Plugging Away at C4SS Stuff

Although I’m still in the middle of a site overhaul, renewed efforts to bootstrap the Center for a Stateless Society as a market anarchist educational org are gradually moving forward. We’re promoting Kevin Carson’s new book. Also, Carson’s first quarterly study for the Center has been published in PDF format - Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles. To complete the Carsonian trifecta, check out his latest commentary piece — Ecuador Repudiates Foreign Debt: It’s About Time.

Finally, don’t forget that we have an upcoming market anarchist bloggers conference call this coming Saturday morning. Drop in to chat about current events, blogging or C4SS.

If you are dissatisfied with current alternatives in organized libertarian advocacy, please consider providing some of the crucial early support we need to build c4ss.org into a going concern.

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An Agorist Primer is THE must read libertarian book of 2009

Samuel Edward Konkin III’s much anticipated introductory book on agorism, An Agorist Primer, has been posthumously published by KoPubCo and arrived in my mail yesterday. A slim hardcover volume, I read it easily in a short amount of time.

Very simply, this is the book on agorism that you give your mom. There’s no other way to describe it.

If I had a million Federal Reserve Notes right now, I’d buy 50,000 copies of it to give to public libraries all across the United States, even if that meant I didn’t have money left to buy lunch. I’m that excited about the book precisely because the book itself didn’t excite me. I’m a mutant. I like weird stuff. New ways of thinking have to pass a point, though, at which most people become bored with them before they just simply get accepted as the way things ought to be. This is the boring little book to give to normal people — and the potential for revolutionary change that creates excites the hell out of me.

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Consider donating to Infoshop.org

Infoshop.org could make good use of some financial help…

Our fall fundraising drive is coming to an end. To date, we’ve raised around $1500 of our goal of $1500. That’s pretty good given the state of the economy, but we can still use a little more help. Even small donations are a big help to us.

We appreciate the support that many of our users extend to our project in the form of story submissions, comments, promotion and financial donations. Every month, over 100,000 users visit Infoshop News and another 50,000 visit Infoshop and associated websites. This makes Infoshop the most popular English language anarchist website and one of the most popular independent news sites.

Our project makes do with very little in terms of money, but we still need support from our readers. We have looming bills to pay and we’d love to have money to work on cool projects.

We aren’t asking for much. A $10 donation can make a big difference. You can contribute to “AMP” with a donation via PayPal (which takes all credit cards) or by mailing a check or well-concealed cash to our snail mail address:

AMP
PO Box 7171
Shawnee Mission, KS 66207

Online donation options:
http://www.infoshop.org/page/Donate

Thanks!

Chuck Munson
for Infoshop.org and Infoshop News

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The wrong lizard might get elected to the Senate

Note the hilarious reference to “Lizard People” in the Minnesota Senate recount:

Douglas Adams fans ought to be reminded of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

‘On [that] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.’

‘Odd,’ said Arthur, ‘I thought you said it was a democracy?’

‘I did,’ said Ford, ‘It is.’

‘So,’ said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, ‘why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?’

‘It honestly doesn’t occur to them,’ said Ford. ‘They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.’

‘You mean they actually vote for the lizards?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ford with a shrug, ‘of course.’

‘But,’ said Arthur, going for the big one again, ‘why?’

‘Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,’ said Ford, ‘the wrong lizard might get in.’

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Post text removed

As questions have arisen about the propriety of publishing this post, the text of it has been removed.

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What makes you think he suddenly stopped lying?

News sites are reporting that Bush says he sacrificed free-market principles to save economy.

Bullshit. You have to have something in the first place in order to sacrifice it. Rhetoric is not reality.

It is free market economic theory, alone, that correctly explains how the present crisis came about (due to government intervention in the market in the first place) and why more of the same will only make things worse.

I might add that the president’s remarks appear to potentially be part of an organized campaign of disinformation seeking to blame a non-existent free market (i.e. stateless economy) for the failure of statism. Alan Greenspan sold out his prior allegiance to free market economic theory when he took over as head of the market-manipulating state capitalist Federal Reserve — yet he deceptively spouts the “OH NOEZ! My lazy-fairy caused this!” routine like some hairless and bespectacled lolcat of the ruling class.

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Murphy’s study guides for Human Action and Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State.

My attitude toward the Mises Institute is a complex and nuanced thing. I am, fundamentally, a Rothbardian — and that means the Austrian school when it comes to economics. At the same time, though, I advocate applying libertarian political and economic theory with a “left sensibility” that embeds Rothbardian thought in anti-state libertarian socialism — an approach shaped by Carson’s historical revisionism. Even though Carson is not an Austrian economist, his work in that area doesn’t contradict Austrian theory.

So, yes, I generally support the Mises Institute’s work even though they habitually display “rightist” attitudes that make me want to wince. Even with all of its flaws, we need the Mises Institute — warts and all. They are simply without peer in the field of advancing Austrian economics. In the present economic crisis, in particular, the Mises Institute has done a great deal of the “heavy lifting” in popularizing the notion that the bailouts are basically a ripoff of the productive class by a parasitic elite; one already fat and bloated with wealth sucked vampirically from regular Americans via the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy.

Everybody has bills to pay and the Mises Institute is no different. Lew Rockwell recently published a new appeal for funds that showcases Robert Murphy’s new study guide for Mises Human Action. Human Action is an ox-stunner of a book, one which nobody has ever previously succeeded in writing a study guide for. Kudos to Murphy on the accomplishment.

What I would suggest for left libertarian readers who want to majorly delve into Austrian economic theory is that they may find Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State (complete with companion volume Power & Market in the Scholar’s Edition) more approachable and (simultaneously) more “developed” in subtle ways, having been written later by the anarchist Rothbard as opposed to the classical liberal Mises.

Not only is Man, Economy and State available free online, so is the study guide for it, also written by Murphy. If looking over the electronic version convinces you that a hardcopy of the book would be worthwhile, it’s available to buy in paperback for only $10.

If you’re looking for a lighter weight intro to Austrian economics, the Mises Institute makes Taylor’s An Introduction to Austrian Economics available free online.

Sophisticated readers capable of distinguishing between the concept of a completely free market economy and actually existing capitalism should find these books helpful, even if the authors don’t make such a distinction or do so incompletely.

Murphy, by the way, is also the author of the short, easy to read, eye-opening and highly recommended Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy.

If you agree with me that the Mises Institute is worthy of some support, you can click here to donate. Their Paypal button is at the very bottom, so scroll down on that page if it’s what you’re looking for. I slipped them $5 just now. Consider doing the same.

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Walter Block and the wage gap controversy

December is half over, but in the latest update he has provided us, Dr. Walter Block recaps a still ongoing controversy we first started hearing about in November:

For those of you who are new to this story, and have not been following the story of my adventures at Loyola College of Maryland, I was accused of racism and sexism for explaining the male-female, and the white-black wage gaps.

His first piece on the matter describes the incident in question. The other 26 or so links provided in the recap all pertain to the fallout resulting from various campus apparatchiks (and similar) acting like a mashup of Orwell’s thought police and the Keystone Cops.

While I support academic freedom and find the rush to judgement of the establishment types objectionable, I also believe Block’s views are mistaken and that the campus authorities are attempting to support laudable values — values that would be better served by methods shaped by a libertarian perspective. Just as good theory can be misapplied, as I assert is going on in Block’s case, good ends can be incompetently sought by the well meaning but philosophically confused partisans of establishmentarianism.

I emailed Dr. Block the morning after publication of his first piece, starting slowly…

—–Original Message—–
From: Brad Spangler
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 3:48 AM
To: Walter Block
Subject: question re: Baltimore and all that

Dr. Block,

I don’t see how anyone could disagree with the core point of your arguments — which, as I understand them, is that discrimination in wage rates on the basis of anything other than actual productivity is a cost to the enterprise and a profit opportunity for competitors. I do have to wonder about a matter of context and/or application, though.

…before confirming my understanding of what his arguments are:

As I understand you, you’re 1) identifying open competition as the engine that drives the tendency to disregard factors other than productivity in setting wage rates AND THEN 2) proceeding from there to state the fact that wage differences corresponding to gender and race exist and, THEREFORE, 3) gender and racial differences in productivity must exist. Please correct the above as necessary.

…and then questioning him in a way that stated my objection as politely as I could imagine how to put it:

My question…

Would you agree that the extent to which competition is not actually open (i.e. the extent to which the existing mercantilist economic order differs from a free market) has a bearing on the applicability of number one above?

Regards,

Brad Spangler

Dr. Block’s response was friendly and polite but short enough to (unfortunately) verge on ambiguity:

Dear Brad:

I agree with EVERY word you say. I urge you to write this up and publish
it. Maybe on LRC?

Best regards,

Walter

That’s very nice, but it seemed odd, considering that my point was that internally consistent theory can support mistaken conclusions when misapplied — such as by falsely equating the present economic system with a free market (a mythical legacy of the Cold War).

Now, Walter Block is indisputably a very sharp guy. Anybody can get in a hurry and thereby miss the point, though. Alternatively, Block could have been expressing agreement with my literal choice of words while holding back delivery of a devastating rebuttal that I didn’t even see the potential for. I chose to risk overstating my point in the pursuit of clarity:

From: Brad Spangler
Date: Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: question re: Baltimore and all that
To: Walter Block

Thanks, but I should point out the implications of my question. The
extent to which number one doesn’t actually apply to present
conditions is also the extent to which doubt is cast on number three.
Expanding the piece would be an elaboration on that.

To date , I have not received a reply. Block’s a busy guy and I didn’t actually pose a question to him in my second message, though. Furthermore, I’m notoriously terrible about answering my own email, so I’m not criticizing him for that. I can wonder about what he meant or didn’t mean, though, and I can toss it all out here for discussion.

What do you think, folks?

UPDATE:
When the distinction between the present economic order and a free market is made, we transform Block’s argument:

1) identifying open competition as the engine that drives the tendency to disregard factors other than productivity in setting wage rates AND THEN 2) proceeding from there to state the fact that wage differences corresponding to gender and race exist and, THEREFORE, 3) gender and racial differences in productivity must exist. Please correct the above as necessary.

…into something very different:

1) Open competition is the engine that drives the tendency to disregard factors other than productivity in setting wage rates

2) To the extent that competition is not fully open at present, we can not know if wage differences corresponding to gender and race have any basis in real productivity differences.

3) Thus, besides the economic imperative to relentlessly cut enterprise costs, the social drive to oppose racism and sexism provide a moral imperative for complete laissez faire.

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Anti-politics and liberty

Jörg Guido Hülsmann faintly echoes the agorist critique of political libertarians:

“The main weakness of this ["this" being Rothbard and Mises' monetary reform] scheme is that it implies that the reform process be directed by the very institutions and persons whom the reform is supposed to make more or less superfluous.”

Thus, the logic of revolution.

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Dialogue of the Damned: Corporate Limited Liability (again)

A respectable amount of my time today (yesterday, actually, but I want to say “today” because I haven’t slept yet) was taken up by a discussion of corporate limited liability with Stephan Kinsella. A stray mention of the topic in blog comments set us off on that tangent via e-mail. This blog post is my effort to edit those emails into a coherent dialogue that can be referred to when discussing this topic in the future.

Kinsella: I just think arguments against “the corporation” based on the idea of limited liability are confused and wrongheaded.

Spangler: Only because you insist on conflating contractually limited liability (which left-Rothbardians don’t oppose) with limited tort liability granted by the state incorporation charters you claim to oppose.

Kinsella: I am not conflating them. It’s the other way around: when you guys oppose corporations based on their limited liability features, your arguments would apply equally to a free market version of it. That’s why they are flawed.

Spangler: No, I would have no objection to a joint stock company formed on the freed market with no statist grant of limited tort liability. You might be confusing my position with someone else’s. I don’t know.

I will review my position on this matter below to make an accurate critique more convenient for you.

Tort liability limitation can’t be accomplished contractually. Said liability can be contractually distributed among contracting parties ahead of time prior to a tort being brought against them as a group (that’s what liability insurance does, after all). You can NOT, though, contractually limit the rights (such as the right to pursue compensation for tortious damages) of people who are NOT parties to your contracts. I could, for example, write contracts all day specifying what you supposedly owe me and it wouldn’t do me any good if you never sign them. You can’t contractually limit the right of others to pursue compensation for tortious damages because that right is not yours to bargain away.

The corporate form is illegitimate because it depends on state granted tort liability [limitation] that is itself illegitimate. We know this because even the state recognizes business forms that don’t possess limited tort liability. Owners in partnerships and sole proprietorships face FULL tort liability that corporate stockholders are shielded from BY DEFINITION.

You may be aware that your own state of Texas recognizes and charters joint stock companies without granting them limited liability. I have no objections to Texas JSCs. They’re seldom used precisely because the unjust state grant of privilege in a grant of limited tort liability is valuable.

Kinsella: [Edited: rephrased for brevity and clarity] Most of what you’ve said is elementary and boring. My point is that shareholders usually should not be vicariously responsible in the first place for employee torts. When did I say you objected to joint stock companies?

Spangler: You said, Stephan that “…your arguments would apply equally to a free market version of it”.

My position is that your statement is inaccurate because THERE IS NO free market version of “it” where “it” is the statist privilege of limiting someone’s right to pursue compensation for tortious damages.

Possession of that privilege, AS A MATTER OF DEFINITION, distinguishes corporations from JSCs, general partnerships and sole proprietorships.

With regard to your statement that shareholders should not be able to be sued for employee torts, I have to ask…

First, do you extend that as well to employee torts for employees of general partnerships and sole proprietorships?

Second, if you DO, I would have to ask if you don’t see that as a rather extraordinary claim and wonder if you’d like to elaborate on it a bit.

Third, if you DO NOT, I’d have to ask why.

Fourth, how exactly do you propose to systematically disallow suits against people in a non-monopolized court system? The entire premise of our theory of law is that people with disputes will [tend to] seek arbitration rather than going to war. If you somehow arbitrarily disallow arbitration from even occuring between certain categories of disputants with real disputes, do you not see this as potentially unwise?

Kinsella: What I meant is that the typical criticism of limited liability is NOT restricted to its being granted by the state. It’s assumed that the shareholders should be liable in the first place. Why should they be?

[first question] — Well, I am not sure. I don’t think much good work has been done on this from a sound libertarian perspective. It seems to me that the first thing we know is the tortfeasor is liable, and he alone, unless we have sound libertarian grounds to attribute vicarious responsibilty to someone else. I am not even sure I agree with respondeat superior. I think the burden is on he who argues that a third person is responsible for the torts of another. You have to show how and why, in each case, whether it be managers, co-workers, vendors, stakeholders, creditors, customers, directors, investors, or shareholders.

[second question] — Why is it extraordinary that I do not automatically accept the state doctrine of respondeat superior and vicarious responsibiltiy?

[third question] — I’ve adumbrated on this many times. I wrote a whole view of my frameowrk of causation and responsibility, which is how I would start. But to start we need a sound understanding of rihgts, causation, and the way corporate an business law works.

[fourth question] — I am simply saying that if A sues C for a tort committed by B, A will need to show why C is vicariously responsbile for B’s tort. If he can’t, then he can only sue B. I’m contending that A won’t be able to prevail if he sues C, in most cases, if C didn’t commit the harm.

Spangler: As near as I can determine, when asking about whether or not shareholders ought to be liable for employee torts, you could ONLY say they ought not if you succeed in defending a claim that…

1) Firms are not property

-or-

2) We are not liable for damages caused by our property

You appear to be asserting that de facto limitation of tort liability could be achieved by means of consensus in the arbitration industry to never hold business owners liable for employee-committed torts.

Given that the doctrine of respondeat superior is not mere statist legislation but has relatively deep roots in the common law tradition, I find this argument lacking. I reserve the right to change my mind if you suddenly get a whole lot more convincing, though.

Kinsella: Property does not cause damage. People cause damage.

Spangler: Pets are property. If my dog bites you, do you sue me or my dog?

Kinsella: Let’s think of a general rule shall we, instead of trying to find intuitive common law rules you like and trying to inductively piece them together? The dog example is irrelevant since it has will and is not inanimate.

Spangler: The misbehaving dog analogy is relevant precisely because the dog has a
degree of agency, as do misbehaving managers in a firm that the owners don’t exercise adequate oversight over.

Kinsella: Ha ha! That’s kind of paternalistic, to assume a manager is like a dog owner. Hmm, wonder why no one ever sues the manager for torts committed by their doglike underlings?

Spangler: No, the stockholders collectively are like the dog owner. The manager is like the dog.

Kinsella: But why hold the shareholders responsible for torts of company management? Shareholders are passive after all.

Spangler: Why wouldn’t passivity with regard to oversight of your property that then results in damages to innocent others not be considered negligence?

Kinsella: Why do you call it their property? Just because the state classifies them this way? If I own shares in Wal-Mart, can I use one of their trucks or go into HQ without permission?

Spangler: I believe you’ve recently claimed that Kevin Carson’s assertion that corporations are essentially unowned property is “hogwash”? Which is it? Do shareholders own the company or not?

Kinsella: They have some rights of control. Others have other parts. It’s distributed and complex. Sorry. But of course it’s not unowned.

Spangler: Within the narrow confines of the libertarian non-aggression principle, I’m okay with complexities of contractually delegated control. That’s not what I’m talking about.

The company is property.

It is not unowned, as you acknowledge.

It has owners.

Those owners are shareholders.

Owners of property are responsible for their property.

Negligence by property owners is always legitimately actionable.

Restraint of such action in the form of grants of limited tort liability are statist privilege.

Contrasting the complexities of implementing collective control with the individual control of a single owner (as you have attempted to do) is not relevant to that point.

Kinsella: The company is not really property. The various things “it” owns are property.

You say that the owners of a company are its shareholders, but Ownership is the right to control. Who has the right to control FedEx’s fleet of trucks? Is it the shareholders? The directors? The managers? Drivers? It’s distributed.

You contend that Owners of property are responsible for their property, but that is merely an assertion on your part. Furthermore, use of A’s property by B to commit a tort is not necessarily “negligence” on A’s part.

Don’t you see how many assumptions your whole chain of reasoning is built on? You want to resort to what you take are a few easy, incontrovertible cases, even though you don’t have a coherent libertarian theory. WE need one. Until then, your case is not proven.

The framework I would recommend approaching this with is my piece on Causation and Responsibility with Tinsley. I think it’s a messed up area of law — messed up by statist doctrines and assumptions; we have to carefully rejuvenate and restore it.

=====

And there you have it. I find Kinsella unconvincing, but perhaps I’m just intellectually stunted. I have promised to give consideration to his work on causation, but I am (ironically) perhaps more “conservative” in my reliance on common law as a time-honored set of heuristics that Kinsella seems entirely to cavalier about tossing aside in my opinion. I am reminded of Proudhons remarks on the anarchist as conservative.

You can find Stephan Kinsella’s related blog post here at this link.

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