According to you (which you imply) which is subjective.
That’s fucked up. Not that someone wonder’s if rape is ok or not, but when someone tries to present a group of people as supporting something what majority of sane people see as immoral (rape). Surely BirthdayPony mus have been drunk writing that post in FLL. Gonna join the discussion, I think 
@RD
That is ridiculous. No belief system is or can be “true” in terms of its moral prescriptions. There’s only what you believe to be good and believe to be bad. As Mises said “There is no science of ought”. Secondly if you want to look at the first group who placed the most emphasis on voluntary interaction it was those “left” libertarians, indeed that’s where the world libertarian ascended from, it initially meant left wing/communist anarchist.
There is no reason why communism, in principle could not be entirely voluntary, it could occur in a free society and it most likely would occur to one degree or other. The anarchists were the first to talk about free association and disassociation as a way to organize society.
Nice use of the association fallacy there, Birthday Pony!
Wheylous, surely you can realize in about two seconds that “-|-Terri Schiavo-|-”, “SexyAtheist_69”, and “Azagthoth” are all trolls. Fail trolls (are fail), but trolls nonetheless. Reading their posts, as well as those of another apparent troll called “Quagmire” (obvious name is obvious) in a couple other threads, give me some inklings as to who this person is/these people are. Anyways, no serious poster from FLL posted in the thread you linked to except to call out the other posters on their rather obvious trolling.
@Neodoxy- There is one objectively true moral code (the Non-Aggression Axiom). I disagree entirely with Mises’ view on the matter, for I am a Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist. Remember - I was convinced of Anarcho-Capitalism based strictly on moral grounds. Utilitarianism had nothing to do with my conversion, except perhaps negligibly.
No, the left libertarians are a perversion of Rothbardian purity. Rothbard himself placed the most emphasis on voluntary interaction.
By the way, I also do not consider myself an “anarchist” as such. Private property anarchist? Yes. Anarcho-Capitalist? Indeed. Rothbardian? True. Libertarian? Correct. But the term “anarchist” does not describe me in itself at all, no.
You probably need to read something else besides Rothbard.
@RD
You didn’t explain why Rothbardian ethics or the NAP is true.
Also I feel that Mises’ thoughts on the subject are undeniably superior if one looks at them. They’re most eloquently put forth in Theory and History
I was originally an anarcho-capitalist because of ethical reasons as well, however I’ve since dropped my ethical stance on the matter.
Exactly. The hardest part about reassuring yourself of your beliefs is actually researching those of another. However, it is the most essential. I would reccomend Nietzsche for anyone really trying to understand the nature of morality.
Just out of curiosity, why is that?
Because ethics are value preferences that are supposed to be given super powers. Ethics inevitably arise from the will to control others.
What about David Friedman and other stateless freemarketeers? They are utilitiarists/consequentalists. Do you Birthday Pony know that Rothbardian libertarians are against any kind of contract enforcement.? Those who think that an-cap isn’t NAP but private laws on the lands of the property owners are the other story though. Still, it’s very insulting to claim that Rothbard and “Von Mises” support enforced rape. I hope you read this, Left-“Libs”.
EDIT: Changed to be more polite
I understand your concern there, and I also understand why you would think of ethics that way. Most people, after all, seem to think of ethics much the same way. My own notion of what you call “ethics” - I call it “morality” - deals with which actions are allowed to be countered with violent force. What I call “ethics” deals with which actions I want and expect to be encouraged (i.e. non-coercively). So you could say “morality” to me is the set of actions which are “bad” and “ethics” to me is the set of actions which are “good”. But notice the asymmetry between “bad” and “good”. Also notice that there can be actions which I consider to be neither - that is, actions which I think are unethical, but not immoral.
Dictionary.com defines ethics first as a series of moral principles and secondly as rules of acceptable conduct. The first definition is why I use ethics and morality interchangeably. I have my own moral code, as do you, although they probably diverge in one way or other, this is the reason why ethics and morality are both subjective. There is no such thing as a “true morality” you can say you should follow moral system X because of reason Y, but inevitably it just comes back to the fundumental question: “What do you value”? No power on earth can make one ethic better or worse than any other except for the individual in question.
So according to your definition you are quite right, you want a free society because of ethical considerations, but this once more comes right back to what you value. In this way, in a “post moral” sense I value a free society specifically for ethical reasons, but there would be no way that I couldn’t and still want the free society and there is no difference between this and the utilitarian view.
My own moral code rests upon the self-ownership and non-aggression principles. While I agree with you that both ethics and morality (as I define them) are entirely subjective, I think that nearly everyone instinctively holds those two principles as being valid - at least vis-a-vis himself.
I’m sorry but I’m a bit confused by your last sentence here. Could you please elaborate?
Why?
And who says I do not read anything else? I do, in fact, but Rothbard is the only author I really trust wih sound logic.
Why?
And who says I do not read anything else? I do, in fact, but Rothbard is the only author I really trust with sound logic.
Because it’s way too obvious you’re a newbie who’s only really read Rothbard and is holding to him dogmatically. You can’t really discuss and explore political theory when you’ve only read one author and assume you have the correct position, it’s arrogant.
Erm…I think you are making a lot of assumptions. I used to believe in monarchic minarchism, in fact.
And I am fine with being arrogant, if that is what I am.
Erm…I think you are making a lot of assumptions. I used to believe in monarchic minarchism, in fact.
And I am fine with being arrogant, if that is what I am.
Assumptions? Yes, your default pic is Rothbard, your user name is RothbardsDisciple, and you’ll actually address others as Rothbardians or say Rothbardian Libertarianism. What you used to believe in is irrelevant to what you post now. (I fancy real Monarchism myself.)
It’s sort of a trench you dig yourself into, and only follow that way. Sort of the same when you come across Randians who are die-hard Objectivists, or Marxists who don’t read non-designated party literature.
I’m still an Anarcho-Monarchist. Just a personal belief though within the wider scope of Anarcho-Capitalism.
Neodoxy - have you read/heard Hoppe’s theories?
About choosing libertarianism and reasoning from logic: while Hoppe tries a bottom-up “derived” approach (which I find quite nice and helpful, though with a few holes here and there), there is also a possible top-down approach to libertarianism I’d like to call “deconstruction of the state.”
I describe it here. It involves taking up opposing ethical viewpoints, finding the most “basic” one and rejecting the other one. Though I have not gotten all the way to generally-recognized anarcho-capitalist thought this way, I find that it is quite helpful. This way, we don’t need to prove all of AnCap, but only deconstruct the state. From there, we can use what is left to logically derive other points of morality.
I think that a lot of people come to libertarianism this way, as a subtractive process. This explains why a lot of people make minarchy their middle step between state and AnCap.
Ultimately, it would be nice if AnCap were logically derived out of a void. Until then, a mix of top-down and bottom-up are alright substitutes.
Anarcho-Monarchist
Let’s see why this is the same thing as saying a “socialist capitalist”:
anarchy = an (no) + archy (ruler)
monarchy = mon (one) + archy (ruler)
“One ruler” + “no ruler” = contradiction
Perhaps you mean a place where the populace would be enlightened enough to voluntarily follow a philosopher king such as Rothbard?