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Notes -
What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
Refusing to have sex with someone also follows those five points in a similar way to how property does. You usurp rights over resources (sex with you), and don't let people use the resources except as you see fit.
You and I understand sex in radically different ways. You, apparently, consider it transactional. I don't. But as far as that goes, here's where I am on sex and "consent": consent favors rapists, which is obvious if you've ever followed a rape case through the courts. It's a far cry from permission. Just try it on: what if the razor's edge was shifted to whether you obtained explicit, revokable permission to have sex with someone? When it comes to "consensual" sex, who would that raise of the bar harm? When it comes to rape, who would it favor? I see no downside, only upside. So, why isn't permission the bar we set? And why does no one even talk about this?
I don't consider sex transactional, but of course I don't consider property as kidnapping either. But by your reasoning, sex can be analyzed as such. And by your reasoning, we would conclude that sex is something that you are keeping away from other people who want it, just like property is. You may not like to think of it that way, but it does fit.
Sorry, your basic mistake is not realizing that property must be available and seized before any question of deprivation is relevant. Sex is not a commodity, it's an activity. My body is not property, it's integral and indissociable from me, the individual. Sex requires access to me which, without my permission, is rape. I'm not depriving others of property I acquired called "sex", because its default state isn't lying on the beach to be picked up, buried in a mountain to be mined, mixed in creek sand to be panned for, or in any way a "resource" to be extracted. You're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
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