on body "rights"

I showed in the last post that your control of your stuff is the result of a negotiation between all market participants.  You control your stuff, because, on average, market participants prefer for you to control it, rather than someone else.  I want to show here that even your control of your own body is necessarily subject to the negotiation of market participants.

Current market participants would generally prefer for each other to have full control over our own bodies.  But we only allow average adults under average circumstances to have full control.  We don't allow people who are infantile or senile. We don't allow the mentally handicapped or insane. We don't allow the comatose, suicidal, sleepwalking, intoxicated, or brainwashed. In all of these cases, market participants prefer to maintain some degree of stewardship over the bodies of others.

If you are a child, we will lock you up in the house at night like a prisoner and we won't pay you back for it. We will force you to eat green leafy vegetables, to go to bed at a reasonable hour, to get vaccinated against life threatening illnesses, to memorize multiplication tables, and a host of other things that we think are in your best interest and we will NEVER pay you back for it. We will never feel obligated to pay you back for it.

If you are mentally handicapped, if you suffer from Alzheimer’s, if you are in a coma, or if you are in any other way incapable of exercising adequate stewardship of your own body according to our opinions, we won't allow you to have complete control over it. We may keep you locked in a facility, or at least under constant supervision. We won't allow you access to certain resources like vehicles or weapons. We will commit an endless stream of offenses to maintain our control over your body. And we will never pay you back for it. We will never feel obligated to pay you back for it.

Rights theories are incompatible with this reality.

At what point does it stop being OK to force a child to stay locked in the home? How old is too old? When does it transition from responsible stewardship to evil body rights violation?

At what point does it start being OK to force an adult to stay locked in a facility? How handicapped is too handicapped? How senile is too senile?  When does it transition from imprisonment to assisted living?

We generally keep kids locked up until they prove they're responsible enough. And we generally leave adults alone until they prove that they aren't, but what gives us the right to restrict their rights in the first place?

As an An-Cap, I would have said that issues like these should be settled on a case by case basis in a free market for arbitration services, but that just begs the question. What is the objective criteria by which you determine the difference between violation and non-violation in this context? “The market will decide” isn't an answer. It's a black box.

All property arrangements are negotiated, even control of your own body. If the average sentiment of the community is that you can't be a responsible steward of your own body, then we won't let you control it. That is, you don't own your body. Nobody owns anything. Ownership doesn't exist. But we all want to control resources, and we all continually renegotiate with each other for who is going to control which resources.

Final thoughts:

1. Sometimes I support rape, but "sometimes" will never happen:

If the human species ever reaches a genetic bottleneck, if it is reduced to only 300 breeding pairs or whatever the hypothetical minimum would be, each surviving member would need to breed according to a stringent central plan in order to maximize genetic diversity and population growth to save the species. If certain members of this desperate tribe refused to submit to this program, I would rape them. I would minimize the trauma associated with it as much as possible, but I wouldn't spare anyone the responsibility of participation. I love the human race more than I love any individual member of it. The human race is the most precious thing the universe has ever produced. If you wont fuck to save your species, then your control over your body is forfeit.  But this is the only scenario I can imagine, and it's vanishingly unlikely.

2.  Moral feelings have evolved to maximize the long term value of tribal assets:

We say that it's "bad" to lock up average adults, because they have a "right" to control their own bodies.  But that isn't why it's bad.  The tribe needs people who can hunt, gather, fight, nurture, heal, and everything else.  Average adults are best suited to all these tasks, and they need to control their own bodies to perform them.  The tribe that disallows average adults to control their own bodies starves to death.

We say that it's "good" to lock up children, because they have a "right" to responsible stewardship.  But that isn't why it's good.  The tribe needs children to grow up to become average adults.  The tribe that allows children full control over their own bodies, watches them die.

so I guess I'm a socialist

 Moral Journey

  Almost immediately after I published the last post, I finally followed the logic of my own argument about homesteading.  Which made me recognize that anarcho-capitalism is actually socialism.  Which means that I'm a socialist.  But let's back up.

Let's actually do an overview of my moral evolution up to now.

1. Obey Jesus. (republican)

     Q: But is it ok to burn the gays forever for the crime of accidental same sex attraction?
     A: No.  So morality is not obedience to Jesus.

2. Don't burn the gays forever. (democrat)

     Q: Can we burn anybody forever?
     A: No. Neither gays nor burning are special.  Eternal punishment is bad.

3. Don't prescribe punishments in excess of the crime. (no party, but liberal who likes the market)

     Q: What counts as a crime?
     A:  Hurting people or their stuff or taking their stuff.  Or lying to them to get their stuff.

4. Don't initiate force against people or justly acquired property. (Libertarian (big L))

     Q: How does property get justly acquired?
     A: You homestead it.  You're the first to claim it and make use of it.  Works for your body too.

5. Don't initiate force against homesteaded property. (libertarian (small l))

     Q: How do you determine what counts as legitimate homesteading and what doesn't?
     A: That should be determined in a free market for arbitration services, not a government court.

6. No seriously, don't initiate force against homesteaded property. (anarcho-capitalist)

     Q: No seriously, how do you determine what counts as homesteading?  "The market will decide"
          isn't an answer.  By what objective standard do we distinguish between legitimate and
          illegitimate homesteading claims?
     A:  ...magic man done it?

Moral Roadblock

And this is where I'm at now.  I can't find any way to objectively distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate homesteading. That means that no matter how much I want it to be, my morality really isn't any better than any body else's. It means that the foundation of my moral philosophy is nothing but another baseless preference.

Moral U-turn

And what's more interesting is that this is a SOCIALIST preference. I want homesteading disputes to be resolved by the free market. That means I want them to be resolved according to the average preferences of the community, rather than by some codified permanent standard. That means I want prevailing property arrangements to reflect the average preferences of the community. That's what socialism is.

Moral Backpedaling

But now I need to distinguish myself.  Most socialists want to use authoritarian processes to achieve this arrangement:  That's logically impossible.  Most of the rest want to use unanimous democratic processes to achieve this arrangement:  That's functionally impossible.  I want to use the free market.

Moral Recalculating

But now I have to redefine "free market".  Before, I would say that the free market is the sum of all voluntary interactions.  But the concept of "voluntary" only makes sense within the context of property rights. Voluntary wants to mean “with the consent of the owner of the object”. But owners don't exist.  All claims to “own” something are subject to the average preferences of society. The current “owner” of an object is just the person who, on average, market participants currently prefer to maintain control over the object. That means that voluntary actually means, “in accordance with the prevailing average preferences of market participants”. That means that I can take an object from somebody, an object that they made a reasonable homesteading claim to, and without his consent, but if the broader community prefers for me to have it instead of him, then the interaction was still “voluntary”.

I think that a better definition of “free market” is:

"a market in which prevailing property arrangements reflect the averaged preferences of all participants".

That means that an “un-free market” is one in which prevailing property arrangements are biased in favor of the preferences of one or more participants.  So an "un-free market" is a biased market.  Governments aren't the only biased markets.  All authority based relationships are biased, whether they are political, commercial, spiritual, romantic, or anything else.

Are we there yet?

 Here's the final interesting thing.  Let's say I live in a community in which average preferences are for things I absolutely refuse to tolerate:  things like honor killings or clitorodectomies.  In that case, a decentralized and competitive system of arbitration companies would tend to produce property arrangements that I would not accept.  I would be not only willing, but eager to violently intervene in that market or even to violently abolish that market.  I would impose a bias for my preferences on to the property arrangements in that community.  And I would feel great about it.

Market mechanisms are only acceptable when the average preferences of market participants are sufficiently close to your own.  When the preferences of a market unacceptably diverge from yours, you must desert it, distort it, or destroy it.  I support free markets only for those who are worthy of them.  I support biased markets for most, cages for some, and bullets for the rest.

Join me in my touchy-feely pinko crusade to (sort of) liberate markets!  Yay Socialism!