One cannot know if violence was aggression without a victim who complains. A victim can tolerate aggression, such as a slave that never rebels or tries to escape. Clearly he doesn’t want to be a slave, but he also tolerates his position so long as he does nothing to change it.
Again, a complaint is intolerance. A slave could also refuse to complain out of the same fear that prevents his rebellion. Our disagreement is purely semantic.
But in the case of coerced silence, someone would have to object on his behalf in order to determine if aggression has taken place.
If that is how you want to define tolerate, so be it. I provided the standard definitions in an earlier post, and it is likely that Clayton used the word in that manner. If that is the case, then he did not contradict himself.
My problem with NAP is that it begs the question. It’s only “aggression” if it violates property rights.
I am yet to see any cohesive or logically straightforward derivation of property rights a priori in the libertarian tradition. This is exclusively my personal opinion. I have read Hoppe and Rothbard, whose derivation is cohesive (more or less), but either logically wrong (in the case of Hoppe) or arbitrary (in the case of Rothbard). Actually, the latter criticism goes for Roderick Long.
Kinsella and Block don’t seem to have any cohesive derivation at all. (If I am mistaken, please give me a link.) Kinsella basically says: “It is what it is, and if you disagree with me, you’re a thug, and I don’t want to talk to you”.
People who don’t have a priori derivation attempts simply state their preferences for what they think the society should be like. Which is fine, and I may feel the same, but it doesn’t prove that something is property; only that they think everyone should treat it as property if they are to achieve certain goals which these authors seems to prefer. Treating any acts that don’t agree with these authors’ definitions of property based on their personal preferences as aggression is like treating any music I don’t like as noise. I.e., a little “subjective”.
Well, you can assume that the victim would complain if given a chance (for instance, if you see someone hit on the head from behind and then robbed, you might safely assume that aggression took place; of course, there is always a chance that what happened was a consensual role-playing.)
But, more importantly, what’s missing is the understanding whether the supposed victim complains justly. Someone may complain that I stole from him if I “pirated” his song. Whether or not this was true aggression depends on whether we recognize information as true property. Likewise, I may observe someone picking an apple from a tree. If I know that the tree has an owner (and believe that his ownership claim is valid), then I may assume that this was aggression, whether or not the owner finds out. But I may believe that the presumed “owner” did not really own the tree (e.g., if he claimed he owned it by pointing a finger at it); in which case, even if he loudly complains about the picking, I won’t believe the aggression happened.
Can you point to your objection regarding Hoppe? I would like to see what you find fault with.
I think most of the objections I have are summed up in the papers by Calahan & Murphy and by Roderick Long (I can provide links if you want). I have discussed AE here (you may need to register to see the thread). Although there were some good answers to some of my objections, I was not convinced that all my objections were addressed.
One problem with AE seems to me that it only applies to the cases when I am actually arguing with someone. It doesn’t explain why I should respect someone’s claim if I choose not to argue with him (e.g., if I possess enough force to ignore his protestations that he is not a slave); what prevents me (according to AE) from treating him as a nuisance and simply ignoring his argumentation? (I may even fully recognize his humanity; I just don’t care to argue with him, because, for example, I have outside reasons to believe I own him or his property.)
Also, it seems to create counter-intuitive logical conclusions (e.g., that I can have a positive right to whatever I need to survive) – I pointed out the logic in the last page of that thread. Bob Murphy pointed out some of these conclusions in his paper.
I may be making a mistake about AE because I am not really getting it, but I seem to have exhausted my logical ability to see how that’s the case. I seem to be in a good company (Bob Murphy, Roderick Long, David Friedman, etc.). If it’s so difficult to understand logically, maybe it’s not such a great ethical theory after all. 
The NAP does and doesn’t beg the question. The NAP does mention violence against people, so as far as violence against people are concerned, the NAP does not beg the question. However, when it comes to property, I agree that it is indeed circular. That is why I advocate the golden rule as the basic moral principle of libertarianism. Furthermore, the NAP is the golden rule but applied specifically to law. When viewed in this context, the NAP is not quite as circular as you might think. It’s more like having an implicit premise that some people forget. But the golden rule rocks.
Regarding the rest of your post, you already know that I think a priori law isn’t any better or different than a priori prices.
I do share the sentiment that certain things are aggression whether or not there is a victim to complain. For example, I consider certain homicides to be murder, even if the victim was not able to speak out before he died. However, I would like to stress that without a victim to state that he considered a certain action to be aggression, we cannot actually know for certain that it was in fact aggression. We can assume it to be true, but we cannot know it to be true. For all we know, the victim might have hired someone to kill him, in which case he would not be a victim at all, or he might have been killed justly in retribution.
Well this goes back to a priori law, which is impossible in some ways, just as a priori prices are impossible. Once you understand the fuction of prices, that prices are signals for how people value goods and services, then you realize that a priori prices essentially violate the function of prices. Instead of signalling how people in general value goods and services, “a priori” prices signal the values of the central planner. At best, “a priori” prices are just distorted signals, and at worst, they signal the values of only one person or group.
It’s the same with law. You can have “a priori” law, but it is an entirely different function than actual law. Law is one of many dispute resolution mechanism that people use, and it is specifically relevant to disputes where violence is a very real alternative. So if a central planner comes along and says, this is the “a priori” law, instead of reflecting how people in general would resolve a certain dispute, the law will now reflect only how the central planner would resolve that dispute.
It’s good to be the king.
Isn’t Golden Rule a kind of apriorism? Why is it better than other rules?
Also, how are we to use it? The rapist should imagine what it’s like to be raped. But why shouldn’t the victim imagine what it’s like to abstain from fulfilling a strong sexual desire? Should we have some sort of scale for rating “imaginations”? That would bring us back to either apriorism or subjectivity.
I am still confused about how to know whether something is just or not without some sort of a priori concept. I have a conflict with someone. I have no idea whether to let him have the resource or to keep it myself. What should I do? How should I know if keeping it would be an aggression?
You told me before that I should use my idiosyncratic views of morality. Fine, so we should define aggression according to morality? Is that it?
The golden rule might be instinctual for some, for others it may be learned. It’s only better if your goal is social cooperation. Naturally there are plenty of people who do not like the golden rule, and they are thieves, rapists, murderers, and politicians. For the rest of us who want to get along with each other, the golden rule is an excellent starting point.
The golden rule does not necessarily require imagining what it’s like to be violated in whatever way. It is the ethic of reciprocity, and it is the basis of mutual respect, which in turn is the basis of property. I respect your home and you respect my home. If we both follow this then we can leave harmoniously together. If one of us or both of us violates this, then there is conflict. Law is one method of resolving the resulting conflict, and sometimes those conflicts are not clearly defined as in the cases of rape or murder. Disputes about borders don’t have to have a clearly wrong aggressor, and sometimes until the border has been properly defined, there is not in fact an aggressor.
Some things you cannot know. If people have not defined the ownership of a certain thing, and then two or more get into a dispute regarding that thing, there may not be a way to know who ought to have ownership. If two people race for a gold nugget and both touch it at the same time, sure, one of them definitely touched it first, but without the proper equipment to measure to the nanosecond, even they may not know for sure who touched it first. And it’s not like people carry around radar guns in order to measure these rare cases. But if we are to have an a priori law, then there must be a way of knowing who gets the gold nugget, when in fact saying theoretically whoever touched it first gets it is entirely useless to the real application of law. In this case, are they really both going to stand there arguing over who touched it first until the end of time? At some point, these guys are going to decide to actually resolve their dispute, and they both probably believe they each touched it first, so appealing to first use is useless in this case for actually resolving the dispute. Maybe they will split the nugget in half, or maybe they will sell it and then split the profit, or maybe one will buy out the other. Those are different ways of resolving the dispute, and none are a priori. But they all will actually resolve the dispute, which is the whole point of law.
What else are you going to measure aggression against? Each person has his own set of values, of which morality is a subset. Saying that you are going to create a valueless law is weird. What’s the point? People need disputes resolved, and each disputant has his own values. If the resolution goes against his values so strongly that he refuses to accept the resolution, there will still be conflict.
What is my home?
In other words, I claim that the area between two rivers and the forest is my valley. You claim that it is your valley. Each of us has somewhat different concepts of what property is and how property acquisition happens based on our individual morality and legal theories.
What would constitute aggression in this case? How does the NAP help us? How does the Golden Rule help us?
(Note that we don’t disagree about the facts of what physically transpired. We disagree about the principles.)
in this example, both of you are in the wrong. you cannot just claim something as your territory; since neither of you have homestead or acquired the property through voluntary interaction with it’s owner (as per your example), then both your claims are spurious.
Where you live.
We can’t both respect the other’s claims in this scenario, as we are both claiming to own the same thing. So if we want to get along, we will have to come up with some sort of agreement as to how we will divide the valley. In terms of the golden rule, it’s really quite simple:
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One of us actually claimed the land first, maybe by literally stating a claim or maybe by using the land. In this case, whoever comes along second is not respecting the first person’s claim. So if the ethic of reciprocity is, “You respect my claims and I will respect yours”, then in this case the second person is saying, “I will not respect your claims”. Reciprocity would mean that the first person does not have to respect the second person’s claims either.
HilarityConflict ensues. This leads to 3 possibilities: we fight until someone yields or dies, we come to a mutually agreeable solution, or one of us drops the matter. -
We both claim the land at the same time without the other knowing. In this case conflict ensues, leading to the three possibilities above.
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We both claim the land at the same time with the other knowing. In this case conflict ensues, leading to the three possibilities above.
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Etc.
Sometimes claims are unreasonable. The relevant people can decide what are reasonable and unreasonable claims. If you follow the golden rule, just know that shit can bite you in the ass if you try and screw others out of their stuff. You might say, “I’m poor so I can take your stuff from you”. Well, there is always someone poorer who can do the same thing to you. That and the guy you take stuff from might not be so happy. And of course, societies based on violating the golden rule seem to be shitty places to live in, unless of course you are the king. But not everyone can be king.
Right, well, the assumption is that being the first one to make a claim makes something your property (and that a particular form of a claim prevails over other forms). But what makes that true?
Also (this is another, independent point), maybe I should say: I made the claim first. But my friend really needs that land; he needs it to survive. I need it for luxury (to enjoy the scenery). Therefore, he is justified over me in using it. I would like him to do the same to me. So, the ethic of reciprocity is: “You respect my claims if I have greater need than you, and I will respect yours.”
As an aside, what do you think about Rothbard’s article here: http://mises.org/daily/4047/Justice-and-Property-Rights-The-Failure-of-Utilitarianism (in particular, Towards the Theory of Justice part)?
I’m not assuming this. In fact, I ended with:
It is your choice if you want to pardon a friend or a stranger who takes your property from you without your permission. Regarding “You respect my claims if I have greater need than you, and I will respect yours”, that is not the ethic of reciprocity. You either claim something as your property or you don’t. You might joinly own it with others. Two people might have an agreement where they freely share their property with each other or just give the rights entirely to the other. You can try and build it into the golden rule, but ultimately you can refine the golden rule right back down to, “Respect me and what’s mine, and I’ll respect you and what’s yours.” That is the purest form. Adding in stipulations needlessly confuses the issue, especially when you consider that people can and do break agreements.
Besides, your rule does not actually define property. Neither person actually owns the thing in question, as ownership entails the right of exclusion. If you don’t have the right to exclude someone from your property, then you don’t really own it. If they have the right to exclude you, then it is they who really owns it.
Just ask the owner of the bridge. The bridge is just a piece of property and the rule of law will be decided by the property owner.
You took this out of context yourself!
In the Anarchy, your private defense agency and the bridge-owner’s property insurance will have the answer long before the suicide-guy even thinks of jumping over the bridge.
If I couldn’t convince him otherwise, his death would probably be a good thing.
The NAP can be dismantled with a one-liner.
What is aggression?
Almost all forms of aggression cannot be specified beforehand as such.
We conclude ex-post facto that certain forms of human interaction are aggressive and thus, perhaps, unethical.
So an “ethics principle” that shuns all forms of aggression is useless because it conveys zero a priori knowledge on what is to be considered aggression, and cannot be used to form judgements.
Aggression forms evolve with technology. From government side aggression, think of drone espionage and vaccines. From the private sector side, think of eletronic theft and derivatives scams.
You cannot forecast if a certain relationship is aggressive up until that relationship has occurred a bunch of times and the outcomes are somewhat understood, and it is now being used as a tool of intimidation and control.
There will always be economically interesting potentially aggressive options to the potential aggressor.
And you cannot rule out all “potentially aggressive” relationships, that is, relationships that can evolve into qualified aggression, because that would include all forms of relationships. Even a guy trying to pick up a girl has a remote probability to evolve into date rape.
The NAP is intelectually bankrupt nonsense.