Theme: Decidability

ELI TRIES TO SCHOOL LIBERTARDS ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CIRCULARITY OF “SHOULD” VERSUS THE CORRESPONDENCE OF “IS”

> Clifton Knox

Hoppe’s argumentation ethic presented in formal logic.

1. Using reason and evidence to deny a proposition is a kind of argument.

2. Deny a necessary precondition or premise of an argument and you deny that argument.

3. Any argument that denies a necessary precondition of the activity of argumentation denies the basis of argumentation, and so contradicts itself.

4 The act of argumentation itself presupposes self-ownership.

Therefore, Any argument that denies self-ownership, contradicts itself.

> Ely Harman

—“4 The act of argumentation itself presupposes self-ownership.”—

Nope. A slave can argue. A child can argue, if it’s precocious. A woman can argue, if she’s in a particularly lucid state of mind. None of those are self-owners.

> Clifton Knox

I would say they are self owners. Even if some person has immorally compelled them to act in that other persons interests and against their own, they are still their own rightful owner. You always have the option of laying down and dying in the face of overwhelming force and nobody can do anything about it. Circumstantial reality does not change the ultimate facts of your ability to make the ultimate decisions regardless of outcomes.

> Ely Harman

You’re just trying to justify a preference for self-ownership. But “shoulds” don’t actually exist and you can’t just argue one into being. If you want to bring something about the only reliable way to bring it about, generally speaking, is to do all the things, and pay all the costs, that it logically implies. Sometimes you can con other people into paying the costs or doing the things for you, but even if you can that never lasts. And that’s all justificationary arguments ever are.

See my next comment below this one.

> Andrew Smith

Slaves still own themselves… They are being coerced, which violates their right to self ownership, but the slave owner doesn’t control the body of the slave, he coerces the mind of the slave. Also, slavery violates argumentation ethics, so it’s besides the point.

> Ely Harman

What you own is what you demonstrate willingness and ability to defend.

If slaves demonstrated willingness or ability to defend themselves, they wouldn’t be slaves.

Ergo, slaves don’t, in fact, own themselves.

> Ely Harman

Hoppe’s argumentation ethics actually set out to prove the non-aggression principle, not self ownership. The argument was non-aggression is a ground rule of argument. (If someone commits aggression it’s no longer an argument, but something else.) Therefore to attempt to justify aggression argumentatively involves a performative contradiction and is invalid.

His conclusion isn’t actually wrong. It’s just misleading. To attempt to justify ANYTHING argumentatively is invalid. It just ends up either being elaborate question begging (you have to assume the axioms so why not simply assume the conclusions? it’s exactly as valid…) or you run into the problem of induction if you’re trying to approach it that way.

Nothing can be justified.

Nothing needs to be justified.

Aggression doesn’t need to be justified.

Plenty of aggressors haven’t bothered trying to justify their aggression, and have gotten away with it; with something for their trouble.

> Andrew Smith

Self Ownership precedes (depends upon) the NAP, and property rights in things precedes self ownership. Self ownership doesn’t mean anything other than “you have a better claim to control your body than anyone else”.

I’d suggest Stephan Kinsella for more on this topic. He is the best teacher of it that I’ve found.

> Ely Harman

“In answer to the Argives, who were disputing with the Spartans in regard to the boundaries of their land and said that they had the better of the case, [Lysander] drew his sword and said, ‘He who is master of this talks best about boundaries of land.’”

> Clifton Knox

It does both. It requires cooperation that precludes violence but it is based on the idea of natural law and self ownership. Number 3 includes self ownership as a necessary precondition. Even Hoppe has made it clear that self ownership,is a necessary precondition.

There is no justification going on here. We could say nothing needs to be justified but we can also say everything needs to be justified.

Why does everything need to be justified? Let’s elaborate, “everything that you wish to be reciprocated” needs to be justified.

> Andrew Smith

Ely you’re literally ignoring the entire point of property rights and self ownership. It’s for a society attempting to avoid conflict, not one looking to provoke it. If you’re pro aggression and believe “to the Victor goes the spoils” is a moral position, then the only thing to do is fight, you’ve rejected argumentation ethics, property rights, self ownership and the NAP

> Ely Harman

The argument is if you assume the right axioms, they’re irrefutable. But a lot of them CAN be refuted. And even if not, you’re still wasting time and energy on something pointless.

> Thomas Cummings

You have to ASSUME the axioms (ie: circular argument).

People are not property. My body is not deeded or owned.

If you are interested in purchasing human bodies, check with your local human trafficker

Exactly, clif. No thank you. My body is not an item of property to begin with. Ownership thereof is moot

> Ely Harman

We can CHOOSE to cooperate or not cooperate or conflict. (According to our incentives.) I agree. If we want to cooperate, then some ground rules are necessary, starting with reciprocity. But not everyone wants to cooperate. And if they don’t, arguing at them about argumentation is worse than useless. If people aren’t going to cooperate, or if they aren’t worth cooperating with, extending them the benefit of cooperative norms is cost without benefit. And trying to justify the moral obligation to cooperate is still more cost without benefit.

> Andrew Smith

Ely who gets to determine who controls the coffee mug I’m drinking from?

> Ely Harman

If I’m Genghis Khan, I don’t care about your arguments. I drink from the coffee cups of 1000 men, right before I fuck their wives. Your arguments are meaningless to me. What are you gonna do now?

I’m a smart, economically savvy, productive Genghis Khan. I actually don’t have anything against mutually beneficial trade. I just insist that most of the benefit accrue to me, while you get to keep only enough to cover your costs plus a token surplus, greatly less generous than my cut. Otherwise we fight.

What are you gonna do now?

—–:CURT:———-

1) You cannot OWN anything without an insurer (violence) capable of insuring it against all *anticipatable* alternatives.

2) You can possess something in fact without an insurer (numbers).

3) You cannot possess a right of enforcement (property right) without an insurer.

4) Ownership consists of a normative and institutional contract (or demand) for the suppression of parasitism, and the insurance thereof.

5) Therefore ownership can only exist as a social and political construction, with ownership in fact and property ‘rights’ agreed to among the members of the society and polity.

This is why terms matter so much when making arguments. If your premises are false so will be your conclusions. The premise of self ownership is false. Your body possesses your mind, and your mind exerts control over your body. But whomever owns your body and your mind is determine by those who possess the force necessary to do so. It can’t be otherwise.

As Eli Says above:

—“non-aggression is a ground rule of argument. (If someone commits aggression it’s no longer an argument, but something else)”–

In other words by cooperating in argument rather than boycotting argument, and forgoing violence, you are demonstrating cooperation. There exist only three possible relations (avoidance, cooperation, conflict).

The problem is that people largely engage in falsehood in argument, so in that case are we cooperating, or are we in conflict at lower cost.

Hoppe is stating a TAUTOLOGY (a circular definition). So again, hoppe is stating a requirement (law) that is necessary in the construction of Law proper. It’s entirely circular. It’s a SHOULD argument not an IS argument.

Eli is showing that if you make an IS argument, (one that is externally correspondent, rather than only internally consistent) then you can only create a polity with liberty with violence, and economic necessity dictates that you can only produce sufficient violence to repel competitors with sufficient wealth, and you can only produce sufficient wealth with commons. And you can only produce commons if people cannot defect from payment for those commons in both service (fighting) and resources.

In other words, you can’t produce a libertarian polity that can survive market competition for territory with other polities, which is why there have never existed such polities except on the frontier of a state powerful enough to prohibit competitors to the territory, yet insufficient wealth to settle, police, govern, and provide infrastructure for it. hence why the only examples of antyng approaching a libertarian fantasy are borderlands of empires.

As such one only possesses liberty by permission of powers, who grant such liberties to excess population in exchange for the labor and investment of settlement of borderland territories.

in other words, all libertarianism is just another (((diasporic))) people’s fantasy of preserving (((pastoralism))) and a normative and cultural bias in favor of consumption rather than investment in the commons. So just as communism eliminates private property by wishful thinking, libertarianism eliminates required common property by wishful thinking.

The Militia produces sovereignty in fact, not liberty by permission for its members, if sufficient investment in commons and sufficient prevention of defection is produced.

Thus Endeth The Lesson.