And so he told me a parable:
Forestman was wandering through the forest one day when he came upon a pond. He sat down to take in its beauty. Shortly after Propertyman came out with his title and a gun threatening to shoot F if he didn't leave the premises or pay for the right to stay. He said the land is his according to the lawful authority in town. The question is; how is that relationship voluntary? And how is Forestman the aggressor (he has to be in ancap theory)?
Any thoughts?
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Change "pond" to "Propertyman's bedroom" and see if the story changes in a meaningful way.
Yes surely, i understand to not be so black and white and think all private property, this or that....
But then can one OWN a forest or a piece of nature?
BTW, im not a syndicalist, nor a communist, but im just wondering why the anarcho left HATES capitalism so much.
Can you own a house? If so, how? Can you own your body? If so, how?
Own a house: build it or buy it,
Own yourself: (actually not sure)
But how can you own something that grows out of the ground? You can try to buy it, but from whom?
You can try to build it: i.e planting, but this is a private park, what about forests that grow naturally from the ground?
Do you own your lawn? Is it right for someone to live in your front yard? Why not?
My lawn, I grew.
People own things that they produce, whether they produce it directly, or indirectly through purchase.
I meant things like forests, where it grows naturally, and no one planted it.
Thoughts: it's pretty much bullshit that P can kick F off of the pond. I understand the lefties' indignance at the permission of such a situation under private property. P wasn't even using it, why can't F fish there? I don't know. It goes against me morally, which is why I can only accept a rule-consequentialist position. That's the price of a prosperous civilization. This example is an extremity of all the implications of private property, so if P couldn't kick F off the pond then the precedent is set that P cannot be an 'absentee owner', which would be a severe retardation of economic growth and likely lead to an upward shift in the originary interest rate.
Given the trade-off there, it's better to 'sell your soul'. Mankind is not owed any solutions, that last puzzle piece never has to show up.
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
I could also argue that the ownership of private parks and the competition ebtween them will drive down prices which will make it so basically anyone can take a look at the wildforest. Also there can be private charities owning reservations, etc etc.
also it is unpopular to kick someone out like that which would drive down business etc etc
but i think the above points take away the philosophical basis of it doesnt it?
Of course P can own some or all of a forest. Have you ever driven around Washington State or Oregon? If so, where ever you enter a forest, you will almost always see a sign that says "This forest is a Weyerhouser Project" posted right out in fromt. There are so many, it looks like there would be no forests without some company to protect and nurish them. And this is a wonderful example of capitalism joined with environmentalism. Where do you think lumber comes from. As for the pond, there are so many Weyerhouser Projects, a few surely must have a pond.
When land is privately owned, the owner has a very real interest in protecting the environmental value of the land. When land is publically owned, it becomes a "tragedy of the commons", which has caused Yellowstone to close many areas to the public.
My personal gripe is that Weyerhouser or other companies can get tax credits, lobbied by the environmentalists, but I, as an individual, can not. Shouldn't credits for no air polution, no energy polution, solar panels, windmills, trees that breathe in CO2, or whatever, go to individuals as well as companies?
Honestly I think the the 'ostracism' argument is unreliable, in that it depends on an active communal altruism, which is much less dependable than simple self-interest.
The philosophical basis of what? Property? As far as its justification extends past enabling a market system, it's unimportant to me. Meaning, you can adore the market system but you don't have to think that P is justified in doing what he does. He's just playing by the rules.
From a review of Butler Shaffer's book Boundaries of Order: "Although Shaffer embraces the idea that the first to claim and use an un-owned resource thereby becomes its legitimate owner, he also recognizes that without the support of one's neighbors, one's claim to ownership will never be respected. As Rose Wilder Lane explained in The Discovery of Freedom (pp. 109--110 in the 1943 edition), the protection of our property ultimately depends upon human decency: The only safeguards of property seem to have been possession of the property, individual honesty, and public opinion. ... [C]abins were never locked on the American frontier where there was no law. The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere, is the general recognition of the brotherhood of man. How much of the time is any American within sight of a policeman? Our lives and our property are protected by the way nearly everyone feels about another person's life and property."
Can the following proposition be defended on libertarian/Rothbardian grounds?:
If an individual uses his labor in the form of his willingness to defend a particular patch of land for the purpose of maintaining it's pristine naturalness it may be said that he legitimately owns it.
Has anyone considered this problem? I have only a limited knowledge of Rothbard and other libertarians' thoughts on this question. Why must it be that an individual has to mix his labor with the land in a way that changes it? How would an individual or group of individuals legitimately lay claim to a parcel of land solely for the purpose of preserving it? Yes, most statist would consider this question as an obvious problem for libertarian ideas while ignoring the question of what gives a state the right to do the same thing.
As an aside there is a wonderful song by Jesse Colin Young( except for his acceptance of taxes) titled Ridgetop that very clearly reflects the desire of individuals to alter nature in a minimal way so as to preserve nature.
I think it is because most collectivist anarchists or anarcho-communists have both the anarchist's hatred of injust authority and the communist's hatred of anyone more successful than themselves. Hostility towards unjust authority seems to be a natural condition of some and the same may be said of jealousy of those more successful in life. I think we may be more hardwired in our beliefs than even I am comfortable admitting.
Forgive me, I am a newbie to posting comments here. I was responding to Kelvin_Silva's question about why left-anarchists are usually so hostile to capitalism.
The idea that anyone has a right to anything is a lie. It's just that simple.
The land isn't Propertyman's "according to" anyone. It is Propertyman's de facto, to the extent he can prevent others from controlling it.
Humans with at least two brain cells to rub together realize we're at a point in human progression where the limits of technology permit scarcity of resources to play the major role in determining the courses of human interactions—and therefore we realize that people have incentive to dominate others in an attempt to control more resources. After this realization, and given a bunch of economic facts, we conclude that the best way for the most amount of people to live the happiest is by proposing and agreeing to propertarian rules. But those rules are a joke to people who don't agree to them, and nobody has any right making anyone agree to them. Propertarian rules are merely a tool for organizing societies given the current and past technological conditions.
So extreme examples as attempts to prove or disprove property ideas are absurd, because the whole point of property rules is to help people. Someone using them to harm people is already a menace to the society he is pretending to play a role in advancing.
The question is; how is that relationship voluntary?
Where does "voluntary" enter into the equation? The question is whether PMan has legitimate claim to the premises, and further more what liberties he retains as owner. I believe a libertarian could say that while PMan owns the territory, he can't just threaten to shoot FMan or do anything violent unless certain conditions are met. Or, I hope, libertarians would at least tolerate a society in which that was the custom.
^^
People wiill still live normally, everyone thinks that everyone will act differently because of the change that an anarcho capitalist society entails.
Let me address hashem's first point:
"The idea that anyone has a right to anything is a lie. It's just that simple. The land isn't Propertyman's "according to" anyone. It is Propertyman's de facto, to the extent he can prevent others from controlling it."
I don't think this statement recongnizes any basic libertarian/Rothbardian ethical standard regarding the nature of property rights. If a man arrives at a virgin land and spends years toiling it till it becomes profitable agricultrural property it may be said that he owns it according to any libertarian ethic I have know of. Anyone who comes and uses force to take the land/property away from the individual who originally mixed his labor with it is in violation of the two legs of libertarianism, the principle of self-ownership and the NAP.
As to his second paragraph containing several other assertions, I must address each individually to maintain coherency. Unfortunately, the hour grows late so I will for the moment only make a few cursory comments regarding them. It seems hashem rejects the idea of rights altogether and I find it hard to disagree with him. Rights may be recognized by individuals and they may be recognized by philosophical, ethical and political ideologies but this by no means gives them universal substance. However, in the realm of human relationships recongition of such ideas (rights) carries a great deal of weight. If we didn't believe other human beings had a right to control their own bodies by virtue of their free will would there be any hesitation on our part to enslave and or rape or murder them as we saw fit when some opportune moment arrived? I am really not sure what hashem means when he talks of current technology. It seems to me that human beings have always been fighting with both their brothers and nature itself for the resources we desire or consider neccessary for our survival.
Finally, I hardly consider the example of a man wondering into a forest claimed by another man can be considered extreme. I would consider it a classi example of the difficulty involved in defining legitimate property rights.
In all fairness, excepting that I don't assume a right of self-ownership my position on property rights is that of Stephen Kinsella. As such it has solid grounding in the libertarian establishment—Kinsella is Hoppe's most famous student, whom in turn is Rothbard's. The idea that property rights are rules we propose and agree to support is really one of the two main views on property rights, the other being Rothbardian Natural Rights.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned homesteading. With virgin land, whoever mixes their labor with it becomes the property owner. If the forestman had mixed his labor with the land, the land would be his, and the propertyman would be agressing against the forestman. The concept of property and homesteading would help the forestman in this situation.
Defining homesteading can be tricky (how much labor is enough is really the main question). Rothbard wrote a lot about it. Just google Rothbard and homesteading and see what you find.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned homesteading. With virgin land, whoever mixes their labor with it becomes the property owner. If people agree on those rules, then they may choose to enforce them. Necessarily, if someone doesn't agree to those rules he is by no law of nature required to follow them. As a matter of fact, the owner of a resource is the person who controls it.
kelvin_silva:And so he told me a parable: Forestman was wandering through the forest one day when he came upon a pond. He sat down to take in its beauty. Shortly after Propertyman came out with his title and a gun threatening to shoot F if he didn't leave the premises or pay for the right to stay. He said the land is his according to the lawful authority in town. The question is; how is that relationship voluntary? And how is Forestman the aggressor (he has to be in ancap theory)? Any thoughts?
This example hits rather close to home for me, as my grandparents own about 10 acres of land, some of which is covered by woodland, and within which there's a pond.
With that said, I think threatening to shoot Forestman per se in that scenario would constitute aggression against him. By simply sitting down to appreciate the pond, I see no way in which Forestman was threatening Propertyman's person, let alone his life. That doesn't mean Forestman is entitled to be on Propertyman's property, and technically he's trespassing. But the notion that trespassing means one has thereby alienated his right to life strikes me as ridiculous. It clearly goes against the principle of proportionality, which I believe in.
Anyway, I wouldn't say that relationship is necessarily voluntary, as it could involve some deprivation of one or more rights (namely (at the very least) those of Propertyman to use and enjoy his property as he sees fit, should he not acquiesce to Forestman sitting down to appreciate the pond). Should Propertyman allow Forestman to remain there, then I'd say the relationship is voluntary, as no trespassing has occurred. IMO, the authority to judge whether an action constitutes trespassing rests with Propertyman.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Not enough info. There could be easements, maybe in the forest by the pond there is a path that had been in use by the health and nature people since before the forest was owned so propertyman can't do squat against people taking a walk in his forest esspecially along this path. Or perhaps the propertyman doesn't own the forest outright, but only owns a certain use of the forest, eg maybe he only has the exclusive right to hunt game in this forest, but hasn't other exclusive rights to it.
I think the response to this would be, If protection of property is coercion against others, then wouldnt it also be coercive if the tourist fucked the propertyman and just told him to fuck off and let the tourist do anything he wants in the land>?
If anything property coercion is HAS to be just, it is defense against intruders, aggression only when you have been aggressed is justified. It is only rational, and proper ettiquete that you ask the maintainer of the land if you can enter a land X. Just like you ask your friend to use X property instead of just taking it.
You ever have that moment where you realize you're the "anarcholeftist" that made the parable? Ya, I just did
Excellent responses comrades. I don't want to derail it, so that is all I will say. Keep it up
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
WEll, yeah no shit but i just want to talk a bit you know?
kelvin_silva:I think the response to this would be, If protection of property is coercion against others, then wouldnt it also be coercive if the tourist fucked the propertyman and just told him to fuck off and let the tourist do anything he wants in the land>? If anything property coercion is HAS to be just, it is defense against intruders, aggression only when you have been aggressed is justified. It is only rational, and proper ettiquete that you ask the maintainer of the land if you can enter a land X. Just like you ask your friend to use X property instead of just taking it.
I personally define "coercion" as simply "the use or threat of physical force against someone". I might want to add "without his consent" to that definition, but I think you get the idea. "Aggression", then, I define as "unjustified or illegitimate coercion". So to me it's not the use or threat of physical force against someone that's morally wrong per se.
kelvin_silva: Own a house: build it or buy it, Own yourself: (actually not sure) But how can you own something that grows out of the ground? You can try to buy it, but from whom? You can try to build it: i.e planting, but this is a private park, what about forests that grow naturally from the ground.
You can try to build it: i.e planting, but this is a private park, what about forests that grow naturally from the ground.
I've thought considerably about this. At first, nature existed. Mankind came along, and eventually territories were claimed, which included the properties in the territories. This goes for most animals in Africa, for instance. So I think it is a lot more about territory than property in my opinion. But it is true that we can only create with things created by God. For instance, the plant grows from a seed, and that is work which goes unpaid. So in essence, it is free labor. From this, we take fruit, seeds and so forth, eat them, plant them, use them, and it was all initiated by a force that is free. So as for the lake scenario, I suppose he wouldn't own the lake so much as the territory.
No doubt we are here to manipulate things that are on this earth. The biggest question we face is HOW to share? When you think about all of human action/economics/etc it all boils down on how best to share, and cooperate (contracts) with each other..
Because if post scarcity can ever be attained then it is pointless to fret about taxation economics etc if it all is infinite.
Both philiosophically and scientifically speaking (i.e praxeology):
The imperative to act and consequences of action are still the same, it doesn't matter.
It's sombodies property because they have the power to make it theirs for whatever reason, plain and simple. After that all that matters are the expectations, customs, and institutions in place. To say one is acting "more peaceful" or "social" than the other on some Platonic ground though is, as with all things Platonic, out and out nonsense.
1) If mr. Hippy Dippy was dumb enough to knowingly walk on somebodies property "to take in the beauty" (the bastard!) knowing full well what the customs were in a rather Draconian society, what do you expect? The dude is obviously a fool, or simply not too concerned with his life for whatever reason. He was a consumer who was willing to pay a price for the product of "taking in the beauty", so be it.
2) If he just happenstanced on there unwittingly and got blown away, we may be able to sympathize a bit - but not much can really be said or done, particularly in an abstract setting.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
This is really basic, but I feel it must be said, because the phrase "take in the beauty" is so utterly pretentious:
"Taking in the beauty" doesn't matter. You can place it with a widget, X, pissing on a tree, throwing big corporate McDonald Wrappers on the "beautiful" property, "not taking in the beauty", holding an extremist right wing rally, attempting to seize the property for himself and build his own home, or whatever. The structure and analytical framework is still the same It's a bogus red herring.
All that matters are the expectations and legal customs, which are elastic and arbitrary
"All that matters are the expectations and legal customs, which are elastic and arbitrary"
I agree with the first half. I'd restate it as, social norms and law are what matters. I'd agree that those are elastic, but I'd disagree that they are arbitrary. If what you mean is they arise in a chaotic way, and aren't subject to selective pressures. My point is that these norms are subject to evolutionary pressures.
In other words, you will see a shape and a form to these norms and laws and in some sense from far away they may seem arbitrary, but when you look closely and follow basic human action, you'll see the pressures and signals that generated the norm. You'll also be able to see from different viewpoints how such norms and laws act as information signals that moderate the behaviors of others.
I think it's important to look closely at these things. Also, examine the rhetoric used as an argument in favor of a particular norm. It's dreadfully important for us to poke holes in such things. For example, while I laud and affirm for very specific reasons the concept of natural rights, in the way it's described in the Ethics of Liberty, I would draw a distinction between myself and Rothbard in that I view them as more efficient solution than the ones we observe in practice because it sets up reliable informational feedback signals to the population that promote economic growth, stability and competition. They provide a level of certainty about the social ecosystem into which you act, and that certainty doesn't have miswired positive feedback mechanisms in it, where a destructive behavior, law, or norm reinforces itself. When the state enters as a monopolist of arbitration and use of force, you end up with such a positive feedback mechanism where the blind spot is in arbitrating and enforcing the law on itself or those acting by proxy in the name of the state.
Jury nullification would be a feedback mechanism that could curtail the other three legs of the US federal government. But if that function is marginalized or impeded one would expect the federal government to grow and expand in unsustainable ways. I believe that is what has happened in practice. Another healthy feedback mechanism in the US republican setup would be state supreme courts nullifying federal law within their jurisdiction. My third example would have been secession at the state or local level.
Of course our optimal solution as anarcho-capitalists would be to abolish the idea that a state has a monopoly on dispute resolution and legal use of force within a land boundary.
Another potential solution would be to invert the sovereignty tree. Give the greatest level of sovereign protection to the individual, then to the local government, then to the state government, then to the federal government. Even the largest of those inversions, (state over federal) would mean a state or group of states could not be able to use federal power to force rules on the other states which they felt were against their own interests.
In organized governments, you find the same battle between have-mores and have-lesses played out over and over again, whether it's rich states vs. poor states, high population states vs. low population states. The same in county governments within a state legislature. Inverting the sovereignty tree at any level would provide a safe haven for more efficient economic and political processes and institutions to flourish at the expense of less efficient ones. The only way to protect less efficient institutions, processes, and laws is to use force at the highest level as a means of quelling the competitive pressures.
Anyway, back to the original structure. "Right" is a point of view. It's subjectively generated. Each of the two actors brings a differing point of view to the table. If they are the only two members of society, then they will find a way to resolve it, either through compromise or through an implied or actual use of force if no agreement can be reached. If you add additional members to the social ecosystem, then each actor MUST consider the implications of his behavior on his relationships to the rest of that social ecosystem. In the mores, norms and laws of that society each finds rule-based guidelines that predict how others will react to his response. What's right? What you can get away with. This I believe is hashem's point above.
I'd argue that there is a phenomena from which the ideas of property and ownership spring. I provide a definition, I use as an a priori definition for that phenomena. It goes like this, in order for a man to act, such that a dispute can arise, he must use matter, at a specific location and over a specific period of time. The intersection of the 4, intentional mind, matter, time, and location in space, constitutes a basis for dispute, as another man may object due to his differing plan to use a part of that intersection (matter or location) in a way that is incompatible with the first actors use.
I believe that is the most minimalist definition of dispute which one can define, which is also true a priori. This does occur, it occurs as a phenomena that acknowledges subjective values without using subjective values as a means of taking a position on the legitimacy of, or correct resolution of the dispute.
If no one stands with you in your argument about why you are right, and the other party in the dispute is wrong, you are at a dead end my friend. That's another a priori truth. You can be sure in your mind, that your logical throught process is absolutely true, and still have others say, "So what?" And you're in a pickle. You can try to force our result onto the other members of your society, and you'll find out just how strongly they feel about it by the way they act. But all of us know I'm sure, that we as groups are highly resistant to changes to our norms, mores, and laws even in the face of good logical and/or scientific evidence of flaws in our reasoning.
This is why the education aspect of our libertarian and anarcho-capitalist views is so important. Until the basic premises of our systems and ideas are largely accepted as axiomatic truths we'll have an uphill battle. Until we can construct, argue and support normative positions founded in those axioms with both sound logic and predictive capability, we'll have an uphill battle.
Even worse, sadly, so much of the social dialog about our norms and laws is based in rhetoric, primarily centered around anecdotal stories that shape the social narrative. So part of our work must be in bringing those tools to the table also. Too often the heart rules the head, and rhetoric and narratives do that very effectively.
but I'd disagree that they are arbitrary
You may be reading too much into this word. By Arbitrary, I meant the fact that you live in society is a given, x is the body of work / custom up until now that is relevant to think about in terms of saud society. It is "arbitrary" in the same way as the latest fashions in music/art/glamour/whatever come and go, come back again and get assimilated and morphed into other things.
My point is that these norms are subject to evolutionary pressures.
The mere fact of something asserting and valuing at a particular moment is the pressure, not the other way around. The past on"evolutionary stories" is just history at best, and a "self fulfilled prophecy narrative" at worst. That is not to say there isn't a certian "logic to success / sociability" - but such a logic has it's intellectual limitations