September 23, 2011

My Understanding of Frederic Bastiat's 'The Law'

Before reading my musings, you should take it upon yourself to read Frederic Bastiat's 'The Law'. This excellent (and free!) edition is provided by the ever-helpful Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Humans derive three rights from their natural state and needs. Life, liberty, and property. Life is self-evident. Liberty is needed to act in a manner fitting to sustain life. Property is needed to shape into the tools of sustenance for life.

The non-aggression principle derives from these rights. While each human has the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, he or she may not (in good moral order) violate these rights of others. Aggression here is not defined simply as physical violence. Plunder as well as murder constitutes aggression.

The natural drive to avoid pain and sustain and improve life causes man to resort to plunder and murder. It is evident that any person may act to defend their rights against the aggression of others. The theory of collective action stems from the ability of a group of individuals to pool their resources to more effectively defend their rights against the aggression of others. However, this collective does not take on 'rights' of its own. It is merely a tool for protecting each individual within it. An appropriate analogy is an armored car, rather than a cell. The occupants retain individuality. 

The law, then, is an extension of this collective defense against rights violations. Or, at least, that is the purest intention of the law. In reality, however, the law is an instrument of plunder, a means of including unwilling members to a (probably arbitrary) collective group, and then extorting from them their resources and violating their basic rights. The justification for this is always the 'good of the collective'. This is an inherently flawed notion. There is no such thing as the 'good of the collective'. Remember that the collective is only a means of defending individual rights. As soon as that collective violates the individual rights of anyone within it for the benefit of the rest, it ceases to exist as a moral entity. It becomes a mechanism of violence and plunder with no root whatsoever in the rights of man.

The mistreatment of members of the collective aside, these entities will look outward for more profitable plunder. As other such entities (societies) exist, conflict between them becomes inevitable. Hence the origin of war: externalized plunder and murder for the benefit of the false collective. 

There is no inherent injustice in the concept of a collectively provided system of public goods, from roads and power to health care. However, this system is only tenable if all members of the collective agree to provide this. Clearly, in a modern national sense, this is not the case. We are born, if not unwillingly then without conscious consent, into a pre-existing collective.  This collective has taken it upon itself to provide certain goods in advance, and does not bother to ensure individual consent before plundering to pay for these services. It also often holds a monopoly on the goods which it presumes to provide. 

This national collective is also extraordinarily jealous of its power. Should an individual or group of individuals dare to exercise their right to remove themselves from the collective or try to operate in a collective manner countering the national collective, the 'legal' retribution is swift and furious. Examples of this range from the sweeping, cataclysmic American Civil War to the the small-scale abuse of individuals in the modern day attempting to 'drop out of the grid'. Apparently, the concept of truly private property within the national collective is abhorrent to its perverse, plundering nature.

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