On Smuggling and Law

"I wasn't making any comments about the 2nd Amednment rather I was saying Libertarians unsderstand force can be a good thing." - Gil

I misunderstood you. My apologies.

Gil,

My hypothetical does not allow for a plan B.

Given that, how would you argue for the property in contention?

I'm open to argument and quite capable of being swayed.

But isn't the point IAALP that the potential to summon defensive force is the Plan B required when others don't respect your property? Sure if everyone respected your property then no defense would be required. But seriously, one group of people has been displaced by another more powerful group time and time again throughout history. I believe MB may be saying that a great deal of force is going still legitimately exist in a Libertarian society. I'm sure many a Libertarian has complained they're not Pacifists.

Martin said:

"Propriety is the will of armed men, for better or for worse, not the will of Nature."

Lets try a hypothetical.

Assumptions:

1. There are no institutions. There are no governments or private institutional frameworks to enforce or adjudicate anything.

2. You cannot use physical force.

3. I've made a claim to a piece of property that you now very much desire.

On what basis will you attempt to convince me that I should relinquish my claim and allow you to use the property?

We are removing coercion and attempting to solve the problem of human cooperation through rational persuasion only. We are removing bestial man and replacing him with rational man.

What would you argue?

I wasn't making any comments about the 2nd Amednment rather I was saying Libertarians unsderstand force can be a good thing. Likewise is there anything wrong with the notion of 'might makes right' provided it refers to defensive might?

P.S. Some fun reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Ass...>

Gil,

Did you ignore the Second Amendment primer I, Vidyohs and others gave you on another thread?

I believe in being armed against aggression, but I don't care if you choose to have faith that others will defend you. I suspect that you'd like to force me into that faith with you, though.

'Enforceable property' has a nice ring to it, though. Enter or use my property with my permission only, or risk getting shot. Sounds reasonable to me.

BTW: I am a libertarian and a Life Member of the NRA.

Around here (northern new york), 'smuggling' is such an ugly word. We prefer to call it the import/export business.

Perhaps the correct term you term you should use is 'enforcable property' M. Brock? Which is to say the ability 'enforce' your property against would-be violators. Libertarians unqualified support for guns is such that it makes NRA members blush. Therefore Libertarians actually know what you means even if they won't admit to it.

BTW, A Smuggler is not always a Pirate, although they can be the same. F.e, Han Solo was a smuggler, but not a pirate.

Bravo! Ja, und? Oh, and the armed men? Creation of the state. Another artifact of man.

Of course, the state is an artifact. What's your point?

LCJ:

Regarding that computer that you were using to type out you comment. You aqcuired it through force?

I acquired it within a system of forcible propriety. Why would I deny it?

And you also used the threat of violence to force your ISP to allow you access to their service?

Why do you ask these silly questions? My ISP owns means of providing internet access, and its claims to these means are forcible. I own various means that I employ to earn the price of my access, and my claim to my means is also forcible. Precisely which claims are forcible and which are not is a matter of law, and legislatures, executive bureaucrats, judges and other officers of the state craft the law.

You're right, I suppose: aside from your violent nature to receive such things, your desire (our desire) to own things is unnatural.

The distinction between the "artificial" and the "natural" is conventional. An artifact is a product of man by definition. Do you have a problem with this distinction? Of course, titles to property are artifacts. I don't see lions, tigers and bears using them.

Legislation states what is against the laws of the land. The notion of "Law" refers to the idea that whether something is against the law or not matters.

For instance, in a group where the rules are strictly and uniformly enforced, people have a very great respect for law. In societies with many laws that are not enforced, the response to something being against the law is "so, lots of things are."

That is the sort of disregard for law that is meant.

As my grandfather was fond of saying "You should never make something illegal if you are not willing to kill a man for doing it." We see the wisdom of this in things such as jay walking laws. They are nearly never enforced, but when they are, it makes no sense to anyone involved for a variety of reasons.

Martin -- I think Prof B (and Hayek) was referring to the customary "laws" that emerge from voluntary transactions and association, not natural law.

Martin,

Regarding that computer that you were using to type out you comment. You aqcuired it through force? And you also used the threat of violence to force your ISP to allow you access to their service?

You're right, I suppose: aside from your violent nature to receive such things, your desire (our desire) to own things is unnatural.

Well done, Martin!

Per Kurowskiduck,

"We know the world cannot afford the illegal growing stronger than the legal, and taking over our nations"

So in our past here in the USA it could be said that the world could not afford the illegal (rebels) growing stronger that the legal (king of birtian) and taking over and creating the nation (USA)?

Do you have any f..king idea of what your're talking about? (at any time)

To an intelligent person the understanding comes easy that smugglers and black martketeers are viewed as criminals by the state, but as welcome businessmen by the needy public. It just all depends upon which side of the "state VS people" controversey one resides on.

Mr. Brocks comments are so self-contradictory that I have no idea what his statements mean.

"Propriety is a product of man, an artifact, not a product of nature."

Bravo! Ja, und? Oh, and the armed men? Creation of the state. Another artifact of man.

Great article, Mr. Boudreaux. Another reason I enjoy returning to this site.

.

We share the reservations on this issue

I suppose patents have some limited utility, but I'm extremely wary of them. For software and "business processes" (even the form of contracts have been patented), the potential for mischief is so great that I expect a world without any of imagined benefits of these patents to be more productive than world with these benefits and the unavoidable mischief. For software, copyrights are sufficient. For source code, the duration of a copyright should be more like the duration of a patent.

Martin Brock “a lawful holder can easily be a parasite in my way of thinking”

Absolutely! The real difference between someone exploiting reasonably or unreasonably a patent awarded by society and someone using without authorization that patent in order to give to the society a lower price of the product is, as far as parasites goes, quite muddled.

The illegal feeds parasitically from the legal, and therefore has a limit predefined by its very nature.

Good point, but I don't accept "parasitically" in this context, if you mean to say that the illegal are the parasites definitively. I suppose the legal can be parasites as easily and often are. A thief can only take what is lawfully held, but a lawful holder can easily be a parasite in my way of thinking.

Legislation is not at all synonymous with law.

I have no idea what this statement means. If legislators don't tell me what the the law is, who does? Don Boudreaux? If Boudreaux tells me, I suppose he is the legislator.

Don presumably discusses something like "natural law" here, but I take few natural laws seriously, besides Newton's, and even Newton's formulations are subject to revision by Einstein, and Einstein's are subject to further revision. Property rights certainly are not natural laws. Propriety is a product of man, an artifact, not a product of nature.

In nature, a creature holds territory by his own force. At most, a small group of related creatures holds territory and then only very loosely. Attributing any broader, more secure, systematic holding to "nature" is Orwellian. Propriety is the will of armed men, for better or for worse, not the will of Nature.

I suppose that some artificial laws have more civil consequences than others, but I also know that U.S. standards of propriety have not the most civil effects. On the contrary, we have unusually high violent crime rates and are the world's most aggressive military power by far. I attribute this state of affairs largely to what our legislators call "the law", and they also call it "proper", and a proper holding is a "property", because I observe the words used this way.

To Roy Gardner.

I was of course not referring to the pirates as those hijacking and stealing but more to those who copy and sell products covered by copyright and patents. Sorry if my Spanish got in the way of my English.

Pirates need a non-free economy to thrive?

So if the world were a 100%, totally free-market, pirates would disappear?

You're confused. Pirates are thieves, and no matter how free the market, there will always be people looking to take someone else's stuff.


If my widgets are in high demand and therefore commanding a premium price, thieves - of the pirate variety or otherwise - would be attempting to steal my widgets.

True enough that if the market were totally free, the smugglers would have nothing to smuggle.

But calling a person who happens to work with thieves in the distribution of stolen property - copyrighted or what have you - calling them a smuggler is not correct. That is just a very subjective definition of smuggler.

By definition of how thieves work, it is impossible for the illegal element to grow larger than the legal market. The illegal feeds parasitically from the legal, and therefore has a limit predefined by its very nature.

Under a very restricted market, smugglers might be able to rival the above-board businesses, but not the thieves. But that would require a "gray" market in all facets of the economy; services et cetera.

Smugglers and pirates are indeed the strangest of all our economic creatures. In one sense they are the true free-marketeerians but at the same time they need non-free markets to thrive.

Also just in the same contradictory way there is a huge legal economy growing because of copyrights and patents awarded there is a huge illegal economy growing at even faster rates just because of the opportunities those copyrights and patents provide.

We know the world cannot afford the illegal growing stronger than the legal, and taking over our nations, but on the other hand how can we afford them not to? How many job opportunities and how much wealth creation would be destroyed by not having prohibitions? That is the really hard question to answer for non-smuggling free- marketeers like me.

The point of the legislation is usually either to raise money or show that the politicians share the moral beliefs of the voters and are trying, albeit ineffectively, to deal with it. The legislation would only be harmful if it led to the politicians voting for it being removed from office. Trying to find sense in most legislation would be a very wearying enterprise. Good luck.

Thus the state contributes to its own demise.

Speaking of Dr. Williams' cigarette smuggling example in his column - it's funny that Massachusetts, the home of John Hancock, is planning to nearly double the already high rate of taxes on cigarettes, even though the state already has a massive problem with tobacco bootlegging, complete with the corresponding massive tax evasion that's pushing the legislature to hike these taxes further to meet their spending demands.

Bootlegging, as you can see here, can be highly profitable, and is all the more so if the taxes keep getting jacked up.

Worse, the tax collections upon which the state is relying, vanish as individuals are highly incented to avoid and/or evade them. At what point do legislators realize that they've passed through the event horizon of a death spiral with these taxes?