Unions are state creations.

As long as the state exists, it will be marginally involved in all aspects of the free market – even to the point of utilizing a free market mechanism (in this case a mortgage contract) to achieve the end it has set in its sights. The private company, when receiving direct state assistance has sold out to the state.

The question then becomes, how does that effect existing contracts between private individuals and the new state-assisted, ex-private, company?

Assuming both parties are private, in the mortgage case, the occupier of the home (the debtor) holds title to the home unless he provides cause to the creditor to reclaim the home upon default (contract breech).

A contradiction arises when the private creditor becomes “state owned” since many people believe that private individuals are “owners” of the state (in theory) and therefore can lay claim to it’s property since it it was forcibly taken. This is a never ending loop of the home occupier (plundered taxpayer – entity #1) being forced to credit the state (entity #2) which in turn lays a partial, if not full, claim to the ex-private, new state-owned creditor (entity #3) which in turn lays claim the the home that is occupied by the plundered taxpayer. The only coercive use of force here is the states action of forcing the taxpayer to credit itself and then crediting (nationalizing) private companies.

Entity 1 and entity 3 agreed on the contract as private companies. That being so, the market mechanism of contract should not be target of aggressive force.

Don’t know if that makes sense but it popped into my head.

Stephan,

You write:

“this is a semantics issue: most libertarians use ‘capitalism’ as a synonym for the free market, and the typical industrial society that can develop and flourish in it.”

I used to know a guy who really liked cocaine. On one occasion, I was present when he phoned his dealer and ordered “half a chicken.” It never occurred to me to believe that half a gram of cocaine and half a chicken were really the same thing and that the difference was all semantics.

“Capitalism” has a history. It was coined to mean certain things, it was popularized as meaning certain things, and when it is used most people will understand it as referring to those certain things, not other certain things which are only imputed to it by a subset of a small political sect.

“The left-libs are incoherent on this issue anyway — they sometimes imply they are against all big business, whether corporate form is used or not; and sometimes against the corporate form, even if it’s small or even non-profit. So what is it — the corporate form, or bigness? Or both — in which case the only thing you approve of are small, non-corporate firms?”

In my view, it is the corporate form, not “bigness.” However …

There’s a reasonable argument that the “bigness” of corporations is at least partially function of their state-bestowed privilege — that they are artificially over-capitalized by virtue of their state-bestowed limited liability, and therefore can invest money in growth which in a free market they’d have believe better invested in insurance.

I don’t object to “bigness” per se, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that some “bigness” is a function of state distortion of the market, not of the market itself.

“why should shareholders be responsible for actions taken by others?”

Maybe they shouldn’t be. But responsibility flows two ways — if I’m not responsible for damages caused in the course of business of an enterprise I allegedly own, neither am I entitled to profits generated by an enterprise I allegedly own.

A shareholder is nothing more or less than a business owner — in particular, a partner in a partnership. It might be a large partnership with many owners. The stake of the owners may vary in ratio and be denominated by shares (in which case it could reasonably be referred to as a joint stock company). But it’s still just a partnership unless the state steps in to make it something else.

If you own something, you’re responsible for it. If someone slips on your company’s floor, they slipped on your floor.

The distinguishing feature of the corporation is that the state says “never mind the floor — you own it for purposes of extracting profit from it, but when it comes to losses from torts, just tell the victims ‘nyah, nyah, the state’s got my back.’”

“No libertarian is against unions; they are only against the extra-market power the state grants them: to force companies to bargain with them.”

Really? I’m not the only one who’s noticed the double standard at Mises and LRC. Almost uniformly:

- Corporations, despite their state privilege and often without reference to it, are the downtrod good guys.

- Unions, not only not necessarily because of their state privilege, but often without even any reference to it, are the bad guys.

I have to assume that unlike the ignorant “Backatcha,” you actually have some grasp of history and understand that until the mid-20th century, unions were not only not state creatures but were often centers of anti-state activity (even Rand credited the unions with busting up FDR’s labor conscription scheme).

Hell, I could even make a plausible case that Samuel Gompers was a “vulgar libertarian.” He treated unionism as a business model for cartelization of labor; he was pro-business (“the worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit”); he was anti-imperialist; he even hewed to the idiotic “right” libertarian arguments against unrestricted immigration (for obvious rent-seeking reasons).

Stephan Kinsella:

My initial reaction to foreclosures was that of Mr. Knapp’s stance at some point over a year or so ago using Rothbard’s “most practical method of de-statization”. Your response to that opens the question I’ve debated in my own head many times: who holds the most justifyable claim to hold title of foreclosed property? What if the ‘paper-holder’ was Fannie/Freddie (FF)? Does this change the claim with the State as the conservator of FF?

I’m inclined to bank-depositors holding the greatest claim as a case can be made that banks robbed them of their money through gross malinvestment — to different degrees, by fiat. Are the bank-depositors to now be shareholders of these “paper”? Should they make this claim and form boards to liquidate the paper or rent out the property?

Being a law student, these questions are a fun little game to me, but my initial argument (Knapp’s) and just tossing “deadbeats” out there are too hasty, IMO; hasty enough to ignore a wealth of valid questions relating to libertarian (mainly, Rothbardian) arguments on banking, prior definitions of “homesteading” as they relate to this extraordinary situation on a massive scale coinciding with the Nanny-State pampering the banks’ cushions, and contract theory.

But, if we’re going to turn this into a Jedi/Sith argument of banksters v. “deadbeats”: who was ‘more’ a deadbeat at contract signing? Calling them both “deadbeats” raises my prior questions, right?

Another note: Mr. Kinsella is being misunderstood as a bankster-apologist, which I don’t interpret at all here. I think people are getting caught up in the argument and Mr. Kinsella’s ‘crafty’ rhetoric.

“if I’m not responsible for damages caused in the course of business of an enterprise I allegedly own, neither am I entitled to profits generated by an enterprise I allegedly own”

Yes, and perhaps the employees are not entitled to wages. And perhaps the lenders are not entitled to interest. And perhaps the customer is not entitled to the benefits of the product.

And so forth. But we. get. it. Shareholders are evil.

Little Alex,

You write:

“My initial reaction to foreclosures was that of Mr. Knapp’s stance”

I don’t recall disclosing any stance on foreclosures. I certainly didn’t intend to do so.

Stephan,

You write:

“are you saying you are NOT against a big firm that is NOT organized as a ‘corporation?’”

I am not against a firm being big; I am against a firm receiving market-distorting privileges from the state, including through the instrument of state charter incorporation.

As it happens, I do lay blame for the dispensation of such privilege on the dispenser (the state) rather than on the receiver (the company) unless I see obvious evidence of the receiver lobbying for that privilege.

To put it a different way, I don’t have anything against (for example) Wal-Mart existing, or doing business, or making a profit, or getting “big.”

I don’t even particularly blame Wal-Mart’s principals for “going with the flow” in terms of accepting state privileges that are out there for the taking — if they didn’t, their competitors would still do so, and clobber them with those privileges.

If I spot Wal-Mart lobbyists seeking additional state privileges, then I begin to blame Wal-Mart’s principals — they’ve gone from being passive beneficiaries of a bad thing to co-creators of that bad thing.

And whether or not I blame Wal-Mart’s principals, of course, I recognize that they’re operating in a state-distorted, rather than free, market.

I don’t find Hessen’s argument for “corporations” (in anything recognizably similar to their current form) existing in a true free market compelling … but I doubt that I could argue the case fully in a blog comment. It would probably take a book.

“Libertarianism simply says: you must not commit aggression against others. This does not automatically imply you are ‘responsible for’ things you own.”

The three forms of aggression as I understand them are plain intentional aggression (picking someone’s pocket), fraud (promising X for Y, receiving Y and not delivering X), and negligent aggression (allowing one or one’s property to cause injury or loss to another, whether one intends that injury or loss or not, when one could have prevented that from happening).

If I own a car, I am responsible for the consequences of its use. If I intentionally run someone down with it, I’m committing plain aggression. If I trick someone into buying it on the promise that it has an engine in it when it doesn’t, I’m committing fraud. If I drink three pints of whiskey and “accidentally” hit a pedestrian with it, I’m committing negligent aggression.

If I own a company, I am responsible for any of the three types of aggression mentioned above which may transpire in its operations. If my ownership is partial, my responsibility may also be partial, but it’s not zero. Like you said, ownership = control. Who could possibly be responsible for aggression caused by a company’s operations except those who own (control) that company’s operations?

Native American Left-Libertarian,
According to Kevin Carson’s work [...] the TRUE property owners are those whose capital was stolen by the state.

That would mean that any person whose capital has NOT been stolen by the State cannot be the true property owner, and that would include any Native Americans whose capital has not been taken by the State. Obviously, this is absurd, which means your assertion is incorrect.

This means that me…as a Native American…really owns your house.

This is a non sequitur. You cannot claim property by ancestry since ancestry is an accident, not something you achieved.

My land was stolen by the white criminal banksters starting in the 1600s. Your house and Wal-Mart are MY property.

It wasn’t your land, so you beg the question, unless you were alive in the 1600s and thus prove possession.

Further, my parents and ancestors were working class folks. Just folks. And I am working class. [This] means that Rothbard and Mises would agree [...] that my capital was illegally appropriated by Monopoly Capital.

It cannot mean such a thing since the conclusion is a non sequitur. First, your ancestry is by accident, not something you sought or achieved; second, unless you can prove you worked as a laborer under direct coercion, then you must have worked as a laborer voluntarily – thus, you cannot now allege coercion just because you worked as a laborer.

Which banks nowadays are “private”, exactly? Which do not benefit from artificial barriers to market entry by competitors? Which do not slurp up freshly printed or computerized dollars from the Fed whenever they get the chance?

Misesians seem to want to defend the “idea” of a private bank that doesn’t exist. All left libertarians are doing is applying libertarian theory to the here and now.

Libertarianism does not imply particular institutions and social relationships. You’re free to predict that a freed market would look like Galt’s Gulch, union-free and a run by the biggest corporations you can imagine populated with rich people or grateful poor ones. We’re free to predict that a freed market would look more like worker-owned businesses, more egalitarian wealth distributions, and usufruct property conventions. Let’s see who’s right.

I don’t see why it’s so hard to understand our use of the term “left libertarian”. We use it to distinguish ourselves from your cultural preferences.

Jeremy,

Prior to this financial crisis, the banks were private. During which time they did benefit, as you say, from barriers to market entry. The creation of the Fed is part of these barriers. It creates a monopoly entity who’s product is transmitted as currency with the protected banks engaging in the transmission business. (The Fed also directly assists the state by funding debt but that is a separate consideration). Does the state, when protecting a private business, entitle the rest of the citizens in the state to lay claim to it? I would say no.

Now in the current situation, the Fed has financed the purchase of private entities by the state. This by itself means nothing (in a contract / ownership sense) other than now the state owns the banks. This bring up the ownership claim “circle of death” whereby the home possessor “owns” the state, which “owns” the banks, which “owns” the persons house. Nothing can be determined while the conventions that are being used permit this circular ownership claim to continue.

If voluntary contract is a staple of libertarianism, how can one expect to advance this position when at the same time calling for its abolition just because one entity is now under control of “the state”. If someone loans me money and I issue them an IOU note, and then they sell that note to someone else, does that make the IOU contract void and allow me off the hook for repayment?

This is exactly what happened with the banks shareholders (who are the real people loaning money) sell their stock to the government.

Now I admit I am a neophyte in these matters and have only been reading stuff on libertarianism for about a year now (mostly bank stuff). But, I must admit, the strict adherence to voluntary contract is something that first drew me to this way of thinking.

I suppose the degree to which you think a given contract is voluntary is a matter of personal judgment. Left libertarians suspect that, at their roots, many traditional institutions and relationships are less than voluntary. And I think this angers those who are invested, not just in liberty and freedom, but in particular institutions and relationships – people, for example, like conservatives.

If I own a car, I am responsible for the consequences of its use. If I intentionally run someone down with it, I’m committing plain aggression. If I trick someone into buying it on the promise that it has an engine in it when it doesn’t, I’m committing fraud. If I drink three pints of whiskey and “accidentally” hit a pedestrian with it, I’m committing negligent aggression.

If your car is parked on the side of the road and another driver (having drunk three pints of whiskey or not – though I suspect after having drunk three pints of whiskey you’d be quite safe behind the wheel, being unconscious if not dead) hits it and shunts it into a pedestrian (accidentally or not), you’re not responsible; your ownership of the car is not relevant.

Similarly, if someone on a bicycle loses control and rams your car, injuring himself in the process, you’re not responsible (unless you parked on a corner in a bicycle lane, or something equally stupid).

Or if you loan your car to a friend, who goes out and intentionally runs someone down (assuming you didn’t know he was going to do that when he asked to borrow the car)… Etc.

Ownership != responsibility.

Trying to conflate subsidized, partially nationalized, fractional reserve fiat money banks with “evil” “capitalist” landlords is so obviously wrong that it is does not even qualify as sloppy. It’s just dishonesty.

The problem with banks is not that they are evil (which many are) or capitalist (which they are not), but that they are creations of the Corporatist, fiat money state, fueled by inflation, subsidy, and privledge.

I don’t have a firm idea as to whether these people who refuse to leave a home are right or wrong. I see both sides of the argument. But it takes an effort not to be prejudiced against your side of the argument, when you spout such dishonest drivel. I expect more from an Austrian economist.

How exactly does one determine who is rightfully the exclusive user of a scarce thing by way of “arbitary cultural / emotional / subjective aspects”? If you have 2 claimants each defining property ownership in his own “cultural/emotional/subjective” way, then how do you resolve the conflict?

Seems to me that you have to have a clearly defined standard of ownership to refer to for property disputes so that everyone knows what’s what. “Cultural/emotional/subjective aspects” don’t cut it. Otherwise, you may have a recipe for chaos.

“Seems to me that you have to have a clearly defined standard of ownership to refer to for property disputes so that everyone knows what’s what. ‘Cultural/emotional/subjective aspects’ don’t cut it. Otherwise, you may have a recipe for chaos.”

Granted, a “clearly defined standard of ownership to refer to for property disputes” is a good thing.

Just because such a standard is a good thing, however, it doesn’t necessarily follow that one, and only one, such standard can be logically deduced from an axiomatic premise of self-ownership.

If more than one such standard can be logically deduced, then it’s possible that different groups of associating individuals may choose different such standards — and that conflicts will therefore arise when two such groups adopting different standards come into contact.

If anyone finds the box that the universe came in, I’d be interested in seeing if there’s a lifetime warranty slip guaranteeing a chaos-free existence. Maybe we just missed it and it’s buried way down in the packaging peanuts or something.

O Contraire,

“Now there’s an intelligent observation, which basically just reiterates what I said dressed in different verbiage.”

No, not really.

“if you have 2 people with completely different conceptions of what constitutes legitimate ownership of something, some provable standard will be necessary in order to determine which is the rightful owner, not subjective feelings and emotions.”

Carson’s assertion is that more than one standard can be logically deduced (“proven”) from the premise of self-ownership.

One observation pertaining to Carson’s assertion is that adopters of any particular such standard tend to treat that particular standard as itself axiomatic and start adorning it with “cultural/emotional/subjective” trinkets which in turn affect their judgment as it pertains both to implementation of the standard and to evaluation of standards which might come into competition with theirs.

Something can be “necessary” all day long without ever becoming “available.”

BTW, speaking of “cultural/emotional/subjective”, on what grounds should I accept Kevin Carson as some kind of authority on property rights?

O’Contraire,

You write:

“Oh, OK. So I guess 2 people who believe they have claims to the same property because each has a completely different ‘cultural/emotional/subjective’ conception of legitimate ownership will just have to…what? Have a duel, or something? Or maybe the dispute can just be settled by seeing who can shout the loudest.”

When responding to my arguments, you might want to try actually responding to those arguments rather than reiterating your hangups with someone else’s phraseology.

If more than one theory of property can be logically deduced from (i.e. is valid as it relates to) self-ownership/non-aggression, then what we’re likely to see (in a total system adherent to self-ownership/non-aggression) are individuals grouping/aggregating into societies or societal components with other individuals who adopt the same such theory that they adopt. Arguments over which theory will serve as the standard for dispute resolution will occur at the edges of such groups, i.e. when an individual in one group with one theory enters into a dispute with an individual in another group with a different theory.

If the theories adhered to by both groups are valid, then the conflict is irreconciliable through logic. “3+1″ is not an inherently “better” way to arrive at “4″ than “2+2.” It is then likely that further conflict will result as adherents of each theory beat their chests on “cultural/emotional/subjective” grounds, since neither side can prevail on logic.

This could be an indication that self-ownership /non-aggression are not the, or least not the only, necessary premises for creating “peaceable resolutions.”

Or it could be be an indication that even the best/optimum solution doesn’t come with a 100% performance guarantee from the universe.

Dude, there is no “logic” anyways. Just listen to the universe. Listen to its magical song and let it wash all over you like a waterfall and it will tell you everything that you would ever want to know.

Hey, man. Don’t bogard that J…

Seems to me that you have to have a clearly defined standard of ownership to refer to for property disputes so that everyone knows what’s what.

But isn’t that what a community is – a group of people who live in close proximity to each other because, for whatever reason among many, they’ve agreed on arbitrary rules concerning how property will be used within a given geographic area? What does it help to make property into a religion that must be either accepted or rejected according to misesian / objectivist / republican tenets? Different people have different priorities – let them form communities that reflect that, so that more of these rules are naturally followed. THAT is the path to the genuinely voluntary society, I should think.

The standard can be defined without being *universal*.

Forgive me, Rothbard and Mises, but I never read any of your work taking away the central point that the commenters here seem to believe: that the system you advocated was a means to ending human conflict for all time. How could I have missed that?

And us left libertarians are dismissed as the hippy dreamers…

ACORN is a state creation.

Carson’s assertion is that more than one standard can be logically deduced (“proven”) from the premise of self-ownership.

If you can deduce two (or more) contrary results from the same axiom, there’s something wrong with your axiom.

(And there’s nothing wrong with the axiom)

>> So are all libertarians, if only by being anarchist >> (which all true libertarians are).

Bull. There are more things in the Libertarian movement than are dreamed of in your philosophy.

There is a reason that we use two words: Libertarian, and Anarchist. All Anarchists are Libertarian. This does not imply that all Libertarians are Anarchist.

Libertarians can be categorized as minarchists (those who believe that the best results would be achieved by a minimal state), as anarchists (those who believe in complete removal of the state), and as — for lack of a better term — Agnostic Libertarians, who do not know whether they prefer small government or no government, but who prefer either to the stinking corpulent states under which (nearly) all mankind struggles today.

If three Libertarians want to flee California for New Hampshire (http://freestateproject.org), it may well be efficient for them to all ride together, even if one is going to Keene to engage in civil disobedience, one is going to Grafton to live off the grid, and the third is going to Concord to work within the system.