Property Rights

[jack555]

My basis for pretty much all of my moral and political views comes from the concept that I have a right to my property (including myself) and that as long as I don't hurt others property I have a right to do as I please and defend my own property. My brother is asking me what gives me the right to personal property. I believe personal property is a proven and logical way of going about life. He wants a better answer then that. Can anyone help me out?

[libertyjam]

The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of “human rights” versus “property rights,” as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that “human rights” are superior to “property rights” simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of “human.”

For the New Intellectual- Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 183.


There is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.

The Virtue of Selfishness “The Monument Builders,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 91.
Ayn Rand

[Travlyr]

My basis for pretty much all of my moral and political views comes from the concept that I have a right to my property (including myself) and that as long as I don't hurt others property I have a right to do as I please and defend my own property. My brother is asking me what gives me the right to personal property. I believe personal property is a proven and logical way of going about life. He wants a better answer then that. Can anyone help me out?
I agree with you. You have the right to your personal property because you earn it and claim it. Food, water, and air are required to sustain life and anyone who lays claim to life must have access to the basics by right. My cheeseburger and fries are mine if I acquired it through honest effort. My home and my garden are mine as long as I did not steal it or force someone else to work for my benefit. It is my responsibility to protect my property against intruders and thieves. You have to stand-up for yourself in this world. Along with rights come responsibilities.

[Conza88]

My basis for pretty much all of my moral and political views comes from the concept that I have a right to my property (including myself) and that as long as I don't hurt others property I have a right to do as I please and defend my own property. My brother is asking me what gives me the right to personal property. I believe personal property is a proven and logical way of going about life. He wants a better answer then that. Can anyone help me out?

Sure. It's called argumentation ethics. Or the a priori of argumentation. Ron Paul recommends you read Democracy: The God that Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Within that book, he makes this argument. But the specific excerpt here is from Economics and Ethics of Private Property (free online, pdf etc.)


"Whether or not something is true, false, or undecidable; whether or not it has been justified; what is required in order to justify it; whether I, my opponents, or none of us is right - all of this must be decided in the course of argumentation. This proposition is true a priori, because it cannot be denied without affirming it in the act of denying it. One cannot argue that one cannot argue, and one cannot dispute knowing what it means to raise a validity claim without implicitly claiming at least the negation of this proposition to be true."

"With the a priori of argumentation established as an axiomatic starting point, it follows that anything that must be presupposed in the act of proposition-making cannot be propositionally disputed again. It would be meaningless to ask for a justification of presuppositions which make the production of meaningful propositions possible in the first place. Instead, they must be regarded as ultimately justified by every proposition-maker. And any specific propositional content that disputed their validity could be understood as implying a performative contradiction […], and hence, as ultimately falsified."

"The law of contradiction is one such presupposition. One cannot deny this law without presupposing its validity in the act of denying it. But there is another such presupposition. Propositions are not free-floating entities. They require a proposition maker who in order to produce any validity-claiming proposition whatsoever must have exclusive control (property) over some scarce means defined in objective terms and appropriated (brought under control) at definite points in time through homesteading action. Thus, any proposition that would dispute the validity of the homesteading principle of property acquisition, or that would assert the validity of a different, incompatible principle, would be falsified by the act of proposition-making in the same way as the proposition 'the law of contradiction is false' would be contradicted by the very fact of asserting it. As the praxeological presupposition of proposition-making, the validity of the homesteading principle cannot be argumentatively disputed without running into a performative contradiction. Any other principle of property acquisition can then be understood - reflectively - by every proposition maker as ultimately incapable of propositional justification."

"(Note, in particular, that this includes all proposals which claim it is justified to restrict the range of objects which may be homesteaded. They fail because once the exclusive control over some homesteaded means is admitted as justified, it becomes impossible to justify any restriction in the homesteading process - except for a self-imposed one - without thereby running into a contradiction. For if the proponent of such a restriction were consistent, he could have justified control only over some physical means which he would not be allowed to employ for any additional homesteading. Obviously, he could not interfere with another's extended homesteading, simply because of his own lack of physical means to justifiably do anything about it. But if he did interfere, he would thereby inconsistently extend his ownership claims beyond his own justly homesteaded means. Moreover, in order to justify this extension he would have to invoke a principle of property acquisition incompatible with the homesteading principle whose validity he would already have admitted.)"

I can go on if you so wish.

[TruckinMike]

Thanks Conza,

Here (http://mises.org/books/economicsethics.pdf) is the PDF Link to "Economics and Ethics of Private Property".

TMike

[hazek]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t26ENNxHiPg

[CaptUSA]

Real simple:

Your property is a product of your labor. Since you own your labor, you own its products as well.

If you do not own your labor and the products of your labor - you are a slave.

[Conza88]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t26ENNxHiPg



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE

[Gumba of Liberty]

Ask him if he has a Right to his fingers. Ask him if the government said they could take his fingers away do they have a Right to do it? Ask him how he knows he is the rightful owner of his own fingers and how he knows that he is. That answer is the answer to all other questions of property: you have a Natural Right to to your body, you have a Natural Right to do with your body what you wish as long as you do not claim another's body, and you have a Natural Right to keep what your body has produced. Life, Liberty, and Property come from nature or nature's God.

[Conza88]

Real simple:

Your property is a product of your labor. Since you own your labor, you own its products as well.

If you do not own your labor and the products of your labor - you are a slave.

I used to think this. Not quite.

Kinsella (http://blog.mises.org/5098/thoughts-on-intellectual-property-scarcity-labor-ownership-metaphors-and-lockean-homesteading/): (... (http://blog.mises.org/6000/owning-thoughts-and-labor/))

"Moreover, I reject the confused, over-metaphorical idea that you own your labor and “therefore” you own things you mix your labor with. Again, as with creation, I think ownership-of-labor is neither necessary (I own land I homestead because I am *first*, and have the best claim to it, not because I own my labor) nor sufficient (even if we did own our labor it does not show that we own things we mix it with–maybe we lose ownership of the labor by mixing it with things, much like you lose ownership of spit when you spit in the ocean).

I don’t start out by asking what we should insist what property is. Rather, as a civilized person who has voluntarily decided to accept the civilized way of doing things and related civilized norms–that cooperation is good, that violent interaction is not preferred, ceteris paribus, etc.–as does anyone would discuss such matters with me, as you are doing now–I simply ask, when there is a possibility of conflict over a given thing (which is necessarily, therefore, a “scarce” things, otherwise conflict over it would not be possible), which of the claimants for the thing should be able to control it; that is, I simply ask, when there is a dispute over a rivalrous thing, which contestant has the *better claim* to it.

Obviously, someone with a more objective link to the property and someone whose connection or claim to it is such that recognizing their ownership is the way that would be seen universally (by those searching for justice and fairness–i.e., by those who choose to be civilized–i.e. by those who choose to discourse peacefully about such things) to be the best way to permit that resource, and others, to be used in a conflict-free (civilized) way; and obviously, ceteris paribus, the *earlier user* of the thing has a better claim than latecomers. If prior users didn’t have better claims than latecomers, there could be no property, no ownership; there would only be the (uncivilized) rule of the jungle, bare possession, and tooth and nail conflict over resource, which contradicts the presupposition of civilized discoursants that a conflict-free system of interaction is preferred.

By the way, the significance of the prior-later user distinction is explained very well by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his “argumentation ethics”; see www.HansHoppe.com (http://www.hanshoppe.com/sel-topics.php#arg-ethics); see also my discussion of Hoppe’s views on mere verbal decrees and the prior-later distinction in Defending Argumentation Ethics (http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312).

[CaptUSA]

I used to think this. Not quite.

Kinsella (http://blog.mises.org/5098/thoughts-on-intellectual-property-scarcity-labor-ownership-metaphors-and-lockean-homesteading/): (... (http://blog.mises.org/6000/owning-thoughts-and-labor/))

"Moreover, I reject the confused, over-metaphorical idea that you own your labor and “therefore” you own things you mix your labor with. Again, as with creation, I think ownership-of-labor is neither necessary (I own land I homestead because I am *first*, and have the best claim to it, not because I own my labor) nor sufficient (even if we did own our labor it does not show that we own things we mix it with–maybe we lose ownership of the labor by mixing it with things, much like you lose ownership of spit when you spit in the ocean).

I don’t start out by asking what we should insist what property is. Rather, as a civilized person who has voluntarily decided to accept the civilized way of doing things and related civilized norms–that cooperation is good, that violent interaction is not preferred, ceteris paribus, etc.–as does anyone would discuss such matters with me, as you are doing now–I simply ask, when there is a possibility of conflict over a given thing (which is necessarily, therefore, a “scarce” things, otherwise conflict over it would not be possible), which of the claimants for the thing should be able to control it; that is, I simply ask, when there is a dispute over a rivalrous thing, which contestant has the *better claim* to it.

Obviously, someone with a more objective link to the property and someone whose connection or claim to it is such that recognizing their ownership is the way that would be seen universally (by those searching for justice and fairness–i.e., by those who choose to be civilized–i.e. by those who choose to discourse peacefully about such things) to be the best way to permit that resource, and others, to be used in a conflict-free (civilized) way; and obviously, ceteris paribus, the *earlier user* of the thing has a better claim than latecomers. If prior users didn’t have better claims than latecomers, there could be no property, no ownership; there would only be the (uncivilized) rule of the jungle, bare possession, and tooth and nail conflict over resource, which contradicts the presupposition of civilized discoursants that a conflict-free system of interaction is preferred.

By the way, the significance of the prior-later user distinction is explained very well by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his “argumentation ethics”; see www.HansHoppe.com (http://www.hanshoppe.com/sel-topics.php#arg-ethics); see also my discussion of Hoppe’s views on mere verbal decrees and the prior-later distinction in Defending Argumentation Ethics (http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312).

I'm sorry, but this is hogwash. It's post-Lockean property theory. In fact, I believe Locke had it right in the first place. As far as prior use goes... If your father worked his labor into something and then gave it to you, you still have that property. You can call that "who got it first", but it's the same thing. You can't mix your labor with property that belongs to someone else and call it yours. They already have claim to that property. But if you mix your labor with property that has no claimant, you now own it.

It's the driftwood analogy. If you find a piece of driftwood, and mix your labor by carving it, you own it. If you place it back in the ocean, no matter what labor you've mixed into it, you've relinquished your right to it. But you can't go onto someone else's property and cut a limb from his tree, carve it, and say you own it. It was his property rights that you have violated.

This first use stuff is just another way of validating Locke's original theories, by hinting that Locke was missing something he was not.

[Travlyr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE

Am I the only one who sees the failure here? All taxation is theft so the document is a failure when the rulers of our day clearly do not abide by the Constitution. They are above the law and all we're asking is that they obey the document.


No mention of exchange - Taxation for Property Rights
No mention of Paul & Max Warburg along with Senator Nelson Aldrich ... 9 days of illegal conspiracy
No mention of forming the unconstitutional 16th amendment.
No mention of Salmon P. Chase and his shenanigans.
No mention of debasement of currency stealing literally hundreds of thousands from each of us through the inflation tax.
Larkin Rose worries about pennies while the oligarchs steal your wealth.


Hate the State folks... hate the state. Down with Statists. Spread the word far and wide. And while you are at it love anarchy... no not that anarchy the other anarchy. Let's just all put our liberty, peace, and prosperity off for another decade or two while we "educate" them on how stupid the intellectual dishonest sociopath statists are.


Did you forget how Ron Paul described himself?
Ron Paul 2012
Defender of Liberty and supporter of the Constitution.