I do not object to State action that protects people from direct physical harm. Blasting music at 2 AM does directly interfere with my ability to get a healthy night’s sleep. This is not the case where my neighbor is quietly smoking pot in his basement at 2 AM.
Sorry for turning toward an example from a work of fiction, but I cannot think off of a real life example of a private individual demanding of a court the right to cut off someone’s flesh.
What is so “bastardized” about my libertarianism? Would you like my position better if it were “purer?”
Digital Stimulus and Hamster King
I personally value my limbs far more so than my TV, but that is just me. Other people are free to feel differently. The point here is a matter of legal principle. Property rights evolved out of and have historically always been linked to rights of the body.
Fortunately in the real world the law does not accept the principle that cutting off one’s limbs and theft of chattels are legally or morally equivalent.
The valid comparison with blasting music at 2 a.m. is blasting music at 2 p.m. You seem to oppose government action agaisnt the latter, but not the former. In other words, you support the government determining when it is appropriate to sleep, and when it is appropriate to party.
Your libertarianism is bastardized because of its fetishization of property and property rights, and its refusal to contemplate the means by which the initial property allocation was determined. I’d respect your position a lot more if it was anarcho-libertarianism.
In principle I have no problem with the government trying to stop people from making noise at 2 PM, particularly such as when the Supreme Court ruled that candidates for office do not have the right to drive through residential neighborhoods blasting their message on a megaphone. I simply recognize that the government has a much stronger case and can put up far more restrictions on noise made at 2 AM.
I take property very seriously because without it we could not have a meaningful conversation about liberty. I am not very free if the government can confiscate my property and leave me “free” to sleep under a bridge. What would you consider to be an acceptable level of respect for property? Last I checked the government either has the right to confiscate property as it pleases or it does not. What about the origins of property am I failing to consider? I recognize that property rights require government, which is why I accept the institution of government as a protector of private property. Furthermore I recognize that if we go far back enough in history basically every piece of property was acquired under questionable means. That being said, every person should have the right to hold on to the land in their possession until someone can prove something against them. Possession is nine tenths of the law.
It doesn’t matter how you got this, we’ll use the full force of the state to defend your right to use it as you wish, even if other people lie starving in the street as a result.
And you wonder why people find it hard to take libertarianism seriously. I’ll give you a clue - it’s the libertarians.
You are completely missing the point about noise control. You find noise control acceptable at 2 a.m. because you believe the government can stop one person infringing on anothers rights - the sole legitimate purpose of government for you. But you don’t, in practice, want the government to enforce the same restrictions at 2 p.m. Why not? Because you are willing to delegate the role of determining when being quiet is right, and when being noisy is acceptable, to the government. Somewhat different from the role of stopping one person infringing on the rights of another, n’est-ce pas?
And saying “the government either has the right to confiscate property as it pleases or it does not” is meaningless. It’s ignoring the whole realm of things that “does not have the right to confiscate as it pleases” covers. From fetishization of property, as you hold, to “government has right to confiscate property under a series of rules determined as fair by the populace.” If you accept ANY role for government, and you do, then you accept there are limits to your own property rights. There will need to be some form of taxation, some form of confiscation of property to have any form of government.
I mentioned in the first paragraph what you aren’t considering about the acquisition of property. You accept the current distribution occured through unfair means, yet you claim it is somehow right to enforce the current distribution. Even Nozick wasn’t that pigheaded.
The only reason you have to assume that someone might starve to death is if you decide to not feed him. If you let someone starve to death rather than feed him then that is your free choice and upon your head. Do not turn around and blame libertarians. Your way of doing things automatically will result in you putting a gun to someone’s head and taking their money. What gives you the moral right to do that?
Make the case that people are being physically harmed by noise at 2 PM and I will accept government action. It is certainly possible, but it would require something pretty extreme, beyond me playing my music loudly. Why are you talking about something as amorphous as “rights?” Thanks to modern liberalism this term is no longer meaningful. I talk about protection against physical harm; in essence life, liberty and property.
Since when did Locke and the Constitution’s right to property become except when the public thinks it is fair to take some? Does the right to free speech only apply when it does not offend the public? The whole point of having rights is to protect people from what the “public” thinks is right. I don’t fetishize property; I fetishize laws and the social contract as the things that will keep me from being murdered.
I accept taxation and the coercive force that comes with it only in those situations which lead ultimately to les coercion and physical harm. For example having police on the street.
I do not enforce the current distribution of property. As a believer in a law based society I simply accept that possession is nine tenths of the law and will not endorse any mechanism to redistribute property outside of any legal framework. The damage to society by empowering the government to operate outside a legal framework outweighs any historical injustice that one might conceivably rectify.