Core Theory

Conflicts

Conflicts are contradictory actions — two wills directed at the same scarce resource, for incompatible purposes, at the same time.

Crusoe fashions a stick to spearfish with.
Friday wants to use the same stick to stoke his fire.
Both are mutually exclusive actions — a conflict arises.

Scarcity is the Root

Conflicts over means are only possible because of Scarcity. If a resource existed in unlimited abundance — like air at sea level, or a mathematical truth — no one could conflict over it. You using it doesn’t diminish my ability to use it. There is nothing to fight over.

But the means that humans act with are finite. There is one stick, one plot of land, one hour of labour, one fish in the net. When two people want to put the same resource to different uses simultaneously, only one can prevail. The actions are physically incompatible.

Scarcity makes conflict possible. Human wants make it inevitable.

This is not pessimism — it is the starting point of all serious ethics and economics. Any system of thought that ignores scarcity produces prescriptions that collapse on contact with reality.

What Conflicts Are Not

Conflicts in this sense are not mere disagreements, arguments, or competing preferences. Two people can disagree on which music is better without a conflict arising — preferences over non-scarce things don’t require anyone to be excluded.

A conflict requires a scarce means: something that can only be used one way at a time. The moment two people attempt incompatible actions over the same physical resource, a conflict exists regardless of whether either party recognises it.

The Question Conflicts Raise

Every conflict demands an answer to one question: who has the right to direct this resource?

This is not optional. The resource will be used somehow — by one party, by the other, or by neither. Ignoring the question doesn’t dissolve the conflict; it just means it gets resolved by whoever is stronger or faster, i.e., by force.

Any coherent social order must have a prior answer to this question — a rule that assigns control of scarce resources before conflict erupts. That is what Private Property rights are: pre-emptive conflict resolution.

The alternative is not “no property rights.” It is: conflicts resolved by whoever can overpower whom. See: Jungle Law.

The NAP as the Resolution

The Non-Aggression Principle doesn’t eliminate conflicts — scarcity guarantees they will always arise. What it does is establish the ethical rule for resolving them: the person who has a prior legitimate claim to the resource (through homesteading, production, or trade) has the right to direct its use. Anyone who acts against that claim is the aggressor.

Conflict → Property Rule → NAP → Argumentation Ethics closes the loop: you cannot coherently argue against this framework without presupposing the very property rights you’re disputing.

October 28, 2023