And so he told me a parable:
Forestman was wandering through the forest one day when he came upon a pond. He sat down to take in its beauty.
Shortly after Propertyman came out with his title and a gun threatening to shoot F if he didn’t leave the premises or pay for the right to stay. He said the land is his according to the lawful authority in town.
The question is; how is that relationship voluntary? And how is Forestman the aggressor (he has to be in ancap theory)?
Any thoughts?
Change “pond” to “Propertyman’s bedroom” and see if the story changes in a meaningful way.
Yes surely, i understand to not be so black and white and think all private property, this or that…
But then can one OWN a forest or a piece of nature?
BTW, im not a syndicalist, nor a communist, but im just wondering why the anarcho left HATES capitalism so much.
Can you own a house? If so, how? Can you own your body? If so, how?
Own a house: build it or buy it,
Own yourself: (actually not sure)
But how can you own something that grows out of the ground? You can try to buy it, but from whom?
You can try to build it: i.e planting, but this is a private park, what about forests that grow naturally from the ground?
Do you own your lawn? Is it right for someone to live in your front yard? Why not?
My lawn, I grew.
People own things that they produce, whether they produce it directly, or indirectly through purchase.
I meant things like forests, where it grows naturally, and no one planted it.
Thoughts: it’s pretty much bullshit that P can kick F off of the pond. I understand the lefties’ indignance at the permission of such a situation under private property. P wasn’t even using it, why can’t F fish there? I don’t know. It goes against me morally, which is why I can only accept a rule-consequentialist position. That’s the price of a prosperous civilization. This example is an extremity of all the implications of private property, so if P couldn’t kick F off the pond then the precedent is set that P cannot be an ‘absentee owner’, which would be a severe retardation of economic growth and likely lead to an upward shift in the originary interest rate.
Given the trade-off there, it’s better to ‘sell your soul’. Mankind is not owed any solutions, that last puzzle piece never has to show up.
I could also argue that the ownership of private parks and the competition ebtween them will drive down prices which will make it so basically anyone can take a look at the wildforest. Also there can be private charities owning reservations, etc etc.
also it is unpopular to kick someone out like that which would drive down business etc etc
but i think the above points take away the philosophical basis of it doesnt it?
Of course P can own some or all of a forest. Have you ever driven around Washington State or Oregon? If so, where ever you enter a forest, you will almost always see a sign that says “This forest is a Weyerhouser Project” posted right out in fromt. There are so many, it looks like there would be no forests without some company to protect and nurish them. And this is a wonderful example of capitalism joined with environmentalism. Where do you think lumber comes from. As for the pond, there are so many Weyerhouser Projects, a few surely must have a pond.
When land is privately owned, the owner has a very real interest in protecting the environmental value of the land. When land is publically owned, it becomes a “tragedy of the commons”, which has caused Yellowstone to close many areas to the public.
My personal gripe is that Weyerhouser or other companies can get tax credits, lobbied by the environmentalists, but I, as an individual, can not. Shouldn’t credits for no air polution, no energy polution, solar panels, windmills, trees that breathe in CO2, or whatever, go to individuals as well as companies?
Honestly I think the the ‘ostracism’ argument is unreliable, in that it depends on an active communal altruism, which is much less dependable than simple self-interest.
The philosophical basis of what? Property? As far as its justification extends past enabling a market system, it’s unimportant to me. Meaning, you can adore the market system but you don’t have to think that P is justified in doing what he does. He’s just playing by the rules.
From a review of Butler Shaffer’s book Boundaries of Order:
"Although Shaffer embraces the idea that the first to claim and use an un-owned resource thereby becomes its legitimate owner, he also recognizes that without the support of one’s neighbors, one’s claim to ownership will never be respected. As Rose Wilder Lane explained in The Discovery of Freedom (pp. 109–110 in the 1943 edition), the protection of our property ultimately depends upon human decency:
The only safeguards of property seem to have been possession of the property, individual honesty, and public opinion.
… [C]abins were never locked on the American frontier where there was no law. The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere, is the general recognition of the brotherhood of man. How much of the time is any American within sight of a policeman? Our lives and our property are protected by the way nearly everyone feels about another person’s life and property."
Can the following proposition be defended on libertarian/Rothbardian grounds?:
If an individual uses his labor in the form of his willingness to defend a particular patch of land for the purpose of maintaining it’s pristine naturalness it may be said that he legitimately owns it.
Has anyone considered this problem? I have only a limited knowledge of Rothbard and other libertarians’ thoughts on this question. Why must it be that an individual has to mix his labor with the land in a way that changes it? How would an individual or group of individuals legitimately lay claim to a parcel of land solely for the purpose of preserving it? Yes, most statist would consider this question as an obvious problem for libertarian ideas while ignoring the question of what gives a state the right to do the same thing.
As an aside there is a wonderful song by Jesse Colin Young( except for his acceptance of taxes) titled Ridgetop that very clearly reflects the desire of individuals to alter nature in a minimal way so as to preserve nature.
I think it is because most collectivist anarchists or anarcho-communists have both the anarchist’s hatred of injust authority and the communist’s hatred of anyone more successful than themselves. Hostility towards unjust authority seems to be a natural condition of some and the same may be said of jealousy of those more successful in life. I think we may be more hardwired in our beliefs than even I am comfortable admitting.
Forgive me, I am a newbie to posting comments here. I was responding to Kelvin_Silva’s question about why left-anarchists are usually so hostile to capitalism.
The idea that anyone has a right to anything is a lie. It’s just that simple.
The land isn’t Propertyman’s “according to” anyone. It is Propertyman’s de facto, to the extent he can prevent others from controlling it.
Humans with at least two brain cells to rub together realize we’re at a point in human progression where the limits of technology permit scarcity of resources to play the major role in determining the courses of human interactions—and therefore we realize that people have incentive to dominate others in an attempt to control more resources. After this realization, and given a bunch of economic facts, we conclude that the best way for the most amount of people to live the happiest is by proposing and agreeing to propertarian rules. But those rules are a joke to people who don’t agree to them, and nobody has any right making anyone agree to them. Propertarian rules are merely a tool for organizing societies given the current and past technological conditions.
So extreme examples as attempts to prove or disprove property ideas are absurd, because the whole point of property rules is to help people. Someone using them to harm people is already a menace to the society he is pretending to play a role in advancing.
Where does “voluntary” enter into the equation? The question is whether PMan has legitimate claim to the premises, and further more what liberties he retains as owner. I believe a libertarian could say that while PMan owns the territory, he can’t just threaten to shoot FMan or do anything violent unless certain conditions are met. Or, I hope, libertarians would at least tolerate a society in which that was the custom.
^^
People wiill still live normally, everyone thinks that everyone will act differently because of the change that an anarcho capitalist society entails.
Let me address hashem’s first point:
"The idea that anyone has a right to anything is a lie. It’s just that simple. The land isn’t Propertyman’s “according to” anyone. It is Propertyman’s de facto, to the extent he can prevent others from controlling it."
I don’t think this statement recongnizes any basic libertarian/Rothbardian ethical standard regarding the nature of property rights. If a man arrives at a virgin land and spends years toiling it till it becomes profitable agricultrural property it may be said that he owns it according to any libertarian ethic I have know of. Anyone who comes and uses force to take the land/property away from the individual who originally mixed his labor with it is in violation of the two legs of libertarianism, the principle of self-ownership and the NAP.
As to his second paragraph containing several other assertions, I must address each individually to maintain coherency. Unfortunately, the hour grows late so I will for the moment only make a few cursory comments regarding them. It seems hashem rejects the idea of rights altogether and I find it hard to disagree with him. Rights may be recognized by individuals and they may be recognized by philosophical, ethical and political ideologies but this by no means gives them universal substance. However, in the realm of human relationships recongition of such ideas (rights) carries a great deal of weight. If we didn’t believe other human beings had a right to control their own bodies by virtue of their free will would there be any hesitation on our part to enslave and or rape or murder them as we saw fit when some opportune moment arrived? I am really not sure what hashem means when he talks of current technology. It seems to me that human beings have always been fighting with both their brothers and nature itself for the resources we desire or consider neccessary for our survival.
Finally, I hardly consider the example of a man wondering into a forest claimed by another man can be considered extreme. I would consider it a classi example of the difficulty involved in defining legitimate property rights.
In all fairness, excepting that I don’t assume a right of self-ownership my position on property rights is that of Stephen Kinsella. As such it has solid grounding in the libertarian establishment—Kinsella is Hoppe’s most famous student, whom in turn is Rothbard’s. The idea that property rights are rules we propose and agree to support is really one of the two main views on property rights, the other being Rothbardian Natural Rights.
he owns it according to any libertarian ethic I have know of.
This is where some confusion may be cleared up. Property isn’t owned by agreement, by “right”; property is owned as a matter of fact. If you control something, you own it by definition, whether or not people agree you have the right. As for self-ownership and the NAP, they are rules, not objective facts. Clearly you only own yourself when you have control of yourself, i.e. when someone else isn’t controlling you, and the NAP doesn’t even purport to be anything other than a rule.
It seems hashem rejects the idea of rights altogether and I find it hard to disagree with him.
To be clear, I reject the notion of “natural”, inherent rights. I fully acknowledge that property rights are rules which people value, propose, and support. Again, as I pointed out above, the objective facts of a matter (i.e. whether someone actually controls a resource, aka owns it) are distinct from the subjective decisions people make regarding the rights they will support (i.e. whether someone should control a resource, aka whether he has title to it).
such ideas (rights) carries a great deal of weight.
I certainly acknowledge this (and you may notice that you acknowledge they are subjective ideas, not objective facts about the nature of reality). Indeed, I said that based on history, economics, etc, “we conclude that the best way for the most amount of people to live the happiest is by proposing and agreeing to propertarian rules.”
If we didn’t believe other human beings had a right to control their own bodies by virtue of their free will would there be any hesitation on our part to enslave and or rape or murder them as we saw fit when some opportune moment arrived?
In the first place, you again acknowledge that rights are about subjective beliefs. In direct answer to your question, a resounding YES. There are personal psychological consequences, there are physical risks, there are social consequences, and so forth. But really, if someone’s personal cost-benefit calculation leads him to rape, who are you to say he’s wrong?
I am really not sure what hashem means when he talks of current technology.
Pardon my failure to articulate well, but this is a major theme in my personal theory and worldview, so I will restate in red:
Humans have conflict because we exist in an environment of scarce resources > The way we reduce the impact of scarcity is through technology > Thus the percieved effect of conflicts among humans is primarily a matter of limited technology.
I hardly consider the example of a man wondering into a forest claimed by another man can be considered extreme.
And yet you failed to notice my point, which is vastly important: the function of property rules is to help people. Someone using property rules to hurt another is a menace to the entire concept and value of property rules. It is pointless to support property rules in a situation where they don’t benefit everyone involved.