Yes and no. If you listen to BrainPolice on this, he rejects the notion that property rights gives you complete control of your property to exercise discrimination against others in the forms of racism, sexism, etc or any other -ism. Or that a murder park is possible (note: Block does not indicate it is desirable, but that it conforms to a plumbline understanding of libertarianism).
Actually, libertarianism is about individualism, not property rights. Of course, property rights follow from individualism, but they are not above individualism when philosophically considered.
Since our disagreement is pretty obviously epistemological (whether or not you can have generalized knowledge of human nature, or enough to form an ethic that is partly universal), I’ll prepare an in-depth post on why I think it is possible.
the reductio for this is voluntary assisted euthenasia and suicide in general, and any behaviour where a party invites violence even though this damages their ‘person’. like a boxer inviting brain damage.
the problem I have with brainpolice is that he is so wrapped up in qualifying and contextualising and finding a balance between moral values (i.e. property and ‘other personhood stuff’) that he ends up with a soup. It might taste good but I prefer solid ground. he can’t judge the morality of an action simply and as effectively as i can by asking question like ‘who owns it?’ and ‘who is aggressing?’, he needs to know stuff like ‘are they a woman who identifies as a woman?’ ‘are they black and proud?’ ‘do they want to live?’ 'do they believe in things i believe in? etc. etc.
I’m sorry zefreak. I mean, not taking seriously the amazing ‘arguments’ that some people parrot like clockwork…
Maybe sarcasm should be banned in the name of moral subjectivism ?
Well I think that’s Brainpolice abandoning liberty and therefore abandoning libertarianism for if libertarianism isn’t about liberty then what is? He abandons an objective consensus for his personal preferences of how a society ought or not ought to be. I mean I’m against racism and such, but I’m also tired of the law being fought over in order to justify personal dealings with everything. If person Z volunteers to be on a property that has an owner being racist or sexist towards them I can only surmise person Z likes being treated that way and I mean nobody is twisting their arm.
I must say, this is one of the best and more relevant and meaningful debates we’ve had here in some time. I can only speak for myself, but if people can make their case, I will listen. But I don’t buy into things that are vague or unresolved.
So thanks for offering more depth.
As an aside, the epistemological argument is huge, but there is also a moral argument involved with actively working against people’s voluntary choices, because you believe (or know!) them to be incorrect. This was something I tried to grill Carson on at Gary Chartier’s blog but he was incredibly evasive about. If someone likes (finds happiness) in being dominated by someone of the other sex, and does so consensually, who is to say that is wrong?
Or maybe that is the root of the epistemological problem. We simply cannot know enough to condemn or condone the peaceful, voluntary and rational decisions of others.
i dont belive that property rights follows from individualism or the reverse, rather, they both , as they must be to be coherently understood, stand together as two sides of the same coin.
for me libertarianism is about individualism-propertyrights. I can’t break it down further than that. decomposing it further as you seek to do to just ‘individualism’ makes no philosophical sense to my mind.
Yes, but that is different from little town X where racism is taught at the local school. Or little town X where ‘voluntary’ theocracy is the law of the land.
Juan is the teaching a crime? is it punishable? is it a question for morality and law and politics?
As long as the racism is voluntarily learned and/or taught, I don’t see a difference. People can be cruel, ugly, and idiots, but I don’t see how the law needs to step in. I’m sure you can find an ugly reason why racism would be considered wrong, but beauty being in the eye of the beholder might be the literal usage of why a certain town wants to only find mates of the same color cause they find that particular color to be beautiful. So a particular colored people (white, black, red, yellow, blue, pink, etc…) might set up a community based solely on color. I don’t see a problem with that. To each his or her own.
No they don’t. Libertarianism is about treating people as ends, not as means. You need property rights to do that, but property rights are a mean, not an end.
I’m not sure what the new compound word means.
That’s maybe a limitation of yours, not a problem with the theory.
Lying is morally wrong I think. You know, force and fraud ? Does the word fraud mean anything at all ?
The law of the land is only applicable where control of property allows it. And likewise, for every school that teaches racism, there is another school or homeschool or some other environment that does not.
That’s my issue with the LLs. As we see competition increase, people travel, they racially interbreed, women gain prominence in all sphere etc. A rising tide of liberty lifts all boats. Focusing on historical materialism, and framing racism and sexism in a 19th century paradigm just makes these folks look silly.
Without any help from LLs or progressives, women have naturally seen improvement in their positions as equals as society has evolved. And likewise with people who might have been heavily discriminated against on superficial grounds only 6 or 7 decades ago.
I believe that as we push for an end to privilege, many of these aesthetic goals will be achieved as natural consequences of a free market.
The LLs don’t believe a free market and voluntary relations are sufficient. That someone in a free market who experiences bossism, would endure it due to some psychological flaw ala Stockholm Syndrome, rather than a rational examination of the costs and benefits to changing their work environment.
Fundamentally, a universal aesthetic constructed around anachronism or a statist conception of man’s nature has to fail because conditions are constantly in a state of flux, and man orders his life around the conditions he is in, not an idealized morality that is divorced from his material reality.
This is precisely my position. I’m not sure Wombatron however agrees with it as strongly as I do.
says who>? Kant perhaps?
could not libertarianism just be as simple as treating people as though they were property owners… ore more precisely not treating them as though they were not property owners. treating people as ‘ends’ is far to vague, flighty and metaphysical for my tastes. and i dont see it adds anything…
it means, dont confuse me for someone that embraces individualism and uses private property as a mere tool for it.
also dont confuse me with someone that thinks private property is comprehensible without indivuals (who might own)
think of me always as someone that understands that the two concepts go together, they can not either stand-alone.
only lying that is an aggressive act ofver property is wrong. saying that i like your haircut when i dont is not morally wrong.
fraud is wrong when its implicit theft. when there is property in the equation.
and you have avoided answering my clear questions on the teaching that you disapprove of, and that i too find distasteful.
He is simply derailing and subverting the discussion to insert his own talking points as he always does. I’d recommend not taking the bait.
I didn’t say the law needs to step in. I wonder though why ordinary people would like to ‘voluntarily’ be the victims of cruelty…
Sorry, the words I bolded make no sense . I don’t know what you are saying. Towns do not act.
Except that it is the antithesis of individualism, there’s no further problem with that. And I wonder : what happens with people who are born into such nice ‘community’ and don’t buy into the racist trash/propaganda - they can “love it or leave it” ? Why should they ?
because it is not theirs to change. they can change what they own of course, no one disputes this, but they cant change what others own against the others will. whether it be other peoples Billboards saying ‘horrid stuff about some arbitrary clique’, or other peoples Brains.
Your question is silly.
"Juan is the teaching a crime? "
No it is not. - But that has nothing to do with what I’m saying.
As to the rest of your message, there’s not much content in it except that you assert that property is justified… just because.
Well, those things you mention are exactly the sort of thing right wingers oppose…
Unfounded assertion. Here’s an interesting historical note.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/property_law.html
They are not aesthetic goals but moral goals. Besides, if they are just aesthetics why would they be ‘achieved’ by the market ? If they are just a fashion, they would surely not last long.
And they are right when you consider the ‘anarcho’ conservatives and theocrats who oppose the current statism only to replace it with their brand of statism.
Yeah. I’m a subversive. How’s your friendship with Stratton and the other conservatives doing ?