Re: On Property Ownership -- LIFEBOAT

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Date Posted: 11:53:52 07/18/00 Tue
Author: SwimmingUpstream
Subject: Re: On Property Ownership
In reply to: OWK 's message, "Re: On Property Ownership" on 11:52:31 07/18/00 Tue

Dear OWK,

Thank you for posting the link to David Friedman's essay.

I hope you are not going to follow Mr. Friedman's path into the Great
Grimpen Mire.

I am bored to tears by intelligent persons like Mr. Friedman who, having
begun with a fairy tale (the State of Nature), and finding themselves
surrounded by a bevy of problems arising from the fairy tale, proceed to add
some falsehoods, and wind up with a PRACTICAL ACCOUNT of something.

Worse, at the end of the exhibition of mental legerdemain, we are given the
PRACTICAL ACCOUNT as an explanation (often included in a Preface) of why the
author has adopted an amoral viewpoint to begin with.

I could spend days levelling criticism at the essay, but I'll confine myself
to two points in hope that they will sufficiently express the thrust of my
criticism.

1) Mr. Friedman chooses to overlook a demonstrable fact that often proves
uncomfortable to strict Libertarians. This fact is that long before the road
that Mr. Friedman has put Man on began--something momentous happened --
socialization. By socialization I mean the development of a needed social
component occurred in certain creatures. We see the evidence of this
momentous occurence in Man, but it must have happened before Man arrived on
the scene (if one accepts some of the case for evolution). The evidence is
the manifest condition of infant humans -- their incapacities to survive
without a prolonged period of nurturing before their maturation is achieved.

This fact of socialization, besides highlighting the imbecility of the State
of Nature, accounts for much of what Mr. Friedman calls "acceptance" of
existing institutions (property rights among them). A "rationally deciding"
human has been habituated, accustomed, schooled, etc. in a way of living by
many years of life within a group that has developed norms, norms the bounds
of which the group acts to keep its members within by exercising an array of
social controls.

(How to account for changing norms? Intrusion into society by something
provides the answer.)

Mr. Friedman carefully avoids using the word that describes what happened in
actuality when property ownership came into full swing. The word is FORCE.
Instead of looking to the fairy tale and "contract", Mr. Friedman ought to
have looked at what actually occurred as the Agrarian Revolution got into
full swing. Planters discovered that cultivation produced a surplus of
wealth sufficient to the building and maintaining of armies -- armies with
which to keep slaves, armies with which to protect and expand land
ownership, armies of appropriation, etc.

Acceptance of the state of affairs by folks over time rests largely on a
wide foundation of personal desires. This brings me to my second point.

There is very little rational calculation of the sort described by Mr.
Friedman in day to day living. We accept things in large part because of the
habits, customs, schooling, etc. that we absorb on our way to maturity.

But even in those instances when calculation about adherence to "social
contract" (or social norms) occurs the range of factors affecting the
outcome of that decision is so wide that ascribing any scale-tipping weight
at all to economic concerns borders on the imbecilic. The melange includes
Valued Place and all that is associated with it, personalities (habit,
temperment, the successfulness of the society in accomplishing its tasks)
etc.

A key question is: Can society endure if it continues to allow the extending
of the lines of communication between leaders and led (and the alienation
that it is producing) that current "property rights" theory is making
possible? Or will the alienation and continuing loss of allegiance to the
project bring us to a point when we no longer "accept" the amoral status of
ownership -- and find ourselves in desperate need of a moral basis for
property ownership?

I suggest that the latter case is pressing hard upon us, and Mr. Friedman's
efforts are of doubtful utility under the circumstances.

Kindest Regards

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Replies:

Re: On Property Ownership -- OWK, 12:02:28 07/18/00 Tue
- Re: On Property Ownership -- SwimmingUpstream, 12:03:31 07/18/00 Tue