I made a thread on a forum I am a member off here. It is based on a blog post I made.
I want to know what you people think?
Thanks.
Geolibertarianism – The Social Contract Fallacy
Sadly, libertarian philosophy today finds itself capitulated to the sloppy thinking and muddled premises of the 17th century original thinkers. But none are as strange as geolibertarianism.
After having spent some time reading various posts of certain geolibertarians on a forum I frequent, I began to realise a set of reoccurring arguments and premises. I think it prudent to make an entirely new thread to act as a compendium against geolibertarian collectivist premises.
I argue that the geolibertarian position, the view that land differs from all other elements of production, and that individuals are not entitled to so-called “unearned value” is economically (and ethically) fallacious & fatuous.
What is Geolibertarianism?
I think the best way to understand geolibertarianism is by defining what they think. I have formulated below a set of fundamental assertions that all geolibertarians would nod their heads to:
- Geolibertarians consider “land” to be the common property of all mankind.
- Private property is derived from an individual’s right to the fruits of their labour.
- Land is not property since it was not created by anyone’s labour.
- A person can privately possess land on the condition that rent is paid
Land as Property
To an extent there is a misperception in the way we think of ‘land’. There is no such thing as ‘land’. Land is a block of three-dimensional space (which there is plenty around us). Private property is the material which we see around us – from trees, swimming pools, pebbles and boulders. What was once a leisure centre is now a cinema, and what was once a tree plantation is now a farm.
What makes the land underneath my feet different to the laptop I am using? It so happens that gravitational forces have created a circular planet and it’s because of gravity that we are bound to it. But does that circular planet have anything different to my laptop? No, of course not.
One cannot own land, as such – any more than one can own ‘space’. We happen to talk about ‘land’ because it is a convenient unit of resources.
This is a point that I think one would do well to consider.
Myth 1: Earth was Left in Common to Mankind
Libertarians (and their geolibertarian neighbours) today derive their understanding of what “makes” private property from the works of John Locke. John Locke was struggling to solve the earlier Grotius-Pufendorf problem of how property could be justified, if God gave Earth to mankind in common. Grotius and Pufendorf postulated that consent justified private property. However, John Locke advanced that appropriation of those goods is justified by labouring on them. The Earth belongs to all, John Locke asserts (by appealing to natural law which he argues is knowable by reason).
Underlining all these notions is a communist assertion that people have “rights” by simply existing – and not through human action (a point I will return to later).
People have these entitlements to scarce goods out-of-nothing other than existing! Geolibertarians proudly claim that people have “equal rights of access”. But this presupposes that all people already have a positive claim to everything. You can only “access” that which you own. It is a necessary condition of ownership. This creates a positive obligation on every human on the planet to ensure they are not breaching the entitlements of others.
A “collective” is made up of individual people (it can be six people on the planet or even six-billion people). The collective entitlements are derived from the rights of its individual members. Thus, if one man cannot claim land – nor can the collective. If it is the case that man cannot claim ownership of land, then nor can any collection of any number of individuals.
The very definition of “ownership” is exclusive control over the use of a scarce good. The concepts of “ownership” and “common” are incompatible. A person does not have the ‘right’ to free speech any more than the ‘right’ to access sidewalks. I have come across the spurious so-called “distinction” between common and collective ownership. The difference hinges on the common ownership being “equal rights” whereas a collective ownership may vary in proportion. But the fundamental point is that in each case everyone has a prior entitlement to that resource.
One can’t help but noticed that geolibertarians (or commonists) also invoke the “… when there was only one man on earth …” state of nature to explain that “we would have a right to the use of the whole earth.” Anyone, with even the vaguest concept of evolution, should dismiss this nonsense. But even if you are the only man on Earth, you don’t have any more entitlement to resources – than sheep or horses. You’re free to do as you please. But you have no entitlements. Indeed, planet Earth has been in existence for billions-of-years. What about all the animals and our primate ancestors? Do they not have an equal ‘entitlement’ to resources? Should chimpanzees, therefore, be locked-up in zoos? When did homo sapiens decide that they have a unique positive entitlement to everything on the planet. Notice the sophistry when the say that the first human (Adam from the bible, of course) would have been able to go anywhere and do anything. But this is obviously not true. He couldn’t, for instance, march into a lion’s den to snatch a cub – not for long. With a big gasp, geolibertarians should be asserting that the lions are preventing Adam’s “right” to access! Further, they would say, shouldn’t the lions compensate Adam’s ‘right’? Perhaps the pride ought to give Adam one of their cubs as payment. But, for some strange reason, this hysteria is directed at homo sapiens and their activity. Geolibertarianism suffers from a grand confusion of positive entitlements (or ‘right’) to land and the freedom to act. (Not forgetting the notion that Earth was given to mankind)
Further, the problem with so-called “collective rights” only begins by asking who determined what they are? Who proposed these rights? And who is bound by them? Geolibertarianism assumes land is owned in common as the beginning point. How did such ownership exist? It is entirely question-begging with no real answers. Hence, one really does need a God to support this foundationless sculpture.
Myth 2: Private Property is the Product of Human Labour
This is my favourite part of the geolibertarian Lockean mantra, because it doesn’t take a lot to shoot-down.
Geolibertarians assert that since man did not create land (i.e. it is not the result of human labour), man is not entitled to own land. But there are no resources on the planet that have been created by humans. The First Law of Thermodynamics asserts that matter (or its energy equivalent) can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change forms. Fundamentally, nobody “creates” anything. Land, like everything else, is a “product of labor” to the extent that it is initially transformed. According to the Lockean proviso, man is no more entitled to a house than a mountain. He happens to have taken some wood of the floor, and re-arranged it. But the wood is not the product of his labour. Thus, the “man didn’t create land” is an utter strawman.
We must depart from this Lockean notion and refine the arguments about rights and property. Labour does not establish private ownership. Scarcity establishes private ownership. According to geolibertarians and Lockeans, private property derives from applying (or mixing) labour with resources. But this is not true. Private property is a result of a natural phenomenon – scarcity. Humans act as a means to an end. Those means involve scarce goods, and since they are scarce, they must become private owned (i.e. exclusive). Two people cannot consume the same apple.
A new argument, a by-product of the previous one, states that man must not be entitled to the value of that which he did not create. But the value of something arises out of its demand – which is determined subjectively. Moreover, how on Earth (excuse the pun!) does someone separate the “original” value from the value added by human labour? It’s time we moved on from the Labour theory of value!
There is another argument that needs to be addressed here. Private property is sometimes involves the production of security (risk-taking) and information. In other words, land has to be discovered. Christopher Columbus was sent by the King of Spain to find new lands. This was a carefully planned & operated and financially-backed venture that wasn’t even sure to produce any results! Shouldn’t the King of Spain be entitled to claim the Americas as being under his dominion? If not, there are no incentives to discover new resources.
Lastly, how can individuals claim that they have ownership over themselves if they didn’t create themselves? Since the geolibertarian position is that one can only claim private property over that which one labours. By that account, man doesn’t ‘own’ himself. I hardly think any libertarian would assert we’re not entitled to our own bodies, since we didn’t create them.
Myth 3: Private Ownership is Harmful
In many ways, John Locke paved the way to the Marxist trap that ownership is harmful (and thus, bad). But appropriation and private property is NOT a zero-sum-game.
When we imagine first appropriation, we imagine a race in which first-come-first-serve are the lucky ones. The unpalatable reality is that life was very harsh for those first appropriators. Consider the first settlers to England. If given a choice, would you rather live in primitive bronze-age England or today? The most we have to wake-up to in the night is a wet dream. They didn’t have long-distance travel done in the matter of hours, or a microwave to cook food, or a Sainsbury’s to do one’s shopping. Original appropriation benefits latecomers infinitely more than the appropriators. The poorest in today’s society enjoy life-expectancy several decades above the original appropriators. This is a fact. The state of the commons before appropriation is a negative-sum-game. It is only when private property comes into fruition that economic standards improve and human existence is extended to more favourable circumstances.
People tend to place the highest value on things that they own. They have an individual responsibility to maintain and increase its value. Equally, they have the least incentive to maintain resources they can get for nothing. Why else was the bison almost exterminated, whereas cattle are never in danger of extinction?
The geolibertarian-Lockean position that one is free to act as long as one doesn’t infringe on another’s right is the source of the problem. My taking X, means that someone else cannot. That is a simple fact of scarcity, which I deal with above and below.
Myth 4: Freedom is Dependent on Land
It is said that freedom is dependent on the availability of land! This is what someone said on an internet forum I’m a member off:
This stops the choice of ‘work or die’, for many, which isn’t really freedom at all.
I don’t own land. Lots of people I know don’t own land. What is wrong with working and saving (other than the fact I am a capitalist)? Human labour is necessary for survival – not land. Wealth is created by the productive efforts of man in the division of labour – simply owning goods is no guarantee to anything.
Even if one is designated a certain space, you can’t live long without trade or working the land. By all accounts, therefore, one still isn’t free since one has to work.
Therefore, we need to revise what freedom really means. People act as a means to an end. There is always something that would make us more satisfactory. Freedom is not about the limitations of choice people must make (which is qualm against the nature of reality) – but being free from coercion to make one’s own choices. The real non-freedom is when someone denies another person the option to work, in the example above.
Myth 5: A Difference Between the State and the Community
If it is true that humans need land to survive (which it is not), then surely – to geolibertarians – taxing land is tantamount to taxing existence. There are two ways to tax. You either tax humans for action, or you tax humans for the resources by which they act. It is perceived that there is a difference between the two. Resources are scarce, and man needs resources to act. Either way, man is being taxed for acting. It is not his fault that he lives with scarcity. But, geolibertarians claim that private property is unjust and that man must pay to rectify the unjustness. This is the basis of the LVT (and, thus, it is dealt with above).
Some choose to call it a rent or tax. The question becomes how does one pay it? How does the assessment, calculation, collection and distribution take place without an institution with the monopoly on the use of force that cannot be retaliated against? What happens if I decide I don’t want to pay this tax, and that may land is indeed justly acquired. You need such an institution that has the monopoly on the use force without being retaliated against. This seems so obvious, I don’t think I need to spend much time explaining any further.
But how is the LVT ‘calculated’? The fact that the quasi-government would have to be involved in this process makes that government inherently political. And the nature of government (or the seductiveness of the monopoly on force) is such that it can only expand. But the LVT can only be calculated by either: (1) an arbitrary figure and/or (2) whenever the lease on a given land is up, the new one is auctioned off to the highest bidder with government approval.
The reality is that the people in the market determine the value of a given stretch of land. Land is still scarce as it was 100 years ago. And if the market-place is the most efficient way to ensure an optimal supply of a scarce good (elastic or inelastic), then it holds that land – on the free-market – would tend to an optimal supply too.
Purchasing land does not reduce the supply of land. If land starts to actually become really scarce, economic incentives would induce resources to be spent on building more land — either by building skyscrapper, or digging deeper into the earth — or to discover land on different planets (if things got really serious!).
Some declare that the LVT has no economic effects. This is bewildering! The LVT has about the same effects as the income tax.