
Controlling your own wealth as a basic human right - aminok
https://blog.coinbase.com/controlling-your-own-wealth-is-a-basic-human-right-9fbe78341a7f#.o51jvuhsw
======
jonathanstrange
Kind of sad when people make such suggestions, not because it's alright if the
government interferes with ones wealth, but because they thereby implicitly
water down the concept of human rights.

Basic human rights are being treated as an equal to other human beings and
with human dignity, being allowed to live, prohibition of slavery, being
treated equal in front of the law and getting due process, and not being
tortured. Everybody should be able to agree on them.

Yes, maybe controlling your own wealth should a right. But please don't put it
on a par with _basic human rights_.

~~~
_petronius
I have sympathy with your argument, but I'm not 100% convinced. If controlling
your own capital means having access to the economy so that you can buy food
and housing, then it becomes a prerequisite for basic human rights like
actually living; doesn't that at a certain point put it on the same level?

It's sort of like countries that take steps to ensure everyone has access to
the internet as a basic right: they acknowledge that participating in the
modern economy, and the things that flow from that participation (security,
dignity, basic sustenance) require internet access to do it meaningfully. How
else are you going to apply for jobs, when companies no longer sort through
CVs sent in by post?

(As an aside, this is one reason I rage at people -- and this has been a
strain of thought popular in Britain recently -- that make negative comments
about the homeless having "luxuries" like smartphones. How else are they
supposed to find work, be contactable to do that work, etc.? Being able to
make and receive phone calls, SMSes, and emails is essential in 2017, at least
in Europe. Madness.)

Anyway, point is, it's not enough to say that "everyone has the right to life
and not be tourtured" and other abstract concepts. Having a right, truly,
means being able to exercise it meaningfully -- just having it under the law
is not enough. Therefore, the prerequisites to exercising those rights need to
also be in place, and form at the very least a part of those basic rights,
even if you do not want to classify them as seperate, also basic rights. (But
I think arguing about Linnean distinctions is a little pointless.)

~~~
vidarh
Consider Proudhons famous "property is theft" for a moment.

His point is that enforcing property rights explicitly deprives others. If
something is scarce, then the moment I wall it off, others become poorer for
it.

Sometimes that may be worth it: the deprivation of others may be small, and
the benefits to the individual of being able to wall something off might be
high.

Even the vast majority of anarchists and communists would draw a sharp line
between private property + the "means of production" vs. personal property. To
put it rather pointedly: Pretty much everyone agrees that granting every
random stranger the right to use your toothbrush deprives us of more rights
than it provides us.

Where exactly the line goes on what should be shared and what should not is
one of the major differentiating factors of political ideologies, but that
there _is_ a line is recognised by every present-day government in the world.

The enforcement of exclusionary property rights might enhance everyones rights
and freedoms when what is walled off is so common that there is no perceptable
increase in freedom from protecting part of it or when the benefits of
exclusionary access are large enough to overcome the downsides, and it might
enhance some peoples rights all the time, but it may also cause a drastic,
profound reduction in the rights of many once something is scarce enough that
allowing some people exclusionary control of it has the potential to
significantly deprive others.

To take an extreme example: If all the resources you could have used to obtain
food belongs to someone else, you've just de facto lost the right to live and
having a de jure right to life does not help you.

This also acts as its own counter-example: If you _don 't_ have right to
control your own wealth, then the ability to eat depends on the willingness of
socity to let you.

And therein lies the problem with looking at a right to controlling your own
wealth: Depending on how the society you happen to live in today is structured
in terms of your ability to _obtain_ wealth, and _who_ has ownership, you may
have more de facto rights with a right to control your own wealth or more
without it. And that structure can change, and suddenly reverse the effect.

In other words, a "right to control your own wealth" does not provide a
universal good, but one that is conditional on circumstances. That is my
biggest problem with considering it as suitable to be a human right.

~~~
aminok
>His point is that enforcing property rights explicitly deprives others. If
something is scarce, then the moment I wall it off, others become poorer for
it.

That makes absolutely no sense. That's like saying preventing people from
feasting on your flesh makes them all poorer. I'm using an extreme example to
demonstrate the absurdity of the argument that enforcing exclusive control
over abundant and practically free natural resources that you've appropriated
and applied work to in order to turn it into something highly valuable
(whether that be soil, water CO^2 and sunlight that you converted into food
and then into bodily mass, or sand that you melted into silicon and turned
into a microprocessor), deprives others of their rights.

~~~
_delirium
> exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources that
> you've appropriated and applied work to in order to turn it into something
> highly valuable

Things like land, mineral resources, and water are definitely not "abundant
and practically free", but in most places, scarce and highly contested.
Furthermore, the people who control them to a large extent did not work for
them, but inherited them. So to what extent you have access to some portion of
these scarce resources doesn't depend on your own labor, but on whether you
happened to get lucky in the birth lottery and get born to someone who, in the
19th century, signed a favorable water-rights contract in California, or a
favorable ranching/mineral-rights contract in Texas. You'd have to have quite
some metaphysical faith in the "labor mixing" theory to believe that because
some pioneer in the 1850s got a good deal on land or water, it metamorphosized
into "his land" in perpetuity, even though he didn't create it. Or, in many
cases, even put any actual labor into it in the first place (many of these
deals were "paper" deals where east-coast financiers acquired Western land
holdings, and sent other people to work them).

~~~
aminok
Natural resources that are scarce can be justifiably taxed, but the argument
the parent comment paraphrased is not a Georgist one of taxing only land and
other natural resources. It is claiming that no form of property rights are
legitimate, and that all enforcement of property rights is a violation others'
rights.

~~~
vidarh
No, I did not claim that no form of property rights are legitimate at all. If
you think that, then read again.

What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently
reduces the liberty of others.

That does not mean it can not be legitimate - we reduce the liberty of others
for various legitimate reasons all the time.

It does mean that whenever we enforce property rights we are making a tradeoff
between the liberties of differents sets of people.

~~~
aminok
You quoted Proudhon who considered none-natural-resource classes of property
theft as well. But your argument is also absurd:

>What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently
reduces the liberty of others.

All property is scarce, which is why it has market value. You're saying people
have no right to the property they create, if it happens to be scarce (which
it always is).

Maybe you have some vague arbitrary definition of "scarce" that allows you to
claim that the property rights you exercise over your possessions are
legitimate, while the property rights of those with much more than you are
not.

------
bryanlarsen
The misnomer in "own wealth" is in the word "own". The only reason that wealth
exists is because of history and society. The only reason that its yours to
control is because capitalism is a relatively efficient and natural way to
allocate and control wealth.

Thought experiment: a world without history & society. 7 billion people, with
the resources of the world fairly divided amongst those 7 billion, but these
people come into the world as blank adults without any knowledge of the past.

They'd quickly starve. Even hunting and gathering requires a surprising amount
of training to do successfully, and the world cannot support 7 billion people
in a hunter and gatherer lifestyle.

Even if your Mom & Dad taught you the skills of subsistence farming you'd
still starve; we don't have enough farmland to grow enough food for 7 billion
without modern farming techniques.

But for the sake of this argument let's suppose your parents taught you how to
farm and make your own tools, shelter, etc and you have enough land to live
on. Subsistence farming is something you can do on a heavily populated world
without the knowledge or cooperation or interference of any others. And it's
pretty much the only thing.

Anything else requires history & society & cooperation forced or unforced.

We've the inheritance of Aristotle, Newton, Watt, Einstein, Borlaug, Caesar,
Washington, Confucius and innumerable others. We control the wealth because
they're all dead and we've inherited it. We're mice standing on the shoulders
of giants.

Certainly we have all done something to be granted our wealth. Some of us may
have inherited it, but most of us do our 9-5 or more. But what we do is such a
small part compared to what came before. We spent 12-20 years in school being
taught by society, protected by society, enabled by society and learning from
history, given to you by your employer or your customers.

It's efficient and natural for you to control the wealth that comes into your
hands; taxation and government implies a certain amount of waste. But society
has just as much of a claim as you do. At least on any part more than that of
a subsistence farmer.

~~~
narag
_The only reason that wealth exists is because of history and society._

That is a bit extreme. You can hoard basic goods (wheat, lumber, livestock) or
build infrastructure (house, barn, pipes) for your own use in the future,
without involving state or society.

Society can more or less work without private property but a _free_ society
can not. We tend to think of the State as an abstract law infrastructure, but
it is not. Who does make, apply, execute the laws?

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you carefully save from your subsistence farm in the good years you might
save a couple of tons of wheat to get you through the bad ones.
Congratulations, you've just saved $300.

But you're right, our other freedoms do imply a certain amount of control over
a certain amount property. The right to self-determination, freedom of
movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of association et cetera would be hard
to guarantee without a little bit of freedom of property.

As I mentioned, capitalism is a pretty good means to accomplish our goals.
It's not an end in itself or a fundamental right, IMO.

~~~
narag
Capitalism and private property are not the same thing. Capitalism is Karl
Marx's definition of an economic system where _the means of production_ are
private property.

Private property is a more broad concept that means of production. You can put
some goods out of market by law (a dam, roads, airports) so society will work
better, but that isn't the same as preventing individuals from having their
own private wealth.

Private property is based on the concept of rule of law. If the State can
arbitrarily disposses you of goods you earned through fair trade, you are not
really free.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The list of fundamental rights that are widely agreed upon are:[1]

    
    
      - Right to self-determination
      - Right to liberty
      - Right to due process of law
      - Right to freedom of movement
      - Right to freedom of thought
      - Right to freedom of religion
      - Right to freedom of expression
      - Right to peaceful assembly
      - Right to freedom of association
    

If the state can arbitrarily dispossess you of _all_ of your goods you don't
have some of the above rights. However, the vast majority of most citizens'
property and wealth is not necessary to exercise the above rights.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights)

~~~
aminok
It was once widely agreed upon that slaves had no rights. Just because
something is widely agreed upon doesn't make it right. I would argue that the
proceeds of the private trades you engage in are fully yours by right, and
that no reasonable case can be made to the contrary.

To suggest that it is not a right is to imply that it is okay for a government
to demand that two private parties divulge information about a private trade
they engaged in, and throw the two parties in prison if they refuse to divulge
this information, or if they refuse to hand over a share of the value they
received in this private trade.

------
3pt14159
From the article:

> I list [the lack of wealth redistribution] as a con because I think most
> people view it as one, but it’s not clear that it is one.

It is _widely_ clear that its a con, especially in the advent of the current
forces in the world. Global warming has made some places on the planet
impossible to live on without wealth redistribution and technology gains
largely go to the extremely talented or the extremely wealthy.

Furthermore "controlling your own wealth" is basically translatable to "doing
whatever you want with stuff" which is so clearly a bad idea. Can I "control
my wealth" towards bribing a politician? Can I "control my wealth" by burning
a bunch of methane on a boat in the middle of the atlantic?

Property / wealth is an important institution for many reasons, and crypto-
currencies should be tolerated for now, but if the world starts to show signs
of regular kidnappings for BTC ransoms then we should use political action to
put an end to the anonymity or lack of state control that they provide.

------
anilgulecha
> but it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth of the poorest
> people.

This is a blatantly incorrect statement (that shows the bias of the author).
Old currency could be turned into bank accounts, and then out to new currency.

The inconvenience was around the logistics of getting new notes into
circulation (which was indeed managed badly in many parts), but no way can
this be conflated with 'wiped out a large percentage of wealth'. The author's
bias is making that leap.

~~~
sleepychu
You're right but the author isn't totally incorrect.[0]

> _But with the note shortage in India, cash is precious and the queue-jumping
> jugaad has a dark side. As banks quickly run out of cash, many have to go
> hungry if they cannot make it to the front of the line. Others have to take
> days off work to wait in line. One man, standing in the queue at the bank,
> who does odd jobs for a launderette, says he will phone his boss when he
> reaches the front, so that he can come and make a cash deposit. “Every man,
> whether he’s rich or poor, has a mouth to feed. But somehow, only ordinary
> folks like us end up standing in line,” he says._

[0] - [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-
lin...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-lines-
controversy-cash-for-queuing)

~~~
notahacker
However counterproductive India's change might have been, I don't think you
can call statements like "it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth
of the poorest people" and "One could argue that the Indian government
recalling bank notes had a positive impact on citizens (more tax revenue for
education, roads, etc). Yet it also harmed millions by eroding their wealth"
anything other than a misrepresentation of what the Indian government actually
did.

I don't think it serves the Bitcoin ecosystem well when CEOs of some of its
most trustworthy platforms make such flatly wrong statements on basic
finanical issues. More generally, it's a counterproductive line of rhetoric to
take when the average person in the developed world is several orders of
magnitude more likely to suffer significant wealth loss through BTC
volatility, platform malfeasance or government crackdown on domestic bitcoin
use than hyperinflation or generalised currency seizures by Western
goverments.

------
twoquestions
I disagree with the notion that property ownership should be provided as a
right, for free, and that any regulation or control over the property the
State protects is an atrocity on par with slavery.

Don't get me wrong, in general I very much like the concept of private
citizens managing capital rather than the State (though I wish workers had a
bigger say in how capital is managed, but I digress), but there are times when
States have to exercise some control over the property they protect in order
to protect itself and the property it guards. Keep in mind, the Draft is a
thing the State can do, the trick is to use such controls as lightly as
possible.

Private control and ownership of property, while important, must necessarily
be secondary to the stability and protection of the society it inhabits.

Also read bryanlarsen's comment, they go into good detail on how the State
enhances private citizen's ability to create and accumulate capital.

~~~
kybernetyk
[http://imgur.com/sjO5Hi3](http://imgur.com/sjO5Hi3)

~~~
hacknat
We should all stop paying for third party enforcement of criminal and civil
disputes. Any seizure of my property by the government is a curtailment of my
property rights.

What benefits of the state are you willing to live without? All of them? If
the answer is no you just want the line drawn further back or forward than
others. My guess is like most of us you draw the line around services and
benefits from the state that benefit you and people you know and not around
services and benefits the state provides you deem unimportant to you and the
people you know.

------
Bartweiss
As usual, I find Paul Graham's comments on economic theory incredibly
frustrating.

This piece just uses the pull quote "a great deal has been written about the
causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not
sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them
in peace." Graham's article about that goes on to theorize that this might be
_sufficient_ , and if so that only guild monopolies prevented earlier
industrialization.

This is, in a word, stupid. Stability is a necessary component of
industrialization - though stability to invest is even more directly required
than stability to profit. This is not a breakthrough idea, I learned it in
high school. Graham just hasn't read enough of the "great deal" he references
to discover that. Stability is thoroughly insufficient - there's a laundry
list of other requirements, with agricultural advances driving most of the
other keys (especially, concentration of capital for investment and
displacement of workers from food production). All of this is well-studied,
heavily-analyzed content. It's not new to this article, or Graham, they're
just reworking theory from scratch.

It's not especially egregious here, and I'm not attacking the conclusions of
the article by pointing this out. But it's a problem that crops up a lot (ever
read pg's thoughts on the Edict of Diocletian?) and it's exhausting to read
ground-up recreations of basic theory.

------
justusw
Talking about pragmatic human rights: Fiat money exists as legal tender in
many countries in one form or another. No shop keeper can turn you down for
wanting to pay with Dollars. With Bitcoin that's a different story.

While I wholeheartedly agree with all the benefits a currency like Bitcoin can
offer, I think we're a long way from being able to use Bitcoin as an
embodiment of basic human right.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_No shop keeper can turn you down for wanting to pay with Dollars._

I do appreciate your point, although 'legal tender' is generally only a
relative term with regard to payment of debts. A seller is not otherwise
obliged to accept dollars.

~~~
otheotheothe
That's not true, my local german bakery simply doesnt accept big euro bills
with the premise it could be fake money, which is nonsense as the smaller
bills get faked more often, shit like this can't happen with bitcoin.

They also dont accept debit cards so u can be screwed if u have only a 100 eur
bill with you..

~~~
krallja
I think you responded to the wrong comment.

------
codingdave
Not that the points are invalid, but this is posted on a site hosted by a
company that profits when people switch to digital currencies. Good marketing
uses truth, and you may agree and use their product.... which is what makes it
good marketing. But it is still marketing, and it is good to be aware of that.

------
jly
> everyman has a property in his person; this nobody has a right to but
> himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hand, we may say, are
> properly his \- John Locke

Locke wrote this envisioning people producing a measured but fair output from
their labor - growing food, making durable goods, etc - and the modest
property and wealth that could be obtained from this effort. In modern times,
the true value of goods and services is skewed drastically in favor of those
that own means of production, increasing exploitation of those that don't.
Locke saw the potential but then less fully realized problem of unlimited
accumulation and concentration of property and wealth and he wrote the
government should moderate this and more equally distribute wealth.

Allowing one to _fully_ control their wealth may increase innovation, but
there are downsides to this without some controls in place to control
dangerous unchecked accumulation of wealth. I disagree with the premise that
"smartphones and steam engines" are a justification for this because they
improve the human condition. They improve it for some, at a huge cost to
others.

------
js8
I am not sure how is that supposed to work. If someone steals or cheats and
then launders the money into Bitcoin or whatever, should he have the right to
keep it? Presumably, no. That would mean that right itself would depend on the
legality of the process with which the wealth was obtained, and that's kinda
circular.

I could however imagine supporting right to control your wealth up to the
point of the average wealth of a human being on the planet. That would be
within the spirit of human equality and universality of human rights.

And in practice, I wish I had at least a right to count my money in public,
and publish my salary (without annoying my employer).

------
d--b
"my product as a basic human right"... sigh...

Putting all one's money in a bitcoin account doesn't sound like the best
solution to hyperinflation and cash confiscation in poor countries. Why not
buy US dollars or gold?

~~~
ssharp
Because US dollars are controlled by the evil US government and not the not-
at-all-self-interested Chinese bitcoin miners and speculators \s.

------
b3lvedere
"51% of more of the participants on a network must agree to a change."

"Governments exist to serve their citizens."

In a democracy you also need 51% or more of the votes and everybody is equal.

We all know the real world works very very differently.

------
em3rgent0rdr
The prohibition of other people controlling your wealth as a negative right
(as is simply represents inaction of others interfering), therefore I must
consider it a basic human right.

"Rights considered negative rights may include civil and political rights such
as freedom of speech, life, private property, freedom from violent crime,
freedom of religion, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

------
user150987
Since the article is about Bitcoin and human rights I think it's worth
mentioning that Monero is the only crypto currency that protects your
financial privacy. Privacy is an important part of controlling your own wealth
not least because it makes money fungible and doesn't allow discrimination
against where coins have been spent previously.

------
nikolay
Most human beings don't have any wealth - or it's negative!

~~~
gjm11
Global median net wealth is about $2200. Most human beings have positive, not
negative, wealth, even if not an awful lot of it.

For global wealth info, go to [https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-
us/research/resear...](https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-
us/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html) where you'll find a
nicely presented Report and a Databook with more numbers in it.

The Databook has a table (Table 2-4) giving estimated median wealth per adult
for all the world's countries (or something like all; I haven't checked). Many
of the figures are small, but _not one_ is negative. I'm fairly sure these
figures are net of debt, but it's not 100% clear. So, just in case, compare
those figures with the ones in the previous column, listing debt per adult;
the only countries where the debt figure exceeds the wealth figures are
(unless I missed some) Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany (!), Malaysia,
Maldives, Sweden, the US.

(I believe from other sources that US median net wealth is comfortably
positive, which is one reason why I am pretty sure the figures in the "median
wealth" column of Table 2-4 are net of debt.)

~~~
jly
Half of all adults own < USD $2,200. The bottom 20% (something like 1 billion
adults today) own < USD $248. Inequality is increasing - the top 1% own almost
51% of global assets.

These statistics show that most humans have very little accumulated wealth to
control, and very few humans have a lot of the total global wealth.

~~~
gjm11
I agree with all of that. But _nikolay_ claimed that most people have zero or
negative wealth, and that isn't correct.

------
ommunist
Bitcoin or any "cryptocurrency" has nothing to do with "human rights". You can
keep it, but you also can choose not to. Human right is something you cannot
easily revoke. For example, slavery was historically recently prohibited in
the UK. Since then, you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are
willing to.

~~~
WalterBright
> you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are willing to.

That's because human rights are inalienable, meaning they can neither be taken
nor given away.

~~~
ommunist
"Human rights" were introduced historically very recently, including concept
of their inalienability. Concept of "justice" is much older. Thank you for
clarification, I really like the word "inalienable".

~~~
WalterBright
Human rights have always been there, it's just that recently they were
discovered (not invented).

~~~
ommunist
Cant find any human right on me, or with microscope. Guess this is pure
speculation, used for human resources management.

------
whack
Interesting that the article talks about wealth but not income. After all,
today's income is tomorrow's wealth. If control over your wealth is a "basic
human right", then shouldn't control over your income and cash flow also be
a"basic human right" for all the exact same reasons given? And if control over
your income is a basic human right, and nations like US and Canada have tax
rates approaching 40% on high earners, does that mean they are violating basic
human rights? At what tax rates do we go from economic-policy to human-rights-
violations?

I agree with the other comments here. The whole point of human rights is to
enshrine the things that we absolutely need for our physical and psychological
needs. Water, air, housing, safety, education. To claim that taxation,
inflation and demonetization are a violation of human rights, devalues the
term itself.

~~~
meanduck
If something is being done against someone's will ==> Basic Human Right is
being violated.

Thus Taxation by the definition, is a human right violation _for many_.

~~~
whack
So your opinion is that every major nation in the world, by having mandatory
taxes, is violating basic human rights.

It's exactly statements like this which dilute and devalue the power of terms
like "human rights."

If you are a hardcore libertarian, and want to claim that every major nation
violates libertarian principles, more power to you. But don't appropriate the
term _" basic human rights"_ towards a political ideology that it was never
meant to represent.

~~~
meanduck
"Dont do somthing that you dont want to be done to yourself." is probably the
reason that give birth to every basic human right.

So yes its absolutely appropriate. You dont have to be even a libertarian to
realize that.

------
throw2016
Money is an integral part of a social system and stability. You can't
'disrupt' money without disrupting governance, rule of law, accountability and
systems.

We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to us
to varying degrees than self appointed shadowy crypto currency cliques with
zero transparency and accountability. The monetary system certainly cannot be
in private hands.

The 'solution' peddled in a frenzy by early adopters is tainted by self
interest and infinitely worse than any problem with central banks and current
monetary systems.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to
> us to varying degrees

Ah, but there's the rub. How accountable are they, really? In the software
industry, you find out that if "everyone" is responsible for something, then
all too often, no one is. And even if they are accountable to people in
general, what happens when they fail individuals? Like this guy who had
£440,000 of lawsuit-settlement money seized by Barclays on money-laundering
suspicions:

[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-
took-...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-took-
my-440000-customers-caught-up-banks-de-risking-money-laundering-laws)

