PROPERTARIANISM: WHAT IS “DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY”? In economics we have the conce

PROPERTARIANISM: WHAT IS “DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY”?

In economics we have the concept of ‘demonstrated preference’. This means that people tend to say a lot of things, but they they demonstrate by how they act, what their true preferences are, and those things are often very different from what they say.

We also have the concept of property. And, we tend to think of property as a legal concept, or a utilitarian concept. But the more interesting question is “What do people consider to be property as is demonstrate by their actions?”

That’s the interesting question. And, Propertarianism is based upon what people DEMONSTRATE by their actions that they consider their property?

It turns out, that they consider quite a few things to be property. And, with that observation, it turns out that we can explain all human action and emotion in terms of what people consider to be property.

So, with private property, we can, indeed, reduce all human rights to private property. But further, with DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY, we can reduce all human action, and perhaps, all human cognition and emotion, to statements of property.

And with that knowledge we can render different systems of economic preference into statements of a competition for the definition of property rights.

For example, using Praxeology, we can determine whether any proposed incentive is logical to the individual. With demonstrated property we can further explain why Praxeology was insufficient – because (besides the failure of ordinality) it failed to incorporate the full breadth of what humans considered to be property. And as such, could not explain their behavior.

Propertarianism, which relies upon Demonstrated definitions of property, is able, along with understanding of our cognitive biases, to complete Praxeology.

Cheers

Curt