When you say “[t]o say a fetus has no rights because it has no intelligence”, I automatically assume you didn’t read *anything* Neverfox or Roderick Long actually wrote.

My second point was meant to be separate from the question of whether or not Proudhon would view passive income streams as legitimate. I was simply making an observation about the practicality of renting capital goods and it was not meant as defending an interpretation of Proudhon that views passive income streams as illegitimate. Starting from the premise that they are legitimate, I was simply asking why firms wound rent capital goods when they could own them outright relatively easily in the context of a mutual credit system. Given that Proudhon was a fairly practical thinker and given the centrality of mutual credit in his economic thought, I think he would say something along these lines. But again this was meant to be separate from my first point. I can certainly imagine situations where renting capital goods would make sense. I was just pondering how prevalent this would be.

However, if the question is, as Rorty might put it, “Which interpretation best establishes what Proudhon would, under ideal conditions, reply to questions about the terms of his analytical arguments which are phrased in terms which he could understand right off the bat” then I think we have to ask what is to be our criterion for a successful interpretation, given that Proudhon is dead and we can’t ask the man? I’d propose in that case a criterion of coherence, viz. interpretations that make the text make sense are more plausible that those that don’t.

When you defend your point by appealing to “what Proudhon is saying,” you are actually appealing to your own interpretation, which is question-begging, circular and dogmatic. I’d rather talk about what interpretation makes Proudhon’s work as a whole make sense (a body of work that includes defenses of exchanging equivalents). That’s not to say that Proudhon can’t be genuinely inconsistent, but that inconsistencies or implausible naivete should be regarded as prima facie evidence of a misinterpretation.

My statement that there is a punishment for sin is not coercion but warning. I’d like to know what you think though.

This is not Dr. Long’s blog.

All humans have souls…It is present in every fetus, no matter how small or underdeveloped.

Maybe, maybe not. I fail to see how that’s decisive. If humans have souls, then rapists have souls too. Does that take away a woman’s right to defend herself from a rapist?

If I tell someone not to do something immoral, I am not coercing him, I’m warning him. There’s a difference.

OK, but who said otherwise?