"This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you. "
You have a house which is worth $100,000 to you, $150,000 to me. A bargained sale…
"This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you. "
You have a house which is worth $100,000 to you, $150,000 to me. A bargained sale will end up with a price somewhere between those numbers. Instead, following out your logic, I seize the house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you.
Is that your position?
"This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. "
My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights — bidding against B for the house B wants to buy or courting and marrying the woman B wanted to marry and would have if A didn't exist. My claim is that my fence is in the same category. You are worse off because I have arranged things such that you cannot do something you want to do without violating my rights. It doesn't follow that I owe you compensation.
>I seize [your] house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you. Is that your position?
No, since my argument relates to original acquisition of hitherto un-owned things, not to the house you mention, which I presumably own.
>My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
This is not true, at least as I meant my neo-Lockean Proviso. The crucial difference is that my standing where I am is not /intended/ to prevent you standing there (though it has this side-effect—unless, of course, that /is/ what I intend, in which case you may or may not have the right to physically move me on). By contrast, your building your fence /is/ intended to prevent others from entering "your" land, and is in that sense an /act/ of exclusion.
>There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights
My view is certainly not that it is never permissible to make others worse off, just that, in the state of nature, you cannot make yourself better off by intending to make others worse off. No-one marries with the intention to exclude others, so the fact that others miss out is their bad luck. However—admittedly—plenty people pollute without intending make things worse for others (though the polluters know that this will be the effect), so, according to the Proviso, that /is/ permitted. Another inconvenience of the state of nature, I guess.
"No-one marries with the intention to exclude others"
On the contrary, nearly everyone who marries does.
More relevant, why is intent so important in your view? And does "by intending to make others worse off" mean "the objective is to make others worse off" or "the objective is to make yourself better off but you know that one result is to make others worse off"?
Only the latter applies to my fence and it applies to my marriage as well if I know that there is another suitor who might succeed if I drop out.
I'm drawing on the familiar distinction between benefiting oneself by intentionally targeting someone with a harm (eg, terror bombing), and doing so while merely foreseeing that the same harm will be a side-effect (cf, strategic bombing). So understood, it is easy to see why one may think that the first is wrong, even if one accepts the second, since it involves /targeting/ someone—with all the connotations of that term.
So—au contraire—this is exactly what your fence is like, since (like the terror bomber) there is no benefit of building it if there is no-one else around, and you would strengthen it if it failed to deter people, etc etc. Its objective is to keep people out, and (unlike the strategic bomber) this harm to them is not some coincidental side-effect, that you would be happy not to occur if only it could be managed. And you want to do this to keep them from land that you admit is not yours. This exclusion can be made good only by nullifying the harm through compensation.
Yes—whoops!—marriage /is/ an exclusive relationship, so that complicates things. Same applies, though. What I /meant/ was that, in this case, your attitude to third parties during your pursuit of your beloved is the opposite. Presumably, you would still have pursued her even if he was not interested, and you would not have tried to prevent him from pursuing her, etc etc [OK, I admit it, for some people these things are false, but, I want say, they are behaving badly]. The complication is that you are pursuing an /exclusive/ relationship with her, but this overall pattern occurs in other contexts. When you eat some fruit (say), you engage in a particularly intimate relationship with it that necessarily excludes others, but your intention is strictly to eat the fruit, not exclude others from it (eg, you'd still eat the fruit even if no-one else wanted it, etc etc). So too when you seek an intimate relationship with your beloved. I /think/ this is all consistent.
Suppose some of my courtship tactics are designed to demonstrate my superior suitability as a husband vis a vis my rival. I wouldn't do those particular things if he wasn't also courting her. My objective isn't to make him worse off — that's a side effect of achieving my objective.
Similarly with my fence. My objective isn't to make him worse off, it is to keep him from doing things to the land, such as building a house on it, that would prevent me from planting wheat on it. If I could achieve my objective without making him worse off, perhaps by pointing out a better location for his house, I would do so. Making him worse off is a side effect of my means for achieving my objective.
We may be in agreement about the fence, /given the details you have just added/. I say that you can appropriate some plot of land so long as you compensate those excluded. One way of doing that is by offering to renounce your rights over an equivalent plot of land ("pointing out a better location for his house"). If he refuses to accept this reasonable offer, then that is on him so long as your offer remains, and so his being worse off is only a side effect of your action, and your fence is justified.
The courtship example is more of a problem for me. The key point is that there would be no (net) benefit to you of engaging in the courtship tactics you mention, and you would not do so, if your rival were not interested in her, etc. As my neo-Lockean account stands, this implies (i) that you are intentionally making him worse off, and therefore (ii) that this is wrong without providing compensation. Now, if the first point were mistaken, if your making him worse off really were a mere side effect, then that would be OK by me, since then I would not have to say that your tactics are wrong. But I don't think that is correct. Your tactics display a competitive motivation, of trying to /defeat/ the other, and that clearly means that you are targeting your rival, in the sense I introduced in my previous comment. So it seems I have to say that you may not employ such tactics, and more generally that competitive tactics in the state of nature are impermissible, and that /does/ seem implausible.
"This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you. "
You have a house which is worth $100,000 to you, $150,000 to me. A bargained sale will end up with a price somewhere between those numbers. Instead, following out your logic, I seize the house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you.
Is that your position?
"This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. "
My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights — bidding against B for the house B wants to buy or courting and marrying the woman B wanted to marry and would have if A didn't exist. My claim is that my fence is in the same category. You are worse off because I have arranged things such that you cannot do something you want to do without violating my rights. It doesn't follow that I owe you compensation.
>I seize [your] house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you. Is that your position?
No, since my argument relates to original acquisition of hitherto un-owned things, not to the house you mention, which I presumably own.
>My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
This is not true, at least as I meant my neo-Lockean Proviso. The crucial difference is that my standing where I am is not /intended/ to prevent you standing there (though it has this side-effect—unless, of course, that /is/ what I intend, in which case you may or may not have the right to physically move me on). By contrast, your building your fence /is/ intended to prevent others from entering "your" land, and is in that sense an /act/ of exclusion.
>There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights
My view is certainly not that it is never permissible to make others worse off, just that, in the state of nature, you cannot make yourself better off by intending to make others worse off. No-one marries with the intention to exclude others, so the fact that others miss out is their bad luck. However—admittedly—plenty people pollute without intending make things worse for others (though the polluters know that this will be the effect), so, according to the Proviso, that /is/ permitted. Another inconvenience of the state of nature, I guess.
"No-one marries with the intention to exclude others"
On the contrary, nearly everyone who marries does.
More relevant, why is intent so important in your view? And does "by intending to make others worse off" mean "the objective is to make others worse off" or "the objective is to make yourself better off but you know that one result is to make others worse off"?
Only the latter applies to my fence and it applies to my marriage as well if I know that there is another suitor who might succeed if I drop out.
I'm drawing on the familiar distinction between benefiting oneself by intentionally targeting someone with a harm (eg, terror bombing), and doing so while merely foreseeing that the same harm will be a side-effect (cf, strategic bombing). So understood, it is easy to see why one may think that the first is wrong, even if one accepts the second, since it involves /targeting/ someone—with all the connotations of that term.
So—au contraire—this is exactly what your fence is like, since (like the terror bomber) there is no benefit of building it if there is no-one else around, and you would strengthen it if it failed to deter people, etc etc. Its objective is to keep people out, and (unlike the strategic bomber) this harm to them is not some coincidental side-effect, that you would be happy not to occur if only it could be managed. And you want to do this to keep them from land that you admit is not yours. This exclusion can be made good only by nullifying the harm through compensation.
Yes—whoops!—marriage /is/ an exclusive relationship, so that complicates things. Same applies, though. What I /meant/ was that, in this case, your attitude to third parties during your pursuit of your beloved is the opposite. Presumably, you would still have pursued her even if he was not interested, and you would not have tried to prevent him from pursuing her, etc etc [OK, I admit it, for some people these things are false, but, I want say, they are behaving badly]. The complication is that you are pursuing an /exclusive/ relationship with her, but this overall pattern occurs in other contexts. When you eat some fruit (say), you engage in a particularly intimate relationship with it that necessarily excludes others, but your intention is strictly to eat the fruit, not exclude others from it (eg, you'd still eat the fruit even if no-one else wanted it, etc etc). So too when you seek an intimate relationship with your beloved. I /think/ this is all consistent.
Interesting response but I'm not convinced.
Suppose some of my courtship tactics are designed to demonstrate my superior suitability as a husband vis a vis my rival. I wouldn't do those particular things if he wasn't also courting her. My objective isn't to make him worse off — that's a side effect of achieving my objective.
Similarly with my fence. My objective isn't to make him worse off, it is to keep him from doing things to the land, such as building a house on it, that would prevent me from planting wheat on it. If I could achieve my objective without making him worse off, perhaps by pointing out a better location for his house, I would do so. Making him worse off is a side effect of my means for achieving my objective.
We may be in agreement about the fence, /given the details you have just added/. I say that you can appropriate some plot of land so long as you compensate those excluded. One way of doing that is by offering to renounce your rights over an equivalent plot of land ("pointing out a better location for his house"). If he refuses to accept this reasonable offer, then that is on him so long as your offer remains, and so his being worse off is only a side effect of your action, and your fence is justified.
The courtship example is more of a problem for me. The key point is that there would be no (net) benefit to you of engaging in the courtship tactics you mention, and you would not do so, if your rival were not interested in her, etc. As my neo-Lockean account stands, this implies (i) that you are intentionally making him worse off, and therefore (ii) that this is wrong without providing compensation. Now, if the first point were mistaken, if your making him worse off really were a mere side effect, then that would be OK by me, since then I would not have to say that your tactics are wrong. But I don't think that is correct. Your tactics display a competitive motivation, of trying to /defeat/ the other, and that clearly means that you are targeting your rival, in the sense I introduced in my previous comment. So it seems I have to say that you may not employ such tactics, and more generally that competitive tactics in the state of nature are impermissible, and that /does/ seem implausible.