General

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:44:29 GMT

Autolykos:

I think I can see your reasoning here. For example, if a person breaks into my house in the middle of the night and tries to murder me, but I'm able to defend myself against him and he runs off, then he's not guilty of attempted murder, but he is guilty of breaking and entering as well as assault and battery. Those were presumably the harms he actually committed against me while trying to murder me. So I agree with you here and retract my earlier statement that he could be guilty of attempted murder. Thanks for pointing this out.

Don't forget threats. If someone is attempting to murder you, he most certainly is guilty of the various and actual crimes that you listed, but is there not an implicit (or maybe sometimes an explicit) threat of murder? For instance, if I aim a gun at you and then shoot at you, but somehow I miss you, would I not also be guilty of a threat to murder even if I did not explicitly state it?

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Autolykos — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:13:41 GMT

Marko:
Also I should say this. If he held a gun to your head while having a conversation with you and you lived to tell the tale then the one thing he can not be guilty of is attempted murder. Surely if he had actually tried to kill you you would be dead.

Second of all even should he be 'guilty' of attempted murder that would have no bearing on anything at all. No harm, no foul. Attempted anything is a victimless crime and as such doesn't fall under the jurisprudence of law in the sense that it would authorise lawful retribution (not defense). These are libertarian ABCs.

I think I can see your reasoning here. For example, if a person breaks into my house in the middle of the night and tries to murder me, but I'm able to defend myself against him and he runs off, then he's not guilty of attempted murder, but he is guilty of breaking and entering as well as assault and battery. Those were presumably the harms he actually committed against me while trying to murder me. So I agree with you here and retract my earlier statement that he could be guilty of attempted murder. Thanks for pointing this out.

Marko:
What he is guilty of in relation to you is threatening murder, and in relation to the third person of using illegitimate actions to get the third person murdered which is the same as murder, both of which are a lot more serious crimes than attempted murder, which is after all a non-crime in itself (that is notwithstanding any, real rather than just attempted, violations of property rights commited in the commision of the attempt).

Yes, I agree that he's guilty of at least threatening murder, and I now agree with your characterization of attempted murder as a non-crime, along with the caveat you provide. Thanks again.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Autolykos — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:05:02 GMT

Marko:
I've found the essay I meant: http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-children.pdf the section I had in mind starts with the sentence 'What about notification?'.

Block writes that "[one] cannot (logically) abandon something if [he] [does] not notify others of its availability for their own ownership". The question then is, what constitutes such notification of others? It seems possible to me that e.g. neglecting a plot of land for 20 years is considered to constitute it.

Marko:
~~LOL,~~ that is an interesting statement to me. So first you said that whether somebody deserves to die is the difference that decides if killing them is murder or not. But now you have went on to say that whether you would consider somebody deserving of death may be dependent on whether this would save you from his threats on your life. In other words you freely admit that to save your life you would be ready to engage in what should be to your system moral acrobatics. If deservingness of death is so important in your system then you should judge it on a more objective criteria than proclaiming which judgement is more benefital to your situation.

I actually do judge it on a more consistent/universal (in place of "objective") criterion than proclaiming which judgement is more beneficial to my situation. Namely, if a person is aggressively threatening another's life, and if killing him is necessary to end the threat, then such killing would not constitute murder IMO. That is to say, I'd consider such killing to be legitimate and hence that the person who was killed deserved to be killed. Where are the "moral acrobatics" here?

Marko:
In fact we have nonetheless seen that whether the agressor in this instance "deserves to die" is irrelevant. Whether you killing him is murder has nothing to do with whether he "deserves to die", clear from the fact that you yourself do not consider this question and answer terribly pertinent, but would easily proclaim that he does in order to save your life, ie based solely on the question what it took to end the threat against you.

The important thing to me is that the threat against my life is aggressive. I presumably did not threaten his life or the life of anyone else. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on this before.

Marko:
Reality is such that whether somebody "deserves to die" is subjective and as such has no bearing on the questions we're dealing with here.

I agree with the first part but disagree with the last part.

Marko:
What is objective here is that you may not live if the aggressor who is in your face does not die, and since it is him rather than you who has acted illegitimately to construct this situation it is right for you to save yourself and kill him. It has nothing to do with what the aggressor deserves. Actually he may be a guy who is real nice to his mother, or else he is a jerk even to her, it doesn't matter.

The converse of "it is right for you to save yourself and kill him" is "it is right for him to be killed by you", which to me is another way of saying "he deserved to be killed by you". Furthermore, I figured you were attributing the same meaning to "he deserved to die" as "he deserved to be killed by you". Please let me know if I was mistaken here.

Marko:
Ouch, the implications! You're wrong, but at least you're consistent, I'll admit that.

... How exactly am I wrong?

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Marko — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:53:46 GMT

I don't see why there would be an obligation for a farmer to farm his land, but if he doesn't farm, why are we calling him a farmer?

In fact, why are you calling him a farmer? First you call him a farmer, then you use this designation of your own making against him. Perhaps as far as he is concerned he should be called absentee owner.

If a landowner does not use his land in any way, how can he say that he has the best claim to it?

I believe it's called first use.

Customs allow for this. If you accidently throw something in the trash, then go take it back. If someone else has beaten you to it, then you have a dispute. Go to an arbitrator and resolve it. The results regarding disputes of how long something can be in the trash before being considered abandoned will become the custom. Perhaps if it is only in the trash for 30 seconds, it is still yours. But if it is in the trash long enough so that it goes to the landfill, then perhaps it is not yours anymore. Perhaps it is. But this is what law is for. Don't throw things out if you want to maintain your claim to them.

Talk about relativism. No arbitrator or whoever decides what the truth is. The truth is the truth is the truth. I either in my mind severed the link to that which ended up in my thrash or I did not. The judges' stated opinion on whether I did this doesn't change the facts. The judge may find that I had abandoned my property, where I did not, in which case he is wrong and I am right, and I am within my right to defend my property against his court. And it is he then who is a renegade to law, not I.

We don't say that is customary that if there has been a murder and you're holding a smoking gun that therefore you are guilty of murder. We don't say that if you are found with a smoking gun that you therefore have a dispute in which the question of whether you are a murderer depends on how hot the gun is. If it is hot as if it fired 30 seconds ago then you are a murderer, but if it is colder than that then perhaps you are not. We don't say that because it would be idiotic. The court may only say it thinks you are the murderer, but their verdict doesn't establish the fact. The fact establishes the fact. Whether you are a murderer depends on whether you murdered somebody, not on what the local custom says about people found standing above the victim with gunpowder residue on their hands. A custom can not make non-murder into murder, or non-abandonment into abandonment.

But this is what law is for. Don't throw things out if you want to maintain your claim to them.

What a cruel and inconsiderate thing to say. Maybe Smith lives in an environment where it is customarily permissible to rape somebody when they have dropped a bar of soap. Would you say to Smith: tough luck, but that's what the law is for. Don't drop soap if you don't want to be raped?

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Marko — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:15:21 GMT

Nothing makes him the murderer. But him holding a gun to my head could make him guilty of attempted murder.

Also I should say this. If he held a gun to your head while having a conversation with you and you lived to tell the tale then the one thing he can not be guilty of is attempted murder. Surely if he had actually tried to kill you you would be dead.

Second of all even should he be 'guilty' of attempted murder that would have no bearing on anything at all. No harm, no foul. Attempted anything is a victimless crime and as such doesn't fall under the jurisprudence of law in the sense that it would authorise lawful retribution (not defense). These are libertarian ABCs.

What he is guilty of in relation to you is threatening murder, and in relation to the third person of using illegitimate actions to get the third person murdered which is the same as murder, both of which are a lot more serious crimes than attempted murder, which is after all a non-crime in itself (that is notwithstanding any, real rather than just attempted, violations of property rights commited in the commision of the attempt).

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 04:31:57 GMT

Marko:

The problem is that you are confusing the question of what signs people would take into account to know if something has been abandoned with the question of what constitutes abandonment.

If you put your trash out onto the side of the street, you are designating to the community that you are abandoning it.

Marko:

Obviously if I have thrown something into the trash by accident then I have most empathically not abandoned it.

Customs allow for this. If you accidently throw something in the trash, then go take it back. If someone else has beaten you to it, then you have a dispute. Go to an arbitrator and resolve it. The results regarding disputes of how long something can be in the trash before being considered abandoned will become the custom. Perhaps if it is only in the trash for 30 seconds, it is still yours. But if it is in the trash long enough so that it goes to the landfill, then perhaps it is not yours anymore. Perhaps it is. But this is what law is for. Don't throw things out if you want to maintain your claim to them.

Marko:

Neither have I abandoned land that I have been absent from for longer than the society deems it permissible to be absent from or whatever. In fact if there is some kind of obligation placed on the farmers that each 20 years they must cultivate their land for a year or else it shall be taken away from them, then we can not talk about freedom and property rights at all. Then we enter into the realm of serfdom and of positive obligations. As we now sometimes say that there is no real private ownership to land under the current system because failure to pay property taxes will result in your claim to your land being stripped from you so it would be in your case, only instead of a monetary tax each year, the positive obligation would be one of corvee, of forced labor once every 20 years.

I don't see why there would be an obligation for a farmer to farm his land, but if he doesn't farm, why are we calling him a farmer? If a landowner does not use his land in any way, how can he say that he has the best claim to it? If a man goes to Antartica and claims a piece of land, and then he never goes back, charge rent, or use it in any way whatsoever, by what right does he have to claim the land as his own? I don't believe he does. He has abandoned it, even if he doesn't formally state this.

Marko:

I can abandon something without saying so, but I do not know how you can be absolutely sure that I have unless I say so, and even then...

Right, we can't always be absolutely sure, and even if everyone vowed to never aggress, there would still be disputes that need to be resolved. If people are both claiming to own a specific piece of property, then they have a dispute that must be resolved one way or the other. I believe I linked to What Law Is and A Praxeological Account of Law by Clayton, and he covers this topic in those two posts.

Marko:

The context was comparison of being stopped for speeding while you're actually speeding by people who will confront you to your face, and recieving a bill in your mail three weeks later. In the first instance you may hope to explain yourself and also hear out the other side. In the second you can not, plus it adds the added tension of never being home safe, most everyone speeds every day, but conventionaly once you're out of the car you are safe from fines for the day. Not in the case of stealthy vans and automated cameras, even should you not drive for two weeks, you may stil not know if there isn't a bill arriving through the mail even as you go on with your life unsuspecting.

The point was exactly that in a free market system where all the roads wouldn't be owned by one and the same jerk people would gravitate toward the roads where you may eventually get pulled over for speeding, but would never have to worry about unmarked vehicles and automated cameras recording your speed for the purpose of sending you bills by mail.

Well, we can only speculate on this matter. I think it is likely that people would prefer the convenience of electronic surveillance over being pulled over by a man with a gun and have their travel interrupted. You think the opposite. Though I think I'm right, this is really a matter for entrepreneurs, and we really cannot know for sure until there is a free market in roads.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Marko — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:51:08 GMT

One way to abandon your property would be to sign a legal document, have it notarized, publish an ad in the paper, put out a commercial, and staple your legal document to your property. This would be a very obvious way to make it clear to everyone that it can be homesteaded. Maybe that is practical for very valuable pieces of property, such as land or an airplane, but must we really do this for everything? Of course not.

Consider trash. Trash is property that you are abandoning. How often do you sign and notarize documents saying that you are abandoning your trash? I can't recall a time I've ever done that, and as far as I'm aware, I don't know anyone who has ever done that. There is a custom regarding trash, at least in America, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were more or less universal. In America, when we put our property in a dumpster or on the side of a road, we are signalling to the community that we are abandoning this property. It is trash and can be homesteaded. Most of the time, this trash just gets taken to the dump. But sometimes people abandon sofas or television sets, and people end up claiming and homesteading these things.

So, the question is, as Autolykos pointed out, what constitutes abandonment? Surely no one needs to staple a notarized document saying that the trash on the side of the road is abandoned? There is a custom already for this purpose. So, the question is, what constitutes abandoning land? As I pointed out, in the case of expensive and valuable property, the customs regarding abandonment would probably be much stricter. But there is no objective reason why someone can't abandon their property without formally saying so.

The problem is that you are confusing the question of what signs people would take into account to know if something has been abandoned with the question of what constitutes abandonment. Obviously if I have thrown something into the trash by accident then I have most empathically not abandoned it. Neither have I abandoned land that I have been absent from for longer than the society deems it permissible to be absent from or whatever. In fact if there is some kind of obligation placed on the farmers that each 20 years they must cultivate their land for a year or else it shall be taken away from them, then we can not talk about freedom and property rights at all. Then we enter into the realm of serfdom and of positive obligations. As we now sometimes say that there is no real private ownership to land under the current system because failure to pay property taxes will result in your claim to your land being stripped from you so it would be in your case, only instead of a monetary tax each year, the positive obligation would be one of corvee, of forced labor once every 20 years.

I can abandon something without saying so, but I do not know how you can be absolutely sure that I have unless I say so, and even then...

Needless to say, I completely disagree. Is it heinous that many stores have security cameras? Of course not. They have the security cameras there for security. If you steal or otherwise disrupt the store, they will use those cameras as evidence and throw you out and maybe even press charges.

It is the same with private roads. If you want to continue to drive on these private roads, you have to pay a fee for speeding. Otherwise, go find another road to drive on. It's a private road, and you don't have a right to it.

The context was comparison of being stopped for speeding while you're actually speeding by people who will confront you to your face, and recieving a bill in your mail three weeks later. In the first instance you may hope to explain yourself and also hear out the other side. In the second you can not, plus it adds the added tension of never being home safe, most everyone speeds every day, but conventionaly once you're out of the car you are safe from fines for the day. Not in the case of stealthy vans and automated cameras, even should you not drive for two weeks, you may stil not know if there isn't a bill arriving through the mail even as you go on with your life unsuspecting.

The point was exactly that in a free market system where all the roads wouldn't be owned by one and the same jerk people would gravitate toward the roads where you may eventually get pulled over for speeding, but would never have to worry about unmarked vehicles and automated cameras recording your speed for the purpose of sending you bills by mail.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Marko — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:06:22 GMT

I'm not sure, but if he did, I'd be interested in reading that essay.

I've found the essay I meant: http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-children.pdf the section I had in mind starts with the sentence 'What about notification?'.

Would I think he deserves to die? If that's what it takes to end the aggressive threat he's making against my life, then yes.

LOL, that is an interesting statement to me. So first you said that whether somebody deserves to die is the difference that decides if killing them is murder or not. But now you have went on to say that whether you would consider somebody deserving of death may be dependent on whether this would save you from his threats on your life. In other words you freely admit that to save your life you would be ready to engage in what should be to your system moral acrobatics. If deservingness of death is so important in your system then you should judge it on a more objective criteria than proclaiming which judgement is more benefital to your situation.

In fact we have nonetheless seen that whether the agressor in this instance "deserves to die" is irrelevant. Whether you killing him is murder has nothing to do with whether he "deserves to die", clear from the fact that you yourself do not consider this question and answer terribly pertinent, but would easily proclaim that he does in order to save your life, ie based solely on the question what it took to end the threat against you.

Reality is such that whether somebody "deserves to die" is subjective and as such has no bearing on the questions we're dealing with here.

What is objective here is that you may not live if the aggressor who is in your face does not die, and since it is him rather than you who has acted illegitimately to construct this situation it is right for you to save yourself and kill him. It has nothing to do with what the aggressor deserves. Actually he may be a guy who is real nice to his mother, or else he is a jerk even to her, it doesn't matter.

Marko:
Also is the criminal in question also a murderer. He did not shoot the gun, what makes him the murderer?

Nothing makes him the murderer. But him holding a gun to my head could make him guilty of attempted murder.

Ouch, the implications! You're wrong, but at least you're consistent, I'll admit that.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 15:27:27 GMT

Nielsio:

So, the NAP as religion? An unquestioned position?

It's not much of a religion, if you want to call it that. I don't see what you are getting at by calling it "an unquestioned position". Everyone has starting positions concerning their viewpoints about the world. There are people who believe it is okay to aggress against one person to benefit another. What else can I say about it? That's their starting point. I can't show them why that is wrong. Those people have to figure it out for themselves, if they even can. Some of those people may come around through a better understanding of economics, but they still might not. These people always turn to outliers and say, "Even if society is better off as a whole, what about X who is still sick and dying? Don't we have to aggress against others for his benefit?"

So I really don't know what else to say. I think aggression is wrong. Why? Because I do. Why do you not want people to aggress against you? Because you do. When others aggress against you, it diminishes or entirely removes your capability to achieve your satisfaction of wants. So you then go the next step and say that you want other people to not aggress against others too. Okay. But your starting point is your starting point, and must be assumed at some point. For me, I just happen to find aggression wrong.

Nielsio:

My position is not a peace-making deal ("let's all not fight each other"). My position is a cooperation-deal: "let's work together under the division of labor for mutual benefit".

It's the same thing (ethic of reciprocity), just one is a positive statement and the other is a negative statement:

Negative: I will not steal so that others will not steal from me.

Positive: I will engage in cooperative and voluntary exchange.

They both describe the same action, just in different ways.

Nielsio:

Libertarianism Is Not 'No Gun In The Room'

Yeah, I actually watched that when you originally posted it.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Nielsio — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:46:31 GMT

Exactly. I am against murder because I am against it. I consider it wrong. But more generally, I am against aggression because I am against it. I don't need a reason.

So, the NAP as religion? An unquestioned position?

Here's the thing, we are both for the golden rule, the ethic of reciprocity. Your position is, "I do not want to be aggressed against by others, so I think all people should not aggress against others". This is the golden rule.

My position is not a peace-making deal ("let's all not fight each other"). My position is a cooperation-deal: "let's work together under the division of labor for mutual benefit".

More precisely, I accept the golden rule in general as a starting point, and I arrive at the NAP because it concerns violence.

Libertarianism Is Not 'No Gun In The Room'

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 04:16:37 GMT

Nielsio:

Morality concerns social rules. The NAP is an example of a social rule. So saying you support the NAP for moral reasons is not an explanation.

Morality concerns a lot of things. Specifically, morals concern right and wrong behavior. Social rules are one aspect of right and wrong behavior. I consider it wrong to aggress against other people. There are other people who do not share this belief. When I say that I support the NAP for moral reasons, I am saying that I support the NAP because I consider it right instead of wrong.

It is true that morality doesn't make much sense without more than one person, but you can have a monk go off into the woods and become a hermit and take a vow of silence and believe that it would be wrong for him to masturbate. Even if he shuts himself off from society, he might still think it is wrong to masturbate and to break his vow of silence. In my opinion, it would be an incredibly silly position to take, but that doesn't stop him from deciding it is wrong.

For the most part, what is considered right and wrong behavior requires more than one person, but there are situations where someone can consider something right or wrong without needing a second person.

Nielsio:

Because of the economic insight of the division of labor, I don't want my trading partners to be stolen from. If somebody steals from my the supermarket I go to, that is bad news for me. All trading partners benefit from getting rid of non-trading partners.

Right, you would consider yourself better off, and people who prefer to behave criminally consider themselves better off. I also agree with you that most people will take your position.

Nielsio:

What is morality except what you are for and against as far as social rules? What I'm reading from you is: "I am against murder because I am against it".

Do you think morality is anything except social rules that we come up with, for our own benefit? For example some external thing that we choose to abide by, which is not grounded in our own benefit.

Exactly. I am against murder because I am against it. I consider it wrong. But more generally, I am against aggression because I am against it. I don't need a reason. I do believe that a society based off the NAP would be a more peaceful and prosperous society (well, I guess that kind of goes with the whole non-aggression part, but I think you know what I mean). Here's the thing, we are both for the golden rule, the ethic of reciprocity. Your position is, "I do not want to be aggressed against by others, so I think all people should not aggress against others". This is the golden rule. My position is, "Not only do I not want to be aggressed against by others, but I don't want others to aggress against others, so I think all people should not aggress against others."

There really isn't much difference between the two statements. They are both the golden rule. Certainly my position is circular, but it's really an axiom. It's my starting point. I am against aggression. Not all people will take this position for the reasons I do.

I suppose the main difference between Rothbard and me is that Rothbard felt he had to reason his way to the NAP, whereas I simply accept it as a starting point. More precisely, I accept the golden rule in general as a starting point, and I arrive at the NAP because it concerns violence. Instead of being about reciprocity of all actions, it is reciprocity regarding aggression only. [EDIT: Really, I should say that the NAP is reciprocity regarding violence, not aggression. After all, the person reciprocating is not aggressing.] For example, you might insult me, and if I were to reciprocate, I would then insult you. Anything more than that (i.e. violence) would go beyond reciprocating, which would violate the golden rule. Law concerns disputes that would otherwise turn to violence, so the NAP is more specific and relevant to law than the golden rule in general.

There is a bit of rambling in this post, but I think I was accurate in what I wanted to say.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Nielsio — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 03:28:02 GMT

Well I support the NAP for moral reasons.

Morality concerns social rules. The NAP is an example of a social rule. So saying you support the NAP for moral reasons is not an explanation.

You might not personally get mugged, but you are against muggers because you don't want them wandering around society - they do pose a threat.

Because of the economic insight of the division of labor, I don't want my trading partners to be stolen from. If somebody steals from my the supermarket I go to, that is bad news for me. All trading partners benefit from getting rid of non-trading partners.

So, you might have arrived at the golden rule through economic means, but I have arrived at simply because I believe it is moral. I am against murder - not because if I'm not against it, it might happen to me, but because I simply find it to be wrong.

What is morality except what you are for and against as far as social rules? What I'm reading from you is: "I am against murder because I am against it".

Do you think morality is anything except social rules that we come up with, for our own benefit? For example some external thing that we choose to abide by, which is not grounded in our own benefit.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:15:11 GMT

Well I support the NAP for moral reasons. The NAP is one form of the golden rule, also known as the ethic of reciprocity. The NAP is a form of the golden rule that is meant to apply to law. I think most people understand and support the idea of reciprocity, as is fairly obvious from the fact that actual criminals represent a very small percentage of society, but people have developed a massive blind spot towards the double standard that is the state. So, while most people consider theft and murder wrong, they are okay when the state does it. It's either doublethink or cognitive dissonance - it just depends if they are comfortable or not in their acceptance of state aggression.

In one of your videos, you stated that people are against theft because they realize it would not be good for them if they were stolen from. And in the podcast, iirc, you stated something similar about muggers. You might not personally get mugged, but you are against muggers because you don't want them wandering around society - they do pose a threat. So, you might have arrived at the golden rule through economic means, but I have arrived at simply because I believe it is moral. I am against murder - not because if I'm not against it, it might happen to me, but because I simply find it to be wrong.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

Nielsio — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 14:48:13 GMT

I do have one question though, do you support the NAP? I assumed you did, but after seeing your videos, it seems like it might be the case that you don't. It seems like you are anti-state for economic reasons.

What reasons besides economic reasons could one have?

I think the 'NAP' is an oversimplified shorthand, which anarcho-capitalists tend to not understand deeply, making them less efficacious.

Re: Dealing with lifeboat scenarios. This Week in Liberty, Episode 2. Guest: Rob (Autolykos) - My thoughts

gotlucky — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:41:02 GMT

Hey Nielsio,

I finished watching your links, so I'll respond now.

Nielsio:

1. You mention Rothbard. I personally believe Rothbard is a confusing mess regarding rights. I regard myself a Misesian consequentialist egoist. I would regard him as an 'axiomatic libertarian', the philosophy of which I think doesn't translate well to real-world situations. I do like that when you're thinking about the situation, you're trying to bring it into real-world consequences and solutions.

Well, there is a soft spot in my heart for Rothbard, but I do not agree with him about natural rights (I used to, but it's probably been a year since I have had that point of view). I still think most of Rothbard is useful, as most of his writings take the NAP as a premise instead of natural rights.

Nielsio:

The assumption of the question is that people are aware of what's going on. If nobody would know, there would be no consequences, except in the mind of the person doing it.

Yeah, it's just one of those weird questions where people are supposed to be aware without having been present, because if they were present, they could have helped the drowning man themselves. My point was to just throw the ridiculous premises back in the face of whoever is presenting it - I was imagining some statist being the person to present it.

Nielsio:

If you have any further comments or question, I'd be happy to respond. But at this point it seems better for me to point you to the critiques I have made, and see if that brings the discussion any further. It doesn't seem like we're thinking very different at all, in realist terms, but the links I gave may make it easier to discover if there is some disagreement.

I think that we agree for the most part. There might have been a few small things in your videos that I disagreed with, but I can't remember what they are now. I do have one question though, do you support the NAP? I assumed you did, but after seeing your videos, it seems like it might be the case that you don't. It seems like you are anti-state for economic reasons.