My friend sent me an e-mail with the following:
"Right to life and liberty but not property.
When I am born I have life. No force (human) is necessary to grant me life. When I am born I am inherently individual and therefore I inherently have liberty in myself. Thus, there is never a time when I am without these until they are taken from me. However, I am not born with property (other than myself but this is really just life and liberty and not property). Therefore, before someone can take it from me I must first get it. Now for me to get property implies a right to whatever I get. Life and liberty are self-evident and present from the first moment of birth. But property is not self evident. What makes it my property. That is a question that we can debate. But if you are born there is no debate that you have life, if you are born there is no debate that in that moment you have liberty (even if in the next moment they shackle your wrists). Furthermore, noone can give you life or liberty but the government gives you property. So who determines the right to property? The person who enforces it. That person is the government. Therefore you have no right to property and no property until the government grants you such. But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first. Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government. Therefore, the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with. The government is certainly not stealing since it is the governments in the first place and you cannot steal from yourself."
I want to debate him on the point that the right of property is only granted by government. I would appreciate suggestions on how to debate him. Thanks!
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that that's the way it should be or that said way is just.
Trimms: My friend sent me an e-mail with the following: "Right to life and liberty but not property. When I am born I have life. No force (human) is necessary to grant me life. When I am born I am inherently individual and therefore I inherently have liberty in myself. Thus, there is never a time when I am without these until they are taken from me. However, I am not born with property (other than myself but this is really just life and liberty and not property). Therefore, before someone can take it from me I must first get it. Now for me to get property implies a right to whatever I get. Life and liberty are self-evident and present from the first moment of birth. But property is not self evident. What makes it my property. That is a question that we can debate. But if you are born there is no debate that you have life, if you are born there is no debate that in that moment you have liberty (even if in the next moment they shackle your wrists). Furthermore, noone can give you life or liberty but the government gives you property. So who determines the right to property? The person who enforces it. That person is the government. Therefore you have no right to property and no property until the government grants you such. But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first. Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government. Therefore, the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with. The government is certainly not stealing since it is the governments in the first place and you cannot steal from yourself." I want to debate him on the point that the right of property is only granted by government. I would appreciate suggestions on how to debate him. Thanks!
Well, you should point out John Locke's labor theory of property. Also tell him (or her) that people need possessions (food, clothing, shelter, transport, etc.) to survive, and that free people are entitled to the fruit of their labor. The right to property comes directly from the right to life and liberty. Point out that that free-market capitalism is the most effective means of satisfying humans' material needs, and that it is compatible with basic freedoms (freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of choice, etc.).
Hope that helps.
"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable."
Trimms: My friend sent me an e-mail with the following: "Right to life and liberty but not property. When I am born I have life. No force (human) is necessary to grant me life. When I am born I am inherently individual and therefore I inherently have liberty in myself. Thus, there is never a time when I am without these until they are taken from me. However, I am not born with property (other than myself but this is really just life and liberty and not property).
When I am born I have life. No force (human) is necessary to grant me life. When I am born I am inherently individual and therefore I inherently have liberty in myself. Thus, there is never a time when I am without these until they are taken from me. However, I am not born with property (other than myself but this is really just life and liberty and not property).
No, it is property. You own yourself. If you aren't your own property, then he's simply playing a redefinition game.
Does he support slavery? Because interference with property rights is retroactive slavery. It's as if someone ordered you to labour for them. Instead, in this case, the individual comes after you've laboured for a good, and arbitrarily decrees it to be theirs, in effect usurping the joint product of your efforts/time and unowned natural resources. So, is he for slavery?
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
But property is not self evident.
Furthermore, noone can give you life or liberty but the government gives you property.
So who determines the right to property? The person who enforces it.
But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first.
Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
How did the government obtain the property that it "gives" you? This is the question that I would like to have answered. Furthermore, the government is nothing more than a collection of individuals that is given power over other individuals. So how can a collection of individuals have a right to property, but a single individual does not have that same right? I think he made his assumption based on a false or unproven premise.
Your friend is making massive equivocations, so giving a thorough critique, while doable, would just be frustrating and simply not worth it. I'll just leave this quote from Bastiat.
"Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property."
Diminishing Marginal Utility - IT'S THE LAW!
Actually, there is no right to life or liberty. Animals are alive; do they have rights? All rights derive from property, starting with self-ownership. Contrary to what your friend says, your body is property - your property, and you are born with it.
Roderick Long writes:
"It is easy to think of the right of self-ownership as, at least potentially, just one right among others, as though we might have self-ownership rights and some other rights in addition. But this would be a mistake. The right of self-ownership, as I understand it, is the right to use and dispose of oneself as one pleases, without coercive interference, so long as one refrains from coercive interference with the like self-ownership of others. It follows that the use of force is never justified except in response to an invasion of someone’s self-ownership. But since rights are, by definition, legitimately enforceable claims, it further follows that there can be no rights in addition to self-ownership. For if there were such additional rights, then there would be claims other than self-ownership that could be legitimately enforced, which would mean that refraining from invading the self-ownership of others would no longer be sufficient to exempt one from liability to coercive interference. But self-ownership, as defined above, just is exemption from liability to coercive interference so long as one respects the like self-ownership of others; hence the right of self-ownership is inconsistent with the recognition of any additional rights. To put it another way, if the initiation of force is forbidden, then any legitimate use of force must be a response to force; but enforcing a right is by definition a legitimate use of force; so there can be no rights other than the right to be free from others’ use of force.)"
LibertarianAnarchy.com - Government is immoral, unnecessary, and doesn't work!
Long is not the person to quote on this. The right to liberty and its corollary right to life is, in essence, the right to self-ownership. The right to property is also a corollary of the former. I do not think Long meant to exclude either of the former rights in what he said there, provided it is understood they are basic, negative rights. Socialists usually argue for them as positive rights.
Trimms: Therefore you have no right to property and no property until the government grants you such. But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first. Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government. Therefore, the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with. The government is certainly not stealing since it is the governments in the first place and you cannot steal from yourself.
Therefore you have no right to property and no property until the government grants you such. But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first. Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government. Therefore, the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with. The government is certainly not stealing since it is the governments in the first place and you cannot steal from yourself.
But government doesn't exist apart from the people that make it up; therefore there was a time in the past when it didn't exist. If people didn't already have property at that time, there could have been no way for government to form (since government is parasitic - it lives off the excess resources (property) it obtains from it's "subjects"). I.e., logically property must precede government. Therefore property is not something that comes from government.
Thus, there is never a time when I am without these until they are taken from me. However, I am not born with property (other than myself but this is really just life and liberty and not property). Therefore, before someone can take it from me I must first get it. Now for me to get property implies a right to whatever I get. Life and liberty are self-evident and present from the first moment of birth. But property is not self evident. What makes it my property. That is a question that we can debate. But if you are born there is no debate that you have life, if you are born there is no debate that in that moment you have liberty (even if in the next moment they shackle your wrists). Furthermore, noone can give you life or liberty but the government gives you property. So who determines the right to property? The person who enforces it. That person is the government. Therefore you have no right to property and no property until the government grants you such. But if the government grants it to you then it must have had it first. Therefore, nothing you have actually comes from anyone or anything other than the government. Therefore, the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with. The government is certainly not stealing since it is the governments in the first place and you cannot steal from yourself."
So the government gives people property for some reason, gift, sale. Then takes it back.
The sentence "the government is not taking anything from you because it wasn’t yours to begin with" does not make much sence in context. The government has given property, that is a fact. Taking the land/property back would need a whole new agreement.
It is like selling a shirt at the GAP for $20. Then when the customer is leaving, the seller steals the shirt back. His logic: "I'm not taking anything from you because it wasn't yours to begin with." The "to begin with" is the fallacy. What matters is who has it last.
Don't debate, read and learn. E.g., http://www.u.arizona.edu/~schmidtz/manuscripts/InstitutionofProperty.doc
http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/
^What he said.
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