ew

'Male' and 'female' are genetic classifications, determined (in humans) by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is the male-making chromosome. There are anatomically untypical cases of males and females, but this does not imply the existence of a 'continuum', as though there were infinitely many increments between male and female. Human sex classifications are binary ('intersex' is a misnomer, since being Y-chromosomed and being non-Y-chromosomed are jointly exhaustive of all the permutations in humans).

No, governments offer that situation to an electorate who mandate it. Take up your concerns with your fellow voters. — Isaac

A frequent defence of the State's legitimacy is that its legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed. There are a number of problems with such a view. In the first place, consent is the act of an individual (nobody can consent for me), and it is an act which an individual undertakes with her own property. Consent is nothing other than the exercise of a property right. One can only authentically consent with that which is one's own. You might consent to being governed, but this does not justify the State's use of force against me.

So, in order to to bear out the claim that the State's use of force against me is legitimate, it must be argued that I really have consented, if only implicitly, to being governed by them. But this claim is far more difficult to defend than it is to assert. It requires us to commit ourselves to one of a number of views on ownership, all of which seem to me to be indefensible.

One option would be to maintain that the governed territory is simply the State's own private property. By residing within the territory, I am implicitly consenting to being governed, and am now subject to all of its statutes. But what reason is there to think that this particular territory is owned by these specific people, whom we recognise as our 'government'? Certainly, there is no purely historical justification for this, since all of the governments of our acquaintance were born of invasive conquest. It might be suggested that the State owns the territory because it has a legal right to it. But this would clearly be a circular argument. Since the State is the institution responsible for producing the law, we must presuppose its legitimacy in order to believe that its pieces of paper are adequate to afford itself (or anyone else) a rightful claim to some article of property, in such a way that mine, say, do not.

Moreover, this view is quite incompatible with the view that State derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Suppose that the governed populace, or a large portion thereof, decide to withhold their consent. On whom is there a burden to leave? If the government’s legitimacy really does derive from the consent of the governed, then there is a burden on the government to disband or to leave. If, however, the government owns the territory, then the burden is on the populace to leave. This shows that government cannot be understood as a private property owner, if one also wishes to maintain that the government’s legitimacy derives from our consent. The two views are incompatible.

The second way in which I might be said to consent implicitly to being governed is if I am residing on the private property of some other, non-governmental entity, and this other entity has explicitly consented to the government’s terms, by contract for example. By extension, I, too, am subject to the government’s terms. A consequence of this view is that the government’s legitimacy derives from relatively few private property owners. Government, in turn, protects the monopolistic and oligopolistic ownership privileges of the landed class. This view, needless to say, is unattractive for all except those who belong to the landed or governing class.

Such a system is objectionable to many on the left and the right. For those on the left, such as Marxists or left-liberal egalitarians, it is objectionable on the grounds that private property is itself illegitimate. For those on the right, such as right-libertarians who do recognise private property, it is objectionable on the grounds that, as a matter of history, the landed class probably do not have a rightful claim to the land in question. In all probability, the present state of land-ownership is owing to a history of aggressive conquest and entrenched government privilege, rather than peaceful productive transformation.

The third (and, by my reckoning, final) way in which I might be said to have consented implicitly to being governed is if the territory is jointly owned by all the citizens. Each citizen owns an equal and infinitesimally small share in the territory, and has an equal say in how it is to be put to use. What becomes of the territory is therefore determined by whatever result this collective decision-making process yields. If a majority of the citizenry wishes to erect a government then that is the rightful outcome. Those who do not wish to be governed have not had their rights violated, for they have exercised their right of partial ownership and have simply been outvoted.

The burden of this view is to explain why a particular group of people comes to jointly own a particular territory; that is, why the boundaries, ‘national’ boundaries, are drawn precisely where they are, and on what basis 'citizenship' is determined. Why, for instance, should territorial boundaries, or citizenship criteria, not be other than they are? The reason why the boundaries and citizenship criteria are what they are is because that is how they have been defined by States themselves. So, again, this position would be circular. Since we are discussing the preconditions of a legitimate government, we cannot assume the prior existence of governments which ‘gerrymander’ territorial boundaries so as to exclude those whom it wishes from the voting pool.

So all of these views look unconvincing. However, if none of these views obtains, then it looks to me as though there is no sense in which I have consented to being governed. In which case, the State's use of force against me is indeed coercive and illegitimate.

No, again. Private service providers can manipulate markets using overt or effective monopolies, use rewards or even direct bribery to encourage laws which provide them with income indirectly (revenue on tax breaks for example). They can also create situations (such negative equity, monopolising property, to stretch the meaning of the word 'voluntary' to its absolute limit in terms of transactions. — Isaac

Notice that these privileges, which may indeed be totally corrupt, are government-granted services. The State is both a coercive monopoly and the preeminent bestower of monopoly privileges, precisely through the mechanisms you have enumerated. Regulatory capture, lobbying, exclusive franchises and bribery are profitable precisely because the facility exists for them to be profitable. I go into more detail on this in my own thread.

I don't think anyone thinks social and economic issues are separate, do they? — Isaac

Textbook progressives tend to be more economically authoritarian and conservatives tend to be more socially authoritarian (though, there are exceptions in both cases). The very idea of the 'political compass' is that it is possible to be consistently authoritarian on social issues, and libertarian on economic issues, or vice versa. But such a view is highly suspect, if we understand social and economic freedom both to be functions of property rights. In my experience 'big government' is a term more frequently employed in the context of economics. But not a lot hinges on this issue.

Governments, in essence, are tax farms, which claim for themselves the unique prerogative to initiate force and invade private property, and use their monopolistic privileges to sustain themselves. This is in distinction from private service providers, which are subject to the discipline of the market; i.e. they must continually satisfy the wants of their consumers in order to survive, and accrue their revenue by voluntary transactions.

Usually, the concern over 'big' government takes place within the context of economics. Keynesians are said to believe in 'big government' because they want the State - through its instrument, the central bank - to have a large amount of influence over the monetary system, whereas the Austrian school believe in 'small government' because they want a free market in money (which means no central banks). Progressives are in favour of 'big government' because they want higher taxes and more 'public services', conservatives are in favour of 'small government' because they want fewer regulations and lower taxes.

But, there are all sorts of ways in which progressives want less government than conservatives, particularly on social issues, like drug use and prostitution. In fact, I don't find the distinction between social and economic authoritarianism particularly helpful. The reason why it is objectionable for a person or group of persons to dictate to me which substances I may put in my body is the same reason why it is objectionable for those same persons to impose a confiscationary levy upon me. Social and economic issues are really inseparable, because all activity, whether we see it as 'social' or 'economic', requires the use of scarce resources, and therefore is determined by the relevant property rights.

What makes one government 'bigger' than another is the degree to which it initiates force and invades people's justly held property. But, since all governments claims for themselves the prerogative to use force in ways that it locks the rest of us in cages for doing the same, all governments are too 'big'. To see why, you need only ask yourself this question: Are the ways in which the State uses force permissible? If 'Yes', then everyone should be able to act similarly, in which case the State is a rights-violator for locking us in cages for doing so. And if 'No', then it is also a rights-violator, for it is engaging in the very kinds of activities which we recognise that people should not be able to engage in.

The university standard text is Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy. It is a good starting point, though not nearly as comprehensive as it could be. Colin Bird's recently published book of the same name is more comprehensive, but does not seem to be as widely used. My favourite introduction, which I tend to recommend to people, is Phil Parvin and Clare Chambers, Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of this on anything other than kindle format. You might also benefit from Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction.

Alright, well have fun doing whatever this is you're doing.

No. I'm saying that you are displaying an example of a pattern in which one ideology is presented as the source of proscription when in fact another is the true source. In this case, a principle of non-aggression and natural property rights is presented as an ideological source proscribing a generally laissez-faire economic policy. Such ideology could also lead to redistribution of property on the grounds that it was obtained by aggression, or at least compensation due resultant from such aggression. It could also lead to supporting environmental legislation on the grounds of community claims to resist the aggressive misuse of joint resources.

Some of these possible consequences must be abandoned (we cannot simultaneously believe all possible proscriptions), but when all the possible proscriptions resulting from an ideology that are not rejected just happen to coincide with proscriptions of another (usually less favoured) ideology, I suspect post hoc rationalisation. Its not a random suspicion, nor is it unreasonable to search for evidence for such in the approach to discussion. — Isaac

Why are you making your objections here? If you want to debate the principles of libertarianism, do it in a libertarianism thread. I am happy to respond to objections, as I have been doing, at my leisure.

That's rather the point. If you respond to every objection with thousands of word - except one - which you respond to with an appeal to authority, or a delay, or no response at all, it certainly raises a reasonable suspicion that there's something unique about that particular objection. — Isaac

Only if you're intent on disbelieving me when I say that I am not at my leisure to respond at the present time. You are at liberty to craft whatever meta-narrative you like, and I will continue to do philosophy.

Hopefully you're grading essays on the basis of how well your students have demonstrated an understanding of the issue, not on the basis of how much you think they 'really' believe them. — Isaac

Sure. That is what I am paid for.

I'm not talking here about the substance of your argument at all. The topic here is the political persuasion of academics. You proposed that you have no easily categorisable political persuasion and that one's political philosophy should instead be built from foundational principles. I'm disputing that that is the case, either with or others. — Isaac

Not exactly. I do have an easily categorisable political position. I am just not easily plotted on the left-right spectrum, which is what this thread is about.

I have not anticipated any libertarian defence as being post hoc, that's the point. I have determined some to be post hoc, but it is impossible to present evidence to justify that conclusion on the basis of the arguments alone. Post hoc is a description of the origin of the arguments, it can only be determined by reference to evidence of things like argumentative style. — Isaac

That's right: an accusation of post hocery, whether justified or not, has no bearing on the philosophical substance of an argument, and is concerned only with its origin. What this means is that, if it is used as an objection, it is a kind of fallacy (a genetic fallacy, specifically). I would certainly mark down a student for a fallacious argument.

The point at which your other commitments prevented you from being able to continue, for example, coincided with the point at which your ideology lead to conclusions unfavourable to typical Western free-market interests. The extraneous comments you felt didn't require a response just so happened to be on the same point. The one time (in an otherwise first-hand argument) you merely appealed to authority also just happened to be on the same point.

Basically, the moment the fundamental flaw in your ideology is brought up you're either too busy to respond, appeal to authority or don't think the comment worthy of response, and you expect me to conclude that this is all just coincidence. It's a pattern I've seen in many situations and yours is just a case in point. — Isaac

I don't understand what you are trying to say. Are you suggesting that I am incapable of responding to the latest objections which my thread's dialogue partners have posed, such that I am compelled to find an excuse not to continue? You could not be so arrogant as to suggest this, surely, given that I responded to objections left, right and centre, thousands of words at a time. Of course, any point at which I happen to take a break could also be identified as the crucial 'weak point' which causes my entire position to come crashing down. This is not convincing.

So, an example here. If me having 'made up my mind in advance' with regards to the post hoc nature of your position is an accusation you can fairly level at me (and I agree it is), then how would I be able to defend myself against it if the evidence I've used to reach that conclusion (argumentative style, timing, etc) is off-limits? — Isaac

What are you talking about? I am not looking at your 'style', let alone your 'timing'. Try writing an essay for college in which you critique the 'timing' of an argument, rather than its philosophical substance. I grade undergraduate philosophy essays, and I can tell you that this does certainly does not cut it. I have simply taken my cue from your words: you have anticipated any libertarian defence against your objections to be post hoc contrivances, which means that you are not receptive to being persuaded by them, regardless of their soundness. This isn't a 'meta analysis'. I'm just pointing out that this is an implication of what you have said.

I did, as did fdrake far more substantially, here. I was interested to hear your response to both. As I said above, it's telling that the ideology is robustly defended until it leads to issue contrary to the interests of the (broadly Western) wealthy, when interest in its defence wanes. — Isaac

fdrake and I have exchanged many thousands of words, and we both think that it is has been quite productive so far. The suggestion that I have 'walked away' from anything is ridiculous. Not that it is any concern of yours, but I happen to be unusually busy at the moment, and so I intend to return to my thread in due course. fdrake is aware of this, so you need not claim any kind of victory on his behalf. I will contribute just exactly as much as I want to contribute, at my leisure.

Besides my other commitments, which are considerable, I did not see anything in your contribution which particularly needed responding to.

It's not so much what your actual response would have been that interests me here (I've no doubt some post hoc restructuring of the theory would account for it), it's the fact that these things (positions on moot points, abandoning lines of argument, appeals to authorities etc) all seem to err on the side of some Randian fantasia on the American dream, and yet are defended as if motivated by nothing but theory. — Isaac

A strange suggestion, as I am neither an objectivist nor an American. There is no small amount of poisoning the well, here. If you have made up your mind in advance of the argument that any defence of libertarianism is a post hoc contrivance, then it is little wonder that you are not interested in hearing a response. At least you are honest about that. I certainly should not like to admit to closed-mindedness, if I were so.

... in an earlier thread, you just walk away. — Isaac

I am not sure what this is referring to.

I have defended libertarianism at length and in depth elsewhere. I have also challenged and rebutted the suggestion that libertarianism is somehow the philosophy of the wealthy (in fact, Statism is). If you wish to take issue with the case I have made in my own threads, you are free to.

I am by no means the first person to point this out, but the 'left-right' divide is not fit for purpose, for all sorts of reasons. That is not to say that the terms 'left wing' and 'right wing' do not have a purpose in political philosophy, but they cannot possibly stand for the entire 'spectrum' of political opinion (supposing that all political positions do exist on a spectrum, a claim of which I am doubtful).

Speaking from personal experience, I am often considered an extreme-right villain when in conversation with progressives, and a raving revolutionary when in conversation with conservatives. In terms of the left-right paradigm, I don't fit into a good box, ideologically. I'm anti-taxation, anti-regulation, anti-Welfare-State (making me the 'arch capitalist'), but I am also anti-war and anti-paternalism, such that I believe in the de-criminalisation of prostitution, recreational drug use and euthanasia (making me the 'arch hippie'). In older language, I am simply a liberal. But, with this term having been hijacked by social democrats, I have to call myself libertarian.

Maybe my inability to be pigeon-holed is a failure of philosophical consistency on my part. But I don't believe so. Indeed, I would argue that, if one is opposed the initiation of force and the invasion of private property, as the libertarian is, then one is committed to all of the positions just mentioned. So much the worse for the left-right paradigm!

Nor does the political compass help very much. The kinds of questions you find on these kinds of tests are often prejudicial and simplistic. Far better just to do political philosophy properly, which involves developing a philosophical system by reasoning your way up from first principles.

How on earth do you get from here

We eliminate inheritance, and all inheritances are divvied up equally among the population. — BitconnectCarlos

to here

Lets go even further and say this has all worked out well: Everyone has attained a decent standard of living, poverty is eliminated, and everyone more or less works full-time unless they're unable (in which case they would still receive a pension.) — BitconnectCarlos

?

For one thing, there is no such thing as abolishing 'inheritance'. The only in way in which inheritance would be abolished is if everybody's property vanished in a puff of smoke upon cessation of the heart. When people say that they are opposed to inheritance, what they really mean is that there is a particular group of people whom they want to be the sole inheritors, namely the State. It is like when people say that they are 'anti-gun'; what they mean is that they want a State monopoly on the means of deadly force. People who are 'anti-inheritance' want a State monopoly on inheritance.

Semantics aside, there is nothing whatsoever about a 100% inheritance tax that works towards the alleviation of poverty. Indeed, there is nothing about government which works towards the alleviation of poverty. Only productive activity does this, and government is destructive in its very essence. The practical effect of a 100% inheritance tax would be for everybody to spend their hard-earned money in high living. If they cannot bequeath it, then why would they hold onto it? Either that, or else they would make a deed of gift to their beloved objects - their children, say - and become dependent upon them in their dotage (this arrangement is typical of parents and children in China). The only way of preventing this is by means of still further State control. Surprise, surprise: a preoccupation with economic egalitarian gives rise to authoritarianism. It has to go this way, which is why it always does.

Beyond this, egalitarianism is subject to the 'levelling down' objection, as the OP observes.

Codex Quaerentis is what you want, then.

Or maybe quaerentis.

Codex Quarendae - just looks a little pretentious to me. The subtitle is good though.

Also, I don't believe this is grammatical, since codex is masculine but quaerendae is a feminine form. Maybe quaerendi? Is it a genitive that you're looking for?

The title looks a bit pretentious.

Because in 'hypothesis' the accent is on the second syllable, but in 'hyphen' the accent is on the first. At least the way I pronounce them.

I don't understand the question.

An hyphen? — Janus

No.

I don't get it.

Presumably, it would mean that you don't use 'an' with one-syllable words, like 'house'.

The way I learned it, when I was leaning English, is that 'an' is correct, in British English, before a word beginning with 'h', if the accent lies on any syllable other than the first.

More precisely; people have no rights except for the ones afforded to them by social systems. If you want to know what a person is entitled to in a social system like ours, look to its laws, and look at how they may change. When the laws change, the rights changed. I assumed you believed this, perhaps you are arguing that there is some non social system by which people are afforded rights? Perhaps by some divine agent like the Free Market, the purveyor of all Goods, Services and Natural Rights? — fdrake

One of the problems we are having here is the fact that you are making unwarranted assumptions, and taking for granted that for which you have not offered philosophical justification, despite my calling on you to do so. To allow that the content of our rights is determined socially is not to allow that our rights are determined by the State’s edicts, which are something else entirely. Why you would think that I believe that the content of our rights is determined by the laws the State passes, I haven’t a notion. I have denied such repeatedly, and offered reasons for thinking that such a view is indefensible; which is why, I assume, you have not tried to defend it, but have merely asserted it instead.

What is really happening, I suspect, is that we have a different understanding of the relationship between rights and law. Law, on my understanding, exists in service of rights, such that rights have a logical priority over law. This is certainly the more ancient view, as far as I can make out. It is also the correct view: if we accept Friedman’s argument, which seems to me a good one, rights-respecting behaviour pre-dates the human species, and so a fortiori it pre-dates the State.

What has happened to our thinking about rights, it seems to me, is analogous to what has happened to our thinking about money. Money, originally, was a commodity, such as gold, silver, iron or seashells. Banks, in their initial form, were little more than safes, which offered the service of storing money securely. Banks would offer paper receipts, ‘bank notes’, which served as entitlements of withdrawal for the bearer. Because it made more practical sense to trade in these notes directly, rather than ‘cashing in’ the notes and then giving the gold to someone else to deposit again, the notes themselves would come to be thought of as ‘money’; i.e., if I have given you a ten-gold-ounce note, I have functionally given you ten ounces of gold. Though, this is not literally what has happened. Rather, I have given you a receipt which entitles the bearer to withdraw ten ounces of gold from the bank. The note ‘represents’ the real money, and acts as a guarantor of it. However, as the world’s monetary systems have evolved (which, historically, has consisted in gradual invasions of the monetary system by States), the notes themselves would be divorced from any real commodity, and they would become ‘money’ straightforwardly, by little more than legal fiat. Cue periodic financial crises, though that is a rant for another time . . .

If you ask most people, they would probably tell you that the State, or something like it, is a sine qua non of having a monetary system. Surely, there must be a law which tells us what money is or isn’t; surely, the money supply must be overseen by a ‘regulatory body’ (none of which is true). Lurking underneath these claims is the intuition that the State, somehow, makes money ‘official’. You can call something money, but ultimately, money is what it is because of what the State declares it to be.
A similar phenomenon has occurred with rights. Rights can and do exist independently of the State. This is the case, whether they are determined by God, by nature, by philosophical reflection, or by the kind of successive ‘bargaining’ of which Friedman speaks (I don’t consider these possibilities as being necessarily exclusive). ‘Law’, then, comes rather late on the scene. Law, unlike the rights themselves, which are essentially conflict-resolution principles, is a service which exists so as to formalise rights, so that they might be protected and enforced. In producing law, one must ask ‘What kinds of things are worth recognising as rights?’, which gives rise to the concept of a ‘legal right’. But these legal rights are rather like the bank notes which would eventually come to be considered ‘money’: unoriginal, derivative, merely iconic. It is only because we have rights over our own selves and the things we produce that ‘law’ is created so as to defend them.

As with money, our thinking would come to be utterly inverted: now, the law is the indispensible source of rights, not merely their protector or guarantor. As with money, the common-sense view is that the State is that which makes our rights ‘official’; ‘You would not have any rights,’ the saying goes, ‘were it not for the State granting them to you.’ Frédéric Bastiat, in his most famous work The Law, bemoans this reversal in our thinking: ‘It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.’ It is because of man’s nature, that we are persons, purposeful creatures, acting creatures, and also social creatures, that talk of ‘rights’ and ‘property’ (which is simply an extension of our personality) makes sense, in a way that would not make sense for rocks, trees or spleens, which do not exemplify these qualities.

‘Natural rights’ theory has often been accused of espousing a flimsy ontology, where the content of our rights is simply stipulated. In fact, this comes from a failure to appreciate what kind of philosophical project ‘natural rights’ theory is: man has a nature, as a purposeful, creative and social agent, and there are ways in which we might think of rights which allow man to act in accordance with that nature, and ways that do not. Perhaps this would become clearer by reflecting on the many ways in which a proposed system of rights may be contrary to man’s nature, some of the ways in which the individual may be dominated or have her ends constantly frustrated. See Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, chs. 1–6: https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Ethics%20of%20Liberty%2020191108.pdf

What is more, the critic of natural rights will tend to view the ‘legal rights’ which the State grants as being more real, more concrete. The rights we really have, the positivist will say, are those which the State declares you to have. The State makes rights ‘official’. But the ontology of rights which is presupposed by the positivist is no less ‘wispy’ than that which the natural rights theorist is accused of espousing. The State is just an association of persons, like you and I. The ‘laws’ it produces are just pieces of paper, like those on which I might write. Why are the ‘laws’ which I produce not ‘official’? Why are the rights that I grant myself by writing ‘I am the rightful owner of all the oreos in the world’ not as 'real' as those which are afforded me by the pieces of paper on which States write? This is why I have pressed you to give an account of the State’s legitimacy. Until you do, there is simply no reason to think that the State’s pieces of paper are remotely special, and therefore no reason to agree with your thesis that the rights we have are what they are because that is what the State says that they are.

can be bargained, without any communication, and are not purely social or legal in character? Despite that they resemble how ownership works in a market society in almost every respect, except that they are somehow "legitimate"? Nonsense on stilts! — fdrake

My point, again, is that you are making a false equivalence between the law which the State produces, and ‘social norms’. Because you are making this equation in your head, when I allow that rights are indeed social phenomena, you hear this as a concession that our rights really are granted by the State. Similarly, when I deny that the State is really the source of our rights, you hear this as a denial that rights are ‘social’. Because you make this equation, you see a gap in my philosophy. But the gap is yours: you are making a leap from one thing to another, without philosophical justification. I have already pointed out why this move is formally fallacious. But it is also a mistake to consider the State as being equivalent to, or the apotheosis of, ‘society’. States are no more ‘social’ than a mafioso protection racket, to which it bears a striking praxeological resemblance. If the State really were a part of, or representative of, ‘society’, then what we should expect to see is that the State is subject to the very same rules and constraints as the rest of us. But this is precisely what we don’t see. Rather, the State invades and is parasitic upon ‘society’, sustaining itself by engaging in the very activities which it locks the rest of us in cages for engaging in.

You're looking for a philosophical (precisely moral) justification rather than a historical or political one, why must history have gone the way it did? — fdrake

On the contrary, I see no historical justification for the State, either. The kinds of mythologies which are typically related concerning the State’s inception – which usually take the form of a ‘social contract’ – are quite fictional, and do nothing to secure the State’s legitimacy. This is true even of the United States, minarchism’s failed experiment. See Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority: http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2194/Spooner_1485_Bk.pdf

You may not have explicitly stated that legal responsibility is a precondition for personhood. But you have denied responsibility to aggregates, like firms, on the basis that responsibility applies only to individuals (humans). I just flipped the implication; if responsibility applies only to individuals (humans), then firms must be humans, on the basis that they are legally responsible for things. Clearly you don't believe that, which is inconsistent. — fdrake

All I deny is that which you have quoted me as denying, no more and no less. Human collectives are not persons, agents of purposeful action, and should not be considered as extra instances of such in addition to the individuals which comprise them. When you behold me and the rest of my scrabble club in the middle of our game, and ask yourself, 'How many persons are there?', the answer is 'Four', not 'Five'. You may deduce however many other implications from that as you wish to. As far as legal responsibility goes, my point remains the same: a human association may write on a piece of paper that rocks are persons, but they are not. They have ‘legal responsibility’, only in the very modest and unimpressive sense that an association of persons whom we are accustomed to thinking of as ‘governmental’ have written on a piece of paper that they may be held responsible for things. The ontology for which I have argued is not in the least threatened by such an occurrence.

There's no more to a system of property rights than how it's set out in the law and how that law's enforced. — fdrake

This is not true. In my original post, I cited an article of David Friedman’s, ‘A Positive Account of Property Rights’, in which he argues – convincingly, to my mind – that a set of non-overlapping rights domains, as well as a set of self-enforcing contracts, can be bargained up to in the absence of centralised State dictum; indeed, without any communication at all. He also makes a case for this in the 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom. He gave a short lecture to this effect in 2018 (unfortunately I could not attend this one, although I did see him speak at my university that same year): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORLmB57zrc

A claim that you seem to believe, as you seem to believe that ownership is determined by social systems. The law is certainly a social system that determines who owns what. — fdrake

No, this does not follow, logically. It is fallacious to argue as follows: ‘Rights are produced by social norms; laws are social norms; therefore rights are produced by laws.’ It is fallacious because, even if it is the case that rights are produced by social norms, this does not imply that they are produced by just any kind of social norms. That is like arguing, ‘Heat is produced by chemical reactions; dissolving ammonium chloride in water is a chemical reaction; therefore dissolving ammonium chloride in water produces heat’. But it doesn’t.

So, in order to make the argument formally valid, we must add a premise: we must have some reason for thinking that the laws which the State produces are adequate to generate property rights. This is why I am pressing you on the question of legitimacy. Unless you can give a (non-circular) reason for supposing that the pieces of paper that are written on by these particular persons, whom we identify as a ‘State’, over this particular territory, which we identify as a ‘country’, have some special rights-bestowing power which my pieces of paper do not have, there is simply no reason for thinking that we require centralised State dictum in order to determine who owns what.

This is all on the assumption, which I have disputed repeatedly and for which you have not even attempted to argue, that the pieces of paper on which the State writes are appropriately identified with ‘social norms’. I see no reason at all to make this identification. It looks to me as a typical case of equating ‘government’ with ‘society’, or our rulers with ‘us’.

So, the state has the benefit of actually existing here, your proposed social system does not, it provides no enforceable claims to property, it cannot decide what is expropriative and what isn't. — fdrake

Yes it can. Why shouldn’t it? I don’t see what point you are trying to make here. The only thing which the State has going for it is that it happens to obtain in the present status quo. But what philosophical bearing does this have? This is a surprisingly conservative argument to see you making.

I've never been arguing that "We ought to follow every law because it's written on a piece of paper" or "We ought to follow every social norm because it's there", I've been arguing that what it means for a person to be subject to a law is to be in the territory of a governing body, or other social form, that has that as its law. — fdrake

Your original words were:

How do they own it? They are legally stipulated to, in the laws that define who owns what.

This looks to me to be a very uncomplicated way of expressing exactly the position which I have subsequently attributed to you, on the basis of this very statement. What are you saying here? You are saying that the law is precisely that which determines who owns what. Everybody owns what they own because that is what the law says that they own, and they own no more and no less than this. Who produces the law? The State. The law is the pieces of paper on which the State writes. But this view – that rightful property claims are the generated by the declarations of the State – forces us back onto the two questions which I keep pressing you to answer: Why these persons, in distinction from all others? Why this territory, in distinction from all others?

My argument strategy has been to show that what you're talking about couldn't possibly happen, or is based in category errors. Hence the argument about what it means to own something being solely a legal matter, or a matter of social custom. — fdrake

I don’t see how you have done all this. What you claim to have ‘argued’ you really have only asserted, despite my repeated objections. There is no reason why the existence of the State is necessary, or even sufficient, to generate property rights. There is no reason to equate the law which the State produces with social norms. And there is no reason why property rights cannot exist and be enforced in the absence of the State.

You're right, governments aren't identical with the societies that they're in. Governments are (minimally) a collection of legislative bodies in a society. — fdrake

This won’t do, even as a partial definition, since a State is not necessary for the production of law. Stateless societies can have, and have had, legal systems in the absence of a State (Iceland, which was Stateless for the first three centuries of its existence, had an elegant justice system). Many libertarian theorists have discussed the private production of law. Many of the ingredients of such a system are already in place (private security and alternative dispute resolution, for example). The State is a human association which maintains a monopoly on the use of physical force over a territory. Not only is the State not equivalent to society, it is precisely anti-social, in the sense that it preserves for itself the prerogative to engage in behaviours which it would put you and me in a cage for engaging in.

That's all there is to ownership of commercial private property. It's determined by the law, which is a kind of social custom - albeit a social custom that few affected by it can change. Your use of "expropriation" and the like are merely poetic (insofar as laws are sufficient to define who owns what!) — fdrake

Again, why? I still have not seen an argument for this; at least, not one which does not require you to make assumptions which I have repeatedly challenged.

No, it's our capacity to form social institutions that can be held responsible for things that makes such a thing a necessary part of our social ontology. As far as the law goes, corporations are legal persons; they can be held legally responsible for things. What I'm doing is feeding facts like that into entailments you've suggested to show they're incoherent.

If your claim goes: "if X can be held legally responsible for something, then X has a mind", then corporations have minds because they are held legally responsible for things. If your claim goes "if X can be held legally responsible for something, then X is an agent", then I guess corporations are agents, so agents need not be humans at all.

"doesn't have a mind => can't be held legally responsible" flipped around is "can be held legally responsible" => "has a mind". Something you have used to criticise what I've said — fdrake

I have not even mentioned legal responsibility as a precondition of personhood, or of being an agent of purposeful action. So I fail to see how any of this could be a faithful reconstruction of my position. To say that a corporation has ‘legal responsibility’ means nothing more than that it is spoken of in that way on the pieces of paper which are written on by an arbitrary association of persons. If these same pieces of paper declared rocks to have legal responsibility, this would not have any metaphysical bearing whatsoever. It would just be another absurd legal fiction, and there is no philosophical reason to take it seriously.

Yes. My view is that the social customs that define who owns what are sufficient to define who owns what. More formally, a person's property is defined by what the social customs of property say is their property. Sometimes there may be legal disputes over the specifics, but as a rough and ready characterisation, yes, this is my view. Who owns what is defined by social custom. What it means to own something is defined by social custom. I believe this is accurate to how property works in the world. — fdrake

I have to confess some disappointment with how little you have engaged with the argument I presented. I have denied precisely the identification which you insist on making, between 'social customs' and 'the laws which the State produces'. The State is not 'us'; it is an association of persons who hold certain monopolistic privileges over an arbitrary territory. If you are going to insist on identifying 'social norms' with 'what is written on a piece of paper by these particular persons in this particular territory', then you must give an account of political legitimacy. That is, you must address, which you have as yet neglected to do, the two questions I posed previously regarding the State's expropriation powers:

‘Why may these persons, in distinction from all other persons, do so?’ and ‘Why may they do so over this landmass, in distinction from all other landmasses?’

However, I have argued that attempts to do so end up being circular. You seem to have ignored this problem completely, even though it is fatal for the position for which you are arguing. The State is not legitimate, so the view that 'rightful property claims are what they are because that is what the State declares them to be' is false.

It is also surprising for you to resort to this avenue of argumentation. My initial impression was that you were sympathetic to my libertarian critique of the State, but felt that I ought to widen my critique to private firms. Now, it seems, you are arguing for straightforward authoritarianism: rightful property claims are determined by social norms (this is fine), social norms just are the content of the pieces of paper the State writes on, so everyone rightfully owns what they own because that is what the State declares them to own. As I pointed out above, this really implies that the State owns everything within the territory in question, for everyone else's 'ownership rights' are only ever provisional, and are potentially expropriated by the State at any time.

Apart from the fact that this view is not remotely plausible (you haven't actually presented an argument for it, that I have seen), and ends up being formally circular (as I laid out in my previous post), it is also a hugely unattractive view, which is why I am so surprised to see you resorting to it. It would entail that the firm's power structure really is justified, because everyone involved is simply exercising their own government-granted property rights. Is this really the result for which you were aiming?

Yes. Because who owns what is defined by social custom, property claims are incompossible. That is, it may be the case that nations and groups and firms disagree about who owns what and it what way. — fdrake

The very purpose of a system of rights is to determine who may do what, and when. A system of rights which gives rise to in-compossible results is simply not fit for purpose. That is not to say that there cannot be competing claims, but what a system of rights is intended to do is to distinguish the rightful from the non-rightful claims. My point is that there are principled ways of doing this which give rise to a set of compossible rights, and there are ways of doing this which do not, and the latter are unfit for purpose.

It is extremely bizarre that you criticise the definition of property ownership through social customs — fdrake

I do not. I have objected, with no small amount of philosophical rigour, to the identification of 'social customs' with the State's edicts. Government and society are not the same. It is not us.

I'm perfectly happy to accept that ownership rights are typically coercive - they are enforceable claims! How in the hell are you going to have a system of property rights without each right in accordance with the social customs being a claim backed up by violence? How are property rights established in a non-coercive way in your ideal system? It must be possible for property rights to be established non-coercively in order for the claim "we ought establish property rights non-coercively" to make sense; ought implies can, therefore if it is impossible to abide by a standard we are not obliged to follow it! — fdrake

There is a linguistic issue which ought to be cleared up. When I speak of 'coercion', I am referring to violations of the non-aggression principle. The NAP distinguishes between forceful acts which are initiatory, and those which are not (those, for instance, which are defensive or consensual). In order to make this crucial distinction, there must be a system of property rights. For this reason, it is putting the cart before the horse to describe systems of ownership as being more or less coercive; actions are coercive, and it is only on the basis of a system of ownership that they may be judged as such. What is more, if we acknowledge that there are ways of using force which do not violate the NAP, we are in a position to address the following kind of question:

a new resource is discovered in your ideal system, two distinct firms make a property claim for "productive transformation", how can you possibly establish which is right without defining ownership through the code and coercing the loser to back off? — fdrake

Rights are indeed enforceable. I have the right to turn down offers of employment, and I am prepared to enforce this right. If you try to coerce me into working for you, without my consent, then I may (and will) use force to defend my property (I am assuming that my body is my own rightful property). But this does not make me a coercer. To say that it does is to fail to allow the distinction which the libertarian makes when she invokes the NAP.

So, anyone may transform the land, in whole or in part. They are then within their rights to resort to force to defend their property.

Your claim amounts to the observation that I type predicates need not be a subset of A type predicates. Prosaically, individual predicates need not transfer to aggregates. I agree.

My claim amounts to A type predicates and I type predicates are distinct.

An example; the ability to communicate is an I type property. The ability to negotiate is an A type predicate. Laws are not I type predicates, laws are A type predicates.

A type predicates may depend existentially upon the presence of select I type predicates; writing requires hands. A type predicates need not be reducible to I type predicates: humans want, cells do not (non-reducible); gas molecules have speeds, gases have temperatures (average speeds, reducible in some sense).

For a given collection of individuals in an aggregate, can A type predicates constrain or promote I type predicates? Yes. Gas molecules have speeds but not enclosing volumes, decreasing the enclosing volume of the gas increases their temperature; the average speed of the gas molecules goes up. Does this require any specific change in gas molecule speeds? No, lots of speed distributions produce the same average.

In societies: an A type predicates like a system of ownership can promote an I type predicate like rent seeking behaviour. Does this require that any individual must rent seek? No, it makes it possible and advantageous; it introduces a statistical proclivity, just like decreasing the enclosing volume of a gas introduces a statistical proclivity for its molecules to speed up. — fdrake

I actually see very little here that I would disagree with. But, nor do I see anything which looks particularly threatening to my thesis. What I said is true: my four-membered scrabble club is not joined by a fifth agent, with plans and purposes of its own, hovering above us when we gather, and spontaneously dispersing when we go home. You seem to be exaggerating my fairly innocuous observation into something far more ambitious, for which I have not argued, like 'aggregations can't have properties or causal powers'.

Firms have properties like corporate personhood! Corporate persons can be legally responsible for things. That's a legal responsibility attributed to something which is not an agent. Update your metaphysics to accommodate this. — fdrake

This, though, is a very poor argument. Are you really suggesting that the pieces of paper on which the State writes determines metaphysics? Are you really saying that things which would otherwise be non-persons become persons because the State writes on a piece of paper that they are? Are there any constrains on this? And, more pressingly, does the reverse also hold true? If the members of the set 'person' are just those things which the State declares to be persons, then I am sure that I do not need to remind of you the dangers of this.

So, no, corporations are not persons, and the State does not have the power to render them persons by legal fiat. It is a legal fiction.

I'm going to assume that you see tax as coercive. Coercive because a government takes stuff off people. — fdrake

On the understanding that that which is expropriated by taxation is the rightful property of her who is taxed, taxation would indeed be coercive, for precisely the same reason as theft and extortion are coercive. Indeed, if we take Tolkien’s advice and view the activity of the State as the actions of ‘King George, Winston and their gang’ (or equivalent), then taxation becomes praxeologically indistinguishable from a mafioso protection racket.

Your strategy, then, is to deny the assumption that the taxed money truly is the rightful property of the victim (if that is not too prejudicial) of the tax. If the money really belongs to the State, then they may expropriate just as much of it as they please. You justify this move as follows:

How do they own it? They are legally stipulated to, in the laws that define who owns what. — fdrake

But this takes a good deal for granted. Your assumption seems to be that, if the State declares itself, by means of the law that the State itself produces, to own object x, then the State rightfully owns object x. Moreover, you seem to imply on one or two occasions that all ownership rights in general are what they are because the State declares them to be so. Perhaps you would want to refine this further, but since you haven’t, I am going to tease out some problems with this view.

One problem with this view is that it gives rise to in-compossible property claims. If, as currently obtains, there is more than one State in the world, then they may both lay claim to one and the same object (a landmass, for instance), which would show the above principle to be deficient in establishing a rightful property claim. To counteract this, we may limit the State’s ‘expropriation powers’ only to a certain territory. This seems like a plausible move, since this is already how we think of States as being distinguished from one another.

But this also needs justification. What we are calling a ‘State’ is just an association of persons. To say that the State may pass a law which gives itself license to expropriate any object within a certain territory gives rise to the following two questions: ‘Why may these persons, in distinction from all other persons, do so?’ and ‘Why may they do so over this landmass, in distinction from all other landmasses?’ This is nothing other than the question of political legitimacy; what makes the State a legitimate State. What is more, since the adherent of this view believes that the State may afford itself the legal right to expropriate anything within the territory, this implies that, in an ultimate sense, the State really owns the whole territory and everything within it, since the only way in which any person other than the State may come to own something is if the State graciously chooses not to expropriate it for itself. If the State wishes to expropriate an object from me and I wish for it not to, the State asserts its right to get its way, and this is just another way of saying that the State considers the object to be its own rightful property.

Unfortunately for the Statist, it is difficult to give a non-question-begging account of why these persons in particular come to own this territory in particular. One move available is to say that the State owns the territory because the law states that it does. But the circularity of this should be obvious. After all, I may write on a piece of paper that I own the same territory. Why does this not have the same authority? ‘Simple,’ says the Statist, ‘because you are not a legitimate State.’ In other words, the State’s statutes are successful in affording the State rightful claims because the State is legitimate. But this is no good as an argument, since the question of the State’s legitimacy is the very thing which we are trying to justify.

Quite simply: the State’s actions are ostensibly coercive, and so the natural move is to insist that they are not coercive because the State is doing nothing more than exercising its own rightful property claims. To justify the rightfulness of those very property claims, you must appeal to that which the State declares about its own property claims in the laws it passes. When the question is asked, ‘Why do the pieces of paper on which the State writes – rather than the pieces of paper on which I write – afford it such rights?’, the only recourse is to insist that the State’s piece of paper is authoritative because, unlike little old me, the State really is legitimate. But this is just to take us back to asserting the very thing that is in question. I hope the circle is clear.

But perhaps I am exaggerating your position. Perhaps you are saying nothing more than that the fiat currencies of our acquaintance – GBP, USD, Won – are just products, for which we have the State to thank. We may choose to use them or not to use them, but if we do, we consent to the State’s terms and conditions, which include the State’s right to expropriate. This story would be convincing, were it not for legal tender laws. Suppose that I raise the following defence: ‘I recognise the State’s right to produce its own currency and to set limits on its use by its customers. But I choose not to use this currency, thank you very much. I shall trade in gold/bitcoin/seashells.’ Would this make me exempt from paying taxes? Of course not. The State’s power to declare by legal fiat what does or does not constitute ‘money’ is the final nail in the coffin of a free monetary system. We are then forced back onto the question of why I should be subject to such a law, which in turns forces us back onto the question of the State’s legitimacy, which, as I have argued, is rather difficult to justify non-circularly.

The main thrust here is to get you to say where property rights come from, and to address the contingent character of coercion within a social form based on the rules of ownership it follows. — fdrake

The contingent character of coercion – or, as I would rather put it, the fact that the NAP is philosophically dependent upon a system of property rights – is an observation I have made enthusiastically elsewhere. I resist strongly the identification of the law which the State produces with ‘social norms’. This should not be surprising, given how anti-social I believe the State to be in its essence. If you really do wish to make this identification, then the consequence would seem to be that the State can never be a coercive institution, by definition: any ostensibly coercive act in which the State engages may be legitimised as the State doing as it wishes its own property, on the understanding that its property is what it is because the State has declared it to be so.

An account of how rightful property claims are generated in the first instance is yet another rabbit-trail which would take up too much space in this post, but which may enjoy more attention at a later point. The three most prominent philosophical traditions here would be the right-libertarian tradition, which has its roots in John Locke, the left-libertarian tradition, which has its roots in Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the Marxist tradition, which has its roots in some guy called Carl, but which has been defended more convincingly by analytic Marxists like G. A. Cohen.

Very briefly, the right-lib and left-lib view is that each individual is a self-owner; i.e. each person’s body is her own private property. They part ways on the question of the ownership of external resources. The left-lib understands the world’s resources to be jointly co-owned by all persons, such that the individual comes into the world with an equal, quotal share in everything. The right-lib understands the world’s resources as being originally unowned, and come to be owned through productive acts of transformation (or ‘homesteading’). Thereafter, rightful property claims are transferred by bequeathal or exchange. Cohen, who may or may not be archetypical of the Marxist view, agrees with the left-lib as regards co-ownership of worldly resources, but also extends this egalitarian view to persons, which leads him to deny self-ownership.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the right-libertarian view, inspired by Locke. I will not provide a philosophical justification for this here. Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner, however, are I think the best apologists for this view.

The main thrust here is to challenge the ontological principles you are using in your arguments to deny causal powers to aggregates. — fdrake

I don’t believe I have denied aggregative causal powers. And I have agreed that compositional aggregates can exist, and that there are certain things which are rightly predicated of a whole which are not rightly predicated of the parts. What I have denied is that aggregations of agents of purposeful action – persons – may be counted as ‘extra’ agents of purposeful action, above and beyond the members. I will not rehearse all of the illustrations I have provided for this ontological commitment. But it seems to me obvious that my scrabble club is not a person, it has no purposes or intentions to speak of; or, if it may be spoken of as having such, then this is a merely linguistic, merely poetic, abstraction from the purposes and intents of the individual members.

What would it take for me to be wrong about this? It would take my scrabble club’s having a ‘mind of its own’. When I and my co-scrabblers sit, the four of us, around our square table, what exactly do you think ‘emerges’? Have we now been joined by a ‘someone’, a 'who', that is not identifiable with any one of the four of us? It sounds like a séance to me. Forgive the facetiousness.

(1) If a free market is only a stipulated idea, it has never existed.
(2) Therefore it has no causal powers.
(3) Therefore deviation from it is impossible.
(4) Therefore attributing blame to the state for the consequences of deviating from it is impossible.

"If only we didn't deviate from the Free Market by having a State (with such and such properties, then..." — fdrake

The main problem is that you are hypostatising or reifying the free market, as though it were presented as a kind of subsistent ‘thing’. But it does not have subsistence. It is only an abstraction, just as ‘the State’ is an abstraction: there is really no such entity as a ‘State’, only persons who act coercively, and whom we identify as ‘governmental’. To set up the discussion as one of ‘free market versus State’ is really a red herring, and does not get to the heart of the issue. The relevant distinction is between the kind of human activity which is peaceful, which does not invade another’s person or property, and the kind of human activity which is aggressive, which initiates force against persons and invades their property.

When we speak of the ‘free market’, all that is intended is the aggregation of exchanges between persons, where this process is not invaded by an aggressor. There is nothing esoteric or abstruse about this, as you suggest in speaking of ivory towers. Your argument seems to amount to this: because such a state of affairs has never obtained, it is senseless to speak of departing from it, and therefore we cannot blame the departure from it on anything in particular, including the State. But this really does not amount to much, philosophically.

The free market and the State are not two ‘things’ to be compared. To say that markets have never been unaccompanied by the State is merely to say that the free associations between persons have always been invaded by aggressors. So what? Does this mean that aggression is not objectionable? Does it mean that peaceful activity must always be accompanied by coercive invasion? Of course not: none of this is implied, logically. States do not exist for the good of ‘us’. Their perdurance is not owing to their practical indispensability, their inevitability, or because of the good which they produce. They are agencies of monopolised coercion, which have an interest in their own self-preservation.

These stipulations together give "the only way we can violate another's agency is by violating their property rights" - so Eve was punished for taking an apple which wasn't hers. This makes coercion attributable to some devil like The State which comes into the picture against humanity because private property rights are stipulated as intimately tied to agency. The ultimate situation of freedom is stipulated in your world as The Free Market, which is entirely non-coercive, and coercion becomes attributed solely to the State. — fdrake

Just as with the free market, there is nothing esoteric or abstruse about the State. The State, and all its subsidiary instruments, is composed of persons, and these persons engage in activities which we would identify as clearly criminal if any other persons were to act similarly. You are quite mistaken if you think that the libertarian considers the State to be the sole author of aggression. I am not sure where you have got this idea. The non-aggression principle opposes the initiation of force and the invasion of private property, and so all of the activities which involve such behavior are implicated. The reason why the State receives such attention is because the State has successfully persuaded the vast majority of persons of its necessity, its inevitability, its nobility, and so on. In some cases, it has even convinced people that it really is them! A perverse notion.

J.R.R. Tolkien put it best, in a letter to his son who was about to be sent his death by his government:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning
abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy. I would
arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England
and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of
recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it
would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the an [sic.] and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to 'King George's council, Winston and his gang', it would go a long way to
clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy.

I much prefer the kind of direct, philosophical engagement you were producing before. Little is gained from analogising my arguments to religious dogma, or translating my arguments into vocabulary of which I have not made use (like ‘free will’). My arguments are what they are. You can either engage with them, as you were before, or play around with them, as you are doing now.

Well, it's a shame. I thought we were having a good discussion.

Should I take it that we're not using arguments anymore? Is that what this is?

:brow:

It's not inevitable. Nuclear States might eliminate the human race before it happens. It is 'natural', in the sense that there is a tendency for poorer and less efficient service-providers to be out-performed by superior and more efficient service-providers. Violence, which is the State's modus operandi, is also very inefficient and expensive. The world's monetary systems and the Welfare State, for instance, cannot endure in perpetuity. But that is only one avenue of the road away from serfdom. Another important avenue is education. Changing minds and outlooks is an equally important ingredient. Students of economics tend, for instance, to be more economically liberal (in the good sense) than your average person, which shows the benefits of education in changing minds. If every voter were required to pass a course in economics before they were allowed to vote, there would be a tendency towards libertarianism (not that this is a proposal of mine).

Property would have to be redistributed equitably before ancap would succeed. Perhaps I grant you that the State is the cause of inequality. But how do we start over? — Noah Te Stroete

There is no need to 'start over'. When you successfully repel a thief from your home, or incapacitate a mugger, you needn't step back and ask yourself 'How now shall we organise society?' 'Society' is what happens when we don't aggress against one another and invade one another's property. The State will not be abolished through an overnight coup, from which we will have to wait for the dust to settle so that we can then rebuild civilisation. In some ways the State has grown, and in other ways the State has been totally out-manoeuvred by free enterprise, and shown to be the lumbering, ineffectual brute that it is (technology and the internet, especially, have contributed to this). If there is an end to the State, it will be through successive out-maneouverings by more competent service-providers, and in this sense the trajectory is good. We need not have a structural vision in our heads to anticipate the occurrence of such.

Furthermore, perhaps I grant you that the resources of the rich are merely of higher quality. Why do you think you are entitled to more property and higher quality? — Noah Te Stroete

You haven't understood the point I was making. My point is that the source of (at least this particular kind of) inequality is the State itself. 'Downtroddenness' is not owing to free exchange and enterprise, but the coercion which the State implements.

No. I’m trying to help you. — Noah Te Stroete

How, exactly?

I don’t know what “ancap” means. — Noah Te Stroete

Ancap = anarcho-capitalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

They will lash out at the target they blame for their lots in life. That’s people like you. — Noah Te Stroete

Should I be taking this as a threat?

Society is not the State. States, as coercive institutions, are precisely anti-social in their working. The fact is, those whom you identify as 'downtrodden' are downtrodden on the State's watch. But I am sure, in your mind, it will be be laissez faire which receives the blame.

If you look at those goods and services which markets, and not the State, are presently responsible for providing, they are of almost exactly equal price and quality in less affluent and ghetto-ised areas as in more privileged areas. Goods like food, and clothing.

Meanwhile, there is an enormous disparity in quality between richer and poorer areas, when it comes to State-provided services. Education and policing are considerably and consistently worse in the very places you are describing.

If you are an egalitarian and have a concern for the poor and downtrodden, you might just consider being ancap.

If the State were dissolved, there would be massive unrest.

There are more guns in the US than people.

If there is massive unrest, there will be massive bloodshed.

If you value your property, you should not dissolve the State.

You value your property seemingly above everything else.

Thus, the State should not be dissolved. — Noah Te Stroete

This is not to engage at all with the argument which I have presented, but simply to ignore it. The assumptions you make in this argument are precisely those of Hobbes: that the absence of the State is that which gives rise to disordered, animalistic aggression, and it is the presence of the State which serves as the principle of peace and order. But this is precisely wrong at both ends, as I argued at length. Did you read the the OP? It is no serious objection to an argument, simply to assert that its conclusion is false. I provided game-theoretic reasons for thinking that Statelessness does not give rise to the kind of war of all against all which you and Hobbes envision, and I also provided reasons for thinking that the State has no reason not to aggress against us in the manner of a criminal gang or protection racket, as it in fact does when it extracts taxation, prohibits peaceful associations, depreciates currency, and wages wars.

If you have an objection to make against the presentation I have made, by all means make it. But it is not a challenge in the least for you simply to repeat back to me the position which I have already argued against in my original post.

QED — Noah Te Stroete

Not exactly.

It’s a fact of life that blows up your entire philosophy. I’m just illustrating the FACT that your philosophy is ridiculously naive. — Noah Te Stroete

Where I come from, arguments are considered the stuff of philosophy.

Say an office has "friday casuals" day, then the workers can turn up in casual clothing. "Friday casuals day" is a firm policy, not reducible to the workers turning up to work in casual clothes, because it is what allows the workers to turn up on Friday in casual clothing and not be in breach of company policy. — fdrake

I think we are talking past each other. This was my initial statement with which you took issue:

we must never fall into the trap of thinking that 'States', 'firms', 'corporations' or 'markets' subsist. These are aggregations of individual persons, and it is only these persons who are the real actors, the conscious agents. Neither States nor firms have their own inherent agency.

I still see no reason to think that this is false. Your examples seem to be concerned mostly with analysis, or providing causal explanations of things, not with what kinds of things there actually are in the world of purposeful action. In your example, the 'policy' is that which explains and gives rise to the workers turning up to work in casual clothes. Explanatorily, then, the policy is not 'reducible' to the actions of the individuals. But the policy itself has no subsistence, nor does it have a mind or any purposes of its own. It does not act. It is not an agent. The only concrete agents at work are persons, as is the case of all the other examples you have raised.

Human collectives, considered as such, can indeed have properties which are not exemplified by any individual; my scrabble club exemplifies the property 'has four members', whereas I do not. But whenever you try to predicate any kind of purposeful action or intent of the collective, this is improper, because it does not have agency.

You can speak of a market as an abstraction independent of a social form, you can also speak of a social form as an abstraction independent from a market. Real states and real markets are hopelessly intertwined. — fdrake

If by 'real markets' you mean the kinds of markets which currently obtain, then of course this is trivially true. But, as I have pointed out, I see no reason why the kind of market which obtains in the absence of the State need resemble these. Why should it?

You make it sound like these "rights" are somehow imbued by a God. They're fought for. People establish rights through collective action; rights are really what people are entitled to under a given social form. That "entitlement" is a codification of hard won principles which applies to everyone in an aggregate, and acts upon the aggregate in constraining its behaviour. "Workers rights", "consumer rights" etc are only established through collective action; and every single one has been hard won.

In the absence of these rights, markets are extremely bad for workers. 14 hour days, children with black lung, perpetual immiseration as an alternative to starvation, slavery... If you want to see markets as the sine qua non of human freedom, note that the freedoms we have within them were established through collective action against their incredible power and those who wield it.

Your overall perspective sees markets as limited abstract mathematical devices, ways of matching individuals to available goods through the satisfaction of a constrained utility function. There's no history in it, no study of the social processes that markets are, where they come from, how laws interface with markets, how people collectivise to ensure that they are treated well in them. This has been shown to (1) not uniquely determine the behaviour of emergent properties (see the paper) and (2) has absolutely nothing accurate to say about markets as a form of human activity, and of how peoples and social institutions relate to them. — fdrake

I don't believe I have ever attempted to give an economic analysis of markets, beyond the broad-brush definition which economists conventionally employ. 'Markets' as such do not play a particularly central role in the argument I have presented, except to point out that, in general, peaceful exchange, which allows for competition, is more conducive to the separation of power than an agency of monopolised coercion, which does not. My preoccupation is less with 'markets versus the State' than with 'non-aggressive behaviour versus aggressive behaviour'. It just so happens that the State is the aggressor per excellence.

Any anaemia you detect in my analysis of markets is owing to the fact that I have not set out to analyse markets in general, or to promote one kind of market in particular. This avenue is one which you have brought into the discussion, and does not have an immediate bearing on the thesis for which I have argued. I should not like to say that markets are a condition of freedom, as you seem to suggest. That is, I do not say that we must first seek to establish a particular kind of market, and then individual freedom flows out from that. It is rather the reverse. If people are free from coercive invasion, both in their persons and their property, then their interactions will be confined to those that are peaceful and voluntary. 'Market' is just a description of what this would look like, after the fact. It is more of a posterior analysis than a structural vision to be strived for. As I mentioned before, libertarians have no structural vision. They merely object to the initiation of force and the invasion of private property.

There is a terrible tendency to declare as a 'right' what is really only an interest. Is there a 'right' to a 15-minute break after every 3 hours of work? I don't see any reason why there should be, though it would certainly be a nice thing to have, and to insist that you are entitled to have. Ultimately, any acceptable system of rights must be jointly-realisable; that is, everyone's rights must be non-overlapping (Hillel Steiner calls this property 'compossibility'). The reason is that the purpose of 'rights' is to determine who may do what, and when. Or, to put it another way, their purpose is to determine what you may not do to other people in pursuit of your own interests. If you were the only person in the world, talk of 'rights' would hardly be necessary. It is only because we must temper our behaviour so as to accommodate other persons that a system of rights is necessary. We cannot all achieve all of our wants all of the time, and this is why we must have a way of determining who may do what, when.

The only way in which a system of rights may achieve compossibility is if we understand all rights to be rights of use and ownership over scarce resources. Otherwise, my 'right' to engage in such-and-such an action may involve the use of a rivalrous resource which you also wish to use in the exercising of your 'right'. This would make our rights competitive, and in-compossible. Only if we understand the object as being proper either to me or to you can we achieve compossibility. If it is mine, then I may do what I like with it (provided that I not invade anyone else's property in the process). In other words, the domain of my rightful action maps onto the domain of objects which are rightly considered 'mine'.

So, rights may not be straightforwardly God-given, but there are certainly constraints on what can and cannot be a right. One cannot have a 'right' if that right affords one unbounded access to a scarce resource. But it also gives us clarity when it comes to 'workers rights', 'gay rights' and so on. You have the right to do as you please with your own property, or with other people's property to the degree that they have consented to it, on the condition that you do not invade other people's property in so doing. But you do not have a 'right' to anything of mine, beyond what I consent to. This is why there cannot be an unqualified 'right not to be fired if you unionise'. If it is a stipulation of our contract that I not fire you for joining a union, then of course it is a violation of your rights if I were to do so. But, beyond this, you have no such right.

This, ultimately, is the philosophical justification of libertarianism's non-aggression principle: that rights-violations consist in invasions of another person's property.