The NAP assumes the following as axiomatic:
1. Self-ownership.
2. Property rights derived through the addition of labor (homesteading).
Do you believe in self-ownership?
Do you view homesteading or labor as the initiation of aggression?
The NAP just states a position whereby a person may do whatever he wishes so long as he does not initiate aggression upon another.
What is your position on methodological individualism?
The premise of your rights argument seems to be based on the assumption of either natural rights (which I agree has issues) or collectivism (7 billion people all agreeing).
I see nothing at all inconsistent or immoral in applying the NAP, as a person principle rather than universal law, via voluntary interactions between individuals. The adjudication of differences would either follow contract or custom, as it would with common law.
re: "2. Property rights derived through the addition of labor (homesteading)."
This gets snuck in where it's not entirely obvious it applies. If we were all just homesteaders I think the case for the coherence of NAP as a practical matter would be stronger.
re: "The NAP just states a position whereby a person may do whatever he wishes so long as he does not initiate aggression upon another."
The problem is it is usually naive in the way it approaches defining "initiate aggression".
re: "What is your position on methodological individualism?"
I'm a methodological individualist insofar as I agree that social phenomena are simply an aggregate of individual decision making. I am not a methodological individualist in that I don't think this provides any paticular methodological imperative. After all, the action of individuals is ultimately the aggregation of cellular behavior and interaction, ad infinitum. However, we've found that it is not practically or scientifically meaningful to build up social science from the cellular level. Similarly, it is not always practical or scientifically useful to always work at the individual level. This probably doesn't make me much of a methodological individualist in most peoples' books.
re: "The premise of your rights argument seems to be based on the assumption of either natural rights (which I agree has issues) or collectivism (7 billion people all agreeing)."
I don't think this is my premise. If you cared about being non-coercive you would need one of these two things, but I don't feel obligated to embrace a non-coercive system. That's a daydream that could potentially come true but is not something I spend my time worrying about because its so implausible.
Clayton:I have no idea who Gene Callahan is.
Epic.
How do you define 'initiate aggression'?
Do you believe in self-ownership? I don't believe anyone has directly responded to this question.
Daniel Kuehn:Similarly, it is not always practical or scientifically useful to always work at the individual level.
Can you define what is practical for me pls?
re: "How do you define 'initiate aggression'?"
I don't personally use the term much because its hard to define - often its in the eye of the beholder. This term is usually used by NAP advocates because they have to use it, and I don't often hear them defining it.
How do you definie it?
re: "Can you define what is practical for me pls?"
I'd imagine this is context-dependent, wouldn't you?
Daniel Kuehn: re: "Can you define what is practical for me pls?" I'd imagine this is context-dependent, wouldn't you?
I don't know. You made the claim about practicality, I am trying to understand it.
Are you going to be responsive?
I was being responsive! Is this better:
Practicality means doing analysis that provides the most useful understanding of a phenomenon given the specific context and constraints of the question and your ability to plumb its depths. All aggregate processes can be dervied from individual behavior and interactions but we are not always capable of this derivation, so practically speaking it's sometimes appropriate to find out useful things about aggregate behavior by restricting our attention to aggregates. It all depends on the particular question you're dealing with and the tools you have for answering that question.
How about that? It's just a longer way of saying "it depends on context".
I'm not trying to be non-responsive - I just can't give you the answer I think you're looking for.
Daniel Kuehn:I don't know if Coase would agree with me on this or not (or if you've accurately represented his point here), but I would say this: all property regimes - private or collective - are coercive. You say Coase says "you cannot be for private property". I say "you can be for it, you just have to acknowledge you are adopting a coercive stance, but a good stance nonetheless".
Agreed in the sense you define coercion.
Daniel Kuehn:Again, I think you're giving the NAP too much credit. NAP needs to assume a rights regime to be intelligible - in other words, NAP assumes and accepts coercion. If you only care about physical aggression, then perhaps it works. "Don't be physically aggressive" is a pretty good decision rule to avoid physical aggression. I think the people who would object to this would say that there are other coercions out there besides physical aggression that we may want to prioritize, and which we may even want to use the coercion of physical aggression to solve (with the understanding that that expenditure of coercion may solve other coercions and therefore minimize total coercions - which is what I care about).
You could say the NAP “coerces” people not to coerce one another. But for my subjective moral valuations this is not real coercion. People have to find the least common denominator to make productive and mutual beneficial living possible. This always means compromises and some people will always interpret some things (not physical aggression) as coercion against them. I care about minimizing of coercion too, and if one could really in a case minimize total coercion by stopping non physical coercion with physical coercion, ok. But first there is the problem of how determining this, secondly this will be the exception to the rule. And third and most important as soon as this is accepted it bears the risk of people generally aggress physically against anything they feel coerced of because from their perspective this would lower “overall coercion”. Imagine a country deciding to become socialistic and that their neighbor “coerces” them by only being capitalistic, and they resort to physical aggression and start a war to minimize "overall coercion”. I think this is very dangerous.
Yes thanks very nice discussion. (Sorry for keeping you from working.. ;)
Here's Rothbard's account.
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eight.asp
The fundamental act of aggression is upon one's person or his property. If you believe in self-ownership, then the statement can be shortened to just property.
Initiation of aggression may be through direct application of force or the threat of force. Initiate obviously means to begin the action.
Now I differ somewhat with Rothbard in his reliance on natural law. I believe there is more than one way to get to the NAP.
**********
The OP and the title of this thread asserts that property rights are coercive. I think the more accurate statement is that some property right claims may be coercive. Saying all property rights are coercive would be an argument against self-ownership, just another form of property rights, or a person's productive labor. I believe Rothbard uses an example of Crusoe overstepping his bounds in declaring the island his property. So property rights have a limit even in Rothbard's version.
A right is just a claim, and competing claims may be resolved voluntarily or adjudicated. When an agreement is not in place, common custom is followed. Most common custom defers the right of property to the person who first finds or utilizes the resource. Some societies differ in terms of custom. I view this as being sorted out through individual voluntary interchanges, with society as a whole being nothing more than the aggregate of all such interchanges.
Two individuals who claim the same property are not yet to the point of coercion. There are many ways to settle the matter. One would be to share the resource. One would be to trade. Yet another would be to find an arbiter.
If one individual has clearly claimed property, has made his claim well known that said property is his, and common custom agrees, then a second individual attempting to take, tresspass or destroy said property is initiating aggression. The second individual may attempt to claim said property, but the first individual is most likely to maintain his claim given his previous actions.
Clayton, Property rights are indeed conducive to social order, and therefore people who violate them should be dealt with harshly. It is furthermore true that people can and do come to mutually voluntary agreements regarding rights. I overstate my case when I say that property rights must be aggressive. However, since not everyone agrees all the time on everything, they must be sometimes aggressive and indeed are usually aggressive, even though this aggression can be and in my opinion is justified.
Property rights are indeed conducive to social order, and therefore people who violate them should be dealt with harshly. It is furthermore true that people can and do come to mutually voluntary agreements regarding rights. I overstate my case when I say that property rights must be aggressive. However, since not everyone agrees all the time on everything, they must be sometimes aggressive and indeed are usually aggressive, even though this aggression can be and in my opinion is justified.
Coase: But I think you're not taking into account the different failure modes of arbitration. In a State-operated monopoly law system, the failure mode of arbitration (aka "trial") is imprisonment and/or fines for the obstinate party. In other words, the State forces me to arbitrate my dispute on pain of imprisonment and fines. Without a monopolist of law services, the failure mode of arbitration is direct conflict (assuming both parties are roughly equally strong). That is, there is no omnipotent Leviathan dwelling in the ether impelling me to arbitrate my disputes with my neighbors so I can simply refuse to arbitrate my disputes and take my chances in direct conflict. It is a mistake to refer to the disputes that result from an obstinate refusal to arbitrate as "coercion" or "aggression" because they are neither.
Let's say you run over one of my goats with your pickup. I come to you and tell you that you need to give me a goat. You laugh at this and tell me to get lost. We live in an area of the world where the State is very weak - non-existent or apathetic. At this point, I send you a notice that I have a witness who saw you run over my goat and that you must either restore the lost goat peacefully or it will be taken by force. You again refuse to arbitrate with me and tell me to get lost. At this point, I may be justified under the law (meaning, that I would be able to justify my actions in arbitration if you later tried to claim I acted unlawfully) to simply go to your property and take what is rightfully my goat, by force. Naturally, this attempt might lead to armed conflict. Assuming we both have about as many armed men, we're in a position where we would each benefit from working out a reasonable solution rather than losing a bunch of people in a battle over a damned goat. So, now that the issue has been forced, you begin to see reason and agree to go to arbitration where you agree to pay me a goat and a few chickens for the trouble of having to attempt to collect the goat by force.
This is a cartoon illustration but the point is that the Statist law order presupposes that law can only operate in the context of an omnipotent Leviathan who coerces one or the other party to accept his fate. Customary law - which is much older than modern statutory law - does not require anyone to be coerced even though not everyone will be as happy with the outcome of legal disputes as everybody else (specifically, the party in the wrong is likely to be very unhappy).
Clayton -
liberty student: Clayton:I have no idea who Gene Callahan is. Epic.
Well, I do now... but there's always bound to be somebody I never heard of, no matter how many people I hear of!
Rather than simply claiming the mantle of non-coerciveness and avoiding the question of the coercion of property rights regimes, libertarians simply ought to recognize that they have no special priority or claim - and actually make a case. That case is hard to make, of course. We can't measure "coercion" after all.
I agree here. And you would think this would dovetail in with the Misean look as to what subjectivity and calculation is and why liberterians who hold to NAP have a curious position.
However: Shouldn't this bring up questions to what you were saying about methodological individualism and what intersubjective studies are?
I'm fine with intersubjective comparisons and to the extent that I think these might be somewhat of a problematic abstraction, I'm enough of a positivist that it doesn't bother me all that much. I'm interested in methodology, not epistemology. I gave up worrying about epistemology and "truth with a capital t" a while ago and started worrying about just developing useful understandings of the world.
Now - I'm not clear on how this relates to the point about the NAP. Am I being inconsistent?
lol, I'm kind of having trouble forming this impression into words, and I think you may have sort of addressed it but I'll ask anyway; maybe this is the best way about it:
Why can't we measure coercion?
Odd because I agree, but it can't be the same reason can it?
P.S. I certainly don't want to debate or argue as that would turn into an unfruitful "meta" topic I think. I am just curious as to what the 1 post answer would be.
Daniel Kuehn:I'm interested in methodology, not epistemology. I gave up worrying about epistemology and "truth with a capital t" a while ago
Epistemology does get in the way of bullshit conclusions, which is why many people abandon it. Methodology works so much better when it is unfettered by mundane concepts like reality.
Daniel Kuehn:started worrying about just developing useful understandings of the world.
Would you please define useful?
Epistemology will give you bullshit conclusions if you're willing to wave your hands at infinite regress problems. A lot of people who are just playing logic games think they are doing epistemologically sound work. Epistemology largely should have stopped with Socrates: "the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".
Useful understanding is something we can work with, though. I suppose useful understanding is just providing a rational explanation of the world that bears a close correspondence to the behavior of the world you observe and can dependable explain unexpected or future phenomena as well. It may even end up being "true", which would be nice as well. "True as far as we can tell" works pretty well though.
Daniel, do you believe any of this stuff when you first write it?
Do you really expect responses to questions like that?
Not if they are like the other "responses".
Daniel Kuehn: Epistemology will give you bullshit conclusions if you're willing to wave your hands at infinite regress problems. A lot of people who are just playing logic games think they are doing epistemologically sound work. Epistemology largely should have stopped with Socrates: "the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing". Useful understanding is something we can work with, though. I suppose useful understanding is just providing a rational explanation of the world that bears a close correspondence to the behavior of the world you observe and can dependable explain unexpected or future phenomena as well. It may even end up being "true", which would be nice as well. "True as far as we can tell" works pretty well though. We all already have an epistemology whether we want one or not. Our brain has a lot of hardwired epistemological (and ontological) circuitry in it, so I find the out-of-hand dismissal of epistemology to be... odd. Of course, I can agree that a lot of the more grandiose epistemological ambitions around trying to find truth-with-a-capital-T are fruitless and we can explain in clear and concise detail why this is the case but there's no need to go all Zen about it. Steven Pinker explains here the innate theories of physics and sociology which the human brain has hardwired within it. It turns out that our intuitive theories of physics break down when extended beyond the range in which our corporeal body can interact with the physical world and the same thing happens with our intuitive theories of sociology when extended beyond the range of familial and clan-like interactions. This partly explains why people are so bad at reasoning about economics and public policy. But we have access to something more than our intuitive theories of physics or sociology because we have a prefrontal cortex... that is, we can purposefully engage in careful, formal reasoning. While our prefrontal cortext won't carry us to nirvana - sorry to disappoint the truth-with-a-capital-T types ... - it does help us escape some of the mistakes in our hardwired theories of physics and sociology that arise when we push our experience beyond the boundaries in which those hardwired theories evolved. Clayton - http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com | Post Points: 60
I'll take a look at the video - thanks.
That we have a hard-wired ontology and epistemology sounds right, but I'm not sure how good such an ontology or epistemology would be. It WOULD be good for getting around in the world, I imagine (I see you're getting into this as I read your second paragraph!). It would be a useful fiction, in other words.
Certainly there's value to thinking seriously about what we want to say constitutes justified or unjustified claims. If you want to call that "epistemology" I'm fine with that.
Daniel Kuehn: I'll take a look at the video - thanks. That we have a hard-wired ontology and epistemology sounds right, but I'm not sure how good such an ontology or epistemology would be. It WOULD be good for getting around in the world, I imagine (I see you're getting into this as I read your second paragraph!). It would be a useful fiction, in other words. Certainly there's value to thinking seriously about what we want to say constitutes justified or unjustified claims. If you want to call that "epistemology" I'm fine with that. You'll find the video is well worth your time... Steven Pinker is literally my hero. Clayton - http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com | Post Points: 5
I'm interested in methodology, not epistemology.
If you have the time what are your thoughts on this:
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/24483.aspx
Clayton:This partly explains why people are so bad at reasoning about economics and public policy.
I don't have this problem, and I am pretty sure I qualify in your terms as "people".
Gross generalizations are a waste of time in discussion, I advise you avoid them.
Lol I'm sorry but how did they determine the content of sociological and physical theories "hardwired" in the brain? All they are looking at are electrical signals.
Phaedros: Lol I'm sorry but how did they determine the content of sociological and physical theories "hardwired" in the brain? All they are looking at are electrical signals.
Watch the lecture. They've learned by studying how we use language.