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Coercive Purchasing?
Possibly a partial reconciliation between libertarianism and socialism

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Coercive Purchasing?
Floyd
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Posted 04/26/08 - 03:32 PM:
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#26
I wouldn't tolerate political inequality on the basis of strength versus weakness because strength and weakness are incredibly ambiguous in social interactions between large groups of self-interested creatures.


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unrealist42
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Posted 04/26/08 - 07:17 PM:
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Mike H wrote:
...
So the dispute between libertarians and leftists does not boil down to selfishness versus selflessness. It boils down to who is entitled to what...


I see no distinction of concept here, only different words. So, if we want to talk of entitlement then perhaps it is society that has a greater claim than the individual because if it was not for a stable society, no indivudal would have much for very long.

Many people recognize this and put the greater social stability above their own selfish interest.

In the end it is an argument over the position of the individual in the greater society. The libertarian delibrately puts himself outside of society and then claims that the greater society does not even exist even though it is society that allowed him to get what he has.

As I said, a deluded argument over selfishness.
Mike H
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Posted 04/26/08 - 08:58 PM:
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unrealist42 wrote:
I see no distinction of concept here, only different words.


I see a clear distinction between the concepts of selfishness and entitlement. Would you consider someone who believes he is entitled to his inheritance from his grandfather, but nonetheless gives it all away to charity, to be a selfish person?

I think you're relying on a liberal caricature of libertarianism. Yes, libertarians do appear selfish from the liberal point of view. But I've seen both sides - I was a radical libertarian a few years ago, on the border of being a right wing anarchist, and I've talked to many libertarians. Now I'm a moderate liberal. I know that libertarians, for the most part, are not selfish. They believe, like most people, that side constraints should govern the interactions of individuals in society. Thou shalt not murder or steal. The difference between liberals and libertarians is on the issue of whether taxes constitute theft. If you believe you are entitled to your gains from trade, taxes are theft. And believing you are entitled to your gains from trade does not necessarily stem from selfishness. If you own a guitar, and your friend owns a drum set, why shouldn't you be able to trade them without the government stepping in and taking away 3 strings and 4 cymbals? Are you selfish if you don't think the government should do that? Essentially, the trade between an employer and employee is of the same character. The employer owns money, you own your labor time. So why shouldn't you be able to trade without the government interfering? You can keep it all if you're selfish, or give it to charity if you're not. Libertarianism is a pretty common sense position, from a micro level perspective. Which doesn't mean they're ignoring society, any more than you're ignoring society when you trade some small items with your friends. Libertarians just believe it should be up to individuals to benefit society, not the government. I think they're naive in believing that the market, combined with people's inherent generosity and cooperative spirit, is enough to ensure a decent society. And I think they're often ignorant about just how bad some of the problems are. But again, naivety and ignorance are not the same as selfishness. And if a libertarian really is well-informed about society's problems, he is not necessarily selfish. What would you call a libertarian who gave more to charity than you do?
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Posted 04/26/08 - 09:03 PM:
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unrealist42 wrote:


I see no distinction of concept here, only different words. So, if we want to talk of entitlement then perhaps it is society that has a greater claim than the individual because if it was not for a stable society, no indivudal would have much for very long.

Many people recognize this and put the greater social stability above their own selfish interest.

While you correctly point out that no individual would have much for very long without a society, it does not follow that society has greater claim than the individual. A society is formed because each participants see that it is more beneficial for themselves and contribute to no less extent than it would benefit to themselves to do so, unless they are subject to deceptive shaman-speak of mindless sacrifice the like which you propose, which make me wonder if you are not an operative.

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Posted 04/28/08 - 10:40 AM:
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Floyd wrote:
A lot of people who call themselves libertarian are willing to use coercion or aggression to claim and maintain control over natural resources such as land, water, oil and so forth. This willingness and ability to use violence to claim and have control over natural resources is usually called ownership, and the owned item is called property. These so-called libertarians support the institution of property more than they support the non-aggression principle. Without that dispute over the distribution of control of natural resources, right-wing libertarianism is almost the same as stateless socialism. But I just call myself an anarchist so as not to imply I support any political philosophy--be it leftism/socialism or rightism/libertarianism--that allows one group of people to violently take and maintain control of more than their fair share of the natural resources.

My favorite anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote, "There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines." I think that is relevant in its point that the way to create a free and fair society is for the oppressed to defend themselves from oppressors who control the oppressed by coercively taking control of the natural resources.


That's an interesting quote, but I'd shorten it to, "There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth." I don't believe that a machine can be "appropriated", because it is indisputably owned by its inventor, and there is nothing malevolent about any voluntary change of hands which might take place after its invention.

As for anarchism, I don't want to derail the thread, but I think that the following is quite a nice little refutation: if you don't support the systematic (i.e., centralized or government-controlled) use of force to prevent coercion, then you, by lack of intervention, do support the systematic (i.e., gang-controlled) use of force to prevent coercion (at least that coercion of which the gang(s), according to their whim, do not approve). So we've arrived at a contradiction, and the whole thing falls apart. sticking out tongue

keda wrote:
When it comes down to pro-life versus pro-choice, I'm leaning toward pro-life, because pro-choice is pro death if you choose death. Should life be protected at the expense of liberty?`No; I do value liberty more; give me liberty or give me death. I am pro liberty, pro-life and pro-choice, in that order. I do consider sucking up all the oxygen as immoral as strangling someone on death, but to make it a law while respecting liberty is to divide it when the day comes such a machine becomes a threat to us. It is then possible to respect the non-aggression principle, because we can retaliate against the one who owns the oxygen machine. If he does not accept such a division, then we have but to declare war.



If you accept that a human being needs space in order to live just as he or she needs oxygen, then surely you see that an event directly analagous to the appropriation of the world's oxygen has already occured: that is, the world's very space has already been appropriated. Since you would find it just to agree on a division of oxygen should someone attempt to appropriate it, surely you see the justice of aggreeing on a division of land now that we've watched it be appropriated by the few. Note, again, that I do not support the notion of public land; rather, I support the notion of an equal right to the access of land. From what I've read of geolibertarianism (which I hadn't heard of before a poster in this thread mentioned it), if someone were to acquire more land than he or she needs to live, he or she would be liable to pay compensatory damages to every other individual, not because land is public, but because he or she has infringed on the equal right of every individual to a space in which to exist.

keda wrote:
Your limitation of what can be bought or sold is anti-liberty as well, and I don't trust anyone who advocate it, even if it is pro-life. The proper way to protect life is to not agree to a division of natural resources that threatens it i.e. anti-choice, for it cannot be bought or sold unless you have agreed to such a division. I think you are barking up the wrong tree. It is not possible to buy the oxygen if nobody owns it. Nobody can own it without your consent. What is at fault here is the lockean principle of homesteading which is pro-choice at the expense of life.


You say that it is not possible to buy the oxygen if nobody owns it. How, then, have we arrived at a situation in which the land has been bought up? Surely land can no more be owned than can oxygen.

Mike H wrote:
Trying to apply the non-aggression principle to property doesn't quite work - not without some assumption about who is entitled to what. A robber takes your money. Does that count as aggression? Well you could say so if you're entitled to the money. But if the robber is entitled to the money, a libertarian would not object - he would not think it counts as aggression. So entitlement is more fundamental than non-aggression in libertarian theory (as Nozick realized). You have to have a theory of entitlement before you can say anything is wrong according to libertarian theory. Libertarians usually assume self-ownership and individual property rights, but those cannot be derived from the axiom of non-aggression. Its more like the other way around. The libertarian concept of aggresion is parasitic on their concept of entitlement - aggression is defined as violation of rightful entitlements. Physical aggression occurs whenever violation of self-ownership occurs, and property aggression occurs whenever violation of property entitlements occurs.

So essentially, libertarians assume what they try to prove. They assume that people are entitled to whatever they can get by trading, and then they define as "aggression" any attempt to take away such gains, which by the non-aggression principle must be wrong.


I believe that either the idea of restrictions on the sale of land or a land tax (as proposed by geolibertarians) would resolve the circularity of the libertarian justification of property rights. Since the land itself is not the product of anyone's labor, no one can claim to own it, and any appropriation of so much land that there is not enough for everyone must be counterbalanced by the payment of damages to those whose right to space you have infringed upon, i.e., everyone. However, anything that is the product of someone's labor should be protected as property, and this follows in a straightforward way from the principle of self-ownership.

Mark H wrote:
Socialists I think usually do the opposite (I'm less familiar with socialism than libertarianism): they assume that all resources belong to society in general (no matter who produced those resources), so anyone who accumulates more wealth than others must be "stealing" from society.


Both socialists and libertarians suffer from muddled thinking on the issues of property and entitlement.

Libertarians, as you said, believe in the absolute right to property, but define property as anything which can be gained through production or trade, when a more reasonable definition would be anything that was originally gained through production and has since been traded freely. This would obviously exclude land, for though some may claim that it is "traded freely", it was certainly never produced by any person. I personally think that "production" should include excavation, so that oil, ore, minerals, etc., may be owned by the person who excavated them, simply because no man, woman, or child on Earth needs oil, ore, minerals, etc. to survive in the way that they need space to survive.

Socialists, on the other hand, suffer from muddled thinking in that they relentlessly personify "society". My biggest gripe with socialists is their claim that anyone who's made a fortune through legitimate (i.e., non-coercive) means owes a debt to "society", for it is quite clear to me that--since we're excluding those who achieve great wealth through coercion--their fortune was paid for, down to the penny, by whatever product or service they gave to society in exchange for that fortune. A debt would imply that the fortune was stolen, when in fact it was freely given by a multitude of individuals ("society") for whatever wealth was created by the holder of the fortune. In other words, Larry and Serge of Google don't owe a debt to society for their fortune; that fortune was "paid for" by the wealth that is Google.

Mike H wrote:
So I think Thoughtless's argument would fail to convince a standard libertarian, and the problem is not that the libertarian is unwilling to deduce from the non-aggression principle. The problem is that libertarians generally assume that people are entitled to all gains from trade. If someone buys up all of a finite resource, so much the worse for the people who don't have any. Any attempt to take away those gains from trade or prevent them from occuring would run up against the libertarian theory of entitlement.


I think that I'm persuasive enough to convince a standard libertarian of the folly of land ownership. Obviously, all the world's land was at one point unowned, so it is up to the standard libertarian to explain how the first land "owners" ended up owning their land. The predictable response would be that they "mixed their labor with it", but this falls to a simple refutation: before you can significantly mix your labor with something, you must control it; but to control it, you must restrict others' access to it; but to restrict a person's access to a thing which you do not own is to coerce them; therefore, it is impossible to ever legitimately come to own land.

Mark H wrote:
I think a better strategy is the one adopted by the geo-libertarians: finite resources belong to society, so taking away gains from their trade in the form of a land tax is justified. But all other goods are treated like they are in standard libertarian theory. I think this fits with our moral intutions more - how could some people be more entitled to parts of the earth than others, when the earth is a given - no one worked to "earn" a greater share of it. But if you produce a thing with your own labor, you're entitled to it, and to do whatever you want with it, including give it to others in exchange for something that they also are entitled to.


I caution you to resist the temptation to personify society. It's not that finite resources belong to society, it's that everyone has the right to at least be left alone to attempt to live, and this implies that we all have an equal right to access land. I do not believe that finite resources belong to "society", for some finite resources are not essential to life, such as oil or metal. If someone goes to great trouble to excavate either, I see no reason why anyone should have the right to take it from him. It is only when he tries to claim the very space around him that he infringes on the rights of others. To make my point even more clear, note the difference between every person having the right to life and the right to everyone's life belonging to "society". The former is morally intuitive and agreeable, and the latter is a nightmare.

Mike H wrote:
On a side note though, I think that libertarian entitlement theory is pretty shaky in terms of its grounding in moral intuition. Intuitively, we think there's nothing wrong with two people trading things they are entitled to. But that's only when we don't take into account possible negative effects on third parties, who are harmed by the exchange but had no say in it. Then our intuitions change. Also, it runs up against our moral intutions when we take income distribution into account. Most people think its wrong for some people to earn vastly more than others despite not having worked any harder for it (whether its a result of luck, or natural skill or whatever), but that's often what happens when people are allowed to keep most or all of their gains from trade.


To your first complaint (external costs), I can only echo another poster, Fried Egg, and say that external costs are not caused by an over-zealous enforcement of property rights, but rather a lax enforcement of the same. Take, for instance, the case of a polluter. It is not his property rights which are at fault, it is his failure to adequately respect the property rights of others, by negligently allowing noxious chemicals to invade their property.

To your second complaint, I can only submit that our moral intuitions must not be the same. I can also point out, however, that your theory that "most people" hold wealth gained through luck in disdain is clearly falsified by the vast number of people who purchase lottery tickets.

Floyd wrote:
For the most freedom and fairness, I believe the principle must be that everyone has an equal share of the entitlement to natural resources.


I think, rather, that everyone has an equal right to exist, which implies an equal right to access to land, but not necessarily an equal right to access of all natural resources. My argument against the possibility of private land ownership is that in order to mix your labor with land you have to first appropriate it, necessarily in violation of the right to equal access of everyone around you. This is not the case, however, with oil or metal. You may be appropriating it against the desire of those around you, but trampling on the desire of others does not hold quite the same moral weight as trampling on the rights of others, and oil is not a requisite of existence as is space.

unrealist42 wrote:
It all boils down to the inherently contradictory nature of the difference between the rights of property and the rights of humans.


This is a bit vague. Can you explain precisely how, given my treatment of land, property rights conflict with human rights?

unrealist42 wrote:
The property rights argument is really nothing more than and argument for selfishness while the human rights argument is really an argument for selflessness.


It's fine to make such an assertion, but what is the argument for it? Please do not argue agaisnt standard libertarianism, but rather the modification of it which I have suggested in this thread.

unrealist42 wrote:
The former sees society as an inchoate assembly of selfish individuals seeking only personal advantage in every interaction and that this is the great engine that drives social progress. The latter sees society as a great assembly of like minded people advancing together through mutual cooperation.


Ignoring for the moment that your post was obviously a pre-conceived rant against liberterianism and not a considered response to the interpretation of libertarian ideals put forth in my original post, I can easily produce broad characterizations of libertarianism and socialism which turns your neat division of them into the categories of selfishness and selflessness right on its head! Thus:

Libertarianism sees society as a loosely organized collection of free men and women seeking fulfillment, no matter if it be through pleasure-seeking or altruism, and trusts that by restricting the individual only as much as necessary not only will the individual flourish, but society as well, for the fundamental nature of man is more good than bad, and people make caring, compassaionte choices more often than they make selfish, uncaring choices.

Socialism, on the other hand, sees society as a collection of potentially selfish individuals, and seeks to pre-empt every possibly conflict by bestowing a select few with the authority to arbitrate the distribution of goods; for people are by nature clannish, and must be forced via threat of violence to share with one another.

You see? Rhetoric is easy.

unrealist42 wrote:
[That others willingly cooperate on a day-to-day basis]...points towards the conception of society as a generally cooperative endeavor of people working together toward a singular goal, to maintain a peaceful environment.


Considering your opinion regarding the cooperative nature of most people, it's a wonder that you're not a libertarian. Surely we don't need laws to force us to do what you seem to believe is already in our nature?

unrealist42 wrote:
That there is room for individuals to occaisionally act selfishly in such an environment without disrupting the general peace is no reason to believe that this selfishness is what drives social progress or that it is this selfish drive which creates society. While it is fairly easy to logically deduce selfish motivation for every single act any person may undertake, it is not how people act.


So, you believe that people are not naturally selfish, and that, if left to their own devices, they are generally motivated by other desires. I agree completely; though every act is trivially selfish (in that one must have wanted to do something if one chose to do it), most acts are motivated by a desire to belong, a desire for closeness with others, a desire to express creativity, a desire to enjoy the wonders of life. Some acts are motivated by pure hatred and self-interest, but not most. Where we differ is that I believe that this, man's nature, suggests a society of few rules and maximum liberty, to allow the creative, cooperative, loving nature of most people to flourish without interference; while you somehow arrived at the conclusion that man's nature suggests a society which is strictly and rigidly controlled by a few individuals bestowed with the responsibility of making society fair and just.

unrealist42 wrote:
Only the most paranoid will undertake the parsing of every single interaction with every other person to deduce their personal advantage from such. It is an absurd position and an absurd argument.


What I grok from your post is the feeling that man is generally good, but also the seemingly contrary feeling that man must be strictly controlled to prevent him from doing bad. Can you explain this?

unrealist42 wrote:
Anyway, history has already shown us the results of of vast accumulations of property and its wealth and power by purely selfish individuals. The revolutions in France and Russia and China are nothing less than proof that a society based on nothing but selfishness is doomed to violent failure.


What has this to do with my suggested modifications of libertarianism with respect to land? Surely most violent revolutions of the past have been caused not by the accumulation of wealth, but the accumulation of land. In fact, I would go as far as to say that wealth cannot be accumulated, but only created; while land cannot be created, but only accumulated.

keda wrote:
Deontological libertarians however could argue, (as does Kant) that entitlement is gained through consensus e.g. imagine two persons living on an island. Person A builds a house on one part of the island and person B grows crops. It starts raining and in the absence of laws, person B goes into A's house to take shelter and sleeps over the night in the warm house, and person A is annoyed that A didn't have to do any work to be able to sleep there so the next day he goes to A's fields and takes his crops. The problem is then that there is no point in doing anything since you can just wait until someone else does it and then take his stuff, and if you do it yourself someone comes and takes it. Since both person A and B recognize this problem, they make a compromise; they divide the land of the island in two equal shares, and person A gets the part with the house and B with the fields. Now the crops belong also belong to B and the house to A, and when it starts raining A can rent a room to B for some of B's crops.


If the two people on the island were to ascribe to my version of libertarianism, rather than dividing the island into two equal shares, Person A and Person B would acknowledge that since they each have an equal right to the island, neither has the right to appropriate more than they need in order to live without compensating the other for taking more than their share. If they were, for instance, expecting new arrivals, they would not each take half the island, for they would recognize that no matter what improvements they made to their respective halves of the island, the newcomer, had he a voice before his arrival, would not have consented to giving up his right to an equal share of the land even for long enough for those improvements to be made. Alternatively, they might each take half the land and improve it, but with the understanding that if their improvements could not later be separated from their excess land and an expected newcomer arrived, they would have to part with said improvements, for the newcomer's right to an equal share of the island--and his implied resistance to appropriation of the entire island by the first two, even if that appropriation were for the purpose of development--would trump their right to the improvements that they may have made to the excess land.

So Person A could start growing his own crops, either on a small enough plot of land to accommodate for any expected new arrivals, or on a larger plot but with the understanding that he might lose some of his crops later due to the fact that the expected newcomers didn't have the chance to protest to his appropriation of excess land. Person B could appropriate some land to build a house on, with exactly the same understanding. Or they could decide to trade with one another, food for shelter, and use the excess land for other purposes (again, with the same understanding) or not at all.

Mike H wrote:
Libertarian freedom, like aggression, is defined in terms of ownership. The common-sense idea of freedom is absence of obstacles to pursuing your goals. A free individual would not just avoid being a victim of aggression, but also would have the resources to pursue his goals. Someone who is paralyzed by disease loses just as much freedom as someone who is paralyzed from a severe beating, according to common sense. But libertarians try to fit a round peg into a square hole and define only the latter as a loss of freedom - or at least the only freedom that counts politically.


The difference between being prevented by a person from pursuing your goals and being prevented by a disease from pursuing your goals is that in the former case, someone has violated your rights, while in the latter case, no one has violated your rights. In the former case, it is just to put a stop to the violation of your rights by another, but in the latter, there is no one who is doing anything to you which must be stopped. It is one thing to prevent someone from beating you; it is quite another to put a gun to a doctor's head and force him to treat your disease. Does it disgust me when people are so hardened to the suffering of others that they do nothing to help? Yes. Am I willing to kill someone if they are attempting to kill someone else? Yes. Am I willing to kill someone if they refuse to assuage the suffering of another, even if they did not directly cause that suffering? No, I'm not; I'm not willing to kill them, I'm not willing to take any violent action against them, and I'm not willing to threaten violence against them.

If someone is suffering from a disease that no person has inflicted upon them, I am an absolute hypocrite if I demand even one penny or one second of labor from a third to assist the sufferer until I have given all of my money and am giving all of my time to assuage their suffering; and even then, my demand is still a request, though backed by the weight of my own integrity and my threatened disapproval.

keda wrote:
I guess geolibertarianism makes a good point about natural resources, but I would like to point out what I see as problematic with geolibertarianism from a standpoint of liberty. A physically weak person needs protection more than a physically strong person. He benefits more from peace than the strong man. As such it is inherent in a fair agreement between the two that the strong man is compensated e.g. by a larger share of the land or more natural resources.


I apologize for my tone, but this is pure folly, for the stronger man only benefits more from peace than the weaker man because of the implied threat of violence which the former levels at the latter. If you mean peace as gained through protection from the elements, then those with natural resistance to disease and starvation should get a greater share of the land; but you're arguing that those who are strong enough to appropriate the most land in a state of nature deserve more land because their ability to appropriate land implies a less pressing need for protection from the elements. This is clearly not the case, and the attempt to justify the disproportionate appropriation of land by those who are able to do so strictly because they are able to do so fails.

keda wrote:
In the state of nature, he is like the weak animal, about to go extinct, while the stronger animals occupy vast amount of land, and this natural distribution is what nature has favoured. If we alter that distribution we may be committing crimes against life. Another person could have natural talents to do well in civilized society but would hardly survive in the state of nature. Another thing to note is that life favours peace in the long run, so there is a transition from age of wars in in which being armed is favoured by nature, toward disarmamanet being favoured. These natural talents are also natural resources are they not? Do we hire them from everyone else? It would also be a crime against life, because it would intervene with the natural favouring of talents beneficial to life, that a free society would promote, by balancing the proportion of talents as talents in larger proportion than needed would reap less profit while talents in smaller proportion than needed would reap more profits, thereby allowing prosperity of those genes of talents that are in deficit and genes of talents that are in surplus to decline. As such the free society is pro life and socialism is anti-life, because the latter will interfer with nature and cause talents to become disproportionate. In the same way geolibertarianism also will interfer with life.


I think you're onto something here. What if we could really capitalize on the idea of maximizing those talents which are needed in the world? Natural selection is slow, but we've already proven that we can do better than natural selection with artificial selection. It would make sense, then, and be quite pro-life, to artificially select for those talents most needed, say, intelligence, resistance to disease, good looks, physical strength, et cetera. Why, we could end up ridding the world of all of its strife--truly purifying the races...!

Oh, wait...rolling eyes

Floyd wrote:
I wouldn't tolerate political inequality on the basis of strength versus weakness because strength and weakness are incredibly ambiguous in social interactions between large groups of self-interested creatures.


Floyd, have I ever told you that I've learned much from you through participation in this forum? Obviously, we disagree on several issues, but I think that we agree about far more. I know for a fact that you helped to inform my theories on morality, and I suspect that I helped to inform yours. I recall quite a few threads in the ethics section where you and I wrangled with moral objectivists...

Anyway, all this flattery is simply a prelude to my stating that I agree wholeheartedly with what I've quoted, and I think that you said it well.

unrealist42 wrote:
I see no distinction of concept here, only different words. So, if we want to talk of entitlement then perhaps it is society that has a greater claim than the individual because if it was not for a stable society, no indivudal would have much for very long.


How can an abstract noun have a claim to anything? rolling eyes

unrealist42 wrote:
In the end it is an argument over the position of the individual in the greater society. The libertarian delibrately puts himself outside of society and then claims that the greater society does not even exist even though it is society that allowed him to get what he has.


It is not "society" which has allowed me to get what I have, it's the cooperative action of many great inventors, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and other thinkers.





Whew! That was quite a post!



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Posted 04/28/08 - 12:09 PM:
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Thoughtless wrote:

If the two people on the island were to ascribe to my version of libertarianism, rather than dividing the island into two equal shares, Person A and Person B would acknowledge that since they each have an equal right to the island, neither has the right to appropriate more than they need in order to live without compensating the other for taking more than their share.

This theory of rights is as baseless as the Lockean homesteading principle, and is likewise coersive. As Mike H also agreed with, if you are the stronger guy, why would you agree to an equal division of land?



I apologize for my tone, but this is pure folly, for the stronger man only benefits more from peace than the weaker man because of the implied threat of violence which the former levels at the latter.

In the state of nature force does not constitute violence. Once the contract has been signed, there is violence in so far the contract is broken. The poor man benefits equally, just has less because he had less to begin with.


If you mean peace as gained through protection from the elements, then those with natural resistance to disease and starvation should get a greater share of the land;

I'm only taking into account what the contract has to offer. If it doesn't protect you from diseases or feed you then it does not give you more negotiating power. Peace is not protection from the elements, but coexistence under the rule of law.


but you're arguing that those who are strong enough to appropriate the most land in a state of nature deserve more land because their ability to appropriate land implies a less pressing need for protection from the elements. This is clearly not the case, and the attempt to justify the disproportionate appropriation of land by those who are able to do so strictly because they are able to do so fails.

There is no court or judge in the state of nature. That the mightier animals occupy more land cannot be unjust, because the animals did not set up a court nor agree on a division of land. The territory is determined by force, by the ability to keep that land from others. Why should those who have more territory give up their land to agree on an equal division of land?


I think you're onto something here. What if we could really capitalize on the idea of maximizing those talents which are needed in the world? Natural selection is slow, but we've already proven that we can do better than natural selection with artificial selection

You do have a warped view of natural selection. There is nothing inherently good in evolving faster. It is fitness that matters, and as such one can be fit without evolving at all. My point is that free market allows for natural selection to set the distribution of talents that makes our species best fit. Eugenics is in fact analogous to interfering with the market.

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Posted 04/28/08 - 12:56 PM:
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#32
Keda,

You say that my theory of rights is as baseless as the homesteading principle, which is funny, since it's the exact opposite of the homesteading principle. I have to disagree, especially since you specifically accuse my theory of being baseless, because it is in fact based on the belief that everyone has a right to life. If everyone has a right to life, then no one may directly interfere with another's right to life, which would be the case if I appropriated all of the world's oxygen or all of the world's land.

Imagine that you and I are on an island and I "mix my labor" with the entire island by erecting a wooden perimeter to help keep the tide from coming too high. I then decide that I don't like you very much, and order you to leave what is now my island. You obviously can't, since there's nowhere to go, and since you refuse to leave my property, I beat you to death. Under standard liberterianism, there is no principle which one can appeal to in order to criminalize my action. However, if you recognize that the right to exist implies the right to exist somewhere, then my erecting the perimeter around the island is much like the homeless man who accosts your vehicle in the parking lot, cleans your windshield, and demands payment: you didn't ask for it, so why should you have to pay? You didn't particularly care if there was a perimeter erected, or if the ground was rendered more fertile, or if huts were built and paths paved, and no matter how many improvements I make I cannot invalidate your right to exist somewhere. Therefore, after I've made my countless improvements and have confronted you with your trespassing, you may cooly respond that while the improvements are nice (and you're grateful to have a cleaner windshield), you did not ask for them, and said improvements cannot invalidate your right to your half of the island (you're not going to give me a dollar, now would I please go away?).

keda wrote:
In the state of nature force does not constitute violence. Once the contract has been signed, there is violence in so far the contract is broken. The poor man benefits equally, just has less because he had less to begin with.


I take it you don't ascribe to the concept of natural rights? If force does not constitute violence in the state of nature, then why should signing a contract mean anything in the state of nature?

keda wrote:
I'm only taking into account what the contract has to offer. If it doesn't protect you from diseases or feed you then it does not give you more negotiating power. Peace is not protection from the elements, but coexistence under the rule of law.


The problem with your whole viewpoint, which seems to be that all law is based on contract, is that the concept of a contract can't be logically prior to the concept of natural rights. And even if it were, you'd need a new contract for every possible relationship between any number of human beings, for why should a contract (literal or figurative) signed by my ancestors be binding with regard to my actions?

keda wrote:
There is no court or judge in the state of nature. That the mightier animals occupy more land cannot be unjust, because the animals did not set up a court nor agree on a division of land. The territory is determined by force, by the ability to keep that land from others. Why should those who have more territory give up their land to agree on an equal division of land?


There is no court or judge in the state of nature, but apparently there are contracts? Your viewpoint seems self-defeating.

keda wrote:
You do have a warped view of natural selection. There is nothing inherently good in evolving faster. It is fitness that matters, and as such one can be fit without evolving at all. My point is that free market allows for natural selection to set the distribution of talents that makes our species best fit. Eugenics is in fact analogous to interfering with the market.


If something is best for the species but violates an individual's right, I will fight against it. nod

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Posted 04/28/08 - 02:58 PM:
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#33
Thoughtless wrote:

You say that my theory of rights is as baseless as the homesteading principle, which is funny, since it's the exact opposite of the homesteading principle.

Both theories presume there is a natural right of property, which is why I disagree with both. I ask again, why should the land be divided equally? That seems to me a completely arbitrary invention.


I have to disagree, especially since you specifically accuse my theory of being baseless, because it is in fact based on the belief that everyone has a right to life.
...
If everyone has a right to life, then no one may directly interfere with another's right to life, which would be the case if I appropriated all of the world's oxygen or all of the world's land.

I don't see how it follows. Geolibertarianism seemed completely different from your original standpoint which did not presume equal rights to land. In any case, what exactly do you mean by right to life? That you ought to provide life support to eveyone? I would agree to a right to life only in the negative sense, i.e. prohibiting murder, but not in a positive sense i.e. a life support welfare program.


You obviously can't, since there's nowhere to go, and since you refuse to leave my property, I beat you to death. Under standard liberterianism, there is no principle which one can appeal to in order to criminalize my action.

Well, under libertarianism you would be a murderer.

I take it you don't ascribe to the concept of natural rights? If force does not constitute violence in the state of nature, then why should signing a contract mean anything in the state of nature?

I do ascribe to the concept of natural rights, but I list property rights as an aquired rights, because the land is not divided from the start, but a division must be agreed upon by contract. In signing the contract however you bring yourself out from the state of nature, in which force may constitute violence.



The problem with your whole viewpoint, which seems to be that all law is based on contract, is that the concept of a contract can't be logically prior to the concept of natural rights. And even if it were, you'd need a new contract for every possible relationship between any number of human beings, for why should a contract (literal or figurative) signed by my ancestors be binding with regard to my actions?

Well, I do not think all law is based on contract. Also a contract signed by your ancestors are of course not logically binding to you, but in order to make any property claims at all, you must join the state.


There is no court or judge in the state of nature, but apparently there are contracts? Your viewpoint seems self-defeating.

By signing a contract you are no longer in the state of nature.


If something is best for the species but violates an individual's right, I will fight against it.

I couldn't agree more, but I don't think we agree on what constitutes an individual right.

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If my sons did not want wars, there would be none - Gutle Rothschild
It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes - Josef Stalin
Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace - Bob Dylan
A prolonged peace favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to degrade the character of the nation. - Immanuel Kant
Thoughtless
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Posted 04/28/08 - 04:13 PM:
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#34
keda wrote:
Both theories presume there is a natural right of property, which is why I disagree with both. I ask again, why should the land be divided equally? That seems to me a completely arbitrary invention.


I believe that there is a natural right to life. This immediately implies that there is a right to live somewhere. This, in turn, implies that we have an equal right to space, which implies that we have an equal right to land. I'm not sure if you grasp--perhaps because I have not explained it properly--that I don't see a significant difference between having air to breathe and having space to exist in. The only (minor) difference is that I can't stop taking up space even if I want to; but whether I am denied access to air or access to space, I will die. Perhaps because it is possible to live in a world in which all the land is "owned" by others, but it's hard to imagine living in a world in which all the oxygen was "owned" by others, the idea of all land being owned doesn't seem as striking, or as immediate to you as does the idea of all oxygen being owned. In fact, it is just as striking, and just as immediate. Simply because I'd go on existing in a world in which all the space (land) was owned doesn't make the situation any more acceptable than the one in which all the oxygen is owned. It would be no less an act of aggression on the part of the oxygen owner(s) even if he (they) sold his (their) oxygen to everyone. The point is that it's not his (theirs) to sell, and the purchase of oxygen isn't exactly voluntary; and neither is the purchase (or rent) of space (land).

keda wrote:
I don't see how it follows. Geolibertarianism seemed completely different from your original standpoint which did not presume equal rights to land. In any case, what exactly do you mean by right to life? That you ought to provide life support to eveyone? I would agree to a right to life only in the negative sense, i.e. prohibiting murder, but not in a positive sense i.e. a life support welfare program.


I do not support a "right to life" in a positive sense. It is an absurd twisting of logic to assert that refraining from appropriating so much land (or oxygen) that others cannot access enough to survive is an acquiescence to a "positive" theory of the right to life. You're basically saying that if someone claims all the land and then refuses to let others use it, resulting in their deaths, he has only failed to "positively" ensure their continued existence, when in reality he is directly responsible for their deaths.

keda wrote:
Well, under libertarianism you would be a murderer.


No, under libertarianism I would be rightfully defending my home. Recall that I mixed my labor with the entire island, thus (under libertarianism) rightfully making it my own. You then refused to leave my island (because we were surrounded buy hundreds of miles of ocean, but no matter), thus making you an intruder; so I defended my home, and ended your life in the process. Under libertarianism, what I did was entirely right and just. You'd need some sort of restriction on land appropriation via the "mixing of labor" with that land in order to get around this. wink

keda wrote:
I do ascribe to the concept of natural rights, but I list property rights as an aquired rights, because the land is not divided from the start, but a division must be agreed upon by contract. In signing the contract however you bring yourself out from the state of nature, in which force may constitute violence.


Why must the land be divided by contract? Can't we just agree that everyone has an equal right to access it? That way, if you want to use far more than you need, you can compensate the rest of us (for trampling our rights) by paying us a citizen's dividend (an equal payment to all of us). Of course, anything that you produce while using that land is absolutely yours; but the land can never be yours. How could it? You didn't make it.

keda wrote:
Well, I do not think all law is based on contract. Also a contract signed by your ancestors are of course not logically binding to you, but in order to make any property claims at all, you must join the state.


Why must we claim land as property?

keda wrote:
I couldn't agree more, but I don't think we agree on what constitutes an individual right.


My arguments follow only from the individual right to life.


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Posted 04/28/08 - 10:36 PM:
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#35
Floyd wrote:
A lot of people who call themselves libertarian are willing to use coercion or aggression to claim and maintain control over natural resources such as land, water, oil and so forth. This willingness and ability to use violence to claim and have control over natural resources is usually called ownership, and the owned item is called property. These so-called libertarians support the institution of property more than they support the non-aggression principle. Without that dispute over the distribution of control of natural resources, right-wing libertarianism is almost the same as stateless socialism. But I just call myself an anarchist so as not to imply I support any political philosophy--be it leftism/socialism or rightism/libertarianism--that allows one group of people to violently take and maintain control of more than their fair share of the natural resources.

My favorite anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote, "There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines." I think that is relevant in its point that the way to create a free and fair society is for the oppressed to defend themselves from oppressors who control the oppressed by coercively taking control of the natural resources.
Thoughtless wrote:
That's an interesting quote, but I'd shorten it to, "There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth." I don't believe that a machine can be "appropriated", because it is indisputably owned by its inventor, and there is nothing malevolent about any voluntary change of hands which might take place after its invention.

As for anarchism, I don't want to derail the thread, but I think that the following is quite a nice little refutation: if you don't support the systematic (i.e., centralized or government-controlled) use of force to prevent coercion, then you, by lack of intervention, do support the systematic (i.e., gang-controlled) use of force to prevent coercion (at least that coercion of which the gang(s), according to their whim, do not approve). So we've arrived at a contradiction, and the whole thing falls apart.

I suppose we can leave the topic of anarchism for another thread as to keep this one on-topic, considering that it seems you and I hold essentially the same view regarding land and its appropriation.

Machines and other forms of wealth can be difficult to judge whether they are a form of produced value or the type of shared resource such as land or air. Nonetheless, most political philosophers seem unable to come to agreement on the more blatantly non-produced natural resource like land. If and when we can all sort that out agreeably, then I'm sure we can all also find a way to deal much more agreeably with other resources, commodities and so-called property using the agreed upon principles.

Thoughtless wrote:
I think, rather, that everyone has an equal right to exist, which implies an equal right to access to land, but not necessarily an equal right to access of all natural resources. My argument against the possibility of private land ownership is that in order to mix your labor with land you have to first appropriate it, necessarily in violation of the right to equal access of everyone around you. This is not the case, however, with oil or metal. You may be appropriating it against the desire of those around you, but trampling on the desire of others does not hold quite the same moral weight as trampling on the rights of others, and oil is not a requisite of existence as is space.

Your "right to exist" seems to be something I have assumed without saying explicitly. I suppose that's because most people already agree that all people have a right to exist, even if they do not agree with what other rights that entails.

I still like to say that I want a society in which everyone has an equal right to all natural resources. That's my way of saying that I will not tolerate the use of force, by a person or group who has claimed ownership of more than their fair share of natural resources, to enforce that claim. I would consider that to be an offensively aggressive act of force, in the same general category as murder, battery and so forth. Whereas I would see it more as a defensive or restitutive use of force for people who are being forcefully denied their equal share of natural resources to use force to disallow the others to take more than their fair share of mutually desired resources; I would put that latter use of force in the same general category as defensive homicide or making a vandal pay for the damages the vandal caused to a window produced and 'owned' by someone else. (With that said, I think it's helpful in practice for us to be hesitant to use force, especially when there are non-violent alternative and when the line between defensive and offensive/aggressive is more ambiguous. For the same reason, as a rule of thumb, I think it's helpful to put the burden of proof on the one using force as much as is feasible in practice.)

Floyd wrote:
I wouldn't tolerate political inequality on the basis of strength versus weakness because strength and weakness are incredibly ambiguous in social interactions between large groups of self-interested creatures.
Thoughtless wrote:
Floyd, have I ever told you that I've learned much from you through participation in this forum? Obviously, we disagree on several issues, but I think that we agree about far more. I know for a fact that you helped to inform my theories on morality, and I suspect that I helped to inform yours. I recall quite a few threads in the ethics section where you and I wrangled with moral objectivists...

Anyway, all this flattery is simply a prelude to my stating that I agree wholeheartedly with what I've quoted, and I think that you said it well.

Thank you. I've enjoyed having discussions with you and learning from you too. grin

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Posted 04/29/08 - 12:02 AM:
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#36
keda wrote:
Perhaps you should read what I said again. I'm not positing a hyper idealized place, nor that agents agree to promote common good at the expense of their own, nor do I make any of the three "highly questionable assumptions". If you want to question any assumptions, question the ones I made, and not someone else. I addressed the problem of entitlement you brought up, proposing how fair entitlements can be achieved.


Do you not assume that a society is just if and only if everyone agrees to it? That's a major assumption. And since no one actually unanimously agrees on anything in the real world, you would have to construct an idealized place where agents are perfectly rational or some such.

And finally, unless you can explain why the strong would voluntarily submit to the weak, you are assuming that at least one class of people acts against their self interest.

keda wrote:
A society consists of a number of people who have entered into a contractual agrement, but it is not just because they agree it is, but because the criminals (contract violators) have been brought to justice and punished for their deeds. IF someone is stubborn and does not agree, then he does not belong to the society, but exists in the state of nature, where he is not protected by the laws of the society. Nobody is forced to agree anything after all, and if he finds it more beneficial to live by the laws of the jungle, then so be it. If the house owner sees there to be nothing to benefit from a treaty then I'm not forcing him. Note however that your fantasy land is less realistic, because having the most guns strategy will not be beneficial in the long run. A society can only form when its participants are weary of war that they see it more beneficial to bury the hatchet. Who builds a house, or grow corn, when there is war, but who can wage war on an empty stomach and no house to defend?


So criminals are not protected by laws? May people line up at women's prisons and repeatedly gang rape them, then?

You are creating a false dichotomy - our law, or the law of the jungle. What if I want something in between? Why should I be thrown to the jungle because, say, everyone else agrees to a fascist dictatorship but I want a democracy?

What history are you relying on there? As far as I can tell, the history of man is the history of domination. A peaceful society is usually not brought about by everyone laying down their arms and singing "kumbaya," but by the weaker submitting to the stronger. Then the weak are exploited - they certainly don't have libertarian rights. This social contract is pure fiction. People never sat down and agreed upon it, and even if they did, their descendents certainly aren't ask to agree to the society created by their forefathers. Its "live by our law, or go to prison!" So I'll probably agree to live by their law, but its not like I really have a choice. If a libertarian considers that an instance of true agreement, one wonders why he doesn't say that agreeing to give a mugger my money is an instance of true agreement.


keda wrote:
Your last question is interesting, because nature has in the strong ones usually also put in strong tribal instincts to protect the weak, not because its beneficial for him, but because it is beneficial for the species.


I suggest reading "the selfish gene" by Richard Dawkins - it explains all about the evolutionary origins of altruism. My evolutionary "purpose" is not to propagate the species, but to propagate MY genes, even if its at the expense of the species. I will only have an evolutionary incentive to protect the weak if they are likely to share my genes - like family members, or members of a close-knit tribe. It is certainly completely false to say that I have an evolutionary incentive to help weaker people who are not related to me.

So I ask again, why would the strong agree to any social contract that prevents them from exploiting the weak?

Edited by Mike H on 04/29/08 - 12:07 AM
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Posted 04/29/08 - 01:40 AM:
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#37
thoughtless wrote:
I believe that either the idea of restrictions on the sale of land or a land tax (as proposed by geolibertarians) would resolve the circularity of the libertarian justification of property rights. Since the land itself is not the product of anyone's labor, no one can claim to own it, and any appropriation of so much land that there is not enough for everyone must be counterbalanced by the payment of damages to those whose right to space you have infringed upon, i.e., everyone. However, anything that is the product of someone's labor should be protected as property, and this follows in a straightforward way from the principle of self-ownership.


I don't think entitlement to the product of one's labor follows from the principle of self-ownership. Do you have your own argument for that? I'm familiar with the one equating confiscation of the product of one's labor with servitude. I'll assume that's the argument you're going to use, since its the only plausible one I know of - and I want to argue against it smiling face

If someone takes the product of my labor, I am essentially the involuntary servant of the thief, according to that argument. But I think that argument only works if you don't know ahead of time that the thief is going to take the product, or if you have no choice but to work. If you live in a town of desperately poor people, and you erect a giant jewel-studded statue made of pure gold on your lawn, knowing for certain it will be gone by the next morning, can you legitimately claim that the robbers placed you in servitude?

If you think so, suppose instead that you live in a town with a bear problem, and you spread out a thousand fresh fish on your lawn. Can you legitimately claim that the bears placed you in servitude? If you don't think you can legitimately make such a claim, whats the difference between the two cases? Wouldn't I just be stupid to think desperately poor people would behave any differently from hungry bears? And wouldn't that make a claim that I was subjugated by the poor people who stole my statue just as ridiculous as a claim that I was subjugated by bears who ate my fish?

So the point of this is that if you know that x percent of the product of your labor is going to be taxed away, it seems a bit facile to claim that you are subjugated by the government - that your self-ownership is violated. Its only by luck that you were able to earn that much from your labor anyway - in all likelihood there are millions of people who work twice as hard as you do for a tenth as much. And ideally, the tax revenue would go to benefit such people (and you as well!). Nature puts a tax on the labor of such people so huge that government taxes are nothing in comparison. And you benefit from their cheap labor. So if your tax money goes to benefit them, who's the servant of whom?

I apologize if that's not at all the argument you wanted to make!

So back to your post - if its not the case that entitlement to the product of one's labor follows from self-ownership, then libertarians are stuck with a circular argument. They try to prove property rights via the non-aggression principle, but in the end they just have to assume property rights.

thoughtless wrote:
Libertarians, as you said, believe in the absolute right to property, but define property as anything which can be gained through production or trade, when a more reasonable definition would be anything that was originally gained through production and has since been traded freely. This would obviously exclude land, for though some may claim that it is "traded freely", it was certainly never produced by any person. I personally think that "production" should include excavation, so that oil, ore, minerals, etc., may be owned by the person who excavated them, simply because no man, woman, or child on Earth needs oil, ore, minerals, etc. to survive in the way that they need space to survive.


I agree, except some libertarians have that homesteading principle. Which I don't think is very reasonable, and full of problems as to what counts as a legitimate claim to land. But many libertarians are still very convinced of it.

thoughtless wrote:
Socialists, on the other hand, suffer from muddled thinking in that they relentlessly personify "society". My biggest gripe with socialists is their claim that anyone who's made a fortune through legitimate (i.e., non-coercive) means owes a debt to "society", for it is quite clear to me that--since we're excluding those who achieve great wealth through coercion--their fortune was paid for, down to the penny, by whatever product or service they gave to society in exchange for that fortune. A debt would imply that the fortune was stolen, when in fact it was freely given by a multitude of individuals ("society"wink for whatever wealth was created by the holder of the fortune. In other words, Larry and Serge of Google don't owe a debt to society for their fortune; that fortune was "paid for" by the wealth that is Google.


Well I'm no socialist, but I have to agree with them somewhat here. It is true that trades are mutually beneficial - people gain wealth by providing society with services it desires. But you're forgetting the institutional context in which that occurs - the trades resulting in people gaining wealth don't happen in a vacuum. Property rights have to be protected - you have to have a whole system of politicians to make laws, military and police to enforce and defend them, and bureacrats and officials to carry them out day to day. Those people don't have to do that, or do it well. They could just let the law of the jungle rule - in which case the physically strong and ruthless would get rich, not the people who serve society well. So isn't only reasonable to think people who gain wealth only because these people worked hard owe a debt to them? Should those people not be compensated for providing a good institutional context for the gaining of wealth? And if they are to be compensated, where is the compensation to come from, if not from the people who gained wealth as the result of their efforts? If they don't have any income, they can't enjoy any of the wealth created by people who get rich. In other words, how are they going to be compensated by getting Google if they can't afford an internet connection?

thoughtless wrote:
I think that I'm persuasive enough to convince a standard libertarian of the folly of land ownership. Obviously, all the world's land was at one point unowned, so it is up to the standard libertarian to explain how the first land "owners" ended up owning their land. The predictable response would be that they "mixed their labor with it", but this falls to a simple refutation: before you can significantly mix your labor with something, you must control it; but to control it, you must restrict others' access to it; but to restrict a person's access to a thing which you do not own is to coerce them; therefore, it is impossible to ever legitimately come to own land.


Well Locke qualifed his argument that one can come to own land by mixing one's labor with it - there has to be enough available for everyone, so that you don't have to shove away competitors (aggressing against them) to claim land. Libertarians often forget that, but if they remember it, it nullifies your argument.

thoughtless wrote:
I caution you to resist the temptation to personify society. It's not that finite resources belong to society, it's that everyone has the right to at least be left alone to attempt to live, and this implies that we all have an equal right to access land. I do not believe that finite resources belong to "society", for some finite resources are not essential to life, such as oil or metal. If someone goes to great trouble to excavate either, I see no reason why anyone should have the right to take it from him. It is only when he tries to claim the very space around him that he infringes on the rights of others. To make my point even more clear, note the difference between every person having the right to life and the right to everyone's life belonging to "society". The former is morally intuitive and agreeable, and the latter is a nightmare.


I just personify society as shorthand. I don't think I run the risk of causing people to believe society is actually a person. By society, I mean "every individual, equally." Oil or metal doesn't belong to everyone equally, because they require effort to extract - they are a product of labor. But I think that if they were just sitting around, freely available, they would belong to everyone, equally. Even if they are not essential to anyone's life, why should anyone have more claim than another to such freely available resources? (of course there's the labor involved in going and picking up the resource - but I discount that, just as I discount the labor required to go and occupy some freely available land).

But regarding oil and metal as they actually are, under the ground, how do you decide based on the "right to life" who gets to mine those resources? If all resources initially belong to society, society could make some rule governing access to resources that require effort to extract. But if those resources - being not necessary for life - belong to no one initially, is it just first come, first serve?

thoughtless wrote:
To your first complaint (external costs), I can only echo another poster, Fried Egg, and say that external costs are not caused by an over-zealous enforcement of property rights, but rather a lax enforcement of the same. Take, for instance, the case of a polluter. It is not his property rights which are at fault, it is his failure to adequately respect the property rights of others, by negligently allowing noxious chemicals to invade their property.


Property rights aren't perfectly definable though. No one lives in an isolated bubble - he must benefit from or suffer from the actions of others, including the trades between others. For example, if I'm allergic to smoke, and every single restaurant and bar everywhere allows smoking (because its profitable), do I not suffer from not being able to go out anywhere? If I'm in a wheelchair, and its not profitable for any business to put wheelchair ramps in so I can have access, do I not suffer? I'd say that its a general rule that whenever you belong in a sufficiently small minority in a certain market, where no profits are to be made from servicing you (either from high costs or low revenue), you suffer from a negative externality in a system of perfectly enforced property rights.

[quote = thoughtless]To your second complaint, I can only submit that our moral intuitions must not be the same. I can also point out, however, that your theory that "most people" hold wealth gained through luck in disdain is clearly falsified by the vast number of people who purchase lottery tickets.[/quote]

How is my claim that a necessary condition of wealth is luck falsified by the fact that vast numbers of people are unlucky and poor?


Edited by Mike H on 04/29/08 - 01:46 AM
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Posted 04/29/08 - 02:46 AM:
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#38
Thoughtless wrote:


I believe that there is a natural right to life. This immediately implies that there is a right to live somewhere. This, in turn, implies that we have an equal right to space, which implies that we have an equal right to land.

The second implication is not valid. It is possible for two people to coexist on an island with unequal ownership to the land.

I do not support a "right to life" in a positive sense. It is an absurd twisting of logic to assert that refraining from appropriating so much land (or oxygen) that others cannot access enough to survive is an acquiescence to a "positive" theory of the right to life.

Well, that was not my argument. There is a difference between merely refraining from doing so, and claiming that you have a right to some oxygen, let alone an equal share of oxygen.

You're basically saying that if someone claims all the land and then refuses to let others use it, resulting in their deaths, he has only failed to "positively" ensure their continued existence, when in reality he is directly responsible for their deaths.
[quote]
That doesn't follow. One may be consequence to someone's death but not directly responsible.
[quote]
No, under libertarianism I would be rightfully defending my home.
Recall that I mixed my labor with the entire island, thus (under libertarianism) rightfully making it my own.

All libertarians do not accept the principle of homesteading. I personally think its coersive, and not in line with the basic libertarian principle of respect for one anothers liberty. In general all claims of property are coersive unless they are consent based, which includes your claim that everyone has equal right to land and space.

You'd need some sort of restriction on land appropriation via the "mixing of labor" with that land in order to get around this. wink

Of course, and I am suggesting it must be based on consent, as in respecting the liberty of the person left without land, not equal sharing of land.

Why must the land be divided by contract? Can't we just agree that everyone has an equal right to access it?

We can do it; then it would be by contract, but the question is, would everyone agree to an equal division? I suggest it is as unrealistic as to expect a major investor and a minor investor to share the profits equally.


Of course, anything that you produce while using that land is absolutely yours; but the land can never be yours. How could it? You didn't make it.

I don't take making something as to be a criterium for owning it.

Why must we claim land as property?

I'm not saying you have to do it, but for most people it would be much more beneficial to do so.

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Posted 04/29/08 - 03:39 AM:
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#39
Mike H wrote:

Do you not assume that a society is just if and only if everyone agrees to it?

I do not make such an assumption.
[quote]
And since no one actually unanimously agrees on anything in the real world, you would have to construct an idealized place where agents are perfectly rational or some such.

All partakers of a particular contract unanimously agree on it. While it may not be beneficial now, or even in a thousand years, sooner or later warfare will become obsolete and people will sign a contract of perpetual peace, unless they exterminate themselves before that happens.

[quote]
And finally, unless you can explain why the strong would voluntarily submit to the weak, you are assuming that at least one class of people acts against their self interest.

Strong people can cooperate with weak and each benefit more than when they did not, since the weak may be able to contribute much more under the protection of the strong, and they could negotate as to share the benefits equally. I'm not saying that it is always beneficial for the strong to cooperate with the weak, and I'm certainly not saying that the strong should cooperate with the weak against their will.


So criminals are not protected by laws? May people line up at women's prisons and repeatedly gang rape them, then?

No and no. Criminals are protected by the law too, but they are not from a punishment proportionate to their crime, that they consented to in the agreement of the contract.

You are creating a false dichotomy - our law, or the law of the jungle. What if I want something in between? Why should I be thrown to the jungle because, say, everyone else agrees to a fascist dictatorship but I want a democracy?

You must realize that there is no one else to set up a democracy with if everyone else is in a fascist dictatorship. If you could persuade someone else to join you, then of course, you can set up your democracy. I'm not denying that there can be several states, but one state to another are still in the state of nature and may wage war against each other and there is no notion of just war unless an international court has been set up with international laws.


What history are you relying on there? As far as I can tell, the history of man is the history of domination. A peaceful society is usually not brought about by everyone laying down their arms and singing "kumbaya," but by the weaker submitting to the stronger. Then the weak are exploited - they certainly don't have libertarian rights. This social contract is pure fiction. People never sat down and agreed upon it, and even if they did, their descendents certainly aren't ask to agree to the society created by their forefathers.

I'm not a historician and I do not tailor my theory of justice after history. That would be incorporating injustice into injustice which is absurd. If you see it that justice is an impossibility then I don't see what the point is debating with you anymore, but if you see it as a possibility then why not strive for it?


Its "live by our law, or go to prison!" So I'll probably agree to live by their law, but its not like I really have a choice. If a libertarian considers that an instance of true agreement, one wonders why he doesn't say that agreeing to give a mugger my money is an instance of true agreement.

To agree to a mugger to give your money, is to give away your money. This does not mean the mugger is innocent, especially if he threatened you.


I suggest reading "the selfish gene" by Richard Dawkins - it explains all about the evolutionary origins of altruism. My evolutionary "purpose" is not to propagate the species, but to propagate MY genes, even if its at the expense of the species.

I have read it and I do agree with Dawkins in so far that there is a tendency for altruism to develope under certain conditions. I don't think however he said the latter, but it has been a long time since I read the book, and I can't be sure, but in any case if he did it would be self defeating and a inconvenient blemish in an otherwise mathematically precise truth. Then again Dawkins has made a lot of other surprisingly and obviously incorrect statements so it may not be surprising that he could have made such an error.


I will only have an evolutionary incentive to protect the weak if they are likely to share my genes - like family members, or members of a close-knit tribe. It is certainly completely false to say that I have an evolutionary incentive to help weaker people who are not related to me.

We are all related; only a tiny fraction of our genes actually differ and even a smaller fraction is in direct competition with one another, and mostly of the former fraction are cooperating with one another.

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If my sons did not want wars, there would be none - Gutle Rothschild
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Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace - Bob Dylan
A prolonged peace favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to degrade the character of the nation. - Immanuel Kant
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Posted 04/30/08 - 09:14 AM:
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#40
Floyd wrote:
I still like to say that I want a society in which everyone has an equal right to all natural resources. That's my way of saying that I will not tolerate the use of force, by a person or group who has claimed ownership of more than their fair share of natural resources, to enforce that claim. I would consider that to be an offensively aggressive act of force, in the same general category as murder, battery and so forth.


I think that you have to make a distinction between basic, essential resources such as land, air, and water, and non-essential resources such as oil and metal. I don't think that one can claim more than one's "fair share" of metal or oil, because I don't think that anyone has a "fair share" to metal or oil. If I find some metal, it's mine. It's not like my appropriation of the oil is infringing on the right of another to exist. Since there's no "right to have oil", it doesn't offend my "moral intuition" (using "moral" in a strictly subjective sense, of course wink) if someone hoards all the oil. And if I'm hoarding my oil and someone tries to take it from me, I'll defend it, with force if necessary. On the other hand, if I'm hoarding all the land and people try to take some from me, I'm not justified in using force to stop them, because I can't own land just by finding it.

Floyd wrote:
Whereas I would see it more as a defensive or restitutive use of force for people who are being forcefully denied their equal share of natural resources to use force to disallow the others to take more than their fair share of mutually desired resources; I would put that latter use of force in the same general category as defensive homicide or making a vandal pay for the damages the vandal caused to a window produced and 'owned' by someone else.


I would agree, but only in the case of basic, essential resources. I'm not forcefully depriving you of your rights by hoarding oil, because you don't need oil to live. It might help to consider something less useful than oil; say that I've collected and am hoarding all of the rocks of a particular shape that I like. No one has a natural right to such rocks, and no one needs such rocks to survive. If you simply want my rocks, and you try to take them from me, I'm going to defend them against theft. Now, you don't need oil to survive any more than you need neat-shaped rocks. The fact that a lot more people would want to take my hoarded oil from me than would want to take my rocks is of no consequence.

Mike H wrote:
I don't think entitlement to the product of one's labor follows from the principle of self-ownership. Do you have your own argument for that? I'm familiar with the one equating confiscation of the product of one's labor with servitude. I'll assume that's the argument you're going to use, since its the only plausible one I know of - and I want to argue against it

If someone takes the product of my labor, I am essentially the involuntary servant of the thief, according to that argument. But I think that argument only works if you don't know ahead of time that the thief is going to take the product, or if you have no choice but to work. If you live in a town of desperately poor people, and you erect a giant jewel-studded statue made of pure gold on your lawn, knowing for certain it will be gone by the next morning, can you legitimately claim that the robbers placed you in servitude?


Rubbish. If a woman dresses up like a whore and goes to a bar full of known rapists, can you legitimately claim that the rapists violate her rights when they proceed to rape her? Please. rolling eyes

Mike H wrote:
If you think so, suppose instead that you live in a town with a bear problem, and you spread out a thousand fresh fish on your lawn. Can you legitimately claim that the bears placed you in servitude?


If bears were intelligent and had free will, their theft of my fish wouldn't be inevitable, so your attempt to make theft by starving people seem inevitable doesn't hold water.

Mike H wrote:
And wouldn't that make a claim that I was subjugated by the poor people who stole my statue just as ridiculous as a claim that I was subjugated by bears who ate my fish?


No, because bears are basically mechanical, whereas people are intelligent and have free will.

Mike H wrote:
So the point of this is that if you know that x percent of the product of your labor is going to be taxed away, it seems a bit facile to claim that you are subjugated by the government - that your self-ownership is violated.


So if I warn you ahead of time that I'm going to come and steal all of your furniture, and I have a big mob of people who agree with me that it should be taken, you won't complain? Or, to more accurately reflect what you're saying, if I warn you ahead of time that I'm going to siphon one dollar out of every five that you earn from your checking account, and I have a big mob of people who agree with me that I should do so, then you won't mind if I start taking a portion of your earnings, because you'll know it's coming? Good to know. I'll circulate a petition and get back to you.

Mike H wrote:
Its only by luck that you were able to earn that much from your labor anyway - in all likelihood there are millions of people who work twice as hard as you do for a tenth as much.


How do you know for a fact that it's only by luck that I was able to earn whatever it is I have earned?

Mike H wrote:
So back to your post - if its not the case that entitlement to the product of one's labor follows from self-ownership, then libertarians are stuck with a circular argument.


Fortunately, it is the case. nod

Mike H wrote:
Well I'm no socialist, but I have to agree with them somewhat here. It is true that trades are mutually beneficial - people gain wealth by providing society with services it desires. But you're forgetting the institutional context in which that occurs - the trades resulting in people gaining wealth don't happen in a vacuum. Property rights have to be protected - you have to have a whole system of politicians to make laws, military and police to enforce and defend them, and bureacrats and officials to carry them out day to day. Those people don't have to do that, or do it well. They could just let the law of the jungle rule - in which case the physically strong and ruthless would get rich, not the people who serve society well. So isn't only reasonable to think people who gain wealth only because these people worked hard owe a debt to them? Should those people not be compensated for providing a good institutional context for the gaining of wealth? And if they are to be compensated, where is the compensation to come from, if not from the people who gained wealth as the result of their efforts?


This doesn't fly, because not only is a lot of our infrastructure private, a lot of it that's currently public could be private, and it would end up costing less. So if I was only able to make my fortune because I had access to roads, and these roads ended up costing 50% more than they would have if they were private, then, really, the public owes me money. If they were private, I would have spent 50% less, and that money would have gone directly to the entity which provided the roads.

The point is that you can't owe a debt to society for using private services (because you pay for them each time you use them), and there's no reason why you should owe a debt for public services which are thrust upon you in lieu of the equivalent private services. Again, it's like the homeless man who washes your windshield and then demands payment. Even if a clean windshield is an essential asset to you, you could have chosen to have it cleaned by someone who, firstly, wouldn't have forced the transaction, and secondly, would have charged less.

Mike H wrote:
Well Locke qualifed his argument that one can come to own land by mixing one's labor with it - there has to be enough available for everyone, so that you don't have to shove away competitors (aggressing against them) to claim land. Libertarians often forget that, but if they remember it, it nullifies your argument.


The problem is that even if other people are not present, there is an implied resistance to your appropriation of excess land. If a non-land-owner were present, they would resist. By your reasoning, I could go to the arctic and claim the land for as far as the eye can see, even though there are people all over the world who (purportedly) don't even have a right to the space which they must necessarily occupy.

Mike H wrote:
I just personify society as shorthand. I don't think I run the risk of causing people to believe society is actually a person. By society, I mean "every individual, equally." Oil or metal doesn't belong to everyone equally, because they require effort to extract - they are a product of labor. But I think that if they were just sitting around, freely available, they would belong to everyone, equally. Even if they are not essential to anyone's life, why should anyone have more claim than another to such freely available resources?


Because the appropriation of said resources doesn't infringe on any other person's right to exist. If I do the work of going around collecting all of the seashells in the world, why should you be able to come take them from me? I'm not infringing on your right to life by hoarding seashells. Not so with space (land).

Mike H wrote:
If all resources initially belong to society, society could make some rule governing access to resources that require effort to extract. But if those resources - being not necessary for life - belong to no one initially, is it just first come, first serve?


Yes, it is; as long as those resources aren't basic necessities. Why should it be any other way?

Mike H wrote:
Property rights aren't perfectly definable though. No one lives in an isolated bubble - he must benefit from or suffer from the actions of others, including the trades between others. For example, if I'm allergic to smoke, and every single restaurant and bar everywhere allows smoking (because its profitable), do I not suffer from not being able to go out anywhere?


Sure, but the perpetrator is not any individual, it's your allergy. If I'm allergic to light (and some people actually are), do I have the right to make restaurant owners everywhere dim their lights for me? No, because they are not violating my rights; if anything, my allergy to light is "violating my rights".

Mike H wrote:
I'd say that its a general rule that whenever you belong in a sufficiently small minority in a certain market, where no profits are to be made from servicing you (either from high costs or low revenue), you suffer from a negative externality in a system of perfectly enforced property rights.


If no one wants to sell you something because it wouldn't be profitable for them to do so, maybe you ought to offer them a higher price. Why should they be forced to serve you if they don't want to? That sounds like slavery.

Mike H wrote:
How is my claim that a necessary condition of wealth is luck falsified by the fact that vast numbers of people are unlucky and poor?


You claimed that most people hold "wealth gained through luck" in disdain:

Mike H wrote:
Most people think its wrong for some people to earn vastly more than others despite not having worked any harder for it (whether its a result of luck, or natural skill or whatever)...


I pointed out that this is falsified by the fact that a great number of people buy lottery tickets (and that most people have gambled at least once). Why would they attempt to make a fortune through pure luck if they think that it's so "wrong" to do so?

keda wrote:
The second implication is not valid. It is possible for two people to coexist on an island with unequal ownership to the land.


Not without one violating the other's right to exist, or at least hanging the implied threat of doing so over their head. If you own 99% of the island and I own 1%, then if I stray from my little plot then I am an intruder and you can kill me in defense of your property. You are not denying me the right to exist, but you are placing extreme conditions on it (by restricting my freedom of movement). This only reaches equilibrium when we both own half of the island.

keda wrote:
Well, that was not my argument. There is a difference between merely refraining from doing so, and claiming that you have a right to some oxygen, let alone an equal share of oxygen.


That everyone has the right to an equal share of oxygen follows from the fact that no one has the right to appropriate all of the oxygen, and the argument is very similar to the argument given above about division of a desert island. If I have a right to exist, and you appropriate 99% of the atmosphere's oxygen, leaving me either short of breath or only able to breathe in a particular area, you haven't denied me the right to exist, but you have placed conditions on it. Why is slavery as bad as murder? A slave owner doesn't deny his slave the right to exist, but he places conditions on it. Similarly, anyone who appropriates more space (land) than they need places conditions on the existence of everyone else around him, and should compensate them for doing so (or simply refrain from doing so).

keda wrote:
All libertarians do not accept the principle of homesteading. I personally think its coersive, and not in line with the basic libertarian principle of respect for one anothers liberty. In general all claims of property are coersive unless they are consent based, which includes your claim that everyone has equal right to land and space.


No, my right to products of my labor is not coercive; it would be coercive to take it from me. I don't need anyone's consent to exist, and so long as I do not infringe on anyone's rights, no one has the right to tell me what I should do or how I should do it, because that would carry an implied threat of violence, and I have infringed on no one's rights. So if the product of my labor isn't mine, I have been told what to do ("Make something for the collective") without justification.

keda wrote:
Of course, and I am suggesting it must be based on consent, as in respecting the liberty of the person left without land, not equal sharing of land.


How are you respecting the liberty of someone with no land if you have more than you need? You are claiming ownership of the space in which they exist, and thus claiming ownership of their right to exist.

keda wrote:
We can do it; then it would be by contract, but the question is, would everyone agree to an equal division?


Again, we don't have to agree to an equal division, but simply recognize that everyone has an equal claim on all land. That means that if we use more than our rightful claim, we must compensate everyone else. If someone doesn't agree to an equal right to access land, then they don't agree that people have the right to exist, and therefore they believe that they have no right to exist.

keda wrote:
I don't take making something as to be a criterium for owning it.


If I make something and I don't own it, then I was forced to make it for someone else, which is slavery, and violates my right to exist (by carrying an implied threat of violence against me if I don't behave in a certain way, even if the alternative behavrios which I would choose would not violate anyone's rights).

keda wrote:
I'm not saying you have to do it, but for most people it would be much more beneficial to do so.


I think that allowing people to claim ownership of huge areas of land has been mankind's single most detrimental act.


Edited by Thoughtless on 04/30/08 - 09:21 AM

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