Posts Tagged with Libert

Inalienable

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Greeting Terrans. It’s been a long minute. I see I missed updates on the slap heard round the world. (Rock Smith.) On the one hand, I am glad. The whole story feels like being stuck between gossipy brats at chow. On the other hand, it seems like quite a test case for differences about getting along, violence, and reconciliation and such. So, I’m not sure how I feel about missing out on the updates.

Back to the first hand, I got troubles of my own. My gryphon is sick, and some enchantress seems to be attempting to drain me of energy. She clearly doesn’t know how much coffee I drink. Recently, I also got a tour of the menagerie, but frankly, I got the impression they were hiding a lot. To what end?

So, the Casey book and I didn’t get a great deal of time. But there is still an update there. I was struck by Casey’s mention that he believes free people can bind themselves. This makes sense to me, but it occurred to me that it does seem to go against the idea of inalienable rights entertained by American terrans. So which way?

Personally, I’ve seen people who’ve chosen slavery for the relief of their debts (and to avoid the public disgrace). I’ve also seen people abducted by their creditors. I can’t abide the latter. But, as for the former scenario… I mean… if they want to, you know? Why not, right? It was even rumored that, long ago, one slave had been king in his own country! Life there was so severe that he chose life as a foreign rich man’s slave instead! Frankly, I wouldn’t have made that call, but he was happy with it. I can imagine the interview:

“So we have one position open. It is 24/7, and you’d have to forsake all legal recourse as a free man, but the position typically comes with those provisions becoming one of my servants, and you don’t have to live in perpetual squalor under the sword of Damocles.”

“Shut up and take my freedom!”

Probably he was hiding from an enemy. But I like my version better.

The question is: what if he wasn’t happy with the arrangement later? One is usually obligated to keep their word, but it could be argued that such an obligation is merely moral, not necessarily legal, not a matter of justice. So, what? Would the royal slave just owe the rich man whatever the material equivalent of whatever his on-going labor would be? Must he re-bargain for his liberty? I’m not sure. One guy says a person has the ability to bind themselves. Another says no. I’m inclined to agree with the first, but the second idea is attractive. I’ll have to think more on this.

Oh, I wanted to mention I collected them little coffee poems and made them into a little ebook. It’s cute. Feel free to check it out. It's around here somewhere.

Well, fare well Terrans.

-Pen
73 Hon 7380

Free-will and Baldness

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Greetings from far far away. I gotta tell ya. It’s been crazy. We got halflings stuck in treasure chests. Dirt tracked everywhere. Beaten tables enduring the further abuse of dwarven slobber. It is not a pretty sight. Weefolk night: not a good idea. Fortunately, I’ve got Gerard Casey’s book Libertarian Freedom to keep me busy. I mean Libertarian Anarchy.

My bad on that title screw up up there. Just, last I was able to manage a bite of the book, Casey was going on about libertarian freedom in that metaphysical free-will sense. No complaints really. Actually I rather enjoyed it. And it reminded me of Tim Stratton, that free-will chap Jeff likes. (Said chap has a video on this subject with some big name called JP Moreland. JP seems like a fun guy. Tim however. I have great difficulty trusting bald men because intentional baldness amounts to an active assault on nature. It’s like, being a manscaper. (I cringe even writing the word.) No. Sean Connery had it right as did that manhood exemplar second only to Jesus Christ: Chuck Norris. To his credit, Tim does allow his God-given manliness a place on his face. Maybe it's the secret of his powers.)

Anyway the free-will stuff was interesting and shocking. Casey talked about dominoism. Dominoism? No. That’s not quite right. Well it was something like that. Whatever it was, it involved the idea that humans are just parts of a huge universe of dominos. (You know, like one thing causing another, causing another, and so on?) Anyway, on that view, a person’s thoughts would amount to mere domino’ery as well. And who would trust that?

So domino people having thoughts and trustworthy ones, doesn’t make much sense in general, and that goes for thoughts about dominoism too. Casey thinks this situation is self-stultifying for the wouldbe domino man. That seems right to me, and dominos is a boring game anyway. But it got me thinking. If free-will is necessary for ideas to avoid being self-stultifying, then that applies to ideas about liberty. Now, it never made much sense to blame folks what they could not help, but it makes even less sense for domino people to do it. This is an interesting line of thought. Casey mentions the futility of debating ethics when the whole conversation has the rug pulled out from under it. I can think of other things that would make it ridiculous. Besides funny hats.

Well, I better get. I don't intend on being here when it's time to clean up this mess. Besides, I have plans. The hunt was good, and the wife is cooking the kill, and if I don’t hurry, it could be gone before I get back. Daylight will be gone soon, too. Have a good weekend, terrans.

-Pen
53 Fi 7380

Liberty > Statery

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Statery is a criminal and elective development. That’s where this book (the same Libertarian Anarchy book) is going right now. Sounds fun. Let's ride.

On the development bit, Casey takes a deep dive into Terran history. He borrows from your Adam Smith supposing various phases of society, phases from hunter-gatherer to pastoral to agricultural to commerce. While Casey’s work both informs and entertains, it is clear he has never enjoyed the hunter-gather lifestyle. Casey seems to think leisure was advanced by progressing from hunter-gatherer life to agriculture. If a farmer works longer than the day's sun, well I had much more free-time stalking prey. Then again, it was just me and the rest of the pack. (But still, right? Anyway.)

I did like this observation in particular. Apparently terran creation, trade, and robbery all progressed through those phases together. Statery advanced with opportunity, so as terra got farmed, terrans did too. I'm pretty sure he didn't say it quite like that, but that's what I gathered.

This Rothbard quote from the book says it well:

“If you attempted to do to your neighbours what a democratic government does to its citizens, let us say, tax them, fix their hours of work, force them to send their children to schools of your choice, or accept the money you have printed, you would very likely end up in jail. No democracy allows you to do such things. Nor does it allow you to undertake these activities in conspiracy with others. But it does allow you to have someone else do them in your name and on your behalf!”

Well, I have to cut it short this week. I still have to meet up with the bard to talk old stories. (He needs material.) Then, it's time for the weekend.

Fare well.

-Pen

Greetings, Congrats, and Bullseyes

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Hey, greetings Terrans. And Americans, congratulations on: the awesome SCOTUS wins, the Babylon Bee being freed on twitter, and on Texas securing its sovereignty. Wait. Well, on the first thing then. By the way, if Texans really did secede, would they still be Americans? I mean Canadians, at least sometimes, refer to the U.S. as the Americans. Why don't Canadians count? Is it Trudeau? It's probably Trudeau right? (And, what do you do with Mexico? If all of South America gets included but not Mexico, I'd have to wonder why.)

Really I am stranger to your world, so please do not take offense. I sometimes forget that the unnatural situation of states and rulers via impersonal entities is common place in your world. I imagine, it is as strange to me as a fuppy would be to you.

You know, all of this “What is an American?” talk and the state talk too, they remind me of some reading I was doing today in that ol' Libertarian Anarchy book. (God bless you Terra; there are some real good thought gems in the rough of your internet.)

Anyway the book was talking about the definition to be used for a state. The author is very humble about said definition, saying that his is not beyond dispute but that it is also not idiosyncratic. I was impressed there. But I think he also managed a good definition, and maybe I'm hard to please on that score. Here's what it is and why:

that group of people or that organization which wields a monopoly of allegedly legitimate force over the inhabitants of a determinate territory financed by a compulsory levy imposed on those inhabitants.
Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy

I especially liked it because he used a that-definition. I've noticed that, sometimes, defining work is done more by trying to exhaust everything that a kind is essentially and then… it is very involved. Lots of room for error and exhausting. That-definitions may not tell us much about the thing, but they do successfully point it out among a bunch of other things. Easier to get the bull's eye when aiming at something rather than writing a book on just the definition. And it seems like Gerard Casey nailed it.

Well for me I am going to have to crash. I had a full day. (I've been working on a fun surprise for the locals. Think of it as a HUGE Easter egg.) Anyway, I wish you well.

-Pen

P.S. Congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Woods. God bless.

Good books and Friday’s are friends.

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A man and elf looked across a field got to talking. Then they disagreed about something they saw. Why weren’t they seeing eye to eye? Probably, they weren’t actually looking at the same thing, that or they literally saw it differently.

Definition-talk seems much the same way. Some defs. point across the field at “that thing over there” and probably some do that more precisely than others. Anyway, I was just reading that Libertarian Anarchy book, and that’s pretty much what I saw Dr. Gerard Casey doing with this gem: “Anarchy is the position in which the members of a society naturally find themselves when they are not subject to the power of a state.” With “anarchy” he means statelessness, with anarchism: a-statism.

After positively saying what he means, Casey gets more precise, winnowing away what he doesn’t. He reminds us of how liberals and conservatives often use the state as a tool, and he explicitly disassociates his subject from that. (It also seems to me that those conservative and liberal types depart from their true dispositions when using statist means, but that’s beside the point.) Then, he also winnows away the idea that statelessness approves of an activity (morally) just because it disapproves of its being illegal. A person may well believe the state is in the way and making matters worse.

Next Casey does something very different. He uses examples of how libertar*ians* typically view things to elaborate on libertarian*ism*, itself. My first thought was that people can be inconsistent, and libertarians are kinda infamous for leveling the charge at each other. So, libertarian principles speak to positions, but the positions don’t necessarily speak back. That said, I have to admit that such examples can be suggestive of the guiding principles in play, and it helps in introducing statelessness to the new and averse. Ultimately, it all seems to work.

Finally, and wrapping this little review of the book's beginning, I like how Casey points out that anarchy gets weighed in two ways, principles and pragmatics, and that he’s focusing on principle. Fine by me. I'm looking forward to it. (I'm also interested in the relation of those two considerations, and I touch upon it briefly in “I Will Do Mine!” in the resources.)

Well, it is time for my Friday salute on the twitter, and then who knows. Wherever thee fareth, terrans, fareth thee well.

Pen