Yebo, Trevor Watkins' Harm Consent Rule, the HCR, is a practical real world option to the otherwise nebulous Non Aggression Principle, the NAP, that libertarians and like minded mostly refer to.
Your smoking example is excellent, and it shows why the prevailing idea in academia that a genuine free market has "market failures" is a myth.
Coupled to the Nature of Us, the NoU, a genuine free market protected by a minimalist government (Night Watchman or whatever other name describes the same rose) is a solution to any form of initiation of physical force (aka violence) against individuals.
Using your smoking example or the asbestos example in the NoU article linked below, any form of physical harm without consent, from smoking to asbestos to conscription to the Apartheid Pass Law or its Immorality Act or Putin droning civilians or the Maoist "one child only per family" genocide in China, whatever, the HCR + NoU can address these explicitly and at maximal resolution.
While I am grateful to you for promoting the principles of the HarmConsentRule (HCR), I am disappointed that there is no acknowledgement of the origins of this rule with the Individualist Movement (www.individualist.one) and its developer Trevor Watkins.
The worker values the money more than the fresh air; you seem to value the fresh air more. You are imposing your subjective value scale on the worker. Do you not think that persons have the ability to make their own value judgments?
I agree, but "If I, as an adult..." means that we better have a non-arbitrary definition of "adult". But this is not insurmountable, anyone who can prove that they are responsible for their own lives is an adult.
The real problem is secular libertarianism which has been a dead end, it has lost us ground to conservatives when we should be louder about the Christian roots of some of our best ideas (natural law, the rule of law, even the HCR or NAP can be traced back to the golden rule). The Christian God is a God of consent "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.", abolition was largely a Christian movement, the early classical liberals were driven by their faith.
But modern libertarians are materialists for no good reason. This makes it much harder to win over people and allows leftists to claim to represent Christian values when the communists and socialists have always been hostile to Christianity, they do this because they know the value of the religious space modern libertarians have vacated, so do conservatives. There is even the absurd suggestion from some libertarians that faith is incompatible with libertarianism, talk about not knowing your own history.
Abandon objectivists, they don't want to be associated with libertarians anyway. Claim the religious ground that rightfully belongs to us, that way we can show people that consent is based on God's love, property rights are based on humanity's God-given stewardship of the Earth and human/natural rights on our being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Or just keep being an irrelevant social club that gradually drifts towards progressivism in a desperate attempt to recapture some relevance.
Here is a rebuttal incorporating your specific points and preferred philosophical stance, keeping the tone firm but intellectually grounded.
"While I do not deny the historical debt classical liberalism owes to Christian theology—particularly regarding natural law and the fervor of the abolitionist movement—acknowledging an idea's roots is different from claiming we are forever bound by them. Genealogy is not justification.
We need not hark back to mystical entities to ground the Non-Aggression Principle. The concept that consent between adults is the sole legitimate basis for human interaction stands on its own logical merit; it requires no divine ratification. To suggest that liberty collapses without a theological crutch is to insult the rationality of the philosophy.
Furthermore, a liberty that requires the threat of 'hell and perpetual agony' to function is hardly liberty at all; it is merely obedience under duress. I choose to stay true to an individualism that does not require a ghost peering over my shoulder to keep me on the 'straight and narrow.' True morality is chosen, not coerced by supernatural surveillance.
If there is room for the divine in this philosophy, let it be Spinoza’s God—revealed in the lawful harmony of existence—not an interventionist judge requiring submission. Secular libertarianism is not a 'dead end' or a 'social club'; it is the necessary evolution of freedom into a universal principle, unburdened by specific dogma and accessible to all rational minds, regardless of faith."
The Christian God is universal if he made us all. From where I am standing, it is not obvious that he didn't. So if he made us, he also created our capacity to be rational. So if you are relying on an aspect of yourself (rationality and logic) made to image your creator, and using that to argue that the creator is unnecessary, you are playing a huge joke on yourself. It would be like your child using your connections to climb the corporate/government ladder and assuming you were not needed for their success because they assume everyone has the same connections.
It is a gross misunderstanding of Christianity to say that it requires the threat of hell or the promise of heaven to get people to behave. Christianity is actually a rejection of the idea that we can ever get ourselves to behave, our human lusts are too powerful (something secular libertarians brush over but it's a real problem for them), the threat of divine punishment/reward or even earthly punishment or reward (this was why the ancient state of Israel was insufficient and Jesus was needed) are not enough.
The radical/divine insight of Christianity is that we need God's grace and to accept Christ in order for him to work on changing our hearts. We cannot perform our way to goodness, even when we convince everyone else that we are good, God still knows our hearts and we know that he knows. Our own consciences drive us to seek this grace.
So going back to libertarianism, it actually doesn't guarantee a good society and in fact a secular libertarianism will be a very bad society, almost guaranteed. It will attract the very worst characters, the ones who just want to do enough to seem compliant with the NAP while doing evil (if you cannot imagine what this looks like, you need to observe people more). You need a libertarian society which also has Christians and makes a special effort to attract them, so you can provide the social pressure to accept Christ or at the very least Christian morality, unlike some non-libertarian Christians, I don't think you can ever legislate morality, but you need to know that there's only one way to be moral and rationality is not it.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams
It may only be a coincidence but as America has become more secular, liberty has become less and less respected (and I know you can bring up religious abuses like alcohol abolition, fair enough). Maybe Adams understood something important.
Lastly, after the ancient Israelis left Egypt and settled in the promised land, they had something like an anarchy under the Judges. This was God's preferred system as can be seen by His response when the Israelis asked for a King.
You have identified the clay feet of the argument - "if he made us all..." He did not. We made Him. From that viewpoint we are actually on the same page. You see morality coming from a dirty I see itvas the fruits of the human mind. The conclusion is the same. Consent is the key.
We can argue this another day, I think there’s good evidence that 1) this universe and everything in it was created by a God and 2) that God is the Christian God.
You make a very important observation, that (I think you mean the New Testament) Christ is a purely voluntary choice, and also important to note is that there is no violence (as libertarians, individualists ... and even Objectivists would define it) advocated by Christ.
Many Eastern religions/philosophies are non violent too, as examples Jainism, Taoism, Buddhism without the added dogma.
That has not stopped tyrants to manipulate these platforms to promote violence via them, but then such dogmatic norms be it the Vatican of the past or the Samurai in Japan pre WW2 is in contravention to the pure teachings of these examples.
The other important point is that the atheist driven communism, with its aim to remove the family unit or regulate it like the Chinese Communist Party did with its one child only policy has created even greater pyramids of victims than fascism.
And the black polo neck intellectuals and academics of the West are complicit in this, from Gramsci to Sartre and beyond into the contemporary Wokistas.
Antifa for example has its roots in the Spanish Civil War, or rather the myth that it was a communist opposition to fascism. Actually half the Republicans were liberal democrats, almost a third socialists, Stalinists only a tenth but supported by Stalin hence the myth, and there was a small percentage that were anti Stalin Marxists who must have paid a bitter price at the hands of their Stalinist "allies" but foes.
The atrocities attributed to the Republicans were all from the non liberal democrat half. Few actually know this as the preferred historical narratives promote the communists as being the opposition to Franco, hence the "romance" of Antifa today.
Yes, every good idea gets perverted, that is why libertarians can only identify with "classical" liberalism now instead of just liberalism. I did not know that about the Republicans in the Spanish civil war, that is interesting.
I discovered that quite by accident watching a Spanish TV series on Netflix called the "The Patients of Doctor Garcia" ... well worth a viewing. The references to the "reds" therein are to Republicans, not specifically only the communists. However the communists sought to claim the opposition as theirs through the preferred narrative of Western intellectuals and academics ... I will be writing a more comprehensive article on this on my Substack ... By the way by "black polo necks" I am referring to the actual garments, a signature of Sartre et al ... it was chic to be a European communist back then, and Existentialists seem to have been mostly that ... So you wore a polo neck, a black one, to signal you were an Existentialist/communist. Cigar smoking seems to have been part of that too, whiskey and women as well ...
Do we really have the luxury in this country not to accept the supervision of a nanny state to stop behaviours that harm others? Sure, in a society where people are truly free to make personal individual choices, we can let go of these top down control or protective measures.
Unfortunately we do not. So if someone is desperate for a job, s/he is effectively forced to go into a smoking area and inhale the restaurant's patron's smoke from his/her addiction. There is nothing fair about this! If we all had the ability to pay for a civil suit to compensate for personal harm done, then yes, get rid of the state's nanny rules.
The force of circumstances is what we call life. The decision whether I take the job or not should depend on the person, not the state. I would rather have the option to decide,than not.
Yebo, Trevor Watkins' Harm Consent Rule, the HCR, is a practical real world option to the otherwise nebulous Non Aggression Principle, the NAP, that libertarians and like minded mostly refer to.
Your smoking example is excellent, and it shows why the prevailing idea in academia that a genuine free market has "market failures" is a myth.
Coupled to the Nature of Us, the NoU, a genuine free market protected by a minimalist government (Night Watchman or whatever other name describes the same rose) is a solution to any form of initiation of physical force (aka violence) against individuals.
Using your smoking example or the asbestos example in the NoU article linked below, any form of physical harm without consent, from smoking to asbestos to conscription to the Apartheid Pass Law or its Immorality Act or Putin droning civilians or the Maoist "one child only per family" genocide in China, whatever, the HCR + NoU can address these explicitly and at maximal resolution.
For the NoU see: https://thetaooffreedom.substack.com/p/the-nature-of-us-nou?utm_source=publication-search
While I am grateful to you for promoting the principles of the HarmConsentRule (HCR), I am disappointed that there is no acknowledgement of the origins of this rule with the Individualist Movement (www.individualist.one) and its developer Trevor Watkins.
The worker values the money more than the fresh air; you seem to value the fresh air more. You are imposing your subjective value scale on the worker. Do you not think that persons have the ability to make their own value judgments?
I agree, but "If I, as an adult..." means that we better have a non-arbitrary definition of "adult". But this is not insurmountable, anyone who can prove that they are responsible for their own lives is an adult.
The real problem is secular libertarianism which has been a dead end, it has lost us ground to conservatives when we should be louder about the Christian roots of some of our best ideas (natural law, the rule of law, even the HCR or NAP can be traced back to the golden rule). The Christian God is a God of consent "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.", abolition was largely a Christian movement, the early classical liberals were driven by their faith.
But modern libertarians are materialists for no good reason. This makes it much harder to win over people and allows leftists to claim to represent Christian values when the communists and socialists have always been hostile to Christianity, they do this because they know the value of the religious space modern libertarians have vacated, so do conservatives. There is even the absurd suggestion from some libertarians that faith is incompatible with libertarianism, talk about not knowing your own history.
Abandon objectivists, they don't want to be associated with libertarians anyway. Claim the religious ground that rightfully belongs to us, that way we can show people that consent is based on God's love, property rights are based on humanity's God-given stewardship of the Earth and human/natural rights on our being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Or just keep being an irrelevant social club that gradually drifts towards progressivism in a desperate attempt to recapture some relevance.
Here is a rebuttal incorporating your specific points and preferred philosophical stance, keeping the tone firm but intellectually grounded.
"While I do not deny the historical debt classical liberalism owes to Christian theology—particularly regarding natural law and the fervor of the abolitionist movement—acknowledging an idea's roots is different from claiming we are forever bound by them. Genealogy is not justification.
We need not hark back to mystical entities to ground the Non-Aggression Principle. The concept that consent between adults is the sole legitimate basis for human interaction stands on its own logical merit; it requires no divine ratification. To suggest that liberty collapses without a theological crutch is to insult the rationality of the philosophy.
Furthermore, a liberty that requires the threat of 'hell and perpetual agony' to function is hardly liberty at all; it is merely obedience under duress. I choose to stay true to an individualism that does not require a ghost peering over my shoulder to keep me on the 'straight and narrow.' True morality is chosen, not coerced by supernatural surveillance.
If there is room for the divine in this philosophy, let it be Spinoza’s God—revealed in the lawful harmony of existence—not an interventionist judge requiring submission. Secular libertarianism is not a 'dead end' or a 'social club'; it is the necessary evolution of freedom into a universal principle, unburdened by specific dogma and accessible to all rational minds, regardless of faith."
I used AI to craft the rebuttal.
The Christian God is universal if he made us all. From where I am standing, it is not obvious that he didn't. So if he made us, he also created our capacity to be rational. So if you are relying on an aspect of yourself (rationality and logic) made to image your creator, and using that to argue that the creator is unnecessary, you are playing a huge joke on yourself. It would be like your child using your connections to climb the corporate/government ladder and assuming you were not needed for their success because they assume everyone has the same connections.
It is a gross misunderstanding of Christianity to say that it requires the threat of hell or the promise of heaven to get people to behave. Christianity is actually a rejection of the idea that we can ever get ourselves to behave, our human lusts are too powerful (something secular libertarians brush over but it's a real problem for them), the threat of divine punishment/reward or even earthly punishment or reward (this was why the ancient state of Israel was insufficient and Jesus was needed) are not enough.
The radical/divine insight of Christianity is that we need God's grace and to accept Christ in order for him to work on changing our hearts. We cannot perform our way to goodness, even when we convince everyone else that we are good, God still knows our hearts and we know that he knows. Our own consciences drive us to seek this grace.
So going back to libertarianism, it actually doesn't guarantee a good society and in fact a secular libertarianism will be a very bad society, almost guaranteed. It will attract the very worst characters, the ones who just want to do enough to seem compliant with the NAP while doing evil (if you cannot imagine what this looks like, you need to observe people more). You need a libertarian society which also has Christians and makes a special effort to attract them, so you can provide the social pressure to accept Christ or at the very least Christian morality, unlike some non-libertarian Christians, I don't think you can ever legislate morality, but you need to know that there's only one way to be moral and rationality is not it.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams
It may only be a coincidence but as America has become more secular, liberty has become less and less respected (and I know you can bring up religious abuses like alcohol abolition, fair enough). Maybe Adams understood something important.
Lastly, after the ancient Israelis left Egypt and settled in the promised land, they had something like an anarchy under the Judges. This was God's preferred system as can be seen by His response when the Israelis asked for a King.
You have identified the clay feet of the argument - "if he made us all..." He did not. We made Him. From that viewpoint we are actually on the same page. You see morality coming from a dirty I see itvas the fruits of the human mind. The conclusion is the same. Consent is the key.
We can argue this another day, I think there’s good evidence that 1) this universe and everything in it was created by a God and 2) that God is the Christian God.
*deity
You make a very important observation, that (I think you mean the New Testament) Christ is a purely voluntary choice, and also important to note is that there is no violence (as libertarians, individualists ... and even Objectivists would define it) advocated by Christ.
Many Eastern religions/philosophies are non violent too, as examples Jainism, Taoism, Buddhism without the added dogma.
That has not stopped tyrants to manipulate these platforms to promote violence via them, but then such dogmatic norms be it the Vatican of the past or the Samurai in Japan pre WW2 is in contravention to the pure teachings of these examples.
The other important point is that the atheist driven communism, with its aim to remove the family unit or regulate it like the Chinese Communist Party did with its one child only policy has created even greater pyramids of victims than fascism.
And the black polo neck intellectuals and academics of the West are complicit in this, from Gramsci to Sartre and beyond into the contemporary Wokistas.
Antifa for example has its roots in the Spanish Civil War, or rather the myth that it was a communist opposition to fascism. Actually half the Republicans were liberal democrats, almost a third socialists, Stalinists only a tenth but supported by Stalin hence the myth, and there was a small percentage that were anti Stalin Marxists who must have paid a bitter price at the hands of their Stalinist "allies" but foes.
The atrocities attributed to the Republicans were all from the non liberal democrat half. Few actually know this as the preferred historical narratives promote the communists as being the opposition to Franco, hence the "romance" of Antifa today.
Yes, every good idea gets perverted, that is why libertarians can only identify with "classical" liberalism now instead of just liberalism. I did not know that about the Republicans in the Spanish civil war, that is interesting.
I discovered that quite by accident watching a Spanish TV series on Netflix called the "The Patients of Doctor Garcia" ... well worth a viewing. The references to the "reds" therein are to Republicans, not specifically only the communists. However the communists sought to claim the opposition as theirs through the preferred narrative of Western intellectuals and academics ... I will be writing a more comprehensive article on this on my Substack ... By the way by "black polo necks" I am referring to the actual garments, a signature of Sartre et al ... it was chic to be a European communist back then, and Existentialists seem to have been mostly that ... So you wore a polo neck, a black one, to signal you were an Existentialist/communist. Cigar smoking seems to have been part of that too, whiskey and women as well ...
Do we really have the luxury in this country not to accept the supervision of a nanny state to stop behaviours that harm others? Sure, in a society where people are truly free to make personal individual choices, we can let go of these top down control or protective measures.
Unfortunately we do not. So if someone is desperate for a job, s/he is effectively forced to go into a smoking area and inhale the restaurant's patron's smoke from his/her addiction. There is nothing fair about this! If we all had the ability to pay for a civil suit to compensate for personal harm done, then yes, get rid of the state's nanny rules.
The force of circumstances is what we call life. The decision whether I take the job or not should depend on the person, not the state. I would rather have the option to decide,than not.