S offers a critique of my views concerning stealing a loaf of bread, which appeared on the blog recently.
Below, see my response to him.
From: S
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2019 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: Compatible…libertarian…bread…? YES
Good afternoon, Walter,
It’s always pleasing to have an intellectual reason for contacting you!
I’m testing the strength of the limb as I shuffle out along it … but ….
Well, let’s start with an analogy. Suppose your neighbour is holiday, and you happen by his house and notice it is on fire. Now the conundrum is, he never gave you permission to enter his property – but that (we presume) is what you’d need to do to tackle the fire. So, does it contravene the NAP, to trespass onto his ground and even break into his house to tackle the flames while they are yet in their infancy?
Suppose also that he has a cat trapped inside. Why a cat? Why not?
Where I believe this avoids contravening the NAP is that you can’t KNOW he, your neighbour, forbids in absentia your trespass etc. to put out the fire in his house. So you can’t KNOW that your actions are ‘aggressive’ – in the sense of going against his wishes regarding his property. Is Schrodinger’s Cat on fire? The chances surely are that he’d rather you trespassed and broke into his house to put the fire out, than just stood there like a useless libertarian, wondering what Aleppo was, while his house burned down.
What you CAN know in advance is that you are at your neighbour’s legal mercy, should he wish to sue you for damages later.
Thus regarding taking someone else’s bread: Suppose, among your many hobbies, you also liked to bake bread; and suppose one afternoon you left some fresh loaves on the windowsill, and a starving munchkin took one. Crossness would ensue. But skip that part. Suppose you then found out that the thief took YOUR bread only because he was starving. Would you prosecute? Would you be glad he took it, if taking it in fact saved his life? Would you hope, when you placed the bread on the windowsill, that anyone who was genuinely starving would come and help themselves?
We cannot always know the motives of those who take the property of others – but that is why we cannot KNOW that we would condemn them for doing so – and I argue this ignorance to the logical conclusion that stealing a loaf of bread is therefore not NECESSARILY aggressive: For if you knew in advance why someone was going to steal your bread, you wouldn’t mind at all; and if you wouldn’t mind them taking it, then it’s not theft; and if not theft, then not aggression against your property.
And if it is not aggressive, then it must be compatible with libertarian law.
Call it ‘hindsight libertarianism’? But I think the problem stems from a presumption of aggression, when circumstances may dismiss the aggression.
Well, I welcome your thoughts. And of course you can publish the above on LRC.
Regards, S
Dear S:
Nice try at undermining strict libertarian theory, but no cigar.
Yes, you’ve put your finger on an important point. The NAP and private property rights, alone, all by their lonesome, do not exhaust libertarianism. More is needed. There are grey areas. We also need rational, hopefully private judges for these grey areas to INTERPET and APPLY the NAP and private property rights, the foundations of libertarianism. To say this does not make me into a thick libertarian. I am not adding material extraneous to the NAP and private property rights.
There is not a rational judge in the land who would imprison for trespass someone who broke into a house on fire in order to douse the flames. Similarly, there is not a rational judge in the land who would imprison for assault and battery a doctor who gave an emergency tracheotomy, without his permission, and thus saved this life, to a man dying from choking. Similarly, there is not a rational judge in the land who would imprison for assault and battery a man who pushed a woman out of the path of the proverbial onrushing truck, thus saving her life, even though he broke her ribs in the process. Ditto for the Heimlich maneuver.
The over-whelmingly reasonable PRESUMPTION is that people want fires in their homes put out. The over-whelmingly reasonable PRESUMPTION is that people want to be pushed out of the way of oncoming trucks, so as to save their lives. The over-whelmingly reasonable PRESUMPTION is that people who are choking want a tracheotomy, or to be subjected to the sometimes brutal Heimlich maneuver, again, so as to save their lives. But, can we say that the over-whelmingly reasonable PRESUMPTION is that bakers, or others, want their bread stolen by starving people? I cannot see my way clear to agreeing with that. Yes, most of us, bakers and non-bakers alike, would be willing to give a loaf of bread to a starving person. Most people are generous. That’s why we have private charity. But, if we left bread out on the street, with a sign, saying, “Only starving people may take this loaf of bread” all the bread would soon be gone, and not at all on the part of starving people. So, we cannot deduce that bread owners are willing to do any such thing.
Again I ask, under which type of law are we likely to have fewer starving people, the goal of all men of good will? The libertarian one, which severely punishes theft, or the hippie, dippie, pinko law, which allows this. The answer is obvious in my view. Private property rights should be sacrosanct, no exceptions. Yes, interpretation, but no exceptions.
4:46 pm on August 1, 2019
