Do we own ourselves?

[Earthborn]

In many discussions about libertarianism it was a recurring theme. Libertarian philosophy is based on the principle of self-ownership. Let’s discuss whether this is actually true.

I think there is a contradiction in libertarian philosophy. Libertarians believe, so we are told by the animation on the Jonathan Gullible website, that someone’s property is that part of nature that one turns to valuable use, through one’s effort and talents. This leads to a contradiction with self-ownership. After all, we are all ourselves ‘mere’ parts of nature put to valuable use through the efforts and talents of others: our parents. Should our parents therefore own us? If that’s true then we do not own ourselves, unless we bought ourselves from them.

The problem becomes clearer when we consider that for about 15-21 years we are not considered to be capable of handling the responsibility of self-ownership. Apparently during that time we simply do not own ourselves. Libertarians do not make clear who owns us instead, but it appears to me that they do indeed argue that children are owned by their parents.

The trouble begins when we consider abusive parents: apparently these parents are not allowed to do with their property as they please. Their rights are to handle their property according to their own preferences is limited by government. Apparently the government assumes that children do not merely have a constitutional right to life and health as Libertarians usually see it, a negative right, a limit on how far the government is allowed to go, but instead have a positive right, an entitlement to protection.

Libertarians do not make clear what people must do to earn their self-ownership. How responsible is one supposed to be to own oneself? A small child is obviously incapable to bearing that responsibility, and so is someone with severe brain damage, but for many people with for example Down Syndrome, the question is much more difficult to answer. And let’s not forget that someone might be able to bear one responsibility, but not another. Someone could be a responsible driver, but can’t handle his finances for example.

I think the problem with the philosophy of self-ownership is so great because property is seen as an indivisible thing: you either own yourself, or you don’t. The problem can be solved by the realization that this is not how things normally work. If I rent a house I don’t own it completely, but instead I have bought the right to use it. Even if someone buys a house, one is still not the ultimate owner: if the government decides that it is best for everyone to demolish it and build a road in its way, the owner will be compensated, but can do little to stop it from happening. Ultimate ownership is communal ownership: ultimately everything belongs to everybody, and we choose a government to decide for us all what will happen to it. The owner of a house has bought the right to use it in a particular way, and to be responsible to it up to a degree.

One could argue that the same is true of people: ultimately we all belong to each other. We don’t have the ultimate say over what will happen to us, but on the other hand, we also don’t have ultimate responsibility over our lives. We pay the ‘rent’ for ourselves in the form of taxes to all others. It means that we both pay rent and receive it in the form of roads, subsidies, welfare, etc…

This is one way of looking at it, and most closely resembles how society is structured I think: we own ourselves partially, but ultimate ownership is communal. This means that we not only have rights, but also duties towards society. How far we are owned by ourselves and how much we are owned by all other is defined by a constitution: it tells us what our duties and privileges are, and in what ways the government must allow us to exercise our self-ownership.

This is of course not necessarily the way things should be…

Another way of looking at it can be expressed in the environmentalist saying that ‘we don’t own the world, we have rented it from our children’. In this view, the world, which includes us, ultimately belongs to the next generation. We don’t hold our children responsible for any of it, but we are their slaves nonetheless: we must make sure that we leave the world at least as good as it was before us or our punishment will be to be remembered as destroyers.
In this view it is clear that ownership and responsibility are separated from each other, while in libertarian philosophy they are intrinsically linked. Apparently the link between the two is not so obvious as libertarians want us to believe, and one can imagine alternate philosophies where the responsibility doesn’t lie with those who own it, but with those most capable of caring for it. Perhaps later I will discuss this in more detail.

Some Christians give it another twist, by arguing that God can do with us as He pleases because he created us. This means that ultimate ownership lies with God. I hope for His sake that He kept the receipts when He bought the building materials, or else His claim is worthless.

Are we owned at all? Do we need to be?

[DarkMagician]

We will see the day when we all belong to Lord Ilpalazzo!

[c4ts]

On Planet X we have a complex system of property law that defines that ultimate ownership of a person lies with someone chosen randomly from individuals you don’t know and who are chosen again every cycle around Planet X’s axis.

On Planet X everybody belongs to Shemp.

[Iacchus]

Yes, we do have a soul which, is endowed with the capacity of free will. Of course that isn't to say we don't have the same capacity to suffer, for doing stupid things. Comprender?

[Dorian Gray]

Originally posted by Iacchus
Yes, we do have a soul which, is endowed with the capacity of free will. Of course that isn't to say we don't have the same capacity to suffer, for doing stupid things. Comprender?
"Comprender?" - literally, "To understand?"

Good. You are moving ahead at a moronic pace. Your technique is serving you well.

[Dorian Gray]

We own everything abstract about ourselves. The rest is all completely arguable.

[Ruby]

If only more people would realize that they do have control over their own lives. Instead, they hand over control to churches, dogmas, bibles, gods, a God, and all sorts of people.

I no longer give over control of my life to any Christian institution or dogma...but I do tend to get controlled by every day people if I'm not careful. Doctors can be controlling too....and that's one area I can't seem to get command over.

Still, I am speaking in very simple terms....nothing deep and philosphical.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Interesting post.

For what it's worth, I think the relationship between a parent and a child is best described as a discretionary duty. Parents have no rights to do anything to their children, but rather they have duties they must perform and discretion as to how they perform them.

For example, a parent is obliged to educate their child. But it is up to the parent's discretion which school they send their child to, and they may choose to school the child at home.

In the same way parents have a duty to protect their children from harm, to teach them to behave in sociably acceptable ways and so on. This can and in practise does include a duty to punish children in appropriate ways for unacceptable behaviour. But it doesn't mean that parents have any right to gratuitously hurt a child, or to force their will on the child in any way that is not in the child's long term interests.

If you view things that way, I don't think Libertarianism is necessarily inconsistent on that issue. They just hive off "people" as a special class of things distinct from nature, which is the usual practise in moral discourse even if it's a tiny bit incoherent on some levels.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Earthborn
In many discussions about libertarianism it was a recurring theme. Libertarian philosophy is based on the principle of self-ownership. Let’s discuss whether this is actually true.

This article is a great example of why I continue to read various fora, because once in a blue moon there's an indication that someone, somewhere has an actual, functioning brain.

I think there is a contradiction in libertarian philosophy.

It isn't just Libertarian philosophy and may not be just libertarian philosophy. Here in the US, the ability to have elective abortions has had a rocky history. A couple of the slogans used by people in favor of legal abortions are "Woman's body, woman's right" and "Keep your laws off my body." While I am strongly in favor of legal abortions (I have to write dumb qualifiers like this because of the people who do not have functioning brains), these are nonsensical arguments in a legal context wherein what one can actually do with one's body is fairly tightly regulated. One could certainly argue that people should have general rights over their bodies or at least should have more rights than they do now, but such people seldom if ever make these arguments.

Should our parents therefore own us? If that’s true then we do not own ourselves, unless we bought ourselves from them.

Legally, the status of a child in most countries is approximately that of a human slave. The process of escaping from that is usually called "emancipation." In Florida, for example, a child is emancipated upon reaching 18 or upon marriage or upon making a petition to a judge and having it approved.

Libertarians do not make clear who owns us instead, but it appears to me that they do indeed argue that children are owned by their parents.

Some libertarians argue that a child should be able to declare him- and/or herself emancipated (but then, parental obligations are also terminated, and the child can't go back to the previous status). That's sort of what can happen in Florida, except that a judge must approve it.

I think the problem with the philosophy of self-ownership is so great because property is seen as an indivisible thing: you either own yourself, or you don’t. The problem can be solved by the realization that this is not how things normally work. If I rent a house I don’t own it completely, but instead I have bought the right to use it.

There are also the legal concepts of joint ownership and ownership in common.

One could argue that the same is true of people: ultimately we all belong to each other. We don’t have the ultimate say over what will happen to us, but on the other hand, we also don’t have ultimate responsibility over our lives.

Well, going along with and extending your approach, one would have to ask what is the responsibility of other people to maintain a claim of partial ownership over oneself? This is one of the things that has always bothered me about the idea of an obligation to society. Speaking only for myself, the number of people who have significantly harmed me is considerably greater than the number of people who have significantly helped me. So there's kind of a trade deficit here.

We pay the ‘rent’ for ourselves in the form of taxes to all others. It means that we both pay rent and receive it in the form of roads, subsidies, welfare, etc…

Some of this can be understood as quid pro quo, and some cannot. I pay automobile taxes, and in return I get roads. However, the automobile taxes I pay are larger in proportion to the amount of wear that my car does to the road than the taxes that owners of trucks pay in proportion to the amount of wear that their vehicles do to the road.

Similarly, I pay taxes for welfare, and I pay taxes for law enforcement, and I pay an implict penalty when people decide to break into my apartment and steal my stuff, and even though I was way below the poverty level last year, I don't get any benefits. It seems to me that, at best, the idea of a mutually beneficial society with shared ownership of people is every bit as naive as any Libertarian concept.

How far we are owned by ourselves and how much we are owned by all other is defined by a constitution: it tells us what our duties and privileges are, and in what ways the government must allow us to exercise our self-ownership.

This would be nice if it were true, but it really isn't, at least not in the US.

Another way of looking at it can be expressed in the environmentalist saying that ‘we don’t own the world, we have rented it from our children’. In this view, the world, which includes us, ultimately belongs to the next generation. We don’t hold our children responsible for any of it, but we are their slaves nonetheless: we must make sure that we leave the world at least as good as it was before us or our punishment will be to be remembered as destroyers.

I would have had some sympathy for this up until the point where it became clear that I was never to have the opportunity to have children of my own. To say that I'm kind of ticked off about this would be an understatement, as it was arranged by members of this Great Society who harmed me. So what is my motivation for going along with this? Of course, I can just be dismissed as a malcontent, some piece of human garbage. However, the proclivity of the Great Society to harm people and then declare them garbage does have its own consequences.

[Blue Monk]

I don’t know if we own ourselves but there a part of me that they will only get when they pry it from my cold dead hand.

[shemp]

All your we belong to us.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Anything other than we own ourselves is tantamount to slavery. If God owns us, but we're free to interpret, that's almost free.

If the USA-FedGov or other national gummint, or the EU or the UN owns us, the only question is how long is the leash. :p

[Dancing David]

Wow, great question especialy to bring up the child abuse issue.

Philosophicaly I have to say that No we don't own ourselves, we just rent our bodies from the universe.

Morally I think that we should respect all life and try to decrease suffering, I do not feel that parents should have the absolute right to own thier children. But I feel that it is just a societal moral to protect children from further abuse. Which is beneficial to society in the long run.

So No, society doesn't own us either. But my personal ethic is that we should try to decrease suffering.

This bears thought.

[LFTKBS]

Originally posted by epepke
I would have had some sympathy for this up until the point where it became clear that I was never to have the opportunity to have children of my own.

Wait. Why can't you have children?

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred
Anything other than we own ourselves is tantamount to slavery. There is another option: We are not owned at all.

That's my vote.

[Keneke]

Originally posted by Michael Redman
There is another option: We are not owned at all.

That's my vote.

That's what I am thinking...apples and oranges. The relationship between a parent and a child is different than between a person and a lamp, or even a person and a pet.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by shemp
All your we belong to us.

What you say!!

[whitefork]

Shouldn't that read All your we are belong to us?

[Blue Monk]

Originally posted by Kullervo
Shouldn't that read All your we are belong to us?

All your base are belong to us.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally posted by Kullervo
Shouldn't that read All your we are belong to us? I think it's "All your we are saying is give peace a chance belong to us.

[billydkid]

Somehow, an argument can be made that others own you or that you own others, but you don't own yourself? We own each other but not ourselves? It is sort of like the notion that we are not competent to govern ourselves (as humans) but are somehow competent to govern other people. Frankly, I don't ever see how this is a even question. How, possibly, could one claim legitimate ownership of the life of another, but not of one's self?

[sorgoth]

Originally posted by billydkid
Somehow, an argument can be made that others own you or that you own others, but you don't own yourself? We own each other but not ourselves? It is sort of like the notion that we are not competent to govern ourselves (as humans) but are somehow competent to govern other people. Frankly, I don't ever see how this is a even question. How, possibly, could one claim legitimate ownership of the life of another, but not of one's self?


Because people are terrible at seeing themselves as they really are. When you look from your eyes, everything is 'tainted' to a greater degree than for other people. This is especially true when feeling a strong emotion (You are more likely to want a harsher penalty if it was you or your children who were wronged, for example).


I didn't vote, because I don't know. I was leaning towards yes, but after reading some of the posts here...I'm just not sure.
My answer is more like "Mostly", after 18 anyway. Under 18...Well, it's much less.

[Ladewig]

I agree with billydkid. I don't see it as useful or appropriate for society to own its members. Given how society treats its other resources, I consider the idea somewhat frightening. Also, under that assumption, I see no clear moral argument against slavery. If one uses resources as a child and becomes a hermit at 18, contributing nothing to society, can we go up into the hills and drag this person back to a job with taxable wages.

When I read the tread's title, I thought it was about owning one's DNA, cells, organs, and so forth. Given that corporations are patening life forms, it is possible that if someone produced a valuable enzyme, antibody, excretion, or whatever, a pharmacuetical company might try to patent that person's DNA (perfectly allowable under the society-owns-us model, but completely unallowable under the personal ownership model).

[Earthborn]

Frankly, I don't ever see how this is a even question.As you have noticed. I put this in Philosophy. Here we can question anything.

Libertarianism is based on the principle of self-ownership, as is made clear in this animation (http://jonathangullible.com/mmedia/philosop.swf). We can take this axiom and consider it obviously true, or we can question whether it is.

This is the question I ask: is it true that people own themselves, or is this just the way people think things should be.How, possibly, could one claim legitimate ownership of the life of another, but not of one's self?You can ask another question. If property is the fruit of one's labour, energy and talents, how can a child, a fruit of one's labour, energy and talents suddenly become something else then your property?

And if we assume a child is not your property, how can you claim it has self-ownership if it cannot be self-responsible?It is sort of like the notion that we are not competent to govern ourselves (as humans) but are somehow competent to govern other people.Listen, this is very simple to understand, once you get the hang of it: people are not equally responsible in all areas of life. Some are responsible drivers, others are responsible with their finances and others still are responsible for their health. People know this, and this is why they form societies: you might govern me in areas I am incapable of, while I govern you and areas that you are not very good at.

While it is true that no person is capable of effectively governing all others, it is possible for people to design systems in which they operate that are better capable of governing people as any person could do himself. For example: I am myself incapable of keeping track of all the latest healthscares and I am incapable of deciding under all circumstances what is best for me. But there are others who can, and they help me by working at the CDC (or similar organization).

[Earthborn]

Originally posted by Ladewig
I agree with billydkid. I don't see it as useful or appropriate for society to own its members.Please note that I am not arguing for how things should be, only how they are. I am also not arguing from the legal definition of ownership, but from a philosophical one: if you own something, you should be allowed to do anything with it you want. If you own yourself, you should be allowed to do anything with yourself if you do indeed have ultimate ownership.

If however someone is not allowed to do anything with himself, but another is, then ultimate ownership doesn't lie with him. For instance, in a society where suicide is prohibited, but there is a death penalty, ultimate ownership of people lies with the government.Given how society treats its other resources, I consider the idea somewhat frightening.How does society treat its human resources differently?Also, under that assumption, I see no clear moral argument against slavery.There is! If (in a hypothetical society) all people all communally owned by all others, none are slaves, since every person owns others just as much as he is owned. This means that they are all equal.When I read the tread's title, I thought it was about owning one's DNA, cells, organs, and so forth.In a way, it is of course. Go ahead and explore that angle.perfectly allowable under the society-owns-us modelYes, and it happens. And they get away with it. What does that tell you?

[c4ts]

Can you own something that isn't property?

[Ladewig]

I don’t know if we own ourselves but there a part of me that they will only get when they pry it from my cold dead hand.

Hey, hey. That's society property there. If there any signs of excessive wear or abuse there'll be heck to pay. And don't think that we all are going to give you another one if you break that one.

[Dorian Gray]

Like I said, Earthborn, we own everything abstract about ourselves, and beyond that it's debatable. Also, this debate is a couple of terms away from being a debate about free will.

[Iacchus]

Originally posted by Dorian Gray

Like I said, Earthborn, we own everything abstract about ourselves, and beyond that it's debatable. Which, is "nothing" according to science, right? You know, how do you "prove" that which is abstract?

[epepke]

Originally posted by Blue Monk
I don’t know if we own ourselves but there a part of me that they will only get when they pry it from my cold dead hand.

Your thumb?

[Dancing David]

The issue with children as I see it is not that parents own them but that parents must care for them.
If a parent demonstrates that they can't care for thier children then they loose the right to care for them.
It is not that children are owned but that they are neonates and dependant upon thier parents to have thier needs met.

So nobody has to own anybody, we just don't allow people to care for children or the eleferly or the dependant who can't care for them.

[Dorian Gray]

Which, is "nothing" according to science, right? You know, how do you "prove" that which is abstract? 2+2=4. Now be quiet and let the grown-ups talk.

[Dancing David]

No Dorian don't, down that path lies the proof of god...
, besides 2+2=4 is not science it is math which is a closed system of language and not a real object.

[whitefork]

Originally posted by c4ts
Can you own something that isn't property? Good one. If something is property, its ownership ought to be transferable, and since you can't sell yourself in these parts (slavery being illegal), then you can't have ownership of yourself.

Yet we have the testimony of Jim "Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth
eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'."