Morality isn’t objective, and Rothbard and company are very wrong about this.
It is. That’s why it is called the Non-Aggression Axiom. It is just true, plain and simple. Like 2+2=4.
Murdering me would be objectively Immoral. (Presuming you Initiated Aggression, of course). Just a fact, like the Laws of Thermodynamics.
In my view of law, anyone with an inclination may sue the murderer. I think that the key is that a) they must spend their own money (they can’t “tax” the public to pay for their lawsuit) and b) they must bear full legal liability for their actions in bringing suit or any other actions related to the dispute.
I think that (a) and (b) above would effectively nullify casual prosecution of the deaths of hermits or even the down-trodden such as orphans, prostitutes, etc. Even if it’s worth money to you to give to a charity that investigates and prosecutes murders of the vulnerable, the legal liability if you get it wrong is not worth the psychic satisfaction from the feeling that justice has been done.
This is why the down-trodden have always been very vulnerable to predation. While predation is done differently in the developed world today than it was 100 or 200 years ago, it still exists and business is booming.
Clayton -
if you want to sit around and figure out every permutation of the NAP, thats fine. But you can’t reach any sort of useful conclusions without examining an actual case in an actual universe because the way that things are going to proceed will be determine by the norms, conventions and laws of that place and time, and not according to natural law
Arguably then the Supreme Court is the epitome of uselessness, because they review laws passed by the parliament of the people in terms of some more or less rigid Constitutional construct.
if no one cares about natural law ethics in this hypothetical world, then the actual people involved in such a problem are going to resolve it however they see fit, morality be damned
Very true, yet remember that to achieve AnCap anyway, you need 51% in a democracy. For people to vote for what popular perception now has as “getting screwed hard”, there will have been a large enough moral shift that society will actually start believing in non-aggression. Saying that all crime will disappear is foolish, yet there would be an “unseen democracy” of non-aggression.
@RD:
it is called the Non-Aggression Axiom. It is just true, plain and simple
Article on utilitarianism I don’t necessarily agree with:
Anemone,
It could be either a govenment or a private agency. In an anarchic society it would be a private agency. The Pinkertons would be a good example of how the market can produce protection services. There is no reason a private detective can’t solve the crime, obtain a warrant from a private court, and arrest the suspect.
You have a valid point in tying jurisdiction to a physical place. But I would like to hear a good reason that an individual should not be able to consent to who he wants to have jurisdiction over himself. If a muslim wants to have his justice decided by a sharia court, why can’t he be free to do so?
Oh, also I forgot to mention to Mike, I could give two craps less about the “norms, conventions, and laws at that place and time.” Libertarianism is The Law.
If a muslim wants to have his justice decided by a sharia court, why can’t he be free to do so?
Anenome believes that it should be allowed. However, he thinks there must be a backup net of jurisdiction for people who don’t want to actually go to court.
I could give two craps less about the “norms, conventions, and laws at that place and time.” Libertarianism is The Law.
I’d love to see you debate vive la insurrecion
Anenome’s just confused. For there to be a State, there must be A) taxation and B) a coercive monopoly on Force.
If your “Ideal State” does not have these two attributes, then it is not actually a State.
Axioms are not necessarily true, they are assumed to be true in order to derive further truths that are completely dependent on accepting the axiom*.* So what I did in my last post was assume that it was true, and demonstrate that your question still could not be meaningfully addressed without observing an actual world. Your respone to this is that 2+2=4. Nice.
What does this even mean? Why won’t you address my argument instead of putting out slogans?
So what I did in my last post was assume that it was true, and demonstrate that your question still could not be meaningfully addressed without observing an actual world.
I addressed the part where you said Rothbard is wrong, because he is not…Obviously. Your argument is meaningless to me because you do not accept the NAA as Truth. The NAA is True even in a world where people constantly murder each other, and murdering is not against the “laws and conventions” of the time.
What does this even mean? Why won’t you address my argument instead of putting out slogans?
What? I addressed you. The Non-Aggression Axiom is The Absolute Law, not a slogan.
No. It is more than that.
I am pointing this out for two reasons: 1) to improve your argument skills but more importantly, because 2) this more accurate language highlights the failure of your premise. Look at what you wrote:
Your premise is a failure before it gets out of the gate because it is impossible to intelligently demonstrate that one connection to the victim is greater than any other.
Any way you want to practice law, demonstrating that a person’s connection to the victim surpasses some arbitrary threshold is always what ends up happenning. Not everything can be objective.
I forgot to ask: Is that a serious desire or a mockery of my simplistic debate style? =)
Sorry if you took offense. It’s just that you seem so adamant that our morality is the correct morality and the only morality, and that the NAP is valid in any circumstance. Which I cannot say is a bad thing, for I have not read much libertarian philosophy and tend to agree with you. However, to “vive la insurrecion” everything is about culture, relationships, and not “reasoning in a void.”
So I thought that a debate between you guys would be interesting/informative.
No, no offence at all. Merely genuine curiosity! (Your comment was rather cyrptic when I did not know who the user was at all).
Thanks for the reply; I am certain such debates will eventually come up.
Well yes you are right, comparing two connections can never be fully objective. Why is this a problem for my point?
I was saying that the murdered person not having anyone that qualifies for the category of friend or family does not have to mean that nobody is fit to take up his cause. I think why it is appropriate for the family to act on behalf of the murdered is that they happen to be the people who are (subjectively and depending on an individual case) the most qualified to do so. So if a murdered person has no family that just means somebody else is the most qualified, because then somebody else has the strongest connection to him. So it can be easily appropriate for someone to act on the behalf of the murdered even if they did not pass the threshold of either family or friendship. In fact in the case that only one person in the whole world claims any connection to the murdered it should be very easy for this person to establish that he has the strongest connection of anyone (since no one is disputing this anyway) thus be recognized as the most qualified person to act on the behalf of the murdered.
Don’t take my post in isolation, it was a reply to OP who was wondering who can pursue a murdered in the case that the murdered had no one who would pass the threshold of family or friendship. It isn’t a problem, you lower the threshold ad infinitum until somebody else passes that lowered threshold. Now is it a problem to determine who is the person that crosses this threshold the first? Yes of course it is. But that is a whole different problem from the one we were tackling.
Marko,
It all boils down to arbitration. The chosen arbitrator could certainly follow the principles that you outlined but not necessarily. Your point seems to imply that all libertarian arbitrators must follow your principles but that is not the case.
I agree with your principles by they way but they do not logically follow from the NAP. If you and I were up against an arbitrator who thought differently, then we are out of luck and principles be damned.
Awesome post, James. It’s definitely helped to clarify my thoughts in this regard. It’s also further revealed to me just how prevalent the bureaucratic mindset - “Anything which is not expressly permitted is forbidden” - is among people these days.
If you sign your organs to someone, they can retaliate for you.