June 2021 – Ethics of Equals

On the Justification for The State

By Brian Wilton June 12, 2021 June 12, 2021 Uncategorized

Having justified individual rights, can we now justify the state? At first glance it would appear that the state has no right whatsoever to operate as we know states to operate. They claim the right to tax, which is confiscation of the property of innocent men, and the right to tell citizens what they can and can’t do, without regard to those citizens’ rights, as we have begun to describe them here. Can this be justified, or are all states unethical?	個人権利を正当化したところで、政府を正当化できるのか？一見したところ、拙者が知る政府見たいに行動する政府には存在する権利がない。政府は無罪である個人から所有を奪うと等しい課税する。個人の権利を無視して恣意に独裁する。これらの正当化が可能なのか？それとも、政府自体が不正なのか？
As it happens, it can be justified. I’ve alluded to the process before, while discussing the choice between ethical individualism and ethical socialism. In short, the state is justified if, and only if, its citizens consent to its operation.	結局、正当化が可能でござる。倫理的な個人主義と社会主義を選択する時には一瞬触れた。政府の作動が正当化するために被治者が同意しなければならない。
If individuals have rights, they can waive those rights, conditionally or unconditionally. So, a group of individuals might propose to institute a state amongst themselves, and with everyone’s consent, that state will be justified. This is not to say that every individual has to sign the new state’s constitution, or even to have read it. Some of the individuals might delegate the decision to others, placing their rights in the hands of people they trust to judge the proposed state well. With enough iterations of congregation and delegation, even a world government could be justified.	個人には権利があれば、その権利を放棄できる。で、個人の集団が政府を設けることを提案して、全員の同意でその政府が正当化される。被治者が全員、憲法に署名する必要も憲法を読んだ必要もない。員の部分が信頼する判断を持つ他人を選択権の代表として派遣することもある。
Due to the a priori economic proof that government is destructive of prosperity, establishment of such states is economically unwise in the extreme. Further, the existence of obstinate individualists in various locations basically dooms the “ethical state” from the outset.	政府は繁栄に破壊的であることが前知の経済学で証明されている故、経済学的に政府の設けが非常に愚かなことでござる。また、頑固な個人主義者の存在でこんな「倫理的な政府」は最初からありえないでござる。
To my knowledge, this process of securing individual consent — through delegates where individuals see fit to do so — has never justified any state larger than some village-sized experimental communes. These communes were doomed to one of two fates: to collapse and scatter when individual consent dwindled, or to consolidate into a typical state that doesn’t rely upon unanimous consent (and thereby lose ethical justification). If states-by-consent are not inherently impossible, it seems clear that they are not tenable under any circumstances they have been tested in to date.	拙者の知識上では、このような個人同意で政府を正当化したことが村の規模の試験コミューンに限られている。そのコミューンには二つの運命が待っていた。個人同意が果たした後、破局して散らす運命と個人同意を捨て強固する運命でござる。同意上の政府自体が不可能じゃないなら、今まで試した条件では適わぬ。
All states but these experiments are ethically unjust. They are all more or less reliant upon imposition of their dictates on individuals without their consent. Where any state exercises sovereignty over even one man without his consent, that state is unjust. This is true of all forms of state, even democracies and republics, despite any popularity they enjoy. One man’s dissent is all it takes.	この試験以外、政府各個が倫理的に不正でござる。各個が多少で同意なしに個人に独裁する。政府が一人の不同意者にも主権を強いれば、その政府が不正でござる。政府の形状には関係がない。人気である民主制でも共和制でも関係ない。一人の不同意だけあれば、不正になる。
No historical state of significant scale has been just, no present state of significant scale is just, and the future prospects of a just state are bleak.	歴史上の正である大規模な政府はない。現状では正である大規模な政府はない。未来に正である政府が現れる見込みがほとんどない。

Birth and Death

By Brian Wilton June 5, 2021 June 5, 2021 Uncategorized

Men, as ethical actors, have rights. But, we are not timeless; each of us is only here for a limited time. And it is only during that time that we are ethical actors. So, when do we start being ethical actors having rights worth considering, and when do we cease being the same and lose our rights? And related to that, if we start ethical life with any property, from whom is that property taken, and what happens to our property when ethical life ends?	倫理的な行動者として人には権利がある。だが人の時間が限られている。その時間の間だけ倫理的な行動者である。だから、いつ権利を持つ倫理的な行動者になる？そして、いつ行動者じゃなくなって権利を失う？その時の所有について、倫理的な生命を始まった時、ある最小限の所有を持つ？誰から貰う？そして、倫理的な生命が終わる時に、所有はどうなる？
These questions are necessarily tied up in the questions of who is an ethical actor and what is not an ethical actor. Some might assert that ethical actors are only working-age men between the ages of 18 and 65, and everything else (including men outside of that age range) is not. Again, it is not our purpose to dictate the answer to that question. We only observe that ethical actors must become such at some point in time, and cease being such at a later point in time.	この問題は必然で誰が倫理的な行動者か、何が倫理的な行動者じゃないかの二つの問題と絡み付いている。「十八歳から六十五歳まで、生産年齢の人だけが倫理的な行動者だ」と主張するものがあるかも知らない。また行っておくが、その質問の答えは拙者の目的ではない。ただ、倫理的な行動者が「そんな者」になる時がある、そしてその後のいつかで「そんな者」じゃなくなると述べる。
In describing this theory, we will assume as a convention that all living human beings are ethical actors. So, upon conception, a child is a human being (whereas before that point “he” was two gametes, which are not human, since they lacked a human’s full genetic data), and alive, so he becomes an ethical actor at that moment. Then, when he dies, he ceases to be an ethical actor.	この理論の記述では、仮定として全ての生きている人間が倫理的な行動者でござる。で、妊娠の時点から子が人間であって（その時点まで二つの人間の遺伝子を不全で持った配偶子だけであって、完全なる人間ではなかった）、生きていって、その時点で倫理的な行動者になる。そして、死ぬ時点で倫理的な行動者じゃなくなる。
All ethical actors possess the right to acquire property in the same ways: via homesteading, and via transfer from another ethical actor. But, do they start their ethical lives with any property? While intuitively I would say that they start owning their bodies, this necessarily means that if their body-matter were someone else’s property before, at the beginning of ethical life they deprive that other party of property without a contract — i.e., through an invalid property transfer. We must therefore conclude that ethical actors start life without any property at all, until they homestead some or receive some from others. A corollary of this observation is that one cannot commit crimes against such an ethical actor, as he owns no property, and we will find later that all crimes are violations of property rights. This can result in parental tyranny, but it follows from absolute property rights that cannot be stripped without consent.	全ての倫理的な行動者が所有を貰う方法を二つ持つ。ホームステッドをすることで、そして他の倫理的な行動者から受けることで。だが、倫理的な生命の初めに所有を持つのか？直観的に体がこの所有と言いたいが、それでは体の質量が他人の所有だったら子が契約無しの不正な譲渡で所有を貰うことになる。だから倫理的な行動者が何の所有もなく生命を始まる、ホームステッドするか他人から受けるかまで。後で「違反」は所有権を侵すことと見ますから、その帰結でそういう倫理的な行動者には違反は不可能でござる。親の圧制になることもあろうが、絶対所有権から所有を承知無し譲渡することを否定するしかない。
For sentimental reasons as well as economic reasons, I would advocate that parents raise their children well, which would include recognizing their self-ownership immediately, but I cannot dictate that behavior.	感情の理由と経済の理由で自体所有を認める育ち方を選ぶ親が良いと意見するが、拙者がその行動を決定付けれない。
On the other end of the ethical actor’s life is their death. Once a man is no long an ethical actor, he no longer has any rights. His property, therefore, is lost to him. What happens to the ownership of that property? If he made contracts with others wherein he gifted to the other parties his various possessions in the event of his death, then the conditions of those contracts are fulfilled, and that property which he willed to those other parties become theirs. All his other property immediately becomes unowned, free for anyone to homestead.	倫理的な行動者の生命の逆転は死でござる。人が倫理的な行動者じゃなくなると、もう権利はない。だからその人の所有が自分に失われる。その所有権はどうなる？死の条件で所有を譲渡する契約を結んだ場合、条件が満たされることで他者に指名した所有が譲渡される。だがそう指名しなかった所有が無主になり、誰でもホムステッドできるものになる。
There are, here and there, cultural customs governing the disposition of a man’s property when he dies without leaving behind a will. These can be justified under the grounds that some executors homestead the unowned property by parsing it out to friends and family in accordance with the custom. Where the custom has support, the opportunist who swoops in to claim possessions from the recently dead (without wills) can be excoriated as virtually a grave robber, and brought to heel by social pressure.	各地には遺言無き亡き人の所有を配置する文化の慣習がある。執行役人が無主の所有を分けることでホームステッドすることと見れば慣習が正当化する。その慣習の地では遺言無き亡き人の所有を貰う飛び掛けるご都合主義者が慣習を侵した異端者として社会的な圧力で慣習に従わせることもある。

Property Transferral and Contracts

By Brian Wilton June 1, 2021 June 1, 2021 Uncategorized

Up to this point, we have considered how men acquire property rights, and described those rights as exclusive, rightful control of property. This has some important features that we have not touched upon yet, however, and very well deserve mention.	今まで、人が所有権を得ることを考えた、そしてその所有権を排他的な正しい所有制御と記述した。だが重要な特徴がまだ残っている。
A feature of property rights is the right to transfer that property, in whole or in part, to other men. Now, we could conceive an ethic that does not allow this feature, but it would violate the basis we have chosen for this ethic — that it is individualist. The individualist basis means that we must acknowledge all individual rights we can conceive, until and unless some newly-conceived right conflicts with other rights; such rights, and only such rights, must be discarded, lest the ethic become self-contradictory.	所有を他人に譲渡することも所有権の特徴の一つでござる。この特徴を含まない倫理を思いつけるが、そんな倫理がここで選択した根幹と矛盾する。個人主義と両立できない。個人主義の根幹上では矛盾が生まれない限り思いつける個人権利を全部受け入れる。
The ethic must have individual rights that are maximal while still being fully internally consistent.	この倫理は完全に一貫することで最大限の個人権利を認めなければならない。
We could observe that denying the right of property transfer would have dire consequence to the prosperity of all parties involved. While that would be an accurate observation, it is only pertinent to a consequentialist ethic- and ours is a deontological ethic. The observation is well and good for other purposes, such as convincing consequentialists to adhere to our ethic, but in constructing our ethic, it is irrelevant.	所有譲渡を否定することが全人類の反映に厄介な影響を生むと述べれる。だが、正確な観測であっても、帰結主義の倫理だけに論外ではない。本の倫理は義務論の倫理であるから論外でござる。観測には別の用に使える（例えば、帰結主義者を倫理に従う理由を証明すること）が、倫理を組み立てることには無用でござる。
For the specifics of how property rights can be transferred, Rothbard’s “Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts” (chapter 19 of The Ethics of Liberty) is an excellent system; I would only object to his claim that voluntary slave contracts are unenforceable. Walter Block has also criticized this facet of Rothbard’s theory.	所有譲渡の詳細について、ロスバードの「所有権と契約の理論」（「自由の倫理」の第十九章）が優秀な体系でござる。拙者の唯一の議論は彼の志願な奴隷契約を拒む主張でござる。ウォルター・ブロックもロスバードの理論のこの点を批判したことがある。