Bitcoin Forum

I'm some kind of lingering between the first and the second.  ::)

This is a strange question.  How should laws be justified?  Rothbard is an option.  Rothbard's claim was that laws were never justified.

Maybe it's semantics, but it's strangely worded none the less.

Plus, there may be many other views. What about via aristocratic opinion?

If you are the ruler, via totalitarian dictatorship...

I'm basically a utilitarian, which I don't see listed. "The Moral Landscape" presents some good arguments.

You need values to measure utility, so you still need justifications.

1. Meaning of life is the most important.
2. Given the amount of debate on that subject, likely the best answer has not been found yet. Even considering religion - interpretations are still debated.
3. Finding the meaning should thus be priority number one.
4. The scientific method is the most widely accepted and successful method for problem solving and knowledge seeking.
5. Ergo - Laws should be justified in that they serve science and/OR the search for meaning. Anonymous might put this as "For the lulz".

/Positivist-technocrat-rant

(Yes its a movement... we're like 1.5 guys!)

You're the guy that Alex Jones warned us about.

If I were to make the observation that 1.5 guys can't possibly impose their rule on the rest of society, would you accept that as scientific fact and would your philosophy then self-destruct in logical contradiction?

make that 2.5

Law can only be justified by the highest power. (Stirner, Redbeard)

All else is mere preference.

By me then?

Well, if you are going for the tautology awards, you should've said that they cannot be justified. At all. Which is true of course.

Hence the use of the word "should" in the question. Separating the descriptive reality with personal motives might help you get it. I don't think anyone in their right mind assumes there are objective moral truths, so yours is not a discovery.

The second problem with that word game is the concept of "power". What is it? Who has that? You only know this after the fact, not before it, so it's double-plus-redundant.

Being a living thing is about mere preferences.

I am just making sure religion and dogma knows its place.

Your poll is a bit misleading and it is missing a fourth option.  First, laws protect right, so the question should be, how rights are justified.   The option that you are missing is "Objectivist theory of rights". 

Usually Natural rights concept is attributed to the Enlightment period, such as Jefferson, and not Rothbard.   This theory claims that "god" created everyone equal in nature. 

In contrast, the objectivist theory of rights proves its position from a basic observation of natural environment: that every alive entity, including humans, wants to survive, and must act accordingly.  Example, a tree wants sun light, and it is gonna strive to get it.  A lion wants meat, and will hunt prey (so killing is moral to a lion). Finally, a human needs to realize his ideas, and create stuff. Therefore, it is moral to arrange a situation for a human to be able to do so, and be protected. This arrangement constitute the laws about which you ask.  More details:

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2011-fall/ayn-rand-theory-rights.asp

Why Rothbard anarcho-capitalism is not protecting individual rights.  It is sufficient to look at Russia since the nineties. The state did not protect private property, and every moderately successful businessman had to buy his own "police", to choose  a mafia to protect him against another mafia.  This is not an exageration or hyperbole.  The situation was terrible, and people fled the country as soon as they could. You can watch TV series Brigada, if you can find English subtitles, to get an idea how it was.

You need the government to have the monopoly on force, and monopoly on the court system, so that you will be able to keep your private property.

That's an interesting conclusion, but not necessarily the only possibility. I probably wouldn't be so opposed to monopolies if they didn't degrade into self-serving oligarchies (extrajudicial plunder via the ruling classes). This happens by design with any monopoly.

Competition is good if it is understood that all security forces, courts, lawful enforcement, and other similarly related organizations, are given deference within the domain of their respective jurisdictions (via free association). Absent that, you tend to resort to riot and war. Shame.

It's quite simple: respect property.

From a short wiki read of him I can believe that. As science is rather collaborative in nature positivist technocratic ideals end up with a progressive taint - and he sounds very conservative.
Obama/Kim Jung? Um/etc. are doing a pretty decent job at that I would say... but that's not really my retort here:

Truth is truth even without public support, technocracy is not necessarily democratic and mostly not.

More importantly I consider the movement quite new so it's too early to judge its survival chances.


Both socialism and free capitalism/weak democracy seem to have failed though so the world seems to be in dire need of new ideas.

Edit:
I'm currently working on a software program to control the execution of law to eliminate human interpretation, so the my site has not been updated for a while, but the interested can check it if they want: floathaven.com.
Its half political and half trying to build floating islands in order to create better countries... don't know if that last part will ever work though...

I hate to be the one to tell you, but...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/TechnocracySign.gif

Modern Technocrats have done away with the central authority aspect of a merit based hierarchy. It was basically scientism. The Venus Project, Zeitgeist Movement, and similar organizations promote positivism through the scientific method. None of these groups agree on everything, which is what science is all about. I think these are the epistemological progeny of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. Disregarding the leaders of these organizations, they find a commonality in their destination if not their methodologies.

There is no fear of govt monopoly when people share common ideas -- any  misbehaving would be overthrown. The problem with Iran is that many people subscribe with govt policy.  Revolutions happened during the enlightenment because people came to disagree conceptually with the kings.

So Zeitgeist/Venus/whatever isn't scientism? They certainly appear that way.

They claim that decisions are "arrived at," not imposed.  Though there's also a supercomputer involved so I'm not sure how that's supposed to work in practice.

Well, if the computer isn't also solving philosophical problems, I don't know how it would change anything. And since we're already inhabiting the supercomputer that is supposed to work on that...  ;)

Actually the policies of "old American technocracy" were thinly wailed socialism with a technocratic taint.

Their ideas include things such as sharing the production apparatus freely - which in essence is communism.

Their command structure is based on being a technocrat and an engineer which to me sounds a lot like "member of the party".
(I have known not so smart engineers and I'm sure some "Engineers" from China are not quite up to par for instance)


Our command structure combine merit OTHER than title and the scientific method. To become a leader you would either have to come from a "school" which methods have been scientifically proven in a "court" to produce better leaders or yourself have been successful leader already (possibly both may be required for higher positions).

We are also working on a software program that will objectively execute the "constitution".
You may ignore the program of course, but the idea is then that you will be denied access to the state funds controlled by said program - Bitcoins among other ideas make this possible.

We have done blogs on all of this already, we will do more later.