Sterba libertarian critique

[liberty_student]

@Donny with an A

I’m finding that it’s difficult for me to engage your position, since in dismissing my conception of rights as baseless

I’m not dismissing your position as baseless. Your position is baseless because it suffers from the basic logic error that some rights are absolute, some of the time. And the person violating rights gets to determine that.

@Donny with an A

And yet you seem to take such a view as the baseline, such that you’re willing to deny things that I think most people believe to be clearly true in order to maintain your position.

Argumentatum ad populum Danny. C’mon…

@Donny with an A

But it also is intuitively plausible (to almost everyone except the people on this board) that in extreme situations, we can be justified in treating people in ways that would ordinarily not be justified – like when Klemm breaks into Tom’s cabin.

Oh man, at least you made me laugh at 4:45 AM.

@Donny with an A

If we understand rights in a rigid way, we will not be able to integrate the claims; if we adopt a softer view, everything works.

Sure, if we muddle up the definitions then A != A.

A = B. A = C and so on. We can make A anything! All problems solved! Tom doesn’t own a cabin, no one owns anything without property rights! Klemm isn’t violating property rights that doesn’t exist! Nothing exists!

@Donny with an A

For most liberal thinkers, the cabin example is decisive: it forces us to reject the rigid view in favor of the softer view, since surely we would not want to say that Klemm is morally required to resign himself to death.

Nir already addressed that as a non-sequitur.

@Donny with an A

This point can be strengthened by putting Klemm in an even worse situation and making the infringment upon Tom’s rights even more insignificant.

No, that is just a rhetorical trick. This is all a lifeboat Danny. You’re trying to solve lifeboats, to provide moral justifications for emotional discomfort by positing that no rights exist, because for a right to be a right, it must be absolute.

It doesn’t matter how outrageous or unobtrusive you make the example, the question is not one of magnitude. It is an error of logic as described in the last two sentences of my last post.

Put simply, Klemm can’t have an absolute right to life, unless rights are absolutes. In which case, Tom’s right to property cannot be softened.

@Donny with an A

What you’re committing yourself to is a position that is not logically false, but seems ludicrous and unfounded.

It seems ludicrous and unfounded to you. The universe according to Danny and the mob. The universe based on how people feel today.

@Donny with an A

On what basis could you say that Klemm is morally obligated to die a slow and agonizing death

Because the same right he claims to live, is the same right that prevents him from aggressing to live. And again, you are advancing the non-sequitur.

Are slow and agonizing emo-words meant to inspire compassion for your position? Am I supposed to feel guilty for opposing relief from a slow and agonizing death, or is this appeal for readers, now thoroughly confused by your argument that sounded so good, but maybe doesn’t quite make sense?

Klemm is dying a slow and agonizing death because he is an idiot. He got himself in a bad way, and in your example, he decides to lie down and die if he can’t violate someone else’s rights. He doesn’t move on and look for other opportunities to save himself because that would imply that he is able to determine the outcome without Tom. He doesn’t knock and ask Tom for consent, because that would verify that Tom has consent to give, which would undermine your premise that Tom has no absolute property rights to exercise. Klemm doesn’t seek cooperation and mutual aid because that too would imply that Tom has rights which must be respected by Klemm in order to save himself.

According to you, Klemm’s only option is to sit there and die.

@Donny with an A

You are supporting a position which seems absurd

To you.

@Donny with an A

the fact that your view commits you to this is a reductio against your view!

lmao.

@Donny with an A

I don’t think the burden should be on me

You’re proposing a notion called “Respectarianism” based on positive liberty. You are the one who proposed the lifeboat. You are the one by your own admission that is not in accord with people on this site. Seems to me the burden of proof is squarely on you despite the attempts at the beginning and end of your response to shift it to me.

@Donny with an A

I’m the one whose position conforms to common sense.

Whose common sense? Nothing you have proposed has made sense. You’ve advanced the same non-sequitur multiple times, and I’ve pointed out the obvious logical error in your premise.

I think your issue can be resolved by just disowning the notion of absolutes and rights. If you can disown all absolutes, and all rights, then we have a perfectly ethereal paradigm that you can dictate your sense of morality and common sense to and watch it form a new soft reality that most people find true even if it is illogical and immoral.