You speak of wealth as if there is a fixed amount. It doesn't grow on trees and there is a virtually limitless amount. That's because wealth is produced by everyone engaged in productive achievement to the extent of their productiveness.
I am not sure of that. Productiveness is measured how exactly? Is a corporate boss more productive than a worker, 10000 times more. I think that something like a car is the product of a team, all members are necessary conditions of the car being manufactured. Saying the boss is 10000 times more productive because that's the wage he gets on the market seems, well, uncertain.
Open markets define productivity, and the proof is? "Well its an open market, so it must be accurate" seems to be begging the question.
Basic principles are black and white. A basic principle is an absolute that doesn't allow any concession to its antithesis. There can be no compromise on these principles and here is why. Say you agree that the government has a right to take a certain percentage of your production. Then the government increases its take until you balk. On what basis do you balk since you have already abandoned the principle of property rights.
One
version of property rights, as defined by you.
Either our lives, work, and property belong to us or they don't. If others have a right to our production then there should be an exact figure that we can come to rationally and there isn't one. Any figure we use is arbitrary. I can give such a figure. No one has a right to one minute of my life without my consent. There are some things that are not open to a vote of the majority and property rights are one of those things, just as whether I live or die is one of those things. The Bible did not say thou shalt not steal unless one has a majority vote. One of the few things in the Bible I agree with.
Government, properly, is a protector of rights not their violator. Any criminal feels that he has a right to your property only he doesn't ask you to sanction his actions. He risks his life whereas the government robs disarmed citizens. When robbery is legal and resistance to robbery is illegal, you know you live in a sick society. when production is punished and failure rewarded you know you live in a sick society.
I would prefer to measure sickness and health in medical terms, or positive sciences etc., rather than money in the pocket. That seems to be the limit of your thinking, money and property. But underpinning the value of money, and property, is the value and dignity of a life. Idolising money and property, meaning valuing them above human dignity, seems disordered to me. The Popes say homosexuality is disordered. Making property fundamental seems disordered to me. It is putting the cart before the horse. Money ought to serve humanity, not the other way around. And this is not arbitrary, because human well being and its causes are not arbitrary.
Animals have rights and so do humans. Or we ought to - it would be better for us. These are not based on property rights, but practical sense given the nature of the "game of life" we are thrust into. As conscious agents with inborn worth, not merely cash value like some rock or stone. For me the value of cash stems from the value of life, not the other way around. Human dignity is fundamental, not human property.
If your property rights advance society then great. If not then its not so great. I am not a deontologist when it comes to politics. I am a consequentialist. Principles can be judged according to their utility, not some "innate worth". Just like a tool box and its tools. A spanner is not there because of principles, its there because it does a job.
