One’s reputation is the product of a specific attempt to produce a set of behaviours that signal to the world that you are an individual of a specific type. That ‘output’ has unambiguous value, including but not limited to its role as an input into other production processes. For example, a lawyer whose reputation is smeared may suffer a decline in their business, since reputation is an important contributor to their competitive advantage and therefore to their production process.

Damage to reputation has tangible effects on the reputee’s ability to trade and is thus either a tort or a violation in equity (arguably one does not have a ‘right’ to a reputation, but iff reputation is property one has a right not to have it damaged: whether or not it’s property, one has the right to be compensated for ‘downstream’ damages that flow from the reputational damage).

There are folk who cling to a rather naive idea of what constitutes ‘property’ – it pretty much limits it to tangible things. That is a very difficult idea to sustain. A flow of services may have absolutely no physical manifestation whatsoever except in the person of the producer (for example, verbal legal advice – rare these days, but palpably it’s “a thing”) and which has value which depends critically on the reputation of the producer.

I’m not arguing here for nonsense like Intellectual Property law (which is a shibboleth from top to bottom), which serves only to prevent goods from being reproduced at marginal cost (i.e., near-zero for anything that can be expressed in bits). You can’t reproduce a 10-year reputation at zero cost, I assure you – and damage to reputation changes the marginal revenue of the producer.

I admit that I still vacillate on this issue: Rothbard’s framework (that reputation ‘belongs’ to those who think about the individual concerned) is increasingly unappetising, given that the ‘labour’ and other actions of reputee plays an unambiguous part in the formation of the reputation.

I am all for untrammelled free speech (in that I don’t think there ought to be laws against any type of speech whatsoever). However I also support asymmetric private retalilatory violence in response to damage to reputation (asymmetric in that it should rightly include a punitive element as a disincentive to recidivism).

And if one’s personal sense of honour is outraged, and one’s sense of honour is the result of a lifetime of specific behaviour (which is not costless), then as the reputee one has the right to seek redress. This is why private duels existed independently of, and entirely outside of, religious and political/State legal institutions: individuals value reputation. And as we all know, value is (almost) entirely subjective: it is not to be arrived at by green eyeshades poring over double-entry books of monetary costs incurred.

I can never see how someone can start out with anarchism and end up with getting rid of all government. What are you going to do with people who want government? Take them out back and put a bullet in their heads?

No, the logical conclusion is that anarchists should work to free themselves from government control, and otherwise let non-anarchists do as they please – including having government. Fortunately this (while difficult) is a heck of a lot easier than converting everyone on earth to be anarcho-capitalists. All we need ask for is tolerance. See: What Is to Be Done With the Statists?

Also, depending on the notion of “rights” is pretty shaky, since rights are nothing but an infinitely maleable meme we carry around in our heads. See: Life Without Rights

I’ve also written about property, without depending on such slender reeds as “rights”:Private Property vs. ‘Your Stuff’