Stealing food vs. Dying of Starvation

[RockyRaccoon]

Hi all,

Up to now, I’ve been a rights based anarcho-capitalist. However, while describing what a society free of government might look like, a fellow utilitarian libertarian asked me a question that’s been bothering me all night.

“Imagine that somehow you find yourself nearly dying of starvation. The only food within reach is a nearby farmer’s crops, but he refuses to exchange with you under any circumstances (which is within his property rights). Would you uphold your morals and die of starvation rather than take only what is necessary to sustain life?”

In my opinion, this is a highly unrealistic situation. However, the imaginary situation does serve to prove a point, doesn’t it? I can’t honestly say that I would allow myself to starve rather than take what I need to survive. But choosing thus seems to destroy my entire argument that people have an inviolable right to their own property, doesn’t it? Couldn’t others use the same kind of argument to justify theft to pay for life-saving medical operations, etc?

Even if I offer to compensate the farmer for the food taken, the point is that the exchange was involuntary. Wouldn’t he be within his rights to defend his crops through threat or use of force? What should be my penalty if convicted of the crime? If I offered to compensate the farmer later by paying him the “market value” of the crops that I’ve eaten, is that fair to the farmer, because he would not have sold me those crops for ANY PRICE.

Here are my thoughts; I’d VERY MUCH appreciate others’ suggestions:

(1) This is an unrealistic situation whose fabrication is designed to induce an admission that one would violate their own principles. In reality, there are likely to be several opportunities to exchange labor or goods for food from willing sellers of food.

However, I’m not so sure the imagined situation should be so easily discarded. Surely there are ways to make the argument more sophisticated. Suppose instead that there is a natural disaster, like a tsunami, and rescue workers are on the way. In the meantime, it is discovered that you don’t own enough fresh water to keep yourself alive. You discover that nobody else is willing to trade for their own fresh water and the only way to survive is to steal water from your neighbors. They may or may not survive if their water is stolen.

(2) The owners of said products have a right to defend their property through threat or use of force. What can be said about me if I am willing to steal from the farmers’ large harvest (easy decision) or my neighbors’ precious fresh water (difficult decision)? Is it right so long as I acknowledge their right to defend themselves from theft? Or is any willingness to steal even under these conditions a clear rejection of ones own embracing of property rights?

(3) Under a libertarian society, what should be my punishment if I am convicted of a crime? One might say it should be the “market value” of the goods taken. In the case of the fresh water, my theft may result in the known death of my neighbor. Would my crime be tantamount to murder? Or would the water just have an extremely high market value in that situation? The farmer may not have exchanged food with me for ANY price – is it fair, then, for the farmer to receive only “market value” for the food that I stole?

(4) Aside from fabricated situations of these sorts, I otherwise agree with the rights-based justification of anarcho-capitalism. So what does that make me?! Not exactly a utilitarian. But not a complete follower of the rights based argument since I’m willing to violate it to prevent my own starvation.

Is it correct to say that I support the right of individuals over their own bodies (without exception) and the rights of individuals over their own property, except in cases where my own life is at risk…? The problem there is that it sounds like someone could twist that argument to justify all sorts of property violations (take the case of “rights” based health care, which I still reject.)

Looking for guidance on this seemingly difficult, uncomfortable conundrum…

Sincerely,

Michael Hall

[liberty_student]

It’s called a lifeboat scenario, and it is a popular challenge to property based rights.

The truth is, if you violate his property, regardless of your intentions, but you willingly violate his property, you are a hypocrite.

So if you will steal to eat, will you steal for clothes? For shelter? For sex? Will you kill the farmer if he defends his crops from you?

Once you start making exceptions, then you have no principles.

I would rather die than steal or inflict violence on others. ymmv.

[laminustacitus]

The entire Rothbardian framework upon which rights based anarcho-capitalism is built is unsound; Edward Feser has shown that it is extremely flawed: here, here, and here. Both Mises’ utilitarianism, and Hayek’s whiggism (for lack of a better term) are far sounder foundations.

[DanielMuffinburg]

@RockyRaccoon

“Imagine that somehow you find yourself nearly dying of starvation. The only food within reach is a nearby farmer’s crops, but he refuses to exchange with you under any circumstances (which is within his property rights). Would you uphold your morals and die of starvation rather than take only what is necessary to sustain life?”

Why is he out an about without enough food? Why did he go so far away from the nearest food place (besides the farm) so as to not have enough food or energy to return to the nearest food place?

@RockyRaccoon

(1) This is an unrealistic situation whose fabrication is designed to induce an admission that one would violate their own principles.

That, or to show how heartless libertarians are, which is an appeal to emotion.

@RockyRaccoon

You discover that nobody else is willing to trade for their own fresh water and the only way to survive is to steal water from your neighbors. They may or may not survive if their water is stolen.

A libertarian world where no one is willing to trade? Oh, come on! That is silly.

[liberty_student]

@laminustacitus

Edward Feser

The 1980s called, they want Edward Feser’s hairstyle back.

Seriously though, I have heard great challenges to rights based ethics, and I am sympathetic to some of those arguments, however, I have yet to see an argument for something superior.

Utilitarianism is just another form of preference ethics, and if we understand that preferences are subjective, then utilitarianism is just a faux claim to objectivity.

[laminustacitus]

@liberty student

Seriously though, I have heard great challenges to rights based ethics, and I am sympathetic to some of those arguments, however, I have yet to see an argument for something superior.

Why care about "superior"arguments - an argument is either sound, or unsound. If they are unsound, as Professor Feser shows Rothbard’s rights theories based on self-ownership are, they should be rejected as such.

[DanielMuffinburg]

@laminustacitus

@liberty student

Seriously though, I have heard great challenges to rights based ethics, and I am sympathetic to some of those arguments, however, I have yet to see an argument for something superior.

Why care about "superior"arguments - an argument is either sound, or unsound. If they are unsound, as Professor Feser shows Rothbard’s rights theories based on self-ownership are, they should be rejected as such.

Edward Feser: “The problem is just that Rothbard seems incapable of giving a philosophically interesting argument for his claims. (Moreover, the claims in question were borrowed by Rothbard from 19th century anarchists like Lysander Spooner, so even where Rothbard is philosophically interesting he isn’t original.)”

Seriously? Should we also have a low opinion of everyone who borrowed from Aristotle?

[Seph]

I would take the food and subject myself to the punishment.

In my opinion (and I could very well be wrong) libertarianism does not make a judgement about whether you ‘should’ or ‘should not’ take the food in this situation, merely that should you do so, appropriate punishment is necessary.

[liberty_student]

@laminustacitus

If they are unsound, as Professor Feser shows Rothbard’s rights theories based on self-ownership are, they should be rejected as such.

And replace them with other unsound theories? Or just have no theory at all? You tell me Lam.

Why isn’t Feser challenging men like Hoppe and Long who have advanced Rothbard’s work? Do you also reject Hoppe and Long?

[laminustacitus]

@liberty student

@laminustacitus

If they are unsound, as Professor Feser shows Rothbard’s rights theories based on self-ownership are, they should be rejected as such.

And replace them with other unsound theories? Or just have no theory at all? You tell me Lam.

Having no theory is better than having a bad one. I find Newton’s assertion of “Hypotheses non fingo” to be far more courageous than him asserting an unsound theory.

@liberty student

Why isn’t Feser challenging men like Hoppe and Long who have advanced Rothbard’s work?

For the simple fact that if you show an arguments premises to be unsound it topples the rest of the structure. If Feser proves Rothbard to be unsound, he proves any work based on the same system to be unsound as well.

@liberty student

Do you also reject Hoppe and Long?

In so far as they take unsound foundations. Personally, I find Hoppe to be a natural rights theorist with an unsound basis for his conception of natural rights, and I do not know enough about Long to have any opinion of him.

[RockyRaccoon]

liberty student - thanks a lot for referring to the “lifeboat scenario”. I’ve been researching it online since your response. I haven’t read anything by Hoppe yet – has he written anything specifically on this topic?

Also, thank you to everybody who has responded thus far! This scenario has really shaken me up tonight. I appreciate all of your input! Please continue the discussion! In the meantime, I will add another tidbit. Rothbard has apparently addressed this issue in “The Ethics of Liberty”. I need to think about it a little further, but his response sounds somewhat similar to my original feeling and nearly identical to Seph’s response. All other opinions are welcome:

Rothbard says:

The crucial point is that even if the contextualist libertarian may say that, given the tragic context, Smith should throw someone else out of the lifeboat to save his own life, he is still committing, at the very least, invasion of property rights, and probably also murder of the person thrown out. So that even if one says that he should try to save his life by forcibly grabbing a seat in the lifeboat, he is still, in our view, liable to prosecution as a criminal invader of property right, and perhaps as a murderer as well. After he is convicted, it would be the rightof the lifeboat owner or the heir of the person tossed out to forgive Smith, to pardon him because of the unusual circumstances; but it would also be their right not to pardon and to proceed with the full force of their legal right to punish.

Once again, we are concerned in this theory with the rights of the case, not with whether or not a person chooses voluntarily to exercise his rights. In our view, the property owner or the heir of the killed would have a right to prosecute and to exact proper punishment upon the aggressor. The fallacy of the contextualists is to confuse considerations of individual, personal morality (what should Smith do?) with the question of the rights of the case. The right of property continues, then, to be absolute, even in the tragic lifeboat situation.

Furthermore, if the lifeboat owner, Jones, is being aggressed against by Smith, and has the right to prosecute Smith later on, he therefore also has the right to use force to repel Smith’s aggression on the spot. Should Smith try to use force to preempt a spot on the lifeboat, Jones, or his hired defense agent, certainly has the right to use physical force to repel Smith’s act of invasion.

To sum up the application of our theory to extreme situations: if a man aggresses against another’s person or property to save his own life, he may or may not be acting morally in so doing. That is none of our particular concern in this work. Regardless of whether his action is moral or immoral, by any criterion, he is still a criminal aggressor against the property of another, and the victim is within his right to repel that aggression by force, and to prosecute the aggressor afterward for his crime.

[RockyRaccoon]

@laminustacitus

The entire Rothbardian framework upon which rights based anarcho-capitalism is built is unsound; Edward Feser has shown that it is extremely flawed: here, here, and here. Both Mises’ utilitarianism, and Hayek’s whiggism (for lack of a better term) are far sounder foundations.

laminustacitus - Thank you for taking the time to find these references. I’ve skimmed/bookmarked them and I’ll read them and consider them carefully.

-Michael

[liberty_student]

@laminustacitus

Having no theory is better than having a bad one.

Are there any areas where you have no theory, or are all of your theories good?

@laminustacitus

For the simple fact that if you show an arguments premises to be unsound it topples the rest of the structure.

But surely Mises and Hayek, who you declared “better than” suffer from this same problem, yes? What happened to no theory being better than a bad theory?

[DanielMuffinburg]

@laminustacitus

The entire Rothbardian framework upon which rights based anarcho-capitalism is built is unsound; Edward Feser has shown that it is extremely flawed: here, here, and here. Both Mises’ utilitarianism, and Hayek’s whiggism (for lack of a better term) are far sounder foundations.

Lam, here is a response to Feser’s critiques: http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2009/lp-1-34.pdf. What is your response to this?

[laminustacitus]

@RockyRaccoon

laminustacitus - Thank you for taking the time to find these references.

Your welcome.

Some more to ponder about:

@Theory and History by L.v. Mises

7. The Idea of Justice

One of the motives that impel men to search for an absolute and immutable standard of value is the presumption that peaceful cooperation is possible only among people guided by the same judgments of value.

It is obvious that social cooperation would not have evolved and could not be preserved if the immense majority were not to consider it as the means for the attainment of all their ends. Striving after the preservation of his own life and health and after the best possible removal of felt uneasiness, the individual looks upon society as a means, not as an end. There is no perfect unanimity even with regard to this point. But we may neglect the dissent of the ascetics and the anchorites, not because they are few, but because their plans are not affected if other people, in the pursuit of their plans, cooperate in society.

There prevails among the members of society disagreement with regard to the best method for its organization. But this is a dissent concerning means, not ultimate ends. The problems involved can be discussed without any reference to judgments of value.

Of course, almost all people, guided by the traditional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremptorily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Social institutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judge them merely according to their fitness to attain definite ends, however desirable these ends may be from any other point of view. What matters first is justice. The extreme formulation of this idea is to be found in the famous phrase: fiat justitia, pereat mundus. Let justice be done, even if it destroys the world. Most supporters of the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as extravagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not more absurd, merely more shocking, than any other reference to an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearly shows the fallacies of the methods applied in the discipline of intuitive ethics.

The procedure of this normative quasi science is to derive certain precepts from intuition and to deal with them as if their adoption as a guide to action would not affect the attainment of any other ends considered desirable. The moralists do not bother about the necessary consequences of the realization of their postulates. We need not discuss the attitudes of people for whom the appeal to justice is manifestly a pretext, consciously or subconsciously chosen, to disguise their short-run interests, nor expose the hypocrisy of such makeshift notions of justice as those involved in the popular concepts of just prices and fair wages. The philosophers who in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme value to justice and applied the yardstick of justice to all social institutions were not guilty of such deceit. They did not support selfish group concerns by declaring them alone just, fair, and good, and smear all dissenters by depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes. They were Platonists who believed that a perennial idea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty of man to organize all human institutions in conformity with this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to man by an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions of this doctrine did not ask what the consequences of realizing the schemes they called just would be. They silently assumed either that these consequences will be beneficial or that mankind is bound to put up even with very painful consequences of justice. Still less did these teachers of morality pay attention to the fact that people can and really do disagree with regard to the interpretation of the inner voice and that no method of peacefully settling such disagreements can be found.

All these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehend that there is, outside of social bonds and preceding, temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing to which the epithet “just” can be given. A hypothetical isolated individual must under the pressure of biological competition look upon all other people as deadly foes. His only concern is to preserve his own life and health; he does not need to heed the consequences which his own survival has for other men; he has no use for justice. His only solicitudes are hygiene and defense. But in social cooperation with other men the individual is forced to abstain from conduct incompatible with life in society. Only then does the distinction between what is just and what is unjust emerge. It invariably refers to interhuman social relations. What is beneficial to the individual without affecting his fellows, such as the observance of certain rules in the use of some drugs, remains hygiene.

The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to the preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust. There cannot be any question of organizing society according to the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of justice. The problem is to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends which men want to attain by social cooperation. Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation.

Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society. Utilitarian philosophy and its finest product, economics, reduced these apparent antagonisms to the opposition of short-run and long-run interests. Society could not have come into existence or been preserved without a harmony of the rightly understood interests of all its members.

There is only one way of dealing with all problems of social organization and the conduct of the members of society, viz., the method applied by praxeology and economics. No other method can contribute anything to the elucidation of these matters.

The concept of justice as employed by jurisprudence refers to legality, that is, to legitimacy from the point of view of the valid statutes of a country. It means justice de lege lata. The science of law has nothing to say de lege ferenda, i.e., about the laws as they ought to be. To enact new laws and to repeal old laws is the task of the legislature, whose sole criterion is social utility. The assistance the legislator can expect from lawyers refers only to matters of legal technique, not to the gist of the statutes and decrees.

There is no such thing as a normative science, a science of what ought to be.

I also recommend everyone going to the linked PDF, and reading “The Idea of Natural Law” (pgs. 44-49), and “The Utilitarian Doctrine Restated” (pgs.55-61)

[DanielMuffinburg]

@RockyRaccoon

…

Rothbard says:

… To sum up the application of our theory to extreme situations: if a man aggresses against another’s person or property to save his own life, he may or may not be acting morally in so doing. That is none of our particular concern in this work. Regardless of whether his action is moral or immoral, by any criterion, he is still a criminal aggressor against the property of another, and the victim is within his right to repel that aggression by force, and to prosecute the aggressor afterward for his crime.

Yes, this is the key to many debates here on the Mises forums.

[laminustacitus]

@Daniel

@laminustacitus

The entire Rothbardian framework upon which rights based anarcho-capitalism is built is unsound; Edward Feser has shown that it is extremely flawed: here, here, and here. Both Mises’ utilitarianism, and Hayek’s whiggism (for lack of a better term) are far sounder foundations.

Lam, here is a response to Feser’s critiques: http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2009/lp-1-34.pdf. What is your response to this?

I stopped reading here:

[quoteuser=““Feser on Rothbard as a Philosopher” by Gerard Casey”]
Feser’s first criticism is this: “Even if it were true that ‘each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish’ and that ‘the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation,’ it just doesn’t follow that anyone has a right to self ownership.” (Feser 2006)

Feser is right—it doesn’t follow. But then, Rothbard doesn’t claim that it does. Feser has omitted to cite the opening lines of this section in which Rothbard makes it abundantly clear that the right to self-ownership is a basic axiom. “The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the ‘right to self-ownership’” [emphasis added]. In both For a New Liberty and “Justice and Property Rights,” Rothbard characterises the right to self-ownership as a basic axiom or first principle and it is a logical solecism to argue for basic axioms/first principles—axioms and principles are that from which argument proceeds, not that towards which it advances. The argument as presented by Feser may be good or bad; but it’s not one made by Rothbard. By misidentifying the nature of the self-ownership axiom, Feser’s criticism is simply inapplicable. Of course, someone may want to deny Rothbard’s claim that the self-ownership axiom really is an axiom, but Rothbard cannot be faulted logically for not arguing for a proposition he takes to be axiomatic. (The remainder of the material in Feser’s first criticism, though raising issues and concerns of more than passing interest, are also all wide of the mark as logical critique.)
[/quote]

I stopped reading for two reasons: 1. its 200 here and I need to rest (I may very well return to the article tomorrow, though, if I have time), and 2. Mr. Casey essentially concedes the entire debate, as far as I’m concerned, to Professor Feser here. In his articles, Feser has shown that the self-ownership as promulgated by Rothbard is unsound, and Casey does not challenge Feser here, but rather asserts that self-ownership is accepted as an axiom in Rothbard’s philosophy. However, the axiom is unsound, as shown by Feser, and therefore it follows that Rothbard’s argument is similarly.

[Conza]

@RockyRaccoon

Even if I offer to compensate the farmer for the food taken, the point is that the exchange was involuntary. Wouldn’t he be within his rights to defend his crops through threat or use of force?

Yes. Completely.

@RockyRaccoon

What should be my penalty if convicted of the crime? If I offered to compensate the farmer later by paying him the “market value” of the crops that I’ve eaten, is that fair to the farmer, because he would not have sold me those crops for ANY PRICE.

That is up to the victim to decide, to the extent you violated his rights. He could take you to a private court, let a judge or jury decide what is fair and accept the decision, or any other number of possible scenarios.

@RockyRaccoon

Surely there are ways to make the argument more sophisticated.

I think this thread touches upon the same underlying issue. Within it a few articles I think you’d enjoy reading.

Jonah Goldberg and the Libertarian Axiom on Non-Aggression by Walter Block

Non Aggression Axiom of Libertarianism by Walter Block

Radical Privatization and other Libertarian Conundrums by Walter Block

Punishment and Proportionality by Murray Rothbard

Life Boat Situations by Murray Rothbard

[Nitroadict]

@liberty student

@laminustacitus

Edward Feser

The 1980s called…

[EternalSanction]

@Seph

I would take the food and subject myself to the punishment.

In my opinion (and I could very well be wrong) libertarianism does not make a judgement about whether you ‘should’ or ‘should not’ take the food in this situation, merely that should you do so, appropriate punishment is necessary.

Seems like this post might have been overlooked. This is pretty much the same view that I hold. Of course it would make me a hypocrite to steal, and of course it would be immoral. But if it were an absolute life-or-death scenario (i.e., not just going a single day without food, but on the brink of death), I would pick life, regardless of what that makes me, because I’m primarily an egoist and thus value myself—I cannot value myself if I would willingly extinguish my life just to make a point. On the other hand, neither would I try to evade punishment for my overt act of crime.