And the institution of private property doesn't use force or the threat of force?
For defense, not offense. I thought that would be clear, but apparently that needed to be called out explicitly. My bad.
A co-op or mall charging rent is not much different than a city or state charging taxes. "Men with guns" will come evict you if you don't pay your rent.
It's not even remotely the same thing. In the mall case you very explicitly entered into a contract with the mall owner, with clearly defined terms regarding the rights and responsibilities on both side. Taxation, on the other hand, is done by agencies which presume the authority to tax anybody within an area defined by lines drawn on a map by men who are long dead. As Thomas Paine put it (paraphrasing a bit) "by what principle can the dead bind the living?"
"Defense" of your property claims, not self-defense. Again, Matt Bruenig has been over this. What if we both claim something as property, are we both acting "defensively" in trying to kill each other over it? One man's defensive claim is an offensive claim to another man, and there's no objective standard by which you can decide who's right.
Sure, one may have the backing of a state, but surely that's just more effective violence. You're not in favour of might makes right, do you? And tradition is no good, because claims have to start somewhere.
> "by what principle can the dead bind the living?"
To achieve higher aggregate utility, by redistributing some of the money to those who would get higher marginal utility from it. Objecting to it based on freedom is backwards, because freedom is just one component of utility.
For defense, not offense. I thought that would be clear, but apparently that needed to be called out explicitly. My bad.
A co-op or mall charging rent is not much different than a city or state charging taxes. "Men with guns" will come evict you if you don't pay your rent.
It's not even remotely the same thing. In the mall case you very explicitly entered into a contract with the mall owner, with clearly defined terms regarding the rights and responsibilities on both side. Taxation, on the other hand, is done by agencies which presume the authority to tax anybody within an area defined by lines drawn on a map by men who are long dead. As Thomas Paine put it (paraphrasing a bit) "by what principle can the dead bind the living?"