*property not prosperity
Discussion
Sorry. I very much hate my dumb, iPhone corrected text. So reposting an edited version for posterity:
I think this is directionally-correct. But I think we can move up a layer of distraction to identify the epistemic problem with Rothbard's concept of self-ownership and property.
Fundamentally, property is a necessarily social construct. The idea that your own body is your property in a self-evident, universalist way sounds compelling. And it makes intuitive sense. However, this is only for the very reason that we are not defining what "property" is very well.
Imagine you are alone on an island. And you will be alone on that island for the rest of your life. You will never encounter another human being. In what sense, does the concept of property even have moral purchase, here?
It doesn't, because property is inherently a *social* construct. It exists as a constructed set of social rules around humans behave in a *community*. This is the *only* relevant domain for the concept of property, which is functionally -- as far as I can tell -- the right to exclude others from the use of thing. It presupposes other people in the first instance. The concept of property has no functional purchase in Rothbard's most idealized sense of it as starting from self-ownership. What does yourself as property even mean? You have the right to exclude yourself from yourself?
I don't think property as the state of possession or even exclusive possession, outside of a social context, is a terribly meaningful moral concept.
I would also push back against the claim that bitcoin is the first thing where a truly pure property right can be realized given its attendant properties. I think this is an oft overstated case by people trying to philosophize about bitcoin and how it revolutionizes the concept of property.
Bitcoin still completely relies on property as a social construct, in practice. Arguing that it doesn't because a seed phrase exists only in your head is making a lot of unchecked assumptions which seem to be wrong upon a closer look.
1. That the ability to extract a seed phrase from someone's brain is impossible. Either by technology, chemical manipulation of the brain, or by a threat of violence.
2. That accidental leakage of the private key doesn't, at some level, remain a persistent threat.
I think both of these cases seem apparently intractable problems that leaves bitcoin purely in the *property as a social construct* camp. People who say otherwise are taking too much for granted, and as I accuse Rothbard above, have poorly constrained definitions of what property *is*.
Speaking with this level of nuance doesn't get you several thousand retweets, like tweeting something that gets a cheap dopamine bit like "Bitcoin is the first time in history that you can have property that doesn't rely on anyone but yourself to enforce those rights!"
I see sentiment like this a lot, and I'm always surprised how easily convinced people are by this.