Topic: national minimum wage LAWS. good or bad? - page 9. (Read 21179 times)

Ownership is legitimate dominion. If you own something, you by definition have dominion over it. You seem to be saying that a market needs only the dominion, not the legitimacy, in order to function. This is false. If legitimacy is not a qualification to trade, then you end up with illegitimately gained items being traded equally with legitimately gained ones, invalidating the legitimacy of the legit goods. In other words, if stolen goods are not classed separately from - and lesser than - legit goods, you ruin the value of the effort of gaining something legitimately, when you can just steal it. A free market requires that property rights - ownership - be respected in order to work properly.

i disagree. Ownership implies legitimacy of means of acquisition. Exercising dominion over an object implies no such legitimacy. Of course in my original statement i was using these ideas interchangeably for lack of a better term and because this philosophical distinction wasnt relievent at the time.

"Property rights" do not exist, with or without belief in papers ("laws").

Property is a concept.  When you say "This Coke can is my property" or "I own this Coke can", what you are saying is only an abbreviated form of "I obtained this Coke can ethically, therefore I ought to be the one who decides, exclusively, what will be done with it".  That's what the concept "property" means.  Concepts do not exist -- when we speak of concepts, we can only speak of their validity or invalidity.

Of course, implicit in that sentence, is the idea that there is (not "exists", is) an unambiguous set of rational rules that allows two or more people to figure out who owns what scarce and rivalrous resource without having to resort to brute force to "decide".

There's lots of debate over what those rules might be, whether it's rules written in a certain set of Holy Papers, or rules that mandate communal ownership of stuff, or rules that mandate individual ownership, or the rule set composed of the "I will shoot you if you don't give me your stuff" (which incidentally is the ultimate rule of the Holy Papers), et cetera.  My point is not to debate what the "right" rule set is.  My point is to get you to think of property in terms of a concept rather than a magical right given or granted to you by anyone or any piece of paper.

Now, in my view, the only two rules needed to decide who owns what are homesteading and consensual transfer.  I'm not here to tell you that is the ultimate rule set and you should obey that.  But I can tell you that, deducing from these rules, if you generated or got (via consensual transfer) a private key for a Bitcoin wallet, and proceeded to generate or obtain (via consensual transfer) Bitcoins in said Bitcoin wallet, then the logical deduction is that "You own that wallet and those Bitcoins".

Epic fail. Thank you though for putting your foot in your mouth and showing your true colors: Money and power rule all. Forget justice and truth.

These are the same thing.

Why not arrive at it by just using mutually agreed upon contracts? In a small enough society, there is no need for a legal body to oversee your market. Contracts are signed and agreed upon, and if broken, enforced by whoever has more power, or pays a third party to exhert power.

BTW, I've mentioned this before, but this whole, "There are no rights without laws!" crap stinks way too much like the "There are no morals without the bible!" crap.

Ah well then lets move out of the pragmatic systems analysis realm and talk philosophy. If what you say is true and an alien brain parasite gained control over my body than this would make him the legitimate owner of my body by virtue of the fact that he was in control of its actions. In my mind this is would not constitute a legitimate property claim.

Funny thing is, that's exactly how I mean it: You own your body because you have exclusive control on how it is used. Because you own your body, you own the products of it - the fruits of your labor.

Ok yes thats definitely true and maybe i should have been more careful with my wording. but this is a philosophical distinction. From a systems analysis standpoint "rights" are irrelevant what matters is the ability for given individuals to exercise dominion. so when i say property in this context i dont mean it in any Lockean sense i mean in the sense that certain individuals have greater and lesser capacities to dictate how objects are or are not used. Part of the confusion seems to come as a result of the fact that the english language seems to be missing an important word.

I really hate to beat a dead horse, but laws protect property, they do not establish it. Self-ownership establishes it.

ah well what i am interested in is the question of whether bitcoins can be "owned" in a state of pure lawlessness. I think they can and thats probably the thing about them that is most wonderful. before bitcoin the ancap model suffered circular reasoning, we proposed to use markets to establish law but markets require property with which to barter and property claims (were at the time) a function of law. Bitcoin changed all that by allowing people to have completely undeniable property claims in the complete absence of law.

as an aside i do know that this problem of circular reasoning could be overcome by having property as a product of social norm instead of law but it could take ages to solve the problem that way, bitcoin solves it right now.

He's not disputing that you own the key. What he is disputing is your reasoning as to why.

I, on the other hand, don't really consider that data to be property, or protected by property rights, except in the sense that one would need to trespass upon your property or commit fraud to acquire it illegitimately.

If property rights do not exist with out law (which is what was said) and there are no laws pertaining to bitcoin (which is true) than logically one must conclude that one has a bitcoin property right. So you could make an argument saying "ok great you just proved that no one owns bitcoins but they do have access to them and thats what matters in this context" to which i would reply "this is not a particularly useful way to define the word ownership or property right"

if you wanted to revise the argument and say "except for the unusual exception, property rights don't exist without laws" i wouldn't protest.

But assuming no back up, it denies ownership.

Much like physical property... Fraudulently/forcibly obtaining it does not grant ownership.

Actually you only own that private key because you homesteaded it or someone consensually transferred it to you. Had you fraudulently obtained it, you would possess a copy but not own it.

bitcoin proves that this is not true. I have a property right to my bitcoins by virtue of the fact that only i know the private key despite the fact that there is no law supporting my property claim in any way.

lol... I don't think he got to that last part. Seems he couldn't stay away.

I must just be too damn smexy for him to resist.

Oh dear god, not this again! Didn't you two settle this argument with "You're a dummy! No, YOU'RE a dummy! Let's just agree to disagree" last year?