The right to own property is a positive right

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Yea or Nay: the right to exclusively use land is a positive right, since it excludes others from use of that land. Like the right to an attorney, emergency health care, and education, there needs to be incentives for the other party.

I say yea.

James P. Sterba made a sound argument: positive and negative right distinguish nothing. It's all arbitrary. When you prevent a starving man from taking crops that naturally grow in your land, you are intruding on his negative rights.

What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs. Needless to say, libertarians would want to deny that the poor have this liberty. But how could they justify such a denial? As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive right to receive something, but a negative right of non-interference.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Yes, of course property rights are positive rights - for the reasons you stated, but also because the right to own property means the right to call upon the police or the army to defend that property. Therefore property rights put an obligation on other people to fund (usually through taxation) the police and army that defend your property.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Yes, of course property rights are positive rights - for the reasons you stated, but also because the right to own property means the right to call upon the police or the army to defend that property. Therefore property rights put an obligation on other people to fund (usually through taxation) the police and army that defend your property.

Quite a hilarious circumstance for libertarians to defend negative rights to such an exclusive degree that they forget property is only determinable by the assistance of other persons.

But of course one could argue negative and positive rights are a pointless distinction since all rights require a force. Either way libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are shit out of luck when it comes to ideology.

Capitalist apologists should take note: "right to own property" only extends as far as that force says it does - like education, health care, legal counsel, and emergency care. Socializing production can't be declared an infringement of rights.

[Baconator]

Yea or Nay: the right to exclusively use land is a positive right, since it excludes others from use of that land. Like the right to an attorney, emergency health care, and education, there needs to be incentives for the other party.

I say yea.

James P. Sterba made a sound argument: positive and negative right distinguish nothing. It's all arbitrary. When you prevent a starving man from taking crops that naturally grow in your land, you are intruding on his negative rights.

What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs. Needless to say, libertarians would want to deny that the poor have this liberty. But how could they justify such a denial? As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive right to receive something, but a negative right of non-interference.

Are you specifically talking about only land ownership or property in general? Are property rights altogether invalid or is just owning land?
Please clarify what is meant by 'right' to healthcare and 'right' to an attorney. Do you believe such rights are valid and why?

The italic quote is basically saying this. It is moral for a group of people called the poor to steal from the produce of another group of people called the rich. Furthermore, these poor or their representatives may arbitrarily determine what constitutes 'surplus possessions' and then my take them by force if necessary. Any rational examination would include universality of moral propositions for all human beings. The poor may steal from the produce of the rich ( people stealing from people is morally permissible) but the rich may not steal from the produce of the poor ( people stealing from people is morally impermissible). Essentially you have two opposing moral rules for the same species. One would have to logically demonstrate how both stealing and not stealing is moral for human beings. The contradiction stands if it cannot be logically debunked and thus , as always , violence is the answer to maintain contradictory ideologies which enslave people.

This is not an argument in favor of the poor nor the rich. It is an attempt to justify the use of violence.

[Baconator]

More logical arguments:

One must understand that the concepts of 'poor' and 'rich' are just labels and there is no objective and universal description of what makes one poor and what makes one rich. Often the rich/poor gap is defined by governments in term of quantities of income. The only thing true and verifiable between all poor and all rich is that they all share the same characteristics at the most fundamental level in which they can be identified as human beings. It is illogical , irrational , and mentally debilitating to consider either rich or poor 'more' or 'less human' based on their income.
For any rules or 'rights' to be logical and rational it must be universal for all human beings, not just a subset conceptual collective called the 'poor' 'rich' 'Americans,' ' Iranians,' etc.

So what about the 'right' of the poor to take or the 'right' for the rich to take and property rights? As I stated earlier , this Sterba is only making an argument to prove the morality of violence which , of course, just fails.
Gene and Sterba are making two contradictory arguments at the same time. They are making both arguments in favor and against property rights at the same time. On the one hand they argue that property rights of the 'rich' or more wealthy should be denied through force yet the property rights of the 'poor' should be affirmed through force. They are obligated to show logically how can two opposing moral rules ( right to steal-from people that are rich, right to posses and keep-for people that are poor) can be rational for the same species. Or they have to prove that the poor and rich are two fundamentally different species.

Then how do you objectively and universally define the 'poor' and the 'rich.' How can there be objective standard? In one land mass called a country where human beings live it is determined by income, in another land mass where human beings live the income standard is different.

Lets just say to be considered rich you have to make 250,000$/yr or more. Thus, any human being making $250,000/yr or more is automatically subject to different moral rules than a human being making $249,999 or less. Or how about the poor? If poor is defined as perhaps $16,000/yr or less then everyone making $16,000/yr or less is subject to different moral rules than those making more. So , can a person that makes $16,000/yr claim to take the possessions of a person making $16,001/yr, in other words affirm for himself property rights but deny the other person the same right?

The irrationality and quite frankly , sick justification for state violence knows no bounds and that is the main thesis of the the opening post. A justification for violence.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

The italic quote is basically saying this. It is moral for a group of people called the poor to steal from the produce of another group of people called the rich.
No. The quote doesn't even talk about morality at all. Nowhere does Sterba imply that it is good or moral for the poor to steal from the rich. He is only saying that the right to take what you need is a negative right, and the right to property is a positive right.

The question at hand is whether property rights are positive or negative, not whether they are right or wrong, or whether theft is right or wrong.

[Baconator]

What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs

He is making a moral argument. Read it closely. He is claiming people should steal from other people if they can be defined between poor and rich. He is making a justification for violence saying that those which have should be forced to give to the have nots. Read it for what it really is, examine it rationally.

[Baconator]

He is also implying that if one has a surplus of something and another has a deficit of the same thing then it must mean that the guy who has the surplus must have already stolen from the guy with the deficit since Sterba appears to be indicating he believes all wealth is social.

Its the classical Marxist line.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

He is making a moral argument.Ethical would actually be the appropriate term.


if they can be defined between poor and richWha- what? You're making shit up. :laugh: He's saying it's technically an infringement on a starving person's right to life to stop him from taking food - if you use the logic of a libertarian.


justification for violenceActually, in the scenario painted the property owner would be the violent one.


He is also implying that if one has a surplus of something and another has a deficit of the same thing then it must mean that the guy who has the surplus must have already stolen from the guy with the deficit since Sterba appears to be indicating he believes all wealth is social. You are oblivious. The author is not promoting theft. He's attacking the concept of negative rights. He's pointing out how absurd libertarian philosophy is to base its entire foundation off of "negative" rights, when negative rights are symmetrical to positive rights.

Stop adding fake commentary.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

He is making a moral argument. Read it closely. He is claiming people should steal from other people if they can be defined between poor and rich. He is making a justification for violence saying that those which have should be forced to give to the have nots. Read it for what it really is, examine it rationally.
There may be a moral dimension to his argument (the quote is too short to be able to say for sure), but that is simply off-topic. The topic is that property rights are positive rights.

And no, he is not justifying violence at all. Suppose there is an apple on the table between us. You claim ownership of the apple. I take it. You punch me in the face and take it back.

Who is at fault here? There was violence, but who caused it? If you believe in property rights, you'll say that I caused the violence by stealing your property (the apple). But Sterba and I don't believe in property rights, so we say that YOU caused the violence by punching me in the face for no reason (since there's nothing wrong with me taking the apple).

Do you understand now? If property rights are invalid, then taking stuff is not a violent act, so Sterba is not advocating violence.

[Bud Struggle]

No. The quote doesn't even talk about morality at all. Nowhere does Sterba imply that it is good or moral for the poor to steal from the rich. He is only saying that the right to take what you need is a negative right, and the right to property is a positive right.

The question at hand is whether property rights are positive or negative, not whether they are right or wrong, or whether theft is right or wrong.

You have a right to take what you need to live. That would never include property. On the other hand the right of a man to own property is one of the basic human rights of all time. Besides for a diversion from this right during the mid-20th century (soon corrected) it has never really been questioned in the entire history of mankind.

Tho' mankind does often make mistakes--slavery was another one.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Tho' mankind does often make mistakes--slavery was another one.
Sporks are another.

[pusher robot]

It's a gray area. It's mostly a negative right because, like other negative rights, all it demands of others is that they leave you alone. But the gray area is that there exists only a finite amount of real estate, and everybody must by necessity of existence occupy some quantity of it. That's why we have things like rules against perpetuities and property taxes and eminent domain.

[IcarusAngel]

GC has once again hit the nail on the head; although, I do agree it is a gray area as well. I'm not totally against the idea of positive and negative rights, but once again "baconator" has gone off into an off topic rant filled with propaganda.

Anyway, I think this "analysis" of capitalism is getting closer to the root of the problem, even closer to the problem than Marxism. Marxism is like a high level language, this is assembly, we're getting closer to the hardware of capitalism here to form our arguments.

And that is that the idea of mixing labor with property to own land, affects everyone, regardless if they partscipate in it or not. When you promote privatization you allow things like Enron where the government and the corporations work together in secret, as the only thing the government is to do is to regulate the economy on behalf of the corporation. Thus, with such a public policy maneuver you're simply shifting power into the hands of private tyrannies. The corportions own all the land, are are essentially governments in and of themselves.

This is more of an anarchist analysis, imo, than a marxist one.

However, convincing people to accept anarchist and democratic, and free arguments, is an uphill battle. What makes it worse is that we have anarcho-tyrants out there like anarcho-capitalists telling people that anarchism would be a system even worse than what we have now, with even more corporate tyranny (perhaps their goal is to discredit anarchims, who knows?).

[Kwisatz Haderach]

It's a gray area. It's mostly a negative right because, like other negative rights, all it demands of others is that they leave you alone.
Wrong. It demands more than just that you should be left alone. It demands that others do not interfere with you or the objects you claim as your property - objects that may not be anywhere near you at the moment when they're being interfered with.

You might own some property hundreds of miles away. If someone does something to that property, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the person interfered with you, as in your person.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Wrong. It demands more than just that you should be left alone. It demands that others do not interfere with you or the objects you claim as your property - objects that may not be anywhere near you at the moment when they're being interfered with.

You might own some property hundreds of miles away. If someone does something to that property, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the person interfered with you, as in your person.

Exactly. Other than pushing you off the tiny bit of land you're standing on, the relationship between people and property is a positive action.

Where this capitalist ideology fails is when it gives property rights and not people.