[SerfsUp]

Just so you know what leftist intellectuals spend their time working on: an airtight argument against individual property rights.

Even more outrageous than this socialist-collectivist nonsense is the fact that so-called academic intellectuals are actually paid tuition dollars to prodcue trash like this.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Its hard to believe garbage like this is still tolerated.

[AuntB]

Also what is amazing is the consclusions they can arrive at....based on their premise that "our money isn't ours until it's taxed and you see what you have left". No, they don't mind a bit suckling off the public teet to support their blather.

[keithtoo]

I'd like to go over to this guy's house or apartment and take "our" TV and computer. It's none of his business when or if I return them.

It is also amzing how close this article comes to supporting the Feudal right of kings and lords. In that system, EVERYTHING, from wild game to cultivated crops, belonged to the royalty, and whatever they 'let the people keep' was, literally, a gift.

[xp38]

I remember a sign on an apartment door in the movie Reds which said Property is Theft. Not much has changed.

[Fintan]

Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel are both professors of law and philosophy at New York University. They are the authors of "The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice."
 

Oooooooooooo...They're "professors" and golly gee, if they say ownership is a myth then, dang, it must be true...

And I'll bet my entire 401k, stock holdings and savings that these effete little twits have their tenure in their little ivory tower and neither one ever worked a day in their self-absorbed little lives.

My solution is that if they don't believe my property and savings and earnings belong to me then they are cordially invited to come to my front door to try to take it away from me...

 

[SES1066]

Which goods, at what level, should be provided by collective public decision and which goods by private individual choice?

Please tell me what 'goods' are provided by a 'collective'? There is collaberation such as this piece of tripe, but nothing is produced by a collective, which explains the failures of communistic 'utopias'. Since4 the first protohuman picked a fruit or snared a rabbit, it is the INDIVIDUAL effort, singly or in common, that has been the source of these goods. Their entire argument is based on a fallacy.

[Mark Felton]

Their argument would make even Marx blush. This is deliberate agitprop.

Private property pre-exists government of any sort. Family, clan or tribal ownership of property existed eons before the rise of the "state" and more modern forms of government.

The clan would control and manage the property using their own marshal forces. Basically, any land which you could control for your own purposes made you the "rightful" owner.

"Nothing is ours, which another may deprive us of." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:440

Entreaties and alliances were negotiated with neighbors to help extend periods of peace, and provide for mutual defense.

It was not until more expansive alliances required joint ownership of resources that "taxes", mutually pledged fiscal support, would be contributed for their common cause. Also taxes would be demanded when a superior military force would conquer lands and demand "taxation" as a price to pay for continued "ownership". The first type of taxation is the approach of a free society, the latter is the method of authoritarianism.

"By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another by force or fraud. Nor is this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books, recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of practice." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME 18:104

[metesky]

We all know there was no property in the U.S. before 1913.

Don't we?

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[GladesGuru]

Thanks for posting this classic of socialist agitprop. May I suggest a warning be appended - 'Reading will induce overstimulation of gag reflex!"

[buffyt]

If you haven't all read RADICAL SON by David Horowitz and what his parents [who were communists] found out about property rights. He has a chapter in the book that covers it. His parents didn't believe in owning private property. They rented a home. It was taken away from them. They had to move out. Later they bought one just like it for a whole lot more money.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

If you allow someone to define the argument, you've already lost. If the argument is about something specific, such as how to distribute the tax cut "fairly," the libs want to talk about "the big picture." If you want to talk about "the big picture" such as getting rid of Saddam, the loonies want to talk about how that affects one specific subject (the "innocent victims.") Right now, Bush is applying a tax cut proportionately to those who pay the taxes. That seems very fair to me. If they want to get into a Talmudic, Cosmic discussion of the tax structure in general, that's fine, at another time and place.

[Dr. Zoo]

Oops, sorry, I thought it said Tax Transvestites...

T-man, what should the rate be, something like...

69%?...LOL couldn't let that be seen, I am trying to be wholesome

[ancient_geezer]

They are the authors of "The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice."

Says it all.

There was good reason why Karl Marx and the Communist Party makes the progressive/graduated income tax the 2nd plank of the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

We should never forget nor overlook the philosophical underpinnings of that choice, which truly condemns private ownership at any level:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state ... . Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property ... . These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. "

[kcar]

Wake me up when the civil war begins. There's no basis for arguing with certain people, who accept absurdity as a founding premise, making them happily immune to having their arguements reduced to that. Like talking to a crazy person.
All rights begin with property. Your property in yourself and the extensions of your efforts = freedom of thought, speech, self defense, and establishes the basis of voluntary contracts. How much of your property does the government need to extract by force from you to pay for collective defense? Should be very little (< 5%). I think serfs paid less than we do as a percentage of income earned. At > 50% we are grossly overtaxed.

[Publius6961]

But in fact we don't own our pre-tax income, and what we do own is defined by a legal system of private property in which taxes play an indispensable role.

Does anyone else besides me remember a stand up comedian of the 50s and 60s by the name of Professor Corey?

I don't think this guy is doing stand up comedy though. That makes it scary.

And I'm still scratching my head. If we don't own our pre-tax income, who does? And if it's the collective? What is that and what empowered it?
I suspect illegal drugs had a major role in the creation of this article.

[USMA '71]

1. Modern property rights are not part of nature. They are created and sustained by a legal, political, and economic system of which taxes are an essential part. 2. The question, How much of "our money" may the government take in taxes?is logically incoherent, because the legal system, including the tax system, determines what "our money" is.

Wrong on both accounts!! The "Market place" will spring up with or without government and IT will set the definition of what money is. This guy needs to take a remedial course in Applied Logic.

[SerfsUp]

But in fact we don't own our pre-tax income, and what we do own is defined by a legal system of private property in which taxes play an indispensable role.

This claim may seem outrageous, but a little reflection shows that it must be so. Notice that we couldn't, as a matter of logic, have unrestricted property rights in the whole of our pre-tax income, because without taxes there would be no government, and consequently no legal system, no banks, no corporations, no commercial contracts, no markets in stock, capital, labor, or commodities-in other words no economy of the kind that makes all modern forms of income and wealth possible.

This is delberate obfuscation of the meaning of the word "property".

Property is defined in terms of recognition of ownership, and a willingness to recognize property rights appears naturally in humans at an early age. If two children trade a baseball card for a stick of gum, both of them will recognize that property rights have been transferred, independent of recognition by any government body.

Property rights can and should be established by contracts between parties, with the legal system's role restricted to arbitration of disputes. The legal system does not define property -- that is the domain of the people, freely contracting with one another.

The government's role is merely to protect property rights when two private parties freely contract to exchange those same rights.

[Grit]

...because without taxes there would be no government [as we know it], and consequently no legal system, no banks, no corporations, no commercial contracts, no markets in stock, capital, labor, or commodities-in other words no economy of the kind that makes all modern forms of income and wealth possible.

Grit's edit to turn lie into truth.