I think I'm "liberal" as far as Hobbes goes but I don't necessarily agree with anyone else in the tradition. Guarantees of liberty, property, and happiness is a bit of a stretch. I don't really have liberty or what I would consider liberty. I don't own property and even if I did I would have to pay taxes to it otherwise it gets taken away by the Sovereign, so it's not really mine. And then there's happiness, which is not, exactly real. I just think some people in the liberal tradition went too far with this. Alot of it seems very spooky.
>I don't own property and even if I did I would have to pay taxes to it otherwise it gets taken away by the Sovereign, so it's not really mine.
?
>>2933541Let's say I own real estate and I don't pay the annual taxes for it or some shit, the Sovereign can take it away from me. Is it "mine"? In a sense, that I pay for it. But in reality, I am a vassal to the Sovereign and I don't actually own the house.
>>2933541By the way this can also apply to automobiles, if you don't pay the insurance on it, the Sovereign represented as police can arrest you, hold you hostage, and take away your automobile.
So you don't really own anything, atleast nothing important to begin with.
This kind of also ties into "liberty", which in itself is very theoretical. In practice, it's how much power you possess, which is usually in the form of capital nowadays.
>>2933542By that logic you can never really own anything because someone could just come and take it away from you
>>2933546Unfortunately, yes, it is mine insofar as I'm able to keep it according to the norms of society.
>>2933547Sure but you can say the same about anything, you might get beheaded if you break the rules also does that mean your body is not yours? Don't chase impossible ideals, pay your property taxes and be happy, it's still far better to own than to rent
>>2933548Your life and its experiences is more real than these other memes that the later liberal thinkers tend to attribute as real