Libertarianism and Property from First Principles

By popular demand, this is a transcript of my oft-referenced video, "Libertarianism and Property Rights from First Principles."



Here's the thing about logic: it's completely objective. There is no "my logic" or "your logic"; there's just logic. So if you have a logical position, then it's an objective argument that stems from First Principles.

First Principles are foundational propositions and axioms that do not have to be defended. As long as your argument is purely from First Principles, meaning that it's linked back to these First Principles with no breaks in the chain and no fallacious reasoning, then you don't actually need empirical evidence to support it. Because then, the only way for the conclusion to be wrong would be for these First Principles to be wrong as well.

1. The Principle of Non-Contradiction

The first principle we'll look at is a foundational principle of all logic and reason: the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Something cannot be "A" and "not A" at the same time. Also, if something is "A", then it cannot be "B" if A and B are mutually exclusive. It may be possible for something that is A to later turn into B, but once it does it cannot be A anymore.

Directly from this, we get:

2. The Consistency Principle

In logic, consistency means that there aren't any contradictions. So as long as the Principle of Non-Contradiction holds, the Consistency Principle does as well. While there are proofs of consistency, for purposes of this video we'll just look at falsifiability: if we can find an inconsistency in a posit, then the posit must be rejected. So if A and B are mutually exclusive and a True Dichotomy, then falsifying A is all that you have to do to support B, and vice-versa.

Ironically, the Consistency Principle itself can be supported in this way. Consider the following claims:

"Consistency is preferable."

"Consistency is not preferable."

This is a True Dichotomy. One or the other must be true, but both cannot be. But if we examine these statements, we see that "Consistency is not preferable" is a consistent principle, and therefore self-contradictory. By the Principle of Non-Contradiction, we, therefore, reject it and accept consistency as being preferable.

It's the Consistency Principle that leads us to establish Burden of Proof:

3. The Burden of Proof is on the active side, not the passive side

There are a lot of things you're not doing right now. Maybe you're not collecting stamps at the moment. You're not walking on the moon. You're not inventing the hoverboard. You're not annexing the Sudetenland. There are an infinity of things you're not doing at the time. Imagine if someone said you had to justify every single one of them! There's no way you could do it!

It would be inconsistent for someone to insist that you had to justify one or some of the things you're not doing, since you can't possibly justify them all. The only principle consistent with the Consistency Principle is that if you're not doing something, you don't have to justify it to anybody. The Burden of Proof is never on the passive side.

Which means that the Burden of Proof must be on the active side when the active side conflicts with a passive side. In the theism/atheism debate, atheists take the passive side: they see no reason to believe in God, so they decline to do so. You don't have to defend not believing in God any more than you have to defend not inventing the hoverboard. But since belief is active, the theist is taking the active position and therefore the Burden of Proof is on those who claim that God exists.

Let me be clear about this: we're talking about the Burden of Proof. We are not concluding that it is always right and proper to take the passive side; sometimes the passive side might well be in the wrong. But if you want to claim that the passive side is wrong, the Burden of Proof is on you to establish that.

Everything so far is absolutely consistent with established logic, and you cannot doubt any of this without running afoul of the basic principles of logic and rational thought. They are the basis of all science and reason. You cannot reject the principles we've talked about so far without rejecting all of science and reason as well.

Now, going from nothing more than these First Principles, let's see how this works in the libertarian/statist debate:

4. Force is active; ergo, those who want to use force have the Burden of Proof, those who do not have no such burden at all

There really is no way around this. If someone's just sitting there not doing anything, the burden is on you to justify any action taken against him. Like, say, taking some of his money. And you can't worm your way out of this just by calling yourself a "government"; that is a blatant violation of the Consistency Principle. You can't have different rules for government than you do for the rest of us.

Even if the person is taking an action, if everyone affected by the action agrees to it, the burden of proof is on you if you want to interfere. So if one person hires another, and that person agrees to work for wages of $7/hour, and you think that's too low, that it should be $10 or $15 an hour, the burden of proof is on you to justify your intrusion into this voluntary, private, peaceful exchange.

So, I know you statists are now chomping at the bit, getting all of your arguments ready to justify the forceful actions your government does, but hold on, because:

5. The initiation of force cannot be defended

Person A hires Person B at $7/hour. Person C, thinking Person B should be paid at least $10/hour, wants to point a gun at Person A and make him pay Person B more money. Is he justified in this? Think about it: what if Person A then points a gun back at Person C, because he doesn't want to be forced to do something he doesn't want to do? What's Person C going to do, say that Person A doesn't get to use force? Even though Person C is doing what he's doing through force? How does Person C have any legitimacy here at that point?

It gets worse: let's say that Person D disagrees with Person C's interference, and points a gun at him. If the initiation of force is defensible, then who is acting in the wrong here?

And even worse: After Person C makes Person A pay Person B more money, Person E points a gun at Person C and makes him do something he thinks he should do, like, give up his collection of pornography. How does Person C have any logical defense if he wants to complain about it? Under the Consistency Principle, if one is valid, the other must be, too.

The only way compatible with the Consistency Principle is that the Initiation of Force is never justified. Which means that the Non-Initiation of Force Principle, also known as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), the basis of all libertarianism, is the only principle compatible with consistent logic. And since this argument was made in an unbroken chain from First Principles, you cannot refute it. Your only recourse is to try to find a flaw in my logic up to this point, some link in the chain that was skipped or doesn't work for some reason. That is the only option open to you if you want to deny the Non-Aggression Principle.

6. Self-ownership

It's now time to turn to the basis for all libertarian political policy: property rights. While Non-Initiation of Force is the guiding principle, property rights is the logical structure we use to determine who is initiating force and when. This isn't a pragmatic idea; it, too, is based on first principles.

We start with the Principle of Self-Ownership. Basically, you own yourself: you own your body, your mind, your time, and the fruits of your labors. Why? Well, what would it mean if you didn't? Who else would own you? If someone else can own you, that would make you their slave. But slavery completely violates the Consistency Principle: who gets to own slaves, and who is subject to being enslaved? You would be making different rules for different people, which you don't get to do.

Even if your answer is that no one would own you, you still have a problem. If something isn't owned, then no one can stop someone from doing whatever they want to to it. If no one owns a rock, there's nothing stopping anyone from picking it up and using it for whatever purpose they want. So if no one owns you, then anyone can do whatever they want to you—including raping and murdering you.

So you run into a problem with the Consistency Principle again. Since ownership of something means having control over what happens to it, the only consistent principle is self-ownership, which means that you get to make the decisions that affect only yourself, and you get to defend yourself against others who would impose their will on you. Giving anyone else the legitimacy to do so runs into fundamental inconsistency problems: that would mean you can't defend yourself, that would mean that no one else has any legitimacy in stopping them, and what happens if someone else wants to rape you instead? How do you determine which of them has the right to rape you? Get the picture?

So self-ownership is the only consistent way. And that naturally leads to private property.

7. Private Property

How can one claim ownership over private property? Only if it's an extension of one's right of self-ownership. So, someone can own something one of two ways:

1) He can do it himself, or make it himself, or whatever.

So long as he doesn't intrude on anyone else's property rights to do so, whatever is the product of his own actions, his own mind, his own labor, rightly belongs to him and no one else.

2) He can trade for it, or otherwise convince the proper owner of something to transfer ownership to him.

If he makes an axe, he can trade it for a saw, and the saw is his. Likewise, the other person gives up the saw and takes ownership of the axe.

Or, he can trade his labor. He can agree to work a certain number of hours and receive property in return. For example, he might do some work for his landlord in exchange for letting him stay there.

In fact, he can engage in any kind of voluntary contract he wants—except one; there's one piece of property he owns he can never give up: himself. You can give someone an axe because the axe can be separated from you. You can donate your kidney because your kidney can be separated from you. But there's no way you can be separated from yourself. No matter where you go, there you are! So although the Consistency Principle allows for the trading of private property, it doesn't actually let you transfer ownership of yourself. Any contract where you sell yourself into slavery is, therefore, completely invalid. But an axe, or a few hours a day, you can voluntarily trade that for whatever you believe is fair.

Normally, of course, these exchanges are made for money, because barter gets out of hand really fast. So you're more likely to sell your axe or work for a certain wage. You can then use the money to trade for other things in the economy. Money is just another form of property; it simply has the features of being a medium of exchange and a store of value. There's nothing special about it. Working for someone in exchange for money in no way makes you a slave or anything else statists like to bleat on about. By the same token, there's no legitimacy whatsoever to the claim that we don't own money, it's all the government's. If you received it in exchange for your labor, you own it. To say anything else would be to deny self-ownership and all the principles on which it is based. And that would make the person a slave. As well as violating the Consistency Principle and therefore all of science and reason.

So from nothing more than a logical examination of first principles, we come to the following inescapable conclusion:

8. Taking of legitimately-owned property cannot be defended

Owning property is passive. Taking that property is active. At the very least, as we discussed earlier, the burden of proof is on the side of the property-taker. This is why a plaintiff in court must prove his case before the court will pass a judgment for compensation. The only time this is legitimate is when the person has taken or damaged his property, or otherwise not lived up to his end of a contract. If Person A has stolen property from Person B, he can be made to give it back, or give the equivalent amount of money. Likewise, if Person A damages Person B's property, Person A can be made to pay damages to fix everything. Or if Person A borrows money from Person B to buy a house and then doesn't pay it back; Person B can then foreclose on Person A's house.

But when there has been no contract, no taken or damaged property, when no such obligation can ever be shown, you run into big problems with the Consistency Principle. By the very effect we talked about before with self-ownership, likewise, private property cannot be usurped by others. So the Burden of Proof in this context means only that you can prove that the person has an obligation based on the positive action he himself has taken to agree with it. That's it.

And that positive action cannot be the result of duress. Duress is an initiation of force, and so any contracts made under that force (or the threat of it) are automatically invalid.

So from first principles, taxation is theft. Using force to take a portion of someone's wages denies the very concept of self-ownership, and therefore denies the Principle of Non-Contradiction and all of science and reason go with it.

That also makes the so-called "Social Contract" a failure right on the face of it: even without having to go into what the courts have said about Tacit Consent and the rest, the Social Contract contravenes these very basic property rights, and since these rights are based on nothing more than first principles, the Social Contract fails right from the start. And you can't get around it by saying, "But government built the roads you drive on!" Remember: If it's done by force, it's duress, and the whole thing is invalid.

The Social Contract is also a direct violation of the Consistency Principle, too. Whereas a normal contract requires positive mutual agreement and a meeting of the minds, the Social Contract gives special powers to a certain group of people known as the "government"—powers we've shown they cannot possibly have in any way that's compatible with the Consistency Principle.

So there you have it: Property Rights and the Non-Aggression Principle stem directly from first principles, and statism, along with concepts such as "wage slavery," the legitimacy of taxation, the "Social Contract," Labor Theory of Value, and pretty much everything else the state does, all violate first principles.

Statists, your only way out of this is to try and show a flaw in the logic I've presented: where either some link in the chain of logic was skipped, or some fallacious reasoning was used somewhere. That's it. There is no empirical data, no emotional argument, no amount of fear-mongering, no Lifeboat Scenario that will help you. "Who will build the roads?" or "Libertarians are selfish" or "there's never been a Libertarian society" will likewise do nothing. These are arguments from First Principles. They cannot be denied.