The Cross Section - RMB Blog

  The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard The state can only exist if people believe it is legitimate.  In order to construct such faith, intellectuals associated with the state concoct philosophies and narratives to teach the public.  There are a variety of narratives, but they all revolve around a couple of basic ideas.  The first is that government is necessary to protect people's rights.  It is simply inevitable as a part of human nature.  The second is that people themselves created the government for their own benefit, based on unanimous or very close to unanimous agreement.  Society as a whole gave the prerogative to use protective violence over to one organization and only one organization.  The third idea within these narratives is that because protecting people is its core function, the state can be trusted to carry out that function. However once you dig a little deeper , you will expose logical inconsistencies in those narratives....

  Human beings were created in the image of God.  Classical philosophers stated that the human ability to reason was the key to understanding what that meant.  After hundreds of years of searching the bounds of reason, philosophers became frustrated.  Following reason alone did not produce the solutions they sought.  As a result, during the 17th century some philosophers in the West started to emphasize emotion.  Our intellectual and political elites have walked us down this other path for another couple of hundred years.  Society in the 21 Century has reached the end of that journey.  It has lead us to a place of confusion, division, and despair. I propose that the problem is both efforts considered only one aspect of  the human soul and neglected the other.  God demonstrates both reason and emotion in the Bible.  As His image, both constitute our substance.  We live simultaneously in two worlds, the objective and subjective....

  The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard The 22nd chapter starts a new section titled "The State Versus Liberty".   Rothbard then goes on to discuss what the State is, what it does, and how it justifies itself to the people.  Its nature is encapsulated in the motto all libertarians know and love, "taxation is theft".  This fact is inescapable.  Even if the State was the organization that is most efficient at serving society, we should still be suspicious because of how it acquires its funds. Normally a person or an organization supports itself economically by providing a good or service and selling it to others on a voluntary basis.  An exception to this rule is criminals who use violence, threats of violence, or deception to take from others involuntarily.  We all consider them bad guys for doing so.  Another other exception is the State.  If you don't consider taxes a form of theft, then visualize what would happen if you refused to...

  The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard The fundamental principle for this subject is that only theft or inherent theft should be punished by contract law.  If no one violates the property rights of another, i.e. no theft, then no court should prosecute a dispute between individuals.  For there to be theft there must be a prior transfer of a title to property.  That property can be money, capital goods, consumer goods, or even labor.  A promise to transfer title or property in the future does not constitute a title transfer.  The distinction sounds small but it makes a huge difference in how we should think about the situation.  Rothbard calls his approach the title-transfer model.   The example of a simple loan illustrates the basics of the title-transfer model.  In such a case, Party A lends $100 to Party B with an agreement that Party B will pay Party A $105 in a month.  Both Parties sign a contract committing to these action...

  The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard Rothbard continues to analyze individual rights as property rights in order to explain what rights truly exist.  In this chapter he applies that framework to knowledge.  This isn't as straightforward as dealing with things that are basic physical property because even though knowledge, thoughts, lies, and slander are not physical things, they can still have physical consequences. He starts by analyzing the situation when someone lies about another person.  Does Smith have the right to lie about Jones?  Looking strictly at property gives a clear answer.  Smith owns his own mind, his mouth, and a smartphone.  Therefore he has the right to use his own property to lie.  He can speak, send out a letter, announce over a radio station he owns, etc.  Smith has done something immoral but his action should not illegal.  In general, it is legal to lie in our day and time, so Rothbard isn't saying anything...

  The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard                  "human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to                 be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights                 on behalf of 'public policy' or the 'public good.' " I expect you have heard a variety of criticisms anytime you have spoken up for freedom or individual rights.  Those criticisms usually consist of claims that no rights are absolute.  One common example is you don't have the right to swing your fists in the space taken up by someone else's face.  Or they claim you should give up some of your own rights so that others will feel free to do what they want.  I call this the, "if I want to go to a concert then everyone else there must wear a mask so I won't get a respiratory vir...

  I have to admit up front, this chapter contains my biggest disagreement with Rothbard so far.  In "Children And Rights", he starts with discussing the rights of parents to abort and neglect their children before partially redeeming himself by focusing his searchlight back onto government's aggression against children and parents. He starts the chapter describing his philosophy on abortion.  I disagree out of the gate.  Uncharacteristically he provides no logical or natural law basis for his foundation.  Instead, he throws out an assertion and starts applying his normal deduction atop this faulty starting point.                 "[with] birth as the beginning of a live human being possessing natural rights...                     While birth is indeed the proper line of demarcation, the usual formation makes           ...