Micha reposts this libertarian parable. In the comments, Scott links us too a response . Read them both if you haven't already for a bit of context.

The parable is a sort of standard story that libertarians tell to illustrate how the state is coercive. In Richard's response (he's actually responding to a similar story from Kling), he concludes:

There are good pragmatic reasons to favour some libertarian policies. But the moral ideology ("taxation is theft") is obtuse.

I completely agree, but for different reasons. Why does he think "taxation is theft" is obtuse? He quotes himself:

A well-ordered society is governed by the rule of law. This means that there are institutional processes to govern certain classes of action. The outcome of a just
institutional process -- whether it be a guilty verdict, or minimum wage legislation -- has a different normative status than the corresponding action of a neighbour who takes it upon himself to unilaterally impose his will on others.

I don't think any libertarian would disagree with that statement. Richard just misses the point - the libertarian theory of justice. Libertarians, at least of the sort we are talking about here, would simply claim that our current institutional processes are unjust and thus dodge Richard's criticism. The libertarian theory of justice is usually claimed to flow completely from the non-aggression principle (NAP). This is highly misleading, however, as Richard inadvertantly makes clear in the post he quotes himself from:

To claim ownership of a resource is to prevent others from making free use of it. If another attempts to use the resource in the same way as you do, you can call it "theft" and initiate force against them (or have the police do so on your behalf).

Thus it seems the NAP alone forces us to conclude that property is theft. And we thought Proudhon was a socialist. But this isn't the full libertarian story. A complete statement of the NAP, at least as I understand it, looks something like this:

It is always and everywhere immoral to initiate force against a person or his or her property.

Notice that the NAP presupposes property. There is another principle at work here which has to do with acquiring property coming straight down the pipe from Locke: the homestead principle (HP). For this reason I call this sort of libertarianism Lockean libertarianism or neoLockeanism. It rests on these two principles, as far as I can tell. Some versions try to derive the NAP from the HP, but that is unimportant fo For completeness, here is the HP as I understand it:

The only just way to acquire unowned property is by mixing one's labor with it.

These two principles together seem to be the foundation of neoLockeanism, though to digress, one important libertarian conclusion doesn't seem derivable from them: that voluntary exchange is always moral, or at least always just even if it is immoral. The NAP gives us that force or coercion is bad, but it doesn't give us that voluntary is good or even just. Perhaps I have screwed something up here (let me know if I have), but this isn't the point of this post anyway, so I'll let it go.

So Lockean libertarianism rests on these two principles, but do they hold water? The NAP is intuitively appealing and not all that controversial among ethicists. All deontologists (Kant) and virtue theorists (Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume) would accept it in some form while most utilitarians would reject it. Two out of the big three ain't bad. I say "in some form" above because the theory of property you accept may affect the NAP in some way, but the general idea runs across both classes of theories. I suspect even Richard accepts it in some form, with caveats for the formation of property.

The HP, on the other hand, has it's problems. For one, I still don't know what "mixing my labor" with something means. Labor isn't literally a substance that is mixed with other substances. Metaphors may be useful in communicating a complicated concept, but in this case we have all metaphor and no concept. Intuitively we have an idea of what it means, but without an actual definition, we'll argue endlessly about what actions count as labor mixture and how much property can be acquired by them - even with the "Lockean proviso," which is just as vague.

The problems with the HP don't end there, however. It is often asserted among libertarians but rarely defended. Locke himself tried to ground it in the existence of God. Ultimately, he assumes it anyway because God owns us by "maker's right" which allows him to argue that we have to take care of ourselves by acquiring property through the HP. I don't know what "maker's right" is outside of the HP. Rothbard is content to assert the self-evidence of his foundations without an account of what self-evidence means. Ultimately, he's waving his hands. Hoppe's argument is an attempt, but it doesn't work for a variety of reasons, on of which is that it isn't incoherent to argue with your slave (for fun, of course). Nozick also assumes the HP, but - and correct me if I'm wrong because I'm going off memory here (this applies for everyone else's views above as well) - he acknowledges this and points out that a rigorous account of property might substantively alter his conclusions, but he ignores the issue to get to other things.

As far as I know, no one has actually given a solid defense of the HP, let alone a clear exposition of what it actually is. I haven't read every libertarian theorist, so I might have merely missed it, but I have my doubts (but by all means, correct me if I am wrong).

In the mean time, let's forget about the HP principle and see what happens to the libertarian's favorite conclusion. The striking thing is that we know longer know if taxation is theft because we don't have an account of property. It seems the neoLockeans were begging the question all along.

So in the end, I agree with Richard's conclusion wholeheartedly - not, like him, because I think the neoLockeans misunderstand institutions, but because I think neoLockeans assume their pet theory of justice.

If one holds a markedly different theory of justice, say something like Hume's, governments seem almost by definition to have a legitimate property right. This doesn't automatically give us the social contract theory as the justification for government, but it does imply that governments are voluntary. Time permitting, I'll have more on this relatively soon.

Now, if this doesn't start a shitstorm, I'll be very disappointed in you guys. Or is my assumption that most of you are neoLockeans is wrong?

edit: Micha agrees that Richard misses the point.

edit: After reading Micha's post again, I think I need to make myself a bit more clear. I agree with just about everything he says. In particular, social contract theorist beg the question too; and Nozick, given his assumptions, doesn't really justify the state. At this point in my argument, it would just as question begging to say that taxation is theft as to say that it isn't. What social contract theorists and neoLockeans alike need to avoid the fallacy is a theory of justice/property. Until an adequate one is presented, we just don't know whether taxation is theft or not under any (or all)
circumstances. Time permitting, I plan on presenting a Humean take on this, but it may have to wait until the final weeks of the semester have passed.