Can I please borrow your toothbrush?

Yesterday, the Rob Waller’s twitter experiments pushed the announcement of Tom Borroughs talk on the Intellectual Property dilemma into the twitterverse. Marmaduke Dando, singer and distant associate of this parish tweeted back:

@RobDWaller @LibertarianHome Accept property in general is a construct, and there will be no dilemma over intellectual property

— Marmaduke Dando (@marmadukedando) March 20, 2012

Twitter can be a bear pit at the best of times, and I stayed away from attempting to comprehensively detail my points and best my opponent using 140 character soundbites. Marmaduke has proved, however, that he is a worthy opponent and I hope our intellectual duel may continue here. You can call it a tactical retreat if you wish, this is indeed Home turf, but I stand by my pre-emptive excuses.

Calling property a construct or an illusion is not sufficient to win an argument. The idea that it is an illusion must be something that can be lived by consistently and with integrity, and Marmaduke’s own tweets reveal that it cannot.

I had challenged Mr Dando to lend me his toothbrush, because I assume he owns one and I further assumed (correctly, I detect) that he feels a sense of ownership over it, that is, he would not readily give up such a personal item for uses that may not be entirely hygienic from his perspective. Of course, Marmaduke protests that of course he would give it up if he felt that my needs warranted sharing his toothbrush with me. My invented scenario that I wanted to be away from home and therefore needed his toothbrush was deemed to be insufficient. Of course, I thoroughly support Marmaduke’s right to tell me where to go over his toothbrush but I protest that when he admitted that my right to his toothbrush was contingent upon the context and subject to his consent, then he is making a claim to a right of witholding that consent. That claim of witholding consent is exactly a claim to a property right. A right to control his own toothbrush.

This may seem like a trivial scenario, but I selected it carefully. You might think that I conceded too much ground by pretending that I merely wanted to be away from home, but people have won this same argument on a much grander scale having conceded the very same ground, and I protest that they should not have won that argument for the same reasons Marmaduke should not have given me his toothbrush.

When a barren woman asks the NHS for fertility treatment, or a poor woman votes in favour of child benefits they rarely are able to claim that they need to have a child. In most cases they want to have a child but cannot afford to do it in their circumstances. They cannot afford to pay for assistance with conception or they cannot afford to feed the child, it doesn’t matter which, the child may be a huge value to them but it is not essential to their survival. I certainly do sympathise with anyone who finds themselves in this scenario, but the honest rational truth is they they would not have met the Marmaduke Dando Test of being “cold and starving”, at least not before choosing to have the child. They would not have been given the singers toothbrush and do not deserve our shilling.

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March 21, 2012

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44 responses to “Can I please borrow your toothbrush?”

Paul C

March 21, 2012 at 8:14 am

An interesting take on it…

But I feel I must disagree with your point that “the child may be a huge value to them but it is not essential to their survival”. It’s maybe taking a leap too far, but isn’t one of the most basic human (and animal) instincts the desire to ensure the survival of our bloodline / genetic code through children, i.e. therefore ensuring their “survival” through their descendants? That’s potentially arguable as a deep psychological “need” rather than a “want” in a large amount of people and is essential to their sense of worth and mental wellbeing.

However, I’m torn, as I disagree with you regarding assistance with conception – I think that should be available to help those unfortunate people – but agree with you as regards being able to afford to feed their child can only having them if they can. Which is contradictory of me, I know. But, hey, I’m an enigma.

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1. Simon Gibbs
  
  March 21, 2012 at 8:31 am
  
  The conflict arises, and always will arise, from using need as the standard in your moral code. If you use positive values then everything is clearer.
  
  The value to be pursued here is life, very clearly, and that is the ultimate basic value. I’m also much more sympathetic about helping people conceive as it is a one off intervention and the cause of undeserved suffering. Helping people feed a baby long term is not a one off intervention, it’s a mortgage on the lives of people who are guilty of nothing except being more successful than them and it’s much less clear that the parents are suffering undeservedly.
  
  So, we are both happy to help with conception because there is a life being created without any other ugly downsides. But the point I was making was much narrower, that generally people to expect to have property rights even if they claim the opposite. Deep down in human psychology (and that of some animals as well) there is this important notion of property. It is conceptual yes, but it is not an illusion because life without property rights quickly gets ugly.
  
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Paul Marks

March 21, 2012 at 8:22 am

The people who call property a “construct” are not always collectivists (they may just be hard core anti natural law types – people who regard all principles, including being opposed to murder and rape as well as robbery, as “constructs”). However, calling property a construct is indeed an old collectivist trick.

The next stage would be to say that “we” create this “construct” for certain purposes….

Then comes the claim that property (especially private property in land) does not serve these good purposes (perhaps never did – or perhaps did once, but no longer for XYZ reasons) so “we” should…..

So, hey presto, robbery is no longer robbery. And murder (should property owners resist being robbed) is no longer murder – indeed “we” are only using defensive force to gain what we need from the false “proprietors”.

Again – this is an old trick, but quite an effective one.

Last point – some of the people who use this trick call themselves “libertarians”.

That is part of a different tactic – the trick known as using a “false flag” (also a very old tactic).

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Sardo Numspa

March 21, 2012 at 10:57 am

Is this the same Maramaduke Dando who owned the The Reefs Beach Club? (according to Wikipedia)

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1. Simon Gibbs
  
  March 21, 2012 at 11:10 am
  
  Maybe, does his former ownership of a Beach Club invalidate his arguments any differently than his claim to control his toothbrush?
  
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  1. Sardo Numspa
    
    March 22, 2012 at 9:22 pm
    
    Yes I believe it does. Most Left Libs and Anarchists have no problem with personal property (the category to which a toothbrush belongs), it’s private property they disagree with (the category to which a beach club belongs).
    
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  2. Sardo Numspa
    
    March 22, 2012 at 9:34 pm
    
    Well….it would if it wasn’t his pirate ancestor who in fact owned the beach house.
    
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  3. Simon Gibbs
    
    March 28, 2012 at 10:28 am
    
    How is the instinct to protect control of a toothbrush any different from the instinct to protect one’s investment in a beach club?
    
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Richard Carey

March 21, 2012 at 11:40 am

“All property is a construct”

Sounds like teenage existentialism.

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Marmaduke Dando

March 21, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Hi all, good to have a debate over this matter. I had hoped to further this debate in person by coming to the next meet up on the 5th, but alas I’m otherwise engaged that night. So here we are instead.

Simon, you accuse me of feeling a natural sense of ownership over my toothbrush, despite me making the statement that property is a construct. I wasn’t expecting to be interpreted this way, so let me just clarify. I do not own the toothbrush. You are quite free to take my toothbrush and use it, even after hearing my argument that you don’t need it, admitting yourself that it would cause me unnecessary discomfort, and the fact that you could quite easily wait until you returned home, or buy yourself another toothbrush in the meantime. There is no compelling argument for you to share my toothbrush. It would be regrettable, and unscrupulous of you, if after hearing me, you proceed to use my toothbrush.

I maintain that this is an issue of need rather than want. Let us take another example, one of land rights. Land after all, provides all that sustains not only human, but all life.

There is a desert island, with just one river that is the only source of clean drinking and irrigation water. You arrive on the island first and on a tour of the island to survey the resources, you find that you’re completely alone. Alone, except for myriad other species. You decide to claim ownership of all the fertile land along every inch of the river, not that you’d need to, given that there’s no one else around, but let’s just say you felt the need. Suddenly, I am washed ashore, disorientated and desperate for a drink. In order to drink however, I have to cross the land that you “own” . There is no other option for me than to petition you to allow me entry to your land. What happens in this situation?

From an objective perspective, I would claim that neither of us own the land on this island. We both need resources on it in order to sustain the necessities of life, and by staking exclusive rights over any portion of it, reduces the freedom of the other. Through social negotiation we can come to an agreement over how to share and meet our basic needs.

What is the argument against this?

I would like to state here, that this is a work in progress. I do not claim to have a water tight argument, but I am working towards this, by engaging in debate.

Enlighten me.

Ps, I am a descendant of the original Marmaduke Dando that owned a guest house in Bermuda…after a stint of piracy I might add.

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1. Rob Waller
  
  March 21, 2012 at 4:24 pm
  
  Within the property concept there is the principle of ‘What you can defend’. There is no way a single man could defend a whole island by himself. As such he could only legitimately lay claim to the small portion he can realistically defend. This is why many Libertarians believe in the right to bear arms.
  
  So you could land on the island and lay claim to a small parcel of land you can realistically defend.
  
  It would be a different matter if the man, after discovering the island, decided to import labour to defend his land. But even then he’d probably have to accept the loss of some land in return for others defending his land.
  
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2. Richard Carey
  
  March 21, 2012 at 4:28 pm
  
  “Alone, except for myriad other species. You decide to claim ownership of all the fertile land along every inch of the river, not that you’d need to, given that there’s no one else around, but let’s just say you felt the need. ”
  
  What you describe here is not a legitimate claim to ownership, according to Lockean natural rights, which are based on mixing one’s labour with nature, and it is this original appropriation, not be declaration but by action, which bestows ownership.
  
  Therefore in the situation you describe, the late-comer is under no obligation to accept the first arriver’s claim of ownership.
  
  However, the case would be different is this particular desert island is inhabited and developed. Now, if a man washes up in need of a glass of water, then he will be obliged to ask for it, just the same as if someone turns up on your doorstep asking for a glass of water. Such a person does not have a right to take it without consent or by force.
  
  The morality of the issue is separate from the issue of property. We may all agree that if someone is in dire need of aid and we can give that aid then we certainly should do so. This is a matter of morality. But it is very different to say that someone can take what they want from anyone else because they “need it”.
  
  Returning to your argument:
  
  “From an objective perspective, I would claim that neither of us own the land on this island. We both need resources on it in order to sustain the necessities of life, and by staking exclusive rights over any portion of it, reduces the freedom of the other. Through social negotiation we can come to an agreement over how to share and meet our basic needs. ”
  
  If you say that the two people need resources to survive, that would mean that both people must take these resources and transform and / or consume them. Such things demonstrate ownership, so you cannot then say that neither of the people owns anything – their actions belie this.
  
  “Through social negotiation we can come to an agreement over how to share and meet our basic needs.”
  
  Yes indeed, hopefully through peaceful means, each person respects the property of the other, and accepts the fundamental rationalism that each will gain more through the division of labour and working in peaceful co-operation with each other, than through working in isolation.
  
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  1. Marmaduke Dando
    
    March 22, 2012 at 6:40 pm
    
    Thanks for taking the time to reply.
    
    We seem to be wanting individuals to arrive at the same ends, i.e. fair distribution of natural resources in order to provide sustenance to the individual and his or her family, but have different methods of getting there.
    
    On this scale, a few small individuals, ownership looks fine, if one man tills a plot of land, and another tills the adjacent plot, there’s not much friction to get alarmed about.
    
    However, scale this up, to a scenario like Rob suggests, where the one man makes a claim to a larger portion he can’t defend alone and so brings in external help to do so, perhaps police guaranteed by the state, perhaps private security, and the argument of property becomes less attractive.
    
    How do you deal with a corporation that claims ownership over a portion of land that communities have had access rights to for centuries? After all, when it starts to exploit the resources within the boundaries of its property, the results are not going to be benign.
    
    Or would you claim that the corporation has been sold land by a government that has no right to sell it in the first place…the indigenous communities technically own the land, given that they have worked it in some form or another?
    
    Is the conclusion, remove government and ownership can work as well in practice as it does in theory?
    
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  2. Simon Gibbs
    
    March 22, 2012 at 9:54 pm
    
    Ownership is certainly implied by the act of working the land, so from a moral perspective sure the indigenous people have the better claim. What is the case politically depends on the institutions dominant at the time and in the jurisdiction concerned. If the dominant ideas are “whatver is best for the common good” then the corporation will win with political help. If the dominant idea is “I have the right to work land, the function of politics is to protect that right” then the politicians will be unable to get away with doing any other than protecting the individuals with the better claim. The size of government is actually secondary, a government of one judge could work very well as long as the other systems at work in the culture are adequate.
    
    As to the desired end, that is (imho) that individual rights enjoy maximim protection and the rest is up to them.
    
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  3. Marmaduke Dando
    
    March 27, 2012 at 3:54 pm
    
    How can the indigenous people have a better claim purely from a moral perspective, if we agree that they were there first, and they have mixed their labour with the land? If I am correct in understanding what it is you define as ownership, then they are the only true claimants to that land, the issue of morality aside.
    
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  4. Simon Gibbs
    
    March 27, 2012 at 4:07 pm
    
    I make no distinction between moral and true, as long as the context allows me to lay claim to my own (broadly objectivist) definition of the latter. I do make a distinction between what is true and what is recognised politically, certainly when silly ideas abound in the culture that permit silly people to be in charge.
    
    If silly ideas like “the common good” dominate then a political institution might just award the land to someone else because it wants to, then attach an official sounding label to their theft, like “eminent domain” or “compulsory purchase” or whatever.
    
    So, do not lay to one side the issue of morality. Morality is what makes indigenous people “true owners”, not what judges say.
    
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  5. Richard Carey
    
    March 22, 2012 at 11:45 pm
    
    “We seem to be wanting individuals to arrive at the same ends, i.e. fair distribution of natural resources in order to provide sustenance to the individual and his or her family, but have different methods of getting there. ”
    
    I’m not sure that is the case. It is not so much to arrive at a fair distribution, but rather to have a system which establishes the rules of ownership, so that people can live in harmony with one another. One part of this is to give recompense to someone who is robbed. If I steal your watch and sell it to a third person, the watch is still rightfully yours, no matter if the third person is wholly innocent.
    
    I think it’s necessary to say that the Lockean ‘labour theory of ownership’ as I’ve attempted to lay out (i.e. by mixing one’s labour with nature, you demonstrate ownership) is not supposed to explain how land has actually been divided up throughout history, which has a lot more to do with fire and the sword, but rather to establish the ethical basis upon which a property right is founded. (N.B. this has nothing to do with the labour theory of *value*!)
    
    Libertarianism, at least for the natural rights people, proceeds from the first principle of self-ownership. If it is accepted that you own yourself, then you own your labour and the fruits of your labour. Taking the latter literally, it is the act of picking the fruit from the tree that makes the fruit your own – provided it is not someone else’s fruit tree. Everything which is not owned, is in a state of nature, thus unowned and free to the first user. The same applies to taking a piece of unowned land and transforming it by labour.
    
    In our modern, developed nation, with a legal system that doesn’t conform to libertarian ethics, there are limited opportunities, to say the least, for applying the above literally, but your labour is still your own and the fruits, now largely metaphorical are still yours also, to sell, to keep or to give away as you see fit.
    
    It must be said, not all libertarians by any means subscribe to such views. In which case they will most likely take a utilitarian view on property, that natural rights is ‘nonsense on stilts’, as Jeremy Bentham said, and that private property is demonstrably the best system of organisation, without any need to bolster the argument. Natural rightists would counter that utilitarianism alone is not a sturdy enough foundation for libertarian principles.
    
    How these principles apply in cases such as a tribe in the Amazon getting driven off their land by a mining company, which has backing from the state, is that the natural right libertarian must (surely?) support the prior claim of the tribe as being rightful. This does not necessarily help the tribe much, if the state has all the guns.
    
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  6. Marmaduke Dando
    
    March 27, 2012 at 4:22 pm
    
    Excuse me for making the assumption that we want the same ends.
    
    I’d like to take another example, to test what your reaction to it is.
    
    A non-agrarian based group, which are few and far between these days though still just about in existence, do not mix their labour with nature. Instead, they are nomadic, moving between a number of various sites over many years, and take the fruits of nature as they go. They have been doing this for centuries if not millennia. Indeed, the whole of humanity lived in this way for 99% of their time on Earth.
    
    Is it your opinion that they do not have the right to continue in this way, simply because they do not conform to a sedentary form of living? That anyone should be free to enter one of the many locations that they frequent amd start to farm, claim ownership and then bar access to all?
    
    I would also like to understand what the argument against a rights based system is. A system that does not recognise property as you describe it, but instead establishes rights of access to common resources, such as land and all that that it implies.
    
    Thank you for your continued engagement.
    
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  7. Richard Carey
    
    March 27, 2012 at 7:59 pm
    
    Regarding primitive tribes, I’m inclined to leave them alone and consider that they do have a claim on the land they inhabit, but we should not romanticise their harsh existence, or try to keep them in their present state as some kind of human zoo. (I’m not attributing such sentiments to yourself btw). If we’re talking about a mining company which wants to move in and poison all the fish, naturally my sentiments will be with the guys with the blow-pipes and hallucinogenic rituals. If it’s some poor peasant wanting to build himself a log cabin and grow a few plaintains, it might be different.
    
    I think I should say that the above is an extreme situation, i.e., not one that we usually face, and it would not invalidate the principle of private property as the basis of law in our society.
    
    “I would also like to understand what the argument against a rights based system is.”
    
    I am not arguing against a rights based system, but in favour of a system at the centre of which is the principle that we are free and sovereign of ourselves, that is what ownership means. It is from this, which others would a call a ‘human right’, that our ownership of property derives, being the fruit of our labour, which we also naturally own.
    
    “A system that does not recognise property as you describe it, but instead establishes rights of access to common resources, such as land and all that that it implies.”
    
    One problem with this, is that the system needs a state to enforce it, to claim overlordship of all the land. Such a power will inevitably be a danger to everyone’s liberty, and there is no guarantee that the power will be used wisely or righteously.
    
    Unless of course we first make men angels. The system of natural law, in contrast, does not require an over-arching apparatus to exist, because it relates to settling matters between individuals, rather than between individuals and the collective, or at least, this is how it seems to me.
    
    Another problem is, as long as there’s scarcity, it will be necessary to economise with limited resources. Alas, ‘the Tragedy of the Commons’ strikes. I.e., no one has an incentive to conserve, preserve or maintain land which is open to all. If everyone can go and chop down a tree, then we better go quick and chop down as many as we can, before somebody else does.
    
    Thank you yourself.
    
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  8. Marmaduke Dando
    
    March 28, 2012 at 9:04 am
    
    I agree, there is a danger that a rights based system would require an over-arching system of government in order to enforce it, which is not desirable. But, I’m not entirely sold on that. Not that this is an excuse for a rights based system, but does ownership not require an over-arching system, of government perhaps, in order to recognise and enforce property rights?
    
    As for the Tragedy of the Commons, as I see it, it’s an assumption that a group of individuals do not communicate and have no interest in negotiation, which is highly unlikely. I believe that individuals will, do, and have, come to agreements on how best to manage common resources, when left to their own devices.
    
    The best way to push the agenda of enclosure and private property however, is to undermine the commons by doing exactly as you say. If one unscrupulous outsider, who has an eventual vested interest in enclosure, were to cut more trees or put more animals out to graze than generally agreed by the community that uses the commons, it will appear (if evidence is hard to come by), that there is indeed a Tragedy of the Commons. A self fulfilling prophecy in other words.
    
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  9. Richard Carey
    
    March 28, 2012 at 7:16 pm
    
    If you think of the phrase ‘free-for-all’, it suggests you’ve got to grab what you can before someone else has it. To what extent the recognition of human nature implies a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, you may be the judge. Certainly, if people think this is how other people see it, they are likely to act accordingly.
    
    “I believe that individuals will, do, and have, come to agreements on how best to manage common resources”
    
    I would say private property IS such an agreement, grounded in human nature and the principle of individual freedom, and that it is, empirically speaking, the best system of agreement.
    
    I would also say ‘common ownership’ could be interpreted in different ways, some of which would resemble private property, but with multiple, joint owners, who have a certain, defined stake and who exclude outsiders from helping themselves.
    
    “does ownership not require an over-arching system, of government perhaps, in order to recognise and enforce property rights?”
    
    It’s hard to say. We seem to get lumbered with governments one way or another. I certainly think that the law would be simpler, less convoluted, less filled with regulations, if it were based solidly on the principle of individual sovereignty over oneself and one’s lawfully-held property, and the non-aggression preinciple, i.e. the prohibition on initiating or threatening violence against another’s person or property, and that the rest of the law was deducted consistently from these principles, whereas the law as it stands, does recognise the above, but the state claims it’s own exemptions and impinges everywhere on the individual in the name of the common good – in the law itself, I don’t mean in their actions alone.
    
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Marmaduke Dando

March 21, 2012 at 1:12 pm

How on earth you expect to convince anyone by belittling them, is beyond me.

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Rob Waller

March 21, 2012 at 2:20 pm

As far as I’m concerned Mr Marmaduke is a top bloke and a good friend. He has genuine concerns around intellectual property — as I do.

And he is right, on some levels property is a construct but that is not to say it isn’t a reasonable and decent construct.

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1. Rob Waller
  
  March 21, 2012 at 2:22 pm
  
  Also I suggest we give Dan a right to reply on this site if he wants to — it’s only fair.
  
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  1. Simon Gibbs
    
    March 21, 2012 at 3:43 pm
    
    @Rob I’m open to that
    @Richard behave!
    
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Ed Lord

March 29, 2012 at 10:06 am

This debate has descended into cold dry male academic obscurity…. however back in the real world…. property remains an illusion. Like so many illusions it impinges on our sanity daily in very concrete ways.

Take a brief tour through archaeology, anthropology, geography and numerous other disciplines and you will find that the consensus is that pre-civilization there was no concept for private property. There was also no concept of work, hierarchy or patriarchy….. but that will push you male right wingers beyond the boundaries of your comfortable paradigm.

Myself and Marmaduke do indeed ‘own’ property, hey why not discount our opinions for this ‘hypocrisy’… just see how quickly we end up in jail as soon as we radically dispel the property illusion. The consequences demonstrate how scared the dominant paradigm is of this illusion becoming widely apparent.

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1. Mises
  
  March 29, 2012 at 11:21 am
  
  “cold dry male academic obscurity”
  
  I see, you want to see a picture.
  
  Pre-civilisation there was also no concept of rape. I guess you’d follow our wise old ancestors on that one also.
  
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  1. Simon Gibbs
    
    March 29, 2012 at 11:48 am
    
    Ed, Mises: Please do not offset dry academic discussion with personalised nastiness. This is supposed be a fun and friendly discussion.
    
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  2. Mises
    
    March 29, 2012 at 12:15 pm
    
    He started it! *wails*
    
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  3. Ed Lord
    
    March 29, 2012 at 11:59 am
    
    Thanks for the simplistic graphic. How nice to have academic abstractions laid out using basic stick men and logos…. Makes a few assumptions (or abstractions) about time, work and property.
    
    Past, present and future… hmm… how about just a capacious present, without the clock time enforced externally on our free will and liberty.
    
    Work… oh you mean the forced renunciation of free will and liberty to produce something?… kind of like slavery, but with wages to pay to someone who ‘owns’ more ‘property’ than I do… oh so just the same a slavery then.
    
    Rape….. a function of patriarchy (or male ‘ownership’ of female ‘property’ to put it another way). May I direct you to the extensive feminist literature on rape which will illuminate far more than I can.
    
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  4. Mises
    
    March 29, 2012 at 12:14 pm
    
    “…how about just a capacious present, without the clock time enforced externally on our free will and liberty”
    
    Now you’re against causality!? That’s too abstract for me I’m afraid, you win.
    
    You seem to be blaming the concept of property for just about everything, but the libertarian concept of property is very much more restricted than that operating out in the real world. It’s understandable how abuse of the term property to legitimate force gives property a bad name, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!
    
    For work read “trade”, which is the major cause of human prosperity over and above that of animals. It’s all voluntary and if you think you’re not getting your just desserts join a union.
    
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  5. Ed Lord
    
    March 29, 2012 at 12:28 pm
    
    I don’t believe we are over and above animals. We are animals. The attempt to become ‘other’ than animals has brought us to this point of overpopulation, environmental degradation and mass psychic immiseration.
    
    You want to keep the debate narrow, but that is much of the problem – ignoring wide context.
    
    ‘Trade’…. imposed division of labour by any other name, even if I am getting a ‘fair’ wage for it. Why can’t I spend my time amidst men, women, babies, children, older people.. the full spectrum? Our ‘trades’ and ‘functions’ separate us into ghettos and stunt empathy
    
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  6. Mises
    
    March 29, 2012 at 12:36 pm
    
    I’m a very clever animal but that wasn’t my point, only that we are more prosperous than animals. As for the overpopulation, native birth rates in developed countries don’t support population maintenance, let alone growth. Growth will slow down in developing countries as they become more developed, we may then find ourselves with the opposite problem.
    
    As for the division of labour malarky, the key word is voluntary: you don’t have to learn a trade and work, you could go and live in the forest. I shall refrain from elaborating on this point.
    
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  7. Richard Carey
    
    March 29, 2012 at 8:24 pm
    
    Ed,
    
    if I may ‘coerce’ you out of your reverie for a moment, is there anything practical that we can do with this knowledge you impart?
    
    You say the world is massively over-populated. You imply that civilisation is a terrible thing (or else an ‘illusion’, perhaps). You say we should never have tried to be better than brute animals.
    
    What exactly are you proposing?
    
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Ed Lord

March 29, 2012 at 12:54 pm

I am coerced into doing a trade by industrial civilisation. How can I go and live in the woods when most have been devastated by said industrialisation and the remainder are ‘owned’ as property. You appear to be falling into Hobbesian assumptions about ‘developing’ the ‘brutal short lives of the savages’, when it comes to discussion of population. Step outside the myth of progress and see what is really going on.

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1. Mises
  
  March 29, 2012 at 1:13 pm
  
  You are not coerced, your options are limited and there is a difference. Coercion is very clear and personal but limited choice is the result of objective facts about the world. Overpopulation may be responsible for lack of forests, but as I’ve mentioned that problem has a solution, I’d suggest economic development* but returning to a hunter-gatherer paradigm would also work since most people would starve; it is agriculture after all that has boosted the population so much and thereby destroyed the forests.
  
  * That is they seem to be choosing economic development, it is of course none of my business if people choose to live in forests.
  
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2. Simon Gibbs
  
  March 29, 2012 at 2:25 pm
  
  Ed, you seem to have abandoned causation, which logically puts you beyond persuasion as most people would attempt to employ causation to disprove you. I’m therefore skeptical (no pun intended) about the future of this debate.
  
  However, you’ve made the same basic error I talked about on this morning’s post of attempting to design policy measures to enable choices that most would simply assume to be impossible due to the circumstances, and then expecting others to carry the burden.
  
  Sorry mate, but it’s just your bad luck to have been born in a world where there isn’t enough room for everyone to live in a forest!
  
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  1. Ed Lord
    
    March 30, 2012 at 11:26 am
    
    You accuse me of abandoning causation, but you are unwilling to discuss origins or any larger contextual issues such as division of labour or patriarchy. If you did look honestly at causation you would see that property and ownership are a construct imposed by a particular mode of living that emerged within the last 1 per cent of our species time on earth. To believe in a capacious present is merely a cognitively different way of approaching causality than seeing everything in the linear.
    
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  2. Richard Carey
    
    March 30, 2012 at 12:27 pm
    
    The benefits of the division of labour come from the rational realisation that people working together can achieve more per person than people working alone. You, who claim to believe in the communal, should be able to grasp this.
    
    You talk about the last 1 per cent of our species time on earth. You seem angry at the species for working out how to prosper, rather than scratching a bare existence from nature, wandering around stark naked and hiding up trees from predatory beasts. You are free to reject all progress from our caveman roots on some intellectual level, even though of course you enjoy the benefits as much as anyone else does. If we went back to the kind of ‘state of nature’ that you seem to want, you will recognise that the vast majority of us would starve to death. This may be gratifying to you, but you can surely understand why not everyone shares your desire for a mass species die-off.
    
    “If you did look honestly at causation you would see that property and ownership are a construct imposed by a particular mode of living”
    
    You are not approaching these issues from the same stand-point. You are seeking in the murky depths of the past some kind of origin. However, property and ownership can be deduced from pure logic, irrespective of what archeologists discover in Rift Valley caves. If you had not passed over the ‘dry, obscure, male academic’ debate above, you may have picked up on this difference.
    
    As for patriarchy, surely you, who believes we are no different and no better than animals, can find the same behaviour in our fellow creatures? Why would you expect it to be different for us than it is for the lion and the dog?
    
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  3. Mises
    
    March 30, 2012 at 2:38 pm
    
    Really, “to believe in a capacious present” is entirely without meaning, it’s just an abuse of language.
    
    Libertarian property is nothing but a description of reality: I created this, you created that etc. What preceeded it, and is there to be seen throughout the animal kingdom is the arbitrary concept of territory, which libertarians oppose. I’m unaware of any human societies that weren’t either patriarchal or matriarchal, but our current society is the least hierarchical of any of them and becoming more so, despite efforts by governments.
    
    Mises, that is the actual Mises, not this shameless fraud writing here now, laboured tirelessly to make the point that socialism destroys communities; that where the natural condition is for people to cooperate with one-another, the effect of government is to atomise society; every individual now has a distant vertical relationship with the government rather than a network of horizontal relationships with one-another.
    
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3. Richard Carey
  
  March 29, 2012 at 8:13 pm
  
  Ed,
  
  before setting off for the wilderness, maybe try camping for a weekend, just to see if you like it.
  
  As for the ‘myth of progress’, if it’s any consolation, Prometheus was sorely punished for giving us fire, and starting us down this terrible path.
  
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  1. Ed Lord
    
    March 30, 2012 at 7:02 am
    
    I’m not going to set off for the wilderness, that would be selfish suvivalism. I believe in the communal….. I will leave you to imagine what that means my solutions would be.
    
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  2. Richard Carey
    
    March 30, 2012 at 11:08 am
    
    I don’t have to imagine, I can read plenty of accounts from history of what solutions are employed by those who believe in ‘the communal’. All for the greater good, I’m sure.
    
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Marmaduke Dando

April 3, 2012 at 2:29 pm

I can’t speak for Ed, but I’d like to try to defend his position a little, not that I believe anyone will be remotely persuaded.

It is not so much that anyone is proposing we all live as hunter-gatherers in the paltry portions of forests that have been left. The indigenous groups that are trying in our present times are having a hard enough time, let alone if 7 billion people decided to join them.

What is being proposed, but is rarely spelt out, is a step toward (not backward) a more humane existence. It is a comparison between epochs that must take place, rather than the mute acceptance of what progress offers us. To question the “opportunities” and the context at every turn. There are alternatives to civilisation, if anyone would take the time to rigourously interrogate what they’re being herded into at every minute of the day.

Was a hunter-gather existence more free than one bound to place under agriculture? In my, and probably Ed’s view, the answer would be yes. Was a small-holding peasant’s existence more free than today’s wage slave in the third sector? That answer is yes again. Given the circumstances into which we were born, we must make our choices accordingly. Population is not something we can fix immediately. Land rights, for example, are within the realm of the possible.

I wouldn’t worry too much though, this is a niche view, to say the least. The left and the right, much to both’s chagrin, are firmly aligned on this matter. They have both gotten their way, and they’re just squabbling over the details.

On the original issue of property, I don’t think we’re going to make much headway any more. I have found it to be a good exercise as I hope you have too. I thank you for taking the time to indulge me. No doubt this thread will provide you with some great ammunition and material for some rip-roaring jokes on Thursday night’s meet up. Enjoy!

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