I could have been a cubicle jockey at a big tech firm or something. I started out on that road. But I wanted to go for the brass ring. Hell, I’d probably do it again. A lot of cubicle jockeys have lost their jobs too, and not had half the fun and amazing experiences I’ve had. You can’t play it safe all your life, and I wanted to build spaceships, not copy machines or Navy computers. And again, the money was good when things were good. There was a while when I was making as much as the boss was. I’m damn good at what I do, but a bit overspecialized. Ah well, at least I’m not getting my ass taxed off now. Everything’s got a bright side.

Neither you nor your wife – or me and my wife for that matter – would be affected by any Republican changes being proposed to entitlements. Something the media is making damn sure gets swept under the rug. I don’t know what’s going on with pensions, but governments are running out of money and retirement funds are full of it. Keep your powder dry (in the rhetorical sense only). I think Ireland is going after theirs soon.

I lucked out, but I am perfectly aware I got lucky, I take no credit for engineering my good fortune, although I do take credit for a lot of things I didn’t do which would have been disastrous; like starting a business, putting my savings into stocks, or job hopping or career changing. A lot of those were conscious choices based on my intellectual, academic assessment of where the country was heading–i.e., they were ideological decisions based on how I perceive this society really works, not the way I was taught it works. It turned out I was right, in the only way that matters, empirically.

But if I had been born just a few years later I would be in your shoes right now, and my wife doesn’t work. Being ready and able does you no good at all if no one will hire you, no matter how good you are at your job. I can’t blame anyone in Tallahassee for not hiring me now. And Tallahassee has always been run by the Republicans. Like they say, the private sector creates jobs, but the private sector ain’t hiring, either. I saw that coming too.

I’m not immune to worrying about what the government might do to me, either. The governor wants to mess with my state pension, and the Republicans are going after Social Security and my wife’s Medicare, she’s six years older than I am, and we both have long term medical issues. Yeah, I’m sure they all have very good reasons, but no one consulted me when I was playing their game, following their rules, making plans and paying dues.

I’ve got two kids in college, and the job prospect for new graduates, even in decent fields, sucks. Around here, summer employment is nonexistent. Why hire a summer kid when there are six adults waiting who will take the job all year round?

Meanwhile, the psychos in Sacramento are doing their best to raise our taxes and make the state as hostile to business as possible. And yes, I’m sorry, but I feel it when they take yet another chunk out of the paycheck. In short, they are after my goddam goods.

I’m not really bitching about my basic situation – I made choices, and took chances, and if things had fallen another direction I might be rich right now. That’s how it works. I just don’t need the usual idiots-in-charge making life even harder for me and the people who might hire me to do work for them. I can’t earn my living as an aerospace designer working for mom and pop stores, which seems to be the largest business you can have before you become a Public Enemy to all right-thinking people in this state.

I seem to be doing OK. Life is easy, I work, I get paid. No problem. Once that is taken care of, I can spend my life living, which does not include indulging any entrepreneurial fantasies, saving the world, or punishing evildoers.

You’re the one I worry about, you seem terrified that everyone is after your goods, and somehow you think I’m in charge (or at least a member) of some sinister conspiracy because I don’t share your sense of imminent catastrophe and I don’t want to talk about it all the time.

You know Tom, when most Republicans have their midlife crisis, they find themselves a mistress. They don’t go on jihad against the Eastern Liberal Media Elite.

As far as property is concerned, I meant land, or the means of production. Not even the Soviets passed laws against personal belongings. Jeez, you really must be paranoid. Do you think the tax man is coming to repo your car?

By the way, there was no “Cato Institution” in Rome. The modern Cato Institute is named after Cato’s Letters, a series of writings from a couple of Brits in the early 1700s.

I’m curious as to how you think society ought to be organized. You’re obviously not happy with this one.

P.S. if there’s no such thing as property, there’s no such thing as theft.

And land, who owns land? Who made land? What gives anyone the right to own land? Oh sure, you can buy and sell it, but who gave someone the right to be the first owner? The buying and selling of land may be carefully regulated, but its acquisition is based on violence, someone either took it from someone else, or they moved in and fortified it and prevented others from using it. Once again, those freedom-loving patriots with their knee breeches and buckle shoes: take the land from the savages (who don’t know how to derive benefit from it) and bring in Africans to work it. My goodness, what proud philosophical forebears your libertarian principles spring from.

What about all the land we stole from the Mexicans, which they stole from the Indians, who stole it from each other? I realize we’re stuck with the system we have now and have little choice but to legitimize it with law and custom, we can’t go back to the stone age. But spare me the flags and the fifes and drums, and all the Victorian hypocrisy as well. Ownership of land is based on blood and violence and suffering. It always has been. Its the arrangement we’re stuck with, not a gift from God.

The system of ownership we have today evolved from historical necessity and blind chance, it has nothing to do with principle, it isn’t even all that old, it was the final compromise that resulted from centuries of struggle and war and, yes, revolution. Everything else has been created from scratch, by men working, not by owners owning.

Land ownership was always the prerogative of nobility. It wasn’t until just a few hundred years ago that people who weren’t aristocrats could even own land, and in 18th century America you couldn’t even vote unless you owned property. No wonder you’re always sucking up to the founding fathers. You really DO want to go back there.

Ownership of land is a relatively recent historical mechanism by which the middle classes eventually defeated the aristocracy, and when it is was introduced it was resisted as violently by the conservatives of that time as today’s conservatives resist any threat to their hegemony.

And then comes the usual TB bleat about how everybody is out to loot his pile. Pal, I don’t want any of your stuff. It turns out I’m doing quite well without you. But if you don’t pay your mortgage, you’ll find your “property” is forfeit just like if you don’t pay your taxes. It’s OK for some private outfit to throw your butt on the street if you don’t make a payment, but the government can’t do it? Tell me, how do you tell the difference? In either case, you have traded your ownership for some presumed benefit, whether it be government services, or a loan that allows you to move into your “property” before you really own it. We fought the British because we rejected taxation without representation, not because we rejected taxation.

Do you really think I like paying taxes? Do you imagine I enjoy giving my money away to the government any more than you do? Do you really think liberals are that stupid? Or did it occur to you that maybe they’re just smart enough to realize nothing is free in a world dominated by owners. We live in a community, you may fancy yourself as a free-ranging Steppenwolf, but you’re just a herbivore like the rest of us.

You see, Tom, we all pay our betters for the privilege of living on this planet. We pay through the nose. And it doesn’t matter who we pay, we still pay. There is no difference between government and business. In both cases, we are engaged in transactions with them. The difference between you and me is I never saw myself as someone who’s paying who deserves to be collecting. At least, the government repo man can be voted out of office, or dragged to the guillotine. The smiling creep in the business suit not only has his hand in your pocket, he expects you to kiss his ass, too, because you should be grateful for your freedom to be a capitalist just like him when you grow up.

“A right to loot but no right to property”. What bilge. You have what right the MAN lets you have. Period. And those rights have been paid for on the picket line, and on strike, not by a bunch of 18th century rich planters and Gilded Age robber barons. You work here just like I do, you better get used to it. You’re not a freeholder, or a capitalist, or a businessman, or self-employed; you’re an employee. That is, if they need you.

Slavery is when someone’s labor and mind are owned by another person without their consent. African-Americans in the years following the Civil War damn well knew how important property rights were.

When the other side says their principles say they can take what I have earned, while my principles say I have the right to keep what I have earned, do you see the difference? These principles are not equivalent, or balanced, or two sides of the same coin. My principles demand nothing of the other side except to be left alone. Their principles demand my life and wealth, leaving me whatever they see fit, or nothing. Yet today wealth redistribution is considered the highest moral imperative in many places. Justified by what? That there are more people who want to take the wealth than there are producers?

A right to loot, but no right to property?

But to half of those “philosophers” in the 18th century it was a man’s right to own slaves. It was part of his freedom, his liberty. And those principled philosophers were dead wrong. A century later, men were willing to turn traitor, to kill their own countrymen or die trying because they felt that as “free” men they had the “right” to own other men and their issue. They were just as wrong. But there is no way I can prove that, I certainly couldn’t have proven it to those principled philosophers..

This is about property more than it is about principle. Yes principle matters, and I am convinced there are things worth fighting and killing and dying for, but don’t presume to tell me what they are, especially when my conscience tells me you’re dead wrong, and when my reason tells me your principle is guided mostly by your profit.

I’ve noticed you have no trouble condemning as morally or intellectually unfit those who disagree with your principles. Why should they suddenly feel their principles are worthless and yours suddenly preempt theirs? Why should I abandon my principles and adopt yours? What gives you the right to condemn me because I don’t agree with your principles.

I’ll give you the example you’re really interested in: I don’t believe anyone has a right to own property, particularly land, capital, or the means of production. As a capitalist, I believe property is useful, important and essential to a well-regulated economy, and I subscribe to the system we have developed to manage and administer the distribution and ownership of property. But it is a system we adopt willingly, after negotiation and compromise, and which is regulated by the state and described by our laws, precedent, and long established custom. I accept capitalism because it is good, and it works, and it is administered fairly, but it is not my right. There is no right to property, there is only a mutually acceptable legal arrangement.

I once asked a Baptist minister how the Lord could condemn to hell an otherwise virtuous man who could not accept Jesus as his Savior because he had never heard of him (perhaps he had lived in a time or place where no one was familiar with Christianity).

The Reverend answered that such a man was not a sinner, UNLESS he heard the gospel explained to him. At that moment, if he did not accept it immediately and unconditionally, he became a sinner.

I know you’re not a religious fanatic, Tom, but in political matters, you sure think like one.