That second formulation of the LEL, by the way, comes awfully close to Crowley’s dictum from Liber AL: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Somewhere, Bob Wilson did one of the great and sometimes confusing things he did with words, focusing on this statement (and its complement, “Love is the law, love under will”), and coming up with a sort of libertarianism as a result, and with “so that you not trespass against another” emerging almost as a reflective corollary. Good stuff, the location of which I’ve entirely forgotten!

Again I think the meaning of liberty is implied in the LEL – to do all that one wills compatible with other peoples’ ability to do the same.

I don’t see why the LEL cannot be extended to the workplace so long as it is done with proportionality and mutuality in mind. Owning a company doesn’t mean you own the people in it. Ideally, agreements to work together would be done on a more equal basis than the employer-worker hierarchy. Providing sufficient consensual alternatives on a freed market (the demand for which would be created by a consistent libertarian consciousness) would certainly make this a less authoritarian relationship, as the worker would then be less dependent on anyone who fancied himself a boss. I don’t know how much I’d use the term “rights” in discussing workplace freedom though.

Incidentally the main reason I don’t call myself a voluntaryist is for similar reasons of semantics. Anarchy means without rulers, but defining what is truly voluntary requires greater explanation. I like to use the word “consensual” because it seems easier to see a difference between consent and acquiescence than between voluntary and involuntary.

Of course, people who describe themselves as voluntaryists or zero-aggression libertarians are usually good folks. I’m not trying to polarize here, but trying to constructively criticize and make my own thoughts more coherent.

I think it could be said that ZAP is simply a corollary of LEL. I lean towards believing the LEL is the fundamental first principle of human interaction and that ZAP is a secondary but equally true principle.

Regarding pushing someone out of the way of an automobile in example 1: I would say the LEL normally forbids pushing people just as ZAP does, but both principles would allow this in order to save a life. The reason is basically that the person whose life is saved would not object. If they consent (even afterwards), then their liberty hasn’t been infringed/they haven’t been aggressed against. This example seems to make the principles equally valid.

Using the example of a person who is threatening violence against others but hasn’t followed through gets closer to a distinction, the way I see it. Threatening violence against innocent, non-aggressing people would not, I imagine, be allowed by LEL but could be construed as permissible under ZAP. Then again, you could extend the definition of “aggression” to mean “initiation of force or the threat thereof” and the terrorist is an aggressor against whom deadly force is justified.

Then there’s the issue of fraud. Fraud is not force or aggression or coercion. It is taking the property of others against their will, though. LEL takes care of this easily: fraud consists of an imbalance between one person’s ability to take and the other person’s protection of their property; any action that involves one person having the right to do something that another does not have is prohibited; anything done to someone’s person or property against his will is immoral, since it would imply asymmetrical rights. Again, you could extend the ZAP to be the “zero aggression or fraud principle,” but, as was the main point of your post, these amendments just highlight the shortcomings of ZAP as a first principle.

(Incidentally, the above considerations are the main reason I don’t shun voluntarism and why I think voluntariness goes hand-in-hand with moral egalitarianism or LEL. A lot of people strongly oppose voluntarism as the basis of morality, but the way I think of it, it means the same thing as the LEL.)

Some of the same problems inherent in ZAP (surrounding what “aggression” even means) also necessarily present themselves in discussions of LEL. Specifically, what does “liberty” even mean? Doing what you want, up to but not infringing upon the equal rights of others? That’s about how I would define it, as mentioned in my sphere of liberty explanation. But this gets awfully muddled when you talk about workplace conditions or voluntary associations. It gets too far into matters of preference and deviates from right vs. wrong. No, it isn’t wrong for people to unionize, talk back to their boss, or organize themselves into a new competing company, but it also isn’t wrong for them to be fired when they strike, make unreasonable demands, or slander the company in the press.

Consider two people working some blue-collar job like construction or manufacturing. They have the same boss, the same pay, the same hours, the same position, and the same conditions. Are Person A’s rights being violated but Person B’s aren’t, if Person A hates the job and the conditions but Person B doesn’t? Everything else would be equal and rightful, i.e., they could quit if they wanted, unionize, encourage all of the employees to come work for their new competing company, demand air conditioning, etc. To be a right, or to be a principle, it must apply equally to everyone at all times and all places. But someone’s tolerable conditions are someone else’s intolerable conditions.

I think encouraging unionization and more equity in the workplace is an extension of the libertarian mentality (part of “thick libertarianism”), but a lot of conditions and privileges are not rights. The ability to freely negotiate your job and pay: a right. Having air conditioning or a boss who treats you as an equal: a privilege.

You probably considered a lot of this already. I wasn’t planning on writing this much; I should write a post of my own.