Thread: a quick thought
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Old 07-11-2007, 02:12 PM
pvn pvn is offline
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Default Re: a quick thought

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Two questions, I guess:

A.) It is morally acceptable for you to force me off land that you claim to own if I don't believe in ownership?

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Sure. Because all I have to do is say I don't beleive in a right to not be assaulted. If you're not violating anything, then neither am I.[/i]

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I'm stipulating that the land owner is an ACist...in which case I assume he believes in a right to not be assaulted, right? Are you just saying that the ACist has a right to suspend his own morality in order to coerce/assault someone who doesn't agree with that morality?

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Why doesn't he? Are you saying that morality is subjective, but you can't change your mind about it?

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If the ACist changes his morality to something that disgrees with AC, you are changing the premise of the question rather than answering it.

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How so? The question doesn't specify anything about the property owner's morals, only the squatters.

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B.) If the answer to (A) is "yes", isn't the person you are forcing off the land being involuntarily coerced into accepting your view of morality?

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Nope. He doesn't have to accept anything. He's just removed from that piece of land. He can then accept whatever view of morality he wants.

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I guess "accept" is the wrong word. Perhaps I should say "obey". My point is that he is coerced by the ACist in the same was that the ACist is coerced by the state.

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No, the state acknowleges property (to an extent), and imposes its power anyway.

Since your hypothetical person doesn't recognize property, the "coercion" he experiences is effectively nothing different than the "coercion" you would experience if you tried to pitch a tent in a bear's den. The bear doesn't "own" the cave. What are you going to do when he violates your rights and assaults you?

Without property, we devolve to might makes right.

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The bear is not a moral actor. You are. You have the ability to make decisions as to what it moral and what is not. We could all decide that assault is immoral without recognizing property, and simply allow people to go where they wish and do what they want. They would be more "free" under this system than the AC one. In fact, they would be most "free" without any restrictions on assault either.

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I'll go along with this. However this sort of freedom isn't my concern.

Further, in such a case, more assaults are *going* to occur, regardless of what anyone thinks about the morallity of such assaults. This should be quite obvious from the fact that people must eat to survive, and without the concept of property to protect investments of time and labor, conflicts will arise over the low-hanging fruit (quite literally, in this case). The conflict between the property "owner" and the squatter are really near the bottom of concerns here.

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AC limits freedom and imposes coercion by forcing people to obey property rights and prohibiting assault, whether they agree with these principles or not.

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AC doesn't "do" anything.

People defend themselves and the products of their labor.

People realize that cooperation has a higher EV than conflict. Property rights are ultimately a manifestation of voluntary cooperative agreements.

Moral systems are subjective in my opinion. However, some are objectively superior to others. Ones that are consistent are superior to inconsistent ones. I don't believe it's possible to construct a moral system which is consistent AND allows for self-ownership BUT does NOT allow for property rights.

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(You could say that someone who assaults another person has voluntarily chosen to engage in their social system, but you can't necessarily say the same thing about someone who wanders onto another's property.)

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No to both. If you initiate a transaction without consent, you haven't chosen to engage in a social system, you've chosen to IMPOSE a social system. And you have no expectation of the other party returning the interaction in any particular way (unless we're talking about some weird, self-evidently inconsistent system where you have a right to aggress but nobody has a right to defend themselves against you).

Someone who wanders onto property also has not (necessarily) engaged in *anything*. But not all wanderings are equal. Wandering into the parking lot of an office building in the middle of a wednesday afternoon is not the same as wandering into someone's bedroom at midnight. Agree or disagree?

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Statism does the same thing, based on different and/or additional underlying principles. But the difference is one of degree and not category.

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It's quite more than a difference of degree. Property (legitimate property as described by AC theory) arises from voluntary interactions. States do not. Statism is a construct that is imposed *over* a structure of property. Property predates the state, it is a necessary condition for a state.
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