Lifeboat Situations

June 22, 2007 9:52 AM by Mises.org Updates (Archive)

In a lifeboat situation, writes Murray Rothbard, we apparently have a war of all against all, and there seems at first to be no way to apply our theory of self-ownership or of property rights. But the reason is because the property right is ill-defined. For the vital question here is this: Who owns the lifeboat? Absolute property rights are the most satisfactory — or, at the very minimum, the least unsatisfactory — way out of the tragic lifeboat example. FULL ARTICLE

(This article was published October 1, 2004. You can read and comment on the original thread.)