Property

Defense has nothing, at all, to do with property. Property is imposition.

It may be right saying that defense has nothing with property. That is because defense is different than enforcement, and, as I explain below, enforcement is what shapes property.

It is only correct to say that there are only claims of property. A claim is an imposition because claims are passive forms of enforcement. A claim is made only when there is a need to "mark" the territory, with the intent to enforce the claim. A claim is passive enforcement of the marked territory. A claim is a statement of intent.

A firearm in a holster is a way of defining the rules, the territory. A firearm is a passive death threat, it's a statement of intent, the intent to enforce the claimed territory.

It would be incorrect to say that property is pure imposition. Imposition means nothing by itself. The underlying meaning of an imposition is: a claim of potential physical violence, enforcement of claim (/ of the imposition).

A rock claims nothing, impose nothing, defends and enforces nothing. A rock owns nothing since its only "behavior" is eternal passivity.

Property is enforcement of claims which arose from biological motives, motives which exist because certain actions (like marking the boundaries of resources, and acquiring resources) increase the chances of survival. The only way to increase the chances of survival is to fight for survival.

One million years ago, accurate to the second, pink unicorns were roaming the Earth. But at some point, one generation of pink unicorns decided to sit on their asses and wait for grass to fall from the sky into their mouths. But the context was not right for such an action. As a consequence, pink unicorns got extinct because grass did not fall from the sky. However, other creatures did not stand by, waiting. They fought for their survival. Some of them got extinct later for various reasons, some are still alive. None of them sat on their asses...

He says that property and, more generally morality, are at best social conventions which he describes like an anthropologist and whose existence he understands in terms of economics and history. He regards ascribing any meaning or absolute existence to them as mere superstition and disregards as meaningless any attempt to do so (because he does not know how to do it and renounced that line of thinking long ago). In contrast, I regard morality, and more specifically property, as facts of reality.

Reality certainly is. It is mere fact stripped of any human attributable properties.

But how do you prove the absolute of your system when your arguments are valid only inside the context you create, but aren't valid outside the system? Why aren't they valid outside? Because you are a human just as the other 6 billions who may or may not agree with your arguments.

I humans exist, then "human attributable properties" are part of reality.

You confuse cause and effect. Reality has no human attributable properties. Nature does "contain" humans and these humans have the "thought" that Reality happens to be like their brains think it is. It is obviously not so since humans can not make Reality have properties other than those it had before humans existed. The properties precede humans.

When the wolf can take part in argumentation, claiming that it has property, then it has property.

Clearly, a wolf would need not take part in any argumentation when it decides a human is its property and so eats the poor dude. Human-like reasoning has nothing to do with property. Property is instinct based decision. Outside such decisions there is no property because property is no gravity or something to act in the absence of living creatures.

Property brings with it rights.

Property brings no rights. Property is people's respect for one's claim / expectations (of property).

A right is a self assumed behavioral concept, whereas respect is the behavior of other people during the interaction with the dude who thinks he has rights.

A right has no relevance during the interaction with other people (since it's personal), so, why talk about rights when other people are involved? We could talk about respect.

In countries such as Zimbabwe where property can be arbitrarily taken away...

So, although property exists (as claimed), it is not respected. It has nothing to do with the "rights" of the owner for property. It just isn't respected (by some with fire power).

If property is good for automobiles and potatoes, should it not also be true, as X argues, of ideas as well?

In virtually every conversation about whether ideas are (or should be) property, the hidden objective of those who promote ideas as property is to have a monopolistic organization which enforces these "rights".

At best, in such conversations, the question should be "should people respect ideas as property?", although it's bizarre to involve people in a conversation to which they don't participate.

Therefore, the only valid question for someone without a hidden objective is "do you, personally, respect the claim that idea X is property?"

In fact, in a society where something X is property, there is incomprehensibly more wealth and creativity and advancing technology and advancing standard of living, than in societies where something X is not property.

Perhaps it's clearer to say: in fact, in a society where something X is RESPECTED AS property, there is incomprehensibly more wealth and creativity and advancing technology and advancing standard of living, than in societies where something X is not RESPECTED AS property.

So, a society where novels, songs, movies, software and other creations (and ideas) are RESPECTED AS property, are the only ones which have wealth.

There are two issues here:

1) One could say that even if property is not respected, but is imposed, like the current patent system, there is more wealth. That would be false because the wealth has been created *despite* the monopoly.

2) Small communities where everybody "shares" (and live happily ever after) are not places where property is respected... because property is in fact banned / shared.

In order for a society to be filthy rich it's not enough to have created property in the form of novels, songs, movies, software, but there must be these dudes with the ability to sell all that.

An interesting point would be Zimbabwe. There was an email about it, I think, some months ago from a dude who was saying that there was no property in Zimbabwe. The dude was wrong because there is in fact lots of property in Zimbabwe, but some criminals with fire power don't respect the claims for it, and as such people can't trade it. Hence, they starve with their property and all.