Since you are a libertarian you will see that force to uphold property is defensive force, not an initiation of force.
One thing is defensive force, the other thing is using that force to steal from people (tax). It’s a word play, nothing more.
Everything that happens must be based on the past.
Do property rights require force? Sure. Do they require violence? Sure it does. How the hell on earth could you defend your property with simply arguing with a thug (in some cases maybe…j)? But are all property rights equally universalizable, rational, justifiable and cosistent? Now there is a big NO.
Production must proceed predation. You can’t tax what hasn’t been produced. Its that simple. The free market is anterior to the state.
What exactly in voluntary exchange, and the ultimate consequence of that(Capitalism), requires a state? Just because the state formed while the market matured ,does not mean that either of the two are entirely dependent on another. While it can successfully be argued that the state is entirely dependent on a market of some sort the ultimate point is that just because the two grew at the same time, does not objectively reveal a specific dependency of any kind. The assertion requires further investigation.
No, if I build a house, and then a fence around that house, and then someone jumps over my fence and I throw him out, I initiated force against him, not the other way around.
Living up to your name with that post. If someone spray paints your wall must you avoid cleaning it lest you vandalise another art.? More to the point, do you extend your analysis of fence crossing to more general cases. Are you unable to evict trespassers who alight on your bed? If so, please post your address, local homeless men could do with the tip.
That depends entirely upon your perspective. If I am the rightful owner of the property upon which the house and fence are built, then any unauthorized trespass upon my property by anyone is, itself, the “initiation of force.” My subsequent employment of force to remove a trespasser from my property is “defensive” necessarily.
The only way the above could be considered “true” is if you didn’t or couldn’t recognize a “rightful” owner of property (real or otherwise). Do you employ such an understanding of “property” that “real property” cannot be “rightfully owned?”
It seems odd to make the random assertion that if capitalism developed side by side with statism or even that statism played some role in it, by way of promoting even a minimally stable environment in the beginning, that the whole concept is invalid. Societal paradigms are a form of technology and just because our ancestors limped along with the social and economic equivalent of using uncured mammoth fur for warmth (statism) until they could develop the social and economic equivalent of fire (capitalism) that doesn’t invalidate the use of fire. Another example would be attempting to refute the utility of modern chemistry because it evolved from alchemy. How can chemistry be right if it had its roots in something so off base and barely functional? The answer is that alchemy was the product of a way less enlightened and educated mindset, but over time it was refined. Principles and theories were tested and discarded as they proved to be useless (meaning not in accordance with reality) until a science that was in accordance with reality developed. What is fundamentally natural and correct is not invalidated because the people who began the process of discovering that fact happened to have a lot of things wrong in addition to what they got right.
If I tried to walk right through you, did you initiate force against me by merely existing? Or by not stepping aside?
Z.
you initiated force and violence maybe, but it was justifiable. Sure, if you simlply killed a trespasser, that would be violation of a NAP too. NAP is non-agression, not non-force, or non-violence.
'Captilalism requires property.
Property requires the initiation of force against people who don’t share your definition of property.
You could go on all day about natural rights but this fact will never change. So yes I would say libertarianism is based on force, but I am still a libertarian.’
So it isn’t property if people do share your definition of property?
To OP,
Don’t waste your time with Anarchist Writers FAQ. They are dunderheads Overly opinionated versions of Revleft.
It is impossible that capital evolved as a result of the state, because without capitalism the modern state would be impossible itself. The state can only live off already accumulated capital, and thus can only grow after economic growth (well, unless there is capital deaccumulation as a result of too large a government) has taken place.
That argument is a red herring. Ancaps aren’t saying that the current mixed market is desireable, so its history is irrelevant to their argument.
Force is what happens when A and B don’t come to an agreement. Any anarchist will kill as quickly as the next guy to win that fight, including killing each other.
Undoubtedly true, as the (libertarian) definition of “capitalism” implies property.
I think you mean that they would see it as initiation of force. Naturally, the property owner wouldn’t see it that way.
It seems you’re basically talking about the is-ought problem. There’s no way to prove one definition of “property” as the correct one. However, I’ve concluded that private property has an instinctive basis in nearly everyone. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a human-universal concept.
Keep in mind, however, that “force” can be either defensive or aggressive. So I agree that libertarianism is based on force, but that said force is considered entirely defensive in nature.
I’m a libertarian because I see it as being the most consistent with human nature.
How is that necessarily the case? Why couldn’t you consider the fence-jumper to have initiated force against you and/or your property?
All political philosophies that aren’t purely pacifist in character are “based on force” in some way or at some level, so of course libertarianism is based on force. The more interesting part is that what constitutes the distinction between justified and unjustified force is entirely dependent on concepts and values that are non-reducible to the notion of non-aggression itself - which makes libertarianism cease to really be special with respect to the question of aggression, despite the protests of its ideologues.
This would only seem to work if you so closely align personhood and property that, by extension, external objects and space is considered a part of you. If we’re speaking at any literal level, this should obviously be seen as ridiculous. Someone who jumps over a fence has not “initiated force” against any people. Indeed, they haven’t “used force” in any meaningful way at all so much as engaged in physical activity that clashes with someone else’s desires (I.E. an owner).
If libertarians are going to essentially define doing anything within a certain boundary (indeed, even just so much as happening to occupy such a space) that property owners happen not to like or want as “the initiation of force” (and then rationalize physical force against others as “defense”), they have some serious problems to contend with and intellectual honesty should lead them to admit that their highest value is property, not non-aggression. It appears arbitrary and too literalist.
Nonsense. This suffers from, among other things, a multiple meaning fallacy.
That real capitalism is non-statist is part of its very definition:
Marx coined the term (aside from Proudhon using it to refer to something completely different), and explicitly stated that capitalism cannot exist without a completely free market, which he called a laissez-faire economy.
So it is definitively non-statist.
What’s more, it’s entirely possible for something to be non-statist, even though it evolves from the state in some regard…if its setup required a state, but its existence did not, then it would be non-statist.
Again, that’s not capitalism…it’s market socialism.