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From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Freedom, coercion, and free markets
Message-ID: <388@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 25-Jan-85 05:01:40 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.388
Posted: Fri Jan 25 05:01:40 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Jan-85 05:52:04 EST
References: <311@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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> This objection to the liberal argument does not depend on how in actual fact
> private property was historically established, how it is in fact maintained,
> or whether it is a good institution.  The objection rests on logic. 
...

> Another way to put the point is this.  In liberal thought a world of
> exchange is conflict-free.  Everyone does what he wishes.  When all social
> coordination is through voluntary exchange, no one imposes his will on
> anyone else.  But how, we ask, can such a happy state be possible?  It is
> possible only because the conflicts over who gets what have already been
> settled through a distribution of property rights in the society.  Was that
> distribution conflict-free?  Obviously not.  Was it noncoercively achieved?
> Obviously not.  The distribution of wealth in contemporary England, for
> example, is a consequence of centuries of conflict, including Viking raids,
> the Norman Conquest, the early authority of Crown and nobility, two waves of
> dispossession of agricultural labor from the land, and the law of
> inheritance.  --Charles E. Lindblom
> 
> Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes


Do I detect the slightest hint of a self-contradiction here?

I (and one assumes most of the propertarians reading this) am well
aware of the limitations on one's freedom which occur because most
of the world is owned by other people.  However, you (and lindblom)
are making the implicit comparison to someone who owns everything,
and thus coming to the conclusion that a scantily-propertied person
is unfree.  If we compare it instead to the Socialist ideal wherein
the person owns nothing, you will see that even a pauper in a 
capitalist state is better off than a hero of labor in a socialist
one.

The basic question which the collectivist must answer is whether
there is any way of a group owning something as a group.  You are
well aware, I'm sure, of the various political power structures which
actually own everything in the cases where it is supposedly owned
by "the people".  I submit that the actual ownership of all property
by a small power group is MORE inequitable than the statistically
skewed distribution which occurs under capitalism.

--JoSH