Brainpolice said:For example, one's ownership over their home, even if it is a just case of ownership, does not give you the right to assault and murder people just because they are in one's home. In other words, property rights do not trump life and liberty.
That strikes me as odd. I thought... well, I remember reading two very poignant scenarios in which consistency in justice must prevail over liberal morality if consistency is to be maintained.
One example was that a man who has been lost in the woods for days and is on the verge of dying comes onto your cabin property and begins shuffling through your kitchen. You shoot him. Are you in the wrong or the right? The article said in the right -- for you were defending your property.
If you invite a friend over for dinner and then shank him as soon as he enters the door, well, that certainly feels different, but why is one okay and not the other (at least according to my understanding of BP's statements)?
liberty student: Daniel Waite:Praytell, what is the deeper moral philosophy? It's pretty much the only thing that can be used to justify left-libertarianism, anarcho-libertarianism anarcho-socialism as being even remotely compatible with anarcho-capitalism. First we create an area of subjectivity. Then we claim it is the base from which rational behavior arises. And so we end up with the perfect doublethink. Subjectivity is reason. Reason is subjective.
Daniel Waite:Praytell, what is the deeper moral philosophy?
It's pretty much the only thing that can be used to justify left-libertarianism, anarcho-libertarianism anarcho-socialism as being even remotely compatible with anarcho-capitalism.
First we create an area of subjectivity. Then we claim it is the base from which rational behavior arises. And so we end up with the perfect doublethink.
Subjectivity is reason. Reason is subjective.
Huh?
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
wombatron:Huh?
I prefer reason to subjectivity. That's 90% of the arguments with BP and I. He has a vision for the world. I don't. I don't feel a particular vision or outcome is compatible with liberty. It's just trading one idealism of social planning for another.
liberty student:I prefer reason to subjectivity. That's 90% of the arguments with BP and I. He has a vision for the world. I don't. I don't feel a particular vision or outcome is compatible with liberty. It's just trading one idealism of social planning for another.
Bingo. Thank you again kind sir, you have cleared the mist obstructing my vision regarding this peculiarity I have found amongst several threads.
I would like to add that if you DO have a vision, great! Contract with others, write a book, script a movie, program a video game to tell your story, but don't force it on others.
Let's be honest now: you're in your cabin in the middle of the woods at night, with a gun under your pillow, and you hear somebody breaking in. How many of you would really hesitate before blowing this individual's brains out?
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Daniel Waite:I would like to add that if you DO have a vision, great! Contract with others, write a book, script a movie, program a video game to tell your story, but don't force it on others.
Because economics can't tell us anything .
Brainpolice: To use an extreme example, shooting someone just because they are standing on your lawn clearly violates the non-aggression principle. The only qualifier for the right to use force in such scenarios is when there is escalation in light of a consistant refusal to get off the property. Otherwise, we're just misusing property rights theory to justify violations of the right to life and liberty. The fact that you have private property by itself is not a sufficient justification for arbitrary force on others. Also, in normal situations, it simply is not necessary to use force to get someone to get off of your property. People generally aren't going to arbitrarily tresspass onto people's homes and whatnot or insist on squatting on your home.
To use an extreme example, shooting someone just because they are standing on your lawn clearly violates the non-aggression principle. The only qualifier for the right to use force in such scenarios is when there is escalation in light of a consistant refusal to get off the property. Otherwise, we're just misusing property rights theory to justify violations of the right to life and liberty. The fact that you have private property by itself is not a sufficient justification for arbitrary force on others.
Also, in normal situations, it simply is not necessary to use force to get someone to get off of your property. People generally aren't going to arbitrarily tresspass onto people's homes and whatnot or insist on squatting on your home.
>>>The fact that you have private property by itself is not a sufficient justification for arbitrary force on others.
well, in this sentance you havem issed out a conjunction. as whilst the fact that you have private property by itself if not a sufficient justification for force on others ( though it is necessary)
perhaps the fact that you have private property, and this property is being aggressed upon allows you to summon an arbitrary degree of force against the aggressor
the issue of what is necessary to 'resolve' the situation is a diversion from the point at stake, i.e. what actions are to be tolerated, and what actions are disallowed under the context of libertarian law. (when dealing with trespassers, which some would label 'petty')the point that violence wont often be needed to remove tresspassers from lawns, is true regardless of whether landowners have the right to adopt a 'shoot till they die or leave' policy, or have no such right. or if the right is to be determined by a coin toss whenever the issue arises. now, shooting and getting a reputation for shooting can be assumed to bring its own negative consequences that are disincentives from that course of action. but what is it in the action that makes the action incompatible with the non-initiation of aggression 'axiom'?it seems to me that all you can say about trespassers is that they trespass till they stop trespassing. and whilst in the 'trespass'-time-zone, when they are engaged in trespass they have initiated aggression, and anything that is done to them by another agent cant be criticised on the grounds of not-initiating agression. because admittedly the agent is not initiating aggression but meeting an offered aggression with his own. you have correctly identified good reasons why its against agents best interests to bind themselves and the others in their societies to a code of conduct that <i>positively commits</i> them to violent defence of their property for even the 'most minor' offences. And one would hope that a libertarian scoiety of individuals, would by extension of the respect given to each others property, in the shared environment of mutual prosperity would lead to a kindler gentler society, one less likely to go for the gun . Yet this doesnt mean that these individuals do not have the right to violently defend (even if its reasonable to assume they rarely choose to use this right).--------the other part of this though is the knowledge problem of judging initiation of aggression, judging that trespass has occurred, this problem is assumed away by many of the purported 'dilemas' that simply propose that there definitely is some kind of minor trespass going on.
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
wombatron: Daniel Waite:They misunderstand the nature of libertarianism. These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality. Therefore, the only proper questions which can be addressed in this philosophy are of the sort, if the flagpole hanger attempts to come in to the apartment, and the occupant shoots him for trespassing, Would the forces of law and order punish the home owner? Or, if the owner of the cabin in the woods sets up a booby trap, such that when someone forces his way into his property he gets a face full of buckshot, Would he be guilty of a law violation? When put in this way, the answer is clear. The owner in each case is in the right, and the trespasser in the wrong. If force is used to protect property rights, even deadly force, the owner is not guilty of the violation of any licit law. And that is exactly where Block is in error. He removes the non-aggression principle from its proper context (the derivative of a deeper moral philosophy), and tries to establish it is a stand-alone axiom.
Daniel Waite:They misunderstand the nature of libertarianism. These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality. Therefore, the only proper questions which can be addressed in this philosophy are of the sort, if the flagpole hanger attempts to come in to the apartment, and the occupant shoots him for trespassing, Would the forces of law and order punish the home owner? Or, if the owner of the cabin in the woods sets up a booby trap, such that when someone forces his way into his property he gets a face full of buckshot, Would he be guilty of a law violation? When put in this way, the answer is clear. The owner in each case is in the right, and the trespasser in the wrong. If force is used to protect property rights, even deadly force, the owner is not guilty of the violation of any licit law.
And that is exactly where Block is in error. He removes the non-aggression principle from its proper context (the derivative of a deeper moral philosophy), and tries to establish it is a stand-alone axiom.
I agree. And it also doesn't make sense to me how he claims that it's somehow not related to ethics, as if the non-aggression principle and property rights are not ethical concepts when clearly they are interpersonal ethical norms.
No, this point of contention has nothing directly to do with left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism. It's actually along the lines of Ayn Rand's criticism of libertarians. It's the difference between an integrated social philosophy of libertarianism and a thin approach. You just injected left-libertarianism into the discussion when this is a philosophical question of how libertarian principles relate to eachother and where they come from. My point has more to do with concept formation then a left-libertarian talking point. So please stop politisizing these conversations.
liberty student: wombatron:Huh? I prefer reason to subjectivity. That's 90% of the arguments with BP and I. He has a vision for the world. I don't. I don't feel a particular vision or outcome is compatible with liberty. It's just trading one idealism of social planning for another.
I find your claim to be value-free as highly disingenous. Noone is value-free. Your arguments are value-laden and you constantly use value-laden terminology. We all do. You're also viciously misrepresenting me once again, as I have never argued for any kind of central planning, I've only argued for the preferability of certain values and questioned the degree to which certain values are compatible with libertarianism. To treat libertarianism as if it has no relationship to other goals is nonsensical.
GilesStratton: Let's be honest now: you're in your cabin in the middle of the woods at night, with a gun under your pillow, and you hear somebody breaking in. How many of you would really hesitate before blowing this individual's brains out?
I wouldn't immediately shoot upon merely seeing this person in my house. Perhaps I would threaten to shoot, but by no means does it necessarily mean I will have to. I would only have to shoot if they persistantly threaten my life. You're just expressing your own hasty preferance to immediately shoot, and the theory that most people would immediately shoot without even threatening or attempting to get a better grasp of the situation is untenable.
i do think there is a fair distinction to make between having a vision for the 'form' as opposed to the 'content'.
though these arent precise words, not exactly suiting the purpose. I think there are libertarians who desire not just that society have libertarian form, but that the agents make liberal decisions, or have contracts with particular clauses in them etc. there are other libertarians who have geniunley satisfied themselves that as far as their political advocation goes, they will do no more than promote the libertarian law as a basis and leave the details to the future market.
maybe that is implausable Brain, im not 100% sure eitherway. there could well be some cognitive dissonance, know thyself stuff affecting all of us. but i dont think its implausable to have these two broad classifications. formists and then contentists.....
nirgrahamUK: Brainpolice: To use an extreme example, shooting someone just because they are standing on your lawn clearly violates the non-aggression principle. The only qualifier for the right to use force in such scenarios is when there is escalation in light of a consistant refusal to get off the property. Otherwise, we're just misusing property rights theory to justify violations of the right to life and liberty. The fact that you have private property by itself is not a sufficient justification for arbitrary force on others. Also, in normal situations, it simply is not necessary to use force to get someone to get off of your property. People generally aren't going to arbitrarily tresspass onto people's homes and whatnot or insist on squatting on your home. >>>The fact that you have private property by itself is not a sufficient justification for arbitrary force on others. well, in this sentance you havem issed out a conjunction. as whilst the fact that you have private property by itself if not a sufficient justification for force on others ( though it is necessary) perhaps the fact that you have private property, and this property is being aggressed upon allows you to summon an arbitrary degree of force against the aggressor the issue of what is necessary to 'resolve' the situation is a diversion from the point at stake, i.e. what actions are to be tolerated, and what actions are disallowed under the context of libertarian law. (when dealing with trespassers, which some would label 'petty')the point that violence wont often be needed to remove tresspassers from lawns, is true regardless of whether landowners have the right to adopt a 'shoot till they die or leave' policy, or have no such right. or if the right is to be determined by a coin toss whenever the issue arises. now, shooting and getting a reputation for shooting can be assumed to bring its own negative consequences that are disincentives from that course of action. but what is it in the action that makes the action incompatible with the non-initiation of aggression 'axiom'?it seems to me that all you can say about trespassers is that they trespass till they stop trespassing. and whilst in the 'trespass'-time-zone, when they are engaged in trespass they have initiated aggression, and anything that is done to them by another agent cant be criticised on the grounds of not-initiating agression. because admittedly the agent is not initiating aggression but meeting an offered aggression with his own. you have correctly identified good reasons why its against agents best interests to bind themselves and the others in their societies to a code of conduct that <i>positively commits</i> them to violent defence of their property for even the 'most minor' offences. And one would hope that a libertarian scoiety of individuals, would by extension of the respect given to each others property, in the shared environment of mutual prosperity would lead to a kindler gentler society, one less likely to go for the gun . Yet this doesnt mean that these individuals do not have the right to violently defend (even if its reasonable to assume they rarely choose to use this right).--------the other part of this though is the knowledge problem of judging initiation of aggression, judging that trespass has occurred, this problem is assumed away by many of the purported 'dilemas' that simply propose that there definitely is some kind of minor trespass going on.
The problem is that some of these situations are clearly NOT self-defense, you are clearly initiating force and merely using your property as the justification. If you just shoot someone just because they are on your property, you are very clearly still a murderer. So while your tendency to try to frame this as a self-defense issue is understandable, I think you're completely overlooking the context of the situations. There is a huge difference between genuine self-defense or reasonable force in conditions of escalation and initiations of force onto people in reaction to property disputes or damages and ex-post facto acts of revenge. I also think your tendency to act as if aggression against property is identical or proportional in nature to aggression against a person is nonsensical. An act of tresspass is not equivolent to an initiation of aggression against your person, and killing or physically incapacitating someone is not proportional. The only context in which killing someone makes sense is if they overtly threaten your life and persistantly refuse to get off of your property. Otherwise, you are clearly an initiatior of force.
Brainpolice:I find your claim to be value-free as highly disingenous. Noone is value-free. Your arguments are value-laden and you constantly use value-laden terminology. We all do.
Clever twisting of what I said. I never said I was value free. I said that I don't feel the need to expect a certain outcome of values from libertarianism. Subtle but important difference.
Brainpolice:You're also viciously misrepresenting me once again, as I have never argued for any kind of central planning, I've only argued for the preferability of certain values and questioned the degree to which certain values are compatible with libertarianism.
Must be a Freudian slip on your part. I wrote social planning, not central planning. I haven't mis-represented anything.
Brainpolice:To treat libertarianism as if it has no relationship to other goals is nonsensical.
Not in the least. What is nonsensical is to apply other goals to libertarianism, setting up the struggle for who is truly libertarian, what libertarianism should attain etc. Libertarianism doesn't need to be conflated with racial equality any more than it needs to be associated with racial diversity or segregation.
Recently when I asked you about Feminism, you admitted it exists outside libertarianism, and it isn't necessary to be a feminist if you are a libertarian. And yet Roderick Long wrote to Walter Block and JH Huebert,
Huebert and Block conclude that libertarians “should win with their own ideas, on their own terms, and avoid pandering to statists of any stripe.” I entirely agree. But to Huebert and Block it apparently seems that I am violating this advice by embracing “the ideas and rhetoric of the left.”Nonsense! These ideas were ours first, when we libertarians were the original left. We pioneered the ideas that today are associated with the left—class conflict, anti-corporatism, and worker empowerment (as well, incidentally, as feminism, antiracism, antimilitarism, and environmentalism). We let the statist left steal these ideas and rhetoric from us during our long and unfortunate alliance with the right; but the statist left never had any legitimate claim to them, since left-statist policies are actually inimical to all these goals. (As Rothbard once put it, left-statism is the confused pursuit of libertarian goals by anti-libertarian means.) Left-libertarianism is not a call to dilute libertarianism by introducing alien elements; it’s a call to recover our own distinctive heritage.
Apparently Long sees feminism as necessary as a part of the Libertarian heritage.
You'll probably take this the wrong way, but it is honest. Half the time I don't know if you guys are lying to yourselves or lying to me. These days, I no longer care.
liberty student: Brainpolice:I find your claim to be value-free as highly disingenous. Noone is value-free. Your arguments are value-laden and you constantly use value-laden terminology. We all do. Clever twisting of what I said. I never said I was value free. I said that I don't feel the need to expect a certain outcome of values from libertarianism. Subtle but important difference. Brainpolice:You're also viciously misrepresenting me once again, as I have never argued for any kind of central planning, I've only argued for the preferability of certain values and questioned the degree to which certain values are compatible with libertarianism. Must be a Freudian slip on your part. I wrote social planning, not central planning. I haven't mis-represented anything. Brainpolice:To treat libertarianism as if it has no relationship to other goals is nonsensical. Not in the least. What is nonsensical is to apply other goals to libertarianism, setting up the struggle for who is truly libertarian, what libertarianism should attain etc. Libertarianism doesn't need to be conflated with racial equality any more than it needs to be associated with racial diversity or segregation. Recently when I asked you about Feminism, you admitted it exists outside libertarianism, and it isn't necessary to be a feminist if you are a libertarian. And yet Roderick Long wrote to Walter Block and JH Huebert, Huebert and Block conclude that libertarians “should win with their own ideas, on their own terms, and avoid pandering to statists of any stripe.” I entirely agree. But to Huebert and Block it apparently seems that I am violating this advice by embracing “the ideas and rhetoric of the left.”Nonsense! These ideas were ours first, when we libertarians were the original left. We pioneered the ideas that today are associated with the left—class conflict, anti-corporatism, and worker empowerment (as well, incidentally, as feminism, antiracism, antimilitarism, and environmentalism). We let the statist left steal these ideas and rhetoric from us during our long and unfortunate alliance with the right; but the statist left never had any legitimate claim to them, since left-statist policies are actually inimical to all these goals. (As Rothbard once put it, left-statism is the confused pursuit of libertarian goals by anti-libertarian means.) Left-libertarianism is not a call to dilute libertarianism by introducing alien elements; it’s a call to recover our own distinctive heritage. Apparently Long sees feminism as necessary as a part of the Libertarian heritage. You'll probably take this the wrong way, but it is honest. Half the time I don't know if you guys are lying to yourselves or lying to me. These days, I no longer care.
Once again, LS, you are functioning as a troll. This thread is about concept formation in relation to libertarian principles and the extent to which violence is justified in defense of property. You are functioning as a troll by bringing up things like feminism and anti-racism, which has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
As for your weak arguments about goals, libertarianism has goals. Libertarianism is a social theory of justice. You cannot divorce libertarianism from a concept of justice. So unless you wish to devolve into a purely utilitarian approach to libertarianism, which Rothbard explicitly denounced, you're going to have to reconcile with the fact that there must be a comprehensive philosophy of liberty in order for it to be coherant.
Also, it wouldn't make sense for someone to favor libertarianism if they thought that it would lead to negative consequences. Why should it be treated as an end in and of itself, divorced from all other values? That simply makes no sense on a philosophical level. Suppose someone told you they favored "war" as an end in and of itself while simultaneously openly aknowledging that war has horrible consequences. Would that make any sense to you?
As for Long's views on libertarianism and feminism, yes - that heritage is a matter of history, particularly the history of individualist anarchism, which tended to embrace early feminism from a libertarian perspective. I already clarified this matter to you reapeatedly anyways, and you've yet to respond to the argument I made.
In either case, if you wish to misrepresent Long as argueing that you have to be a feminist to be a libertarian, then you'vsimply misunderstood the point completely and have erected a straw man. The point is, first, a historical one that many early libertarians embraced the early feminist movement (this list includes even Herbert Spencer). The other simple and harmless point, which I repeated to you ad neuseum while being trolled, is that feminism can be either compatible or incompatible with libertarianism depending on which approach to feminism you are talking about.
I'm not neither lieing to myself or lieing to you. I'm being repeatedly misunderstood, misrepresented and trolled by you. Stop it.
Brainpolice:If you just shoot someone just because they are on your property, you are very clearly still a murderer
this is question begging, isnt it?