I don’t know if I agree with this. Economics can’t ‘justify’ anything normative; an economist qua economist can only study the consequences of adhering to certain principles and rules. Maybe people ought not to work below a certain wage, but then involuntary unemployment will follow. Mises and Rothbard in HA and MES presupposed throughout their work a property based (and respected) society to analyze the consequences (until the part, of course, were they examined government intervention). But this doesn’t justify property rights or anything.
If and only if you are convinced of the market… You say this, because you are probably familiar with austrian economics (and perhaps with some moral philosophy like Hazlitt’s Foundations of Morality), but it one isn’t convinced about how the market works, then the utilitarian argument won’t work, for obvious reasons.
And not all people always care about ‘efficiency’. Note that Mises in Human Action in the chapter on the welfare principle and redistribution doesn’t really denounces it per se as ‘illegitimate’; he just investigates the reasons advocate and concludes that they are wrong or based on self-interest. But there are ways to evade the remarks Mises made. This is the enterprise of people like Kymlicka, Rawls, Dworking and others.
‘Win’ according to who? According to what criteria? I always ‘win’ my arguments; even though the other guy is rarely convinced. I don’t know if I could call this a ‘win’, though. If you are able to convince people of a free society; fine! But the utilitarian way alone won’t cut it indefinitely.
Sorry. I meant that property rights can be justified regardless of whatever subjective preferences market participants have.
Right when I say the free market wins, I mean that in a debate between the top socialists and top ancaps, the latter wins.
Right. Personally I focus my arguments as to why the state is a really bad idea rather than attacking wealth redistribution head on. So even if wealth redistribution did have its merits, it wouldn’t be possible to implement safely. This obviously dodges the question of wealth redistro in and of itself, but I think its nice to be able to arrive at a libertarian answer without having to plod through the crap that is the state-robinhood argument.
Right if someone walks away unconvinced thats not really a victory in my book. And its not like I’ve always won my arguments since I was thirteen. I’ve lost free market arguments before because I didn’t know enough, and I’ve been a socialist before too. But I’ve found that if you tailor your rhetoric and focus on the same bad-guys as your opponents have in mind, you can make a lot of headway.
Most liberals will try to get you to apologize for super rich CEOs and corporations extorting workers, but this is a very easy argument to throw back at them because all the truly free market industries are just groovy with everyone, while the worst industries like banking/healthcare are the most government controlled.
Its all about rhetoric with them… once you speak in terms they can understand they’ll listen to you. When they say they want more regulation say that you agree with them; but that the best regulation is a system of personal responsibility.
"One might think the reason is purely strategic. Most people are unlikely to find the deontological case for a given course of action compelling so long as they believe it would have terrible consequences; likewise, they are equally unlikely to find the consequentialist case compelling so long as they believe that the action violates human dignity, or equality, or liberty. But while a combination of consequentialist and deontological arguments is most assuredly the best rhetorical strategy for persuading people to accept one’s views, I don’t think it’s mainly for rhetorical reasons that would-be persuaders combine both sorts of considerations. On the contrary, the persuaders combine both sorts of considerations precisely because they share with the persuaded a reluctance to accept one without the other. Whatever they may say officially, most consequentialists would be deeply disturbed to discover that their favoured policies slighted human dignity, and most deontologists would be deeply disturbed to discover that their favoured policies had disastrous consequences.
This fact has often led each camp to suspect the other of hypocrisy. The consequentialists say: “Look at all the effort you deontologists put into trying to show that abiding by your principles won’t have counterintuitively disastrous consequences. For example, notice how eager contemporary Kantians are to distance themselves from Kant’s claim that it’s wrong to lie to a murderer at your door. Obviously, you deontologists implicitly regard harmful consequences as potential falsifiers of your theory; you’re really crypto-consequentialists, not sincere deontologists with the courage of your convictions.” 5
And the deontologists can reply in kind: “Look at all the effort you consequentialists put into trying to show that your theory doesn’t license counterintuitively unjust actions. For example, notice how quick contemporary utilitarians are to insist, via such devices as rule-utilitarianism, that they are not committed to sacrificing one innocent person to save ten others. Obviously, you consequentialists implicitly regard sanctioned rights-violations as potential falsifiers of your theory; you’re really crypto-deontologists, not sincere consequentialists with the courage of your convictions.”
Right. My initial post focused on the consequentialist side of things because I believe the OP was losing to utilitarian arguments. I think its okay to use both types of arguments though.
I would like this question resolved as well. My default thought would be that non created “natural” resources are jointly owned whatever that would mean. But in contradiction to that property rights are supposed to be about conflict resolution and joint ownership increases conflict. I get the feeling if our rule of who gets to own what is who grabbed it first, well just have a buncha grabbers.
…but universal joint ownership of external resources, no ownership of external resources, or severely restricted ownership of external resources, that the correct position was to allow individual absolute ownership of external resources…
is there some distinction between internal and external resources…is internal here seen as ip?
what method of individual ownership occurs if not by homesteading of non-homsteaded stuff that ends up as a property?
Sure it is. Because I think Rothbard is bouncing around ideas in that article, he’s “riffing”. I don’t think there is any serious theory in what is clearly a politically oriented article. Unfortunately, the libertarian left has run with this idea that the workers homesteading the factory is legitimate and a means to reward the “landless labourer class” for their toil under the state. I think such an approach is more about egalitarianism than it is about market based justice and restitution.
I don’t have Hoppe’s position, and I am not a Hoppean. My point is that if we’re going to compensate people for state intervention, we have to start first with those who have clear claims. We might not have a clear method of restitution, but we can have clear claims of loss. To deal with post-state property in any manner other than addressing the most clear claims first, would not be justice in my opinion. Would you agree?
If one expects material compensation for for non-material, psychological losses, then that’s outside the scope of libertarian property rights. We’re into the realm of progressivism.
Not necessarily. Sure, the clearest claims will be easiest to deal with. But shouldn’t the most morally serious claims be dealt with first?
I was thinking about, e.g. victims of drug laws and immigration restrictions. These are still material, physical losses.
But furthermore, why do you think non-material losses are outside the scope of libertarian rights? Threatening coercion is non-material, but it’s still a rights violation.
Now we’re getting beyond the scope of libertarianism (at least beyond the scope of thinlib). For a virtue ethicist moral seriousness would be determined by how something relates to flourishing.
Being kidnapped and imprisoned, in the case of drug laws.
The only right there is: the right not to be aggressed against.
You still haven’t answered the question. What is objectively serious?
How would you propose the state payback time and opportunity? With material property confiscated from others?
If I say I do not like you, is that aggression? If I say I will not trade with you, is that aggression? If I say I wish you were dead, is that aggression?
What if I only think about killing you but don’t say it. Is that aggression? What if I tell my friend I want to kill you, but I don’t tell you. Is that also aggression?
We have two very different conceptions of what aggression is. I believe it is the initiation of force without consent. If you don’t consent to what I say, regardless of what I am saying, does that make my speech aggressive?
I don’t think your conception of objective rights is very well defined.
Here is another Rothbard article, written in 1992, where he restates his position:
I disagree with Rothbard here, for the reasons given by LS.
Hoppe says much the same thing in Democracy: The God That Failed. I think they both dismiss without good reasons the idea of creating shares in government property. Here’s Rothbard’s reasons:
This is a reasonable concern, but I don’t think it justifies the ‘mutualist’ solution, which is plainly unjust.
Hoppe agrees with Rothbard, emphasising the practical difficulties involved in a ‘share scheme’, like having to create an inventory of all the State’s assets and divide them into appropriate units, and having people suddenly owning properties they know nothing about it. I don’t think these practical problems are insummountable, and anyway I don’t think this should be about what is most practical or what will have the most utilitarian result. It should be about what is most just.
I think the most just principle would be to distribute State property to individuals according to how much has been stolen from them. This can be approximated by the amount of tax individuals have paid.
I disagree with Hoppe saying distributing shares is unjust:
Hoppe seems to be ignoring that by distributing shares according to how much tax someone has paid, you ARE considering his actions in relation to the owned asset. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s better than the mutualist idea.
Interestingly, Hoppe later says:
This seems to be a contradiction of when he says:
Is he saying civil servants, bureaucrats, street workers, State school teachers, etc, get to own the formerly public buildings and structures or not?
He seems to brush over this main point, when he says “the streets to the street workers or residents”. Well which is it? The workers or the ‘customers’? This is the fundamental point.
[where previous ownership is clear], syndicalist ideas should be implemented; that is the ownership of assets should immediately be transferred to those who work them
The bit I added in brackets is referring to the first part of the sentence. “Regarding socialist property that is not reclaimed in this way [i.e. where previous ownership is clear], syndicalist ideas should be implemented; that is the ownership of assets should immediately be transferred to those who work them”
In the paragraph before, he explains that if government has recently seized someone’s property, it is clear that that individual should be given it back immediately. The syndicalist idea applies only to more complicated cases such as buildings that have been created out of tax money, or where no claimant arises with a legitimate claim to the expropriated property.