Briefly: I could dispute other parts of your response, in particular how some of what I wrote was interpreted, but I am interested in your declaration of ABL.
Say the State has (actually) disarmed everyone and taken a monopoly on crime prevention, punishment, and retribution. Now say a hypothetical person is out writing articles about the right of all to protect themselves, and the economic efficiency to be gained by private actors protecting their own private property.
If some gang is at the same time going around breaking into houses, is it ABL to advocate for the State to do the job it has assumed for itself? To publicly advocate that the State send out the gendarmes? To say, "Ideally, and hopefully in the future, we will all be able to defend ourselves. But if we are robbed blind and murdered before that day, then all of my advocacy will be for nothing."
What if the State monopolized education and only taught Keynesianism. Would it be ABL to advocate that the State schools teach Austrian economics? because it is a State school? What if our hypothetical person was given a job as Education Czar, where they were allowed to determine curriculum, but not abolish the State education monopoly; would it be ABL to use that position/power to mandate Man, Economy, & State in every classroom? What if education had previously been only daycare, and as Ed. Czar you could mandate that they study MES instead of the ceiling tiles? ABL?
I feel like you are taking the easy way out a bit (ha! nothing we do is the "easy way out," but I hope you get the spirit of my comment) by looking only at each act in isolation, and not at each act as connected to a larger network of acts/outcomes.
As for my reference to common law and juries, and your mention of arbitration: I totally agree! Arbitration, even trial by combat is perfectly acceptable. And no one would have to submit to a jury trial; and if they did they would not have to submit to the decision. They would risk social consequences, such as blackballing, but it would be their right. I also never "centrally planned" anything; I suggested what I think will be a useful component of a PPS. What I mean is that, to the extent that someone in a PPS wanted to deal with others in their community, they would benefit from a general common understanding of how to deal with each other (precedents), and from those nearest to their situation coming together to judge disputes.
This is all I have time for, for now.
Thanks again!
RW response:
I should begin by discussing what I mean by Ass-Backward Libertarianism. I have written:
I consider an ABL to be any libertarian, who upon recognizing a distorting intervention by government in free markets and a free society, calls for another installment in the direction of socialism. They are not aware that they are advocating another step toward socialism. They believe that their call for interventionism is the only sound policy move that can be made, never once recognizing they are calling for more bricks to be laid on the ever more stifling socialist wall that prevents us from entering a land of pure freedom.In other words, the eye must be kept on advancing liberty, If a government has already taken a monopoly position on crime prevention, well then, we really have no choice but to use their "services." This is not moving against liberty in the sense that we are calling for an expansion of government but dealing the best we can with the current interventionist state. The way we use government sidewalks and roads.
However, I would consider it an expansion of the state where say protection "services' are currently provided by a city but individuals call for new Federal "protection." If a city can't get its act together to police its own, why should taxpayers from the rest of the country be forced to fund the protection? Further, the expansion of Federal police is a very slippery slope. What will they be used to police next? That kind of expansion no libertarian should ever advocate.
As far as education is concerned, I have no problem advocating for allowing the study of Austrian school economic theory in public schools. That is an increase in liberty. However, I would not be in favor of making it mandatory. That would be a step in the direction away from liberty,
If a curriculum was already mandated and all that could be changed were the topics studied, I would be in favor of listing mandatory Austrian and libertarian topics but only because the mandatory element was already there and thus not a move away from liberty. But this is really a far-fetched example, it is very unlikely you are going to find a public school government that is going to make a curriculum mandatory and then let slip in curriculum items that argue in favor of abandoning mandatory curriculum.
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