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[Content warning: this contains meta-politics. Doctors
believe meta-politics might slightly less detrimental to
your health than straight politics, but they still might
be against many sensible information diets.]
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I’m not exactly pleased with how much of my life I spent in
the debate community, but one thing it did for me was
expose me to the Spark Notes version of the libertarian
tradition, including Lockean rights theory . . . for
Babies[1].
Ripping Locke out his historical context, as does both
Robert Nozick [2] as well as kids in suits who vastly
over-estimate their intelligence [3], the basics of the
argument is that even if there was no government at all we
would have life, liberty, and property. For the purposes of
what I am trying to argue today, we can just concede that
premise. Obviously, there are a great many complications,
and many of them were not beyond the milieu of thinkers on
these issues at the time, or even to Locke himself (if only
people could be bothered to read a book, let alone do so
carefully) but I am used to the rough and tumble of winning
the battle of soundbites, so I at least get where those who
make the value assertion in the present-day are coming from.
Speaking of value assertions, the next one is that you should
look at government as a rights protection agency, which you
can only legitimately hire out to protect those rights to
life, liberty, and property. Again, the argument very well
could, if not should, bog down here [4], but I again can
concede the point, as I am about to offer a retort.
My retort: a Libertarian who has built the *moral* argument
for rights on the two premises above has no business
feeling good about corporations — certainly no right to be
smug (in their little dapper suits), though it is
understandable if they come off smarmy, or are angry with a
defensiveness that shows real weakness and insecurity ,
casting about to find the support of peers for validation,
even though such collectivism and truth via politics (nay,
the micro-politics of micro-aggressions) forms another
delicious performative contradiction of their most dearly
held beliefs about their atomization, free-thinking, and
integrity.
There are no corporations in nature. They are created by
governments. Worse, they are created by governments to
limit liabilities, in other words allow organizations to
form that violate rights and then have those who have
benefited have a discount on paying restitution. Once the
costs of legal damages are more than the company has is
more than the company has, the company is bankrupt, but
there is no ability to go after the *personal* fortunes of
the shareholders -- even if large dividend payments have
been made from profits that are now shown to be fraudulent,
if not murderous. Once the corporation is dead, what happens
to those with unpaid claims, especially in the kind of
minimum government that the Libertarians dream about?
Thus a reason, if not the *main point*, of corporations is
to violate rights in ways that generate wealth. But that
wealth and the distribution of that wealth exist at the
leisure of legal structures, not any bedrock of "natural
rights."
So you can see, the tradition of trust busting is not
anti-libertarian, and is as American as apple pie. But
good luck finding a Libertarian who believes that.
Here's a pet idea of mine: governments could choose to only
offer charters to companies that make employees
shareholders, diluting shares as new employees come on. If
some rich people wanted to make business entities
structured so they would reap all the profits -- fine, but
they won't be able to have any liability protection that
comes with a corporate charter. They would be *personally*
liable for whatever happens. (Getting how different of a
business environment that would really be?) As Taleb would
say, this would put some skin in the game. And more skin
certainly needs to be in the games of political economy.
In reality, this is just me playing around with ideas. It
was for entertainment purposes only. There is virtually no
chance this would ever change a Libertarians mind as these
arguments aren't the real reason anyone is Libertarian.
Instead, I am attempting an act of de-mythologizing.
===
[1] There is a book series of those chunky card books for
kids that tries to tackle science topics with the naming
format of “X . . . for Babies.” Whenever my wife I end up
shopping for a young child, I find one of these books and
make a little sing-song voice for the “. . . for Babies”
part. I particularly like Astrophysics . . . for Babies
which features some gridded images to represent space under
different distortions.
[2] In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I almost
recommend the book just to read his prose style, where the
premises are frequently questioned and different pathways
are constantly hinted at. Locke is writing in a time where
the Divine Right of Kings was an ongoing project both on
the Continent (where it was winning) and by James II (who
was being resisted, and would be defeated by Dutch invasion
that his Protestant subjects invited and labeled the
Glorious Revolution of 1688). Locke goes deep into theology
in his First Treatise on Government, which modern readers
try to ignore, and even then still has to appeal to
theological warrant in his Second Treatise. Nozick shrugs,
waves his hand, shrugs again, and then moves on.
[3] In doesn’t even matter if one in a hundred of them
really is at a stellar IQ; their estimation of their
intelligence is just too high for any debater to reach. A
future Tesla, Bucky, and Musk should be smart enough to
either not do the activity or quickly exit it.
[4] Here’s my personal favorite[a], one that I promise will
never convince anyone, even though it is correct: the
Libertarians want to see liberty, property, life as negative
rights — showing only what governments cannot violate, not
positive rights -- what governments should do or provide. But
then where is your positive right to policing, courts,
administration of punishments and restitutions? All the
sudden you want government to *do* something? It doesn't
matter that you have established that you want governments
to do those things because they are just and fair, once you
establish that governments have positive obligations (with
the necessary flip-side that citizens have positive rights)
you can no longer base everything a government must do on
the theory of negative rights. . . The reason so much rights
discourse comes out for negative rights is that governments
existed first, including autocracies and military
dictatorships and for purely practical and utilitarian
reasons people wanted limits on government.
[a] It might be my favorite out of pure nostalgia. I
was a young, analytic man, chasing the roots of ideas
that I only later realized no one cares about. Sigh.
Youth. Even after it gets done being wasted on the
younger version of yourself, it comes back to sway your
emotions in your old age — often leading to old age
being wasted on the old.
===
I'd love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus
"net" (work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at sdf.org.