Remarks about Key Assumptions

1. Humans are rational because, unlike all known animals, we survive and prosper using reason. We observe, consider, deduce, act. We may not get our premises right, and our logical deductions may be flawed; but we do have the innate ability to correct such errors and do both.

A common and gross error is that people fail to pick premises sufficiently primitive; for example they presume that because government exists, therefore it must exist. They fail to presume that because an individual exists, he has the sole right to control the manner of his continued existence.

Even so, the process of reasoning is used even by the most grotesque examples of players in the political arena, for example Hitler. He failed absolutely to set as his primary premise the fundamental right of every human to operate his own life - but having so failed, he did at each step of his terrible career advance by reason; he found he had an extraordinary oratorical talent, and therefore used it to popularize his agenda; he found that he could out-bluff other politicians and get what he wanted by threatening force and therefore gambled again by invading Poland in 1939; he enjoyed two years of fabulous military success and therefore continued to wage war despite the entry of FDR's America. He not unreasonably considered himself infallible.

On a less bloodthirsty scale, according to Professor Buchanan's "Public Choice" theory of economic behavior players in today's "mixed" economy behave quite rationally, given the restrictions they suffer; for example it is rational to obey the web of government regulations, absurd and destructive though they are, just because of the high imposed cost of breaking them. All this regrettable behavior has one silver lining: it confirms that humans are rational, that this key assumption is correct.

2. Market Anarchism is the only rational economic system. This will be a vital part of what we have to show our rational but so-far unenlightened friends, but I'll not dwell on it here; if the reader hasn't already reached that conclusion he probably won't have read this far. I do want to stress though that indeed there is no rational alternative to the free market; that if a rigorouly logical process of thought is followed from first principles, that conclusion will be reached, and no other. Thus, that if it is patiently explained to a rational student, he must eventually come to embrace it because all alternatives are irrational.

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