Skip to main content

Matt Bruenig versus definitions...


Private property was a necessary precondition for the long-term adoption of farming. Matt Bruenig had a bee in his bonnet about libertarian entitlement theories, and I would sympathize if the attack was purely against the 'non-aggression axiom' crowd, but in practice it's an attack on private property rights per se, hence my previous post on the subject back in December 2015.

Matt's definition of the libertarian position on property rights makes a big omission and needs to be changed from;
Theft occurs when (1) you threaten or use force against someone (2) to exclude them from scarce material resources (3) without their consent.
... to;
Theft occurs when (1) you threaten or use force against someone (2) to exclude them from previously legitimately claimed scarce material resources (3) without their consent.

Those three words in bold are very important. Could 'legitimately' above be a synonym for peacefully? For consensually? At least for now I'll defer to others on the matter.

I have assumed 'use force' to simply mean 'take action' since theft can be undertaken without the owner's knowledge.

Matt chose a leaky definition, maybe because he wasn't aware of how the statement can be shored up a bit, as I have above, or maybe because he just wanted to strengthen his argument; I don't know which is the case, if either.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeitardation

A Youtuber called axe863 made a video in which he used scientific, mathematical and statistical common-sense to deliver the KO that the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement so richly deserved. If his approach seems weird and unconventional it's because he's not attacking from a tradition neoclassical or Keynesian perspective. Axe863's poison is complexity economics, something a good deal more dangerous to ideas like TVP and TZM. [ 2 ] Now to a couple of comment threads from below the video that I thought could od with being replicated just in case they get deleted at source! ~~~ AstralLuminary 1 year ago Why can't we generalize the consumption patterns of middle-income people in the western world, set our constraints equal to the amount of localized resources, and the rate of resource recovery, derive a population growth model that would be sustainable to said consumption patterns, and derive the necessary quantifiable amount of work required to expen...
Post a Comment
Read more

RIP Macroeconomics

This post has no intellectual rigour, but I'm posting it anyway, because neither does macroeconomics. Most economists love spending all day doing macro, preferring it to the prosaic small-scale world of microeconomics. This is where the brazen hypocrisy of many heterodox folks will make itself known, as they decry the fallacies of composition rife within neoclassical economics and then go away and commit the same daft mistakes themselves (sometimes quite well disguised) using aggregates of demand, supply, and labour time. Further friction for modern economists can be had when contending with the tripartite division of economics into land, labour, capital, and the action of classes (the 'class' praxis) of the owners of those three economic resources. So, to all of macroecon... you're drunk. Go home and rethink your life.* * Yes I know I just committed a fallacy of reification.
Post a Comment
Read more

Foreign Policy hates you...

In Foreign Policy a hardcore fluff piece * talks about young Americans falling out of love with capitalism. The closing paragraph is very artful but also insipid and inaccurate. Read it and weep! ~~~ * A fluff piece that does a very bad job of grappling with a subject that is actually important.
Post a Comment
Read more