Anarchism Is Not Panstatism/Polystatism

I've recently run into some major trouble with some people who seem to be interpreting anarchist pluralism or anarchism without adjectives to mean a total open-endedness that allows one to establish whatever sort of system or organization they prefer, regaurdless of the content of that preference or its compatability with any particular principle of justice. In other words, these people are trying to completely divorce anarchism from any unifying or fundamental principles, and are redefining it to mean the same thing as polyarchy. Even on an etymological level, one should be able to see the difference between anarchy (no rulers) and polyarchy (multiple rulers). While anarchism without adjectives might have the appearance of being structured as a polyarchy, it isn't polyarchy in and of itself due to a lack of institutional rulership.

As far as I understand it, anarchism without adjectives is not completely open-ended, it is based on the context of anarchism. It's anarchism without adjectives, not anything without adjectives. It has preconditions or qualifiers, particularly at least a basic fundamental understanding or agreement as to what distinguishes voluntary interaction or organization from rulership, or a basic understanding of what distinguishes initiation from defense. Otherwise, anyone can claim that any particular authoritarian preference they have is defacto compatible with anarchism, and anarchism is more or less redefined out of existance. Anarchist pluralism is pluralism contextual to voluntary interaction, not a completely open-ended hodge-podge of whatever people happen to like. Anarchist emergence is emergence contextual to voluntary interaction, not a broader sense of emergence as in "whatever occurs over the course of history".

To be sure, polycentric order is an aspect of anarchism, or the two can overlap. However, anarchism as such should not be conflated with polycentric order per se. Technically, one could have a polycentric order, and internal to each organization things are highly authoritarian. So while decentralization is an important aspect of anarchism, it is a necessary but not sufficient element of it. Decentralization for decentralization's sake, without regaurd for the actual qualatative content of a given association, is nonsensical and suicidal. This is part of the problem with things such as "state's rights", for while it may be a useful tool against federal governments, it may also be a tool for empowering more local authorities. On one hand, this problem is due to there not being enough decentralization (decentralization ends at individual choice), and on the other hand, this problem represents a lack of any coherant principles or basic concept of justice.

The preferential nature of anarchism without adjectives is not completely open-ended. It means that one can follow their preferences with regaurd to what affects them, but they cannot enforce their preferences on innocent bystanders or unconsenting 3rd parties of people. The basic principle is supposed to mutually apply, I.E. I cannot rule you and you cannot rule me. Anarchism without adjectives does not mean that just because things are more decentralized or on a more local level, it's suddenly okay to rule people. Neither does it mean that the meaning of rulership is completely open-ended and can be redefinined by anyone as they please in order to justify their preferences or the unilateral enforcement thereof. This error seems to be thin libertarianism on speed, which results in no libertarianism at all.

Using such an approach, one can redefine their preference for a particular kind of state or rulership to superficially appear compatible with anarchism, by blurring the definition of anarchism and voluntarism and rulership and force, and by displaying a superficial pluralism. At such a point, one is likely engaging in obscurantism and using anarchism as a sugar-coating or tool for their more fundamental and esoteric ideology (in the case of "national anarchism", this is clearly generally being done with respect to white nationalism). Why be an anarchist in the first place if there is no real difference between your "anarchism" and a particular proposal for a state? This is counter-intuitive if not deceptive, to say the least.

Of course, different anarchists can have pragmatic differences and different preferances for how they'd prefer to voluntarily organize or what purely personal values they would like to voluntarily pursue. But these differences are reconciled under a general umbrella of anarchism without adjectives, which involves at least a basic consensus with regaurd to non-rulership and "live and let live". This also tends to imply a degree of federation between anarchists; complete isolation or atomism is clearly not desirable. The differences, when in the context of anarchism without adjectives, are not really primary ethical differances. The basic ethical norm of personal sovereignty and the non-rulership that follows from it is supposed to be what unifies anarchists, and provides the proper context for anarchism without adjectives.

Walter Block on Sexism: Straddling the Line Between Thin Libertarianism and Vulgar Libertarianism

Again, I thought this post would be of interest to you guys, so I'm reposting it from Back to the Drawing Board.

Introduction

Dmitry Chernikov left a comment on an earlier post directing my attention to an essay by Dr. Walter Block which basically just railed on several thinkers with whom I identify for various reasons. The essay appears to be a work in progress, as Dr. Block's typically clear and thorough writing style is conspicuously absent, but as the main points seem to be there, I think it would be fair to critique them. The essay covers a wide array of topics and it would not do to address them all here. I will focus here, therefore, on Dr. Block's response to Dr. Roderick Long on the issue of feminism.

In piece cited in the essay, Long's main point is built on the idea that treating women differently than men simply because they're women fails to give them their due, and that where we can see sexism embodied in wage structures, we should decry it. He engages an objection to this view which he attributes to Austrian economists and particularly Block himself, which is that the free market naturally ensures that women are not mistreated, since their wages would naturally be brought into line with their marginal productivity by the workings of the market process.

Long argues that in spite of the equilibrating tendency of the marketplace to bring wages into line with workers' marginal productivity, we cannot say with any degree of certainty that prevailing wages at any particular time will actually satisfy that equilibrium condition (e.g., because of imperfect knowledge, lack of entrepreneurial actions, etc.). Accordingly, even if employers were solely dedicated to maximizing monetary profit, there would be no guarantee that wages would equal workers' marginal productivity.

He then argues that on top of this, there are many reasons to believe that employers are not perfectly rational monetary-profit-maximizers, acting on influences like prejudices, presumptions, etc. So even if the market were providing an incentive through the profit motive to bring workers' wages into line with their marginal productivity, other factors could be providing a skewing counterweight that would make markets tend towards unfair wages for women.

So essentially, Long is saying that it simply isn't true that the free market naturally ensures that women are paid their fair wages, and that in fact we have good reason to believe that women are not being paid fairly. Therefore, he concludes that one can't create problems for the claim that there are sexist wage structures, and that they should be condemned, by arguing that the market naturally eliminates sexist wage structures.

Block offers no less than nine objections to this argument, which I perceive to take three basic forms: 1) Long's economic arguments are incoherent and there is evidence that he happens to be wrong; 2) The wage structures to which Dr. Long objects are not coercive, and therefore are not unjust and have nothing to do with libertarianism; and 3) There is no reason to object to people paying women differently than men, or to cultural institutions that demean women. I will discuss each of these objections in turn.

I. Are the economic issues discussed by Long dealt with improperly?

Block's first question is:

But why would there be a bias in the market such that entrepreneurship necessarily results in lower female wages in disequilibrium? Why not wages higher than MRP when the market is not in its equilibrium or evenly rotating state? Long, let alone not furnishing us with an answer to this absolutely crucial implicit claim of his, does not even seem to recognize that there is a need to do so.

In passing, I should note that budding young philosophers out there should be aware of what's about to happen here. Block has engaged in some very clear PhilosophyFTW!! If he is wrong -- and I think he is -- then this will be embarrassing for him, whereas if he had been nice about his objection, it would be totally okay for him to be mistaken. So here's the tip: If you're going to argue that someone made a very obvious mistake, don't be a jerk about it.

And here's Long furnishing us with just such an answer, quoted from Block's own paper:

Even if women are not generally less productive than men...there might still be a widespread presumption on the part of employers that they are, and in light of the difficulty of determining the productivity of specific individuals, this presumption would not be easily falisified, thus making any wage gap based on such a presumption more difficult for market forces to whittle away.

And:

But there is no reason to rule out the possibility of deliberate, profit-disregarding discrimination either. Discrimination can be a consumption good for managers, and this good can be treated as part of the manager's salary-and-benefits package; any costs to the company arising from the manager's discriminatory practices can thus be viewed as sheer payroll costs. Maybe some managers order fancy wood paneling for their offices, and other managers pay women less for reasons of sexist; if the former sort of behaviour can survive the market test, why not the latter?

Now, Block disagrees with the attribution of the wage gap to these phenomena, but that doesn't mean that Long does too. Clearly, Long believes that the answer to the question of why the wage gap favors men (even when productivity differences are taken into account) lies in some combination of unfortunate social stereotypes and sexism. Not only does Long apparently recognize that one would need to explain this, but he basically devotes 2 paragraphs of a 9 paragraph argument to doing so. So I don't think that Block's criticism is on the mark here.

Block's next piece of evidence that Long's economic reasoning is bad is to point out that lesbians apparently make more money than straight women. The article Block cites is no longer at the linked location, but I would have to wonder...aren't there a lot fewer lesbian housewives and stay at home moms? And is it impossible that lesbians -- who have often had difficult, character-building upbringings -- are typically more productive than straight women? I'm not saying that this isn't evidence against Long's point, but it seems like more needs to be said.

Block moves on to suggest that Long is on a slippery slope that will commit him to suggesting that minimum wage laws are not all bad. But Long specifically said that he didn't necessarily support government intervention, and concluded his argument with the claim that the wage gap is:

...no reason to gripe about 'market failure.' Such failure is merely our failure. Instead, we need to fight the power - peacefully, but not quietly.

So Block seems to miss the mark here as well.

Block's next point is that Long's argument sounds like the "cluster of error" of Austrian Business Cycle theory, and:

...as we know from our study of business cycles, any such conglomeration of error cannot long endure without continued statist interference with markets. It would be dissipated by the market's profits and loss weeding out process.

Now, anyone who's been paying attention will realize that Block has objected to Long's critique of a particular argument by simply reiterating that argument. Accordingly, the best response would be to simply reiterate Long's critique: A) The market's "profits and loss weeding out process" is a process and can be hampered by a number of factors which appear to be at work in this instance (e.g., entrenched prejudice, a lack of clear information about the marginal productivity of individual workers); and B) There are other examples of unprofitable business strategies that have survived the market test (e.g., fancy wood paneling in managers' offices), and the market is not a perfect mechanism for weeding these strategies out. I would beg the question if I suggested that this rebuttal wins the point for Long, but it is at least clear that Long has a response which this particular objection does not preempt. So again, Block somewhat misses the mark.

Block's final objection to Long's economic arguments is that he simply doesn't believe that sexism operates in the way that Long suggests: he thinks that sexism may actually benefit women where it does occur. He suggests that:

...when it comes to pay, my own informal assessment is that it works mainly in the direction not of increasing the pay gap between men and women. Rather, it is all in the direction of paying attractive women a beauty premium.

He goes on to suggest that:

...if they [men's tastes] are in opposition to anyone, it is to other males who are seen as competition.

Now I don't have the empirical evidence to go to battle on this point. So it will have to suffice to say that it seems very unlikely to me that the underlying productivity difference between women and men is being underrepresented by the existing wage gap because hot women are being paid more than their labor is worth. I mean think about it: Long is saying, "Women make 75% as much as men for the same work," and Block is saying, "And lucky them! They'd be making even less if they weren't so damned cute!" Ummm...somehow that seems...just...no. I could be wrong to think that negative sexism plays a more significant role than positive sexism, but...well...I just don't think I am.

For one thing, many beautiful women will tell you that it can be difficult to be taken seriously for top positions as an attractive woman because many managers believe that beautiful women have only gotten to where they are on the basis of their looks. Beauty premiums, then, may well be counterbalanced somewhat by beauty handicaps. And even if beauty premiums really did outweigh the lower wages generated by demeaning sexism, that wouldn't mean that we should call the whole thing a wash. Surely Long would object to sexism in the workplace even if it didn't show up in aggregate wage statistics.

II. Is sexism an issue on which libertarians should opine?

This brings us to the next kind of objection that Block raises to Long's argument, which is that sexism embodied in wage structures and social conventions is not coercive, and therefore is not an appropriate domain for libertarian inquiry. Block writes:

Of course, there are other problems [besides coercive violence] that libertarians are involved in combatting: bad breath, the heartbreak of psoriasis, losing chess games, cancer, the list goes on and on. But here, libertarians who do so are not acting qua libertarians. This is a distinction that is crucial for a clear understanding of this philosophy.

This objection is an instantiation of Dr. Block's longstanding argument against so-called "thick" libertarianism, a view which holds that libertarians ought to be concerned not only with matters involving coercive violence, but also a wide range of other issues which are in one way or another connected with their views on coercion. Block's argument is that these other issues are certainly important and worthy of discussion, but they have nothing to do with libertarianism, per se. Libertarianism, according to Block, is a philosophical view which is directly concerned with opposing coercive violence, and that's pretty much it.

Now, at first glance, this would seem to be an argument about semantics. If it's really such a big deal for libertarians to talk about other issues "while wearing their libertarian hats," then for the sake of discussion, Dr. Long could just say, "Fine. I'm not talking about sexism as a libertarian. I'm talking about it as a feminist who happens to be a libertarian as well." But more substantively it seems like we should ask why Dr. Block is objecting to the use of the term "libertarianism" in talking about things like sexism, and try to decide whether there's really a deep difference between, say, being a libertarian and being a feminist.

What Dr. Block seems to have in mind is that libertarianism is, at its core, built around the concept of "justice," where justice is defined as turning on the legitimacy of initiation of coercive force. This seems to me like a naked move to entrench the non-aggression principle in a piece of terminology by warping the normal meaning of justice to conveniently allow for a clean distinction between coercive and peaceful behaviors to be labelled "unjust" and "just," respectively. But no matter; that's how Dr. Block seems to want to use the term, and we can grant it. On this view, then, we should notice that the fact that something is "just" need not mean that it is desirable, aesthetically pleasing, reflective of what people deserve, impartial, or even morally acceptable. It just means that no one has "thrown any punches" yet in a way to which we object, and therefore there cannot have been any injustice.

If we define libertarianism as a school of thought focusing on "justice" as defined above, then we will be led to the position advocated by Dr. Block:

Why is this [inequality in wages for equivalent work] unjust is this unjust from a libertarian perspective? It is not.

That is not to say that individuals who are libertarians have no business objecting to these inequalities. To reiterate Block's point, quoted above:

Of course, there are other problems that libertarians are involved in combating: bad breath, the heartbreak of psoriasis, losing chess games, cancer, the list goes on and on. But, here, libertarians who do so are not acting qua libertarians.

The point is, these things are objectionable for reasons which have nothing to do with justice, as defined above. Therefore, they have nothing to do with libertarianism, which is a philosophy that deals only with justice.

I think that this view is mistaken. To see why, we should note that in the above, I did not say anything about what position libertarians actually take on positions of justice (as I defined it); I only said that Block's view limits libertarianism to matters of so-called "justice." If my familiarity with Dr. Block's views serves me correctly, I believe that he would want to say that the libertarian view of justice has something to do with the non-aggression principle, such that initiating coercive violence is "unjust," and anything else is "just." Since I don't believe that the non-aggression principle is correct, and I want to be charitable to the libertarian position (particularly since I consider myself to be a libertarian), I will rephrase this position to say that the initiation of coercive force is prima facie unjust, and that (to the extent that we accept the definition of "justice" with which we are working here) anything that does not involve an illegitimate initiation of coercive force is just (for a discussion of this view, check out this post). If I'm wrong, and the non-aggression principle is true, then we can simply say that only illegitimate initiations of coercive force are unjust, but all such initiations are unjust. In other words, coercion is prima facie wrong, and there are no considerations which would cause us to find it legitimate. The way I've phrased it, we just get to include more views under the umbrella of "libertarianism" (most importantly, mine).

But libertarianism would be an empty shell of a position if it were simply a vague claim that "If and only if a view has only to do with the initiation of coercive force and views it as at least prima facie wrong, then it is a libertarian view." It would seem to behoove us as libertarians to say that a part of libertarian philosophy has to do with explaining why people should hold that kind of view. That is, it should explain why we should care so much about the initiation of coercive force, and why we are generally disposed to object to it as a matter of principle.

Now a complication arises here because (again if I correctly recall his views), Dr. Block believes that the initiation of force is unjust as a matter of undisputable logical fact. His view, following in the tradition of libertarian thinkers like Dr. Hoppe, is that one cannot advocate, condone, or engage in the use of coercive force without committing oneself to a contradictory position. The only position that one can reasonably defend, according to this view, is the libertarian view that the initiation of coercive force is incorrect. The reason that this is a complication is that for reasons I have discussed here and here, I think that this position is flat wrong (as was brought to my attention after writing those pieces, Dr. Bob Murphy and non-quite-Dr. Gene Callahan made some similar arguments as well). It is simply not true that any other position besides the non-aggression principle is incoherent.

But other libertarian views, including the one to which Dr. Long ascribes as well as the one to which I ascribe, resist coercion because of a fundamental belief that each of us is a valuable individual with his or her own life to lead. We suggest that it would therefore be disrespectful and unbecoming of us to force others to live according to plans that are not their own or to destructively interfere with their ability to pursue theirs. We see ourselves as having moral significance, and we acknowledge that the things that make us important also make others important. It is out of this deep appreciation and respect for individuals -- and the separateness of individuals' unique lives -- that we demand justification from those who would interfere with their neighbors' lives (or condemn them out of hand, for those libertarians accepting the non-aggression principle).

If we accept that something like this is at the root of the libertarian position on the issue of justice (still within our provisional definition), then it seems reasonable to say that an inherent part of libertarianism is an attitude of respect for individuals. And it is for this reason that I believe Dr. Block to be in error. If libertarianism is built upon a foundation of respect for others, then it would seem that libertarians would be committed to opposing any view which contradicts that paradigm of respect. And what Long is doing in leveling this argument is contending that sexism against women is indeed at odds with a view which sees all people as worthy of respect, as it is built upon subordination and dehumanization. So by incorporating feminism into libertarian philosophy, Long seems to be contending that feminism represents the position which follows from the consistent application of the ideas that make coherent the libertarian position on so-called "justice". In my opinion, this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for a libertarian to be saying qua libertarian.

So what, then, of Block's point that:

Of course, there are other problems that libertarians are involved in combating: bad breath, the heartbreak of psoriasis, losing chess games, cancer, the list goes on and on. But, here, libertarians who do so are not acting qua libertarians.

This point seems intuitively right (except for the part about losing chess games; surely Block doesn't think that the world would be a better place if all chess games ended in stalemates). But whereas there is a reasonably strong connection between the ethical underpinnings of libertarian political philosophy and feminism, there is no such connection with bad breath, psoriasis, or cancer. The analogy simply doesn't work, and for reasons that I believe vindicate Long.

III. There is nothing wrong with sexist wage structures or demeaning social conventions

There is a third sort of objection appearing throughout Block's argument which basically suggests that beyond being a non-libertarian issue, Long's objections speak to a problem that isn't a problem. In doing this, I believe Block skirts the line between merely "thin" libertarianism and "vulgar" libertarianism.

The term "vulgar libertarianism" can best be understood by going back to our distinction between "just" and "unjust" from earlier, which defined as "just" anything that doesn't involve illegitimate coercion. Recall that we said that just because something is "just" by this definition does not mean that it is good, or even morally acceptable. Vulgar libertarian views, we will say, function essentially as "capitalist apologetics" by jumping to the conclusion that because something does not involve the illegitimate use of coercive force, it is not objectionable. The vulgar libertarian is the sort of thinker who, when presented with a lamentation about the outcomes generated by a free society, automatically reacts by saying, "Oh, but here's why that outcome isn't lamentable at all!" The vulgar libertarian, for example, might put down Dr. Block's Defending the Undefendable and proceed to argue that actually, the man who cheats on his girlfriend with a prostitute is doing nothing wrong, since no one has been coerced and the transaction was actually beneficial to both parties. Or that all poor people deserve to be poor, since they haven't produced anything for society that others have found to be worth paying any more to obtain. Or that the pervert who seduces the child is blameless, as both parties are simply doing what they want to be doing.

Let me be clear: I do not believe that Dr. Block is a vulgar libertarian. It is because I do not believe this that I am even making the argument that his views here seem to border on vulgar libertarianism. If Block were a vulgar libertarian, it would surely do little good to show that his arguments indeed sound like those that a vulgar libertarian might make.

So what in Block's paper am I talking about? Block first writes:

Perhaps most important, we must hark back to the biblical story where people are paid different amounts of money for doing precisely the same job; or what is the same thing, the same compensation for doing very different amounts of work...These disparities can be interpreted as a differential gift giving. That is, the employer pays everyone equally for equal productivity, but then makes a freely given donation to some but not to others.

For those not familiar with the story, there's a story in Matthew 20 about a vineyard owner who hires a group of workers to work at his vineyard, promising them a fair wage. Later in the day, he sees another group of workers who have not found any work for the day, and hires them to come help as well. At the end of the day, he pays all of the workers equally, to the consternation of the workers who had worked all day. Block's implication is captured by the differentially-paying vineyard owner in Matthew 20:13-16:

Friend, I am not treating you unfairly. Didn't you agree with me to work for the standard wage? Take what is yours and go. I want to give to this last man the same as I gave to you. Am I not permitted to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?

The first thing that one should notice is that in the vineyard parable, all of the workers were paid at least the "standard wage." A controversy might be raised, then, about whether the parable would apply to situations where capitalists were levering their advantaged position in negotiating with applicants to drive their wages below "fair" levels, which is presumably what Long thinks is going on when women are paid "unfairly." But even broaching the subject of "fair" wages opens up a can of worms all on its own, and the issue here is about sexism, not some form of wage egalitarianism.

The more substantive point is that when we consider the action of the vineyard owner, we see that he has acted out of generosity towards the late-coming workers. In the story, the reason for the generosity is not suggested to be some sort of prejudice against the early-coming workers, nor is the account stated in terms of some kind of malice, scorn, dismissiveness, or ill-will towards the early-comers. If these factors were involved in the story, then presumably Dr. Long would be uncomfortable with this example as well.

It seems pretty clear to me that when employers pay their male employees disproportionately higher wages, they are not doing so out of the generosity that the vineyard owner showed towards the workers who had not been able to find work. For that reason, I think that the analogy somewhat fails, though it is a valuable insight that unequal treatment does not necessarily have to objectionable. It's unequal treatment because of prejudice or sexism that should draw the ire of feminist, not unequal treatment as such.

Hopefully it will be clear, then, why I find this argument to be at risk of vulgarity. The feminist complains that sexist or prejudiced employers treat women badly by paying them less, and Block responds with an example of seemingly legitimate differential pay, with the implication that sexist and prejudiced employees are in the clear on its weight. In doing so, he conveniently defends the status quo and the employer, while comparing the feminists to grumbling and envious characters in a well-known story. But as the principle of charity compels us to assume that Dr. Block didn't perceive the disanalogy we discussed above, and did not intend vulgarity, we must keep in mind that we are not trying to argue that Dr. Block is a vulgar libertarian, but only that this particular position seems like it is wrong for reasons that are reminiscent of the vulgar paradigm.

Dr. Block's next point is entwined with the "thin" libertarian view discussed in the previous section:

...Long is going to have to decide whether his primary allegiance lies with feminism or libertarianism. This author does indeed touch on one aspect of this when he discusses the possibility that the wage gap between males and females might be due to in effect employer consumption [sic]: paying males more than females just for the sheer joy of doing so. If so, is this not the employer's right? And if so, from whence springs any possible libertarian objection to the wage gap?

That this argument borders on vulgarity can be seen by examining the first sentence. Remember, Block's argument for "thin" libertarianism is that the kinds of issues that concern the feminist here have nothing to do with libertarianism, and that the libertarian cannot talk about them qua libertarian. But why, then, would Dr. Long have to choose between these positions? If these are issues which really have nothing to do with libertarianism, then one should be able to be a libertarian while holding substantively any view on the issues that concern the feminist in this instance.

What seems to be going on here, as evidenced by the accommodating tone that Dr. Block takes in talking about "paying males more than females just for the sheer joy of doing so" is that Dr. Block has gone beyond his "thin" libertarianism in favor of a "thick"-er view in the opposite direction. That is, it's not just that sexism is not violent, and therefore is not "unjust," but rather, it seems like Block is flirting with saying that there is nothing wrong with sexism. But this is not thin libertarianism. It is vulgar libertarianism.

This sort of thing vaguely seems to reappear when Dr. Block writes:

What is this business of criticizing the freely made decisions of women to stay home and take care of babies? It matters not one whit that this is done "on moral grounds (or) prudential grounds." The libertarian qua libertarian simply has no business in criticizing "women's (choice of) greater responsibility for household work." It is no business of the libertarian, none whatsoever, to "combat" the "sexism" implicit in "the cultural expectations that lead women to assume such responsibility."

I don't want to get involved in saying something like "Well no, he didn't say that there is nothing wrong with these cultural expectations, but don't you think that's what he meant?!" But I do want to point out that if this argument is intended to promote "thin" libertarianism and not "vulgar" libertarianism, it seems like one would expect some kind of qualification along the lines of, "Of course, none of this is to say that these cultural norms should be embraced or even countenanced silently. They are simply not within the providence of libertarian discussion." And yet not only is such a disclaimer not offered, but what is written seems like it could be easily interpreted as an argument that "criticizing the freely made decisions of women to stay at home and take care of babies" "on moral grounds (or) prudential grounds" would be misguided, even if done from outside the realm of libertarian theory. Such an interpretation would be vulgar, even though it is not at all entailed by what Block actually says, and I think offers another example of Dr. Block straddling the line between thin and vulgar libertarianism, even if it does not technically cross it.

Conclusion

Having evaluated all three kinds of objection raised by Block to Long's discussion, and found each of them somewhat wanting, I think that a few closing words are in order. It will surprise no one to discover that I sided with Dr. Long in this argument before reading Dr. Block's piece, and therefore my response must be taken in that light. Further, there is no reason to expect that Dr. Block would have nothing to say to the points that I have raised here; this debate has been going on for a very long time, and presumably Dr. Block has heard most of the objections that can be offered against his position. Accordingly, it may well be that my points here have missed their mark.

That being said, I do think that I have raised some important questions here about Dr. Block's position and arguments, and that my analysis was both thorough and fair. Dr. Long's arguments cannot, I think, be dismissed as easily as Dr. Block's piece makes it sound.

Hopefully this has been as valuable and interesting for you to read as it was for me to write!

Individualism, Abstraction and Authority

As I understand it, individualism is not merely political in any narrow sense of the term. It is philosophical in a broader sense, relating to fundamental questions of personal identity and responsibility. A thorough-going individualism, in epistemic terms, denies that one's identity and responsibility as an individual is absolutely predetermined for them by collective forces and abstract concepts. An individual is a separate entity from other people and things, with their own will and body. It could also be said, from a nominalist perspective, that an individual should not be directly conflated with a concept or abstraction.

To be sure, this isn't necessarily to be confused with atomism, I.E. the denial of the fact that one lives in a given environment or society. While it might be possible for individualism to overlap with atomism, pretty much no serious or thorough-going individualist denies interrelations or pretends that people exist in a vacuum; this isn't solipsism. But individualism could be viewed as a denial of both nature and nurture being used in a fatalistic or hard detereministic way as it relates to personal identity. In terms of epistemology, individualism recognizes some sort of uniqueness in each individual (more of an analytic approach) or leaves it to the individual to discover and create their own uniqueness (more of an existentialist approach). In either case, people clearly are not identical or uniform or absolutely unanimous in every way.

It is important to note that the implications of this overlaps with pluralism. Approached as an analytic description of people, individualism attempts to identify the unique characteristics of an individual in terms of their physical composition and behavior, and since each individual's characteristics vary, this analysis will have a pluralistic result when we start to deal with multiple people. Human behavior can be incredibly diverse and unpredictable. Praxeology, employing methodological individualism, describes human behavior in terms of the values that people hold and their purposeful action in the pursuit of their values, rather than being based on the criteria of a particular value (since it isn't working in the field of ethics).

Individualism can also be seen as pluralistic in a more overtly existentialist sense, which is to say that in some sense individuals create their own meaning and value (especially in the realm of aesthetics). To be sure, there is culture, and a culture is essentially a collectivity of memes that come from people. But at the same time, it could be said that each individual has their own unique culture, as they do not all have the exact same ideas and behaviors, and individualism would encourage the individual to develope a unique personal identity that is not to be conflated with highly abstract and collective cultural memes such as the nation, class, race, gender, family, political party, and so on. The individual has no inherent obligation to these memes, and they are free to create their own identity and their own ideas on the ruins of the old. Introspection is also an important element to this.

Consequentially, this may lead the thorough-going individualist to reject a good deal of tradition when it comes to ethics, since a lot of these memes are often normatively treated as something that one has a duty to and has no choice but to identify with. Why should the individualist value something like "the nation"? They clearly never chose to be a part of any "nation", and they clearly are not identical with the other people whom "the nation" is said to represent. There is no "nation", as an entity in and of itself with its own conciousness and values. The individualist strongly feels that this "nation" is alien to them, for good reason. They soon find that many other cultural memes are alien to them (especially those relating to "the state"), and from the perspective of tradition or the norm, their deviations must be considered "immoral" by default.

Hence why the individualist is so despised by authoritarian institutions and ideologies of all kinds. The individualist who dares to rebel against the norm must be treated as a sinner against the good, because the good is superficially understood only in terms of what's already the norm. The greatest threat to tradition and the norm is the individual who innovates, who thinks for themself and slips away from the psychological trappings of the society that they were born into. Independance of judgement is the ultimate enemy of arbitrary authority, and arbitrary authority tends to be rooted in floating abstractions that are turned into ethical and legal obligations. Once one rejects the abstractions upon which the authorities are founded (such "god", "state", "humanity", "family", "nation", "race", and so on), if one follows things consistantly through one ends up rejecting the authorities. And since ethics is so often defined in terms of those authorities, the individualist must superficially be classified as immoral by either the elites or the masses (or both).

The thorough-going individualist is an anti-authoritarian, through and through. The highly abstract concepts that are used to justify the norm of authority claims hold no instrinsic authority in the eyes of the thorough-going individualist. Not only is "the state" conceptually used as a spook, so are a laundry list of cultural memes, some of which may relate to the state directly and others of which do not directly relate or even precede the state. Some of these cultural memes are used to justify the state and some others are consequences of the state, and in turn the rejection of any intrinsic authority to such cultural memes strengthens the reasons for opposing the state. In some sense this is a question of "thickness", specifically in terms of individualism. It's also a question of the epistemological roots of individualism.

Why Do I Call Myself a Left-Libertarian?

I thought this might be of interest to you guys, so I'm cross-posting it from Back to the Drawing Board.

I received a very fair comment on a previous post, "On Distributive Justice and the Indeterminacy of the Market Process," from an anonymous reader, asking:

Reading this post, I am quite baffled why you name your blogspot libertarian-left.blogspot.com. How can you say that you work in the Left Libertarian tradition, when in this post you completely reject the ideas of all the most famous Left-Libertarians including Henry George and Steiner and Otsuka and Vallentyne? How can you say that you "attempt to incorporate concepts such as equality, opportunity, and need into my framework", when this post seems to be arguing that they cannot be incorporated to your libertarian framework? I cannot find aything leftist about your ideas. Exactly what distinguishes your beliefs from Right-Libertarianism pure and simple?

I thought it might be worthwhile to give that question a thorough answer, since I anticipate that it may come up again, and others might find this answer interesting.

There is definitely a tension within the world of libertarian thought regarding the meaning of the term, "left-libertarianism." One school of thought identifying itself as left-libertarian describes its ideas as upholding the libertarian conception of self-ownership while insisting that a just society would distribute worldly resources according to some egalitarian principle. This is the tradition into which writers like George, Steiner, Otsuka, and Vallentyne fall. As you rightly notice, I am clearly not a part of this camp [Update: I discuss this position in this post].

The other interpretation of the term "left-libertarian" has been offered by Roderick Long, building on Rothbard's (and later Samuel Konkin's) idea that libertarianism is more naturally allied with the political left than with the right. Dr. Long gives a really good explanation of his views in this interview. And as you might have gleaned from my description of this site on the sidebar, I basically agree with his approach.

I've been very conflicted about using the term "left-libertarian" to describe myself, as it's unquestionably true that the first meaning is more widely acknowledged and used today, and I'm not a big fan of inherently confusing terminology. But I'll offer two points in my defense. The first is simply that I chose the name for my website before realizing how deeply I disagreed with the folks in the Steiner camp, and the status quo has thus become somewhat entrenched.

But secondly, and more substantively, I don't think that left-libertarianism of the Steiner mold has much to do with leftism, except to the extent that it has something to do with egalitarianism and, in some sense, it views a non-egalitarian property regime as oppressive. The bread and butter of the left, I think, has always been to root out oppression and mistreatment in society and demand its rectification. And that has been my concern as well, as I search for different ways to think about the respect to which people are due and build ideas about living together that try to embody that respect.

Now, an important part of the commenter's question was this:

How can you say that you "attempt to incorporate concepts such as equality, opportunity, and need into my framework", when this post seems to be arguing that they cannot be incorporated to your libertarian framework?

This, I think, is a somewhat unfair reading of my earlier post. In the last section of that post, I wrote:

Perhaps it is the case that, as individuals who appreciate each other's value and moral worth, we owe it to each other to lend a helping hand in times of need. And if we did not lift a finger when others were facing crisis, that we would be failing to uphold our duties as morally responsible people. To say this implies no injustice in the market system which brings about unfortunate outcomes, nor does it imply that somehow we need to find some point in the past to serve as a "source" of injustice. Rather, we can think of distributive injustice as a recognition that in a community or society where so many live free of need, there are individuals among us who struggle to survive, without so much as a helping hand from their neighbors.

Of course, the mere existence of need and want surely cannot entail the presence of injustice. The same respect for the value of life which commands us to care about our neighbors also commands us to recognize the importance of living our own lives according to our own goals and desires. Earlier, we noted an idea from F.A. Hayek that coercion is evil because it "eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another." We suggested that the tragic need which drives individuals into exploitative labor relationships is evil for this reason as well. But we must now acknowledge that the attitude which places on the successful individual the burden of caring after the world's needy is evil for exactly the same reason (I discussed this in a previous post). Addressing one evil through the introduction of another seems like a questionable way to proceed. But it does not seem that either extreme -- ignoring the suffering of others or sacrificing oneself for the good of those in need -- is the correct one. What is needed is a balance between the two.

In saying this, I had hoped to address what I felt to be some of the important and relevant concerns that people on the left might have had in response to my argument. And I certainly didn't mean to suggest that other leftist concerns (e.g., about the proper social response to inequality, oppression, lack of opportunity, etc.) "cannot be incorporated into my libertarian framework."

My point was that these concerns cannot coherently be levelled as a moral objection to the market process itself. It was my hope to convey that a just society would not simply accept the often arbitrary, sometimes lamentable, and always sub-utopian products of the market process, insensitively brushing the unpleasant bits under the rug. The market process, I think, is just, and cannot be condemned wholesale because of its inherent potential to generate undesirable outcomes for some people. But I think that there is more to living together than the market process, and that the concerns of the left are valid reasons for searching for solutions outside of the typical consumeristic market paradigm. That, I think, is where the "left" in my "left-libertarianism" comes through.

Possible Book?

I'm thinking of writting a short book or long pamphlet/essay, with a purpose and theme that may be controversial to some and constructive to others. That purpose is internal criticism of the general libertarian and/or anarchist movement, in both philosophical and strategic terms, something which I think is very much needed. This isn't to say that it may be purely negative in nature, because part of the process of such internal criticism is fleshing out libertarianism as a social philosophy. The purpose is not merely to negate things, it also is an expression of my viewpoint on the complexities of libertarianism and anarchism in terms of social philosophy.

Some of the main and fairly well-known libertarian thinkers who have certain ideas that I have varying degrees of criticism of are: Hans Herman Hoppe, Walter Block, Stephan Kinsella, Stefan Molyneux and Noam Chomsky. The material on this blog alone contains some criticisms of the ideas of these people already. I have varying degrees of both sympathy and disagreement for their ideas. But my criticism most certainly isn't restricted to the ideas of specific people, it also applies to certain ideas that are generally held by certain libertarians, wether they are under the influence of these thinkers or not.

There are quite a few areas of contention and controversy internal to the libertarian and anarchist movements that I think are in great need of being clarified or resolved. Such concerns include things such as: the validity of an axoimatic approach to libertarianism, thin vs. thick libertarianism, the idea of alienable rights and voluntary slavery, the legitimacy of corporate status and limited liability, questions about monarchy and democracy, the issue of individually owned cities, the issue of children's rights, questions of immigration restriction and/or border enforcement, the degree to which violence is justified or unjustified in the context of property theory, neo-lockean property rights vs. proudhonian or usufrunct property rights, methods of privatization, self-ownership as a dualism vs. a monist approach, the validity and practicality of participating in political processes, the relationship (if any) between libertarianism and conservatism and the general concern of vulgar libertarianism and vulgar collectivism.

To be sure, a lot of my criticism is generally conductive toward a fairly thick left-libertarian perspective. But it's also conductive toward a tempered or contextual anarchism without adjectives, and my criticism is not restricted to the libertarian right. In particular, I have just as much criticism for guys like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn for somewhat different reasons. In either case, I certainly have a lot of ground to cover and am not entirely sure where to start. I'm open to suggestions and minor help from anyone who's willing to contribute.

On The Psychology and Language of Power

The language of contemporary politics, and of politics in general, is fascinating to me. Mainstream politics, particularly in the media, seems to be filled with deceptive and meaningless verbiage. There are a lot of buzzwords meant to spark an emotional reaction in people, and the meaning of certain terms has flip-flopped to almost their polar opposite over the course of the decades and centuries (for example, the term liberalism used to signify a dedication to individual liberty, while in contemporary politics it is almost completely detached from its original meaning, and simply means someone associated with the Democratic party or someone with a vague set of ideas associated with "the left"). There are also a lot of false dichotomies that try to force us to choose between two irrational positions (liberal/conservative, republican/democrat, capitalist/socialist, and so on).

Political power, particularly in our modern sham democracies, seems to be dependant on such an abuse of language in order to control the ideological atmosphere. Political identity is largely constructed on the basis of preconcieved and ill-defined terms. Political philosophy is not discussed in any significant manner, everything is more or less reduced to a matter of petty identity politics. It's all about appealing to cultural preferances. The appeal to emotion and short-term or more petty personal interests is common. And words that typically have a positive connotation are used to get people to support politicians and win them over to certain specific ideologies. Even a perfectly good word like "freedom" can be used as a weapon to justify tyranny.

George Bush and Dick Cheney are perfect examples of this, with their justification of mass-violence in the name of freedom. I favor freedom, but it doesn't follow that I should favor them and their policies. Barack Obama is another example of this, with his justification for his authority by appealing to "hope" and "change". I have hope and want change, but it doesn't follow that I should favor Obama and his policies. These are perfect examples of the abuse of language as a weapon. I can have totally irrational premises, and bully someone with phrases such as "the truth", "morality", "the good", "the people", "the workers", "personal responsibility", and so on, as my authority to get them to agree or comply with me.

Consequentially, modern politics seems to have devolved into a confusing haze of words and signs that don't have much of a context or any significant content to them. Power elites can justify just about anything they want in the name of good-sounding things. And even then, sometimes the assumption that these good-sounding things are so good in the grand scheme of things isn't quite accurate. Appeals to things like national entity and altruism are essentially meaningless to me. So I come to reject even many of the phrases and concepts that are relied on. I reject the implicit assumptions of mainstream politics, and am unfortunately lead into a cynical attitude when I see the masses hooray for such things.

Being somewhat of an adherant of analytical philosophy, clarity is an important thing to me, and it seems like most political language completely undermines clarity. Everything breaks down into vast overgeneralizations and arbitrary categories that noone could possibly fit into as an absolute. Assumptions are made about people's beliefs based on a few terms they use, which ends up being a strawman. For example, if I talk about "free markets", some might assume I'm just some sort of Republican or conservative. I'm actually very hostile to conservatism. Or if I express concerns about corporate power and racism, some might assume I'm some kind of Marxist and politically correct. I'm actually very hostile to Marx. In a sense, mainstream politics has stolen perfectly good words and taken them out of context. In another sense, it has invented new words that we are forced to accept as a way to categorize ourselves. This confusion has to stop. Clarity is called for.

Anarchism: Beyond Good and Evil?

I recently had some thoughts that are along the lines of anarchism being "beyond good and evil". Of course, strictly speaking, I am not an amoralist, I know that Neitzsche was not formally an anarchist and I am not an outright Neitzschean. But there is a sense in which I think anarchism is beyond good and evil, viewed in a certain historical context. My reasoning for this is quite simple: rational anarchism (which is involves atheism) in particular is beyond good and evil in terms of the authority that defines good and evil.

At first, the authority that defined good and evil was "god". But as history progressed, the moral authority of "god" had worn out as the enlightenment occured and the secular age was ushered in. So "god" no longer is the authority of good and evil. But this didn't overcome the problem, as the authority merely shifted to "the state". "The state" became the authority of good and evil. But as classical liberalism radicalized, it came to reject even "the state" as an authority of good and evil. And as thought becomes more individualistic, we progress to the point where "humanity" in the abstract is rejected as the authority of good and evil. Max Stirner was the first thinker to really drive this particular point home, with his analysis of the way in which many early atheists still clung to a Christian concept of morality and merely shifted the authority from "god" to "state" or "humanity". They had merely spiritualized the material, not done away with the spiritual.

Of course, under the guise of "god" and "state", it was always human beings at work the entire time. It was human beings who invented "god", and "the state" is not transcendant of human beings, despite people's tendency to act as if it is. But the point I'm making is that a radically secular and individualistic anarchism transcends good and evil as it has traditionally been defined, since it rejects the three main authorities that usually determines what is good and evil: god, the state and humanity. Does this mean that rational and individualistic anarchism is amoralist? Strictly speaking, it doesn't, but if our standard for morality is constituted by this trinity of authorities, then in a sense the answer to the question is affirmative.

I think there's a sense in which so-called "amoralists" like Neitzsche and Stirner are not really amoralists so much as people who took historical context into account and put foreward an evolutionary theory of sorts about how our concepts of morality have changed over time and where they initially derive from. They clearly predate post-modernism, although they are often cited as influences on it or a point of transition into it. Perhaps it's wise not to take certain words or statements literally, and to realize that they are being used in the context of a historical analysis, and that what's being denied is a transcendental concept of "truth" and "morality". In this sense, I think that their ideas are very conductive towards rational anarchism.

Radical Alienability Scenarios

In response to Brainpolice's recent post on inalienability, I would like to offer the following scenario, which I think will illustrate why Brainpolice's contention that responsibility and rights are not commodifiable is mistaken.

Suppose that at some point in the future, medical technology advances to the point where it devises a medication or medical device that can alter how the brain processes information and functions. In the present world, the brain operates by responding to stimuli in its environment and it sends signals to other parts of the body, commanding them to perform certain actions in response to that stimuli. This new medical technology, however, supplants this normal operation brought about by millions of years of human evolution. Instead, the medical device reconfigures the brain such that it obeys on command the verbal recitations of those persons in control of the external device. No longer does the brain process information it receives from stimuli and make a series of choices to send signals to other parts of the body for action. Now, the choices the brain makes, as in what signals to send to the body in response to its environment, are in the control of an outside person or persons.

Entertaining that this scenario is plausible (and it certainly does not seem logically impossible), suppose someone wanted to purchase this medical technology and use it on a consenting adult. This technology, in effect, alienates the person's body from his "will." Conscious, volitional choices are no longer possible once the decision is made to use said device. The reason for the seller selling his control over his body is not important, but imagine it is to save the life of his daughter. The seller's daughter has a deadly disease and the operation to cure it is very expensive, in the range of $1 million. So, the seller decides to contract with Company X that wants to buy all the capitalized value of his rents (wages) at once. The company pays the seller $1 million, and the seller deposits the money in a trust that will use it for his daughter's expensive operation. The seller then submits himself to operation, having the medical device implanted, and becomes a life-long worker for Company X. In essence, the man has become a mindless automaton.

The next scenario is possible at present.

Sarah has suffered for years with a debilitating disease that brings her unimaginable pain. She has tried medication and surgery, but nothing seems to completely eliminate the around-the-clock pain she feels. Sarah decides that life is not worth living anymore under these circumstances and commits suicide.

My point with these two scenarios is that the exact same thing is happening in both of them: the "will" is being separated from the body. In the first scenario, the father is making a conscious, consensual decision to end his control over his body by having the medical device implanted to save his daughter. In the second scenario, Sarah is making a conscious decision to end her control over her body by committing suicide. After all, who would contend that the "will" remains with the body once an individual has died? Both of these decisions are voluntary, and both of them should be allowed in a truly free society. If one is going to argue that alienating rights, control over your body, the will, responsibility, etc., is not permissible in a free market society, then one will have to also argue that suicide is not permissible either.

I should also make a distinction between selling things that are practically impossible and those things that are logically impossible. I can conceivable sell control over my brain functions as a matter of logic. As a matter of practicality, current technology and medical knowledge may not be able to perform it. This is different than trying to sell a square circle. Ownership of such a thing as a square circle is not possible, because square circles cannot logically exist. Thus, no one can sell a square circle.

To the extent that you cannot sell those things which you own, it is to that same extent that you do not own them to begin with.

Inalienability

There recently has been a lot of discussion and debate among libertarians online about self-ownership, rights, responsibility, voluntary slavery and inalienability. I think that this has helped reveal some significant flaws in the way that certain libertarians approach such matters, especially as it relates to Walter Block's ideas. In essence, what the issue boils down to is wether or not rights and responsibilities are alienable or not, or if alienation is possible or consistant with libertarianism. By alienation I do not refer to the Marxist notion of alienation, but the separation of certain things from the self in a more literal sense. As I have said before, a dualistic concept of self-ownership is an incoherant concept because it tries to alienate the mind or will from the body, and this simply cannot be done, hence why Walter Block's notion of "voluntary slavery" is incoherant and contradictary. I have explained in quite a bit of detail why this is in past blog posts.

But the issue apparently is even more far reaching than this. Some people have been taking the viewpoint that rights and responsibilities are actually commodities to be bought and sold on a free market. I think this stems from taking metaphors (such as self-ownership) too literally and not fully understanding what inalienable rights means, which leads some people to take what amounts to ridiculous positions that blatantly violate basic notions of personal responsibility and individual sovereignty. Not only is it impossible to alienate the mind or will from the body, but as a consequence of this, you cannot alienate someone's responsibility as an individual as if it something that can be transfered to someone else through contract. Nor is someone's actual person a commodity to be bought and sold on a free market, as that is precisely what chattel slavery is. If libertarians really want to take such a position, they must realize that the ultimate consequence is the total elimination of any coherant meaning for rights and responsibilities in libertarianism.

One can concievably sign a contract that says that someone else is responsible for their actions, but this contract would not change the actual causal reality of responsibility, which remains in the metaphorical court of the actual people who are human actors in a given scenario. If someone murders someone else, for example, it doesn't matter if they have made a contract that delegates responsibility for their murder to someone else, they are still the murderer. Such a contract is fraudulent with regaurd to their actual behavior. The idea that criminals can be exempted for responsibility for their crimes through contract eliminates a good deal of the meaning of justice. While I myself do place a lot of emphasis on the restitution of victims, I do not accept the notion that the criminal actors in a given scenario can delegate their responsibility for restitution to someone else. This is because you cannot alienate responsibility from someone, as you cannot alienate their will and the causal reality of the scenario is that they are the ones who commited the given act in question.

I think that a lot of this also generally stems for improper concept formation or a lack of understanding of the proper order of concepts. The old saying goes "life, liberty and property", and it is in this order for a good reason. A problem I often run into is that some people appear to act as if property is primary or axoimatic at the expense of life and liberty. But a coherant theory of rights does not place property above life and liberty, property is contextual to respecting the right to life and liberty. Property rights does not grant one a legitimate right to violate someone else's right to life and liberty, and it is a grave error to conceptualize literally everything, such as personhood and responsibility, as a property right. The idea that personhood is a property right to be bought and sold is part of the very basis for slavery of all kinds, and you cannot argue for a notion of "voluntary slavery" without destroying the inalienability of rights. Trying to turn literally everything into a propertarian question is to nonsensically expand the concept of property to absurdity.

While freedom of contract is a vital component of libertarianism, it is does not supercede people's inalienable rights. There is such thing as a fraudulent or criminal contract, and a perpetual contract that is enforced onto someone against their explicit consent into the future or as a 3rd party not directly privy to the contract is fraudulent and the basis for gross rights violations, including the coercive social contract. All contracts must have a way to get out of them, even if there are conditions or consequences for opting out of a contract such as dealing with withstanding debts. A perpetual contract that you cannot possibly get out of regaurdless of your will is a significant part of the very basis for the coercive social contract, and there is a huge differance beween the delegation of the enforcement of rights to a 3rd party and the delegation of the rights themselves. If contracts are a method by which one can legitimately lose all of their rights, then rights essentially lose their meaning as something to consistantly apply to recognize in people.

Wether they realize it or not, those who advocate notions of justice that rely on an alienation of the mind, will, responsibility and rights from the self are undermining the entire basis for individual liberty. The very premises that they are using can be used against the entire libertarian notion of justice and as a way to legitimize political institutions or policies that libertarians normally would oppose. So it turns out that this is actually an extremely important issue to clarify. It is based on some fairly fundamental philosophical misnomers that threaten to undermine the entire libertarian project, despite the good intentions of some proponents of such misnomers. If this issue is not properly clarified, I fear that libertarianism can be used to push for abominable notions of justice that commodifies rights and responsibilities. But rights and responsibilities are not commodities in any rational theory of justice.

LaughingmanOX Pwns Stodles/ConfederalSocialist

Limited Liability and Corporations

I so happened to be reading through old posts on this blog that slipped under my radar when they were initially posted. I came across one by Brainpolice entitled "Limited Liability and the Social Contract." While I understand where Brainpolice is coming from in his approach, I disagree with the overall claim of his article.

Instead of focusing on the article itself, I'd rather elaborate on the reasons that I think notions such as limiting liability are not in conflict with market anarchist philosophy.

It is claimed that limiting liability via a contractual arrangement suffers from the same problem as the social contract. Intellectuals like Lysander Spooner long ago swept the idea of a social contract into the dustbin of history. Spooner and others posited, quite rightly, that no one can bind a man to a contract in which he is not a party. Brainpolice alleges that limiting liability in corporations does the exact same thing that causes the social contract to fail: it attempts to bind third parties.

I dispute this claim. I do not agree that limited liability and the social contract are similar concepts which suffer from the same flaw. To the contrary, limiting liability is a product of free association and alienability in the free market.

My claim is that individuals can contract individually or form an entity to transfer responsibility for their actions, even their crimes. I base this on the idea that one can delegate his rights to another, i.e. he can alienate his rights. That is, a person can contract or sell away his legal responsibility to another in the same way that one can transfer any other kind of legitimately owned property. For instance, John buys the legal responsibility of Sam, so that when Sam goes out and commits a crime, like theft, the victim's right to restitution would not be viable against Sam, since John owns the legal responsibility of Sam. The victim's right to restitution would be directed against John, the rightful owner of Sam's legal responsibility.

It may be objected that the victim clearly has a right to have his restitution come directly from Sam. But does said victim? No. Restitution from Sam is no different than restitution from John in and of itself. To elaborate, if Sam is truly the owner of his legal responsibility, he can contract (or sell or alienate) it away. To the extent that Sam cannot alienate his legal responsibility, it is to that same extent that he does not truly own his own legal responsibility in the first place. If one does not truly own his legal responsibility such that he cannot alienate it, how can it be seriously maintained that restitution should be rightly directed against him for any of his crimes in the first place?

It is on this basis that the contrast between the social contract and the limited liability of corporations becomes evident. The social contract, from the outset, does not contract legal responsibility away from those that fall under a particular government, for the vital ingredient of consent is lacking. On the other hand, limited liability is a concept in which those that agree to it fully consent at the outset. This agreement does not bind third parties like the social contract, since it merely transfers a commodity from one person to another; it no more binds third parties than the fact that Yamaha purchases the tires for its motorcycles from Dunlop. Yamaha, in this market exchange, hardly "binds" consumers of its products in any meaningful sense. The rights of third parties remain completely intact. With one, the social contract, it imposes without consent a certain type of legal order; with the other, limited liability, it simply transfers a commodity, with no impact on the rights of third parties.

It is another matter to consider whether such an arrangement in a free market is a smart or good idea. It is also another matter whether or not such an arrangement under a government is legitimate, since the state's law is not consented to, and it does, in fact, change the legal rights of those seeking redress against a corporation. My point is to claim that limited liability of persons under a business contract merely transfers owned commodities and that this is compatible with market anarchy.