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

I. Self Ownership 1. I don’t really understand Con’s point here. The “warrant” (which apparently means ‘reason that the claim is true’, for those that aren’t familiar with debate jargon) is the whole argument, which shows that one cannot deny argumentation ethics without logically contradicting oneself. 2. The universality of argumentation ethics derives from the universality of argumentation. Anyone capable of argumentation cannot deny argumentation ethics without contradiction. So as far as argumentation is universal (not animals, for example), argumentation ethics is. 3. I don’t need a justification for my claim that logical contradiction implies falsehood, because that’s just what logical contradiction means. And while I’m pretty sure Daoism teaches the complementary nature of opposites, which is different from truth in logical contradiction, it wouldn’t matter if some religion did teach that logical contradictions can be true—FREEDO believes such nonsense, but I doubt anyone would accept that as evidence for Con’s claim. 4. It doesn’t matter that one’s entire body isn’t used for argumentation. We can still acquire ownership of it the same way we acquire ownership of things outside our bodies—by the first-use first-own principal. 5. Hoppe’s argument is not that we all have the power of self-ownership. Obviously, people’s rights to their bodies and property are violated all the time, as in Con’s slavery example. His argument is that everyone has the right to self-ownership—it is a moral argument, not one about how the world actually is. Saying that that right is often violated proves nothing, except that the world is often an immoral place. 6. Contrary to Con’s claims, Hoppe says nothing about overriding the right to self-ownership for “society’s good.” Criminals may be imprisoned because they forfeited their rights by violating the rights of others. There’s more on why exactly that is here [1], if anyone’s interested (note that the information in that link isn’t part of the debate, it’s just interesting). II. Homesteading 1. Again, Con misrepresents Hoppe’s argument. His point is not that survival is “good,” or that it is a better consequence than death, but that survival is necessary for argumentation. This is not accepting the consequentialist framework at all—it’s an extension of his point that denying argumentation ethics entails a contradiction. 2. There is, in fact, a bright line we can determine property rights by. As I said in Round 1, homesteading is done by the first-use first-own principal. If you use a plot of land first, you own it. Simple. 3. First, see 1. for why Hoppe’s argument does not assume consequentialism. Second, it doesn’t matter that we often pay other people to do things like build our homes. The first-come rule is how people HOMESTEAD property, not the only way one can acquire property. Once property is homesteaded, it can be traded away in exchange for money or goods, because once someone owns property they can, by definition, do anything they want with it that doesn’t violate the rights of others (“Anything that’s peaceful”). III. “Because I need it..” 1. Any definition of property rights without a particular link between a person and a particular piece of property would be incoherent. What could the right to exclusively control a vague, undefined piece of property possibly mean? Such a criterion for property rights would be incompatible with the rest of Hoppe’s argument, and if that is correct, then need-based property rights must be invalid. 2. Why would you create a separate point for this? IV. Restrictions on Rights 1. A self-imposed limit on homesteading simply means not homesteading as much property as you possibly could. Obviously, failing to acquire as much property as you can doesn’t contradict self-governance. 2. Again, no it doesn’t. See II. 1. 3. No social contract has ever actually been made, so this point is irrelevant. Even if people did voluntarily get together to set up a social contract creating a government, that wouldn’t prove Hoppe wrong. He argues that property rights exist—not that people can’t cede these rights if they want to. If people chose to create a social contract, it wouldn’t be a rights violation. V. Survival and Late-Comers 1+2. Con here conveniently ignores almost all of my argument here. The part he disputes is in no way necessary to my argument about late-comers—see the last paragraph of my Round 1 for what my argument actually was. ==Off Case== 1. Consequentialism A. Again, this isn’t true. See II. 1. B. Saying a consequentialist society would have better consequences than a society based on a rights-based ethic isn’t really an argument. 2. Here, Con fails to understand the meaning of the word ‘aggression.’ It is the initiation of force, not any force at all. Non-aggression means not using violence against innocent people—it says nothing about using violence against criminals, which, as I said before, is permissible within the private property ethic. [1] http://mises.org...