Troubadour
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 464
- Reaction score
- 181
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
It goes like this: According to libertarians, the fundamental basis of all rights is property. Not humanity, property. Human beings only have rights because we are each our own property. But...wait a second...if we are our own property, then we have to a right to sell ourselves to someone else, don't we? Uh-oh. This sounds like it's going in a dangerous direction. And if we can sell ourselves to someone else, then that person can in turn sell us to yet another person. In fact, if they own us, don't they also own whatever we produce, whether it be work or children? Oops. It seems we've gone full circle - the libertarian claim to be against slavery actually ends up rationalizing slavery.
The lesson is this: Our rights are based on our humanity, not on the idea of property. You do not steal because stealing hurts people, not because it would violate some abstract absolute of possession. You do not kill because killing destroys people, not merely because rules of property do not permit you that prerogative. You pay taxes that fund government programs because they serve people, and property-based complaints are trivial next to that fact. You do not wield absolute power over your children because they are not your property, they are people whose interests are held in trust by you, not something you own because you created them.
To the extent property helps people, it is to be protected. To the extent it does the opposite, as in the reasoning above - which drove the ideology of the Confederacy, and motivates so much conservative/libertarian politics today - it is subordinate to humanity. Either humanity is the absolute right or property is, and if property is then you support slavery. There is no escaping it.
The lesson is this: Our rights are based on our humanity, not on the idea of property. You do not steal because stealing hurts people, not because it would violate some abstract absolute of possession. You do not kill because killing destroys people, not merely because rules of property do not permit you that prerogative. You pay taxes that fund government programs because they serve people, and property-based complaints are trivial next to that fact. You do not wield absolute power over your children because they are not your property, they are people whose interests are held in trust by you, not something you own because you created them.
To the extent property helps people, it is to be protected. To the extent it does the opposite, as in the reasoning above - which drove the ideology of the Confederacy, and motivates so much conservative/libertarian politics today - it is subordinate to humanity. Either humanity is the absolute right or property is, and if property is then you support slavery. There is no escaping it.