Thanks for honestly emphasizing "initiation". http://sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php analyzes why that qualifier renders the statement almost meaningless. I, at least, found his points convincing.
I read quite a bit of that, despite the very hostile opening, and found it to be a quite a rant. He seems to be claiming that everything is relative, and thus the NAP is meaningless.
I really don't think the initiation is so meaningless. I know that a lot of people like to rationalize the initiation of force because they think the ultimate result is better (Which gets into practical debates, and at the end of the day is still an ends-justify-the-means argument.)
It is true that the NAP is meant to be something everyone should agree with, because we believe everyone is naturally a libertarian and just gets convinced otherwise via a lot of sleight of hand, and rationalizations.
I'd be willing to discuss it if you can provide a concrete example where the NAP fails to provide the right outcome. Or where initiation becomes "meaningless".
I certainly don't deny that there are sticky areas (abortion and rights in land being two of them.)
I am failing to understand how NAP can be applied to the initial gain of property rights.
A business man makes space ship goes to asteroid belt mines resources and sells them on earth. Does he own what he mined? Who owned it before he mined the asteroid?
Another example which emphasize the problem differently. Lets pretend N libertarians one day wake up in a rather large box. At the center, bottom floor of the box is a food dispenser that can dispense a near infinite amount of food.
Bob is the first person to wake up and discovers the food dispenser. Knowing the value of this natural resource he claims it as his property. He later trades food from the food dispenser for favors from everyone else in the box. The other libertarians have to do what Bob asks otherwise they will not get food since they are not willing to break the NAP.
It is not clear to me that when Bob claims the food dispenser as his property and then trades the food it dispenses for favors weather he is breaking NAP or not.
Does NAP solve these type of problems or do libertarians use a secondary guiding principle to solve them?
> Bob is the first person to wake up and discovers the food dispenser. Knowing the value of this natural resource he claims it as his property. He later trades food from the food dispenser for favors from everyone else in the box. The other libertarians have to do what Bob asks otherwise they will not get food since they are not willing to break the NAP.
Examples like this often provide strong challenges to the right-wing libertarian view on property. As a left-libertarian, I'd like to offer that some of us do consider monopolization of natural resources to constitute aggression, since resources are originally unowned. This is known as Georgism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
Let's take his example of whites-only and blacks-only drinking fountains. Would a black person drinking from a whites-only fountain have constituted "initiation of force"? And similarly, was Rosa Parks' refusal to vacate her seat an "initiation of force"?
If a water fountain is a private object, then the owner can pass whatever restrictions he or she wants on its use.
However, during the Jim Crow era those restrictions were passed by the government as part of a policy of institutionally enforced segregation. The governments passage of those laws constitutes an "imitation of force" on both the water fountain owners and users.
Under a libertarian analysis, that would depend on whether the segregation is imposed by government or by the relevant property owner. If the government mandates segregation, it has initiated force. Violating a private property owner's rules would be initiation of force.
Note that in the US, we've never actually tried the system where private discrimination is neither required nor forbidden. We went straight from the mandatory discrimination of Jim Crow to the forbidden discrimination of the Civil Rights Act. So no one really knows how actual freedom of association would work out in practice. It is unfair therefore to try to taint libertarianism as equivalent to Jim Crow, but likewise one should be skeptical of libertarian claims that things would work out all right under such setup.
More context is needed, and preferably one without a racial component. (For instance, the racial rules on Rosa parks bus were put in place by the local government, not a private bus company.)
Do you think that a gay couple should be forced to rent out the room they listed on craigslit to an adamant and vocal bigot who hates gays?
Freedom of association is a basic human right, correct? I don't have the right to force some woman I like to associate with me if she thinks I'm disgusting.
That doesn't change if the reason she thinks I'm disgusting is because I'm black.
In the former, I'm just a creep, in the later, she's the bigot. It doesn't really matter.
Racism and other bigotry goes away the more free and open an economy is. The companies run by bigots will underperform, and freedom of association goes both ways- you can refuse to do business with them, and a racist business will lose customers from all races.
Saying that gays can't get married violates freedom of association, but so does saying that you have to have a minimum wage (its dictating terms of a private relationship.)
The passing of such laws, I consider, an initiation of force.
PS- I up voted both of your posts. Not sure why you were down voted. I much prefer your attempts to challenge my position on the merits to the ad hominem I've gotten from others.
> Racism and other bigotry goes away the more free and open an economy is.
That was not true in the racist southern society where the majority of the population was born into a tradition of racism. In a racist society a business will be much more successful by catering to the desire of its customers for white-only water fountains, etc. A business that tries to integrate will suffer a loss of the majority of its customers and that majority is also the wealthier portion. So in such a society a free economy will tend to reinforce existing racism. We needed authoritarian civil rights laws and the threat of force to begin reversing that racism.
0. You seem to have ignored "the more free and open an economy is." which recognizes both that there are degrees "more free and open" and that these are factors that help it go away. The south to some extent lacked them.
1. In the south, racism was going away. Maybe not as fast as people would like, but it was going away.
2. Much of the racism in the south was perpetrated by governments, not by businesses.
3. The south was, after the civil war, subjugated to the will of the north in a form of (probably racist) enslavement of the entire region. The avoiding of this subjugation is why many free blacks in the south fought on the side of the confederacy during the civil war. (while its notable that the north enslaved people via conscription to fight on their side in the civil war.)
At any rate, I wouldn't call the south after the civil war until the 1960s a completely free and open economy.
4. These authoritarian civil rights laws perpetuated racism, they didn't end it. In a way they codified racism by saying "black people can't compete on their own in the market place" which is a racist perspective.
