To these three examples I say this: I choose when to do that.
So long as you don’t offload the consequences on others it’s nobody’s business. Note though that if you have health insurance and keep showing up in the ER from all your fisticuffs or keep badgering the PDA to go after somebody because yet another angry dad punched you in the face, the other policyholders are going to question your standing as an insurable risk.
The problem is that the viewpoint you’re taking is explicitly unlibertarian, even in the most “thin” sense. Yes, as a matter of descriptive fact, it is possible that people will burn my house down and nobody will give a shit. However, in terms of libertarian justice, burning my house down would be a violation of my rights. Furthermore, I highly doubt that most people would simply not give a shit about someone’s house being burnt down in their neightborhood. If we really want to be realistic, most people would consider the arsonist to be in the wrong, so your prediction of the likelyhood of a stateless society flies in the face of common sense. It appears to be an incredibly sophmoric rationalization for tyranny.
Allowing people to “self-segregate” in a way that allows for a bunch of authoritarian enclaves or fiefdoms in which aggression is a norm has nothing to do with libertarianism. The right to disassociate does not imply the right to initiate aggression against others on localist, communitarian grounds. What you advocate is conservative communitarianism, not libertarianism, and it’s a non-sequitor to derive conservative communitarianism from the libertarian concept of freedom of association. Freedom of association is not “the freedom to violate other people’s rights on the grounds that they are in your community” or “the freedom to force people off their own property on the grounds that the community truly belongs to collective identity group X”.
This argument is pretty silly.
Most of these issues can be solved by property rights and contracts.
Excellent point.
Well, at least we agree on something.
You are really missing the point. When people self-segregate according to shared values, then aggression between people with differing views of rights isn’t even an issue. The only people worried about such an outcome are frustrated social engineers like you.
At least the “thick libertarianism” of the left for the most part doesn’t justify aggression outright (although I fear it would eventually, given its unhealthy emphases). But Byzantine has his own brand of “thick libertarianism”, only of a right-wing variety. And he does justify aggression outright. Also, I spend more time debating against LL’s only because Byzantine’s philosophy will ultimately prove quite harmless in practice by virtue of its ugliness. Left-libertarianism calls for more vigilance, because of its prima facie attractiveness.
Honestly, from my experience debating with him on and off over the past few years, knowing what his positions are, I don’t consider him a libertarian of any sort. He doesn’t even advocate the NAP and falls back on a conservative communitarian position that inherently contradicts libertarianism. Philosophical justifications for libertarianism aside, he doesn’t even meet the “thin” qualifications for libertarianism and, as you say, justifies aggression outright.
I don’t “justify” anything. I’m merely pointing out that if you push people too far they are going to push back, your protestations that you haven’t physically aggressed anyone notwithstanding. And if you want malefactors who violate your view of the NAP punished, then you will have to pay for it. For example, there would likely be a ready market for people who will hunt down and kill child molestors. In fact, it will probably be done by volunteers at no cost to the victims. Protecting your ‘right’ to say and do whatever you want on your front lawn will be more expensive, even to the point that, God forbid, you may have to weigh the consequences of your actions.
“Aggression” and “rights” are terms that cannot be objectively defined, as some people attempt to do here.
If aggression is any meddling with a man’s property without his consent, then are you aggressing against me if your shadow is blocking the sun from my lawn? Even if it’s just for a few seconds, I have a right to my property! My grass could not grow to its fullest because of you. I deserve restitution.
Of course, now NAPists will argue this is “negligible” or “absurd”. Well, you’ve just arrived on Byzantine’s side. If people consider it negligible that you got punched for being a hooligan, then that’s it.
I’m sorry, but I find this line of argument disingenous, when people here generally very well know what is meant by “aggression”. We can play semantics all day, but we’re working with specific concepts here that have been extensively written on. A libertarian’s objection to burning someone’s house down or murdering someone is not comparable to your sun-blocking example. If someone advocates burning people’s houses down simply because they don’t like that person’s lawn ornamentations, they aren’t libertarians, plain and simple. This recent trend (both on youtube and apparently on here) towards anti-libertarian amoralism is ridiculous and dangerous, generally having the function of legitimizing non-libertarian politics by viciously relativizing everything.
Okay, so you’re saying that it’s possible for such a thing to happen. What you cannot coherant argue, however, is that such a thing is compatible with libertarianism. It isn’t, plain and simple. Libertarianism is not the theory that whatever happens will happen (to which I want to say: so what? that’s a truism regaurdless of what your political theory is), it is normative and perscriptive. Hunting down and killing child molesters, while it may be a possibility within reality, is not compatible with the norms of libertarianism.
Libertarianism as a normative political theory is not a completely open-ended legal pluralism in which whatever legal norms people happen to come up with are considered to be legitimate. At least with respect to questions of physical force, it is constituted by a single legal norm. Communitarian localists who wish to establish aggressive legal norms will have to deal with this fact in an actual libertarian society. While you might be describing the possibilities of reality, you’re not describing what is normatively compatible with libertarianism, you’re describing conservative mobocracy.
The egalitarians want to be able to provide social pressure to get people to conform to their conception of right and wrong, but when individuals, freely and peacefully choose to organize for their own compatible values under a church or community, that is seen as segregationist in a negative sense.
As always, it is only “right” to do things, if someone elses standards are being met. You can display porn on your lawn, but don’t you dare display anything with racial connotations, because “that’s bad”.
Egalitarianism is just elitism for the dull and simple minded. It doesn’t bring down great men (which is why they are not attracted to it), it only (temporarily and artificially) elevates the lowest common denominator through solidarity to an irrational ideal.
No he doesn’t.
It’s not at all clear what “egalitarianism” means here. You guys seem to be using it as a buzzword for just about anyone that is “culturally liberal” to any significant degree. In either case, if we want to be accurate about segregation, it isn’t simply a matter of similar people associating with eachother, it’s also a matter of explicitly excluding an entire group of people from an entire community or from being able to patronize the services in that community. So it isn’t merely about the “whitey” being left alone, it’s about keeping others out of society or excluding others from having access to the benefits of society for arbitrary and irrational reasons (such as what racial identity group they happen to belong to).
In the case of left-libertarians, this is simply a strawman. Noone has ever implied that it should be illegal for you to display things with “racial connotations” or to engage in “hate speech”. Once again, there is a conflation between the political and social that often goes on here. I can think that you have a right to display racist imagery or engage in racist speech while simultaneously thinking that you’re wrong and opposing your ideas.
You’re not culturally liberal, so you are off the hook on that one.
Isn’t that a tactic you said was acceptably non-aggressive to shape people to your own cultural values? Or do you no longer embrace ostracism and boycott?
I’m significantly less white than you, so you should get off your little race soapbox, because you’re a marginal character when conflating the topic with particular race groups.
No one ever said it should be illegal to display porn. Please stop shifting the goalposts.
Who defines your single legal norm? And more importantly, who enforces it?
It doesn’t have to be comparable as long as it’s the same category. It’s an infringement of someone’s property without their consent, plain and simple. The only reason why burning someone’s house is persecuted and blocking sun from someone’s grass is not is the profit motive.
This recent trend that you warn of here is a direct result of evolutionary thought. Anarchism is a fairly young and far-rooted branch of thought, so it shouldn’t be surprising that we will encounter lots of crossroads all the way down.
In this specific case, there are modal anarchists, as represented by yourself, who will claim that anarchy is “more than anti-statism” and present an individualized set of values whose implementation is deemed to be necessary for “true anarchy” to exist. On the other hand, there are pragmatic anarchists who try to desribe how a polycentric order with communities of individuals with conflicting sets of values could exist and prosper. You’re employing ethics and philosophy, we’re employing economics and history.
This has nothing to do with legitimizations, but with a sober outlook on what we can expect to happen in a polycentric order.
You’re not very good at this, LS.
I take it that you made this statement with a semantic quibble about the meaning of “liberal” in mind. Cheap point. You very well know what I mean by “culturally liberal” - tendencies such as an aversion to racism being one of the connotations.
Refusing to buy the products of racist buisinesses is not the same thing as denying all black people entrance into an entire community (making them unable to even exist within it) or refusing to allow black people to eat in your restraunt or buy food at your grocery store. Comparing direct action against racial segregation to racial segregation is about as orwellian as it gets. For one side, the goal is an actual open society. For the other, the goal is a bunch of entrenched feifdoms.
You should drop the smug attitude and personalization. It never does anything for your argument.
What was said or implied, in effect, is that it is compatible with libertarianism to burn someone’s building down for displaying porn. That claim is bunk.