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[Content warning: this contains meta-politics. Doctors

believe meta-politics might slightly less detrimental to

your health than straight politics, but they still might

be against many sensible information diets.]

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I’m not exactly pleased with how much of my life I spent in

the debate community, but one thing it did for me was

expose me to the Spark Notes version of the libertarian

tradition, including Lockean rights theory . . . for

Babies[1].

Ripping Locke out his historical context, as does both

Robert Nozick [2] as well as kids in suits who vastly

over-estimate their intelligence [3], the basics of the

argument is that even if there was no government at all we

would have life, liberty, and property. For the purposes of

what I am trying to argue today, we can just concede that

premise. Obviously, there are a great many complications,

and many of them were not beyond the milieu of thinkers on

these issues at the time, or even to Locke himself (if only

people could be bothered to read a book, let alone do so

carefully) but I am used to the rough and tumble of winning

the battle of soundbites, so I at least get where those who

make the value assertion in the present-day are coming from.

Speaking of value assertions, the next one is that you should

look at government as a rights protection agency, which you

can only legitimately hire out to protect those rights to

life, liberty, and property. Again, the argument very well

could, if not should, bog down here [4], but I again can

concede the point, as I am about to offer a retort.

My retort: a Libertarian who has built the *moral* argument

for rights on the two premises above has no business

feeling good about corporations — certainly no right to be

smug (in their little dapper suits), though it is

understandable if they come off smarmy, or are angry with a

defensiveness that shows real weakness and insecurity ,

casting about to find the support of peers for validation,

even though such collectivism and truth via politics (nay,

the micro-politics of micro-aggressions) forms another

delicious performative contradiction of their most dearly

held beliefs about their atomization, free-thinking, and

integrity.

There are no corporations in nature. They are created by

governments. Worse, they are created by governments to

limit liabilities, in other words allow organizations to

form that violate rights and then have those who have

benefited have a discount on paying restitution. Once the

costs of legal damages are more than the company has is

more than the company has, the company is bankrupt, but

there is no ability to go after the *personal* fortunes of

the shareholders -- even if large dividend payments have

been made from profits that are now shown to be fraudulent,

if not murderous. Once the corporation is dead, what happens

to those with unpaid claims, especially in the kind of

minimum government that the Libertarians dream about?

Thus a reason, if not the *main point*, of corporations is

to violate rights in ways that generate wealth. But that

wealth and the distribution of that wealth exist at the

leisure of legal structures, not any bedrock of "natural

rights."

So you can see, the tradition of trust busting is not

anti-libertarian, and is as American as apple pie. But

good luck finding a Libertarian who believes that.

Here's a pet idea of mine: governments could choose to only

offer charters to companies that make employees

shareholders, diluting shares as new employees come on. If

some rich people wanted to make business entities

structured so they would reap all the profits -- fine, but

they won't be able to have any liability protection that

comes with a corporate charter. They would be *personally*

liable for whatever happens. (Getting how different of a

business environment that would really be?) As Taleb would

say, this would put some skin in the game. And more skin

certainly needs to be in the games of political economy.

In reality, this is just me playing around with ideas. It

was for entertainment purposes only. There is virtually no

chance this would ever change a Libertarians mind as these

arguments aren't the real reason anyone is Libertarian.

Instead, I am attempting an act of de-mythologizing.

===

[1] There is a book series of those chunky card books for

kids that tries to tackle science topics with the naming

format of “X . . . for Babies.” Whenever my wife I end up

shopping for a young child, I find one of these books and

make a little sing-song voice for the “. . . for Babies”

part. I particularly like Astrophysics . . . for Babies

which features some gridded images to represent space under

different distortions.

[2] In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I almost

recommend the book just to read his prose style, where the

premises are frequently questioned and different pathways

are constantly hinted at. Locke is writing in a time where

the Divine Right of Kings was an ongoing project both on

the Continent (where it was winning) and by James II (who

was being resisted, and would be defeated by Dutch invasion

that his Protestant subjects invited and labeled the

Glorious Revolution of 1688). Locke goes deep into theology

in his First Treatise on Government, which modern readers

try to ignore, and even then still has to appeal to

theological warrant in his Second Treatise. Nozick shrugs,

waves his hand, shrugs again, and then moves on.

[3] In doesn’t even matter if one in a hundred of them

really is at a stellar IQ; their estimation of their

intelligence is just too high for any debater to reach. A

future Tesla, Bucky, and Musk should be smart enough to

either not do the activity or quickly exit it.

[4] Here’s my personal favorite[a], one that I promise will

never convince anyone, even though it is correct: the

Libertarians want to see liberty, property, life as negative

rights — showing only what governments cannot violate, not

positive rights -- what governments should do or provide. But

then where is your positive right to policing, courts,

administration of punishments and restitutions? All the

sudden you want government to *do* something? It doesn't

matter that you have established that you want governments

to do those things because they are just and fair, once you

establish that governments have positive obligations (with

the necessary flip-side that citizens have positive rights)

you can no longer base everything a government must do on

the theory of negative rights. . . The reason so much rights

discourse comes out for negative rights is that governments

existed first, including autocracies and military

dictatorships and for purely practical and utilitarian

reasons people wanted limits on government.

[a] It might be my favorite out of pure nostalgia. I

was a young, analytic man, chasing the roots of ideas

that I only later realized no one cares about. Sigh.

Youth. Even after it gets done being wasted on the

younger version of yourself, it comes back to sway your

emotions in your old age — often leading to old age

being wasted on the old.

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I'd love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus

"net" (work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at sdf.org.