Take Down!

David Gordon is a quiet titan of thought, and a meek deliverer of lectures.  I love his work.  He subscribes to the anarcho-capitalist school which I think is an internal contradiction,  but it is the term his school uses.  He is also a voracious reader and comes up with great reviews. He here reviews an author who takes down the Ayn Rand objectivists:

But must not Oliver overcome an objection? The standard response of Objectivists to anarchism is that there cannot be a market in law and defense. To the contrary, the free market presupposes the existence of a fixed legal order, not subject to competition; and this only a government can provide.[1]

The objectivists suffer from the idea that because we have government, we have a market. Indeed to have a market we need government.  But wait wait, obviously there were markets before the Government, so as an imperative, Government is a non-starter.    The bible records some 400 years of no Government, yet peace and prosperity.

Now, markets give rise to wealth and no end to the diversions and deprecations to which people will get up, all manner of vices, including Government.  

Oliver not only answers this difficulty but turns it against the objectivist defenders of the state. It is entirely true, Oliver says, that the free market presupposes objective law; but the requirements of objective law are fixed by human nature. Far from requiring a state, objective law correctly understood precludes its existence. “There is no need for a legislative process. Law is inherent in the nature of things — including man’s nature. Thus, discovery of law rather than the fabrication of law is called for.”

Just so, just as all of the laws relating to fire can be found in fire, so all of the laws of the free market are found in the free market.  Some may catalog the know laws of fire, but anyone can quickly also learn for themselves, but it does save time and money to read up on fire before using it yourself.

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