DavidSSS said:
Gia, you need to take a step back: in what way is violence against a person justified in defence of private property? How do you measure this? Is it ok to kill someone if they steal something of yours? This is the problem, you deviate from the non-aggression principle in defence of private property. Defence of private property is a source of aggression.
I need to step back? I’m the one defending my position I have outlined and I have asked you to outline yours finally and I still only get criticism of my position. Perhaps you should take a step back and think what your position is and what justifies it. I’ll still answer your critique.
It is justified on these grounds:
Resources are scarce, and conflicts arise between human agents on the use of these resources. Human agents are capable of reason therefore instead of applying the “might is right” principle, how can they use argumentation to determine who is the just owner of these resources i.e. the property owner? A property right to one’s own body is justified a priori, for anyone who tried to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right of control over their body as a valid norm in order to say, “I propose such and such.” Anyone disputing such a right would become caught up in a practical contradiction since arguing so would already imply acceptance of the very norm which they were disputing. It would be equally impossible to sustain argumentation for any length of time and rely on the propositional force of one’s arguments if one were not allowed to appropriate in addition to one’s body other scarce means through homesteading action (by putting them to use before somebody else does), and if such means and the rights of exclusive control regarding them were not defined in objective physical terms. For if no one had the right to control anything at all except his own body, then we would all cease to exist and the problem of justifying norms simply would not exist. Thus, by virtue of the fact of being alive, property rights to other things must be presupposed to be valid. No one who is alive could argue otherwise. Now what good are rights if they are not enforceable? Therefore property rights are enforceable rights.
Violent defense must be confined to violent invasion — either actually, implicitly, or by direct and overt threat and the proof of burden falls on the victim. Someone who violates another’s property rights loses their own property rights to the extent that they have deprived the other of theirs. Going beyond this is in itself an invasion of the property rights of the original violator. Hence you can’t justify killing someone for say stealing your Matthew Richardson poster. If the person was found to be guilty of theft, resisted attempts for the poster to be returned and threatened to kill anyone that attempted to return the poster to the original owner, than their property right to their body would be forfeit.
The NAP doesn’t say that all violence is unjust, it says that the initiation of force is unjust. Using violence to defend one’s property from the initiation of force from another is not contradictory to the NAP.
DavidSSS said:
The object of violence and aggression is hardly going to care whether it is in defence of private property or socialist ideas. You are both so similar: my violence is ok as it is in defence of private property (substitute the workers' state and you get the Marxist version of the same sentence).
The Marxist contradicts themselves when they justify violence that violates someone’s property rights as I outlined earlier. One position is logically valid and the other isn’t, that’s a big difference.
DavidSSS said:
Basing the notion of freedom on private property is fundamentally flawed, you create unearned disparities in freedom at birth depending on the property holdings of your parents and where you are born also impacts upon your ability to add to your property. You create and perpetuate hierarchical power relations purely on the basis of property ownership. This is fundamental because free market theorists are blind to disparities in economic power. There are weak attempts to explain these away, such as the notion of consumer power you use, but it is crap. Do you seriously believe that entry to markets is equal, that those with economic power are unable to influence consumer decisions, to put other suppliers out of business? It would not surprise me if you do think this is the case as it is what I expect - it is a feature of far right ideology that it ignores that economic power is used to create and perpetuate relations of domination and subordination.
You are attempting to justify violence that violates someone’s property rights and in doing so contradict yourself.
I’ve never suggested that entry to markets is equal. All I have said is that who holds economic power is not static, and that in order to continue to hold economic power in a free market, one must continue to satisfy consumer demand better than their competitors.
DavidSSS said:
So, praxeology is just a methodology? Gee, where have I heard a statement like that before . . . hmm . . . oh that's right, very similar claims are made about "scientific socialism".
Praxeology does not seek to answer what ends people should desire, but what means they should employ to achieve their desired aims. It is a methodology for answering the latter question. An ideology on the other hand, such as libertarianism focuses on what ends people should desire.
DavidSSS said:
Freedom means not being subordinated in a hierarchical power structure. It means being free to do what you wish and to achieve all you can, it comes with responsibility for all and any decisions you make, and responsibility for the very freedom to make choices. It is incompatible with hierarchical power structures.
If people choose freely to organise into hierarchies, would you let them (i.e. would you use violence to stop them)? If not, on what basis do you justify stopping them. What do you do when an individual’s idea of achieving all they can conflicts with someone else’s idea of achieving all they can?
DavidSSS said:
Just as an aside, you claim I am a relativist? I posit that freedom is an absolute right not derived from some strange notion that people are pieces of property which own themselves. In contrast, it is your favourite theorist who says that there is no such thing as a perennial standard of what is just and unjust. So do you support non-aggression perennially or just sometimes?
You haven’t yet posited where this absolute right derives from. Can you please clear that up?
I don’t agree with Von Mises on everything, I think Rothbard, Hoppe and many others have advanced upon his work. As a libertarian I support the NAP at all times, what is important is to understand what the NAP is and what it is not which confuses a lot of people including people that claim to be libertarians.