[An Article from Free Life]

From time to time, the fundamental right of each of us to our individual liberty is challenged by the notion that such a right shouldn’t necessarily apply in emergencies. In the regular, fair weather of societal relations, it is easy enough for us to agree that we should, for instance, have no right to physically injure or steal from other people. But what if an emergency could be resolved only by a breach of the non-aggression principle (NAP)? What if that situation was so desperate that the only way to avoid almost certain loss of life (or severe bodily harm) was to violate the property rights of another person?

Some of these emergency situations are easier to resolve in favour of the NAP than others. This is obviously the case when the degree of harm that would be inflicted on another person is equivalent to the degree of harm that one seeks to avoid for oneself. For instance, if John is in need of an urgent heart transplant, it would be absurd to suggest that he could instruct a surgeon to extract Sally’s heart so as to transfer it to his (John’s) body, thus condemning Sally to the very fate that was meted out for him. More realistically, what if a man needs to drive his dying wife to the hospital in as quick a time as possible in order to save her life? Given his desperation, is it not likely that he will drive less carefully and with a lower degree of consideration for other road users than if he was just driving to work? Unfortunately for him, however much we may empathise with this man’s sense of urgency, he would not be relieved of the requirement to avoid striking pedestrians and other cars. As we said in a previous essay:

In short, however unfortunate your plight, you cannot offload the cost of the burden onto other people. Indeed, to look at it from another angle, the avoidance of harm to oneself (or to someone for whom you care) is itself a benefit; obtaining that benefit at the expense of other people through physical force is the very essence of aggression.

Matters become slightly more difficult when the number of people that can be saved during an emergency is greater than the number that would suffer from aggression in the process. For instance, in a famous case in English law – a literal lifeboat situation – three stranded seafarers killed and cannibalised a fourth so as to provide food for survival. Once rescued, two of the survivors were prosecuted and found guilty of murder (although their final sentence was a mere six months’ imprisonment). While this case is complicated by the fact that the victim was as equally marooned as the defendants (i.e. he, and everyone else, would have died anyway had he not been sacrificed), we can see that the principle in favour of the judgment is the same regardless of the extent of the emergency. A group of people should not be able to offload the burden of their shared misfortune onto another person any more than a single individual can; each individual is an end in himself, and cannot be sacrificed for the benefit of others. Indeed, all of these examples are simply a more extreme variety of the general, oft-cited problem of the supposed need to balance “security” with “liberty”. The libertarian answer to this is that nobody’s security can be bought at the expense of another person’s liberty.

[An Article from Free Life]

Some years ago, I decided to cease any participation in online discussion forums. While such engagement was far from fruitless, it can very quickly become a net burden if, like me, one lacks the willpower to prevent all of the waking (and many non-waking) hours from being consumed by back-and-forth arguments on every single little detail of Austro-libertarian theory that happens to arise. Far more productive, I tell myself, to spend the time I have available reading and writing original material for outlets such as Free Life.

Unfortunately, I have recently suffered a minor relapse, although I have mostly managed to stick to reading the comments rather than engaging with them. A recent thread, concerning natural rights, caught my eye on Reddit on account of the many nonsensical objections posited by some contributors to the libertarian theory of original appropriation (“homesteading”) of land. I won’t waste time reciting every comment; the relevant part of the thread is available here for anyone who should be interested. Rather, I will consign myself to expressing the correct theory while addressing the main misunderstandings.

First, the virgin land of the Earth is no way held in “common ownership” by the whole of humanity. “Common” is inclusive; “ownership” is exclusive. You cannot have both. Ownership rights over property are enforced by some individual humans against other individual humans for the very purpose of excluding the latter from interfering with the owner’s use of the property. A right belonging to the whole of humanity could be enforced only against itself, which is nonsensical. It would be equally ludicrous to suggest that every single human in the world possesses approximately 1 seven-billionth of a share of ownership of every single plot of land, resource, mineral deposit, etc. across the entire globe. If this was the case, no good could ever put to use by anyone on account of the fact that one would have to undertake the impossible task of seeking permission to use that good from every other single person in the world. Such a state of affairs would quickly consign the human race to extinction. The correct view is that land, goods and resources, in their virgin state, are entirely ownerless.

One circumstance that is occasionally, but erroneously, raised as a counterexample is land which is subject to casual use by many people without actually having been appropriated. For example, suppose that there is an ownerless plot of land between a village and a stream. Over the years, the villagers have worn a path through the middle of this plot so as to access the stream. Surely this path, clearly of use to the villagers but belonging to no single one of them, should be considered their “common property”? Surely such land could never be appropriated by anyone so as to deprive the villagers of their access to the stream?

While casual use of land by multiple persons is certainly a complicating factor, it does not change any basic fact. Unless and until anybody attempts to appropriate the ownerless plot, then it remains common, not property, i.e. anybody can use it. However, a later appropriation is never precluded entirely. Rather, any appropriator would have to take the land as he finds it, an imperative which includes allowing the continued use of the path by the villagers. In terms of property titles, this would mean that the appropriator would own the land, but the villagers would gain easement rights over the path which the owner (and his successors in title) would have to honour. The land is no longer common; lawful use of it has now been subject to property rights held by specific individuals.

Read the Whole Article