Introduction

What we do between us as humans, how we behave and treat each other deserves some real thought. It requires a foundation in philosophy. Objectivism is the only philosophy that makes sense today. Ayn Rand built a supreme framework in her metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and esthetics. That is as far as I can go along with Objectivism.

I part company with them at the point where we reach the fork in the road where ethics is extended to cover the relationship between men in society. See Harry Binswanger’s response to my blogging on this. I do not know if all Objectivists took the same road, extending ethics into politics. Since I view Objectivism as an open system, requiring growth and possibly corrections, some of its proponents may agree with me (later if not now) in taking the other road from the fork: the market.

“Government is the absence of a market.” TOLFA.

Libertarians do not have a united front on this issue. Murray Rothbard took the anarchist route. Other libertarians are close to that thinking. Randy Barnett pictures a world where natural rights are protected in a “polycentric constitutional social order.” Linda and Morris Tannehill, before Barnett, Bruce Benson and Robert Nozick, pictured that route to be an anarcho-capitalist world, free of government.

On the other hand, many libertarians took the limited government road at the fork. Whether this is due to the writings of Ayn Rand, the memory of Barry Goldwater, or just a traditional conservative streak in their thinking, is not clear to me. Philosophically they are diverse, and many of them lack a proper philosophical foundation for their positions. These are the people who built the Libertarian Party.

Where the Objectivists have their home in politics changes, but it is well-known that they shun the LP and switch between the Democrat party and the Republican party, depending on which is the lesser of two evils at any time.

Government or Market

In any case, the choice is clear and stark.

The political world, or government, as an extension of a sound ethical system, has been a dismal failure. Down that path await dishonesty about what motivates the prime participants, legalized thievery, intervention in the economy and war. Bruce Benson defined government in a different way than TOLFA did.

“The primary functions of governments are to act as a mechanism to take wealth from some and transfer it to others, and to discriminate among groups on the basis of their relative power in order to determine who gains and who loses.”

The market world, on the other hand, becomes the arena for applying ethics in the inter-actions of men. The element in the Objectivist ethics on which this is based is the Trader Principle. Ayn Rand wrote:

“The symbol of all relationships among [rational] men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the underserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws.” Atlas Shrugged.

This is a principle which requires justice. It requires men to treat each other fairly, as they deserve, depending on whether they trade with us or want to take from us by force or fraud.

This principle does not require politics, or a political order or government. Among all the proper actions that men do, we do not find “governing” or “being governed.” We find activities such as producing, division of labor, trading, buying and selling.

What About Law?

Do we not need laws? Do we not require laws that are objective? How can such objective laws be produced if we do not have a government, a legislature to enact them and courts to apply them and police to execute them?

Bruce Benson has researched how laws are produced. He has shown clearly that private sector institutions are capable of establishing incentives that lead to effective law making and enforcement. Public police is a recent invention, introduced in the nineteenth century.

He ferreted out the remarkable stories of privately produced law and enforcement among traders, starting in the Mediterranean, later to be known as “Law Merchant.” A trader or shipper who broke a contract was black-balled, and with the loss of reputation, their business was seriously harmed or destroyed. Great care was taken to keep governments out of their affairs, resorting instead to private arbitration of any disputes. He also found private law making and enforcement in Anglo-Saxon England, among the Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea. Government as we know it played no part in these legal systems.

David Friedman, among others, researched the 300-year history of the stateless Iceland of the Middle Ages. When someone harmed another in body or property, the requirement was “making good” the victim, restitution. Refusing to make restitution could result in being shunned and allowing anyone to put the criminal to death if the harm done was serious enough. For a period longer than the existence of the United States, these people produced and enforced law without a government.

Without Any Institutions?

While much can be accomplished by individuals and groups to establish rules and encourage compliance, establishing order for peaceful trade, building institutions can no doubt help. Understanding “institution” as a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture, ex., the institution of marriage, rather than a monopoly that uses coercion, institutions would be encouraged.

While everything should be voluntary, we should not expect anyone to carry out the work involved in private law making and enforcement free of charge. In fact if you privatized everything, everything would be businesses. The private agencies that adjudicate disputes must be able to charge for their services, as would the agents sent out to collect the restitution for a harm done, and the agencies that would fight off invasions.

Protection of the assets of businesses already include the hiring of guards and buying insurance to protect against crime and accident. Businesses would have the most to lose if a foreign power attacked. They would be more willing than individuals to pay for agencies for defense. Including such a service with insurance against damage, harm to oneself bodily or one’s property, would encourage individuals also to be willing to subscribe to pay for defense agencies.

Agreements would need to be in place between agencies about who would be a mutually acceptable arbitrator. Thus disputes between subscribers to different agencies would not be liable to push their respective agencies into any violent conflict. It would be in the interest of any agency to abide by those agreements, for if they backed out and ran the risk of disputes not being easily resolved, subscribers would begin to cancel their memberships, and their business might collapse. Reputation is often a company’s most valuable asset.

Conclusion

I quit the Libertarian Party because I gave up on politics. That is the same reason I part company with Objectivists at ARI. When we extend Ayn Rand’s ethics into the sphere of the inter-action of men in society there is one choice: politics or the market. At that fork in the road I choose the market. I am not interested in the Libertarian Party, except as part of an educational effort to free us and to free the market and make life without government possible.

REFERENCES

Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998).

Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990).

Jim Davis, The Online Freedom Academy.

David Friedman, “Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: a Historical Case” published at his website

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged ( New York: Dutton, 1992 – originally published in 1957).

Ayn Rand, Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal (New York: The New American Library, 1966)

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Quality Paperback Books, 1998 – originally published in 1964).

Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1993 – originally published in 1970).