The Libertarian Bizarro World

[n2doc]

by Matt Bruenig

Today's post about how libertarians are big fans of initiating force reminds me of a subject near to my heart: libertarian theories of initial property appropriation. The part of a given libertarian theory that deals with initial property appropriation is always the hands-down most exciting part. This is so because it is at that point in the theory, especially for those inclined to talk about aggression and force, that we enter into bizarro world. Up becomes down, down becomes up, and all other relevant words take on their totally opposite meaning.

If you are a libertarian who believes justice requires the following of a certain liberty-respecting process, you have to explain how anything can come to be owned in the first place. That initial move is, by any coherent account, the most violent extinction of personal liberty that there ever can be.

On a fairly traditional account (e.g. Hobbes' account), liberty and freedom are defined as: being free of bodily restraint. Being able to walk about the world freely and without people stopping you and saying you can't go here or there is a fairly appealing notion of liberty. This is what things are like (analytically speaking) prior to ownership. Prior to anyone owning things, you should presumably be free to move about the world however you see fit. And if someone were to come up to you and physically restrain you from moving about the world, you would rightly understand that as a restriction on your liberty.

But physically restraining you from moving about the world is exactly what property ownership does. Whereas before ownership you have full liberty to walk about the earth as you'd like, after ownership, you don't. Should you try, someone (the person claiming ownership of, for instance, a piece of land) will physically restrain your body.

more

http://www.demos.org/blog/11/18/13/libertarian-bizarro-world

[el_bryanto]

1. it's an interesting question - what defines legimately acquired property

If you trace it back far enough all land got stolen or taken by force by someone or other. More recently here in the US of course - but everywhere I'd guess.

Property is theft someone once wrote.

But then again our whole society is built on property - how do you get around that?

Bryant

[PETRUS]

2. K&R

[DBoon]

3. property is theft

the original anarchists understood that

[Narkos]

5. Here's a link to an EXCELLENT article about this issue

http://www.usbig.net/papers/175-Widerquist-LibertarianDilemma.doc

[MisterP]

6. there is indeed a strong tendency in the US to see ourselves as Nice Decent People

Last edited Tue Nov 19, 2013, 04:31 AM - Edit history (1)

in a sea of howling bearded Mooslims/howling bearded Russkies who Hate Us For Our Freedoms and will invade California if we don't stay in Vietnam (or "Texas" and "Nicaragua" 2 decades later)

We are either free and capitalist, or nice humanists who just want to allow bikinis to be worn worldwide (and we'll hire Al Qaeda to liberate the Mideast): "we" are not only nice and innocent, we're outright neutral, the standard by which every other group is judged

right-libertarians see the whole world as an ocean of "force" and commienazis, outsie their doorstep