A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)

[Zygote]

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Hah I'm not playing games. It'd be like if I said "anarchism is marxist communism" and then got upset at you for playing games when you corrected me.

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your first comment was justified. your continuance is no more than nitpicking.

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Statement one: "Iraq was wrong, because the system was forced.
Statement two: Invading countries and trying to force them to have the sort of government we want doesn't work well.
I don't see how the two statements are equal in any way. Do I really need to elaborate?



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you need to elaborate because i think this will be very telling.

Are you saying going to iraq to instill democracy was right then? If not then why?

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That's a huge topic and I'm not going to get into it right now. I just entered this thread to argue against your more absolutist, black/white statements.


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this is the crux of the debate. iraq was wrong because of the force factor. our government's today are wrong for the same reason.

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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. Maybe as an experiment we can invade another country with a sectarian rift and force them to have no government. Then we can compare it to Iraq and see which works better. I'm being facetious of course, my point is just that evidence does not work the way you're suggesting it does. We need both an experimental group and a control group to compare to. If you look at History I think you'll find that the "best" societies have been democracies. That's debatable and not certainly not conclusive that Democracy is the ideal system, but it is the sort of empirical evidence you brought up.

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we can already compare saddam's iraq to a democratic iraq. i dont think theres a clear winner and that pretty bad for democracy proponents.

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I thought invading the country, overthrowing the government, dismantling the army and occupying the country created the chaos.

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They didnt dismantle the governmnet. They transformed the government from saddams style governance to democracy. The sectarian violence has nothing to do with the US. they are fighting each other internally for a reason

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I'm curious how you would bring about these property rights, since they can't be enforceable by your philosophy?


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I never said they can't be enforced. The problem today is that they are breached. The US should dismantle the government, return public assets to the citizens in the form of equal equity shares. Taking away the government will stop the social rule and free individuals to run their social and economic lives in their own dynamically unique ways.

[foal]

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your first comment was justified. your continuance is no more than nitpicking.

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I believe your response to my first statement was to say I was "playing semantics".. hence why I continued defending myself. But I'll stop now.

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Statement one: "Iraq was wrong, because the system was forced.
Statement two: Invading countries and trying to force them to have the sort of government we want doesn't work well.
I don't see how the two statements are equal in any way. Do I really need to elaborate?



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you need to elaborate because i think this will be very telling.

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The first statement is a moral judgement. The second statement is a pragmatic judgement. The first statement is a judgement about all instances of using force. The second statement is much more specific and speaks only of invading countries.

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Are you saying going to iraq to instill democracy was right then? If not then why?

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No. And I don't believe moral statements about "right" and "wrong" can have any objective or absolute truth to them. I do make moral judgments, but I do not claim them to be objective fact, nor based on a system of underlying logical premises (such as "it's always wrong to use force" or whatever). I think invading Iraq was wrong, because there were no good reasons for it and we killed lots of people, destroyed lots of [censored] and I could go on, but that should be enough.


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we can already compare saddam's iraq to a democratic iraq. i dont think theres a clear winner and that pretty bad for democracy proponents.

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That's not a fair comparison. We'd have to compare the current Iraq to an Iraq in which we invaded, occupied the country, dismantled the military and then propped up a new dictator.

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I thought invading the country, overthrowing the government, dismantling the army and occupying the country created the chaos.

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They didnt dismantle the governmnet. They transformed the government from saddams style governance to democracy.

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I said dismantled the military. Also the fact that the Shi'ites are a majority is significant, because the country is transitioning from power being held by the Sunis to power being mostly held by the Shi'ites. But the loss of military/police security is probably the biggest reason for the chaos.

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I'm curious how you would bring about these property rights, since they can't be enforceable by your philosophy?


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I never said they can't be enforced. The problem today is that they are breached.

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How can they be enforced if not by law?

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The US should dismantle the government, return public assets to the citizens in the form of equal equity shares. Taking away the government will stop the social rule and free individuals to run their social and economic lives in their own dynamically unique ways.

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I have a feeling some of those 'unique ways' are going to include murder and terrorism.

[Zygote]

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No. And I don't believe moral statements about "right" and "wrong" can have any objective or absolute truth to them. I do make moral judgments, but I do not claim them to be objective fact, nor based on a system of underlying logical premises (such as "it's always wrong to use force" or whatever). I think invading Iraq was wrong, because there were no good reasons for it and we killed lots of people, destroyed lots of [censored] and I could go on, but that should be enough.


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i disagree with the formation of the US government for the same reasons.

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I said dismantled the military. Also the fact that the Shi'ites are a majority is significant, because the country is transitioning from power being held by the Sunis to power being mostly held by the Shi'ites. But the loss of military/police security is probably the biggest reason for the chaos.


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there is a larger military presence there now then before. the military now is also much more technologically advanced and well funded.

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That's not a fair comparison. We'd have to compare the current Iraq to an Iraq in which we invaded, occupied the country, dismantled the military and then propped up a new dictator.


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not sure what you're getting at here. we're comparing democracy to dictatorship.

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How can they be enforced if not by law?


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they should be enforced by law. laws should be private though. david friedman rights a lot on this topic for one and id suggest checking out some stuff on law and economics. there are certain natural laws to property rights though like ownership of our bodies.

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I have a feeling some of those 'unique ways' are going to include murder and terrorism.

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apparently you think people blow themselves up for no reason. i tend to give them more credit. there is substantive evidence that all major acts of terrorism are politically motivated too btw.

[foal]

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No. And I don't believe moral statements about "right" and "wrong" can have any objective or absolute truth to them. I do make moral judgments, but I do not claim them to be objective fact, nor based on a system of underlying logical premises (such as "it's always wrong to use force" or whatever). I think invading Iraq was wrong, because there were no good reasons for it and we killed lots of people, destroyed lots of [censored] and I could go on, but that should be enough.


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i disagree with the formation of the US government for the same reasons.

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

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there is a larger military presence there now then before. the military now is also much more technologically advanced and well funded.

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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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That's not a fair comparison. We'd have to compare the current Iraq to an Iraq in which we invaded, occupied the country, dismantled the military and then propped up a new dictator.


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not sure what you're getting at here. we're comparing democracy to dictatorship.

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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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How can they be enforced if not by law?


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they should be enforced by law. laws should be private though. david friedman rights a lot on this topic for one and id suggest checking out some stuff on law and economics.

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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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I have a feeling some of those 'unique ways' are going to include murder and terrorism.

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apparently you think people blow themselves up for no reason. i tend to give them more credit. there is substantive evidence that all major acts of terrorism are politically motivated too btw.

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You should stop reading so much into what I say. I never said they do it for no reason.

[Zygote]

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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

[foal]

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.

[Zygote]

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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.