Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - 1719 The Salvation of Philosophy Part 2 - Property Rights
Aired: 2010-08-12
Duration: 07:44


=== Self-Ownership Bomb (07:44) ===

[00:00:00]  Let's say you and I get lost in the woods, and I whip out my compass, point and say, we have to go north, and then immediately start heading in the opposite direction.
[00:00:10]  What would you think? Would you be sure that north was the best way to go?
[00:00:15]  South? There would be no way to know, but one thing would be certain, that I did not believe that north was the best way to go, despite my claim.
[00:00:27]  If you called out, dude, you just said we should head north, now you're heading south, and I got angry or started running away, what then?
[00:00:37]  Let's suppose that you run a store, and I tried to buy something with bills that look kind of fake.
[00:00:42]  When you begin to wave them in front of the counterfeit detection machine, I grab at them and run away.
[00:00:48]  Does that prove that the bills are in fact counterfeit?
[00:00:51]  Nope. But it does prove that I think they're counterfeit.
[00:00:57]  Self-detonating statements are not always absolutely conclusive, but they are always worth identifying because they expose the integrity of your debating partner.
[00:01:09]  Some people get into debates because they have a yearning burning for the truth and are willing to hurl errors aside to find it.
[00:01:16]  Others, most it seems at times, debate because they are overflowing with bullshit and need some place to dump it.
[00:01:27]  An honest debater will acknowledge a self-designating statement and stop the debate in order to examine and resolve it.
[00:01:34]  A brain-troll will always attempt to evade his own contradictions.
[00:01:40]  Just a heads-up. So, property rights.
[00:01:45]  Why are they so important?
[00:01:47]  Well, without property rights, there's really no such thing as philosophy.
[00:01:51]  Certainly, ethics are completely impossible, so I think they're worth examining in some detail.
[00:01:58]  Property rights rest on two central pillars.
[00:02:01]  The first is self-ownership, and the second is responsibility for the effects of one's actions.
[00:02:09]  Self-ownership simply means that I am responsible for my own body.
[00:02:14]  Barring demonic possession, epilepsy, or Vulcan mind melds, my body pretty much does what I tell it to do.
[00:02:22]  The seat of self-ownership is the mind, of course, which is why, if I strangle some guy, all of me goes to jail, not just my hands.
[00:02:32]  If I'm not responsible for the effects of my actions, if I do not own what I do, then there is no such thing as morality, of course, and we're kind of back to demonic possession.
[00:02:44]  If I am responsible for actions, throwing a ball, and the effects of my actions, breaking a window, then we have established the basis for property rights.
[00:02:57]  Now, some people will argue that self-ownership is invalid, but this is a classic self-detonating statement.
[00:03:04]  If I want to argue that self-ownership is invalid, I must first exercise self-ownership by making the argument using my body in some manner.
[00:03:13]  Typing, speaking, miming, hand puppets, something.
[00:03:19]  If I type an argument into a message board, then I am exercising self-ownership by formulating thoughts within my own brain and then exercising the exclusive use over my hands in order to make the argument.
[00:03:33]  Since I must exercise exclusive self-ownership in order to argue against exclusive self-ownership, I'm basically dropping a large stinky bomb of cosmic fail on the message board.
[00:03:48]  A guy on the Free Domain radio message board once posted that we are not responsible for the effects of our actions, and so I posted that we were.
[00:03:55]  He intensified his argument, and I then replied that I completely agreed with him and had never disagreed.
[00:04:01]  He immediately reposted my earlier argument, saying, You just said this!
[00:04:06]  Ah, I do love the smell of self-detonating arguments in the morning.
[00:04:11]  They smell like burning troll.
[00:04:17]  So he was affirming that I was responsible for my argument, the effects of my actions, while arguing that people are not responsible for the effects of their actions.
[00:04:26]  Naturally, he recognized his own contradiction and apologized for holding a position so utterly at odds with his own actions.
[00:04:34]  Just kidding. I mean, this is the internet.
[00:04:37]  Like, any fertile garden bullshit is its major fuel.
[00:04:42]  So, if you're in a three-way, no, no, no, no, conversation, and person A argues against the ownership of actions, try replying to person B instead.
[00:04:54]  Person A will immediately protest, saying that he made the argument, not person B. See, philosophy really isn't that hard.
[00:05:02]  It just takes social balls of steel.
[00:05:05]  Excuse me, who the heck is this?
[00:05:07]  I've got balls of steel.
[00:05:10]  Balls of steel, what is that?
[00:05:13]  You can't argue against property rights without first using property rights.
[00:05:18]  Making an argument requires exercising exclusive use over your own body.
[00:05:22]  Typing something into a chat room requires exclusive use of a keyboard.
[00:05:26]  The server has to be owned.
[00:05:28]  I'm sure you get the point.
[00:05:31]  How does this help us understand the concepts of land ownership or homesteading?
[00:05:36]  Well, the first thing to understand is that no one cares about land at all.
[00:05:40]  We only care about what it can produce.
[00:05:43]  Crops, a hole in the ground to put a house in, a place for our cattle to graze, and so on.
[00:05:49]  I mean, how much would you pay me for an acre of land in the Amazon if I refused to tell you where it was?
[00:05:53]  Or if I stipulated that you could never use it for anything or even look at it?
[00:05:58]  It is not land that is fundamentally owned, but the products of the land.
[00:06:03]  The land is not created, but the products are.
[00:06:07]  Just as a man is responsible for, i.e.
[00:06:10]  owns, the argument he creates in a debate, an effect of self-ownership, a man is responsible for, i.e.
[00:06:19]  owns, crops that he plants, grows and harvests from a piece of land.
[00:06:23]  My argument does not exist in the world if I do not communicate it, and crops do not exist if you don't plant and harvest them.
[00:06:32]  It is this bringing things into existence that is the essence of property.
[00:06:37]  It is not stealing from someone else, but rather creating something new that establishes property.
[00:06:43]  Things are not owned.
[00:06:45]  They are created.
[00:06:49]  Now remember, this is a very short introduction.
[00:06:52]  My point here is not to solve all conceivable problems of property rights, but rather to introduce you to the power of identifying self-detonating statements about property rights so you can vault over the bridge-lurking trolls squatters, no doubt, and get to the real meat of discussing property rights, rather than endlessly fussing over whether self-ownership and the ownership of resulting actions is valid to begin with.
[00:07:17]  Like all self-detonating statements, denying property rights requires exercising property rights.
[00:07:22]  If someone doesn't know this, no problem, let them know.
[00:07:25]  If they then get it, fantastic, move on to some real philosophy.
[00:07:29]  If they deny or fog or evade or attack, then they're either not smart enough to understand basic contradictions, in which case give them a lollipop and a pat on the head and send them back to the sandbox.
[00:07:41]  Or they're just manipulative trolls bent on messing with your head.