A Solution to World Hunger ' Property rights

[Akrasia]

I just wanna throw this out there for the Austrians to think about.

Problem, there are lots of people in the world who do not have the means to support themselves.

They have no education or fertile land and or skills that they can trade for food and shelter. They have many children, and many of these children will die before they are 5 years old, of the survivors, they have little chance of ever being educated or improving their life situation.

Introduce Property Rights!
Libertarians believe as individuals we "own" ourselves. Most libertarians I have spoken to also say that children are too young to contract, but their parents can contract on their behalf.

Libertarians and austrians believe that 'free contracts' are binding and generally place no limits on what these contracts can extend to cover as long as they are 'free'.

Solution to global poverty.
Allow parents to sell their children into slavery.
The reason why the children die now, is because nobody has an economic interest in preserving them. If they were sold, they would have owners, and those owners would have an interest in feeding them, keeping them healthy and clothing them and sending them to some kind of education (if only how to stitch zips onto levis)

The kids could work as slaves obeying their owners and not running away (as running away would be theft of the owners property until they reach the 'age of reason' when the parents contract would expire and the adolescant would be 'free' to either renew that contract or leave and do whatever he/she wanted.

The parents similarly could sell themselves into slavery in exchange for the same, food clothes and shelter.

"Voluntary slavery" would guarantee that these people would be protected by the property owners who would act in their own interest (they paid for the slaves, they have an economic interest in keeping them in good condition)

The reason for this is that 'Strong Property rights' always ensure optimum outcomes.

With all this cheap labour around, the prices of goods and services would fall. Lower prices of goods and services is something that Austrians and Libertarians are all in favour of. It is irrelevant if the slave owners become billionaires and turn more and more people into 'voluntary slaves'. Productivity would increase, prices would come down, and the individuals would be making 'free' choices and 'volunteer' to become slaves.


I'm finally coming around to this property rights thing. Can't see a single inconsistency in any of the arguments I just made. Property rights are just swell, sure can't wait till we're all free

[Akrasia]

I don't usually bump my own threads, but I find it highly improbable that the Austrian/Libertarians on this site don't have any opinion on my brilliant idea.

[cactusflower]

LoL

[Jethro]

I just wanna throw this out there for the Austrians to think about.

Problem, there are lots of people in the world who do not have the means to support themselves.

They have no education or fertile land and or skills that they can trade for food and shelter. They have many children, and many of these children will die before they are 5 years old, of the survivors, they have little chance of ever being educated or improving their life situation.

Introduce Property Rights!
Libertarians believe as individuals we "own" ourselves. Most libertarians I have spoken to also say that children are too young to contract, but their parents can contract on their behalf.

Libertarians and austrians believe that 'free contracts' are binding and generally place no limits on what these contracts can extend to cover as long as they are 'free'.

Solution to global poverty.
Allow parents to sell their children into slavery.
The reason why the children die now, is because nobody has an economic interest in preserving them. If they were sold, they would have owners, and those owners would have an interest in feeding them, keeping them healthy and clothing them and sending them to some kind of education (if only how to stitch zips onto levis)

The kids could work as slaves obeying their owners and not running away (as running away would be theft of the owners property until they reach the 'age of reason' when the parents contract would expire and the adolescant would be 'free' to either renew that contract or leave and do whatever he/she wanted.

The parents similarly could sell themselves into slavery in exchange for the same, food clothes and shelter.

"Voluntary slavery" would guarantee that these people would be protected by the property owners who would act in their own interest (they paid for the slaves, they have an economic interest in keeping them in good condition)

The reason for this is that 'Strong Property rights' always ensure optimum outcomes.

With all this cheap labour around, the prices of goods and services would fall. Lower prices of goods and services is something that Austrians and Libertarians are all in favour of. It is irrelevant if the slave owners become billionaires and turn more and more people into 'voluntary slaves'. Productivity would increase, prices would come down, and the individuals would be making 'free' choices and 'volunteer' to become slaves.


I'm finally coming around to this property rights thing. Can't see a single inconsistency in any of the arguments I just made. Property rights are just swell, sure can't wait till we're all free

In the very poor societies slavery is an unfortunate feature. Yet as societies become richer and richer through economic growth they have more disposable income. Many choose to spend that money based on their conscience. For example buying Fair trade coffee. So the slavery (relative or otherwise) eventually goes completely. This is clear when you look at working conditions in different societies with different levels of income from $1000/year to $40000/year.

[Cael]

In the very poor societies slavery is an unfortunate feature. Yet as societies become richer and richer through economic growth they have more disposable income. Many choose to spend that money based on their conscience. For example buying Fair trade coffee. So the slavery (relative or otherwise) eventually goes completely. This is clear when you look at working conditions in different societies with different levels of income from $1000/year to $40000/year.

Unfortunately, western capitalism is based on slavery. Western economies would collapse immediately if they could not access cheap goods produced by people earning less than $2 a day.

[Monkey-Magic]

No one with an understanding of economics (even a thatcherite) takes these libertarians seriously. It is nothing but a half-baked ideology formed so that some fruitcakes can try to justify their outrageous greed. They believe that if they have some bogus political theory behind them it will excuse their ignorance and hate.

[Akrasia]

I note that 2000miles left me a negative rep for this thread saying "weak even for you"

If it's so weak, why don't you explain why on this thread?

[Asi-Irish]

Akrasia, have you ever met an actual slave? I have. In fact I've met a few. I met a family who had escaped from slavery on rubber plantations in Malaysia while I was in Kuala Lumpur. They lived in abject poverty and worked 14 hours a day. Since both father and mother were required to work, and they had quotas to meet, they had to bring their kids to the fields to work with them. They eventually escaped and sought refuge with the Communist Party of Malaysia. It is difficult to describe just how downtrodden and dispondent these people appeared.

In Pakistan, I've also met slaves. They cannot choose their life partners and the women are rotuinely raped, abused and murdered by their masters.

Perhaps in such situations it would be better to grant the poor property rights, so they might have some control over their lives and their destinies.

[Akrasia]

Akrasia, have you ever met an actual slave? I have. In fact I've met a few. I met a family who had escaped from slavery on rubber plantations in Malaysia while I was in Kuala Lumpur. They lived in abject poverty and worked 14 hours a day. Since both father and mother were required to work, and they had quotas to meet, they had to bring their kids to the fields to work with them. They eventually escaped and sought refuge with the Communist Party of Malaysia. It is difficult to describe just how downtrodden and dispondent these people appeared.

In Pakistan, I've also met slaves. They cannot choose their life partners and the women are rotuinely raped, abused and murdered by their masters.

Perhaps in such situations it would be better to grant the poor property rights, so they might have some control over their lives and their destinies.

The problem is that the slave owners have too many 'property rights', not that the slaves have too few property rights.

Granting the slaves so called 'property rights' is utterly meaningless as they may have the 'right' to own property, but not the means to acquire it. After emancipation in the U.S, there was the tragedy of the 'freed slaves' being forced to go back to their masters to work for a subsistence wage under almost identical conditions.

No reasonable person would suggest that the solution to slavery is to allow the slaves the notional right to one day own their own slaves.

It is also interesting that the slaves in malasia ended up taking refuge with the communist party. This indicates that they desire freedom, but don't define freedom as 'property rights', and would rather live in a communist collective than as a 'free' exile wandering the country with nothing to their name (but the notional rights to buy land if they ever get money)


I would like to see a libertarian defend their position that it should be legal to sell children in a 'free market"
This is from your own website, Mises.org, and it quotes Rothbard

Now if a parent may own his child (within the framework of non-aggression and runaway-freedom), then he may also transfer that ownership to someone else. He may give the child out for adoption, or he may sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children...........

The demand for babies and children is usually far greater than the supply, and hence we see daily tragedies of adults denied the joys of adopting children by prying and tyrannical adoption agencies. In fact, we find a large unsatisfied demand by adults and couples for children, along with a large number of surplus and unwanted babies. The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard

Can't see any problems with that argument????

at all??

You acknowledge that slaves routinely are mistreated and raped (despite the libertarian insistence that if you have property rights, you have an interest in preserving that property in a good condition) but your ideology supports the sale of children on the free market.

Property rights eh. Gotta love them

[20000miles]

Up until this point, this thread was atrocious; a troll thread for trolls. But now a real talking point has emerged:

I would like to see a libertarian defend their position that it should be legal to sell children in a 'free market"
This is from your own website, Mises.org, and it quotes Rothbard:

Now if a parent may own his child (within the framework of non-aggression and runaway-freedom), then he may also transfer that ownership to someone else. He may give the child out for adoption, or he may sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children...........

The demand for babies and children is usually far greater than the supply, and hence we see daily tragedies of adults denied the joys of adopting children by prying and tyrannical adoption agencies. In fact, we find a large unsatisfied demand by adults and couples for children, along with a large number of surplus and unwanted babies.

Can't see any problems with that argument????

at all??

You acknowledge that slaves routinely are mistreated and raped (despite the libertarian insistence that if you have property rights, you have an interest in preserving that property in a good condition) but your ideology supports the sale of children on the free market.

Property rights eh. Gotta love them

By "property rights in children", Rothbard refers to the adoption market; slavery isn't the issue and doesn't come into the picture here. Another slight of hand move is deliberate omission from Arkasia, specifically the omission of this quotation from The Ethics of Liberty:

"This means that we now indeed have a child-market, but that the government enforces a maximum price control of zero, and restricts the market to a few privileged and therefore monopolistic agencies. The result has been a typical market where the price of the commodity is held by government far below the free-market price: an enormous “shortage” of the good."

Anyone who supports adoption is ideologically in favour of "selling children on the free market", and it just so happens there exists such a market today. This is just another one of those cases where something done for a price of zero is heroic and noble, while the same thing done for a price greater-than zero is considered disgusting and deplorable.