Lockean property rights

1) Attribution Ownership Through Work A) Insufficient Definition of Life There is a fundamental difference between the way gravity acts on a body and the way an organism acts on its surroundings. A sun or a planet doesn't have to DO anything to be acted upon by gravity and assembled into a blob. It can just sit there passively. Organisms are different. If they just sit there and do not act, they will very quickly disintegrate and die. Precisely this mortality of living beings gives them *values*. Only those organisms that value their life (i.e. act to gain or keep their life) will actually secure long-term existence. Because of this all organisms are value creatures. They perform labor in order to create value for themselves to secure long term existence. Suns do not have to act to maintain their boundaries. Organisms do. Life as self-producing entities makes self-ownership in the attribution sense innate to all life. Even Amoeba own themselves in the sense that they are their OWN creations. In social animals this form of self-ownership is mutually *respected* by other species members. Thus, for instance in humans, self-ownership in a social context implies not only self-attribution but self-control. B) Infinite regression Parents own their children to some extent. It is certainly correct for a parent to say that it is THEIR child, i.e. attribution ownership. The fact that they have created them also gives them some control over their children: they have a right to raise them and give them their own values. However, they do not fully own their children as the children actually bring self-creation into the mix. Children have their own metabolism which self-sustains them and continuously recreates themselves. Therefore parents' right to partial control over their children expires. C) Performative Contradiction of Self Creation No self-created being can be rightfully owned by others because they are "slippery." Even if you can mix your labor with them and partially own them for a short amount of time (such as parents' control over their children) the self-creation will overcome this and they will simply create themselves anew as new beings all the time. Self-ownership is continuously renewed whereas claims on other people's lives are continuously eroded. D) Self-creation is irrelevant The topic of artificial life is an interesting one, but beyond the scope of this discussion. I simply note that any living being today by evolutionary necessity MUST be self-producing and self-reproducing (or have close relative who is self-reproducing). All living beings in existence today exist ONLY because they are self-creating. Hence self-creation is very relevant. (2) Control Ownership Through Humans A) Rights are antisocial Although the exertion of rights in themselves are antisocial (violent) it does not mean that they are unnatural. Humans are peaceful by nature, but we are also (and primarily) self-interested beings. We value our lives (a value which is encoded into our self-creating bodies as a strong tendency) and therefore we will act to defend it. which is also natural. So we humans have a dual relationship to violence: peaceful when respected, violent when violated. The common factor is reciprocation: tit for tat. We are peaceful towards the peaceful, and violent towards the violent. A human society will normally be dominated by peace because we are PRODUCTIVE beings and therefore require peace to produce values. Peace is therefore the norm, violence is the exception. B) Argument from biological happenstance That something is biologically natural does not mean that it must always occur in nature. It is natural for a child to be born with 10 toes and 10 fingers, but sometimes something goes wrong. i) we are normally peaceful by nature. Rights pertain to what violence should be used for. What is the NATURAL thing for a PEACEFUL being to use violence for? Obviously self-defense against violators who break the peace. ii) actually scratching one's behind IS a natural right, because it is a peaceful activity. It is the exercise of peaceful self-ownership. iii) dropped 3) Mixing labor with Nature Values are not subjective, they are personal but objective (i.e. reality based). Life is objectively the highest natural value of all living beings because without this value they would not exist. While pouring soup into the ocean could "mean a lot" to someone, it probably does not promote their existence. All living beings have only a limited amount of time and energy and the labor that they performed must therefore naturally be channeled into activity that promotes the existence and flourishing of its life. Property rights are ONLY gained by the kind of labor in which that labor results in values, i.e. things that are objectively of importance to the promotion of the existence and flourishing of their lives. === Con case === 1) Theory of self ownership I contest that the communal lifestyle of hunter gatherer tribes more closely resembles communism. [1] They all have private property, and they often have CORPORATIONS together (analogous to Ltd or Inc) based on personal relations and peaceful cooperation. Self-ownership and property rights are NOT weird. I agree that it is impossible to ARGUE against self-ownership, because rational argument by definition is a peaceful activity, but so? Your opponent may refuse to argue and present only one "argument" to you backed up by a gun: "obey." The fact that people can choose NOT to argue but instead resort to power makes the point about rationality implying self-ownership moot. Yes, it does, but people may choose not to be rational. 2) Extension of Self Ownership It makes no sense to say that you are doing something with your cabin when you are in the city and the cabin is standing idle. By Cons logic one does not interfere with each other's activities if the cabin is used by others while one is in the city. If not, then Con is pushing the meaning of "doing" very far to artificially force his point. There is no contradiction between peaceful self-ownership of homesteaded farm property and someone else's peaceful radiowaves passing through the property. Homesteading is NOT materialistic contrary to Con's contention. One does not homestead atoms, but labored values, which may or may not include matter. If one farms a land one has NOT mixed one's labor with the radiowaves passing through there, because one hasn't performed labor that created value from radiowaves. So long as the radiowaves do not interfere with farming another person may homestead the radiowaves and send them through farmland. ===Conclusion=== Anyone who claims that humans do not have a strong natural inclination to be peaceful and respect the boundaries of other people people and their property should reconsider their position. [2] There is no contradiction between being peaceful towards the peaceful and violent towards the violent. Con brings up important points with respect to usage that does not interfere with other people's usage, but this ONLY makes sense within the context of property rights based on the creation of values. Why does a mother have the right to raise her child any more than, say, a teacher? Both are "using" the children part of the time. A usage based rights theory cannot give an answer, but the labor theory of ownership CAN. It is mother's child because she created it and therefore has a natural right to raise it. This gives her partial ownership (attribution and some control) over her child until it is an adult. Ownership based on labored value also explains natural abortion rights. So long as the fetus is in the womb of the mother it is not yet a self-creating being. At this point the mother has a right to terminate the pregnancy, because the fetus has not yet achieved the status of self-ownership. [1] http://alturl.com... [2] http://alturl.com...