Have they homesteaded them? Was the property unowned and they have made the first claim? Was the property [boat] owned? What has the owner stipulated in such a situation? Is the officer a legitimate agent of the owner? Was their a prior contract by any of the survivors with the boat company? Did anyone initiate violence to claim their seat?
There was no explicit mention of “ownership” in the OP [who owns what], however it is implicit and must exist since, in the OP scarcityexists, there-fore PROPERTY must. Or do you disagree with that? Humans cannot survive without property. If there is property, then someone will have ownership or the RIGHT to control it! Or do you disagree with that? Well the questions that naturally arise are all of the above in the previous paragraph - they need to be answered, if this is to go anywhere, and since it’s a hypothetical it probably won’t. The reason I went down this path was because I was asked, how I would rule on the matter if it got to arbitration. Those questions above are what I would need to know, as well as ones I raised previously. And I’m guessing those answers would actually be obtainable.
I have already stated. But primarily, whose claims are “just”? And in order to determine that, you need a theory of property rights. I’ve got one, have you? Or do you just draw straws and vote? [:P] The claims get resolved by first determining if the claims are just. If not all of them are, eg. everyone paid for lifeboat insurance, except one person - then it’s solved.
However, let’s assume (a) everyone has the same lifeboat insurance and all are entitled to a seat. Is there any stipulation in the insurance / contract with the company i.e ladies and children first? Is there a procedure laid out by the boat owner for such a situation? No?
Ok - and this also applies if there is no boat owner, and no instructions left - it’s whoever claims it first, i.e sits in the seat & homesteads it. Simple.
It’s like musical chairs. 6 seats, 7 people. Last on the boat and all the seats are gone, and the others claims are legit - then it’s tough luck.
Why not?
No, but it has a bearing on whether I will continue this discussion with you or not.
It appears you didn’t read the link.
Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceabletheft contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the of property from the other party. In short, a contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property. But this can only be true if we hold that validly enforceable contracts only exist where title to property has already been transferred, and therefore where the failure to abide by the contract means that the other party’s property is retained by the delinquent party, without the consent of the former (implicit theft). Hence, this proper libertarian theory of enforceable contracts has been termed the “title-transfer” theory of contracts.
“And as for vote or draw outcomes not being legally enforceable by contract, are you saying that contract obligations can never be contingent on future outcomes?”
No, I’m not saying that.Would should be pretty evident. Alternatively, would you use force to uphold this promise contract?
Let us examine, on the other hand, the implications of the now prevalent “promise” or “expectations” theory of contracts. Suppose that A promises to marry B; B proceeds to make wedding plans, incurring costs of preparing for the wedding. At the last minute, A changes his or her mind, thereby violating this alleged “contract.” What should be the role of a legal enforcing agency in the libertarian society? Logically, the strict believer in the “promise” theory of contracts would have to reason as follows: A voluntarily promised B that he or she would marry the other, this set up the expectation of marriage in the other’s mind; therefore this contract must be enforced. A must be forced to marry B.
As far as we know, no one has pushed the promise theory this far. Compulsory marriage is such a clear and evident form of involuntary slavery that no theorist, let alone any libertarian, has pushed the logic to this point. Clearly, liberty and compulsory slavery are totally incompatible, indeed are diametric opposites. But why not, if all promises must be enforceable contracts?
Just quickly - questions you ignored, which I would still like an answer too.. thanks. [:)]
Define “just” and define “fair” please.
Instead random chance and ‘democracy’ by vote [Which put to death Socrates and Jesus Christ] is some how “fair” and “just”. Was the killing of Socrates, “fair” or “just”? Why not? There was a vote. What about Jesus? He was sacrificed.
What equality? What justice?
Equality of law? You surely don’t mean equality of opportunity do you? That would be socialist. Well then, what law? You have resorted to drawing straws and a vote. That is your concept of ‘equality’, and ‘law’ ?
Justice? What justice? You surely don’t mean social justice do you? That would be socialist. Well then, what justice? You have resorted to drawing straws and a vote. That is your concept of ‘justice’?
What will happen is that if the boat is populated by libertarians and philosophers, they will spend the time arguing amongst themselves about the morals and ethics of the situation until the boat sinks and everyone dies.
Otherwise, a hard choice is going to have to be made. The morality and ethics are quite meaningless because the reality of the situation is that one has to go. It is a shitty situation, but action needs to be taken. Personally, I’d first inform everyone of the situation and ask for a volunteer, and if nobody wanted to volunteer then I’d go with the straw-picking as it does not rely on subjective individual value judgements. I don’t know if people could live with choosing someone to die, but I think they could live with playing a form of russian roulette, where 6 winners get to live and one unfortunate loser has to go.
If nobody agrees to that then I’d have to go with the old guy or the terminally ill person, and if there is too much resistance then I guess we are all too selfish and we will all die anyways.
Let’s assume I rightfully and justly own my seat. Either I homesteaded it first [was unowned], or I have a contract with the boat owner and others don’t, or do [and there is one latecomer] I will not participate in your drawing of straws, which has nothing to do with “justice”, “equality” or “fairness”.
And what then?
Could you please read the posts I have made on this issue already, and critique them if you disagree and as to why. Cheers
If rationing was possible, then I don’t see why anyone would need to be evicted.
"If you are to add the corollary that there is someone who is in the water, who the six come across - then it is simple, those who homesteaded the seats first, that is their property (if there was no owner, or instructions left by owner). They can choose to let anyone in their space, sit on their lap, or what not. "
I agree with this.
“Alternatively, if the officer has been designated the agent of the owner (person who owns the boat) and has been given authority to determine who can, or cannot join, it is up to him.”
I also agree with this.
So now I’m going to continue my post with the theme of the original OP, which is “And, yes, it doesn’t really make any sense that there are 7 people on a lifeboat that only fits 6, but is how the scenario was proposed.”. That is, somehow we ended up with an extra passenger and we don’t really know how, but the fact of the matter is we’re already out on sea. If rationing would work, then no, there is no reason why someone would need to be sacrificed. However, let’s imagine that someone does need to be sacrificed. I’m going to continue the rest of my post with that in mind.
Well, I wouldn’t pretend that I have the “right” to do anything; I would just act based on what I believe to be appropriate. The universe does not recognize nor give a damn about what people believe is right or wrong nor what they believe are “natural rights”. What matters is survival and since everyone depends on the officer for survival, his word is king unless they all want to commit suicide.
It is justice if everyone agrees that it is an appropriate selection method, it is equal in that everyone has equal odds to be selected, but I agree that it is not fair. It isn’t fair that anyone should have to die, but that’s the way it is. Should we be in the hypothetical situation, then if we had all agreed to who had rights to the seats beforehand then it would be pretty clear who was in the wrong and who didn’t belong on that boat. In that case, that person would have to leave the boat unless someone else volunteered and made the sacrifice for that person.
If that was not the case, and your homesteading views are your own personal views only and are not legitimized by any actual contract recognized by me, then the legitimacy of your “rights” will depend on my recognition and the recognition of the rest of the passengers of your rights. So, you may very well find yourself evicted off the boat regardless of your beliefs, in that case.
So, as officer what I would look at first is if anyone had a pre-determined right to the seats on the lifeboat. If I knew accurately who was the last one to enter the boat, then I would first look at them as the illegitimate passenger. If there are no pre-determined rights, and I cannot accurately know who has less right to be in the boat than the others, then I ask if there are any volunteers. If there are none, then I go with the straw picking. If people object to that, I choose someone. If people still object to that, then I guess I jump off the boat myself and leave them to their fate, because there’s not much else I can do without the consent of my passengers as I am not strong enough to just manhandle ALL of them.
According to klingon-sharia law homesteading is performed by excretion of bodily fluids. The DNA in them makes it easy to discern the rightful owners of any property. As the ship started burning, I spat on the lifeboat and urinated into the surrounding ocean, thus homesteading them both into my rightful ownership - the latter just in case some libertarian (“touched it first, it’s mine!”) took my boat seat ahead of me. With this doubly-just ownership (of the boat AND the water in which it floats) I get to decide if you get to even peep a squeek, much less propose who gets to be thrown out. I’d be nice and give you the option to vote, do straws, or let me decide who goes. Would this be “just” enough for you?
In turn, we can distinguish two subvarieties of descriptive rights: legal rights and de facto rights.
This gives us a three-way distinction:
This whole discussion is about the former. Justice is when they link up Natural Law → Natural (normative) Rights → Natural Justice.
What is your conception / definition of justice? What the officer says, goes?
The method is merely a promise, and that is not enough to establish a valid contract - as shown above. Say I go along with it, then I get chosen / lose, I refuse to go and I don’t keep my promise. So what? It may be deemed as immoral, again - so what? It isn’t unethical. I have not broken a valid contract, i.e robbed anyone of their property. I have my property, it is was justly acquired.
Do they? [;)]
Probability, Statistics, and Truth - Rothbard
Richard von Mises’s great classic, Probability, Statistics, and Truth, effected a revolution in the nature of probability theory during the 1920s and 1930s. “Classical” probability theory considered numerical probability to be derived from “equal ignorance” about the potential events being considered: thus, the probability of obtaining a “three-spot” upon the throw of a die was considered to be “one-sixth” because there are six possibilities and we do not know if one possibility is stronger than another. Mises (the brother of Ludwig von Mises), demonstrated the contradictions of this approach, insisting both that the probability is not one-sixth if the die happens to be loaded, and that the only way to find out if a die is loaded is by tossing it a large number of times. Thus was born the “frequency theory” of numerical probability, based on knowledge and not on ignorance. The frequency theory implies that to say the probability of a die showing “three” is “one-sixth” means that, if a die is thrown a great many times, the number of occasions on which “three” is obtained will approach one out of every six throws. But this means that numerical and mathematical probability theory cannot really apply to each single case, but only to the proportion of randomly-selected homogeneous events, as in tossing a coin or throwing a die. This fact is much more true of the unique, nonrandom events of ordinary human (and entrepreneurial) action. It becomes evident from Richard von Mises’s fundamental work that mathematical probability theory can never be applicable to economics, or to any other study of human action.
As someone else asked earlier, can you define “fair” please? All these social justice buzz words make me ill. What is just, is fair and what is fair is just, as far as I am concerned. If you initiate violence against me and my justly acquired property - it is fair / just that I defend myself, and if you die trying to take it from me, then that’s fair / just.
Who is “we” ? The people now in the boat? Where is “before hand”? You mean just before they jumped in it? The point being, if the seats are still unowned / unclaimed - then no-one has any right beforehand to decide who gets what seat. If though, the owner of the ship gave instructions for his agent, the officer for this situation, then he would have the right to. The issue now is; there is no “we” in that decision process.
Why would I need to make a contract with you? You don’t own the boat. You are the officer, you are the merely a potential agent of the real owner (the owner of the ship that sunk, and who owns the lifeboats)
The legitimacy of my claim can only be rejected, if I did not have a prior contract with the boat owner (eg. life boat insurance) AND the officer has been left instructions by the owner to deal with the situation, which I what I believe I said earlier; is fine. If both of these are untrue, then my claim stands (or sits ;p).
Of course you can all disagree, and use force to throw me off. Back on the mainland after the investigation, I am sure you would be found guilty. My will says to punish to the fullest extent. lol
Assuming that you are the legit agent of the owner, and have been given instructions, and no-one else has made a contract with the boat owner, then you, as the one who currently ‘legitimately’ owns / controls the boat, you can if you want - I’d imagine, order them all of your property. (Which wouldn’t be wise, lol)
Again, assuming you are the legit controller, why would you need to manhandle all of them?
Assuming I and others survive, making it back to the mainland - I’m sure the ‘sacrificed’ persons family cares. I care. The other passengers care. The boat company cares. PDA’s & DRO’s are going to care.
I believe it is, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with the situation. If someone has a contract to be on the boat then I’d respect that, but in the absence of that I don’t see why the concept of property should apply to the scenario.
The scenario suggests that I am the only one who can get us to safety, so, I would just laugh at that person.
The problem with normative rights is that they try to tell you what you ought or ought not to do, but if I don’t care about your definition, then they mean nothing to me. These rights (and morality and ethics by extension) can only exist when viewed through the prism of a social context, by the legal structures and the de facto rights which you mention above. For example, if you have a society of people who are are completely against the private ownership of property, then in that society it is right that everybody shares in property, and someone who does own property is committing aggression against those who have now had their communal share deprived. Maybe this sounds insane to an anarcho-capitalist, but it sounds perfectly reasonable and sane to the communist.
When I say that the universe does not care, I say that for all intents and purposes, there is absolutely no distinction between either set of values until a human makes that judgment. In order for you to make a distinction, you would need to have a way to evaluate the set of preferences of both groups. To do so would be to make a value judgment and would throw subjectivity into the equation.
Extend this to the lifeboat situation, and what it means is that all your talk of contracts and homesteading mean nothing to me unless I recognize them, the other passengers recognize them (which would lend more legitimacy to those views in my eyes), or the society we live in recognizes them and I stand to face punishment upon reaching land.
About drawing straws, sure it has its flaws, but it’s better than nothing if there is no other way to reach a decision save physically forcing someone off the boat.
“Fair” to me is if in the situation with the inability to determine the odd man out (that one guy who has less of a right to be on the boat than the others), to choose a method of selecting someone to go that weighs all of them equally and without prejudice using the best effort possible in the situation, be it rolling a dice if we have one or whatever we can do that we all agree has a fairly random probability.
“We” are the people now in the boat. If I have instructions then I follow those. If I don’t have instructions, then in my judgment, the first 5 others to make it on the boat have the right to stay and the last guy doesn’t. If I don’t know who the last guy was then we need to move on to other methods of making a decision.
Does your claim legitimately trump the claims of the others to be on the boat? If so then fine, you can stay. If not, then I’m sorry but you have a chance to get kicked off, because I’m not having all of us die simply because of what you claim. I’ll take my chances on the mainland rather than just commit suicide then and there.
I would hope that I wouldn’t have to, but let’s say that we can’t come to any sort of agreement on who has the right or who doesn’t have the right to be on the boat, and everyone refuses to sacrifice themselves. In that situation it means certain death for all of us. Then there’s nothing else to do but use physical force and deal with the consequences of that, because a chance at survival is preferable to death, and this comes back to when I say the universe doesn’t care about the rights that someone imagines they have. Sure, some humans back on the mainland might punish me, but then and there what is “right” is what leads to survival. I’ll trade one injustice for the bigger injustice of us all perishing in the sea.
Why not? In the absence of contract - that still does not establish the ‘officer’ as a legitimate agent / owner of the boat. Which is what is also required. And in absence of that, then all the boat is - is a piece of property, unclaimed, ready to be homesteaded.
The concept of property is vitally important. By the way, you have not defined your use of the word “right”, nor put forward a theory of property rights (probably because you reject it as necessary), yet you choose a vote or strawman. Furthermore, you do use the concept of property though, even when you say you reject it. You assume the officer is the legitimate owner, and thus has the right to decide who stays or goes. [:D] Or do you not?
The passengers don’t respect your appeal of authority (through knowledge, and that only through you will they survive). The officer is not above the passengers, there is no separate class analysis here. Universal laws apply to all. If they find themselves in the position, of the boat being unowned / unclaimed, the officer doesn’t get authority, and the right to decide who lives or dies - simply because he has a badge.
Can you not see how this applies to all society, especially in a lifeboat! The problem with these scenarios is that those who set them up, often have an agenda to smuggle in concepts through the backdoor. This is what the non-libertarian lecturer is trying to do. There is an objective answer to this and it comes through libertarian theory / analysis. More answers to questions are needed to reach that point, and since the event hasn’t actually happened, neither will those concrete answers be forthcoming. What is clear as day is, “voting” has nothing to do with justice. Nor does engaging in utilitarian considerations.
So say in this situation, everyone has justly homesteaded and are first claimers to their seat. You, as “the officer” (with the same rights as everyone else) are the last one standing, you are no 7. You have to go. That everyone may now die because of you taking your knowledge, holds no relevance in terms of rights. They may well survive too. You may not have the necessary skills or knowledge to get everyone to safety, but are just presenting yourself as such - to get out of the vote.
Anyway, everyone has justly homesteaded and are first claimers to their seat, you have to go and be sacrificed. “And what is your objection to the person who believes it is appropriate that you be sacrificed?” - You said you would laugh. That’s it? You are encroaching on someone else property, and they defend themselves against you’re encroachment - any response?
Begs the question, what legal structures are just. For that you need a theory of property rights, normative rights. So you’re a legal positivist?
“Just as it does me no good to have a legal right on paper that the state pays lip service to in theory but systematically ignores in practice, so it does me no good to have a natural right inscribed in the Law of Nature if no one is willing or able to enforce that right. But this is the wrong way to think about natural rights. A natural right isn’t a legal right, it’s a normative right. To claim that natural rights don’t protect anything is to miss the point; natural rights are supposed to receive protection, not to provide it. Likewise, the function of Natural Law is not to protect any claims, but rather to tell us which claims deserve protection. As normative concepts, natural rights provide guidance for people’s conduct. Blaming natural rights for not protecting us is like blaming a cookbook for not making dinner. Cookbooks don’t make dinner for us; their purpose is to teach us how to make dinner for ourselves. Likewise, Natural Law doesn’t lead our lives for us; its purpose is to guide us in the living of our own lives.”
You haven’t actually addressed my point, purpose of normative rights is guidance. But they too, can sometimes also protect.
*Argument from ignorance? That ‘society’ is only plausible in a Libertarian society, where the individuals voluntarily give up their property to the commune or organisation. Notice how no commune in the history of the world, has ever lasted - no matter how many have been attempted? That is because they violate natural law. Any system or society / civilization / commune that violates natural law will collapse. The further they violate it, the faster that will come about.
“someone who does own property is committing aggression against those who have now had their communal share deprived” - Social contract theory fails remarkably. Are you assuming a closed of “society” where the only people exist in the commune, who have signed that “social contract”? If anything, that adds weight to my case - not yours, lol. And that is precisely why communes like this always fail, when they violate natural law / natural rights.
“Let us set aside for a moment the corollary but more complex case of tangible property, and concentrate on the question of a man’s ownership rights to his own body. Here there are two alternatives: either we may lay down a rule that each man should be permitted (i.e., have the right to) the full ownership of his own body, or we may rule that he may not have such complete ownership. If he does, then we have the libertarian natural law for a free society as treated above. But if he does not, if each man is not entitled to full and 100 percent self-ownership, then what does this imply? It implies either one of two conditions: (1) the “communist” one of Universal and Equal Other-ownership…”
What then of alternative (I)? This is the view that, considering individuals A, B, C . . ., no man is entitled to 100percent ownership of his own person. Instead, an equal part of the ownership of A’s body should be vested in B, C . . ., and the same should hold true for each of the others. This view, at least, does have the merit of being a universal rule, applying to every person in the society, but it suffers from numerous other difficulties.
… But suppose for the sake of argument that this Utopia could be sustained. What then? In the first place, it is surely absurd to hold that no man is entitled to own himself, and yet to hold that each of these very men is entitled to own a part of all other men! But more than that, would our Utopia be desirable? Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyoneelse in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on earth. And, as we saw above, any ethic where one group is given full ownership of another violates the most elemental rule for any ethic: that it apply to every man. No partial ethics are any better, though they may seem superficially more plausible, than the theory of all- power-to-the-Hohenzollerns.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what your point was? You’ll have to come up with a better example. Also, you are still yet to define your use of the word “right”. What is with the avoidance?
You can choose not to recognise them, sure. But again, this completely misses the point of normative rights. “Likewise, the function of Natural Law is not to protect any claims, but rather to tell us which claims deserve protection. As normative concepts, natural rights provide guidance for people’s conduct.” People can do whatever they want, but there will be consequences for their actions.. if they violate someone elses freewill, by initiating violence against their property.
But there is another way. It is called Libertarianism, you know - political philosophy, using reason - theory of punishment. If the passengers and officer don’t do it, so what? What I was asked was how I would arbitrate on the situation, should they all make it back to society - where plausibly an investigation would be launched.
That’s not a definition. “that one guy who has less of a right to be on the boat than the others” - define “right”. Furthermore, how do you establish that right - you’ve previously rejected that, normative rights - and yet, are using it here?
Did you not read any of this Probability, Statistics, and Truth - Rothbard ? Could you please address it, or do you concede it has nothing to do with justice?
By what right do you [officer] get to decide?
Assuming you [officer] have any right to make that decision. Which if the boat was unclaimed / you’re not a legit agent, you would not have. Who knows the future? The chances of survival may increase without you “in charge”, or without the “officer” on board.
Ah, as would be most peoples inclination I’d imagine. Of course, as a society becomes more free-market orientated the chances of these lifeboat situation decreases.
So I guess it comes back to this completely missing the point.
Again, you’re going to need to define ‘right’.
Also: I previously asked “What is your conception / definition of justice? What the officer says, goes?”
The way I was looking at it is that the officer is a legitimate agent / owner of the boat, and this was never in question. When I mentioned contracts, I was referring to the passengers. I suppose I do use the concept of property in regards to the officer as legitimate owner/agent.
For me, “rights” are those guidelines that you can expect to be respected and enforced by the society. They don’t exist without force to back them up, and they are relative between different societies and even between different people. Some rights are held in almost universal regard (i.e. the right to not be killed or raped) while others are more ambiguous (i.e. the right of women to have equal status to men).
There’s a line from Pirates of the Caribbean that comes to mind:
"The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’tdo." Everything else is built on top of that.
I like this scene because Will is so caught up in rules whereas Jack simply acts, and in this case where he’s hanging from the boom, Will is left at Jack’s mercy. Will’s rules and “rights” did nothing to prevent him from getting in that situation.This suggests that “rights” are guidelines used by humans to guide and control human conduct.
Now I know there are thousands of philosophers who all think that their definition is the “right” one, but that just proves to me that it’s something created out of the human mind and can only exist in a society with 2 or more human beings, and is not intrinsic to the world around us. A person stranded on an island would have absolutely no need for “rights” at all because he would never deal with another human being. “Rights” are really promises of action or abstention from certain actions that humans grant to each other, and that’s all that they are.
What you’re saying only makes sense if the officer is not the proper agent of the boat. As long as he is, I think he SHOULD just laugh at any passenger who would suggest otherwise. If you want to change the scenario, then that changes my answers as well and I would agree with you. If the passengers are dumb enough to go it alone that’s their problem.
This assumes that the guys investigating “natural rights” are correct in their assumptions, and I very highly doubt that they are. Just to call them “natural rights” is sort of arrogant in my opinion. It’s just like the economics thinking that they “know” human behavior and can construct models to predict it. I’ll spend some time to read the material that you’ve linked, though.
Isn’t this the second time you ask me that? You seem to be interpreting the scenario a different way that I am; in your view, the officer is NOT an agent of the boat and has no special privileges vis a vis the other passengers. In my view, he IS an agent of the boat, so his right to decide should be obvious. Are you trying to make the point that we shouldn’t confer special privileges to a figure of authority just because? I agree with that. I thought the point though was that the officer was the person in charge of the lifeboats, and they are not property to be “homesteaded” but property that is in charge of the officer.
Perhaps
Please see above for my definition of “right”. I explained pretty clearly what I as officer would do, and yes, that is with the assumption that I am the agent of the boat. To make it more clear: My definition of “right” in this specific circumstance is whatever leads to survival. I am the agent of the boat and I will make that decision. I’m going to throw one of you off the boat if I need to; like I said even if your will says to punish me to the fullest extent, I’ll take my chances instead of swimming with the fishes
If that is consistent with what you’ve said then fine; if it’s not then your system is inadequate for me because it means we would all need to die to satisfy it.
Well said. Besides promises, they are also representations of what aspects of humanity are considered “rightfully deserving of legal protection” in the eyes of the people in that society (or in the eyes of the State). The idea that rights are endowed by the Creator was probably just an attempt in classical liberalism to indicate that rights are not endowed by the State, so the State cannot take them away either - in other words, the concept of rights was to claim that the State should not be able to violate or alter those legal protections.
In my estimation, that gave the concept of rights an almost magical or heavenly quality of being “above any man on earth, inalienable by even the highest authority in the land” in the context of minarchy. However, once we begin to talk about having no “highest authority” (no monopoly - i.e., anarchy), the concept of rights becomes simply a persuasive notion and a legal concept. It’s no longer a plea to the State saying that God has granted us rights that even the State cannot deem it rightful to violate. Who determines what are rights are the same people who determine the law: individuals in the free market. If those individuals in that particular market or legal assocation you’re in are by and large against the right to free speech, say, then in all likelihood there will be some limits to your free speech - even in anarchy or a system of PDAs or private courts.
Taking it back to a few people on an island clarifies the situation nicely. De facto rights are just what the people in power agree upon. In anarchy, there is no person or group monopolizing that power, so de facto rights will be decided by the market or some other kind of polycentric social agreement or as-yet un-thought-of non-monopoly-based system.
Yes & there-in lies the contradiction. Property rights are rejected and yet the whole scenario stems from them.
So “rights” are what ever society says they are? You support legal positivism then?
You make no distinction between “rights” and privileges?
You don’t make a distinct between negative rights and positive rights?
How on earth do you determine what “rights” society will be “expected to be respected and enforced.” - Vote?! You choose not reason to arrive at what constitutes rights, but the mob?
These appeals to “society” are growing tiresome.
“They don’t exist without force to back them up” - We have been over this already. Why are you muddying the waters between normative rights, and defacto / legal rights?
How fitting… you’re making an appeal to pirates / criminals, to help make your point about rights? lol
The only rules that matter: is what the just property owner states they are. Everything else is built on top of that. And how that owner becomes a ‘just’ property owner, i.e homesteading which flows on from the philosophy of self ownership, that’s what really matters.
The catch phrase, I believe you are looking for is “might makes right”. Why must this point be made over again and again?
A recent variation on the natural-rights-don’t-protect argument is Rich Hammer’s article “Might Makes Right: An Observation and a Tool,” (Formulations, Vol. III, No. 1 (Autumn 1995)). Rich argues that the rights we have are the ones we are able to secure by force:
When I read a passage like this, my first question is whether the rights being talked about are normative rights, legal rights, or de facto rights. If Rich is talking about de facto rights only, then I don’t think I have any disagreement with what Rich says, at least if “force” is defined broadly enough (e.g., does the ability to motivate people through persuasive argument to respect certain rights count as effective policing of those rights?).
Most of the arguments Rich goes on to give do seem to be intended to apply specifically to de facto rights (and also, to some extent, to legal rights). For example, Rich offers the following challenge to his readers:
This request for a counterexample seems to presuppose that it is descriptive rights that are in question. For of course no natural-rights libertarian will have any trouble coming up with examples of normative rights that we still retain despite the ability to back them up by force — because normative rights are rights that we retain even when we’re deprived of whatever it is the rights are rights to. Indeed, that’s the crucial difference between normative rights and de facto rights. If you steal my jacket, I lose my de facto right to my jacket, because my claim to that jacket has not been respected; but I retain my normative right to the jacket, so long as it remains true that my claim to the jacket ought to be respected. So when Rich assumes it will be tough to come up with examples of rights we retain despite a contrary claim’s being supported by greater force, it seems he must be thinking about de facto rights, not normative rights.
But this can’t be the whole story. For Rich thinks his position is going to be a controversial and unwelcome one:
Who are these libertarians who are going to be upset by Rich’s thesis? Libertarians who believe that de facto rights come from sources other than superior might? I’m not sure there are any such libertarians. And I strongly suspect that Rich instead has in mind libertarians who believe in normative rights that they regard as deriving from sources other than superior might — sources like Natural Law, for example. But why would such libertarians be upset by Rich’s thesis, if it is only a thesis about the source of de facto rights? Clearly, Rich thinks his thesis has implications — unfavorable implications — for the theories of natural-rights libertarians. And that means that Rich’s thesis is more than just a thesis about de facto rights; it has something to say about normative rights as well.
But what? There seem to be two salient possibilities. Either a) Rich is saying that superior might is the source not only of de facto rights but also of normative rights; or else b) Rich is saying that there are no normative rights, that de facto rights are the only rights there are.
I’m inclined to doubt that (a) is what Rich means. If (a) were Rich’s thesis, then he would be committed to endorsing and approving of whatever de facto rights actually end up getting favored by superior might. Now, to be sure, Rich does argue that the results of superior might will generally tend to be beneficent, at least in the long run; but he also says that there are cases in which the might-makes-right thesis “runs counter to the values by which I live”; by saying this, Rich seems to be denying that in every case he will automatically regard as valuable whatever set of arrangements wins out.4
Thus I think the most likely interpretation is (b): Rich believes that there simply are no rights over and above de facto rights — that his occasional aversion to the results of force is simply a matter of personal preference.
This interpretation is reinforced by the following passage:
If I understand him properly, Rich seems to be saying that any claim that is not backed up by sufficient force — that is, any claim that fails to be a de facto right — is nothing more than a wish, a subjective preference. And that in turn would seem to mean that there are no objective grounds for preferring one claim over another, no such things as claims that ought to be respected and claims that ought to be denied. In other words, there are no normative rights, and there is no Natural Law. Now of course this sort of moral skepticism might be true. But I can’t see that Rich’s article gives us reason to think it is true. I find quite convincing Rich’s arguments for the claim that de facto rights are made by might; but those arguments do not seem to rule out the possibility of normative rights that do not depend on might for their validity."
It doesn’t matter how anyone else has defined “rights”, I have asked you! And so far, you’ve continually failed to give a definition. Can I get a definition please?
“A person stranded on an island would have absolutely no need for “rights” at all because he would never deal with another human being.”
A person stranded on an island wouldn’t need a medium of exchange (money) either. Your point is completely moot.
“Rights” are really promises of action or abstention from certain actions that humans grant to each other, and that’s all that they are."
Nope. Rights have nothing to do with promises.
I haven’t changed the scenario at all. All I’ve done is made an assumption clear, that which is very possible, if not more likely the the main assumption in the scenario [He is legit agent].
Prove their not. It’s not arrogant, it’s descriptive. “The economics”, yes but none of the ‘economics’ profession at large I would imagine -believe in natural rights, they’re all utilitarians - like you? Austrian economics doesn’t ‘think they know human behavior’ and make models*,* hence praxeology, which is funny because essentially all prominent Austro-Libertarians believe in Natural law / natural rights. Kind of making my argument for me again.
I have addressed both scenarios. If the officer is an agent of the boat, he has that RIGHT from property. Thus he can ask whoever to leave by whatever means. However, if he is NOT then he can’t. The officer has no legitimacy, ‘just because’ - as you said. I agree with that." Ok good. Yeah, that is what I was trying to get across.
I don’t mean what is “right” - as in ‘correct’… I mean as in normative / natural rights, right to control / own etc. I’m looking for a specific definition as requested above. I thought that was clear.
Basing morality off unrealisitic situations is rather silly. Morality should be based off of reality.
But, if I were indeed the owner of the boat, I’d either get rid of the pregnant chick or the terminally ill librarian. The pregnant girl because shes the least durable, needs the most care, and even if we got back to civilization shes like to both be the least happy and the least productive, with the child quite possibly carrying this along.
OR
The Librarian, because shes terminally ill and is the smallest loss in that sense.
I considering getting rid of the Nun, but I’l assume for the sake of argument that she provides emotional counseling to some of her church goers to a helpful degree, although I very strongly dissaprove of her methods.
“The believer in a rationally established natural law must, then, face the hostility of both camps: the one group sensing in this position an antagonism toward religion; and the other group suspecting that God and mysticism are being slipped in by the back door. To the first group, it must be said that they are reflecting an extreme Augustinian position which held that faith rather than reason was the only legitimate tool for investigating man’s nature and man’s proper ends. In short, in this fideist tradition, theology had completely displaced philosophy.[3] The Thomist tradition, on the contrary, was precisely the opposite: vindicating the independence of philosophy from theology, and proclaiming the ability of man’s reason to understand and arrive at the laws, physical and ethical, of the natural order, if belief in a systematic order of natural laws open to discovery by man’s reason is per se anti-religious, then anti-religious also were St. Thomas and the later Scholastics, as well as the devout Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius. The statement that there is an order of natural law, in short, leaves open the problem of whether or not God has created that order; and the assertion of the viability of man’s reason to discover the natural order leaves open the question of whether or not that reason was given to man by God. The assertion of an order of natural laws discoverable by reason is, by itself, neither pro- nor anti-religious.[4]”
“One common, flip criticism by opponents of natural law is: who is to establish the alleged truths about man? The answer is not who but what: man’s reason. Man’s reason is objective, i.e., it can be employed by all men to yield truths about the world. To ask what is man’s nature is to invite the answer. Go thou and study and find out! It is as if one man were to assert that the nature of copper were open to rational investigation and a critic were to challenge him to “prove” this immediately by setting forth on the spot all the laws that have been discovered about copper.”
Conza, I think you’re reading too much into what I’ve been saying. The scenario was specifically constructed about what I would do in the situation as the officer, not about why he has the right to do what he can. There are already a thousand philosophers that have spent their entire lives trying to figure that out. Call me a legal positivist, utilitarian, or whatever you want; I don’t really know what you should call me because I don’t even think in terms of nor care about these labels; The fact that so many labels exist should be clear evidence on the true nature of “rights”.
I’ve already given you a specific definition on rights; here it is again: ““Rights” are really promises of action or abstention from certain actions that humans grant to each other, and that’s all that they are.” No matter what system or which philosopher you believe, it will always reduce down to that. That doesn’t mean I support “might makes right”, I’m just telling you what the reality is.
Therefore I find the whole concept of “natural rights” absurd. Call them “common rights held by many humans”, or something fancier than that, but don’t tell me that they are in any way “natural”. The sun is natural, the air is natural, fire is natural, water is natural, gravity is natural… there is nothing “natural” about “natural rights”. At most they can be a system saying what “ought to be”, but that doesn’t necessarily follow from “what is”. You can try as hard as you like to convince me of that, but in the end it is just your opinion and by no means a fact.
I never said I rejected property rights (I just didn’t see the sense in looking at it as “homesteading” a seat as if the boat was something that can be homesteaded when it is clearly the property of the cruise ship) nor do I make appeals to society nor do I think that voting is the most efficient decision making manner. In fact, I think I agree with most of what you say but we seem to be talking past each other. I don’t really have anything to argue about with you because we both agree (at least I think we do) on what the officer may or may not do, you just seem to be hung up on the words that I’ve chosen.
The scenario was about what I would do as an officer, and perhaps if it was you and me on the boat I think we would be the group of “philosophers” arguing about what to do until we all die
