If you are okay with someone stealing from you so that they can eat, and you forgive them after the fact, then there is no need to involve the law. Their explanation that they were starving was good enough to justify their behavior to you. So what’s the problem?
I think different people would accept different explanations as justifiable or not. For instance, “well, I just got carried away in a moment of passion” may be justifiable to some and not to others. “I stole the TV because I needed to sell it to pay for my mother’s medicine, and I figured this guy has a ton of money” may also sound as a just reason to a lot of people.
I’ll just repost this again:
Well, if someone steals your TV and sells it in order to pay for their mother’s medicine, and you forgive him and don’t involve the law, then that is your choice.
Precisely - and the relevant “people” in any particular legal dispute are the complainant/victim and/or his or her relatives. In particular, the moral opinions of kibitzers of current events and legal disputes - the busy-bodies - are wholly irrelevant. The only way in which they are relevant is in the very indirect sense that past all disputes have been decided between people so prevailing moral sentiments are reflected in case law to a greater or lesser extent. The beauty of law is that by slicing away the unvested opinions of disinterested third parties, it compels the disputants to focus on the moral principles that actually apply to their dispute, rather than appealing to mob or mass sentiment in order to bring to bear irrelevant moral principles and win an unjust outcome to the dispute. In my opinion, the history of the corruption of law is little else than this.
Clayton -
I cannot be okay with someone stealing from me. Stealing by definition is taking from me something when I am not okay with giving it away.
The question is why we should prefer homesteading of a TV over using it acquire medicine (through selling or barter) on the scale of justice.
I.e., I am not okay with you taking the TV I homesteaded (which I thereby consider “my” TV). But I am willing to listen to you explain why you think it’s just for you to take it. My neighbors are equally either inclined to forgive me for preventing you from taking the TV or forgiving you for taking the TV. You need to explain why you think it’s just to take the TV.
We can also think about this as some sort of communist-anarchist discussion, where someone lays a claim on resource X, and someone else does so too. The first person says: I have homesteaded it. The second person says: I need it to survive, while you need it for luxury. Why is the first person’s claim more just?
The TV can be considered stolen property at the time of the theft, and after you pardon the thief the TV is his and he is no longer a thief. You pardoning the thief is done after the fact, that means that at the time he took the TV, he did so without your permission.
Who is this we? What does homesteading have to do with this? If the TV is already considered your property, then it is already your property. This new person has to take it away from you, something that is yours. If all he has to do is convince his neighbors, then it’s might makes right, and they are all no different than thugs. After all, his neighbors could have helped him out, but instead they thought it would be better to rob you of your TV and sell it.
If you are not okay with me taking the TV, why do you care about my explanation? Are you willing to change your mind? Again, if all that matters is mob rule, then it’s just a might makes right system. How can a might makes right system be just?
Is this first person’s claim more just? Right now you haven’t provided much of a scenario to work with.
I really don’t know what’s not clear about my question. We (the people in dispute, the neighbors, the observers, the omniscient we, whatever) are trying to figure out what is just in a given scenario. We have two things on the scale of justice: homesteading vs. needing an item to survive. Based on which need is more just, we will assign property right to the item.
Bleeding-heart liberals argue that needing an item to survive is more important. Hence, it is not unjust to take the item away from its homesteader and give to someone who needs it to survive. A more abstract way of saying it is that the item you homesteaded was your property until someone who had a greater need for it laid a claim on it. Then it became his property.
Why are they wrong?
Those are some very different groups of people. Do you all get together to decide the price of apples too? Do orthodox Jews get together to decide what the price of pork ought to be?
Sounds like you guys support might makes right. Whatever your group decides will be the rule, and anyone who breaks from that will pay dearly.
Well I’m glad the entire community came together to rob one person. Apparently it was too much trouble for them to be charitable.
Wrong according to whom? According to the mob they are right, according to their victim they are wrong. Why would a victim not want his stuff stolen from him?
I am guessing from your answers that you do not believe in universal anything: morality, justice, etc.
Again: I am using “we” as a literary tool. I am not talking about any group of people in particular. For instance, imagine someone asks a philosophical question: “How do we know that 2+2 = 4? How do we know mathematical truths? How do we know that laws of nature are stable and are the same tomorrow as today?” Asking “who is we, and why are you guys trying to force your opinion on someone else” is ridiculous.
How does one know what is just? “One” as in “an abstract person”.
What does price of pork have to do with it? Are you saying that what is just is what will come out from the negotiation? I feel like we are speaking past each other. My conception of justice is something that can be rationally figured out. Like a mathematical problem. If your conception is different (for instance, maybe you think that justice is equivalent to a Schelling point or some such concept – i.e., some idea on which it makes sense for two subjective parties to agree according to game theory), please let me know so that we are on the same page.
Again, I will repost this:
I also like the typical libertarian rhetoric (which I, admittedly, also use) that one sees on the Facebook memes of libertarian groups: “you guys robbed someone”. Robbed means deprived of his just property. But we are figuring out here what just property is; how one arrives at that concept. So, telling me that I robbed someone is either begging the question or ignoring that any question was asked.
So, should the law be based on morality? Or should it be based on something extra-moral?
In other words, when you just said that “you guys robbed him”, you meant “according to my [gotlucky’s] morality”. But according to “us guys’” morality, needing to pay for medicine trumps needing to have a fifth TV in one’s house. So, we didn’t rob him, we re-evaluated whom the TV belongs to.
My idea (based on the ideas of a few people whose posts I read here) was that law should not just be based on one’s personal moral views, but on some other considerations as to what should be the set of rules in a society based on which the society can achieve peaceful conflict resolution. (Although, admittedly, there are many holes in my understandingof this. E.g.: why should peaceful resolution trump all other social goals?)
So, your answer to my question re: radio frequency is: either look at what your moral views say or see what the state says (because that’s the current law in the society)?
Property and rights emerge from the resolution of disputes. I prefer a certain system of law. That does not mean that I believe all resolutions of that system are correct. It just means that I think that system is the most moral system. As I said before, several times without getting a response:
Everything you do is based on your own morality and values. What else could your opinion of law be based on if not your values?
Do you have any idea of what law is? Do you know what the purpose of law is?
What else could you base your opinions on law on if not your own values and morality? What do you base your decisions on when you buy or do not buy food, clothes, entertainment, etc.?
The question of “what [the] libertarian view of radio wave frequency as property is/should be?” I would think whatever the state says is irrelevant to what a libertarian’s opinion should be.
So, if a fundamentalist Christian believes that homosexual acts are immoral (not just unvirtuous for the people involved, but immoral objectively; for the whole world if you wish), would you say that he must believe that the law should outlaw such acts? Perhaps Christians cannot be libertarians, at least deontological libertarians (who believe in libertarians ends because of certain ideals, as opposed to a desire of specific consequences)?
Roderick Long gives a good definition:
Law may be defined as that institution or set of institutions in a given society that adjudicates conflicting claims and secures compliance in a formal, systematic, and orderly way.
Clearly, our TV “thief” (taker, whatever) and our TV “owner” (homesteader) have a conflict over the TV. Both claim that they ought to own the TV (or that they ought to be assigned property rights over the TV). One claims it based on homesteading principle. Another claims it based on “urgency for life functions” principle (or something like that), claiming that his mom’s life is more urgent than the TV owner’s luxury from owning the TV.
What you’re saying is that there is no a priori way to resolve this conflict?
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Even if a fundamentalist Christian believed that homosexual acts are immoral, it does not follow that he must necessarily believe it is moral to use violence to prevent people from pursuing these acts.
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A fundamentalist Christian believes that homosexual acts are immoral subjectively, not objectively. The fundamentalist Christian is the subject, and only subjects can value.
Tell that to Bob Murphy and Tom Woods.
That looks to be consistent with “law is the nonviolent process of dispute resolution”. So I don’t know why you don’t apply this to your question.
Okay, so they have a conflict, and they will either
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Resolve it through violence
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Resolve it through argumentation
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Drop the conflict and the TV remains with whoever is currently possessing it
Clearly there isn’t. You have no way of knowing what the resolution will be without observing it. That completely flies in the face of what a priori knowledge is.
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That’s true, but assume that he believes it moral to use violence to stop an objectively immoral act (such as murder).
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No, he believes it is objectively immoral. He believes that there are objects (or events) that have properties independent of the observer. Whether they are good or evil is one such property. Murder is objectively immoral, not only subjectively unpleasant for the victim and her relatives (and damaging the murderer’s virtue). It is an event that everyone “on the side” can see as evil. Just like they can see that an orange is round or that sky is blue. (This is different from them perceiving orange as tasty: that’s not an objective characteristic of an orange, but a subjective reaction of their mind.)
A fundamentalist Christian believes the same about a homosexual act – that it’s objectively wrong..
- I don’t see any reason to believe they would disagree with what I wrote. It’s a fairly standard interpretation of morality of homosexuality. Furthermore, Bob Murphy told me himself that he’s never read anything about rights, etc., that he fully agreed on, outside of New Testament.
Be it as it may, as a Jew, I see a good reason for not supporting a law that pushes one’s views of morality on everybody else: I don’t want others to push their views of morality on me. I am willing to sacrifice support of enforcement of what I consider moral in order to live in a society that respects people’s choices. Of course, the society must be a society, not a jungle; as a result, I am willing to agree to a basic set of rules that prevents aggression.
I.e., although I may reject contractarian approach to morality (such as Jan Sterveson’s) – I think it’s nonsensical – I can accept contractarian approach to law.
This is just one example.
Observing what? The resolution? I may have an a priori way of determining what kind of resolution will be just. I.e., what natural law should say on this.
(Note: I am using “natural law” a little differently from others. I am not using it as “deriving from nature of people”, but “a just way of conflict resolution that can be discovered naturally; i.e., rationally”.)