Huh?
Huh?
I feel like, if you didn’t agree with the laws of the neighborhood, you’d just declare yourself sovereign. That just sounds like a government to me. I’m still confused on how laws would be formed and everything in an an-cap society, though, so I might have to research it more. So far I’ve been recommended Chaos Theory and one other (I’d have to look it up on the past forums), but do you have any other recommendations for book about an-cap legal systems?
“I’m pretty confused about the idea of renting too.”
It’s only ‘use’ in the most vague loose sense.In the absurd sense -following the idea of this theory anyways- that giving something something is still using it.
As the theory’s name implies the user and occupier is the owner.
The hole that causes confusion in this and related areas, I think, has to do with the idea of property. It’s assumed, mistakenly in my opinion, that property could mean something in a Crusoe situation (what it’s supposed to mean, I suppose, is that Crusoe owns everything) and an attempt to generalize that to a situation with more people. In reality, property is meaningless in a Crusoe situation. So, when Friday arrives, what happens? The idea of property now comes into existence, but not in response to abstract philosophical principles. Rather, it comes into existence depending on agreements between Crusoe and Friday. This generalizes a full-scale society by the recognition that property is really an agreement among the society, not an abstract idea. We shouldn’t argue for a definition based on a philosophy, but for a definition based on what works.
Rather, it comes into existence depending on agreements between Crusoe and Friday
Does it? Are you saying Crusoe cannot exclude Friday from the Island he has homesteaded without Fridays agreement?
Are you saying he can? Even if you want to say he’s “homesteaded” the entire island (did he do labor everywhere?) there are proportionality constraints here, and we generally would not think trespassing deserves death.
But, on the other hand, what’s in Crusoe’s best interest? Trade benefits all parties, so it makes sense that he’d actually want Friday to stay on the island, and survive, so that he can contribute to the economy. So, what do they do? They negotiate where Friday will be, and where Crusoe will be. Presumably, they need privacy to masturbate and so on.
Of course they can negotiate, and of course there may be good reason for Crusoe to make a guest of friday, or a gift of property or whatever else; I am not concerned with these possibilities,
I am concerned with the possibility you have forbidden which is that Crusoe wants to be alone, and had homesteaded the property Friday has arrived on.
Outside of freak coincidences, the individual whose judgment is best at deciding a land site’s most value-productive allocation will not be the same person as the individual whose specific skilled labor is best suited for working the land. And humans qua consumers are served best if land sites are allocated to their most value-productive uses. Benjamin Tucker’s plan would harm the interests of virtually all of humanity, since we are all consumers. Whether it is more or less “naturally right” is byplay.
Well, I don’t think he has homesteaded it prior to Friday’s arrival, as I think homesteading can only take place in a context where it means something to exclude. But even if he had, no, I don’t think he gets to sentence Friday to death, life comes before property.
We should keep in mind the basic, fundamental intuitions involved in being libertarians. Do we really want to allow property agreements to take those away? If we develop ideas that lead to “its ok to starve people to death to defend your property” we need to rethink what we’re doing.
Hey, take your complaints to Locke then, too, he required labor to get the land. Of course, the problem looks to be easily resolved - for instance, the person who knows the best use can buy the land, and if he doesn’t have the money, he can use investors.
But even if he had, no, I don’t think he gets to sentence Friday to death, life comes before property.
you are the only one who spoke of death. does he have the right to sentence friday to being excluded from his property? if you say no, i don’t think your theory of negotiation is anything other than a theory of collectivising property. For If I come into your home and you must negotiate with me and find my terms that I require you meet such that I will agree to leave, where is the private property?
Ownership is use.
There is no dichotomy.
but island is not the same thing as “home” in our society.
They’re on an island. There’s nowhere else to go. This is not the case with a house. Now, if your house were surrounded by other houses, and you didn’t have any arable land, or a helicopter, then yes, you have a right to go through my house to get out.
Noone, because occ/use is more of a qualatative than quantative notion, I.E. it does not necessarily determine a particular time-standard for abandonment. What determines whether or not something is no longer in use enough to merit ownership has more to do with the context of the situation in general, including the general state of the property in question and the claimants relation to it. The reductio arguments along the lines of “so if I walk away from my car…?” confuse occ/use for an overinflated standard of perpetual use that noone actually believes in. These things can be cleared up by emphasizing that it’s about the context of particular cases. I don’t think of occ/use in terms of a very specific universal rule providing some set-in-stone quantative standard of abandonment. Absentee land ownership is not reducible to considerations about time.
ok, I see what you have in mind. Crusoe is on a tiny dingy in the ocean and suddenly a hand comes up out of the waves, followed by an arm and a head, and the man friday is trying to crawl into the dingy. a lifeboat situation. and property is to be decided by negotiation. But does your theory require a lifeboat situation, if not why the emphasis on the lifeboat situation? or If so then isn’t your theory really that situational necessity determines property and negotiation comes second ?
What I’m talking about isn’t simply a matter of life-boat situations. I mean a state of affairs in which someone completely isolated geographically from the property and has no involvement in the use and improvement of what’s within a territorial boundary maintains a perpetual legal title to ownership and hence decision-making and rule-making power, while at the same time another individual or group of individuals transform it through their use and labor (which does happen over time, but it’s not reducible to a particular time standard). Death isn’t the threat so much as a lack of decision-making input over one’s own life due to existing inside of a territorial domain that someone else has the title to. That is essentially what peasant societies consists in.
Well, I don’t think I have a theory. I think I have more of a limitation on what a theory should include. That aside, the real question I’m addressing is what ought to be seen as primary - is property some philosophical given, or is it something we define?