Can the Non-Aggression Principle be "proved"?

All political philosophies are concerned with who has ultimate decision-making jurisdiction (ownership rights) over which scarce objects (property). That is, they are concerned with how property rights are assigned. Different political philosophies have different principles by which they assign property rights. Libertarianism is based on the principles of homesteading and voluntary exchange. Those principles are used to determine who owns what, and hence who has what rights.

The Non-Aggression Principle, or NAP, is in one sense trivial, because aggression is really defined as a violation of a legitimate property boundary, so it all depends on what property boundaries are legitimate. Everyone supports "non-aggression", except that libertarians and non-libertarians have a different idea of what constitutes aggression, because they assign property rights according to different principles. In this sense, NAP is a fairly useless term, as it is simply a re-statement of the task of political philosophy: to give meaning to aggression, to explain what constitutes aggression, to say what property boundaries are legitimate.

In another sense, if we take the A of "NAP" as meaning specifically the libertarian idea of aggression, then it is simply a restatement of the libertarian principles for assigning property rights. To "prove the NAP" (in this second sense) would be to "prove the libertarian principles of homesteading and voluntary exchange for assigning property rights".

Can this be proved? To prove it would mean to say that homesteading and voluntary exchange, as principles for assigning property rights, are not just a preference (subjective), but that they are the objectively correct principles for assigning property rights.  Hans Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics is one attempt to do this.

What argumentation ethics actually proves, in my opinion, is different. I do not believe it "proves the NAP" or "proves libertarian ethics" which is what I believe it sets out to do. I think the clearest explanation of argumentation ethics comes from Stephan Kinsella: here.

So the question is, does Hoppe's theory establish that the libertarian view of rights, as opposed to competing views, is the correct one?

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Hoppe starts by noting that if any proposed theory of rights is going to be justified, it has to be justified in the course of an argument (discourse).

The problem is right here at the start. Is a theory of rights something that can be justified through argumentation? Is there a correct view of rights? Does that question even make sense?

Libertarian rights can be argued for because they are good (they appeal to our human senses of right/wrong) and beneficial (breed prosperity). But this is a justification of libertarianism as a means for already existing ends. It is not justifying them as an end, saying "this is the correct theory of rights, anyone supporting any other theory of rights is incorrect." It is saying "if you think initiating coercion is unethical, or if you just prefer prosperity to poverty, then libertarian ethic is the correct ethic for you".

The rest of Hoppe's argumentation ethics may be (and, I think, is) sound, but what I think it proves is if there is such a thing as objective ethics, i.e. if it is possible to show that one ethic is correct and all others are incorrect, then the libertarian ethic is the only correct and true theory of ethics.

So if a socialist says "I support socialism because it is correct and libertarianism is incorrect", then we could show that he is making a performative contradiction and what he says is not true. If there is such a thing as a correct ethic, libertarianism is it.

But most socialists don't claim that their ethic is correct, just that (they think) it is good and beneficial. The way to counter this is 1) to show that the libertarian ethic is actually the most beneficial ethic (using Austrian economics) and 2) by appealing to their personal ethical values, their sense of justice, of right and wrong, and helping them to see that the socialist ethic is really not one that any good person should be in favor of.

It does not make sense to talk about correctness/incorrectness, and hence of proofs, in the realm of ethics. Ethical values are values; they are subjective. We can appeal to non-libertarians' personal ethical values (showing they conflict with their political ethical values), and we can show them their political ethical values, when implemented via laws, have bad consequences; but we cannot present them with any proof that they are incorrect to hold to the political ethical values that they do. Political philosophy is simply not a subject which has objectively correct and incorrect answers, except as a means of achieving a particular goal.



Note: this is a copy of a post I made at the Mises forums: here.

Environmentalists should be libertarians

Environmentalists should be libertarians because free markets will in most cases better satisfy their desires - saving the whales, preserving forests, stopping animal cruelty, etc - than will socialist alternatives.

Libertarians qua libertarians do not have a view on whether any particular environmentalist goal is worth it or not. We just say let's have a free market so that the views of everyone are encapsulated in free market prices, so that the amount of resources devoted to particular and environmental causes generally is precisely the amount of resources that the individuals in society are willing to devote to them.

The alternative is having the politicians guessing this and using highly inefficient (and unethical) socialist techniques to try to achieve environmentalist goals. Also, there are the usual public choice problems associated with socialism and democracy in particular: pandering to special interests, bribery, corruption, short-term thinking, waste, etc. These are widespread problems when it comes to state environmental policy-making.

Secession: Who Decides?

The EU is deeply unpopular in the UK and other European nations. The British people never voted to join the EU, and if there were a referendum, I have little doubt that the result would be Yes for the UK to withdraw (secede) from the EU.  The EU has brought about a resurgence in nationalism, and rightly so.

That no referendum has taken place is profoundly unjust. Membership of the EU should be decided upon by the British people, not by politicians, nor by anyone outside the UK.

But why stop at the secession of the UK from the EU? Consider Scotland. Who should decide whether Scotland should secede from the UK? To be consistent, it should be the people of Scotland, not politicians, and not the people of the UK. If the Scottish people want to secede from the Union, it is unethical for anyone to prevent this.  Membership of the UK should be decided upon by the Scottish people.

The same principle applies at an even more local level. If the people of the county of Cornwall, or Yorkshire, or Buckinghamshire wish to secede from the UK, or the people of the city of Oxford, or Liverpool, or Bristol wish to secede from the UK, it would be unethical for anyone to prevent their secession.

Perhaps you can see where this is going. If a small village community, or a family, or a single individual wish to secede from whichever state they are a subject of, who should decide? Well, the secessionist(s) themselves, of course, and not the entity they wish to secede from.

If one opposes the EU and believes in the right of secession at all, they must recognize the right of individual secession. That is, they must recognize the right of any individual to stop paying taxes and to stop following the rules and regulations forced upon him by the state, whenever he wishes.

Nationalism, while preferable to internationalism, is a blatantly inconsistent doctrine. The only consistent positions are a one-world government (which is justifiably, almost-universally unpopular) or individual secessionism, also known as libertarian anarchy.

Statism is at odds with diversity

A common argument against the EU is that it is not possible or beneficial to have a centralized authority controlling such a diverse group of peoples and cultures.

The idea is that the same governmental policies will not work over the whole of Europe. Laws will have to be different in different areas, because in different areas people have different cultures and values. It is recognition that values are subjective; nothing is ‘inherently’ valuable; if something is valuable, it means it is valuable to someone.

But when you think about it, there is no such thing as ‘group values’. Saying Scottish people like haggis is not literally true of all Scots and of no one else. It is a broad generalization. Italian people don’t value pasta as a group, although many of them value it as individuals. No two individuals have exactly the same values or opinions; we are a wonderfully diverse species.

So the above argument against the EU in favor of nationalism works equally well as an argument against nationalism and in favour of localism and ultimately individualism/anarchism.

If the people of Scotland should not have the same laws as the people of Turkey, why should they have the same laws as the people of England? The counties of Scotland each have their distinct character, where people have different values, so why should all of Scotland be controlled centrally from Edinburgh (or anywhere else)?

This line of thinking leads directly to individualism/anarchism: why should any two individuals have to live under the same laws if they don’t want to? After all, they have different values.

The End of War, or How to Minimize Conflicts

In a trivial sense, anarchy will eliminate war, because war can be defined as a conflict between states.

Needless to say, this response is not satisfactory to people who believe that without states, there will be more war. They are using a broader definition of war than just conflict between states.

The broadest possible definition of war would be any conflict between two individuals. Then the question of whether statism or anarchism will have less war becomes the question of what system will minimize conflicts.

The question of what ultimately causes conflicts lies largely outside the realm of political philosophy and economics (and in psychology), but we can ask:

• Will conflict prevention industries be more effective in a free market or under state control?
• Will conflict resolution industries be more effective in a free market or under state control?

In other words, we can examine arrangements in the security and law industries.

Before thinking about how the security and law industries might be structured in a free market (which is difficult because we are all personally familiar only with how states structure these industries), we can say, using general economic principles, that we can expect greater quality, efficiency and service, lower prices, more dynamism, diversity and choice, and less corruption, with a free market arrangement than with a state monopoly.

All this means that we have every reason to believe that there would be fewer conflicts if the security and law industries were provided by a free market, i.e. libertarian anarchy. That is, in the broadest sense, war would be minimized by anarchy.

For an examination of how free markets in security and law might be structured, see the writings of Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and David Friedman.