In some of the debates between libertarians and non-libertarians about immigration, immigration opponents tend to bring up an analogy between private property and state sovereignty.
I was struck in earlier iterations of these arguments by the fact that I considered private property more plausibly legitimate than communal or governmental sovereignty, while many other people thought it was exactly the opposite way around. E.g. I remember Mike Huben years ago saying that clearly property had to be derived from sovereignty. I think his arguments were essentially (1) property is only meaningful if it is defended by force, which normally state sovereigns do, and (2) the means by which governments acquire and defend territory are analogous to the means by which individuals acquire and defend property rights, and one is not more obviously legitimate than the other.
This again was the reverse of my intuition, because I thought one could acquire property via a peaceful and commendable activity like making productive use of it (if one believes in some theories along these lines) and then asking others to respect one's efforts by not interfering with them. On the other hand, the state sovereignty claims seem to mostly rest on killing people and seeing who's left afterward, or who surrenders afterward. "You should stay out of here because I've been working hard on my own thing" or "because I personally physically live here with my vulnerable family" feels more morally significant to me than "you should stay out of this whole area because some people in our group killed everyone else here, and we're prepared to do the same to you, too".
However, if one thinks that neither is really a moral question (either because of moral antirealism or because of skepticism toward property institutions in particular), then perhaps the entity that has the most conspicuous and organized willingness to enforce its claim with force has the greater "positive" claim. I think my confusion with Huben is that he seemed to feel that *all* property claims were forms of "might makes right" and that gradually we had systematized some of these things in ways that produced less chaos and violence on a day-to-day basis (in fact Scott Alexander also said something somewhat like that in his own critique of libertarianism). On the other hand, if you think there's a plausibly legitimate way for individuals to acquire property (at least in chattels, maybe also in land) then you won't think of that as a matter of "might makes right" and it will perhaps not seem to be the same thing as territorial sovereignty claims, unless you also see those as sort of aggregating smaller property claims or somehow repeating the same kind of legitimate process.
I wonder what you currently think about the analogies and disanalogies between individuals' property claims and states' territorial sovereignty claims. Also, how important is it what the actual historical facts behind each claim are, as opposed to the Schelling point of how people think about the claims today?
I should add to my description of why Huben thought sovereignty was more legitimate than private property: sovereign claims in some places are older than most recorded land claims, and most people in state societies habitually believe or accept state-issued real property deeds and registries, and most land ownership, even if not originated by states, has been regularized by their issuing formal title. And again, most people treat that formal title as the actual truth of the matter about ownership, with usually pretty marginal exceptions. So we don't see a lot of people saying "actually, Peter isn't the real moral owner of this land, he's just the county-deed-registry-recorded owner, we should uphold Paul's claim instead". Almost nobody anywhere in the world is (per a suggestion of Nick Szabo's some years ago) trying to maintain any alternative parallel land registry on different principles or derived from different initial claims.
Sometimes people make a coordinated effort to resist government views of land tenure, like in Massachusetts the government purported to seize and auction the home of some radical pacifist anarchists who refused to pay Federal income tax. Some of their supporters tried to continue to enforce the pacifists' claim on the home and to impede the auction purchasers from occupying it. But this is rare enough that it gets whole books and movies made about it and may become national news.
I vaguely remember that you argued somewhere that an unregulated competitive banking system would, under some conditions, produce the optimum quantity of money as defined by Milton Friedman (i.e., the quantity that produces a zero nominal interest rate). Did you make such an argument and if so, can you repeat it and/or point to a reference?
[SCA]: Oh traveler from the Orient to many lands, you have seen much of cookery, I believe. I have frothed egg whites with bundles of birch twigs and with willow, but I am curious whether there is some better contrivance that you prefer?
I assume, based on what I gather of your worldview, that you support full drug legalization (i.e. you think it should be legal to manufacture, transport, sell, possess, or take any drug).
If my assumption is correct, I haven’t seen you write much about it. How important an issue do you think drug legalization is? If you think it is of relatively minor importance, why is that?
I understand that the questions are addressed to David Friedman, but yours stands out to me. I think it is one of the most consequential issues of our time.
In the media the debate is highly centered on the US, and there's good reasons for it: drugs and the War on Drugs are devastating for many US citizens. Even there, there are questions that are rarely addressed, such as: What is the role of prison and police lobbies in shaping drug policy? Was if worth it to crack down on prescription opioids?
But on a global scale, the problems are even more dire. Drugs finance dictatorships in Latin America, Western Africa, the Middle East (eg, IRGC's captagon business) and will probably have an impact on European politics. Legalizing drugs (at least cocaine) wouldn't impact just the US, it would also eliminate a lot of political corruption worldwide.
Thanks Dan. I couldn’t agree more. I personally consider the war on drugs America’s worst policy since slavery, and I see its ramifications all over the place. I don’t think you need to be any kind of libertarian to support comprehensive drug legalization, but I would be a bit surprised if someone who considered themselves any kind of libertarian didn’t, and I’d be curious for an explanation (and I would expect to hear reasons based on things that are simply not true).
1st question: Do you think any of these views are irrational to hold, why or why not? Billionaires are some of the best humans on earth due to their economic productivity and philanthropic contributions. Governments are the most dangerous threat to the human species and create the highest risk for humans to go extinct. It's 60%-70% likely (or greater) that pausing or even regulating AI is worse for humans than not pausing/regulating AI.
Specifically in the case of pausing AI, I believe that even if pausing AI were to be a good thing, there are no entities with enough power to regulate the government from continuing AI development in which case the threat of AI is still existent from the most harmful organization that exists in society, and therefore, we should not pause AI so that at least non-governments could potentially be able to use AI to help defend against the existential risks that arise from governments in general and the government using AI for harm more specifically. I believe this line of reasoning can be used for all of the reasons people try to give to justify why governments are necessary for society and although I can tell them to read Machinery of Freedom, what do you think about my logic here? Is it overall irrational? Am I applying it too broadly?
No need to address that last paragraph if it's too lengthy, I am more curious on your thoughts about AI regulation in general even though I sense that most of your thoughts are covered in Future Imperfect.
Second question: Do you have any updated replies to more contemporary views on pausing (or regulating) AI or do you believe there aren't any uniquely new views and what you've said in Future Imperfect still holds today?
Big fan of your 'stack and your books. Thankful that you are not behind a pay wall. For your AMA, what are your thoughts about HR 25 The FairTax Act, which has been unable to get out of the Ways and Means Committee each and every year since 1999, if memory serves. I am a pro bono advisory board member for Fairtax.org. Since Trump has not seen fit to get on the FairTax bandwagon, I've grown utterly pessimistic that it has any chance at all in future.
What do you think are the most promising areas of pursuit to advance liberty? What has the best bang for the buck (all bucks included like time, effort, explicit money, etc.)? Are the answers different for those with meaningful power (e.g., big following, positions of authority, large resources) versus those without (e.g., the young, middle & lower income/wealth, the common man)?
In your debate with Bob Murphy at Porkfest, you alluded to the fact you used the efficient market theory to bet on Microsoft and Apple because you had knowledge which the market didn’t. You said this with a large grin on your face, so I guess your bet paid off. Can you elaborate on what you knew that others didn’t? Or share any more details about that story?
Another question for you. How can you be so confident in anarchy when every sector of the economy is so unique and complex. It’s impossible to say that anarcho capitalism would be preferable in the face of a bunch of market complications / failures. Healthcare being the best example is super complicated and even small regulations like a Hippocratic oath are monumentally helpful.
First, I don't agree healthcare is complicated on its own; the only thing super complicated is government control of it.
Second, the very complexity of systems is what makes them more suited to the flexibility of anarchy. The worst thing for any system is to lock it into one monolithic process which is incapable of evolving.
Anarchy is not everyone flying off in different directions regardless of everyone else. It is people cooperating voluntarily. Collectivism is coercion and status quo. One of these can adjust to changing conditions better than the other.
The last thing bureaucrats want is to solve the problems that created their jobs. Independent thinkers are the most dangerous thing in the world to bureaucrats.
In my opinion talking more about "market systems" than "free markets" may be effective. People find it easy to belive that complicated things should be controlled and don't understand that a free market system is an incredibly sophisticated and successful system for organizing. It's definitely not anarchy, and even free market doesn't convey these aspects of it
I’d never thought of that or heard of it before, but you’re right about “free markets” being a loaded political term. But it is anarchy in my mind. The problem is that too many people equate “anarchy” with “chaos”, and they are definitely not the same.
Firstly, big fan of all your work, especially on private defense. Secondly, I was wondering what your thoughts on the Austrian Economic Calculation Problem are. It seems to me, it rejects Hoppe and Rothbard more than it does you, since you are a staunch fan of polycentric law. Hoppeans and Rothbardians are overlaying law with their deontological view. Any thoughts? I know you probably reject the ECP’s impossibility theorem btw.
In swordsmanship and the like, how have you had to change your footwork in a spar due to age? In drill?
If you could put just one Icelandic saga into the curriculum - let's be realistic here and say a home school high school curriculum, since inclusion there is totally politically possible - what would it be?
What is your favorite memory of growing up as the son of Milton Friedman?
In some of the debates between libertarians and non-libertarians about immigration, immigration opponents tend to bring up an analogy between private property and state sovereignty.
I was struck in earlier iterations of these arguments by the fact that I considered private property more plausibly legitimate than communal or governmental sovereignty, while many other people thought it was exactly the opposite way around. E.g. I remember Mike Huben years ago saying that clearly property had to be derived from sovereignty. I think his arguments were essentially (1) property is only meaningful if it is defended by force, which normally state sovereigns do, and (2) the means by which governments acquire and defend territory are analogous to the means by which individuals acquire and defend property rights, and one is not more obviously legitimate than the other.
This again was the reverse of my intuition, because I thought one could acquire property via a peaceful and commendable activity like making productive use of it (if one believes in some theories along these lines) and then asking others to respect one's efforts by not interfering with them. On the other hand, the state sovereignty claims seem to mostly rest on killing people and seeing who's left afterward, or who surrenders afterward. "You should stay out of here because I've been working hard on my own thing" or "because I personally physically live here with my vulnerable family" feels more morally significant to me than "you should stay out of this whole area because some people in our group killed everyone else here, and we're prepared to do the same to you, too".
However, if one thinks that neither is really a moral question (either because of moral antirealism or because of skepticism toward property institutions in particular), then perhaps the entity that has the most conspicuous and organized willingness to enforce its claim with force has the greater "positive" claim. I think my confusion with Huben is that he seemed to feel that *all* property claims were forms of "might makes right" and that gradually we had systematized some of these things in ways that produced less chaos and violence on a day-to-day basis (in fact Scott Alexander also said something somewhat like that in his own critique of libertarianism). On the other hand, if you think there's a plausibly legitimate way for individuals to acquire property (at least in chattels, maybe also in land) then you won't think of that as a matter of "might makes right" and it will perhaps not seem to be the same thing as territorial sovereignty claims, unless you also see those as sort of aggregating smaller property claims or somehow repeating the same kind of legitimate process.
I wonder what you currently think about the analogies and disanalogies between individuals' property claims and states' territorial sovereignty claims. Also, how important is it what the actual historical facts behind each claim are, as opposed to the Schelling point of how people think about the claims today?
I should add to my description of why Huben thought sovereignty was more legitimate than private property: sovereign claims in some places are older than most recorded land claims, and most people in state societies habitually believe or accept state-issued real property deeds and registries, and most land ownership, even if not originated by states, has been regularized by their issuing formal title. And again, most people treat that formal title as the actual truth of the matter about ownership, with usually pretty marginal exceptions. So we don't see a lot of people saying "actually, Peter isn't the real moral owner of this land, he's just the county-deed-registry-recorded owner, we should uphold Paul's claim instead". Almost nobody anywhere in the world is (per a suggestion of Nick Szabo's some years ago) trying to maintain any alternative parallel land registry on different principles or derived from different initial claims.
Sometimes people make a coordinated effort to resist government views of land tenure, like in Massachusetts the government purported to seize and auction the home of some radical pacifist anarchists who refused to pay Federal income tax. Some of their supporters tried to continue to enforce the pacifists' claim on the home and to impede the auction purchasers from occupying it. But this is rare enough that it gets whole books and movies made about it and may become national news.
I vaguely remember that you argued somewhere that an unregulated competitive banking system would, under some conditions, produce the optimum quantity of money as defined by Milton Friedman (i.e., the quantity that produces a zero nominal interest rate). Did you make such an argument and if so, can you repeat it and/or point to a reference?
[SCA]: Oh traveler from the Orient to many lands, you have seen much of cookery, I believe. I have frothed egg whites with bundles of birch twigs and with willow, but I am curious whether there is some better contrivance that you prefer?
You have in past written a lot about JD Vance. What is your current opinion of JD Vance and if it has evolved.
I assume, based on what I gather of your worldview, that you support full drug legalization (i.e. you think it should be legal to manufacture, transport, sell, possess, or take any drug).
If my assumption is correct, I haven’t seen you write much about it. How important an issue do you think drug legalization is? If you think it is of relatively minor importance, why is that?
I understand that the questions are addressed to David Friedman, but yours stands out to me. I think it is one of the most consequential issues of our time.
In the media the debate is highly centered on the US, and there's good reasons for it: drugs and the War on Drugs are devastating for many US citizens. Even there, there are questions that are rarely addressed, such as: What is the role of prison and police lobbies in shaping drug policy? Was if worth it to crack down on prescription opioids?
But on a global scale, the problems are even more dire. Drugs finance dictatorships in Latin America, Western Africa, the Middle East (eg, IRGC's captagon business) and will probably have an impact on European politics. Legalizing drugs (at least cocaine) wouldn't impact just the US, it would also eliminate a lot of political corruption worldwide.
I haven’t read much about the topic, any recommendations?
Thanks Dan. I couldn’t agree more. I personally consider the war on drugs America’s worst policy since slavery, and I see its ramifications all over the place. I don’t think you need to be any kind of libertarian to support comprehensive drug legalization, but I would be a bit surprised if someone who considered themselves any kind of libertarian didn’t, and I’d be curious for an explanation (and I would expect to hear reasons based on things that are simply not true).
Dr. Friedman,
1st question: Do you think any of these views are irrational to hold, why or why not? Billionaires are some of the best humans on earth due to their economic productivity and philanthropic contributions. Governments are the most dangerous threat to the human species and create the highest risk for humans to go extinct. It's 60%-70% likely (or greater) that pausing or even regulating AI is worse for humans than not pausing/regulating AI.
Specifically in the case of pausing AI, I believe that even if pausing AI were to be a good thing, there are no entities with enough power to regulate the government from continuing AI development in which case the threat of AI is still existent from the most harmful organization that exists in society, and therefore, we should not pause AI so that at least non-governments could potentially be able to use AI to help defend against the existential risks that arise from governments in general and the government using AI for harm more specifically. I believe this line of reasoning can be used for all of the reasons people try to give to justify why governments are necessary for society and although I can tell them to read Machinery of Freedom, what do you think about my logic here? Is it overall irrational? Am I applying it too broadly?
No need to address that last paragraph if it's too lengthy, I am more curious on your thoughts about AI regulation in general even though I sense that most of your thoughts are covered in Future Imperfect.
Second question: Do you have any updated replies to more contemporary views on pausing (or regulating) AI or do you believe there aren't any uniquely new views and what you've said in Future Imperfect still holds today?
Big fan of your 'stack and your books. Thankful that you are not behind a pay wall. For your AMA, what are your thoughts about HR 25 The FairTax Act, which has been unable to get out of the Ways and Means Committee each and every year since 1999, if memory serves. I am a pro bono advisory board member for Fairtax.org. Since Trump has not seen fit to get on the FairTax bandwagon, I've grown utterly pessimistic that it has any chance at all in future.
What do you think are the most promising areas of pursuit to advance liberty? What has the best bang for the buck (all bucks included like time, effort, explicit money, etc.)? Are the answers different for those with meaningful power (e.g., big following, positions of authority, large resources) versus those without (e.g., the young, middle & lower income/wealth, the common man)?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on consciousness.
Is consciousness an evolutionary accident?
Can human made computers become conscious?
Is "real" intelligence possible without consciousness?
In your debate with Bob Murphy at Porkfest, you alluded to the fact you used the efficient market theory to bet on Microsoft and Apple because you had knowledge which the market didn’t. You said this with a large grin on your face, so I guess your bet paid off. Can you elaborate on what you knew that others didn’t? Or share any more details about that story?
Another question for you. How can you be so confident in anarchy when every sector of the economy is so unique and complex. It’s impossible to say that anarcho capitalism would be preferable in the face of a bunch of market complications / failures. Healthcare being the best example is super complicated and even small regulations like a Hippocratic oath are monumentally helpful.
First, I don't agree healthcare is complicated on its own; the only thing super complicated is government control of it.
Second, the very complexity of systems is what makes them more suited to the flexibility of anarchy. The worst thing for any system is to lock it into one monolithic process which is incapable of evolving.
Anarchy is not everyone flying off in different directions regardless of everyone else. It is people cooperating voluntarily. Collectivism is coercion and status quo. One of these can adjust to changing conditions better than the other.
The last thing bureaucrats want is to solve the problems that created their jobs. Independent thinkers are the most dangerous thing in the world to bureaucrats.
In my opinion talking more about "market systems" than "free markets" may be effective. People find it easy to belive that complicated things should be controlled and don't understand that a free market system is an incredibly sophisticated and successful system for organizing. It's definitely not anarchy, and even free market doesn't convey these aspects of it
I’d never thought of that or heard of it before, but you’re right about “free markets” being a loaded political term. But it is anarchy in my mind. The problem is that too many people equate “anarchy” with “chaos”, and they are definitely not the same.
Hello Mr. Friedman,
Firstly, big fan of all your work, especially on private defense. Secondly, I was wondering what your thoughts on the Austrian Economic Calculation Problem are. It seems to me, it rejects Hoppe and Rothbard more than it does you, since you are a staunch fan of polycentric law. Hoppeans and Rothbardians are overlaying law with their deontological view. Any thoughts? I know you probably reject the ECP’s impossibility theorem btw.
Have you ever individually picked stocks or other assets and did you beat the S&P 500?
How did you deal with tantrums when you were raising your kids? How did you discipline your kids according to your principles?
In swordsmanship and the like, how have you had to change your footwork in a spar due to age? In drill?
If you could put just one Icelandic saga into the curriculum - let's be realistic here and say a home school high school curriculum, since inclusion there is totally politically possible - what would it be?