I admire Rothbard, but i see problems in his self-ownership-theory. If self-ownership is deduced from the fact that individuals are the only ones to control their bodies, how is it possible then that someone can take control over your other property? I see this problem in Hoppes argumentation ethics too.
I have great respect for both theorists, and i hope that I have just understood something wrong.
You are the first owner for both your body and homesteaded property. Your body can never have another owner, so there can be no transfer of title. Your other property can only justly be controlled by another through title transfer, at which point it ceases to be your property.
The issue at hand is not causal-control, but legitimacy. Another person could force you to do something you don’t want to do, but that doesn’t mean they should do so. You’re the only person who has the right to control you, which is equivalent to saying you own yourself.
I don’t even see the point of all this self-ownership jibba-jabba. Trying to moralize the law just confuses things.
People have a presumption of liberty for epistemic reasons, property is just a consequence of liberty; not a ‘right’ or an ‘ownership’ except as a derivative relating to your contracting it out. Law is for dealing with people, obviously if you deny that people are at liberty to act with their own bodies you’re making the whole question of law superfluous. You’re free to do so, but that’s got to do with physical power, not law or jurisprudence or arbitration.
“You are the first owner for both your body and homesteaded property. Your body can never have another owner, so there can be no transfer of title. Your other property can only justly be controlled by another through title transfer, at which point it ceases to be your property.”
Well, that explained the problem after I gave a thought for your post… “Trapped” in body, your mind “homesteades” it by using it. By biological reasons your mind cannot gave body away, expect if you decide to do an amputation. But there is an another problem.
Even if we could found logical ethics for liberty, is there any use for them in global anarcho-capitalism, where property owners create their own laws? For example, James founds a city to his land. He decides that those who break contracts must be punished by force. If you don’t like that you don’t have to move to his city, of course. Most people are still OK whit this law, and move in. Then someone breaks the contract he had made and is punished, while this is against Rothbards ethics.
So in a world where laws are created and used by their workability, not by how axiomaticly ethical they are, where do we need Rothbards self-ownership theory?
EDIT: I screwed quotes maybe but whatever i’m not into this forums mechanics yet
Care to enlighten us?
You can come to Mises Forums to argue about free market vs. statism but don’t do it here!! I don’t want that my questions get buried under some leftist offtopic.
I think it runs something along the lines of he agrees with Mise scientically, but not culturally. If I am correct, have fun thinking about that one.
‘Enlighten’ in the sense of New Age mysticism.
The concept of self-ownership is something that evolved over time as part of the ‘spontaneous order.’ But it can’t be assumed that people ‘by default’ or inherently own their bodies. The limitations that other members of society have over your body is an aspect of the complex arrangement that is the property rights system, wherein other scarce resources, but not one’s ‘vessel,’ can be traded.
In a sense, the right over one’s body is ‘inalienable,’ but not because of some ‘natural law,’ but because it is impossible for one to stop exercising power over their bodies, whether actively or passively, unless coercion is involved.
In a sense, the right over one’s body is ‘inalienable,’ but not because of some ‘natural law,’ but because it is impossible for one to stop exercising power over their bodies, whether actively or passively, unless coercion is involved.
Beh. This is all just customary stuff. I have no problem with slavery contracts. If someone owns your body they own the property, if you can’t cease your association with the physical materials that make up your body that is your problem, it is not theirs. It is no more coercion to beat you into submission than it is to beat a horse.
Contracting yourself into slavery makes you an outlaw. You can try and escape if you like, and they can whip you and throw you in a cage if they like.
I am reminded of the scene in ‘Fight club’ where Edward Norton is trying to convince those guys who are holding him to let him go, and the guys just tell him “You told us you’d say that.”
Surely, someone can try to implement a system of slavery contracts, but it is not something that I see flying in a free society. I see consequences to such a decision, whether it be other free people setting the slave free (even though the slave had ‘renounced’ his freedom) without any courts willing to convict them of trespassing and theft; or the slave owner is ostracized.
Now it isn’t inconceivable that slavery contracts would be tolerated, even become socially acceptable, but that’s not something I see going with people’s concepts of freedom and non-aggression. It ultimately depends on what society in general accepts, in the same way that abortion is acceptable or unacceptable.
Ricky James Moore II, I’m trying to appreciate your stance on things since you mention Nietzsche, whom I deeply admire, but maybe this notion of slavery is just still too ‘out there’ for me.
Now it isn’t inconceivable that slavery contracts would be tolerated, even become socially acceptable, but that’s not something I see going with people’s concepts of freedom and non-aggression. It ultimately depends on what society in general accepts, in the same way that abortion is acceptable or unacceptable.
I really don’t give a damn about ‘freedom’ or ‘non-aggression’; the former is useless (to be ‘free’ means to be rid of something) and the latter is tautological. I am interested in a particular concept of contract and tort law; with which slavery (i.e., selling of the pieces of matter that make up your body) is perfectly compatible.
Ricky James Moore II, I’m trying to appreciate your stance on things since you mention Nietzsche, whom I deeply admire, but maybe this notion of slavery is just still too ‘out there’ for me.
If a man is improvident or fool enough to sell himself onto a plantation, good riddance; I hope they sweat him hard.
Libertarians get into these quandries because of their classical liberal nonsense and tendency to moralize everything; both of which I consider basically useless/counter-productive. For that matter, if it wasn’t for indentured servitude many hundreds or thousands would have starved in the Old World for want of a boat ride.
You’re an an-cap? If so, what does it matter what you or philosphers think about slavery? If property owners think that people in their land have right to sell themselves to be slaves or to do circumcision to their children and people agree with that by moving to that property, no one can’t go there and force them to follow some Rothbardian ethics.
In a stateless free market, laws are not created and used by how ethic they are, but by what people prefer. I would like to hear from Rothbardians that is there any use for Murray’s philosophy, because clearly no one would care about it in pure free market.
voluntary slavery? It’s a bogus concept and practically has no use except if one wants to show how “ancaps are insane”. Take one positive word (voluntary), add some negative word, that all people fear (slavery) and you have a perfect example of propaganda. Another and more interesting example would be “voluntary rape”. If a woman writes a contract that she will have sex with a man, but she at the “hottest moment” (say, after taking her clothes off) changes her mind. Does man have a right to proceed and rape her? After all, there is a contract. LOL checkmate anarchists. You deluded kids. Go back to democractic thinking herp derp.
P.S. nope, I don’t think that such contracts could be enforceable or moral. At worst, the woman owes that man a monetary compensation of some kind, not the “sex”.
I’m not talking about does man have the right for that or it is moral or not. I’m asking is there any role for ethics in anarcho-capitalism, where property owners can choose their laws. Example circumsion, it is a mutilation and a right violation. How you are going to stop that in anarcho-capitalism?
Of course if you are minarchist, I don’t see any point in this debate.
I don’t want to sound too “cynical”, but there is no issue at all, Chyd3nius. At least, not that big that most people (especially those new to anarchist philosophy) seem to think. Actually, here the minarchists, who have a real BIG problem, because their system has a monopoly on law, so any lunatic can impose his/her preferences on everybody! And circumsticion is actually not the worst thing that could happen, even though I am against it (for the record), but I see mentally mutilation of children (who experience it in public schools for example) much more violent than cutting parts of their penises.
The thing that you have to understand is that there is no need to stop anything except letting other people decide what’s best for you. Minarchist state is unsustainable in my opinion and has the same major flaws that any modern state has. While I would like to live in such state (of which most minarchists fantasize) compared to where I live now (a shithole), but I hate limitations people put on themselves because they are afraid of change. I am more radical about freedom than any even radical minarchis is, because I would like no cancer at all than a controlled ill condition.
Now, asking how am I gonna stop this and that in ancap implies that there will be some objective authority who can decide what is right and wrong in minarchist state in a first place. I tell you, there is no such thing, it’s a delusion to think that just because it may seem possible to enforce only “good laws” on everybody through state monoply and it may seem preferable to some people, that thing hardly would happen. It is much more likely that the contrary thing will happen. BAD people will impose their stupid idiotic fantasies on everybody and you will have to live with it. Like it or not.
To say it short, once the state exists it is impossible to limit its power.
I won’t answer your question in a higher detail, how a free society could solve the “cirmusticion” problem because by doing so I would only put the limit on other peoples’ solutions that are out there.
Sure, I would prefer to live in a society free from violent religious delusions (not a religion itself, but such things as circumsticion, telling a kid he has original sin and other mental tortures), but I can’t impose my preference on everybody with physical force because that leads us to where we are now. The true answer is deeper than we think.
P.S. and I don’t think anarcho-capitalism has no problems or that it is perfect. Quite contrary, but I share many views with them and it’s a handy term, at least in this forum.
There is an important distinction between libertarian ethics and a stateless society. In an (obviously anarchist) libertarian society almost everyone follows Rothbardian ethics and “market chosen laws” correspond very closely to the libertarian ideas of justice. But there is also a sort of paradox with this scenario, if everyone is truly libertarian, wouldn’t there be no crimes? We wouldn’t even need courts, since everyone would always respect everyone else’s rights. It’s a utopian paradox.
A stateless society is merely one where laws are defined through competing private courts and arbitration firms. There is no single government dictating laws, but instead laws are codified through a market process. Now it is very likely that market chosen laws could drift away from strict libertarian ethics, however if the laws drift too far from self-ownership and private property, society will likely break down. For this reason there are market forces to make market chosen laws similar to libertarian ethics.
Robert P. Murphy - Chaos Theory
If you can only own your body then everything else must be a claim (a concept that involves more than one party).
If you can own your body and your body produced something your claim is standing on good evidence.