no third solution

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Category Archives: ponderings

Do Rights Exist?

October 21st, 2008

I don’t generally engage in discourse with nihilists. Clearly, this is someone who isn’t interested in discourse.

Do rights exist?

I have finally accepted that there are no rights. There is no non-aggression axiom, it’s all bullshit the randroids are trying to shove down our throats.

I am going to show you that there is not a single proof for natural law, Randian quasi-religious nonsense, or the allmighty NAP.

Natural law theories have been crap all along, it is just something easy to invent, easy to espouse and easy to explain:

God/nature/reason gave us rights, so we can make society better

I still haven’t heard a convincing argument that proves the axiom of self-ownership, or the axiom of anything. We must get rid of these proto-religious concepts we call rights.

I challenge everyone to try to prove me wrong, try to prove the existence of rights, try to prove the axiom of the non-aggression axiom or the axiom of self-ownership.

Did I miss the part where he “showed me that there is not a single proof for natural law”? Because it seems to me that he didn’t demonstrate any such thing. That said, I have no intention of “proving” any of these concepts; I’m neither a moral philosopher or a pedantic academic.

Look, if you want to have a discussion with people, you have to do more than assert the correctness of your position. Last I checked, “proof by volume” or “proof by repetition” is not a valid argument. I might recommend starting with these so-called unconvincing arguments has, and then describing the process by which one determines them to be “crap.”

Perhaps, assuming that rights are “given” is the first mistake. Reason doesn’t “give” rights to anyone. Also, only utilitarians honestly believe the consequentialist crap about how we have rights in order to “make society better,” and once we’ve gone down that road, we’ve clearly equivocated, because a utilitarian right is really more of a mob-rule privilege, it’s certainly not the same sort of “right” that is currently in question.

A “right” is merely the measure by which we determine the appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of human action. If nothing is appropriate, or inappropriate for that matter, why bother tilting against the ideas? This is sort of a variant of the estoppel principle.

If there is no such thing as a right, then you’re wasting wind by denying the existence thereof; if you believe yourself to be wronged or injured by my attempt to exercise what I understand to be “rights,” then you are at least tacitly claiming some sort of right, or privilege, of your own, which nicely invalidates the categorical “there is no such thing as a right”.

Truth is Not Relative

September 15th, 2008

FSK says that Truth is Not Relative.

An important pro-State troll debating point is “Truth is Relative”. They say there is no absolute standard of truth.

In math, computer science, physics, engineering and chemistry, most people agree that absolute truths exist, but on matters of politics or economics, people often disagree and claim that objective truths don’t exist.
One commenter, anarcho-mercantilist says, referring to something called “E-Prime”,

Unless I interpret your statement as “We all believe that theft contradicts our moral philosophy in all circumstances,” your statement that “Stealing is wrong” is subjective.

I thought it was funny, that his conclusion violates the principles of E-Prime, which sounds like another futile exercise in semantic confusion. Note that FSK did not suggest that “Stealing is wrong” is axiomatic.

Is it possible to deduce “Stealing is wrong” based on E-Prime valid premises? I’m fairly certain it can be done. Most people think that stealing is OK if the government does it, or if 50%+1 of a population vote against 50%-1 of the population. These people don’t know E-Prime from a hole in the wall. Since I presume that nobody really gives a shit about that sort of pedagogy, I’ll table it for further discussion.

Since an indisputable goal of debating is to establish what is (and what is not) true, anyone disputing the existence of universal truths is committing a performative contradiction, since participating in the dispute belies the existence of universal truths, since the contrary position “There are no universal truths” is, of itself, a binary universal statement; it cannot be a true statement, since its truth is self-invalidating.

Economies of Scale, the Faustian Bargain

July 24th, 2008

Some people say that Wal-Mart does a good job providing low-cost goods, and its success is indicative of its superior ability to satisfy customers. But I can win any game, if I’m allowed to write and re-write the rules on a whim.

Consider that recently, Wal-mart favored the recent minimum wage hike.  Already paying its employees significantly more than the minimum wage, Wal-mart had nothing to lose, but the effects of such legislation would be a blow to smaller competitors. The retailers and smaller stores on the margin, and the people who work at those stores were the ones who as a result, face artificially high barriers to entry. Even some of the bigger stores began automating processes previously performed by lower-wage employees.

This is but one solution to the challenges of a pseudo-market economy:  grow a business that is so big that the government has to listen. And by “listen,” I really mean “steal money from productive people in order to prop up your Brontosaur of a business model.”
Aside from being plain fucking evil, it’s hard to do this unless you’re already pretty well-connected, or independently wealthy. Plus, whatever the government giveth, so too can the government taketh away. Many a company has fallen out of favor and become victim of the hand that used to feed it.

The “economies of scale” that we learn about in school are essentially a fiction. Step in to any big company and you’ll see the same thing: a handful of really talented people banging their heads against cubes, running into invisible walls erected by corporate culture, groupthink, and bureaucracy, tasked with creating synergy, or building efficiency, or improving processes, or some other made-up HBR newspeak.

Think “Six Sigma.”

There will be periodical discussions about how the large company can best share its resources and knowledge across its many disparate teams and departments, when the fact of the matter is that resources and knowledge distribution can’t be maximized in the absence of a market economy.

This is the case, always and everywhere, because “economies of scale” is really a euphemism for “special privileges and immunities.” A company can’t get economies of scale without paying a pretty hefty price. In return, the businesses have become tax collectors and watchdogs for the government, and most of what they produce is ultimately confiscated. Every aspect of what they do is monitored, reported, watched, scrutinized, regulated, legislated. The entrepreneurs and people who started a business for love of meaningful work, have more often than not, struck a terribly Faustian deal.

But Faust always had the opportunity to redeem himself, he just couldn’t believe it.

If we were to abolish all the massive government subsidies and benefits bestowed on large corporations, it’s really possible for a much smaller enterprise to be competitive. Small companies don’t have the political clout, the insider connections, or the money to make politics happen in their favor. This is why large companies are typically behind legislation in restraint of trade. Think of just about any major monopoly, and there’s a government behind it. How about AT&T, Microsoft, and Northern Securities, to name a few . Wal-mart is but a recent example.

There is another solution to the challenges of a pseudo-market economy, though: what if the smaller enterprise can find a way to evade the spiders’ webs of regulations and restrictions and taxes, it can provide greater value at lesser cost than the large, subsidized counterparts?

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics