Property rights are coercive

Economics Political Theory
21

Okay, that’s somewhat equivalent to my definition of “aggression” (which also includes the initiation of threat of force). So I now interpret your thesis as “property rights are aggressive”. Thanks for clarifying. :slight_smile:

You seem to be implicitly assuming that people do not respect others’ possession by default, but only in the face of “superior force”. This sounds decidedly Hobbesian. Do you have any reasoning or evidence to support this proposition? Otherwise, I’ll simply reject it and move on.

Legitimacy can never be proven, as it is subjective (logically speaking).

22

Not sure i understand the reasoning for this, so to claim that my ears are mine is coercive against those who want my ears? Does this mean that coercion increases as the population increases of would-be owners increases? And why must the default position be that ownership is coercive? Why can’t no-ownership be coercive?

23

As far as I can tell, this is a non sequitur. Please demonstrate why you must “attack or threaten to attack anyone who is willing to compete with [you] for ownership of the resource”.

24

You’re right, actually. I’m changing my position (for once). This most certainly is coercion, as Isaiah Berlin defined it anyhow, and I do like his definition. I was far too restrictive in my first post.

“Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability…[it] implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings. Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not a lack of political freedom…” Berlin, in Two Concepts of Liberty.

I’ll still agree with the rest of my original post, in that I really could care less (all other things being equal) that this process is coercive.

25

“Phaedros, if you want to own something, I cannot. So you must tell me that the thing you desire, I cannot have.”

That is only if you desire it as well and have some legitimate claim to it. Which in the case of most things that I own you do not have any legitimate claim to.

“Not in self-defense, but the point is that what can be defended must ultimately first be gained through aggression.”

No, this is entirely wrong. If it had been first gained through aggression then, yes, it would be illegitimate. I guess in order to agree with your conclusion I would also have to conclude that labor is coercive, which is ridiculous.

26

Coercion is unavoidable in some form. Let us, however, take an example and boil it down. Suppose you are starving, and a man owns a storehouse full of apples. In the interest of self-preservation, you steal apples and eat them. In the sense that we assume people are justified in trying to live, the coercive forces are present in three places. First, you have used force to take what someone views as their own. Second, they may use force to prevent you from doing so. The third is the one that the anti-property idealist leaps at. The owner of the apples has FORCED you to steal from him, by the fact of his having your only means to survive.

There are no problems with the logic. It is very true that if you have things that others don’t and they require them to live, then if they desire to live they are forced to act on that, and your ownership of said items is responsible for the coercion used against you, just as much as that person is responsible for initiating the force. But there is no actual being involved in the former. It is just a logical concept given the situation.

Now, take the same situation, and apply it where no one is allowed to own anything. You are starving. There is a man who owns…oh. Wait a minute. No he doesn’t.

You die.

In this situation, you have the same fact: There is a logical concept of coercion rather than any actor. It has been either decided by freely following a concensus of society or by force of a governing hand that no one holds property. So the fact of nobody’s ownership of things has forced you to die. If anything, this is an equal amount of coercion to forcing you to steal, except that in the one case you get to go on living. Another case of that which is seen and that which is not seen. We see that the businessman is forcing someone to steal so that they can live. What we do not see is that the alternative is everyone has taken apples as they please, no one has saved any, because they cannot own things, and therefore when a man is starving he doesn’t even have the option of stealing to live. He has nothing. He dies.

The point I’m making is that if this is the backbone of an argument against the idea of property rights, then it can be demonstrated that there is an equal amount of coercion, insofar as situations that force someone to act in a way that they might wish not to. In a world of property rights, someone might have to steal, against their better judgment, from some evil hoarding apple capitalist. Without property rights. someone might have to, against their better judgment and will, die.

27

“The owner of the apples has FORCED you to steal from him, by the fact of his having your only means to survive.”

This is assuming that those are the only apples and the only edible thing left in the world. In other words, it’s the most convenient means to survive, but not the only means. For example, you can eat rabbits, squirrels, berries, some mushrooms, birds, etc. etc. This is why socialism must be a parasite off of capitalism also. :wink:

28

Coase " if you want to own something, I cannot. So you must tell me that the thing you desire, I cannot have."

No, this is not the case. If one owns a thing, you cannot own that one thing but you can own one like it. You may also purchase or trade for that one thing if the value you offer is of equal or greater value, either way, you can only own it through production. Without production, consumption leads to extinction.

" mutual agreement is fine. However, the current system of property rights has not been agreed to by everyone on the planet, so this is a problem. It is aggression because I must attack or threaten to attack anyone who is willing to compete with me for ownership of the resource."

Why would you attack for a resource if you cannot claim the right to use or consume it. You contradict yourself and prove property rights as legitamate.

29

Clayton, I don’t see the relevance. No rules of society are needed to see that claiming a right means denying someone else a right.

Autolykos, even if everyone respected the arrangement out of knowledge that it is conducive to social order, establishing the right to control what the price of a good is (for example) still means denying others the right to do so. However, it is obvious that many do respect property rights only out of fear of violence. Do you doubt that if no one lifted a hand to stop a violation of their property rights, theft would not rise? Respecting property rights is a collective action problem, since the marginal benefit for any single person to respect property rights is often zero or close to it.

Jeremiah, yes, yes, and denying someone the right to establish property is coercive as well. Do bear in mind that this argument is pointless from a utilitarian perspective. I mean to challenge the moral superiority of libertarianism insofar as it stems from the NAP.

Autolykos, everyone in the world could agree to some system. You’re right. But if they don’t (and they don’t) the system requires aggression or its threat against dissidents.

MrSchnapps, see my response to Jeremiah.

Phaedros, you must violently impose your definition of legitimate upon me.

Valject, I support property rights and believe their abolition would lead to billions of deaths.

30

“Phaedros, you must violently impose your definition of legitimate upon me.”

Lol ok then. What’s your definition of legitimate that’s logically coherent?

“denying someone the right to establish property is coercive as well.”

Thirst is, then, coercive. The problem with your system, the one that is apparent from your line of thought at least, is that, as Rothbard says, man needs at least the space for his body to live. Is the fact that you can’t have the space that my body occupies coercive to you?

31

To me property rights are legitimate because without them people are poor and die quickly. With them the opposite is true. Also, yes to the Rothbard question.

32

And why must the default position be that ownership is coercive? Why can’t no-ownership be coercive?

They are both coersive in so much as property is just a fact of life, which it most certainly is. Or no-ownership is “non coersive” in the fact that it is a nonsense phrase.

@Clayton:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Callahan_(economist)

his book Economics for Real People may be the best laymans’/ 101 book to Austrian Econ

33

Property is simply the exclusive use of resources. This does not require the property owner to initiate force against another party. If another party should wish to make use of what the property owner is already using and what the property owner wishes to continue to make use of exclusively, this second party can either give up its attempt, or use force in order to make use of this resource. If I am holding an apple, is it coercion for me to refuse to hand it over to you? That is essentially the question.

34

“Also, yes to the Rothbard question.”

I can’t take you seriously then.

35

Why do you get to be the owner? Because you violently prevented me from being so. The logic is circular.

36

How can there be coercion without any use of violence or threat of violence by one party against another party?

37

Phaedros, the logic is unchanged. If I am so absurd, rebutting me should be easy.

38

Aristippus, there can’t be. But to claim ownership of something requires violently preventing others from doing so, unless all 7 billion people agree to this arrangement.

39

Your understanding of coercion is a meaningless distinction between what is coercive and what is not if you believe that it is coercive for you to be unable to have the space that my body occupies.

40

“But to claim ownership of something requires violently preventing others from doing so, unless all 7 billion people agree to this arrangement.”

By simply claiming ownership of something doesn’t make it so. However, the traditional understanding of how land comes to be owned by someone is through labor. The violence is initiated by the person attempting to take someone else’s property.