His claim to the oasis is not legitimate. It is no more an intolerable act than taking swipes at the state. In this instance private ownership puts others in a more coercive situation. But if such a scenario arises, you can gladly be on his side of defense. Theories are wonderful, but practicality comes first. Communists seem to suffer from a similar problem.
Tell that to the millions who grow up in desert regions. Or do you expect them to move for your convenience? How very - coercive.
If, hypothetically, I’m encircled with your property and the conditions for my escape are limited to your pleasures, it isn’t an act of coercion, eh? Again I refer to my statement about this being mental masturbation.
No; they obviously can survive there! Or moving would be for their convenience, not mine, wouldn’t it? (What part of “move into” did you interpret as “grow up in”?)
Of course it isn’t. You’re currently encircled by a gravity well you can’t get out of - is that coercion?
Oh boy. If I really need to distinguish between a physical phenomena constrained by reality and a social construct enforced by one group of humans onto another, I may as well end the conversation now. Even advocates for natural rights see the contradiction between the actions undertaken by humans and nature.
Because I say economic coercion on that level is illegitimate; the same reason you think it isn’t. Looks like in a post-state society this will be a source of confrontation where property owners are going to have quite a time trying to fend off their claims.
Surviving isn’t the problem. How one acquires survival is.
What you call economic coercion, it would seem, is nothing more than people’s natural response (dehydration, death, etc.) to one person’s refusal to share his water or whatever in the desert; to wit, “a physical phenomena constrained by reality.”
In the general form of the argument as presented by Costa I do agree, but I have three questions that may wrestle out the details for everyone concerned.
The person that has a natural monopoly and is improving the land, does that person have a moral right to continue claim on that land? If not, why?
(examples: a building firm in a downtown setting buying/selling buildings, repairing them (or completely replacing them with better ones), and then rents them out. Or someone who takes that fertile land as you talked about in one of your own examples, improves that land, and rents it at a nominal fee for the cost of improvements and continued maintenance.)
Do you agree that land in itself has no inherent value? If not, why?
(This is something I try to point out to “Tuckerites” but they seem all too keen to dodge this question…)
In a state-free situation, would land ownership be a significant economic influence? And how?
(This is a question more of specification of hypothetical economic conditions than the beliefs one espouses…)
WTF?! Who the hell are you to say whether my land should or should not be “improved?” Maybe I just want to buy some land and see how the market develops before I commit to building. Maybe I want to preserve a view. You are in no better position than the actual owner to decide what is the best use for somebody else’s land.
Are you done? Because, no libertarian theorist worth their salt I know of, argues that land (as in any natural resource) can be acquired without improving it, according to community standards. In fact, no one has any reason to respect a claim to property unless there is some objective link between the owner and the natural resource, such as expending one’s time in appropriating it. So please save the “WTF!?” for statements to which it is a pertinent response, and not expositions of basic libertarian property theory. I did not say one cannot acquire land by purchasing it…
Libertarians have dealt with this apparent problem. If someone owns a plot of land and you buy up the land in a circle around him, it is not legitimate for you to prohibit him from leaving his land or to make outrageous demands in exchange for so allowing him. You are obligated to grant him an easement.
If I claim a plot of unused land or buy it from someone else who had, it is mine and I can go and rent it to farmers or hire some. If someone starts squatting there in the meantime while I look for some farmers, the land doesn’t thereby become theirs. You’re not addressing the issue of how long someone can in your view own unused land before it is fair game for anyone else to claim. The original claimant or the recent buyer must have some time to make use of it, but he can’t have unlimited time because at some point the land must count as having been abandoned.
That you prefer a certain set of economic arrangements doesn’t necessarily imply that you would initiate force to bring them about. The important question then would be whether you think it would be legitimate to aggress against the owners of a nature preserve or the owner of a large plot of unused land who is looking for someone to buy it from him or rent it from him or to hire someone to use it according to his wishes (say farming). Just because it is unused at the moment doesn’t mean the guy doesn’t have legitimate title to it. You need to specify in some general way approximately how long he has to make use of it before it can be considered abandoned. People will no doubt disagree on this time frame, and it will probably be strongly case dependent, but I don’t see it as reasonable to claim the guy never had legitimate title to begin with. And would you initiate force to eliminate business models of which you don’t approve?
This all depends. It depends on who gets there first. If I am the first to enter a desert region and discover an oasis., it is perfectly legitimate for me to claim the oasis as my property, so long as I actually use it or plan to in the near future and have marked my claim in a customary way. If others later enter the region and set up shop, if they want to use the oasis they have to make arrangements with me. If, on the other hand, a community or several communities have already been living in the region and have been using the oasis for years, if not generations, then I cannot legitimately move in and claim the oasis as my own just because it doesn’t appear to have been used or improved in any obvious way. The oasis is the joint property of the community members or of the members of the several communities.
Somewhere in the cosmos Henry George and Benjamin Tucker are busting their guts at the idea of another person comparing reality to social constructs.
His water? I don’t recall water being the product of human toil. Surely we haven’t jumped to the conclusion that one advocates licking the sweat off another person?
This goes against earlier statements about people being able to acquire the natural world with little or no improvements for environmental purposes. It appears my “subjective” statement is being championed by everyone on the forum, including some of the strictest propertarians.
Acquiring property first is rarely a good indicator of physical talent, cleverness, or any trait we would consider a positive influence. And it isn’t always a defensible position, either.
That depends on the definition of coercion we’re using here. Someone who has a natural monopoly on being the sewer cleaner is not coercing anyone to use his/her services as others can come into the sewer cleaning industry to offset him. The only argument against so-called absolute rights is when the rights exclude the rights of another, which Locke explained far better than anyone has so far. Which is also why I’m against communism (state form) or any ism that requires a state to leverage its dominance.
If one conceded that privately ownable commodities were restricted to what is the product of one’s labor, and that everything else was “equally owned,” then yes, it would logically follow that one may lick the sweat off another person (since all water is owned equally between everyone). Of course, such absurd conclusions are not a problem for me because I’m not a libertarian-socialist.
Are you referring to yourself?! You contend that one guy dying of dehydration in the desert is somehow the fault of another guy who wouldn’t give him water!
Here are two realities that I recognize: scarcity and individualism. You are oblivious to both.
No, it doesn’t. Assuming that the late-comers are just that–late-comers–and given that the person was not the one who caused their problem in the first place, his ownership claim is in no way a “more coercive situation”. You argue from the same vantage as the idiotic “sin of omission”. The oasis-owner might do things in poor taste, perhaps, but certainly his claim is not illegitimate. Only if he caused the problem (which he didn’t) would you be correct in your view.
Are we taking the royal view of Locke or one that acknowledges the proviso as an instrumental part of property acquisition? I have to object to comparing labor and land as completely similar means of wealth. Calling for the sewer cleaner to not act is not the same as calling for him to act. This is a verifiable portion of any libertarian philosophy: the rejection of murder and rape.
You’re misconstruing my words. I made no implications about one person refusing to give another water. This draws on an image of someone being forced to carry a dehydrated person to the local waterhole. Obviously you are not theoretically compelled to such actions, even though in practical circumstances a scenario like this would probably stray from all ideology.
Not giving and not allowing are different concepts.
