Quote:
Originally Posted by Frosty
How can government be required for private property rights when it must by it's very nature violate private property rights to exist?
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Maybe I'm looking more into the law side of this than government, but when I try to reduce government to it's most basic form I think power, and when I think power, I think law. It may be a somewhat unrealistic depiction of humans, but if you look back to Hobbe's state of nature, or even Rousseau's burgeoning society after society--there was chaos. For example, a man might have seen the benefits in a tree, and therefore claimed the tree his own. But then another individual would see him getting use out of his tree and try to take it from him. It's like a child who see's their friends toy and wants it, but doesn't understand until their parents explain to them that it belongs to their friend that he can't have it. There needs to be laws that mediate who can can have this, who can take that--without the laws there is nothing stopping anyone from taking your belongings or your home.
And sure, there this is a very negative view of human nature, but even if everyone for the most part did get along and respected everyone's privacy right, you would still have criminals that would take advantage of the fact that their is no government. How would these criminals be punished? There is no singular government or power, so how is there law? How can their be a constitution, Charter of Rights, etc? You might be able to say that the people form together to make this, but I am sure that every single person doesn't agree on every thing in coordination. There are certain people who take power. Even in Ancient Greece which is basically one of the earliest forms of an ideal democracy (everyone person in the town would come and vote and whichever side got the most votes won) it still had it's problems. Only men who could own property were considered people, and therefore no one else could vote.
I think every time a large enough group of people live together, there needs to be laws to deviate who can take what, how do you pay for this, how can we punish this person. It may be ideal, and I wish it was, that everyone decide these laws in ultimate coordination, but that is not going to happen. What if there is an odd number of people voting- there will have to be someone who makes the final decision. This means that he or she
makes the decision for the entire group.