Re: a quick thought
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As I have mentioned in other threads, AC is incompatible with a non-belief in property rights, and will ultimately end up forcibly coercing people who do not believe in such rights.
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I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that people who don't believe they are free will be enslaved?
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If I don't believe that land is capable of being "owned" by a person, should it be morally permissible for someone to force me off of a piece of land just because they claim to own it?
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If you don't believe land can be owned, by what calculus do you think you are entitled to stay?
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Not that I agree with that position neither, but one could argue that every human has the right to physically be whereever he wants, which right do you have to deny me access to xox'x"N xox'x"E? That your grandfather bought it from somebody that bought it from somebody etc. that bought it from the Catholic church (for Europe) gives you the right to deny access to me? Where did that right come from anyway, wasn't it just invented by somebody at one point to restrict other's freedom?
Property rights are a result of interaction and a general consensus that such rights need to be in place, but there are also other conflicting rights, i.e. in Norway I have the right to use uncultivated land for recreation etc., a landowner can't deny me the right to sleep in a tent in his forest etc.. This right stems from a consensus that was in place prior to modern law.
AC'ists choose one of those conflicting rights and puts it above all, claiming that i.e. land ownership is self evident although it is a very recent invention in the big picture, although people interacted and cooperated way before that. Suddenly I have no right to put up that tent since I am coercing somebody although probably the ownership of that land is a result of coercion conducted by the church or king or something after the right to free movement was established. I don't deny that property rights, especially the mechanisms in place to be able to own capital is probably one of the main drivers of recent human progress. Thus both for ethical and practical reason it is a right I hold very high. However I can't see how it suddenly jumped to the top of the rights hierarchy and how this jump to the top doesn't have to be justified (I suddenly have to justify not allowing it to jump to the top).
(In the US this is much easier as there has been a recent relatively fair distribution of land and those losing the right to free movement to some extent agreed to give up that right (although obviously coercion was present) and the ones entering chose to enter knowing which principles would be in place.)
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