[Mathematical proof for UPB]

"Example 3. Propositions p and p′ can't be both true is equivalent with p ∩ p = ∅. "

 

Is is that a typo? Should be

Example 3. Propositions p and p′ can't be both true is equivalent with p ∩ p' = ∅. 

[Anarcho capitalism is not anarchy?]

Any argument from history can't be universal.  

 

At first I was just nodding my head. But I kept thinking about it. The scientific method depends on empirical experiments, induction, which is just history on a small scale. Hypothesis, test, generalization. Physical experiments are not like social experiments, that's for sure. But theories are intended to universalize from history. Not this one in particular, however.

 

Anyhow, theyre saying (ironically) "We homesteaded that word, you can't use it!" To which, I think the proper response is probably "Too late!"

[Anarcho capitalism is not anarchy?]

Here's an anarchist FAQ that hates anarcho-capitalism so much they have two separate long sections proving that ancaps are not anarchists: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secFcon.html

 

The issues for the authors of the FAQ seem to be hierarchy (it is always bad, can't be voluntary, might as well be rape) and socialism (which they define either as worker ownership of the means of production or worker ownership of their entire output, I'm not remembering). They claim that the individualist anarchists, such as Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, were socialists and opposed rent, interest, and wage labor. According to them, anarchists must be socialists (using that definition of socialism). This is an historical issue for them, not definitional or etymological. Proudhon was the first to embrace the epithet "anarchist" and he and all subsequent anarchists (until Rothbard) would agree on this, again according to the FAQ's authors.

 

This seems sort of plausible in light of the fact that Spooner was a member of the first international. But it still has a funny smell. Here's s quote I found in Wikipedia, from Voltairine de Cleyre, who I think everyone agrees was an anarchist: "[The anarchist individualists] are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centred upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State." Wikipedia cites [Anarchism. Originally published in Free Society, 13 October 1901. Published in Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre, edited by Sharon Presley, SUNY Press 2005, p. 224.]

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

I was upset to read this, assuming the question was aimed at me. I don't know what UPB says. I feel I've been clear on this point.

The topic of this thread is UPB ethics and aesthetics. Thank you for giving me your non-UPB derivation of morality, based on the foundation of self-ownership. I think I understand it, as it is admirably brief and clear. Since you seem to wish to avoid UPB, maybe you should start ignoring this thread? I will answer your other questions in the context of my quest to understand UPB, so be forewarned. 

And I still am not sure as to what you mean by prohibit. Of course the fact that murder is immoral doesn't render somebody incapable of inflicting it. Murder is internally inconsistent because it's the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights.

When I mentioned moral prohibitions, I was thinking of UPB. For instance, "don't murder." I consider this to be a prohibition. It describes an action that a moral agent may not legitimately take. No enforcement mechanism, formal or informal, is necessarily implied. Another example: I have been in restrooms or gas stations where a sign was posted that said "smoking is prohibited on these premises." In that case, it was not a moral prohibition. Perhaps it was a legal prohibition, or simply a policy of the property owner. Presumably in that case the cops might have been called to enforce it if I had violated the prohibition too flagrantly, I am not sure. 

Can you logically explain why the earning of property through investment of your time and labor would go from being righteous to suddenly being a crime against everybody else? Can you clarify where that line is drawn and why?

No. Maybe square4 would like to take a shot. I wanted to know why (I think) Stef would categorize it as aesthetic, and I did not understand how it flunked his version of universality. Apparently, you were not referring to his version of universality? 

Again, the onus is upon him or in this case, you if you want to argue his position [that land is unlike other sorts of property].

I want to understand how UPB deals properly with his case, which seems unusual. If UPB says land must be treated the same as other ordinary objects, I'd like to see where that principle came from. 

In what way is land different from a car, a refrigerator, or your body?

It doesn't move. Land ownership has lots of little quirks from common law practice and from the odd nature of land, which I would know all about if I was a lawyer. Perhaps most of these are warpage cause by the state, but probably not all. Have you ever bought land? It's different. You can dig up all the rocks and soil on your land, until you have a mine shaft, but your land is still there. You can dig so deep that it turns into a volcano, and it's still your land. This seems unusual to me. If I take a car apart and sell the parts, I don't have a car any more. And mineral rights. If there is oil under my property, that complicates matters in a way not possible with refrigerators.Land is different from my body because my body is different from all other sorts of property, in that I cannot legitimately sell my body, at least, not the same way I can sell anything else and just cease any connection to my former property. If I sell my body, my consciousness must either go with my body or cease. That is not the case when I sell my land.

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

I made it clear up front that I'm not touching UPB and why.

I still managed to misinterpret you. Fair enough.

If it's confusing to you and somebody else's explanation is not so confusing, I'm not sure why you'd continue to pursue the one you find to be problematic.

Well, the different strategies accomplish different goals. I think it would be valuable for me to understand UPB so that if I fully agree, I can explain it to others, if I have minor disagreements I could make helpful suggestions to fix the problems I found, or if I thought it was a hopeless failure, I could make that clear and start looking for other options. Stef has enough credibility that I was not willing to dismiss him out of hand, but not so much credibility that I am willing to just take his word for it. I want to figure it out.

I'm not sure what you mean by "justify prohibitions." By prohibitions, do you mean legislations?

No. I'm not sure how to make it more clear. Each of the moral propositions that pass the UPB tests prohibits some behavior. Stef is careful to avoid committing to any specific enforcement mechanism, punishment, etc., other than to defend the idea of self-defense. Or at least, that is how I am remembering it. According to UPB, murder is prohibited to moral agents. Right?

you cannot have immorality (or crimes if you'd prefer) without property rights. How could you know that murder was wrong if the life that was snuffed out didn't belong to the person who took it?

If you are saying, every sort of moral prohibition can be interpreted as a violation of a property right, I agree. If you are saying, everyone knows this, and agrees that property rights are morally justified and they are willing to think of morality in these terms, I do not agree. I am not willing to just ignore those who consider the ordinary conception of property rights to be flawed and in need of justification, I want to give them a convincing answer.

I apologize for the ambiguity. You said you thought it was aesthetics but couldn't explain why. I was providing for you the explanation. If it is not universal, it cannot be binding.

So a universalizable proposition might not qualify for the ethics category, but if it cannot be universalized, it definitely fails to qualify. That is clear.

[square4's proposition is] essentially saying that you own the effects of your actions, but only up to a certain point.

So, apparently UPB concludes that you own the effects of your actions, period, full stop, no exceptions? Is this one of the axioms derived from pure argument? Where did it come from?On page 76 Stef wrote:

Since we own our bodies, we also inevitably own the effects of our actions, be they good or bad. If we own the effects of our actions, then clearly we own that which we produce, whether what we produce is a bow, or a book–or a murder.

He makes a conclusion, but leaves out the explanation. Also, he is using "own" in an unusual way. By committing murder or theft, we now "own" something, but what we own is not a physical object in reality, not the body of our victim or the loot in our bag, but responsibility for an historical truth. So if I smash a hole in your wall, I don't own the hole that I have made, in the sense that I can control it or sell it. I own the hole in the metaphysical sense that I am responsible for it, not that I possess or control it legitimately. So the hole is an effect of my actions that I *do not* own in the strictly commonplace sense of ownership. So, why shouldn't owning too much land also qualify as an exception to his principle?

[square4's proposition breaks universality by] differentiating land from all other forms of property.

Does this break universality? I've been interpreting Stef's (rather strong) version of universality to mean the proposition must apply to all moral agents, at all times, in all places, but not necessarily in all circumstances. (It is the difference in circumstances that differentiates between murder and killing in self-defense, for instance.) So square4 can claim that his proposition applies to all persons, all places, all times, what is the problem?Why shouldn't we treat land differently from other property, since in many ways it actually is different? Or perhaps we could also prohibit ownership of "too much" of anything? That seems a bit ridiculous, but which principle of UPB prevents it, which test does it fail?

Ethics refers to enforceable preferences, and enforceable means that it's acceptable to compel compliance/obedience. A non-enforceable preference would then logically be one where it's not acceptable to compel obedience.

So in various places, Stef draws the line between ethics and aesthetics using enforceability, use of violence, and avoidability. Does that mean they all agree on where the line is drawn, in all cases?

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

I have to second Mike's suggestion of calling into the show with a question.

Thanks for answering. Last time I called in my connection went flakey and it wasted Stef's time and mine. That's kind of an excuse. Conversing with Stef on air makes me tense.

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

You have the capacity for reason, therefore you own yourself. People are not fundamentally different in this regard, therefore everybody owns themselves. If everybody owns themselves, then theft, assault, rape and murder are immoral because they require exercising ownership over that which is owned by somebody else.

I like this, but UPB is supposed to use logic to justify property along with prohibitions against murder, etc., not use property to justify prohibitions against murder, etc. So this explains the conclusions of UPB, but doesn't quite do what Stef wants UPB to do.

Referencing a "proportionate area of land" breaks universality

So whether or not we categorize it as ethics or aesthetics, it flunks universality.

Quoting from UPB (p. 48) [...]I don't believe that you are having this much trouble with these ideas while also being intelligent enough to think about them without something in your history preventing you from doing so.

Yeah, I quoted some of that in the original post, and reviewed pg 48-52 before that. Maybe it's something in my history. Maybe I'm just not that intelligent. Maybe I am so accustomed to a certain way of thinking, that it's hard to think differently."Non-violent actions by their very nature are avoidable." Venn diagram, small circle (non-violence) inside large circle (avoidable)."Ethics is the subset of UPB which deals with inflicted behaviour, or the use of violence." Does the "or" indicate that inflicted behavior and violence are different and are to be combined (ethics = inflicted behavior + violence, inflicted != violence), or is it a rhetorical flourish, clarifying that (inflicted behavior = violence)?"In general, we will use the term aesthetics to refer to non-enforceable preferences – universal orpersonal – while ethics or morality will refer to enforceable preferences." Are "non-enforceable preferences" preferences that can be realized without force, or preferences you are prohibited from enforcing?"It is universally preferable (i.e. required) to use the scientific method to validate physical theories, but we cannot use force to inflict the scientific method on those who do not use it, since not using the scientific method is not a violent action." Implying that we can inflict something (presumably restitution, or punishment, or at least self-defense/enforcement) on people who use violence, right?

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

So, as for the distinction between ethics and aesthetics, let's put things straight. Ethics deals with the objective and universal principles. Aesthetics deals with the subjective preferences.

I like your statement, but did you base it on something from the UPB book, or is this something else? And now we need to distinguish between objective and subjective. Is it universlaizability? Stef pointed out several examples of APAs (aesthetically positive actions, but basically means universalizable aesthetics, e.g. "Be on time"). The objectivity Stef is trying for consists of facts implied logically from logic itself, plus norms and principles implied by the act of arguing.

the line between the ethical and the unethical lies in the use of force, which you can argue is identifiable by whether or not self-defense is the only option.

Is this answer based on the UPB book, or are you rolling your own? It's not that I don't care what you think, but that I've been trying to figure out UPB, and I want to know whether I'm getting the Stef-approved version or a hybrid. There is a confusing discussion of self-defense on page 87, but I don't think I can squeeze out an interpretation that matches what you wrote.

Do you realize that you are intentionally going around in circles trying to distract yourself with abstract details or questions already answered in the book?

I'm trying to get people to help me understand the book, which I find confusing. Do you have an answer to my question about why we categorize square4’s proposition as aesthetics, or do you just want to shame me?I think I can answer why we categorize "don't murder" as ethics. If someone shoots me, I can't choose to avoid it. (I might survive the attempted murder by running away if I am lucky, but somehow that isn't the kind of avoidance that matters.) And we categorize "don't be late" as APA because if someone inflicts their lateness on me, I can just stop associating with that person. Am I on the right track? But I do not have a good grip on the principle, so that I can confidently tell square4 why his proposal doesn't qualify as ethics.

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

You cannot avoid robbery or murder without defending yourself. It's true that violence isn't the only option, you can also flee or set an alarm in your home, but the possible options you're left with are all forms of defense either way.The things you can do to avoid the guy with the annoying story aren't forms of defense.

Seems to me there is a bit of overlap, since I can run away from all the above. So we moved from trying to understand the distinction between ethics and aesthetics to trying to understand the distinction between defense and whatever that other stuff is that is not defense but protects me from the crashing bore.Do you agree with me that Square4's proposal is aesthetics? Can you explain why it is not ethics?

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

When I said "simply saying no", I mean that in a broad sense. Obviously, it also includes walking away. The point is, you don't need to use violence to enforce your preference of not having that guy bore you.(If walking away doesn't work, and it becomes clear that he's coercing you into listening to his shaggy dog story, then it's harassment and it becomes a question of ethics. Of course, that's a pretty ridiculous scenario, this isn't ever gonna happen in real life )

I might be able to avoid a robbery or murder attempt without using violence, but that doesn't mean we should categorize robbery or murder as aesthetics. Is it proportionality? I don't remember Stef discussing it this way, but his ethical violations all have in common the possibility of defensive violence. Is that somehow the real criterion, that if violence is an appropriate proportionate response to the violation, the rule is part of ethics, if the violation does not justify a violent response, it is aesthetics? This makes some sense, but in this context it seems like begging the question, since UPB is supposed to justify all this, not depend on some prior moral concept about proportionality of responses. hmmm...

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

Theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral. It's that simple. The proof and explanation requires a few mores words, but not many.

I'd love to read your version.

Where's the line between aesthetics and morality/ethics? Is it binding? If not, it's aesthetics. If it is, it is morality/ethics. I like ice cream is not binding upon you. I own myself IS binding upon you because it means you cannot steal, assault, rape, or murder me without engaging in the internally contradictory conclusion of simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights.

The two examples you give are not close to the boundary between morality and aesthetics. Can you think of examples that illustrate bindingness more clearly? "Binding" is not immediately more clear than "avoidable", at least for me. When I think of examples of using that word, I think of binding promises, which are enforcible by a court, or at least backed up by some serious consequence. Stef uses it differently in his book, from context he seems to mean something like "undeniable" or "logically required."This discussion comes from a thread where Square4 is arguing for a moral proposition about not owning or controlling more than a proportionate area of land, and I objected that I thought his proposition qualifies as aesthetics, not ethics, but I was not able to explain clearly because, well, I am not sure I understand how Stef draws that line. I think I can predict the result in that case, but I can't explain how we would determine whether some proposition is ethics or aesthetics. What is it about Square4's proposal that is avoidable or not inflicted or not binding or whatever? What does it mean in the context of his proposal "it is not UPB to own/control more than a proportionate amount of land?"

Back on topic, it is unclear to me as to where avoidability enters into it. Pardon me if this is a result of my lack of exploration of UPB. I can avoid being punched in the face by you by always staying at greater than arm's length. This doesn't make punching me in the face moral.

Yeah, Stef mentions stuff like that in the book, but I never figured out how he wants to deal with it. He mentions several examples, like if someone invites you to stand next to a cliff so he can push you off, or someone who lives thousands of miles away threatening to kill you if you come close, or a guy who leaves his wallet on a park bench, etc.

The line lies at the question: Can it be avoided without retaliatory force? Can it be avoided by simply saying "no"? In that case, it's aesthetics.

So, if I am at a party and someone is boring me with a shaggy dog story, and I say "you're boring, go away" but he just keeps on yammering, should we categorize that as ethics, because I said "no" but he didn't stop?

The reason why it's aesthetics and not ethics is because if nothing is inflicted, there is no internal inconsistency to be found if you universalize the behavior. (remember, ethics must be universal)

I am tantalizingly close to understanding what you wrote, but can't quite get there. If it has to do with internal inconsistency, why not just go ahead and use the UPB tests to reject it on those grounds, rather than categorizing it as aesthetics and rejecting it without even bothering to do the tests? Some Aesthetic propositions also can be universalized, but because of avoidability or inflictedness, they do not get treated as part of morality. Violating them is annoying, but not evil.If "nothing is inflicted" is the critical fact, Stef should have talked about that more. And I'm not sure it is much clearer to me, as some violations of APA or even my personal preferences seem like "inflictions" to me, although I can usually avoid them by running away. Of course, I can run away from robbers just like I can run away from social torture, the difference being a robber might injure me for running away, while a bore usually would not.

Aesthetics start where property violations end.

Your distinction is admirably clear, concrete, and credible. Unfortunately, it does not match up with what Stef wrote in the UPB book. Also, given his purpose in writing the book, he could not use property rights to define a critical distinction that he later uses as part of his argument to justify property rights. That would be "begging the question."

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

Want to call into the show about it?

My bandwidth is too unreliable.

[UPB Ethics/aesthetics, avoidability, violence, property]

In UPB, the line between ethics and aesthetics is important, but for me it is hard to understand. Violence, consent, and maybe other factors combine into avoidability? Two issues are unclear. How precisely do we draw the line between ethics and aesthetics? And how does this distinction connect to the derivation of UPB?

Ethics is the subset of UPB which deals with inflicted behaviour, or the use of violence. Any theory that justifies or denies the use of violence is a moral theory, and is subject to the requirements of logical consistency and empirical evidence, page 49. Aesthetics applies to situations that may be unpleasant, but which do not eliminate your capacity to choose. Page 50Morality is defined as an enforceable subset of UPB, page 76. The subset of UPB that examines enforceable behaviour is called “morality,” page 125.Force violates the moral requirement of avoidability, page 118. This capacity for escape and/or avoidance is an essential characteristic differentiating aesthetics from ethics, page 50.Non-violent actions by their very nature are avoidable. Page 48. For the moment, we can assume that any threat of the initiation of violence is immoral, but the question of avoidance – particularly the degree of avoidance required – is also important. Page 51.We will use the term aesthetics to refer to non-enforceable preferences – universal or personal – while ethics or morality will refer to enforceable preferences. Page 48.

Pages 48-52 discuss this topic, but I have read it many times and still feel confused. Can someone help me make sense of this? Stef's discussion of avoidance seems to go to great length to show that the line is fuzzy, there are cases where someone is the victim of violence but they could have reasonably avoided it. He gives concrete examples, but does not explain where the line is drawn, or why. I could understand more easily if the line involved consent or violence. Consent mostly works, as if you don't consent to something in the category of aesthetics, you can opt out. You can't opt out of violence if you are the victim of assault, robbery, etc. OTOH, I can easily imagine someone trying to elevate aesthetics to ethics, just by shrieking "I do not consent to this bridge party!" Violence also works, except it is a bit vague in cases of sneak-thievery or fraud, where deception replaces physical violence.In any case, whichever concept we use to distinguish between ethics and aesthetics, what is the justification? How does it connect to the derivation of UPB from the prerequisite norms and concepts of debate? If we select one of these concepts without reference to the derivation, that would be begging the question. Is nonviolence a normative prerequisite of argument, and how does that translate into "violence is categorized as ethics?"

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

What land qualifies? all land above sea level (without distinction). The calculation and limit are stated in my previous post.

If we are including untenable inaccessible land, maybe we should include the surface of the Moon and Mars?

About the "avoidable" issue: I was hoping one of the UPB experts would chime in to answer your UPB questions about it. Maybe an idea to start a topic about the avoidability issue in the Philosophy section?

Yeah, I am not optimistic. But maybe I will.

In relation to the proportionality rule: If one person claims more land than proportional for himself, this is indeed avoidable by going to another place that he hasn't claimed. But suppose that people universally claim more than proportional (except yourself), than you are locked out of the possibility of owning land, and it becomes unavoidable.

It's avoidable so long as someone will sell you some. And let's face it, some people live their whole lives without even considering buying land. How is not owning or controlling a proportionate share of land unavoidable?

So a problem with using avoidability as a criteria is that when you universalize a behavior, a lot of behaviors become practically unavoidable, but not necessarily immoral.

I'm not clear what you mean. Is the land thing an example? Are there others? 

The action "using land exclusively" means that you take active measures (fences/force) to ensure exclusivity. Now I think about it, the rule would actually make more sense, if it would also include situations where the land owner would possibly allow other people on its land. So the rule would then be: "People should not control a more than proportional share of the land area of the earth." Exclusive use is only one form of control. Consuming a resource, for example food, is an ultimate form of control, and it doesn't involve force, but land cannot be consumed.

Makes a bit more sense, still aesthetics. 

Controlling exclusively more than one square inch of land can be universalized without contradiction. On the other hand, controlling more than proportional cannot be universalized. Murder and rape are examples of controlling a more than proportional amount of human bodies. Only controlling one body can be universalized, hence self-ownership.

How can you be sure I not controlling more than one body?

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

Indeed. It also doesn't make sense to me, but is our common sense on this subject objective? At least, the proposed rule is now feasible; most people don't violate it.

I'm not sure you've convinced me it is feasible. I'm not sure what land qualifies, or how to make the calculation of what the limit should be. I notice you are not pursuing the "avoidable" issue.  

When you would use force to get exclusive control over it, it wouldn't be shared.

I don't know what you mean. If I own an apartment building, do I have exclusive control over the land where it is located, assuming I got it by buying it? Is it ownership the proposition prohibits, or control, or exclusivity? Is an apartment building shared by your standard or not? If I put apartment buildings on all my land, does your proposal limit me or not?

And if that area would be more than a proportional part of the earth, it would violate the rule. Does that mean that personal property rights of areas larger than about 20,000 square meters are not enforceable?

What about "state owned" land, land owned by corporations or other groups, etc.?Maybe we should toss out the proportionality angle, and just put a completely arbitrary limit on maximum land ownership. Would that pass the UPB tests? "no one may own more than one square inch of land."How about that?

[Larken Rose: Statist Contradictions]

TDB i am not sure what your point is, but the thing about communist buying land where he can practice his believes is contradictory since he does not believe in land ownership.

I am assuming your communist is one lone dissenter in an ancap society. So is he so principled that he would rather start a violent revolution (by himself) than pay for something, or is he just so stupid he can't understand the concept of buying land? Perhaps it would be contradictory for me to pay the USG to allow me to secede, but I would do it if I thought they would really stick to the bargain. Is the point really so obscure? In ancapistan, the communist can do most of the things he can do currently (rebel, persuade, emigrate, or put up with the pain, minus one option, bribe a congressman) plus one additional option, which is, he could buy his way out. If he wants to start a commune, he could buy some land, and the ancaps will leave him alone after that. Don't you think Marx would have been happy to use some of Engels's money to buy a little communist utopia? Buy the land and "liberate" it. Out-produce the capitalists, recruit all their workers, buy more land. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have achieved world revolution without spilling a drop of blood. Or until it all falls apart.

I read through your comments and i get the sense that you believe the majority (or super majority) will win and those who disagree can either capitulate, persuade or relocate.

Nope.

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

Retry: People should not use exclusively more than a proportional share of the land area of the earth. (added the word exclusive, because otherwise violating it can be universalized by sharing land). About the other objections: they seem to be about values and human customs, which are not considered objective in UPB.

Yes, I suppose the point has nothing to do with whether the proposal really makes sense or not, just does it pass the tests, and if so, does that create some sort of contradiction? Well, as long as we are quibbling, now I can own the entire planet Earth, so long as it all qualifies as "shared." And I still have a problem with avoidability. 

It is still interesting to know if something is an aesthetically preferable action (APA),

APAs confuse and bore me, so I mostly don't think about them. Maybe it would be simpler to say they are about good manners and reciprocity.

[Larken Rose: Statist Contradictions]

I feel like people conflate disagree with violate. The answers i received are similar to what i hear from statist who do not have a problem with people being forced to pay taxes when a libertarian is arguing about the morality of taxes. Again, i give the example of someone who is a communist and doesn't believe in individual's right to own land and trespasses on someone's land. He would not care if you walked on his land since he doesn't own one, neither does he believe in the concept. However, you can forcibly remove him from your land because you believe in private ownership of land.

Am I "people" in this case?I think when it actually came down to it, neighbours would know about each other and work something out. The first time they encountered each other, there would be strife, dispute. Maybe they would seek arbitration, or maybe they'd fight it out. Eventually they'd find some workable compromise. Should we, sitting in our armchairs, necessarily be able to predict what solution would satisfy them? I am reminded of a fascinating book by Robert Ellickson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ellickson) titled "Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes". The author went out and compared the armchair predictions of economists to the actual experience of disputes between cattle ranchers and farmers in a particular place. If I remember correctly (it's been a while), he found that the law on the books specified one thing, but that what actually happened in most cases was different, that an informal system had been worked out. Elinor Ostrom is famous for studying similar things, informal means of managing common resources (like fisheries), but I've never laid hands on her book, so I'm pretty ignorant about the details. That's pretty unsatisfying to us system builders and universal moralists, and I have digressed from the point of your question. Let me see if I can find my way back.

answers i received are similar to what i hear from statist who do not have a problem with people being forced to pay taxes when a libertarian is arguing about the morality of taxes.

Here's the difference I see. Most statists you describe haven't thought about it, and might reject the "rulers own you and your output" premise underlying their claims if it is pointed out to them. The ancaps you're talking to have thought about private property, and they're pretty certain that private property is non-negotiable and fundamental. Their utopia is set up in a certain way, and people who have incompatible ideologies need to figure out what's up. They also are more flexible than the statists, in that your communist is able to buy some land and start a commune and no one will come on his land and try to stop him. And if communism is really superior, it can spread and take over. The statists are not offering any such olive branch/booby prize.

How would you deal with someone who does not believe in private property in a voluntary society?

So, if it's an ancap society, I'd explain to them that their beliefs are incompatible with the way things run around here, and he needs to save up some money or borrow some or get a rich benefactor and buy some land to start a different society. Or leave, or persuade everyone, or adapt.

What would you say to this statist?[...] "A society is a group of individuals who have to come to some consensus about the way their society is run. [...] If anyone disagrees with the way we choose to govern ourselves, they have two options; find a society more suitable to them or seek to change their current society by working within the confines of the current rules."

I'd say, check the dictionary, I don't think "consensus" means what you think it does. If the consent of the governed concerns you, you need a reasonable method that dissenters can use to opt out or secede.

Why should anyone be able to draw lines on the ground and use force on anyone that enters that land?

This question does not seem serious. If the question is, how do we justify property rights in land, Stef and a lot of the people on this forum would point at UPB. I would point to the fact that "drawing some lines" is less confusing than having no lines whatever, and in fact every society is going to "draw some lines" somehow. In every society, someone will decide where the lines are and what happens within these lines or those, it's just a question of "who decides?" and "how does it change?" The communist you describe also draws lines, he just has a different rule for what entitles him to change the lines or change who is in charge within a set of lines. He just doesn't want to call it private property, to emphasize some minor differences. My opinion is, this is just confusing. If property is theft, then possession is theft, unless you twist the ordinary meaning of these words into something much more difficult for a normal person to understand. It is jargon to be invoked while giving the secret handshake to fellow cultists, not helpful for communicating clearly.In my ideal world, people with different ideas about how to run society could run experiments and those that attracted attention by making people more happy, creative, and productive would expand, and those that starved people or made them miserable would contract. People would choose from different options and try to innovate new options. And I am not sure the process would ever end. This is all too consequentialist to get approval from Stef, I think.

[Larken Rose: Statist Contradictions]

1. How do you determine how to make rules, how do you make rules and how do you enforce it?2. How do you deal with those who disagree?

I think it boils down to "how do you settle disputes?" The implicit answers I was hearing were,"don't really need rules when you've got the NAP, and we deal with those who disagree the same way as everyone else, if they violate the NAP we defend ourselves."I think that these answers are a bit abstract, as in, I don't feel like arguing against them, but I also don't understand what they mean very well. OTOH, maybe it's a good idea to keep it abstract, and fill in the details when it becomes practical.

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

People should not use more than a proportional share of the land area of the earth.

Define "use". Land is not a commodity, where one unit can costlessly replace any other. Deserts are not like mountains are not like valleys, etc. Many land uses involve a large number of people sharing or benefiting from the land use, e.g. apartment buildings, office buildings, highways, parks, factories. Actually, almost all land uses create a shared benefit.

 

Do all these objections reflect on the proposition, or does UPB fail by not addressing them?

 

I can, of course, fall back on my standard objection, that probably Stef would claim your proposal qualifies as aesthetics rather than ethics. So, why does "don't steal" qualify as ethics, but this proportionality idea does not? Maybe "don't steal" should not qualify. I could pretty much guarantee that I never get mugged or have my pocket picked if I hire a troop of bodyguards to go everywhere with me. I can avoid having customers shoplift in my store by hiring a bunch of security personnel to follow customers around and keep an eye on them. Not really practical... But how do we draw the "avoidability" line?

 

This is a resource that is almost constant in quantity, and it is feasible to estimate with a reasonable amount of accuracy. It is about 149 million km². Divided by the earth's population, this is about 20,000 m², which would then be each person's proportional share. The value difference between various land areas are disregarded in this rule, to avoid subjectivity, instead each square mile is treated equally. Any new person that comes into being or arrives on earth is allocated a proportional share; others have to make room in that case.

Doesn't sound feasible. But does UPB require feasibility?

 

Would you think it still brakes universality, when we apply a rule to all possible areas and subareas in the universe (including all rooms)?

I think universality requires that the scope includes the universe. Maybe for practical purposes we could limit it to planet Earth, but definitely not a room.

 

It would not [make coma test trival?]. Positive obligations still need to be conditioned on ability, otherwise they fail the coma test. A man in coma does no action, so he complies with all rules that forbid something, but he violates all rules that ask a positive action unconditionally.

Stef rejects all unchosen positive obligations, perhaps for this very reason. A quick search of the text doesn't show me where this comes from, either he does it without using the word "obligation" or I picked it up somewhere else. Maybe someone can help me out?

 

Secondly, if unconscious actions are not excluded from morality, violating NAP can also become unavoidable. For example, it is possible that someone suddenly gets a seizure, and hits another unintentionally. So this argument is needed to prevent NAP from being rejected as a moral rule.

I think we could probably quibble with the meaning of the NAP, that it excludes unconscious actions. But you may be onto something. I've always had a funny feeling about the coma test. What is the difference, for our purposes, between a toddler and a coma victim, other than that a toddler can move her/his body? If a coma victim is not excused from the limitations of morality, why should a toddler be excused (or an Alzheimer's victim, or a lunatic, etc.)? (Or, same thing, if a toddler is excused, why not excuse a coma victim?) If a coma victim is excused, then the coma test is B.S.

 

[added later]

Here's a quote from page 65 of the UPB book that I hope speak to UPB requiring deasibility. (I say "hope" because the context doesn't make it perfectly clear that my interpretation applies.)

 

Each morally preferable action must by its very nature have an opposite action – because if it does not, then there is no capacity for choice, no possibility of avoidance, and therefore no capacity for virtue or vice. If I propose the moral rule: “thou shalt defy gravity,” then clearly morality becomes impossible, immorality cannot be avoided, and therefore the moral rule must be invalid.

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

Can the same be said about the principle of private land ownership? Do we have to evaluate separately each rule that the land owner sets for visitors, or can something in general be said about it?

 Good point. I think I can still use the "avoidable" issue though. Mr. Burns's mansion is a lot more avoidable than "the state". Still, property is sort of a blank check. 

To avoid the difficulty of determining what is the opposite or negation of a behavior (there was a long thread about this), it is easier start with a moral rule, such as "Do not steal", determine what is the violation of it (stealing), and then test if this violation can be universalized.

I think that only works in the simple cases, where it's "always do this" or "never do this". Not sure I can back that up. 

[...]To calculate what is proportional, we have to know what are the available resources, and divide this by the number of persons.

The fact that this is constantly changing, and in fact changes as a result of each person's consumption (and birth and death), makes this impossible. Does that disqualify it? Does UPB need a separate test to reject rules that are simply infeasible? 

The "available" resources can be defined in a number of ways: we could take the resources of the earth, a community, or a room (for the two-guys-in-a-room test).

Nope, that breaks universality. And we'd better include any intelligent space aliens in our calculations. 

Whatever we choose, as long as the available resources are a definite set of things, using more than a proportional part of it cannot be universalized.

But it's not definite. Even conceptually, there are undiscovered resources, subjective valuations, and fluctuations due to consumption, spoilage, changes in production, technological innovation, etc. It's a mess.   

A man in coma uses oxygen involuntary. It is conceivable that this amount of oxygen would be disproportional. But if an action is involuntary, it is not really your action, but that of your body, and similar to a rock falling, it is outside of morality.

I was thinking more about the labor that is expended keeping him alive.Your statement is an argument against ever using the coma test, not an argument for this proposition passing the test. Pretty much everything the man in a coma does is like a falling rock, so if that was an excuse nothing would ever fail the test, would it? Stef's idea is, the man in a coma is not excused from morality, so propositions that categorize coma victims as evil get rejected. OTOH, UPB does excuse infants from morality, I think. That seems a bit inconsistent.  

The violation of this rule is smoking pot. It is possible for everyone to smoke pot at the same time, while not resisting that others smoke pot. Since the violation can be universalized, I think the rule would not be accepted in UPB.

I think you missed my point. If we can promote anything to the category of ethics just by enforcing it, UPB becomes nonsense. Does UPB rule that out somehow? Maybe if I really understood the relevance of avoidability I'd know.

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

My point was that no reason was given for even wanting the apples, let alone distributing them, or even for saying that there weren't enough for everyone...

I think the apples were tossed in just to make the 2 guys test more clear, which doesn't work, because a) nothing universal about it and b) it's no longer the same moral principle Square4 originally proposed. 

There's no point in asking "How does UPB say the apples should be distributed" without understanding the economic situation, so you can see what is forced and what is a choice.

Square4 was asking about UPB. UPB is about morality, it does not specifically get into economics. "Don't steal" gets approved because it passes the UPB tests, not because it has beneficial economic implications. We can use the beneficial economic implications as additional evidence in favour, I suppose, but many moral principles do not have any obvious economic dimension. Perhaps you are suggesting that UPB should be expanded to have some special provisions for economic proposals. I don't think this would be an improvement.Perhaps you want to discuss economic aspects of Square4's proposal. That might be interesting, but does not respond to Square4's question and intent. Square4 is looking for a flaw in UPB. A similar approach would be to ask whether some form of the communist credo "from each according to ability, to each according to need" might pass the UPB tests. This would be a serious blow to UPB, not merely because it is economic nonsense, but because then UPB would be approving moral propositions that contradict each other, and logical consistency is one of the primary goals of UPB.You do raise an important issue, though, "what is forced and what is a choice." I think this is what Stef is getting at when he uses "avoidability" to distinguish between ethics and aesthetics. This is not totally clear to me. He discusses this in the book, but I am not really sure what the justification is or how to apply the concept in each case. UPB seems to ignore voluntary contractual interaction, so long as there are no disputes. It is all about exceptions, situations where one person does the choosing for both, imposes a decision on the other, which the other cannot avoid or consent to. So should we look at Square4's proposal as imposing a system on everyone, or as a claim that someone violating the principle is imposing on others?Was I too hasty claiming it fails the avoidability issue? By making it an enforceable rule, violators can no longer avoid? On one hand, if we use this as a model, we can promote any issue to the category of ethics just by making a rule enforceable. That is, if there is not an enforceable rule about egalitarianism, how much I consume is not part of ethics. Can the enforcement satisfy unavoidability? I wish I could say this more clearly, I am confusing myself and so I wonder if anyone reading this has a clue what I am trying to say.Another example. Does "Don't smoke pot" pass the UPB tests? I see Stef as dismissing this as aesthetics, as anyone who doesn't want to smoke pot is able to avoid smoking pot. If I take my hybrid Square4 approach, "don't smoke pot" gets promoted to the category of ethics *because* there is an agency enforcing the rule, and now some people cannot avoid the enforcement. But in that case, maybe the proposition needs to mention the enforcement, became "enforce the rule 'don't smoke pot'"? Why does this formulation fail the UPB tests?This would be a problem for UPB, as we could replace 'don't smoke pot' with pretty much anything. Fails the coma test?We could criticize it for too much abstractness, that the rule depends too much on interpretation of the words of the rule, which are not specified. But this is a general problem for UPB. "Don't murder." Where is the line between murder, accidental killing, and assisted suicide? Not specified. "Don't steal." Different societies have different rules of property (what is unowned, how can property be transferred, when can property be considered to have been abandoned, etc.), so what counts as stealing? All these concepts have some wiggle room. How much wiggle room is too much?

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

Questions of how to handle scarcity are definitely economic questions.

So does that mean they are not moral questions? If so, should property rights be tossed out of UPB?

Dealing with scarcity is a fundamental economic question. Any particular approach to answer the question is really an economic theory.

If it can be formulated as a moral proposition, it qualifies for the UPB tests. Stef thinks "don't steal" qualifies. I think Square4's "don't consume more than your proportional share does not. Am I playing fair?

Not trying to be pedantic, it's just that a *lot* of effort has been expended on determining what to do about scarce resources or goods.The two apples egalitarian problem you listed was, essentially, "two apples, two men, no one should use more apples than their fair share." If there are enough apples for everyone, it's not a scarce resource. It has an effective price of zero. Why would either of them care if someone got two apples? Are they the only thing to eat?

All these are interesting questions, but not relevant to the question Square4 is asking, does his proposition pass the UPB test, and if not, why not?

If there are not enough apples for everyone it will have a non-zero value, and the actors in the system will rationally negotiate in their own self-interest to get enough apples for their own use. However, this particular problem doesn't posit anything else other than two apples in the room. It is incomplete.

Square4's use of the two apples has thrown us off. I think he really intended to ask, can his egalitarian principle pass the "2 guys in a room" test of UPB. He threw in the apples to make it concrete, perhaps, but confused the issue by making it too concrete and non-universal. Square4 wants to formulate a moral proposition like "no one should consume more than their proportional fair share of scarce resources" and submit it to the UPB tests. I claim UPB would categorize it as aesthetics, not ethics. Am I right or wrong?It would definitely pass the 2 guys test. But it's "opposite" (Don't consume your fair share of scarce resources) would also. Or would the "opposite" be "consume more than your fair share of scarce resources" or "consume less than your fair share of resources" or even "consume whatever you will"? Would it pass the coma test? Someone in a coma uses a lot of resources. What is their proportional fair share?

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

I don't think Stef will squirm with any reformulation of the "two apples" problem. You've just discovered Economics.

The two apples situation sounds more like strict egalitarianism than economics. Square4 should probably ask, why is the ordinary property rights issue part of ethics (not avoidable) but egalitarianism isn't?How about a really silly example, like the moral principle "everyone ought to commit suicide." Does that pass or fail?

[Why is UPB behavior preferable?]

I found this summary informative -

The first two lists contain assumptions Stef derives from the act of arguing. The last list has some conclusions. How does Stef derive the tests and categories of UPB from these assumptions? Are there additional assumptions? Avoidability draws the line between ethics and aesthetics, why is that? What does it really even mean?

a property right opponent might argue as follows: The owner (capitalist) of property may do whatever he wants with it, but the non-owner (a proletarian) has to ask permission. So he would argue that there are different rules for different actors in this case, in violation of universality.

What do you think of this analogy? X sees a mugger rob someone, pulls a gun and shoots the robber as the robber runs away. Y sees a jogger running down the street and shoots him. Are we treating X and Y differently if we punish Y but thank X? Does that break universality, or is that simply 2 different outcomes of the same rule in different circumstances?

And then we could respond: But everyone has the right to homestead and acquire property through trade etc., so it is not a different rule. But the other side remains unconvinced. Similarly, if someone proposes the rule: Obey state laws, this might seem universal, but we might argue that it is not universal, because it incorrectly makes a distinction between the rulers and the ruled.

"Obey state laws" is not a moral proposition according to UPB, it lacks the quality of unavoidability. Also, it is vague. Each of the laws to which it refers would need to be formulated as moral propositions and tested on their own. Or does it just mean, "obey the rulers, whether or not their commands are moral"?

But then the democrat replies: But everyone has the right to form a political party, and try to get elected etc. Do you see the parallel? So those who agree with a rule, see it as universal, those who disagree with it, see it as non-universal. Can this be resolved within UPB?

I see the parallel. Everyone must obey the rule, but the rule categorizes persons or things according to a scheme or circumstance (trading or voting) that is not part of the rule itself.

Does UPB treats proposition differently according to their formulation? I don't think so.

Maybe we are interpreting those words differently. I've lost the context, don't know how to answer. Maybe I was saying that one proposition that does not qualify somehow may be edited/polished by someone who understand the intent until it does qualify?

examine the following egalitarian principle: People should not use more than a proportional share of the available resources. Not fulfilling this rule cannot be universalized. It is impossible that everyone uses more than their proportional share. It also fails the "two guys in a room" test. Suppose there are two apples in the room, then they cannot both eat two apples. Someone might say: but it's not force, but neither is non-violent theft.

This does not qualify as a moral proposition under UPB, due to lacking unavoidability. I think this is very clever, though. Reformulate this with some unavoidability and Stef will be squirming. 

I would be very interested to see and examine a step by step derivation of UPB, that shows that moral nihilism is false.

Noesis started an incredibly long thread on that topic. I would give a link but then my ipad would probably eat this post. In another post in this thread I outlined my understanding of the moral nihilism idea in the context of UPB. As for a *well organized* derivation of UPB, good luck. I've never seen one.