From: Michael S. Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Dec 12 2000 - 11:40:07 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> 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?
Sorry Hal, but that is a rather ridiculous extrapolation, with no
connection to the situation whatsoever.
>
> 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).
The value you add through your labor belongs to you. Is that better?
>
> 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.
No, you don't. You could assume that natural resources are community
property. If the community chooses to sell that property to individuals,
that is its right, but once sold in an agreeable exchange, that is now
private property. The fractional added value to raw materials that an
individual's labor belongs to the individual providing the labor,
exchanged under mutual agreement with the owner of the raw materials.
Also involved are tools used by the laborer, and the value of the
greater productivity the tools provide when combined with the knowledge
and skill posessed by the laborer in their use is split between the two.
Given all this, a capitalist free market results.
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