From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: The big difference
Date: 22 Jan 1993 19:49:39 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1jmce6INNkv1@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> jwh@citi.umich.edu writes:
>In article <1jklsnINN3rl@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>|> In article <1993Jan18.052324.10297@zip.eecs.umich.edu> positron@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jonathan Haas) writes:
>|> >I want a world where I can rule over myself, and everyone else can mind
>|> >their own business.
>|> 
>|> As soon as you declare something to be your property, you are denying others
>|> use of it.  Thus, you make it our business to regulate what is your property
>|> (at the very least, lest you or any group impoverish the rest.)
>|> 
>|> Libertarians complain that they never have signed a contract for the current
>|> government.  Well, I don't know anybody who has signed an agreement for a
>|> system of property either.  Want to do away with both?  :-)
>|> 
>
>Do you believe that rights exist only because a government (or
>'society') created them?

Yes.

>Or do you believe that there are at least
>some rights which a person has simply because they exist?

There is NO physical evidence of this, whereas there is ample historical
evidence of the former.  Rights come from the exact same source as laws:
human societies.  To pretend that they have some Platonic existence outside
of a particular human society is the fallacy of reification.

Most cultures find it useful to create rights.  However, it's rare that any
rights created by any culture are absolute, such as the property rights
endorsed by libertarians.  Otherwise you run into real "irresistable force
vs. immovable object" conflicts as soon as you have more than one right.

>I believe property rights fall into the latter category, therefore there is
>no need for a signed agreement because the rights simply exist.

Your superstitious beliefs are merely convenient for your position, not
indicative of anything real.  If "rights" were like gravity, you wouldn't
need a signed contract.  But they're social fictions.

>For example, suppose you like gardening and you build a garden.  A
>neighbor decides that he could make better use of the space and
>builds a shed on it.  Is it ok for the neighbor to do this?  You've
>potentially spent a great deal of time building and tending your garden,
>only to see it wiped out by someone else with no regard to what you have
>done.  If there are no laws against this, do you simply accept this,
>or do you feel that something is wrong and things like this shouldn't
>be allowed to happen?  

You didn't build the natural resources (the land) used in the garden.
You have no more right to those natural resources than the child born
yesterday.  Thus, you ought not to be able to own those natural resources:
you ought to be able to bid for their temporary use.  The income from the
rental of natural resources ought to be distributed to all people.  That,
in effect, is what property (land) and extractive taxes do directly.

You are right in that it is inefficient NOT to have some system of property.
However the systems of property that libertarians presume is not the only
one that can protect your garden.

Mike Huben

Strephon: "Have you the heart to apply the prosaic rules of evidence to a
	   case brimming with such poetical emotion?"
Chancellor: "Distinctly."
	From "Iolanthe", by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian