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MaximumLiberty comments on Why capitalism? - Less Wrong Discussion
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One could equally well say "letting people own property is capitalistic. Taxing them for property is less capitalistic precisely because it is equivalent to the government really owning the property and leasing it".
In other words, you haven't shown that the same situation is or isn't capitalistic depending on the framing. Rather, you've shown that both framings are equally capitalistic, but they just have different starting points. In one situation, you start out with capitalism (owning property) and make it less capitalistic (taxing the property). In another, you start out with a socialist situation (government owns the property) and make it more capitalistic (people can lease it and get some rights over it).. Either way you end up in the same place.
In practice, you don't end up in the same place.
"I own this property and pay $1,000 in taxes to the government" is a very different situation from "The government leases me this property for $1,000".
"Property" is a large bundle of rights that does not boil down to cash flows.
You end up in the same place in this hypothetical. OrphanWilde postulated a situation where the same situation could be described as taxing people on property they own or the government leasing property. If these are in fact two different framings of the same situation, it follows that in this hypothetical, the government has an unusual kind of lease that does grant the kind of rights you are referring to, even though a normal lease would not do so.
Of course I may be steelmanning too much and he may have just not noticed that his hypothetical requires a very atypical kind of lease.
Mexican land trusts are a good example of a "lease" arrangement that behaves identically to ownership as we typically regard it.
I think that would require considerable violence to the words "own" and "lease".
Why is taxing property less capitalistic?
The only reason you can or cannot own land in the first place is that government has asserted that land is something that you can own, and will protect your claim of ownership by force. Government enables that ownership in the first place - just as it -doesn't- enable ownership of the ocean, and does enable ownership of physical processes but not mathematical processes. Setting terms on the manner in which ownership is handled isn't more or less capitalistic; the difference, rather, is between good rules, and bad rules. Ownership of land has proven, on the whole, a very productive arrangement; it's a good rule. That's not the same as "capitalistic."
This kind of claim is very popular on the left, and it always puzzles me, because it's so obviously false on so many levels.
Firstly, land ownership long predates any government. In fact, it even seems to predate humans! It would be more historically true to say that land ownership created government than that government created land ownership.
Secondly, just because the government recognises your property right in something, doesn't mean you own it in any meaningful way. You seem to picture an omnipotent government that could even enable ownership of the ocean, but if it tried it would find itself much more like Canute. Unless you can enforce ownership, it's meaningless. People simply don't pay royalties every time they sing Happy Birthday, regardless of its copyright status. And so on.
Thirdly, just because the government doesn't recognise your property right in something, it doesn't mean you don't own it. Does Tony Montana own the cocaine he imports? He buys it, he sells it, he stores it, he makes use of it how he wants, other people accept that it is "his," no-one else can get hold of it except by his agreement. That's ownership. The fact that the government doesn't recognise his legal title is irrelevant, he has other methods of enforcing his claim.
In summary, government recognition of title is neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership, nor is it the historic origin. I myself am the title-holder of a plot of land that I do not own in any meaningful sense, because the writs of the government that recognises my title do not run in that area. Instead, there are other people who are currently enjoying all the property rights of that land, using it, earning money from it, excluding others from it, maybe even transferring their ownership. Perhaps I should go there and tell them that because the government doesn't recognise their claim, they can't do any of that stuff. Something tells me they might not find the argument persuasive.
[Edited: Quoting mistake]
At any rate, I think you are trying to fit what I am saying to a political agenda that doesn't match my own. I don't -have- a political agenda here. I'm asserting, as somebody who would be described as an extremist capitalist, that "capitalism" isn't an economic system. What people usually mean, when they say "capitalism", is either exactly the set of economic rules they think would work best, or exactly the set of economic rules they disagree with most.
If you assert that any entity that enforces property rights is a government, then your claim is (1) circular and (2) a distortion of the term "government" beyond all recognition. Tony Montana certainly doesn't look like a government.
Any entity which acts as the final enforcer for any set of rules at -all- is a government; your city can send police to arrest you, your county can do likewise, so they both qualify; your HOA has to sue you for breach of contract in a court run by a government who will enforce the decisions of that court by sending a policeman if necessary. Tony Montana isn't -a- government, but rather an agent of one; the Mafia.
But Tony Montana isn't an agent of anyone, he works for himself. There is no final enforcer in that situation, it's an anarchy in that sense (which is why the drug trade is violent). But property still exists.
In fact, governments are much closer to anarchies than your "unlimited escalation" would allow. The reason I can't enforce property rights in my land isn't because of some rival government, but because of anarchy that the government can't suppress.
Finally, you concede the possibility! Yet property still exists there. So how's property merely a creation of government again?
The property of whom? You? Begging your pardon for insensitivity, but in what meaningful sense do you own it?
ETA:
Does it belong to someone else? In what sense do -they- own it? They get use of it? Do I own the sky because I can enjoy its hue? Or do they, or representatives on their behalf, actively prevent anybody else from taking use of it? If that's the case, in what sense are they, or those representing their interests, not a government?
So in a traditional (patriarchal) household, each husband is a government, right? And all parents, too?
No, because few husbands or parents are willing or able to act as final enforcers.
Final enforcement requires unlimited escalation. No matter how you escalate the situation, a final enforcer will escalate back.
Is this equivalent to saying that a government is any entity which has the will and the ability to kill you if it deems necessary?
And I think that parents of small children are final enforcers. No one sues their five-year-old for throwing a tantrum.
By that reasoning, making people slaves isn't less capitalistic, either. The only reason you can or can't control your own life is that the government has asserted that you do or don't, and will protect either you or the slaveowner's claim by force.
Also, by that reasoning, you cannot ever assert that the government is violating someone's rights, since rights do not exist independently of whether the government sets the terms.
If you can't compare how capitalistic two situations are, you can't claim that they are equally capitalistic either, which you are implicitly doing.
Being able to justify your argument also implies being able to justify the things that it implies. This is true whether you claim those things or not.
In this case, you've said that you can characterize ownership of land as being enabled by the government on the grounds that you need government force to keep owning it. This argument extends both to other kinds of ownership (including farms and buildings) and other kinds of rights. It is equally true that you rely on government force to keep owning a building, and it is equally true that you rely on government force in order to prevent someone from killing you.
You're shifting arguments. Your argument wasn't "conversion", it was that the government will protect your claim by force. Protecting your claim by force is something that applies to land, buildings, and the right not to be murdered. Of course, if you bring up a new argument, anything I say about your old argument may not necessarily apply.
Actually, you shifted arguments, and I permitted it in that case, but nice attempt to try to berate me for what you've been doing all along. But at any rate, at this point I must conclude discussions with you can't be productive, because as soon as you realized I wouldn't permit you to change the subject and pretend we were having the same discussion, you instead resorted to petty debate tactics. Good day.
I didn't change the subject. It's right up there.