\JimC wrote: In most Western countries the essence of that property right is true, putting to one side your "tax is theft" obsession...
Strawman. I've never said "tax is theft." I'm very specific about what form of taxation is theft, and that is redistributive taxation that takes money from one person in order to give it directly (more or less) to another, as in welfare payments.
I'm attacking the fundamental premise of socialism. That this society or that society may deign to acknowledge some degree of individual property rights doesn't change the fact that the fundamental premise of socialism is that the collective rules, and that anything that the individual has, including their very liberty, is actually owned by the state and is doled out at the discretion of the state, and therefore that permission (not right) is ultimately revokable at the will of the collective. MrJonno states this exact philosophy with respect to socialist culture on every occasion. He seems to truly believe that an individual's rights are not inherent but are granted by the state, and are revokable by the state.As always, you are attacking a socialist straw man that simply does not exist anywhere except your own imagination...
The distinction between individualism and collectivism is very distinct and clear: Under collectivism, the collective assigns permissions to do this or that as it sees fit, and there is no challenging the assigning or revoking of such permissions unless the state itself agrees to have the matter arbitrated. Take the UK as an example. In theory, the citizens of the UK have a Magna Carta right to keep and bear arms. In practice however, decisions about who may bear what arms are made by various Ministers based largely on their own personal beliefs about the appropriateness of citizens being armed. The same is true in Australia, where the Great Gun Ban was not the result of a public vote (which itself is just a manifestation of the tyranny of the majority), it was dictated to the people without their participation or consent because Australians have no right to keep and bear arms, they at best have revokable permission to do so, permission which, as we see, can be revoked at will.
The concept of inherent natural individual rights is the cornerstone of individualism such as that (which used to be) practiced in the US, and upon which the US was founded. The distinction is clear: Under our system, rights (not permissions) are not granted by the government, they exist independent of even the existence of government (collective action) and may not be abridged by anyone without just cause and due process. This means that what happened in Australia cannot lawfully take place here because as a part of our founding documents, we, the People, have removed from the purview and authority of government the power to ban our keeping and bearing of arm.
In the sphere of other types of property rights, the UK's land ownership rules have devolved from the principle that the Sovereign owns everything and the authority to occupy land comes from the Sovereign, and therefore may be revoked by the Sovereign, as it often was in Medieval times.
While many socialist societies pay lip service to individual property rights, and may have established rules regarding the ownership and control of private property, they all come from the same core principle of common ownership of everything with private occupation and use being authorized and tolerated at the whim and caprice of the collective.
It's a fundamental philosophical divide that cannot be bridged by plastering the appearance of respect for individualism over the basic flaws in the ideology. As we saw in the USSR, and in every other communist country, and in a good many so-called "democratic socialist" societies, when the needs of the many rear their ugly head, the needs of the few are quite often routinely ignored and disparaged, because socialism is founded on, once again, the principles of collectivism.
However much makeup a particular society wishes to paint their version of collectivism with, they are all still nothing more than painted whores doing the bidding of their political pimps.
Without the fundamental assumption that individual rights exist entirely independent of and apart from government and therefore government, being hierarchically inferior to those individual rights, is rightfully constrained in its authority to tread upon those rights, which is the very basis of individualism, no man's property, goods or life is safe from the state exercising its supreme authority in a socialist system.
