The difficulty with Rothbard's particular take on ethical naturalism (a problem also shared by Ayn Rand's Objectivist ethics) is that he tries to overcome the is-ought dichotomy by claiming that all moral choice presupposes a choice to live to be able to accomplish anything, and therefore a choice of life over death constitutes an axiomatic basis for ethics. He makes this argument more explicit in his book _The Ethics of Liberty_.
The problems here are that (1) the formation of a utility scale precedes the action, meaning that choice might be inconsistent with the possibility of making further choices in the future; and (2) there is in fact no binary choice between life and death, our choices are constrained by actions that might bring about death sooner or later. Instead of having to maximize lifespan, it is logically coherent for a moral agent to choose some other final end to optimize and treat the length of one's future lifespan as an instrumental value to be chosen in accord with that final end.
The poor reputation of ethical naturalism among modern secular philosophers is due to it being derived from ancient Greek philosophers (most notably Aristotle, but Plato and the Stoics as well) who sought to venerate the exercise of man's rational faculties as somehow being metaphysically essential, with essentialism reflecting what amounts to a doctrine of divine intelligent design. Rand was explicit in linking her notion of "life" to a _qua man_ qualifier; but both Rand and Rothbard modeled their ethical naturalism on Aristotle's system while failing to embrace Aristotle's metaphysical theory that final ends are defined by a hierarchy of external causal agents and ultimately by a divine "prime mover."
Ethical intuitionism doesn't really fix this error with respect to the is-ought problem; treating the abstraction of "good" as an introspective object neither explains one's motivation for choosing it nor its universality among human beings. If you are trying to urge someone to be good, how can you know that they will intuit goodness in the same way you do, or care about it is much as you do?
There was an ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who proposed a different solution to the is-ought problem in the context of a metaphysical system that is thoroughly materialist and devoid of divine providence and of an empiricist epistemology. Epicurus proposed that while one can attempt to act on the basis of arbitrarily chosen values, such attempts aren't always successful if they conflict with one's innate desires, which in turn are causally linked to the operation of one's innate pleasure/pain mechanisms.
A modern psychologist would characterize this as a type of cognitive dissonance. It isn't simply mutually inconsistent values that can produce such dissonance (which, as ethical skeptics like Hume recognized, obliges a rational ethics to harmonize all instrumental values to optimizing a single final end); an arbitrarily-chosen final end can also produce dissonance if it generates sufficient pain, turmoil, and misery to prevent one from acting. A rational ethics must also take into account facts regarding man's innate desire for happiness and the innate psychological properties of man, including one's innate pleasure/pain mechanisms, that are involved in generating happiness to align the choice of final end to what can be consistently realized in light of man's psychological nature.
Epicurus further argued that happiness is caused by the memories of past pleasures and anticipations of future pleasures as well as the present experience of pleasure, so optimizing the pursuit of happiness requires active management of the flow of pleasures one experiences over an entire lifespan and it requires attitudes that help one fully appreciate past, present, and future pleasures and to cope with pain when it occurs. This ethical naturalism appeals, not to one having a mysterious essence designed by God that sets a final end for you, but rather to one's introspective experiences of how reason, pleasure, and pain motivate one's own behavior and our sensory experiences of the words and deeds of other human being that enable us to infer that analogous mental states exist in the minds of others.
Epicurean ethics is also constrained by the particular facts of man's psychological nature one can form generalizations about. While one can infer from these generalizations a few universal principles of conduct (i.e. instrumental virtues) and attitudes that are necessary to everyone's pursuit of happiness, there are also differences among individuals that restrict the extent to which such broad generalizations can specify particular choices for particular individuals. Within the constraints of universal virtues, individuals still must find their own path through life, relying on their personal experiences to continually fine-tune the more detailed aspects of their moral beliefs to fit their own personal natures and circumstances.
There are problems with Locke's homesteading. What does it mean precisely to mix one's labor with a thing? As Nozick provided an example of mixing in a bottle of ketchup in ocean.
In general, Locke provides a general idea whose precise details need to be fixed. And only a political community can provide the required precision of how much labor needs to be mixed with precisely which things. Thus, political community is essential to define property rights. Also the example provided by Milton Friedman-- how much of airspace above your landholding belongs to you? Only the political community can define it.
There are even more severe problems with saying "Only the political community can define it!" For example, what if the political community says you're only entitled to 6 inches of airspace above your land? Would you not say they're wrong?
And of course there are endless problems with defining "the political community" and "its wishes."
The better view is just that for many questions of detail, the correct answer is somewhat vague. The best we can do is identify clearly wrong answers, but that doesn't mean there isn't a right answer.
Political community provides shared premises. Arguments can only proceed to conclusion when premises are shared. Property rights are conclusion to a series of arguments, the kind of arguments that are argued over in courts of law.
Political community is morally authoritative. It defines right and wrong over the territory it possesses. This is (almost) the whole point of political community. It is what or who is sovereign-- a matter of fact and not just legalism.
"And only a political community can provide the required precision of how much labor needs to be mixed with precisely which things."
Nothing about politics is precise, and pretending property rights are well-defined is a joke when governments routinely change zoning, confiscate property for owing a few hundred dollars in taxes, and seize cash, cars, and other property in the name of civil asset forfeiture.
I don't even know what you mean by "political community". Is that the whole community, and thus redundant, or just the politicians and government employees? How can any community not be political?
The Indian-American community is not a political community. You can just replace the term "political community" by nation or tribe that controls a territory and defines the law that prevail in that territory.
That at this moment things are not going perfectly in America hardly means that laws are necessarily imprecise. For one transaction going haywire, there are thousands going correct.
You must be delusional. Either you think people are gullible enough to believe that you believe such nonsense, or you are wrapped up in the idea of the noble savage, pure of heart, risen above mere community politics, thinking as one hive mind … More contempt for Indian-Americans being individuals with agency and differences of opinion is hard to imagine.
And if you think laws are precise, then pray tell, how can appeals courts split 2-1, then reverse themselves en banc 7-8 a year or two later, and then be reversed yet again 5-4 by the Supreme Court another year or two later? All that with the finest law libraries, their pick of the brightest law clerks, and a year or two to discuss and debate the issue … and still not agree on what the law means.
What bugs me about this chapter is trying to present nonaggression as an "axiom". When you want something to be considered an axiom you need to focus on the definition and prove that it is sound in its most basic applications. But instead the author jumps to all these abstract points like leftism and price controls and war.
From the article:
“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.
This doesn't really seem sound to me in the most basic cases. Person A vaguely threatens person B, then person B kills person A. Not okay. It also doesn't define what counts a "threat". There are many cases where person A claims person B threatened them and person B denies it.
So a lot of these general principles make sense but when he tries to simplify it into an axiomatic system it just seems to degenerate into error.
If Rothbard were honest, he would have admitted that the terms, though broadly meaningful, are too vague to be part of an "axiomatically" true principle.
This seems more like a detail that could be explained later rather than a flaw in the axiom. It seems pretty obvious that some sort of proportionality needs to be observed when granting recourse against a violation. But this discussion focuses on what counts as a violation, not what the available recourse should be.
That is not to say that the discussion was all that successful, just that the questions of what counts as a violation and what sort of recourse is justified seem distinct. Or it could be framed as deciding when overdone recourse counts as aggression itself. I am pretty sure Rothbard discussed that somewhere.
Stimulating critique of Rothbard, Prof. C. I think that all people in all times and all places know what is right behavior for rational humans. Rather than attempting to justify that positive statement here in this text box, I will offer this link:
I think this is Rothbard at his best. Not weighing pros and cons as an economist, but sermonizing as a moral absolutist and exulting readers toward a higher standard of justice. His property theory of justice is fantastic, even if one doesn’t fully buy the foundations. It stands tall rhetorically and gives libertarianism real moral force.
The one persistent qualm I had is the appeal to “nature.” As you noted, it does a lot of work but never feels fully grounded. I found myself wondering whether there was some first chimpanzee who became “naturally human” and suddenly acquired full rights and liberties, while his parents did not. Evolution doesn’t deliver clean “pow!” moments; it produces marginal gradations in cognitive capacity. If that’s right, then appeals to human nature don’t give the axiomatic categorical boundaries Rothbard seems to want.
In that sense, the move to natural rights feels less like a solution and more like a way of avoiding the vagueness he worries about in utilitarianism. But I’m not sure it really succeeds in doing so.
I’m curious how others think Rothbard would respond to this kind of evolutionary challenge. Would he just deny that biological continuity matters here, or is there a deeper philosophical move I’m missing?
This chapter focuses so heavily on property ownership and it is such a compelling case for libertarian thought, but it made me think that in today’s age — where young people own property at far lower rates — libertarianism is at a strong disadvantage and socialism sounds more compelling.
Young men have always responded positively to conscription. That is, in surviving societies. The society in which young men object to being conscripted does not last long.
Is it really conscription if men don’t object to being conscripted? Conscription is slavery. If young men object to slavery and rebel and form a new government, looks to me like society survived and the old government died. If young men go quietly into slavery, the society which survives isn’t worth a warm bottle of spit.
You wrote that young men have always responded favorably to conscription, so you can’t provide an example of a society not lasting long when they didn’t, or wouldn’t.
Bryan, how does the non‑aggression principle handle rights violations like fraud, breach of contract, denial of due process, or non‑coercive property violations such as trespass? None of these involves force or threats, yet libertarians still treat them as rights violations. Do you see the NAP as sufficient here, or do we need a broader principle to explain these cases?
Bryan, one clarification: in discussions like this, some libertarians try to resolve every non-coercive rights violation by redefining it as “aggression” — essentially NAP-ifying fraud, breach of contract, trespass, and even procedural violations. But that move seems to stretch the NAP beyond recognition. These cases don’t involve force or threats, yet libertarians still treat them as genuine wrongs. So, I’m trying to understand whether the NAP alone can explain them, or whether a broader principle about consent, property boundaries, and procedural rights is needed.
"Denial of due process" is quite different from all of the other cases, unless you've got a contract that specifies due process. All of the other examples seem like reasonable extensions of NAP to me. If you accept that property is legitimate, how is trespassing any less coercive than painlessly touching my body without my consent?
Bryan, I see the intuition behind your question. But the reason trespass feels wrong isn’t that it’s coercive in the NAP sense — it’s that it crosses a boundary without consent. The same is true for fraud, breach of contract, and even non-payment of a debt: none involves force or threats, yet all violate claims people are entitled to. That’s why I’m trying to understand whether the NAP itself explains these cases, or whether a broader principle is doing the real work about consent and boundaries. I’ve been developing such a principle, and I’d be glad to share it if you’re interested.
Fraud which causes no harm is not a crime. If it causes harm, that's your NAP violation, and the fraud merely shows it was intentional.
Breach of contract is the same: without harm, there is no crime. With harm, that's your NAP violation.
Trespass is theft, of a sort. It violates your control of your property. If that's not a good enough answer, then you'll have to provide a more explicit example.
Denial of due process means nothing to me, in a libertarian NAP sense. If victims prosecute, what does due process mean? Failure to serve the papers announcing a contract dispute or to tell a criminal suspect that he is a suspect? You may as well ask what it means to eat soup with a fork. How can you prosecute someone without telling them you are prosecuting them?
That approach depends on harm being objective, or at least, that arbitrators will always (in principle) know harm when they see it, and agree on that, when resolving disputes. This overlooks two relevant things.
First, harm which was done with valid consent does not violate a right, because persons can waive their rights. E.g. a surgeon will always do some harm, but presumably with the patient's consent and the expectation that it is likely that the benefit will outweigh the harm. This is a bit of a quibble, but it can be misleading.
Second, because consent is involved, harm cannot be objective in the relevant sense that we all know it when we see it. The meaning of harm depends on what requires consent and from whom. This is what is actually in dispute between libertarians and others. This cannot be taken for granted, but needs to be explicitly part of the principles used in resolving disputes. Everyone can agree on the vague harm standard, if they get to have their own definition or set of precedents that determine what counts as harm when done without the consent of whom. But that just changes the location of the controversy rather than resolving it.
This becomes clear when we consider some implausible but popular claims, such as “silence is violence” or “hate speech is violence.” The persons making such claims would consider them to be harms, and would include them among the things prohibited by a principle against harm.
Worrying about surgeons doing consensual harm is the kind of theoretical philosophy which drives me up the wall. Another is the idea of objective harm which arbitrators always recognize the same way every time. There is no such thing when humans are involved.
You also assume arbitrators decide these things, that nothing else is possible.
Too many assumptions and theoretical musings. Life does not work that way.
>Worrying about surgeons doing consensual harm is the kind of theoretical philosophy which drives me up the wall.
Is using vague terms in a misleading way better?
>objective harm which arbitrators always recognize the same way every time. There is no such thing when humans are involved.
I agree. But then the proposition being discussed makes even less sense. If harm is subjective, it can't work as a standard.
>You also assume arbitrators decide these things, that nothing else is possible.
It seems you misunderstood me. I assume that disputes are resolved peacefully or not. The peaceful way to resolve them is some sort of arbitration, in the broadest sense, without assuming what form that takes. You can call it something different if you like. The disputants have to persuade someone, even if that is only the other party.
>Too many assumptions and theoretical musings. Life does not work that way.
No, bud. It's simple. When someone thinks he has to explain that a surgeon is doing consensual harm, I know he's trying to lecture to 5-year-olds, and I respond appropriately. If you want that kind of an audience, I'm not it. Go lecture down to someone else.
He chides Milton Friedman for only holding to a "general tendency" against state action. Fair enough. But it's unfortunate that the example he gives to show up Friedman is "what if a society burned all of its tiny minority of redheads at the stake because it would make the majority happy." That would be bad and wrong, yest. But I doubt such an argument will sway an agnostic reader about the overall correctness of Rothbard's system. Would have been more compelling to critique actual policies of Friedman.
Good to know. Even knowing that, I was hoping for some knockdown arguments from him. But any specific point is sketched to briefly it's hard to find it compelling on it's own. I largely agree with many of his conclusions, but I'm not sure if this would convince me coming to this ideas for the first time.
I think Rothbard’s intent here was just to show an example of a utilitarian-libertarian. I can’t think of a better example for a general audience than Milton Friedman.
The difficulty with Rothbard's particular take on ethical naturalism (a problem also shared by Ayn Rand's Objectivist ethics) is that he tries to overcome the is-ought dichotomy by claiming that all moral choice presupposes a choice to live to be able to accomplish anything, and therefore a choice of life over death constitutes an axiomatic basis for ethics. He makes this argument more explicit in his book _The Ethics of Liberty_.
The problems here are that (1) the formation of a utility scale precedes the action, meaning that choice might be inconsistent with the possibility of making further choices in the future; and (2) there is in fact no binary choice between life and death, our choices are constrained by actions that might bring about death sooner or later. Instead of having to maximize lifespan, it is logically coherent for a moral agent to choose some other final end to optimize and treat the length of one's future lifespan as an instrumental value to be chosen in accord with that final end.
The poor reputation of ethical naturalism among modern secular philosophers is due to it being derived from ancient Greek philosophers (most notably Aristotle, but Plato and the Stoics as well) who sought to venerate the exercise of man's rational faculties as somehow being metaphysically essential, with essentialism reflecting what amounts to a doctrine of divine intelligent design. Rand was explicit in linking her notion of "life" to a _qua man_ qualifier; but both Rand and Rothbard modeled their ethical naturalism on Aristotle's system while failing to embrace Aristotle's metaphysical theory that final ends are defined by a hierarchy of external causal agents and ultimately by a divine "prime mover."
Ethical intuitionism doesn't really fix this error with respect to the is-ought problem; treating the abstraction of "good" as an introspective object neither explains one's motivation for choosing it nor its universality among human beings. If you are trying to urge someone to be good, how can you know that they will intuit goodness in the same way you do, or care about it is much as you do?
There was an ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who proposed a different solution to the is-ought problem in the context of a metaphysical system that is thoroughly materialist and devoid of divine providence and of an empiricist epistemology. Epicurus proposed that while one can attempt to act on the basis of arbitrarily chosen values, such attempts aren't always successful if they conflict with one's innate desires, which in turn are causally linked to the operation of one's innate pleasure/pain mechanisms.
A modern psychologist would characterize this as a type of cognitive dissonance. It isn't simply mutually inconsistent values that can produce such dissonance (which, as ethical skeptics like Hume recognized, obliges a rational ethics to harmonize all instrumental values to optimizing a single final end); an arbitrarily-chosen final end can also produce dissonance if it generates sufficient pain, turmoil, and misery to prevent one from acting. A rational ethics must also take into account facts regarding man's innate desire for happiness and the innate psychological properties of man, including one's innate pleasure/pain mechanisms, that are involved in generating happiness to align the choice of final end to what can be consistently realized in light of man's psychological nature.
Epicurus further argued that happiness is caused by the memories of past pleasures and anticipations of future pleasures as well as the present experience of pleasure, so optimizing the pursuit of happiness requires active management of the flow of pleasures one experiences over an entire lifespan and it requires attitudes that help one fully appreciate past, present, and future pleasures and to cope with pain when it occurs. This ethical naturalism appeals, not to one having a mysterious essence designed by God that sets a final end for you, but rather to one's introspective experiences of how reason, pleasure, and pain motivate one's own behavior and our sensory experiences of the words and deeds of other human being that enable us to infer that analogous mental states exist in the minds of others.
Epicurean ethics is also constrained by the particular facts of man's psychological nature one can form generalizations about. While one can infer from these generalizations a few universal principles of conduct (i.e. instrumental virtues) and attitudes that are necessary to everyone's pursuit of happiness, there are also differences among individuals that restrict the extent to which such broad generalizations can specify particular choices for particular individuals. Within the constraints of universal virtues, individuals still must find their own path through life, relying on their personal experiences to continually fine-tune the more detailed aspects of their moral beliefs to fit their own personal natures and circumstances.
There are problems with Locke's homesteading. What does it mean precisely to mix one's labor with a thing? As Nozick provided an example of mixing in a bottle of ketchup in ocean.
In general, Locke provides a general idea whose precise details need to be fixed. And only a political community can provide the required precision of how much labor needs to be mixed with precisely which things. Thus, political community is essential to define property rights. Also the example provided by Milton Friedman-- how much of airspace above your landholding belongs to you? Only the political community can define it.
There are even more severe problems with saying "Only the political community can define it!" For example, what if the political community says you're only entitled to 6 inches of airspace above your land? Would you not say they're wrong?
And of course there are endless problems with defining "the political community" and "its wishes."
The better view is just that for many questions of detail, the correct answer is somewhat vague. The best we can do is identify clearly wrong answers, but that doesn't mean there isn't a right answer.
Political community provides shared premises. Arguments can only proceed to conclusion when premises are shared. Property rights are conclusion to a series of arguments, the kind of arguments that are argued over in courts of law.
Political community is morally authoritative. It defines right and wrong over the territory it possesses. This is (almost) the whole point of political community. It is what or who is sovereign-- a matter of fact and not just legalism.
Political communities can provide precision? News to me. Nothing about politics is precise.
The laws that underlie private property--are they not sufficiently precise? Not more precise than whatever is theorized as universal by theorists?
This is what you said:
"And only a political community can provide the required precision of how much labor needs to be mixed with precisely which things."
Nothing about politics is precise, and pretending property rights are well-defined is a joke when governments routinely change zoning, confiscate property for owing a few hundred dollars in taxes, and seize cash, cars, and other property in the name of civil asset forfeiture.
I don't even know what you mean by "political community". Is that the whole community, and thus redundant, or just the politicians and government employees? How can any community not be political?
The Indian-American community is not a political community. You can just replace the term "political community" by nation or tribe that controls a territory and defines the law that prevail in that territory.
That at this moment things are not going perfectly in America hardly means that laws are necessarily imprecise. For one transaction going haywire, there are thousands going correct.
You must be delusional. Either you think people are gullible enough to believe that you believe such nonsense, or you are wrapped up in the idea of the noble savage, pure of heart, risen above mere community politics, thinking as one hive mind … More contempt for Indian-Americans being individuals with agency and differences of opinion is hard to imagine.
And if you think laws are precise, then pray tell, how can appeals courts split 2-1, then reverse themselves en banc 7-8 a year or two later, and then be reversed yet again 5-4 by the Supreme Court another year or two later? All that with the finest law libraries, their pick of the brightest law clerks, and a year or two to discuss and debate the issue … and still not agree on what the law means.
Blech. Try again.
What bugs me about this chapter is trying to present nonaggression as an "axiom". When you want something to be considered an axiom you need to focus on the definition and prove that it is sound in its most basic applications. But instead the author jumps to all these abstract points like leftism and price controls and war.
From the article:
“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.
This doesn't really seem sound to me in the most basic cases. Person A vaguely threatens person B, then person B kills person A. Not okay. It also doesn't define what counts a "threat". There are many cases where person A claims person B threatened them and person B denies it.
So a lot of these general principles make sense but when he tries to simplify it into an axiomatic system it just seems to degenerate into error.
If Rothbard were honest, he would have admitted that the terms, though broadly meaningful, are too vague to be part of an "axiomatically" true principle.
This seems more like a detail that could be explained later rather than a flaw in the axiom. It seems pretty obvious that some sort of proportionality needs to be observed when granting recourse against a violation. But this discussion focuses on what counts as a violation, not what the available recourse should be.
That is not to say that the discussion was all that successful, just that the questions of what counts as a violation and what sort of recourse is justified seem distinct. Or it could be framed as deciding when overdone recourse counts as aggression itself. I am pretty sure Rothbard discussed that somewhere.
Stimulating critique of Rothbard, Prof. C. I think that all people in all times and all places know what is right behavior for rational humans. Rather than attempting to justify that positive statement here in this text box, I will offer this link:
https://economicsandfreedom.substack.com/p/what-is-morality
I think this is Rothbard at his best. Not weighing pros and cons as an economist, but sermonizing as a moral absolutist and exulting readers toward a higher standard of justice. His property theory of justice is fantastic, even if one doesn’t fully buy the foundations. It stands tall rhetorically and gives libertarianism real moral force.
The one persistent qualm I had is the appeal to “nature.” As you noted, it does a lot of work but never feels fully grounded. I found myself wondering whether there was some first chimpanzee who became “naturally human” and suddenly acquired full rights and liberties, while his parents did not. Evolution doesn’t deliver clean “pow!” moments; it produces marginal gradations in cognitive capacity. If that’s right, then appeals to human nature don’t give the axiomatic categorical boundaries Rothbard seems to want.
In that sense, the move to natural rights feels less like a solution and more like a way of avoiding the vagueness he worries about in utilitarianism. But I’m not sure it really succeeds in doing so.
I’m curious how others think Rothbard would respond to this kind of evolutionary challenge. Would he just deny that biological continuity matters here, or is there a deeper philosophical move I’m missing?
This chapter focuses so heavily on property ownership and it is such a compelling case for libertarian thought, but it made me think that in today’s age — where young people own property at far lower rates — libertarianism is at a strong disadvantage and socialism sounds more compelling.
Young people own themselves, except in socialism. That needs to be emphasized more then ever.
Young men have always responded positively to conscription. That is, in surviving societies. The society in which young men object to being conscripted does not last long.
Once again you conflate government and society.
Is it really conscription if men don’t object to being conscripted? Conscription is slavery. If young men object to slavery and rebel and form a new government, looks to me like society survived and the old government died. If young men go quietly into slavery, the society which survives isn’t worth a warm bottle of spit.
You wrote that young men have always responded favorably to conscription, so you can’t provide an example of a society not lasting long when they didn’t, or wouldn’t.
Bryan, how does the non‑aggression principle handle rights violations like fraud, breach of contract, denial of due process, or non‑coercive property violations such as trespass? None of these involves force or threats, yet libertarians still treat them as rights violations. Do you see the NAP as sufficient here, or do we need a broader principle to explain these cases?
Bryan, one clarification: in discussions like this, some libertarians try to resolve every non-coercive rights violation by redefining it as “aggression” — essentially NAP-ifying fraud, breach of contract, trespass, and even procedural violations. But that move seems to stretch the NAP beyond recognition. These cases don’t involve force or threats, yet libertarians still treat them as genuine wrongs. So, I’m trying to understand whether the NAP alone can explain them, or whether a broader principle about consent, property boundaries, and procedural rights is needed.
"Denial of due process" is quite different from all of the other cases, unless you've got a contract that specifies due process. All of the other examples seem like reasonable extensions of NAP to me. If you accept that property is legitimate, how is trespassing any less coercive than painlessly touching my body without my consent?
Bryan, I see the intuition behind your question. But the reason trespass feels wrong isn’t that it’s coercive in the NAP sense — it’s that it crosses a boundary without consent. The same is true for fraud, breach of contract, and even non-payment of a debt: none involves force or threats, yet all violate claims people are entitled to. That’s why I’m trying to understand whether the NAP itself explains these cases, or whether a broader principle is doing the real work about consent and boundaries. I’ve been developing such a principle, and I’d be glad to share it if you’re interested.
I have my own answers:
Fraud which causes no harm is not a crime. If it causes harm, that's your NAP violation, and the fraud merely shows it was intentional.
Breach of contract is the same: without harm, there is no crime. With harm, that's your NAP violation.
Trespass is theft, of a sort. It violates your control of your property. If that's not a good enough answer, then you'll have to provide a more explicit example.
Denial of due process means nothing to me, in a libertarian NAP sense. If victims prosecute, what does due process mean? Failure to serve the papers announcing a contract dispute or to tell a criminal suspect that he is a suspect? You may as well ask what it means to eat soup with a fork. How can you prosecute someone without telling them you are prosecuting them?
That approach depends on harm being objective, or at least, that arbitrators will always (in principle) know harm when they see it, and agree on that, when resolving disputes. This overlooks two relevant things.
First, harm which was done with valid consent does not violate a right, because persons can waive their rights. E.g. a surgeon will always do some harm, but presumably with the patient's consent and the expectation that it is likely that the benefit will outweigh the harm. This is a bit of a quibble, but it can be misleading.
Second, because consent is involved, harm cannot be objective in the relevant sense that we all know it when we see it. The meaning of harm depends on what requires consent and from whom. This is what is actually in dispute between libertarians and others. This cannot be taken for granted, but needs to be explicitly part of the principles used in resolving disputes. Everyone can agree on the vague harm standard, if they get to have their own definition or set of precedents that determine what counts as harm when done without the consent of whom. But that just changes the location of the controversy rather than resolving it.
This becomes clear when we consider some implausible but popular claims, such as “silence is violence” or “hate speech is violence.” The persons making such claims would consider them to be harms, and would include them among the things prohibited by a principle against harm.
Worrying about surgeons doing consensual harm is the kind of theoretical philosophy which drives me up the wall. Another is the idea of objective harm which arbitrators always recognize the same way every time. There is no such thing when humans are involved.
You also assume arbitrators decide these things, that nothing else is possible.
Too many assumptions and theoretical musings. Life does not work that way.
>Worrying about surgeons doing consensual harm is the kind of theoretical philosophy which drives me up the wall.
Is using vague terms in a misleading way better?
>objective harm which arbitrators always recognize the same way every time. There is no such thing when humans are involved.
I agree. But then the proposition being discussed makes even less sense. If harm is subjective, it can't work as a standard.
>You also assume arbitrators decide these things, that nothing else is possible.
It seems you misunderstood me. I assume that disputes are resolved peacefully or not. The peaceful way to resolve them is some sort of arbitration, in the broadest sense, without assuming what form that takes. You can call it something different if you like. The disputants have to persuade someone, even if that is only the other party.
>Too many assumptions and theoretical musings. Life does not work that way.
Physician, heal thyself.
No, bud. It's simple. When someone thinks he has to explain that a surgeon is doing consensual harm, I know he's trying to lecture to 5-year-olds, and I respond appropriately. If you want that kind of an audience, I'm not it. Go lecture down to someone else.
He chides Milton Friedman for only holding to a "general tendency" against state action. Fair enough. But it's unfortunate that the example he gives to show up Friedman is "what if a society burned all of its tiny minority of redheads at the stake because it would make the majority happy." That would be bad and wrong, yest. But I doubt such an argument will sway an agnostic reader about the overall correctness of Rothbard's system. Would have been more compelling to critique actual policies of Friedman.
To be fair, Rothbard does critique specific Friedman policies in later chapters. This is where he's trying to argue general principles.
Good to know. Even knowing that, I was hoping for some knockdown arguments from him. But any specific point is sketched to briefly it's hard to find it compelling on it's own. I largely agree with many of his conclusions, but I'm not sure if this would convince me coming to this ideas for the first time.
I think Rothbard’s intent here was just to show an example of a utilitarian-libertarian. I can’t think of a better example for a general audience than Milton Friedman.
> indeed, all reasoning
This links seems to have succumbed to rot many years ago, so you should probably replace it with one to the Internet Archive.
Fixed.