Right. I am a member of a different forum, and I came across this someone wrote. I am just wondering what people here think in response to this. I think it is rather interesting ...
Society enables an inidvidual to make a profit beyond what would be possible with his own individual labour. Especially so in a system which employs the unequal distribution of land. If he is allowed to do so without rent or charge, he does so at the expense of the greater part of society. Or are you basicallly saying that land belongs to strongest, land belongs to those who would use violence and coercion to keep others off their claimed property. In which case you put the rights of a few above the rights of the many. Five indivdiuals have created their little society, if one of them was to own the most productive land in said society. He would have an immediate and devestating advantage over the others, in that his right to life is protected and enforced through both his labour and the land which to labour upon. But the other four only have one of these things. So they are at the mercy of the one who owns the land. He is in a position to bribe them, if they do not accept the terms he lays down, in way of working hours, conditions and pay. Then they will die. The choice in itself of work or die, in a society of supposedly equal inidviduals, is in fact a violation of the natural right. In the same way that other forms of governemnt exist as violations, be it an absolutist police state where the choice is work or die, or a Monarchy where the choice is work or die. They all offer the same choice, in every one there is an opressed majority and a well off, controlling minority. It is exactly that distribution of land which is unfair and which creates inequality. So i ask you again, if you supposedly stand for liberty, freedom and the inidvidual rights of every person. Then how can you support the current system of land distribution which has it's origins firmly in coercion and force and was inherited by each siccessive generation and enforced by the well of off? You see what i am getting at? And you see why i abandoned the beliefs of the libertarian mainstream? Most are apologists for the illiberal and coercive forces they preach so vehemntly against. If a truly free society is to come about, then this unqeual system of land distribution must be adressed. That does not mean eveybody must have their land stripped from them. But it does mean that they must contribute to that part of society, the majority, which finds itself at such a collosal disadvantage, and is practically coerced by the current situation into the will of those who own the majority of the land. Which happens to be the minority.
" Then how can you support the current system of land distribution which has it's origins firmly in coercion and force "
Not sure what the rest of it is about.It's very vague but this sentence rings true to some degree.I believe it is true that a majority of the current distribution of wealth and land comes from coercion involving the state.
I don't really want to comment or read anything here.I have near zero in common with many of you.I may return periodically when there's something you need to know.
Near Mutualist/Libertarian Socialist.
Stephan Kinsella does a good job of talking about homesteading as having the best case for ownership via occupation and trade of titles.
Also the other 4 may want to gather their wealth together and trade for a piece of the productive land. There would be a point where the landowner would value the piece of land less than what they would trade in exchange. If you told him that, he would probably just place the limit that this productive land owner would NEVER trade his land, and his children would never trade the land, and his children's children, so the other 4 are DOOMED no matter what, which is just an unrealistic assumption.
Also, seems like this guy has the typical "there is only this much economic pie to go around, one person is worse off and one person is better off in the trade," and the typical belief that profits are evil.
First paragraph is that sneaky nonsense about an anthropomorphic society, followed by nonsense about negative externalities of owning land, followed by more nonsense about rights.
Second paragraph is a series of non-sequiturs; I don't think the content of a single sentence follows from the sentence previous to it.
The third paragraph is confusing, because I'm not sure if he's referring to the hypothetical scenario in paragraph 2 or actual history. If it's the latter, some kind of evidence would be nice. But even if we are to admit that all original claims to land were made in blood, what is to be done? His solution is completely nonsensical: how does taking from the currently rich address the issue? How much qualifies as proper restitution? How do you determine who is unworthy of his wealth, or how much of his wealth he deserves and how much was exploited from "society"? Though Bill Gates's success may be due in part to government intervention, he did not steal anyone's land. He accumulated his wealth by increasing the happiness of the majority. As I see it, the only sensible solution to this supposed problem is allowing the market process to work unhampered, so that land and other factors of production are directed toward their most productive uses. If a man is rich because of favors from the state, he will eventually find himself impoverished, his wealth released to those who know how to better serve the interests of the masses.
I guess he assumes that the quality of "land" is the only factor governing the creation of wealth. Even in pre-industrial societies this was not true. And in modern society it is completly untrue. In a free society individuals are free to engage in activities that enhance themselves and increase their well being. So unless this society is stuck in a time warp or under the hand of coersive force, the 4 relatively poor humans would work to do a combination of A. Develop their land, B. Develop other products and services to sell to the rich dude, C. Chastise the rich dude and work amongst themselves to do versions of A and B.
But you can see when government is involved as in the USA cases of education, mail delivery, security services, etc people get frozen in time and have no ability to change their circumstances. Without govenrment people will innovate peacefully and improve their own lives.
I'm sure you guys (Mike and Bogart) would be fine if I stole a very valuable object from you, but you didn't find out about it till after I died, and now my children are in possession?
You guys miss the point when you bring up that wealth is not a zero sum game. One person has an inherent advantage that was given to him through coercion. He can live a life of luxury now by choice. The other four have no such choice. They can only hope to live in luxury later because of said systematic theft from their ancestors.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Nope we have the point. Stolen property does not become unstolen once the theif dies, although proof that it was stolen in the first place is harder to prove as time passes. So if property(Any property) can have its ownership traced to theft then the current owners of the property should have to surrender that property to the rightful owners. Then the owners of the property would have to take it up with the person from whom they purchased it to get money they paid back. But who adjudicates this dispute? Well if you say government does, how can this organization do so fairly, rationally, objectively, etc when it is government that gave the theif/theives the ability to get the loot or simply gave them the loot.
As for advantages, wealth, information, ability, desire for that wealth, etc are never the same in two individuals much less among lots of individuals so you will always have people with advantages over others. It is government that hurts the disadvantaged through price and other market distortions, give aways, redistribution, etc.
Stolen property does not become unstolen once the theif dies, although proof that it was stolen in the first place is harder to prove as time passes. So if property(Any property) can have its ownership traced to theft then the current owners of the property should have to surrender that property to the rightful owners. Then the owners of the property would have to take it up with the person from whom they purchased it to get money they paid back.
I agree there, but it seemed as if your first post was implying that people should just suck it up and create their own new wealth.
As for advantages, wealth, information, ability, desire for that wealth, etc are never the same in two individuals much less among lots of individuals so you will always have people with advantages over others
I'm only speaking of inherent advantages gained through the inheritance of systematically stolen property
Why can't people just suck it up and create their own wealth? Other people do it all the time. Some of us face the theft of our property by true theives but most of us face by far the largest amount of theft at the hands of the various levels of govenrment. But, despite the rampant theft by the government, most of us manage to create marvelous things. Do you just want people to sit around and wait for Obama or Arnold or the mayor or the SBA or some judge to correct the world? Not one of these people can make the world better because they can not create peace through force. They only make it worse as they pit people against oneanother. How about I wait for the USA Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates?
Why can't people just suck it up and create their own wealth? Other people do it all the time.
Don't get me wrong, they should. But it still doesn't address the historical injustices that created the problem.
And I don't think people sitting around waiting for some great leader to fix their life will ever help them. Democracy = tyranny with an apathetic populace (tho many of you would argue tyranny always, if so, just substitute society for democracy).
This whole thing seems to rest on a premise that most wealth is *found* rather than created, or explicitly, that "land" is the front and center resource, the determiner of all subsequent wealth creation. David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf argumes that "land", that is, that which was originally gathered by homesteading, is around 1/20th of all wealth. Thus, even if it was the case that somehow someone got more land than others, that would only give them a very slight advantage. Is that 100% "fair"? Maybe not. But it's probably more fair than the genetic differences that people have, e.g. some are smart and some are not, some are talented, pretty, etc.
And the argument seems to fall down in several other places as well. The example of 5 people subdividing *and being able to use* a fixed portion of land isn't a relevant comparison in at least two ways: when this world had only 5 people, land was effectively infinite; and even if someone had claimed enormous tracts of land, it was in name only because they could neither use nor prevent others from using that land. It was purely in theory that they would have "owned" that land.
While picking on analogies beyond what the author intended is pointless, here I think there is good reason to take the guys' use of this analogy more literally: his explicit thesis is that crimes were committed a long, long time ago by the first people who claimed land, and that injustices from those early crimes exist today and that *that* is what needs to be rectified. But in fact, economic logic shows that there were no first movers who created subsequent inequities. In the early days when these crimes were supposedly being committed, the world was very sparsely populated so that there was as much land as anyone could use; and the truth is, they couldn't use much, they simply didn't have the technology to do so.
I know there are many detailed philosophical discussions about what "property" is, but I've gravitated towards a purely contractual derivation of social concepts like property in which such concepts and institutions exist *only* as explicit contracts (other approaches always seem to require agreement on an assumption or definition that time has shown will *never* be universally or even close to universally accepted). It makes subjects like this pretty easy to reason about. In this case, "property" itself is a contract: it's a contract between the "owner" and "everyone else" that everyone else agree to allow the owner to determine the use of the property (and a couple of other things like the contractual clause allowing them to sell their role in that contract to someone else). Why would any person sign such a contract about an item that they are not the owner of? In return for having similar contracts signed for their "property". Economically, each of the signees of these multiple contracts sees it in their self-interest: they agree to not try to control something A in return for knowing they will get sole control of something else B; this works if they cared more about controlling B than not controlling A.
When you define it this way, you get to get away from esoteric definitions of property and defining homesteading etc, and think about purely in self-interest terms. For example: why would the other 4 agree to a contract granting the 5th guy sole access to a huge amount of land, when they get a much smaller amount? How is that in their self-interest? It isn't, so they simply wouldn't agree to it.
This argument puts the cart before the horse: it *assumes* the common contractual form of property and then goes back to the origin to argue that if, at the origin, they had this definition of property, that injustices would have resulted. In fact, though, you have to derive contracts like "property" contracts in a way that the concept is a win/win for all involved, or they simply wouldn't have participated in such a contract. Person 5 may say "I get America!" and claim that by his rules, he said it first so he gets it, but that only works if the others agreed to those rules contractually ahead of time. They didn't. If the 5th person claims to own most of the land, it simply isn't a contracxt that is binding on the other 4, and thus there is no contract by which to even define "ownership". The only was the other 4 would sign a contract giving him ownership of a lot of land *is if he made it worth their while*. He would have to give them something valuable enough that for them, what they get is more valuable than the claims to the land that they are agreeing to give up control for.
At that point, if person 5 *paid* for all that land (by giving the other 4 something for which they were willing to trade signing the contract of ownership for all that land to the 5th guy), then it wasn't a crime nor an injustice. It may not have been a good trade after the fact by the other 4 - though who can say, since you'd have to evaluate that trade as a function of time (meaning it's not even a metric space so you can't even refer to concepts like "best" or "most", at least not in a strong way) - but that's not the same as a crime or an injustice, and that's what your debating partner is claiming.
It seems a silly thing to get all hung up about.
This whole thing seems to rest on a premise that most wealth is *found* rather than created, or explicitly, that "land" is the front and center resource, the determiner of all subsequent wealth creation. David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf argumes that "land", that is, that which was originally gathered by homesteading, is around 1/20th of all wealth.
I disagree not with this assesment. But land is really the basis of most wealth, if not the wealth its self. Where do you put factories, stores, and other workplaces, if not on land?
it was in name only because they could neither use nor prevent others from using that land. It was purely in theory that they would have "owned" that land
It was assuming a fixed amount of land, a hypothetical surely. It certainly never existed in real life.
But, now they can use and prevent others from using the real land. I like the homesteading idea mentioned above. No more banks holding on to dilapadated properties for 5 years that have mold from basement to 2nd floor (I work with these properties, it's disgusting). If you don't use it in x time, it is open for homesteading.
In the early days when these crimes were supposedly being committed, the world was very sparsely populated so that there was as much land as anyone could use; and the truth is, they couldn't use much, they simply didn't have the technology to do so.
What, you think around 4000 bce one tribe spread out and created all the civilizations? Humans have been spread across the globe for 100k+ years now, it was only about 6000 give or take that property (of land/capital) developed. Even more than that, native's in america most certainly literally had land stolen from them.
For example: why would the other 4 agree to a contract granting the 5th guy sole access to a huge amount of land, when they get a much smaller amount?
He has a gun Or he says it was his dad's, or something.
At that point, if person 5 *paid* for all that land (by giving the other 4 something for which they were willing to trade signing the contract of ownership for all that land to the 5th guy), then it wasn't a crime nor an injustice
Are you familiar with how we "bought" land from native americans (some if it we did claim to have bought).
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:I disagree not with this assesment. But land is really the basis of most wealth, if not the wealth its self. Where do you put factories, stores, and other workplaces, if not on land?
Water? Space? The internet?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:No more banks holding on to dilapadated properties for 5 years that have mold from basement to 2nd floor (I work with these properties, it's disgusting). If you don't use it in x time, it is open for homesteading.
Name three ways this would create chaos and destroy property rights.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:What, you think around 4000 bce one tribe spread out and created all the civilizations? Humans have been spread across the globe for 100k+ years now, it was only about 6000 give or take that property (of land/capital) developed.
The problem with participating in libertarian arguments without understanding economics (human action) is that any premise, no matter how fallacious, can persist.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Even more than that, native's in america most certainly literally had land stolen from them.
Yes they did. Due to a lack of respect for property rights.
But the point is that since most wealth is created, not found, that which *was* found will quickly get traded for that which was created. After a period of trading, most of the "land" (that which was found) will have been distributed across the population since most of the population had plenty of wealth to trade for the land.
Put another way: yes, land is an often a necessary condition for economic production, but it doesn't follow that its *value* has to be higher than that of the things it produces. Most wealth is created; it's is easy to trade it for land which while necessary is not particularly valuable compared to all that has been created.
What, you think around 4000 bce one tribe spread out and created all the civilizations? Humans have been spread across the globe for 100k+ years now, it was only about 6000 give or take that property (of land/capital) developed.
I think that's my point, right? There was no *need* of "property* before that - it didn't offer a mutual advantage - because there was plenty to go around. the difficulty wasn't in getting "land", it was in doing something *with* it.
Even more than that, native's in america most certainly literally had land stolen from them.
I am certainly no fan of genocide nor a defender of the acitons you are referring to, but I don't see how the land was "stolen": ownership is a contract binding only on those who have agreed to it. Since the pilgrims etc had never even *met* the Indians, how could they have agreed to a contract with them? Remember, I don't believe in some mystical "right" handed down either by a government, a god, or "laws of nature" that were just sitting out there waiting to be found, so I don't believe that one mystically gets a right to land just because you were there first. The sense in which that kind of a "homesteading" rule makes sense is purely pragmatic: most of the time, the person who gets to land first and starts using it cares about that particular land more than anyone else and will defend it more than anyone else, so that he will A) be more willing to trade away his "claims" on other land in return for others trading away their claims to his land, and B) is willing to fight to protect his land enough to drive up the cost to anyone else too far to be worthwhile not signing the ownership contract. That rule of thumb will work in relatively "equal" situations, e.g. you've built a house in spot A and I'm in spot B and they are pretty close, it may very well be mutally advantageous for us to agree to a contract in which we agree not to agress against each other's "property". If you aren't likely to use spot C because it's far away, or it's not very useful, etc., and I'm not either, then there's no reason for us to sign a contract about spot C, and it would remain not "property".
But that pragmatic self-interest calculation won't apply in all situations. If you've sailed for a long, long time and have finally landed on land and it would be incredibly expensive - probably a matter of life and death - to leave that land, and someone runs up to you and says "wait, you can't land her or use anything here because, well, because I claimed this as my property a long time ago", it is simply not in your self-interest to sign that contract. You value access to the land you are on more than you value signing a contract in which you agree to not have *any* claim on that land in return for the natives agreeing not to have any claim on your "property" *back in England*.
Put another way: you may consider the early colonist's actions in "taking" land as an act of aggression. But any force taken against someone that they did not contractually agree to first is aggression, so any effort that the natives would have made to forcefully defend "their property" would have been a *unliteral* action that was not contractually agreed to, and thus would have represented an act of aggression. Property is a *contract*; the settlers had signed no contract. They had no more obligation to honor some unilateral "contract" of property asserted by the natives than I would have to pay you $100 if you came and mowed my lawn on your own initiative and then knocked on my door and told me I owed you $100 since that is your going rate.
Property doesn't exist until there is a contract for it, and then it only exists between the signatories. Until then, the disposition of things that are "found" is one of compromise for mutual gain. If something is just laying around but it isn't scarce - either because no one wants or can use it, or because it is replenishing - then there is no need for a property contract. Once found things are scarce in the sense that more people want to use it than physically can, a simple series of trades is possible in which each trade is win/win (I want to say nonzero-sum but that's not actually strong enough; is there a cool term for "nonzero sum in which both sides experience gain?" besides "win/win" or "mutually beneficial?) and that has the result of distributing the use of that found item relatively efficiently. But it's not *property* that is being *traded*, since property doesn't actually exist until the contract is signed., The contract *defines* the property; it's the trading of "signing contracts" that is occurring.
Or he says it was his dad's, or something.
I'm not making my point very clear: *he* may say that, but why would the others agree to that? It's not in their self-interest to do so. They will simpy refuse to sign the contract that defines that "property", and by failing to do so, the supposed "uneven/unjust" distribution of property that happened way back when would have never happened.
Are you familiar with how we "bought" land from native americans (some if it we did claim to have bought)
Again, you are assuming something that isn't so: that there was a contract between the people you are talking about and the native americans such that they former had agreed ahead of time that they only way they could get access to any of the found wealth - e.g. land - on the continent was to pay the native americans for it. They had signed no such contract. You are confusing a rule of thumb that works in a lot of situations - "the one who is on a piece of land first gets it" - with some mystical Platonic rule that was just floating up in the ether waiting to be found. There are no such things. There are only economic calculations and the institutions - in the form of agreements, that is, contracts - that people are willing to sign because they see them in their self-interest. The modern conception of property that almost everyone here at Mises would agree is a good one is not, in my derivation, good because it is philosophically pure, or because it was discovered in the ether, or because it is a "natural" something (right, most commonly); it is a good one simply because the vast majority of the time, it increases average wealth because it represents a nonzero-sum trade and signatories, given the way that the world currently is. If the world were very different, say, much less populated, that definition might not be a particularly good one. When people first came here form Europe, it was not a particularly good one; if you don't choose to sign a contract, you cannot be held responsible for it.
And as a very minor thing: who is "we"? I certainly didn't do any of those things you are talking about. I'm not guilty of anything. It's just a pet peeve: when someone places me in a "we" of their choosing unilaterally. No one is ever a part of a "we" that they don't explicitly agree to be part of, like when someone says I owe them something because I am part of their "society" by virtue of society being "we". Offer me the terms of your "society" we and then I'll make a decision about whether I want to be a part of it.
"most." Not yet. Mostly relies on IP rights (not the servers tho, those are on land).
Name three ways this would create chaos and destroy property rights
Against my own hypothesis? Strange, but ok. 1) Bank says no, calls in state thugs 2) Competing parties for the same house refuse to concede, and refuse to submit to a court 3) one guy gobbles up all the houses in an area, charges exorbinant rents, calls in state thugs to enforce it
Your turn?
The problem with participating in libertarian arguments without understanding economics (human action) is that any premise, no matter how fallacious, can exist.
Substantive rebuttal. You can prove that pre-neolithic man had a concept of the respect for ownership of land? Honestly, I like arguing with you LS, but your appeals to ignorance are getting tiring.
I'll agree with you there
I don't disagree with this in any way. I think you're mistaking my point tho. It is that the owner of this land can both do the above AND charge rent on his land. He is given an inherent and illegitimate advantage based on the inheritance of stolen property.
I am certainly no fan of genocide nor a defender of the acitons you are referring to, but I don't see how the land was "stolen": ownership is a contract binding only on those who have agreed to it. Since the pilgrims etc had never even *met* the Indians, how could they have agreed to a contract with them? Remember, I don't believe in some mystical "right" handed down either by a government, a god, or "laws of nature" that were just sitting out ...
Sounds like if I have the bigger guns, I have no self-interest in recognizing a contract on your property. You own a large farm and I start squatting on it, you come to throw me off, I shoot you. I never met you, nor signed a contract respecting your right to the property. Am I in the right?
I'm not making my point very clear: *he* may say that, but why would the others agree to that? It's not in their self-interest to do so.
He has an AR-15, they don't.
Again, you are assuming something that isn't so: that there was a contract between the people you are talking about and the native americans such that they former had agreed ahead of time that they only way they could get access to any of the found wealth - e.g. land - on the continent was to pay the native americans for it. They had signed no such contract. You are confusing a rule of thumb that works in a lot of situations - "the one who is on a piece of land first gets it" - with some mystical Platonic rule that was just floating up in the ether waiting to be found. There are no such things. There are only economic calculations and the institutions
So, once again I:
Never met you, have a big gun, feel like I can use your property better than you... I have no self-interest in signing any contract with you. I do have a self-interest in signing a contract on you.
Ya haha. I feel the same way. My apologies, cultural habit.
I just don't see any value in the question you are asking. "In the right?" What the heck does that mean? If you're not in the right but you have a big gun and I don't, am I going to stop you by whipping out my copy of Atlas Shrugged and showing you how you are wrong? You seem to be operating in a frame of reference in which the object is to figure out all of what is "right" in a way that every single person will agree with you, and then we will have structured society as well as it can. I reject that as a possibility: there are too many assumptions involved in any derivation of "right" for there *ever* to be anything remotely resembling unanimity. My frame of reference is pragmatic and economic; the only "common ground" you can ever hope for between two parties is that contained in a contract they voluntarily signed. One's derivation, then, of the structural foundations reduces to figuring out which contracts would be signed by whom in what circumstances.
So the answer to your question is: yes, if there is a sufficient imbalance of "might", there is a very good chance that the mighty will not have very symmetric relationships with the weak. People do not have very symmetric relationships with cows or ants, for instance - we eat the former and murder the latter by the thousands - not because we have souls and they don't or some other mystical reason, but simply because we are much mightier than they are. While it would be in a cow's self-interest to sign a contract with humans honoring the libertarian non-aggression agreement, it is not in *our* self-interest to do so, and so we haven't (noting that yes, I *am* putting you in the "we" of "human beings", while recognizing that you don't *have* to be part of that... you can be a vegan, for instance ;-).
Fortunately, in the human sphere, might is relatively well distributed, and the situation you mention doesn't happen all that often. Most of the time, my interactions are with, say, my neighbor, and not once have I had to go out there with either a gun or a copy of Atlas Shrugged to deal with a neighbor who is squatting on my property. Why? Because he gets more out of my agreement to recognize *his* property than he would out of trying to appropriate mine. It's not because it's "right", it's a simple economic calculation that what I have taken to be "mine" is something I will fight for so hard that it simply won't be worth it to him to try to take it. The problem is exacerbated greatly when he realizes that many other people who have been respecting his property will now be less inclined to do so, knowing that the contract they have with him is not a very secure contract since he violates contracts.
And in either case: if might is really unevenly distributed and the powerful want to take from the weak, no societal institution is going to change that. Societal institutions are about compromise and trade; they simply have nothing to offer a battle of pure might.
Well now you're just changing the original scenario to a completely different one. The original scenario implied 5 relatively equal people, one of whom somehow yells loudest and first that he gets all of the land, and for some reason the others acquiesce. That makes no sense. But to change the conditions so that one has all of the might then has no bearing on what actually happened since, you know, there were no AR-15s 6000 years ago.
If you take the n (n-1)/2 pairs of people in this world (where n is 6 or 7 billion), the vast, vast majority of them will *not* have the asymmetry that you posit here. In *those* pairwise relationships, it is easy to see that it is in their mutal self-interest to not agress against each other, and to recognize some reasonable extent of the other's "property" in exchange for having theirs recognized. Even if some of those pairwise relationships are so unequal that one of the signatories would prefer to flex their might over the other rather than sign (or honor) a contract mutually recognizing each other's property, that would be no reason to argue that all of the other pairwise contracts should be thrown out. At worse, we'd have civil society amongst those who are civil, which we do not have today since we agress against each other daily via the intermediate of government. But clearly, over time additional agreements would be reached by many of those pairwise people that would ratchet up the cost of aggression for people that choose to be aggressive so that the incidence of such aggression would go down (we could pool our money and buy our own guns, and/or we could pool our information and refrain trading with aggressors, etc). As long as the distribution of might is such that the vast majority of people who do respect property have more collective might than the minority that don't, the majority should be able to defend themselves. And if they can't, if some superhuman came along who was to normal people what people are to ants: we're fucked. But we're fucked no matter what in that case. Our running up to him and telling him to respect our property rights isn't going to constrain him any more than ants showing you the deed for your kitchen counter is going to sway you from doing what it takes to get them out of your kitchen. And even if that happened, it wouldn't follow that the rest of us should abandon our mutually agreed upon property contracts just because we can't deal with the superhuman in that way. They are still beneficial.
But it really hammers home that property is bilateral, not a "universal property". The fact that someone in Outer Mongolia has something they and the people around them consider "property" doesn't obligate me to respect their definition of property. The fact is, I just don't *care*. Property contracts only need to exist between those that would like to have that property. I don't want land in Outer Mongolia, because I want to live here, and it would not be in my self-interest to try to fight the person that currently has that land for it, the cost would be way more than the value I'd gain. If there are only two people in outer Mongolia, they may contract with each other on how to divide use of the land between the two of them, but that is in no way binding on anyone else. If anyone else want to make a claim on that land, then the two current residents are going to need to deal with them, either bilaterally or unilaterally; most of the time, unilateral is far more expensive.
It's actually kind of an interesting derivation of property. If you imagine only two people in some area, then it is likely that "property" will be ceded to one for essentially no cost: they each cede to the other their property in return for having their property ceded to them. Since part of the construction here is that they didn't really want the other one's property that much, they are hardly giving up something. They aren't giving up any wealth that they created, in particular. As more people begin to covet their property, they need to keep concocting bilateral contracts with them that get them to honor their "property". Each time they do, they are paying more. In essence, they are paying others to respect their "property": they are buying it, not from a central government that maintains record of property, not from a PDA, but from *each other*. and not surprisingly, the price goes up as the scarcity of land goes up. But never did some arbitrary rule about "homesteading" come into play. It is simply self-interest. If I claim that I own everything west of the rockies but I live on a 1-acre farm, chances are that no one is going to sign a contract saying they'll respect my claim to everything west of the rockies, but they may see it in their self-interest to recognize the 1-acres of my farm in exchange for my recognizing some 1-acre that I'm not using or don't care about as theirs. Sure, I could be obstinate and insist that you have to pay rent, but pragmatically, it will cost me far more to try to collect that rent than it is worth, particularly as more and more people come and want that land. After all, you don't have to sign anything with me, you could just squat. I've always wondered how homesteading is really "fair": why shouldn't everyone in the world be considered an equal "owner" of the original earth and thus get paid their portion that every piece that is sold? Why is it "fair" that whoever runs out into the woods first and puts some stakes down gets to "own" it? In my derivation, homesteading really doesn't work, except to the extent that you are using the land actively in a way that others will calculate makes that land so valuable to you that the cost of taking it from you just isn't worth it, you'll fight too hard.
I am no fan of force or violence: I'm a libertarian AnCap. But I don't think we can just *argue* people out of using it. We don't need to. If we look at things in terms of mutually beneficial contracts, we see that the vast majority of time, because might is not so concentrated tha a small minority can overpower the rest of the 7 billion, it's not in most people's self-interest to use force and thus they should be willing to sign such contracts.
The challenge I think is not to decide what is "right" by the perfect moral standard and teach that to everyone, it's simply to illustrate to people that a contract in which they honor each other's property (including themselves of course) in return for having theirs honored is in their self-interest, and to then clearly show why what we have now - government - violates that contract. That's still really hard, but I think less backbreakingly hard than trying to get everyone to ascribe to the same morality. My readings of the technical differences just between the libs etc here at Mises - where there are dozens of subtle differences even though we are all way more aligned with each other than the rest of the world - just hammers home the futility of trying to find a common intellectual ground on which the whole planet will agree and from there derive their social instituations. If a small group of like-minded people can still differ so much on fundamentals like "rights" and "property" (is IP "property"? etc), then getting the entire world onboard is impossible.
I short, and I think this is controversial: I don't advocate the NAP because it is "right". I can and regularly violate the NAP when dealing with beings to whom I am vastly more powerful. I advocate the NAP because it is *pragmatic*: most of the time, I have far more to gain by agreeing to the NAP when dealing with the people around me than I would by initiating force. Initiating force is super-expensive against people, because most people are relatively equal in power/might to me, they are really good at communicating to others when they have found someone who will try to overpower them, and there's a whole shitload of them out there.
It may sound kind of callous to couch the NAP in violent terms, but I think in the end that that's the only way you can really understand it. Trying to argue it as a moral code or a philosophical point doesn't convince anyone. I've done that for over 20 years and it never works. What is going to constrain the majority necessary to make the state/country/world "libertarian" (minarchy, anarchy, whatever, they are both so far from what we have now that either would be much better) isn't an attempt to show them their morality is inferior or a philosophical proof, but an appeal to their self-interest. The former, for example, would be sufficient not only to argue that people should be libertarians with respect to other people, but also with respect to fish, our pets, the microscopic creatures that live on our skin and that we wash down the drain daily, etc. The appeal to their self-interest clearly differentiates people from other beings: people need to be negotiated with because they are more less equal to you, and thus the cost of having a hostile relationship with them is almost always not worth the benefit. You don't need to negotiate the NAP with microbes because it's not in your self-interest to do so.
[Before anyone goes there: no, I'm not "justifying" being cruel to, say, mentally impaired people. I'm not deriving what one "should" do, which is the proper place for "morality": the process and standards by which you make your decisions. I'm deriving the social institutions that will pertain to our *interactions* with each other. We already treat mentally handicapped people unilaterally: to the extent that they can't make agreements, we are necessarily treating them unilaterally, but the fact is, we put them in homes or hospitals and otherwise initiate force on them. For the most part, those decisions are made with a lot of care and concern and I applaud that, but it's an illustration that the NAP is really about "relatively normal and equal people improving their relations with each other", it doesn't provide much value in other situations, and something else is needed for those.]
I just don't see any value in the question you are asking. "In the right?" What the heck does that mean? If you're not in the right but you have a big gun and I don't, am I going to stop you by whipping out my copy of Atlas Shrugged and showing you how you are wrong? You seem to be operating in a frame of reference in which the object is to figure out all of what is "right" in a way that every single person will agree with you, and then we will have structured society as well as it can
You seem to be of the school of intentional misrepresentation of one's position. You know perfectly well by right, I meant justified. I know you did, because you answered the question... wrong imo. But that's just my opinion. Your argument sounds llike a great justification of the state, as that is the ultimate imbalance of power, and it has no interest in respecting the individual. Might makes right, society is a compromise. We call that compromise the state, that's what it seems your argument logically would lead to.
Well now you're just changing the original scenario to a completely different one. The original scenario implied 5 relatively equal people, one of whom somehow yells loudest and first that he gets all of the land, and for some reason the others acquiesce. That makes no sense. But to change the conditions so that one has all of the might then has no bearing on what actually happened since, you know, there were no AR-15s 6000 years ago
It never said 6k years ago, it merely assumed five people were vying over the same land. I added an object that would legitimize the one man's claim to the property; a gun.
If you take the n (n-1)/2 pairs of people in this world (where n is 6 or 7 billion), the vast, vast majority of them will *not* have the asymmetry that you posit here. In *those* pairwise relationships, it is easy to see that it is in their mutal self-interest to not agress against each other, and to recognize some reasonable extent of the other's "property" in exchange for having theirs recognized
You can speak for "most people?" I don't disagree with what you're saying, but even if "most people" were pacifists, the one who isn't would rule everything.
But clearly, over time additional agreements would be reached by many of those pairwise people that would ratchet up the cost of aggression for people that choose to be aggressive so that the incidence of such aggression would go down (we could pool our money and buy our own guns, and/or we could pool our information and refrain trading with aggressors, etc
This completely disconnects itself from the last 6000 years of human history.
As long as the distribution of might is such that the vast majority of people who do respect property have more collective might than the minority that don't, the majority should be able to defend themselves. And if they can't, if some superhuman came along who was to normal people what people are to ants: we're fucked
I agree with the first part. But isn't the state that "superhuman who was to normal people what people are to ants?"
If anyone else want to make a claim on that land, then the two current residents are going to need to deal with them, either bilaterally or unilaterally; most of the time, unilateral is far more expensive
Luckily noone wants land in outer Mongolia. BUt they do want it in Iraq. So, taking Iraq's land for their oil because we're stronger than them is justified appropriation of property?
I can and regularly violate the NAP when dealing with beings to whom I am vastly more powerful. I advocate the NAP because it is *pragmatic*: most of the time, I have far more to gain by agreeing to the NAP when dealing with the people around me than I would by initiating force
So does every other aggressor in the history of the world. So, just to make it clear, if I have more guns, I can take your property?
In short, I feel your description of hte NAP and property gives me the possiblility to never negotiate with anyone. It is in my self-interest to shoot first, and I ask if I can have it later.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Water? Space? The internet? "most." Not yet. Mostly relies on IP rights (not the servers tho, those are on land).
???
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Name three ways this would create chaos and destroy property rights Against my own hypothesis? Strange, but ok. 1) Bank says no, calls in state thugs 2) Competing parties for the same house refuse to concede, and refuse to submit to a court 3) one guy gobbles up all the houses in an area, charges exorbinant rents, calls in state thugs to enforce it Your turn?
Try again without a state. The state is always a problem. We're talking about how your idea of organizing a voluntary society with expiring property rights will lead to chaos.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Substantive rebuttal. You can prove that pre-neolithic man had a concept of the respect for ownership of land? Honestly, I like arguing with you LS, but your appeals to ignorance are getting tiring.
It may be tiring, but your arguments are equally tiring, mostly because I can't tell that you understand economics any better today than 2 weeks ago.
I don't have to prove neolithic man had a concept of property rights because scarcity itself necessitates some conception of property rights. Our ancestors were not cattle, and then suddenly someone invented agriculture 10,000 years ago (how did they evolve without a concept of self and property?) and we were off to the races. The problem with relying on history over reason, is that bad accounts of history and emotional narratives end up leading to silly conclusions based on ridiculous premises.
I was saying land is the basis for "most" wealth, water plays a role as well as many other factors. Space isn't a viable alternative yet. And the internet largely relies upon IP rights to make any money (if not wealth).
Try again without a state. The state is always a problem. We're talking about how your idea of organizing a voluntary society with expiring property rights will lead to chaos
This is where I think our largest disconnect is. I don't like to deal in theory prior to evidence. Right now we live in this society, and I am discussing how to transfer this society to a better society. My point is not to discuss some society that exists disconnected from the history that put it there.
On that note (first the homesteading was not my idea, I just said I liked the concept);
1) Bank says no, calls in private security firm to enforce it 2) two competing parties refuse to concede or submit to a court 3) One man gobbles up all the houses in one area, charges outrageous rents, calls in private security firm to enforce it
It may be tiring, but your arguments are equally tiring, mostly because I can't tell that you understand economics any better today than 2 weeks ago
Than offer a substantive rebuttal (even if its one sentence) that's not an appeal to ignorance fallacy. It's not that you keep calling me ignorant. If I am I'm fine with that and working/willing to change it. It's that "you're ignorant" is not a substantive rebuttal.
I don't have to prove neolithic man had a concept of property rights because scarcity itself necessitates some conception of property rights. Our ancestors were not cattle, and then suddenly someone invented agriculture 10,000 years ago (how did they evolve without a concept of self and property?) and we were off to the races
It's not property rights in general I am addressing. It is the right to own land, that I am saying pre-neolithic man had any concept of. They were nomads, the concept of owning land was utterly meaningless to them. Don't take this as an argument for abolishment of land ownership, I was merely rebutting a previous poster by saying that our concept of owning land, is not that old compared to the total length of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
The problem with relying on history over reason, is that bad accounts of history and emotional narratives end up leading to silly conclusions based on ridiculous premises.
I would completely agree with this as is, and in its opposite. A correct view will be logically sound and based off prior experience. I got an A in my logic class, and all of my arguments were outrageous falsehoods, but logically sound. Pure reason alone can argue almost anything, even if it's utterly disconnected from reality.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:This is where I think our largest disconnect is. I don't like to deal in theory prior to evidence. Right now we live in this society, and I am discussing how to transfer this society to a better society. My point is not to discuss some society that exists disconnected from the history that put it there.
The entire point of Austrianism is that empiricism cannot predict human action. Not to mention, that you set yourself up to create logical fallacies, when you rule out things you haven't observed. Your capacity to observe (alone, disregard interpret for now) is incredibly limited. If you have never been to China, how can you know it is there? To which you might make an appeal to collective wisdom, but then if that is the case, wasn't it collective wisdom at one time that the earth was flat?
Ask yourself, based on collective belief what flat earth ideas do we hold today which will be revealed to be false in the future? Or do you believe that the collective wisdom which informs you today is the pinnacle of human understanding?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:I would completely agree with this as is, and in its opposite. A correct view will be logically sound and based off prior experience. I got an A in my logic class, and all of my arguments were outrageous falsehoods, but logically sound. Pure reason alone can argue almost anything, even if it's utterly disconnected from reality.
I don't know what class you were in or what you were arguing, but logic can't promote a falsehood, because saying something which is not true, is true, is a contradiction, and by definition, illogical. No offense, but you need to ttalk to your educators about a refund if they let such thinking fly as "logic".
Not at all. If you think that, you are mistaken about the scientific method. It doesn't say "this is true." It says "here is the evidence." I can look at sattelite photos of China. Do you deny that the scientific method has been the most reliable system of obtaining knowledge humans have yet created?
I don't know what class you were in or what you were arguing, but logic can't promote a falsehood, because saying something which is not true, is true, is a contradiction, and by definition, illogical
Logic does not deal with true/untrue. It deals with valid/invalid. I can make a valid argument that the sun revolves around the earth. If the conclusion follows from the premise, it is logical; regardless of the truth value of the premises.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun: Ask yourself, based on collective belief what flat earth ideas do we hold today which will be revealed to be false in the future? Or do you believe that the collective wisdom which informs you today is the pinnacle of human understanding? Not at all. If you think that, you are mistaken about the scientific method. It doesn't say "this is true." It says "here is the evidence."
Not at all. If you think that, you are mistaken about the scientific method. It doesn't say "this is true." It says "here is the evidence."
We were not talking about scientific method at that point. I'd already advanced beyond it to your claims about inter-subjective knowledge. Care to address that?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:I can look at sattelite photos of China.
So before satellites China didn't exist to anyone who had not been there?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Do you deny that the scientific method has been the most reliable system of obtaining knowledge humans have yet created?
That's a subjective argument, not an objective one.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Logic does not deal with true/untrue. It deals with valid/invalid. I can make a valid argument that the sun revolves around the earth.
Is that a valid argument? How so?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:If the conclusion follows from the premise, it is logical; regardless of the truth value of the premises.
Your sun example is a conclusion without a premise. What was your premise?
If enough people tell me China exists, I am willing to take their word for it. I'm an advocate of scientific thinking, so I don't "believe" anything. I see evidence, and sometimes take people's word on things. If you can repeatadly show the evidence to turn out the same, I accept that as truth, for now. Just because Einstein changed gravity, doesn't make Newton wrong, it just made him incomplete.
This is a strange response, but.. in a way, yes. Before sattelites, one either had to go there or believe it was there. So to anyone that believed China existed prior to sattelites, it was purely belief... I guess you could say, in those terms, "it didn't exist to them."
That's a subjective argument, not an objective one
Do you deny it?
If A (logic is not truth, per se) than B (logic deals with valid arguments). Therefore, C (I can make an untrue, valid argument on geocentrism.
This was really just an example of what could be done but:
Stars/sun/moon spin around the planet (from my perspective). Therefore, the sun is at the center, and all the celestial bodies rotate around it.
I am commiting an argumentative fallacy, but no logical one that I can see.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:If enough people tell me China exists, I am willing to take their word for it.
If enough people tell you the earth is flat will you also take their word for that?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:This is a strange response, but.. in a way, yes. Before sattelites, one either had to go there or believe it was there.
But if you didn't know it existed, how could you believe it existed? You're now claiming that empiricism isn't your method, but belief. Which is it?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Do you deny it?
It can't be proven one way or another, so why would it matter?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:This was really just an example of what could be done but: Stars/sun/moon spin around the planet (from my perspective). Therefore, the sun is at the center, and all the celestial bodies rotate around it. I am commiting an argumentative fallacy, but no logical one that I can see.
You realize this ^^^ is complete nonsense, right? Did they really teach you this in school and give you high grades for this as reasoning?
No, I have direct evidence that contradicts that. See the beauty of evidence to create theory, rather than pure reason?
I'm not even going to touch that trap.
To see whether or not you care if your views accurately represent reality. Do you deny it?
You realize this ^^^ is complete nonsense
Where is the fallacy? Appeals to ignorance do nothing to refute my statement.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:But if you didn't know it existed, how could you believe it existed? You're now claiming that empiricism isn't your method, but belief. Which is it? I'm not even going to touch that trap.
It's not a trap. You claimed one thing, then you claimed another, and now you are back to claiming the first thing. I just want to know, how do you believe in China, if you don't know it exists?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:If enough people tell you the earth is flat will you also take their word for that? No, I have direct evidence that contradicts that.
No, I have direct evidence that contradicts that.
So anything you do not have direct evidence for, you believe whatever other people believe. Is that accurate?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:See the beauty of evidence to create theory, rather than pure reason?
You're confusing theories with the truth. For example, I have a theory that you're in over your head in nearly all these discussions, but I don't pretend that is the truth, even when I demonstrate it repeatedly.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:It can't be proven one way or another, so why would it matter? To see whether or not you care if your views accurately represent reality. Do you deny it?
See, you're claiming it is an objective fact, when I have already to you it is not. It is a matter of preference. You really, really, really need to learn the difference between subjectivity and objectivity.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:You realize this ^^^ is complete nonsense Where is the fallacy? Appeals to ignorance do nothing to refute my statement.
You're claiming your subjective opinions are objective truths. It's a denial of logic.
I just want to know, how do you believe in China, if you don't know it exists?
I don't believe China exists. I have evidence it does. If you can show me evidence it doesn't, I will consider your proposition.
I don't believe anything exists. I have evidence it does. If you can show me evidence, I will consider your proposition.
I do no such thing. And neither have you demonstrated anything but appeals to ignorance, misrepresentations of my positions, and ridicule (at least in the last few discussions).
Where did I claim it as objective fact? I said it accurately represents reality, in my opinion. The context of my posts have all said the same thing; we are subjective creatures that can make reasonable inferences on reality based on experience. The scientific method has flushed this evidence based outlook to a point that it is far more reliable to me than any other system created beforehand.
You're claiming your subjective opinions are objective truths. It's a denial of logic\
Where? Stars spin around the night sky (objective observation). Therefore, the sun is at the center of this system (objective inference). If A than B. I never said "i like stars" or "stars are great."
Still waiting for that evidence for China, by the way.
Your theories of knowledge make me cringe.
So, just to make it clear, if I have more guns, I can take your property?
I know you think you're scoring a point, but you're just talking past me. What do you mean "can"? Do you mean "can I physically take your property"? Well, if your gun is big enough, then sure, though at that point is isn't "property" because you haven't honored our property contract. If you mean "can" as in some sort of "will God think that's a sin" type of thing, then I reject the utility of the question: again, if you've got a gun big enough to take my "property", then what does it matter if it's "just" or "right"? I'm not going to stop you by pointing it out to you.
In short, I feel your description of hte NAP and property gives me the possiblility to never negotiate with anyone.
The NAP and property have nothing to do with your "possibility to never negotiate with anyone": that exists no matter what. If you don't want to negotiate, you simply won't, and no number of philsophers or libertarians is going to make you. Negotiation is a *bilateral* process, so by definition, you only participate if you *choose* to participate.
It is in my self-interest to shoot first, and I ask if I can have it later.
Non-sequitur alert: how do you come to that conclusion? T answer that question one way or another is a complex economic calculation that takes into account all of the consequences of each possible decision.
You can speak for "most people?"
You are clearly missing my derivation. I'm not "speaking for them", I'm positing a hypothesis: that the vast majority of pairwise relationships between people have qualities such that each of them would benefit from a mutual non-aggression pact that is more or less equal to the NAP. Note the things I am not doing:
1) I am not using that as a justification for "forcing" the NAP on them. No, I am not claiming that I can better know others' subjective values than they do; I am making a predictive statement, an empirical estimate.
2) I am not saying that all people will magically just sign mutual nonaggression pacts, or that if they do, that they intend to honor it. I assume there will always be defectors. It just doesn't follow that the majority of non-defectors should abandon their mutually beneficial contracts just because some of their contracts get violated. That is what the "state" is: people who are perfectly civil, who would deal with each other without coercion or force if they were dealing with them directly, instead deal with them via coercion and force because they deal with them through the state. I would never walk over to my neighbor and beat him to take money from him to pay for my daughter's school; but I do the equivalent via the state.
3) I am not justifying the state; I am arguing that rather than try to "prove" that "freedom" is the best morality, or that libertarianism is the best political system, so that the only way people will participate is if they buy your morality or become political philosophers, we can get the equivalent of the NAP by showing people that they easily benefit from explicitly signing non-aggression pacts with people that they weren't going to aggress against anyway (in most cases), or at least that it would cost them more to aggress against than not to. It won't be universal, but there's a lot better chance of selling *that* simple calculation than there is of everyone becoming a scholar on libertarianism.
But we have to be realistic: we have to sell it in terms of *self-interest*, not in terms of morality or philosophy. A system that only works if every part understands the whole system design and who and how it works is doomed to failure before it starts. The system has to work even when the vast majority of its parts/participants *don't* understand the whole system and why or how it works, because it is just unrealistic to expect 7 billion people to all "get it". We're fighting a losing battle as libertarians: we strive to have everyone "get it", and then blammo, the world will change. They aren't going to "get it". If you're going to sell it - and clearly, we need to sell something, because the whole idea is to have a voluntary society which means everyone else has to volunteer to parrticipate - we need to sell something really easy and basic. The NAP as a principle or concept is a lovely thing and it sucks *me* in, but 20 years of doing this has shown me clearly that it doesn't suck that many people in. It's competing against too many other memes for too little mind-real-estate. it's competing again "feminism" and "socialism" and "equality" and "wage gaps" and "class warfare" and "religions", all of which are trying to occupy the small mind real-estate of "most important issue". We just can't sell libertarianism or the NAP as "the most important issue", because it will never occupy the top stop in a very large fraction of minds.
But there is lots and lots of mind real-estate for "this is in my self-interest", and it's not a zero sum piece of mind real estate, a new meme that "this is in my self interest" does not kick out old ones. I wouldn't even tell people about the NAP or libertarianism (or our philosophical definitions and derivations of property). They don't need to understand it to essentially be *honoring* it. They just have to say "hey, I really don't want to attack Joe anyway, and it is worth far more to me to know that Joe isn't going to attack me, so I'll sign a non-aggression pact with him." Induct, and blammo, you've got a huge number of mutual non-aggression pacts that together have more or less the effect of the NAP, in the sense that even if we explicitly had a NAP that many people signed, the result would be that between most pairs of people, there would be no aggression, and then there would be exceptions. The good people here and in other libertarian/AnCap places have spent a lot of time thinking about how a world that is filled mostly with non-aggressing pairs of relationships but that has a few pairs could still work pretty well. In effect, you get the same thing, but you get it in a much more sellable and thus feasible way. In one derivation, there is the NAP, a single contract, and everyone signs it because they understand that the NAP will lead to a better society, but even though everyone signs it, some people still aggress against some other people sometimes and we have to have to deal with it; in the other, people sign pairwise contracts (in reality, they don't need to sign them with very many other people, because most people they will never interact with) because they can easily see those contracrts as being in their self-interest, but some people still agress against some other people and we have to deal with it. It's the same effect; but it's a much lower barrier to get there.
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=sattelite+photos+of+china&wrapid=tlif12859012458722&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1259&bih=821
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,17311,23756,24692,24878,24879,25756,25854,26209,26218,26339,26425,26710,26781,26789,26885,26894&sugexp=ldymls&tok=rAnMM0u4GgYVBzHQ-kuxFQ&xhr=t&q=China&cp=4&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=Chin&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3f137aea2efaa6b6
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,17311,23756,24692,24878,24879,25756,25854,26209,26218,26339,26425,26710,26781,26789,26885,26894&sugexp=ldymls&tok=rAnMM0u4GgYVBzHQ-kuxFQ&xhr=t&q=history+of+china&cp=13&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=history+of+ch&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3f137aea2efaa6b6
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,17311,23756,24692,24878,24879,25756,25854,26209,26218,26339,26425,26710,26781,26789,26885,26894&sugexp=ldymls&tok=rAnMM0u4GgYVBzHQ-kuxFQ&xhr=t&q=chinese+economics&cp=17&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=chinese+economics&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3f137aea2efaa6b6
Like I said, if you want to believe China exists, that's on you. I believe nothing. But I have seen strong evidence that China exists.
Is it because I don't believe in your magic wizard hypothesis?
What do you mean "can"? Do you mean "can I physically take your property"? Well, if your gun is big enough, then sure, though at that point is isn't "property" because you haven't honored our property contract
That's my point. So you agree that most of the land across the world is not legitimately property of the people in possession of it?
I like where you go towards the end there. The idea of selling liberty as self-interest rather than "morally righteous" is much more efficient imo. Idk about your concept of property, it seems like its only property if someone has a big enough gun to keep everyone else off. But the self-interest idea is much more pertinent, and very close to what I'm working on as well.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun: So you agree that most of the land across the world is not legitimately property of the people in possession of it?
How far do you want to go back. Roman Empire, Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamia maybe?
How long are you going to use this silly argument against current private property owners? According to this argument, you must be able to trace back the first original owner of some property tens of thousands of years ago, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years if you are really consistent, just so you can begin to sort everything out.
I also don't buy the alleged motives behind these arguments, as if these Marxist type "libertarians" actually give a crap about just property owners all of a sudden. They want to abolish private property and establish their system of Kibbutzim, by hook or by crook!
I'm not a Marxist. And I don't propose we do anything about it, per se. It just seems a problem that seriously puts a hamper in the legitimacy of property as it stands today.
MrSchnapps:Your theories of knowledge make me cringe.
An epistemology that is completely ad hoc.
DD5:How long are you going to use this silly argument against current private property owners? According to this argument, you must be able to trace back the first original owner of some property tens of thousands of years ago, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years if you are really consistent, just so you can begin to sort everything out.
Leftists aren't interested in today or the future, they are interested in anarchronism.
DD5:I also don't buy the alleged motives behind these arguments, as if these Marxist type "libertarians" actually give a crap about just property owners all of a sudden. They want to abolish private property and establish their system of Kibbutzim, by hook or by crook!
The motives are socialist motives. To plan society, to destroy economic progress and to tell other people what to do.
Think what you want LS. That's fine. I'm honest to myself and that's all that matters.
DD5:According to this argument, you must be able to trace back the first original owner of some property tens of thousands of years ago, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years if you are really consistent, just so you can begin to sort everything out.
Sorry to interject, but isn't this also one of the premises upon which Anarcho-Capitalism considers the state unjustified?
Epicurus,
I'm going to ressurect this section just because I think we can make some progress here.
I have a question regarding your theory of believing nothing:
Do you believe nothing can be believed? Do you really believe that?
Off topic; we should probably open another.
But, I'll bite;
No, that's a silly statement. That's like feeding the scarecrow a brined and smoked kipper.
I hold open the possiblity that a now-truth could be an absolute-truth, but the evidence suggests otherwise. I see skepticism and empiricism as healthy components to development.