KOL453 | Objections to Argumentation Ethics, Libertarian Property Rights, Scarcity, Intellectual Property: Discussion with a Student

okay um so are you you’re a student at uh A&M yeah I’m a Classics major at A&M

and then I joined the philosophy Club about two years ago and then now I

became the president but ksil is the advisor so through him and his uh

occasionally he gives meetings and presentations about his own legal

theories okay and he gave one about intellectual property maybe three

semesters ago and he mentioned a friend of his who was a patent attorney who was

with him in being against it as a concept and then through pure

coincidence I was reading um I got into it I will admit I started with liquid

Zulu yeah of all people and then through him he mentioned you in stopple and ALS

so intellectual property video that he created and then I looked you up saw

that you were a patent attorney and then they clicked like I woke up at like 2 am and I was like wait a

minute small world and then I found out that not only were you guys friends but

you were Houston base I’m also Houston base so it’s very funny oh really yeah and David and I we actually went to New

York uh together to do the stasel show on on IP about five years ago seven years ago oh wow

so that’s funny funny yeah he’s great guy very smart very smart dude oh yeah

some of his IP one I can keep up with kind of yeah his Adolf rack theory of

Rights was challenging but then when he started talking about legal ontology I just I don’t think anybody could follow

yeah I uh I’m not a philosopher so um but I I’m not aware of his rho theory of

Rights I’ve written a good deal on rho and his some of his stuff um so I’ll be

curious to look to look into that um yeah Roch I actually published uh

well I’m familiar with his AR prior theory of the civil law which uh was in published in Altha in the 80s I recall I

mean originally published in the early 1900s I think he was killed in World War I um but then he wrote one on on the

criminal law but it was never published in English and so I found a transcript I mean a translation of it by Barry Smith

and one of his students um um uh a woman who I forgot her name um but um she’s a

European and anyway um she gave me her translation and I published it in my

journal at the time libertarian papers which I don’t publish anymore but um Brett brogard I want to say um anyway

Barry Smith’s another another smart philosopher libertarian philosopher um I

don’t think capsil is quite a Libertarian but he’s pretty solid on IP stuff anyway so yeah I’ve talked to him

about that he is I think more of like a utilitarian in terms of his ethic and

then he grounds it with right an which is it’s interesting

it’s definitely unique yeah have to look into it all right what did you want to chat about what what you got yes I

wanted to talk about mentation ethics because I know um I watched the YouTube

video where you were talking to Murphy about each other’s responses to papers

concerning that topic and you expressed how argumentation ethics is usually used

to convince people who already were Libertarians and to ground that into a

more like uh I guess grounding for me it actually was got me what got me into it

as an ethic um because of I guess the philosophical interest so that’s what

got me excited about it and I wanted to write about critiques and responses to those

critiques almost as if I’m steel Manning the position the best I could I’m doing so for

um the undergraduate Journal at A&M for philosophy where partnering with them

this semester and I’m want to submit my own publication for that and uh okay talked to ksil and then

he’s mentioned you and I was like Wella that’s this would be a great opportunity to get from The

Source yeah and I I think I sent you the main stuff I would look into on this I think You’ seen it seen it by now H has

given a recent talk about five years ago seven years ago on this that’s the last time he really talked about it in

detail um and he actually did def respond to some of his critics but in the meantime I responded to some of the

critics and a few others have too like he I Brasa and Frank vun yeah um yeah

and I when I said it’s it’s mainly meant to explain why we believe things um yeah

I I I find the argument persuasive it it it it it really uh blew my mind when I

read it in law school and look I’ve known people who have come to libertarianism through reading my stuff

on intellectual property so you never know how people get to a certain idea um yeah um I do think it’s persuasive

argument um I think one thing I meant was a lot of people say um you’re not going to use that to

persuade like a socialist as if that’s as if that’s a reputation of the soundness of the argument it’s like well

just because it doesn’t persuade someone doesn’t mean it’s not a sound argument um so persuasiveness is not the is not

the lipus test of whether an argument is sound um um but because it’s sort of a

transcendental type argument where what you’re really doing is avoiding the isot Gap

by by you’re going from a to a so it’s a logical argument and you’re pointing out

that there are certain basic oughts which I call Gren Norms kind of following Kelson and I don’t know if

that terminology is idiosyncratic on my part or not but it seemed like a useful term to me um it’s it’s a um you’re

going from a to a because you’re pointing out there are certain basic Norms which are unavoidably presupposed

in argumentation um so you’re going from odd to odd um that’s what I found

interesting about it at first because I I would admit that when he

talked about RAC capsule he gave a meeting about that he was talking about his aiori um of contracts yeah and

that’s when I was around the same time learning about the isad G from Hume and I was thinking about it how

the the is of a contract is created through the A and then it has certain

obligations within it so if you take it upon yourself to enter into a contract then there are legitimate objective

obligations such as to fulfill it well that would get us into a whole different topic um which I’ve just written on I

just wrote um a long paper on contract theory um I’ll send it I’ll send you the

link after but um oh great thank you the example is fine I think it’s in reality

that example it’s probably a sloppy way to sloppy well you’re taking you’re using you’re using the the existing sort

of termin you’re using the existing um um theory of contract that most lawyers

and legal theorists use which I think is um somewhat wrong like I actually think

contracts do do do not give rise to obligations at all um but that’s that’s

the rothbardian Tittle transfer Theory which um and and my my sort of U massaging of that um

um it it gives rise to it gives rise to um transfers of ownership now that could

give rise to an obligation if you if you already accept um that ownership rights are

enforcable and that they have um that they have um that rights always have a

uh corresponding uh obligation like if I have a right then that imposes on you a

duty not to invade the right or to to respect the right so rights and Duties are are reciprocal and those are both

normative Concepts um so but again the contract doesn’t give rise to an

obligation what it it gives rise to is a CH a change of ownership but ownership is a normative term too because that’s a

that’s a legal normative term um so again saying you have an obligation to respect property rights presupposes

um your obligation to respect rights and and law in the first place so you’re already in the realm of

of of of shoulds or or Norms when you’re talking about obligations

um see one thing most people don’t point out and I haven’t written too much on this except in passing um I think it’s

something someone needs to do and maybe I will someday the do you know much about Austrian

economics um I have been getting into that as extension like Human Action just came in the mailed 5 days ago yeah or or

even just regular economics just the concept of um the concept of exchange for example yeah um so the concept of

exchange I think the the maybe it’s just English but the way we use words in English there’s there’s a potential

ambiguity because economics in principle is is has nothing

to do with art with arts or Norms or shoulds or even with law it it only has to do with a description of the

consequences of action which is a totally value-free category um so in

principle economics could describe the way it could describe the actions of of someone alone on its Island cruso cruso

economics that’s called um it would be a very simple economics but it would still be U it would still be economics proper

so you could say you know uh you’re choosing among ends to when you do

something you you’re choosing means to achieve those ends the the choice of ends and implies

value and preference it it implies opportunity cost um the action implies

profit and loss subjective profit and loss or psychic profit and loss um all

those things are implied in the category of action per se um and Concepts like investment and

savings those all apply and when you have multiple people you make the the you make the assumptions a little bit

more Rich to get an interesting analysis but not without not with money let’s just say a barter Society even that can

be described in purely descriptive terms like you can explain why people engage in a certain action they do it to get

the end they they chose why they engage in interaction with each other they do it for the division of labor

specialization of Labor and to trade with each other but that trade when you

describe it simplicit like that it only means economic trade so why do I hand

you this apple and why do you hand me your your orange

in a trade well the economic explanation is you handed me your Apple to get the orange and vice versa doesn’t

necessarily mean that there’s anything legal about it like there’s there might not be ownership recognized it’s just why you do

something um and then usually we have laws on top of that in society where there’s ownership of the Apple not just

possession so like the the first action could be described as transfer of possession why do you do that I give you

the Apple because I my belief is my hope is that that will induce you to hand me your orange

doesn’t mean you own it or that I own it it’s just it’s it’s the reason why I do something so it’s a description of why I

do things but when we when we assume that there’s not only interaction and trade

between people but there’s also laws and ownership you go down from you go from

possession to which is factual and descriptive you go from that to ownership which is prescriptive and

normative and legal um and the problem is that when you describe an exchange

it’s you could be talk you could be talking about an economic exchange or you could be talking about a legal

exchange and they’re different but the words used are the same so people get confused by that because for example in

intellectual property you’ll often have someone say well and I have a chapter in

my book on this um on why selling doesn’t imply ownership and vice versa

because people because the terms can be applied different Realms one could be the descriptive Realm Of Human Action in

a sense but one can be the the prescriptive Realm Of Human Action um in

a context where there are are norms and oughts and shoulds and laws and ownership um so someone might say well

canell you claim that intellectual property is not valid which means that you don’t own your

ideas but yet you think you can sell your ideas because it’s okay to have a contract where you sell I sell my

knowledge to you and you pay me money for it so you must be buying something and if you’re buying something I must be

selling it for me to sell it I must own it so you see but they’re using these terms back and forth from the normative

and the descriptive realm and it leads to confusion um so like Tech so that’s why the contract thing matters if you

view a contract is only the transfer of ownership then technically speaking if

if I say I’m going to pay you a dollar well let’s say I pay you $100 for you to

uh for you to paint my house in economic terms we would

describe that as an exchange or a trade because we’re trying to exra explain the reasons why each person performs that

action so one person gives the money to induce you to

do to perform an action that’s why I do it the means I use is giving you the

money the end I have in mind is to get you to paint the house and the reason you paint the house is to get me to

induce me to give you the money so symmetrical that’s an exchange it’s a symmetrical Exchange in economic

terms but in legal terms there’s only one title transfer the title transfer is when I transfer the ownership of the

money to you but you didn’t transfer any money to me all you did was perform an action yeah so the mistake there is in

making the analogy in because the language is the same like I say I buy

that from you if that has a legal meaning it means that you you gave me ownership of your money and I gave you ownership of the

thing you bought if it’s a thing that has ownership like if you buy a car from me I have ownership of the car and you

have ownership of your money that’s a bilateral or a mutual transfer of

ownership but if you buy a service from me there’s only one title transfer but

economically they’re both exchanges because in both cases you can explain each person person’s action by what they

hope to achieve in economic terms anyway but go ahead I’ll let you I derailed you

but go ahead I’ll let you oh no not at all that’s interesting it reminds me the

example you gave of oh but you can sell your ideas so you can own ideas that sounds like a similar but the opposite

argument is the one about if you could if you own your body then you could sell your body that’s yeah that’s another one

um I talk talk of that one in another chapter in the book it’s about inalienability and again

the so there’s a slight difference though so in the case of sale of of Labor I’m pointing out that there are

two senses of the word sale yeah and and and the word possession is a descriptive

word and the word ownership is a juristic or a legal word so you have to be clear what you’re talking about so if

you untangle that you can see that in the in the purchase of a service you’re only there’s only one

title transfer okay but in the case of the body the slight difference so so the

the thing is when I when I when I perform a service for you like I paint your fence you can say I sold you my

labor but it’s just a metaphorical description of what I’m doing if you look at it closely no one really can

seriously maintain that I own my labor because it’s not like after I performed the service you have I had the labor in

some bucket and now you have it it it’s just a metaphorical description however in the case of human bodies it there is

a meaningful sense in which you do own your body okay so if I own a car I can

sell it to you because I own it that’s true so you would think

that the ability to sell is is implied by the by the uh capacity or by the um

uh by the nature of ownership because that is possible when you own a car and then you would think that okay then

likewise if you own your body which is implied by the idea of non-aggression if non-aggression means that no one has the

right to use my body body without my permission which is another way of saying I own my body so clearly we we

have ownership of our bodies and if you if you assume that well ownership means that you can sell

it then a contract to sell your body would be enforceable as well which is what Walter block argues U and my view

is my argument is that the mistake there is that in assuming that um the ability

to or or the right to own something the right to control it the right to exclude

people from it necessarily implies the right to get rid of that right it

doesn’t necessarily and the argument is that my argument is that because there are different modes or ways that we come

to own or Justify our ownership of our bodies and other things in the world

there are different ways that you can get rid of that right so the reason you can sell an object that you own is not

because you own it but it’s because of the way you came to own it and the way you came to own it was you found it in

the world when it was unowned and you came to you acquired it and if you can

acquire something that was unowned then you can unacquired by just getting rid of the intent to own it for example

again if you take seriously the distinction between cons uh between um ownership and

possession then owning something is different than possessing it like cruso possesses a STI a stick but he doesn’t

own the stick because there’s no one else that he has a right against um but in the world where there’s laws and

Norms you can possess a stick or you can own it and they’re not the same thing for example if I own a stick and I

possess it those are two different things but I if I loan it to you I still maintain ownership of the stick but you

so possession and ownership are different are different uh statuses um so by the same token if I come to

possess an unknown stick in the woods I don’t necessarily own it if I don’t have the intent to own it I might just intend

to use it briefly and then throw it away so I never owned it um so by the same

token if I own something that I do possess I can separate ownership and

possession like I can hand the stick to you and let you use it so you possess it but I own it and then I can abandon it

so now I no longer own it and now you own it because you’re in possession of it and if you intend to own it now you

be homesteaded so to speak so that’s sort of the contractual mechanism that’s the reason why ownership as applied to

acquired things implies that one thing you can do with it is to give it to

someone else we go in the case of your body you never acquire your body because

acquiring an own unkown thing presupposes that you already have a body because to acquire an unknown thing

requires an action and that requires a human being with a body um so it would

be nonsensical to talk about acquiring your body unless you use some mystical religious argument like you know there’s

a soul and God sends it down and but that’s just not a rational argument so

the reason we own our bodies is simply because U uh not because you’re the first user of an unknown thing but

because you have an intimate direct connection to your body which I argue in in my book um and that’s the reason but

that that’s an ownership which means that no one can use your body without your permission but it doesn’t mean that they gain that right to use

it later on when you object just because previously you uttered the words you can

use my body in the future if I uh without my permission or or with you

have my permission now to use my body in the future it doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind so to me that’s the

distinction between types of ownership and that’s why the ability to sell something or to

transfer it is not a part of ownership it’s a part of um it’s it’s like saying

you know if I own a house it includes within it the right to to

dance naked well it doesn’t really include within it the right to dance naked it it’s just that the right to a

house gives you the right to exclude others and practically speaking that gives me the ability to be naked inside

that house right if I own my body it gives me the it gives me the right to

tell you no to use my body without my permission but and that gives the

ability to prevent you from using my body without my permission but obviously the relevant permission for something

that you own is the most recently stated or communicated permission not the previous one so for example if a woman

tells you um in an hour I’ll let you have sex with me and then you do it in

an hour we we presume that it was consensual because that was the last thing she said but if she says no when

the time comes and you you go ahead anyway that’s called rap because and and the defense

wouldn’t be his defense couldn’t be well she said yes an hour ago I mean it’s the most recent communication that matters

because that’s what ownership is it’s the right to say to communicate your your choice whether to give permission

or to deny it um in any case go ahead yeah it sounds similar to like will it’s

always the most recent version that matters and then um that important

distinction between direct and indirect control I know haa makes clear in the

the lecture that you sent me from five years ago and I think that kind

of helps me understand that how you can’t sell your body it’s inalienable

you can’t forgo that ownership claim as opposed to a stick which you can because

you acquire it right now just to be clear this this is my argument and I

don’t know if it’s widely accepted it’s sort of a legalistic and very careful argument I’m sure HOA would agree with

me on this um lots of other Libertarians seem to be confused on a lot of this

however I will say that almost all Libertarians I’m aware of well I don’t know what the percentage is but if I had

to guess the percentage of Libertarians that agree that you can sell your body in the slavery is very small it’s Walter

block um um Robert knows it kind of implies it

I doubt he would he’s dead now but I yeah I can find that past is in Anarchy state in Utopia it’s because he had a

simplistic understanding of a contract again if you just think contract is something that you can by mouthing words

obligate yourself to do then why why what’s the difference between your body and other things yeah but again if you

don’t think of contracts as obligations that helps to solve the problem and if you see the distinction between

different types of ownership that helps but while nosing didn’t see that he was more simplistic uh and then I think also

Gerard Casey who is a guy a recent guy in his book he has a com he doesn’t really go to

detail but he has something so I think Casey nosik and uh block almost everyone

else basically seems to Intuit it that there’s inalienable rights they don’t

really have a good argument for it the the best argument is is mine really and then it’s implied in

rothbard’s arguments against in in his arguments against voluntary slavery um

he gets it a little bit confused because on the one hand he wants to view contracts according even to his new

Theory uh he wants to say that if you don’t pay off a debt later it’s implicit theft which is not true he he he says

that because he has a revolutionary brilliant contract theory but even he doesn’t understand what it implies like

so he’s thinking that if you don’t pay off a debt in the future you’re you’re a you’re a thief and so in theory debtor’s

prison would be justified but debtor’s prison means you could bind Yourself by your promise because it could be backed

up by force which goes against the idea of inalienability so he’s a little bit confused on that I’ve tried to sort it

out on that article I’ll send you on on contract theory and I would imagine to be a thief in that situation you would

have to be owning or possessing something which you don’t own but then there’s no correct there’s no thing the

money is not there yeah so that’s the first thing so if you ask Walter block or

rothbard okay what thing did you steal then the first answer is well you’re

stealing the money that you you owe someone I’m like well if you don’t own anything there’s nothing to steal and so

then Walter would say which I’ve had a debate with him he’ll say okay it what so let’s say a loan for $1,000 on day

one to be repaid 1,00 to be repaid in a year if if the BET dtor doesn’t own the

1100 when he’s by the way if he does have the 1100 then ownership does transfer to the to the Creditor and if

you refuse to turn it over then it would be it would be theft but but if he doesn’t have any money then there’s no

future title to of anything to steal so then Walter would say okay well then it was the original $1,000 I said well

so on day one year from now you’re making the ACT a year ago retroactively

theft even though it was consented it just doesn’t make any sense you can’t retroactively steal something um and not

only that the 11 the $1,100 was given so that the buy borrower could spend it he

has to be able to he has to own it completely this this the thing Walter

block would say well the transfer of the $1,000 is conditional on you being paid

back later but as HOA points out you know you property rights have to be able to answer the question right now who

owns what you can’t have to wait for something in the future um and and and

and U so and and this is clear if you don’t make it money with interest because it seems like you’re repaying

the loan if you just make it two different things like I give you a hammer now and in one year you TR and

you you transfer to me um um I don’t know um a

shovel so they’re just two different things so obviously the ownership of the of the hammer is transferred outright

and the ownership and that’s a future trans it’s a present title transfer it’s done it’s gone now and it’s done and and

this recip IAL and it’s related to a second separate title transfer which is a future title transfer of the future

shovel but that’s a future thing which doesn’t exist yet that’s why all future

transfers are always conditional they have they’re conditioned upon the thing

existing at the future time and being owned by the person who’s supposed to transfer it those things those two

things have to have to take place for there to be sort of an obligation to

transfer I think liquid Zulu goes over that in his contract

chapter I think he does touch on it I think you’re right yeah

um did you want to get to the actual did you want to get the actual uh uh criticisms of uh argumentation ethics or

the responses to it yeah so I went through Murphy and Callahan’s uh

critique and then I went through your response to that critique there were a couple questions that I had in in

general about argumentation ethics and then I had a couple that stemmed from

Reading both of those okay my first one

was from um haa himself I

guess because you know my club I would admit where there are a lot of and I

myself came from this background a lot of rational and relative Skeptics and ethical Skeptics and so that’s who I

would be that’s the sort of crowd I would be dealing with for the most part when defending the paper and so my first

question was why does scarcity mean we require property right

Norms why does scarcity mean require proper well uh yeah and you might notice

in my in my writings I scarcity is fine it’s just that’s another word you have to uh disambiguate because it has

different connotation so I tend to use like rivalrous or even conflict to refer

to the conflict nature of things things that there could be conflict over um which which are scarce means of action

it’s just that the word scarcity for some people in a technical economic sense as

we use it it implies um ravness really it means um yeah yeah but but in in

common common language it means lack of abundance so yeah that’s I I will go

into that because many times people talk about how oh you know there’s no more

there’s no longer a scarcity of things in the world yeah but so I would say if you know if there’s a thousand bananas

and and you and I are sitting there and I have one of them in my hand then if there’s a dispute over who

owns that particular banana like you take it from me then that particular banana we would call it a scarce good

it’s got nothing to do with how abundant it is although in the limit in a world that’s an unrealistic world the world of

the world of U The Garden of Ed an example yeah and that kind of thing um

um there would be no property rights because there would be no conflict because and there would be no there

would be no theft because if someone took my banana I I would just conjure up another

one I wouldn’t lose anything and on the other hand they would never take my banana because they can conjure one up

too so the whole concept disappears um so I think HOA goes into this so so

there’s two aspects to it I guess one is the nature of Human Action which is always the employment of these scarce

means to achieve an end and the nature of these means is that they’re not super abundant um that means there can be

conflict over them which means basically in Practical terms only one person can use them at a time so that’s really

what’s going on here um and then the second issue is whenever this question comes up it’s

always in the context of a of an argumentation between two people who are

discussing Norms they are discussing they are discussing this possible conflict over this use of this

resource that’s what the context always is um in other words whenever you

whenever you say um who owns this or what should the law be you you have to you have to decide

that in the course of an argument or a discussion and in such a in such a context both parties are necessarily

presupposing certain things normative there’s ative presuppositions of an argument um there’s practical and

normative presuppositions the Practical ones are that you know you had to be alive to get here you had to use scarce resources to get here you can’t outright

condemn the very ability of people to use resources or to use them in the first place because if no one could use

something in the first place we would all still be dead because no one would have been able to use something in the first place yeah so if you’re looking

for Norms which is what you’re always doing in these discussions you’re already presupposing

you’re already taking taking for granted there’s conflict is possible in other words that’s the nature of the world that things are scarce so every

discussion about what Norms should be in place is always a discussion uh that

takes into account the possibility of conflict I don’t see how anyone can deny that even a socialist can’t deny that

the things that we’re discussing and saying who should own them are things that by their nature can only have one

user at a time and if we are to avoid conflict which again is the purpose of Norm coming up with a rule that people

can follow to avoid conflict if people don’t want to avoid conflict they wouldn’t engage in discussion they would

just use the mo Whoever has the most most might would just take it so so then the only question becomes

well then what’s the norm that would that would reduce the conflict in the use of these

resources and number one that can only be the norm that uh is comp that’s

compatible with any other Norms that you’re presupposing as part of discourse and one of those is peace and the other

one is recognition of each person’s self- ownership of their body the reason the reason that self ownership is

presupposed is because when you’re having a genuine rational

discussion about what Norms we should agree or to adopt mutually among each

other um you’re necessarily going by the force of

argument alone in other words there’s no coercion there in other words I’m not trying to persuade you to adopt my

claims or my argument uh based upon the threat that I will I will physically harm you if you

don’t because if you do that’s just coercion and that’s not a genuine argument so there has to be an implicit

recognition that willing as HOA talks a willingness to walk away a willingness to agree to

disagree if there’s not that then it’s not a real argument and every no no

proposition about who owns what what’s right wrong as haa argues could ever be uh solved except an argument and

that’s undeniably true because no one can no one can deny that’s true because AR they have to be in an argument to

even deny it so I think that’s all true and so it’s very all that’s left for the

Socialist by socialist I mean anyone who doesn’t agree with libertarian political Norms um anyone who arguing against

libertarian political Norms um someone who’s in favor of slavery someone who’s in favor of tion

egalitarianism uh rule by a king you know what whatever they want to argue

they’re arguing for some political norms and they have to take into account they have to take for granted that the right

to agree to disagree and that everyone has to have the right in the beginning to Homestead unowned resources to be

able to survive and then this is where ca’s prior later distinction comes into it so

he points out that the prior later distinction is an inherent necessary part of what property rights are and the

reason is because the reason is because

uh you can’t base the property right principle on mere verbal decree or

arbitrary assertions otherwise again it’s not a genuine argument to argue means to give reasons grounded in the

nature of things which means that I can’t simply say well the reason I own that football

is because I’m me and you’re you that’s again not giving a reason it’s just resorting back to violence and force

okay so you have to give a reason and I can’t say I’m I’m your owner and you’re my slave and that’s Justified because

you’re black and I’m white that is a distinction but you have to show that it’s a relevant distinction or I’m a man

and you’re a woman or or I’m I’m 6′ 3 and you’re 6’1 you know those are

distinctions but they have to be relevant distinctions and unless you give a reason why that’s a relevant distinction it’s just arbitrary and to

be it’s not it doesn’t count as a as a reason has to be grounded in the nature of things so all we really know is that

when we both come into this argument we’re both assuming each other how’s body rights because we’re willing to respect each other’s body for the

purpose of the argument and we both assume that that everyone at least Prim

aasi has the right to use unknown resources in the world that were previously unowned otherwise we we

wouldn’t be here okay so once you accept that and then you accept the norm also that the current owner of something is

now the owner and they can’t be dislodged from that ownership unless they transfer it

consensually by contract if you don’t believe that then again we’re not talking about ownership we’re talking

about possession yeah right because otherwise it’s like well then I don’t care who owns it I’m just going to take it and

now I take it again you’re back to just bare physical Force argument okay so

that means that means the current ownership has to matter but what that implies is that the current owner has a

better claim than someone who comes after by virtue of what ownership is but

if you go back in time sort of like the regression theorem for money of mises that implies that the very first owner

of an un unknown thing had ownership of it until someone else until they sold it

voluntarily to someone else right so that’s why the current

recognition of mutual bodies ownership in an argument implies the implies

number one the prior later distinction which means that it implies that we’re searching for ownership rules for the

current things in dispute and that search for ownership rules implies uh that the current owner has a

better claim than a late Comer okay because that’s what it means to recognize once we come up with the answer to our argument like who owns the

football is it me or is it you you’re the owner that means you own it until you give it to someone else but that

necessarily implies the prior letter distinction and also because you cannot

deny the the um you can’t deny the

justice of someone being able to acquire an unknown thing in the first place because otherwise you wouldn’t be alive

and furthermore if you take an unknown thing in the wilderness there’s no one that can complain that you took it from

them right because they would be owner already and that that’s against the Assumption okay so

again those three or four assumptions which are virtually undeniable goes back to mean that the first owner has to be

the owner so that’s why the only Norms that can be justified

for ownership of of external resources or property rights that’s what they are that’s what you’re looking for when you

have a debate about who should be able to control this thing and that’s why the only ones that can satisfy that are

those that are rooted in the ability to acquire something first which we call original appropriation and the maintainance the

maintaining of that ownership unless you consensually transfer it which is why contract enters into the picture so the

the the Three core rights of libertarianism are very they all come up

they come from the from the context of an argumentation which is the only way you

could ever justify these things and those are self- ownership original appropriation and transfer by contract and then there’s a

third one which I I view as a sub is a subtype of of of

um of contract which is if you transfer it because you have to pay someone restitution or compensat for

compensation if you harm them but again you could look at that is um as a type

of contractual title transfer like if I punch you by that action of aggressing against your body I’ve consented at that

moment to you taking some of my resources to pay you back for the damage I’ve done um but so those three or four

principles are the are basically the core of all political philosophy and all libertarianism and there the and the way

that we look at thosee those three things is what distinguishes libertarianism from every other

political philosophy um most of the political philosophies adopt these views those principles to one extent or the

other it’s just that they make a lot of exceptions so most political

philosophies would say that they agree to body ownership they oppose

slavery in most cases but they don’t do it completely like yeah you own yourself unless you don’t pay taxes or unless you

refuse to fight in our Wars yeah or unless you smoke marijuana and then we can put you in jail and treat you like

our slave um but unless there’s an exception but the point is they’re exceptional the general rule is everyone

owns themselves and the general rule is that you own your body until you part with it consensually unless the

government takes it from you a forced for taxes know so they make exceptions so the libertarianism rule is simply the

one that that has no exceptions that it’s more consistent than the

others I had a question about when you were talking about how you can’t make a

distinction between 6 foot1 versus 6 fo3 and things like that and or black versus

white it has to have a um a distinction that matters you

mentioned with the Murphy YouTube video how a distinction that would matter is

if somebody was committing a crime then you could legitimately um imprison them are there

would would those distinctions that matter revolve solely around them already having committed a

crime are there other situations where that could

happen um

I’m G look at my notes and see if I could find no I think it is I’m um um and I think this is this is implicit in

HOA he he he doesn’t always go into those distinctions and I’ve talked to him I’m pretty sure he would agree when

I tried to defend him in that argument and others I tried to so one of M M

Murphy and and and kellahan things is well you could argue with your slave that kind of thing as that’s that’s as

if that’s a counterargument um and I understand why they might have made well I think it’s I think it’s a

mistaken argument but I understand why they might have made that argument because haa doesn’t explicitly make the distinct he doesn’t

make the exception about if you own a slave that’s committed a crime against you I think that’s implicit in his

theory so the way I would look at so yeah I think the answer is yes and the reason is because um for the same reason

that your body rights are inalienable um and by inalienable I don’t mean they’re they’re

I I don’t mean they’re really inalienable what I mean is that um they’re not alienable by contract by by

they’re not alien alienable which is another way of saying the only way someone can have a right to

your body um is number one if you grant them

permission by communicating it okay uh but if the only way they have a right to use your body even when you say no

um uh is is if they committed an act of aggression

but not if they merely said you can use my body because you have the right to change your mind and the reason is

because telling someone I will I sell you my body is not an act of aggression

so saying words to someone doesn’t invade the borders of their property and doesn’t give them any any right to

commit aggression against you um now Walter block and others would say well but then why can you sell your your car

to someone so they again they’re they’re thinking that it’s magical words that that had this um this effect of changing

your ontological status but they’re they’re they’re

they’re they’re forgetting the reason for all this and the reason that the reason that saying you own my car

now transfers ownership is because the way you came to own it was the was the

combination of your intent and your possession it was a combination of those things it was a previously unknown thing

which had the status of being unowned owned and now has the status of being owned by you because of the Union of

your intent and your possession but if you get rid of one of those two thing if you get rid of the the of the intent

part you’re just possessing it you don’t own it anymore and because you came to

own it or acquire it by an act of intent you can get rid of that by intending to

abandon it and you can do that by your communication to tell people what what the status is just like if I own

something if I pick up a stick I can tell people I don’t own this I’m just using it temporarily so your

communication of your intent can tell them whether you’re an owner or just a possessor by the same token if I own

something that I already own I own it until I change that status and one way to one way to do it would be to die if I

die I don’t own it anymore right another way to do it would be to uh to abandon it forever in the woods and I just no

one and then let’s say there’s no Trace left anym of my ownership to it someone else could treat that as unowned and re

Homestead it and another way would be to like physically hand it to them and say you you possess this car and now I

abandoned my claim to it so now they become the owner it’s not magical it’s just it’s just I’ve relinquished my

intent to own it so I don’t own it anymore so that’s why your your your

your verbal or your written communication that you you own this

works it works because I’ve gotten rid of my intent to own but your body is not

owned because of your intent to own it’s owned because you have a better connection to it so merely saying I

don’t own my body anymore doesn’t change that fact you still have the will that’s what Rockbar talks about in his argument

like you still have the will over your body now here’s where people get they say well then if that’s true why why can you

argue with your slave and why wouldn’t that mean you could never justify imprisoning someone who’s

actually an aggressor and the answer is because in that case so if I’m if I’m a

Roman Guy arguing with my slave HOA would say you actually cannot argumentatively just ify keeping him as

your slave you’re engaged in a performative contradiction because you’re treating him as if he’s a self- owner and yet after the argument’s over

you go ahead treat you you use Force against him even though you’ve already conceded you shouldn’t do that so you’re you’re you’re caught in a contradiction

which is why no ethic other than libertarianism can can be justified but if I kept if a guy’s in my on my farm

and he just murdered one of my children and he’s he’s a rampaging threat and a menace and he’s done damage to me and I

I subdue him using self-defense and I put him in a cage waiting for I don’t know waiting for the local private

Defense Agency to come to card him off to I know eject him to Siberia or to kill him or whatever they’re going to do

with him I’m treating him for that finite duration of time as as my slave

because I am treating him as a means to my ends I’m I’m disregarding his verbal

assertion that of no when he when he denies me the ability to control him so

if we have a discussion about it I could justify treating him

differently I he could say oh you don’t have the right to treat me like like your slave because we’re both

equal as far as we know we’re both equal because we both have the capacity to reason we both need things to survive um

and and and and you’re and you’re recognizing my right to use my vocal cords right now and I the response could

be yeah but I I’m your owner because not because I’m me and you’re you but because you committed an act of

aggression against me so and that’s not that’s not arbitrary or irrelevant if I

said I’m white and you’re black that’s a there’s I can’t give I can’t give a reason for why that distinction is

relevant because for whatever reason I have for rights it’s not because of my skin color it’s my rationality it’s my

my will it’s something that we share it’s a capacity we both share but it’s

not my skin color now I could say that well God told me I’m special I’m the chosen people or

something like that and you’re just an inferior person so that’s why but now

I’m resorting to something mystical and something Supernatural and something irrational which we can say is also not

permitted in a rational discourse between people uh that’s not in the nature of things that’s some mystical

text so I would say that doesn’t count either and also it wouldn’t count for me to say well it’s because you’re you’re

black and I hate black people it’s like okay but you haven’t related it to the reason why we’re assuming we both have

rights which is something to do with our mental capacity right but now our rights do have to do with mutually respecting

each other’s rights and living in the world together and if someone’s committed an act of aggression they have

they have put themselves outside of that they’ve distinguished themselves yeah now they’re an aggressor and they can be

treated differently because they did not respect my rights and because they didn’t respect my this is where my stopple Theory comes into it because

they didn’t respect my rights I don’t have to respect their rights sort of like a symmetry is there um so that’s

why I think that it is not um it’s not a debunking of of ha’s argument to show

that there are cases where you could have an argument with a slave where you

could justify enslaving him now another one they give is I think Murphy’s

religious and I don’t remember he goes into this thing well if God owns us to me this this sort of like mises’s kind

of off-handed arguments about about he says well Human Action is an undeniable practic logical truth because you can’t

deny that humans act and when they act they act to in a world of uncertainty to achieve some end because they’re

dissatisfied right now with the current way that things are heading and they want to change that so if we imagine a

God God is perceived God has conceived as being um perfect and all good and all

omniscient omniscient and all powerful omnipotent um and therefore it’s

inconceivable God would ever act because to act means he’s dissatisfied with

something but that would imply he’s not perfect so I mean I actually think that’s an argument by means as why God

can’t exist because he an impossible thing it just but basically he’s Trea he’s like okay well God exists then

we’re going to have to separate him from this category of action it only applies to humans on the earth what he really means is it’s a nonsensical concept so

if Murphy wants to say well there’s a God up there and he’s really our slave owner okay but even if there’s a God who

created the universe and because he created it and because he’s omnipotent and he’s all good and he has some kind of super moral

right sup some super right to to just treat us like his ends let’s say that’s

true that still doesn’t mean that we have that right with respect to each other because on on this Earth and in this moral plane even in God’s eyes he

put us down here as equals because he gave us all equal ability to use the resources on the earth that he gave us

so it still wouldn’t justify socialism it might justify God being a

dictator but that’s not really our problem here and if it was our problem we would have bigger problems because if

God wants to be our dictator there’s nothing we can do to change his mind or stop him because he’s omnipotent so it’s

just a silly uh it’s a distraction from the argument I think

the distinction that you were talking about the black and white one it’s similar to the same paper he mentioned

the Aristotle and The Barbarians one yeah now you could use it for for children’s a more interesting case

because that’s my next question well you could say that so you could you could say then why does a a a

father of let’s say a three-year-old have the right to do things to him that he wouldn’t do to a neighbor

um and again the answer is because you could point to a difference you could say well the child is obviously he has

rights or he’s growing into a point where he has rights but is because of the way humans develop this is again

grounded in the nature of things because of the way humans develop in our social nature and because of my special

connection to him I’m the father of him I have a better connection to him than a stranger because of all these things uh

and because of his incapacity he just doesn’t have the maturity or the rational faculty to make decisions yet

it’s obvious that you could argue that there’s a Continuum when he’s born and

even before he’s born to when he develops a certain level of maturity and then has full ownership but between that

point he has less than full ownership which means that someone else has the right to make decisions on his behalf

and in his interest which is presumably the parents they can use that right by abusing it and then maybe some other

adult would have the rights the supervisor supervisory rights the guardianship rights that’s why I really

liked Walter Block’s decrypted will analogy I thought that was a great way

the decrypted will analogy decrypted will from Walter block where you the

rights of a child much like a decrypted will as they age you slowly decrypt what

um rights they’re able to express of themselves I never heard that uh but that makes that makes a sort of sense to

me in other words it’s a that was part of uh the contract and the rights of children chapter of liquid to lose

course encrypted decrypted will yeah like or encrypted will where um you’re

slowly decrypting it and then as the child age it’s much like that where okay yeah certain parts of it become

available as to how they’re able to express and consent yeah and I would yeah so I would the way I would word

that is um there there’s a when the when the when a when a when the when the

natural parent of a child who has not abused the child and who is fulfilling their sort of natural obligations to

take care of the child uh when that’s the case then we we presume that the child would consent to

whatever the parent consents on their behalf um and that presumption can be

broken in obvious cases of abuse or when the parent is not acting in the child’s behalf but is acting on their behalf

like if you sell a child into into into slavery or something like that uh in most cases I would say um um yes so I

would and I would say that’s a gradual thing although I would you know I would say technically speaking the age of consent would be a

lot lower than the current legal systems laws regulate or at least it would be flexible enough to let a very young

child if it came if push came to shove if things got so bad for that child that he wanted to and that’s what Roth BR

says when the child is old enough to run away now yeah that’s a little bit that’s

a little bit too glib I mean two years old they can run away but a toddler

doesn’t really have any but I think a five or seven or 10-year-old can

basically commit enough of a they can express their desire to be manumitted sufficient to you know at a

certain age even in today’s system you can go to a court and you can ask the judge to free you of your parents you

can manit yourself before you’re 18 um and I think something like that makes

sense but sure I would agree with that that decrypting the encrypt cted will

metaphor that leads me to my next question um because children are growing

into their ability to um engage in consent for certain

things over and um appropriate resources and trade with

them what would the argument for the rights of I know Murphy and Callahan

mentioned this like um people with mental retardation yeah and I don’t think I think that’s an argument more that’s more of a um that’s

not really necessarily an argumentation ethics argument anymore that’s more of a that’s more of a borderline or or an

edge case issue or a Continuum issue as Walter block calls it

um I mean the essence of

Rights according to hoa’s rights theory is bound up with

reason the the the capacity to reason okay we can say that for sure so there’s

a clear case the clear case is a functioning adult human

um does it apply to a a one- day old fertilized zygote inside the mother’s

womb you know opinions vary um my view is is because it’s bound up

with rationality not with not with personhood which is just just a tautological term uh and

not with being a human which is which by the is Walter’s argument which I think is Walter argument for abortion or is

that or for choice or whatever he calls it evictionism is that all humans have

rights from conception because they’re humans but they’re parasites on the mother so they can be

aborted um they’re I’m sorry the’re trespassers I mean I think both steps of the

argument are wrong you don’t have rights from conception because you don’t have a rational faculty yet and and you’re not

a you’re not a trespasser because you’re invited so like both s both sides of his argument are wrong um in my view um I

think the best view is that because rights are bound up with the rational faculty it’s clear that there’s a

there’s a there’s a time period between let’s say late term of ab of

pregnancy and somewhere in early childhood when when after that point

children clearly have rights between in that gray area you could have arguments about it and I think what happens is in

a rich and generous and benevolent Society people tend to a on the side of

Rights for the child so because there’s no clear answer and we can’t just say what what a God say then out of respect

for human life we would say well um you know a seven-year-old has rights we’re

going to treat the baby like he has rights to and even late term abortion we’re going to we’re going to frown on

doesn’t mean you would treat late term abortion as murder for other reasons

which I which I gave in my argument my talk on abortion last year at PS um I

think you could argue that it’s it’s murder to to kill a healthy late term

fetus but that the the jurisdiction over that should be still with the mother so

it’s up to her to decide to treat it like murder whereas we on the outside might treat it like murder I think the

outside legal system of the community should not get involved until the baby’s born but after the baby’s born it would

be reasonable for a society to extend the right Lauren lamasi has a section in his

book on person’s rights in the moral Community he’s a philosopher and libertarian he’s got a section in there

on what he calls piggybacking how like the rights of what he calls defective humans which I guess he means like

people and people in people in comas people like that whether we

attribute rights to them the very infirm the elders you know and I guess

fetuses he kind of treats them as edge cases not really exactly having rights but we we we attribute the rights of

healthy adult people to them out of respect for their kind of affinity to us

and again piggybacking so like I’m walking and if like a little child is with me yeah I put them on my back to

help them get across the Stream So they kind of get the attributes of my and I think that’s it’s it’s not a very

rigorous argument it’s kind of metaphorical but I think that’s the best we can do to help sort this out so I

think the short answer is in the in their sense in the arguments of like Ein Rand I think she would say that you know

in a sense someone who’s severely or in a coma um they’re essentially dependent

upon the healthy people in the world helping them out they’re they’re

utterly dependent just like just like a newborn baby is dependent upon its parents otherwise that it will die yeah

because of this dependency they in a sense they have to depend upon the voluntary help of of of the people so

the most important thing is to make sure you have a working capital of society where everyone that’s a functioning

adult has their rights respected so that they have the ability to care for the people that need the help um and then we

we as a practical matter you always have to count on these people’s generosity

and benevolence to help out the people that need it whether you can say that you know a severely person has

full rights I think it’s a hard argument to make I think it’s more of a moral argument at that point um just for the

same reason we wouldn’t say that you know a horse has rights they just don’t

have the rational faculty to have it but we can still oppose needless cruelty of

animals based upon moral considerations but we keep them

distinct not not not to not to equate humans with animals um but

there is a sense in which they they all have a certain impairment of their

faculty compared to the faculty of a functional adult human

um so I would say that um at most you can argue by analogy and

from moral principles to and and hope for the benevolence of everyone to treat um those edge cases um you know to

extend as much of as much of our status to them as we can as as much as we can afford

to and by the way when you have these kind of difficult cases people always expect the the libertarian to have an

answer for everything um yeah and it’s not always possible and a lot of randians and a lot of anarchists and a

lot of non- Libertarians they’re bothered by that um but I always view

these things comparatively like um for example you could point out a these

are sometimes called Lifeboat scenarios you know you could have a situation where you have three people on a Lifeboat and there’s only enough food

for two of them how’s libertarianism going to solve that problem it’s like well how is socialism going to solve

that problem how is nothing sometimes there’s tragedy and sometimes there are

situations where there’s no good solution and that’s not because we have libertarianism that’s because the world

is not always perfect and Justice and peace and and Harmony is not always

possible but in in a case where we have that we hope to make it better by by

adopting property rules that allow us to minimize violence and conflict um so

again I always point out well how you know how’s your how’s your property right system going to going to solve is

it going to magically make enough food appear for all three people on the boat to to live it just it’s not going to

happen some would say that will eventually stop being a concern I’ve heard that well and I’m I’m

not I’m not too again this is like the it’s like this this is why this like the

scarcity versus abundance concept yeah uh I could conceive of us reaching what

we might call now a post post scarcity future what is it called post scarcity is that what it’s

called I think so yeah um but even that wouldn’t really be a world of post scarcity it might be a world of such

superabundance that rights don’t matter as much anymore um and if that’s the

case but again it’s like the bananas thing it’s like if there’s a billion bananas around I could still want that

one I I might want it but if they’re all the same if they’re all the same they’re homogeneous units of of of a good then

there would be no theft there would be no need for theft and there would be no concept of theft because no one would care and no one would want to do it in

the first place so you know in a post scarcity World everyone’s physical needs are met I just think that that is a

little bit science fiction because even in such even in a POS in in a post scarcity world the best we’re going to

have is a world where there is no poverty left like there’s machines and plentiful energy and food where no one

starves no one no one is missing out any material Goods that they want you’re

still going to have people have an attachment to their physical bodies and things they like and they’re still going

to be the possibility of murder and rape because people will still have free will

and so there would still be the need for laws and property rights to prohibit

those things so I don’t think that this post scarcity World means that property rights go away it could mean that money

goes away because we have so much that we don’t need money to coordinate our actions anymore because the whole

purpose of money is to is to allocate scarcity in the sense in the in the in

the in the in the in the non-abundant sense um if you don’t care if everything’s provided for then you

wouldn’t care about e economic efficiency so much anymore so I I could

see a world where prices go away although it’s hard to imagine now you need prices as Mis has pointed out you

need prices as long as you need to compare heter heterogeneous factors of production you

can’t compare alternative ends if you’re trying to make a monetary profit without money prices but if you don’t care about

monetary profit anymore then I guess you wouldn’t need money prices and so money might disappear like in the Star Trek

world but even in the Star Trek world there’s still there’s still crime and still property rights in people’s bodies

yeah because even in um hoa’s example the guardian of Eden he still explains how you’re standing room in your own

body standing right so you if you take the if you take the the hypothetical construct of the land of Eden or the

garden of the Garden of Eden or the land of cocaine he calls it um if you take

that to an extreme then it’s just a it’s just a fictional thing that it’s just it’s a of ghosts basically yeah they

like there’s no standing room there’s no bodies there’s no Corp corporeal anything and then that that construct is

totally useless to us we can’t use it to we can’t use it for any conclusions like even the even the Robinson cruso example

cruso economics is a real realistic example it could happen it’s just it’s rare and the Garden of Eden thing really

couldn’t happen um or like the evenly rotating economy example of mises and

rothbart that could never really happen you just assume that to be the case to isolate some features of the world that

you’re trying to explore for understanding time preference or interest or something like that but even

that could never really happen because the future is uncertain as mises elsewhere demonstrates is unavoid it’s

it’s inherently uncertain because it hasn’t happened yet and our knowledge is not we’re not we’re not

omniscient I had another question um I guess one of my biggest problems

when trying to understand the argumentation ethics was how it the

conclusions that you can derive from it for example if it’s the case that you cannot logically argue

that um for conflict and you must it’s a necessarily peaceful

action one of the common critiques I see is oh well there are other Norms that you presuppose in argumentation so

therefore you can’t argue against those one of those being that you have to be awake so therefore it’s unjustifiable to

argue for sleeping or same for yeah something like I’ve I’ve heard that one

before and I didn’t necessarily it was during a debate and I didn’t necessarily get a see a good response to that I want

to know I I think those are all variants of the you can’t argue their slave in a in a sense and and they I think they

also missed the okay they missed the point that there’s another argument people they’ll say like well all you’ve done is proved

that during an argumentation we have to respect property rights just during the course but once the argument’s over then

we’re back to to I don’t know world of of of no Norms like yeah but the whole

purpose of the argument is it’s a it’s the argument is not about the argument itself it’s about how we handle

situations in the world in the world when we not argue it’s about like it’s about who’s going to own you know the

land that they use who’s who’s going to own it if the question is who’s going to own it then you’re you’re just answering

this kind of hypothetical question about it’s a general question you’re so the

point is if in the real world outside the argumentation if you want to respect

if you want your actions to be justified they can only be justified in accordance with the Norms that you could justify in

an argumentation so if you don’t care about your AR actions being justified then you can just do it so it is true

that the nor but that’s almost like saying okay I’m arguing with someone who

has a very short attention span and I might persuade them right now that they shouldn’t take my my chocolate but

they’re going to forget this and in 10 minutes they’re going to take my chocolate anyway so why would I bother argue like why would someone bother

engaging in an argument with someone if if they’re treating it like a game and they’re GNA just start misusing they’re

going to treat me like they’re slave as soon as the argument’s over I guess I’ll I guess I’ll Never End the argument then I’ll I’ll arguing with them forever so

they’ll they’ll at least treat me with respect during the AR I’ve heard that one before too that if you know you

presuppose that you should be arguing therefore argumentation ethics say that you should never stop arguing yeah and

the other the other thing to keep in mind is most people that are making these criticisms argumentation ethics

it’s because well some of them agree with libertarian ethics they just don’t like hoa’s argument yeah and I I want to

say to them it’s like well then so haa simply argues that you can’t argue until

justify socialism if you’re a Libertarian you must believe that too you must think for some reason you can’t

there’s no good argument there’s no good justification for socialism and that’s all hop is saying is there’s no good argument for

socialism he’s just pointing out why it’s because when you argue you’re adopting Norms that are inconsistent

with it but because you’re a Libertarian you already you already agree with those Norms too so it’s it’s not it’s it’s not

really clear why PE why Libertarians don’t agree with it but when you’re arguing with someone else if they’re criticizing argumentation ethics or if

they’re criticizing libertarian ethics um and if one of their arguments is well your argument for rights is flawed

because uh it doesn’t apply to people that are sleeping or something like that

yeah it’s like they usually have their own alternative arguments so their alternative argument is like um well in

my view the better argument is that we should all live in an egalitarian society and we should have the right to welfare and all this stuff then you

could just tell them you could you could come back to them and you could say well well doesn’t your argument only apply to

people that are not sleeping or like you made that argument when you’re awake does that mean that someone sleeping

can’t make that argument so therefore socialism is not a good system

because no one can make the argument all the time I mean again it’s just like the

it’s like the Lifeboat thing it’s like libertarianism doesn’t solve that problem but socialism doesn’t either and

if you point out that argumentation can only happen between rational conscious

people who are not sleeping okay well I can aim that back at any kind of rational discussion about

any Norms I don’t see why it’s it’s especially picking on argumentation ethics to make that

point the same kind of retort that I’ve seen in response to

critics of your aole ethic actually people talking about how oh well when

they try to particularize it like oh I’m me and therefore I can do what um just did like let’s say it’s kick you and

then you can’t do it back to me because you’re you and then U how they could

just turn that back and be like oh well I’m me and so I can or even if it was like oh well I used to think this now I

don’t I regret it and they’re like okay well I’m gonna hit you as punishment and then I’ll later regret it and then it’ll

be fine according to your own ethic yeah my my stole thing is not gotten quite as

much attention as hopas and so it has it also hasn’t gotten quite as much criticism but on occasion I’ll get

something like that um and my my response was already buried in a few

sentences in the original article I wrote about it and it’s simply that

um if you’re if if if you committed aggression

against me and then I try to retaliate and your response is you can’t do that

to me because um I own my body uh and it’s wrong to use my body without

my permission then once you grant that you’re granting

that you have to you have to acknowledge that you shouldn’t have done what you did to me previously and you do because

usually in the hypothetical they they they say oh I I admit I shouldn’t have done that I apologize um I shouldn’t

have done that but now you shouldn’t do it to me because we both agree that it’s wrong to do that to people it’s like

yeah but you not only agree that it’s wrong to do that to people you agree that you did it and that you shouldn’t have done it and if you agree that you

shouldn’t have done it and that you did it and you agree that there should be a law against it or some kind of

enforceable rule against it then you have to agree that some response is

Justified because if no response is Justified and the and the response has to come after so that’s the thing the

response has to come after the fact because nothing is simultaneous so

the response to an act of aggression has to come after the act of aggression so if response is going to be

justified it has to come after which means that the fact that someone now agrees with you doesn’t change that fact

or that it’s irrelevant um and if you say

well the fact that a response has to come after means that you can never have a response then that means that we don’t

have any rights at all that means that we’re back to Mere shoulds or we’re back

to a might R role either one one or the other so again once you concede that

there should be rights and there enforceable rights and you con see that the response has to come after the fact

then once you admit that you committed the ACT then you’re you basically I would say you’re stopped from denying

your from withholding your consent that’s why in a sense when you use Force

against someone who says the word no in a sense they they’ve already consented and again this is why I would

distinguish the voluntary slavery thing or the kissing or the having sex with a girl who said yes

before she can change her mind and in her case her later consent is the one that matters and the reason is because

she hasn’t committed an act of aggression if she had committed an act of aggression first that would have

stopped her from withholding her consent later okay that’s why a criminal is

stopped from complaining about Force being used against them after because in a sense they’ve already granted their

consent and their act of aggression and that and it’s to too late for them to change your

mind but if I merely make words to You and I say I will kiss you at the end of the day or I will be your slave I

haven’t committed aggression so I can change my mind that’s the distinction which is really apparently Hard for some

people to see to my mind it’s very simple you got to keep it clear in your mind the distinctions but it’s it’s it’s

easy to see why there’s a distinction an act of aggression is a fact that happened and it cannot be

undone word saying something to you didn’t harm you so it can be undone I

can take it back I can change my mind that’s the difference and that’s what Walter block doesn’t see because he just

keeps thinking but I I promise to be your slave I I can’t undo it anymore that I can undo the sale of the car it’s

like yeah but they’re not because of promises they not because of obligations they’re because of the way you come to own these things so I think when you

untangle all these things have a clear view then all these conundrums you can

see the you can see why people get confused about but you can see why they’re they’re just

wrong one of my um I don’t want to get too deep into stole but that’s something

I’ve always found a little confusing myself I understand how you can’t later

retract that oh you shouldn’t aggress on somebody because I I guess I I wouldn’t I doubt you would call it aggression to

use Force against somebody who aggressed not just

yeah so there’s there’s two ways I would you could word it so if if I’m the I’m the recipient of aggression when I use

Force against them um you could you can you can distinguish it you can say it’s it’s it’s respon I call it responsive

Force it’s Force that’s not in response so when they initiated Force against me their force was not in response to any

Act of force I committed so it’s it’s it’s it’s initiated or aggression when I respond it’s responsive so that’s one

distinction and then the other way you could look at you could charact you could say well well it’s not

even by being responsive it’s another way of saying that it’s consented to

it’s consented to by by the aggressor when I aggress against his body because

even though he’s mouthing the words no he’s a stop from saying that because of

his previous act so you can look at it either way you can say you can say that I can use Force against him because it’s

it’s responsive force and it’s Justified or it’s because he’s consenting to it

now because he can’t withdraw his previous consent either way is a kind of an

equivalent way of looking at it I used um the estaple method in a paper I wrote

in my Greek in Roman drama class um we were going over the oran Trilogy with cl nestra and

Agamemnon and uh clam nestra killed both Agamemnon

and agam’s concubine I was the question was whether she was justified in her actions and I gave a defense for her

actions of killing Agamemnon because Agamemnon killed her daughter okay but not Cassandra the concubine because she

was just a bystander in the situation I think it was perceived

pretty well but um I just you know as a way to see if I understand something I

try to use it myself that’s Le me yeah I don’t know the I don’t know the classics

as well as you do um by the way did you ever you ever heard of the St John school the one in uh Maryland I have not yeah it’s got It’s

got a deep Classics program there um okay and uh it’s quite interesting um

that’s I think I I would have wanted to go there if I was studying classic something like that um but there’s an

there’s an example in Roman law use there’s a there’s a um the most fam of the Roman the most famous of the RO the

five famous Roman jurists was called penan and I think it was around the year 200

ad it was when caracella you know the TW you see the movie uh Gladiator the new one no but um that’s

during the rain his rain yeah well and then well in the new one it’s in the Reign it’s a few years later maybe a

generation later and it’s in the reign of of the that twins with the The Sibling Brothers uh um carosella and

um I forgot the other one’s name any carisella carala and the other one uh um

Gada G yeah g and I think carala had get murdered and uh in the

movie in the movie uh Cara’s killed like a week a day lat five days later uh but

in reality uh Cara lived another eight years until another guy became emperor but

anyway after he had his his brother killed he went to Pini who was who was

the jur chief jurist at the time and he he asked him to compose a justification for what he had done because it kind of

didn’t look bad that one Emperor killed his co-emperor his brother so he wanted him to propose a justification say no no

he had a right to kill him for the following reasons and penan says he said this this quote which I love is it is

easier to commit it’s easier to commit murder than to justify it so he refused

to compose the justification and what he meant was you know there’s a difference between fact and Norms there’s

difference between thoughts shoulds and facts and the fact is you murdered them that’s might but the right was it was it

was it was a crime and there’s no justification for it and so um caraa had

had pinan uh tortured and and executed because he refused to compose a

justification but he was right he was right to refuse to because uh there is

none good it’s good it goes perfectly in hand and I need to go in a few minutes so if you got any final and

we can talk if you need to but U but but I I greatly appreciate I my last question actually I think would be a

good way to wrap it up it was what is the main thing that critics misunderstand about argumentation

ethics if you had a so probably restricting to try to pinpoint into one

thing but if you had to think well I think a lot of them don’t I mean haa is a very dense writer and he also writes

in this dramatic Style style and his original books were all trans he wrote them but then his his wife and others

had to help him clean up the English so I think um he says a few things in

passing that you can just glance over and not really get the import of like he you know he says like there’s three or

four things he says that are extremely important to his argument one is that all argumentation is necessarily

argumentative justification okay you can’t justify anything especially anything normative except in a

justification so if you can’t do it in justification you can’t do it at all I mean if you can’t do it in argument you

can’t do it at all and if argument has certain normative presuppositions then those are ones you can never argue

against okay so then the question is what are those argu what are those and then when he says that and the right to

agree it right to agree to disagree is also extremely important he just sneaks that in but it’s an extremely important

thing because it shows the distinction between a real argument where you’re trying to persuade someone by force of

reason alone the force of your words alone which he says um and coercive

threat which is not a real argument you’re just trying to get someone to say to agree with you to say words so they don’t get hit

um and then this thing about articles argument is a practical affair because in the real world you have to have

standing room and the right to control your body but you also have to have the ability to control scarce resources

right now and also to have gotten there in the first place which means this right to you have to presuppose the

right to first start using something right um and then the prior later

distinction that try ties back in this regression so all four or five of those things kind of combined together so I

guess the probably the biggest misconception or argumentation ethics is well I guess there’s a couple one is

failure to understand all these things um in in an explicit way and if you just reread it and listen to it enough you

you get that part uh then the other is sort of this um hostility towards what

they think of AR priori or transcendental reasoning or or what they

call knockdown arguments they sort of want to be stuck in this uh noii and model of always having just kind of

making it a game and never settling on anything or even the idea I think David Freeman and some others they’ve said you

know or or noser or someone like it’s almost oppressive to have a knockdown argument to say that there are some

things you just can’t argue without running into a contradiction they think that’s oppressive to like they think it’s

almost cororve it’s like I don’t think it’s coercive um uh and then I guess the slave the slave and the like someone

arguing with their slave they think that’s a counter but a lot of people haven’t read it deeply enough to know

that um or maybe some of them just don’t a lot of them are randians too a lot of randians have a hostility towards Kant

that could be part of it they have a hostility towards Kant because of Ran’s hostility

towards uh what she call what she call subjectivism which she really means I

think moral relativism or or skepticism um I’m not a deep philosopher but I’ve

been persuaded by haa and others that Kant was a murky writer in a way so

people that have a certain interpretation of him could be forgiven for for it because he was murky but my

understanding is there’s like there’s one tradition of interpretation of kant’s views like on E iics um and

epistemology and stuff like that in in in America the American tradition and one in Europe the Continental tradition

and the the Continental tradition is far more realistic and that’s that’s what mises and and and haa come from so

they’re not real they’re not they’re realists they’re not idealists and they’re not Skeptics at all especially not haa um and then the American

realists they I mean Sor the American conents sort of have this more idealistic skeptical interpretation of K

and the argument is that ran when she she didn’t really read Kant in the original sources she read secondary

sources and she was reading some Americans who were arguing for kind of a skepticism so when she’s attacking Kant

she’s attacking she’s attacking this kind of skeptical yeah uh a moral relativist

version of Kant uh in any case I think there I think the hostility of a lot of Libertarians who are randian influenced

to Kant might be one reason they just um um are averse to hoa’s seemingly contian

ariori all that stuff inspired argumentation ethics and their hostility towards mises who they think no no hoa’s

argumentation that is not really misesian I would say is grounded in in I

say hoa’s argumentation I think is grounded in mises’s basic prac logical content way of looking at things it’s

also grounded in the political realism of rothbard and radicalism of rothbard and it’s also grounded in some of the

inside of his Professor Jurgen hos and Carl otter Opel which were both kind of

democrat socialist types but kind of the argumentation ethics insights so all

that kind of combination of stuff is where haa got it from but even mises was sort of a conent and he was a

utilitarian in ethics not really principal more consequentialist or pragmatic and I

think so the randians have this hostility towards um mises’s what they

would call subje ISM which is not subjectivism um in the randian sense but anyway I so I think it could be because

of their their kind of Nar hostility towards what they perceive as kinism um

because the way he goes about the Norms of argumentation did remind me of K’s

categories when reading it yeah and the randians also if you read Chris’s book

um I think it’s called total freedom where he goes into his philosophy he’s

trying to defend ran but show that her method is heavily dialectric right she’s trying and she always does try to if you

read her stuff she always tries to um she tries to to explode dichotomies I

might not be using the right term but but like uh like the Mind B the analytic synthetic dichotomy the mindbody

dichotomy dualisms things like that um and she did that a little bit even with knowledge like she doesn’t like this

ariori versus aposteriori way of looking at things um even though her own way of

looking at knowledge is very similar to um the subjectivism of of the economics of Mees

in terms of um we we demonstrate that we subjectively value things by our actions

he didn’t mean that all ethics were were sub were were morally relative it’s it’s

a different use of subjective um um uh and uh

um and and so like so so so she would so when she says there’s

axioms for example she goes she meant axiomatic knowledge so we know some things to be absolutely true because

they self-evident and the attempt to deny it leads to self-contradiction like you can’t deny that there’s Consciousness because and therefore you

can’t deny that there’s existence because you gota and you can’t deny there’s a difference distinction between you and the outside world because to be

conscious is to be conscious of something it’s a relational property right you can’t deny the law of non-contradiction because it’s at the

base of what it means to have a contradiction at all or falsity and Truth like all these kind of Elementary

things that she builds her philosophy on she calls him axiomatic which is I think

not the standard way philosophy uses the term axiomatic what she meant was self-evidently true so that contradict

uh denying it leaves self-contradiction so it’s something you could never show is wrong and that’s the same way that

that mises argues with about the Human Action Axiom and aspects of praxiology

and it’s the same way haa argues about um about his Norms so it’s all the same

way of arguing about what’s true and what’s not true what’s obviously false and all that stuff so

um I think she had she just didn’t want to use the word AR priori because this too sounds too conting to her right um

anyway awesome I’m thank you very much for giving me this opportunity this has

been very helpful and I still have to go through and organize clean up all my

notes and then finish this paper in March but this has yeah if you write the paper if you want any feedback I’ll be

happy to do it and if you you end up publishing it that’d be great send me if it’s published and if you don’t if you want to publish it like in the journal

libertarian studies or something like that uh you could think about that if if it’s not suitable for yours so we can talk about that later oh wow okay thank

you thank you all right well good luck thing and and I’ll I’ll send you the recording when this okay great thank you

have a good night take care all right take care C