Sterba libertarian critique

[wilderness]

@Sage

@liberty student

You can do it with the cabin example. The problem is, the intution doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and as we saw in this thread, your, Danny and the intuition of others wasn’t quite as common as the premise of the arguments seems to rely upon.

LS, I think the root of our disagreement is whether rights are absolute or not.

As I understand it, your position is based on the premise that rights are absolute, and so the cabin example has no intuitive strength and hence proves nothing.

My position uses the premise that attempts to justify absolute rights are unsuccessful; there’s no prima facie reason to think that rights are absolute. Therefore, the cabin example is intuitively appealing, and gives us a strong reason to believe the conclusion that rights are not absolute.

Is that a fair interpretation?

Sage why must you coerce Tom? Why can’t Tom help Klemm using his own free-will? Why do you have to force morals on Tom? Sage you are not for liberty if you coerce Tom and yet Tom could have easily agreed with you freely without you having to violate his liberty to do so. To violate Tom’s liberty is a statist position. To protect Tom’s liberty is a libertarian position.

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

Brainpolice sometimes you seem to have it, and then other times you seem to fumble. This makes no sense. I am a slave of me. What’ll some people think of next.

Maybe its some Freudian logic, like the tyranny of self. The id being a slave to the ego and the super ego. I am a slave to my subconscious! Save me!

You actually might not be far off.

With all this “save the intuition” and “save the emotions” coming from Giles, Sage, and Brainpolice. I never knew emotions and intuition were in such dire straits and needed saving to begin with. But then again my emotions and intuition are in excellent condition so conclusion - theirs must not be. For emotions and intuition are a personal issue.

So maybe Laughing Man. You might not be too far off.

[Laughing_Man]

Or perhaps they are Hobbesians…THE PASSIONS WILDERNESS!!! THE PASSSSIONNS!

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

Or perhaps they are Hobbesians…THE PASSIONS WILDERNESS!!! THE PASSSSIONNS!

I don’t know what you mean.

[Laughing_Man]

17th and 18th Century Theories of Emotions > Hobbes on the Emotions (Stanford...

[liberty_student]

@Sage

LS, I think the root of our disagreement is whether rights are absolute or not.

No. I think our disagreement is about positive and negative rights.

@Sage

As I understand it, your position is based on the premise that rights are absolute, and so the cabin example has no intuitive strength and hence proves nothing.

It’s a lifeboat, which are usually as ridiculous as possible, intended to wear down a rational position by appeals to emotion. I have emotions, strong ones. But I am not going to succumb to a lifeboat scenario when I have time to think about it. People who act without thinking, or don’t critically think will be susceptible to the guilt and compassion trip.

@Sage

My position uses the premise that attempts to justify absolute rights are unsuccessful; there’s no prima facie reason to think that rights are absolute. Therefore, the cabin example is intuitively appealing, and gives us a strong reason to believe the conclusion that rights are not absolute.

Are we able to justify positive rights?

I don’t understand this fascination with intuition. Is it because you think that negative rights lead to a cold society with no compassion?

@Sage

Is that a fair interpretation?

I don’t think so.

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD3Hobbes.html

What do you mean by what you said? You can private message me on this if you want. I don’t have the time to read that link. I started to skim it, but…

[Laughing_Man]

Just that human passions conflict with human reason. I believe Hobbes argued that passion makes reason subservent to it.

[Brainpolice]

@zefreak

@Brainpolice

My view is that the right to life, liberty and property are interwined, but property rights are entailments of a more general right of personal sovereignty. Property rights is not the first principle that personal sovereignty is derived from. Property rights are inherently constrained by personal sovereignty in the sense that in order for a property claim to be just it cannot violate the personal sovereignty of others (for an obvious example, one cannot rob someone at gunpoint in order to aquire property). Without this context of rights-respecting behavior being there in the first place, “property” claims are invalid.

So in this sense it’s really the other way around - property is not ethically valuable without individual sovereignty. Outside of the context of individual sovereignty, there are the property claims of tyrants, thieves and slavemasters. Property is not absolutely normatively “good” in and of itself, regaurdless of any context. Property rights (as the “good” manifestation of property) are entailments or applications of more fundamental right of personal sovereignty. A reasonable theory of property rights inherently involves some kind of qualification for ownership based on respecting people’s sovereignty in the first place.

Brainpolice, property is an ethical construct. I think you are unnecessarily obfuscating the issue with your unclear use of terminology. Property cannot not be ethically valuable. Perhaps you are referring to claims of property within a political system possibly being illegitimate, but once again that is not explicitly what you are stating.

What the heck are you talking about? I’m talking about property rights, which is inherently an ethical question. Why are you avoiding the content of my arguments while trying to shift this towards a meta-debate?

[Sage]

@wilderness

Sage why must you coerce Tom? Why can’t Tom help Klemm using his own free-will? Why do you have to force morals on Tom?

The whole point of the hypothetical cabin scenario is that Klemm is in a position where his only options are (1) break into the cabin to save his life, or (2) resign himself to an all-but-certain death. There are no other options. And you can’t change the scenario to add other options.

If you’re still having trouble understanding this, check out Section II of this paper.

@wilderness

To violate Tom’s liberty is a statist position. To protect Tom’s liberty is a libertarian position.

From my perspective, this is a false dichotomy. What I said to LS applies here as well: if rights are absolute, this is a black and white issue. If rights are not absolute, then it is much more complicated than that.

[Brainpolice]

@Laughing Man

@Brainpolice

Yea, it’s called slavery. Ironically, the “self-ownership” myth logically entails slavery.

Oh how excellently absurd, please spin this logic out for me. I am in rapture as to how you can rationalize this statement.

I’m refering to Walter Block’s “voluntary slavery” argument, which is what happens when one takes an axoimatic “self-ownership” position too far. My point is that such an alienability issue inevitably results as a consequence of the axoimatic “self-ownership” position.

[JackCuyler]

@GilesStratton

By the way, I’d just like to point out that your rejection of the cabin example suggested by Danny led nir to suggest that it would be the moral thing to do if a father let his three children die because he didn’t take a loaf of bread from them.

I would have to disagree with nir, in that case. It would be immoral for a father to allow his children to starve. However, that does not make stealing bread moral, it simply illustrates that sometimes humans find themselves in situations where there is no moral choice – literally the choice of the lesser of two evils. That feeding ones children is moral in no way makes stealing less immoral.

[Juan]

@Laughin Man

@Brainpolice

Yea, it’s called slavery. Ironically, the “self-ownership” myth logically entails slavery.

Oh how excellently absurd, please spin this logic out for me. I am in rapture as to how you can rationalize this statement.

Well, I don’t pretend I know what BP meant, but here’s a guess.

When you your-self own your body, then you are certainly not a slave, but free.

But literally “self-ownership” can also mean that “selfs” (i.e. persons) can be owned, as in Person A owns Person B…which is also called slavery.

[Laughing_Man]

@Brainpolice

I’m refering to Walter Block’s “voluntary slavery” argument, which is what happens when one takes an axoimatic “self-ownership” position too far.

And one can argue that this is self-refuting for one does not consent to go into or stay in slavery.

[nirgrahamUK]

how about It would be immoral for a father to allow his children to starve if he could sustain them without violating other peoples property…

[Brainpolice]

@nirgrahamUK

what?!, my person owning my body is slavery now,? what are you talking about?

No, what I’m saying is that an alienable and axoimatic concept of “self-ownership” justifies slavery.

[Brainpolice]

@zefreak

@Brainpolice

My view is that negative rights are primary and normative, while “positive obligations” are contractual (I.E. there must be prior explicit consent to enforce such obligations) in the context of negative rights being respected. So I reject unchosen positive obligations on a normative level. And precisely for this reason I think that all contracts have to be opt-outable in some sense, even if there are reprecussions for doing so or resulting restitutional issues.

This doesn’t follow, assuming a contract is a voluntary, chosen obligation. Of course, all contracts may be voided by the mere action or inaction by one or both parties, which is why repercussions are usually explicitly stated in the contract.

By making repercussion and restitution legitimate, you are implicitly recognizing that the act of absolving a contract or positive obligation is illegitimate in your system.

Is this particular caveat regarding contracts the only difference between the traditional libertarian concept of negative liberty and your amalgamation of negative and positive liberty?

You’re conflating two separate although partially related issues: whether or not it is permissible for people to opt out of contracts, and whether or not there are possible reprecussions for doing so. The fact that there may be consequences for opting out of contracts does not mean that it is impermissible to do so. A labor wage contract, for example, I can opt out of it at any time. The moment that you use force to make me keep working and stop me from opting out of the contract, it becomes slavery - and the enforcement of unchosen positive obligatios. No contract can bind someone’s future will in a sense; they should always have the option to opt out of the contract, even if this means that there will be some renumeration that follows from doing so.

Renumeration as a consequence of opting out of a contract is not the same thing as forcing someone to continue being a party of the contract. It does not mean that it is “illegitimate” or impermissible for you to do so, and renumeration only comes into play in situations in which there is some sort of meaningful debt withstanding or when opting out of the contract entails an act of theft or fraud. If this isn’t the case, in situations in which there is no genuine debt withstanding and there is no implied theft or fraud, then renumeration and restitution isn’t even an issue and the only real consequence of opting out of the contract is to willingly give up the future benefits of continueing being a party of the contract (in the case of a labor contract, that would be future wages) - and this is in exchange for being absolved of future contractual obligations. Both parties are absolved of their obligations at the termination of the contract on the understanding that there is no debt withstanding or implied fraud.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

No, what I’m saying is that an alienable and axoimatic concept of “self-ownership” justifies slavery.

question: does an alienable and axiomatic concept of ‘apple ownership’ justify the theft of apples?

[Brainpolice]

@wilderness

You said this:

@Brainpolice

A reasonable theory of property rights inherently involves some kind of qualification for ownership based on respecting people’s sovereignty in the first place.

But then you say this:

@Brainpolice

This insane tendency to act as if property rights are axoimatic is philosophically absurd. One’s right to life and liberty is not an entailment of property rights! That has the formula backwards.

So I take it you are not against property rights your merely involved in an intellectual discussion on origins if you might say.

I favor property rights. What I do not favor is a theory of property rights that treats property rights as axoimatic and acts as if the principle of personal liberty follows from property rights, when from my perspective the entire function of property rights is as an entailment of personal liberty. I think that this tendency leads some libertarians to actually oppose personal liberty sometimes by subordinating it to the will of a property owner (for an absurd example, what Rothbard called “maximalism” in TEOL - shooting the kid who steals a gumball from your gumball machine in the name of “property rights”).

From my perspective, property rights does not give one the right to enslave or murder people just because they are on your property, and in this sense property rights are inherently constrained by the right to life and liberty, which are also intertwined with it. The entire point is to uphold all of them at once, similar to “the unity of virtue”. It doesn’t mean that property rights are devalued, it simply means that they are placed in their proper context (as entailments of personal liberty, not the source of it).

[JackCuyler]

@Laughing Man

Homesteading principale dictates that if man is not utilizing the property then it has no owner. Therefore if you are stranded on an island ALL BY YOURSELF with your kids, then there is no property owner of that house.

This seems to be a stretch. How long does it take before disuse makes my property unowned? From this example, it looks like less time than it takes for a loaf of bread to go moldy or stale. If I’m on vacation, can you homestead my house? If I’m carpooling to work one day, can you homestead my car? Can you homestead my heavy winter coat simply because it’s summer? Can you homestead my umbrella because it’s sunny?