'Property is theft' stolen concept fallacy

Property is theft. This is a phrase that unpacks as all property is theft, and it's something that I've seen mentioned a few times on YouTube lately. A comment from one of my subscribers, I think in my previous video, prompted me to address this specifically.

To claim all property is theft is one that we can easily show to be incoherent. A stolen object is not considered the property of the thief; even though it's in his possession, it remains the property of the rightful owner. Theft is when property is taken by someone who has no legitimate title to that property, and this person doesn't have the permission of the rightful owner to take it.

So, the existence of legitimately owned property is conceptually ancestral to the concept of theft. In other words, in order to be intelligible, the concept of theft depends on the concept of legitimately owned property. Similarly, the actual existence of theft presupposes the actual existence of legitimately owned property. Thus, we can be certain it's not the case that all property is theft. In fact, we know we can see that this makes no sense.

Or, as Nathaniel Brandon put it, "theft is a concept that logically and genetically depends on the antecedent concepts of rightfully owned property and refers to the act of taking that property without the owner's consent." If no property is rightfully owned, that is, if nothing is property, there can be no such concepts as theft. Thus, the statement "all property is theft" has an internal contradiction.

So, to use the concept of theft while denying the validity of the concept of property is to use theft as a concept to which one has no logical right; that is, as a stolen concept.

The same problem applies to the phrase "property is aggression" or "initiated force," which I've also seen posted on YouTube lately. I'll briefly explain why you have your work cut out for you if you want to make this claim to a libertarian who is in favor of property rights.

Aggression, in common language, often refers to behavioral manifestations of anger. However, aggression in the context of libertarian or property rights tradition means something more specific and something a little bit different. It refers to the unauthorized use of another person's property or the threat to do the same. It doesn't assume that the aggressor is angry; they might even be very calm while they're doing the aggressing.

So, like with theft, the existence of aggression, understood this way, depends on the existence of legitimate property ownership. Why is this? It's because aggression is the breach of or the violation of property rights, or the threat to violate them.

In fact, we can only detect that aggression has occurred because we have an idea of what a person's property rights are, and that means we notice when they've been violated. So, if you want to say that property is aggression, you should be prepared to explain how you're defining these terms. Because, according to their meanings within the libertarian tradition, it makes no sense.