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@ GrumpyRabbit
2025-05-08 00:13:16
I respond herein to your statements on property rights, but not to your assertions regarding Fascism (I will do so in a separate reply):
First, a synopsis of my full response: On property: Property is objectively necessary in order to minimize conflict over physical things for which consumption/use is necessarily rivalrous. That's why socialists don't even try to eliminate the ownership of property, but instead seek to collectivize it. The only difference between one cult of socialism and another is how the line is drawn between the property that's OK for an individual to own privately versus that which must be owned collectively.
Collective ownership politicizes the management of the property, which means that the behaviors of those in control of the collective, and/or of its property, will necessarily result in exactly the issues that arise with collective control over a society (corruption, mismanagement, unethical rule making, dishonest / partisan enforcement of the rules, and specious rulings rendered by courts.)
Hierarchical power structures can have only one result: giving effective ownership to the rich and powerful, and denying it to everyone else. Any collective entity with a monopoly of either societal power in general, or of the ownership of whatever property, is a single point of failure, and a high-value target of corruption. Rich, powerful and evil people will _always_ end up in control of it. Always.
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." ~ Frederic Bastiat
The "Iron Law of Oligarchy" cannot be mocked, Nor can the "Economic Calculation Problem" be solved in any other way than by private ownership and a free market.
Also, to deny anyone else the right to own anything physical (and which can only be consumed/used rivalrously) is the exercise of ownership of it by a socialist collective. That means that denying others the right to own something is a logical contradiction--as demonstrated by the fact that whatever collective ownership agent socialists advocate will, in fact, not allow me--or any other propertarian, whether as an individual or any other collective ownership agent--to freely consume/use whatever property it claims to own.
You cannot simultaneously disavow the rightfulness of property while also insisting that what others have should be shared with you. That argument contradicts itself, because it is a claim of title to property currently in the physical possession of others.
Finally, there is no principle of logic that can assign an objectively-valid value--larger than 1--to the minimum number of people in a collective ownership group who may "rightfully" own anything collectively: If N people can rightfully own whatever, then why can't N-1 people also rightfully do so? Values less than 1 are the only logically-supportable answer to that question—because it's logically impossible zero or fewer entities to "own" anything at all.
And, given the fact that a corporation is a totally valid example of collective ownership (and it's even totally consensual!), why do socialists oppose them so adamantly?
My full response can be seen in the conversation I had with Grok on the topic (a long series of questions by and and responses by Grok) => https://x.com/i/grok/share/6rNezAdsnogcsuD4mLBXpVhTa