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The term Human Resources gains its roots from the fact that human labour is the most necessary pre-condition for the production of Wealth. All such goods, which, man needs to produce for his well-being, prosperity and progress and as a thinking being he expend his rational faculty and physical labour or effort to produce them, are economic goods and all economic goods are wealth.
Naturally occurring goods such as air, sunlight, rainfall and wind are also material goods coming to us automatically, they do not need human labour or his thinking capacity to occur hence such material goods are known as free goods.
The land and natural resources are also wealth insofar as man has made them accessible and useable. An unowned barren piece of land is obviously not wealth until a person possesses it, work on it and transform it from barren land to a fertile, productive useable land. Obviously, it needs human labour and his intellect to turn that barren piece of land to a productive piece of wealth.
Wealth and Money
Wealth is not money, nor is it synonymous of monetary value. Money is the means of exchange of wealth and services. More wealth created in the form of commodities like sugar food-stuffs, clothing, automobiles etc without any increase in the supply of money is essentially more wealth, but no increase in the total monetary value, thus it results in lower prices or deflation[1]. Similarly, more money can exist without increase in wealth that happens almost everyday in the system of fiat currency, where the supply of money is decided by the wishes of government, the result of such fraudulent acts is increase in commodity prices an hence inflation[2]. Fiat currency is fraud, as the common individual never gets equilibrium between the total wealth produced and total monetary value present. Further frauds are the terms like GDP, or National Income etc as they indicates the amount of money and has no connection with the wealth accumulated or goods produced. Fraud is essentially a form of initiation of physical force; any such government controlled fiat currency is essentially depriving the common person of the freedom he deserves. Yet, money is an essential commodity of a free-society as it helps in provision of free exchange and mutual dealings between individuals, to apply impartiality and better co-relation between wealth and money, 100% gold standardized currency[3] should be used and monopoly of government on supply of currency and gold should be eliminated.
Self-ownership and Wealth
A free society providing sovereignty to every individual is essentially based on the principle of non-initiation of violence, as Ayn Rand said,
“So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate — do you hear me? No man may start — the use of physical force against others.”
Freedom is based on Non-Initiation of Aggression axiom that no man or group of men may aggress against a person or the property of any person. A human body is the natural border of the individual thus; using the body of another without his or her consent is aggression against him and hence is impermissible. This definitely confirms the idea of property rights in one’s body, that is, each person is the owner of his body; he has the right to control his body, to decide whether or not he consumes alcohol or narcotics, use his body for prostitution[4], joins an army, becomes a farmer, decide to be a mother or to abort a child and so on. One should understand that wealth is not necessarily property possessing market value, for example, various legal rights and licenses provided by government, like liquor license, patents, stocks, bonds, copyrights etc[5], do possess market value and are property, but they are not wealth, rather they restricts the production of wealth. Similarly, in a society allowing human slavery, the number of slaves does indicate property, but slaves are not wealth. Such property, which is not wealth, indeed destroys the wealth; slavery in any form thus, destroys the wealth, as it provides no incentive for production.
Thus, human are property but they are not wealth; also, human labour is the most essential requirement for production of wealth. Hence, for unrestricted production of wealth and hence prosperity, it is a necessary condition that all individuals remain free owning themselves, because only than they will gain the full incentives of their expenditure of intellect and labour in the production of wealth and material prosperity.
The societies that do not consider man free enough to have complete property rights on his body restricts his freedom to use and decide for his body by means of partial slavery. Such societies do maintain that each person has some “limited rights” to his own body, yet not complete rights. Society or government acting as such society’s agent- has some right in a citizen’s body too, in other words, the government owns the citizen in some way and the citizen is partially a slave to the government. This partial slavery is implicit in government laws prohibiting individual freedoms like censors and bans, state prohibitions or illegalization and state actions like taxation, conscription, fines, interest rates and price control etc confirms the nature of partial slavery imposed by the government on common citizens.
As it is incontestable that slavery in any form (complete or partial) definitely restricts the production of wealth, hence imposes scarcity, poverty and suffering on human, it is quite clear that the more a society is free, the more it is prosperous, progressive, peaceful and secured. Thus, to be prosperous and progressive, a society essentially needs to provide the citizens full freedom and that is possible only by means of asserting complete self-ownership to the individual.
Self-ownership and consistency with freedom
Since human labor, natural resources and wealth all are scarce, it is extremely essential for any political system to assign ownership rights on humans and external resources. Socialism and other collective systems assign limited ownership rights on individuals while they assign whole property rights to the state and government. As in India, individuals are partial slaves to the government and there are no specific property rights for the individuals.
A libertarian society on the other hand, strictly favours self-ownership to the individual completely. In order to avoid conflicts, property rights should be assigned to that seeker amongst others who provides the objective of ownership and a definite link between the owner and the subject owned. In case of human body, it is direct link between the body and the person, the objective of self-ownership is definitely freedom to pursue self-interest and happiness, thus the principle of self-ownership is thoroughly rational. No outsider (not even government) can deny this specific link between the individual and his body as the outsider itself expects the same right of sovereignty for itself. Thus self-ownership essentially avoids any conflict and hence it provides the best and most proficient way to attain justice, peace, prosperity and hence civilization. The principle of self-ownership hence, is essentially consistent with freedom as no one except the individual himself can have right over his body and hence he is thoroughly responsible for his body and all his acts, if he initiates aggression against the free domain of other individual by means of initiation of violence such as assault, sexual attack, fraud, killing etc, he becomes the criminal and is a subject of appropriate punishment. Footnotes:
- Falling Prices is the cure of Deflation [↩]
- Cause of Inflation: Story of Money and what causes Inflation [↩]
- Fiat Money Versus Gold Standard, Privatization of Currency! [↩]
- Prostitution: Legal or Illegal [↩]
- Copyrights: Legal or Illegal [↩]
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1 views6 Responses to “Self-ownership and consistency with Independence”
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Gopi Krishnan Says:
September 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm“for example, various legal rights and licenses provided by government, like liquor license, patents, stocks, bonds, copyrights etc[5], do possess market value and are property, but they are not wealth, rather they restricts the production of wealth.”
what about stocks & bonds which were issued by private companies? do you consider it as wealth or money? why / how would stocks / bonds restrict the production of wealth?
MichaelM Says:
September 27th, 2009 at 7:35 pmDiva,
While I am in general agreement with the content of your post as a whole, I would like to offer you an understanding of the basis of freedom that differs from this:
“Freedom is based on Non-Initiation of Aggression axiom that no man or group of men may aggress against a person or the property of any person. A human body is the natural border of the individual thus; using the body of another without his or her consent is aggression against him and hence is impermissible. This definitely confirms the idea of property rights in one’s body, that is, each person is the owner of his body;”
While the non-initiation of force principle is an important element of Rand’s politics, it is not an axiom underpinning the concept of freedom, but rather the necessary means to fulfill man’s ethical requirement to achieve a life in accordance with his nature. That ethical requirement derives first of all from the fact that we are living entities facing, like all living entities, the fundamental alternative of existence or non-existence, life or death. By our nature, our specific capacity to deal with that alternative is reason volitionally applied to action. If one chooses to pursue the alternative of death, questions of first principles are moot. If one chooses life, then life becomes one’s goal and the standard of all values.
The complex and spontaneous nature of our lives requires us to identify those values we must seek in the service of our life and order them into a code of values to guide our choices — i.e. an ethics. Those values require certain kinds of action (virtues) in principle to achieve them, and the ability to exercise those actions in pursuit of our values in the service of our life necessitates certain preconditions that are, if properly identified and defined, morally right to demand and defend. The primary precondition is the freedom to exercise autonomy over the application of reason and action in the service of our life. Thus the the right to life and our need for freedom is based on what we are — on the fundamental nature of man.
The moral right to one’s life is not a social/political right. It is that which in principle is right for any individual in the context of his own life. When and if an individual chooses to live among other men and interact with them over the long run, he needs to preserve his ability to live by his moral rights. Nothing can prevent him from doing that except physical force or the threat of force, so, above all, his primary social need is the absence of coercion so he may apply reason and action to production and voluntary trade.
To that end, Rand proposes a neutral third party institution (government) subject to the will of the populace through a system of checks and balances that would monopolize force in order to restrict its use solely for protection against coercion. It would in effect exercise an absolute tyranny against coercion in order to achieve absolute liberty for production and voluntary trade. In my words, its mandate would be to guarantee that:
No person shall initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy any tangible or intangible value owned by any other person who created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange.
The political rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are the principles that define what actions the government must protect and what contrary actions other men may not exercise. They are the extension of moral rights in the context of the life of an individual into the social context of an individual living in a society of men.
So, you can see that both freedom and one’s right to life as well as to property are all based on the more fundamental fact of one’s nature as a human being and not on the non-aggression principle. Consequently, it is not accurate to speak of owning one’s body or self, because the right to one’s own life precedes the concept of ownership. The concept “ownership” refers to the control of external products of the application of one’s mind and actions.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
September 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pmMichael,
I agree with you.
But here for this particular write up, I used principle of Non-Initiation of Aggression to signify self-ownership because initially, I had composed it for describing the importance of division of labour and its dependencve on property rights and overall, Individual Freedom to own, govern and be responsible for himself.
Since the initial write up became heavy and lengthy, we divided in two parts, and may be because of that the whole issue of using principle of non-initiation to describe importance of self-governance/ownership/responsibility lost its essence.
Anyways, the remaining part has been published.
Division of labour, prosperity and production of labour.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
September 28th, 2009 at 1:48 pmBonds irrespective of issued by private sector or government are not wealth.
Rather they are promises of a futuristic increment of the monetary value they represent. Since money itself is not wealth, stocks or bonds cannot be termed as wealth.
In case of bonds issued by private sector, the increment in monetary value may represent an increase in wealth production (it may not be the case too), but in bonds issued by government it is definitely destruction of wealth production.
The stocks of private sector can be termed as wealth, because they are basically documents of agreement representing a share in the existing wealth.
Stocks/Bonds issued by government are definitely destructive to wealth
Why?
Government bonds/stocks represents that there are some definite streams of production exclusively under governmental control disallowing any free-competition and restricting the producers to enter in those productive sectors. Such monopoly obviously is destructive of wealth and prosperity and is restrictive of development.
Yet, there is a security of increase in monetary value of gov. bonds.
An example is Indian agricultural sector. No matters how bad agriculture sector goes down, the value of “Kisan Vikas Patra” will increase, that increase in monetary value is actually engrossed from the citizens itself in form of levies and taxes etc.
If government creates documents forcing value inside it(like fiat currency, or carbon credits) then its not real wealth. Its destructive to wealth.
I am not very clear about it though, I will look for further clarifications.
renegade_division Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:44 pmIf this argument you have raised is not another bash of a desire of achieving complete or at least more liberty, nor you are just trying to bash Unpretentious diva in a way to ‘defeat’ her in debate, and if you really are convinced that we need complete liberty, but you just don’t think how that can be done, then I might try answering your question. But if this is another attempt to somehow demonstrate that its all impractical and its never going to happen, just save us some trouble.
If that is a genuine question, then the answer is, that even I don’t really know how complete freedom can be achieved. I am honestly working on it. I have no more or less clue about how to do it than Gandhi had on how to get rid of British rule in 1897. Contrary to what you might believe until 1928 Indian Independence movement wasn’t really an independence movement, it was more like ‘let us rule ourselves under the crown’ movement. It was in 1928(merely 19 years before we actually achieved independence) that we started a ‘Poorna Swaraj’ movement in India(it was 26 Jan 1929 exactly, the first time Congress party put the idea in public of a complete freedom).
My point is, until 1928 Indians didn’t even think of completely independent India. Or put it this way that since 1857 to 1928, the Indian independence movement was really a Indian commonwealth movement(like Canada and Australia currently are under British Crown). Why? Its not like nobody thought of a completely free India, rather they knew that it would be too far fetching for Indians. People didn’t even think it was possible for India to be completely free from British rule.
Mind you people weren’t really desiring a previous situation, there was no Indian nation or republic to start with when Britishers came to India. People weren’t really dreaming of a republic as we have today they were merely comparing British rule with Mughals and Kings. Yet in 1947 we got what nobody could sold it to Indians until 1928. Complete independence from British Rule.
I cannot really tell you HOW we can achieve complete liberty, but all I can tell you I am observing the ‘fight’ against the govt. And more and more I see how much justified the govt has made itself. I rarely like to quote Ayn Rand(I just read her ‘Atlas Shrugged’), but she wrote a few things which Gandhi may or may not have written but sounds like he understood it and may or may not have written about it(I haven’t read much Gandhi yet, but his books are making in my ‘to read’ list. What she said was the way govt works, they need our consent for anything. They want justification for their actions, and as soon as they get your consent(you show your consent by using their system), they win. In her novel Rand shows her character’s own way of winning by not giving their consents.
In real life Gandhi did the same by making a whole nation say no to British Rule.
In my rediscovery of Gandhism, something very peculiar which never made sense to me(and that particular action made Gandhi the most hated character among the viewers of the movie ‘Bhagat Singh’ by Ajay Devgan) and that was revoking the whole Non-Cooperation movement based on one incident of violence in Chauri Chaura. I remember hating Gandhi myself when I saw the scene in that movie. Now I realize that by using violence against the Britishers the people handed Britishers a weapon against Gandhi, now Britishers could simply start shooting the non-cooperation participant citing violence, but Gandhi immediately disarmed Britishers by taking back the whole movement. How could Britishers accuse Gandhi of being evil and violent? How could they shoot a man like that and not fear widescale anger in public. If they shoot Bhagat Singh people would rise for him, but not as much as people would if Gandhi was shot dead by Britishers.
Britishers really wanted to hang Bhagat Singh and all his revolutionary friends, but they could not touch a guy who refuses to raise arms against them. It was just against their system, they wanted consent, among their own people. They wanted that their officers when shoot the revolutionaries do not feel remorse(and they would have felt remorse if they were made to shoot Gandhi). After all British officers were human too.
This is exactly what I am trying to understand now. Gandhism makes much more sense to me now. Gandhi may not have been a libertarian, but his method was the most compatible method of libertarianism.
I am sorry but I cannot answer your question on how to be free in 10 steps or less. But I can tell you the answer lies in the sole philosophy of libertarianism, the non-initiation of aggression.
Desires | Reason for Liberty Says:
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