Thoughts?
Property is created through homesteading. The state does not homestead, therefore it has no legitimate authority on the territory it claims.
Jackson LaRose: What is the Difference Between Territorial Property and a State?
What is the Difference Between Territorial Property and a State?
Good question.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Raudsarw:Property is created through homesteading. The state does not homestead, therefore it has no legitimate authority on the territory it claims.
What do you make of this? Homesteading? Something else?
I. Ryan:Good question.
Thanks.
I don't quite believe in territorial property, but... still, I am sure there is some difference even between that and a State. As someone mentioned, the state doesn't have legitimate authority on the territory it claims. But then again, I don't believe it is possible at all to legitimately claim thousands of square miles of land..
Relevant to my interests..
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Property in land does not entail a dual-law/morality, a territorial monopolist of law and security does. I am working on an ethical theory of property that defines property in exactly these terms. The boundary between public and private property is the boundary of unitary law. In order for society to be subject to unitary law/morality, public property must be governed by a unitary law, that is, there is no one agent with special privileges with respect to the use of public property. Public property is that which is available for anyone's use and so no one can claim special ethical privileges with respect to its use, that is, public property is restricted to ethically symmetrical uses. This restriction is not enforced by an agent of overwhelming power but, rather, by the force of the private property order itself. Blocking a public thoroughfare is a tortious offense in itself and anyone affected by your actions may sue.
Private property, on the other hand, entails a moral distinction between the owner (privileged) and all others (unprivileged). Within the boundaries of private property, there is an ethical duality that applies. You may rightfully unlock your door. No one else may rightfully unlock your door, even if they have key but not your permission. That's because it's your door. Doors are not like public thoroughfares. You may block someone from passing through your door and, in fact, someone attempting to force their way past you into your house is committing a tortious offense because they are violating your privileged status with respect to your property.
Communism can be understood as a mistaken, naive extension of unitary law past the boundary between public and private property. I have no right to prevent you from entering my house because it's as much your house as mine. I have as much right to block a public thoroughfare as anybody else has so that if I choose to park my tractor-trailer across it, that constitutes no offense to anyone. Of course, such a social order is so incoherent as to be unimaginable.
But communism has always been a vehicle for statism, in practice. Statism can be understood as an augmentation of the above situation. The king (state) not only imposes ethical duality on his property, but also on all public property (the king (state) may direct the use of public property and no one else may) and also on all the formerly private property of everyone else. In other words, everything is the king's (state's) and we have it by gift from him. In the movie Das Lieben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), it is mentioned that, in East Germany, even the furniture in your house was stamped with a serial #, as a reminder that it belongs to the State's inventory.
This is the difference. Private property minimizes ethical duality to only the extents necessary to avoid conflict on the basis of the facts of human nature. The private property order arises by custom not imposition. Communism claims a sort of moral high ground by abolishing all ethical duality but at the cost of being utterly unable to avoid conflict (you can walk into my house any time you feel like it). Statism is the imposition of a single ethical duality - the king's - onto everyone. The statist property order arises only through imposition, not custom or willing acceptance. Hence my sigline.
Clayton -
I'm not sure you can block a public thoroughfares as is. But it does raise a few interesting questions:
What does it mean to say "ours."
Assuming it means as much yours as mine, can you litigate against your own partnerships?
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Clayton:Statism is the imposition of a single ethical duality - the king's - onto everyone. The statist property order arises only through imposition, not custom or willing acceptance.
But to argue this is to imply that the physical matter in question is not, in fact, the King's rightful property. Why/how do you derive this conclusion?
In a sense, perhaps there is no difference between the state's property inour current world and private property in an "ideal" world, but there is a definite one in our current one. Currently, only states are truly "sovereign" and could be said to have undisputed claims to property, aside of internal struggles with rebels and external ones with foreign enemies. This undisputed nature of title is denied to private property holders, who are always under the consistent threat of "rightful expropriation at the hands of the sovereign.
From this we can discern another difference. The state, additionally and implicitly "owns" its subjects, much like slaves, from which it extracts tribute under threat of violence and imprisonment.
Hence in an anarchocapitalistic world, the pattern of ownership for private individuals would be equivalent and complete, much the same way as it is for current sovereigns, without "private property" in the current sense which can be taken at the arbitrary whims of the ruler, and is at best granted to the individual. Furthermore, self ownership would be supreme, and every man would be "king" on his own "turf."
Whether and how such a world can be realised, is of course another matter.
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
Jackson LaRose wrote: What do you make of this? Homesteading? Something else?
If I steal your money, and then buy a nice sweater with that money, is the sweater mine?
abskebabs:Hence in an anarchocapitalistic world, the pattern of ownership for private individuals would be equivalent and complete, much the same way as it is for current sovereigns
So, you consider anarcho-capitalism a decentralization of statism to its logical conclusion (the individual as the state)?
Nielsio:If I steal your money
Define "steal".
is the sweater mine
Define "mine".
Jackson LaRose:Hence in an anarchocapitalistic world, the pattern of ownership for private individuals would be equivalent and complete, much the same way as it is for current sovereigns
In a certain sense, though I think I have to be careful how I state this lest I be misinterpreted.
To me, the characteristic of the state is the eminence of its claim to property that should be held by private individuals ot itself. Hence, in an anarchocapitalist world one would not have a 2 ranked system of supreme sovereign and private whimsical claims to property, but rather that the private claims to property would be sovereign in themselves, as well as that of self ownership.
Secondly, and key to recognise is the voluntary nature of such a system, with valid contracts for whatever purposes only being. Hence only those who explicitly entered into contracts with landholders would be liable to their terms, so no vague bullshit implied "social contract" on non-participatory parties. Similiarly defense, and legal services would be provisioned privately along the lines already envisioned by Hoppe, Molinari and Rothbard.
Another empirical factor, we would see much more of I feel, in the absence of the current statist paradigm would be far more exchange and a genuine market for these sovereign properties. At the moment, one does not see much of this outside of royal marriages and annexations.
abskebabs:To me, the characteristic of the state is the eminence of its claim to property that should be held by private individuals ot itself.
Why "should" the rightful title to the territory in question be held by individuals rather than the state?
Hence, in an anarchocapitalist world one would not have a 2 ranked system of supreme sovereign and private whimsical claims to property, but rather that the private claims to property would be sovereign in themselves, as well as that of self ownership.
You do not believe in rental or lease?
Secondly, and key to recognise is the voluntary nature of such a system, with valid contracts for whatever purposes only being. Hence only those who explicitly entered into contracts with landholders would be liable to their terms
When should an individuals be approached by the landholder to confirm such a contract?
Similiarly defense, and legal services would be provisioned privately along the lines already envisioned by Hoppe, Molinari and Rothbard.
define "private".
Why do you predict this?
Jackson LaRose:Why "should" the rightful title to the territory in question be held by individuals rather than the state?
There is a danger of a semantic confusion. As long as a state is not coercively breaching the property rights of others it is no longer a "state." In that case, it would be legitimate.
Jackson LaRose:You do not believe in rental or lease?
I do, but only for individuals who explicitly and voluntarily entered into the contract.
Jackson LaRose:When should an individuals be approached by the landholder to confirm such a contract?
I do not know... This seems to raise more issues than I anticipated.
Jackson LaRose:Why do you predict this?
Private property is already exchanged on the market, I see no reason why this would not continue when these property titles are no longer threatened by a coercive monopoly. On the other hand, I do not know why there is not more of a slave market among states, perhaps that's the point of elections.
I'll have to think about this more carefully, your thread has been something of a wakeup call...
Clayton: Property in land does not entail a dual-law/morality, a territorial monopolist of law and security does. I am working on an ethical theory of property that defines property in exactly these terms. The boundary between public and private property is the boundary of unitary law. In order for society to be subject to unitary law/morality, public property must be governed by a unitary law, that is, there is no one agent with special privileges with respect to the use of public property. Public property is that which is available for anyone's use and so no one can claim special ethical privileges with respect to its use, that is, public property is restricted to ethically symmetrical uses. This restriction is not enforced by an agent of overwhelming power but, rather, by the force of the private property order itself. Blocking a public thoroughfare is a tortious offense in itself and anyone affected by your actions may sue. Private property, on the other hand, entails a moral distinction between the owner (privileged) and all others (unprivileged). Within the boundaries of private property, there is an ethical duality that applies. You may rightfully unlock your door. No one else may rightfully unlock your door, even if they have key but not your permission. That's because it's your door. Doors are not like public thoroughfares. You may block someone from passing through your door and, in fact, someone attempting to force their way past you into your house is committing a tortious offense because they are violating your privileged status with respect to your property.
What if we just call the "public property" the private property of the people making up the state?
Well, "rightful" and "property" have both pre-legal and legal meanings. I will simply say that in neither sense is my body or the things I produce with my body or voluntarily exchange with others the property of the king. The only sense in which they are the king's property is by the king's superior force and his own evaluation administered through his courts who impose what the king calls "law" onto me and others.
What if we just call "public property" the private property of the people making up the state?
Well, I think that's how most people today think of public property. It's in this kind of pseudo-government-owned status ... it's "all of ours" yet it's really the government's. I'm talking about giving a positive account of how the ideas of public and private property originally arose. Essentially, each self-interested individual has an unbounded capacity for special-pleading, that is, imposition of his own way of looking at things. In my view, the whole world and everything in it is mine. But that goes for everybody else, too. Each of us are Yertle the Turtle King.
It turns out, however, that we all have fists and can wield weapons to keep others from actualizing their Yertle-like egos onto us. Over time, a concept of possession emerged which is a sort of "truce"... I don't take what's in your hand and you don't take what's in my hand, and nobody gets hurt. The scope of my Yertle-ego has been scaled back to smaller and smaller domains until it is only the things I carry on my person and the territory over which I roam that I regard as "mine." But the process doesn't stop here, the concept of public property pushes it back even further so that the territories that are hunted by many or the paths that are walked by many or the streams that are used by many cannot be owned, either. No one can establish sufficient control over these resources to afford to exclude all others from their use (private property), so they remain public property. And this pushes the scope of my Yertle-ego even smaller so that it is only the ground on which I directly dwell that is "mine" - this is the emergence of property in land.
So, public property originated in convention in the private property order, not from government exclusion. Only very recently has the idea of blurring "public" with "State" arisen. In fact, this is the essence of democracy.
Jackson LaRose: Thoughts?
I think that the difference between territorial property and state property is this.
A territorial property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to leave, whereas a state property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to stay. A territorial property owner can say, do A, or I will force you to you leave, and then you aren't my problem anymore; but a state property owner can say, do A, or I will make you stay in a certain part of my property, namely one of my prisons. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from the fact that his property is attractive to other people, and he can choose to help them or not; but a state property owner gets all of his power from the fact that certain parts of his property are very unattractive to other people, and he can choose to screw them over or not.
We can see this idea in the anarcho-capitalism of Bob Murphy. He thinks that prisons in an anarcho-capitalist society would simply be the last territorial property in the society which would still let a violent criminal hang out on. If all of the private property surrounding the "prison" was owned by people not wanting anything to do with you, it would be "legitimate" for the "prison" to not only act as a hotel for you, but also act as a protector of the private property owners surrounding you, by not letting you get onto the property of the people who don't want anything to do with you. But that would of course make it so you couldn't leave the "hotel", unless the people in society forgave you for whatever you did. This means that violent criminals could also just choose to leave society if they want. And it means that the prisons could be as nice to live in or shitty to live in as the people supporting them would tolerate.
abskebabs:As long as a state is not coercively breaching the property rights of others it is no longer a "state." In that case, it would be legitimate.
Do you consider the current states of the world as illegitimate?
Like this?
This seems to raise more issues than I anticipated.
It's a slippery slope, isn't it?
LOL, thanks. This is the kind of junk that bugs me all the time. Glad someone else could be bugged by it too!
None at all. Provided that the State stops enforcing eminent domain and blocking free exits, it would be indistinguishable from any property holder. Thus, as long as property rights are homogeneously applied for everyone (i.e. the state doesn’t get to cheat), there is no differcne between the state and a property holder.
I. Ryan: I think that the difference between territorial property and state property is this. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to leave, whereas a state property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to stay. A territorial property owner can say, do A, or I will force you to you leave, and then you aren't my problem anymore; but a state property owner can say, do A, or I will make you stay in a certain part of my property, namely one of my prisons. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from the fact that his property is attractive to other people, and he can choose to help them or not; but a state property owner gets all of his power from the fact that certain parts of his property are very unattractive to other people, and he can choose to screw them over or not.
Clayton:The only sense in which they are the king's property is by the king's superior force and his own evaluation administered through his courts who impose what the king calls "law" onto me and others.
Yet the geographic locale in which yourself and your possessions reside can rightfully be considered the king's?
I. Ryan:A territorial property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to leave, whereas a state property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to stay. A territorial property owner can say, do A, or I will force you to you leave, and then you aren't my problem anymore; but a state property owner can say, do A, or I will make you stay in a certain part of my property, namely one of my prisons. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from the fact that his property is attractive to other people, and he can choose to help them or not; but a state property owner gets all of his power from the fact that certain parts of his property are very unattractive to other people, and he can choose to screw them over or not.
See exile.
Merlin:Thus, as long as property rights are homogeneously applied for everyone (i.e. the state doesn’t get to cheat), there is no differcne between the state and a property holder.
But this begs the question,
How to enforce property rights?
Yeah, I mean, I think this is exactly why we have had governments from the dawn of history. There is this parasitic analogy of property in the mind of the masses which has always formed the basis of the power of our lords and masters. The king cannot be everywhere at once, so he cannot actually enforce his property claims. He cannot even profitably directly employ enough people to enforce them. Hence, he must benefit from the willing cooperation of a good deal of the public. This is de la Boetie 101.
The problem is that, while this is a wonderfully accurate description of the state of affairs, it does nothing to tell us if there are improvements that could be made to the social order. And even without having a selfless concern for the wider good of humanity as a whole, we can look at the conflict between the interests of an individual in what is his own property (in both a pre-legal and customary legal sense) and the interests of the king (state) in that property and see that the king's successful establishment of his rule is actually a huge source of conflict in society. Government is nothing but steady-state conquest, see my sigline - to govern is to conquer. It seems to me that unless you are willing to say that raiding parties are good or efficient then you can't consistently say that government is good or efficient.
Jackson LaRose: See exile.
Well, if that is the only power which a state uses, I don't see how it we could consider it a state anymore.
Think Blue: I. Ryan: I think that the difference between territorial property and state property is this. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to leave, whereas a state property owner gets all of his power from being able to force you to stay. A territorial property owner can say, do A, or I will force you to you leave, and then you aren't my problem anymore; but a state property owner can say, do A, or I will make you stay in a certain part of my property, namely one of my prisons. A territorial property owner gets all of his power from the fact that his property is attractive to other people, and he can choose to help them or not; but a state property owner gets all of his power from the fact that certain parts of his property are very unattractive to other people, and he can choose to screw them over or not.
Both the state, and property owners, maintain their claims by duress or consensus.
This is apparently a Man Talk Forum: No Women Allowed!
Telpeurion's Disliked Person of the Week: David Kramer
OK, let's clear the air.
Property is logically antecedent to the king. That is, there was rightful possession long before there were kings. When a pretender to kingship comes and takes what is mine, there is a dispute. Now, this dispute might be resolved by the king's killing me with his overwhelming force. If so, questions of right and wrong are moot. There's just conquest and if I was smart, I would never have objected to the king's plunder in the first place. Or, perhaps I'm a wealthy man with plenty of armed servants and I can do battle with the king. Then, this is an amoral question of strategy - who can beat whom in battle? But if the king is not willing to do battle and would prefer to settle the matter without arms, then we are dealing with a question of law and the king isn't really a king anyway, he's just another asshole trying to get whatever he can.
When you ask whether my property can be "rightfully" the king's, you are asking a legal/moral question but kings are precisely those people who have no regard for legal/moral questions as a result of the overwhelming power they possess with respect to their subject population. What is the point in discussing whether the king has a "rightful" claim to my property? Either he has sufficient power to take it no matter what I think about it, like the IRS, or he doesn't, in which case, he must either accept the customary laws governing the nature of property and property rights or sue for some alternate terms. And, if he has to stoop to this level then, by definition, he's not a king.
Telpeurion: Both the state, and property owners, maintain their claims by duress or consensus.
Can you elaborate?
Any abstraction like territory requires that others recognize it. You can either force, or use threat of force, to get others to acknowledge it, or you can convince them, if they are not already convinced for their own reasons, that your ownership is legitimate.
Telpeurion: Any abstraction like territory requires that others recognize it. You can either force, or use threat of force, to get others to acknowledge it, or you can convince them, if they are not already convinced for their own reasons, that your ownership is legitimate.
Do you disagree with the difference which I outlined; or are you just throwing that out there?
I. Ryan:Well, if that is the only power which a state uses, I don't see how it we could consider it a state anymore.
So there were no states before there was jails. What about slavery?
Jackson LaRose: So there were no states before there was jails.
So there were no states before there was jails.
Prisons were just an example.
Jackson LaRose: What about slavery?
What about slavery?
Can a slave leave if he wants to?
Clayton,
What is property? To me, it is morally justified possession. Which set of norms one wishes to use when determining which method(s) of appropriation, retention, etc. of physical matter is unimportant at this point.
Descriptively, what is the distinction between a landowner and a prince, or a corporation and Parliment? If it simply a question of who's ideology is "true" and which is "false", it isn't much different than a religious schism. On the other hand, if there is some value-free distinction, I am all ears (or eyes).
I. Ryan:Prisons were just an example.
Then I may've misinterpreted your point. I thought jails were the distinction.
Not without revolt.
Telepurion:Any abstraction like territory requires that others recognize it. You can either force, or use threat of force, to get others to acknowledge it, or you can convince them, if they are not already convinced for their own reasons, that your ownership is legitimate.
+1. If this is the birth of the state, the question becomes,
How can one prevent sufficient state-forming accumulations of force, and the rhetorical means of legitimization?
I really am baffled how you guys can manage to characterize the obvious distinction between natural ownership and conquest as "ideological". Again, I will try to be as clear as possible. The word "property" is overloaded, so I will use some synonyms with definitions to provide clarity.
First, there is the idea that conflict-free use of physical resources requires division of those resources, in space and time, along boundaries of exclusive use. Another way to say this is that every physical resource is either unused, in exclusive use, or disputed, that is, there exists a conflict over its use. Two people cannot both swing the same axe at the same time. Two people cannot both breathe the very same air molecules at the same time. And so on. I will call these physical resources exclusive-use zones (EUZ) for the sake of discussion. EUZs are abstractions. Our capacity to engage in these boundary abstractions is not unique, however. Other animals have this capacity, as well. This is all value-free.
Second, there is the idea of rightful possession or ownership of property. Property is inherently normative in the sense that it is a criticism of the state of affairs as it is and a normative assertion that another state of affairs ought to hold instead. If I steal your wallet, your property claim against me is of the form, "He has exclusive control over the EUZ comprising my wallet but he ought to return the wallet to me."
Too much is made of the distinction between positive and normative statements, however. Any normative statement can be converted to positive form by noting that normative statements are an expression of a subjective mental state. "X ought to do Y" means that I am more pleased with the state of affairs where X has done Y than I am with the state of affairs where X has not done Y. So, if you say, "Clayton ought to give me the wallet" you are simply expressing your preference for the state of affairs where I have given my wallet to you over the state of affairs where I have not. Or, more generally, if you say, "I believe that someone who has taken a wallet which is not rightfully theirs (where "rightfully" is defined by conditions A, B and C) ought to give it back" you are simply expressing a generalized preference.
What makes normative statements different than other kinds of subjective preferences is that their domain of action is often physical force or violence. Property emerged from the preference of individuals to fight rather than give up what they considered to be rightfully their own. The rules that have emerged are the result of many such battles fought and either won or lost by the attacker or defender. The rules are also fairly symmetrical. For example, any man may not walk up to any woman and remove her purse from her person despite the fact that any man chosen randomly has a significant physical advantage compared to any woman chosen randomly. The capacity for physical violence alone is not sufficient to explain the rule set which has emerged for the negotiation of boundaries between EUZs (property boundaries).