Pirates and Emperors

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Well, I think we can deny the leader of a gang of thugs being legitimate, as all such a leader would be is the head thug.

[i]The State is a gang of thieves writ large - Murray Rothbard[i]

Government is, at its most fundamental level, coercive, and thus evil. Government takes your money and constrains your will, without either prior consent or prior contract, all enforced by bayonets, guns, and tanks.

The greatest irony in human civilization is that we imprison thieves in prisons built with funds that can only be called stolen - while a prison (or any other "public" good may be desirable), force was used to attain it, therefore, it is theft.

Thus, there is no difference between the pirate and the emperor, save for honesty, which lies on the side of the pirate.

I wondered when someone would start quoting Rothbard.

The irony extends back even further. The mere fact that claiming something as simple as a stone as "your property" requires coercion. You have to horde the stone, deprive it from others, and apply force against others to ensure your hold on it. In many respects, coercion is human society, even at the simplest level.

Well, to the Rothbardian, this is false. As to the Rothbardian, there is a manner of just acquisition based upon the idea of natural rights, where the violation of these rights is coercion(theft is coercion), while property itself is not coercion.

However, you are right coercion is human society, and that's why I would like as little to do with other people as possible.

I have a barely Wikipedian understanding of the founder of Anarcho-Capitalism. But, I am curious, is there any way at all that the Rothbardian would be able to apply "Natural Rights" in assisting the Cro-Magnon to resolve his dispute with others who claimed the fine and (for the pre-historical period) valuable sample of flint as his own?

In Iraq, who has the "natural right" to the reserves of petroleum? Do artificial persons, like corporations, also have "natural rights" or are they devoid of such rights (considering how the corporation itself rely depends upon the coercive state to come into being)?

One of the founders to be clear, the other is David Friedman, son of Milton Friedman, who is a utilitarian.

I believe that Rothbard likely used a more Lockean stand for acquisition of resources, and thus would argue that the person who first meaningfully established the claim(improved things and all) is the owner. I don't have much beyond a wikipedia knowledge of Rothbard either though, as he is a thinker that has always annoyed me.

In Iraq? Well, as it stands the entire system in Iraq is likely perverse from a Rothbardian view, for neither the US government nor the Iraqi government before them could meaningfully exert ownership. I am not sure if Rothbard personally believed in corporations, but I think that some thinkers who adopted his basic ideas such as Edward Konkin III were against corporations as false. In any case, if corporations emerged in the Rothbardian view, they would have to emerge from contractarianism, making them probably about the same as a regular person in this stance. Yes, Rothbardians are for a different form of society.