..any truth claim, the claim connected with any proposition that it is true, objective or valid (all terms used synonymously here), is and must be raised and settled in the course of an argumentation. Since it cannot be disputed that this is so (one cannot communicate and argue that one cannot communicate and argue), and since it must be assumed that everyone knows what it means to claim something to be true (one cannot deny this statement without claiming its negation to be true), this very fact has been aptly called "the a priori of communication and argumentation."
The compatibility of this principle with that of nonaggression can be demonstrated by means of an argumentum a contrario. First, it should be noted that if no one had the right to acquire and control anything except his own body … then we would all cease to exist and the problem of the justification of normative statements … simply would not exist. The existence of this problem is only possible because we are alive, and our existence is due to the fact that we do not, indeed cannot, accept a norm outlawing property in other scarce goods next and in addition to that of one's physical body. Hence, the right to acquire such goods must be assumed to exist.
...by engaging in discussions about welfare criteria that may or may not end up in agreement, and instead result in a mere agreement on the fact of continuing disagreements — as in any intellectual enterprise — an actor invariably demonstrates a specific preference for the first-use-first-own rule of property acquisition as his ultimate welfare criterion: without it no one could independently act and say anything at any time, and no one else could act independently at the same time and agree or disagree independently with whatever had been initially said or proposed. It is the recognition of the homesteading principle which makes intellectual pursuits, i.e., the independent evaluation of propositions and truth claims, possible. And by virtue of engaging in such pursuits, i.e., by virtue of being an "intellectual" one demonstrates the validity of the homesteading principle as the ultimate rational welfare criterion.The theory basically boils down to this: the very act of arguing and intellectually considering a position automatically assumes that one has ownership to their body because they must use their body to form their arguments and to engage in communication. Rather than assume as Rothbard does that property rights for the body are natural and self-evident, Hoppe uses Misean praxeology and logic to deduce it. Here is Rothbard on Hoppe's theory:
In a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular, he has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the scholastics, and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock. Not only that: Hans Hoppe has managed to establish the case for anarcho-capitalist-Lockean rights in an unprecedentedly hard-core manner, one that makes my own natural law/natural rights position seem almost wimpy in comparison.Kinsella's guide, though lengthy, is fantastic and highly recommended.
Doug Casey is the latest to weigh in on insider trading and why it shouldn't be illegal. Here are some excerpts in an interview with the International Speculator:
Doug: Yes. There’s nothing wrong with insider trading, per se. For example, there’s nothing wrong with a manager, who knows his company will report a good quarter, buying shares in his company in advance. This causes no one any harm. Let me repeat that: the fact that an insider knows – or thinks he knows – good news is coming and buys shares does not hurt anyone. Actually, it spreads out the buying pressure and may help everyone buy at better prices. Moreover, if someone needs to sell urgently on a given day, maybe for tax reasons, or maybe because their kid needs an operation, then the fact that someone is in there buying with gusto does him a lot of good.CNBC has a good report on how much more throwing a barbecue this weekend will cost as compared to last year:
L: But people say it isn’t fair.
Doug: There’s no such thing as fair. “Fair” is necessarily an arbitrary and contentious word, usually employed by busybodies and losers. You think it’s fair to the antelope when the lion eats it? Was it fair to the dinosaurs when Mother Nature wiped them out? Or how about this: is giving everyone an equal share of something fair, if some worked for it harder than others? The guy who knows something and buys has not taken anything from unwilling hands – just uninformed hands – and people have to make decisions with varying amounts of uncertainty all the time. You can’t regulate uncertainty or the uneven spread of information out of existence any more than you can regulate the capacity to intuit the significance of information into every human skull. Not only is it impossible to do, it’s ethically wrong to try. If you’re no good at this game, don’t play it. Life’s not fair. Get over it.
Here is the summary from EPJ:
Prices for a barbecue this year vs last year: +29%For another dosage of civil unrest and police crackdown due to austerity measures in Europe, see more evidence of police brutality in Spain (pay attention at :30 mark):
Ground beef: +14%
Lettuce +28%
Tomatoes: +86%
Potato Salad: +27%
Corn on the Cob: +150%
Coffee: +20 %
Robert P. Murphy has a post today not unlike my reconsideration of where the economy is going and the surprise many are experiencing due to so much Fed stimulus not translating to a higher CPI rating. Murphy makes a prediction:
What I can say for now is that the specific mistake I made, was in thinking that other people would see the end-game as I perceived it. In other words, I am still quite confident that there is no way Bernanke’s actions “fixed” the economy, or that TARP was a good idea etc. To translate that into a falsifiable prediction (which I’ve made before but will here repeat): If the Fed’s balance sheet goes back to where it was pre-crisis (we can make it % of GDP to make it fair), and unemployment (as currently defined) goes under 6%, and we don’t have CPI (as currently defined) inflation higher than 5% over any 12-month period, there’s not some major event that could totally falsify the measures (like a war and Obama drafts everybody and imposes wage and price controls), and (just to cover myself) that situation lasts for at least a year without any hiccups in the economy (i.e. there’s not a stock market crash two months after the above conditions are met), then sure I don’t just need to tweak things a bit, I would have to question Austrian business cycle theory itself. (I realize those are strong conditions, but I don’t want to say something too flippant on a blog post.)Bob has updated the post again with one more condition to his prediction:
So because I don’t see the Fed’s huge interventions ending in anything but a combination of a bad economy and high price inflation, I thought others would come to that realization and start shorting the dollar. I thought that once we got over the year/year drop in CPI due to the sharp drop in late 2008, that people would realize inflation was the threat.
Well, that obviously has taken a lot longer than I thought. So that was my specific mistake: I thought other investors would start agreeing with my views by now, whereas I still think most of them are being incredibly optimistic.
In contrast, if next week Bernanke pegs the dollar back to gold, and Obama gets Congress to agree to abolish the IRS, cut federal spending by $1 trillion immediately, and start selling off all federal assets, then yeah maybe we could get of our current pickle without a crash and without high price inflation. But really what would be happening is that the great pro-growth measures would offset the disaster I think Bernanke et al. have baked into the cake, in our current trajectory. (Also, in practice I still think there would be a major recession, possibly even depression, in the scenario I just described–but it would last about 6 months.)Like Bob, I would like to consider myself a man and admit when I am wrong. The next year or so will prove which school of thought is right. Joseph Fetz has a pretty convincing comment on the topic validating the Austrian theory though:
So to add another condition to the above, I am barring any incredibly radical pro-growth measures. I’m not going to be a jerk and say, “Oh, Boehner shaved $3 billion from Fiscal Year 2013 spending, so I’m off the hook.” I’m talking crazy Austrian heaven stuff.
As for your little spending comment, you are missing just about every component of what prices are all about; you’re are ignoring that not every entity spends in concert. As I said, government accounts for 46% of all spending. And, it does not have the same margin with regard to utility. It spends whatever it wants, because it has a printing press, coerced revenue, and can spend infinitely if it wanted to (or, until domestic/foreign economies loss faith in the currency). The point is that its marginal utility will diminish at a greater rate than an individual, or any number of individuals within the economy due to this very relationship. I should also mention that its current expenditures tend to be in the industries in which we are seeing the highest increases: defense, welfare, education and healthcare. I would mention pensions, but that is an entirely a different ball of wax (requires literally pages of data and research), but is inextricably related to the topic at hand. The demand for capital and commodities that serve the 4 sectors I mention above are seeing great increases, both on the investment and the consumption side, this is no coincidence.I must admit, I love his argument for the inefficiency of government spending in regard to diminishing marginal utility as compared to individual spending or private sector spending. I just finished chapter 2 and 3 in Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State which discussed this very concept but didn't relate it to government spending. Perhaps Rothbard does it later in the book, but I have yet to reach that point.
To continue along with the “who is spending” theme, I must direct our attention to the financial sector; they got a golden parachute out of the entire ordeal. They got bailed out, they got liquid-injected beyond their wildest dreams (apparently more than they wanted), and they’ve got a pretty good promise that that they don’t have to worry about their balance sheets now or in the future. So, now they’re trying to recapitalize, and what better way to do that than to move to stocks, securities, and commodities. They have more liquidity than they know what to do with, they aren’t going to loan it out to the economy (esp. when wages are falling and unemployment is high), so it is no wonder that equities had been climbing, that treasuries were being bought, and that commodities are being bought in huge amounts: highly liquid entities tend to bid up prices of goods and contracts to capital. Duh.
Was Murphy wrong? Yes. He was wrong in that he saw the logical implications of the increase in the monetary base, ready bank reserves, and government stimulus, but that he did not take into account the shift in demand (from the economy to the government and financials). So, core inflation has remained at low levels even though prices at the higher orders. But, the prices of goods in the higher orders of production are rising, and they will have further pressure on CPI. This is going to create further problems with regard to input prices and the selling prices of goods meant for the consumer, but it will be met with inadequate consumer demand (standard ABCT theory, different circumstances). However, considering the fact that Murphy is a quite intelligent man and an economist, I can only imagine what mistakes the technicians behind the switches are making.
We have one of three choices: we let the market correct (which is not a fun time, but necessary), we keep playing this game of cat and mouse of long-run malaise (with transitory bouts of stagflation/deflation), or we can enjoy the spenders of hyperinflation. Of course, there is default, but that is an external problem with our creditors, and is an entirely separate issue, as well as one that has implications that our beyond our reckoning due to our not being able to control the actions of foreign nations (esp. with regard to war).
On a less theoretical note, here is another example of Goldman Sach's ever extending tentacles into D.C.:
Goldman Sachs has announced that Judd Gregg, a former three-term U.S. Senator from New Hampshire has been named an international advisor to the firm.The number of these types of occurrences is getting sad and yet there are still some who think government regulators are saints and incorruptible. Perhaps ignorance really is bliss.
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