Violating someone else's property rights is violent. One's exclusive right to their body is a type of property rights. One's right over their body is based on exactly the same principle of appropriating unclaimed natural resources for one's own exclusive use as one's right over what we commonly refer to as property.
That's an argument that violence is theft, not vice versa.
But let's not get hung up on a semantic argument. I am drawing a distinction between what you are calling "theft of body" and theft of anything else. I can use whatever terms you like, as long as you accept the distinction. (I will use "violence" and "theft" for now.)
Most people think violence is bad because it causes direct physical suffering. Theft alone causes no such direct suffering. It may cause suffering as an indirect outcome, but this depends on a lot of factors. To take an absurd example, if one person owns all the resources, and refuses to let others access them, theft will lead to better outcomes than letting everyone else starve to death.
Now it gets murkier when the inequality is less pronounced, but many people would argue that taking some resources from the rich to help the poor leads to better outcomes in a similar way. If you want to argue against that, you need to talk about outcomes as well. Just asserting that something is a "human rights violation" is not going to be very convincing to people who don't believe the action has bad outcomes.
As you say, let's not get hung up on semantics. Whether you want to call it violence, or violating someone's rights, intruding on someone's property is aggressive deprival of someone's rights, and justifies the use of defensive/retaliatory force.
This is unlike the force used against those who refuse to comply with income tax laws and hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade, which is morally unjustified.
> Most people think violence is bad because it causes direct physical suffering. Theft alone causes no such direct suffering. It may cause suffering as an indirect outcome, but this depends on a lot of factors.
That's an immature standard for morality. Theft is wrong. It's depriving someone of something that they are morally entitled to. You're not entitled to alleviate your suffering with someone else's resources. And theft does absolutely cause direct and immediate suffering for the victim.
> To take an absurd example, if one person owns all the resources, and refuses to let others access them, stealing will lead to better outcomes than letting everyone else starve to death.
There is absolutely no proof that violence backed theft against the rich leads to a higher standard of living in the long run.
And even if there were, social outcomes cannot in any sane justice system justify violating someone's rights.
>There is absolutely no proof that violence backed theft against the rich leads to a higher standard of living in the long run.
In the scenario I'm describing, it's a certainty. Without theft, everyone starves to death because they have no property which would enable them to acquire food. If they steal from him, they survive.
Now obviously this is not a very realistic scenario, but my point is that strict enforcement of property rights can cause direct harm in certain situations.
And I would argue that lesser inequality still exhibits the same kind of failure mode, where the poor become incapable of acquiring resources, because they have nothing the rich need.
>That's an immature standard for morality. Theft is wrong.
Moral absolutism seems a lot more immature to me. Almost any category of act can be good in the right circumstances.
>And even if there were, social outcomes cannot in any sane justice system justify violating someone's rights.
But now you're talking about a justice system. Enforcing rules at the expense of short term outcomes can be beneficial, but only if people respecting the rules causes better outcomes in the long term.
Rights are only as valuable as the outcomes they lead to.
>In the scenario I'm describing, it's a certainty. Without theft, everyone starves to death because they have no property which would enable them to acquire food. If they steal from him, they survive.
There is no scenario where they have the political/legal/military power to rob him, but don't have the power to feed themselves.
>And I would argue that lesser inequality still exhibits the same kind of failure mode, where the poor become incapable of acquiring resources, because they have nothing the rich need.
I would argue the ability to exert political influence is indicative of the ability to generate value. The same kind of intellectual feats are required in both cases.
Moreover, the historical trend is that of the standard of living of the poor rising. There is nothing at all in the economic trends seen to suggest the poor would be doomed without welfarism. Technological progress is creating an age of abundance, and this abundance is massively enriching every income class, in ways that are not even captured by traditional measures of economic consumption.
So no, I don't think there is any argument whatsoever for the instutionalization of theft.
>Moral absolutism seems a lot more immature to me. Almost any category of act can be good in the right circumstances.
Moral absolutism prevents the slippery slopes that the population at large has slid down over the last 100 years, where a massive share of economic activity is restricted by regulatory prohibitions that harm the economy, welfare programs have tens of millions of multi generational dependents, and income taxes demand over 30% of people's income.
Imagine how absurd a justice system would be if it let someone off for theft because the victim was rich. That's effectively what you're arguing for for the political system. I see it as extremely immature.
>But now you're talking about a justice system. Enforcing rules at the expense of short term outcomes can be beneficial, but only if people respecting the rules causes better outcomes in the long term.
I disagree. The outcome of a society accepting theft is bad, in and of itself. Theft is bad. Principles matter. Murdering an innocent person to save a thousand is wrong. Even engaging in a lesser evil, like theft, against one, to save many, is wrong.
Moreover, even if we accepted your moral framework, there would be no argument whatsoever for welfarism. Economic theory and the historical data strongly suggests minimising taxes levied to pay out welfare maximises economic development and the rate of increase in standard of living.
So I'm going to focus on one point here, because it's the one I find the most irrational about libertarian philosophy.
>I disagree. The outcome of a society accepting theft is bad, in and of itself. Theft is bad.
So what exactly do you mean by "theft" in this context?
Normally theft is defined in terms of the property system of the society it occurs within. Such property systems vary in the extent of control they allow individuals to exert over resources. Some involve limited time periods (copyright) while others require social contribution to maintain exclusive control (property taxes).
So in order to call something "theft" even if society accepts it, you have to define a property system outside of society. And to say such theft is morally bad, you have to elevate this one property system to the level of morality.
And this seems extremely dubious to me. We can say murder is intrinsically bad because life is evident in the universe, but there is no intrinsic notion of property in the universe. The only way I can consider one property system morally superior than another is to talk about outcomes, at which point we're making economic arguments, not moral ones.
>Normally theft is defined in terms of the property system of the society it occurs within.
As you said, let's not get hung up on semantics. It's taking property from someone that they are morally entitled to. If John gives me a widget, you have no moral right to take it from me without my consent because you happened to sign a piece of paper saying it's the law, and get Bob and Alice to add their signatures as well. Government does not have any rights that a group of people do not have. If it's wrong for a group of people to deprive you of your property, it's wrong for a government to do so as well.
>We can say murder is intrinsically bad because life is evident in the universe, but there is no intrinsic notion of property in the universe.
What about slavery? What about predation, or parasitism, where one animal lives off of the life of another? The predator/parasite robs the prey/host of their bodily resources. Property is absolutely evident. Every bit as evident as freedom/self-ownership. Animals will fight against attempts to prey/parasite off of their body, just as they'll fight against attempts to steal their kill.
First Possession is a principle observed in animals to reduce conflict, and it is the basis of property rights. It is also found to lead to a stable equilibrium in game theory experiments.
