Hacker News Reader

Comment by aninhumer | Hacker News Reader

>It's not a limiting doctrine that says you can only do this or that.

Of course it is. It's a limiting doctrine that says "you may use the resources allocated to you within the property system, and no others".

This idea that property rights aren't a form of coercion is one of the most tiresome aspects of libertarian rhetoric.

Capitalism is a very effective economic system, and that efficiency often affords people more freedom than the alternatives, but it is still fundamentally a system of coercive constraints, as indeed any economic system must be.

View on HN

It's only coercive when you adopt some backwards conception of what coercion means. (E.g., The rapist claims they are being coerced because they can't do whatever they please with other peoples' bodies.)

I'll agree that there are many ways in which the status quo contains injustice as it relates to claims of ownership, but that's entirely different than calling the system of private property coercive. I also don't think there is one objective standard for what confers just and unjust title (i.e., I think this is an emergent social convention rather than some clearly definable concept), but that again is an entirely different topic.

>It's only coercive when you adopt some backwards conception of what coercion means.

If I try to use particular resources, the system will use violence to stop me. If you claim this isn't coercion, then I think it is your conception which is backwards.

>(E.g., The rapist claims they are being coerced because they can't do whatever they please with other peoples' bodies.)

Yes, the prevention of crimes is indeed a form of coercion.

This only sounds strange if you start with the assumption that coercion is inherently bad. If instead you recognise coercion as a necessary consequence of conflicting desires, you can start to discuss what coercion is justified.

Now I think property has shown to be a very effective economic system, and that using coercion to enforce it is therefore entirely justified. But it's still coercion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com