All he needs is a claim on the land upon which the alleged crime takes place.
What most of you libertarians fail to realize is that you can have the laws you want. All you need is to accept that your laws only apply to your land. You can outlaw cursing and swearing on your land. You can outlaw people of certain races or religions on your land. Your neighbors can do the same. All you need to do is enforce it.
A libertarian society is likely one in which people of like minds will congregate together in tribes or enclaves. It is just easier and cheaper to live that way. It makes sense too.
So, back to Clayton’s question. Nobody needs to defend or explain a metaphysical concept of dignity. All you need to do is pay your private defence agnecy to enforce what you want on your land and on the other land. Just like you would have to do with intellectual “property” laws.
@Birthday Pony: I recommend you take a gander at OP’s numerous “questions”, he starts at least a thread a day when he’s active and most of his questions rise little above the level of inanity. I agree with you that there is no good reason to focus on rape, it is one of a host of personal torts. The principle I’ve tried to underline is that the terms of settlement may - and usually do - far exceed any monetary reckoning of the property damage. This is not a symptom of Statist law (which actually fails to give the victim any restitution at all) - it is the case in common law. This immediately suggests that “restitution-only” theories of settlement are simply wrong. The purpose of settlements is not only to restore the property which was damaged or stolen but, rather, to settle the dispute at a price that the victim finds acceptable. In the case of grave offenses against personal dignity, it is only reasonable to expect that the price of settlement (punishment, if you prefer) will be much higher than impersonal offenses.
No, that’s definitely not true. This kind of land = sovereignty nonsense is odious. So, I can lure someone to my home and feed them a poisoned meal so long as the “law of my land” is that poisoning guests is permitted? After all, he crossed onto my property at his own risk. Absurd.
While I agree that rape is its own thing, it can and must be analyzed from the point of view of law. For example, the law differentiates between sexual assault and rape. I believe the distinction has to do with penetration or attempted penetration. Anyway, my only point is that analysis matters because that is how we know whether something meets the definition of rape or not.
Uggh, I typed a longer response and it didn’t go through.
I think the differentiation may be more or less a way for custom to deal more flexibly with categories as they present themselves. So it is possible that sexual assult could very well be a legal category within rape
Sexual assult may be a purely legal term - Rape on the other hand is an untechnical “transedent” (for lack of a better word) term like murder or something I think it relates more to one’s relationship to others within culture, self, and deeply held values - and then Sexual Assult , etc are various technical ways to name rape in trial are sort of a cultures way of trying to deal with it as best as possible
hope that makes sense because I just didn’t have the patience to type my other answer twice
@vive: I totally know the feeling. Hate this damn forum software.
Anyway, I agree with you that ‘rape’ and other words that are used in law began with colloquial definitions and were only later more rigorously defined. Like any specialization - such as engineering - law attributes very specific and non-mainstream meanings to the vocabulary it uses. I don’t think this should be viewed with suspicion (except insofar as the State distorts the meaning of legal language through legislation and abuse of its monopoly on arbitration). Instead, I see it as a healthy sign that the division of labor in that specialization is well-developed.
Rape doesn’t necessarily involve violence. There’s statutory rape and rape that occurs when the victim lacks the capacity, either due to mental defect or intoxication, to give consent.
This kind of land = sovereignty nonsense is odious
Hm. Do you always have the power to remove someone from your property? If so, then you could have “pseudo-laws” where if someone doesn’t adhere to them, you remove them from your property.
Thus, everyone retains their rights everywhere unless they specifically revoke them through contract. Except for the right to self-ownership as it relates to removal from your land.
Hence, poisoning someone violates NAP. However, if enforcing your own “pseudo-laws”, you only breach self-ownership as it relates to removal from property (which is implied when entering on someone’s property, as said above).
Thus, you can enforce your own laws. Especially if they also sign contracts with you.
Of course. The purpose treating something as property, legally, is to establish a zone of exclusive decision-making which simplifies the process of settling a dispute. If the land is mine, then my decision regarding its use is final. If I say “leave my land”, you must leave because the land is mine and for you to stay is to confound my exclusive decision-making power over my property.
Yes, you may remove someone from your property that you do not want to be there… also known as a trespasser. The process of notifying someone that they must leave is called trespassing them.
Rights can never be revoked. It actually doesn’t make any sense to speak of rights-revocation when you think about it. A right is opposed to a wrong. So, what are rights and wrongs? A right is a course of action which you will be able to justify in a legal dispute… “He acted in the right.”
More to the point, poisoning someone is a violation of their right to self-ownership in their own body. If you invite someone over to a meal, it is understood that the meal is to be free of poison and you cannot absolve yourself of all liability regarding the contents of food you serve to guests - in other words, you are liable even for accidental poisoning.
Forcible removal of a trespasser is a different issue. Here, a conflict already exists, that is, the trespasser is already violating your property rights. If he will not agree to peaceable resolution of the dispute, then it can only be handled through justifiable force. The level of force that is justifiable is determined by law.
You can eject people from your property. It’s a gross distortion of language to call this “enforcing laws”.
Contracts change nothing regarding the principle of property, they only re-assign who owns what property and on what conditions.
Because “law” - in its most general sense - refers to the rules of civil conduct, that is, your rights and obligations with respect to your fellow man. A set of policies specifying when you will trespass someone (e.g. a private campground with rules of conduct) do not constitute “law” - they exist within the wider context of law and cannot override or supersede law. This is why you can ask someone to leave your house party if he gets too loud and obnoxious but you cannot just kill him. If you could “make laws” on your land then you could override law qua law, that is, you could kill someone at your party because he got to loud and obnoxious. The fact that you can’t shows that your trespass policies are superseded by something higher.
The whole idea of “making laws” on one’s land is just aping the dictatorial pretensions of the State through statutory legislation, regulation and monopoly on arbitration.