A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)

[DontRaiseMeBro]

this seems like a bunch of nitpicky what-if's to me... it's almost... well, childish really.

Instead of looking for ways that we can't be free let's start looking for ways that we can be.

It's very possible that this is over my head though as I am a simpleton compared to the better minds here so I'll leave it to pvn, borodog etc to answer. Maybe this article does point out something important and I've missed that essence but it doesn't seem that way to me.

[tomdemaine]

This is just a string of ridiculous, nonsense, pointless, grey area null zone scenarios designed to hurt the cause of freedom. Why does anyone anywhere care about the possibility of a photon hitting my door when there are millions dying through the corruption of a bloated evil violent coercive state, trillions of dollars in debt and wasteful spending forcing people to spend half their time working for no pay and hundreds of thousands in gulags being beaten and raped for the mere "crime" of setting fire to a plant and putting it in their mouth. [censored] your stupid laser crap.

[DrunkHamster]

I really get the impression people here are missing the point; Friedman knows his examples are ridiculous, and that in practice no one will have any trouble deciding that a candle is fine while a laser beam is not.

But that's not his point. His point is that if you take a natural rights approach there is no dividing line between the two cases. To take his aeroplane example: no one here seriously questions that you should be able to forcibly disarm someone playing russian roulette with you against your will (1 in 6 chance of dying), just as no one here questions that someone flying a plane over your land is legitimate (say a 1 in 10 000 chance of dying). The problem that Friedman raises is that this seems entirely arbitrary if you look at it from a natural rights point of view.

[applejuicekid]

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I really get the impression people here are missing the point; Friedman knows his examples are ridiculous

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The problem with his examples aren't that they are ridiculous, it is that they are not analogous.

A laser that will damage your property isn't the same as a flashlight. And it has nothing to do with the concentration of the light.

Shooting a gun at someone is a violent act. Flying a plane over someone's land isn't.

[DrunkHamster]

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A laser that will damage your property isn't the same as a flashlight. And it has nothing to do with the concentration of the light.

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Do you believe in the subjective theory of value (like, I would've thought, all the ACers on this board do)? Because if so, please tell me how you can objectively tell whether something is damaging my property? If the STV is right, all value is in the eye of the beholder, and so if I decide that a couple of photons spilling over to my land is damaging it, who are you to say any different?

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Shooting a gun at someone is a violent act. Flying a plane over someone's land isn't.

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Again, missing the point - the violence isn't what matters, the risk of death is. I'm sure I can come up with other examples of non violent situations which cause a 1 in 6 chance of you dying - do you think you are within your rights to stop these occuring? If so, your violent/non violent dichotomy won't help you one bit.

[applejuicekid]

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Because if so, please tell me how you can objectively tell whether something is damaging my property?

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I can't. But there are certain cases where I can tell for sure that you are damaging my property. Eliminating all cases where it is obvious that my property is being damaged or interfered with would be a good start. For those other subjective cases a reasonable man argument would be a decent solution.

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non violent situations which cause a 1 in 6 chance of you dying - do you think you are within your rights to stop these occuring?

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Of course I am, as those infringe on my right to live. You are free to do what I want as long as it doesn't interfere with my rights. I don't see why I am not allowed to defend myself because you decide to do something incredibly dangerous. I suspect you will comeback with something about what probability is acceptable. And the answer is I don't know, but this isn't a natural rights problem. It is a subjective question for any society.

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Again, missing the point - the violence isn't what matters

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Yes, it is. In Friedman's article he asks what if the gun had a million chambers and then switches to the plane example. This is why it is a bad example, he should have stuck with the gun. If he had, it would be quite clear that it is still not right to shoot the gun at someone.

I think we are stuck on different things. You are saying since what constitutes damage to property is subjective it means that it is ok to damage people's property sometimes. While this may be true it does not mean that it is ok to damage people's property in cases where it is not subjective. Friedman uses the stealing of a gun to stop a madman as an example of when it is ok to steal (which would always be wrong according to absolute rights supporters).

[Phil153]

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Shooting a gun at someone is a violent act. Flying a plane over someone's land isn't.

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What if it's a helicopter, meant to intimidate the owner into selling their land to the local monopolist?

The point which all you fine AC intellects are missing is that a million scenarios can be thought of (many of them realistic) where your absolute rights mantra gets shown up as a logical and practical farce.

[Money2Burn]

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What if it's a helicopter, meant to intimidate the owner into selling their land to the local monopolist?

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That would seem pretty coercive to me (and not that realistic).

In any case, nothing brought up in this article seems that compelling to me. Of course people are going to have different ideas of what affects their property, these all seem like trivial disputes that would arise between individual property owners that could be settled by arbitration. I think that would be the whole purpose of arbitration in the frist place, to settle these "grey area"
disputes.

I know the article was about absolute property rights, but I wouldn't consider it too damning if the best argument someone can come up with against this idea is that there is a 1 in 1 x 10^10 chance that a plane flying overhead might crash into your property therefore your rights aren't absolute!

[ianlippert]

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Shooting a gun at someone is a violent act. Flying a plane over someone's land isn't.

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What if it's a helicopter, meant to intimidate the owner into selling their land to the local monopolist?

The point which all you fine AC intellects are missing is that a million scenarios can be thought of (many of them realistic) where your absolute rights mantra gets shown up as a logical and practical farce.

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Well mabey you could provide a positive theory of property rights. Or do you just want the government to own everything and control everyone?

The problem with you example and many of the abstract examples that come up is there is no cost to the actors in abstract land. Whos gonna pay for the pilot and helicopter in your example? At some point the owner is going to sell his property and at some point it doesnt make economic sense to do rediculous things. Its when you have the state to externalize the cost of the rediculous things that you want to do that we get massive amounts of violence. Why dont you go have a discussion with those poor people in Iraq about property rights.

[ianlippert]

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But that's not his point. His point is that if you take a natural rights approach there is no dividing line between the two cases. To take his aeroplane example: no one here seriously questions that you should be able to forcibly disarm someone playing russian roulette with you against your will (1 in 6 chance of dying), just as no one here questions that someone flying a plane over your land is legitimate (say a 1 in 10 000 chance of dying). The problem that Friedman raises is that this seems entirely arbitrary if you look at it from a natural rights point of view.


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And the answer is the exact same as it is now. Its determined by how much people value the enforcement of their property rights. So some guy shines a light at my house, am I gonna pay the $100 to call the cops up and get him to stop? Or would I do what most people do now when minor infractions occur to their property? I'm going to go over to his house and have a discussion with him, and since most people dont have a incessant need to annoy their neighbours he's probably going to stop.

To say that there are some grey areas to property rights and therefore there are no property rights is pretty insane. We need to spend our time on the real important areas of property rights. Where people are stealing and murdering are far more important than some theoretical that is never going to happen in real life.