Ep. 422 Answering Common Objections to Private Law
Adam Haman returns to help Bob respond to a common string of objections he recently received, as feedback on a lecture given to the Menger Institute.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this conversation.
- Bob’s lecture to the Menger Institute on private law (and defense).
- Bob’s articles on warlords and the mafia.
- BMS ep 166 on Arrow’s Theorem. Adam and Tyrone discuss Arrow.
- The HamanNature substack.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
A small govt guy on X:
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Producing cars and producing laws are not the same kind of problem.
If a car company fails, you buy another car. If the law fails, you don’t get a refund — you get riots, bloodshed, and anarchy.
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Notice he’s comparing A car company to THE law, not a carmaker to a lawmaker. He’s provided for many carmakers but for only one lawmaker, for unequal cars but not for unequal laws. Doesn’t everyone want THE perfect car and THE perfect law and THE perfect everything else? So no cars if not all cars are perfect cars? No cars today if better cars could be made tomorrow? No laws if all laws are not perfect laws? No laws today if better laws could be made tomorrow?
If you want to compare things, compare carmaking to lawmaking, or foodmaking to lawmaking. And on the surface of it, it seems rather perverse that it’s the lawmaking sector, industry, or world that people most believe has the right to steal or to use coercion to finance its actions. I think people misconstrue the state’s strangleholds with necessariness, as if the power of its grip or the extent of its dominance is indicative of its rightful place.
Good catch.