Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
Gene, I think you're a cool guy, but I suspect if we went backpacking through Europe, I would be driven to homicide.
ReplyDeleteAnd Bob, if homicide is indeed what you were driven to, no doubt there would be some who would conclude that, objectively, you did the right thing.
ReplyDeleteJust kidding, of course.
Ridiculous, Tom -- homicide is always OK if you just subjectively decide it's OK!
ReplyDeleteAs Aristotle pointed out, no moral subjectivist actually puts his "principles" into action -- witness Tom's outrage when he thought I had hidden my post to avoid his 'scathing' critiques.
ReplyDeleteHomicide is OK precisely when there are no witnesses. The classic mistake in homicide is assuming that the only witnesses are the person or persons dead.
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