Anarcho-Capitalism: A Branden ‘Blast from the Past’

[George H. Smith]

What they will agree with you about is competing defense agencies. They'll get their own and put it against yours and you better be one of the five families.

--Brant

I checked this out on the Internet. There are currently 193 mafia-like "families" in the world, but they call themselves "sovereign states."

Sovereign states throughout history have killed and maimed many more people than private criminals ever have. The respective scores are not even close.

I therefore assume that you would favor the elimination of these competing agencies -- a.k.a. "governments" -- and call for a one-world government instead. Correct?

I asked Dennis the same question, but he was smart enough to ignore my question. Would you care to get entangled in this web? The spider awaits its prey.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

What they will agree with you about is competing defense agencies. They'll get their own and put it against yours and you better be one of the five families.

--Brant

I checked this out on the Internet. There are currently 193 mafia-like "families" in the world, but they call themselves "sovereign states."

Sovereign states throughout history have killed and maimed many more people than private criminals ever have. The respective scores are not even close.

I therefore assume that you would favor the elimination of these competing agencies -- a.k.a. "governments" -- and call for a one-world government instead. Correct?

I asked Dennis the same question, but he was smart enough to ignore my question. Would you care to get entangled in this web? The spider awaits its prey.

Ghs

They aren't competing defense agencies, not in the sense I think you mean.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

What they will agree with you about is competing defense agencies. They'll get their own and put it against yours and you better be one of the five families. --Brant

I checked this out on the Internet. There are currently 193 mafia-like "families" in the world, but they call themselves "sovereign states." Sovereign states throughout history have killed and maimed many more people than private criminals ever have. The respective scores are not even close. I therefore assume that you would favor the elimination of these competing agencies -- a.k.a. "governments" -- and call for a one-world government instead. Correct? I asked Dennis the same question, but he was smart enough to ignore my question. Would you care to get entangled in this web? The spider awaits its prey. Ghs

They aren't competing defense agencies. --Brant

They are if you view the entire earth as a "given geographical area," and to the extent that people can renounce citizenship in one country and acquire citizenship in another country.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

What they will agree with you about is competing defense agencies. They'll get their own and put it against yours and you better be one of the five families. --Brant

I checked this out on the Internet. There are currently 193 mafia-like "families" in the world, but they call themselves "sovereign states." Sovereign states throughout history have killed and maimed many more people than private criminals ever have. The respective scores are not even close. I therefore assume that you would favor the elimination of these competing agencies -- a.k.a. "governments" -- and call for a one-world government instead. Correct? I asked Dennis the same question, but he was smart enough to ignore my question. Would you care to get entangled in this web? The spider awaits its prey. Ghs

They aren't competing defense agencies. --Brant

They are if you view the entire earth as a "given geographical area," and to the extent that people can renounce citizenship in one country and acquire citizenship in another country.

Ghs

Let's take a step back. It seems to me that the whole m-a debate really begs the question of what the law is and where the law resides. How can you be a lib. anarchist without competing laws?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

What they will agree with you about is competing defense agencies. They'll get their own and put it against yours and you better be one of the five families. --Brant

I checked this out on the Internet. There are currently 193 mafia-like "families" in the world, but they call themselves "sovereign states." Sovereign states throughout history have killed and maimed many more people than private criminals ever have. The respective scores are not even close. I therefore assume that you would favor the elimination of these competing agencies -- a.k.a. "governments" -- and call for a one-world government instead. Correct? I asked Dennis the same question, but he was smart enough to ignore my question. Would you care to get entangled in this web? The spider awaits its prey. Ghs

They aren't competing defense agencies. --Brant

They are if you view the entire earth as a "given geographical area," and to the extent that people can renounce citizenship in one country and acquire citizenship in another country.

Ghs

It ain't me, babe, it's you--your---competing defense agencies. C'mon, lib. anarchist, stop shape-shifting.

--Brant

[Dennis Hardin]

I don't have substantial disagreements with any of this (though you have oversimplified the problem). I have never claimed that the NIOF principle is a moral primary. But once the NIOF principle has been derived and justified by moral reasoning, it becomes, for Rand, the foundation of political theory and the necessary presupposition of a free society.

Just because the NIOF is not a moral primary does not mean that you can posit all kinds of exceptions, willy-nilly, on the social and political level. Rand was very clear about this. She also insisted that a proper government is strictly limited to those powers that have been delegated to it by individuals. All rights, she said (like Lockeans before her), are individual rights. A government cannot possess special rights over and above the rights of individuals.

Thus if you wish to argue that a government has the right to initiate force, you must first show that individuals have the right to initiate force against other individuals. I eagerly await your explanation of how Rand defended and approved of this right. Perhaps you will find what you need in another dimension.

Once again, you seem to want to deny that you are using NIOF as a primary, while you continue to use NIOF as a primary.

The rights that individuals have are the rights to live the life proper to a rational being, including all of that which is entailed—e.g., the right to the products of one’s mental effort, the right to be free from the threat of force, the right to the value of the reputation one has earned, the right to the free, mutually agreed contractual exchange of goods and services, the right to not be deliberately and (from the victim’s standpoint) unknowingly placed in harm’s way in one’s daily activities. All of these may, in certain circumstances, entail the existential initiation of physical force—e.g., to stop copyright infringement, to enact a restraining order against stalking or intimidation, to exact compensation for damage to one’s reputation, to obtain civil damages for contractual violations or injuries related to endangerment.

The first overt act of physical force may, in some cases, be initiated by the victim. There is simply no way to just look at the situation existentially and say whether or not the force was justified or who actually initiated the force. The issue of rights must be defined first.

In every one of these cases, a convincing argument can be made that the force was initiated by the guilty party—that the guilty party engaged in a form of force to deprive the victim of a value he had rightfully earned—and that the legal action is therefore retaliatory. The same is true of the anarchist, who has deprived everyone of the right to objective, institutional control of force.

Rand held that it is appropriate to undertake the existential act of the initiation of physical force against those who were engaged in the violation of rights. Technically, she did not consider this the initiation of force, however.

This is gobbledygook. All acts of force, whether initiatory or retaliatory, are "existential," i.e., they are acts that, once undertaken, actually exist. To say that a given act is existentially the initiation of force but "technically" not the initiation of force is a needless and self-contradictory distinction. Rand said nothing like this. You are merely venturing out farther on thin ice in an effort to defend an interpretation that had no basis to begin with.

You imply that the distinction is artificial and unnecessary, since all acts of force are equally overt and existential. If that were true, I’m inclined to think we might not need a theory of rights.

The point I'm making is that force is often used in ways that are not always obvious and self-evident. If we concretize these situations, it is clear that there are major differences, and that overt force may be necessary to stop covert force. It’s the difference between stalking and actual physical constraint of the perpetrator (via a restraining order).. It’s the difference between inducing the fear of potential assault and the members of the gang being arrested by the police and taken to jail. It’s the difference between indefinitely delaying payment that is due and physically extracting that payment from a freeloader’s wallet. It’s the difference between politely inviting someone to do something one knows to be hazardous and, later, using legal means to raid the perpetrator’s bank account to pay for your broken neck. It’s the difference between lying (as in the case of fraud) and being forced to pay for the consequences of a lie. In each case, the victim may be unaffected physically, but the physical impact on the perpetrator is overt.

I am simply extending this mode of analysis to apply to private agencies which want to enagage in the use of force: you do not have the right to create an institution which interferes with the principle of keeping force under objective control, because it poses a direct threat to everyone’s right to live a proper human existence.

Acts of force do not come with labels that enable us to differentiate between initiatory force and retaliatory force. We distinguish between the two by identifying the relevant rights involved -- and this is a primary philosophical function of a theory of rights.

A man enters a house, picks up a television, and leaves with it. Has this person initiated force against any one? Well, we don't know yet because we don't have sufficient information. Is this the guy's own house? Is it his television? If not, does he have the consent of the owner? Etc., etc.. Only after we have this information about the relevant rights can we determine whether force was involved in this act.

Hmmmm. That’s what I have been saying all along. So now you are acknowledging that NIOF cannot be your theoretical starting point politically. It can't serve as your "foundation." You need a theory of rights first. The issue of force alone is not enough.

It will be interesting to see where this leads us.

She put the libertarian anarchist in the exact same position as the con artist, the extortionist, the stalker, the street gang or the terrorist calling in bomb threats, because there is no such thing as a "right" to set yourself up as an independent agency imposing your view of “legitimate” force outside the exclusive province of government. The oversimplication I spoke of consisted of Rand’s use of the phrase noninitation of force without always making it absolutely clear that clarification of the nature of rights must precede any understanding of what that phrase means. She said, in some cases, “The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.” In other cases, she said, “Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force.” To avoid the anarchist’s confusion, she should always have put the issue of the initiation of the use of force in the context of objectively defined rights.

You can repeat this catechism as often as you like. But until you explain how a government acquires a legitimate monopoly on force that permits it to use force against other agencies that are doing the same thing that it does, you are pissing in the wind.

Ghs

Because placing the use of force under objective control is a “condition of existence required ny man's nature for his proper survival," and there is no other practical way to accomplish that.

And taking overt action to stop you is justified as retaliation against the covert threat of uncontrolled violence.

NOTE: I tried to post this several hours ago, and got a message back that seemed to say OL had shut down due to an overload of incoming data. As pissed off as I was, I took that as a compliment.

[Brant Gaede]

Dennis, you are making negative rights sound like positive rights. It's almost like they are being granted instead of residing in the person.

--Brant

[Dennis Hardin]

You accused me defending a "license to kill" -- and as usual you quote Rand, as a Christian would quote the Bible, to buttress your point. Do you actually have an argument somewhere? Or, better yet, do you actually have a theory of rights that deals with the problem of when a fetus acquires a right to life and when the mother loses some of her rights, to that extent? Or would you like to throw another hissy fit?

hissy fit noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial.

I suspect we both know who is throwing the hissy fits around here.

My own theory is that fetal viability should serve as the brightline test that determines when the unborn can no longer be routinely exterminated. It is no longer dependent on the mother at that point, and can survive on its own outside the womb, so the mother no longer has the right to end its life.

I realize the matter is debatable. I don't happen to think it's reasonable to kill a viable fetus moments after the woman's water breaks, just because it still happens to be inside her. I call that unconscionable.

I remember when Tom Snyder interviewed you on his "Tomorrow" show years ago. I wonder how he would have reacted if you had said to him, on national television: "Sure. It's okay to kill the baby seconds before it's delivered. What's wrong with that?"

My guess is that they would have had to cut to a commercial break while he regained his composure. It's crazy, George. I'm sorry. It really is insane.

I'm not going to say anything more in the way of defending my position. It would be like defending my belief that the earth is round. Good fucking grief.

I assume you eat meat. What?! Do you defend a license to kill helpless and innocent animals? Would you say that animals don't have any rights? What?! So is it okay with you if people torture dogs and cats, subjecting them and other animals to prolonged and intense pain for no purpose other than to give pleasure to their sadistic tormenters? You savage! Pack up your license to kill and your license to torture and begone from civilized society! We all know that if something is highly immoral it should also be illegal. Rights are an extension of morality, after all, not a license to kill and torture.

Ghs

Animals do not have rights, so I don't see any relevance to this bit of silliness.

[Dennis Hardin]

Dennis, you are making negative rights sound like positive rights. It's almost like they are being granted instead of residing in the person.

--Brant

Could you clarify that with an example, Brant? I'm sorry. I don't get your meaning.

[Dennis Hardin]

My method of arguing on this thread is how philosophers have discussed such matters for many centuries. Philosophy, in whatever field, addresses highly abstract problems in an effort to fomulate fundamental principles. For Rand, the NIOF is a fundamental principle in the social/political realm, and she was absolutely right to stress the importance of this principle as a limitation on governments. As Rand warned in "The Nature of Government" (my boldface):

Now consider the extent of the moral and political inversion in today's prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man's rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases....

One also begins to see more clearly the nature of the political principles that have to be accepted and advocated, as part of the battle for man's intellectual Renaissance.

Here as elsewhere, Rand stresses the NIOF principle as an essential limitation on government. If we concede, as Dennis has, that a government may legitimately initiate force, then we have conceded the principle of statism, and the rest is just a matter of time. (I devote nearly an entire chapter to this issue in Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press later this year, or perhaps early next year.)

Ghs

I corrected myself on that and acknowledged my error. As I now understand the issue, as long as the government is acting to protect individual rights, it is not initiating force. That is why it is crucial that rights be clearly defined. Once we have objectively established, theoretically, what man has the right to do in the service of his own life, his rights can only be violated by the initiation of force, and the government's role is restricted to the use of retaliatory force.

I have cited several examples already, but one more might be illustrative here: intellectual property rights. It may appear that the government is initiating force when it takes action against a publisher for copyright infringement, but once the right to intellectual property has been established, this is not the case at all. Once it has been established by objective law that a person has the right to the products of his own mind, interference with that right constitutes aggression, and the government's action to stop such aggression is retaliatory.

Once again, this is why a theory of rights is fundamental to political theory, and why the NIOF principle cannot be taken as a fundamental. Until rights are clearly defined, it is impossible to know what constitutes the initiation of force.

[Brant Gaede]

The rights that individuals have are the rights to live the life proper to a rational being, including all of that which is entailed—e.g., the right to the products of one’s mental effort, the right to be free from the threat of force, the right to the value of the reputation one has earned, the right to the free, mutually agreed contractual exchange of goods and services, the right to not be deliberately and (from the victim’s standpoint) unknowingly placed in harm’s way in one’s daily activities. All of these may, in certain circumstances, entail the existential initiation of physical force—e.g., to stop copyright infringement, to enact a restraining order against stalking or intimidation, to exact compensation for damage to one’s reputation, to obtain civil damages for contractual violations or injuries related to endangerment.

This is it.

--Brant

[Dennis Hardin]

The following passage is from "What is Capitalism?" (My boldface.) It succintly expresses the views I have attributed to Rand thus far:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e.., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

The need to quote passages like this is depressing in a way, since Rand said the same thing many times, without equivocation. But Dennis's bizarre reading of Rand, according to which she defended the initation of force by government, has made this necessary.

As I said earlier, Dennis, having drilled holes in the Randian boat with many supposed exceptions to the NIOF principle, is now attempting to patch up his own holes by distinguishing between cases of the "existential" initiation of force that Rand supposedly approved of, but did not regard as "technical" cases of the initiation of force.

The problem here is that Dennis does not understand Rand, or he does not take what she said seriously. Rand meant exactly what she said, over and over again, viz., that a proper government "may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."

Ghs

Have you had your glasses' prescription checked lately, George? I corrected myself in post #336.

Evidently the subtlety of my observations taxed your beleaguered brain beyond its limits, so I'll repeat the essence of what I said here:

In thinking about this issue further, it occurs to me that Rand did not consider such issues as defamation of character, reckless endangerment or intellectual property to be exceptions to the noninitiation of force principle. Rather, her position was that, once these issues were objectively established as consistent with rights—i.e., as conditions of existence required for proper human survival—violations of them would constitute the initiation of force.

I have been approaching the issue of the initiation of physical force from the existential perspective of who first engages in a literal act of physically compelling one individual to do something—because that is the approach used by the anarchist. The anarchist says: you cannot physically stop me from starting an agency whose purpose if to use force strictly in retaliation. On a purely existential level, the monopoly government is engaging in the first act of the initiation of physical force by stopping that agency from doing what it purports to do.

When Rand used the term “initiation of physical force,” however, she was not speaking in strictly existential terms. This is why she did not regard the initiation of physical force as a fundamental, as you claim. In her view, it is necessary to define what is or is not a right before you can correctly ascertain who is initiating the force.

Once it has been determined that a person is entitled to certain actions by right, interfering with that right is an act of aggression, and government action to stop such interference is retaliatory.

[Brant Gaede]

You accused me defending a "license to kill" -- and as usual you quote Rand, as a Christian would quote the Bible, to buttress your point. Do you actually have an argument somewhere? Or, better yet, do you actually have a theory of rights that deals with the problem of when a fetus acquires a right to life and when the mother loses some of her rights, to that extent? Or would you like to throw another hissy fit?

hissy fit noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial.

I suspect we both know who is throwing the hissy fits around here.

My own theory is that fetal viability should serve as the brightline test that determines when the unborn can no longer be routinely exterminated. It is no longer dependent on the mother at that point, and can survive on its own outside the womb, so the mother no longer has the right to end its life.

I realize the matter is debatable. I don't happen to think it's reasonable to kill a viable fetus moments after the woman's water breaks, just because it still happens to be inside her. I call that unconscionable.

I remember when Tom Snyder interviewed you on his "Tomorrow" show years ago. I wonder how he would have reacted if you had said to him, on national television: "Sure. It's okay to kill the baby seconds before it's delivered. What's wrong with that?"

My guess is that they would have had to cut to a commercial break while he regained his composure. It's crazy, George. I'm sorry. It really is insane.

I'm not going to say anything more in the way of defending my position. It would be like defending my belief that the earth is round. Good fucking grief.

I assume you eat meat. What?! Do you defend a license to kill helpless and innocent animals? Would you say that animals don't have any rights? What?! So is it okay with you if people torture dogs and cats, subjecting them and other animals to prolonged and intense pain for no purpose other than to give pleasure to their sadistic tormenters? You savage! Pack up your license to kill and your license to torture and begone from civilized society! We all know that if something is highly immoral it should also be illegal. Rights are an extension of morality, after all, not a license to kill and torture.

Ghs

Animals do not have rights, so I don't see any relevance to this bit of silliness.

Under sundry American laws they sure do. Never mind the philosphical justification. When the SOB who done the thing gets hauled into court, let him defend himself morally and philosophically. I'll watch but not speak.

--Brant

a pet animal has a kind of derivative right his master grants him qua pet--not to be fucked over just as his master has the right not to be fucked over!

[Dennis Hardin]

The rights that individuals have are the rights to live the life proper to a rational being, including all of that which is entailed—e.g., the right to the products of one’s mental effort, the right to be free from the threat of force, the right to the value of the reputation one has earned, the right to the free, mutually agreed contractual exchange of goods and services, the right to not be deliberately and (from the victim’s standpoint) unknowingly placed in harm’s way in one’s daily activities. All of these may, in certain circumstances, entail the existential initiation of physical force—e.g., to stop copyright infringement, to enact a restraining order against stalking or intimidation, to exact compensation for damage to one’s reputation, to obtain civil damages for contractual violations or injuries related to endangerment.

This is it.

--Brant

Okay. I continue to be impressed by my perspicacity. Where am I going wrong here?

[Dennis Hardin]

In my judgment, the following passage from "What is Capitalism?" is the most significant single paragraph that Rand ever wrote on the relationship between values and force.

If one knows that the good is objective—i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man's capacity to recognize the good, i.e.., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man's judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one's mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man's life, needs, goals, and knowledge.

As with the passages I quoted previously, this shows the fundamental role that freedom and physical force play in Rand's ethics, and not merely in her political theory. The pursuit of objective values, according to Rand, presupposes freedom of choice and action. And rights (as I explained earlier) then become the conceptual method by which we define and sanction this freedom of action.

On at least two occasions that I can recall, Dennis said that rights make a "moral existence" possible for man. (I believe this is the term he used.) I checked my "Objectivism Research CD-ROM." Rand only used "moral existence" twice in her published writings -- and in neither case did she use this expression in the same context that Dennis did.

Nevertheless, I don't especially object to Dennis's use of "moral existence," provided we understand this term properly. "Moral," in this context, should be understood in contrast to "nonmoral," not to "immoral." As indicated in the passage quoted above, objective values themselves cannot even exist outside the context of uncoerced choices, so freedom (as defined by rights) is an essential precondition of a moral, as opposed to a nonmoral, existence.

But we cannot slide from this reasonable assertion, as Dennis is prone to do (e.g., in his comments about abortion), into the false assertion that rights do not apply to actions that are manifestly immoral. One has the perfect right to commit immoral actions, so long as one's actions do not violate the rights of other people.

Yes, rights have a moral foundation, but this doesn't preclude us from distinguishing between immoral actions that violate the rights of other people and immoral actions that do not violate rights. When I distinguish between morality and justice, I mean by "morality" what every philosopher has meant by this distinction, i.e., personal moral judgments that do not violate the rights of other people.

I am almost embarrassed to call attention to this elementary distinction, but, again and unfortunately, it is necessary when discussing these matters with Dennis.

Ghs

In certain primitive cultures, the "shaming code" is very effective as a tool for shaping unwanted behaviors. In modern Western society, however, we tend to just laugh that crap off, and that's what I'm doing here. Your embarassment is your problem, whatever the real source happens to be.

The passage quoted above is similar to the one in your prior post:

A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans, or "welfare." Such a mind may be hampered by others, it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument. (An example and symbol of this attitude is Galileo.)

These two quotes essentially make the point that force and mind are opposites, but they do not, obviously, provide anything resembling a theory of what constitutes a right. Here are two passages which do provide the essence of such a theory.

First, here is Rand's definition of "the right to life" (from "Man's Rights"): the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means, the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.

And here is her expanded explanation (which I quoted previously):

The function of the government should be only to protect individual rights…A right is a moral concept that defines and sanctions a man’s freedom of action in a social context. The basic issue is: Does one man have the right to dispose of the life of another? Once you have established that a man is the owner of his own life—that his life is his to dispose of and does not belong to anyone else—you then have the base from which all other rights are derived. If a man has the right to his own life, then he has the right to take all those actions that are necessary, by his nature as a rational being, to sustain and protect it. In order to prove that a certain action is in fact a right, you have to prove that it is required by man’s nature

Objectively Speaking, p. 47

Look at those two quotes and tell me where there is a reference to the initiation of physical force. Rand does not define rights in terms of force at all. She defines rights in terms of what man requires for a human (or moral) existence. It is only after she has clarified what man requires that we are in a position to say what constitutes the initiation of force.

I just thought perhaps we should clear that up, in case those other quotes from Rand were your idea of a "theory of rights."

Now, you refer to the distinction between morality and justice, and you say we must differentiate between "immoral actions that violate the rights of other people and immoral actions that do not violate rights." Evidently this is supposed to support your claim that it's perfectly consistent with the rights of everyone involved to exterminate a baby just seconds before it sees the light of day for the first time.

You truly do not see that the mother or doctor who did such a thing would be guilty of the crime of murder. Until it's outside of her, it's just immoral.

Now there I would say you do have something to be embarassed about, and you have my sympathy.

[Dennis Hardin]

According to this approach, to have "property in" something (or "propriety in" something) is to have legitimate moral jurisdiction over something. It is to have a moral claim of ownership -- hence the term "self-ownership" that became popular among 19th century libertarians. Property rights are the conceptual method by which we distinguish mine from thine.

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

Oh, really? So why did Rand write the following (in "What is Capitalism?"):

Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and its products—or is he the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases, that may dictate his convictions, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products?

Since according to you and Peikoff, "ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object," Rand could not possibly have defended the absurd position that "man is a sovereign individual who owns his own person, his mind, his life," etc. Since this is not even possible, I guess Rand wanted to defend the only alternative, i.e., that man is "the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases...."

Rand was speaking metaphorically, not theoretically.

The important issue is the part of Peikoff's quote which you ommitted:

This whole idea came into being many generations ago from very bad, frightened conservatives who thought that the safest way to defend individualism was to make it all a matter of property rights. Therefore, individual rights are just a form of property rights. You just own yourself. This was in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions. This is a completely wrong inversion because it makes property the primary instead of the derivative.

This is a crucial distinction with respect to a proper derivation of individual rights.

[George H. Smith]

According to this approach, to have "property in" something (or "propriety in" something) is to have legitimate moral jurisdiction over something. It is to have a moral claim of ownership -- hence the term "self-ownership" that became popular among 19th century libertarians. Property rights are the conceptual method by which we distinguish mine from thine.

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

Oh, really? So why did Rand write the following (in "What is Capitalism?"):

Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and its products—or is he the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases, that may dictate his convictions, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products?

Since according to you and Peikoff, "ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object," Rand could not possibly have defended the absurd position that "man is a sovereign individual who owns his own person, his mind, his life," etc. Since this is not even possible, I guess Rand wanted to defend the only alternative, i.e., that man is "the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases...."

Rand was speaking metaphorically, not theoretically.

Yeah, right. Whenever Rand said something that doesn't fit into your preconceived notion of what you think she should have said, simply chalk it up to to her speaking metaphorically. This is a very dishonest method of interpretation.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Rand was speaking metaphorically. On the contrary, her statement is entirely consistent with her definition of "ownership," which I also quoted.

The important issue is the part of Peikoff's quote which you ommitted:

This whole idea came into being many generations ago from very bad, frightened conservatives who thought that the safest way to defend individualism was to make it all a matter of property rights. Therefore, individual rights are just a form of property rights. You just own yourself. This was in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions. This is a completely wrong inversion because it makes property the primary instead of the derivative.

This is a crucial distinction with respect to a proper derivation of individual rights.

Peikoff's comments are exceedingly ignorant. They are downright embarrassing.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Once again, you seem to want to deny that you are using NIOF as a primary, while you continue to use NIOF as a primary.

I never claimed that NIOF is a moral primary. I have said this repeatedly. How many more times must I say this before you get the point?

The first overt act of physical force may, in some cases, be initiated by the victim. There is simply no way to just look at the situation existentially and say whether or not the force was justified or who actually initiated the force. The issue of rights must be defined first.

Of course rights must be defined first, because this is how we distinguish between the initiatory and retaliatory uses of force. After we define the relevant rights and make our determination, we then prohibit those activities that qualify as the initiation of force.

I made this point as early as 1978, in the Appendix to "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market." See: http://mises.org/jou...s/3_4/3_4_4.pdf. My discussion of the initiation of force begins on p. 424.

My views have changed a bit since I wrote this discussion, but I still agree with the basic perspective.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

You accused me defending a "license to kill" -- and as usual you quote Rand, as a Christian would quote the Bible, to buttress your point. Do you actually have an argument somewhere? Or, better yet, do you actually have a theory of rights that deals with the problem of when a fetus acquires a right to life and when the mother loses some of her rights, to that extent? Or would you like to throw another hissy fit?

hissy fit noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial.

I suspect we both know who is throwing the hissy fits around here.

My own theory is that fetal viability should serve as the brightline test that determines when the unborn can no longer be routinely exterminated. It is no longer dependent on the mother at that point, and can survive on its own outside the womb, so the mother no longer has the right to end its life.

We are speaking of individual rights. The fetus does not become an individual, metaphysically speaking, until the moment of birth. It may be a potential individual with potential rights, but an acorn is not an oak tree.

I realize the matter is debatable. I don't happen to think it's reasonable to kill a viable fetus moments after the woman's water breaks, just because it still happens to be inside her. I call that unconscionable.

A fetus doesn't just "happen" to be inside a woman's body, as if it wandered inside one day in a drunken stupor and couldn't find its way out. A fetus is part of a woman's body.

If you are going to use viability (i.e., at around six months) as a bright line for when a fetus acquires individual rights, then you should attribute the same rights to a viable fetus that we attribute to babies. Thus, since a mother should not be permitted to force alcohol, drugs, or other harmful substances into the body of her baby, so a pregnant woman should be legally prohibited from ingesting substances that might harm the fetus. And just as a mother does not have the right to endanger the life of her baby, so a pregnant woman (after six months, in your scheme) should be legally prohibited from engaging in risky behavior.

Of course, the woman had these rights before becoming pregnant, so somewhere along the line she lost some of her natural rights. How, exactly, can a woman lose some of her rights by becoming pregnant?

Also, according to your scheme, if a woman and her doctor perform an abortion after six months, then they should be prosecuted for first-degree murder, just as if they had conspired to murder a baby. If you happen to believe in capital punishment, then both murderers should face the death penality, or, at the very least, life imprisonment.

Moreover, after six months a pregnant woman would not even have the right to kill herself, if this act would also result in the death of the fetus. This action would qualify not as mere suicide, but as a murder/suicide.

So will you defend all this? Or will you attempt to weasel out of the logical implications of your own position?

I remember when Tom Snyder interviewed you on his "Tomorrow" show years ago. I wonder how he would have reacted if you had said to him, on national television: "Sure. It's okay to kill the baby seconds before it's delivered. What's wrong with that?"

My guess is that they would have had to cut to a commercial break while he regained his composure. It's crazy, George. I'm sorry. It really is insane.

You have again attributed a position to me that I have never defended, indeed, one that I explicitly denied. I denied that it is "okay" to kill a fetus seconds before it is born. Please stop this silliness.

I'm not going to say anything more in the way of defending my position. It would be like defending my belief that the earth is round. Good fucking grief.

By all means don't make any effort to defend your views on this subject. You have as much right to hold arbitrary opinions as the next guy. If my position offends your sensibilities, then go with your feelings. Reasoning can be hard work, after all, and it sometimes leads us to embrace uncomfortable conclusions. I certainly wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable.

I assume you eat meat. What?! Do you defend a license to kill helpless and innocent animals? Would you say that animals don't have any rights? What?! So is it okay with you if people torture dogs and cats, subjecting them and other animals to prolonged and intense pain for no purpose other than to give pleasure to their sadistic tormenters? You savage! Pack up your license to kill and your license to torture and begone from civilized society! We all know that if something is highly immoral it should also be illegal. Rights are an extension of morality, after all, not a license to kill and torture.

Ghs

Animals do not have rights, so I don't see any relevance to this bit of silliness.

Ah, so you do think it is "okay" to torture helpless animals! I call that unconscionable

Snyder: "Mr. Hardin, do you think it is okay to torture helpless animals?"

Dennis: "Animals do not have any rights."

Snyder: "Let's go to a commercial break while I regain my composure."

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The following passage is from "What is Capitalism?" (My boldface.) It succintly expresses the views I have attributed to Rand thus far:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e.., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

The need to quote passages like this is depressing in a way, since Rand said the same thing many times, without equivocation. But Dennis's bizarre reading of Rand, according to which she defended the initation of force by government, has made this necessary.

As I said earlier, Dennis, having drilled holes in the Randian boat with many supposed exceptions to the NIOF principle, is now attempting to patch up his own holes by distinguishing between cases of the "existential" initiation of force that Rand supposedly approved of, but did not regard as "technical" cases of the initiation of force.

The problem here is that Dennis does not understand Rand, or he does not take what she said seriously. Rand meant exactly what she said, over and over again, viz., that a proper government "may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."

Ghs

Have you had your glasses' prescription checked lately, George? I corrected myself in post #336.

Evidently the subtlety of my observations taxed your beleaguered brain beyond its limits, so I'll repeat the essence of what I said here: [snip]

You confuse subtlety with incompetence. All you have done is to confuse the issue even further. Your views on this subject are as unfocused as any I have ever encountered. You have been attempting to fit Rand's ideas into a Procrustean Bed of your own making.

Perhaps you can find another howler from Peikoff to quote. I really don't care. I am interested in what Rand said, not in what mediocre second-handers claim she said. Nor am I interested in what the second-hand followers of second-handers have to say.

When confronted with passages by Rand that explicitly contradict what you claim she said, you dismiss such comments as metaphorical or by concocting an artificial distinction between the "existential" and the "technical." I have no patience with these evasive techniques. I grew weary of them during my college years, after witnessing the attempts of Marxists to rewrite Marx.

So go on your way, m'boy, and play with the other children.

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

A fetus doesn't just "happen" to be inside a woman's body, as if it wandered inside one day in a drunken stupor and couldn't find its way out. A fetus is part of a woman's body.

For a limited amount of time. Actually the fetus is connected to the placenta. And it is the placenta, attached to the womb, that is part of the mother.

When the uterus finally contracts violently enough the placenta is torn asunder and is expelled along with its cargo, the fetus, from the confines of the woman's body. Even so, the fetus, atom for atom except for the initial fertilized nucleus is built up of material provided by the woman's efforts. You might say the placenta and fetus are a crop that grows from a seed planted in the mother. The mother did not sow it, but she fed it and it grew.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

As ye sow, so shall ye rape?

[George H. Smith]

A fetus doesn't just "happen" to be inside a woman's body, as if it wandered inside one day in a drunken stupor and couldn't find its way out. A fetus is part of a woman's body.

For a limited amount of time. Actually the fetus is connected to the placenta. And it is the placenta, attached to the womb, that is part of the mother. When the uterus finally contracts violently enough the placenta is torn asunder and is expelled along with its cargo, the fetus, from the confines of the woman's body. Even so, the fetus, atom for atom except for the initial fertilized nucleus is built up of material provided by the woman's efforts. You might say the placenta and fetus are a crop that grows from a seed planted in the mother. The mother did not sow it, but she fed it and it grew. Ba'al Chatzaf

Again, individual rights pertain only to individuals -- and "individual," in this context, means a physically discrete entity. A baby does not become a discrete entitity until birth. Only at that point can two different people -- the mother and the baby -- undertake independent actions that do not necessarily affect the body of the other person.

Imagine if all humans were physically connected by some kind of umbilical cord, such that people could not move around independently, consume something without it affecting other people, etc. The notion of individual rights, as we now understand that concept, could not be justified in this scenario. Why? Simply because we would not be dealing with physically discrete entities known as "individuals" at all. Rather, the human species would constitute a type of single organism in which harmful actions by one part would adversely affect other parts.

We can use a theory of rights to distinguish between aggressive actions and voluntary actions only because we are dealing with individuals who can reap the beneficial or harmful consequences of their own actions independently of each other. I can drink a martini, for example, without adversely affecting you, so I can be said to have a right to drink a martini. But this would not be the case with my hypothetical scenario. If my drinking a martini caused alcohol to flow into your system without your consent, then we can forget about such rights.

Of course, Dennis will find my views "unconscionable," but his aversion to systematic reasoning and theoretical consistency is his problem, not mine. He is far from the only anti-intellectual that I have encountered among O'ists. Virtually the only thing to do in such cases is to let these people stew in their own emotional juices, as they dub arguments they cannot answer "crazy" and "insane." Par for the course, I'm afraid.

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

At birth babies perform two "independent actions". Breath and suck. And these are wired in before birth.

A baby is not a person until several weeks after birth. Until then it is a breathing, crying, sucking machine.

A baby does not have enough brain tissue at birth to be a person. It takes several weeks. The brain is one of the fastest growing parts of a new born.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Your identification of the connection between the reductionist interpretation of NIOF and the mind-body dichotomy is superb. I agree completely. I want to do some more thinking on that topic before commenting further.

Thanks for your insight on this.

Dennis,

Thanks for your kind words.

I can't help but notice the similarity between NIOF and dogma in general (when NIOF is believed in as an axiom). When you remove the mind, but insist on the rule, that's the definition of dogma to me.

When someone believes in dogma all the way down, they say it trumps reason, they say you have to take it whole hog or nothing while saying they are not actually saying that, and they get really pissed and personal when you when challenge it at the root.

I wonder what the influence of cognitive bias is on dogma...

Something to think about...

I'll look forward to your essay on Napoleon Hill. That little gem of a book has always been an inspiration to me.

This is not just an essay.

As an aside, just to take a breather, I'll give you a taste of what I am setting up.

I have started putting a site together called Independent Mastery. (This isn't the greatest name, but it comes with IM as initials, which also stands for Internet marketing, information marketing and so on. I prefer not to use those words in the title because Google is now penalizing (in the search results) new sites that focus too blatantly on money-making as a field.

Also "independent" speaks to my roots in Objectivism and "mastery" speaks to mental skills you develop in studying material like Think and Grow Rich. And it's a subdomain on my own domain, so the URL spells out "Im Michael Stuart Kelly." That's probably overkill on clever, but that's the way my mind works. I think that stuff is cool. )

Since the focus is on attracting people interested in improving their relationship with money (me included), which basically means buyers and sellers at root, not necessarily intellectuals, I am discouraging snarkiness, argumentativeness and so on in the comments. That stuff chases money away in the beginning like nothing else on earth unless you are setting up for a fight.

That's not my purpose.

I am not going at this like a guru teaching others the Enlightenment Path to Higher Things and the Dirty Rotten Villainy of Them. My posture is more like a witness: to look at, mull over, research and think about the things as they come up in the book, then share my observations with others who do the same.

There is a public domain version of Think and Grow Rich (the 1937 version), so I can use that any way I wish without worrying about getting copyright permissions. That is just too much of a temptation.

I am making short videos (with mp3 and pdf) of the entire text and each one will serve as the basis for a blog post, which will come with commentary. I want to relate that particular thought from yesteryear to modern fields like neuromarketing and explore some modern examples and case studies.

But I am also giving constructive criticism when the idea contains incorrect or forced information. (This last approach is more in the way of keep the good while being aware of the bad, not so much on proving Napoleon Hill wrong.)

I am including historical information. I got a hold of Hill's biography (A Lifetime of Riches by Michael Ritt and Kirk Landers), and I have several other sources--including the public library when I need it--for clarifying who the people were and what some of the customs were that Hill gives as examples. Current audiences aren't familiar with a lot of that stuff. Frankly, neither am I, so this focus is just as much for me as it is for others.

I feel particularly drawn to this project because Hill was born in Wise County in the backwoods of Virginia as was I (in fact Pound, where he was born, is only about 15 miles from Norton, where I was born, and 10 miles from Coeburn, where I should have been born if they had a hospital).

He made a holy mess out of a marriage to a hottie (Rosa Lee Beeland) as I once did with my own headache, although I didn't tie the knot. Ironically, this happened right when he wrote Think and Grow Rich--and she took him for everything he had at the time, including the royalties. So although he got rich from the proceeds of that book in the beginning, he lost it all to her shortly thereafter. It's quite a colorful story.

And there are other striking parallels I have found between his life and mine. There is a strong identification factor that constantly nudges me inside. It's personal.

Napoleon Hill was a major up-and-down dude. Lots of dazzling success and lots of crash and burn. Yet his spirit was always can-do. I find that inspiring. Once again, this has been the pattern of my life.

I have applied and been accepted as an affiliate for Nightengale-Conant, which publishes some of Hill's stuff and other material tailor-made for the public I aim to attract with this project. And I have some other stuff I am offering for sale (and for free) to visitors.

I intend mingle in some of the wisdom I have learned from my familiarity with Rand's writing--but without the save the world focus and hostility toward altruism and so on. I'm going on a non-contempt diet over there. This is a feel-good experience and I will only migrate feel-good stuff from Objectivism to it. (Lots of money already comes with enough bad vibes that you have to work around in order to stay positive. A project like that will sink if I allow it to be contaminated with bad vibes from other fields and influences.)

There's a lot of misinformation out there about Napoleon Hill. I want to set up a resource where people can get his good stuff without falling into the hype that usually comes with it. Also, almost all of the major players in Internet marketing have been influenced by Think and Grow Rich, so I have no doubt this will be a good big dog attractor and get my name before them (for joint venture deals and so on).

Hopefully, I will be able to cobble together a mastermind group for business from the folks who show up. I know I'm going to be selective as hell.

For a few years now, I have been studying all the skills needed for Internet marketing (SEO, video marketing, copywriting, social marketing, Wordpress, information product creation, storytelling and so on). This project will be like practice in getting all this from the classroom to market. I can screw up all I wish until I get it right and it won't appear like screw-ups.

There it is in a nutshell. This is going to be a lot of work, especially since I want to do it right (I already have a good start, although it's still private), but I believe I will be well rewarded. And I expect it to fertilize some other projects I have on the back burner. Hell, I expect it to have good spin-off for OL, even though I am keeping those two projects separate.

Michael