Sivad wrote:"If I pick a wild apple, it is clear that I have more right and claim to it than someone who did not pick it."
That's a metaphysical claim right there,
It's not metaphysical. It is a physical fact that when I pick the apple, it is in my hand, in my possession, and if anyone else took it, they would be physically depriving me of something I would otherwise have. That is the fundamental essence of rights violation.
picking the apple doesn't somehow endow you with a natural right of exclusive ownership.
Yes, it does, as explained above. The facts of objective physical reality place the product of my labor literally in my hands.
If there are plenty of apples and apples are easy to come by nobody is going to object to you "claiming" it,
That is the assumed situation. Apple trees typically have lots of apples on them, it's just a matter of making the effort to pick one.
but if there's three starving people and one apple I don't see how it would be reasonable for you to claim exclusive right to the last apple because you picked it or found it or whatever.
Right, but that's a materially different situation. If more than one person wants to use a natural opportunity, and someone is excluded, then the one who excludes others owes them just compensation for depriving them of it. So unless they just agree to share it, the three starving people looking up at the last apple on the tree have to find a way for the one who picks and eats the apple to compensate the others who don't get it. A fair way would be bidding: whoever will give the others the most consideration -- maybe some nuts or berries, etc. -- in return for not being able to pick the apple gets to pick and eat it.
There is an additional problem that arises when resources are considered common ("The Tragedy of the Commons"): there is an incentive to exploit and privatize them in a way that makes everyone worse off. The people who want the apples will tend to pick them too early, in order not to lose their chance at their share. Managing the commons to maximize productive private use is in society's best interest.
And I don't see how the other two people would be in any way obligated to accept that claim.
If the apple picker has picked an apple the others didn't know about, couldn't reach, expressed no interest in, etc., they are obligated to respect the picker's property right because it is in the interest of all to encourage wealth production. It gets the incentives right. The thief who would take the apple from its owner harms not just the picker, but everyone else in the community, including himself, because people who don't have secure property rights in the fruits of their labor won't produce as much, leading to general scarcity.
"Please identify the statement of metaphysical principle you imagine I have made."
"If you dig ore out of the ground and make it into a tool, which is then rightly your property, the ore is no longer there as something nature provided"
Any understanding of property or rights beyond social construction is inherently metaphysical.
No. Social construction is just an evolved approximation of what is right as a matter of empirical, physical fact. Sometimes evolution gets things right, sometimes it leads to a dead end. Because we have knowledge of biology, economics, psychology, etc. that blind evolution might not account for, we can improve on the rights various cultures have evolved.
"Which would be having property rights in the fruits of our labor, but not in what nature provided for everyone equally."
That's an empirical question, and it's all that should really matter.
Bingo. But it is a very complex empirical question that can't be settled except by running the experiment on real societies in real time, and might not give the same answer under all conditions. That's a wasteful trial-and-error model of institutional design that our modern scientific understanding of human behavior can improve on very substantially a priori.
We have no way of knowing what is right and proper according to nature or nature's God so we have to go with what's in our best common interests.
As best we can understand them. Right. What's right according to nature is what survives and replicates in the evolutionary arena. We can't know a priori what that is, but we can make some pretty good guesses, especially as to what it is not.
If that's capitalism or geolibertarianism then so be it, but if there's a better way then those systems are just illegitimate.
I agree. And the jury is still out on that question. For example, Islam seems to be a very successful memetic system, probably because it is totally devoted to its own spread, and disregards the welfare of its individual adherents. Maybe that is ultimately going to be the successful -- in the Darwinian sense -- cultural model; though I have my doubts, as it is in terminal conflict with science and modernity. But although capitalism is clearly the most successful economic system tried to date, I think there are very good a priori reasons -- economic, psychological, anthropological, historical -- to think a geoist or geolibertarian model would work best in the long run, and I have given them. The problem is to get people who are accustomed to other models to try it, just as the problem with science and reason is to get people who are accustomed to relying on faith to try them.
"Are you really unable to understand the difference between picking a wild apple and on that basis claiming it is yours exclusively, and picking a wild apple and on that basis claiming the tree is yours exclusively? REALLY???"
Really. I don't believe there are such things as absolute, unconditional rights of ownership so all property claims have to be justified on some reasonable grounds before I'm willing to abide by them.
What is unreasonable about objective physical reality's decision to place the product in the producer's hands?
I don't think other people owe me the apple or the tree, or anything at all in fact.
I think other people owe both of us respect for our rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor, as that is in their best interest as well as ours.
Only a mass of very confused and mixed up people would accept an arbitrary property regime that wasn't in their own broad common interest.
I'm not at all sure of that. Maybe people are just ignorant or lack imagination, because history is certainly replete with examples of peoples who did exactly that even when it was OBVIOUSLY robbing, enslaving and killing them: not just slavery, but landowning, IP monopolies, private banksters' money issuance, socialism, etc.
The capitalist class is very good at identifying, protecting, and advancing their interests, the working class is not.
Right, as proved by their preference for capitalism or even socialism over liberty, justice, and truth. But at least they are smart enough to prefer capitalism to socialism.