As every honest man knows, crime doesn’t pay. Our main problem is that apparently no one has yet told the criminals. Crime is our number one growth industry, and currently exhibits such bullish prospects that its present competitor seems content to merely slow its rate of growth. Thus the government would have us rejoice that the alligator is eating us slowly.
This paper is an essay on the coordination of economic activities. It is exploratory and speculative, connecting arguments that I have made in several other places. The essay is an attempt to give a coherent picture of some of the theoretical and practical problems facing economists, as well as society in general.
Not even the most doctrinaire egalitarian will deny that heredity affects, if it does not deter- mine, individual intelligence, strength, vitality, and the capacity to develop certain skills. There are three other dimensions of inequality, how- ever, which are universal, and yet commonly over-looked or even denied. To what extent their basis is phylogenetic may be open to debate, but beyond question is the fact that all three are deeply entrenched in acquired human nature.
(Barthelemy) Charles (Pierre Joseph) Dunoyer (1786-1862) was born on May 20, 1786 at Caremac in ancient Tureme (Quercy, Cahorsin), the present-day Lot. His father, Jean-Jacques- Philippe Dunoyer, was seigneur de Segonzac. Destined at an early age for the order of St. Jean de Malte, he began his education in the order’s near-by house at Martel.
In the popular academic mind, the doctrine of class-conflict seems to be inextricably linked to the particular Marxist version of the idea. Lip-service is often paid - especially by those eager to diminish the claims to originality of Marx and Engels - to the fact that these writers had precursors in this approach to social reality. Frequently a certain “French school,” preceding Marx and Engels and influencing their views, is alluded to, and the names Guizot, Thierry, Saint-Simon and a few others are sometimes mentioned in this connection.
A society is certainly conceivable in which there was no governmental intervention in family life or education and in which the sole function of law enforcement was the upholding of universal rights.
What requires explanation or justification depends on what is taken as being given: what comes into question depends on what one already believes. The inertia of one’s present outlook - sometimes too hastily labeled by others as a bias - gives one a sense of commitment without which possible justifications for one’s position might be overlooked. Nor does an ability to empathize usually carry such a sense of commitment.
Libertarianism -the political philosophy based on the concept of individual rights -seems to be an inherently clear, unambiguous position.
In his seminal essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty“, Professor Rothbard delineated a libertarian interpretation of history, an interpretation which saw the larger part of humanity’s existence on earth before the 18th Century as dominated by a distinctive “Old Order”. Whether in the form of the primitive tribe, Oriental despotism or feudalism, the Old Order was a “society of status” distinguished by tyranny, fixed class or caste, exploitation, stagnation and hopelessness.
What this essay will attempt to show is that while, during the 19th century, the prohibition of sexual immorality played a comparatively unimportant role in American criminal law, the medical profession arrogated to itself the task of dealing with moral questions. Psychological medicine particularly, by substituting “treatment” of disease for legal punishment of moral transgression, placed itself in the position of enforcer of virtuous conduct.
