The production of security as a form of original appropriation and the consequences for future land homesteading

Economics Economics Questions
61

I never meant to imply that you’re my ally. I just pointed out that you were actually making the exact same arguments that I’ve been making against Giles for months. That you go out of your way to remain hostile to me when I point this out just shows to me that you have an irrational axe to grind. Indeed, if I was directly making the same arguments to Giles, I’m convinced you would have jumped in to nitpick my arguments due to this motivation, despite the fact that we’re actually in agreement on this. But, oh well, you just decided to be an asshole again.

As for your statement about the difference between me and Giles, are you kidding? He has yet to admit he is incorrect and is insisting on the same premises he has been insisting on all along. Furthermore, I’ve never “tuck tail and leave” upon being wrong - because I was not wrong. I end up having to repeat myself ad nauseum to some of you people because you don’t seem to comprehend my argument. And then you have the gaul to make the exact same argument as me while still going out of your way to disassociate yourself from me. Well, guess what Liberty Student? BRAINPOLICE ALREADY MADE THOSE POINTS MONTHS AGO HERE, AND YOU WERE DEFIANT AND DEFENDING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DEBATE IN THAT CONTEXT. Definitely some bad psychology and hypocrisy going on here.

Hypocrisy? Yes, hypocrisy. When I make more or less the exact same arguments, all one sees is nitpicking, devil’s advocacy and opposition from you. It’s “the loony left” when I make the arguments. Then you make what amounts to the exact same points, and suddenly it’s somehow supposed to be different - a matter of “integrity”. Actually it is you who seems too preoccupied with labels or terms here, as when I make a perfectly radical libertarian argument and phrase it in “leftish” terminology, you start frothing at the mouth and nitpicking, and yet you will turn around and make the exact same arguments as if it’s somehow different. Clearly the terminology is a stumbling block for you, or you wouldn’t have such widely contrasting attitudes when the exact same thing is phrased differently or categorized under a different label.

62

You seem to be unaware of how the legal process works. Of course a child would be helpless against someone taking their property, and so would an old person with alzheimer’s. How will it be determined who their property belongs to? In most cases only one claimant will take control and there will be no disputes. (At least this is how things work in my family.) If there is a dispute it will be between two people exercising rational faculties, the incapacitated person being obviously unable to pronounce an opinion outside of a written will, and so in real terms the property rights of the incapacitated person have ended. What’s being contested are the property rights of the still rational.

You did not answer the question. There is no such thing as a they in the theory of appropriation. Only individuals can appropriate scarce goods. What you are calling they may be a tribe of slaves and their warlords, in which case stating that the slaves have homesteaded the land is moot - they are not exercising any property rights over it and have no control over their supposed property. You are the only one who sees private property there, and since you are not involved in the legal process involving that property, your opinion is immaterial.

63

Yeah, I am unaware of how the legal system works. Is this the current, statist legal monopoly we’re going to use as a framework now?

Why? Even small children have an understanding of property (mine, yours) that precedes rational argumenatation. Again, you have described a situation where it may be easy, or even legal under the current paradigm to steal, what you haven’t provided is an ethical framework that justifies it.

I answered both questions, separately so they could be answered clearly and precisely. As to “no they” in the theory of appropriation, then that theory sucks, because it doesn’t include collective ownership.

Nonsense.

They have already established a homesteading claim, who specifically holds that claim within the group is moot. And further, they specifics of their claim (how it is organized, passed on, sold, managed, adjudicated) is irrelevant, because you do not dictate the social or legal norms for every group you come across.

Simply, if you believe in the homesteading principle, then you must stand down when you encounter someone with a higher claim than your own, not proceed with naked aggression, when by the same standard you would claim for your own homesteaded property the group in question has satisfied.

Put it simply Stranger, you come across land, and there are people farming it. A lot of people. Say one every 50 metres or so. How do you know who owns what? Are any of them obligated to explain to you where ownership begins and ends? Does it really matter if they are all employees of a land holder, or they are all individual landholders themselves?

And further, while I loathe communes and socialism, if they have peacefully and voluntarily organized as a social corporation with a verbal contract, they can act as a group, with a group claim (representing a myriad of title holders) over a single parcel of property.

Regardless of your dislike or mental inhibitions to such an arrangement (and I can somewhat sympathize) you still cannot get past the base reality that they hold the highest claim via homesteading, either collectively or individually. You still do not have the best claim no matter how they are organized.

64

Actually, the real issue is that you see only a monopoly on the following;

  • Who decides how ownership is determined
  • What is property
  • And who can rationally argue

.If you have enough guns, you can certainly behave like the state, and enforce monopoly law on others. But that’s not libertarianism. That’s no improvement over the existing social order.

The problems with communal ownership are internal, not external. It’s inevitable that someone within the ownership collective will be unhappy about how their share of the property is returned to them or not, used or not, maintained or not, passed on or not. And I see no easy forms to address this, although the corporate model gives us some indication of how it can be done contractually.

I’m also not fond of the commune folk who won’t recognize my own right, outside the collective to own private property.

But neither of those situations are approached in this discussion. Again, it’s not whether or not the ownership structure meets your standards. You’re dead in your tracks, as soon as the higher claim via homesteading is revealed. After that point, you can play all sorts of legal shenanigans to convince a 3rd party that the person or group with the higher claim, is an animal and not a human.

I find the entire argument, ironically made by folks with (I believe) a prefence for religion, that we start off as animals, become humans, and then depending upon whether or not we get certain types of disease, injury or age related breakdown, we revert back into animals again. It is interesting that for the purpose of attaining and controlling property, we believe that man can be transmuted into animal and back again, perhaps in a temporary fit of madness, animal and man, man and animal over and over again, gaining and losing rights not on who they are, but strictly on their capacity to think as arbitrarily judged by their peers.

65

Good. Then please be quiet. The adults are discussing right now.

66

It matters whether their bonds to the landlords are hegemonic, in which case it is in their interest and your interest to relieve them of these bonds. If you approach them with your persuasive arguments stating that they are in fact the legitimate homesteaders of the land, their response will be shut the hell up and help us with these guys.

If you intervene to liberate the land, then you have become as much of a homesteader as they were.

That is immaterial.

67

In your argument, it actually might be. Seems to me that you are applying an abitrary scale to the ability to rationally argue. Perhaps based on that, he who is most rational, or most capable of rational argument should get the property title, regardless of who has the first or original claim on it. A meritocracy of the mind so to speak. Because that is how this discussion started out. We follow the homesteading principle. Until we don’t follow it because we want land someone else isn’t using to what we consider to be the highest efficiency. Then we prove they are lesser humans by their inability to articulate, different social organization, incompatible language, religion or legal systems. So now it’s ok to drive them off like wild animals.

I don’t think you have satisfied your own standard for property ownership with this argument, let alone anyone elses. If you abandon homesteading, you might be able to. But I can’t see how you can be consistent and embracing homesteading where the first claim is always highest (and for good reason).

68

My argument regards the material consequences of a system of free arbitration and security. In such a system, the “homesteading principle” as traditionally defined applies only to resources that are not in use by anyone. It does not apply to resources that are in use by people outside of the system of free arbitration and security. A different principle, based upon the same proscription of pareto efficiency, must be devised for such a situation, as homesteading is materially irrelevant here.

69

Stranger, I appreciate your playing along. I need an answer to this scenario. Because this discussion is personal for me and I haven’t seen my questions about the monopoly of the methodology for determination of rights loss answered.

My step father’s heart stopped for about 12 minutes 2 years ago. He suffered massive brain trauma. Was confined to a hospital bed, wearing only a diaper, incapable of more than screaming, crying and soiling himself. He couldn’t see or stand. He didn’t respond to basic stimulus you would expect from a cat or dog.

Finally, our legendary health care system got him transferred to a rehab facility. It’s now 6th months later, and they begin working with him and my mother for over a year. He’s able to handle a spoon (badly). He can walk short distances unassisted. Some of his vision returned. He can speak, very poorly. His ability to articulate speech is poor, his speech itself is as intelligent, witty and profound as ever. He’s a legendary joke teller at family gatherings and hasn’t lost the wit behind that reputation. His memory is excellent, and his powers of observation and rational though are as strong as ever.

On the surface, he seems badly handi-capped but there is definitely a rational mind still there.

During his broken man phase where he was merely a vessel of spasmodic behaviour and pain is that when you would have sought to confiscate his property leaving him no home to return to? Would you have confiscated the property he had accumulated (savings) that allowed him to receive care?

I need to know when you determine people cannot learn to argue rationally (even understand your language) or when they are beyond all hope. Do they determine that? Their family? Their lawyer, doctor? Who decides when you can pull the boots off a man who isn’t dead yet, and proudly proclaim you came by them honestly?

This is a real scenario. I’d appreciate a sincere answer for how this would be handled in the system you propose. Hopefully it is a method we can all get behind. Because if there is one thing about libertarianism over socialism and the state, is that the individual never gets force fed to the good of the many or the powerful. And when one is weak, but not dead, he is susceptible to healthy people with suspect agendas exercising power over him.

70

Stop wasting my time.

71

You’re wasting your time. Now let me know if you still feel you can divvy up the loot based upon who has the rational means to defend themselves.

Like I said, this was a true scenario, not some lifeboat fantasy. Do you have the guts, assuredness and conviction to apply your ideas to real world situations, or just fantasize about tribal primitives running around in grass skirts?

72
73

Doesn’t apply. Try again. Rights can’t be conditional upon having an advocate for them. Not to mention that a temporary loss of rational facility can’t justify a permanent loss of property.

74

And yet they are. For real.

75

So that is where we have arrived? If you see someone who cannot advocate their own property rights, even if you know that property belongs to them, you feel this is sufficient ethical and legal basis to take their property? But if their son or daughter, neighbor or padre was there, you would not be able to?

So much for the rights of the individual hunh? Remind me never to spend time alone with you. One konk on the head with a brass candlestick holder, and you’ll be three blocks down the street, whistling as you rifle through my wallet.

76

Isn’t that why one creates a Will or a sort of contract regarding their property in the event of their incapacitation and/or death, so as to plan ahead in the possible event that they are not capable of rational thought? To prevent said loss of property and/or wealth in the event of the loss of rational facility?

77

I’ve already said that. It seems not to matter.

78

Sure. But are our rights contingent upon having a will? If I die tonight in my sleep without a will, does that mean that the property my will would have allocated is now back in the wild, ready to be homesteaded? What good is a will without someone to execute it? Recognize it?

If I (as a single parent) will my property to my only child who might be 7 years old, the rationale here is that a full fledged adult can come and take that property from the child who cannot rationally argue to keep it.

Do we only have rights when we are kept by someone else?

I understand that thieves and scoundrels don’t worry about this. But Stranger is proposing a framework where people in a weakened state can be legally stolen from, even if they recover their health later. The disposition of their property becomes contingent upon paperwork.

79

Who would stop him?

80

A detailed arrangement via formentioned will wherein services of a PDA (or perhaps more acurratley, a Private Property Defender, or a more specific service along the lines of Property of Youth Defenses) are payed for accordingly until the child reaches a certain age (which may or may not be designated in the will, but let’s assume that this age is 16 - 18) ?

Obviously, not every individual may consider or plan for such a contingency, but neither should we assume, as LS mentions, that rights are dependent on the existence of a will (when one is in aforementioned weakened state that may imply temporary reduced rational faculties), as this would clearly leave behind those who do not a family, which could be caretakers in the case of the child you mention, Stranger, & others who do not wish to prepare one or were unable to (i.e. you may decide to put off writing a possible will until next week, when crossing the street, a car manages to skid into your person & you die).

This would obviously be a great moment for a Statist to drop by & remark “the state, lol”, but obviously, this is not a valid solution.

Perhaps there would some sort of agreements in communities regarding the status of property of the deceased? Perhaps a certain amount of time can be placed upon property of the deceased (to allow descendants to claim), & if such time passes, the property is considered free-game?

This, however, doesn’t solve the issue of those who have temporarily reduced rational faculties (TRF). Perhaps the limitations of current cognitive science prevent a solution from being either attainable or easily attainable? I’d imagine a good deal of science would be involved in determining whether one is rationally capable of upholding their rights in a given weakened state such as trauma, amnesia, etc.