Scott:

I don’t think you suggest a persuasive reason why one cannot make purely positive claims about property

Why not? If a statement P just is a normative claim, then doesn’t it follow that you can’t make “purely positive” (i.e., non-normative) claims about whether or not P is true? And isn’t it true the claim “S owns P” just is a claim about the rights that S has toward P (and thus what would constitute legitimate use, legitimate defense, thieving, etc. with regard to P)? And aren’t those normative claims? So doesn’t any theory which says anything about the truth-making conditions for claims of the form “S owns P” a claim that necessarily deals with normative considerations?

I said:

…treating government edicts as if they had unlimited authority to determine legitimate property rights is not conducive to libertarian politics.

Scott replied:

That may be true, but “treating government edicts as if they had unlimited authority to determine legitimate property rights” is conducive to acceptable legal argumentation. … The alternative is likely to get the judge to rule against you.

The second sentence only provides support for the first if the criterion of “acceptability” in legal argumentation is the argument’s ability to ensure that violence is not used against you, rather than the logical strength of the argument and the truth of the premises. But why should we accept that? How is that any different from a textbook example of the fallacious argumentum ad baculum?

Brandon:

I’m sympathetic to arguments about courts capriciously (or systematically) ignoring contracts, but this is a problem for everybody, not just for homosexuals.

Well, come on now; this isn’t “a problem for everybody” any more than, say, lynch law in the South was “a problem for everybody” rather than Blacks specifically (there are a few cases of white people being lynched in the 1920s and 1930s). It’s a problem for gay people specifically because partners in gay relationships are particularly vulnerable to having their express agreements arbitrarily disregarded by courts; they’re often treated in ways that straight couples would almost never be treated because they are gay. That there’s an “almost” in front of the “never” doesn’t really affect the point that this is a politicized class structure that needs serious attention.

Brandon:

And as a libertarian, I’m obviously not moved by claims that gay couples can’t force taxpayers, employers, or other private entities to give them various material benefits or “social respect.”

I certainly agree with you here, but oughtn’t we be more concerned about the fact that straight couples today are already forcing taxpayers, employers, and other private entities to give them various material benefits or “social respect”? I mean, why dick around about expansion to gay couples specifically when the issue is that nobody at all should have access to government marriage privileges?

Speaking of which, here’s Micha:

I think people here are focusing on abstract freedom to contract without giving enough attention to the transactions costs of contracts. Even if it were true that gays could get all the various contractual benefits a married couple currently enjoys by using a mishmash of contractual arrangements, it still would be a violation of their freedom to contract since they cannot enter into a boilerplate marriage contract that includes all of these benefits without prohibitive transaction costs.

Come on, Micha, this is frankly silly. If transaction costs were the only issue, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to draw up a fill-in-the-blanks bundle of lifetime-partner contracts and sell it or give it away to anyone who wanted it. But civil marriage is neither a contract nor a bundle of contracts; it’s a change in legal status and it confers a number of privileges and obligations that are not and could not be privately contracted. The issue here isn’t transaction costs; it’s that the State is using coercion to grant special privileges to straight couples through civil marriage. But of course the proper reply to that is not expanding, but rather dismantling, the coercive entitlement.

S.K.: “Do you know Tom DiLorenzo? I do. He has nothing to do w/ the bucktoothed yahoo type you must envisage. He is a cosmopolitan guy, and very intelligent and sincere, and not the type to pine for the plantation. So give it a rest. These continual character assassinations are of fellow libertarians are disgusting.”

Who’s “envisaging” anything? I cited some things that DiLorenzo wrote and said (1) that they seemed like indications of “a fetish for the Confederacy and its leaders, which sometimes overrides respect for documented historical fact” and (2) that “in addition to unthinking pro-Confederate apologetics, it may also serve as a good example of unthinking contrarianism as well”.

If you think that believing either (1) or (2) about someone requires you to believe that he or she is a “bucktoothed yahoo type” then you should probably think harder about it. The “Lost Cause” mythology has always been promoted primarily by well-spoken, articulate white Southerners, including politicians (among them Jeff Davis himself, in his memoirs), educators, and professional historians. Being articulate and well-spoken, however, does not have any bearing on whether what they say is true or false, nor on whether what they say indicates sincere engagement with the facts or dishonest fetishism.

So, let’s move on to the actual issue, which is what DiLorenzo said, not the ad hominem context of what virtues or vices you think DiLorenzo has as a person.

S.K.: “As I have almost no interest in the Confederacy issues, I have no opinion on DiLorenzo’s comments on Jeff Davis etc. I don’t know what it has to do with “Confederacy” worship.”

If you care so little about “Confederacy issues” that you haven’t bothered to form any opinion at all about DiLorenzo’s decision to single out Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee for praise then how in the world do you know that DiLorenzo (or anyone else writing for LewRockwell.com, other than yourself) is not engaging in dishonest fetishism for the Confederacy? You make strong claims that he isn’t, but it seems to me that if you haven’t bothered to look into these questions you shouldn’t have any rational basis for giving an answer.

That said, the connection is simple. DiLorenzo singled out two central figures of “Lost Cause” Confederate mythology for praise, in spite of the fact that they are opposed to libertarian political principles on every important point—from slavery to conscription to secession. He did so in spite of the fact that they had no apparent qualifications for the praise other than their leading roles in the Confederate government and the Confederate war machine. And in his writings there and elsewhere, he has told flat lies (e.g. that Lee willingly freed his father-in-law’s slaves when he actually kept them in slavery as long as he legally could) and omitted important truths (e.g. that Jeff Davis, not Abe Lincoln, pioneered national conscription in America) in order to make Confederate leaders look better than they actually were. Doesn’t that seem like pretty clear indication of a fetish for the Confederacy to you? If not, what would?

Since none of my remarks had anything at all to do with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, or DiLorenzo’s criticisms of Lincoln (which I mostly consider to be just and well-founded), the rest has been snipped without reply.

Oh, I should add that besides what clearly looks like indulging in Lost Cause fantasy, DiLorenzo’s posts also clearly indicate the supposed offense that his comments are giving to “liberventionist” bogey-men as one of the chief motives for putting out the claims that he put out. (“Cackling like a flock of hens,” &c.) So in addition to unthinking pro-Confederate apologetics, it may also serve as a good example of unthinking contrarianism as well.

Stephan: ‘Pro-Confederacy stuff? I’m not aware of much of this . . . Palmer’s libel of Lew Rockwell et al. notwithstanding, there is not “fetish” over the “Confederacy” at LewRockwell.com. Palmer insists on labeling those who oppose Lincoln’s war as neo-Confederate apologists for slavery.’

Stephan, what do you think about Tom DiLorenzo’s recent post on LRC blog, nominating pro-slavery, anti-secession statist warrior Robert E. Lee for the top of his list of “greatest Americans”? Or his decision to lie about Lee’s role in the emancipation of his father-in-law’s slaves? Or his follow-up suggestion of pro-slavery, pro-conscription, anti-secession Jeff Davis for the state of Mississippi? How about his repeated false claims that Lincoln “introduced” conscription in 1863, “for the first time ever”, as an “unprecedented coercive measure”, etc. without ever once mentioning that Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy implemented a national draft more than a year before the Union?

If these don’t seem like indications of a fetish for the Confederacy and its leaders, which sometimes overcomes respect for documented historical fact, on the part of a prolific author at LewRockwell.com, what do they seem like to you?

Kennedy:

“If you promise me $10 and then don’t deliver do I have any moral claim against you?”

Well, yes, obviously. That’s what promises are for: keeping.

There are lots of speech-acts that morally bind you to carry something through even though breaking them doesn’t count as a violation of anybody’s rights: not just making promises but also, e.g., swearing, taking oaths, exchanging vows, making alliances, etc. By giving your word you accept a moral obligation on yourself, and by breaking it you are doing wrong. If the moral obligation is an obligation directed towards somebody else (e.g. if you exchange a vow of sexual faithfulness with me, or if you promise me some gift) then by breaking it you are specifically wronging the other party.

Of course, it is only in the case of a contract that the sort of wrong you do is a violation of rights. But violating somebody’s rights is hardly the only way that you can do wrong by her.

Micha, replying to Scott:

So you are making a positive and not a normative claim?

Scott:

Yes.

The problem here is that you can’t make purely positive claims about property; to say that A owns P is to make a statement that involves normative claims about A, P, and what A can do with P. (“Owning” a piece of property just means having certain rights with respect to how it is used.)

For example, to say that the State has the right to transfer property rights in all the means of production, by fiat, to the Politburo, is to say that the State can (at will) give itself the right to do whatever it likes with the factories, mills, mines, etc.; that it will be within its rights to “recover” its new property from those holding it, using proportional violence if necessary; that anyone who resists the legally authorized grab by either passive resistance or violence will be trespassing or aggressing against State officials (and can rightly be punished for it); and that any successful effort to keep capital in private hands in spite of State efforts to “recover” it will in fact be organized theft and (since it disrupts the Politburo’s exercise of their newly-minted “property rights”), violent interference with the free market. These are all weighty normative claims that Scott’s theory seems to entail; apparently by State fiat innocents can be transformed into thieves and politically-connected brigands into peaceful property owners. I wonder if “for legal purposes, at least” they can make up into down, too.

If you make claims about how property rights are determined you’re making a normative claim, not a positive one. And treating government edicts as if they had unlimited authority to determine legitimate property rights is not conducive to libertarian politics.

My preferences come into the picture as the answer to your question: “If so, in what way are you actually opposed to state Communism?” I would prefer a different state of affairs. That would seem to clearly mark me as “opposed to state Communism.”

If you are only going to cite your preferences and not any further fact that gives the reasons for your preferences, then they mark you as “opposed to state Communism” in exactly the same sense in which my loathing for mustard on hot dogs marks me as “opposed to mustard on hot dogs” (and in which the tastes of those who like the foul stuff mark them as “supporting mustard on hot dogs”). But I wasn’t surveying your tastes; I was asking you what, if anything, is wrong with state Communism under the theory that you apparently use to justify intellectual property claims. So far I can’t find any answer.

There will be consequences I find undesirable.

Who cares what consequences you do or don’t find undesirable? It’s not your property to control anymore; it’s the Politburo’s, and they enjoy the consequences of state Communism quite a bit, thank you very much. Since it’s now their property and not yours to dispose of, it’s not at all clear to me where your preferences on the matter come into the picture.

Scott:

Yes, and, to the second question, since 1787 at the very least.

Let’s say the government does something completely unheard-of in world history, like, say, passing a law declaring that henceforward the government will be the rightful owner of all the means of production, and authorizes the use of force to seize the factories, mines, mills, farms, etc. It seems that on your theory, since the government said they now have property rights over all the means of production, they do own all the means of production; and the use of armed force to seize them is not plunder but rather using defensive force to recover what they own.

Is this actually entailed by your position?

If so, in what way are you actually opposed to state Communism?

If not, what’s the relevant difference that makes the government able to conjure property rights in your scenario but not in mine?