Every argument for intervention can be followed downward, one question at a time, until the person making it concedes or runs out of ground. This note is that ladder. Each rung is the next question, asked when the answer above is refused, and each is a place where a fair opponent can say “fine, you’re right” and stop.
Two people argue about banning crack. “Ban it, it wrecks lives.” “A ban won’t work.” That is an ordinary fight, and it is entirely about whether the ban works. The second speaker has argued only about whether it works, which treats a ban that did work as fine, and nobody has asked the question underneath: what gives anyone the right to forbid a trade between two adults who invaded no one?
The ladder is that question, and the ones beneath it, asked in order. Most fights end near the top, and that is fine. A position only goes deep when the person making it refuses every place to stop on the way down, and that is where The Selective Guillotine picks up: past the last rung, below Logic.
Use the shallowest rung that settles the claim. A rebuttal that ends at Economics isn’t weaker than one that goes to the floor. It’s cheaper. It says the ban fails and concedes nothing about a ban that worked; if the reply is “then make it work”, the next rung down is already there. Know what lies beneath it in case the first answer is refused.
Dissects tag every rebuttal with the rung it ends at, written Economics: Scarcity → Rights. Read it as: answered at Scarcity, with Rights underneath if that answer is refused. Each name links to its section below.
Policy
- The question: what is actually being done?
- The refusal: “It’s just a contribution.” “It’s a safety net.” “It’s a guardrail.”
- The answer: name the mechanism. A tax is taking without consent. A ban is force against people who’ve harmed no one. A licence is permission you must get from someone with no right to give it.
- Notes: Taxation, Aggression
Economics
- The question: can it work?
- The refusal: “Government will do it better.” “Something must be done.”
Most topical fights, over trade, housing, healthcare or technology, are fought here. So this rung is split into four questions, and the right one is whichever the claim fails on.
Incentives
- The question: who pays for being wrong?
- The answer: a private actor who errs loses his own money. An official who errs loses nothing, and often gains budget. An institution with no skin in the game will be wrong in a predictable direction.
- Notes: Skin in the game, Inverse incentive structure, Regulatory Capture
Knowledge
- The question: who has the information?
- The answer: the people living the circumstances do, and prices are how it travels. A price carries what millions know about their own wants. Remove prices and no planner, however clever, can know what to produce.
- Notes: economic calculation problem, Knowledge Problem (Information Throughput Problem), price system
Scarcity
- The question: what’s given up, and where does scarcity move?
- The answer: every resource used one way isn’t used another. A benefit counted without its cost is half an argument, and making one input cheap doesn’t end scarcity. It moves it to the next want.
- Notes: Scarcity, Seen and Unseen, Lump of Labour, Production
Action
- The question: do people respond to change?
- The answer: people always act to improve their situation, so an argument that needs them to stand still while one thing changes contradicts the Axiom of Action. That is a stronger result than “that seems unlikely”, and it is where Economics meets the floor.
- Notes: Human action, Subjective Value Theory, Revealed Preference
Authority
- The question: who gets to decide for others?
- The refusal: “We voted for it.” “The experts agree.” “It’s an emergency.”
- The answer: a majority can’t hand over a right none of its voters have. An expert’s knowledge isn’t a right to rule. An emergency doesn’t change who owns what. There is no situation special enough to license aggression, not even a penny to save humanity (The Alien Ultimatum).
- Notes: Democracy, Jungle Law, Threats and Risk
Rights
- The question: whose is it, and was it invaded?
- The refusal: “It’s society’s money.” “His use of his land affects me.” “He’s made my work worth less.”
- The answer: you own your body and what you homesteaded, produced or traded for. You own its physical integrity, not its market value. Only a physical invasion is aggression, and its remedy is restitution from the person who did it.
- Notes: Self-ownership, private property, Homesteading (First-comer Ethic), Physical Integrity vs Value, Liability and Restitution, Conflicts
Equality
- The question: does the same rule bind everyone?
- The refusal: “Taking is fine when the state does it.” “Rulers and ruled are different.”
- The answer: if men are equal, a law that lets some take from others can’t follow. If they aren’t, who exactly is sub-human? One rule for rulers and another for you is Mixed Law.
- Notes: Mixed Law, State, The Non-aggression Principle
Logic
- The question: is it consistent?
- The refusal: “Different logic applies to different people.” “A can be non-A when I need it to be.”
- The answer: arguing for many logics uses exactly one. And the law of identity is the floor: every argument, including this refusal, already relies on it.
- Notes: Polylogism, Argumentation Ethics, Law of Non-Contradiction, Identity
Below the floor
The last move left is to say that none of it binds anyone: you can’t derive an ought from an is, and contradictions don’t matter. That isn’t a rung, because it isn’t an argument. It’s a refusal to make one, and the man who makes it has left the conversation, not won it. The full case is “The Line in the Sand” in The Selective Guillotine.