Likewise, “tax” people for property they “own”, and you’re being capitalistic. “Lease” people property the government “owns”, and you’re being anti-capitalistic.
One could equally well say “letting people own property is capitalistic. Taxing them for property is less capitalistic precisely because it is equivalent to the government really owning the property and leasing it”.
In other words, you haven’t shown that the same situation is or isn’t capitalistic depending on the framing. Rather, you’ve shown that both framings are equally capitalistic, but they just have different starting points. In one situation, you start out with capitalism (owning property) and make it less capitalistic (taxing the property). In another, you start out with a socialist situation (government owns the property) and make it more capitalistic (people can lease it and get some rights over it).. Either way you end up in the same place.
“I own this property and pay $1,000 in taxes to the government” is a very different situation from “The government leases me this property for $1,000″.
“Property” is a large bundle of rights that does not boil down to cash flows.
You end up in the same place in this hypothetical. OrphanWilde postulated a situation where the same situation could be described as taxing people on property they own or the government leasing property. If these are in fact two different framings of the same situation, it follows that in this hypothetical, the government has an unusual kind of lease that does grant the kind of rights you are referring to, even though a normal lease would not do so.
Of course I may be steelmanning too much and he may have just not noticed that his hypothetical requires a very atypical kind of lease.
The only reason you can or cannot own land in the first place is that government has asserted that land is something that you can own, and will protect your claim of ownership by force. Government enables that ownership in the first place—just as it -doesn’t- enable ownership of the ocean, and does enable ownership of physical processes but not mathematical processes. Setting terms on the manner in which ownership is handled isn’t more or less capitalistic; the difference, rather, is between good rules, and bad rules. Ownership of land has proven, on the whole, a very productive arrangement; it’s a good rule. That’s not the same as “capitalistic.”
The only reason you can or cannot own land in the first place is that government has asserted that land is something that you can own, and will protect your claim of ownership by force. Government enables that ownership in the first place—just as it -doesn’t- enable ownership of the ocean, and does enable ownership of physical processes but not mathematical processes. Setting terms on the manner in which ownership is handled isn’t more or less capitalistic; the difference, rather, is between good rules, and bad rules. Ownership of land has proven, on the whole, a very productive arrangement; it’s a good rule. That’s not the same as “capitalistic.”
This kind of claim is very popular on the left, and it always puzzles me, because it’s so obviously false on so many levels.
Firstly, land ownership long predates any government. In fact, it even seems to predate humans! It would be more historically true to say that land ownership created government than that government created land ownership.
Secondly, just because the government recognises your property right in something, doesn’t mean you own it in any meaningful way. You seem to picture an omnipotent government that could even enable ownership of the ocean, but if it tried it would find itself much more like Canute. Unless you can enforce ownership, it’s meaningless. People simply don’t pay royalties every time they sing Happy Birthday, regardless of its copyright status. And so on.
Thirdly, just because the government doesn’t recognise your property right in something, it doesn’t mean you don’t own it. Does Tony Montana own the cocaine he imports? He buys it, he sells it, he stores it, he makes use of it how he wants, other people accept that it is “his,” no-one else can get hold of it except by his agreement. That’s ownership. The fact that the government doesn’t recognise his legal title is irrelevant, he has other methods of enforcing his claim.
In summary, government recognition of title is neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership, nor is it the historic origin. I myself am the title-holder of a plot of land that I do not own in any meaningful sense, because the writs of the government that recognises my title do not run in that area. Instead, there are other people who are currently enjoying all the property rights of that land, using it, earning money from it, excluding others from it, maybe even transferring their ownership. Perhaps I should go there and tell them that because the government doesn’t recognise their claim, they can’t do any of that stuff. Something tells me they might not find the argument persuasive.
This kind of claim is very popular on the left, and it always puzzles me, because it’s so obviously false on so many levels.
I’m a minarchist.
Firstly, land ownership long predates any government. In fact, it even seems to predate humans! It would be more historically true to say that land ownership created government than that government created land ownership.
You and I have different working definitions of the word “government” if you think “government” is something which was invented, rather than recognized.
Secondly, just because the government recognises your property right in something, doesn’t mean you own it in any meaningful way. You seem to picture an omnipotent government that could even enable ownership of the ocean, but if it tried it would find itself much more like Canute. Unless you can enforce ownership, it’s meaningless. People simply don’t pay royalties every time they sing Happy Birthday, regardless of its copyright status. And so on.
You’re arguing with what I “seem” to be rather than what I am.
Thirdly, just because the government doesn’t recognise your property right in something, it doesn’t mean you don’t own it. Does Tony Montana own the cocaine he imports? He buys it, he sells it, he stores it, he makes use of it how he wants, other people accept that it is “his,” no-one else can get hold of it except by his agreement. That’s ownership. The fact that the government doesn’t recognise his legal title is irrelevant, he has other methods of enforcing his claim.
The agents enforcing his claim are -also- governments. If he enforces his own claim, he is, de facto, a government.
[Edited: Quoting mistake]
In summary, government recognition of title is neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership, nor is it the historic origin. I myself am the title-holder of a plot of land that I do not own in any meaningful sense, because the writs of the government that recognises my title do not run in that area. Instead, there are other people who are currently enjoying all the property rights of that land, using it, earning money from it, excluding others from it, maybe even transferring their ownership. Perhaps I should go there and tell them that because the government doesn’t recognise their claim, they can’t do any of that stuff. Something tells me they might not find the argument persuasive.
I don’t know if you noticed your own subtle shift from “the” government to “a” government when you wrote this sentence. If you didn’t, pay attention. It matters.
At any rate, I think you are trying to fit what I am saying to a political agenda that doesn’t match my own. I don’t -have- a political agenda here. I’m asserting, as somebody who would be described as an extremist capitalist, that “capitalism” isn’t an economic system. What people usually mean, when they say “capitalism”, is either exactly the set of economic rules they think would work best, or exactly the set of economic rules they disagree with most.
If you assert that any entity that enforces property rights is a government, then your claim is (1) circular and (2) a distortion of the term “government” beyond all recognition. Tony Montana certainly doesn’t look like a government.
Any entity which acts as the final enforcer for any set of rules at -all- is a government; your city can send police to arrest you, your county can do likewise, so they both qualify; your HOA has to sue you for breach of contract in a court run by a government who will enforce the decisions of that court by sending a policeman if necessary. Tony Montana isn’t -a- government, but rather an agent of one; the Mafia.
But Tony Montana isn’t an agent of anyone, he works for himself. There is no final enforcer in that situation, it’s an anarchy in that sense (which is why the drug trade is violent). But property still exists.
In fact, governments are much closer to anarchies than your “unlimited escalation” would allow. The reason I can’t enforce property rights in my land isn’t because of some rival government, but because of anarchy that the government can’t suppress.
But Tony Montana isn’t an agent of anyone, he works for himself. There is no final enforcer in that situation, it’s an anarchy in that sense (which is why the drug trade is violent). But property still exists.
Since I haven’t seen the movie in question, I’m at a disadvantage to say properly whether Tony Montana qualifies as a government; he could readily be equivalent to a monarch, however, inwhichcase it could reasonably be asserted that he qualifies as a government in himself.
In fact, governments are much closer to anarchies than your “unlimited escalation” would allow. The reason I can’t enforce property rights in my land isn’t because of some rival government, but because of anarchy that the government can’t suppress.
In what meaningful sense, then, is the government the government of that land? They’re unable to govern. If it were a rival government, we’d call it civil war, and we’d say the rival government is the effective government of that land. It’s possible—I’m unaware of the exact circumstances—that nobody is governing that land.
The property of whom? You? Begging your pardon for insensitivity, but in what meaningful sense do you own it?
ETA:
Does it belong to someone else? In what sense do -they- own it? They get use of it? Do I own the sky because I can enjoy its hue? Or do they, or representatives on their behalf, actively prevent anybody else from taking use of it? If that’s the case, in what sense are they, or those representing their interests, not a government?
I own it in the sense that I acquired the land lawfully, I have the title deeds, my name is on the land registry in the capital, I used to “properly” own it until the anarchy, and if the government makes its writ run again, I’ll own it again “properly.” It’s all quite awkward because I wanted to sell the land before this happened, but obviously now no-one is keen to buy.
But now there are other people squatting on the land. They didn’t chase off the government, they just took advantage of the chaos. They get the use of it (they are farming it). They do prevent other people from making use of it, yes (otherwise farming would be pointless). But they’re certainly not the government, they’re just some squatters. If all their neighbours (also mostly squatters!) showed up arrayed against them, they wouldn’t be able to hold onto the land. They aren’t capable of “infinite escalation.” But human society doesn’t work like that (mostly). And I’m certainly not going to put together some group of mercenaries to expel them. So those guys now effectively own the land, and they could probably sell it to some other group of squatters living in that anarchy. As long as the central government doesn’t reclaim the area, or some rival government emerges, effective property ownership in that area is going to be governed by the tacit norms and mutual understandings among those people. Which sucks for me (although it’s not like the land is worth a huge amount) but does appear to have been the norm for most of human history.
I take no disagreement with anything you’ve said—“infinite escalation” is strictly theoretical, as there’s an upper bound on resources. So do we have any disagreement at this point?
You seem to be saying that property, at least in land, derives from government. I’m saying no, not necessarily, and I have given you a concrete example. And frankly I think that most property derives from private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement, and that government, while sometimes a helpful agent, isn’t the prime mover.
I don’t understand your example. My view of property is force based, you own a land either because you can protect it by force or because someone who can i.e. the government allows you.
Thankfully force is not the only arbiter of human relationships. However its opposite, compassion or altruism does not seem to play much of a role in the idea of property. A third option is trade, cooperation for mutual gain, non-altruistic, and force plays a role in rare cases in punishing defectors but usually people don’t defect largely because they want to continue a beneficial trade and not because of that kind of fear.
Is your point that property can be trade-like? That it exists not only because either you or the government has enough guns to chase away trespassers, but also because a tit-for-tat trade-like “I won’t touch stuff you call yours if you promise the same” social agreement is seen as mutually beneficial, even without much of an enforcement?
Is your point that property can be trade-like? That it exists not only because either you or the government has enough guns to chase away trespassers, but also because a tit-for-tat trade-like “I won’t touch stuff you call yours if you promise the same” social agreement is seen as mutually beneficial, even without much of an enforcement?
Kinda. I would de-emphasise the “mutually beneficial” and “promise” bits and emphasise the notion of self-reinforcing equilibrium. After all, you do have to defend your property, because theft does exist, but you don’t have to defend it very much, at least in normal times, because Hobbes was wrong; we do not have a constant ‘Will to contend by Battle.’ Similarly, international relations are fundamentally anarchical, so most countries judge that they need armies, but that doesn’t mean that they are constantly on a war footing, nor that “there is no place for industry, .. culture of the earth,” etc.
Similarly, international relations are fundamentally anarchical
I would argue with that. There is policeman: the yanks. Pax Americana, used to be Pax Britannica pre-1914 or so, which was a similar policing role, just more polite perhaps. There is also a quasi-democratic state-like thingy, the UN. It was anarchic before. Roughly before the “Anglosphere” became dominant. 18th century, for example. But today? Putin thought it is anarchic then found not being allowed to trade with about 80% of the GDP of the planet is not such a good deal.
Wasn’t like the whole point of having the UN is to stop it from being anarchic?
My view of property is force based, you own a land either because you can protect it by force or because someone who can i.e. the government allows you.
How does that not apply to things other than land? You have your life because either you can protect it by force or because the government does so.
No, not only because of that. There is also a trade-like aspect. A mutual social agreement that if nobody tries to kill the other, and thus we do not have to waste our resources on maintaining an ability to protect it by force, then everybody benefits from it.
My point is that you sound like to me it is only the direct deterrent, the immediate cost of the attack matters, my point would be here more like the consideration “if I attack someone, I erode the rule, the social agreement against attacking, and make it likelier that others attack me”. And because it could be a tragedy of commons, one level higher there is the social precommitment to punish the attack because everybody is better off if such rules are enforced. It requires ability to punish, sure, which is force, but not a very impressive one, a mob with pitchforks will do in a pinch.
How does that not apply to almost everything? We have a mutual agreement not to take each other’s land.
(If your answer is that everyone has life and not everyone has land, then use another example that not everyone has, such as money, or legs. How does your characterization of land not apply to those? You only have money, or your legs because either you can protect them or because the government does.)
You’ve given me a concrete example of how, as soon as government stopped enforcing your property, it stopped being your property. What exactly did private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement avail you?
It stopped being my property, but it didn’t stop being anyone’s property. There’s nothing to say that private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement will give the same result as government enforcement.
Is this equivalent to saying that a government is any entity which has the will and the ability to kill you if it deems necessary?
“If necessary to enforce rules” might be a slightly better modification; somebody who kills you because it’s more convenient than not killing you isn’t necessarily trying to govern your behavior, after all.
And I think that parents of small children are final enforcers. No one sues their five-year-old for throwing a tantrum.
By that reasoning, making people slaves isn’t less capitalistic, either. The only reason you can or can’t control your own life is that the government has asserted that you do or don’t, and will protect either you or the slaveowner’s claim by force.
Also, by that reasoning, you cannot ever assert that the government is violating someone’s rights, since rights do not exist independently of whether the government sets the terms.
By that reasoning, making people slaves isn’t less capitalistic, either. The only reason you can or can’t control your own life is that the government has asserted that you do or don’t, and will protect either you or the slaveowner’s claim by force.
No, your reasoning requires treating capitalism as a system rather than a model, which my opening comment explicitly rejects. Something isn’t “more” or “less” capitalistic.
Also, by that reasoning, you cannot ever assert that the government is violating someone’s rights, since rights do not exist independently of whether the government sets the terms.
And here you’re extending the argument into an entirely different domain in which I have thus far made no claims whatsoever. In order for my claim to extend in this manner, two things would have to be true: First, there would have to be a good natural rights argument for land ownership. (There isn’t, although there -are- very good natural rights arguments for ownership of other things, including farms and buildings sitting on that land—an important distinction.) Second, I’d have to have rejected natural rights, which I haven’t done.
No, your reasoning requires treating capitalism as a system rather than a model, which my opening comment explicitly rejects. Something isn’t “more” or “less” capitalistic.
If you can’t compare how capitalistic two situations are, you can’t claim that they are equally capitalistic either, which you are implicitly doing.
And here you’re extending the argument into an entirely different domain in which I have thus far made no claims whatsoever.
Being able to justify your argument also implies being able to justify the things that it implies. This is true whether you claim those things or not.
In this case, you’ve said that you can characterize ownership of land as being enabled by the government on the grounds that you need government force to keep owning it. This argument extends both to other kinds of ownership (including farms and buildings) and other kinds of rights. It is equally true that you rely on government force to keep owning a building, and it is equally true that you rely on government force in order to prevent someone from killing you.
If you can’t compare how capitalistic two situations are, you can’t claim that they are equally capitalistic either, which you are implicitly doing.
No, I’m saying “domain error”.
Being able to justify your argument also implies being able to justify the things that it implies. This is true whether you claim those things or not.
Again: “Domain error”. More explicitly, this time.
In this case, you’ve said that you can characterize ownership of land as being enabled by the government on the grounds that you need government force to keep owning it. This argument extends both to other kinds of ownership (including farms and buildings) and other kinds of rights. It is equally true that you rely on government force to keep owning a building, and it is equally true that you rely on government force in order to prevent someone from killing you.
Ownership of land is an exclusive right of conversion, whereas ownership of farms and buildings is an exclusive right of the -product- of conversion. Your argument about preventing people from killing you is yet another attempt to shift domains; domain error, again.
Ownership of land is an exclusive right of conversion, whereas ownership of farms and buildings is an exclusive right of the -product- of conversion. Your argument about preventing people from killing you is yet another attempt to shift domains; domain error, again.
You’re shifting arguments. Your argument wasn’t “conversion”, it was that the government will protect your claim by force. Protecting your claim by force is something that applies to land, buildings, and the right not to be murdered. Of course, if you bring up a new argument, anything I say about your old argument may not necessarily apply.
Actually, you shifted arguments, and I permitted it in that case, but nice attempt to try to berate me for what you’ve been doing all along. But at any rate, at this point I must conclude discussions with you can’t be productive, because as soon as you realized I wouldn’t permit you to change the subject and pretend we were having the same discussion, you instead resorted to petty debate tactics. Good day.
The only reason you can or cannot own land in the first place is that government has asserted that land is something that you can own, and will protect your claim of ownership by force.
One could equally well say “letting people own property is capitalistic. Taxing them for property is less capitalistic precisely because it is equivalent to the government really owning the property and leasing it”.
In other words, you haven’t shown that the same situation is or isn’t capitalistic depending on the framing. Rather, you’ve shown that both framings are equally capitalistic, but they just have different starting points. In one situation, you start out with capitalism (owning property) and make it less capitalistic (taxing the property). In another, you start out with a socialist situation (government owns the property) and make it more capitalistic (people can lease it and get some rights over it).. Either way you end up in the same place.
In practice, you don’t end up in the same place.
“I own this property and pay $1,000 in taxes to the government” is a very different situation from “The government leases me this property for $1,000″.
“Property” is a large bundle of rights that does not boil down to cash flows.
You end up in the same place in this hypothetical. OrphanWilde postulated a situation where the same situation could be described as taxing people on property they own or the government leasing property. If these are in fact two different framings of the same situation, it follows that in this hypothetical, the government has an unusual kind of lease that does grant the kind of rights you are referring to, even though a normal lease would not do so.
Of course I may be steelmanning too much and he may have just not noticed that his hypothetical requires a very atypical kind of lease.
Mexican land trusts are a good example of a “lease” arrangement that behaves identically to ownership as we typically regard it.
I think that would require considerable violence to the words “own” and “lease”.
Why is taxing property less capitalistic?
The only reason you can or cannot own land in the first place is that government has asserted that land is something that you can own, and will protect your claim of ownership by force. Government enables that ownership in the first place—just as it -doesn’t- enable ownership of the ocean, and does enable ownership of physical processes but not mathematical processes. Setting terms on the manner in which ownership is handled isn’t more or less capitalistic; the difference, rather, is between good rules, and bad rules. Ownership of land has proven, on the whole, a very productive arrangement; it’s a good rule. That’s not the same as “capitalistic.”
This kind of claim is very popular on the left, and it always puzzles me, because it’s so obviously false on so many levels.
Firstly, land ownership long predates any government. In fact, it even seems to predate humans! It would be more historically true to say that land ownership created government than that government created land ownership.
Secondly, just because the government recognises your property right in something, doesn’t mean you own it in any meaningful way. You seem to picture an omnipotent government that could even enable ownership of the ocean, but if it tried it would find itself much more like Canute. Unless you can enforce ownership, it’s meaningless. People simply don’t pay royalties every time they sing Happy Birthday, regardless of its copyright status. And so on.
Thirdly, just because the government doesn’t recognise your property right in something, it doesn’t mean you don’t own it. Does Tony Montana own the cocaine he imports? He buys it, he sells it, he stores it, he makes use of it how he wants, other people accept that it is “his,” no-one else can get hold of it except by his agreement. That’s ownership. The fact that the government doesn’t recognise his legal title is irrelevant, he has other methods of enforcing his claim.
In summary, government recognition of title is neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership, nor is it the historic origin. I myself am the title-holder of a plot of land that I do not own in any meaningful sense, because the writs of the government that recognises my title do not run in that area. Instead, there are other people who are currently enjoying all the property rights of that land, using it, earning money from it, excluding others from it, maybe even transferring their ownership. Perhaps I should go there and tell them that because the government doesn’t recognise their claim, they can’t do any of that stuff. Something tells me they might not find the argument persuasive.
I’m a minarchist.
You and I have different working definitions of the word “government” if you think “government” is something which was invented, rather than recognized.
You’re arguing with what I “seem” to be rather than what I am.
The agents enforcing his claim are -also- governments. If he enforces his own claim, he is, de facto, a government.
[Edited: Quoting mistake]
I don’t know if you noticed your own subtle shift from “the” government to “a” government when you wrote this sentence. If you didn’t, pay attention. It matters.
At any rate, I think you are trying to fit what I am saying to a political agenda that doesn’t match my own. I don’t -have- a political agenda here. I’m asserting, as somebody who would be described as an extremist capitalist, that “capitalism” isn’t an economic system. What people usually mean, when they say “capitalism”, is either exactly the set of economic rules they think would work best, or exactly the set of economic rules they disagree with most.
If you assert that any entity that enforces property rights is a government, then your claim is (1) circular and (2) a distortion of the term “government” beyond all recognition. Tony Montana certainly doesn’t look like a government.
Any entity which acts as the final enforcer for any set of rules at -all- is a government; your city can send police to arrest you, your county can do likewise, so they both qualify; your HOA has to sue you for breach of contract in a court run by a government who will enforce the decisions of that court by sending a policeman if necessary. Tony Montana isn’t -a- government, but rather an agent of one; the Mafia.
But Tony Montana isn’t an agent of anyone, he works for himself. There is no final enforcer in that situation, it’s an anarchy in that sense (which is why the drug trade is violent). But property still exists.
In fact, governments are much closer to anarchies than your “unlimited escalation” would allow. The reason I can’t enforce property rights in my land isn’t because of some rival government, but because of anarchy that the government can’t suppress.
Since I haven’t seen the movie in question, I’m at a disadvantage to say properly whether Tony Montana qualifies as a government; he could readily be equivalent to a monarch, however, inwhichcase it could reasonably be asserted that he qualifies as a government in himself.
In what meaningful sense, then, is the government the government of that land? They’re unable to govern. If it were a rival government, we’d call it civil war, and we’d say the rival government is the effective government of that land. It’s possible—I’m unaware of the exact circumstances—that nobody is governing that land.
Finally, you concede the possibility! Yet property still exists there. So how’s property merely a creation of government again?
The property of whom? You? Begging your pardon for insensitivity, but in what meaningful sense do you own it?
ETA:
Does it belong to someone else? In what sense do -they- own it? They get use of it? Do I own the sky because I can enjoy its hue? Or do they, or representatives on their behalf, actively prevent anybody else from taking use of it? If that’s the case, in what sense are they, or those representing their interests, not a government?
I own it in the sense that I acquired the land lawfully, I have the title deeds, my name is on the land registry in the capital, I used to “properly” own it until the anarchy, and if the government makes its writ run again, I’ll own it again “properly.” It’s all quite awkward because I wanted to sell the land before this happened, but obviously now no-one is keen to buy.
But now there are other people squatting on the land. They didn’t chase off the government, they just took advantage of the chaos. They get the use of it (they are farming it). They do prevent other people from making use of it, yes (otherwise farming would be pointless). But they’re certainly not the government, they’re just some squatters. If all their neighbours (also mostly squatters!) showed up arrayed against them, they wouldn’t be able to hold onto the land. They aren’t capable of “infinite escalation.” But human society doesn’t work like that (mostly). And I’m certainly not going to put together some group of mercenaries to expel them. So those guys now effectively own the land, and they could probably sell it to some other group of squatters living in that anarchy. As long as the central government doesn’t reclaim the area, or some rival government emerges, effective property ownership in that area is going to be governed by the tacit norms and mutual understandings among those people. Which sucks for me (although it’s not like the land is worth a huge amount) but does appear to have been the norm for most of human history.
I take no disagreement with anything you’ve said—“infinite escalation” is strictly theoretical, as there’s an upper bound on resources. So do we have any disagreement at this point?
You seem to be saying that property, at least in land, derives from government. I’m saying no, not necessarily, and I have given you a concrete example. And frankly I think that most property derives from private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement, and that government, while sometimes a helpful agent, isn’t the prime mover.
I don’t understand your example. My view of property is force based, you own a land either because you can protect it by force or because someone who can i.e. the government allows you.
Thankfully force is not the only arbiter of human relationships. However its opposite, compassion or altruism does not seem to play much of a role in the idea of property. A third option is trade, cooperation for mutual gain, non-altruistic, and force plays a role in rare cases in punishing defectors but usually people don’t defect largely because they want to continue a beneficial trade and not because of that kind of fear.
Is your point that property can be trade-like? That it exists not only because either you or the government has enough guns to chase away trespassers, but also because a tit-for-tat trade-like “I won’t touch stuff you call yours if you promise the same” social agreement is seen as mutually beneficial, even without much of an enforcement?
Kinda. I would de-emphasise the “mutually beneficial” and “promise” bits and emphasise the notion of self-reinforcing equilibrium. After all, you do have to defend your property, because theft does exist, but you don’t have to defend it very much, at least in normal times, because Hobbes was wrong; we do not have a constant ‘Will to contend by Battle.’ Similarly, international relations are fundamentally anarchical, so most countries judge that they need armies, but that doesn’t mean that they are constantly on a war footing, nor that “there is no place for industry, .. culture of the earth,” etc.
I would argue with that. There is policeman: the yanks. Pax Americana, used to be Pax Britannica pre-1914 or so, which was a similar policing role, just more polite perhaps. There is also a quasi-democratic state-like thingy, the UN. It was anarchic before. Roughly before the “Anglosphere” became dominant. 18th century, for example. But today? Putin thought it is anarchic then found not being allowed to trade with about 80% of the GDP of the planet is not such a good deal.
Wasn’t like the whole point of having the UN is to stop it from being anarchic?
How does that not apply to things other than land? You have your life because either you can protect it by force or because the government does so.
No, not only because of that. There is also a trade-like aspect. A mutual social agreement that if nobody tries to kill the other, and thus we do not have to waste our resources on maintaining an ability to protect it by force, then everybody benefits from it.
My point is that you sound like to me it is only the direct deterrent, the immediate cost of the attack matters, my point would be here more like the consideration “if I attack someone, I erode the rule, the social agreement against attacking, and make it likelier that others attack me”. And because it could be a tragedy of commons, one level higher there is the social precommitment to punish the attack because everybody is better off if such rules are enforced. It requires ability to punish, sure, which is force, but not a very impressive one, a mob with pitchforks will do in a pinch.
How does that not apply to almost everything? We have a mutual agreement not to take each other’s land.
(If your answer is that everyone has life and not everyone has land, then use another example that not everyone has, such as money, or legs. How does your characterization of land not apply to those? You only have money, or your legs because either you can protect them or because the government does.)
My point is that it does apply.
That would mean that your statements about owning land also apply to owning your legs.
Yes, that is the point!
You’ve given me a concrete example of how, as soon as government stopped enforcing your property, it stopped being your property. What exactly did private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement avail you?
It stopped being my property, but it didn’t stop being anyone’s property. There’s nothing to say that private, tacit, anarchic methods of enforcement will give the same result as government enforcement.
So in a traditional (patriarchal) household, each husband is a government, right? And all parents, too?
No, because few husbands or parents are willing or able to act as final enforcers.
Final enforcement requires unlimited escalation. No matter how you escalate the situation, a final enforcer will escalate back.
Is this equivalent to saying that a government is any entity which has the will and the ability to kill you if it deems necessary?
And I think that parents of small children are final enforcers. No one sues their five-year-old for throwing a tantrum.
“If necessary to enforce rules” might be a slightly better modification; somebody who kills you because it’s more convenient than not killing you isn’t necessarily trying to govern your behavior, after all.
They’re unwilling or unable to escalate.
By that reasoning, making people slaves isn’t less capitalistic, either. The only reason you can or can’t control your own life is that the government has asserted that you do or don’t, and will protect either you or the slaveowner’s claim by force.
Also, by that reasoning, you cannot ever assert that the government is violating someone’s rights, since rights do not exist independently of whether the government sets the terms.
No, your reasoning requires treating capitalism as a system rather than a model, which my opening comment explicitly rejects. Something isn’t “more” or “less” capitalistic.
And here you’re extending the argument into an entirely different domain in which I have thus far made no claims whatsoever. In order for my claim to extend in this manner, two things would have to be true: First, there would have to be a good natural rights argument for land ownership. (There isn’t, although there -are- very good natural rights arguments for ownership of other things, including farms and buildings sitting on that land—an important distinction.) Second, I’d have to have rejected natural rights, which I haven’t done.
If you can’t compare how capitalistic two situations are, you can’t claim that they are equally capitalistic either, which you are implicitly doing.
Being able to justify your argument also implies being able to justify the things that it implies. This is true whether you claim those things or not.
In this case, you’ve said that you can characterize ownership of land as being enabled by the government on the grounds that you need government force to keep owning it. This argument extends both to other kinds of ownership (including farms and buildings) and other kinds of rights. It is equally true that you rely on government force to keep owning a building, and it is equally true that you rely on government force in order to prevent someone from killing you.
No, I’m saying “domain error”.
Again: “Domain error”. More explicitly, this time.
Ownership of land is an exclusive right of conversion, whereas ownership of farms and buildings is an exclusive right of the -product- of conversion. Your argument about preventing people from killing you is yet another attempt to shift domains; domain error, again.
You’re shifting arguments. Your argument wasn’t “conversion”, it was that the government will protect your claim by force. Protecting your claim by force is something that applies to land, buildings, and the right not to be murdered. Of course, if you bring up a new argument, anything I say about your old argument may not necessarily apply.
Actually, you shifted arguments, and I permitted it in that case, but nice attempt to try to berate me for what you’ve been doing all along. But at any rate, at this point I must conclude discussions with you can’t be productive, because as soon as you realized I wouldn’t permit you to change the subject and pretend we were having the same discussion, you instead resorted to petty debate tactics. Good day.
I didn’t change the subject. It’s right up there.