MSE 299: Course Outline
Introduction
Personal Rights
The Economy
Foreign Affairs
- Designing a Free Society
- Social arrangements
- Legal systems
- Govern the use of force
- Determined by the portion of your ethical code to be imposed on others
- The Maxim
- “Peaceful, honest people have the right to be left alone.”
- Positive and negative rights
- Definition of terms
- Personal and economic freedoms
- The matrix: OK to be rich? / OK to take drugs?
- Rights to body and property
- Inseparable
- Delegable
- Self-defense
- Not pacifist, but accommodates pacifists
- Consequences of the maxim
- No requiring benign people to take actions they do not want to take
- No draft
- No required witnesses or jury service
- No compulsory education
- No taxation
- No preventing benign people from taking actions they prefer
- No vice laws
- No laws against suicide
- No state licensing of professions or products
- No wage or price controls
- No crimes against the state
- Bases for maxim
- None
- Religious
- Natural Law
- Empirical
- Psychological
- Consequential
- Are criminals and terrorists the results of earlier rights violations?
- Efficacy and Ethics
- Worries / Provisos
- Chaos
- “Free riders”
- Transient instability
- Irrevocability
- Control by rich or big business
- Interface with other systems
- Police
- Courts
- Defense
- “Just” starting position
- Care of the unfortunate
- Environmental protection
- Spontaneous order
- Concern with corner conditions
- No assumption of ideal people
- Self-replication: anyone can generate theory from the maxim
- Use rights
- Acquisition
- Exchange
- Markets
- Black markets
- Pricing systems
- Entrepreneurship
- Title
- Difference between title and property
- Difference between title and evidence of title
- Common law
- Napoleonic code
- Rights to expectations
- Contracts
- Exchange of property rights
- "Meeting of the minds"
- Penalty clauses
- Complete contracts
- Specific performance
- Inalienable rights - sale of body parts
- Implicit contracts
- Covenants
- Intellectual Property
- Patents vs. Copyrights
- Trade secrets
- Trademarks
- Torts
- Corporations
- Liability
- Bankruptcy
- Eminent domain
- Options
Personal Rights
- Self-defense
- Use of minimum force necessary
- Delegation
- No compulsory service
- Draft
- Jury service
- Subpoenas
- Privacy
- Freedom of speech
- Libel
- Slander
- Blackmail
- Freedom of action
- Discrimination
- Boycotts
- Joint action
- Group rights
- Cases of rights limitations
- Children
- Incompetents
- The incapacitated
- Guardian-ward theory
- Mental health
- Children’s rights
- Abortion
- Animal rights
- Crime and punishment
- Violence, threats, theft, fraud
- Decisions vs. outcomes
- Restitution
- Criminal overhead
- Conspiracy
- Historical rights violations
- Practical redress
The Economy
- Taxation
- Regulation
- Monetary Systems
- Wage / Price / Rent / Trade controls
- Zoning
- Licensing
- Antitrust
- Labor laws
- Unions
- Public utilities
- State enterprises
- Roads, schools, parks, research support
- Prohibitions
- Gun control
- Abortion
- Victimless crime
- Gambling
- Drugs
- Prostitution
- Usury
- Requirements
- Conscription
- Jury
- Subpoenas
Foreign Affairs
- Alliances
- Diplomatic rights
- Foreign aid
- Projection of power
- Pollution
- "Cocoon" theory
- Injunctions
- Use rights
- Duration
- Exchange
- “Basins”
- Enforcement by tort law
- Risk as pollution
- Examples
- Nuclear power
- Acid rain
- Resource depletion
- Rights of the future
- Real help
- Short and long term effects
- Welfare
- Private charity
- Suppression of individual concern
- Psychology of help
- Police
- Courts
- Defense
- Mass weapons
- Lessons of psychology
- Myers-Briggs
- Learning the thrill of responsibility
- Learning compassion
