[evanwise]

I sometimes feel like "free-market" types are actually incapable of understanding this point. The idea that markets and property exist as some sort of independent, empirical objects is baked so deeply into their ideology that it's almost as if they lack the symbolic vocabulary to even conceptualize the idea that property itself is created by regulations.

[Banthum]

You seem very strongly invested in this point, which is strange considering how easily refuted it is:

Property existed long before third-party regulation.

Rather than ownership being enforced by a third party with monopoly on violence, it was enforced by the threat of escalating violence from the property owners themselves.

Eg. You take one goat from my herd and refuse to give it back, and we are now at war. Result: Nobody takes any goats.

So the property was defined by mutual understanding and mutual enforcement, not regulation.

This is still done in some societies and sub cultures (Eg. Criminals). Even animals do it, with things like territory or sharing food from a kill.

A mutual cultural belief in property strengthens this mechanism and makes it work more smoothly. This cultural belief is part of what ""free-market" types" (sic) would like to spread.

[evanwise]

It's interesting that you start off attempting to refute me but end up demonstrating my point. The cultural conditions in early agricultural societies, before the development of the city-state, were insufficient to support a strong rule of law, and hence, property as we now know it. Property and personal possession are not the same thing. Certainly, individuals claimed ownership of goods, and barter occurred, but these were far from the only or even the dominant modes of economic activity in early agricultural societies, which also incorporated gift economies and cooperative sharing of labor and goods. By interpreting past economic systems through the lens of capitalism, you are proving my point: that the defenders of the free market commit the fallacy of reifying markets and property, as we now define them, as some sort of inevitable emergent attribute of human society, when there have been many different economic systems throughout the history of human civilization, none of which fully correspond to the abstract conception of the free market as discussed by economists.

[dv_dt]

And with those conditions economic growth and stability of society seems much lower than the more civilized alternatives...

[hacking_again]

This doesn't mean property exists in the same way that objects exist. A piece of property is just a protected object.

[alexanderstears]

Go try to wrestle a caveman for his fur pelt and see if he considers it to be a protected object.

Force protects the object, sometimes the government exerts the force sometimes not.

[tormeh]

>Go try to wrestle a caveman for his fur pelt and see if he considers it to be a protected object.

But if I show up with a better club then all his stuff is now mine. A third party enforcing certain resource allocations with overwhelming force is different to everyone defending their own stuff.

Government is the difference between property rights and might-makes-right.

[hacking_again]

In theory yes, if you have an impartial third-party monopoly, but in practice it's still might-makes-right, where might = money, lawyers, political connections, ethnicity, etc. It's probably still better, but it's less transparently obvious what's going than with my club vs. yours.

[alexanderstears]

But if I show up with a better club then all his stuff is now mine.

Bingo. Ownership exists without government - ownership exists to the extent others respect the claim.

Government is the difference between property rights and might-makes-right.

Governments are legitimate because of their might. Why do you think the basic social contract between authorities and the governed is "obedience for protection"?

[hacking_again]

Eh, I don't disagree, I was just trying to distinguish between property existing and objects existing. But maybe force defines existence all the way down.

[philwelch]

Property is created by government, but markets are more like evolution or society; a system that emerges naturally out of multiple separate but interacting agents given the right set of conditions (namely, scarcity and the ability to exchange goods and services).

Even in places like East Germany or prison where overt markets are suppressed, people still exchange things with each other, even developing bootleg currencies such as loose cigarettes. And if there’s a sudden shortage of a specific good inside these black markets, the price will go up; likewise if there’s a sudden surplus, the price will go down; likewise; if there’s a sudden surplus in whatever good is used as a currency (e.g. cigarettes) then there will be inflation, at least until its cost-effective to switch currencies.

[131012]

Or swords and chainmails if we go back to the birth of common law and guns and bacterial warfare in the case of Turtle Island aka Americas.