So if I say you have an obligation (by the virtue of your birth lets say) to give me $100, and you say that you do not. Then our statements are equivalent. Since you deny existence of truth in any part of ethics there is no inherent truth in your statement, or inherent untruth in mine. Your view that you do not owe me $100 is nothing more than your unsubstantiable personal opinion, and you can take no non-arbitrary moral high ground over me if I take that amount of money from you.
The fact that it’s all down to what people consider to be true. You can consider that I have rights and I can consider that you have rights but this does not necissarily mean that either of us have rights. Furthermore rights, as nothing more than a human concept, depends upon the individual in question believing or disbelieving the fact that the other person has rights. It’s like all relationships between men, whether or not I consider someone to be my “friend” or not depends upon what either of us think independently. To me person X may be my friend and I am his friend, to person X I may not be his friend. Even if someone does have “rights” there is nothing to compell anyone to value anything. Even if I considered that you had rights, if I valued your death more than I did the concept of rights then I would kill you given the opportunity.
“And what if I value a non-voluntaryist society? Why should your value trump my value or vice versa?”
I could use your own value preferences to prove why it is that you should value a voluntaryist society, I could show inherent flaws in your reasoning, or I could convince you to value the same things which I do. However if all these things fail or I am not given the opportunity to exploit them then the simple fact is that there IS NO “SHOULD”. Should simply means what someone believes should happen, there is no inherent should with these types of matters. The scenario you are giving me is that two men are sitting at the table, on the table there is a dollar. Each man values the dollar and wants the dollar, the two men have several different ways they can resolve this problem, they can negotiate where each gives something, one could convince the other that he should have the dollar, one could allow the other to have the dollar just because its not worth arguing about, or if all of these methods fail or if one of the parties doesn’t wish to take part then the simple answer is that a physical conflict is going to happen.
I want voluntaryism to become the system employed, for me this is the system which “should” be used, for a statist it is not the system which should be used and if both us us activly pursue it dogedly enough a conflict will ensue. I have a should, as does he, neither is superior except by a standard which differs with every individual. I have a preference that everyone eat icecream and no one eats cake, you have a preference that no one eats icecream and everyone eats cake, whose preference is superior?
Since natural law operates in fantasyland it shouldn’t bother you at all if a collaberation of people acted upon a particular belief to impose a few cumbersome legal fictions upon you using force. What objection could you possibly have?
“Don’t you love all the assertions and non-arguments they like to throw around about ‘nachural rites’?”
I do actually… Especially because people who accept NR are so close to understanding it, and indeed natural law can stand on its own even without morality, but they still can’t make the last big leap and give up the final of the great 3 mysticism (god, the state, and morality)
“I guess the overlying issue is that at the most, I can argue that libertarianism is superior to other philosophies and political systems because I can say that I value freedom above other goods.”
And what’s wrong with that? That’s a very civil way to start a dialogue.
“I guess this means I am not a libertarian”
Hey don’t close the door and lock yourself out…or me! There has to be some room for those of us who reject both religion and Randian objectivism in the libertarian movement.
I think Robert P. Murphy said it best in Chaos Theory.
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“I guess the overlying issue is that at the most, I can argue that libertarianism is superior to other philosophies and political systems because I can say that I value freedom above other goods.”
And what’s wrong with that? That’s a very civil way to start a dialogue.
“I guess this means I am not a libertarian”
Hey don’t close the door and lock yourself out…or me! There has to be some room for those of us who reject both religion and Randian objectivism in the libertarian movement."
It makes me feel good to read responses like this, as I felt that I might have needed to turn my Mises card in. Why? I’ve been alluded to as supporting rape, murder, and the killing of the jews, all because of my views on “natural” rights and the like. It is this kind of ideologically-driven behavior that makes me prefer a word other than “libertarian”.
This ideological, black and white thinking turns friends of freedom into virulent foes, and all over assumptions and semantics. For me, the most important point is improving the conditions of our world; I don’t necessarily see government as “evil”, but I see problems with the statist-driven ideology spoon-fed to us by the politicians and by the mass media. I think it is a road which leads to a dead-end and that there are better alternatives.
My current points of interest are seasteading, which I hope becomes viable in the near future, and city-states. I would love to see more sovereign competition in north america. I don’t know if the U.S. is going to move toward this, but I really would prefer to see the states “scale down” rather than implode. When states implode, it sows seeds for the worst kind of radicalism (just look at what all the people in Greece are demonstrating for and about).
You guys are right; it’s not about the labels and it doesn’t have to be about the dogma; the Austrian school has a lot of relevant things to say about the world today and this is probably one of the smartest and most motivated communities i’ve ever come across (when you guys aren’t nitpicking and fighting each other over molehills!) I am slowly spreading the ideas to friends and coworkers and while it takes time to open up brains, including my own (I am still not very convinced that anarcho-capitalism can work, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is bringing our ideas into the real world), the change is happening. That is one good thing that’s come out of the 2008 crisis!
I am still not very convinced that anarcho-capitalism can work, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is bringing our ideas into the real world
I’m assuming by can work, you mean will work (and by work, you mean improving life faster than a state would). Because if not, we can point you to a number of times in history that it has worked before.
I am slowly spreading the ideas to friends and coworkers and while it takes time to open up brains, including my own (I am still not very convinced that anarcho-capitalism can work, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is bringing our ideas into the real world), the change is happening. That is one good thing that’s come out of the 2008 crisis!