Liberte, I 100% agree with you regarding this topic, but please let’s not be harsh.
If I burn them. Is this a pertinent question?
Ok. so what? Try it. I guess in no fewer words you’d rather choose fight. Still a conflict of scarcity.
I recognize I do have a right to have it. Again so what? You’re trying to argue against a value judgment. My value judgment. So if you want to fight over the scarce item, then it’s your call. Cause I’m willing to let you go if you leave me be.
Since you aren’t willing to acknowledge my existence which is easily perceptible by the senses being that I appear even on the gross (definition 4) level of reality, would I really count on you to go the extra intellectual and heartfelt mile and acknowledge what is even more subtle such as my sensibilities?
Why is it irrelevant? Are you trying to say that you don’t make judgments of value? Explain.
So, both of you disagree with Hoppe’s argumentation ethics?
Kinsella’s estoppel reformulation is really common-sensical. I’ve asked this before of skeptics: If Hoppe is wrong, is “(one having a right to) do unto others (property rights violators) as they do unto you” somehow inferior as a political ideology to Libertay’s dictatorial lunacy or whatever Lilburne prescribes?
Why is it relevant? Maybe I’m missing something. I don’t see how it relates to our discussion of whether scarcity implies normative ethics.
Lilburne agrees 100% with Liberte so that’s known. Since Liberte doesn’t even recognize the founding act of private property, economic action isn’t even a consideration in that possible world.
There is scarcity in the world. It’s the hallmark of Austrian economics, natural law, and libertarian philosophy - pick your label - but scarcity is a fact. Now how will such scarcity be decided upon? Who gets it?
Maybe ask me a specific question so I know where you are coming from. In that way I’ll be able to communicate what I’m saying to you better because I’ll know what is familiar terminology to you. It’s not unusual to come across a person that at first seems so out there but I sometimes think that’s only because it’s a subject that might not be as familiar to the other person. I’ve listened to discussions between astronomers before or even car mechanics and sometimes I haven’t a clue what they mean. I mean that’s something we can agree on, maybe? So ask about something that might not be coming across very well. Something I’m not, at the moment, sounding clear on. Sound like a plan?
I meant with regard to the Hume/Rothbard issue, not with regard to any particular political program Liberte favors.
So, can you answer my question or offer your refutation of Hoppe supposedly solving the Humean Problem?
She never resorted to Hume so there was never a Hume/Rothbard issue with her. She made that clear in her first post in this thread.
Okay fine, then I agree with her regarding natural rights doctrines being untenable.
Refuting Hoppe is too much for me to take on right now. I just popped in to ask Liberte to be nice to wilderness. Jeez.
Thank you for being forthcoming.
As to your argument it is with scarcity. Have fun!
Sure. I won’t be able to respond again until tomorrow, but here’s the question that need to be answered: how does scarcity give rise to normative ethics? I feel like you’re sidestepping this question. If you can write it in premise/conclusion format, this would be helpful. I just don’t see how the fact that there are a limited number of vacuum cleaners in the world implies a specific method of settling the disputes that arise over them. Scarcity implies disputes, that’s it. It says nothing about how we should respond to this fact. Maybe we should institute private property; maybe might should make right. You can’t make a decision either way without appealing to an external standard. You can’t start an argument in the indicative mood and end in the imperative mood.
That’s valid. No lie.
have a good night [:)]
you too, wil-dy. [H]
It wasn’t his task of doing so when he wrote TEOL.
The traditions. He is working in the Aristotelian, neo-Thomistic, Mengerian tradition.
Aristotelian and neo-Thomist.
So you don’t believe Rothbard distinguished between political ethics & personal ethics?
I’ll grant you this much. Keep in mind though that you can’t coherently object to turds being tossed at you when you toss turds. It’s a negative proof of what I term “moral-legal” grundnorms rather than an empirical proof of what I term the “ethical-aesthetical”. There are certain things that are obviously in line with a process of civilization (what separates men from beasts), i.e. an objective, intersubjectively ascertainable system of property rights as a legal philosophy, and those things that stray from it.
What do you mean by normative?
I’ll explain what it has to do with descriptive ethics, which E.R. provided a quote of pertaining to Hoppe which Rothbard was intellectually kin to.
Demonstrations, ie. argumentation, agreements, and bodily movements, involve ethics when the demonstration or act deals with two or more people, ie. the conduct towards another person. That’s basically ethics.
Property is defined as the person and whatever they originally appropriate or homestead. Human action, ie. again demonstrations such as argumentation, agreements, contracts, and bodily movements, are grounded in property because the human in human action is semantically property or in other words, scarcity. To define a human as scarcity or property is a semantics issue so therefore wouldn’t take away from the actual argument. It’s just a name, but a name that obviously provides meaning. The meaning would stay even if the name didn’t.
To put these last two paragraphs together what we find is property is demonstrated by each individual either through argumentation or bodily movements, ie. human action. The question of what is ‘mine and thine’ or what is ‘person A’s and person B’s’. That is what ethics describes. How that is answered is based on the axiom property and property is an axiom as it is self-evident that ethics involves humans. The conflict over scarcity or property is a conflict over humans. The conflict (or no conflict depends on the context) over scarcity is also a conflict over what humans originally appropriate or homestead which leads into economic goods. Ethics are descriptive in this sense, because this only describes the conflict over scarcity. This assumes that there is conflict over scarcity, but a conflict that is resolved peaceful right off the bat or one that is resolved in violence. In other words, it assumes that property will come into conflict with other property and how that conflict will be resolved is based on an ordinal value scale that all parties involved decide upon. So far still descriptive ethics because I haven’t answered who gets the property. It is self-evident that logically person A and B, their starting points, first principles, thus, their axiom is property, in other words, they are individually property. That’s the definition. Any conflicts that arise that involve person A and/or B therefore deal with property, ie. scarcity.
Axioms don’t involve premise/conclusion formats.
Right. Scarcity does imply disputes. Good we agree on that. At least that’s out of the way.
Nobody has said anybody should respond in any particular way as of this moment. Unless of course, it became person, then the individual’s that made this personal will provide their individual judgment of value. That might be what’s hanging you up. Maybe not.
But this is exactly the point I highlighted in my first post. Nobody technically can say how anybody should act unless they either coerce them or the person chooses to go along with them. Where I find the is-ought gap lacking is it pretends that ethical decisions are not made but they are always made. Resolutions to scarcity problems are made during any particular exchange. This is why I bring up ‘in the real world’ as opposed to the ivory tower construct of the is-ought gap that tries to stay out of ethical decisions when obviously in reality people are dealing with each other a trillion times over.
People involve themselves in decisions over what to do with scarcity all the time. Judgments as to how people should respond to each other happen all the time in the real world. Standards are erected everywhere from the price marked at the store and the consumer disagrees or agrees with the price to somebody punches another one in the face so each person in the fight go back and forth dictating how the exchange will end. Even a pacifist or a complete tyrant end up in issues over scarcity and each person is deciding how the scarcity should be exchanged or what will happen with the scarce good. Everybody is judging on everybody and on everything they get their hands on.
Again, nobody says how the scarcity should be resolved until the actual event takes place. Then all parties involved will definitely provide their individually judged values on the scarce good whether that scarce good is a person or an inanimate tangible good. That’s all descriptive. I haven’t said who exactly should get anything. But begin to apply names of real people involved in the billions upon billions of decisions made over scarcity every day and night and you’ll end up with a whole array of answers and outcomes. And this is all based on the axiom of property and human action.
Now of course, personally, I will make my decisions over scarcity as I live in the real world. I will respond in ways that when I go to the store the price is set for me and I can choose the product or not. I will make countless agreements, contracts, economic monetary exchanges, and yes I’ve been in some fights but that was when I was young or at my old job in the justice field. And if somebody personally confronted me I’m not going to use an ivory tower is-ought remark and say to the other person, “You can’t tell me what I ought to do” and then think he or she will obey that especially in light that they picked the fight with me. Of course I’ll try to say they ought not to do this to me, but they, as Liberte showed her position, may think they own me and I am their property and they can do to me whatever they feel they ought to. But personally I will not let them. Now this was my own personal response in this last paragraph here in this particular response so I did declare some ‘oughts’.
That’s the only ordinal range of value that exists. You draw out here an excellent point that I’ve been communicating in this thread.
Not necessarily. Person A’s decision happens in the intellect. That’s where decisions take place. But those decisions are based not only on knowledge but also interpretations of empirical data (external standards).
I don’t know if I did. Define those terms.
Now that it’s the next day, I find it convincing to point out that a person who supports Hume would so easily ally with Liberte, ie. a Hitler supporter, which is another reason that the is-ought gap fails to provide any sense of civil justice.
Just so the thread is clear as to Liberte’s position, Lilburne’s “her” in this quote, would unquestionably revolve around making sure natural rights are untenable due to:
2 -
And that’s the only argument Liberte offers as to why she thinks natural rights are “untenable”. She attempts to use property, ie. a natural right, as a means in order to make sure natural rights are untenable. Her objective is clearly stated above. She’s a run of the mill, what Hazlitt had called, special pleader. I contend these are the only kind of motives that exist to make sure natural rights are untenable - that and - there’s always the case of fallible knowledge as to what natural rights are.
Without natural rights there is no economic action, and it is crystal clear as to the class of people that natural law theorists name as to who threaten and violate natural rights and thereby deliver ruin to people’s lives and economic conditions: murderers, rapists, thieves, frauds.
Now of course there are also people that don’t like to call themselves natural law theorists or don’t like to say they abide by natural rights, but they do this in name only and not in actual practice. It’s human action I’m referring to. I’m referring to what people actually do which maintains this as a science. Clearly Liberte though is not spelling out in name only but has pointed out how she would like this all to end up as.