Comments Elsewhere

What if one thinks (1) that property rights are neither arbitrary nor contingent on extrinsic standards such as aggregate utility, but also (2) that “our [actually existing] property system” is in many ways systematically wrong and unjust? Surely if my position allows for people to be mistaken about the norms to have regarding property, it also allows for me to think that a lot of people actually are.

I don’t think we live in a world where the correct theory of property rights is very widely accepted, or where property rights are in practice taken very seriously—least of all the property rights of the poor and marginalized. I’d submit that if we did, there wouldn’t be an IRS for me to complain about. Sometimes property rights are trashed in the name of “compelling State interests” such as government regimentation of the economy, taxation, government law enforcement, militarism, and anti-terrorism. Other times they are trashed in the name of political privileges masquerading as property rights, and passed off as “the market at work” by the plutocrats and their intellectual bodyguard (e.g. copyrights and patents, government granting and enforcement of unearned land titles, most so-called “privatization” schemes, etc.).

And the idea that the government permits the super-rich to visit space by not taxing them 100% of their wealth is, on my view, on a par with the idea that I am giving you permission to post on your blog by not tracking you down and bashing your head in order to make you stop. The term “permit” is an obfuscation when it is not within the “permitter’s” rightful authority to forbid what she is “permitting.”)

On quite another subject, I take it that “courage is a virtue” is actually true by definition; one of the virtues is what “courage,” in the English language at least, names. The interesting question is what can properly be said to constitute courage.