TechnoEudaimonia

New Blog!

2009-01-29T14:42:00.001-08:00

Its time to say goodbye to Blogger and TechnoEudaimonia. I've moved on to greener pastures: The Examined Life, hosted by WordPress. I'll leave this one up for the time being; there are some half-way decent posts buried somewhere in here.

A New Kind of Journal: Libertarian Papers

2009-01-22T16:24:00.001-08:00

Stephen Kinsella and Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute have started a new, online-only academic journal called the Libertarian Papers. It has a slimmed-down editing process and will accept submissions from anyone. Each article is posted as a separate blog post, as soon as it is ready, instead of being released in issues. To add to the goodness, the Papers are using Creative Commons Liscense, so kudos to them for that (I guess Kinsella finally felt guilty about being a patent lawyer :-) ). As a sneaky side note, Roderick Long is on the editorial board, so lets see if we can get some left-libertarian stuff published!

List of Random Stuff that I'm calling a Blog Post

2009-01-15T20:10:00.001-08:00

1. This will be my first post aggregated to Anarchoblogs, so to all reading, hello! Also, I'd like to take this oppurtunity to once again mention the Forums of the Libertarian Left, a great place for agorists, mutualists, geolibertarians, voluntaryists, libertarian socialists, decentralists, and other left-libertarians to discuss theory, history, and tips, tricks, and strategies on smashing the state.

2. Happy birthday Pierre-Joseph Proudhon!

3. If you will, vote for Kevin Carson's policy recommendations to the Obama administration on Change.gov.

4. That's about it. I'll close with Aristotle Quote #2:

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

Rasmussen & Den Uyl and Carson on Property Rights

2009-01-10T17:20:00.000-08:00

I just got my copy of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order, and I would recommend to anyone interested on a neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics and rights-justification. While I was reading, I discovered a very interesting parallel with none other than Kevin Carson, suprisingly enough. The passage below is in a section about justifying Lockean property rights:

In terms of specific situations and social setting, how to cash all
this out in terms of positive law and rights will be difficult and
beyond the purview of abstract moral and social thoery. We believe a
good deal will be practically dependent on actual agreement. Herein,
for us, lies the proper, and extremely important, place for social
contract theory. What people are willing to agree will impact
significantly on the specific rights structure of a given society,
although it will in no way be decisive about the moral quality or
character of such a society. Perhaps pouring cans of tomato juice into
fluid mediums (wombatron: a reference to one of Nozick's examples in Anarchy,
State, and Utopia) would be an acceptable procedure for detirmining
boundries in cases of original acquisition in some strange land of
tomato juice fetishists. Similarly, a community of artists might
settle upon criteria of visual perspective in their society (for
example, you own what you can see) in cases of original acquisition.
We find it highly improbable that these criteria would command
consensus; but then it is also unlikely that the Puritanical idea that
one ones what one can physically labor upon would be the only
acceptable principle of original acquisition in all societies either.

The above could just as easily apply to, say, abandonment, instead of original acquisition. This parallels Carson where he talks about competition and arbitration of competing property meta-systems in Mutualist Political Economy. The implications of this are interesting: given that mutualist property rules really only fundamentally differ from a traditional Lockean system in what constitute abandonment of property, one could easily ground a mutualist society in R&DU's neo-Lockean system. More tenatively, one could even justify a form of Georgism, although I am less sure on how to go about that.

On a side note, this post has got me interested in grounding mutualist and individualist principles, such as mutuality, within a neo-Aristotelian ethical framework. Look for more on that sometime.

Website of the Week #3: Forums of the Libertarian Left

2009-01-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

(yes, I know that it's been more than a week; I'm working on posting more often)

If you are a mutualist, agorist, geolibertarian, voluntaryist, left-Rothbardian, decentralist, libertarian socialist, or any other individual on the Libertarian Left, and you want to discuss and debate theory, history, and smashing the state-capitalist system, then the Forums of the Libertarian Left is the place for you. It has grown beyond all of my expectations, with 72 members (currently) and about 10-20 posts a day (on average). It has become the forum for Left-Libertarianism online. Sign up and join the Revolution today!

One More Time on "Axiomatic Libertarianism"

2009-01-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Wirkman for pointing this out:

Whatever liberty is or is not, its ethical defense is something in
addition to it. Thus, there may be more than one ethical principle
defending liberty. Autonomy (self government) and eudaimonia (happiness
through flourishing, or however you define it) likely have something to
do with the best defenses of liberty. But the ethically principled
defense of liberty is not the same thing as liberty, and it is
worthwhile to separate — keep distinct — the is question (contingent upon human action, mind you) from the ought question (which itself can be looked at from several perspectives.

What I meant was the right to liberty, liberty in the normative sense, not liberty as an existing condition. Its my fault for not making the proper distinction here. From now on, revising, I promise :-).

Some Clarifications on "Axiomatic Libertarianism"

2009-01-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

A little clarification is needed for my previous post (I really need to finish my posts before I post them :-) )

First, I was unclear on what I meant by "axiomatic". In saying this, I meant that liberty or self-ownership (more on this later) was independent from wider ethical concerns. There is another meaning of axiomatic, a self-evident principle that cannot be logically denied, that I conflated with the definition that I was going for. Some of the conceptions of libertarianism are axiomatic in both senses, but my criticism was directed towards the first. Also, it may be argued that Rothbard's method is half-way between an axiomatic view and a view based in Aristotelian meta-ethics, as Douglas Rasmussen does here.

Second, I was a little off base on what the axiom actually was. Most of the thinkers I named (Rothbard, Hoppe, Block, Molyneux, and Kinsella) posit that self-ownership, rather than liberty per se, is axiomatic. Liberty is then a corollary of self-ownership. This is a small clarification, as it doesn't really effect my criticism, but I thought that I should make it anyway, before someone corrects me :-).

Third, I was asked by someone by email what I meant by "independent from wider ethical concerns." I mean this: in an axiomatic conception of libertarianism, the only principle that is referred to is self-ownership (liberty and arguably Lockean homesteading rules are corollaries of self-ownership). Nothing is said about autonomy in a wider sense, or any other moral principle. For example, Walter Block has said that you have the right to pry someone's fingers from the ledge of your skyscraper window, if you don't want them to be there. The problem with that is that it would result in their death, a rather more important issue in this case than your property right. A libertarian political theory properly grounded in a broader ethical theory would tell you that there are limits to the harms that you can inflict on others, regardless of property.

I hope that this has been of some use in clarifying my argument.

The Problem with Axiomatic Libertarianism

2009-01-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

Many libertarians, following in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, propose that liberty is an axiom; that is, liberty is a self-evident fact. They include such thinkers as Hans-Hermann Hoppe with his libertarian version of argumentation ethics, Stephan Kinsella with his conception of estoppel, and Stefan Molyneux with his "universably preferable behavior". Non-aggression is thus singled out and seperated from the rest of ethics, which leads to a seperation of what is "right" and what is "good"; this is evident, for example, in many of the writings of Walter Block.

The problem with this is that it isn't the case; liberty is not an axiom, it is an ethical princple based on deeper ethical concerns (autonomy and eudaimonia). This may seem to be a small difference, but it leads to several deviations from what I would consider to be truly libertarian.

First of all, it leads people to only consider principles, divorced from any wider ethical context. This means that ethical concepts with real meaning, such as need or harm, are completely ignored. Thus, the Rothbardian view of proportional punishment as being a valid answer to a crime, regardless of the consequences to anyone, and ignoring what Long called each individual's "spheres of authority". Also, Block's view that one can legitamately pry someone's fingers off of the ledge of a skyscraper if you own it falls under this category.

Second, it leads many thinkers to propose a "plumb-line", "thin" libertarian view; that is, the view that libertarianism is the non-aggression principle, and nothing else. The problems with that are best explained here.

Third, it leads some thinkers to bundle libertarianism with values that a non-axiomatic thick libertarian would reject. This includes some of Hoppe's ultra-conservative views; he explicity rejects pluralism, a necessary part of a free society, and he advocates a sort of "voluntary" authoratarianism.

Instead of divorcing liberty from the rest of ethics, libertarians should base the non-aggression princple in a wider ethical theory, to avoid these problems.

Aristotle Quote #1

2009-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

Because I don't have the motivation to write a full post:

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We
do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather
have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” (from the Nichomachean Ethics)

Action as a Basic Axiom?

2008-12-26T13:44:00.001-08:00

While I was contemplating about a hybrid Aristotelian/Randian/Austrian ontology, I started wondering: is human action a basic axiom, like existence, identity, and consciousness, or is a non-basic axiom like entity or a corollary of an axiom like causality or non-contradiction?

First off, I wondered about Rand's distinction between basic and non-basic axioms. Existence, identity, and consciousness are said to be basic, while the only non-basic axiom that I could find (in OPAR) is entity. The distinction seems a bit weak: strictly speaking, the only basic axiom appears to be existence, while the others are implicit in it. A closer inspection will reveal, though, that the distinction holds. Existence and identity are 2 different aspects of the same irreducible fact (something is and something is, respectively), while consciousness is another irreducible fact (the law of identity also serves the useful purpose of being the basis of the laws of logic). Entity, for example, is a sub-divsion of existence, and while it is an irreducible fact, it still depends on existence in a way that identity and consciousness do not.

With that established, we can investigate the nature of action. Action, according to Mises in Human Action, is "purposeful behavior". He further defines it as "will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego's meaningful response to stimuli and to the condition of its enviroment, is a person's concious adjustment to the state of the universe that detirmines his life." Already, we can see that action depends on at least one of the basic axioms, consciousness. But is action irreducible?

To answer this question, it appears we must ask another: can the be consciousness without action? Can a self-aware being not have purposeful behavior? One example that comes to mind is an "unlimited" consciousness, which would have no reason to act. However, such an idea is rendered impossible by the primacy of existence; every existent, including a conscious being, has an identity, and is thus limited. Any unlimited attribute is an impossible contradiction (see OPAR and George H. Smith's Atheism for a further arguing of this point).

Here is another example: imagine an artificial intelligence, running on an isolated computer, with input but no output. Can this consciousness act? It would seem not. Thought isn't purposeful behavior; it is only a pre-requisite to purposeful behavior. Thus, I think we have come to an answer: action is not completely contained within the concet of consciousness, but is a basic axiom in its own right.

Comments from those more knowledgable than I are appreciated :-)

Happy Winter Solstice Eve!

2008-12-23T22:51:00.000-08:00

Or, as the Pastafarians say, "Yarrrr! Give me some booty, or walk the plank!"

[ insert creative blog title here ]

2008-12-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

In case anyone wants to read the random ramblings of my gorgeous fiancé, her blog is back up! [ insert creative blog title here ] has returned! She says that its boring, but I beg to differ. :-)

Damn, I need to post more.

Website of the Week #2: Invisible Molotov

2008-12-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

(This will be a post that I will try to make once a week, providing
access to a website that I think is cool, interesting, weird, or useful
in furthering the revolution.)

Invisible Molotov is "A Market Anarchist Zine Distro and Publishing House", maintained by William Gillis. Basically, it functions as an archive of various anarchist articles and books in PDF files, formatted so that they can be stapled and read as books or pamphlets when printed out. Some very good stuff in here, including works by Kevin Carson, Roderick Long, Sam Konkin, and some classics from Benjamin Tucker and Voltairine de Cleyre, among others. Print some out and give them to friends, or print a lot out and give them to strangers. Sadly, it hasn't been updated in a while, but what is there is very good. There is also a partial archive at Agorism.info.

A Quick Question...

2008-11-28T09:22:00.001-08:00

Anyone have any tips for a non-religious wedding ceremony, especially as regards the Iowa/Nebraska area?

Hostility towards natural rights?

2008-11-04T09:44:00.001-08:00

Recently I have noticed a certain hostility towards the concepts of natural rights and natural law in the left-libertarian blogosphere. I guess I don't get it; what is wrong with stating that it is right or wrong to treat a person a certain way because of their nature as a human being?

Website of the Week #1: Orion's Arm

2008-10-16T19:44:00.001-07:00

(This will be a post that I will try to make once a week, providing access to a website that I think is cool, interesting, weird, or useful in furthering the revolution.)

If you like futurism, world-building, transhumanism, and science fiction, then you will love the Orion's Arm Universe Project. It was originally intended to be the basis of a novel, but eventually the world-building aspect took over. There is an 8000-year history, and no handwavium or unobtainium. It has taken the best from several other world-building projects, and added on quite a bit of original and interesting information. A fair warning, though: it can get rather jargon-heavy. Even if you are familiar with transhumanism, you will head to the Encyclopaedia Galactica more than once to find out what a "modosophont" or a "autowar" is. What's more, one of the main empires that is fleshed out, the NoCoZo (Non-Coercive Zone), is a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist polity (there's the usual transhumanist/Extropian focus on Hayek and David Friedman while ignoring others, though). All in all, a fantastic site for those interested in SF world-building.

Libertarian Left News!

2008-10-09T14:50:00.001-07:00

First, Rad Geek has started the ALL Ad Hoc Organizing Committee to help left-libertarians find ALLies nearby and organize local chapters. Start by putting your name and location on the Frappr map!

Second, the Forums of the Libertarian Left has become more successful than I originally thought. Apparently, there is a demand for a place for agorists, mutualists, voluntaryists, geolibertarians, and other libertarian-leftists to hang out and discuss in a non-listserv format (its not 1999, LeftLibertarian2 :-) ). Join today, if you already haven't!

I'm a (blank)

2008-10-09T14:31:00.001-07:00

I have recently realized that I don't have a convenient, specific label for my political and economic views (whether that is good or bad remains to be seen). Yes, I'm an anarchist. So what? How do I differentiate myself from the anarcho-communists, anti-civilization anarcho-primitivists, and paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalists? Same problem with libertarian; people think that I'm a Catoite or pot-smoking conservative. I'm also a liberal, in the classical sense of the word, but that is a sense used so rarely that its not even worth discussing. How about Geoffery's term, Aristotelian liberal? This is perhaps the closest, but it is a mouthful; ok for academia and intelligent discussions, but not for everyday arguments! Adding in a qualifying "/libertarian" as I usually have to just makes it downright awkward.

How about agorist? Again, it fits, but I see agorism as being more of a method than a philosophy (similar to syndicalism). Also, as far as it is a philosophy (ie; a left-wing interpretation of Rothbardianism), it doesn't apply to me. Mutualist? Nope, Locken-minus-proviso over here. Market anarchist? True, but too broad. Left-libertarian? Same as the previous. Left-Rothbardian? Not entirely accurate; I would have to add in "/left-Randian", which gets us back into the awkwardness. And don't even start me on capitalist and socialist, both terms which I think have zero utility from an anarchist perspective.

More and more, I am finding that the best political philosophy is one that synthesizes the insights of several different schools of thought, a "syncretic libertarianism", if you will: A synthesis of the the lassiez-faire "capitalists" (Mises, Hayek, Rand, and Rothbard) with the individualist anarchists (Spooner, Tucker, and Carson) and the best of libertarian "socialism" as a whole, informed by the economic, political, and social insights of the Austrian School, a Sciabarran dialectical methodology, a "thick" cultural and social perspecitve a la Long and Johnson, and neo-Aristotelian philosophy in the tradition of Rand, Veatch, and Long. More and more, my views start to resemble a modern version of Voltairine de Cleyre's "anarchism-without-adjectives", even with all the adjectives cluttering everything up.

And I'm not sure that is a bad thing.

No Bailout. Yet.

2008-09-30T09:10:00.001-07:00

Odd. It appears that the upcoming Congressional elections were enough to force many House Democrats to break ranks, in addition to those Republicans opposing for ideological reasons. Its amusing to see how they realize that people don't like the idea of handing over $700 billion of their (and their children's) money to the corporate class, despite the entire media trying to drill in the idea that it "is in everyone's best interest". On a side note, it will be an interesting experiment to see how many of those who voted "no" will be re-elected.

Still, I'm not getting my hopes up quite yet. Even if it is after the election, there will probably be a de-facto bailout eventually. There are way too many elite interests supporting it for the opposition to have any success. Yet another illustration of the inevitable failure of electoral politics to promote anything besides statism.

Why I Don't Need Microsoft Anymore

2008-09-22T12:44:00.001-07:00

Operating System: Ubuntu Linux version 8.04 LTS "Hardy Heron", with GNOME 2.22 desktop

Web Browsing: Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1, Opera 9.5, and Google Chrome Beta

Email: Evolution email client and GMail webmail

Office: OpenOffice.org suite (includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation

Gaming: Wine with PlayOnLinux, Winetricks, and Wine-Doors (allows the installation of virtually all Windows games and other apps on Linux)

All of the above far outperform their Microsoft counterparts (Windows XP/Vista, IE, Outlook, Microsoft Office, etc.). With Wine and the appropriate APIs and DLLs, almost any Windows program can be installed on a Linux machine; sometimes the programs work even better than in Windows. My advice to anyone: don't give Microsoft (a beneficiary of massive state privelige in the form of IP laws) any more money: a combination of open-source products and closed-source software from more ethical companies (including Google, Opera Software and, to a lesser degree, Apple) can fulfill whatever computing needs you may have.

The Endgame Begins

2008-09-02T08:21:00.001-07:00

According to very reliable sources, a US attack on Iran is imminent. This may be the worst news this year. An Iran War would drive the price of gas up to the stratosphere and dust off the word "depression" in everyone's vocabulary. The is the beginning of the end, folks.

Combined with the mess in Georgia, it appears that the neocons are trying to assert their dominance over Iran and Russia (and, by extension, China, by means of the Shanghai Treaty Org). It won't work. The US military is massively overstretched, and any non-nuclear confrontation with either Russia or Iran will end in massive embarrassment for the US. Our wonderful ruling class have dug themselves into a corner: they can't back down without losing all of their power, foreign and domestic, and they can't beat Iran, China, or Russia in a conventional conflict. They are left with one option: the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. I don't know what the leaders of Russia or China would do in that situation, but I know what the Beltway power elite would do: escalate the use of nukes to a strategic level.

No one knows what this will lead to. Hopefully I'm wrong, and I'm blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Hopefully, the Dutch are wrong and the US isn't going to attack Iran. Hopefully, the neocons will stop their ridiculous posturing against Russia and China. However, it doesn't look likely. Begin emergency preparedness measures now. Buy as much physical gold and silver as you can, and hide it. Start stockpiling clean water and canned food. Buy a gun, and enough ammunition to practice weekly.

These could be the last days of the American Empire. Maybe, just maybe, some good will come from the collapse: a society based on contract rather than status, mutual aid rather than taxation, and free markets rather than corporatism. One can only hope.

*edit* Oddly enough, the link is from the Jerusalem Post, which appears to have very strong neocon leanings. Go figure.

"The Dark Knight" and democracy

2008-08-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

To start off, from an aesthetic perspective, The Dark Knight was an incredible movie. The special effects were fantastic and still realistic (excusing the pun), and Heath Ledger was absolutely incredible as the Joker. All of the other actors played their roles perfectly, and the movie preserved a dark, edgy, and realistic feel while still being funny at the appropriate times.

*SPOILER WARNING!*

There is one situation that was especially interesting from a moral perspective. The Joker had wired two ferries with explosives. One of the ferries carried criminals from the county jail, and the other held common citizens trying to escape the city. Both boats have the detonator for the other boat's explosives. The Joker had said that he would blow both ferries up at midnight, unless one of the detonators had already been set off.

*SUPER SPOILER WARNING!!!*

Here comes the interesting part. The non-criminal boat held a vote to see whether or not they would use the trigger. The vote turned out in favor of blowing the other ferry up. The problem was, no one was willing to do the deed. One man who had been especially vocal about using the detonator volunteered to, and then couldn't carry it out.

This is directly applicable to modern-day statist democracy. People vote for politicians to do things that they wouldn't do themselves, and politicians appoint and order people to do things that they won't do. If the every-day person on street had to carry out a drug bust, or kick out a family of "illegal" immigrants, or forcibly take more than half of their neighbor's pay check, would they be so willing to vote for people to do it for them?

Triple-A Battle Cry!

2008-08-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

"We witness to the efficacy of freedom and exult in the intricate beauty of complex voluntary exchange. We demand the right of every ego to maximize its value without limit save that of another ego. We proclaim the age of the Market unbound, the natural and proper condition for humanity, wealth in abundance, goals without end or limit, and self-determined meaning for all: Agora.

"We challenge all who would bind us to show us cause; failing proof of our aggression we shatter our fetters. We bring to justice all who have aggressed against any, ever. We restore all who have suffered oppression to their rightful condition. And we destroy forever the Monster of the Ages, the pseudo-legitimized monopoly of coercion, from our minds and from our society, the protector of aggressors and thwarter of justice. That is, we smash the State: Anarchy.

"We exert our wills to our personal limits restrained only by consistent morality. We struggle against anti-principles which would sap our wills and combat all who physically challenge us. We rest not nor waste resource until the State is smashed and humanity has reached its agorist home. Burning with unflagging desire for Justice now and Liberty forever, we win: Action!

"Agora, Anarchy, Action!"

Online Agorism Study Guide

2008-08-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

This is a study guide for agorism that I will be following over the next few weeks. It starts out with the basics of libertarianism, and builds on that foundation with Rothbardian market anarchism and agorism. The last part is made up of short- to moderate-length essays that expand on several key points.

1. Introduction to Libertarianism:

Libertarianism: The Path to Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom by Jarret Wollstein
Key Concepts of Libertarianism by David Boaz
The Essence of Liberty by David Nolan
Why Be Libertarian? by Murray Rothbard
For A New Liberty by Murray Rothbard

2. Rothbardian market anarchism:

The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard
A Groundwork for Rights: Man's Natural End by Douglas B. Rasmussen
Chaos Theory by Bob Murphy
Defense Services on the Free Market by Murray Rothbard
The Nature of Law by Roderick T. Long
Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market by George H. Smith

3. Agorism:

Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty by Murray Rothbard
New Libertarian Manifesto by Samuel E. Konkin III
Agorist Class Theory by Wally Conger and Samuel E. Konkin III
Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III

4. Supplemental reading:

War, Peace, and the State by Murray Rothbard
Confiscation and the Homestead Principle by Murray Rothbard
Rothbard's "Left and Right": Forty Years Later by Roderick T. Long
Equality: The Unknown Ideal by Roderick T. Long
Big Business and the Rise of American Statism by Roy A. Childs
The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights by Roderick T. Long
Can Austrian Economics Break Bricks? by Benjamin Darrington*
Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved? by Roderick T. Long and Charles Johnson
Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice by Randy Barnett

Dialectics and Liberty by Chris Sciabarra

*-the only format I could find for this is a zine PDF file that will need to be printed out

Something to think about, Obamaphiles

2008-08-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

Almost every left-liberal proposal I read complains about the state of the health care and education industries in the US. I don't blame them in that: health care costs have outpaced inflation by double or more (quite a feat), and the educational system is failing in every possible meaning of the word. What makes these industries so awful? What separates them from the rest of the economy.

Hmmmm....

Which two industries are some of the most regulated, licensed, and monopolized industries our extremely regulated economy? The health care and education industries! Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here: statism doesn't work. Throwing more of the taxpayer's money at a problem doesn't make it go away; most of the time, it worsens it. Why don't we give up on trying to force people to do what we want them to, and try a truly free society and free market.

And no, the corporatist "reforms" of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet are not "free market".