Which part are you having trouble with? Reading the words? Understanding them? Considering opinions that are different from your own?
Please point out where I’ve stated anything with the force of religious conviction. Please point out anywhere where I’ve advocated for a particular ideology. (You’ve actually already criticized me several times for not advocating for particular ideologies.) Throughout this discussion you’ve been spouting libertarian dogma and I’ve been asking you to think more critically about some of it. I have not spouted any dogma of any variety in turn.
What do you mean by “ethical burden”? Do you mean that a starving person may actually be justified in stealing from a rich man?
Anyone who wants to maximize his or her utility. Undermining market rules can work really well if you can tip them in your own favor.
You own something because you can “ethically use proportional force to stop them.” You can “ethically use proportional force to stop them” because you own it. Circular definition is circular.
If your notion of ethics is predicated on your notion of property rights then your definition of property rights cannot be predicated on your notion of ethics.
Unless your system is internally consistent but externally unjustifiable dogma. In which case, carry on I suppose.
It’s unfortunate that you’re unable to debate without resorting to insults. I fear you would do poorly in a reputation economy.
Markets are spontaneously organized, they’re mechanisms not centrally planned constructs- by centrally planned I mean by people who aren’t participating in said markets. Markets without top down management, and enforcement, are comprised of people interacting voluntarily, the fact that they do so to acquire needed resources doesn’t say anything about the markets.They’re just the best method of resource allocation that humanity has devise thus far. Again required resources aren’t determined by the market they’re determined by individuals and the laws of nature.
No one has to participate in any particular market, without government force that is, they do so because it’s efficient. Whether a particular market is considered to have moral rules is up to the individual to decide. That’s market competition.
I can’t have an economic system without government force. Markets and resulting economies develop without central planning. How would a market benefit from losing market actors? Doesn’t make sense. If history is our guide only government use up people to no benefit.
Again no is demanding anything. Markets are an example of spontaneous organization. People are free to experiment with any number of trading rules. Because resources are finite there will always be markets to allocate them. The solution is for people to voluntarily help those in need. I do so, so do many others.
Yes… initiation force vs defensive force. Pretty uncontroversial IMO. It seems an important distinction to me. Your comment appears to attempt to erase that distinction.
Yes those are mechanisms people have developed to allocate resources. New better ideas of resource allocation are always welcome.
Christ, you’re boring, you know? All you do is derail any conversation you can possibly wedge your tedious, selfish philosophy into, just like every other libertarian on the internet. It’s like a particularly monomaniacal chatbot…
That’s nonsense. Nobody makes you trade in a market, but your conception involves my respecting all its property claims - not taking food people saying they own, not using land people say they own, not using ideas people say they own, who knows where the boundary is.
Markets are not spontaneously organized, they are organized by the application and enforcement of rules. You claimed to acknowlege this, but are still talking as if it isn’t the case, or at least as if the rules don’t extend to people who aren’t voluntary participants. Because nobody would ever want to steal.
You didn’t answer my example of taking bread that someone had set on the ground for a moment. Was it ok to me to do so, seeing as how I didn’t initiate force, or should I listen to them say they’re entitled to it because they paid for it earlier? If so, why shouldn’t they listen to me when I say society is entitled to some portion of their income, because of all it did to make it possible?
Tax laws are just words on paper, compliance with tax laws is achieved with threats of violence up to violence.
That may be true of some people who follow libertarian ideas. It may seem like this to you but how else do discussions often start, with a single issue maybe? The dislike for all governments, well most current ones, is generally due to the use of force. A characteristic that underlies all government actions.
And it could conceivably result in fewer problems. No one can know the outcome of change, but certainly attempting to follow an ethical structure while enacting change is preferable to change, of lack thereof, following the precautionary principle.
The initiation of force and the use of force to defend are to different things.
I don’t know. If not it would just mean that people would prefer to use private entities to provide services.
No it doesn’t validate them but it certainly argues that there is interest in them. Crazy ideas? Come on now.
I haven’t read much of her work but I’ve seen many debates she’s had. I don’t think she shied away from debate.
You implied that my ideas had the force of religious conviction. That is incorrect so you put words/motivations in my mouth, hence the pot/kettle. Seemed obvious to me.
Stealing is still stealing but the remedy for the different thefts, if there is one, should be proportional.
That’s not an insult. It is a criticism but they’re not the same thing.
They’re also determined by the structure of the market. I already explained this quite clearly.
Markets rely on boundary conditions to function in the first place. You’ve admitted as much. In our particular market economy, ownership of land is one of those boundary conditions. However, ownership of land precludes widespread hunting/gathering and subsistence farming as viable fallbacks for individuals who are unable to acquire “required resources” from the market economy. Thus, participation in the market economy is mandatory, not voluntary.
Basically, you seem to think it’s more ethical to force poor people to suffer than to force rich people to pay taxes. I disagree.
As I’ve already explained, the necessity of food and shelter make this not true. Attaining food and shelter require participation in the market economy. If there are any alternatives please point them out.
That’s an incredibly collectivist argument for a libertarian to be making. If being a “market actor” is not sufficient to provide myself with necessities like food and shelter then why should I care whether the market is benefiting or not from my participation? I should do whatever I need to to maximize my utility as an individual rather than suffer for the “good of the market”, shouldn’t I?
Well that’s certainly sweet of you but I have this nagging suspicion that this wouldn’t actually be a “solution” for poverty, hunger, or homelessness. In fact, I’d bet a pretty good amount of money that under a purely voluntary system all those problems would actually get worse. If that was the case then this wouldn’t be much of a “solution”, would it?
Not erase; problematize. I think your definitions are too simplistic and fail to be applicable to the real world as a result.
Yep, and me respecting yours. That’s how non-violent, voluntary interactions works.
We do because we decide how/if we want to interact.
If you knew the person owned the bread and you took it anyway you would be breaking market rules, for most markets. So I would guess that few people who participated in the market would want to interact with you.
All of society or just some? Did the person contribute more than they received? How do you determine that society did in fact make it possible rather than impede? Difficult questions, certainly I wouldn’t presume to advocate taking resources based on such flimsy information.
“Pot/kettle” refers to an idiom: “the pot is calling the kettle black”. The idiom refers to situations in which your interlocutor is accusing you of a fault that he or she is also guilty of. In this case, you’re accusing me of doing something different then what I am accusing you of so “pot/kettle” is inapplicable and therefore confusing in context.
So what’s the remedy for a starving man stealing a loaf of bread from the rich man?
Your proposal is to replace a democratic government over which all people have some constrained control with a private system which would be completely controlled by the wealthy.
This is really a shining example of the way liberals and libertarians talk past each other. Libertarians seem to assume liberals are pro-government.
No. Liberals are as critical and wary of government as pretty much anyone except libertarians. The difference is that liberals see government as a flawed backstop against oligarchy whereas libertarians either seem to think oligarchy in the absence of government is impossible (despite the wealth of historical examples provided by every civilization ever to exist on earth) or actually desirable.
I don’t know about more, it seems it’s a huge demographic overlap with the kind of people who have strong visibility through the internet. Self-described Randian heroes who justify having more things than other people because of their inherently superior qualities now run successful start ups and do TED talks, where lots of other people come across them.
Fine. We claim a certain proportion of your income is actually the property of the society that makes it possible, which will be paid to its representative government and distributed accordingly. In exchange, we will respect your claim to the bread that was set down for a moment, the house you say you own, and so on; otherwise you can go find your own market somewhere else.
In other words, the system we have now, except in recognition of the non-aggression principle we can’t imprison you for not paying taxes. All we can do is take all the stuff you were hoping to persuade us to recognize as your property, whenever we can do so without direct bodily harm to you. Change the locks, that sort of thing - you can watch us do it so long as you don’t fight us.
Is that what you were going for? It works with your rules, but does have taxes, probably used for public health care. Are you ok with them in that context?
Edited to add:
This is no idle example, either. At one point for instance there were functioning alternatives to the US economy, as represented by the Native Americans. A big part of why those fell apart is because of settlers seizing land and wiping out bison until they could not continue to function, sometimes with that aim in mind.
Not without violence against people, but certainly the Natives were being undermined without that, and in many cases they initiated force in response. stupendousman condemns the force, but is does he think the appropriation and destruction that provoked it was fair game? His rules don’t seem to tell.
They don’t actually say much, really, unless an entire conception of what is property and who can own it is a hidden presumption. Which goes with my point (a).
It’s the definition you provided. And it doesn’t work because it’s circular.
This is either a non-sequitir or misses the point entirely.
It seems to me that you’ve been arguing all along that ownership justifies “proportional use of force” to protect property.
In other words, ownership is prior to ethical use of force.
When I ask you what ownership is predicated on – what is prior to ownership – you responded that ownership is determined by when “proportional use of force” is ethical to prevent someone from taking it.
This is circular. You use ethics to justify your concept of property and then use property to justify your concept of ethics.
Well, I’d have been quite interested in a debate about the pros and cons of Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general - it’s the kind of interesing, educational conversation that I have been very fond of BoingBoing for providing me with for at least a decade. Then, along you come, and wind folks up (as you surely knew you would, same as the last thread you did this in), and get everyone off the point, and arguing with you, because that’s what you really enjoy.
I didn’t dispute that. I said markets are spontaneously organized, there’s no bogeyman there. So railing against markets makes no sense.
Sure. I would welcome a solution to this boundary.
You’re the one putting labels on very specific conditions here. All property owners aren’t rich nor are all poor people suffering. All I’ve said, in so many words, is that property owners have a right to the use of their property, non-owners don’t. That’s the starting condition. Outcomes will vary.
Again so what? Unless one goes back many, many years this has always been the case. If someone wants to live a semi-neolithic existence more power to them. Of course the advancement, or should I say progress in, human interaction has made this difficult to do without first participating in markets. You seem to be arguing that this is unfair, I agree, but I don’t see an easy solution. The starting conditions were set long ago. This is part of the reason that I advocate competing government/social/markets. But we have to use the current set of rules to get there.
You don’t have to care, I wasn’t making a collectivist argument. I think you’re not getting what I mean when I say markets are an example of spontaneous organization- many individuals pursuing their self-interest benefit when there are more choices. More actors means more choices so people would generally choose actions that kept participants rather than not.
So, your solution? Force people to give resources to other?
The difference between the initiation of force and force used in defense is fundamental. Without it the idea of self-ownership is meaningless.
