You do control what you own. More precisely, you control that which embodies what you own, i.e. the product of your reason and actions.
When I say that ownership is a moral relationship, I mean that the concept is first necessitated by a requirement of ethics that man who survives only by reason and action needs to retain (own) the product of those, and that only later is ownership functionally described by economics.
I do not describe laws as collectivised. Rights and laws are defined in terms of individuals, not a group or collective anything.
IP is not a “natural right” as much as it is a right by the nature of man. It needs a state to defend it as much as any other right does.
The relative cost of production has absolutely nothing to do with the qualification of something as property.
“Objectivist dogma” is an oxymoron. Since intellectual independence is a primary virtue of the philosophy’s ethics, treating any of it as dogma by its author or any student, fan, or adherent would disqualify them from being or claiming to be an Objectivist. Consequently, such accusations tell one more about the accuser than the accused.
Also, I am wondering why you asserted that I was making unsupported assertions, and then failed to support that assertion. While you are at it, you might also support your assertions of strawman arguments and contradictions …
There is nothing inherent in the concept of a third-party institution controlled by a system of checks and balances that would allow one to assert that it would inevitably violate rights. First of all because such an institution consists of volitional human beings.
Such an institution can defend rights if those who establish it and define the rules by which it must operate enable it to perform only one single function: to guarantee that all human interactions in its jurisdiction shall be voluntary.
It is precisely because you think that you do not need a state to defend your rights that the rest of us need one to defend our rights from you.
Do you have the intellectual independence to refute Ayn Rand? Is it possible for Ms. Rand to ever be wrong, within the Objectivist philosophy?
I’ll happily list some.
Objectivists reject the Libertarian attempt to establish their politics without the ethical base. It leaves them with nothing but pragmatism to support their advocacy of liberty and vulnerable to arguments about practicality.
Strawman.
It is only the embodiment of reason/effort (an improvement) in otherwise unowned matter that can justify its possession.
All human action is purposeful.
Since in a just and free society, all exchanges must be voluntary
Except in the Objectivist just and free society, which insists the state is necessary for coercion.
Objectivists and Libertarian anarchists are in agreement that the principles of Austrian free-market economics as presented by Mises are valid. When it comes to defining the proper government structure to enable that economics, however, the anarchists are subjectivists. That is why Rand labeled them “the hippies of the right.”
There is no such thing as a proper government structure that is not one that is freely consented to. And consent is subjective.
And a lot of anarchists will concede that justice requires a single set of principles that will be enforced, and some will even concede that it requires some single function of oversight for appeals of the last resort to those principles
Strawman.
Anarchists maintain that a government may not exercise their monopoly of force to stop them from the inherently just and moral act of using force to defend themselves from an initiation of force by others—not just in those spontaneous acts of self-defense when attacked, but anytime ever, because it is in itself an initiation of force.
Incorrect, strawman. Anarchists don’t think government is moral because it has a monopoly on force, through the use of force. It operates outside consent. It is by definition unaccountable, authoritarian, and prone to political violence.
Unique to Rand’s capitalism is the recognition that the primary prerequisite for liberty is that the exercise of defensive force will be objective and expected, not arbitrary and unknowable.
Epistemologically impossible.
All laws, procedures, and acts of enforcement must be objectified in the Constitution, the laws, the adjudications, the rules of enforcement, and the punishments for violations.
There is no such thing as an objective Constitution. Constitutions are written by men.
The anarchist, in condoning the use of force in self defense without having to comply with objective standards that are known or knowable to all in advance, violates the liberty of others by enabling an arbitrary use of force that in the daily life of the populace becomes indistinguishable from an act that initiates the use of force.
Strawman. Non sequitur.
Anarchy is thus inherently incompatible with liberty.
Absolutely security is absolute slavery. This is utopianism.
I don’t violate the rights of others. You still haven’t made the case for why you need a state.
I think you’re mixing terms here, so I will try to help you out.
A state, is a territorial monopoly of law and security. It does not seek volition, it doesn’t operate by concensus. It isn’t equally accountable, it doesn’t perfectly follow perfect rules. What you call a state, is a utopian institution that is all knowing, perfectly restrained, established and run by imperfect men, to run with a perfection that exceeds its creators.
It’s great science fiction. It’s actually not too far from a collectivist fantasy. If only we can mechanize and institutionalize the perfect, and cut out the human in humanity.
And before you go off about reason again, remember Mises’ praxeological insights. All human action is purposeful. All of it is reasoned.
Sticking your unsupported assertions into my post like placeholders doesn’t cut it. So we will just have to take 'em one at a time. Pick any one to start with, and tomorrow we will debate it thoroughly. Then, when you say “uncle” we’ll move to the next, and the next, and …
This sounds fairly interesting. Specifically, I would like to see you substantiate this assertion:
If true, compulsory taxation wouldn’t exist, correct? The state would consist of socially necessary institutions that provide services which are demanded by the general public. In other words, it would yield economic goods, which could be sold in markets for profit. It would be what economists call a “natural monopoly” for things such as security and an objective legal system.
Additionally, the idea that society requires a certain degree of compulsion in order to limit the coercion which otherwise would exist in an anarchical system, is something that I’m extremely sympathetic to. But this begs the question, namely why does the state, even the democratic republic, restrained by a constitution, necessarily degenerate into the largest human rights violator and greatest source of economic inefficiency (I’m implicitly referring to certain arguments made by public choice economists)? Is this merely coincidental? And if so, how could this be avoided?
Some libertarians use pragmatic arguments, but that’s not to say there isn’t an ethical basis to it. For example, I wouldn’t care if drug prohibition actually “worked” in terms of stopping people from taking drugs - I’d still think it was immoral - but that doesn’t mean I can’t point out to its advocates the embarrassing fact that it doesn’t even achieve the ends they want it to.
Maybe it’s just that libertarians live in the real world, and objectivists live in Ayn Rand’s psyche…
No, his concept of ownership is simply predicated upon scarcity.
The axiom at work is that human action is purposeful, conscious adjustment to the state of a given human’s environment, as he perceives it. If you have a problem with that axiom, we would all love to hear it.
Man desires natural resources which are scarce, therefore he must act rationally to reduce scarcity. Man desires knowledge in order to do this, so he must act to reduce his ignorance.
From an ethical perspective which seeks to apply universally valid moral principles, it’s sufficient to say that each individual human should act rationally to reduce his own scarcity inasmuch as he does not do this by taking for his own that which is functioning to reduce the scarcity of another. He should not engage in a zero-sum transaction of his own scarcity for another’s, as this would violate ethical universality.
Similarly, should it not be sufficient to say that each individual human should act rationally to reduce his own ignorance inasmuch as he does not do this by increasing the ignorance of another?
Yes, a relationship in which the owner has the legitimate ethical prerogitive to use the property in question in any way he sees fit. That’s how ownership is defined.
The human body, including the mind it generates, is physical matter and energy external to the metaphysical “self”. It is a scarce physical resource used by the metaphysical self, and it can be used by others too. If something can be used, it must be owned, since ownership is nothing more than the ethical relationship describing who may or may not use something. “Self-ownership” is fundamentally non-transferable, because you can’t literally give your life to someone else.
I don’t think that’s logically possible. The recognition of objective ethical values must surely precede the establishment of institutions acting to enforce such a system. If there is no morality, then you can’t form an institution to enforce something that doesn’t exist.
Yeah, I agree, it’s actually not a true axiom…
It’s based on the praxeological axiom that man acts purposefully to reduce his perceived discomfort, and the moral axiom that valid ethical principles apply universally to all natural persons.
No…
Anarchists maintain that it is illegitimate to hold a monopoly on force, no matter what you intend to do with it.
If you’re wondering why libertarians criticise the vast majority of wars, it’s because the vast majority of wars, as a matter of case-by-case fact, are not legitimately waged in self-defence.
What are you going to write in your constitution? Arbitrary, specific rules? Maybe that people can only use 9mm handguns for self-defence, or how hard they can hit back if someone is punching them?
It is inherent to the definition of “self-defence” that one is exercising force that is, under the circumstances, necessary to protect against a real initiated threat of force, and no more excessively than that.
I think Objectivism is ‘dogma’ not just because no one concedes that Ayn Rand can be wrong on something. But because it is believed by Objectivists that Ayn Rand either had a complete system or that there is no way to solve some issue unless somehow Ayn Rand came back to life to settle it; Leonard Peikoff pretty much exudes this philosophy on life (which ironically Rand called ‘second-hander’ mentality during her life). That’s why they always say things like ‘we, as Objectivists should take issue with Mises on…’. As such there is there is ‘individualism’, but no individuals contributing. Since that is not one’s place within objectivism to define objectivism themselves or to change objectivism. It is ‘objective’ and final and not democratic. It is someone’s intellectual property; to engage it would be communism or worse: compromise. Therefore the individualist aspect is irrelevant to objectivism. One is accepting ‘dogma’, not because one can’t think for themselves, but because objectivism necessarily doesn’t call for it. Just as reading this post by me doesn’t call for you to edit it and tell me what I mean. That is, there can be a debate against objectivism but not within objectivism. Once imbedded within objectivism, you are no longer a philosopher but a student of a philosopher. and again, since it is complete, there is no way to shift from student into philosopher mode. Because again, you are not needed. At best, you can take from Objectivism like a buffet and be your own person. But as such Objectivism has no need for philosophy, for individual input, or anything else. Just like any other dead person.
On the other hand, Austrianism, if such a thing exists, has very diverse opinion. Mises and Rothbard differ quite extensively on a number of issues. As far as I know, they didn’t complete any systems. It’s even possible that they did not have much in the way of positive systems. There are some Austrian dogmatists. But for the most part, it still retains the ability to be for ‘we the living’. The people who follow the dead, then, are necessarily upset.
I even remember an interview some Objectivist did for the game Bioshock in which the person said that it is not unusual or untrue to say that Ayn Rand was a perfect person. “Why is that so weird?” the spokesperson asked.
As a territorial monopoly, it doesn’t only force you to pay them, but (among other things) also forces out any competition. It doesn’t just take your money, but also forbids you to pay anybody else for the same services.
(Also, I would add that a state isn’t just a territorial monopoly, but is a compulsory, territorial monopoly: It doesn’t only disallow you from paying anybody else for its kind of services, but also forces you to pay them. It doesn’t just make it impossible to accept these types of services from other people, but actually makes it impossible to not accept it from them. Or at least it does that to enough people to warrant us calling it a “state”, or something like that.)
