I am discussing with some hard-core proprietarians on the Polish Libertarian’s Forum. Currently our discussions revolve around Rothbard’s idea of proportional response to initiated aggression against victim’s property (let’s say a land).
They claim that a victim, when his property is aggressed, is entitled to any aggressive response he sees fit. Because he is the victim, he is the owner thus he decides the rules on his property (and these rules state that his preferred response to any aggression on his property is punishable by death). Nobody can have say in what the owner can do on his property, right?
The aggressor loses all his rights by the act of aggression and is completely at mercy of the victim. Any proportional response rule, as proposed by Rothbard, would be against the owner’s will and constitute a third part intervention which is for them synonymous with collectivism (thus making Rothbard “stupid old fart with collectivist views, not worthy any respect”). Only free market means may be used to convince such hard-core owners to change their behaviors, but anything they do to e.g. trespassers is totally justified.
What is exactly Rothbard’s or other “soft” libertarians justification for the proportional response to initiated aggression? The excerpts from “Ethics of Liberty” – chapter 12 Self-defense don’t seems to be convincing enough for hard-core propretarians because the property of aggressor body isn’t seen by them as anything more valuable than victim’s property. They claim that a perceived value of aggressor’s life cannot be compared to a value of victim’s right to set rules on his own property.
Any good arguments in favor of limited response to aggression?
These people (like you described and certainly I am not speaking about all propertarians) are as insane as hardcore statists. Actually, there is no much difference.. Sorry, I don't have a proper counter-argument at the moment.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
There is nothing insane in asking questions about the boundaries of a subject.
Maciej Miasik, I have asked similar questions on this forum. The responses varied.
Your summation with the problem of "proportional" was excellent. I am also interested in responses here.
The example of the bubble gum thief is always useful. If a kid steals a stick of bubble gum from a conveniece store, what is the just response? Can the owner gun the kid down for stealing bubble gum?
It's quite clear that the owner of the store has aggressed against the kid more than the kid against the owner. Another example: some kids are playing baseball and the baseball lands in a neighbor's yard. One of the kids goes to retrieve the baseball. The neighbor guns him down for trespassing.
You might say, well, there is a difference between a bubble gum thief or a kid retrieving his baseball and a burgalr in someone's home. You are right. But it's a difference not of kind, but of degree. It's like when we libertarians talk about taxes equaling slavey. Someone today has 50% of their property taken while a slave might have 100%.
When Rothbard talks about proportionality, he is talking about how much of someone's rights is forfeit when he aggresses upon another's property. If I hit you, you are allowed to hit me (though Rothbard proposes two teeth for a tooth!). You are not allowed to shoot me dead. That said, context is key. If I hit you and then point a gun in your face, I have now made it clear that I am going to kill you. But that would be the case whether or not I hit you.
Anyone who claims that once a crime has been committed on their property that he can put the criminal to death is insane. Stealing a piece of bubble gum is not the same as murder. You can force the kid to return the bubble gum. If he resists then you can use more force. If during the fight your life is in danger then the bubble gum thief has escalated his crimes. Only then can you kill in self defense. But that is a different situation. Killing the thief right off the bat would be a gross violation of the thief's rights.
The problem with propertarianism is that it confuses property and law. Property emerges from law (the root of the word being "proper" should make this obvious). The promotion of property to a state of absoluteness is a mistake. It is true that conflict avoidance and resolution is impossible without property, a point that Hoppe makes with astounding clarity. However, property boundaries are not objective attributes of the universe, like the charge of an electron or the mass of a quark. Rather, property boundaries are fuzzy, subjectively ascertained and negotiated through human language which is famously flexible. Look how many disputes people manage to have over property lines on real estate... perhaps one of the most objectively definable forms of property boundary. It's very simple - you pay a surveyor to drive a stake in the ground at the precise (within 1 cm) location of the corner of the property using advanced mathematics, surveying equipment and electronic equipment. Case closed. Any dispute should just be a matter of going out and looking at where the stake is. Yet people still manage to squabble about every aspect of this process.
Now let's move to the other end of the spectrum - I'm a young woman walking down the street and you're a male stranger following me within 12 inches distance, so close I can feel your breath on the back of my neck. You're not touching me. You're not saying anything to me. Just following me. Do you have a right to remain this close to me and follow me? Or does that constitute an implied threat to the integrity of my person? I think that the law is pretty clear that it is a threat and it should, therefore, be actionable. So, where was the property line? 12 inches? 24 inches? 36 inches? Or maybe it's not a distance, it's an amount of time you can be behind me following me. One minute? Two minutes? One hour? How much is too much?
The fact is that fleshing out property boundaries is a process with no final solution or final outcome. It's not like solving the quadratic equation. There is no single solution, there are many possible solutions and many wrong solutions and the only way to separate the right from wrong solutions is through arbitration, that is, through a healthy, thriving, unsubsidized and coercion-free law industry.
The idea that all rights to one's property is ceded in the case of coercion is actually incoherent with the concept of private law. In private law, both parties to a dispute come to a negotiating table (possibly arbitrated) to hammer out a mutually agreeable resolution to their dispute. Mutual agreement is not possible if one party has already ceded all property rights (even in his own body). Hence, both parties must retain their property rights during the negotation. And no one would ever voluntarily agree to give up all their property rights (even in their own body) as part of a mutual agreement to end the dispute - the point of negotiating is to come out of the dispute better off than had there been no negotiation. Dead/enslaved/destitute is not better than any other outcome. Hence, it necessarily entails the use of coercion to create a situation where one party to a dispute cedes all rights in his property and body. This is also why there can be no "death penalty" under private law.
Clayton -
While it would be within the realms of self defense to kill a trespasser on your property. The trespassers relatives might take you to court for murder in spite of the trespassing transgression. This is where the context would come to light and if it was found that you killed an unarmed man then you could be found guilty of a type of murder.
There would also be negative incentives to want to be trigger happy on your property, killing people is not desirable for most people, due to personal guilt and other personal issues, as well as reputation. If you shoot every person that comes on to your property, you might lose a lot of friends and not many people would want to come on to your property, even legitimately.
It would also matter the region that the property resides and the knowledge that you have of crime within the area. If you know that there is a high chance that armed men will rob you and everyone shares this knowledge, then you might have more chance of getting away with defending your property by shooting first and asking questions later. If you live in a region that has hardly any crime and if someone is on your property it is most likely a teenager or a poor person looking to steal something small etc. Then you might have less justification in the killing.
Take for example south africa where there is a high crime rate. Growing up in Cape Town i heard many times of people defending their property by killing intruders and those people never stood trial for the murder. On the other hand i heard of stories where people did not defend their property and the worst of things imaginable happened.
However i heard of a case in the USA where an intruder fell through the sky light and broke his leg on the kitchen counter and sued the owner of the property and won.
"They claim that a victim, when his property is aggressed, is entitled to any aggressive response he sees fit."
"The aggressor loses all his rights by the act of aggression and is completely at mercy of the victim."
Owning something does not make you necessarily able to make laws concerning your property, and does not necessarily make you the owner of life of any trespasser. Personally I believe the best definition(s) and practical implementation(s) of property would emerge in free market arbitration and would not be something that someone can put in place and say - this is how it will be. It is easy to imagine that if someone takes "justice" into his owns hands and shoots trespasser, just for walking on his property, he could be considered murderer by most of the people that interact with this person - I as hell would. Justice is subjective and matter of compromise. In my opinion it is not possible to deliver "justice" by one side of the conflict due to obvious bias. This is where market arbitrage could be pursued to solve dispute - without third party arbitrage I personally would not consider outcome "just " and would treat this guy as insane murderer. Although I'm ancap I would never wish to live in community where everyone can kill anyone just for trespassing someones property. Being an ancap does not necessarily mean you must be crazy.
As for what kind of punishment if any would come out of arbitrage - whether it would be proportional or not - why does it matter? Free market will find the best solution that takes into account both sides of conflict.
I'd say that the agressor loses his rights to the extent he agressed upon victim (I think this argument was made by Rothbard himself, my head is blank now, can't remeber where I read it first). So that would be my counter argument. All these responses like "agressor loses all his rights" are ridiculous.