Walter Block and Evictionism: Who Has Property Rights Around Here, Anyway?

I return to this subject once again (previously here and here).  If you have not read the first two posts, I suggest you do so as this one builds on those. 

I have looked at several of the additional links provided by Block regarding his position, and find this one worth additional comment.  Here, you will find a short, five-minute video of Mr. Block going through his theory of evictionism, and his defenses against two of the more common criticisms of his theory.

There is no transcript.  I have typed out the following myself based on the video.  I suggest you watch the video as well, to confirm and double-check my work.  Please let me know if I mistyped something of significance.

According to Block, the first common objection raised by critics is that there is an implicit contract between the mother and the unborn child.  Block rejects this, stating there is no implicit contract, because at the time of intercourse, there is not an unborn child to have a contract with:

“I insist for there to be an implicit contract, there have to be two parties.”  He goes on (paraphrased): at the point of intercourse, there is no second party (the unborn child) for the mother to have a contract with. “At the time of intercourse, there were no two people.”

I have addressed this in one of my earlier posts.  I believe the idea of causation is directly applicable here – the woman’s conduct caused a result.   The result (the unborn child) cannot be separated from her action (intercourse).  This places on her an obligation – one which her action directly caused. 

Block is incorrect that a contract requires two parties – at least at the time a contract is enforceable.  A unilateral contract requires only one known party at the time of contract.  A unilateral contract is a contract in which only one party makes an express promise, or undertakes a performance without first securing a reciprocal agreement from the other party.  The other party need not even be known at the time of the contract.  It is further defined as an agreement to pay in exchange for performance, if the potential performer chooses to act.

A typical example would be an offer of a reward, where the one making the offer does not know who, if anyone, will take him up on the offer; however, if someone does, the one making the offer is obligated.

I view the obligation of the mother based on a unilateral contract – not an implicit contract, as Block suggests.  The potential performer is the unborn child.  He kept up his end of the bargain.  There is a contract that obligates the mother.

Block’s second example of objections raised by critics is that of the obligation to save.  Block suggests there is no obligation to save:

“If I push someone into the water, then he starts to drown, I owe a positive obligation, which I otherwise wouldn’t owe a positive obligation to.  What they are trying to say is that by having a child [presumably before term – evictionism], you are putting him at risk, and therefore you owe him to keep him alive for nine months.  My claim is that by giving birth to a child, you are not harming him; you are not putting him in a worse position – you are putting him in a better position because before the sperm and the egg meet, there is no person at all.  Surely it’s better to be a person for a little time than not at all.  So I reject the analogy.”

Libertarians “don’t believe in good Samaritan laws.  You don’t have an obligation to fetch drowning people out of the water because if you don’t, you haven’t violated their rights unless you put them in there.  But I deny that having a child is like putting them in deep water and they can’t swim.”

“Surely it’s better to be a person for a little time than not at all” can be said to any human.  Does this justify murder?

Block can “reject the analogy” and “deny” this all he wants.  He is just wrong.  By delivering the child before term and before viability, this is exactly like pushing a non-swimmer into the water and then letting him drown – taking an action that directly causes another to be placed in physical jeopardy, up to loss of life.  In fact, it is worse – the mother took an action to bring the unborn child in a position to be pushed.  You could say the mother tricked the child into thinking it was wanted.  It would be like personally inviting a non-swimmer to a boat ride to the center of the lake and then throwing him in.

Here, I come back to causation, but on the other side – not the causing of the pregnancy, but the causing of harm to the unborn child from abortion:

For example for the defendant to be held liable for the tort of negligence, the defendant must have (1) owed the plaintiff a duty of care; (2) breached that duty; (3) by so doing caused damage to the plaintiff; and (4) that damage must not have been too remote. Causation is but one component of the tort.

This is precisely the sequence of events in pushing a non-swimmer into the water, and it is precisely the sequence of events in an abortion.

I will now return to the idea of property rights, and specifically property rights in the womb.  I return again to one of my earlier posts, and quote Block and his co-author:

The position put forth here, in contrast, is one of eviction not of killing. However, if the only way to evict is by killing the fetus, then the woman's right to her property - that is, her womb - must be held above the valuable life of the fetus.

In the earlier post, I rejected this on the grounds of proportionality.  Property rights are not to be defended in disproportion to the violation – shooting the six-year-old who is leaving the store without paying for a candy bar, for example, cannot be justified with the statement that the shopkeeper’s right to his property – the candy bar – must be held above the valuable life of a child.

In this post, I will suggest the idea that the unborn child has more claim to the womb than does the mother – in the same way that a tenant has more right to occupy the rental home than does the landlord.  I suggest this is true for the unborn child precisely because of causality and unilateral contract.

The mother took an action that caused the pregnancy – causality.  Her conduct caused a result for which she is responsible.  Can she be relieved – by her unilateral choice – of the obligation that came to be as a direct result of her action?  I don’t see how.  The obligations, caused by her actions and not those of the unborn child, are hers because of a unilateral contract – the one the mother extended to the potential taker – the unborn child.  In this case, the unborn child took up the offer at the moment of fertilization.  That he did not exist when the offer was made is irrelevant.

The property (the womb) belongs to the unborn child for the term of the lease – a fixed-term tenancy tied to a specific event: birth.  I conclude that the unborn child, not the mother, has property rights in the womb for the duration of the pregnancy.

Twelve Years Too Late

Rachel Maddow seems to be having second thoughts about the war on terror, or at least the length of the war on terror:

Before interviewing former Defense Department general counsel Jeh Johnson, Maddow noted that German prisoners were held on U.S. soil during World War II, paralleling the current detention of terrorism suspects in Guantanamo. However, the war with Germany had a definite endpoint, while currently terrorism suspects are being held indefinitely.

“We have always held prisoners in wartime, and obviously we have always killed people in wartime,” she said. “That’s not what is weird now. What is weird now is that we are doing those things right now, this year for twelve years now, as part of a war that we say is a worldwide war in which the only declared combatant country is us.”

Makes it kind of easy to fight a war, if you don’t even need another party to accept the invitation.  Did she expect that a war on “terror” would have an endpoint?  Was this ever really possible, or just an attractive name used to leverage the emotionally charged atmosphere of the country twelve years ago?

“When does this thing we are in now end? And if it does not have an end — and I’m not speaking as a lawyer here, I am just speaking as a citizen who feels morally accountable for my country’s actions — if it does not have an end, then morally speaking it does not seem like it is a war,” Maddow added. “And then, our country is killing people and locking them up outside the traditional judicial system in a way I think we maybe cannot be forgiven for.”

There is no “we” about this.  Speak for yourself, Rachel.  Be morally accountable for your own actions.  This should be troubling enough.

This is one reason why the religion is so hard to break.  Too many equate themselves with the government.  Too many equate the country with the government.

(h/t LRC)

Global Governance

This is an article of complete speculation.  Just FYI….

I have previously mentioned my view that the implementation of global governance is behind us, and not in front of us – and that the implementation of the major necessary institutions was accomplished through the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War.  From the post:

Every institution necessary for world government is in place.  Many of those institutions were firmly established in the aftermath of World War II…when guess-which-country held all the cards.  The United Nations, IMF, World Bank, NATO, etc…even the global currency was established at Bretton Woods.

The United States took the place of Britain as being the tool to expand empire – a necessity given the limitations of British power and reach that were being exposed in the first half of the last century.  In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. tool played its part – establishing the institutions that would enable global consolidation.

In the time since then, we have seen Bretton Woods come apart and the strength of the US economy and dollar grow relatively weaker.  Can it be that, having served its purpose, the US is no longer necessary to lead?

From “The Silent Revolution Inside IMF”:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), at long last, has begun to open up. Gone are the days when it acted as a handmaiden of Western, mainly US, economic orthodoxy. It is even throwing a gauntlet down to the mighty US Federal Reserve, questioning the effects its constant monetary boosting has had on the rest of the world.

Enter the now more open-minded IMF, as Boston University professor Kevin P. Gallagher has documented, it has issued a whole range of reports that cast a critical eye on the spillover effects that quantitative easing in the US has had on emerging market economies.

Members from emerging markets are having a greater say in IMF policy.  But what struck me about this article was the repeated use of the term “global” as regards governance, finance, etc., as follows:

Given that the IMF is the key arbiter on many key issues of global finance and economics, and hence also over global fairness and equity…

Given the global economic dynamics…

…have seen to it that the notion of "global governance" finally gets some real-life meaning.

Global governance reform is about much more than changing voting rights in the IMF's and the World Bank's boards. It concerns a very hands-on process to ensure a fair and equitable share of the burdens of adjustment in the global economy and finance.

The success of this campaign owes much to the fact that the richer countries from the South now act very much as global lenders, too.

…it would represent a big step forward for better global governance.

That this is happening in the field of global finance makes it that much more meaningful.

Could it be that a) with the global systems in place and developed, and b) many of them have gained new “legitimacy” given the financial calamity of the last five years, and c) the economies of the West are clearly living in an unsustainable manner, it is time for d) the move to truly globalize these structures?

A second message I took from this article was the suggestion that capital controls implemented in emerging market economies put in place to limit inflows might also be necessary in the developed economies to limit outflows:

The IMF found, for example, that lower interest rates in the US were associated with a higher probability of a drastic increase in capital flow into emerging market economies. And it declared that such increase in capital flows can cause currency appreciation and asset bubbles, which in turn can make exports more expensive and destabilise the emerging market economies' domestic financial systems.

In addition, the IMF is warming up to the view that, in order to fend off these problems, it may well be advisable to use counter-cyclical capital account regulations, as Brazil and South Korea have begun to do. The use of such regulations flies in the face of the old IMF orthodoxy. At the behest of the US Treasury, especially under secretaries of Treasury Robert Rubin and Larry Summers during Bill Clinton's presidency, it preached the "gospel" of unfettered capital market liberalisation to the newly emerging economies.

What shines through all these technical-sounding arguments is that the burdens of adjustment are no longer automatically imposed on the recipient countries in the South. The countries in the North, mainly the US, may need to regulate the outflow of capital from their shores.

I can think of national reasons to limit international capital transactions, but why do so if global governance is the objective?  Unless the limits are to be placed on “non-approved” entities, with “approved entities able to continue transactions.

The Daily Bell recently speculated on global fascism being the ultimate desire of the elite.  It certainly could be so, with global governance going hand-in-hand with international corporations.  Could the capital limits be put in place for the non-approved entities in order to drive more business through the approved (and much more visible) entities?

(h/t Ed Steer)

The Trillion Dollar Coin

Joe Weisenthal has written a column about the proposed trillion dollar coin as a means to resolve the debt ceiling issue:

This is really thrilling.

An arcane idea that started on finance blogs in the summer of 2011-- that Tim Geithner should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling -- is now seriously taking off.

The premise of the idea is this: Although the Treasury can't just create money out of thin air to pay its bills, there is a technicality in the law that says the Treasury has special discretion to create platinum coins of any denomination, and the thinking is that Tim Geithner could make the coin and walk it over to the Federal Reserve and deposit it in the Treasury's bank account.

“Thrilling” isn’t the word that comes to mind….

Weisenthal points to a blog post by Cullen Roche as the first blog to really promote the idea:

The simple threat of doing this would end this debate right here and right now.   It’s time for Congress to stop playing Russian roulette with the US economy.  If you want to take a stand on spending then do so before you pass legislation that causes us to run up into the debt ceiling.  Don’t use some phony law to try to scare people into thinking that we are Greece (something that’s entirely impossible anyhow).

Now it is quite true that the debt ceiling game is Kabuki Theater, a charade allowing some congressman to pretend they are fiscally conservative, while all the while supporting bills that increase the debt.  But this isn’t the solution.

Weisenthal even evokes Paul Krugman, but fails to mention that Krugman, if anything, comes out against the idea (well, tepid at best):

The peculiar exception is that clause allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination it chooses. Of course this was intended as a way to issue commemorative coins and stuff, not as a fiscal measure; but at least as I understand it, the letter of the law would allow Treasury to stamp out a platinum coin, say it’s worth a trillion dollars, and deposit it at the Fed — thereby avoiding the need to issue debt.

In reality, to pursue the thought further, the coin really would be as much a Federal debt as the T-bills the Fed owns, since eventually Treasury would want to buy it back.

I don’t know why the Treasury would eventually want to buy it back.  Why?  There is no plan to buy back the debt issued by the Treasury, why would this be any different? 

Krugman is now apparently at least beginning to show some concern about (price) inflation…

It’s true that printing money isn’t at all inflationary under current conditions — that is, with the economy depressed and interest rates up against the zero lower bound. But eventually these conditions will end. At that point, to prevent a sharp rise in inflation the Fed will want to pull back much of the monetary base it created in response to the crisis, which means selling off the Federal debt it bought.

…so he throws a few drops of cold water on the idea:

We are living in weird economic times, where many of the usual rules don’t apply and there are big free lunches to be had. But not everything is a free lunch, even now. Sorry.

So, Krugman seems to come out against the idea of the trillion dollar coin, but he remains wrong on there being free lunches.  There are none, at any time.

The Weisenthal points to Josh Barro at Bloomberg:

If Republicans start issuing a list of demands that must be met before they will raise the debt ceiling, Obama should simply say that he will issue platinum coins as necessary to pay government bills if he cannot borrow. But, to avoid causing long-term inflation expectations to skyrocket, he should pledge that he will have the Treasury issue enough bonds to buy back all the newly issued currency as soon as it is allowed to do so.

Does Barro actually believe that the President will give up this power once he uses it?

Back to Weisenthal : what about inflation?

This would not result in massive inflation, because we wouldn't have a gigantic injection of new money into "the system." That is only achievable through massive spending beyond which the economy can handle. But this loophole would in no way let the government spend beyond which Congress has allocated through the budget.

He (nor Krugman) understands anything of inflation.  It seems he is thinking only in terms of prices.  However, unless the coins have $1 trillion worth of platinum in them, this is inflationary to the money supply.  Once that happens, the misallocations begin; resources are diverted from the productive to those with first access to the coin; and new bubbles form…somewhere.

This entire idea is a green-backers dream.  The Treasury should issue currency (and coin) directly, and not borrow.  No effort needed to back the currency.  Just print (or coin) away.

If this power ever transfers from the Fed to Treasury (or Congress), the odds of hyper-inflation go from miniscule to probable. 

More on The Rose: Evictionism and Contract

I recently commented on the issue of abortion, using the work of Murray Rothbard and Walter Block as the basis for my comments.  I would like to expand on some of my thoughts regarding Block’s work.  

I will warn once again, that I am and will remain quite biased on this subject.  I cannot imagine an argument that will sway me from the view that abortion is an act of aggression: murder.  If my having this bias is somehow a turn-off, I suggest you stop reading now.  If you have not read the first post, I suggest you do so as I will not cover the same ground here, despite some overlap.

I mentioned in my last post that I had not read much of Block’s work in detail.  In this post, I will go into one of his published papers on this subject:

COMPROMISING THE UNCOMPROMISABLE: A PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS APPROACH TO RESOLVING THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY, by Dr. Walter Block and Roy Whitehead

The authors make clear their personal view regarding abortion:

…we maintain that abortion is an abomination. It is a massive killer. More people die annually as a result of it (1,591,000) than perish from heart disease (720,058), cancer (505,322), stroke (144,088), or all accidents (91,983). Adding insult to injury, death occurs in these cases because of the purposeful action of other people.

However, just because aborting the fetus is abominable, it does not follow that it should be prohibited by law.

The authors begin by suggesting that it is appropriate to consider that human life begins at conception:

At what point does human life begin?  There are really only two reasonable possibilities: at conception or at birth; all other points of development in between are merely points along a continuum which begins and ends with these two options.

So which is it? Does life begin at the beginning point of this nine-month continuum or at the end of it? We take the former position. We maintain that the fetus is an alive human being from day one onward, with all the rights pertaining to any other member of the species.

They will get no argument from me on this.

The authors compare abortion to the act of failing to come to the aid of another – of failing to be a “good Samaritan” – not an aggressive act.

The woman who refuses to carry her fetus to term is in exactly the same position as a person who refuses to rescue a drowning swimmer.  Abortion is not, in and of itself, an act invasive of other people or their property rights, even when fetuses are considered persons.        

This is not a good analogy.  In the case of the drowning swimmer, the person (presumably) did nothing to cause the swimmer to drown – the person did not throw someone unable to swim into the middle of the ocean.  However, the woman did take an action in the situation of pregnancy, and aborting the fetus is like throwing a non-swimmer into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  This does convey some obligation.

Given this, how can we defend the mother's right to kill the fetus?  Simple. She owns her own body, and the unwanted fetus growing within it is in effect a trespasser or parasite. This may sound harsh, but when the property rights in question are thoroughly analyzed, it is the only possible conclusion that may be reached.

If this is true for a fetus in the womb, why not for an infant at one month old?  The infant is trespassing in my bedroom.  The infant is even more the parasite.  Do I have the right to place it in a situation that is certain to result in the infant’s death, simply for my convenience?