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  • Locked thread
Caros
May 14, 2008

Alright, wife's in bed, laptop has power and there is wi-fi I can crib off my phone. Lets do this. Lysaaaaaaander Spooooooner!

jrodefeld posted:

Note to mods: You know who I am. I'm a libertarian who is staring his own thread, which is acceptable according to the rules, I assume? There are two reasons I want to start a specific thread rather than retread over the "other" libertarian thread and just post comments there. In the first place, I want this discussion to be more narrow in scope. And I want to say something at the beginning that everyone will have a chance to read. On Caros's thread, he specifically poisoned the well from the very beginning by writing an OP describing libertarianism and its adherents in an unflattering and, from my perspective, misleading way. By the time I first posted on that thread, there had already been something like two hundred pages of people making GBS threads on libertarianism before I had a chance to defend it. And since the thread was almost entirely directed at me in particular (it would not exist without my having posted here in the past), you can understand how I'd like to have a bit more discretion about the framing of the debate when I am outnumbered 30 to 1.

I've already covered the fact that the libertarian thread was intended more as a preserve for you people than anything else. I actually made it for some other long gone libertarian after he did the same thing you're doing now. The fact that I front loaded it with insults shouldn't really be taken with umbrage by the by, if only because every single political thread is loaded with insults. If you look at Canada politics we make fun of Stephen Harper, Angry Tom and Pothead Trudeau despite the majority of SA readers being left leaning. You would know this if you'd bothered to learn anything about the culture of SA over your time here instead of coming solely to D&D to jump face first into the dogpile that you know is waiting for you.

And as I said I'd be happy to let you rework (or add) a chunk of your posting to the libertarian thread opening if you'd like. I'm really just looking out for your best interests because you will get banned again and end up giving mighty Lowtax more :10bux: if you keep opening up with posts like this one.

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If there is any problem with me posting my own topic, I will cease and you can remove it. But if I don't break any clearly stated rules, I hope you would welcome a libertarian voice here in the service of a full discussion rather than a self serving bias-reinforcing circle jerk, something that is far too common.

I think in a lot of ways this typifies your particular brand of libertarianism. You're treating this as you treat everything, as a system of perfectly logical rules that will result in a good outcome for you if followed the way you view them. In reality SA is a community of people, and as a community we not only have the obvious rules but also basic standards of community that you refuse to learn or acknowledge. You are interacting with the forums as if it is a rational system when it is in fact a group of people and prone to irrational behaviour, such as banning amusing libertarian posters before all the comedy has been mined.

In this aspect you're not too far from a Sovereign Citizen and their 'magic words' view of the legal system. Just a minor gripe anyways.

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I have no doubt that whatever confines I initially set out to limit the scope of discussion, it will soon expand out on dozens of directions covering every element of libertarianism. But I'd like to describe libertarianism a bit differently from how you may have heard it described in the past. The central theme of this OP is property, what is it, what constitutes legitimate property rights and what is the origin and function of private property rights? The real distinction between libertarians and nearly everyone else is not their opposition to the State since there are anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists who also oppose the existence of States. It is not even our belief in the non-aggression principle. Rather, as you probably guessed, it is our understanding of private property that sets us apart. After all, how can you know what constitutes an act of aggression if you can't clearly articulate between what is mine versus what is yours?

This is literally how you have described libertarianism multiple times over previous threads. Please stop treating your readers like children who are unaccustomed to the glory of libertarianism. We know what it is you are selling. We disagree with the contents, not the packaging.

Now before you get into your rambling about how great property rights are I want to make sure everyone knows precisely what we're talking about, Property. As a former libertarian I think I can give a pretty solid definition of what property is from the libertarian viewpoint. Please correct me on this if I'm wrong:

Property Rights are the right to sole use of a material or resource and the accompanying authority to use force in their defence.

I think that is a pretty solid definition of Property Rights from the libertarian viewpoint. Much as governments are a monopoly on force within a geographic area (to a libertarian) a property right at its core is the right to sole use of something and the authority to use force to defend your claim. If you own your home and someone breaks in against your whim they are intruding on your sole use of the home and you can use violence against them or have someone use violence in their defense of your property rights. Likewise if someone attempts to attack you they are intruding on your right to own your own body and thus you can us violence to defend yourself against their intrusion.

Now here is the crucial point about property rights. They are a fiction.

What do I mean? I mean property rights do not exist in nature. There is no inherent ownership of objects by people. Down later you're going to quote Locke's theory of homesteading and to you I say this, that is an arbitrary system of determining who owns what that is no more or less correct than any other, because property rights by their very nature are an arbitrary fiction.

Consider the description above: "The authority to use force in their defence". That description by itself puts the lie to any idea of property rights that exist in nature absent the human condition or societal agreement. The authority we're talking about doesn't come down from on high, god doesn't illuminate the ground around someone when their house is broken into while a booming voice says "Thou shalt defend thine property rights!" The authority is an understood human consensus, it is an agreement that what's yours is yours and what isn't is not.

Still further in your post you talk about the abstract "Right" to healthcare and how if you have this right but there aren't enough doctors then your right to healthcare is sort of irrelevant. I'd argue that property "rights" are just as ethereal as a right to healthcare. To bastardize an old saying, if you sit down to dinner at a Japanese Sushi Restaurant with 80's rock band Prism but the band includes none of the original members, are you still eating with the band Prism? The answer is of course "Does society consider that band to be Prism?"

They were total assholes by the way.

That might have been a bit of a ramble, but my point is that while you might be (you aren't) technically correct that you have a right to certain property, if society doesn't agree with you then from a practical standpoint you do not have that right. If you claim to have a property right to a home through locklean homesteading but no one agrees with you, do you have that property right? If society agrees that you are my slave, does it matter that your particular theory of property rights doesn't allow for that? A key aspect of property rights is the right to defend what you believe to be yours, but in absence of the agreement of others you appear to the outside observer as a sociopath. If you walk into my house and claim that your theory of property rights says that it is your house... well I mean lets see how far it gets you?

Furthermore there have been vast differences in the theory of property rights over the centuries. Several posters have already taken you to task for your incorrect suggestions that early humans lived with Locke style homesteading, when in fact property rights were something that was almost entirely absent from those societies. I however am going to present a different object, and with this I'm going to answer your question from the very end of your post. Sorry for going out of order.

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I'll leave it here for now. I want to try, at least initially, to limit the discussion to property rights as understood by libertarians, and their need under conditions of scarcity. I'd like to hear competing theories of initial property acquisition that make more sense that the first-user principle if you reject that theory.



Genghis Khan was a leader of various nomadic steppe peoples from ~1206 -1227. Over the course of his lifetime he greatly expanded his empire and rapidly improved the quality of life for his people. When Genghis came to power some of the people of his particular tribe were so desperately poor that they wore clothing stitched together from field mice. In many cases mongols of that period would wear clothing so long that it would literally rot off their skin over the course of weeks or months before they could procure something better.

The man was the founding father of Mongolia, brought the Silk Road under control and is credited with largely making it passable. Perhaps one of his lesser known accomplishments was the imposition of a single rule of law over a very wide area, the Yassa code. The mongols were a meritocratic society where even men who had previously attempted to kill the great Khan in battle could rise high in the ranks if they proved their skill and loyalty. On top of all of that the mongol empire was actually religiously tolerant, believing that you can worship whoever you drat well please so long as you ask them to pray for the Khan while you're doing it.

So why am I rambling about all of that? Because the Mongols, a 13th century warrior people had a system of property rights that makes as much sense to me as yours does. In Mongol culture everything belonged to the Khan. Every single thing alive in the world, every castle, every bit of gold or wine all belonged to the Khan, and when the Mongols came upon people they told them to submit to the obvious divine goal of the mongols (to bring everyone together as one) or to be crushed. The mongols then took (by force if necessary) huge amounts of loot from these societies, that was then given to the great Khan, who in turn gave it to his generals, who gave it to their officers and so on.

Now I ask you, what is wrong with this principle of property rights? It is logically derived, particularly for the standards of mongols (Genghis Khan was a huge badass who got people to follow him en masse as he conquered). It deals with the problem of scarcity as everything belongs to the Khan to divide as he sees fit. It solves the problem of initial acquisition because everything belongs to the Khan and simply needs to be taken if he wills it. What is your issue with Mongol Based Economics (MBE)?

You might say that this is reducto ad absurdum, and maybe it is... but please, explain to me why your theory of property rights is any more objectively correct than MBE. I'll agree with you wholeheartedly that making mountains of skulls from the bodies of the slain killed in your rampage across europe is a little disgusting by modern standards, but if we're arguing that something is an incorrect system of economics simply because society finds it morally reprehensible then I'd argue the same applies to Anarcho-Capitalism which wouldn't poll at 1% if it were brought to a vote. If your argument is that it's inefficient I will say gently caress you, that is a consequentialist argument and we're talking deontology here bitch. To my eyes MBE view of property rights is equally as valid from an outside viewpoint as your homesteading belief, or the version we as a society use now. If there is an objective morality out there then that could shed some light on things, but unfortunately if there is we don't know what it is. For all we know Khorne is sitting up on his throne of skulls being all pissed off shouting "The Goal of All Life is Death! The mongols had it right you fuckers!" and we'll never know.

I'd like to hear you come up with a reason that Mongol Based Economics are somehow less valid than First-Use. Because as far as I can see both are utterly arbitrary if you ignore consequentialist arguments, and if you add in consequentialist arguments then first-use gets the everloving poo poo kicked out of it due to real world applications.

quote:

It is often stated by misinformed left-Progressives that libertarians or other free market advocates have a fetish for private property rights; that we elevate property as a right above human rights, that our insistence on private ownership creates conflict between those who have more and those who have less and encourages human greed and alienation between different groups of people.

I personally believe Murray Rothbard jerked off into the deed of his house on a semi-regular basis, I'm not sure fetish even covers it. Paraphillia maybe? And yes your insistence on private ownership does create those conflicts which is why the only people who like libertarianism in any large numbers are the people who are statistically most likely to succeed in society (white males).

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As to the first claim, this one is always amusing because it is so crystal clear to a libertarian that there is no meaningful distinction between property rights and human rights. But much more important is the fact that we recognize that a correct understanding of private property is essential to a flourishing, healthy society and that human progress is inexorably linked with a legal recognition of private property claims.

News flash, this is not crystal clear to anyone else and is in fact an utterly arbitrary distinction made by you and you alone. Side note, do you realize how creepy you sound when you talk like this? "We realize that human rights ARE property rights, and we recognize that private property is so crucial to human progress! Why don't you? You loving peasents just accept me!"

I might have added that last part but it is what you come off as. Many people have probably said this to you before, but libertarianism appeals to you because it gives you a false sense of accomplishment and a cultist belief that you understand how things really work. The same feelings you get from libertarianism are found in cultists and conspiracy theorists for the same reason. Incidentally this is another reason it appeals to modern white males, we feel that society isn't giving us what we promised. We grew up with fathers who made more than we do, in a society where white males succeeded as a general rule and there must be something wrong because it isn't that way any more. The search to deal with this feeling of powerlessness leads to destructive behaviour, like Anarcho-capitalism.

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The reader should be disabused of the notion that libertarians have some obsession with private property or criticize public, or society-"owned" property based on any shallow ideological grounds. The reason we oppose socialism is that its core tenets are in conflict with observable reality. Were reality to be different than it is, libertarians would gladly abandon the concept of private property (outside of our physical bodies) as meaningless and of no use. For example, suppose we lived in a mythical "Garden of Eden", a paradise where everything that people desire was available in super-abundance. Everyone could satisfy all their needs an desires and no-ones use of any resource would in any way hinder anyone else's ability to use that resource. In such a theoretical world, property would cease to have any meaning in external objects outside of our physical bodies. Our bodies would remain scarce, and so we'd still need to have a property right in those (i.e. no assault, murder, rape).

Fun fact, in this document where you talk about how you aren't obsessed with property you use the word property 43 times out of 2,500 words. It is your seventh most used word after "the of and to that is". Just thought I'd put that in perspective.

Speaking as a consequential I will point out that we live in a society where we have the capability to feed, clothe, house and provide basic medical care to every person in the country (probably the planet) if we devoted those resources appropriately. Yes, scarcity will be a thing in human society for the foreseeable future, but as it currently stands the argument is not one of "Can we produce enough to meet basic needs" it is "What do we have to sacrifice to do so." Capitalism suggests we sacrifice in areas that many of us find abhorrent for reasons that don't make much sense to many of us in the search for profit.

That aside, I do not consider my body property. Your entire argument about self ownership is nonsense to me because my body is fundamentally different from property. I cannot sell my body (my wife won't let me :downsrim:) in the same way that I can sell my house because I cannot physically give up possession of my body. Beyond that however, I refer you to my very large argument above where I discuss the fact that property rights are an utter fiction created by people. There is no property right to "Caros" out there, if only because we as a society honestly believe that is a stupid loving thing. You are certainly entitled to believe the way you want, but stop acting like something is a universal fact when it is in fact only part of your weird pseudo-cult and not accepted by anyone outside of it.

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The reason property rights are so incredibly essential is that we live in a world of scarcity. In such a world, the desires, wants and needs of humans will always exceed the available goods needed to fulfill all our desires simultaneously. Therefore situations inevitably arise where two or more people want to use the same scarce resource to achieve two completely incompatible desired ends. This inevitable human conflict that arises from the reality of scarcity necessitated the acceptance of norms, or rules for determining who had the right to exclusive control over what scarce resource. Without this developing and widespread recognition by early human civilizations of basic private property rights, the emergence of modern industrial society, of production, commerce, agriculture and all the trappings of civilization would never have been possible. Humans would have remained perpetually in conflict, as primitive hunter gatherers living at a subsistence level.

Hey cool guys! Jrodefeld is agreeing with me that property rights pretty much solely exist as a way for hairless monkeys to keep from killing each other over scarcity. Also, no, agricultural societies did not require private property to grow, in fact many early human civilizations lived in what can best be described as communes. I'll let other posters field this one.

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This should not be controversial. If we can agree on the vital necessity of the recognition of private property rights for human evolution and survival, then what rules ought to be in place for the attainment of legitimate property that should be legally enforced? The libertarian answer is that the first user to appropriate a resource out of its naturally environment and transform and improve it for the furtherance of his well-being has the best claim to ownership of that scarce resource. This, as you already know, has been referred to as the homestead principle. And it predated John Locke as a recognized norm in primitive civilizations millennia before he coined the phrase for the modern science of economics to make sense of an existed social phenomena.

Just what part of evolving from H. rhodesiensis to H. sapiens required the recognition of property rights. :allears:

I know that is probably a cheapshot and I do hope what you meant was 'evolution' as in societal evolution rather than physical. It still is funny to read anyone writing something liek that without a hint of irony. Also I'd like to ask you to stop begging the loving question so hard that it is getting disturbed by your kink.

I think my favorite thing about this entire section however is how you talk about 'the libertarian answer' because that is what it is and looking at it from that perspective is a hell of a lot more honest than much of what you post. You aren't talking about some objectively correct answer, you're talking about your particular answer which is as correct as the one suggested by the mongols. That said, no, homesteading principle was not widely recognized among primitive humans. If anything most humans throughout the centuries have practices something significantly closer to MBE than homesteading. The romans, for example, ruled the world for centuries with a recognition of private property that in many cases can be boiled down as "Veni, vidi, vici."

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Had any other principle of property ownership and use-rights been adopted, the human race would have died off. This is not hyperbole. Let's suppose not the first user of something has the right to exclusive control of a scarce resource, but rather that the fifth user was the one who had that right. How could we eat? If I'm the first person to claim ownership of a coconut tree, or a water spring, but I don't have any property right in that thing, then I wouldn't be able to justly use that scarce resource. I'd starve and die of thirst. We'd all have to wait around for the fifth user of everything. Naturally, humans desired above all else to survive and improve their condition. And it makes intuitive and logical sense to most people to give the earlier user precedence over a later user.

This is wrong.

I mean I could just leave it like that, but lets be clear, it is wrong for a variety of reasons. Early humans lived largely in commune with one another. Later humans may have used first use in some cases, but more often the term I would suggest is 'current use'. If I'm here farming this is my land. Stevicus down the way agrees that it is mine and we've got a militia or an army to back up our claim. When we go all Carthago delanda est on a certain city that will remain nameless then the outlying provinces use a property system that can best be described as 'ours now you fuckers'.

If you have evidence that early humans lived in the way you suggest I would ask you to provide it. Anthropologists disagree with you on this issue and there is nothing to suggest that homesteading of the variety you are suggesting played a large or critical part in human history. Even when people did expand outwards I'd argue that homesteaders were working less off a theory of 'first use' and more of a theory of 'why don't you come and try to loving take it'. If I am a roman colonist the argument I use to decide what does and does not belong to me is not first use, it is "I'm roman, suck my balls."

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Once this recognition of property rights was recognized, not perfectly but to a large enough extent, great strides in living standards were made immediately available to the human race. Suddenly a division of labor was possible, free exchange was made possible and barter soon led to the development of the first currency. People could save in excess of their immediate consumption needs because they knew that they had the legally recognized and enforceable right to their property. Conflict was reduced and peaceful cooperation was encouraged.

Might I recommend you read Debt: The First 5000 Years before you talk any more. It is by no means an academic treatise on the issue and I'd highly suggest you read more on the subject afterwords, but it is a good introductory primer that contains enough narrative to keep you interested on a dry as gently caress subject that you'll be willing to search out other factors once you're done. I say this because what you're talking about here is completely and utterly ahistorical to modern understanding. I don't give Locke poo poo because he didn't know any better, you live in a modern society and absolutely should. Stop treating the words of a man who died three centuries ago as if they were fact.

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Given the reality of scarcity, what humans need more than anything else are social rules and a legal system that facilitates ever greater material production such that people can attain more and more of their needs and desires. What we are essentially doing is moving towards less and less scarcity through greater and greater productive capacity in modern economies. This, of course, should be considered a great thing for human welfare all around.

Social rules like taxes!? Statist.

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Left-progressives frequently speak about the plight of the poor and the continuing social problems that exist throughout much of the world. However, the engine that drives the greatest and most robust increase in society-wide wealth for everyone is one in which property is private and the division of labor, capital accumulation, investment and a free price system are permitted to function unhampered.

Industrialization and modernization is the engine that drives the greatest and most robust increase in society-wide wealth for everyone. The soviet union drastically increased the society wide wealth and overall conditions as they industrialized. You do not need to be a capitalist or worship private property to grow society.

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I've asked for a better and more coherent method by which property should be acquired other than original appropriation and I have not heard an answer.

Mongol Based Economics. Alternately, the system we have now. Alternately, any other system.

While I'm at it can we bring this back to the genocide of native americans and how 'original appropriation' seems to cut off the moment it is inconvenient for modern libertarians?

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I'm going to throw in a curve-ball here and talk about another so-called "property" right that isn't actually property at all. That is what is called Intellectual Property. Libertarians oppose the existence of so-called "intellectual property" at all. But why would that be? The reason is that property is only a coherent and useful concept when it applies to things that are scarce. Copying a movie cannot be theft if you owned the original that you made a copy from. No one else was deprived of any physical possession whatsoever. Since copying can be done, theoretically infinitely, without depriving anyone of their copy, there is no scarcity and no theft. Patents on inventions present a similar case. Ideas are not scarce. If you freely share an idea and someone emulates or improves upon that idea, society is all the better off.

gently caress you. I make my life as a writer and eliminating intellectual property rights would essentially ruin me and impoverish my family. But who gives a poo poo about consequences right? :)

I spend, on average, about 800 hours writing a full length novel. In absence of intellectual property rights I would post that novel, and then instantly see copies of it being published by other companies who sell it to the end consumer without giving me a dime. But there is no scarcity or theft right Jrodefeld? I mean I put in the equivalent of about twenty weeks working on it but who gives a poo poo right?

And no crowdfunding is not a functional replacement for sales for a whole variety of reasons.

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Society has been made incalculably poorer and many corporations unjustly wealthier than they ought to be because of this grotesque State-monopoly privilege known as intellectual "property".

Please explain why any drug company would make a drug absent the ability to make money by the monopoly of that drug. Please explain how I wouldn't be living destitute in the gutter if people could get a free or drastically discounted copy of my new releases the moment they hit the shelves.

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Therefore things that are not scarce can indeed be held in the "commons", and in fact society is much better when we have socialism for ideas and computer data for example.

Psst, scarcity isn't as severe as you think and socialism is just as successful with things like healthcare.

quote:

Left-progressives frequently rail about the need for a legally mandated "right" to a service like healthcare forgetting or never understanding in the first place how the services needed to supply the growing human need are most efficiently produced and allocated. You might have an abstract "right" to a heart surgery, but if the sort of economic system and the State regulations and mandates heaped upon it don't produce enough hospitals, doctors and medical equipment, you won't get the care you need despite what politicians might claim.

Speaking of which...

I want to make something absolutely, perfectly clear to you Jrodefeld. This does not happen in any significant numbers. I went googling and I could barely find more than a few dozen cases over the course of the last decade in which patients died on waiting list. And even that number, scary as it is, is misleading. Winnipeg for example, has had twelve people die while waiting for care in a three year period. Of those not a single one was an emergency patient. Of those the wait time was between 52 and 57 days, significantly below the recommended benchmark of 180 (a number used in the US) of those each patient was waiting because a team of trained medical professionals said that it was safe for them to wait. Of those all twelve had other serious medical issues that contributed to their deaths. Finally and perhaps most strongly, when the doctor was asked if their wait times would have been shorter with unlimited resources his answer amounted to "Maybe" because heading into heart surgery without proper research and preparation can actually increase mortality rates.

Moreover, it is important to remember that the US absolutely does ration care. People bitch about waiting lists in Canada because they are an obvious sign of rationing limited care. You wait because we only have X doctors. In the US there is care rationing, but rather than simply waiting lists (and you do have those) the rationing takes place in the cost of care. 45,000 die annually in the US due to inability to receive medical care. Tens of millions have no insurance and thus no real access to medical care outside an emergency room. The US rations care as much as a UHC country, you just do it really, really poorly.

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If you're concern is largely for the material well-being of society's most vulnerable, surely you'd want the economy to be as physically productive as possible? The problem facing the poor is not that they make $8.50 and not $15 an hour. The problem is that they don't have enough basic "stuff" to give them a reasonable standard of living. And why don't they? They economy is not physically productive enough to provide them with needed and desired goods or there are artificial impediments to employment and/or entrepreneurship that constrains their available options.

Capitalism is as much responsible for this failure as anything else. One of my favorite examples of the utter failure of capitalism is the great depression. One day the economy is booming along and everything is great. The next factories are shutting their doors, workers are being laid off and so forth. What changed? Did a war start? A natural disaster? Did we run out of fuel? No. The market simply decided that it was time to go backwards for a little while and ruin lives for no good reason. We have the ability to produce the basic 'stuff' we need to give people a reasonable standard of living. The resources are there, the factories are there, it is the allocation that is corrupt.

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A problem with "democracy" and all forms of collective ownership either of the factory or of public spaces is that use for such resources is heavily constrained by the need for consensus to act. If all workers owned factories together, endless meetings and deliberations would be required to make any decisions about the use of capital and production. Furthermore, conflict is enhanced rather than reduced. Who would REALLY have the final say on the use of collectively owned property? Well, no one does. All this wasted energy determining the best use of scarce resources leads to a tortoises pace to decisions that otherwise would be made by individual owners of these resources rather rapidly. This leads to paralysis and loss of productive capacity. If everyone can determine the use of property they own and put it to productive use immediately or trade it to another in an exchange immediately, the economy is made wealthier and decisions are made quickly by individuals who bear the personal responsibility for risking their capital and ONLY their capital in the effort.

Scare quotes around democracy? Really? Hans Hermann Hoppe is that really you? Tell me more about the natural social elite and time preferences.

That aside this post is actually pretty disgusting. Why should the people who do all the work have any say in what they're working on! gently caress that, this one guy should be the one to determine what happens because he jammed his dick in the soil. Believe it or not there are plenty of union factories that run far more efficiently than factories run by fiat of a single power mad individual.

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I've spoken about the Tragedy of the Commons in the past, but that is one more effect of property not being privately owned. When no one has a financial incentive to maintain the capital value of a piece of property, everyone has an incentive to overuse that property, even towards ecological destruction. This was the story of the American Buffalo which was hunted to the brink of extinction when it was a part of the "commons" yet made a major comeback once private entrepreneurs homesteaded the animals and judiciously decided which to kill for meat and which to breed to replenish the livestock for future generations and future profit opportunities.

You realize that it was capitalism that utterly ruined the american buffalo while the 'socialist' native americans were completely capable of not murdering the poo poo out of their food source for no reason. The tragedy of the commons here is that a bunch of entitled pricks decided to reap a huge profit or kill for sport. Cool story tho.

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If we lived in an alternate universe without scarcity, then collective ownership of everything would make sense. No libertarian would dogmatically demand we maintain the concept of private property and homesteading with legal arbitration services if all goods existed in superabundance. If scarcity ceased being a limiting factor, then property would similarly cease being an important concept. There is a reason we don't parcel out oxygen rights for the air we breath. Oxygen is not scarce in any practical sense as it applies to human needs. Every human can breath as much as they want without limiting the ability of anyone else to breath as much as they want.

I'd like you to talk more about your arbitration services. Walter Block discussed them on his interview with Sam Seder and they sounded insane. We've previously discussed DRO's and I think we can both agree that those are crazy as gently caress. Have you come up with some new alternative to deal with the necessity of a legal system, preferably one that isn't laughably bad?

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I'd like you to explain to me the problem with the libertarian understanding of private property. And how, in a world of scarcity, that socialism is a feasible or coherent system? How could the human race have survived without the first-user principle of property acquisition being at least tacitly acknowledged?

The problem is that no one likes it. Your proposed system of private property is about as anathema to most modern people as Mongol Based Economics. As a result it will not be implemented in any significant scale because people think the idea of totally unregulated markets and a total obviation of social government is loving insane. If you're talking "People who own something own it" then you're talking the system you have now and no one really disagrees with that. Its when you start getting into the crazy weeds of taxation is theft and government is immoral that people tell you to go suck a lemon.

Socialism is feasible and coherent because mixed economies with significant socialist elements are the norm throughout the world and have been for some time. Moreover countries that trend more socialist are happier and in many ways more prosperous than those who are not.

Human society survived without first-user because first user is largely an irrelevant concept made up well after the fact. Hope this helps.

quote:

Left-Progressives always tout the "successes" of social democracies like Sweden or the social welfare State in the United States, but they always (as Scott Horton likes to say) "truncate and antecedents". You know what the best way to attain a small fortune? Start with a large fortune and squander some of your wealth. In example after example, left-progressives tout the relative wealth of modern-day Sweden or post FDR United States forgetting or never understanding that these countries that remain reasonably wealthy and can bear the burden of the socialistic demands on the economy have all, without any notable exceptions, had a lengthy history of laissez-faire free market fueled growth for decades and decades before their governments made a left turn and decided to implement a welfare State.

This is a nonsense argument that effectively argues from a position that because countries started out as capitalists any success they've had with socialist programs (Social security reducing elderly poverty from 66% to 13%) happen only because capitalism. This is basically the same argument that cackles about how socialism can never work because an impoverished, brutalized country ruled by a strongman dictator only 'mostly' caught up with the US in the aftermath of the second world war rather than overtaking it.

Just as an aside, Jrodefeld, how do you attribute the incredible growth of the Soviet Union in terms of wealth. The soviets were a barely functional 'industrial' country when they came to power, decade upon decade behind the US in terms of industrial and scientific technology. The suffered the brunt of ALL total losses from both world wars, totaling tens of millions of soviet citizens and yet despite all that they still managed to become a super power running neck and neck with the US in a large number of fields throughout the 20th century. I'll happily agree that the US won that race, but lets not pretend they started at the same place.

quote:

This is absolutely true of the United States from the Industrial Revolution until the Progressive Era of the early to mid 20th century and it is also true of Sweden which had an incredibly laissez-faire free market economy during much of the same period of time and, even after their nominal shift leftward during the mid-20th century, the bulk of the socialist program so loved by leftist commentators is barely forty years old.

Getting your cause and effect reasoning straight would do wonders to improve your understanding of these historical events.

Pot, meet kettle. I'm done here. Time to relax.

Edit: I do find it funny that the thread is named for a question I asked myself through the entirety of this post. Even Jrodefeld agrees with me that property rights are an arbitrary fiction, and since that is the case I find myself wondering why should we care about property rights, in particular why should I care more about them than the wellbeing of people in general.

Another good question is "Why does first-use homesteading mean taxation is theft" but if he gets back I'm sure I'll see an answer.

Caros fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Oct 10, 2015

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Tacky-Ass Rococco
Sep 7, 2010

by R. Guyovich
Hey Caros: you're cool. But don't become Reverse Jrod by posting a billion words as response to his billion words. I like your effort posts on actual issues, but beyond that, gently caress him, just get a bunch of zingers in, that's what the thread is for.

Wanamingo
Feb 22, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
Oh, Jrod. Jrod, Jrod, Jrod...

go gently caress yourself

Caros
May 14, 2008

Jack of Hearts posted:

Hey Caros: you're cool. But don't become Reverse Jrod by posting a billion words as response to his billion words. I like your effort posts on actual issues, but beyond that, gently caress him, just get a bunch of zingers in, that's what the thread is for.

Little late to 'become' that since it's pretty much my shtick. Besides, I'm stuck in the backwoods part of fucknowhere. What else am I going to do?

Tacky-Ass Rococco
Sep 7, 2010

by R. Guyovich

Caros posted:

Besides, I'm stuck in the backwoods part of fucknowhere. What else am I going to do?

Fair enough.

Caros posted:

Little late to 'become' that since it's pretty much my shtick.

Your posts on e.g. health care were really good, it's just that this is some abstract and poorly-thought-out bullshit which doesn't deserve a deep response.

In fairness, though, we all gotta have hobbies, so whatever.

Caros
May 14, 2008

Jack of Hearts posted:

Fair enough.


Your posts on e.g. health care were really good, it's just that this is some abstract and poorly-thought-out bullshit which doesn't deserve a deep response.

In fairness, though, we all gotta have hobbies, so whatever.

I do go overboard at times I'll admit, but it's worth mentioning I banged that whole thing out in about thirty minutes including eating an orange. When its poorly-thought-out-bullshit I don't have to bring sources which cuts down on the actual time.

Plus I got to use Mongol Based Economics which I'm unreasonably proud of. :negative:

CARL MARK FORCE IV
Sep 2, 2007

I took a walk. And threw up in an English garden.
MBE is awesome because you're essentially doing Van Tillian Apologetics, but in reverse & aimed against a worshiper at the temple of mammon. It's super cool.

Jrode, you should seriously go back to your thread.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
It's faith based economic, libertarians are just dogmatic as gently caress. Or whatever that word is when you are a hard line rear end in a top hat. I wonder if they have any heretics.

If things don't get better you have to sacrifice more goats.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
A good example of the role of early states in the economy is the Incan empire. The Incas were probably the first imperial power to establish themselves in the Andes. They were incredibly expansionist and attempted to assimilate a lot of people. Their economy also had a limited internal market. All economic organization was controlled by a kind of extended family structure, that provided both social services and controlled labor. Taxes to the central state was not paid in currency, but in both surplus food and corvee labor/military service.

This kind of model wasn't unique to the Incas either - early sumerian and egyptian empires followed a similar structure. There are literal accounting records for the Third Dynasty of Ur which show, for groups of citizen, a running account balance of the amount of goods produced, which was converted in worker-days using standardized prices. If they fell below quotas, they would be forced to pay back that debt with civil service/indentured servitude.

A big mistake of libertarians is to assume that fiddling around with financial structures constitutes progress, but in truth it's technology that drives social organization. The industrial age begins not with the joint stock corporation, but the invention of the steam engine, itself the result of important advances in metallurgy. Even today, the most important advance of the finance industry is...the ATM.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


rudatron posted:

A good example of the role of early states in the economy is the Incan empire. The Incas were probably the first imperial power to establish themselves in the Andes. They were incredibly expansionist and attempted to assimilate a lot of people. Their economy also had a limited internal market. All economic organization was controlled by a kind of extended family structure, that provided both social services and controlled labor. Taxes to the central state was not paid in currency, but in both surplus food and corvee labor/military service.

This kind of model wasn't unique to the Incas either - early sumerian and egyptian empires followed a similar structure. There are literal accounting records for the Third Dynasty of Ur which show, for groups of citizen, a running account balance of the amount of goods produced, which was converted in worker-days using standardized prices. If they fell below quotas, they would be forced to pay back that debt with civil service/indentured servitude.

A big mistake of libertarians is to assume that fiddling around with financial structures constitutes progress, but in truth it's technology that drives social organization. The industrial age begins not with the joint stock corporation, but the invention of the steam engine, itself the result of important advances in metallurgy. Even today, the most important advance of the finance industry is...the ATM.

incas, sumerians, egyptians? sounds like brown people to me, you know they have an uncontrollable attraction to free stuff

jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

Fados posted:

Even Marx said societies had to go through capitalism to then get to socialism, so I don't see the problem there.

Exactly it's like, "I did find this apple first, but seeing that guy over in famine over there kinda makes me feel a bit bad, and since I feel we could probably get more apples I don't see why I coulnd't share it'." Obviously in severe scarcity environments all society goes to poo poo but if this is the premisse for libertarianism I guess it's the theory that describes a war ravaged, post apocalyptic world.

There are very few people today who actually advocate State ownership over the means of production. Anyone who has studied the matter for five minutes could tell you about the disaster of communism.

My comments were directed to those left-Progressives who advocate "social democracy" and cite examples such as Sweden and 1950s-1960s United States as great examples of the State "creating" great prosperity and building a middle class.

My point is that the wealth enjoyed in such oft cited countries came into existence almost entirely due to lengthy periods of laissez-faire. No welfare States, only property rights and a market economy. People who fail to credit the market economy for the wealth generated in places like Sweden are the people I am concerned with.


Second, and this should be quite obvious, having a legal right to property which you appropriated first from the state of nature of course does not keep any decent person from sharing the property which they have acquired.

It is entirely reasonable and moral for the person who finds an apple, and already has sufficient nutrition to sustain his own life, to share the food with a person who is starving. Such an act would be virtuous and worthy of praise.

But he still has the right to NOT do such a thing. And people of good will who witness him acting callously towards human suffering can choose to disassociate from that person.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

jrodefeld posted:

But he still has the right to NOT do such a thing. And people of good will who witness him acting callously towards human suffering can choose to disassociate from that person.

Or they can choose to take it from him and give it away. This is moral and correct.

jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:

What's the One True Libertarian doctrine say about returning stolen American land to its legitimate owners?

If any ancestors of Native American tribes can demonstrate evidence that certain property was stolen from their ancestors, then it should be returned to them. This can't be some abstract and vague assertion though. People who doubtless occupy the disputed lands today had nothing to do with previous Americans treatment of Native peoples. However, if they are in possession of stolen land, they can be made to move because the earlier user of a good has precedence. If the earlier user did not freely trade away land rights, then he or his direct descendants have a better claim to just ownership than subsequent owners even if they had no knowledge that they were being sold stolen goods.

Let's suppose I own a Rolex watch (I don't) and someone steals it from me. Then he sells it to you and you have no knowledge that the watch was stolen. But suppose I see you wearing the watch and I know that the watch is in fact my property and I can prove it. Maybe my initials are engraved on the back or something.

Should you be legally forced to give the watch back to me? Yes, absolutely. You were taken advantage of and cheated but the fact remains that the watch is my property because I didn't voluntarily part with it. Your beef is with the person who stole your money by selling you a stolen item that he had no right to sell. You have to have him arrested and forced to make restitution for your troubles.

This is the same principle that applies to land ownership, even land ownership claims that are very old.

But those who wish to overturn existing property rights must have the burden of proof on them to prove just ownership and the farther back in history the alleged theft took place the harder it is to prove it. The exception to this is property owned by the State. State property is inherently illegitimate because a "state" cannot homestead land. Only individuals can do that. States violate property rights and, even if the original owners whose land was stolen by the State cannot be identified, the property must still (according to libertarian theory) be transferred to private hands.

The only just way to do this, in my view, is to follow the principle of syndicalism. If no original owner (or descendant) can be identified as having homesteaded the land when it was seized by the State, then the second most just way to allocate the property into private hands is to grant it to the workers who work the land. The factories to the factory owners, the farms to the farmers, the State function buildings to the workers employed there, etc.

Since these people have worked on these lands, which are stolen, they have in theory homesteaded some legitimate claim to ownership if a previous just owner cannot be identified.

Tacky-Ass Rococco
Sep 7, 2010

by R. Guyovich

jrodefeld posted:

It is entirely reasonable and moral for the person who finds an apple, and already has sufficient nutrition to sustain his own life, to share the food with a person who is starving. Such an act would be virtuous and worthy of praise.

But he still has the right to NOT do such a thing. And people of good will who witness him acting callously towards human suffering can choose to disassociate from that person.

Today in "questions jrod will never answer": are you aware that other people have systems of morality which don't take the NAP to be their first axiom? And that under these systems, compelling people away from immoral behavior might be completely moral?

Tacky-Ass Rococco
Sep 7, 2010

by R. Guyovich

jrodefeld posted:

The only just way to do this, in my view, is to follow the principle of syndicalism. If no original owner (or descendant) can be identified as having homesteaded the land when it was seized by the State, then the second most just way to allocate the property into private hands is to grant it to the workers who work the land. The factories to the factory owners, the farms to the farmers, the State function buildings to the workers employed there, etc.

Jesus Christ.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
Hot drat, good find.

That's more significant than you know, because that little dodge there is a window into the jrodefelds thought process. There's no way he could have added 'owners' in there accidentally, he had to have recognized the pattern and then intentionally subverted it. So for those that read PJ's schizo thread, this is a little glitch in his 'outer narrative' (the structure meant to persuade, not actually be believed). Had it been his inner narrative, he would be forced to confront the contradiction. I'd like to know what really motivates him, but of course if you ask you'll get more blowhard rhetoric.

But you can get a glimpse if you look carefully: notice that he derails himself in the OP from his 'rising tide' rhetoric to attack democracy as an institution, with the method of attack focusing on the idea that 'no one has final say', therefore inefficiency. That's kind of a strange attack, isn't it? Not simply because it ignores actually existing cooperatives, but that somehow the same logic doesn't apply to shareholders.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and suggest jrodefeld is a libertarian because he has a fetish for Great Leaders, which conversely leads to a disdain for committees or popular rule, because these programs stifle individual ambitions (by design). The idea of 'power corrupting' is ignored, and substituted with 'being poor is corrupting' - giving rule to 'mobs' under this framework is suicidal (Bread and circuses! Flatscreen TVs! etc etc). Everything else, first-owner-principle, non-aggression-principle, whatever pseudo-scientific bullshit is deployed, is centered around the goal of justifying the demobilization of mass politics. To put the genie back in the bottle.

Until he can admit that, or reveal what his real motivations are, the game of this thread + the other thread is going to go on forever. Dodge, throw out decoys, convenient fairy tales, etc.

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

jrodefeld posted:

There are very few people today who actually advocate State ownership over the means of production. Anyone who has studied the matter for five minutes could tell you about the disaster of communism.

My comments were directed to those left-Progressives who advocate "social democracy" and cite examples such as Sweden and 1950s-1960s United States as great examples of the State "creating" great prosperity and building a middle class.

My point is that the wealth enjoyed in such oft cited countries came into existence almost entirely due to lengthy periods of laissez-faire. No welfare States, only property rights and a market economy. People who fail to credit the market economy for the wealth generated in places like Sweden are the people I am concerned with.

Laissez-faire is not the opposite of welfare state. Laissez-faire is an economy where the market is free from regulations, tariffs, subsidies, etc.

It's also not the systems they had at the time.

During their years of development the now industrialised countries did not have a laissez-faire policy because almost all of them with a few exceptions like the Netherlands put in place trade restrictions to make imports uncompetitive and build up their own industries. For instance in their 1816 tariff law almost all manufactured goods were subject to tariffs of around 35%,. The tariff of 1832 (The Tariff of abominations" raised this even higher, adding high tariffs to raw materials or low value-added manufacturers (liquor, fur, wool, help, etc). The tariff law of 1832 did a little bit to alleviate this, but not much, with only small cuts and still high protection of 40%+ for wooled manufactured goods and clothing.

This actually caused a crisis (The Nullifcation Crisis) with South Carolina refusing to accept the law. Due to this a year later a bill was passed which didn't do much up front but over the decade or so would gradually bring down the tariffs to about 20-25%. Of course as soon as the 10 years were up a new tariff (The Black Tariff) was introduced and raised the tariffs back to what they were before, around 40%.

Due to the different interest of the protectionist Nroth and free Trade South, this was a major issue which helepd bring about the war. in case you don't know the Nroth won and there were very high tariffs until the Underwood tariff of 1913 which loosened things a bit but kept the average tariff on manufactured goods still at around 25%. This quickly changed though with World War 1 right around the corner which saw a tariff increase to pay for it. Up Until 1945 the USA was one of the most protectionist if not THE most protectionist countries around.

That's not even mentioning other matters like the government support of agricultural research (Morill Act of 1862) and the establishment of government research institutes to help the private sector like the Bureau of Animal Industry and Bureau of Agricultural Chemistry or the government giving hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land to railway companies to fund and aid them in expanding West.

Similar things went on in most countries people randomly assume were Laissez-faire. The truth is, they had strong protectionist policies to allow them to build up their industries and only became more free-trade later one once they were fully developed and had strong established industries that could compete with others..

quote:

Second, and this should be quite obvious, having a legal right to property which you appropriated first from the state of nature of course does not keep any decent person from sharing the property which they have acquired.

It is entirely reasonable and moral for the person who finds an apple, and already has sufficient nutrition to sustain his own life, to share the food with a person who is starving. Such an act would be virtuous and worthy of praise.

But he still has the right to NOT do such a thing. And people of good will who witness him acting callously towards human suffering can choose to disassociate from that person.

So if these guys:



Think that these guys:



Have too much money and are not sharing it in the manner they should, then they're free to disassociate from them? And I can support them by disassociated from them too?

Can you see why people maybe think this will not work and is not a good system?

TLM3101
Sep 8, 2010



... Am I the only one who wants to hear more about the Homesteading Adventures of Caros and Stevicus; Roman Colonists at Large? Because I think that could be an amazing story. :v:


jrodefeld posted:


The only just way to do this, in my view, is to follow the principle of syndicalism. If no original owner (or descendant) can be identified as having homesteaded the land when it was seized by the State, then the second most just way to allocate the property into private hands is to grant it to the workers who work the land. The factories to the factory owners, the farms to the farmers, the State function buildings to the workers employed there, etc.


... workers. Factory workers. Seriously, you are missing the point of syndicalism so goddamned hard that I'm amazed it doesn't register on seismic sensors the world over. Explain, pray, why factories should go to the owners, whereas farms should go to farmers or the "state function buildings" to the workers there? What makes factories qualitatively different here, hmm? Don't be shy, come on. Explain why factories should go to the owners, while everything else, apparently, should go to the workers? Because I can guaran-loving-tee you that the factory owner is not 'mixing his labour' with the goods produced on the floor!

Unless rudatron is right and you're just jacking off to the idea that a Great Leader will spawn once we get enough military or culture points, in which case... keep on keepin' on, I guess.

Edit: You know what? gently caress it. Last time, JRod ducked out of the thread before taking a crack at a question that I posed to him, so in light of the above, I'm going to repeat it for the third time, but with a bit of a wrinkle:



Imagine a small company - let's call it "Carl's Clothing and Couture Purveyance" ( or CCCP for short, since Carl's a bit of a card ) - that is being operated along no particular ideological lines. We are dealing with a hypothetical perfect, frictionless sphere moving in a perfect vacuum here. Now, in addition to Carl who funded the company and took the initial risk of getting a loan and starting the company, CCCP employs five people, all paid on the usual wage-scale for the area in which it operates, the company follows all local, state, and federal laws to the letter, and it has enjoyed a steady period of modest, but increased customer satisfaction and sales which have resulted in a reasonable though not spectacular profit year after year. This has allowed Carl to repay the loan faster than anticipated, and he has recouped his initial investment, and is debt-free.

Once the relevant accounting has been done, it turns out that after everything, including re-investment into the company, has been accounted for and all expenses paid, there is, once again, a tidy profit for the fiscal year. Let's say on the order of $100 000. The amount isn't important though. It could be $1 or $1 000 000.

My question is simply this: Who is responsible for that profit?

Before you answer, keep in mind that these are the stipulations I am making:

  • The company is doing reasonably well.
  • Carl - the one who initially started the company - has recouped his investment in full.
  • Carl is not a follower of any -ism. He is not a Libertarian, Communist, Anarchist, Socialist, Fascist, Nazi, Liberal or Conservative. He simply wants to run his company the best way possible and make a living. While this technically makes him a capitalist he's not particularly dogmatic about it.
  • All employees are paid in accordance with the applicable laws.
  • Re-investment of capital into the company has already been accounted for.

You will also, I hope, note that I have gone out of my way to put up a scenario that is at once as plausible and as ideologically neutral as I can, so this is the closest thing we'll ever get to level ground.

TLM3101 fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Oct 10, 2015

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


TLM3101 posted:

... Am I the only one who wants to hear more about the Homesteading Adventures of Caros and Stevicus; Roman Colonists at Large? Because I think that could be an amazing story. :v:


... workers. Factory workers. Seriously, you are missing the point of syndicalism so goddamned hard that I'm amazed it doesn't register on seismic sensors the world over. Explain, pray, why factories should go to the owners, whereas farms should go to farmers or the "state function buildings" to the workers there? What makes factories qualitatively different here, hmm? Don't be shy, come on. Explain why factories should go to the owners, while everything else, apparently, should go to the workers? Because I can guaran-loving-tee you that the factory owner is not 'mixing his labour' with the goods produced on the floor!

Unless rudatron is right and you're just jacking off to the idea that a Great Leader will spawn once we get enough military or culture points, in which case... keep on keepin' on, I guess.

I don't think he's aware that most actual premodern farm workers did not own the land they worked and thus are exactly analogous to the factory workers.

That is no coincidence; I've long pointed out that Austrianism's ideal world would look strikingly similar to classical Western European feudalism, with sovereignity and property rights being conflated into essentially the same thing

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Oct 10, 2015

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




jrodefeld posted:



But those who wish to overturn existing property rights must have the burden of proof on them to prove just ownership and the farther back in history the alleged theft took place the harder it is to prove it. The exception to this is property owned by the State. State property is inherently illegitimate because a "state" cannot homestead land. Only individuals can do that. States violate property rights and, even if the original owners whose land was stolen by the State cannot be identified, the property must still (according to libertarian theory) be transferred to private hands.

The only just way to do this, in my view, is to follow the principle of syndicalism. If no original owner (or descendant) can be identified as having homesteaded the land when it was seized by the State, then the second most just way to allocate the property into private hands is to grant it to the workers who work the land. The factories to the factory owners, the farms to the farmers, the State function buildings to the workers employed there, etc.

Since these people have worked on these lands, which are stolen, they have in theory homesteaded some legitimate claim to ownership if a previous just owner cannot be identified.
What constitutes 'homesteading'?
Many members of my family are/were tenant farmers, including my dad. They work the land, but don't own it (though they do own the livestock). The Laird owns it. He inherited it. His family owned it for a couple centuries. He has never done anything resembling work on the land. Who is the 'homesteader', the Laird or my dad?
It's estimated that half of my country's land is owned by fewer than 500 individuals. Some are old money, some are foreign tycoons who live abroad. Are they homesteaders? If they are, what are they doing that the state doesn't in publicly owned land?

E: to the best of my knowledge, that Laird's ancestor's bought the land from a previous family, who were given it by the King a few centuries earlier, so I guess that's the point it was illegitimately seized? I don't know who owned it before, but we're talking late medieval times here and the land has been settled since prehistoric times so the very concept of there even being an original homesteader let alone finding their descendants is ridiculous.

On the subject of human and property rights being the same:
In my country, we have the right to walk through land we don't own. So long as they don't cause any damage, the Laird can't stop hill walkers from going on a hiking trip on his land. Is this not a conflict between freedom of movement and the right to do what you want with your land? Which right should win out and why?

bitterandtwisted fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Oct 10, 2015

Tokamak
Dec 22, 2004

So this whole thread exists because the OP can't understand how people can fairly share a coconut tree? Fairness being a type of judgement that young children can make.

So instead of government welfare, the OP decides to come up with their own self imposed form of welfare where they 'own' the coconut tree for 'reasons'. This allows themselves to justify leeching off the local community without having to give anything back. Bring on the sovereign coconut death panels.

MY COCONUTS

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

bitterandtwisted posted:

What constitutes 'homesteading'?
Many members of my family are/were tenant farmers, including my dad. They work the land, but don't own it (though they do own the livestock). The Laird owns it. He inherited it. His family owned it for a couple centuries. He has never done anything resembling work on the land. Who is the 'homesteader', the Laird or my dad?
It's estimated that half of my country's land is owned by fewer than 500 individuals. Some are old money, some are foreign tycoons who live abroad. Are they homesteaders? If they are, what are they doing that the state doesn't in publicly owned land?

E: to the best of my knowledge, that Laird's ancestor's bought the land from a previous family, who were given it by the King a few centuries earlier, so I guess that's the point it was illegitimately seized? I don't know who owned it before, but we're talking late medieval times here and the land has been settled since prehistoric times so the very concept of there even being an original homesteader let alone finding their descendants is ridiculous.

On the subject of human and property rights being the same:
In my country, we have the right to walk through land we don't own. So long as they don't cause any damage, the Laird can't stop hill walkers from going on a hiking trip on his land. Is this not a conflict between freedom of movement and the right to do what you want with your land? Which right should win out and why?

His weird Homesteading thing only applies when a person goes to a completely unclaimed or abandoned piece of land and starts using it in a productive way, like living on it or farming or building a factory. Nobody's been a homesteader in Scotland for a millennium or more. Some prehistoric folks moved into the area and mixed their labor with the land, establishing a permanent property right, and it has been peacefully and fairly passed down ever since in accordance with the Non Aggression Principle. Now I know you're thinking "wait, how do we know that all of those trades were peaceful? Human history is an unfathomably violent tradition of subjugation and invasion, and if even one transition was done through force or fraud, every owner after that is illegitimate!" To that I say, loving prove it, statist.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

And how does homesteading and first-use cope with the enclosure movement? Should all commonly held land that was illegitimately taken by force be expropriated and returned to the communities it was taken from?

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment I'm alive, I pray for death!

bitterandtwisted posted:

What constitutes 'homesteading'?

To Jrod? Being white, and heavily-enough armed to turf indigenous peoples off their land. All the rest is post-hoc justification.

Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Oct 10, 2015

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

And how does homesteading and first-use cope with the enclosure movement? Should all commonly held land that was illegitimately taken by force be expropriated and returned to the communities it was taken from?

No such thing as "commonly held land," son. If that were a real thing that existed instead of the obvious and universal Finders Keepers Standard, humanity would have died out, like Jrodimus said. We clearly aren't all dead, so QED.

Polygynous
Dec 13, 2006
welp
Hi OP, I've studied libertarianism for five minutes and declared it a disaster. Rebuttal?

Pener Kropoopkin
Jan 30, 2013

spoon0042 posted:

Hi OP, I've studied libertarianism for five minutes and declared it a disaster. Rebuttal?

*the sound of a wet fart*

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Caros posted:

I do go overboard at times I'll admit, but it's worth mentioning I banged that whole thing out in about thirty minutes including eating an orange. When its poorly-thought-out-bullshit I don't have to bring sources which cuts down on the actual time.

Plus I got to use Mongol Based Economics which I'm unreasonably proud of. :negative:

The post you just made was most excellent. I read the whole thing and it brought me to tears.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

*the sound of a wet fart*

Libertarianism in general.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth
Caros, you beautiful bastard, don't let anyone ever tell you to stop effotposting at Jrod. They are only trying to lead you towards the dark side of shitposting.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




jrodefeld posted:

If any ancestors of Native American tribes can demonstrate evidence that certain property was stolen from their ancestors, then it should be returned to them.

I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Alhazred posted:

I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen.

Are we counting the bits that were completely depopulated from the Columbian Exchange?

Sharkie
Feb 4, 2013

by Fluffdaddy

jrodefeld posted:

It is entirely reasonable and moral for the person who finds an apple, and already has sufficient nutrition to sustain his own life, to share the food with a person who is starving. Such an act would be virtuous and worthy of praise.

But he still has the right to NOT do such a thing. And people of good will who witness him acting callously towards human suffering can choose to disassociate from that person.

This is a tired point that's been brought up before, even in this very thread, but I'm drinking coffee and killing time before I start my day so I'll bring it up anyways:

Says who?

I say people who need food have the right to take food from a person that has plenty. It's axiomatic. There. Now I've made a claim that rests on a foundation that is equally as solid as yours (despite the fact I used 1/20 the number of words). Jrode do you understand how you can't objectively prove me wrong, and what this says about the nature of rights?

Alhazred posted:

I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen.

I think you'll find that just because a contract was written in a language not spoken by one of the parties, signed at the barrel of a gun, and later broken by the people who wrote it, doesn't mean it's not totally valid :v:

team overhead smash
Sep 2, 2006

Team-Forest-Tree-Dog:
Smashing your way into our hearts one skylight at a time

Alhazred posted:

I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen.

I'm guessing his argument will be they held the land in common rather than as glorious private property they didn't actually claim it, so sucks to be them.

Hello Sailor
May 3, 2006

we're all mad here

Caros posted:

As a former libertarian I think I can give a pretty solid definition of what property is from the libertarian viewpoint.

What changed you, if it's not too personal a question?

I remember years ago that I was starting to think that Ron Paul had some really great ideas when a retired treasury agent of my acquaintance sat me down and politely explained to me that I was being an idiot. I'm grateful for that, because in an alternate universe, I could be rereading Atlas Shrugged for the umpteenth time right now.

Vitamin P
Nov 19, 2013

Truth is game rigging is more difficult than it looks pls stay ded
Jrod if a group of people have been playing Monopoly for an hour and then a new player joins does the new player have the same chance of winning as the others?

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

Alhazred posted:

I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen.
No, no, you see, you can't do that. The indigenous person must affirmatively prove that the land was their direct ancestor's and their direct ancestors alone. And if they can't point to the exact dimensions of the land being claimed, and prove that those exact dimensions are legally correct, and prove that the land was stolen, then they have no claim. JRod is well aware of the practical impossibility of any of this.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Oct 10, 2015

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

jrodefeld posted:

If any ancestors of Native American tribes can demonstrate evidence that certain property was stolen from their ancestors, then it should be returned to them.

It's called a History text book.

Juffo-Wup
Jan 13, 2005

Pillbug
Pictured: an abstract and vague assertion

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Juffo-Wup posted:

Pictured: an abstract and vague assertion



But could they prove that they owned their settlements at Wounded Knee?

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paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Descendants. You meant descendants Jrod. You copied and pasted that bit of response from somewhere didn't you? You made the exact same basic mistake last time you posted that particular bit of idiocy.


And if I'm not mistaken we actually do have historical records saying which tribes owned what land. For some like the Cherokee, who actually did have families owning specific property, you could probably find records of who owned what as well.

I assume you also support those tribes being compensated for all the wealth being illegally extracted from their lands for centuries?

Edit: As an aside why do I keep seeing people make the mistake of saying ancestors when they obviously mean descendants? It's not just jrod that I've seen gently caress this up. It's like saying North when you meant South.

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