The Debunk: The Non-Aggression Principle ft. Ben Burgis (TMBS 85) 

Man went to the Dave Smith podcast and half the comments are snowflake libertarians crying about ben's breathing. They have nothing.

@@p.chuckmoralesesquire3965 the comment section was so bad lol

Under communism we will finally be able to clear Ben’s sinuses✊

@ThisIsMyRealName probably just needs a turbinectomy.

I believe he is on the phone.

@ThisIsMyRealName I'm pretty sure he could afford a mic lol.

> _Ayn Rand stated that Native American's didn't have any claims to property because they didn't have an understanding of property rights._ I wonder if she ever made the argument that infanticide is justified because infants don't have an understanding of the right to life.

I don't think Libertarians understand what coercion is.

@@Ronni3no2 she might actually make that argument, lol. She was pro-choice and an atheist. Paul Ryan had to disavow her beliefs and reaffirm his beliefs in Catholicism, even though he has cited her as his inspiration.

@@lukesenesac they only seem to understand as physical violence. Ask them about the Rothbardian ideas on child consent, lol.

@@andrewgreen5574 I just looked that up. Holy shit!

"Being a libertarian in 2019 is like being a crack-head anytime after 1994 - who still does that shit? It's gotten SOOO much bad press" - Chapo Trap House Guest

I don't know where you're pulling this from. No rational person cares about using force against property. The correct statement is that the use of force is the only way property is maintained and that the NAP is completely contradictory.

@@wesleystreet How is property maintained ONLY by the use of force? A sale of a house is not force where both parties mutually benefit.

@@twoshedsjohnson8540 Because if there was no force you could never sell the house. Why would I pay you for an empty house if I can just move in? Why would I pay you for a house that already has someone living in it? > _We say you can't use force against ME or violate my property rights_ And rapists say you can't use force against them or violate their right to rape. You see, that's a logically inconsistent position for obvious reasons, moral issues aside.

@@Ronni3no2 Your comment is so retarded I need to comment despite the age of it. To say that the NAP is logically inconsistent "because a rapist will say you're violating their 'right to rape' " shows no grasp of what is being argued, nor what the NAP is. No one has any right to initiate violence, which is what RAPE is -- the initiation of violence (sexual assault) against the will of another. It is a violation of the NAP to rape someone (also stealing and murder, among other things).

You are missing the point. Property presupposes coercion and violence. The question is what property is legitimate and, thereforey what coercion is. The point is that the difference between libertarians and non libertarians is not the question of force or violence, but of what legitimate property is.

You mean the ubiquitous rules that has been applied for centuries by the English common law of property, tort, and criminal law? So, you, your family and your associates do not live while respecting other peoples' bodies, money, homes, cars, bank accounts, clean air as their own and which you know you cannot rape, steal or pollute? Really?

@@BRod313 See, that's exactly what I meant: The only reason why the NAP is such a favorite among Libertarians is its strong intuitive moral appeal. Whereas on logical (in this case conflating the proposal and the prerequisites/enforcability of the concept and committing the apex fallacy by extrapolating to the general case) and empirical (based on all available historical, biological, psychological and sociological data) grounds it simply doesn't have a leg to stand on.

> _ubiquitous_ > _centuries of English common law_ lol

@@robertfranks8047 Grow up dude

Refugees cross the border and camp out on your farm (next to a "no trespassing" sign). You ask them to leave, they don't, and you have them forcibly removed. Regardless of what turns out to be justice in such a situation, imo you should see that a qualitative difference in actions exists here. Similarly, if our government increases Jeff Bezos' maximum tax rate by 60%, that's a qualitatively different appropriation of property than stealing objects from his home. Shouldn't similarities and differences be taken into consideration in these kinds of ethical problems? Imo one big reason we tend to equate these kinds of property scenarios is because we've been indoctrinated to do so - not because they are actually equivalent.

Weird! Here’s the Amazon link: www.amazon.com/Give-Them-Argument-Logic-Left/dp/1789042100/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=32N7AWD4KO4WS&keywords=give+them+an+argument+logic+for+the+left&qid=1554955337&s=gateway&sprefix=give+them+an+argument+l&sr=8-1

It's not released yet, but you can pre-order from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

You are seriously better off just taking some free online course on logic or philosophy, this guy is massively overrated by MR and tmbs for some reason.

@@BenBurgisGTAA Wow. for some reason I never got the notification for your response. Thanks so much , Ben. Love your work, appreciate what you do at Zero Books, and look forward to reading your book alot!

Amazon ew

Really. People should be allowed to smash your kneecap with a brick any time they feel like it. And eat your little dog too. Such dumb rules we have.

@@BRod313 yeah, those are just laws which hold anyone accountable should they break them. the notion that people won't actuate harm onto others based entirely on "principle" is asinine

@@oolacilesbotnet6564 "shouldn't" not "won't". Pay attention before commenting

Robert W. Roddis, Esq. lol you bing dingus

Not trying to derail your point, which I think is solid, but apparently going shroom hunting in cow pastures is pretty common in florida according my sister in law who just moved there. We went down there and holy hellscape, the fundamentalist Trump supporting maniacs made me fear for my life.

Tiger Style Apistevist all property, including collective property, allows someone to exclude someone else. Exclusion can mean “go away” if the excluded are cooperative, but uncooperative people exists also, and some other solution will be called for.

"But yes, private property can only exist with the threat of violence backing it. Otherwise it loses all meaning. " It's not the threat of violence, but the threat of consequences for violating my property rights. Consequences are enacted from our legal system that exists to protect our property rights.

@@twoshedsjohnson8540 > _Consequences are enacted from our legal system that exists to protect our property rights._ So? Are they nonviolent just because they are a part of a legal system?

@@Ronni3no2 They're laws...you got a problem with laws? And you're playing semantics with the word "violence". Sure, if you want to call punishment for crimes committed as "violence", then yes the legal system enacts violence against criminal behavior.

I think "A Knight's Tale" inadvertently had the most coherent statement about the acquisition of property in pop culture this century. Roland (Mark Addy): What's your name? Will (Heath Ledger): Roland... Roland: It's not Sir William, it's not Lord William, it certainly isn't King William. You have to be of noble birth to compete! Will: But how did they become noble? How did they get those titles? How did they get their land? They took it.

@@wvu05 I think the implication there is supposed to be that they took it from some other people who owned it previously. It assumes property rights in order to criticize certain instances of acquisition.

@@Anthropomorphic You may be right. I just rewatched it recently, and it reminded me of a conversation with one of those individual sovereignty people about what it really means to legally own property.

Actions can contradict words so rather than attacking me or threatening me you're using the NAP because instead you used logic and reasoning to gain an advantage. Not only that but in an argument you need a body which you are recognizing as my property because you're not using force/threat's against it. Not only that but another prerequisite to arguing is food. You must have food for your body before you eat and in order to give things out equally you must debate first so technically before you allocate things fairly you already have property rights. Also any argument you use against me would just prove my point forward

@@sirdynos5646 Want to debate on discord then? Let's see you defend your evil principle.

@@sirdynos5646 Add me, Comrade Muneer#2492.

I agree So he is ok with violence to get people's income which he didn't earn,

@@karchhinckley532 You'd be surprised to find that after a month, he/she still hasn't added me yet.

H and why exactly he should waste his time on you???

Its called obesity. usually people who cant even take care of themselves, think that they should be able to take care of the world.

You apparently have read nothing. Ever. tinyurl.com/y4gy5fv9

Also, Occam's Razor. Everything that I used to believe as a libertarian is complicated, conspiratorial bullshit. Looking at some of these comments, I suppose that hasn't changed.

@@robertfranks8047 You mean like taking coals to Newcastle? But they've already got some, silly!

Yes! Michael Perelman's Invention of Capitalism is great on this topic, also gives some interesting insight on British history.

@@robertfranks8047 It's not a philosophy, it's a process that was implemented by Governments at the behest of classical economists(capitalists) in western Europe in the period that Western Europe transitioned from a feudalist society to an industrial one. Whether it aligns with your philosophy that capitalism was a natural progression of human society doesn't change the fact that it's a fact. Remember facts don't care about your feelings.

Exactly. Or if somebody’s property earns them a living (ie farm land) it is perfectly justifiable to use aggression to repel or prevent destruction of your property.

That’s hilarious. And Ben was wrong about that point. But he was correct about the other point.

So if you want to defend your property, it's self defence, but if the Native Americans want to defend their property, it's violence. How convenient.

@@WhatThisClassNeeds where did I make such a race-based distinction?

@@hagoryopi2101 At SawCon.

@@WhatThisClassNeeds Native Americans claim land that they've done nothing with, not transformed in anyway, so yeah 99.99999% of the land they lay claim to is illegitimate

No, you see, organised political action on the left is aggression. /s

@@exsilencio Not too far off from libertarian thinking. I remember seeing a Ron Paul book talking about the biggest threats to "freedom," and he included both anti-trust laws and the Wagner Act. So, when someone wants to compile everything and gouge the rest of us, it's "freedom," but when workers want to get better pay, it's oppressive. Either rich or tools of the rich is the American right in a nutshell.

@@sirdynos5646 A lot of small government people had no problem with machine guns to break up strikes. I didn't hear too many libertarians saying that was wrong.

@@sirdynos5646 Show me anyone who talks about the nonaggression principle anywhere who has defended workers who are getting shot for going on strike. Anywhere.

@@sirdynos5646 You thought so when showing zero evidence? Just because you think drugs should be legal doesn't mean that you should do them before you try to make a coherent argument. Show me anyone anywhere who claims to support the non-aggression principle who has applied that to support workers on strike. PS I never said that Ron Paul was, so what is your point?

Wait. The only terms you would agree to are ones where you get everything you want and you aren't willing to discuss anything, but he is in the wrong?

@@jillymiller7590 We couldn't discuss anything because he insisted I accept his premises and vice versa. Their is an incumbency of wealth in this nation that has been garnered by ill gotten means. Until that is rectified I cannot agree to his terms of property rights.

@@TheNaqoyqatZ you can't agree on what property rights are unless you have shifted around resources in society to your preference?

Correct. Stay mad.

ohy my god

You mean you lay still forever, as in dead? Yep. Thats what happens when you abolish private property rights. Happened in the USSR, especially Ukraine, happened in Mao's China, in Somalia under communist rule, and now in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

@@SaulOhio Yeah but that only happened to LANDLORDS. That wasn't a great loss to society.

@@wesleystreet What do you mean it only happened to landlords? I am talking about widespread FAMINES. And people freezing to death in Siberian Gulags. And murders of political opponents, even if they are other communists. And anyone who opposes the regime. And anybody whose faces the rulers don't like.

Of course like with all of this philosophising there are very obvious flaws but it seems to me better to start from more freedom of choice than less. It's better to start from white than red if you get my drift hahahah

Yeah. I literally had an ancap try to say blackmail was a just business practice

English common law rules of property, torts and criminal law would apply, numbnuts. Why expose to the world that you know nothing of the subject matter?

@Z'Q How is it possible to have slavery when the initiation of violence is strictly and rigorously prohibited and where the rule would be applied rigorously in favor of the poor and powerless?

@@BRod313 How does help to revive somebody poisoned due to bad food or medicines?

@Lucas Correa If only that were true. I know some rich kids from a rich school. Trust me, thorough bred ancaps. :(

Your position ONLY holds if you conflate voluntary association with coercion. These are the basis by which business and the state, respectively, conduct interactions with individuals. The dishonesty of equating an explicit threat of violence for extracting property (taxes) with the voluntary agreement of property use (rent) is ridiculous. You are not entitled to anything except to not be aggressed upon. In other words, you get to be left alone. You are not obligated to a home or place to stay, you earn this privilege through voluntary association. You pay rent because someone offered you a condition better than living on the streets. Gripe all you want, but that does not make it a violent imposition.

@@AnCap217 The dishonesty is entirely your own. Pretending that business does not coerce is the height of disingenuity. It is typical, however, of Libertarians, who worship at the altar of business. If I told you that a man could be banished from his country for speaking ill of an allied government, would you call it repression? I know of no such instance. How about if I told you that a man could lose his job at a company that is a Microsoft customer because he spoke ill of Microsoft? This is common practice, written into Microsoft's customer contracts. Furthermore, corporations are fully capable of violent coercion, as exemplified by Columbian anti-union death squads. Succinctly, oh he who cannot tell his own name, you and your fellow Libertarians are, in the immortal words of Rush Limbaugh, JUST PLAIN WRONG.

Jeff Mullen This is poor argument structure on many levels. First, the ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ tactic is sophomoric at best. I made specific reasoning as to WHY you were dishonest in your initial presentation and yet you make no attempt to exemplify my alleged dishonesty. Poor form. Second, even after I addressed your conflation of initiated aggression with voluntary association, you once again formulate what I can only infer is an attempt at an argument (as questions are not arguments) under the same premise. A person being kidnapped and removed from their location is an act of aggression initiated by individuals calling themselves “government” in an attempt to legitimize such antisocial behavior. The Microsoft example you gave is under voluntary conditions. This is exemplified by your own use of the word “contract”. If the terms of the contract are breached then is it completely appropriate to end association with an individual. That you conflate these two antithetical relationships is poor form, once again. Third, your inquiry into individual expulsion or excommunication by a state is irrelevant. I do not need to sight knowledge of specific examples of this as it has no bearing on the legitimacy of my position (which you have yet to counter properly). Governments DO disappear, cage and execute dissidents. A North Korean faces unimaginable repercussions if they were to publicly speak of the ills of their government while praising South Korea. There were gulags, internment camps, drone striking of citizens, etc. Poor form Fourth, your final point is a non-sequitur, as is most of you positions I assume. Columbia is a Narco-State with unquestionable levels of corruption in and out of the government. The fact that a group acts in violence against another group in no way exemplifies the act of engaging in business. In fact, to do so negate the very conditions of business action...that being offering a product or service in a voluntary manner. Conflating mafia-like behavior with this is DISHONESTY. And...poor form.

@@AnCap217 First, "I''m rubber you're glue" is quite an egotistical way to describe being called out as a liar and a hypocrite. I wish that I could say that it surprised me coming from a Libertarian. My reasoning is every bit as specific as your own. Just because you do not share my values does not make yours superior. In fact, I would argue--am arguing--that yours are delusional. My argument that you claimed was not an argument showed an example of your failure. I further explain it, and why I don't buy your pitiful attempt at a counter-argument for a moment and never will. Second, my argument (your semantic disingenuity aside) is valid whether you recognize it or not. There is no choice where you say there is--or at least very little. This situation is NOT voluntary. Just as there is no real choice in signing those bully agreements with Microsoft--you conform or, to use the terms a Libertaritard used on me, the guy with The Badge and The Suit shows up and kicks me out--there is no choice in either signing the bully agreement (the guy with the suit would be waiting) or in neglecting to live up to it. And if you want to talk about ridiculous, you should start with the notion that the only reason one does not pay one's rent is because one chooses not to. Your Libertaritard colors show in your inability to understand this. Third, you--in typical Libertaritard fashion--failed to abstract the information from the data that I gave. The point is that you can be expelled from a business just as you can from a country--and banishment need not be by the violent means that you describe, just as expulsion from a company need not be non-violent. You completely failed to understand the content that is right in front of you. Fourth, this is another example of the way that Libertaritards worship at the altar of business. It is similar to the word game that some Christians play: Christian: God can do no wrong, so, if anything goes wrong, it's not God's fault. Libertarian: Business can do no wrong, so, if anything goes wrong, it's not Business's fault. And you call ME dishonest? No, Libertaritard. Businesses CAN AND DO break the law in the worst ways, just like governments. Their poop DOES stink, and so does yours. That you pretend otherwise only serves to show all the more how divorced from reality your neurotic religion is. When a business breaks the law, it's still a business. This is what I alluded to in when I EXEMPLIFIED YOUR DISHONESTY (DIRECTLY disproving your claim to the contrary) by showing another choice that is not a choice. And you actually have the gall to try to claim that it is a realistic choice to lose one's job rather than allow one's right of free speech to be oppressed! WHAT A JERK!!! Conflating the two is NOT poor form, it's UNDERSTANDING THE REAL WORLD. You should try it sometime.

I'm sorry. It wasn't "the suit," it was "the costume."

Your argument presupposes that land which is not claimed is under no ownership. However, if the world is a common treasury, we can as easily assume that it is commonly owned and any establishment of private property by right of force without the consent of all people is therefore akin to theft. In history private property was much more often established by conquest and violence than by mutual agreement. It also is not clear why a person should be bound by the contracts and agreements of previous generations. The problem with libertarians is that in order for them to legitimize current property relations, they must fall back to abstract Gedankenexperimente, since the actual manner in which property relations where established historically completly undermines their point. The history of capitalism is the history of the expansion of the state, it is the history of expropriation. An argument for capitalism and the upholding of current property relations must therefore be argued for from a utilitarian perspective, which itself undermines the core principles of libertarianism.

If it's not legitimately owned land then whoever is the first to homestead that land would rightfully own it, not an outside gang that calls themselves a "court".

You missed the point completley. Property presupposes coercion. The question is what property is justified and, therefore, what coercion

"Libertarians would imprison someone for property violations when that property was gained through a mutually consensual way" Libertarians do not support prisons or kidnapping people for any reason, you've only got a right to associate or dissociate with whomever you choose to. You cannot make a moral argument for prison since that requires statism

But they do have a big problem with workers in existing businesses having control of their means of production, which is really all that's relevant. It's no great benefit to me that I am able to form my own grocery chain that is owned exclusively by its employees when simultaneously the Walton family is able to maintain ownership of billions and billions of dollars worth of those means of production and billions more in cash and assets earned off the back of laborers who didn't have control of those means. "It is wrong that workers do not own the means of production" (as Ben argues) is not remedied by saying "while billionaires continue to own the means of production and exploit laborers for profit you will be able to start your own business and give ownership (or not!) to your employees as you see fit".

Property rights ARE human rights. You violate human rights every time you violate property.

@@SaulOhio No, they are not and your language reveals your nonsense ("property right" and "violate property"). Property has no rights and cannot be "violated". Any imaginary "right" that rests upon violation of human rights is not a human right. For example, the right to own slaves is not a human right and liberating slaves is not a violation of human rights.

Nobody is saying that property has rights. People have the right to property. If you think anyone is saying the first, you are mistaken. Or badly misled. Or intentionally creating a strawman argument."The right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values."--Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 93 It is libertarians who are the FIRST to say that slavery is a violation of rights. "Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another."--Ayn Rand, “Textbook of Americanism,” The Ayn Rand Column, 84 Leftists keep proving that their understanding of libertarianism is on the level of a creationist's understanding of evolution. It is as if you are asking, "If men are descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

@@SaulOhio Which is why you should call it "right to own property" and not "property rights". Unlike other rights, right to own is an *_exclusive_* right. The right to own something literally means the right to use force to *abolish other people's freedom to action* (of using it). Hence the name "libertarianism"; it's such an obvious choice. > _"Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times."_ No, not by every man at all times, according to libertarians. It notably excludes people who voluntarily sign employment contracts. Ayn Rand most certainly did not believe that employees who produce while their employers dispose of their product are slaves.

"Property rights ARE human rights." Incorrect. Property rights are arbitrary grants of ownership, human rights are the recognition that every person is equal in worth. Hunter-gatherer societies lack the concept of property, much less property rights, yet they have very strong human rights.

Imagine thinking we need a government

How do you deal with a murderer who disagrees with your idea that you have a right to life?

@@SaulOhio I wouldn't consider disagreeing with libertarians on the same level as a murderer. If murderers made up almost 90% of the population you might be on to something

@@barryh97 A murderer is one example of the kind of person who violates the NAP. So is a thief, a rapist, a mugger, a lynch mob, and so on. Are these people, these violent criminals, just people who don't agree with the libertarian idea of society? Or are they people interfering with my right to life using violence, thus justifying my use of violence in self-defense?

@@SaulOhio Use self defense against rapists and muggers all you like. The vast majority of people will agree with you. However, libertarians disagree with the vast majority of people on taxation and government, how does a libertarian society plan to deal with these people?

@@barryh97 Persuade them. We know we have them most of the way there already. Almost everyone, universally, believes that it is wrong to steal, rape, and murder. We just have to convince them that it is wrong for the government to do those things, too.

Libertarian theory is simply a more refined version of the English common law of property, torts and criminal law. You live it and operate in it every day as does everyone you know. The problems about which "progressives" complain are when exceptions have been applied for the benefit of the rich and powerful and about which libertarians always examine and rigorously expose. You have no familiarity with the rigorous libertarian analysis and your incuriousness is astonishing. You don't know what you are talking about.

The living meme 2019 libertarians, all 2 of them, think that taxes and laws are "REEEE violence" bkuz the eeeeeevil gubment has a monopoly of force. LOL, they literally just figured out that when they turn 35, and their parents finally stop beating their ass and kick them out of the house, that they STILL have to answer to some force in society. These failsons are total rocket scientists.

He says that the concept of initiating violence against inanimate objects doesn't make sense. Yes, if you take it literally. I think this is in reality a quibble over how libertarians definition of the NAP is not definitionally satisfactory, but you can still understand the concept. What hasn't been refuted is the obvious property rights people believe in, and the belief that we shouldn't violate those rights.

Our position is basically the same as two hundreds years of English common law regarding property, torts and criminal law applied fairly across the board and without exception. The grotesquely "unequal distribution of wealth" is mostly attributable to violent government interference especially in regards to fiat money emissions. David Stockman explained this all just today: "To wit, wealth distribution in modern America started to go to hell in a hand basket about 1987, which is to say, the exact time in which Bubbles Alan Greenspan took over the Fed and discovered the printing press in the basement of the Eccles Building during the 22% market meltdown of October 19, 1987. Therefore, if the top 1% went from a 34% share of the national wealth to 40% during the last three decades while the bottom 90% went from a roughly equivalent share (33%) down to just half of the slice (21%) going to the super wealthy, it should at least be conceded that the essence of capitalism did not change during that interval. Nor did Ronald Reagan’s so-called trickle down tax cut policy skew even more to the rich. In fact, the low water mark on the top marginal tax rate was the 28% level embedded in the 1986 tax reform act, which rose steadily thereafter to an effective rate of 42% by December 2017. "

He goes on to argue that the NAP is just a way of saying that the morally right property claims should be enforced. Of course it is, how on Earth could it mean anything else? No one should find the libertarian formulation of the NAP bizarre to the extent Burgis does, but he seems to not be able to understand a very basic implication of the NAP. That is what's truly bizarre. Burgis claims that this is just an argument between libertarians and everyone else against property claims. But it really isn't, most people agree with libertarians on homesteading and ownership. Most people agree that you can not redistribute wealth, UNLESS it's done by the government. And this is the point of the NAP, the government's special claim to people's property is wrong on its face, and this contradiction should be opposed. Aka, actually enforce property rights. Maybe Burgis has an argument against the current property norms, but the assertion that libertarians are engaging in sophistry can't be serious. Just because someone asserts a moral principle and doesn't immediately respond to every argument against said moral principle, doesn't mean they're begging the question.

12:00 is completely false, Walter Block believes in reparations for Natives and Blacks in the form of land. We'll just chalk that up to faulty memory.

Dude, you don't even understand "private property." Your car is not "capital." Nobody wants your fucking toothbrush.

And on the flipside you have monarchists/conservatives/libertarians/ancaps. And nothing objective to indicate either side is "correct" about anything.

Dave Smith is a cartoon character

You mean it falls apart at retaliation, which is explicitly allowed under the Non-Aggression Principle?

@@SaulOhio okay. So straight physical darwinism it is then. Thank you for clearing that up.

@@delphidelion OK, what "mental gymnastics" did you have to perform to get from self-defense to Darwinism?

@@SaulOhio > _you used my phone_ > _I will now hurt you_ "retaliation"

@@SaulOhio your defense of the NAP boils down to might makes right. If you are fast enough and skilled enough to respond to every physical threat against you (and assuming you come out on top in every instance which of course you wouldn't) without the backing of law to buttress when you are wronged you are making a might makes right claim - not a claim of being morally right. In a NAP world, the warlord with the largest, best equipped private militia sets the rules of the society.

If he's the guy I'm thinking of I saw him on Rogan for about ten minutes and gave up. He was dumb, uninteresting and not funny. Maybe it was some other douche bag I might be wrong.

Probably because they want to focus on one argument at a time. If it isn't more than "nuh uh!" it is pointless to go over what you already said.

Libertarian?

How is that different from what we have now?

"The deal is they hurt the product of your mind, labor and your means of acquiring future produce. " Homesteading does this to everyone but the homesteader, hence, the people who "get in" have just as much right to use force as you say you do.

Of course. The ONLY response of commies to the obvious and self evident truths of libertarianism is to obfuscate and distort the meanings of simple and well known words and concepts. But there are people who are better at it than Spinach Pizza Ben.

@@BRod313 It strikes me as bizarre. Like if someone comes into a barber shoppe or a family owned grocery store and smashes everything, or sends a rock through a window out of hatred, Mr. Burgis has a hard time envisioning what that might look like? From what pedestal divorced from the every day reality of normal folks does Mr. Burgis reside? And there is Brooks, nodding his head in apparent agreement with this. These two don't know what violence against someone's property looks like? I'll give them a clue: look up the FBI's statistics on hate crimes against property.

@@chipo746 Inanimate objects have no rights. You can act on them by force in the physical sense, but there is no such thing as "violence against" them, just as there is no such thing as murdering a toaster or molesting a light bulb. I'll give you benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't a nutjob who thinks that this is a picture of a violent act: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/Seabee_using_Cat_D8T.jpg/1200px-Seabee_using_Cat_D8T.jpg Your examples miss the point, since people like Burgis obviously understand and do not condone smashing everything in someone's home or workplace (the reason being that this causes harm to the people who live or work there, NOT to the property itself, which is meaningless). The point of contention is with acts which are not comparable to smashing things, such as using them to create something else, touching them, moving them etc. Calling that _violence_ would be... what's the phrase I'm looking for here.... oh, yeah it's obfuscation and distortion of the meanings of simple and well known words and concepts.

Self-ownership is an absolutely terrible concept because it falls on the "people are property" side of the question "are people property?" Self-ownership says people are their own property. I and others say, people are not property.

​@someonenotnoone that's a retarded starting point, so obviously there's no discussion to be had here.

Ben would say incarceration is violence imposed by the state. Ya fucking moron.

Yes he does and he has. Anyone who has a good grasp of politics and a solid educational background can dismantle libertarianism in a few minutes...thats how ill thought out and incomplete a theory it is.

He wrote a book about it.

Nap does zero argumentative work at all. The point is that lefty/socialists are calling into question pre-existing property arrangements and how they came about, but libertarian mush-mouths are making the claim "dont use 'violence' in the form of laws/taxes against me/my property" essentially side-stepping the claim entirely hiding behind cirular reasoning failing to make THEIR OWN argument for how current property rights are valid and just today. They dont do that at all.

Ignoring what we count as violence, and splitting those hairs, seriously Alex, if you dont own at least 3 BMW dealerships and a couple houses in the Bahamas, how can you possibly be silly to get tricked into thinking that current property distribution are just and helpful to the society at large? Have you tried to buy 2 or more houses in the past ten years? I have.

Even if all these Blacks/Indians owed anything they might get/have to others in turn, as reparations, that doesn't mean we don't owe them.

Weird guess. Do you though.

@@refoliation Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't criticize him.

Aidan James no

@@thomasgurburger7580 Yes

@@aidanjames5262 Can you in your own words explain the "debunking"?

Scott W libertarians have been proven to be the stinkiest

@@thomasgurburger7580 so stinky

As smart as you are, yet you don't see how 'threatening violence' and 'owning property' are related I would expect as much because libertarians are stupid as fuck

I still say that the starving North Koreans have a better claim to Ben's dog than he does. They are REALLY hungry.

@@BRod313 LUL

@@qwerty9091000 I suppose that among the cretins you usually hang with, that amounts to an argument, right numbnuts?

> _So the assertion is that owning property is violent inherently?_ Yes, obviously, since without violence you are just a guy with a claim that others may or may not care to honour. > _redistributing someone else's stuff because they don't have a legitimate moral claim to it (according the person DOING the redistributing...)_ Retrieving stolen goods is redistribution of someone else's stuff because they don't have a legitimate claim according to the person DOING the redistributing. I am going to assume that you do not have a problem with that, so your apparent shock at the idea is surprising.

@@Ronni3no2 Howbout a claim to your own body. What if someone else doesn't care to honor your claim to your own body? Is violence justified then in defense of being forced to work? Near as I can tell that's the whole point of "from each according to his ability" isn't it? What was left out of that statement was "from each according to his ability and his consent" If you don't in any sense own any property how can you say you own yourself? And if you don't own yourself, what justification do you have to resist being enslaved?

Double talk...is that your excuse for not having the mental capacity to understand what he is saying? Get an education before you hurt yourself and others.

It's funny how desperately you're spamming posts and still haven't managed to debunk a single thing he said. Sounds kinda like you've been DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC to me.

"REEEEEE I disagree and you hurt my feelings" - Robert

That's a remarkably Marxist way of looking at things. If your labor entitles you to its fruits, then your boss skimming off the top is stealing from you. Welcome to the fold, comrade!

@@exsilencio Nope. Someone working for an employer is not working to obtain the final product. His goal is to earn the paycheck. The emplolyer's goal is to sell the final product and earn a profit. The worker works to earn his wage. The employer works to earn his profit. Marxist exploitation theory is so full of holes that it has been refuted in maybe a dozen ways.

> _Because we own our own bodies and minds, we also own any action we take using our bodies and minds_ Care to explain this inference? Once you do that, I'd love to see an explanation as to why you do not hold this principle universally, without exceptions.

Which inference? That we own our own bodies and minds, or that it leads to our owning our own actions? Why should I explain how I do not hold this principle universally? Because I do think it is universal. There are no exceptions. If you think there are exceptions, please give me examples, so I can explain your mistake.

@@SaulOhio there goes your universal principle then. If ownership of the fruits of labour is a natural and universal consequence of that labour, then workers should own the product. Their work didn't print the money, nor did it sell goods on the market to acquire money. No. They made a product, which came from their bodies and is, as you point out, inalienable to them.