The topic of self-ownership and property will be covered in more detail on this blog. Right now, I'd like to offer you another to think about it.
You see, I'd love to have Yuval Noah Harari come visit for the weekend. We'll go out into the woods and find the bears. Even better, near a den.
No need to worry. No grizzlies or polar bears around here. Black bears are much smaller - only 250-350lbs - about the size of an NFL player (with 4 Freddy Kruger claws). And we're not bringing firearms.
Once we're in bear territory, Harari can go lecture the bears about the territory not being theirs, not even the dens they claim. The bears simply made that shit up. I'm not going on with him.
Will the bears clap and cheer at the joy of this new profound wisdom of owning nothing?
Not a chance.
The bear is going to react properly - as if his life and property were in danger. The bear will defend itself with extreme prejudice. Harari will not survive to tell another silly tale.
I would also act like the bear. So would you. It's a natural reaction. Survival. As Sir Edward Coke declared back in 1604:
The house of every one is to him as his Castle and Fortress as well for defence against injury and violence... [I]f thieves come to a man’s house to rob him, or murder, and the owner or his servants kill any of the thieves in defense of himself and his house, it is no felony, and he shall lose nothing.
If natural rights are just a "fiction," meaning Yuval has no natural right to life, is it acceptable to kill him? If not, why? I mean, after all, his right to live is just a "fiction". Amirite?
Arguing against self-ownership and property is self-defeating nonsense. It's no different than arguing for your own enslavement.
Right now, as you read this, families are fighting to keep their property against a government that wants to give their land to somebody else (in this case, Georgia Power), while whispering promises of more tax revenue and bigger campaign donations.
Theft. Robbery. Burglary.
They get away with stealing so much because they've convinced you that as an individual, you don’t mean a damn thing. You must agree with the Borg hive mind and submit to the collective meat grinder.
Politicians are no different than slimy tv preachers selling bullshit and lies. Prostitutes are far more respectable than the Ruling Class. More honest too.
What's Mine is Mine
In fact, socialists and fascists have this damnedable idea that what’s good for the collective is good for the individual, and that’s almost never the case. Maybe it works for creating a road network, but once you open that can of worms, suddenly hundreds of interest groups line up to drain the treasury for their pet projects. The projects very quickly get out of hand, and pretty soon you’re paying through the nose for things that never materialize.
The self-important bozos in elected office are trying to pay off the NGO/banking mafias that lent billions of dollars to buy a future that will never exist and offered only a fleeting PR bump. All of it was only to glorify and enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the country. At the same time, they have legislated and regulated the guts out of the national economy, so that they now have no revenues and are forced to steal the lifeblood of prudent and frugal folks.
Naturally, they look at the folks who have worked hard, purchased assets, and are saving them for when market forces favor a healthy profit for their prudence. This is always what socialists/fascists do. They sit on their plump unproductive arses dreaming up schemes that will make “everyone” rich, steal the wealth of productive people, and then watch as their stupidity ruins the entire nation for absolutely nothing. Kind of a reverse Midas Touch—all the wealth they touch turns to dust.
It’s not just the socialists, either. The US, one of the largest fascist nations on the planet, also has a habit of seizing property from folks they don’t like. Australia is starting to seize people’s machetes because no one needs them in a civilized country where criminal African gangs hack people to death with machetes. Britain is arresting folks for posting on social media, instead of arresting and executing rape and grooming gangs. Canada is helping folks who can’t take it anymore to kill themselves, while banning the few remaining sane folks from walking in the woods.
Once governments allow themselves to steal private property (asset forfeiture) for whatever reason, they eventually expand to seizing all wealth as a part of the national treasury. You can have a bank account or piece of land, as long as you are producing tax revenues for an ever-expanding national debt load.
Everything they steal, they burn.
You have no ownership, yet you're still individually (deep) in debt?
Sounds like a suckers game to me.
What are your thoughts?
