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You can just as well say that property is coercion. Like I get that you won't agree, but you are asserting a value system when you do that.



taking something with the threat of force is not the same as owning something that you traded for in a mutually agreed upon transaction


Property is enforced by the government and its social contract exactly the same way that taxation is.

You didn't actually agree in a mutual contract with everyone when you "traded" your property, except for the agreements the government upholds with its system of laws that forms the social contract and taxation is a clause in that contract.


There still needs to be an initial act of taking by force to set up the initial ownership, creating the possibility of trade.


No, there doesn't. You can own and trade something you built. That's what remunerated work is.


You still have to build it out of something.

An economy of pure traded labor, like trading foot massages or whatever, wouldn't actually have property.


There are natural resources that nobody created. Using them to create something is not coercion and results in property that can be traded for other property or services. Property can be coercion (e.g. untouched land claimed by or with the support of the state), but it doesn't have to be.


I want to build a table, so I chomp a tree. You want to build a chair, and you chomp another tree. I want to build another table, so I must walk a longer distance to find a tree. If everyone cut trees, it will get harder to find one.

Another person want to build a music instrument. He need some special kind of tree, with some specific size and age, so he want all of us to not cut that tree. Does he make a fence to protect the tree while it's growing? Does he hire a bodyguard for the tree?

Hunter-gathering is coercion-free unless someone other group want hunter-gathering in the same place. An once farmer arrive, it gets more complicated.


> I want to build a table, so I chomp a tree. You want to build a chair, and you chomp another tree. I want to build another table, so I must walk a longer distance to find a tree. If everyone cut trees, it will get harder to find one.

No coercion here. There is no force or threats of violence involved in these scenarios. Imposing a negative externality on someone is not necessarily coercion.

> Another person want to build a music instrument. He need some special kind of tree, with some specific size and age, so he want all of us to not cut that tree. Does he make a fence to protect the tree while it's growing? Does he hire a bodyguard for the tree?

That would likely be coercion. Unless he planted the tree, or acquired it by consensual means from its previous owner, he doesn't have any more right to the tree than anyone else. Although, I don't think it would be as bad as if he had taken the tree from someone who had already cut it down because in that case he would have deprived them of the product of the labour that went into cutting the tree down as well.


The claim that the act of creation gives you exclusive rights can be coercion in a value system that doesn't care about the act of creation (or just cares less about it than things like mutual agreement about what to do with the commons).


I think it's self-evident that a person should not be deprived of what they create without their consent. I'm not sure what you mean by "mutual agreement", but I assume you don't mean that literally, as there would be no conflict and no need for any kind of ethical theory in a situation where everyone agrees.


That's what I'm trying to get at, those things aren't self evident, they are a value system.


Enacting property rights over those natural resources is the initial act of coercion that makes trade possible.

Merely using resources isn't coercion but it doesn't "result in property" unless you also apply coercion to exclude others from them.

(Seems like a pointless word game you're trying to play here.)


I'm not advocating for property rights over natural resources. I'm advocating for property rights over artificial objects created by labour applied to natural resources.


Whatever you want to call it, you need coercion to enforce the exclusivity.

That's a difference between physical objects and trading pure labor itself (like the trading foot massages example).


My point is that it's perfectly valid to argue that ownership itself is coercive.


I don't think you understand what coercive means


If multiple people want to own the same thing, how do they "decide" who gets it?


The owner of the thing decides to keep it or trade it. If there are no owners, then anyone can take it and it's not coercion.




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