Nowadays the majority of the means of communication are owned by a small group. Even tought absolute monopoly is hard in such area, should it happen you’d have a ideological opression, without physical coersion.
Nay, some indians had no private property and the other natural rights are expalinable without property.
You haven’t been able to show how property rights are not natural. So far, in this above context, you’ve only discussed a primitive culture in South America that may or may not have property rights. I’ve asked for a link, but so far, no go.
Who’s this “He” that can “buy all means of communication”? Are you saying here that a particular “he” can buy all the raw resources that are means of communication?
What do you mean “we are done” provided in the above context?
How is property “the lack of liberty”?
What does it mean that private property is achieved by “dumpings, trusts, and holdings”? A monopoly is only sustained by physical coercion, which is a government, so therefore this isn’t about private property.
First off, “property hasn’t always existed” is an unfounded assertion. Secondly, you stated property rights are not natural cause “they appeared somewhere in history” is vague. I appeared somewhere in history and so did this earth. Thirdly, private property is private and thus of the individual. Somebody may come along and not recognize that I’m fictionally using this basket and they can take it from me, but for a basket to be taken from me it would have to have been mine to assert it was taken from me.
ok and?
Why? One could just as easily argue the opposite; rights do not derive from natural law.
What is good for some humans is not necessarily good for others. Isn’t what is best a matter of subjective value scales? And when you say natural law, are you referring to physical laws such as the conservation of momentum, or legal norms such as self-ownership and the homesteading principle?
But why should there be a law against murder? Or, why shouldn’t some people be allowed to murder, and others not?
Why this axiom? Is it self-evident? Is it negatively demonstrated? Is it transcendental? What’s the epistemological justification? Why not the a priori of argumentation?
In what sense? Is this a legal norm, such as a right? Or is this just a praxeological fact, namely all humans have physical control over some economic goods?
All this is true provided that your premises are. But your argument seriously needs some work. Btw, what do you think of Hoppe’s argumentation ethic? Also, you might want to point out what characteristics of the state make is necessarily an aggressive institution: the exclusion of competitors from entry into services provided by the state and taxation.
The data about capital acumulation I found on “Reports from the Commune de Paris”, real nice serie at youtube.
MarxistStudent, my reply was the last post on page 2. Check it out.
Why not ? What happened in russia is what marx planned. You don’t want to admit that ? That was the dictatorship of the proletariat also known as mass murder. That’s what you get when you disregard ‘natural rights’.
So you don’t want to admit that you are criticizing mixed economies and blaming the free-market for outcomes that the free-market didn’t create ?
Not sure what you mean…Of course there’s more capital now. And everybody benefits from it. You can buy a computer for $200. A similar machine cost $20000 ten years ago. And it didn’t even exist 20 years ago. Cheap products which benefit everybody are created thanks to ‘capital accumulation’.
And the thought never occurred to you that such wouldn’t happen in the absence of government interference?
No, they did have private property (yes, I know that you’re misusing the term. I’m using the term properly), and no rights can be explained without property.
Such “property” means right to life and freedom, explainable without the idea of property.
A condition is natural when, without any human forces or social forces, that condition persists.
I guess people should have to life without wich we can’t “exercise your faculties free from aggression”, I guess you mean the right to “live you life”, basically only possible with liberty another natural right.
What you mean by property in your person is life and liberty, you seem to like so mcuh the idea of property that you externalize it to all other rights, but once primitive (natural) societies didn’t have property rights, and modern ones have, this right was instituted somewhere, in a certain day.
I am quite sure this is a simplification. You can defend yourself from one person, what about a goup of them? In this case to assure property you’d need an institution with legitimate uses of force and violence.
Of course they don’t, the world never needed a tyran so that he would exist. Tyrans are tyrans BECAUSE they impose thei will. But this maket you propose could lead to such tyrany.
It’s a long story. Read anything by Murray Rothbard, or visit the banished topic “Proving Natural Law.” It was the biggest topic ever to exist on the Mises.org forums, I posted everything I know about natural law there throughout probably around a hundred posts.
That is always the first objection. What about what is bad for others? If there are things that are always bad for all humans – meaning that they prevent humans from fulfilling the ends to which nature calls them, i.e. living – then there are things that are good for all humans – meaning that they promote fulfillment of the ends to which nature calls man, i.e. living.
Nature works in mysterious ways. The natural law against murder promotes fulfillment of man’s natural tendencies, i.e. living.
And the mugger from Brooklyn has a right to take your wallet. According to the nature of the mugger "he must be invested with in order to fulfill the ends to which his nature calls him. When we speak of someone having a right, we mean that it is impermissible to use aggression to prevent him from exercising that right. Thus the mugger has a natural right, for example, to steal your wallet, because if he couldn’t, he would be prevented by aggressive violence from fulfilling the ends toward which nature calls him – in this case, spending your money.
See how your arguments are flexible? Why should anyone accept them?
Dude, you need to explain what it is specifically in man’s nature, that gives him rights. And what you mean specifically by ‘natural.’ Your definitions and arguments are quite vague.
“Nature” is not an acting entity that bestows ends upon man; instead, man is free to choose his own ends through his own subjective valuations.
By the way, could you please enlighten me as to these questions that I have:
Stephen Forde - I thought you believed that natural rights was a valid concept ?
If I have the right to liberty, then I have the right to property. If someone presumes to take my possessions, then he has violated my right to liberty. Thus, the “right to liberty” is really just a bunch of property rights.
Then humans, along with everything they could possibly do, are unnatural, because these rely on human forces, i.e. acting to perpetuate one’s life, socializing, etc.
True. And it’s about time. The right to be free from aggression has always existed as well, and it’s about time that was instituted.
Or I’d need neighbors. Or I’d need a weapon. Or I’d need powerful persuasion skills. And if I decided to call upon legitimate defensive help, that would necessarily exclude the state as an option, since the state is defined as wielding illegitimate, aggressive force.
Well then, I guess we would have a state again. This tyrant would be the most efficient and effective tyrant the market has ever voluntarily chosen.
Absolutely false.
Native Americans had remarkably varied and complex systems of property and rights associated. In the northeast United States the Mahican Indians families passed down the rights to use very well-defined tracts of garden land along the rivers through familial lines. Even European settlers recognized these well established rights. In the southeast “creek towns” were quite common, where families would own and pass down their own plot of land. Indians of the Northwest had complex fishing and hunting rights whereby permission from the owners (generally, a family) of the land or water (yes, they even owned water) had to be granted to use the resources to fish or hunt. And on and on…
Now to be fair you did mention South America specifically, however your point is still flawed since North American Indians were more primitive than those of South America, yet even they still had property.
That fails the universality test. The mugger does not represent all humans. Not all humans, in all times, and in all places, under all circumstances, require my wallet to meet the ends to which nature calls them.
I thought you were in the thread Proving Natural Law… “The critical and unique facts about man and the ways in which he must live to survive – his consciousness, his free will and free choice, his faculty of reason, his necessity for learning the natural laws of the external world and of himself, his self-ownership, his need to “produce” by transforming nature-given matter into consumable forms – all these are wrapped up in what man’s nature is…”
If my arguments appear vague, it’s because you need to read more.
I am sorry I’m having a lot of work here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_in_Brazil, I don’t know if it will contain enoght information, but you may also look for the “gentilis people”(povos gentilicos, in portuguese) in ancient grece, living without property .
A bourgois can buy them, but raw resources are means of communication? For me they are TV, Radio, etc
If you agree that property rights may only be assured by an institution with monopoly over the legitimate uses of force and violence, then ideological freedom is treathened by property, “we are done” would mean you’d accept liberty is treathened by property.
Capitalists everiwhere used such to defeat other captalist, to have a greater share of the maket, marching towards monopoly. A monopoly may exist without physical coercion: Lets say I am owner of the only factory in a very small town, then I have monopoly over the industrila sector of that small town.
1st - It is founded on the fact that many primitive societies had no property rights;
2nd- Once they didn’t always existed, they appeared somewhere in history. Each culture at its time instituted the property rights.
3rd- Property only makes sense because people live in groups, should they live isolated as individual, property rights wouldn’t exist. Explanation: what would it be good for to have property you can’t trade with people? For nothing. thus if there is no condition to trade stuff (requires people to live in groups), we wont have property.
hehehe, It is your literature, not mine, but I’ll explain. This means it is natural for us (who lived in a society based on property rights) to think that property rights are natural, just as it was natural for those who lived in a slavery-based system to think that slavery is natural.
I’ve probably read more pages of Rothbard’s work than you have. I read through the entire “Proving Natural Law” thread. The arguements are just as vague in that thread as in this one. I understood Rothbard’s argument for a private property ethic. I just don’t understand yours, because it’s full of gaping holes. In fact Rothbard’s argument was a little weak. Hoppe’s is much better.
So if a starving person steals your food to live (and you still have enough left over to live), it’s justified according to natural law? Am I getting it right? Because it’s not bad, for them. They’re still alive. Or what about lifeboat situations? Triage? One life is equal to any other?
I wonder when you’re going to get to his argumentum a contrario. It was pretty much the crux of his argument for private property.
For some people, but not for others. Some are just naturally murderers, and naturally make their living that way.
I posted and reposted and triple posted what natural law is in the topic Proving Natural Law, you were there, getting destroyed. I remember well, clearly you do not.
Well my argument is Rothbard’s. If it’s full of gaping holes, it’s because I am not a master of it like Rothbard was, I’m still learning. If you understand his argument so well, then cease asking me questions that you pretend to know the answers to.
No. Requiring aggression at a given time and place and circumstance fails the universality test. I thought you said you knew Rothbard’s argument…?
A natural law applies to all people, at all times, in all places, regardless of circumstance. That is why it’s a law. It is necessarily universal and true. The law is not “do not murder,” or “do not murder sometimes.” The law is “murder is bad for humans.”
property is a ratter material idea, while liberty is an abstract one. Liberty as inexistence of shackles is NOT a property right, a person can be perfectelly free in a society without a single property right.
And indeed, humans are the most unnatural living being on earth, it is completely different (war, property, luxury, boats, airplanes, computers). The human being is more and more unnatural every passing day, but the “state of nature”, the natural men in a natural human group would be the only possible form of natural human beings, with natural rights.
You AGREED[:D][:D]!!! Then property is an instituted right THEREFORE it isn’t natural becuase in order to such right exist people had to create it. I made it, agreeing with this the axiom of property as a natural right also falls.
Comrade, don’t try to change the definitions, they existed before either of us we were born. The state is the institution that has monopoly over the legitimate uses of force and violence. MAX WEBER
You are being evasive, let’s say you are on your own, the thieves don’t tell you when tell steal things from you, they surprise you, point a gun at your face. How can you assure your property will be retuned to you without an “institution that has monopoly over the legitimate uses of force and violence” or a state?
Funny, but you see, in order to prevent such a tyrany to rise, what would you do?