Freedomain Radio

Stefan Molyneux:

Why oh why are you people wasting my time responding to this immature and shallow baiting?

Oh, I think you know.

We paid 10 cents in donations to get him on the site and like to get our money worth

Reik:

The Religious part, well, I kinda meant that as a shot at left-libertarianism.

That's what I thought you meant, but it is right-libertarianism that is religious.

Going on, Christianity has an arch-demon named Ba'al. Now Ba'al happens to be a very common diety of earlier polytheistic religions. He was the local god who owned everything. In fact, he was named The Owner.

And even though each village had their own personal Ba'al who ruled their personal village, they were each thought to be somehow, magically, the same.

So it's really all the same thing--absolute egotism in one sphere replicating itself across others.

This is getting downright humorous.

That is really interesting actually.  As I understand it though, most libertarian metaphysical models make it impossible for someone to own someone else, its like someone else being guilty for your crime, unless you could literally be under control of someone else all of the time in the most direct sense you could not own them, and even then they would have to let you.

Do you realize that most of us are not fond of Christianity, and thus associating us with Arch Demons only tickles our minds? Accusing us of Demon worship?

 Demon worship is silly though. Most of us do not worship contracts or ownership either (they are conclusions not fetishes, we really do think these things out), it is an attempt at rationality.

Why is self ownership a false concept? Provide an alternative maybe? 

2 + 2 =   10,   (IN BASE FOUR I AM RIGHT!!!!)

Reik:

That is really interesting actually.  As I understand it though, most libertarian metaphysical models make it impossible for someone to own someone else, its like someone else being guilty for your crime, unless you could literally be under control of someone else all of the time in the most direct sense you could not own them, and even then they would have to let you.

Do you realize that most of us are not fond of Christianity, and thus associating us with Arch Demons only tickles our minds? Accusing us of Demon worship?

 

 Demon worship is silly though. Most of us do not worship contracts or ownership either (they are conclusions not fetishes, we really do think these things out), it is an attempt at rationality.

 

Why is self ownership a false concept? Provide an alternative maybe? 

 

2 + 2 =   10,   (IN BASE FOUR I AM RIGHT!!!!)

 

 

Actually, Walter Block makes a case for selling your moral responsibility (e.g. a mob boss is responsible rather than the hitman). 

Reik:

Most of us do not worship contracts or ownership either (they are conclusions not fetishes, we really do think these things out), it is an attempt at rationality.

Why is self ownership a false concept? Provide an alternative maybe?

Possession. Which was implied in the initial post since ownership was contrasted against possession. In fact, self-ownership was proved to be a false concept in that very post.

To reiterate, to own something means by definition:

• being able to sell it
• being able to destroy it
• being able to lease it out

Leasing out your body to another mind is physically impossible. Selling it is either possible or impossible, depending on whether you think being butchered for meat and organs qualifies. Any way you slice it, your body is vastly more a possession than it's an owned item.

And that brings up another issue. The self-object duality which is implied by owner-owned doesn't apply to the human body. You ARE your body. You do not "own" it. Your body is INSEPARABLE from yourself. And if anyone thinks otherwise, then perhaps they can volunteer to have their arms chopped off to see whether or not this changes their self-identity. We'll call it an empirical scientific experiment.

Ethan:

• being able to sell it
• being able to destroy it
• being able to lease it out

Leasing out your body to another mind is physically impossible. Selling it is either possible or impossible, depending on whether you think being butchered for meat and organs qualifies. Any way you slice it, your body is vastly more a possession than it's an owned item.

This is why you saw fit to call us slavery loving egotistical shitbags? This is what almost every anarcho-capitalist I know thinks--that it is impossible to sell one's body because it is inalienable from oneself. Heck, that's what the guy who came up with the term anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, thought. And unless I've been missing something big, that's what everyone here thinks as well.

Yeah we are not into that "My soul owns my body" b.s.

People sell blood. Sperm. Hair even. Eggs. But that is the body.

Someone's arm being cut off would change their identity, and you could sell it if you were mentally ill I suppose.  

So how can someone posses their own body if they can not own it? I though possession was a much more temporary and less permanent concept that ownership.

If we ARE our own body as you say we are, how would you go about saying who owns or possesses anything? By what criteria?

I thinks stef's logic went something like this: ( he seems upset at this debate, but I am more forgiving aparently and I know people calm down after their initial outbursts of rage, but I would like someone to make sure I am not misinterpreting him)

1. People are responsible for themselves.

2. Thus people are responsible for their own actions (yay).

3. Thus when two people wish to trade they make an agreement saying that they will exchange actions (you can not own someone else actions, but you can agree to do actions for someone else). Contracts are the only way to make sure people understand the things they are agreeing to, so they can avoid slavery and fraud.

I have a feeling that you are the kinda person who gets upset at owning land and such stuff. Mutualism would not sound so ridiculous if it was not so influenced by Marxism.

Civilized countries don't permit the sale of body parts. You can't sell blood in any Western European country or Canada so high-risk people don't have any incentive to sell diseased blood. I mention this only to knock out a possible justification for the concept of "self-ownership". I do this by pointing out that "self-ownership" gets you the wrong answer in reality: it gets you more diseases in blood banks.

As for possession being less permanent than ownership, this is a definite plus. Less permanence means that it is more fluid. It means there's more room to fit in all that natural ambiguity which any society of human beings /will/ have. It also means there's less room for elites to entrench themselves. If you're not in favour of dynastic wealth then you really shouldn't be seeing permanence as a good thing.

Now you're asking what rules would go into making an anarchist society based on possession. Which is very good. The rules would have to be those of social justice. That is, of universal human rights. So for example, if you had a tonne of meat in your cottage and a starving person found you in the middle of the forest (and there is no civilization outside of the forest) then possession of a small part of that meat is now automatically his.

You aren't forfeiting or sacrificing anything, it is automatically his by right. And as his inalienable right, it would be impossible for you to sell, barter, or exchange anything for it. And most importantly, it would be utterly impossible for you to try to blackmail the starving person into doing your bidding or in any way hold power over them ... unless you first stole the meat that is *theirs by right*.

Such a system is much more fluid in some sense. Who possesses what when is more fluid. In a stable community, it's not that much more fluid. On the other hand, what you can expect from the system, social justice, is MUCH more stable. Because human rights become absolute, and not mere charity handed out on someone's whim.

I think Stef is upset because there is a debate. And I think his joking about being dictator was very revealing. I remember having a boss once who joked about not paying the workers. It definitely let us know what was on his mind.

> 2. Thus people are responsible for their own actions (yay)

This violates medical science and also violates universal human rights. I suggest that you investigate universal human rights as a moral system rather than hanging onto principles which violate scientific fact.

> I have a feeling that you are the kinda person who gets upset at owning land

Naah, land is passé. Land was the old feudal economy. In a modern economy it's capital that matters. And given the modern economy is being replaced by the attention economy ... well let's just say that concern about land is obsolete. Note that redressing land ownership merely requires property taxes. Not such a big deal when you think about it.

Ethan:

I think Stef is upset because there is a debate. And I think his joking about being dictator was very revealing. I remember having a boss once who joked about not paying the workers. It definitely let us know what was on his mind.

You know, for a guy who claims a deep knowledge of ethics, you are kind of missing a basic one here, which is that it's pretty rude to insult someone as intolerant and dictatorial while using his server for free.

I am very confused on why it is bad to sell blood. People need/want to live, blood when they are injured, and people should be rewarded if they are giving it.

So in objections to ownership (because ownership is to you a form of slavery) you are suggesting a system where even the rights to our own body are less permanent? And by extension, the rights to the fruits of our labor?

Take the meat example there are a couple of ways you can go:

1. The man with the tonnes of meat gained that meat by legal/just means,  that means that he worked for every pound of it or that the group of people that he is working for (he could be representing factory workers/butchers as a sales representative) did and he is going to get a share. The starving man has no right to access his stuff. He did not earn it, luckily though, in all probability, he would get fed.

2. The Butcher/Capitalist/Evil Top Hat Man stole the meat, or defrauded people somehow, which then it is an irrelevant situation, taking from takers I do not need to hear about.

And now that you have made need a universal principle at what point is need defined, at what point can someone take someone else's stuff?

Why is being responsible for your own actions unscientific?  

I needed to work, so I got a job, so I got money, so I got food. And then some guy comes along and tells me that he needs my money more than I do? Thats clearly not true.

Sounds like a looter society.
 

Regarding the selling of blood, aside from the fact that giving a monetary incentive for homeless people and criminals to give blood is a REALLY bad idea, the best possible "reward" for giving blood is the act itself and to a lesser extent recognition. The empirical research on motivation is quite solid and it all definitely points to the fact that providing monetary or any other kind of incentives destroys motivation. If you wish to review the research, you can read Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn.

What happens is that output (blood-giving) will go up in the short term but then it will backslide to either the previous level or to a lower level. As soon as you put a price on an activity, you're signaling that that price is the value of doing that thing. And that price is almost certainly not going to be enough to motivate people. So where before people were giving blood because it was "the gift of life" now people are going to give blood because it nets them 10$. And let me assure you that much fewer people are going to do it in the latter case.

Regarding your first point, this is quite irrelevant. What you're neglecting is the fact that just means don't necessarily end in a just outcome anymore than a just outcome necessarily implies that it was arrived at by just means. The outcome is a STATE, and the means are a PROCESS. And properties of states aren't properties of processes. This is illustrated thus: living is a process that doesn't change your humanity, but you can become a corpse by living (a corpse is not a human), while being flash-frozen into an icicle won't stop you from being human.

Now, you're going to complain that dying is not a part of the process of living. Well you see, I'm going to turn this around on you and say that *retaining* the meat while someone is starving in front of you is not just. It doesn't matter whether the person gained the meat through just means. What matters is that any attempt to retain it is unjust. And this unjust means results in an unjust outcome: being able to lord it over someone who's starving to death.

> He did not earn it, luckily though, in all probability, he would get fed.

Not good enough. It's not good enough that "in all probability" he would get fed. It must be an absolute. And if you seriously don't see the injustice in this, then we have nothing more to say to each other because from my point of view you are morally corrupt.

By the way, there is absolutely no argument whatsoever, no justification whatsoever, no rationalization whatsoever, that you can make to say that you "earned" land. Or that you "earned" sunlight. Or that you "earned" air. Or that you "earned" language. Or that you "earned" our highly developed technological culture. And since you cannot have earned any of these things, and since ALL of them are inputs into getting that tonne of meat, you therefore, logically, cannot say that you earned that tonne of meat.

If you are genuinely curious about need then I suggest you study human rights. They come in a hierarchy of lesser and greater rights. The human right of the starving not to be exploited is far greater than the right to just hang onto some possessions. It's very different from ownership since it means, at a minimum, that the "owner" MUST sell and that they MUST sell at a reasonable price. Effectively, they can be expropriated.

Regarding responsibility, I suggest you study the countless cases where people are held not responsible for their actions. Let's start with children. We can pass through the intoxicated and get to the mentally handicapped. I don't think I should have to point this out.

As for your final example, it's a strawman. Money only has meaning within a society, and if a member of a society needs money for some clearly defined need then it should be the society as a whole that provides it (perhaps from the idle rich who are spending it on yachts) and not any individual person. But then, thinking about society as a whole is something egotists are not wont to do.

Ethan:

Regarding the selling of blood, aside from the fact that giving a monetary incentive for homeless people and criminals to give blood is a REALLY bad idea, the best possible "reward" for giving blood is the act itself and to a lesser extent recognition. The empirical research on motivation is quite solid and it all definitely points to the fact that providing monetary or any other kind of incentives destroys motivation. If you wish to review the research, you can read Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn.

What happens is that output (blood-giving) will go up in the short term but then it will backslide to either the previous level or to a lower level. As soon as you put a price on an activity, you're signaling that that price is the value of doing that thing. And that price is almost certainly not going to be enough to motivate people. So where before people were giving blood because it was "the gift of life" now people are going to give blood because it nets them 10$. And let me assure you that much fewer people are going to do it in the latter case.

Did any of the following ever occur to you?:

1. The potential number of people donating for money is more than the number of people donating for "the gift of life"?

2. The people donating for the "gift of life" would opt to not receive a cash reward.

3. The people donating for the "gift of life" would donate their cash reward to a charitable cause.

4. The people donating for the "gift of life" already receive incentives (material and sentimental) in the form of sweets, peer pressure, and knick-knacks (e.g. a shirt).

5. You are making HUUUGE assumptions which do not match up to reality.