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jrodefeld posted:No, property is not protected by initiating violence. It is protected by the use of defensive violence if necessary. If you are trespassing on my land and you don't pose any direct threat to me or my property (i.e. you are not attempting to steal anything) I can't just shoot you. I can't come up to you and start punching you in the face. I can ask you to leave. If you refuse to leave then I can have you physically removed by calling the police. This all looks rather evasive. In your OP you claimed we could only delegate rights to the police that we individually own, so bringing them in here is a red herring: you must think you have the right to physically remove someone from your land. That is initiating violence, unless some previous act of violence has been committed; and walking on your land is not violent, according to the normal use of the word. Of course you can redefine 'violent', so that it means 'infringe your property rights'; but then you can't justify property rights by appealing to the prohibition on violence, because that would be circular.
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Aug 9, 2014 13:54
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jrodefeld posted:I am going to assume that you all agree with me that people should be free from aggression against their physical bodies. That people own themselves and that others cannot murder, rape or kidnap another. If you concede this point, and you also concede that desired resources are scarce, then you logically must defend some sort of property rights system. The reason to support private property rights is that we want to reduce conflict in society. If everyone has a clear understanding of who has the final say over the use of a scarce resource, conflict is minimized. Furthermore, being secure in the things that you homestead, i.e. having the right to defend that property that you have acquired, means that society can become more prosperous and produce more and more which benefits all members of society. This is hopeless. Yes, it is good for everyone to have a clear understanding about who controls what. No, that doesn't imply anything about who should control what - let alone that all control over resources should belong to unelected people, upon whose land the rest of us have no right to tread. You have not even begun to justify private property rights here. quote:I cannot see any other rational principle by which a person can acquire property legitimately than the principle of original appropriation or homesteading. I do not think that that is a rational principle at all - it irrationally fetishizes 'firstness', as well as relying on terrible metaphors and vague definitions. If you and I are racing to grab a piece of unowned land, and just before you get there I manage to chuck some of my urine on it, so that a creation of mine has been 'mixed' with the soil - how on earth does that, rationally, make me a better person to decide what should happen to the land, and give me the right to order you off it? And how does allocating property via your homesteading principle reduce conflict? Of course I may explain clearly to everyone that the land is mine, because I have laboured to mix my pee with it; and the vast non-libertarian majority will still dispute my claim, because it is barking mad. So all your claim about reducing conflict boils down to is this: that if we all agreed about how property should be allocated, we would all agree. As for another 'rational' principle - wouldn't it be better to try to get the maximum possible benefit from our resources? This would probably allow total private control of some resources - staplers, for example - and forbid it for others (land, uranium mines, etc). We could even have some clearly understood system of elections to determine who has the final say over a resource!
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Aug 11, 2014 12:40
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Lumpen posted:When you say "our" resources, how do you define "us"? Only individuals are capable of acting. When you say "maximum possible benefit", how does one properly determine what is beneficial, and to whom, and when? By 'us' I mean human beings, as many as possible - though for a variety of reasons, some good some terrible, we tend to make resource decisions in smaller groups. And groups of people can act perfectly well. Collective acts consist of several individual acts. If every time someone says 'we got in the car' you reply 'collective action is an illusion, only individuals can get into cars', you have a serious comprehension problem. Deciding what is beneficial involves investigating the likely results of the possible courses of action and judging them by your personal standards of what is good. Of course people will disagree about such things. This is one reason why it is bad for some unelected people, called 'owners', to control resources absolutely. In democracy we all have a say, and our self-interest actually helps us make a decision that benefits at least the majority. The autocratic right of homesteaders is no more reasonable than the autocratic right of kings was, and it should go the same way. quote:My understanding is that the free market, with individual ownership of property and voluntary exchange, is the system that best facilitates the allocation of resources and factors of production to satisfy the various wants of individuals, respecting their individual choices. It is very easy to see that this is not true, by considering the case of the person with no money, whose wishes are completely ignored.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:53
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