The government versus freedom problem

[lehighguy]

I view it in quite the opposite way. The wealthy can hire police to protect themselves. The poor can't. I had always seen government law enforcement as essential to prevent the powerful from coercing the powerless.

[Ed Miller]

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Is a man who posesses nothing but his own body then denied his liberty?

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No, not at all. He still has his own body. He still has the freedom to pursue other forms of property through work and trade.

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So it's the potential to own property, not the owning itself, that is necessary for liberty.

To satisfy the property requirement for liberty, must someone be allowed to keep every bit of property they can get their hands on without force, fraud, or coercion? Or is some basic set of property enough, and anything beyond that not necessary to ensure liberty?

[SheetWise]

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How does insurance solve any such problems? Say I steal your ring. I fence it. You have insurance that compensates you for your loss. Haven't I thus stolen from everyone who pays insurance premiums?

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That's an entirely different question -- I was simply saying that Title Insurance was certainly created out of a necessity, and it did solve the problem you described -- all without the involvement of government.

Re: Your new question, Haven't I thus stolen from everyone who pays insurance premiums?

Yes. We voluntarily chose to pool our risk. I say the problem is stealing ... what's your point?

[Ed Miller]

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Yes. We voluntarily chose to pool our risk. I say the problem is stealing ... what's your point?

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I don't have a point. I'm just asking questions.

[Ed Miller]

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So it's the potential to own property, not the owning itself, that is necessary for liberty.

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I'm going to assume that you will agree to this and pose another parable. If you don't agree with the assumed statement, feel free to say so.

Say you and I are stranded on a desert island. After we get on the island, you decide to take a nap. I decide to gather every coconut on the island (the only food source available). When you wake up, you realize that you missed out, and now you have no food source. You ask me for a coconut. I say no. You offer to work for a coconut. Again, I say no. Under no circumstances will I give you one of my coconuts. Ultimately, you will die for lack of coconut. Are my actions just, or am I denying you your liberty by refusing to offer you a chance to obtain property?

[mackthefork]

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Why does this need to happen? Most people agree these services are of great value to our society, so why would we immediately discontinue them if the government suddenly stopped forcing them upon us?

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Hi

I don't know how the government collects funds to pay for garbage collections in the US, but here we pay by council tax, it's a kind of fixed amount paid annually, there are 7 bands depending upon the value of your property. This tax is supposedly used to provide local authority services, such as garbage collection and landfill management, road networks in towns etc, and other stuff that generally annoys people. Unemployed people and low income households do not pay this tax, their rubbish still gets taken away. That was my basic point.

Regards Mack

[mackthefork]

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I view it in quite the opposite way. The wealthy can hire police to protect themselves. The poor can't. I had always seen government law enforcement as essential to prevent the powerful from coercing the powerless.

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The poor don't have much worth stealing either, think of a cherry tree, and a thorn bush, which needs protecting from the birds.

Mack

[SheetWise]

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Say you and I are stranded on a desert island. After we get on the island, you decide to take a nap. I decide to gather every coconut on the island (the only food source available). When you wake up, you realize that you missed out, and now you have no food source. You ask me for a coconut. I say no. You offer to work for a coconut. Again, I say no. Under no circumstances will I give you one of my coconuts. Ultimately, you will die for lack of coconut. Are my actions just, or am I denying you your liberty by refusing to offer you a chance to obtain property?

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"Under no circumstances will I give you one of my coconuts" ultimately means that your survival, well being, happiness, etc. is not dependent upon my survival -- it's the only way to come to that conclusion.

Are my actions just, or am I denying you your liberty(?) Your actions are actions based on your view of the landscape -- they're neither just or unjust -- they will have consequences that are either favorable or unfavorable. Are you denying me liberty? No. You're denying me access to the coconuts you selfishly liberated. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Cyrus]

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I don't have a point. I'm just asking questions.

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[Ed Miller]

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I don't have a point. I'm just asking questions.

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Libertarian thought, especially that which leads to an advocation of a minimal state, tends to rely heavily upon the primacy of property rights.

While the idea of, "You should get to keep whatever you earn," is certainly an intellectually appealing one, once you declare there to be some sort of absolute (or perhaps quasi-absolute in the case of taxation for a minimal state) right to property, you run into, in my opinion, insurmountably thorny issues.

A brief summary of a couple issues:

1. Why is there a right to property? Who gave it to you? Perhaps God did, but if you don't believe in God, then who?

2. Because of myriad prior coercions, our present distrubtion of wealth cannot possibly be just if there is an absolute right to property. Even if every subsequent transaction is just, the overall distribution of wealth will become no more just than it is now. If achieving a just distribution of wealth is impossible, how valuable is the concept of absolute property right?

3. The premise that taxation is coercion is similarly difficult to show. If I jab a gun in your back and demand $10, that's coercion. But if you enter into a contract knowing that you will be paid $10/hour that you work and someone else (i.e., the government) will be paid $5/hour for that same work, it's really not at all the same beast.

As soon as you break down the absolute (or quasi-absolute) right to property, these concerns disappear, but they are replaced by the new question, "Under what circumstances can the government appropriate people's property for other uses, and what calculus should apply to justify these decisions?"

So I really don't have a point. I was just engaging someone who said he wanted to discuss libertarianism by getting him to enumerate his thinking.