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> What's euphemistic about my phrasing? Why would you otherwise feel the need to rephrase it and are still unable to explain the practical difference? > A dea

• Dracophoenix 5y ago
  >Why would you otherwise feel the need to rephrase it and are still unable to explain the practical difference? Because your "definition" implies a lack of agency in an agreement between contracting parties. That is a practical difference and one that was noted in my last sentence which you either didn't read or avoided addressing. To quote: "The difference in practice is that someone can walk away from a deal, but no one can walk away from the government". >Yes, and for the masses without property? I think I hinted at indirect coercion by "to feed yourself". I read your statement as implying the usual anti-libertarian argument: property is coercion. I thought that the "to feed yourself" line was a throwaway example of a "limited" freedom "granted" by a property owner made to support your mistaken thesis that a top-down structure exists between individual parties freely engaging in a deal. My approach was to explain how property owners can't grant freedoms, as people have their freedoms or trade them for expedience, and that this top-down structure has, in the past and the present, implicitly and explicitly been practiced by government. I couldn't have read your statement in the way you implied simply because I've never conceived of any such claim being made seriously that choosing to feed oneself, whether one owns property or not, is evidence and a product of force. But now that you've made that clear, I can only say that it's ridiculous. >and I have no interests in going off into some USDA tangent. The USDA is not a tangent. It's an example of my point that someone without the ability to decide what do with his own property is better defined as coerced under your original phrasing. It's also a counterpoint to your claim that my point is a euphemistic rephrasing of yours.
  • cloudfifty 5y ago
    Just so I follow, do you recognize the existence indirect coercion by necessities (which very well could be the result of private property creating artificial scarcity) at all? Because if you do I have no idea how you can come to the idea that one can just "walk away". > The USDA is not a tangent It is, you're switching the topic to be about government, and a contemporary setting, instead of continuing on the topic of a private property owner and a hypothetical libertarian society. Libertarians seem to have a bad habit of using unnecessarily convoluted language.
    • Dracophoenix 5y ago
      "Artificial" scarcity, even of so-called necessities, is not indirect coercion so long as it's the choice of the property owner. No one is entitled to the provisions or labor of another because of lack or need. If someone decides it's not in his interest to distribute the fruits of his labor, that's his right. And yes, people can walk away. Human beings have being walking away for tens of thousands of years. You don't need to read libertarian literature to know the phrase "vote with your feet". A government with a monopoly on force and enforcement of contracts is as much a feature of a libertarian society as it is in a contemporary one, and so the comparison involving the USDA is germane. The contention is one of degree and nature involvement. A private property owner in a libertarian society must still follow the law to the extent that such laws don't violate his rights.
      • cloudfifty 5y ago
        > so long as it's the choice of the property owner. and there you have it. why libertarianism in it's propertarianism form has nothing to do with freedom and all to do with giving power to the property owners. > And yes, people can walk away. You surely can't believe that people can just walk away from their only source of income?
      • lovich 5y ago
        What untamed land might an intrepid settler go to if they wanted to vote with their feet? There aren’t any frontiers anymore. Everything is owned