Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • STATISM AND CORPORATISM VS PARTNERSHIPS AND THE COMMON LAW Can you imagine comme

    STATISM AND CORPORATISM VS PARTNERSHIPS AND THE COMMON LAW

    Can you imagine commercial trade and the market without the abstract entity we call the corporation? Sure you can. The corporation is just a partnership that the government has granted limited liability to in order to increase tax revenues from ventures that are both expensive and high risk. THink of it as off-book investment in research and development.

    If you can imagine commerce without corporations, then you can imagine government without the state. The state is just a corporation – a collection of people who are insulated from liability for their actions.

    The common law, and the rule of law under the common law, with private property, and a government that is a contract, wherein the governors have no right to issue law, only to facilitate contracts between groups, which are then enforceable by the courts.

    Under such a common law system, (the anarchic system), people in corporations and in government are not protected from you suing them for violating our contracts -the most important contract being our constitution.

    Anarchy as we describe it, isn’t the absence of organization, of commons, or of law. It’s the absence of the state and the state bureaucracy that through the violence of law, forces us to do what we do not wish to, and its members profit from doing so.

    We can have all the government we want. but we do not need the state, the bureaucracy, legislation, and majority rule to accomplish it. Our government needs only to facilitate contracts and to forbid all parties, whether parties to the contract or not, from free riding, rent seeking, privatization, socialization, corruption, theft, and violence involving those contracts.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-22 08:31:00 UTC

  • PROPERTY, PRAXEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE (Cross posted from FB.Libertarian) Unfortunate

    PROPERTY, PRAXEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE

    (Cross posted from FB.Libertarian)

    Unfortunately, while humans demonstrate a preference for the consumption that is made possible by the combination of private property, the division of knowledge and labor, and the experimental innovation the market drives us to, humans also demonstrate an equal preference for violence, theft, fraud, omission, interference, free riding, privatization of the commons, socialization of losses, rent seeking, corruption, organizing for the purposes of extortion, and organizing for plunder and conquest via war.

    All of these forms of theft from the most direct to the most subtle, in the absence of the threat of violence, are easier means of competition than is the risky and personal act of speculative production we must engage in, if we choose to compete in the market for goods and services.

    Only a minority of us demonstrate a preference for the market, and by consequence, demonstrate a preference for private property: which is to eschew, at high cost to ourselves, the tempting portfolio of thefts – and instead work to consume exclusively via voluntary, informed, exchange that is the product of guesswork, planning, foresight and risk.

    For these reasons – these praxeologically obvious reasons – any portfolio of property rights, from the most collective, to the most individual, to the most totalitarian, and within that portfolio, the scope property ranging from simple personal possessions to complex anonymous contractual commitments; has been and must be imposed on a body of people by the threat of violence.

    The concept and practice of liberty was created by egalitarian aristocrats who granted property rights to those who equally respected property rights of their peers, and who fought to preserve them at great personal cost.

    Moral arguments as to the utility of private property are specious. They are an attempt to obtain the right of private property at a discount – despite the fact that the majority do not favor those rights for either themselves or others.

    That the enlightenment’s emergent middle class philosophers tried to justify taking power from the aristocracy by fabricating moral and utilitarian arguments was a necessary political ruse at the time. But we if we desire to preserve our vestiges of freedom we should not confuse that ruse with the factual reality that all systems of property rights are imposed by the threat of violence.

    It is praxeologically illogical to suggest that those who would compete better in the absence of private property, should suffer lower state in order to yield to the desires of those others who may be more successful under private property. This makes no sense.

    As such, the only defense is the offensive application of organized violence for the purpose of implementing one system of property rights and obligations over another.

    Aristocracy is a functional synonym for private property – and private property a right gained in exchange for reciprocity both in the respect of private property and the obligation to use one’s wealth of violence to ensure the perpetuation of the portfolio of property rights that we call ‘private property’ at the expense and exclusion of all other possible portfolios of property rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-20 16:31:00 UTC

  • When Did The Capitalist Regime Under Which We Currently Live *begin*?

    INTERESTING QUESTION. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE.

    The west has been more ‘capitalist’ since its inception 4500 years ago, because it’s been more individualistic, and it’s property rights have been more widely distributed and therefore power has been distributed and balanced for most of our history.   It’s also true that enfranchisement in those property rights has expanded and contracted along with prosperity. YOu had more under rome, and less under feudalism.  More under english common law, and less under european napoleonic law.  More in the 19th century and less today.

    ‘Capitalistic’ means that property rights are distributed.  ‘Socialistic’ means that property rights are concentrated in the state.  The concentration of large amounts of credit under a network of contracts is illogical and unnecessary under concentrated socialistic  systems that we associate with totalitarian governments.

    You could argue that the invention of Venetian accounting, followed by English and Dutch mercantilism is the origin of our modern political model, and that it was formalized into language by Smith, Hume, and the American Constitution.

    Most people, I think, would argue that Napoleon created the nation state and the concept of ‘total war’ and that the system of credit that developed in response to the Napoleonic wars was the origin of our capitalist state.

    Others would argue that the 20th century development of fiat money, fiat credit, the practice of regulating unemployment, and the state as the insurer of last resort was probably when we developed an institutional balance between capitalism, socialism and corporatism.

    Most modern states are ‘capitalistic’ in that they use consumer capitalism and individual property rights to run their economies.  Most modern states levy taxes and and redistribute those taxes under the social democratic thesis that we must have capitalism but we can abscond with a considerable amount of the profits people make, and treat those profits as common property, even if all property is held privately.  Most modern states subsidize key industries as a means of creating an internationally competitive product that gives the country an economic advantage – this is corporatism.

    When the socialist movements succeeded in Europe and Canada, they did not succeed in the USA – probably because we were the military and political center of western civilization in the post war period. Instead, the combination of the Vietnam war, the temporary economic rise of the proletariat due to the rest of the world’s economic collapse from the war, the increase in proletarian birth rates that gave us the 60’s and 70’s, the racial movement of the 60’s,  feminism because of birth control, and various other factors led to a fracturing of american society that continues to effect us to this day.  

    It had become apparent that socialism had failed in theory (incentives and calculation) and as the 70’s progressed we learned that the great society programs ambitions were also a failure, so socialism was a failure in practice. And finally in the 90’s we saw the collapse of world communism and the universal adoption of consumer capitalism.

    1) Starting in the 50’s progressives and liberals (socialists) began trying to develop a philosophical and political framework given that socialism was failing in theory, and because the american people were not ‘buying it’.  This system of philosophy was called ‘postmodernism’.  Postmodernism is an attempt to use the technique of monotheistic religious dogma to propagate falsehoods, that must be passionately treated as moral truths (equality, equality of outcome, relativity of morals except postmodern morals, relativity of cultures except western culture which is bad, and a dozen more.)  Postmodernism and postmodernists have been successful and has effectively become the state religion in america. This is because it both sells goods and services, as well as promotes concentration of power in the state.

    2) Staring in the 70’s conservatives and libertarians developed a series of strategies to combat socialism and postmodernism.  This included what we see today in think tanks, policies, and ideologies.  All of which were designed to combat the state.

    These ideas fell into the following groups:

    1) The most rigid was that the state would bankrupt capitalism, and destroy our traditional society if capitalists didn’t bankrupt the state first.  This meant effectively hiring the corporations and financial empires by granting them privileges and protecting them from taxation.  This approach has been successful – mostly, because Keynesian economic policy requires that the government use the financial sector to insert money into the economy, and the profit available to the financial sector provides them with the incentive to fight the state.

    2) The more practical approach was to promote libertarian policy solutions to social democratic problems, which would accomplish redistribution without empowering the state and expanding its bureaucracy.   This approach has been marginally successful. Most voucher systems or privatization in both Europe and America, were the result of these libertarian ideas.

    3) The ancient approach has been used too. The purpose of organized religion is largely to oppose the state. As the state has grown, the more traditional segments of the populace have turned increasingly fundamentalist as a means of opposing the state. For ancient reasons, it is not possible in america to interfere with religion.  And religions determine the limits of political power.  So religious fervor has increased as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and traditional roles for men and women – and therefore the status signals available to people in nuclear families.

    4) The marxists were extremely successful in promoting ideology instead of philosophy – ideology is a collection of statements for the purpose of obtaining power by appealing to emotions instead of reason.  (This is, again, a tactic taken from the monotheistic religions.)  The conservative and libertarian think tanks began promoting conservative and libertarian ideology, as well as launching news networks and talk radio shows as well as books and magazines.  Ideology and religion are more effective than reason in a population because we are, in total, when voting, expressing our moral feelings, not our rational understanding.

    THE RESULT

    Capitalist ideology (libertarian and aristocratic conservative) , and socialist ideology (postmodernism and democratic socialism) are opposing means of running a society and so we are constantly subjected to extremist arguments form both sized.  Meanwhile we vote our morals. And our morals are almost entirely a reflection of our reproductive strategy.  Since women have more in common in their reproductive strategy than do men, as the number of single women and single mothers increases, the vote continues to move to the socialistic (feminine) social model.  However, immigration and the minioritization of the white population are causing a consolidation of parties into racial and gender distributions that are fairly predictable.

    So most of it is noise.

    ON CAPITALISM

    It is not possible to have any means of production that is not capitalistic. Money and prices contain information and convey incentives that cannot be done in this level of complexity by other means.  However, it is also true that it is possible to expropriate the profits from individuals and redistribute them while preserving the capitalist system of information and incentives.

    Given that a population is small and heterogeneous enough, it appears that a combination of socialistic redistribution and capitalistic production is politically possible. However, heterogeneous societies resist redistribution and increase competition and friction in the state.

    For this reason we will likely continue to have friction here in America until the demographic system plays out with white minority status, and likely some serious conflict at that point.

    YOUR ANSWER

    The capitalistic system evolved over thousands of years and is one of the primary reasons why the west, despite being small, poor, and on the fringe, developed rapidly both in its ancient and modern periods.

    Today we are in less of a capitalistic system but capitalistic rhetoric is very high because of the minoritization of whites, and the opposition to the state. 

    Furthermore, regardless of rhetoric you will always live under a capitalistic system because it’s not possible to coordinate a complex division of knowledge and labor without capitalism.


    I hope this helps provide some clarity amidst the nonsense we are subject to every day.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-capitalist-regime-under-which-we-currently-live-*begin*

  • Which Articles Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Are Negative Rights?

    1-2 Address who is included in these rights.

    3-20 Address negative rights. These rights prohibit everyone, including government, from violating the life, body, movement, association, speech,  and property of individuals in various ways.

    21-29 Address positive rights.These are ambitions that all governments are chartered with attempting to achieve.

    30 closes prohibiting exception.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-articles-of-the-Universal-Declaration-of-Human-Rights-are-negative-rights

  • When Did The Capitalist Regime Under Which We Currently Live *begin*?

    INTERESTING QUESTION. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE.

    The west has been more ‘capitalist’ since its inception 4500 years ago, because it’s been more individualistic, and it’s property rights have been more widely distributed and therefore power has been distributed and balanced for most of our history.   It’s also true that enfranchisement in those property rights has expanded and contracted along with prosperity. YOu had more under rome, and less under feudalism.  More under english common law, and less under european napoleonic law.  More in the 19th century and less today.

    ‘Capitalistic’ means that property rights are distributed.  ‘Socialistic’ means that property rights are concentrated in the state.  The concentration of large amounts of credit under a network of contracts is illogical and unnecessary under concentrated socialistic  systems that we associate with totalitarian governments.

    You could argue that the invention of Venetian accounting, followed by English and Dutch mercantilism is the origin of our modern political model, and that it was formalized into language by Smith, Hume, and the American Constitution.

    Most people, I think, would argue that Napoleon created the nation state and the concept of ‘total war’ and that the system of credit that developed in response to the Napoleonic wars was the origin of our capitalist state.

    Others would argue that the 20th century development of fiat money, fiat credit, the practice of regulating unemployment, and the state as the insurer of last resort was probably when we developed an institutional balance between capitalism, socialism and corporatism.

    Most modern states are ‘capitalistic’ in that they use consumer capitalism and individual property rights to run their economies.  Most modern states levy taxes and and redistribute those taxes under the social democratic thesis that we must have capitalism but we can abscond with a considerable amount of the profits people make, and treat those profits as common property, even if all property is held privately.  Most modern states subsidize key industries as a means of creating an internationally competitive product that gives the country an economic advantage – this is corporatism.

    When the socialist movements succeeded in Europe and Canada, they did not succeed in the USA – probably because we were the military and political center of western civilization in the post war period. Instead, the combination of the Vietnam war, the temporary economic rise of the proletariat due to the rest of the world’s economic collapse from the war, the increase in proletarian birth rates that gave us the 60’s and 70’s, the racial movement of the 60’s,  feminism because of birth control, and various other factors led to a fracturing of american society that continues to effect us to this day.  

    It had become apparent that socialism had failed in theory (incentives and calculation) and as the 70’s progressed we learned that the great society programs ambitions were also a failure, so socialism was a failure in practice. And finally in the 90’s we saw the collapse of world communism and the universal adoption of consumer capitalism.

    1) Starting in the 50’s progressives and liberals (socialists) began trying to develop a philosophical and political framework given that socialism was failing in theory, and because the american people were not ‘buying it’.  This system of philosophy was called ‘postmodernism’.  Postmodernism is an attempt to use the technique of monotheistic religious dogma to propagate falsehoods, that must be passionately treated as moral truths (equality, equality of outcome, relativity of morals except postmodern morals, relativity of cultures except western culture which is bad, and a dozen more.)  Postmodernism and postmodernists have been successful and has effectively become the state religion in america. This is because it both sells goods and services, as well as promotes concentration of power in the state.

    2) Staring in the 70’s conservatives and libertarians developed a series of strategies to combat socialism and postmodernism.  This included what we see today in think tanks, policies, and ideologies.  All of which were designed to combat the state.

    These ideas fell into the following groups:

    1) The most rigid was that the state would bankrupt capitalism, and destroy our traditional society if capitalists didn’t bankrupt the state first.  This meant effectively hiring the corporations and financial empires by granting them privileges and protecting them from taxation.  This approach has been successful – mostly, because Keynesian economic policy requires that the government use the financial sector to insert money into the economy, and the profit available to the financial sector provides them with the incentive to fight the state.

    2) The more practical approach was to promote libertarian policy solutions to social democratic problems, which would accomplish redistribution without empowering the state and expanding its bureaucracy.   This approach has been marginally successful. Most voucher systems or privatization in both Europe and America, were the result of these libertarian ideas.

    3) The ancient approach has been used too. The purpose of organized religion is largely to oppose the state. As the state has grown, the more traditional segments of the populace have turned increasingly fundamentalist as a means of opposing the state. For ancient reasons, it is not possible in america to interfere with religion.  And religions determine the limits of political power.  So religious fervor has increased as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and traditional roles for men and women – and therefore the status signals available to people in nuclear families.

    4) The marxists were extremely successful in promoting ideology instead of philosophy – ideology is a collection of statements for the purpose of obtaining power by appealing to emotions instead of reason.  (This is, again, a tactic taken from the monotheistic religions.)  The conservative and libertarian think tanks began promoting conservative and libertarian ideology, as well as launching news networks and talk radio shows as well as books and magazines.  Ideology and religion are more effective than reason in a population because we are, in total, when voting, expressing our moral feelings, not our rational understanding.

    THE RESULT

    Capitalist ideology (libertarian and aristocratic conservative) , and socialist ideology (postmodernism and democratic socialism) are opposing means of running a society and so we are constantly subjected to extremist arguments form both sized.  Meanwhile we vote our morals. And our morals are almost entirely a reflection of our reproductive strategy.  Since women have more in common in their reproductive strategy than do men, as the number of single women and single mothers increases, the vote continues to move to the socialistic (feminine) social model.  However, immigration and the minioritization of the white population are causing a consolidation of parties into racial and gender distributions that are fairly predictable.

    So most of it is noise.

    ON CAPITALISM

    It is not possible to have any means of production that is not capitalistic. Money and prices contain information and convey incentives that cannot be done in this level of complexity by other means.  However, it is also true that it is possible to expropriate the profits from individuals and redistribute them while preserving the capitalist system of information and incentives.

    Given that a population is small and heterogeneous enough, it appears that a combination of socialistic redistribution and capitalistic production is politically possible. However, heterogeneous societies resist redistribution and increase competition and friction in the state.

    For this reason we will likely continue to have friction here in America until the demographic system plays out with white minority status, and likely some serious conflict at that point.

    YOUR ANSWER

    The capitalistic system evolved over thousands of years and is one of the primary reasons why the west, despite being small, poor, and on the fringe, developed rapidly both in its ancient and modern periods.

    Today we are in less of a capitalistic system but capitalistic rhetoric is very high because of the minoritization of whites, and the opposition to the state. 

    Furthermore, regardless of rhetoric you will always live under a capitalistic system because it’s not possible to coordinate a complex division of knowledge and labor without capitalism.


    I hope this helps provide some clarity amidst the nonsense we are subject to every day.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-capitalist-regime-under-which-we-currently-live-*begin*

  • Which Articles Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Are Negative Rights?

    1-2 Address who is included in these rights.

    3-20 Address negative rights. These rights prohibit everyone, including government, from violating the life, body, movement, association, speech,  and property of individuals in various ways.

    21-29 Address positive rights.These are ambitions that all governments are chartered with attempting to achieve.

    30 closes prohibiting exception.

    https://www.quora.com/Which-articles-of-the-Universal-Declaration-of-Human-Rights-are-negative-rights

  • Why Are Gay People Asking For The Right To Marry? If It Is Legal Stuff They Are Asking For, Can’t They Go To Some Separate Setup For Partners?

    1) Corporeal Assets. Because “marriage” under the corporeal state is in fact a CORPORATION, with two shareholders, and all property not specifically set aside in a prenuptial agreement is contributed to, and an asset of, the CORPORATION upon creation of the marriage corporation.  A marriage corporation is a significant benefit to those who enter into them. Economically, a marriage corporation is much more advantageous than an living as an individual (sole proprietorship). Not the least of which is because of the increased credit that is available, and the decreased statistical risk that married couples exhibit.

    2) Parity Membership. (status equality) Because homosexuality is instinctively ostracized in most cultures, and people don’t like being ostracized.  First as a ‘defect’ and secondly as a ‘immoral corruption’.  It appears that homosexuality is an in-utero genetically caused ‘defect’, that ‘defect’ has no negative consequences OTHER than those that derive from our instinctual biases. Secondly, as an in-utero defect, it is not a CHOICE and therefore not a matter of ‘immoral corruptoin’ or a danger to those who are ‘normal’.  As such we have enough knowledge to counter our instinctual biases, and enough knowledge to abandon our cultural biases.

    As such, no longer deserving stigma, homosexuals, as any healthy social human, desire ‘acceptance’ (to receive positive status signals) in the society.

    3) Binding commitment.  Homosexuals demonstrate high levels of promiscuity – and unlike heterosexuals, whose promiscuity creates the problem of children without economic support – there is little harm to it.  As such the function of a marriage corporation creates a greater economic incentive in support of preventing promiscuity and preserving both the economic and emotional investments we make.

    4) Pledge of commitment: The promise of a marriage will tend to give each of us access to superior mates (yes it does).  Without this pledge of commitment homosexuals do not have the way demonstrate their commitment to quality partners.  Trust is a difficult thing to come by.

    5) Conformity to norms. In an effort to obtain the right of marriage the homosexual community has ‘reigned in’ its more extravagant public behavior, which has reduced the level of objection prevoiusly held by moderates.  Further, unlike women’s rights activists and racial activists, homosexuals are not asking for redistribution benefits, OR for other special rights – other than the questionable ‘hate crimes’ that is already in force.

    RESISTANCE BY RELIGIOUS GROUPS
    6) Religions are the last resistance to homosexual marriage.  This is partly for doctrinal reasons, and partly because the gay community aligned with the feminist, and left political wings, and in doing so, added to what religious groups consider an attack on the nuclear family, on traditional male and female roles, to the status signals available to those who fulfill traditional male and female roles – and from their perspective, an attack on civilization itself. This voting block is both activist and uniform, and provides a resistance to both the expansionary state and to culture.  For this reason the real opposition for homosexuals is in fact, organized religion, because organized religion is the source of the nuclear family’s traditional moral legitimacy.


    I hope that is a sufficient answer for you. Although I did have to rush the end a bit.   – Cheers.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-gay-people-asking-for-the-right-to-marry-If-it-is-legal-stuff-they-are-asking-for-cant-they-go-to-some-separate-setup-for-partners

  • ANY MONOPOLY DEFINITION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS REQUIRED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF DIS

    ANY MONOPOLY DEFINITION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS REQUIRED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES:

    “Fundamentally speaking, it is illogical to suggest that a “polyopoly” of property rights and definitions is possible since a homogenous “monopoly” definition of property right is necessary in order to logically resolve disputes over rights, obligations and conflicts. Without property rights, disputes are logically impossible to resolve.

    If there is a monopoly of property rights at any point, that monopolistic definition, in practice, is the premise for all law within that group of people. Therefore even without the institutions of administrative government, any monopoly of property rights is in fact ‘government’. Everything else is just procedure.”

    This is not to say that allocating all property rights exclusively to private property is the only possible solution for a group. We’ve just learned that economic incentives to act, and to produce, and therefore to increase choice and decrease prices, can only exist where individuals have property rights. Without those rights one cannot have incentives. Or rather, without property rights, one’s incentives are balanced between numerous incentives – most of which are not productive, but consumptive.

    Anarchic production and exchange require only private property rights. But if a group with homogenous interests, wants to invest in the development of commons’, most generally called ‘infrastructure’ and in particular, commons that occupy physical (unique) space, then anarchic production under a monopoly definition of property rights alone isn’t sufficient. The reason being, that commons are victim to: (a) free riding (b) competition (c) privatization, and (d) violations of the rights of others. We don’t usually consider competition a problem, but it’s a problem for investors in a commons. And governments ( one or more people) that can outlaw free riding (taxes), competition (indirect privatization), direct privatization (theft), and protect the rights of others from abuses of their property rights through the process of creating commons, turns out to be necessary, since the cost of these appropriations of common investments is higher than the willingness of people to take the risk to develop the commons. Furthermore they also consider free free riding, competition, and privatization to be immoral.

    THis is not to say that private organizations can’t create commons (they can). The difference is that most commons that are other than symbolic such as monuments, are open to such free riding (consumption without compensation) and appropriation (the ancient practice of stealing of stones to build a house from public works for example) that the combination of moral objection and material theft is higher than the desire and willingness to contribute to a commons.

    Furthermore, some commons, like defense, are of such high risk and cost, that near universal free riding (pacifism), or perhaps more clearly, sufficient free riding, is endemic, and therefore it’s very difficult to create both defense, and private property rights. Historically, property rights are determined by those who contribute to defense. Or more commonly, property rights are exclusively possessed by those who contribute to defense

    So that is why we create governments.

    The problem is not that we’ve created governments to resolve conflicts and to create commons. The problem is that the only governments that we’ve been able to create have consisted of monopolies issuing laws rather than a monopoly of property rights under which we issue contracts the terms of which are binding on all members of the group.

    The problems with the organization we call government are (a) lawmaking instead of contract making (b) Monopoly Rule – whether majority, minority, or dictatorship instead of contract negotiating between factions (c) bureaucracy that is insulated from competition and therefore follows its natural incentives to expropriate from shareholders (citizens).

    (Snippet from yesterday’s posting on Quora)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-30 23:30:00 UTC

  • THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY IS A EUGENIC ONE Or isn’t that obvious? And isn’t th

    THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY IS A EUGENIC ONE

    Or isn’t that obvious? And isn’t that the complaint against it?

    Does it all really boil down to that, and nothing else?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-13 07:16:00 UTC

  • FROM QUORA: IS GOVERNMENT OR PRIVATE PROPERTY MORE “NATURAL’? QUESTION: “Is priv

    FROM QUORA: IS GOVERNMENT OR PRIVATE PROPERTY MORE “NATURAL’?

    QUESTION: “Is private property is more natural than government? Why or why not?”

    AN INTERESTING QUESTION – THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST TO ANSWER IT. I’ll try to give you the best answer currently available.

    “We have laws because we have property, we do not have property because we have laws” – Frederic Bastiat.

    PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUM

    We define private property as something over which one EXPECTS TO HAVE exclusive “monopoly” control, and common family property as something over which we expect to have limited control and consumption, and shareholder property something over which one expects to have LIMITED control and prohibition from consumption, and ‘the commons’ over which one expects to be PROHIBITED from consumption and or exclusive control, but where membership is dynamic.

    NATURE

    Many animals treat their nests, stores of food, mates and offspring as property. Humans have more complex memories, and can put objects to a multiplicity of uses. And humans can learn to specialize in the use of certain resources to produce certain increasingly complex goods and services.

    The first value of memory is to observe resources and avoid dangers. But once we have complex memory, and the abilty to locate and store resources, we can create property, and therefore conserve energy by creating stores for future consumption, and stores for future production. The human mind is a is a difference engine, but the primary difference it calculates is property: what can I expect to make use of or not make use of, as a member of a family, band, tribe, or society?

    We can speak. That we can speak and negotiate demonstrates that property is natural. Without property cooperation would be unnecessary. To debate by definition is to acknowledge the existence of property. And we were able to speak before we were able to form governments. We were able to trade before we were able to form governments.

    However, just because property is natural to man, and humans can peaceably cooperate by conducting voluntary exchange of property, that does not mean that humans will do the hard work of trying to satisfy the wants of others. Instead, rather than exchange, humans try to harm, steal, commit fraud, commit fraud by omission. Rather than adhere to agreements as shareholders, humans free-ride, rent-seek, privatize assets and socialize losses.

    So, despite our natural ability to create and use property, and to negotiate exchanges and contracts, we also require the use of third parties to administer conflicts. We have used tribal headmen, elders, priests, judges for private matters, and politicians, lawyers, advocates, and lawmaking to regulate the process of dispute resolution itself.

    However, rather than justly administer agreements people engage in all possible manner of direct and systemic corruption. But, rather than enter political agreements honestly, they lie, cheat, defraud, deceive, use incrementalism, use coercion and bribery.

    So, despite our creation of these administrative institutions, we have created the constitutions, rule of law, and a high court so that we may limit the ability of politicians, kings, bureaucrats to conduct thefts of many kinds. And hold them accountable. We have enacted democratic processes to remove them from office if they commit these crimes.

    However, rather than adhere to constitutions and rule of law, people undermine the rule of law, buy voters compliance with redistribution and privileges. Threaten to replace judges if they don’t rule in the politician’s favor.

    So, despite our creation of limits on politicians and law makers, and the bureaucracy, and judges, we must retain our ability to use violence and revolution in order to defend ourselves from those who would seek to live off our efforts rather than administer our efforts.

    Property is the result of memory. Property is necessary to make use of the vicissitudes of time, to store and produce goods. Property is necessaty to uniquely and efficiently calculate uses of resources. Property is necessary to reduce conflict over possible usees even within families and tribes. Property is necessary for the construction a division of knowledge and labor. Without which we cannot specialize, save time, and produce high value goods that make us independent of nature’s bounty.

    Property is prior to government. Government exists to resolve disputes over property.

    As our division of labor increases, it becomes useful to develop additional common property. In a marketplace, competition provides us with incentives to produce better products and services at lower coasts. Competition is the privatization of other people’s assumptions about the opportunities in the market. However, common property, unlike private property, is hard to protect from privatization, and necessary to protect from competition, which for any commons, is just a theft from those who organize and pay for the commons by those who fail to organize and pay for the commons. In the market competition and privatization are desirable, but in the production of commons competition is an unnecessary cost. Therefore, the second purpose of government is to allow the formation of commons at a discount by prohibiting privatization of any commons, and preventing free-riding on any commons by the use of mandatory taxation.

    THE TWO NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT

    These are the only two necessary properties of government. In order to perform these functions any body of people must have a portfolio of property definitions that describe each kind of property on the spectrum from private to commons. Most difficulties arise from the failure for societies to do so. One of the reasons the west was (and partly remains) superior in economic per capita perormance is that more of the property in the civilization is privatized, and therefore available for frictionless use, and therefore as an incentive for individuals to act to better their status.

    CLOSING

    I won’t carry this further for now, and it is a book length topic, but it is probably the most, if not only, accurate description of property and government that you will be able to find, despite extraordinary efforts to research the subject. That is because I’ve tried to articulate the necessary properties of government not the multitude of abuses we can put it to.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-12 08:09:00 UTC