Francisco Ferrer

You say that and I say you have no right to violate rights. It's bottom line the same and there's no need for a semantical argument. --Brant Yes, there is no right to violate rights. Citizen B has no right to initiate force by slugging Citizen C in the chin. However, once force is initiated, legal/moral consequence ensue. The initiator of force may not reasonably expect to go about his life as if nothing had happened. He may and should be called to account and made to perform restitution. And what is restitution if not a forfeiture of a portion of what one had rightfully owned up to the point of committing aggression? On the other hand, if the argument is that no rights are ever forfeited, then nothing owned by the initiator of force could be made to be surrendered to the victim of force. Citizen B would retain full control of all his property and freedom of movement. He would have to pay Citizen C damages only if he wanted to. There is a semantical dispute only if there is a difference of opinion over the meaning of forfeit ("Lose or be deprived of (property or a right or privilege) as a penalty for wrongdoing.").

Thus the aggressive trespasser forfeits his rights over his body. (forfeit: "Lose or be deprived of (property or a right or privilege) as a penalty for wrongdoing.") "A man has forfeited his own rights (to the extent of the aggression he has committed) in attacking the rights of others." --Auberon Herbert

I am led to believe by your attitude that Rand is only a credit-stealing irritant who, along with Branden, had nothing to do with the flowering of libertarianism in the 60s and 70s. Never said anything of the kind. Rand was the single most important influence on the founders of the Libertarian Party. I have in fact written that on this forum.

Yes, was his. Emphasis on past tense. Now no longer his. In other words, by his actions he forfeited his right to a certain portion of what he owned. And a man breaking into my bedroom window at night may forfeit his right not to have a large bullet wound in his torso.

The phrase "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" dates back to ancient Rome. This is yet another example of people stealing from Rand and not giving her credit.

Back to criminal law: Citizen B lays bricks for a living and and is paid $200 a day by his employer. By the principle of free exchange between employer/employee, that money is rightfully Citizen B's. One day in a bar B gets into an argument with Citizen C. In anger, B slugs C and dislocates C's jaw. B is arrested. A criminal court judge orders B to serve 10 days in jail for assault and battery and to pay the full cost of C's medical treatment, $2,000. "But, Your Honor," says B, "two thousand dollars is all I have saved, and because I worked for it, that money is rightfully mine. I earned it." "Of course you did, son. And I'm not going to take away your right to that money." "You're not?" "No, son. That money is yours by right and will always be yours. Rights are never forfeited. I'm just taking away your right to exercise control over that money. From now on, Citizen C will have full control. But you'll still have the right to it. And ain't that the most important thing?" "You betcha! Thanks, Your Honor! Thanks for everything!" "Next case!"

Citizen A digs pools for a living and and is paid $100 a day by his employer. By the principle of free exchange between employer/employee, that money is rightfully Citizen A's. One day A accidentally hits another car and causes $2,000 worth of damage. A traffic court judge orders him to pay the full cost of repairs. "But, Your Honor," says A, "two thousand dollars is all I have saved, and because I worked for it, that money is rightfully mine. I earned it." "Of course you did, son. And I'm not going to take away your right to that money." "You're not?" "No, son. That money is yours by right and will always be yours. Rights are never forfeited. I'm just taking away your right to exercise control over that money. From now on, the plaintiff will have full control. But you'll still have the right to it. And ain't that the most important thing?" "You betcha! Thanks, Your Honor! Thanks for everything!" "Next case!"

Would you consider imprisonment to be moral being that the criminal has forfeited their rights? Yes. Yes, but with the addendum that government is by its nature a coercive, criminal organization. When one is attacked by two gangs, one often has to align with the less monstrous. Yes, but more out of lack of moral alternatives than pure principle. There is nothing immoral about imprisoning a violator of rights, provided that the imprisonment "fits the crime." The imprisonment could not, say, consist of weeks of being chained in a standing position for the theft of ten dollars. The essential point is that collecting a tax-funded salary does not automatically make a law enforcement officer wiser, fairer, more just than a private citizen.

The cultural impact of a libertarian ethical theory is quite separate from the existence of such a theory, which is specifically what you you asked about in Post #14. It is safe to say only a tiny part of any population will ever engage in a thoughful, close analysis of the foundation of ethical principles. The popularity of the novel Atlas Shrugged hardly implies that that millions of people have adopted the non-initiation of force based on a painstaking reading of Galt's speech. I would argue that compared to Rand, Locke's ethical/polirical argument has left a much larger footprint on "the course of human events" in American history, simply because it was at the core of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution is its early form, and many state constitutions. When the nexus of ethics and politics are discussed in an academic setting, it is more likely that Locke than Rand will be on the reading list. In terms of what you call "practical politics," I cannot imagine how one would keep score today on crediting the election of officeholders or the enactment of legislation to a particular political philosopher. In any case, I hope we will not judge the worth of a set of ideas by its popularity in the culture. If so, pragmatism, majoritarianism, and collectivism would be the clear winners.

Since I made no claim for the non-aggression principle (NAP) as an axiom, nor quoted anything to the effect that it is an axiom, I hope I may be forgiven for not defending NAP as axiomatic. It may or may not be true that "libertarians cannot get out of their own way when it comes to philosophy generally," but that has no relevance to the questions posed in Post #1 or the questions you raised in Post #14. I cannot think of any instances of a person who argues for NAP while "obscuring individual rights." For example, those who take the position that government may not initiate force to collect taxes seem without exception to endorse the idea of a right to the fruit of one's labor. But if you feel this is a widespread problem, by all means make it your personal crusade. I am not aware that "theoretical libertarianism has slowly imploded since Hospers 1972." In the past 20 years, there have been scores of articles on the foundations of libertarianism published in The Journal of Libertarian Studies, The Cato Journal, and The Independent Review, as well as in books such as Ronald Hamowy's The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (2008), Edward P. Stringham's Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice (2007), Robert P. Murphy's Chaos Theory (2007), Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed (2001) and the republication of many nearly forgotten classics such as Wilhelm von Humboldt's On the Limits of State Action (1792). The paper and online library of this forum's own George H. Smith outdoes anything written by John Hospers. As for not matching up libertarian and Objectivist ethics, I provided a link to Locke's Second Treatise on Government and quoted a key passage from it. If you want boxes and arrows drawn, feel free to perform that task yourself.

Those unfamiliar with the ethics of libertarianism can read a summary at Wikipedia: "Right-libertarians value self-ownership and the non-aggression principle, which leads to strong support of private property and free-market capitalism, while rejecting most or all state functions." If you want "sans politics" you may skip the last seven words in the above sentence. Libertarianism predates Objectivism, although Rand, fanning the flames of the myth that she owed nothing to any previous philosopher save Aristotle, claimed herself to have invented the core ideas of libertarianism and accused libertarians of stealing those ideas: "I've read nothing by Libertarians (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn't my ideas badly mishandled—i.e., the teeth pulled out of them—with no credit given." In fact, the basic principles of libertarian ethics go back at least 200 years before Rand's birth to the publication of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, in which he set forth the idea that every individual· man has a property in his own person [= ‘owns himself’]; this is something that nobody else has any right to. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are strictly his. So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property. (p. 11) By extension each individual owns the products he receives in free exchange with others.

I do not ignore the datum that moral theories may vary depending on cultural and historical context. However, variance in moral theories does not mean all theories are equally valid, any more than variance in cosmologies means that Flat Earth theory has an equal footing with Kepler's theory. I hope we can agree that the Nazi ethics that the "master" race has the right to displace the "inferior" races in Europe is nonsense, that hanging women for witchcraft is wrong, and that putting college kids in prison for smoking pot is a bad idea. Thus, if some ethical theories can logically be ruled out, then there must be some objective criterion by which we can determine the truth of an ethical system. I would argue that libertarian ethical theory is the only one that is not contradicted by its own premises or evidence in the physical world. In that light, I have no hesitation to call the military draft a form of kidnapping and slavery even though a majority of Americans may think it perfectly moral. And, regarding Post #1, there is no "process (e.g., constitutions, elections, legislation) by which human beings can transform an immoral act into a moral act (without changing the act itself)."

1. Executions and the killing of aggressors in self-defense are not murder for simple reason that the aggressor has forfeited his rights over himself by presenting a deadly threat to a peaceful citizen. (Everybody, not just tax-paid officials, enjoys the right of self-defense.) Thus "the definition of what is moral" has not changed nor has "the morality against murder" been "trumped." 2. Tax-paid officials are not legally or morally equivalent to parents. Parents assume the role of guardians only because their children are not yet capable of making critical decisions. That is not true of the relationship between government and adult citizens. If someone in America needs another, stronger, wiser person to be his leader by taking a portion of the weaker man's salary and telling the weaker man what to do, that arrangement can be made--voluntarily. If there are governments on this planet that present their subjects with the option of whether or not to grant government authority over them, ours is not one of them. 3. I am not aware of any case in which a person has transformed a murderous act (say, the hanging of a "witch") into a moral act by merely changing the definition of "moral." The fact that the theocrats of Salem, Massachusetts believed with all their hearts that killing witches was their moral duty did not make those killings any less murderous. 4. If I knock down a wall in my neighbor's house in order to seize and destroy a chemical that I do not like, I owe him for the wall, the chemical and any inconvenience he suffered. The same is true for superheroes and tax-paid "heroes."

Rand called psychology a "sewer"? My admiration for her just doubled.

Further proof that government is incapable of supplying goods and services: The Governor's order calls on local water agencies to adjust their rate structures to implement conservation pricing, recognized as an effective way to realize water reductions and discourage water waste. The State of California has been in the water business for a century and it is only now realizing that prices must rise when demand increases and supply falls?

I have an HP printer from the mid-'80's. It is tough, economical, reliable and has never needed service. However, it won't print large MB documents, so I had to buy a second printer. My 80's HP 5MP printer is still running, but none of its HP successors lasted more than a few years without a costly defect or breakdown occurring. A friend of mine in the company says management consciously made the decision to downgrade quality because of the speed of technological development. You don't need long-term service when the Next New Thing is just six months away.

The view that the German national character has a wide streak of backwardness, authoritarianism and sadism was nurtured during the world wars by skillful tax-funded propagandists and in the post-war period almost single-handedly by William Shirer's acclaimed, best selling and inaccurate The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Maybe. The last time I voted, my guy won. He was not in office more than three months when I got a bad case of voter's remorse.

The Slap Heard "Round the World Then, on August 10, Patton toured the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. There he came across Private Paul G. Bennett, C Battery, 17th Field Artillery, II Corps. According to Lieutenant Colonel Long’s official report, Bennett had already served four years in the army and had been in II Corps since March. . . Indeed, he had a fever, was sick, dehydrated, fatigued, confused, and listless. In that condition, despite protests, he could not be returned to the front. “[He] never had any difficulties until August 6th, when his buddy was wounded. He could not sleep that night and felt nervous. The shells going over him bothered him. The next day he was worried about his buddy and became more nervous. He was sent down to the rear echelon by a battery aid man and there the medical officer gave him some medicine which made him sleep, but still he was nervous and disturbed. On the next day the medical officer ordered him to be evacuated, although the boy begged not to be evacuated because he did not want to leave his unit.” Patton, who knew nothing of this, looked at Bennett . . . He asked him what the trouble way. Long related the exchange: “It’s my nerves,” [said Bennett and] began to sob. The General then screamed at him, “What did you say?” The man replied, “It’s my nerves, I can’t stand the shelling any more.” He was still sobbing. The General then yelled at him, “Your nerves, hell; you are just a Goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch.” He then slapped the man and said, “Shut up that Goddamned crying. I won’t have these brave men here who have been shot at seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying.” He then struck the man again, knocking his helmet off and into the next tent. He then turned to the admitting officer and yelled, “Don’t admit this yellow bastard; there’s nothing the matter with him. I won’t have the hospitals cluttered up with these sons of bitches who haven’t got the guts to fight.” He then turned to the man again, who was managing to sit at attention through shaking all over and said, “You’re going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you’re going to fight. If you don’t, I’ll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact,” he said, reaching for his pistol, “I ought to shoot you myself, you Goddamned whimpering coward.” As he left the tent, the General was still yelling back to the receiving officer to “send that yellow son of a bitch back to the front line.”

I'm with Mark. As in previous elections, I will very likely sit this one out. Rand Paul is a craven opportunist who will say (or hide) what he needs to in order to get elected. Such a man will do the same in order to get re-elected. And at the end of his second term, will perform whatever compromise is required to get his party re-elected. Remember Paul is the same character who endorsed the re-election of the egregious Mitch McConnell instead of the relatively sound Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin. In 1976, Ayn Rand wrote the following: The Presidential election of 1976. I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose—see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion. If Rand can snub Reagan for his alliance with big government conservatives, I can do the same for a senator who is looking more and more like a Bush every day.

Francisco, I already addressed this... in the very response that you are responding too. What do you think the unemployment rate is? Official rate is 5.5% ..........but c'mon! We can easily triple that to 15% Not enough? Okay lets make it 30%. So 30% of the US population doesn't work at all. How much of that 30% do you think survive only on government benefits? Unemployment insurance only lasts 6-8 months. Some people no matter what there condition would never sign up for benefits. But still lets say that 20% of the 30% of US population survive on benefits (right now I'm leaving out those who get benefits but still make some money for reasons I will answer in a bit) So under the no tax system. The the 20% are now under incredible pressure, they are getting nothing to survive on so half of them get jobs, 5% become permanent dependents on family and the last 5% die. Most jobs pay MORE* than benefits (not including unemployment insurance) so buying capacity goes up for the 80% who were adding to the tax pool in the first place and for the 10% with jobs now AND 5% of the population died or moved to Mexico. So with buying capacity up for 95% of the population, you don't think prices will adjust? Lets make the number 90%, you don't think it would still adjust upward? Hell, make it 80%, I'm thinking prices will rise. *Have you ever been on welfare? I have. Single mother, four kids (divorce and restraining order because of abuse) I remember a time my mother got checks from 3 different sources and she was excited that we were riding around with "half-a-thousand dollars" That's three sources for 500 dollars. Of course this was during the 80's so the amounts are probably higher but its not like these people are getting a 40,000 dollar salary or even a 15,000 dollar salary from the government. So their buying capacity is NOT causing prices to rise. At the same time a person making 50 grand is taxed at 25% which is 12,500. If a store looks at their customer base and finds that they make 15,000 from welfare prices are x, but if stores all over the US (since 80% of population would get increased buying capacity through no taxes) saw that their customer base suddenly went from having 37,500 to spend to now having 50,000 to spend.... What problems do you see with a federal minimum wage of 10 dollars an hour? Beyond the fact that employers are being told what to pay their employees? Maybe you would say that prices will rise? Prices will rise at McDonald's because of the higher costs of labor? So that shouldn't effect you at all because you don't eat at McDonald's right? Prices wouldn't rise everywhere else simply because the the entire bottom of the income pyramid moved up.... I'm thinking they will. Why is the costs of living higher in the US than it is in Mexico? Partially because people have more to spend. Why is the costs of living higher in NYC than it is in Mississippi? Can't be that the higher wages in NYC are only in housing businesses who then have to raise rates because their costs are so high. No the average wage is higher across all sectors and that by itself makes housing costs higher. A producer puts out a product and feels around for the correct price by raising it until it falls into equilibrium for what people are willing/able to pay. If neighborhood income is higher than prices in that neighborhood are higher What about those who do make money and still get benefits (which are not alot) or what about Solyndra. The money that they get is the bonuses production money I was talking about. They receive the money and are able to do something/anything with it AND because they aren't (the welfare queens) getting a whole lot relatively speaking, their capacity doesn't increased prices on a whole. But if 70-80% of the population, Hell you know what, 60% of the population's buying capacity went up, prices would surely adjust Or maybe not..... If the government taxed people and simply held the taxed funds, yes, the effect on the economy would be deflationary. Conversely, a sudden release of the unspent, confiscated funds would be inflationary. However, that is not the case today; nor has it ever been. Not only does the government redistribute the stolen loot (in order to buy votes), it spends more than it takes in through the Federal Reserve's expansion of the money supply. It may be true that dependent families do not make a windfall, but that does not mean that the stolen dollars are not returning to circulation. A study has shown that only 30 cents on every dollar spent on welfare reaches the intended recipients. The remainder of the dollar is not stowed under Uncle Sam's mattress. The other 70 cents goes to the redistributors, in other words, the bureaucrats and those that thrive on government contracts. Let X equal the number of dollars taken in by the government through taxation. The buying power of all taxpayers has been reduced by X. But X did not disappear into some vault at Fort Knox. It was paid out in the form of moocher benefits; federal worker paychecks; and the purchase of office supplies, office space, computers, janitors, carpet layers, airplane tickets, fuel allowances and various other private vendor products and services. The moochers, the redistributors, and all those that attend them did not take their tax generated dollars home and stuff them into piggy banks. No, like the rest of the population, they spent the money on new sneakers, big screen TV's, and iPhones. In order to prove that ending taxation is going to add an additional X number of dollars to the economy, you would have to show that X has not been released into the economy already. As to your point is that the former welfare recipients are now going to have to get jobs--you still have not shown that there is inflationary pressure. Companies do not hire people simply to keep a chair warm. Employees are put on payroll to perform productive tasks. If there are more people productively working, all things being equal, there are more goods being produced. Thus there will not be a greater number of dollars chasing the same or fewer goods. Therefore, no inflation.

She gathers a group of adoring Neanderthals to sit at her feet and gush as she reads from the latest chapter of her unpublished novel, Prometheus Laughed. The most servile of the flatterers she takes as her bedmate.

I'm all ears and will let you count the many ways. One, two, three, four . . . --Brant the genie You could be counting the same criterion twice. (Trust but verify.)

I'm all ears and will let you count the many ways.

Let's look at number 3. You say that without taxation people would have more to spend. But that is only true of people who currently pay more in taxes than receive in government benefits (net tax producers). But those who are net tax receivers (welfare recipients) would have less to spend. In abolishing taxes, we have simply shifted control of the same amount of money (tax dollars) from one group (government and its special interest clients) to another (the producers of that money). You say, "People who make clothing for the rich charge more simply because their clients have more money to spend." Let's return to my example of Citizen A with the taxed $10,000 now back in his pocket. If Retailer X now wants to charge Citizen A $400 for a suit that a month ago cost $200, why can't A spend his money more frugally by going to Retailer Y? There is no reason to suppose Retailer Y's cost of doing business increased because control of X trillion dollars shifted from government and its clients back to the producers. There is nothing that prevents Y from increasing his sales by cutting his prices. This is how the Wal-Mart fortune was made. Yes, "buying capacity increases because [some people] no longer have to pay taxes," but the buying capacity of those that were once receiving that money is now zero. The same U.S. economy that is now awash in untaxed dollars is simultaneously drained of the taxed dollars that were formerly pouring into it.