All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 24, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:02
67 Property Rights
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, brothers and sisters!
I hope you're doing well.
It's Steph.
It is Tuesday, January the 24th at 4.30pm.
I'm going home a few minutes early because we have a little snow up here in the Great White Way.
So I hope you're doing well.
And I'm going to chat about property!
And I'm going to chat about it for free because that just seems to be a nice and juicy paradox.
So, you know, there's lots of sort of complications and messes and confusions that people have around property.
And, you know, property as a concept doesn't exist in reality any more than rights does, right?
The only thing that exists is stuff, right?
Material things.
And so what would it mean to say that I have a right to X, Y, or Z when such a right It does not exist in reality.
Property, i.e.
my car, does exist in reality.
Property rights, i.e.
the right that I claim to be able to be the only one who really is able to use the car or to choose who uses the car, that right does not exist in reality.
So how can it be considered to be valid, right?
So that's sort of one of the confusions that people get into around property.
Another one is the fact that people say, well, property is an important right, but the right to life is more important, and that's why we have the welfare state.
So, you know, I'm a baker.
I may have the right to the bread that I bake under certain circumstances, but I certainly don't have the right to that bread if there's somebody starving who needs the bread and is going to die if they don't, you know, you've all heard the same kind of nonsense that I have, right?
So I'm sure I don't need to tell you all of the arguments that people have about property.
Now, there's a number of different ways to approach the problem of property with people.
You know, the argument for morality, I do believe, is a good approach to the problem of property.
And so the way that you would use the argument for morality, as I'm sure you're becoming more than aware, so I'll keep it brief, the way that you would argue the property from the argument for morality is to say, OK, well, do people have the right to use property?
Do you have the right to eat food, right?
I mean, if you eat it, no one else is going to get to eat it, right?
Except maybe the parasites in your lower intestines.
But they don't vote, so we won't count them.
So, if you eat a sandwich, well, then nobody else can eat a sandwich, right?
So, obviously by eating something you are exercising a pretty fundamental property, right?
Which is you're absorbing it into your body.
So, and, you know, to the exclusion of anybody else being able to absorb it into their body.
So, you know, obviously that is an exercise of property rights.
Then, if you have that right, then, of course, everybody has that right.
Not to that sandwich, but everybody has the right to use property.
Right now, if everybody has the right to use property, then property rights exist as a logical consequence, right?
The same way that horses, individual horses exist, the concept horse does not exist, but it is imperfectly derived from the existence of each individual horse, right?
That's why you know a giraffe is not a horse, because, you know, it's a little taller and kind of splotchy.
So, you know, property as a characteristic habit or state of humanity, the concept property does not exist, But the fact that human beings use property, that use external material objects to their own ends, is a fact.
Now, if nobody has the right to property, then that's fine, right?
I mean, that's a perfectly logical, if insane, approach to the problem of property rights.
So, if nobody has the right to property, then, you know, everybody dies.
You know, pretty rapidly, right?
I mean, because If I drink water, you can't drink water.
If I eat food, you can't eat food.
And since the use of property that is exclusive to oneself is the basis of property rights, then you don't really have to worry.
about people who argue that there is no such thing as property rights because, you know, give them two days and they'll be stone dead because they'll dehydrate and fall over.
So obviously there is a right of property which human beings have to have otherwise we simply can't exist as a species.
So that's sort of the way that you would start using the argument for morality is to sort of establish that, you know, if it's a required preferential behavior to be able to utilize property for one's own benefit then Property rights certainly do exist, and the only question then is, you know, do they exist to a greater or lesser degree between different people, right?
I mean, height is something which all human beings have, but they have it to a greater or lesser degree depending on their sort of hormones and how much food they had and, you know, their basic sort of DNA and physical characteristics.
Hair, as I can personally attest, is something that men in their thirties possess to a greater or, in my case, lesser degree.
You can look at just about any human characteristic and say that, you know, people possess it to a greater or lesser degree.
Musical ability, pleasant singing voice, intelligence, eloquence, eye color, health, you know, the sort of innate forms of health where you have genetic forms of illness.
So human beings do possess physical characteristics to a greater or lesser degree, which I'm sure we can all get behind and agree on.
So, you know, the question is, is property, or is the right to property, one of these rights that human beings possess to a greater or lesser degree, like height or intelligence, or is property one of these characteristics that human beings possess like being a human being, right?
You don't possess being a human being to a greater or lesser degree.
I mean, again, putting the issue of the fetus aside, which we will get to at some point, but you don't have a characteristic called, I am a human being, to a greater or lesser degree than another human being.
So that is not something which is like height or intelligence.
It is a fixed characteristic.
Trees have different heights and species, but the fact that a tree is composed of wood at its core is not a characteristic which it shares to a greater or lesser degree with other trees.
So that's the real question when it comes to things like property.
Do we possess it individually to different degrees, or do we possess it absolutely as a characteristic of being a human being?
And, I mean, there's a couple of ways to approach solving that problem.
I'll sort of take a few and, you know, if you have better ones, which you may well do, then be sure to let me know and I'll share them with everybody else.
But the way that I would approach that is to say, well, of course, if we're going to base a characteristic and to find out whether or not it is sort of localized to the individual or common across a group or a species is we would say, well, what is the essential, you know, what is its essential nature?
And also, how is it founded on material reality?
So we say that horses have a particular, you know, set of characteristics which define them as horses.
And I apologize for my scant biology knowledge here, but, you know, there are quadrupeds with, you know, certain color, sorry, certain kind of head structure and, you know, certain number of legs and, you know, a nice swishy tail for getting rid of the flies and, you know, that kind of stuff.
And, And so all of those are essential to horse-dom or horse-ishness.
And, you know, they're all based on physically verifiable things, right?
And you can sort of measure them and, you know, so on.
And that's how species get classified, right?
And, of course, if you go down even further into the DNA, a horse is going to have a specific set of DNA that is going to be common with all other horses.
And, of course, there will be individual characteristics like the breed and the height and so on.
But, in general, there are going to be enough shared DNA bits, to use a technical term, with other horses that you can verify empirically whether a horse is a horse or something else completely.
So we want to be sure that we're going to base our analysis of property rights on something that's in the material world, right?
Otherwise it's just, you know, my imaginary friend arguing with your imaginary friend in a language neither of us understands, and we're really not going to get very far with that kind of analysis.
So, you know, how is it that you base property rights in sort of tangible, physical, reproducible material reality?
Well, the first thing that you would do, of course, is you would look at something which is consumable by only one person at a time, right?
So if people do have property rights, then their property rights are going to be most centered upon those things which are only consumable by one person at any given time.
And that's where you would sort of start your analysis of property rights.
So the first thing we're going to start with is not the sandwich, but the body, right?
I have a body which I am more or less in control of, except when I'm snowboarding.
And no one else can move my arm, no one else can force me to take over my mind and make me do this, that or the other.
And yes, there are cattle prods that will make my legs shake, and yes, I can sit there and a doctor can tap my knee and so on, but that's, you know, that's not really what we're talking about here.
We're talking about, you know, in general, in 99.9999% of my life, I am the one who is, you know, making my accelerator foot push down and sort of swinging wildly from side to side and getting lots of car horns because I'm so focused on my podcast.
So, and nobody else is doing that.
So nobody else can possibly control my body, right, at the same time that I am controlling it, because nobody else has the neurological structure within my physical frame to be able to control and manipulate my body.
So, given that, you know, we can absolutely trace the neural energy that goes from my brain down to, you know, through my neurological system to, you know, my tendons and my muscles and so on and causes them to contract, Do you know that muscles never non-contract?
That's kind of neat, right?
You learn this when you lift weights, right?
That every muscle has an opposing muscle and it's that muscle which contracts.
It's kind of neat, but you know.
And the only segue that I promise that we will have today for the moment.
So you absolutely can be sure and can verify empirically that each human being is the master of his body and that no other human being has the capacity to control and override and, you know, take over somebody else's body.
And yes, of course, you can put a gun against someone's head and say, lift your leg three times, and it seems quite likely that that person will move their leg three times, since, you know, there's no one who has a religion against that, and so you're probably going to want to do it.
But that doesn't at all obviate what I'm saying, because it's true that a rock has no motive power of its own.
And yes, I can kick a rock and send it skittering across the street, but that in no way indicates that the rock has come to life and is able to walk.
It's just that an external force is being applied to it.
It doesn't change the nature of the fact that rocks have no motive power.
And so it's true that somebody can stick a gun to my head and say, lift your leg three times, but that in no way changes the fact that I'm the one who still has to do it.
You're just bringing in an external agent that's, you know, making me do it.
And it's even looser than the rock, because the rock has no choice if I kick it to go across the street, but I can still choose to get my head blown off rather than lift my leg three times.
So, you know, I don't think that's really a particular issue of consideration.
So let's just say that every human being is the owner of his body, because nobody else can utilize that physical structure at all.
I mean, not even at another time.
It's not like I borrow my body during the day and lend it to you at night and so on.
I mean, I am the sole owner In perpetuity, you know, until I die of my own body.
So, you know, property rights to begin with are directly traceable to the physical fact that I control my own body and nobody else does, right?
So wherever you have that kind of sole utilization capacity, you know that you have the beginning of property rights, which would sort of make sense.
So what do you have next?
Well, the question is, what happens when... To say that I own my body, right?
So I have direct ownership and responsibility for my body, and I also have direct ownership and responsibility for my thoughts, but, you know, you can't ever tell what somebody else is thinking.
So, you know, that's sort of theoretically interesting, but, you know, practically sort of silly, right?
Which is why You always have to have physical evidence in a trial.
Motive alone doesn't do it, because you can't ever sort of tell what other people are thinking.
I guess with an MRI you could tell that they're kind of thinking a little more, but you have no idea what the contents are.
So you absolutely own your body.
And so if I own my body, let's say that I am, you know, Luciano Pavarotti, and I have this great singing voice.
Obviously, obviously I own My singing voice, right?
And simply because nobody else can use it, right?
I mean, you could hack out his throat and try and stuff it in your own, but it's still not going to give you that kind of voice, right?
That's something that's sort of organic and embedded within the biological and material structure of Pavarotti's throat.
And so, for sure, Pavarotti owns his singing voice.
There's no question of that.
And because he owns his singing voice, he can choose whether or not he sings.
I think we're all very clear on that.
I don't want to labor this point too much, because it's all pretty obvious, right?
Now, if Pavarotti can choose whether or not he sings, then if he chooses to sing, he also owns The sound waves, because they are a direct result of his throat, and nobody else can produce it conceivably, so obviously he has responsibility for, if you don't like the term owns yet, and we'll get there bit by bit, but he definitely has responsibility for The sound waves, right?
One of the ways that we know somebody's crazy is they punch someone and then say the devil made me do it.
I have no ownership for the actions of my body is a way that you know someone's crazy, right?
But generally if somebody punches someone else we know that they are responsible for the actions of their body and therefore they have whatever.
And even if they're drunk, right?
They're responsible for putting alcohol into their system and so they're responsible for whatever chaos comes out of that destabilization of their mind and body.
So, we know for sure that Pavarotti is responsible for the sound waves the same way that somebody is responsible for, you know, punching someone or planting a tree or whatever it is.
It's a direct effect of their body.
We know people have ownership of their bodies.
We know that they are responsible for the effects of their bodies.
And then we can deduce that they own what it is that they produce.
Because there is no possible way that such a thing could come into existence without them producing it.
There's no way that Pavarotti's vocal singing could come into existence without Pavarotti deciding to open his mouth and sing.
And so to say that they own their voice and that we are responsible for the effects of our body, but we don't own the production of what it is that we have created, would make no sense.
Because it doesn't exist.
And we're not talking about sort of complex trade and 99-year leases and so on.
We're just talking about the very basics, right?
So, let's take a sort of simple example, and I know that there's lots of complications, which people will rain down upon me, and I certainly appreciate that, because this is a complex topic, too.
It's sort of very simple.
We all know what property is.
I mean, a three-year-old knows what property is.
If you try and take candy away from him, you'll hear about it.
But it's a difficult thing to work through.
So, you know, bear with me.
We'll do our best, and we'll see what's sort of left standing after I've tried dropping a lot of intellectual bombs on the topic.
So, let's sort of take a simple example that a man has a little plot of land, and I know I'm presupposing property in order to prove property, but bear with me and we'll see if we can't hack our way through it anyway.
So, let's just say that... No, sorry, let's make it even simpler.
A man in the jungle picks two oranges, right?
And they're high up, so he climbs a tree, picks two oranges, comes back down, is wandering along the jungle.
And along comes M. Pavarotti, humming away to himself, and that guy with the two oranges says, oh man, you know, I really love that humming, sounds great.
I wonder if that guy could sing to me, you know, a nice Wagnerian opera, or a libretto, sorry, or an aria, just to, you know, make my ears thrill with the sound and make me happy.
Well, so he's going to say, well I got these two oranges, maybe what I'll do is I'll give him an orange.
In return for him singing to me an aria, right?
So, well, you know, does the guy who has picked the oranges from a state of nature, let's just say, from a place where there's no property, does the guy who has picked the oranges have the right to those oranges?
Well, obviously he does, right?
Because nobody else can eat those oranges and they're only in a position to be eaten because he's gone and gotten them.
So, without a doubt, he owns his body, he owns the fact that he has climbed up the tree and picked the oranges, and so nobody is going to begrudge him his right to eat the orange.
Like, it wouldn't make any sense to say that he's responsible and has ownership of his body, and yet he's not responsible for and has ownership of that which his body produces.
It wouldn't sort of make any sense.
So yes, he has the right to the oranges.
Now, he also, of course, has the right... he can throw the oranges away, he can stomp on them, or he can trade them to someone else for something else.
So he goes up to Pavarotti and he says, dude, sing me a nice little aria and I'll give you an orange.
Well, Pavarotti then opens his mouth and sings a nice little aria and the guy gives him the orange.
Maybe he stops halfway through and says, you give me half the orange and I'll give you the rest of the aria or whatever.
But the end result has occurred, and the aria has been completed.
And he's standing there, and he takes the orange, and so on.
Well, what's happened?
Well, the voice, which Pavarotti undoubtedly owns and is responsible for, has produced sound waves, which he is undoubtedly responsible for and therefore owns, and he's decided to do it within listening of this gentleman, who then receives those sound waves and owns the experience based on his You know, desire to hand over the whatever, right?
He owns it legitimately as long as he hands over the orange at the end of it.
So, because he's not paying Pavarotti to go sing somewhere else where he can't hear him, right?
He's got it right there.
So when he hands over the orange to Pavarotti, does Pavarotti have the right to that orange?
Well, of course he does.
Because Pavarotti has won, I guess you could say, or achieved ownership over that orange by performing labor based on his body in exactly the same way.
I mean, it's just another way of climbing the tree and getting the orange is singing the aria and being given the orange by somebody else.
It's exactly the same transaction.
Your control over your body is producing something that is of value to someone else, right?
So you've climbed the tree and now Pavarotti wants an orange because apparently the guy can eat.
And Pavarotti has decided to sing, so he's produced that.
And so he has the guy give him the orange.
In return for his singing so they absolutely have the complete right to what it is that their bodies have produced and They absolutely have the right to exchange it because you know, they have the right to dispose of that as they see fit so that's sort of a very simple example of how property works and If for instance you have a problem with that and we'll go back to Pavarotti, right?
So, I mean I understand there's lots of places that you can quibble with all of this But let's try and sort of close up some some gaps So, we'll just go back to Pavarotti's voice.
So, if you say, well, just because he can produce it, the sound waves, doesn't mean that he owns the sound waves.
Right?
And, of course, the question would be then, well, who does?
Right?
I mean, the only people, and we're talking sort of pre-phonograph here, right?
But the only people who can consume the sound waves are those sort of within spitting distance of him, right?
Because it gets muffled in the jungle or whatever.
So, there is a finite number of people who can consume Pavarotti's sound waves.
So, given that it's a finite resource, somebody has to be in control of it.
And surely, the person who is in control of it is the person who is actually in control of it, i.e.
Pavarotti is the only person who can produce those sound waves and nobody else can do it.
So, somebody has to control that resource.
And it has to be the person who has created that resource.
So, the orange in this tree, you know, that's too high for anyone to get, is useless.
It's of no value to anyone.
So, surely, the person who controls the orange is the person who has created, in a sense, its value, right?
It's created the value, therefore, by going up the tree and pulling it back down, that's the only way that the orange has any value, because it has no value high up in the tree where no one can get it, right?
And we know that because, you know, if you're an old person, you can't climb the tree, you're just going to starve to death if that's the only thing you can eat.
So it has no value way high up in the tree.
It only has value because it's been brought down.
Right?
The same way that, you know, sound in the air has no value in a sense when before Pavarotti sings and then because of the sound waves it has value after he sings.
So the value has been created, right, by somebody who has responsibility for what they are creating and so that the value does accrue to the person who has created it.
So I think that's a fairly good way of putting it, in my own humble opinion, and I apologize if I sound vain.
But I think that's a fairly good way of explaining how it is that a finite resource that has value must accrue its disposition.
It must be able to be disposed by, and only be disposed by, the person who created that value.
Because we own our body, we own the effects of our body, and therefore we own what it is that we create with our body.
And this is of course another reason why we know that parents to some degree are responsible for children, right?
Because you create the child out of your own body and so on.
It's a value that doesn't exist unless you create it.
And so once you bring something new into existence through the operation of your body, you have custody over that because it's something which didn't exist before and only one person can dispose of it at any time.
So, we know, for instance, that where you have resources which can be consumed by many people...
At the same time, if this theory is correct, that property rights really only matter when it comes to items which can be controlled by one person or can only be utilized by a small group of people at any given time, then we look at where property rights really aren't that important and we would expect it to be among those areas where many people could consume it without cost to each other at any given time.
An example of this, of course, is air.
Nobody owns the air because Everybody can breathe at the same time, and assuming they're not in a little room, right?
Everybody's going to be just about fine.
So where there is in fact a sort of many-to-many relationship in terms of consumption, nobody has any problem with there not being property rights there, right?
Because it just doesn't make any sense.
Where everyone can use everything, there's no need for property rights, because There's no conflict, right?
And also, for instance, if you... and there are private beaches, but let's just say there's a beach, right?
If you are enjoying swimming in the ocean, it's not necessarily... it doesn't take away from your pleasure of swimming in the ocean if somebody else, like a hundred yards, a hundred feet down the beach, is also swimming in the ocean.
It doesn't sort of detract.
It doesn't take anything away from you, right?
Like, if I eat your sandwich, you sure as heck can't eat your sandwich, but I'm swimming in the ocean.
It doesn't really matter that you're swimming in the ocean, right?
I mean, maybe I want some peace and quiet, maybe I want to swim in the nude, but, you know, overall, it doesn't matter.
And therefore, we don't have property rights called swimming in the ocean, like I'm going to buy a swim in the ocean.
And again, I know there are private beaches and so on, but, you know, just roll with me a little here and we'll see where we end up, right?
So that's, you know, that's sort of a pretty important way to distinguish between, you know, where there are property rights and where there aren't, and why.
So, you know, to go from sort of the odd but hopefully vaguely illustrative example of Pavarotti and the orange dude, we can have a look at something much larger, right?
So, if everybody does own the effects of their body as a direct result of owning their own bodies, then it would seem to me that that is a fundamental human right that is not something which is available to human beings by two different degrees.
Right, so you wouldn't say, well, I have, like, I'm six foot tall and you're five foot five, so we have, you know, whatever, seven inches between us and that sort of difference of degree.
We wouldn't say, like, I wouldn't say I am human and you are human-ish, right?
But if you have a characteristic called property rights, and it's based on sort of neurological facts that are objective and reproducible across all the species, then it's not something that exists to different degrees among people.
Everybody has an absolute right to property in the way that they have an absolute right to be classified as A human being, right?
So I don't have a greater right to property than you do, right?
We both have equal rights to the property because we both have control over our bodies and it can be neurologically traced and so on.
We don't have the right to the same degree of property, of course not, right?
But whatever we create Because that's dependent upon subjective factors, right?
Like, if I don't have a voice like Pavarotti's, then I'm not going to be paid as much or anything to sing in public.
To different degrees, that is going to occur.
But whatever it is that my body does produce, for better or for worse, or to a greater or lesser degree, is something that I absolutely own, because I own my body just as much as Pavarotti owns his body.
So if we look at something as large an abstraction as the state, right, and we sort of say the welfare state, then when somebody says, well, a human being has the right, property rights are important, but a human being has a right to steal if they're going to starve to death.
Well, no, they don't, right?
And that doesn't mean that I would say don't do it, right?
I mean, if I'm about to starve to death, of course, I'm going to steal a loaf of bread.
Absolutely.
I'm not saying that I'm moral to do so.
I'm just saying that I'm going to do it.
Of course, the whole point of morality is to not end up in situations that are as ridiculously extreme as you're going to starve to death.
You can't go to the baker and say, hey, I'll sweep out your shop for a loaf of bread.
You can't go to a charity and say, oh man, I'm starving.
You can't ask anyone for change.
You know, all of these emergency situations that people come up with are just such a load of nonsense.
And I've talked about it before, like, you know, well, nobody has the right to kill anyone, but if you're in a lifeboat and you only have enough for eight people and there are nine of you, it's like, oh, God, shut up.
Like, it really is not what morality is all about.
That's like med school training by saying, OK, the guy is having an aneurysm.
and a brain hemorrhage, and a heart attack, and his spleen has exploded, and he's falling from an airplane.
What do you do?
It's like, well, you just watch him fall and go treat someone who you have a hope with, right?
That's not how you deal with medicine, right?
You deal with medicine by giving situations wherein a reasonable response can be taken, and that's the job of morality too.
So yeah, you absolutely don't have the right to steal bread, because everybody has a right to Now, of course, you can steal bread, right?
You don't have the right to do irrational things and call them rational, but it sure as heck doesn't mean people don't do irrational things and call them rational.
It's just not a factual statement to be made.
So the fact that somebody does not have the right to steal the bread doesn't mean that they're not going to steal the bread.
It just means that they're still not right in doing it because they're not exploring other alternatives.
That, you know, as I mentioned before, right?
You just offer to work for the baker or for whatever, right?
You know, shine your shoes or, you know, do a little tap dance on the street corner and hope someone's going to give you a bit of money.
And, of course, somebody who ends up in a situation, in a free society for sure, where they're starving to death, is probably not someone who has made very good choices in their life.
And if they're smart enough to recognize that they should steal a loaf of bread to eat, then they're smart enough to figure out that they should probably work for their living or, you know, at least find somebody to welch off or whatever.
I mean, if you're a pure schizophrenic and you're just crazy and nuts and all over the place mentally, you're probably not going to figure out that you need to eat a loaf of bread.
So, you know, all condolences and compassion to those people.
But if you can handle the cause and effect long enough to know you need to steal the loaf of bread, then you're, you know, smart enough to know what's right and wrong and that you should never have gotten into that situation to begin with.
Um, yeah, I think, But that having been said, I mean, if I was the baker, you know, unless the guy came every day to steal my bread, I probably wouldn't press charges.
I'd probably be like, oh, you poor guy, he has to have two loaves, right?
So, you know, it's perfectly illegitimate for a man to steal his bread, but it's not something anybody really needs to worry about, because it's not... Violations of property rights in the modern world, trust me, they do not center around people stealing loaves of bread because they're starving.
I mean, that's just ridiculous.
It's a ridiculous example to focus on, right?
It's like saying that the gravest danger to the world at present is smallpox in Toronto or something.
Maybe there may be a case once every 20 years, but when it comes to figuring out your health care issues, that's probably not going to be number one on your list.
It may not even be number 10,000.
Forget about that example.
It doesn't matter.
It's just a red herring that people throw in to muddy up the case.
It's bad, but it doesn't matter.
It's never going to happen.
And even if it does happen, no one's going to press charges, because the guy's starving, so whatever, right?
And the guy might welcome being put in jail.
Yeah, who knows, right?
I mean, just forget about that stuff.
It doesn't matter.
It's a red herring.
It's sort of these anal little people who are like, well, everything has to be perfectly consistent at all times, otherwise the whole theory fails!
It's like, come on, haven't you ever studied biology?
I mean, I'm no biologist, but even I know that animals don't all have to be the same size for there to be such thing as species.
So, you know, just let that stuff go, and let's focus on the bigger issues.
So the bigger issues are something like the welfare state, right?
Where you say that, yes, we all have a right to property, right?
But some people have more of a right to property than other people.
So, for instance, if I have a right to make whatever my money, 110k a year, As a base salary, and that's great.
I have that right because I'm exchanging the effects of my body, my presentation skills, my coding skills, my typing, my phone manner or whatever, right?
My ability to negotiate and say and get things done and you know, humina humina.
I'm exchanging all of the effects of my body for all of the goodies that everyone else can bring to the table and we're all happy and everything's going swimmingly.
But, you know, so I have the right to all of that.
Nobody has a problem with that.
However, there's this other class of people They're called, you know, politicians, bureaucrats, police, military, whatever you want to call them.
And they have the right to their property, and they have the right to my property.
And that's the problem that can't be solved.
It can't be solved logically, it can't be solved morally, it can't be solved empirically.
That's why the theory is false.
If nobody has the right to property, then we all starve to death and die of dehydration in two days, because nobody can ever conceivably utilize property that can't be simultaneously utilized by other people.
So we don't die in three minutes because we can't breathe, because obviously this theory that I'm talking about, property is only really relevant as a concept when you have a single consumable item.
So the money that's paid to me It's not available to anyone else, right?
Unless it's the government.
You can print money, but, you know, we're just talking logically, right?
They pay me the $110,000.
They don't have that $110,000 either, right?
You don't eat your cake and have it too.
So, you know, my salary is a single consumable resource and therefore it's subject to property rights.
Now, if you say that there's something like the welfare state or old-age pensions or, you know, foreign government loans or such a thing as the government or whatever, then you're saying that something like property rights is more like height Right?
In so far as it is distributed unevenly across the population, and the politicians and the bureaucrats have more property rights than we do.
Right?
I can't control the local politician's property, but he can control mine.
So he's kind of like taller, you know?
In this sort of hierarchy of property rights values, he has more.
He has more property rights.
But, you know, the question is, well then, of course, why?
Are there any physiological differences?
You know, I have more property rights than a hamster, because we have pretty much strong physiological differences between us, which can be empirically measured, and so on.
Size of brain, ability to reason, and so on.
Although not when I was dating in my teens, oddly enough.
But if you say that some people have a different degree of property rights than others, then, you know, you have a real challenge on your hands.
Because you have to sort of say, okay, well, then it's a degree of a difference, like height, and then you have to sort of show, well, how is that the case?
How could that conceivably make sense?
Height you can measure, so you know it's a difference of degree.
Every man possesses height, but men possess heights individually to different degrees.
So that's, you know, logically easy to measure, right?
There's no human being who has zero height because they'd be invisible and non-existent.
And, you know, so all human beings have some degree of height.
And so that's, you know, empirical and measurable and nobody's going to have any problems with it.
But if you say that property rights exist at different degrees, then you have to prove the sort of physiological difference.
Now one way in which you could prove that physiological difference, one way that I would accept such a sort of different kind of degrees in terms of property rights, would be along the lines of the following.
So you would have to say that, okay, if people Some people have the right to property more so than other people have the right to property.
Politicians, welfare state, police, military, and so on.
Well, fine.
What you would have to prove then is that they are actually controlling my body to the degree to which they claim that they can have my property.
Let's take an example.
It's kind of science fiction-y, but it just shows you how ludicrous the idea is that we have different degrees of property rights.
When I sleep, You actually get up, you're able to sort of magically enter my body and make me wake up and you go and drive a cab for...
Three hours, right?
And that makes you 300 bucks.
And then, you know, all I have is a vague dream of being yelled at by drugs, and you have 300 bucks.
Well, then you could conceivably come to me and say, look, you have to give me a portion of your income because I earned it.
I entered your brain and got you up out of the bed, and we went and drove a cab, right?
And therefore that money belongs to me.
Right, because property derives from one's ownership of one's body, and if somebody else actually had ownership of my body, to some degree, during some period of time, then it would seem to me somewhat logical, I mean, excluding the problem of I like to sleep and maybe I'm tired if you borrow my body to go cabbing at night.
It could be conceivable that you would make the argument then to say that you then have a right to some of the money that magically shows up in my bank account.
Maybe you have to sort of register your cab under my name or whatever and money just shows up in my bank account.
You could then conceivably come to me and say, look, that three hundred bucks a night is mine because I take over your body and so on.
Because property results from, you know, one's ownership of one's body.
So only if ownership in a sort of invasion of the body snatchers kind of fashion could be shown to be transferred between consciousnesses, could anybody else ever have the right to the property that I have generated through the actions of my body?
Now, since, of course, that's pure nonsense, never going to happen, scientifically it's ridiculous, then, you know, it's very clear that there can be no such thing as somebody else's right to my property or your property or anything like that.
Again, doesn't mean property rights have to be respected, to use the argument I've used before, or the example.
You know, the scientific method is optional, but it doesn't mean that it's subjective, right?
So respect for property rights is optional, but it doesn't mean that it's subjective.
So you can't claim to be acting in a logically consistent and therefore a moral manner if you claim that you have the right to my property because of whatever x, y, and z. So the welfare state, in saying that it has a right to my property, politicians and bureaucrats and the police and military, they're acting in an inconsistent, illogical, and immoral fashion.
And so, obviously, they're incorrect, right?
They simply do not have a right to my property because I'm the only one who controls my body, so I'm the only one who has a right to the effects that my body produces.
And so, the idea that there are some people who have more rights to my property than I do just completely fails, right?
I mean, there's just no logical or scientific or biological or rational way, or moral way, of course, that that case can be made.
Now, of course, I pay my taxes because they're holding a gun to my head, but I don't pay my taxes because I think they have a right to them, because there's just no evidence for that in reality or logic.
So, you know, that's the challenge that's out there to people who are very keen on the welfare state, is to prove that those who run the welfare state have some sort of fundamental difference and have a greater degree of property rights than I do.
And not just to property in general, but to my property in specific.
The bureaucrats are not out there saying, If we discover a new planet we get 60% and you get 40% because we have some general plucking things out of a state of nature, a generally greater set of property rights than you do.
No!
They're actually saying you own that property and we get to take it from you to whatever degree we see fit.
Well, it's simply not the case, right?
They don't own that property.
They didn't produce it.
It was my mind and my body which produced it, and therefore it accrues to me as an ownership, right, which sort of we talked about earlier.
They have absolutely no right to take my property.
They can force me to do it, and absolutely that's a possible action within reality, but it's not at all legitimate or logical.
And so, you know, if somebody claims that they have the right to your property, And they claim a virtue for it.
You can absolutely, you know, run them through perhaps a simplified version of this and sort of say, well, you know, it's not the case.
Or, you know, if you want to use the argument for morality, then you say, oh, so you think the welfare state is moral?
Is that your theory or is that a fact?
Right?
And if they say it's a fact, then they have to tie it into logic and empirical evidence.
And they have to show how these bureaucrats are so much physiologically different to and superior to ours that they are actually working our bodies in the middle of the night and thus have a right to part of our income.
Which, you know, hey, if you've got the proof, if you've got the video, I would be fascinated to see it.
So thanks so much for listening.
As always, I hope you're doing very well.
I am signing off.
▲
Export Selection