pperrin

If I needed a kidney, maybe I'd take yours. If I needed food maybe I'd take yours. If I needed food and had none, maybe I'd eat your kidney. Because in my universe I am more valuable than you - if you don't think you are more valuable you will happily let me, if you think we are equal you will not mind either way... If you agree that people have different values you will fight me. So given the opportunity to extend your own life by the death of another it is automatically wrong to take it?

Sorry bout the editing/embedding - still working out how this thing works(!). I said nothing about being owed it - just the right to pursue it. Yup some pretty solid stuff in there....

Given the other responses to the post, I think many people got the idea of what I was saying. Sorry if it went over your head. If the option is for you to freeze to death on the streets then yes, maybe you should. No, a 'right' is absolute - I distinguish between 'abundant' resources (where your ownership denies no one) and 'scarce' resrouces where your onwership may deny others - if ownership of a specific resource gives you 'joy of ownership' but denies someone else the 'right to life', then there is an issue to be considered/discussed... I agree that homesteading is a pretty lame concept. I don't want to get into disputes on word definitions (just use a different word!) - but consider how people spend their leisure time, especially in video games... they seek challenge, disputes, and obstacles to overcome. The 'joy' often/generally comes from *finding* solutions, not by actually living in the 'perfect world' that they (supposedly) create. On a side issue - western civilisation seems to be crumbling because youngsters have too *few* real imperfections to challenge them, so make stuff up... like 'micro agressions' and so love their made up issues, they ignore real ones. (They are so busy with intellectual masturbation the are not interested in real world intellectual sex). No that is pretty wide of the mark. 1) yes. 2) 'should'? at most I observed that people do, I didn't say they should. 3) ? 4) I'd suggest 'feeling unhappy' and having your pursuit of happiness arbitrarily blocked are different things. 5) ok, that looks closer... 6) No, there is nothing to abolish if they were always bogus... You aren't obliged to argue - if you do so it is because you care, stop lying to yourself. I think you are arguing with the sequence of logic you presented, which (as I set out) doesn't match my reasoning. Many resources appear effectively unlimited... do you need some air mister? Breathe all you like!!

In a perfect world,... nothing... In a perfect world everything is perfect so there is nothing to be said about it (and it would likely be very, very boring). However, we live in an imperfect world and many of us pursue happiness by seeking to cater for its imperfections, and so allow more people to pursue their happiness too... Property rights can be used to prevent others pursuing their happiness, while seeming to offer the supposed 'owners' nothing much more than the 'pleasure' of exerting control over others. I could go with a made up example, but I think the Indian caste system with its untouchables is probably a good real example. The 'untouchables' effectively have a conspiracy against them to prevent them owning, or having access to the resources, to ever become anything other than an untouchable (even where those resources are abundant but owned by others) - they cannot pursue happiness outside of what others choose to allow. To assert that property rights are absolute, is an assertion that this is an acceptable state of affairs - that by dint of birth your future is under the control of others. In early discussions of 'homesteading' it included consideration of whether a resource was limited/scarce - and that ownership of limited and unlimited resources could/should be considered separately. I expect some reflex responses attacking any suggestion that this mainstay of libertarianism has been outgrown now that the world is such a small place - but there it is!

I don't have any links to offer - but I do think lovers of liberty do need to no only ensure these resources exist, but that they are spread far and wide... oh for a 'Gideon' like movement to put such resources in every school...

I'll give you that one - I look forward to a conversationalist to provide some input - yours is not worth having.

You are playing words - you'd have to say you can't 'choose a healthy diet' because it is only through fear of being unhealthy... You don't get to decide what/how others assess anything. If someone chooses to be a thief/thug you have to deal with them as they are, not as you would have them in your utopian dream world. If you are so sure of your position and have no stick - just assume that I do have one and send me all your stuff - ok?

From what I've read I doubt he'd be interested in any interview - he hates spending time on the islam thing... he does it 'cos it needs to be done and spends as much of the rest of his time as possible having nothing to do with it! Love his last one... 'I vote against you'.

OK, I have no idea what you mean by 'argument'. I posit a set of circumstances (as I have) you can accept or argue with it. If you have no argument against it then you have accepted it. There is 'no argument' because it is universally accepted - works for me. That depends on the price we agree for me assisting in the protection of your car. My original suggestion is based on the idea that a fair price for all risking our lives is an equal share of what we are fighting to protect. Any real (non-utopian) system has to work with the unprincipled - because they do, and always will, exist - in practice your rights exist only as far as the stronger are willing to protect them. Moan about the man taking your land all you like... that won't bring it back. No idea what you are on about here... If its just a personal attack - boo hoo - now back what I said rather than what you think are the motivations behind why I said it eh? if a society was based on women being held captive and raped to reproduce, and then someone proposed that we switch to something like our current system, describing it saying "So for 'rape' there would voluntary marriage" seems a reasonable wording - if you disagree, fine, I don't think it matters in this discussion. But you were, and you said a free society wouldn't be attacked... So I ask why you don't declare your home a free-society and see how long you get away with not paying taxes etc...? It would only be against 'the entire population' if they acted together - else anyone could pick them off one by one. And even when the entire population do act together (as per WW1 and WW2) countries do still fall. A man owning nothing may happily stand by and watch while the man who owns many acres is relieved of them - which really comes back to what I originally outlined (that he probably should - unless the land is equally owned...). But if that were true it would already be happening in practice. I see you want to throw around 'rapist' allegations - this must mean you are very unsure of your position as you are trying go divert attention from it again - if you are that unsure of it I am not sure why you'd expect anyone else to try to make it stand up for you.

The one thing that is 'required' is that you are prepared to fight to protect the (in this case) the island. While not wanting to initiate force, if you aren't prepared to attempt to use it to resist others initiation of force you are already dead. An individual cannot expect to resist the force of others - we can't currently live in an anarchist/libertarian society because our tax-collectors are too strong for us to resist. The tax-collectors (government and their supporters) have not yet been debated out of giving up that power... I can 'do nothing' with land - if its registered in my name, the state will give me possession of it at any time - ejecting anyone who has settled on it while I was 'doing nothing'.

The argument is 'if two people risk the same to defend an island, they have the same right to ownership of that island' - if you don't think that is contentious in anyway good, that means you agree. How about you skip trying to make a discussion into an argument - being patronising is tedious - if you want to divert the discussion I'll assume its because you have no confidence in you position. I put 'tax' in single quotes, thats to indicate that the rent for the land is in lieu of tax. Which bit of the original post did you think was not voluntary? A free society would never be attacked? Well why haven't you already got one? I think there are plenty of mobs/gangs that outnumber you... and would take your property in a second but for greater external threats to them (tax funded law enforcement etc in the current system).

There is no share of profit from the land. The only payment is rent for the land. On effort to acquiring it - a man could inherit unlimited land, do nothing (apart from maybe let someone build windmills on it) and pass it all on for others to do the same - you can't make assumptions about the effort spent on acquiring it...

I saw Basic Income Guarantee was done a few months ago - but I am interested in a different angle... Starting with the UK (where I live, and is an island with good resources etc...) my basic idea is that as every person could be called upon to defend the island (with their lives) there is an argument that it is equally owned. i.e. In WW1 or 2 a soldier with 10,000 acres and a man with none were both risking the same (their lives) but one's reward was to keep their 10,000 acres from enemy occupation (theft) while the others reward was... errr... to let the other guy keep his 10,000 acres(!). Not very fair... Landless man should have refused to fight unless he got half the spoils of victory (surely?). So if every citizen owns the land equally - that is 50mil acres and 50mil people - a nominal 1 acre each. In principle 5 acres is enough for a self-sufficient small holding for a family so on paper everyone could live tax/service/government free except for a call to arms to protect the country. However we aren't all farmers and not all land is farmable so.. pool all the land and rent it out (for whatever it can be let for) and share the proceeds of the rent between all citizens. The rent paid is your 'tax' and the proceeds you receive are your 'citizens income' - how much it would be are entirely unpredictable! but by definition it is enough to rent at least an acre and be self sufficient, so that is your safety net. That is pretty much it - it is a basis 'in principle' for a citizens income and tax. The only 'duty' is effectively conscription - fight to protect the country if attacked... Its not complete (not accounted for seas/fish/minerals etc)... but as a minimum imposition on free men I quite like it... Thoughts?

Funny - this is something I've been kicking around on and off for ages. As I see it there can only be anarcho-anarchism. People seem to use 'anarcho-' to mean 'wipe the slate (state?) clean' and then the suffix to replace it with a different system (which by definition would have to be enforced). I also think we already live in anarchy... the only leaders are the ones we choose to follow (through choice or fear). If you wiped the slate clean there is nothing to stop us arrived back here - with everything exactly as it currently exists... In anarchy the guys with the biggest sticks run everything... and in this, the anarchy we live in, it is the state who has the biggest stick.

Sorry I don't have figures - but I am not sure they would make sense anyway. What is different between a politician giving away money they control as opposed to a businessman doing so? Taxation simply reduces the wealth private individuals have available to give away - and transfers it to politicians who then have it available to give away.