The “More Guns, Less Crime” Event received massive press coverage and had a huge impact in Austin, so we are very proud to be on this esteemed list. Many thanks to all those who made it possible (especially Jose Nino, the main organizer of the event), to the great John Lott, and of course to Students for Liberty as well.

Click here to see the original SFL blog post with all of the nominees.

• Robert Butler’s session on email marketing, which built on methods of attracting media attention via email and communicating effectively with supporters.
• Dawn Westerberg’s session on using social networking and blogging to communicate.
• Jeff McGhee’s session on building effective websites for candidates. This was particularly great since I am interested in freelancing for candidates who need help making websites that are attractive and easy to update. (Contact me for more info if you are interested!)

The dinner that evening was centered around a debate between five individuals who are running for the Chair position of the Libertarian National Committee. I was not personally acquainted with any of them before that day, but I got to know John Jay Mayers and Mark Hinkle a bit. Ernie Hancock was my fave of the night, but everybody had great things to say and I’m excited to see what’s going to happen with LP-National in the coming years. There is a big push from many people to stay the course of principled libertarianism rather than become Republican-lites or Tea Partyists. (Side note: the best word of the day was “Teo-cons”, ha!) I’m just glad to see that even though we can disagree on certain aspects of libertarian theory, we can be united behind “hating the state,” which is what is important in the long run.

But the biggest surprise for me was that the Libertarian Party of Texas presented me with their first “Student Libertarian of the Year Award,” for my work with the Libertarian Longhorns over the past few years and LibertarianChristians.com. This came with no warning and I was at a loss for words (I know, shocking). It was great to be nominated for the SFL award a few weeks ago, but to be recognized by your peers, your colleagues, and so many people that you admire – well, let’s just say it was touching. Many thanks to Pat Dixon, Robert Butler, Art DiBianca, Jim Lark, and the rest of the awesome crew of LP-Texas. My only proper response is to continue serving others via the cause of liberty, and we will make a difference!

We are fast approaching the highlight event of the semester for LL/YAL: the Students for Liberty Texas Conference. If you haven’t already signed up and you intend to come, YOU NEED TO SIGN UP IMMEDIATELY!!! Why, pray tell? Because registration shuts down on Monday morning! We have to give a final number to the caterer next Monday, so if you decided to come after this deadline I won’t have any of our awesome food for you. The only option available after Monday morning will be BASIC Registration, which will not include Lunch or Dinner.

I don’t know how else to persuade you to come, but it’s going to be AWESOME. Just look at the conference page on our website and check out the speakers. Gene Healy, Mary Ruwart, Nigel Ashford… You don’t get better than this anywhere in Texas. Why on earth would you want to be anywhere else on October 24?

So get signed up TODAY on the website via the registration page. This conference was planned with YOU in mind, so plan on being there bright and early at 8am on October 24 and spend your day learning about freedom!

All information about the event can be located at the official Conference Page, but here are some of the details thus far. The conference will begin at 10 A.M. (location TBA) and will feature expert speakers on topics such as the foundations of liberty, liberty and the economic crisis, and strategies for advancing freedom. On top of the great speakers and company the conference will feature a free lunch for students and an evening social event. Literature packets will be presented to all attendees.

Again, we invite all libertarians to participate in this conference, and hope you will help make this conference a great success. Remember, registration is required for the conference. Also, please consider supporting this event through your generous donation via ChipIn.com.

If you’re not convinced yet that you cannot miss this event, then take a look at this amazing lineup of speakers:

• Keynote Address: Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D. – New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. He is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
• Mary J. Ruwart Ph.D. - Former pharmaceutical research scientist and Assistant Professor of Surgery. She has worked extensively with the disadvantaged in low-income housing and was a contender for the 1992 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential nomination and the 2008 Libertarian Party Presidential nomination.  She is the author of Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression, hailed by Visions Magazine as “what may be the most important book of the decade.”
• Anthony Gregory – Editor in Chief for the Campaign for Liberty and a consultant for the organization.  He also a researcher at the Independent Institute, a columnist at LewRockwell.com, a guest editor at Strike the Root, a blogger at Liberty and Power and a rock musician.
• Gil Guillory – Research associate at the Molinari Institute, whose mission is to promote understanding of the philosophy of market anarchism as a sane, consensual alternative to the hypertrophic violence of the State.
• Other institutions to be represented (speaker names TBA):
  • The Institute for Justice
  • The Institute for Humane Studies
  • Texans for Accountable Government
  • Texas Public Policy Foundation

Mark your calendar and be sure to come to the Students for Liberty Texas Conference 2009!

Given the variability in human opinions, there are bound to be disagreements over what is to be done with a given physical thing, and given the harm that violence does to human prosperity and happiness, it is necessary to resolve such disputes without having to resort to violence. This involves the establishment of a right over that thing: that is, to establish that a person may make certain choices such that to interfere in these choices would be a violation of justice. It is not necessary that all rights for any object all belong to a single person; different people may have the rights to do different things with a given object. Since physical violence is only over physical things, it is a meaningless exercise to argue over rights to things that are not tangible. People cannot fight to control the sun or a person’s belief in god, but they may very well fight over control of somebody’s mouth, with which he claims ownership of the sun or preaches about religion.

In their practical effect, therefore, all rights that anybody might postulate are property rights, and to discuss property rights is to discuss rights in general, which may be given simply as collections of property rights. The right to free speech may be given as a right over ones own mouth, a sign with incendiary words on it, or over a street corner where he waves said sign. The right to free assembly may be given as a right over the space in an assembly hall to welcome whatever visitors you like into it. A copyright may be given as a right of someone over all printing presses such that they cannot produce a copy of a given work without his consent. The right to health care may be given as a property right over the people and goods in the economy as a whole, sufficient to produce the treatment of a given person’s ailments.

A property right is not somehow intrinsic to the object or to its owner, but is rather a relationship between a person and the rest of his society; it exists by virtue of the unwillingness of everyone else to interfere with a person and the things he owns. A right that is disputed by everybody is, in fact, nothing at all, and it is only when a right is not disputed that it has an objective existence. The establishment of a right, therefore, requires more than simply that someone should assert this right, but that other people be willing to assent to that assertion. This should not be seen as a compromise of the absolute libertarian theory of property rights; it is necessarily true by the very nature of rights. If a man wishes to paint his house neon orange and purple stripes, but his neighbors communicate to him that they would shoot him rather than allow it, then empirically he does not have that right, though absolutely he should have it! For the Aristotilially inclined, one might say that I am simply speaking of the material cause of rights, whereas next I will discuss the formal cause.

Rights cannot simply be arbitrary. If rights are not justified by reasons, then other people cannot reasonably be expected to assent to them. A system of rules for the justification of rights is called law, and only under special circumstances can rights be established without law: if one organization becomes so powerful that it can crush all opposition, then other people will assent to its whims simply out of fear and respect any “rights” it should assert for anybody. When there are neither law nor a supreme power, then we can only expect chaos.

Theories of the state assert that there can be no establishment of rights without the existence of such an organization, though rights may still exist in a purely theoretical sense. The libertarian theory of justice addresses the more general case where there is no state. There are certain rules for the justification of rights that distinguish themselves over all others in that they are neither arbitrary nor patently absurd, and such that if there is no agreement on these rules then there can be no agreement at all.

Suppose two settlers were to make contact for the very first time, having previously believed themselves alone. If they are to establish property rights to one another, neither can justify a morally superior position to the other; one could only achieve a superior place for himself through conquest. If one settler wishes its claims over its land to be recognized, he must recognize the analogous claims of the other. He must also make claim only to land of which he can demonstrate ownership in some way; otherwise his counterpart would have an equal justification for making the same claim. This is the libertarian principle of homesteading. If a third settler were to show up one day, then the same reasoning applies to his claims over that of the other two; only in this case, he must also recognize the transference of titles between the first two settlers should they trade with one another because otherwise he could not expect to trade with either one of them. This is the libertarian principle of free exchange.

The homestead principle and the principle of free exchange are the basis for the libertarian theory of rights. These are the axioms of law. They are also the only principles compatible with both peace and reason; other foundations must assert that some people or organizations are arbitrarily privileged over others and back those assertions with force. When these principles are followed, all rights exist for reasons that can be established objectively, at least in principle: property rights are what they are because they were originally demonstrated to be so, and have since been freely transferred from one person to another. Without a state being presupposed, these principles are the only ones on which a theory of rights can be founded because these are the principles that allow two people to establish relations as equals.

Within the libertarian axioms of law there are unlimited possibilities. All forms of organization are possible. What matters is not the present form of society, only its history and the way it propagates itself. Although it would be terribly uneconomical, people are certainly capable of voluntarily sharing all their property or of obeying the orders of one centralized body, and they certainly may create any other arrangement that one might imagine as long as everyone enteres into it voluntarily.

Beyond the axioms that justify private property, there are no other a priori principles of law. A complex society requires further principles to of law to function well, but the axioms of law are the only principles that are absolutely necessary for peaceful coexistence. Libertarians often attempt to introduce further principles as if they were a priori, but there will always be a certain arbitrariness in these attempts. Whatever else serves as a standard in law other than the rules of private property must be seen as hypotheses to be tested on the free market rather than a priori principles that everyone must necessarily accept. The justification of further principles must be that they emerged on the free market, and the axioms of law must be observed or there can be no free market of law in the first place.

On the free market, people gain by contributing to one another, and the greatest gain goes to him who satisfies the most urgent needs. Around him, each person sees what is desired by observing what gain can be gained by producing it, and to pursue gain is to search for ways of helping others. As people learn how to serve one another, they wish to become more efficient in their work, and thus they soon seek to serve one another in improving their production rather than satisfying their appetites. So begins the development of capital and with it the beginning of history. Whereas before people lived from hand to mouth and each generation lived like the previous, they could now finally begin to invest and build, step by step, vast new systems of production. Their new economy may then finally lift them out of poverty, give them the time to think and communicate more broadly, become sophisticated, discover new facets of their individuality and new ways of being happy, in short, bring within their grasp the infinite possibilities of a process that builds upon its own past.

No one even need understand more than a small part of the process, but having contributed a small improvement to the system, he has left everything more harmonious than before. Our society is so complex that nobody can hope to understand it, and our economy is so vast that no one could hope to command it.

It is of course the capitalization of law that particularly concerns us here. As a society becomes more cooperative and depends more heavily on trade and the division of labor, contracts become more complicated and it becomes more and more important to minimize the risks of agreeing to them. People must create assurances that contracts be fulfilled and account for all contingencies if they should not. Since not every possibility can actually be imagined beforehand, this entails providing for professional arbiters to resolve contractual disputes as well as relying on preestablished standards of interpretation. As this system becomes more formal, it becomes possible for people to contract with arbiters, and for them to contract with one another, such that there is a procedure defined to resolve all disputes whatsoever, not only those between two parties that have already contracted with one another. This is the birth of law in a free society, and we can see here that law is like a form of capital. It must be built with trial-and-error, accruing more and more general principles as needed so as to make the contracts it serves ever more clear. As more people agree to it, it grows more powerful as a means of easing human cooperation.

Unlike the mythical social contract from which the state traces its birth, people do not collectively renounce some of their freedoms, dragging any stragglers along with them, in return for the fearsome order of the state, but rather individually bind themselves, not to some giant monopolistic illusion that claims arbitrary power over themselves, their children, and every generation to come, but simply to one another by their own individual wills and for their own individual benefit, reserving the same choice each new generation.

A system of free-market law requires more principles than the a priori principles of homesteading and free exchange, though libertarians try to torture more out of the axioms than they really say. These principles can be justified as the result of history, as the capitalization of law rather than as rational “derivations” from the axioms. I shall now show that principles for the interpretation of the axioms can be justified in this way.

A distinction is often made between a person who homesteads all rights of a given object and a person who homesteads an easement, meaning that he has some rights over an object but not all of them. For example, a person who pollutes over unowned land homesteads the right to pollute on those lands, but not other rights over them. He has therefore got an easement. He may therefore continue to pollute even if other people move in and attempt to live on those lands, but he may not exclude those people from doing whatever else they wish with the land.

There is not always an obvious answer when we try to determine whether a person has homesteaded anything and whether he has homesteaded everything or merely established an easement over certain rights. Suppose a ranger walks in a straight line across some unowned land. Has he homesteaded anything? If someone else then creates a farm over that field, may he then exclude the ranger from walking back over that same line? It seems reasonable to me that if the ranger habitually walks over this land, then he has certainly established an easement to continue crossing it even if someone else farms it, but perhaps he could not exclude anybody else from farming over this line; whereas if the ranger walks so much that he has created a path over the land then he owns that entire path and may exclude farming. However, there is no logical necessity in these answers, so it cannot be expected that any settler I met would agree to that even if he did not wish to pick a fight. Still, there is a need for agreement even if there is no single logical answer; hence it can be expected that a standard will be provided the system of free market law. The reasons people give to justify such standards over other possibilities may seem wishy-washy to people as pedantic as libertarians, but what matters is not that they have a solid a priori foundation, but that people have agreed beforehand to abide by them, and know, therefore, precisely how their actions are going to be interpreted later.

This idea sheds light on the issue of libertarian nature preserves. If someone wishes to own land so that he can leave it how it is, how can he gain the right to exclude others from the land? How is it possible to homestead something without changing it? The explanation of law as given here shows, however, that to homestead requires only that one be able to demonstrate ones claim convincingly enough that no one disputes it. It is not necessary that he must “mix his labor” with the land and alter it into some human product, although this is the most obvious way to demonstrate ones claim. Between people who do not share a common legal system that allows for other kinds of demonstrations, to farm the land may be the only way they can convincingly demonstrate ownership to one another, but once people wish to own pristine natural land without altering it, the legal system will evolve to accommodate their needs. Having agreed upon the new method of demonstrating ownership (perhaps by producing witnesses who say he had patrolled the land and then recording the boundaries somewhere where they can be easily looked up) people now have a new rule of how to recognize claims.

There are issues to be resolved with exchange as well as with homesteading, but the issues that are not so obvious that the reader could easily figure them out on his own will will involve contracts and punishments, which will be discussed in a later post.

To conclude, a property right does not somehow exist within the object itself or within the owner, but rather because other people understand that they cannot justify claiming it for themselves. A vital part of the law, therefore, is to establish standards which people use to show each other what they own. It is clear that a system of free market law might very well introduce standards that would seem oppressive to any libertarian; however, since all people enter into the law of their own free will with their own benefit in mind, we can expect that legal standards will be useful to everybody, not just one group. If people are to choose the law, it must individually benefit them; hence the standards must tend to be very permissive and individualistic, particularly in a pluralistic society with many different needs to be satisfied.

I originally thought that I was going to write a series of three posts on free market law, but I’ve already written two and still have three more planned! They will be on alienability, contracts, and punishment. This is really getting out of control. Fortunately, most of what I’ve written can go directly into the book I’m writing. Stay tuned!

Part 1: Free Market Law

Part 3: The Violation of Rights

Calling all Libertarian Longhorns! We want to fill this blog with great content for students at UT and beyond, and we need YOU to help us do it! It doesn’t matter whether you think you’re a good writer or not, we want you to contribute to this blog. We are looking for people who want to report news, write editorials, rant, post videos, link to libertarian content across the web, photoshop pictures, tell us about great book deals — we are open to whatever content you want to create.

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