I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that there may be times where it is the “right” (“good” would actually be the better word) thing for you to violate someone’s rights. However, I wouldn’t expect these cases to be common, and the fact that it was right for you to do it doesn’t excuse the fact that you may owe restitution and/or damages for your actions, should the person decide to exercise their right to do so.
Hat tip to LS here.
This is where the interventionists’ reasoning leads: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.html
The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday…
Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.
“Imminence” (by which I mean proximity of cause) is determined the same way as it is for any other case. If someone is being accused of murder, we ask “Did the suspect’s actions cause the victim’s death?” Similarly, in this case, we ask “Did Bob’s actions cause Alice to survive?” If Alice was in no imminent danger (i.e., she would probably have survived anyway without Bob’s intervention), then we say that Bob did not cause her survival. And so for situations where someone is smoking, speeding, having unprotected sex, eating greasy food, not getting enough sleep, or reading unpleasant books, there is no proximate cause connecting the outsider’s intervention with the other person’s survival. Now, causality is a complicated philosophical issue that is often attended with a great deal of uncertainty, but this is a problem that affects ethical judgments in all cases, not just in the scenario I presented here.
I agree with you here, that saving a life does not justify stealing. What I’m talking about is the specific case where the person whose property is being “violated” is the same person whose life is being saved in the process. If Alice argues that Bob should not have broken her fence, then she is essentially saying that she would rather have died than have lived. But the fact that she is alive now making this statement shows that she does in fact prefer life over death (otherwise, she would go commit suicide rather than bother Bob). You might say that her very presence “estops” her from objecting to Bob’s actions.
Interrupting euthanasia violates the rights of the person administering it. The euthanasist can object to the intervention without running into the same contradiction as when the patient objects.
Again, the defense’s argument would be valid only if they could show that the power station’s owners were in imminent danger of death, and that painting Gordon Brown’s name on the plant’s chimney was the only way of saving them. But you don’t have to be a scientist to see that this is obviously not true.
Certainly the people running the government now profit enormously from it; but I think we can agree that those who oppose it are not trying to “force their morality on others” or “circumvent the price system.” The obvious objection is that we don’t have a free market now, and the members of the government can only profit because they use force to extract wealth from the citizens. In a free market, consistent profits could only be made by providing something that people are willing to pay for. But the moment we say that, we are already assuming that there is some standard by which some societies qualify as “free markets” and others don’t. (This is a little off-topic; we can start a new thread if we have to.)
I say this with respect, and hope you will understand the positive sentiment behind it.
You are becoming a fantastic politician.
Precisely. It leads us right back to where we are.
The notion being that the most profitable system is one based on rights.
I believe that is a non-sequitur.
No one has to, provided someone will give you access to the right of way, and if they do not, they are merely asserting their property rights.
Remember, the interventionist has an insurer as well. [;)]
You didn’t answer the question. WHO decides whether the proximity of cause was valid, in the instance that the intervened party objects to the intervention? This is based on the premise that you are correct (which I believe you are not).
I know the answer (from the Sterba thread), but I would like you to make it clear.
The same person or people who would decide any other sort of dispute. It could be a judge, jury, or some other arrangement—it would vary depending on what the individuals preferred. But I don’t see how it’s relevant to the correctness of my claim, any more than someone who says that murder is wrong has to know the answer to the question “Who will decide whether or not murder has been committed?”.
But how can they choose an arbiter when regardless of whether or not there was a rights violation, your claim is that proximate cause already eliminates responsibility and restitution? Seems to me that the fact that rights were violated never come into question, only whether or not rights may be violated.
Do you see the difference? The victim has nothing to gain where someone can decide his rights do not apply and yet this is the likely aggrieved party.
Ultimately, you propose an agency which can decide when rights apply and do not apply.
It’s an added layer of subjectivity which is the premise of the state. Rights are not sovereign, or delegated, but defined by a legal body which reserves the right to change the definition of rights arbitrarily.
I already said your claim was incorrect. I am merely playing it out.
Again, that is different. We’re not gathering evidence to determine if rights were or were not violated, as they would be in determining if a murder was committed and by whom. You’re proposing to redefine rights as impotent based on circumstance. It’s completely separate from the material facts of the event.
What is especially dangerous about this is that we stop judging action, and start trying to judge intent. No one can conclusively prove intent but action is observable, quantifiable.
Could you rephrase that? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.
I’m not saying that there can or should be any agency with the power to decree rights into and out of existence. The proper function of any legal agency is to discover truths that exist independently of the agency itself, not to determine right and wrong by arbitrary fiat. The objectivity of ethical principles is in no way diminished by the practical fact that eventually some human is going to have to decide how to apply those principles to a certain case.
By the way, what do you find problematic with my line of reasoning?
That you ignore action and allow for rights violations without consequence based upon (1) outcome and (2) intent.
I think it is another spin on lifeboats.
As for the rest, I don’t have the endurance tonight to go through it in even more detail. Any time, any one proposes what seems to me to be an excuse to violate rights, whether it is you in this thread, others in the Animal cruelty thread, Danny in the Sterba thread, or Wombie in our discussions on property redistribution, my spider sense goes off like a fire alarm.
Perhaps I am too radical, or too absolutist but if rights are so easily compromised in theory, before we have won our rights, then we’re sunk. We’re sunk like the Constitution starting out as an enduring social contract based around property redistribution.
I understand in the real world, there will be compromises. Someone will jump my fence, save my life and I will thank him, not charge him with trespass. But if we start out with the premise that rights violations with positive outcomes and perceived good intentions are automatically beyond the understanding and forgiveness of the violated, then we’re screwed. This is PRECISELY the rationale the state uses. Violate rights for a greater good or better outcome, with the claim of good intentions.
Guess I found some moxie after all.
I agree - I can’t help thinking - and I’m not sure if I’m correct here, that rights are worthless if they aren’t absolute.
Well, let’s bring in culpability and the extent of that as it pertains to rights violation. One example that I can think of is… Imagine there is a diver on the edge of a pool who, in the act of diving, hits his/her head on something - causing terminal damage… now in that very instant that person is drowning and the terminal damage won’t mean much in about 60 seconds, but someone comes in and saves the diver.
After the fact, the diver is upset about being saved and claims rights violation. My question then is as follows “is the rescuer only guilty of moving someone against their will, or are they now culpable for the terminal damage as well?”
Secondly, what aspect do property rights play into this? If the diver is at a private pool and someone saves him/her - isn’t it up to the owner of the pool whether or not there was a violation of rights?
I understand why you might have this gut reaction, but it doesn’t suffice as an argument. At best, it should cause us to look upon such claims with skepticism, not dismiss them offhand.
This is a far more general claim than the one I have made. Again, I’m only talking about a case where a person’s property is used to save the life of that same person. The rescuee cannot object to the rescuer’s actions without engaging in a performative contradiction. The case where one person’s rights are violated for the benefit of a third party is another matter entirely.
No, it’s the indicator than an argument stinks.
I didn’t dismiss your idea offhand. I explained why it erodes the notion of rights, seeks to redefine rights on the fly, diminshes the victim while protecting the rights violator, and that it requries removing arbitration from the sphere of what happened, to what the outcome and intent was.
And the rescuer cannot first take action without committing a rights violation.
I’ll repeat. You are validating the aggression by the outcome and the supposed intent. Since we can never truly prove intent, we are left with outcome. Which is an ends justifies the means argument.
I’m curious to know how your performative contradicition works with regards to restitution for murder? If the party in question is dead, then how could they possibly claim a rights violation from a murderer?
What happens when I push the man from the path of the boulder, and he falls and bangs his head, leading to death? That is to say, what happens when I kill someone trying to save them? Does the contradiction still cover my ass when things don’t work out to plan?
Are you saying that the terminal damage happened before the rescuer decided to act? If so, then obviously the rescuer isn’t responsible for it, because causation can only proceed forward in time. (Correct me if I’ve misinterpreted your scenario.)
The pool owner might stipulate conditions for admittance such as “You agree to let the lifeguards save you” or “You agree not to save any other swimmers in danger.” But in the absence of such conditions, the pool owner’s preference is not important to the dispute between the diver and the rescuer.
Well, that’s the matter at issue. I’m saying that the act of rescuing is not a rights violation.
What’s the difference between “what happened” and “what the outcome was”? And how is a determination of intent necessary to determine whether or not Bob’s actions caused Alice’s survival?
The dead victim of course cannot literally open his/her mouth and object, but this is not a condition that the victim preferred. Other people can argue in the victim’s name and say that at the time of the murder, the victim did not want to be killed. There is no contradiction here because it is not being claimed that the victim preferred death. (If the victim did in fact prefer death, then there is no rights-violation, and the killing is not murder but euthanasia.) If the murderer tries to say that no living person has the right to argue on behalf of a dead victim, then this simply gives everyone else permission to kill the murderer with impunity.
You would be covered if (A) the action you took was one without which the boulder-stander would surely have died, and (B) this action presented ex ante a risk of killing the boulder-stander no higher than was necessary to prevent their death.
For example, suppose Dave will die unless someone points a randomized six-chambered revolver (loaded with one bullet) at his head and pulls the trigger. Carol does this, and as it turns out, the bullet is shot, and Dave dies. Carol is innocent of any crime, because Carol’s action cannot be objected to in Dave’s name without claiming simultaneously that Dave both did and did not want to die. (This is the same contradiction that estops Alice from objecting to Bob’s intervention.)
Now this is an extremely abstract and contrived example, and in any real situation you would have to satisfy the very heavy burden of proving both (A) and (B).
You refuse to acknowledge that your theory is not objective. It is based upon the outcome of the intervention to validate the intervention in the first place. It also relies heavily on the unprovable, namely intent and a negative proof (if I did not save you, you would have died).
I relent because I am just repeating myself.
One of the (many) foundational arguments for anarchic law comes from the reputation of individuals. If Bob saves Joe from his burning home, and Joe sues Bob in retaliation, Joe will have to live with the reputation of his action. Family, friends, and community peer pressure will more likely than not convince Joe not to sue Bob.
Though if in the unlikely case that it is brought to court, Joe should be held accountable for destruction of any property which was damaged in the rescue of Bob.
There is ATLEAST one exception to this premise that I can think of off the top of my head. If Bob and Joe’s resolution organizations both included an ‘Emergency Rescue Situation Clause’ which would allow for violation of property rights in specified scenarios. Joe might not have the right of retaliation. More likely than not, most contracts would allow for this. This however, MUST be left up to each individual to decide, as it becomes VERY dangerous if it is left up to any sort of collective or third party (ie, the jury, the community, the state, etc). This is in part due to the arbitrary nature of words with relation to the ideas they are referencing. When one attempts to achieve a universally enforced law, it generally means, bad things are right around the corner.
In short- let each individual decide for themself when their property can be violated. After all, I can decide what is in my best interest better than anyone else on this earth.
I agree with LS on this. No amount of aggression is necessary. You don’t solve it by leaving it up to a mandatory third party, you will only make it worse. You also kick open the door for all sorts of statism. The market will (and is very capable of) solving every problem you throw at it- sometimes it is very difficult to see, but that is precisely WHY we should leave it up to the magnificent minds of the market to solve.
Why from Bob and not from home or personal insurance? Or from (private) firefighters because he did their job for them.
I suppose you could say that all ethical claims lack objectivity in the sense that it’s not always possible to determine with certainty whether action X caused outcome Y, but that doesn’t mean that statements of the form “Actions which cause outcome Y are moral/immoral” are meaningless. The ethical validity of an action can be judged only on the basis of what outcome happens as a result of that action.
As I mentioned, a determination of intent is not necessary to determine whether or not the “performative contradiction/estoppel” argument applies.
In all the scenarios I assume for the sake of argument that this is true. It is an empirical claim that must be supported with evidence in any real case.
Aren’t all ethical principles necessarily universally applicable? And do you believe that the current statist status-quo is a satisfactory solution to the problems thrown at it? If not, why not? As I said before, one cannot say that some markets are “free” and others are “unfree” without some universal ethical principle(s) to distinguish between the two.
We’re assuming there are no contractual relationships to complicate the matter.