So if someone decided to buy up all the land around my house, then told me that if i encroached upon their private property i would be shot, what could i do?
Similarly, what if for some reason i no longer had any money to pay the toll, would i be unable to travel across the country to either work or the grocery store? What would my options be? Would you be made to pay to walk down a sidewalk? What if i wanted to visit my relatives in the nearest city but couldn't afford it? Would this not be restricting my freedom?
So if someone decided to buy up all the land around my house, then told me that if i encroached upon their private property i would be shot, what could i do? Charter a helicopter? Similarly, what if for some reason i no longer had any money to pay the toll, would i be unable to travel across the country to either work or the grocery store? What would my options be? Would you be made to pay to walk down a sidewalk? What if i wanted to visit my relatives in the nearest city but couldn't afford it? Would this not be restricting my freedom? Part of the curb is often part of the private property adjoining it. Would you charge people to walk across it? Do malls normally charge people to walk around inside them? No one can know exactly how the system will work until it's tried, but why do these particular expenses, which must be relatively trivial no matter what, bother you so much? What if you can't afford soap to bathe, and your boss starts asking questions because you smell bad? What if you can't afford gas or bus fair or whatever to get to the next town? What point are you trying to make? Life sucks if you're poor. Solving this problem by coercively living at the expense of others is no decent way to behave. Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro | Post Points: 20
But someone buying up all the private property around my house is a possibility in such a society. I would like to know how it can be dealt with. Your answer seems to indicate you have no idea.
Secondly, the point i'm trying to make is that there will be many occassions in many people's lives that they would be unable to go to get in a car and drive to see their family because they can't afford to do so. Are you not restricting their freedom in this case? Does that not bother you?
It seems ridiculous that to drive 5 minutes to the grocery store i may have to pay to do so, and that if i dont have enough money i am essentially a prisoner inside my own home.
Are you not restricting their freedom in this case?
No, I am not restricting their freedom in this case.
It seems ridiculous that to drive 5 minutes to the grocery store i may have to pay to do so
Do you understand that someone has to pay the cost associated with getting any person from point A to point B? Who do you suggest should pay for this, if not the person who desires to get from point A to point B?
But someone buying up all the private property around my house is a possibility in such a society. I would like to know how it can be dealt with.
I would like to know how you propose to deal with it.
Why, don't you think a helicopter would work?
You're suggesting that someone will do something unbelievably expensive, wasteful and unlikely just to make your little life difficult; I don't think chartering a helicopter is an excessively drastic measure under the circumstances.
You're talking about someone who could afford to buy a majority share in whatever it is that owns the road outside your house. They don't sell roads by the square meter. If someone is powerful enough to do this, you are screwed no matter what political system is in place, and no system can stop someone becoming that powerful by providing a mechanism through which they can wield the power of the state.
Why is it my fault that this person is in such dire straits?
You know what I would do in his situation? I would call my family, explain to them my problems, and ask them to wire me bus fair. Why the hell can't this person do that?
If it's a question of giving to the deserving poor, do you really think it can be done more ethically by forcing people at gunpoint, or that it can be done more efficiently in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats?
I already had this question:
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/25559.aspx
I will post more soon.
You seem to believe that just because the society is free, people will actually be able to do whatever they want. Instead, a complex web of human desires will build up in which people respect each others' property.
For example:
Considering your scenario, people in a community decide to not allow anyone to buy such a circle of land unless he grants transit rights on it to the encircled party.
Furthermore, the mall poing someone already mentioned.
Also: since society understands that it is nice ot be nice to people, there would be a system of contracts in place similar to:
1) We all voluntarily agree to not deny reasonable passage rights to people.
2) We all voluntarily agree to not trade with a perceived aggressor who denies us the standard of living we want.
3) We have established private companies to protect just from this which are likely shared between multiple communities to bring down costs
Also, read up on the concept of easements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement
My problem with easements as defined on wikipedia is that they also include air, water, and things such as fishing in private ponds.
Yet easements of land (before it was owned) are fully compliant with AnCap, as you are utilizing the land and thus claiming it in a way.
To beat the dead horse a bit more:
I had the same concern as you a month ago when I joined these boards. Since then, I have realized that part of the problem is that our frame of mind is still statist in a sense:
If we don't have the FDA, we will die of food poisoning. No. This is false. We would definitely have private entities regulating companies which voluntarily let them. Why? Because we want to. We know it's nice to have food inspection.
In the same line of reasoning, we would find ways to protect against these "property rights to the extreme."
My problem with this concept was "but it is possible to enricle someone and have no one help!" The same is true in democracy. You can vote to kill a man, and it will be done. In fact, it's called war (foreign or drug).
You're committing the Nirvana fallacy, which is that because something is not perfect, it should not be instituted.
No human justice can be perfect, because we're not objective all-knowing angels. We're flawed men. So we must try to approximate justice. And the free-market has shown that it is the best.
Easement rights.
I'd rather have anarcho-capitalism and face the (extremely unlikely) possibility of ending up in the hole of a doughnut-shaped property. And hey - what's to stop ever-larger concentric property rings extending outward, with the entire real estate market supported by humble little me at the center of it all?
Of course the flip side of that is eminent domain abuse. Nevermind simply being charged to cross land that encircles your own - you just lose title to your land in exchange for a pittance. That's not ancap, that's government.
I like Rothbard's answer:
The point is that the advocate of a free market in anything cannot provide a “constructive” blueprint of such a market in advance. The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. The libertarian economist can try to offer a few guidelines on how markets might develop where they are now prevented or restricted from developing; but he can do little more than point the way toward freedom, to call for government to get out of the way of the productive and ever- inventive energies of the public as expressed in voluntary market activity. No one can predict the number of firms, the size of each firm, the pricing policies, etc., of any future market in any service or commodity. We just know—by economic theory and by historical insight—that such a free market will do the job infinitely better than the comp ulsory monopoly of bureaucratic government.
Stephen:Easement rights.
^^^ This.
To address the OP directly:
The_Bomb19:So if someone decided to buy up all the land around my house, then told me that if i encroached upon their private property i would be shot, what could i do?
I don't think he has any right to shoot you while you're merely passing through his private property (i.e. causing no noticeable damage or disturbance to it).
The_Bomb19:Similarly, what if for some reason i no longer had any money to pay the toll, would i be unable to travel across the country to either work or the grocery store? What would my options be? Would you be made to pay to walk down a sidewalk? What if i wanted to visit my relatives in the nearest city but couldn't afford it? Would this not be restricting my freedom?
Setting aside the likelihood of you being literally unable to afford (any of) these things, some possibilities spring to mind:
1. You might be able to enter into debt agreements with the property owners, which you pay either indirectly (through money) or directly (through labor). Note that the latter is like the old notion of washing dishes for a restaurant if you can't afford to pay (all of) your bill.
2. You could borrow money from one or more friends or family members.
3. You could take out a personal loan from a bank or other financial institution.
4. You could get a credit card from a bank or other financial institution.
5. You could wait until you can actually afford it.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
My point is that if one has been using land, in this example to cross it, nobody has the right to exclude them from it. They have an easement right to cross that land as a part of their property right to their house or whatever. If a newcomer comes and appropriate all the land around the house, he cannot do so in a manner which excludes the homeowner. This would interfere with the homeowners control of his property. One must make a prior/later distinction, however. If someone flys in on a helicopter to an empty piece of land already surrounded by owned land and homesteads it, they have no right to any additional easements other than the right to fly in and out.
I think Walter Block already has the answer to your hypothetical situation in the following essay:
The Non-Aggression Axiom of Libertarianism by Walter Block The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc. If the non-aggression axiom is the basic building block of libertarianism, private property rights based on (Lockean and Rothbardian) homesteading principles are the foundation. For if A reaches into B's pocket, pulls out his wallet and runs away with it, we cannot know that A is the aggressor and B the victim. It may be that A is merely repossessing his own wallet, the one B stole from him yesterday. But given a correct grounding in property rights, the non-aggression axiom is a very powerful tool in the war of ideas. For most individuals believe, and fervently so, that it is wrong to invade other people or their property. Who, after all, favors theft, murder or rape? With this as an entering wedge, libertarians are free to apply this axiom to all of human action, including, radically, to unions, taxes, and even government itself. The non-aggression axiom and private property rights theory which underlies it have recently come under furious attack, amazingly, from commentators actually calling themselves libertarians. Let us consider two cases posed by these people. First, you are standing on the balcony of a 25th story high-rise apartment when, much to your dismay, you lose your footing and fall out. Happily, in your downward descent, you manage to grab onto a flagpole protruding from the 15th floor of the balcony of another apartment, 10 floors below. Unhappily, the owner of this apartment comes out to her balcony, states that you are protesting by holding on to her flag pole, and demands that you let go (e.g., drop another 15 floors to your death). You protest that you only want to hand walk your way down the flag pole, into her apartment, and then right out of it, but she is adamant. As a libertarian, are you bound to obey her? Second case. You are lost in the woods, freezing, with no food. You will die without shelter and a meal. Fortunately, you come upon a warm cabin stocked with staples. You intend to eat, stay the night, leave your business card, and pay double any reasonable price that could be asked. Unfortunately, the cabin has a sign posted on the door: "Warning. Private Property. No Trespassing." Do you tamely go off into the woods and die? Opponents of the non-aggression axiom maintain that you have no obligation to die in either of these cases, much less in the name of private property rights. In their view these concepts have been adopted to promote human life and well-being, which, ordinarily, they do, and superlatively so. But in these exceptional cases, where the non-aggression standard would be contrary to utilitarian principles, it should be jettisoned. The non-aggression principle, for them, is a good rule of thumb, which sometimes, rarely, should be ignored. There are several grave problems with these critiques of the non-aggression axiom. 1. They misunderstand the nature of libertarianism. These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality. Therefore, the only proper questions which can be addressed in this philosophy are of the sort, if the flagpole hanger attempts to come in to the apartment, and the occupant shoots him for trespassing, Would the forces of law and order punish the home owner? Or, if the owner of the cabin in the woods sets up a booby trap, such that when someone forces his way into his property he gets a face full of buckshot, Would he be guilty of a law violation? When put in this way, the answer is clear. The owner in each case is in the right, and the trespasser in the wrong. If force is used to protect property rights, even deadly force, the owner is not guilty of the violation of any licit law. 2. These examples purposefully try to place us in the mind of the criminal perpetrator of the crime of trespass. We are invited, that is, to empathize with the flag pole hanger, and the hiker, not the respective property owners. But let us reverse this perspective. Suppose the owner of the apartment on the 15th floor has recently been victimized by a rape, perpetrated upon her by a member of the same ethnic or racial group as the person now hand walking his way down her flag pole, soon to uninvitedly enter her apartment. May she not shoot him in self-defense before he enters her premises? Or, suppose that the owner of the cabin in the woods has been victimized by several break-ins in the past few months, and has finally decided to do something in defense of his property. Or, suppose that the owner, himself, views his cabin as his own life preserver. Then, may he not take steps to safeguard his property? To ask these questions is to answer them, at least for the consistent libertarian. 3. The criticisms of libertarian property rights theory base their views on the philosophy of emergencies. The non-aggression axiom is all well and good in ordinary circumstances, but when there are life boat situations, all bets are off. The problem, however, with violating libertarian law for special exigencies is that these occurrences are more commonplace than supposed. Right now, there are numerous people dying of starvation in poor parts of the world. Some are suffering from illnesses which could be cured cheaply, e.g., by penicillin. We have all read those advertisements placed by aid agencies: "Here is little Maria. You can save her, and her entire village, by sending us some modest amount of money each month." In point of fact, many so called libertarians who have attacked the non-aggression axiom on these emergency grounds live in housing of a middle class level or better; drive late model cars; eat well; have jewelry; send their children to pricey colleges. If they truly believed in their critiques, none of this would be true. For if the cabin owner and the apartment dweller are to give up their property rights to save the hiker and the flagpole hanger, then they must give up their comfortable middle class life styles in behalf of all the easily cured sick and starving people in the world. That they have not done so shows they do not even take their own arguments seriously. The logical implication of their coercive welfarist argument is far worse than merely being required to give a few dollars a month to a relief agency. For suppose they do this. Their standard of living will still be far greater than those on the verge of death from straightened circumstances. No, as long as these relatively rich "libertarians" have enough money to keep themselves from dying from poverty, the logic of their argument compels them to give every penny they own over and above that level to alleviate the plight of the endangered poor.
by Walter Block
The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc.
If the non-aggression axiom is the basic building block of libertarianism, private property rights based on (Lockean and Rothbardian) homesteading principles are the foundation. For if A reaches into B's pocket, pulls out his wallet and runs away with it, we cannot know that A is the aggressor and B the victim. It may be that A is merely repossessing his own wallet, the one B stole from him yesterday. But given a correct grounding in property rights, the non-aggression axiom is a very powerful tool in the war of ideas. For most individuals believe, and fervently so, that it is wrong to invade other people or their property. Who, after all, favors theft, murder or rape? With this as an entering wedge, libertarians are free to apply this axiom to all of human action, including, radically, to unions, taxes, and even government itself.
The non-aggression axiom and private property rights theory which underlies it have recently come under furious attack, amazingly, from commentators actually calling themselves libertarians. Let us consider two cases posed by these people.
First, you are standing on the balcony of a 25th story high-rise apartment when, much to your dismay, you lose your footing and fall out. Happily, in your downward descent, you manage to grab onto a flagpole protruding from the 15th floor of the balcony of another apartment, 10 floors below. Unhappily, the owner of this apartment comes out to her balcony, states that you are protesting by holding on to her flag pole, and demands that you let go (e.g., drop another 15 floors to your death). You protest that you only want to hand walk your way down the flag pole, into her apartment, and then right out of it, but she is adamant. As a libertarian, are you bound to obey her?
Second case. You are lost in the woods, freezing, with no food. You will die without shelter and a meal. Fortunately, you come upon a warm cabin stocked with staples. You intend to eat, stay the night, leave your business card, and pay double any reasonable price that could be asked. Unfortunately, the cabin has a sign posted on the door: "Warning. Private Property. No Trespassing." Do you tamely go off into the woods and die?
Opponents of the non-aggression axiom maintain that you have no obligation to die in either of these cases, much less in the name of private property rights. In their view these concepts have been adopted to promote human life and well-being, which, ordinarily, they do, and superlatively so. But in these exceptional cases, where the non-aggression standard would be contrary to utilitarian principles, it should be jettisoned. The non-aggression principle, for them, is a good rule of thumb, which sometimes, rarely, should be ignored.
There are several grave problems with these critiques of the non-aggression axiom.
1. They misunderstand the nature of libertarianism. These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality. Therefore, the only proper questions which can be addressed in this philosophy are of the sort, if the flagpole hanger attempts to come in to the apartment, and the occupant shoots him for trespassing, Would the forces of law and order punish the home owner? Or, if the owner of the cabin in the woods sets up a booby trap, such that when someone forces his way into his property he gets a face full of buckshot, Would he be guilty of a law violation? When put in this way, the answer is clear. The owner in each case is in the right, and the trespasser in the wrong. If force is used to protect property rights, even deadly force, the owner is not guilty of the violation of any licit law.
2. These examples purposefully try to place us in the mind of the criminal perpetrator of the crime of trespass. We are invited, that is, to empathize with the flag pole hanger, and the hiker, not the respective property owners. But let us reverse this perspective. Suppose the owner of the apartment on the 15th floor has recently been victimized by a rape, perpetrated upon her by a member of the same ethnic or racial group as the person now hand walking his way down her flag pole, soon to uninvitedly enter her apartment. May she not shoot him in self-defense before he enters her premises? Or, suppose that the owner of the cabin in the woods has been victimized by several break-ins in the past few months, and has finally decided to do something in defense of his property. Or, suppose that the owner, himself, views his cabin as his own life preserver. Then, may he not take steps to safeguard his property? To ask these questions is to answer them, at least for the consistent libertarian.
3. The criticisms of libertarian property rights theory base their views on the philosophy of emergencies. The non-aggression axiom is all well and good in ordinary circumstances, but when there are life boat situations, all bets are off. The problem, however, with violating libertarian law for special exigencies is that these occurrences are more commonplace than supposed. Right now, there are numerous people dying of starvation in poor parts of the world. Some are suffering from illnesses which could be cured cheaply, e.g., by penicillin. We have all read those advertisements placed by aid agencies: "Here is little Maria. You can save her, and her entire village, by sending us some modest amount of money each month."
In point of fact, many so called libertarians who have attacked the non-aggression axiom on these emergency grounds live in housing of a middle class level or better; drive late model cars; eat well; have jewelry; send their children to pricey colleges. If they truly believed in their critiques, none of this would be true. For if the cabin owner and the apartment dweller are to give up their property rights to save the hiker and the flagpole hanger, then they must give up their comfortable middle class life styles in behalf of all the easily cured sick and starving people in the world. That they have not done so shows they do not even take their own arguments seriously.
The logical implication of their coercive welfarist argument is far worse than merely being required to give a few dollars a month to a relief agency. For suppose they do this. Their standard of living will still be far greater than those on the verge of death from straightened circumstances. No, as long as these relatively rich "libertarians" have enough money to keep themselves from dying from poverty, the logic of their argument compels them to give every penny they own over and above that level to alleviate the plight of the endangered poor.
Hope this helps-
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
ThatOldGuy,
That was great to read. I hadn't seen it before. I've struggled with some hypothetical questions/scenarios like that in the past and that helped a lot to clear up my thinking.