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Comment by _petronius | Hacker News Reader

I have sympathy with your argument, but I'm not 100% convinced. If controlling your own capital means having access to the economy so that you can buy food and housing, then it becomes a prerequisite for basic human rights like actually living; doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

It's sort of like countries that take steps to ensure everyone has access to the internet as a basic right: they acknowledge that participating in the modern economy, and the things that flow from that participation (security, dignity, basic sustenance) require internet access to do it meaningfully. How else are you going to apply for jobs, when companies no longer sort through CVs sent in by post?

(As an aside, this is one reason I rage at people -- and this has been a strain of thought popular in Britain recently -- that make negative comments about the homeless having "luxuries" like smartphones. How else are they supposed to find work, be contactable to do that work, etc.? Being able to make and receive phone calls, SMSes, and emails is essential in 2017, at least in Europe. Madness.)

Anyway, point is, it's not enough to say that "everyone has the right to life and not be tourtured" and other abstract concepts. Having a right, truly, means being able to exercise it meaningfully -- just having it under the law is not enough. Therefore, the prerequisites to exercising those rights need to also be in place, and form at the very least a part of those basic rights, even if you do not want to classify them as seperate, also basic rights. (But I think arguing about Linnean distinctions is a little pointless.)

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Consider Proudhons famous "property is theft" for a moment.

His point is that enforcing property rights explicitly deprives others. If something is scarce, then the moment I wall it off, others become poorer for it.

Sometimes that may be worth it: the deprivation of others may be small, and the benefits to the individual of being able to wall something off might be high.

Even the vast majority of anarchists and communists would draw a sharp line between private property + the "means of production" vs. personal property. To put it rather pointedly: Pretty much everyone agrees that granting every random stranger the right to use your toothbrush deprives us of more rights than it provides us.

Where exactly the line goes on what should be shared and what should not is one of the major differentiating factors of political ideologies, but that there is a line is recognised by every present-day government in the world.

The enforcement of exclusionary property rights might enhance everyones rights and freedoms when what is walled off is so common that there is no perceptable increase in freedom from protecting part of it or when the benefits of exclusionary access are large enough to overcome the downsides, and it might enhance some peoples rights all the time, but it may also cause a drastic, profound reduction in the rights of many once something is scarce enough that allowing some people exclusionary control of it has the potential to significantly deprive others.

To take an extreme example: If all the resources you could have used to obtain food belongs to someone else, you've just de facto lost the right to live and having a de jure right to life does not help you.

This also acts as its own counter-example: If you don't have right to control your own wealth, then the ability to eat depends on the willingness of socity to let you.

And therein lies the problem with looking at a right to controlling your own wealth: Depending on how the society you happen to live in today is structured in terms of your ability to obtain wealth, and who has ownership, you may have more de facto rights with a right to control your own wealth or more without it. And that structure can change, and suddenly reverse the effect.

In other words, a "right to control your own wealth" does not provide a universal good, but one that is conditional on circumstances. That is my biggest problem with considering it as suitable to be a human right.

>His point is that enforcing property rights explicitly deprives others. If something is scarce, then the moment I wall it off, others become poorer for it.

That makes absolutely no sense. That's like saying preventing people from feasting on your flesh makes them all poorer. I'm using an extreme example to demonstrate the absurdity of the argument that enforcing exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources that you've appropriated and applied work to in order to turn it into something highly valuable (whether that be soil, water CO^2 and sunlight that you converted into food and then into bodily mass, or sand that you melted into silicon and turned into a microprocessor), deprives others of their rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Reductio ad absurdum is a valid form of argument.

The resource has to belong to the public to begin with. Your body belongs to you exclusively.

We can play your game the other direction. If using "practically free" natural resources doesn't deprive you of your rights, you would have no objections to a company rolling into your neighborhood with bulldozers and taking all of the nutrient-rich soil so that they can turn it into something highly valuable and sell it to other people. You would have no objection to a company like Nestle claiming ownership of a local river and prohibiting nearby residents from drinking from it.

But your body came from natural resources initially. If you do not have a legitimate right to appropriate natural resources and make exclusive use of what you transform said resources into, it follows that you cannot have a right to your own body.

I have no problem charging private entities rent for the appropriation of natural resources. What I have a problem with is demanding a share of the private property that they fashion out of those natural resources. From a public standpoint, it should make no difference if someone appropriates a ton of iron ore and places it in their living room as a collector's item, or if they use it to create a supercomputer. They should pay the same fee to the public in both cases, since it is the natural resource usage that should be charged, (and that the public has a legitimate right to charge a fee for), and not their private actions upon that material. But current tax laws, and Proudhon's argument which the parent comment cites, delegitimizes the value that one adds in the process of creating the latter.

I don't disagree with you on policy, I'm just pointing out that thought experiments pushed to their logical extreme don't really make sense.

Before your body was formed, there was no "you", so the concept of ownership didn't apply. The "offender" in that case was the laws of physics, or some deity if you prefer.

I suppose that if we want to take the "a legitimate right to appropriate natural resources and make exclusive use of what you transform said resources into" argument to its own silly-extreme, we could say that slavery is a natural right, because that sounds like a fairly good description of parents making a baby.

I don't follow. What offender?

> exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources that you've appropriated and applied work to in order to turn it into something highly valuable

Things like land, mineral resources, and water are definitely not "abundant and practically free", but in most places, scarce and highly contested. Furthermore, the people who control them to a large extent did not work for them, but inherited them. So to what extent you have access to some portion of these scarce resources doesn't depend on your own labor, but on whether you happened to get lucky in the birth lottery and get born to someone who, in the 19th century, signed a favorable water-rights contract in California, or a favorable ranching/mineral-rights contract in Texas. You'd have to have quite some metaphysical faith in the "labor mixing" theory to believe that because some pioneer in the 1850s got a good deal on land or water, it metamorphosized into "his land" in perpetuity, even though he didn't create it. Or, in many cases, even put any actual labor into it in the first place (many of these deals were "paper" deals where east-coast financiers acquired Western land holdings, and sent other people to work them).

Natural resources that are scarce can be justifiably taxed, but the argument the parent comment paraphrased is not a Georgist one of taxing only land and other natural resources. It is claiming that no form of property rights are legitimate, and that all enforcement of property rights is a violation others' rights.

No, I did not claim that no form of property rights are legitimate at all. If you think that, then read again.

What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others.

That does not mean it can not be legitimate - we reduce the liberty of others for various legitimate reasons all the time.

It does mean that whenever we enforce property rights we are making a tradeoff between the liberties of differents sets of people.

You quoted Proudhon who considered none-natural-resource classes of property theft as well. But your argument is also absurd:

>What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others.

All property is scarce, which is why it has market value. You're saying people have no right to the property they create, if it happens to be scarce (which it always is).

Maybe you have some vague arbitrary definition of "scarce" that allows you to claim that the property rights you exercise over your possessions are legitimate, while the property rights of those with much more than you are not.

It's not absurd at all, and your first example is nonsensical.

There's a fundamental difference between creative capitalism, which is the application of intelligence and organisation to the creation of new resources and opportunities from new materials and ideas, and extractive rentier capitalism, which is a zero sum game that works on the principle of monopolised control of limited resources - to the extent that it may actually deliberately limit those resources purely for profit. (See also Enron, pharmaceuticals, OPEC, and many other examples.)

If I own a significant amount of property in a town I can increase rents to "the level the market will bear" - which will have the sole effect of enriching myself at the expense of everyone else in the town.

Proponents of capitalism who don't understand how capitalism actually works always say "Yes, but someone can always compete with me and charge lower rents."

Except they won't, and this never happens, because once an exploitative individual begins creating a monopoly, the feedback loop never works in that direction. It's incredibly hard to destroy a monopoly through market means alone, and lower prices certainly aren't enough to do it on their own.

Why worry about monopolies? Because they're the inevitable outcome of limited ownership. Unequal access to resources is magnified until either a monopoly or a cartel results.

Any suggestion that equates the ability to create this outcome with a basic human right is preposterous. A more nuanced definition of economic rights would severely limit rentier capitalism while encouraging creative capitalism - but intervening to maintain innovation before monopolies or cartels become the main political and economic players.

>It's not absurd at all, and your first example is nonsensical.

It is absolutely absurd, and my first example makes perfect sense if one has the capacity to understand what is being discussed.

>There's a fundamental difference between creative capitalism, which is the application of intelligence and organisation to the creation of new resources and opportunities from new materials and ideas,

Proudhon's argument is that all property is "theft", so there is no such distinction in his philosophy. He was the angsty teenager with the edgy arguments of the 19th century.

>It's incredibly hard to destroy a monopoly through market means alone, and lower prices certainly aren't enough to do it on their own.

Government is a monopoly of force. You want to cure market monopolies by expanding the power of a monopoly that employs threats of violence. Good luck with that.

>Why worry about monopolies? Because they're the inevitable outcome of limited ownership. Unequal access to resources is magnified until either a monopoly or a cartel results.

This is unscientific quackery. You have provided no evidence at all for this inflammatory fearmongering. You're making a very specific argument about the cause of a particular outcome, in a system with an untold number of factors at play that could explain any set of outcomes.

>Any suggestion that equates the ability to create this outcome with a basic human right is preposterous.

Violently attacking someone and/or throwing them in prison for their refusal to hand you a share of the currency they received in private trade is a grotesque violation of human rights.

Trying to justify this grotesque violation of human rights with economic quackery that you are trying to pass off as fact (just another variation of the "if you don't rob the rich guy, you'll starve to death" snake oil that is always used to justify socialist ideology that violate human rights) is childish idiocy.

> Violently attacking someone and/or throwing them in prison for their refusal to hand you a share of the currency they received in private trade is a grotesque violation of human rights.

This argument will be a lot more interesting as soon as someone demonstrates a functioning advanced economy absent a sovereign state, as we commonly think of it, and without someone or something else becoming the de facto sovereign in short order, since then we'll know the state isn't entirely necessary for the levels of wealth and advanced commerce and industry we presently enjoy, as it currently very much appears to be. I'm not holding my breath.

I am not opposed to the existence of a state, and my argument does not necessitate that it be abolished. I think there are legitimate sources of revenue that a state can rely upon, and legitimate functions it can serve in society.

> Government is a monopoly of force. You want to cure market monopolies by expanding the power of a monopoly that employs threats of violence. Good luck with that.

Or you could destroy it by reducing the power of government to use violence to guarantee exclusionary land use.

> Violently attacking someone and/or throwing them in prison for their refusal to hand you a share of the currency they received in private trade is a grotesque violation of human rights.

I would be fully for giving you the right to live untaxed if you also agree to not make use of any of the shared goods paid for by those taxes. That would be including most roads, of course. Have fun trying to earn more that way.

>Or you could destroy it by reducing the power of government to use violence to guarantee exclusionary land use.

Exclusionary land use is necessary for anything as basic as having privacy in your home and personal security. Shifting taxes from income to land would certainly be beneficial, but it would not eliminate monopolies.

>I would be fully for giving you the right to live untaxed if you also agree to not make use of any of the shared goods paid for by those taxes. That would be including most roads, of course.

And that would be absolutely fine. The vast majority of taxes are used for forcible income redistribution (social welfare) and government largess (e.g. miliarily occupying other countries).

If government stuck to providing national defence and roads, it could collect all the revenue it needed from something like a split-rate property tax, and there'd be no need for a human-rights-violating income tax.

>Government is a monopoly of force. You want to cure market monopolies by expanding the power of a monopoly that employs threats of violence. Good luck with that.

I really wish libertarians would stop using this facile rhetorical device: "Government must be bad, it relies on THREATS OF VIOLENCE!!"

But if you're talking about property rights, unless you're suggesting enforcement by stern warnings, you're already talking about using threats of violence to coerce people.

Threats of violence, and by extension government, are not always evil. It's evil when it's used to violate one's human rights. Punishing someone for driving dangerously on public roads, or stealing someone's wallet, is a legitimate exercise of force. Using violence to punish someone for refusing to hand over a share of currency they receive in private trade, or for being 'too successful' at selling a widget and therefore being categorised as a monopolist, is not.

I mean if you're going to criticise libertarianism, at least learn the basics, like what the Non Aggression Principle (notice it's not called the Non Violence Principle) is.

Libertarianism is just the formalization of common decency and common sense. People denigrate it so that they can term basic decency as the tenet of some fringe ideology and get a pass to promote tyranny over other people through political action.

>Threats of violence, and by extension government, are not always evil.

Of course. But my objection is that libertarians like to imply that violence coercion is inherently bad for rhetorical effect when criticising government.

>Using violence to punush someone for refusing to hand over a share of currency they receive in private trade, or for being 'too successful' at selling a widget and therefore being categorised as a monopolist, is not.

Well clearly we disagree. I think asking participants in society to pay for the benefits it affords, and discouraging anti-competitive practices are perfectly reasonable uses of violent coercion, and lead to better outcomes overall.

If you disagree that those policies are effective, that's fine. But please don't elevate your economic theories to morality.

>at least learn the basics, like what the Non Aggression Principle is (notice it's not called the Non Violence Principle).

I know what the NAP is, and I agree right up until libertarians start trying to define aggression to include theft. Honestly, the NAP seems at best like an awkward attempt to simplify a political philosophy, and at worst like a rhetorical device to hide property rights inside something that seems superficially unobjectionable.

>Libertarianism is just the formalization of common decency and common sense.

Yes, that's certainly how it likes to portray itself, but my impression is that as soon it gets into details, it's all about property rights.

I think society should be designed in the way that leads to the best utilitarian outcomes, and I think property rights are a very effective tool and should be part of that system. But they are not perfect, they are not morality, and they're certainly not "common decency".

>Of course. But my objection is that libertarians like to imply that violence coercion is inherently bad for rhetorical effect when criticising government.

I was implying that using threats of violence against non-violent people engaging in voluntary trade with other consenting adults is wrong.

>Well clearly we disagree. I think asking participants in society to pay for the benefits it affords, and discouraging anti-competitive practices are perfectly reasonable uses of violent coercion

So you're willing to use violent coercion against non-violent people for their refusal to pay a debt they did not voluntarily assume and/or for their engaging in too much voluntary trade with other consenting adults. Your moral framework is essentially sociopathic.

>So you're willing to use violent coercion against non-violent people

So are you. Theft is not violence. If you walk into my house and take my valuables, at no point have you done anything violent.

Theft is violence. Property is an extension of a person. Depriving someone of their property without their consent is an act of violence.

Well you can define the word "theft" that way if you want, but I see a big difference between punching someone in the face and picking up an object, whatever words you use for it.

So you can't use the moral weight of the former to make responding to the latter with actual physical violence seem significantly more necessary to me than responding with physical violence to people who don't pay taxes.

I think it's perfectly appropriate to use violence to take back the object that you crafted and someone stole from you. I don't think it's appropriate to use violence to force someone to hand over an object they crafted and which they never agreed to cede to you.

> That makes absolutely no sense.

People starve to death because we find protecting property rights more important than letting them eat. How does it not make sense?

I am not saying that reducing enforcement of property rights does not negatively affect the owner. I am saying that there are plenty of cases where property rights reduces the ability of others to make us of it.

This makes it a tradeoff, not something worthy of absolutes.

> That's like saying preventing people from feasting on your flesh makes them all poorer.

And of course it would - if they enjoy human flesh and were denied it, they would certainly be poorer for it - but we thankfully value your right to keep your own flesh higher than someone elses abiltiy to be able to feast on it.

Liberty is not some absolute - pretty much every one us would agree that directly harming someone infringes more on their liberty than outlawing it would.

It's not a zero sum game - a lot of our laws centre around reducing our liberty in ways that increases it more in other ways: Making violent crime illegal and backing it up with the willingness to deprive those using violence of liberty is a restriction on all of us, and certainly even more so of those we justifiably lock up for our protection. But one that simultaneously increases our overall liberty by constraining a tool of oppression.

> I'm using an extreme example to demonstrate the absurdity of the argument that enforcing exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources

If something is abundant, then the argument doesn't apply. That is the entire point: It applies to scarcity. If something is abundant then everyone who wants it can have access.

But land is one such thing that is distinctly scarce. Suitable farmland even more so.

> deprives others of their rights.

If you starve to death because you can not afford food, much less land to grow a crop, nor afford to move anywhere else, you might think otherwise.

That is not really a hypothetical example. E.g. during the Great Famine in Ireland, Irish food exports increased while hundreds of thousands starved to death because their crops had failed and they could not afford to buy the plentiful amounts of food being exported from the island.

They were deprived of their right to life because others property rights were given precedence - to the extent of the UK giving military escorts to ships exporting food.

Were those who died not deprived?

>People starve to death because we find protecting property rights more important than letting them eat. How does it not make sense?

You're not framing the situation accurately. The question to be asked is: should people starve to death because we refuse to rob someone? The answer is yes.

Even if you don't care about the moral reasons for this, you must see that a legal system which allows those who are resource-poor to legally plunder those who are resource-rich perverts incentives and misallocates capital, leading to less innovation and development, and consequently, less progress in reducing the total number of deaths.

>And of course it would - if they enjoy human flesh and were denied it, they would certainly be poorer for it - but we thankfully value your right to keep your own flesh higher than someone elses abiltiy to be able to feast on it.

My point was that even if they would be richer for being able to cannibalize you, denying them that 'right' is not morally wrong. They do not have a right to feast on you. Even if a group of people were starving, and murdering and cannibalizing you would let them all survive, it would be morally wrong for us as a society to allow that to happen.

>It's not a zero sum game - a lot of our laws centre around reducing our liberty in ways that increases it more in other ways: Making violent crime illegal and backing it up with the willingness to deprive those using violence of liberty is a restriction on all of us, and certainly even more so of those we justifiably lock up for our protection.

Liberty is historically and conventionally defined as rightful action with one's own person and property. Denying someone access to another individual's person and property does not limit anyone's liberty. That is simply contrary to what liberty means.

>If something is abundant, then the argument doesn't apply. That is the entire point: It applies to scarcity. If something is abundant then everyone who wants it can have access.

You're not getting my point. I'm saying that if someone takes abundant resources, applies work to it, and produces something of value that is scarce, they should have full moral rights to it, yet Proudhon's argument, as well as yours, denies them that right.

>But land is one such thing that is distinctly scarce. Suitable farmland even more so.

And therefore it's perfectly suitable to tax valuable land. What is not appropriate is taxing everything a person generates.

Let's say that each tonne of iron ore extracted from the crust costs society $10.00 in diminishment of natural resources, and in environmental damage. Let's say society charges an iron ore miner $50 to extract a tonne of iron ore, to compensate for these costs.

Now if the iron ore miner pays the fee, mines the ore, smelts the iron, and fashions the iron into an incredible machine, you have absolutely no right to what the machine produces. An income tax is not a tax on using scarce natural resources, or a charge for damaging the environment. It is robbery against someone successfully generating economic value. It is a human rights violation.

Proudhon's argument rationalizes the violation of human rights and legalized plunder against those who strive and succeed.

>That is not really a hypothetical example. E.g. during the Great Famine in Ireland, Irish food exports increased while hundreds of thousands starved to death because their crops had failed and they could not afford to buy the plentiful amounts of food being exported from the island.

The Corn Laws prevented the Irish from importing food. It was not liberty that caused the Great Famine in Ireland.

The lack of freedom to submit, or not, to what basically amounts to socialism, instead of being able to choose the use of your labor or its rewards, is in essence its own slavery.

I feel his argument was a utopian and philosophical one, and is quite hard to consider practically, hence the other replies less articulate indignance to the idea.

> Consider Proudhons famous "property is theft" for a moment.

> His point is that enforcing property rights explicitly deprives others. If something is scarce, then the moment I wall it off, others become poorer for it.

I keep hearing this argument. And its so obviously illogical.

Establishing the concept/law of property and property ownership is probably the first thing a society does as soon as it gets formed.

> Establishing the concept/law of property and property ownership is probably the first thing a society does as soon as it gets formed.

And so are autocracies, inequality between genders, slavery, feudalism, rule of the strongest etc...

Private (not personal) property doesn't a priori have to be more of a natural law than any of those.

>Private (not personal) property doesn't a priori have to be more of a natural law than any of those.

Private property is every bit as natural as personal property. Both are enforcing exclusive usage of some part of the natural world for one's own self. Both are required for one to be able to enjoy the full value that they create through their own efforts. The personal/private distinction an arbitrary one with no philosophical basis. It's purely done for sophistry.

When enforcing the access to scarce natural resources or paying someone only part of what their labor is worth, you're enjoying more than just the value of your own efforts. It is way less natural that owning a toothbrush or a laptop.

I can image a society where the first is considered ridiculous. The second, not so much

>When enforcing the access to scarce natural resources

We could require all owners of property to pay rent for their use of natural resources, at a rate commensurate with the value of said natural resources, and there would still be trillions of dollars worth of private property, and socialists claiming a right to an equal share of it based on some contrived justification.

>or paying someone only part of what their labor is worth, you're enjoying more than just the value of your own efforts.

If someone voluntarily gives you more labour than what you pay them for, that's still a voluntary transaction, and anything you earn from that labour is legitimately yours. If you build me a shed in exchange for $1, because you're such a generous guy, I still have full rights to that shed. Of course in most cases people do not accept a job that pays them below market rates.

I assume you're implying that profits are the surplus value of labour that is unfairly provided to employers, which is simple Marxist ignorance.

Profits are the compensation the employer earns for the organisation and capital they provide. Labour is worth whatever its market price is, not whatever revenues are generated in enterprises where it's employed.

It's sad that I have to debunk 150 year old Marxist fairy tales on hackernews.

> Both are required for one to be able to enjoy the full value that they create through their own efforts.

That is demonstrably wrong, given that a large number of people throughout history has enjoyed the full value that they create without enforcing property rights.

If you want to make an argument that property rights are beneficial, then make that argument, because that is an argument that you may be able to defend depending on your underlying assumptions.

But the very point of property law is to limits others ability to make use of property. Its very point is to reduce the liberty of those who does not have ownership.

It's ok to feel that this is an acceptable, justifiable reduction of liberty, but it doesn't change the fact that it places substantial restrictions on others, and trying to pretend that it doesn't will not change that.

>That is demonstrably wrong, given that a large number of people throughout history has enjoyed the full value that they create without enforcing property rights.

That is not demonstrable at all. That's idealising the past for ideological convenience.

>But the very point of property law is to limits others ability to make use of property. Its very point is to reduce the liberty of those who does not have ownership.

Liberty is historically and conventionally defined as rightful action with one's own person and property. Denying someone access to your own person and property does not limit anyone's liberty. That is simply contrary to what liberty means.

Theft implies concept of ownership exist. Proudhons says ownership imples theft. Its just useless nonsense.

So my point was not that if something is accepted in society ==> Its right. There is no such thing as right/wrong/moral/etc. Its about consistencies in the contracts we humans sign with each other.

Pre-property rights, I have the freedom to walk and inhabit any space I want.

Post-property rights, I no longer have the freedom to walk and inhabit any space I want. I can't walk into your living room and stay there. I can't sleep in your bed. Your "right to own property" has severely curtailed my ability to move freely about the world. Men with guns will come after me if I don't leave your bedroom.

Your "private property" has imprisoned me into a tiny rabbit warren of publicly-owned spaces.

Right to freedom is not your birth right. Its society given.

Even if I could make sense of that, it doesn't change the argument in any way.

Everything is a contract including basic human rights. By birth, you have not signed any. You dont have anything that you can lose. But usually you would implicitly sign "right to freedom" and "property laws" with people around you.

So you did not lose right to move in private properties (because you did not have any) but you gain right/assurance to move freely in public properties without danger to your person.

If aliens invade earth and set their own property laws it would not be stealing. It would be nothing. Because we dont have any contracts with aliens that we can claim aliens have broken.

There's never been a pre-property era. Humans have always been territorial, and even intra-group, have recognized private property. Non-human animals are also territorial and observe principles like First Possession, which is the foundation of property rights.

Then give an example, because the existence of property law, and the fact that property laws can be used for good, does not in any way imply that restricting access to property does not also reduce liberty for those affected.

That does not automatically mean it is bad - to determine that you need to first consider whether a given reduction in liberty is justified. Sometimes it will be, and sometimes it isn't.

Exactly. Resources are limited, so a person's rights to personal property must always traded-off with others persons' rights to live in dignity or being able to live at all. Otherwise you'd have to accept the case that the personal rights of property of a few can essentially deny the right to live in dignity or live at all to others whenever resources are distributed in an extreme way to only those few.

In case you're interested, there are quite elaborate theories of distributional justice. For example, New Theory Of Fairness And Social Welfare by Marc Fleurbaey and Francois Maniquet is a very good recent book on the topic, if you're fine with a decent amount of economic apparatus.

>doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

No, it's only a prerequisite as a result of the existing economic model. Human rights should transcend that.

I think capitalism is mostly effective at producing good outcomes, and as such it should be supported in as far as it does. But the important thing is the outcomes, not the capitalism.

Producing good outcomes for who?

Precious metal miners?

I appreciate my smartphone, but understand a trail of human misery was used in its creation.

>Precious metal miners?

>I appreciate my smartphone, but understand a trail of human misery was used in its creation.

Are you implying all mining produces human misery? I suggest you look into how a modern mine works in a developed country. A mine that kills people is a reflection of the country, not the act of mining itself.

Mining still kills people in developed countries. It's also associated with long term heath issues like black lung, which is vastly under reported in the US.

Maybe underground coal mining. But that has little relationship to mining precious metals. I suggest you take a look at how open pit ore mines are operated to understand how silly your suggestion is of issues with black lung.

People working around coal get black lung not just underground miners. In 2013 CWP resulted in 25,000 deaths down from 29,000 deaths in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalworker's_pneumoconiosis#ci...

Considering the total number of people globally working with coal it's still a significant issue.

PS: Spraying it with water can help with transportation, but you can't do that right before burning.

Exactly. "Human rights" should be universal. "controlling your own wealth" is not. Because it implies:

- control

- wealth

- ownership

3 concepts that are tied too our current society. You can imagine other societies where those don't hold anymore, but where human right should still hold.

It's universal when applied as a negative right e.g. nobody has the right to steal from or enslave another.

The problem is that there's a certain segment of the population that views that right so broadly that it encompasses a bunch of stuff I and most others don't agree with.

Property rights are weird. We all mostly agree that no one should be able to steal your phone off your desk at work. We very much don't agree that governments should not be able to tax income. When someone says "controlling your own wealth should be a basic human right", I don't know whether I agree or not until I know quite a lot more about what that person means. Which probably means I disagree that it's a basic human right.

>Property rights are weird. We all mostly agree that no one should be able to steal your phone off your desk at work. We very much don't agree that governments should not be able to tax income.

Stealing your phone or taxing your income is fundamentally the same. And it doesn't matter how many agree that it's acceptable. In a lot of countries, a lot of people agree that those who make blasphemous statements should be imprisoned or put to death. They do not see any inherent right to free speech. By your logic, if a lot of people agree that blasphemy should be punishable by the state, free speech is not necessarily a human right.

"Nobody has the right to steal" is a tautology: theft is by definition the unsanctioned removal of something, so all theft implies the violation of some right. All property rights accomplishes in this sense is making stealing easier by extending the human rights to encompass basically anything, making it easier to find a means to violate someones right.

>doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

No, it's only a prerequisite as a result of the existing economic model. Human rights should transcend that.

Not very convincing. Do you have some alternative to the "existing economic model"? I ask because I can't think of a single example of a free society where there's no private property.

The people that think such things as the State having no right to collect taxes are terribly naive. But it's equally naive to think that you can be free in a society where you don't have economic freedoms.

>Do you have some alternative to the "existing economic model"? I ask because I can't think of a single example of a free society where there's no private property.

I don't know if there is a viable alternative economic model, but I can certainly conceive of them, and I don't think "Human Rights" should preclude those models, nor do I think they need to.

If the current economic system requires certain prerequisites to meet our Human Rights, then those prerequisites are implied by those rights in the context of that system.

>But it's equally naive to think that you can be free in a society where you don't have economic freedoms.

To "be free" is a nebulous concept. There are many possible freedoms one can have, and many of them conflict with each other.

To some, economic freedoms mean the freedom to deny food to the starving. Many people disagree on whether this is a freedom worth defending.

I don't know if there is a viable alternative economic model, but I can certainly conceive of them

So you neither know nor you acknowledge that's absurd.

To "be free" is a nebulous concept. There are many possible freedoms one can have, and many of them conflict with each other.

That is terribly wrong. Freedom is not some abstract idea, it's freedom from tirants that try to keep you enslaved using a variety of means. That's why freedom is a whole.

Come on, that's like politics fundamentals. Is this really news to you?

I think your notion of freedom is overly simplistic.

A freedom is the ability to choose to do something. But choosing to do some things will limit the choices of others. Therefore we must inevitably trade some freedoms against others.

Generally we agree on certain trade-offs. We agree that freedom from murder is more important than freedom to kill. We agree that freedom from slavery is more important than freedom to enslave.

But there are many cases where people do not agree on the trade-offs. If you respond to these cases by insisting that your preferred trade-offs are somehow correct by definition, you're avoiding the argument. Why are those freedoms preferable?

And freedom to control property is one of case where people disagree. In order to own property, you must deny others the ability to use that property, and in extreme cases that means denying the starving the ability to eat. Many people believe that in such cases, the freedom to survive is more important than the freedom to control property.

This is not my notion of freedom. This is what political thought looks like since the liberal revolutions and for good reasons. At the time there were very real obstacles to freedom in european countries: absolutist regimes with a strong intellectual support. The liberals realized that the tyranny had many tentacles and that the fight for freedom should address every one of them.

And make no mistake: that's also true for modern tyrannies, communism, right wing dictatorships or theocratic regimens.

My point is very simple and I'm sad to see people answering to my comments are not properly addressing it.

My point is that there is not a single country that can be considered free where you cannot safely own wealth. This is not just an idea: it's a fact that you can easily check.

If you come to think about it, it's a very similar reasoning to the one that originated socialism. You can't be free if you're starving or if you're so poor that you can't get out of poverty, or you can't afford proper healthcare, or you can't give your children an education.

In the same way, you can't be free if the State has arbitrary power to ruin your life. There must be some safety, a rule of law that assures that reasonable expectatives are met.

> This is what political thought looks like since the liberal revolutions and for good reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_freedom really? Notice that almost this entire article is discussing the various differing opinions on what constitutes freedom, and in particular the trade-offs between positive and negative freedoms.

Yes they share some broad similarities, and everyone agrees that obvious historical tyrants are bad, but there's a lot of nuance once you get into the details.

>My point is that there is not a single country that can be considered free where you cannot safely own wealth.

That depends what you mean by "safely". Plenty of countries charge property taxes, and many have eminent domain laws which can force you to surrender land. Property is not absolute, nor do I think it should be.

Which is why I don't think these kind of economic decisions should be considered Human Rights.

Since I cannot answer you, I will answer me.

Of course property is not absolute, it's you who said it, not me.

Which is why I don't think these kind of economic decisions should be considered Human Rights.

That's not a good point. Free speech is a human right and it's not absolute, is it?

Anyway, you're missing the point. What we are talking about (if for no other reason, because that was TFA's point) is safety for personal wealth that was acquired legally and after due taxes are paid. We're talking about arbitrary seizure, not about taxes.

Actually I have learned today that for some reason, there is people that conflates them. So it's either communism or wild capitalism. Honestly I didn't expect that.

> ... doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

I don't think so, no.

Basic human rights are something that we agree shouldn't be taken away, from anyone, even from prisoners.

Control of wealth is not one of those things, I don't think. There are times when it's fair for your country to take your money from you against your will. There are times when it's fair for your country to audit or freeze your finances against your will, or simply stop you accessing them.

Is control of money & access to the economy important? Sure. It's important enough to be in the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war are expected to be paid, and have access to a shop.

Is it a basic human right? I don't think so.

There are times when it's fair for your country to take your money from you against your will

And there are times when you can be jailed against your will. There is a huge gray area between absolute private property and absolute state property that's where every country in the world is, including worst tiranies. Also free societies are more on the more private property half of that area.

Sorry I'm not sure what your point is here.

You seem to be suggesting a positive correlation between private property and freedom, but I think that's a far more complicated relationship than an implied correlation allows... as shown by the fact that 'socialist' democracies like New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, etc. consistently rank highest on indices of freedom (e.g. Cato) and laissez-faire democracies like the US tend to trail them.

So no pp for nz???

Edit: BTW, my point was that your previous point is nonsensical. The fact that the State can suspend one right doesn't mean that right is less important.

Also you don't seem to understand that "social democracy" is actually what happens in every western country, even the USA. The goverment seizes at least half the production of the country. Maybe USA spends a lot in the military while other countries spends more on public health. But that's how they spend the money. The fact that money is collected and percentage of wealth seized is the same.

What (hopefully) we're talking about here is the legal safety that you have for the money that you have after taxes. If the State can arbitrarily seize money, raise the taxes to confiscatory levels or use another trick to crush you, that's lack of control.

I don't think that's worse in NZ than in the USA. Actually I believe it to be the other way around.

> Edit: BTW, my point was that your previous point is nonsensical. The fact that the State can suspend one right doesn't mean that right is less important.

You're analysing my point backwards. Fundamental right aren't more important because the state can't suspect them... they are more important, so the state shouldn't suspend them.

Do we now agree, or do you still disagree even with the order corrected?

> Also you don't seem to understand that "social democracy" is actually what happens in every western country, even the USA.

Okay, slow down and take the time to read what I actually wrote, because you're quoting and arguing against something I didn't say... and being kinda rude with it. I'm fine being easy-going about your manners, but if you're not going to bother reading what I wrote then writing more is kinda pointless.

Look, if you stray from initial point and keep moving goal posts, don't expect me to be kind. You first wrote this:

Basic human rights are something that we agree shouldn't be taken away, from anyone, even from prisoners.

That seems like a clear (and wrong) point. Free speech, freedom to move and so on are human rights and everybody understand that. One prisoner has none of these.

So first you make an obliquous attack on private property, you don't say it's not a human right, but you create a distintion between "basic" and "advanced" human rights and proceed to define a rule that separates ones from the others.

But that rule doesn't work. We suspend basic human rights to prisoners because, well, they're prisoners and there are good reasons to do it.

Now you say that the point is backwards because casuality is the other way around. But it makes no difference. Please explain what it is said difference if you disagree. But then, you would have no point at all, it's just your opinion on what should be.

Also you blatantly misrepresent what I said:

You seem to be suggesting a positive correlation between private property and freedom

That's taking a clear point (that without private property there is no freedom) and introducing a scale of "more private property" vs "less private property", that's also misleading, because all the countries that you mention have well protected private property.

So you're consistently trying to dilute others' points, making distracting distinctions and then ignoring the original points. I hadn't complained, but it's not a nice way to discuss, FYI.

> Look, if you stray from initial point and keep moving goal posts, don't expect me to be kind.

I'm not asking you to be kind. I expect you to either read what I write, or be polite enough to discuss the misunderstandings without being rude. Neither of those have consistently been the case so far.

You feel like I'm moving goalposts, I don't see how that's true because I've spent most of this conversation trying to interpret and reword the things you're saying to openly attempt to understand what you're getting at. I haven't found your comments so far very clear.

>... Also you blatantly misrepresent what I said

Not at all. I said openly that I didn't follow your point: "Sorry I'm not sure what your point is here. You SEEM to be..." [emphasis added]. I don't think it's a reasonable position that I'm "blatantly misrepresenting" what you said there. I openly stated my confusion at the point you were trying to make.

I'm happy to discuss opposing views but please drop the attitude. It's neither helpful nor necessary... but I'll have another go at trying to find the source of our disagreement.

> That seems like a clear (and wrong) point. Free speech, freedom to move and so on are human rights and everybody understand that. One prisoner has none of these.

I disagree. Prisoners should have fundamental rights (and do in many cases, it varies wildly). There are organisations who spend a lot of time watching for & correcting human rights violations within the criminal justice system (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, ACLU).

Freedom to move is a point worth discussing too. I think "freedom to move" while often discussed as a fundamental right is interpreted as freedom of residence, or to not be stopped while travelling around a state; I don't think it means everyone should be allowed to go everywhere at all times. I don't think anyone would think it reasonable to let serial killers roam around freely.

> But that rule doesn't work. We suspend basic human rights to prisoners because, well, they're prisoners and there are good reasons to do it.

So your assertion here is that prisoners are stripped of all human rights? Which country does that?

I think the point was that "prerequisite for basic human rights" is not the same thing as "basic human rights." I want everyone to have access to fast, affordable internet. I think it makes the exercising of your basic human rights much easier! That doesn't make the internet a right, and it's certainly not a basic human right on the same level as your right not to be enslaved or murdered.

it's certainly not a basic human right on the same level as your right not to be enslaved or murdered.

You are forgetting that you can be enslaved in a lot of indirect insidious ways that doesn't involve chains or swords.

Most people in absolutist societies weren't murdered or technically slaves. But we considered them not free. Also free expression is a basic human right and we should consider private property the same. Of course every right has limitations, but freedom is a whole, either you are free or you aren't.

I agree free expression is also a basic human right - I'm not sure exactly what you mean by private property. I believe the concept is a basic human right but that doesn't mean every person has the right to a specific piece of property unless you mean something like food or shelter.

>If controlling your own capital means having access to the economy so that you can buy food and housing, then it becomes a prerequisite for basic human rights like actually living; doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

Nope. I think the OP is talking about universal human rights (which are universal in space and time).

Given the current structure of society, controlling your own capital is a means to obtain your basic human rights, and it's totally fine to view it that way, and enforce laws related to it. However, it is not a human right in itself - it is the path to one.

If we made it a basic (universal) human right, then we are putting ourselves in handcuffs - not allowing for a society that could potentially give all the basic human rights, simply because this one human right is forcing us to structure society in a capital oriented way.

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