Comments (16)

• TLWP Sam

  Is this another case of low- to mid-ranking officers who wish they were Generals and didn't have to take orders? The 'Guvmint coerces me' and 'Peter robs his neighbour Paul'? How about 'the Government is equivalent to a private landowner - a private landowner would get to make the rules and expect payment from the tenants and can use force for non-payers and can evict and, even, kill stubborn tenants who get all violent about it. Actually modern Democratic Government is more lenient - a private owner can make what rules he wants, charge as much as he can get away and deliver the least amount of services for that rent - if the land tenants don't like it they can move to the next private landowner or else. At least a Democratic Government (yes, with a Constitution) has facilities to change the managers, change the rules, change the rent payments and even go some way to protect the tenants and minorities from the managers. Once again Libertarians presume they'd must perceive themselves as being landowners and never the land tenants in the idyllic anarcho-Capitalist world.

  Published: June 26, 2008 9:53 AM

• oma5

  TLWP Sam: You are right about "a private owner can make what rules he wants, charge as much as he can get away and deliver the least amount of services for that rent" but the key is your statement "if the land tenants don't like it they can move to the next private landowner or else"...or else stay and honor the contract freely entered into and meet the terms therein. You are free to choose. You can go and find another landlord that has policies more to your liking. You can negotiate your deal with him. You can choose between different levels of service. With the government, however, you cannot negotiate, you cannot choose between different levels of service, you cannot find another "landlord". You are stuck with what you have until the next election and if the majority then chooses to vote for things you disagree with, you remain stuck. Also, in reality, the government is immune to public opinions and really doesn't have to listen to the public until the next election which means they too "can make what rules he wants, charge as much as he can get away and deliver the least amount of services for that rent"...and they do! But we cannot choose another landlord! No, I prefer dealing with a private land owner.

  Published: June 26, 2008 11:28 AM

• EnEm

  "As Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, "Virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate".

  Tell me if I am understanding this correctly:

  If virtue aims at the intermediate then that would translate to "there is some good in the worst of us" and its corollary: "there is some bad in the best of us". Or, "nobody is all good or all bad". Therefore, attempts to practice "extreme virtue" would be unacceptable, since the "intermediate" is now to be be the standard of "good" and "extremism" would therefore be bad. And that would in turn, fill Integrity shot-full of holes.

  Published: June 26, 2008 11:31 AM

• Jake

  To TLWP Sam,

  How, in your world, did government get its hand on the property it supposedly "owns"? You're advocating socialism/communism, price fixing and coercian to try and make your argument work.

  Published: June 26, 2008 11:41 AM

• Roderick T. Long

  I made points very similar to those in this article in a 2004 blogpost.

  (And to EnEm: No, that is not remotely what Aristotle means.)

  Published: June 26, 2008 12:30 PM

• Glenlivetup

  Ahhhh, yes--the central Libertarian argument of "government intervention is violence" rears its cumbersome head yet again.

  Perhaps some clarification should be in order for those that do not subscribe to this theory, namely: For people accustomed to living under government rule (which will never pass away), can someone please explain how the *absence* of government intervention would not eventually lead to anarchy?

  This answer, I suppose, greatly depends on one's view of government. Is government a necessary evil to maintain order in a fallen world, or is it an oppressive juggernaut that man should flee?
  

  Published: June 26, 2008 12:39 PM

• Roderick T. Long

  can someone please explain how the *absence* of government intervention would not eventually lead to anarchy?

  Anarchy just is the absence of government, so of course it would lead to anarchy. But if your question is why anarchy wouldn't lead to chaos, see this piece. Further reading here.

  Published: June 26, 2008 12:46 PM

• billwald

  Capitalism is the system under which AT&T would have maintained a monopoly over all forms of communications especially those franchised as city utilities.

  Published: June 26, 2008 1:06 PM

• billyray

  uhmm...theres regulated and unregulated capitalism, an economic machine fueled by exchange, mostly going head to head with unfettered free-enterprise....then theres socialism, a political machine, fueled by population membership and stipulation to the common good, competing head to head with a myriad of other political machines representing tiny groups to whole nations, and even a new world order...the conflict is mostly between individual ownership of resource and common use of resource; the rub is that individualists still expect to be supported by non-owners...laying off their liabilities as externalities, all the while depending on military protection, road building, financial insurance, schools and so forth

  Published: June 26, 2008 2:19 PM

• Danny

  Why did all the trolls come out of the closet today? And for this article?

  Published: June 26, 2008 2:43 PM

• magnus

  I'm glad to see this article. The old saw about how "mixed" is somehow always preferable is so very tiring. It is invariably the product of life-long intellectual laziness.

  Mixing a little socialism with your economic freedom is like mixing a little radioactive waste with your drinking water.

  A little is bad. A lot is worse. Pretty simple equation.

  Published: June 26, 2008 3:46 PM

• Michael A. Clem

  Capitalism is the system under which AT&T would have maintained a monopoly over all forms of communications especially those franchised as city utilities.
  
  Um, free market capitalism is the system under which Bell Telephone, later AT&T, would never have been granted a monopoly in the first place. They would have had to compete against other companies.
  

  Published: June 26, 2008 3:54 PM

• TLWP Sam

  Unsurprisingly oma5 did the standard textbook 'if I don't like one private landowner I'll go to another'. Last time I looked in the government landowning world that's called Emigration. Perhaps the only difference is that government make a big deal of 'citizenship'. But what oma5 presumes is the 'politicians get to do what they want until election time'. Actually there are checks and balances against politicians supposedly 'doing what they want'. Even if the politicians can find ways around them, a private landowner has no checks and balances, he's a sovereign owner - he simply takes what the market bears. And pray tell what, in this day and age, is a 'private landowner'? Do you mean a private landholder?

  P.S. Nope I see how you came to that conclusion Jake. Actually a lot of governments, in the Old World, forcefully displaced the reigning Monarch of the day. But considering most people abide by thir governments they may hate the initial methods but like the results.

  Published: June 26, 2008 7:23 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

  TLWP Sam wrote "...oma5 did the standard textbook 'if I don't like one private landowner I'll go to another'. Last time I looked in the government landowning world that's called Emigration."

  Only, those aren't equivalent. The choice between countries is limited to the ones that have converged on certain things. You can certainly emigrate to a country where they drive on the side of the road you prefer, but not to one where there are no taxes or in which they really have a functioning gold standard. Not that there is a complete range of choice in conditions from seeking out a new landlord, but there is more real choice. Ideally, the only real lack of choice would flow from physical constraints that affect all suppliers and limit what they can offer, not from a consensus adopted by all suppliers.

  Published: June 27, 2008 12:24 AM

• fusgerm

  TLWP Sam:

  "considering most people abide by their governments they may hate the initial methods but like the results"

  People abide by unjust laws not because they approve of them but because the alternative is a fine or imprisonment. I pay taxes because I prefer it to life in prison or emigrating to some other mafiocracy.

  "At least a Democratic Government (yes, with a Constitution) has facilities to change the managers, change the rules, change the rent payments and even go some way to protect the tenants and minorities from the managers"

  Democracy is a tyranny of the majority. Minorities hold their rights at the pleasure of the majority. Think of Jews in (democratic) Nazi Germany, businessmen in (democratic) Venezuela, ethnic Chinese in (democratic) Malaysia, Japanese in (democratic) wartime USA, Christians in democratic Indonesia, tribal discrimination in democratic African states, etc, etc.

  Constitutions cannot protect minorities for long. Constitutions can be changed by a big enough majority, or by a compliant supreme court. Modern democracy is an exercise in mass bribery: pilfering from one minority after another in a demagogic appeal to the greed of some majority.

  "the Government is equivalent to a private landowner - a private landowner would get to make the rules and expect payment from the tenants and can use force for non-payers and can evict and, even, kill stubborn tenants who get all violent about it"

  In those terms the current system stands condemned ipso facto, since no one but a few hundred governments can actually "own" land. If I myself cannot homestead or even buy land, where can I find space to exercise freedom?

  "Libertarians presume they'd must perceive themselves as being landowners and never the land tenants"

  Nothing wrong with being a tenant if there's a MARKET to choose from. I don't call a few hundred coercive monopolies a real estate tenancy market for over 6 billion people.

  Published: June 27, 2008 9:10 AM

• dsmccoy

  What a puffed up piece of bull.

  Morehouse constructs a strawman then burns it down.

  Isaac M. Morehouse sounds like an ideologue. I consider his opinion to be of no use to me.

  Pathetic.

  Published: November 3, 2008 1:29 AM