Was I included in the all? I’m just curious to know if there is specifically something I wrote that you didn’t agree with.
I agree completely. As Stirner said “Might makes right. Indeed, one gets further with a handful of might than a bag full of right.” Whether or not you think a society should be based on belief in inalienable rights, those rights become alienable as soon as you are incapable of defending them. This is where the natural rights people become religious; they say that their rights have not been alienated from them, but merely “violated.” Of course, if this is the case then “inalienable,” becomes a meaningless word and we see a clear disconnect between reality and belief. Perhaps the NR believer is too stuck in his beliefs to see how absurd it is to tell someone about to die that their rights are still inalienable; they will lose their life but keep their “right to life.”
Anyways, I’m digressing. The main point is that this is one of the points that the conservatives on this board see more realistically. Even if you are a strong believer in natural rights (in the “spiritual”-- not purely jurisprudential sense) I don’t see how you can argue that there is at not a market for “protection of rights.”
Oh no =] Another amoralist ? This is getting…pointless ?
That depends. Do you believe a PDF protecting some “right” to aggress is libertarian? Or do you think it’s a substitute for the State that needs to be crushed in similar fashion?
Hmmmm
Of course not. But it is anarchic.
Sure.
My point isn’t whether it is right or wrong, but that some asshole is going to pay armed men to be his thugs. It’s very likely, if there is no monopoly on justice [sic] there will also not be a monopoly on crime [;)] sans the state.
Wanting to impose rule over another is anything but anarchic. In fact it is the inception of a new state.
No one defending natural rights believe they are inviolable. No one. No one who believes in the right to live one’s life simultaneously believes that murder is impossible. I repeat, no one. A right is a universal claim on what is moral. It’s an ought not an is. Your arguing against a strawman.
I believe part of the point of PDA is that without people being forced to pay for protection they are less likely to demand things like that. People wouldn’t view their PDA as a private state that would agress against people who are nonviolent. They would view it as an insurance agency unto itself only responsible for what it says it is. First of all, if one PDA decided to unilaterally attack the clients of another PDA who happened to be drug users or prostitutes or whatnot the other PDAs would have an incentive to fight the agressive PDA. The costs of waging said conflict would increase the costs of premiums and thus decrease the incentive for anti-drug, anti-prostitute PDA-users to stick with the company. Is it perfect? No. Nothing is. But by aligning incentives in the right way it’s the most moral system out there for the natural rightser. And for the utilitarian who wishes for a cooperative, productive, proserpous and happy society. And for the argumentative ethicist who argues for consistency. And for some Egoists who demand that each man be allowed to live for himself without reference to others.
Now if you agreed to not engage in homosexual acts or do certain substances on the premises as a condition of your lease that would not be aggression or might makes right, but forbearance. That’s just the right to exclude in action.
Your argument is similar to that of The Marquis de Sade. That morality (to the extent it exists at all) flows from the use of force. I believe that human beings (with the exception of psychopaths) are social creatures in the narrow sense that they prefer to act in a way that leads to social harmony. This is something Hoppe does get right. The existence of the state has screwed this up however. With the state interfering in every possible part of human life in very immoral ways the natural human moral compass has been altered. The problem with Sade’s argument is that it fails to take into consideration this basic human nature. He was analyzing the worst specimens in his literature and deriving a theory of all humanity from there. It is as though we were examining the behavior of a cat with two heads and making judgments about all cats on that basis.
I do not claim there is not a market for PROTECTION of natural rights. Only that rights themselves are inherent.
Who said anything about rule? No one is saying the PDF will try to establish a monopoly of criminality or law (hence it is anarchic), but only that it might aggress.
With the diversity of opinions here, if we had our own libertarian community, it is unlikely we could go more than 15 minutes without a rights dispute, simply by how many of us interpret and demand rights differently, and would be employing PDFs to enforce those positions. If Juan sees his rights one way, and demands his PDF to enforce those, is he an aggressor? Not that simple when the definitions are varied and muddied.
And hence, in my opinion, it would be anarchic because there would -=NOT=- be archy or monopoly on justice or criminality (the modern state is the defacto super criminal in our societies). Definitely not libertarian (with a focus on a notion like the NAP) but certainly anarchic in the diversity of action, effectiveness, ideas and means.
And the state is always successful in preventing that now?
Indeed, the state turning vice into crimes as with the Prohibition and the Drug War tends to result in organized crime building up around those activities.
The state just claims a monopoly, it’s never fully able to enforce it and often in select circumstances doesn’t even try.
By the way, when someone and his gang of thugs begins to impose persistent hegemonic power and authority over others, you start to leave anarchy as a new state arises.
No, one who merely accepts the fact that my idea of justice isn’t the one society accepts and that society has accepted many ideals of justice in the past; nice try with the ad hominem, though.
Did I claim it was always successful?
Who said anything about vice?
Of course not. But all petty thieves must compete with the state. When a state can no longer be the biggest criminal, it collapses.
Sure. I haven’t disputed this. Did you bother to read all of the entries in this thread by me, previous to the one you replied to?
Yeah, thats right. Try to dazzle me with fancy words. Theyre druggies. They get high. Thats what matters. Lets keep our eyes on the goaline, here. I said they take the same mushrooms. I didnt say they get the same trips.
He’s actually correct…
How is it contradictory to claim some believe the earth is cooling, while others claim it is warming?
What has that aggression got to do with anarchy?
If a PDA begins aggressing individuals on their property or property of others not subject to that PDA. it is an aggressor no better than the state, plain and simple. Nothing “anarchic” about it except in the sense of anarchy instead of anarchism…
Defining anarchy as lack of a monopoly on coercion, even if providers of defense don’t abide by the NAP, it’s still anarchic since there is competition between providers of defense/ justice.
Unless you want to say that the moment an individual coerces another the society isn’t really “anarchic”.
Their actions are not. They’re an outlaw/aggressor.
Not really, Asimovs robots in the end outgrew their programming to become know-it-all, law-onto-themselves, goal-justifies-the-means, Ill-make-your-decisions-for-you-because-I-know-best, a-mayor-but-slow-motion-enviromental-disaster-on-planet-earth-will-be-good-for-humanity-whose-benefit-is-the-highest-virtue collectivists. He should have really been hung from a tree branch for his nonsense.
I think you miss the point I’m trying to make, perhaps I’m wording it badly.
My point is not that the insurance companies who stone gays and lynch blacks don’t deserve scorn, for the same reason you’d scorn the state for doing the same. If you can’t criticize competing providers of defense for initiating coercion it seems to me that you don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the state. By my argument doesn’t concern what ought to be, it concerns what is (or what will be). Your conception of justice may well be correct, I’ve not done the reading to debate that. The point is that insurance companies won’t be run by Henry Veatch or Roderick Long, they’ll be run by entreprenuers, and that means that they will strive to make a profit and nothing else.
The most you’ll be able to do is criticize these individuals, or try to convince individuals to adhere to the teachings of Aristotle.
A good example is that of the middle aged, single man in a park who spends the day giving candy to kids while their parents aren’t looking. Now if this individuals is seen walking off with a child into the distance you can be sure the parent of that child will step in, and more than likely that will involve coercing the middle aged, single man to quite a large degree. Now from the perspective of philosophy this man might not have violated anybody’s rights, but no insurance company is going to support the behaviour of this man, they’re going to turn a blind eye to the guy who put him in hospital because giving candy to kids isn’t insurable behaviour. At the end of the day economics trumps philosophy.
Fortunately conflict is expensive and insurance companies will try to avoid it to stay competative, but that means that individuals whose conceptions of justice will most likely be informed by their cultural values not by reason will have every incentive, contrary to BP and others, to stay amongst those that share similar values and conceptions of justice, because otherwise they’re going to have to pay, literally.
To put it in a more simple way: nobody is going to insure a black homosexual who is living amongst white, homophobic racists.