Re: Brainpolice's statements in "You are free to leave..."

[nirgrahamUK]

@wombatron

To be completely honest, proportionality in self-defense or defense of property is what Block would call a “continuum problem”. Its not something that can be specified a priori, as it relies on the context of the situation and the broader social and cultural environment. Its something that would have to be decided, on a case-by-case basis, by a free market court.

i completely appreciate this perspective. Indeed there is a sense in which i feel the issue is moot. since i believe individuals that are broadly anarchist, would , even if they have shuch rights to extreme violence, bind themselves, oblige themselves in explicit behaviour contracts with each other, or by allegiance to market produced legal codes; render such ‘dillema questions’ soluable, by virtue of merely appraising individuals behaviour within the context of a fleshed out body of law (and precedent?).

but what im trying to dig down to, is that, supposing free individuals have not voluntary agreed to abide by specific codes of conduct, to observe social norms. to game theory barter with each other, and set each other permissable levels of unintentional trespass and the like, (in order to better serve their long term self interest.) dont our theories lack something, if they cant describe these moral agents in an enivronment where they have not this legal structure. cant we describe them in a state of raw an-cap, (even if we feel a ‘mature’ ancap to be a greater practical goal to achieve)

in other words, arent we falling into contradiction, if somehow we are unable to say, quite what these free individuals are ‘giving up’ by binding themselves to follow market produced law. E.g. they are either giving up the right to shoot first ask questions later. or they arent as they never could.

and isnt this a big difference. isnt the first case in some way. more impressive, and doesnt the 2nd reveal the lie that there is no functional purpose to institute codes of conduct, as a particular code of conduct is pre-supposed.?

---

[wombatron]

@nirgrahamUK

but what im trying to dig down to, is that, supposing free individuals have not voluntary agreed to abide by specific codes of conduct, to observe social norms. to game theory barter with each other, and set each other permissable levels of unintentional trespass and the like, (in order to better serve their long term self interest.) dont our theories lack something, if they cant describe these moral agents in an enivronment where they have not this legal structure. cant we describe them in a state of raw an-cap, (even if we feel a ‘mature’ ancap to be a greater practical goal to achieve)

I’m not sure if a meaningful answer can be given outside of the context of an actual situation. It doesn’t mean that our theory is lacking anything, just that our theory is only a guide to action, not a set of hard-and-fast rules. The map is not the territory.

@nirgrahamUK

in other words, arent we falling into contradiction, if somehow we are unable to say, quite what these free individuals are ‘giving up’ by binding themselves to follow market produced law. E.g. they are either giving up the right to shoot first ask questions later. or they arent as they never could.

They aren’t necessarily giving anything up. What constitutes legitamite self-defense depends on a very wide range of circumstances, and it will probably vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

@nirgrahamUK

and isnt this a big difference. isnt the first case in some way. more impressive, and doesnt the 2nd reveal the lie that there is no functional purpose to institute codes of conduct, as a particular code of conduct is pre-supposed.?

I’m not quite sure what you are asking here.

[nirgrahamUK]

hi wombatron, thanks for digging into this with me.

is it fair to say that there are two distinct concepts of liberatarian law.

on the one hand their is a body of fleshed out law (codes, cases, jurisdictions,enforcers, precedence) that a 'libertarian society will adopt.

that its members would be voluntary adherents of (in contrast to statist ‘forced membership’)

but the more fundamental law libertarian law, is the ethical law which underlies these libertarian individuals core ideology, and which says its legitimate for them to be voluntary members in society, and that also says its illegitimate for others to involuntarily bind them to other arbitrary codes.

in the search for a universal ethics, rothbard found that it cant be that an individual owns, a partial stake in himself and others, that he owns not less than all of himself, but only that he could own himself. hoppe does ismilar work for us in argumentation ethics. From these sources we get hard axioms of self ownershpi, and the prohibition to Initiate aggresion, and the the admission that property outside the self-owner can be owned, by someone that first homesteads it, or as a result of voluntary trades leading back to the first homesteader. These hard laws do not look at utilitarian considerations of what the effects would be if someone did something to a trespasser, it just says that people should not be trespassers.

viwed in this light, the problem does not seem to be a continuum problem at all. In the flagpole article walter block, (sometimes explicity by throwing in tweaked version of the story) is challenging us to just ignore the fleshed-out market law , that would have us make this or that exception, and brings us back to the point that at root, given the stated facts of the case. A trespassses on B and given that we dont presuppose any ‘market law context’ in particular, leaves us to take a view that in a raw anarchy, extreme action against active trespasss, at least whilst trespass is occuring can not be denied without danger of contradiction.

then later when he writes of evictionism, In a raw anarchy perhaps abortion is always an option, pre birth, but evictionism has benefits as a compromise position because market law would produce the law the market consumers want, and if this emphasise the lives of unborn children, then one might as an exercise assume a libertarian legal code, fleshedout that binds women who are subscribers to a given law code to sign away their rights to kill the feotus, and this might be more marketable law than demanding female subscribers sign away their rights (not only to kill the feotus but to even ‘merely’ to evacuate the fetus).

am i doing any better?

[angryrabbit]

@nirgrahamUK

but the more fundamental law libertarian law, is the ethical law which underlies these libertarian individuals core ideology, and which says its legitimate for them to be voluntary members in society, and that also says its illegitimate for others to involuntarily bind them to other arbitrary codes.

in the search for a universal ethics, rothbard found that it cant be that an individual owns, a partial stake in himself and others, that he owns not less than all of himself, but only that he could own himself. hoppe does ismilar work for us in argumentation ethics. From these sources we get hard axioms of self ownershpi, and the prohibition to Initiate aggresion, and the the admission that property outside the self-owner can be owned, by someone that first homesteads it, or as a result of voluntary trades leading back to the first homesteader. These hard laws do not look at utilitarian considerations of what the effects would be if someone did something to a trespasser, it just says that people should not be trespassers.

viwed in this light, the problem does not seem to be a continuum problem at all. In the flagpole article walter block, (sometimes explicity by throwing in tweaked version of the story) is challenging us to just ignore the fleshed-out market law , that would have us make this or that exception, and brings us back to the point that at root, given the stated facts of the case. A trespassses on B and given that we dont presuppose any ‘market law context’ in particular, leaves us to take a view that in a raw anarchy, extreme action against active trespasss, at least whilst trespass is occuring can not be denied without danger of contradiction.

am i doing any better?

You are able to articulate very, very clearly. You’ve basically identified and stated everything I’ve been thinking. Awesome.

I feel like BP is ignoring the “root” libertarian axioms you described and skipping directly to the “market law” part, and that’s why he’s falling down, because he’s arguing from the perspective of a collectivist. He’s trying to impose ideals and social norms onto the allowable actions of others, which is “whatever” so long as he doesn’t attempt to go after someone for abiding by those axioms.

One either accepts the homesteading and non-aggression axioms (note I’m not calling them principles anymore – axioms are established and self-evident) or they don’t.

As I’ve said before, I personally wouldn’t shoot a person who stepped a few feet onto my property while on their way home. But if I did, it would be axiomatically valid, because they acted as an aggressor.

It probably sounds unyielding, and it is, but I believe such hard-and-fast rules, despite EVERYTHING I’ve ever been taught or experienced, are the only way to ensure absolute freedom for all. “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” comes to mind.

[wombatron]

@nirgrahamUK

hi wombatron, thanks for digging into this with me.

No problem, this is more interesting than the constant left-wrong ([:P]) debates.

@nirgrahamUK

is it fair to say that there are two distinct concepts of liberatarian law.

on the one hand their is a body of fleshed out law (codes, cases, jurisdictions,enforcers, precedence) that a 'libertarian society will adopt.

that its members would be voluntary adherents of (in contrast to statist ‘forced membership’)

but the more fundamental law libertarian law, is the ethical law which underlies these libertarian individuals core ideology, and which says its legitimate for them to be voluntary members in society, and that also says its illegitimate for others to involuntarily bind them to other arbitrary codes.

Yes, that would be the distinction between normative law and a libertarian positive law.

@nirgrahamUK

in the search for a universal ethics, rothbard found that it cant be that an individual owns, a partial stake in himself and others, that he owns not less than all of himself, but only that he could own himself. hoppe does ismilar work for us in argumentation ethics. From these sources we get hard axioms of self ownershpi, and the prohibition to Initiate aggresion, and the the admission that property outside the self-owner can be owned, by someone that first homesteads it, or as a result of voluntary trades leading back to the first homesteader. These hard laws do not look at utilitarian considerations of what the effects would be if someone did something to a trespasser, it just says that people should not be trespassers.

And here I would disagree with both Rothbard and Hoppe. I don’t see self-ownership as being axiomatic; having control over one’s self is not necessarily the same thing as self-ownership, and even then, its not entirely clear what self-ownership actually means. In my eyes, the right to liberty emerges from 1) the need to protect political autonomy, a constitutive part of self-direction and thus flourishing, and 2) the fact that human beings are rational animals, capable of communication and cooperation, and that they should do so. This approach doesn’t suffer from the same extreme separation of the “right” from the “good”, or the strict separation of liberty or justice from the rest of ethics. BP uses a similar approach, if I am not mistaken.

I think that the best short example of this approach is Roderick Long’s:

@Roderick T. Long

Principle of Proportion: If I aggress against you, you have the right to coerce me in whatever way is necessary to remove me from your sphere of authority, so long as your coercion is not disproportionate to the seriousness of my aggression.

Thus not even all defensive coercion is automatically justified. Coercion, to be legitimate, must pass three tests: first, it must be a response to aggression on the part of someone else; second, it must be necessary in order to end or prevent that aggression; and third, it must be proportionate to the seriousness of the aggression.

Let me guard against a possible misinterpretation of this principle. It might seem that if the defensive response must be proportionate to the threat, then we can never be justified in using greater force than our aggressor (e.g., killing someone to prevent them from inflicting serious but not fatal harm on us). I think that would be a mistaken inference. An aggressive killing is worse than a defensive killing. Hence aggression need not be fatal in order for deadly force to be a proportionate defensive response to it.

@nirgrahamUK

viwed in this light, the problem does not seem to be a continuum problem at all. In the flagpole article walter block, (sometimes explicity by throwing in tweaked version of the story) is challenging us to just ignore the fleshed-out market law , that would have us make this or that exception, and brings us back to the point that at root, given the stated facts of the case. A trespassses on B and given that we dont presuppose any ‘market law context’ in particular, leaves us to take a view that in a raw anarchy, extreme action against active trespasss, at least whilst trespass is occuring can not be denied without danger of contradiction.

Again, I see his approach as being fundamentally flawed. One absurdity that would follow from that is being justified in shooting a toddler for stepping foot on your lawn.

[Brainpolice]

@GilesStratton

@Charles Anthony

@GilesStratton

Brainpolice, stop the intellectual dishonesty and answer my question. Or at least, admit you can’t.

Stop trolling.

This whole debate is a joke, BP is selectively answering what he thinks he can give a somewhat sound answer to and leaving the rest.

Hardly. I’m repeating the same points to some people because they keep hounding me with questions that misunderstand what the initial point is, as if I’m argueing against genuine self-defense when I’m not.

[hayekianxyz]

@Brainpolice

Hardly. I’m repeating the same points to some people because they keep hounding me with questions that misunderstand what the initial point is, as if I’m argueing against genuine self-defense when I’m not.

I asked you a question, you didn’t answer. Now, you’re trying to save face. Luckily for you, I’ll give you the chance.

If I live in downtown Freetown and a number of houses have been broken into recently in my area, and the people inside murdered, do I have the right to shoot somebody if they break into my house?

Secondly, am I right in thinking that if somebody is hanging on a flagpole outside my window, do they have the right to break my window to save themselves? Am I right in thinking that your position is that they do since the right to life and liberty comes above that of property?

[Brainpolice]

I feel like BP is ignoring the “root” libertarian axioms you described and skipping directly to the “market law” part, and that’s why he’s falling down, because he’s arguing from the perspective of a collectivist. He’s trying to impose ideals and social norms onto the allowable actions of others, which is “whatever” so long as he doesn’t attempt to go after someone for abiding by those axioms.

No, I am not argueing from the perspective of a collectivist, I am argueing from the perspective of a thick interpretation of the NAP, somewhat influenced by neo-artistotileanism. I am not ignoring the root libertarian principles at all, and the essence of the disagreement is that I’m more widely interpretating and applying them than you are and providing them with context.

I am not “imposing ideas or social norms” outside of that which is inherently intertwined with a libertarian theory of justice. A floating axoim is meaningless without a specific definition of its terms and its context relative to other principles. My arguement is not about legal systems, it’s about the normative ethical framework that functions as the pretext for a libertarian legal system.

A libertarian legal system cannot be established as a genuine libertarian legal system if something about its establishment undermines itself, such as a lack of clarity in the definition of what constitutes and jusifies the use of force. You can define force however you please for a legal system, but that doesn’t mean that the legal system is consistant with libertarianism.

In some sense, my view on this merely a logical extension of Rothbard’s theory of proportionality in punishment, although my own perspective goes further to the point of opposing the traditional concept of punative justice. But the basic point is that there is a distinction between reasonable self-defense and pre-emptive and ex-post-facto violence.

[hayekianxyz]

@Brainpolice

A libertarian legal system cannot be established as a genuine libertarian legal system if something about its establishment undermines itself.

Of course it can, all it requires is the lack of a monopoly on justice and security.

[Brainpolice]

@GilesStratton

@Brainpolice

A libertarian legal system cannot be established as a genuine libertarian legal system if something about its establishment undermines itself.

Of course it can, all it requires is the lack of a monopoly on justice and security.

What about “if something about its establishment undermines itself” don’t you understand?

[hayekianxyz]

@Brainpolice

@GilesStratton

@Brainpolice

A libertarian legal system cannot be established as a genuine libertarian legal system if something about its establishment undermines itself.

Of course it can, all it requires is the lack of a monopoly on justice and security.

What about “if something about its establishment undermines itself” don’t you understand?

The part where you slide social engineering in the back door. In any case, are you going to answer my questions on not?

[hayekianxyz]

@GilesStratton

The part where you slide social engineering in the back door. In any case, are you going to answer my questions on not?

I guess not, in which case I’ll take that as you admitting you’re wrong. Thank you.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

A floating axoim is meaningless without a specific definition of its terms and its context relative to other principles.

this seems to be a blind assertion.

anyway, in advocating the position that i am , for the purposes of stretching our minds…

the ‘floating axiom’ of non- initiation of aggression

HAS a specific definition. it means not being the first to use force against anothers property.

also it IS in a context relative to other principes.

i.e. it is supreme, it states what is not allowed, initiating aggression. it says everything else, that hasnt been contractually agreed not to be done, is do-able.

[liberty_student]

@Daniel Waite

It probably sounds unyielding, and it is, but I believe such hard-and-fast rules, despite EVERYTHING I’ve ever been taught or experienced, are the only way to ensure absolute freedom for all. “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” comes to mind.

/me claps

[liberty_student]

@wombatron

No problem, this is more interesting than the constant left-wrong () debates.

Yeah, you might even have half a chance in this debate!

@wombatron

I think that the best short example of this approach is Roderick Long’s:

Can we get a forum consensus, that if people quote or reference Long, they also source the comic strips he gets his ideas from?

@wombatron

Again, I see his approach as being fundamentally flawed. One absurdity that would follow from that is being justified in shooting a toddler for stepping foot on your lawn.

But how is that any more absurd than aborting a fetus? Why is the toddler superior to a fetus? Or a senior citizen? Or a vagrant?

If babies are wandering around, and mistakenly ending up on someone else’s property, isn’t that the responsibility of the parent? By extension, if the baby falls into a ditch on my property, are you going to tell me that the ditch should have been guarded against rogue infants? Or that I am obligated to rescue the infants? Can I use passive defenses like half mad, rabies infested guard dogs or moats?

[hayekianxyz]

@liberty student

isn’t that the responsibility of the parent?

Responsibility? Crazy.

[wombatron]

@liberty student

Can we get a forum consensus, that if people quote or reference Long, they also source the comic strips he gets his ideas from?

You know, I always did find the comic versions of the Nichomachean Ethics, Human Action, and the Tractacus more accessible.

@liberty student

But how is that any more absurd than aborting a fetus? Why is the toddler superior to a fetus? Or a senior citizen? Or a vagrant?

If you are talking about blowing their brains out for accidental trespassing, then no more absurd, I suppose. Abortion is a different issue.

@liberty student

If babies are wandering around, and mistakenly ending up on someone else’s property, isn’t that the responsibility of the parent?

Yes. How that would give you the right to use deadly force against them is for you to demonstrate.

@liberty student

By extension, if the baby falls into a ditch on my property, are you going to tell me that the ditch should have been guarded against rogue infants?

Given that a baby falling into a ditch is probably a rare occurrence, no.

@liberty student

Or that I am obligated to rescue the infants?

Legally, perhaps not. Ethically, certainly.

@liberty student

Can I use passive defenses like half mad, rabies infested guard dogs or moats?

Yes. But then you would probably be responsible for harm that befell accidental trespassers.

[Brainpolice]

@nirgrahamUK

@Brainpolice

A floating axoim is meaningless without a specific definition of its terms and its context relative to other principles.

this seems to be a blind assertion.

anyway, in advocating the position that i am , for the purposes of stretching our minds…

the ‘floating axiom’ of non- initiation of aggression

HAS a specific definition. it means not being the first to use force against anothers property.

also it IS in a context relative to other principes.

i.e. it is supreme, it states what is not allowed, initiating aggression. it says everything else, that hasnt been contractually agreed not to be done, is do-able.

It’s not a blind assertion, it’s a matter of proper concept formation. It’s actually an epistemological matter.

The NAP, by itself, divorced from a comprehensive definition of aggression and its relationship to other more specific principles such as personal sovereignty (otherwise called self-ownership), is a floating abstraction that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Likewise, your specific conception of property rights is begged. You cannot just reduce everything to “The NAP” without specifying all of the things that this really implies.

[hayekianxyz]

@Brainpolice

@nirgrahamUK

@Brainpolice

A floating axoim is meaningless without a specific definition of its terms and its context relative to other principles.

this seems to be a blind assertion.

anyway, in advocating the position that i am , for the purposes of stretching our minds…

the ‘floating axiom’ of non- initiation of aggression

HAS a specific definition. it means not being the first to use force against anothers property.

also it IS in a context relative to other principes.

i.e. it is supreme, it states what is not allowed, initiating aggression. it says everything else, that hasnt been contractually agreed not to be done, is do-able.

It’s not a blind assertion, it’s a matter of proper concept formation. It’s actually an epistemological matter.

The NAP, by itself, divorced from a comprehensive definition of aggression and its relationship to other more specific principles such as personal sovereignty (otherwise called self-ownership), is a floating abstraction that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Likewise, your specific conception of property rights is begged. You cannot just reduce everything to “The NAP” without specifying all of the things that this really implies.

You forgot to answer my questions.

[Juan]

I own a gun. It’s my property. It follows that I can shoot anybody I like with it. If you disagree you’re a commie who doesn’t believe in property rights. Not letting me use MY gun as I see fit is a violation of the NAP.

There, can I get some trolling points too ?