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Comment by tacitusarc | Hacker News Reader

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has had his house smashed into an all of his stuff stolen, none of which was recovered and no meaningful attempt to do so was made, I don't particularly buy the argument that government enforces property rights. In certain cases, maybe. But mostly property rights exist because we all kind of agree they exist, and we generally don't go burglarizing each other.

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The point being made above about property rights is much bigger than “does my local police do a good job finding burglars?”.

The point is that the government maintains an entire system for tracking, resolving disputes, and enforcing ownership. Think about who has the final say in a dispute over whether you own your car or your house or your company. The government adjudicates ownership disputes and then enforces that adjudication via people with guns.

It’s easier to notice this system if you imagine the counter-factual: if you lived in a failed state, and you wanted to keep your your home or car you would probably need to hire some guys with guns.

(When you think about it this way, you notice that the “value” of the government’s “service” is much higher for people who own a lot rather than for those that own a little.)

Exactly - owning land within a country is different from discovering an island and needing to hire people to defend it once you find oil or gold or have anything of value.

Or, alternatively, you'd need to buy a gun and defend your property yourself. Which many people do, and has become even more prevalent with the spate of looting in major cities with no police response last summer. You seem to be approaching this from a highly theoretical and ideological position, but that ignores the reality of the current situation, and the fact that the proposed law does not exist in some hypothetical world. The problem with tax impositions is rarely the theory (there's always a reasonable justification), it's the practical realities surrounding policy.

But you're still relying on the US military to protect you from foreign nation states. Your little gun wouldn't do anything against a tank or fighter plane.

Have we learned nothing from Red Dawn?

Home defense doesn’t exist in a Hobbesian void of law. You’re still expecting the law to clean up after the fact, either to dispense justice against the invaders, or for the insurance payout, or whatever.

> Which many people do, and has become even more prevalent with the spate of looting...

Only 42% of US households own at least one gun. Which means at least 58% of households depend on police for protection. Moreover, having just a gun is not going to be sufficient and you will need other forms of protection offered by police and judiciary. Finally, just having an effective property rights protection and enforcement system deters a lot of crime. None of those things are available for free and property taxes are an effective way to pay for them.

Self defense with a firearm can be part of a plan to avoid being the victim of violence, but it works a lot better in a society where crime is rare, serious crimes are likely to be punished, and the probability of profiting from major crimes is low. When skilled and motivated criminals attack unsuspecting victims, they tend to be successful even if the victims are armed.

Case in point, in 1986, Michael Lee Platt and William Russel Matix went on a crime spree in the Miami area. They started by murdering a man at a shooting range to steal his firearm and car. They then tried and failed to rob an armored car, murdering an armed guard in the process. Next, they robbed a bank. After a couple months off, they robbed another armored car, during which they stole a guard's rifle and murdered him with it. A couple months after that, they robbed and attempted to kill another man at a shooting range, using his stolen car in a bank robbery a week later.

All of the victims these criminals shot were armed, which did not dissuade them from initiating attacks. The armored truck guards were presumably trained, but not sufficiently to defend against attackers whose opening move was gunfire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

Property rights are typically enforced if you are rich. It's pretty evident even just by looking out your car window at the condition of a place how the level of enforcement and tolerance for certain things changes the minute you drive from Los Angeles into other cities like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, or Culver City, for example.

The classic example of this differential response was in 1992, when the LAPD staked out defensive positions to protect the mansions owned by wealthy white political donors in Hancock Park, while Koreatown burned with immigrant shopkeepers left to fend for themselves by forming armed vigilante militias until the national guard was deployed and restored order.

You kept the house and the land- probably by far the most valuable assets. Without enforcement of property rights, what stops me from coming in with a bigger gun and just taking the land?

Of course, there are limits to the protection they provide- you can always buy more.

Clearly if the police could get away ignoring the fact that you came in and took the land, they would.

I would make a strong delineation between the adjudication of property rights and the enforcement of property rights. Those are two different things, and it has ever been the case that individuals frequently must act in an enforcement capacity. Potentially, if you tried to take someone's land, they will shoot you. That is enforcement. Adjudication happens when a judge says they were in the right.

Adjudication requires enforcement at the end of the day. Otherwise, whoever has the biggest gun wins.

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