I quote a geo-libertarian from another forum. I think his view is very convincing. Morally I believe it is more compelling than the homesteading principle. What do you think?
…What?
What’s all this talk of a gold mine? Who in this scenario first discovers or ‘works’ the gold vein? Who is the geolibertarian saying actually owns it, and why?
Implicitly, then, if there are limitations on property acquisition, then SOMEONE owns it. Otherwise there could be no talk about lack of ownership or exclusion of people who do homestead it.
Which is more plausible? The ownership of this goldmine by people who have never even seen or been near the area, or the individual(s) who actively homesteaded it and mixed their labor with it–not like I give much credence to mixing labor, anyway.
But prima facie, it would seem that homesteading is far superior than this alternative because of the assumptions of collective ownership that he’s trying to smuggle in here.
I’ve wondered weather the homesteading principle always works my self.in new zealand 1980s any one could get a boat and fish the fuck out of the sea.the result was some fish species like orange roughy plummeted.(with many fish species if numbers go below a certain level they cant school together and breed )the solution was to turn all the fish into property.now when fish numbers get to low the owners of the quoter’s ask the fishies that the amount that can be fished per quoter be reduced .(to maintain they have a future stoke)turning the fish into property works well but how could you come to home stead fish.isn’t there a case property can be created by law not homesteading.
I agree that collective ownership is practically problematic, that’s why I don’t support his views. But morally I think it makes more sense. After all earth doesn’t naturally belong to people, it is earth, not a product of anyone’s creation. So it makes sense that people have free access to earth. Now it doesn’t necessarily mean that the gold miner has to pay taxes to people on the other side of the planet, but he also can’t object other people from using the gold as well. If he does object, then he’d have to pay them off, which is akin to taxes.
Rubbish. This drivel fails to even address the most basic problem that property addresses (so basic, it even exists in other animal species) and that is: avoiding and resolving violent conflict over the question of possession. It is generally the case that a specific physical resource can only be disposed of by a single individual - two men cannot simultaneously swing the very same ax or swallow the very same pill. This is a consequence of scarcity (the sum of all wants exceeds the available supply). Hence, violent conflict over the disposition of resources is an ever-present problem. “Property” is the word we apply to the complex of rules governing the possession of physical resources. These rules have been useful precisely because following them tends to reduce the amount of conflict. Hoppe states the superlative case for the basic rules of property here.
Clayton -
By the way, I’ve noticed a particularly ideological bent to your posts, Eugene. Most of us on these forums have come from an ideological past and have found a measure of freedom from ideology in the pursuit of truth for its own sake. The unfortunate reality is that almost nobody is in the business of pursuing truth for its own sake because everybody has some degree of interest in what people believe to be true irrespective of whether those beliefs correspond to reality. For example, my life would be a lot nicer if everyone believed that it was their moral duty to donate 10% of all their income to Clayton the Great (me). It should hardly be shocking, then, if I were arguing that everyone should believe the truth that it is their moral duty to donate 10% of their income to me and very little weight should be placed by the truth-seeker on my supposed facts and arguments in this regard.
You’re either seeking the truth for its own sake or you’re just carrying someone else’s water.
Clayton -
That would have been a solution, but that’s not what happened. A fishing quota is not the same as property rights in the fish. Imagine if there were “lamb quotas” – any farmer could go onto any land that had sheep on it and kill X number of them, but can’t raise his own sheep and protect them from other quota-holders, he’s limited to the particular number his quota allows, etc. (and why would he ever take fewer sheep than his quota allows?) Where’s the property right? The quota system is essentially government claiming total ownership of the resource and parcelling it out on its own terms.
(I don’t know quite how you’d organize private property in fish (in the ocean…easy enough in captivity), but quotas aren’t it)
one possible solution would be having a territorial ownership of parts of the ocean. Sure, owning fish and other creatures, that developed naturally in wild life is difficult (if not entirely impossible), but it is possible to have an agreement between groups of people in which areas they are allowed to fish, for example and even how much. It’s like “public property” just without one single monopoly on all territory.
Hope that makes sense. 
that is what happened and they do ask to cut their own quotas .live in a fish port aye.homestead is developing land how could it apply to the ocean.and any property rights for it would seem to be abirtary.unless we got some ideas out there i havnt heard yet.
Walter Block
has walter block gone over it
I believe he has but I do not have a specific source for you. Google or emailing him directly may be helpful.
Block hasn’t done book about it yet but he’s going to do it.
As I said geolibertarianism has some practical problems, but morally I agree with it more. The earth is not someone’s product. When you take a piece of earth someone else can use less of it. So it makes some sense for you to compensate others for losing this opportunity.
No, it doesn’t make sense because you have only reduced the available pool of resources which were not already in use. In other words, the only reason you were able to appropriate the resource is because no one else was already making use of it. Consider plucking an apple from a wild apple tree. If no one was making use of the tree before you plucked the apple, what sense does it make for them to sue you for “damages” in reducing the “potential” wild apples they could have plucked? The very fact they had not already plucked the apple from the tree is proof that they had no need of it, else they would already have put it to use.
You seem to be very clever. Why not try putting that cleverness to good use (truth-seeking) rather than pushing a pre-decided agenda?
Clayton -
In some sense I agree with you. Earth is nobody’s product. It is just a bunch of dirt. That’s why people need to invent “property right” theories to avoid conflicts using this huge ball of dirt to avoid conflicts with each other. If I am breething the air, it means, someone else is gonna get less of it. And now think about those poor unborn people. What they gonna do? Should we now compensate them? No. They do not exist. Yet. We can only talk about those pople who exist right here right now, who face the problem of matter being scarce and rivalrous resource.
It’s weird, that you think that someone has to compensate for the “lost opportunity” (I am thinking now about compensating my friend, because I got the job and he didn’t). As you yourself said, nobody owns Earth, so it’s up for us to invent the first use rights (homesteading). There is no (or at least I didn’t hear about it) other consistent and rational way to do that which wouldn’t violate self-ownership. Geolibertarianism, as far as I read about it in wikipedia, seems to face the problem that communists do. Who decides? Society or community isn’t some single organism. It consists of many different people with different values etc.
I admit, that I don’t quite understand the position of geolibertarianists and what exactly do they propose. Again, I agree with their sentiment 100 percent (that all people “own Earth equally”), but I don’t see any substantial theory of property in land so to speak for me to evaluate. Can someone enlighten me?