Fundamental to classical liberalism is private property, absolute and inviolate. The state exists to regulate commerce, enforce contracts, and guarantee property rights. Our contemporary concept of the state has moved far away from this construct into rights, powers, and privileges necessary for the state to function in a sophisticated and complex environment.
Critiques of capitalism emphasize its conceptual frame of order out of chaos and object that humans are a fairly orderly bunch without the rule of law, with only custom to guide behavior. While I concede that nasty, brutish, and short may be overstating the case for life in nature, there is something to the construct.
The adjustments we are making to our concept of the state are moving us further from the basic relationship of citizen and government and violating boundaries of systems and logic. In light of these adjustments I propose a philosophical construct of contract anarchy as I call it and contractors instead of radical individualists.
The construct is indeed order out of chaos, contract by contract, performance by performance, and adjudication by adjudication. The basis of this construct is the Greek concept of ownership by legitimate use, a profound stewardship, structured by the tenets of Adam Smith.
It is my contention that the focus of the industrial process will be robots which, like draft horses, must have a steward who is legally responsible for them, a legal person who will register them, pay registration fees, and collect the profits of their labor. Registration fees are after all a license to do business in a given polity. These fees could easily fund, with protective tariffs, a humane UBI to support aggregate demand. This will rationalize the entire edifice of autonomous automation.
Do Well and Be Well
Comments
Post a Comment