Why should I respect your property rights? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Classical liberalism. The individual before the state, non-interventionist, free-market based society.
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#14354383
The Immortal Goon wrote:This, again, has nothing to do with the idea that tomorrow everything goes to an-cap.

At the very least, you fail to address what would happen to everything Trump (or anyone else) owns should tomorrow everything go an-cap.

From my perspective there is only a minority of existing private property claims in modern western common law based economies that will be open to dispute (I can't speak for non-common law based economies). The transfer of property that the state has currently claimed and owns because there will be multiple overlapping valid claims. There are a variety of ways of letting those change hands (Rothbard had a plan for transitioning the USSR for example) each of which have there own advantages and disadvantages. As long as the transfers can happen peacefully I'm not wedded to any particular arrangement.


The Immortal Goon wrote:So in twenty years into an-cap, it would still be impossible to hold land that you later hoped to build upon, say, while you were getting supplies someone could come over and take it from you? What level of homesteading matters? If children built a fort, does that make the land their own? If you chopped down a tree, do you own an acre? Five acres? Ten? What if two people were using the land for wood for their homes and someone else moved in and started to build a house? What if that was land someone nearby was using to graze upon but didn't technically modify himself? If someone mines in Alaska in the summer and rests elsewhere in the winter, is the land abandoned the day after he leaves? The week? The month? These are all disputes that happen every single day as it currently stands and will sometimes turn to violence even with a monopoly of violence only being sanctioned by the state. How would an-cap deal with these property disputes? Execution for whomever draws slowest?

In order to have a valid claim you need to (a) make a claim and (b) have some way that passes the reasonable man test that the claim is valid. The specific ruling by the legal system is dependent on circumstances just like distinguishing between different types of murder (self-defence, first degree etc).

The Immortal Goon wrote:Finally, I have seen nothing to address the issue of people that choose to reject the premise of owning property in the first place.

People who reject the premise of private property also reject the premise of people's rights to their life and liberty. You cannot have rights to life and liberty without also the right to private property. As has been exhaustively discussed since about page 5 of the "Libertarianism and the UN human rights" thread, all rights in the end are property rights.

Of course there are people (many on this forum included) who do not believe others have the rights to their life or their liberty and desire to control and constrain them (or simply deny them all together). These people also do not respect property rights. However, if we had a society that actually respected people's rights to life and liberty then it will necessarily respect the right to property.

BoK's opening remarks were not that he rejected people's right to property but that he wanted to delineate between certain types or circumstances. Fundamentally his delineations are either consistent with the Libertarianism view or are internally inconsistent and irrational, but as he has not come back to the thread and answered my questions it is difficult to know what he really means.

In terms of the "time dimension" issue that I mentioned and that you have questioned, it is dependent on many factors. A house that is unoccupied for 6 months while it's owners are travelling or sick in hospital can still clearly be identified as being owned by someone but a house that is unoccupied for 50 years will clearly show signs of having been abandoned and unclaimed by others. In contrast, a towel and a pair of thongs left on the beach for a week would generally be regarded as having been abandoned or lost but the same towel and thongs left inside someone's locker at work would not be deemed by any reasonable person to have been abandoned or lost. A building site which has been left untouched and unvisited for a couple of months would not be deemed abandoned but one left untouched and unvisited for 10 years probably would be. As I said, different cultures may come up with slightly different rules for assessing the exact conditions that an item has been deemed abandoned and consequently revert to being unclaimed property. They may also have slightly different rules about what happens when the original owner shows up and reasserts their original claim and explains why their claim is still valid (eg they had been continuously paying for services to be connected even though they hadn't been there or cleaned the joint for 10 years). This is noise around a very small subset of property arrangements.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Traditionally un-regulated capitalism processes their women and children through rape and converts the entire population into piles of bodies. Is this still the punishment for refusing to acknowledge the premise of private property in an-cap, or is there another solution that will be tried?

What the heck does that mean? Is it even relevant to the topic?
#14354407
Eran wrote:You cannot have a group of neighbours decide to "tax" their neighbours, regardless of how worthy their use of funds is.

Of course they can, that's precisely what all taxes are. These people just need to follow the proper procedures for this and convince enough congressmen or local government representatives to pass the new tax and new spending into law, or get enough voter support to get their own people elected.
#14354426
Saying that it's unfairly restrictive that only a government can pass tax laws is like saying that it's unfair that only pilots can fly planes, or that only delivery men can deliver packages, or that only programmers can program computers. It's not a special privilege, it's the definition of the terms. If you're passing laws, you are governing, by definition.

In a constitutional democracy, all you need to do to pass a law is to gather popular support for it.
#14354436
lucky wrote:Saying that it's unfairly restrictive that only a government can pass tax laws is like saying that it's unfair that only pilots can fly planes, or that only delivery men can deliver packages, or that only programmers can program computers. It's not a special privilege, it's the definition of the terms. If you're passing laws, you are governing, by definition.

In a constitutional democracy, all you need to do to pass a law is to gather popular support for it.

Saying that the initiation of force under government authority is permissible because that's the definition of government authority does not say justify an initiation of force (or what limit it has). The fact that murderer is a defined word explaining that a murderer murders does not make it justifiable for me to murder people. I'll just stand up in court and say "But I'm a murderer you honour. It's what I do." shall I?
#14354452
And how would ancaps prevent, say, us communists from building our very own Red Army to exterminate the property-owning class like vermin and just plain looting all their stuff? Presumably, we would only initiate force once when we already had overwhelming force and there was little y'all could do about it.

And that, quite frankly, is the very best case scenario for everybody involved: It's vastly more likely that the bourgeoisie would just employ their private armies to preemptively suppress the labor movement way before it became an existential threat... Which would mean that everybody always exists at the whim of corporate private armies.

Anarcho-capitalism inevitably (and pretty much immediately) succumbs either to us commies or to outright warlordism.
#14354468
So you would use your peaceful right to life, liberty and property to accumulate property in order to exterminate property owners? The best case scenario is presumably to start with the most violent property holders first then? Everyone's problems would be solved at far less expense

W.r.t. warlords, you are basically saying that once we successfully have an anarchist society dominated by multiple private defence providers and judicial agencies that one (or more) of them will want to consume their own assets that they have accumulated via continuous peaceful competitive dealings in order to steal whatever is left after the fighting is done. Such a radical shift in a companies business plans is really very extraordinary. The shareholders/co-op members would also all have to be in on the gig as they would be actively approving the build up of weapons and materials ready to start the war and ready to suddenly treat their own workers as expendable meat in the war machine or to hire willing mercenaries at great expense. [We aren't talking about a US President wanting to use someone else's property to start a war or fire off a few cruise missiles at multi-million dollar expense because the newspapers are focussing on your infidelity with a White House aide.]

But these are the same individuals who have grown up living in a society where the vast majority have been actively avoiding violence in their day-to-day dealings and indeed think it is wrong (even if they do have differences of opinion w.r.t. things like the validity of capital punishment or appropriate sentencing).
#14354603
In USA...The land was confiscated from the Indians....
In Britain the land was confiscated by the Norman's a thousand years ago and their descendants still own a large part of it....
#14354928
Eran wrote:These are excellent questions that cannot be answered abstractly.


Yes, of course.

Eran wrote:Again, disputes will arise under any system. The key for keeping society functioning peacefully is not to avoid disputes, but rather to find peaceful means for resolving them. The libertarian answer is to apply to objective arbitrators (ideally by mutual agreement) to resolve such disputes.


And I've heard you speak of peaceful arbitrators. Maybe I'm going to step over a line, but is there an example of this ever having succeeded? It's like arguing with any other anarchist: As long as people keep breaking windows of banks, everyone will suddenly agree on everything!

As I mentioned, historically capitalism has solved these kinds of problems by murdering everyone on one side. Why would this suddenly be different if we remove any kind of representative system in which minorities may participate?

Eran wrote:In practice, btw, there is rarely a free-for-all grab. At any moment, society and the economy are near equilibrium. That means that most of the economically-viable natural resources have been claimed. As technology progresses, new resources become economically viable. That doesn't happen suddenly. Rather, they first become marginally-viable, of interest only to those willing to take the risk and invest the effort required. In early Colonial days, the American heartland was "free for all" (ignoring Native Americans for the moment). Yet you didn't see millions of people head West. Heading West was dangerous and difficult, and only a hand-full of people did so.

Today, the moon is free for all. But very few people go there - it is far too expensive and risky. One day (I hope), it will become economically viable to exploit the moon's resources. But that won't happen all at once. You won't see a scramble for the moon (even assuming the world's governments stay out).


Voluntarism wrote:From my perspective there is only a minority of existing private property claims in modern western common law based economies that will be open to dispute (I can't speak for non-common law based economies).


This is simply not true. Though it's a lie that would be convenient for libertarians. A google search of, "case property rights" will show innumerable cases. Further, I know lawyers that deal with this and cannot keep up with the issues. There are so many it can take decades to get to one or another.

Eran wrote:No. An an-cap society would expect such disputes to be resolved peacefully, by an appeal to arbitrators who will be guided by the NAP and local community standards. As mentioned before, countless communities have developed mechanisms, rules and institutions to address precisely such questions.


Voluntarism wrote:What the heck does that mean? Is it even relevant to the topic?


And, historically, the most common way to, "address precisely such questions," is genocide.

Then governments revolving disputes.

Then people just murdering each other until there's nobody left.

In no case is there people walking around on fairy dust shooting rainbows, hand in hand, singing songs and coming up with solutions. Especially in a system specifically designed to reward he who has the most.

Eran wrote:Libertarians recognise the rights of nomadic people (I know of no agricultural society without the concept of private property in land) to use the land on which they dwell. The advantage of the formulation of the NAP that I am advocating is that it doesn't assume property. Rather, property becomes a derivative or conclusion of the NAP under particular circumstances, circumstances that may not apply to land under nomadic use, for example.


There has never been a case where this has worked. Further, an NAP strong enough to keep this is effectively a government. But if it makes you feel better to clothes your masters in a name other than, "government," then just do it.

The rest of everything is the same border-line conspiracy nonsense that can be thrown away pretty easily. It's not worth getting into.

Voluntarism wrote:In order to have a valid claim you need to (a) make a claim and (b) have some way that passes the reasonable man test that the claim is valid. The specific ruling by the legal system is dependent on circumstances just like distinguishing between different types of murder (self-defence, first degree etc).


This is exactly why capitalists structured their governments the way that they exist today.

Voluntarism wrote:People who reject the premise of private property also reject the premise of people's rights to their life and liberty.


Oh please. Private property has only been an abstract concept in the last few centuries in its current form. If you want to go far enough back and stretch it, then maybe the paleolithic, which is about 5% of human existence. To say that this is some kind of wonderful innate thing is naive and absurd.

Voluntarism wrote:Of course there are people (many on this forum included) who do not believe others have the rights to their life or their liberty and desire to control and constrain them (or simply deny them all together). These people also do not respect property rights. However, if we had a society that actually respected people's rights to life and liberty then it will necessarily respect the right to property.


This is all so much flowery language. It does not describe reality. You propose abstract theoretic democracy, we propose actual democracy. Not for he who may afford it, but for everyone.

Voluntarism wrote:In terms of the "time dimension" issue that I mentioned and that you have questioned, it is dependent on many factors. A house that is unoccupied for 6 months while it's owners are travelling or sick in hospital can still clearly be identified as being owned by someone but a house that is unoccupied for 50 years will clearly show signs of having been abandoned and unclaimed by others.


And what sick totalitarianism demands everyone conform their thoughts to this standard?

What about one year? Two? Someone is going to have to force the issue.

---

And this whole thing comes down to the problem with such nonsense. Libertarians, with no historical example, no contemporary evidence, feel like they're right. I prefer material facts.
#14354949
The Immortal Goon wrote:This is simply not true. Though it's a lie that would be convenient for libertarians. A google search of, "case property rights" will show innumerable cases. Further, I know lawyers that deal with this and cannot keep up with the issues. There are so many it can take decades to get to one or another.

Besides this point and the one below, I can't really see much that really addresses the discussion at hand (or is worth commenting on). When I look it seems to be principally about violations of property rights not about whether there is dispute about an owner having a property right in the first place (which is my point). I chose three "random" websites from the first half dozen links supplied by Google and the cases I looked at were actually about whether or not the owners had violated a government regulation about what they could or could not do on their land (eg thinks like vegetation management) - again not disputes about ownership. Another was principally about intellectual property rights, which as I've said aren't actually valid property rights under Libertarianism so these wouldn't even be in court because they are an completely artificial construct. So you've actually proven my point so far.

The Immortal Goon wrote:And what sick totalitarianism demands everyone conform their thoughts to this standard?

What about one year? Two? Someone is going to have to force the issue.

Ironic that you chose those words - sick totalitarians demanding everyone conforms to their thoughts about certain standards.

Seriously though, a peaceful person can honestly assume that a piece of property has been abandoned or lost and can assert a new claim to it. Given humans age and die and that they acquire and lose/abandon property all of the time, it is simply stupid to assume that a given piece of property can never change from being "owned" to "unowned". No one would be able to pick up rubbish from the side of the road in that instance on the basis that they couldn't prove that the true owner wouldn't be coming back to pick it up themselves. In an minarchist Libertarian society the "sick totalitarian" would simply continue to be the government. In an an-cap society the dispute resolution organisations would presumably build up a common law basis of determination based on the reasonable man test and the particular circumstances. Given that everyone is using the DRO's on a regular basis they would voluntarily abide by the decisions. Importantly though, the claimants can decide among themselves independently of the agreed upon arbitrators. The average time arrived at by the DRO's for a given piece of property may be, say, X years. The original owner may plead with the new claimant and give a sob story about why X+2 is reasonable (or vice versa with X-2) and they may agree to split the property or voluntarily decide to gift the property to the other party or one may even pay a sum of money to the other to settle the claims. Who cares what they come up with as long as they peacefully agree. What I might agree with one party would probably differ if I was locked in exactly the same dispute with another person.
#14417901
Voluntarism wrote:Why do I think I even have a claim to unused land I have never stepped foot on? This does not sound like a valid property claim and Libertarians do not support invalid property claims.

What is the difference between a thing that I have in my possession that I could use for personal consumption/use but equally you could use for production? Are you saying that:
1. I am not allowed to consume/use such an item?
and
2. That I cannot rent it out to you for a fee?

NB: Edited for clarity



The concept of owning land is a lie. Just printed out the deeds to the moon and now it's mine.
#14418070
Xlarissa wrote:The concept of owning land is a lie. Just printed out the deeds to the moon and now it's mine.

Please look at the homesteading principle. Ownership as a gift from government is indeed a lie. But a farmer who has cultivated land and grown crops on it, has more rights to the land than someone who is just passing by.
#14418441
Xlarissa wrote:The concept of owning land is a lie. Just printed out the deeds to the moon and now it's mine.

"Printing out the deeds to the moon" is what governments do with their "eminent domain". Is eminent domain a lie? Yup. So we agree that printing out the deeds to the moon, or a broad swathe of earthly geography such as is claimed by governments, is a lie. But what about a homestead on the moon? What if a company or commune or community found a moonbase, can they rightfully claim to own that moonbase?
#14418954
Dagoth Ur wrote:You can make a land claim inasmuch as the claim can be defended, by yourself or by an agency. Either way a stronger person or agency negates the claim and so on and so forth. Government organically grows.

Ownership may be defended by reason and by force. A claim that is successfully taken or defended by reason but not successfully taken or defended by force, is right but not tenable. A claim that is successfully taken or defended by force but not successfully taken or defended by reason is wrong but is tenable. Ideally ownership should be both defensible by reason and by force in order to be both rightful and tenable. I reject your notion that ownership relies solely on force.
#14468972
Xlarissa wrote:The concept of owning land is a lie. Just printed out the deeds to the moon and now it's mine.

Nunt wrote:Please look at the homesteading principle.

He appears to have looked at it longer and harder than you.
Ownership as a gift from government is indeed a lie.

There is no other kind of landownership, and never has been.
But a farmer who has cultivated land and grown crops on it, has more rights to the land than someone who is just passing by.

What about the people who used the land before that, as hunter-gatherers or nomadic herders?

I can understand why the farmer has more right to what he has produced on the land, but why would he have more right to the location, which he certainly did not produce? How does his perfectly valid property right in the fruits of his labor extinguish the passerby's perfectly valid right to liberty? The passerby is obliged to stay off the crops, but surely the farmer is then obliged justly to compensate him for depriving him of the opportunity to use what nature provided.
#14468973
Dagoth Ur wrote:You can make a land claim inasmuch as the claim can be defended, by yourself or by an agency. Either way a stronger person or agency negates the claim and so on and so forth. Government organically grows.

A claim founded on nothing but force is just as validly overturned by force. There is a difference between property and brute animal possession.
#14469019
Not really. Government exists so it can through its awesome power behind weaker land owners. They pay for the state and the state makes them strong enough to resist being taken over. Otherwise it would be constant chaos among warlords.

Property is a matter of force always.
#14469300
Dagoth Ur wrote:Not really. Government exists so it can through its awesome power behind weaker land owners. They pay for the state and the state makes them strong enough to resist being taken over.

That doesn't make sense. Why would the state need landowners to pay for it, when the state could more easily and efficiently recover the land rent itself, cutting out the parasitic landowner? Landowners aren't paying for the state in any case, but purely taking from society. It is always the productive land user who pays for the state, because he is ultimately the only one who has anything to pay with.

In modern societies, the producer pays taxes to fund the desired services and infrastructure government provides, and must then pay land rent to landowners for access to the same desirable services and infrastructure his taxes just paid for. This system is designed to enable the landowner to pocket the latter payment in return for no contribution. Certainly the landowner controls and uses the state to maintain that system by force, but the state as an entity gets nothing from the landowner; it merely serves his interests by abrogating the rights of producers.
Otherwise it would be constant chaos among warlords.

It is true that without the state to enforce their privilege, landowners would be poor like everyone else, because the entire rent of the land would have to be devoted to defending its ownership. That is The Lesson of Feudalism. In Europe's feudal period, even kings were poor: their entire wealth often consisted of a small chest of silver coins, which they carried around from place to place, collecting taxes from local vassals which were promptly spent on defense in the form of armies and castle building. Feudalism in other countries has typically had similar results: whenever a landowner kept a substantial portion of the land rent rather than spending it on defense, his wealth became a target for aggression. If he survived the aggression, or was a particularly talented aggressor himself, he might become the founder of a state which would then secure his land rents for him without the need for so much defense spending.
Property is a matter of force always.

No. There is a difference between genuine, rightful property and brute animal possession: rightful property is respected by third parties. I.e., A's rightful property in the fruits of his labor will reliably be defended by B against depredations by C, because it is to B's benefit that A have secure property in the fruits of his labor. The property right in the fruits of one's labor is universal in all human societies, even the most primitive hunter-gatherers, because that is the only way people have accurate incentives to produce, enriching all.

You are, however, correct about property in land. As land is not the fruit of anyone's labor, private property in it is always a matter of force.
#14469626
Eran wrote:The reason you should respect property rights (when defined as above) is that as a descent person, you don't believe in using force against other (peaceful) people or their ongoing projects.

So in the fully-automated world we are delving in, a decent person should accept to starve rather than violate the property of the one who make caviar castles out of boredom?

Obviously do not have the same definition of decent.

You also realise that the stability and prosperity of society depends on such respect.

The point is that in an anarcho-capitalist society, few people would have an interest to make the society prosperous. Asking people to die politely not always produces the desired outcome.

Finally, effective, if decentralised institutions will make sure you do, or pay for your aggression.

In other words: "because the one with property rights will buy enough guns to defend his caviar castles."
Indeed, this is the correct answer.


PS: please spare me the part where you teach me how in an anarcho-capitalist society everyone would be prosperous and how charity would do wonders. You would only waste your time: I am not into religion and cults.

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