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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
I have encountered this argument often before but typically in the context of 'debunking' libertarian ideas that property rights are compatible with the non-aggression principle. I think it's correct to say, especially with regards to ownership of agricultural land, that the foundation of property rights is the capacity to violently exclude others or have the state do that on your behalf. I don't think you could find much currently occupied land that wasn't at some point taken from one person or people from another through force. The point of establishing this is usually not to suggest that we actually do away with property rights or ownership as a concept but to say that if the intellectual framework which finds that 'taxation is theft' can also be used to show that 'ownership is theft' then that framework isn't particularly useful for making normative claims and should be discarded.
Of course the usual Libertarian (or rather right-anarchist) counter argument is that the NAP is just a loose description of their fundamental ethic and not the basis of their moral system.
Which is instead, conveniently, axiomatically based on property and contracts. Or immediately derived from some philosophical device shaped like Natural Law.
The lenghty debate between Proudhon and Bastiat in La Voix du Peuple is illuminating on this question, and really most contentious points between left and right anarchists on economics. And I would like to once again mention that Proudhon himself was eventually convinced by the right anarchist side on the particular issue of property.
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