Let's assume that is what you said for the sake of brevity, what does right mean in this context?
The standard definition, same as I will use if I do mention “rights.” I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy discussion of what is and is not a right.
This is a confusing statement because you both acknowledge a loss and then deny any loss.
There is no significant loss. No loss great enough to have a noticeable effect on economics. By your logic, when I breathe, I take oxygen from the others. But there is plenty of oxygen, so it doesn’t matter. There is no economics of oxygen. Someday there might be, but not now.
Again I'm less interested in what you can imagine than what can be objectively proven, like the tiny loss of some trees.
Your scenario is useless for understanding Marxism because it is the complete opposite of the real world. In your imagined world nothing is scarce and so you can build a house and I can build a bigger house and the next guy can build a bigger house and on and on and on and we would never run out of land and wood.
Actually, that is the real world. Not meaning you, but I think that many progressives do not get that there is plenty of land and plenty of wood in the world. On their college campus, they typically see many spindly trees supported by braces and plastic binding, with one old magnificent oak to remind them of what trees “used to be” like.
If they would take a drive to the country, and look up from their screens, they would see that trees cover the Earth in great abundance. It is only recently that the United States had more area of cattle grazing land than forest.
The Ukraine alone could feed the whole world with modern farming methods. So why would there ever be hunger? Not because we ran out of land, or because farmers forgot how to grow food on it. Definitely not because people are hogging farmland, and not growing food on it. Bad government, not bad production, creates famine.
That's not the real world. In the real world everything is scarce because conditions are never static. River beds dry up, animals migrate, season's change, disease destroys crops and livestock. We are in a constant war against nature and our own biological needs.
Yes, and left on our own, without interference from people who want to stop us from being productive, we will win handily. Not because we are so smart, but because we have thousands of years of cumulative knowledge. The resources are there, the knowledge is there, the motivation is there.
It breaks down when someone - namely some form of government - decides to take away one or more of those elements.
We can either attempt to overcome them by ourselves or as a group but you aren't entitled to anything not even the fruits of your own labor. That you must negotiate with those around you.
I believe that one is entitled to the fruits of one’s own labor. But I don’t know how to prove it. So, maybe on some philosophical level they are not. There is no right and wrong, it is just what we agree on in negotiations. Sake of argument, let’s say so for the rest of the thread.
So, we negotiate and the people around me have all the power in the negotations since they far outnumber me. The result of the negotiation is that if I build a house, grow food, grow cotton and spin and weave and sew to make clothes, invent and build heating and cooling for the house, and build a swimming pool, people who spent that whole time napping and masturbating are just as entitled to live in the house, swim in the pool, and wear the clothes as I am.
Clearly that is indeed the attitude of modern progressives. Fine, so be it.
How sustainable is that system, though? Am I really going to wake up every day and say, “Wow, even more people moved in while I was asleep! I better invent a lighting system so I can work the farm at night as well as the day, since I’ll have more people who will be eating the food I grow.”
No, of course not. The first time I build something and it gets taken away in that kind of negotiation with the non-producers, guess what my next production will be will be? Either it will be no production at all, because I say ”screw that,” or it will be weapons with which to protect what I create from the takers.
Your idea of communal ownership of produced goods take away the vital element of motivation. Government, if it is to be of any benefit at all, would need to focus on protecting me from the loss of my produced goods to the mob. That would motivate me to keep producing. The government’s assisting the populace in taking it from me instead of protecting my ability to keep it, would have a detrimental effect in that I will stop producing food and housing.
There's always negotiation it's just that not everyone is always included in the negotiations. Typically those without power. They still had to negotiate among themselves.
Not I guess, you can do better than that. He either is or he isn't. Private property can only originally be obtained through force or agreement with those around you.
Not originally obtained. If a guy makes a tree into a house, there is no force or negotiation required for that. The possibility of force or negotiation with force to back up one or both sides only comes when the others decide it would be easier to take the house from the builder than to build their own. Again, a very common Marxist/socialist/progressive thought process.
This is supposition. If we're doing supposition then some would be angry he took their favorite tree, some would be envious, some wouldn't care, the point is telling people you're entitled to anything (even the fruits of your own labor) isn't going to cut it, you're going to have to convince them.
Enter fiefdoms, kingdoms, empires and governments.
As I mentioned in post # 38.
What separates us from other animals aren't possessions or hierarchies, it's our ability to imagine the possible. We can look at trees and imagine a house.
Negotiations are never complete, if they were he wouldn't have people beating down his door and factory owners would never be in threat of revolting workers.
Let the workers revolt and take the factory. How long will they sustain it? What evidence is there that a mob of workers can run a factory as well as factory owners and the managers that they hire? I suppose the workers could “negotiate” with the managers to stay on and manage the factory without the owners. But would not those workers revolt against the managers if the managers did not give them raises? No, workers don’t revolt to put someone else over them, and make the same wages. They revolt so they can be rich like the owners.
Nurses could revolt against doctors and throw them out of the Hospital. They have more training in medicine than a factory worker has in factory management. Would you select that Hospital for your own treatment, the one where the doctors were thrown out?
Suppose the workers did successfully run the factory. They make ten thousand ball bearings to fulfill an order from an engine factory. They proudly deliver and ask for payment. The motor factory managers say, “send us a bill, we’ll get right on that, LoL!” and never pay. Now the workers can either learn to eat ball bearings, or they will have to find some other way to feed themselves.
No it was an honest and sincere question. What is the right to life? Explain it to me. What are it's shapes and dimensions? What tangible existence does it possess? Where does it come from?
Great discussion idea! Seriously, the supposed right to life is violated constantly, with increasingly creative justification. So do we really even believe in it? If you start a thread on that, I will participate for sure.
