I do mean self interest in the sense of instrumental rationality - doing what seems best to further your own goals. Those goals can be altruistic, of course. The point is that the question that requires an answer is whether relying on self interest in that sense does actually always produce the best result, and how that is supposed to be established. — Echarmion
That seems like circular logic though. If people follow their own interests and respect the principle of non-aggression, they will bear the costs and benefits of their actions. If people do not bear the costs and benefits of their actions then they did not follow the principle of non-aggression. If any detrimental effect an action has on a third party is an "aggression" towards that party, the principle of non-aggression is so general as to be useless. — Echarmion
But who is going to decide when compensation is required and how high it should be? Who is going to enforce the collection of compensation? — Echarmion
You have said so repeatedly, but so far I don't see any argument for the claim. That private property avoids the tragedy of the commons is not equivalent to your claim. — Echarmion
Moreover, it is simply incoherent to say that declaring an act of ownership is aggression. Certainly, it can be aggression (like in the case of theft), but it is not aggression per se. It is incoherent for the same reason as Proudhon’s dictum, ‘Property is theft’, is incoherent; as Marx himself observed, you have to first have a system of property in place before you can even recognise theft (or any other kind of aggression) for what it is. — Virgo Avalytikh
If rights do not exist prior to the State, then my first question would be: Where does the State get its ‘right’ to govern? Either this right comes from the State’s own declarative statement about itself, or else it is a precondition of the State. The former is simply circular: it is no more persuasive to argue for the State’s legitimacy by appealing to what the State declares about itself than when I declare myself to be the supreme ruler of the universe. If the legitimacy of the State is the very thing in dispute, then appealing to the State’s authority to justify its authority is begging the question. And if the State’s right to govern is a precondition of the State, then your assertion is simply false: at least one right can and does exist, prior to and independently of the State.
The third possibility, of course, is that the State really doesn’t have the right to govern — Virgo Avalytikh
Again, no: ‘aggression’ is used very specifically in the context of libertarianism. It is defined as the initiatory use of force against persons of property. — Virgo Avalytikh
As I explained above, a system of property rights is a precondition of recognising acts of aggression for what they are. — Virgo Avalytikh
Is it aggressive to lock your doors so that you can keep all of your possessions and your home? Do we own our bodies? According to you the State has the power to decide what we can or can't do with our bodies — Harry Hindu
But there is no reason to think that this has to be a State. — Virgo Avalytikh
So the inner-dynamic of the gang demonstrates why the leap that you make to Statism is unwarranted — Virgo Avalytikh
Each individual treats peacefully with everyone else, because if he doesn’t, he has the rest of the society to answer to; at the very least, they will not associate with him thereafter. — Virgo Avalytikh
Your solution to the problem of criminality, it seems, is to place our trust in a criminal gang of unparalleled scale — Virgo Avalytikh
I am not much of a fan of removing the legions sitting on top of the outer boundaries of the perimeter or shutting down the patrols within the perimeter, because otherwise I would need to quickly resort to looting all the good stuff before anybody else does. — alcontali
I don’t believe that the notion of self-interest plays a particularly important role in the argument I have presented. It seems like a red herring. — Virgo Avalytikh
I don’t see what is circular. — Virgo Avalytikh
What I said is true: acts of aggression are predatory, such that one party benefits at another’s expense, and voluntary trade yields mutual benefit. So the fact that the non-aggression principle prohibits the former while permitting the latter goes a long way towards alleviating market failure. — Virgo Avalytikh
In the absence of the State, services like rights-enforcement and dispute-resolution would be provided by private firms, competing for consumer patronage. — Virgo Avalytikh
The degree to which private property alleviates market failure is a relative one. We must always ask, ‘Compared with what?’ What I have argued and tried to illustrate is that collective or State ownership tend inevitably towards market failure, and a system of private property tends to alleviate these problems. Will it do so perfectly? Of course not, and it is not reasonable to expect it to do so. We are choosing from finitely many imperfect options. That it is conceivable that private property produce market failure problems is not a defeater of it, nor is it a vindication of any alternative in particular. That really was the whole tenor of my argument. — Virgo Avalytikh
Right, but in that case your argument boils down to "no system is perfect, all systems have their problems to deal with". That may be an insightful realization, it just doesn't do anything to argue for any particular system. — Echarmion
Your options here are not exhaustive, some might say God gives the right to the State. Regardless, people have rights, a State is not the type of thing which could have a right. So we agree on your third option, I think it's incoherent to say that the State has the right to govern. The problem though, which I mentioned in the last post, the rights which individual people are said to have, are given by the State, or some other social convention. If we abolish the State, we give up what is given by the State, and this includes rights. There is no such thing as "natural rights", this is incoherent. You yourself have dismissed talk of "the natural" as providing no useful distinction. So, would you agree that rights come into existence (naturally) as a product of human conventions, such as the State, and do not pre-exist such conventions, which bestow upon the individual human beings, various "rights"? And, since "rights" are commonly associated with "the State", and you advocate for removal of the State, why not dismiss rights altogether as an archaic concept produced for the purpose of gathering support for the State, and opt for a completely different sort of convention, without 'rights'? — Metaphysician Undercover
It's circular because the conclusion that "self-interest combined with non aggression usually leads to a fair (paraphrased) distribution of burdens and profits" is reliant on defining non-aggression as "whatever rules lead to a fair distribution of burdens and profits". The conclusion is inherent in the premise, that is in the way non-aggression is defined. — Echarmion
The obvious problem though is that private firms don't enforce rights - they provide a service. It is entirely irrelevant to the service provide whether or not that service happens to coincide with a right. So what you are talking about is not enforcement of "rights" but of "interests". And naturally the interestst of the strongest will end up being enforced most effectively. — Echarmion
Right, but in that case your argument boils down to "no system is perfect, all systems have their problems to deal with". That may be an insightful realization, it just doesn't do anything to argue for any particular system. — Echarmion
What Virgo Avalytikh doesn’t seem to get, and this is probably because she has no concept of the riff raff, living the privileged life of an Oxford grad — Noah Te Stroete
Because she drank the Kool-Aid of the billionaire class that funded her educational curriculum. Perhaps daddy is rich, too? States seem particularly coercive to the rich when they don’t want to pay taxes. — Noah Te Stroete
There may be a ‘common sense’ that the State is the source of rights, but I think there is an equally strong ‘common sense’ that it is possible for States to commit rights-violations of their own, implying that there is a higher standard of rights to which States are subject. It is probably the case that most people’s common-sense intuitions just are not terribly refined on this point. — Virgo Avalytikh
Could we maybe stop with all the ad hominem, please? I thought we were doing political philosophy here. You really don't know enough about my life to make these kinds of judgements. — Virgo Avalytikh
Therefore, declaring a right of ownership in the first instance cannot be aggression. That is to put the cart before the horse. — Virgo Avalytikh
dabs — Virgo Avalytikh
Plus, I’m not really sure what this means. I assume it’s forgiveness? That seems like something a gracious person would do, and that’s how I now think of you. — Noah Te Stroete
All that it really has going for it is that it happens to be the status quo. — Virgo Avalytikh
To say of any particular action that it is ‘aggressive’ presupposes a background schema of rights. Therefore, rights are a precondition of aggression. — Virgo Avalytikh
Perhaps we have both signed up for a boxing match. — Virgo Avalytikh
The leap you make from this to a justification of Statism is completely unwarranted, logically. — Virgo Avalytikh
You simply insist that, if we do away with a State, we would have to do away with rights too. But I see no reason to think that this is so. The fact that rights are commonly ‘associated’ with a State is not particularly decisive. — Virgo Avalytikh
There may be a ‘common sense’ that the State is the source of rights, but I think there is an equally strong ‘common sense’ that it is possible for States to commit rights-violations of their own, implying that there is a higher standard of rights to which States are subject. — Virgo Avalytikh
This is why I don't engage in ethical and political discussions much. Ethical and political discussions always comes down to feelings, or opinions. There is no such thing as an objective morality. It makes no sense to ask questions like, "what is the best way to live for everyone?" or "What is the best government for everyone?" There is no objective answer to such questions, so it makes no sense to ask for justification for the way everyone should live or be governed. It is personal, so how I want to live and be governed may be different than how you want to live and be governed. This is the basic foundation of Libertarian thought - that I know what is best for me, not what is best for everyone else.Is this just an opinion of yours or do you have justification for these assertions? — Noah Te Stroete
Sure, that was the upper range of the numbers that I saw. I saw numbers as low as $10,000. I thought I would be a little less biased by putting up a number in mid-range. You also ignored the fact that most of that money is tied up in commodities and property. So, using your number, people would get around $10,000 cash, and then they would own a fraction of a beach house on the California coast. They would have a place to stay for two weeks out of the year, but then what would they be able to own with just $10,000?The number I found was 34.000. Having 34.000 dollars in assets is not "poverty" according to any definition I am aware of. It's also for every single person, not household assets. For the vast majority of the population, that would be significant wealth. — Echarmion
LOL. Isn't this what we are discussing - which version of "ownership" is "better" for everyone? If you have to share everything, do you really own anything?Ownership is a social convention though, so you cannot necessarily enforce your own view on what you own. — Echarmion
I didn't attempt to justify Statism. What I am arguing is that non-aggression is incompatible with the right to property. I even said that saying a State has the "right" to govern is incoherent. where does it look like I am trying to justify Statism? — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, if justifying Statism is something you have no interest in doing, then you're not presenting anything that is particularly threatening to my thesis. — Virgo Avalytikh
So far, no good arguments have been given for Statism over Anarcho-Libertarianism regarding market failure. It’s just a matter of the proven, tried and true, for protecting relative freedom, and the unproven of Anarcho-Libertarianism. — Noah Te Stroete
But, that only addresses the thesis. The practical matter is, there isn’t enough real estate to divide up the world equitably to start this project out from the beginning. That’s why, I believe, the billionaire class loves this idea of Anarcho-Libertarianism. They seem to get that they would get to keep their shares that were gained through the State because there is no practical way to start from a blank slate. The powers that be JUST SIMPLY WON’T ALLOW IT, anyway. And the riff-raff would rebel in a system without a centralized propaganda machine if the billionaire class got to keep their property. — Noah Te Stroete
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