Brainpolice : Slavery

Do slaves have "self-ownership"?

Brainpolice — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:31:00 GMT

I'd like to extend on my criticism of Hoppe's argumentation ethics by concretizing the point about the difference between "self-ownership" as it is used ontologically and "self-ownership" as it is used ethically. I realize that this point has been made in one way or another by others before me, but I am putting it in my own words and using my own conceptual framework to express it.

If all one really means by "self-ownership" is the capacity to purposefully act (and this capacity, at best, is all that "argumentation ethics" proves), then slaves must be said to have "self-ownership", since even though they are slaves their basic nature as human beings has not changed and therefore they retain the capacity to purposefully act despite being a slave. Liberty does not merely mean that someone has the capacity to purposefully act, it more specifically entails that their sphere of action is not infringed upon. A slave has the capacity to purposefully act, but their sphere of action is significantly limited by their master.

This is the problem with trying to prove "self-ownership" by treating it as an ontological given upon the act of argumentation. A slave completely retains the basic capacity to argue and act in general. Presumably, their state of slavery does not eliminate their will. And yet it would be absurd to proclaim that a slave proves that they have rights by engaging in argumentation. They could argue until they are blue in the face, but their rights would still be restricted by their master. In this sense, people are not "inherently free", otherwise there would be absolutely no point in proclaiming that people should be free in the first place.

The slave argues not because they have rights (and by "have rights" I mean their actualization, not "having rights" in the more basic sense of an ought), but because either their master gives them the permission to argue or they manage to argue in spite of their master's control. In terms of the actualization of rights, the slave does not have rights, or at least not completely. And in terms of rights purely as a prescription, the fact that the slave argues by itself does not does not "prove" the validity of rights as a prescription. But if argumentation ethics is to be taken seriously and applied consistent, we would have to say that the slave is "free" and implicitly proves that they have rights by arguing. Surely this is nonsensical if not outrageous.

Clearly, the fact that people engage in argumentation is not sufficient in and of itself to prove that people have rights. For in all times and all places, people who do not completely have rights have engaged in argumentation! Upon them engaging in argumentation, it is not implicitly proven that they have a certain set of rights that is consistent with a specifically libertarian social theory. To treat rights as some sort of inherent ontological fact in this way is to confuse what the meaning and purpose of rights is to begin with. The purpose of a theory of rights is not to prove some sort of ontological characteristic that people inherently have, for rights are ethical norms and not merely descriptive traits. At best, they can only sensibly be treated descriptively upon their realization as ethical norms or as a description of such ethical norms as such.

What's strange about Hoppe's argumentation ethics is that it appears to be attempting to make an "ontological proof" of libertarianism. Unfortunately, there is no such ontological proof, because libertarianism is not an ontological fact. "Liberty", strictly speaking, is not some sort of "natural state" that we cannot possibly escape any more than "tyranny" is such a "natural state". Argumentation ethics seems like a naturalistic fallacy because it treats liberty as if it an intrinsic quality of all humans. Perhaps all people have the capacity for liberty, but the realization of liberty as such is not intrinsic.

Furthermore, the attempt to derive a specific notion of rights and the general premise that people should have liberty from such an assumption of intrinsic ontology inherently is fallacious and bumps into the most obvious sense of the is-ought dichotomy. If liberty is some sort of intrinsic quality in this way, then there is no rational reason to argue that we should have liberty. An "ethics of liberty" would henceforth be completely pointless. On the other hand, if liberty is some sort of capacity that has not yet been fully realized, if liberty is prescriptive in nature and hence constitutes an ethical norm, then it makes no sense whatsoever to appeal to liberty as an intrinsic ontological fact, for in this context it is a goal that has not yet been realized (and hence in this sense it simply is not a "fact").

Inalienability

Brainpolice — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:35:00 GMT

There recently has been a lot of discussion and debate among libertarians online about self-ownership, rights, responsibility, voluntary slavery and inalienability. I think that this has helped reveal some significant flaws in the way that certain libertarians approach such matters, especially as it relates to Walter Block's ideas. In essence, what the issue boils down to is wether or not rights and responsibilities are alienable or not, or if alienation is possible or consistant with libertarianism. By alienation I do not refer to the Marxist notion of alienation, but the separation of certain things from the self in a more literal sense. As I have said before, a dualistic concept of self-ownership is an incoherant concept because it tries to alienate the mind or will from the body, and this simply cannot be done, hence why Walter Block's notion of "voluntary slavery" is incoherant and contradictary. I have explained in quite a bit of detail why this is in past blog posts.

But the issue apparently is even more far reaching than this. Some people have been taking the viewpoint that rights and responsibilities are actually commodities to be bought and sold on a free market. I think this stems from taking metaphors (such as self-ownership) too literally and not fully understanding what inalienable rights means, which leads some people to take what amounts to ridiculous positions that blatantly violate basic notions of personal responsibility and individual sovereignty. Not only is it impossible to alienate the mind or will from the body, but as a consequence of this, you cannot alienate someone's responsibility as an individual as if it something that can be transfered to someone else through contract. Nor is someone's actual person a commodity to be bought and sold on a free market, as that is precisely what chattel slavery is. If libertarians really want to take such a position, they must realize that the ultimate consequence is the total elimination of any coherant meaning for rights and responsibilities in libertarianism.

One can concievably sign a contract that says that someone else is responsible for their actions, but this contract would not change the actual causal reality of responsibility, which remains in the metaphorical court of the actual people who are human actors in a given scenario. If someone murders someone else, for example, it doesn't matter if they have made a contract that delegates responsibility for their murder to someone else, they are still the murderer. Such a contract is fraudulent with regaurd to their actual behavior. The idea that criminals can be exempted for responsibility for their crimes through contract eliminates a good deal of the meaning of justice. While I myself do place a lot of emphasis on the restitution of victims, I do not accept the notion that the criminal actors in a given scenario can delegate their responsibility for restitution to someone else. This is because you cannot alienate responsibility from someone, as you cannot alienate their will and the causal reality of the scenario is that they are the ones who commited the given act in question.

I think that a lot of this also generally stems for improper concept formation or a lack of understanding of the proper order of concepts. The old saying goes "life, liberty and property", and it is in this order for a good reason. A problem I often run into is that some people appear to act as if property is primary or axoimatic at the expense of life and liberty. But a coherant theory of rights does not place property above life and liberty, property is contextual to respecting the right to life and liberty. Property rights does not grant one a legitimate right to violate someone else's right to life and liberty, and it is a grave error to conceptualize literally everything, such as personhood and responsibility, as a property right. The idea that personhood is a property right to be bought and sold is part of the very basis for slavery of all kinds, and you cannot argue for a notion of "voluntary slavery" without destroying the inalienability of rights. Trying to turn literally everything into a propertarian question is to nonsensically expand the concept of property to absurdity.

While freedom of contract is a vital component of libertarianism, it is does not supercede people's inalienable rights. There is such thing as a fraudulent or criminal contract, and a perpetual contract that is enforced onto someone against their explicit consent into the future or as a 3rd party not directly privy to the contract is fraudulent and the basis for gross rights violations, including the coercive social contract. All contracts must have a way to get out of them, even if there are conditions or consequences for opting out of a contract such as dealing with withstanding debts. A perpetual contract that you cannot possibly get out of regaurdless of your will is a significant part of the very basis for the coercive social contract, and there is a huge differance beween the delegation of the enforcement of rights to a 3rd party and the delegation of the rights themselves. If contracts are a method by which one can legitimately lose all of their rights, then rights essentially lose their meaning as something to consistantly apply to recognize in people.

Wether they realize it or not, those who advocate notions of justice that rely on an alienation of the mind, will, responsibility and rights from the self are undermining the entire basis for individual liberty. The very premises that they are using can be used against the entire libertarian notion of justice and as a way to legitimize political institutions or policies that libertarians normally would oppose. So it turns out that this is actually an extremely important issue to clarify. It is based on some fairly fundamental philosophical misnomers that threaten to undermine the entire libertarian project, despite the good intentions of some proponents of such misnomers. If this issue is not properly clarified, I fear that libertarianism can be used to push for abominable notions of justice that commodifies rights and responsibilities. But rights and responsibilities are not commodities in any rational theory of justice.

Two Philosophies of History

Brainpolice — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:02:00 GMT

Political philosophies often involve views of history. There seems to be two fundamental views of history, as I have touched on in "Traditionalism as Stagnation" and "Radicalism and Moderation". These two views are what I would call the "conservative" and "progressive" views of history. I would like to elaborate on the ups and downs of both of these views of history and to explain why I ultimately side with a progressive view of history and consider it to be compatible with and perhaps even essential to libertarianism.

The conservative view of history may be summed as either the desire to keep things the same or the romantization of the past. The progressive view of history may be summed up as a desire to see things change or the idea that things progress and evolve over time. By definition, the progressive view is more foreward looking, and as a consequence it is quick to abandon traditions. It easily leads to notions of social evolution. In contrast, the conservative view is pessemstic towards the future and consequentially clings to tradition and even aims at reversing history in some respects. The progressive view could be said to be comparatively optimistic because there is something to possibly look foreward to, and therefore it would seem like it has the potential to be radical and revolutionary, while the conservative view easily becomes reactionary and counter-revolutionary.

The marxist view of history, in which communism is proclaimed without proof as being an inevitable future stage of history, is an example of progressivism. On the other hand, progressivism of a quite different sort was espoused by Herbert Spencer, in which social evolution necessitates adaptation to man's environment through increased individual freedom in accordance with the laws of nature. An example of the conservative view would be rigid religious or cultural traditionalism, in which changes that have occured in recent times, such as the move towards secularism and cultural tolerance, are radically opposed while systems of the past are held up as the ideal.

When understood in their proper context, both views have lead to both erroneous and correct conclusions. The conservative view always faces the danger of becoming primitivism or ludditism, in which more simple, agrarian and tribal living of the past is considered the ideal. And progressivism always faces the danger of becoming unenthusiastic and desensitized to the present, or of becoming overly utopian by basing the allegedly "inevitable" future on false notions about human nature. Hence, the social evolutionist faces a danger of becoming more gradualist. Such was Murray Rothbard's diagnosis of what happened to the social evolutionist Herbert Spencer as he aged.

But there have also been some good tendencies on both sides. The wise progressive possesses the insight that it is possible to improve conditions through both social evolution and revolution. They are aware that there things that have not been tried yet, at least fully. The progressive has reason for optimism toward the future. The wise conservative possesses the insight that there are certain basic principles or laws which are necessary for order to flourish. They are aware that there is much to be learned from the thinkers and writters of the past, and that there are some things that will never go away.

Where the progressive may err is over the question of how to go about changing things and what to change to, and in exessive optimism. Change for its own sake, divorced from context, is not rational. Neither is a utopian view of the future. Where the conservative may err is in the inability to aknowledge the changes and extensions that have been made upon the basic principles and laws of the past, and in their exessive pessemism toward the future. Tradition for its own sake, divorced from context and new information, is not rational. Neither is a utopian view of the past.

However, despite such a neutral comparative analysis, ultimately the progressive view has certain benefits that is lacking in the conservative view. For as Frank Zappa once stated, "progress is not possible without deviation from the norm". All innovations had to result from deviations from, modifications on and the total abandonment or replacement of past traditions. The conservative ends up functioning as an apologist for the status quo in the name of a false sense of realism, while inaccurately demonizing all progressive forces as idealist or utopian. The more successful progressive forces are, the more the conservative enters a state of desperation. At best, the conservative can only be a moderate, while the progressive at least has the potential to be a libertarian. The only thing that the strict conservative could concieve of abolishing is modernity, for when driven to their extremes the conservative effectively becomes anti-modern.

Allow me to apply these two basic views via historical example. When there was slavery in America, there were three basic positions with respect to chattel slavery. There were the slavery abolitionists, the slavery reformists and the outright slavery supporters. In the context of the times, the application of the conservative view of history inevitably would lead one to be a slavery supporter or a mild reformist at best, for this view would treat slavery as if it were virtually an inevitable law of nature that always has been and always must be. In this view surely the abolitionists were far too radical and utopian. Consequentially, the conservative view could only lead to a passive acceptance of the existance of the institution of slavery while possibly trying to minimize its effects if one is slightly generous. Only the progressive radicalism of the abolitionists could truly represent a principled opposition to slavery.

The same principle applies to any other institution or tradition, such as the state. By their own logic, the conservative has no choice but to conclude that because the state currently exists and has prevailed in the past, it inevitably must exist by necessity of human nature. Indeed, the conservative view easily leads to extremely pessemistic notions about human nature that are used to legitimize current conditions and institutions. All inequities can be brushed off as mere inadequacies of nature, and all positions of power can be legitimized as the consequence of inexorable laws of nature. Libertarianism and anarchism, in contrast, questions the alleged legitimacy of the state and consistantly applies the same human principles to state agents as they would to any other individual. It questions whether or not existing institutions and traditions are particularly necessary or ethical or logical at all.

The level-headed progressive does not necessarily have to be a starry-eyed utopian. For the progressive may very well grant that there will always be some degree of inadequacy and suffering in life. What they seek to abolish is not reality itself but the synthetic institutional framework that allows such things to be expanded and traditionalized. The constant charge of utopianism thrown at the progressive by the moderate or conservative thus becomes a mischaracterization. The progressive libertarian is neither a utopian or a conservative. Rather, they are radical bastions of vigilance and certainty. The libertarian stands on the side of social power rather than political power, and they do not cave in to moderate and conservative pressure. Neither would it be accurate to blame the libertarian of being only against things and for nothing, for while they certainly may wish to deconstruct certain things they also propose the construction of new things.

The conservative is ultimately a mere apologist or shill for power, while the libertarian is a delegitimizer of power. While the libertarian has a possible future to look foreward to, the conservative is ultimately doomed because they are attempting the impossible: a static society. Despite their sense of being realistic, the conservative refuses to accept the dynamic nature of reality. The future lies with the libertarians.

What Is Democracy? Part One: Democracy Is Slavery

Brainpolice — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:57:00 GMT

This is part one in a three part series: democracy is slavery, democracy is impossible and democracy is liberty.

Democracy Is Slavery

By the phrase "democracy is slavery", I refer to the tyranny that inevitably arises from the principles of majoritarianism and communalism. One standard definition of democracy is rule by the majority. Rule by the majority is fundamentally in opposition to the liberty of the minority, and the individual is of course the greatest minority of them all. The logical implication of the principle of majoritarianism, viewed as an ethic, is that superiority in numbers justifies decision-making over others. The group with the largest amount of people in it may control and subjugate all other groups, all other individuals not within it. To use a common phrase that accurately describes majoritarian democracy, it reduces to "might makes right". Majoritarian democracy creates a master-slave relationship in which the masters outnumber the slaves. The range necessary for a group to become a majoritarian ruling class could be anywhere between 51% and 99% of a given population.

Numerical majoritarianism, a subcategory or altered version of majoritarian democracy, is somewhat different in that no true majority is actually required. One does not have to exceed 50% in numerical superiority in order to rule over others. The numerical majority could theoretically be constituted by anywhere between 1% and 49% of a given population. In practise, it actually reduces to a minority ruling over a majority in terms of the overall population of those involved. Numerical majoritarianism creates a master-slave relationship in which the slaves outnumber the masters. The more groups that are involved, the smaller the numerical majorities may potentially get, and conversely the larger the dominated or subjected group may potentially get. Most examples of democracy in action are cases of numerical majoritarianism, although democracies could be said to vary between exercises of both pure and numerical majoritarianism interchangably depending in the particular situation in question.

Democracy is slavery because the minority, most importantly the individual, is forced into an association with and subjected to the decision-making power of the majority that they did not explicitly consent to. I define slavery quite simply as involuntary servitude and forced association, a state of affairs in which one or more individuals imposes decision-making from above upon one or more individuals against their explicit consent. Under democracy, whatever positive obligations that the majority wishes to impose on the minority must be lived up to regaurdless of the consent of the minority. The majority exercises decision-making power over social and economic life of others. Certainly a man is no less a slave if they have a multitude of masters rather then one master. While in monarchy the individual has one ruler or is the subject of a tiny familial or noble aristocracy, in democracy the individual has more of a plurality of rulers. The majority exercises shared or quotal rulership over the subjected individual. Democracy increases the amount of rulers. It could conversely be said that it reduces the amount of subjects as compared to monarchy, but this does not solve anything and the subjects are only reduced by the creation of more rulers.

It is important for one to realize that, as a principle seeking to justify authority and decision-making, majoritarian democracy, wether it be constituted by true majorities or numerical ones, is blind or neutral to the logical or ethical nature of the preferences of the majority in question. It justifies whatever decision is made by the majority, regaurdless of wether or not is right or wrong based on any independant ethical criterion and regaurdless of wether or not it makes any sense at all. In an exercise of majoritarian democracy, anything from murder to theft to rape to kidnapping could theoretically be given sanction, so long as the group approving of or engaging in such actions constitutes a majority. To reduce majoritarianism to the absurd, using the principle of majoritarianism on a small scale, if there are two men and a woman and the men want to have sexual intercourse with the woman and she does not, the two men are allegedly justified in raping her. Or, to use a large-scale example of the absurdities resulting from the principle, 51% of a population may allegedly legitimately murder the other 49%.

Majoritarian democracy fails the criterion of universality in ethics because the respective majorities and minorities are not held to the same basic standard of ethics. It functions as a defacto justification for the majority or group being able to get away with doing that which the individual or minority may not do. In short, the majority is exempted from being subject to the same ethical criterion and responsibility as everyone else. This is logically inconsistant if ethical principles and rights are supposed to apply to all individual human beings, if the individual is our standard of sovereignty. Using the law of universality as our criterion, even if it is one individual against everyone else in the world, it still is not just for even everyone else in the world to enslave, plunder or murder the individual. "The community", "the majority", and the deceptive phrases such as "the will of the people" and "the public good" cannot legitimately be invoked to justify tyranny. These terms function as obfuscations and illegitimate apologetics for the subjugation of people.

Utilitarianism could be seen as being linked to democracy in terms of the old and common maxim "the greatest good for the greatest number". Using this as a criteria for ethics could be used to justify majoritarianism because the precise definition of the term "good" is left up in the air so that whatever the majority happens to consider to be "good" is sanctioned. Afterall, the majority is "the greatest number". The majority may certainly benefit and gain utility, wether it be in a purely psychological and emotional sense or in terms of material and physical well-being, prosperity and survival. But the criterion for justifying it is arbitrary and inconsistant, especially when terms such as "happiness" are employed. The means toward obtaining the utility are not taken into proper consideration. The end of utility or happiness for the majority is used to justify the means. What is not addressed is that there is a burden of proof on the majority to justify their means. The burden of proof always lies with those who assert authority, and a mere numbers game does not constitute a sufficient justification for authority. If explicit consent is used as a criterion for the burden of proof, then democracy and utilitarianism cannot ethically legitimize anything at all. It functions as little more then majoritarian hedonism. In the absence of explicit consent, democracy as a general principle is nothing but an arbitrary apologetic for slavery.

The idea that one has a right to participate in and have decision-making power over other people's private relationships against their explicit consent is fundamentally contradictary to the concept of individual sovereignty and free association. A sovereign individual is one who is free from the imposition of 3rd parties of people, including majorities. Noone else has an abstract entitlement to decision-making over the individual and the private relationships that they enter into. Only the individual has legitimate authority in decision-making over their own person. The only alternative to individual sovereignty or self-ownership, as Murray Rothbard once pointed out, is either for another individual to exercise decision-making over their person, which would create a master-slave relationship in which one person rules over another, or for the collective or everyone to exercise quotal ownership or decision-making over eachother's person, which would create an absurd scenario in which everyone attempts to own a quotal share of everyone else. Since this is practically impossible to realistically enforce, the communalist alternative, in practise, reduces to the first alternative of individual rulership, only in the name of the community or collective. Democracy is somewhere in between the two extremes of individual rulership and the mutual and universal slavery of everyone to eachother. Democracy is as close to the communalist ideal that a society can get, reducing to some combination of pure and numerical majoritarianism in which there is a mixed and somewhat dynamic network of master-slave relationships.

Re: Moral vs Hierarchical obligations

Brainpolice — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:23:00 GMT

The following is a response to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoXjrlxDSL4

Dear Mr1001Nights,

Unchosen positive obligations are indeed slavery, which should be obvious because the obligations are not chosen. In claiming or bestowing unchosen positive obligations onto other people, you are the authority that must face a burden of proof. The person who claims that others have unchosen positive obligations to them is the one who must prove that others owe some kind of debt to them. In the absence of any objectively definable debt previously accured, the claim is absolute hogwash. To claim an abstract positive right to the servitude of others is to claim authority over them by definition. By all accounts, someone who must fulfill unchosen positive obligations is engaging in involuntary servitude. Involuntary servitude is slavery. Who exactly will enforce these unchosen positive obligations? Obviously everyone is not going to just willingly fulfill them, and when we really start to think more deeply about it, it is impossible for everyone to universally fulfill such positive obligations due to geographical problems and the availability of resources. So some individual or body of men is going to have to enforce these positive obligations, especially for those who resist and refuse to fulfill them. Hence, your system already requires a heirarchy from the get go.

Positive and negative rights inherently contradict eachother because negative rights implies that one is free from unchosen positive obligations imposed by others. The only obligation they could be said to impose is for others to leave one alone. Positive rights bestow an obligation onto people to serve others. Positive rights lead to claims of entitlement to the labor of other people. The enforcement of positive rights onto someone who is unwilling to serve others inherently constitutes theft or extortion from that individual. If Joe has an abstract "right to food", and Jack has food but doesn't want to give it up, their in order for Joe's alleged "right" to be fulfilled, either Joe himself or some agent or 3rd party acting on Joe's behalf must confiscate the food from Jack. Jack has no choice not to serve Joe and pony up the good.

By all accounts, in the type of society envisoned by market anarchists, there is nothing to stop you from joining together with your fellows who all agree to such positive obligations and to form a community by which you all strive to fulfill them. This would be perfectly fine because all of the people involved actually chose the obligations and believe in them. On the other hand, if someone in this society decides that they no longer favor such obligations, and they do not have any debt withstanding, they are free to opt out of your community and flock elsewhere. I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand that your type of society is only one possibility out of many that may co-exist in an anarchy, not some monolithic model that everyone must abide by. Luke12000 and others have tried to point this out endlessly to no avail. There is no reason why your ideal society cannot exist as one option out of many within a larger framework. Market anarchists are not imposing their preferential society on you, so it would only make sense to mutually extend the same "tolerance" back in the other direction.

The problem with the wage slavery arguement is that it applies to any society no matter what system or lack thereof is in place. No matter what system is in place, including socialism, resources are still scarce and material well-being still requires labor. Things must be produced, they do not just fall down like mana from the sky. It is therefore disingenuous to imply that "work or starve" only applies to a so-called "capitalist" society when it still applies no matter what type of organization a society is constituted by. "Work or starve" or "act or die" is not a human created set of choices, it is imposed by the necessities of nature itself. Humans must act in order to achieve the ends they desire. No social or economic or political system can make it so that some kind of production is not required for survival and material well-being. Put frankly, people can't just sit on their asses all day and expect to have prosperity and material wants, because these things must be produced. What system is in place is rather irrelevant to this fact. This reveals an interesting paradox: your ideal society can exist within a free market, but a free market cannot exist within your ideal society.

Another part of the problem with the wage slavery arguement is that it uses a nonsensical definition of coercion. In my understanding, coercion requires human agency, usually realized as a threat of force. But the wage slavery arguement implies that someone taking no action at all, specifically someone simply not giving their stuff or a piece of it to someone else, "coerces" that person into an unwanted circumstance. Noone actually physically forced you to work. Noone actually imposed starvation on you through their human agency. The negative circumstances created by a lack of productive action is simply a fact of life. Production requires human cooperation. One is perfectly free not to cooperate and not to produce, but in the absence of any mechanism that forces them to not cooperate and not produce, the negative circumstances that may come about as a consequence of this is truly no fault but their own, or, put somewhat more lightly, outside of their control and imposed by the inadequacies of nature. In either case, the wage slavery arguement is nonsensical in that it equates the inedequacies of nature to coercion.

As far as the concept of solidarity goes, human beings inherently are not in a state of absolute solidarity. Rather, human beings are incredibly diverse. Each individual is unique unto themselves. Uniformity in traits and preferences runs contrary to how we work as human beings. People have their own identities as individuals and their own self-interest. Self-interest, however, does not negate all cooperation. To the contrary, as psychological egoism demonstrates quite well, people cooperate out of mutual self-interest. It is an error to assume that everyone's self-interest inherently clashes at all times. It is in people's rational self-interest to cooperate and associate with eachother and engage in a generally peaceful manner. What I see as being amazing about organic society is that cooperation flourishes despite people's vast diversity and disagreement. An anarchist society is pluralist, not a uniform model for all of mankind. Market anarchism, when one actually understands it, is the exact same thing as anarchism without adjectives because it provides a framework by which multiple types of societies can co-exist.

Have a nice day.

Positive "Rights"

Brainpolice — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:33:00 GMT

The idea of positive rights is that people have a "right" to be given particular benefits, material resources or services by others. They represent claims of a right to recieve positive benefits from other people, in the abscence of any actual "debt" incurred. They require people to take certain actions with regaurd to eachother. The contemporary notion of a right to healthcare, a right to education and a right to income equality are common manifestations of this.

It is empirically impossible to consistantly apply or enforce positive rights to all people. Imagine that every single person has a positive obligation to provide food, clothing, income security, healthcare, and education for eachother. Not only does the scarcity of resources make this hopelessly utopian, but it is simply physically impossible for each person to exercise their quotal share of control over everyone else. There is no realistic way for everyone to keep continual tabs on eachother as to ensure that they fulfill their alleged positive obligations to serve eachother. Therefore, the attempt to enforce positive rights will always in practise impose a burden on one group to the benefit of another. Positive rights cannot realistically be applied equally. Of course, wether they are attempted to be enforced or not, there will always be some degree of inequality in terms of the material resources people possess, and hence people's alleged positive rights will always be quantatively imbalanced. Any attempt to set it up so that everyone has an absolutely equal quantity, as well as quality, of goods and services will be in vein.

More importantly, however, is that claims of positive rights inherently must violate what is known as "negative rights", which are real rights. Positive rights require that people be forced to sacrifice in order to serve eachother. In short, all claims of positive rights bestow a positive obligation onto everyone to perform particular actions on the behalf of others. This is essentially altruism or forced egalitarianism. Negative rights, in contrast, bestow an obligation for people to abstain from infringing on the free actions of others. They do not require anyone to take any particular action. Instead, they are based on people abstaining from infringing on the free action of others. Negative rights is to be understood as freedom from the violence or coercion of other people. A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, in the form of violence or coercion. Therefore, positive rights violate negative rights in that they infringe on the liberty of others to not be forced to give to, serve or associate with other people. For example, in forcing someone to give money to someone else, their right to be free from coercion is being trampled upon, for they are being forced to take a particular action to benefit someone else against their will.

If someone has a right of self-ownership, then noone else can legitimately claim control over their bodies. Self-ownership implies that they are free to act without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their person. The alternative to self-ownership is some kind of slavery, even if it's a partial kind of slavery in question. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone is eachother's slave. But as we have previously touched on, it is impossible to consistantly apply it. Therefore, in practise, one individual or group is enslaved to another under a regime of positive rights. If someone has a right to that property by which they voluntarily aquired, then noone else can legitimately claim that property against their will. Property rights implies that they are free to control that which they have justly aquired without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their property or to claim control over it against their will. The alternative to property rights is some kind of theft or coercive usory. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone has a right to steal from eachother. But since it is impossible consistantly apply positive rights, in practise, one individual or group is plundered to the benefit of another.

As has been pointed out by professor Walter Block, the utopianism of positive rights can further be demonstrated by making another distinction between positive and negative rights. Negative rights violations require a human agent. Positive rights violations don't. Suppose that a natural disaster occurs, such as a bad tusnami or hurricane in central asia. Could it be legitimately argued that any negative rights violations occured? Most certainly not - no individual used any aggression or compulsion against eachother. But if one takes positive rights seriously, one could concievably argue that the people's positive rights were violated - afterall, they had no food, adequate clothing, shelter, healthcare or education! This, of course, is not to say that it would not be wise to provide such victims with food and shelter, but the idea of positive rights would lead us to claim that each and every victim of the disaster has an abstract "right" to have others provide certain services, in this case clothing and shelter, even against their will.

A mighty strange doctrine this notion of positive rights is. Someone can be charged with violating someone else's rights when they have not done anything to that person at all, and may have never even met the person in their life. A positive rights violation merely requires that someone abstain from fulfilling some expected positive obligation, even if they are completely unaware of such an excepted obligation. In other words, you are charged with a rights violation for the "crime" of taking no action at all or simply not knowing someone else! But people who are separated by oceans and large land masses must therefore be considered guilty in the extreme according to this view, for they mostly don't really interact with eachother at all. In either case, exploring the notion of positive rights empirically clearly leads us into an endless series of absurdities. More importantly, however, in terms of ethics the concept of positive rights is indistinguishable from a concept of mutual theft and slavery.