Fighting Ebola with Freedom

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I think it's possible to have rule of law "calibrated wrong" so to speak; if you have laws that allow for indentured servitude and monopolistic exploitation, for example, it won't do much good.

(Not that I think that's controversial to anyone in this conversation)

I think I see the confusion.  The Principle of the Rule of Law does not simply mean that there are laws that everyone must obey.  There has been a lot written about the Rule of Law and it is difficult to define with precision but a minimum threshold is a notion of fairness and due process.  I think we can all agree that a system which allowed for indentured servitude would not meet the minimum standard and if you study the law as it relates to the treatment of the poor you will see signficant reforms both in the common law and in legislation.  One can argue that is the Rule of Law at work.

[Razgovory]

It's either a transaction between two consenting adults, in which case it's not bribery, or it's among 3 adults, one of whom is not consenting.

I don't think a business really can be described as a true person that is able to consent or not. 

[dps]

Yeah, I think it's possible to have rule of law "calibrated wrong" so to speak; if you have laws that allow for indentured servitude and monopolistic exploitation, for example, it won't do much good.

(Not that I think that's controversial to anyone in this conversation)

But change it to laws allowing abortion or capital punishment and the precise calibration would be controversial.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't think a business really can be described as a true person that is able to consent or not.

I don't care.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I think it's possible to have rule of law "calibrated wrong" so to speak; if you have laws that allow for indentured servitude and monopolistic exploitation, for example, it won't do much good.

(Not that I think that's controversial to anyone in this conversation)

But change it to laws allowing abortion or capital punishment and the precise calibration would be controversial.

Again, Jacob is talking about the enactment of specific laws not the Rule of Law.

[Razgovory]

I don't think a business really can be described as a true person that is able to consent or not.

I don't care.

Well you're in a bad mood.

[dps]

Yeah, I think it's possible to have rule of law "calibrated wrong" so to speak; if you have laws that allow for indentured servitude and monopolistic exploitation, for example, it won't do much good.

(Not that I think that's controversial to anyone in this conversation)

But change it to laws allowing abortion or capital punishment and the precise calibration would be controversial.

Again, Jacob is talking about the enactment of specific laws not the Rule of Law.

Right;  I don't disagree with your point that Rule of Law assumes a certain level of fairness, but I think Jacob's point is that while in the West most people agree with the principle of Rule of Law, there can still be considerable differences among people within that majority as to what is "fair'.

[grumbler]

Locke's Carolina constitution is a fundamentally illiberal document - it provided for a feudal system where landowners would have feudal rights to dispense justice and a large permanent class of serfs tied to the land by restrictions on movement.  One could argue that it didn't really reflect Locke's views, I suppose, or that he changed his mind.  I would agree that the Locke of the Two Treatises could be considered a libertarian or proto-libertarian but I wouldn't agree that his argument, as least as concerns property rights, is particularly coherent.

Locke wasn't writing the Carolina Constitution for himself, he was writing it for, and under the direction of, Lords Proprieters.  Naturally, it doesn't reflect what he later wrote about as his understanding of liberty and justice.  It does contain some remarkably "clasiically liberal" statements about religion (but, again, in practice these liberal practices were already in effect in Carolina).  I'd agree that Locke never really had a solid concept of the liberal approach to property, but I'd also argue that no other classic liberal (or modern libertarian) has succeeded with that, either!    And, yes, Locke would be a proto-liberal in the sense that he was pretty much the first big liberal name, and was still working out the kinks in his thinking when he died. 

Property is a slippery thing even for Divine-Right-of-King conservatives.

As for Smith, he was a moral philosopher who adovocated the practice of virtue, which he defined as a sympathetic approach to others in which one objectively considers the needs, desires and feelings of others in society.  It is not inconsistent with libertartianism, but it certainly does not entail it.  Smith's identification as a classical liberal is thus based on the Wealth of Nations.  But Smith in the WoN is really more concerned with the interference in politics by commercial interests than vis-a-versa.  What WoN really reflects, I think, is an early articulation of knowledge economics - namely that in a system of production where productivity is driven in significant part by specialization - the state is in a very poor position to coordinate economic activity, and the more efficient and effective result is to permit individual actors on the spot to make judgments based on superior information.  This is an argument often made by classical liberals- Hayek famously refined it many years later - but it is not at all unqiue to classical liberals.  It is also pragmatic argument based on what works best, not an a priori argument from economic liberty as a fundamental value in itself.  In other circumstances in WoN, Smith is of the view that state intervention may be desirable.

I don't think that there is any question that classic liberals recognized a need for the state to intervene in economic matter - contract law enforcement, for instance, isn't possible without the state.  Nor do I think that non-kook modern libertarians think that such intervention isn't needed.  And I don't agree that Smith didn't know where he was going when he started WoN - he knew that he was making an argument for the value of economic liberty when he first put pen to paper - but he was doing so by arguing from the interests of the state first, because the interests of the state were assumed in his time to be paramount.  No argument from economic liberty a priori would have had the power WoN did, because it would be dismissed immediately as not "recognizing the truth."  I don't know whether he would have made the argument a priori if he thought he could get away with it, of course.

[grumbler]

I think many people would be genuinely surprised by what Smith actually wrote

  Many people here, in fact.

[DGuller]

I don't think a business really can be described as a true person that is able to consent or not.

I don't care.

Well you're in a bad mood.

Raz, concede the point when it has been refuted (or at least STFU).  Bribery is a conspiracy by the agent to steal from the principal.  Ultimately, the principal is always at least one person.

[grumbler]

Right;  I don't disagree with your point that Rule of Law assumes a certain level of fairness, but I think Jacob's point is that while in the West most people agree with the principle of Rule of Law, there can still be considerable differences among people within that majority as to what is "fair'.

But part of the Rule of Law is that you obey the law even if your minority doesn't like the law or think that it is 'fair."

[garbon]

Smack DG in his Russian mouth Yi. Russians only respect force.

[dps]

Right;  I don't disagree with your point that Rule of Law assumes a certain level of fairness, but I think Jacob's point is that while in the West most people agree with the principle of Rule of Law, there can still be considerable differences among people within that majority as to what is "fair'.

But part of the Rule of Law is that you obey the law even if your minority doesn't like the law or think that it is 'fair."

What about civil disobedience? 

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I think it's possible to have rule of law "calibrated wrong" so to speak; if you have laws that allow for indentured servitude and monopolistic exploitation, for example, it won't do much good.

(Not that I think that's controversial to anyone in this conversation)

But change it to laws allowing abortion or capital punishment and the precise calibration would be controversial.

Again, Jacob is talking about the enactment of specific laws not the Rule of Law.

Right;  I don't disagree with your point that Rule of Law assumes a certain level of fairness, but I think Jacob's point is that while in the West most people agree with the principle of Rule of Law, there can still be considerable differences among people within that majority as to what is "fair'.

Agreed.  But that is why we have a judiciary that decides such things, an independant judiciary being another important aspect of the Rule of Law.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't care.