Long time browser of the forums, first time poster. I’m an anarcho-capitalist who’s working on ‘converting’ a liberal friend of mine, and I’m encountering some difficulty when it comes to explaining property. It’s easy enough to convince him that taxation is theft, and governmnent is illigitimate, but he’s having a hard time accepting private property, and I’m having problems explaining the concept in any sort of coherent way.
I’m arguing for private property in this fashion.
People are self-owners
If people are self owners, then they own the fruits of their labor.
If people own the fruits of their labor, then they own any property which they mix their labor with.
Therefore, People own any property that they mix their labor with.
It’s lockean, I suppose. Is that how all of you would argue for private property? I’m having a hard time justifying the second and third premises. He does accept the first one, but cannot make the leap to the conclusion.
I really need your help. Can anyone clarify this for me, or point me to literature that does? Have I missed a discussion thread that already covers this topic? Does Rothbard tackle this issue in ‘Ethics of Liberty’? If no, who does? Hoppe? Block?
In any case, glad to be a part of the libertarian community here. You’ve all been of great service to me in the past when I needed help with debates. ; )
Hoppe’s proof is a negative proof. Without private property we would need to ask everyone’s consent before doing anything to anything, a physical impossibility that would result in the extinction of humanity.
Could not property just exist then, without being ‘private?’ What makes the ability to use AND defend property legitimate, as opposed to simply the ability to use it? Where does ‘private’ enter into it, and with what authority?
The idea that everyone owns everything is possible, as stranger pointed out.
If there is a fish, its impossible for “everyone” to consume it. It has to be eaten by one, or several, people. Who gets to eat it? Fairness says the person who caught it.
Channeling my liberal friend, I believe his reply would be that if he is right and property doesnt exist, then it wasnt stolen from you, because you can not have possibly have owned it to begin with.
I believe during our two hour conversation he said that in some ways he sees property as a man-made fabrication; antithetical to the natural state of things. He made refference to the fact that animals do not have property, but live in ‘the commons.’ I did not want to complicate the debate further by talking about what seperates us from animals, and why we have ‘natural rights,’ and they dont. If I had wanted to start that digression though, I’m not sure I could have argued for natural human rights. Perhaps you can see why I’m having trouble.
On the upside, if I convince him of property rights, everything else in the path to anarcho-capitalism logically falls into place without much trouble. ; )
I dont think he was arguing that everyone owns everything, but rather that no one owns anything. Everyone has sufficient authority to use whatever items they happen upon, but they do not own them. Does he circumvent Hoppe’s point about ‘no one being able to use anything’ when he says that?
To keep the fish analogy, I guess the argument is that whoever catches it can eat it, but has no right to claim it as exclusively his. I guess in his world theft would not exist. He does not lay out a particular argument, though; he merely needs to be convinced that one or another is correct.
Do you have a proof for this statement? Isn’t this just assuming what you are trying to prove?
What specifically is your friend’s objection to “private property”? If he does not accept the existence of private property at all, then his position can be easily refuted. You can’t justify stealing something by saying that there’s no such thing as private property, because the act of stealing is itself an assertion that the item in question is the thief’s property. And so, people who deny the existence of private property altogether cannot consistently do or say anything that is at all relevant to those who accept it. It’s like someone who says that there is no such thing as morality—if they really believe that, then they can’t also expect people to change their behavior in response.
In short, everyone implicitly accepts the legitimacy of private property simply by acting. The only question is, who should be the property owner? An absolutist dictator thinks that everything should be the dictator’s property. Libertarians believe that property rights are rightly held by those who first occupy (“homestead”) them. I’m afraid I can’t provide any proof for this being the correct position, but I’m still trying to figure it out.
Ok, even if he concedes that point though, he’ll still want to know what gives a person the right to defend what they’re using. Only one person can eat any particular apple at one time, let’s say. How does it follow that by using it, it becomes their apple? What grants them the authority to defend the apple with force?
I would probably retort with “what grants a person the right to take it?” And I imagine he would say 'because no one owns it. Even though someone is using it, they dont ‘own’ it. It does not become ‘private property.’
So, do you think that the strongest defense of private property rights lies in lockean approprian through labor, or Hoppe’s ‘negative proof.’ Neither? Both?
ownership/property/rights. dont exist aside of the moral agents to which these concepts are useful. obviously if the universe big banged and no life evolved anywhere on any planet above that of insects (exhibiting purely instinctual behaviour ) there would be no such things.
property rights, serve a purpose for rational beings concerned with morality. it is important for rational beings that want to adopt a convention in order to be in harmony with other rational beings. if you are trying to teach any person to adopt a ‘rights’ based approach, you need them to first abandon a nihilistic/amoral approach. then when they accept a moral apprach, you need to explain how morality must be rational, and it must allow agents to use things in the world, and the only coherent and objective moral system is the ‘natural law’ , property rights system.
theres obviously a lot more that can be said about this…
If I had proof of that statement, it would be nonsensical to come looking for it. Ovbiously, I dont.
Maybe; that’s why I was asking for advice
Well, he doesn’t believe that it exists. Or, more accurately, he is not convinced that it exists.
I don’t think that he would call it theft. Ovbiously you’re right that for theft to exist, there must be ownership. If no one owns anything, though, then there is no theft.
Could someone not take your car, for instance, and still reject private property by asserting that it does not exist, and again, no theft is involved?
well, if your friend doesnt accept ‘rights’ then this question makes no sense, as by the premise of no rights, nothnig gives the apple defender rights to defend against the apple taker, and nothing denies the apple defender such defending rights. he either defends or does not tdefend the apple and rights dont come into it.
now if property rights are accepted, we need a rule for valid ownership, the natural law rule (the one that makes sense) is essentially first come first served. it is superior to all other possibility. if it was last comer’s rights, the whole ownership stake is as good as not existing ,as what has changed form the ‘there are no rights’ scenario. if it ignores who comes first and who comes after and picks some other arbitrary rule then we get nonsense,.observe, ‘the strongest wins’, or ‘the weakest wins’ , this sets both parties up to contest. the whole point of property ownership is to avoid contests. all parties must accept that first comers are the owners, and that if someone requires someone elses property this must be dont by voluntary title transfer, under this paradigm, conflict is not sanctioned. and the purpose of morality is to avoid conflict between rational and moral individuals.
If your friend says this, then you can tell him that he is contradicting himself: He is arguing that the thief has the right to use the apple, by saying that nobody has the right to use the apple. At the very least, he must admit that private property is a meaningful concept before he can say that the thief is the rightful owner of the apple.
Actually, he’s a pretty logical kid. He voted for Obama a few months ago, and I’ve gotten him to admit to me that he cannot refute my argument that taxation is theft. He’s changed a lot since then, and it’s mostly due to my superior argumentation. This is why it’s absolutely imperative that I can make an air-tight defense of private property rights.
I would add if somebody is using a “nihilistic/amoral approach” they choose too, and value it why? Cause it’s better than anything else they know. That in itself is a moral argument, so, they can’t even stay inside of their amoral paradigm when trying to explain why they value this amoral paradigm. I say this for I think choices basically come down to value/moral preferences. Those preferences are basically made because somebody is convinced it’s “best” (that’s a moral argument). Now people that take an amoral approach usually blow off their decision being made based on preference and say it is fact. But that’s still a choice and a decision based on something they “like” (again that’s a moral argument). If one takes the amoral approach all the way, then they believe life is totally deterministic and all is organized and acts like robots without a choice or free will to be made. So they will have extreme conclusions that eating chocolate was totally pre-programmed and they don’t make any choices in their life at all, that even their choices were just pre-programmed acts. I would say change usually irritates these people, but to try to convince somebody that is not willingly to try out a new perspective and see how it works, then yes, they have pre-determined their decision and no matter what you say they will not go for any part of it. This is about freedom. So people will freely draw up their own conclusions. Pre-determined, amoral perspectives incline that life is despotic and tyrannical (full of no choices and no value/moral preferences).