Do inalienable rights exist?

[clairobscur]

@Smartass

For you to violate your own right would be nonsensical;

Actually, there are examples of inalienability where you’re legally prevented from renouncing to your right.

For instance, the human body is generally legally considered as inalienable. You can’t choose to sell one of your kidneys.

I could also pay you to renounce to your right to vote. You could think it’s a good deal, but there’s no way you could legally do so.

I’m pretty certain there are more mundane cases. For instance of inalienable property that can’t be sold. I’ve no example in mind, and anyway it would probably be irrelevant in the case of the USA. Maybe some american lawyer could come up with one.

[Smartass]

@continuity eror

Huh? Are you trying to say that libertarians are always the odd people out? Where I come from IRL, there are a lot more people who agree with your notions of “fairness” than my notions of “fairness.” (And yes, I know you were talking to clairobscur, but I’ll just answer for all “socialists”/conformists.)

It seems to me that libertarians in general have quite a superiority complex.

I am not trying to say that libertarians are the odd people out–I am saying that libertarians are the ones who want to protect the interests of the odd people out.

I am not implying that clairobscur is a member of the majority because of her socialist leanings, I am saying that she is a member of the majority because she believes that a system of resolving disputes or “reaching a compromise” based on democracy or majority rule is “fair”–even though, rather than being a compromise in which both sides give and take, it is actually a method of choosing which side gives and which side takes.

-VM

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

I think the isssue is that you would want me to define some principles I would use as a basis for a social organization. But not only I don’t think any set of principle is inherently true or provable, but also I don’t think it’s possible to organize a society on a basis of a simple set of principles, even arbitrary ones.

You’re playing with meanings again. Most of this post could be summarized by “Different people have different notions of ‘fair’ and ‘right’ and there is no way to say that one person’s definition is inherently better.” There is no disagreement whatsoever on this point.

What we are talking about is a system of dispute resolution. You claim that there is no way to have one system, and then assume one exists. I am talking about a system for handling the fact that people will not always agree. I am NOT talking about “whether people should compromise”, I am talking about “how people should compromise”. When there is a dispute as to whether a particular person should be allowed to walk on a particular plot of land, how do you resolve the dispute? When there is a dispute as to whether a person should be prevented from gutting a child, how do you resolve it? Saying “some sort of compromise” is evading the question. The system that I have described based on rights is an example of a sort of compromise. The resolution of dispute by majority vote is a system for resolving disputes, but does not dictate that any compromising happen. Either of these systems define a type of government, one being libertarian and the other being democratic.

Systems can be complex. The US has a system where people rarely vote on issues, but instead vote on who should be the “deciders”. There are several sets of deciders, with two of them resolving disputes among themselves by means of yet another vote. The result of the system, ultimately, is a majority rule where the choices are often defined in convoluted ways. The rights we are discussing were built into the system, but the majority-rule mechanism allows the majority to override these built-in “rules”.

The complex collection of laws you talk about is not a system in this sense–they are the result of it. The question is, how do you select them? You keep saying that there must be “compromise” or “consensus” but what you seem to mean is “the majority will vote and the side with the most votes wins”. For some reason, you are shying away from admitting that you have a system in mind, or that this is in fact a system, but the simple fact is, without a system for resolving disputes, there is no “organized society” and disputes are not resolved except by force. Unless you are claiming to be an anarchist, you are in fact proposing an alternate system.

Society, and even human nature, is way too complex to do so. The list of principles to follow would include dozens, or hundreds or thousands of them.

You are dissembling by conflating the number of potential disputes with the system for resolving them.

Like, say, a code of laws.

A code of laws is a set of pre-resolved disputes. Once they are law, the system has already been applied.

We all long for simple principles to guide us, but I think this quest is vain.

Are you saying that it is possible to have a system without having one, or that anarchy is the only answer, or that we may as well pick a system by rolling a die? (If it comes up 3, does that mean we ask the Pope to resolve each dispute?)

So, on what are my socio-political opinions, my principles, my moral values based?

Climb down from your pulpit. I don’t care how you arrive at your personal moral values. What I am interested in is your “compromise system” for resolving occasions when your and my values conflict. For instance, if I think everyone must worship Satan, and you think this is unreasonable, how do we come up with a compromise. I am continuing to assume that you believe we should vote, and until you say different, I will stick to examples that explain why I think your system is less fair than mine.

How, then, could I convince anybody that my values, my principles, my proposals are better than somedy else’s?

Why, then, would you insist that we must act as if we all agree? Once again, I am suggesting that the best system is one that doesn’t require one of us to submit to the other’s values any more than absolutely necessary. You are suggesting that the best system is that the minority must always submit to the will of the majority. If this is not what you are suggesting, then please correct my misinterpretation.

More often, I must rely on the fact that most of my values and principles are shared by my contemporaries. So, I can argue on the basis of common assumptions.

And I am suggesting a minimal set of common assumptions that we can build a system on. Namely: No one person or group’s values are superior to any other person or group’s values. Is this an unreasonable assumption. Is this the part you disagree with? Do you honestly think “the majority is right” is more fair?

The less “value-loaded” the issue is, or the more generally agreed upon the basic assumptions are, the more likely I am to convince.

Issues are not “loaded” with value. In and of themselves, they are without value. The value exists in the people–when I talk about the “value” of something, I am talking about how important it is to me. This is why markets work as well as they do–the requirement that we find a medium of exchange to agree on (I’ll trade you three potatoes for that seashell) ensures that people’s wants or needs are met in proportion to the importance that they as individuals place on them. Thus, we will pay more for healthcare because it is important and difficult to replace (if we happen to be sick, that is). We will not pay much for potatoes because, even though food is important, potatoes may easily be substituted with something else, like wheat (if you’re not allergic).

You assume that you must convince everyone (or a majority) to agree with your values in order to be able to “enjoy” them. I am suggesting that there is a better compromise that does not require us all to agree.

I won’t have a hard time stating “it’s wrong to gut small kids”.

And this is one of the reasons that assuming a “right to life”–in the way that I have defined it–is not an onerous assumption for each and everyone of us to agree to.

Everybody, apart from some sociopaths is going to agre. If I add “we have a duty to prevent people from gutting little kids”, it’s not so simple anymore.

Exactly, you are making the “shared values” requirement more onerous and using a “system” that says any dispute about interpreting this requirement will be resolved based on a vote of the majority.

First on the principle. Some ultra-libertarians will say that there’s no such obligation.

Your use of “obligation” is a confusion of the system I am describing. I have no personal obligation to protect the child’s life. We have agreed that the government is obliged to protect the chilld’s right to life, and the government has the power to force me (“violate my rights”) in protecting this right.

does my duty stops at paying taxes to fund a police force, or do I have a duty to personnally prevent the crime if need be?

If you are living in this “system”, you are obligated to not kill the child. The government has the power to violate you in any way necessary to keep you from killing the child.

If there is a bear, you are entitled to protect yourself from the bear. If you can do it without violating someone else’s rights (hunting on their property w/out permission), the “system” has no opinion about your killing of the bear.

If the bear is threatening to kill a child, you may have a moral obligation to protect the child, but you do not have a legal obligation. You may have a moral obligation to sacrifice your life to save the child, but you do not have a legal one. Whether you help the child is up to you. An extremely large number of people believe that the parents have a moral obligation to keep the child safe from bears, and to not allow bears on their property if children are running around.

And now, if I ask “do we have a duty to prevent bears from gutting little kids”, you tell me that we don’t have such a duty.

I am telling you that the government should not require it of you. I am not telling you whether you have a moral duty–that is up to you to decide, based on your personal values. If it were me, I would feel morally obligated to protect the child, probably even if it meant the loss of my life.

And this statement of yours is arbitrary.

The selection of this system is, utimately, arbitrary (as is the selection of a democratic system). However, the fact that determining your moral obligation is left up to you in this system is a result of trying to minimize how many of my moral views are imposed on you.

You enunciated a number of “inherent rights”.

And I explained that they are a system for resolving disputes–a way of defining the cases where government steps in and forces people to comply with some decision they disagree with.

Extremely vague ones. “Right to life”, for instance. What the hell does “right to life” mean, pratically?

I have answered this question repeatedly. I have clarified with examples. You are pretending that the definition is in doubt by pointing out the obvious fact that different people can define “right” in different ways. I have told you how it is defined in THIS system. What part are you not able to understand?

So you refined them, gave examples. You even admitted that this choice was arbitrary, unprovable. And you’re daring me to give better ones.

I am not daring you to give better “rights”. I am daring you to define a system for resolving disputes–and I don’t care whether it is based on “rights” or it is based on “community property” or on “ownership of the means of production”–that is more fair than the system I advodate, and to explain on what basis you are evaluating fairness. I am evaluating fairness based on “each individual’s freedom to determine what is morally right”.

And I can’t . I freely admit that I can’t. But I also state, without the shadow of a doubt, that you can’t, either. Something you seem unwilling to admit.

Unwilling to admit? The whole point of my argument is that we should use this system BECAUSE neither you nor I can come up with a better one. And you are either not understanding me or you are dissembling.

You appear to be convinced that your principles are objectively better, “more fair” than any others.

I am convinced that it places the least onus on any person to submit to another person’s will–the fewest occasions when you must do something because “I say so”. If you don’t think this is fair, what do you think IS fair?

Which results in exchanges like these : (examples removed)

That is because I am talking about a fair system for us to resovle disputes (or define a government) and you are talking about the fairness of “reality”. The fact that I can’t propose a system that makes the universe fair is, apparently, a fatal flaw for you. You propose a system that does not make the universe any more fair, but DOES subject me (the minority) to your (the majority) will.

In all of these cases, you’re arbitrarily drawing lines (humans : yes, bears : no)

Again, the system is arbitrary (I arbitrarily choose to try for “fairness”), but these various lines are not–they are dictated by this “fair” system. Your system does not make it possible to deduce where these lines are drawn, other than to say “the majority will decide, because it is complicated”.

Your values are absolute: individual freedom is to be protected at all cost (well…nearly all. I still have to pay taxes to protect your life),

Any system requires some sort of arbitrary absolutes–mine are no more or less absolute and arbitrary than “the majority will decide”. My system does not make freedom an absolute; it tries to spread it evenly among humans.

I don’t call this reason. I call this blind faith. Blind because you don’t recognize it as what it is : a mere set of beliefs. Blind also because it’s tainting your perception of any issue. Slavery is lurking around our potatoes and hospital beds. But the Holy Free Market will protect us all.

How 'bout justifying your accusations? I am not so blind that I can propose a system and claim that it isn’t one. I can as easily say that your “blind faith” that everyone is selfish and evil is tainting your views. Bears are threatening children and no one will protect them unless someone forces them to. People are starving and no one will offer them food unless I figure out a way to make them do it. Everyone is trying to figure out a way to horde all the food and keep me from having any.

I trust that people know what is right and will do it. You believe that only you (majority) know what is right and the rest of us (minority) must be forced to comply.

-VM

[clairobscur]

@Smartass

What we are talking about is a system of dispute resolution. You claim that there is no way to have one system, and then assume one exists. I am talking about a system for handling the fact that people will not always agree. I am NOT talking about “whether people should compromise”, I am talking about “how people should compromise”. When there is a dispute as to whether a particular person should be allowed to walk on a particular plot of land, how do you resolve the dispute? When there is a dispute as to whether a person should be prevented from gutting a child, how do you resolve it?

I think this part alone sum up your response.

There are two elements, here :

1. Are there other systems that could solve the disputes? Yes there are.

For instance concerning the gutted child. Simple principle. You’ve have a duty to protect children from any kind of external harm. Which implies having a police force, firefighters, public hospitals. Or simply from humans and bears.

In both cases, this duty need not to be absolute. In the same way in your system, the duty to protect kids from harm done by other humans isn’t absolute. For instance, I doubt you would support a system where there must be a police officer at all times following each and every child. If I think that protecting people from serial killers is very, very, very, very important hence that we must pay 60% of our income in taxes to provide a personnal bodyguard to everyone, while you think it’s not that important and one police officer for one million people will suffice, how do we solve the dispute? Your simple principle isn’t at all sufficient. You must come up with much more detailled ones.
Concernig the dispute about whether a particular person should be allowed to walk on a particular plot of land : the “right to walk around”. You’re just not allowed to prevent me from walking anywhere. You think it’s not practical? I don’t think an absolute “right to property” is practical, either. In any case, it solves disputes. Besides, you can include any sort of exceptions to this “right to walk around”. For instance “the right to walk around except in buildings and in cultivated fields”. As I wrote in my previous post, there’s no reason to assume that a system must be, or even could be, based on a very limited and very simple set of rules. Your system too has to include a lot more details. In particular determining who is the legitimate owner of something isn’t a simple issue. I could also come up with “public property of all land, with possibility of long-term lease for farming purpose”. Which, as I wrote previously, has been the norm in many agrarian societies. What about “all the means of production belongs to the collectivity, other kind of property can be owned privately”? What about “private property is a right protected except in cases A, B, C and D” (which is the system currently used)?
Your principle of absolute right to property seems simple to you only because you’ve integrated (part of ) the complex rules that are used to determine ownership. Whose land is it when you die, for instance? Do you have any right to decide beforehand what will be done with your property once you’re not alive anymore, hence no more a free agent? If you assume such a right, whose land is it if you didn’t write any will? How do you solve the ensuing dispute? How deep extend your property of land? If I detect oil under your field, whose oil is it? Yours? Mine? Public property? If a bird is born on A’s land, is spotted and killed by B and fall on C’s land, whose bird is it? Is the running water crossing your property yours? If my family has been farming a plot of land for 150 years, and someone comes up, stating : “actually, this piece of land was the property of my grand grand grand father, and your grand grand grand father stole it from him. Give it back to me right now.”, how do you solve the dispute?

2. How the principles are decided upon at the first place.

You’re refusing the concept that the majority should decide. Then, tell me, what better system do you propose? You can’t take you prefered set of principle as granted. You think we should implement a “private property” sytem and I think we should implement a “collective property” system. How do you solve this dispute? You think we should have a duty to protect people from harm done by other people, and pay taxe accordingly. I think we should have a duty to protect people from harm done by other people and bears, and pay taxes accordingly. Someone else thinks we have no duty to protect anybody from anything, and shouldn’t pay any tax altogether. How do you solve this dispute?

It’s not like your system magically avoid disputes. You’re still left with the original dispute over which sytem should be implemented, and them with the numerous disputes that will arise once a system is chosen.

Should an accused be provided with a public lawyer or not? Should an ill person be provided with a public doctor or not? Is it “slavery”? (disputes about the system itself).

If we agree that people should be provided with one, or the other, or both, Should the lawyer or doctor work for free? Should it be funded by taxes? What if no lawyer or no doctor is willing to defend the accused/ provide care to the ill person? Should we force them to do so at gunpoint? Remove their license? Do nothing, since that’s their right, too bad for the accused/ ill person (disputes about the duties imposed on the members of the collectivity).

If we agree that people have this right to a lawyer/doctor, that some compensation paid with taxes must be offered to them and that they’re obligated to work in exchange for this compensation, we’re still not finished. How much are we obligated to pay for this person’s defense or medical care? An unlimited amount? Twenty of the best lawyers available, all expenses covered in a shoplifting case/ a whole surgery department? One lawyer fresh from school, compensated for the equivalent of half an hour of work in a murder case/ an aspirin tablet? (disputes about the implementation of the system).

So, for all of these disputes, you’re rejecting the unfair rule of the majority. Then which other fair system must be used?

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

So, for all of these disputes, you’re rejecting the unfair rule of the majority. Then which other fair system must be used?

Based on your last post, I thought you were just being obstinate. Now, I’m not so sure. I think you have an underlying assumption that it is difficult to get you to admit because you aren’t really aware of it: I think you assume that a great many disputes must be resolved in a “global” way.

Allow me to recap a little. You agree that different people have different notions of what is right. You agree that there is no absolute “standard” that we can point to in order to pick a winner. Then, you make an internal leap to the conclusion that there must be a winner. I keep saying that compromise means that both sides do some giving and taking, and you seem to be okay with that for issues that aren’t important to you, but for issues that are important, you revert to a notion that someone must win and someone must lose.

For instance, if we talk about religion: I suggest that you want the world to worship God and I want the world to worship Satan. We have a dispute. You would probably suggest that you should be allowed to worship God and I should be allowed to worship Satan. We both “take” in that we both get to worship our chosen deity. We both “give” in that we don’t get to choose the deity for everybody else. You accept that this is reasonable because, while you feel strongly about controlling who YOU worship, controlling who I worship is not as important.

Different instance, if we talk about healthcare: You want everyone to treat healthcare as a “common pool” to which everyone contributes and from which everyone takes. I want everyone to “buy” healthcare individually and to be free to choose whether they contribute to someone else’s (and it doesn’t matter whether the “contribution” is money, land, time, effort, knowledge, etc.). We have a dispute. I try to suggest a resolution similar to the religion one: Namely, you and anyone who agrees with you should be allowed to create a common pool and share it; at the same time, I and anyone who agrees with me should be allowed to “buy” it separately. My “compromise” also makes room for any “in-between” solutions (insurance is an in-between solution). In fact, my compromise allows for ANY solution you can come up with, as long as no one is forced to participate in it. The problem is that, in this case, it is too important to your personal values that there be a lot of people in your “common pool” and you are unwilling to risk that there won’t be enough people in it. So, you insist that there can be no compromise: One of us must win and one of us must lose, and the “fairest” way to do this is to put it to a vote.

From where I am sitting, I am being reasonable and willing to compromise and you are being hard-headed. You insist that only one person can be right and we must settle it for once and for all. It is not enough for you to free to select how you deal with healthcare, your “value-load” for this issue is too wrapped up in a requirement that we all follow the same plan.

Try to keep in mind that libertarian ideals do not require people to not share, any more than they require people not to “pool” healthcare. They actually make room for a group of people like yourself to get together and have a “community-owned” piece of land and make decisions about its use in ANY of the ways you suggest. The only requirement that libertarian ideals place on you is that you NOT FORCE PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE.

In a true libertarian “utopia” (which in this sense cannot exist), there would be no disputes because we would all have everything we need. Unfortunately, the reality of scarcity dictates that there will be times when you want to walk across my plot of potatoes. The establishment of “natural” rights is not intended to answer every question that may come up; it is intended to provide a minimum compromise that we can all make so that disputes–as much as humanly possible–can be resolved without someone getting hit or threatened with a rake.

You are focused on the “right to property”. At the “deepest” level, it makes no more sense to say that a person owns a piece of land than it does to say that a community, a government, or a bear owns it. Instituting private property is a way to make an agreement that says “I won’t trample your potatoes if you want trample my wheat”. Instituting community property (as a rule, not as a concept) is a way of pre-deciding that someone must win and someone must lose. If it is based on majority rule, it is a way of saying “If I have more friends than you, then I can trample your wheat any time I want to, but you can’t trample my potatoes.” Or vice versa, if you have more friends than I do. Having an individual right to property is a way of “weighting” the system so that we have no choice but to find a compromise. It’s a little easier to follow if you think about a similar right to life: You should not be allowed to kill me, even if you do have more friends than I do. You have never suggested a “community pool” approach to life or liberty because it is more difficult to imagine, but you have a hard time making the leap to “property”, which–as a concept–is no more tangible than “life” or “liberty”.

Also, you think that insisting that the rights work the way they do is “convenient”, as if I were making up the rules as I go along. And that’s not it at all. The rights are intentionally designed to only force you to withhold action. They place a boundary on the kind of decisions you can make without having to compromise. Once you start trying to make them compel action, you are dropping compromise and insisting that someone must win and someone must lose.

In answer to your question, then, what I would propose (instead of majority rule) is that we agree on a minimum set of things that we force on each other for no other reason than “I said so”. We will use our superior numbers to force everyone in the “community” to abide by this minimum set–and enforce it with rakes, if need be. We will say, “These things are not negotiable, on all other things, we must find a real compromise.” Given this, the “most minimal” set that anyone has found requires that we each assume that everyone of us has an “inherent” right to life, liberty, and property, and we will create an “institution” that endeavors to protect these rights for each person equally. (Some libertarians translate this to a “simpler” formulation in which each person is protected from force and fraud. Most libertarians think of the two as equivalent).

Does this answer every imaginable question or resolve every imaginable disagreement? Of course not. Does it ensure everyone a “happy” life. Again, no. Does it make the world “fair”? How could it? It leaves the definition of “fair” for each of us to determine for ourselves (within limits).

It is the best compromise that I can think of (I did not create it), and it seems to accord the maximum human dignity and self-determination, not just to me, but to you and all of your friends, of any system that anyone has suggested.

Therefore, I advocate that we adopt it. That we agree to find a compromise in every situation where one can be found.

If you disagree, is it not fair for me to ask why? Is it not fair for me to ask for an alternate proposal? If you say that you won’t agree because it is not perfect, then that leaves us with anarchy–strongest man wins. Or one step up from anarchy: We’ll count rakes and assume that whoever has the most people waving rakes would have won if we fought it out. It’s neater, but I don’t think it is more fair.

-VM

In case you’re wondering…

1. Are there other systems that could solve the disputes? Yes there are.

Free markets are a great “system” in which people can find compromises.

For instance concerning the gutted child. Simple principle. You’ve have a duty to protect children from any kind of external harm.

I disagree. What do we do now?

Your simple principle isn’t at all sufficient. You must come up with much more detailled ones.

It’s not meant to be “sufficient”. It isn’t a solution. It is a set of ground rules for us to use in finding a compromise.

Concernig the dispute about whether a particular person should be allowed to walk on a particular plot of land : the “right to walk around”. You’re just not allowed to prevent me from walking anywhere.

I disagree with this one, too. What if you want to walk around “my” bedroom in the middle of the night? Since we don’t agree, what do we do now?

Your principle of absolute right to property seems simple to you only because you’ve integrated (part of ) the complex rules that are used to determine ownership.

It’s not a question of simplicity. It’s a question of forcing compromise. Your various forms of “community ownership” do not force compromise–they pick winners.

Whose land is it when you die, for instance? Do you have any right to decide beforehand what will be done with your property once you’re not alive anymore, hence no more a free agent?

These are better questions. These are more like the kinds of questions libertarians might ask each other. The easiest answer is if there is a will. If not, it gets a little less intuitive. Once again, I’m not claiming to have all the answers. And I’m not really all that inclined to talk about the issues while you’re waving that rake at me.

“actually, this piece of land was the property of my grand grand grand father, and your grand grand grand father stole it from him. Give it back to me right now.”, how do you solve the dispute?

More good questions. Since we agree that “society” creates the right to property, I would begin by saying that ownership can’t predate the society. Beyond that, more stuff that libertarianism doesn’t “automatically” answer.

2. How the principles are decided upon at the first place.

Somewhere in the path, someone has to force agreement. I’m being the nice guy and saying “Let’s get our friends together and only force people to agree to the absolute minimum.” The only alternative with less “forced” rules is anarchy.

–I think the rest have been answered, but feel free to ask more…

[Smartass]

One more thing. I want to comment on your reductionist argument about the “freedom to walk around”. The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t ever end. We can both win it, argument-wise, if it suits our ends and the argument itself never draws a line and says, “Here is where you must begin to find a compromise”.

An example: If you have a right to walk around does it not follow that I have a right to move my hips back and forth? And who are you to claim that I can’t move my hips back and forth, just because they’re too close to your ass? If my male member is moving around in space that is next to your colon, what’s it to you? You don’t own that space. Why is it my problem if your ass is in the place where I am exercising my right to “move my body freely”? And the fact that my hand is in front of your neck is irrelevant. Your neck is no more entitled to move through that space than my hand is to be there.

I can also easily re-word the argument in a way that deprives you of all food because I have more friends than you (after all, I’m just exercising my right to “chew” anywhere I want to, and since no one can own a potato, we’ll just vote to see who can chew around it).

In other words, while your argument is irrefutable, I can use the same argument to justify anal rape or starving you (using majority rule, of course). And there is no “objective” place to say, this is where we draw the “freedom” line and people have to start compromising. Which means that the argument is useless in terms of ever agreeing–as long as you insist that I “prove” where the line should be drawn.

The “inherent” rights framework draws the line, by starting with an assumption of “liberty” and placing some manageable restrictions on it (life, property), and it does it in a way that is designed to put minimal burden on both sides–we can each “guard” our chances to eat potatoes and to remain chaste.

-VM

[clairobscur]

I keep only these parts of your last post, since it seems to me they’re sufficient to answer :

@Smartass

Based on your last post, I thought you were just being obstinate. Now, I’m not so sure. I think you have an underlying assumption that it is difficult to get you to admit because you aren’t really aware of it: I think you assume that a great many disputes must be resolved in a “global” way.

Different instance, if we talk about healthcare: You want everyone to treat healthcare as a “common pool” to which everyone contributes and from which everyone takes. I want everyone to “buy” healthcare individually and to be free to choose whether they contribute to someone else’s (and it doesn’t matter whether the “contribution” is money, land, time, effort, knowledge, etc.). We have a dispute. I try to suggest a resolution similar to the religion one: Namely, you and anyone who agrees with you should be allowed to create a common pool and share it; at the same time, I and anyone who agrees with me should be allowed to “buy” it separately.

You are focused on the “right to property”. At the “deepest” level, it makes no more sense to say that a person owns a piece of land than it does to say that a community, a government, or a bear owns it. Instituting private property is a way to make an agreement that says “I won’t trample your potatoes if you want trample my wheat”. Instituting community property (as a rule, not as a concept) is a way of pre-deciding that someone must win and someone must lose.

You’re missing a major point. In this debate, we’re assuming that we’re obligated to live together in the same society for some reason. So, you’re right, I’m basing my assumptions on the fact that we must find solutions in a global way.
Your argument is that we could live within the same society with different set of rules. For instance, you don’t pay for healthcare, and you aren’t covered. I pay for healthcare, and I am. It seems fine in apparence. But in practice, your decisions have consequences on me. For instance, I gave in the other thread the example of contagious diseases. Small pox has been eradicated by a policy of mass vaccination. Similary, tuberculosis (which is a disease much more common in the most disfranchised social categories) is kept at bay because these disfranchised categories benefit from free treatments. You can opt out of public healthcare, and die from tuberculosis. I don’t mind. When I’ll begin to mind is when I catch tuberculosis because it became widespread amongst the poorest of the people who opted out public healthcare.

Similarily, in the case of the tribesman. You want to keep your private property and grow potatoes. If I want to grow wheat, it’s not an issue. But if I’ve no intent to grow anything and just want to hunt, all the fenced fields popping up everywhere will make my lifestyle much more difficult. The choice to allow private property wasn’t neutral for me. Contrarily to what you said, there’s a winner : you, and a loser : me.

I could come up with an endless list of such cases where your free choice has adverse consequences on me. If we live in the same city and you don’t want to pay taxes to fund firefighters, what we do if there’s a fire in your house. If we don’t put out the fire, it could spread to the neighboring houses of people who have paid for the firefighters. If we put out the fire, you’re a freeloader. We were forced to protect you for free because not doing so would have adverse consequence for us. Same thing if we hunt down the bears without your help. You’ve no risk to be killed by the bears, but we took all the risks. Freeloader again.
And there’s not only the problem of adverses consequences one’s choices has on other people. There’s also the sheer complexity of solving every single issue if people don’t operate according to the same rules. For instance, we’re not in agreement about the legal system we should implement. I hold for the napoleonic code, and you support a common law system. So, if we don’t decide by a majority vote, we separately implement the legal system of our choice. Now, I kill you, or I defraud you. Which legal system should be used for my trial? And of course, this is only an extreme example. Each time someone hold a different opinion about what should be done in a specific situation, about what should be punished and what shouldn’t, etc…there will be a problem. We won’t be able to solve any dispute. There’s no way a complex society (or even a simple one) could operate without the frame of a common set of rules that will be enforced on everybody whether they agree or not with the rule at the first place.
You seem to assume that the set of rules of your choice won’t result in anybody losing anything. And of course, we can’t just agree on “there’s an absolute right to property”. We’ll need much more complex and specific rules, as I mentionned in my previous post : whose property is this, yada, yada… Each time we’re chosing a specific rule, someone is going to be on the loser side and someone on the winner side. As a hunter, I want to be the owner of any bird I shoot. As a landowner, you want to be the owner of of any bird found on your property, for instance.

Your system is a “no loser” system only if none of the rule implemented has adverses consequences on anybody. Beginning with the most basic rules, and all the way down to the most specific ones. Or if we find a way to exactly determine a “compensation value” for the adverse consequences of any rule implemented. Which would be totally impossible in practice. And would require a totally crazy amount of bureaucracy to even be tried. Even more since this value will often be subjective, and sometimes not material. For instance, you implement the right to private property. All the population except me agree with you, and you all forbid me to enter your property. I’m the only hunter left, and as a result, I can’t hunt deer anymore, since they’re always going to enter your property as a result. I starve and die. How much are you going to compensate me for being dead? I’m afraid no compensation will do. You could agree to feed me for free all my life, instead. But what if I only like deer meat? How much is worth the impossibility for me to follow my prefered lifestyle? In particular I enjoyed long walks. I can’t enjoy them anymore since I’m barred from entering in your properties. How much are you going to give me to compensate this?
And this kind of issue will arise at every corner, each time even only one person disagree with the rule that should be followed. Resulting in impossibly complicated issues. And what if, concerning a very basic problem, someone refuses absolutely to accept a common rule? For instance, very painfully, everybody somehow agree to implement a common law judiciary system. I’m born. I read an old book and I find the Napoleonic code would be better in my opinion. I flattly refuse to be tried according to your system. You try to offer me, say, 2 millions dollars, if I accept to pay the taxes necessary to fund this legal system, and to be tried according to it. But it’s an issue of principle. I refuse to abide by your rules, at any cost. What are you going to do? Force upon me the will of the majority? Alternatively : I’m born. I decide I want to cross the USA from the west cost to the east cost. I really, really, really, really want to cross the states. Furthermore, in straight line. And I find myself in front of a fenced property. What the fuck??? When did I agree with the concept of private property which is preventing me from exercising my right to walk in straight line??? I never did so. On what basis then, are you limiting my choices, imposing on me a rule I disagree with at the first place? The tyranny of the majority? The idea that it’s more convenient? Or more fair according to you? Or more efficient?

To sum up, your idea that the system you’re proposing insure that there’s no loser would only be true if :

-None of the rules on which is based this system has any adverse consequence on anybody else whatsoever. As soon as my house is more likely to burn if you don’t pay for the firefighters, as soon as your private property prevent me from walking along my prefered seashore, there’s a loser : me. Except if you could find a way to estimate the value of my loss, in every possible situation. Which is plain impossible. And don’t tell me “the market”. The market can’t determine what value, I, personnaly, attribute to something. It can’t determine in advance the value of a higher risk of a devastating epidemic, either.

-No interactions between people or groups using different set of rules (because no agreement has been reached on an issue, hence anybody or any group is free to abide by its own rules on this issue) can result in a dispute that can’t be solved by refering to an higher set of rule everybody is agreeing upon. Which is also impossible in any relatively large society. My “which legal system should we us” would be an example of this. Not everybody is going to agree on such a basic question.
In other words, there’s no loser only if each group of people agreeing on a particular set of rule can live apart from the other groups, with minimal interactions. For instance if the “hunters” can set shop a hundred miles away from the “potato growers”. It can’t be applied to a large scale, complex and integrated society.

Given this, the "most minimal" set that anyone has found requires that we each assume that everyone of us has an "inherent" right to life, liberty, and property, and we will create an "institution" that endeavors to protect these rights for each person equally.  

As you might have noticed, I disagree with considering property as an inherent and absolute right. So, what are you going to do with me in your society, since you’re unwilling to force your principles upon me? How can you prevent me from crossing the USA in straight line without doing so?

Concerning your responses to my comments :

Free markets are a great “system” in which people can find compromises.

Like “I’ll work for you for a bowl of rice if I’m born in misery”? That’s definitely a compromise. I lose any actual freedom, but that’s great since you’re not forced into giving me rice, and I can freely chose to starve. Mind you, that’s the result of me being born. Feodality was great by comparison.

I disagree. What do we do now?

That was precisely my point. I can find alternate systems, they’re as valid as yours, and we disagree. What do we do now?

It’s not meant to be “sufficient”. It isn’t a solution. It is a set of ground rules for us to use in finding a compromise.

Fine. But, assuming that we agree on this set of rules, how do we find a “compromise” about how to decline it? Each time I used a similar word, you shouted “Tyranny of the majority!!!”. So, what is your solution not involving this tyranny to find a compromise?

I disagree with this one, too. What if you want to walk around “my” bedroom in the middle of the night? Since we don’t agree, what do we do now?

Once again, it was precisely my point. How do we decide about what “ground rules” we should use? I insist on my freedom to move (and it’s definitely not a ludicrous concept) and you insist on your privacy. Customs, opinions, and “tyranny of the majority” can’t be used to solve the dispute. What do we do?

It’s not a question of simplicity. It’s a question of forcing compromise. Your various forms of “community ownership” do not force compromise–they pick winners.

How so? Since these systems were actually used, they must have had some sort of advantage. Let’s assume for instance that the collective property of the cultivable land allow economies of scale (for instance, it allows an easier rotation of crops). If 49 people decide to fence their plots, not only they produce less food, but the 51 others produce less food too. By implementing a private property system favored by only some people, everybody lost something. Or in the hunter/ farmer example, you’re definitely picking a winner by implementing private property : the farmers.

You’re choice isn’t neutral. No social choice is neutral.

These are better questions. These are more like the kinds of questions libertarians might ask each other. The easiest answer is if there is a will. If not, it gets a little less intuitive. Once again, I’m not claiming to have all the answers. And I’m not really all that inclined to talk about the issues while you’re waving that rake at me. […] More good questions. Since we agree that “society” creates the right to property, I would begin by saying that ownership can’t predate the society. Beyond that, more stuff that libertarianism doesn’t “automatically” answer

My point wasn’t to ask you to provide a solution for each of these questions. Just to show that there’s a lot of questions left unanswered by your basic rules. Hence that the set of rule is going to include a lot of rules. And, according to you, we’ll have to all agree about all these rules (or else it would be a tyranny of the majority). How are we going to go through such an ordeal?

Concerning “ownership can’t predate the society”, does this mean that if you manage to implement a libertarian society, the first thing we’ll do will be to share everything like good communists?

Somewhere in the path, someone has to force agreement. I’m being the nice guy and saying “Let’s get our friends together and only force people to agree to the absolute minimum.” The only alternative with less “forced” rules is anarchy.

I’m happpy that you eventually agree that whatever the system, it has been to be forced in some way at some point.

But if we’re going to force an agreement, I’d rather have this agreement being along the lines of my political philosophy than yours.

[clairobscur]

@Smartass

One more thing. I want to comment on your reductionist argument about the “freedom to walk around”. The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t ever end. We can both win it, argument-wise, if it suits our ends and the argument itself never draws a line and says, “Here is where you must begin to find a compromise”.

I specifically excluded the right to walk on a place where you’re standing, in order not to infringe on your own right to walk, somewhere in this thread.
But more seriously : You apparently fail to notice that your “right to property” has exactly the same flaws. It doesn’t ever end. You too fail to say “here is where we must begin to find a compromise”.
Since you’re unwilling to accept conditions or limitations to a right to property you can’t attack me for doing the same. When you’ll agree to let a path open on your property so that I can go to the river, maybe I’ll agree not to trample on your potatoes.
Yes, you indeed accepted to put limitations on freedom (a right we both favor) to protect property (a right we don’t favor to the same extent). But until now, you refused to put limitations on property to protect freedom. And…of course, I mean actual freedom, not a theorical one. Or else, I’ll admit that you’re the owner of the potato field, but will go on walking all over it. You’ve every right to grow potatoes, it’s just that they happen to be on the way, and are always trampled on. Too bad.

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

So, you’re right, I’m basing my assumptions on the fact that we must find solutions in a global way.

Now, I am sure that you ARE being obstinate. I have pointed out to you the problem with your assumption, and you refuse to acknowledge the implications. I will point out that when you use arguments when they are convenient and drop them when they are not, you lose credibility. Most of your pontificating now amounts to “There is not enough of everything for everyone to have all of it, and your system sucks because no one can have everything.” Remember what I said, your problem is that you refuse to compromise on issues that are TOO IMPORTANT for YOUR personal value system.

Let’s take a look, shall we? (If it helps to make it sound less like I am insulting you personally, you can replace “you” with the “the majority” and “I” or “me” with “the minority” for most of my examples. I’m not on a witch hunt here, I just like to keep the fact that all the parties are living, breathing people in the forefront)

But in practice, your decisions have consequences on me.

If they did not, there would be no disputes to resolve, right? Once I eat a potato, there is no way for you to eat that potato. Once I spend a dollar of your money on medicine, you cannot spend that dollar to buy a potato. Resources are scarce. They must be divided up. You can choose a system that does not involve a concept of ownership, but you can’t do so and then pretend that it solves the problem of scarcity. Scarcity is a condition of reality; ownership is one “system” for addressing it. You continue to claim that, with regard to certain issues, your “want” is too important to consider compromise. To paraphrase: We both acknowledge that there is scarcity and that different people want different things. I suggest a system for dealing with this, and you say, “Your system sucks. You keep ignoring that there is scarcity and coming up with solutions where I don’t get everything that is important to me.”

Your argument is that we could live within the same society with different set of rules.

I have suggested that you should have the same rights as I do. Misrepresenting my argument is a no-no. Misrepresenting your own is even worse. When it was convenient for you, you have attacked my claims with the fact that no one person’s moral system is any more “right” than another person’s. When this fact is inconvenient, you replace it with “my moral system is right and yours is wrong” and you try to conceal it by hiding it behind popular positions.

This is easily demonstrated. I can use YOUR argument to support the opposite of what you are “proving” based on a less popular definition of what is “right”. Your example:

…tuberculosis (which is a disease much more common in the most disfranchised social categories) is kept at bay because these disfranchised categories benefit from free treatments. You can opt out of public healthcare, and die from tuberculosis. I don’t mind. When I’ll begin to mind is when I catch tuberculosis because it became widespread amongst the poorest of the people who opted out public healthcare.

I underlined the part where you have decided that this issue is TOO IMPORTANT to compromise on, because you might die. My version:

Tuberculosis is a disease that happens more to people who can’t afford healthcare. You can provide healthcare for them and many of them will live longer. But you refuse to consider the consequences of your actions on me. If these people don’t die from tuberculosis, they will keep eating potatoes. When I begin to mind is when there are so many people eating potatoes that I have to starve to death.

Or is it your contention that healthcare is scarce and food is not?

But there’s no need to work that hard. In your search for examples, you are picking ones that illustrate the unfairness of your system and then “forgetting” to make the comparison:

You want to keep your private property and grow potatoes… But if I’ve no intent to grow anything and just want to hunt…private property wasn’t neutral for me. Contrarily to what you said, there’s a winner : you, and a loser : me.

Let’s finish this example. You really want to hunt, but no one is “compromising”. You think about using your rake to take out your neighbors one at a time, but then you remember that you’re not allowed to do that. Then you have an idea. You tell your neighbors that you enjoy hunting so much, that you’ll give them some deer meat if they’ll let you hunt on their land. It’ll even save them work, because having deer meat means they won’t have to grow potatoes… Maybe they agree, maybe they don’t. But at least, with a little ingenuity, you have a CHANCE to get what you want most in this system.

And what happens in your system? Well, based on your philosophy that “solutions must be complicated” and planned by “society”, the group has elected one of their leaders, Clair, to plan the solution for the field. Clair believes in working with facts and making things fair and so surveys the group to discover what everyone wants. 50 want to grow wheat, 49 want to grow potatoes, and 1 want to leave it natural and hunt deer (bit of a closet environmentalist). So Clair divides the property so that 50% of the land is devoted to wheat, 49% to potatoes, and 1% is set aside as a preserve for hunting (no fences, of course). A vote is taken and the plan is passed 99 to 1. You say, “Wait a minute, this sucks. You guys get your wheat and potatoes, but now there’s not enough room left for me to hunt. I’m not a fucking rabbit. I need meat.” Clair says, “You’re just being selfish. We have to do what’s best for the Common Good, and the consensus is that 99% of the land must be used for wheat and potatoes. I know you enjoy hunting, but people will starve without food, and growing wheat and potatoes is TOO IMPORTANT for us to compromise.” You say, “I don’t like this system at all.” Claire says, “We’ve got 99 rakes that can MAKE you like it.”

Your system guarantees a winner and a loser. Specifically, it guarantees for issues that are really important, someone’s values are ignored. I offer a system where the unpopular hunter has a chance, and you conclude that I am selfish.

I could come up with an endless list of such cases where your free choice has adverse consequences on me.

I could make a pretty good argument that this is true in every case. Because of scarcity, I think it is fair that people should set priorities and be prepared to compromise. People should search for solutions where everyone gives up some stuff they want in trade for stuff they want more. Unfortunately, you insist–paradoxically–that dividing up resources is complex and therefore one group can figure out the right answer so it can be imposed uniformly onto every single person. When something is TOO IMPORTANT, you immediately pick up your rake and start looking for someone who needs a whack.

I am asking you to put down the rake, accept that we all can’t have everything, have as much respect for my position as I am trying to have for yours, and think about possibilities for compromise. An exercise that I recommend for you is, for all your scenarios, imagine that 50 people are in favor and 50 are against, and all are convinced that it is TOO IMPORTANT to compromise and try to work out a solution. (If you’re a politician, one side will probly start telling Big Fat Ones.)

…you don’t want to pay taxes to fund firefighters…If we don’t put out the fire, it could spread to the neighboring houses of people who have paid for the firefighters. If we put out the fire, you’re a freeloader…

So, in this case, I don’t want a fire department, and you do. Maybe I insist that the chances of my house catching on fire are too low to waste my potato money on a fire department. If it’s my system, then there is nothing you can do to force me to help you pay for it. (I’ll point out that I am not insisting that you not be allowed to have a fire department, just that I won’t help you buy it.) Once you accept that you can’t just have your way, you will start to think about your priorities. Is feeling safe important enough for me to pay for fire protection for this freeloader? You’ll think about other options. Maybe I should put a fire-proof wall around my yard–no, that’d be too ugly. You’ll talk to friends about it. I hate living in a neighborhood where some idiot can burn both of our houses down and doesn’t even care. The issue is so important, lots of ideas will get passed around. Maybe one of your friends is a developer, and he says, “Hey, I’ve got this big plot of land where I am creating a neighborhood. Why don’t we make it a fire-safe neighborhood and everyone who buys a house has to sign a contract agreeing to pay towards the fire department. Hell, I can probly make more money off the houses.”

Is it the best solution? I have no idea. But it is A solution, and it doesn’t require you to gang up on anybody. Once you stop using “respect for other people’s happiness” as an argument of convenience and start incorporating it into your hunt for solutions, it will turn out it really is possible to find compromises by agreeing on a few ground rules.

Where are we, then? So far, you have done nothing whatsoever to touch my argument that the “system” of recognizing inalienable rights is the best system anyone has proposed–ever–for satisfying every person’s moral values as much as possible. You have, however, done some pretty underhanded debating.

Same thing if we hunt down the bears without your help. You’ve no risk to be killed by the bears, but we took all the risks.

And while you were hunting bears that probably wouldn’t have hurt anybody, I was growing potatoes that everyone needs to survive. You’re wasting time because of your silly bear-aphobia as an excuse to not contribute to the community potato patch.

There’s also the sheer complexity of solving every single issue if people don’t operate according to the same rules.

No person or group has ever been shown to be able to solve complex problems better than a market that includes everyone. Instead of One Best Solution being selected by vote, a whole bunch of solutions will be tried and compared with each other.

We won’t be able to solve any dispute.

What do you mean by solve? Your system resolves the dispute by picking a winner. Mine forces a compromise–a specific kind of compromise where every single person’s values are taken into account and are reflected in the “solution”.

There’s no way a complex society (or even a simple one) could operate without the frame of a common set of rules that will be enforced on everybody whether they agree or not with the rule at the first place.

I agree. And I’ll ask for the, I don’t know, 100th time: Since we both agree on this part, why don’t you agree that it is more fair minimize the arbitrary rules that we shove down society’s throat? Another idea that you drop when it is inconvenient. You keep saying, “Somebody has to eat some shit.” And I keep saying, “I know, I know, let’s divide it up equally.” And you keep saying, “Hell no, I’m not eating any shit. This is TOO IMPORTANT to me. I think you should eat it. Let’s have a vote on whether you should have to eat the shit for the Common Good.” Very fair.

You seem to assume that the set of rules of your choice won’t result in anybody losing anything.

No, I don’t. I assume that EVERYONE will have to lose something. You seem to assume that there is a “solution” that keeps this from happening, and we can figure it out by taking a vote.

Your system is a “no loser” system only if none of the rule implemented has adverses consequences on anybody.

My system is never a “no loser” system, and neither is yours. Mine gives everybody a chance to have a say-so. Yours does not.

Or if we find a way to exactly determine a “compensation value” for the adverse consequences of any rule implemented.

There already is such a system, and it is so finely tuned that it can adjust for the different “personal” values that each person places on each thing. You’ve heard about it, right?

And would require a totally crazy amount of bureaucracy to even be tried.

None needed. You tell me how many potatoes you would trade for that deerskin. I’ll tell you how many potatoes I’ll trade for a seashell.

But what if I only like deer meat?

I would say, what’s it worth to you?
What if I really hate universal health care? You would say, “Fuck you. This is TOO IMPORTANT to me.”

In particular I enjoyed long walks. I can’t enjoy them anymore since I’m barred from entering in your properties.

No, in YOUR system, every decision is all or nothing. In mine, we can compromise. Give me one deerskin a month, and I’ll let you wander around my property (as long as you stay out of my bedroom).

And this kind of issue will arise at every corner, each time even only one person disagree with the rule that should be followed.

Yep. Lots of compromising. There will be very few decisions that are TOO IMPORTANT for my opinion to matter.

Resulting in impossibly complicated issues. And what if, concerning a very basic problem, someone refuses absolutely to accept a common rule?

The same bad arguing tactic over and over again. The answer is that this is the reason libertarians believe in having a government. You use the notion that “imposing rules on people is bad” when it is convenient for attacking my position. A couple sentences later, you describe how life is complicated and so we should have a whole bunch of complex rules that carefully weigh every issue according some nonexistent absolute system of value. If you agree that “imposing rules on people is bad”, then you are admitting support for my system. If you do not, then this argument is meaningless. If you continue to randomly change your position to whatever you think counters my argument, you are not debating, you are trolling.

To sum up, your idea that the system you’re proposing insure that there’s no loser would only be true if…

I think it is fair to say that you have demonstrated a clear enough understanding of my system that it is indefensible for you to deliberately misrepresent my position in this way.

As you might have noticed, I disagree with considering property as an inherent and absolute right.

Well, you disagree with it at this moment. But you aren’t establishing much of a reputation for consistency in your views.

So, what are you going to do with me in your society, since you’re unwilling to force your principles upon me?

Well, since you won’t agree to a compromise, I guess we’ll have to gather up all of our friends in the field and fight it out with rakes. If I can convince enough people to join me, maybe having a rake in your ass will encourage you to change your opinion. Again.

Like “I’ll work for you for a bowl of rice if I’m born in misery”? That’s definitely a compromise. I lose any actual freedom, but that’s great since you’re not forced into giving me rice, and I can freely chose to starve.

If you could eat straw, you could produce your own food out of thin air.

If 49 people decide to fence their plots, not only they produce less food, but the 51 others produce less food too.

Some of them will some of them won’t. How do you think new techniques get discovered? By everyone voting and then doing the same thing, or by different people trying different ideas to see which one is best?

By implementing a private property system favored by only some people, everybody lost something.

Exactly. And thanks to my system, they were able to choose to give up things that were less important (to them) to trade for things that were more important (to them).

Concerning “ownership can’t predate the society”, does this mean that if you manage to implement a libertarian society, the first thing we’ll do will be to share everything like good communists?

In my example, people sort of appeared, in which case, dividing it up equally is probably the least objectionable choice. Do you really want to discuss every possibility, see if you can find one possible case where your system is more fair?

But if we’re going to force an agreement, I’d rather have this agreement being along the lines of my political philosophy than yours.

And let’s face it: This is TOO IMPORTANT to compromise on.

-VM

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

But more seriously : You apparently fail to notice that your “right to property” has exactly the same flaws. It doesn’t ever end. You too fail to say “here is where we must begin to find a compromise”.

No, this is the flaw of your continuous efforts to reinterpret “rights” in such a way that they compel action. The reason that this system works is that it does in fact draw a line: You are free to exercise your right in any way (here is where it ends) that does not infringe on my rights. The only circumstance that allows you to infringe my rights is when I give you permission to do so.

Since you’re unwilling to accept conditions or limitations to a right to property you can’t attack me for doing the same. When you’ll agree to let a path open on your property so that I can go to the river, maybe I’ll agree not to trample on your potatoes.

You can’t trade something you don’t have. For this, my price is…deer.

But until now, you refused to put limitations on property to protect freedom. And…of course, I mean actual freedom, not a theorical one. Or else, I’ll admit that you’re the owner of the potato field, but will go on walking all over it. You’ve every right to grow potatoes, it’s just that they happen to be on the way, and are always trampled on. Too bad.

What I did was expose the fallacy of your argument:

No two people living in the same “reality” can have unlimited freedom. The laws of physics dictate that I cannot exercise unlimited freedom without infringing on yours. In other words, freedom is scarce in the same way that potatoes and healthcare are scarce. Implementing a “right to property” rule is a method to limit everyone’s freedom in a minimal, and equal, manner. This is my argument.

Your rebuttal: Your argument sucks because it doesn’t allow everyone to have unlimited freedom. You cannot refute my argument by restating one or more of its premises.

You imply that the right to own property is unlimited, but it IS limited in a similar way. It would be no better if you were to complain that my ownership of the field infringes on your right to own property because it prevents you from owning that particular property. Scarcity exists. You cannot acknowledge it one place and assume it away in another.

-VM

[clairobscur]

I didn’t notice your response until now. I’m just going to respon to your second post, because I’m fed up with this argument :

@Smartass

No, this is the flaw of your continuous efforts to reinterpret “rights” in such a way that they compel action. The reason that this system works is that it does in fact draw a line: You are free to exercise your right in any way (here is where it ends) that does not infringe on my rights. The only circumstance that allows you to infringe my rights is when I give you permission to do so.

Mine do exactly the same. My right is to walk around. Your right is to walk around. I can’t infringe on your rights, you can’t infringe on mine. No action is compelled. My system draw a clear line : you can’t prevent me from walking where I want to. You can’t walk where my feet are. Except if I allow you to do so.

So, the difference is? Apart from the fact you think “private property” is TOO IMPORTANT to compromise, as you put it?

You can’t trade something you don’t have. For this, my price is…deer.

Of course I have something. The right to go to the river. At any time. But for some reason you’ve decided to create a new “right”. You would supposedly have the right to prevent me from doing so. Once again, when did I agree with that? I assume since you don’t want to compromise in any way, we’ll have to see who has the most friends with the most spears.

As usual, you’re taking as a given what you’re supposed to prove. That you somehow already own the land. We still didn’t agree on that.

What I did was expose the fallacy of your argument:

No two people living in the same “reality” can have unlimited freedom. The laws of physics dictate that I cannot exercise unlimited freedom without infringing on yours. In other words, freedom is scarce in the same way that potatoes and healthcare are scarce.

Absolutely. Space is scarce, so we can’t be both at the same place at the same time. You can’t walk on my feet. Where’s the fallacy?

Implementing a “right to property” rule is a method to limit everyone’s freedom in a minimal, and equal, manner. This is my argument.

Absolutely not. My right to walk around has been severely limited. I’m only guaranteed to be able to walk around on my property (say, on 1/6 billionth of the planet). You severely limited my freedom by creating your “private property” concept.

Your rebuttal: Your argument sucks because it doesn’t allow everyone to have unlimited freedom. You cannot refute my argument by restating one or more of its premises.

I don’t clearly understand this sentence. In any case, what I did is using your arguments while replacing your right to property with my right to walk around. You’re accusing me of not being ready to compromise. I am. You renounce to your absolute right to property, and I’ll renounce to my absolute right to walk wherever I want.

But you insist on not compromising with your absolute right to property in any way, shape or form. You’re all for compromise, but only if people first accept your views.

You imply that the right to own property is unlimited, but it IS limited in a similar way.

It is unlimited in your system, as far as I can tell. You don’t accept any conditions or limitations on your right to property in exchange for having the right to own any property at the first place and as a result limiting my freedom.

In this case, you’re unwilling to accept that I could have a right to access to the river in exchange for your right to grow potatoes that wont get trampled on.

It would be no better if you were to complain that my ownership of the field infringes on your right to own property because it prevents you from owning that particular property.

Absolutely not. It can’t infringe on my right to property since I don’t recognize the existence of such a right at the first place. It’s infringing on my right to walk around, that I do recognize.

You’re still taking as granted the right you’re favoring and rejecting arbitrarily the right I favor.

Scarcity exists. You cannot acknowledge it one place and assume it away in another.

Aknowledging it or not doesn’t change a thing in my argument. Which is that you’ve decided, arbitrarily, that you’ve have an inherent, and absolute right to property. You want me to compromise (by exchanging skins against potatoes, for instance), but only after I will have recognized your right to property. What I ask you is : what kind of compromise are you willing to make to deprive me of my natural right to walk wherever I want, or to access to the river?

As long as you will hold the position “I won’t compromise about my absolute right to property”, I won’t compromise about my absolute right to walk wherever I want, either. Why should I? I don’t need to give you any deer skin, since I don’t think you have any right to block my way to the river at the first place. You just decided all by yourself that you had.

Agree with limiting your right to property (you can’t prevent people from going to the river) and I’ll agree with limiting my right to freely move (people can’t walk on the potatoes you’re growing).

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

Mine do exactly the same. My right is to walk around. Your right is to walk around. I can’t infringe on your rights, you can’t infringe on mine. No action is compelled. My system draw a clear line : you can’t prevent me from walking where I want to. You can’t walk where my feet are. Except if I allow you to do so.

So, the difference is? Apart from the fact you think “private property” is TOO IMPORTANT to compromise, as you put it?

Once again, you are accusing me of not considering the consequences of my argument while not actually considering the consequences of yours. You are hung up on the notion of property and your ideas of what is meant by ownership. The right to property places a limit on freedom, not because of an arbitrary assumption, but because of the recognition that there must be a limit on freedom. I said that freedom is scarce and you did not consider what that means. It means that it is not physically possible for the two of us to both have unrestricted liberty. Your silly statement about walking on your feet shows the gap in your thinking. I cannot put my feet where yours are, even if you do give me permission, because it is not physically possible.

Let’s return to the field, and there is no notion of ownership or property. Your “right to walk around” is a simplification of the right to “free motion” or of personal liberty. In much the same way, we would both have an unlimited “right to grow potatoes”, even if we had no particular right to own them once they were grown. Given that, since your walking tramples the potatoes, your right to walk around infringes on my right to grow potatoes. Just like my right to lay down on the ground would infringe on your right to walk over it. What we are talking about are cases where competing rights to liberty conflict and there is no obvious way to resolve it. As long as I can make a case that your right to walk around infringes on my right to dig holes and put potatoes in them, you can make the case that my right to do this is infringing on your right to walk through the spot where I am squatted down on the ground and digging.

What you keep insisting is an imaginary right to property is nothing more than a way for us to exchange liberty. It is a way to make a compromise and say, “Okay, I won’t exercise my right to grow potatoes here, if you won’t exercise your right to walk around there.” It is not an arbitrary limiting of freedom in the way that you are characterizing it; it is a method of accounting for agreements that we make. In every situation where opportunities to exercise a right to freedom collide (freedom is scarce because the world is scarce), the only way to ever get anything done is to be able to have a way of agreeing to limit our exercise of our rights.

If there are two potatoes, we are both equally “free” to eat both potatoes and neither can infringe the other’s right, so we both stare at the two potatoes longingly until we starve to death. Since we are not stupid, we say, I’ll trade you my right to eat the potato on the left for your right to eat the potato on the right. This breaks the impasse, is fair, and allows us each to eat a potato. What we are trading is agreements not to exercise our rights on a particular object or in a particular place. You can call these agreements anything you like, but what they amount to is the notion that I refer to as “ownership of property”.

If you really think that there is a way to have even human survival, much less a society, without having some sort of ownership concept with which to work out these agreements, then I am truly curious to hear what it is.

If, on the other hand, you are ready to recognize that it is not physically possible to have unlimited freedom, then we can talk about your problem with individual ownership. All of the scenarios you propose are based on conferring the right to own property–whether you call it that or not–to “society as a whole”, which is led by a majority rule. While the individual has a right to property, that means that he is able to negotiate for himself these agreements to forgo freedom. In your community property world, the majority negotiates these agreements and, for the minority citiizens, this means that their “unlimited” right to freedom, rather than being traded away voluntarily, is stolen by the group with more rakes.

I’ll ask again: How is this more fair? You criticize the system I propose because of your half-baked ideas of what is meant by a right to unlimited freedom, and yet the only alternative you propose, rather than granting this right to everyone, completely takes it away from some people to confer it on others, in essence making the minority the slaves of the majority.

But it reflects your general thinking on all of these things. When you imagine your own unlimited “right to walk around”, you never imagine me with the same right, so you notice infringements of your own right while being blithely unaware of infringements to mine. In every case, I imagine us both with equal amounts of whatever right is being discussed. And in every case, you imagine yourself with unlimited rights and me as just someone trying to take yours away. Since you don’t imagine me with rights, you can’t even follow the arguments that show where your notion of rights conflict with mine.

You have yet to make a single coherent argument where what you proposed was any sort of compromise. Rather, you try to depict me as unfair by imagining me with no more rights than you apparently think I deserve. You don’t even consider the possibility that I might have a right to grow potatoes that is equal to your right to walk around.

It is an extremely self-centered viewpoint that I find all too common in people who spend their time thinking that they are the absolute arbiters of what is fair and the chosen few to determine what is “right” for the rest of the world.

As usual, you’re taking as a given what you’re supposed to prove. That you somehow already own the land. We still didn’t agree on that.

Well, since you are taken as a given that you have the right to decide which one of us gets to exercise our right to freedom on that land, I would say it was you who was assuming ownership.

Absolutely. Space is scarce, so we can’t be both at the same place at the same time. You can’t walk on my feet. Where’s the fallacy?

The fallacy is in your thinking that there is any way physically possible for us both to have an unlimited right to freedom without being able to make agreements that amount to a “right of ownership”.

You severely limited my freedom by creating your “private property” concept.

No, I just reminded you that you aren’t any more entitled to your freedom than I am to mine.

In any case, what I did is using your arguments while replacing your right to property with my right to walk around.

Which shows that you don’t understand what is meant by scarcity or ownership.

You’re accusing me of not being ready to compromise. I am. You renounce to your absolute right to property, and I’ll renounce to my absolute right to walk wherever I want.

Again with the renouncing of rights. You renounce citizenship. You don’t renounce a right. You agree to limit the places or objects upon which you wil exercise your right.

But you insist on not compromising with your absolute right to property in any way, shape or form. You’re all for compromise, but only if people first accept your views.

I think that it is clear that there is no possible way to ever resolve any dispute of any kind without an agreement that equates to ownership of property. If you think this is just a “view”, then explain to me how we go about exercising our unlimited right to freedom without someone having authority to say who exercises their freedom where.

It is unlimited in your system, as far as I can tell. You don’t accept any conditions or limitations on your right to property in exchange for having the right to own any property at the first place and as a result limiting my freedom.

This is pretty low, even for you. Surely, you do understand that I am suggesting that we both have an equal right to property, right? I mean, you do appear to be able to read.

In this case, you’re unwilling to accept that I could have a right to access to the river in exchange for your right to grow potatoes that wont get trampled on.

No, I am saying that any way that we negotiate such an exchange amounts to the creation of a concept of ownership.

Absolutely not. It can’t infringe on my right to property since I don’t recognize the existence of such a right at the first place. It’s infringing on my right to walk around, that I do recognize.

And I suppose you think that in a world where you recognize your own right and no one else’s that you are an exemplar of Willingness to Compromise?

What I ask you is : what kind of compromise are you willing to make to deprive me of my natural right to walk wherever I want, or to access to the river?

On the assumption that you are as clueless as you are presenting yourself to be, I will answer. If I weren’t willing to compromise, you would have no more chance of making it to the river than I would of planting potatoes. Of course, if you only recognize yourself as having this right to liberty, I can see where you would think that trampling all over me or the potatoes I am growing is fair and equitable.

Agree with limiting your right to property (you can’t prevent people from going to the river) and I’ll agree with limiting my right to freely move (people can’t walk on the potatoes you’re growing).

Why bother? As you say, I am unwilling to compromise. Which means that you can continue to walk parallel to the river, while I continue to walk in such a way as to place myself exactly between you and it. These rights are unlimited, and until you recognize that the concept of property is necessary in order to enable us to find a compromise, there really is no solution to be had.

-VM

[clairobscur]

@Smartass

Once again, you are accusing me of not considering the consequences of my argument while not actually considering the consequences of yours. You are hung up on the notion of property and your ideas of what is meant by ownership. The right to property places a limit on freedom, not because of an arbitrary assumption, but because of the recognition that there must be a limit on freedom. I said that freedom is scarce and you did not consider what that means. It means that it is not physically possible for the two of us to both have unrestricted liberty. Your silly statement about walking on your feet shows the gap in your thinking. I cannot put my feet where yours are, even if you do give me permission, because it is not physically possible.

Really,you don’t get it. I picked the example of not walking on my feet (and it’s perfectly possible to do so), precisely because it’s the only needed restriction in my “absolute right to walk around”.

You still refuse to aknowledge (or are unable to perceive, one or the other) that there’s no objective difference between me choosing this right as a given and you choosing right to property as a given.

Let’s return to the field, and there is no notion of ownership or property. Your “right to walk around” is a simplification of the right to “free motion” or of personal liberty. In much the same way, we would both have an unlimited “right to grow potatoes”, even if we had no particular right to own them once they were grown. Given that, since your walking tramples the potatoes, your right to walk around infringes on my right to grow potatoes.

Not exactly. It infringes on your right to have the potatoes not being trampled on. You still have the right to grow them (that’s why I compared this with a theorical freedom in a purely libertarian system that becomes a completely moot point if, due to various external factors like being born poor, I can’t use it in any meaningful way).

You put hard work in growing your potatoes, so you want the right to protect them from tramplers like me. On the other hand, I want to be able to freely access to the river, because otherwise I lose something. Maybe only the right to take leisure time by the river, maybe the right to live if it’s the only source of water in the area.

That’s why we must come to an agreement. This agreement must take into acount both of our concerns. You can’t just tell me : I protect my potatoes and you lose the right to go to the river. It’s not any kind of compromise, it’s having it your way.

Just like my right to lay down on the ground would infringe on your right to walk over it. What we are talking about are cases where competing rights to liberty conflict and there is no obvious way to resolve it. As long as I can make a case that your right to walk around infringes on my right to dig holes and put potatoes in them, you can make the case that my right to do this is infringing on your right to walk through the spot where I am squatted down on the ground and digging.

Indeed we could make such a case. Similarily you could propose a system where you’re the only one with a right to property and you decide that me owning something infringes on your right to own the same thing. But I picked an example where I aknowledge you’ve the same right as me : going and staying wherever you want. Which means that I can’t walk on you.

What you keep insisting is an imaginary right to property is nothing more than a way for us to exchange liberty.

I don’t understand the meaning of this sentence.

It is a way to make a compromise and say, “Okay, I won’t exercise my right to grow potatoes here, if you won’t exercise your right to walk around there.” It is not an arbitrary limiting of freedom in the way that you are characterizing it; it is a method of accounting for agreements that we make. In every situation where opportunities to exercise a right to freedom collide (freedom is scarce because the world is scarce), the only way to ever get anything done is to be able to have a way of agreeing to limit our exercise of our rights.

It’s an arbitrary limiting of freedom if you impose it on me without my agreement. You’re inventing a right I don’t aknowledge (let’s assume I come from a hunter/gatherer society where the concept of private property of land is unheard of) and use this right you just made up to limit my freedom. Perfectly arbitrary.

If we come to an agreement (I wont exrcise my right to…if you don’t exercise your right to…) , it’s not arbitrary anymore. But it also means that we agree that my right to walk around and your right to own property aren’t unlimited and absolute. They’re conditionnal.

And these are my points

1. Your right to property doesn’t exist before we come to an agreement, before we create a social norm or a “law”. Before that it’s just you stating so against me stating otherwise.

2. Your right to property isn’t absolute. We can put all sorts of conditions on it. Like you being obligated to let me go the river so I’ won’t be thirsty (public interest) or you giving me 5% of your potatoes (taxes) in exchange for me loosing the opportunity to hunt game in the plot of land where you want to grow potatoes.

If there are two potatoes, we are both equally “free” to eat both potatoes and neither can infringe the other’s right, so we both stare at the two potatoes longingly until we starve to death. Since we are not stupid, we say, I’ll trade you my right to eat the potato on the left for your right to eat the potato on the right. This breaks the impasse, is fair, and allows us each to eat a potato. What we are trading is agreements not to exercise our rights on a particular object or in a particular place. You can call these agreements anything you like, but what they amount to is the notion that I refer to as “ownership of property”.

Absolutely. Like agreeing that whatever game is killed can be eaten by the hunter who killed it. But it still doesn’t mean that a right to property is absolute. In this case, it’s conditionned only by each of us recognizing to the other an equal right to property. Because the only dispute involved is related to the same right : the right to eat, or own potatoes.

In the access to the river vs protecting potatoes issue, it’s two different rights conflicting. I don’t care about you eating all the potatoes, I care about you trying to restrict my freedom to move. The only way to solve the issue is by agreeing that both rights won’t be absolute anymore, but conditionnal.

If you really think that there is a way to have even human survival, much less a society, without having some sort of ownership concept with which to work out these agreements, then I am truly curious to hear what it is.

I’m not interested into finding another system, but in showing you that your position about property rights (them being absolute and inherent) is arbitrary and even unsound.

A concept of property is necessary. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t legitimately put limitations and conditions on its exercise. Actually you’re obligated to do so, or else you would infringe on other rights (like freedom) arbitrarily.

If, on the other hand, you are ready to recognize that it is not physically possible to have unlimited freedom, then we can talk about your problem with individual ownership. All of the scenarios you propose are based on conferring the right to own property–whether you call it that or not–to “society as a whole”, which is led by a majority rule.

It’s perfectly possible to have an absolute “freedom to move as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s freedom to move” in the same way it’s possible to have an absolute “right to property as long as it doesn’t infringe on somebody else’s right to own property”. But both aren’t compatible.

A compromise necessitate that both rights must be restricted. It’s up to us to decide to which extent they will. Insisting that one right shouldn’t be compromised with won’t lead us anywhere.

Now, let’s assume that we propose a compromise (that, once again, will necessarily involve limiting your right to property and my right to move). Everybody in the tribe agree, except two persons, one insisting that there’s no way he will compromise about an absolute right to property and the other similarily refusing to compromise about an absolute right to move.

What system, other than a majority decision, do you propose to solve the dispute?

While the individual has a right to property, that means that he is able to negotiate for himself these agreements to forgo freedom.

And when the individual has a right to move , that means he’s able to negociate for himself these agreements to forgo freedom.

In your community property world, the majority negotiates these agreements and, for the minority citiizens, this means that their “unlimited” right to freedom, rather than being traded away voluntarily, is stolen by the group with more rakes.

I’m not proposing as a basis a community property world. I’m just stating it’s an option as valid as “no property at all” or “private property only”.

We’re at the point when the issue is undecided. We’re precisely discussing about which system we should implement. We obviously can’t all have it our way. If we both insist onthe right we favor being absolute, no agreement can be reached. We must trade limitations on my right against limitations on your right. If it appears that no unanimous agreement can be reached, what solution do you propose apart from a majority vote? You can’t impose your property right concept as a basis when it’s precisely the issue debatted.

And there will be other issues. Let’s assume for instance that we agree on the fields being private property and the wheel being public property. We’ll have to settle disputes like “this plot of land is mine! No, it’s mine!” or “You took too much water from the wheel !”. Each time, we’ll have to draft some new agreement, IOW, a law, to settle the dispute. In each of these cases, how do we solve the issue if no unanimous agreement can be reached?

I’ll ask again: How is this more fair? You criticize the system I propose because of your half-baked ideas of what is meant by a right to unlimited freedom, and yet the only alternative you propose, rather than granting this right to everyone, completely takes it away from some people to confer it on others, in essence making the minority the slaves of the majority.

And your system does exactly the same. I’m granting the same right to everyone. The right to move freely. And you want to take it away from some people (or even from everybody else, if you happen to be the only one favoring private property). You want to make everybody your slave by restricting their freedom, whether thy agree or not, and giving them in exchange a right to property they don’t want.

You’re still unable to understand that your right to property isn’t a given. And that my right to move freely is exactly as valid as your right to property.

But it reflects your general thinking on all of these things. When you imagine your own unlimited “right to walk around”, you never imagine me with the same right, so you notice infringements of your own right while being blithely unaware of infringements to mine.

Uh? I always proposed that we both have this right to walk around.

In every case, I imagine us both with equal amounts of whatever right is being discussed. And in every case, you imagine yourself with unlimited rights and me as just someone trying to take yours away. Since you don’t imagine me with rights, you can’t even follow the arguments that show where your notion of rights conflict with mine.

Again : Uh??? I grant you exactly the same rights I have. What we’re disagreeing about is what these rights are. More exactly, what I disagree with is that you want to oppose to my right to freely move your right to own property, and apparently assume that it’s somehow legitimate for you to decide all by yourself what rights we should both have.

You’re the one trying to impose something on the other against his will. I’m ready to compromise about my right to freely move, but you’re completely unwilling to compromise about your right to own property. You want to take it as a basis for further compromises.

You have yet to make a single coherent argument where what you proposed was any sort of compromise. Rather, you try to depict me as unfair by imagining me with no more rights than you apparently think I deserve. You don’t even consider the possibility that I might have a right to grow potatoes that is equal to your right to walk around.

You should buy glasses or read again my posts, or maybe teach me english. Because I didn’t deny you had the right to grow potatoes as long as it doesn’t infringes on my own freedom. If it does, by preventing me to go to the river, or simply to sit in my favorite spot to watch the sunset, you certainly have to accept some compromise. Or else, you’re just imposing your decision on me, at my expense.

Once again, you’re the one trying to have it your way, ignoring my rights, and unwilling to compromise.

It is an extremely self-centered viewpoint that I find all too common in people who spend their time thinking that they are the absolute arbiters of what is fair and the chosen few to determine what is “right” for the rest of the world.

Absoutely. And you’re this person.

You’ve decided for the rest of the world that there’s an absolute right to property and that your system is “more fair” (your words) .

On the other hand, I’m the one stating there’s no such thing as an absolute right and that it’s necessary to come to an agreement , in some way or another, and that this agreement will necessarily mean that all rights will be limited.
The fact that you can write such a sentence and be completely oblivious that you’re precisely putting yourself as an absolute arbiter is puzzling. You’re obviously blind to something, I don’t know why exactly, I tried times and times again to point at the flaw in your reasonning, to no avail. So I think this debate is pointless.

Well, since you are taken as a given that you have the right to decide which one of us gets to exercise our right to freedom on that land, I would say it was you who was assuming ownership.

Nope. I just stated that nobody is the “owner” as long as we didn’t agree on this issue. You’re the one attributing to yourself a right of ownership. You seem unable to envision a situation where the land isn’t owned by anybody, and the issue of whether it should is undecided.

This is pretty low, even for you. Surely, you do understand that I am suggesting that we both have an equal right to property, right? I mean, you do appear to be able to read.

Honestly, it seems to me that you don’t understand anything I write. I never suggested this (you, on the other hand, accused me above of assuming that I’ve more rights than you, or that you don’t have any right at all, or something).

I know you agree with me having a right to property. I mean that you’re unwilling to limit the extent of this right to property (for instance by agreeing that everybody has a right to go to the river) despite it limiting other rights. I don’t want this “absolute rigth to property” at the first place. So stop stating that offering it to me justify taking away from me a right I want to keep.

On the assumption that you are as clueless as you are presenting yourself to be, I will answer. If I weren’t willing to compromise, you would have no more chance of making it to the river than I would of planting potatoes.

Absolutely. That’s why you have to compromise. And compromising means giving something in exchange for something else. Not choosing for me which right I should have and which right I shouldn’t have.

Of course, if you only recognize yourself as having this right to liberty, I can see where you would think that trampling all over me or the potatoes I am growing is fair and equitable.

For the umpteenth time, I’m recognizing the same rights to you. You just don’t want this right and instead want an absolute right to property. I’m in the reverse situation.
And how fair and equitable is deciding for me which right we can be legitimately deprived from, and which right we can get? You bargaining position is interesting : “I’d like to exchange your car for mine” . “Thanks, but I’d rather keep my car” “Doesn’t matter. I’m taking it anyway. I’m giving you mine in exchange. That’s fair”.

[Smartass]

@clairobscur

You still refuse to aknowledge…that there’s no objective difference between me choosing this right as a given and you choosing right to property as a given.

One is a logical result of the other. We are both assuming an “absolute” right to liberty. We are both saying that when our rights to liberty conflict, there must be a compromise. If there are two of us and two potatoes and we both have an absolute right to life and liberty, some notion of property is the only way to resolve the dilemma. What I suggested before was that I trade some of my liberty for an equal amount of yours. We each have equal claim on both potatoes. I trade my claim to the left potato in exchange for your claim to the right potato. Once I have traded you my right to the left potato, I have bestowed ownership on you. If we include in the trade that I can’t later change my mind and reassert my claim to the left potato, we are, in practice, declaring that you have a right to own property. In this case, it is an obvious one-to-one trade.

Now, imagine that there are still the two of us, but instead of two potatoes there are a potato and two celeries. As it turns out, I absolutely despise celery, and you aren’t all that crazy about potatoes. For that reason, my right to eat the celery isn’t all that valuable to me. Given that, it is easy to imagine a scenario where I would trade you the right to eat both celeries in exchange for the right to eat the one potato. The key point is that my rights are traded freely with no one making the decision for me. In other words, only I can evaluate what is a fair trade for me, and only you can evaluate what is a fair trade for you. By focusing the right to make these trades on the individuals, we ensure that someone else doesn’t dictate the trade in such a way that one of us doesn’t think that the trade is fair.

Let’s say that I am absolutely convinced that I need that particular potato in order to stay alive. In that case, there is virtually no scenario in which I will trade away my right to eat it, even if you offer mounds of celery, carrots, and lettuce. What I am suggesting is that, since only the individual can determine what is a “fair” trade for him to make, only the individual should have the right to authorize this trade. I am further suggesting that only by assuming an inherent individual right to property can we protect the rights of all individuals to have a say in whether a trade of his liberties is fair.

It infringes on your right to have the potatoes not being trampled on. You still have the right to grow them…

This comparison is not enlightening in any way. Since we both have our right to walk around, chances are that I will use the right to prevent you from trampling the potatoes. When you “walk around” toward the potatoes, I will “walk around” in front of you. Since you can’t push me down or step on me, then as long as I keep myself between you and the potatoes, you are prevented from trampling them. At this point in the argument, however, your right to walk around suddenly expands to a “right to go to the river”. By blocking your path through the potatoes, I am not infringing your right to go to the river, I am using my freedom to prevent you from choosing a path that goes through the potatoes. Nonetheless, since you like to reinterpret rights in your own favor, what I expect is that you will say that your right to go to the river is absolute, push me down, and trample through the potatoes to get to the river. Along the way, you have completely forgotten that I was mererly exercising my right to walk around and that you violated it when you pushed me down.

On the other hand, I want to be able to freely access to the river, because otherwise I lose something.

Yes, by not carefully establishing the ground rules, you are able to take everything you might want and call it a right. And for every case where you get what you want, there is a corresponding lost opportunity for me. In practice, you keep coming up with new “rights” that are TOO IMPORTANT for you to consider negotiating a compromise with me in order for you to exercise them. You describe this as only being a right to go to the river, when in fact you are making it a right to go to the river in a particular way–by trampling the potatoes. In other words, you are looking for an argument that entitles you to get what you want without giving up anything in exchange.

No matter how you define your rights, if you attribute the same rights to me, there is always the potential for conflict. The individual right to property is a way of saying that you’re never allowed to just push me down because what you want is too important. In every case where we seek to exercise our rights in ways that conflict, you are forced to trade with me and not allowed to just arbitrarily take something from me because your perceived need seems more important to you than my needs.

That’s why we must come to an agreement. This agreement must take into acount both of our concerns. You can’t just tell me : I protect my potatoes and you lose the right to go to the river. It’s not any kind of compromise, it’s having it your way.

And this is a classic straw man. I am saying that the right to property provides a way to ensure that both of our concerns are taken into account. It requires that we trade and that we do so voluntarily. While a right to property exists, we can agree that I will not do anything on the left side of the field that might interfere with your right to walk around on it (or sit in the sun, or whatever), and you will not do anything on the right side of the field that will interfere with my right to grow potatoes on it.

I think you are acknowledging that this is necessary, but are failing to recognize the importance of making it an individual right. Making it individual means that you are never forced to make a trade that is unacceptable to you. It means that, until we negotiate a compromise that is acceptable to both, no one will be able to use the field. Let’s say that half the field does not provide enough room to grow potatoes. At the same time, you know that you can walk to the river using less than half the field. Since no trade happens until we both agree, there is every chance that we can negotiate a deal where I grow potatoes on most of the field, leaving a path for your river access, and give you part of the yield of potatoes when they are grown. The important thing is that there is no deal until we both agree that the compromise is acceptable. If you change this individual right to some sort of community right, then you get the case where people are forced to make compromises that they believe to be unfair.

I don’t understand the meaning of this sentence.

It was missing some words (stolen, I think). I was trying to point out that the right to property is not an arbitrary limitation on liberty. It creates a mechanism that forces all parties to trade liberties in a way that is always fair. It is always fair because no one can be forced to trade against their will. Since you have a right to property, once we have agreed that the path to the river is yours, there is no way that I can mess with this path without your permission. If I later decide that I want that path, I can’t just come and take it from you.

It’s an arbitrary limiting of freedom if you impose it on me without my agreement. You’re inventing a right I don’t aknowledge (let’s assume I come from a hunter/gatherer society where the concept of private property of land is unheard of) and use this right you just made up to limit my freedom.

Let’s assume that you do come from such a society. Are you really suggesting that such a society can exist without a concept of property? Who gets to eat the deer that you kill? (Let’s assume it is patriarchal) What keeps the women from tanning hides and giggling right next to the blind where the hunters are hiding and waiting for a deer to come by? I am suggesting that there is no way for there to be a society without some concept of property, even if it is not called “ownership”. I am further suggesting that saying that it doesn’t exist is just a way of saying that you confer the property on the group instead of the individual.

If we come to an agreement (I wont exrcise my right to…if you don’t exercise your right to…) , it’s not arbitrary anymore. But it also means that we agree that my right to walk around and your right to own property aren’t unlimited and absolute. They’re conditionnal.

No right is “unlimited and absolute”. The simple fact is that you cannot exercise your right to walk around without a right to property. If there is not some plot of land somewhere that we both agree you are more entitled to your right to walk around on than I am, then I can prevent you from exercising your right without actually infringing on it (I just have to stay in front of you).

1. Your right to property doesn’t exist before we come to an agreement, before we create a social norm or a “law”. Before that it’s just you stating so against me stating otherwise.

This is incorrect. A right to property is the only kind of agreement that we can come to. Unless I agree to trade some freedom to you (and not change my mind later), there is no way for a compromise to happen. Ultimately, the right to exercise our liberty is the only thing any of us have to trade.

2. Your right to property isn’t absolute. We can put all sorts of conditions on it. Like you being obligated to let me go the river so I’ won’t be thirsty (public interest) or you giving me 5% of your potatoes (taxes)…

It sounds to me like you want a way to make a trade and then welch on it later. Remember when I said I wouldn’t interfere with your potato growing? Well, I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that I should have a say in what you do with them.

I also really like this phrase: “…so I won’t be thirsty (public interest)” I think it concisely illustrates a conflation that you make over and over: This is something that I want or need; therefore, it must be in the public interest.

Like agreeing that whatever game is killed can be eaten by the hunter who killed it. But it still doesn’t mean that a right to property is absolute…the only dispute involved is related to the same right : the right to eat, or own potatoes.

So, apparently you think there is some qualitative difference between the rights to liberty and property? It is not clear that all disputes are disputes involving the same right? A dispute about land is a dispute about liberty. A dispute about potateoes is a dispute about liberty. They are all disputes about liberty. The individual right to property is a method for protecting the right to liberty equally. If only you as a person can trade it away, then no one can make you “compromise” against your will.

In the access to the river vs protecting potatoes issue, it’s two different rights conflicting.

Nope, they are both disputes about who can exercise their liberty where and in what way.

The only way to solve the issue is by agreeing that both rights won’t be absolute anymore, but conditionnal.

That resolves nothing. The only way to resolve it is for us to make a deal. And the only way for us to make a deal is to confer ownership on one thing or another.

I’m not interested into finding another system, but in showing you that your position about property rights (them being absolute and inherent) is arbitrary and even unsound.

Well, so far, you’re nowhere close. The only thing that I have seen is that you think there are loads of cases where it is okay to make someone give up rights against their will.

A concept of property is necessary. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t legitimately put limitations and conditions on its exercise.

If you believe this, I would like you to describe to me a case in which the right to property is limited–and I don’t mean a case where the right to property is conferred on the group instead of the individual.

A compromise necessitate that both rights must be restricted…Insisting that one right shouldn’t be compromised with won’t lead us anywhere.

This doesn’t tell me anything at all about what you think is a “compromise”. I would say that a true compromise necessitates that both sides take, both sides give, and neither sides takes or gives against his will. This is not a restricting of rights, it is a trading of them. To restrict rights is to take them away.

And when the individual has a right to move , that means he’s able to negociate for himself these agreements to forgo freedom.

The results of these negotiations are meaningless without a right to own property. Without it, one side can negotiate in bad faith.

I’m not proposing as a basis a community property world. I’m just stating it’s an option as valid as “no property at all” or “private property only”.

The fact that you think that “no property at all” is a valid option is evidence that you have not thought this through.

We must trade limitations on my right against limitations on your right.

You acknowledge the necessity to trade here, but you don’t acknowledge that “ownership of property” is the result of these trades. Also, you think that there is some way to say which right is of more value than another. The fact is, the value of any right can only be determined by the individual who has it. While I am well fed, my right to eat a potato is of little value to me. When I am starving, I may be willing to trade anything for it.

And your system does exactly the same. I’m granting the same right to everyone. The right to move freely. And you want to take it away from some people. You want to make everybody your slave by restricting their freedom, whether thy agree or not,…

That is exactly the opposite of my goal. My goal is to make it impossible for some other person or group to take someone’s freedom without it being a voluntary trade.

You’re still unable to understand that your right to property isn’t a given. And that my right to move freely is exactly as valid as your right to property.

I understand this just fine. You are still unable to understand that you’re right to move freely is meaningless without some kind of right to own property.

More exactly, what I disagree with is that you want to oppose to my right to freely move your right to own property, and apparently assume that it’s somehow legitimate for you to decide all by yourself what rights we should both have.

The right to own property gives us a way to negotiate. It does not require us to. You are still free to not trade away any freedom. However, at some point, everyone DOES find something they’re willing to trade for, or they die.

You’re the one trying to impose something on the other against his will. I’m ready to compromise about my right to freely move, but you’re completely unwilling to compromise about your right to own property.

Please describe to me how you can “compromise” your right to move freely in a way that does not recognize a right to property.

You’ve decided for the rest of the world that there’s an absolute right to property and that your system is “more fair” (your words).

I have concluded that some version of property is unavoidable. I have asserted that conferring this right equally to each individual is more fair. Do you see the difference?

Nope. I just stated that nobody is the “owner” as long as we didn’t agree on this issue…You seem unable to envision a situation where the land isn’t owned by anybody, and the issue of whether it should is undecided.

Ownership is nothing more than the authority to decide how a piece of property is used. Without ownership, no one is able to decide and the property is not used. Once again, can you describe to me a resolution that is reached without land being owned by any person or group?

I never suggested this (you, on the other hand, accused me above of assuming that I’ve more rights than you, or that you don’t have any right at all, or something).

Are you not assuming that your right to sit in the sun trumps my right to sit in the sun in the same spot at the same time? By saying that neither of us owns it and then sitting your ass down, you are pretty much assuming that I do not have an equal right, are you not? If you say “I was here first” then you are asserting squatters rights: I sat down first, so now I own it. I guess this is some sort of moving version of property where I own the land under my feet and the potatoes in my hands. How is this a solution?

I mean that you’re unwilling to limit the extent of this right to property (for instance by agreeing that everybody has a right to go to the river) despite it limiting other rights.

You need to really think through the implications of the notion of a “right to go to the river”. Suppose there is only room for one person at the river at a time and I go and sit in the sun in that spot and refuse to leave, ever.

And how fair and equitable is deciding for me which right we can be legitimately deprived from, and which right we can get? You bargaining position is interesting : “I’d like to exchange your car for mine” . “Thanks, but I’d rather keep my car” “Doesn’t matter. I’m taking it anyway. I’m giving you mine in exchange. That’s fair”.

I am absolutely amazed by this. This is exactly the kind of situation that your rights protect you from. If you have rights to life, liberty, and property as I have described, the only way you end up trading your car is if I offer you enough that you are willing to trade. Even if this means I have to offer you my car, my house, and my clothes. Either I offer you something you are willing to accept, or we don’t trade.

YOU are the one who says, well I want to spend this dollar on healthcare so I’m just going to take it from you without offering you anything in trade and without concern for what you would rather do with this dollar.

-VM