CDZ Libertarian Error: Locke And The Natural Right To Property

[SeaGal]

Human nature does not have any inherent respect for property. Humans, like all other creatures, would as soon from others take property/resource they desire as elsewhere and otherwise obtain substantively the same property/resource. Respect for property/resource, or more accurately, respect for the fact that such property/resources currently belong to someone other than oneself, is borne of codified jurisprudence and exigencies of its enforcement. not of nature, and codified jurisprudence is a human construct, not an aspect of nature, be it human, bovine, canine, or any other.

Exactly - libertarian thought does not advocate anarchy. It is far closer to the vision of the framers than socialism

.

??? Who, other than you, was talking about anarchy? What point is there to introducing anything have to do with anarchy when the discussion topic is libertarianism rather than a comparison of libertarianism with anarchy? Nobody who knows what they are talking confuses libertarianism with anarchy.

Because why write an essay when a sentence will do? I was being generous in interpretation, economical of word.

Jurisprudence is the theory, or study of law - there is no enforcement of a theory, regardless of exigencies.

But Libertarians do believe in codified law, not anarchy. Or so I've been told.

 

[flacaltenn]

Greed in itself is not a bad thing.

Greed is one of the seven cardinal sins, and for good reason. Greed itself is indeed a bad thing.

• Why Greed Begets More Greed
  
• The Global Financial Crisis of 2008: The Role of Greed, Fear, and Oligarchs

This is now philosophy. Because there is a point where the greed that is normally channeled into PRODUCTIVE SERVICE -- becomes a criminal act -- when folks perceive the power to "get away with it" or the ability to argue themselves out of criminal behavior.

In the case of the financial crisis -- it reared up because of the braindead Federal guidelines and emphasis on booking risky loans. No natural market would have booked such a mountain of bad debt without coercion or encouragement from the "legal" authorities..

 

[flacaltenn]

But Libertarians do believe in codified law, not anarchy. Or so I've been told.

... (wink) -- we support the Constitution in Full. Including ALL TEN of the BoRights!!! No bigger guardians of EVERYONE'S civil liberties than us..

(this has been a paid announcement by LP USA.. Not the Russians)

 

[Kosh]

The fundamental flaw in libertarian thinking is its failure to take into account the interdependent nature of social life and, in particular, how property is acquired, and must be acquired, in a settled society.

We are all born propertyless.

This is as true for the person who eventually becomes a billionaire as it is for the impoverished. The only way to acquire property in a settled society, where all the natural resources have been divvied up and are already owned by someone, is to acquire it from those who already have it. Those who cannot acquire property from those who own it will die.

If we now say that property owners have the right to do whatever they like with their property – share it or not, hire people or not – this is as much as to say that they have the right to determine, at their sole discretion, who, among those who do not yet have property, shall live and who shall die, who shall prosper and who shall founder, who shall have the opportunity to fulfill their potentialities and whose potentialities shall be quashed. In effect, it is to say that property owners have a right to establish a tyranny over everyone else.

In other words, to grant that people have the property rights that libertarians claim is to grant that some (the propertied) have the right to deprive others of the very things libertarians themselves generally claim we all have a right to – life, liberty, and property.

But this amounts to a contradiction. By definition, no one can have a right to deprive others of those things they have a right to.

It follows that there must be a flaw in the libertarian understanding of the right to property – and indeed there is. Wherein lies this flaw? To answer this we need to take a closer look at what the ‘right to property’ really means.



The Libertarian Error

Well according to far left lore what is mine is theirs and what is theirs is not for me.

Explains why you do not understand what |private" property is. However if you pay property taxes, you do not really own your property.

 

[Natural Citizen]

John Locke in his First Treatise of Government, Locke writes the following:

God, the lord and father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods, so that it cannot justly be denied him when his pressing wants call for it, and therefore, no man could ever have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions, since it would always be a sin in any man of estate to let his brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his plenty. - end

Therefore: The fundamentally religious basis of this philosophy is the foundation of its moral code, which contemplates The Individual's moral duty as being created by God's Law: the Natural Law. The Individual's duty requires obedience to this Higher Law; while knowledge of this duty comes from conscience, which the religious-minded and morally-aware Individual feels duty-bound to heed. This philosophy asserts that there are moral absolutes: truths, such as those mentioned above, which are binding upon all Individuals at all times under all circumstances. This indicates some of the spiritual and moral values which are inherent in its concept of Individual Liberty-Responsibility.

Liberty should never be spoken absent the word responsibility. The American philosophy, based upon this principle, is an indivisible whole and must be accepted or rejected as such. It cannot be treated piece-meal. Its fundamentals and its implicit meanings and obligations must be accepted together with its benefits.

Copy pasta from here - 10. Private Property--Liberty's Support with reference to 1. The Spiritual is Supreme

The fundamental flaw in libertarian thinking is its failure to take into account the interdependent nature of social life and, in particular, how property is acquired, and must be acquired, in a settled society.

We are all born propertyless.

This is as true for the person who eventually becomes a billionaire as it is for the impoverished. The only way to acquire property in a settled society, where all the natural resources have been divvied up and are already owned by someone, is to acquire it from those who already have it. Those who cannot acquire property from those who own it will die.

If we now say that property owners have the right to do whatever they like with their property – share it or not, hire people or not – this is as much as to say that they have the right to determine, at their sole discretion, who, among those who do not yet have property, shall live and who shall die, who shall prosper and who shall founder, who shall have the opportunity to fulfill their potentialities and whose potentialities shall be quashed. In effect, it is to say that property owners have a right to establish a tyranny over everyone else.

In other words, to grant that people have the property rights that libertarians claim is to grant that some (the propertied) have the right to deprive others of the very things libertarians themselves generally claim we all have a right to – life, liberty, and property.

But this amounts to a contradiction. By definition, no one can have a right to deprive others of those things they have a right to.

It follows that there must be a flaw in the libertarian understanding of the right to property – and indeed there is. Wherein lies this flaw? To answer this we need to take a closer look at what the ‘right to property’ really means.



The Libertarian Error

 

[Natural Citizen]

Useful comparisons in the different philosophies within such a big tent as libertarianism would be those such as Mises vs Rothbard and Hoppe.

So many different people are competing for entitlement to the term libertarianism. To that extent fundamental libertarianism is often misrepresented by those who seek claim to it.

I'm still kind of chuckling at the Libertarian Party offering up a cultural Marxist like Gary Johnson. But I digress.