I’d rather this have not been about ethics in this thread. In the other thread, the question of ethics necessarily didn’t come up, the topic was economics.
Now if you can provide a reason instead of being provocative it might help your consistency improve.
That isn’t the point I was making. I was saying that when ideas compete for the scarce space that is your brain (no offense intended), innovation, and learning is the result.
Yeah, lucky me [:P]
You honestly think I’d waste my time just to get you guys’ goat by being randomly contrarian? You have a very high opinion about how important you are.
I wasn’t saying that Libertarianism holds the same principles as those other ideologies, I was saying that it is a belief system, like those other things. There are other ideologies that preach self-ownership (objectivism) and conflict avoidance (pacifism), but the two together is Libertarianism. That’s why it has its own name. I don’t see how that makes it unique from other ideologies.
I got a lot from reading his book, but I don’t adhere to his ideas, because that’s what the book is all about. I also don’t completely agree with what he has to say, as I believe the ego is really as much a fixed idea as any of the rest. The book in its entirety can be found here, if anyone is interested, although the newer Cambridge translation is easier to read, IMO.
Well, if you have to wait for the entirety of people you interact with to accept Hoppean Rights theory before anarchy will suit you, you will be waiting a long time. There are other things besides enforced moral codes preventing people from going at each other’s throats.
LOL, this reminds me of something:
Or what?
And what is important to me as a user of these fora is a plurality of ideas to foster real debate, rather than cloistered zealots confirming each others petty biases in a positive feedback loop of inflated self-righteousness.
Who said I was against the division of labor?
What claims?
Don’t forget wild-eyed frothing when heretics appear.
Hey man, the burden of proof rests on you to prove that property rights are vital for the existence of markets. I made no assertion in regard to that proposition. You have the beliefs, convert me!
And Hoppe hasn’t changed mine. I suppose we are at an impasse.
This is the definition I am basing this on:
To me the concept of property, and the concept of rights are inseparable. Even you couldn’t manage to seperate the two without completely contradicting yourself in the other thread.
Thank you for reverting from you other more insulting comment. My comment was provocative, I’m sorry I was simply angry at indeed the previous provocative and disrespectful comments earlier in the thread.
I derive the idea that there are no objective ethics from the concept of a subjective theory of value. If there is no inherent value then one act cannot be inherently better than the other, therefore there is no “good” or “evil” except for what the individual evaluates the situation as. It was indeed Austrian economics founder that lead me to drop the ethics proposed by many of its current members.
If you could convince me of objective ethics, I would be ecstatic.
Yes unfortunately I did not bring up ethics but the goal of this thread was for Jackson to denounce property, which he does, then promptly define it again after denouncing it. He does this in the reverse order. First he defines property, without calling it that, then denounces property.
(IE Property)
This was ultimately my goal, for him to spell it out. I’m not sure it is worth further debating. If he believes the statements he says above I will just have to dismiss his argument as nonsensical. All he has done, which you showed in the previous thread, is that he simply doesn’t like the word property. Truth be told I could care less what he calls it, his concepts are still generally enough of the same. [:)]
[edit] Yea I guess I didn’t bring up ethics. My question is an economic one as well.But even if Jackson carries ethics into his own pet definition it still doesn’t explain his nonesensical answer above.
If you thought I was insulting I wasn’t, and it’s rather unfortunate that you feel that way. If there was a way to rephrase what I wrote to not come off in an “insulting” manner I would. I was simply saying instead of saying “load of crap” it would have been more dignified to give a reason. I mentioned “your consistency improve” as it seemed you didn’t appreciate the way E. O. was discussing and bemoaned his posts but then you bemoaned as well “load of crap” comment. But I didn’t come here to dance, but to rather talk so shall we…
That’s why I said “consistency”, but that’s behind us.
subjective theory of value is an economic theory. Economics isn’t an ethical system. You are conflating ethics with economics.
One act is better, the act you first take as it is the highest on your preference scale.
I’ll skip this as the economic and ethical need not be conflated in a discussion, though, they both are ever present but that need not be of current discussion.
First you need to understand economics is not an ethical system and to conflate the two was your first mistake.
edit: And don’t think for a moment that I never dragged an economic discussion into an ethical discussion. I have before. And the objective and subjective dichotomy is a red herring when it comes to human action, in my opinion, as it leads the discussion away from anything meaningful.
Thank you for your civility so far in the discussion.
Economics is the study of human action, aren’t ethics supposed to be based off of human action? Or will you admit that they are arbitrary whims? At any rate if there is no objective value that will compel an individual to value something as good an evil, then it is obviously not objective.
Indeed such a principal is essential to understand, we are all but collections of molecules, how can there be any objective “good” or “evil” except what an individual deems to be “good” or “evil”? They are both but standards that each individual sets for an action or thing. You can define ethical behavior as, say, that action which is best for the most people, but this is merely your standard which you set and project out wards to the world, there is nothing objective therein.
Please tell me how you can consider an ethical system that does not take into account human nature and reality “worth” following.
Also I probably wont be able to reply until tomorrow, however I would love to continue the discussion.
-TLAR
To build on wilderness’ reply, this is the exact same mistake that Ayn Rand made, just on the other side of the coin. The subjective theory of value explains that actors value ends differently, which is a praxeological fact. This says nothing about the ultimate “good” or “evil” of those ends. Objective ethics is tasked with determining the latter, assuming that an objective good or evil can be determined (and I believe it can).
The simplest response I can think of for this is that “ignorance is no excuse.” In other words, just because an individual fails to recognize the good or evil inherent in a given action or end does not mean that such a good or evil cannot objectively exist.
The entire task of objective ethics is to find an objective standard against which to judge good and evil. Ayn Rand used “man’s life,” and, while her arguments have been refuted in some places, I think she was off to a nice start. It’d be impossible to elucidate a whole theory of objective ethics here (especially since I don’t have one fully fleshed out), but the whole point is that it would start from an axiom, with an ethical code able to be deduced from that.
I agree. Enter Leviathan.
I hate this thread. It is too antagonistic to make any sense out of. Can we start over?
Yes. You are correct. But economics isn’t ethics. Categorically they are distinct. That’s why human action can be applied to various social sciences but one wouldn’t say history is economics or psychology is economics, etc… But human action being an axiom it applies universally. But one axiom doesn’t rule out other axioms. They are all axioms.
I don’t know what you mean. Individuals are objective. Individuals are subjective. Could you explain.
The individual always makes the decision. To clarify one thing, some objectivists point out that human action is objective. Would that make sense to you?
But that isn’t based on each individual being deliberate and purposeful. You’re bringing up “most people”, but human action is within or of each person. Explain.
I don’t understand “objective” in this context.
Human nature doesn’t equate human action. They are distinct. Human nature is the genus and human action would be a specie of human nature, categorically speaking. Human action is only about deliberate and purposeful action, ie. choices. But the nature of being human includes involuntary, non-deliberate action, ie. heart beating, etc… Just so we are clear, not that you don’t know this already.
I don’t understand what you mean by an ethical system “worth” following. Is that addressed to your ethical system or my ethical system? and what ethical system?
ok
IE by your personal definition
To avoid confusion, when I say authority, I mean it as value-free.
So your still just playing semantics. You can’t refute me so you just simply ignore the word property. You re-describe precisely the same thing, and ignore the actual tangible word it applies to. B ut what difference does it make? You have already concede the point by stating
What is it called when you have possession over an object?
What are you talking about? How could I possibly refute your personal interpretation of a word? I don’t agree with your definition, but that’s all I can do!
According to you.
Possession.
Ultimately Jackson you concede your own point when you argue that the market is the best way to do things. Whether you like the word property or not, that is specifically the concept we are referring to when we refer to markets, exchange, ect.. on this forum.
In our mind there is no exhcange without property. You can refute this by employing your own definition of property but it does not invalidate our argument. So what you have done is re-constructed a parralell to our concept of the market, using a different word other then property, but a concept whos principles are identicle.
So ultimately what is the point you are trying to get at? As Wilderness has pointed out it seems that your only problem is with the physical, tangible, structure of letters which becomes the word property.
I disagree.
OK, but that is not what is in my mind. Refer to Fencing. Also, it seems a bit creepy to refer to “our mind”, like this place is a big collective Borg-hive.
What is your argument?
No I haven’t. As far as I know, I agree with your concept of the market (could be wrong). Our difference in opinion comes from the fact that I don’t see how the concept of property (as I understand it, the rights-based definition) is necessary for the market to function.
My problem, is that to me, calling an “object”, “property”, carries with it all sorts of ethical baggage, which is why I refrain from accepting it. Please read my correspondence with wilderness, in which he exposes these connotations, despite his attempt to reconcile “property” with his non-ethical definition of the term.
Fine then we can agree that for you possession means the same as property does for me.
Essentially you agree to everything I have stated. You just prefer to use the word possession in the place of property, but it makes no difference over all. As such you have never had an argument against me.
Ultimately your entire premise is entirely pointless. Let me amend the comment I made to you before you wasted several days of my time.
Now if you want to argue that possession is not property then you should have been honest from the get go and argued that. Instead you made 3 pages worth of assertions without ever really backing yourself up.
Ultimately I don’t care if you want to argue that property is not possession, because your definition of possession is nearly identicle to my definition of property heh.
Also understand that when you site Wiki you are not citing a definition, but a concept. Wiki articles describe the concept as a whole, not necessarily the specific definition. In other words if you went to definition.com you would get a different result.
And thats fine, for you the market operates under the premise of possession, not property. Fine.
Right so we need to start another thread exploding your ethical nihilism now that we have shown that you agree with me and others on the notion of property? err excuse me possession.
Sure, but I am still skeptical. I made that agreement with wilderness, and after some discussion, it turned out we were still at odds.
Well, if you look waaaay back, you’ll see why we started this discussion. You claimed babies had a primitive understanding of property, ownership, and rights. I still contend that assertion. So, I guess I have an argument after all.
Why would I bother to argue mere semantics? Don’t be mad at me because we mutually misunderstood each other.
all of these still speak of ownership. I’m not sure what this proves.