Category: Philosophy

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is titled “Of the Beginning of Political Societies” and attempts to argue logically how at least some governments must have appeared due to people banding together voluntarily for their common defense.

Locke tries to explain how the leadership he often observed in his day and in history developed, and how older monarchies differed from ones around his time.

I won’t say that his arguments are airtight, but if we take care to understand how the scope of Locke’s “state of nature” differs from Hobbes’s, Locke does in fact make some good points.

Locke refers to a couple of historical sources that I managed to track down:
Jose de Acosta’s “Natural and Moral History of the Indies”
https://archive.org/details/naturalmoralhist00acos/page/n5/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/naturalmoralhist01acos/page/n9/mode/2up

“Justin,” a.k.a. Marcus Junianius Justinus Frontinus’s
“Epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s ‘Philippic Histories'”
https://www.attalus.org/info/justinus.html

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is titled “Of Political or Civil Society,” but that title is a little bit deceptive. It begins with a few more appeals to religious beliefs in the beginning, attempting to emphasize (again) that familial and master/servant relations fall short of what Locke terms “political power.”

However, the real meat of the chapter is Locke’s argument against absolute monarchy as an example of a civil society. In short, by taking ultimate judgment powers upon himself (even for matters concerning himself), an absolute monarch of any kind effectively puts himself into the state of nature with respect to his people.

It is a simple and clear argument for rebellion against any totalitarian state.

We have some more issues with Locke’s assumptions of horizontal integration of the various roles that states usually monopolize, and he’s definitely keeping his toe off of any line that might get him officially sanctioned by the English king at the time, but the elements of the argument are there and are convincing:

If the state fails to serve the people, then those people need not remain subjugated by it. The purpose of society is to improve man’s lot compared to the state of nature/war.

This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 6

Chapter Six is titled “Of Paternal Power,” but actually it covers a bit more than that, seeking not only to explore the limits of paternal (or, as Locke might have it, “parental”) power and show how it differs from political power.

However, here we also find Locke deviating somewhat from his desired goal of a government by consent. He makes a few crucial assumptions and moves in the direction of “implied” consent, vis a vis allegiance to governments, although not to the degree that Rousseau pushed.

What we learn here is that the primary “implication” that leads to consent of governance is the ownership of land, but Locke has side-stepped any argument about why governments must maintain a monopoly on land ownership.

All this and more in the video, which is available at Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 5

This chapter is titled “On Property,” and covers the most basic parts of Locke’s theory of property.

To summarize, man owns his labor and the stuff he mixes his labor with from out of the commons in the State of Nature.

However, the Law of Nature prohibits man from appropriating things and then wasting or destroying them.

In society, positive rules are created to handle the rules for ownership and transfer of property.

It’s here that Locke seems to dig himself into a bit of a hole, both by making some assumptions about the positive laws of society and about the tendency of man in the State of Nature to only appropriate that which he can cultivate.

This video is available on YouTube, Odysee, and BitChute.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapters 3 and 4

In chapters three and four of Locke’s Second Treatise, he covers The State of War (inside and outside of the context of society), and Slavery.

He makes a few strange arguments here, so bear with me as I try to work through them and provide some context.

One very interesting point is that, for Locke, the primeval state of man (pre-government) consists of some mixture of the State of Nature and the State of War. In short, Locke’s State of Nature has a different scope from, say, Hobbes’s.

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapters One and Two

Finally finished the first part of this summary, analysis, and critique of Locke’s Second Treatise. This part covers chapters 1 and 2, the Introduction and Locke’s explanation of the State of Nature.

It’s worth noting that Locke borrows his concept of the Law of Nature from Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which can be found here.

My perspective is that Locke doesn’t get enough credit for his work toward describing and understanding a limited government. Too much of Rousseau’s perversion of Locke has made its way into the philosophical zeitgeist, and has led people to believe Locke’s State of Nature is idyllic.

It is not.

In addition to summarizing and analyzing Locke’s work, I’m going to be going through the whole Treatise and pointing out where Locke’s efforts toward a limited form of government fails from a voluntaryist perspective.

This video (and others in the series) will be available on YouTube, Odysee, and BitChute.

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Economics Philosophy Video Link

Aluminum Cans and the Nirvana Fallacy?

Today’s short video was inspired by an awful video about aluminum cans and the environment.

The Nirvana Fallacy is not the only mistake this guy makes, but it is the most frequent one.

False declarations of human “rights,” failure to understand the profit motive, a top-down view of the economy… there is a lot of foolishness to cover!

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

“Everything Is Political:” The Totalitarian’s Creed

Today I’m working through a thing I keep hearing people say. “Everything is political.”

It’s a very odd saying, in my mind, for a variety of logical and philosophical reasons.

First of all, it’s a declaration of totalitarianism. It seems very strange to me for people to just agree with totalitarians. It’s a slave mentality.

Absolute power and an absolute obligation for people to obey that power is not a path to good incentives, or good rulers.

It also encourages the kind of thinking… “It’s just politics,” used as a rationalization for all kinds of evils applied to innocents.

Even if we soften it to “Everything affects politics” or “politics affects everything,” we find ourselves walking down the same totalitarian path, just with nicer words around it.

It’s a misunderstanding of something being a thing and something having an effect on a thing. It’s reminiscent of Wickard v. Filburn, which held that products that you make yourself and consume yourself affect interstate commerce, and therefore are interstate commerce. That’s not necessarily true, and even if it were, it gives politicians more (if not unlimited) political power, which is exactly what we don’t want.

There’s a difference between these three things:

  1. I exercise political power over X
  2. I do not exercise political power X, but I could
  3. I may not/shall not exercise political power over X

There might be a bit of gray area in between, but it seems like these are real distinctions.

This fallacy also creeps into public goods theory (which Hoppe dismantled).

Anyway, just some thoughts I wanted to get out there.

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Essay Philosophy Political

First Thoughts on “Political Violence”

Seeing a lot of people, including libertarians, oddly enough, pronouncing these blanket oppositions to what the corporate media calls “political violence.”

This is another case of people failing the Bastiat test–looking only at the bare surface level of such a policy, and failing to account for its secondary effects.

Worse yet, these oppositions actually seem to preach from a moral perspective, and not merely a strategic one. Yet another blundering oversight.

Because what kinds of activities do you have to disavow in order to oppose “political violence?”

Continue reading “First Thoughts on “Political Violence””
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Economics Philosophy Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Six

This chapter is short, but really needs a little supplement from Rothbard’s other writings to really “get it.”

Don’t worry, I got your back. In the video, I identify two more passages that help explain why the goal of “stable prices” is counterproductive. They’re from Man, Economy, and State and Making Economic Sense.

Continue reading “Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Six”