Private Island Thought Experiment and "the Lifeboat"

I.

One of the purposes of a book like Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block is to apply radical libertarianism into the more "extreme" scenarios of life. By doing this it makes libertarianism all the more powerful because if man can apply libertarianism to "hard" cases all the more true will it apply to the "easy" cases.

This is what makes Dr. Block call libertarianism "beautiful," like the beauty one hears from listening to a Mozart symphony or the beauty a mathematician sees in a complex mathematical proof. Libertarianism is a bracing and rigorous theory in political philosophy and justice (ethics). It attempts to build a concretized theory based on solid axiomatic-grounds bringing out a consistent and whole system deducing self-ownership, property, liberty, and justice.

Even under the most extreme and direr scenarios does liberty provide a path to peaceful relationships and future economic advancement, if only men have the wisdom to see it. We just need strong citadels of liberty, escaping from the traps of the statists of the left and right.

II.

Like a past Paleo Blog entry, I would like to apply libertarianism to  "extreme" lifeboat cases. A reader asked me what I thought about the following case. So let me please share some of my own thoughts on it.

Imagine a man became shipwrecked and landed on a very small island in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of rescue for the foreseeable future. Two men live at this island. Say it is a given that they homesteaded the entire island. One man owns half the island on one side and the other man owns the other half on the other side. They are "isolationists" and want no contact with the outside world.

The two islanders agree that this unlucky shipwrecked man can stay with them respectively, but want to impose (literally) brutal laws and rules on him. Is there a limit to how far they could go? And, if so, what are those limits?

Before I directly address the issue I would like to preface my response and relate this thought experiment to the "real world" of complex societies filled with many people, write a little about "implied" or "implicit" contracts, and then move directly into the thought experiment and apply some economic-utilitarian analysis.

III.

When I first thought about this thought experiment I was thinking about how this fits into the bigger picture of the "real world," and how someone might try to (falsely) discredit libertarianism. However, the truth of the matter is, as I see it, that this kind of thought experiment in reality is not apposite to the real world and normal situations. It has virtually no practicability and applying it to the real world would misunderstand general societal tendencies in a free and complex division of labor.

Envisage, if you will, that tomorrow a brutal idea (such as, cutting off body parts as a requisite to be a citizen of a nation) was adopted by the majority of Americans, excluding you the reader and myself, living under a State. A statist society could not solve this problem, especially a democratic one, if it occurred anymore than if such immoral and stupid ideas took hold in a free society. But a free one has less chance of this occurring and less chance that one (you and me) will be pushed into this idea or association rule simply because it is a free society and has no monopoly in law making. Thus no matter how bad it could get in a free society it will only be worse in an un-free one.

Tomorrow they might also, say, decide that interaction with other households in any division of labor is "evil" and stop doing it. But is it likely? The answer is no. In regards to this, most of the population would die out. (I'll side-note here that the farcicality of protectionist ideology should be clear.)

And with this kind of thought experiment we must keep in mind that today, in a statist world, there are plenty of places you would not want to be stranded at. Would you, or the shipwrecked gentleman, want to be stranded at certain places in Africa with little to no hope of escape? My guess would be no. In addition, there would probably be fear for one's life, not to mention some theoretical or hypothetical immoral association rule.

IV.

Now the more interesting thing about this whole topic----and which might be forgotten or overlooked in the ethics of private property----is implied or implicit contracts. It has nothing to do with this thought experiment per se, but I think it is worth exploring quickly.

Pretend that I own an airplane and invite you on it. Up in the air I say I do not want you there anymore and ask you to leave. You obviously cannot, not without jumping out to your death. My reasoning is that I own it and have a right to push you out. But do I?

The answer is I do not have any such "right" in a case like this. This is because implied contracts exist, so to speak. It is implied that I will not physically aggress against you (or your privately owned property, besides your physical body) on my property. If you enter someone's home, it is implied that he will not take out a gun and kill you. That would most obviously be murder. Likewise for the airplane: It was implied that when I invited you that I would not do such a thing. That is to say, an implied contract existed for not being kicked out in midair. (The only way that kicking you out would be possible is if I told you in advance that I might do this and, I venture, had you sign a notarized paper in writing for any future judge to see.)

Okay, on to the original thought experiment.

V.

We must first recognize that an entire island, even a moderately small one, would most likely have "virgin" land. The islanders could claim to own everything, but if they did not actually homestead everything they do not. And, clearly, just walking through virgin land is no real ownership claim! The islanders could not apply any private rules or laws to land like that. It seems to me that the chance they owned all of it combined would be low. The only way to own land and have the ability to apply private rules and laws----like rules a man can apply to his own legitimately, privately owned house----is to the land that was actually homesteaded into private ownership. (See Murray Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty on homesteading.)

Since it is a given that they do, then my answer would be that if the shipwrecked gentleman is on their legitimately owned land they do have a right to impose all the rules and laws that they like----even insane, immoral, and stupid ones. But this does not mean that their law can implement slavery as it is strictly and technically defined. (Hence any owner cannot force a guest to stay on their property or anything of this nature. That kind of rule/law is incompatible with making contracts in the first place.) So this truly is a very bad luck case---what can I say?

However, even in a case like this there are natural forces that will tend for this not to happen.

VI.

In a horrible situation like this I would suggest that the gentleman see if he can "pay off" the inhabitants in some way. That is, the guest can agree to work for them to avoid dumbfounded laws and rules. Or he can just tell them that they should drop their dumb rules and cooperate in a small division of labor, for their mutual benefit. After all, it is the division of labor that is our friend----including in this case, because even under conditions of hostility between peoples can self-interest alone mend fences in a division of labor of social cooperation.

From a utilitarian perspective in terms of economics and private law, the two inhabitants, for sheer self-interest, would not want to put too many rules or private laws on the man because that would lower his productive capabilities to produce things. (How wealthy can they be all alone!? Not very! They could use all the help they can get.) Therefore even if you consider the man a servant (or even a fake quasi "slave"), the islander owners, if they had any interest in their own wealth and if they had any intelligence, would not want to be brutal to him. They would want him productive because this would benefit them more than if he was unproductive. In a symmetric way the same is true for the gentleman. He wants to be less imposed on and to benefit from a mini-division of labor. This is not only true for the "short term" but is also true, and even more so, for the "long term."

Furthermore in a case like this the gentleman would probably be better off----minus the fact that capital wealth will be no doubt much lower and other considerations of this nature----in terms of the rules and laws that would likely (on average) be imposed on some private island than those imposed (on average) in public law by some State. This is because the State does not have these peaceful and non-intrusive incentives. Being a slave to the State would bring less and less incentive to impose fewer laws. The State could afford imposing lots of intrusive and anti-capitalist laws----spreading them out and collectivizing them, so to speak----on lots of people without too much adverse consequences to them qua State rulers directly. This is most profoundly true with a democratic government. The incentive with this type of State is to loot as much as you can get away with. Capital (i.e., long-term) value of "its" citizens, in a manner of speaking, would not exist. A temporary elected ruler, unlike a hereditary king, would have the incentive to loot what he can loot now in the present because he might not get a chance to do so in the future. The more they flail the public, the better for them and their buddies. Just as importantly, he cannot sell what he extracts from the public and he cannot sell any of the operations of the State to the open, free market. As a result, even the functions of the State will be overcapitalized, grossly inefficient, and as operations themselves abusive to private citizens. Opening the State up would make it so that if something is not looted now someone else might loot. As it turns man into a political animal we truly see a Hobbesian world.