This is an x-post from a different thread.
For context:
Velocity: Liberals and conservatives both tend to be authoritarian.
LinusK: I disagree: in my opinion, liberals are anti-authoritarian.
Libertarians tend to see an economic system in which wealth flows from the poor to the rich as natural; liberals see it as constructed. A thing that is constructed can be reconstructed.
Grumman: That is the exact opposite of the truth. If participation in an economic system makes poor people poorer, the strictly libertarian position is that it is immoral to force them to participate - you may only use force to prevent somebody actively causing harm to others.
John Mace: [Responding to LinusK] No, they don’t.
Robert163: [Responding to Grumman] What other choice do they have? A self induced coma?
Me again.
I want to expand on what I meant when I said:
Capitalism is based on ownership. But ownership is a creation of law, and therefore a creation of government.
As a simple example: you may own your home, and the real estate around it. Nevertheless, if a plane flies above your home, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t charge the pilot with criminal trespass, for example, and you can’t negotiate a fee with the airline for crossing over your land.
What’s happened is that the government has limited or defined your ownership in your land so that your property rights stop somewhere below the altitude of the plane.
The government has limited your ability to enforce ownership of the airspace above your land (by preventing you from, for example, shooting the plane down with a Stinger missile) by limited and defining those rights
That the government defines and enforces property rights is true not only of ownership of land, but of air and water, and copyrights, patents, trademarks, corporations, bonds, and every other thing that you can own.
The ability to own, and the ability to enforce ownership claims, come from the government.
I’m going to add one more thing, and this is a test: Where does wealth come from?