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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

> Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that.

The compensation they extract has nothing to do with the cost of enforcing property rights, because those costs are trivial.

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Not trivial at all, just mostly invisible and most of us who've only known modern western societies never give it a second thought.

Try again. Law enforcement was just 9% of the Cupertino municipal budget in 2015.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1222

What fraction of that do you want to bet has anything to do with protecting private property, as opposed to the large revenue generating activities like parking tickets?

Like I said, completely invisible to you.

Try again. That "protection" you're referencing is actually the natural cooperation between rational actors that capitalism and market economies in general foster and perpetuate. Capitalism is the invisible hand, not government.

Go to school, kid: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/property_rights.asp

I've been studying economic theory for the majority of my life, have a PhD, and I am a fellow at one of the most prestigious econ think tanks in the world. I've gone to school. I do appreciate being called a kid though.

Is your point that they need a blank check to protect property rights? Because that's preposterous and would only demonstrate your own misunderstanding of property rights (or rights in general).

Let's see your dissertation then.

for professional reason (i.e. mixing personal social media activity with links to my professional work) I can't post that here. Against our social media policy, and is generally in bad taste. Undoubtedly, you will take that as "I can't since it doesn't exist", but I couldn't really care less.

Are you sure it's not because it's really in sociology?

Are inverted yield curves and business cycles typical sociology dissertation topics?

If you care to educate yourself on the point I was making: https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-and-cooperation/

Ctrl+f "property rights": Phrase not found -- I really don't understand why I'm supposed to slog through such bloviating.

https://fee.org/search/?q=protection%20property%20rights seems pretty clear they understand the government is responsible for protecting property rights, which is a prerequisite for capitalism.

Because you asserted that there is some invisible, omniscient, 'so complicated we couldn't possibly understand it' work being done by the government in order to keep the boat afloat. My claim is that that's largely a ridiculous claim. And the government IS responsible for protecting property rights, I never suggested otherwise. That responsibility doesn't afford them (we the collective) a blank check.

Is the irony seriously eluding you?! You're saying in order to protect our property rights, they need to further violate our property rights! For the love of god...

In one sentence you claim we never own our property, the next you say they're in charge of protecting our rights as property owners... You literally contradict yourself in one sentence...

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