Tag: liberty

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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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Essay Political Video Link

Stay Vigilant and Strike the Roots

Some thoughts after the election results. In short, if you care about liberty and not just Trump, now is the time to be extra vigilant and ensure that the people who want unchecked authority don’t Wormtongue their way into power again in the next four years.

My written notes here.

Video available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Economics Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Appendix

The final section of Rothbard’s book is an extended discussion of Rothbard’s concepts of the Gross (or Net) Private Product, and an argument about how to calculate government depradations against the private product remaining in private hands.

The appendix contains a number of tables of data on economic statistics from 1929 through 1932, providing calculations of Private Product and Depradation as well.

One thing worth noting is that the Table VI in the Fifth Edition is an error. That table is supposed to contain government expenditure numbers but the receipt numbers from Table VII are reproduced there mistakenly.

The corrected content of Table VI is as follows:

FederalState & LocalTotal
19294913
19304.29.713.9
19315.59.715.2
19324.48.813.2
Corrected Table VI from page 345 of the fifth edition. All figures are in billions of dollars.

My reconstruction of Table VI comes from combining appropriate figures from Tables IV and V.

For my full show notes, go here.

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

References

Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/compendia/hist_stats_1789-1945.html

NY Tax Foundation, The Tax Burden In Relation To National Income and Product
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tax-burden-relation-national-income-and-product/
(pdf direct link)
https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/ra4.pdf

Fabricant and Lipsey, The Trend of Government Activity in the United States Since 1900
https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/trend-government-activity-united-states-1900
(specific section cited by Rothbard)
https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/trend-government-activity-united-states-1900/appendix-d-data-government-purchases-payrolls-transfers-and-expenditures

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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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Economics Political Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Ten

Chapter ten covers the events of 1931. Basically, after massive state intervention didn’t fix the problem in 1929 or 1930, Hoover gets the great idea that more government intervention will fix the problem in 1931 and 1932… with disastrous results.

Up until 1930, Hoover had (at least) resisted the swan song of massive government control over the economy and huge federal relief programs. During 1930, that resistance waned and set the stage for the rest of the depression.

Alternative places to watch the video are on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

Get my full notes here.

References

(FYI, Rothbard cites a bunch of defunct journals and magazines in this chapter that are practically impossible to find outside of university library archives these days, but I did my best.)

Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare
https://archive.org/details/economicspublicw0000ande/page/n3/mode/2up

Clark, Central Banking under the Federal Reserve System…
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/central-banking-federal-reserve-system-314

Aldrich, The Causes of the Present Depression and Possible Remedies
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Causes_of_the_Present_Depression_and.html?id=iijIAAAAMAAJ

Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization…
https://mises.org/library/book/economic-mind-american-civilization-1606-1865-volume-one

Bernstein, The Lean Years…
https://archive.org/details/leanyearshistory0000bern_f7p8/page/n5/mode/2up

Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
https://archive.org/details/herberthoovergre0000warr_f2d0

Hayes, Activities of the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment
https://books.google.com/books/about/Activities_of_the_President_s_emergency.html?id=7QHJAAAAMAAJ

Congressional Record 75, including January 11, 1932
https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_january-04-19-1932_75/page/1654/mode/2up

Monthly Labor Review 32 (1931), including p. 834
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/april-1931-608201?page=62

Wolman, Wages in Relation to Economic Recovery
https://books.google.com/books/about/Wages_in_Relation_to_Economic_Recovery.html?id=Vh1QAQAAMAAJ

Angly, Oh Yeah?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Oh_Yeah.html?id=rTWMAAAACAAJ

Salary and Wage Policy in the Depression
https://archive.org/details/salarywagepolicy0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up

Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.462199

(I had no luck finding any electronic resource for the very old Barron’s issues referenced in footnote 17 on page 270)

Putnam, Is Wage Maintenance a Fallacy, in Journal of the American Bankers’ Association
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086750646&q1=putnam&start=1

Divine, American Immigration Policy
https://archive.org/details/americanimmigrat0000divi/page/n7/mode/2up

Abbott, Public Assistance
https://archive.org/details/publicassistance0001edit/page/n3/mode/2up

Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933
https://archive.org/details/ageofrooseveltcr0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up

Fusfeld, The Economic Thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Economic_Thought_of_Franklin_D_Roose.html?id=tRZUQwAACAAJ

Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931) containing p. 1341-1342
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/june-1931-608203?page=10

Wendt, The Role of the Federal Government in Housing
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Federal-Government-in-Housing.pdf

Nash, Herbert Hoover and the Origins of the RFC
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1892269

Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931), containing pages 1049-1057
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/november-1930-608195?page=9

Frederick, Readings in Economic Planning
https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/228876
alternate link:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Readings_in_Economic_Planning/Xo_XAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=frederick%20%22readings%20in%20economic%20planning%22

Loth, Swope of G.E.
https://archive.org/details/swopeofgestoryof00loth/page/n5/mode/2up

Donham, Business Adrift
https://archive.org/details/businessadrift0000wall

Coit, Mr. Baruch
https://archive.org/details/mrbaruch00coit_0

The Magazine of Wall Street including December 14, 1929, unfortunately I could find no better link…
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/QKxLAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU6OH-gd-IAxWCkO4BHXobAEIQre8FegQIAxA1

Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt
https://archive.org/details/democraticroosev00tugw

Stocking, Stabilization of the Oil Industry…
https://www.jstor.org/stable/46

Watkins, A Planned Economy Through Coordinated Control of Basic Industries
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Planned_Economy_Through_Coordinated_Co/aOcyHAAACAAJ?hl=en

Categories
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””