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by perl4ever 1651 days ago
But we don't "have" trees. Owning a tree is dependent on a highly abstract concept of ownership, enforced by an organized state that monopolizes the use of force.

Saying a transaction is without force or fraud is only begging the question. If it is legal, and someone thinks it is illegitimate, then it logically involves both fraud and force from their perspective. It was fraud to write the rules down, and it is force to use guns to make people comply.

It's too easy to defend "free markets" while ignoring that the usual description is circular.
1 comments
WalterBright 1651 days ago
It's a little too easy to dismiss arguments by trying to redirect it into a debate about what words mean.

You and I both know what the terms mean.

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diordiderot 1651 days ago
I don't think that's a fair assessment.

You absolutely have hidden assumptions about what the words mean. We all do.

Be open minded towards other interpretations you may take for granted.

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rjbwork 1651 days ago
It's also a little too easy to avoid arguments you find inconvenient by refusing to examine the assumptions that underpin the position you put forth.
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WalterBright 1651 days ago
Sorry, I've been down the tiresome path of what does "is" mean too many times. You can explore it if you like.
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perl4ever 1651 days ago
From https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/john-locke-justificat...

'"He that is nourished by the Acorns he pickt up under an Oak, or the Apples he gathered from the Trees in the Wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No Body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did they begin to be his? When he digested? Or when he eat? Or when he boiled? Or when he brought them home? Or when he pickt them up?"

Locke answered these questions by selecting the last of these options. The acorns became the private property of the owner when he picked them up, for it was in the gathering that labor was first expended. "That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than Nature, the common Mother of all, had done, and so they became his private right."'

I'm not endorsing or dismissing this, but notice how it conflicts with ownership of the tree.

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