A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)

[Misfire]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why it was a great example. In terms of the % chance of your dying, the gun with a million chambers and the plane flying overhead are no different. Why is one bad and the other not bad when they both represent another individual's actions posing the exact same threat?

Perhaps the difference is that there's no other point to aiming a gun at someone, but that brings back the question of where to draw the line. How much utility must an individual derrive before it justifies violating someone else's rights? Who gets to decide how much utility is actually gained? Where's the line between the pointlessness of the gun and the utility of flying the plane?

[tomdemaine]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why it was a great example. In terms of the % chance of your dying, the gun with a million chambers and the plane flying overhead are no different. Why is one bad and the other not bad when they both represent another individual's actions posing the exact same threat?

Perhaps the difference is that there's no other point to aiming a gun at someone, but that brings back the question of where to draw the line. How much utility must an individual derrive before it justifies violating someone else's rights? Who gets to decide how much utility is actually gained? Where's the line between the pointlessness of the gun and the utility of flying the plane?

[/ QUOTE ]

The line is active vs passive. Me buying a burger drives up the price of burgers for you (though by an inperceptable amount) but that is a passive "loss" to you. Activly stealing from someone is different, just like pointing a gun a someone and pulling the trigger is different from flying a plane near them.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
This is why it was a great example. In terms of the % chance of your dying, the gun with a million chambers and the plane flying overhead are no different. Why is one bad and the other not bad when they both represent another individual's actions posing the exact same threat?

Perhaps the difference is that there's no other point to aiming a gun at someone, but that brings back the question of where to draw the line. How much utility must an individual derrive before it justifies violating someone else's rights? Who gets to decide how much utility is actually gained? Where's the line between the pointlessness of the gun and the utility of flying the plane?

The line is active vs passive. Me buying a burger drives up the price of burgers for you (though by an inperceptable amount) but that is a passive "loss" to you. Activly stealing from someone is different, just like pointing a gun a someone and pulling the trigger is different from flying a plane near them.

[/ QUOTE ] Your presuppositions here: that the ethicality or acceptability of an action is to be determined by intention (your active vs passive distinction), not consequences, and, furthermore, that the law (or "social norms" or whatever anarchists want to call the rules of human interaction) should reflect this, are debatable, to say the least. Although I'm certainly not a consequentalist of the strict sort, intentionalism of the strict sort is just nutty to me; far crazier than strict consequentalism. If you are killed by somebody crashing a plane into your house or a disease that spread because I think that state required vaccinations are immoral because they are "aggressive acts preventing passive acts", it does you no good if someone puts on your gravestone "Thanks to the wise law of the land,was killed by a passive act, not an aggressive one".

[Misfire]

[ QUOTE ]
The line is active vs passive. Me buying a burger drives up the price of burgers for you (though by an inperceptable amount) but that is a passive "loss" to you. Activly stealing from someone is different just like pointing a gun a someone and pulling the trigger is different from flying a plane near them.

[/ QUOTE ]

While both raise the price of burgers, actively stealing from Burger King has a victim that purchasing a burger doesn't have. A better example might be pollution, or drunk driving where there is no specific victim against whom the action is intended.

Either way, since there is an argument that everything you do has the possibility of injuring another, at what point do your intrusions on their rights, passive or active, become unacceptable? Can I smoke a cigarette? Can I drive an SUV? Can I operate a factory with a smelly smokestack?

[Luxoris]

It is not true that one person buying a burger raises the price (even with the imperceptibly caveat). I assume the basis for the proposition is an overly simplistic supply and demand analysis?