"Freedom" thread or something

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/

I went from hoping this President could mean something.  And now I'm terrified that he has.

JJLehto wrote: Hey whadya know? The rich suck and manipulate the people for their gain... But you totally weren't gunna make that point on FB, right KoL? That was the one time you weren't gunna make that same point, that you make with every comment and post?

I recently posted this article about the non-aggression principle on my blog.  It voices one of my few disagreements with libertarian philosophy and I would be interested in the rest of the PA libertarians think about it.

Epignosis wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I recently posted this article about the non-aggression principle on my blog.  It voices one of my few disagreements with libertarian philosophy and I would be interested in the rest of the PA libertarians think about it. My initial response is why are you hiking with a "misanthropic nihilist jerk?"

Maybe it's Ayn Rand and you're discussing philosophy with her.  Although "nihilist" doesn't quite fit there...

Epignosis wrote: You say, "One might object to my examples..."  You're right.  I'm going to object to your examples, but not for the reasons you give.  Each of your examples assume a one-sided, assumptive perspective. In the case of the dying man who needs water, there is no immediate assurance that we are safe.  So by robbing my friend of his water, I could be dooming him later.  Furthermore, who is to say that the dying man has led a life that warrants saving?  Perhaps he has killed many people and got lost in the woods on the lam. Suppose you steal a car to take your dying friend to the hospital.  The owner of that car needed it that very evening to drive his child to the hospital.  And it isn't there.  Because you took it without asking. Your examples all rest on this: "Is right to devoid someone of property in order to save a life?" Suppose your son needs a kidney transplant to live.  Your friend has two kidneys.  Is it right to take your friend's kidney to save your son?  This is where it gets blurry- "My income isn't my body," and so people are okay with taxation, etc.  If the authorities began demanding organ redistribution, I think people might have more of a problem with that.  But if you used your body to make your money... Finally, your comparison of the non-agression principle to Newtonian physics is a flawed one: the former is a matter of philosophy (how things should be) and the latter is one of physics (how things are).  They are not comparable.

To be fair, the first example did say that the hikers are near the end of the trail and don't need any more water.

I didn't deal with your other objections in the article; I do plan to address them in a future post, but I will answer as best I can:

My view is that ethics rests on the principle of loyalty.  Ethics is, ultimately, the art of competing loyalties.  Ethical decision making is essentially a weighing of one loyalty against another, not merely according to the strength of the allegiance (or else you could construe it ethical to kill someone and take his TV so you kids can watch Saturday morning cartoons) but also according to the extent of your obligation and to the demands of the specific situation; for example a married man has an obligation to protect his wife and may have to aggress against another's property or such to protect her life, but does not have an obligation to buy her everything she wants and thus cannot steal from a jewelry shop (for each has an obligation to all to respect their property) so that she can have an expensive ring.

I think that this makes sense both in principle and in practice; it is both how we should act and how humans tend to make ethical decision.  Of course, as a Christian I would view each person having an ultimate loyalty to God, with family coming after that, then friends, then the rest of humanity, etc.  Yes, it is blurry, it doesn't have many easy answers and it leaves quite a bit of room for disagreement even within the system.  But no one ever said that ethics was simple or easy.

Your kidney example is a real tough nut to crack, though.  I'm going to have to think about that one.  I do understand your objections to my examples, but consider if you were in those situations.  Would you act according to the non-aggression principle?  Would you feel justified in doing so?

The last example was merely an illustration to demonstrate how a principle (whether descriptive or prescriptive) can be applicable in most situations but not universally so.

I still object to taxation, by the way (and government coercion in general); I've grown progressively more libertarian to the point where I would now consider myself an anarchist, but I just reach that conclusion ethically in a slightly different way I suppose.

Well, I respect your principles too Rob, even though I may not hold to them myself.  You do have to make some sort of basic assumption whenever you want to talk about ethics and we're probably making different assumptions.

Epignosis wrote: You say, "One might object to my examples..."  You're right.  I'm going to object to your examples, but not for the reasons you give.  Each of your examples assume a one-sided, assumptive perspective. In the case of the dying man who needs water, there is no immediate assurance that we are safe.  So by robbing my friend of his water, I could be dooming him later.  Furthermore, who is to say that the dying man has led a life that warrants saving?  Perhaps he has killed many people and got lost in the woods on the lam. Suppose you steal a car to take your dying friend to the hospital.  The owner of that car needed it that very evening to drive his child to the hospital.  And it isn't there.  Because you took it without asking. Your examples all rest on this: "Is right to devoid someone of property in order to save a life?" Suppose your son needs a kidney transplant to live.  Your friend has two kidneys.  Is it right to take your friend's kidney to save your son?  This is where it gets blurry- "My income isn't my body," and so people are okay with taxation, etc.  If the authorities began demanding organ redistribution, I think people might have more of a problem with that.  But if you used your body to make your money... Finally, your comparison of the non-agression principle to Newtonian physics is a flawed one: the former is a matter of philosophy (how things should be) and the latter is one of physics (how things are).  They are not comparable.

I have to for the most part agree with Rob here.

Specifically I would say two things:
1) Even for the purpose of analogy, i would refrain from equating a baseless axiomatic foundation for a man-made system to a experimentally verified law for a natural system.

2) You seem to be treating the NAP as an ethical axiom. You can do this and some libertarians do. But I believe properly that the NAP is only a pillar for a legal system. If a stateless Ancap society were achieved with the NAP being the defining ethical principle, I would be just as vehemently about burning to the ground as I am our current one.

I would, however, argue that political philosophy has to be based upon ethics, or else it's meaningless.  I would be interested in finding out what other libertarians who do not see the NAP as axiomatic have as their ethical foundations.

It's been a while since I asked a question. . I was going to use another nation as the hypothetical case but let's bring it closer. Let's suppose one day finally government is reduced to almost zero (or zero depending on your flavor of libertarianism). Liberty reigns supreme. No central organization has force over nobody.... And after a while, let's suppose that this generates really abject poverty, horrendous inequality, and that, proving those who oppose libertarianism correct, only a few extremy wealthy powerful barons have control over the rest of the people, force them to work for miserable wages with no benefits, while they accumulate all the power of wealth. All without infringing the non aggression principle. Would then be acceptable to start proposing equalizing measures? Would that be a time where it would be justified to ask for the "return of the state"? Would then be justifiable to take from the "makers"? Or should liberty reign supreme even if most everybody is starving? How supreme can this principle be?

All of this hypothetical.

Edited by The T - January 23 2014 at 22:27

The T wrote: It's been a while since I asked a question. . I was going to use another nation as the hypothetical case but let's bring it closer. Let's suppose one day finally government is reduced to almost zero (or zero depending on your flavor of libertarianism). Liberty reigns supreme. No central organization has force over nobody.... And after a while, let's suppose that this generates really abject poverty, horrendous inequality, and that, proving those who oppose libertarianism correct, only a few extremy wealthy powerful barons have control over the rest of the people, force them to work for miserable wages with no benefits, while they accumulate all the power of wealth. All without infringing the non aggression principle. Would then be acceptable to start proposing equalizing measures? Would that be a time where it would be justified to ask for the "return of the state"? Would then be justifiable to take from the "makers"? Or should liberty reign supreme even if most everybody is starving? How supreme can this principle be? All of this hypothetical.

Well, there would be several other options in that case.  The first and most obvious one would be to wait and see if the powerful coorporations collapse under their own weight, which brings up all sorts of other hypotheticals and intricacies of economic theory, but assuming that isn't an option then there are still more.  Armed revolution a la Marx would be a possibility, although it wouldn't necessarily involve the establishment of a new state if it was sufficient to cripple the robber barons.  A more realistic option would probably be for people just to establish communes and communities independent of the coorporations which would probably involve re-settling, but in a stateless society where no central entity has claim over a territory apart from their purchase/use of it re-settling would basically just function as a universal right to homestead.  It's likely that you'd end up with anarcho-socialist communities that would function mostly self-sufficiently, thus not overthrowing coorporations but simply operating independently of them.

And despite my passion for libertarianism/anarchy I don't see complete and total freedom of action as the highest human good and thus can accept that the state would be necessary if the alternative was total chaos and hell on earth (although obviously I don't think that would be the result of a libertarian society).  By the same token I wouldn't advocate (if, hypothetically speaking, it could occur) the immediate abolition of the state because that would just create chaos.  I'm a gradualist.  Sometimes the ends justify the means.