4 ms·

Why do you view 'working' as having asymmetric value? If I'm a plumber working for myself and I fix pipes all day so that I can put food on the table and a roo

• digi_owl 11y ago
  Grow carrots in the yard, and you can eat those carrots to survive. You can't eat fixed pipes.
  • gwright 11y ago
    So what? You can purchase carrots with the money you made fixing pipes. Suddenly that isn't about your own survival but is about someone else survival? Even if you don't want to bring 'money' into the conversation and shift to an entirely barter based mechanism you are still going to take the fruits of your labor and convert them into the fruits of someone else's labor via trade. In the absence of coercion both parties benefit from the trade.
    • TaylorAlexander 11y ago
      Coercion is most effective when it goes unnoticed. Why does the plumber need to purchase carrots? Why can't this individual avail themselves of existing carrots of their own will? Ah, because someone decided there is this thing called "property rights", which are violently protected. The person growing the carrots purchased a piece of paper that says they "own" the land, and the legal system supports the notion that they also own the carrots they grow on the land. Never mind where the land originally came from. I wonder, is the enforcement of this artificial notion of property rights a form of coercion? If it didn't exist, would the plumber still choose to fix pipes all day?
      • brownbat 11y ago
        I'm not sure I'm really cut out for the utopia where we all get to make our own food, transportation, shirts, and antibiotics.
        • TaylorAlexander 11y ago
          "We" already make all those things. I'm just interested in a more equitable way of distributing the benefits.
          • brownbat 11y ago
            > a more equitable way of distributing the benefits That sounds much nicer than "abolition of property rights," which does not get you anywhere near where you're trying to go.
            • TaylorAlexander 11y ago
              You're making an assumption that doesn't follow from my comment. Did I suggest we abolish property rights? I merely asked a question about how property rights relate to coercion. The solution may be to keep property rights, but to understand their place in society. I just want to stimulate that conversation. We act as if property rights are absolute, but perhaps they should not be used to keep a hungry person from food, or a homeless person from shelter? Perhaps intellectual property rights shouldn't be used to keep a person from repairing their tractor? We're already having a discussion in the US about whether or not people should be able to access health care without exchanging their property to get it. Is it so radical to ask the question about food, shelter, and (inherently not scarce) digital goods?
              • brownbat 11y ago
                > You're making an assumption that doesn't follow from my comment. Usually when someone makes a comparison to coercion, I assume they're against it. That seems like a fairer reading than, say, taking a pronoun someone used, changing its meaning, then using scare quotes to signify you know you're misrepresenting their point to dodge their argument. But let's set aside the mechanics of the discussion. We've moved the goal posts to: "Sometimes property rights are bad in extreme cases. They're really useful in other cases. The defense of necessity, which allows the use of property to provide shelter or food to people who need it, was a grand idea." Sounds like we all agree and can go home.