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Epicurus, the problem is not that the USA post office is good or bad in doing what they do, the problem is that A) they are a forced monopolist, made such through coercion B) since no one else can do what they do we can not know if someone can be better than them or not there could exist two arguments for preferring them to be the only one to do what
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Trilub, thank you for the reply. First of all I need to make a very important note, and that is the following: what people are doing when discussing whether there do exist or don't property rights, or more generally when they discuss who should do what or not do it , they are making fundamental propositions about the way two or more people interact
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I do not think I can correctly understand what the author of the theme means with "war=socialism". socialism is a state of affairs where the State owns all the means of production. there is an aggregation of the productive relationships that brings about a social economic structure of society - which means that there is no private property
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that is why I suppose you should not use the word "interest" because both scarce and non-scarce goods can be of interest to me. and if you nevertheless use it , depending on the circumstances, for examples air, can be scarce or non-scarce and in both scenarios of interest to me. if I am underwater it is scarce and I am very much interested
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Smiling Dave, thank you for the kind reply. I will try to respond you. First of all, when I wrote that Schiff telling what America should do I referred to the quote, let me peraphase : "we should produce more stuff". this saying clearly impies that by "We", since he is American he means American people, and by stuff he means stuff
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i hope that two consequent posts are not counted as spam i think that what I suggest in my first post is what Rothard have written here : http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/six.asp
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where Crusoe lives - on a desert island, where he is the only human individual present, no concept of property rights emerges. in order for such to emerge there needs to be rivalry for scarce goods. it is true that goods on the island are scarce - his body and the standing place that it occupies, he also can not have a net and two pairs of shoes at
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what the user laminustacitus said is correct. economics as a value-free science does not make policy recommendations. the moment in which an economist makes a recommendation he is no longer value-free but he has introduced ethics in his work. so, austrian economics tells us what really are the phenomena of interpersonal exchange, production and etc
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Schiff telling what AMERICA SHOULD do is first of all an appeal for a collectivist action (i.e. does not exist), and second of all is a proposition for an universally preferable behavior, that is if what is implied (by merely making such a proposition) and explicitly said (that not enough stuff is made - i don't know how much stuff is scientifically
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i think that his thread could help rettoper very much. reading it and the references presented will help him coming to the insight that threads like "rebuting an-cap" are not the smartest thing to do.