Samson Corwell

Well, no, not all of them. You have the obligation to serve on jury duty when summoned, comply with search warrants, comply with child support payments, alimony (it's not a contract!), damages, serve jail time when convicted, and, last but not least, pay your taxes. Let's not confuse legal obligations with moral obligations. Darrell I don't think that makes any sense. Legal obligations are a subset of moral obligations. So there are no unjust laws? Legal obligations are orthogonal to moral obligations. At best, we try to make our laws consistent with objective morality, but don't always succeed. I'd say there are a lot of unjust laws on the books today. Darrell I should've been more clear. Yes, they're can be bad laws (a law to turn Jews over to the SS is not a good one), but good laws are still normative in nature.

Go ahead, lay it on me. What is legal positivism? The view that the validity of a law depends upon its source.

Defined by what? Every fourth sura? a show of hands? Okay, maybe I'm being a little imprecise. But I don't see what's wrong with it unless you subscribe to legal positivism.

Preventing mass murder restricts voluntary action? Then Hitler must represent the height of volunteerism! Touché. I didn't word my objection clearly enough. I'm objecting to the representation of laissez-faire as embodying a unique type of voluntariness. I don't find Weber's definition of government as a "monopoly" as accurate. Megacorporation, Inc. arose spontaneously through the accumulation of hundreds of deals, none which involved twisting arms or breaking knees.

Well, no, not all of them. You have the obligation to serve on jury duty when summoned, comply with search warrants, comply with child support payments, alimony (it's not a contract!), damages, serve jail time when convicted, and, last but not least, pay your taxes. Let's not confuse legal obligations with moral obligations. Darrell I don't think that makes any sense. Legal obligations are a subset of moral obligations.

The fundamental rule of the free society is not to violate anyone's property or to use force to compel him to act against what he explicitly chooses with regard to his person and property. Yes, this concept certainly goes against the desires of the predator who would like to murder, say, every redhead or albino he can find. But for a society to indulge such a killer would result in a net reduction of voluntaryism, for the multiple murders would cancel out any benefit of granting the predator his way. "voluntary: done or given because you want to and not because you are forced to." If I have warped this word, you are free to show how. Then it's not "voluntary"! I just wish people would stop touting laissez-faire like it's got some particular quality that other systems don't have. Uh, "monopoly"? Where does that even enter into what I was saying. Megacorporation, Inc. in my scenario grew over time in the amount of territory it controlled, absorbing surrounding areas. Monopoly, "coercive" or not, has got nothing to do with it. It's a corporatocracy, a corporate republic now. See this or this (two links to TVTropes that explain my point).

If you're going to argue that all agreements are contracts, then sure, it's a "contract". As are treaties. I'm just anticipating and countering the idea that marriage is really some form of contract that government has usurped or whatever.

Well, no, not all of them. You have the obligation to serve on jury duty when summoned, comply with search warrants, comply with child support payments, alimony (it's not a contract!), damages, serve jail time when convicted, and, last but not least, pay your taxes.

<sarcasm>Lovely.</sarcasm> To have only value as a tool is just disgraceful and undignified.

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society in the sense that each person is allowed to use what he rightfully owns, provided that he does not infringe on the equal right of every other person. True, a man who claims, wrongfully, that he has a right to a share of Bill Gates's fortune will probably not consent to the laissez-faire arrangement. But I do not know of any advocate of a free society who claims that such a system is going to please everyone. Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home. People who are less than thrilled at having full ownership of their bodies are free to invite others to run them over and hack off pieces of them. In such a way would their dignity as non-self-owners be preserved. Right. It's voluntary in the sense that what you do is entirely up to you...so long as you follow our rules! There's is no such thing as a "voluntary society" and there never can be such thing as a "voluntary society". It's warping of words to be sure and can be done with any system. Let's say we have Libertopia or Ancapistan and fast forward a hundred years. The region has centralized and is now governed by Megacorporation, Inc. The people born there sure as hell didn't choose their circumstances. So, what are you going to say? "Don't like it, then move."? Great, we're back where we started! Taxes are voluntary...youl'll just be thrown in jail if you don't pay! Paying back your debts is entirely up to you...you'll just have your home confiscated if you don't!

The difference is, you can live in our society and be free to set up your little communities and run your little system with no interference. However, you, being a statist, would not allow folks like us to live in your society, unless we live by your rules. I know that is too simple for you to grasp, however, try in on and walk a few decades in it, you might be surprised. Don't tell me you believe the nicel little (classical) liberal myth of neutrality, Selene. You too want to force people to live by your rules. Do you think an animal rights activist would be fine with meat eaters and fur manufacturers simply continuing what they do some place else? Or have you never heard of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society that challenges Japanese whalers on the high seas? You've uttered before that left anarchism can exist inside an anarcho-capitalist society. It can't. You'd be trying to get them to buy into the very policies that they seek to reject. Selene, I'll be the first to admit that I think my political views are the correct ones and that I have zero problem forcing them on others--same as you.

Right, because that's exactly what people mean by "right to life". As for the bit about a "voluntary society", it's an impossibility, unless you hope to get everyone to consent to your favored scheme of property law. Anyway, if property rights are indeed the base of your system, then you have yet to explain where a right to own property fits in. I'm sure most people would be less than thrilled to know that they're a piece of property that owns itself. How less than dignified. (Surely that relationship is backwards to begin with.)

In a sea tossed life boat where water is scarce and bailing absolutely necessary to survival some sort of life-boat "socialism" will be imposed. Those who -can- bail -must- bail and water has to be rationed to help keep the bailers and the rowers alive.Fortunately such emergency situations can only last a short time. Either rescue happens in which case the passengers of the life boat can get back on land and get back to being their selfish selves or the people in the life boat perish and their problem is "solved". Ba'al Chataf I wouldn't called that socialism unless we want to make the word more devoid of meaning than it already is.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here. Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others. Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..." (It's certain you know this well, FF). So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue. I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others. I disagree with the positive/negative dichotomy. I suggest that there are more distinctions that should be drawn elsewhere. I consider a right to an attorney and a right to a fair trial to be perfectly valid, as well as the rights to confront one's accusor and summon witness testimony. I don't think "positive rights" are necessarily about "goods and services" (there's that economic reductionism again).

This seems like nitpicking.

Straw kidneys.

You don't realize how debased and repulsive that sounds (the capital good part), do you? For the record, I don't think doing any of the other things require ownership.Does it sound debased and repulsive for a blood bank to own blood or a sperm bank to own semen? Then it should be no different for an individual. If ownership and exchange of such items is too repulsive for you, why not advocate banning the sale of such items?No and no. The two are very different. Straw man; that's not what I'm talking about. Not necessarily so. I'm allowed to kill a maniac who is attacking me in self-defense, therefore I must own him! A few counter-examples that negate your statement: Child custody.Power of attorney.Trusts.Probate. No one.See above. Authority to use and dispose of an item is effectively ownership.See above. Not necessarily. Homesteading doesn't follow from self-ownership at all. What it was was totally ad hoc bullshit that John Locke pulled out of his rear end to excuse the taking of land from Native Americans. That land the Indians had lived on and hunted on for centuries? Conveniently turns out that they didn't really own it. Any Lockean who tries to homestead any land I own that I haven't "mixed my labor with" will find themselves up booted out.Let's suppose we don't acquire land through making improvements on it. Ownership does not come from homesteading, we'll say. Now that we've eliminated that as a possibility, you will perhaps share with us what entitles anyone to occupy the place he currently resides in.Length of time used, particular circumstances, and the fact that changing all these property titles would introduce chaos into the world. Says who? Rothbard? I think if you move near the mill, then they certainly be compelled to stop polluting, even if they were there first.Fine. Try moving from a farm to an apartment right off Times Square and then sue the City of New York to make them stop all the traffic noise at night. Or try the same thing with an airport or railroad terminus or shipyard. It's been done. I was unaware noise pollution damaged things.If a property owner next to a recently opened all-night body shop cannot get a good night's sleep, then his health may be damaged. There is abundant recent, objective data on the ill effects of sleep deprivation.That's a very funky definition of "damage" and certainly not like any of the ones I've heard from most NAPsters. This is shorhorning. I like it.Good, then show me the science that objectively measures bizarreness.The "I'll know it when I see it" part is what I was referring to.Unless you have a method of presenting evidence through telepathy, you'll have to do better than hunches and feelings in a court of law."I'll know when I see it" means I can't specify in advance. Anyone who tries to approach politics without a little bit of this is headed for disaster. (See: Jacobins, Marxist-Leninists, Walter Block.)

It's absolutely standard phrasing straight from Locke. You might be interested in the distinction between claim rights and liberty rights. Yes, I'm aware of the distinction. It doesn't answer my concern that "life" should require a "right".Right to life is a contradiction in terms (for me). Living, being in existence, is the irreducible foundation of all rights -- how can it be a "right" in itself? All I can say is that it's ridiculous that you're having trouble with this. It's the right not to be killed.

Why should we accept the opinion of Hobbes as an authority on government? His work Leviathan is full of non sequiturs. Example: if man, as Hobbes claims, is inherently aggressive and life in a state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish," how would his solution of a powerful sovereign to rule society help? Would not the sovereign be selected from the species of homo sapiens? Is that not the very species that Hobbes regards as inherently aggressive? Whoooosh. You don't realize how debased and repulsive that sounds (the capital good part), do you? For the record, I don't think doing any of the other things require ownership. There is nothing overly broad or redundant about recognizing the logic of self-ownership. If A does not own his body, who does? God? Obama? The rest of the human race? No one. Homesteading doesn't follow from self-ownership at all. What it was was totally ad hoc bullshit that John Locke pulled out of his rear end to excuse the taking of land from Native Americans. That land the Indians had lived on and hunted on for centuries? Conveniently turns out that they didn't really own it. Any Lockean who tries to homestead any land I own that I haven't "mixed my labor with" will find themselves up booted out. Says who? Rothbard? I think if you move near the mill, then they certainly be compelled to stop polluting, even if they were there first. I was unaware noise pollution damaged things. I like it. Good, then show me the science that objectively measures bizarreness. The "I'll know it when I see it" part is what I was referring to.

It's absolutely standard phrasing straight from Locke. You might be interested in the distinction between claim rights and liberty rights.

I must say I'm shocked by this response. I had thought you were pretty well read and just chose the libertarian position for whatever reason. But, this smacks of a total lack of understanding of a basic principle, the right to life. Paid for by oneself. See how easy that was? If you want "easy," try self-ownership. We don't have to append "paid for by yourself" or anything else to self-ownership. Its implication are self-evident. And, by the way, "paid for by yourself" may not cover all possibilities. What about getting voluntary help for living expenses from others? "The appearance of man as the proprietor of his person would have fascinated Hobbes if he had lived to witness it. He might have classified it as a variety of madness similar to that of the man who believes himself God. The history of political thought does not offer an attack on the dignity of man comparable to this classification of the human person as a capital good." -- Eric Voegelin The right to free speech is most assuredly a property right. Once one understands that an individual has ownership of his own body, it logically follows that he is within his right to operate his lungs, tongue and lips as he sees fit--provided such actions do not interfere with the property rights of his neighbors. Example: unless he "comes to the nuisance," by buying a house next to an opera singer who has lived there for some time, the new home owner is entitled to a reasonable amount of quiet at night. I have already explained how the principle of self-ownership would logically lead to penalties for the man who falsely yells "fire" in a theatre. There is no need to repeat it here. Only if your notion of property is so broad so as to make "property rights" a redundancy. Quite frankly with respect to the opera thing it seems like you're trying to translate simple common sense prohibitions on annoyance into the language of property. I've seen this same thing done with immigration issues: both anti-immigration "libertarians" and those who call for open borders prop their arguments up with it. Suffice to say, both of those arguments (on immigration) are rather stupid. If you object to bizarre conclusions, perhaps you should write it into your ideal constitution that no interpretation of individual rights that is objectively and scientifically shown to be "bizarre" shall be permitted. Then we can look forward to a future justice declaring, "I know it when I see it." I like it.

Over in this thread, a few of us got into a little back-and-forth over property rights. One of us was arguing that banning blackmail assumes some sort of property right. I disagreed. This line of thought is actually one I've encountered before, namely that of reducing everything down to property rights, claiming that all rights are property rights, or claiming that property rights are themselves some sort of undergirding structure in the whole collage of human rights. Needless to say, I think this view is flawed. There are two rights I support that come to mind as counterexamples: a right to privacy and personality rights. I do not think one should be able to use another person's likeness without their consent or, say, publish revenge porn without their consent. I bring these up because I do not think they suppose any kind of ownership. I think it is more accurate to say that property rights are specific whereas something like the right to an attorney or the right against unreasonable search and seizure is more general. Has anyone noticed this or have any thoughts on it?

I must say I'm shocked by this response. I had thought you were pretty well read and just chose the libertarian position for whatever reason. But, this smacks of a total lack of understanding of a basic principle, the right to life. Paid for by oneself. See how easy that was? The right to life means the right to live at your own expense. It means the right not to be killed. It doesn't imply any sort of claim on the life of someone else. I thought you understood that. The right to life means the right to the freedom to take those actions necessary and proper for survival and/or thriving. It means the right to not be impeded in taking those actions. It means the right to be left alone. It doesn't guarantee success in living the good life or in living at all. It just means that no one should stand in your way if you are engaging in productive activities. The right to life implies the right to property, not the other way around. A person must be able to control the product of his effort in order to survive and therefore has a property right in those things with which he mingles his effort. But, not all rights are property rights. The right to free speech is not a property right. Earlier, the case of a man falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater was discussed. That case has nothing to do with property rights. The rights of man yelling are constrained by the immediate effect that the false information might have on the actions of the people around him, not by the property rights of the owner of the theater. It would be just as wrong to falsely yell "tsunami" on a crowded beach, even if no one claimed ownership of the beach. If people stampeded and innocent people were trampled to death, then the person that yelled "tsunami" would be at least partially responsible for their deaths. Libertarians, by attempting to reduce everything to property rights sometimes end up arguing for bizarre conclusions. I've argued with people that say planes should not be allowed to fly over their houses because their property rights extend to all of the air above their little piece of land, just to give an example. You need to have a proper basis for your political philosophy or it will stop making sense. Darrell I know. It is more than a little disconcerting. I think Rothbard made the declaration because he wanted a nice response to the saying "human rights trump property rights". Almost everyone understands what the people saying it mean, but his primary strategy was to attack whatever he thought could be portrayed as some kind of inconsistency. Ralph Waldo Emerson's utterance on "foolish consistency" comes to mind. This article makes the faults of Rothbard's position clear, I think (part III.C, to be precise). But I think the best rebuttal to the proposition "all rights are property rights" is to bring up the right to own property to begin with. I think it's based on a false equivocation in that the difference between a property right and, say, the right to freedom of speech is that the former is particular whereas the latter is general. The ploy involves painting one's exclusive use of X (the particular) as being identical to freedom of speech as a rule of thumb (the general). It's truly ingenious rhetoric, but it's one that can trick even the sharpest of minds. The problem is that once you start using a theoretical distinction as a guide to everything you wind up embracing incredibly stupid conclusions (i.e., encirclement, what you said about planes, blackmail *glares at FF*, etc.). The property rights reductionism can lead to some hilarious situations, though. Like pro-IP libertarians calling anti-IP libertarians "intellectual communists".

I do not argue from a "right to life" principle, for the same reason I do not argue from a right to food, shelter and clothing principle. "Right to life" raises a question that cannot easily be answered: paid for by whom? Example: Jones lives in the Republic of Pauperstan, has a fatal kidney disease, and must have a $10,000 dialysis machine. How will the law of his country enforce his "right to life"? I start with self-ownership, which is not contradicted by reality or any other feasible theory of property and deduce further rights from that. What problem? One starts with the property of one's own body and through labor, creation, and exchange with others increases one's ownership of things outside one's body and prospers. It is not clear how the nebulous "right to life" solves the problem of acquisition--unless we decide the law must give a man whatever he needs to stay alive. As for selling one's body or parts thereof, I see nothing about it that is reprehensible or inconsistent with individualism. I do not know how well the theory will connect with the public at present. But when I sit down to consider man's nature, the principles of ethics, and the philosophy of law, my thoughts are not guided by what sells best. Really? "Right to life" is exactly the way Locke phrased it. You're attacking a straw man.

I think libertarianism's main problem is that it employs reductionist principles that are very counterintuitive. The vast majority believe that these principles are wholly determinate, but the case of abortion makes it fairly clear that they are not. Surely, not all rights are property rights and thinking of myself as property just seems vulgar. I just don't see how the law, which contains subjects like aviation, banking, parental rights, right to publicity, and so forth, can be reduced to one or two principles.