Most people are poor, it is a rediculous argument to take the position that protection could save a billionaire from death. A more honest argument would be to take into consideration the average salary of a citizen and the amount of children the average of citizens do have in accordance to the age of the victim involved.

Then we obtain a more realistic value for life.

If a government regulates an industry to save lives, you have to consider the costs of the regulation at hand and it’s effects. How many people had accidents before the regulations versus the new regulation. We also have to figure out the costs of the victim, if by a major accident, did the regulation prevent the accident from being worse? (although there are epistemic issues here). If it didn’t help then we cannot compile this incident as being mitigated by regulation, if however it did help, then we have to determine the cost differentials with an alternative event that is extremely vague because it didn’t happen. Let’s say we can determine this , did these costs actually outweigh the costs of regulations per capita, or not? We also have to include the costs of this very research. We also have to figure out where the money would have gone instead of into this regulation and wether or not the natural way of spending was better or not than the regulation (which is almost impossible to figure out). All we know is that the regulations tend to be more inefficient and more costly than private alternatives. We also have to discover the choke points in productivity created by this regulation and take them into account as well as the potential composed interests lost.

And that’s really just the beginning, the task is insane and we’ll probably never know the opportunity costs fully nor the gains, so we cannot even verify if such a program functions at a loss or not meaning that regulations economically blindsight p&l accounting. We simply can’t know if we are cutting losses or not, and if we could the research itself would be extremely expensive and redundant , whereas the private sectors only needs maintain a profit to know for sure that losses have been cut.

All you can do is assume regulations will save people without any empirical data, without destroying more lives due to side effects of the regulations, which have been found in generality to harm safety because the entrepreneurs do not take care to improve safety as the government bears those costs or force all entrepreneurs to respect them equally which directly cuts the incentive to improve safety; which explains why statistically speaking safety regulations almost never improve the rates of incident, but rather maintain them, whilst costs go through the roof and if you look back through time there is generally a tendency for the costs of safety to go down as well as the rate of incidents but now the government placed a permanent legal roadblock. Also , the government simply looks at what is already being done and turns it into law, or it gets lobbied by competitors to erect economic blockades masquerading as “safety measures” . The government is INCAPABLE of regulating in a non-wasteful manner, it actually just tries to control which ends up into a net loss.

You simply don’t understand catallactics.

At least, it is, until hyperinflation hits!

Perhaps the problem is going into debt in the first place. Or worse, going into debt, based on an interest rate lower than it should be, because you *think* it will be enough to complete your project…but it turns out not to be the case, because everyone else is doing the same, and hence is causing a type of inflation.

If inflation is bad, but mild inflation is ok or even desirable, I don’t see why minor deflation would be all that bad–perhaps it, too, can be desirable!

If the market fails your expectations, the fault lies entirely with you.

Sorry, economics shows that the world doesn’t work that way.

Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism

TLWP Sam: The crowding of the globe by governments is not applicable to a libertarian society. The need to find new land of which I spoke was out of an effort to escape government. In a libertarian society, and in the extreme imaginary construct of a world with no natural land (i.e., land in the state of nature) remaining, it is not very likely that anyone would fall down on their knees crying out of need of a place to lay their head at night: a libertarian society leaves space open for the opening of new markets, and if this entertaining situation arose, I would be one of the first to build onto my house and rent out the top floor. Thanks for leading me on that train of thought: it was a very entertaining imaginary construct.

Owen: your “right to life” kills itself (what about its right to life?). If “society” owes “members of society” (and anarchists) their lives, then no one could have a right to property, because it would be required to preserve their lives. We then become a bunch of cockroaches eating each other, telling each other to stay alive: it doesn’t work. The only way to keep oneself alive is to maintain that one has a right to oneself, as property. No one else can attack you; but, in turn, you cannot attack someone else and live off of their blood (they may in fact gift it to you, but that would be a gift, obviously). So quite basically, right to property is part of the essence of life, but as soon as we claim a “right to life,” we basically turn life against itself. Life is your property in yourself; but you are not required to bleed for someone else.

Additionally, Owen, you’ll recall that the Irish enjoyed their anarchic existence, until they were taken over by a government that was external. And technically, that may be said of all government takeovers, because anyone governing is government (I won’t bother explaining that one; I think we can agree that it stands (to reason)). So, any governing force is separate from an anarchic force. Anarchy is voluntary is non-aggressive is capitalism; government is non-voluntary is aggressive is communism (if we could say that communism IS, which of course we can’t so instead, we’ll put death and nothingness as the antithesis to capitalism).

Considering that no one posted on the blog again after I got back from my week in Washington, D.C., I doubt that anyone will read this. However, if you do, please remember that there is no legitimate reason for government; but don’t take my word for it: read For A New Liberty, The Ethics of Liberty, Man Economy and State, and Power and Market, by Murray Rothbard, now available through the Mises Institute in print, PDF, and audiobook.

Another voluntary “group” of individuals who were able to (through force) establish their own government – which reflected the morals and perceived ‘rights’ of the majority of members – in this anarchist state of nature we live in.

Exactly as I said.

We call that one “straw man”. If I say, “Oh, look, there’s a sock. Let’s see if I can find my other one,” it isn’t the same thing as saying, “I found one sock, therefore there is another one here.” Notice how the first is not phrased as a deductive statement? Good. The fact that you are willing to go to such great stretches and twists of logic in an attempt to prove your argumentative superiority only shows that you are not truly interested in reaching a resolution, but simply want to fight.

Just a little tip: don’t call people “idiot” or suggest remedial education. It makes you feel that you’ve won, when in reality people just leave you alone in disgust, as I am already doing.

Somehow, it is part of the majority’s view that they have the right to make everyone vote and those that don’t should either leave or suffer the consequences because you have infringed their “rights”. Much the same way as if they had infringed your property rights…but sadly you have no power to enforce your concept of “rights” on the other much larger voluntary group called the government.

Yeh, I mentioned the join and sabotage method earlier in this thread. It is an option which would be tolerated for only so long until the members of that group are prevented from standing for government. If they did by a miracle win seats or power well then there would simply be civil war and the winner would again be the one with the most guns.

TWLP Sam:

yes you are correct. In libertarian philosophy a very important tenet is that right to not be deprived of property comes before your right to life. Pretty screwed huh? Which one would you rather have?

Lets exemplify that fallicious argument for you a little:

Mises was not God;
Therefore he made some mistakes;
Therefore Mises theories were also wrong.

Can you see the fallacy? The above wrongly relies on the additional premise that because a person makes one error, that EVERYTHING they do is also wrong. We all know that not to be the case.

Arguments stand or fall on their individual merit not on whether statements upon which they do not rely were correct or incorrect.

Back to elementary school eh?

Scientific enquiry is also a legitimate area of burden of proof.

However….

Fallacy = Because one non-syllogistic argument is wrong, another is also wrong.

One incorrect statement (regarding burden of proof) does not invalidate any other arguments made that do not rely on this argument.