Subject: property and liberty

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 17:44:43 -0500

From: Paul V. Torek <[email-masked]>

In reply to Bryan Douglas Caplan <[email-masked]> --

Oops -- left out something on Rawls, in my last post.  I'll put
it at the end of this one.  If you reply to each post separately,
please attach that piece where it belongs.

>a slight modification where we add money ("labor notes") to the
>pure service economy.  Do you still agree that redistribution is
>impermissible then?

Yes, but I would support a tax for national defense, assuming
that this society faces threats from other societies.

>But I didn't advocate that ["labor-mixing"] view, and in fact did
>deny the deducibility of homesteading from self-ownership.
>Rather, I was considering the similarities of some of the negative
>arguments against private property, and showing that they also apply
>to self-ownership, too.  This wasn't meant to defend property rights
>in objects, except insofar as refuting objections to something 
>constitutes a defense.

Sorry I misunderstood.  Now, though, I have to point out that
refuting objections to something doesn't help much.  At least,
it doesn't if the objections refuted aren't the ones opponents
are likely to offer.  It's important to distinguish objections
to private property as such, vs. objections to some *particular
argument for* private property.  I think that you've mistaken
the latter for the former.

>Now I'm trying to get a clear grip on your point that private property
>prima facie seems to restrict liberty.  As far as I can tell, I agree
>with your conclusion.  Namely, we must _first_ establish ownership
>in order to say that infering with continued possession reduces
>liberty; and once we establish that someone owns something, then it
>no longer makes sense to claim that their action reduces liberty.

And when we try to establish ownership of something, we must take
into account the fact that when we, as a society, deem one person
to own something, we reduce the scope of others' liberties.  My
right to swing my fist doesn't just end at the tip of your nose.
(Who said that, by the way?)  It ends at the tip of your Ming vase,
your house, etc., too.  The more property you have, the less
freedom of movement I have.  There is potential for injustice
here.  Consider someone born in a place where everything around
her is owned (acc. to her society) by others, so that she cannot
even feed herself, whether by hunting and gathering or by farming,
without paying steep rent to the land's owner.  Such a condition
can be slavery in all but name.

Unlike yours, the above scenario is not just hypothetical.

>Just to take a stab at the underlying question: what justification
>could be given for ownership of things?  I make no attempt to "deduce"
>it from self-ownership.  Rather, I think that it just a second,
>almost as plausible principle that a person who produces something
>from previously unowned materials is entitled to own it.  

I don't find that plausible.  I think it is important to set
constraints on who gets what share of the earth's raw materials,
and to pay attention to who doesn't get any share worth mentioning.
It is a good idea to set up a convenient, salient scheme of
acquisition, but the rights stemming from such a scheme are 
conditional on the protection of the interests of those who
can acquire less.

By the way, I still consider the term "self-ownership" an ugly
metaphor, and precisely because it exaggerates the parallel
between liberty and ownership of objects.  I *am* (not "own")
myself, which identity is a relation I bear to no other thing.
And this is precisely why anyone else's objection to my "self-
ownership" can be dismissed in a way that their objection to my
ownership of material things cannot automatically be dismissed.
(I admit that this paragraph doesn't exactly refute your claimed
parallel, but simply states my opposition to it.)
----
Addendum on Rawls:

>And finally, I would point out Rawls' many denials of the claim
>that individuals have deserve their natural talents.  [pp. 103-4
>quoted by Caplan, omitted here]
     
You edited out (with a "...") this sentence:

        The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases.

Which if you refer back to this:

        The natural distribution [of talents] is neither just
        nor unjust; ... (middle of p. 102)

casts a whole new light on his point.  I agree with him that if
a person has some *inborn* talent, that's simply a natural fact,
and neither just nor unjust.  However, I think he draws some
bogus inferences about other talents/character/etc. -- but
I digress.

>If this doesn't seem to be an affirmation of the propriety of
>redistribution even in the pure service economy, 

It doesn't!  It's simply a defensive argument,
staving off an attack on the difference principle which only
Plato, among political theorists, would make.  And probably not
even Plato.  (In other words I think he's defending his theory
of justice against a straw-man attacker.)

--Paul Torek, [email-masked]