Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
Gene,
ReplyDeleteDo you think that your reading is the *only* conclusion to be drawn from Oliva's post? In other words, are you claiming that Oliva is being disingenuous, incoherent, or just reckless? If is is possible to read Oliva's post differently than you do (which seems likely; it is a difficult thing to prove that denying your conclusion is tantamount to logical incoherence), and that reading is more charitable, then it is incumbent upon you to grant that charity. If not, however, then your critique stands.
"and that reading is more charitable, then it is incumbent upon you to grant that charity."
ReplyDeleteStephen, I gave this a *very likely* reading. And since we are talking about the sort of rhetoric which has, in the past, led people to fly a plane into an IRS building and blow up a Fed building in Oklahoma, it is, I think, incumbent upon Oliva to guard much more carefully against such a reading.