One of the most difficult crossroads presented to libertarian Voluntaryists is the intersection of property rights violations and assignment of responsibility.

This difficulty stems from a common misconception that all property violation responsibility must be assigned to the de facto (in act) violator.

However, this is an improper absolutism that prevents justice where bad actors use property rights to shield themselves.

A simple example:
Imagine a serial killer kidnaps 3 children and hides them in an unoccupied home. The homeowner cannot be contacted because he went on vacation and turned off his devices so he could finally relax from work. An affected parent tracks down the serial killer and wants to break into the home to rescue his child. To do so, he must inherently violate the sovereign property rights of the homeowner as he lacks consent to break in.

Here is where libertarian philosophy either becomes completely impotent or powerfully buttressed.

Either you believe that the parent should be able to break in and rescue his child, or you think there is an absolute bar on acting because it is a property rights violation.

If one thinks there is an absolute bar, one has now rationalized every murderer, kidnapper, and terrorist leveraging property rights to insulate themselves from justice.

If one says that the parent can break in and rescue the child, one would have to deal with a question of consequentialism.

Does stopping a greater evil enable one to violate property rights?

Are the CONSEQUENCES greater than property rights respect?

If you find yourself troubled here, that is good.

You should worry about a pure consequentialist or utilitarian ideology that excuses property rights violations in the name of the “greater good.”

However, this is NOT the only philosophical angle by which to deal with the situation.

The situation can properly be dealt with by recognizing that there IS a property rights violation, but NOT assigning the responsibility to the rescuer.

The rescuer is attempting to save his child. The person who created the property rights violation context is the kidnapper, who took the child among 2 others. The violation responsibility should be held against the kidnapper, not the parent.

THIS is how you avoid rationalizing property rights violations while ALSO not insulating bad actors under the superficial application of property rights.

Without this ability to assign fault to the most morally responsible party, libertarians are inherently paralyzed, forced to sit on their hands as those who do not care about property rights use violations to their advantage and shield themselves from justice.

If one fails to apply this critical theory, libertarian values become useless as they are nothing more than impotent wishes with no teeth by which to bring bad actors to justice who otherwise are willing to leverage the bodies and properties of others to shield themselves from capture.

There are further nuances.

For example, would a father have the right to burn the whole house down just to rescue his child?

Could the father shoot wildly into the home at the kidnapper, risking the lives of the other kidnapped children?

These questions should always come down to a comparison of the means implemented against the needed goals to achieve the restitution.

Where the actions taken cause far greater harms the threat presented, then the person who is attempting rescue may be held liable in part.

This calculation will inherently have some subjectivity to it, and justice systems will be needed to meter these nuances.

In another example, a person who steals a ladder in order to save someone from a burning building may be held responsible for theft to the extent there is no third party responsible for the fire’s creation.

While the abstract act of rescue is noble, the theft is still a property rights violation, and there may be damages if the ladder is destroyed or lost in the process.

These issues should not be a major cause for concern.

Market-based incentives based on these premises will incentivize insurance and voluntary support to cover emergency situations.

It is just a matter of balancing appropriate assignment while not rationalizing property rights violations in the process.