Brainpolice: Richard A Garner: I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her? Yes. In my understanding, libertarianism is incompatible with unchosen positive obligations.You can help other people all you want. It's just not obligatory if you didn't actually choose the obligations.
Richard A Garner: I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her?
I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her?
Yes. In my understanding, libertarianism is incompatible with unchosen positive obligations.You can help other people all you want. It's just not obligatory if you didn't actually choose the obligations.
That is a common view, but not a necessary one, as I will show when I get to your argument later.
Most people probably would try to help out their mother anyways. I would. All I state is that you cannot legitimately force/coerce them into doing so, I.E. that it truly is not obligatory for them to do so without consent.
Not all obligations are or should be morally enforcable, and not all obligations are correlative to rights. So it is perfectly possible to say that people have positive obligations to help others or to protect them without saying that it is right that they be forced to do so, or that those others have rights that they do so.
As I've argued to anarcho-syndicalists before (not that I'm insinuating that you are one), there is a fundamental contradiction between ownership over the products of one's labor and the idea of an unchosen positive obligation to appease people's "needs" (I.E. positive rights and altruism). If you truly own the products of you labor then you may freely exclude them from others. If you have an unchosen positive obligation to fulfill "need", then you cannot consistantly have individual sovereignty. These obligations would become coercive and those claiming such positive rights would effectively become thieves.
No, they would become thieves if they forced you to contribute the products of their labour. The fact that your mother shouldn't steal, say, my food if you are hungry, does not imply that I am not under any moral obligation to give it to you. All it implies is that you shouldn't take it without my say so.
What does it mean to have an "obligation" if no one is allowed to force you to do it?
Don't allow leftists to play games with definitions! Some of the libertarian-leaning leftists at this forum will try to redefine "left-wing" back to its original defition (Third Estate, limited government, free-markets, laissez-faire reforms, etc.). Fine! We non-leftists can't stop them from using their own personal definitions; they can use whatever labels they want to describe any concept they want.However, they have the audacity to then use their personal definition of "left-wing" (remember, the original definition, which is no longer valid) to prove that modern leftists are more libertarian than modern rightists! They will say that libertarianism is "inherently leftist" (again, using the original, no longer valid definition), and use that to insist that we should prefer and side with modern leftists over modern rightists.
Question their motives.
Ego: What does it mean to have an "obligation" if no one is allowed to force you to do it?
Precisely. What's the point of positive obligations if they are unenforcable? People will do whatever it is that they do then. It no longer is really a matter of morality at that point. It reduces to a personal preferance as to wether or not to fulfill such alleged obligations. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter.
Richard A Garner:Not all obligations are or should be morally enforcable, and not all obligations are correlative to rights.
In my understanding, all rights claims entail obligations. Positive rights claims entail positive obligations, while negative rights claims entail negative obligations (I.E. the absence of certain actions with respect to others).
No, they would become thieves if they forced you to contribute the products of their labour.
Right. Or if they had a 3rd party force you to do so. In other words, as soon as such unchosen positive obligations are enforced they become negative rights violations. That's precisely my point and is why I consider unchosen positive obligations to be incompatible with liberty. As soon as they are enforced the NAP is breached.
The fact that your mother shouldn't steal, say, my food if you are hungry, does not imply that I am not under any moral obligation to give it to you. All it implies is that you shouldn't take it without my say so.
But then if it truly depends on my say so, I may say "no". If I truly have the right to say "no", then it is not an obligation. A meaningful one at least. If you can exclude it from others, then by definition you have no unchosen positive obligation to give it up to them.
Stolz25:Maybe they all just decided to take a nap on the comfortable railroad tracks.
In such a case, mayhap your obligation would actually be to do nothing, for the good of the species, that we are no longer polluted by such idiots as would take a nap on railroad tracks.
Ego:Would you consider it murder to kill the mass-murderer, knowing that it would result in the death of an innocent person?
Add in JCFulsome's proviso, that the death of the mass murderer is causally connected to the death of the innocent person, and the answer is yes. Remove it and the answer is no.
The consequences of inaction have no effect on whether the action is ethically justified. There are no positive obligations, only negative ones.
Stephen Forde:Add in JCFulsome's proviso, that the death of the mass murderer is causally connected to the death of the innocent person, and the answer is yes. Remove it and the answer is no.
First off, your ad hominem attack in the misspelling of my name is uncalled for and childish.
Secondly, do you need to be certain that another will die automatically for it to be murder? What if it is a 90% chance, or a 50% chance? You can never really be certain it's not the case, can you? Is it ever, then, permissible to use lethal force in self-defense?
Even more, what if, say, there's a pressure sensor on a person's forearm to detect that you've blocked the stroke of a sword (getting a little outlandish here, I know) which will automatically kill another if you do. Are you then obligated to allow the blow to fall?
If you say yes, your philosophy is even more outlandish than my scenario. The culpability for the murder here belongs to the sword-swinger alone.
JCFolsom: Stephen Forde:I think one can only be considered an accomplice and held responsible for a criminal’s action if they have entered into a contract with them which supports and sanctions their action. Taxpayers haven’t entered into a contract with government agents. They in no way sanction the actions of government agents. I don't see how it's different than the bomb-throwing scenario. You are taking an action (sending in that check) to save yourself from the violence of an aggressor (the government) which you know will result in the harm of many others who are innocent in this situation. Your alternatives may be ugly, but it is still, as it has been said, by your free will that you do your work and pay your taxes. So, are you or are you not justified in taking an action that harms another to save yourself? If you answer no, and you pay taxes, you are a hypocrite.
Stephen Forde:I think one can only be considered an accomplice and held responsible for a criminal’s action if they have entered into a contract with them which supports and sanctions their action. Taxpayers haven’t entered into a contract with government agents. They in no way sanction the actions of government agents.
I don't see how it's different than the bomb-throwing scenario. You are taking an action (sending in that check) to save yourself from the violence of an aggressor (the government) which you know will result in the harm of many others who are innocent in this situation. Your alternatives may be ugly, but it is still, as it has been said, by your free will that you do your work and pay your taxes. So, are you or are you not justified in taking an action that harms another to save yourself? If you answer no, and you pay taxes, you are a hypocrite.
Taxpayers are not the ones causing harm. Government agents are.
Stephen Forde: Ego:Would you consider it murder to kill the mass-murderer, knowing that it would result in the death of an innocent person? Add in JCFulsome's proviso, that the death of the mass murderer is causally connected to the death of the innocent person, and the answer is yes. Remove it and the answer is no. The consequences of inaction have no effect on whether the action is ethically justified. There are no positive obligations, only negative ones.
No one is saying that anyone has any positive obligations (aside from Richard A Garner).
Why should JC's modification matter? If it's clear from history that an innocent person will die, why does it matter whether or not it's a machine doing the killing? In any event, let's assume that JC's modification in effect.
Do you realize that you are creating a system which rewards gangs who hold someone hostage? Fellow gang members know that people will be afraid to kill any of their murderers because people like you will want to prosecute and punish the heros.
I don't want to this to come across as snarky, rude, or insulting to any former leftist, but did you use to be one?
edit: can't type
Stephen Forde:Taxpayers are not the ones causing harm. Government agents are.
Only with the resources you've given them under a duress you state does not exempt you from culpability. You might as well pay your taxes in bullets. It is the same as giving an axe to a known axe-murderer. Are you saying that such an action does not make you an accessory to murder, but defending yourself from an attacker with a human shield makes you a murderer? Preposterous!
It means that an action is something you ought, morally, to do, or chose to do.
JCFolsom:First off, your ad hominem attack in the misspelling of my name is uncalled for and childish.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misspell your name. I’m trying to respond to too many posts at once and I make mistakes. There would be a lot more if I wasn’t typing everything up in Word first to make sure the spelling and grammar is incorrect. I don’t take exception to anything you have said. I’ve rather enjoyed arguing this topic. We’re all libertarians here. Nobody on this forum would advocate something like a minimum wage. All we are arguing over is the finer points of our political philosophy.
JCFolsom:Secondly, do you need to be certain that another will die automatically for it to be murder? What if it is a 90% chance, or a 50% chance? You can never really be certain it's not the case, can you? Is it ever, then, permissible to use lethal force in self-defense?
There is always uncertainty in every action. The intent of the action is divorced from the result. You are only guilty of murder if the person dies. If you take that chance it’s your proper assumption of risk.
JCFolsom: Even more, what if, say, there's a pressure sensor on a person's forearm to detect that you've blocked the stroke of a sword (getting a little outlandish here, I know) which will automatically kill another if you do. Are you then obligated to allow the blow to fall? If you say yes, your philosophy is even more outlandish than my scenario. The culpability for the murder here belongs to the sword-swinger alone.
I think that culpability lies with the sword as well unless the person put the pressure sensor on their own forearm.
Brainpolice: Ego: What does it mean to have an "obligation" if no one is allowed to force you to do it? Precisely. What's the point of positive obligations if they are unenforcable? People will do whatever it is that they do then. It no longer is really a matter of morality at that point. It reduces to a personal preferance as to wether or not to fulfill such alleged obligations. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter.
Why is it no longer a matter of morality? And what people will do is irrelevent to the question of what they ought to do.
Richard A Garner:Not all obligations are or should be morally enforcable, and not all obligations are correlative to rights. In my understanding, all rights claims entail obligations. Positive rights claims entail positive obligations, while negative rights claims entail negative obligations (I.E. the absence of certain actions with respect to others).
This may be true, but it doesn't address the question of whether all obligations are correlative with rights. The fact that the rights I hold against you entail obligations you owe to me does not in anyway have anything to do with the possibility that you owe obligations to me without my having rights correlative to those obligations.
No, they would become thieves if they forced you to contribute the products of their labour. Right. Or if they had a 3rd party force you to do so. In other words, as soon as such unchosen positive obligations are enforced they become negative rights violations. That's precisely my point and is why I consider unchosen positive obligations to be incompatible with liberty. As soon as they are enforced the NAP is breached.
But it is the enforcement of the obligation that violates the NAP, not the presence of it. Why can't I have an obligation it would be immoral for you to enforce?
The fact that your mother shouldn't steal, say, my food if you are hungry, does not imply that I am not under any moral obligation to give it to you. All it implies is that you shouldn't take it without my say so. But then if it truly depends on my say so, I may say "no". If I truly have the right to say "no", then it is not an obligation. A meaningful one at least. If you can exclude it from others, then by definition you have no unchosen positive obligation to give it up to them.
Sure it is an obligation. You can have the power to choose what you should do with you property and it still be true that one option be the one you should be chosing as opposed to others.
I have not encountered many libertarians who think that morality only encompasses what it is OK to force people to do or not do.
To start, I can see how a spell checker could lead to that mistake. It's kewl.
Stephen Forde:I think that culpability lies with the sword as well unless the person put the pressure sensor on their own forearm.
I must assume you mean the swordsman, not the sword itself. In that case, please explain to me how taking one action, killing the life-monitored killer to save yourself, is morally different from blocking the killer with the pressure sensor? I suspect there may be some misunderstanding here.
My how this thread has burgeoned...
Do you differentiate what is immoral for one to do from what one may enforce as a matter of rights? E.g., would you say that it reflects poorly on the character of one who failed to live up to such an obligation (demonstrating a lack of gratitude) but that they may not be forced into such an action?
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Ego:Why should JC's modification matter? If it's clear from history that an innocent person will die, why does it matter whether or not it's a machine doing the killing?
If it is just the case that the mass-murderer is hooked up to a machine, then if one kills the mass-murderer, they have set off a causal chain of events which leads to the hostage’s death. If the mass-murderer has a friend who kills the hostage on his behalf after you kill the mass-murderer, you are not culpable. He is freely acting and responsible for the hostage’s death.
Ego:Do you realize that you are creating a system which rewards gangs who hold someone hostage? Fellow gang members know that people will be afraid to kill any of their murderers because people like you will want to prosecute and punish the heros.
It is not heroic to use an innocent third parties person or property against their will in any quest for justice. If the results of what I’m advocating encourages hostage taking, so what? It would also encourage the development of greater precision and non-lethal weapons and tactics. And the incentives for hostage taking would be far lower in a free society. Insurance/protection agencies would put hits out on hostage taker’s heads, because they would pose a serious liability to the insurance agency if they used their hostages as human shields while they are committing crimes. The insurance firm would be liable to pay up for any damages the gangsters committed on the one hand, or liable if any of their own agents ended up killing any of the human shields. There would be a large incentive to find more sophisticated methods of dealing with hostage takers.
And yes. I used to be a lefty, a consequentialist, a liberal.
JCFolsom:Only with the resources you've given them under a duress you state does not exempt you from culpability. You might as well pay your taxes in bullets. It is the same as giving an axe to a known axe-murderer. Are you saying that such an action does not make you an accessory to murder, but defending yourself from an attacker with a human shield makes you a murderer? Preposterous!
I think that for one to be an accessory they must both actively support and sanction the perpetrator of the crime. Both conditions are necessary and neither is sufficient. Giving an axe to a known axe-murderer might make one an accessory. I'm not sure. But a taxpayer definitely doesn't qualify. He doesn't give his support willingly, as is demonstrated by the fact that coercion is used to extract funds from him, so the fact that he gives support does not mean that he also gives a sanction.
Jon Irenicus: My how this thread has burgeoned... I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her? Do you differentiate what is immoral for one to do from what one may enforce as a matter of rights? E.g., would you say that it reflects poorly on the character of one who failed to live up to such an obligation (demonstrating a lack of gratitude) but that they may not be forced into such an action?
Yes, kind of like that. Although I would say that both obligations that are correlative to rights and obligations that aren't are moral obligations, but only the latter should be enforced (because enforcing the former requires breaking the latter sort obligations owed by the enforcers to the enforcee - eg. you have an obligation to save a drowning man, but forcing you to do so would violate your rights, which also involves breaking an obligation).
JCFolsom:I must assume you mean the swordsman, not the sword itself. In that case, please explain to me how taking one action, killing the life-monitored killer to save yourself, is morally different from blocking the killer with the pressure sensor? I suspect there may be some misunderstanding here.
The swordsman still has the option of ending his swing at the last minute, after the victim raised their arm to block. So the swordsman's action is the last in the causal chain of events leading to the hostages death. I think it is always the last action which starts a causal chain of events which leads to harm which is the criminal one.
Richard A Garner:A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?
Absolutely. I hold that an action is moral if it has good results, and the person is sure of those results. As long as the person is sure that the action will save the others, and there is no large probability that 6 will be killed instead of five, it is moral.
Richard A Garner:As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
Probably not, because chances are that the fat man won't stop the trolley completely. Of course, if somebody is sure that the trolley will be stoppped by the fat man, it will be moral for that person to intervene.
Richard A Garner: A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.
A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.
Even less moral, because chances are that there are significant probabilities that the transplants won't succeed, and some won't be saved.
Our weaponry is about as precise as human arms and wrists will allow. In fact, militaries around the world are researching precision weaponry faster than the free-market would dictate. That point isn't important, though.
You said that in my original hostage scenario (not JC's modification) -- despite the fact that I knew from history that the hostage would be killed if I killed the mass-murderer -- it's not my fault, it's the fault of the person who killed the hostage (because it was his choice). In the case of JC's modification (where it's a device hooked up), why isn't it the fault of the person who chose to attach the device to the hostage (and to the gang member)? Same with human shields; why isn't it the fault of the mass-murderer who chose to employ human the shields? In all of these examples, you are acting in a way that would otherwise be completely legitimate, even using your value system. The difference is that someone evil chose to do something that knowingly results in another innocent life lost. That's why any lives lost in this way should be blamed on the true aggressor, not the man acting to defend himself and his family.
Stephen Forde:I think that for one to be an accessory they must both actively support and sanction the perpetrator of the crime. Both conditions are necessary and neither is sufficient. Giving an axe to a known axe-murderer might make one an accessory. I'm not sure. But a taxpayer definitely doesn't qualify. He doesn't give his support willingly, as is demonstrated by the fact that coercion is used to extract funds from him, so the fact that he gives support does not mean that he also gives a sanction.
Ah, but the taxpayer does give it willingly, according to many here. True, he is faced with dire consequences via government thugs if he refuses, but merely being faced with such duress does not remove one's culpability. You make this point repeatedly in saying that shooting the man with the life monitor makes you a murderer of the innocent in the trap
Your fallacy comes in thinking that the automated mechanism is any less the result of the aggressor's action than his presence in trying to directly harm you. BOTH are fully HIS aggressions. If we have an absolute right to defend ourselves, as I think we do, this right cannot be done away with because some cackling supervillain decides to be sure that his very last act is a murder.
That being said, I think we're beginning to get circular here. I cannot really comprehend the logic of your position, if there is any, and you, apparently, find no opposing arguments convincing either. It's been a long thread...
It is no longer a matter of morality because there is no "ought" if it's not truly enforcably obligatory. It's just something you may or may not choose to do based on your own whims or preferances. A morality that is not enforcable is no morality at all. It becomes aesthetics, as when it comes down to it you can prefer and do whatever you want, since no particular standard is enforcable. What's the point of saying "you ought to do X" if in the same breath one says "but noone can make you do X". Logically, that would reduce to "you don't have to do X". Hence, it ceases to be an obligation.
You can't have an obligation that it would be immoral to enforce because that negates the entire point of it being an obligation. The obligation would not be legitimate if the only way to enforce it would be to breach morality. Legitimacy is the key question. There is no such thing as a legitimate obligation that cannot be morally enforced.
If it's a matter of whatever you have the power to do then the obligation becomes meaningless. Furthermore, I think that once legitimacy in ownership of the property has been established, it's irrelevant what you do with it. There is no obligation for what to do with it once legitimacy in ownership has been established. In the absence of any blatant NAP violation, how you use it henceforth becomes a matter of personal preferance.
And I have never encountered any libertarians who think that libertarian ethics are unenforcable yet somehow it still entails tangible obligations. What's the point of ethics if it's unenforcable? Functionally, it ceases to be ethics.
Stephen Forde: When it comes to personal ethics, I think intent matters. When it comes to interpersonal ethics I don't think it does. If someone is driving drunk, and they accidentally kill somebody, they should be just as liable as if they intentionally killed them. The result of their action is the effect of someone else dying, whether they intended it or not. They are no less responsible for the other person's death because it was accidental. The family of the victim should be entitled to the same proportional restitution and retribution. This is the proper assumption of risk for not taking precautions to avoid killing someone. And even if the driver were sober, the same would hold. He is still responsible for his choice to drive that day, and just as culpable.
When it comes to personal ethics, I think intent matters. When it comes to interpersonal ethics I don't think it does. If someone is driving drunk, and they accidentally kill somebody, they should be just as liable as if they intentionally killed them. The result of their action is the effect of someone else dying, whether they intended it or not. They are no less responsible for the other person's death because it was accidental. The family of the victim should be entitled to the same proportional restitution and retribution. This is the proper assumption of risk for not taking precautions to avoid killing someone. And even if the driver were sober, the same would hold. He is still responsible for his choice to drive that day, and just as culpable.
If a sober driver has an accident (a real accident, that's not his fault - a tyre blows out or the steering linkage breaks or something; or even a sudden and unforeseeable heart attack, etc. - not an "accident" resulting from the driver's stupidity) and kills someone, he should be treated in the same way as if he'd deliberately set out to murder the "victim"? I don't think so.
(From the original question: what if Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao and Mugabe are the guys tied to the main track, and Ludwig von Mises is tied to the other track - do you still pull the lever? What if someone else is about to pull it - do you stop him? )
I suppose I consider "personal ethics" to be subjective "aesthetics" and therefore not real ethics at all. The only kind of ethics that ever made sense to me is interpersonal ethics. I can't see how one can truly have a genuine obligation to themselves.
Stephen Forde: There would be a lot more if I wasn’t typing everything up in Word first to make sure the spelling and grammar is incorrect.
There would be a lot more if I wasn’t typing everything up in Word first to make sure the spelling and grammar is incorrect.
You deliberately check that the spelling and grammar are incorrect before posting? Interesting choice
JCFolsom:Ah, but the taxpayer does give it willingly, according to many here.
According to who?
Let's change the scenario. The hostage is now with the mass-murderer and armed. Do they have a right to kill you, to prevent you from defending yourself from the mass-murderer and indirectly killing them?
JCFolsom:I cannot really comprehend the logic of your position, if there is any, and you, apparently, find no opposing arguments convincing either.
My position is basically Rothbardian. We have exclusive jurisdiction over our person and any property we homestead. If we have a right to our person and property, we have a right to defend it, but only in proportion to the aggression being imposed on us. If a crime has been committed against us, we have a right to both restitution and retribution each in proportion to the crime. We may not conscript others, or force them to give us the necessary funds, or otherwise use their property in our persuit of justice. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lies with the plaintiff, not the defendent. The proper assumption of risk lies with the aggressor not the victim.
All of this except the last part can be found in the first 5 or 6 chapters of the Ethics of Liberty.
My point is that we only have the right to defend ourselves against an aggressing party. We don't have the right to use any innocent bystanders as a means to that end against their will. And I don't see why that should change just because the situation is an extreme one.
user="Brainpolice"]Why is it no longer a matter of morality? And what people will do is irrelevent to the question of what they ought to do. It is no longer a matter of morality because there is no "ought" if it's not truly enforcably obligatory. It's just something you may or may not choose to do based on your own whims or preferances.
It is no longer a matter of morality because there is no "ought" if it's not truly enforcably obligatory. It's just something you may or may not choose to do based on your own whims or preferances.
So what? Why does that mean that it ceases to be something you should choose to do?
A morality that is not enforcable is no morality at all. It becomes aesthetics, as when it comes down to it you can prefer and do whatever you want, since no particular standard is enforcable. What's the point of saying "you ought to do X" if in the same breath one says "but noone can make you do X". Logically, that would reduce to "you don't have to do X". Hence, it ceases to be an obligation.
No, it is an obligation if that is what you ought to do. Why should the fact that you are not forced to do X mean that X is not something you ought to do?
But it is the enforcement of the obligation that violates the NAP, not the presence of it. Why can't I have an obligation it would be immoral for you to enforce? You can't have an obligation that it would be immoral to enforce because that negates the entire point of it being an obligation. The obligation would not be legitimate if the only way to enforce it would be to breach morality. Legitimacy is the key question. There is no such thing as a legitimate obligation that cannot be morally enforced.
So you keep asserting, but I've yet to see a reason why. It certainly seems to me that there can be moral and immoral ways of ensuring others behave morally.
Sure it is an obligation. You can have the power to choose what you should do with you property and it still be true that one option be the one you should be chosing as opposed to others. If it's a matter of whatever you have the power to do then the obligation becomes meaningless. Furthermore, I think that once legitimacy in ownership of the property has been established, it's irrelevant what you do with it. There is no obligation for what to do with it once legitimacy in ownership has been established. In the absence of any blatant NAP violation, how you use it henceforth becomes a matter of personal preferance.
So what? Look, its like this: Property rights enable us to tell who gets to decide how a resource is used. They tell us absolutely nothing about how he ought to decide.
I have not encountered many libertarians who think that morality only encompasses what it is OK to force people to do or not do. And I have never encountered any libertarians who think that libertarian ethics are unenforcable yet somehow it still entails tangible obligations. What's the point of ethics if it's unenforcable? Functionally, it ceases to be ethics.
What are "libertarian ethics"? Libertarianism is a theory about what rights are and what rights people have. It is not a theory of ethics. And I have not even said that "libertarian ethics" are unenforcable. In fact, I have said the opposite. I have said that obligations correlative to rights can be enforced, but obligations not correlative to rights cannot (without failing to fulfill obligations correlative to rights).
I have yet to see a decent explanation as to why it follows from the fact that nobody should be able to force me to help my sick mother that helping my sick mother is not something I ought to do.
Like JC is saying, under your value system you are guilty for funding a government which steals and murders.
Sure, if you don't fund them, they'll kill you or lock you in a cage for the rest of your life, but according to you, that doesn't matter. According to you, even if someone is under severe torture (or the threat thereof), they should be blamed for everything he or she does. By ever doing any business with any taxpayer, you are funding the government.
It's cruel to blame a victim for the situation an aggressor places them into, and that's exactly what you've been doing this entire thread.
Ego:In all of these examples, you are acting in a way that would otherwise be completely legitimate, even using your value system. The difference is that someone evil chose to do something that knowingly results in another innocent life lost. That's why any lives lost in this way should be blamed on the true aggressor, not the man acting to defend himself and his family.
Why couldn't a terrorist use the same argument? The state compels X to pay a tax or conscripts X into its army to support foreign aggression. The state is the true aggressor so any lives lost if the terrorist should defend himself or family by killing X should be blamed on the state for putting X in that position. If X were not compelled by force to fight or fund aggression, the terrorist would be perfectly justified in taking X out.
Also, what if the hostage is hooked up to a device so that when the mass-murderer's heart stops, he dies. And he is with the mass-murderer and armed. Is he justified in taking you out as a matter of self-defence if you try to kill the mass-murderer while he's on a rampage?
Ego: Sure, if you don't fund them, they'll kill you or lock you in a cage for the rest of your life, but according to you, that doesn't matter. According to you, even if someone is under severe torture (or the threat thereof), they should be blamed for everything he or she does. By ever doing any business with any taxpayer, you are funding the government. It's cruel to blame a victim for the situation an aggressor places them into, and that's exactly what you've been doing this entire thread.
What I have been saying all along is that the taxpayer cannot be considered an accessory to the crimes of government agents because they don't give sanction in anyway to the goverment agents to commit acts of aggression. They are innocent victims.
That's inconsistent. Victims of the mass-murderer didn't give consent, either.
Stephen Forde:Why couldn't a terrorist use the same argument? The state compels X to pay a tax or conscripts X into its army to support foreign aggression. The state is the true aggressor so any lives lost if the terrorist should defend himself or family by killing X should be blamed on the state for putting X in that position. If X were not compelled by force to fight or fund aggression, the terrorist would be perfectly justified in taking X out.
A "terrorist" (that is, a fighter without a state to officially back him) can indeed make that argument. According to your previous positions, however, X is not exempted from responsibility for his actions by the threats of his own government against him. He is still choosing to act for his own well-being at the expense of the "terrorist"'s people. Under your moral calculus, only if you are bodily forced, puppeted into taking an action that results in an innocent death, are you exempted from responsibility. No threat constitutes that, but only a rather unfortunate set of choices.
Stephen Forde:Also, what if the hostage is hooked up to a device so that when the mass-murderer's heart stops, he dies. And he is with the mass-murderer and armed. Is he justified in taking you out as a matter of self-defence if you try to kill the mass-murderer while he's on a rampage?
Absolutely. Again, as I've pointed out before, while we might think him more noble for not doing so, we cannot hold him criminally culpable for any action he takes in self-defense. Self-defense is an absolute right. That your rights bring you into conflict is unfortunate, but it does not mean that either right is invalid. It just means that the aggressor, the man attacking you and linked to the other, has committed murder one way or another. You're SOL.
Another fallacy I see coming up frequently here is that if two people are in conflict, especially violent conflict, at least one of them has to be in the wrong ethically. I do not believe that is so. It would be nice. It would make it very easy to pick sides. It is rarely that simple, alas.
Do you think that it is criminal to prevent a justice-seeker from pursuit of a criminal by using force or the threat of force?
Ego:That's inconsistent. Victims of the mass-murderer didn't give consent, either.
There is no inconsistency. If A threatens B into aggressing against C, B has aggressed against C and is culpable. If A threatens B into giving A the necessary funds to aggress against C, B has not aggressed against C nor did he give sanction to A to aggress and he is not culpable. If B contracts with A, gives him funds and sanction to aggress against C, he is an accomplice and culpable for A's aggression.
Why on earth does it matter if there is a contract if everyone knows where the money is going?
Look... when pull the trigger of a gun when pointing it at someone, I'm not technically what kills that person. However, I know that when I pull the trigger, a bullet will come out.
To return to the torture victim you want to punish, if someone is coerced under torture by an aggressor to fire a gun at someone, he knows what will happen when he pulls the trigger just as much as the taxpayer who is threatened with deadly force knows what happens to his tax dollars.
edit: haha "threated"
"How might libertarians solve the Trolley Problem?" Better yet, how would the Dadaist's solve the Trolley Problem? Probably take a picture with a polaroid & scribble 'The World Is Burning" as a caption; 'bout as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Do you know what killed Vaudeville? Talking pictures, but ya still make it kid, you just gotta have a gimmick. I for one am a tumbler!: tumbles back on topic:Wouldn't a contract matter as a way of providing legality & proof of an agreement?
"Look at me, I'm quoting another user to show how wrong I think they are, out of arrogance of my own position. Wait, this is my own quote, oh shi-" ~ Nitroadict
Ego:Why on earth does it matter if there is a contract if everyone knows where the money is going?
Well, how would you in your system justify punishing state rulers for the crimes which other state agents who are acting on their behalf? And at the same time avoid punishing the state's subjects?
I don't really think anyone should be punished for any of it. If anything, we should punish the people who advocate for larger government, more welfare, more taxes, etc., not the people who want a job and sign up with the IRS.
Still, I don't think any of them should be punished; with a vengeful attitude, we'll never get anything done!