austrolibertarianism makes two additional assumptions, that humans act and that humans act purposefully.
those assumptions also require empirical observation whereas occam's razor is a purely metaphysical position.
*facepalm
@alsdj: I don't think you understand the point of Occam's razor. "The position with the fewest axioms must be true" is not what Occam's razor means. It means, given two different explanations of the same evidence, the one with fewer axioms that is still consistent with all the evidence is preferable to the explanation with more axioms. In other words, multiplying entities beyond necessity is poor metaphysics.
Please point out where Austrian methodology "multiplies entities beyond necessity".
Clayton -
alsdjfalsdjfos: So you agree that there's nothing natural about them, they're simply what you'd personally like to be implemented.
So you agree that there's nothing natural about them, they're simply what you'd personally like to be implemented.
I don't agree that there is nothing natural about them. They are by definition natural. They are a product of complex social evolution. No different than the fact that the human genotype and phenotype are products of biological evolution and are "natural".
All social groups have norms and rules that define "legitimate use claims". They aren't "Right" in an absolute sense. They are however natural. But I argue even more strongly that a social group always has them. So we can't be arguing about whether or not there are natural property rights in a social group. The only discussion we can be having is about what you seek from these naturally occuring rights, and what form you think they should take. We know from action, that all men seek their own ends. Thus all men seek to use anything and everything at their disposal as means to accomplish their own ends, including other men.
The negative feedback loop to that selfish primal individual desire, is that other men have the same desires. In social action, we have to account for the responses of other men to our behavior. In that feedback you find the behaviors of negotiation, argumentation, coercion, arbitration, etc. All centered around finding away to (cooperatively or aggressively) get the thing you want in spite of the resistance of other men.
Out of this social interaction (a dynamical system) if communication occurs at all, then shared knowledge emerges that embodies the norms and rules we adopt in our social circles. Scarcity, as I've often repeated, is the driver for adoption of property rights. In the end the form of the norms and laws provide feedback in how they alter the costs of certain behaviors. Coercion because of it's win-lose nature will usually end up being more costly to the group socially than win-win negotiation, exchange, argumentation, arbitration. That's a natural explanation for why human society tends toward what you define as Natural Property Rights.
I never claimed that this was what I wanted. But, in fact since I am a man and I do want things, it seem that what I actually want is the end result of a system of Natural Property Rights. Praxeology explains brilliantly and accurately the side effects on a social group of the rules we call Natural Property Rights. Those consequences are what I want. Show me a different system that achieves the technological and economic advancement of men at an extremely high rate of improvement, and I'll consider it as a viable alternative.
But in the context of this discussion, why not confine the discussion to the necessary consequences of original appropriation, voluntary exchange, restitution for coercive transfer of ownership or illegitimate use of property. You can't win on utilitarian grounds. You can't present a sound case for unfairness without presenting a standard of fairness. If you make the argument that people end up poor. I'll respond, that's uneven but dynamic distribution of wealth is the rule not the exception. No part of reality EVER demonstrates even and equal distribution of anything, matter, energy, etc. Interfering with the natural forces to alter the distribution of property must necessarily produce the violation of another, perhaps better, standard of fairness, equality before the law. It's the same standard that all matter and energy in the universe have applied to them. No atom get's different special rules. They all must be under the laws of physics. An egalitarian standard of wealth distribution, must necessarily fail in achieving its result, and in will destroy the accumulated wealth and technology of civilization.
So, what exactly are your arguments? Do you have a proposed alternate system of rights? Do you have a standard by which you evaluate the norms and laws themselves? Do you have a science that informs you about the necessary outcome of any system of rights? Do you have a standard that you apply in evaluating the necessary outcome of a specific system of rights?
Aren't these the necessary tools for having this discussion at all? I have the scientific tool for understanding the consequences of specific norms in human society; it's praxeology. But my standards for evaluating a system of rights internally, or it's outcome in the real world when implemented are my own. I can share what they are, but you have to find your own.
*facepalm @alsdj: I don't think you understand the point of Occam's razor. "The position with the fewest axioms must be true" is not what Occam's razor means. It means, given two different explanations of the same evidence, the one with fewer axioms that is still consistent with all the evidence is preferable to the explanation with more axioms. In other words, multiplying entities beyond necessity is poor metaphysics. Please point out where Austrian methodology "multiplies entities beyond necessity". Clayton -
i already did. it makes at least one more pointless axiom than everyone else.
>Isn't that a circular dependency? >In other words, if your idea relies on Occam's razor, in addition to other assumptions, then it is no longer the simpler idea.
it isn't an assumption, it's a good principle, in the same way not sticking your hand into a fire is a good principal (exceptions might exist, like having a fireproof glove on, but the principle is good generally). since humans acting is empirically provable (as clayton said, "trying to make the case that human beings do not act purposefully is a rather tall order"), my worldview is more robust than yours for rejecting it as an assumption and instead testing it. those tests might have unpleasant consequences for austro-libertarians, however, so they reject them (even to the point of dismissing pavlov's research as bolshevik propaganda)
>They are by definition natural. They are a product of complex social evolution
so is government
>All social groups have norms and rules that define "legitimate use claims". They aren't "Right" in an absolute sense. They are however natural.
then slavery can be "natural". to hell with your naturalness, give me liberty. thank god for leviathan protecting me from people like you.
alsdjfalsdjfos: >They are by definition natural. They are a product of complex social evolution so is government
Yep, wrote about it several times. Doesn't make it the only or best solution to the scarcity issue in social groups. Just makes it "a solution".
>All social groups have norms and rules that define "legitimate use claims". They aren't "Right" in an absolute sense. They are however natural. then slavery can be "natural". to hell with your naturalness, give me liberty. thank god for leviathan protecting me from people like you.
Slavery is a social institution, one that's been discarded for very reason's I think are good. It did occur naturally, and it went away naturally. Since when did naturally mean it was something good? Good requires a subjective point of view. Tsunami's are natural, earthquakes and avalanches are natural.
"To hell with your naturalness." I never claimed naturally occuring solutions are the "right" ones, only naturally occuring.
"give me liberty." You already have it metaphysically and epistemologically. You can't have liberty socially. There are in fact things you can't do in social society. The question is what are they. That's a system of rights.
"Thank god for leviathan protecting me from people like you." - Why what is it I hope to do to you? I'm serious. What evil thing is it that you think I want from you? What thing you want in your life is it that I wish to prevent you from doing?
I'd simply encourage you to continue to ask of yourself two things. What do I want? How do I get it? At some point in your development as a child, you stop simply acting out those questions from biological and instinctive imperatives, and you begin to engage those questions in a more and more conscious way. I already know you're asking yourself those questions. We all are. In fact, from any person's actions we can intuit answers to those two questions.
What liberty are you going to lose if Praxeology is right?
Let me give you another interesting point of view on empiricism.
Empiricism is the concept of testing the veracity or correctness of a theorem by referring to experience. But let me give you a few points about that statement.
All of these questions are not metaphysical questions, they are epistemological questions. They require a point of view, a conscious mind, they cannot exist without them. The chimerical view in the church of Empiricism is that somehow we are learning something about reality apart from man. But the introduction of man as observer, thinkier, and interpreter of reality means that you must understand the nature of the tool you are using.
The human mind is praxeological. Every man can validate it by experience. Knowledge is a tool conditioned by the imperative to act. It is a tool that makes the action of man more effective, but a desire to act precedes the construction of knowledge. The categories of action are necessarily more primal than the categories of knowledge. Empiricism is a category relating to the formation and validation and application of knoweldge.
Human action is a priori, not because it can't be verified or understood from experience. But because the very concepts of verifying, understanding, and experience can only arise from a man who acts. Human Action is the conscious application of the mind to a world that changes, but a world that changes in ways which are chaotic, not random. The non-random nature of the chaos is what we refer to when we think of categories, knowledge, and rules. One cannot describe or understand what a world would look like in which there was no change, or in a world in which the changes that happen are in fact random.
So, again, I'll give you your tool of empiricism, and empiricism can in fact show that there is knowledge, action, choice. What you can't do is "prove" that man doesn't act, doesn't form knowledge, doesn't experience time. You cannot discard the very categories that precede even attempting to know anything.
That's the a priori nature of human action, of praxeology. All human knowledge is preceded and conditioned by these categories. There's nothing to argue with you about. In some ways, I think the mental combat, like another argument I've had about time preference, is not because you don't see the categories, but because they are so basic and fundamental to how you view the world, that you don't even realize they are part of the way you view the world, and therefore can't see the effects or necessary conclusions one must draw from the fact that these categories are present. Kind of like anthropomorphism in ancient spiritual traditions. Like a geocentric universe.
>Slavery is a social institution, one that's been discarded for very reason's I think are good. It did occur naturally, and it went away naturally. Since when did naturally mean it was something good? Good requires a subjective point of view. Tsunami's are natural, earthquakes and avalanches are natural. >I never claimed naturally occuring solutions are the "right" ones, only naturally occuring. per your world view, everything is naturally occurring so the term as your cult uses it is completely redundant (there being no difference between "natural law"/"rights" and their "statist" equivalents - you admit governments to be natural too), its only function in the austro-libertarian dogma being to manipulate emotions and garner support. > You already have it metaphysically and epistemologically. i don't exist metaphysically or epistemologically, i am not an abstract concept, i don't and i can't have liberty or any properties at all outside the real world. >What evil thing is it that you think I want from you? >What liberty are you going to lose if Praxeology is right? the doctrine you espouse will never be implemented. it serves only to justify the capricious whims of actually existing capitalism. your ideology is nothing but an exercise in vulgar liberal apologetics. the more support your cult accrues, the more powerful the forces you claim to oppose will become. every bow-tie wearing gold-bug clamouring for lower taxes means another dozen south african miners shot by capitalist thugs. >a world that changes in ways which are chaotic, not random what training do you have in physics to make this pronouncement? the world isn't deterministic at a quantum level, the double slit experiment proves this. evidently human minds can comprehend a random as well as chaotic universe > "prove" that man doesn't act, doesn't form knowledge, doesn't experience time i hold the second as an assumption (as everyone does) and the other two i have no interest in trying to disprove, i accept them based on empiricism whereas you hold the other two as assumptions/following from an assumption as well, which makes your world view less robust than mine. everything following from an axiom is tautologous as you know, and a tautology alone has no predictive capability (and hence no real world applicability) without a second, empirically acquired, statement. in fact the nature of time (and hence man's experience of it) is an active topic of research and pretending you can know it a priori is another demonstration of the lack of robustness of your world view.
>Slavery is a social institution, one that's been discarded for very reason's I think are good. It did occur naturally, and it went away naturally. Since when did naturally mean it was something good? Good requires a subjective point of view. Tsunami's are natural, earthquakes and avalanches are natural. >I never claimed naturally occuring solutions are the "right" ones, only naturally occuring.
> You already have it metaphysically and epistemologically.
>What evil thing is it that you think I want from you? >What liberty are you going to lose if Praxeology is right?
>a world that changes in ways which are chaotic, not random
> "prove" that man doesn't act, doesn't form knowledge, doesn't experience time
alsdjfalsdjfos: per your world view, everything is naturally occurring
so the term as your cult ...
... uses it is completely redundant (there being no difference between "natural law"/"rights" and their "statist" equivalents - you admit governments to be natural too), ...
... its only function in the austro-libertarian dogma being to manipulate emotions and garner support.
i don't exist metaphysically or epistemologically, i am not an abstract concept, i don't and i can't have liberty or any properties at all outside the real world.
>What evil thing is it that you think I want from you? >What liberty are you going to lose if Praxeology is right? the doctrine you espouse will never be implemented.
it serves only to justify the capricious whims of actually existing capitalism. your ideology is nothing but an exercise in vulgar liberal apologetics.
the more support your cult accrues, the more powerful the forces you claim to oppose will become.
every bow-tie wearing gold-bug clamouring for lower taxes means another dozen south african miners shot by capitalist thugs.
>a world that changes in ways which are chaotic, not random what training do you have in physics to make this pronouncement? the world isn't deterministic at a quantum level, the double slit experiment proves this.
> "prove" that man doesn't act, doesn't form knowledge, doesn't experience time i hold the second as an assumption (as everyone does) and the other two i have no interest in trying to disprove, i accept them based on empiricism whereas you hold the other two as assumptions/following from an assumption as well, which makes your world view less robust than mine.
everything following from an axiom is tautologous as you know, and a tautology alone has no predictive capability (and hence no real world applicability) without a second, empirically acquired, statement.
in fact the nature of time (and hence man's experience of it) is an active topic of research and pretending you can know it a priori is another demonstration of the lack of robustness of your world view.
OP kindly demonstrates a forum truth for us. He shows us you can get around forum rules to employ namecalling as petty and obnoxious as you like without reprecussions as long as you put the insults in question form. It's quite handy. For example I can say 'Is alsdjfalsdjfos a retarded child?' or 'Does alsdjfalsdjfos have sex with mutant donkeys?', or 'Does alsdjfalsdjfos's mom have sex with mutant donkeys?' or for that matter 'Is alsdjfalsdjfos a sexually-molested and retarded offspring of a mutant donkey and his mom?' I can say all of that without a reaction from the mods happen since I'm not making the claim, I'm merely asking and voicing my suspicion, in fact the belief, that is the case.
>True, including government. What's your worldview? This feels more like an exercise (for you) in rhetoric.
don't change the subject please
>I'm me, not someone else. This is my understanding of the world. So, if you want to compare my understanding of the world with yours do so, but don't tie me to someone else. Don't tie them to me.
you lifted your understanding from a rothbard textbook
>I've never said they didn't occur naturally.
referring to one set of arbitrary rights and laws as "natural" and not applying the same term to another set is misleading (purposefully, as you admit)
>Anyone who holds knowledge they think has value will try to "garner support."
not clayton:
>The action axiom isn't something that Austrians are interested in persuading people to agree to
the term natural as applied to one set of arbitrary rights and laws but not to another is purposefully misleading. in your usage, as it applies to the entire sample space it is meaningless, whereas in common usage it refers to a subset of the sample space.
>The distinguishing feature of dogma, is that it is authoritative. The laws of nature are also authoritative aren't they? Does this mean that any system of knowledge or theory is dogma? Are physicists, pushing the physicists dogma? If you think so, you and I are stuck even having a conversation. Everything said by either of us must therefore be dogma, there is no truth. What you then are railing at isn't me, but that your experience in the reality you inhabit is one which violently and capriciously oppresses you.
the other key feature is belief. austro-libertarianism is founded upon an assumption, the action axiom, which will never change whereas true science is founded on empiricism. physicists do not preach dogma, as their teachings can be altered with the scientific method. our understanding of the laws of nature constantly changes, as too does our understanding of human nature, whereas austro-libertarianism is content to posit human nature and construct a model that may or may not have anything to do with reality.
>I don't know how you exist. But in order to interact with you I must hold a concept of you in my mind.
your concept isn't me. if your concept has "liberty", that has no bearing on whether i have liberty. i exist in the real world.
>Praxeology is not a plan to be implemented.
yes it is. it posits humans as having a certain nature. as clayton said:
> Hence, we can say things like "if you are a human being, then you ought to _______"
the final goal for rothbardians being anarcho-capitalism, which cannot exist (not for any a priori reason, but for mundane reasons like information asymmetry, power differentials, the finite nature of time and space and externalisation of costs and benefits). since anarcho-capitalism cannot exist, its supporters will have to "settle" for a night watchman state in the palms of oligarchs. all pushes towards anarcho-capitalism will benefit the oligarchs. the democratic and republican parties understand this, hence their desire to co-opt ostensibly libertarian projects like the tea party movement. "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." ~ grover norquist, author of the taxpayer protection pledge which 95% of republican representatives have signed
>Wait, it justifies something? So you think it provides good arguments for capitalism? That's not the fault of praxeology.
praxeology did not spring out of the nether fully formed, it was designed in the minds of men who wished to justify capitalism during a time of great social upheaval. why did hayek and mises address socialism and communism in so many books? why is your forum so obsessed with marxism? the purpose of praxeology and other utopian right-libertarian ideologies is to justify the status quo, even as they denounce it as horribly tainted by statists and marxists and what have you.
>Define vulgar here? I'm not sure how it's vulgar. I've never seen any "bad words" in either the exposition of or application of the axioms of Praxeology.
vulgar in that it seeks to address and understand only the surface of capitalism (divining "the finally achieved correct understanding of actual conditions subsisting always and everywhere") rather than the underlying social relations which have caused so many changes to human societies (and in turn, through socialisation, "human nature")
>Government is the tool of private interests. It's the source of legitimization of criminal behavior. There is no other way to "make it ok" to rob, kill, rape. Look back at the history of business and government. You'll find that it's a history of mercantilism, not capitalism.
a "truly" free market has never, will never and can never exist. please, do opine about nasty statists subverting True Human Nature and denying us our garden of eden. no doubt the role of the tree of life is played by the gold standard and the tree of knowledge by fiat money, but who plays the snake? hammurabi?
> I don't see the causal link between someone wanting lower taxes, a return to the gold standard, or wearing a bowtie and someone else in Africa shooting a miner.
more's the pity
>All of geometry, mathematics, and logic, are products of man's interpretation of reality. Products of the mind. My job is not to justify or defend their use. Your job is to deny their usefulness because they don't in fact give us knowledge that we can apply to reality.
there is "having no predictive capability without outside inputs" and there is "not useful". they aren't the same thing. praxeology isn't useful because it tries to take the place of models in various fields like economics, sociology, political science (and even quantum physics if i'm to believe the above derail) without allowing itself to be improved through testing. given that what we know about human nature is constantly changing, it's risible to think we can build predictions in so many spheres of knowledge on an almost century old piece of anti-communist propaganda. indeed austrian economists have had a laughable track record in predicting crises, with the austrian poster boy of the 2007 crisis, schiff, originally saying we'd have weimar levels of inflation by now
>It seems to allow me to argue more robustly than you.
my world view can be tested more comprehensively than yours. you would be forced to deny the validity of evidence that contradicts your axiom, i could simply change my models to accommodate the evidence
>True, including government. What's your worldview? This feels more like an exercise (for you) in rhetoric. don't change the subject please ... my world view can be tested more comprehensively than yours.
in your usage, as it applies to the entire sample space it is meaningless, whereas in common usage it refers to a subset of the sample space.
David B : The distinguishing feature of dogma, is that it is authoritative. The laws of nature are also authoritative aren't they? Does this mean that any system of knowledge or theory is dogma? Are physicists, pushing the physicists dogma? If you think so, you and I are stuck even having a conversation. Everything said by either of us must therefore be dogma, there is no truth. What you then are railing at isn't me, but that your experience in the reality you inhabit is one which violently and capriciously oppresses you. the other key feature is belief. austro-libertarianism is founded upon an assumption, the action axiom, which will never change whereas true science is founded on empiricism. physicists do not preach dogma, as their teachings can be altered with the scientific method. our understanding of the laws of nature constantly changes, as too does our understanding of human nature, whereas austro-libertarianism is content to posit human nature and construct a model that may or may not have anything to do with reality.
>Praxeology is not a plan to be implemented. yes it is. it posits humans as having a certain nature. as clayton said:
the final goal for rothbardians being anarcho-capitalism, which cannot exist (not for any a priori reason, but for mundane reasons like information asymmetry, power differentials, the finite nature of time and space and externalisation of costs and benefits). since anarcho-capitalism cannot exist, its supporters will have to "settle" for a night watchman state in the palms of oligarchs. all pushes towards anarcho-capitalism will benefit the oligarchs. the democratic and republican parties understand this, hence their desire to co-opt ostensibly libertarian projects like the tea party movement.
Natural law is nothing but a myth invented by the Austrian "economists" in order to a priori legitimate (sic!) their envisaged property regime, their dystopia of racist neo-feudalism, their totalitarian anarcho-capitalism, the absolute rule of capital over wage laborers. Their ideology goes under some more appropriate names like Apriorism or Propertarianism. Its main dogma is: Anything I say is "axiomatically" true because I, the Austrian moron, say so. To protect my ignorance I reject evidence and falsification.
In fact, there is now law without a lawmaker (i.e. state) and a law enforcer (i.e. state). The Austrians seem to be captivated by an extreme legalistic world view. They tend to dissect everything into legal and illegal. They are possessed by a fetishistic belief in a mythical origin and universal validity of "the property law". Like children in kindergarten, having grasped the concept of rules of the game and the power of controlling the rules, they try to establish an arbitrary rule and manipulate it such that they are its beneficiaries. In the case of the Austrians the arbitrary rule is universal property and their goal is to manipulate it such that the Austrians are its beneficiaries, that they alone are the proprietors of the world with the rest of mankind as their slaves. To disguise their agenda they have adopted the term "libertarianism" from the left and talk about "liberty". What they mean is the liberty for themselves to kill and enslave anybody as they please.
Take for example this Hoppe sociopath, racist, and wannabe mass murderer. He tries to establish property as a precondition for debate. So, according to him, any Marxist who engages in a debate with an Austrian Übermensch, enlightened by the eternal knowledge of the Mises, Rothbard, and Rand gods, must accept that property exists. This, of course, is utter nonsense, a fabrication of Hoppe's sick, psychopathic mind. There is no such thing as property or self-ownership of one's own body by nature. You don't have to be a proprietor of your body to debate. You only need to use and control some body parts to debate. We don't have to own the air we breathe while debating in order to debate. We don't have to own the internet to debate over the internet. We don't have to own the space we live in to debate. If it was the case that one had to own everything one uses, this would be a perfect argument against the private property of the means of production.
You don't have to be a proprietor of your body to debate. You only need to use and control some body parts to debate.
I'm trying to figure out if there's a socialist version of the Postmodernism Generator. I swear LM is using one. I think he punched in some different names, but it seems to be the same thing. The structure of an argument without any substance or meaning behind it.
The bottom line is the Marxist will always assume that a person who appears to be supporting capitalism is inherently supporting economic disparity and hegemonic relations. That they are providing an apology and support for the "exploitation" and economic oppression of people who work for wages.
The argument we keep coming back with is a simple one. It's not a desire to create those situations. We keep telling you why and how the world works such that those situations arise. We tell you what will necessarily happen if you make certain changes.
If you come and tell me you want to fly and you have a plan for wings made of bird feathers. I pull out physics and aerodynamics and I say, ok, let's look at the design. How will it work?
If I come back with, "Wait it doesn't work!" It's not because of a desire to oppress mankind, who yearns to fly freely, with his own two arms. It's because the science that we know says it can't work. If you think it will work, show me where my application of the science is wrong, or build a prototype and demonstrate that something about science must be wrong because it does work.
An industrial economy can't work without savings and investment. Can't. The only way one can conceive of making this happen in some communal society requires a social singleness of thought and conformity that isn't in mankinds nature. We are autonomous individual beings. We are greedy and self-inerested. We are not peaceful, we are fearful and angry at our core in the face of uncertainty or threat. We are not the Borg. On small scales, in families perhaps, some amount of "communal" accumulation of wealth and "public ownership" within the group are in fact possible. But they require at minimum some type of hegemony within the group's interpersonal relationships. "The manager", "The parents", "The chief", "The council", etc. As soon as you introduce this hegemonic interaction, you recreate all of the "problems" of every society at every time and in every place.
If we can't eliminate hegemony, because it's not a real possibility in reality, what CAN we do in accordance with the laws of social science to counterbalance the inherent inequity of a hegemonic relationship?
Secession. To disconnect from the relationship. Whether it's quitting a job. Emancipating oneself from one's parents. Disowning and firing are also effective. Excommunication or switching denominations. etc. etc.
It's the only tool that fits in accordance with the Praxeology. So again, if you ask me what we can do? Push secession as a concept in all it's forms.
Support any effort by any social group to emancipate itself from a hegemonic bond.
you've accepted most of my criticism so i dont see the need to respond
alsdjfalsdjfos: you've accepted most of my criticism so i dont see the need to respond
Cmon, don't run away now...
I haven't accepted your criticism, I've showed you that you have a naive view of Libertarians, Austrians, Economics, and Natural Property Rights.
Your "criticisms" were straw men about the viewpoints of the community, not the parrots who run around lambasting people, but the people actually thinking reasonably about these issues.
I too can run to a neo-con board, or a liberal board, or a socialist board or a <insert socio-political view here> board bring a caricature of the position held by members of that board and attack it. But a more impressive interaction would be one like the one of @Fool on the Hill. He asks the questions at a deep and probitive level. He interacts with the ideas themselves.
To use your words, I'm not the concept you have in your head of an anarcho-capitalist.
Oddly, at the heart of most socialists, is this deep anger about injustice in the world which occurs due to the hegemonic nature of so many realitionships. In particular the poorer and politically marginalized. It's a real issue, I dont think libertarians do enough to point out that we're as outraged. That the same motivations drive us.
If we thought welfare made poor people better off without devastating the economic conditions around them and destroying the wealth that prevents everyone else from being as poor or poorer, we'd argue for welfare in all of its forms. But it can't, and we can demonstrate it.
Capital investment is what improves everyone's lives, the poor among us benefit from cheaper roads, cheaper health care, cheaper cell phones, cheaper energy, cheaper food, cheaper homes, cheaper vacations, cheaper entertainment, cheaper transportation. Not lower quality, less expensive.
@Malachi
So you think using and controlling something amounts to having something as property? I showed that this is not true. I can show it again: A user of a public road does not own it. As somebody who breathes air I don't own it. However, the capitalists who pollute it obviously own it. A tenant does not own her apartment, her landlord does. A homeowner possibly is not the proprietor of her home, probably her bank is.
Property is the violent exclusion of everybody except the proprietor from use. I don't see how this relates to using your body to debate. It is a relation of using something. No property is involved.
This debate about Hoppe's debating theory is settled, anyway. You can find some additional arguments in this article.
So you think using and controlling something amounts to having something as property?
Malachi: I'm not going to debate semantics with a marxist, lol. Property is a social relation. If you refuse to have meaningful and productive social relationships, then who cares about your opinions on how meaningful social relationships dont exist
I'm not going to debate semantics with a marxist, lol. Property is a social relation. If you refuse to have meaningful and productive social relationships, then who cares about your opinions on how meaningful social relationships dont exist
QFT.
@als: "i already did. it makes at least one more pointless axiom than everyone else."
This is just dodging the question. Even if Austrian social science "makes ... one more ... axiom than everyone else" [sic], that doesn't make it false. Again, Occam's Razor is not about seiving true from false theories on the silly idea that "the theory with the least assumptions must be true" but, rather, it is about selecting between two theories both of which explain the facts.
Natural law is ... a myth invented by the Austrian "economists"
How ridiculous. Natural law dates back to the medieval Scholastics. The Austrian school arose during the 19th century. You need to work on your timeline.
They need to attack and discredit the concept of natural rights because it is the basis of libertarianism, and libertarianism is its natural consequence.
Ultimately, to deny natural rights is silly. Like all physical things, man has a nature he cannot escape. Rights derived from this nature are the only rational basis of deriving rights.
Ironically, the idea of man having a nature was attacked in the past as being somehow a religious concept. It is anything but.