Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle?

[Sumeet]

www.libertarianism.org/blog/six-reasons-libertarians-should-reject-non-aggression-principle

Hello all. I am a long-time listener and lurker, but I have not posted here much. I came across this article a short while ago though, and felt it might be interesting to possibly get some thoughts from other philosophically-minded people. While the author is a philosophy professor and is apparently a noted figure in some libertarian circles, I felt the article thoroughly missed the mark right from the start, where he attemps to define the non-aggression principle. Then he went on to present 6 examples which were either flawed (due to his initial misconceptions) or not even relevant to the topic. On the other hand, even after reading it twice, I have the odd sense that I may still be missing something. Perhaps this is just because the article is fairly well written, I don't know. Still, I'd certainly be interested in other perspectives.

[Wesley]

1. This is silly. It is a problem if I can prove that my property or my person is harmed. No individual car pollutes my property to an extent that I care and no business does either. If a business was bad enough to cause a problem, then yes they would need to stop or buy pollution rights from me.

2. Ethics of emergenices. They never happen in real life. Also, if you ask me to scratch me to save peoples lives, I would volunteer. Same for taxing me like 10 bucks. Asking permission is perfectly fine to accomplish these ends.

3. Threats are violations of the NAP. You can't point a gun at me- even if it is unloaded as I think that it may be loaded and you are threatening my life. Besides this, I can establish rules of behavior or speed limits on my own property and society will tend toward some basic rules of behavior that become generally accepted.

4. Fraud is immoral (unless under durress as has been explained before). Many sum up the NAP to be against all initiatory force, fraud, and coercion.

5. This is ridiculous. People who own property where others may potentially walk mark the property as owned in some way so that you are aware you should not tresspass. When it is property in the middle of nowhere, then no one walks there. If they do, you likely wouldn't even know. If you see them, you always measure the response by what the aggression is. Shooting someone for tresspassing is stupid. You start by asking them to leave nicely, then maybe a little more forcefully, but everyone apologizes and leaves at this point.

6. Murray Rothbard is very wrong. The child is dependant on the parents and the paarents have the obligation to care for the child by having the child, unless they find someone else who is competent and willing to care for the child. The child, as a dependant person, can use another person as a proxy for their defense if they are being abused in any way.

This is my brief counters to these. Let me know if any are unclear or unsatisfactory explanations.

[MysterionMuffles]

I think I managed 3/4 of this before closing the window. I really thought it'd be a challenging article but he's not even sure what NAP really is.

[Naddrin Kentlar]

The issue is actually property rights and force. And having both property rights and NAP in my opinion is like having your cake and eating it too. I myself been searching this forum extensively for a concept of property rights, but all fail fundamentally when you try to combine them with the NAP.

How I understand Stefan is defining property rights while trying to maintain the NAP is that. 'If I plant a seed, because of my work the tree is mine, and I can then deny other people access to the tree'. But he fails to mention how he got the seed, and what made that seed his. Or how would he be more entitled to that seed, or piece of land then someone else, or someone that is born 3 generations later.

 

there's an extensive topic i've read where a lot of arguments I could come out and say have been already debated.

 http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/3351.aspx?PageIndex=1

so it's rather pointless bringging it up again.

 

it's also funny to hear the preaching that 'emergency ethics' never happen. While they're the stripped down of all the white noise so one could understand better a concept, They do happen.

tell it to the people that died on Titanic that 'emergency ethics' don't happen. Or to the people that when in dire situations resolve to canibalism. One coul'd care very little about the NAP, if the only thing I could eat is someone else . Can you really say that the one that initiated force in that situation was immoral ?. (Ukraine anyone)

 

I also find it funny how  theese principles about humans are stated as universals. But it's a different kind of universality. If you try to apply them 200 years ago they don't work. If you try to apply them today they don't work. The only way they do work is in 100 years or more where the humans are changed and no longer resemble the humans today in behavior.

[DaveDoggOwns]

1)This IMO is the only one that even comes close to a valid argument, but only if you assume CO2 emissions are a pollutant. All the other pollutants the author lists can be easily dealt with in a free market.

2)This is a fallacious use of consequentialism. Consequentialism prioritizes what is good for the larger contex over what is good in the smaller contex. A true consequentialist would not concern himself with "life boat scenarios" at all.

3)Why would people live next to neighbors who were threatening? This argument is contex dropping.

 4)The Non-Aggression Principle does NOT mean merely the prohibition of physical force. The prohibition of the initiation of force is just one major aspect of it. It is the prohibition of aggression. Fraud clearly is an attempt to hurt someone for one's own gain by dispossessing someone of property by dishonest means. That is aggression.

5)Gigantic Straw Man. Property rights does NOT mean you get to do whatever you want to people on your property.

6)The problem is nobody is BORN into parenthood. The state however tells us we are born into a "social contract". There is no moral equivalence whatsoever.

[Agalloch]

 

1)This IMO is the only one that even comes close to a valid argument, but only if you assume CO2 emissions are a pollutant. All the other pollutants the author lists can be easily dealt with in a free market.

 

I can't think of a pollutant easier to deal with than CO2 emissions... Aside from the obvious free market reactions to any pollutant (ostracisation of polluters, bankruptcy of polluting organisations, price increases on products that lead to pollutants), no pollutants reduction is more directly linked to our attempts to save money. Not wasting money on electricity and gas not only saves you money but directly reduces your carbon footprint. It's near impossible without the State to actually increase your costs while reducing CO2 output. And with the eventually inevitable price increases in fossil fuels, completely removing yourself from dependance on them because cheaper and cheaper.

[Kirk Olson]

Personally, reason nr. 6 (the one about children) is the only one that makes me feel uneasy. The others can be dealt with quite easily, as some of you (and others on the orginal blog) have demonstrated. The one about letting one's own children starve to death I still have difficulties coping with however. Because no matter how you twist and turn things, it IS the ultimate consequence of NAP, I honestly see now way around it. Whenever some friend of mine starts to grasp the idea of NAP (and luckily most of them do now) there's always one that brings up this very argument and I have a hard time refuting it.

I usually start by stating the fact that people who will want to delibaretely starve their own children are extremely rare. So rare that making it explicitly illegal (and by doing so violate the NAP) probably won't save many children because people who do these kind things are so psychologically disturbed they will try to do it regardless of the legality of their behaviour. Sadly though, people like this exist and I feel quite uneasy advocating a theory that, in its ultimate consequence, can not punish them.

I also state the fact that you can always feed these children by yourself. Perhaps even taking them away from their parents can be allowed by a libertarian justice system , although I'm not sure of that. Children are not anyone's property but can you take them away from their parents if they do a bad job raising them? Any thoughts on that are welcome.Finally I resort to stating that although libertarianism can be considered a philosophy, it is also an economic theory (a very good one I might add, most of my friends will at least give me that) As such it concerns acting, reasoning people. Since young children are no economic actors in that way they should not be subjected to the rigorous consequences libertarianism may have as philosophy anymore than to any other religious or philosophical theory. In other words, although you think libertarianism is the most ethical, civilized and humane life philosphy out there, and you think you have the arguments to prove it, it doesn't give you the right to starve your own child.

 Or does it?

[Pepin]

From this principle, many libertarians believe, the rest of libertarianism can be deduced as a matter of mere logic.

If the principal is valid, then all implications from the principal must also be valid. In theories of physics, laws and theorems apply not do to logic, but because laws and theorems are posited to always apply.

This is going into the "not everything is rational", which tends to just be an admission of a belief they hold, and can't argue for in rational.

What is the proper libertarian stance on minimum wage laws? Aggression, and therefore wrong. What about anti-discrimination laws? Aggression, and therefore wrong. Public schools? Same answer. Public roads? Same answer. The libertarian armed with the NAP has little need for the close study of history, sociology, or empirical economics. With a little logic and a lot of faith in this basic axiom of morality, virtually any political problem can be neatly solved from the armchair.

It is important to assess whether aggression is present in the enforcement and/or funding of minimum wage laws, public schools, taxes, and so on. If the reasoning and logic follows, why isn't it applicable to situations in reality?

What does history, sociology, and empirical economics have to do with the validity of the NAP? What theory from such a field invalidates the NAP? Is that theory logical?

Also, the ending sentence makes little sense in context to the subject. Non-aggression is not a solution to any problem beside aggression. The minimum wage is claimed to be to a program to solve the problem of poverty, and to provide a proof as to how the minimum wage is not a solution to poverty is not a solution to problem, but an invalidation of what was thought to be a solution.

It is, of course, common sense to think that aggression is a bad thing. But it is far from common sense to think that its badness is absolute, such that the wrongness of aggression always trumps any other possible consideration of justice or political morality. There is a vast difference between a strong but defeasible presumption against the justice of aggression, and an absolute, universal prohibition.

So the NAP does not apply to all situations.

1. Prohibits All Pollution – As I noted in my last post, Rothbard himself recognized that industrial pollution violates the NAP and must therefore be prohibited. But Rothbard did not draw the full implications of his principle. Not just industrial pollution, but personal pollution produced by driving, burning wood in one’s fireplace, smoking, etc., runs afoul of NAP. The NAP implies that all of these activities must be prohibited, no matter how beneficial they may be in other respects, and no matter how essential they our to daily life in the modern industrialized world. And this is deeply implausible.

The claim here is that 

Pollution is universally immoral according to the NAP

One must pollute to live

Everyone is in defiance of the NAP since they pollute 

If one must pollute to live, then pollution is not an ethical concept, as it would be a description of what people do. I realize that the author claimed that "one must pollute to live in the modern ear", but since time is irrelevant to the NAP, including it in the argument does not make sense. To go further

Large industries release pollution into the atmosphere

These industries are in violation of the NAP

Burning wood on a fire releases pollution into the atmosphere

You are in violation of the NAP

This is an argument based on the word pollution, and it does not follow as there is no context, just a rather a broad definition based on association of a property. 

The author claims this to be an implication, yet implications cannot be willed through words, yet must be proven through reason and evidence.

I can go further with the article if anybody wants me to.

[Guest darkskyabove]

 

The one about letting one's own children starve to death I still have difficulties coping with however.

 

Really? Do you honestly believe anyone, including Rothbard's statement (please read the entire text before taking one statement out of context), advocates the starving of children?

But, let's assume for the moment that that was precisely what was advocated.

What business is it of yours, or anyone else's? Are you the libertarian NANNY? That you can decide what people can and can't do?

Understand this point, people, freedom includes the freedom to fail. It's not all about your freedom, and how you see the world. It's about "SHUT THE HELL UP", and stop telling other people what to do, whether you like what they're doing , or not.

[Kirk Olson]

 

Really? Do you honestly believe anyone, including Rothbard's statement (please read the entire text before taking one statement out of context), advocates the starving of children?

 

Of course not, I never said that. It's not advocating the starving of children I'm worried about. It's the ultimate consequence of NAP that you may not use force against someone who starves its own child since they don't violate your property rights.

 

But, let's assume for the moment that that was precisely what was advocated.

What business is it of yours, or anyone else's? Are you the libertarian NANNY? That you can decide what people can and can't do?

Understand this point, people, freedom includes the freedom to fail. It's not all about your freedom, and how you see the world. It's about "SHUT THE HELL UP", and stop telling other people what to do, whether you like what they're doing , or not.

 

I understand all that. I don't think a "who cares" approach on this matter will bring libertarianism much sympathy though..

[Flake]

 

Of course not, I never said that. It's not advocating the starving of
children I'm worried about. It's the ultimate consequence of NAP that
you may not use force against someone who starves its own child since
they don't violate your property rights.

 

The reason people accept the NAP is mostly because they think it will cause the least harm. Could one reasonably say that letting a child starve would be in line with the reasons they accepted the NAP in the first place? Put differently, if you want the least amount of harm possible, which caused you to accept the NAP, then why would you let the parent starve the child? It would clearly cause needless harm, which would go against the reason you accepted the NAP, if you wanted to get poetic you could say that letting a child be starved by its parents would go against the spirit of the NAP.

 

[Andrew79]

Regarding starving children, I'd read Rothbard directly rather than base your views on what someone trying to co-opt libertarianism says:

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

[Pepin]

Of course not, I never said that. It's not advocating the starving of children I'm worried about. It's the ultimate consequence of NAP that you may not use force against someone who starves its own child since they don't violate your property rights.

The NAP allows for responding to aggression on someone else's behalf. If you are walking down the street and see someone being mugged, you have the ability to use violence against the mugger in defense of the person being aggressed against. If you choose not to involve yourself in the matter, someone cannot aggress against you for not taking action, as there are no unchosen positive obligations.

With the care of a child, the caretaker has claimed a monopoly over taking care of the child, and if they do not take care of the child (like not feeding them) or do the opposite (abuse), anyone has the ability to use force against the "caretaker" and to remove the child from the home. It would be completely legitimate to hold the "caretaker" accountable for any damages had suffered.

The situation is no different than if it is known that a man encloses a woman in the basement and uses her as his slave. The conclusion is not that is it immoral to free the woman as that would entail infringing upon the man's property rights, the conclusion is that the man is initiating force against this woman, therefore aggression against the man is valid.

It is important to realize that taking care of a child is not only a positive obligation that the caretaker agrees to, but is also a claim to a monopoly. If the caretaker wish to relinquish their chosen positive obligation, they simply cannot just neglect it (as is the same with other chosen positive obligations), but they must go through a process to relinquish the obligation they choose. In the case of a child, they choose the positive obligation of taking care of the child, and this is not voided by acting in opposition to the obligation.

[Pepin]

This guy really goes for some weird arguments. He seems to think the NAP is intended to apply to any situation, which doesn't really fit in the idea of there needing to be choice in how one interacts with another.

2. Prohibits Small Harms for Large Benefits – The NAP prohibits all pollution because its prohibition on aggression is absolute. No amount of aggression, no matter how small, is morally permissible. And no amount of offsetting benefits can change this fact.

No amount of benefit of one or more parties can change whether the benefit was the result of force and that force is immoral? What the author suggests is that something immoral can become moral if it benefits enough people, and this associates morality with gains. Kind of similar to "what is moral is what is best for the majority".

Or, to take a perhaps more plausible example, suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires, I could provide life-saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children? Even if we grant that taxation is aggression, and that aggression is generally wrong, is it really so obvious that the relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong, given the tremendous benefit it produces?

This is a question where the answer is intended to be embedded in the question. This is much like "if there was a bomb that a terrorist planted, and you had this terrorist in custody and torture was the only was of getting the information out of the terrorist as to the location of the bomb, would you not agree with torture". I don't agree to assess fictional scenarios with a binary choice and pretend like I am talking about ethics.

All-or-Nothing Attitude Toward Risk – The NAP clearly implies that it’s wrong for me to shoot you in the head. But, to borrow an example from David Friedman, what if I merely run the risk of shooting you by putting one bullet in a six-shot revolver, spinning the cylinder, aiming it at your head, and squeezing the trigger? What if it is not one bullet but five? Of course, almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent persons. We run this risk when we drive on the highway (what if we suffer a heart attack, or become distracted), or when we fly airplanes over populated areas. Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable, while others are not, and that the difference between them has something to do with the size and likelihood of the risked harm, the importance of the risky activity, and the availability and cost of less risky activities. But considerations like this carry zero weight in the NAP’s absolute prohibition on aggression. That principle seems compatible with only two possible rules: either all risks are permissible (because they are not really aggression until they actually result in a harm), or none are (because they are). And neither of these seems sensible.

I am not following this at all. I want to pick this apart, but I'm not sure what is being claimed and why. It is written rather poorly, and if there is an argument being made, it isn't very clear. Feels like it is similar to point 1 where it is based on a word as opposed to reality.

4. No Prohibition of Fraud – Libertarians usually say that violence may legitimately be used to prevent either force or fraud. But according to NAP, the only legitimate use of force is to prevent or punish the initiatory use of physical violence by others. And fraud is not physical violence. If I tell you that the painting you want to buy is a genuine Renoir, and it’s not, I have not physically aggressed against you.

This argument is a little difficult to believe because the author quotes Rothbard and others, they are aware that libertarians argue that the NAP applies to fraud, yet the author just dismisses whatever argument the libertarians are making and say it only applies to physical violence. It is a pretty blatant strawman or perhaps a lack of understanding of what the NAP is.

Parasitic on a Theory of Property – Even if the NAP is correct, it cannot serve as a fundamental principle of libertarian ethics, because its meaning and normative force are entirely parasitic on an underlying theory of property. Suppose A is walking across an empty field, when B jumps out of the bushes and clubs A on the head. It certainly looks like B is aggressing against A in this case. But on the libertarian view, whether this is so depends entirely on the relevant property rights – specifically, who owns the field. If it’s B’s field, and A was crossing it without B’s consent, then A was the one who was actually aggressing against B. Thus, “aggression,” on the libertarian view, doesn’t really mean physical violence at all. It means “violation of property rights.” But if this is true, then the NAP’s focus on “aggression” and “violence” is at best superfluous, and at worst misleading. It is the enforcement of property rights, not the prohibition of aggression, that is fundamental to libertarianism.

A would not be aggressing against A as A is not aware that the field is owned. The NAP is only capable of evaluating chosen action, in that A is aware that the field is owned by someone else, and chooses to go through it.