At Some Point It Would Be Nice If Rothbard’s Critics Actually Read His Article on Legal Theory
Gene Callahan doesn’t like my article in which I said that Rothbard had given a prima facie plausible response to critics like Steve Landsburg and David Friedman, who argued that the libertarian approach to property rights would mean that (say) your neighbor could force you to not use any electronic devices. Here’s Gene:
This argument is so bad I doubt Rothbard put it forward thinking it worked: he was merely chucking up whatever he can to rally the troops. First of all, what the hell happened to value subjectivism?! “They are therefore not really invasions of property, for we must refine our concept of invasion to mean not just boundary crossing, but boundary crossings that in some way interfere with the owner’s use or enjoyment of this property.” So, I say I can’t enjoy my property if it is all full of radio waves: How is Rothbard going to prove that is wrong?
This proves way too much. Suppose someone taps my rear bumper at a red light. I get out and say, “You moron! You just caused me $1 billion in psychic damage!” Does this example show that Rothbard has to agree that cars must be banned in a libertarian society, or that he must admit that the 1871 subjective value revolution was wrong? C’mon.
But what’s really bizarre is when Gene writes: “And Rothbard didn’t even attempt a harder case, like smoke from a BBQ, which absolutely is harmful and can definitely alter someone’s enjoyment of their property in a real, tangible way.”
Now if Gene had written “Rothbard DOESN’T even attempt” then we could just interpret that as saying, “In the short quote Bob put in his article about harmless electromagnetic waves, Bob only talked about Rothbard handling harmless magnetic waves–the type of thing Landsburg brought up in his critique.”
But no, Gene said “Rothbard DIDN’T even attempt.” That makes it sound like Gene clicked the link and actually read the discussion to see if Rothbard had the decency to handle other cases.
Well, for what it’s worth, on literally the page before Rothbard talks about radio waves (page 80 here), he brings up the distinction trespass and nuisance. Here’s part of that discussion:
On the other hand, ‘‘contact by minute particles or intangibles, such as industrial
dust, noxious fumes, or light rays, has heretofore generally been
held insufficient to constitute a trespassory entry, on the ground
that there is no interference with possession, or that the entry is not
direct, or that the invasion failed to qualify as an entry because of
its imponderable or intangible nature.”55These more intangible invasions qualify as private nuisances and
can be prosecuted as such. A nuisance may be, as Prosser points
out:“an interference with the physical condition of the land itself, as by
vibration or blasting which damages a house, the destruction of
crops, flooding, raising the water table, or the pollution of a
stream or of an underground water supply. It may consist of a
disturbance of the comfort or convenience of the occupant, as by
unpleasant odors, smoke or dust or gas, loud noises, excessive
light or high temperatures, or even repeated telephone calls…”Prosser sums up the difference between trespass and nuisance:
“Trespass is an invasion of the plaintiff’s interest in the exclusive
possession of his land, while nuisance is an interference with his
use and enjoyment of it. The difference is that between. . . felling
a tree across his boundary line and keeping him awake at night
with the noise of a rolling mill.”57But what precisely does the difference between “exclusive
possession” and ‘‘interference with use” mean? Furthermore, the
practical difference between a tort action for trespass and for
nuisance is that a trespass is illegal per se, whereas a nuisance, to be
actionable, has to damage the victim beyond the mere fact of invasion
itself. What, if any, is the justification for treating a trespass
and nuisance so differently?
You might say, “Well c’mon Bob, how was Gene supposed to know that Rothbard had placed the specific example of radio waves in a broader discussion of legal theory, especially the distinction between trespass and nuisance?” My answer would be, Because I specifically said that in the original article.
To be clear, I am not saying Rothbard solved all of the problems in this arena. What I’m saying is that it’s frustrating to see people coming up with thought experiments and other objections that (they claim) are crippling blows to the Rothbardian approach, without even bothering to see whether Rothbard talked about these specific things.
For an analogy, I am a critic of the pure time preference theory of interest. But if someone said: “And get this, Rothbard thinks interest is about present goods being preferred to future goods–but what about ice in the winter vs. summer? Idiot.” then that wouldn’t be a great critique.
Callahan falsely believes that subjective value theory is the same thing as or implies subjective physics, subjective chemistry, and subjective biology.
Value being subjective does not mean any subjective claim about the material world is valid.
Subjective value means the source of skyscrapers being built instead of mud huts is the individual builders and residents. It does not mean that we are entitled to say that the objective characteristics of mud huts are indistinguishable from skyscrapers.
Property rights practises are a social convention, but WHICH property rights among all possible property rights schema are the most sound, logical, reasonable, and appropriate for actors such as ourselves, the way we come to know this is not social convention, or arbitrary agreements between an arbitrary number of people at some arbitrary time in history, but rather an a priori analysis of what action entails.
Major_Freedom, are you claiming that there is a praxeological proof of the Rothbardian non-aggression principle? Are you referring to argumentation ethics, or something else?
Whatever the best most logical and rational ethic there can be, will be a priori yes. It must come from what we are, not merely what some people can agree to who are numerous enough and/or violent enough to influence the “social conventionists” that “this” population has “this” conventional ethics whereas “that” population has “that” conventional ethics.
As far as argumentation ethics is concerned, my position is that it is a formal requirement of any argued, universally applicable ethic and that I do not know yet if it is necessary and sufficient, or just necessary.
I think the universally preferred behavior approach from Molyneux is another formal requirement, for any rational ethic.
Psst, Gene, your radio senses radio waves you do not, turning on your radio allows you to sense sound waves. See, sound is a human sense. I suppose you may have a sixth sense, cosmic antenna.
Gene doesn’t like Rothbard’s ethics because it would implicate the gravitational force he foists on the rest of humanity.
When trolling is the goal, there isn’t much time or necessity for niceties like reading what you are critiquing. I only wonder why you expect something better from someone like Gene.
His answer to the last question in your quoted passage is: “The reason why not is that these boundary crossings do not interfere with anyone’s exclusive possession, use or enjoyment of their property. They are invisible, cannot be detected by man’s senses, and do no harm. They are therefore not really invasions of property…”
This argument seems very weak. Invisible things can interfere with peoples’ possesion and enjoyment of their property, their presence can be detected by the senses through technology and harm is subjective.
Rothbard is simply saying that private courts would likely throw out frivolous legal claims such as these. Sure, someone might claim that radio waves are harming his property, but the burden should be on the claimant to provide evidence of quantifiable damage during arbitration proceedings. Simply crying “nuisance!” in court would not be enough to win your arbitration hearing.
Indeed harm is subjective, thus the need for arbitration. Exposing the need for arbitration is not sufficient to dispel Rothbard’s proposed political structure. To do that, you would need to convince us that a Rothbardian society would be incapable of providing arbitration at a level commensurate to that of some alternative society. Short of that, your argument is that a Rothbardian society would provide arbitration services equal to that of any other society but without the need of a state apparatus. And you should be able to see that that would be a win for Rothbard.
Ok, if Rothbard is happy with an arbitrary system based on what most people think, that is fine with me. I thought he was after something more fundamental than that, whereby property rights meant we could distinguish the frivolous from the serious by something other than gut feeling.
It cannot work both ways. Either we have a system based on fundamental principles, or we do not. If we do not then the whole enterprise seems to fall. There is no such thing as “simply saying” if we are arguing fundamentals. It either is or is not.
I think MF gets this, and does not succumb to temptation of allowing exceptions where the consequences appear bad. His is not a consequentialist system, so we just have to live with whatever consequences fall out. Rothbard appears to have blinked.
You are being too rigid. It is possible to have multiple implementations of a single architecture. There is never a perfect solution in the real world. If Rothbardianism improves most facets of the political and economic structure of society but leaves the outcomes of arbitration hearings alone, then it is a good design. Keep in mind that Rothbard like most libertarians is always quick to say that we can’t know exactly what a libertarian society would look like. We can guess based on what we know about human action and how it would interact with a libertarian set of laws, but libertarianism is not rigid enough to come up with a single correct outcome for every potential conflict, only to eliminate those outcomes which would not be consistent with libertarianism. It is good enough if you can show that free people engaging in private local arbitration is likely to be better than coercive state-run arbitration. If you are truly interested, you should read For a New Liberty. It is a great book. Rothbard gives a lot of examples about what he would expect a libertarian society to look like and what modern-day solutions would be untenable in a libertarian society.
Your misunderstanding is one that has been common throughout history and is especially prevalent today. It is why so few people are able to truly grasp libertarianism. So many people expect hard fast rules that govern exactly what justice looks like. Libertarianism and the classical liberalism of the founding fathers takes the opposite approach. Instead of defining justice and mandating it, the classical liberal approach defines injustice and prohibits it. The actions that are left to us, those that we cannot define as injustice, are allowed. That is what liberty is all about.
” If Rothbardianism improves most facets of the political and economic structure of society but leaves the outcomes of arbitration hearings alone, then it is a good design. ”
Ok, if you want to argue consequentialism as implied by improving the economic structure, then you have to use evidence. Rothbard wants to argue from principles, so evidence is not necessary. If we are going down the evidence line, then what is your evidence that Rothbrdism imroves the economic structure? Remember, we can’t go back to first principles because they have just failed us.
Rothbard says “The law says that action X should be illegal, and therefore should be combatted by the violence of the law. The law is a set of “ought” or normative propositions.”
Rothbards attempt to decide what ought to happen fails.
Evidence is always necessary as far as I am concerned. But I’m not going to go into that in this forum (sorry). You can strike that sentence you quoted along with the one that starts with “It is good enough…” if they are the only things tripping you up. The rest of that post stands without them.
If you disagree with the NAP, then that is a fundamental disagreement that we will not overcome. If you disagree with Rothbardian property rights, then that is another fundamental disagreement that we will not overcome. What falls out of those two ideals is not a one size fits all vision of human society.
If you want to argue within this framework then you need to recognize that it is a set of “shall nots” and not a set of “shalls.” There are a set of outcomes to any arbitration hearing that would be consistent with Rothbardianism and a set that would not. Arbitration is necessarily arbitrary to some degree. It is right there in the name. If you don’t think that a societal structure can be simultaneously principled and flexible then I’ll never get through to you anyway.
If you want to debate a more specific example, see my response to Roy at the bottom of the page.
Distinction without a difference, in that it doesn’t get around the subjectivity of harm & the necessity of invoking “democracy,” which ultimately all political systems must, and subjecting one person to power weilded by another on the basis of opinion, whether private or public or whatever.
Calling something a nuisance vs a tresspass does not solve this problem, around which all the rest of it turns.
With no “objective” (external standard) reference, like Tel said the other day, it’s all dogs chasing their tails. I’ve seen too many of these “pure-logic-based, universal value philosophies” that supposedly everybody has to agree to turn into this kind of thing (Objectivism, etc). It’s old.
If you want everyone to have to agree that your system is right, be honest about it — invoke God or go home. Otherwise, accept that it’s a value judgment, appeal to the only value-source available to you, and make yourself a good salesman. But I’m tired of hearing circling dogs criticizing other circling dogs. “Bad form, Fido! You’re turns aren’t tight enough, and your tail is too low!”
If the scarce possibility of neighbors demanding that I get my radio waves off their lawn is the biggest problem with a Rothbardian society, then I move for immediate implementation. Is there a second?
Missing the point that if there is no logical basis in every case we have no reason to implement if it any case. You are arguing for utilitarianism or consequentialism in some form – i.e. the outcome does not apperar too bad, lets do it!
Arguing about the radio waves doews not imply that there are no other problems.
That was intended to be a joke, not an argument. I hope you didn’t expect that my two sentence quip would run down the entire list of pros and cons associated with libertarianism and put the argument to rest forever. The point of my joke was that “Crazy neighbors might cause just as big of a nuisance under libertarianism!” is a very minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. That the debate has devolved to this level of nitpicking should be considered a good sign for the central tenets of Rothbardian liberty.
Ok, but I think the point is that crazy neighbours might cause a much, much bigger nuisance under libertarianism.
Well then you should stop trespassing on your “crazy” neighbors’ property. Just because you’ve somehow convinced the local state apparatus to sanction your misdeeds doesn’t make it right. Your “crazy” neighbor just wants to enjoy his property in peace. This is exactly why we need libertarianism: to protect the rest of us from trespassers like you!
😉
The biggest mistake I see people like Gene (and just about everyone else taking the opposite stand) making is a wrong leap from theory to practise, thus tying themselves up in knots about the theory itself. Take the simple example of the artificial photon landing on a neighbour’s property. Every single one of the opponents out here is taking the stand that the neighbour would be able to launch legal proceedings against the photon emitter AND prosecute it successfully, thus forcing the emitter to shut down the emissions. Some are going to the extent of implying that the neighbour may go on to the emitter’s property unmolested (though unwelcome) and shut down the source of the emission.
This is simply wrong. The neighbour has just the option of action. His chances of “success” and even the consequences of such an attempt depend completely on the legal principles and framework in operation in the society he lives in. To assume that “society” here means all of humanity as one lump would be a mistake here, one that most if not all opponents seem to be making. As Andrew Keen points out here, the neighbour will have to go to HIS PDA and lodge a complaint against the emitter.
His own PDA could laugh off his complaint. The emitter’s PDA may laugh it off. The arbitrator may laugh it off. Everyone else in that society may laugh it off. Success is not guaranteed just because he feels wronged. He has to weigh the costs. These costs are not just monetary. They include but are not limited to the equally ridiculous counterclaims that every other person injured by this claim of his is going to make on him. Life in this society may come to a standstill if that were to happen, but the opponents seem to make the mistake of presuming that it will happen and therefore that it will be the universal state of existence in a libertarian world.
The more plausible reality in a libertarian world is that some society in some part of the world may reach this state. Simultaneously, there would also be others in which everyone else laughs off the claim and the neighbour will have to learn to live with his little irritants. Each society would offer a state of existence (quality of life) corresponding to the legal choices made by the people who constitute it. First, the consequences would be voluntarily imposed. Second, the very existence of different societies with standards of living that are a consequences of legal stands will cause rethinking of legal stands by people in these different societies and migration of people who differ with the society they live in. Eventually, birds of a feather will flock together and everyone will tend towards being as happy as they can possibly be.
This is a state of existence far superior to anything attainable under The State and a monopoly legal system, especially one imposed on a large territory housing hundreds of millions or even billions of people.
No. Everyone knows well enough how the mechanics are supposed to work out. The assertion is that Rothbard (correctly) acknowledges value subjectivity, and does well enough within economic theory, but then runs away from the consequences when it show up in his political theory and he doesn’t like the consequences. He then invents this ‘we can all agree’ stuff, which is totally out of line for the kind of theory he’s trying to create (which is supposed to avoid exactly this kind of thing) to get away from it and make it work. Which is why people are calling it ad hoc.
He’s running into a basic philosophical problem which will eventually blow up any attempt to construct a system from pure logic — logic cannot produce value on its own. You can’t talk about better and worse in purely logical terms. This problem was solved long, long ago by guys like Plato, who created/discovered the notion of transcendence, so that if two people are arguing about whether, say, a pair of shoes is good or not, they can answer the question “compared to what?” with the notion of transcendent qualities and virtues that all things could be answerable to, because they existed outside and independent of the material cosmos. Without this, the question is nonsensical. It’s just a matter of taste.
You can get away with just human values in an economic system, because issues of right and wrong and justice don’t really come up. You can’t do it in politics. You need transcendent values, or you just need to accept that you can’t tell a commie or a liberal he’s wrong and you’re right. The matter is reduced to a question of taste when humans are the only source of value.
I’ve read two big fat books trying to do this kind of thing now (MES and Atlas Shrugged) by two very smart people, and I’ve seen and heard numerous other less wordy attempts. They all blow up the same way, with these kinds of howlers near the end.
This is an unjustified assertion that flies in the face of the facts (of the statements made by people). Anyone who says or implies that the neighbour will be able to (one way or the other) stop the emitter from emitting is clearly failing to misunderstand the mechanics.
Rothbard’s point is simple, especially to someone who bothers to read the links Bob has given. There is trespass and there is nuisance. He is not just expressing his own analysis but citing others who have written on the topic. Trespass is something he identifies as objectively verifiable action and hence easily classified as illegal while nuisance is not. A nuisance needs to be demonstrably infringing on property rights to be declared illegal and for legal action to be taken to put an end to it.
Everyone criticising Rothbard on these comment boards is clearly ignoring this point and asserting that the neighbour would be able to go ahead and prevent the emitter from emitting just because he subjectively considers it an interference in his enjoyment of his property. This was and remains my point. I fail to understand how anything you said addresses this point I made just above.
Oops… I said
“failing to misunderstand the mechanics”
It should be
“failing to understand the mechanics”
Sorry.
“A nuisance needs to be demonstrably infringing on property rights to be declared illegal and for legal action to be taken to put an end to it.” And a trespass does not?
Rothbard is anything but simple.
“Trespass is something he identifies as objectively verifiable action and hence easily classified as illegal while nuisance is not.” No he does not. Radio waves are objectively verifiable. He says they are invisible, cannot be directly sensed and harmless. Well, since harm is the thing we are trying to prove in order to get action it is circular argument to define nuisance as harmless.
The whole thing is not only not simple, it is not coherent.
Have a go and see if you can explain to me what Rothbard really means by the difference between nuisance and trespass.
I think you misread the last paragraph in Bob’s quote of Rothbard. Rothbard is saying that trespass and nuisance need not be treated differently. They are the same thing, just to varying degrees, and the courts should treat them accordingly. That quote is a critique of the nuisance/trespass distinction, not a proposal in favor of it. He goes on to say that radio waves would be permitted because they are not harmful and do not inhibit the exclusive use of the property, but if they were ever determined to be harmful in the future, they would be prohibited at that time and any damage caused by radio waves would be the responsibility of the transmitter.
Rothbard would’ve bombed law school.
Andrew, that is very clear, thanks. But it does not help Rothbard’s case. He says that radio waves are not harmful, but that is based on his subjective opinions. Rothbard doesn’t think they are harmful, so they are not harmful. I think that is very much the criticism that is made of other ways of dealing with things, and undermines the whole project.
My objection was to the claim the he had made this distinction objectively.
“Rothbard doesn’t think they are harmful, so they are not harmful” does not mesh with “. . . if they were ever determined to be harmful in the future, they would be prohibited at that time and any damage caused by radio waves would be the responsibility of the transmitter.”
If you can prove that they are harmful, then they are harmful. Otherwise they are not harmful. Which part has you confused?
Try this on for size: Radio waves have been bouncing off of you and passing through you for your entire life. Estimate how many dollars that has cost you and then explain yourself to the rest of us.
Determined to be harmful by whom? I thought we were to have absolute property rights, not rights as long as some authority assess the invasion to be harmful.
Firstenberg considered himself harmed. Are we to say that his perceived harm is not real harm? Is it to be assesed by outside agencies based on what they think is harm? Fair enough.
If this it to be the case, then Rothbard’s arguments against Coase fall apart. There is nothing to stop us assesing harm on a society wide basis, and ahgain the whole project falls apart.
Damage has to be quantifiable in order to be recouped. I don’t have the right to broadcast radio waves onto your property. However, my right to be unmolested on my property supersedes your right to be free of radio waves unless you can prove a quantifiable damage is being done. You can’t simply say “I hate radio waves, so that gives me the right to enter your property and destroy your radio transmitter.” The damage that you cause to my transmitter would exceed the $0 of damage I caused to your property and so you would be required to pay the full cost of replacing the transmitter. If you could prove that my transmitter was causing $1/day of damage to your property, then I would be forced to stop transmitting and pay you $1 times the number of days that I had been operating the transmitter.
Hopefully that makes sense to you, but I’m starting to get the feeling that you’re just being intentionally difficult.
Sorry, I’m simply not going through the defense-through-infinite-regression-of-references thing. Been through that before. Waste of time. Like I said, I’ve read MES, I know the basic argument. Other people seem to also. The dilemma is pretty simple, and it’s pretty obvious there’s no solution on the allowed terms. It may have slipped Gene’s mind about the BBQ smoke/nuisance vs tresspass thing, but I’m pretty sure he’s read pretty much everything reasonable to expect of him. Arguments you don’t find convincing just tend to slip your mind.
We are not talking about some quibble here, some special case/some side issue. You might be able to deal with something like that through further elaboration of theory. Not this. This is very basic and fundamental. We are talking about the absolute crux of the matter — conflict resolution, power, etc. This is the central issue of politics.
And here we find this enormous, ragged, gaping hole. It’s embarrassing.
What is proposed to deal with it? First, it is denied. “No hole here, nothing to see, move along now. Okay, at least stop staring….” Then, it is divided in two, and one side (nuisance) is declared an insignificant non-hole, nobody cares anyway, they’re all laughing at you, so nevermind. The other is plastered over with “democratic” plattitudes in the final analysis, which had originally been understood to be off-limits by the premises of the argument/theory. But somehow they are brought back in at the end of the argument, because, well, they’re unfortunately necessary.
This is ridiculous. It’s like a tree fell on your house, and you plastered over the hole with spackle and duct tape and called it a day.
If you want to fix the theory, fill the hole. With something that can at least plausibly fill it — i.e., meet the necessary conditions. Figure out the qualities necessary, and then propose something reasonable. I’ve already given examples — there are plenty more. This is a very old problem, and lots of very smart people have been thinking about it for thousands of years and given what they thought to be good answers. You may not like those sorts of answers (and heck, they could solve this particular problem and still all be wrong), but you’ll never beat something with nothing. At least they do actually solve the problem in some reasonable form.
Unfortunately, it’s simply in the nature of the problem that you’re almost certainly going to have to abandon at least some of the original aims and conditions, because they specifically exclude exactly the sorts of things you need to solve it. Just the way it is.
You guys have been shown several times now, by a number of different people, that the emperor has no clothes. If you want to continue on pretending, I guess that’s your business. But anyway, I’m done.
Bala – you said:
//The biggest mistake I see people like Gene (and just about everyone else taking the opposite stand) making is a wrong leap from theory to practise, thus tying themselves up in knots about the theory itself.//
I will let Gene speak for himself, but the problem is not that everyone (like me) who questions Rothbard’s logic is tying themselves up in knots – it is that Rothbard’s own theory of absolute property rights is tied up in knots.
The only person who has so far been consistent in his defence of absolute property rights here is Major.Freedom. While I disagree strongly with his ethics, at the very least, he was consistent in his application of those ethics and was willing to bite the bullet and state unequivocally that in his system of ethics, photons from an artificial light source are in fact an aggression and that those who turn on artificial sources of light in their property need to take the necessary steps to prevent any of those light photons from crossing over into other people’s property.
It seems to me that everyone (other than Major.Freedom) here who defends absolute property rights (Murphy, Bala, Andrew Keen etc.) are trying to have their philosophical cake and eat it too. You are the ones hopelessly tying yourselves up in knots because you don’t want to accept the conclusions of your own theory.
You either have absolute property rights or you don’t. If you do, then any boundary crossing into your property is a violation of those rights. Since you are using the word “absolute”, there can be no ifs and buts allowed.
The fact that a boundary crossing is harmless is irrelevant, since absolute property rights are just that – absolute. Nowhere in the definition of absolute property rights does it say that something is not a violation of those rights until it causes harm. In addition, as I noted earlier, if harm is the standard by which a boundary crossing is to be considered a rights violation, you have to deal with the difficulty of having to declare that a trespasser who causes no harm to your property has not violated your property rights.
The fact that a boundary crossing is undetectable my man’s senses is also irrelevant. Just because I can’t detect a boundary crossing doesn’t mean the boundary crossing hasn’t occurred. In addition, as I noted earlier, if detection by man’s senses is the standard by which a boundary crossing is to be considered a rights violation, you have to deal with the difficulty of having to declare that a trespasser who trespasses into your property when you aren’t around has not violated your property rights since you could not detect this with your own senses.
This distinction that Rothbard was trying to create between a trespass and a nuisance should be completely meaningless based on his own theory. The fact that there is a distinction between trespass and nuisance in the legal tradition should be irrelevant to him – after all, his project is to come up with a set of universal libertarian laws that are derived from absolute property rights. What other legal theorists have done in the past is irrelevant to this project. This distinction that Rothbard was trying to create is nothing more than a desperate attempt by him to not have to accept the conclusions of his own theory.
You really have 2 choices here:
You can, like Major.Freedom, bite the bullet and admit that one implication of your theory is that anyone who decides to turn on a light in his property needs to take the necessary steps to prevent light photons from escaping his property.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to live with that conclusion, you can admit (as I personally did a few years ago after I read David Friedman’s objections to deontological libertarianism) that absolute property rights is a flawed concept and that what should be considered a property rights violation depends on the social context, on common sense, and on the consequences of those rules – and not on some grand theory encapsulated under the Non-Aggression Principle.
What you can’t do is to have your cake and eat it too.
You’re assuming that everyone must take every precaution to ensure that every action does not constitute a trespass. You are also ignoring proportionality of response. This is why you fail to comprehend liberty.
Libertarianism does not propose a system in which trespass will never happen again. It proposes a system in which trespass would be dealt with proportionally and without state intervention.
Let’s walk though an example that might help. You want to set up a light on your property. You assume that your neighbors won’t mind so you put the light up. In most cases, you will be fine and no one will complain. But for the sake of this argument, let’s say that your neighbor has a problem with the light and he asks you to take it down.
At this point you can negotiate with him to make some changes to the light to better suit his needs or you can simply refuse him. If you refuse, he can take you to a private court. Or he can walk onto your property and destroy the light.
If he takes you to court, then he would have to prove that your light is harming his ability to use his property (e.g. it’s too bright and he can’t sleep). At that point the court might order you to make a change that keeps the light from passing onto his property. Or it might determine that his claim is frivolous and dismiss it.
If he walks onto your property and destroys your light, then you would have to take him to court and prove that his destruction of your light was not proportional to the damage that your light was doing to him. If the court agreed with you, it would force your neighbor to pay the damage that he did to your light minus the damage that your light did to his property. Or it might force him to pay the full cost of the damage he did to your light and order you to add safeguards that keep the light from entering his property in the future.
These scenarios are all consistent with libertarianism. Property rights are absolute, but trespass is perceived by the land owner. When two land owners disagree on what constitutes a trespass, they settle it themselves or they consult a third party to arbitrate. It is true that you do not have the right to shine a light in your neighbor’s bedroom window from your property. But this does not mean that you must get the permission of every house within the line of sight before turning on a light. Unless you foresee some obvious objection, go ahead and turn on the light. If someone has a problem with your light, settle it using libertarian property rights as the framework for arbitration.
A lot of people are assuming that everything that possibly could be construed as a trespass, would be in a libertarian society. That simply isn’t how libertarian society works. People will do what they will. When conflicts arise they will be settled based on libertarian property rights. I can’t legally stop you from doing something on your property unless I can prove that it damages me or my property.
@ MF.
I am not a 100% sure you totally agree to this description of Andrew, so I ask. Do you? (I do).
Sumantra might argue that what the judge rules here is just arbitrary and therefor in violation of absolute property.
And if you disagree how would judge MF judge here?
Andrew:
//If he takes you to court, then he would have to prove that your light is harming his ability to use his property (e.g. it’s too bright and he can’t sleep). At that point the court might order you to make a change that keeps the light from passing onto his property. Or it might determine that his claim is frivolous and dismiss it.//
So objective harm is the standard by which one judges whether or not a property rights violation has taken place? And if there is a boundary crossing that has caused no objective harm, then no property rights violation has taken place? Is that your position?
//When two land owners disagree on what constitutes a trespass, they settle it themselves or they consult a third party to arbitrate. //
Ok, but what objective standard would this third party use to determine whether or not a trespass has taken place?
//If you don’t think that a societal structure can be simultaneously principled and flexible then I’ll never get through to you anyway.//
If a societal structure can be simultaneously principled and flexible, how is that societal structure compatible with absolute property rights? Absolute property rights are, by definition, absolute. How can something that is absolute also, at the same time, be flexible? This is a contradiction in terms. Absolutism means – by the very definition of the word – the complete lack of any flexibility.
This is the kind of confusion that one gets into when one tries to have his cake and eat it too.
When you envision a societal structure that is both principled and flexible, you are in fact specifically disclaiming the possibility of absolute property rights.
Just to be clear, my own preferred societal structure is in fact similar to what you just outlined – i.e. both principled and flexible. But I am under no illusions that my (or your) preferred societal structure incorporates *absolute* property rights. If you want a societal structure that is both principled and flexible, you can say that you support “strong property rights”. You can’t, however, say that you support “absolute property rights”.
Like I said, the only person here who can legitimately claim that he is not contradicting himself while supporting absolute property rights is Major.Freedom and only because – unlike everyone else here – he is happy to live with the conclusions of his own theory when that theory is taken to its logical extreme.
(1) I poked at this in my comment below but Rothbard would not allow for a penalty or a response for a crime that literally caused zero damage. Whether you call it a property rights violation or not is semantics. In practice it would make no sense to call it a crime because no intervention would be justified.
(2) The arbiter would not be tasked with determining whether a trespass had occurred. The arbiter would need to determine how much damage was caused and what preventative steps must be taken to avoid damage in the future. He would use the NAP and Rothbardian property rights to determine who was at fault for and who was the victim of any damage that occurred, but ascribing the word trespass to cases without quantifiable damage would be meaningless.
(3) The principle is absolute. The application of the principle is flexible in that there are many responses to a conflict that would satisfy the principle. This is what I mean by principled and flexible.
So you think that a harmless and/or undetectable boundary crossing is still a trespass? That’s fine. Just recognize that, in a libertarian society, the penalty for a harmless and/or undetectable crime is $0.00. And the only response to a harmless and/or undetectable crime that would be considered proportional to the damage inflicted would be no response at all. Is a crime without a victim or a penalty still a crime? Answer: Who the hell cares?
//Just recognize that, in a libertarian society, the penalty for a harmless and/or undetectable crime is $0.00//
So just to be clear that we are on the same page, I walk into your property when you are on vacation. Maybe I spend a few days on it, maybe use a sleeping bag to sleep on your porch, peek through your windows and see what you have in your house, etc. But I leave before you return. And I cause no harm to your property whatsoever and leave it just the way it was when you left.
Let’s say you decide to sue me. What you are telling me is that since my trespass caused you no harm, my penalty is $0.00. Is that correct?
Rothbard does say that there could be well-known punishments in a defined area to prevent such a thing and that would not be out of line with his principles, but I realize that isn’t what you were getting at.
As far as I am aware, in a “pure” Rothbardian society, you would not be punished for coming onto my property and leaving within a reasonable amount of time without causing any quantifiable damage.
However, if you did make use of my house for some extended period of time and I found out about it, I could sue you for any wear and tear that you cause plus what it would have cost you to rent such things all at double the fair market rate for the given area.
So if you stay for the weekend in my house that would have cost $1000 to rent and caused $100 of damage, your penalty would be $2200 payable to me based on my reading of Rothbard.
But why must I leave your house at all as long as I cause no damage to it?
Remember that you yourself have stated that your standard for determining when a property rights violation occurs is that there must be “quantifiable damage”. So as long as I cause no quantifiable damage, I can continue to live in your property without paying any rent for as long as I want, correct?
Because it is my property and I have the right to remove you from it. If no one is there to protect it and you cross through it without causing any damage, then no harm no foul. A violation has occurred, but it is not a prosecutable violation because there is no loss for me to recoup. But if you cross through it and I or my security guard is there, we can legally remove you using the minimum amount of force required.
If you stay there for an extended period without my permission, then you have stolen rent from me. The penalty for doing zero damage is $0. But it is still my property and so I have the right to remove unwanted guests from it and to charge rent to use it.
Andrew: Let me ignore for the moment that not many libertarians who believe in absolute property rights (at least not the ones I am familiar with) will be willing to accept your notion that I can cross into your property and leave within a “reasonable” time without any consequences. However, since you can’t speak for other libertarians, I guess I shouldn’t hold this against you.
Let me also ignore for the moment how fuzzy your notions of “staying for a reasonable period” vs. “staying for an extended period” are, given that you have no objective basis for determining what is reasonable and what is extended.
Let me instead focus on a more important problem in your argument:
When you say that I have “stolen rent” from you, that assumes that there exists a prior rental agreement between you and me and that I am refusing to pay what I agreed to. Obviously, there is no such agreement here.
Now I am not suggesting that agreements can only occur when there is a formal document that has been signed by both parties. Agreements can certainly be implicitly assumed to occur based on social convention. For instance, if I go into a restaurant and order something from the menu, even if there is no formal written or verbal agreement between the restaurant and me, one can reasonably state that there was an implicit agreement based on social convention that I am supposed to pay for what I had.
But the case of a trespasser is different. Here are 2 of the important differences between my entering a restaurant and eating their food and then refusing to pay, and my trespassing into your property:
1. I was invited to enter the restaurant and sit inside it. I entered your property uninvited. This, by itself, makes the 2 cases entirely different and accounts for why no such implicit rental agreement between you and me can be assumed to exist.
2. The menu clearly told me what the prices are for each of the items I ordered. There is no such menu that was presented to me when I trespassed into your property.
The legal concept of “rent” only makes sense when there are 2 parties who willingly enter into a rental agreement with the knowledge of what each party’s rights and responsibilities are. When one of the parties (me) was clearly not looking to rent your property at all, and when the other party (you) would most probably not have agreed to rent your property to a bum like me even if I wanted to rent it from you, the concept of rent completely loses its meaning here.
The only option that you are left with then is to prosecute me and seek compensation from me for having made use of your property without your permission. But since you stated that something becomes a prosecutable violation only when there is a quantifiable damage, and since I have stipulated that I did not damage your property at all, I don’t owe you any compensation at all.
Sumantra,
Trespassing in someone’s house does cause “damage”, because you are changing the physical characteristics of the home just by walking in it.
The thing about this kind of change, is that most home owners are willing to have their homes changed by others such as their visiting friends and family.
It is when the changes made do not have the consent of the home owner, that damage occurs.
Think of your visiting nephew puking on your floor. You might be a little peeved, but you probably won’t consider him a damage causing trespasser, even though a complete stranger doing the exact same things likely would be considered a damage causing trespasser (according to the home owner).
You’re fooling yourself, twisting yourself in loops trying to find a hole. You can’t rob someone and then cry, “I never agreed to pay you in the first place!” You likewise can’t cry, “You never would have sold this to me if I hadn’t stolen it!” That is precisely why you needed to steal it in order to obtain it! You have convicted yourself in admitting that you took it without an agreement in place! What in the world are you thinking with this defense?
Andrew: Your confusion is that you are assuming that a rental agreement has the exact same legal nature as (say) a TV. When you own a TV, you own it regardless of whether there is any contract between you and me. Therefore, if I steal your TV, you have legitimate grounds for claiming that I have stolen something that belongs to you regardless of whether there is any contract between you and me.
A rental agreement, however, doesn’t exist until and unless there is actually an agreement between the landlord and the tenant. Rental agreements have no independent existence of their own unlike a TV. They don’t come into existence at all until 2 parties agree to it.
Therefore, given that there was no rental agreement between you and me, I could not have “stolen rent” from you because there was no rent for me to steal in the first place. All that you can do is to accuse me of trespassing into your property and claim damages for violating your property rights. But since you stated that something is actionable only when there is quantifiable damage, you won’t be able to recover anything from me at all.
It is not me who is twisting myself in loops trying to find a hole. The gaping hole exists in your theory of absolute property rights – and it is you who is twisting himself trying to cover the hole by inventing the novel concept of “stealing rent” from thin air.
I disagree. And you have no grounds for your assertion besides the assertion itself. In fact I have a real world example from my personal life. Once I went camping out of season at Red Bridge campground in northern Pennsylvania. When not in season, the campsites operate on the honor system. I camped at the campground for 5 nights and left $100 ($20/night) in their payment box.
Now there was never a formal agreement between myself and the campground. Much in the same way that there isn’t a formal agreement between the diner and the restaurant that the diner will pay when the meal is finished. Much in the same way that there isn’t a formal agreement between me and you that my television belongs to me and you may not come into my house and leave with it. Regardless of formal legal agreement, the property owner has the right to use his property and no one else does without his permission.
If you steal my TV, you must pay me double the market rate as a penalty. It doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t have sold it to you if you had asked. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t have an agreement, formal or otherwise, for transfer of ownership of the TV, temporarily or permanently. You must still pay. You have no basis for claiming that stealing rent is any different than stealing a TV. You are baselessly asserting that rent does not exist without the paperwork. It is pretty clear to me that you are wrong.
If it helps, think of stealing rent this way: It isn’t that you stole a rental agreement contract document out of my filing cabinet. It is that you stole my house and property itself, albeit temporarily. The value that you stole is equal to the price it would have cost you to rent the house. Since, as you have pointed out, you and I did not come to a price peacefully as individuals engaged in fair trade, we would use the fair market rate as a stand in for the price we would have most likely agreed to.
Clearly you wouldn’t say that my house doesn’t exist for you to steal until I make a rental agreement with you. And neither could you say that since you didn’t move it, you didn’t steal it, because stealing is about possession, not location. So now even you, a staunch difficultarian, should be able to see that you did indeed steal a physical object with real value and not a non-existent rental agreement.
I have replied to you at the bottom of this page.
Major.Freedom: My trespassing example was directed at Andrew’s position that something becomes actionable only when there is quantifiable damage. This, as I understand it, is entirely different from your position, since harm is not your standard for determining when something is actionable.
They can’t assert (but you can) that trespassing amounts to “damage” and is therefore actionable because the moment they do so, they are in the position of having to say that radio waves are also actionable, a conclusion that they are uncomfortable with.
Andrew’s (and Rothbard’s, Bob Murphy’s and Bala’s) position is substantially different from yours. While I strongly disagree with your position as I have noted earlier, I can’t criticize you for contradicting yourself or being hopelessly confused – your position has the benefit of consistency since you are willing to live with the consequences of your ethics even when they are taken to their logical extreme. The four of them want to have their cake and eat it too – they want to defend absolute property rights but quickly look for “flexibility” the moment you present some of the conclusions of their position to them, and thus end up contradicting themselves.
Anyway, this discussion has gone on long enough.
Sumantra,
With all due respect, I think you’re trying to have your cake and it it too, on two levels.
One, you yourself are promoting a having your libertarian cake and eating it too brand of ethics. You say liberty is good, but only up to a point.
From the perspective of absolutist libertarianism, your ethics of liberty being good but only up to the point where you prefer your standard of living over abiding by what was a binding ethic, is in the same “you have an inconsistency leak” boat as the one you put Andrew and Bala in.
How can you criticize them for not taking libertarianism to its logical conclusion when that is exactly what you told me is the basis for you disagreeing with the ethics I am writing here? That it is precisely because absolutist libertarianism leads to dealing with photons that you reject it?
Two, you are also trying to have your cake and eat it too by praising my consistent application of the libertarian principle. By praising the consistency of what I say, you make it seem like you are not being inconsistent yourself and are separated from Andrew and Bala in this regard. But you are in the same boat as they are according to what you have told me.
If you believe absolutist libertarianism is wrong because consistent application of it leads to actionables that you yourself have stated is impractical and the wrong thing to do, what you are essentially telling me is that you value inconsistency! How can you then say things like “at least you are being consistent MF”?
Telling me you disagree with where I take the consistent application, but also praising the consistency, seems not genuine to me.
Instead of saying your ethics are ” like” or “similar to” Huemer’s ethics, why not explicitly explain the ground for your ethics and then expose yourself to the kind of criticism you are levying against Andrew and Bala? You seem eager to criticize what they write without you yourself being as open as they are.
I don’t appreciate posters who do that. Criticism and challenging are good things, don’t get me wrong, but if you are going to participate, then have as much courage in being as explicit in what you believe in the positive sense, as much as you have the courage to criticize what they write.
——————-
This is for you and others, not directed solely at you:
Harm is not quantifiable.
If someone gently touches you, over and over, against your consent, there is no (what you might call) “quantifiable” changes done to your body. If a doctor were to conduct a medical exam, they would have no idea that you were touched. Yet you would not be wrong to say you were harmed. You knew that your body was affected however small the change, but you did not consent.
We can also approach this from the other direction, of someone slapping you over and over (if that’s your thing). Here, there is (what you might call) “quantifiable” changes done to your body. If a doctor were to conduct an exam, he would likely have an idea that you were hit forcefully, he would see bruising, etc. Yet you would not be wrong to say that you were not harmed. You knew that your body was affected, but you did consent.
I realize the above is not only directed at what you said.
Sumantra,
With all due respect, I think you’re trying to have your cake and it it too, on two levels.
One, you yourself are promoting a having your libertarian cake and eating it too brand of ethics. You say liberty is good, but only up to a point..
From the perspective of absolutist libertarianism, your ethics of liberty being good but only up to the point where you prefer your standard of living over abiding by what was a binding ethic, is in the same “you have an inconsistency leak” boat as the one you put Andrew and Bala in.
How can you criticize them for not taking libertarianism to its logical conclusion when that is exactly what you told me is the basis for you disagreeing with the ethics I am writing here? That it is precisely because absolutist libertarianism leads to dealing with photons that you reject it?
Two, you are also trying to have your cake and eat it too by praising my consistent application of the libertarian principle. By praising the consistency of what I say, you make it seem like you are not being inconsistent yourself and are separated from Andrew and Bala in this regard. But you are in the same boat as they are according to what you have told me.
If you believe absolutist libertarianism is wrong because consistent application of it leads to actionables that you yourself have stated is impractical and the wrong thing to do, what you are essentially telling me is that you value inconsistency! How can you then say things like “at least you are being consistent MF”?
Telling me you disagree with where I take the consistent application, but also praising the consistency, seems not genuine to me.
Instead of saying your ethics are ” like” or “similar to” Huemer’s ethics, why not explicitly explain the ground for your ethics and then expose yourself to the kind of criticism you are levying against Andrew and Bala? You seem eager to criticize what they write without you yourself being as open as they are.
I don’t appreciate posters who do that. Criticism and challenging are good things, don’t get me wrong, but if you are going to participate, then have as much courage in being as explicit in what you believe in the positive sense, as much as you have the courage to criticize what they write.
——————-
This is for you and others, not directed solely at you:
Harm is not quantifiable..
If someone gently touches you, over and over, against your consent, there is no (what you might call) “quantifiable” changes done to your body. If a doctor were to conduct a medical exam, they would have no idea that you were touched. Yet you would not be wrong to say you were harmed. You knew that your body was affected however small the change, but you did not consent.
We can also approach this from the other direction, of someone slapping you over and over (if that’s your thing). Here, there is (what you might call) “quantifiable” changes done to your body. If a doctor were to conduct an exam, he would likely have an idea that you were hit forcefully, he would see bruising, etc. Yet you would not be wrong to say that you were not harmed. You knew that your body was affected, but you did consent.
I realize the above is not only directed at what you said.
What is the maximum justified response for causing non-quantifiable damage in your libertarian society?
My society? You mean my humble land and home? The maximum is equal to the aggression.
I can’t speak to specifics unless specifics are addressed.
Okay, three examples then:
(1) Someone is broadcasting radio waves and they cross into your property. You contact them and ask them nicely to stop broadcasting onto your property and they refuse.
(2) Someone gently touches you on the arm without your consent.
(3) Someone crosses through your property when no one is there to defend it. Your security cameras catch the trespasser in the act on digital video.
I would say that no forceful response would be justified in these scenarios. What say you?
I say you have a right to use force if they refuse to stop, but only enough force to stop the activities.
By refusing to stop, the person is not only careless, but vindictive.
What if you have a bionic implant that just so happens to develop problems if exposed to the frequency of the radio waves?
What if you have a mental disability brought about by genetics or a traumatic experience in the past that you find yourself having panic attacks or nervous breakdowns if touched by people?
What if your land is dangerous and you prefer not to have a child, who wandered onto your property, killed on your land?
Wouldn’t you think it would be justified if your hired protector, I.e. your hired goon, defends your life?
The crucial part of ethics as I see it, is not the outcomes of violations, but the violations themselves.
Should people who are say allergic to something that does not adversely affect anyone else, be given a raw deal about ethics? Should we say that Mr. Smith can die by what others have done simply because to ban people from doing what they did, would require a significant adjustment to their way of life?
It is easy to imagine scenarios where pointing a gun in people’s faces may not be the justified response. Except when it is. Your scenarios MAY even require shooting your gun, depending on other facts of the cases.
I can only provide you with what I think are the best PRINCIPLES of right activity. I am not promising sunshine and rainbows, absence of mistakes, or Utopian relationships.
MF: Just noticed this comment.
//Telling me you disagree with where I take the consistent application, but also praising the consistency, seems not genuine to me.//
I wasn’t praising you. I was simply stating an objective fact, i.e. that you were consistent. In this case, as I have explained earlier, I think being consistent is the wrong thing to do. Consistency is usually a good thing, but there’s absolutely nothing praiseworthy in your being consistent in this particular context. In case what I wrote came across as praise, then I should have perhaps phrased it differently.
//If you believe absolutist libertarianism is wrong because consistent application of it leads to actionables that you yourself have stated is impractical and the wrong thing to do, what you are essentially telling me is that you value inconsistency!//
I would generally value consistency. In this particular context, however, when consistency leads to results that are impractical, I am happy to acknowledge that I do in fact value inconsistency.
The ultimate conclusions that I draw regarding what is and what is not a property rights violation is probably very close to Murphy’s, Bala’s and Andrew’s. The difference between us is that I am happy to acknowledge that my position and my conclusions are not based on the consistent application of a single principle whereas they *think* that they can derive those same conclusions from a consistent application of a single principle even though they actually can’t.
You can claim that the fact that my conclusions are not based on the consistent application of a single principle is proof that I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. Let’s assume for the moment that it is. Even if it is, however, the difference is that I am happy to acknowledge that I am, whereas Andrew and Bala aren’t.
//Instead of saying your ethics are ” like” or “similar to” Huemer’s ethics, why not explicitly explain the ground for your ethics and then expose yourself to the kind of criticism you are levying against Andrew and Bala? You seem eager to criticize what they write without you yourself being as open as they are.//
First, it is completely wrong to suggest that a critic must present his own theory of ethics when he decides to criticize someone else’s, or that the critic is somehow being cowardly (as you have hinted at) for not doing so. When someone proposes a certain ethics, all that a critic needs to do is to prove that those ethics are wrong – he doesn’t need to propose his own theory of ethics to replace the one that he is criticizing. It’s quite possible that the critic doesn’t have his own theory of ethics to begin with. It’s also possible that the critic believes that it may not be possible to actually have a theory of ethics that works in each and every case.
Second, I thought I did present a very broad outline of what my ethics are grounded on in the previous comment thread. What I stated was that our moral intuitions are usually correct but may sometimes be wrong and that therefore, assuming that they are correct until proven otherwise is a good place to start. This leads to the conclusion that there is a very strong presumption in favour of liberty, but that this presumption can be overridden if (and only if) there are sufficiently strong consequentalist considerations. The actual arguments behind this can be found in two books – both my Michael Huemer – Ethical Intuitionism, and The Problem of Political Authority. I hope you aren’t suggesting that I need to present all those book-length arguments in this comment thread?
Third, I will also note in passing that you yourself have not stated what the grounding for your ethics is. If I remember correctly, what you said was that AE was a formal requirement for your ethics, but that your ethics wasn’t grounded on it. You didn’t, however, say what it is that your ethics was grounded on.
//Harm is not quantifiable..//
I happen to agree with this (and the examples you gave to prove this). Andrew’s attempt at quantifying harm is the reason his argument doesn’t work.
Sumantra,
“I wasn’t praising you. I was simply stating an objective fact, i.e. that you were consistent. In this case, as I have explained earlier, I think being consistent is the wrong thing to do. Consistency is usually a good thing, but there’s absolutely nothing praiseworthy in your being consistent in this particular context.”
Then why chastise Andrew and Bala for being inconsistent when that is the ethics you are preaching to me?
You are not the ultimate judge over my preference for what happens to my person and property on account of your activity. I am. Ultimately, if you do not recognize the actual judges on this Earth, then I have no qualms with saying there would be nothing morally wrong with individuals doing what they need to do to prevent you from continuing in that activity, as long as you aren’t a newly made victim by excessive force.
I do not seek your praise, so your not finding of anything praiseworthy in a consistent basis of defense of and respect for individual liberty, is absolutely valueless to me. I do not care. I am not hear to convince a self-professed advocate of inconsistency, about anything that is itself dependent on consistency.
You yourself are insisting on a consistent consistency by the way, namely, that your passions and feelings at the moment are to remain the consistent ultimate arbiter for when ethical norm consistency is “praiseworthy” and when ethical norm inconsistency is “praiseworthy” when it comes to other people’s preferences for their own persons and property. That I am not to expect you to be consistent in how you apply any principle, and that you believe in the consistent consistency that your preferences concerning my person and property are to be made legal and enforceable over and above my own preferences.
“I would generally value consistency. In this particular context, however, when consistency leads to results that are impractical, I am happy to acknowledge that I do in fact value inconsistency.”
I am happy to acknowledge that you want to have your ethics made consistent and binding on all, which means it is to be determined on how you personally would benefit in the short term at the expense of others, and that everyone else is to abide by it regardless of their own particular contexts and preferences.
You want your Ego to be consistently more important than all other Egos. You don’t desire or prefer an equality of Egos, since an equality of Egos would risk you losing in the short run as compared to temporarily making your Ego more important than all others.
“The ultimate conclusions that I draw regarding what is and what is not a property rights violation is probably very close to Murphy’s, Bala’s and Andrew’s. The difference between us is that I am happy to acknowledge that my position and my conclusions are not based on the consistent application of a single principle whereas they *think* that they can derive those same conclusions from a consistent application of a single principle even though they actually can’t.”
You can’t do what you believe you can do and are doing. You are trying to set up an ethical worldview containing contradictory premises of premises, and fooling yourself, but not me, by communicating this as “context dependent”.
You are not asking enough “why’s” to know any better.
“You can claim that the fact that my conclusions are not based on the consistent application of a single principle is proof that I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. Let’s assume for the moment that it is. Even if it is, however, the difference is that I am happy to acknowledge that I am, whereas Andrew and Bala aren’t.”
Maybe that is because they believe it is not always a good thing to be consistently happy about acknowledging certain things. Maybe it s because doing so depends on “context”. That it would be “impractical” to be consistent in happily acknowledging one’s Ego driven fantasies.
Maybe you are a believer that inconsistency is a virtue some of the time, but only for you all the time. That when others are ever inconsistent about anything, that because those inconsistencies do not match your inconsistencies, that they are making flawed arguments whereas you are not.
Sumantra, what you are experiencing right now is a clash between unbridled Egoist thoughts and strict moral duty bound thoughts. Yes indeed they do very much conflict. But the best way to deal with this conflict is not to lie to both yourself and others that your motivation has anything other to do than what is best for you personally even if it means others are made worse off with their persons and property because of your actions.
Silly appeals to “practicality” are at root what is practical for you, and maybe others, but definitely not for me and still more others.
You are not the judge of what is practical for me. If you tell me that installing a wi-fi shield around your home is too “impractical, then all you are really saying is that you want your Ego to me made more important than your neighbor’s, permanently, and that you consider respecting his property rights perhaps most of the time suitable to furthering your Ego. All hail Sumantra the practical libertarian, fighter of individual liberty.
” Instead of saying your ethics are ” like” or “similar to” Huemer’s ethics, why not explicitly explain the ground for your ethics and then expose yourself to the kind of criticism you are levying against Andrew and Bala? You seem eager to criticize what they write without you yourself being as open as they are.”
“First, it is completely wrong to suggest that a critic must present his own theory of ethics when he decides to criticize someone else’s, or that the critic is somehow being cowardly (as you have hinted at) for not doing so.”
I never said you “must”. I know your Ego doesn’t take kindly to such orders.
I said WHY DON’T YOU.
I was asking for a reason on why you are not being upfront with your own ethics, even though you are ” happy” to be upfront in acknowledging you value logical inconsistency when it suits you.
Oh, I know, it is because you are in fact too cowardly to come right out and say that everything you have said to Andrew and Bala was all just a vain exercise in stroking your Ego, by reading yourself type certain words knowing their true meaning but hoodwinking Andrew and Bala into believing you are placing Rationalism above your unbridled Egoism.
Read again what I wrote. I never said what you said is wrong or incorrect because you have not been explicit about your own ethics. I never said you “must” do so. I asked a question, and if you can pause your affronting Ego for just this “context” called intellectual debating, then debate etiquette says that you OUGHT to answer, unless the question itself is unfair or rhetorically violates debate etiquette.
So what say you? What good reason is there for anyone to be upfront with you about their ethics, if you won’t be upfront with them about yours? Is that you want? Deception and unequal rules for debating?
“When someone proposes a certain ethics, all that a critic needs to do is to prove that those ethics are wrong – he doesn’t need to propose his own theory of ethics to replace the one that he is criticizing.”
False! Absolutely false. When you present a “refutation”, you are at the same time eliciting a norm of thought. You are saying they are ” wrong”, but from what basis? What foundation? If it is anything other than “What I Sumantra says goes”, then you are referring to a transcendentalism, an ideal standard for how arguments are supposed to be made and how truth is supposed to be understood.
“It’s quite possible that the critic doesn’t have his own theory of ethics to begin with.”
No that is impossible
“It’s also possible that the critic believes that it may not be possible to actually have a theory of ethics that works in each and every case.”
So you accept that your “I want to be inconsistent when it suits me” might not work in the case of photons?
“Second, I thought I did present a very broad outline of what my ethics are grounded on in the previous comment thread. What I stated was that our moral intuitions are usually correct but may sometimes be wrong and that therefore, assuming that they are correct until proven otherwise is a good place to start. This leads to the conclusion that there is a very strong presumption in favour of liberty, but that this presumption can be overridden if (and only if) there are sufficiently strong consequentalist considerations. The actual arguments behind this can be found in two books – both my Michael Huemer – Ethical Intuitionism, and The Problem of Political Authority. I hope you aren’t suggesting that I need to present all those book-length arguments in this comment thread?”
I hope you don’t expect me to read your mind on how your ethics differs from Huemer’s?
“Third, I will also note in passing that you yourself have not stated what the grounding for your ethics is. If I remember correctly, what you said was that AE was a formal requirement for your ethics, but that your ethics wasn’t grounded on it. You didn’t, however, say what it is that your ethics was grounded on.”
Actually I did. I was going to repeat it as I strive to be consistently engaging and not dodging, but you taught me that in some cases it just isn’t practical to be consistent, in this case engaging your comments. I will appeal to my intuition for legitimacy on that statement. And I will with great pride and happiness acknowledge that for you, since I am so generous in who gets to experience my Ego.
Major.Freedom: This is going to be my last message to you regarding this. Until your previous comment, the discussion had been civil. However, you have chosen to attack me personally in this comment, and I have no intention of engaging in this discussion any further.
I strongly encourage you to have the last word by replying to this comment and pointing out how big a coward I am being by not responding to your comment and running away from the debate etc.
It has been a slice, Mr. I Am Too Cool for This School.
Until we meet with you finding it “impractical” to respect my preferences for my own person and means of life, I bid thee adieu.
Bravo
I was considering saying “I just don’t think consistently civil is a good idea, that I happily acknowledge to being inconsistently civil, that being consistently civil with you is “impractical”, because in this particular “context” you are trying to convince me of the quite uncivil dictum that your preferences concerning my person and property are more important than mine and should be made legally binding on me, with force against me if I dare act as final judge over what happens to me.”
I always chuckle when people who have no qualms with physically disrespecting other people’s preferences for their own lives, have the gumption to complain that their interlocutors in merely a verbal dispute, are being “uncivil.”
What, does civil now mean smiling while shooting at people?
Andrew: this is going to be my last reply to you regarding the issue of trespassing. The discussion on trespassing has gone on long enough, and I doubt whether we are going to make further progress here.
There are 2 reasons that your campground example doesn’t work here:
1. The campground, by making its property open to the public, has implicitly invited you to stay in their property. You did not implicitly or explicitly invite me to stay in your property.
2. The campground presumably had a prominent sign hanging somewhere (or some other mechanism of informing you) that said that if you stay in their property, you need to pay $20 per night based on the honour system.
This means that even though there was no formal signed agreement between you and the campground, there was an implicit agreement. This is exactly the same sort of agreement that exists between a diner and a restaurant.
In the case of trespassing, if we stipulate that the property owner had no such sign hanging on his property, no such implicit agreement between the trespasser and the property owner can be assumed to exist.
//You have no basis for claiming that stealing rent is any different than stealing a TV. //
I do. A TV has an independent existence of its own. A rental agreement has no existence whatsoever until 2 parties agree to it.
//You are baselessly asserting that rent does not exist without the paperwork.//
I did not assert that you require “paperwork” for a rental agreement to exist. What I did assert is that the concept of rent requires some sort of an agreement between the landlord and the tenant – no matter what form this agreement takes.
Rental agreements need not be written on a piece of paper. They can be verbal in nature (i.e. I verbally ask you to rent your property to me and you agree – that would constitute a valid agreement) or it could be implicit in nature (as in your campground example).
However, the point is that in the case of trespassing, no written, verbal, or implicit agreement exists. Therefore, the concept of “rent” is invalid in the case of trespassing. The only thing that has happened here is that I have entered your property without your consent. I have not violated any rental agreement because no such formal OR implicit agreement exists. However, even though I admit that I have violated your property rights, according to your standard where something is prosecutable only when there is quantifiable harm, I cannot be prosecuted.
//because stealing is about possession, not location.//
When I trespassed into your property, I did not “possess” it – not even temporarily. I “used” it. I need not even have used it on an exclusive basis – for instance, if other trespassers wanted to trespass into your property while I was doing so, I could have very well let them do as they pleased. If I thought I “possessed” your property, I would not have let other trespassers into it.
Usage and possession are 2 separate concepts. Merely using something does not constitute possessing it.
Anyway, like I said, this discussion on trespassing has gone on long enough. If you want to reply to the above arguments, I’ll let you have the last word.
On a different note:
Trespassing is one of several examples where your standard of “quantifiable harm” doesn’t work. Major Freedom has pointed out one of those other examples (my gently touching you repeatedly even though you have asked me not to – there is no quantifiable harm here yet most reasonable people will say that this is actionable).
Let’s take 1 more such example:
Suppose A sexually molests B over the course of 1 hour. Let’s stipulate that B is a prostitute who normally charges her clients $100 per hour. (This example does not require B to be a prostitute but assuming that she is makes the example simpler). Let’s also stipulate that B suffered no quantifiable harm from this act of molestation (i.e. A was very gentle). But let’s further stipulate that B had expressly said that she does not consent to these acts by A. So this is clearly a case of molestation.
Are you suggesting that all that’s happened here is that A has “stolen” B’s sexual services and that once A pays her $200 (i.e. double what B’s market price is), he can go scot-free and B has no further prosecutable claim against A? I’m sure that’s not what you would suggest; yet that’s the conclusion that one has to draw if we apply your argument from the trespassing example to this example.
It’s fairly easy to construct many such examples where there is no quantifiable harm and yet where no reasonable person will say that those acts are not prosecutable.
Therefore, something does not necessarily need to constitute “quantifiable harm” in order to be prosecutable. In certain cases (like trespassing, my touching you gently but repeatedly even when you have asked me not to, A molesting B without harming her, etc.), those actions are prosecutable simply because of the lack of consent on the part of the victim regardless of whether or not there is quantifiable harm.
To summarize: The problem with your standard of “quantifiable harm” is that there need be no quantifiable harm for something to be prosecutable. Yet, you can’t admit this within the parameters of your theory of absolute property rights because the moment you do so, you have to accept that radio waves and light photons are also prosecutable within the parameters of that theory – and that’s something that you (quite reasonably) don’t want to do.
As I have mentioned earlier, your only solution is to either
a) take your theory to its logical conclusion and do what MF has done – i.e. state that radio waves and light photons are in fact prosecutable, OR
b) abandon your theory of absolute property rights and propose a slightly more nuanced theory of “strong” but not “absolute” property rights and admit that you need to bring in elements of common sense and context into the question of what is and what is not a property rights violation.