The Proper Solution to Excessive or Unjust Ownership

[Abhorsen]

Your comparing apples to oranges because I am not proposing a limit to what 'one owns' but a limit to what a foreign citizen/country 'can own' as in what they have the right to buy in the first place as far as a share of the U.S. economy is concerned.

I wasn't really responding to your point. But denying someone the ability to buy means banning someone else from selling, which does interfere with property rights. I mean, you could say this is inherently

And just who gets to declare that people own themselves, and why isn't that socialism since said person is making rules about who owns another person?

I'm not saying that rules = socialism, as there are some basic rules about who owns what, like taking by force is wrong, etc. I'm saying that violations of property rights -> socialism. And the simple rule is that people start owning themselves at birth (not socialism, but instead recognizing private property in much the same way as a homesteading act on unclaimed land). So unless the person actually sold themselves into slavery (think indentured servitude or debt slavery), then no one would be able to own a slave. Now, banning people from selling themselves into slavery is a tiny bit of socialism, as it does infringe on one's property rights to their own body, but I'll take a minor bit of socialism here.

In contrast, slavery as commonly done is very socialistic: First, not recognizing someone's inherent right to ownership over one's own body. Second, the governmental systems enforcing slavery. Third, frequently the government is the chief slaver, including the draft, most communist countries forcing people to work, etc.

Well, if any social obligation or government control is socialism, then every human society and every conceivable human society is socialist, in which case calling something socialist is equivalent to just calling it human, and thus means nothing.

Everyone has limits to what they can own, and what you can do with it. In our system, you own the water that falls on your roof, but your right to take water from the river has limits.

A fathers right to do what he wants with his money is limited by a responsibility to not let their child starve.

I will not cede the idea of social responsibility to the socialists.

One can quite easily have social responsibilities that aren't enforced by government. This isn't socialism, as it isn't done by force.

As for the water from the roof example, that has to do with property rights as well. You don't own the river, but you might have a partial right to water from the river, etc. This has nothing to do with socialism either.

 

[Julio92]

"Control over what one owns" is not socialism. Otherwise you run into the bizarre proposition that anti-slavery laws are socialism, drug laws are socialism, all forms of taxation are socialism, licenses are socialism, etc. You're plowing into that strange notion that anything government-adjacent anywhere whatsoever is socialism.

Yes, and that's not a bad thing. Collective(societal) action for the good of the collective(society) is socialism(collectivism).

Its not a value judgement to call something socialism.

The term itself big-S Socialism has gained a lot of baggage due to the fundamentally radically egalitarian bent of people who identified with socialism as their main political salient, but civilization itself *is* a social project.

Well, if any social obligation or government control is socialism, then every human society and every conceivable human society is socialist, in which case calling something socialist is equivalent to just calling it human, and thus means nothing.

Everyone has limits to what they can own, and what you can do with it. In our system, you own the water that falls on your roof, but your right to take water from the river has limits.

A fathers right to do what he wants with his money is limited by a responsibility to not let their child starve.

I will not cede the idea of social responsibility to the socialists.

Actually in a lot of western states you don't own the rain that falls on your roof or land, with exemption for personal use(2 barrels of storage typically), this being that the state needs the water to distribute out to the cities and agriculture, and it would be harmful to the society if large landowners hoarded the rainfall, this is socialism.

Back in the early days of of Rome, the paterfamilias actually had the right to kill his children or sell them into slavery. That Rome evolved to preventing this evil of abuse of authority from occurring for the good of Rome was socialism.

Big-S Socialists, don't have a monopoly on the idea of social responsibility, just don't be afraid of the term.
As a recent example, the National Socialists certainly weren't afraid of it.

 

[JagerIV]

Yeah, watering socialism down to "anything people do together" is not I think a useful form to use, since, as we see above with Julio92 that basically lets one define not killing children as socialism, which makes the underlying beliefs that make socialism such a monstrorous belief system obscured by hiding what the actual underlying belief structure is, like letting communists define communism as things done in common, or Satanism as freedom and doing fun things, when that is not an accurate description of either belief structure.

I'm sorry @Abhorsen, but your definition of socialism doesn't seem particularly useful, especially for describing anything in the real world.

 

[Abhorsen]

I'm sorry @Abhorsen, but your definition of socialism doesn't seem particularly useful, especially for describing anything in the real world.

Thats not what I'm watering down socialism to mean. I'm saying socialism is a lack of respect for rights, including property rights, in exchange for government control of them. Though you are right that this isn't socialism, but its definitely moving away from perfect capitalism (not necessarily in the good sense of perfect, to be clear). Perhaps I should replace the socialism label with command and control economy.

 

[Floridaman]

First, lack of control over what one owns is pretty close to socialism. People 'own' things in China, but the state can seize them whenever they want, and restrict how people use them, etc.

Also, people own themselves, so slavery wouldn't be included. But yes, the other things are steps on the way to socialism. Socialism vs. capitalism can be thought of as a spectrum between total government control and individual property rights. Now, do I want to be all the way on the capitalism side, fully ancap? No. But that doesn't mean that most of government control is bad, such as occupational licensing, most taxation, the vast majority of the FDA, etc.

But if people own themselves, can they not also sell themselves? And historically people did sell themselves into it, for instance in Rome If not, how is the argument that some property cant be sold any different than the idea that some share of a piece of property can’t be sold. Don’t get me wrong I am not supporting that idea, but then my proposal is. Duality. If one group aren’t allowed to own property in another country, perhaps apply the same standard to their citizens.

 

[Lanmandragon]

@Bear Ribs beat me to the punch. I was about to bring that after the conquest of the promised land, the tribes cast lots to determine which lands went to whom, and your land was kept in your family forever. It was illegal to try to acquire the land of other families, to prevent the rich from just acquiring everything and most of the people becoming workers/indentured servants who had no land of their own.

Ofcourse, this only works if it's enforced. King Ahab wanted to buy Naboth's vineyard, but Naboth said no (and had the right to retain his land). Queen Jezebel conspired with community leaders to have Naboth framed and stoned, and then illegally took his land using a foreign custom.

If we implemented this today, what's to stop China or other countries from bribing the government to change the law/create exemptions that just let them buy up our land anyway? Again it only works so long as there are people willing (and able) to stand up and enforce it, which doesn't work because governments have a monopoly on power. We are at the mercy of the government. We don't live in the pre-modern period where kings had to abide by the rules or risk being overthrown by the common people.

Also, this system is incompatible with globalism/mobile labor. Right now we have a system where you sell your house and move hundreds of miles to where your job is, and then a few years later you do it all over again to follow the next job. This won't be as much as a problem with working from home technology, but if you want to be an aerospace engineer, you can't really do your job in Idaho. You HAVE to move to California. If you're landlocked then you either have to trade a plot with someone in California, or you have to pick the jobs that you can do in your area/from home.



I wonder if we will eventually see a widespread revolt or a collapse when the government and corporations end up owning everything. Or if they will have successfully created a 1984 state where we are all slaves. Well, they're kinda half way there.

The moving issue isnt that hard "all land within the United States must be owned by legal citizens of the United States". Solves that issue fairly decisively though loopholes could be made its be alot harder. The rest is harder but simply limiting land to actual citizens solves alot.

 

[Julio92]

The moving issue isnt that hard "all land within the United States must be owned by legal citizens of the United States". Solves that issue fairly decisively though loopholes could be made its be alot harder. The rest is harder but simply limiting land to actual citizens solves alot.

Birthright citizenship, and extremely liberal naturalization policies for residents (esp. allowing dual citizens!), makes U.S. Citizenship near worthless on a generational timescale, that which nations (should) operate on.

 

[Lanmandragon]

Birthright citizenship, and extremely liberal naturalization policies for residents (esp. allowing dual citizens!), makes U.S. Citizenship near worthless on a generational timescale, that which nations (should) operate on.

If you can enact a law like that the tou can get the support for removing birthright. Your correct though in that the 14th would cause issues with such a law.

 

[Doomsought]

If you can enact a law like that the tou can get the support for removing birthright. Your correct though in that the 14th would cause issues with such a law.

The first supreme corut case on the 14th said it was to make black ex-slaves citizens and had no other purpose. If you roll back the rampant reinterpretation of the law there will be no problem.

 

[JagerIV]

Thinking on it, defining "breach of property rights" as socialism is also false because socialism does respect property rights: its opinion is all property belongs to the state, and the state allows people to use its property. And, well, that is partially true in all states: all property within the state belongs to the state. The land I live on can meaningfully be said to be owned by the USA, in a way it does not belong to china.

Right now, I do not even own my own place, renting it from a landlord. However, I can also be said that I do have rights, and that in a meaningful way the lease does grant me ownership. Is the fact that I have some rights as a renter which limits my landlords rights to his property a creeping in of socialism?

The reality is that in our reality very few things are truly owned free simple. I, my landlord, the town, the state, and the Nation all have property right claims to the land I live in. And that property is subdivided further into specific aspects, rights, and responsibilities. The mineral rights are separate from the right to build upon it, and the right to build upon it are within somewhat restrained terms of the town, and my rights to modify the property as it exists are limited by the landlord.

I can see what point your making, but I would definitely strongly suggest against throwing around socialism so trivially. Socialism is a monstrosity, and using it so casually for such a common thing that seems inescapable in any civilized space is a dangerous use of language.

 

[Bassoe]

The problem is called colonization, and the solution is war.

'If you've got no path to upward social mobility or even stability at your current rung in the status quo, go attack the neighbors, if you win, you can take their stuff, if you lose, you'll have gotten enough people killed to make room for job openings again'? Not a viable option since 1945. A couple decades of wars of open imperialist conquest in the modern world would either lead to every soft target becoming a nuclear power or being annexed by a nuclear power, followed by either an endless standoff or the apocalypse.