Posted on 02/20/2006 6:24:40 AM PST by Shalom Israel
The Soviet Gulags and Pol Pot's labor farms are good examples of this type of philosophy. This is a very good article.
Let the uprising, rebellions, revolutions and other words that start with R begin.
This is on a pretty abstract level, but I have two qualms with the argument here.
First, we need the state to create property rights in the first place; regardless of where your moral right to property comes from, you'll need the state to lower the transaction costs of using and having property.
Second, this argument seems to hinge on how many "Murrays" there'll be in a society; if you don't have many people that angry about paying for national defense, enforcement and transaction costs will be much lower. I have a hunch that any civil society stable enough to maintain a democracy won't have many Murrays unless economic or political conditions are quite bad.
Statists are the single biggest threat to freedom in America, whether they be safety statists, lifestyle statists, or just plain old big government statists.
Let's nuke Milstedistan now!
The State doesn't create property rights--the proper role of the State is to DEFEND them. Those rights were created by God & existed long before the people themselves created the State in order to defend their God-given rights.
I have a problem with that statement. Indeed, I think it's the problem with statism. My property rights don't emanate from Teddy Kennedy! I would agree with the founders that they are "endowed by our creator," and transcend any state. Even from an evolutionary perspective, though, my rights don't come from Kennedy--they come from my willingness to defend them against Kennedy.
Actually, the article is typical libertarian rubish. National defense cannot be contracted out.
I should have been more precise; I was trying to point to this by mentioning the moral rights thing. What I'm saying is that you can have the moral right to owning property from God or your own labor or wherever; what the state does is create those rights as a legal framework that defends whatever rights those are. That is, you can go to a court if the government or someone else tries to take your property, you can get patents, etc.
The reason why I make that distinction goes back to the idea of a natural law; while the reason can certainly discern large moral principles, like having property, it's hard to derive specifics about how to flesh the concept out. For example, it's hard to get from the basic right to have property to, say, delimiting blocks of radio frequencies to property owners. I guess the rights provide the framework, and the state's legal rights fill in the details.
Teddy Kennedy doesn't create your rights. But the framework of government laid down in the Constitution does create legal rights for you -- it gives you an equal and free place in a political structure where you can vote, get a free trial, etc. That structure is supposed to defend your pre-state rights like to life and property; of course, you have the right to change that framework if you so choose...
"Hard to add much. This article sings to me."
What if the BRUTES went to rob Murray and got the wrong house? How much would that cost?
Beat me to it.
The founders were closer to my view than yours; they believed there should be no standing army, and that "national defense" meant that everyone was armed and ready to defend his life, liberty and property.
I think you'd find the issue less cut-and-dried if you tried to actually prove that defense "cannot be contracted out."
I'd have disputed that statement even before Kelo vs New London. Don't you find the irony unbearable?
I thought that the Founders' biggest worry about a standing army was that it might interfere in politics. But with a professional army, we haven't had any problem at all, especially seeing how many problems France and Germany had because of it.
I don't think my argument would justify Kelo; in that case, the structure of legal rights was interfering with someone's natural rights, and so the legal right of the state should have lost.
Certainly you have to agree there's a difference between a natural right like "the right to property" and a civil right like having X number of people in your jury. Civil rights just flesh out the details of natural rights; but that doesn't give them the, er, right to trump natural rights.
The statists will tell you that cost should be assessed to Murray, who should be held responsible for whatever mistakes the Brutes make simply because he made you hire them in the first place. It falls into the category of "Now look what you made me do!"
However, suppose that the economies of scale are such that this tax is less than half of what people would have had to pay for defense on their own.""
Gross over simplification of what the military has to do and how it is done. Defense is not reducible to a mere service such as elec. or water. Cost is far from the first concern.
Read up on life in the 8th Airforce circa 1944 or what was involved in taking any of the fiercly defended Pacific Islands.
Those jobs WEREN'T done by contractors. They were done by people who DIDN'T have to do them.
However much, for good reason one beleives in a thing--in this case free market--that thing is NEVER a panacea.
"I think you'd find the issue less cut-and-dried if you tried to actually prove that defense "cannot be contracted out.""
That would be trying to prove a negative. What don't you try to prove that it can be?
"The founders were closer to my view than yours; they believed there should be no standing army, and that "national defense" meant that everyone was armed and ready to defend his life, liberty and property."
Defense of one's life, liberty, and personal property is not national defense.
The founding fathers did believe that a militia could be called out to defend the nation. Since service in the milita was compulsory (the militia consisted of all able bodied males), how is this consistent with the libertarian philosophy? Would this not also be the taking of personal property?
Just exactly how would you propose maintaining a high tech national defense? You going to buy your own F-15?
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