Life and self-ownership

Mark Humphrey “I don’t want to precipitate trench warfare with devoted Rothbardians, but I strongly suspect that Rothbard owed his insight about “life as the standard of moral value” to Ayn Rand. I can’t prove this, of course. Sadly, in “The Ethics of Liberty”, (published in the early Eighties) Rothbard chose to, in a sense, blacklist Rand by claiming that NO ONE, other than himself, in the libertarian movement was working to develope a system of rationally defensible ethics. (Maybe Rothbard meant “at the moment I am writing this statement”.)”

Björn That life is an axiomatic value and functions “as the standard of moral value” in an ethical system, Rothbard could, alternatively for example, have gotten this insight from Mises himself through analyzing his statement in his book, “Human Action”, page 11:

“We may say that action is the manifestation of a man’s will.”

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec1.asp

I am not saying that Rothbard did get his insight from Mises; I am only saying that it was possible. Surely, many other possibilities exist which we do not know anything about.

Mark Humphrey “It has been awhile since I’ve read Hoppe, and Rothbard; but I suspect Hoppe’s reasoning goes: either we all own ourselves, or everyone owns everyone else. Since the first proposition is clearly more defensible than the latter absurd proposition, one can affirm self ownership as valid. But if this is the argument, it fails. For that argument assumes that which it sets out to prove, namely that an ethical concept, “ownership”, exists. But on this basis, ownership remains unproven, so that one could just as well assert: “no one owns anything, and anything goes.””

Björn Self-ownership is a natural fact, since a man in his very nature controls his own mind and body (natural disposition), that is, he is a natural self-owner of his own will and person (having a free will) and if this was not true, neither could he effectively control any property and, therefore, not own it. In other words; “nothing could control and own something”.

Naturally, praxeology the science of human action, by itself logically confirms the natural fact of self-ownership, since praxeology is based upon “the acting man consciously intending to improve his own satisfaction” and I quote from answers.com:

“From praxeology Mises derived the idea that every conscious action is intended to improve a person’s satisfaction. He was careful to stress that praxeology is not concerned with the individual’s definition of end satisfaction, just the way he sought that satisfaction. The way in which a person will increase his satisfaction is by removing a source of dissatisfaction. As the future is uncertain so every action is speculative.

An acting man is defined as one capable of logical thought — to be otherwise would be to make one a mere creature who simply reacts to stimuli by instinct. Similarly an acting man must have a source of dissatisfaction which he believes capable of removing, otherwise he cannot act.
Another conclusion that Mises reached was that decisions are made on an ordinal basis. That is, it is impossible to carry out more than one action at once, the conscious mind being only capable of one decision at a time — even if those decisions can be made in rapid order. Thus man will act to remove the most pressing source of dissatisfaction first and then move to the next most pressing source of dissatisfaction.

As a person satisfies his first most important goal and after that his second most important goal then his second most important goal is always less important than his first most important goal. Thus, for every further goal reached, his satisfaction, or utility, is lessened from the preceding goal. This is the rule of diminishing marginal utility.

In human society many actions will be trading activities where one person regards a possession of another person as more desirable than one of his own possessions, and the other person has a similar higher regard for his colleague’s possession than he does for his own. This subject of praxeology is known as catallactics, and is the more commonly accepted realm of economics.”

http://www.answers.com/Praxeology?gwp=11&ver=2.0.1.458&method=3

Further:

The Ethics of Liberty, page 45:

Footnote:

“[1]Professor George Mavrodes, of the department of philosophy of the University of Michigan, objects that there is another logical alternative: namely, “that no one owns anybody, either himself or anyone else, nor any share of anybody.” However, since ownership signifies range of control, this would mean that no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish.”

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eight.asp

Or in my own words:

Why must anybody own anything?

In accordance with our objective test to find out if something is a condition for something else, we grasp a state of things where the following principle is none existent anywhere and at all:

“The existence of property rights”:

In a world without any property rights nobody would be able to do anything, since nobody has the right to control anything. Not even themselves (see below about property rights in your own person).

This question is not only a contradiction it is also silly. You ask a question which means that you control yourselves (natural disposition), that is owning yourself (see below the excellent writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe). The other contradiction is that if nobody would own anything, nobody would be able to hinder anyone to own anything either since they would otherwise have an invalid control (having the disposition to) of everyone else, that is having an invalid ownership to everybody else (see below about valid property rights in your own person).

Ownership itself is, therefore, an objective condition for the preservation of human life.

Please read some of Hans-Hermann Hoppe´s excellent writing from the book “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property”:

http://mises.org/etexts/hoppe5.pdf

And to:

ON THE ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION OF THE ETHICS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY:

http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-10.pdf

Björn Lundahl

Do not forget that “wanting the humanity wiped out” is not an axiomatic value as only a few people wants that. The premise, in other words, is subjective.

Further:

As it is true that some people wants the human race to perish and some people might also want to have the moon served for breakfast, but there is always a limit, and our dimension cannot please everyone every time. If they want to live on this planet, they will have to play by its rules that preserve its existence and as they go on living they certainly have chosen life and its conditions.

“Similarity of ethical views held by a large group of people is just a sign of intersubjectivity of those views, not necessarily about objective existence of those views.”

That might be so, but it is not the “views” of the many that by itself justifies anything. “The many” can also do a lot of bad things. For example, large groups of people murdered the Jews in Germany and caused the great depression in the U.S.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

This message of relativism is surely also the following:

“Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Pol Pot and all the “criminals” in history, they did not really do anything wrong. I might feel that they did but that is only what I feel. What they felt counts too! Their “bad actions” were not really destructive because they did not undermine mankind and in this objective sense were totally okay.

Criminals all over the world unite! You are a suppressed lot. You have the right to kill, “steal”, rape and to do so called criminal acts. If you blow up the whole world it is objectively and therefore totally okay.”

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

If praxeology tells you that, praxeology is (obviously) wrong. (Of course, it doesn’t actually tell you anything of the sort!)

The problem is he supposed the ends sought by everyone was a whealier, longer and happier life for human beings.

But what if I say that my end is “only equality among human beings”. I don’t care about wealth, happiness, longer life etc.

Then my means of coercion, force etc can not be declared “wrong means” by praxeological analysis.

You are right about praxeology, it does not concern praxeology whether or not coercion is deemed coercion wrong or right. What would concern the praxeologist in regard to coercion is harm to the person adopting it as a course of action. Because once the praxeologist revealed that it is harmful to coerce, those who considered it, would have knowledge they didn’t have before. That new knowledge being, one can never achieve his aspirations by adopting coercion as a course of action.

Regarding your comments about Mises. I am no historian, and do not know what Mises’ personal beliefs were.

As Mises said in Human Action, historians don’t report the facts, they distort them.

Wade

Rothbard apparently couldn’t see how to get from means to ends – how to make praxeology make value judgements – though he hinted at the same solution Hoppe eventually came up with. Hoppe did that.

Praxeology is not intended to “make value judgements”. To clarify, the reason praxeology is the “science of means” is exactly because Mises intended for praxeology to be “value-free”. Once we start trying to use praxeology to determine what “ends” to aim at, it is not praxeology anymore.

The fallacy of including value judgments in social scientific analysis was a focus of great emphasis in many of Mises’ works. If I told you that “You should not adopt coercion because it is wrong because it is harmful in regard to others and their property”, then I would not be using praxeology. However, if I told you that “If you adopt coercion as a course of action, you cannot achieve what you are aspiring to achieve”, and proceed to tell you that you will remain dissatisfied by adopting this method of action, then I would be using praxeological analysis. The reason being that I am only refering to what must be the case for the coercer, not anyone else.

Essentially, Rothbard tells us that coercion is wrong because it is an invasion, aggression, etc. on someone elses “property”. What praxeology can tell us is that the person actually coercing, the coercer, cannot achieve his aspirations, and will never relieve any of his uneasiness, dissatisfaction, etc.

So the difference is readily clear, objective ethics tells us that coercion is wrong because it harms others, while praxeology tells us that if we adopt coercion, we will remain uneasy and dissatisfied, which could be considered harmful to OURSELVES.

More importantly, if the coercer is aspiring to achieve a particular circumstance of reality he believes different than the current one, if this is the case, then praxeology can tell us what must be the case when he adopts coercion as a course of action, however, it will not tell us what the coercer should do after that, praxeology is mute on the subject of aspirations.

But of course what you are really striking at the heart of is constitutionalism — i.e., of being born into a “contract” to which you were not a party and, to the extent that you didn’t like its terms, would have the moral right to break whenever you see fit.

That you, alone, might not fare very well under such circumstances — i.e., you would become an enemy of state — is not the point as the recognition of everyone’s right to break such a “contract” would be sufficient to assure that you wouldn’t be the only one to do so, altering the “constitution” of things accordingly.

“Unless they want to be slaves, of course.”

Yes. Until they no longer want to be slaves as well, of course. And because of the need for it to remain voluntary, the term slave in this context seems contradictory. But I guess it’s no big deal.

Please do not interfere; I was referring to my above essay “Normative principles”.

I will post it again:

“If we grasp a state of things where nobody owns anything, the human race will quickly perish.”

Naturally, this definition of mine includes the government, in other words, when I defined in my above essay “Normative principles” that nobody owns anything, I meant a state of things where no one in society, not even the state owned anything.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

Naturally, this nobody includes the government.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden”

This is not quite so.

“Nobody” is theoritical. Government is not a nobody.

What rothbard is saying there is you can not abolish property. When government owns everything there is still property but no private property.

He presents three possible alternatives.

One is private property, which is universally applicable.

The other no property, which is impossible practically.

And another is slavery, which is not universally applicable hence not defendable.

The case with the government is the alternative of slavery. Total or by a percentage.

Right now everyone is a slave in this world since everyone lives under a state. Percentage differs.

Björn Do you think that it might have persuaded Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and characters like that?

It is a pity that those Islamic suicide bombers (from Al Qaeda) did not read those books that Ayn Rand wrote before hitting the North and South towers.

I thank you for a very persuading comment. It is very sad, though, that Rothbard missed it.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

Naturally, this nobody includes the government.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

Mises and his praxeological analysis of economics had no ethics, value judgements in them. You surely know this.

He started with one question.

“What is your end”.

After he heard it he started his analysis from undeniable axioms, used logic and told you if you can reach that goal with “what means”.

The problem is he supposed the ends sought by everyone was a whealier, longer and happier life for human beings.

But what if I say that my end is “only equality among human beings”. I don’t care about wealth, happiness, longer life etc.

Then my means of coercion, force etc can not be declared “wrong means” by praxeological analysis.

Simply you can start with the same axioms, use the same logic and can say coercion is the only means to achieve those ends.

I will give you a simple logical argument.

Human beings are unequal by inherent reasons. Each human is unique. And you can not equalise humans on the upper level. But using coercion you can equalise them on the lower level. So if you want equality among humans at the end you must use coercion.

> The USSR had virtually none, but people manages
> to survive. The natural law concept of property
> is that it is necessary for man to flourish, not
> that it’s necessary for life.

Heh. People managed to survive precisely because there was a huge, officially illegal but generally tolerated, underground market in food staples, some clothes and services.

I remember pretty well visiting marketplace (similar to “farmer’s markets” in US, though a lot dirtier) to get some food – nearly every day. Everyone went to those marketplaces; it was either paying high prices for the privately produced food staples, or risking malnuorishment.

And there was the whole system of informal trading relationships – the “blat” – of providing each other with favours and access to scarce goods. A large portion of Soviet economy was simple barter. There was a recognized (and highly regarded) profession of “snabzhenets” (“provider”) – specialists in barter exchanges at the idustrial level. It was well understood that without such dealing the industry would simply stop.

There even were entire private manufacturing shops run by entrepreneurs (“tsekhoviki”) – though these were occasionally arrested and prisoned. They did manage to supply significant quantities of clothes and shoes.

The socialism did erode people’s notions of property rights, to the point of nearly universal petty thievery – but generally Soviet people were pilfering government property, not personal belongings.

The market grows in the most unhospitable places – and keeps people fed and engines rolling. Even if it “officially” does not exist.

Rothbard doesn’t claim that at all. I assume you’re referring to this: it cannot be sufficient by itself to enable the economist to make any value pronouncements or to advocate any public policy whatsoever. “It cannot be sufficient by itself” is not the same as “it is impossible to relate”. As you say, ethics includes ends, and praxeology is the science of means. Rothbard apparently couldn’t see how to get from means to ends – how to make praxeology make value judgements – though he hinted at the same solution Hoppe eventually came up with. Hoppe did that.

Unless they want to be slaves, of course.

There are people who appear to prefer that, but since they don’t, in fact, wipe themselves out, they’re just hypocrites, saying they prefer to wipe out humans (of course, they rarely actually say that in so many words), but showing by their actions that they don’t really prefer that!

[PS: how come I can post in this thread? When I try to post in the "should we serve god?" thread, it keeps telling me I have to put the security code on the bottom - which I already have. If I put the wrong code, I get a different message!]

The following will give a satisfactory answer to above statement:

The Ethics of Liberty:

“If the State may be said to properly own its territory, then it is proper for it to make rules for anyone who presumes to live in that area. It can legitimately seize or control private property because there is no private property in its area, because it really owns the entire land surface. So long as the State permits its subjects to leave its territory, then, it can be said to act as does any other owner who sets down rules for people living on his property. (This seems to be the only justification for the crude slogan, “America, love it or leave it!,” as well as the enormous emphasis generally placed on an individual’s right to emigrate from a country.) In short, this theory makes the State, as well as the King in the Middle Ages, a feudal overlord, who at least theoretically owned all the land in his domain. The fact that new and unowned resources—whether virgin land or lakes—are invariably claimed as owned by the State (its “public domain”) is an expression of this implicit theory.

But our homesteading theory, outlined above, suffices to demolish any such pretensions by the State apparatus. For by what earthly right do the criminals of the State lay claim to the ownership of its land area? It is bad enough that they have seized control of ultimate decision-making for that area; what criterion can possibly give them the rightful ownership of the entire territory?”

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp

For a New Liberty:

“-and reveals a lack of sensitivity to human or property rights. Friedman’s statement, in fact, is of a piece with the typically conservative, “If you don’t like it here, leave,” a statement that implies that the government rightly owns the entire land area of “here,” and that anyone who objects to its rule must therefore leave the area.”

http://mises.org/rothbard/newliberty12.asp

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

I respect Hoppe’s efforts to praxeologically formalize the concept of private property.

However, Praxeology is not suited to justify objective ethic, if that’s what he was trying to do, according to you that is.

In other words, Hoppe has used praxeology to justify an objective ethic

Praxeology and objective ethics are exactly opposite. My definition of objective ethics being a science of ends, if there ever could be such a science.

The core of my comments have to do with Rothbard’s divergence from Misean Methodology and his claim that praxeology could never be used to discover anything about ethics. And that you quoted from him yourself. Did you not?

You can call me Wade