For you anarcho-capitalists out there, how do you plan on, without deeds and government enforcement, keeping your “royal” system of land as property in place? Sure, you can keep, lock, and defend your house, but how do you prevent someone from, say, moving into a vacant piece of your property you had intended to rent? In other words, how do you capitalists plan on retaining capital that you aren’t using? Do you really think that you’ll be able, as you can now, to increase your wealth by mere virtue of your claim on a particular piece of property? Oh, I know, there may be security agencies, but of course the ones that enforce rules of absolute land property rights will only be favored by those who want to own large tracts of land exclusively, as rentals or some such. How far does it go? If you visit once a month your otherwise empty (for some reason) rental property and the day after the last time I found the place, saw that it seemed abandoned, moved in and claimed it as my home, when you return at the end of the month, do you think you’ll be able to evict me? Ought you be able to? By what right? You aren’t possessing it, not really. You have no official deed, because such things don’t exist. Indeed, why is it more yours than mine? Because you claimed it first?
Really, am I misunderstanding the position here? Please clarify, and if that is what you mean, explain why your system will be stable and natural to anarchy.
Because either I made it property in the first place, or bought it from the one who did. Is my car no longer my property if I park it?
The registration of a title and deed is a valuable service, and there’s no reason to think that such won’t exist, along with enforcement powers, without government. If you’re going to say that ongoing physical possession and occupation is the only valid claim to property, then we’d have to decide it with bullets. Care to guess who’d have more resources to buy bullets with, and more “friends” who agree and are willing to help? Capitalists or squatters?
Do you think the state is the source of rights? That it creates them? If so, you’ll be hard pressed to remain a libertarian. If not, then these moral questions make little sense. The issue is a practical one and as the previous poster pointed out, property registration services will be in demand in a market anarchist society. There is actually historical precedent for this. For instance, you can search for some research on the “Wild Wild” West for examples of property registration. Here’s one: Terry L. Anderson and P.J. Hill “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West.”
Of course I don’t think the government is the source of rights. Still, this is after an anarchist revolution of some sort or another. Most anarchists today have at least rather grave doubts about land ownership. What if the majority of the security agencies followed that same philosophy? Given the rather onerous nature of rents/mortgage debts, I rather think that at least among the formerly poorer majorities, such land “rights” would not be seen as a necessary good or a basic right. What if I concede to you the house… just not the land. Take your house, but I’m going to occupy this land. The immobility of the house is not my problem. You neither made the land, nor did the person you bought it from, and if it is based on pre-anarchy deeds your claims are illegitimate even from a homesteading (far the weakest and most incongruous concept of anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion) standpoint.
I think not. Answer my question: how do you expect that capital, beyond your capacity to use or even watch at all times, will stay your perpetual property in an anarchist society? Why is some patch of land yours and not mine? Because you claim it? How do you enforce that claim? Even if you have some document showing your ownership, so might I. I am not asking what is right. I am asking, what is practical?
I think yes. Insurance firms and PDAs will have no trouble in protecting homesteaded/contractually acquired property, if it’s worth the cost of protecting it. The fact that you have some document means nothing unless it is valid. You may have a document claiming you have a right to something you do not, in which case the burden of proof is on you to prove that you do in fact have a right to it. So I fail to see any “practicality” issues.
No, you seem to be vacillating between asking what is right and asking what is practical. As for the practical, there are plenty of essays on anarchist legal systems, legal enforcement, and security provision. We’ve linked to or cited them many times in this forum. You should read them. I also linked to an article that gives historical examples of such things in action in the US.
The burden is on you, too. Your claim is no more established than mine. Your agency is no more legitimate than mine. That you might have the moral right on your side is irrelevant. You say it’s your property, I say it’s mine, and neither of us can really prove anything because really, you only own something because you say you do and it matches some preconceived definition. If our definitions differ, it may be that possession really does end up being 9/10ths of the law.
I have no problem with that standard. Sounds perfectly practical to me.
If you want to talk about practicality, the onus is now on YOU to explain how practical it is for a thief to survive in the world. Go ahead. Make your case.
N.B.: What you are advocating is that lying and stealing is a practical business strategy.
I can imagine everybody on my street throwing a block party or a house warming party for you. I can hear them singing:
“So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day. Since we’re together we might as well say: Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?”
while you move in after having evicted me from my house.
I can say that I was destined by God to be the ultimate owner of the world, and claim title to all land. I can call anyone who lives on any land a thief for not paying me rent while on my land. But just because I say so, even if I’m right, doesn’t make anyone else believe or respect it.
What is thievery depends on your definition of property. If my definition of property does not include land, at least not in the sense it is used by capitalists, and most others agree with me, what exactly are you to do. If you want to accuse me of thievery, go ahead, but you will have to convince others, too.
Note that I never said I was kicking you out of the house you occupy. I have taken up residence in your rental property, and refuse to pay rent, since you weren’t using it anyway.
And yet when the legimate owner comes to use it according to their timeline you refuse to vacate the property because your claim in more valid than theirs?
What about other capital goods?
If I keep a coffee can stuffed with money does that give you the right to appropriate my property since I am not using it at the time of the appropriation? Or farmland when crops do not grow and the farmer winters in Florida?
The whole concept is absurd.
Oh, and thanks for the Not So Wild West link, I have been wanting to read that.
If you are an active occupier of your land and home, you are clearly its possessor. You have an active claim to it. I cannot enter it, because you possess it, and therefore, your money is safe.
However, with the rental property, you possess only your claim to it, and that is just words. Similarly, if you leave your coffee can stuffed with cash out in some common area without supervision, and I come along and take it, you would not only have a terribly hard time finding out who did it, but even once you did, a strong argument could be made that my assumption that it was abandoned was reasonable, especially if you don’t notice its absence in a fairly immediate time frame.
According to your theory the renter would have a valid claim on the property since they are the active occupier and the land lord only has ‘words’ in the form of a contractual rental agreement to back their claim.
I really don’t understand how you can treat land as different than all other real property based on the fact that it allows someone to occupy it.
A business who doesn’t have the capital to invest in the development and construction of a property to serve their needs doesn’t have the right to squat in a factory that is out of use because the individuals who built it are neither residents or haven’t been able to find someone that needs it at a price that is mutually acceptable to both parties.
What if someone were to put up a cyclone fence to keep people out, is that an acceptable active claim?
A finer justification for car theft I have never heard…
Uh… maybe you do not realize it but you just answered your own question. You just admitted that claiming other people’s property as your own is impractical. The reason by which you believe your claim to be true is irrelevent.
People tend to believe things because they’re true. Not always, but more often than not. That allows them to be effective in the world, to make it more likely that their actions will lead to the results they want. The belief you are proposing here is untrue, and thus acting on it will, on the whole, lead those doing so to be less effective in the world.
Sure, might can often overcome right, for a while. Eventually, irreconcilable disputes will be settled by violence, or one side backing down from fear of violence. That’s nothing unique to anarcho-capitalism, it’s the way all human societies operate. As a practical matter, which is what your question is all about, these beliefs are irreconcilable with peaceable respect for the basic human right to property, and, if pursued fully, will only be settled by violence or threats of violence. That’s because it’s an inherently violent belief system, explicitly disregarding those principles, and the social conventions that flow from them, that best minimize violence. The question will come down to which side has the more effective means of bringing violence upon the other, and that will be determined, in the widest context, by whose beliefs lead them to be more effective in the world.
If you’re trying to make some oblique criticism that mere words and ideas cannot bring universal agreement and harmonious kumbah-ya can’t we all just get along utopia, no s**t, Sherlock. There will always be evil in the world - including beliefs such as you propose here - and it will always lead to violence.