Spladle, your link is bad (I guess because it is your own blog), but I can pull it off google's cache.

I'll look over it later, but just curious, what is your solution to your own objections, or how do you propose to have any system of law/dispute resolution?

This will be helpful too.

uh.. no ****?

ack, sorry, no, it's not my own blog, it's a link I've had bookmarked for awhile, didn't realize the site had gone down. My bad. =(

To which objections do you refer? I don't think systems of law/dispute resolution require a recognition of the existence of morality. I also don't think systems of morality require a recognition of the existence of God.

What will it be helpful for?

So, what does it require? I'll clarify some things on "ethics vs morality" later. Outline your legal system, the justification for punishing murderers, or whatever. I think that we can do better than surveying de facto systems.

Do you mean a system of law/dispute resolution? It requires entities with the ability and desire to enforce their preferences.

There needn't be a justification for punishing murders, or whatever.

Might makes right then?

You could say that, or you could say that there's no such thing as right. I'm pretty sure all other claims regarding the origins of "right" are absurd. I am open to being shown otherwise, though.

This is all well and good. But isn't your rule ("we should maximize utility") just as arbitrary as "we should respect natural property rights" or whatever other moral principle you can think of?

This is well said. But the fact that my Universal Litmus Test (respect property rights) is much easier to apply than your Universal Litmus Test (maximize utility) is one of the reasons that some people don't think very highly of utilitarianism.

yup

You could say there is no such thing as rights. Fine, so when you murder someone you won't bring up your right to not be killed yourself if you actually mean what you say.

While Hoppe's argumentation ethics is correct, it isn't a crime to blather nonsense. Where it is important is in a court, where disputes over property rights violations are to be settled.

Again, I'm a bit busy and have been meaning to write something on "origin of rights" or some such thing, but I will get to it ASAP. Skimming over the paper you linked (I'll try to find a better version), I see a whole bunch of authors and theories thrown about.

I don't find the term "natural rights" useful, personally. The various ways it has been used throughout history just lead to confusion. I have issues with parts of Rothbard's work, and quite often find disagreement with Tibor Machan as well.

I promise to elaborate when I can. I'm still not getting much from you though, and am curious what the point of denying any valid conception of "right" is? Some of your posts earlier seemed reasonable... are you denying "property", "self-ownership", etc. too?

People are going to struggle to establish their preferred legal system as holding a balance of power. There's always some line of thinking behind it. I'm asking what yours is.

"my ULT has more utility than your ULT"

We've been over this. It's impossible to act ex ante on future knowledge of ex post evaluation.

Erroneous, the fact that other people think rights exist means that I can exploit their delusion in order to protect myself if I so desire.

I do so hate to be contrarian, but no, Hoppe's argumentation ethics is not correct. Engaging in an argument does not demonstrate a universal preference for discourse over violence nor an acceptance of the principle of self-ownership.

Please do!

What is the point of denying any valid conception of "God"?

Concepts such as "property" and "ownership" are the products of intersubjective consensus and exist in the same sense that countries or races do. I do not deny that rights are recognized. Ditto God.

Really?

I suppose you could call me an egoist.

How is what you said relevant to what I said?

The elegance of consequentialism is its grounding in subjective preferences as expressed through social, political, and economic interactions. It shows no preference toward the needs or wants of any given person, including their moral codes. In other words, maximizing social welfare is not an arbitrary principle because the very the idea of social welfare necessarily accounts for the preferences of all. Objecting to the principle is objecting to the very idea that the goal of sound political philosophy is the betterment of humanity.

Arguing that relative ease of application is a reason for preferring propertarianism to consequentialism is mere intellectual laziness. It's even easy to apply any number of childish and obviously unconscionable rules, yet no one thinks this means such rules ought to be preferred to propertarianism. Consequentialism embraces strong property rights where they serve the ends of social welfare - they often do - but doesn't blindly demand enforcement of a particular set of them regardless of outcome.

Itt drmodern with so much win

Its pretty obvious that most of us are propertarians because we believe stronger property rights would maximize social welfare. I know this might be hard to believe but a lot of us dont have some property fetish regardless of how the consequences effect the well being of humanity. The main reason AC/Libertarianism appeals to me is because of how terrible democracy has been doing lately. If we really need an elite group of people, checked only by the ability of a disinterested and misinformed electorate, to tell us what to do, why has there been so much blatant and widespread corruption occurring in most of the developed democracies? Its a pretty big stretch these days to simply assume those technocrats in power are disinterested and all knowing.

You also havent clarified why discrimination due to race is any more or less arbitrary than discrimination due to birth origin.

"Strong" vs. "weak" property rights generally is irrelevant. The question is whether a racially diverse society (especially where race is considered salient to a person's social value) is better off ex ante if land carries an unconditional right to exclude on the basis of race. It doesn't matter if you favor strong property rights generally if endorsing some set property rights in this particular instance leads to deleterious outcomes. Which rule gives people stronger individual rights - the Civil Rights Act or its repeal?

You might as well say this is why communism appeals to you. As I said before, there's no forced choice between the status quo and (a particular form of) statelessness.

Of course, no one thinks they're disinterested and all-knowing, and it's possible to improve society by working for better public policy, or providing the empirical research that allows for the implementation of better policy. But even if the American republic has faults, it's possible to observe the victories that have been won in the area of civil rights, is it not? Even if you object to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, you can recognize that the Civil Rights Act is cause for celebration.

You mean pvn's annoying canard about invading other countries to bring about constitutional changes in favor of free speech? Or American immigration policy? I don't understand the question.

Probably where you fail to qualify one form of prejudice as unjust (skin color), versus another (being an amputee, being hot enough to be a stripper, etc.)

It's the same as how your "appeal to reasonableness" isn't good enough for the two important criteria of IP law.

Whether there are other forms of discrimination, justifiable or not, is irrelevant to whether excluding someone from a lunch counter on the basis of race is justifiable.

Yes, if I, personally, can't enumerate the niceties of every conceivable patent litigation, the entire patent system must be horrendously inefficient. I'm blown away by the force of your logic.

I disagree. What essential difference is there in the color of the skin on a person's arm vs. them wearing the appropriate black suit over their arm?

You're not very good at this are you? This isn't even "crazy libertarian talk". Mainstream, statist legal theorists identify the inadequacy of "what is reasonable" in finding equity.

Protip: When someone says something to you that no one could possibly believe, they might be being sarcastic or something.

One you can change and one you can't?

Must be a trap though, because I don't think you're that simple...

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Oh, I saw what you were replying to by making that argument. I stand corrected.

Essentially what you're saying is murder should be legal. After all, there's some people breaking the law, so what's the difference between someone jaywalking and someone killing someone?

And you call other people 'not very good at this'. LMAO. Though it does get frustrating I'm sure to be discussing something with people so dense they don't understand when they're wrong.

DrModern,

Are you in favor of banning onerous speech such as Koran-burning or Holocaust denial?

From the other thread: