Response to "Being Classically Liberal"

In reference to:

Furthermore, there are no animal rights, since animals are property. Which means that in the world Anarcho-Capitalists desire, people would be free to torture animals, leave them to starve, etc. There would simply be no legal responsibility to take care of them or treat them well.

Animals do not have rights because they are not concious actors. See:

http://www.down-with-power.com/animal_rights.html

What’s more, many people simply don’t believe in the non-aggression principle. They think that it is moral to use the force of government to achieve “socially optimal” outcomes.

Argumentum ad populum with no explanation as to what the moral nature of these claims by “many people” are.

Morality is subjective, adherents of the NAP simply believe the principles of non-aggression are more moral than the principles of forced egalitarianism. While I am sympathetic to the NAP adherents, there is no one true and objective morality.

While certain theorists on this site would argue for objective morality, this is not even an argument. There is no explanation as to why NAP is an inferior moral position to take viz either “forced egalitarianism”, or, in the author’s case, any rationalization for state action or existence running contrary to principles of the NAP.

Another thing to consider is the logical short comings behind the reasoning of the NAP. Ancaps believe people have a right to the fruits of their labor. But this is a non-sequitur. From where did they draw this conclusion exactly?

See Kinsella & HHH

In fact, there is objectively no such thing as natural rights. In people’s minds what constitutes a right is subjective, only in the context of law do rights actually exist, and they can be anything ranging from property rights to a right to health care.

This entire passage seems grossly ignorant of any of the philisophic consideration of the nature of rights (positive vs negative). The fact that there is no “objective” measure of natural rights does not mean there are not more or less convincing conceptions of rights that are capable of being articulated. Again, this is an assertion about the unintelligibaility of the argument without materially addressing any of the points raised by natural rights theorists.

See http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-perils-of-positive-rights#axzz2UJ4TKy6w for criticisms of positve rights, further see chpt 15 of Ethics of Liberty (which OP claims to have read) which discusses property vis postive rights.

The Non-aggression principle is objectively no more moral than the principles of egalitarianism (or as I like to call it, ‘forced equality’).

Continued use of straw-men argumentation.

  1. Nowhere was it submitted that the NAP is an “objectively moral” moral principle.

  2. Clearly, I would argue, not forcibly coercing persons into governmental arrangements is certainly a more “moral” principle than egalitariansim, seeing as the latter rests on the forced coercion of vast portions of the population reduced to ant-heap existences. Egalitarianism is inherently anti-individual. Yet again OP has not explained in what manner NAP is less moral a principle to have but just repeats lack of objectivity. Interesting coming from someone whose method of argumentation consists of randomly linking “research” PDF’s as if empirical evidence itself constitutes objective argument rather than an apriori assumption (logical positivism).