Saturday 26 October 2013

Civilisation doesn't work without property rights

To have property rights requires the consent and agreement of other people. It means nothing to have property rights in isolation. If a single person claims to own the world then this is clearly meaningless because other people will disagree... so then property rights are meaningful only in the context of a state or something approximating to a state. And because civilisation doesn't work without property rights then the state is good and necessary. Anarchism (defined by statelessness) is not a valid approach because it yields no property rights so then we must have government and by implication we must have democracy.

But there are two kinds of democracy there is proportional democracy and there is the two-party first-past-the-post system. Because the state is good it makes no sense to deprive people of their democratic rights... it makes no sense to exclude some voters from the democratic process. It is generally voters who support the minority parties who are excluded by first-past-the-post and there is no reason to exclude these voters from government (since government is good). If government is good it is inconsistent for the government to arbitrarily exclude some voters from the government due to their support for a minority party.

Anarchy is a false concept because it does not yield civilisation and property rights and it is for this reason that proportional representation is preferable.

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