Correction: doesn’t display in my Firefox browser, displays OK in MS IE.

The essay was very nice in that it really did put the focus on the fact that an individuals liberty is an end in itself more than the sustanance of any particular system.

Some thoughts though…

People have rights, and they naturally organize in the form of government to secure those rights. As long as people have the free will to violate liberties, they will also use their free will to organize to secure liberties.

Justice is not about undoing evil that has been done, some evils can never be undone. Justice is about making sure that when an individual(s) makes an evil choice(s) that their ‘choice’ does not happen again, one way or another (without restricting everyone elses free will). Ideally, justice would undo an evil, but that is not the ends. Ideally, Justice can be done without violence or even violation of liberties, but in practice the violators bad choices and non-credibility often make that impossible. Also, sometimes there are honset disputes that require arbitration.

Anhyow, sometimes unjust things happen in life and you are left in a situation where you never get recompence for the evils done for you. Well, that’s life. Humans are finite, life is difficult. IMHO, that’s just a part of the human condition that we just have to manage. Sometimes it is simply necissary to let the rest go and make the best of whatevers left.

If you don’t forgive and let go from time to time, then there is always the risk that repayments, obligations, and remittances will spin out of control. Justice is not a compensation problem, justice is a free will problem. When a person has free will and they make an evil choice – how can it be made sure that they don’t make more evil choices without restricting everyone elses free will? IMHO, this is the essance of justice.

It’s interesting to me that the author quotes Mises just one time, and then in reference to subjective value. I thought the Mises Institute had for its purpose the promotion of Mises’s writings?

Paul, I said nothing about preventing evil choices. You can never prevent evil choices, because people will always have choices. In no way did I imply that we should be soft on people who make evil choices, and I especially hate how the state often tries to limit peoples free choices in the name of preventing the evil ones. In no way am I sujesting that.

However consider an example where a person shoplifted chewing gum from 10 stores, and was caught, and had to pay $200 each time. Then it could be argued that justice was done, not because you stopped the person from stealing – but because the damage of the bad choices was contained by making it more profitable for the store owners.

But, if a person raped 10 women, and then each one of them recieved $2000 in compensation, and each one of them was happy with that and considered it just compensation. This would still be unacceptable, and this person would still need jail because compenstaion or not, the problem of his choices are not contained.

The next person he rapes may not be happy with even $1 million in compensation, and may even get 0 because the is now spending the rest of his life incarcerated. That is still justice, because his evil choices have been contained where in the $2000 example they had not.

Also, consider the “perfect” society where all people have free will, and all people make non-evil choices. But one day an 8 yr old kid, being finite and unknowledgable fires off a gun and accidently kills someone. In this situation, justice would not be served with incarceration or a massive fine. The optimum good for him and society is for him to still have his free will optimized for the rest of life. For the victim, the optimum good is to still have a society that tends to optomize free will.

Now lets say a 17 yr old shoots someone, because he was raised in difficult situation and never lernt to manage his anger appropiately, and grabbed a gun and shot someone. Then in this case, incarceration may instead be just because even if he would never make that choice if raised or trained correctly. the simple truth of the matter is that poor choice still needs to be contained. Also, in this case, even if he learns to manage his anger later on, then it may be just to still have him work several decades on reparation to test and strangthen his choices.

The point is that rights can not be forfieted even if people make evil choices. The purpose of incarceration and fines is not to forfiet the rights of others for the sake of the victim. The purpose is to optimize free will in society by containing evil choices.

Stephan, It’s more of a statement than a question. Mises considered states legitimate institutions. He promoted the restraint of state power, not anarchism. By advancing Rothbard and Hoppe’s anarchism, they’re advocating something I believe Mises would have opposed.

Roger M:

Stephan, It’s more of a statement than a question. Mises considered states legitimate institutions. He promoted the restraint of state power, not anarchism. By advancing Rothbard and Hoppe’s anarchism, they’re advocating something I believe Mises would have opposed.

Roger, 2 responses.

1. So? We are not a closed system of cult worshippers like some Randians.

2. Are you aware of how close to anarchy Mises arguably was? As Hoppe wrote,

under Mises’s unique definition of democracy, the term means self rule or self government in its most literal sense. All organizations in society, including government, should be the result of voluntary interactions. … In a sense you can say that Mises was a near anarchist. If he stopped short of affirming the right of individual secession, it was only because of what he regarded as technical grounds. In modern democracy, we exalt the method of majority rule as the means of electing the rulers of a compulsory monopoly of taxation.

RogerM., have you asked him?

I mean that seriously. From what I have read, Mises respected vigorous logic above all else. Taking the simple premise of self ownership to its logical conclusion is an-archy, that is rules but no “rulers”.

To assert that he rejected the idea is unsupportable. His “support” of government was, as per his own words, because he recognized the benefits human beings had created by inventing a way to remove the “legitimate initiation of force” from the individual.

Now take that literally: If *NO ONE* has the legitimate power to initiate force, then what we label as “government” ceases to exist because it cannot sustain itself by extracting involuntary tribute.

As Mr. Kinsella states above, Mises’ stated reasoning was indeed one of facing reality. Governments do exist, government do reserve to themselves the legitimate power to initiate coercion, but the more limited their scope the more the people flourish.

If you ask any of the anarchists here, what they will say is that no one has a “legitimate” power to use coercion, therefore it cannot be deligated to a “government” in the first place. The best government is, in the purest analysis, no government at all.

Stephen,
In the Hoppe interview you site, the interview made these comments:

AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.
AEN: The strongest evidence against Mises as a radical anti-statist is the passage in Human Action that endorses conscription.

Hoppe then argues for his own interpretation. If Mises accepted the state as legit, then he would implicity accept the conditions necessary to sustain it.

I doubt that Mises had a unique definition of democracy. He was an honest man and such people don’t create private definitions of words without announcing them. That’s what the left does, for example, with its use of the term “liberal.” I’ve noticed anarchists doing that a lot, too.

Stephan, The acuteness of your wit blows me away!

Hmm. Minarchist libertarians and people of such ilk tend to claim that governments are created to protect the rights of individuals.

But other folks claim that governments are created to protect the interests of individuals.

How do we decide which is right? By what means can we tell? Dogma is not an answer to this question.

For instance, some “liberal” socialists claim that government is there to redistribute wealth so that the mass of people are better off. Even though in the long run this policy creates less wealth, over the duration of a human life it might well provide more wealth for many people. (“In the long run, we are dead” — people with a shorter time preference will favor policies that immediately transfer wealth to them.)

At the same time, some anarchists claim that government is there to advance the interests of the ruling class. They have history on their side — for historically, a “government” has merely been a large band of robbers led by a warlord or king or prince-bishop, suited to the extraction of wealth from the populace for the enrichment of the leader’s cadre. Likewise today we see the power of those to whom government has given monopolies or near-monopolies, such as utility firms and military suppliers.

As far as I can tell, the historical fact is that NO government has ever been created for the sole purpose of protecting individual rights. By this negative claim, I include the U.S. government — whose foundational forms included not only slavery, but also government debt to be secured by tariff, that is, by theft.

So, given both the wide variety of opinion and given historical fact, what truth can there be to the libertarian claim? It is surely the case that I would prefer a government that was restrained to protecting individual rights only. But that is merely my preference; I do not see that it is defensible other than that.

I apologize. I should have read the mission statement first. I think Rothbard diverged significantly from Mises with his version of libertarianism and I would like newcomers to the site to understand that they don’t have to swallow Rothbardian libertarianism along with Austrian economics. I’m afraid Rothbard will turn people off to Mises and Austrian econ in general, which would be a shame. Also, Rothbard’s and Rockwell’s politics have little in common with their economic writings, which are outstanding.