LvM L&Sa - I.1.Ownership (7)

Law did not leap into life as something perfect and complete. For thousands of years it has grown and it is still growing. The age of its maturity—the age of impregnable peace—may never arrive. In vain have the systematicians of Law sought dogmatically to maintain the division between private and public Law which doctrine has handed down to us and which in practice they think it cannot do without. The failure of these attempts—which indeed has led many to abandon the distinction—must not surprise us. The division is not, as a matter of fact, dogmatic; the system of Law is uniform and cannot comprehend it.

In principle, the law can also not comprehend the carrot. This is immaterial for both carrot and law, as neither is the carrot required in any way or by any consideration to be "comprehended" by law, nor is the law required for any practical use to "comprehend" the carrot. What'd law "comprehending" something mean ? Law is not much unlike a large rock upon which a tired traveller is resting, it comprehends not travel nor traveller, it comprehends not dust nor dew nor moss tho' it may well be covered in it, and none of this has any bearing : the rock just sits there, offering through its incompressibility a convenient counter to gravity, so that the traveller may sit.

The traveller who does comprehend travel, and so may sit when tired rather than press on, the traveller who does comprehend moss and dew and dust so he may sit or not sit on any given rock... the public versus private divide is comprehended by men, which is to say chiefly women.ⁱ For when she feels at ease opening up in privacy, behind closed doors, but does not feel at ease doing the same in the gutter, before every leering drunk and critically minded other woman you have the public/private divide quite clearly marked in practice, and when you take an hour to enjoy her fruit in bed and five minutes in the park you similarly have that divide quite clearly before your eyes. Some things are said for some, or maybe just for one, some things are said for all, and these types are not the same nor in any way reducible to sameⁱⁱ, and there your distinction lies nude and quite comprehensible. What difference does it make if the hammer comprehends the painting or doesn't comprehend the painting ? You're hammering the nail in the wall to hold the painting for yourself, not for the hammer. Let it not comprehend anything as long as it remains incompressible enough to drive a nail.ⁱⁱⁱ

The division is historical, the result of the gradual evolution and accomplishment of the idea of Law. The idea of Law is realized at first in the sphere in which the maintenance of peace is most urgently needed to assure economic continuity—that is, in the relations between individuals. Only for the further development of the civilization which rises on this foundation does the maintenance of peace in a more advanced sphere become essential.

Insasmuch as we have heard of wars before the time writing was invented, and we have nonwritten proof that they in fact existed, it seems quite improbable to believe that conflict as an individual endeavour in any way predates conflict as a group endeavour. Moreover, groups are for no reason and in no way to be suspected as "more advanced" than individuals. It's on the balance of evidence - heaps upon heaps of evidence - much more likely that group and individual identity evolved together, similarly to the earlier discussed applications of evolution to all other fields. Equally, the presumption that group anything is in any way superior, or more important, or more sophisticated, or more worthy of expenditure of consideration or any kind of other resource than individual something seems laughable, since the only reason to have groups in the first place is the economy of scale they either offer of promise. For this reason, certainly all expenditure towards the group will have to be less than the expenditure toward individual, and if this general law is ever broken the cause is accidental and the effect quite limited in time.

More generally, dear reader, learn from the mistakes of Mises so you may be less stupid than he is : do not posit nonsense on the grounds that it makes your thing sound prettier, better rounded, more elegant. It's better to say nigger cunt than rosebush mound if the latter's at best a ridiculously senile attempt at pious fraud.

1. You think it's happenstance that Merkel is the principal figure to protest the recent US panoptical cluelessness ? [↩]
2. The Kantian notion that morals reduce to doing in private as you'd do in public is complete nonsense, I would never entertain a lover, or a friend, or a horse that treated me as if I was anyone else. This is after all why working in any bureaucracy is dehumanizing, the requirement that one acts the same way towards all equates to an extirpation of the private sphere which reduces man to chemical compound. Not even animal, because every horse I ever owned knew enough of this world to know me from any other man, and show it. The correct solution is, of course, corruption, which is why all the confused attempts to "fight corruption" on the grounds of some grand if pedestrian and ill conceived "humanitarian" programme are so very funny. You're fighting against the very thing you claim you wish to have, chitlins! [↩]
3. And yes, the age of hammeresque maturity, when there's no space where one can still drive a nail, may perhaps never come. You think it ever might ? If it does, it certainly won't be the age of drywall impregnability, for should the walls become impregnable to our current crops of hammers we'll just forge larger ones. [↩]