I don’t know what your second point is but I have never liked your first one.
The coercion or force is applied to both parties. The little guy is far more in need of the coercion to protect what he has than a rich guy who can hire an army. Once they both accept their need to protect what is theirs, the violence is then not about the property but about the violation of the agreement.
We can be sad about the consequences of the agreement ie poverty but criticizing property rights, which has brought more people out of poverty, sounds wrong.
I own myself. I sure hope the government punishes someone who hurts me.
Hey Dan! I definitely didn't intend this post to be a criticism of property rights. Actually, just the opposite. I'm trying to defend those rights against Hale, who was very critical of them.
I do think though, that almost all good things involve trade-offs. So, maybe property rights are coercive, depending on how exactly you want to define that concept. But that doesn't settle the moral issue. As you say, property rights have done an awful lot of good in the world. And the coercion involved is of a general and reciprocal sort. So to my moral reckoning, that's probably a fair price to pay for all of the benefits they bring.
I don’t know what your second point is but I have never liked your first one.
The coercion or force is applied to both parties. The little guy is far more in need of the coercion to protect what he has than a rich guy who can hire an army. Once they both accept their need to protect what is theirs, the violence is then not about the property but about the violation of the agreement.
We can be sad about the consequences of the agreement ie poverty but criticizing property rights, which has brought more people out of poverty, sounds wrong.
I own myself. I sure hope the government punishes someone who hurts me.
Hey Dan! I definitely didn't intend this post to be a criticism of property rights. Actually, just the opposite. I'm trying to defend those rights against Hale, who was very critical of them.
I do think though, that almost all good things involve trade-offs. So, maybe property rights are coercive, depending on how exactly you want to define that concept. But that doesn't settle the moral issue. As you say, property rights have done an awful lot of good in the world. And the coercion involved is of a general and reciprocal sort. So to my moral reckoning, that's probably a fair price to pay for all of the benefits they bring.