# The morality of coercion **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 28, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730 "2014-03-28T02:05:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Bo\_Pai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@Bo\_Pai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bo_Pai)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/81 "2014-04-07T13:04:10Z")
Still talking about this? What will Libertarians do when the concrete world falls? Modern concrete only lasts about 50 years and we’ve been using it, almost exclusively, for just about 60. Some pretty big stuff’s going to start falling over. Not to mention homes. You’re going to need corporate Republicans to clean that up and Democrats to tax you because Republicans don’t work for free. The twin towers, with their nearly half a million cubic yards of the stuff, would have had to go whether they’d been knocked over, or not. The Pentagon - with its 400,000 cubic yards of concrete - was in the process of being completely rebuilt. Of course, the “good” news is that a lot was learned when the plane hit the new construction - we all saw the pictures, eh? So, what’s the Libertarian plan for this failed, 100 year old concrete experiment? Forget about your homes and offices falling down around your ears - forget about Roman roads, made of the real stuff, that are still intact after 2000 years - you have nuclear power plants made of this “new and improved” shit. What’s the “libertarian” plan for that? Politics - pfft - it’s like throwing a tantrum because the humidity messed up your hair, when you’re next in line to be waterboarded. Coercion, Libertarianism - _it does not matter_. Not only do you not get to make choices for anyone else, you don’t even get to know what choices they \*are \*making. Government, like coercion, accomplishes little more than driving the things people don’t want to see, _underground_. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/82 "2014-04-08T06:22:17Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Note that when Rand criticized libertarians, she called them “hippies” . . . Rand had a strong dislike toward men with facial hair, often calling them “hippies,” even if they were Objectivists. Apparently, most of the male Libertarians she knew had facial hair. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/83 "2014-04-08T12:35:59Z")
Libertarians, as seen by different people: [![](https://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/what-people-think-libertarians-do.jpg) ](https://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/what-people-think-libertarians-do.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/84 "2014-04-08T13:19:57Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > “Violence against property”? What a foolish notion. Can you also murder or rape property? > > I’m not surprised this is a tenet of libertarianism. But the rest of us don’t have to take it seriously. You own yourself. Violence against the person is violence against property. If you deny self-ownership, then that’s one thing. It’s another thing to neither understand, nor attempt to correct your ignorance of libertarian philosophy and keep spouting the same nonsense in every thread in which libertarianism is discussed. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/85 "2014-04-08T14:08:16Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Let me refer you back to the hypothetical I used in a previous post. How would your principles apply to my apple picking scenario? Suppose some people want to pick apples freely wherever they find them and other people want to reserve some apples for their own use based on property ownership. How do you resolve this dispute? > > My rule would be simple. We’d take a vote and let the majority set the rules for everyone. (I’d personally vote with the property owners.) > > But would libertarian principles come to the same result? Libertarianism generally respects private property as a natural right, much like the right to not be murdered or raped. Hence we would believe that people who own an apple orchard have the right to decide who can and can’t pick the apples in that orchard. But of course that doesn’t mean that anyone is banned from picking apples in a libertarian society. Anyone can grow apples on his or her own property and pick them. Anyone can pick apples on the property of a friend or relative who allows that person to pick them. Anyone can pay a business for the right to pick apples on the business’ property. It’s worth noting that in America or Canada, with our free market economies, there are copious opportunities to pick apples for everyone. Contrast that with centrally controlled economies. I doubt that ordinary Cubans or North Koreans have many opportunities to pick apples. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/86 "2014-04-08T22:07:27Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Libertarianism generally respects private property as a natural right, much like the right to not be murdered or raped. Hence we would believe that people who own an apple orchard have the right to decide who can and can’t pick the apples in that orchard. But of course that doesn’t mean that anyone is banned from picking apples in a libertarian society. Anyone can grow apples on his or her own property and pick them. Anyone can pick apples on the property of a friend or relative who allows that person to pick them. Anyone can pay a business for the right to pick apples on the business’ property. > > It’s worth noting that in America or Canada, with our free market economies, there are copious opportunities to pick apples for everyone. Contrast that with centrally controlled economies. I doubt that ordinary Cubans or North Koreans have many opportunities to pick apples. This has nothing to do with Canadians or Cubans or Americans or North Koreans. We’re talking about libertarians. Property ownership is just a rule. There’s nothing wrong with that. I believe in rules. My point is that libertarians have their own set of rules and they’re prepared to use coercion to enforce those rules - just like everyone else. So libertarians should stop claiming they’re somehow different than everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/87 "2014-04-08T22:11:00Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > You own yourself. Violence against the person is violence against property. If you deny self-ownership, then that’s one thing. It’s another thing to neither understand, nor attempt to correct your ignorance of libertarian philosophy and keep spouting the same nonsense in every thread in which libertarianism is discussed. Again, you end up re-defining everyday language to the point of unrecognizeability. We already have “crimes against persons.” We don’t need to create an intermediate interpretation of self-ownership and violence against property. Violence against persons is criminal. It’s like you found a cheese grater somewhere, and now everything you cook has to be grated first. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/88 "2014-04-09T11:53:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > We already have “crimes against persons.” We don’t need to create an intermediate interpretation of self-ownership and violence against property. Violence against persons is criminal. > > It’s like you found a cheese grater somewhere, and now everything you cook has to be grated first. No (in the opinion of hyperlibertarians), the _centrality of property rights_ means we should _define ownership of person_(s), as the shortcut to imagine and define human rights. Note that to be perfectly free, a person (say, Mr. X) _must be at liberty to sell himself_ (e.g., all of his services 24/7, knowing that it would be uneconomical of purchaser to quickly work X to death). IANAL, and don’t know what Amendments, if any, would be needed for courts to enforce the enslaving rights of Mr. X’s co-covenantor and purchaser. IANA Political Theorist, and don’t know how Libertarians would award real-estate ownership “initially.” They and fellow travelers often allege that, if restarted via anarchic revolution, confiscations and/or hyperinflation, or crackpot communist schemes, then the real estate and other wealth would soon be distributed as “_To Each according to His/Her Abilities_.” IANA Historian, but I think England’s real estate is divvied up via a long set of legal documents (transfer deeds) stemming from awards by William the Bastard circa 1066-1079. I say “let bygones be bygones” and am happy to let such old deeds be “grandfathered in.” (The Bastard himself grandfathered in many Anglo-Saxon claims.) Where I live, over just the last century, land has been acquired based on the “range of rifle-shot” rule. IANA Socio-economist, but the selective conversions of Squatterships (i.e. squatter payment receipts) into Land Deeds is a major political issue in many developing countries, including Thailand. It might be interesting for SDMB experts in this thread to prescribe solution for where I live! By law, the King of Siam owns many classes of land in Thailand, including forests, hills and beaches. Hills and beaches have natural protections, but many millions of acres in Thailand were converted from unowned forest to squatted-on “degraded forest” a half-century ago by illegal (but largely unprosecuted) burning and logging! Much of rural Thailand is now a mosaic with four different classes of land ownership! (a) full deeds, (b) deeds with sale and mortgage restrictions, (c) surveyed homesteads, owner must farm, can be mortgaged at government bank, or transferred to someone of same surname, (d) squatting tax receipts. In our area, both deeds and squatting-lands trace back several decades to a WildWest-like era. Which villages have the higher-class deeds is generally a relic of political influence. My own house is built on deedless land. If a hypothetical Thai Parliament were controlled by Libertarians, what would be their plan to normalize rural land ownership? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/89 "2014-04-09T16:17:27Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > No (in the opinion of hyperlibertarians), the _centrality of property rights_ means we should _define ownership of person_(s), as the shortcut to imagine and define human rights. Note that to be perfectly free, a person (say, Mr. X) _must be at liberty to sell himself_ (e.g., all of his services 24/7, knowing that it would be uneconomical of purchaser to quickly work X to death). But it still calls into question what the fundamental principles of libertarianism are. Defining yourself as your own property and saying you derive rights from that only works if you accept the principle of property ownership being the source of rights. And that’s something which several libertarians are denying. It also avoids leads to other problems. Does a wild animal own itself in the same sense that a person owns himself? Does a tree or a rock or a lake? These are all items which can be owned as property in a traditional system. But if you claim that property has a right to own itself then you’re saying you can’t just go and buy a piece of property from another person. You have to first establish that the property surrendered its own self-ownership, which I can’t imagine you doing for anything other than a person. So we have to accept that people own themselves in a different way than other things own themselves. A tree or a cow doesn’t own itself and you don’t have to negotiate with the tree or the cow to acquire ownership of them. This may seem like a trivial point but it’s actually quite important. Because if you create a division between things which have self-ownership and things which don’t, you then have to draw the line between these two groups. And that brings us back to the issue of slavery: slave owners simply put Africans on the other side of the line and declared that white people had a right to own themselves but black people did not. They were like trees or cattle - they could be property with no ownership in themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/90 "2014-04-09T20:56:19Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > No (in the opinion of hyperlibertarians), the _centrality of property rights_ means we should _define ownership of person_(s), as the shortcut to imagine and define human rights. Note that to be perfectly free, a person (say, Mr. X) _must be at liberty to sell himself_ (e.g., all of his services 24/7, knowing that it would be uneconomical of purchaser to quickly work X to death). Whew! I’ve never met any Libertarian who espoused the right of a person to sell himself into slavery! Most Libertarians I’ve met believe in “natural law” and hold that our rights are inalienable. Their view is that it is impossible for me to sell myself into slavery, because I am, by nature, always free. I’m not saying that there aren’t any who hold this interpretation…just that this is a new one to me! > [@](#): > > IANA Political Theorist, and don’t know how Libertarians would award real-estate ownership “initially.” They and fellow travelers often allege that, if restarted via anarchic revolution, confiscations and/or hyperinflation, or crackpot communist schemes, then the real estate and other wealth would soon be distributed as “_To Each according to His/Her Abilities_.” Either a redistribution or a ratification of the status quo; I can’t think of a third way around it. Fidel Castro broke up the big plantations; there are actually people around, today, holding on to land deeds, claiming that they are the rightful owners of those vast holdings, and fantasizing that, when Castro’s communism falls, they will be able to move back and take possession. Doesn’t seem very likely to most of us… The American Indians are just about the only documentable case of people moving in to land no other humans had possession and occupancy of. And, once they got settled in a region…they had wars of aggression just as greedy as any European war. “The Mayans hate the Toltecs and the Toltecs hate the Olmecs. And everybody hates the Incas…” ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730/91 "2014-04-10T11:32:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Whew! I’ve never met any Libertarian who espoused the right of a person to sell himself into slavery! Most Libertarians I’ve met believe in “natural law” and hold that our rights are inalienable. Their view is that it is impossible for me to sell myself into slavery, because I am, by nature, always free. > > I’m not saying that there aren’t any who hold this interpretation…just that this is a new one to me! I’d like to hear from real-life Libertarians where they draw the line. Surely they would allow me to contract my services for less than any minimum wage, and for more than 40 hours/week. Surely, for consideration received, I might commit to a year’s employment, or five year’s. Given the arguments that Libertarians make on these boards, surely they couldn’t object to contracted voluntary servitude. Is it just the word “slavery” that is objectionable? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-coercion/684730.md?page=4)