Anything That's Peaceful: In Defense of a Voluntary Society

I. DE 1a. First of all, why would you write ‘Hoppe doesn’t justify his assumption that ethics must be justified through argumentation’ as “No warrant is provided by Hoppe that tells us why discourse ethics are correct”? The entire argument is known as discourse ethics, not just that assumption. Second, Hoppe does explain why an ethical system must be derived from argumentation, I just left it out of my exposition of his theory because I thought it was obvious. How else would one derive an ethical system? It is true that a human ethic must be derived through argumentation because that fact could not be denied without contradicting oneself. 1b. This seems to be the exact same thing I said, just stated in a very convoluted way. To reiterate, Hoppe’s argument is that one must necessarily exercise property rights to make any argument at all, so any argument denying property rights must logically contradict itself. 2. As I’m sure the readers of this debate were able to discern, that is not at all what I said. But to reiterate: First, argumentation is universal. This is obvious—we can all communicate and argue. Second, argumentation ethics applies to any people capable of arguing, since it shows that anyone who tries to deny property rights through argumentation logically contradicts themself. So, if it applies to anyone capable of arguing, and we’re all capable of arguing, then it applies to all of us. 3. What’s that? Dropping the point about logic not being true? Yeah, that’s what I thought. 4. I do not need ownership of the entire body before being able to use the first-use first-own principal. Ownership over the entire body can be derived in a similar way that ownership over regular property is derived—such ownership is necessary for argumentation. Even though you don’t use your entire body for argumentation, you still must have control over it to argue, because that’s just the way bodies work—control is all or nothing. 5. Again, those are not examples of “people arguing their case without having property rights.” Even if someone is a slave, they still have a right to their own body, even if they don’t have the power to do what they want with it. Just because slave owners controlled slaves in practice does not mean they controlled them by right. So this doesn’t prove there’s no contradiction between arguing and not having property rights, it just shows that people can continue to argue while their rights are being violated, which is irrelevant. Hoppe’s point stands—people must use their physical bodies to argue, and so, by doing so, presuppose their rights to use their physical bodies. 6. I did not interpret your words too literally; you just communicated your idea poorly. And no, this still proves nothing. “Society” cannot strip people of their rights when it wants to, people can choose to forfeit their rights by violating the rights of others. There’s a big difference—property rights remain universal and absolute even if people can forfeit them. If someone commits a crime, it is not a property right violation to punish them, because they, in effect, consented to their punishment by failing to recognize the rights of others. A criminal cannot morally object to a punishment equal to that he exacted on his victim without logically contradicting himself. II. Homesteading 1a. ”Thus, he is saying that survival is good because it prerequisite for argumentation first and foremost.” No, he isn’t. Hoppe merely says that survival is a prerequisite for argumentation, which is obviously not the same thing as saying survival is “good” because it is a prerequisite for argumentation. 1b. “Cross-apply my above responses that he isn't arguing that denying argumentation ethics creates a contradiction,” Yes, he is. That’s what the whole argument is. 2a. No, it isn’t. Locke’s “mixing one’s labor” is, but first-use first-own is different. Fencing off 50 acres doesn’t count, because you aren’t using the acres inside the fence. Plowing the land counts, because you are using the land. Paying people to homestead makes it yours, because even though they’re homesteading the land, you can have a contract with them to hand it over to you. All have clear bright lines, and are not vague at all. 2b. It doesn’t matter that people don’t do all of the jobs they want done themselves. Homesteading isn’t the only way to acquire property, it’s just the way unowned property is appropriated. Once property is homesteaded, it can be given away, bought or sold, whatever. So even though I didn’t, say, homestead my own house, I can still own it, because someone homesteaded it originally, sold it to someone else, who sold it, and so on, until I buy it. 2c. This is completely irrelevant to anything about rights. He’s basically saying that my argument is wrong because it would cause something he doesn’t like. So what? That’s not a counterargument. 3a. See my response to his response. 3b. This doesn’t show that Hoppe’s argument is wrong. If current property holdings aren’t legitimate, then that doesn’t prove Hoppe wrong, it just means that injustice has occurred. Hoppe’s argument is one of justice—it says what is just or unjust, not what actually is or could be. III. "Because I need it..." 1a. Governments can allocate resources, obviously. My argument wasn’t that such distributions cannot occur, it was that they cannot occur by right. 1b. No, what I said was that this is correct if the rest of the argument is correct. I’m basically saying A implies B implies C implies D implies E (this point being E). Since I’ve shown A>B>C>D, this point follows. So, if I’ve proved the other parts, then it’s true too, and if I haven’t, then it doesn’t matter if this point is true because the argument is already wrong. 2. True, every part of argumentation ethics must be true for the whole to be true. But every part is true, so it’s fine. 3. Con can’t just assert that consequentialism overrides, as if that proves my argument wrong. The argument must be proven wrong first—you have to show that we don’t actually have property rights before you can override them, not just say they aren’t as important as someone’s survival. 4. Con misunderstands the point of argumentation ethics. The idea isn’t to maximize the amount of people that can engage in discourse, so it doesn’t matter if welfare rights would do this. IV. Restrictions on Rights 2. Ditto. V. Late-Comers 1. No, that is not what I did. It was a side point, one entirely irrelevant to Hoppe’s argument (try reading that paragraph without that part—the argument is still complete and makes sense, because it’s a side point, not actually part of the argument). My argument is one of rights, it doesn’t matter if Con shows that the consequences would be bad if society followed the private property ethic. Since Con completely dropped all of the arguments in this section, he has conceded them. ==Off Case== 1. Consequentialism A. Ditto B. Still not an argument. Con is just assuming positive consequences matter for moral questions (flexibility being the consequence in this case), and then saying that his system better meets that standard. This is obviously a ridiculous argument—he has to justify his point that morality is determined by the consequences of actions first. 2. Again, Con is just assuming that consequences matter. He’s failed to justify this, so his point is irrelevant. Furthermore, people still could help others in places that have humanitarian crises, they just couldn’t be forced to help.