But again, Rothbard points out that mere making whole is not in fact making whole. If you only restore the $50 the thief stole back to its rightful owner the victim still had to suffer the theft, face the loss of his money for a time, etc., etc. And how would merely returning the money to its victim be a punishment on the thief for his crime?
If crime were not punished beyond mere compensation to include restitution there would be no punishment on the criminal at all. Therefore you need a rational and objective guideline to limit the punishment proportionally to the crime.
And, as Rothbard points out in Ethics of Liberty, there can be no better a proportional punishment than to do to the criminal what he had himself done to the victim. Thus, the criminal must not merely restore the victim back his $50 but must also be himself deprived on $50 more, the exact thing he tried to perpetrate on the victim.
I think it’s brilliant, rational, and workable. It gets a bit odd to think of having to rape the rapist and things like that tho >_>
Rothbard also allows the victim to decide at the point of conviction whether he’d like the criminal to have the same thing done to him or else to negotiate a monetary buy-out of that consequence. Thus, rather than the rapist being raped, albeit clinically and likely with a non-living object, the victim could accept $100,000 from the criminal in lieu of that punishment, or w/e they or their agents decide.
TL;DR: The OP may profit from a reading of Ethics of Liberty.
Possibly. That would depend on the sort of law/social norms that our hypothetical free society generated wouldn’t it?
I’m not so sure about that. I suppose that depends on how one conceptualizes morality.
I tend to think of morality as a complex social feedback system. I think we use our understanding of morals/social norms as tools to determine how we are to treat one another. I see these sorts of morals and social norms as emergent phenomena much like language, they’ve developed over time not through any one person’s efforts but through countless trials of human interaction.
So I can’t help but wonder: To whom would I be required to justify my purchases to in a free market if they were already deemed legal during the development of market law? Who would have standing to demand justification from me if my actions were seen as moral and normal by the society in which I lived?
I should tell you that I’m not a libertarian. I don’t subscribe to libertarian ethical premises. I’m imagining myself living in Libertopia and as far as I’m concerned if it’s legal then it’s moral, particularly in a society where the law is generated not by the state but by the market actors themselves.
I’ve read it a few times so I know what Rothbard’s arguments are. My original post was asking what his justification was for people losing their rights to the extent of their crime. He provides absolutely none. He simply “proposes” it.
All supporters of restitution I know of include those things as part of the compensation.
A lack of punishment is not a problem unless you can find a reason that they should be punished. Some people automatically associate justice with punishing the criminal but I do not. However neither position is justified without an argument unless you take it as a first principle.
Not really. Assassination and slavery is illegal and considered immoral everywhere in the world right now (so far as I know) but it still happens. There is no such thing as a perfect society so even a libertarian one would have crime.
I realize now that I got a little confused over your use of the word “could” in “If I were a billionaire I could buy slaves etc.” I read could as ‘would be allowed to by law and/or social norms.’ I don’t know why.
I’m thinking now that you meant ‘could’ as “would be capable of.”
You’re right that a free society would have crime. And I think you’re right that assassination and slavery are usually considered immoral, at least based on my limited experience of the world. It seems reasonable to assume that the currently prevailing social norms would carry over into our free society.
But then again those norms could change. If slavery and assassinations became acceptable in our hypothetical free society (however unlikely that may seem to be) at least to the extent that a billionaire could legally purchase slaves and hitmen then it would seem to me that he wouldn’t have to justify his purchases to anyone and would probably be considered a moral man by most of his social peers.
But again, Rothbard points out that mere making whole is not in fact making whole. If you only restore the $50 the thief stole back to its rightful owner the victim still had to suffer the theft, face the loss of his money for a time, etc., etc. And how would merely returning the money to its victim be a punishment on the thief for his crime?
If I recall he was using this theory to show that there is no utilitarian justification for compensating an individual who had been wronged by the state in such a case as emminent domain.
Unless there is some justification that involves why we ought not to initiate aggression, libertarianism is nothing more than an idea.
If you mean that libertarianism is founded on subjective valuations, then I agree. All ethical systems are founded on subjective valuations.
Intuition and pre-existing values are useful as a guide to discovering correct behaviour but they are not in themself justification.
If to justify an ethical proposition is show that it is objectively valid, then no ethical proposition can be justified. I wasn’t suggesting that intuition justifies ethical propositions, I was merely observing that in many cases intuition is is fact the historical origin of ethical propositions. That is, intuition is the answer to the question “why does Jimmy believe in ethical proposition X,” not to the question, “why is ethical proposition X objectively valid?”
Also, rights are normative, therefore if you claim that it is impossible to prove normative statements you contradict yourself.