Serious Libertarianism / Limited Government Thread

[Deck Knight]

It's a common statement among people, especially young people and a considerable number of Smogonites, that they just want to be left alone to pursue who they really are.

Do they really though? What I mean is - if they were forced to choose between a civic philosophy with maximum individual freedom and non-intervention in social disputes and a civic philosophy that actively and with coercion supported and promoted group-based rights, opinions, and preferences as compensation for perceived or actual historical wrongs, which would they choose to live under?

Libertarians are in the former camp, and I'd like to create a safe space for people of like mind to share their thoughts, news stories, and opinions. I myself am not a "Big L" Libertarian but my philosophy heavily leans towards libertarian ideals or justifications as an answer to most issues.

For some basic background, a good place to start is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

The Non-Aggression Principle is the backbone of most libertarian philosophy, the basis for the notion that force should not be used to settle disputes. As governments are a monopoly on force, the libertarian ideal is to reduce or remove as much potential to coerce individuals from the government as possible.

There are plenty of recent new stories to talk about from a libertarians perspective as well. The Bundy Ranch dispute with the Bureau of Land Management, the general problems with land-use problems in the Western states, the general trend in social tolerance for government mandates on behavior and speech -

Please dive in.

As a warm up:
Milton Freidman is always great on these topics. I'll use this as a brief placeholder for a few clips until we have more to discuss.

On Freedom Not To Act:

On Drug Policy (Vid says on Too Many Laws, but that's the thrust of the content.)

 

[Brap]

A huge problem that libertarianism fails to deal with can be summed up in two words: Market failure.

 

[Deck Knight]

A huge problem that libertarianism fails to deal with can be summed up in two words: Market failure.

The primary cause of "market" failure is market distortion, which is chiefly caused by meddlesome governments that do things like bailout auto companies and bailout financial firms that have been hogtied with an incestuous level of mandated government entanglement. In short, "market" failure is better described as government failure.

Market corrections are normal and healthy. It takes a market completely in bed with the government to turn a correction into a catastrophe (i.e. "market" failure).

The only real problem with libertarianism, economically in any case, is the potential for the amassing of monopolies. Not that any other system addresses that problem either, it's just that under libertarianism a monopoly requires sustained effort. Under mixed or command economies monopoly has the endorsement of government and near-infinite resources allotted by being a ward of the tax rolls.

 

[Super Mario Bro]

The way the term "libertarian" is generally used in the US -- to refer to right-leaning people and organizations with some anti-authoritarian tendencies like Cato Institute, Ron Paul, etc. -- is fairly alien to the rest of the world. It's been traditionally associated with individualist anarchism and libertarian socialism (not a contradiction in terms!), which oppose capitalism.

I am an adherent of left-wing libertarianism; more specifically, the brand of individualist and mutualist anarchism advocated by Benjamin Tucker, Thomas Hodgskin, and contemporary scholar Kevin Carson. I've also had a renewed interest in the type of Proudhonian anarchism advocated by Shawn Wilbur.

EDIT: Here is a great video, incidentally released today, discussing capitalism, "crony capitalism", and this variant of libertarianism:

 

[Brap]

Someone's never heard of the externalities diagram then...

Also, I fixed this quote:

The way the term "insert any word here" is generally used in the US, is fairly alien to the rest of the world.

 

[Tangerine]

The primary cause of "market" failure is market distortion, which is chiefly caused by meddlesome governments that do things like bailout auto companies and bailout financial firms that have been hogtied with an incestuous level of mandated government entanglement. In short, "market" failure is better described as government failure.

Market corrections are normal and healthy. It takes a market completely in bed with the government to turn a correction into a catastrophe (i.e. "market" failure).

The only real problem with libertarianism, economically in any case, is the potential for the amassing of monopolies. Not that any other system addresses that problem either, it's just that under libertarianism a monopoly requires sustained effort. Under mixed or command economies monopoly has the endorsement of government and near-infinite resources allotted by being a ward of the tax rolls.

Sorry, but that's not quite right.

The Friedman-style Libertarianism is very different from the Libertarians that's preached on the internet, specifically the "Which is chiefly caused by meddlesome governments".

Market failures exist and that's is simply how it is. You can twist it however you want to pretend that it's some result of some old government policy or not there's a lot of things that can go wrong in the market that could prevent such a thing. Ignoring them or throwing them as "government failures" is a very easy cop-out -- which is why it appeals to a lot of internet educated "economists".

Friedman-style Libertarianism fully understands that, markets do fail. The caveat that makes them very different is that, they believe that any Government solution to it will be worse than the actual problem, so they believe that market failures are better than government interventions. The explanation to this is a bit more complicated, but "inefficient" is a simple enough way of putting it -- but perhaps, too simple cause apparently people like watered down simple answers, which is the entire brand of internet libertarians.

Economics is a subject that I feel like everyone likes to say they understand and has an opinion, but it's just amusing to me to always see people who scream the loudest about it be the internet educated libertarians.

 

[LeoLancaster]

Someone's never heard of the externalities diagram then...

While I can't truly speak for Deck Knight, I'm fairly sure he (and I, actually) assumed that by "market failure" you meant things like businesses failing, unemployment, etc. Externalities, such as pollution or public education, are an entirely separate beast. These are issues that the market system in its purest form does fail to address.

Harmful externalities fall under the same category as swindling merchants, IMO - there has to be some form of punishment for it. Dishonest merchants are generally considered to be doing moral wrong which hurts others, and thus government enforces law against such behavior. The same applies to pollution, but it's such a more complicated problem than cheating in the market. It's difficult to asses the true damage caused by pollution, and thus the proper level of punishment or tax to enforce is difficult to figure. Further, pollution is less universally considered morally wrong, because of the difficulty of assessing the damage caused, as well as the economic considerations. The tax/punishment might actually hurt society as a whole through the economic damage caused by said tax/punishment.

In sum, I don't believe that government shouldn't regulate the market - just that it should only do so in cases where society as a whole needs protection (harmful externality) or an essential good or service cannot be profitably produced by the market (beneficial externality). Examples of the former include standardization of weights, laws dealing with false advertising, and anti-pollution laws. Examples of the former include firefighters, police forces, and public education.

While I'm not too familiar with the finer points of Libertarianism, I'll bet this sort of necessary regulation is acknowleged by the philosophy - the point of debate is what is actually necessary. I tend to lean towards less being necessary, FWIW.

 

[Deck Knight]

Mostly I think it's just a mixup of terms.

Say for example a Mega MultiNational Corp goes belly up, and its million employees are out of work. Over the course of a year 20 other companies end up taking over the market share Mega MultiNat Corp had and employing the people left in Mega MultiNat's collapse. The pain is felt immediately, but in the end whatever damage is caused is absorbed by the market. Let us even say some criticism holds true and the million employees are paid less than they were a year ago at Mega MultiNat, and they never make as much - maybe the problem is they were overcompensated for the value the produced, and that's what caused the company's collapse.

I would call this a market correction, other people would call this a market failure, or they might say "it's a failure of the market." Except it isn't a failure, it's the expected rough and tumble of an economic system that seeks equilibrium between supply of a desired good or service and demand for it.

Insofar as market collapses in the US and specifically the housing collapse, I'm not blaming government out of reflex but out of factual evidence. No coercive lending mandates regarding buyers traditionally unable to pay, no allowable mechanism for derivatives bundling, no Fannie and Freddie backed loans purchasing those derivatives - no financial collapse.

There's no such thing as "Too Big to Fail" unless somewhere along the line moral hazard is eliminated from transactions or product considerations. Only a guaranteed stream of income regardless of outcomes -i.e. income derived by force aka taxation - presents a chance for the elimination of moral hazard.

Externalities:
Externalities happen in all systems. Command economies are presently much bigger polluters than market economies (see: China), because the sole controller of supply and demand in that system is the government, and governments don't care about anything except power and control. If building gardens gives them power and control over the populace they'd do that. If building coal-fired power plants gives them power and control over the populace, they'd do that instead. The press release that they truly care about the people and the planet is still going to be written and disseminated. That's how an unchecked monopoly on force operates.

And on that note of cynicism I'll leave with a bit from a Mark Steyn post to reinforce this point. (Emphasis mine)

The Feds' position is basically that Buckyballs are magnetic Kinder Eggs. So we cannot be entrusted with Buckyballs. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated the cost of a Buckyballs recall at $57 million, and set about extracting it from their creator, Craig Zucker.

Mr Zucker fought back, and a settlement has been reached in which he will pay $375,000. From the press release issued on Zucker's behalf:

The CPSC's actions regarding Craig Zucker are not about consumer safety, they're about punishing an entrepreneur who dared to speak out against the federal government. The years spent by the CPSC targeting a product that has never been declared unsafe and pursuing overzealous litigation against Craig Zucker are yet another example of a federal agency gambling with taxpayer dollars to test its own power.

If the CPSC's goal was consumer safety, why is it settling for an amount that covers less than one percent of its original $57 million recall estimate?

 

[Tangerine]

I would call this a market correction, other people would call this a market failure, or they might say "it's a failure of the market." Except it isn't a failure, it's the expected rough and tumble of an economic system that seeks equilibrium between supply of a desired good or service and demand for it.

Market Failure is LITERALLY defined as a problem that the market cannot correct itself on. So no, your definition is totally wrong, and you are trivializing market failures. Market failures is not a feature of the government, it is a human trait. Capitalism is a theory that is developed off what we consider to be very human traits.

Command economies are presently much bigger polluters than market economies (see: China), because the sole controller of supply and demand in that system is the government, and governments don't care about anything except power and control.

Yes let's take a country that's rapidly developing and compare that with the United Fucking States of America who have already moved onto a service economy.

The issue with your comparison is that, every country when they were developing, regardless of their economic structure, were very heavily polluters. China and India pollute a lot cause they are willing to pollute so they can develop the country. It is a very active trade off.

I understand you're paranoid of the government. But don't bastardize economic theory to justify your points. All of these things you're using to justify your fears... they have really deep, complex reasons that people spend years and years studying, and you choose to bastardize all of that and take the most shallow argument simply to justify your fears. I don't like this at all.

 

[Parker.]

Thank you Tangerine. Generalizing here but, like, modernized libertarianism (read: internet libertarianism) is a joke. For example, after participating in policy debate this year (the resolution had to do with welfare and food stamps) and researching the topic for weeks, it's impossible to say that market failure and correction is strictly a viable solution in modern society, because it fails to account for the specific individual and instead generalizes to fit the needs of the entire market. Income inequality is a HUGE issue in America and limited government involvement doesn't fix the issue, it enhances it.

light reading on libertarianism: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/libertarianism/
https://twitter.com/crushingbort/statuses/463132110006784000

 

[Tangerine]

Thank you Tangerine. Generalizing here but, like, modernized libertarianism (read: internet libertarianism) is a joke. For example, after participating in policy debate this year (the resolution had to do with welfare and food stamps) and researching the topic for weeks, it's impossible to say that market failure and correction is strictly a viable solution in modern society, because it fails to account for the specific individual and instead generalizes to fit the needs of the entire market. Income inequality is a HUGE issue in America and limited government involvement doesn't fix the issue, it enhances it.

light reading on libertarianism: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/libertarianism/
https://twitter.com/crushingbort/statuses/463132110006784000

Mmmm, I don't really agree with your assessment either.

The thing about government involvement is that it tends to come up with solutions that are very "mediocre". For example, the big issue regarding the aftermath of financial crisis was that due to "concessions", the stimulus packages ended up being something in the middle of what the economists argued for... which made the stimulus package not effective at all (people who were pushing for a stimulus was like "wtf, that's too little to have an impact", and people who were against it was like "wtf, why waste money"). This is one of the reasons why government intervention is looked down upon and why people are "paranoid" of it -- they're well intended but they tend to mix too much steel into the silver bullet, so to speak.

The real issue, regardless of anyone's stance in government intervention, has to do with whether people are willing to do the research to actually find out the cause of the problems. Sadly, research into these issues are very lacking, especially regarding the social issues nowadays, and money tends to be burned in well-intended but really shallow solutions.

For example, in the ways most people argue for how income inequality should be fixed my intervention by the Government... I think it'll make the problem worse.

There are also cases in which markets for some random gimmicky stuff are no longer in demand, but we keep things going into artificial stimulus and make the problem worse. This happens a lot, because we think too much of the "specific individual" and politicians' incentives aren't really aligned with being effective, so to speak. (these aren't market failures, btw, so please don't confuse them -- market failures are not related to "markets correcting themselves")

So this isn't really a clear cut issue and there's a lot of ways of thinking about it. Research is hard, pleasing people is hard, meanwhile bleeding heart liberals want to save the world while the conservatives are like "wtf why are you wasting money you twats".

There's a lot of legitimate and interesting Libertarian lines of thought... but they don't come from mises.org and its sister sites, nor are you going to understand it from watching a few videos of Friedman destroying clowns on youtube.

 

[xenu]

Someone's never heard of the externalities diagram then...

Also, I fixed this quote:

Are you serious right now? Laissez-faire libertarianism provides -by definition- the "ideal" market model designed around eliminating market failure. I assure you everyone who's taken a high school economics class has heard of the "externalities diagram" (there's 4) and those who were paying attention would have noted that besides from the abuse of monopoly power, most incidents of market failure arise directly as the result of government intervention. The magnitude of any externalities created by the private sector is also much lower than those caused by the government - and besides, in real life, the existence of externalities alone isn't a sufficient condition for "market failure" which is really just a vague blanket term for a variety of situations, most of which can easily be dealt with with little to no government interference. What's your point?

 

[BenTheDemon]

Off Topic

I believe that the current Republican Party will have to become what we now know as the Libertarian Party to stay politically relevant.
No one wants to vote for a homophobe, so they must adopt socially Liberal issues if they wish to keep their Economic platform.

 

[Deck Knight]

Dunno why moderators are so intent on cordoning "off-topic" things, but as regards to social liberalism and Libertarianism:

Social Liberalism is expensive and intrusive. There is literally nothing that social liberals and libertarians have in common as an end policy.

Examples:
Libertarians want to abolish government-sponsored marriage, social liberals want marriage to be just another government program for the benefit of adults.
Libertarians believe in a very limited set of easily definable, universal, individual human rights.
By contrast Social liberals believe in collective rights, and every product or service they desire is a right that must be provided by government regardless of cost. So housing is a right, welfare is a right, health care is a right (and health care includes things like taxpayer funded sex re-assignment surgery and abortion), free speech is a right except government needs to ban or suppress the wrong kind of speech (the unjust / oppressive / hateful kind as defined by social liberals.) There are gay rights, women's rights, transgender rights, and I'm sure many more that I can't list off the tip of my tongue.

Libertarians are live and let live. Social liberals are "adopt my policy or you're a racist / sexist / classist / bigot / homophobe / transphobe / ablist / privileged / heteronormativist [I'm sure I missed a few, it's a long list]" bullies who only get away with their shtick because decent, honorable people let them.

In Libertarian philosophy government is a single thing, a monopoly on force. That's not a moral judgement, merely a statement of fact. In Social Liberalism Government is The Great Liberator, Everything We Do Together, The Engine of The Right Side of History.

Tangerine: Umm, I don't think we disagree on what the definition of a market failure is. I was pointing out what I believe is a common, erroneous definition of it [i.e. anything large and painful that happens in the economy is a market failure].

It's not really paranoid to look at what our government is presently doing and conclude it is an adversary. I don't know what's worse - the stories about bureaucratic SWAT teams coming down on ranchers, government agencies paid massive sums to literally do nothing, stonewalling even on protecting government officials overseas, or your more run of the mill corruption stories.

But suffice it to say, the idea that presently if you're of the "wrong" political persuasion or even if you just get in the way of some mid-level administrative bureaucrat's big idea, you can expect to be treated like an enemy in your own land. Libertarianism suggests a very clear answer to this problem, which is to dramatically scale back the power and influence of government and let the problems be worked out by more responsible, closer-to-the-issue state and local authorities.

 

[billymills]

If something is not entirely related to the topic, I'm going to hide it and label it off topic. If you want to respond to it, make sure you're bringing it back to relevance. (You did this well in your last post; any response regarding political parties would have been deleted. That is a topic that should be discussed in a separate thread.)

 

[jrrrrrrr]

A huge problem that libertarianism fails to deal with can be summed up in two words: Market failure.

Tell me what government/social/political philosophy can deal with market failure and I'll sign up today

 

[Ides_of_March]

A question I think needs to be addressed in this thread is what is the evidence that a Laissez Faire system of economics would actually produce the economy and society that Libertarians speak about. So far, the only source materials in this thread that advocate Libertarianism are YouTube videos. I think if any convincing is to be done it may benefit the OP and others to provide some peer-reviewed papers and articles about the economical and psychological impact that Libertarianism would have on a nation.

Also, it would be best for all parties involved in this thread if instead of ONLY pointing out all the obvious wrongs past and present governments have committed as the evidence to support Libertarianism, you who would advocate for it begin providing a proof that Libertarianism will actually work. It's all well and good to blow whistles and protest government overreach, but it's another thing entirely to show observations and data that support your ideology as the (only) solution to the problem.

This is a problem I see in every Libertarian thread, on every forum I've ever visited. Everyone just shows ways that the other person is wrong, instead of proving they're right. I agree with Libertarians on a lot of social issues, so much so that every internet survey I took in 2012 said I should vote for Gary Johnson, but I am genuinely concerned at the uncertainty everyone has at what effect a Laissez Faire system would actually have on a society. Where is the data?

 

[Tangerine]

Umm, I don't think we disagree on what the definition of a market failure is. I was pointing out what I believe is a common, erroneous definition of it [i.e. anything large and painful that happens in the economy is a market failure].

My bad! Should have read that part more carefully. I think I was pretty irritated by your second paragraph onwards that I just painted that first paragraph that way :]

It's not really paranoid to look at what our government is presently doing and conclude it is an adversary. I don't know what's worse - the stories about bureaucratic SWAT teams coming down on ranchers, government agencies paid massive sums to literally do nothing, stonewalling even on protecting government officials overseas, or your more run of the mill corruption stories.

But suffice it to say, the idea that presently if you're of the "wrong" political persuasion or even if you just get in the way of some mid-level administrative bureaucrat's big idea, you can expect to be treated like an enemy in your own land. Libertarianism suggests a very clear answer to this problem, which is to dramatically scale back the power and influence of government and let the problems be worked out by more responsible, closer-to-the-issue state and local authorities.

Just cause some parts of the government should be kept in check does not mean the government does not provide useful services that are beneficial. Furthermore, I believe it is a stretch to say that the government should not interfere.

The thing is that anything with power will have bad parts -- that's something that should be corrected. The government is not an animal that you should just defang cause it could be harmful -- it is something to be understood on human terms because it can learn.

A question I think needs to be addressed in this thread is what is the evidence that a Laissez Faire system of economics would actually produce the economy and society that Libertarians speak about.

Libertarians speak of it in ideals -- but for the most part we see a large part of what Laissez Faire could do, and that's where they generalize it from. The real world is filled with those examples -- it's just a matter of making it wholesome.

Like I said, "Laissez Faire" system of economics, in general, all of it is based on human traits. The point of these systems is "could we have a system where we can channel these human traits by system of incentives", which is pretty much how our entire world kind of works right now. The discussions are more so on "are these wheels training wheels, or do we actually need them to actually move forward"

 

[Super Mario Bro]

A question I think needs to be addressed in this thread is what is the evidence that a Laissez Faire system of economics would actually produce the economy and society that Libertarians speak about.

One of the main principles of libertarianism is that the burden of proof should lie squarely on the people who advocate for coercive authority. An anarchist would go further and say that, if one cannot prove that a state is just and necessary, then it is illegitimate, and ought to be dismantled.

 

[capefeather]

That's what libertarianism should be on paper, but too often such a principle is abused in practice. Skepticism is great, but it's easy to fall into double standards due to cognitive biases. I think that Ides_of_March has the right idea. It's easy to find holes in arguments you don't agree with. It's harder to attack your own, most cherished beliefs. And because certain variants of libertarianism always seem to have something to say about current social issues, it becomes that much harder to question yourself just as much as you're questioning the "enemy". You think you're demonstrating your intellect, when really you're demonstrating that you've degenerated into basic tribal instincts.

Deck Knight has mischaracterized both libertarianism and social liberalism. Libertarianism encompasses a variety of beliefs, and libertarians often align with liberals on social issues. Gay marriage is not about whether there should be a government program, but about applying or not applying a government program equally to all "marriages" when there's no justification not to. Because of this, you'll see libertarians "supporting gay marriage" because, in the end, marriage is some kind of cultural phenomenon revolving around some notion of commitment, and there's no reason to ban LGBTs in particular from participating in it.

Libertarians also recognize that free speech is a restriction on the government and not an "everybody has to listen to me and not be offended at all" card. Citizens can't overtly restrict each other's freedom of speech without being inconsistent or involving the government, but they can criticize each other, pressure them to step down, refuse to give them air time, etc. Phil Robertson not showing up for a couple of episodes because of a statement that frankly isn't the worst we've heard out of him is not a violation of free speech. Brendan Eich deciding to step down because people weren't buying his doublethink approach to inclusiveness is not a violation of free speech. Such incidents were fought through protests and boycotts, not lawsuits.

Libertarians don't disagree with liberals on the subject of bigotry. They may disagree on what to do about it, though. And there's no reason that a monopoly on force can't also be an engine for fulfilling collective interests. Governments have attempted to be both throughout history, and often have succeeded.

 

[Alan]

Thank you capefeather for sorting out all the incongruities.

I consider myself to be a very left leaning (ironically a couple years ago I was very republican) but I do not agree with the typical liberal philosophy of "bigger is better" in regards to governance. As Thoreau once said, "the government that governs best is that which governs least." The government has gotten out of control, and quite frankly it's gotten so big and so powerful (particularly in America, but I can't imagine it's too much different in the rest of the world since America used to be a country for freedom) that there is no more accountability. The government no longer fulfills its duties of protecting it's citizens and rather works in it's own interests to grow. The government no longer listens to the pleas of it's people and works in their interests (as we have seen time and time again since the late 60s and early 70s). It's become nothing more than a cesspool of corruption and greed and we the people are more or less at it's mercy. I truly believe America is on a downward slope as we see our freedoms and choices slowly stripped away,more often than not, it's in the sake of National Security. Anyway, I could go on and on about how corruption has ruined that which was once beautiful, but tl;dr: government is out of control and we're going to suffer.

Libertarianism suggests a very clear answer to this problem, which is to dramatically scale back the power and influence of government and let the problems be worked out by more responsible, closer-to-the-issue state and local authorities.

Which is pretty much what the 10th amendment says.

 

[Jorgen]

I was going to try to make a super vague post to mock the series of unsubstantiated, broad statements Alan just posted. But I realized I couldn't if I tried, because the first thing that popped to my mind was to cite NSA intrusive spying (an actual thing that happened/is happening) to support a sensational tirade about the US descending into totalitarianism. Now I'm actually kind of impressed with the post I had set out to mock.

 

[Crux]

yo can someone please provide me with a non-first mover justification of property rights that doesn't involve the state protecting them / legitimising them and doesn't assume other rights that you haven't proved exist, and then tell me why we should value those property rights before and over other ethical concerns?

 

[Alan]

Well I'm not going to delete my tirade, even though it may be off-topic, mostly because it's too late now.

Also, since I'm assuming you're talking to me as I was the last who made assertions, I'm not really a "first-mover" I'm more of a socialist but not a state-socialist. (I'm pretty much a hippie just live and let live and everything will work out). It's more a philosophy or ideal that property rights should be held in regard. While I being a socialist do not really vibe with the idea of private property (it's everybody's Earth, just take what you need) I do think if it's going to be a thing, it should be respected. It's just how I feel on the subject, it's a discussion thread not an essay. I don't really have sources and most of them are probably "first-mover" if I could find one so it wouldn't really matter.

As for spying? That is a gross invasion of privacy. According to the third item on the list of guarantees in The Privacy Act located here, it guarantees "the right of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasion of their privacy resulting from the collection, maintenance, use, and disclosure of personal information." The abuse of the NSA to gather store information is exactly what's going on right now.

edit: also this isn't really about litertarianism and is barely a discussion on limited government, i was just "defending myself" back to talking about ideologies.

 

[Super Mario Bro]

I thought I would say something about the NAP, since it was mentioned in the OP and nobody challenged it so far. A couple of things we ought to ask are: What constitutes aggression? What constitutes self-defense? Specifically, the issue of property is something that can change depending on the point of view; an adherent to one particular economic arrangement or philosophy may have a radically different view on which party is the aggressor than another. Kevin Carson highlights this distinction in the following quote:

"In a mutualist, occupancy-and-use system, a self-styled landlord attempting to collect rent would be the aggressor, invading the property rights of the occupant-user. But in an identical instance, in a non-Proviso Lockean system, the occupant – or squatter – might well be considered the aggressor. Since no particular set of land property rules can be deduced from fundamental moral axioms, they must be evaluated on utilitarian or practical grounds: i.e., the extent to which they maximize other, fundamental moral principles.”

This is just one example of why I don't really embrace the NAP. Like many other blanket concepts, it discourages thought, nuance, and discussion of several factors that deserve careful consideration.