[duairc]

> Abolition of property rights is usually down through coercive means by some agent of the state, hence it is top-down.

No it's not? Property rights themselves can only be enforced through some agent of the state, hence they are top down. Abolition of private property means abolition of the state.

I mentioned this in another post in this thread, but take the example of a house you rent from a landlord. Under capitalism, it's not your house, even though you use it. It's the landlord's, because ultimately the landlord can use the coercive power of the state to remove you if you stop paying rent. If you abolish the state, then it simply becomes your house, and the landlord can no longer claim ownership over that which they do not use.

[dragonwriter]

> If you abolish the state, then it simply becomes your house, and the landlord can no longer claim ownership over that which they do not use.

If you abolish the state, anyone can claim ownership over anything they want, they'll just have to muster their own force to enforce the claim since there is no state to impose force on behalf of any claimant.

[scarmig]

This isn't borne out, though, by actual experience.

Plenty of economic goods are not secured by codified property rights, defined and enforced from above. Communities are able to self-organize to define a reasonable set of behavioral norms. Local knowledge can be leveraged to generate better outcomes, and locality allows different communities to experiment with what actually works best, making the system as a whole more fault tolerant.

See the work of Elinor Ostrom for several deeply investigated examples of this kind of organizing.

[ameister14]

It actually is. While plenty of economic goods may not be secured by codified property rights and instead are secured through the application of community norms, when those norms are challenged community does have to apply force.

See: the majority of human history, particularly Pythagoras' attempt at community, every war for conquest, anarchic systems created in early Iceland/Scandinavia, normal people's experiences with bullies, etc.

[dragonwriter]

> This isn't borne out, though, by actual experience.

Yes, actually, the fact that, in the absence of a state (and, in fact, even in the presence of a de jure state but the absence of an effective state), people are free to claim whatever, but their ability to enforce a claim is dependent on their ability to muster force to press it is well established by experience.

> Plenty of economic goods are not secured by codified property rights, defined and enforced from above.

I don't disagree with that, but its not relevant to anything I said.

> Communities are able to self-organize to define a reasonable set of behavioral norms.

Again, I don't disagree (in fact, that's what a democratic state is.)

> Local knowledge can be leveraged to generate better outcomes, and locality allows different communities to experiment with what actually works best, making the system as a whole more fault tolerant.

And, yet again, I don't necessarily disagree with that in general (though I do think it is an overgeneralization), and, again, it doesn't contradict anything I said.

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