There is nothing 'libertarian' about (i) the State having a monopoly on dispute resolution, (ii) 'corporations' (which are a legal fiction), (iii) special government privileges for said corporations (or indeed for anyone). The State is an agency of monopolised aggression by its very nature. ssu brought up Max Weber's definition of 'State', which is still the most widely cited, as far as I can tell. The State is ‘a compulsory political organization with a centralised government that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a certain territory’.

There is no significant sense in which the government 'is' the people. These are just empty words. There is no reality to which these words correspond. I do not even consent to being governed, so how can it be said to 'represent' me?

This is Murray Rothbard, prolific libertarian theorist and the first anarcho-capitalist:

The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.

The encyclopaedia of libertarianism:

The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.

And everyone from Ayn Rand to Robert Nozick define it in the same way. The purpose of the NAP is to distinguish between two uses of force: that which is intiatory and that which is defensive. And, as they all recognise, it presupposes a system of property rights.

I flagged a while ago that what is going on here is an uninteresting semantic disagreement. Your initial assertion was that the NAP is incompatible with private property. The only justification you have for this claim is that the definition of ‘aggression’ with which I have been operating is improper or ‘twisted’. In fact, I am using this term perfectly consonantly with how it is used by libertarians, in their expression of what they mean by the terms they use, in distinguishing their own philosophy. The NAP is a libertarian principle. It is an article of their philosophy. You don’t get to come along after the fact and redefine their terms.

I am sorry if I didn’t perfectly grasp the connotations of ‘institution’ relative to ‘convention’ (English is not my first language). I just mean to say, a formally recognised State is not necessary in order to have a set of conventions in regards to ownership. Such conventions can exist independently of a State. That’s all.

That's the problem with libertarianism: the extremely passionate emotional hatred of 'statism'. — ssu

Hatred really has nothing to do with anything. I don’t ‘hate’ the State. I am opposed principally to aggression for philosophical reasons, and the State is an agency of monopolised aggression.

But you do see the difference between property (that can be owned by many) and your body. — ssu

Yes, I do.

The strict (and quite ideological) juxtaposition to a "State" and the "peaceful voluntary free market" isn't a good model as you simply need institutions starting from simple rules for a market to work even without any 'State' involvement (or a State even to exist). In order for any market to operate, the market participants have to agree on basic rules, starting from the definition of what is a "peaceful and voluntary" transaction and what is "theft" or "involuntary". And this is basically totally similar collective "intervention" to someone who can think he or she can do otherwise. If you accept that such rules are needed, especially in an advanced market, then where do you draw the line with "good" market intervention and "bad" intervention? Sorry to say, but markets do need rules. — ssu

Markets require a system of property rights, which are conventions, but not institutions. Peaceful trade does indeed require a convention which is generally agreeable to both, but this does not imply a State or anything like it. We can see this by looking at the nature of peaceful interaction on a small scale. David Friedman whom I referenced above has invoked the concept of Schelling points to explain persuasively how coordination can occur in the absence of communication. This concept can be pushed, I think, to account for a generally accepted convention of ownership even in the absence of a formalised institution like a State. What you say about rules (or, as I would sooner put it, a system of ownership rights) is nothing that I haven’t talked about already (I don’t know how closely you have been monitoring the thread). I just don’t make the leap thence to Statism.

You write above that "all rights are really just rights of use or ownership over scarce resources which have alternative uses." So what about your right to live? Can someone own you? If that is not so, then not all rights are just about use or ownership of scarce resources which have alternative uses. — ssu

Most certainly, someone may own me: me. This is a very common starting point in philosophical treatments of rights, left and right, libertarian and non-libertarian. (Property) rights begin with an individual’s right of ownership over him/herself. Marxist (i.e. very non-libertarian) philosopher G. A. Cohen bemoaned the fact that the idea of self-ownership is not given adequate treatment in Marxist literature. It is often expressed thus: the right of self-ownership means that an individual has over him/herself the same natural (i.e. institution-independent) rights as those legal rights which a slave-owner has over his/her chattel slave. My body is mine to use, abuse and exploit to my heart’s content. It seems to me most plausible that a system of ownership rights should start here, since, before we can establish what (else) I may own, we must first establish who owns me.

Is all of this really better? — alcontali

I am not sure what I am being asked to defend, exactly . . . as though my only options are choosing between endorsing this or that form of aggression. There really is no categorical distinction between a formally recognised 'State' and an aggressive faction. Becoming a 'State' is simply the prerogative of the winner. I have not argued here for any kind of 'program' for liberty, and I suspect that such a program will be multi-faceted and gradual; it probably will not consist in an overnight coup, and I shouldn't be thought to advocate for such a thing. The road away from serfdom is a long one but, in many ways, the trajectory is a good one. Several of the services which States provided in days gone by are now being provided by private agencies (especially in those important services of rights-enforcement and dispute resolution). In my humble opinion, the death knell for the State will be the gradual realisation that, in fact, those things for which most people are convinced that we simply need a State can be provided by alternative means. I don't feel the need to choose between aggressive States or aggressive soon-to-be States. The dichotomy is quite false.

All you say of monopolies and oligopolies are fine with me. I don’t think we disagree too much here. I’m just not sure what the argument is into whose service these observations are being pressed.

Speaking of 'mainstream economists' isn't productive. Far better to refer to specific economists, not refer to stereotypes. And what is market intervention? One could argue there being laws and a legal system is 'market intervention'. — ssu

‘Mainstream economists’ actually does have a fairly refined designation. The spectrum of economic opinion is typically divided into (from left to right) the Marxists, Keynesians, Chicagoans and Austrians. The ‘mainstream’ typically incorporates the Keynesians and the Chicagoans. This includes everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman. I understand ‘market intervention’ in a political context simply to be any State action; any service a State provides (which is funded by tax revenue or debt) or any kind of regulation is an intervention into the system of peaceful voluntarism which characterises the ‘free market’. But, since the State is just an agency of monopolised aggression, I can certainly imagine non-States 'intervening' in markets as well, such as a mafioso criminal organisation (not all that different from a State, actually).

Is it incorrect? At least you admit "many libertarians" think so and I do agree that surely there are those ridiculous fundamentalists who think that absolutely everything can done better with the private market, perhaps even their own personal life starting from having a family could be better done by the market... — ssu

You seemed to be saying that it is simply ‘known’ among libertarians across the board that certain services, particularly those which are typically understood to constitute the State’s core functions, are such that a market cannot produce them, and that even an-caps share in this commitment. Yes, this would certainly be incorrect. I posted on the first page two important an-cap book-length contributions which explore all of these issues. I don’t cite them as an authority, merely to show what is out there.

And just where does it then put (the cost) of your own life? — ssu

Sorry, I don’t understand what this question means. ‘Costs’ are forgone opportunities. Can you explain?

I’m not sure how to respond to this, except to say that it seems entirely wrong-headed. Since I am sceptical of the State tout court, it is little comfort that there may be ways of keeping the power of this coercive monopoly ‘reined in’. I would say, cut out the middle man, and do away with it. Since the State is an agency of monopolised aggression by nature, it will always violate the ‘perimeter’ to some degree. Given this – and, given that it is not the only option available – I am much more enthusiastic about the private alternative, which is consistent with the NAP, rather than the Statist solution, which violates it. But I feel like this is just an impasse.

The problem, Virgo, is that you are taking for granted ownership of property, "that which belongs to oneself" in your definition of aggression. — Metaphysician Undercover

It’s not a ‘problem’ at all. In a system of thought, some beliefs are relatively basic and some are derived. I have made no secret of the fact that the NAP presupposes a system of property rights; this is a point I have made numerous times.

As I observed above, fundamentally all rights are really just rights of use or ownership over scarce resources which have alternative uses. The right to do anything in particular is really a right to do what one wants with a resource which might have instead gone to serve someone else’s ends. So the whole question of ‘rights’ in general is really just a question of resource allocation to someone or other, to serve someone or other’s separate ends.

In regard to the concrete question of how a specific property right is generated in the first instance, there are two main competing views in the literature. Right-libertarians in the tradition of Locke argue that all external resources are originally unowned, and come to be owned as individuals engage in productive acts of transformation (‘homesteading’). Thereafter, just property titles are transferred through peaceful exchange, or gift. Left-libertarians, by contrast, and more in the tradition of Rousseau, consider all the resources in the world to be owned by everyone in an egalitarian manner. The arguments both ways are voluminous and technical, but if you can get your hands on ‘Left-Libertarianism and its Critics’ (Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne, eds.), there is nothing better out there for exploring these issues.

I am sorry if I mistook your purpose at all. It seems to me that monopolies and oligopolies are subject to the same inner logics, that the former are in effect more problematic versions of the latter (ceteris paribus), and that almost anything that is true of a monopoly is a fortiori true of an oligopoly, too. But if I am missing something here, feel free to fill me in.

What you say is true in the sense that ‘market equilibrium’ is a perpetual tendency of the market, and not a real final stopping point. The market tends perpetually towards an equilibrium, but ‘perfect market’ models are of course unrealisable. What I find, however, is that it is the mainstream economists (who are Statists down to a man, as far as I can tell) who tend to think in terms of ‘perfect markets’ and, recognising that they are unrealisable, argue for government intervention on that basis. Meanwhile, it is the heterodox Austrian school economists (many of whom are anarcho-capitalists) who point out the invalidity of such an argument, basically for the same reasons as I have mentioned: either, government does not solve the problem, or else government is itself subject to its own ‘market imperfections’ which make it a less than ideal solution. I have actually not argued that natural monopolies are unlikely to occur. All I really have an interest in arguing is that, given that the State is itself a monopoly of the most dangerous kind, it is not a reasonable solution. Indeed, any argument for Statism on the strength of its ‘monopoly-busting power’ is self-referentially refuting.

Libertarians, even the anarcho-capitalists, often make very casually the exception of defence in their ideal society. Yet they obviously understand the total incapability of a simple market mechanism to handle the defence of the society. — ssu

This is incorrect. While many libertarians (minarchists) agree with you, others (anarcho-capitalists) do indeed believe that the market is not only capable of providing these services, but insist that it does so much better. See, e.g., Friedman and Rothbard, which I posted above.

I will be honest: this is quite disappointing. There really is nothing here that I have not responded to already, and it has been largely ignored.

You give ‘the wild’ a privileged status that I see no reason to give it. There is nothing uniquely ‘natural’ about our primitive past, relative to our (somewhat) civilised present. ‘Nature’ produced them both. No doubt, aggression has decreased since this primitive past, but as I observed above, this is not due to nature’s being invaded by some alien force. Nature got us here, and, with any luck, it will take us further still.

With this in mind, can we really say that libertarians believe that a ‘background perimeter’ is going to ‘materialize out of the blue’? That depends entirely on what you mean by it. If you mean that it is going to occur ‘naturally’, then yes, and in this case we are in the same boat together. Everything that happens is what nature produces. It is not naïve to believe that nature tends towards a spontaneous order; indeed, the very fact that we are not atomised individuals eating one another’s flesh demonstrates this conclusively. You may say, ‘But we needed a State to get us here’. Whether or not that is true, the fact is that a State, if it is understood as being a ‘gang’ such as you have spoken of, is itself an example of individuals treating peacefully with one another (if not with others) for mutual benefit. And nature produced this. So, when pressed, you too must concede that nature can indeed give rise to spontaneous peaceful voluntarism – if this weren’t the case, no State could ever have formed in the first place!

I have agreed with you that, if aggression is to be discouraged, the costs of aggression must outweigh its likely profits. But, logically, this does not imply Statism. It does not imply Statism for the two main reasons I have given: first, because a State is not the only kind of agency which can provide such a service, and second, because the State is itself an agency of aggression, which violates the ‘perimeter’ in myriad ways. You may well be sceptical of some alternative way, but I would argue that, since the State exists in violation of the ‘perimeter of lowered aggression’ which it is allegedly responsible for maintaining, I could scarcely imagine how a system of private justice could do a worse job.

That's the problem libertarians define "aggression" in a way which suits their purpose, not in a way which represents the thing which we refer to as aggression. Then they hijack the non-aggression principle, applying this definition of "aggression", to create the illusion that the non-aggression principle is compatible with the right to own property. With a proper definition of "aggression", the illusion is shattered. — Metaphysician Undercover

These kinds of semantic discussions are never productive, and always uninteresting. They’re certainly not philosophically impressive. Libertarians define ‘aggression’ in such a way as to express a concept of particular relevance; namely, the initiatory use of force. There just is no reason why the semantic domain of this usage ought to be perfectly coterminous with that of the casual usage. Ask an economist how he uses the word ‘land’, or a logician how he uses ‘validity’. These terms have a technical significance. All that matters is that these words be assigned a clear and consistent meaning, which ‘aggression’ certainly is.

It is absurd and fundamentally confused to speak of libertarians as having ‘hijacked’ the NAP. The NAP is a libertarian principle. It is like saying that the Marxists ‘hijacked’ historical materialism, or the logical positivists ‘hijacked’ the verification principle.

Put a pin in the word ‘aggression’ for moment. There is a philosophically and practically meaningful distinction between the initiatory use of force which invades that which belongs to another, and the defensive use of force used to protect that which belongs to oneself (or some other victim of initiatory force which one wishes to aid). What the libertarian is seeking to do via the NAP is to distinguish these two things, prohibiting the former and permitting the latter. So the word ‘aggression’ is used to designate the initiatory use of force. Another word might easily have been chosen, but this one is perfectly suitable. There is nothing ‘improper’ about it.

The libertarian has the right to use force to defend the ownership of one's property which has been obtained through aggressive means that do not qualify as "aggression" under the libertarian's definition. Simply put, the libertarian may use unethical, aggressive means (aggressive sales, aggressive trading, lying, cheating, fraud, etc.) to obtain property, as these do not qualify as "aggression" for the libertarian, then use force to defend the right to own this property. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are wrong. As you discover if you read libertarian defences, fraud is considered a form of theft and is assuredly prohibited under the NAP, as an invasion of one’s property. Lying and cheating too, if they be relevantly fraudulent. I don’t know what you mean by ‘aggressive sales’, but if you are talking about bringing a gun to the negotiating table and forcing a sale under duress, then of course this is in violation of the NAP; it is a ‘hold-up’!

Not to be unkind, but I just don’t get the impression that you are sufficiently familiar with libertarianism as it is expressed by libertarians themselves to throw these kinds of arguments about. They are quite muddled. Most people form their beliefs about libertarianism based on what non-libertarians say about it, and it certainly seems that you have arrived at your position in this way.

So far, no good arguments have been given for Statism over Anarcho-Libertarianism regarding market failure. It’s just a matter of the proven, tried and true, for protecting relative freedom, and the unproven of Anarcho-Libertarianism. — Noah Te Stroete

This is certainly a refreshing concession. Though, I would point out that there is a growing market in private justice. The US presently has nearly twice as many private security guards as there are police officers, and more and more civil cases are being devolved to private alternative dispute resolution, like arbitration. This is especially common for in-house disputes within a company or within a particular industry. The basis of a system of private justice is already in place. The situation is simply that there is one agency, the State, which presently has an enormous market share with respect to these services and uses its coercive power to preserve this monopoly.

But, that only addresses the thesis. The practical matter is, there isn’t enough real estate to divide up the world equitably to start this project out from the beginning. That’s why, I believe, the billionaire class loves this idea of Anarcho-Libertarianism. They seem to get that they would get to keep their shares that were gained through the State because there is no practical way to start from a blank slate. The powers that be JUST SIMPLY WON’T ALLOW IT, anyway. And the riff-raff would rebel in a system without a centralized propaganda machine if the billionaire class got to keep their property. — Noah Te Stroete

One thing that the right-libertarian and the Marxist have in common (one of the few things) is that they are both sceptical of the unholy and totally corrupt alliance between the State and private business. ‘Corporations’ (which are themselves a legal construct) benefit far more from the State’s existence than they would from its absence. It’s not at all difficult to see why. The State is an agency of aggression. Aggression is a predatory activity which can only benefit one party at another’s expense. It follows that the State can only ever be a weapon to be wielded by some against others. If you don’t seek to exploit its advantages, others will, and they will do so at your expense. It stands to reason that those who will benefit most from the State are those from whom the State itself will benefit the most: those who are already rich and powerful. Libertarianism is not the philosophical contrivance of billionaires. Statism is. Don’t be under the misapprehension that the State and the capitalist are bitter rivals, locked in epic struggle for influence. They are intimate bedfellows, and I don’t see how it could ever be otherwise.

The issue here is an uninteresting semantic one. 'Aggression' has a specific meaning in the context of libertarianism: it is the initiatory (in distinction from 'defensive') use of force; hence 'non-aggression principle'. Whether an instance of force is initiatory or defensive is determined by the relevant property rights. If I grit my teeth and growl at you, this may be 'aggressive behaviour' in a common sense of the term, but it does not constitute 'aggression' in a sense that is relevant to our purpose here.

I didn't attempt to justify Statism. What I am arguing is that non-aggression is incompatible with the right to property. I even said that saying a State has the "right" to govern is incoherent. where does it look like I am trying to justify Statism? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, if justifying Statism is something you have no interest in doing, then you're not presenting anything that is particularly threatening to my thesis.

Plus, I’m not really sure what this means. I assume it’s forgiveness? That seems like something a gracious person would do, and that’s how I now think of you. — Noah Te Stroete

Nothing. A dab is a kind of pose. It's meaningless.

dabs

What Virgo Avalytikh doesn’t seem to get, and this is probably because she has no concept of the riff raff, living the privileged life of an Oxford grad — Noah Te Stroete

Because she drank the Kool-Aid of the billionaire class that funded her educational curriculum. Perhaps daddy is rich, too? States seem particularly coercive to the rich when they don’t want to pay taxes. — Noah Te Stroete

Could we maybe stop with all the ad hominem, please? I thought we were doing political philosophy here. You really don't know enough about my life to make these kinds of judgements.

It's circular because the conclusion that "self-interest combined with non aggression usually leads to a fair (paraphrased) distribution of burdens and profits" is reliant on defining non-aggression as "whatever rules lead to a fair distribution of burdens and profits". The conclusion is inherent in the premise, that is in the way non-aggression is defined. — Echarmion

But I never said that this was the definition of the NAP.

If I aggress against you, perhaps by killing, assaulting, or stealing from you, I win and you lose. If you and I trade peacefully, we both enter into such arrangements with the expectation of individual benefit. The NAP prohibits aggression, and allows for peaceful trade. So it prohibits the former and permits the latter. There is nothing circular about any of this. The NAP is simply a just and worthy principle.

The obvious problem though is that private firms don't enforce rights - they provide a service. It is entirely irrelevant to the service provide whether or not that service happens to coincide with a right. So what you are talking about is not enforcement of "rights" but of "interests". And naturally the interestst of the strongest will end up being enforced most effectively. — Echarmion

They provide services, such as rights-enforcement. There might be criminal service-providers too, such as assassins or whatever else. But that doesn’t mean that the market will not or could not provide those services for which the State is usually considered necessary. All I am pointing out is that, just because the State does x, it does not follow that x would not get done in the absence of the State.

Right, but in that case your argument boils down to "no system is perfect, all systems have their problems to deal with". That may be an insightful realization, it just doesn't do anything to argue for any particular system. — Echarmion

This is certainly true, but only one part of the argument. The vindication of libertarianism for which I have argued also involves the fact that there is good reason to presume in favour of liberty (in other words, that aggression is something to be resorted to rather than a starting point), and that, while liberty is imperfect, the alternatives are much more imperfect. This is the entire point of the argument I presented initially.

I don’t really know what more there is to say. A defence of Statism, it seems to me, must be of one of two kinds. Either, the State is defended on the grounds that it is legitimate, that its coercively monopolistic position is rightful, or else it is defended on the grounds of its necessity, that we simply must have such a thing and that it would not be possible to function without it.

I have not seen you make any substantial claim for the former. You seem to be making a purely pragmatic or consequentialist case. But I see no reason to think that the State is either the only possible way in which services like rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution may be provided, nor that it is the best way. All that it really has going for it is that it happens to be the status quo.

On the other hand, I see some very good reasons for thinking that the State is a poor solution. The answer to aggression is not to have an enormous agency of aggression ‘encircle’ us. There does seem to be an unwarranted assumption here: that this enormous criminal gang is not itself corrupt, that it can be trusted to protect our rights, and that will not itself break the peaceful ‘perimeter’ and aggress against us in the way that it prevents others from doing. Indeed, this is precisely what States do. States are coercive monopolies by nature. Monopolistic criminality is not a serious solution to criminality in general.

As I pointed out above, it is not possible to determine an action as definitively ‘aggressive’ unless one already has a system of rights in place by which to make that judgement. ‘Aggression’ is not a property which inheres in an action; it is a relation of an action to a specific (property) right. Consider something ostensibly aggressive, such as my punching you in the face. Does this constitute an act of ‘aggression’? That depends. Perhaps we have both signed up for a boxing match. Perhaps we are acting and this is part of the scene. Or consider something ostensibly innocuous, like simply standing. Is this aggression? Again, it depends. If I am standing in my own living room, then probably not. If I am trespassing in your living room, and have been asked to leave, then yes. To say of any particular action that it is ‘aggressive’ presupposes a background schema of rights. Therefore, rights are a precondition of aggression. Therefore, declaring a right of ownership in the first instance cannot be aggression. That is to put the cart before the horse.

Invasions of one’s person are just a sub-species of invasions of one’s property in general. Property rights begin with the right to self-ownership. Obviously, I must first own myself before it can be determined what (else) I may own. All rights are ultimately just rights of use or ownership over scarce resources that have alternative uses, whether these be our own bodies, or whatever.

Your options here are not exhaustive, some might say God gives the right to the State. Regardless, people have rights, a State is not the type of thing which could have a right. So we agree on your third option, I think it's incoherent to say that the State has the right to govern. The problem though, which I mentioned in the last post, the rights which individual people are said to have, are given by the State, or some other social convention. If we abolish the State, we give up what is given by the State, and this includes rights. There is no such thing as "natural rights", this is incoherent. You yourself have dismissed talk of "the natural" as providing no useful distinction. So, would you agree that rights come into existence (naturally) as a product of human conventions, such as the State, and do not pre-exist such conventions, which bestow upon the individual human beings, various "rights"? And, since "rights" are commonly associated with "the State", and you advocate for removal of the State, why not dismiss rights altogether as an archaic concept produced for the purpose of gathering support for the State, and opt for a completely different sort of convention, without 'rights'? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not to nit-pick, but ‘divine right’ would come under the second category I mentioned. It seems to me that my categories are indeed exhaustive. And I agree that the third option in fact obtains.

I have agreed with you that rights are conventions. Moreover, conventions can and certainly do exist independently of the State (take language, as an example), and to this degree, are ‘natural’. The leap you make from this to a justification of Statism is completely unwarranted, logically. You simply insist that, if we do away with a State, we would have to do away with rights too. But I see no reason to think that this is so. The fact that rights are commonly ‘associated’ with a State is not particularly decisive. There may be a ‘common sense’ that the State is the source of rights, but I think there is an equally strong ‘common sense’ that it is possible for States to commit rights-violations of their own, implying that there is a higher standard of rights to which States are subject. It is probably the case that most people’s common-sense intuitions just are not terribly refined on this point.

Your analysis is much too simplistic. For one thing, it is not clear to me at all that attacking someone and looting them is cheaper to me than trading with them. Not only is a fight to the death almost always a net loss for both parties in terms of the risk you assume, but the discipline of constant dealings makes it such that back-stabbing somebody today denies you an entire future of trading with them. The fact that some other aggressor might get to them first is not enough to outweigh these considerations, it seems to me. This is difficult, because we are discussing game-theoretic notions concerning a state of nature, with which we are not experientially acquainted in the least. But the very fact that we do not still all exist as atomised looters today means that it must obviously be in our interest to enter into non-violent relations with other persons over long periods of time. If this weren’t the case, the state of nature would still obtain.

About the only thing that I can see actually follows from your analysis is that an individual is unlikely to resort to aggression if the costs of doing so outweigh the profits he is likely to make from it. Indeed, there must be a ‘stronger power’ (stronger than any given individual who is considering becoming an aggressor) set in place in order to dissuade aggression in the first place. But there is no reason to think that this has to be a State.

It is interesting that you suggest that individuals might ‘gang together’, even if it is only for criminal purposes. Whatever their purposes may be, these gang-members must have a peaceful arrangement with one another. Each individual benefits from being in the gang because he has the protection of his comrades, and it is not in the interest of any given member to back-stab any other member, because he has the rest of the gang to answer to. So the inner-dynamic of the gang demonstrates why the leap that you make to Statism is unwarranted: the gang itself may well be perfectly egalitarian with respect to its members; the ‘stronger power’ is not so much a monopoly at the top as much as the rest of the gang. Recognising this gives us a clue as to how aggression can successfully be prohibited in a Stateless society. Each individual treats peacefully with everyone else, because if he doesn’t, he has the rest of the society to answer to; at the very least, they will not associate with him thereafter. So the discipline of constant dealings creates an incentive to treat peacefully with everyone else in perpetuity.

What is more, Statism is no serious solution to aggression, since the State is the aggressor par excellence. Your solution to the problem of criminality, it seems, is to place our trust in a criminal gang of unparalleled scale. Needless to say, this is not very convincing.

I do mean self interest in the sense of instrumental rationality - doing what seems best to further your own goals. Those goals can be altruistic, of course. The point is that the question that requires an answer is whether relying on self interest in that sense does actually always produce the best result, and how that is supposed to be established. — Echarmion

The rationality axiom is not a libertarian recommendation. It is a praxeological axiom. At any given moment, we are always acting in such a way that aims at satisfying our highest want. It is inconceivable that we could prioritise a lesser want over a higher want, for what could this ‘prioritising’ possibly mean, but that it is itself the higher want? Moreover, this is not even a distinctively libertarian claim. It just happens to be that libertarians (especially in the Austrian school) are the ones who tend to observe this. I don’t believe that the notion of self-interest plays a particularly important role in the argument I have presented. It seems like a red herring.

That seems like circular logic though. If people follow their own interests and respect the principle of non-aggression, they will bear the costs and benefits of their actions. If people do not bear the costs and benefits of their actions then they did not follow the principle of non-aggression. If any detrimental effect an action has on a third party is an "aggression" towards that party, the principle of non-aggression is so general as to be useless. — Echarmion

I don’t see what is circular. What I said is true: acts of aggression are predatory, such that one party benefits at another’s expense, and voluntary trade yields mutual benefit. So the fact that the non-aggression principle prohibits the former while permitting the latter goes a long way towards alleviating market failure.

But who is going to decide when compensation is required and how high it should be? Who is going to enforce the collection of compensation? — Echarmion

In the absence of the State, services like rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution would be provided by private firms, competing for consumer patronage.

You have said so repeatedly, but so far I don't see any argument for the claim. That private property avoids the tragedy of the commons is not equivalent to your claim. — Echarmion

The degree to which private property alleviates market failure is a relative one. We must always ask, ‘Compared with what?’ What I have argued and tried to illustrate is that collective or State ownership tend inevitably towards market failure, and a system of private property tends to alleviate these problems. Will it do so perfectly? Of course not, and it is not reasonable to expect it to do so. We are choosing from finitely many imperfect options. That it is conceivable that private property produce market failure problems is not a defeater of it, nor is it a vindication of any alternative in particular. That really was the whole tenor of my argument.

Political philosophy is not my thing, but I just thought I'd bring that up, because anyone who's seriously researched these two principles, ought to have come across this notion. To declare ownership is an act of aggression. Libertarians cloud this issue, creating the illusion that we naturally own things. In reality we are born without private property. We are born with nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are quite mistaken on this. Right-libertarians almost always advocate for a Lockean theory of ownership, which understands all external resources as being originally unowned, and become owned through productive acts of transformation, or ‘homesteading’. This isn’t ‘clouded’; it is treated very systematically in the literature (some of which I posted above).

Moreover, it is simply incoherent to say that declaring an act of ownership is aggression. Certainly, it can be aggression (like in the case of theft), but it is not aggression per se. It is incoherent for the same reason as Proudhon’s dictum, ‘Property is theft’, is incoherent; as Marx himself observed, you have to first have a system of property in place before you can even recognise theft (or any other kind of aggression) for what it is.

Certainly there are those (left-libertarians and other collectivists) who will say that private ownership is aggressive, because all the resources in the world are owned by everyone, but even assuming they are correct (which I don’t), it would not follow that property itself is aggression. According to such people, ‘privation’ is aggression.

This is exactly the problem. A "right", such as the right to property, is something bestowed on a person from the State. It is a "service" provided by the state. If the State, by its very existence violates the non-aggression principle, and therefore ought to be dissolved because of this, then everything given by the State, including the right to own property will be lost with the dissolution of the State. — Metaphysician Undercover

If rights do not exist prior to the State, then my first question would be: Where does the State get its ‘right’ to govern? Either this right comes from the State’s own declarative statement about itself, or else it is a precondition of the State. The former is simply circular: it is no more persuasive to argue for the State’s legitimacy by appealing to what the State declares about itself than when I declare myself to be the supreme ruler of the universe. If the legitimacy of the State is the very thing in dispute, then appealing to the State’s authority to justify its authority is begging the question. And if the State’s right to govern is a precondition of the State, then your assertion is simply false: at least one right can and does exist, prior to and independently of the State.

The third possibility, of course, is that the State really doesn’t have the right to govern.

Notice that a right only exists in relation to some sort of convention. It is not a property of a person, but of that convention. Further to this, the right to own property is a right which by its very nature requires enforcement, acts of aggression, because we are born with nothing. Perhaps you might avoid the necessity of force, by rewording the "right", as the right to give property, or sell property, but this implies that someone already owns the property which would be given or sold. Since we are born with nothing, we cannot get into the circle of ownership without acts of aggression. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, no: ‘aggression’ is used very specifically in the context of libertarianism. It is defined as the initiatory use of force against persons of property. As I explained above, a system of property rights is a precondition of recognising acts of aggression for what they are. I agree that rights do not ‘inhere’ with the material stuff of a person, that they are conventions, and that they require some means of enforcement. But, logically, this does not imply a State. The recognition and enforcement of conventions are both perfectly possible in the absence of a State (indeed, the State exists in violation of the system of rights that we all apply to non-States; that is why they are distinctive as ‘States’).

I am always apprehensive when one talks about ‘nature’ or ‘the natural’, especially when this is contrasted with ‘civilisation’ or ‘the civilised’. The reason is that it suggests that something other than the course of nature brought us to (relative) civilisation; as though nature was trundling along in its immutable and ponderous fashion, and then some external invader ‘overtook’ nature, subjugated it, overcame it, and gave rise to civilisation. I would argue that, in a sense, smart phones are no less ‘natural’ than grass and trees. Smart phones are composed of materials which, if you go far enough back through their individual histories, are reducible to perfectly ‘natural’ resources. They are built up into something new by human productive ingenuity, but this, too, is a product of ‘nature’. The primitive past is often given this privileged status of being our ‘natural’ state, as though something other than other than nature – nature plus something else – got us to where we are. But this isn’t true. Nature is not always red in tooth and claw. Nature is just as responsible for producing peaceful cooperation as it is for animalistic aggression; just as responsible for smart phones as it is for fire. The forces which conspired to bring us to where we are today (wherever that is) did not come into nature from without.

Once we shake the idea that primitive aggression has some privileged status as our ‘natural state’, I see no reason to think that this is true:

Non-violence and non-aggression is a relatively unstable, artificially constructed situation. It should never be considered "natural". — alcontali

Moreover, I think that your analysis leaves some vital things out. First off, it is in the interest of virtually no individual in particular to exist in a state of nature. Even the ‘alpha’, who is fortunate enough to have those characteristics which make him unusually adapted to survive in a war of all against all, can still be taken out easily enough by a group of two or three who conspire to do so. The incentive to enter into a relationship of peaceful voluntarism with others is perfectly ‘natural’.

The free market – which I understand simply to be the totality or aggregate of voluntary associations – has done more to improve the material condition of humanity than anything else in this world, by an incalculable margin. Peaceful voluntarism generates a ‘discipline of constant dealings’, which gives rise to a stability that violent aggression can never enjoy. Arbitrary force is unstable in the extreme. How can it be otherwise? What, in a war of all against all, can one possibly rely on?

think the "non-aggression principle" has been shown to be deeply incompatible with the right to private property. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is certainly an interesting take on things. I wonder what you could possibly mean by it.

I was wondering if you could explain in your own words how and why a State wouldn’t be formed to protect property rights and to set up markets. Is there still international trade under this system? — Noah Te Stroete

The answers to these questions will vary depending on what kind of libertarian you’re talking with. Within the right-libertarian camp, we might distinguish between minimal-State ‘minarchists’, and anarcho-capitalists. Minarchists believe in ‘limited government’ (a phrase so vague that it is hardly helpful at all), usually reserving for the State merely a ‘night-watchman’ role. Anarcho-capitalists are obviously anti-Statists all across the board, and consider the so-called core functions of the State to be such that no one should be doing them (like, say, having the means of waging nuclear war) or such that a private alternative is preferable. So, for the anarcho-capitalist, services like rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution would be provided by competing firms in a free and open market.

Robert Nozick, far and away the most sophisticated minarchist philosopher, argued that a minimal State can be legitimate, and probably would be formed organically and without violating anyone’s rights. He spent the entire first part of his ‘Anarchy, State, and Utopia’ providing what is, in effect, a defence of Statism against the anarchist, which I find an interesting structural decision given that his book is a defence of libertarianism against Rawlsian egalitarian liberalism. So if you ask a Nozickian, he would say that we could and probably would have a State to protect private property and enter into relations with other States.

The an-cap would disagree, for reasons both philosophical and pragmatic. If the State violates the non-aggression principle by its very nature (and I believe that it does, contra Nozick), then it is illegitimate no matter what size it is, or what services it provides. More practically, David Friedman captures the point well enough: if we don’t trust the government to produce things like cars or food (and, in case there is any doubt, governments would indeed be totally incompetent at producing such things), why should we think that they have what it takes to produce and enforce a legal system with any competence? What is so special about these services, that they must be provided coercively and monopolistically, rather than consensually and competitively? The an-cap simply says, ‘There is no reason’, and therefore considers the market alternative to be preferable in practice, too. A ‘State’ is essentially just a coercive monopoly which forcibly prevents competition in certain services, like the hypothetical baker I mentioned above.

I cannot speak to the historical particulars of land-ownership in Britain (and don't wish to). Needless to say, private ownership can be legitimate, or not (a thief who steals my bag is a 'private property owner'). Libertarians are not committed to approving of any and all private-property claims. Was the enclosure of English agricultural land illegitimate and aggressive? Quite possibly. If we are talking about the unilateral seizure of land from its estwhile owners, then it is criminal.

Moreover, libertarianism does not require us to oppose any form of collective or cooperative ownership. If you and a syndicalist commune can make a good go of it, then I have nothing against you. Though, I would say that we need to be clear about exactly what 'collective ownership' or 'public property' mean. In practice, these terms are not distinguished sharply enough from private property. If private property is essentially 'exclusionary' property, then, in order to distinguish public property from it in a meaningful way, it must be global. Many left-libertarians recognise the logic of this (they get it from Rousseau). Either you are anti-exclusion, or not. If you are, then ultimately everybody really has to own everything. So a small syndicalist commune with a field to call its own doesn't satisfy 'public ownership' quite crisply enough for me.

It's interesting: I have no idea whether your historical claim about the State being a critical development in wrenching us up out of a state of nature is true. But I do know that Chomsky would take serious issue with it. I believe he locked horns with Pinker on just this issue.

While I am a (non-pejorative) idealist, I certainly don't want to allow that the State is some sort of pragmatic concession, because this is the 'real world' that we live in. Statism does not work. It makes the world an immeasurably worse place. I believe this for reasons both pragmatic and principled.

Aggressive marketing campaigns would not be considered as 'aggression' in the libertarian system. The reason why libertarians do not simply use the term 'violence' is because libertarianism is not pacifist. Violence is justified, for defensive purposes. 'Aggression' is that term which is used to designate the initiatory use of violence.

The question is not so much whether one is "anti-liberty" and more what one thinks constitutes liberty. Anarcho-socialists might consider wage labor not much better than slavery. They may be wrong in their analysis, but the core problem remains that "freedom" or "liberty" is a fundamentally contested term. Most people have their intuitions about what liberty means, but few have a systematic approach. I myself find Kant's notion of "liberty as duty", to put it very briefly, quite compelling. This is, presumably, quite a different basis than the one from which classical libertarians argue. — Echarmion

Yes, I made this point with Noah de Stroete. One ought not to prejudge what liberty means; rather, one ought to develop a system of rights which seeks to preserve liberty, and the libertarian does this through private property rights and the non-aggression principle. That these principles are more conducive to liberty than any competing principle is (or should be) a libertarian conclusion, not a presupposition.

This is, however, fundamentally a question of efficiency, not about knowledge. The libertarian approach is not that we should make use of market-based mechanism where those are most efficient, but that an approach based on individual self-interests is the right one - and the only right one - for all circumstances. — Echarmion

I am not sure that this really is a libertarian commitment … it depends on what you mean by ‘self-interest’. If you simply mean that we all always act in accordance with our highest want at any given moment, what Ludwig von Mises would call the ‘rationality axiom’, then yes indeed. But this is not a normative judgement. It’s simply a praxeological truth. But if you mean ‘self-interest’ in the sense that we shouldn’t give a care to the sick and suffering, but rather horde what we have for ourselves, then by no means. Nothing in the libertarian position demands such a commitment. Libertarianism doesn’t tell anybody how to live, or what to do with the resources at their disposal, so long as it is non-aggressive.

But this example is extremely simplistic. We live in a capitalist society with significant division of labor. We are simply not self sustaining farmers, and we very likely don't want to be. And even if that example were at all applicable to a modern society, it leaves out all the complications. What if, in order to improve my yields, I divert a river that happens to flow across my land. Or use pesticides with significant effects on neighbors? There are all sorts of scenarios where burdens and profits fall apart. And I will repeat that if I act solely according to pragmatic self-interest, I will try to make it so that the burdens of my actions fall on others. — Echarmion

Both my examples were simplistic (both the collective ownership and private ownership one), because they are illustrative of a principle. The main cases I can think of in which what I do with my private property imposes unreasonable costs on others is when I am acting aggressively, invading the property of others in some way. If I pump out dangerous toxins which affect your health or pollute a river which runs outwith the boundaries of my land, then of course I must give compensation. So the non-aggression principle, if employed, covers many such cases. As I said, the fact that private-property owners tend to be the immediate bearers of the costs and benefits of what they do (assuming, of course, that they are not criminal aggressors) is true. It is only a tendency, but it really is a tendency. That establishing private property rights is an effective solution to the tragedy of the commons problem is well known.

While the structure of this argument is logically sound, you haven't provided much of any justification for all the premises on the way. The premises you are setting up are the core points of debate where libertarianism is concerned. — Echarmion

Well, I think I have laid out some plausible reasons for thinking that market failure is a relative rarity in a system of private property, and is implicit in the entire political process (as well as in any collective decision-making process). The force of this observation can easily be underestimated, but I believe that it constitutes a powerful libertarian defence.

One basic problem with the theory of the free market is that even if it comes close to describing reality, it doesn't get the cigar. What the global markets are absolutely dominated are oligopolies and oligopolistic competition: thousands of smaller actors exist yes, but only ten or so large companies exist that simply dominate the market. Basically in every market there is. As libertarianism can be accredited to make good critique about state created monopolies and things as disasterous as centrally planned socialism, it hasn't in my view made such a compelling explanation how we get nearly in every market an oligopoly. — ssu

It is probably worth saying something about monopolies, and clarifying a little more what we mean by this. One important distinction is that between ‘coercive monopolies’ and ‘efficiency monopolies’. Coercive monopolies are those which are established and maintained through acts of aggression. An example of this would be if I, a baker, were to beat up or kill all the other bakers in town, or set fire to their bakeries, and generally use force to make sure that nobody can compete with me. Apart from the fact that this is clearly impermissible behaviour, there is also nothing about this which tends towards consumer satisfaction. This is distinct from my baking the best bread in town and offering it for the best price, satisfying consumers better than all my competitors so that they patronise my business, such that my competitors go out of business. This is an ‘efficiency monopoly’. Efficiency monopolies are harmless in and of themselves. This is not to say that it is impossible for them to produce problems, but they are not problematic per se (all of this can be applied to oligopolies as well).

Whatever your feelings about natural economic monopolies, the State is not the answer. You correctly point out that the State has the power to grant monopolistic privileges to private firms, but that isn’t even the most fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that the State is itself a monopoly, and a monopoly of the very worst kind: it is a coercive monopoly, existing on a scale that puts any private actor in the shade (except, perhaps, for those private actors who make privileged use of the State apparatus). Quite simply, you cannot sensibly be ‘anti-monopoly’ and ‘pro-State’. To be a Statist is, by definition, to be pro-coercion and pro-monopoly. That is what a State is, it seems to me. So, whatever your feelings on economic monopoly, Statism is no serious solution. It is simply rushing us towards the very nightmare that the market sceptic is trying to prevent.

So, the libertarian (or simply the economic) explanation for the way in which markets tend to produce a small number of companies holding a large market share is twofold: either the companies are producing a service which, for reasons of quality or price, do the best job at satisfying consumer wants, or else they are the beneficiaries of illicit State privilege. Probably some combination of the two. Obviously, the first is the less problematic of the two (indeed, there’s no reason in principle to consider it as problematic at all). And the second, you have to take up with the Statist.

I purpose an a mind experiment: Let's assume a new of technology emerges and creates a new market, where every major actor in the market is an optimist and a believer in "the cause". This aggregate optimism will create a mania and the stock prices of this new industry will shoot to the moon...until even your old aunt has invested in the 'new thing' and there is nobody left to buy at such astronomical prices and hence the prices collapse bursting the 'speculative bubble'. The crash will be then seen as a market failure. — ssu

Your thought-experiment is interesting, though I am not entirely sure for what it is intended to be an argument. Certainly, it cannot be an effective argument for Statism: if some substantial number of market participants (whether consumers, entrepeneurs of whoever) make poor or short-sighted allocative decisions with their own resources, how much worse would the consequences be when they are acting as voters, lobbyists, regulators and elected representatives in the political market, where the consequences of their actions are distributed among many others, and they therefore have far less reason to be prudent!

So I know you cannot mean this. Perhaps you are merely illustrating the fact that not everything which comes under the umbrella of ‘market failure’ is caused because of individuals taking decisions whose costs are borne by other people. This much I am happy to concede: it may well be that some examples of market failure are not caused this way. It is only a tendency. ‘Market failure’ is defined (at least for my purposes) as a case wherein individually rational actions produce a negative effect for almost or absolutely everyone. So your example would indeed be a case of market failure. As to its precise causes, this perhaps will vary from one case to the next. I would say, though, that since States, through their central banks, tend to control both the money supply and the interest rate, the whole financial system is so remote from a free market in money that none of the crises of recent times can fairly be blamed on ‘laissez faire’. Our monetary systems are market-hostile at their very core. From the libertarian point of view, it is not simply a question of ‘deregulation’; the whole monetary system needs gutting.

No problem. Though I should say, there is a more recent and much expanded 3rd edition of Friedman, though you'll have to pay for that one.

Also, virtually everything Rothbard wrote is available for free at mises.org

Well, thanks for the honesty.

It's not a matter of appealing to authority. It's simply a matter of sending you ad fontes so as not to multiply material unnecessarily. Why do you need it to be 'filtered' through me in order for it to be palatable? Is all this not interesting to you?

It is important that 'liberty' not be defined too specifically, at least initially, except to say that it is a general posture by which individuals are able to pursue their own interests and satisfy their separate goals. This, of course, must have clearly defined limits, but these limits must be worked through carefully, rather than prejudged, for fear of begging the question. Right-libertarians define these limits negatively, in terms of non-aggression against persons and property (persons, of course, really being just a specific kind of property).

Unusually aggressive persons would, presumably, be criminals and rights-violators in any kind of society, be it Stateless or Stateless. So this is not a particularly libertarian problem.

Maybe you're just accustomed to having things your own way, I don't know. But it's not unreasonable to expect some give-and-take here. There is plenty for you to be getting on with - I'm not sure what you are expecting of me, exactly. I suppose I could copy/paste material that is already easily accessible to you in the literature with which you are not familiar, but that doesn't help anybody in particular. You have raised, not so much challenges or problems for libertarianism, as much as queries about it, queries which are addressed in the material with which I have furnished you. In order to understand a position better, is the published work of its advocates not the first port of call? If, having become familiar with libertarianism, you have specific objections to its specific proposals, you are perfectly at liberty to start thread of your own. But, in the meantime, it seems as though the 'cowardice' only goes one way. The fact that you don't bother to deal with the substance of the argument I presented isn't even taken into account.

I was in two minds as to whether to respond to this. The subject of the thread is market failure, and its significance vis-à-vis libertarianism and the State. I presented an argument that the concept of market failure vindicates the libertarian position, over against its alternatives. Given that you did not engage with the argument at all, I did not care much for:

I expect All of these questions to be taken seriously and addressed in full. — Noah Te Stroete

In the first place, it is disappointing to see the libertarian position characterised as ‘utopian’, not only because I pointed out why it is not utopian, but also because it is simply prejudicial to assume that it is utopian in the grammar of your question. You have, in effect, prejudged it to be a practically impossible dream right from the start, so that any attempt to persuade you of its workability is doomed to fail.

Not only this, but, since you raise many questions, each of which would take us off-topic and would require a separate discussion in its own right, and since you have conceded in another context that your knowledge of right-libertarian literature in limited, I feel that it would be best to direct you to some existing treatments of the issues you raise, rather than reinventing the wheel. The questions you pose are not particularly problematic, but require space to unpack, and I can do no better a job than, e.g., Friedman’s own discussion of how services like rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution would be provided in a voluntary society:

http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

For more detailed discussions of property rights and how they are generated and allocated, especially in relation to criminality, the best treatment is Rothbard's:

https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/The%20Ethics%20of%20Liberty_0.pdf

That's fine. As I said, stay tuned.

I just assumed you were asking me in good faith. If you have prejudged it as incurable then there's scarcely any sense in having a discussion, is there? 'How would you solve this problem, which I am already persuaded is insoluble?' is poisoning the well entirely.

These are important problems (though, it is rather question-begging to prejudge them as 'incurable'), but, since they take us far afield from the topic of market failure, on which I have already written so much, I would sooner address them in a future thread, if it's all the same to you. I would simply point out that, since the State is itself is coercive monopoly, which is the very agency which allows for patent trolling and which controls the barriers to entering an industry (through licensure, for example), it is not a reasonable alternative.

Thanks for this.

You note quite rightly that I justify a presumption in favour of liberty only very briefly. The primary reason is that it is not the main subject I wanted to address, the argument being concerned primarily with market failure. Few people, it seems to me, would say openly of themselves that they are ‘anti-liberty’. Maybe I am wrong about this. But I think that there is a widespread intuition that a world in which individuals have a substantial measure of freedom to pursue their own interests and satisfy their wants is preferable to a world in which, say, most people have the trajectory of their lives dictated to them by others. That a world in which most people are free is preferable to one in which most people are enslaved is a proposition that I didn’t feel the need to justify at any length. Maybe a project for another time. Rather, most people are sceptical of libertarianism, not because they are ‘anti-liberty’ as such, but because they believe that a system of peaceful voluntarism faces limitations which only an alternative (such as coercive Statism or collective ownership) can overcome. This is the subject I sought to address.

If I were forced, however, to argue for a presumption in favour of liberty – if I were compelled, in other words, to answer the question ‘Why, in general, is liberty attractive? – I would appeal to two things, mainly. One is the nature of knowledge. Knowledge is de-centralised; it is specific to time and place, to specific situation. The reason why ‘Freaky Friday’ body-swap comedies make sense to us is because we realise that, if I were put in charge of your life for a day, and you of mine, we would probably both make a mess of things. I am most acquainted with my own life, and therefore best situated to make the best decisions for myself. This is only a generalisation, but the generalisation holds. I am a better judge of my own affairs than I am of yours. No one should trust me with running their life for a day. An elegant argument for liberty on the basis of the nature of knowledge may be found in Friedrich Hayek’s essay, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, which everybody in the world should read (twice).

The second argument I would make is that, in a system of private ownership, we generally bear the costs and benefits of our decisions. NB: I don’t say that no one else might be affected by our decisions. Moreover, I am once again only speaking in generalities. But, in general, it is the case that, as far as private ownership goes, one reaps what one sows. Consider the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. There is common land, ownership of which is shared by the community as a whole. Because nobody is individually responsible for its upkeep, it goes to ruin. If everybody other than me works to maintain the land, it is not necessary for me to join in and help, because the land will probably be kept to a suitable standard without me. On the other hand, if nobody else works to maintain the land, it still does not make sense for me to do so, for my work alone will make negligible difference, and it will require me to assume great costs while most of the benefit goes to others. This problem is typical of collective ownership.

Now consider the private-property solution. Everybody, by some system or other (a topic for another day), has a piece of land, and is personally responsible for cultivating it. Someone who works the land to the full and gets the most out of it, (if he is permitted to keep what he produces) will receive the benefit from it, and therefore has a realistic incentive to be productive. Some people might cultivate their land only to some degree, producing less but also having more leisure. And somebody who adopts the same ethic of laziness that he did under collective ownership will starve. Moreover, when you and I engage in voluntary trade, we both benefit in net terms. That which I receive from you is of greater psychic value to me than that which I traded away, and ditto for you. Our decisions will, no doubt, ‘affect’ others to some degree, but we as individuals are the most immediate bearers of the costs and benefits of what we do when we deal in that which is our own, exclusively.

This is the main reason why collectivism, not individualism, is ‘utopian’. Because of the problems of market failure which it is liable to generate, collectivism relies on individuals engaging in what is, in effect, self-sacrificial behaviour for the sake of the common good. Individualism makes no such assumption.

As you point out, some people, perhaps many, might take it upon themselves to work for the common good, even at great cost to themselves. To which I would respond that, if such is the case, then there is no reason why this may not happen in a private-property system, too. We must have a fair and consistent standard, in our estimation of human nature. What one finds is that there is an excessive scepticism of human nature when it comes to considering the risks of private ownership, and an excessive optimism when considering the risks of collective ownership.

Where does this leave us? Contrary to your objection, I believe that the argument does indeed support the conclusion. I have argued that there ought to be a presumption in favour of liberty, where liberty is defined in terms of private ownership and the absence of aggression. There are good reasons to think that this general posture is one which makes us better off than the alternatives (namely, being aggressed against by a coercive institution, or being a negligible element in a much larger collective). From here, the argument is that, while peaceful voluntarism does exhibit certain limitations in terms of what it can easily achieve, which I have grouped together under the category of ‘market failure’, the alternatives to peaceful voluntarism are themselves subject to market failure, though with far greater frequency, and with fewer possibilities to overcome it.

Thanks for this. So in Aristotelian logic, 'All people are dinosaurs' does have existential import? Or is it just ambiguous?

So, I agree with the consensus that 'No people are not dinosaurs' should be understood as 'All people are dinosaurs'. Negate this, and we have 'It is not the case that all people are dinosaurs', or equivalently, 'It is not the case that, if there exists an x such that x is a person, then x is a dinosaur'. If we take this as having no existential import (and it seems to me that it doesn't), then we cannot infer anything that does have existential import. This rules out A and C. Obviously we cannot infer B, since our starting proposition is the precise negation of this. D seems to be equivalent to 'All dinosaurs are people', and I don't see how we can get this from out starting proposition, either.

So my answer is: neither A, B, C nor D follows. But since this differs from the answer that has already been determined correct, I am not so confident about it.