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"you could argue it infringes on the rights of the officers" Libertarians typically refer to the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), where your right to swing your

by crusso 9y ago

"you could argue it infringes on the rights of the officers" Libertarians typically refer to the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), where your right to swing your fist stops at my face. It would be hard to argue that filming the officer violates the NAP, particularly since the officer is allowed to film another individual citizen, creating a parity of individual rights. I see what you're trying to say about coming at the problem from different perspectives, but the individual liberty arguments are almost always going to be the simpler ones to reason about when starting from first principles. The common good arguments become subjective and ambiguous very quickly. Worse, the people making the collective arguments are almost always the ones with the power. Guess which arguments will win out most of the time.

vidarh 9y ago
What you say would apply largely to certain parts of right-libertarianism. As a left-libertarian, the NAP is the kind of sophistry that makes me not consider right libertarian truly libertarian, as taken to the extreme it can be used to actively deprive others of even the right to life, reducing liberty more than it increases it. (Most commonly is it used to protect property rights) E.g. if I monopolise all sources of food, strict adherence to the NAP prevents you from using violence to prevent everyone else from starving to death. The left-libertarian view would be that the right of life is far more essential to liberty than property rights - if you are dead there is no way you can be free -, and so if many are at the threat of starvation over your property rights, liberty is maximised by taking your property from you, even at the cost of your life if necessary, as your act of monopolising an essential resources is morally equivalent to violence against everyone deprived. This is a common good argument and individual liberty argument at the same time.

by crusso 9y ago

vidarh 9y ago

What you say would apply largely to certain parts of right-libertarianism. As a left-libertarian, the NAP is the kind of sophistry that makes me not consider right libertarian truly libertarian, as taken to the extreme it can be used to actively deprive others of even the right to life, reducing liberty more than it increases it. (Most commonly is it used to protect property rights) E.g. if I monopolise all sources of food, strict adherence to the NAP prevents you from using violence to prevent everyone else from starving to death. The left-libertarian view would be that the right of life is far more essential to liberty than property rights - if you are dead there is no way you can be free -, and so if many are at the threat of starvation over your property rights, liberty is maximised by taking your property from you, even at the cost of your life if necessary, as your act of monopolising an essential resources is morally equivalent to violence against everyone deprived. This is a common good argument and individual liberty argument at the same time.