 1. Libertarianism The Purpose of Property Norms Because the desire for many resources exceeds their availability, there exists potential for interpersonal conflict to emerge over how they are to be employed. To address this issue, property norms are established to provide an objective basis for reconciliation. Without such norms, the alternative would be destructive interpersonal conflict, where presumably might-makes-right would reign as a social paradigm. Although there exist many variations of property norms, the purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate why any valid norm must be logically compatible with private property and its libertarian implications. Hopper expounds upon the function of property norms in general. To develop the concept of property, it is necessary for economic goods to be scarce, so that conflicts over the use of these goods can possibly arise. It is the function of property rights to avoid such possible crashes over the use of scarce resources, by assigning rights of exclusive ownership. Property is thus a normative concept, a concept designed to make a conflict-free interaction possible, by stipulating mutually binding rules of conduct, norms regarding scarce resources. The Nature of the Libertarian Private Property Ethic The Libertarian Ethic, aka the Private Property Ethic, holds that all legitimate rights are derived from property rights, the most fundamental of which concerns one's relationship to his own physical body, i.e. that he and he alone has an exclusive claim to it. This is commonly referred to as the principle of self-ownership. To own something, especially one's body, means to have final say over the employment or use of whatever is owned, provided that such employment does not entail the initiation of uninvited physical interference with another person's body or their justly acquired property. Simply put, only the owners of something have the exclusive right to use it. They are likewise justified in resisting demands made on their property by others. From the concept of property rights, one may derive the non-aggression principle, NAP, which states that no one may justifiably initiate uninvited physical force against another person's body or property, or make threats thereof. Thus, when aggression is referenced in this work, it will be referring to the uninvited initiation of physical interference with one's person or property. The only two legitimate methods of acquiring property, according to the Libertarian ethic, are original appropriation and voluntary exchange. Original appropriation simply entails that the first claimant and user of a previously unowned good found in nature is the rightful owner of the good. Put differently, if one mixes his labour with an unowned good and claims it as his own, then he would become this good's rightful owner. It is critical that this mixing of labour criterion is met. Asserting that a mere verbal declaration would suffice in obtaining property rights over any good would yield a host of logical and practical problems. More specifically, such mixing of labour for the sake of original appropriation may include the transformation, possession and or in bordering of a scarce good. The second just means of acquiring property is through voluntary exchange. Voluntary exchange is a derivative of original appropriation, in that economic, aka scarce, goods must be captured and appropriated before they can be traded or given away. Hopper provides a cogent summary for the Libertarian ethic. Quote, Unlike bodies which are never unowned but always have a natural owner, all other scarce resources can indeed be unowned. This is the case as long as they remain in their natural state, unused by anyone. They only become someone's property once they are treated as scarce means, that is as soon as they are occupied in some objective borders and put to some specific use by someone. This act of acquiring previously unowned resources is called original appropriation. Once unowned resources are appropriated, it becomes an aggression to uninvitedly change their physical characteristics or to restrict the owner's range of uses to which he can put these resources. As long as a particular use does not affect the physical character characteristics of anyone else's property, just as in the case of bodies. Only in the course of a contractual relationship, i.e. when the natural owner of a scarce means explicitly agrees, is it possible for someone else to utilise and change previously acquired things. And only if the original or previous owner deliberately transfers his property title to someone else, either in exchange for something or as a free gift, can this other person himself become the owner of such things. Unlike bodies though, which for the same natural reason can never be unowned and also can never be parted with by the natural owner completely, but only be lent out as long as the owner's agreement lasts, naturally all other scarce resources can be alienated and a property title for them can be relinquished once and for all. Generous use of the term rights has been made in this chapter. Prior to moving forward, it would behoove us to examine what exactly rights are and what they entail. For this task I will take advantage of the insight provided by Murray Rothbard. When we say that one has the right to do certain things, we mean this and only this. That it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do not mean that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a moral use. It is important to expand upon the above definition in a few important ways. Rights provide a framework for the justification of force. To say one has a right against being coerced unjustly or being murdered implies that the right is defensible by one's own use of force. In other words, if one's rights are violated, then the use of physical force or the threat thereof may be justifiably employed against the perpetrator. Such measures may be used for either defending those rights or for seeking retribution or restitution for their violation. To be clear, this is not to say that physical force or the threat thereof must be used. It is simply saying that such force would be justified. This force would be reactionary, not initiatory, and hence satisfies the non-aggression principle. In the future chapters of this book, there will be discussion regarding some non-violent means by which criminal behaviour may be effectively combated. But for now the scope of this discussion will be limited to identifying what the libertarian ethic is, how it may be rationally justified and what rights it entails. Finally, the above definition of rights should not be misconstrued so as to think that any breach of morality warrants the use of physical force. For instance, if a man promises his girlfriend that he will take her to the movies on Saturday night and then reneges on this promise in order to go out with her best friend, this act may be immoral. However, if in response his girlfriend slashes his tyres, then she would be guilty of violating his property rights despite his recent unsavoury act. It is important to note the greater specificity of a discussion on rights as compared to morals. All too often the topics are confused and this confusion has been used to justify assaulting others for a great many victimless crimes. So to be clear, from this point forward I will be speaking in terms of rights and not the greater scope of morals. The actions of others may offend our moral code, however we must determine which of these actions warrant physical force and which of them are just aesthetically displeasing. The Criteria for Moral Agency How do we determine to whom or what the libertarian ethic applies? More specifically, what makes someone or something a moral agent? Perhaps the ability to engage in discourse is the right criterion. Hopper suggests, quote, only if both parties to a conflict are capable of engaging in argumentation with one another can one speak of a moral problem, and is the question of whether or not there exists a solution meaningful. Only if Friday, regardless of his physical appearance, i.e. whether he looks like a man or like a gorilla, is capable of argumentation, even if he has shown himself to be so capable only once, can he be deemed rational and does the question whether or not a correct solution to the problem of social order exists make sense? Only if this other entity can in principle pause in his activity, whatever it might be, step back so to speak and say yes or no to something one has said, do we owe this entity an answer? And, accordingly, can we possibly claim that our answer is the correct one for both parties involved in a conflict? End quote. In other words, the libertarian ethic applies to beings capable of argumentation or of propositional exchange, discourse. However, proper reasons that if a being is not capable of argumentation, then whether or not said being is capable of recognising the rights of others cannot be known with certainty. It is important to clarify that such capacity to communicate a proposal or to argue is not limited to verbal communication. Any form of communication would suffice and may theoretically range from physical gestures to telepathy to drawings, etc. For rights to exist between two or more beings, there needs to exist a certain degree of reciprocity. This must entail the ability to both recognise and deliberately respect the other's right to his own body and property. Such ability is the minimum criterion for one to be considered a moral agent. To say that a moral agent, e.g. a mentally healthy adult human, must not aggress against a non-moral agent, e.g. a wasp, would be to put the non-moral agent in a position of moral superiority over the moral agent. For instance, the moral agent is capable of consciously respecting the NAP in regards to this non-moral agent. In contrast, the non-moral agent is incapable of deliberately respecting the NAP and will be able to act outside its confines without being said to have violated the moral agent's rights or to have committed an unethical act. The reason this non-moral agent could not be held ethically accountable for such actions is that, being such, it would have no capacity to conceptualise the NAP, let alone deliberately abide by it. This has great implications in regards to so-called animal rights. Really, it would be more appropriate to recognise that rights are only applicable to those beings which satisfy the minimum criterion for moral agency listed above. Which animals, if any, are moral agents as defined above, I will leave to the zoologist. In conclusion, the Libertarian Ethic is not necessarily limited to humans, but applies to all moral agents, be they human, extraterrestrial or otherwise. Philosophical Groundwork Some additional groundwork is needed before diving into the justifications of the Libertarian Ethic. Let us first examine what it means for an ethic or right to be justified. First, it must be universalisable or consistent. That is to say, for something to be a valid or justified ethic, it must apply to all moral agents at all times and in all places. A rule stipulating that stealing is wrong is a universalisable ethic. A rule stipulating that stealing is permitted by people over six feet tall is not. This introduces arbitrary distinctions between types of moral agents and therefore fails the universalisation test. This concept is commonly referred to as the Golden Rule of Ethics or the Kantian Categorical Imperative. A second and more obvious criterion for an ethic or right to be justified is that it must be practically achievable. If one cannot physically act in accordance with an ethic, then the ethic is null and void. For instance, the proposition that occupying a physical space with one's body is unjustified is absurd because one cannot but take up standing room. Third and finally, for an ethic to be justified, it cannot come into conflict with other norms which must be presupposed in the act of discourse or argumentation. For if a proposed norm did come into conflict with the necessary norms of argumentation, then the person proposing the ethic would fall into what is known as a performative contradiction. That is to say, the person's actions would come into conflict with the proposal he was making. To justify anything means to justify it in argumentation. As the act of argumentation presupposes certain norms, any proposed norm that was in conflict with these must be rejected as logically unsound. It is important to remember argumentation is a conflict-free exchange of ideas. It may be as simple as a truth claim proposed by one individual to another. The next layer of groundwork requires examining the nature of axioms. According to Ein Rand, an axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. This definition will be pertinent when discussing Hans Hermann Hopper's argumentation ethics later in this chapter. The particular axiom upon which the whole of Austrian economics is based is that of human action. Ludwig von Mises defines this axiom. Quote, human action is purposeful behaviour, or we may say action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego's meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person's conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life. End quote. Simply put, the axiom of action tells one that action is purposive, that people deliberately employ means for the sake of achieving particular ends. Furthermore for anyone to act, he must be doing so with the intention of profiting in some manner. That is to say, if he is acting, he necessarily must view such actions as bringing him closer to a more preferable state of affairs. This is not to say his actions will accomplish this, but rather that he believes they will. This is true necessarily, for if he felt a given action would take him further from his preferred state of affairs, then he would either refrain from acting or act differently. This does not mean that people do not sometimes act to help others at a cost to themselves, but rather that they view such an act to yield more to them, in this case a feeling of personal psychic pleasure than what is being given up. Such psychic pleasure may also be referred to as psychic profit. An additional insight made by Austrian economists is that all value is necessarily subjective. The mere fact that voluntary trades occur is indicative of this truth. For example, if I buy a candy bar from you for a dollar, then this demonstrates that I value the candy bar more than a dollar, whereas you value it less than a dollar. Otherwise, we would have never bothered expending the time and energy required to make said trade in the first place. From this insight one may deduce that all voluntary trades must be seen as mutually beneficial ex ante to both parties involved, otherwise they would not have occurred. The a priori of communication or argumentation or discourse will serve as the final piece of groundwork. From here on in I shall refer to this concept as the a priori of argumentation, though communication and discourse are also appropriate. Hans Hermann Hopper defines the a priori of argumentation. Quote, The argument shows us that any truth claim, the claim connected with any proposition that is true, objective or valid, all terms used synonymously here, is and must be raised and settled in the course of an argumentation. Since it cannot be disputed that this is so, one cannot communicate and argue that one cannot communicate and argue, and since it must be assumed that everyone knows what it means to claim something to be true, one cannot deny this statement without claiming its negation to be true, this very fact has been aptly called the a priori of communication and argumentation. This fact is logically incontestable. There is no way anyone can assert something to be true without making an argument, for the very act of asserting something to be true is itself an argument. Furthermore one cannot coherently claim not to know what truth is, for in doing so he is claiming that it is true that he does not know what it means for something to be true. Thus our actor finds himself in a performative contradiction. It may be concluded then that for one to make any argument it must first be presupposed that he understands the concepts of truth and validity and that a given proposition may only be shown as such in the course of an argument. Justifying the Libertarian Ethic Now that the necessary groundwork has been laid we may proceed in justifying the Libertarian Ethic by means of Hopper's argumentation ethics. Hopper describes the nature of this approach. It argumentation ethics only makes explicit what is already implied in the concept of argumentation itself and in analysing any actual norm proposal its task is merely confined to analysing whether or not it is logically consistent with the very ethics which the proponent must presuppose as valid insofar as he is able to make his proposal at all. But differently if one proposes an ethic which contradicts the necessarily presupposed ethics of discourse then this proposed ethic must necessarily be rendered invalid by his own action the fact that he engaged in argumentation. Thus the ethical norms presupposed in the making of any proposal must themselves be the logical benchmark by which all future ethical proposals are evaluated. If a given ethic runs counter to the presupposed ethical norms of proposal making then it cannot be valid. Argumentation ethics are a logical extension of the a priori of argumentation. The purpose of any argument is to establish a proposition as being true and or justified or conversely to show a given proposition to be false or unjustified. And then is by its very nature persuasive and non-coercive. If one were to attempt to use physical coercion in the course of an argument this would undermine the intent of discovering truth or falsehood thereby precluding such an act from being compatible with argumentation. As such for someone to engage in argumentation with another would require an implicit acceptance that the other party has the right to exclusive control over his own body. To demonstrate this let us assume that one does not recognise the other's exclusive control over his own body and proceeds to slap him in the face when confronted with a point he is unable to counter. This coercive act would immediately end the argument and begin violent conflict. To reinforce this fact let us assume that one of our interlocutors does not hit the other but rather threatens to assault him if he does not concede. Again this act of coercion falls outside the realm of argumentation as it undermines the goal of discovering a truth or a falsehood by substituting conflict for resolution. By establishing as a precondition of argumentation the mutual recognition and acceptance of each party's agency the principle of self-ownership has been justified a priori. Thus it may be concluded that any proposition which conflicts with the principle of self-ownership cannot be coherently justified. For the sake of thoroughness I will proceed to run the principle of self-ownership through a justification schema. 1. Is it universalisable? Yes, the principle of self-ownership states that every moral agent without exception is the sole and legitimate owner of his body. 2. Is it practically achievable? Yes, every moral agent has the capacity to own his body. 3. Is it compatible with the necessary presuppositions of argumentation? Yes, in fact the principle of self-ownership is a necessary presupposition of argumentation. Next I will provide a justification for the private ownership of external economic goods. Hopper explains lucidly. Quote, I first demonstrate that argumentation and argumentative justification of anything presupposes not only the right to exclusively control one's body, but the right to control other scarce goods as well, for if no one had the right to control anything except his own body, then we would all cease to exist, and the problem of justifying norms as well as other human problems would simply not exist. We do not live on air alone, hence simply by virtue of the fact of being alive, property rights to other things must be presupposed to be valid too. No one who is alive could argue otherwise. End quote. A practical precondition for argumentation is that the actors involved are alive. To be alive and to even argue requires the right to exclusively control and consume external resources. Naturally one must also have the right to occupy a given amount of physical space with his body before he may be able to argue at all. Rothbard supplements this argument. Quote, now any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is, by virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life. For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of discussion, and hence the preservation and furtherance of one's life takes on the stature of an incontestable axiom. End quote. This argument should not be misconstrued as saying that people are entitled to having a particular set of scarce resources, but rather that it is within their right to own them, provided that they are acquired by a just means. The distinction here may seem trivial, but the implications are vastly different. For instance, if one is entitled to a particular resource, this would mean that he would have a right to it, and that if this right is not fulfilled, then physical force, or the threat thereof, would be justified in either fulfilling it or seeking retribution for its violation. This is what is known as a positive right. For a positive right to be fulfilled, someone is required to take an action in order to fulfill it. For example, if I had a right to healthcare, this would oblige someone else to provide this service to me, or at least to provide me with the funds necessary to purchase it. Thus, positive rights necessarily conflict with private property rights, as they limit to some degree a person's right to exclusive control over his own body or external property. In contrast, having the right to own something simply entails that others may not commit aggression against this owned good, or make threats thereof. For that to be fulfilled requires no action taken on the part of anyone else. These types of rights are known as negative rights. In contrast to positive rights, negative rights simply preclude others from taking certain actions, whereas positive rights oblige others to act. Finally, the validity of the private ownership over external economic goods will be verified by running it through the justification schema. 1. Is it universalisable? Yes, the right to own external economic goods is shared by all moral agents, and can thus claim to satisfy the test of universalisation. 2. Is it practically achievable? Yes, everyone has the capacity to own external economic goods, or scarce resources, at all times. 3. Is it compatible with the necessary presuppositions of argumentation? Yes, in fact the right to own external scarce resources is a necessary precondition of argumentation. In light of the above proofs for the principle of self-ownership and the right to own external property, one may deduce that the non-aggression principle, NAP, must also be valid. To further demonstrate the validity of the NAP, we will run it through the justification schema. 1. Is it universalisable? Yes, the NAP condemns uninvited initiations of physical force against all moral agents and their property. 2. Is it practically achievable? Yes, everyone has the capacity to refrain from committing aggression against others or their property at all times. 3. Is it compatible with the necessary presuppositions of argumentation? Yes, in fact the NAP is a necessary presupposition of argumentation. Original appropriation, aka homesteading and voluntary exchange, are the only two legitimate means of acquiring property. Hopper has this to say, quote, if a person did not acquire the right of exclusive control over other nature-given goods by his own work, that is, if other people who had not previously used such goods had the right to dispute the homesteader's ownership claim, then this would only be possible if one would acquire property titles not through labour, i.e. by establishing some objective link between a particular person and a particular scarce resource, but simply by means of verbal declaration. This solution, apart from the obvious fact that it would not even qualify as a solution in a purely technical sense, in that it would not provide a basis for deciding between rivaling declarative claims, is incompatible with the already justified ownership of a person over his body. For if one could indeed appropriate property by decree, this would imply that it would also be possible for one to simply declare another person's body to be one's own. However, as we have seen, to say that property is acquired not through homesteading action, but through declaration involves a practical contradiction. Nobody can say and declare anything unless his right to use his body is already assumed to be valid, simply because of the fact that regardless of what he says, it is he and nobody else who has homestead it as his instrument of saying anything. The argument Hopper uses here is known as an argumentation accontrario. This is an argument type that entertains the possible alternatives to a given proposal to demonstrate how they are either invalid or less suitable for a particular end. In this case, Hopper demonstrates how the alternatives to original appropriation or homesteading must be in conflict with the principle of self-ownership, and by extension the necessary presuppositions of argumentation. The alternatives fail the third step of the justification schema. Moreover, unlike the first user homesteading rule, such a declarative alternative creates the possibility for multiple people to lay claim to a given scarce resource at the same time. With homesteading however, the laws of physics do not permit two bodies, human, to occupy the same space at the same time, so only one person has the capacity to mix his labour with a given resource first. It is this mutually exclusive characteristic of space occupation that permits the homesteading theory to avoid any possible violent conflict, where two or more claimants have equally valid claims to a given good or area of land. Again, if verbal declarations were in themselves considered sufficient to acquiring title over property, then anyone could simply make a competing claim against a given piece of property, and propose that his evidence of ownership over said property is equally legitimate to the currently recognised owner. Thus, any future rulings over competing claims of property would ultimately have to be offered on the basis of arbitrary criteria. Alternatively, if a judge decided not to rule in favour of one party over another, because as we said the declaration in itself was sufficient in acquiring rights over property, then the number of parties having title to specific economic goods would increase drastically, thereby increasing the likelihood that multiple parties will attempt to use the good in question in mutually exclusive ways. Because there would be no way to arbitrate between mutually exclusive plans for the same good, such a situation would only serve to generate conflict, thereby defeating the very purpose of establishing a property norm, i.e. to serve as a conflict avoidance or dispute resolution mechanism. Perhaps one may then object, why does the first appropriator or homesteader get the stuff? Why not some latecomer? If economic goods were able to be owned by some unknown person who may arrive in the future to claim them, then no one could act without infringing on the property rights of these futurecomers. We would all be paralysed lest we violate the property rights of said futurecomers. Thus, to reject the first user ethic would be to put the nail in our own coffins. No economic goods could be consumed in the present, for doing so would deny said good to futurecomers. Because this particular proposal would render its followers dead, it must be considered invalid. Moreover, the practical requirement for an effective property norm is that it enables objective arbitration between competing claims to a given scarce resource. Such arbitration is intended to confer rightful ownership to that party which may demonstrate a superior objective link between himself and the good in question. If someone is a first user of a scarce resource, then by definition he is the only one who could have any objective link to it at all. Thus, being the only one with such a link, it is necessarily superior to all others. With this being the case, any futurecomer may only establish such a link with the disputed resource by violating the first user's previously established property right to the good. The very purpose of ethics and norms is to help avoid otherwise unavoidable conflict. To say a latecomer, or a possible futurecomer, is the rightful owner of a given good, would only serve to generate conflict between the first and latecomers, and would therefore be completely contrary to the very purpose of a norm. Thus the only ethic or norm which would serve to avoid conflict would be to grant a given scarce resource to its first user. This would be inherently conflict-free, because by definition there would be no valid competing claims. Hopper elaborates on this first user necessity. Quote, what is wrong with this idea of dropping the prior-later distinction as morally irrelevant? First, if the latecomers, i.e. those who did not in fact do something with some scarce goods, had indeed as much of a right to them as the first comers, i.e. those who did do something with the scarce goods, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything, as one would have to have all of the latecomers' consent prior to doing whatever one wanted to do. Indeed, as posterity would include one's children's children, people that is who come so late that one could never possibly ask them, advocating a legal system that does not make use of the prior-later distinction as part of its underlying property theory, is simply absurd in that it implies advocating death, but we must presuppose life to advocate anything. Neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny, could, do or will, survive and say or argue anything if one were to follow this rule. In order for any person, past, present or future, to argue anything, it must be possible to survive now. Nobody can wait and suspend acting until everyone of an indeterminate class of latecomers happens to appear and agree to what one wants to do. Rather, insofar as a person finds himself alone, he must be able to act, to use, produce, consume goods straight away, prior to any agreement with people who are simply not around yet, and perhaps never will be. And insofar as a person finds himself in the company of others, and there is conflict over how to use a given scarce resource, he must be able to resolve the problem at a definite point in time with a definite number of people, instead of having to wait unspecified periods of time for unspecified numbers of people. Simply in order to survive then, which is a prerequisite to arguing in favour of or against anything, property rights cannot be conceived of as being timeless and nonspecific regarding the number of people concerned. Rather, they must necessarily be thought of as originating through acting at definite points in time for definite acting individuals. An alternative argument put forth by Hopper quote, if a person A were not the owner of his physical body and all goods originally appropriated, produced, or voluntarily acquired by him, there would only exist two alternatives. Rather another person B must be regarded as the owner of A, or both parties A and B must be regarded as equal co-owners of both bodies and goods. In the first case, A would be B's slave and subject to exploitation. B would own A and the goods originally appropriated, produced, or acquired by A. But A would not own B and the goods homesteaded, produced, or acquired by B. With this rule, two distinct classes of people would be created, exploiters B and exploited A, to whom different law would apply. Hence, this rule fails the universalisation test and is from the outset disqualified as even a potential human ethic, for in order to be able to claim a rule to be a law, just, it is necessary that such a rule be universally equally valid for everyone. In the second case of universal co-ownership, the requirement of equal rights for everyone is obviously fulfilled. Yet this alternative suffers from another fatal flaw. For each activity of a person requires the employment of scarce goods, at least his body and its standing room. Yet if all goods were the collective property of everyone, then no one, at any time and in any place, could ever do anything with anything unless he had every other co-owner's prior permission to do what he wanted to do. And how can one give such a permission if one is not even the sole owner of one's very own body and vocal cords? If one were to follow the rule of total collective ownership, mankind would die out instantly. Whatever this is, it is not a human ethic either. The first ethic clearly fails the universalisation test and therefore we need not go any further. However it is important to note that this ethic is also incompatible with the third criterion of the justification schema, which states that any valid ethic must be consistent with the presupposed ethical norms required for engaging in argumentation. In this case it would conflict with the principle of self-ownership. Next is the scenario where everyone owns an equal share of everything to include the bodies of one another. 1. Is this universalisable? Yes, this ethic proposal does indeed pass the universalisation test as everyone owns everything does not entail distinctions among moral agents. 2. Is this practically achievable? No, acting according to this norm would be impossible. Not only would acquiring the prior approval of all seven billion people on earth be virtually impossible in itself, but no one person could even give permission in the first place, as giving permission is itself an action requiring the use of scarce resources. As each person needs everyone else's approval in order to utilise communal resources, each of them would need everyone else's approval simply in order to give approval. Thus this norm falls victim to the logical quagmire of infinite regression, thereby prohibiting all actors from acting at all. Any attempt to follow this norm would lead to a speedy death. 3. Is this compatible with the necessary presuppositions of argumentation? No, as it conflicts with the principle of self-ownership, which asserts that everyone is the exclusive owner of his or her own body. If everyone owned an equal share of everyone else's body, then no one would have the right to exclusive control over his own body. It also conflicts with the right to exclusively own external property, which is a necessary precondition of life, and life a necessary precondition to being able to put forth any argument. Now that the alternatives have been shown to fail the justification schema, let us see if the acts of acquiring property via original appropriation and voluntary exchange suffer the same or a different fate. 1. Are they universalisable? Yes, the requirement for one to use either original appropriation or voluntary exchange to justly acquire property applies to all moral agents. 2. Are they practically achievable? Yes, everyone has the capacity to acquire property over scarce goods through original appropriation or voluntary exchange. 3. Are they compatible with the necessary presuppositions of argumentation? Yes, in fact they are corollaries of such presuppositions. Common objections to argumentation ethics. At this point critics may object on the basis of Hume's fact value dichotomy, otherwise known as the is-ought problem. Formulated by David Hume, this perspective states that one cannot derive an ought from an is. Normative claims, that is claims regarding how things should be, cannot be derived from explanations of how the world is, otherwise known as descriptive claims. Critics of Hopper's perspective will often attribute normative positions to his libertarian argument. They understand his argumentation ethics as saying that nobody should commit aggression. However raising this objection indicates a misunderstanding of Hopper's proposal, as he does not claim to derive an ought from any is. Argumentation ethics merely identifies which ethical propositions are logically sound or justifiable and which ones are not. Hopper defends himself from these assertions. It, Hopper's style of argumentation ethics, remains entirely in the realm of is-statements and never tries to derive an ought from an is. The structure of the argument is this. a. Justification is propositional justification, a priori true is-statement. b. Argumentation presupposes property in one's body and the homesteading principle. a priori true is-statement. c. Then no deviation from this ethic can be argumentatively justified. a priori is-statement. The truth of Hopper's argument is unaltered by one's willingness or unwillingness to abide by it. Whether or not a man accepts the libertarian ethic as valid or justified has no bearing on whether or not it is valid and justified. He summarises the point thusly. Quote So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway? Why indeed? But then why should the proof that 1 plus 1 equals 2 make any difference? 1 certainly can still act on the belief that 1 plus 1 equals 3. The obvious answer is because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing but not for doing another. But why should we be reasonable is the next comeback. Again the answer is obvious, for one because it would be impossible to argue against it. And further because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not. For even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don't know, they don't care or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this would be surprising or make the proof somehow defective. More than this cannot be done by propositional argument. End quote. The implications of the libertarian ethic One of the shocking implications of the libertarian private property ethic is that it is not logically compatible with the state. The state is defined as quote that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area. In particular it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by the production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others the state obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion that is by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet. End quote. The first characteristic of the state is that it exercises a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision making. The state as final arbiter of disputes does not allow the verdict of competing arbitration agencies to supersede its own. By definition any uninvited initiation of physical force or the threat thereof against the persons or property of others is condemned by the NAP. Thus the state's status as ultimate arbiter and the means by which it is enforced are illegitimate and unjustified. The state's supposed legal right to lay taxes is also incompatible with the NAP. Taxes require people to surrender their earnings to the state despite an individual's lack of genuine consent. Thus because taxation amounts to taking one's property against his will via aggressive means it must be considered theft. To illustrate one's refusal to pay taxes ultimately leads to arrest and imprisonment. If one decides to resist such an arrest the agents of the state will not hesitate to assault or murder this person. To add insult to injury most people do not directly enjoy the benefits of all the so-called services that they are forced to fund via taxes, e.g. one who has no children having to pay taxes which go towards public elementary schools etc. Finally the state exercises jurisdiction over a given territory despite the fact that its agents have not acquired property rights over it through legitimate means i.e via original appropriation or voluntary exchange. This clearly indicates that the state's claim of authority over this geographical area is unfounded. Only the legitimate owners of a given piece of property may exercise jurisdiction over it and may determine the rules under which its residents may live. Simply put if one does not homestead a thing or space or acquire it through voluntary exchange then he has no just authority over the people who occupy or have themselves homesteaded said thing or space.