Anarcho Capitalism take 1million

[AlexM]

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In a more serious vein, note that I did not ask if the slave owner imposed anything on the slave. It is obvious that you will think so. I asked if the slave owner imposed anything on me if he used violence to stop me from freeing his slave. The analogy works perfectly. He thought owning slaves was his natural right. You think owning land is your natural right. Does that mean he could use violence? Does that mean you can use violence?

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It's all a question of who initiates aggression, not who uses it. In the example of the slave owner, he has initiated on the slave. Since the initiation has already happened, you coming in to help the slave isn't initiation. When I go out into the wilderness and homestead a piece of land and work to make it productive for society, I haven't intiated aggression on anyone. It isn't until someone comes and messes with my land that the initiation has happened and it's not the land owner who's the initiator.

[pvn]

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or one thing, people are never really compensated for money taken via taxation. <font color="red"> yes, they are </font>

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Because the person taking the money and giving the "compensation" says so?

If I take your wallet and give you a handful of toad poop, have you been compensated?

PS: LEARN HOW TO REPLY

[pvn]

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Most people think selling drugs is wrong, yet you think it's perfectly fine.

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I think this is an incorrect framing of his views. There's a difference between saying someone has no right to stop a person from doing something, and approving of that particular action. I think eating 200 doughnuts every day is probably a "bad" choice but I don't feel that anyone should be able to use force to stop you from doing it.

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Your moral views don't appear to come from most people, but from yourself, so "because I say so and it feels right" can't be too far from the truth.

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Actually, I think it can.

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I agree though, that this is not very charitable of me to say. Obviously you could say the same about my moral views. There is still a point here: I have lots of moral views, but the only view I want to impose on others is the one that says violence against other people is wrong. I think it's ok to stop someone from forcefully imposing their will onto you or others, even if you have to use force yourself. You agree with this, but then you want to impose your view on private property on top of it. And I don't see how you have the right to do that.

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This is wrong. If you don't like my view on property, then that's fine with me. Just don't try to interact with me.

If you don't believe that the land that I think I own can be owned at all, then you must recognize that YOU don't own it either, and therefore you have no right to be there, so my exclusion of you from that property is in no way depriving you of anything you are entitled to.

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You say that societies that have not respected property rights have tended not to prosper. I agree with that, and that should be an incentive for people to respect property rights and to enact economical sanctions against thieves. But it does not justify the use of force. If people don't think property rights will be necessary for prosperity, or don't value prosperity enough that they want your view on property rights in their society, who are you to tell them otherwise?

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I don't tell them otherwise.

[pvn]

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In a more serious vein, note that I did not ask if the slave owner imposed anything on the slave. It is obvious that you will think so. I asked if the slave owner imposed anything on me if he used violence to stop me from freeing his slave. The analogy works perfectly. He thought owning slaves was his natural right. You think owning land is your natural right. Does that mean he could use violence? Does that mean you can use violence?

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Slaves are human beings, and are moral agents. freeing a slave is stopping an aggression against him. Cats and land and cows are not moral agents.

[nietzreznor]

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Go back to when slaves are property. If I help a slave run away from his owner, I am the aggressor, right? Nothing is being imposed on me if I'm violently stopped from doing so?


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Clearly the slaveowner is the aggressor, not you. Slavery violates the principle of self-ownership.

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If what you mean by a natural right is the right to use violence to enforce them, I'm saying you don't have a natural right to unlimited property rights. A lot of people think everyone has a natural right to food, water, shelter and so on. Right to not be discriminated against because of race, sex, opinions, retardation, chronic illness, so on. Maybe we can use violence to enforce all of that too. It would be some "anarchy".

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But it matters which of these views are actually correct! I'm not a moral relativist, so I don't concede that just because, say, you and I have different views about property rights, that any attempt to force one view at the expense of the other constitutes aggression. The whole point of arguing and debating about rights theory is to find out which rights we *actually* have. Now, I haven't put forth an argument for traditional libertarian self-ownership, and I don't really intend to. But the reason I think this particular point isn't very convincing is because IF the libertarian view of self-ownership is essentially correct, then it doesn't matter that some people disagree, or think that there should be a right to food, etc. Individuals don't get to choose which rights they find appealing and then cry "aggression!" when they aren't followed. We find the rights that we actually have (I would arguew that it is self-ownership) and see what actions are consistent and inconsistent with that.

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And some local customs could envolve violently enforcing "law" on people that had not agreed to it?

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Two points:

1. You don't have to agree to a law to be under its jurisdiction, if we're talking about natural-rights violations (eg, even if I don't agree to a law about not killing people, I can still legitimately be held liable if I kill someone).

2. As we are proving with this argument, people don't always agree on what is 'right', 'good', etc. One of the biggest benefits of an anarchist society is that a large are, like the US, could be home to a WIDE variety of different communities with different local customs. Some communities may have rules and appraoches to life that I find unlibertarian or otherwise distasteful. Some may not respect property rights at all. Now, anarchists could be up in arms that community XYZ is too conservative, has stupid regressive laws, etc. But what should someone do--purge the land of all law that isn't in exact accordance with libertarian principle? My point was that different communities can exist side by side, and since there are lots of communities without any overarching federal bureaucracy it is much easier for an individual to avoid an oppressive situation by just leaving and going to a different community (much much easier to do than it is right now).

EDIT: I should add, wrt to issues of different fundamental views of property rights... Libertarians base their views of property rights on the a) the prionciple of self-ownership, and b) homesteading theory. I think both of these are more intuitive and more fundamentally held than any property theories with stuff like "everyone has the right to food." I also think any such "postive rights" theories are inconsistent with self-ownership, so if the choice is between "everyone owns themselves" and "everyone has a right to food", I'll take the former.

[RedBean]

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Slaves are human beings, and are moral agents. freeing a slave is stopping an aggression against him. Cats and land and cows are not moral agents.

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What if we changed the slave in the analogy to his 13-year old daughter, who is being 'aggressed upon' by him grounding her for 6 weeks for having a $363.12 cell phone bill last month.

He has taken away her access to several things, and restricted her freedom, much to her chagrin.

If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

[pvn]

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Slaves are human beings, and are moral agents. freeing a slave is stopping an aggression against him. Cats and land and cows are not moral agents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What if we changed the slave in the analogy to his 13-year old daughter, who is being 'aggressed upon' by him grounding her for 6 weeks for having a $363.12 cell phone bill last month.

He has taken away her access to several things, and restricted her freedom, much to her chagrin.

If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

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Is she a moral agent?

[RedBean]

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Slaves are human beings, and are moral agents. freeing a slave is stopping an aggression against him. Cats and land and cows are not moral agents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What if we changed the slave in the analogy to his 13-year old daughter, who is being 'aggressed upon' by him grounding her for 6 weeks for having a $363.12 cell phone bill last month.

He has taken away her access to several things, and restricted her freedom, much to her chagrin.

If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

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Is she a moral agent?

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Read it again with the emphasis added. (Yes, she is a moral agent.)

That being clear....again...If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

[pvn]

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Slaves are human beings, and are moral agents. freeing a slave is stopping an aggression against him. Cats and land and cows are not moral agents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What if we changed the slave in the analogy to his 13-year old daughter, who is being 'aggressed upon' by him grounding her for 6 weeks for having a $363.12 cell phone bill last month.

He has taken away her access to several things, and restricted her freedom, much to her chagrin.

If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

[/ QUOTE ]

Is she a moral agent?

[/ QUOTE ]

Read it again with the emphasis added. (Yes, she is a moral agent.)

That being clear....again...If a 40-year old man comes along and "frees" her by the two of them running off, is the pedo justified in using force against the father in freeing her as a moral agent who is being 'aggressed upon', since the father was the initiator?

Is the father justified in using force to defend what he believes is in the best interest of his young daughter, despite it not being her wishes?

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If she is a moral agent, it doesn't matter how old the daughter, the "pedo", or the father are.

Actually, if she isn't, it doesn't matter.

If she's a moral agent, she makes her own decisions.

If she isn't, she doesn't.

But feel free to muddy up the waters with a lot of emotional appeals. That sort of pandering to base lizard-brain instincts works in a lot of places, but generally doesn't here.

[adanthar]

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If she is a moral agent, it doesn't matter how old the daughter, the "pedo", or the father are.

Actually, if she isn't, it doesn't matter.

If she's a moral agent, she makes her own decisions.

If she isn't, she doesn't.

But feel free to muddy up the waters with a lot of emotional appeals. That sort of pandering to base lizard-brain instincts works in a lot of places, but generally doesn't here.

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Of course it doesn't; you are subscribers to an abstract notion of how to live your life that breaks down when subjected to the slightest real world scrutiny.

Once again, please go ahead and educate the world at large of the attractiveness of AC-land using this example. Please.