materials into more useful goods and services. These persons, too, are entitled to the ownership of their products.” (Rothbard 2006 [1973]: 36–39).

The argument is just as flawed as Rothbard’s argument for absolute ownership of one’s own body:

(1) the fact that I have used my labour to possess some external object in nature not claimed by anyone else only means that I now possess or have it: the descriptive facts do not entail with necessary moral truth that I now have an absolute right to ownership of the object free from all external coercion. The morally necessary “ought” just does not follow from the “is.”

To see this, let us look at a real world example:

Bees use their labour to collect nectar from flowers: they now have a morally necessary natural right to the nectar!

Then honeybees return to the hive and give their nectar to worker bees. These bees labour by regurgitating the nectar and making honey from it (through the action of enzymes), and they then use their labour to store the honey in honeycombs.

It follows from this that bees own their honey and have the absolute natural right to not be aggressed against and have their honey stolen by other animals and humans!

If Rothbard’s natural rights arguments were true, then it would be a grossly immoral act for any human being to take honey from wild bee hives, and saying that a person used their labour to coercively collect the honey so that he “homesteaded” it does not overcome the problem: for then I could claim that the labour expended by a thief in robbing someone was a legitimate way to own the victim’s property. Clearly, this does not work under Rothbard’s ethics.

Another response would be that natural rights only apply to human beings: but even this does not succeed, for if no non-human, living thing has any absolute natural right to self-ownership and ownership of external things, then why should human beings? Why the double standard?

The answer to these various moral conundrums is of course that Rothbard’s natural rights theory is nonsense.

But what would a consequentialist say about this? Can we take honey from bees morally, given that the bees mixed their labour with the honey? The answer is “yes,” because no living thing has any necessary moral right to its external property in the first place.

Is it always moral to take honey from bees? Though it would have to rank low on the list of moral question humans must face, consequentialism can provide better answers than Rothbard’s natural rights ethics and its incoherence.

If a human being, for example, has no pressing need for food and destroys a hive and takes all the honey leaving the bees with no food and to suffer and starve, then one can make a consequentialist case that this is immoral. But here it would be immoral because we have to keep in mind the consequentialist aim of minimising the harm and suffering we cause to other living things (of course, even here empirical questions arise: is the animal in question conscious? Does it feel pain? Can it suffer?).

But fortunately most bee-keeping is not like this and such moral questions do not normally arise and, as noted above, even if they did would be low on our list of moral questions: for most beekeepers take a certain amount of the honey and leave the hive enough to survive and sometimes even provide the bees with sugar or corn syrup if necessary.

Yet another issue arises with animals: say you acquire fertilised chicken eggs and through your labour create chickens. Does it follow you have an absolute natural moral right to the animals, even to the point of torturing them and mistreating them? Is it immoral for another human being or the community through its laws and legal system to use non-lethal and limited coercion to stop you in your mistreatment? The absurd natural rights ethics of Rothbard says “yes,” the consequentialist rightly says “no,” because (1) you never had any absolute natural right to ownership of the animals in the first place and (2) greater moral issues arise when human beings own living things that can feel pain and suffer.

In short, with these examples, we see how Rothbard’s natural rights ethics leads to incoherence in the first instance, and moral bankruptcy in the second, and that consequentialism is superior.

(2) One of Rothbard’s arguments, taken from Locke, verges on the mystical:

“Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material objects of the world in order to survive, then the sculptor has the right to own the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality. He has placed the stamp of his person upon the raw material, by ‘mixing his labor’ with the clay, in the phrase of the great property theorist John Locke.”

It is difficult to see how using one’s labour to create something makes the thing in question an “extension of [sc. the] … personality” of the labourer.

Even if did, it would still not follow that any necessary natural moral right to the created thing is created.

For example, are children the absolute property of parents, merely because parents have engaged in labour to create the children?

In conclusion, the foundation of Rothbard’s natural rights ethics is utterly flawed, incoherent and dependent on logical fallacies long known in the history of philosophy.

Links
Feser, Edward, “Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rothbard, M. N. 2006 [1973]. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (rev. edn), Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Feser, Edward, “Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009

The Horror of Rothbardian Natural Rights

Murray Rothbard adopted a natural rights ethics to justify his system of anarcho-capitalism. I have already written a post here showing the logical foundations of his ethical system are incoherent and unconvincing.

John Maynard Keynes once wrote of Hayek’s book Prices and Production:

“The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 … It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam.” (Keynes 1931: 394).

With the requisite changes, one can say that same thing about Rothbard’s ethical theory.

When judged by the standards of most other ethical theories (whose starting propositions and arguments are at least not so obviously false as natural rights), the logic of Rothbard’s theory takes him to conclusions that can only be described as moral insanity.

This can be illustrated in Rothbard’s argument for why parents should actually have the legal right not to feed their children and even kill them by starvation or neglect:

“Suppose now that the baby has been born. Then what? First, we may say that the parents-or rather the mother, who is the only certain and visible parent-as the creators of the baby become its owners. A newborn baby cannot be an existent self-owner in any sense. Therefore, either the mother or some other party or parties may be the baby’s owner, but to assert that a third party can claim his ‘ownership’ over the baby would give that person the right to seize the baby by force from its natural or ‘homesteading’ owner, its mother. The mother, then, is the natural and rightful owner of the baby, and any attempt to seize the baby by force is an invasion of her property right.

But surely the mother or parents may not receive the ownership of the child in absolute fee simple, because that would imply the bizarre state of affairs that a fifty-year old adult would be subject to the absolute and unquestioned jurisdiction of his seventy-year-old parent. So the parental property right must be limited in time. But it also must be limited in kind, for it surely would be grotesque for a libertarian who believes in the right of self-ownership to advocate the right of a parent to murder or torture his or her children. We must therefore state that, even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a ‘trustee’ or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his
mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child’s rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc. On the other hand, the very concept of ‘rights’ is a ‘negative’ one, demarcating the areas of a person’s action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a ‘right’ to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced. Thus, we may say that a man has a right to his property (i.e., a right not to have his property invaded), but we cannot say that anyone has a ‘right’ to a ‘living wage,’ for that would mean that someone would be coerced into providing him with such a wage, and that would violate the property rights of the people being coerced. As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former’s rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man’s rights.

Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g. by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such ‘neglect’ down to a minimum.)” (Rothbard 1998: 99–101).

Even as it stands the argument is blatantly unsound:

(1) Rothbard contradicts himself by asserting that a newborn “cannot be an existent self-owner in any sense,” yet arguing in the very next paragraph that every newborn “is therefore no longer contained within his mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult.” Thus the parents’ “ownership is not absolute.” It beggars belief that Rothbard can accept that no child can be killed by active attack, but at the same time can be killed by passive neglect.

(2) According to Rothbard, even though the parents “own” their children in some limited way, they have the legal right to not feed it, and hence kill it by starvation. Rothbard attempts to justify this by appealing to negative rights:

“the very concept of ‘rights’ is a ‘negative’ one, demarcating the areas of a person’s action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a ‘right’ to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced. Thus, we may say that a man has a right to his property (i.e., a right not to have his property invaded), but we cannot say that anyone has a ‘right’ to a ‘living wage,’ for that would mean that someone would be coerced into providing him with such a wage, and that would violate the property rights of the people being coerced. As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former's rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man’s rights.”

Yet this argument blatantly contradicts Rothbard’s argument elsewhere that creation of fiduciary media (debt money such as fractional reserve banknotes) and use of this as money is not moral, because others suffer the effects of inflation and loss of purchasing power. Yet private transactions in which parties freely and voluntary create and use debt money must be regarded as moral by Rothbard’s own argument here: whatever effects free transactions using debt money have on others’ through inflation is not an argument for banning debt money, for “no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former’s rights.” Thus Rothbard’s contention that only negative rights must be respected is not even a consistent position in his own work.

It is quite apparent that the Rothbardian moral world is a grotesque, vile and cruel landscape, affording no protection to the most helpless human beings from irresponsible parents. This is a world where parents who are mentally ill, psychopathic or pathologically cruel can kill their children at will, albeit passively by withdrawal of care.

It also raises other issues: if parents have a legal right to withhold food from a newborn child in Rothbard’s mad world, then what about a crippled adult child? If my 40 year old son is a quadriplegic, lives with me and is dependent on me, with no other person to support him, do I as a parent have the legal right to kill him by withholding food or care? Even when he is capable of clearly saying he does not wish to die? If not, why not?

Logically, it appears Rothbard is equally committed to the legal right of parents to kill mentally or physically disabled adult children as well: and, at that point, Rothbard’s world would allow “private sector” groups of humans who, as in Nazi Germany, practise euthanasia of the disabled, even when the disabled vehemently object to being killed.

For most people this is proof enough of the moral bankruptcy both of Rothbard and his natural rights theory, and it is difficult not to agree. (I also direct readers to a fine article by Gene Callahan called “Liberty versus Libertarianism” [2012] that discusses this passage on pp. 8–9.)

As Keynes said of Hayek, one could also say that this is also a perfect example of how Rothbard, starting with flawed assumptions, himself ends up in utter Bedlam.

UPDATE
I also recommend another post on this blog on Rothbard’s family ethics:

“Libertarian Ethics in a Family Way,” February 24, 2012.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Callahan, G. 2012. “Liberty versus Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (published online before print February 5, 2012): 1–20.

Keynes, J. M. 1931. “The Pure Theory of Money. A Reply to Dr. Hayek,” Economica 34 (November): 387–397.

Rothbard, M. N. 1998. The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, N.Y. and London.

A Note on the Libertarian Asteroid Dilemma

This is a brief afterthought to a post I wrote some time ago:

“Would Anarcho-Capitalists Allow the Earth to be Destroyed?,” February 28, 2011.

I write it because the issue continues to pop up now and again. The fundamental point is that the Austrian Anarcho-capitalists supporting natural rights theory are the ones subject to this problem. The Austrian advocates of a limited state justified by utilitarianism would be capable in principle of evading it by endorsing some form of government intervention.

And, as I have pointed out before, it is useless for anarcho-capitalists to try and evade the question by claiming that the situation imagined is “unrealistic” or “unlikely.” Hypothetical scenarios that are possible are perfectly legitimate to test ethical theories and their implications.

And it now strikes me that even that alleged “unrealistic” nature of the scenario can be questioned. Asteroid strikes and other threats we might face from natural events in our local part of the galaxy are no joke:

“Every century or so, a 10-meter meteor slams into the Earth with the force of a small nuclear device. Tunguska was the site of the last, in 1908, and it was pure luck that that meteor landed in the uninhabited wilderness of Siberia. Every few thousand years, Earth can pass through unusually thick parts of the debris trail of comets, turning the familiar light show of a meteor shower into a deadly firestorm. Roughly every 100,000 years, a projectile hundreds of meters across unleashes power equal to the world’s nuclear arsenals. The result is devastation over an area the size of England, global tidal waves (if the impact is in the ocean), and enough dust flung into the atmosphere to dim the Sun and kill off vegetation. That could ruin your day.

Then there's the “Big One”. About every 100 million years, a rock the size of a small asteroid slams into the Earth, causing global earthquakes, kilometre-high tidal waves, and immediately killing all large land animals. Creatures in the sea soon follow, as trillions of tons of vaporised rock cause drastic cooling and the destruction of the food chain based on photosynthesis. There's good evidence that this happened 65 million years ago and our tiny mammal ancestors were the beneficiaries as the giant lizards were extinguished. .... When massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, the result is a titanic explosion called a supernova. The dying star brightens to rival an entire galaxy and emits high-energy particles that can destroy the ozone layer of a planet like Earth if it occurs within 30 light years. The demise of large North American mammals 41,000 years ago has been linked to a supernova, and several other mini-extinctions may be tied to the cataclysm of stellar death. A supernova is a small squib compared to a hypernova. In this dramatic and rare event, the violent collapse of a very massive star ejects jets of gas and high-energy particles at close to the speed of light, and for a few moments the star outshines the entire universe in gamma rays. If a hypernova went off within 1,000 light years, and Earth was within the narrow cone of high-energy radiation, we’d experience an immediate global conflagration. It’s brutal luck if a hypernova ever goes off with its beam aimed at us.”
Chris Impey, “The End of the World as we Know It,” Independent, 14 June 2010.

We live in a dangerous, dangerous universe indeed, and humanity in fact needs to devote itself to detecting and dealing with threats like this.

And one immediately wonders: has the private sector concerned itself with threats like this, and by pure private funding provided a solution or detection system? I see no evidence of it. By contrast, both the UK and US governments certainly have:

Centre to Monitor Asteroids Opens, Guardian, 18 April 2002.

Robert Matthews, “Britain Leads Defence Against Asteroid Impact,” Telegraph, 1 March 2001.

Furthermore, the technology required for actually doing something about any such threat now exists because it has been developed in the state sector, with decades of government funding to programs like NASA.

If such a threat occurred and the solution required not just national mobilisation of resources and labour, but international co-operation by governments as well, the pure natural rights libertarian would be forced to condemn such coercive measures as an immoral violation of private property rights.

The extinction of the human species in scenarios where government intervention would be required to save it follows logically from natural rights ethical precepts. That is a very high price to pay for a theory which also lacks any credible justification.

The two major Austrian defences of absolute rights to property are Rothbard’s natural rights theory (which I have criticised here) and Hoppe’s argumentation ethic. Neither overcomes the ought from is dilemma of Hume. In the case of Hoppe, one can note that, just because you require the use of certain body parts in debate, it simply does not follow from this that you have any absolute moral right to the use of your body or of any external property.

Rothbard’s Argument for Natural Rights: A Critique

Natural rights and natural law were traditionally defended by appeal to the existence of a god or divine agent. Like other early modern natural law philosophers, Murray Rothbard rejected the idea of basing natural law on the existence of god or through theological justifications, but leaves open the question of the existence of god:

“The Thomist tradition … [sc. vindicates] the independence of philosophy from theology and [sc. proclaims] … the ability of man’s reason to understand and arrive at the laws, physical and ethical, of the natural order. If belief in a systematic order of natural laws open to discovery by man’s reason is per se anti-religious, then anti-religious also were St. Thomas and the later Scholastics, as well as the devout Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius. The statement that there is an order of natural law, in short, leaves open the problem of whether or not God has created that order; and the assertion of the viability of man’s reason to discover the natural order leaves open the question of whether or not that reason was given to man by God. The assertion of an order of natural laws discoverable by reason is, by itself, neither pro- nor anti-religious.” (Rothbard 2002: 4).

In this, Rothbard tries to find a non-religious or secular justification for natural law and natural rights independent of the existence of god.

According to Rothbard, natural law and natural rights are supposedly deduced from the essential nature of human beings. Rothbard presents his case for natural rights in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (rev. edn; 2002 [1973]):

“Let us turn then to the natural-rights basis for the libertarian creed, a basis which, in one form or another, has been adopted by most of the libertarians, past and present. ‘Natural rights’ is the cornerstone of a political philosophy which, in turn, is embedded in a greater structure of ‘natural law.’ Natural law theory rests on the insight that we live in a world of more than one—in fact, a vast number—of entities, and that each entity has distinct and specific properties, a distinct ‘nature,’ which can be investigated by man’s reason, by his sense perception and mental faculties. Copper has a distinct nature and behaves in a certain way, and so do iron, salt, etc. The species man, therefore, has a specifiable nature, as does the world around him and the ways of interaction between them. To put it with undue brevity, the activity of each inorganic and organic entity is determined by its own nature and by the nature of the other entities with which it comes in contact. Specifically, while the behavior of plants and at least the lower animals is determined by their biological nature or perhaps by their ‘instincts,’ the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. Violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’; it violates the natural law of man’s needs.” (Rothbard 2002 [1973]: 26-27).

Against this a number of points can be made, as follows:

(1) It is not even clear that “since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values.” Virtually all human beings begin life as children subject to the coercion of their parents who choose to instruct their children with knowledge and values. Children can survive and flourish while being subject to quite severe parental constraints and rules. For example, if one is raised Catholic, one did not give one’s consent as a child to be raised with Catholic values and religion: the choice was made by the parents, but one may well become a moral, successful, and prosperous human being, despite that parental coercion in knowledge and values.

There are even adults who prefer to let others choose their ends. Certain mentally impaired human beings can survive and even flourish even though they are subject to strict control by their carers (on these criticisms, see Feser, Edward, “Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009).

(2) Rothbard is wrong that humans possess “no automatic instincts”
Rothbard makes a bold statement:

“Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life.”

What? Human beings do possess “automatic instincts”: hunger, thirst, and a vast range of genetically determined behavioural traits. To take one example: human children have a genetic predisposition to acquire language as naturally as a bird grows its feathers.

(3) Rothbard commits the “is-ought” problem of David Hume.
The central passage where Rothbard attempts to deduce a human being’s natural right to be free from violence or coercion is here:

“the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. Violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’; it violates the natural law of man’s needs.”

This is subject to Hume’s “is–ought problem”. How is it possible to derive the prescriptive or normative statement (“violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly ‘antihuman’) from mere descriptive ones?

To see how unconvincing this argument is, one only needs to make some changes to it to see its absurdity:

“the nature of a leaf under the influence of gravity is to fall to the ground, such that each leaf must, in order to fall, be free from obstruction and interference when it detaches from the tree. Possessing no automatic instincts, each leaf must be subject to gravity, and fall to the ground; to interfere with and cripple this process by using interference to stop the leaf falling to the ground goes profoundly against what is necessary by the leaf’s nature. Violent interference with a leaf’s nature is therefore profoundly ‘antileaf’; it violates the natural law of the leaf’s natural action.”

Just because the nature of a leaf is to fall to the ground under the influence of gravity, it does not follow that the leaf has any moral right whatsoever to fall to the ground.

(4) Rothbard’s argument for the “right to self-ownership” is flawed.
Rothbard’s defence of the “right to self-ownership” is as follows:

“The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the ‘right to self-ownership.’ The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to ‘own’ his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation. Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.” (Rothbard 2002 [1973]: 28).

Rothbard’s claim that there are only “two alternatives” to denying each man the right to own his own person is manifestly false, as is shown by Edward Feser (“Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009).

In fact, there are a number of alternatives that Rothbard does not consider, as Feser notes:

(1) no human actually owns himself or herself;
(2) a divine, creator being owns all human beings;
(3) one group of human beings might have a right to partial ownership of another group;
(4) all human beings have a partial and/or unequal ownership of everyone else.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rothbard, M. N. 2002. The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, N.Y. and London.

Rothbard, M. N. 2002 [1973]. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (rev. edn), Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Rothbard, M. N. 2006 [1970]. Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

Feser, Edward, “Rothbard as a philosopher,” August 8, 2009

Would Anarcho-Capitalists Allow the Earth to be Destroyed?

A lively debate has inflamed the blogosphere, concerning the natural rights-based (and pro-free market) libertarians’ view that it would be immoral to tax people coercively to prevent the earth’s destruction by an asteroid. Some of the relevant posts are below:

Sasha Volokh, “Asteroid Defense and Libertarianism,” February 15, 2011.

J. Bradford DeLong, “Empirical Proof that America's Libertarians Are Completely Insane...,” February 15, 2011.

Robert P. Murphy, “Empirical Evidence That Brad DeLong Is Completely Obtuse,” Mises Daily, February 22, 2011.

J. Bradford DeLong, “Robert Murphy Joins the ‘It’s Immoral to Tax Americans to Destroy an Asteroid’ Caucus,” February 22, 2011.

Robert Murphy, “Murphy vs. Famous Keynesian,” 22 February 2011.

For J. Bradford DeLong, this is proof that (pro-free market) libertarians are “completely insane” – a not unreasonable conclusion.

But, in fact, such a position by them is logically consistent with their ethical theory. The difference between Austrians/pro-free market libertarians who would accept some government intervention to save the earth and those who would reject such intervention lies in their ethical theories. That is the fundmanetal point that, I think, escapes a good many people: this is about ethics, not economics per se.

Nor will it do any good for anarcho-capitalists to try and evade the question by claiming that the situation imagined is “unrealistic” or “unlikely.” Hypothetical scenarios that are possible (whether likely or not) are precisely what are used in good discussions of ethical theories to test them and their implications. To refuse to answer the question of what your ethical theory says is the right thing to do in a hypothetical situation is intellectual cowardice and surrender. You may as well wave the white flag.

This applies to Robert Murphy’s claim that taxes would not be needed to fund a project to save the earth, as many people would in fact give voluntarily. That may well be true, but is irrelevant to the actual moral question and simply evades it. Suppose not enough people give. Suppose more money is needed: is it moral to tax people to get that money or not?

The Misesian classical liberals who believe in a minimal state and who use utilitarianism as an ethical theory could in fact justify government intervention in such a case (whether they all do so in practice, I don’t know). Their utilitarianism gives them such a justification.

Natural law/natural rights-based Austrians in the tradition of Rothbard will vehemently reject all government intervention, even to save the earth, without logical inconsistency, in a way that (to them) appears rational, as that is what their ethical theory leads them to.

The cold, rational reason why they are wrong is simply that their natural law/natural rights based ethics is severely flawed and untenable (an interesting starting point is L. A. Rollins, The Myth of Natural Rights).

A more practical reason to reject their view is that, with no sense of the public good, and an ethical theory which would place absolute rights to property above not just a single human life but above the lives of all humans on the planet, their society would quickly destroy itself.

Why? In fact, we would not need an asteroid. Anarcho-capitalism would logically require the private production, sale, ownership, and (possible) use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. How long would civilization last in such conditions? (see “The Different Types of Austrian Economics,” December 5, 2010).

And, if there are any anarcho-capitalists who deny that this is a logical conclusion of their ideology, let them explain why chemical, biological and nuclear weapons should not be privatised. They won’t do it convincingly without some concept of the public good or consequentialist ethics.

Economics and Ethics: A Brief Survey

In the previous post (see “Rothbard on Mises’ Utilitarianism: Why the Systems of Mises and Rothbard both Collapse”), I pointed out that Rothbard’s natural law theory is untenable, and once that is recognised his whole case for anarcho-capitalism also collapses. While I will publish a longer post soon refuting natural law and natural rights theory, I present here a brief introduction to ethics. This post was also published as a guest post on the Cynicus Economicus blog ( “Guest Article: Economics and Ethics,” May 4, 2009).

For a number of economic systems (e.g., libertarianism, free market economics, neo-liberalism, social democracy, democratic socialism, communism etc), in intelligent debate many people justify their preferred system as public policy by appealing to some ethical theory, to convince other people of the morality or superiority of their system.

The Austrians who follow the praxeological system of von Mises claim that economic science is value-free, and that the inferences of praxeology are justifiable as economic laws independently of ethics, though that remains a questionable idea. But, as a public policy prescription, even Austrians will often require an ethical theory, and Rothbard explicitly used natural rights theory to justify his anarcho-capitalism.

In the end, when an economic system is urged as a policy it must often be justified or limited by an ethical/moral theory, and one needs an objective theory of right or wrong to do this. For the only effective theories available to justify a larger philosophical system in a consistent way are objectivist theories of ethics (that is to say, a subjectivist or relativist theory of ethics is self-defeating).

In essence, an objectivist theory of ethics holds that:

– moral judgements are propositions that have an objective value, either true or false (e.g, “The unjustified killing of another human being is wrong”);
– the truth of a moral proposition remains true regardless of the subjective opinions of a person or the values of a different culture (e.g., “Slavery is wrong”);
– morality is not subjective or relative.

If we want an objectivist theory of our morality, we essentially have these options:

(1) Moral absolutism

(a) Divine Command Theory

(b) Categorical Imperative ethics (Kantian ethics)

(2) Moral Universalism (minimal/moderate moral realism)

(i) Deontological theories:

(a) Natural law theories (Plato and many Christian philosophers)

(b) Thomist ethics

(c) Pluralistic deontology, the non-absolutist ethics of W.D. Ross

(d) Human rights objectivism (Rawls)

(ii) Consequentialist theories:

(e) Utilitarianism (act utilitarianism; rule utilitarianism)

(f) Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(3) Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(4) Utilitarian Kantian Principle of James Cornman (this combines deontology and utilitarianism).

All of these objectivist theories of morality/ethics can be divided into two basic groups as follows:

(1) Deontological theories (= duty or obligation based morality): the basis of morality is duty and some acts are always right no matter what consequences they can cause (the best example of which is Kantian ethics or some forms of divine command theory; Kant famously said that it is always wrong to lie, no matter what the circumstances).

(2) Consequentialist theories: the basis of morality is the evaluation of the consequences of acts on people (the most famous such theory is Utilitarianism). The greatest happiness of the greatest number of people is one way of describing it.

(I will not address the question whether Ayn Rand’s objectivism is consequentialist or in a category by itself, since this is disputed.)

Use your intuition and find out whether you subscribe to (1) a duty-based ethical theory or (2) a utilitarian or consequentialist ethical theory by thinking about this moral problem:

A known murderer comes to you and asks to know where a person he wants to kill is, and you are aware of his desire to commit murder. Do you:

(1) Lie to protect the innocent person and say you do not know, or
(2) Tell the murderer where that person is in the knowledge that a murder may occur?

Decision (1) makes you a utilitarian, and (2) a believer of duty-based ethics. Immanuel Kant held that (2) is the moral course of action, since lying is always immoral, under all circumstances.

Ethics as Applied to Economics

Divine command theory is easily refuted: e.g., if god orders someone to commit genocide, then this suddenly becomes a “moral” action, because God has ordered it. Thus divine ethics turns out to be a subjective theory of ethics: what is moral and what is not actually depends, in the end, on the arbitrary whim of God, not the goodness of actions or their consequences. If God’s moral laws are not arbitrary, then there must be some independent, objective standard or method he uses to determine what is right and wrong. But, if there is an independent, objective standard, then it is this system that tells us what is right or wrong, not the commands of God. We could presumably use reason to apply the standard ourselves to discover what is right and wrong, without any need for instruction from God. (And Kantian ethics was in fact partly an attempt to create an objectivist ethics that could defend Christian morality, but remove this problem by basing morality on moral principles derived from human reason.)

Many libertarians rely on a natural law/natural rights theory of ethics.

Thus they often argue that state intervention is bad when it violates private property rights, and that this government action is always immoral, irrespective of the good or bad consequences that state intervention has or may have.

Natural law as a theory can be traced back to Plato, the ancient Stoics, and many Christian philosophers. (Contrary to popular belief, the most widely-held theory of ethics in the Middle Ages in Christian philosophy was the natural law theory, not the crude divine command theory.)

Natural law was famously attacked by the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham as “nonsense on stilts.”

One of the main weaknesses of natural law theory is that its main historical justification was the belief in a “divine order” and a divinely-created human nature that makes us conform to “natural law.”

For Plato, the divine soul made human beings conform to the natural law of the universe. In ancient Stoicism, all humans had a divine reason given by the gods to make them adhere to divine “natural law.”

When natural law theory was taken up by Christian theologians, they simply substituted the Christian god for the gods of the Greek and Romans.

In the early modern period, rationalist European philosophers like Grotius tried to defend natural law theory by removing God and the previous supernatural justification for it.

However, in doing so, they destroyed the only convincing explanation for belief in natural law (Tawney 1998: xxv-xxvi).

Thus anyone who accepts an atheistic and naturalistic scientific view of the universe, and who rejects all religion, has no reason to believe in natural law or natural rights.

I would note here that just because we appear to have an innate sense of right and wrong, this does not provide us with an objective system of ethics. That some scientists believe they can identify an innate sense of right and wrong, which humans have evolved through social life in communities during our evolutionary history, does not mean that they have found an objectivist theory of morality that can function as a consistent, logical and universal system for justifying our moral choices, both now and in the past. The well-known fact that there is a vast chasm between what can be regarded as moral in one society and immoral in another demonstrates that, like our language faculty (which also has a biological basis), our innate moral intuition can lead to quite different systems of morality in different cultures in different times (just as our core language faculty leads to vastly different languages, with different words, grammar and syntax). For instance, in ancient Greece and Rome, the killing of unwanted children by exposing them (i.e., leaving them at crossroads or abandoning them at birth) was widely accepted. Human sacrifice and slavery were also widely practised in many ancient societies, and this was apparently perfectly compatible with the “innate moral sense of right and wrong” that ancient people had, although it is no longer accepted today.

Only an objectivist theory of morality can demonstrate that these things are immoral now and also immoral in the past. So it turns out the innate sense of right and wrong is not the same thing as an objectivist theory of morality.

Nor does appealing to “nature” give us any objective standard of right and wrong. For example, cannibalism is observed in many species: does this make cannibalism moral for humans? It certainly does not, and anyone who thinks so has committed the fallacy of appeal to nature, a fallacy of relevance.

I will note here too that a very good starting point for why natural law and natural rights are untenable is Kai Nielsen, “The Myth of Natural Law,” in S. Hook (ed.), Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, University Press, New York. 1963.

Also relevant is L. A. Rollins, The Myth of Natural Rights (Loompanics Unlimited, 1983), which is an attack on the natural rights theories of Rothbard and Ayn Rand.

It follows that all modern types of libertarianism or free market economics based simply on a “natural law” or “natural rights” foundation are severely flawed systems (e.g., the systems of Adam Smith or Murray Rothbard). There is no reason to believe that the “natural law” that justifies placing inviolable property rights at the centre of our modern political or economic systems has any validity whatsoever.

In my opinion, Kantian ethics has no real consequences for economics: it can be used to justify numerous economic systems and is fully compatible with social democracy. However, Kantian deontological ethics has severe problems.

A better ethical theory, in my view, is a modern form of utilitarianism called rule utilitarianism (which is quite different from its crude early form as advocated by Jeremy Bentham). Some libertarians or advocates of free market economics actually do use utilitarian arguments to justify their positions and economic systems, e.g., Ludwig von Mises (although Mises’ praxeology was an a priori system of deductive reasoning, independent of his utilitarianism), the earlier Friedrich von Hayek (Gregg 2003: 21–22), and Milton Friedman (Frederick 2002: 23). Thus anyone who uses a utilitarian argument to support ideas about economics will ultimately have to examine the good and bad effects of the policies they advocate.

In these theories, there is no reason in principle why state intervention could not be moral and successful. Any economic argument, then, essentially becomes an argument about empirical reality: the consequences of economic policy today and in the past. The good consequences of state intervention and social democracy fully justify these policies. Of course, philosophical objections have been raised to utilitarianism as well.

One solution may be that we should adopt James Cornman’s Utilitarian Kantian Principle of ethics: this (as I understand it) has caused a great deal of excitement amongst modern philosophers, because it combines the best elements of Kant’s deontological ethics with utilitarianism. It is perfectly compatible with state intervention in economics.

APPENDIX 1: WHAT WAS MARX’S ETHICS?

Marx himself, as I understand it, rejected the utilitarianism of his day for some very confused ideas on ethics (Alan Gilbert, Democratic Individuality, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 240). And, at the very least, the question of what ethical theory he believed in is debatable (N. Churchich, Marxism and Morality: A Critical Examination of Marxist Ethics, James Clarke & Co., 1994, p. 139).

Since I don’t advocate communism as preached in the Communist Manifesto, it has nothing to do with my moral argument for certain types of state intervention.

Furthermore, the means Marx advocated to achieve communism (i.e., dictatorship, destruction of freedom of speech and civil liberties) can be rejected on utilitarian grounds anyway, since the abolition of freedom of speech and dictatorship have harmful effects on everyone.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cornman, J. W., Lehrer, K. and G. S. Pappas. 1992. Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction, Hackett, Indianapolis.

Frederick, R. 2002. A Companion to Business Ethics,, Blackwell, Malden, Mass.

Gregg, S. 2003. On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, Lexington, Oxford and Lanham, Md.

Nielsen, K. 1963, “The Myth of Natural Law,” in S. Hook (ed.), Law and philosophy: A Symposium, University Press, New York.

Rollins, L. A. 1983. The Myth of Natural Rights, Loompanics Unlimited.

Scruton, R. 1994. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey, Penguin Books, London.

Tawney, R. H. 1998. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Transaction, New Brunswick, N.J. and London.