Right-to-work Laws

[surviva316]

I think that property rights would make a close third on almost everyone's list of inalienable rights, after the right to not be killed or hurt by someone else.

It's far less obvious than you're giving it credit for, which is kinda why property laws are--excuse my french--retarded. It's very difficult to simply outline a law to defend someone's right to not take things away because, quite frankly, things like land ownership don't make any sense. Or maybe they make such a complex and counterintuitive sense that no one has quite been able to wrap their mind around it yet. Either way, it betrays your point.

[Renton]

It's far less obvious than you're giving it credit for, which is kinda why property laws are--excuse my french--retarded. It's very difficult to simply outline a law to defend someone's right to not take things away because, quite frankly, things like land ownership don't make any sense. Or maybe they make such a complex and counterintuitive sense that no one has quite been able to wrap their mind around it yet. Either way, it betrays your point.

Land ownership makes perfect sense. It's one of the many scarce resources that has alternative uses. I cannot think of a better way to distribute it than to have the people trade it with one another for money and other resources.

[surviva316]

Land ownership makes perfect sense. It's one of the many scarce resources that has alternative uses. I cannot think of a better way to distribute it than to have the people trade it with one another for money and other resources.

Distributing it is all fine and dandy, but what does the "ownership" even mean? The American legal system defines property as any thing "whereby a legal relationship between persons and the State enforces a possessory interest or legal title in that thing." Since inalienable is defined as anything that is independent of laws, customs or beliefs, calling property an inalienable right is literally a self-contradiction.

Of course, that assumes that you use the definition above, so you're welcome to define it differently if you'd like, but I think you'll find that the "right" you're pretty much always defending is the "right" to have a governing body protect other people from touching your shit--it doesn't have anything to do with the property itself or your relationship with it.

Let's use an example: say you get 4 babies together on a play date and dump a box full of toys on the ground and tell the kids to have at it. What's the difference between "giving the babies the right" to own certain toys, and having an ownership-free micro-society? Giving them property rights isn't what allows them to play with toys. If the parents just don't give a shit about whose toys are whose and say nothing at all and never intervene and enact true laissez faire, then toys are gonna be played with, most likely by babies. In fact, probably the best way to ensure that the toys are played with optimally is for the parents to intervene and enforce regulations, but for these regulations to actually be the exact opposite of, "This is Baby 1's toy, this is Baby 2's toy, etc, and you can't interuse these properties." This opposite policy would be a basic enforcement of making the kids share--especially if the biggest baby is hogging the best toy for too long.

Again, in this example, "property rights" don't seem to be anything more than having the right to have outside bodies intervene when other people are trying to use your shit/walk on your lawn/etc. Ownership =/= usership; in fact, the former (in most cases) prohibits the latter more than it effects it (see DRM for a perfect example). I mean the word "prohibits" in a logical way, by the way. I'm not saying that in most cases it just so happens to work out that property rights eventually preclude usership one way or another. I mean that property rights are basically just the enforcement of prohibition from usership.

[Renton]

Distributing it is all fine and dandy, but what does the "ownership" even mean? The American legal system defines property as any thing "whereby a legal relationship between persons and the State enforces a possessory interest or legal title in that thing." Since inalienable is defined as anything that is independent of laws, customs or beliefs, calling property an inalienable right is literally a self-contradiction.

Of course, that assumes that you use the definition above, so you're welcome to define it differently if you'd like, but I think you'll find that the "right" you're pretty much always defending is the "right" to have a governing body protect other people from touching your shit--it doesn't have anything to do with the property itself or your relationship with it.

Let's use an example: say you get 4 babies together on a play date and dump a box full of toys on the ground and tell the kids to have at it. What's the difference between "giving the babies the right" to own certain toys, and having an ownership-free micro-society? Giving them property rights isn't what allows them to play with toys. If the parents just don't give a shit about whose toys are whose and say nothing at all and never intervene and enact true laissez faire, then toys are gonna be played with, most likely by babies. In fact, probably the best way to ensure that the toys are played with optimally is for the parents to intervene and enforce regulations, but for these regulations to actually be the exact opposite of, "This is Baby 1's toy, this is Baby 2's toy, etc, and you can't interuse these properties." This opposite policy would be a basic enforcement of making the kids share--especially if the biggest baby is hogging the best toy for too long.

Again, in this example, "property rights" don't seem to be anything more than having the right to have outside bodies intervene when other people are trying to use your shit/walk on your lawn/etc. Ownership =/= usership; in fact, the former (in most cases) prohibits the latter more than it effects it (see DRM for a perfect example). I mean the word "prohibits" in a logical way, by the way. I'm not saying that in most cases it just so happens to work out that property rights eventually preclude usership one way or another. I mean that property rights are basically just the enforcement of prohibition from usership.

Dunno how to reply to this other than to say I agree basically, and that there needs to be rule of law in order to have a functioning society, much less to enforce property rights.