It’s just my personal term for having agency over my own mind and body.
Being both a woman and a person of color, I understandably have major problems with the concept of ‘ownership’ where any sentient, intelligent life is concerned.
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I am glad you like it and I hope you start using it. Words mean; that’s what words do. Sovereignty has a different meaning than ownership. Meanings have consequences and it is important how they are used “in every day political debate.”
“Right” and “privilege” both convey that one has some type of claim. But would you not agree that the two words convey further meanings that complicate said claims in substantial ways? I’m not trying to be a pedant and I swear I’m not a prescriptivist language asshole. But the intersect of language and politics is extremely important.
I kind of expected that rejoinder. However, I was thinking less about physical aggression than other moral obligations. You are libertarian and I bet you think you have some kind of right to “speak freely”. I do as well, but not in the sense that you do, I’m sure. This thread isn’t the place to argue that, but I do believe that our disagreement is also bound up in the difference between “sovereignty” and “ownership”. We probably have differing opinions on the obligations we have toward other humans that are relevant to “ownership” and “sovereignty” of the self. And on and on.
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Sure. Shoot me an email and I can send you a copy:
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I’ve been giving this some thought. It is quite common to hear people use the terms “my arm”, “my liver”, “my mind”, “my brain”, “my soul”. People are capable of giving “their” organs to another person. We use the possessive to refer to ourselves (!) constantly. This is why I think most people would view most distinctions as semantic.
But now that I’ve thought about it I would go further and say, given “my arm”, “my liver”, “my mind”, “my brain”, “my soul”, how is the sum of those parts not mine? It simply doesn’t stand to reason that my body parts (including the whatever the brain comes up with that correlates to a “spirit”, “soul” or simply “being”) belong to me yet I don’t own the whole.
I do not see any logical inconsistency is saying yes, I own myself, and no, of course I cannot own others.
(Your last paragraph yes, not the place, but you do make some incorrect assumptions.)
But you don’t. Take children, for example.
A child comes from the bodies of two people who ‘donated’ their genetic material, obviously; but those people don’t ‘own’ that child as property - legally, we are not allowed to sell our offspring, or intentionally harm them just because they “belong” to us.
(Just as it’s not legal to kill oneself, although that may not be the best example to use.)
Agency ≠ ownership; possessions are owned, whereas people are living beings capable of making their own decisions about their lives.
It may seem like mere semantics, but words are symbols for ideas; they matter.
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Not yet, anyway.
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You already know I think there is something deeply wrong with such people.
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That’s absurd.
That’s Walter Block. He’s a maroon. Suffice to say he does not speak for me, except for correctly noting that Phyllis Schlafly is no libertarian.
Tell us more about true Scotsmen, er, Libertarians.
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I have a libertarian in my family. He says that on the matter of defining who is and who is not a libertarian, it’s best to read The Anarchists’ Convention by John Sayles.
So, I guess, in defense of libertarians (did I just say that?) I’ll say that at least some of them are very aware of the irony of a libertarian saying someone else isn’t a real libertarian (while still doing it).
ETA: And of course they still do it, it can’t be helped. I can’t help saying some people aren’t real libertarians. There was a candidate for leader of a state Libertarian party who wanted to bring back prohi-fucking-bition.
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Thank you for bringing this up. Small-l libertarian is a big-tent that holds even opposite positions within. But as your example reminds, there are times when a Scotsman is clearly not Japanese.
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This is highly confusing to me, Sayles being no defender of capitalism. From what I’ve read of his interviews/public comments he’s quite averse to ideological labeling, but his voice feels quite left. I’ve only watched his films tho, never read his books. I suppose I’ll have to pick this one up.
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What does his being an evaded slave has to do with anything?
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The analogy is tangential to the book.
The connection being made was that both anarchists and libertarians are sort of walking embodiments of the No True Scotsman problem.
Basically, no anarchist to tell someone else that they are or aren’t an anarchist because they are groups built around not having an authority to tell you what to do (or who you are). The other side of that coin is that the definition of what it means to be an anarchist is owned by each individual in the group, so anarchists often have very strong opinions about who is and is not one.
So the trouble with an anarchist convention is that you can’t decide who gets to come.
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It’s not that authority is absent from anarchism, it’s just that it’s purely based on trust and nothing else. A bit like it theoretically should be in sciences. No wonder one of the most subtle depiction of anarchism in fiction is a faction that defines itself primarily as scientists and keepers of knowledge: the Followers of the Apocalypse in the Fallout series of videogames. Interestingly, as far as I know, they never define themselves as anarchists.
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Ahhh I see, I was reading too literally. Makes way more sense now thanks!
True.
There are certainly no left anarchists who believe ancaps are anarchist (myself included) because the ideology still maintains hierarchies.
I tend to think that ingroup differentiation is more centered around theories of political and economic organization, whereas what separates left from right is fundamentally a philosophical issue. I suppose primitivists occupy a gray area but I don’t take them very seriously. YMMV
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AKA: “public choice: the racist origin of an elitist scam”.
Anyways, it another example of the true mindset of libertarian founders: everything should belong to the highest bidder.
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Reminds me of that anti-union canard, “right to work.”
And don’t profit-driven charter schools get promoted with “school choice”?
Sucks how much the left in the U.S. lets the right highjack terminology in public discourse.
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Hijack. Yes, as if freetard and libtard (which applies fine to wanting m04r prohibition) had been well worked and produced with unmistakable quality and economy.
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