|
jrodefeld posted:It violates self ownership. Hans Hermann Hoppe supports the revocation of rights of individuals who are against his system and treating them as free goods, you know, animals.
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 07:14 |
|
|
jrodefeld posted:No it doesn't. To say "defending people or property requires the initiation of violence" is a contradiction in terms. Defensive violence is not initiatory. You have to have a coherent understanding of what legitimate property rights are before you can determine what is initiatory and what is defensive violence. Defensive violence must be proportional otherwise it becomes initiatory. If you shoot someone who is trespassing on your property you are committing aggression. The act of trespass is a far less serious act of aggression than shooting someone. If you tell someone they are trespassing and you make every effort to politely ask them to leave your property, then you are justified in using force to get them to leave. Who determines whether or not an act was defensive or initiatory? E: Looking for either a name or a role, here. Somfin fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:19
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:The reason why libertarians want an anarchist society is that we don't believe in the initiation of violence against peaceful people. LMAO you don't want an anarchist society when your ideal society is all about reinforcing the hierarchical status quo.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:22
|
|
|
Jrodefeld, you're caught up now but you skipped over a few things. Let's set aside for a moment that you can't seem to get it through your thick loving skull that Rothbard defended apartheid. He did so in a very slippery manner, so I don't expect you to be able to understand it. Instead, let's concentrate on the fact that Hoppe is a monarchist totalitarian and a racist. You are still defending his ideas, so let's focus on that. You keep talking about "within covenants," what you seem to not understand is that for Hoppe, covenants that do not include many totalitarian restrictions on thought, speech and action are invalid covenants. Hoppe believes that libertarianism without a legal definition of thoughtcrime isn't real libertarianism. He also believes that true libertarian societies will have a majority of white people in them, because white people are genetically superior to others. These are all things Hoppe believes. Go ahead, disagree with me. I want you to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:I believe that human rights and property rights are one and the same. Your question is too vague to give a definitive answer. In what way would the preservation of justly acquired property cause harm to human life? I didn't ask about human RIGHTS, I asked about human LIFE. quote:Are you speaking about the so-called "lifeboat scenario" where a drowning person would need to violate the property right of the lifeboat owner to save his life? Or like the example of a starving person who has to steal food to stay alive? If a starving person steals a loaf of bread, then he is indeed violating a property right. Any one of us would do the same thing if our life was on the line. And I would gladly pay the store owner back for the value of the food stolen once I recovered from my perilous state. If the property owner is so callous as to press charges against me anyway, I would argue my case to the court. In your stateless libertarian society, what court? Whose court? The shopowner's court? What if the "callous" property owner, acting in their economic self-interest in order to scare future shoplifters from doing as you did, bribes the court in order to make an example of you - and, in their own economic self-interest, the judge/juror(s)/arbitrator accepts that bribe(s)? What is your recourse? quote:There would be serious societal backlash against the property owner who would be vindictive enough to go after a starving person who stole food in desperation to live. Social pressure would punish such action. What if the "property owner" was sufficiently wealthy that they could influence all forms of media to such a degree that [the starving person, or even ALL impoverished people] were demonized in the public consciousness? Social pressure might, in that case, empower the vindictive "property owner" and further punish the impoverished person/people, even though their actions were justified by their right to live? Is that such a far-fetched situation? quote:That is the only scenario where I could see a potential conflict between property rights and human life. And even then, I don't think it is much of a conflict because how many store owners would refuse a small amount of food to a dying person? You cannot base your entire ethical and legal system on a once in a decade kind of freak occurrence. If you sincerely believe that starving people are denied free food by [food-havers] only "once a decade", you're very much mistaken. Just two years ago, a homeless man was strangled to death for shoplifting toothpaste from a CVS, and another woman was shot and killed by a security guard after shoplifting food and other small goods from a Wal-Mart, and ANOTHER shoplifter was killed by security guards at a DIFFERENT Wal-Mart. Three times in one year is hardly "once in a decade", and the fear of death (the "threat of force") caused by these events have undoubtedly exacerbated the suffering of many more impoverished people. And another example, in the field of clothing (which is likewise critical for human survival): Abercrombie and Fitch refuses to donate unsold clothing to charity because it would rather protect its brand's aura of wealth than help poor people sleep warmly at night. H&M was doing the same thing. Those are some specific examples of private property (and even more egregiously, "brand protection") being held in higher regard than human life and safety. It happens all the time. Capitalism kills people every day. ~~~ reposting this because it got caught at the bottom of page 5.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
Caros posted:I just so happen to have that! Yes, stealing the drugs would constitute an act of aggression. The fact that I would do the same in his position does not make me a hypocrite, nor does it make the non aggression principle invalid. Rather, it illustrates that desperate people without choices resort to whatever is necessary to maintain their life, even resorting to acts of aggression. Any reasonable system of justice would take into account these extenuating circumstances while still not excusing the violation of private property rights.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:24
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Yes, stealing the drugs would constitute an act of aggression. The fact that I would do the same in his position does not make me a hypocrite, nor does it make the non aggression principle invalid. Rather, it illustrates that desperate people without choices resort to whatever is necessary to maintain their life, even resorting to acts of aggression. Any reasonable system of justice would take into account these extenuating circumstances while still not excusing the violation of private property rights. Apparently you have trouble taking short posts seriously. Who determines whether or not an act was defensive or initiatory? What "justice system" (your exact words) would your libertopia have? What authority would that justice system have? Who decides any of this?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:28
|
|
|
What good is a system of ethics that people have to violate on a regular basis to stay alive?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:29
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Any reasonable system of justice would take into account these extenuating circumstances while still not excusing the violation of private property rights. Who enforces this system of justice?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:29
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:What good is a system of ethics that people have to violate on a regular basis to stay alive? I'm not going to tell you to ignore my previous posts, jrodefeld, because you shouldn't, but this is the core of what I'm trying to say.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:30
|
|
|
zeal posted:Who enforces this system of justice? Batman.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:32
|
|
|
zeal posted:Who enforces this system of justice? Robocop. Or (more accurately) Judge Dredd and friends.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Yes, stealing the drugs would constitute an act of aggression. The fact that I would do the same in his position does not make me a hypocrite, nor does it make the non aggression principle invalid. Rather, it illustrates that desperate people without choices resort to whatever is necessary to maintain their life, even resorting to acts of aggression. Any reasonable system of justice would take into account these extenuating circumstances while still not excusing the violation of private property rights. So you're going with option B. You are arguing that it is an inherently immoral act to steal from someone even to preserve your own life, but that you would, and you expect that anyone would in fact take that immoral action. Morality is the distinction between what is wrong and what is right, and you are arguing that everyone would take the immoral action. How can that action be immoral when even you agree that it is the best of two bad choices? Do you not see anything wrong with that? The idea that your ideology defines as immoral the choice that any sane person would make? Why is this aggression 'okay' in your eyes but other Aggression is not. You argued in your previous post that you believe society would look down on anyone who chose to prosecute someone for this aggression, but why should they? It is naked aggression, it is theft through and through. What is the difference between a person who steals to continue to live, and one who does so to satisfy a want, or simply due to boredom. If I steal a $10 bottle of wine would you also assume that people would look down on someone who chose to prosecute me? I suspect not, but why? I know my answer, because morals are a human construction and are thus relative. The same action taken in different circumstances has different moral implications. Stealing to save your life is different than stealing for fun, and we treat it differently. I have no difficulty resolving this because it is obvious. You should have difficulty resolving this because your Non-Aggression Principle should be absolute. If you believe that someone should be forgiven for stealing in this instance, or that their punishment should be less severe... why? Morally there is no difference, they both agressed against another person for an item of the same value, if your belief is universal their punishment should be identical.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Jrodefeld do you realize that you've just argued that anyone who consistently applies the principles of libertarianism is morally inferior to anyone who realizes its flaws?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:37
|
|
|
Caros posted:So you're going with option B. You are arguing that it is an inherently immoral act to steal from someone even to preserve your own life, but that you would, and you expect that anyone would in fact take that immoral action. It's the same brand of logic by which anti-abortion activists who believe that life begins at conception and the fetus has total rights are still okay with abortions in cases of incest or rape. They shouldn't be, because those fetuses are just as conceived and rights-granted as normal fetuses, but they know that that's what they'd want to be able to do. They also know they're too smart and rich and (usually) white to have any of the other extenuating circumstances under which abortions are performed. This is called holding two ideas in your head that are completely incompatible and not being able to realise that they are incompatible. And just in case you "skimmed" over my posts before, Jrodefeld, What "justice system" (your exact words) would your libertopia have? What authority would it have? Who would pay for it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:39
|
|
|
Don't try to argue the fine print of his bullshit nonaggression theory. It's bullshit. The idea that initiating violence is always the worst decision morally is ridiculous on its face just by intuition.
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:44
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Yes, stealing the drugs would constitute an act of aggression. The fact that I would do the same in his position does not make me a hypocrite, nor does it make the non aggression principle invalid. Rather, it illustrates that desperate people without choices resort to whatever is necessary to maintain their life, even resorting to acts of aggression. Any reasonable system of justice would take into account these extenuating circumstances while still not excusing the violation of private property rights. The law has to be followed to the letter. That's the point of the law. Exceptional circumstances sure, like with slavery and the fugitive slave act, but you are handwaving away an enormous systemic problem with your theory. A judge can't decide to simply stop enforcing the law by not sentencing people. Your entire theory is centered around morality and rights. Either you think the starving person has a moral obligation to starve to death or they don't. You don't get to have it both ways, that's incredibly cowardly
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:47
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:The law has to be followed to the letter. That's the point of the law. Exceptional circumstances sure, like with slavery and the fugitive slave act, but you are handwaving away an enormous systemic problem with your theory. A judge can't decide to simply stop enforcing the law by not sentencing people This isn't true at all. Judges can and do accept mitigating circumstances on a regular basis. His problem is that Jrodefeld doesn't believe in moral relativism, which should mean that it doesn't matter the circumstances each violation should be just as bad as any other, because they are all violations of the same overriding moral.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:49
|
|
|
Jrodefeld if your neighbor purchases all of the land surrounding your house, digs up the water lines going to your property and surrounds you with "no trespassing" signs, is leaving your own property aggression? Or in a market economy, will society at large have an interest in providing you with a pro bono helicopter?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
Jrodefield what happens when your nonaggression principle is broken in your anarchist society? In the absence of a state, who decides punishment, who enforces that punishment, and who pays for this enforcement? If you had no money to pay for private security or private arbitration, then wouldn't it be de facto legal to rob and murder you in such a society?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 04:55
|
|
|
What exactly happens if I take something that you did not want me to take without using violence? Any attempt to retrieve it or otherwise enforce your property rights would involve initiating violence. Especially if I decided to squat on your land. How do you propose to get me off without initiating violence against me? Oh, I found your "answer": quote:No it doesn't. To say "defending people or property requires the initiation of violence" is a contradiction in terms. Defensive violence is not initiatory. You have to have a coherent understanding of what legitimate property rights are before you can determine what is initiatory and what is defensive violence. Defensive violence must be proportional otherwise it becomes initiatory. If you shoot someone who is trespassing on your property you are committing aggression. The act of trespass is a far less serious act of aggression than shooting someone. If you tell someone they are trespassing and you make every effort to politely ask them to leave your property, then you are justified in using force to get them to leave. So you are actually all for initiating violence, but only when it is convenient. That kind of makes a joke of the whole non-aggression principle, dude. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:03
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:What exactly happens if I take something that you did not want me to take without using violence? Any attempt to retrieve it or otherwise enforce your property rights would involve initiating violence. Especially if I decided to squat on your land. How do you propose to get me off without initiating violence against me? In Jrodefeld's worldview, taking his property/squatting on his land is itself an act of violence.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:06
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:In Jrodefeld's worldview, taking his property/squatting on his land is itself an act of violence. That requires quite the mental gymnastics, not to mention creatively redefining your entire vocabulary to hide the fact that you are selectively all for initiation of violence under some sort of facade of pacifism. Really, once you are using violence to enforce property rights, you've allowed all the violence of a modern state. Oh, except taxation, but your supposedly moral stance against violence is revealed as a farce when you turn around and decide that you can initiate violence in every other situation in which a state does. That's not being against violence, it is just not liking having to pay taxes. Or is there something I'm missing that goes beyond some truly pathetic special pleading? e: also, your covenants or whatever are probably going to initiate violence against you should you fail to live up to your contractual obligation to help fund them. Are you alright with that? A contract was broken, after all. And you have what is now their money in your possession. edit 2: The more I think about it, the more it is clear that libertarians are fine with the state and it's violence, they just want to create a new state in which they have more power than they currently do. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:14
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:That requires quite the mental gymnastics, not to mention creatively redefining your entire vocabulary to hide the fact that you are selectively all for initiation of violence under some sort of facade of pacifism. Fixed that for you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:21
|
|
|
In case anyone missed it, jrod just undermined his own idea that non-aggression implies libertarianism. Because right here:jrodefeld posted:You have to have a coherent understanding of what legitimate property rights are before you can determine what is initiatory and what is defensive violence.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:46
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:No it doesn't. To say "defending people or property requires the initiation of violence" is a contradiction in terms. Defensive violence is not initiatory. You have to have a coherent understanding of what legitimate property rights are before you can determine what is initiatory and what is defensive violence. Defensive violence must be proportional otherwise it becomes initiatory. If you shoot someone who is trespassing on your property you are committing aggression. The act of trespass is a far less serious act of aggression than shooting someone. If you tell someone they are trespassing and you make every effort to politely ask them to leave your property, then you are justified in using force to get them to leave. That is initiating force you idiot. Someone may be on your property against your will and that is not "force" by any sane or meaningful definition. You can believe in private property and believe that. You can believe in virtually anything and believe that. quote:This is very clear. You, as a leftist, probably don't accept that private property rights are legitimate and therefore you don't see the defense of many times of private property as defensive violence. But if you do accept that justly acquired property requires that the owner of that property be permitted to determine who can use that property and who cannot, then a trespasser who was not invited onto the property would be committing aggression. A minor aggression usually, but aggression nonetheless. I recognize personal property rights, but that isn't the issue. The issue is that your philosophy that it is never OK to initiate force is worthless crap as long as you are willing to define passive nonviolent resistance as aggressive force and the physical and forceful response to it as defensive. Here, let me do the same trick: the government sending men to drag you to jail if you refuse to pay your taxes isn't the initiation of force because you were clearly aggressing against the government (you want it to stop existing and were even taking steps to materially harm it, how much more aggressive in intent can you get) and trespassing by staying in a place without paying its required fees and abiding by the rules, and as such their actions were a purely defensive response to your aggression. See how easy this is?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 06:42
|
|
|
He still hasn't addressed how mind-manglingly wrong he was about universal health care either has he.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 06:50
|
|
|
Jrofeld I am going to approach this from a more right wing sensibility, but how can rights be natural? Are mans rights in any way natural at all? Could it not be argued a persons rights, and of course what they consider right or wrong determined by the societies they are raised in? Seriously are not our rights defined by what society as a whole is willing to give us, not some vague notion of universal rights? I mean the notion of private property as an absolute is not a universal value held by most societies. Even American society with its frankly extreme form of private property still holds that there are such things as the public good. Our very concept of what is just and is unjust is based entirely on what our society teaches us, and what it considers acceptable to be taught. Likewise societies infringe on our abilities through actions beyond the state, through values, through social organizations, and through such things as bonds, should these forms of coercion also be undone so people have maximum rights that that you as a libertarian seek?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 07:10
|
|
|
This particular brand of thought is so rigid and caught up in sweeping tautology with all thought pointed towards reinforcing the egos of the Captains of Industry championing it and no thought to how a practical implementation would go. Intellectually lazy people say that communism "looks good on paper" when they're trying not to piss off a liberal friend. Libertarianism, by contrast, "sounds good while high".
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 07:25
|
|
|
Caros posted:So you're going with option B. You are arguing that it is an inherently immoral act to steal from someone even to preserve your own life, but that you would, and you expect that anyone would in fact take that immoral action. Morality is the distinction between what is wrong and what is right, and you are arguing that everyone would take the immoral action. How can that action be immoral when even you agree that it is the best of two bad choices? Just because one believes in the non-aggression principle does not mean that equal acts of aggression have the same moral character. I agree completely when you say that "The same action taken in different circumstances has different moral implications". I don't think this contradicts libertarian theory one bit. I believe there is a limited use to these "lifeboat" scenarios. They are useful in testing a moral principle, but I don't think you can simply throw out a very practical legal system simply because there could potentially exist a very difficult case. If I was trying to describe what a donkey is and I said "I donkey looks like a horse but smaller, has one head and four legs", then you came back at me and said "oh yeah? I saw a mutated donkey that was born with two heads. Therefore it is wrong for you to state as a fact that donkeys only have one head". You would never be able to arrive at any principle because you will always be able to think up some far fetched scenario that contradicts that principle. For example, let's suppose I bought an island. The island is my property and a ship sunk a couple miles off shore. One man survives and is able, with his last energy, to swim to my island. What if I don't want this person on my island? I could say "this is trespassing. Get off my island at once!" Then the person goes back into the water and inevitably dies. In this situation the owner of the island is directly responsible for this person's death. To my mind, to physically force that person back into the ocean when you know that would kill them would be murder. He still might technically be trespassing against your property but you are still committing a greater aggression by causing his death. This would be a very difficult case. But if I say that the owner of the island has a moral obligation to not remove the man from his property knowing that it would cause his death, does this mean that all property rights are invalid? Because of this highly unusual and rare circumstance are you seriously going to make the leap and suggest that if a stranger walks through your living room you can't make him leave? Libertarianism is influenced by morality of course. I said that committing aggression is unjustified and that moral laws should be universal. However, the question that libertarians ponder is referred to as punishment theory. If a person is trespassing against you, are you within your rights to use proportional force against them? When can force be used? Do you see how this is quite a different question from the issue of whether or not it is morally justified, in an extenuating circumstance, for you to steal food or water to prevent starvation? Or whether ethics and spiritual compassion should instruct a property owner to share his food with a hungry man or the owner of an island allow the shipwrecked people onto his private island. The point is that all these individuals own themselves and the property they legitimately acquire. That means that they should be the ones who have the final say over the scarce resources that are called "property". People can use their property in ways that might be, in the abstract, immoral while still not committing aggression against the person or property of another. The point is that punishment theory says that we cannot justify using force against such a person for exercising his natural right of jurisdiction over his physical body and private property. In the event that a person uses his or her property in a way that is considered "bad" by society we can use nonviolent means of ostracism, speaking out against him, boycotting his business and so forth. If someone is known to have pressed charges against a starving man for stealing a loaf of bread, we can simultaneously affirm his right to that property and to press charges while at the same time condemning him for his callousness and lack of compassion. But returning to the issue of ethics for a moment. I stated that an ethical principle that we agree to must be universalizable for all members of society who are faced with similar circumstances. What you are attempting to do is to argue that the libertarian standard of self ownership and private property determining who can use defensive violence is flawed. You and others have been saying that human life is worth more than private property and thus in some cases a person would be justified in committing aggression against the private property of someone else. In the example of healthcare, you argued that a sick man is justified in stealing a drug that could save his life if he cannot afford to pay for them. Also, by implication you are saying that society can therefore compel doctors to treat sick people because "human life trumps property rights". The entire socialist system can be justified using this sort of logic. But if, as FDR said, a "necessitous man is not free" and this need justifies aggression against private property, this new standard of morality should also apply equally to everyone in society. If the State, under your system of ethics, is permitted to expropriate the rich in order to fund healthcare for the poor, among many other welfare programs and well intentioned public services, why can I not cut out the middle man and steal from my neighbor directly, providing the money I stole will go to a pressing need? Let's say I was quite poor and a family member needed treatment for a medical condition. Why could I not rob my rich neighbor directly and then take care of my sick family member with the money? Because, after all, human life trumps private property? Why should I have to do this through the political process rather than on my own? I'm sure you would concede that the State shouldn't be taking peoples money in taxes and spending that money on frivolous things. They shouldn't be enriching corporations or politicians and things of that sort. But, according to leftist principles, it is perfectly legitimate to redistribute wealth to fund services for those that really need it, where there is a pressing social and human need. By that ethical standard then, anyone should be permitted to steal directly from their richer neighbor provided the money goes to a "good cause" or to a less well off person who needs food, clothing, shelter, medical care or whatever. If this redistribution is moral in principle, there should be no reason why only the agents of the State are to be permitted to expropriate people in this manner. Why are politicians and IRS agents permitted to commit aggression against private property but other citizens are not? Where is the logic in that? Of course if you universalize a socialist ethic, you end up with chaos and disaster (greater even than what comes about from a socialist State). If everyone can steal from everyone legally, even only in the name of a "good cause", then all property rights break down, no one can save or produce for fear of immediate theft and we regress to a primitive existence quite rapidly. Socialist States need to maintain a monopoly. They require some semblance of private property and a market economy to produce the wealth that they then can expropriate. Only they can expropriate and decide how this tax money is redistributed. I rational ethic should be universalizable. Punishment theory states that the person who has the jurisdiction over the use of a scarce resource, either his body or external property, can use force against a person who commits aggression against that property. That doesn't mean he should, as you could argue in the case of a starving person stealing a bit of food, but given his appropriation and jurisdiction over a scarce resource, he has that right. Now, under a socialist State, most people still have the right to press charges and exercise self defense against other non-government civilians who commit aggression against them or their property. But you don't have that right against agents of the State initiating violence against you. How is this a rational and defensible principle to base a society on? Why can't you be consistent and universalize the socialist ethic you are trying so hard to defend?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:02
|
|
|
quote:Libertarianism is influenced by morality of course. I said that committing aggression is unjustified and that moral laws should be universal. However, the question that libertarians ponder is referred to as punishment theory. If a person is trespassing against you, are you within your rights to use proportional force against them? When can force be used? I'm going to complain about this one very small point out of that one very long post, and say trespassing against you? Really? Really?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:08
|
|
|
Caros posted:This isn't true at all. Judges can and do accept mitigating circumstances on a regular basis. Belief in moral principles does not mean that I don't accept mitigating circumstances. For example, first degree murder and accidental manslaughter are treated very differently with drastically different sorts of punishments. They both involve the taking of a life, so shouldn't they be treated exactly the same way? No, because the intent matters. My understanding of moral principles and the universalizability of those principles means that, for example, if a drunk driver kills five people, then should be held to precisely the same legal standard as anyone else who does the exact same thing. Ceterus parabus, drunk driving murder of five people under the same intoxication level should be judged the same whether the killer was a poor black kid, or a middle age wealthy white male. If the circumstances are the same (that is the key) then the standards for morality and punishment should be the same. I understand that no system of law can ever provide perfect justice. And in any system, the judge (or private arbiter) will have some discretion given the specifics of the case at hand. But the flawed nature of man should still be informed by the philosophic concept of moral absolutes and universal principles.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:14
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:What exactly happens if I take something that you did not want me to take without using violence? Any attempt to retrieve it or otherwise enforce your property rights would involve initiating violence. Especially if I decided to squat on your land. How do you propose to get me off without initiating violence against me? Seriously, if you had just a modest competence in reading comprehension you could clearly see my position. Or even a five minute Google search to try and understand the nature of aggression or Rothbardian private property rights. Let us stipulate that we both don't believe in pacifism right? There is a legitimate role for violence under certain circumstances clearly. To determine when the use of violence can be justified you have to have a theory of property rights. Even Marxists recognize this fact. A Marxist favors a worker uprising against the factory owner precisely because the Marxist believes that the worker is entitled to own the means of production. Since the Marxist believes that the Capitalist is stealing the labor of the worker, the worker is justified in using violence against the capitalist to take back what is "rightfully" his. But most Marxists I have talked to believe that people should have legitimate property rights in their personal possessions. And, presumably, they would say that if someone else uses aggression to steal the shirt off your back, you have the right to use violence to defend yourself and to retrieve the stolen item. Why do you keep forgetting the word "initiation" which has always described the sort of violence which the non-aggression principle prohibits? Aggression doesn't mean violence. It means the initiation of violence against a person who is not violating your Natural Rights. Can you understand the difference? Just as the Marxists have a theory of property which allows them to determine which sort of violence is justified and which isn't, the libertarians do as well. Is this really so hard to understand or are you being purposefully obtuse?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:24
|
|
|
Stealing just to feed yourself: an abstract thought experiment with no practical consequences. Tune in again tomorrow for The World According To Jrodefeld
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:30
|
|
|
Jrodefeld, what's your position with regards to what should be done about the housing crisis? There are nearly FIVE TIMES as many uninhabited homes in the United States than there are homeless families (including "families" of one). The vast majority of these homes are currently owned by banks, not private individuals. For those banks, the houses are purely abstract tokens, no more meaningful than houses in Monopoly, but for those homeless families, those homes could save lives. How can you condemn those families, those children, to homelessness when there's enough room for everyone to be sheltered and safe? How can anyone? Yet somehow, those children are still out on the streets. That's why capitalism is abhorrent. That's why your worldview is morally bankrupt. Odds are you're never going to change or reconsider your position. You've convinced yourself that the world is naturally fair, that some "invisible hand" ensures that bad things only happen to bad people, and that if someone was really a good person, they'd be rich and successful by now. You may claim not to believe this, but the policies you advocate would only cause more pain and suffering if such a force did not exist. Jrodefeld, bad things happen to good people, and vice versa, all the time. That is a fact. People are not rational actors. POWER CORRUPTS. Life is suffering. And Capitalism kills. The duty of every human being should therefore be to mitigate one another's suffering to the best of their ability. For someone like you, who clearly has the time and disposable income to come here and argue economics, that means rejecting the "just world" fallacy. That means putting yourself in the shoes of the less fortunate. That means openly and loudly challenging the systems that oppress and exploit the impoverished and marginalized. Please be a better person. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:33
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Just because one believes in the non-aggression principle does not mean that equal acts of aggression have the same moral character. I agree completely when you say that "The same action taken in different circumstances has different moral implications". I don't think this contradicts libertarian theory one bit. I have made no such assertion. I understand that in the society we have, we have property rights. These rights are not some immutable law of nature but a constructed agreement between a society of people. We have property rights because everyone agrees on what belongs to one another and how to determine that. These 'edge cases' are entirely the point because you have argued from the start of this thread and in many others that the non-agression principle is a universal, natural law. You have made the argument that it is not a subjective fact but an objective one, one that can be observed. Breaking the non-aggression principle must always be an immoral act, because if it is not an immoral act then we have entered into the realm of subjective morality and nothing you are talking about makes sense. It seems to me that your entire argument is predicated on the fact that this is Axiomic, that it is always true, and now you're trying to evade the uncomfortable fact that even you have problems with it being always true. Libertarianism is influenced by morality of course. I said that committing aggression is unjustified and that moral laws should be universal. However, the question that libertarians ponder is referred to as punishment theory. If a person is trespassing against you, are you within your rights to use proportional force against them? When can force be used? quote:Do you see how this is quite a different question from the issue of whether or not it is morally justified, in an extenuating circumstance, for you to steal food or water to prevent starvation? Or whether ethics and spiritual compassion should instruct a property owner to share his food with a hungry man or the owner of an island allow the shipwrecked people onto his private island. The point is that all these individuals own themselves and the property they legitimately acquire. That means that they should be the ones who have the final say over the scarce resources that are called "property". People can use their property in ways that might be, in the abstract, immoral while still not committing aggression against the person or property of another. The point is that punishment theory says that we cannot justify using force against such a person for exercising his natural right of jurisdiction over his physical body and private property. Wait... so non-aggression is not the sole moral discussion in your society now? You actually believe that things can be more or less moral dependant on extenuating circumstances? Congratulations Jrodefeld, you believe in moral relativism. And if you believe that things can be more or less 'good' or 'bad' depending on circumstances why are you unwilling to apply that to aggression. In your example above you note that 'technically' the man is committing aggression against the person by trespassing on his island, but that the land owner would be comitting further aggression by forcing him back into the water (or in a better example, not helping him into a boat). Does that not prove to you that sometimes aggression can, in fact, be justified? It's why we use these examples, to point out the absurdity that there are instances where 'aggression' such as climbing into a boat rather than drowning is preferable, and if it is preferable then you cannot base your entire philosophy off the idea that it is NEVER preferable. quote:In the event that a person uses his or her property in a way that is considered "bad" by society we can use nonviolent means of ostracism, speaking out against him, boycotting his business and so forth. If someone is known to have pressed charges against a starving man for stealing a loaf of bread, we can simultaneously affirm his right to that property and to press charges while at the same time condemning him for his callousness and lack of compassion. There are seven billion people in the world. Ostracism does not work. As a real world example of this take Karla Homolka. She is a woman who was directly involved and almost certainly killed at least one of three teenage girls along with her boyfriend. One of those was her sister. Because she made a plea bargain she served twelve years in jail and is now living in Guadeloupe, by all accounts having three children. If you do something lovely in a world with seven billion people, you move. It might be a pain in the rear end but don't pretend for a moment that causing the death of someone through action will ruin someone's life. It might not even make the evening news. quote:But returning to the issue of ethics for a moment. I stated that an ethical principle that we agree to must be universalizable for all members of society who are faced with similar circumstances. What you are attempting to do is to argue that the libertarian standard of self ownership and private property determining who can use defensive violence is flawed. You and others have been saying that human life is worth more than private property and thus in some cases a person would be justified in committing aggression against the private property of someone else. In the example of healthcare, you argued that a sick man is justified in stealing a drug that could save his life if he cannot afford to pay for them. Also, by implication you are saying that society can therefore compel doctors to treat sick people because "human life trumps property rights". The entire socialist system can be justified using this sort of logic. You know, I am really glad you asked this question because it isn't a hard one for me despite what you think. Human life is more important than property, pretty much full stop. My posts might be a little bouncy here since you're all over the place but bare with me. quote:But if, as FDR said, a "necessitous man is not free" and this need justifies aggression against private property, this new standard of morality should also apply equally to everyone in society. If the State, under your system of ethics, is permitted to expropriate the rich in order to fund healthcare for the poor, among many other welfare programs and well intentioned public services, why can I not cut out the middle man and steal from my neighbor directly, providing the money I stole will go to a pressing need? The simple answer? Because it is inefficient and leads to far more problems than it solves. We created social programs because we acknowledge these problems and bad choices will exist, and we keep these things as crimes because stealing pills, or food or what have you is a bad choice that can lead to dangerous outcomes. We attempt to alleviate the problem while acknowledging it exists. In fact the reason that we have many of these programs is to solve your very question. One of the reasons we have, for example, unemployment insurance is because when people get poor and hungry and desperate they start having to make lovely choices. They start having to steal, or to beg, or to attack other people. Also the government is not stealing money. I've asked you rather repeatedly to cut that poo poo out because it is disingenuous. Seriously, stop it. quote:Let's say I was quite poor and a family member needed treatment for a medical condition. Why could I not rob my rich neighbor directly and then take care of my sick family member with the money? Because, after all, human life trumps private property? If you were in Canada, The United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa... loving Iraq or any other place than the USA with its free market healthcare you would not need to rob anyone, because we acknowledge healthcare as a human right and act accordingly. quote:Why should I have to do this through the political process rather than on my own? I'm sure you would concede that the State shouldn't be taking peoples money in taxes and spending that money on frivolous things. They shouldn't be enriching corporations or politicians and things of that sort. But, according to leftist principles, it is perfectly legitimate to redistribute wealth to fund services for those that really need it, where there is a pressing social and human need. I don't concede jack poo poo, and you'd get laughed out of a high school level debate for that rear end in a top hat tactic. Seriously, stop it. And yes, it is perfectly okay to redistribute funds to the people who need it most, particularly since the people who typically have the money have gained it by exploiting the people who need it. Capitalism 101. quote:By that ethical standard then, anyone should be permitted to steal directly from their richer neighbor provided the money goes to a "good cause" or to a less well off person who needs food, clothing, shelter, medical care or whatever. Again, no. We have as a society empowered the government to do things that individual citizens cannot. The redistribution of wealth is one of those things, just as maintaining markets, providing health care, paving roads and so forth. Stealing from someone invokes a host of risks and dangers to both parties which is one of the myriad reasons we don't allow it. Also again, cut it with the stealing poo poo. I'm going to include that every time I see it until you realize that no one is buying your bullshit rephrasing of things. Remember, you aren't in a libertarian circle jerk, you are talking to people who don't agree with you. quote:If this redistribution is moral in principle, there should be no reason why only the agents of the State are to be permitted to expropriate people in this manner. Why are politicians and IRS agents permitted to commit aggression against private property but other citizens are not? Where is the logic in that? Because we don't believe in your non-aggression principle basically. The vast majority of people believe in a social contract, in our case a democratic one wherein we can invest specific rights and responsibilities to others that individual citizens do not have. We do this by consensus. People agree that say... the government can tax us, and thus the government can tax us. This is no different from how paying for things would work in Hans Hermann Hoppe's private covenants save perhaps that there it would be slightly more explicit. Again, we do not believe that government is some 'other'. The government is a representation of the wills and desires of the people. It is run by the people (in democratic places anyways) and we can have it do whatever the hell we want. It is an upscale version of when I moved two months ago and we all listened to my former roommate tell us where to go and what to put where. quote:Of course if you universalize a socialist ethic, you end up with chaos and disaster (greater even than what comes about from a socialist State). If everyone can steal from everyone legally, even only in the name of a "good cause", then all property rights break down, no one can save or produce for fear of immediate theft and we regress to a primitive existence quite rapidly. See, here is the difference between your world view and mine. We can hypothesize about poo poo that might happen in yours because yours isn't real. Yours has never been real, and likely will never be real because almost no one who isn't an american white male between the ages of 18 and 55 actually believes in it at all. This is because its based off a view that is equal parts racism, bootstraps and wishful thinking. Your example doesn't work because our world doesn't work like that. We are not hard pressed with wave after wave of charitable theft because as a society we have agreed to a certain way of doing things. A social contract if you will. quote:Socialist States need to maintain a monopoly. They require some semblance of private property and a market economy to produce the wealth that they then can expropriate. Only they can expropriate and decide how this tax money is redistributed. They are we. quote:I rational ethic should be universalizable. Punishment theory states that the person who has the jurisdiction over the use of a scarce resource, either his body or external property, can use force against a person who commits aggression against that property. That doesn't mean he should, as you could argue in the case of a starving person stealing a bit of food, but given his appropriation and jurisdiction over a scarce resource, he has that right. Well first off I don't attempt to universalize socialist ethics because universalized ethics because I am not autistic. Morals and ethics are an illusion, like society and money that exist solely based on the consensus between different groups of human beings. To think that there is some universal 'ethics' out there that is not based off of a deity is frankly silly. To the rest of it, I don't agree with you that government commits act of aggression against citizens constantly, nor that citizens are without recourse in the instances where the government does impact their lives. Most people here I imagine disagree with your premise entirely and repeating it for the upteenth time says nothing other than that you are doggedly persistent.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 08:47
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:Jrodefeld, what's your position with regards to what should be done about the housing crisis? There are nearly FIVE TIMES as many uninhabited homes in the United States than there are homeless families (including "families" of one). The vast majority of these homes are currently owned by banks, not private individuals. For those banks, the houses are purely abstract tokens, no more meaningful than houses in Monopoly, but for those homeless families, those homes could save lives. The title of that article "Vacant Houses Outnumber Homeless People in U.S." tells you something doesn't it? It might surprise you, but there is a libertarian argument to be made that homeless people should squat in these unused homes that are sitting vacant. The reason is simple. The housing bubble was not a market phenomenon. The Federal Reserve and government policy created an over-investment in housing, far exceeding market demand. Plus the encouragement by the State for lenders to make risky loans and all the funneling of expropriated taxpayer money into this sector of the economy combine to render the legitimacy of the property titles to these homes claimed by the Banks rather suspect. The very fact that there are more vacant houses than homeless just serves to illustrate how out of control that housing bubble is. But how can you blame this on libertarianism? Libertarian monetary policy would never have permitted the creation of an artificial bubble like this in the first place. The artificially high housing prices would not exist and the price of homes would drop under a libertarian society, there would not be an overproduction of houses and supply would meet demand on the market. These problems you are referencing would simply not exist in a libertarian free market economy. In a related note, Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann Hoppe have even advocated for embracing the concept of syndicalism to transfer "public", State owned property to private hands. The idea is that since it can be difficult or impossible to determine who homesteaded the land before the State stole it originally, the next best way to privatize this land is to give it to those who most recently worked on that land. Therefore, the factory to the factory workers, the farm to the farmers, the government facilities to the government workers, and so forth. A similar argument could be made about the excess houses from the housing bubble that only exist due to State interference in the market. Therefore a coherent argument could be made that these homeless people should be permitted to "squat" in these homes, thereby homesteading these properties and justly acquiring them. This concept of syndicalism is only applicable to State-owned "public" property, or property that, like the extra homes built during the housing boom, were so intertwined with State funding and intervention that the supposed private property titles are suspect or invalid. Therefore your criticism of libertarianism based on this example is entirely invalid.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 09:05
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Hans Hermann Hoppe Hans Hermann Hoppe is a totalitarian and a racist who believes libertarian societies cannot tolerate or survive the expression of ideas contradictory to libertarianism. These ideas include homosexuality. Do you agree with him?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 09:15
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:The very fact that there are more vacant houses than homeless just serves to illustrate how out of control that housing bubble is. But how can you blame this on libertarianism? Libertarian monetary policy would never have permitted the creation of an artificial bubble like this in the first place. The artificially high housing prices would not exist and the price of homes would drop under a libertarian society, there would not be an overproduction of houses and supply would meet demand on the market. These problems you are referencing would simply not exist in a libertarian free market economy. Do you sincerely believe that greed (and marketing) don't exist in a "libertarian free market economy"? And when you talk about "libertarian monetary policy", who exactly would enforce that policy in your proposed stateless society? In fact, wouldn't that be interfering with the development of the market, making it no longer "free"? I don't like using "gotcha!" arguments but, really, it's a pretty easy way to dismantle your worldview, because your entire philosophy is based on contradictions and magical thinking.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 09:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 07:14 |
|
|
Keep going guys; at this rate it's looking like Jrod will, before the end of page 12, write a post arguing that the only way to ensure a truly capitalist society in the spirit of Herms "Triple H" Hoppe is for the workers to seize the means of production through Glorious People's Revolution.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 09:21
|
|
