keda wrote:

How exactly do you propose this to follow from the principle of non-agression?

keda wrote:
I don't think you understand what the "aggression" in principle of non-agression means. It means the use of physical force against a person or his property. As such the only way it can constitute force to remove oxygen from the atmosphere, is if the victim owns the oxygen.

keda wrote:

It would not constitute an act of aggression, unless someone owns some of that natural resource, who is not willing to sell it.
Really, your argument appears to be not much different from that there should be some basic "life support" available for free to everyone. Lets say we a have a group of people who have no food, and a group of people who have no food but at least some money. According to your original argument, the group who has no food and no money will have to starve because the group of people with some money will buy it up for themselves since they are the highest bidders. Aren't they being aggressors too on the ones who starve to death? Is that your definition of being an agressor, to let anyone die because you didn't feed them, shelter them and provide every single thing they need to survive?

Mike H wrote:
On a side note though, I think that libertarian entitlement theory is pretty shaky in terms of its grounding in moral intuition. Intuitively, we think there's nothing wrong with two people trading things they are entitled to. But that's only when we don't take into account possible negative effects on third parties, who are harmed by the exchange but had no say in it. Then our intuitions change. Also, it runs up against our moral intutions when we take income distribution into account. Most people think its wrong for some people to earn vastly more than others despite not having worked any harder for it (whether its a result of luck, or natural skill or whatever), but that's often what happens when people are allowed to keep most or all of their gains from trade.

unrealist42 wrote:
It all boils down to the inherently contradictory nature of the difference between the rights of property and the rights of humans. Those on the right put the right of property first while those on the left mostly try to put the right of people first. Each side claims that there way will lead to the most just and fair society.

But, let us step back a moment and take a closer look at each of these positions.

The property rights argument is really nothing more than and argument for selfishness while the human rights argument is really an argument for selflessness. This is the nub of the argument, is social interaction based on selfishness of selflessness?

The former sees society as an inchoate assembly of selfish individuals seeking only personal advantage in every interaction and that this is the great engine that drives social progress. The latter sees society as a great assembly of like minded people advancing together through mutual cooperation.

There is no doubt that people will act selfishly at some time or another. There is also no doubt that they willingly cooperate with others around them on a day to day basis without any seeking of advantage or other ulterior motive other than a vague desire that their life proceed without undue disruption.

That this willing cooperation constitutes a great majority of each persons day to day interactions points towards the conception of society as a generally cooperative endeavor of people working together toward a singular goal, to maintain a peaceful environment.

That there is room for individuals to occaisionally act selfishly in such an environment without disrupting the general peace is no reason to believe that this selfishness is what drives social progress or that it is this selfish drive which creates society. While it is fairly easy to logically deduce selfish motivation for every single act any person may undertake, it is not how people act. Only the most paranoid will undertake the parsing of every single interaction with every other person to deduce their personal advantage from such. It is an absurd position and an absurd argument.

Anyway, history has already shown us the results of of vast accumulations of property and its wealth and power by purely selfish individuals. The revolutions in France and Russia and China are nothing less than proof that a society based on nothing but selfishness is doomed to violent failure.

Mike H wrote:
Trying to apply the non-aggression principle to property doesn't quite work - not without some assumption about who is entitled to what. A robber takes your money. Does that count as aggression? Well you could say so if you're entitled to the money. But if the robber is entitled to the money, a libertarian would not object - he would not think it counts as aggression. So entitlement is more fundamental than non-aggression in libertarian theory (as Nozick realized). You have to have a theory of entitlement before you can say anything is wrong according to libertarian theory. Libertarians usually assume self-ownership and individual property rights, but those cannot be derived from the axiom of non-aggression. Its more like the other way around. The libertarian concept of aggresion is parasitic on their concept of entitlement - aggression is defined as violation of rightful entitlements. Physical aggression occurs whenever violation of self-ownership occurs, and property aggression occurs whenever violation of property entitlements occurs.

So essentially, libertarians assume what they try to prove. They assume that people are entitled to whatever they can get by trading, and then they define as "aggression" any attempt to take away such gains, which by the non-aggression principle must be wrong.

On a side note though, I think that libertarian entitlement theory is pretty shaky in terms of its grounding in moral intuition. Intuitively, we think there's nothing wrong with two people trading things they are entitled to. But that's only when we don't take into account possible negative effects on third parties, who are harmed by the exchange but had no say in it.

Floyd wrote:
Perhaps even worse than trading entitlement is rent. For example, a right-wing so-called libertarian might allow for a person to claim ownership of all the air in the world. We'd all be the slaves of the air-owner because we need the air breathe. We would have to do whatever the air-owner tells us because he is requiring with the threat of violence that we get permission to breathe. If we breathed the air without the his permission, the right-wing "libertarian" may attack us and call it defense of his property.

keda wrote:
Not all libertarians would go under that brush I hope. After all "libertarian" is derived from the word "liberty" is it not? Would you wish to twist that word so far that we have no liberty left? Is it it not now barking up the wrong tree to blame it on trading entitlements, when the real reasons of unfairness is an initial unfair distribution, coupled with crime and socialist ideas within our society?

Floyd wrote:


I also hope that not all libertarians support ideas similar to those that I described. I believe that most libertarians unfortunately do support those ideas. I think their support of a perhaps unwittingly unfair appropriation of natural resources limits their support for liberty. Those right-wingers would rather some people be able to have so-called ownership of more than their fair share of natural resources than to have more complete liberty and fairness.

I think geolibertarianism entails more freedom and fairness than common libertarianism. I think it is closer to anarchism (i.e. the complete lack of limitations on freedom). As I see it, Geoism takes a more anarchist approach to the control or "ownership" of land.

keda wrote:

Not all libertarians base property rights on such assumptions. What it comes down to is as you correctly put it, entitlement. The land is initially undivided, and the homesteading principle does not cut it, and can only be justified on utilitarian grounds. Deontological libertarians however could argue, (as does Kant) that entitlement is gained through consensus e.g. imagine two persons living on an island. Person A builds a house on one part of the island and person B grows crops. It starts raining and in the absence of laws, person B goes into A's house to take shelter and sleeps over the night in the warm house, and person A is annoyed that A didn't have to do any work to be able to sleep there so the next day he goes to A's fields and takes his crops. The problem is then that there is no point in doing anything since you can just wait until someone else does it and then take his stuff, and if you do it yourself someone comes and takes it. Since both person A and B recognize this problem, they make a compromise; they divide the land of the island in two equal shares, and person A gets the part with the house and B with the fields. Now the crops belong also belong to B and the house to A, and when it starts raining A can rent a room to B for some of B's crops. At a larger scale, a number of people weary of fighting for the same reasons join a state, make an agreement to enforce property rights, as well as right to not be murdered. It is this consensus, this contract that is the basis of entitlement. Unlike libertarianism, socialism, given our current position, involve breaking the current contract, which is why it is unjustified. Not only that; it puts us in a much worse position, more like the state of nature, where people can parasite on others. This is why libertarianism was prefered in the first place, when they agreed to join a state. According to Kant it is not enough that you mix labour, such as building a house or plants crops to own the land as opposed to Locke. Some land may be much more valuable, such that contains precious metals or oil for instance, and if you just come there first, doesn't justify an entitlement to it, but entitlement can only be the result of negotiation. Given such a negotiation, all crime including theft is contract violation i.e the breaking of a promise.



Given my above reasoning, if the third party is part of the same state, then it cannot constitute harm (in a juridical sense) unless the trade results in a violation of the contract, which it would not if he has consented to the original division and no crime has been committed since the contract was made. An external third party exists in the state of nature has no claim so it cannot constitute harm to him.