A Critique of Rothbardian Natural Rights (sorta long)

[applejuicekid]

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[censored] your stupid laser crap.

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lol...I agree with this sentiment, but I think it is important to establish natural rights as absolute. All of the things you mentioned can be justified if we say even though we are ignoring the rights of people it is necessary because it will make society better. His draft example is the most obvious case of such disregard of people's rights. He is basically saying a draft is wrong unless we REALLY need one. How do we know if we really need a draft? While I guess that his point is that such decisions are completely subjective, it does nothing to protect natural rights.

[ConstantineX]

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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.

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This guy has written countless articles about the feasibility of private enforcement agencies and various ideas that appeal to ACists. He's making an honest point, and your post just makes you look like another robotic libertarian, spouting slogans.

I think he makes a good and simple point. He's just pointing out reducto Rothbardian libertarianism doesn't square with our instinctive moral intuition at all, and to pretend so leads to philosophical contortions.

I personally don't think absolute natural rights should be enforced. But the market mechanism seems the only tool humans have ever invented for positive-sum gains. As it's so useful, it makes sense to guide our morality by that tool, just as a Native American might have his morality guided by his way of life. That might be a better case for legal libertarian absolutism.

EDIT: I have repeatedly made this point several times.
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Perhaps we should replace a statement about what one should do ("never initiate coercion") with a statement about what objective one should seek ("do whatever minimizes the total amount of coercion").


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[Misfire]

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EDIT: I have repeatedly made this point several times.
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Perhaps we should replace a statement about what one should do ("never initiate coercion") with a statement about what objective one should seek ("do whatever minimizes the total amount of coercion").


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Friedman questions this point by pointing out his reluctance to steal a $100 gun to prevent a $200 robbery, and the conversation again returns to finding where to draw the line.

[ianlippert]

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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.

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But whose gonna run the lighthouses!!?!?!??

Seriously I dont get the statists in this thread. If property rights are a problem for AC then its an ever bigger problem for statism. If there are no property rights then we should be satisfied with the madmax type anarchy. Obiously the statists wont go this far. They just want their particular preference of property rights enforced, but there is nothing more inherantly objective in the statist definition of property rights.

[vulturesrow]

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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.

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But whose gonna run the lighthouses!!?!?!??

Seriously I dont get the statists in this thread. If property rights are a problem for AC then its an ever bigger problem for statism. If there are no property rights then we should be satisfied with the madmax type anarchy. Obiously the statists wont go this far. They just want their particular preference of property rights enforced, but there is nothing more inherantly objective in the statist definition of property rights.

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But "statists" entire belief system, at least in the political sense, isnt based on an a concept of absolute, inviolable property rights. Anarchists/libertarians do believe in that. Get it now?

[ianlippert]

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But "statists" entire belief system, at least in the political sense, isnt based on an a concept of absolute, inviolable property rights. Anarchists/libertarians do believe in that. Get it now?


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But the value of the protection of property rights isnt absolute. Nobody is going to go shoot someone because there was a light put on their house. Retribution is still going to be a case of degree.

But I dont see what bothers you about absolute property rights? Does the idea of the welfare state being immoral bother you?

[tame_deuces]

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But "statists" entire belief system, at least in the political sense, isnt based on an a concept of absolute, inviolable property rights. Anarchists/libertarians do believe in that. Get it now?

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Anarcho-capitalists do, most anarchists don't.

[Zygote]

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But "statists" entire belief system, at least in the political sense, isnt based on an a concept of absolute, inviolable property rights. Anarchists/libertarians do believe in that. Get it now?

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Anarcho-capitalists do, most anarchists don't.

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Lets say a state of anarchy is created. Now an anarcho-capitlist stands his ground and proclaims that the land he stands on his to preach from.

An anarcho-socialist comes along and wants to make use of his share of the property that the anarcho-capitalist claimed to be of his right of use. The anarcho-capitalist refuses and, trying to play devil's advocate, says if this society is socialist then before you protest my action you need permission to preach from the land you stand on. The anarcho-socialist redirects this argument to him. This continues back and forth ad-infinitum. In the least both anarchists must concede that all have the right to use their body and the land they stand on. This is inherently anarcho-capitalist and private property based. How far the private property extends is debateable, this much is not, however.

The question is what basis of action does the anarcho-socialist have against the anarcho-capitalist in terms of protesting the anarcho-capitlist's attempt for private property use? How can he accomplis his goal without either creating a state or admitting he's at least a hypocrite anarcho-capitalist?

In anarchy, there can be quasi socialists but they must respect private property to prevent descending into a state. A kibbutz can live side by side capitalist institutions but they can't make all the land under kibbutz rule without become a state.

[vulturesrow]

For those of you who arent getting the poin:

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A second problem is that simple statements of libertarian principle taken literally can be used to prove conclusions that nobody, libertarian or otherwise, is willing to accept. If the principle is softened enough to avoid such conclusions, its implications become far less clear. It is only by being careful to restrict the application of our principles to easy cases that we can make them seem at the same time simple and true.

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The obvious response is that only significant violations of my property rights count. But who decides what is significant? If I have an absolute property right, then I am the one who decides what violations of my property matter. If someone is allowed to violate my property with impunity as long as he does no significant damage, we are back to judging legal rules by their consequences.

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I am not claiming that libertarians who argue from rights rather than from consequences believe that you cannot light a match on your own property, or fly an airplane, or breathe out; obviously they do not. My point is that simple statements of libertarian rights taken literally lead to problems of this sort.

One can avoid such results by qualifying the statements: saying that they apply only to "significant" violations of my rights, or violations that "really injure" me, or that by breathing and turning on lights and doing other things that impose tiny costs on others I am implicitly giving them permission to do the same to me. But once one starts playing this game one can no longer use rights arguments to draw clear conclusions about what should or should not happen. People who believe in taxes can argue just as plausibly that taxes do not really injure you, since the benefits they produce more than make up for the cost, or that everyone implicitly consents to taxes by using government services.

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Our response to such questions demonstrates that we do not really believe in simple single values. Most libertarians, myself among them, believe that a libertarian society is both just and attractive. It is easy enough to claim that we are in favor of following libertarian principle whatever the consequences--given that we believe the consequences would be the most attractive society the world has ever known. But the claim that we put individual rights above everything else is, for most of us, false. Although we give some value, perhaps very great value, to individual rights, we do not give them an infinite value. We can pretend the contrary only by resolutely refusing to consider situations in which we might have to choose between individual rights and other things that are also of great value.

My purpose is not to argue that we should stop being libertarians. My purpose is to argue that libertarianism is not a collection of straightforward and unambiguous arguments establishing with certainty a set of unquestionable propositions. It is rather the attempt to apply certain economic and ethical insights to a very complicated world. The more carefully one does so, the more complications one is likely to discover and the more qualifications one must put on one's results.

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[tolbiny]

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A second problem is that simple statements of libertarian principle taken literally can be used to prove conclusions that nobody, libertarian or otherwise, is willing to accept. If the principle is softened enough to avoid such conclusions, its implications become far less clear. It is only by being careful to restrict the application of our principles to easy cases that we can make them seem at the same time simple and true.

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One solution to this problem is to reject the idea that natural rights are absolute; potential victims have the right to commit a minor rights violation, compensating the owner of the gun afterwards to the best of their ability , in order to prevent a major one.

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vulturesrow,

The author is not at all softening his stance on property rights in this article, as he seems to think he is. The above quotation is evidence of that. The fact that he admits that a person would have to compensate the misanthrope for the use of his rifle is evidence of the fact that the author believes in personal property rights. The issue he misses is that Rothbard never said that natural rights should never, ever no matter the circumstances, be violated, but that when they are violated the victim is due compensation proportional to the violation. The recognition of this distinction invalidates all of the authors absurd examples. Sure, I violated my neighbor's property rights by shining a flashlight on his door, and I owe him compensation for the damage caused. If I have caused damage I owe him, if not I don't, from a practical standpoint this is where arbitration steps in.