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!