Sorry if this has been covered and/or is unintelligent.
Man acts. If man acts, he uses scarce resources as means to achieve an end. One of those scarce resources is always his self.
When it comes to your self, there can necessarily be only three possibilities:
Your self is owned by you.
Another person or group of persons owns your self.
Every person has an equal share of ownership in every other person (also read as: no one owns anyone).
Since 2 and 3 would have others having part or full ownership of your self, how would you act if you didn’t own your self? By the very fact of being conscious, you would be acting, as even inaction is action. Even thinking about getting approval to act from others would constitute as an action. So how could others own your self if you are already acting and using your self as your private property without their consent?
Doesn’t the very fact that you act NECESSITATE that you own your self? And since you necessarily own your self you own your labor? And therefore private property is a fact of the world? For if you didn’t own what you labor, then you would not own your self. And if you did not own your self, you would not be able to even act.
If you own your self, you necessarily own your actions. If you own your actions, you necessarily own your labor (which is the amalgamation of your active efforts with natural resources).
Your use of the term “own” is just plain sloppy here, actions cannot be “owned” in the sense of external objects (I won’t go into whether it “self-ownership” is even intelligible in this sense) hence this statement makes no sense.
This statement yields nothing of value once we realize that talking as if one “owns” one’s actions the same as one “owns” external objects is gibberish.
You’re begging the question of what it means to own something. Also, you’re implying a sort of dualism, which you haven’t given support to anywhere.
Can you separate your self from you? If you are the same thing as your self, how can you act upon your self in owning it? If you and your self are separate, what distinguishes one from the other? If ownership is a necessary relational state of all scarce, natural things (which is implied by the necessary conditions you give), you and your self are separate, and you own your self, what owns you?
Also, your point is wholly irrelevant, since it says nothing about other people forcing you to do things. You’ve merely demonstrated the relation that you are the only thing that can cause your self to act, not that it is illegitimate for others to influence you to act in certain ways by threatening you or attacking you.
What you’re saying boils down to essentially saying “you are the only thing that can physically interact with the your self and this interaction cannot be terminated. Therefore, the ‘right’ to control your self is relegated to your you, and because your self interacts with other physical objects, denial to the exclusive use of those physical objects once your self has interacted with them would imply that you do not control your self, which we know to be incorrect. Therefore ownership of property exists”. This is completely riddled with non sequiturs.
The way I understood the way you put it was this. Part of defining “control” or “possess” is action, in the sense of praxeologic. There is no dualistic, unless somebody wants to see it that way. A human controls or acts. What do they control and act? Their person or human: hence human action. What do they control or act? Their choice. That is what human action is. When a person acts, they are controlling or in possession of their own actions, in other words, their actions are deliberate and have purpose. And what an individual is controlling or acting (their person/human) is semantically and conceptually called his or her property. Property is another word for person/human, now onto labor and external property.
The labor aspect is an extension of the human acting, and mixing their labor with an external object such an object is now deliberately their object. Their actions or, in other words, control has physically mixed with the object. There is a transfer of physical energy into lifting an object or making an object by the person, and it is their physical energy. The object doesn’t lift up in the air on its own when I pick it up. Some of my physical energy transfers into the object. The argument as to who’s just property, the property is - that is a lawful and/or ethical inquiry that can be explained by human action as well.
"if a person A were not the owner of his physical body and all goods originally appropriated, produced or voluntarily acquired by him, there would only exist two alternatives. Either another person, B, must then be regarded as the owner of A and the goods appropriated, produced, or contractually acquired by A, or both parties, A and B, must be regarded as equal co-owners of both bodies and goods.
In the first case, A would be B’s slave and subject to exploitation. B would own A and the goods originally appropriated, produced, or acquired by A, but A would not own B and the goods homesteaded, produced, or acquired by B. With this rule, two distinct classes of people would be created—exploiters (B) and exploited (A)—to whom different “law” would apply. Hence, this rule fails the “universalization test” and is from the outset disqualified as even a potential human ethic, for in order to be able to claim a rule to be a “law” (just), it is necessary that such a rule be universally—equally—valid for everyone.
In the second case of universal co-ownership, the requirement of equal rights for everyone is obviously fulfilled. Yet this alternative suffers from another fatal flaw, for each activity of a person requires the employment of scarce goods (at least his body and its standing room). Yet if all goods were the collective property of everyone, then no one, at any time and in any place, could ever do anything with anything unless he had every other co-owner’s prior permission to do what he wanted to do. And how can one give such a permission if one is not even the sole owner of one’s very own body (and vocal chords)? If one were to follow the rule of total collective ownership, mankind would die out instantly. Whatever this is, it is not a human ethic.
Thus, one is left with the initial principles of self-ownership and original appropriation, homesteading. They pass the universalization test—they hold for everyone equally—and they can at the same time assure the survival of mankind. They and only they are therefore non-hypothetically or absolutely true ethical rules and human rights." - (Hoppe intro to TEOL)
I believe this might help you and others clear up some loose ends / understand the issue better.
What Libertarianism Is - Stephan Kinsella
… What is distinctive about libertarianism is its particular property assignment rules: its view concerning who is the owner of each contestable resource, and how to determine this.
Property in Bodies
A system of property rights assigns a particular owner to every scarce resource. These resources obviously include natural resources such as land, fruits of trees, and so on. Objects found in nature are not the only scarce resources, however. Each human actor has, controls, and is identified and associated with a unique human body, which is also a scarce resource.[7] Both human bodies and nonhuman, scarce resources are desired for use as means by actors in the pursuit of various goals.
Accordingly, any political theory or system must assign ownership rights in human bodies as well as in external things. Let us consider first the libertarian property assignment rules with respect to human bodies, and the corresponding notion of aggression as it pertains to bodies. Libertarians often vigorously assert…
I recommend everyone go read the above piece, it’s great. Too much to paste, I left out all the good relevant parts and answers contained within - respond to objections raised by others against the OP. Property is naturally the link between economics & ethics.
Thanks Conza for filling in the ethical, lawful aspect of this, as well as how human action doesn’t work outside of the deductions of the universalization test.
No. It’s apparent that that’s what he’s driving at. Arguments like these are always interested in establishing a natural and irrefutable framework for libertarian ethics, but the fact is, all he’s demonstrating is that you (which seems to be some abstraction which he’s provided no evidence of actually existing) necessarily control your self (which I will take mean your physical body), nothing more. The fact that one thing is interminably linked as the cause of the function of another thing does not demonstrate ownership nor does it demonstrate exclusivity of use. It’s a weak attempt at avoiding the use of a normative argument to demonstrate libertarian natural law.
But you say nothing in this post about “people forcing you to do things”, which neither did the OP. But then you imply the OP should have by making the claim the OP “…says nothing about other people forcing…” That’s why I said you jumped ahead of the OP, and now this post of yours isn’t even in the context of my comment which was a response to this below. You’re zig-zagging. This is what I responded to:
Now what would you like to discuss? This that I responded to, or what you said in this recent post of yours. Two different issues.