Do you consider the current states of the world as illegitimate?
Like this?
It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it?
LOL, thanks. This is the kind of junk that bugs me all the time. Glad someone else could be bugged by it too!
None at all. Provided that the State stops enforcing eminent domain and blocking free exits, it would be indistinguishable from any property holder. Thus, as long as property rights are homogeneously applied for everyone (i.e. the state doesn’t get to cheat), there is no differcne between the state and a property holder.
Yet the geographic locale in which yourself and your possessions reside can rightfully be considered the king’s?
See exile.
But this begs the question,
How to enforce property rights?
Yeah, I mean, I think this is exactly why we have had governments from the dawn of history. There is this parasitic analogy of property in the mind of the masses which has always formed the basis of the power of our lords and masters. The king cannot be everywhere at once, so he cannot actually enforce his property claims. He cannot even profitably directly employ enough people to enforce them. Hence, he must benefit from the willing cooperation of a good deal of the public. This is de la Boetie 101.
The problem is that, while this is a wonderfully accurate description of the state of affairs, it does nothing to tell us if there are improvements that could be made to the social order. And even without having a selfless concern for the wider good of humanity as a whole, we can look at the conflict between the interests of an individual in what is his own property (in both a pre-legal and customary legal sense) and the interests of the king (state) in that property and see that the king’s successful establishment of his rule is actually a huge source of conflict in society. Government is nothing but steady-state conquest, see my sigline - to govern is to conquer. It seems to me that unless you are willing to say that raiding parties are good or efficient then you can’t consistently say that government is good or efficient.
Clayton -
Well, if that is the only power which a state uses, I don’t see how it we could consider it a state anymore.
Thanks.
Both the state, and property owners, maintain their claims by duress or consensus.
OK, let’s clear the air.
Property is logically antecedent to the king. That is, there was rightful possession long before there were kings. When a pretender to kingship comes and takes what is mine, there is a dispute. Now, this dispute might be resolved by the king’s killing me with his overwhelming force. If so, questions of right and wrong are moot. There’s just conquest and if I was smart, I would never have objected to the king’s plunder in the first place. Or, perhaps I’m a wealthy man with plenty of armed servants and I can do battle with the king. Then, this is an amoral question of strategy - who can beat whom in battle? But if the king is not willing to do battle and would prefer to settle the matter without arms, then we are dealing with a question of law and the king isn’t really a king anyway, he’s just another asshole trying to get whatever he can.
When you ask whether my property can be “rightfully” the king’s, you are asking a legal/moral question but kings are precisely those people who have no regard for legal/moral questions as a result of the overwhelming power they possess with respect to their subject population. What is the point in discussing whether the king has a “rightful” claim to my property? Either he has sufficient power to take it no matter what I think about it, like the IRS, or he doesn’t, in which case, he must either accept the customary laws governing the nature of property and property rights or sue for some alternate terms. And, if he has to stoop to this level then, by definition, he’s not a king.
Clayton -
Can you elaborate?
Any abstraction like territory requires that others recognize it. You can either force, or use threat of force, to get others to acknowledge it, or you can convince them, if they are not already convinced for their own reasons, that your ownership is legitimate.
Do you disagree with the difference which I outlined; or are you just throwing that out there?
So there were no states before there was jails. What about slavery?
Prisons were just an example.
Can a slave leave if he wants to?
Clayton,
What is property? To me, it is morally justified possession. Which set of norms one wishes to use when determining which method(s) of appropriation, retention, etc. of physical matter is unimportant at this point.
Descriptively, what is the distinction between a landowner and a prince, or a corporation and Parliment? If it simply a question of who’s ideology is “true” and which is “false”, it isn’t much different than a religious schism. On the other hand, if there is some value-free distinction, I am all ears (or eyes).
Then I may’ve misinterpreted your point. I thought jails were the distinction.
Not without revolt.
+1. If this is the birth of the state, the question becomes,
How can one prevent sufficient state-forming accumulations of force, and the rhetorical means of legitimization?
I really am baffled how you guys can manage to characterize the obvious distinction between natural ownership and conquest as “ideological”. Again, I will try to be as clear as possible. The word “property” is overloaded, so I will use some synonyms with definitions to provide clarity.
First, there is the idea that conflict-free use of physical resources requires division of those resources, in space and time, along boundaries of exclusive use. Another way to say this is that every physical resource is either unused, in exclusive use, or disputed, that is, there exists a conflict over its use. Two people cannot both swing the same axe at the same time. Two people cannot both breathe the very same air molecules at the same time. And so on. I will call these physical resources exclusive-use zones (EUZ) for the sake of discussion. EUZs are abstractions. Our capacity to engage in these boundary abstractions is not unique, however. Other animals have this capacity, as well. This is all value-free.
Second, there is the idea of rightful possession or ownership of property. Property is inherently normative in the sense that it is a criticism of the state of affairs as it is and a normative assertion that another state of affairs ought to hold instead. If I steal your wallet, your property claim against me is of the form, “He has exclusive control over the EUZ comprising my wallet but he ought to return the wallet to me.”
Too much is made of the distinction between positive and normative statements, however. Any normative statement can be converted to positive form by noting that normative statements are an expression of a subjective mental state. “X ought to do Y” means that I am more pleased with the state of affairs where X has done Y than I am with the state of affairs where X has not done Y. So, if you say, “Clayton ought to give me the wallet” you are simply expressing your preference for the state of affairs where I have given my wallet to you over the state of affairs where I have not. Or, more generally, if you say, “I believe that someone who has taken a wallet which is not rightfully theirs (where “rightfully” is defined by conditions A, B and C) ought to give it back” you are simply expressing a generalized preference.
What makes normative statements different than other kinds of subjective preferences is that their domain of action is often physical force or violence. Property emerged from the preference of individuals to fight rather than give up what they considered to be rightfully their own. The rules that have emerged are the result of many such battles fought and either won or lost by the attacker or defender. The rules are also fairly symmetrical. For example, any man may not walk up to any woman and remove her purse from her person despite the fact that any man chosen randomly has a significant physical advantage compared to any woman chosen randomly. The capacity for physical violence alone is not sufficient to explain the rule set which has emerged for the negotiation of boundaries between EUZs (property boundaries).
Clayton -