Anarchism

[Conscentia]

Well I don't agree with the proviso.

I don't understand why you are having difficulty with this: private property requires action (Acquisition and enforcement of exclusion). By the reasoning you present, that would align it with the positive liberties thus excluding it from the category of natural rights.
Common property is common to all. It does not have to acquired and no-one is excluded hence there is no exclusion to enforce. Hence no action is taken. By the reasoning presented by you, that would make it a natural right.

And why not?

The right to property is a natural right because it is, well, firstly legitimised by the proviso, and secondly fits Lindsay's definition of what rights are. The right to accumulate property cannot be taken away from you, the same way it cannot be given to you, because the right just is. It can be violated, however, but not granted. Could you give me an example to which common property you were referring to?

Common property cannot just be appropriated as private property just because there's an equivalent available to others.
"I'm taking this money from our treasury - don't worry, it's okay because an equivalent amount of money is left"

Don't move the goal posts. You said that natural rights correspond to negative liberties. Private property does not correspond with negative liberties. There is no natural right to accumulate property. Accumulation of property requires action, thus it corresponds with positive liberties.

[Liberaxia]

The principle of justice in acquisition is the Lockean proviso, which I already linked you to.

There is a right to property, yes. If we're using Lindsay's definition of rights (that which is inalienable; cannot be transferred, given, or taken away, and is not granted by a state), how isn't there a natural right to property? And why do you make a magical exception in your logic when it comes to common property?

The argument can be pejoratively perceived in such a light, but yes, to an extent.

Well I don't agree with the proviso.

I don't understand why you are having difficulty with this: private property requires action (Acquisition and enforcement of exclusion). By the reasoning you present, that would align it with the positive liberties thus excluding it from the category of natural rights.
Common property is common to all. It does not have to acquired and no-one is excluded hence there is no exclusion to enforce. Hence no action is taken. By the reasoning presented by you, that would make it a natural right.

I think you are both talking past each other in that both of your views require some sort of action. I have my own views on property and they contain an element similar to yours. The difference is that it does not exclude private property and it views "the commons" as sort of unowned. As an example, building something big in the ocean does not grant one ownership of that area of ocean but was illegitimate in the first place. I don't feel like attaching any of the typical tags to that view.

[Liberaxia]

Public universities and academies of medicine

And these things can't be provided by private individuals, and not the state?

I'd like to ask why a sufficient amount of people organizing these universities wouldn't make them public.

[Warsaw Pact Germany]

Deleted.

[Arkolon]

And why not?

The right to property is a natural right because it is, well, firstly legitimised by the proviso, and secondly fits Lindsay's definition of what rights are. The right to accumulate property cannot be taken away from you, the same way it cannot be given to you, because the right just is. It can be violated, however, but not granted. Could you give me an example to which common property you were referring to?

Common property cannot just be appropriated as private property just because there's an equivalent available to others.
"I'm taking this money from our treasury - don't worry, it's okay because an equivalent amount of money is left"

Don't move the goal posts. You said that natural rights correspond to negative liberties. Private property does not correspond with negative liberties. There is no natural right to accumulate property. Accumulation of property requires action, thus it corresponds with positive liberties.

If I take one-hundred US dollars from you, but then leave you an envelope with a cheque for one-hundred dollars with a note attached reading "cash it in in ten days", my actions of taking the one hundred dollar bills are the initiation of force, and you have been placed at a lower place on difference curve (not satisfying the proviso), so I had to compensate in order to not make you worse off. After the ten-days are up (this part of the example was used to make it more realistic-- if I had a hundred dollars to give you after taking your hundred dollars I wouldn't have taken them in the first place), you collect your money and the theft has been cancelled out. If money is taken from the treasury, but the treasury is no worse off than it used to be (I compensate in one way or another so that there is exactly the same amount of money in the treasury left), then it was a malicious act at first (theft; initiation of force), but it was rendered just, I guess you could say, by the compensation. Where's the problem?

Negative liberty as in "freedom from coercion", yes. How does property accumulation not satisfy this? Positive liberty is empowerment: "freedom to do what you want", in a sense, being granted the means to do so.

[Conscentia]

Lenin was quite effective. Though Stalin undid all of the work of the revolution and turned Russia back into an empire.

That was not an anti-imperialist struggle.

Since when was Lenin against foreign invasions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_W ... dependence
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/balticmiracle.htm

Lenin was opposed to imperialism, amongst many things. Just because the revolution was not exclusively an anti-imperialist struggle does not mean that it did not aim to end Russian imperialism.

Foreign invasion =/= imperialism.

[Sociobiology]

If Anarchy worked we would be using it now. It doesn't, we don't.

Anarchy worked for 99.8% of humanity's history.

of course those were all very small societies without specialized labor, thus incapable of supporting anything near modern technology.
Anarchy works, as long as you are willing to give up heart surgeons and MRI machines.

[Arkolon]

Anarchy worked for 99.8% of humanity's history.

of course those were all very small societies without specialized labor, thus incapable of supporting anything near modern technology.
Anarchy works, as long as you are willing to give up heart surgeons and MRI machines.

... so the existence of modern medicine is reliant on the existence of an institution with the monopoly on violence?

[Conscentia]

If I take one-hundred US dollars from you, but then leave you an envelope with a cheque for one-hundred dollars with a note attached reading "cash it in in ten days", my actions of taking the one hundred dollar bills are the initiation of force, and you have been placed at a lower place on difference curve (not satisfying the proviso), so I had to compensate in order to not make you worse off. After the ten-days are up (this part of the example was used to make it more realistic-- if I had a hundred dollars to give you after taking your hundred dollars I wouldn't have taken them in the first place), you collect your money and the theft has been cancelled out. If money is taken from the treasury, but the treasury is no worse off than it used to be (I compensate in one way or another so that there is exactly the same amount of money in the treasury left), then it was a malicious act at first (theft; initiation of force), but it was rendered just, I guess you could say, by the compensation. Where's the problem?

Compensation does not render it just.
Property that was common has ceased to be common, and it has not been returned to being common.

Negative liberty as in "freedom from coercion", yes. How does property accumulation not satisfy this? Positive liberty is empowerment: "freedom to do what you want", in a sense, being granted the means to do so.

Private property empowers it's acquirer.
One is not being coerced when one does not have private property. However, coercion does occur when private property is enforced.

[Sociobiology]

3. Civilisation existed before states. Look at the Harappan Civilisation, which lasted a very long time without a state, and had a population of c. 5,000,000.

wait what makes you think the Harappan did not have states?

[Arkolon]

3. Civilisation existed before states. Look at the Harappan Civilisation, which lasted a very long time without a state, and had a population of c. 5,000,000.

wait what makes you think the Harappan did not have states?

Honestly? It was on an online webpage titled "List of Stateless Societies".

[Sociobiology]

Public universities and academies of medicine

And these things can't be provided by private individuals, and not the state?

not without a power structure that lets those people accrue vast wealth. wealth much greater than that controlled by most of the population.

[Sociobiology]

wait what makes you think the Harappan did not have states?

Honestly? It was on an online webpage titled "List of Stateless Societies".

so basically nothing, I man we don't know a lot of things about the Harappan, but we know they had an oligarchy, specialized labor, and public services.

[Arkolon]

If I take one-hundred US dollars from you, but then leave you an envelope with a cheque for one-hundred dollars with a note attached reading "cash it in in ten days", my actions of taking the one hundred dollar bills are the initiation of force, and you have been placed at a lower place on difference curve (not satisfying the proviso), so I had to compensate in order to not make you worse off. After the ten-days are up (this part of the example was used to make it more realistic-- if I had a hundred dollars to give you after taking your hundred dollars I wouldn't have taken them in the first place), you collect your money and the theft has been cancelled out. If money is taken from the treasury, but the treasury is no worse off than it used to be (I compensate in one way or another so that there is exactly the same amount of money in the treasury left), then it was a malicious act at first (theft; initiation of force), but it was rendered just, I guess you could say, by the compensation. Where's the problem?

Compensation does not render it just.
Property that was common has ceased to be common, and it has not been returned to being common.

Again, we can trace the divisiveness of the argument back to the positive-negative dichotomy of common property. We should really be debating this instead: in the state of nature, does the land belong to every individual equally, or does no one own the land at all (yet)?

Negative liberty as in "freedom from coercion", yes. How does property accumulation not satisfy this? Positive liberty is empowerment: "freedom to do what you want", in a sense, being granted the means to do so.

Private property empowers it's acquirer.
One is not being coerced when one does not have private property. However, coercion does occur when private property is enforced.

That's why everyone has the right to accumulate property, but not everyone has the right to have property handed over to them. It's like the right to pursue happiness, if we can use that as an example (whose legitimacy I wouldn't want to debate because a) it's irrelevant and b) idfk my position on it): not everyone has the right to happiness, just the right to pursue happiness.

And no, not at all. Are you also being coerced when force is applied when you try and rape someone?

[Arkolon]

And these things can't be provided by private individuals, and not the state?

not without a power structure that lets those people accrue vast wealth. wealth much greater than that controlled by most of the population.

Could you elaborate, or perhaps rephrase? I can conclude from this that your opinion is that laissez-faire anarchism would result in income equality, which is obviously wrong..

[Arkolon]

Honestly? It was on an online webpage titled "List of Stateless Societies".

so basically nothing, I man we don't know a lot of things about the Harappan, but we know they had an oligarchy, specialized labor, and public services.

ftfy

[Conscentia]

not without a power structure that lets those people accrue vast wealth. wealth much greater than that controlled by most of the population.

Could you elaborate, or perhaps rephrase? I can conclude from this that your opinion is that laissez-faire anarchism would result in income equality, which is obviously wrong..

ftfy

[Arkolon]

Could you elaborate, or perhaps rephrase? I can conclude from this that your opinion is that laissez-faire anarchism would result in income equality, which is obviously wrong..

ftfy

Free-market capitalism results in perfect income equality? I'm afraid even ancaps don't pretend that's how it works.

[The Scientific States]

I don't see how anarcho communism could work. For one, in anarcho-communist society, everyone would have to support the ideology for such a society to work. And, I also don't find such a society desirable. I don't want to live on a commune, and I don't want private enterprises to be put under common ownership, as that's unfair and downright silly.

[Conscentia]

ftfy

Free-market capitalism results in perfect income equality? I'm afraid even ancaps don't pretend that's how it works.

I misread. *facepalm at self*

[MERIZoC]

I don't see how anarcho communism could work. For one, in anarcho-communist society, everyone would have to support the ideology for such a society to work. And, I also don't find such a society desirable. I don't want to live on a commune, and I don't want private enterprises to be put under common ownership, as that's unfair and downright silly.

Then you wouldn't live in such a society. Pretty simple. Anarchism can't be coercive, or it's not anarchism. The only way anyone should be in an anarchist society is if they want to.

Anyway, this should probably just be merged with the anarchism thread.

[Arkolon]

Free-market capitalism results in perfect income equality? I'm afraid even ancaps don't pretend that's how it works.

I misread. *facepalm at self*

No problem. I had to correct myself because I wrote "income inequality" at first, too. Who actually says "income equality"?

[Sociobiology]

of course those were all very small societies without specialized labor, thus incapable of supporting anything near modern technology.
Anarchy works, as long as you are willing to give up heart surgeons and MRI machines.

... so the existence of modern medicine is reliant on the existence of an institution with the monopoly on violence?

basically yes, you need a huge population living in the same place to support the level of specialized labor needed to support advanced medicine. that naturally creates concentrations of power it is unavoidable. more importantly you need a specialized body of for law enforcement because the population is so far beyond dunbar's number that instinctual interpersonal knowledge and social pressure cannot act as sufficient behavior modifiers to maintain the level of social trust need for that specialized labor.
societies need a mechanism behavior modification, small societies can get away with using human "tribe" (really band) instincts which use social pressure and only use force in the more extreme circumstances, but this relies on detailed personal knowledge about everyone in the society.
This is also why they have a lit of inter-band or inter tribal war, because there is rarely any way to cultivate trust, because interactions are rare.
there is a limit to how many people a person can keep track off as a society grows more and more interactions will be with strangers for which you have little trust, states and chiefdoms get around this limitation by having formal law and specialized enforcement which punishes and infraction and can spend all their time doing this. basically they enforce trust by punishing any unlawful action through force. They don't have to know the person, because they use force, not peer pressure. now with large size comes specialized labor which creates imbalances in power, which makes concentrations of power unavoidable without a mechanism to redistribute and/or impede this concentration, of course as discussed peer pressure doesn't work well enough at this scale, so you again need an institution of force. more importantly you need a single end of the line enforcer, you can have lesser one and many do, but you need a group that can settle conflicts between these different groups or you get extreme factioning and the society breaks up into smaller societies (small states with their own courts, chiefdoms, or tribes (this would be anocracy and what happens every time someone tries to create a large anarchy.) In our large society you can go to other forms of conflict resolution but if they fail or have conflicting decisions, the state is relied upon, a group that in the end has final say. and no matter what you call it that group, it wields tremendous power and again can use force in situation no one else can, thus they will always be a state.

Now chiefdoms use a single individual and his family as the decider and enforcer of the law, but this has several problems I can into if you desire, states on the other hand use a specialized group, this group functionally has a monopoly on violence, now there many be some variance based on what is lawful violence (duels for instance) but in the end they can commit violence others cannot, this gives them great power so we introduce things like separate groups to decide the law and courts to decide guilt to split up this power among many groups to mitigate corruption. this is what a state is these specialized groups.

Now I can hear you asking what about direct democracy, where at least the laws themselves can be decided upon by everyone, this is also size limited it as takes time for each decision and you still have two of the three, courts and law enforcement. So you still have a state. you also run into the problem of specialized knowledge, most of the people making a law will have little understanding of the impact of that law, (most of the people are not bridge builders for instance so laws about bridge use or construction will be made by people with no clue) so far the best we have come up with is representative democracies where everyone gets a say in who will be part of these specialized groups, these specialists will spend most of their time familiarizing themselves with the thing they will make a law about before they make the law. Now this system is not perfect by any means but it is the best we have come up with that actually works.
societies naturally break down until they reach a level with population wide trust, trust that antisocial behavior will be punished often enough to make it unlikely. this kind of trust only comes naturally in small societies, in large ones you need to create a mechanism to enforce it.

[United Dependencies]

Anarchist schools of thought are not based on consequentialist arguments.

No, they clearly are not.

[Sociobiology]

not without a power structure that lets those people accrue vast wealth. wealth much greater than that controlled by most of the population.

Could you elaborate, or perhaps rephrase? I can conclude from this that your opinion is that laissez-faire anarchism would result in income equality

of course, different jobs have different effort to reward curves, individual humans have different capabilities and plot of land have vastly different resources, all this creates inequality, you need a mechanism to counteract this. on a small scale peer pressure and intimate knowledge of each other will work,(if you want examples there are, but for a large society this interpersonal knowledge is too few and far between, so you need a formal mechanism to do it.