Property Rights

Economics Political Theory
1

There was a case recently where the Brazilian government wanted to build a large hydroelectric dam in the amazon, but it meant forcing out a small indigenous village of roughly 200 people. The dam would have been able to provide electricity to several million people, but obviously because this tribe had ties to the land they did not want to leave.

So under such a libertarian society, would you always favour with the indigenous people (assuming they hold property rights) rather than whoever is building the dam? If these people didn’t want to relocate because of an illogical reason, and subsequently deprive millions of electricity, do you not they should be forced to relocate?

How would this situation be solved in a free market? Clearly from a utilitarian viewpoint, these people should be given compensation and forced out, but what do you think?

2

No, they wouldn’t and shouldn’t be forced out. Their rights are theirs to hold against the entire world.

I also think the utilitarian case cannot be made because it is impossible to define the greater good (maximum utility, ect.) in a coherent manner. All that can be said is that some individual’s interests clash with other individual’s interests. If they have to be forced out, no amount of compensation is sufficient to recompense them for their loss, or else they would have taken it for payment in the first place.

3

Yes.

No.

How would you go about calculating the correct amount of compensation?

4

How are the indigenous people depriving millions of other people of (more) electricity? To say that is to imply that those millions of other people are somehow entitled to (more) electricity. How exactly are they so entitled?

Otherwise, what Stephen and Daniel Muffinberg said.

5

Well these individuals can and are willing to buy the electricity. Of course the level of utility derived from the project is subjective, but why should the rights of these indigenous people to stay on an arbitrary piece of land because perhaps of largely some religious/spiritual reason, trump the right of many people to experience an improved standard of living, better education and healthcare.

I think that because you subscribe to an absolutist moral viewpoint, you are looking for excuses as to why the indigenous people should be able to uphold their property rights when the obvious solution is some form of compensation. Again, of course the compensation is difficult to attach a definitive figure to, but that doesnt mean you should reject that altogether.

6

Being absolutist is a strength, not a downfall. It results from logical consistency. If a rule applies in one case, it applies in all cases if there is no objective reason to apply a different rule. The only alternative is adhocery, where different rules apply to similar instances simply based on preference and not on a rational criteria for applying a different rule.

In any other science, a relativistic position is regarded as a demonstration of intellectual confusion and contradiction. It is not as though sometimes the Pythagariom theorem holds and other times it doesn’t hold. It’s absolute. It is not as though sometimes the second law of thermodynamics sometimes holds and other times does not hold. It always does. The same is true for justice, at least if you are being systematic and consistent.

Also, to say that both parties have a right to the same land (in the case of “many people,” it is a proximate right resulting from their right to an improved standard of living, better education and healthcare), is contradictory. Rights are exclusive justified claims to some specific good. Both parties cannot have a right to the land. Either the indigenous people do or the many people do.

The reasons why the indigenous people choose to stay on the land are irrelevant. Their right implies exclusive jurisdiction to the land. Also, the reasons for the many people to expropriate the property are irrelevent.

Check out this audio lecture from 37:57 onward. Hoppe provides some excellent reductio ad absurdums of the chicago school’s position on law, which also serve as reductios for utilitarian wealth maximization in general.

7

This was discussed here using a slightly different example, but virtually the same question.

Uh…okay, if you want to play that game, let’s ask the opposite question. “Why should the will of some people trump the right of others to live on their own property?” Hmm.

Why does that question sound so familiar.

And more importantly…People have a right to improved standards of living? And who exactly is obligated to provide that? Who decides what constitutes “improved”? How “improved” does it have to be before the obligation is met?

8

Would you like to be moved against your will ? You probably see yourself belonging to the millions who are “deprived” of electricity, have you ever thought as belonging to one of the 200, deprived of their freedom ?

9

So you’re saying that it is morally okay if 10,000 men force your mother to have unconsensual sex with them because it will satisfy the many?

10

No he didn’t say that. Why are you putting words in his mouth?

11

It’s a reductio.

12

I think the property of The Bomb19 can be put to better usage than how it is currently being utilized, so I’m just going to go ahead and take it. Don’t worry, I’ll give you 20% of its market value or so. Also anybody who thinks there is such a thing as logical absolutes is not thinking in a nuanced manner; you’re a logic fundamentalist if you think that.

13

Thank you. I really think people need to learn this. It gets really tiring when you illustrate the absurdity of someone’s logic by applying it to a different case and have them come back and claim you’re putting words in their mouth.

14

John, probably the only thing that rivals the missing of a reductio ad absurdum is calling somebody a name and then having to hear, “all you can do is resort to ad hominems”; forgetting that insults are only ad hominems if they are a substitution for an argument as in, “X is stupid, therefore he is wrong.” There’s no law against making the statement that you believe X is stupid.

3 ways Obama could bypass Congress
15

True, that is also annoying, but even if the accuser is misattributing the fallacy, at least in that case they have a point. While simply calling someone names may not equate to a fallacy, it does demonstrate bad form, and shows a lack of emotional control as well as concern for courtesy in discourse. This, not to mention the fact that name-calling is most often the tactic of people who have no argument, or who are losing the debate. It is a way to attempt to save face (from observers as well as oneself), while at the same time trying to bring the opponent into the same distressed emotional state of the aggressor. It is a way for people who have lost the intellectual battle to attempt to get their digs in elsewhere. Like the kid who loses the race but makes it a point to claim “well at least I’m not poor like you and your family.”

And while yes, there are examples of bullies who actually do win the contest and still feel the need to make it personal, the act still tells much about the character of the individual engaging in it.

It is one thing to match the tone and even the language of an opponent, but useless name-calling is just that: useless.

Arguing With Statists
16

You don’t even have to do that. Simply put, if the people really wanted the electricity and were willing to pay all the costs, it would be done. It’s not like the indigenous land is the only possible land fit for producing electricity.

This is mostly about the blurred line of property rights that is quite common throughout the history of civilization. State’s illegitimately claiming to own all land, it’s nothing new, and it’s very sad.

17

Because, as far as I can tell, those many people have no such right. Can you show otherwise?

Should I take this to mean that first you ask us for our opinions, and when you don’t like them, you tell us to offer you different opinions? And what’s wrong with an absolutist moral viewpoint?

18

Thank you. I really think people need to learn this. It gets really tiring when you illustrate the absurdity of someone’s logic by applying it to a different case and have them come back and claim you’re putting words in their mouth.

He phrased it as “so you’re saying” instead of “that’s like arguing.” Usually when you put it that way you are looking for clarification and trying to present their argument in as favourable a light as possible.

19

it’s not absolutism at all. It’s being principled. Only propertarian anarchists are absolutists in that sense (who believe only in all mighty property rights and ignore culture, personality, etc.).

Nope, morality from first principles is in no way absolutist (again, it doesn’t apply to propertarian morality, when everything, even ethics is reduced to property rights, which could be call quite silly). It’s universal, which means, it applies to all people, not only some elite or chosen gang, like OP wants it to be (force indegenous people out of their property for greater good…guess whom? FOR CHOSEN GANG, and nope, indegenous people do not fall in that category).

I think killing a man is wrong. But I also think, that killing a man in an extreme situation where you are yourself in danger and this other man is an agressor it is justified act of violence. It’s still bad in my view, but it’s justified.

20

I don’t think these assertions are compatible. If utility is subjective, it means that you can’t assign a cardinal number to quantify it. You can’t say that Bob derives three units of happiness from eating a bar of chocolate and Jane derives five units and Joe only derives two units.

You are assuming that it is possible to assign cardinal numbers to preferences, because you need cardinal numbers in order to infer the existence of a sum ‘happiness number’ of all the people in the village and their wants subtracted from the hypothetical sum utility total of all the millions of people who would putatively gain from the proposed hydroelectric project. In order for your assertion of “clear” utilitarian benefit to be correct, utility cannot be subjective, and yet you maintain that it is.

What one can do to maximise utility, if utility is subjective, is use ordinal numbers to rank someone’s preferences, if you allow them to demonstrate their preferences without interfering. If you give someone $5 as an unconditional gift, to set up an example, whatever they choose to do with it will demonstrate which of their preferences, regarding that money, is superior to whatever others they might have at the time. They will have a choice between saving the money, or spending it on whatever they like, and if they decide to spend it on chocolate, you know that this is what they preferred to all other options they perceived as available to them at the time.

In order to maximise everyone’s subjective utility, you have to abandon the initiation of force in absolutely all cases, because people cannot demonstrate their preferences if they are being coerced into assuming other people’s preferences. If utility is subjective, meaning that you can’t assign people cardinal ‘happiness numbers’ and then add them all up in contrived groups and subtract that total from the total of a second contrived group, then the non-aggression principle must be adhered to absolutely in order to maximise utility.

Are you an arithmetical absolutist if you think that 2+2 always =4? You can only dodge on that point if you decide that the symbols used to represent the numbers actually mean something else in your mind. Of course Arabic numerals, like any other symbols, are conventional. Try to see beyond the symbols, to the immutable logical principles they are supposed to represent. If everyone could do that consistently, the world would be a better place.

You will probably find that the Brazillian state actually owns the land in terms of civil law. They claim almost the entire Amazon river basin because the King of Portugal once claimed that God gave it to him. Seriously, and these are the people who criticise us for antiquated thinking…