Re: A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)
 

It is not true that one person buying a burger raises the price (even with the imperceptibly caveat). I assume the basis for the proposition is an overly simplistic supply and demand analysis?

Re: A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)
 

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Of course Democracy alone isn't going to work miracles. No system of government or lack of government will. To be a good form of government it merely needs to be good in comparison to the alternatives. So for this to be evidence of the lousiness of democracy, we'd have to compare it to something else.

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See this is the point we are trying to make, its the people not the government that makes a country successful. Its the people not the government that takes care of the poor people. Its the people not the government that determine the level of violence in a country.

Democracy is good in so far as it points out to people that there is a way to run a country that doesnt involve massive amounts of bloodshed and violence everytime the current dictator needs to be over thrown.

Anarchy (voluntarism) is just a system that shows people that there is a less violent way to run a society than Democracy. You still get to organize society however you feel like. Anarchy is just pointing out to people that they shouldnt use force when they are in the majority and that they shouldnt acquiesce to irrational moral theories.

Re: A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)
 

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The US government was formed by killing people and blowing [censored] up?


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in a sense, yes.

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What I mean is those things are all confounding variables. If we compare dictatorship to democracy when there are a ton of other significant variables differing in the two circumstances then the comparison isn't valid.


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but we're talking about democracy and dictatorship over the exacts same set of people in the exact same region in very similar times.

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Yeah, but a foreign military is going to have a much harder time dealing with another country's disputes than a local military that's been around for a long time and that most of the people consider legitimate.
I don't know the exact cause of the chaos in Iraq and I think pointing to any one thing as "the cause" is a mistake.


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Even Petreus who has all the bias to say the military is the solution has admitted in his congressional testimony that the cause of violence in iraq is the fight over the political forum.

I personally think the US military helps exasperate the problem but even if they werent there, those problems would remain due to the democracy's failure.

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What book would you recommend that explains how laws can be private? What is a private law anyway? Isn't law public by definition. I think you mean the enforcement would be private. But can they enforce whatever laws they're paid to enforce (e.g. something like "Sunis can't worship freely and can't insult that guy that the Shi'ites like so much")? Who comes up with the laws? It doesn't seem fundamentally different from state coercion to me.

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since the thread is about David Friedman we'll stick with his works although many others write on this topic, not at always from the same perspective. If you want some more stuff let me know.

http://daviddfriedman.com/Libertaria...pter%2043.html

http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/L...vate_good.html

http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/A...d_Eff_Law.html

http://daviddfriedman.com/laws_order/index.shtml

Re: A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)
 

thanks, I'll check that stuff out on Friday hopefully. I have to focus on the philosophy of cognitive science right now and don't want to get too distracted.

Re: A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)
 

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thanks, I'll check that stuff out on Friday hopefully. I have to focus on the philosophy of cognitive science right now and don't want to get too distracted.

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thats a great topic. a few months ago I went through a binge reading stuff on evolutionary psychology, AI, and consciousness like Dennet's works. Economics also plays into this stuff in interesting ways.