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"if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.”" This comment by Robert Murphy is a weird non sequitur apropos of not

"if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.”" This comment by Robert Murphy is a weird non sequitur apropos of not much in the article. If property rights are respected by all, some small fraction of humanity will indeed become fantastically wealthy, but the vast majority would be on the tail end of a very thinly tailed distribution as humans become worthless for production - leading to quite a bit of aggregate unhappiness.

EGreg 9y ago
When anarcho capitalists make the jump from the non-aggression principle (NAP) to property rights, they invariably switch from using deontological arguments to consequentialist arguments like everyone else: "Look communism failed, capitalism produces more wealth" "Well if everyone has everything they need, who's going to work?" It sounds like the music industry asking who's going to record songs if copyright isn't strictly enforced.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, but I am a fierce proponent of private property rights, and I regularly make deontological arguments for them. My central argument is that self-ownership (the right to our person) implies a right to appropriate natural resources, since our bodies are constituted of natural resources that at some point we appropriated. That same principle should extend to non-biological appropriation, since there's no reason to give a different moral treatment based on how the natural resources were appropriated. Thus, our property is an extension of our self, which axiomatically we consider people to have an absolute right to. What it ultimately comes down to is that the value you add to natural resources morally belongs to you. When you turn 100 lb of food into a brain, that produces Mozart's symphonies, you are converting matter into a higher value form, and you should be entitled to that value. Similarly when you convert a dead tree into a canoe, you should be entitled to that canoe, minus whatever value you're depriving society of by depriving them of the log. This is just and this is fair, and appropriately, it aligns with consequentialism.
Jabanga 9y ago
>If property rights are respected by all, some small fraction of humanity will indeed become fantastically wealthy, but the vast majority would be on the tail end of a very thinly tailed distribution as humans become worthless for production - leading to quite a bit of aggregate unhappiness. The evidence suggests that adoption of market institutions boosts wages for all classes and is the most effective way to alleviate poverty: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/308134/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-pol... I would argue this is because the sum knowledge of society is NOT accessible to any one party. Knowledge exists in a diffused pattern, across billions of individuals. The only way for the entirety of that knowledge to come to bear is for all the individuals that constitute a society to participate in market decisions, with rules that punish bad decisions with a reduction in capital and reward good ones with an increase in capital. In other words, a government will not be able to intelligently invest with anywhere near as much skill as billions of independent individuals investing their own capital. Every individual has unique knowledge about specific domains, and when empowered and incentivized to invest, will utilise that knowledge to find and invest in opportunities within these domains that the vast majority of the population would overlook. It's billions of individual investment decisions, each utilising the unique knowledge of the individual investor, that combined, can create a highly effective economy that rapidly grows and produces significant returns for the population.

EGreg 9y ago

When anarcho capitalists make the jump from the non-aggression principle (NAP) to property rights, they invariably switch from using deontological arguments to consequentialist arguments like everyone else: "Look communism failed, capitalism produces more wealth" "Well if everyone has everything they need, who's going to work?" It sounds like the music industry asking who's going to record songs if copyright isn't strictly enforced.

Jabanga 9y ago
I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, but I am a fierce proponent of private property rights, and I regularly make deontological arguments for them. My central argument is that self-ownership (the right to our person) implies a right to appropriate natural resources, since our bodies are constituted of natural resources that at some point we appropriated. That same principle should extend to non-biological appropriation, since there's no reason to give a different moral treatment based on how the natural resources were appropriated. Thus, our property is an extension of our self, which axiomatically we consider people to have an absolute right to. What it ultimately comes down to is that the value you add to natural resources morally belongs to you. When you turn 100 lb of food into a brain, that produces Mozart's symphonies, you are converting matter into a higher value form, and you should be entitled to that value. Similarly when you convert a dead tree into a canoe, you should be entitled to that canoe, minus whatever value you're depriving society of by depriving them of the log. This is just and this is fair, and appropriately, it aligns with consequentialism.

Jabanga 9y ago

>If property rights are respected by all, some small fraction of humanity will indeed become fantastically wealthy, but the vast majority would be on the tail end of a very thinly tailed distribution as humans become worthless for production - leading to quite a bit of aggregate unhappiness. The evidence suggests that adoption of market institutions boosts wages for all classes and is the most effective way to alleviate poverty: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/308134/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-pol... I would argue this is because the sum knowledge of society is NOT accessible to any one party. Knowledge exists in a diffused pattern, across billions of individuals. The only way for the entirety of that knowledge to come to bear is for all the individuals that constitute a society to participate in market decisions, with rules that punish bad decisions with a reduction in capital and reward good ones with an increase in capital. In other words, a government will not be able to intelligently invest with anywhere near as much skill as billions of independent individuals investing their own capital. Every individual has unique knowledge about specific domains, and when empowered and incentivized to invest, will utilise that knowledge to find and invest in opportunities within these domains that the vast majority of the population would overlook. It's billions of individual investment decisions, each utilising the unique knowledge of the individual investor, that combined, can create a highly effective economy that rapidly grows and produces significant returns for the population.