"Rational autonomy is a subset and a function of the fact of exclusive possession...' With respect, the sentence does not make sense. My best guess is that you mean that embodiment is required for rationality to be possible; and that embodiment makes other things possible as well. That is true. But I assert--because I cannot prove--that embodiment matters only because of the existence of the person--the rational autonomous moral agent--not independent of that. I can make it plausible, but no in 1200 words.

And, of course, I still don't see how you propose to get from a value of embodiment to one of ownership (in the computer sense).

Whatever the guy in the blizzard’s purpose was in being where he could get caught in a blizzard in the first place – maybe he was sightseeing or hoping for fame or whatever – why should he be able to put the costs and risks of his purposes onto someone else? Why should he be able to ‘privatize the profits and socialize the losses’ so to speak? Why is that automatically more important than property, without which there wouldn’t be a hut?

Also, Judith Jarvis Thompson and you seem to assume this would have no cost for the life of the owner. How do you know the owner is not being forced to sacrifice his life, e.g. next time he arrives in a blizzard and hoping to burn the furniture?

By assuming that not being able to use the property would have a cost for the trespasser but not the owner, you’re not comparing apples with apples. How could JJT, or you, or any trespasser ever know? And why wouldn’t this negate the right to own property in general? Where would you draw the line?

Could you please answer my earlier question: Who decides? Why that person?

There are a number of issues.

1. Whether rational autonomous moral agent independent of embodiment

I don’t see how that distinction can be maintained. How could the r.a.m.a. have existence independent of the fact of the person who embodies it? How could the rational autonomy express its rationality and autonomy other than in propositional exchanges, i.e. in argumentation, by an individual person?

2. Whether embodiment presupposes self-ownership
How could a person engage in argumentation, either to speak or to hear, without presupposing both the fact of, and the right to the exclusive possession and use of his body?

And as to the *right* of the exclusive possession and use of his body, how could anyone (for example a slave or his master) argue that, though a slave can factually speak, he does not have the right to argue, without relying on argumentation as the means to justify the proposition he contends for, and hence pre-supposing the ethic of self-ownership and private property?

3. Whether self-ownership justifies more extended property rights such as homesteading principle, products of one’s own labour, and products of voluntary exchanges.

How could a person engage in argumentation about an ethical proposition as to the justified use of scarce resources, without presupposing that both he and his interlocutor have the right to appropriate unowned resources, such as air?

How could he have the right to appropriate unowned scarce resources without mixing his labour with it and having a right to the resulting product?

How could he have a right to the product of his own labour, without the right to engage in voluntary transactions with others?

4. I have not impermissibly derived an ought from an is. In fact the whole argument is wertfrei.

To quote Hoppe in the book I linked above:
“[A]ny ethical proposal, or indeed any proposition, must be assumed to claim it can be validated by propositional or argumentative means… "
[i.e. might-is-right can only go to fact – the fact of power - not to ought – the value of justification] …

(Hoppe continued):
“…The structure of my argument is this:
(a) justification is propositional or argumentative (a priori true is-statement);
(b) argumentation presupposes the recognition of the private property ethic (a priori true is-statement);
(c) no deviation from a private property ethic can be justified argumentatively (a prior is-statement).”

5.
To say that slavery may exist is no refutation. The issue is as to the justification, not the fact of power.

“Obviously, no one could propose anything or become convinced of any proposition by argumentative means if a person’s right to exclusive use of his physical body were not presupposed.”
Hoppe

Someone can say that 1 +1 = 3. That doesn’t disprove the proposition that 1 + 1 = 2, nor does it prove that 1 + 1 = 3. All it means is that people may prefer unjustified over justified propositions or actions.

6.
At the empirical level, what reason is there to think that violation of property rights is capable of increasing net social utility, or whatever one calls the ultimate human welfare criterion? The only way you have attempted this is to assume the net social benefits of violating property rights, as in the case of the starving or emblizzarded man (like that? New word.).

But obviously if we ignore the costs, anything will seem beneficial. Once we account for the cost side of the ledger, we find that
a) the violator has no way of knowing or proving that the risk to the life or welfare of the owner, or other downstream beneficiary of the owner’s property rights, is necessarily lesser than that of the trespasser
b) *and* there is no principled defence of such violations than to assert what is in issue, namely whether they would increase net social utility,
c) and property violations would reduce the net social utility by reducing the benefits of property and substituting arbitrary aggression, and
c) such argument is unjustifiable by argument, but only by arbitrary force, which is no justification.

Or, to quote my wife just now coincidentally reading an article about rights:
“The people who blah on most about human rights, actually mean, that they wanna come and take stuff off other people."

Peter Hume and Jardine K. Jardine,

At last I have again access to my computer. My apologies for so long a delay. I will understand if you decline to continue after my unexplained delay.

How rights and conflicts of rights are to be built into the law is a complex matter. Some rights, such as the right to freedom of speech, are claims about what laws ought not to exist. We sometimes deal with conflicts by way of balancing—a well understood term. Laws are made accordingly; and courts also interpret them by balancing various considerations. The way Australian law deals with the conflict between the right to life and that to property is to give a magistrate (I include judges in that term) the power to decline to record a conviction. Thus in a case where a person deliberately gets caught in a blizzard so he can wreck my property, the magistrate can reject the excuse. Some rights are enforceable but not enforced—the assertion of them can be a demand for their enforcement. Others are not suitable for enforcement at all—the cost of doing so is too great. Assertions of them are demands for action, not for laws.

The commonest use of right demands I know of is attempting to persuade government figures to desist from grossly immoral actions. People write at Amnesty’s suggestion to government figures in other countries demanding/asking them to free someone from prison, or to commute a death penalty, or to provide protection to some in extreme peril. That may appease your wife, Peter.

Jardine, as I said, the point of the blizzard example is to show that the right to property is not absolute, but may be overridden by at lease one other right. Variations on the example will of course giv