The problems with the NAP, so far as I can tell, are twofold: firstly, I have never seen a convincing rational basis for it; it is taken as merely “axiomatic”, so far as I can tell. Secondly, even for those who claim to be its adherents, an acknowledgment of a willingness to violate the principle in certain circumstances appears universal.
Egoism has a clear and rational basis. Given that we are the only ones who can truly know our own minds, our own desires, our likes and dislikes, each of us is in the best position to decide what is best for ourselves. This does not mean we always will. Given that we do not and cannot know what is best for others, we ought not take their good into account in our actions. Similarly, we ought resist any attempts of others to coerce our actions “for our own good”.
Secondly, while it can be shown that a normative culture of non-aggression would be best for maximizing one’s own wealth and security, egoism allows for aggression in lifeboat situations. Thus, egoism is a more natural and truthful philosophy than the open hypocrisy of NAP.
I guess my main problem with what you’re saying is that I don’t see why there needs to be a dichotomy between rational egoism and the NAP. They’re interrelated.
Wot? You have managed to be both insulting and nonsensical at the same time.
I see words which seem to obey rules of grammar, but they are completely unsupported and without context. Could you, maybe, elaborate with your comments?
They may be related, but the diverge where the only way to preserve one’s own life (given that one wishes to preserve one’s own life) is to aggress against another. Given that for many of us, most other outcomes are preferable to death, egoism says that it is ethical to harm in order to spare ourselves from harm. The NAP does not allow for such actions.
For the sake of full disclosure: I basically believe in the NAP myself, but I have had trouble justifying it; my support is basically intuitive/emotional. Egoism is easier to justify and apply consistently.
I would recommend the works of Tibor R. Machan to you. From what I’ve heard, he does an excellent job of fleshing out and developing Rand’s arguments in justifying rights from an egoist foundation.
The NAP has a clear and rational basis as well. Aggression requires an infringement of someone’s ownership, which is why it’s morally wrong.
I don’t see how you can justify aggression by any stretch of the imagination(especially not by lifeboat situations). There was one these threads a couple of days ago. The scenario was: “If you could steal a pen to save 1,000,000,000 lives, would you?” The NAP says that stealing the pen is wrong no matter what. No circumstances(outside of aggression) takes away a person’s right to their pen. The same goes for the flag pole scenario(where you’ll die if you jump from the flag pole, but you can jump into someone’s window to save yourself). Just because your life is on the line, does not mean that the owner of the house has lost his right to not have his window broken, or his property trespassed on. If you do jump through his window, he still deserves to be reparated for the damages to his property.
Don’t play dumb and expect that to be an actual retort. There are certain groups that reject egoism and yet whose members have contributed greatly to libertarianism that libertarianism would ostracise if egoism were to be accepted as its premise. Libertarianism being as influential as it is today if most religious individuals, esspecially Christians, were to find libertarianism incompatible with their personal philosophies is unimaginable.
You’re treating the NAP as if it is an ethical framework, which it’s not. It’s a principle. The ethics one uses to arrive at it’s conclusion may vary greatly.
That’s not really a problem. In the case of a principle, it doesn’t matter if the subject abides by it, it matters whether or not they acknowledge it and their proceeding actions as right or wrong accordingly.
What is egoism’s rational basis for critiquing action then? If people know what’s best for themselves, and (as has been rationally established in praxeology) people act according to their greatest interest, all action ought then be permissible, no? You can’t say governmental agents do wrong because they simply act according to their preferences. You could say they are wrong according to your preference, but with egoism there is no faculty to address the actions they take. It seems a lot like relativism.
I’ll second what Wombatron said, to clear up misconceptions on both egoism and the NAP. And for more advanced readers, there’s Rasmussen and den Uyl’s Norms of Liberty and Liberty & Nature.
In my thinking, the NAP proceeds directly from recognising the individual sovereignty/moral autonomy/self-ownership of each and every individual. Of course, this merely means one has to take individual sovereignty as axiomatic; however I find this far easier to do.
I see it the other way around - without some kind of egoist framework (this includes psychological egoism), noone could possibly make sense of the NAP. The NAP is not completely divorced from other values, otherwise it’s fairly arbitrary and up for a million different interpretations. I think libertarians need to stop treating it as a floating axoim.