John B writes , occasionally an amusing blog . This is an example of the subtlety of his thought . “
Money and property rights are both creations of the state ….the fact that you happened to own a nice house would be irrelevant, because someone bigger than you would come along and tell you to get out of it or he’d kill you”
Prompted a muse of mine , probably rather dull but anyway
Octogenarian Peer - Hoy you Oik get off my estates
Huge Thug- I `ll do what the fuck I like ta
Octogenarian Peer - Why why you young bounder my ancestors fought for this land …
Huge Thug- Got it . Lets fight for it then .
You( John B ) have a redundant case for the rule of law and the maintenance of order even if that order is clearly far from perfect . In other words you have made the classic Conservative case. Your Libertarian is a very straw man indeed . The King’s peace , delivered by whatever means was much valued for centuries before the invention of income tax when the game keeper became the robber .The Classical Liberals like Tom Paine argued that the rule of law was an essential to freedom and the only people who set up utopias were religiose loons like the Owenites , ie left wingers whose efforts were of course doomed .
I often have cause to say to Libertarians soi disant that in fact their utopia once existed and the funny thing was that all this freedom consisted of outright slavery for most people.
The first English Parliament was a court and its function was the ritual enactment of the shared will of the people taken to be god given . Justice was natural and the process of law making one of “ discovery” rather than imposition . It is not true that private property exists only because of massed ranks of police , it exists because of the general acceptance of it as a natural right . When that acceptance has ceased so has private property . Libertarianism is of coursed only a useful tool for fighting the cultural attack on freedoms we have evolved . Margaret Thatcher did not agree with Hayek , nor visa versa and I agree with Margaret Thatcher .
6 comments:
The state does not need to decree money. People will find their own means of exchange which works for them. Coins were only introduced in the first place to reduce the need for people to carry weighing scales around all the time.
Private property is rather important because in practice only the state can properly enforce it and the other nice bits of the rule of law.
HOWEVER! The cost of providing law and order is a tiny fraction of the total amount spent by the state on our behalf. The state does have a role in facilitating some of our profitable activities, but that doesn't mean that the state is the default owner of everything. That is feudalism.
That is feudalism
Not really, BE, it is the state of affairs in Russia at the height of the Muscovite Tsars
under feudalism, everyone had rights (though, it is fair to say, some were more, err, equal than others) which is the glory of western socio-political development, and how we get to the Rule of Law etc which they genuinely don't understand in Russia
BE- the state does lots of things that are handy. When I use the termn" State" that is not what I mean, I would say Government which implies consent.
Nick - It sometimes occurrs to me that the assumption that being medieaval Englishman was miserable is almost certainly wrong. Knowing what your role was and everyone around you might have been a very rich life. Its a lost world in many ways
you have the look of a well-contented villein, Mr M
There have been papers that surmise that the feudal peasant worked only about 175 days a year. Saints days and feast days being holy days.
An average of 8.2 hours a day {longer in summer, shorter in winter.}
The average office worker works about 228 days at a minimum of 8 hrs a day.
Serfs Up dude!
Bring me my bodkin snaggle toothed wench and mead.
Post a Comment