Posted: Apr 07, 2014 3:15 am
Nicko wrote:Beatsong wrote:If you really want to consider wealth as "belonging" to an individual in an absolute sense, which is in no way subject to anything to do with society, then fine. All I have to do then is come along and steal all your wealth, and we don't have to have this conversation. Because of course you wouldn't dream of getting the police or judiciary involved, would you? That would just be SOCIETY telling me what do or don't have a right to own, and they've got no right to do that, have they?
You do realise he'd shoot you, don't you?
Nice post though. Particularly the criticism of US Libertarianism.
All property "rights" are based on force. Either individual force, in the form of a shotgun or spear or bow and arrow, or social force in the form of the police, courts, lawyers, deeds, titles of ownership and the entire apparatus of modern governance.
Of course society tells us what to do, what we can own, what we owe to fund the collective good, what we can expect in return from the collective. The only people I've ever seen arguing your strawman position are living in compounds out in the woods, waiting for the asteroid strike or Yellowstone eruption. They're the lunatic fringe, and their position is no more relevant to current Libertarian thought than Joe Stalin's musings are to U.S. Democrats or UK Laborites.
The points of contention are who decides what comprises the collective good and at what point the good of the many override the rights of the one. You draw your lines differently than I do. You think inherited wealth is bad, or if not actually "bad" than at least not so "good" as to insure it stays with the people it's willed to. You believe the collective has a better moral and ethical claim on that wealth than the hereditary beneficiaries. I disagree.