Saturday, February 13, 2016

Murray Rothbard: The Godfather of Libertarianism

This is a great and important addition to the history of the early days of the libertarian movement and the intellectual giant of that movement Murray Rothbard.

It is not an exaggeration to state that you probably are studying libertarianism because of early movement seeds planted somewhere by Rothbard.  The more and more I think about the many ways Rothbard contributed to the dissemination of libertarian ideas in the early days, the more I realize how remarkable and skilled a promoter of liberty he was. He was a genius in this field in addition to being a giant in economics, political science and philosophy.

The speakers on this clip in order are David Gordon, Walter Block and Joe Salerno.

-RW

22 comments:

  1. "This video has been removed by the user."

    I discovered Lew Rockwell first, who led me to Rothbard.

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    1. For me: Ron Paul >> Lew Rockwell >> Murray Rothbard

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    2. All roads lead to Rothbard :)

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  2. I'm in Rick Gee's boat as well. Found LRC through Earnest Handcock's site Freedoms Phoenix who led me to Rothbard

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  3. I was introduced to Richard Maybury first, which led me to the Tannahills, which led me to Rothbard, then Hoppe, Ron Paul and Lew, Mises and on and on. And here I am on Target Liberty, which I took too from Economic Policy Journal, when the split was made.
    But my beginning as a young boy (11 or 12) was Locke, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, the Adams cousins, and Madison. I can even see the "Little house on the prairie" series steering me in my life today. I still thank my parents for allowing me to home school 33 years ago and on, I think I was 8 when they pulled me out of public school.

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    1. Joshua, you are so fortunate. I didn't start learning about liberty until I heard Gene Burns' and Harry Browne's radio shows in the late 90s.

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  4. For me it was Ron Paul -> Rothbard -> Mises

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  5. Not sure where I 1st heard of Ron Paul, might even have been the daily show. But it went Ron Paul > Edward Griffin > Rothbard as I chased down the fed rabbit hole. Currently reading Man, Economy and State with Power and Market on my beloved kindle.

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  6. Ayn Rand seemed godlike until encountering Rothbard. Rothbard takes it all to another level. He pulls in multiple disciplines, connects all the dots, extends the principles of liberty to their logical conclusions.

    Today, no one knows his name, but I think a future free world will look back to possibly regard him as the most important thinker of this century. One who first sketched the outline for humanity's path forward out of the dark ages of statism.

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    1. Rothbard was certainly more prolific. I know Rand wasn't perfect and Rothbard didn't particularly care for her and her scene, probably because she had his number. Rand's essay "The Nature of Government" dispatches the folly of anarchism and competing governments in about 4 paragraphs. It also addresses some of the core issues that afflict RW's PPS, including "government is the means of placing retaliatory use of physical force under objectively defined laws" and that "man's rights may not be left at the mercy of the unilateral decision, the arbitrary choice, the irrationality, the whim of another man."

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    2. Rand's arguments in that essay are what are easily dispatched.

      Is it objectively just or unjust that theft of an apple be punished by repayment with a replacement apple only, or also an extra apple as compensation for hassle, or yet another apple as punishment, or some other remedy?

      Which of these laws is objectively just? How will you render that determination? What scientific instrument will you employ that will return a positive result for "objectivity?" Rand never admitted there is no external objective reference available to refer in matters of law. There is no touchstone to reference. No Oracle of Delphi to consult. No way to recognize so-called objectively defined laws.

      She refused to recognize government laws are necessarily penned by a few ordinary men expressing their opinion of what is just. Making their laws by nature as unilateral, arbitrary, and whimsical as dictates written by other men not bothering to label themselves government.

      Rothbard went the extra mile of laying out how a free market of governance solves this problem. Just as free markets solve all other problems that people insist can only be solved with authoritarianism.

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    3. The essay ties together a number of important factors that you have conveniently omitted but I will let Rand speak for herself. Obviously, you are entitled to your opinion. That being said, your thoughts on "Marquis De Sade Island" on that other thread a while back gave me a good window into your style of "libertarian" thinking.

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    4. I'll take it from your tone you reacted emotionally to the notion of principled freedom, so principled it allows for the theoretical possibility of a Marquis De Sade Island and thus you dismissed that as "too much" freedom. If so, you join the ranks of many a different shade of statist employing the same rationale for how much authoritarianism they claim is necessary to impose for social order, stability, security, the common good, etc.

      I've read the Rand article and can refute its anti-anarchism assertions and pro-state assertions point by point on the basis of individual rights. Thus I am unable to hazard a guess at what important factors you think I have conveniently omitted.

      Here is one well-argued critique of the Rand article in case you do elect to check your premises: http://www.panarchy.org/childs/objectivism.html

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    5. Thanks for the link. It's crazy how long this stuff has been debated and here we are slipping further and further into fascism.

      Anyway, I happen to agree with one of the themes that has been fleshed out on this site by other commenters regarding anarcho-capitalism and RW's PPS in particular, that there is a fine line over which "principled freedom" crosses into "degenerate behavior", i.e. shooting a trespassing child who steals an apple or operating Marquis de Sade Island. This line has been delineated in society by the confluence of history, culture, trial & error, and precedent, for many reasons including sometimes simply the survival of the human species. Crossing it will have consequences, and you will, however you wish to describe it, be "governed" against your will by those humans who surround you. So, if your arguments and principles lead you to promote or even condone such practices, perhaps it is you who should be checking premises.

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    6. I endeavor to repeatedly recheck my premises. I pray when I forget or omit that smart people will smack me some sense into me by supplying superior argument.

      I don't personally promote de Sade practices. They are not for me personally. But I have no choice but to condone them among consenting adults on private property. Actually, it is not and can not be my place to judge the actions of people who respect private property. In my view, maintaining this stance is the bedrock of liberty. Without it, all is lost. One destroys liberty when one presumes one's own values are righteous, objectively proper, and thus may be forcibly imposed on other people.

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    7. The actions of consenting adults on private property are safe from invasion under a government acting according to its proper role as defined by Rand. I suggest you better familiarize yourself with the story of the Marquis and then ask yourself if it is a story of "the actions of consenting adults on private property." Keep in mind a culture or society that assumes no values are objectively right or proper is, at best relativist and, at worst, nihilist. Unless you assume all men are angels, it becomes a "race to the bottom." Under such circumstances man's rights are then left (to paraphrase Rand) at the mercy of the unilateral decision, the arbitrary choice, the irrationality, the whim of another man. Is that liberty?

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    8. The actions of consenting adults on private property are _not_ safe from invasion under a government acting according to its proper role as defined by Rand.

      Would Rand's government allow for a group of adults with adjoining privately owned land to do whatever they wanted within their borders? Including not pay taxes to her government? Including not follow her government's commandments for how they must behave? What if they formed their own police force, courts, and laws for managing their affairs?

      To maintain relevance at all, much less the funds to operate, Rand’s government would have to employ force to attack these private property owners. It would have to assert its claim of exclusive dominion over them, or else it would effectively lose it, and they would have effectively seceded. So much for respect for property rights under Rand's government. In fact, if consistent, it would either have to respect all acts of secession down to the smallest level thus effectively ceasing to exist as government or move to become a one-world government under the same principle of forcibly disallowing parallel systems of governance to co-exist.

      The concept of property rights is philosophically derivable from the nature of reality and man in an objective way. But it is not relativism nor nihilism to recognize specific laws interpreting the concept of property rights and applying it to day-to-day affairs could be written in any number of plausible ways depending on the different perspectives of the people involved. For example, how many days must land be utilized to be considered homesteaded? 90 days? 365 days? What constitutes substantive utilization of land? There is no objective reference for such matters and no one entity (i.e. a small group of men) may anoint itself exclusive determiner of them for all other people.

      Not to mention the individual values of what a person finds to be rewarding uses for his property are utterly subjective. The very basis of contract grants people the right to surrender their claims to their property for any personal reason they see fit.

      Per your advice, I just did a quick review of de Sade. He was an aggressor violating people’s bodies (their property) without their consent. In any property rights respecting society this guy would be forcibly stopped.

      But to morally enjoy his lifestyle, all he would have to do in an anarchic society is buy an island/plot of land for himself then get contractual agreement from each person requesting his permission to enter his island/land. They would be offered the option to voluntarily surrender their property rights in their own bodies to permit others to abduct and flagellate them while on the island (if some people want to live this lifestyle, that's their affair). If they agree and enter the private property subject to those rules then no external people, calling themselves government or otherwise, may claim a right to intervene.

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    9. "... the guy would be forcibly stopped." Really? If he is on his property, then by whom? Say the Marquis is self-sufficient in all respects and recognizes no "over-ruling body based on 'culture' etc."

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    10. With respect to Rand's vision of the proper role of government, think back to early America. There was no income tax and "the people" were free to "form their own police force, courts, and laws for managing their affairs" a.k.a local government free from Federal interference. The government's commandments on how people were to behave were limited strictly by the Constitution. At the time, the U.S. was, in fact a "voluntary" union of the states based on the ideals of the "consent of the governed." Secession was not a "prohibited" political concept. Some folks even chose to die, without success unfortunately, for these ideals.

      The fact that the people of the U.S. have, over the past 100 or so years, traded all of this for a "mess of pottage" does not invalidate the ideals of limited government set forth by the Founders and succinctly reiterated by Rand.

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    11. An aggressive de Sade would be forcibly stopped by individuals acting in self-defense. If he retreated to his own property to try to escape them the matter would escalate to where they would have to either barricade his borders and negotiate his surrender and restitution or barring that invade his property to “go to war” with him. Think how current sovereign countries handle it when a murderer crosses borders between them.

      Almost everyone would voluntarily delegate his right to self-defense to for-profit defense agencies who specialize in that sort of thing. They would offer highly trained officers and systems of negotiation avoiding the need for force except for a true last resort. And eliminating any possible risk of causing new aggressions on their own part. Because people like you and me would object to funding defense forces who might turn around to use force against us, we would vote with our dollars for ones devising elaborate limitations to reassure us as customers. Limits enforced not by words on a piece of paper but by more tangible means. Security bonds of owner person and property put in trust with reputable 3rd parties. Heavy, transparent, audits, and reviews. But most importantly healthy robust competition from other agencies. Including potentially unlimited numbers of new entrants offering ever safer forms of defense force service. Take all the reasons you think voluntary free market solutions to other human needs are moral and are more effective than authoritarian monopoly solutions, and apply them to the need for self-defense service.

      The U.S. federal government’s actions in response to The Whiskey Rebellion was the first wake-up call that individuals in the U.S. had not achieved freedom but had switched masters living thousands of miles away for masters living hundreds of miles away. The inexorable expansion thereafter of power and centralization of the U.S. federal government is not a "flaw,” or a “hiccup” in the notion of limited government. It is a normal, predictable aspect of all government which by dint of its leviathan nature monopolizing force cannot be limited.

      Without individuals bearing the right of secession, local government is just geographically smaller authoritarianism. Back in U.S. colonial times or right now, if some neighbors and I living in a small township tried to peacefully secede in response to the imposition of local taxes from us used for purposes we object to, the local township government would respond by sending a heavily armed sheriff team out to forcibly seize our property to collect those taxes. It would aggressively attack us just as the national government would. Citing its arbitrary Randian/authoritarian “right to rule.” That is, claiming the name of protecting our property rights it must violate our property rights. Claiming an exemption from any moral obligation to respect private property and non-aggression. This is morally indefensible by anyone who says with a straight face he believes in principled respect for property rights.

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    12. You tell great stories! Really. It's one of the reasons I come to this site.

      I find it interesting that you speak of others coming to the aid of the Marquis' victims in a spirit of "self-defense." Presumably only the victims themselves could claim self defense. Otherwise, the individuals coning to aid the victims would be acting as if they were some vigilante group with a conscience, a.k.a an "over ruling body based on... an objective morality, culture, etc. Hmmmm....

      Your notion of private defense is certainly complicated and costly. Do you think your average Urban Primitive understands what "security bonds of owner person and property put in trust with reputable 3rd parties.. heavy, transparent, audits, and reviews..." means? What about people with no property and negative net worth like the 40% of Americans I read about this morning? Are those for-profit defense agencies gonna work and provide "justice" for free? When wealthy people hire Los Zetas to protect their gold vaults, you think "security bonds" and the threat of "heavy audits" will protect them if the Zetas go rogue?

      The world you envision is one of fantasy live action role playing among adult urban or suburban white dudes who, when the game is over, get out their checkbooks to pay their taxes, say "yessir" to the 5-0s when questioned, dutifully obey the posted speed limits, etc., etc.

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    13. Rand relies on the notion of an individual delegating his right of self-defense to government. Yet you claim if an individual delegates his right of self-defense to a group not labelled government, this is implausible, unfathomable, and unworkable.

      Since you ascribe some mystical quality to men who call themselves government, maybe you could be more at peace with freedom if you simply looked at it as unlimited right of secession with as many tiny "governments" as the market finds equilibrium at. Governments focusing on governing different aspects of life and overlapping in territory. Does the concept feel more comfortable described in that way? The current world has hundreds of governments in peer-to-peer relationships, behaving according to mutual self-interest, with no global ruler commanding them all. Strange we don't see the breakdowns of global order, global vigilantism, chaos, etc. you prognosticate arises without a leviathan authority in charge. Must be a glitch.

      My notion of private defense is less costly. Unless you think government central planning, bureaucracy, lack of accountability, and lack of competition is more efficient. In which case you are on the wrong blog and the former Soviet Union would be your nirvana. In terms of complicated, it’s no more complicated than shopping for a car. Most people seem to appreciate the freedom of doing that, despite the extra work, vs. having the government make and supply just one make of car for everyone. To the extent car shopping is unpleasantly complicated, Consumer Reports publishes reviews, websites offer financing, Tesla innovates easier sales models. Free market forces at work. If you believe in that sort of thing.

      You're using all the collectivist fallacies to defend state control of self-defense. "But what about the poor? They would suffer and die without the state. Without the state monopolizing these functions, you'd be helpless to educate, defend, heal, and provide essentials for yourself." BS. Poor people would earn and save to pay for their self-defense as surely as they do today for rent and utilities. And if they didn’t, that constitutes no claim on the productive lives of others. As Rand made plain.

      The “Zetas Defense Agency” going rogue, turning aggressive, would get as far as a restaurant announcing it is spitting in the food. The Zetas customer base would flee - no one voluntarily funds an aggressor. The Zetas would get thrown out of their apartments and stores would not sell them food or gas. They would become pariahs overnight. They’ve got to eat. They’ve got to sleep. They’ve got to get gas for their cars. They get wounded and sick. If no one in society cooperates with the Zetas, no one re-supplies them, they couldn’t last more than a few days on the run. Meanwhile demand for competing defense services would skyrocket and an avalanche of resources would flood into other defense agencies which would confront and overwhelm the Zetas. Remember when there is no government everyone imagines to be their righteous overlord, it’s the peaceful producers that command the spigot of resources and thus the means of force, not the aggressors. Aggressors don’t produce anything. Read Atlas Shrugged again.

      If coordination and cooperation is as essential to peaceful living as you say, you won't need to violently impose your authoritarian solution on people against their will. People are just as self-interested as you, and they will realize it just as fast as you. They will voluntarily agree to delegate self-defense, abide by common rules, etc....just to “governments” of their own choosing. All the things you advocate be forced onto people for their own good are things they will agree with you and choose if you are right…but choose an alternative competing solution if yours is wrong. So why won’t you allow these property owners to choose what to do with their own property? And by what right do you claim you may force their obedience to your power scheme?

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