Is there even such a thing as a “universal language”?
If you do not think laws of economics hold water in some universally applicable sense, I don’t understand why you are here.
Other than that, when you seem to be in disagreement (?) with something you seem to have the habit of throwing out a question at every concievable point and as often as possible- which isn’t even an argument it is just being contrarian. And if the tactic is “clarifying” some point you disagree with until the person can no longer give a definition, you nihilize everything useful about language, and perhaps out skepticize your way out of the language you are trying to undermine, which is a form of nonsense.
If you have any questions about the preceding paragraph they will not be answered. I need an argument or positive statement.
Why hello there, tyrant.
I am not the one who makes societal arguments and tries to assert them into reality based off of an imposition of nonsensical aesthetics, ethics, or non extant custom/culture/and legal theory.
This doesn’t explain to me exactly what you mean by “universal language”. Please try again.
On another note, I don’t see how everyone necessarily has the same semantics when it comes to economics or laws thereof.
I think this is certainly a straw man of how I actually debate and discuss things. As I’ve tried to explain to you in the past, I never ask questions to be contrarian. One reason I ask questions is to hopefully better understand where the other person is coming from. Why you have such a severe problem with that, to the point of refusing to answer any of my questions, is really beyond me even now. I can only surmise that you don’t like being challenged on statements you’ve made. Your behavior above seems indicative of that to me, as it seems obvious to me that I hit quite a nerve with you.
Amazingly enough (to me), even though I’ve also explained to you that I’m not a nihilist or language skeptic, you continue to paint me as one. My understanding that semantics are arbitrary doesn’t preclude any and all communication. Obviously, if semantics are arbitrary, what matters is intersubjective agreement on a given set of semantics.
Regardless, I’d certainly appreciate it if you could back up the claims you’ve made with evidence that you think is indicative of them. In other words, the burden of proof lies with you.
Just so you’re aware (if you aren’t already), I definitely don’t consider myself bound by your debating standards.
But you are the one who’s advocating a totalitarian position of banning all political labels. Otherwise, I don’t really feel able to respond to the above because I have no idea what you mean by “[making] societal arguments and [trying] to assert them into reality […]”. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say you’re obliquely criticizing me looking at the world through a normative lens rather than through a descriptive lens. If I’m right about that, then I’ll challenge you to prove that any normative ways of looking at the world are necessarily invalid and therefore should not be done. Note that, in order to do this, you’ll need to somehow bridge the gap between “is” and “ought”. Good luck with that.
All forms of conflict revolve around disputes over scarce physical resources, whether your body (a scarce resource), or property.
That is why we go on and on and on about self-ownership and property-rights here. Because all disputes and conflicts are based on this and nothing else. Even disputes and disagreements about things like IP, just reduce into claims of ownership of scarce physical resources.
But I think capitalist property rights often create scarce resources. Say there is only one tree and three boys who want to climb it. If one boy wants to climb the tree every Monday, another every Wednesday, and the third every Saturday, then the tree is not really a scarce resource under occupancy and use. But if the tree becomes the property of the first boy after he climbs it, the tree then becomes a scarce resource and conflicts arise.
Fool, you could just as easily change that scenario so mutualist property rights do the same thing (which in either case is not “creating [natural] resources” or “creating scarcity” or anything along those nonsensical lines). Say there is only one tree and three boys who want to climb it. If one boy is climbing the tree on Monday and the other two boys want to climb the tree on Monday because they’re busy the rest of the week or whatever, then the (daily?) use/occupancy criterion has just excluded boys #2 and #3 from being able to climb the tree and thus terrible conflicts arise.
But your scenario misses the significant point. Natural resources do exist and are scarce. The variable is allocation mechanism and the delineating-perpetual-property-rights-based-on-first-possession mechanism in general form (as is empirically near-universal in all human civilization and experimentally evidenced as instinctual in psychology - see “the property instinct”) solves the commons problems that your proposed tree-sharing would not. It internalizes significant negative and positive externalities. And when such externalities become signficiant is when property rights are logically (and empirically) formed for any particular natural resource in the first place. See Coase, Demsetz, new institutional economics, etc etc. Delineated property rights in general form are extremely prevalent throughout all human history precisely because they are the most socially efficient means for allocating scarce natural resources. This includes norms of abandonment (perpetual does not mean forever) and there are special cases where the resource is not amenable to individual property rights and so you have other means of allocating them (pure public goods a la Ostrom, community spaces, family etc.) including potential daily sharing arrangements, but these are precisely the exceptions that prove the rule. There’s no point in making ideological mutualist assertions about the universal preferability of sharing norms, much less possession-only ownership.
I think it does. I don’t know what FotH take is, but occ/use does deal with rivalrous resources. If you have a regular pattern of usage or occupancy then you own it, and you’ve got an exclsuive claim. If two people occupy or use something, they both own it and can settle disputes however they see fit. Common law from place to place can deal with what qualifies as abandonment.
Some “regular pattern” of use/occ entails exclusive ownership rights in your particular mutualist system? You know that means there wil be the “absentee ownership” you guys bemoan all the time, right? What does “regular” mean here? Predictably repeated over time, right? And that minimum amount of time will be determined by relevant common law too, I assume. So the time from first posession until second may very well be significantly >0 while retaining exclusive ownership rights (and empirically it prettymuch always has been for logically predictable reasons), so you’re really just talking about abandonment criteria.
Anyway so given that you’re now talking about a “regular pattern” of use/occ rather than the active use/occ itself, there will be perpetual property rights (thus some non-active use/occ absentee ownership) which therefore must be practically communicated in some formal way suitable to common law in case of conflict (i.e. there will be titles to property). This means I can rent out my property between my regular uses (which will be = time until abandonment, practically speaking).
So you’ve got perpetual property rights, absentee ownership, titles, and rent. The only thing you’re adding to standard human property rights is vague, confusing language and thoroughly confused economics.
While abandonment is not clear, current use and occupancy is, in regards to absentee ownership. If I’m living in a house, I am clearly occupying the house. That’s not iffy, and rent would not be justifiable.
What is unclear in all instances is what qualifies as abandonment. Walking to the grocery store and back is probably not. Leaving for ten years probably is. At what point is it abandonment? I don’t really know for sure, and I’d say it goes case-by-case. But if someone moves in and I don’t do anything about it, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve given up my house.
Right, that is exactly where Kevin Carson’s pointless arguments ended up: it’s all reducible to wanting to decrease the time until property is considered abandoned. That’s dumb precisely because, as you point out, such things are determined in common law… and near-universally, empirically, in human common law (including stateless common law and customary law going back to hunter-gatherers), the time from first possession until abandonment has been significant and there is no reason to believe (or wish) that this will change in the future.
I mean… look at your own house thing. If you walk to the grocery store (gone for 30 minutes?), it’s still your house. If you dissappear for many years, it might not be (especially if, as you posit, someone else has moved in and you “do nothing about that”). Prettymuch the same as interpersonal property rights in the Western world right now, in fact. You can’t have a problem with the house owner renting out his house for, in particular, 30 minutes or 30 days or 30 years given you admit this is a matter for common law and dictating these time periods a priori is arbitrary and pointless. So… Do you want it be arbitrarily illegal to build and own two houses? Three? Ten? Will owning summer houses or renting out offices be arbitrarily illegal? Highly unlikely and a waste of time to advocate.
You can’t have a problem with the house owner renting out his house for, in particular, 30 minutes or 30 days or 30 years given you admit this is a matter for common law and dictating these time periods a priori is arbitrary and pointless. So… Do you want it be arbitrarily illegal to build and own two houses? Three? Ten? Will owning summer houses or renting out offices be arbitrarily illegal? Highly unlikely and a waste of time to advocate.
As I understand Mutualism, it’s not illegal to “own” or rent ten houses. However, it is “illegal” to enforce tenants living in those houses to pay rent. Tenants are free to rent a house and pay rent. They’re also free to violate that contract. Such contracts have no legal standing in Mutualism.
Wikiepedia defines scarcity thusly: “Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having seemingly unlimited human needs and wants, in a world of limited resources…goods are called free goods if they are desired but in such abundance that they are not scarce, such as air and seawater.”
The boys in my example do not have unlimited needs (i.e. their needs do not exceed the tree’s ability to satisfy them), so the resource is not scarce. It is a free good. If they all wanted to climb it every Monday, then yes it would be a scarce good. However, it would only be a scarce good on Monday. So any solution they come up with to manage the scarce good need only manage its use on Monday. Giving the tree to the first boy who climbs it on Monday will make it a scarce good for the rest of the week, preventing other boys from climbing it at other times. Thus, capitalism only solves the problem of scarcity in one instance by creating exponentially more of it in another.