self-ownership concept - is it axiomatic?

Economics Political Theory
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You can take it to be self-evident but I don’t think that does you any good. My objection is to the supposed “necessity argument” or presuppositional argument that self-ownership must be assumed in any rational discussion. I think that it really is self-evident that each individual owns himself but I also think that doesn’t matter. Let’s say someone claims to be your master and you are their slave. You go to court to prove that you are not his slave. In the course of making your legal proof, you trot out Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics. But when you’re done, the master simply pulls out his Deed of Ownership of your body, and points out the legal statute which grants him ownership of you since he holds the Deed free and clear. The judge looks at the Deed, looks at the statute, says, “Sorry Mr. Collins, your argument was very beautiful but you’re the property of Mr. X”. The reality of coercion is that shared assumptions or self-evident truths are irrelevant. What matters is what rights can be defended and what the conditions are under which those rights can be defended.

The problem I have with focusing on creating clever arguments for self-ownership or natural rights is that they can lead a person astray into the idea that what is wrong with the world is that we don’t have good enough theory to explain the way things ought to be. This is simply not the case. There are many improvements which could be made to our legal system that would immensely enhance the rights which individuals enjoy. As David Friedman says, our legal system is about 1000 years behind the state of the art in legal theory by virtue of its disuse of one of the most important legal devices ever created… the performance bond.

But once you start to look at these particular rights which would be enhanced by simple changes to our legal system, you begin to perceive a pattern. The pattern is that our legal system is the way it is exactly because it is a territorial monopoly. We do not have less rights than we should because there is a lack of theoretical arguments that show why things should be different than they are. We have less rights than we should have because the territorial monopolist of law and security - the State - has devoted its full energy to ensuring that we cannot enjoy those rights. So, the root problem is the territorial monopoly of law and it is this which must be attacked by libertarians. I do not think attempting to raise self-ownership to the level of an axiom enhances the battle against the monopolist of law, in fact, I think it cheapens libertarian theory. Please note that I admire Hoppe’s philosophy in most ways but on the point of natural rights and his Argumentation Ethics, I take strong exception.

Clayton -

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@Clayton, I fail to see why it cheapens libertarian theory. I see the self-ownership “axiom” as the very foundation of libertarian theory. It’s the foundation of the entire concepts of rights and liberty. For this it must be the foundation of any argument against the state and its actions. I don’t say this to mean we should devote more time and energy to arguing for the principle of self-ownership than against the state, but it must be argued and understood first, if the arguments against the state are to hold any weight.

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The problem is that the state is brute force, arguments against brute force are pointless. It’s like a hostage trying to talk the hostage-taker out of continuing to hold him by arguing natural rights theory. Utterly pointless. You could say that the audience is not the State itself but the general public but this is a failure to be consistent - the State exists exactly because the general public assents to its existence. The people want an apparatus of legitimized coercion to exist. Nothing could be more certain than this.

The reason people want the State to exist is because they are immoral, that is, they hold corrupt morals. Natural rights arguments skirt the whole issue by pretending to jump from value-free argument to normative principles, which is impossible. Rothbard made the mistake of thinking he had derived ought from is. Rothbard argued that it is immoral for something to act in a manner contrary to its nature. This is an unfortunate lapse in Rothbard’s characteristically unflinching logical rigor.

Now, a self-consciously value-laden approach is fine with me. If you start the argument by acknowledging that you are making a values argument, then you are not trying to imbue an ethical opinion with the certitude of science. But once you start promulgating normative principles under the guise of being value-free, you are just being dishonest and, ultimately, logically inconsistent.

I think we ought to be simultaneously following both value-free and value-laden approaches. In the value-free approach, we ought to be expounding the praxeological consequences of social norms. This helps establish the facts in the case. In the value-laden approach, we ought to be exposing the immorality of the State, that is, stripping the mask from the State and showing its true nature as an agent of hypocrisy. Perhaps the most deeply ingrained ethical concept - present in all cultures - is the ethical concept of universalizability, that is, that rules should be symmetrical, should not have special exemptions on the basis of personal identity, that right and wrong should not depend on the identity of the actor. The essence of the State is personal privilege, special exemptions for a special class of individuals who live according to a different set of rules than the rest of us. By exposing this fact and its consequences, an insuperable case can be made against the State.

Clayton -

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“I fail to see why it cheapens libertarian theory. I see the self-ownership “axiom” as the very foundation of libertarian theory. It’s the foundation of the entire concepts of rights and liberty. For this it must be the foundation of any argument against the state and its actions. I don’t say this to mean we should devote more time and energy to arguing for the principle of self-ownership than against the state, but it must be argued and understood first, if the arguments against the state are to hold any weight.”
I completely agree. Thanks again everyone for your insightful comments. In other forums, I have noticed objections to the concept of self-ownership that harp on the idea that an object cannot own itself. But is that not merely a play on words that essentially ignores the fact that the human being is a very special kind of property? In fact, is it not undoubtedly the most important/essential “piece” of property one will ever own?

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@Clayton, I understand your point better. Thank you for explaining it.

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There is a difference between possession and ownership.

Something the “might makes right” crowd doesn’t understand, or does and rejects.

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Conza88, that some of us realize that property is a convention does not make us the “might makes right” crowd. In fact, we don’t need a right to property because property is a liberty which violates no convention against torts. Liberties are those acts that are left out of all the feasible acts when you subtract all of the acts that violate conventions against torts. Liberties are not rights, and rights are not liberties. To assume that we must have a right to do something before we are free to do it, is to assume that everything is unfree unless we are given a right to do it. The opposite is true, we are free to do anything unless it violates conventions against torts. No special right is required.

Every right has a corresponding obligation and a rights/obligation relationship is one between two or more people and an act. Having a right to own yourself is redundant and silly. No one is free to enslave you because it violates conventions against torts, not because they lack a “right” to enslave you.

The idea that we need a right before we can legitimately do anything is dangerous to the idea of liberty. Naturally, it leads people to ask where these rights come from. When you can’t convince others of where these rights come from they will inevitably conclude that they do not exist and so you cannot legitimately perform the act you wish to perform. Of course, this is completely backwards, because the burden of proof is on those to show why a given act is illegitamate not for you to show that it is legitimate (this is the case because you would have to give an infinite number of reasons to show why every possible objection to your act fails, but they only have to give one good objection).

When Locke, Nozick, or Rothbard try to come up with theories to justify property, they are assuming the burden of proof when they should not. This is like a defendant making a case that he is innocent before he even hears of what he is being charged with. Admirable, but foolish.

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“Conza88, that some of us realize that property is a convention”

Except it’s not, and as such the rest of your post is a waste of time.

“Furthermore, if a person were not permitted to acquire property in these goods and spaces by means of an act of original appropriation, i.e., by establishing an objective (intersubjectively ascertainable) link between himself and a particular good and/or space prior to anyone else, and if instead property in such goods or spaces were granted to latecomers, then no one would ever be permitted to begin using any good unless he had previously secured such a late-comer’s consent. Yet how can a late-comer consent to the actions of an early-comer? Moreover, every late-comer would in turn need the consent of other and later later-comers, and so on. That is, neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny would have been or would be able to survive if one followed this rule. However, in order for any person - past, present or future - to argue anything, survival must be possible; and in order to do just this property rights cannot be conceived of as being timeless and unspecific with respect to the number of persons concerned. Rather, property rights must necessarily be conceived of as originating by means of action at definite points in time and space by definite individuals. Otherwise, it would be impossible for anyone to ever say anything at a definite point in time and space and for someone else to be able to reply. Simply saying, then, that the first-user-first-owner rule of the ethics of private property can be ignored or is unjustified implies a performative contradiction, as one’s being able to say so must presuppose one’s existence as an independent decision-making unit at a given point in time and space. 4”

4 Note the “natural law” character of the proposed solution to the problem of social order - that private property and its acquisition through acts of original appropriation are not mere conventions but necessary institutions (in accordance with man’s nature as a rational animal). A convention serves a purpose, and an alternative to a convention exists. For instance, the Latin alphabet serves the purpose of written communication. It has an alternative, the Cyrillic alphabet. Hence, we call it a convention. What is the purpose of norms? The avoidance of conflict regarding the use of scarce physical things. Conflict generating norms contradict the very purpose of norms. Yet with regard to the purpose of conflict avoidance, no alternative to private property and original appropriation exists. In the absence of prestabilized harmony among actors, conflict can only be prevented if all goods are always in the private ownership of specific individuals and it is always clear who owns what and who does not. Also, conflicts can only be avoided from the very beginning of mankind if private property is acquired by acts of original appropriation (instead of by mere declarations or words of late-comers). ~ The Ethics and Economics of Private Property - Hoppe

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Your body is the only thing you’ll ever have with a real life-time guarantee.

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Conza88, your quote doesn’t even contract my assertion. In fact, it simple defends the convention I was talking about; namely, the convention of “first come, first serve”. It makes the distinction between convention and “neccessary institutions”, but it doesn’t tell us what it is “necessary” for. Many conventions are necessary for civilization to exist and others for it to prosper. The fact that “first come, first serve” could not have been “last come, first serve” shows that conventions aren’t really arbitrary but depend on biological facts about humans as well as physical facts about the world. This doesn’t mean that they cease to be conventions, only that people are much more likely to adopt conventions that work well (minimize costly conflict), than ones that don’t.

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All fully-specified conventions minimize costly conflict. If the first-come-first-serve convention is really “necessary,” then how do you explain the fact that it exists virtually nowhere (i.e., that states exist virtually everywhere)? See my reply to your other post about conventions.

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Which is it? I think it’s a far stretch to say that self-ownership is “self-evident” – it would be like saying that the four-color map theorem is “self-evident.” While I think it may be possible to prove, it’s not nearly as easy as it is often assumed.

As for whether or not it matters:

To my knowledge, Hoppe does not dispute this. (If he does, then he’s confused, but this confusion would be easily corrected.)

Can you refer us to a source? Does Friedman actually prove the affirmative assertion that anti-self-ownership is consistent, or does he just debunk someone’s particular argument for its inconsistency? Again, though I think that Hoppe’s particular argument is unsatisfactory, I think that a proof is possible, and more importantly, that such a proof would be incredibly useful, for the reasons I’ll outline below.

To be more precise, people want others to be coerced, but not themselves. If someone wants something for themself, then it’s not coercion. (I don’t want to start a debate about unity of will, akrasia, etc., but this is at least true in the political realm of taxation, regulation, and so on.) However, the physical fact of scarcity means that not everyone can get what they want. As a result, conventions emerge to determine what people can and can’t do. But there is no reason to believe that any particular convention will arise (see Schelling’s example here).

Breaking the monopoly by itself won’t guarantee a libertarian outcome. To the extent that people interact with one another, the market will demand uniformity of laws between them. (Earthlings and Martians can get along just fine with different laws, until they meet and try to trade and mingle.) But in general, the market will not determine the contents of the uniform laws – see this article by Cowan and Sutter. This explains why the state (territorial monopolist) can come into existence when it did not always exist.

This is where the self-ownership arguments come in. Imagine that, in the game on page 2 of Cowan and Sutter’s article, we could show that “Able Backdown / Baker Challenge” is the only solution for which an argument can be coherently maintained. Then it becomes the uniquely salient solution, and much more likely to be the one that emerges.

In short, simply opposing legal monopolies doesn’t ensure that the outcome will respect libertarian rights. To achieve this, the libertarian must also take positive action to shape the consensus that emerges. The arguments put forth by Hoppe (and others) are part of this.