| | Robert
But...who is the "rogue" agency, and by whose definition? Is it "rogue" because of its violation of "rights"? Well, by whose theory and definition of rights? Since the resolution of these matters requires SOME enforceable conclusions, whose force will ultimately rule -- and whose rules ultimately will be enforced? By what right are the enforcers empowered? In whose name and for whose interests do they speak?
Couldn't the same be said to the Founding Fathers? They thought it was OK to use force against a "protection agency." According to their own theory of rights or justice. If the principles of justice are objectively knowable, then they are Objectively knowable. Of course, we have little reason to believe that those in protection agencies are doing what is just, as revealed by the use of reason, but we have little reason to believe the same of politicians in government.
And that begins to look suspiciously like a government: a final arbiter of disputes with the power to enforce their resolution. It means that at some point, "competition" in such interpretations will end, because somebody will make his own interpretation stick.
Why? Having a final arbiter needn't need a monopoly, for reasons Roderick has shown: There is no reason to assume that if there is a final arbiter in disputes between you and I, then that same arbiter need be the final arbiter in disputes that arise between myself and others, or those others and yet others.
Moreover, an agency that ignores the final arbiter is in essence the same as an agency that doesn't go to arbitration in the first place. It is esentially saying that arbitration is not what it wants, and is choosing to settle disputes with force.
If you are an anarchist, please, don't pretend that THIS arrangement is anything more or less than the forceable elimination of all "market competition" in the determination of what rights are, and how they apply to a given situation.
But since we are discussing Rothbard here, this is moot point: He didn't advocate competing laws, but a single, libertarian law code.
Of course, in reality, we know that the market will produce the laws there is a demand for, just as any government (including minarchy) will. there are reasons for believing that it will tend to be libertarian law, but no guarantees. This leads us to the conclusion that anarcho-capitalism won't necessarily be libertarian. However, until some means of refuting Roy Childs argument against Rand can be provided - i.e., without denying (a)that government is an institution with a monopoly on enforcing certain rules of social conduct in a given geographic area, or (b) that preventing people from doing what would be legitimate for the government to do, from using legitimate force, from doing something that isn't an initiation of force - we know that a minarchy will <i>never</i> be libertarian. It would be logically impossible.
Suppose that there were some Objective laws, perhaps developed by the legislature of the Objectivist state, that defined what was and was not an initiation of force. Now suppose a protection agency, without having secured a license or anything from the state, started using force without ever doing what this Objectively derived view of what it is to initiate force. Wouldn't the government face the same dilemma Childs brings up?
And suppose that the government itself violates that law? Can the agency use force against it? If so, the we have a body of Objective law, but no monopoly on the role of enforcing that law - no government as Rand defines it. In who's courts will the government be judged? In its own? How can we be sure of an impartial verdict then? But if government canm be tried in some other courts, perhaps ones pre-arranged between itself and its prosecuter, again, how would that be different from a protection agency prosecuting another protection agency under this Objective law code, or a protection agency using force to check another protection agency? The situation would be no different from the anarchist situation Rothbard describes in Power and Market.
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