@ James,
“Some libertarians use pragmatic arguments, but that’s not to say there isn’t an ethical basis to it.”
The moral question that arises on the choice of men to live and interact together in a society is that given the fact that men have different moral codes that might treat drug use or taxation or whatever differently, what is the moral basis for a system that will inevitably deal with the actions of men per their different moral convictions, i.e. what is the moral basis for socio-economic interrelationships of all kinds?
Rand, like a gardener planting a tree and identifying what is good or bad for that tree by identifying what the tree’s particular nature is as opposed to all other species, derived her moral code from that which our nature as human beings necessitates. Primary in the present context is that it necessitates individual autonomy—to be free from interference by other fallible men. And since that can only be effected by physical force or the threat thereof, it means that man’s most fundamental socio-economic alternative is freedom v. force.
The only government ever proposed that recognizes that fact and seeks to enforce it with defensive force is Rand’s laissez-faire capitalism that guarantees that all human interrelationships shall be voluntary.
Libertarians cannot get from the nature of man to that point without the chain of logic that is Rand’s ethics. The ethical considerations you bring up regarding drugs are necessarily applications of ethics within the context of a free society that is moral per the above explanation. Since the freedom capitalism imposes protects the moral autonomy of every man, you may implement any moral principle you want to regarding drug use, so long as you do not use force to interfere with anyone else’s.
The moral principle that a man has an absolute right to the product of his own reason/effort is not predicated in any way on scarcity. The hierarchy is ethics > politics > economics. Scarcity is an economic concept.
“The axiom at work is that human action is purposeful, conscious adjustment to the state of a given human’s environment, as he perceives it. If you have a problem with that axiom, we would all love to hear it.”
Purpose is a primary value, but not the ultimate value, which is one’s life. purpose is, like reason, are values that are the means of achieving the ultimate value. In that, reason is the source of the values in service to one’s life that purpose determines the hierarchy of their pursuit by one’s productivity. Thus man survives and thrives by applying reason to action in production and trade in accordance with the hierarchy of values determined by his purpose. That is what purposeful human action is.
The moral relationship to an application of purposeful reason/action in production and trade is thereby established long before (hierarchically) scarcity becomes a consideration.
The human body, including the mind it generates, is physical matter and energy external to the metaphysical “self”.
Consciousness does not consist of physical matter. It is an attribute of your physical matter, and self is implicit in and inseparable from your consciousness. Ownership is the moral justification of the possession of something that is distinct from you—that you alternatively do or do not possess. It is pointless to raise an issue of ownership for something that is implicit in and inseparable from your very being.
Me: "Furthermore, the choice to form a society with a third party institution to manage the use of force to enable liberty logically precedes the necessity of an objective standard such as ownership to justify the possession of values that is property.
You: I don’t think that’s logically possible. The recognition of objective ethical values must surely precede the establishment of institutions acting to enforce such a system. If there is no morality, then you can’t form an institution to enforce something that doesn’t exist."
Your statement is not mistaken, but rather I think not applicable to possession outside of the politics of a society in the same way that it is applicable within one. And the latter is the present context.
“Anarchists maintain that it is illegitimate to hold a monopoly on force, no matter what you intend to do with it.”
Legitimate means complying with the laws of a system of justice. The monopoly on force that objectifies the use of defensive force to that end is a means to enforce those laws. It cannot possibly be illegitimate.
If you do not like the monopoly on force, you need to define another system of justice that will objectify the use of defensive force that does not necessitate that monopoly on force. In that system, then it might be labeled “illegitimate”. No form of anarchy can be that, however, because anarchy inherently enables th arbitrary (not objectified) use of defensive force that in reference to the liberty of the populace is indistinguishable from initiated force.
“What are you going to write in your constitution?”
Whatever is necessary to restrict the government to the guarantee that no person may initiate the use of physical force or the threat thereof to take, withhold, damage, or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange.
“It is inherent to the definition of “self-defence” that one is exercising force that is, under the circumstances, necessary to protect against a real initiated threat of force, and no more excessively than that.”
Yes.