There's no point to this thread other than my curiousity on the views of the Mises community on property. By this I mean, how do you feel about graffiti, tresspassing on property and in abandonments, orphans stealing oranges, petty vandalism, and the like?
Personally I take a highly unpricipled approach to the above. If the graffiti is ugly then I don't like it. If the tresspassing means kicking over someone's pink flamingo I don't really care. But I think that the market society is the most desirable type of society, and such a society requires property rights. Property rights to me are only a means to the market end. What do you think?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
This seems to be a vague question, could you clarify? It seems on one hand you're asking us the question of small crimes involving property, and on the other the reason why we support property at all, which are different things.
My take on property rights is through the lense of the NAP/Golden Rule. I don't want my property vandalized, so I'm not going to vandalize other people's property. Obviously, I consider some crimes worse than others, and I may forgive someone for a minor transgression towards me.
I don't see anything unprincipled in your approach as you are just displaying preferences for different crimes. Some of these just don't bother you the way arson probably bothers you. I would only consider it unprincipled if you believed that what you listed weren't crimes. Is that what you meant?
To you, is property man's right, a desirable construct, or something else? I thought my questions would exemplify the question. Is tresspassing a necessary formality of the rigidity of property rights or an actual crime?
To you, is property man's right, a desirable construct, or something else?
The concept of property is inherent to not only people, but also animals (probably most, but certainly many). Law is what arises when people try to resolve the disputes people have about property.
Is tresspassing a necessary formality of the rigidity of property rights or an actual crime?
I assume you mean trespassing on someone's land, though this is not the only legal meaning of the word. Trespassing on someone's land is an actual tort - and don't forget that many animals feel the same way about their territory too! There are certain rules regarding the use of someone else's property, and perhaps this link about easements will help.
Jargon:There's no point to this thread other than my curiousity on the views of the Mises community on property. By this I mean, how do you feel about graffiti, tresspassing on property and in abandonments, orphans stealing oranges, petty vandalism, and the like?
There's an issue of whether the property owner feels victimized. For example, I own a house, and some of my neighbors on either side have kids. Sometimes when they're outside playing, they'll run through my back yard to get to their friends' house. Do I explicitly give them permission to do that? No. But since I don't do anything to stop them, one can presume that I'm okay with them doing that (which I am). Therefore, I don't think the kids are trespassing - I essentially give them tacit permission to run through my back yard. Part of the reason for that, though, is because the kids aren't really strangers. If someone I've never seen before walked through my yard, I'd probably at least come out and ask them what they're doing.
Graffiti and other forms of vandalism, presumably, are not permitted by the owners of the vandalized property. Likewise with people taking fruit without paying for it. If someone didn't want people running through his yard, he'd take measures to (try to) stop them.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
From my article on law:
The Austrian account of property rights – as exemplified in the writings of Hoppe or Rothbard – begins with two basic principles. The first principle is that of self-ownership. The second principle is that of original appropriation or homesteading. A corollary to these two principles is voluntary exchange. The unspoken assumption of the homesteading principle is that, absent some reason why something should belong to one person rather than another, no one has any better claim to it than anybody else. Who owns the moon? Who owns Mars? There is a slice of the Antarctic continent, called Marie Byrd Land, which is not claimed by any sovereign nation. Who owns it? I can give no good reason why I have rights to exclusive use of some portion of the Moon or a portion of Marie Byrd Land. So, no portion of the moon or Marie Byrd Land is my property. These questions open up the larger question of how any physical thing came to be owned in the first place. To grant some individuals a priori primacy in property claims is equivalent to the bully system of law – it is the grant of privilege or double-standards. I term this dual-law. The choice is between some version of homesteading on the one hand or dual-law on the other hand. A better reason must be given for why someone owns something than “because he’s stronger than everybody else” or else accept the assignment of property rights by a system of privilege, that is, dual-law.
But is it true that we can deduce a perfect system of property rules (rules for the resolution of property disputes) solely by means of reflection? I think the answer is no unless we mean meta-rules that are completely devoid of content, such as the rule that “some kind of reason must be given why a thing belongs to one person rather than another.” Rather, laws regarding the resolution of property disputes (that is, property rights) are no different than any other kind of law and emerge in exactly the same way – through a process of discovery by trial-and-error. In fact, if we say that the rules of property can be deduced solely by means of reflection, then we are doomed to Marxism. The reason is simple – since no one has any better claim to anything than anybody else, nobody owns or can come to own anything. The homesteading principle itself should be dismissed as a piece of capitalist propaganda designed to lure the masses into accepting their own enslavement in a system of privilege through “property rights.” But the fact of the matter is that the practice of owning things, of homesteading them, and so on is an integral part of human action. It is a brute fact of human action, and the disputes that arise in the process are also brute facts of human action. And the means which have been successful in settling these disputes in the past – property law – are also brute facts of human action. Hence, property rights emerge from the resolution of disputes about who owns what and the normative content of property rights is filled out by the same process of discovery through trial-and-error as any other law.
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I think that property rights emerge in the same way as other rights and are not as foundational as Hoppe takes them to be (axiomatic to any discussion). Property rights may have many "exception clauses" that make them fuzzy and complicated. I think that the idea that a homeowner can blow away someone with his 12-gauge for kicking over the pink flamingo on the front lawn doesn't make sense in real law even though there are routes through Hoppean reasoning to these kinds of extreme conditions. But I think that he can probably collect damages for graffiti on the side of his garage, whether or not it is artistic and I think that real property rights law is very capable of making these kinds of distinctions.
Clayton -
Property is not deducible from human action, nor is any sort of ethical behavior besides what I would term the "praxeological ethic" of maximization of ones own utility. Property is a social construct. It was created by man, and it can be destroyed by man, nor is there any inherent reason why property rights should exist. Only effects of property rights which certain individuals or sets of individuals find desirable.
I value property rights because I believe that on a free market individuals have the highest chance of realizing their own happiness, both through the creative and adaptive structure that would form within the post-political sphere, the death of one of the largest modern religions, the state, the capability for a greater number of lifestyles, a greater freedom of choice, and, lastly, a greater yield of what consumers demand.
Ironically it's the last one which is most compelling for most people, but least compelling for myself. The fact is that in the modern world the average person has more than enough material wealth to allow them to achieve a very happy state of affairs, but they're too trapped within various preconceived notions of how to live their lives to actually achieve something resembling a true state of individual happiness, finding it haphazardly and as a matter of circumstance rather than as the fruit of their own efforts.
Pretty vandalism and petty theft are obviously torts - albeit petty ones.
I don't consider trespassing to be a tort in itself.
Do any of these petty crimes bother me personally? Well, if some starving orphan steals my orange, I think I'd let it go. I'd tend to be harder on vandals. As for trespassers, I'd just remove them from my property, hopefully without having to use violence.