I should be a little more precise in the above language. The exercise of the right is subject to mitigating circumstances, denoting that the right itself is not inalienable.

V Harris

“Eight ‘homesteaders’ have climbed aboard a floating, but previously empty, lifeboat when the rightful owner (bearing title) and his henchman swim up, lay exclusive claim to the boat and it’s supplies, and demand *all* (not just two) occupants jump overboard. Using individual property-rights principles, explain the proper outcome of the owner’s demand.”

The individuals who jumped into the life boat most likely assumed that the life boats were there for the benefit of those who first reach the boat. In other words, the would correctly (Link)believe that it was implicit in the contract. So even if the owner demands that they jump out, they would view it as an unreasonable request to rescind a contract that was implied by the purchase of their tickets to cruise on the ship. If the henchman of the owner of the ship throw them overboard, that would constitute an aggression against their most intrinsic property (i.e., their lives.)

The sinking of the Titanic was also instrumental in changing the existing regulations for lifeboats on passenger liners. The Titanic was fully compliant with the lifeboat regulations of the day, yet carried only sixteen of them, enough to hold 1,178 passengers—and the Titanic was booked with 2,207 passengers and crew19. However, due to the reluctance of many passengers to leave the ship, believing that it was unsinkable, nearly all the lifeboats were lowered away without their full complement of passengers. In the end, only 705 were saved.

Both the American and British inquiry committees made numerous recommendations towards the revision of existing lifeboat regulations. The American committee proposed that every ship carry sufficient lifeboats to hold all passengers and crew onboard in the event of an emergency, a measure that was already being taken by steamship lines across the world in the wake of the Titanic’s loss. No less than four crew members with knowledge of handling boats would be assigned to every lifeboat, and lifeboat drills for the crew would be conducted and noted in the ship’s log a minimum of twice a month. Both crew and passengers would be assigned to lifeboats before the start of the voyage; the assignments would be allocated as to provide passengers the shortest route possible to a lifeboat, and both assignments and directions to the lifeboats would be posted in each stateroom20.

The British committee’s plans for revising lifeboat regulations were much more detailed. Lifeboat accommodation on passenger ships would be based on the projected number of passengers to be carried, rather than tonnage, and such accommodations would be considered independently of the subdivision of the ship into watertight components. (This involved striking down Rule 12 of the Life-Saving Appliance Rules of 1902.) In special cases where the Board of Trade believed the provision of lifeboats for all on board to be impractical, requirements would be altered accordingly. This involved changing the sizes and types of lifeboats on board, changing the manners of stowing them, or setting aside an entire deck to the storage of lifeboats and the drilling of the crew. All lifeboats would be fitted with a “protective fender” or bumper, to prevent damage when being lowered. In addition, the committee proposed that the Board of Trade be empowered to require that one or more lifeboats be fitted with “some form of mechanical propulsion”—i.e. an engine. All lifeboats would be on board before any ship commenced a voyage, and be equipped with lamps and pyrotechnics for signaling, as well as compasses and provisions; they would also be marked to easily indicate the maximum capacity of adult individuals when being lowered. Finally, the committee recommended that Board of Trade inspection of lifeboats should be more strict and searching in the future21.

The British inquiry committee also made a number of recommendations for the conduct of lifeboat drills. They proposed that if a ship did not carry enough deckhands to sufficiently man all the lifeboats, other members of the crew should be trained and tested in boat work to take up the slack. In this light, the committee recommended that steps be taken to encourage boys to train in the merchant service. More frequent lifeboat drills should be conducted; in all ships a lifeboat drill, a fire drill, and a watertight door drill should conducted as soon as possible upon leaving port, and then again during the voyage at convenient intervals lasting no longer than a week. All this should be recorded in the ship’s log. Before allowing a ship to leave port, the Board of Trade should be satisfied that all requirements had been met and that each officer of the ship knew the plan for efficiently working the lifeboats22.

V Harriss,

Of course, the owner can use retaliatory force to remove the tresspassers from his boat. I was just assuming that he was incapable of doing such, due to being outnumbered. Steven M. makes a good point about norms regarding lifeboats, when one gets on a ship. Regarding the Titanic, see The Real Titanic Story. Cox, Stephan.

V Harris,

We have to distinguish between several related, but separate, issues:

1. Does the lifeboat owner have the right to kick those off of his boat in excess of the seats necessary for him to secure himself a placee? The answer here is a qualified yes, presuming he did not have some prior obligation to seat the passengers on his lifeboat: e.g., in all cruises and such, the cruise-liner is obligated to place passengers in lifeboats, or in the case where the lifeboat owner put the individuals in their current predicament.

2. Is it moral for the lifeboat owner to demand that everyone else on the boat jump overboard? Probably not.
3. Is it moral for the lifeboat owner to demand that the first two seats be vanquished, so him and his bodyguard can be seated? In this case, it depends. Certainly, it is a virtuous thing to sacrafice yourself for others; however, that does not mean that refusing to do so is immoral.
4. Is the lifeboat owner likely to demand that everyone else leave the boat? Probably not. You’ve assumed this for the sake of argument, but I find it very unlikely that such a situation would occur.
5. Is it legal for others on the boat to refuse to leave the boat, when asked to do so by the owner? Since the owner is within his legal rights to ask them to leave, and force them to leave if necessary, it is necessarily criminal for the others on the boat to refuse to leave.
6. Is it moral for others on the boat to refuse to leave the boat, when asked to do so by the owner? Anything which is prohibited by natural law as being criminal must necessarily be immoral. Thus, such refusal would be immoral.
7. Is it likely that the others on the boat would refuse to leave the boat? Probably so. In any event, when one is in a dire circumstance, and violates the property rights of others, that doesn’t excuse one from compensating them afterwards (restitution + retribution).

Assuming the lifeboat owner has not obligated himself to allow the individuals to use his lifeboat (let’s say one passenger, the lifeboat owner, had his own private lifeboat attached to the ship, thus which did not fall under the conract that cruiseliners make with all customers), there are a few important things you are forgetting.

Firstly, without this owner, if he hadn’t invested his resources to make the lifeboat, these individuals wouldn’t have been in it in the first place. Thus, they should thank him that his forethought increased their odds of survivorship and abide by his request. The one complicating factor here is that, when seating lifeboats or taking lifeboat seats, the cruise’ directors may have filled the private lifeboat, or the passengers may not have recognized it was any different. In that case, the question is: Who’s fault is it that this occured? It is the cruiseliner’s fault — for either seating people in this lifeboat, or not specifying that it was not owned by the cruiseliner, and specifying the private owner’s rules of boarding — so the lifeboat refuges cannot blame the lifeboat owner for that.

Secondly, this case is analagous to another hypothetical I could concoct. Let’s say there’s 1 woman and 9 men on a lifeboat. Lets say that these 9 men on a lifeboat with some kind of bizarre disease that requires them to have sex with a woman every hour or die. Now, assuming that the woman did nothing to place these men in such a situation, and assuming that this woman did not want to have sex with any of these men, would it be legal for them to force her to have sex with them so that they could survive? The answer is a clear no. Irrelevant of their personal predicament, it does not give them the right to violate the property rights of another (in this case, the property right of a person in her body). There are many reasons why the woman might not want to do such, but even it is something as apparently trivial as “none of them are appealing”, that still doesn’t justify raping her.

The problem with the kind of argument you’re proposing is that it is Utilitarian, and Utilitarianism has been debunked on several grounds.

1. Interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible, hence an attempt to say “it wouldn’t be of much harm to the woman to allow the men to have sex with her” or “it wouldn’t be of much harm to the lifeboat owner to allow the others to stay on”, but that it would do great benefit to the others, is meaningless, and does not in any way justify the violation of property rights.
2. Utilitarianism is contradictory to its stated goals, as Hoppe has shown. Allowing for the redistribution of property and violation of property rights when, according to the wise ones it “increases net utility”, creates inherit instability in property rights. The result is increasingly high time-preferences and a process of decivilization, resulting in exactly the opposite of the goal Utilitarians are trying to reach.
3. Utilitarians have a performative self-contradiction. Utilitarianism states that if it would raise “net social utility” (a meaningless concept already), it is ok to murder someone — that is, kill them without their consent. Yet, lets hypothetically place the Utilitarian in the position of the person who needs to be killed. If he consents to being killed, then he hasn’t verified his argument, for he has consented (that is, he was not murdered, not killed against his will). If he refuses and does not consent to being murdered, he is actively contradicting himself, for he is saying then that it is not ok to kill someone against their will. Note, that restitution/retribution under libertarian law does not fall into this problem, due to argumentation ethics and estoppel.

Alternatively, your argument could be emotive. In that case, you still have to generalize, and you run into a problem with the rape scenario i pointed out. Furthermore, anyone else could have a different emotive reaction. Emotional arguments are not particularly solid.

V Harris,

If she did, then she’d be obliged to allow them to have sex with her. E.g., if she blew up the boat they were previously on, thus causing their current predicament (where they presumeably don’t have access to their medication, or other potential women). It’s the same as if you push someone in the water — you’re then obligated to get them out, lest you be held guilty for murder.

David,

First, let’s do away with the need to hedge answers by repeatedly incorporating the ‘howevers.’ The boat is the exclusive property of the owner with no other rights, express or implied, given to anyone except the henchman. The ‘homesteaders’ are now fully aware, and convinced, of the owners exclusive rights to it, and thus their status as trespassers.

I have no desire to defend any particular alternative to natural rights philosophy, but rather to illustrate the inane conclusions that natural rights principles, taken to their logical conclusion, drive us to embrace. Having read through your post, I see that we are still in agreement that the owner has acted perfectly within his rights by ordering his henchman to throw overboard the remaining trespassers, that they have no right to refuse to leave nor resist the force about to be exerted against them to affect their exit.

Let’s proceed with the lifeboat situation unfolding as the owner continues to exert his rights thus:

The two trespassers previously thrown overboard by the henchman have, in the meantime, drowned. The owner, aiming to assist in removing the remaining trespassers from the boat, has armed himself with a knife from the supply cabinet. A scuffle ensues wherein four more trespassers are ejected from the boat by the henchman, but the owner has been thrown overboard by one of the passengers after the owner cut him with the knife.

The owner directs the henchman to make quick work of the other two trespassers and then pull the owner aboard. The henchman lunges for the cut passenger when the passenger draws a gun and fires at the henchman, who falls over the edge of the boat and into the water, dead.

Realizing he has lost this battle, the owner surrenders the knife and the two remaining passengers pull him on board on condition that he stop trying to eject them. He agrees. The other four ejected passengers are no longer visible, presumably drowned.

Shortly thereafter, the owner pulls a one-man raft from the supply cabinet, inflates it, puts it into the water, gets in and starts paddling away. As he recedes he again demands the trespassers vacate his lifeboat. They again refuse, this time claiming they have an agreement. The owner claims the agreement is void as it was extracted under duress and they must leave. They refuse. In a few minutes, the trespassers begin to notice the lifeboat listing and the waterline rising — the owner has removed the hull drain plug to scuttle the boat. The cut passenger is weak and goes down with the boat, but the other passenger is a strong swimmer, jumps from the edge of the lifeboat and is able to catch the owner in the raft.

He ejects the owner from his raft and climbs in. At just that moment, they both hear a horn and see a rescue ship on the horizon.

Only two survivors are rescued — the owner and one trespasser. They are fully debriefed and their stories match that described above.

Do natural rights laws dictate that:

-six of the dead trespassers committed various trespass and assault crimes (fighting against ejection),

-one dead trespasser also attempted murder (threw owner overboard after being cut) and committed murder (shot henchman while being attacked),

-one surviving trespasser is also guilty of attempted murder (dumped owner from raft),

-the henchman committed no crime and,

-the owner committed no crime?

Justice is then administered — assets of trespassers are seized to affect restitution to the henchman’s family and the lifeboat owner, and retribution is exacted on the surviving trespasser.

Although farfetched, does this scenario correctly portray one proper outcome when natural rights are rigorously enforced on those who willingly violate them? If so, then it seems obvious why the inalienability of natural rights are widely rejected — and just as obvious why we need another, more acceptable guiding principle to dictate our behavior in settling disputes in the ‘hard cases.’

V Harris

V. Harris,

Certainly, those on the lifeboat who refused to leave are guilty of tresspass. The owner, in attempting to eject those individuals, is entitled to use proportional force necessary to remove them. If he asks them to leave, and they start to comply, he’s not entitled to use any force against them to remove them. If he asks them to leave, and they refuse, he’s entitled to use the physical (pushing) force necessary to push them off the boat; any further resistance they put up, he is legally entitled to counter with proportional retaliatory force. If someone’s tresspassing on your property, and they violently resist leaving, you’re entitled to use proportional force against them to remove them: if they are hurt or injured, or mortally wounded, it is their own fault, as they had the option to leave peacefully.

Despite that rather improbable story you told, you still haven’t made a convincing argument, as you are either appealing to emotionalism — which is not a moral argument — or Utilitarianism, which has been thoroughly rebutted. All that you have done is shown what you think is an unfortunate result of property rights, in one specific case — consequentialism. So what?

Again, the thing you are failing to account for is that without the lifeboat owner (who in your specified case hasn’t give anyone else permission to board it by contract, implicit or explicit) these people all would have drowned anyways. Thus, they should be thankful that his foresight increased their odds of survivorship, and at the very least lengthened their lifespan slightly. And let’s look at exactly what your argument is…in these situations, where you think the consequences of property rights are unfortuante, you think that property should be redistributed, the rights of the property owners encroached upon. Of course, the result of this is mass-uncertainty. Who knows when some bizarre situation would over-ride their claim to what is theirs? The result would be higher time-preferences, and a greater tendency towards decivilization, thus less of a likelihood of such forethought existing in the first place.

You conveniently brushed aside my rape example. However, if you think that the lifeboat owner here shouldn’t be able to prevent these people from getting on (or staying on) his lifeboat, then you also have to say that the woman in a lifeboat with 10 men who need to have sex every hour (or else die) shouldn’t be allowed to prevent them from having sex with her (that is, it would be “ok” for them to rape her). You can’t have it both ways, and this is where “emotionalism” falls flat on its face, caught in an irresolvable conflict.

And consider this situation, which is logically no different: The owner equips his lifeboat with bionic finger-print readers, one for each seat, which will recognzie his fingerprint and those of 9 others he pre-specifies. If it does not recognize the fingerprint, a spring in the seat ejects the person sitting there off of the lifeboat. Thus, in such a situation, these 9 other individuals couldn’t stay on the lifeboat in the first place — they would have been removed from the owner’s property by a device he set up. This is logically no different than your example — the owner, albeit indirectly, is still removing unwanted tresspassers from his property — yet one’s “emotional reaction” is most likely different. Again, emotionalism falls flat on its face.

V Harris,

I did answer the question — “what if she did place them in that predicament?” — in a brief post (upon trying to find that post again, in the midst of all the other posts, I can see how you’d miss it, because I had trouble finding it!, my apologies):

If she did, then she’d be obliged to allow them to have sex with her. E.g., if she blew up the boat they were previously on, thus causing their current predicament (where they presumeably don’t have access to their medication, or other potential women). It’s the same as if you push someone in the water — you’re then obligated to get them out, lest you be held guilty for murder.

However, the situation that you set up is where the lifeboat owner did nothing to place those others in their current predicament, and has no legal obligation to them (explicit or implicit, such as is the implicit agreement that when boarding a cruiser, you can use the lifeboats). Thus, the appropriate parallel case for the woman being raped by the 10 men who have to have sex every hour or die, is that she did nothing to place them in that position (and is just another unfortunate passenger-gone-overboard like them).

I am sure to be accused of contextualism, consequentialism and so on but here goes… imposing an arbitrary set of rules (property rights/non aggression etc. in this case) on someone in extreme conditions is only useful if people are going to play by/respect the rules. If I valued my life higher than the shame of breaking these rules, I could take advantage of those following the rules, i.e. step in the boat and throw someone else out without fear of much resistance. Sure I’d have to take the consequences at the other end but maybe I’d prefer to than certain death? Taking this to the example of war, if many nations respected property rights and the non aggression axiom, and I as a baddy knew this, I could use it greatly to my advantage. Twisting a historical case, if Hitler had thought the UK and USA were by principle not going to intefere with whatever God awful plans he had up his sleeve in Europe think what a wonderful boon to his ambitons and likely success this would have been.

V. Harris,

In the situation where the woman caused the men to be in their current predicament — intentionally or otherwise — they can coercively force her to have sex with them (that is, it would be legal for If I cut out your kidney and burn it. You’re then entitled to cut out mine to replace your kidney (without which you’d die). In the situation where the woman accidentally (but not purposefully) put these men in that situation, they’d still be entitled to use coercive force to force her to have sex (that is, restitution), but they would not be entitled to retribution.

If someone accidentally initiates aggression against you (e.g., if I hit a baseball with a bat and it breaks your window) you’re entitled to restitution (I have to pay to fix your window), but you’re not also entitled to retribution (that is, after I pay to fix your window, you’re not entitled to break mine). If, however, I deliberately throw the ball at your window to break it, you’re entitled to restitution (I have to pay to fix your window) and retribution (you get to break my window).

However, this is a tangent. The appropriate comparison is with a woman who did not cause these men to be in the predicament where they’re stuck on a lifeboat and if they don’t have sex every hour, they’ll die. That is, the woman is just another innocent passenger, struck by the unfortunate accident of the boat sinking and her needing a lifeboat, who happened to board a lifeboat with these ten men who have this unfortunate condition. If we accept your argument — that the lifeboat owners right to his property has become forfeit through no fault of his own, thus that the other passengers have the right to stay on — then we also have to accept that the unfortunate woman on a boat with 10 men with this “copulate-or-die” disease no-longer has the right to her body, and thus that these men would be justified in forcing her to have sex with them. You cannot escape this conclusion without falling into self-contradiction. As I was trying to explain before, this illustrates the severe limits of emotionalism.

Once we’ve rejected emotionalism — on the grounds that it is inherently self-contradictory, and that different people have different emotions, thus no argument regarding ethics can proceed if everyone’s arguing from emotions — there’s also utilitarianism, which has also been thoroughly rejected. These are the only two basis’ upon which one can make an argument against my natural-rights view, the non-aggression axiom. I assert, via the non-aggression axiom, that it is: (1) Criminal for those on the lifeboat owner’s boat not to leave when asked; (2) Criminal for the 10 men with the “copulate-or-die” disease to force the woman to have sex.

Jonathan,

Talking about the morality of things is not going to stop immoral people from behaving immorally, nor is it going to turn us all into saints. This still doesn’t mean that morality, justice, and natural law aren’t important. It just means that we aren’t perfect. We could also be discussing how to properly carry out various mathematical operations, to find out exactly what is the correct way to do things. This wouldn’t mean that none of us would ever make a math-mistake, or that no-one ever does.

Mike D,

I had to think about this one for a while. The last time I heard it, I was a Utilitarian, so it was a lot easier to answer (by that debunked nonsense).

Case A: If you throw a switch, the trolley car will kill 1 person. If you don’t throw it, the trolly will stay on its current path and kill 5.

By natural law, you’re not obligated to do anything, either way (to throw it or not throw it). No action you do (note: not throwing the switch is an action) could constitute the initiation of aggression, as you’ve been placed in an unfortunate situation where, no matter what you do, someone is going to die (note: not throwing the switch is an action). Thus, you cannot be held liable for any action you engage in. In any event, you’re throwing the switch should be looked at as the decision to save five lives. However, I run into a problem, as seen below…

Case B: Same situation, except you can’t throw a switch, but can push someone in front of the train to trigger the brakes, saving the lives of the 5 people

Pushing someone in front of the train would clearly constitute the initiation of aggression. The opinion that it would be legal to push one person in front of a train to save 5 can only be understood to be Utilitarian, and thus flawed. By the non-aggression axiom, such an action would be criminal. Eveyone is entitled to defend someone else against the initiation of aggression, or against accidental physical harm; however, in doing so, you’re not entitled to use someone elses’ property — that is, to initiate aggression against someone else — in the process of defending said person or persons. Thus, I’m not entitled to push this one person in front of the train to defend the others against death.

As should be obvious, I am deeply troubled by this answer in combination with my answer to A, because there’s a possible contradiction. In A, I said that no matter what you do, someone’s going to die; however, does pulling the switch to save the lives of the 5 people constitute the initiation of aggression against hte 1 person, in the same way that pushing the 1 person in front of the train to save the 5 people would constitute the initiation of aggression against the 1 person?

Case C: The 1 person you would push in front of the train is a prostitute or bum; the 1 person that could be saved is a woman or child; the 5 persons that would die if you don’t pull the switch (or don’t push the prostitute/bum in front of the train) are either nazi’s or politicians, or some other worthless crooks

Knowing the parties does not in and of itself change the answer.

Another interesting problem is a case (which would make for good analysis by Game Theory) from Baldur’s Gate II

A vile person has imprisoned you and your brother in two parallel cells. Each cell has a button.

If both of you press your buttons, you both die.

If you press your button, but he does not press his button, then your brother dies.

If your brother presses his button, but you do not press your button, then you do.

If neither of your press your buttons, you both die.

So, what do we make of this? Here’s the break down, from the perspective of the individual actor:

• If you press your button, your brother will die, and (depending on what he does) you may die or you may not dies.
• If you do not press your button, you will die, and depending on what your brother does, he may die or he may not die.

Game theory tells us that the likely response (with the various flaws of game theory, such as assuming that you both want to live, rather than act morally) is that you will both press you’re buttons: that’s the dominant strategy for both of you. Legally, it is obvious that the pressing of the button constitutes the initiation of aggression against your brother. Thus, you should not press the button (and doing so would be criminal). That is (assuming that these two brothers cannot communicate; that is, the cells are opaque and sound-proof), the legally correct action is not to press the button; thus, if both brothers act in accord with the non-aggression axiom, they will both die. Of course, if the brothers can communicate, then it would be morally correct of them to agree to do something such that one of them survived (in which case, pressing the button, with the consent of the other, wouldn’t be the initiation of aggression).