cody on Nostr: I don't get the point of making this demand/argument. If Spooner's theory is the ...

I don't get the point of making this demand/argument. If Spooner's theory is the strongest argument in favor of self-ownership then ostensibly Rothbard's/all others' are weaker by comparison, and thus subject to critique as is the case here. Just because someone isn't attacking "the strongest argument" doesn't mean the positions being taken against "weaker arguments" are wrong.

 

I think the major problem with “self-ownership” principles is that they are based on an idea of property and people that is just too narrow. At the end of the day, all we are dealing with are objects and the relations between them. Whatever relational system “property” exists in, it’s far more multidimensional than the classic “I used my body to grow this food” model that is still at the root of self-ownership takes.

 

I made that joke about living on an island earlier, but let’s look at the problem from the other side with a different thought experiment. There’s a show on Apple TV + called “See,” where everyone in the future is blind. Let’s say that a neuralink-type device gets invented that allows everyone to integrate real-time models of their physical reality with those of everyone else on the network, essentially allowing people to virtually see the world around them (don’t worry I’m not spoiling anything). Do we have self-sovereignty over our bodies in that scenario? No – the entire ability of our bodies to operate (with sight) is now predicated on a common dimension of dominion over (a) material reality, and (b) the linguistic/mental reality that forms the new vision model.

 

Sure, you might think you can assert self-ownership by choosing not to get chipped, or by turning the program off. But you haven’t really demonstrated bodily autonomy. All you’ve really done is choose to live in one of two different dimensions of reality – a binary choice predicated on the fact the chip-network reality was created through a common-ownership schema. So, common ownership still overdetermined your self-ownership decision making. You didn’t have autonomy, you had one of two choices about how to relate to the rest of the world. More than that, the common ownership vision model could end up overdetermining the entire material world you’d want to try to assert self-ownership over, and you’d be rendered inert.

 

The experiment seems dystopian – and it started that way. But now there’s a risk one centralized entity or group of actors could flip the switch and make the whole-world blind. Well, that’s where decentralization and identity within networks comes into play. If this virtual dimension is out of the domain of a central source of control, and it can perfectly map one-to-one everyone’s state within it, then we should be good. But we haven’t created self-ownership, we’ve only ensured that the integrity of the common-ownership relational structure is preserved.

 

All this to say is that a rights framework that approaches objects in the world without considering the dimensions in which people and objects operate is going to fall short of providing a sustainable worldview for the future. And before you say this example is too far-fetched, keep in mind that literally every digital innovation created today exists and operates in the same domain the vision network does – one of thought and ideas.