My take is that certain property [...]]]> There was recently a discussion on the Reddit’s Anarchism forum about the nature and origin of property rights. Many people, ironically both Objectivists and the vast majority of anarchists, believe that property rights would not exist in practice in the absence of a state to enforce those rights.

My take is that certain property norms, such as intellectual property, final decision-making authority and exclusive control of a property, would vanish in the absence of a state — and so they should. The first part of my empirical (or fact-based) account for property rights will attempt to substantiate how we can derive prescriptive “ought” statements from descriptive “is” statements, bridging the so-called fact-value dichotomy, and why each individual’s life, morally speaking, is his or her ultimate standard of value. Beforehand, let me define my understanding of a few words.

A value (or goal) is that which one acts to gain or keep. The adjective “objective” means derived from an evaluation of the facts of reality. An objective standard of value would mean that the standard by which the value of an action is determined is based on an evaluation of the facts of reality. Morality prescribe what code (or hierarchy) of values (or goals) one ought to achieve and how those values ought to be achieved. A right is a normative principle defining and sanctioning the proper course of actions for an individual to take in a social context. Property is the ownable means of achieving values.

Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’

As I said above, morality is concerned with answering rationally and logically which values ought a person pursue and how a person ought to pursue them. The way I would begin answering how to establish the validity of morality is by recognizing that values only have meaning to living beings; dead people cannot act to gain or keep anything. So it stands to reason that for there to be a value, there must be a valuer. The problem is that values are not readily perceptible. What we see when looking around the world are facts. The sky is blue and water is wet. There are no facts labeled “ought” or “should,” so the idea that there are moral principles about how people ought to act seems counter-intuitive. That is, values are not a primary concept. What I hope to demonstrate is that values are different kinds of facts, facts as it relates to the fulfillment or destruction of life. It is not as simple as picking any values (or goal) and identifying the most likely means of achieving that value. The purpose of morality is to identify the proper values to pursue. For morality to be based in reason, moral principles about what one ought to do must be derived from what is — the facts of reality.

A value is a value because it serves some intended end, which might then be used as means to another intended end. This process would go on ad infinitum in the pursuit of higher and higher values unless there were some ultimate value or values to which all other values served as a means. In the absence of an empirically demonstrable ultimate value or values, there can be no empirical basis to judge which values are objectively good and which are objectively bad, as moral judgements would be left to personal discretion. Without an empirical ultimate end, there could be no empirical standard to determine which values are the proper values to pursue, meaning that moral knowledge could not be arrived at objectively. The challenge then is to discover if an empirical ultimate value exists at all.

The most fundamental choice human beings confront (before we can choose which values to achieve and how to achieve them) is the alternative between existing and not existing, between living and dying. To remain alive, one not only has to avoid achieving life-destroying values, one must act to achieve actual life-promoting values. Inaction results in death. There is no neutral alternative because remaining alive is a constant struggle between life and death, with death as the default. Time is a scarce and irretrievable resource. By taking actions that are not life-promoting, one’s life is degraded and is that much closer to death since that misspent energy could have been used in producing life-promoting values instead. For people who do choose to live, it is very possible that they could choose to pursue life-destroying values. After all, people have free will. Moral altruists do that very thing, but they are not able to practice altruism consistently or else they would succumb to death very shortly. For a person who chooses to die, morality and the pursuit of values would be useless because death naturally takes hold relatively quickly if values (such as remaining hydrated) are not achieved. To reiterate, I am not making the case that just because someone is alive, his or her ultimate value is his or her life. After all, a person who chooses to die but is currently alive has no need for a standard of value. I said that if a person chooses to live, his or her ultimate value is his or her own life. It is logically inexplicable to choose to remain alive and have any ultimate value (or goal) other than one’s life. To act contrary to the idea that one’s life is his or her ultimate value is to contradict the choice to remain alive.

For each organism, the principle of life means living as that type of organism. For human beings, just to be clear, the principle of life means living as a volitional, productive and conceptual being — not as a rodent.

To grasp that an entity is a value, one would have to recognize it is a value to something for something. The thing to note is that the concept “value” presupposes, depends on and is derived from the concept “life.” Since the only fundamental choice, which does not presuppose any other choice, is to remain alive or to die, a person’s choice to remain alive logically establishes one’s life as the fundamental value (or goal), directing what one ought to do. To put it another way, all other values I achieve determine what state of life I am in as a human being. But that I am alive determines whether I am in any state of life at all. Life or death is a fundamental alternative; it establishes that all other values are means to it, but life is not means to any higher value. Therefore, the principle of life is an ultimate value, an end in itself.

The principle of life is not only an ultimate value but necessarily an ultimate standard of value too. The corollary conception of value is maginitude-based. In general, a value is judged to be positive or negative by whether it can be used as means to pursue some intended end. It is also the case that evaluations are made, particularly in the social sciences, based on how well a value can be used in the pursuance of an intended end. To evaluate a value’s magnitude, the end intended to be achieved is the standard of value used for evaluation. Since the principle of life is an ultimate value, one’s life is his or her ultimate standard of value as well. That which contributes to one’s life is a life-promoting value and that which hinders one’s life is a life-destroying value. The degree to which these values are impactful are measured by the ultimate standard of value, one’s life.

One common objection to the principle of life as an ultimate value is that there could be multiple ultimate values that are possible, for instance, if the primary ultimate value were not pursuable at a particular time. This objection would fail on two accounts. It is not possible to pause life or take a break from it. Sustaining it requires constant action. The more basic reason that there are not multiple ends in themselves is because life or death is the only fundamental alternative. All other alternatives a person confronts are contingent on the choice to remain alive.

Another objection could be that since human beings have volition, it could be possible to choose another ultimate value (e.g., the welfare of the environment). I do not believe it is possible. In order to answer why the welfare of the environment is a value to that person, he or she would have to appeal to some higher value, which would require an appeal to some higher value, and so on and so forth until he or she concluded with the alternative of life or death. Identifying someone’s ultimate value would require explaining why achieving or not achieving that value makes a difference to that person. To be of value, the use of something must be worthwhile to the valuer. The common denominator in all differences is one’s life. Death means nothing is of value because nothing can make a difference to that person in death. For a person who chooses to remain alive, death is of no value because death cannot be used in the maintenance of one’s life.

(On a side note, this is not so much a rebuttal to any objection but a clarification on a common misunderstanding. Leading a successful life — a life in tune with one’s nature as a human being — does not mean maximizing the number of heartbeats or some such. The genes received from our parents gear our nature to find certain behaviors, such as sex and child rearing, fulfilling. Pursuing important values at the expense of a shorter lifespan would be adding to the value of one’s life. To me, it is reasonable that defending the freedom of one’s family or sparing an innocent person from injustice could be an instance worthy of putting one’s life on the line.)

Not only do we have to be alive to achieve values; we also have to achieve values to remain alive. Put another way, it is not just enough that living entities have values. Values must be pursued and achieved to be of any consequence. Life not only gives rise to the possibility of values; life requires the pursuit of values in a manner consistent with our productive, conceptual and volitional nature as human beings so that those values will be most likely achieved.

For living beings without volition, their values and the means to achieve them are provided innately (or automatically) by their nature. For them, there is no “ought” involved because living entities without volition have no choice in the matter. Humans beings, on the other hand, have to choose which values they ought to pursue and how they ought to pursue them, so for them alone is morality necessary or even possible. An individual has to make the choice to pursue values supportive of one’s nature as a human being if an individual chooses to remain alive. To do otherwise and pursue life-destroying values or no values at all would be reneging on the choice to remain alive.

It is incoherent that a person could consistently as a matter of principle pursue life-destroying values or no values at all and remain alive. It is reasonable to conclude that if a person chooses to live, he or she ought to pursue life-promoting values. People can choose to live and make life-destroying choices or no choices at all (not consistently as a matter of principle though); but if they choose to remain living, what is — Mankind’s requirements for survival as a human being — prescribes what they ought to do to fulfill that choice: pursue life-promoting constituent values and do so in such a way that preserves their lives in accordance with their nature as rational animals.

If it is possible to determine what an individual’s ultimate value (or goal) is (and can only be), he or she can conclude from the ultimate standard of value what ought to be done to achieve that value (or goal). It is not more complicated than that. If a person chooses to remain alive, the reality of Mankind’s nature — what is — prescribes what ought to be done to remain alive. The is-ought false dichotomy is solved this way: if something is of value, one ought to gain or keep it. The science of the study of the values and virtues — the logically consistent and meaningful pursuit of values — required by Mankind’s nature to lead a successful life is called morality.

Empirical Account for the Validity of Rights

Having resolved the fact-value false dichotomy to establish that moral principles guide which actions promote our values on a personal level, likewise we need principles to guide which interactions promote our values on a social level. Those principles are what I call rights. Just as each individual’s life is the fundamental source of values, so an individual’s life is the fundamental source of rights. The fundamental right is the right to life, which originates from the fact that each individual’s life is morally an end in itself, as I explained above. As life exists in individuals and the principle of life is an ultimate value, each individual is his or her own ultimate value, an end in him- or herself. Since this is true of all people, it is neither moral to sacrifice one’s life for another nor sacrifice another’s life for one’s own. Since it is absolute that the principle of life is an ulitimate value, the right to life and all corollary rights are absolute (or inalienable). The right to life means the right to sustain one’s life according to its nature. Since each individual’s life is an end in itself, one person’s rights cannot intrude upon or violate the rights of others to think and act on their own.

According to my understanding, only a being whose life, morally speaking, is his or her own standard of value has a claim to rights (or normative principles sanctioning the actions for an individual to take within society). Since morality only has a bearing on rational forms of life — non-human forms of life are simply amoral beings and subsequently cannot possess rights. (As an aside, that does not mean animals should be cared for recklessly or mistreated. Other animals can provide companionship and be of profound value in other ways.) Although not a cause of its validity, the great majority of people, who believe entities such as a society, a state or a god is the ultimate standard for good and bad, seem to agree with the principle that only ends in themselves have a claim to rights. The well-being of those entities are placed before the interests of the individual, so individual rights are seen more as permissions slips to be revoked and replaced with duties whenever doing so serves the greater entity’s compelling interests.

Returning to how rights originate, a right is a normative principle, which like any principle, is based on certain premises. First being that each individual’s life is morally an end in itself. The other premises are that human beings have the faculty for productive work and have volition for the conceptual faculty to make reasoned judgements, meaning that it is possible for us to live and prosper together without sacrificing one another. (“Productive” in this context means not only being able conform to nature, but also overcoming the need to conform to what is provided by nature.) Taken with what I said before that the principle of rights is contingent on the premise that human beings are capable of productive work, so it would follow that a right to own a value is contingent on having produced the means to achieve that value. As a consequence of each individual’s life being an end in itself, an individual has a valid claim to independence in the exercise of his or her own judgements and is the proper beneficiary of the values he or she achieves. Rights are meant to protect the independent exercise of one’s judgement in the pursuit of values — or what is otherwise known as liberty — the values achieved by those judgments — or what we might call property. Those rights, which are manifested into physical reality through the use of property, are violated through the use of direct or indirect physical force that causally (or deterministically) prevents the achievement (or realization) of those values.

To demonstrate, if I happen upon an unowned apple tree and picked an apple for the purpose of producing a value (satisfying my hunger), I believe I would have a right to the apple for that use (satisfying my hunger) since I, a rational being, have made a physical change to the object and am not interfering with any existing property claim of another volitional being. To reiterate, what makes a value a value is the difference its achievement would have on that person. Those differences are manifested into the physical world, so the interruption of those differences requires the use of physical force.

My right is not to the apple itself, but to the freedom to gain, keep, use or dispose of the apple for the purpose of producing the value (satisfying my hunger) I sought. If someone can use the apple, then or in the future, in a manner that does not interfere with my preexisting right to the use of the apple, that person could make his or her own property right claim for achievement of his or her value. Abandonment of the right would take place when an owner can no longer achieve his or her value with the use of a property and has made no apparent effort to regain that ability.

Accordingly, the logical validity of so-called intellectual property has no merit because the use of non-physical entities, like a concept or a procedure, does not deterministically prevent anyone else’s use of the same non-physical entity in the production of another value. Along those same lines, I think it would be proper to reject the Lockean notions of having final decision-making authority and exclusive usage of a property since others are free to earn rights to use the property in the production of their values so long as no preexisting rights are violated. As a central tenet of a state is its final decision-making authority within its territory, which I have attempted to demonstrate is illegitimate, a state has no moral claim to exist either.

In summation, I have attempted to build a coherent normative secular justification for why morality is necessary and valid, how individual rights (politics) are a logical extension of morality and what those rights entail in the functions of society. A society where those naturally rendered rights were most honored would enjoy the most vibrant forms of social harmony and be of inspiration to others. While a right has never physically stopped someone from being murdered or abused, the ideas behind rights, like all ideas, are what shape our society, to paraphrase the Tannehills in “The Market for Liberty.” That is why they are important and worthy of defending.

I recently saw a video clip of Michael Moore calling other people’s money “a national resource.” I have to agree that in some cases other people’s money is not truly their own. For example, the wealth of Moore and others who benefit from government privileges, in Moore’s case intellectual property laws, would belong [...]]]>

I recently saw a video clip of Michael Moore calling other people’s money “a national resource.” I have to agree that in some cases other people’s money is not truly their own. For example, the wealth of Moore and others who benefit from government privileges, in Moore’s case intellectual property laws, would belong to others had it not been for the enforcement of arbitrary property claims. The executives of Halliburton and other government contractors benefit enormously from their relationships with politicians.

However, most people are not on the positive end of government privilege, and taxing wealth acquired without the use of government aggression (protections or subsidies) would be theft. Calling taxation theft can sometimes offend people. After all, by alleging that taxation is equivalent to the moral crime of theft, libertarians could be thought of as condemning supporters of taxation, many of whom, including Michael Moore, hold their belief out of an honest moral conviction. For them, not supporting taxation is the height of cruelty.

The purpose for making such a charged statement that taxation is theft (besides being true) is that it challenges conventional political beliefs. It is a contest of values, and libertarians who oppose taxation make this point in order to highlight the inconsistencies in political ideologies. They are demanding some explanation as to why people in governments should be held to different principles than others. Supporters of taxation know this, so they have weaved farcical tales for why taxation is voluntary. Some may call it a social (read: imaginary) contract, which conveys that people residing within a certain geographic territory implicitly agreed to support it. As I will explain below, even if such an explicit contract existed, it would give no credence for taxation.

From what I recall, there are at least six explanations as to why taxation is theft (extortion more precisely). These explanations are often fused together in some arrangement or another, and some are simply incompatible with one another. I do not happen to agree with every one, but I wanted to offer a complete array of moral arguments against the support for taxation. Before I begin, I will note that contemporary argument that an individual consents to the social contract or constitution simply by remaining within a territory or accepting services presupposes what it is trying to prove, that the social contract or constitution is legitimate, the very thing in question. It is a circular, invalid argument.

1. Taxation is founded on the belief that the exercise of an inalienable right is a privilege, a self-contradiction. People who refused to remit taxes for performing a particular right (e.g. owning property or earning an income) would no longer be able to exercise that right without coercion being enacted upon them, which would undermine from the outset the stated purpose of forming a government. If an implicit contract or written constitution did exist that permitted taxation, it would be unexecutable and invalid from the beginning since one’s (inalienable) natural rights cannot be suspended, making the contract unexecutable and thus void. In a previous post, I explained why I believe rights are inalienable for the fact that free will, a basis for the formation of rights, is inalienable. One way to think of inalienability is that rights are in effect moral obligations on others to refrain from using force against someone. That moral obligation is not for another to give away, so signing away one’s inalienable rights is a self-contradiction. A contract to give up one’s inalienable rights could at most be seen as a (non-binding) promise, just as a slave contract would be.
2. The central tenet of government, the final decision-making authority to resolve disputes within a territory, is illegitimate, nullifying the legitimacy of government altogether, let alone the power to tax.
3. Taxation is premised on the claim that the item being taxed is the property of the state or society, as Michael Moore believes. The reason someone might reject that idea is because governments or societies have no rights over citizens; legitimate governments act by permission (which can be revoked), not by right, and nor for that matter could voters grant permission to someone else’s property; therefore, government would never be justified in using coercion to extract payment for taxes. Similarly how a power of attorney can sign contracts on behalf of a client, an agent (the government) is under the authority of its principals (the citizens).
4. Without the liberty to refuse to consent, expressing consent is impossible. So by preventing the option of withdraw by means of secession, it is not possible to express consent to delegate any powers to government.
5. Almost all governments in existence came about by exploiting the existing property claims of land owners, and those who did explicitly consent are no longer alive.
6. Anarchists who adopt the occupancy-and-use theory of land tenure reject the enforcement of rents, which would include taxes, against people in possession and use of a property.

In light of all this, many still defended taxation on the basis that a tax is the fee that must be paid for government services. But this is fallacious. Existing ways that services are provided for include borrowing funds and counterfeiting the government-mandated currency. From a libertarian perspective, taxes could be coerced from people who acquired their wealth by ill-gotten means like government aggression, but only if the taxes were paid to victims as direct payments whenever possible or as services otherwise. For as long as a government did exist, it would not have to be limited to raising revenue by issuing taxes. It could just as well sell off assets, charge user fees for performing services customers ordered (assuming there were no monopoly privileges in place) or just ask for donations.

Even if the handful of above objections were overcame, taxes are demanded whether a service is provided or not. It is true that governments do provide services, but they do so out of concern for maintaining popular support, not because there is any legal obligation to do so. In a voluntary transaction, a buyer is entitled to a refund if the service fails to be provided accordingly, which is plainly not the case with government.

In the above post, I gave six explanations as to why taxation might be considered immoral and unworthy of support. I also rebutted the idea that taxes are owed for the performance of government services, which is usually the final objection raised by tax supporters. In many ways, taxation is worse than extortion. When people have wealth taken from them without their consent, that is likely the last time the thief will harass them. But taxation is altogether more insidious. As Lysander Spooner said:

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these.

In his inaugural speech (also on YouTube) as a United State senator, Rand Paul gave an inspirational talk about the virtue of not compromising on issues of morality.

He gave a telling of the political career of former Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, who helped orchestrate the extension of slavery [...]]]>

In his inaugural speech (also on YouTube) as a United State senator, Rand Paul gave an inspirational talk about the virtue of not compromising on issues of morality.

He gave a telling of the political career of former Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, who helped orchestrate the extension of slavery into the Western territories of the United States. Paul contrasted that with the actions of Clay’s abolitionist cousin Cassius Clay.

I give Paul all the respect in the world for honoring integrity as a virtue and bucking conventional political wisdom. The thing with morality is that it cannot be compromised, only abandoned. Paul utterly supports abandoning moral principles, as he made evident in his speech.

He straightforwardly condones extortion via taxation. Now, supporters of taxation might respond that voters are eligible to elect lawmakers who abolish taxation. I suppose that could happen. In any case, majority vote is no evidence of justice.

Paul also condones deficit spending, indebting future generations who are not of age to vote. The proposed budget he introduced earlier this month would add trillions of dollars to the federal government’s debt in the coming years.

Whatever criticism Paul has of Henry Clay is equally applicable to Paul’s own politics. Clay supported the more overt practice of confiscating the labor of others by way of chattel slavery; Paul would just rather people’s future labor be confiscated by politer means and on a more general scale.

For anyone not familiar, the post’s title comes from a Frank H. Knight quote:

The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.

I thought I would offer responses to questions posed in Gary Chartier’s opening remarks.

I take this question to be asking by what principle can a property become [...]]]> The Center for a Stateless Society is hosting a virtual symposium concerning issues of land ownership.

I thought I would offer responses to questions posed in Gary Chartier’s opening remarks.

• After how much time does land become ripe for homesteading?

I take this question to be asking by what principle can a property become abandoned. I think this to a large extend is dependent upon how property becomes owned, which is where I differ somewhat with the labor theories of ownership (not to be confused for the labor theory of value).

It is not so much a physical object that is owned as it is the use of that object. A right to use a property is conferred by the production of some value (that which one aims to gain or keep), provided that another’s existing use of that physical object to produce his or her value is not infringed upon.

When an owner can no longer achieve his or her value with the use of that property and has made no apparent effort to regain that ability, it should be inferred that the right is abandoned.

• Does abandonment require the absence of not only the owner but also her agents from the property for a reasonable period?

My understanding of abandonment has to do with abandoning the claim to a property, not temporarily moving from it.

Take for instance a deceased person or someone in a coma. Both can leave instructions for their agents to care for their estate for as long as the means exist to do so. Once the estate’s resources are depleted, the claim is abandoned.

• Should property be treated as abandoned if the putative owner herself is absent for a reasonable period, even if her agents have been present during the same period?

I do not accept that abandonment consists of absenteeism.

• Just how present does the owner need to be to establish continued possession: is a visit acceptable, or must she treat the land as her residence or place of business?

I do not accept that the owner’s presence is a condition of ownership.

• Is an absent owner’s intent relevant? If so, must it be communicated, and, if so, to whom and in what way?

I would say that intent is relevent in so far as the right is contingent on what use the owner has for the property.

To identify existing ownership claims, it is necessary to establish who is making the claim, the bounds of the claim and the value being sought. People who want to ensure that their property right is respected will adopt the most widely accepted means of publicizing their differentiation with possible conflicting claims.

Someone who makes no effort to publicize a claim, capture it once it was lost or distinguish it from others must not have had much stock in it.

My understanding of occupancy and use is that someone has the right to control a property — something that is ownable — for the period [...]]]> I call them conundrums because there may be some way around my objections to an occupancy-and-use theory for property rights, but I do not possibly see what those could be.

My understanding of occupancy and use is that someone has the right to control a property — something that is ownable — for the period of time that he or she has continued to willfully occupy and use that property, provided that one acquired the right to the property at a time when it was unowned or by means of consensual trade.

My overall take is that this theory of property rights, though sincerely held, neglects the basis on which the right to property is formed and maintained, and so it is in irreconcilable contradictions with the nature of human beings. Granted, I will need to do some explaining.

The first step of my explanation is to address the basis for my understanding of the concept of rights (or normative principles for the actions to take within society) and why they are necessary at all. In doing so before, I discussed why I believe people have sovereignty over their own life. In a nutshell, morality is necessary for conceptual beings without instinctive values to choose among the available pursuable values and the manner in which those chosen values — facts in relation to the requirements of life — ought be pursued. Since the concept of value presupposes, depends on, and is derived from the concept of life, one’s life (if her or she chooses to live) must be the underlying standard of value of all choices. And as life is an attribute of the individual, each individual’s life is his or her ultimate standard of morality, an end in itself.

Now that alone does not explain how rights exist. Rights themselves stem from the fact that human beings are productive and have volition for the conceptual faculty to make reasoned judgements, meaning that it is possible for us to live and prosper together without sacrificing one another. (“Productive” in this context means not only being able conform to nature, but also overcoming the need to conform to what is given by nature.) In fact, our interests align in honoring the sovereign will of others. If all that human beings were capable of is consuming a fixed amount of wealth, preserving one’s life would consist of honoring the law of the jungle, kill or be killed. However, with our incredible imagination as conceptual thinkers, our potential for wealth is practically limitless, and our fundamental interests align in harmony with other rational thinkers.

Misplaces the Origin of Rights

The first interesting thing to take away is that rights are a function of our capacity for productive work. However, the occupancy-and-use theory is evidently based on the misunderstanding that rights are a function of our capacity for consumption, which is what the act of occupying and using is. All living things consume, but we as humans are set apart by their capacity for production, which is made possible and rendered necessary because our values are not instinctual. In this light, the occupancy-and-use theory cannot be said to have an empirical basis in human nature, as property rights manifest as a result of production.

Neglects the Right to Liberty

Rights pertain to the actions necessary for the preservation of an individual’s life — his or her ultimate end — since it is Man’s requirements for life that gives rise to the necessity and possibility for morality. Each individual has the primary obligation to sustain one’s life if he or she chooses to live. This process of self-preservation to act on his or her will is an individual’s right to life. A stipulation is that the right to life, or any right for that matter, does not include the right to infringe on any individual’s equal rights. To know which values to pursue, human beings need some method of survival to gain and keep knowledge and to act on behalf of that knowledge. This is the right to liberty. Every act requires the use of material resources. To achieve our values in the physical world, we must also create and consume the material means of sustaining our life, which is the right to property.

A second problem with the occupancy-and-use theory is the manner in which it conflicts with the right to liberty. Some human beings have lived for over 100 years. Since human beings are able to live for such long periods of time, it is necessary to be able to plan ahead for that potential eventuality. As I said before, the right to liberty is our process of acting on behalf of our values. But the occupancy-and-use theory imposes on the liberty to plan for our long-term values because accumulating property (or deferring consumption) for later use is not recognized as a right. If someone has an immediate use for the unused property another has produced or traded for, the existing owner no longer retains the right to that property, according to the occupancy-and-use theory.

Confuses Where Rights Exist

My third contention is not exclusive to occupancy and use and applies to the broader labor theories of property rights. My point is that rights only have meaning when we are dealing with other human beings within a society. If someone occupied and used resources on an otherwise deserted island, there is no right to that resource, because rights only exist within the sphere of inter-human relations. This principle is not entirely lost upon occupancy-and-use proponents. Benjamin Tucker in his discussion of the four monopolies explained about how property serves a role of reducing conflicts within society. So if there is no society in the first place, there can be no conflict among people and, thus, no role for property rights.

A sensible alternative theory of property rights should conform to the nature of morality, which gives rise to the very concept of rights in the first place. It is with that understanding and in that respect that a proper understanding of property rights should originate as a consequence of acting on one’s liberty.

So what should chaining ourselves to a 220-plus-year-old political compromise between Northern protectionist merchants [...]]]> The constitution was written by men over 200 years ago to reflect their own interests at the time. Along with a deeper understanding of the natural world, people today have different interests and different values (along with not being sexist racists).

So what should chaining ourselves to a 220-plus-year-old political compromise between Northern protectionist merchants and Southern slave owners have to do with achieving freedom?

Since government, as popularly constructed, is given the sole discretion of interpreting and enforcing the law, even in conflicts between [...]]]> If authority is the willingness and ability to command obedience to one’s will, authoritarianism would be a belief that someone is superior in some manner (ethically, politically, ect.) because he or she has such authority.

Since government, as popularly constructed, is given the sole discretion of interpreting and enforcing the law, even in conflicts between the government and an individual, a government of limited constitutional powers is still authoritarian by nature.

In many cases, authority is based in aggression. But that is not necessarily always true. Widespread racism and sexism, for example, enforced through rightful private property claims could also constitute instances of authoritarianism. Some forms of indoctrination could manifest non-aggressive means of gaining authority over others as well.

In a society of widespread authoritarianism, liberty would have very little substance. Even if we achieved a libertarian society, it would be short-lived if the prevailing notion about the non-aggressive authority that can be held over others were left unchallenged.

Today, it calls inflation “a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and [...]]]> Webster’s dictionary had defined “inflation” as “an increase in the amount of currency in circulation resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and a rise in prices.”

Today, it calls inflation “a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services.” That flip of inflation’s cause and effect misplaces the public’s resentment on business and laborers instead of the central bankers who expanded the money supply. As justification for the modern definition, the Federal Reserve and other central banks can point to prices sometimes erratically jumping and falling during times of a steady increase in money.

That divergence between the rate of price changes and the change in the money supply is entirely plausible under a simple illustration. Suppose a shopper believes prices will soon rise. That gives an individual reason enough to buy up those commodities sooner rather than later. On a market-wide scale, that increased demand causes consumption to increase and prices to adjust upward.

Even still, I can think of a more straightforward definition of “inflation”: theft.

The show got contentious when the discussion moved to immigration. From my understanding, Emanuelson is concerned that mass immigration will drive down [...]]]> I was listening to an episode of The Fuze, a local internet show co-hosted by Ken Emanuelson of the Dallas Tea Party, with former New Mexico governor Garry Johnson as his guest.

The show got contentious when the discussion moved to immigration. From my understanding, Emanuelson is concerned that mass immigration will drive down wages of those already in the country. As a self-described libertarian, he also made the point that those who advocate for open immigration “have to be honest” when stating its economic impact on wage rates. I can confidently state that historically and praxeologically the economic evidence gives overwhelming credibility for an open immigration policy.

A leading open immigration opponent in academia, George Borjas, thinks that existing immigration rates are a net positive to income. He said, “Although the entry of immigrants reduces the wages of comparable natives, it increases slightly the income of U.S. natives overall.” Coincidentally, Tyler Cowen wrote about a new study that demonstrates why immigrants create a demand for higher-paying management jobs and that immigrants compete more so with foreign labor than with existing native workers. Those might be some valid points, but I’m not ready to say they are conclusive just yet.

Clarifying Terms

Granted, the purpose of a quota system is to drive up prices (including the price of labor), so it is reasonable to believe that the immediate effect for a particular profession might be to experience decreased real wages if immigration were abnormally high for that profession compared to the rest of the labor market. With an open immigration policy, that problem could be minimized since open immigration would not be restricted to just one or a few classes of workers. But if real wages in a profession did fall, that only tells us that wages for that profession were too high for the market to bear, which was likely brought about by government manipulation of the market in the first place. One thing we know for sure is that the sooner an economic distortion is eliminated, the less harm it will do overall. Certain professions are assuredly propped up by the existing immigration restrictions (like border patrol agents), but they are being supported on the backs of other Americans through taxation and lost economic opportunities. In fact, Frederic Bastiat offers some great advice on this:

Every injustice is profitable for someone (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits nobody); to express alarm over the dislocation that ending an injustice occasions the person who is profiting from it is as much as to say that an injustice, solely because it has existed for a moment, ought to endure forever.

Counter-intuitively, immigration restrictions do not raise wages; at best, they shift (or redistribute) wages from honest native workers to ones who benefit from privileged government intervention. Just as it would be a gross misrepresentation to say that sentencing a bank robber to jail time would ipso facto reduce his “wages,” it would be equally absurd to claim that returning to a free market would do anything but restoring the economy to the natural state it should have been in all along. If it seems odd why I would characterize immigration restrictions as theft, it might be helpful to read a past post in which I explained why immigration restrictions against peaceful people are a logical contradiction.

Free Markets, Free People

I said that “at best” immigration restrictions, or any prohibition of consensual activity for that matter, merely shift income patterns. It likely could be the case that increased competition leads to more specialization, more innovation, and thus more demand for the product of that profession, so real wages could rise with a greater influx to that labor market.

Historically, the periods of greatest growth in American living standards took place in a climate of lenient or almost non-existent immigration policies. Part of that came about because the founders had railed against the king’s immigration policy, even levying a charge of obstructing “migrations hither” in the Declaration of Independence, and so purposefully did not give the federal government any enumerated power to govern immigration (only naturalization), save for the importation of slaves into the 13 original states.

Contrary to the predictions of Keynesian interventionists, if we look to the greatest American wealth expansion in the 20th century, which followed the end of World War II, millions of GIs returned home and flooded the labor market, just as some anti-immigration hawks fear would happen with open immigration. As a matter of deductive logic, independent, rational people must produce more than they consume in order to remain alive, creating a surplus of products for the market and driving down consumer costs. Those consumer savings can then be spent on other products that before they could not afford to purchase. Freedom and self-interest provide not only the necessary components for consumer demand but also the supply and ingenuity to meet those demands.

Despite its patriotic backdrop, the contemporary anti-immigration stance has its origin in Marxism as it tends to view people as laborers only and not also as consumers who are going to desire products of their own. Our desires are limitless, practically speaking, and so a free market (if one existed) would never have a shortage of jobs. After Word War II, the economy expanded to accommodate the desires that were now possible to accomplish with an influx of new workers. With more workers, we increase our division of labor, and so we can become more specialized, which enables each individual to exert his or her comparative trade advantage. It was Adam Smith who called the division of labor the source of the “greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour.” Even those workers temporarily laid off could be somewhat placated with falling consumer prices that result from increased competition. They would be able to shift to sectors of the economy that have a greater demand for their labor, and so their real wages (the amount of products they can afford to purchase with their earnings) will increase (since consumer prices have fallen) even if their nominal wages do not increase.

Notice the effect here. People are able to save more because of greater competition, reducing the rate of interest to borrow money, which in turn reduces the costs of capital investments, which increase productivity to pull up wage rates. Various government interventions sharply reduce the availability of capital and raise the barriers to entry through a multitude of regulatory, credit monopoly, legal tender, and intellectual property controls, severely hampering this free-market mechanism from taking place today.

Lying for Liberty

What also stuck with me is Emanuelson’s view that people should be honest when discussing the reality of a political policy. I would agree further that people ought to always be honest, though we would probably differ on how we bridge the is-ought gap.

In reply to an inquiry of mine, he confirmed that he does equates honesty with, at a minimum, not knowingly making a false statement. As for myself, I do not think that honesty and lying (deliberately making a false statement) are mutually exclusive. The classic case is of an angry abusive husband knocking at the door looking for his frightened wife at the neighbor’s house. Would it ethical to lie to the husband? I hope so. The alternative of putting people in direct danger risks having their rights violated by the abusive husband. Honesty is fundamentally a recognition and acknowledgment of the facts of reality; integrity would be acting on behalf of those facts. Ayn Rand called honesty “the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.” To be acting honestly does not mean telling the truth no matter the context. Honesty means taking into context one’s full knowledge. In the case of a surprise party, it would be ethical to lie to the special guest because I am have not deprived him or her of any values. Ethics is not a matter of floating categorical imperatives — these principles are derived for the purpose of living happily, which requires the existence of rational values to achieve.

People who support immigration restrictions that stretch beyond those necessary to defend individual rights are necessarily advocating for aggression, as I explained before. In that context, it would be acting honestly to make a false statement about the economic consequences of immigration in the same sense it would be ethical to lie to a thief who wants my friend’s wallet. I am being honest. I am taking into account the full context of my knowledge, including a recognition of the fact that no one has a (natural) right to aggress against others. My lie would not be denying the anti-immigration hawk any rightful value of his or hers, but I would be protecting those values of prospective immigrants and native residents, namely their freedom.

For the record, I do not think it is necessary to lie about the political consequences of freedom, as there is no moral-practical dichotomy. With that said, I do not advocate lying to voters, if for no other reason than their net impact on the political process is negligible and does not present what might be called a “clear and present danger,” and because they are not ethically liable for the actions of the state. That responsibility rests with politicians and their agents, to whom it would be justified to lie given the proper context.

I do not like it any more than anyone else. Most voters will gleefully cast their ballots for politicians openly seeking the legal sanction to aggress [...]]]> On Nov. 2, tens of millions of Americans will exercise their political franchise to play their part in shaping the future of the country, or so the story goes.

I do not like it any more than anyone else. Most voters will gleefully cast their ballots for politicians openly seeking the legal sanction to aggress against others. It is enough that the state is illegitimate even if its sole purpose were to defend individual rights, but politicians across the spectrum make campaign promises to increase the level of state predation.

Indeed, “Law is force,” Frederic Bastiat said. This “legal plunder, organized injustice,” as Bastiat called it, has two sources. “One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy.”

Many libertarians take the stance that electoral activism, in and of itself, is an act of aggression since political power is vested in violence. As understandable as the anti-voting stance is, self-defense is ethically justified if I can support candidates who I believe will aggress less than another credible candidate. Still others say that voting either grants consent to the political system or at least gives the perception of consent. This is also dubious. For how can consent be granted if there is no credible opportunity to withhold consent? It is true that some could perceive voting as consenting, but so could choosing not to vote be viewed as apathy for whatever policy wins out. The solution would be to educate why libertarians participate in electoral politics despite not viewing the government conducting the election as ethical. Another objection is that it is fine to act in self-defense, but it would be unjust to elect a representative who would presume to rule someone else.

Now, I certainly do not think anyone is ethically bound to follow or support legislation simply because it is has received the majority’s support. A point Lysander Spooner makes is that no one in government can represent anyone but him- or herself. He said,

They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts. It is of no importance that I appointed him, and put all power in his hands. If I made him uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent, attorney, or representative.

If elected officials are personally responsible for their actions, what then are the ethics of holding office? Would it be necessary to only support an immediate abolition of aggression or a phased withdraw of government services?

Roderick Long argues that government aggression “lies in the fact that the services are funded by stolen money (taxation), and that competitors are often prohibited or severely restricted (regulation). Hence a gradual phase-out of government services (as opposed to immediate abolition) involves no violation of libertarian principle, provided some solution can be found to the problems of taxation.”

Except in those cases where private firms have been granted a monopoly on a product (or another artificial advantage in the market), a libertarian acting consistently with the non-aggression principle would have to advocate for a complete dismantling of regulatory controls. In those cases of that firms have been given a market advantage by government aggresion, any barriers to competition should be removed immediately, but pricing or other regulatory controls could be phased out gradually.

In order to raise funds for some of the more redeeming services performed by government, there are a few options that Long favors so long as a government regrettably were still in place.

1. Raise money by selling off government assets
2. Charge user fees for government services
3. Solicit voluntary contributions
4. Use non-coercive measures to get people to pay their taxes
5. Tax the beneficiaries of state privilege
6. Restrict the franchise to taxpayers

As an immediate matter, it most likely will not be possible to implement these methods. It would still never be ethically justified to vote in favor of any level of aggression. There are obvious pitfalls to avoid and cautions to take to prevent libertarian corruption or political backlash.

I do not support electoral politics as the primary method of political change. In fact, it is probably the least important factor compared to educating the population, leading by example, and raising emotionally healthy children. If libertarians have done the work necessary to spread these ideas, getting these policies implemented would be more of a formality.

After looking at the deontological (or rule-based) and the consequentialist basis for [...]]]> Silly question, right? Of course, consequences matter. More precisely, how do consequences affect one’s ethical beliefs? We hear all the time how there is a dichotomy between how one should act and how one must act to satisfy his or her best interests.

After looking at the deontological (or rule-based) and the consequentialist basis for libertarianism, both sides make convincing arguments. In consequentialism’s favor, how bizarre would it be that libertarianism made for such beneficial outcomes but in no way did those consequences validate the case for libertarianism? This is a point Roderick Long makes. From the deontological side, applicable ethics derived from human nature make setting codes of rational conduct more or less uniform. One Misesian point is that a person cannot reliably achieve his ends by disposing of principles whenever there is an occasion where it might benefit to do so. Long points out that when someone is treating principles, regardless of why they are doing so, as ends in themselves, then those principles are ends of their own.

While the source and content of human nature is hotly contested, the fact that all humans have the same nature means that no one has a superior or dominant claim over others. As highly conceptual beings, our minds must be free to create and refine complicated abstract thoughts. I’m not saying this is the most accurate or complete case for libertarianism. From there, the secular and religious strains of deontological libertarianism split ways.

The consequentialist argument is more straightforward. The idea is that no matter what human nature is, a libertarian society would still produce better results than a statist one. Even if human beings were brutes or were highly evolved beings with a collective conscience, an environment without a dominant structure in place to institutionalize violence would still be preferable to a society with such commands and controls. So even if all men were good, no government would be necessary. If all men were evil, then having a government would make things demonstrably worse since those evil men would have a greater number of resources at their disposal to act on their evil. If some men were good and other evil, then evil people would be drawn to that power more so than good people. That is why libertarians, for the most part, support pluralizing political power, if not eliminating it altogether.

But consequentialists share more in common with the deontologists than they usually care to admit. On purely consequentialist grounds, it would be best to have firm codes of conduct in place in order to maximize the happiness or pleasure of society. For people to most effectively plan, they need to know the rules of the game and how they are administered. Since human life can span decades, those norms are manifested in the formation of property rights.

You could not just say that everything goes, and let the chips fall were they may. If people had no adequate reassurance that their property claims were respected by others in society, everyone in society would be geared toward immediate consumption, and the incentive to save and invest in long-term capital projects would be sunk. A consequentialist society would need hard-set rules in place that could not be overturned on a whim. So a consequentialist would have to practice as a deontologist.

As a matter of ethics, consequences do matter. And an Randian theory of rights incorporate consequences.

Ayn Rand said a right is a principle that defines the proper actions for an individual to take within society. By “proper,” she meant that which is necessary to serve an individual’s ultimate end, which is an individual’s own life. The primary necessity is to remain living, obviously. So each individual has a right to his or her life (self-ownership), a right to act in order to preserve that life (or liberty), and a right to the consequences of those actions (or property). It follows that it would be moral to enforce these right to prevent their breach. Those rights extend only so far as to include the force necessary, and nothing more, to protect those rights.

Long points out elsewhere that the right to life (what he called self-ownership) is the most fundamental right of all. He said,

For if there were such additional rights, then there would be claims other than self-ownership that could be legitimately enforced, which would mean that refraining from invading the self-ownership of others would no longer be sufficient to exempt one from liability to coercive interference. But self-ownership, as defined above, just is exemption from liability to coercive interference.

He added that there “cannot be rights in addition to self-ownership, but must instead be specific applications of the self-ownership right itself.”

There is no dichotomy between the ethical and the practical. It is only by surrendering ethics to the arbitrary that such a split forms and some find excuse to rule over others.