Abstract: The Author brings forth principles and theory of primary and secondary free trading markets for non-scarce goods and services operating on principles of supply, demand and price discovery, and postulates that such markets can exist and contribute to the advancement of society and the world economy. Advances in science and technology have enabled digital duplication and the distribution of electronic content, and opened new pathways of doing business, but have also enabled illicit activities in digital goods, namely digital theft and piracy. An extremely low cost of copying, in a trivially short amount of time, has made digital copies of creative works practically non-scarce, thus destroying the equilibrium of supply and demand. As the majority of digital goods are currently sold and distributed on the Internet through retail outlets, which dictate prices and restrict users through monopolistic terms of use agreements, the rights of creators supersede the rights of consumers. Existing copyright laws serve as a legal basis for such operation of the markets. There are no pre-existing, legally operating secondary trading markets for digital goods, and primary markets do not utilise competitive price discovery, as only the copyright owners are entitled to set arbitrary trading prices. There is no pre-existing scientific framework for the operation of free trading markets for non- scarce goods to serve as a model for establishing electronic trading exchanges, for digital goods in particular, and non-scarce goods in general. This thesis provides a theoretical framework of free trading markets for non-scarce goods and services, as well as examples of practical applications for the theoretical framework in electronic commerce of digital goods and services. A software simulation of a free trading market for non- scarce goods, operating on the principles of this theoretical framework, is also provided. The applied theoretical framework is intended to create equitable trading of digital goods in a free market environment, provide a remedy for the growing piracy of digital goods, and enable investing in commoditised creativity, in a manner similar to investing in stocks or commodities
Interesting article by one “Marco”: “Least, Sufficient Force: Libertarian Theory of Defense,” The Voluntaryist Reader blog (2013). He argues that a victim may use force in self-defense, during an act of aggression, and for punishment/retribution, after the fact, and that while there are upper bounds on the level of force that may be used in each case, they are different. For punishment to be just, it must be proportional to the offense being punished. So you could kill a murderer but not someone who punched you in the arm. For self-defense, the victim may also use force to defend himself during the attack, but is limited to using the “least, sufficient force” that will prevent or repeal the attack. These standards are different, meaning, for example, that the victim is entitled to kill the aggressor in self-defense in some cases where capital punishment after the fact would be disproportionate. For example if someone is going to give you a severe beating that would not be punishable by death, you may still kill the guy during the act if that’s the only way to stop him.
Re this facebook post, where Cathy Reisenwitz writes
“It’s telling that basically no academic libertarian philosophers try to ground libertarianism in NAP; using NAP to generate libertarianism is the hobby horse of philosophical amateurs. I think the reason for that is that academic philosophers recognize that using NAP to get to libertarianism begs the question against their intellectual opponents. One of the effects of having to publish articles refereed by left-wing philosophers is that they don’t let you get away with shitty arguments for libertarianism. In contrast, when you just write for a libertarian audience, they reward you for producing shitty arguments for libertarianism.” -Jason Brennan somuchthis
On self-ownership:
Franklin Harris:
“Libertarianism is simply self-ownership…” That’s just another way of saying libertarianism is incoherent. Ownership is a relationship between two or more things. You can’t own yourself because that’s not a relationship. Libertarian shorthand clouds more than it reveals.
You hear this dumb claim made all the time. As I wrote there:
When you hear people sniff at the NAP, you should hold onto your wallet–they are coming after it.
“Is there a need to reform taxes? Most certainly. Always and everywhere. You can always make a strong case against all forms of taxation and all tax codes and all mechanisms by which a privileged elite attempts to extract wealth from the population. And this is always the first step in any tax reform: get the public seething about the tax code, and do it by way of preparation for step two, which is the proposed replacement system.”Of course, this is the stage at which you need to hold onto your wallet.” —Lew Lew Rockwell
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” —Ayn Rand, “Francisco’s Money Speech“
The long thread [pasted below] contains interesting arguments about the non-aggression principle, Rothbard, and so on.
One important question would be: What is more beneficial to the advance of the cause of freedom? Incrowd populist rethoric or peer-reviewed philosophy papers?
The NAP (or some version of it) may be burdened with many logical problems, but it inspires many.
For the record, the only person who ever used the NAP in a semi-academic sense (Rothbard), actually argued for it. He didn’t blindly assume it. Wether or not those arguments are good, is a different matter.
Rothbard was a genius when it came to studying social movements. A lot of his tactics were adaptations of Marx and other productive revolutionaries. If you can convince someone that an action is morally wrong, then all evidence to the contrary does not matter. It surely worked with Marx, but we cannot stop at the moral argument.
Why is the moral argument not itself sufficient justification? I am all for showing that a free society is the best possible way for society to be organized in a consequentialist sense but even if Marxism was a better system I would still defend a free society on moral grounds.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”
The non aggression principle is an ethical statement. Without any epistemology or metaphysics for it to be built on. It’s jumping into philosophy in the middle. Of course, Rothbard wanted it that way to attract a larger number of people. But, it makes for a shaky platform.
edit: Sorry, not an ethical statement, but a political statement. Missing epistemology, metaphysics AND ethics for it to stand on.
“I think coercion is bad and that we should generally hold that coercing competent decision makers requires a pretty good rationale. and what makes something a “pretty good rationale” is an effective argument that it would make the world a more peaceful, prosperous place etc.. IOW, I think one power of the NAP is to put the burden of proof on the coercer.”
Joe Paul, pretty much all accepted opinions in society have links with academia. Indirectly, but there is relevance. What is true is that most ideas do not filter through. That is true.
Seems like I’m “suddenly” seeing a lot of hate for the NAP. (I have also widened my circle of anarcho-libertarianistas just recently.) Anyone care to bring me up to speed on why the NAP is a bad thing?
It’s not that NAP is a bad thing. It’s just that it’s the end of the argument, and most libertarians want to treat it as the beginning, middle, and end.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation” – Herbert Spencer
It’s important to distinguish between treating the NAP as a first principle without bothering to defend it, and grounding the NAP in something more fundamental and then building from there.
If you treat the NAP as the beginning (and this is the only sense in which I think that’s valid), it only works as a kind of fuzzy intuition, a presumption that violence is bad. You still have to show your work and not just scream NAP at people.
In full disclosure, I am all for the NAP. My issue is that you have to move past that if you are going to do more in an argument than say, ” I am right, and you are immoral.” and vice versa.
“But if you stop your thinking there and don’t allow for anything else, you can get to ridiculous extremes like driving on govt roads is an act of aggression.” This explains it, I suppose. I am cursed with a capacity and a desire to see a much larger picture than only the details, and to see issues and concepts contextually. I find it necessary to grasp the physical composition of the metaphorical links, but without the context of most or all of the chain, where and if the ends are connected, what is being bound to what else (or being bound alone in itself) the links are almost pointless. Without the links, the chain is useless. Without the chain, the link is useless. For me, the NAP has always been a link in a powerful and profoundly ethical way of living, but I am aware that there are people who magnify the gnats and dismiss the camels….
Not that I give a shit about any of this, but libertarianism isn’t a religion. Maybe that makes me a thin libertarian, but I don’t give a shit because I already have a religion. And, it isn’t the NAP, either…
Cathy, those whole quote is an ad hom.”shitty argument” is not an argument.
So the real question is how does the principle of the NAP not maximize the personal freedom of others when practiced? How does it not offer the best barometer of personal rights violations?
Yes, academic philosophers must have some sort of value. Honestly, if libertarians want to change the world, be in the hard sciences. Send your kid to a stem college. Peer reviewed humanities papers have the same value as a shit soaked plunger.
It depends on what people view as “violence” or “coercion”. Morals are just your preferences. There is nothing objective about each person deciding for themselves when their preferences are being violated, because preferences differ from person to person.
I find it ironic that hardcore individualist libertarians focus on one central moral code. Showing people that their desired ends are best achieved through the means of the free market is a better method than trying to proselyte in the religious-fanatic way of stroking yourself off to the NAP.
Michael: That’s just it though. There are no morally justifiable reasons to initiate violence, because there is no objective way to morally justify anything. Whether you like or not, really everything comes down to preferences. If somebody prefers violence, really and truly there is no reason why its less valid than not wanting to commit violence.
So, in my experience, people who rail against the NAP as an improper “grounding” of libertarianism never have one of their own. And this is a strawman in part b/c it’s not a “grounding” for most, it’s just a shorthand summary for our view of property rights. There are different “groundings” for our particular view of property rights–though most libertarians it seems to me are just intuitionists and have no grounding, so it’s a bit rich that they criticize NAPers for having the temerity to have a grounding. Third, this kind of argument is a distraction. The point is not whether the NAP is a “grounding” or not for libertarianism–but whether you think aggression is or is not justified. Those who think it is not, are consistent libertarians and have no claim to complain about other libertarians advocating the NAP as an inviolable principle. Those who think aggression is sometimes justified–well, it is these ideas that we libertarians oppose, and thus the complaint about the insufficiency of the NAP just serves to camouflage the hidden advocacy of aggression.
“One of the effects of having to publish articles refereed by left-wing philosophers is that they don’t let you get away with shitty arguments for libertarianism.”
Yeah, because they’re so good at acknowledging the good arguments.
They don’t know the difference because they start from different assumptions.
Logical constructions can be valid.
Logical constructions can be persuasive.
Neither one infers the other.
“Grounding” your political ideology in presumptions other people find easy to accept does not make them rigorous or true.
So, what I want to know is… Who is this stuffed shirt from the original post and why do I care if he thinks the Non-Aggression Principle is subjective?
If you have a formal education, you spent too much time in classrooms and not enough in the real world to see how your theorized subjectivity of principle actually reacts in real life situations.
But when you remove the NAP from libertarianism; what is left but “free markets!” and “limited government!”? I think the NAP properly understood can be quite liberating, but it can also be misused.
To use nap means to define aggression. In my reading of these neolibertarian posts, it is an empty signifier for what they already believe, not a philosophical foundation.
I’m going “No true Scotsmen” for a second. The defining characteristic of a “free market” is that all transactions are made of free will. Or in other words, without aggression. So if you don’t abide the NAP, you’re not a libertarian…
Ayn’s flaw in reasoning was equating eveything to money. With better booking and proper accounting for generated value mothers would have far greater value than they do.
“Is there a need to reform taxes? Most certainly. Always and everywhere. You can always make a strong case against all forms of taxation and all tax codes and all mechanisms by which a privileged elite attempts to extract wealth from the population. And this is always the first step in any tax reform: get the public seething about the tax code, and do it by way of preparation for step two, which is the proposed replacement system.”Of course, this is the stage at which you need to hold onto your wallet.” —Lew Lew Rockwell
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” —Ayn Rand, “Francisco’s Money Speech“
I’m not a big fan of the NAP as a starting point Stephan Kinsella, but I _do_ have an alternative for founding my principles. I base my understanding of libertarian thought on consistency. If someone murders someone, they have authorized anyone else to kill them. If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own. Initiation of actions creates a rule of consistency and reverse applicability. By using the principle of consistency, people can readily see that it is much better to have property rights through homesteading and not initiating force is certainly more desirable.
“Libertarianism is simply self-ownership…” That’s just another way of saying libertarianism is incoherent. Ownership is a relationship between two or more things. You can’t own yourself because that’s not a relationship. Libertarian shorthand clouds more than it reveals.
Robert Kruger: “I’m not a big fan of the NAP as a starting point Stephan Kinsella”
Um, me neither. This is a straw man, it seems to me. Most people who say it’s their “starting point” are about the same as those who deny it, who also have no foundation–they just have assumptions.
“, but I _do_ have an alternative for founding my principles. I base my understanding of libertarian thought on consistency. If someone murders someone, they have authorized anyone else to kill them.”
That is my argument too — see my estoppel/punishment/rights stuff in a few articles listed here. http://mises.org/daily/5322/ But consitency is not a foundation. You have to have some base values, or grundnorms, on which you base consistency as a value too. You can’t just assume it.
” If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own. Initiation of actions creates a rule of consistency and reverse applicability. By using the principle of consistency, people can readily see that it is much better to have property rights through homesteading and not initiating force is certainly more desirable.”
Again, this is basically my own argument for rights, in my estoppel theory. And it is compatible with that of Rothbard’s protege, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his argumentation ethics.
NAP isn’t an argument FOR libertarianism, it IS libertarianism.
Why would it be a shitty argument? It’s a definition?
Shitty arguments come when you use NAP to justify your actions or a policy. NAP doesn’t prove libertarianism is good or bad, it just is. Proving that it is ideal is a whole other argument.
“If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own.”
That’s just ridiculous. If, for example, I steal to feed my starving family, I am only saying, at most, that one may steal to feed a starving family. Context matters. (No, I’m not defending stealing, just opposing bad arguments.)
Murphy’s response was a repeat of an earlier one, which I responded to (http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312) , and which his reprint did not take account of, nor did it take account of Van Dun’s evisceration of it published in LIbertarian Papers — http://libertarianpapers.org/…/19-van-dun…/ — moreover it was co-authored with Gene Callahan, a waystation libertarian who was at the time pretending to be AUstrian and libertarian and now is some kind of neocon. But I would not expect knee-jerk opponents of a solid defense of the NAP to have read the literature. They like to shoot from the hip.
ANTI-STATE.COM
Anti-State.com : Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan , by Stephan Kinsella
Though I would consider NAP a default ethic that is prima facie true. The burden is not for me to prove I own myself but for you to prove why you have a right to partial or co-ownership of my body. There is a long history of arguments attempting to prove that people are co-owners over eachother and libertarians academically argue for why this shouldnt be.
Stephan Kinsella: almost every libertarian I know in philosophy who rejects the NAP has a story about the foundations of libertarianism. Who do you have in mind?
Kevin Vallier: “Stephan Kinsella: almost every libertarian I know in philosophy who rejects the NAP has a story about the foundations of libertarianism. Who do you have in mind?”
Oh, really? A “story”? So what? What is their main defense? So far as I can tell they pretty much always are intuitionist, positivistic, empiricist, and/or just build on some unstated moral premises–i.e. are hypothetical, without acknowledging it.
“What is your defense of rights?” is a question that assumes the answer. I’m a libertarian because of the preponderance of the evidence. It makes people happy, gives them autonomy, preserves moral agency, in general people are the best judge of what is good for themselves, etc. I don’t have an incontestable A to B to Z argument because those are a fantasy, and if any of them wasn’t there would probably be a lot more libertarians.
“”What is your defense of rights?” is a question that assumes the answer. I’m a libertarian because of the preponderance of the evidence. It makes people happy, gives them autonomy, preserves moral agency, in general people are the best judge of what is good for themselves.”
sounds like you do not even understand the question. YOu are presupposing some basic norms–that it’s good for people to be happy, etc. So you have a consequentialist, or hypothetical, case. Fine. But your foundations seem to be nonexistent–you just “happen to favor” these grundnoms. That is fine, but it’s a bit rich to attack Hoppe’s argumentation ethics–how dare he have an objective basis for the same things I believe in! We must all believe it for arbitrary reasons!
” I don’t have an incontestable A to B to Z argument because those are a fantasy, and if any of them wasn’t there would probably be a lot more libertarians.”
What a non-answer. If you don’t know why you are libertarian why do you weigh in and attack those who explicate this?
So basically you are saying Hoppe is as arbitrary and clueless as you, and he should just admit it instead of pretending he has an objective basis for rights. In other words, people who have no coherent basis for their political norms are floundering and are offended by people who think they do.
So Franklin, even though you say you oppose aggression (I guess), and think it’s “wrong” (for some reason) (I guess), you think it’s perfectly compatible to argue for aggression with someone that you are having a civilized discussion with? These things are perfectly compatible? No inconsistency, no contradiction, at all?
No contradiction at all. Exactly. Claiming an argument is universalizable means it applies to all people; it doesn’t mean it applies to all contexts. Most people get that you don’t bash people over the head in the middle of a discussion. It doesn’t follow (from argumentation) that head-bashing is illegitimate in other contexts.
” Guys, the point isn’t that the NAP is false. I agree that it’s true. The point is that you can’t use it in an argument with a smart leftist, because the leftist disagrees with you about who owns what and thus what counts as aggression.”
You can’t use it in an argument with a rapist or criminal either. So what? Libertarianism is normative. It is prescriptive. It does not pretend that rights are impossible to violate. We do not make the mistake of equating “persuasiveness” with correctness. Or at least, those of us not mired in activism as a way of being don’t make this mistake.
I would just like to know whether people who mock HOppe’s AE actually espouse libertarian norms yet think it’s perfectly consistent to argue for its opposite in a civilized discourse. I have yet to get a good explanation of this. It’s like libertarians bending over backwards to pretend that their statist-criminal opponents are all on an equal playing field–some kind of bizarre, self-hobbling egalitarianism or skepticism.
Hayek and Rand lived before the internet age. While the base of what you say is true Jason, there is no longer a need to have a piece of paper to be a philosopher.
The problem of course with this quote is: no “amateur philosopher” but some random dudes on facebook claims that libertarianism is grounded in the NAP (or maybe I missed some, but it is up to Jason Brennan to make his case and show us some). The NAP is a conclusion, not a starting point. Yes, even for Rothbard or Hoppe. One can argue about how right or wrong someone’s justification of it is, but that is another thing. Not the same thing as having none. Jason Brennan is doing the same thing here than with his fictitious “Austrian dude”. He targets the worst possible defense of the NAP and strawman some authors as representative of that defense while suggesting he is a role model of academic standards in the process. This is… Well, this is annoying to put it nicely
Though I’m sure I’ll get a TLDR comment, here’s argumentation ethics in 3 minutes.
Libertarian ethics are based off the self-evident truth that you own yourself, that any attack upon your body is unjust, and that any society that considers itself ethical cannot be based in direct opposition to your rights. Self-ownership is presupposed in any argument, for an argument to occur both individuals have to accept that each other has the ability to think rationally and be able to change their position, that each other is the exclusive owner of their body, and in doing so, one cannot rationally argue that you do not own yourself. In conjunction with this, it is impossible for a rational argument to be made to justify unsolicited force upon you, for the attackers verbal argument would contradict the idea they needed to use force, for their argument has demonstrated that you are capable of rational, voluntary communication, that you’re capable of changing your mind through conversation, that you are the exclusive owner of your own body, and therefore their force was unnecessary and was an intrusion upon your self-ownership. This non-aggression principle is a direct result of self-ownership. Just as self-ownership is a result of being alive, so are property rights, as they are a necessary pre-condition to being alive, for in order to live one must eat, drink, and take up space. If an individual is arguing, he has demonstrated that he necessarily had to have used scarce resources in order to be alive, and there for any argument against property rights is inherently contradicted by the very act of living. This does not mean that anyone is entitled or owed property, but that human beings have the right to attempt to own property through just means which is through original appropriation or a voluntary transaction that results in the exchange of property, which is necessarily win-win for both people value what they are getting more than they are giving. As a result of the self-evident truths of self-ownership and property rights, In order to have a just society, individuals transactions must be done with a respect for the principles presented within libertarian ethics – i.e., a respect for self-ownership and property rights- and therefor a society based on taxation is inherently unjust, for taxation is the involuntary theft of property under the threat of force, which is a rejection of self-ownership and property rights. The only just society is one that respects self-ownership and property rights; therefor the only just society is a stateless society.
Brennan and Zwolinski need to watch the entire video that Matt apparently stopped watching within the first 5 minutes. Molyneux expands on the issue of pollution later in the video. I don’t think his initial “refutation” was sufficient in the beginning of the video but his argument towards the end is.
The part where Molyneux describes the YAD Principle is essential. Don’t be the D in the YAD.
Snickers at the term *academic libertarian* in the OP. I imagine them very much like academic liberals, with theories and a great grip on semantics – little of it which applies to real life solutions.
Using the NAP is begging the question only if you can’t demonstrate where your rights come from. The NAP is not an axiom, but the political and philosophical extension of the concept of individual rights. If *academic libertarians* don’t ground their libertarianism in it, I prefer they stay in acadmia and out of our way.
In reference to the original post, I don’t know if it really matters so much if the NAP is the basis for someone being a libertarian. What might be more important is the strength of one’s foundation and the depth of one’s knowledge regarding libertarianism. Without this foundation, some might very well support the NAP, but then change their views without much thought. “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.” – Bastiat
Here’s my list of libertarian and classical liberal philosophers/p-theorists, with my super quick summary of their foundations ethical/political approach:
1. Roderick Long: eudaimonism.
2. Dougs Den Uyl and Rasmussen: eudaimonism.
3. Mack: natural rights (not a mere self-ownership view).
4. Huemer: Rossian intuitionism.
5. Schmidtz: moral particularism, sorta-kinda intuitionism.
6. Narveson: Hobbesian contractarianism.
7. Gaus: Kantian contractualism.
8. Lomasky: a hard to specify hybrid.
9. Levy: broadly welfarist.
10. Jason Brennan: Rossian pluralist? I think MZ is too.
11. A bunch of misc. neo-Objectivists: Randian eudaimonism.
12. Gordon: I could never get clear on David’s view. It’s some kind of idealist intuitionism.
So, we’re supposed to ignore academic philosophical standards and talk about NAP because academic philosophy is just elites talking to themselves. But we’re not supposed to talk about libertarianism in terms of values people actually hold and understand, like utility or happiness or self fulfillment or moral agency, because those things aren’t as rigorous as the abstract NAP. Got it.
I just finished reading The Ethics of Liberty again, as I’m teaching an independent study, and it is really poor quality stuff. If anything, someone should have told Rothbard that you don’t write a book with gigantic block quote after gigantic block quote without adequate exposition. The book is not only philosophically weak, it’s rather poorly assembled. But for those who like the arguments: both trilemmas establishing self-ownership and acquisition rules are false trilemma. There is a mile between natural law and natural rights that Rothbard simply missed. And this is a man willing to bite ridiculous cannon-ball sized bullets, especially in the children and rights chapter. I would fail it as a dissertation as well.
So Mr. Brennan is the liberty-philosopher hero of the day. JB agrees ZAP/NAP is true. JB agrees that “smart” leftists don’t agree with the concept of self ownership/property rights. Who do these leftists think own or should own their own bodies? What is the best way to help them understand what you want them to understand?
Jason Brennan: “Hardly anyone believes things on the basis of good arguments or good evidence.”
So … you say you think the NAP is true–apparently most of your fellow libertarians just happen to have stumbled into what you consider the right view by dumb luck or random chance?
Jason Brennan & Kevin Vallier, could you agree (I am sorry if you have already answered this) that the NAP (and the usual content) is a good and easy summary/soundbite to summarize the conclusions of what libertarians belief?
(But that the actul arguments put forth by Rothbard and Hoppe are bad?)
“Guys, the point isn’t that the NAP is false. I agree that it’s true. The point is that you can’t use it in an argument with a smart leftist, because the leftist disagrees with you about who owns what and thus what counts as aggression.”
Libertarians have long recognized that the NAP is based on a more fundamental theory of property. It’s just shorthand to refer to our particular property allocation rules. Lots of libertarians recognize that the real disagreement with the leftist is over how property rights are to be assigned to particular claimants.
Lode Cossaer: it’d take awhile to explain. But here’s a quick thought. In some cases the NAP-generalization is workable and appropriate, especially when it comes to rights of bodily integrity. And when property rights are plainly justified, then again the NAP seems to get our intuitions right (burglars). Where it starts to become less helpful is when you have genuine moral disputes between parties (does NAP help resolve the justice of abortion?) or when the bounds of what is aggressed against has a heavily conventional element (does the NAP help settle the justice of intellectual property? Nope, and not even Kinsella would say so, I assume). So as Stephan has just said, the underlying theory of property is what really matters. And I think it starts to matter most when what counts as aggression becomes unclear.
I agree –many people don’t recognize this, that a theory of property is more fundamental and prior to aggression; aggression is a dependent concept on property rights. Hoppe does and I think Rothbard did–he said all rights are property rights.
And I am not sure who called you a statist but it was not me, to be clear. (and I’ve published books with Oxford as well, so maybe their vetting is not perfect….
I think that would probably go for most philosophies/ideologies when arguing them to people of who do not subscribe. X person will think harder about refuting Y person’s claims than another Y person. It’s called confirmation bias. People also use the term ‘echo-chamber’.
I agree with Stephan Kinsella in this thread. The NAP is simply a way to summarize property rights, even Rothbard confirmed this… besides, like math, it truly is deductive reasoning. Is 2 + 2 = 5 just because others say they can’t test it? No, it still = 4 and that won’t change. In fact, I think it’s a good thing that NAP is so static/unchangeable. Unlike utilitarian/consequentialist arguments which can be replaced by other statist consequentialist arguments…. (ie. the state uses fake statistics all the time to “show how statism is better” even though they are all twisted with lies and nonfacts… ie, Al Gore’s hockey curve), with NAP there is no way to debunk that we are individuals.
Let’s see Al Gore debunk NAP… the best he could do is say that the NAP isn’t objective, but he couldn’t debunk it per se…. the argument always goes, “well we don’t have good enough evidence to support NAP 100%, so that means it’s worthless.” I think this is the true fallacy, the slippery slope fallacy. I have found that people can argue against statistical data all day long (right or wrong doesn’t matter…), but to prove that we aren’t individuals (that we are the borg in a social contract) is much harder to do. I believe both arguments are complimentary, and not in competition… NAP and consequentialism.
It says something that no one is providing any hard philosophical defense, instead providing quips. I’d say the NAP/ZAP/whatever people are calling it this week is crap philosophy and I challenge anyone to provide a rigorous philosophical justification for it. If it’s so perfect, defend it.
The NAP is also pretty old, discovered by Epicurus I believe, and was also part of the Islamic belief system. What I hate about the NAP is that those who espouse it tend to act like they always have the moral high ground in every argument, and are very loose with accusing people of violating it. The truth is that just because you follow the NAP doesn’t mean you automatically have the moral high ground. I do not give up the moral high ground every time someone use that special, magical acronym in their defense. Life is just not that simple.
I also think it is very weak when it comes to preventing violence; instead of preventing it I have argued that it has caused it. People used the NAP to justify intellectually the cop shootings by Jared and Amanda Miller, and even the Zimmerman shooting. People have twisted the NAP to mean that it is ok to use excessive violence, up to an including deadly force, as a response to even the threat of “aggression”, a nebulous term which can be loosely interpreted to mean anything someone doesn’t like (it doesn’t have to mean explicit violence). So it’s not even a non-violent philosophy, in fact it is a potentially very violent ideology that justifies pre-emptive attacks, such as the cop shootings and the Iraq war.
I recommend libertarians drop the NAP altogether, except perhaps as something to teach children on the playground so that they are not bullied by the big kids. Other than that, I’d prefer adults to use their brains and to not let a “philosophy” do the thinking for them (especially when it comes to physical violence), and would also would prefer a much more robust “non-violence principle” to the very weak and easily refuted non-aggression principle.
I like Mises utilitarian perspective; that value is ordinal, not measurable between people (therefore economic models based on money aren’t utilitarian and can’t measure the utility of a pauper), and that the only way to maximize utility (and this is what Rothbard does/ completes) is to have rights which he takes from the natural rights tradition. The right to self-ownership and property as an extension of self is built up around this idea of utility. Utility being the ability to exchange one set of circumstances for another without the initiation of violence by a third party.
That being said, I’d love to read Jason Brennan on Anarcho-Capitalism.
It’s hard to quickly state what Mises thinks on Utility but to my admittedly untrained mind Rothbard seems brilliant in synthesizing Molinari and Mises together. Mises view on utility, though, I think is the most important idea out there. NAP is touted as “axiomatic” but it makes sense looking forward and backward onto the justification for NAP. It is also utilitarian (not simply axiomatic) in the sense that, looking forward onto decisions, asymmetric info and all, any action a person takes has more utility than any action a person takes under threat of violence or while being coerced.
There is the issue of regret but unless we’re talking about parents, non-initiation of force should be the exception to a rule, not the rule.
Phil Cleisthenes Marrone: ” Non aggression principle is walmart-quality philosophy. Below first order logic.”
again, when people reject the NAP, what I hear is “I am in favor of aggression in some circumstances,” and I thus hold onto my wallet and keep a closer, wary eye on the utterer.
I am reminded of the anarcho-capitalist Hoppe’s response to minarchist (?) Loren Lomasky’s critical review of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics:
“Loren Lomasky was intimidated and angered by my book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. For one, because the book is more ambitious than its title indicates. “It is,” he laments, “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” So be it. But so what? As explained in my book but conveniently left unmentioned by Lomasky, untrammeled anarchism is nothing but the name for a social order of untrammeled private property rights, i.e., of the absolute right of selfownership and the absolute right to homestead unowned resources, of employing them for whatever purpose one sees fit so long as this does not affect the physical integrity of others’ likewise appropriated resources, and of entering into any contractual agreement with other property owners that is deemed mutually beneficial. What is so horrifying about this idea? Empirically speaking, this property theory constitutes the hard core of most people’s intuitive sense of justice and so can hardly be called revolutionary. Only someone advocating the trammeling of private property rights would take offense, as does Lomasky, with my attempt to justify a pure private-property economy.”
(in the Appendix to Economics and Ethics of Private Property)
Rothbard also notes this in http://www.lewrockwell.com/…/murray-n…/hoppephobia/ “Lomasky’s second charge against Hoppe is lack of scholarship, for which not spending time on Nozick is a typical – and irrelevant – charge. But what of Lomasky’s own scholarship, as evidenced by his review? First, he is shocked and stunned that Hoppe is not simply a defender of existing capitalism; his book is “no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism.” Well, heavens to Betsy! Anarchism! One wonders where Lomasky has been for the last 20 years! Perhaps the knowledge has not yet penetrated to the fastnesses of Minnesota, but anarchism has been a vibrant part of the libertarian dialogue for a long time, as most readers of Liberty well know.”
One can reject the NAP even if one agrees with what the NAP prescribes… or reject it because one believes some coercion is desirable in some circumstances.
I believe Jason agrees with the conclusion of the NAP, just not it’s internal logic. He espouses different reasons to believe in anarcho-capitalism.
Some other libertarians believe some aggression is necessary sometimes, and they are no less libertarians for it. Minarchists have some sound arguments to believe a society with a minimal state would suffer less aggression than an anarchistic one.
As long as we agree “property rights” (or any kind of ‘right’, for that matter) can’t be demonstrated, only agreed upon, I think we’re on the same page.
MIchel, either you oppose aggression on principle (for whatever reason), or you do not. If you do, you adhere to the NAP whether you are willing to use the term or not. If you do not, then you are not a libertarian, to that extent. It’s pretty simple.
You can oppose aggression on consequentialist grounds. You can even defend a strict adherence to rights (including property rights) for consequentialist reasons.
But that is not a natural rights theory, and it’s certainly not a logical conclusion, but a conclusion derived from non-provable premises.
You are right to note that the NAP is (or may be) the logical conclusion from certain property rights (which are NOT traditional in any way). But not everybody agrees on the extent, structure or nature of those rights, and they are as arbitrary and cultural as any other right out there.
Stephen I’m actually against aggression too. Like pollution from factories, for example. The problem with NAP is it fails to provide a basic principle. A labor organizer might consider wages below a decent living standard to be aggression of some sort, and an anarcho-capitalist might disagree. Time to go back to rational libertarianism, and not crap philosophy that appeals to the lowest common denomenator.
Michel Ibarra” “You can oppose aggression on consequentialist grounds. You can even defend a strict adherence to rights (including property rights) for consequentialist reasons.”
Yes. And that means you favor the NAP. So it is weird to oppose the NAP, just b/c you are consequentialist.
“But that is not a natural rights theory, and it’s certainly not a logical conclusion, but a conclusion derived from non-provable premises.”
Yes. you are stating the obvious.
“You are right to note that the NAP is (or may be) the logical conclusion from certain property rights (which are NOT traditional in any way). But not everybody agrees on the extent, structure or nature of those rights, and they are as arbitrary and cultural as any other right out there.”
Another obvious point.
“And spare me the ‘libertarian-ometer’. We stole the term from people who did not believe in private property in the first place.”
Distraciton. this has nothing to do with whether aggression is justified or not.
“Phil Cleisthenes Marrone Stephen I’m actually against aggression too. Like pollution from factories, for example. The problem with NAP is it fails to provide a basic principle.”
So does your saying “I’m against aggression” So what? This is a weird criticism.
“A labor organizer might consider wages below a decent living standard to be aggression of some sort, and an anarcho-capitalist might disagree.”
yes, and one is right and one is wrong. This poses no problem for people who are not relativists and moral skeptics.
“Time to go back to rational libertarianism, and not crap philosophy that appeals to the lowest common denomenator.”
I see nothing here that shows that the NAP is wrong.
We have a very different understandings of what the NAP implies. For me, it was a natural rights principle. But homesteading, self-ownership or any other proposition of property rights is not ‘natural’, nor indisputable.
You treat the NAP is subservient to a property rights proposition, but most people use it (incorrectly) as the reasoning behind property rights.
As for this point of yours…
“Distraciton. this has nothing to do with whether aggression is justified or not.”
True, but it was a reply to this line of yours: “If you do not (oppose to aggression on princible), then you are not a libertarian, to that extent”.
NAP does not imply natural rights. You seem to be confused, Michel. In such a case it may be better to be humble and ask questions rather than pontificate as if you have it figured out. Just an idea.
Stephan, I suggest you re-read Parts I & II of The Ethics of Liberty:
“There is, however, another and contrasting type of interpersonal relation: the use of aggressive violence by one man against another. What such aggressive violence means is that one man invades the property of another without the victim’s consent. The invasion may be against a man’s property in his person (as in the case of bodily assault), or against his property in tangible goods (as in robbery or trespass).
In either case, the aggressor imposes his will over the NATURAL property of another—he deprives the other man of his freedom of action and of the full exercise of his NATURAL self-ownership.
“Marx was a better economist than Krugman. Marx made a major advance in our understanding of class struggle. Krugman contributed a nice book on the comparative advantage (Smith, Ricardo?) that is only read by non-economists like Brennan. Marx the economist beats Krugman the economist.
Later in life, Marx and Krugman both become activists. Marx beats Krugman there, too, because Marx has more influence. The only thing here is that Marx plays for the wrong team.”
Michel, the fact that Rothbard observed that there is a consonance between the NAP and the “natural” situation of self-control and usage of resources does not mean that the NAP “implies” natural rights–or that if you reject natural rights you must reject the NAP. There are many consequentialists who adopt the NAP.
Adapting classical comparative advantages theory to modern-day economies of scale is not ‘minor’.
On the other hand, in his one big contribution to the field, Krugman is basically a libertarian. He adheres to free trade and rejects strategic trade on Public Choice grounds.
On his one, big, Nobel-prize-winning contribution, Krugman is not a statist.
I didn’t say it was the most important thing. I said HIS most important contribution (which dates back to 1979) is a free-market-oriented one. That contribution, economics-wise, doesn’t put him on ‘the other team’. He is, though, but that’s a whole different issue.
No, Keynes didn’t deserve the Nobel prize. And I never said nor implied Krugman was a libertarian, but rather that his major academic contribution is a free-market one… which it is. And its importance does not rest on the Nobel he won.
We have been debating NAP. Even those of us who see through the fog of NAP don’t believe it’s wrong. We think it isn’t of any substance. It isn’t anything. “Don’t be bad” would be a better principle. Maybe that’s why it’s called NAP, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Dante, the single most important issue in the Third World is free trade. It’s what lifted millions our of poverty. It’s what created the modern Southeast Asia. It’s the number one enemy of protectionist populists (the “evil foreign capital”). In Argentina, where I live, protectionism is arguably the most important issue after inflation.
To have an influential pundit listened by the left talking about free trade it’s a pretty big deal, even if he’s wrong on pretty much everything else.
So… I think “importance” is subjective and a matter of debate. And while I don’t agree with Jason on everything, I think it’s wrong to try to demonize him just because he insulted Saint Rothbard.
Jason, who would you say are the most influential libertarian thinkers that people who are interested in libertarianism should study? Would you include Mises and Hayek?
By what standards should we judge how much influence a libertarian thinker/writer has? The amount of times this person has been published in an academic journal (perhaps this depends on which journal)? Book sales? How much influence this person has had on legislation? On other libertarian writers?
I can’t I’m an authority on Rothbard’s work as I have not yet read any of his books (only various articles), but it seems that he has influenced many other libertarians such as Tom Woods, Wendy Mcelroy, Walter Block, and David Gordon. I’m sure there have been many others too. Would this count as influence within academic circles as well?
It’s both sad and hilarious that this quote, that’s nothing more than a full paragraph of bitching, really, gets taken so seriously, despite being devoid of any argument whatsoever.
Isn’t that a bit unfair to Rothbard? ASU was written for philosophy professors. For better or for worse, Ethics of Liberty was written for libertarians. The fact that Rothbard doesn’t have a comparable section to part II in ASU doesn’t seem to be sufficient to justify your critiques of him. Making bad arguments seems like a better reason to condemn someone as a bad philosopher than not making certain arguments.
Ethics of Liberty is bad pop philosophy, and ASU wasn’t just written for philosophy professors. I’ve read both books in the last three weeks for an independent study and with a few exceptions, ASU is dramatically more fun and way less crazy and bullet-bitey. But Rothbard’s arguments aren’t as complicated, which I think makes it seem like an easier work, though bad arguments paper over subtleties. That said, those first two chapters of gigantic block quotes are pretty slow going.
“Rothbard and a few others liked to push this myth that the academy is so biased that libertarians can’t cut it. They’re right that it’s biased. But libertarians can and do cut it, and flourish.”
You see this a lot in regards to Mises. Mises wasn’t a martyr. Mises was a distinguished member of the AEA, an employee of the NBER, offered positions at top universities (that he turned down because he wanted to stay in New York), won the top awards in Austria, and was approached by to produce unified monetary rules for the League of Nations. Oh, and Paul Samuelson himself thought that he’d get the Nobel if they’d have offered it when he was alive.
If you’re looking for evidence that there is bias, it isn’t that hard to find. Hayek paid a fairly large price for his stances (Go look up David Levy’s work). Also look up David Levy’s work on the Thomas Jefferson Center and how Buchanan, Tullock, Coase, and Nutter were treated.
You don’t get to be employed by the NBER, get the offers he got, get the awards he got, or get to be a distinguished member of the AEA by struggling.
As I said in my follow up post, Hayek did indeed suffer the bigger toll for his work.
Yes indeed Rothbard published in the AER. One of those publications was fairly important where he pointed out that the work of modern economics falls squarely within praxeology.
Here is something Ludwig Von Mises said: ” In every chapter of his treatise, Dr. Rothbard, adopting the best of the teachings of his predecessors, and adding to them highly important observations, not only develops the correct theory but is no less anxious to refute all objections ever raised against these doctrines. He exposes the fallacies and contradictions of the popular interpretation of economic affairs. . . .
Now such a book as Man, Economy, and State offers to every intelligent man an opportunity to obtain reliable information concerning the great controversies and conflicts of our age. It is certainly not easy reading and asks for the utmost exertion of one’s attention. But there are no shortcuts to wisdom.” http://tomwoods.com/blog/rothbard-was-a-hack/
And Robert Higgs said this: “Murray Rothbard’s scholarship spanned an enormous range, including philosophy, methodology, economic theory, the history of economic and political thought, economic history, economic policy, law, and contemporary politics. I was well along in my career as an economist specializing in the economic history of the United States when I began to read his work. Once started, I never stopped.”
We shouldn’t be playing a “who are you?” game. Zwolinski and Brennan are highly published, present in popular literature, have done pop videos, and have been interviewed in radio and in print about libertarianism and related subjects. So instead of say “who are you,” we should be asking, “why haven’t we been reading people who are young well respected emerging scholars?”
Jason, would you only consider those who are currently in academia and have been consistently published to be experts who are uniquely qualified to assess someone like Rothbard’s influence on libertarianism and the quality of his arguments? Would you also consider those I have mentioned (i.e. Robert Higgs, Walter Block, David Gordon, Tom Woods, Brian Doherty, and Wendy McElroy) to be laypeople as well who are not qualified to make these assessments? Part of the reason I ask this is because I am a layperson myself and I’d like to know your thoughts on whose work I should study.
Jason. Do you think that the reason because libertarianism is not mainstream has to do because some authors like Rothbard who you mentioned, had not been publishin “in/for the academy”?
if yes, how do you explain that hayek (who even had a nobel prize), and debunked keynes a lot of times, is not mainstream and keynes is…..
Kevin Vallier, thanks for mentioning Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s eudaimonism in your list. Norms of Liberty is good philosophy and my favorite treatment of the libertarian argument. Not enough libertarians read it.
Austrians like Hayek still get regularly cited by economists at the top of their games–like Easterly. Austrians like Pete Leeson have hit one of the top *five* journals in all of economics.
This paper won an award for being the best paper published by junior faculty in Public Choice that year–it builds on earlier work by Boettke and others. There’s a lot of Austrian Econ outside of Rothbard. You’ll get more out of it.
As a mere layperson I barely feel qualified to comment here. My first thought however, was of Ron Paul, who was neither a academic, nor a intellectual, nor a philosopher, and in fact his message wasn’t particularly philosophically sound, but he has done 1000x more than everyone in this thread combined to generate interest, promote the concepts, and even create anarchists.
He did it by speaking truth to and inspiring laypeople or anyone who would listen, not by writing papers for prestigious academic journals.
Popularizers of academic ideas are very important, I don’t think anyone denies that. It just shouldn’t be done under the guise of rigorous academic argument.
Jason Brennan – Rothbard is merely a celebritarian, not an academic!? Last I checked, Rothbard was an Economics professor for roughly 30 years, wrote 15+ books, published numerous articles, and greatly influenced many prominent libertarian thinkers and academics. Like him or not, to call him a mere celebritarian rather than an academic is absolutely ridiculous.
– a student or teacher at a college or university.
– a person who is academic in background, attitudes, methods, etc.: He was by temperament an academic, concerned with books and the arts.
Rothbard certainly fits both of those descriptions. Just because he may not have published his work in your preferred academic journals means little in the face of all the academic thought he created and put out into the world via numerous books.
This is why many libertarians don’t like “academia,” because of the institutionalized arrogance and the ivory tower mentality. As far as influencing society, book sales matter far more than little read academic articles.
I didn’t read all 300+ comments, so I was unaware of the accusation. My only intention was to point out that Rothbard was indeed an academic, albeit of a different variety than the norm. I wouldn’t accuse you of being a simple celebritarian, since you’re clearly doing a lot of work in academia.
Rothbard is one of the reasons I am a libertarian, and one of the reasons I’m trying to become a better academic, trying to futher the best arguments, trying to play in the big leagues. Rothbard did a lot of things (good and bad), but he wasn’t God almighty.
Rothbard is also relatively well respected *within* academic libertarian circles for the things he did. (Relative to his actual academic contributions.) To put it this way: even though he doesn’t have any major publications, he is relatively well respected for the things he did, even though they don’t count for tenure. This doesn’t mean those things should count for tenure, but it’s still somewhat of an achievement. The way people like Boettke and Horwitz talk about Rothbard is an achievement of Rothbard in and of itself. Kirzner also had high praise for Rothbard, even though they had their mutual criticisms.
Again: this is a feat, and congratz to Rothbard for that. But it doesn’t follow that he is a state of the art academic, respected by academic peers who don’t agree with him. That doesn’t follow.
Libertarianism deals with what the law should be. In this article, we focus on
what the appropriate law to punish criminals should be in a libertarian society; that is, one that respects the Non-Aggression Principle and property rights. We examine various theories of punishment and explain why some are
incompatible with libertarianism. We contribute to the latest libertarian theory of punishment suggesting the necessity to take time preference into
consideration. We conclude stating a limit and a limitation to libertarian
punishment theories.
In their “Nulla Libertarian Poena Sine NAP: Reexamination of Libertarian Theories of Punishment” Eduardo Blasco and David Marcos wrestle with a particularly thorny challenge to libertarianism: punishment theory. They take on such previous contributors to this literature as Murray N. Rothbard, Walter E. Block, Stephan Kinsella, Randy Barnett, David Friedman and HansHermann Hoppe. Their unique contribution is that they “take time preference into consideration” something never before done as far as I know. They offer a limit and a limitation to libertarian punishment theory
Pierre Rochard’s testimony regarding commingling of and fractional-reserve lending for bitcoin assets in Texas. “Today I testified in favor of Giovanni Capriglione and Tan Parker HB 1666 / SB 770 to protect Texans from fractional-reserve Bitcoin custodians”
With Sean Gabb, Chris Tame, et al. I’ve known Sean, a tireless advocate of liberty, since the first Property and Freedom Society meeting in 2006. It’s always refreshing to hear a non-libertarian perspective on libertarianism.
In this clip from “Voices of Liberty,” filmed by David Botsford in 1991, Chris R. Tame, founder and then Director of the Libertarian Alliance, and Sean Gabb, then Libertarian Alliance Webmaster, give a brief overview of libertarianism.
Years ago I came across a fascinating series of lectures by Andrew Galambos, called V76, which focused on the significance of Thomas Paine’s thought and his crucial role in the American Revolution (and Galambos’s contention that Paine was the actual author of the Declaration of Independence, not merely its intellectual inspiration). The files had been available at this link, but have since been taken down. I recently found them at another page on the Internet Archive, which describes it thusly:
This is an open source download of a 3 session course by Andrew Galambos, delivered live in 1966, entitled ‘The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine and Your Freedom.’
In my various arguments about intellectual property (IP) over the years (since I first started writing and speaking on this, in about 1995) I have gradually come up with new ways of explaining the issue, mostly in response to various criticisms and arguments I’ve seen raised on the pro-IP side. I don’t disagree with much of what I wrote in my 2001 Against Intellectual Property, though I was not hard enough on trademark and trade secret, and I probably would be more careful with the term “scarcity” since I have learned that its dual meanings are an unending source of equivocation by unscrupulous opponents (e.g. when they say “well good ideas are pretty scarce, in my opinion!”). I’ve learned a few supplementary arguments against IP or have learned different ways of making the case, that I would now include in the 2001 monograph, and which I may do someday if I write a new case against IP from scratch (a possibility; tentatively entitled Copy This Book). [continue reading…]
Apparently Facebook retroactively deleted it since it linked to c4sif.org which for some reason Fecebook now censors; I re-posted the link here. [↩]
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