 | Robert Searle |
5/13/14
|
Dear All,
I am the originator of a system known as Transfinancial Economics. It was created independently of Social Credit, which I discovered later on. The similiarity between TFE, and SOCRED (a good abbreviation!) took me by surprise a number of years ago. I suppose the former could be seen as a "modernisation" of Social Credit. Clifford Douglas was way ahead of his time. However, there are some basic differences between TFE, and SOCRED.
i) TFE recognizes the huge importance of the fact that the present financial systems is essentially a highly complex network of IT Systems, and that money is essentially in the main electronic data transmitted from one account to another. Ofcourse, Douglas lived before the advent of accessible technologies (eg. computers, and mobile phones) but would have probably approved of my approach. However, he was well aware of tabulating machines which existed in his day.
ii) TFE believes that the "only" way forwards is to work with certain banks, and corporations. Douglas seemed to be against such a pragmatic approach.
iii) TFE is open to the idea of a Universal Dividend, or Basic Income.
There may be other differences of a "minor" nature, but one needs to examine Social Credit more carefully.
| johnwiparr |
5/13/14
|
Dear Robert,
I cannot speak for Social Credit as a whole- each of us perceives it uniquely- but I think you have got a good idea there. I can't say I agree 100%, but there seems to be certain similarities, more so than with many other economic ideas.The discrepancy between these flows is made of several things, but the main reason to sum it all up is the development of capital, and the replacement of humans by machines in production. Hence, included in prices is the "wage of the machine," which is not previously distributed, yet must be accounted for in prices. The floating universal price subsidy - the compensated price- and the national dividend from new money we propose would reflect the increasing obsolescence of people in production, and of the right of people to be able to purchase all production without needing to work harder than is physically necessary.
We also propose that the banking system should be able to create as much money for production as there is production potential. No more, no less. Should enough people be employed via production loans, and incomes become greater than prices, the floating price subsidy would become a tax.
I believe you do have similarities with our proposals. Your inflation controls seem to be, in some of its forms, very similar to our compensated price. It sounds a call for more money to be distributed for worthy causes, and that there be no limit on money except what is physically possible. And no doubt a basic income could be applied, as you say.
We would rather see the new issues of money be distributed direct to citizens, in the form of basic incomes and lower prices, rather than in respect of government programs and grants. Citizens, with independent financial means, freed from wage and salary slavery, and able to fully exercise their monetary vote, could devote their money and time to more worthy causes- of which, I am certain, sustainability would be one. We prefer that to government spending (except when approved by democratic mandate) because it would represent merely the furtherance of centralized control over peoples' lives, and in interests not necessarily those of the individual.
I am not completely certain that I represent the position of Social Credit fully and completely- I am still learning. Others on this board, I think, would be able to give you more insight and reply. But I hope this has helped.
Sincerely,
John Parr
John Parr
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Social Credit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to social-credi...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
| oliver.heydorn |
5/13/14
|
I just wanted to point out that the contemporary call advanced from many different quarters for a universal, or basic, or citizen's income is not the same thing as Social Credit's call for a National Dividend.
Unlike the typical basic income proposal, the National Dividend is indexed to the productivity of the economy. That is, it would not constitute a guaranteed amount, but would depend on how much additional purchasing power is required to offset the operating costs of real capital and other legitimate production costs for which no or insufficient purchasing power is being distributed to consumers. Thus, it is likely to differ from month to month but would be increasing (in terms of its relative purchasing power) in an economy that was steadily progressing by incorporating more and more real capital and less and less human labour.
Secondly, unlike the typical basic income proposal, the National Dividend is not to be financed via redistributive taxation or by an increase in public debts but by the creation of fresh money (debt-free money, if you like) to bring the capacity to consume in line with the capacity to produce (to the extent that the latter has been actualized in any given period). Redistribution does not increase the aggregate purchasing power and is a political, economic, and social irritant and increasing the public debt is simply more of the same madness in which the world is presently drowning.
I have not yet had a chance to examine 'Transfinancial Economics' but, if it would be open to providing people with an income whether they are employed or not, I hope it is open to such an income in the Social Credit as opposed to the conventional sense.
Parr seems to have a fairly decent understanding for someone who is relatively new to the subject.
- show quoted text -
 | Steve Hummel |
5/13/14
|
John and Robert,
I agree that there are many similarities between Social Credit and TFE, and you Robert should be complimented for comprehending that fact and that you had the openness of intellect to do so. Presently, very few economists have such intellectual openness and that lack of intellectual wholeness is part and parcel of the problems with economics and economic theory.
I would say this about the directness of the dividend and nature: Nature is in a state of feedback/constant association with its component parts, however it receives its source of energy from an external source. We as individuals perfectly reflect this same relationship/circumstance The directness of the dividend is what approximates a natural economic equilibrium, and the discount is what mathematically maintains it through time and circumstance
- show quoted text -
| Robert Searle |
5/14/14
|
Thank you all for your comments. Yes, TFE is certainly very much like SOCRED. The article which "clinched" this was discovered in the Michael Journal, the link to which I would like to give out.
http://www.michaeljournal.org/
29 comments:
I have recently published two books on the subject: "Social Credit Economics" and "The Economics of Social Credit and Catholic Social Teaching." They are available via amazon.com
No, the dividend does not do away with private ownership of the means of production at all or with the specific benefits that serve as an incentive in a free market to produce: private profit. In fact, Douglas was very much in favour of maintaining and supporting free enterprise (private ownership of production, free markets, entrepreneurship, functionalist profit, etc.) What the dividend does is to universalize the beneficial ownership of that aspect or proportion of production which is due to the cultural heritage, the unearned increment of association, and natural resources. Each person becomes a private owner of part (not all) of the factors of production which are then combined by the private business owner to yield goods and services. It is as if every individual was given, at birth, a set of shares in the nation's productive capacity which would earn him or her a dividend on the operation of real capital in the production process. What could be more capitalist than that? SC is the universalization of capitalism and is directly in keeping with the distributist ideal that private productive property should be widely and equitably (though not necessarily equally) distributed. Moreover, the dividend is necessary to balance the rate of flow of final prices with the rate of flow of purchasing power, as salaries, wages, and dividends are not enough to purchase in full what we produce - hence the ever increasing mountains of unrepayable debts - public and private.
Social Credit has nothing in common with socialism at all. It denies the validity of class warfare, rejects the collectivistic ownership of the means of production, rejects central planning, rejects the redistribution of wealth via taxation and the Welfare State, and rejects excessive government regulation or control of the economy. A SC economy would be much freer and fairer than anything we have at present.
You said something else that is patently UNTRUE. I challenge you to find a single quote from any of Douglas's many writings where he says he proposes to "take away the fruits of ownership" from anyone. How do you arrive at such a flawed conclusion when the only thing he ever proposed was to fill the gap between the cost of the goods and services we produce and the wages we are paid to produce them? Check out www.economiccures.com and get some understanding before you make yourself look any more foolish than you already have.
Michael Greaney seems confused regarding a number of issues. More or less equating Douglas's and Keynes's financial policies is an inversion of fact. There appears to be sound reason for believing that Keynes plagiarized Douglas because Keynes actually does admit that we will have an increasingly difficult task in distributing current output without drawing upon future incomes. Unfortunately, Keynes offered no solution to the problem other than effecting distribution by increasing financial debt, i.e., increasing bogus purchasing-power by credit-money expansion via bank loans. Purchasing-power is only effective if it cancels a financial cost upon being expended. As conditions are today, the banks actually and increasingly appropriate the communal capital through their claim of ownership of the financial credit which the create against the community's wealth--a claim that they put into effect through property foreclosure facilitated by credit contraction which slows the expansion of money making it impossible for debtors to service or liquidate their debts. Apparently, Greeney is not troubled about this appropriation of the community's real capital by the banks, which have not created that capital.
Social Credit does not attack ownership, pe se, nor profits earned by entrepreneurs. Nor does it encroach upon the administration of industry. However, as allocated capital charges in price become progressively larger relative to the costs of wages, salaries and dividends and this changing ratio is reflected in final prices, Social Credit would ensure that consumers would always have sufficient effective demand to claim the physical output of industry as it flows from the production line. Thus, Social Credit expands and universalizes the concept of inheritance through the financing of consumption increasingly independent of direct participation in production--the latter of which would have no reason for existence without consumption.
All costs must be recovered from consumers. Only if consumers have sufficient financial income to meet said costs can the producer recover his or her costs and remain financially solvent and in business. The sole purpose of production is consumption--not to create "work" or serve any other ulterior purpose. The Social Credit consumer credits to be issued via the Consumer Dividend and to lower consumer prices (the Compensated Price) would be issued without creating new financial debt but there is already a claim against them in final consumer prices and when received from sales they will be cancelled as purchasing-power by when businesses repay their bank loan or replenish their capital reserves.
The natural, rational, inevitable and only sane trend is for technology to replace human effort and energy in production processes. Attitudes such as those expounded by Greaney raise a nightmare scenario where should we totally automate our economies so as to produce a towering mountain of consumer goods without the help of human intervention we would have to erect a gigantic fence around such a surfeit of material wealth and deny access to it because consumers had no earned income--because there was no longer any need for paid employment! We have not reached this theoretical level of technological development by we are progressively moving in this direction--with astonishing rapidity as a recent article in the Chicago revealed in claiming that within about twenty years hence we have the potential to eliminate approximately fifty per cent of industrial and commercial "jobs".
Michael Greaney seems confused regarding a number of issues. More or less equating Douglas's and Keynes's financial policies is an inversion of fact. There appears to be sound reason for believing that Keynes plagiarized Douglas because Keynes actually does admit that we will have an increasingly difficult task in distributing current output without drawing upon future incomes. Unfortunately, Keynes offered no solution to the problem other than effecting distribution by increasing financial debt, i.e., increasing bogus purchasing-power by credit-money expansion via bank loans. Purchasing-power is only effective if it cancels a financial cost upon being expended. As conditions are today, the banks actually and increasingly appropriate the communal capital through their claim of ownership of the financial credit which the create against the community's wealth--a claim that they put into effect through property foreclosure facilitated by credit contraction which slows the expansion of money making it impossible for debtors to service or liquidate their debts. Apparently, Greeney is not troubled about this appropriation of the community's real capital by the banks, which have not created that capital.
Social Credit does not attack ownership, pe se, nor profits earned by entrepreneurs. Nor does it encroach upon the administration of industry. However, as allocated capital charges in price become progressively larger relative to the costs of wages, salaries and dividends and this changing ratio is reflected in final prices, Social Credit would ensure that consumers would always have sufficient effective demand to claim the physical output of industry as it flows from the production line. Thus, Social Credit expands and universalizes the concept of inheritance through the financing of consumption increasingly independent of direct participation in production--the latter of which would have no reason for existence without consumption.
All costs must be recovered from consumers. Only if consumers have sufficient financial income to meet said costs can the producer recover his or her costs and remain financially solvent and in business. The sole purpose of production is consumption--not to create "work" or serve any other ulterior purpose. The Social Credit consumer credits to be issued via the Consumer Dividend and to lower consumer prices (the Compensated Price) would be issued without creating new financial debt but there is already a claim against them in final consumer prices and when received from sales they will be cancelled as purchasing-power by when businesses repay their bank loan or replenish their capital reserves.
The natural, rational, inevitable and only sane trend is for technology to replace human effort and energy in production processes. Attitudes such as those expounded by Greaney raise a nightmare scenario where should we totally automate our economies so as to produce a towering mountain of consumer goods without the help of human intervention we would have to erect a gigantic fence around such a surfeit of material wealth and deny access to it because consumers had no earned income--because there was no longer any need for paid employment! We have not reached this theoretical level of technological development by we are progressively moving in this direction--with astonishing rapidity as a recent article in the Chicago revealed in claiming that within about twenty years hence we have the potential to eliminate approximately fifty per cent of industrial and commercial "jobs".
That means that you cannot change the definition of a natural right as Keynes asserted on the opening page of the fist volume of his Treatise on Money when he claimed that the State has the power to "re-edit the dictionary." This is because the natural law is not a gift from God (except in the larger sense that existence itself is a gift from God), but an unchanging and unchangeable part of human nature, which is a reflection of God's Nature; the natural law, the code of human conduct, which includes the rights to life, liberty, and property, cannot be abolished or redefined in any way that changes what it means for it to be a right, or that defines the exercise thereof in such a way as to change its substantial nature. Natural rights are "inalienable" (or "unalienable," if you prefer), which means they cannot be alienated or "taken away," which is what "alienated" means.
Social credit re-defines property to mean that enjoyment of the fruits of ownership is not part of private property, but belongs to the community at large. This changes the essential definition of property, effectively abolishing it. Given that Karl Marx and Pope Leo XIII (among others) defined socialism as the abolition of private property, social credit is a form of socialism. It is Fabian rather than Marxist, but it is still socialism.
You cannot go around changing definitions of natural rights based on your personal interpretation of anything, or that harms others in any way (and violating someone's natural rights is "harm"), only the exercise thereof (and then only in ways that do not harm or abolish the underlying natural right itself) because the natural law, being based on human nature, is based in turn on God's Nature, self-realized in His Intellect, NOT His Will, and therefore discernible by use of human reason alone. Changing the definition of a natural right, whether life, liberty, or property, disparages all other natural rights and calls them all into question.
Further, to claim that a natural right can be taken away or substantially changed in its essential definition is, ultimately, to deny that God is God. God is a perfect Being. Any change is necessarily a movement toward or away from perfection. Thus, to change a natural right based on God's Nature necessarily implies that God is imperfect at some point, either before the change or after, and therefore not God. This is a contradiction, another violation of the first principle of reason, this time expressed "negatively": "Nothing can both 'be' and 'not-be' at the same time under the same conditions."
No, Social Credit does NOT re-define property in such a way that the fruits of ownership do not belong to the private owners. What it does is this: it extends some of the fruits of ownership to each and every individual via the dividend without abolishing salaries, wages, private profit, and without confiscating anything whatsoever from any legitimate existing owner. It does not rob Peter to pay Paul. The dividend is financed by the creation of new, debt-free money, which is necessary to bring the economic cycles of production and consumption into financial equilibrium. It is not financed via redistributive taxation or public debts.
Right now, the private banking monopoly appropriates (via the issuance of new loans in order to fill the price-income gap) that proportion of production which is due to the unearned increment of association, natural resources, and the cultural heritage for its own oligarchic uses at the illegitimate expense of the real owners of these factors of production: the common individual citizen.
Many Catholics have been Social Crediters including Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals. They find no contradiction between Social Credit and Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy - nor do I. I hold, btw, a Ph.D. in philosophy and have studied at Catholic schools. I do not take issue so much with the principles you exposit (though I find your expression somewhat unclear), but rather with the claim that SC is guilty of re-defining property; it does not. Furthermore, a commission of 9 theologians in Quebec (before Vatican II N.B.) had examined SC and declared that it was not at all socialistic and could be supported in good conscience by Catholics.
Please stop redefining terms and attempting to judge what I say by your principles. If you wish to disprove what I say, you must do it using the principles on which I base my argument, not on yours.
1) By making the currency unstable, the State shifts wealth from one class of persons to another. If the State inflates the currency, the shift is in favor of debtors. If the State deflates the currency, the shift is in favor of creditors.
2) By emitting bills of credit, the State is imposing a "hidden tax" in the form of inflation. Taxation is not, however, an exercise of property on the part of the State as Thomas Hobbes asserted, but a grant from the citizens as John Locke pointed out, and is unjust without their explicit consent.
The bottom line in social credit is the fixed belief that the end (adequate income) justifies the means (overthrow of the natural law).
You said:
"When the State emits bills of credit ("creates money") it dilutes the value of currency already in circulation, and decreases the value of all assets denominated in that currency. This makes inroads on private property in two ways."
The tendency to demand-pull inflation that is induced by the creation of money (which can be offset if the new money is associated with increased production in the same period of time) occurs whenever money is created under the present financial system. It does not matter whether it is the government or private banks. Are you aware that well over 95% of the money supply in the typical industrialized country is created by private banks out of nothing through the fractional reserve system in the form of bank credit (i.e., digital numbers)? Their creation of digital numbers can and often does dilute the value of the currency, which, technically speaking, is only 5% of the money supply. Yes, government-created money, notes and coins, is a very small proportion of the money supply.
"1) By making the currency unstable, the State shifts wealth from one class of persons to another. If the State inflates the currency, the shift is in favor of debtors. If the State deflates the currency, the shift is in favor of creditors."
Yes, the inflation and deflation of the money supply can have this effect, but once again, it is the inflation and deflation of the money supply through the activity of private banks which play the greatest role. Even when governments inflate through public debt they are typically borrowing most of it as bank credit from private banks.
None of this would apply under Social Credit, because under SC consumer incomes are to be EQUATED to the rate at which final prices are being generated; i.e., there will be neither demand-pull inflation, more money chasing the same volume of goods, nor deflation resulting in not enough income to meet prices. BTW, prices are not infinitely flexible, businesses must charge at least enough to cover their costs.
You said:
"2) By emitting bills of credit, the State is imposing a "hidden tax" in the form of inflation. Taxation is not, however, an exercise of property on the part of the State as Thomas Hobbes asserted, but a grant from the citizens as John Locke pointed out, and is unjust without their explicit consent."
Yes, SC agrees that demand-pull inflation filches purchasing power from consumers and that this is unacceptable, but please note again that it is the private banks who are chiefly responsible for inducing this kind of inflation directly or indirectly at present. Furthermore, the SC measures are anti-inflationary. Only as much money as is required to balance prices with incomes is introduced and the price adjustment mechanism is designed to prevent retailers from increasing their prices whenever there is more money about because of the dividend. What is wanted is a real increase in purchasing power, not a mere increase in the money supply followed by price inflation. That would serve no one. Also the money created to balance prices and incomes is debt-free money, rather than, as at present, debt-money from private banks. This will liquidate costs and thus prevent these costs from being factored into future economic activities, thereby contributing to push-cost inflation.
You said:
"The bottom line in social credit is the fixed belief that the end (adequate income) justifies the means (overthrow of the natural law)."
This is completely false. Douglas is on record as rejecting the principle that a good end can ever justify an intrinsically evil means. Furthermore, the SC mechanism is explicitly designed to provide adequate income or liquidity to the financial system without inducing either demand-pull or cost-push inflation. No inflation and the various points you make regarding the loss of property do not apply. Finally, SC also agrees with Locke's position that any taxation must be okayed by the explicit consent of the citizen and adequate mechanisms must be devised to make that possible.
You cannot properly understand SC from within the context of economic orthodoxy. I really encourage you to get a copy of my book. There is too much a stake for the brilliant light of SC to be obscured by elementary misunderstandings.
SC is quite easy to correctly grasp once you have a realistic understanding of what is actually going on in the physical and financial spheres of economic life.
Beyond labour, land, and capital (including entrepreneurship), there are other factors of production such as various natural resources, the unearned increment of association, and the cultural heritage which make a real contribution to the productive process. Labour deserves to be recompensed in exchange for its services to production and it is. The owners of land and capital also deserve to be recompensed and they are. Guess what? Those who own the natural resources, the unearned increment of association, and the cultural heritage must also receive their share in justice, which they don't at all at present. SC would finally allow the real owners of these factors to have their share recognized, while not taking anything at all from labour or the owners of land and capital.
So who owns these latter factors? They are common property, not in the socialistic sense (i.e., the property of a collectivity, the nation or state), but common in the distributistic sense, i.e., every individual is a part owner of these factors and is entitled to an individual share in the benefits derived from them. In keeping with the Church's teaching on the universal destination of goods, natural resources, air, water, etc., were created and given by God for everyone's use and benefit. The unearned increment of association, i.e., the benefits that come from co-operation and that enable things to be done more quickly and easily, cannot be privatized, they belong to every member of that association as individuals since each contributes to it. Finally, the cultural heritage is simply a recognition that when patents run out or inventors, scientists die, their contributions are the patrimony of mankind generally to which each individual should be able to lay his claim.
The commons was a very important form of property in the medieval period, i.e., in the Catholic World Order, and it is through its destruction via enclosure that the vast majority of the world's population have been turned into wage-slaves. SC restores the commons in an age of high technology.
Social credit is based on a redefinition of private property, a natural right. A natural right, a manifestation of the unchanging and unchangeable natural law based on God's Nature self-realized in His Intellect and therefore discernible by the natural force of human reason, cannot, by definition, be changed. The exercise of a natural right can and must be changed, but never its essence or substantial nature. Social credit, however, relies on such an impossible change.
By changing the definition of a natural right, social credit changes what it means for something to be true, removing all concept of an absolute standard. The basis of the natural law is shifted from the Intellect, discernible by reason, to the Will, accepted on faith.
Your analyses take for granted that the definition of private property used in social credit is correct, when, in fact, you have not demonstrated that it is, in fact, any such thing. You are basing arguments on opinion, which may or may not be true, and dismissing knowledge, which is certainly true.
Even if you were correct, and private property is exactly what social credit claims (which has not been proved), you are attempting to critique one system in terms of another.
This is fatal to the consistency of your argument, and is illogical. You cannot, for example, insist that I am playing baseball incorrectly or am lying because I refuse to employ the rules of football on the grounds that both are games involving balls, and both are sports. It does not make sense.
You can construct all the castles in the air that you like, you can accuse me of lying, you can do many things, but until you present evidence and rational argument to support your claims, you have done nothing. By accepting Douglas's change in the definition of private property, you have made the seemingly small error that leads to great errors in the end.
1. Give me in a sentence your definition of property. "Property is ...."
2. Give me in a sentence what you think Douglas' 're-definition of property' happens to be. "According to Douglas, property is ...."
2) By taking away the fruits of ownership by having the State issue a "national dividend," Douglas abolishes private property. The State does not own the marketable goods and services against which it issues claims in the form of bills of credit, and therefore has no right to (re)distribute it, except as explicitly granted by the citizens in the form of taxation.
Property is not a right. One may have a natural right to property, but that is a different matter.
Property is that which a person owns and can therefore control.
You have not answered at all how Douglas supposedly re-defines property. I am waiting for the completion of the sentence, "According to Douglas, property is ..."
Try again.
"[I]n the strict legal sense, an aggregate of rights which are guaranteed and protected by the government."
By claiming that property is not a right, you are admitting that you have changed the definition of property. This violates the first principle of reason as expressed in the principle of identity.
As your "arguments" and demands demonstrate, violating the first principle of reason leads inevitably to what Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen translated as "mental suicide" from Aquinas's "intellectual self-annihilation," a process Chesterton described as "the assassination of Thomism." As Sheen explained,
"No thesis in the philosophy of St. Thomas is clearer than that which asserts that all knowledge rests upon a single first principle. To it all other principles of thought may be reduced. Upon it all depend for their validity. Without it there can be no certitude, but only opinion. Whether we choose to express this absolute, first principle in the form of an affirmation — the principle of identity — or in the form of a negation — the principle of contradiction — it matters not. The point is, that unless our knowledge hangs upon this basic principle, it is devoid of certainty. Wherefore, causality — efficient, formal, material or final — must attach itself in some manner to the principle of identity. In the Thomistic view, the connection is immediate. Its very immediateness gives to the notion of causality the absolute necessity and complete universality of the ultimate principle.
"He who denies causality must ultimately deny the principle of identity and the principle of contradiction — and this is mental suicide. It is to assert that that which has not in itself and by itself its reason of being, is its own reason of being; or, in other words, is and is not, under the same formal consideration."
By insisting on imposing your redefinition of property on others operating in a different framework than yourself, you violate one of the first principles of rational discussion as well as the first principle of reason. As Chesterton explained when commenting on Aquinas's reaction to a similar attempt by Siger of Brabant in the 13th century (your errors are by no means original), one of two occasions on which Aquinas is known to have expressed anger,
"At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else’s principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours. We may do other things instead of arguing, according to our views of what actions are morally permissible; but if we argue we must argue 'on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves.'”
By insisting that property is not a right, when the clear understanding of property for millennia is that property is in strict fact nothing other than the right to be an owner, and the socially determined bundle of rights that accompany ownership and define the exercise of the underlying right to be an owner, you are merely spewing out nonsense.
I notice that you still have not answered the second question. "According to Douglas, property is ..."
My definition of property is backed up by no less an authority than the Oxford dictionary.
The Oxford dictionary defines property this way:
noun (plural properties)
1 [mass noun] A thing or things belonging to someone; possessions collectively:
Notice, it says nothing about a right or rights. I am not denying that people should have a right (natural or legal) to certain types of property.
Furthermore, it is possible and, in certain situations, it is the case that a person may hold property that he or she has no right to on the basis of natural law. For example, women are, for all intents and purposes, regarded in N. America has owning the foetus and are therefore 'within their rights' to have it killed. Since one can hold property, i.e., have something at their exclusive disposal for their use, and yet not have a right to that property .... PROPERTY AND RIGHTS TO PROPERTY ARE CLEARLY DIFFERENT THINGS.
If you cannot see this or admit it, I'll just have to conclude that, as shown by your marked tendency to ignore many of the important points I have raised in my various posts, you are not intellectually honest.
You have been given the precise and correct definition of property. You reject it, and attempt to evade the issue by making other demands that you decide have not been answered.
Redefining property violates the first principle of reason. Since this has already been pointed out to you a number of times, I conclude that you are "playing dumb" and assuming the role of what Hilaire Belloc called "the stupid skeptic."
It is patently useless to try and discuss anything with you, as you have taken up automatic gainsaying as an end in itself, regardless of the objective truth or falsity of your claims. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, you can verbally deny everything forever, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence — but you cannot thereby change reality, however much you want to. You might even be able to bully others into going along with what you say out of fear or intimidation, or merely to get you to shut up, but that doesn't make you right, either.
You inserted yourself uninvited into this blog in a transparent effort at self-promotion, i.e., to plug your books. I let it go in the interests of fair debate. I have no idea why you continue to drone on and on with demonstrably false statements. You clearly have no understanding of the banking principle on which binary economics is based, or the natural law on which the social doctrine of Pius XI is based. You are now making shrill demands regarding something that any reasonable person would conclude has already been answered in full not once, but several times. You are, in short, a "troll," and are here only to make trouble and engage in insulting and, frankly, ridiculous behavior.
Please do not come back. I will delete any future comments by you.