{"id":2491,"date":"2002-06-01T15:49:52","date_gmt":"2002-06-01T15:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2002-06-01T15:49:52","modified_gmt":"2002-06-01T15:49:52","slug":"damn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2491","title":{"rendered":"DAMN"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep wanting to write about sexy, controversial issues which will provoke wildfires of argument and commentary (after all, why else do this?), and keep getting sidetracked into what I know are relatively arcane issues \u0096 which I find to be absolutely critical and fascinating \u0096 and which I just can\u0092t help but write about.
\nChris Bertram (who I have complimented before) has another great discussion<\/a>, this time on the flaws in libertarianism.
\nI have always felt that libertarianism was an interesting thought experiment (gedankenexperiment<\/i>, as my old physics teachers used to say), on a class with Schroedenger\u0092s cat<\/a>. To be honest, I\u0092ve also thought that Rawlsean liberalism was the mirror image of it, in terms of being the product of a bunch of smart, well intentioned kids sitting around with too much pilsner and pizza and trying to design a society.
\nIn his terrific post, Bertram points out a key flaw in libertarian theory \u0096 which is that the absolute property rights created will need at some point to be adjudicated.
\nIt\u0092s a great point, but I don\u0092t think he went quite far enough, so I want to take it and run a little further.
\nWhat, exactly, is<\/b> property?
\nThe \u0093law for dummies\u0094 version is that property is something which you control, can dispose of as you see fit, can transfer the ownership of, and can deny the use of to another.
\nTo which I add: Who says?
\nWell, in the old days, I did. By the force of arms. (i.e. I would either kill you and take your stuff, or threaten to kill you and you would then give me your stuff).
\nTo condense two entire disciplines (sociology and anthropology) into some bullet points, we began to form increasingly complex kinship and then social groups, in no small part because we needed enough people by our side to keep the group over the hill from coming and taking all our stuff.
\nIn these groups, often, the strongest took command, and could basically decide what stuff he wanted, restrained only by the fact that if he took too much stuff, the weaker members would gang up on him and take all his<\/u> stuff.
\nSometime around the beginning of the Enlightenment, the concept that everyone in society was subject to the rule of law\u0085that it was not just the diktat of the strongest\u0085began to gain currency. And as a part of that the concept of \u0093ownership\u0094 came to the fore.
\nThis meant that what you owned \u0096 your property \u0096 was yours independent of the say-so of the king, or the local powers-that-be. It was not \u0093granted\u0094 to you by the Queen.
\nAnd, I will also argue (in this kind of cartoon fashion), that creation \u0096 of marketable, private property \u0096 is what led to capitalism, industrialization, and all the material progress that culminates with a college freshman surfing the web for fart jokes.
\nBut in order to do that, we have to have a concept of \u0091property\u0092 which is both absolute, in that we have clear mechanisms to determine and enforce ownership, and flexible, in that we have to adapt the definitions of property to current social conditions.
\nWe are living through an adaptation now as intellectual property in the form of movies and music is suddenly readily transferable (and changeable \u0096 the \u0091remixed\u0092 Star Wars Episode I.II<\/a> is out on DVD).
\nSo the reality is that property is a socially defined right; there are significant issues in how it is defined, and I will claim that the \u0091best\u0092 definitions require a healthy tension between the utility and fairness of individual control and the utility and fairness of a well-functioning society.
\nIn my mind, this alone puts paid to the libertarian absolutism of property relations as the controlling element in social relations. Reality is, as always, surprisingly complex. And people are even more complex than that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep wanting to write about sexy, controversial issues which will provoke wildfires of argument and commentary (after all, why else do this?), and keep getting sidetracked into what I know are relatively arcane issues \u0096 which I find to be absolutely critical and fascinating \u0096 and which I just can\u0092t help but write about. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}