My Turton Thread Coda

Update: another round of sparring:

"A point by point rebuttal is unnecessary. You toss out terms like "property" "rights" "market" "state" "violence" etc as if they were totally unproblematic. But these things are all historically contingent, codified and defined by by a very messy combination of state action, state violence, social norms, our cognitive history, etc. The market and property rights cannot be an antidote to intrusions of the state on "liberty" because they are productions of state action..."

Unless Turton and friends significantly raise their game in the dimension of sincerity at least, then this will have been my final comment:

"I shall reiterate one last time: the principle that property be privately owned (and therefore subject only to voluntary trade, not the threat of overwhelming State violence implied by an “expropriation”) is not only the foremost ethical implication of the premise that each individual human being owns his or her person (and may not therefore, be a slave), it is also the chief necessity of individual human survival in a political context.

The contrary position advocated by Turton – from the premise of social democracy – can offer no rational principle upon which infractions against private property can be defended from the predations of big business enabled by government. The best his position can offer is an uncertain degree of legal, and extremely fallible, oversight. When I consider that we in Taiwan are on a slippery sloap toward unification with a totalitarian State, it seems to me that this form of defence is not only morally weak but that it is also politically weak and should therefore be rejected by anyone who wants a chance (or who wants their children to have a chance) of getting through whatever the next few decades might bring."