2008.10.06 by paulie
Nothing to add to what’s been said about this by others.
Just my attempt to get a threadjacking off IPR and bring it to where it is on subject. That is, here.
If you have thoughts on the question, whether you find this from IPR or elsewhere, please add them in the comments.
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Just testing to make sure comments work, since folks at IPR still want to talk about that over there instead.
What is there to say about this issue? What was said on IPR?
You should have been able to see it clicking on IPR. If the link is hard to see it is
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/10/libertymaven-publishes-and-seeks-additional-evidence-for-cynthia-mckinneys-claim-of-katrina-mass-murder/
The link to what others have said is
http://praxeology.net/anarcres.htm
Hi Paulie,
Thank you for your efforts in promoting discussion of political improvement and Libertarianism via your blog. re the topic at hand, these people are, bless ‘em, misinformed.
Mini-archism is the classical form of anarchism, variants being what the Church called regular communities and Jefferson related to New England open townships which he also calls wards. Don’t get me started on micro-archism.
When people use mini-archism they often mean their version of liberalism, or making government small and efficient while maximizing rights, usually with a conservative tinge based on their personal blind spots. For them libertarianism is just a shorthand for less-government, which isn’t a solution, it’s a method. They then attack Liberalism. Whoo-boy. They read chaise longue and see chaise lounge, but longue it is.
Anarchism in modern Libertarian usage refers to relatively non-punitive voluntary associations that may have some traditional governmental characteristics but are basically non-authoritarian. The US Congress and any group using Robert’s Rules meet these requirements. Most Libertarians today use the original classical term of self-government (ataraxy) where no coercive government is assumed.
Anarcho-capitalism is a form of mini-archy. The term was designed to relate free-enterprise with competing governments or more precisely government programs, particularly when not territorially based.
It doesn’t help that (as in the LP legislative platform) caveats that government means ‘coercive government’ or abolition means ‘abolition or replacement by voluntary means including democratization and privatization’ are left implicit.
Confused? Don’t ask the pupils then. These are all applications of Libertarianism. The problem is when people start confusing applications or adaptations with political Libertarianism itself. It’s like people who think ‘free market’ means ‘Wall Street’ and then argue on the basis that there is a broker with bad breath.
In brief, Libertarianism is the replacement of coercive programs by successful voluntary ones via persons consciously dedicated to natural right, within the general study of rights. Anything else is a libertarian-direction, -oriented, etc. approach within that discipline. Government is a method for managing the officials, not the people, and entirely optional or assistive to its fundamental institution, the private jury.
Leading Libertarians including anarchists met in the 1970′s to define these matters and created a specific glossary, so there is no room for debate. Sadly, the US LP stopped posting the information, and things haven’t been helped by less then consistent usage by Lib leaders. I asked Vince Miller and others to dig up the information and reformat it with various other things. With his sad death R. Swanson has taken up the task. This will be circulated in due course with or before the new master directory and standard rating of Libertarian groups.
All this has limited relevance to the US LP, which was designed as a Liberal-Libertarian alliance and consensus organization and whose state and local LP’s operate with considerable latitude from light ameliorist to fairly involved. Under a method called sometimes the Dallas Accord, our job in the LP is to present the options from baby-step libertarianism-light to sample complete non-coercive solutions, preferably already done somewhere–and let the voter /user decide what is most suitable. That saves a lot of argument, now, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that one has a much easier task as one can refer to the many educative groups for more examples.
Nonetheless, you have extremists, particularly religious or government-agent type ones, constantly coming into groups attempting to re-define things, calling anything they don’t like extreme, claiming there is a debate among ‘factions’ and playing the ends they created against the middle. We’ve been dealing with this for years, and Robert Wilson even wrote a hilarious satire, “The Illuminati Trilogy” you might enjoy (get the uncensored original 3 volume version).
There’s more but I hope this helps. If a debate keeps going in circles defining the terms makes a big difference. Keep up the good work.
MG
Co-ordinator
Libertarian International Organization
In brief, Libertarianism is the replacement of coercive programs by successful voluntary ones via persons consciously dedicated to natural right, within the general study of rights.
This quickly gets muddled up in the press for private property rights. Natural Rights to possess property extend only out as far as the property is directly utilised by an individual (see: T. Jefferson, letter to Issac Mcpherson, 1813.08.13), yet many libertarians, notably those associated with Mises, believe in an absolute right to private property ownership that goes far beyond what is Natural.
There is no Natural Right for an absentee possession of property; no natural right to intellectual property; no natural right to inheritable property. They are all gifts of the state. How are these complex property rights to be protected without coercion?
An anarchist society is an oxymoron. Like the concept of a perfect vacuum, it can not exist in this universe. People who espouse anarchism are just pedantic exhibitionists. Like the young earth creationists they refuse to accept any evidence and just rail against reality.
John Famularo – anarchist societies can and do exist. The oxymoron is “Anarchist State”.
I think you are being anti-semantic here by using “society” as a synonym for “state”. There is a chasm of difference between the meanings of these two terms
pdsa asserts, “There is no Natural Right for an absentee possession of property; no natural right to intellectual property; no natural right to inheritable property. They are all gifts of the state. How are these complex property rights to be protected without coercion?”
Inheriting property can be done by many effective mechanisms that can survive the death of one of the participants. A pure contract trust can be created to hold property. Indeed, “contract trust” is redundant, since a trust is a contract. A trust has a creator or grantor, one or more trustees, one or more managers, one or more beneficiaries, and some assets. It need not be registered with any state. The grantor of the trust may die and the trust may continue to benefit the surviving beneficiaries. These processes are used by many asset management consultants to limit contact with the state. (Trusts can be perpetual, so the death of some party does not involve transferring property. Beneficial ownership can be provided by simply changing managers, a completely private action.)
Absentee possession of property is nonsense. There is no possession in the absence of everyone. If a tree grows in the forest with no one around, who is to say who owns it? The idea of absentee ownership in the presence of the state implies that the state has someone who steps in and says, “Royt royt royt what’s all this then?” But, that isn’t possession in the absence of everyone. It is possession in the absence of the owner.
Evidently, if the state can provide someone to police trespass and theft of property in the absence of the owner, so can a private contract. The registration of a land claim is not sufficient to provide absentee possession, the number of claims jumped in any number of Western states being evidence to the contrary. There’s no magic to this power to provide an ability to have remote possessions. The state does nothing special. If human beings can do it organized as a state, why can’t they do it organized with private contracts?
What is the nature of the right to intellectual property? If I have an idea and keep it in my mind, then it remains my idea. And mine alone. If I make it more valuable by telling parts of it to others and get them to buy some product or service (like a book) based on my idea, it ceases to be protected by natural secretiveness. But it also gains value, to me, by creating a market for the idea.
It follows that I can reach agreements with other people to learn about my idea and keep it private. The term for such agreements is “non-disclosure” agreements. They sometimes provide for arbitration, and sometimes pretend to be adjudicated under the laws of a state. Most do not have any consideration, and, therefore are not really contracts.
Copyright and patent laws are designed not to protect the author’s property in perpetuity, but to bring his ideas into the public domain where they can benefit from the tragedy of the commons. The fact that exceptional lobbying by Disney Corpse has extended the time limit on some copyrights does not disprove the basic purpose of the copyright laws, as the constitution describes them “to secure for a time” the property interest of the authors. Same for patents.
But, participating in a scheme, however much subsidized by the taxpayers, to publish information and at the same time pretend that it is private property comes with numerous risks. Among them, the ability of people in other countries to duplicate the stuff without paying the royalty fees.
No, there is no natural right to participate in such a scheme. But, it is not the only possible way to share private intellectual property. And if non-disclosure agreements between private individuals are possible, then a market can be built out of ideas.
There is also a considerable body of evidence that ideas are much improved and worth a whole lot more if they are provided with open source details, using some sort of creative licensing arrangement. Many people have made lots of money creating open source software and systems. Evidently, real talent is involved, and people pay for talent. Go figure.
There is also a body of evidence that secrecy makes some stuff bad. That is, for example, encryption algorithms that are never published turn out to be vulnerable, and, because they are secret, the vulnerability is never corrected. And since secrets get shared around, the users of the code might not be the wiser until, like Yamamoto, they are shot down over a jungle island by fighter aircraft at the very edge of their operational range. Open source encryption algorithms work better. There is probably an application of this fact to many other areas of activity.
John Amendall – my assertion about what constitutes Natural Rights to own property came with a Thomas Jefferson citation. Did you even read it?
All other forms of property are the gift of a robust state. You even admit this when you speak of a “contract trust” for heritable property. Just who decides what is a valid “contract trust”, and who enforces this contract against those who are in a position to assert their Natural Property Rights through direct utilisation of it.
Absentee ownership is any property owned, which is not directly utilised by the owner in their day to day life. This includes all forms of lease, which is nothing more than skimming from the work product of others.
Additionally, your muse about IP follows much of what Jefferson stated in the same aforementioned Letter. Again, did you even read the citation?
The natural right to Property defaults to the one who directly possesses and uses it. I am not saying that other forms of property are not also important, only that those rights derive from a robust state, and as such, are not Natural Rights. This exposes a gaping hole in the Mises theorists, who posit an unassailable right to complex forms of private property ownership, yet at the same time, a weak and nearly powerless state. This cannot exist without the use of private force against individuals who assert their Natural Property Rights over a vested absentee landholder.
The Mises theorists donot believe in liberty, the desire a neo-feudalistic society in which they exist as the idle lords.