Sterba libertarian critique

[liberty_student]

Danny, one of my least favorite debate tactics on this forum, and it’s for some reason mostly used by people who identify as left libertarians, is to respond to a post with few or no specific quotes and simply providing a wall of text in return. I don’t know if it is coincidence, unimportant or what, but it seems like there is a tendency to be excessively verbose instead of concise and specific.

It frequently leads to dialogue that does not advance, and a greater tendency for strawmen (you said this, but without a source).

@Donny with an A

Liberty student, first of all, your counterargument, “Put simply, Klemm can’t have an absolute right to life, unless rights are absolutes” is at least not necessarily true. Klemm can have an absolute right to life if only some rights are absolute – namely, the right to life – even if other rights are not absolute – namely the right to property. There is no logical problem with that – to imply otherwise would be to imply that there’s a logical problem with saying, “Not all cats are black, but some are.”

It doesn’t matter what game we play, ultimately you are placing Klemm’s positive (not negative) right to life above Tom’s negative right to property. But really, it comes down to the lowest common denominator. Klemm violating Tom’s property is aggression, and you are making a claim that faced with death, aggression is acceptable. I don’t see the difference between someone breaking into a hospital for drugs, or someone breaking into a store to get food.

I don’t know if everyone read back, but Danny’s position is that it is morally just for Klemm to break into Tom’s home.

@Donny with an A

But in any case, I’m not sure that I agree that Klemm has an absolute right to life. If Klemm were attacking me, I might think myself justified in infringing his right, or if he were attacking someone else, or if he were falling on me from on top of a cliff and I had a rocket launcher, or if he were strapped to the front of a tank that was coming to run me over and I had an anti-tank gun (h/t to Judith Thomson for the preposterous examples).

That’s a negative right to life Danny. Your example is predicated on a positive right to life.

@Donny with an A

Your last resort seems to be to deny that “lifeboat” situations have any bearing on moral thinking.

This is a strawman. They do have an effect on moral thinking. I am imminently concerned that you are making a case for aggression against Tom. Your assumption is that in lifeboat situations, one agent is more important than the other, and the entire discussion is based around requests for you to prove how this is so.

@Donny with an A

I think that the moral importance of Tom’s property rights in the backpacker example so clearly pale in comparison to the moral importance of Klemm’s saving his life that the choice is clear: break into the cabin.

Which is finally a clear and sincere statement from you. Moral importance to who? Klemm or Tom? You haven’t resolved a dispute, you have merely eliminated one agent from consideration. And frankly, Klemm’s justification is entirely based on his emotions, his value of his own life over the value of Tom’s property. There is no standard here but Klemm’s own desires.

I also think you are overlooking the very important fact you brought up early as a non-sequitur. Klemm has the choice to not break in. This isn’t a situation where he has no choice, this is a situation where you claim Klemm gets to do anything to save his life and will necessarily do so.