This looks like a fun thread. Allow me:
My scenario was abstracted from the discussion of workers taking control of a factory. My understanding is that capitalists, be they statist or anarchists, believe people have a “right to defend their property,” which I have translated into the rationale to beat someone up for using a given product. If a factory owner didn’t use violence to forbid anyone from entering his factory and using his equipment for their own ends, then it would be impossible for him to accumulate vast quantities of wealth. So I would say that this scenario is very common. Presently, the state punishes “theft” by putting people in jail. The situation in Argentina is an exception and is fairly limited in nature anyway.
Well, there is a very large can of worms here that would take ages to work with in detail (the NAP, property rights, etc), but I can go over it briefly.
A person owns their own body, correct? From their body they derive property due to them earning it through the work of their own labour, or through non-coerced trade. If I go out and, using just my own hands (more complexities will follow), make a hut, then that hut is mine due to my having made it. The raw materials (wood, stone, straw, etc) are no one’s unless used or leased. A rock sitting on the ground in of itself has no utility, but used to make a house it does and thus becomes the property of the person using it.
That is where Mutualists and Voluntarists generally agree. Where the disagreements start is absentee property. Now, the Mutualist summarizes that the guy who owns a bunch of factories hasn’t actually made anything, that in fact it was the factory workers who made the products and thus they should own them. The problem here is that the factory owner’s factories did not pop into existence without any human action, and the factory owner himself had to have gained those factories somehow. It is possible that he, say, mugged people, lied, and stole things to get those factories, or that he actively violated property rights, but in that case he is a criminal for having committed such crimes, not for owning factories. To own those factories legitimately (again, assuming he didn’t engage in coercive action), he had to have either earned enough money (or whatever the medium of exchange is called) through legitimate means to purchase/construct them, or he had to have inherited it from someone ELSE who earned the money needed to construct the factories (If THAT person earned the factories through illegitimate means, then we just go back a generation and the same principle applies as if the factories were constructed with loot).
Now, does a factory worker own the things he makes? Well, the person who made a hut through his own labour does (I will deal with the communist issue with this briefly, as it is far easier to kill), so why not the worker? Well, the worker ISN’T making those things through his labour alone. He is hardly strolling onto the assembly line and expected to find raw materials to put together a car with his hands, is he? He is provided machines that aren’t his to make portions of (or whole, depending on the factory) products with raw materials that aren’t his, in a building he didn’t contribute to the construction of. Yes, it is very true, he HAS contributed; the machines can’t man themselves (yet)! But the PORTION he has contributed is pre-supplied by the entrepeneur producing the product in the form of his paycheck, which both the worker and entrepeneur have to negotiate for to reach a common agreement (some statist interventions have impeded this relationship over the years, but in the hypothetical Voluntarist society they wouldn’t). In fact, the factory worker has the far safer job; he is pre-paid for his labour, whereas the entrepeneur has absolutely no guarantee that anyone will buy his product.
Now, seeing as how you are an Anarcho-Communist, I will provide an example for if you disagree with the Mutualist-Voluntarist section on you owning the hut you built. If you don’t own the home you live in, why can’t I bust the door down and take a dump on your bed? Why can’t I burn it to the ground while you are away? In the example of that bike and skateboard, while I can’t beat you up and take the skateboard, why can’t I wait until you have left it unattended and then take it? After all, by your logic, no one owns those things. There is no particular reason for me to not steal your stuff. You have the right to prevent me from stealing your things through force (again, non-aggression-principle), as does the factory owner of the previous example of preventing workers from trashing his factory and preventing other workers from working.
When we are talking about individuals fighting each other with their fists, then yes I would agree that the costs can be more of a deterrent. However, in real life the exploiters have formed alliances and wield powerful weapons. Why do you pay taxes? Is it not because the state is much more powerful than you? Why does the state use violence if it is not “profitable” for them? Is it not also likely that such power would be used to define what property is and thus determine who gets rich and who stays poor?
But to be capable of looting, you require an initial investment, just like a regular business venture would. The costs would vary depending on who you were planning to attack, but if those you were planning to attack had anything of value worth taking then you would require a lot of cash to buy the equipment to overcome whatever defenses they may have. You would need to find goons to help you in your venture, and would need to have enough promise of loot to keep them from finding a more profitable, legal venture to undertake. In addition, war making is an extremely risky job, and it is doubtful many people would risk their lives for you if you didn’t pay them absurdly well, which would require you attack a very wealthy target. This wealthy target, unless populated by pacifists, would likely have private defence agencies and possibly local militias and volunteer forces to prevent themselves from being an easy kill for raiders, and thus you would have to have enough money to supply what would amount to an army. Even assuming you managed that, you would need to both avoid excessive damage (it would be hard to extort a profit from a city levelled by artillery fire and strategic bombers) and at the same time have to deal with angry guerillas armed with small arms. Such guerillas have fought the entire US armed forces in addition to a sizable portion of NATO to a practical standstill, and they are armed with rusty equipment from the 1950s. It is doubtful you would manage to do better with a smaller army (unless you are making the equivalent of trillions of dollars in cash to pay for a huge, technically advanced force, in which case you have no reason to be wasting time on conquest) and with the bonus of being punished heavily in profit for all the destruction you cause without first looting. There would be (and are) two ways to deal with such insurgents: Mongol style, by burning cities to the ground and scaring people into submission (you won’t get much profit this way, and the Mongols only succeeded because it doesn’t take lots of industrial processes and work to make a horse like it takes to make an Abrams tank), or through gritting your teeth and lasting a decade or so of fighting. In either case, you aren’t profiting, and would have better earned your money through legitimate means.
Before you ask, it works for the state because they already start with a tax base that doesn’t consider that it owes nothing, in addition to things like patriotism to get people to forgo considerations of making the most money. If most people in a country rejected the local state’s authority (and in Voluntaropia, they would have to to have reached the anarcho-capitalist point at all), then the only way to be forced back in would be through intervention by another, larger state due to the fact that the government in question would be powerless without people paying taxes without complaint.
Provided that I don’t consume your crops right away, “stealing” your crops would not deprive you of anything because you could simply take them back just as easily. All I have done by “stealing” is move them from one place to another. Whether my car is parked in my driveway or your driveway, is irrelevant to my ability to drive it. It doesn’t become “mine” simply because it’s parked in my driveway. I would say that it becomes “mine” when I unilaterally restrict your ability to use it. What you are afraid of, I think, is that I will take your crops and not let you take them back. This would be an initiation of force on my part. Without the presence of this force, I would not say that I own anything. I merely use some things more than other people use them.
Three raging problems here. First; time is something that is being deprived by taking away and returning later without permission. I might take your car and return a week later with it fully fueled up and in great condition, but maybe you need your car to do your job or get to work. If you are a starving man and I take your only meal and go away for a week, my returning it won’t be beneficial at all to a corpse. Second; Why would you find it an initiation of force if I took your crops and ate them? What makes them yours anymore than they are mine? Without property (and all the things that come with the concept), the only thing that makes those crops yours are vague declarations that stand up no better than my claim to be the owner of the sun. Third; assuming I do initiate force against you, what are you gonna do about it? The exact same problems from the Voluntarist world apply, except you seem to assume that you are a pacifist, and thus can’t respond with force. If you do respond with force, than you obviously aren’t a pacifist, but a follower of (to some degree) the NAP.
My definition of property: An entity to which force provides an individual exclusive access. In this definition, the means by which the entity comes into being is irrelevant. Whether one is justified in using force is irrelevant. It’s purely a descriptive definition.
What I gather to be the ancap definition: An entity to which an individual ought to have exclusive access. The problem I have with this definition is that it contains a normative statement within it. If I use this definition, I contradict myself every time I use the word. If I say one shouldn’t have the right to property, I am basically saying that one shouldn’t have a right to what one should have a right to. My only other option is to say that there is no such thing as property. If you have another word that fits my definition, I’d be happy to use it.
Here is my (imperfect) definition: An entity either created by the labour of a person, or gained through mutually agreed upon exchange with another, which is protected by the same rights and protections as those granted to the life of their owners
However, here you seem to be using a different definition from what I supposed. Are you saying property only comes into being after there is some sort of contract? If I take “your” crops without agreeing to a contract proclaiming them your property, am I not taking your property?
The crops came into being because I planted them there, on property I either homesteaded or gained through trading with another person who did so, using equipment that I either made personally or gained through the exchange of my crops. In a simple example, I used money (again, replace with what you will, the medium of exchange), which I use to represent all of my labour from growing crops and selling them to others who have earned their money through a different trade and require crops, to purchase a hoe from the guy who makes hoes or a tractor from the man who sells tractors (where, in turn, a portion of the money will go to the entrepreneur who purchased the equipment needed to make the tractor, and some of THAT money will go to workers who will make tractors in the future as part of their paychecks). These people then, having made my money from providing equipment that lets me increase my productivity and make more money, will then spend it on things they want. It can be an extremely complex economic chain spanning a very long period of time, but at the end of it there is always someone who made the original “thing” through his own sweat and toil. With the state as the middleman it gets harder because some people benefit from statist benefits gained by thievery, but such people would be unlikely to prosper without being propped up by a government.
Just playing games with math, not making a real point.]? What is my incentive to do that?