The Criminality of Rothbardian Ethics


Moreover, the this is why libertarians were wrong in privatization. The difference between a commons and private goods, is that owners can consume private goods, and others cannot, whereas no-one can consume commons whether one was a contributor or not.

Instead the market (locality) itself benefits from the *externalities* produced by the construction of the commons.

So private property prohibits others from consumption, and commons prevent all from consumption. And whereas competition in the market creates incentives to produce private goods, competition in the construction of commons produces malincentives.

Why? Because of loss aversion. Given that commons product benefits only be externality, they must be free of privatization in order to provide incentive to produce them.

The libertarian solution was to make commons either impossible to produce due to malincentives, or to create vehicles for extraction by externality without contributing to production. pathways through two-dimensional space are particularly problematic since the only way to create private property is with a militia or military funded by the commons.

The answer instead is to increase incentives for the private production of commons as a status signal and personal monument that outlast’s one’s lifetime, and can be inherited by one’s offspring. And to increase the scale of commons that can be produced by the public (market) production of commons that are free from privatization.


Leave a Reply