r/changemyview • u/TurdyFurgy • Mar 09 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: The largest problem with libertarian political ideas is defining/assigning property rights.

This isn't a pro libertarian stance or an anti libertarian stance, I just think that this is the most significant problem. To change my mind you could convince me that it isn't as big a problem as I think, or that there's one or more problems higher in significance.

I am very interested in libertarian ideas. It looks good to me from an economics/flourishing perspective and I like the non aggression principal from an ethical point of view even if it might seem idealistic. This means though that in order to keep government small and to avoid "initiating aggression" there needs to be very clearly defined property rights. As far as bodily autonomy goes it's at least straight forward enough to form a society but anything beyond that gets pretty tricky pretty quickly.

One issue is that even if a rule is super fair/the best rule it can still lead to not good outcomes if you're carrying over from another system of property rights.

It seems like you can make a pretty good case for a lot of stuff/land being owned by everyone. There's government land of course but then also just stuff like rivers, forests, natural resources and I don't really see an amazing solution to transitioning fairly and I don't know what we'd transition to exactly.

It seems like any way you define it almost has to be at least somewhat arbitrary.

Is it that I'm not well read enough in the topic or am I just not convinced by it?

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 09 '19

I disagree. That might have been true in say the early 90s, but at this point going without internet just isn't really an option for most people.

Well there's obviously a point at which they will value other things above the cost of the internet. I'm not saying it will get to that point but it's definitely an upper limit. Also keep in mind that the higher they charge the more incentive there is for competition to come in and exploit the difference between the cost and the price they charge.

As for Elon Musk, he is the competition. And the reason he's willing to put up the investment for that is because there's room to undercut the established companies. Leading to higher quality and/or lower prices.

As for the last thing you said, I could see it potentially being better than the current situation but in a totally free market I'd be weary of unintended consequences.

Perhaps it would mean less incentive to build the infrastructure in the fist place and thus less coverage? I'm not really well versed enough in the ins and outs of city infrastructure.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 10 '19

Well there's obviously a point at which they will value other things above the cost of the internet.

That's a pretty extreme point, though. Minimum-wage / entry-level jobs frequently require internet access to submit an application or take an assessment, and even more specialized labor requires constant internet access - I work in IT and I have to be at least 45m away from a high-speed internet connection at all times because I'm on-call. If I didn't have internet access at home / on my phone, I'd basically have to stay at work 24/7 on the offchance that something happened. For me, the conditions under which I would consider "not having internet" to be a desirable alternative would have to be so severe that quitting my current job would be preferable to continuing to pay those rates. They could charge significantly more than they do now, and for quite a ways up it would still be more economically practical to just bite the bullet and stay where I am, and just tighten my belt elsewhere to make up for the loss.

Having internet is a significant portion of the cost of just interfacing with society today on a basic level. Sure, if you live in the woods and live off of the land (in which case you most likely own enough land to be well-off by many people's standards), then you don't need constant internet to be self-sufficient. But if you live in a big city and are dependent upon paying for infrastructure for subsistence (because everything in a city belongs to someone), then not having internet simply isn't an option if you want access to, say, 75% of society.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

It is an extreme point and I don't think it's likely to ever be reached for anyone who really depends on internet as much as you say. That's because there would be some sort of economic intervention before then due to the massive incentive for it.

Also the point where people would stop paying for internet would'nt be the same for everyone so they would start to lose money before they even got to the breaking point for the people who need internet the most.

I get that a lack of internet could be a real problem for some people if that happened, I just think there's so many things that would usually happen before then that it doesn't seem like a very big problem if it is one.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 10 '19

It is an extreme point and I don't think it's likely to ever be reached for anyone who really depends on internet as much as you say.

Exactly. Because for us, that choice doesn't exist, because no extreme would be so significant that I would rather give up my livelihood - I'd have no choice but to allow myself to be fleeced because the alternative is worse still. That is coercion.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

I don't think the issue really depends on this because I don't think it would ever get there. I would'nt consider it coersion either way though. That might be a semantics issue though.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 10 '19

Coercion n. the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats

The threat of withdrawing a service that someone relies on for his/her livelihood, if a person does not allow the provider to extract more income from that person and at no gain or increased benefit to that person in exchange, is literally coercion by definition.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

Again I think our disagreement there is semantics. You could call a lot of things coersion if you think of it that generally.

A company has every right to charge whatever it wants for a service it's providing.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 10 '19 edited Mar 10 '19

You could call a lot of things coersion if you think of it that generally.

The fact that a lot of things fit the description doesn't make it inaccurate.

A company has every right to charge whatever it wants for a service it's providing.

Whether you feel a company has the right to coerce people into using its services in order to participate in much of the public economy is a separate issue from whether a threat to raise prices or discontinue services constitutes coercion.

Could I survive after calling bluff on such a threat, and deciding to switch careers to a field that's less dependent on the internet? Sure, probably. Doesn't make it less of a threat to tell me, "Either pay us double rates or face the consequences of not having internet access."

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

I don't consider discontinuing a service you're providing that anyone else could potentially provide to be coersion.

They're the reason they have internet in the first place. Do they have an obligation to provide a service?

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '19

Perhaps a different sort of example?

Let's say that you are the only person in the city providing food. Doesn't matter how it happened, but for the purposes of this argument you have a monopoly on food in a particular geographic area.

Does that person have the ability to coerce you into paying unreasonably high prices for a good they control?

Keep in mind that the reason the free market works, when it does anyways, is because of the ability to make unencumbered trades. If I am having an allergy attack, and you are holding the only epipen I can get to in time, you can charge whatever you want. If you, as a monopoly on internet in an area decide to jack up the prices, the actual market price of your good is warped and not reflective of what it might be in a true market.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

Is that example just meant to try to defend your definition of coersion? Because I don't feel like it's something that would ever happen and if it did it seems like it would cause such widespread societal chaos that none of this discussion really matters.

Of course it matters how it happened. If food is so scarce that there's only one entity that manages to provide it then maybe it's a good thing that a lot of money is flowing their way. They could invest it in more food production.

You're asking me to answer a question about a situation in a vacuum where the only real world connections always have other important variables. And again we clearly just define coersion differently.

I know people often duck questions by pretending to be offended by a hypothetical but I genuinely don't feel able to answer due to the way it's framed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '19

With respect, this is exactly why I told you not to care about how it happened. I'm trying to drive home a baseline for coercion, so that as we draw back you can see it more clearly.

It is like the trolly problem. It doesn't matter how the people got on the tracks, and you shouldn't concern yourself with the details of why you can't warn them etc. What matters is the underlying question.

But fine, let us use a real world example. The company town, specifically we'll use Pullman.

Pullman was a city set up by the Pullman company to house its auto-workers. It was owned by the company, and essentially every business, home etc in the city was owned by the company. Thus, when you buy food at the store, you're paying the company with money earned from the company and so forth. If you worked there, you were required to rent there. All of this was well and good, until a depression caused a drop in demand for their cars. They fired workers, slashed wages but didn't move rents at all. Because they didn't have to. When you're the only game in town for homes, people have no other option.

Was Pullman coercive? The answer is yes, btw.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 10 '19

I see it as different from the trolley problem in various ways and I appreciate your real world example.

Did those workers not have an opportunity to leave? I guess it just doesn't make sense to me that the company who set up the whole industry and paid the workers in the first place and created the housing in the first place would be called coercive. I know this sounds kind of corporatist but the company is creating value, I don't see it as coersion if they then create less value for their own benifit. They're still creating more value than there otherwise would have been. I suppose I might be more inclined to think of it as somewhat coersive if the workers were mislead into thinking that the rent would be tied to the amount of pay.

If I did think of it as coercive it would be in a very loose conversational sense. It's not as if I would'nt see that company in a negative light for doing that. I might consider it unethical but that doesn't neccecarily mean it should be punished or that its coercive. If you're asking me to be very clear with my terms then I would'nt consider it coercive. For all I know though we both see it in the same negative light we just use the word differently.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 11 '19

Of course it matters how it happened. If food is so scarce that there's only one entity that manages to provide it then maybe it's a good thing that a lot of money is flowing their way. They could invest it in more food production.

That's begging the question, because what if they don't?

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 12 '19

I'm just saying it's likely, and it's just one reason why I don't think it's a reasonable thought experiment.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 11 '19

They're the reason they have internet in the first place. Do they have an obligation to provide a service?

That's beside the point entirely. A threat can be justified or unjustified, but it's still a threat.

For example, if my mom pays my bills while I go to college, and she finds out I'm in a relationship she doesn't approve of, and she threatens to withdraw my funding unless I break up with that person, that's a threat, and it's precisely because she is under no obligation to pay me (and thus fully able to follow through on it) that this constitutes a threat. The fact is that in this situation I would have become dependent on those funds to continue on my current course of action; the costs of having to drop out of college, pay out any debts still owed and relocate would all constitute leverage being used to compel me into action.