Spinoza is certainly departing from Aquinas and the classical theological tradition in that respect.

For the sake of clarity, Aquinas does not believe that God (who is goodness itself) and being are coterminous - that would be panentheism or pantheism. To say, as Aquinas does, that God is ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself), means that, in God, there is (uniquely) no distinction between essence and existence; i.e. between the divine nature and the act by which God exists. So, God must not be thought to be identical with all that is. Rather, God is pure being, in the sense that, in God, it is not one thing to be and another thing to be God. God's very nature is simply to be. This is why he is the I AM of Exodus 3:14.

It doesn't seem that this is necessarily true. If I say that I own someone, then it could be meant that I have engaged in brute force against that person so that they are under my control. There is no need to invoke property rights to make sense of the statement that I own someone else. — Walter B

This seems to be largely a linguistic issue, but from my understanding of English, 'property' and 'ownership' are essentially coterminous. To say that something is my property is to say that it is proper to me; i.e. that it is my own. Slavery just is a case where one person is considered to be the property of another; they are considered 'chattel'.

Moreover, the definition you have given seems too permissive. Suppose that I use force against somebody else so as to encourage them into furnishing me with their labour. Suppose that they have previously signed an employment contract, consenting to furnish me with said labour for a price (wage), and suppose that they have neglected to do so. In using force, I am doing nothing more than enforcing our contract. In refusing to work for me, they are defrauding me and violating my property rights as a result. Am I 'enslaving' them? By no means - it is precisely on the basis of consent (contract) that cases of slavery are distinguished from cases of mere employment. So, the fact that I am using force in order to claim some article of property (in this case, my employee's body, so that they may make good on their commitments) is not automatically slavery.

To say that I "stole" an item from you can mean that I have taken something without informing anyone of my action. No need to invoke property rights to describe this action either. — Walter B

One ambiguity here is what it means to 'take' something. One possibility is that I have 'taken' something just in case it is physically on my person; in my hand, for instance. But this is obviously too permissive. This would mean that I 'steal' my own coffee cup when I take it from my cupboard without anybody knowing. It is more difficult than you think it is to define 'taking' in such a way that is neutral to property rights, since 'taking' something from somebody else is not always a matter of transferring it from their immediate person to mine. If I hotwire your car while it sits empty in your garage, I am 'taking' it from you, not because it is being transferred physically from you to me (you might not be anywhere near it at the time), but because the car is associated with you according to a principle of ownership.

And why begin with this question? Why not ask the more basic question: are there really such things as natural rights at all? — Walter B

Rothbard does: see The Ethics of Liberty, ch. 1.

I thought it was clear that I was trying to ask for a politically neutral description of slavery that anyone from any political background can agree with. A definition of slavery that is purely descriptive is not necessary, however, since leftists have their own starting principle that hierarchies that find their basis in brute force are illegitimate. Since most have an intuitive believe that actions that justify themselves by brute force are illegitimate, then slavery may be rejected simply based on how the enslaved remains a slave by the slaver. This is why anyone who embraces the non-aggression principle will also reject slavery without having to know the definition of slavery; so even right-libertarians can reject slavery without having to debate the nature of property with the left-libertarian. This is why I find it strange that you think that a definition is truly necessary here. — Walter B

I don't know what you are trying to get at here. As I mentioned above, there are cases in which I am within my rights in using force to compel someone to furnish me with their labour; i.e. when enforcing a contract. So the suggestion that 'slavery' is just any case in which force is used to compel the labour of another is not politically neutral, since the right-libertarian would not consider this to be a case of slavery, but of the enforcement of an employment contract.

A definition of slavery in terms of property rights is necessary. The NAP does not simply oppose 'force'. It opposes the initiation of force (including the invasion of justly held property). It permits the defensive use of force. But, it is not possible to distinguish which acts of force are initiatory and which are defensive, except in reference to a system of property rights.

Suppose, for instance, that I am a rightful self-owner. This means that, if somebody forcefully invades my person and compels me to work for them against my will, this is a rights-violation, and 'slavery' is the term we use to designate this. If I were to use force to resist them, my use of force would be defensive, whereas theirs is initiatory. So they are in violation of the NAP, but I am not. But suppose that I am instead considered the rightful property of some other person. When they put me to work, they are simply exercising their property rights. If I use force to resist them, I am invading their property by acting as though I rightfully own myself, where we have stipulated that I do not. Here, then, I am the aggressor, and they are the victim. Their use of force is now defensive, protecting their property from somebody else (me) who is depriving them of its use.

So, the NAP depends upon a system of property rights in order to distinguish who is or is not an aggressor, and that is why, from the libertarian standpoint, slavery must be understood in these terms.

It looks like you think that if property rights don't exist, then we can't make sense of statements like "he stole my purse." I already noted that these statements can be made sense of without aligning oneself to any political position. — Walter B

Again, no. Your attempt at defining 'theft' in purely physical terms results in a definition that is too permissive for the libertarian to accept, so it is not politically neutral.

You must understand that definitions that are not politically neutral are not going to be accepted by your political opponent and they will charge you with begging the question. If you are debating the definition of property, and your definition of property is biased in favor of individualism, will the left-libertarian agree with you or will he challenge your definition as biased against him? — Walter B

The fact that somebody may charge the libertarian with question-begging does not imply that she really is question-begging. There are good reasons for libertarians to define their terms as they do, as I hope I have already indicated, and as can be discovered further by reading some of these figures.

The closest thing would be Gerry Cohen, especially Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Like so many works of political philosophy, I disagree with it while also being profoundly appreciative of it.

Also some of the left-libertarians I mentioned above: Hillel Steiner, Michael Otsuka, Peter Vallentyne, Roderick Long. I find these thinkers much more compelling than Chomsky himself, despite their lacking his celebrity status. Steiner's An Essay on Rights is especially brilliant.

Why should it be that when I own someone that I am afforded a natural right? — Walter B

'Ownership' is a statement about property rights. We are not just talking about de facto possession here; a thief who pinches my purse now physically possesses it, but this does not imply that he has a rightful claim to it (a world in which all de facto possession implies a rightful claim of ownership is praxeologically indistinguishable from a Hobbesian state of nature; we might as well not speak of rights at all, if such a world obtained). To speak of a right as 'natural' is simply to say that the right in question is not 'bestowed' upon one by an institution, such as the State. This is pertinent here, because Rothbard is considering the question of starting points: who starts off as the property of whom?

Why not give an account of slavery that is descriptive? Here is an example: when I own slaves it is often against their will. — Walter B

Well, one problem is that it does not seem possible to define slavery apart from rights (specifically, property rights, which fundamentally are the only kinds of rights there are). The 'account' of slavery you have just given is not a definition. It does not give us a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing cases of slavery from cases of non-slavery. Moreover, in the description you have given you have invoked the concept of 'ownership'. This is not a wertfrei description, for it simply throws us back upon the question, 'Who is the rightful owner of the person in question?' Trying to define slavery independently of property rights is like trying to define theft independently of property rights. If I take something from you against your will, is that 'theft'? Not necessarily - maybe it was my property, and you had previously stolen it from me. Distinguishing cases of theft from non-theft requires us to have a system of rights in place, and I would suggest that such is also necessary for distinguishing cases of slavery from non-slavery (e.g. employment).

When building a political system, there are starting assumptions that are taken for granted. That I own my own body is the starting point of Nozick, and that coercive control over another is illegitimate is the starting assumption of libertarians (both left and right). Suppose that I ask, why is it that you own your own body? If it a first principle, that I own my own body, then the question will be greeted with the reply that this is what has been taken for granted as true. — Walter B

I am not sure that this is the case. While libertarians do indeed hold to self-ownership and the non-aggression principle, they are not simply taken as self-evident axioms. Rothbard, for instance, argues for self-ownership from the impossibility or arbitrariness of the alternatives. One alternative would be that one part of humanity begins by owning another part of humanity, and the other would be that every person in the world is jointly co-owned by everybody. Rothbard argues that the former is arbitrary, since some members of one and the same natural kind are afforded a 'natural right' that others are not, and he argues that the latter is impossible to implement, for all sorts of reasons which I won't rehearse here. Whatever we make of his arguments, the point is that they are not simply stipulated.

I guess your issue is how is it that the left and right-libertarian, have similar-sounding starting assumptions, have differing levels of detail as to how society will be organized? — Walter B

Just a nit-pick: libertarians don't claim to have any idea how society should be organised. That is why they are libertarians. Libertarianism is really just classical liberalism in this respect: there is no 'blueprint' for making the world a better place, that is housed in the head of a genius somewhere. There is knowledge which is capable of making the world a better place, but it is de-centralised, spread across many individuals. This is why markets work as miraculously well as they do (see F. A. Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society), whereas collective decision-making processes tend towards market failure and function less and less well as the scale increases (see my topic, Anarchy, State and Market Failure).

If we compare Nozick with Chomsky, then Nozick sets out to make the case for minarchism in the form that trained philosophers go about in making the case for anything, but Chomsky doesn't have this background and may not have realized that anyone expected this of him. — Walter B

This is quite right.

Or is your issue, that the starting assumptions of the left-libertarian seem to imply the conclusion that he wants to prove so that they seem too vague? — Walter B

That would depend on the left-libertarian. I love to read Hillel Steiner, for instance. I am greatly appreciative of his The Structure of a Set of Compossible Rights.

I'm sorry, but you are making a storm in a teacup here. This wasn't even a debate or discussion post until you unearthed it after I don't know how many months. I can see that Chomsky is your favourite, but I can't tell you how uninteresting this conversation is. Thank you for your book recommendations.

I really don't think it's necessary to get quite this prickly. I have not attacked Chomsky. My query was just that - a query:

For anyone who knows, is there a book in which Chomsky lays out his own political philosophy (since he very clearly has one) from the ground up, as it were? — Virgo Avalytikh

It sounds as if the answer is 'No'. You might have lots of reasons excusing the fact that this is the answer, but that really isn't relevant, which is why I have to confess some bemusement at your passion, especially so late in the day.

In any case, 'power' and 'justification' still have not been defined. Expressions of 'power' are indeed everywhere, which is why they are multivalent and don't admit of an easy, monolithic definition that unites them. I might be justified in pulling a child back from a busy road, but that still doesn't give a 'justification condition'. What precisely is the condition of justified coercion? Multiplying examples does not give us such a condition.

Vague. What is the "free market"? How can a "system of property" (vague) be "aggressive"? What in Locke are you referring to? — Xtrix

The best exploration of the nature of a 'market' is Ludwig Von Mises's Human Action. A market is 'free' to the extent that it is not subject to invasion, and the best exploration of the nature of this invasion is Rothbard's Power and Market. For an application of Locke's classical liberalism to the ethical categories of libertarianism (e.g. property, aggression), see Ibid., The Ethics of Liberty.

So the principle that power should be justified and the principle that workers who run the companies should own the companies is what, exactly? Gibberish? Seems very clear to me. The fact that he doesn't write in precisely the same way as the Austrian school is a merit, in my view. But even if you don't agree, what exactly are you asking for, specifically? As someone who has read Chomsky widely, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability. — Xtrix

Not gibberish, just vague. Take 'power' for instance: 'power', like other foundational concepts in political philosophy, like liberty, rights, obligation, equality, etc., admit of numerous conceptions. They do not come pre-interpreted for us. And what of 'justification'? What, in principle, would or could constitute a 'justification' of a coercive institution? As for the claim that workers should own the companies in which they work, there is nothing axiomatic about this. This claim must be arrived at on the strength of a robust philosophy of property, which as far as I am aware Chomsky does not lay out.

Political philosophy in general benefits greatly from being presented in a cumulative, systematic form, beginning from first principles and making plain the assumptions at work. It is the strength of libertarianism's/liberalism's intellectual tradition that it tends to present its thoughts in this way. Why the shunning of this would be a 'strength', I haven't a notion. The point is, right-libertarianism's opposition to the State and advocacy for the free market are logical derivations from its more fundamental opposition to aggression. 'Aggression' is not left as a vague banner behind which to rally, but is defined in terms of a system of property which is explored and defended at length, and which itself has a tradition going back to Locke. And this is not unique to the 'right': Marxist philosopher Gerry Cohen also manages to present himself in this way (he is far and away the best Marxist, precisely on account of his clarity). The issue is that Chomsky is not particularly persuasive, except to the already-convinced, and this is owing to the relative informality of his approach.

You're moving the goalposts. You specifically mentioned his "principles." That's been given. Anyone who accepts this principle may arrive at different ways to implement it politically, but different conclusions? I don't think so - unless they're simply professing to believe in it. What "figures" who endorse this principle are you talking about specifically? — Xtrix

What I bemoaned was the lack of a work of systematic political philosophy in which the reader is led to anarcho-syndicalism from a set of first principles. I observed that neither Chomsky nor his heroes (Rocker, Proudhon, Bakunin) seem to have produced such a work. Libertarian writers of the Austrian school provide such formal treatises, for instance Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, and The Ethics of Liberty. What would be a refreshing breath of air is for Chomsky to produce something similar. I make this observation constructively, not as an enemy of Chomsky, but as an academic with an interest. This is why I do read him.

Chomsky has repeatedly stated, for the last 60 years, what he sees as the essential principle of anarchism:that power should be justified. That is to say, that structures of power, hierarchy, domination, and control are not self-justifying -- that they have the responsibility to justify themselves and, if they can't, should be dismantled. — Xtrix

That sounds wonderful - the problem is that this is a statement which would also be endorsed by figures who arrive at radically different conclusions from Chomsky, figures who have written with far more clarity and systematicity. So much is left unsaid; hence why a systematic political programme would be welcome.

Let’s forget the analogy. I used it as an illustration of one possible interpretation of your position which turned out not to be the correct one. We needn't dwell on it.

Your argument hinges on the claim that the State gives rise to a greater degree of standardisation than does a Stateless situation; that, under Statism, peaceful order is the norm and aggression is the exception, and that, under anarchy, we are wild animals engaged in perpetual aggression. It would be helpful for us to remind ourselves that the ‘standardisation’ we are concerned with is of a specific kind, namely a system of rights. This is the only reason why ‘convention’ entered the discussion, because rights are a convention, and convention requires at least some measure of standardisation for it to be meaningful. So the question before us is whether a State really does do the job that your argument needs it to do, in terms of creating a standardised system of rights, relative to anarchy.

I have attacked your argument at both ends. First, I have argued that the State is a miserable candidate for being a rights-standardiser, rights-protector, rights-bestower, or however you would wish to phrase it. I argued that States are engaged in perpetual aggression towards their citizens (a point to which you have not responded at all), and that the historical record excites serious distrust of the claim that battle is some sort of occasional exception to a State’s normally ordered activity. The hundreds of millions of deaths which I enumerated in my previous post are to be accounted for by wars between States, and States murdering their own citizens. Does this give you a moment’s pause? It seems not. all you have to say is:

All these killings and yet many would argue that the world has already passed into overpopulation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Astonishing. Are you saying that the death toll isn’t yet high enough?

You talk about the State as if it is a person with the power of persuasion. It is not, and this is another good example of your doublespeak. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be sure, the State does not have its own inherent agency. Only individual persons have this. There is nothing objectionable in speaking about ‘collective agency’ so long as we recognise that it is an abstraction, and that we be careful not to smuggle in any untoward ontological commitments (like the idea that groups have their own independent capacity for purposeful action). As Murray Rothbard says, ultimately, there are no ‘governments’; there are only certain individuals who act in a manner that is recognised as ‘governmental’. Recognising this is much more of a threat to Statism than an apologetic for it. It dispels the notion that there is anything peculiar about a State (or the individuals comprising it) which grants it license to engage in activities which non-States do not. You yourself have spoken of the State as though it has agency, on numerous occasions.

Clearly I do not agree with the Hobbesian description. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your argument resembles that of Hobbes in the sense that you have claimed that, in the absence of the State, we act like ‘wild animals’ (i.e. a state of nature), and that it is the State which brings order. Maybe you are not really arguing this, but it certainly seems that you are, and if you are not, then as I pointed out above when you denied that you were seeking to justify Statism, you are not really threatening my thesis.

The State only emerges in the second level. Prior to this, at the first level, there is cooperation, people being helpful, caring, loving and agreeable. But this attitude only exists if it's cultured. From this general attitude of caring for each other, comes communion, sharing, having things in common. A State can only come from this, having things in common. — Metaphysician Undercover

So it looks like we agree on this much: peaceful cooperation, and standardisation regarding rights, are possible independently of the State. You extoll the virtues of education in further cultivating this standardisation, but there is no reason why this education could not occur under anarchy (indeed, hardly any education really occurs under Statism, see Caplan’s book I mentioned).

Where does this leave us in the trajectory of the discussion? We began with the principles of right-libertariansm, private property rights and the NAP. You claimed that the NAP was useless (deceptive!) in the absence of a system of rights. ‘Rights’ are a service bestowed on an individual by the State, a service provided by the State (there is the State as agent!). I have agreed that the NAP does depend on a system of rights, and that rights are conventions, which of course require a certain measure of standardisation. The disagreement from this point has seemed to involve the question of whether I can sensibly hold to a system of rights, given my disavowal of the State. My response has been to point out that, not only is the State a truly miserable candidate for rights-bestower (or whatever job it is supposed to do here), it is also perfectly possible for spontaneous order and cooperation to arise in the absence of a State. This latter point is one which you now seem prepared to concede. So, as things stand, I feel like my position is vindicated.

I don't refer here to an utopia being equivalent to paradise, when I talk about utopia here. — ssu

But you used the word 'paradise'

(the non-state libertarian paradise) — ssu

right there.

Perhaps better would be to talk about a fictional or a theoretic model of a society, because there is no record of this kind of non-state society having ever existed or emerged and the idea that it would (or could) emerge seems doubtful. — ssu

This actually isn’t true. Iceland was anarchistic for the first three centuries of its existence, and had quite an elegant justice system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Legacy

So it's modest for you to say there cannot be a state that is more closer to the minarchist state than to a totalitarian state, that all states are statist? — ssu

Libertarianism is modest in the sense that it requests only that persons not be aggressed against; a modest request indeed. It’s really not much to ask.

I haven't made or intended to make any ad hominem attacks to my knowledge. — ssu

I took this as rather ad hominem, as it was directed at me, and not at any argument I have presented:

Let's face it, the society where Virgo Avalytikh would confine every one else here participating in this debate into a "re-education camp" where starting from the morning to the night the libertarian creed and NAP would be taught to us to mold us into true believers of libertarian values is simply an oxymoron. — ssu

But is that true? You do have the right to use violence for self defence. And isn't a State made from people that uphold the idea of that State so much, that even others also accept the existence of the state? — ssu

Yes, it is true. You quoted the first sentence of a paragraph in which I give numerous examples of such. This understanding of the State, by the way, is perfectly consonant with Weber’s.

I said that I would happily concede the triviality of the rationality axiom if you concede its truth. I was hoping that you would cooperate with this and concede its truth so that we can move on. Instead, you have simply restated its triviality, which doesn’t advance us at all. As I pointed out, its axiomatic self-evidence is only an objection if the principle is accepted uncontroversially. It is only because it is disputed that it bears restating.

Contrary to your characterisation, the rationality axiom is not simply that ‘humans act in the way humans act’. If it were, I would have formulated it that way. It might be an implication of the axiom, but that is nothing special, since all tautologies are implications of everything (including contradictions). Humans act is such a way that aims at achieving their highest want at a given moment. Is this new information? Is this a valuable insight? That depends on whether you already knew it. If you did, then surely it is trivial. If you didn’t, then you have achieved a new insight. So let us just agree ‘The rationality axiom is true’, and then move on to more interesting insights (of which there are many; see Ludwig von Mises’s magnum opus, ‘Human Action: A Treatise on Economics’).

I think it's useful, in this context, to draw a parallel to moral relativism. I think what you are arguing here is a form of complete economic relativism that ultimately boils down to a complete moral relativism. — Echarmion

Economics is relative in the following sense: an economist is able to tell you (fallibly) that a particular course of action will boost GDP, but they cannot tell you that boosting GDP is objectively a ‘good’ thing. Or, if they can, they can do so only in reference to some higher criterion that has been stipulated. Whether that criterion is objectively ‘good’ is, again, a judgement that lies outwith the purview of the economist qua economist. As any introductory textbook will tell you, economics is a Wertfrei discipline. It is analogous to how natural science can tell you that putting arsenic in your mother’s drink will kill her, but not whether or not you should do so. This does not imply moral relativism at all, nor have I argued for moral relativism. My focus has been predominantly on rights, which is a different logical sphere. There are many things which I consider to be morally wrong, but not rights-violations (like committing adultery), and even certain things that are clear rights-violations, but are still probably the right thing to do, all things considered (like fraudulently over-charging somebody by a penny if doing so would prevent World War 3). Moral relativism is a red herring here, since I have not argued for it, nor is it an implication of anything I have argued. I am not a relativist in the moral sense, so we can just drop it there.

If I cannot argue that it's bad economically to have to give away your house essentially for free or starve, I cannot argue that it's morally bad to let people starve. — Echarmion

Hold on – there is an equivocation here which needs to be ironed out. It is one thing to imagine somebody foolishly trading away a house for a loaf of bread, and then using this as an example of how, sometimes, people enter into voluntary trades from which they emerge ‘worse off’. It is another thing to speak of someone being in a position where they have to give away their house for a loaf of bread, due to the desperation of their situation. They are two completely different points.

Supposing that we establish some criterion by which a house is ‘better’ than a loaf of bread, so that trading away the former for the latter is ‘bad’. This is something that anybody may do, poor or rich, desperate or not. Alright, then it is logically conceivable that somebody might enter into a peaceful trade and emerge ‘worse off’, by the criterion we have stipulated. So what? For what would this be an argument? I have used the fact that people typically know what is best for themselves as a pro-liberty argument, as an argument for the non-aggression principle. So the only way in which these unusual counter-instances actually have a bearing on the discussion if you are going to use them as an argument for aggression, i.e. sometimes, people must be forcibly protected from themselves, and coerced into doing the right thing. This is why I raised paternalism. Paternalism is the placing of limitations on someone’s liberty or autonomy for their own good. A paternalistic government does not recognise the right of individuals to engage in self-destructive behaviour, but considers it necessary to coerce them into doing the ‘right thing’. I am not sure if you are endorsing this, but if you are not, then such counter-instances are moot.

Suppose, on the other hand, that we are talking about somebody being in a position where they ‘have to’ trade away their house for a loaf of bread. Again, for what is this an argument, exactly? If you are on the brink of starvation, and the only way to save your life is to make such a trade, then you are better off for having made it, and this is consistent with my thesis. We might bemoan the fact that someone might be in such a desperate situation in the first place, but I don’t see how this has any immediate bearing on our discussion. Unless you are just taking for granted that the only way of alleviating poverty is through the instrumentality of the State (which is false).

We can conduct similar thought-experiments about violations of the NAP. For every conceivably possible case in which someone enters into a peaceful trade and emerges ‘worse off’ by whatever criterion you care to stipulate, I can give you one in which an act of aggression make one party ‘worse off’ by that same criterion. We are talking about tendencies. Relatively speaking, mutual benefit is a norm and unilateral loss an exception when it comes to peaceful trade. The reverse is the case when it comes to aggression. You were happy to agree that individuals tend to make decisions which are best for themselves, on the grounds that they are better acquainted with their respective situations than anyone else is. All I am doing is deducing the implications of this. If we look at the kinds of things which the NAP permits, they tend to work for the benefit of all voluntary participants (e.g. trade, friendships), and if we look at those things which are prohibited by the NAP, they tend to produce a clear loser (e.g. rape, murder, theft). I see this as being very difficult to argue with.

I don't see that this is a good argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

Let me use an analogy. I once witnessed a debate between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. The Catholic argued that his church, the Roman church, is single and unified, and has never throughout its history experienced schism or division. Meanwhile, Protestantism is divided into more than 33,000 denominations around the world. Christ’s church is unified and not divided, and therefore the Roman church is the true church. The Catholics all stand together in a unified tradition, and the Protestants are scrambling all over the place, unable to agree on even the minutia of doctrine. Unity beats division, Catholicism beats Protestantism. Only, the source from which the ‘33,000’ number came from, some encyclopaedia of world Christianity (I don’t know which, I believe the editor was someone named Barret) also listed 214 Catholic denominations (e.g. Dominicans, Franciscans, Sedevacantists). This point was brought up by the Protestant apologist. To which the Catholic responded, ‘Well, there you go: 33,000 versus 214. Protestantism gives rise to greater disunity than Catholicism.’ Now, he may be right, and his argument may even be a good one, but it is also obvious that he is now making a new and different argument, and that his first argument has been defeated. Either the Roman church is a unified church or it isn’t! And, according to his own source, it isn’t. It is no longer a question of ‘unity versus division’. Now it is a question of degrees of division.

This is why I asked if the standardisation to which you make appeal must be absolute. If the argument is something like ‘standardisation beats disunity, the State breeds standardisation, anarchy breeds disunity, therefore the State beats anarchy’, then the argument is defeated fairly definitively simply by pointing out that Statism gives rise to its own kind of disunity. So if the debate is set up as one of ‘standardisation versus disunity’, both Statism and anarchy are equally embarrassed; neither is vindicated over the other. They are both equally non-absolutely standardised (there aren’t degrees of non-absoluteness). Now, you have clarified that this is not the argument you are making, that standardisation does not have to be absolute, in which case we can drop the point. I raised it as a possible interpretation of your argument, so as to clarify your position. You must be making the weaker claim, that the degree of standardisation which is made possible by the State is greater than that which is possible in the absence of a State.

Essentially you are arguing that if two nation-States come to war over an issue of territory rights, (like the Falklands Islands for example), this is no better than having all human beings acting like wild animals or very young children, running around fighting with each other over every single object which they seek to use. — Metaphysician Undercover

I really never did say this. If it were true that Statism gives rise to an adequate degree of order, and that conflict and disorder are exceptions under Statism rather than the norm, and if it were true that, in the absence of the State, we would all be wild animals constantly engaged in a war of all against all, then the argument would have some mileage. But these two premises are precisely what are in dispute.

I made the point above that the fundamental philosophical objection to the State is that it apparently has license to engage in acts of aggression which it prohibits others from engaging in. I cannot tax, I cannot wage wars, I cannot pass laws or execute my own private justice (except within the limits which the State permits me to). The State reserves for itself the monopolistic prerogative to do all of these things, and it uses force to do so. It is undoubtably a coercive monopoly, and it is so essentially. I doubt that it would be possible to distinguish States from non-States, were it not for these particular characteristics which they exhibit. A State persists by perpetually aggressing against its citizens. This is not necessarily to say that resorting to physical force is the State’s first port of call, but it is always the background threat. A highwayman may never actually shoot anyone, but, in demanding ‘Your money or your life’, he is an aggressor nonetheless. This is clouded by the fact that the State has its own distinct vocabulary for describing its activities. The State taxes, I steal. The State defends the homeland, I am a terrorist. The State conscripts or subpoenas you, I put you to forced labour. It is propagandistic double-think from start to finish. The State cannot be an effective protector of rights, for one very simple reason: if we judge the State’s actions by the standards of a non-State, we would consider it a rights-violator on an unparalleled scale. I have not even talked about the war on drugs, the prison-industrial complex, paternalistic bans on life-saving drugs . . .

Supposing we ignore all of this, and consider the State to be an effective maintainer of order most of the time, occasionally engaging in acts of conflict. Anarchy produces perpetual aggression, Statism produces occasional aggression, so Statism is preferable to anarchy. This is what I understand you to be arguing here:

Notice that in the former case, the majority of people are living in peace for the majority of the time, with a few issues arising which might cause battles, while in the latter case, the majority of people are battling each other for the majority of the time. That is why I consider the former situation to be better than the latter. — Metaphysician Undercover

But there is more to it. What if the aggression to which Statism gives rise is of a scale that no anarchistic situation could ever dream of? Just look at the 20th century, the bloodiest century in history. 40 million dead in WW1, 85 million dead in WW2, and (estimates vary) probably more than 90 million deaths across various communist regimes. These are Statist phenomena. If anarchy obtained, and this was the death toll that resulted, I am sure you would see this as proof-positive that anarchy tends towards animalistic aggression. No doubt, this is passed off as a ‘blip’, as Statism ‘going wrong’. After all, not all States are created equal, and ours are the good guys. We can trust them to use their monopoly on force in the right way, rather than in a corrupt or murderous way. Well, the numbers are what they are, and this century is still young. We may see worse still before we’re through. By the time we do, it will be too late to recant. Send the ring back to Mordor and destroy it. No one can be trusted with it. That is just wisdom.

This is done through the educational institutions, not enforcement. Enforcement is only for the few who step out of line of the laws. If we stop funding educational institutions because they are an expensive State-run enterprise, and educate in other fragmented ways, standardized conventions will be lost to a multiplicity of fragmented conventions. — Metaphysician Undercover

One of the reasons why the State’s monopoly on force has perdured for so long is because it has successfully persuaded the vast majority of people that a State is absolutely necessary, and that there could not be a functioning society without one. Its success in so-persuading people is owing to its involvement in shaping the minds of the young. It is plain as can be that for the State to have any involvement whatsoever in the education of the young (which, presumably, is when most of our ‘conventions’ are formed) is an enormous conflict of interest. I would no sooner have a government department of education than I would have a government department of language. A minimal requirement for a functioning democracy (not that I concede the existence of such a thing) is the possibility of directing independent intellectual criticism towards the State. For that very State to be the principal agent of ‘educating’ entire generations of people is as bone-chillingly Orwellian as the State dictating the language by which we may formulate such criticism.

(This is all leaving aside the fact that government schools are quite simply terrible; see Bryan Caplan’s ‘The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money’).

Anyway, the idea of "spontaneous order" was disproven by science in its original form of "spontaneous generation", though some people have rejuvenated the idea as abiogenesis. Regardless of how you present it, "spontaneous order" is illogical and inconsistent with fundamental metaphysical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

In effect, you have simply been making Hobbes’s argument: human interaction, in its natural state, is a war of all and against all, in which everyone aggresses against everyone else to benefit at another’s expense, and the only escape from this situation is for there to be a State which maintains order. There is already ample reason for doubting that States do in fact maintain any adequate degree of order, given that they are agencies of aggression, and are responsible for more violence and death than any private agent could dream of. But there are at least two other reasons why this argument is dubious. First, one must explain how a State may first form, if it is really the case that order cannot occur spontaneously. If the State is a human association with a unified purpose, and if such associations are impossible in the absence of a State and its various institutions, then in order for such an association to form there must have already been a State in existence, to allow for it to come about. But this is not the case, since we are talking about how a State first formed. In other words, the very existence of the State serves as a counter-instance to the Hobbesian claim that spontaneous order is impossible. Indeed, we know that spontaneous order is possible, because if it were not, we would still be atomised aggressors engaged in perpetual war.

This is why I posted the essay by Friedman. ‘A Positive Account of Property Rights’ is concerned precisely with the question of how individuals bargain themselves up out of the Hobbesian state of nature. We know that it did happen, because we couldn’t be where we are now otherwise. The question is ‘How?’, and Friedman invokes the logic of Schelling points to explain (persuasively, to my mind), how property rights can be recognised and enforced by societies of organisms in the absence of a formalised institution. This is praxeology we are discussing. ‘Spontaneous generation’ and ‘abiogenesis’ are complete red herrings, and there is nothing metaphysically objectionable about what I have argued, either. The video I posted about the iterated prisoner’s dilemma is actually a very nice illustration of how the discipline of constant dealings tends towards self-enforcing arrangements (we might think of them as proto-contracts) which work towards mutual advantage.

Here you go, wandering around in your circle, lost. You have explained the conventions as coming into existence through "spontaneous order", and now you say that the system of private property along with non-aggression is capable of producing the spontaneous order. See the circle? — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not so much a circle as an iteration. Looking again at the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, we can illustrate in game-theoretic conditions how, in a community of aggressors, one or two peaceful agents very quickly spread their example to others, so that peaceful voluntarism becomes firmly established and very difficult to dislodge, whereas aggressors cannot get a foothold. In the complexity of the ever-growing 'market' of peaceful interaction, it may not be entirely clear whether x is a precondition of y or y is a precondition of x. But it does happen, and so the circle is a virtuous one rather than a vicious one.

If nothing else, please read Friedman’s essay and watch the video on the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (10 minutes only). I will happily read or watch whatever you would like to send me.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0

how do our examples we have discussed NOT show that this semantic problem does indeed have philosophical implications? (I think trespassing is wholly non-violent - you think it is a definite example that violates the NAP - have you shown me I am wrong? or just pointed out that according to your definition, you are right?) — ZhouBoTong

Simple: I have defined ‘aggression’ in a particular way, in a way that is consonant with how the term is conventionally used in the libertarian tradition, and have argued that trespass does indeed constitute aggression on that definition. You may respond that you are defining ‘aggression’ in a different way, and that, on your definition, trespass is not aggression. To which I respond, ‘That’s fine’. I’m not claiming that trespass is aggression in the way you are defining it. I am claiming that trespass is aggression in the way I am defining it (and the way in which libertarians define it). I happily concede that, if I were defining ‘aggression’ in the way you are, I might be wrong. But since I’m not, I’m not.

When you don't have absolutely any example of the ideal state of the society (the non-state libertarian paradise) which you model and every state ever is too suffocating for you, isn't that idealism? — ssu

No, for the simple reason that libertarianism is non-utopian (or non-paradisiacal). I don’t know what is best for you, I don’t know how you should be living your life, educating your children, parting your hair, or what you should be having for dinner. Individuals tend to be the best judges of their own affairs (I explore this in more detail in some of my responses to Echarmion). This is why coercion is, in net-terms, unlikely to make the world a better place (relative to non-aggression). Libertarianism is not so much a structural vision for ‘fashioning’ an ideal society, so much as a set of really very modest conditions on the basis of which it is possible for individuals to fashion their lives largely as they wish. It’s not a matter of opposing all existing societies because they are sub-optimal or unideal. I am simply making consistent application of the non-aggression principle. Libertarianism is not a paradise, it does not claim to be a road to paradise, its defenders frequently deny that there is such a thing as a realisable paradise, and someone who believes otherwise just needs to read the libertarians more carefully (it’s worth pointing out: the ‘Utopia’ in Robert Nozick’s ‘Anarchy, State, and Utopia’ is facetious).

I've always seen libertarians as good and rather harmless people. Because in reality their society or state likely closest to their ideals would be a huge disappointment for... the libertarians. Social Democrats would enjoy very much a classic liberal state. What better environment for a social activist than a society with a functioning healthy economy and prosperity?

Let's face it, the society where Virgo Avalytikh would confine every one else here participating in this debate into a "re-education camp" where starting from the morning to the night the libertarian creed and NAP would be taught to us to mold us into true believers of libertarian values is simply an oxymoron. — ssu

Is it just my imagination, or are you getting steadily more ad hominem each time?

Since you seem not to see the significance of some of the concepts of which I have made use in this discussion (I don’t mean this in a condescending way, I’m just reading this off what you have said), let me restate the argument in more detail.

I have made the claim that voluntary trade works towards mutual benefit. This is true in at least two (related) senses. One of these senses corresponds to the perspective of entering into the trade in the first place (this is the ex ante perspective), and one of the senses corresponds to the perspective of having made the trade (ex post).

At any given moment, conscious agents are engaged in purposeful behaviour. Man acts. Action is motivated by purpose, by a desire or want, which we aim to achieve, even if such a purpose is not always at the forefront of our conscious awareness. Purposeful action may be distinguished from involuntary action, like a muscular spasm. There isn’t much to say about involuntary action, since we cannot (directly) control it, so I will just restrict myself to purposeful action. At any given moment, we have a multitude of wants, and these wants are, in a sense, in conflict with one another. My desire to take a sip from my coffee cup and my desire to type a message are in conflict, in the sense that they are both competing for my time. No doubt there are at least two activities which I could conceivably engage in simultaneously without compromising either, but the important point is that I cannot do everything I want; my wants are insatiable, and resources (time, attention, physical space) are scarce. This is the fundamental economic problem.

So why do I end up doing what I do? Because my wants exist in a hierarchy, and, at a given moment, I will always act in such a way that aims at realising my highest want. This is the doctrine of ‘demonstrated preferences’. And it is self-evident: it is senseless to speak of someone prioritising a ‘lesser’ want over a ‘greater’ want, for, if it is prioritised, it is not really the ‘lesser’ want at all. It stands to reason, then, that in a trade, we each act in such a way that aims to attain something we value more at the expense of something we value less.

This is axiomatically true (which, I assume, is why you have used words like ‘circular’ and ‘trivial’ to describe it). But, to say that something is trivially true implies that it is true. There would be no need to repeat the fact that it is true if no one ever denied it. It is the fact that it is disputed that creates the need to repeat it. If you are happy to concede its truth, then I am happy to concede its triviality, and we can drop the point. But, until then, its axiomatic self-evidence is a point in its favour, not a point against it.

‘Value’ is an important concept here too. Value is subjective, as I argued above. To speak of a ‘material worsening’ of someone’s condition presupposes an objective theory of value, which is wrong. If I trade away a house for a loaf of bread, it is because ‘having a loaf of bread’ was higher in my preference hierarchy than ‘having a house’. You might think that I am crazy for making such a trade, but that is beside the point. The question of what I value is demonstrated by my preferences.

Having said this, there is still a meaningful sense in which I might be said to make ‘bad’ decisions. But this requires us to shift our perspective from ex ante to ex post. Our preferences may change from moment to moment, and this is especially the case when what was previously my highest want has been satisfied. Having traded away my house, I may immediately regret my decision. I might now have a whole host of new wants which only my old house could satisfy, and which my bread cannot. This does not serve as a counter-instance to what I have just argued about the logic of purposeful action. My claim is that purposeful agents aim at satisfying their highest want at a given moment. This is perfectly compatible with the fact that we might change our preferences, change our minds, regret past decisions, and so on. So we now have the question, ‘How likely is it that people are going to trade and interact with each other in such a way that they will not regret their decision later?’ And this returns us to the question of who knows what is best for me. And the answer is: me. I know what is best for myself better than anybody else does. I believe you were happy to agree to this point earlier.

With this in mind, we can see that there is also an ex post sense in which voluntary trade works towards mutual benefit. If I know what is best for myself, then I know better than anyone else which trades I should enter into. This claim is weaker than the first, for it is a contingent generalisation with possible counter-instances, not a praxiological axiom. But it is true, and on this much we seem to have previously agreed. If, in general, individuals know what is best for themselves, then a fortiori they know what is best for themselves with regard to trade (and other interactions).

So what is to be done about the fact that some people make decisions which are ‘bad’ for themselves? In the first place, we must have some basis upon which to recognise such a thing, and this is not as easy as you seem to think it is. That heroin is addictive and dangerous to your health does not imply that it is always ‘bad’ for someone to consume it. All it implies is that there is a cost to consuming it. But there is a cost to all actions, and often there are benefits too. Someone who desires to take heroin will no doubt make appeal to its recreational use; the pleasure it brings, or whatever reason people take it for (I don’t know). So now it has been complicated by the fact that there are net-considerations of benefit and cost. This is where subjective value is important: you might value the recreational benefits of heroin less than avoiding its costs, but someone else may not.

What you say of heroin is also true of fast food. It’s dangerous and it’s addictive (which is why I avoid it). Not to the same degree, of course, but in a way, this is precisely the point. This is a relative issue, and not an absolute one. And it is impossible to draw a line in a non-arbitrary way. The only natural resting point is simply to allow people to do what they want with their own lives.

What is the alternative? Only paternalism: only the use of ‘benevolent’ aggression, ‘kindly’ initiating force against people for their own good. Remember, I have been invoking the mutually beneficial nature of voluntary trade as an argument for private property and the NAP. If you think that my argument for these principles is undermined by the fact that some people make bad decisions for themselves, this only has any bearing if you are going to propose the 'kindly' use of force. Can I at least nail you down on this? Are you arguing paternalism here? If not, then all of this looks moot.

:wink:

Coercive aggressor, which has an inevitable growth and 'limited government' is utopian? — ssu

I said the concept of ‘limited government’ is utopian. My point is that a State with clearly circumscribed limits remaining within those limits in perpetuity is too much to reasonably hope for. The usual ‘checks and balances’ to which apologists for the State typically make appeal (the democratic process, the separation of powers, a written constitution) are not up to the task.

Well, this seems not to be an economic debate, but simply an ideological debate where you put the NAP on a pedestal and treat it as a religious icon.

I've noticed that discourse nowdays tends to go in the way of a religious mantra. The state, central banks, large corporations, the free market all seem to become these incarnations of evil, just depending on what side you are (or sometimes on both sides). In the Soviet socialist bloc there was a perfect word for this. It was called a "lithurgy". All the correct words and endless nonsensical chatter without any true meaning. But it sounded politically correct (in the right circles). — ssu

It is a philosophical and praxeological/economic debate, at least for me. I oppose the State because it is an aggressor, and there is no non-arbitrary reason why this particular human association should be able to use force in such a way that would be impermissible for any other agent. This isn’t hatred, I haven’t used words like ‘evil’ or anything with religious connotations. I aim simply at philosophical consistency.

Have you by the way ever read Max Weber? — ssu

I certainly have.

The term 'aggression' is not as important as the concept it designates. The most important thing is for us to be clear on how we are using it. Libertarians are clear in how they use it (as per the citations I posted above). You may well observe that 'aggression' has alternative uses in other contexts. But this is a purely semantic observation, rather than bearing any real philosophical substance.

This is frankly absurd. You're not "better off" if you sell your house for a loaf of bread. The next day, you will be hungry and homeless. Being "better off" requires your objective material situation to improve. Using it to mean simply "you gain something that you currently value" is a sleight of hand and turns your argument circular again. What you're actually saying is "if you engage in peaceful trade, you will receive whatever you trade for" which is trivially true but also completely meaningless in the context of this topic.

Claiming that situational value is the same as overall well-being is simply false. Your argument rests on overall well-being, not on situational value. — Echarmion

Who are you to say that they are worse off for making the trade? Why are they doing it, if they do not value the bread more than they value the house? I am not saying it is a prudent decision. I couldn’t imagine doing it. But I couldn’t imagine paying for all sorts of things that other people pay for. If a person trades away their house for a loaf of bread, it is because they value the bread more than the house. This is a self-evident praxeological reality.

Value is subjective, not objective. Value does not ‘inhere’ within the material substance of an object, like a physical quality. You cannot deduce the ‘value’ of an object from examining or dissecting it, as you could its mass or its chemical composition. It is a subjective relation, between (valuing) subject and (valued) object. It is a psychic phenomenon. As such, it varies from person to person, and (importantly here) from moment to moment. The only definitive measure of the ‘value’ of something is: how many units of some other resource is a person willing to part with in order to attain it? And this may change. As such, there is no such thing as value simpliciter. There is only value to a particular person at a particular moment.

Since value is a subjective praxeological phenomenon which determines that individuals will pursue this purposeful action rather than that one, the mutual benefit which results from voluntary trade is one that is ex ante, rather than ex post. Now, it is also true that there is a general tendency to ex post benefit, since, as I have argued, individual persons tend to be the best judges of their own affairs, but this is more of a tendency than a praxeological axiom.

The problem doesn't lie with ex-ante and ex-post. Buying heroin to fuel your addiction is not good for you from an ex-ante position either. If you sell your house for a loaf of bread, it's clear ex-ante that your material wealth will decrease sharply. — Echarmion

This is simply paternalism. Do I think that taking heroin is a poor life decision? I certainly do. I think that paying hundreds of dollars (or equivalent) on vacations abroad is a poor decision. I think that eating at Macdonalds (ever!) is a poor decision. Other people might think that paying for an expensive degree is a poor decision. There might be a ‘right’ answer here, or there might not be. I’m not sure. But I have the humility to recognise that I don’t know what is best for other people. And even if I think that I do, I could very well be wrong. Reasoned humility is the essence of the libertarian position; it is precisely that which makes liberty important. My life is my business, and your life is yours. If someone wants to take heroin, I might make a private judgement about them, but it would be presumptuous for me to prohibit them from doing so. The right to self-determination implies a right to self-destruction.

Suppose that we agree that people sometimes do make decisions which make themselves worse off. What is the Statist solution? Preventing people who are in desperate situations from taking the decisions which they actually choose?

There'd be no ground to stand on because there'd be no principles to apply. You need a starting point, some moral order that provides the axioms of the particular resolution. Usually, these are provided by constitutions or similarly central ideas, like environmentalism. Alternative dispute resolution mostly relies on the actors operating in some specific framework, like a business relationship, which had identifiable goals and overlapping interests. But what is supposed to provide this basis in the pollution example? How do you even start to formulate a rule? — Echarmion

I don’t see how this has a bearing on the libertarianism/Statism discussion, for a number of reasons. Libertarianism does have principles to apply; the ones I have mentioned. To be sure, these principles do not yield a specific resolution to the question of precisely where negligible pollution drifts into meaningful damage to property, but neither does any constitution that I know of, nor a general commitment to ‘environmentalism’. Formulating a non-arbitrary resolution to such a dispute is no less difficult for a State’s judicial system.

One option available to a private arbitrator, in distinction from the Statist alternative, is to engage in market research so as to determine what kind of service justice-consumers are prepared to pay for. The profit-and-loss system provides a reasonable (though shifting) basis upon which arbitrators may make non-arbitrary decisions regarding what kind of penalties to administer. This is actually a really complex topic in the economics of law, and David Friedman is virtually the only person who works with the concept of economically efficient law, so if you are interested to explore how the nut and bolts of such a system would work, please do look at ‘The Machinery of Freedom’.

There is nothing "unique" about a state. It's just an actually existing human association that serves as the necessary higher order to grant rights and is able to enforce them. You were the one that made this about states, specifically. My argument is that rights need to be granted by some higher order. — Echarmion

If there is nothing unique or special about a State, then there is nothing ‘higher order’ about it, which might afford it unique rights-bestowing prerogatives. I have long-since agreed that rights are higher-order in the sense that they are principles, and therefore abstractions. If we can also agree that such does not imply or require a State then I am happy to move on from this.

The difference between rights and interests,very simply put, is that your interest is what you want, and your right is what you deserve. If you are going to pay someone to enforce, you'd pay them to get what you want, not what you deserve. — Echarmion

Fine, I already allowed that it is possible for interest-enforcing services to exist even if they violate rights (I used the example of assassins). But, also, rights-enforcing services can exist independently of a State. That is all I mean to argue.

So I misread this as I don't like Monkeys and I had a whole response formulated in my head.

RIP my life.

No, ownership is aggressive, and prohibited under my understanding of the NAP (you use 'the NAP' like that means the same thing to everyone). Notice that 'ownership' presupposes property rights. Someone 'owns' the land, because there is a power that allows them to hold onto it. If land cannot be 'owned', then one cannot 'trespass'. This is actually a rather tidy illustration of what I have been arguing the whole time. — ZhouBoTong

I use the NAP as I have defined it, and consonantly with how libertarians in general define it. There is some dispute over who coined the term; it was either Ayn Rand or Murray Rothbard. But they both define it the same way. The NAP is a libertarian principle. If you want to know what it means, you go ad fontes.

This is Murray Rothbard:

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 the encyclopedia 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.

You have every right to define any term how you wish. But we are discussing libertarianism, so I have defined it as libertarians define it. That's not to say that there aren't alternative and competing definitions (though, I have not encountered such a thing). They are just a red herring.

If I understand the essence of your argument, it seems to hinge on the issue of standardisation, or universality: in the absence of the State, there may be as many rights-conventions as there are individuals, and so uniformity is impossible. Given the existence of a State, however, it is reasonable to think that there would be a unified system of rights, which the State has the institutions to enforce.

There are few problems with this. First, I would ask how much standardisation you believe to be necessary. Must it be absolute? If it does, then not even Statism is enough, for a world with multiple existing States would be one in which there might be multiple competing systems of rights. If two nation-States both believe themselves (or their citizens) to have some sort of rightful claim over a territory, by what higher standard do they resolve their dispute? There is none, and so, just as two individuals with competing conventions would break out into violence and the winner would be determined by arbitrary force, so too would the two nations break out into war and, once again, justice would be the advantage of the stronger. Even a multinational political union could only ever be a partial solution. In order for a State to do the work you need it do philosophically, there really can be only one of them, and its scale must be global. Anything short of that, and the standardisation problem which you seem to be levelling at the an-cap position is equally applicable to a Statist situation.

If, on the other hand, the standardisation does not strictly have to be absolute, then there is no reason why a State is necessary at all to preserve and enforce it. Once we establish the precedent that a convention can exist and be enforced at something less than a global scale, there is no longer any in-principle reason why its enforcement can only be done by the kind of thing that a State is. This is especially the case since, as I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the services of rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution can be (and, to a significant extent, are) provided by private agencies.

Moreover, we ought not to underestimate the tendency of individuals to arrive at a spontaneous order in the absence of coercive institutions. While it is conceivably possible that there be as many rights-systems as there are individuals (as in my silly ‘all x’s pass to me on a full moon’ example), this kind of situation is praxeologically unlikely to obtain (and, even if it does, the formation of a meaningful State is going to be impossible). It is precisely because not all systems of rights are created equal, that some are conducive towards mutual advantage where others are not, that creates a tendency towards spontaneous (if imperfect) standardisation. Fairly rigorous game-theoretic explorations concerning how this standardisation comes about in a state of nature can be found in Friedman:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html

(a more reader-friendly version may be found in the Social Philosophy and Policy Journal in which it was first published)

And more general treatments may be found in Hayek:

https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Individualism%20and%20Economic%20Order_4.pdf

Or for something more fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0

And, as always, Rothbard is excellent here too.

Going back to my opening post, from which we seem to have become somewhat uncoupled, a system of private property and non-aggression is not arbitrarily chosen. It has distinct and significant advantages relative to its competitors. Spontaneous order occurs because it is in individuals’ interests to enter into peaceful constant dealings with others, and it is private property and non-aggression which allows this to take place. And, while the integrity of such a system requires the means of enforcing one’s rights against aggressors, the very system of private property and non-aggression is capable of producing such services without violating anyone’s rights, by the standards of the system. The fundamental difference between this and a Statist situation is that the State reserves for itself the prerogative to engage in acts of aggression which it prohibits others from engaging in. This remains the fundamental philosophical problem of the State, and as yet I have not encountered any non-arbitrary justification for it (and if providing such a justification is something which you are not interested in doing, then I am not hopeful of hearing such a thing anytime soon).

This is your claim not mine, the NAP "presupposes" a system of property rights. Therefore there needs to be a universally accepted system of property rights before the NAP can have any merit. Otherwise the NAP is useless because it would be applied differently according to different conventions of property rights. This is obvious. I am just following the logic of your claims. — Metaphysician Undercover

I thought we had come to the agreement together that the NAP presupposes property. After I drew attention to the fact that this is universally acknowledged among libertarian theorists (the NAP being a libertarian principle, after all), I thought this was an agreement we had reached. Is this not so? My claim, in any case, is that the dependence relationship between the NAP and a system of property rights is one that is logical and not temporal, so I am not committed to holding off on ‘NAP-talk’ until after I have successfully realised a particular system of property rights in the world.

The NAP refers directly to the right to ownership. You have stated this clearly. But if what I believe is my right to ownership is different from what you believe is your right to ownership, we would each apply the NAP differently. So the NAP would be meaningless in this case, useless. And when the land is full of people claiming that you have no right to ownership of what you claim to own, the NAP does nothing for you. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is true, different people may have different conventions regarding rights. I responded to this point here:

Moreover, the fact that there may be diverse conventions with regards to rights does imply that all conventions are created equal. Some systems of rights are good and worthy, and some are not. This is where political philosophy has a role to play. By the same token, the fact that one system of rights might be recognised as ‘conventional’ does not imply that there is not a better system of rights that we might choose to employ.

I might believe that I have a rightful property claim to x because I traded for it peacefully with somebody else. You might believe that you have a rightful property claim to x because it is a full moon tonight, and on a full moon all x’s automatically pass to you. We may disagree, and it may come to blows. But this does not mean that our respective claims are equally reasonable, implementable, liberty-conducive or prosperity-conducive.

Moreover, I am not sure to what extent Statism is supposed to solve such a problem. You and I may both exist in the same Statist society and have differing views regarding what constitutes a rightful property claim. The only sense in which a State may be said to ‘solve’ such a disagreement, as far as I can see, is simply by picking a winner, and enforcing a single system of rights upon everyone. But there is nothing to say that this system of rights is just, or reasonable, or generally agreeable. Indeed, it seldom is. It may choose in favour of my claim, or yours, and the ‘winner’ is simply the one which the State chooses to enforce. But there is nothing philosophical about it, nothing reasoned. Everything is settled by the arbitrary use of force. It is the view of Thrasymachus in The Republic: ‘justice’ is just the advantage of the stronger.

It is just not altogether clear what you mean by ‘State’, nor what kind of philosophical work the State is doing in your argument. The arguments you are attempting to level against libertarianism can only be successful if the State solves the problems you raise. But I am still in the dark as to how it is supposed to do so. Can you explain? As things stand, the work the State seems to be doing is to enforce one particular system of property rights upon everyone (within its territory, that is). But whether that system is the right one remains to be seen.

We've been through this already. I don't claim "the State" as the source of rights. I thought we agreed on "convention". But the State upholds the conventions with the means of force when necessary. Notice I say "when necessary". The majority of conventions are upheld by the State without the use of force, through institutions, because we readily agree to them. But without the State we do not have the institutions, nor the means to uphold the conventions, and the conventions fall apart. "State" and "conventions" co-exist. — Metaphysician Undercover

But if the State is not the source of conventions, and conventions can and do exist independently of the State, and if conventions can be enforced by non-States, I fail to see how you arrive at a State. Again, the State just seems smuggled in, and no justification for it has been offered. You earlier denied the charge that you are attempting to ‘justify Statism’. But you must, otherwise you really don’t have anything with which the threaten anti-Statism.

That the State violates the NAP is simply an indication that the NAP places the right of ownership higher up in the hierarchy of rights, than the conventions which the State is bound to uphold places that right. The State upholds a multitude of rights, and there is a hierarchy of rights which itself is conventional. That the right to private ownership is limited, restricted, even forfeited in some cases, because other rights are of greater importance, according to the conventions which the State is bound to uphold, is evidence that the NAP is not a good principle. Why ought the right to private ownership be given such priority when the conventions which are presently accepted, and upheld by the state, assign a lesser priority to this right? The State can force one to give up ownership (fines) when that individual has committed offences not covered by the NAP. Clearly there is reason to believe that some rights ought to take priority over property rights. In this case the State is right in forcing one to give up one's property. Valuing private property higher than what is provided for in the conventional hierarchy of rights, validates the use of force against oneself, in contravention of the NAP. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not possible to prioritise a non-property-right over a property right, because all rights are fundamentally property rights. I made this point here:

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.

And it certainly appeared as though you concede this point:

OK, I'll go with this, it sounds reasonable. — Metaphysician Undercover

The only outstanding question is which specific property-claims are worth recognising, and which are not. We may decide this reasonably, as many in the libertarian intellectual tradition attempt to do, or it may be decided by the arbitrary use of force, which is the solution of the thieves, murderers, States, etc.

I've already given you examples of such, aggressive sales, and aggressive trading. They refer to the means by which one takes advantage of another in business transactions. If one takes advantage of the other, yet it is not fraud, you cannot call this "mutual advantage". Are you not familiar with these terms? — Metaphysician Undercover

You did indeed make this point, and I responded with:

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’!

Maybe you need to refine what you intend by ‘take advantage of’. In a voluntary trade, we both ‘take advantage of’ each other, in the sense that we both benefit from one another’s existence. This is not an embarrassment or a counter-instance. I know I seem to have quoted myself a lot here, but we have now reached that point at which most of what you are presenting has been addressed in my previous responses.

Haha. Because 'trespassing' is not per se aggressive? (I am just standing there). — ZhouBoTong

No, trespassing is aggressive, and prohibited under the NAP. Notice that ‘trespass’ presupposes property rights. I am trespassing on someone’s land because it is their land. If the land were unowned, or owned by me, it would not be trespass. This is actually rather a tidy illustration of what I have just argued.

These are fair questions, though I would hasten to point out that libertarianism does not present itself as a structural model by which to organise a society. It is a set of principles which are considered to be just and, if recognised, can reasonably be expected to make the world a better place relative to its alternatives (as per my opening argument). To ask a question like ‘What would libertarianism do about x’ is therefore slightly wrong-headed, since libertarianism is not a recipe for how to organise ourselves; it is a fairly modest set of principles, on the basis of which we may then choose to organise ourselves. The limits of what a libertarian world could look like are the limits of human imagination and ingenuity, operating within the framework of private property and non-aggression.

With this in mind, I really do not know enough about the internet to offer a quick-fix ‘solution’ to the problem of online radicalisation. As regards the principle of it, I would point out that online radicalisation of a kind that results in terrorism is essentially conspiracy to murder, and is prohibited under the NAP. How these particular aggressors would be dealt with is beyond the expertise of a recluse like me (analogously, I know the world is a better place where people are free to manufacture computers, but I haven’t any idea how to build one myself).

Speech is easier. ‘Hate speech’ is not a helpful category, at least when it comes to the question of rights. The right to ‘free speech’, just like all rights, is really just an ownership right: the right to do as one likes with one’s own property. There is no such thing as an unqualified ‘right to free speech’; your right to say what you want to say is always qualified by the property in relation to which you are standing. If you are sitting in your own house, your right to ‘free speech’ is nothing other than the right to use your property as you see fit. If you are sitting in my house, and you engage in speech which I dislike, and I tell you that you must leave if you continue, your right to ‘free speech’ is limited by the limitations that I have placed upon the use of my property. If you continue with this speech against my wishes, you have made yourself a trespasser and are now in violation of the NAP. It may surprise some people, then, to discover that libertarianism does not imply free-speech absolutism.

Why not? Especially when looking at history this divide becomes very problematic. How do you define a tribal community? These communities surely did have laws of their own. — ssu

A tribal society may or may not have a State; it would depend on how it is structured. I don’t know if you are using ‘tribe’ in a vague way, or if you have a specific kind of social/political structure in mind. It may well be difficult to determine just where non-States end and States begin, but there is certainly a meaningful distinction between States and non-States. I am not a State, and my scrabble club is not a State. There must be certain distinguishing characteristics which distinguish States from non-States, and I have attempted to draw attention to some of them (most notably force, monopoly and territorial sovereignty). The fact that a society has law does not make it a Statist society: law can exist under anarcho-capitalism as a function of dispute-resolution provided by private competing firms. But such a society would still be Stateless (hence: ‘anarcho’).

And what does the libertarian society with the 'libertarian creed' do to enforce this creed. Or it isn't needed to be enforced? — ssu

Yes, it may, must and would be enforced. The important point to note here is that the NAP applies equally to everyone, everyone should be subject to it, and anyone should be able to enforce it. But the State is an aggressor, which reserves for itself (coercively) monopolistic privileges. This is where the difference lies. It violates the NAP, and uses force to reserve for itself the monopolistic privilege to do so.

And what's the difference between a tax and a payment for services, especially if you provide me a service I need? — ssu

Taxation is a confiscationary levy, meaning that it is implemented under the threat of force. It is implemented whether or not I consent to it, whether or not I receive a service (e.g. redistributive taxation) and whether or not I even approve of that which tax revenue goes on to fund (war). It is not the same thing as payment made for services rendered, on the basis of a peacefully negotiated contract. One is an act of aggression, and one is an act of peaceful voluntarism.

Now what I don't understand is that you are talking about just this 'Statist' nations and seem not to show any interest or accept even the possibility that the state wouldn't have 'substantial centralized control' over social affairs and the economy. That those classically liberal/libertarian elements are there in many countries curtailing the power of the state. A lot of people simply don't think that all countries are so centralized. I think that af Statist nation was the old Soviet Union, which I had the opportunity to visit just when it was falling apart. Western countries simply aren't similar to Soviet Union. — ssu

‘Substantial’ isn’t nearly refined enough to get any philosophical purchase on it. All major States of my acquaintance have ‘substantial’ control by the standards of the classical liberals. The United States government, that bastion of capitalism (apparently), has its money supply and interest rate determined centrally, and has (without exaggeration) recognised a good half of the stipulations of the communist manifesto, from government-controlled education to the inheritance tax. States which reserve for themselves monopolistic privileges and maintain this monopoly by force (which is what they all do; otherwise, we couldn’t tell them apart from non-States) already have ‘substantial’ control.

What is more, 'limited government' is utopian. Once a government exists, its growth is inevitable. There are good reasons for this, and Michael Huemer's 'The Problem of Political Authority' explores them quite well (ch. 9).

Then your body, your liberty isn't property in the similar way and cannot be explained in the same way as something that's value is defined by the market and can be sold and bought (and I don't mean here people selling services). — ssu

Self-ownership is a sub-species of ownership in general. My right of ownership over my self is more basic than other forms of ownership, as it is a precondition of them, and it is also not the result of any productive or commercial activity. So there is a difference. But they are both ownership rights of some kind.

Because what else is the state as an collective effort of it's citizens? People that adhere to the "libertarian creed" do form in a way a proto-state themselves. If they enforce collectively this creed, what is so different of them acting as a state? — ssu

A State is an association of persons who hold a successful monopoly on the use of force over a geographical territory. Whether there is more to it (and there may well be), it is not helpful to simply use ‘State’ as a stand-in for any obtaining social organisational principle. States are agencies of force, force that is wielded at the behest of some (historically, a monarch or ruling class) against others. It can never be ‘representative’ of the people as a whole, for precisely this reason. Even if it is notionally ‘democratic’, the logic of predation (as Michael Huemer aptly calls its) is such that, in a Statist society, there will always be winners and losers, exploiters and exploited. This is what the initiation of force results in.

To address your argument head-on, one important feature which distinguishes States from non-States is that the States of our acquaintance engage in activities which would be clearly impermissible if a non-State agent were to act similarly. If I were to ‘tax’ people this would be theft/extortion, if I were to raise my own army and engage in acts of war this would be terrorism, and so on. States violate the NAP. They initiate force and invade property. Supposing that ‘Ancapistan’ is ushered in and a voluntary society is realised – one in which private property and the right not to be aggressed against are observed – there would be nothing like what we now know as a ‘State’. If you use ‘State’ simply to stand in for ‘any situation in which individuals organise themselves in some way’, then I suppose you could describe anything other than a Hobbesian state of nature a ‘Statist’ society. But I do not use the term in this way, and I do not think that it is at all a conventional or helpful usage.

So 'philosophers' can thinking about 'political philosophy', but if they reach some universal agreement (or close to it), they wouldn't be... politicians? — ssu

Again, not in anything like the ordinary sense in which we use this term. I am (humbly) a political philosopher. I am not a politician. I really hope we don't go down an interminable semantic road where these terms are given non-standard meanings and the goal-posts are shifted ad hoc. Please, let's not do that.

And just who is saying that? — ssu

Virtually everybody? I don’t begrudge your not reading the entire thread (I haven’t). But if you do, you will see what I mean. It is an unwarranted assumption being made tacitly left, right and centre. It is the number-one philosophical prejudice that I am gradually trying to gnaw away at.

I think this is where my main problem lies. You are claiming that, in the grand scheme of things (ignoring fringe cases) any interaction that is not aggression - initiatory use of force, as you put it - is beneficial for everyone involved. The only way I can see this claim working is if you bend aggression to encompass a whole lot more than just the initiatory use of force. Even concerning the main example of trade, things aren't as clear cut as "everyone will only agree to things that are beneficial to them". Sure, if you engage in trade that means you value what is offered, but only insofar as it has value to you in your present circumstances. If your present circumstance are that you are starving, you might sell your house for a loaf of bread. This is an extreme example, but people are definetly in differing bartering positions, and that will how beneficial the trades are. There are also all kinds of other factors from outright fraud to misinformation, from addiction to brand loyalty. There is plenty of room to enrich yourself to the detriment of others without resorting to force. — Echarmion

If you take issue with my thesis that voluntary trade works for mutual benefit, then what I would expect you to do is to provide a counter-instance. But the example you have given actually isn’t. If you trade away a house for a loaf of bread, it is because you value the loaf of bread more than you value the house. You are better off for having made the trade rather than not having made it. This is perfectly compatible with what I have argued. I have not made the claim that both parties are going to be in position of equal negotiating strengths (not least because I haven’t the faintest idea how ‘negotiating strength’ could be quantified in units). I have only argued that, if our interaction be peaceful rather than coercive, we are both better off for it.

This analysis is true, but makes no claim to comprehensiveness. Being in the position of having to sell one’s house for bread is regrettable, but I would simply say this of it: if you want to help the poor, what you certainly should not do is look at the option that they have actually chosen, and deprive them of that option (advice from which a good many legislators would benefit).

Fraud (and misinformation, if it be relevantly fraudulent) is prohibited under the NAP (it is really just a form of theft). As for addiction and brand loyalty, these are not counter-instances to my thesis, either. The addict who pays for heroin values the heroin more than the money. Just so with the brand-loyalist, and the particular brand of something (heroin?) to which he is eccentrically attached. Value is a subjective relation; different people value different things differently (trade could not occur except on this basis). You might think that my commercial decisions are poor, but you aren’t the one making them.

It is perhaps worth clarifying: when I speak of mutual benefit, I am speaking from an ex ante rather than ex post perspective (this is an important distinction when trying to understand the rationality axiom in Austrian economics). Voluntary trade is mutually beneficial because we both enter into a transaction with the anticipation of personal benefit. It is possible that our preferences may change after the transaction and we regret our decisions.

And if we want to push the NAP even farther, we get into things like pollution, usage of scarce resources, long-term environmental damages and there is simply no ground to stand on. Who is going to decide, and on what basis, what level of environmental degradation constitutes an "aggression" towards your neighbors, for example? — Echarmion

Why ‘no ground to stand on’? There would be rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution services in a voluntary society; they would simply be private competing firms rather than an agency of monopolistic coercion. The question ‘Where does negligible pollution end and meaningful damage to property begin?’ is a difficult question, but not for distinctively libertarian reasons. Whatever answer one gives is no more or less arbitrary in a Stateless or Statist society. Practically, it would be determined by whichever arbitrator settles a dispute if it came to it. Any court – Statist or private – must draw the line, and that line will no doubt disappoint some people. So this isn’t a ‘libertarian’ problem.

However, a virtue of the private justice system is that it is polylegal. It may be that A and B take their dispute to one arbitrator, and A and C take their dispute to a different arbitrator. ‘Law’ is simply a function of dispute-resolution administered by the arbitrator. So there is no need for a ‘one size fits all’ solution. Multiple crossing lines of legal rules may apply over a single territory, which is of course far more conducive to the satisfaction of justice-consumers than a single set of legal rules being imposed uniformly over an arbitrary territory.

But Anarcho-Capitalism and collective ownership are not the sum-total of economic systems. There are plenty of different ideas for free-market socialism, for example, that do non advocate fully collective ownership or a more powerful state than the current one. — Echarmion

This is true enough. But the observations I made about private property, communal property and the State, and their relative tendencies towards market failures, are true regardless of scale (though, the problems associated with communal property and the State become more and more prevalent as the scale increases).

Ontologically speaking, a state is nothing other than an idea, something inside someone's head. However, the parliament, the agencies and all their employees are real enough. It used to be that people had a higher authority by divine providence, now the idea is that we hand it to them by voting. The point is that everyone agrees that there is a higher order above the individuals, and that that higher order is actually effective in practice. — Echarmion

An ‘idea’ does not have agency. If the State is nothing more than an ‘idea’ then it cannot engage in concrete instances of purposeful action. ‘Ideas’ cannot tax, or implement justice, let alone bestow rights. The things we refer to as States are human associations, (the members of) which act in ways that are impermissible for non-States. I still do not see what is supposed to be so special about a State that it has unique right-bestowing capabilities. This has not been made clear at all.

If you pay someone explicitly to enforce your rights, sure. But who would do that if they could pay someone to enforce their interests instead? — Echarmion

I’m sorry, I’m not being difficult. I just really don’t understand what you’re getting at here.

OK, we can probably all agree that there ought to be a system of property rights, but this doesn't make such a convention magically appear. But the NAP, as described by you, presupposes the existence of such a system. So it is the NAP which ought to be thrown away, because its principal prerequisite does not exist. Once convention on property rights is established, then we might decide whether something like the NAP is called-for. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a leap being made here, and I do not make it with you. You seem to be saying, ‘We need to establish a universal convention of property rights first, and only then can we start talking about the NAP.’ The relative priority of a system of property rights, and the relative posteriority of the NAP, is a relation that is logical, not temporal. The NAP does not ‘come along later’; it is implementable (and should be implemented) synchronically with the system of property upon which it (logically) depends. There’s no reason to hold off on talk of the NAP until later. No reason – that is – unless the NAP poses a threat one’s own position.

Alright, so let us say that ‘being good’ is a logical precondition of ‘not acting aggressively’. Does this mean that we cannot even have a discussion about the worthiness of non-aggression, until we have got a suitable number of people in the world to be good? I don’t see why. We can develop a system of thought with numerous logical steps, before we seek practically to implement the first, or before we have successfully done so. Of course we may.

But you have been proposing a completely different angle, one in which the State has been abolished. At this point, there are no rights, that's the important point which you do not seem to be grasping. At this point we cannot say "rights determine the acceptable use of force" because there are no rights, the revolt is against the State which is the support of the existing rights. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, a complete non sequitur. That the State is the only possible ‘source’ of rights has not yet been justified. Indeed, that the State even can be a ‘source’ of rights has not been justified. It is simply assumed. There is nothing special or mystical about States. They are associations of human individuals, who hold a successful monopoly on the use of force over a historically arbitrary territory. And this leads into another point which ought to be clarified: I do not begin with an opposition to Statism. That is an incidental consequence of libertarianism. It is because the State exists in violation of the NAP that it is objectionable.

You begin in the opposite direction. You begin with the State, taking for granted both its legitimacy and its necessity, as well as affording it the unique privilege of rights-bestower, and from these assumptions you take it that the libertarian alternative is impossible. But this is not convincing. Rights are principles, abstractions, and to leave the question of which rights are worth recognising, and which are not, to the State is simply un-philosophical. It is nothing short of ‘might makes right’.

If my grandpa steals all your land then leaves it to me in his will, would you and the courts be the aggressors when you try to get your land back? I didn't do anything wrong? — ZhouBoTong

Well, this is a different case from the original one, so the result may well be different. There is no reason, from a libertarian perspective, why I should be culpable for an act of murder that somebody else committed, and the fact that the murderer just happens to be the parent of the person who just happens to be the parent of me doesn’t change this fact. Murder is the act of a personal agent, and I am not the personal agent who committed it. So any retributive force that is implemented against me is initiatory, and is in violation of the NAP.

If my grandfather steals property from somebody, he is not the rightful owner. He therefore has no rightful basis to bestow it upon anyone else. I, perhaps an innocent beneficiary, do not own it rightfully so long as the rightful owner (let’s say, the person from whom it was stolen) is alive, or some clearly identifiable heir (like, for instance, someone to whom the theft-victim left all his worldly possessions upon his death). If there is no clearly identifiable heir, then it is essentially unowned, and therefore free to be appropriated by a new person. No doubt this will appear rather ad hoc, but it is in fact the natural outworking of a system of Lockean private property theory and can be found explored at some length in Rothbard’s ‘The Ethics of Liberty’, which I posted above.

I disagree (how is the trespassing MORE aggressive than the ownership?). — ZhouBoTong

Because ‘ownership’ is not per se aggressive. Indeed, since the question of whether a given instance of force is initiatory or defensive is determined by who owns what, there must be a system of property in place before ‘aggression’ is possible. I made this point in more detail above:

“‘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.”

Well actually, of course they would. The overall definition of 'aggression' does not change just because libertarians have claimed one specific meaning. Even if we concede the libertarian meaning, the old definitions still apply when they are applicable. — ZhouBoTong

It may be 'aggressive' in some sense, but not in the sense that is relevant to our purposes. Libertarians aren't interested in altering the definition of 'aggression' tout court, erasing all other possible meanings from history. The word is simply chosen to express a particular idea: the initiatory use of force.

And in world foreign policy, what counts as "initiatory use of violence"? If your grandpa killed my grandpa is my use of violence against you justified? — ZhouBoTong

No, it is not justified. I have not used force against you, so when you use force against me, it is initiatory. Our grandparents are a red herring.

How about domestically? If I see a police officer tackle a peaceful protester (who refused to move off private property), and I beat up the police officer? I know you will count the refusal to move from private property as an act of aggression (but careful, because there is no violence in this example - unless you redefine violence as well), but what if I don't? Then the police are initiating violence. — ZhouBoTong

Is the protester an aggressor, or not? You describe him as 'peaceful', but if he is a trespasser then he is violating someone's rights and stands in violation of the NAP. The police officer may simply be protecting the rights of whoever owns the property on which the protester is trespassing.

I would like you to justify your premises beyond the first one. A libertarian system can suffer from "market failure", but other systems can suffer similar defects - fine. Your next premise was that market failure is less severe in libertarian systems than for other systems, especially any form of statism. Please provide an argument for this premise. — Echarmion

For the purposes of my argument, I have defined market failure as a situation wherein each individual acts correctly in his/her own interests, and the net result is to make (almost or absolutely) everybody worse off. One element of my argument is that such a phenomenon is a relative rarity in a system of private property and non-aggression. Both of the conditions are important: the NAP is senseless without a system of property (because, in the absence of ownership rights, ‘aggression’ cannot be recognised definitively as such), and private property is also important for avoiding the problems of market failure which plague a collective system of ownership. I understand ‘right-libertarianism’ to be the conjunction of these two principles (in distinction from, say, ‘left-libertarianism’, which upholds the latter but rejects the former).

If market failure is as I have defined it, then a system will successfully avoid market failure if, generally, individuals acting correctly in their own interests serves to improve their own situations as well as other peoples’, and does not make people substantially worse off than they would have been under some alternative system. I have provided a number of reasons for thinking that right-libertarianism satisfies these criteria.

I have argued that, since individuals tend to be best acquainted with their own situations, it is reasonable to expect people to do what is best for themselves if left to their own devices, rather than being forcibly coerced into living in a particular way, or being co-owned by everybody else. I know what is best for myself better than I do for any other person in this world, and I also know what is best for myself better than anybody else does, whether individually or collectively. I think that this principle is reasonable, and it stands in support of both private property and the NAP: private property, because ownership rights begin with the right to own one’s self, and the NAP, because I am more likely to know what is best for myself than someone who wishes to coerce me into living in a certain way.

I have also drawn attention to the nature of voluntary trade. Voluntary trade is win-win; the only way in which a trade can occur is if we each value what the other person has more than what we each presently have. Notice that this applies, not only in commercial ‘market-place’ situations, but for non-aggressive interactions in general. If you and I become friends, it is because you and I would each rather be friends than non-friends. This principle can be pushed very far, I think. Again, this serves as a vindication of both of our right-libertarian principles. ‘Trade’ cannot occur in a system of collective ownership, and therefore requires private ownership, and the NAP is that which secures the mutually beneficial result of the interaction (contrast this with an aggressive act, such as theft or murder).

Third, I drew attention to the way in which private property rights tend to eliminate the market failure problems inherent in a collective system of ownership. Collective ownership tends towards market failure for numerous reasons, but one reason is that no individual is personally responsible for that which is owned. In a system of collective ownership, an individual who puts that which is owned collectively to profitable use may not receive the profits him/herself, instead losing most of it to the central pot. An individual who does not put that which is owned collectively to profitable use is negligibly worse off than he would have been otherwise, and enjoys far more leisure. This becomes more and more the case as the scale of collective ownership increases.

Not so under private ownership. A private owner who puts his property to profitable use receives that profit, and bears the cost (e.g. forgone profit) if he does not. Moreover, unlike collectivist situations, markets have an astonishing capacity to function on a scale that is simply dizzying (I strongly recommend Leonard Read’s short essay, ‘I, Pencil’, which illustrates this point marvellously). Not only is private property important, but of course the NAP is a vital ingredient here, too. That I bear the profits and costs of doing what I want with what I own presupposes that I am not subject to predatory aggression.

Contrast all of this with Friedman’s observation in my opening argument, that virtually everybody in the political realm take decisions whose costs and benefits go to others. The differences are striking and, to me at least, impressive (which is why I am an anarcho-capitalist).

You have positioned the NAP as the principle that ensures, for lack of a better word, fairness. But the NAP, in it's general formulation, is vague and does not reference distribution of burdens and benefits at all. It's details are also debated, and you have offered no definition of your own. From this I conclude that you're taking for granted that the NAP will ensure a "fair" distribution of burdens without actually defining a specific NAP and showing how it works. — Echarmion

The NAP is that principle which prohibits the initiatory use or threat of force against (persons or) property. I don’t believe I have invoked the concept of ‘fairness’ in defending the NAP, and I am not convinced that there is a perfectly coincidental connection between them (if I give a gift to all of my cousins bar one, this strikes me as unfair, but not a violation of the NAP). The NAP has many virtues, however, and I think that most people hold to it quite intuitively in all cases except the State (a quite arbitrary exception).

There is also no difference between a human being and any other configuration of matter beyond the special status people tend to recognise in it. It also doesn't follow that because a state is a construct, it cannot provide rights. — Echarmion

If a right is something of ‘higher order’ than individual persons, and if collective entities (like States) are, ontologically speaking, nothing above and beyond the individuals which comprise them, then States are no more capable of creating or bestowing rights than anyone else.

You have also completely skipped my point about self-interested contractors not "enforcing rights". — Echarmion

I am not sure what this means. I can enforce my own rights (by defending myself against an aggressor), a friend can help me to do so, and a private service-provider can help me do so as well. Why can't I pay someone to enforce my rights, or help me to do so?

These kinds of discussions really aren't worth having unless we have a clear distinction in place between 'private' property and 'communal' property. Private property is characterised, fundamentally, by de-privation; that is to say, exclusion. Private ownership is essentially exclusionary ownership. Consider a community of persons, in which there exists a wealthy property-owner. Suppose the other members of the community forcibly deprive him of his property, and distribute it according to some principle of egalitarian justice across all the members of this community. On the face of it, this looks like a straightforward case of 'communal' ownership.

Suppose, however, that there is a second community across the river, one which does not have a wealthy property-owner of its own to ransack. It may say to the newly enriched community that it, too, is entitled to its fair share of this wealth. But the first company refuses; 'It it ours', they say. What has really happened, then, is not so much the transferal of private property to communal property. The community is still practising private ownership rights. There is no difference in principle between the state of affairs before the ransacking and that which obtains after the ransacking. All that has changed is the scale.

The point is simply this: left-liberal egalitarians since Rousseau have recognised that the only consistent way to oppose private property is to endorse a system of global communal ownership. Either exclusion is per se objectionable or it is not. If it is, then a particular people with a patch of land to call their own is not really 'communal'; or, if it is communal, then communal ownership is simply a sub-species of private ownership.

Sure, but then trade and aggression are not the sum total of human interaction. Of course you can go ahead and define trade as "every interaction which allows for mutual benefit" and aggression as everything else, but then again your argument ends up circular. — Echarmion

Either we interact in such a way that involves the initiatory use of force, or we interact in such a way that does not involve the initiatory use of force. These possibilities are jointly exhaustive, it seems to me. The distinction is also meaningful, and precisely the one which the NAP seeks to make. To be sure, not all interactions of the latter kind constitute ‘trade’ in the sense we ordinarily use this term, it is just an example of it (though, many social interactions such as friendships or marriages can certainly be analysed economically as kinds of ‘trades’; look at the stable marriage problem for example).

You keep making this charge of circularity, but I still don’t see exactly what it is that is supposed to be circular. ‘Circularity’ is a property of arguments, and it is that property by which the conclusion is assumed as a premise, implicitly or explicitly. What is the conclusion I am taking for granted, and where do I take it for granted?

Sure, individuals could provide similar services to what the state provides, but individuals cannot provide "rights", because a "right" needs a higher order, that is something that supersedes the self-interest of individuals, to exist. That doesn't need to be a modern nation state, but it needs to be something with authority above and beyond that of individuals. — Echarmion

Certainly, individuals do not ‘provide’ rights (though they can defend them). Rights are ‘higher order’ in the sense that they are principles, and therefore they are abstractions. You correctly observe that this does not have to be a State, but I would go further: it cannot be a State. There is nothing magical about ‘States’. A State, like any collective entity, is just a construct, composed of individuals like you and me. There is nothing ‘higher order’ about a State beyond the monopolistic status people tend to recognise in it, quite arbitrarily.

The problem is (and I am starting to repeat myself here) that as far as I can see, you haven't provided justification for the other steps in the argument. — Echarmion

Yes, you keep saying this, but I can do no more than direct you to my opening argument and subsequent comments. I’m not sure what step of the argument you’re taking issue with, exactly. What is it you object to?

That there is a plurivocity of opinions doesn’t mean that we should throw away the whole enterprise. People who disagree about the precise substance of rights may still agree that there ought to be a system of rights, just as two people may have completely different ontologies while still agreeing that ontology is meaningful and worthy. Moreover, the fact that there may be diverse conventions with regards to rights does not imply that all conventions are created equal. Some systems of rights are good and worthy, and some are not. This is where political philosophy has a role to play. By the same token, the fact that one system of rights might be recognised as ‘conventional’ does not imply that there is not a better system of rights that we might choose to employ.

‘Rights’ are nothing more than a set of principles which decide in favour of either you or me, where we would otherwise be engaged in conflict such that we cannot both achieve our own separate ends. If it were possible for all of us to achieve our own ends all of the time, there would never be any conflict, and no system of rights would be necessary. The ‘right’ allocates the scare resources over which we are in conflict either to serve your ends or mine. Coming at it from a slightly different angle (though it amounts to the same thing), rights determine the acceptable use of force.

The alternative to a system of rights is for there to be no principled system of resource-allocation, and no principled system determining the acceptable use of force. A system of rights is that which distinguishes us from a state of nature, in which all such conflicts are determined, not in a principled way, but by the arbitrary use of force. Statism is not a serious solution to this; indeed, Statism is simply an extension of the Hobbesian starting point, since the State’s use of force is no less arbitrary than anyone else’s. All that really distinguishes a State is that its use of force is successfully monopolistic.

What you have presented does not pose a particular threat to the worthiness of the NAP. Your argument seems to be that, since the NAP presupposes a system of rights, and since rights are conventions, and since there is no single, definitive convention regarding rights, the NAP should be abandoned. I don’t see how this follows. The world we live in is not a libertarian world. The NAP does not ‘obtain’ in the sense that the world is populated by States, and States are agencies of aggression on a dizzying scale. But all of this is quite independent of its worthiness. The NAP is a normative claim.

I introduced two major streams of thought in contemporary political philosophy concerning how property rights are generated, so that you can see what kinds of views are prevalent in the literature. There's no secret about the fact that they are mutually incompatible; that is why there is a distinction between them. Within the larger thoughtworld of libertarianism, there are certain varieties of opinion, as there are with all political philosophies. It doesn't follow in the least that therefore libertarians 'don't have' a system of property rights. They are there to read, if only you take the time to do so. I would say that a major task of political philosophy is to determine in a reasoned way what kinds of conventions in relations to property are worth recognising and which are not. The fact that there are differences of opinion on this question is not to say that there are not or could not be such conventions; it simply requires us to do the hard work that political philosophers do. Moreover, to say that, because one is a Statist, one simply doesn't have any basis on which to conduct such a discussion, is completely unwarranted and not convincing.