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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

Not to directly answer your question, but to elaborate slightly, many political philosophers would draw a distinction between natural property (e.g. land, natural resources) and 'made' property. They would say that in the case of found property (land, natural resources), property rights are indeed artificial and coercive. But the value that has been added to those natural resources by the efforts of a person is theirs. This is, in part, the justification for the Land Value [1] tax. It's an interesting question where Bitcoin ownership may fall on that spectrum. I'm not sure, to be honest. But I think that might provide a framework for thinking about the issue.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

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I think you're mixing up the argument of whether property is just with whether property is coercive.

The arguments you've outlined are drawing a distinction between which kinds of property are thought to be just by certain schools of thought. However, this is entirely unrelated to the fact that all forms of property are coercive -- enforcing them ultimately requires (the threat of) violence.

Most people fail to make this distinction unless they properly think it through, though I personally find it most grating with the type of libertarian who argues with the "non-aggression principle" or variants thereof. I believe people make this mistake because it can be uncomfortable to admit to yourself that you're in favor of something that is coercive, even when the coercive thing is clearly a good thing overall. I'm sure there's a fancy name for this type of fallacy :)

Yep, you're totally right. My mistake. Good point.

While this position is technically correct, it is absurd. By this logic, enforcing freedom from slavery is coercive as well, because it requires threat of violence.

Exactly! Which exposes the flaw in basing your political ideology around the removal of coercion.

Hmmm I think it's important to emphasise that anarcho-capitalism necessarily relies on coercion, but it's probably a strawman when speaking about its philosophical defenders. Libertarians want to maximise the account of freedom they build up from the originating premise of self-ownership. They are perfectly willing to license the use of coercion to uphold that propertarian system of rights. What they have issue with is the existence of an overweening state that has de facto and de jure power over you no matter what. They want the means of coercion to be privatised; to be outsourced to local militias, private security firms, and the like.

Of course, like all ideologies, they don't think of this as a system of accumulated power that exploits destitute workers and relies on dystopian bands of warlords to beat anyone who protests into submission, but as something like 'a pure state of freedom'.

Indeed, it is - which proves the parent's point. This would be an example of something that's both just and coercive.

But this definition is unusual and doesn't bring any insight. It reminds me about psychological egoism, that says that there is no altruism, everything is egoism. Technically correct, but doesn't help to explain altruism-behavior.

No, I don't believe so. Take taxes, taxes are coercive because if you refuse to follow tax law then the government enacts violence against you right?

Now take property, property is coercive because if you refuse to follow property law then the government enacts violence against you.

It's one to one.

Difference being that the first is someone taking your property and the second is you taking property from someone else.

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