From: hal@finney.org
Date: Tue Dec 12 2000 - 09:52:55 MST
Mike Lorrey writes:
> You own yourself. Thus, your labor belongs to you, and the products of
> it also belong to you.
Does this really follow, logically? Why stop there? Your labor belongs
to you, products of it belong to you, things you touch belong to you,
people who see the products of your labor belong to you, the universe
belongs to you? Where in this chain do we overstep our bounds? What
rule of logic tells us where to stop?
Saying that you own yourself is one thing, although it's not 100% clear
what that means. At least you are a tangible object; saying that you
"thus" own your labor is less well defined (labor is merely a pattern
of activity, something which is questionable to speak of owning).
But to go from there and say that you own the products of your labor is
entirely unjustified, unless these products emerge directly from your body
(and I doubt that anyone will fight you over those products).
In practice, to make products, you need raw materials. And if you are
going to own those products, you better have owned the raw materials.
But now your logical flow is completely disrupted. You tried to
show how you could come to own physical objects by starting with the
logical premise that you own yourself. However, you also have to assume
that you already owned certain physical objects (the raw materials).
Hence you have not built a system of property rights upon a foundation
of self ownership. You had to assume owned property already.
Hal
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