a quick thought

[NickMPK]

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Ding ding ding. Without ownership, you devolve to might makes right. Have fun with that.

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You can still be morally opposed to the use of force without accepting property rights. That is, you could say that I only have self-ownership; that is, I have only the right to be where I am right now.

Societies have existed for centuries that acknowledge the right to be free from violence but don't acknowledge the permanent ownership of land.

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But you weren't always there. So you didn't have any entitlement before, and you gave up the entitlement to where ever you were before that. So you go to work, I can move into your house?

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Well sure, if I don't believe in property rights, then I can't keep you from occupying my house if I leave it. A person with such beliefs probably would not own a house. But I don't see how any of this speaks to whether this person is coerced into submitting to property rights in AC society.

[pvn]

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Nick is not saying "Other rights might sometimes be more important than property rights" like you are. He is saying "What if person X doesn't believe in property rights (at all)?"

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ACists are always saying, "If I don't believe in your morality, you have no right to force it upon me." I'm just saying that AC itself forces a morality upon everyone living under it, and it is a morality that adopts a set of axioms that generate property rights and exclude the possibility of any so-called "positive" rights.

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But the only people who "live under it" are those who voluntarily agree to. Ergo, they are not imposed upon.

[2OuterJitsu]

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I believe you got an answer numerous times from pvn and perhaps others, but please link the thread if I'm wrong.

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This is the thread in question. The relevant discussion starts on page 5 or so. Pvn does come closest to giving an answer, which is basically, "if we don't have property, then we have nothing," but that still sound like a mandatory belief in property rights to me.

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It's not mandatory, It's inherent and inescapable. It extends from owning yourself. If you however were to argue that you don’t believe in property whatsoever, than I’ll have to call bs, I cannot assault you if you don’t own you. You cannot be robbed, raped or suffer any injury at all. If you can be robbed, than you can own things. Land is just one of those things. What quality of land do you believe makes it “un-ownable” that doesn’t apply to any other “property”.

[pvn]

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Ding ding ding. Without ownership, you devolve to might makes right. Have fun with that.

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You can still be morally opposed to the use of force without accepting property rights. That is, you could say that I only have self-ownership; that is, I have only the right to be where I am right now.

Societies have existed for centuries that acknowledge the right to be free from violence but don't acknowledge the permanent ownership of land.

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But you weren't always there. So you didn't have any entitlement before, and you gave up the entitlement to where ever you were before that. So you go to work, I can move into your house?

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Well sure, if I don't believe in property rights, then I can't keep you from occupying my house if I leave it. A person with such beliefs probably would not own a house. But I don't see how any of this speaks to whether this person is coerced into submitting to property rights in AC society.

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He's not compelled to be a member of any society. This is like saying that you don't recognize the authority of Wal-Mart while you're in "their" store. But nobody has compelled you to enter the store in the first place.

Since you think being removed from the store would be assault, we'll just build a big brick wall around you. Will moving your rotting corpse in three weeks be considered "assault"?

[NickMPK]

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Nick is not saying "Other rights might sometimes be more important than property rights" like you are. He is saying "What if person X doesn't believe in property rights (at all)?"

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ACists are always saying, "If I don't believe in your morality, you have no right to force it upon me." I'm just saying that AC itself forces a morality upon everyone living under it, and it is a morality that adopts a set of axioms that generate property rights and exclude the possibility of any so-called "positive" rights.

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But the only people who "live under it" are those who voluntarily agree to. Ergo, they are not imposed upon.

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You could say the same thing about democratic statism. You are free to leave, and thus by staying, you are agreeing to the coersion of the state. If all of the property on a physical piece of land is "owned" in an AC society, how is the anti-property person supposed to live without (a) being coerced to accept property rights or (b) leaving?

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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I'm just trying to point out that AC society would require the same coercive acceptance of property rights that statism does.


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How is this "coercion" you point in AC anything close to the same as the coercion of the current US state? Come on no way are they the same.

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Of course it is not comparable. We are discussing rights here, how many of the decisions made i.e. during Bush was based on prioritizing rights? Most seems to be based on the principle of limiting freedom for no other good reason than limiting that citizens locally and abroad conduct actions that he/his followers don't like due to lack of tolerance. He also thinks that 10 Iraqi/Afghani lifes is worth saving one American life, what kind of principle is that? He forces people to pay tax to an operation with an inherent goal to discriminate based on nationality. A conscious population is needed in any sort of society, otherwise the results become what we see today.

[NickMPK]

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This is the thread in question. The relevant discussion starts on page 5 or so. Pvn does come closest to giving an answer, which is basically, "if we don't have property, then we have nothing," but that still sound like a mandatory belief in property rights to me.

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It's not mandatory, It's inherent and inescapable. It extends from owning yourself. If you however were to argue that you don’t believe in property whatsoever, than I’ll have to call bs, I cannot assault you if you don’t own you. You cannot be robbed, raped or suffer any injury at all. If you can be robbed, than you can own things. Land is just one of those things. What quality of land do you believe makes it “un-ownable” that doesn’t apply to any other “property”.

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Ownership of land is not "inherent". Societies have existed throughout history and around the globe that did not recognize it. We have adopted the principle of land ownership because we think it makes for a better society. But not because there is some higher Platonic truth to it.

[ConstantineX]

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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 choose to enter knowing which principles would be in place.)

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David Friedman makes the point on his website that while the initial assignment of property rights by the market may be arbitrary, the government has even less of a claim on those same assets or at the very least its claim is just as spurious. And it is clear once property rights have been assigned the development and maintenance of those assets "flows" to those who perform that job best, far more fair than any government has done. Allowing private hands is "equitable" because the market system ensures those flows go to those who utilize them best.

I find the concept of "homesteading" to be the most equitable, especially in the modern age. The distribution of land, the longest recognized asset, is initially I admit a conundrum. But typically the way the recognized government expropriated most of its land by conquest or rebellion, usurping some previous property rights, mitigates the "fairness" of its current property protecting institutions. For most of history, governments claims to existing assets are just as illegitimate in your view as any private claims. In the modern age, we can even go further. Any new asset class that arises presumably required the ingenuity of the "prospector", "entrepreneur", "pioneer", what have you, to utilize his ingenuity to capture utility and package it into a medium fit for consumption. This is clearly illustrated in the evolution of radio; for a while after Marconi discovered it, large companies had no idea how to structure the product they discovered. In Europe, the government turned to subsidizing radio. In America, some entrepreneur hit upon the idea of selling advertising through radio and thus made it big business. We can think of this "pioneering" as a reward to entrepreneurs who make a claim to some medium, transform it through personal ingenuity into a marketable asset, where the government can play a proscriptive role in organizing tradable property rights. No doubt this is very lucrative, because these innovations are nearly always transformative.

[2OuterJitsu]

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ACists, however, claim that they would not force any set of beliefs onto unwilling people. I'm just trying to point out that AC society would require the same coercive acceptance of property rights that statism does.

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ACists are always saying, "If I don't believe in your morality, you have no right to force it upon me." I'm just saying that AC itself forces a morality upon everyone living under it, and it is a morality that adopts a set of axioms that generate property rights and exclude the possibility of any so-called "positive" rights.

The person who doesn't accept the legitimacy of property rights is just an example of a person involuntarily coerced under AC, just as the person who doesn't accept the legitimacy of the state is involuntarily coerced by the state.

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Well sure, if I don't believe in property rights, then I can't keep you from occupying my house if I leave it. A person with such beliefs probably would not own a house. But I don't see how any of this speaks to whether this person is coerced into submitting to property rights in AC society.

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It’s not a question of belief. It’s a question of behavior. What an ACist believes is not equal and opposite to what a Statist believes. A Statist believes that his/her beliefs entitle him/her to control/coerce me. If the arguments were:

Statist: I don’t believe in owning guns. Therefore I don’t own a gun
ACist: I believe in owning guns. Therefore I own a gun

Statist: I don’t believe land can be owned. Therefore, I don’t own any land.
ACist: I believe land can be owned. Therefore, I own land.

They would be equal and opposite (morally). However:

Statist: I don’t believe in owning guns. Therefore you can’t own a gun
ACist: I believe in owning guns. Therefore I own a gun

Statist: I don’t believe land can be owned. Therefore, you can’t own any land.
ACist: I believe land can be owned. Therefore, I own land.

Is the argument, they are not equal at all. The Statist believes that his beliefs entitle him to restrict my behavior. ACland has room for everyone, Stateland however does not.

(You are also making an additional leap that trespassing entitles the land owner to assault you. I don’t think ACist would agree (I don’t)).

[NickMPK]

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It’s not a question of belief. It’s a question of behavior. What an ACist believes is not equal and opposite to what a Statist believes. A Statist believes that his/her beliefs entitle him/her to control/coerce me. If the arguments were:

Statist: I don’t believe in owning guns. Therefore I don’t own a gun
ACist: I believe in owning guns. Therefore I own a gun

Statist: I don’t believe land can be owned. Therefore, I don’t own any land.
ACist: I believe land can be owned. Therefore, I own land.

They would be equal and opposite (morally). However:

Statist: I don’t believe in owning guns. Therefore you can’t own a gun
ACist: I believe in owning guns. Therefore I own a gun

Statist: I don’t believe land can be owned. Therefore, you can’t own any land.
ACist: I believe land can be owned. Therefore, I own land.

Is the argument, they are not equal at all. The Statist believes that his beliefs entitle him to restrict my behavior. ACland has room for everyone, Stateland however does not.

(You are also making an additional leap that trespassing entitles the land owner to assault you. I don’t think ACist would agree (I don’t)).

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My whole point is that the ACist belief in property does restrict my behavior.

ACist: I believe in property. Therefore, you can't be on my property.