Money is property. Information is not.

My exchange doesn't charge any commission for trades.

No, I get what you're saying. You're saying that even though I don't want people to rob me, other people want to rob me so I should compromise and let them rob me some of the time or only let them take half of my stuff because that way I'm not forcing my beliefs on others. I see where you're coming from but at the same time, I don't give a shit. Rob me at your own peril, thief.

Thanks for trying to reach out to me though. Maybe someday I'll be as sophisticated and egalitarian as you and think we should comprise on murder, rape and theft. Until then, wear bullet resistant armor.

Whoever wins this has no life.

My way being not attacking me or my property. So, yes, if people attack me or my property I will defend myself. If you want to be a murderer or a rapist then I'll shed a single tear for you and pour out some beer for you in your memory after you're dead. Congratulations, you got me to confess that I will kill murderers and rapists if they attack me. I hope my reputation can survive this shocking revelation!

It's not my personal definition. It's a definition used by hundreds of thousands of Libertarians.


I'm sorry that you think morality is a popularity contest but even if 5.9 billion people think rape and murder are part of a fun Friday night I really don't care. We can argue about whether or not you should be allowed to rape and murder but as soon as you attempt to do it, you're going to have a few extra holes in your body.

There's nothing wrong with a license, which is essentially a contract. You simply can't enforce your contract on third parties unless they agree to the terms. If I sell you software but the contract says that you agree not to give it to third parties and you must sacrifice a chicken each full moon, that's compatible with Libertarianism. However, if you violate our contract and give the software to a third party, I can't enforce the terms of that contract on him or her.

Define "taking care of". Maximizing our happiness? Sounds like a utilitarian nightmare to me.

Yes, I see how it works. However that doesn't explain how I'm being inconsistent. You might not agree with my definition of coercion but you're still wrong when you say that I'm applying it inconsistently. QED. Yet again you've been proven wrong.

Anyways, if you think the definition coercion still allows you to attack and rob people or that murder is eating ice cream then you'll need to come up with some kind of cogent argument for it. The accepted definition is that using threats of violence to get what you want is coercion. I'm sorry if you don't understand the difference between persuasion and coercion but there is a difference.

That's wonderful. Libertarians always view charity as part of the free market. I would suggest though that people be able to provide some sort of evidence that they are needy so that the system doesn't get abused.

You're moving goalposts here. You were asking about an intelligence which operated purely on logic and nothing else and that's what I was responding to. A an intelligence that operates purely on logic would have no motivation to survive, care about anything or even wish to apply logic. You need to understand why humans act. Humans act because they are dissatisfied with their current state of affairs, the state of affairs that would obtain if they didn't act or the state of affairs that would obtain if they stopped their current action. Dissatisfaction however has nothing to do with logic. A purely logical creature wouldn't act. There would have to be some non-logical underpinnings such as emotions, instinct, hardwired programming or whatever else you wish to call it.

So, would you say people were drowned by an Earthquake? I don't think so.

Instincts may trigger emotions but the desire to survive is still emotional.

Anyways, this is a pointless argument. The relevant point is that there's nothing dictated by logic that you should desire to survive. It's irrelevant whether you wish to argue that desire is emotional, instinctual are whatever else. That's a red herring.

Instincts trigger emotions.

No, remember, my definition is "persuading someone to do something by using physical force or threats of violence other than in self-defense of person or property". If I do that to anyone else then it's still coercion. You've utterly failed to show that I've been inconsistent in application of my definition.

The only connection between logic and morality is that logic can help you see implications of moral beliefs. If you believe killing is wrong and shooting someone with a gun will kill them then you can deduce that shooting someone with a gun is wrong. Aside from that though, the premise that "killing is wrong" is based on emotion, not logic. If you were completely logical with no emotions, you wouldn't even move, feed yourself, etc because there's nothing about logic that says you should prefer pleasure over pain or living over dying, unless you have some emotional predispositions built-in. If an intelligence has no emotions, we could do whatever we want and it would have no preference about whatever we did.

Here's my definition.


Show me where I've been inconsistent.

We're talking about who was there first with the pollution vs. the need for there not being pollution. Let's say that a doctor and a machine shop are next to each other and the machinist starts with his grinding and other noise and the doctor doesn't complain because the doctor has his office on the other side of the building where it doesn't affect him. Now let's say, the doctor later decides to relocate his office to a point where the noise is now a problem. That's too bad, the machinist was there with his noise first.


That's too bad. We don't protect possible futures. You have to have something that will be damaged before the noise is in place and something that is damaged after the noise is in place.


If you were there first with your bees then I have to stop but I only owe you for your current operation. I don't owe you for your future expansion or if you suddenly decide to buy only ultra-expensive rare bees.

I've already answered this in my above post. If you were there first, you win. If they were there first, they win.


No company is going to reach a settlement unless it includes conditions that disallow you for suing from further damages. In that case, the company will just have to shut down their operation.


I'm well aware of Ronald Coase. I'm an avid follower of Walter Block. He's got an hour-long lecture critiquing Coase.

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id6glPCLm0E

If you don't want to watch it, I'll explain the flaw with Coase in my own words. Coase ignores the prior-latter distinction. All he sees is that A harms B and B harms A. But that's like saying that if you kick me in the shin, even though you're hurting me, my shin is also hurting your foot. For Libertarians that's just too bad! You shouldn't have kicked me!

This problem isn't hard at all. Who was there first? The other person? Then you lose. My shin was there first. Don't kick it and you won't hurt your foot on it.


Exactly. I don't understand why we have to pretend this is such a subtle and difficult issue. It's not.

If I start an airport next to some unowned land and then you move there and tell me to shut down my airport, that's absurd. I was there first. I homesteaded the rights to pollute. If, however, I build an airport next to some previously owned land then you have the right to tell me to stop the noise. It's all about who was there first.


You can sue over every form of pollution if you were there first.

The only difference between voluntary organization and government is that the government uses coercion. Without it people would only do what they voluntarily wanted to do. It's hard to see how protecting the weak from the strong wouldn't be one of those things. If it isn't how could a government possibly accomplish that? It can't.

Thanks for the book recommendations, I'll check them out and see if they merit reading, but unless you can make a cogent argument in your own words then this isn't a debate.


Concentrating power in the hands of a few politicians is handing them the world on a silver platter. Decentralizing power isn't. Rich people can organize and lobby more effectively than poor people. That's why any system based on swaying votes is going to necessarily favor the rich. Of course, it's easier for you to make baseless assertions, call people names, etc, than to actually address the arguments with some kind of evidenced based reasoning.