Aren't all property rights "government-created monopolies"?
If I own a car, I may have a "monopoly" over a subsequent sale of that particular car, but it's an extremely limited market with n = 1. And the rationale for protecting my property rights here isn't just theft of my car would deprive me profits from resale, but that it would deprive me of actually using the car and driving around.
In contrast, intellectual property concerns the control of a particular market where n > 1. Copyright isn't necessary to protect my ability to use a particular copyrighted work -- I can still read my book, write sequels, etc. even if someone infringes. Rather, the rationale for copyright is to enable me to capture 100% of the profit from any market for my copyrighted work -- i.e. a monopoly.
The idea being that proper governments recognize rights that already exist, they don't create those rights. One could argue that so-called intellectual property rights aren't rights that existed before governments created them.
I keep my copy of Hobbes bookmarked for occasions such as this.
Hereby it is manifest that, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.
And, a few paragraphs later, the refutation of your assertion:
To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ distinct, but only that to be every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it.
There are countless opportunities for me every day to engage in risk free petty theft, yet I don't. Why don't I? It isn't fear of the law, since I have no fear of being caught, and it isn't fear of reprisal since, again, I have no fear of being caught.
No, I think the reason why I don't steal, even when I could, probably has something to do with the same underlying basis of all those "don't steal" laws. I mean, is it a coincidence that I, and those long dead lawmakers, both think that I shouldn't steal? I don't think the existence of the law has created in me this aversion to stealing either. I could cite for you countless examples where the law and I agree to disagree. It's neither fear nor respect of the law that keeps me (and I suspect, most people) from stealing.
well... yeah. If not born into a society with established laws, there would be nothing engraining this idea that you may not take something somebody else is "using".
Said another way, if you define "government" as people agreeing on a rule, then no, property rights cannot exist outside of government. Or if they did, they would have no basis in reality so they're not worth thinking about. However, if you define "government" as a certain way of enforcement, or a way of codifying laws, or really any particular construct, then in that case property rights obviously do exist outside of government.
What Hobbes is saying is a bit more involved than that. He is saying that because people's nature (and self-interest in particular) mean that they will, in practice, not acheive universal agreement, you can't, in practice, have order without an entity which can enforce compliance with the general-but-not-universal agreement and punish defection from it, because otherwise even a general agreement will devolve into chaos. (He might have been more succinct and made reference to the "Tragedy of the Commons", except that that term wouldn't be coined for a little over three centuries after Hobbes wrote Leviathan, and even the historical events that motivated the term were still.)
As there is no global government or other power, we can observe the relationships between people that have no common power and prove his assertion false.
For example, there is no one common power that controls all American and British people. Yet Americans and British people travel to each other's homes, have relationships with each other, trade with each other, and sometimes even move from one country to another. All of this is done peacefully, with no common power that controls both sides of the equation. Same thing with relationships between Swiss people and Japanese people, or Chinese people and Egyptians, or Brazilians and Indians, or anybody else that you choose.
If Hobbes' idea was true, wouldn't the relationship between two average people that have no common power be rather warlike rather than the mutually beneficially peaceful relationships that we see every day?
Or we can observe that though someone may travel abroad, at home they are subject to a power (their home country's laws) and abroad they are subject to a power (the laws of the country they're visiting).
And then we can observe that your analogy really works best with the countries themselves, and of course the history of international relations is full of countries respecting each others' territory, sovereignty, etc. without any need for some third party to exercise power and hold them in check. Right?
Right?
Have you read much history?
A prime example of Bastiat's reasoning skills and demonstration of how much respect should be afforded him.
"Possession", as a concept used by anarchists, has always seemed rather poorly defined (surprise surprise), but if we are willing to permit some very slight anthropomorphism, there are non-human examples of the recognition of a concept that we could reasonably call "possession". It seems therefore that whatever "possession" may be, it is a concept that can exist in the absence of governments.
But using a vague definition for government like "resources which most of society recognizes to be under the rightful possession of a specific individual or group and for which most of society expects attempted trespasses to be met with violence from the possessor or people serving the interests of the possessor" and a vague definition for (at least modern Western) government like "the organizations which are funded primarily by taxation and which have the sole legal authority to make and implement policy," both of which I think line up with most people's everyday definitions, I would say that property predates government and can easily be conceived of in modern times without government.
Enforcing a monopoly requires the application of violence to maintain it. In the absence of violence, anybody may compete.
Physical property rights, as an example, exist at all times in the absence of force. To physically take something from someone you must use violence in one form or another. That ownership is not granted by the government, it's granted by my having acquired it without using any form of violence to get it, and you must take the thing from me to change that.
The government doesn't guarantee I'll always own my property, they provide no guarantee to a monopoly over my car. A thief can come and steal it, and I may never see that car again. The government will not then replace it. The government provides justice, not property guarantees.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.