Question to libertarians: why is theft wrong?

[BCPVP]

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Killing is wrong because human beings have value, not because of some metaphysical theory of ownership.

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FWIW, I agree that humans have value. No reason that it can't be wrong to kill them both because they have value and because they own themselves and therefore have a right to not have their life taken.

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To say that killing is wrong because of ownership is to turn human beings into pieces of property; giving them equal status to things and turning them into commodities, which is beyond disgusting.

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Not really.

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Put differently, in your view, killing is wrong because it is doing something to someone

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No reason to beat around the bush. That someone is owned by himself and so it is wrong to do "something" to that person without their consent.

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Even if nobody owned Jim down the road (including Jim himself), killing him would be wrong because he is a thinking, choosing being with a sense of justice.

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What if he's comatose? Apparently it would be fair game to kill him because he cannot think, choose, or display any sense of justice. At least under your sytem. Under mine he owns himself regardless of his mental state and so is not fair game. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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On the other hand, property rights, in your sense, come from four things, all necessary:

1. Self ownership
2. World ownership
3. Theory of initial acquistion
4. Theory of legitmate trade.

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Those last three are logical extensions of the first and it's been explained how enough times already.

[moorobot]

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1. Self ownership
2. World ownership
3. Theory of initial acquistion
4. Theory of legitmate trade.


Those last three are logical extensions of the first and it's been explained how enough times already.

[/ QUOTE ] They are not logical extensions of the three, and the moral arguments that tried to connect them have lost the historical philosophical debate decisively. I could just as easily say I have explained many times why self-ownership does not lead to world-ownership.

[moorobot]

If Jim is comatose he both was and is likely to soon be again a thinking, choosing human being.

Let's try another angle on property in addition. Jim finds several million dollars worth of resources out in the middle of nowhere. For the sake of the debate, let's say nobody owns these resources.

Since nobody owns them, under the ownership theory of ethics, it is acceptable if he destroyed them. But this is highly counterintuitive. There are literally billions of humans who can barely or who cannot meet there basic needs. Jim destroying this resources, when they could instead be used to alleviate human suffering by him or someone that comes along later, is clearly wrong if anything is.

The ownership theory doesn't account for this; the "humans are important" theory does.

[moorobot]

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FWIW, I agree that humans have value. No reason that it can't be wrong to kill them both because they have value and because they own themselves and therefore have a right to not have their life taken.

[/ QUOTE ] What happens when the humans have value and the ownership principle come into conflict with each other?

Classic example: Taxing the world's very wealthy to help the world's very poor. We could literally save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people greatly improve the lives of millions of humans simply by taxing 10% of the wealth of a thousand billionaires.

[Al68]

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Matieral goods as well are created on land and made out of nautral resources; that's my whole point: nothing is created completely out of a person's labor. A person's labor essentially never creates any value by itself. To say that a person should own the fruits of her own labor is to say something meaningless.


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I did misunderstand your statement. So I would now say that a person owns the wealth "added" due to his labor. And I only mean he owns the wealth, I don't mean this wealth is equal to any certain "value". By "own", I mean the right to contract, sell, trade, etc. And if the laborer does not own the raw materials, then this contract would have to exist prior to the good being produced.

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I'm making no such assumption. I never said anyone was entitled to any certain value for their labor. I said he has ownership rights to it. Ownership rights are the right to contract with their labor, or with the result of their labor. That does not imply that one is entitled to any certain value from his labor.

[/ QUOTE ] You said that a person owns the wealth created by his labor: "
And as for property ownership being a right, well that's a result of the idea that a person owns his own labor and the wealth created by that labor. So the person has ownership rights to this property." In no way did my post accuse you of saying somebody is entitled to a certain value for that labor; that has nothing to do with anything.


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I believe your post said that I assumed that the monetary value of wealth is created by labor. I didn't say that. I said that the wealth itself (ie, the product) was created by labor, and owned by the laborer. There is a huge difference here. It's the difference between Marxism and libertarianism. I said, if I make something, I own it. That's all. I can sell it or trade it as I please. That's what I mean by ownership, the right to contract, not any entitlement to any certain value at all.

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You don't know what Marx's labor theory of value is. It is the view that work creates the monetary value of a product; but that is false, consumer demand, not labor, creates the monetary value.


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I agree that consumer demand creates the monetary value of a product. I never said otherwise. I never said that the laborer was entitled to this or any other monetary value. I think you misunderstood what I meant by "ownership". I mean the right to contract, trade, sell, etc. I did not mean any kind of entitlement whatsoever. And I was not using the word "right" as a synonym for entitlement. And I certainly did not mean that the "value" of the product was determined by anything other than market forces.

As a matter of fact, I never said anything about how the value of anything should be determined. I was only talking about who owns it, who has the right to sell it, and who does not have the right to have any say in the matter (people who are not parties to the contract).

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I thought my post was very clear but you misunderstood it completely. The point is this:

You jump from self-ownership to world ownership. But that jump is not warranted; you have in no way shown how self-ownership leads to ownership of land or matierals, or the profits that come from labor.

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Well, I never said anything about the ownership of the profits that come from labor. Unlike Marx, I don't believe the laborer owns this. I believe the laborer owns the product of his labor before he sells it, then it belongs to the buyer. Ownership of wealth is tranferable.

As far as land ownership, you're right, I didn't show anything about it. Most land ownership theories are based on "who got there first". Labor has nothing to do with it. And again, I don't think this was the subject of this thread, except to the extent that the laborer may not own the raw materials of the product he creates, in which case he would need to contract to sell the added value in advance, which is the case with employment.