Another very well-written Doug Muder article as usual, so I’d just post an excerpt and urge you to read the rest
Libertarians tend to take property as a given, as if it were natural or existed prior to any government. But defining what can be owned, what owning it means, and keeping track of who owns what — that’s a government intervention in the economy that dwarfs all other government interventions. You see, ownership is a social thing, not an individual thing. I can claim I own something, but what makes my ownership real is that the rest of you don’t own it. My ownership isn’t something I do, it’s something we do.
[Aside: This is why it’s completely false to say that government programs primarily benefit the poor. Property is a creation of government, so the primary beneficiaries of government are the people who own things — the rich.]
Weekly Sift, Why I Am Not a Libertarian
Did Muder read Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”? Property hardly treated as a “given” in that book.
I’m not sure — it’s probably best to ask him directly. That being said, I think he doesn’t mean to say all the key thinkers have that conception, but it is a commonly-held view among libertarians today.
…and what is this “given” “conception”?