There’s nothing particularly special about land per se. The question is about property rights.
If people recognize the benefits of social cooperation and that the gain from such mutual beneficiary action tends to be greater then that can be archived in isolation, then property rights must be a de facto recognized institution before any ill conceived notion of a government can ever even come to life.
Only if he beats me at chess. It’s not ‘latecomer’ ownership ethics. It’s ‘better chessplayer’ ownership ethics.
Why such requirement? Would you concede if I beat you at chess, instead? Or if I won by argumentation after proposing the point?
Why? Is there a square inch on this planet that doesn’t have a ‘degenerate’ foundation when submitted to your time ordinality criterium? Also, how does property assignment according to a sequence of chess game outcomes ‘fail due to regression’, or how is its foundation degenerate?
I don’t understand. I just described how the ownership of the initial chess set could be decided by playing a chess game on it.
Is there a square inch on this planet that doesn’t have a ‘degenerate’ foundation when submitted to your time ordinality criterium?
of course, unowned goods which are awaiting are first comer are perfect foundations and not degenerate like property that requires a chess game to be played before it can be owned, even in the case of assigning ownership over the raw materials required to make a chess peice.
I just described how the ownership of the initial chess set could be decided by playing a chess game on it.
How do you decide whether i should cut the wood from the tree to make a peice or that Abe should? How do you decide that Bob should take the marble from which to fashion a peice or that you should? Besides all you have is a strategy for settling some disagreement, settling disagreements is not the same as assigning property rights, which is a wider concept.
Wider concept → Imagine a standard lockean property world in which ‘everyone knew all the facts’ , in such a world everyone knows who is in the wrong, and they have no need for the courts to adjudicate and ‘discover’ the truth if the law is unamibigious… and yet these people can have property assigned and know the boundaries etc.
Nir, good answers, though I’m still not convinced about the philosophical specialness (strength) of the time ordinality criterium. Leaving that aside, how about a ‘firstcomer + better chessplayer’ ethic: The firstcomer owns it until he either: (1) loses it in a chess game, (2) sells it, or (3) gives it away?
This is an attempt at an adhoc ethic. You concede that to appropriate from nature and originally assign property rights, homesteading is necessary, then you come in with the adhoc arguments about how late comers might superced the rights of the original homesteader.
You must explain to me why an adhoc conglomeration of the elegant minimalistic ethic, plus some arbitrary conceit seems attractive to you?
But the deeper point is this. When we homestead from nature that which has no prior owners, there literaly is no one that you could possibly be performing a tort against (they might lie and say that they were first and you torted them, but we both know you did not…). Here we can bring virgin material into the sphere of property and hence the market, we can allow consentual acts, like trade to transfer property, and consentual acts like abandonment, and consentual acts like agreeing that the winner of a chess game gets to take home the prize…
But the same would not go for chess-playing as universal ethic, since I may not want to have my homesteaded property chess-played away by you… where is my freedom to continue to own it, and to ownly lose owenership when I choose to.
It should be clear that Libertarianism (homesteading theory) is the only universally acceptable ethic, adhoc ethic may contingently be observed to be held by particular people and groups, but they could change their minds in an instance and adopt another adhoc premise, yet can they so easily abandon homesteading and remain with a universally acceptable ethic that permits property? I think not.
Do we have to play chess to find out who’se right and wrong? There is no necessity, if we choose to its just our choice.
Do we have to accept at least a firstcomer ethic vis acquiring virgin property? yes, it is necessary lest the ethic be contradictory.
There is a difference in quality here.
Critics don’t matter. Claimants do. You only need to be able to demonstrate that you have a better claim than anyone else, that’s all.
Crusoe has no use for the concept of ownership (property rights) if alone on the island. Friday lands on a boat later and a discussion develops as to property (ownership) assignment:
Crusoe: I came first, hence I own the island.
Friday: I am better at chess, hence I own the island.
Why/how is Crusoe’s ownership assignment scheme superior to Friday’s? How could this property conflict get resolved? I don’t claim to know the answers to these questions. Just curious.
This. If property titles and delineation exist in order to resolve conflicts, why would you put forth a system that can create conflict from the outset?
Time-based propery rights are superior because they allow for original homesteading to occur once and ever after require the planned, voluntary transfer of title. Prior/later distinctions matter to purposeful behavior, because a subset of purposeful behavior is planning for future actions. It is impossible to plan in the long term when, at any time, someone else could arrive and lay superior claim to your property. If you already hold legitimate title then you can be reasonably assured of continued use of that property in your schemes until you willingly give it up.
So, time-based property rights appear to be superior because they are vastly more efficient at providing for the continued execution of productive human action when compared to other measures; cf the entire history of mankind where warlords roamed the land making claims and very little that was productive happened.
edit: Changed some wording a bit.
Those titles and delineations were established by your system, and are questioned by mine. Property titles can easily be determined by chess games at the outset, arguably with even less boundary ambiguity and potential for conflict than homesteading (if we’re comparing the conflict-avoiding utilities of each system). As to why I would put forward an alternative system, a couple of reasons I could gather quickly (I’m sure I could come up with a few more):
Because my potential property gains by applying such system outweigh my risk of losses from a potential conflict, especially if I believe that I could conceivably convince you (by argumentation) of the superiority of my system over yours.
Because I find my aesthetic valuations of chess-playing ability to be superior to your aesthetic valuations of time ordinality or simplicity.
“Those titles and delineations were established by your system, and are questioned by mine. Property titles can easily be determined by chess games at the outset”
No. If I find an island untouched by people and choose to build on it, property title would not be determined until there was a conflict. If there is no one to play chess against, I cannot have a title to the land. Therefore, in order to have a valid claim, I would have to wait until there is a conflict. Try again.
What is the meaning of ‘title’, ‘property’, and ‘ownership’ if there’s no one to play chess against?
Property rights based on chess playing acumen would be quite efficient, too, IMO. What’s wrong with a situation where the best chess players owned and controlled most property? It would certainly suck for bad chess players, but it would suck the same for late-comers in a homesteading scheme. Could you prove that assigning ownership to first-comers is more ‘efficient’ (or ‘better’ along any other utility measure) than assigning it to better chess players?
All the pure uber chess player has to do in order to control all possessions is to play games of chess. The appropriator of virgin land has to add his labour, time etc. in order to transform the land into something that is of worth to him. Coming up against an appropriator of virgin land, the pure uber chess player thus becomes an uber parasite and this has many consequences which I really hope you don’t need me to outline. You may as well ask “could you prove that assigning ownership to first-comers is more ‘efficient’ than assigning it to the government?” I have a feeling certain economists have already written something about this.
All the first-comer has to do to control all possessions is show up first everywhere. Presumably, in the chess ethics system, everyone would be strongly incentivized to get better at chess, so ‘uber’ would be quite common and not so rare, I guess.
A good chess player, too, has to work hard at reaching an ‘uber’ level in his game. All the first-comer has to do is show up, dick around, and maybe clear some brush. Not so clear-cut about who the ‘parasite’ is. Btw, are you refering to some Labor Theory of Ownership?
No need to involve the government. cporter was the one that brought up efficiency as a criterium for comparing schemes. I mentioned efficiency only as a response to him.
if you think a firstcomer makes a tort when he refuses to accept the challenge of a chess playing late comer ,then you must make a positive case for it, because we must presume that the firstcomer is a proper owner (remember the necessity of homesteading on arrival) so his ownership is not in dispute until you ‘claim’ that chess should influence it someway, but your chess theory is not a universal ethic.
The first-comer had no ownership of, or title to, anything before the second-comer showed up. Ownership, property, and title only make sense (and have purpose) when more than one agent is involved (present), at which point time of arrival is no more ‘natural’ than chessplaying ability at delineating property boundaries.
It would not be efficient. This has nothing to do with good chess players owning most of the property and it being tough luck for bad chess players. Even amongst good players, you could play chess for land and build a factory on it and then I could beat you in chess and take the factory.
The flow of time, at least as far as economics is concerned, is immutable. The guy who homesteaded the property first is always the same guy, no matter how many newcomers arrive, no matter what their skills, intentions or wants. Knowing this, that first guy can effectively plan the use of his property. You can’t plan for future use of your property if at any time a newcomer can have title transferred to himself, even if he has to jump through a hoop (Chess, kill you, whatever) to do so.
Your Chess-based system would exhibit the exact same traits as those exhibited in force-based systems (what we commonly refer to as places where property rights are not respected): Minimal capital investment. Why? Because at any time your capital can be taken from you, and therefore it is better to consume now. Systems like these are like midway points to the total chaos of a ‘propertyless’ system where effectively anyone at any time can transfer title with no effort.
I realize ‘efficient’ might not be the appropriate term here, but it worked and I couldn’t think of anything else I liked better off the top of my head. Feel free to suggest something else.
I don’t buy into the idea of property rights springing forth from nothingness. Man decided to use the concept for his own ends as a means to achieve something. I also believe that something is more than just ‘reduce conflict’, because assigning all property to one guy forever would likely have done a much better job of that. Instead, I think it was to reduce conflict and to allow individual social cooperation in a meaningful way (or some other similar sentiment). Systems where newcomers can make claims on already homesteaded property, even if seen as legitimate claims by all parties, fail at the second criteria for the reason I discussed above.
Before the second-comer arrived, the first-comer exercised exclusive use and control over the object/land in question. This is the essense of ownership.
So why is it less efficient (and for whom?) if a better chess player owns my factory now? What if a guy with a lot of money came and bought the factory from me? In both cases someone other than myself owns the factory in th end. Happens all the time, and things still get done/made/produced.
At any time a buyer could come and offer you a price at which you’re willing to sell, at which point the newcomer has title transferred to himself.
Or you could start learning chess pronto, which may not be a bad idea anyway.
Valid assertion, but an assertion nonetheless. I don’t see how dynamic change of ownership, by itself, is detrimental to prosperity. Why is it necessary (or ‘natural’) that the first-comer is the owner, and for a very long time after that, to boot?