Replies to post #6272 on The Free Zone Board

[Spallenzani]

there's a huge difference in degree between painting your house a color your neighbor finds unaesthetic and surrounding your house with intrusive high beam lights that cast glare into his house night and day, don't you agree?

No, I don't. The difference is merely a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. My understanding of libertarianism has changed dramatically after reading David Friedman and studying economics. Previously, I understood libertarianism as a statement of rights, but statements of rights are necessarily incomplete and insufficient as answers to real world questions.

For example, even the most ardent libertarian would probably object to a claim made by a land owner who wanted to ban aircraft from flying thousands of miles above his house. Yet how high up does property go? It seems reasonable to give land owners the right to ban other people from building houses on stilts twenty feet above their property, yet it does not seem reasonable to give them the right to ban aircraft from flying over head. This is a question that simply statements of principle cannot answer.

So too, most libertarians would object to a claim made by someone who wanted to prevent his neighbor from shining a flashlight on his property. Every time I turn on my porch light, it is visible to my neighbors, and this is no different from shining a flashlight directly onto their lawn. Yet it would be reasonable to object to a neighbor who shined a high powered laser at my front door, boring a hole straight through.

But the difference between a flashlight and a high powered laser is simply a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.

David Friedman goes into more depth on this issue here: http://daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Your right to do what you want with your property doesn't extend to permitting you to interfere with your neighbor's right to enjoy his property.

But how do we determine who should have the right to do what when one person's use of property conflicts with another person's use of his property? Let's say I buy a plot of land out in the middle of nowhere so that I can have loud parties every night without disturbing the neighbors. Just my luck, the next year, a little old lady buys the property next door to me and she likes to go to bed early each night and demands silence. Should she have the right to call on the police to interfere with my right to enjoy my property?