Hello everybody!
I am what you guys call a statist. I am also a social democrat. I believe that we need government and I believe welfare state is neccessary and essentially a good thing. A Couple of days ago I had a discussion with someone who identified himself as an anarchocapitalist and a libertarian. He also told me about Mises institute.
I'm very interested about worldviews that are different from my own. I was wondering if you guys could explain me why NAP and natural rights are valid? Oh and could you give me some sort of reading list about libertarian ethics?
Sorry for my bad english grammar. I am not a natural born english speaker.
Loppu:I'm very interested about worldviews that are different from my own. I was wondering if you guys could explain me why NAP and natural rights are valid?
The NAP and natural rights aren't both required to be a libertarian. Let's just tackle the non-aggression principle. To oppose the non-aggression principle, would mean that one tolerates some aggression. Aggression is the initiation of force.
Our natural state, is not one of being aggressed against, nor aggressing those around us. Our natural state is cooperative.
So the question which should be asked is, why is aggression valid?
Loppu:Oh and could you give me some sort of reading list about libertarian ethics?
Everything flows from non-aggression. If you believe it is wrong to aggress, then it is wrong to tax. It is wrong to regulate.
There are things you can read, but ultimately, the question will be whether one endorses violence as a means of ordering society, or they endorse peace as a means of ordering society.
A good start would probably be "The Ethics of Liberty".
I would also suggest "For a New Liberty: A Libertarian Manifesto" By Murray Rothbard.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Are you only interested in ethical libertarianism? What about libertarianism from a utilitarian perspective? Ludwig von Mises, the namesake of this organization, was a utilitarian. He argued that government intervention caused more harm than good.
In the case of welfare, there are several negative unintended consequences. For example, the taxes used to fund welfare act as a disincentive for investment (investment being the cause of long-run economic growth). The less money people have, the less they can invest. So the taxes associated with welfare decrease long-run economic growth, and thus make everyone poorer in the long run. When it comes to the welfare itself, there are also negative unintended consequences. Oftentimes, welfare institutionalizes families. By giving money to people for free, welfare encourages people to stay on welfare, and not to go out seeking a job. This reduces economic productivity, increases government spending, and thus increases government taxation/deficits. Thus, this also reduces long-run economic growth. Welfare also changes incentives for many people. For example, in the United States, single mothers get more welfare money. This acts as an incentive for young poor mothers to dump the fathers when they have a child. After all, the mother and the child will get more money if the mother is single. The end result is that many children are raised in a fatherless home, which contributes to the high crime rate in inner cities.
Political Atheists Blog
you said "i believe we need government" and "welfare state is necessary". for those you need not an ethical approach. you need reasons why government is beneficial or not beneficial.
start by answering: who exactly is "we"?
Thanks to everyone who has taken time to answer to my questions!
Liberty student said: Our natural state, is not one of being aggressed against, nor aggressing those around us. Our natural state is cooperative.
I'm starting to understand NAP but why do you think our natural state is cooperation rather than aggression? To me it seems that aggression is just as natural as cooperation.
Krazy Kaju said: Are you only interested in ethical libertarianism? What about libertarianism from a utilitarian perspective?
I would like to begin to understand libertarianism from utilitarian perspective but not yet because if libertarianism is unethical I don't think utilitarian perspective matters. So I will first try to understand libertarianism from ethical perspective.
Zangelbert said: start by answering: who exactly is "we"?
Sorry but I'm not going to answer to your question because I'm not looking for a debate. I'm looking for a deeper understanding about libertarian ethics. This topic is not about my world view.
I would suggest reading Lysander Spooner's "No Treason", it is a very good start (if not the best).
Read it online and free:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/NoTreason/NoTreason.html
http://jim.com/treason.htm
On a side note: You will better understand "the "we" problem" if you start thinking about your own needs as an individual and respecting other peoples' rights to do the same (minding their own business). Because, what suits for you doesn't necessarily suit for other person (and I'm even not speaking about the "everyone").
Libertarianism offends people, because it speaks (metaphorically) the truth, it defines terms as it is, not with mumbo-jumbo double speak (war is peace, slavery is freedom etc).
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Aggression is as natural as Cooperation. The questions are whether one is more productive than the other and which will endure in the long-term. I suggest Henry Hazlitt's "The Foundations of Morality"
Loppu:I'm starting to understand NAP but why do you think our natural state is cooperation rather than aggression? To me it seems that aggression is just as natural as cooperation.
Think about how you are brought into this world. Think about how you are raised and cared for when you are incapable of doing it for yourself. Think about how many times a day you cooperate (engage voluntarily) with others, and how many times you use aggression or receive aggression.
And of those situations you receive aggression, remove the times when it is the government directly performing or incentivizing it.
We take for granted all of the peaceful, fair, and noble things we do, and focus only on the 1% (if that) of our daily experience which involves unpleasant behavior. That obsession becomes a mental prison, which keeps us isolated from the truth.
Liberty Student: You obviously did not grow up in the ghetto. Aggression is as natural as Cooperation. That the majority of people choose the latter does not make the former any less natural. There are people who choose to steal, defraud, and injure others for their own gain. And is aggression necessarily evil if it is used to prevent aggression? I think this is where the OP is going by asking What circumstances would have to exist to justify aggression? And Isn't poverty a circumstance that justifies aggression in the form of welfare? and Why not?
To get at the crux of the welfare issue we must understand the poverty concern. It is believed that poverty is the result of a zero-sum game and we must question whether this is really the case. I believe it is not. People don't produce at the expense of others though what they produce may not necessarily be in demand, if they are able to produce at all (assuming others are not using aggression to prevent them from producing).
Lyle:Liberty Student: You obviously did not grow up in the ghetto.
Lyle, you obviously do not know me, and would do well not to make arguments based on my personal experience.
Lyle, a statement is true irrespective of the person and its background that utters it. Liberty Students point is much more subtle than the empiric claim that suburban regions are no slaughterhouse. The point is that the human brain as is favors the NAP as shown by brain scans. Or on a more heuristic approach: Imagine yourself meeting an other person. Do you have any motivation to attack this person? Certainly, ike the vast majority, no. To answer you formulation of the OP's question: No circumstance justifies aggression, that is the content of the NAP. By deduction, poverty does not justify aggression either.
You do not need to believe that poverty is not the result of a zero-sum game, it simply is not. Poverty is simply the lack of means of production, or more generally a lack of productivity. This is an economic fact that is accepted by all major economic schools.
To answer the OP's question: Seperate natural rights and NAP. In my approach you can derive one from the other or view them as the same, so I will focus on the "legitimacy" of the NAP. A better question in this context would be "Why should the NAP be not valid?". You can accept die NAP based on a concept of natural rights such as the concept of God given right to live and bodily integrity or on utilitarian grounds as to some extent Mises did. I will give a hint to the latter and claim that history shows us that the more free a country is the more prosperous it is and the better the people fare. The reverse is true also such that the more opressed a people is the more it suffers, economically. Two excellent examples are before 1990 West Germany and the DDR and South Korea and North Korea. The contrasts couldn't be starker.
Poverty is simply the lack of means of production, or more generally a lack of productivity. This is an economic fact that is accepted by all major economic schools.
^ Even if I disagree with his politics, this guy gets it. Too many economists (amateur and professional) forget the first part, and only politic using the second (attacks on the poor as poor because they're lazy).
OP you're going to have trouble finding a comprehensive review of libertarian ethics. First because most of the world's libertarians are leftist/socialist/anti-capitalist. But mostly, from an american perspective, you will have trouble because american libertarianism is very cosmopolitan. Rothbard had different justifications than Mises, and Ron Paul different justifications than both.
As has been pointed out, many are not ethical libertarians at all (meaning don't focus on the ethics of it, because they are utilitarian. tho I tend to see some of them as generally unethical as well [Glenn Beck types]). YOu will find some who find monarchy to be more libertarian than democracy...
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
No circumstance justifies aggression, that is the content of the NAP.
Metus: As I understand NAP, the aggression of self-defense is not defined as aggression. However, for the sake of the OP, I have defined it as such that we may have a clearer understanding of where the OP is coming from that we might also shed light on the path on which the OP should begin to travel. I particularly liked Robert P. Murphy's treatment of the subject in his essay "Chaos Theory."
Lyle:Metus: As I understand NAP, the aggression of self-defense is not defined as aggression.
Aggression is the initiation of force. Self-defense by definition, cannot be aggression.
Thank you Liberty Student. While I understand that self-defense is not aggression as defined by NAP, it seemed to me that the OP was unaware of the difference. As the discussion was progressing, it appeared everyone was talking past eachother for lack of a willingness to recognize this difference in understanding. I bow out.
I'm a virtue ethicist so my reasoning will be a bit different to everyone else's here but I'm sure the arguments can be adapted to fit other frameworks.
The proper standard for morality should be human well-being. It's a reasonably simple idea. It doesn't involve any abstract categorical imperatives but at the same time it can incorporate certain things being "goods-in-themselves" if they are a constitutive part of this overarching goal. Ancient greeks called this ultimate end "eudaimonia", I'm calling it "well-being", and it basically consists of all the lesser ends a person could reasonably strive for. In virtue ethical theory these lesser ends are the goods and virtues.
The NAP is simply a recognition of how diverse and individualised "the good life" is. Learning how to live a succesful life in co-operation with other humans is something that just can't be legislated. Knowledge about what a particular person's well-being consists of is dispersed and tacit and the future is uncertain so it's impossible to plan what the best outcome is to every problem that may arise. What is required is for people to develop genuine virtue, especially the virtue of good judgement, then they can work out life's difficulties as they arise.
Both of these are impossible without a commitment to freedom.
Broadly speaking there are two things necessary for a person to develop good judgement - that they are given the chance to make decisions themselves and that they are responsible for both the positive and negative consequences of their actions. No one should be making your decisions for you or guaranteeing you a bail out when you screw them up or you will never learn how to function intelligently. Therefore learning good judgement requires you having a right to make choices but no right to other's co-operation.
Secondly, just like it's impossible to develop good judgement without freedom it's also impossible to develop any virtuous character traits if your behaviour isn't self-directed. To genuinely demonstrate kindness, generosity, courage etc you have to have actually chosen to be kind, generous or courageous. There is nothing admirable about, say, giving to the less fortunate if you had no choice in the matter. There is also nothing contemptible about it (at least not in general). It's just absurd to apply value-laden terms to behaviour directed by someone else. So genuine virtue too depends on having free choice in the matter.
I would argue that this makes the NAP the essential framework within which well-being can be pursued. As a political principle it protects the possibility of well-being and biases no person's well-being at the expense of another's. To violate the NAP is to make pursuing well-being to the same extent impossible and to privilege some members of society over others.
At the level of personal ethics the NAP is supported by many of what aristotelians call the "generic" virtues (traits that are admirable in everyone). Fundamentally it's the choice to deal with others through persuasion (reason) rather than force (lack of reason), to respect other's autonomy, to care about other's well-being and to live productively rather than parasitically (and as this refers to a character trait I'm using productive to mean "productive relative to what a person could produce with their natural talents" so disabled people aren't ruled out - you can be disabled and still have a productive mindset which is what really matters). The fact that life, liberty and property are good ethical principles can be seen my the fact that we only accept government violations of them. No one would tolerate private citizens ignoring them and if the government is the delegate of the people (which in theory it's supposed to be) then it should be held to the same standards.
None of these reasons however should lead to an absolutist interpretation of the NAP, as though the initiation of force was the only relevant concern, which is why I would argue consequentialist considerations, are important even if they aren't decisive, and in extreme cases can affect what counts as a proportional use of force to defend your rights. You couldn't throw someone off your flagpole or kick them out of your lifeboat for example (though you could still claim damages from them). I couldn't provide a fully worked out economic theory here but some of the same reasons that support a libertarian ethical theory support a libertarian economic one. The localised, tacit knowledge argument and the good judgement argument would both apply to resource allocation too. Probably the most common argument against libertarianism is that the poor would be systematically disempowered and left struggling to just get by. However I think the poor would benefit, disproportionately so, from a more libertarian system. There are three options the less fortunate have, starting their own business, working for someone else and charity. I think all of these would be made more attractive if the state ceased to externalise costs, set up barriers to entry and make factors of production artificially scarce (as a short, very generalised list). Whatever a libertarian system would do it certainly wouldn't be involved in any of the above. Alas a full argument for this premise would take a while and this post is dragging on a bit.
http://0welcometo1984.wordpress.com
P.S - I summed up some of my arguments against social democracy here. I wrote it a while ago so I could probably expand on it now but it's, imo, a good starting point.
Damn, there was supposed to be a link. Oh well here it is again
http://0welcometo1984.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/why-im-not-a-social-democrat/
James, the OP specifically said they weren't interested in arguments against their position. They wanted more information about the NAP.
A big flaw with a lot of libertarians, is that they are so eager to attack another position, they don't listen to what the other party is asking, or saying.
Good activism, just like good salesmanship, starts with careful listening (or reading).
That's why I added it at the end as an after thought. The bulk of my comment talked about the NAP but you never know, he may have found the critique an interesting tangent. Also if I was feeling more eloquent I would have argued that one reason for being a libertarian is it's better than being anything else and that the post I linked to explained some of my reasoning behind asserting liberty is good for the poor too. However it was three in the morning so I failed to do this.
NAP is the foundation of libertarian legal theory. It defines what act is considered lawful and what act is considered unlawful. The consideration is based on whether the act is aggressive or not. According to libertarians "...[aggression] is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion." Only an act of aggression is unlawful and no nonaggression act is unlawful.
The purpose of NAP is to restore and/or keep the natural state of order between human individuals.
According to libertarians "...[aggression] is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion."
Of course, this definition by itself is question-begging. The only way to really give it a *specific* meaning is to highlight who rightfully owns what, and hence whether or not a given act is aggression or defense will depend entirely on one's property norms and the resulting distribution of ownership, as well as whether or not or the extent to which one conceptually ties personhood with property. Therefore, the NAP can't possibly stand by itself and it contains too little useful information for a particular political philosophy to depend on it. Its meaning is relative to the value scheme you plug into it.
If that's the case, then its purpose is in vain because "natural" can only meaningfully refer to whatever happens, whether or not it's compatible with libertarianism. Whatever occurs, no matter what we think of it, is in conjunction with the "natural state" of human beings. I always had a problem with this kind of invocation of "human nature". "Human nature", if there is such a thing, is neither innately good or bad, cooperative or competitive, peaceful or violent, etc. The "human condition", if we are to speak of one, is pluralistic and dynamic. There is no external force supressing our true nature; this is an essentialist dogma carried over from the enlightenment that libertarian ideology would do best to rid itself of.
Again I would like to thank everybody for attending to this topic.
Metus said:"The point is that the human brain as is favors the NAP as shown by brain scans." Shown by brains scans? Please tell me more about that. Metus said"You can accept die NAP based on a concept of natural rights such as the concept of God given right to live and bodily integrity or on utilitarian grounds as to some extent Mises did. I will give a hint to the latter and claim that history shows us that the more free a country is the more prosperous it is and the better the people fare" Let's just for the sake of argument pretend that god does not exist(I'm atheist by the way) and that your claim "more free a country is the more prosperous it is and the better the people fare" is not true. Would you still support NAP? Vaduka said"The purpose of NAP is to restore and/or keep the natural state of order between human individuals." What is the natural state of order between human individuals? I have more questions concerning libertarian world view and ethics. I think I can probably see the validity of NAP. I can see how NAP leads to value liberalism. There is just one problem and the problem is that I don't see how NAP leads to economic liberalism. When libertarians say stuff like "taxation is theft" etc. don't they already assume that the property they own rightly belongs to them? I'm not necessarily claiming that all property of every human being belongs to the state but I would like to know where do you libertarians base property rights and stuff like that. How can you be sure that what you own are rightly yours?
I was wondering if you guys could explain me why NAP and natural rights are valid?
Well, you see, they are not.
The worst mistake libertarians ever made was styling themselves as philosophers or speaking on morality. The problem is that most libertarians are from an economics, stock market, or business background and sometimes from technical sciences like computer science or neuroscience, and they may be experts in their own fields, but they absolutely reach a road block when they hit the issue of morality.
You see, there are far superior moral philosophers going back over several centuries like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Libertarians, even the esteemed Henry Hazlitt, are inferior dwarves to such giants. They are also relatively contemporary. Any scholar of classics will tell you that John Locke was a mediocre thinker, and Rothbard himself tried to reach into old Christian traditions to understand morality while ignoring Messrs Locke, Smith, and Mills.
Morality is a complicated issue, and one doesn't understand morality by thinking in isolation, but by basic involvement in everyday human life. It would have been one thing for libertarians to say that they were trying to deal with issues of their day and time, like chivalric codes during medieval days. But to universalize it to all people in all situations, they have not only made libertarianism a pseudo-religion, but an empty superficial one at that.
Just understand that libertarians, let alone Austrians, are just a tiny drop among thousands of schools of thought and have no monopoly on the truth, and I would like to see a religio-libertarian take a time machine, go to ancient Greece, and tell them that it is not worth defending their lands against Persians, because they should totally understand the Non-Aggression Pact.
Prateek Sanjay: Libertarians, even the esteemed Henry Hazlitt, are inferior dwarves to such giants.
Libertarians, even the esteemed Henry Hazlitt, are inferior dwarves to such giants.
What about Ludwig von Mises?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I would like to see a religio-libertarian take a time machine, go to ancient Greece, and tell them that it is not worth defending their lands against Persians, because they should totally understand the Non-Aggression Pact.
1. The 'P' in NAP stands for principle not for pact. 2. The NAP does not preclude national defense, stop your slander.
Lappu, as confusing property rights can get, surely you can understand that the same problem arises with public/state property and state borders. Do states rightfully own property? Why is it clean cut for the state and not for individual owners? :)
It's better to just ignore Prateek.
Prateek Sanjay: The worst mistake libertarians ever made was styling themselves as philosophers or speaking on morality. The problem is that most libertarians are from an economics, stock market, or business background and sometimes from technical sciences like computer science or neuroscience, and they may be experts in their own fields, but they absolutely reach a road block when they hit the issue of morality.
I'm a philosopher by background, with a degree that I gained at a university that focusses on the mind/body problem, philosophy of religion and philosophy of (the natural) sciences. And I'm still a libertarian. :p
Prateek Sanjay:You see, there are far superior moral philosophers going back over several centuries like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Libertarians, even the esteemed Henry Hazlitt, are inferior dwarves to such giants. They are also relatively contemporary. Any scholar of classics will tell you that John Locke was a mediocre thinker, and Rothbard himself tried to reach into old Christian traditions to understand morality while ignoring Messrs Locke, Smith, and Mills.
You are aware that there are, in fact, libertarian philosophers that base their ideas on parts of Aquinas or St. Augustine? We at the Murray Rothbard Institute are in a debate this instance on the concept of the relationship between transcendental concepts and individual rights and epistemic issues. Just sayin'.
I agree that John Locke is actually quite mediocre (regarding political philosophy) but that doesn't mean what he says isn't correct - to a certain extend. Locke and Rothbard were on to something, but both never quite got it in total (imo). In any case; you are aware that libertarian thought is rooted in the history of philosophy, right? It's not an modern accident or what not.
Prateek Sanjay:Morality is a complicated issue, and one doesn't understand morality by thinking in isolation, but by basic involvement in everyday human life. It would have been one thing for libertarians to say that they were trying to deal with issues of their day and time, like chivalric codes during medieval days. But to universalize it to all people in all situations, they have not only made libertarianism a pseudo-religion, but an empty superficial one at that.
I don't think there is any substantial argument in this. More like a meta-argument; a general feeling. While I agree that it's possible to critique some libertarians for not being able to sustain deep philosophical arguments - me being one of them - it doesn't follow that the libertarian ideas as such are not developed or have no root in the history of philosophy.
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.
Thanks, Adrian.
I think all in all (and Rothbard and Hayek definitely have indicated the same) liberty is not just one singular strong body of human thinking, but a smaller subset of other older philosophies that take root in higher ideals that go beyond liberty.
Perhaps that thing would be...high civilization?
Was the above not the reason that von Mises in the 1920s said (but wrongly) that fascism had saved western civilization, despite all its flaws?
Otto said:"Lappu, as confusing property rights can get, surely you can understand that the same problem arises with public/state property and state borders. Do states rightfully own property? Why is it clean cut for the state and not for individual owners? :)"
Yes, I can see how the same problem arises with public property and state borders. However this does not prove libertarian view of property rights to be ethical or correct. Could someone please tell me why libertarian property rights are valid? How do you know that your property is rightfully yours?
So did everybody get bored with my questions or why hasn't anybody answered?
Could someone please tell me why libertarian property rights are valid? How do you know that your property is rightfully yours?
Because enough people accept it as such.
I see it like this. I know my toothbrush is mine, because I have the best claim over it. There exists no one who can claim my toothbrush as his with greater validity than I can. So there isn't some special connection between my toothbrush and me, it is just that it belongs to me more than it belongs to anyone else. This relation is in terms of law then deemed "ownership". On the other hand I know that an object is unowned if there does not exist a person who can claim that object as his with more validity than anyone else could. So it is just a matter of establishing rules of what makes a claim valid. There is a question then if any set of rules can be valid above another set. I would say law which is reliable, which in the same situation always says the same thing, which can not in any given situation be used to support opposite positions and which can be used to resolve any contest, is superior to law which is not reliable. The legislated law is notoriously unreliable where the law as argued for by us is not, therefore I can conclude that even where I can not be fully certain that my property is actually mine, I likely have a better idea than the state does. As a natural rights libertarian I am also convinced that if you set out to write down a body of law which would be perfectly reliable it would be possible to write down one such system, but impossible to write down more than the one.
Why do you need to know that property is rightfully yours? In your everyday life (when the state is not involved) how often to you have to prove that you rightfully own your property? In the cases that you do, you show proof with receipts, titles, etc., all of which align with the libertarian views of valid means to obtain property. Furthermore, when someone makes a claim against your property (once again ignoring the state), the burden of proof rests on them. You say "this is my toothbrush" and they must falsify that claim; this is how these disputes ACTUALLY happen.
If the issue is more about ethically or morally right, you won't find the answer on an internet forum.
they said we would have an unfair fun advantage
A discussion of the ethics of property rights has to begin with an understanding of self-ownership, and that has to begin with an understanding of the relationship between authority and responsibility. Authority and responsibility extend from each other, either can only effectively be practiced to the extent that the other exists.
I cannot be made responsible for my actions if I have no authority over my actions. Like a soldier who is ordered to kill someone. If we call it murder, we cannot accuse the soldier of murder, but whoever ordered him to do it.
Likewise, I can have no authority over my actions if I have no responsibility for them. The teenager living under his parents roof wants to be free to do as he pleases, yet wants his parents to provide him with shelter, food, a car, car insurance and money to buy gas for the car; he feels he should be free to get drunk and drive around if he likes, but he does not have that right while his father is paying his car insurance and his father must pay for the lawyers and the fines and such when the teenager is arrested. While the father has responsibility, he has authority, not the teen.
So, authority and responsibility go hand in hand, you cannot claim one or be saddled with one without having the other. Once you are responsible for yourself, you also have authority over yourself, you have self-ownership, and the NAP codifies your right to exercise your self-ownership.
As you own yourself, you own your actions, you own your labor, and you own the results of your labor. Lets say you desire to create a farm on which you intend to raise and supply a family. First you look around for a piece of real estate to either purchase or homestead; and then you get to work building your shelter, your fences, and your outbuildings, digging your well, clearing your land, plowing your fields, etc.
Along comes a social democrat who says to you: "You have created a very nice farm here, it can sustain a lot of people and because all property belongs to everyone, we have decided that this homeless family with live on it with you." You are dumbstruck because you know your small farm could not support more than five or six people at its maximum sustainable level of production, and with this new family living with you, you will not be able to have your own family.
You try to explain to the social democrat that had you known that all property belonged to everyone, you would not have bothered to create this farm, since you had no guarantee that you would be able to use it for your own purposes, that of raising a family, and instead you would have moved to the city, rented an apartment or just claimed one to use, and got a job taking property from one group and giving it to other groups.
Fortunately, at that moment, a passing libertarian steps over and says, "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear the conversation, and I think there is a misunderstanding here. This farmer has either homesteaded an unused piece of land or purchased an occupied piece of land from another, he has mixed his labor with this land to transform it from raw land into a wealth producing farm. His labor belongs to him, therefore the farm belongs to him, and while you might have been able to claim the raw land before it was transformed into a farm, you cannot now, because his farm depends on the land underneath for its continued existence. To take the land from him would necessarily result in the taking of his labor, which, because it extends from self-ownership, belongs to him."
I mixed in a bit of the utilitarian argument for property, in that the farmer would never have created the farm, which ultimately will be a benefit to society, as it will increase the overall wealth of the society, had the farmer suspected that his property rights would not be upheld. But even this is an ethical argument in the sense that one has the right to pursue his vision, and in order to pursue a vision of creating something out of raw resources, one must be able to rely on the continued ownership of those resources.
One aspect of libertarianism that might appeal to your social democratic sensibilities is the idea that in order to own something, you must be using it or maintaining it. If you are not using it or do not have some reasonably defensible plan for using it, then its considered to be abandoned and available for ownership by someone else. That means that all of that "publicly-owned" land out west would be available for homesteading. It also means that vast tracts of land currently owned by wealthy people that sit idle would be available for homesteading via squatters rights. Libertarian ownership is a double edged sword.
Sorry for the late reply. I had completely forgotten about this thread.
I think it's a little harder to justify property rights but, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, this may actually turn out to be a good thing.
The key rationale for property rights is that without them it's very hard to extend autonomy into the real world, or hard to protect it at least. All our actions require the use of some scarce, physical resources so if our use of them goes unprotected then so does everything we do. All property, with the exception of undeveloped land, was transformed by the co-operation of at least one person and the non-aggression principle prohibits any claim to the co-operation of others. Private property is just a protection of this right to opt out of other people's projects. To rightfully use a resource that's existence depended on someone else's co-operation requires that they aren't forced to let you make use of it.
The link between a person and their body is still stronger than the link between them and their property. All this means though is that less force is warranted in protecting property than people which lines up nicely with common sense.