Please use the quote function, or I won't get the notification. At which point? She first gains possession of the apple by purchase, she then loses possession of the apple due to theft, and she gains possession of the apple by Grace or Bob handing it back to her. I guess there are two possible scenarios, either Grace taking it from Bob and handing it to Alice, or Grace threatening Bob (implicitly or explicitly) to the point where Bob returns it himself. A coherent theory of possession should be able to deal with either scenario. Or would you say that Bob gaining possession of the apple through theft doesn't mean that Alice loses possession of the apple? A coherent position, maybe, but it might have some awkward consequences. Well, water is something we need to survive, and a caveman finding it is one way to gain that water, yet that means neither that he has found a lifetime supply (although he might have), nor that he thereby has found a life sustaining supply of every other good he might need. I wasn't asking where rights don't come from, I'm asking where they do come from. It seems to me you can make the argument you're making, but then you might end up with awkward conclusions like that humans don't actually have the right to live or something. I don't know, the conclusions are still unclear, since you answer questions I didn't ask.
I do not know how "Alice " acquired the apple. Your scenario does not include that information. She defended her ownership of the apple by proxy in your scenario. My Op most certainly did include the qualifier, "four ways to acquire the products we need to SURVIVE". Rights cannot come from one's equals. We cannot be endowed by ourselves or each other with rights. If it comes from one's equals it is something else. It's an entitlement or something else, but it Ownership and possession are two very different things. Alice defended her ownership by proxy. Clean, safe, sufficient water is too rare; and just stumbling upon it, without the industriousness to look for and recognize it, is even rarer. Human history has never been without the processing of water by filter, heat or additives like alcohol, or the industrious acquisition of clean, safe, filtered water, like a well. We are endowed by our Creator with certain and inalienable rights.
Then what information is missing? I have suggested an, in my opinion, complete scenario of something happening. I've left exactly who hands over the apple vague, because I want to hear your explanation in both cases (although I have suggested two cases, so I think you have enough to go on, and yet they're not too many to deal with). If there is some information missing, suggest one or two pieces of information which could complete it and tell me how your theory deals with it. Not only will that probably answer my actual question, if it doesn't, I know what kind of information is missing, so I can complete the example. The example highlights a concern I have with your theory, avoiding the question won't resolve it. That doesn't really address my argument. Water is a product we need to survive. A person who finds clean water has acquired water. That seems to me an instance of acquiring a product which one needs to survive. Interpreting that the other way around has some weird effects. For instance, imagine someone cleans one river, and then the river runs dry and she has to find another river and cleans that (but it runs out a bit after the person dies). Did that person never find the goods she needed to survive, given that neither river was able to sustain her forever? That seems like a weird interpretation to me. Again, copy pasting doesn't help anyone, I didn't fail to read it, I fail to understand it. The solution isn't to write it again, but to explain it further, especially noting the comments I have on it. I am willing to agree that possession and ownership are different. If you acquire something (the phrasing of the OP), do you gain possession or ownership of it? I would say it's possession, since you included theft, and theft transfers possession but not necessarily ownership. Under the assumption that we're talking about possession, why do you keep giving your justifications in terms of ownership instead of possession when that's what I'm asking for? I am not making any statements about rarity. I'm contesting the statement "There are only four ways by which human beings can acquire the products we need to survive" (my underlining), not "There are four common ways by which humans can acquire products". What I'm really trying to pin down here is whether you suggest this to be a logical truth or just a decent approximation of reality. If it is a logical truth, then there should be no exceptions, no matter how rare. Wait, so are you basing this idea on some understanding of the origin of humanity? Given that this is a forum where the existence of God gets debated left and right on a daily basis, I feel like that's a very important detail.
We most definitely can run out of and destroy materials. It happens all the time with the biological components in nature. Humans are actively destroying biodiversity and driving species extinct.
How does one “self-possess” property from the commons (such as land, water, etc) other than standing next to it with a weapon saying “It’s mine.” and then following the logic of light makes right because no one took it back from you?
Important question for the OP: If a choice voluntary if it is coerced? If I put a gun to your head and tell you that I will kill you if you don’t do something, if you choose to do it, is it really voluntary?
Do you recognize the existence of market failures, IE things that are outliers for the market that it cannot or will not properly/efficiently allocate resources for (negative and positive externalities, monopolies, public goods)?
If it is okay to take money from you to defend another person from being attacked by a hostile army, why is it not okay to also take money from you to defend another person from being attacked by a hostile disease?
Private property extends from self possession (one's ownership of them self). If one owns them self, they own the product of their industry and trade as well as their receipts of charity. Industry is the combining of material and ingenuity. Land, for example, is material. Combine land with ingenuity and it becomes the product of industry. Almost everything we need to survive including sufficient clean safe water, food and shelter are the products of industry. There are only four ways by which we can acquire the products we need to survive: industry, trade, charity and theft.
Markets allocate scarce resources that have alternative uses. There are other ways to allocate scarce resources that have alternative uses, but markets are the least worst way to do so. Do you recognize the devastating effect of centralized planning, in lieu of markets, that killed tens of millions of people in the twentieth century?
No it isn't. in·dus·try ˈindəstrē/ noun noun: industry 1. economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.
I am a libertarian-anarcho-capitalist. I do not think that soldiers should be government employees. I am left to believe that the only public employees should be our elected officials. Everything else should be subcontracted out to the private sector. I'm not in favor of governments having standing armies at the expense of the taxpayers.
As a technocrat I mostly agree with you. I believe our elected officials main job is to pick people to run our government, those who have the skills in the fields that they are assigned to. On the standing army I am sort of split. I don't like it but at the same time it is more effective if its constantly training and preparing.
I could not agree more, but that's no good reason why that constantly preparing army must be government employees.
There's a world of difference between an occasional piece of low hanging fruit and acquiring the products one needs to survive. There are only four ways by which we can acquire the products we need to survive: industry, trade, charity and theft. That goes for Long Island or a desert island.
What gives a person the right to take land and use it, excluding others from being able to use that land?
I recognize that dictatorships killed millions of people regardless of the economic system they used. You didn’t answer my question. There are market failures. The free market cannot or will not allocate resources when it encounters them efficiently. You have to have a non-market entity involved to do so.
Pray tell, how does a private military function without turning into a feudal lord’s private force of thugs used to force his will on other and keep his serfs down? Especially when you consider the free rider problem exists.
There is no such thing in the real world as a "libertarian-anarcho-capitalist". People think they can tweak human nature to such a level that they can implement these self-contradicting hyphenated labels. You either trust the individual and believe the individual has priority over society, or you believe the society acting through government has priority over the individual.
