Private school is child slavery!!!

[cunicula]

Where I live, all land is owned by the state. I guess this must be illegitimate ownership.

What if the dictator sells all the land to his nephew. Is that a voluntary transaction? Does it become an 'AnCap' state by virtue of this 'privatization'.

The nephew says "Well, before the state owned the land [of course, this is true of all land everywhere at some point]. Now I bought the land in a voluntary transaction. So all the land is mine. States are illegitimate. I am a good AnCap. So we are dissolving the state. Now you can give me all your property too and I will fuck your wives. There were laws against this before, but that was theft. So we are dissolving those. So pony up, or vote with your feet. You can make a swim for an illegitimate state if you like, but please don't trespass on my land or I will have to respond to your violence with my own violence. Let's keep our txns voluntary, m'kay?"

So the dictator's nephew is all good in AnCap circles? This becomes the first truly legitimate state feifdom [states are never legitimate slipped up there]? I think the dictator may be looking for new ideological consultants. He has a serious demand for democracy problem which you might be able to fix. Can I help you submit a resume?

[1714709933]

1714709933

[1714709933]

1714709933

[1714709933]

1714709933

[myrkul]

Edit: one could even put it this way: ownership of property is just the idea that something belongs to you.

Very deep, very Zen. Unfortunately, also very flawed. If I come and take your stereo, you still have that idea, but I have your stereo. If I copy your book, we both have the book, and we both have the idea.

Here's a Bitcoin counter-example. Sole possession of the private keys = ownership. In conflicting cases, the winner successfully spends the coins.

Sole possession of private keys approximates ownership, but it's not. Having keys to a safe doesn't mean I own the contents of the safe.
Bitcoins aren't even digital "things" (like, say, an mp3 is) they're just transactions in a record that everyone has. Sole possession of the private keys just means you're the only one who can change the record for that particular address. If I get your private keys, I haven't stolen from you. I may have trespassed, if I had to access your computer to get them, but it's not theft. Sorry.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DIeTybKL1pM4&ei=i0uqUPOPLIeO8wStqoDADA&usg=AFQjCNEDg7_ap8otqvRJxjUWZn4Bw2kP7g

That's what copies can do...

You guys assume too much. Where did I suggest that I was a fan of copyright laws in their present form? In fact I think that many of the laws are overdue for significant reform. I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of selectively embracing only some ideas about property. Too bad that in AnCap there would be no State to intervene and lay down the law when somebody tries to enforce the 'wrong' ideas.

"Enforce"? Do me a favor, and read your posts out loud before you hit "Post." It will save you from moments like this. What's the root word of "enforce"?

Where I live, all land is owned by the state. I guess this must be illegitimate ownership.

Most likely, yes. States aren't known for making deals without the gun on the table.

What if the dictator sells all the land to his nephew. Is that a voluntary transaction? Does it become an 'AnCap' state by virtue of this 'privatization'.

If I steal a car, and then sell the car, does the car rightfully belong to the guy I sold it to, or to the guy I stole it from?

[myrkul]

Enlightened Absolutism.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAA!

Yeah, right. That will work.

Tell you what, you want self-similar benevolent absolutism? Sure, no problem. Every person is his or her own benevolent dictator. None can gainsay their word when it comes to their own persons, or the products thereof. Happy?

[myrkul]

Enlightened Absolutism.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAA!

Yeah, right. That will work.

Tell you what, you want self-similar benevolent absolutism? Sure, no problem. Every person is his or her own benevolent dictator. None can gainsay their word when it comes to their own persons, or the products thereof. Happy?

You're openly mocking a number of respected leaders who presided over the Industrial Revolution and guided the uneducated peasantry out of the Middle Ages?

Yup. Most of what they did was get out of the way.

Did you bother looking at the Self-Similarity link? I present you with a real law of Nature and you laugh...

I did indeed look at that link. And applied the concept. At the lowest level, something that is self-similar resembles the whole. In other words, each individual would resemble the whole. The whole is "benevolent absolutism." Each individual being their own benevolent dictator would indeed resemble, at the lowest level, the whole of benevolent absolutism.

[myrkul]

Enlightened Absolutism.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAA!

Yeah, right. That will work.

Tell you what, you want self-similar benevolent absolutism? Sure, no problem. Every person is his or her own benevolent dictator. None can gainsay their word when it comes to their own persons, or the products thereof. Happy?

You're openly mocking a number of respected leaders who presided over the Industrial Revolution and guided the uneducated peasantry out of the Middle Ages?

Yup. Most of what they did was get out of the way.

Did you bother looking at the Self-Similarity link? I present you with a real law of Nature and you laugh...

I did indeed look at that link. And applied the concept. At the lowest level, something that is self-similar resembles the whole. In other words, each individual would resemble the whole. The whole is "benevolent absolutism." Each individual being their own benevolent dictator would indeed resemble, at the lowest level, the whole of benevolent absolutism.

You're mixing two concepts: benevolent dictatorship, where a dictator is thought to be "pretty OK", and Enlightened Absolutism, where the tolerance for 'new thinking' (in practice: art, satire, secular beliefs, etc.) was ahead of its time.

I don't have time right now for all the other 'ping-pong' responses.

Enlightened absolutism (also called by later historians benevolent despotism or enlightened despotism) is a form of absolute monarchy or despotism in which rulers were influenced by the Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs embraced the principles of the Enlightenment, especially its emphasis upon rationality, and applied them to their territories. They tended to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property. Most fostered the arts, sciences, and education.

Like I said, they mostly just got out of the way.

Benevolent dictatorship is a form of government in which an authoritarian leader exercises political power for the benefit of the whole population rather than exclusively for the benefit of himself or herself or only a small portion of the population.

Yeah, seems like the same concept to me. The only difference is "in which rulers were influenced by the Enlightenment"

So, care to explain how each person being their own benevolent, absolute ruler does not meet your "self-similar" qualification?

[cunicula]

If I steal a car, and then sell the car, does the car rightfully belong to the guy I sold it to, or to the guy I stole it from?

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Everything has passed through the state's hands and therefore there is no legitimate ownership? (e.g. as a state employee I cannot legitimate own anything. My salary comes from taxes, which is theft.) Or every time the state privatizes something it establishes a legitimate ownership? Or there is a statute of limitations so that if you own something long enough, then it is rightfully yours? Hmm all the options seem to go in the state's favor.

Can you explain?

[myrkul]

(e.g. as a state employee I cannot legitimate own anything. My salary comes from taxes, which is theft.)

I think you're starting to get the idea.

Or every time the state privatizes something it establishes a legitimate ownership?

I believe sale of stolen goods is illegal in your country, as well? (Unless, of course, the government does it.)

Hmm all the options seem to go in the state's favor.

Can you explain?

If a legitimate owner can be found, stolen State property should be returned to them. If a legitimate owner cannot be found, then the only ways to establish legitimate ownership would be homesteading or syndicalism. In other words, open the ownership to first comers, and those who are currently using the state property are automatically "first comers."

[augustocroppo]

Sole possession of private keys approximates ownership, but it's not. (...)

Not in accordance with this paper from Satoshi Nakamoto:

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

2. Transactions
We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures.  Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin.  A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.

In accordance with the above quote, the possession of a private key indicates the ownership of electronic coins. If there was not a method to determine the ownership, it would be impossible for the Bitcoin network to form the blockchain.

Definition of ownership

noun
the act, state, or right of possessing something

The act of possessing a digital key which allows a system to transfer electronic digits from one point to another point is a definition of ownership.

(...) Having keys to a safe doesn't mean I own the contents of the safe.

You are proposing that the ownership of object A does not exist because it cannot determine the ownership of object B.

The ownership of object A is still valid if such ownership does not determine the ownership of object B.

Bitcoins aren't even digital "things" (like, say, an mp3 is) they're just transactions in a record that everyone has.

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

12. Conclusion
We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.  We started with
the usual framework of coins made from digital signatures, which provides strong control of
ownership, but is incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending.

Sole possession of the private keys just means you're the only one who can change the record for that particular address.

You are contradicting your initial statement. To "change the record for that particular address" it is necessary first to own the private key.

If I get your private keys, I haven't stolen from you.

Yes, you have stolen from me:

Definition of steal
verb
1 [with object] take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

You have taken my right of possessing the private key without my permission.

I may have trespassed, if I had to access your computer to get them, but it's not theft. Sorry.

It is theft:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/theft?q=theft

Definition of theft
noun
[mass noun]
the action or crime of stealing.

[myrkul]

Sole possession of the private keys just means you're the only one who can change the record for that particular address.

You are contradicting your initial statement. To "change the record for that particular address" it is necessary first to own the private key.

Nope, you must possess the key. If two people can possess the same thing at the same time, neither owns it.

You can't own data, and copying isn't stealing.

[augustocroppo]

Nope, you must possess the key. If two people can possess the same thing at the same time, neither owns it.

Wrong again...

If two people posses something, both people OWNS the thing.

You can't own data, and copying isn't stealing.

Yes, I can own data. I am right know owning countless quantity of data in my brain.

Moreover, if the copy happens without prior permission of the owner of the object copied, it is theft.

[MoonShadow]

Sole possession of private keys approximates ownership, but it's not. (...)

Not in accordance with this paper from Satoshi Nakamoto:

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

2. Transactions
We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures.  Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin.  A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.

In accordance with the above quote, the possession of a private key indicates the ownership of electronic coins. If there was not a method to determine the ownership, it would be impossible for the Bitcoin network  to form the blockchain.

Definition of ownership

noun
the act, state, or right of possessing something

The act of possessing a digital key which allows a system to transfer electronic digits from one point to another point is an definition of ownership.
n or crime of stealing.

[/quote]

Myrkul didn't really state that well.  The private possesion of the private keys does, indeed, indicate ownership of the value that those coins represent.  However, this is only assumed to be legitimate because there is no way to determine who minght be the legitimate owner of those coins from within the system itself.  Thus, possession of the private keys must be presumed to have been aquired honestly.  Either way, the coping of the private keys, which are simply numbers, isn't theft of property; it's theft of the access to that property.  In this particular case, that property isn't tangible, but nor is it digital; it's simply a concept that, by using this system, we have implicitly agreed to.  That the transaction entries in the blockchain represent the (presumed legtimate) transfer of value.  This is no different than the tranfer of value that occurs within banking computers daily.  It's entirely abstract.  IT comes down to agreements.  You own what you own because you have a honest claim to it that I do not, and I can coose to honor that claim or not, but society at large develops a consensus upon ownership.  While I do agree with Cunicula that what is property is a social convention, I don't agree that those social conventions would not occur in the absence of governments, nor that governments are the natural body to define them.  We have many examples of primitive societies that didn't ever develop anything like what we would consider a government, and yet there are consistent patterns to how these societies view personal property.  Generally speaking, if you killed it and cooked it, it's yours to give away or not; and since most such societes are based upon gift economies, this is usually what happens.  Not because it was community property, but because it's in the interest of one hunter/gatherer to share his surplus with others like himself for the times that he fails to bag the game and another skilled hunter did not fail.  Now real estate is something more complicated, and a very modern & western idea.  But that does not mean that it belongs to everyone via the state, or to the state/king; while that has often been a convient fiction to the peaceful allocation of real estate property.  What libertarain societies would or should do when a significant minority of people within it's own realm should decide that they don't agree with the dominant consensus about property has never really been settled.  Even modern attempts at creating a real libertarian state all but depend upon land that is 'owned' in the tranditional sense by the city-state, and leased for lifetime long periods per agreements.

[fornit]

If I get your private keys, I haven't stolen from you.

Yes, you have stolen from me:

Definition of steal
verb
1 [with object] take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

You have taken my right of possessing the private key without my permission.

one-line refutation: lets say i have the intention to return the key i memorized... 

[myrkul]

Nope, you must possess the key. If two people can possess the same thing at the same time, neither owns it.

Wrong again...

If two people posses something, both people OWNS the thing.

Indeed you are wrong again. I'm glad you're coming to realize this. You cannot possess property at the same time someone else does. If two people can possess something at the same time, neither owns it, because it is not property.

You can't own data, and copying isn't stealing.

Yes, I can own data.

No, you can't. Data isn't property.

I am right know owning countless quantity of data in my brain.

I dispute that.

Moreover, if the copy happens without prior permission of the owner of the object copied, it is theft.

I see. We both know the meaning of the word "air." Someone copied that data into our brains. The transfer of that data into your brain occurred without my permission. The transfer of that data into my brain happened without your permission. Have you stolen from me? Have I stolen from you?

[myrkul]

...

...
You guys assume too much. Where did I suggest that I was a fan of copyright laws in their present form? In fact I think that many of the laws are overdue for significant reform. I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of selectively embracing only some ideas about property. Too bad that in AnCap there would be no State to intervene and lay down the law when somebody tries to enforce the 'wrong' ideas.

"Enforce"? Do me a favor, and read your posts out loud before you hit "Post." It will save you from moments like this. What's the root word of "enforce"?

Ooh, touchy. So, back to basics, when an Anarchist nut meets a Communist nut, the Anarchist's claim on a piece of land as "private property" trumps the Communist's claim that it "belongs to the State"? Therefore, when the Anarchist ____(does whatever)_____ to drive the Communist away, that's not enforcement, that's a "legitimate response to a coercive, and therefore illegal occupation"? Suurrre they can co-exist peacefully, it's just the Communist's fault for failing to recognise the superior nature of private property rights. Can there be both private property and a State? No way! That's the evil Communist part of society, and their silly 'State' dogma should be abolished! </sarc>

State = violent monopoly on greed. Take each of those philosophies down to root principles, and you'll see that Private property says you own you, communism says the state owns you. Since both the state and you can't own you at the same time, you can't have a mix. Since the state is a violent monopoly, and monopolies are always worse than services offered on the market, private ownership is better.
 

You're openly mocking a number of respected leaders who presided over the Industrial Revolution and guided the uneducated peasantry out of the Middle Ages?

Yup. Most of what they did was get out of the way.

They got out of whose way?

Peaceful people.

They tended to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property.

Did you bother looking at the Self-Similarity link? I present you with a real law of Nature and you laugh...

I did indeed look at that link. And applied the concept. At the lowest level, something that is self-similar resembles the whole. In other words, each individual would resemble the whole. The whole is "benevolent absolutism." Each individual being their own benevolent dictator would indeed resemble, at the lowest level, the whole of benevolent absolutism.

*yawn*. There's a "lowest level" in a self-similar structure?? Don't bother answering that.

Then a society can not be a self-similar structure. Society does have a lowest level. The individual.

Of course, a fern has a lowest level as well. So I guess according to you, the example used on Wikipedia is wrong?

[augustocroppo]

However, this is only assumed to be legitimate because there is no way to determine who minght be the legitimate owner of those coins from within the system itself.

I am not disputing the legitimacy of the possession. I am arguing over the meaning of ownership, whatever is legitimate or illegitimate. Moreover, there is a method to determine who is the legitimate owner the electronic coins:

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

We need a way for  the payee to know that  the previous owners did not  sign any earlier transactions.  For our purposes, the earliest transaction is the one that counts, so we don't care about later attempts to double-spend.  The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions. To accomplish this without  a trusted party,  transactions must  be publicly announced [1], and we need a system for participants to agree on a single history of the order in which they were received.

Thus, possession of the private keys must be presumed to have been aquired honestly.

The Bitcoin protocol do not presume "honestly" to determine ownership.

Either way, the coping of the private keys, which are simply numbers, isn't theft of property; it's theft of the access to that property.

The act of steal requires a direct subject. If you steal my door key to grab my computer with the private keys to obtain the ownership of my electronic coins, you have stolen my Bitcoins, not my access to that electronic coins. The result of your criminal act is defined by your initial intention. Whatever method you use to obtain the ownership, you are acting to possess something you were not allowed with no intention to give back to me.

If I give you my door key, my computer password and ask you to verify if is any problem in the Windows registry, and then you copied my wallet.dat file to obtain the private key and posses my electronic coins, you are not stealing my access to that electronic coins. I granted you the access myself! You are indeed copying  something you were not allowed with no intention to give back to me.

In this particular case, that property isn't tangible, but nor is it digital;

If is not digital, what is

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/digital?q=digital

Definition of digital
adjective
1(of signals or data) expressed as series of the digits 0 and 1, typically represented by values of a physical

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed, such as with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of zero bits.  The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.

it's simply a concept that, by using this system, we have implicitly agreed to. That the transaction entries in the blockchain represent the (presumed legtimate) transfer of value.  This is no different than the tranfer of value that occurs within banking computers daily.  It's entirely abstract.  IT comes down to agreements.  You own what you own because you have a honest claim to it that I do not, and I can coose to honor that claim or not, but society at large develops a consensus upon ownership.

I own because I own because I own...

Circular logic.

I own my electronic coins in the blockchain because I posses the private keys which allows the Bitcoin protocol verify the previous ownership of my electronic coins with the society's consensus (miners).

[augustocroppo]

one-line refutation: lets say i have the intention to return the key i memorized... 

Well, that would be a prank, not an act of theft.

[myrkul]

one-line refutation: lets say i have the intention to return the key i memorized... 

Well, that would be a prank, not an act of theft.

[MoonShadow]

However, this is only assumed to be legitimate because there is no way to determine who minght be the legitimate owner of those coins from within the system itself.

I am not disputing the legitimacy of the possession. I am arguing over the meaning of ownership, whatever is legitimate or illegitimate. Moreover, there is a method to determine who is the legitimate owner the electronic coins:

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Then, I suspect, that we are arguing semantics across a language divide.  That said, ownership is, at core, the right to possess property, or do dispose of it at one's own discression.  For example; in the former Soviet Union the state 'owned' everything, but could not actually possess it.  If a truck driver under the state's employ were to take the truck the state owned and use it to move contraband, it does not mean that he ever owned the truck.  In this sense, it's actually impossible to "own" information, because there is never a single person or group who has a right to destroy that information.  You can destroy the private keys on your hard drive, but that simply destroys your own access to the value on the blockchain; others could still come along in a couple decades and brute force another private key and claim salvage, whether or not you are still alive and could otherwise prove your prior possession.  Within the network itself, it's entirely unnecessary for any particular entity to even submit a claim of salvage, because the production of another private key would be all the claim that is required.

In short, if you don't have a right (or ability) to destroy something, then you don't own it.  If I were to write a poem and keep it on my hard drive, I own that data.  If I were to post it anywhere on the Internet, I've reliquished the ability to destroy that data, and thus do not own it anymore; I only own my own copy.

We need a way for  the payee to know that  the previous owners did not  sign any earlier transactions.  For our purposes, the earliest transaction is the one that counts, so we don't care about later attempts to double-spend.  The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions. To accomplish this without  a trusted party,  transactions must  be publicly announced [1], and we need a system for participants to agree on a single history of the order in which they were received.

Thus, possession of the private keys must be presumed to have been aquired honestly.

The Bitcoin protocol do not presume "honestly" to determine ownership.

No, the protocol does not.  The people who use it do.  The protocol does not presume anything, it only functions as the developers desire it to, and they must make such presumptions.

Either way, the coping of the private keys, which are simply numbers, isn't theft of property; it's theft of the access to that property.

The act of steal requires a direct subject. If you steal my door key to grab my computer with the private keys to obtain the ownership of my electronic coins, you have stolen my Bitcoins, not my access to the ownership of my Bitcoins. The result of your criminal act is defined by your initial intention. Whatever method you use to obtain the ownership, you are acting to possess something you were not allowed with no intention to give back to me.

If I give you my door key, my computer password and ask you to verify if is any problem in the Windows registry, and then you copy my wallet.dat file to obtain the private key and posses my electronic coins, you are not stealing my access to that electronic coins. I granted you the access myself! You are indeed copying  something you were not allowed with no intention to give back to me.

I don't dispute that copying your private keys implies the intent to spend your coins as if they were mine. I don't understand what point you were trying to make here.

In this particular case, that property isn't tangible, but nor is it digital;

If is not digital, what is

You misunderstand.   The transactions that reside on the blockchain are digital, but the actual coins do not exist. They are entirely an abstract concept.

it's simply a concept that, by using this system, we have implicitly agreed to. That the transaction entries in the blockchain represent the (presumed legtimate) transfer of value.  This is no different than the tranfer of value that occurs within banking computers daily.  It's entirely abstract.  IT comes down to agreements.  You own what you own because you have a honest claim to it that I do not, and I can coose to honor that claim or not, but society at large develops a consensus upon ownership.

I own because I own because I own...

Circular logic.

Linier, actually. Just because you do not understand it, does not make my logic circular.  Every claim of ownership, within bitcoin or otherwise, has a chain of transfers that can be traced back to a start.  In bitcoin, we can trace that start all the way back to one or more block rewards, each originally owned by the miner who created the block.

I own my electronic coins in the blockchain because I posses the private keys which allows the Bitcoin protocol verify the previous ownership of my electronic coins with the society's consensus (miners).

You own them because we both agree that the chain of events depicted by the blockchain is correct, and that they represent an honest title, which is enforced by the protocol and your private keys being kept secret.  If you do not agree you cannot function within the bitcoin economy, because the blockchain (and thus the whole of the bitcoin 'society') would not recognize any claims that do not conform to the perspectives that the protocol reflects.  Otherwise, the entire bitcoin network is just numbers in motion; it is the users who grant them meaning.

[myrkul]

However, this is only assumed to be legitimate because there is no way to determine who minght be the legitimate owner of those coins from within the system itself.

I am not disputing the legitimacy of the possession. I am arguing over the meaning of ownership, whatever is legitimate or illegitimate. Moreover, there is a method to determine who is the legitimate owner the electronic coins:

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Then, I suspect, that we are arguing semantics across a language divide. 

Careful... you're getting close to ad hominem.

But, yeah... I've said that for days. The language barrier is killing this debate.

[augustocroppo]

Indeed you are wrong again. I'm glad you're coming to realize this. You cannot possess property at the same time someone else does. If two people can possess something at the same time, neither owns it, because it is not property.

So, in your definition, if I (psychically and legally) posses the house at the same time my wife (psychically and legally) posses the house, we do not owns the house.

Who owns the house?

No, you can't. Data isn't property.

I will put again, in case you did not read:

Definition of ownership
noun
the act, state, or right of possessing something

The definition of ownership do not regard "property", but "something".

Data is "something".

I dispute that.

I see. We both know the meaning of the word "air." Someone copied that data into our brains. The transfer of that data into your brain occurred without my permission. The transfer of that data into my brain happened without your permission. Have you stolen from me? Have I stolen from you?

You are disputing over the act of possessing something which cannot be possessed...

You can own data, but you cannot own what the data means. You can own the data which represents "air", but you cannot own the meaning of "air".

I can own the numbers and letters which of private key, but I cannot own what that numbers and letters means.

Therefore, the answer for your questions is: no, no.