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>How do you determine it's my laptop? How do you determine I didn't give consent? How do we determine that you assaulted me? It's your word against mine. We're

by aminok 10y ago

>How do you determine it's my laptop? How do you determine I didn't give consent? How do we determine that you assaulted me? It's your word against mine. We're not talking about the complexity of determining the true account of events, which is obviously great. We're talking about the complexity of establishing what property rights are. It's not complicated at all. >What about if I wrote a contract to lend you my laptop and we didn't specify a certain edge case? Then common law, which springs from the first principles of personal and property rights, would preside. We'd have a similarly difficult time determining if a hockey fight classifies as assault. Or if in a traffic altercation, you stepping out of your car and aggressively approaching me justified my preemptive (or aggressive?) first punch. >There are answers to all these questions, but we need a complicated system of laws to determine them. The system of laws being complicated does not mean that it is not generally straightforward to determine what a person has property rights to. The complexity comes from the edge cases, but most cases are not edge cases.

aninhumer 10y ago
>We're talking about the complexity of establishing what property rights are. It's not complicated at all. Okay so what are they? What makes your claim to own the things you own correct and someone else's invalid? Or more generally, how do you go from a world with no property rights, to one where everything has a defined owner, in a way that is simple and obviously fair? Again, there are answers to these questions, but they are complicated and even within libertarian thought, people disagree about them.
- aminok 10y ago
  >What makes your claim to own the things you own correct and someone else's invalid? The fact that I made it, or acquired it from someone else through trade. >Or more generally, how do you go from a world with no property rights, to one where everything has a defined owner, in a way that is simple and obviously fair? The homestead principle is based on the notion that if something is unclaimed, and someone adds value to it, they should be able to enjoy the full benefit of that value-added thing. The only 'artificial' private property is scarce natural resources, most importantly land, and that is because much if not most of its value comes from its natural form, rather than anything added to it by its original homesteader, and it is this class of property which society has a moral right to create rules/taxes on. With respect to this latter class of property, once the rules on its use have been established (say a rule asserting that a property title owner must pay a rent equal to 1% of the value of their land to the government each year) anything the title owner earns in accordance with the rules (e.g. anything they earn on top of the 1% tax) is theirs by right.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    And sure, these are reasonable answers, but they're starting to show complexity, and people aren't necessarily going to agree that they're obviously fair.
    - aminok 10y ago
      Society is complex, and trying to explain a principle and its application in all possible permutations will require an indepth explanation, but the overall concept is coherent and straightforward. I wouldn't call it ambiguous. Regarding people disagreeing: people also didn't agree that ending ritual sacrifice and slavery were fair, but I don't believe many reasonable people would disagree on the general outlines of what private property is if the discussion is permitted to progress far enough. I believe counter-notions are mostly a result of demagoguery and would dissipate in the face of reasoned inquiry.
      - aninhumer 10y ago
        Well for what it's worth, I think property is an effective economic system which should be utilised to the extent that it leads to good outcomes. I think arguing about a philosophical notion of property rights is ultimately pointless if a system that enforces them doesn't lead to better outcomes than one that flagrantly violates them.
        aminok 10y ago
        I guess we can agree to disagree on that. I think if we step out of the philosophical, it's clear what private property rights are at the level of principle. True, there is a lot of disagreement in relation to specific cases, but I think that's due to superficial understandings people have about these cases, and that once the complexities of the given situation are elucidated, there would mostly be agreement on what a person has private property rights to. As for outcomes, knowing what we know about incentives and how they affect the behavior of economic agents, and extrapolating the effect of the evolutionary processes of the market, it's inconceivable to me that violating private property rights would result in better outcomes in relation to increasing economic output over the long-run, than protecting them.

by aminok 10y ago

aninhumer 10y ago

>We're talking about the complexity of establishing what property rights are. It's not complicated at all. Okay so what are they? What makes your claim to own the things you own correct and someone else's invalid? Or more generally, how do you go from a world with no property rights, to one where everything has a defined owner, in a way that is simple and obviously fair? Again, there are answers to these questions, but they are complicated and even within libertarian thought, people disagree about them.

aminok 10y ago
>What makes your claim to own the things you own correct and someone else's invalid? The fact that I made it, or acquired it from someone else through trade. >Or more generally, how do you go from a world with no property rights, to one where everything has a defined owner, in a way that is simple and obviously fair? The homestead principle is based on the notion that if something is unclaimed, and someone adds value to it, they should be able to enjoy the full benefit of that value-added thing. The only 'artificial' private property is scarce natural resources, most importantly land, and that is because much if not most of its value comes from its natural form, rather than anything added to it by its original homesteader, and it is this class of property which society has a moral right to create rules/taxes on. With respect to this latter class of property, once the rules on its use have been established (say a rule asserting that a property title owner must pay a rent equal to 1% of the value of their land to the government each year) anything the title owner earns in accordance with the rules (e.g. anything they earn on top of the 1% tax) is theirs by right.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  And sure, these are reasonable answers, but they're starting to show complexity, and people aren't necessarily going to agree that they're obviously fair.
  - aminok 10y ago
    Society is complex, and trying to explain a principle and its application in all possible permutations will require an indepth explanation, but the overall concept is coherent and straightforward. I wouldn't call it ambiguous. Regarding people disagreeing: people also didn't agree that ending ritual sacrifice and slavery were fair, but I don't believe many reasonable people would disagree on the general outlines of what private property is if the discussion is permitted to progress far enough. I believe counter-notions are mostly a result of demagoguery and would dissipate in the face of reasoned inquiry.
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      Well for what it's worth, I think property is an effective economic system which should be utilised to the extent that it leads to good outcomes. I think arguing about a philosophical notion of property rights is ultimately pointless if a system that enforces them doesn't lead to better outcomes than one that flagrantly violates them.
      - aminok 10y ago
        I guess we can agree to disagree on that. I think if we step out of the philosophical, it's clear what private property rights are at the level of principle. True, there is a lot of disagreement in relation to specific cases, but I think that's due to superficial understandings people have about these cases, and that once the complexities of the given situation are elucidated, there would mostly be agreement on what a person has private property rights to. As for outcomes, knowing what we know about incentives and how they affect the behavior of economic agents, and extrapolating the effect of the evolutionary processes of the market, it's inconceivable to me that violating private property rights would result in better outcomes in relation to increasing economic output over the long-run, than protecting them.