Thursday, January 26, 2012

Rothbard, in For A New Liberty:

The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

Rockwell, from The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism:

 What does conservatism today stand for? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night. There comes a time in the life of every believer in freedom when he must declare, without any hesitation, to have no attachment to the idea of conservatism.

Rockwell, from The Enemy Is Always the State:

Let me state this as plainly as possible. The enemy is the state. There are other enemies too, but none so fearsome, destructive, dangerous, or culturally and economically debilitating. No matter what other proximate enemy you can name – big business, unions, victim lobbies, foreign lobbies, medical cartels, religious groups, classes, city dwellers, farmers, left-wing professors, right-wing blue-collar workers, or even bankers and arms merchants – none are as horrible as the hydra known as the leviathan state. If you understand this point – and only this point – you can understand the core of libertarian strategy.

See also my post The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It.

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I noted previously that Reason author Cathy Young had written in favor of a fifty-year copyright term. Now, in a recent Reason article,”The Trouble with the Copyright Debate” (subtitle: Does every illegal download represent a lost sale?), she joins the anti-SOPA bandwagon, but is still pro-copyright:

A few days ago, I committed an illegal act.

Instead of watching the latest episode of the British fantasy show Merlin on the SyFy channel and suffer through a hundred commercials and pop-up ads that sometimes deface the screen during the show itself, I got online and watched an illicitly streamed video. What’s more, I intend to continue my crime spree and download the three-episode second season of Sherlock, which aired on the BBC earlier this month, rather than wait until May when it finally gets to PBS.

The point of this true confession is that the current debate about copyright enforcement and piracy on the Web largely misses the boat. Yes, creators and copyright holders have important rights and legitimate interests. And yes, some Internet users display an obnoxious sense of entitlement to “free” intellectual content.

So: Young is anti-SOPA. But she is still pro-copyright: “creators and copyright holders have important rights and legitimate interests”. And yet she admits she herself engages in piracy (while bizarrely taking a superior tone in condemning others who pirate). Say what? If she thinks copyright should last 50 years, and that it is legitimate, then … when she pirates she is violating people’s rights, and should be penalized–perhaps even by imprisonment. Right?

Young is confused and hypocritical. She favors copyright, and bashes other people who pirate, all the while engaging in piracy herself and then condemning efforts to enforce copyright. She’s trying to have her copyright and eat it, too.

As I argued earlier this week SOPA is the Symptom, Copyright is the Disease. The only solution is to abolish copyright. Wake up and smell the libertarian principles, Young.

[C4sIF]

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Professor Hoppe was previously interviewed on Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, on the topic “Anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: What is it?” (approx. 25 minutes). It was aired on Jan. 23, 2012; audio is available here. As described on the ABC site, “What is anarcho-capitalist libertarianism? Hans Herman Hoppe explains the idea behind it and why it’s a very different and quite radical way to think about government, society and the economy.”

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Self-ownership and Teeth-ownership in Communist China: A Lesson for Confused Libertarians

by January 26, 2012

A recent NPR feature, The Secret Document That Transformed China (h/t Vijay Boyapati), tells the fascinating story about one of seminal events at the dawn of the modern Chinese experiment in their version of capitalism. In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret [...]

Read the full article →