WEBVTT NOTE 2.13. Enforcement Against Invasion of Property 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 13. Enforcement Against Invasion of Property 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:17.000 This work is largely the analysis of a market society unhampered by the use of violence or theft against any man's person or property. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:24.000 The question of the means by which this condition is best established is not at present under consideration. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:42.000 For the present purpose, it makes no difference whether this condition is established by every man's deciding to refrain from invasive action against others, or whether some agency is established to enforce the abandonment of such action by every individual. 5 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:50.760 Invasive action may be defined as any action, violence, theft or fraud, taking away another's 6 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:55.320 personal freedom or property without his consent. 7 00:00:55.320 --> 00:01:01.080 Whether the enforcement is undertaken by each person or by some sort of agency, we assume 8 00:01:01.080 --> 00:01:06.940 here that such a condition, the existence of an unhampered market, is maintained in 9 00:01:06.940 --> 00:01:08.920 some way. 10 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:14.600 One of the problems in maintaining the conditions of a free market is the role of the enforcing 11 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:20.840 agency, whether individual or organizational, in exchange contracts. 12 00:01:20.840 --> 00:01:27.080 What type of contracts are to be enforced to maintain the conditions of an unhampered 13 00:01:27.080 --> 00:01:28.080 market? 14 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:34.320 We have already seen that contracts assigning away the will of an individual cannot be enforced 15 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:40.800 in such a market, because the will of each person is by its nature inalienable. 16 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:46.300 On the other hand, if the individual made such a contract and received another's property 17 00:01:46.300 --> 00:01:52.940 in exchange, he must forfeit part or all of the property when he decides to terminate 18 00:01:52.940 --> 00:01:54.600 the agreement. 19 00:01:54.600 --> 00:02:00.520 We shall see that fraud may be considered as theft, because one individual receives 20 00:02:00.520 --> 00:02:06.200 is the other's property but does not fulfill his part of the exchange bargain, thereby 21 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:10.200 taking the other's property without his consent. 22 00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:17.600 This case provides the clue to the role of contract and its enforcement in the free society. 23 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:24.160 Contract must be considered as an agreed-upon exchange between two persons of two goods, 24 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:26.360 present or future. 25 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:31.840 Customers would be free to make any and all property contracts that they wished, and for 26 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:40.480 a free society to exist, all contracts, where the good is naturally alienable, must be enforced. 27 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:46.280 Failure to fulfill contracts must be considered as theft of the other's property. 28 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:52.400 Thus, when a debtor purchases a good in exchange for a promise of future payment, the good 29 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:59.080 It cannot be considered his property until the agreed contract has been fulfilled and 30 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:00.880 payment made. 31 00:03:00.880 --> 00:03:07.260 Until then, it remains the creditor's property, and non-payment would be equivalent to theft 32 00:03:07.260 --> 00:03:09.720 of the creditor's property. 33 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:16.400 An important consideration here is that contract not be enforced because a promise has been 34 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:18.640 made that is not kept. 35 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:24.880 It is not the business of the enforcing agency or agencies in the free market to enforce 36 00:03:24.880 --> 00:03:29.000 promises merely because they are promises. 37 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:35.520 Its business is to enforce against theft of property, and contracts are enforced because 38 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:39.400 of the implicit theft involved. 39 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:45.400 Evidence of a promise to pay property is an enforceable claim, because the possessor of 40 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:51.600 This claim is, in effect, the owner of the property involved, and failure to redeem the 41 00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:55.200 claim is equivalent to theft of the property. 42 00:03:55.200 --> 00:04:00.520 On the other hand, take the case of a promise to contribute personal services without an 43 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:03.200 advance exchange of property. 44 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:09.060 Thus, suppose that a movie actor agrees to act in three pictures for a certain studio 45 00:04:09.060 --> 00:04:10.520 for a year. 46 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:17.520 Before receiving any goods in exchange, salary, he breaks the contract and decides not to 47 00:04:17.520 --> 00:04:24.680 perform the work. Since his personal will is inalienable, he cannot, on the free market, 48 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:30.640 be forced to perform the work there. Further, since he has received none of the movie company 49 00:04:30.640 --> 00:04:37.240 property in exchange, he has committed no theft, and thus the contract cannot be enforced 50 00:04:37.240 --> 00:04:39.120 on the Free Market. 51 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:44.600 Any suit for damages could not be entertained on an unhampered market. 52 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:49.760 The fact that the movie company may have made considerable plans and investments on the 53 00:04:49.760 --> 00:04:56.120 expectation that the actor would keep the agreement may be unfortunate for the company, 54 00:04:56.120 --> 00:05:03.120 but it could not expect the actor to pay for its lack of foresight and poor entrepreneurship. 55 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:08.080 It pays the penalty for placing too much confidence in the man. 56 00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:13.960 The movie actor has not received and kept any of the company's property, and therefore 57 00:05:13.960 --> 00:05:20.060 cannot be held accountable in the form of payment of goods as damages. 58 00:05:20.060 --> 00:05:27.920 This is true even if the actor had previously agreed in a contract that he would pay damages, 59 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:31.080 for this is still merely a promise. 60 00:05:31.080 --> 00:05:35.640 He has not implicitly seized someone else's property. 61 00:05:35.640 --> 00:05:42.760 The object of an enforcing agency in a free society is not to uphold promise-keeping by 62 00:05:42.760 --> 00:05:48.120 force, but to redress any invasions of person and property. 63 00:05:48.120 --> 00:05:53.800 Any such enforced payment in the present case would be an invasion of the movie actor's 64 00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:59.520 property rights on the free market, rather than an attack upon invasion. 65 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:05.160 It may be considered more moral to keep promises than to break them, but the condition of 66 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:11.840 a free market is that each individual's rights of person and property be maintained, and 67 00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:18.160 not that some further standard of morals be coercively imposed on all. 68 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:25.040 Any coercive enforcement of such a moral code, going beyond the abolition of invasive acts, 69 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:34.040 would in itself constitute an invasion of individual rights of person and property and be an interference in the free market. 70 00:06:34.040 --> 00:06:39.040 Sir Frederick Pollock thus describes original English contract law. 71 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:44.040 Money debts, it is true, were recoverable from an early time. 72 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:49.040 But this was not because the debtor had promised to repay the loan. 73 00:06:49.040 --> 00:06:54.040 It was because the money was deemed still to belong to the creditor 74 00:06:54.040 --> 00:07:06.840 As if the identical coins were merely in the debtor's custody, the creditor sued to recover money in exactly the same form which he would have used to demand possession of land. 75 00:07:06.840 --> 00:07:15.480 And down to Blackstone's time, the creditor was said to have a property in the debt, property which the debtor had granted him. 76 00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:24.480 Giving credit, in this way of thinking, is not reliance on the right to call thereafter for an act to be performed by the debtor, 77 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:30.480 but merely suspension of the immediate right to possess one's own particular money, 78 00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:35.480 as the owner of a house lot suspends his right to occupy it. 79 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:40.480 The foundation of the plaintiff's right was not bargain or promise, 80 00:07:40.480 --> 00:08:09.480 It certainly would be consonant with the free market, however, for the movie company to ask the actor to pay a certain sum in consideration of his breaking the contract, and if he refuses, to refuse to hire him again, and to notify other prospective contracting parties, such as movie companies, of the person's action. 81 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:16.520 It seems likely that his prospect of making exchanges in the future will suffer because of his action. 82 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:20.920 Thus, the blacklist is permissible on the free market. 83 00:08:20.920 --> 00:08:31.600 Another legitimate action on the free market is the boycott, by which A urges B not to make an exchange with C for whatever reason. 84 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:38.700 Since A's and B's actions are purely voluntary and non-invasive, there is no reason for a 85 00:08:38.700 --> 00:08:42.600 boycott not to be permitted on the unhampered market. 86 00:08:42.600 --> 00:08:49.100 On the contrary, any coercive action against a boycott is an invasion against the rights 87 00:08:49.100 --> 00:08:51.380 of free persons. 88 00:08:51.380 --> 00:08:58.460 If default on contracted debts is to be considered as equivalent to theft, then on the unhampered 89 00:08:58.460 --> 00:09:04.460 In the third market, its treatment by the enforcing agency will be similar to that of theft. 90 00:09:04.460 --> 00:09:15.460 It is clear, for example, in the case of burglary, that the recovery of the stolen property to its owner would be the fundamental consideration for the enforcing agency. 91 00:09:15.460 --> 00:09:21.460 Punishment of the wrongdoer would be a consideration subsidiary to the former. 92 00:09:21.460 --> 00:09:28.620 Suppose A has stolen 100 ounces of gold from B. By the time A has been apprehended by 93 00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:35.220 the enforcing agency, he has dissipated the 100 ounces, and has no assets by which the 94 00:09:35.220 --> 00:09:41.580 100 ounces can be obtained. The main goal of the enforcement agency should be to force 95 00:09:41.580 --> 00:09:49.000 A to return the 100 ounces. Thus, instead of simply idle imprisonment, the agency could 96 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:54.000 would force the thief to labor and to attach his earnings to make up the amount of the 97 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:58.600 theft, plus a compensation for the delay in time. 98 00:09:58.600 --> 00:10:04.480 Whether this forced labor is done in or out of prison is immaterial here. 99 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:10.820 The main point is that the invader of another's rights on the free market gives up his rights 100 00:10:10.820 --> 00:10:12.840 to the same extent. 101 00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:17.480 The first consideration in the punishment of the aggressor against property in the free 102 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:21.480 is the forced return of the equivalent property. 103 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:24.480 As Wordsworth Donisthorpe reminds us, 104 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:29.480 in Rome one could recover stolen goods or damages for their loss 105 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:32.480 by what we should call a civil process, 106 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:39.480 without in the least affecting the relation between the thief and the public by reason of the theft. 107 00:10:39.480 --> 00:10:44.480 Restitution first and punishment afterwards was the rule. 108 00:10:44.480 --> 00:10:53.480 On the other hand, suppose that B voluntarily decides to forgive A and grant the latter a gift of the property. 109 00:10:53.480 --> 00:10:56.480 He refuses to press charges against the thief. 110 00:10:56.480 --> 00:11:01.480 In that case, the enforcement agency would take no action against the robber, 111 00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:06.480 since he is now in the position of the receiver of a gift of property. 112 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:12.480 This analysis provides the clue to the treatment of defaulting debtors on the free market. 113 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:25.480 If a creditor decides to forget about the debt and not press charges, he, in effect, grants a gift of his property to the debtor, and there is no further room for enforcement of contract. 114 00:11:25.480 --> 00:11:29.480 What if the creditor insists on keeping his property? 115 00:11:29.480 --> 00:11:41.480 It is clear that if the debtor can pay the required amount but refuses to do so, he is guilty of pure fraud, and the enforcing agency would treat his act as such. 116 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:49.480 Its prime move would be to make sure that the debtor's assets are transferred to their rightful owner, the creditor. 117 00:11:49.480 --> 00:11:55.480 But suppose that the debtor has not got the property, and would be willing to pay if he had it. 118 00:11:55.480 --> 00:12:03.480 Does this entitle him to special privilege or coerced elimination of the debt, as in the case of bankruptcy laws? 119 00:12:03.480 --> 00:12:04.680 Clearly not. 120 00:12:04.680 --> 00:12:10.240 The prime consideration in the treatment of the debtor would be his continuing and primary 121 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:14.720 responsibility to redeem the property of the creditor. 122 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:20.000 The only way by which this treatment could be eliminated would be for the debtor and 123 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:25.840 the creditor to agree, as part of the original contract, that if the debtor makes certain 124 00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:31.520 investments and fails to have the property at the date due, the creditor will forgive 125 00:12:31.520 --> 00:12:32.620 the debt. 126 00:12:32.620 --> 00:12:39.140 In short, he grants the debtor the rights of a partial co-owner of the property. 127 00:12:39.140 --> 00:12:46.460 There could be no room in a free society such as we have outlined for negotiable instruments. 128 00:12:46.460 --> 00:12:52.460 Where the government designates a good as negotiable if A steals it from B and then 129 00:12:52.460 --> 00:12:58.980 sells it to C without the latter's knowledge of the theft, B cannot take the good back 130 00:12:58.980 --> 00:13:06.120 from C. Despite the fact that A was a thief and had no proper title to the good, C is 131 00:13:06.120 --> 00:13:12.680 decreed to be the legitimate owner, and B has no way of regaining his property. 132 00:13:12.680 --> 00:13:18.420 The law of negotiability is evidently a clear infringement of property right. 133 00:13:18.420 --> 00:13:24.320 Where property rights are fully defended, theft cannot be compounded in this manner. 134 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:30.680 The buyer would have to purchase at his own risk and make sure that the good is not stolen. 135 00:13:30.680 --> 00:13:37.040 If he nonetheless does buy stolen goods, he must try to obtain restitution from the thief 136 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:41.120 and not at the expense of the rightful owner. 137 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:43.280 What of a cartel agreement? 138 00:13:43.280 --> 00:13:46.280 Would that be enforceable in a free society? 139 00:13:46.280 --> 00:13:53.880 If there has been no exchange of property and A, B, C firms agree among themselves to 140 00:13:53.880 --> 00:14:00.280 To set quotas on their production of a good, this agreement would surely not be illegal, 141 00:14:00.280 --> 00:14:02.900 but neither would it be enforceable. 142 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:09.920 It could be only a simple promise, and not an enforceable case of implicit theft. 143 00:14:09.920 --> 00:14:15.520 This reason for the unenforceability of a cartel agreement in a free society has no 144 00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:23.580 relation to any common law hostility to agreements allegedly in restraint of trade. 145 00:14:23.580 --> 00:14:29.580 One difficulty often raised against a free society of individual property rights is that 146 00:14:29.580 --> 00:14:36.220 it ignores the problem of external diseconomies or external costs. 147 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:43.220 But cases of external diseconomy all turn out to be instances of failure of government, 148 00:14:43.220 --> 00:14:49.460 the enforcing agency, adequately to enforce individual property rights. 149 00:14:49.460 --> 00:14:55.980 The blame, therefore, rests not on the institution of private property, but on the failure of 150 00:14:55.980 --> 00:15:02.020 the government to enforce this property right against various subtle forms of invasion, 151 00:15:02.020 --> 00:15:06.580 the failure, for example, to maintain a free society. 152 00:15:06.580 --> 00:15:12.740 One instance of this failure is the case of smoke, as well as air pollution generally. 153 00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:19.300 Insofar as the outpouring of smoke by factories pollutes the air and damages the person's 154 00:15:49.300 --> 00:16:18.420 In a free society, as we have stated, every man is a self-owner. 155 00:16:18.420 --> 00:16:25.380 No man is allowed to own the body or mind of another, that being the essence of slavery. 156 00:16:25.380 --> 00:16:32.820 This condition completely overthrows the basis for a law of defamation, that is, libel, written 157 00:16:32.820 --> 00:16:37.140 defamation, or slander, oral defamation. 158 00:16:37.140 --> 00:16:44.180 For the basis of outlawing defamation is that every man has a property in his own reputation, 159 00:16:44.180 --> 00:16:51.020 And that therefore any malicious or untruthful attack on him or his character, or even more, 160 00:16:51.020 --> 00:16:56.260 a truthful attack, injures his reputation and therefore should be punished. 161 00:16:56.260 --> 00:17:02.000 However, a man has no such objective property as reputation. 162 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.560 His reputation is simply what others think of him. 163 00:17:05.560 --> 00:17:10.780 That is, it is purely a function of the subjective thoughts of others. 164 00:17:10.780 --> 00:17:15.120 But a man cannot own the minds or thoughts of others. 165 00:17:15.120 --> 00:17:20.860 Therefore I cannot invade a man's property right by criticizing him publicly. 166 00:17:20.860 --> 00:17:27.280 Further, since I do not own others' minds either, I cannot force anyone else to think 167 00:17:27.280 --> 00:17:30.380 less of the man because of my criticism. 168 00:17:30.380 --> 00:17:36.480 Similarly, blackmail would not be illegal in the free society, for blackmail is the 169 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:55.920 The Foregoing Observations should firmly remind us that what the enforcing agency combats 170 00:17:55.920 --> 00:18:04.480 in a free society is invasion of the physical person and property, not injury to the values 171 00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:06.120 of property. 172 00:18:06.120 --> 00:18:09.600 For physical property is what the person owns. 173 00:18:09.600 --> 00:18:15.020 He does not have any ownership in monetary values, which are a function of what others 174 00:18:15.020 --> 00:18:18.000 will pay for his property. 175 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:24.960 Thus someone's vandalism against or robbery of a factory is an invasion of physical property 176 00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:26.680 and is outlawed. 177 00:18:26.680 --> 00:18:31.840 On the other hand, someone's shift from the purchase of this factory's product to the 178 00:18:31.840 --> 00:18:38.200 The purchase of a competing factory's product may lower the monetary value of the former's 179 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:42.280 property, but this is certainly not a punishable act. 180 00:18:42.280 --> 00:18:49.280 It is precisely the condition of a free society that a property owner have no unearned claim 181 00:18:49.280 --> 00:18:52.280 on the property of anyone else. 182 00:18:52.280 --> 00:18:59.780 Therefore he has no vested right in the value of his property, only in its physical existence. 183 00:18:59.780 --> 00:19:04.400 As for the value, this must take its chance on the free market. 184 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:09.980 This is the answer, for example, to those who believe that undesirable businesses or 185 00:19:09.980 --> 00:19:16.060 people must be legally prevented from moving into a certain neighborhood because this may 186 00:19:16.060 --> 00:19:21.060 or will lower the existing property value. 187 00:19:21.060 --> 00:19:26.620 One method of acquiring property that we have not discussed yet is fraud. 188 00:19:26.620 --> 00:19:34.000 Lud involves cases where one party to an agreed-upon exchange deliberately refuses to fulfill his 189 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:36.020 part of the contract. 190 00:19:36.020 --> 00:19:41.560 He thus acquires the property of the other person, but he sacrifices either none of the 191 00:19:41.560 --> 00:19:46.160 agreed-upon goods or less than he had agreed. 192 00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:52.080 We have seen that a debtor's deliberate failure to pay his creditor is equivalent to an outright 193 00:19:52.080 --> 00:19:55.520 theft of the creditor's property. 194 00:19:55.520 --> 00:20:00.040 Another example of fraudulent action is the following exchange. 195 00:20:00.040 --> 00:20:06.340 Smith agrees to give up 15 ounces of gold to Jones in exchange for a package of certain 196 00:20:06.340 --> 00:20:08.760 specified Chinaware. 197 00:20:08.760 --> 00:20:13.940 When he receives the package, after having given up the gold, Smith finds that he has 198 00:20:13.940 --> 00:20:20.320 received an empty crate instead of the goods that the two had agreed to exchange. 199 00:20:20.320 --> 00:20:24.740 Jones has falsely represented the goods that he would exchange. 200 00:20:24.740 --> 00:20:30.340 And here again, this is equivalent to outright theft of Smith's property. 201 00:20:30.340 --> 00:20:36.740 Since the exchange has been made falsely, the actual form of which might not have been contracted 202 00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:39.660 had the other party not been deceived. 203 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:45.580 This is not an example of voluntary exchange, but of one-sided theft. 204 00:20:45.580 --> 00:20:52.540 We therefore exclude both explicit violence and the implicit violence of fraud from our 205 00:20:52.540 --> 00:20:54.500 definition of the market. 206 00:20:54.500 --> 00:20:59.300 and the pattern of voluntary interpersonal exchanges. 207 00:20:59.300 --> 00:21:07.140 At this point we are dealing only with an analysis of the market unhampered by fraud or violence. 208 00:21:07.140 --> 00:21:13.340 We have not here been discussing what type of enforcing agency will be set up or the 209 00:21:13.340 --> 00:21:20.100 means it will use, but what type of actions the agency will combat and what type will 210 00:21:20.100 --> 00:21:21.880 be permissible. 211 00:21:21.880 --> 00:21:27.840 In a free market, all invasive acts by one person against another's property, either 212 00:21:27.840 --> 00:21:34.480 against his person or his material goods, will be combated by the enforcing agency or 213 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:36.020 agencies. 214 00:21:36.020 --> 00:21:42.740 We are assuming here that there are no invasive acts in the society, either because no individuals 215 00:21:42.740 --> 00:21:49.320 commit them, or because they are successfully combated and prevented by some sort of enforcing 216 00:21:49.320 --> 00:21:50.680 agency. 217 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:58.400 The problem then becomes one of defining invasive as distinguished from non-invasive acts. 218 00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:02.880 And this is what has been done here in various typical examples. 219 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:08.500 Each man would be entitled to ownership over his own person and over any property that 220 00:22:08.500 --> 00:22:15.600 he has acquired by production, by appropriation of unowned factors, by receiving gifts or 221 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:18.400 by voluntary exchange. 222 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:25.560 However has the basis of the free, non-invasive, or voluntarist society been described more 223 00:22:25.560 --> 00:22:31.800 clearly in a brief space than by the British political philosopher Auberon Herbert? 224 00:22:31.800 --> 00:22:33.000 1. 225 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:38.920 The great natural fact of each person being born in possession of a separate mind and 226 00:22:38.920 --> 00:22:46.400 separate body implies the ownership of such mind and body by each person, and rites of 227 00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:49.520 of Direction over Such Mind and Body. 228 00:22:49.520 --> 00:22:51.800 It will be found on examination 229 00:22:51.800 --> 00:22:54.760 that no other deduction is reasonable. 230 00:22:54.760 --> 00:22:58.600 Two, such self-ownership implies the restraint 231 00:22:58.600 --> 00:23:02.800 of violent or fraudulent aggressions made upon it. 232 00:23:02.800 --> 00:23:06.160 Three, individuals therefore have the right 233 00:23:06.160 --> 00:23:10.080 to protect themselves by force against such aggressions 234 00:23:10.080 --> 00:23:12.760 made forcibly or fraudulently, 235 00:23:12.760 --> 00:23:15.960 and they may delegate such acts of self-defense 236 00:23:15.960 --> 00:23:19.220 to a special body called a government. 237 00:23:19.220 --> 00:23:21.160 Condensed into a few words, 238 00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:24.260 our voluntariest formula would run, 239 00:23:24.260 --> 00:23:28.380 the sovereignty of the individual must remain intact 240 00:23:28.380 --> 00:23:31.900 except where the individual coerced has aggressed 241 00:23:31.900 --> 00:23:35.920 upon the sovereignty of another unaggressive individual. 242 00:23:37.100 --> 00:23:40.900 Elaborating on the first point, Herbert continued, 243 00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:44.620 if there is one thing on which we can safely build, 244 00:23:44.620 --> 00:23:59.860 It is the great natural fact that each human being forms with his or her body and mind a separate entity from which we must conclude that the entities belong to themselves and not to each other. 245 00:23:59.860 --> 00:24:03.740 As I have said, no other deduction is possible. 246 00:24:03.740 --> 00:24:10.340 If the entities do not belong to themselves, then we are reduced to the most absurd conclusion. 247 00:24:10.340 --> 00:24:17.380 A or B cannot own himself, but he can own or part-own C or D.