Well, my blog is down right now (at the time of writing this, if
you’re reading it on blog.com it’s obviously up again) because
apparently blog.com is infamous for having extended outages, so who
knows when that will be back. Still, someone came to me and asked me for
an outline on my idea of property and property rights, since I have
unorthodox views that are well outside the American norm. Since I might
as well discuss it sooner or later, and because someone asked, I’m delivering. That
being said, let’s discuss it.
Remember, I’m a moral nihilist and a utilitarian
The big shift in my perspective from the norms of property rights come from my atheistic views. I reject the concept of “natural rights”, and while I may view rights as social conventions that should be followed and are beneficial to society, I don’t really see any innate morality in this world. It’s cruel, it’s Darwinistic, and without societies, most people would die before age 40. Morality exists because we decided collectively, that we would rather live under a set of rules than under the absolute “freedom” that the state of nature provides, which I view in a very Hobbesian light.
I also view morality largely through the lens of consequentialism, particularly utilitarianism. While I am open minded to relatively deontological social conventions like rights and stuff, these must be seen as what they are, means to achieve good consequences, and those consequences should be bound to relatively utilitarian ends. You see, I know strict utilitarianism, especially act utilitarianism, can sometimes lead to problematic outcomes, which I think undermines the whole greater good thing. As such, I’m fairly accommodating to the concept of rights in a subjective context assuming they reach utilitarian ends. However, such rights should never be taken to their most radical extremes, and there should be limits placed on them, I think property is one of these things.
Americans’ love affair with property rights is also subjective
Americans like to draw their views from John Locke on property rights, seeing them as inalienable rights that the state should never infringe upon. This is, to me, merely one model of property rights. There is no one single objectively moral model for property rights out there, and if one looks beyond our perspective, there are many ways to consider it.
Some people consider the concept of property to be inherently coercive and aggressive. The far left views the concept of property as evil, which is why communists and the like advocate for no property. While I think this view is also extreme, it does have some good points. When you have property, you are basically saying, this is mine, only I can have access to it, and I will use men with guns to enforce this claim. Note how I use libertarian “men with guns” language here. I do this in a way to outline to more right wing libertarian minds how the left views these claims. And if you have a system that springs up, that basically has everything or nearly everything owned already, and what options do the poor and propertyless have? Well, they have to work, for those with property, to get what they need. I really see this as a soft form of slavery.
Some people take a softer stance, like geolibertarians, which claim that stuff that people make is the fruits of one’s labor and is rightfully theirs, but that land should belong to everyone. This system is similar to libertarianism, but has an important left wing concession: that property rights of land are bad and oppressive.
Other societies, like the !Kung San in Africa, have no concept of property at all. When I was in college, I watched a video called “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, in which a coke bottle fell out of an airplane to tribal group that had no concept of property. Believing it was a sacred artifact from the gods, these people started fighting for possession over it. Due to the discord this caused in their community, they decided to take the bottle back to the white men who dropped it from the airplane, believing that they were gods, and telling them that they reject the gift for the strife it caused.
This sounds bizarre to us, but really expresses something that I feel that people with an American concept of property rights don’t understand: the importance of culture. These social norms are nowhere near as objective as we think. People view things very differently around the world, and there is no right way or wrong way to do things. The American concept of property rights is not objectively moral. It just isn’t. Many societies around the world, whether they be tribal or advanced, have radically different ideas of how things should work. Some of these things are good, some of them are bad. All that matters to me is what model best helps humanity on their goal to improve their lives. As such, we need to develop a model that accomplishes this goal.
My concept of property rights
Seeing how I live in American culture, I’m ultimately influenced by the default position toward private property and largely support the concept. However, I do recognize the various problems other models point out with our own, and are influenced by them too. I believe property rights are a useful social convention through which we can allocate resources to people. I believe the concept that those who work should get property as compensation is largely good and useful, as it creates motivation to do the work. A common criticism of left with egalitarian societies is their lack of positive work incentives and the reliance on blatant, literal gun to the head coercion. This is a valid criticism in my opinion. However, this does not mean that the left’s criticisms of our model don’t matter either. Quite frankly, both the far right and the far left get some things right and some things wrong. It is up to us to take the goods of these various models and try to avoid the bad. As such, my model is actually a hybrid of left and right wing thought. It’s not hardcore ooh rah,
American capitalism and inalienable private property rights. It’s not communism either.
My ideas are along the lines of social democratic principles. That is, we have a system that is largely capitalistic, but introduces various socialistic elements into it when needed to offset its flaws. This is very much in line with what I discussed elsewhere on my blog. I think capitalism is a functional system, and I think private property rights is a functional system, and wouldn’t advocate for a total replacement as no better alternative that will work better exists. However, capitalism and our system of private property rights is very cruel and unfair to the poor. In the worst case scenario, income, wealth, and power become concentrated in a small number of elite people who basically use it to enslave the rest of humanity, and make them live far worse lives than they would under a more egalitarian system. I have a vested interest in ensuring our society doesn’t resemble feudalism or some other exploitative system. I, as a human being, want to be free to live my life as I choose, and I believe that oppression by economic elites is just as real as oppression by the state. I believe in progress and the idea that we should strive to improve our lives, and I believe social conventions should help us on that journey. We should not be slaves to our conventions, when I don’t think they work out for a decent amount of people. I also believe our current social conventions lock us into this concept of having to work endlessly to justify our own existence, when, as I have discussed elsewhere, I think society should strive toward less work over the long term and start automating crap. This can’t happen under a system of inalienable property rights. The people who own the machines will hoard everything, and screw the rest of humanity. This, to me, is unacceptable.
As such, I believe that when there is an argument to be made that curtailing private property rights would produce gains for humanity that exceed the benefit of enforcing them in an inalienable way that it is the right thing to do. This is generally consistent with my overall view on the role of the state. All state action is about a balance of liberty and government action to make our lives better in some way. We do away with the freedom to murder in order to ensure that people can live free of a constant fear of dying by the hand of another. We do away with the freedom to take what you want by joining a society that has a property rights system to determine who gets what and enforces it (note how I think without the state people would be free to just murder and take what they want; property is a product of ordered civilization, it’s enforced by the state; this is different than libertarians who think it exists separately from the state). To me, my ideas on restricting private property rights to some degree is just a logical extension of the general role of the state in general. You’re giving up some of your absolute freedom in order to gain something else. Security, etc. And in some ways, more freedom that wouldn’t exist under anarchy.
Honestly, when I believe that when we adjust the existing property rights regime in order to accomplish some goal, like, for example, universal basic income, or other social programs, we are doing this for the benefit of everyone in that society. Sure, some people will be a bit worse off, but ultimately, according to libertarian principles, the losses should be minor to the gains. I believe this is in fact the case with my ideas. I believe in the concept of diminishing marginal utility. This is basically the principle that for every unit of something someone has, the relative happiness that each unit beings goes down. Your first dollar will make you a lot happier and mean a lot more to you than your millionth. In reference to income and wealth redistribution, essentially, when you have a system in which a few own most of the wealth and income, whereas everyone else is struggling to survive, this is an objectively worse society by the metric of overall happiness and well being than a society in which stuff were better distributed would be. It’s better for society to have everyone have at least something and be able to live their lives freely, than to have the wealth concentrated among the few, in which everyone else must struggle to survive. It’s better to have a society where everyone haves than to have a society divided into haves and have nots. Even if some level of inequality is still desirable for motivational purposes, this does not justify the extremes that raw capitalism and a system of inalienable property rights happens to produce in my opinion, and as such, advocate for some level of wealth redistribution to allow people to live better, happier, easier lives.
Conclusion
In conclusion I discussed my idea of how property rights should work. I discussed various models and schools of thought, including systems with individual property rights, communal property rights, and no property rights. I discussed how various systems have advantages as well as disadvantages. Finally, I discussed how my system would combine elements of both capitalistic and socialistic elements to achieve the highest amount of human happiness and well being.
Remember, I’m a moral nihilist and a utilitarian
The big shift in my perspective from the norms of property rights come from my atheistic views. I reject the concept of “natural rights”, and while I may view rights as social conventions that should be followed and are beneficial to society, I don’t really see any innate morality in this world. It’s cruel, it’s Darwinistic, and without societies, most people would die before age 40. Morality exists because we decided collectively, that we would rather live under a set of rules than under the absolute “freedom” that the state of nature provides, which I view in a very Hobbesian light.
I also view morality largely through the lens of consequentialism, particularly utilitarianism. While I am open minded to relatively deontological social conventions like rights and stuff, these must be seen as what they are, means to achieve good consequences, and those consequences should be bound to relatively utilitarian ends. You see, I know strict utilitarianism, especially act utilitarianism, can sometimes lead to problematic outcomes, which I think undermines the whole greater good thing. As such, I’m fairly accommodating to the concept of rights in a subjective context assuming they reach utilitarian ends. However, such rights should never be taken to their most radical extremes, and there should be limits placed on them, I think property is one of these things.
Americans’ love affair with property rights is also subjective
Americans like to draw their views from John Locke on property rights, seeing them as inalienable rights that the state should never infringe upon. This is, to me, merely one model of property rights. There is no one single objectively moral model for property rights out there, and if one looks beyond our perspective, there are many ways to consider it.
Some people consider the concept of property to be inherently coercive and aggressive. The far left views the concept of property as evil, which is why communists and the like advocate for no property. While I think this view is also extreme, it does have some good points. When you have property, you are basically saying, this is mine, only I can have access to it, and I will use men with guns to enforce this claim. Note how I use libertarian “men with guns” language here. I do this in a way to outline to more right wing libertarian minds how the left views these claims. And if you have a system that springs up, that basically has everything or nearly everything owned already, and what options do the poor and propertyless have? Well, they have to work, for those with property, to get what they need. I really see this as a soft form of slavery.
Some people take a softer stance, like geolibertarians, which claim that stuff that people make is the fruits of one’s labor and is rightfully theirs, but that land should belong to everyone. This system is similar to libertarianism, but has an important left wing concession: that property rights of land are bad and oppressive.
Other societies, like the !Kung San in Africa, have no concept of property at all. When I was in college, I watched a video called “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, in which a coke bottle fell out of an airplane to tribal group that had no concept of property. Believing it was a sacred artifact from the gods, these people started fighting for possession over it. Due to the discord this caused in their community, they decided to take the bottle back to the white men who dropped it from the airplane, believing that they were gods, and telling them that they reject the gift for the strife it caused.
This sounds bizarre to us, but really expresses something that I feel that people with an American concept of property rights don’t understand: the importance of culture. These social norms are nowhere near as objective as we think. People view things very differently around the world, and there is no right way or wrong way to do things. The American concept of property rights is not objectively moral. It just isn’t. Many societies around the world, whether they be tribal or advanced, have radically different ideas of how things should work. Some of these things are good, some of them are bad. All that matters to me is what model best helps humanity on their goal to improve their lives. As such, we need to develop a model that accomplishes this goal.
My concept of property rights
Seeing how I live in American culture, I’m ultimately influenced by the default position toward private property and largely support the concept. However, I do recognize the various problems other models point out with our own, and are influenced by them too. I believe property rights are a useful social convention through which we can allocate resources to people. I believe the concept that those who work should get property as compensation is largely good and useful, as it creates motivation to do the work. A common criticism of left with egalitarian societies is their lack of positive work incentives and the reliance on blatant, literal gun to the head coercion. This is a valid criticism in my opinion. However, this does not mean that the left’s criticisms of our model don’t matter either. Quite frankly, both the far right and the far left get some things right and some things wrong. It is up to us to take the goods of these various models and try to avoid the bad. As such, my model is actually a hybrid of left and right wing thought. It’s not hardcore ooh rah,
American capitalism and inalienable private property rights. It’s not communism either.
My ideas are along the lines of social democratic principles. That is, we have a system that is largely capitalistic, but introduces various socialistic elements into it when needed to offset its flaws. This is very much in line with what I discussed elsewhere on my blog. I think capitalism is a functional system, and I think private property rights is a functional system, and wouldn’t advocate for a total replacement as no better alternative that will work better exists. However, capitalism and our system of private property rights is very cruel and unfair to the poor. In the worst case scenario, income, wealth, and power become concentrated in a small number of elite people who basically use it to enslave the rest of humanity, and make them live far worse lives than they would under a more egalitarian system. I have a vested interest in ensuring our society doesn’t resemble feudalism or some other exploitative system. I, as a human being, want to be free to live my life as I choose, and I believe that oppression by economic elites is just as real as oppression by the state. I believe in progress and the idea that we should strive to improve our lives, and I believe social conventions should help us on that journey. We should not be slaves to our conventions, when I don’t think they work out for a decent amount of people. I also believe our current social conventions lock us into this concept of having to work endlessly to justify our own existence, when, as I have discussed elsewhere, I think society should strive toward less work over the long term and start automating crap. This can’t happen under a system of inalienable property rights. The people who own the machines will hoard everything, and screw the rest of humanity. This, to me, is unacceptable.
As such, I believe that when there is an argument to be made that curtailing private property rights would produce gains for humanity that exceed the benefit of enforcing them in an inalienable way that it is the right thing to do. This is generally consistent with my overall view on the role of the state. All state action is about a balance of liberty and government action to make our lives better in some way. We do away with the freedom to murder in order to ensure that people can live free of a constant fear of dying by the hand of another. We do away with the freedom to take what you want by joining a society that has a property rights system to determine who gets what and enforces it (note how I think without the state people would be free to just murder and take what they want; property is a product of ordered civilization, it’s enforced by the state; this is different than libertarians who think it exists separately from the state). To me, my ideas on restricting private property rights to some degree is just a logical extension of the general role of the state in general. You’re giving up some of your absolute freedom in order to gain something else. Security, etc. And in some ways, more freedom that wouldn’t exist under anarchy.
Honestly, when I believe that when we adjust the existing property rights regime in order to accomplish some goal, like, for example, universal basic income, or other social programs, we are doing this for the benefit of everyone in that society. Sure, some people will be a bit worse off, but ultimately, according to libertarian principles, the losses should be minor to the gains. I believe this is in fact the case with my ideas. I believe in the concept of diminishing marginal utility. This is basically the principle that for every unit of something someone has, the relative happiness that each unit beings goes down. Your first dollar will make you a lot happier and mean a lot more to you than your millionth. In reference to income and wealth redistribution, essentially, when you have a system in which a few own most of the wealth and income, whereas everyone else is struggling to survive, this is an objectively worse society by the metric of overall happiness and well being than a society in which stuff were better distributed would be. It’s better for society to have everyone have at least something and be able to live their lives freely, than to have the wealth concentrated among the few, in which everyone else must struggle to survive. It’s better to have a society where everyone haves than to have a society divided into haves and have nots. Even if some level of inequality is still desirable for motivational purposes, this does not justify the extremes that raw capitalism and a system of inalienable property rights happens to produce in my opinion, and as such, advocate for some level of wealth redistribution to allow people to live better, happier, easier lives.
Conclusion
In conclusion I discussed my idea of how property rights should work. I discussed various models and schools of thought, including systems with individual property rights, communal property rights, and no property rights. I discussed how various systems have advantages as well as disadvantages. Finally, I discussed how my system would combine elements of both capitalistic and socialistic elements to achieve the highest amount of human happiness and well being.
No comments:
Post a Comment