Gin, and A Problem of Ownership

The culprit: Several gin-and-tonics served in a 16-ounce wine glass.

The result:
 "Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you political beliefs are at odds with your personal ethics?" I've been stumbling into problems with my conviction that libertarianism is an extraordinarily strong political principle, but is mostly consequence blind. In essence, the problem is that libertarianism allows for folks to starve to death, for the world to burn, so long as everyone is free from coercion while it happens. (Our intuitions about what counts as coercion is where things get sticky ).

My friend Valerie said that some issues like abortion are tricky for her and that her overt support of capitalism conflicts sometimes with her sense that we owe it to other people to help out society.

I asked about her idea of owing, remarking that implies that society owns us to some extent. I thought that was a knock down argument, since I was a) intoxicated and b)  assumed that she would agree that owning other people is like slavery. She didn't think so, and neither did my friend Tim, who pointed out some issues with my own idea of personal property.

We didn't stay on the topic for too much longer, since a) I was still intoxicated, b) as a result,  I couldn't think as clearly as I would have liked at that moment,  and c) I didn't think I could stand to have my political psyche jostled at that moment.

The lasting effects:

I spent most of this last week thinking about property, about how we acquire property, whether I own myself, what it means for other people to own me. I haven't reached too many conclusions, but I do think I've gotten somewhere. Here are a few things that I've noticed.


1) Anyone who thinks property is real, whether collectively or personally owned, must give an account of how property is acquired. Right now, I think that property is probably a social agreement (not a metaphysical mixing of labours as philosopher John Locke would have it), where I show up, find something unowned, say "This is mine," and people agree that I have certain rights to its use and that they don't. We'll call this homesteading. If there is no one around when I try to homestead an object, there isn't property, but it's irrelevant, since no one can disagree with my use of that object.

2) There can be homesteading disagreements. Some of these disagreements we call theft, since we can see that Tim previously acquired rights to his textbook, and Valerie never got those rights when she snuck into his room and stole his calculus book. Other disagreements are pseudo-thefts, where I find Tim's textbook on the road, think that no one has a homesteaded right to it, and decide to keep it. Tim actually still owns the textbook, so if he found out I had it, he'd be in his rights to demand I return it. Finally, there are those occasions where we find a textbook, think it's unowned, and eventually, the original owner basically says "Well, that's gone forever, who ever has it can keep it." So owners can relinquish ownership of their homesteaded property.

3) On 1 and 2, its still tricky to determine whether people are owned. One argument could be that I am the first to homestead myself, or I have the best homestead claim over my person. I am the only person capable of making it move voluntarily and it's clear that I definitely was always here to claim myself, whatever I am. (Weird fetus-personhood arguments might happen here. Exciting!). In essence, this argument claims that I homestead myself the moment I come into existence.
The other side of the argument has a pretty interesting case, too. In order to reach adulthood as a human being, you need a caretaker for your early years of life. For a lot of folks, this is a parent. One intuition here is to say that since infants can't take care of themselves, that children are homesteaded by parents, so parents own their children. We can stretch this further to say that society also provides things for the child, so society homesteads the child, too. 
4) I don't find either the parent or society homestead argument very satisfying. First, it's not clear that the child is unowned, and you can only homestead unowned objects. If people auto-homestead themselves when they come into existence, then parents can't homestead children like that and neither can society. The second problem is what to do with the fact that as the child gets older, it becomes more independent. But is it still owned? If not, when does that stop? If yes, is there any way for the child to achieve self-ownership? Third, if I am owned, what can I do with myself? Since I am not fully my own property (or perhaps not at all), what sorts of behavior must I ask permission to perform before I do it? This leads to my next point.

5) It seems right to say that we can do whatever we want with property that we own, (so long as it doesn't harm other people's property--we don't own their property after all). This seems to follow from the idea that since no one else owns what I own, they don't get a say in how I use it.

6) If I am owned, I am enslaved, in so far as I cannot decide what actions I may take, but instead am compelled by my owners to take actions. Slavery seems wrong to me, so I don't like the idea that society owns me. It may be true, but it doesn't make it right.


Those are some thoughts/problems. I don't think I've made a very charitable case for society owning me, so that's something to work on in the future. However, I do think that there are some bad implications for the claim that I am owned in some part by society. I'm still puzzled by how property acquisition works, and whether it is possible to claim ownership of persons, so there is lots more to consider, perhaps this time without the influence of alcohol.