I’ve been ’round and ’round with this and I’ve finally come to an unexpected conclusion.

Let’s say that Bob took some food from Tom and ate it without Tom’s consent. The food now no longer exists, for all practical purposes. Originally, I would have asserted that Tom now has a claim on Bob’s property because Bob had violated Tom’s property, transferring the value of Tom’s property to Bob without Tom’s consent. Bob had displayed that he rejects the moral principle that property should be respected, and that applies to his own property and, therefore, Tom would not be violating Bob’s property if he took property from Bob in order to replace the value of the food Bob took from Tom without Tom’s consent. But objective or universal moral principles can’t be based on subjective ideas. Objective morality isn’t based on “value”, it’s based on “those material objects to which no one else has an equal or greater claim, nor for which others can be assigned responsibility”. In this way, the assertion in Manual to Humanity is inconsistent with itself. Libertarians and, in particular, Austro-libertarians, should understand that value is subjective. The value of any object to any person is going to be different based on any person’s current situation and preferences. Ordinarily, a 100 oz gold bar would be more valuable to me than most other things, however, if I found myself in the desert, my values would suddenly shift away from gold and toward shade and water. But values shift in this way constantly, though less radically, for everyone in every moment. In this way, the value Tom places on the food Bob took from him can’t really be pinned down in any objective way, in any permanent sense, even by Tom himself!

The point is, for a philosopher to claim, as I previously did, that the violation of one’s property creates a claim on the property of the violator, the moral principle would need to be based on value, rather than material objects. Material objects objectively exist and value is merely subjective, so it can’t be true that the violated party, Tom, in this case, has an objective claim on the property of the violator! The property owner does, actually have a right (or an entitlement) to his own property, and, if that property is taken from him without his consent, he may recover that property by any means necessary, because he has a right to do what wants with his property and, because no one else has a right to the property of others, they may not, morally, stop him from recovering his property. However, if his property no longer exists, or the violator no longer possesses the stolen property, like Tom’s food that Bob ate without Tom’s consent, there is nothing for Tom to recover. Under no circumstance does one have a right to the property of others, even if others have violated one’s property.

That is all very unsatisfying, because it seems unjust that someone can take what’s yours, dispose of it in some way without your consent and owe you nothing. I think, however, that this is something a free market would deal with. Obviously, everyone has an interest in getting their stolen property back, in whatever form they can, even if that property no longer exists. Even consistent property violators would want this for their own property. Therefore, some arrangements could be made to mitigate these bad outcomes. For example, people could have insurance against property violation, and if property were violated, the insurance company would pay out and the property violator’s premiums would go up accordingly, effectively wiping out the long-term gain the violator may have gotten from violating the property. The violator may, in fact, find that he can’t be insured, which would make his property vulnerable to uncompensated violation.

Before wrapping this up, I want to address another issue I brought up earlier. I said, “…Bob had displayed that he rejects the moral principle that property should be respected, and that applies to his own property and, therefore, Tom would not be violating Bob’s property if he took property from Bob in order to replace the value of the food Bob took from Tom without Tom’s consent”. In the moment that property is being violated, I think (as of this writing, anyway) that this is a defensible position. I’ve written on this before in the Defense of Others post. However, people change over time. Tom demonstrates, in taking Bob’s bike without Bob’s consent, that he rejects the idea that property should be respected, including his own, since property is universal among humans, which constitutes Tom’s blanket consent to the use of Tom’s property by anyone, including Bob. But if, later, Tom has a change of heart and no longer approves of his past actions, he effectively withdraws his blanket consent. So, that concept is still applicable, but only during the act of the violation of property, which includes the time during which Tom refuses to return Bob’s bike.

The conclusion is that one does not have a claim on property that no longer exists, nor does one have a claim on the property of the violator because property is material and, therefore objective and “value” is subjective and indeterminate. An objective principle, like “By violating his victim’s property, thereby transferring value from the victim to himself, he creates a claim on his own property by which the victim may attempt to recoup the value taken from him…” can’t be based on a subjective concept. It’s ok, a free market would take care of this worrying conclusion in the real world.

I’ve come to believe that a libertarian political order isn’t possible. Libertarianism is the way that the productive class deals with each other, naturally. The libertarian social order already exists and functions at a high level. The political order, however, will always be dominated by pathological personalities who will be able to manipulate the general public’s genetic tribalism for their own gain.

Those of us who call ourselves libertarians have certain genetic characteristics like a weak tribal survival instinct, logicality, curiosity and a high value for knowledge. If people don’t have those characteristics, they won’t be able to recognize libertarianism even though it’s clearly correct and they live their own lives by it. They will believe what they perceive the tribal elite want them to believe and they can’t do anything else. It’s literally in their DNA to do so.

The question for me has become whether or not I should be a knowing victim of the political class in a dying empire, or should I get whatever I can from the government and help other libertarians do the same? Logically assess the situation at hand and figure out how to profit from it? The real difference between us and the normies is that we can see and, therefore, try to avoid our own political victimization. So should we do it?

I haven’t made up my mind., however, for the reasons described above, I don’t think anything can be done about tribally motivated social unrest and the political scams. As I’ve said before, the scams are how the political class transfers power and wealth from the productive class and that’s as permanent as modern settlements. You’re either going to get on board with the scams or be a victim of them.

That’s something we’re all going to have to figure out according to our own moral codes.

The bad news is that libertarianism can only be understood and accepted by certain people who happen to have certain characteristics, like weak tribalist instincts and talents like curiosity, reasonability, and intellect. If you don’t have those characteristics, you aren’t going to get it and that includes the vast majority of people. Additionally, since virtually everyone lives according to libertarian principle without understanding it, the few who don’t live by it have a big advantage. If I walk into a room of normal, peaceful, cooperative people who aren’t going to use violence, for the most part, but I don’t have any problem using violence, can you guess who’s going to get their way? Once I get my way with violence, I become the de facto tribal elite and, over time, I will be accepted and followed by the normies. After that, I can pretty much do whatever I want to them with their support. Libertarianism is a part of the human genome, but so is a certain amount of psychopathy. In the hunter/gatherer times, that was manageable because tribe members could simply leave the tribe or neutralize the offenders if the psychopathy became malignant. With the advent of permanent civilization, that safeguard faded.

This seems to be an unfixable problem with humanity. It may be that our species was never meant for permanent civilization, but our intellect and drive for survival uncovered agriculture, led to permanent civilization and now we’re dealing with the friction that’s caused between our current conditions and the conditions we evolved in. I think it’s unlikely to destroy us, because successful species, like mankind, tend to self-regulate (the pendulum swings), but it seems likely that humanity will continue to be dominated by the worst of us, forever.

What to do?

I’ll warn you now that I have no good solutions. I’m no political or social strategist. However, I do know a few things. One, after accepting libertarianism, most don’t realize that libertarian principle isn’t binding. You can accept and advocate for principle and still do things that are non-libertarian, or even anti-libertarian. I can prove it. Even though I’m a staunch advocate for libertarianism, I can walk over to my neighbor’s house and set it on fire. If I decided to do that right now, no one could stop me. All that libertarian principle tells me is that it’s morally wrong to do so and that behavior like that will have negative consequences for society in general. That’s it. Libertarianism is a pretty narrow philosophy. It’s almost impossible to live strictly according to principle. In real life, no compromises must be made, but life’s going to get really tough if compromises aren’t made. It’s best to live according to principle, however, we need to realize that we’re going to do things that aren’t particularly libertarian, whether we want to or not.

The point of saying that is to raise the question of whether or not we should get on board with whatever scams the political class is running and try to benefit from their violence. Basically, you’re going to be a victim or a beneficiary. I don’t think violence against the political class is a good answer, because they’re the best at violence. That’s why they’re at the top. And, even if violence could overthrow them, it would, most likely, only establish a different, violent political class. It might be a less bad political class for a while, but violence now is an awful big risk to take for a “maybe better political class” later. Controversially, participating in the scams isn’t against libertarianism, since it doesn’t actually involve violating property. Taxation isn’t theft. It really isn’t. The political class demands money and we give it to them. Under most circumstances, they don’t actually steal it. If they do, then yes, it’s theft, but that’s rare. The decision to pay taxes is like any other decision; it’s making a tradeoff to avoid something or to gain something. What’s more, being the recipient of tax money definitely isn’t objectively immoral. It doesn’t violate property when it’s collected and it certainly doesn’t violate property when it’s distributed. So, receiving tax money isn’t objectively immoral. “…but taxation is a threat and threats are aggression!” Well, you can define aggression however you want, but the Non Aggression Principle is really about property and consent. Threats don’t violate property. What about The Fed? The Fed literally takes the value of my money from me without asking. The question, however, is whether or not I’ve consented to this taking. The answer is yes. I have consented. I know that they’re going to take the value from me, yet, I willingly participate in the Dollar monetary system. What people don’t like about that is that it’s unfair. The political class has an enormous advantage over the rest of us and they tilt the tables in their favor. People don’t like the fact that they’re on the weak side and so they want to call it immoral, when, in fact, it isn’t (at least it’s not objectively immoral. Subjective morality varies.). So, receiving money printed by the Fed isn’t objectively immoral. As odd as it seems, as far as libertarianism goes, there are no moral concerns about getting involved in political scams, as long as it doesn’t require that the libertarian actually violates others’ property.

Political scams are absolutely inevitable and I’m not advocating involvement in them. I’m just trying to assess the situation realistically. If a libertarian world isn’t an option, then the question is, again, are we going to be a victims or beneficiaries? That’s something people have to decide for themselves. If your subjective morality rejects involvement in such things, then good for you. That’s probably a virtue. However, you will be a victim. Maybe, if we were to focus our energies on political scams, we could work ourselves into the elite class and, finally, have some tribal influence with the normies while gaining wealth and insulating ourselves from the otherwise inevitable victimhood. We aren’t going to be violent. It’s not in our nature, but we might be able to piggyback on the violence of the political class in order to gain the tribal sway that they maintain.

Should it be a religion?

As I mentioned, only certain people, with certain characteristics, can understand and accept libertarianism. There’s a small industry built up around libertarian awareness and persuasion. There are people out there who can be persuaded, but the number is small. That’s why, even though we win all the arguments, we aren’t a bigger constituency. The mind mine that these mind miners are mining is a lot smaller than I think they hope it is. It’s more about entertaining current libertarians than it is discovering new ones. We might be better served to just hand out a generic, libertarian essay and those who can grasp it will and those who can’t won’t and we won’t have wasted our time evangelizing to NPCs. As I pointed out in this post, normies who can’t grasp moral principles or ideas can be persuaded to follow them, through a religion. It might be worth developing a religion, like the elites did with the Covid-19 scam, or working libertarian ideas into current religions by creating a story that manipulates tribalism, provokes fear and offers security and is simple enough for average people to understand. How that might work, I have no idea, but it is a proven technique. It’s been done before to great effect, however, new religions often end up as cults. Maybe being a cult is a process that religions have to go through. Regardless, it can be done and there are people who will have a knack for it.

Are we an ethnicity? Should we act like one?

I’ve heard, anecdotally, that jews tend to be a very exclusive ethnic community who discourage marriage outside of the ethnicity and who value any jew over any non-jew. I don’t know if that’s true, but the idea is interesting. Maybe libertarians should be this way. If you are one of the few who can “get it”, then you can join the group, or maybe, more specifically, you are one of the group and we can focus on our own well-being. Some are already doing this, setting up groups of libertarians to help each other progress. That’s great, but maybe we need to be equally zealous in excluding non-libertarians from participating. I’m not suggesting only doing business with or helping/supporting libertarians, but excluding non-libertarians from our “ethnic” support groups. Ultimately, there is the violent, dominant political class, the clueless, tribalistic normies who support them and are exploited by them and us, the libertarians. Unlike the normies, we don’t have to be exploited by the political class, because we can see what the game is. The political class treats the rest of us like cattle, because that’s what we are and that’s what we’ll always be…unless you’re a libertarian and you realize that there are ways to get outside the fence that keeps the rest of the cattle in. So, if we can stick together, to the exclusion of others, maybe we can help each other avoid exploitation, or even benefit from the exploitation.

The problem with that idea is that we are, necessarily, weakly tribal. Our cohesion will be and has proven to be, tenuous, at best. I guarantee that response to this post, if there is any, will be all over the place and very contentious, maybe even nasty. I’m not sure we’re even capable of a strong ethnic affiliation. Maybe we don’t need to be organized. Maybe we should go our own ways, individually, with the goal of avoiding exploitation, teaming up when it’s beneficial.

This post has been prompted by what may be a realization that human society can never be broadly libertarian. Humans aren’t unlike any other animal in the sense that our social structures are genetically dictated and we can’t change that. The New Socialist Man can never be created, nor can the New Libertarian Man, for the same reasons. The difference is that, unlike socialism, libertarianism is in our DNA, but so is the tribalism that makes us beholden to the political class, whose personalities are pathological. The political class will always use violence against the naturally libertarian productive class, they’ll get their way and gain the support of those they’ve exploited through the tribal response. If this is true, and I’ve come to believe it is, then we need to figure out how to deal with it. We need to stop spending our time, talent and treasure on things that may be useless, like political reform and proselytizing and focus on that which will allow us to thrive – whatever that may be.

As I’ve said over and over, the reason for the existence of governments is to transfer wealth and power from the productive class to the political class. I think this is pretty obvious if you can filter out the propaganda and look at things for what they are. That fact changes the way societies naturally function. As the political class grows in wealth and power, the productive class become more subservient to them. There’s really no way around it and the political class does everything they can to guarantee that. I know a business owner very well who once owned a defense contracting company. Business was good until his partner, a former Navy procurement officer, was caught conspiring with a current procurement officer to secure contracts unlawfully. The partner did jail time and the company was finished.

The problem wasn’t that the partner was winning contracts illegally, the problem was that he was taking the contracts away from the established players and one of them called him out. That’s what law is for; keeping the game in order. Breaking the law is fine as long as you’re a member of the Big Club and playing by the rules. If you aren’t a club member and/or you aren’t keeping in line, the law will be used against you. Governments, especially national governments and even more especially the US federal government (“even more especially”, because it controls the world’s reserve currency and can steal more than any other), is a highly curated and internally disciplined mega-money gravy train that’s too profitable to the Club Members to allow it to be derailed by late-comers, do-gooders or savages.

It’s tempting to blame the participants in the Political Scam Machine, like Facebook and Twitter for their censorship, Google for political interference, Pfizer for its treat-the-symptoms-not-the-cause business model, Lockheed Martin for pushing for perpetual war, the SEIA for climate change lobbying and the Big Banking Cartel, or any others involved. But that’s the insidious genius of the Political Scam Machine; the more successful you get, the more you’re forced into participating in the scams. If your biggest competitor is in the Big Club, but you aren’t, they’re going to be able to use that leverage to out-perform you or maybe even to defeat and destroy you. They’ll get subsidies and you won’t. They’ll get preferential regulation and you won’t. They’ll get government contracts and you won’t. They’ll get exemptions and you won’t. You may be inclined to stand on principle and refuse to play, but you have hundreds of families, including your own, whose well-being depends on the continued success of your business, customers or clients who depend on your goods and services and vendors or suppliers whose success depends, to some extent, on your success. Think about the blood, sweat and tears that countless people paid into the success of the business, including your own. Think about how proud you are of your success and the opportunities and quality of life it’s given you, your family and so many others. How many people would be willing to risk all of that for a moral principle? That’s just the risk. I haven’t mentioned the great benefits the Big Club offers! You think you’re successful and well-respected now? Just wait until you’re in the Big Club!

The big players, whether they want to or not, are sucked into the machine. Once you’re in, and the political class says, “Let’s run a scam. We’ll tell everyone there’s this scary virus. We’ll make tens of billions of dollars, but we all have to stay in line to make it work…”, what are you going to say? No? Maybe you would, but they’d make you wish you hadn’t and you know that.

Covid-19, Climate Change, the War Machine, the Federal Reserve, virtually all of the Healthcare Industry, Big Ag/Big Pharma; all scams designed and implemented by the political class to transfer wealth and power to themselves from the productive class. The more profitable the scams become, the more attractive they are to the smartest and most ambitious of those with pathological personalities. It’s easy to understand why. We all see the mountains of money redistributed by and to terrible people and the fantastic lives they live because of it. We should all be able to see the temptation to just say to hell with principle! We won’t need principle when we’re rich!

Until recently, I think the political class has been too afraid to try these ostentatious mega-scams like Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and Isreal, Climate Change, etc., because they underestimated the effectiveness of their own propaganda, how dumbed-down and tribal the citizenry has become and how little public support matters.

The political scam machine is hardly a new phenomenon, but it’s entered a golden age of unprecedented success. Eventually, the pendulum will swing, but before that happens, many people will have gotten very wealthy and powerful from their operations. You gotta get while the gettin’s good and, right now, the gettin’s very good.

Those who are weakly tribal and intellectually talented are the only people capable of developing, considering and adopting ideas. These people speak in a code that can’t be understood by others. This is why intellectual progress has so little value in the market. To the masses, it’s gibberish. For the strongly tribal and intellectually talented, it comes from a nonsensical paradigm and for the strongly tribal and intellectually untalented, it’s simply noise.

Those who are weakly tribal, intellectually talented and talented in communication can simplify these intellectual advances in way that makes them available to the weakly tribal and intellectually untalented. People who are strongly tribal and intellectually talented are well-suited in developing elitist propaganda and those of them who are also talented in communication are more capable of delivering that propaganda to a largely tribalist public. Because the curve of tribalism is skewed toward tribalism, the elitist propagandists have a wider audience and naturally occupy higher ground than those promoting intellectual progress.

That, in a nutshell, is why society’s progress doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with intellectual progress and that we may be doomed to this situation forever. On the bright side, I think that there’s a natural tendency for society to self-regulate and to oppose the excesses of political overreach. However, that pendulum swings in an irregular motion and I don’t have clear thoughts on that, yet.

This isn’t meant as a negative assessment of the past or future of human progress, but as an explanation of what we see in reality with the masses holding nonsensical ideas and beliefs despite the progress of intellectual development and dissemination.

*For some reason, I’m only allowed to place the curve in certain places, so that’s as close to the appropriate placing I could get.

The reason governments exist is to transfer wealth and power from the productive class to political class.

I’ve been saying that for years. Might as well write it down.

In that case, you can get a moral absolute if all humans agree on it. Better put, you can get a moral absolute if it is not possible for humans to disagree. In the case of property, it is impossible for anyone to disagree that their property should not be violated. That’s what non-consent is: the denial that one’s property should be used by others. It is impossible for any human to disagree that their property should be used against their will. All humans that have lived, live or will live, did, do and will agree that their property should not be violated.

For clarity, people can say that they disagree, but what they say and what actually is can be different things. Manual to Humanity puts it like this, “Assume a man who ardently rejects the notion of property, Tom, is sitting in the park. If Bob punches him in the face, Tom will either consent or not consent to being punched. Tom must, as a condition of being human, consent or not consent. Consenting or not consenting is an involuntary reaction among humans. Even if Tom doesn’t act, he still must consent or refuse consent, even if only in his mind. If, even as an emotional reaction, he objects to being punched, then he is refusing consent. If he has a negative emotional response, but is more dedicated to his beliefs than he is opposed to the punch, then he consents. If he agrees to be punched, even on an emotional level, he consents. If he does not agree to be punched, even on an emotional level, he refuses consent. If he doesn’t want to be punched, but does want to demonstrate his anti-property philosophy more than he objects to the punch, he consents“.

Every human being agrees that their property should not be violated. One may agree that their property should not be violated, but also advocate that someone else’s property should be violated. However, in the definition of moral absolutism described above, it is impossible for all humans to agree (and, therefore, cannot be a moral absolute) to the extent to which the property of others should be violated, and all of the others will disagree, absolutely, that their property should be violated. On top of that, there is no fundamental, logical path that leads to the morality of property violation.

In short, property exists among humans (reference the link to Manual to Humanity, above). All humans either consent or deny consent to the use of their property by others. The denial of consent to the use of one’s property by others is a moral statement that others ought not violate their property. Property is ubiquitous to all humans and all humans agree that their property ought not be violated, and that is an objective, moral absolute that passes the Hume’s Is/Ought Problem.

*Everyone* is agnostic. At least in common parlance, where people claim to be agnostic if they don’t know if gods exist or if they’re open to the belief in gods, literally everyone is agnostic. No one knows if gods exist.

Everyone is either a theist or an atheist. There is no middle ground. One either believes in gods or they don’t. Believe is a verb. You’re either believing or you aren’t. There’s no gray area where you might be jumping, or you’re open to jumping and, therefore neither jumping nor not jumping. You’re either jumping or you aren’t. If you believe in gods, you’re a theist, if you don’t actually, actively believe in gods, you’re an atheist. I think the confusion comes from the popular lack of distinction between the lack of belief in the existence of gods and the belief in the non-existence of gods. Both are atheism, but the lack of belief in existence is passive and belief in non-existence is active. In the former, you aren’t convinced that gods exist and in the latter you are convinced that they don’t exist.

In Episode 424 of the Bob Murphy Show, near the end of the episode Bob and Stefan Molyneux talk about Molyneux’s evolving ideas about Christianity. At one point (1:02.40 mins), Molyneux refers to agnostics as “taking pride in not making a decision on essential matters in the world is a kind of smug superiority on a lack of intellectual throughput and rigor and consistency…”. Belief in gods is not a decision. You’re either convinced, for whatever reasons, or you aren’t. This is a problem with Pascal’s Wager. You can’t just start believing in something. If you can, then start believing in Flarf, The Almighty, the semi-sentient, inter-dimensional turtle who created the universe that I just made up. No, I mean, really believe in him. Then, in a few minutes, stop believing in him. You won’t be able to do it. That’s not how belief works. Telling yourself you believe in something and actually believing in it are different things. The best you can do is search for evidence or a story that convinces you.

I just had to address these little issues because I think they’re important to understand when pushing this type of discussion forward.

First, philosophy can tell us what the ideal is and tell us what the morality of action is, but it doesn’t tell us what can or can’t be done. If I see a man with a record of assault approaching a group of women with what I feel is bad intent, I can take physical action against him if I want to. That’s my choice. Philosophy tells me that doing so would be immoral, since physically engaging the property of others (like this man’s body) without their consent is immoral. It violates the man’s property, because he hasn’t actually violated the property of anyone else. When I decide to take the action to violate his property, I have to take into consideration that I will violate his property and that I may owe him for damages. If I think it’s worth it, however, I can take that action and hope for the best.

I think this is one of the main hang-ups about the immigration debate; people want to do immoral things because they think it will have a better outcome according to their preferences, but they don’t want to take the moral responsibility for doing so. They think that their desires have to be morally justified. They don’t. You can advocate the NAP and still advocate positions in conflict with it. Your preference may be such that violating the NAP brings a result you think is better than not violating it. You are morally responsible for your actions and it could be that others, including those whose property you violate will agree with your actions and forgive you, or at least, they won’t seek restitution. Of course, that’s very simple, and in a complex world things are muddier. The point is that philosophical principles and actions can be in opposition, but it can’t always be claimed that one justifies the other.

Second, governments can’t own property, at least in the way that they exist in the world today. That idea won’t be anything seasoned libertarians won’t have heard, but the reasons I’m going to give may not be obvious. Ownership and control are not the same thing. Ownership is a philosophical idea and control is a physical reality. If Bob steals Tom’s bike, Bob controls the bike, but Tom still owns it. Tom hasn’t consented to the transfer of his property, the bike, to Bob. Governments do, occasionally, actually steal things, however, taxation isn’t theft, but a voluntary transaction made by the taxpayer to mitigate a threat of violence against them if they don’t. That’s extortion, not theft. The reason it’s important to understand that distinction is that threats aren’t NAP violations, as outlined in Manual to Humanity. It is possible for the state to collect taxes, then use the money to buy things. But even if they buy things this way, voluntarily, they still don’t own them, because the state itself has no ownership. No one owns shares in the state; not its employees, its subjects, or anyone else. There’s not a single person or group of people anywhere who can buy or sell any kind of share in a government. If the government buys a car, you won’t be able to find a single person on Earth who actually owns the car or any share in it or claims to own it or a share in it. A shareholder in a company or partnership, on the other hand, can be identified. The state has no shareholders or ownership agreements and therefore, no owners.

All “public property” is controlled to some extent by the state, but it isn’t actually owned by anyone. From a philosophical perspective, this means that anyone has the right to whatever objects constitute “public property”. An entity that controls, but does not own property, creates a problem in the real world. These problems may not have ideal solutions. Some argue that philosophically imperfect solutions are required to fix philosophically muddy situations. That’s fine, but they shouldn’t try to twist philosophy to justify those actions. What’s being proposed should be argued with that understanding.

Most NAP violations are either too insignificant to pursue or are simply forgiven. Those that are significant enough to pursue, still may not result in any measure of justice. You may send your kid to a public school, object to a homeless drug addict being there doing homeless drug addict things and advocate that he be removed. The fact is that the school is unowned and he has a right to be there as much as anyone. That said, anyone can see why his removal might be preferable even though it violates his property/consent. One may even be able to get away with doing it if the violation is dismissed by the victim (the homeless drug addict), forgiven, or if justice is simply impossible to obtain. Clearly, the removal of the homeless man is a violation of libertarian principle. The libertarian thing to do would be to avoid taking your kid to unowned places where there are homeless drug addicts.

The point is that libertarian philosophy really only tells us when it’s appropriate to use the property of others, whatever that property may be, whether it’s grabbing someone and throwing them out of a school, borrowing someone’s car, going to someone’s house and eating supper with them, killing someone, or whatever. It doesn’t say what the solutions to problems are in an unfree society where the state has thrown a wrench into everything. Of course, all people should abide by libertarian principles to whatever extent they can, but, when they don’t, they should own up to it, take responsibility and hope for forgiveness or that restitution isn’t sought. It’s less respectable to advocate that the NAP be violated in the hopes that victims will simply be unable to obtain justice. There’s nothing wrong with making the argument as long as the implications are understood and libertarian philosophy isn’t twisted in doing so.

A popular libertarian podcaster, whose show I consistently listen to and enjoy, recently did an episode where he advocated that the police remove homeless people from a public park that he and his daughter were visiting. That started a debate on some censorship platform that I’m not familiar with, called “Twitter”, I think. On the podcast episode in question, the host mildly criticized libertarians who opposed the common-sense practice of having police remove the homeless from public parks. As much as I want to just go along with what this guy says, I was a little shocked by it (mission accomplished, [Name Redacted]!), as being not only non-libertarian, but also naïve and impractical.

Therefore, Bulleted List: