Eugene:Autolykos, your questions are of very philosophical nature, and I don't see much benefit in philosophical musings. By the way I also asked a question which you failed to answer.
You should go back and refine your definition of what a crime actually is, because the weights you place on "what has the most utilitarian outcome" are garbage for defining what a crime should and should not be.
Also, you were trying to say the difference between rape and a punch in the face was the emotional damage (which I believe is wrong), but even if we do agree on this, it still does not follow that emotional damage alone is a crime.
Eugene:What is the practical disadvantage of not prohibiting spying and stalking for fun?
It can be a rule on private property if you so choose. But you continually say that you should be able to sue the guy for "emotional damages", but he is not on your property, using your property, or doing anything else to effect your property in any negative way. Thus, you are saying you can sue him for "emotional damages", but emotional damages on their own are NOT a crime.
Eugene:Autolykos, your questions are of very philosophical nature, and I don't see much benefit in philosophical musings.
Then you don't actually see much benefit in this topic, because it's ultimately philosophical in nature.
Eugene:By the way I also asked a question which you failed to answer. What is the practical disadvantage of not prohibiting spying and stalking for fun?
In my opinion? The formation of a state.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
1. Why must a state be formed to keep laws against spying? You don't need a state for that just as you don't need a state to sue against physical aggression. So I ask again, what is the practical disadvantage of not looking at spying for fun as an act of aggression? 2. Texas, you are again defining crime in terms of property without trying first to explain why it must be so. I don't even want to have a single rule for criminal behavior. I have no significant problem in creating very specific laws for very specific circumstances without trying to justify them philosophically. In the an-cap society these would not be laws but merely justification to use retaliatory force. The point is the same though. In general, If some things make sense (such as demanding restitution in case of noising into private affairs) but are inconsistent with some definition of what is crime, then the definition is wrong.
3.Regarding your reservation. Physical aggression will be illegal regardless of the property on which it occured. You can't just shoot every treepasser. 4. If someone makes noise at night and disturbs your sleep, you can sue, right? How is that different from spying? In both cases you are not physically harmed but only harmed emotionally.
Eugene:1. Why must a state be formed to keep laws against spying?
Only a state has the authority to make laws.
Eugene:So I ask again, what is the practical disadvantage of not looking at spying for fun as an act of aggression?
Prove it is aggression.
Eugene:2. Texas, you are again defining crime in terms of property without trying first to explain why it must be so.
The burden of proof is on you to show how a crime can be outside property.
Eugene:I have no significant problem in creating very specific laws for very specific circumstances without trying to justify them philosophically. In the an-cap society these would not be laws but merely justification to use retaliatory force. The point is the same though.
It's still a philosophy of law. You're making arbitrary rules, you have to substantiate the basis for them or their authority. The burden of proof is on you.
Eugene:3. If someone makes noise at night and disturbs your sleep, you can sue, right? How is that different from spying? In both cases you are not physically harmed but only harmed emotionally.
Under a state? How would that work without a state?
What would you sue them for? What harm have they done?
You hurt my feelings with these posts. I am going to sue you for $10,000. I should win right? You hurt me emotionally?
Eugene:1. Why must a state be formed to keep laws against spying? You don't need a state for that just as you don't need a state to sue against physical aggression. So I ask again, what is the practical disadvantage of not looking at spying for fun as an act of aggression?
Act of aggression against WHAT? No property is being aggressed against, you cannot own emotions, emotions are not property, you cannot sue someone just because they hurt your feelings (see divorce, cheating, calling your mom fat, calling you fat). What you can do though is kick them off your property and perhaps convince others to do so as well.
Eugene:I don't even want to have a single rule for criminal behavior. I have no significant problem in creating very specific laws for very specific circumstances without trying to justify them philosophically.
I agree with what libertystudent commented, and you will run into all of the problems of Utilitarianism. I would recommend going to read up on that, but alas, it is just "philosophical musings."
Eugene:In the an-cap society these would not be laws but merely justification to use retaliatory force.
You would not be justified in doing so, there is no crime being commited by the "pervert spy". I cannot go much further into what justification is, it might lead to paragraphs of "philsophical musings."
Eugene:If some things make sense (such as demanding restitution in case of noising into private affairs) but are inconsistent with some definition of what is crime, then the definition is wrong.
Or the definition of crime is correct, and your "law" is wrong.
Eugene:3.Regarding your reservation. Physical aggression will be illegal regardless of the property on which it occured. You can't just shoot every treepasser.
Well everyone owns at least one piece of property, their bodies. And answering this question might lead us into all of these "philsophical musings" on what amount of force is justified to repel an aggressor, but I do not see how it applies to the "pervert spy."
I would also recommend adding Hoppe to your reading list.
1. What do you suggest me to read by Hoppe? Is there an online link for that?
2. How is excessive noise different? Excessive noise does not harm property yet it is considered aggression by most libertarians.
Eugene:Excessive noise does not harm property yet it is considered aggression by most libertarians.
Can you substantiate this claim?
From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/air-pollution.html (Murray Rothbard)
Excessive noise can be considered a form of aggression
On the other hand, if the airport starts to increase noise levels, then the homeowners could sue or enjoin the airport from its noise aggression for the extra decibels, which had not been homesteaded. Of course if a new airport is built and begins to send out noise of X decibels onto the existing surrounding homes, the airport becomes fully liable for the noise invasion.
Rothbard is not equal to most libertarians, Want to revise your claim, or are you just appealing to Rothbard as an authority?
liberty student:Rothbard is not equal to most libertarians, Want to revise your claim, or are you just appealing to Rothbard as an authority?
Would you think it is ok then for my neighbour to play incredibly loud music and constantly have parties night afternight and keep everyone awake? What I mean is, would I not be able to make some sort of appeal in a Libertarian society? And as for privacy, again would I not be able to make some sort of appeal if I thought my neighbour was using binoculars to spy on me every night?
There is no relevant equivalence between pollution and observation that I can see.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
why is loud music not pollution? when a jet flies over a head or a train rattles by does it never shake walls? at lower levels when a neighbours emitted vibrations worry your ears whilst you try to sleep (you hear by being shaken) it is certainly up for debate as to whether he commits a tort against you.
also I hope ou've considered the fact that you do not see objects by shooting rays out of your eyes quite like the greeks thought...
The solution to being 'spied on' is to erect barriers of some sort, and whatever else you can muster in a voluntary manner,.
nirgrahamUK:also I hope ou've considered the fact that you do not see objects by shooting rays out of your eyes quite like the greeks thought...
That explains, now, why I went through all that confusion reading about how Socrates thought colour was perceived!
What if a new technology will be available that will give complete visual and audio information about everything that happens in your neighbors house, including the thoughts inside the head of your neighbor, all that without physically harming the property of the neighbor?
Buy some tin foil and hope for best.
EvilSocialistFellow:Would you think it is ok then for my neighbour to play incredibly loud music and constantly have parties night afternight and keep everyone awake?
What I think is irrelevant. My values are not facts. The questions to ask are, if someone "disturbs the peace" is that a crime, and if so what is the crime, and what sort of restitutive measures are reasonable given we have established a tort of some sort?
EvilSocialistFellow:What I mean is, would I not be able to make some sort of appeal in a Libertarian society?
What would the appeal be? Who would you appeal to? What would their authority be?
These are all rhetorical. I'm asking you to think about your concerns from another angle.
EvilSocialistFellow:And as for privacy, again would I not be able to make some sort of appeal if I thought my neighbour was using binoculars to spy on me every night?
So you want to control how he can use his binoculars and where he can look? Do you have a right to control his property and body? If so, from where did you derive it?
And as above, who would you appeal to, and so on ...
The reasons why libertarians support the idea of private property is that it allows disputes/conflicts to be settled in a fairly clear manner. So if you feel you have been done wrong by, you will have to define the crime or injury a little more substantively than "it makes me feel bad", because I am sure that both you and Eugene can appreciate how the entire situation devolves when we embrace a stystem of torts based on subjective emotional valuations.
Eugene:So are you supposed to buy special barriers to avoid that?
You buy clothes, don't you?
Eugene:How much do you think you could sell your 5 million dollar house if the neighbor and all his buddies constantly stare at your backyard?
If you can find a voyeur with the means to buy it, lots. An important rule of marketing, problems are features. It's all in the spin.
Eugene:So you can't sell your house because no one would buy a house with such neighbors, you've already lost 5 million.
This is a failure to understand how prices are formed. Value is subjective Eugene, when you buy a house for $5 million, it is worth NOTHING if there are no buyers, and there is no guarantee it is worth $5 million if you try to sell it and there are buyers. Value is not fixed.
Eugene:You can only hope to move out, even though the film about your intimate life is already on the web constantly humiliating you. I'm sorry but this is not a viable solution.
This is funny considering you live in a police state. I can't tell if you are serious in this discussion or not. If you don't want to be filmed, don't go outside. If you think you have a right that no one should look at you, explain where you got this right, because it creates an obligation on others to look away from you at all times. And likewise they can expect you to look away from them at all times.
You're basically asking for a society where there is zero individual responsibility and everyone walks around with their head down. Brilliant!
Eugene:1. What do you suggest me to read by Hoppe? Is there an online link for that?
Here is a start:
http://mises.org/resources/860/Economics-and-Ethics-of-Private-Property-Studies-in-Political-Economy-and-Philosophy-The
liberty student:If you can find a voyeur with the means to buy it, lots. An important rule of marketing, problems are features. It's all in the spin.
Yes, the house can be sold with "will never be robbed, neighbors are constantly are watching your house." hahaha
Eugene:What do you suggest you should do if the neighbor is constantly spying on you?
There are multiple things:
- Do nothing
- Buy his property
- If it bothers you so much, take defensive measures (barriers, farraday cages, do naughty things away from the reach of this neighbor's tool (don't tell me this theoretical object will have infinite range and be able to spy on you no matter where you are in the world), etc)
- Confront him and try to negotiate a contract which says he will not spy on you
- Move to a neighborhood which has the "no pervert spying" rule in place.
Eugene:There has to be a solution, and whether it is consistent with some rule or not doesn't matter.
Of course it matters, as libertystudent stated, where does this "no pervert spying" rule get the authority? You can't just force your neighbor to wear the silly hat because you believe the world would be better off if everyone wore the hat.
Eugene:Without a practical solution a society that can't deal with this problem is not viable.
I just stated a few "practical solutions" which are in perfect alignment with Property Rights. All of those do not violate anyone's Property Rights, and takes care of the problem.
liberty student:What I think is irrelevant. My values are not facts. The questions to ask are, if someone "disturbs the peace" is that a crime, and if so what is the crime, and what sort of restitutive measures are reasonable given we have established a tort of some sort?
The fact my (and your) values are subjective does not really detract from my original point. Indeed, it is impossible to refer to how markets or society *should* be organised without referring to philosophical 'oughts'. Murder, rape and torture are only subjectively wrong.
Anyway, I wasn't intending to get into a heap of anal austrian methodology so to phrase my initial point entirely wrong just to please the subjectivists, I know that it is definitely morally and objectively wrong (my opinion being a universal underlying ethical principle that is always right by necessity ) to spy on your neighbour or play loud booming music at night and hence I ought to be able to use physical force to prevent that happening.
EvilSocialistFellow:I know that it is definitely morally and objectively wrong (my opinion being a universal underlying ethical principle that is always right by necessity ) to spy on your neighbour or play loud booming music at night and hence I ought to be able to use physical force to prevent that happening.
So basically you're still a statist. Sheesh, this is a lot of work getting you around to libertarianism.
You can't just force your neighbor to wear the silly hat because you believe the world would be better off if everyone wore the hat.
I fail to see how this argument does not apply to property rights, as well.
You can't just force bums from this lawn because you believe the world would be better off if everyone respected property rights.
Eugene: However I am inclined to think that in some cases it should be legally enforced.
Who pays for that enforcement?
Who gets to decide the rules and the methods of enforcement?
On whose property does this enforcement take place??
Eugene,
I recommend that you start aproaching libertarianism by asking and answering practical questions.
Andris Birkmanis:I fail to see how this argument does not apply to property rights, as well.
Then you have to go read more on how Property Rights arise. I would recommend that Hoppe book I linked to a few posts up.
Andris Birkmanis:You can't just force bums from this lawn because you believe the world would be better off if everyone respected property rights.
It all depends on who owns the lawn. You cannot go to your neighbor's property and throw bums out, but you can throw trespassers out on your own property. Just like you can't go to your neighbor's property and demand he wears a silly hat. The silly hat example came from critiques of Social Contract Theory, which I think would tie well into this discussion, and might bring in some relevant arguments.
Andris Birkmanis: You can't just force your neighbor to wear the silly hat because you believe the world would be better off if everyone wore the hat. I fail to see how this argument does not apply to property rights, as well. You can't just force bums from this lawn because you believe the world would be better off if everyone respected property rights.
Property rights are not about making everyone better off. If I have got a Ferrari and you don't, but you very much would like to have one, you are unhappy not because of the concept of property rights. You are unhappy because you do not have the productivity for such car, or don't have wealthy parents or so. Prosperity is a direct consequence from property rights, but not their goal. If the concept is not applied no such car as Ferrari would have come into existance in the first place. Property rights do not tell or guarantee who will be affected by the prosperty (the concept does not include in itself some sort of an equal distribution system,i.e., the marginal increase of the total wealth that is brought about as a result of exercised and not violated property rights is not allocated in an equal manner among the individuals). But one thing is for sure - the total material well-being will increase relatively if property rights are not violated.
By the way how do you apply property rights theory with excessive sound? How can you say that excessive sound harms your property and non excessive sound doesn't? Isn't it obvious that its not about harm to property but about psychological damage? How is excessive sound different from spying or from non excessive sound?
Property rights will be applied to reflect the value preferences of the parties involved. It's a market process.
An instance of this objection was discussed by Coase (1960), Friedman’s colleague at the University of Chicago, and fellow Nobel Prize winner in economics. It was the case of Sturgis v. Bridgeman, which revolved around the issue of whether the manufacturer may run his machinery, which interferes with the quiet needed by the doctor in order to operate his MILTON FRIEDMAN ON INTOLERANCE: A CRITIQUE 11 stethoscope and other medical needs. Coase, of course, answered this question in terms of which decision would maximize GDP, but the libertarian analysis is clear on this matter: it depends upon who was there first, to homestead either the given level or noise, or the required level of quiet. So, to answer Friedman’s challenge, it all depends upon who was the initial homesteader of the noise or quiet rights. Walter Block, “Milton Friedman on Intolerance: A Critique”
1. This is not even theoretically possible as far as I know without trespassing. You would need to send a signal of some sort onto the person's property first, be it a transmitter, cameras, x-rays, etc. If you are putting things on someone else's property then you are trespassing and violating their property rights. At such a time as people find a way to spy purely by looking at what comes naturally out of the property then this answer would change but I don't even think that is theoretically possible at the moment.
2. Since all land is owned if someone is stalking you then you should speak to the owner of whatever land he is stalking from. Following a person is not illegal in itself, but the acts required to follow a person might be (tresspassing again).
3. If you masturbate in front of your window with the blinds open then the person recording the video is not in the wrong. In my opinion there is a certain amount of burden of security on the individual wishing to keep his life private. Closing your blinds would require the person commit some other act (tressspassing) in order to commit this "offense" which they can be held accountable for. If you are worried about such events get really expensive tresspassing insurance that has a massive payout.
If I setup a infra-red scanner and point it at my neighbor's bedroom, it is a mockery of common sense to claim, "Well, technically the infra-red rays from their body heat were coming to me...". The same is true with sound dishes that are able to pick up noises that far exceed the normal capacity of the human ear. Free individuals should not be forced to "infra-red proof their homes", or install "sound dampeners" to prevent eavesdropping - people have a reasonable expectation of privacy against these invasive and insidious technologies.
I don't really mind how anti-spying laws should be justified, should we somehow justify them using existing libertarian principles or should we think about new principles, intuitively it just doesn't make sense to legalize this kind of behavior.
Eugene:people have a reasonable expectation of privacy against these invasive and insidious technologies.
An expectation is not a right.
1. When that technology exist then privacy problems would be dealt with, but hypothetical situations will never have a satisfying answer. But even today that they have the technology to look in to your home and see a heat signature. This is used by the police frequently from helicopters, looking for cannabis grows and similar illegal activity. This is legal with a state and nothing happens. Would a private organisation get away with heat signatur’ing a suburban area? Well google has satellite mapped several countries and we can only imagine what sort of mapping the NSA and GCHQ have. So it would foolish to speak about hypothetical situations as you described when the government and its agencies already do similar things and they are completely legal.
2. Restraining orders could exist within a stateless society or like you said they would be dealt with in similar ways as they do today, violence and other deterrents.
3. When people think of privacy they think of an Orwellian type state or corporation that is infringing on their personal life. But if you look at today’s society people voluntarily hand over all the information. Sure some types of information are forced through the threat of fines, like the census and driving license etc. People have to take the necessary precautions or they will suffer the consequences. Complete privacy is possible but that requires a lot of money and high security etc. What most people would not even think of doing.
Murray Rothbard on right to privacy from ethics of liberty
It might, however, be charged that Smith does not have the right to print such a statement, because Jones has a "right to privacy" (his "human" right) which Smith does not have the right to violate. But is there really such a right to privacy? How can there be? How can there be a right to prevent Smith by force from disseminating knowledge which he possesses? Surely there can be no such right. Smith owns his own body and therefore has the property right to own the knowledge he has inside his head, including his knowledge about Jones. And therefore he has the corollary right to print and disseminate that knowledge. In short, as in the case of the "human right" to free speech, there is no such thing as a right to privacy except the right to protect one's property from invasion. The only right "to privacy', is the right to protect one's property from being invaded by someone else. In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else's home, or to wiretap someone's phone lines. Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly "invasion of a 'right to privacy'," but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped.
Steve Rambam on Why privacy is dead.