What exactly is human progress

Lynn Stuart Paramorre writes in her latest piece...

"What exactly is human progress? If progress is the growth of opportunities, then we should welcome developments that give us more options in how we spend our time and structure our lives."

Human progress is the fight against scarcity. As progress is made goods become less scarce society becomes richer. Production, or the transformation of resources into more desirable goods, is the only way that real wealth is created, and with it the standard of living and quality of life is increased. Progress is not the 'growth of opportunities, although the fight against scarcity increases your overall opportunities in life, you can't ignore fighting scarcity as causal to 'increased opportunities' and more options in how we spend our time and structure our lives'. This end simply can not be achieved without fighting scarcity and acting productively as a means.

"But when we get trapped in the mindset of eternal scarcity and laboring until our last breath, we stop imagining that there could be any path in front of us except more and more work."

Working is simply acting, a human can not live without acting to trasnform resources into more desirable goods that improve the human condition. Not working, or slowing productivity, ultimately means a world of 'eternal scarcity'. If you start imagioning a world of less and less work, less productivity, you WILL get trapped in not only a 'mindset', but objectively, in a world of eternal scarcity.

Further, the only reason we should see less and less work is because productivity is so high, and goods are see plentiful, that there is not reason to work as much, but that happens naturally in the market, not by legislative law.

You can achieve less and less work  by fighting scarcity and productivity, but you can't fight scarcity and be prpductive by less and less. There's two causal chains here, one makes sense the other does not.

And that is the contradiction the author doesn't notice in the first paragraph of her piece, and where I stop reading the rest of it.

"This isn't liberty. It's the exact opposite'!

Demo.org PolicyShop blogger Matt Bruenig on property rights...

"This isn’t liberty. It’s the exact opposite. Every little thing you grab up reduces my liberty, my ability to move about as I’d like. I don’t agree to it."

This isn't logical. This presupposes resources and goods aren't rivalrous or scarce, and such a theory could only exist in world of non-scarcity. Everyone can't both have a right to everything and no right to anything at all. This kind of thinking is fundamentally selfish, as it assumes you have a property right in everything that exists in the world and anyone else needs you to 'agree' to their acting at all.

"Every little thing you grab up reduces my liberty..."

If every person on the planet claimed this line of thinking, then everyone is claiming a right to use everything and denying anyone else the right to use anything at all. It's Absurd, resources and goods are rivalrous and scarce.

"Bob, has decided that he can take things that nobody owns and violently exclude everyone else from them..."

Your view is that everyone has a right to the use of both everything and to nothing at all, and with logic like that no resources could ever be used or employed as a means. Bob can't transform any resource because Jane is claiming the right to it's use and Jane can't transform any resource because Bob is claiming a right to it's use, it's absurd and illogical.

"Jane ignores Bob’s threats of violence and comes into the square of land to play frisbee with her friend."

Jane is doing the same thing as Bob here, claiming a right to the exclusive use and control of a rivalrous resource, land. Suppose Bob shows up after Jane is already using this land and wants to play soccer, what happens now? How is this dispute settled? Does one have the better claim to the use of the land? The Frisbee scenario, in my opinion, is too simplistic, what if Bob built a home there and had been living there for a year, what if Jane showed up and claims he had no right because he didn't ask her for permission to live there and she had a right to it previously! What happens? They both can't have a right to use and not have a right to use unowned rivalrous resources...it's illogical because resources are scarce and rivalrous by nature of their existence...

Further, how did Jane get the Frisbee to begin with? She would have had to claim a previously unowned resource to transform into a Frisbee. The right to exclusively use and transform a resource into a more desirable good (a Frisbee) exists for Jane without Bob's permission, but it does not exist for Bob without Jane's permission?

Self-contradictory.

Rawlsian 'Preferred Distribution' and slavery.

"There's no fundamentally "right" distribution deviations against which are "theft". There are only various preferred distributions."

..it is important that we think of money (income) only as a medium of exchange and focus on the actual resources, goods, and labor that are being exchanged.

Because what is really being said here is not that someone has a right to someone else's income, but that they have a right to someone else's labor....slavery.

By this logic, there was no slavery pre-1860, there was only a change in the 'preferred distribution'...which is absurd. If you agree that it was slavery, then you don't agree with this logic of 'preferred distribution'...if you disagree that it was slavery and only a change of 'preferred distribution' then you have to atleast acknowledge what it really is...you can't redefine slavery as "preferred distribution".

You either have a right to whatever property you can get voluntarily by acting, or you have a right to whatever property you can get involuntarily by other people acting for you. The second example is slavery, and it is exactly what Rawlsianism is.

Self-ownership and land.

"No it doesn't. If anything ownership of bodies (a concept that I actually find totally incoherent, but whatever) is a total wash. I can easily argue that if I own my body, you cannot appropriate pieces of the world because when you do so, you violate my self-ownership by initiating coercive threats against me, and then using violence against me if I go on to the piece of the world (something I never agreed to give up my access to). It's a total non-issue in the debate."

"If anything ownership of bodies (a concept that I actually find totally incoherent, but whatever) is a total wash."

When someone makes someone their slave they are claiming a property right in that persons body. They are saying, "I have the exclusive right to the control and use of your body".

How is this different from any other rivalrous property???

Your land analogy is ridiculous. You never asked me if you could live where ever it is your living, and because of this you're initiating coercive threats against me!! And, I imagine, that because you're the one initiating the violent threats against me, that If I break down your front door and move in that you have no better claim to your home than I do so you'd have no problem with me as your new room mate? I never agreed to give up my access to your land/home/whatever and I want my access to it back!

Further, back to the self-ownership debate, if you were the first user of that land and mixed your labor with it to build a house. Then one afternoon I show up and take it from you, because you never had my permission to mix your labor with that land, then ultimately didn't I make you my slave for the labor it took to build that house????

Also, Youre making a property rights claim to the entire planet? I've never heard something more selfish!

Should we all come to you and ask for your permission to walk the ground??? And if we don't we're all initiating coercive threats against you right? absurd.

You're literally claiming people you don't even know exist, and that you will never know exist, are making threats against you. And further, that you have a right to the land that you will never walk on, never use and mix your labor with, or probably even see, is insane.

More from Bruenig on redistribution

"The Word Itself To be clear, I don’t actually care if people use the word “redistribution.” I think some people thought I was against that. I am not. I use it plenty. The word is ambiguous though. It can mean changing the distributive rules from one thing to another. It can be a purely relatively term that is used to quantify the difference between two distributions. It can mean deviating from the Everyday Libertarian distribution (the pre-tax market income, if you will). I honestly don’t mind when people use it to mean all of these things. I do it plenty. It’s fine."

If redistribution can mean changing the rules from one thing to another something must actually be redistributed every time a rule is changed.
If I am making $500 a week from an employer (the distribution baseline), and the state takes $75 of it and gives it to a third party increasing their income from $250 to $325 a week, my income has been redistributed to them. If the rules change again and the state stops taking that $75 a week, the third parties income drops back down to their income of $250 and mine back to $500. but there's no redistribution of income happening here, just the initial distribution from employer to employee.
If the rules change and the state stops taking the $75 but instead starts taking $50, that is still redistribution of income. But, I can't see the logic in claiming EVERY rule change, specifically a rule where the state stops taking income all together and instead enforces property rights and voluntary contracts is redistribution.

I think, and i could be mistaken, that you're claiming when the state changes the rules to take that $75 from my income and give it to a third party that if the rules change back that i am taking that $75 from the third parties income and it's being redistributed to me. My problem with this is that the math and the philosophy don't support this theory.

Maybe you can clarify these points for me.

"The distribution baseline... LOL"

You claim there are two separate baselines, the 'libertarian baseline' and the 'every change baseline', I argue there is only the libertarian baseline. There has to be an initial voluntary trade of rivalrous goods and/or labor in order to make a change and redistribute the rivalrous goods within that trade. That initial transaction is the libertarian baseline, or what I'm calling the distribution baseline. Every change made after that initial trade isn't a new and separate baseline because the libertarian baseline still exists and is the core of every change made. I'm using the term 'the distribution baseline' because there is only one baseline.

Do you still claim EVERY rule change, including the scenario i gave in my previous comment, is 'redistribution'?

"property "owning" is merely violently threatening other people"...

Matt Bruenig responds...

"So the real question I present in this post, if you get down to it, is "what are your assumptions." The problem with figuring out what "redistribution" can refer to has an immense literature. The big issue is something called The Baseline Problem. You can't figure out what is redistribution without comparing it to some baseline distribution. But there is no natural or automatic baseline distribution. The baseline distribution is a construct, itself a creature of policy and government programs (e.g. the government program of property and contract law).

Everyone in this debate realizes this. It's not even a point for discussion. The question is actually how do you use the word.

What's interesting about your post is that you try to demarcate a Baseline, but the way you demarcate it actually moves between two different frameworks for doing so. In a desert framework, you can say the baseline is "fruits of my labor" (or I am distributed what I produce). In a just-processes framework, you can say the baseline is "whatever I am distributed without violence or force or whatever." But these are actually *two different frameworks*. And they will produce *two different Baselines* for determining when redistribution is happening.

So not only do you just assert that you have some answer to The Baseline Problem, which you clearly don't. In providing that answer, you actually draw upon two different types of frameworks that are in conflict with one another! So it's not even clear what your Baseline would be: desert or just-processes?

Good times."

The natural baseline distribution in society, IMO, is voluntary trade, which exists without government policy/programs. Any government policy or program kicks in with force AFTER the voluntary baseline distribution.

I don't see a difference between the two frameworks of distribution you described, maybe you could elaborate? IMO they are the same thing. Because my employer and I voluntarily contracted, I am distributed without violence or force the fruits of my labor (income), that is the baseline distribution BEFORE government policy/programs interfere with force to disrupt and rearrange that distribution and redistribute to others not involved in that initial trade of labor for income.

Property isn't a government program, infact, government does more in opposition to private property than to support it.

"There is no such thing as a voluntary trade. They are all coercive because property "owning" is merely violently threatening other people. See, e.g., http://www.demos.org/blog/10/2..."

You must own a device to have typed and posted that response with. If you are using a rivalrous good than you are claiming a right to the exclusive use and control of that property because it is a rivalrous good.

Is your use of that property a violent threat to others? 99.9% of people respect your right to the exclusive use and control of that property and don't feel violently threatened by your ownership of your laptop/tab/phone/whatever. I'd argue that the other 0.01% don't feel violently threatened by your right to that property, they instead want to claim a right to that property for themselves and will violently threaten you to take it.

Do you have a right to the exclusive use of that rivalrous property (phone/tab/laptop/whatever) or not? If you're using it, then you are claiming that right for yourself. If you acquired that property by voluntary trade, then claiming that right isn't violently threatening to other people.

And, 'there is no such thing as a voluntary trade', WHAT!?!? If you agree to trade me your Laptop for my 5 dollars that is voluntary. If some random third guy shows up claiming our right to the ownership of that property is threatening to him because he never agreed to let us own that rivalrous property we're trading in the first place, this is where it gets confusing. Property is rivalrous, so we have to determine who has the best claim to it, does the first/current user of that property have the best claim to it, or does the guy who showed up later claiming a right to it have the better claim?

If you believe that the guy who showed up later has the better claim to it, then any time someone wants something of yours, just give it to them, they have a better claim to the property than you and you're someone the one violently threatening them, right???

Argumentation Ethics

One can never read this too many times.

http://mises.org/daily/5322/

"I don't accept your claim that knowledge flows from "unproven presuppositions", but that's irrelevant....The problem is, no knowledge flows from your presupposition that god is the immaterial, timeless, spaceless and personal creator of everything. All your arguments must assume one of several of these things to support themselves.

If you must presuppose something to achieve a conclusion later, and your conclusion (god is the immaterial, timeless blah blah…) is hidden in your initial presupposition, then you never achieved any further conclusion at all. No knowledge was ever produced according to your own epistemic standards. In this case, you are basically lying to yourself: you are pretending to know things you don't know. And pretending to know things you don't know is a guaranteed, certified method to keep yourself deluded about reality."

Re-blogged from Debunking Christianity.

http://www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2013/11/quote-of-day-by-luiz-fernando-zadra.html

More from Matt Bruenig on destribution

"To demonstrate the difference between the two meanings, consider the following. Suppose at time one we distribute things a certain way. Then at time two we increase taxes and increase food stamps. Then at time three we decrease taxes and decrease food stamps. So at time four we are back at the distribution in time one.

If redistribution means deviations from the Everyday Libertarian baseline, then you will say time two was redistribution, but time three was not. Time three was unwinding redistribution. It was unredistribution.

If redistribution means Every Change, then you would say time two was redistribution and time three was redistribution. Both changed the distribution. So both were redistribution."

'Every Change' is philosophically invalid.

How could time three be redistribution? If my employer voluntarily agrees to pay me $500 per week in exchange for my labor and some third party uses force against me to claim a portion of the fruits of that labor as their own (effectively making me their slave), then that is wealth being redistributed. But, when the next week that third party stops using force against me to claim a portion of the fruits of my labor then nothing is being redistributed. Specifically, let's say that third party made $450 a week before what was redistributed to them from my labor, giving up their claim to my labor can't be said to be another case of redistribution because nothing is redistributed from their labor to others. They're keeping all the fruits of their labor. It is impossible to redistribute something that doesn't exist, it could only be said to be redistribution if the first party makes a claim to the fruits of the second parties labor, so instead of $450 the second party ends up with $400 while say, $50 is redistributed back to the first party making their income $550. But, if there's no transaction then there's no redistribution happening.

The initial distribution is a voluntary one from individual A to individual B, the redistribution is  a forced one from individual B to individual C, ending this can't be said to be a redistribution from individual C to individual B as nothing is being distributed any longer from B to C or from C to B. There's no transaction of property, and therefor no distribution at all.

deconstructing Matt Bruenig on property distribution.

http://mattbruenig.com/2013/11/10/no-serious-there-is-no-non-political-definition-of-theft/

"The correct view on the naturalness of distribution is that it isn’t natural. Who gets what is all made up and we can make it up how we want. That’s not to say it’s all arbitrary and all ways of doing it are equal. It is to say that you have to come up with normative principles for your preferred distribution that don’t assume that things inherently and naturally belong to people. An argument that relies on such an assumption is always invalid."

I'll assume when you say 'things' you mean 'rivalous property'. Because you didn't give ANY definitions, to avoid confusion, I'll define 'property' as the exclusive right to the control or use of a rivalrous good. No matter what the 'normative principles for your preferred distribution', property rights still exist, and your argument therefor still assume that 'things' inherently and naturally belong to people. No matter the scenario, one person or group of people, is/are making a claim to property.

"Sometimes people make an argument that seems to not rely upon this assumption but secretly does. It goes like this: if I buy a home and then you change the distributive rules at some point so it doesn’t belong to me anymore, then you really have taken from me. The upshot of this argument is that you don’t need a normative theory of entitlement or a belief in a natural distribution to say something is confiscatory. But it fails."

"What it reduces to is the claim that all changes to distributive rules are somehow theft because they change what would belong to people relative to the no-change baseline. The house example is a good one. Suppose we change the rules so the house doesn’t belong to you anymore (so it belongs now to someone else or some other group of people), and then we change the rules back so that it does belong to you again. If you actually believed that changing the rules was theft, then you’d think this was two bouts of impermissible theft."

But it's not two bouts of impermissible theft. Since we're talking about normative principles, the normative principle in society for theft would be 'the use or threat of force when claiming a right to property that wasn't voluntarily agreed upon'. The first scenario was the normative principle. When you say 'we change the rules' you mean 'we use government force against you'.

I'll argue that not only is changing the rules theft, but it's also slavery. If I buy a home for $100,000 and it took 3 years of work and the resulting income to pay for that home. Then one day you 'change the rules' (use force against me) and take that property from me and give it to yourself, you are not only claiming a property right in the exclusive use and control of that home, but also in my body for the 3 years of work it took to afford that home. Since you used force to take the fruits of my labor, I was forced to work for your personal gain, slavery.

Based of the theory of estoppel, if a person or group of people use force to claim a right to property (theft) they are claiming a normative principle that it is OK to use force to take property, and therefor have no complaint if force is used against them in the claim of, or reclaim of, that property. Changing the rules back can't be said to be theft, as this person would have no complaint against the original owner taking it back. It is the returning of stolen goods, the reclaiming of property that you did not voluntarily agree to give up in the first place.

"But a person who claims changing the rules in the first case is theft doesn’t believe changing the rules back would also be theft. They believe that the first rule change was theft and the second rule change was distributing the house back to its rightful owner. It was untheft. But that indicates then that they have some other idea of what deeply and truly belongs to people, and that it is this idea that actually underlies their claim of theft. They don’t actually believe rule changing is theft. They believe rule changing that is inconsistent with their theory of deep entitlement is theft. But then that just pushes us back into a totally normative debate about who is entitled to what. We never escaped into some neutral world where we can decide something is theft in and of itself without reference to a normative theory of entitlement."

Any time you use force to claim a right to property, that is theft. Any time you use force to claim the fruits of someone's labor, that is slavery. Neither of those statements are my 'theory of deep entitlement', these are both not only normative principles within society, but literally the definitions of the words. The second rule change wasn't theft because the second owner didn't have a valid (or moral) claim to that property, they used force AND made the original owner their slave for the time and labor it took to get that property, and therefor have no complaint. Theft is only theft because one party has a complaint against the other over the control and use of a rivalrous good. If there is no complaint, or if one parties complaint is invalid (which it would be because they established a principle that it is OK to take property without the others voluntary permission when they did it), then there is no theft. So, no complaint, or valid complaint, over the use and control of a rivalrous good = no theft.

"You can still argue for whatever distribution you prefer even if it is an extremely unequal one."

Your argument would be a self-contradiction. If you are peacefully arguing with someone that they have no right to the control and use of rivalrous property, you are attempting to reason them into voluntarily giving their right to the use and control of rivalrous property to you, so you can have the right to the use and control of that property. Therefor, in a peaceful argument over rivalrous property a normative principle is established between both parties that they only have the right to the use and control of rivalrous property that they acquire by voluntary means from the other party. Individual property rights and ultimately, libertarianism, is presupposed by the act of peacefully arguing over the right to rivalrous property.