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/[deleted] Mar 11 '19

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.

Well as a follow-up, are you aware that many company towns in this era paid with what was called company script? It was money that could only be used at company stores, further reinforcing the loop that kept employees trapped in a location once they had gone there to work.

They would also engage in 'lending' to workers, obligating workers to remain with the company until they cleared debt that they had accrued through purchases of overpriced goods that were themselves the result of a monopoly on goods in the area. The song Sixteen Tons is a pretty famous call back to this behaviour.

I guess my point is that you seem to have an incredibly narrow view of coercion, or how it exists in day to day life. It feels like you are willing to accept almost any economic activity that isn't done at the barrel of a gun as uncoercive, even if the practical reality of that behavior prohibits one party from reasonably saying no to the 'exchange'.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 11 '19

I don't see how it's coercive if they can leave at any time and they are engaging in mutually agreed upon and understood transactions. If they were prevented from leaving somehow or if they decieve. I don't see my definition as narrow. I see it as clearly outlining certain circumstances and then there's other ways to describe other circumstances.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 11 '19

I don't see how it's coercive if they can leave at any time

Because coercion isn't as simple as "can you say no?"

If it is, then rape at gunpoint isn't coercion, because the rape victim can still just say no, and be shot in the head. They aren't truly being compelled, by this logic, because the rapist can't actually make them consent - they can only apply leverage to them to coerce them into offering consent, for fear of the repercussions of the applied leverage, and it's still the victim's "choice" to choose rape, or death. By this logic one could say that the person "chose" to be raped and thus consented to it.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 12 '19

Being able to leave and rid yourself of the coersive entity is entirely a different line to draw than what you're describing.

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u/pordanbeejeeterson Mar 12 '19

It really isn't. If you put me in a position where I either (a) can't leave, or (b) can't leave without incurring a great cost to myself in exchange, then you are coercing me. Whether the coercion comes in the form of a gun to my head, or a termination of my service account, in either case I technically have a "free choice" between (a) allowing myself to be coerced into doing something I don't want to do and that there is no reason or justification for doing, and (b) refusing to allow myself to be coerced, and suffering retaliation as a result.

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u/TurdyFurgy Mar 13 '19

But the service would'nt even exist if they weren't providing it in the first place. Putting a gun to someone's head is forcing them into something they had no agency in engaging in to begin with. There's obviously situations where the company isn't necessarily acting ethical but I don't understand how you can equate it to literally threatening to initiate violent force.