Economics Questions

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

mahall — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:26:23 GMT

Yes, along with de Jasay's Justice and Its Surroundings. Parts of the latter are available online at the Online Library of Liberty.

It has been a while since I read Bastiat's The Law, but as I recall I thought it was good - though it's obviously a very brief treatment of the subject.

A book called De Jasay and His Surroundings is also good, particularly the essay in it by Jan Narveson; another author I read for a contractarian angle on justice and rights.

I'll look into them and add them to my list. Thanks!

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Autolykos — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:18:45 GMT

Ricky James Moore II:
That's what it means. Fiat or statute is something completely different. Justice is not morality, it is not legislation, it is juridical practice and legal theory. Whatever relationship fiat and morality may have to justice it is something else. If you don't understand that aggression is inherently unjust then you don't know what justice is.

Again, you really need to read de Jasay and Fuller.

It's not a matter of knowing what "justice" is or is not. There is no inherent meaning to the word "justice". So let me ask you again, how are you defining "theory of justice", as well as "justice" itself?

Ricky James Moore II:
Autolykos:
And when someone doesn't agree to that?

Then they find a [sic] arbiter.

I asked that question in response to your question, "As long as everyone involved agrees to be bound by the arbitration results, who cares?" How can they find an arbiter together if one of them doesn't agree to be bound by the arbitration results?

I'm not saying there's no way to deal with this -- I'm just trying to find out your stance on the issue.

Ricky James Moore II:
Autolykos:
Or when he changes his mind?

You are estopped from doing so. This is basic contract law.

What's the basis for estoppel procedures? I mean, where does estoppel arise from? Is there any guarantee that estoppel will always arise?

Ricky James Moore II:
Autolykos:
Sure, they can be, but logical impossibilities don't preclude people from foregoing things like the presumption of innocence.

Then it's not justice. You can't have an arbitrary system. That's a non-system.

That depends on how you define "system", doesn't it? It seems you're sneaking in the premise of universalizability. Strictly speaking, there's nothing illogical about a system that says "I win no matter what".

Ricky James Moore II:
Autolykos:
Logic is a process, not a result.

And norms and bounds are results, not logic. They are channeled by logic, but they do not consist of logical deductions or praxeological realities.

Presumption of innocence is a norm, right? Yet earlier you wrote that not presuming innocence was a logical impossibility. It seems that you're contradicting yourself between here and there.

Ricky James Moore II:
Obviously logic is involved with all ratiocination. That does not mean there is any a priori way to decide how many hectares you can claim by digging a ditch. And classificationism is not classification, it is a particular quart of statute legislation because there are no norms of practice, only some doofus with a pen and too much free time.

I read your link on "classificationism". While I agree with Manuel Lora's sentiment, I can't help but notice that he doesn't define "classificationism" anywhere in his blog post. Wiktionary defines "classificationism" as "the belief that things are best understood by being assigned to categories". It would seem, then, that human language itself is inherently classificationist. After all, words depend on definitions, which denote the "limits" (Latin definire "to limit off, to set bounds on") of meaning for that word. I think what you're really opposing here is the notion that a single organization presumes the rights to 1) stand in as a silent third party to every agreement, and 2) therefore trump those agreements when it wants to. That doesn't have much to do with "classificationism" per se, IMO.

On another note, Stephen Adkins confirmed my claim about the OP, so your comment on "[deciding] how many hectares you can claim by digging a ditch" seems to be moot.

Ricky James Moore II:
Yes, so long as we aren't flying around in space with supertechnology this would be absurd and no one would recognize it. So it's a non-issue, in real life. These things only become relevant when you get to more feasible sizes, like two cattle ranchers arguing over grazing pastures. Then people have real disputes. In our present, real world only lunatics claim to own the moon.

But then, following that logic, the Spanish conquistadores who claimed huge swaths of the Americas for Spain were not following the Homesteading Principle either; yet their claims were honored (by the Spanish government and, ultimately, other European governments). So we have a situation where, as Epicurus ibn Kalhoun pointed out in another thread, large areas of land have been owned under false pretenses, in a libertarian sense. I think the OP was trying to reconcile these things.

Ricky James Moore II:
Well, customary law, markets and civil society in general are a kind of 'mob rule'. It is the pressure of majorities exerting what control they can to force other people to serve them. That being said it is a highly constrained, rationalistic mob rule. The trouble is that agencies like the state or rampant warlordism (I would not say there was a 'state' in the middle ages) break apart the constraints of customary and civil law, and unleash mob rule and fiat against the individual without providing feasible protections or recourse. The fact that the majority basically determines what is going on is inevitable, the question is how can we keep them from running roughshod over one another in the process.

For better or for worse, most people think of "mob rule" as being unconstrained. What you're talking about sounds more like "the rule of law" to most people (though that phrase itself has been perverted by some). Your question of "how can we keep them from running roughshod over one another in the process" is the question of how to maintain "the rule of law". IMO, anarcho-capitalism provides the most cogent answer to those questions.

Finally, I'd like to point out that you still haven't give me your definition of "law". Can you please do so? I see no reason why you couldn't.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:37:11 GMT

If I could recommend a concise book on these topics you have presented, what would it be? Fuller's The Morality of Law?

Yes, along with de Jasay's Justice and Its Surroundings. Parts of the latter are available online at the Online Library of Liberty.

It has been a while since I read Bastiat's The Law, but as I recall I thought it was good - though it's obviously a very brief treatment of the subject.

A book called De Jasay and His Surroundings is also good, particularly the essay in it by Jan Narveson; another author I read for a contractarian angle on justice and rights.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

mahall — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:59:46 GMT

Ricky James Moore II,

Your recommendation of Fuller and De Jasay peaked my interest. If I could recommend a concise book on these topics you have presented, what would it be? Fuller's The Morality of Law?

Also what is your opinion on Bastiat's The Law?

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:09:57 GMT

I would say fencing would be generally a normal procedure in some circumstances, also I think the Lockean notion of 'mixing one's labor' is confused and probably nonsensical (what is 'labor'?) But I would still reiterate: whatever the people involved will accept.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Stephen Adkins — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:39:34 GMT

From Wikipedia:

Fencing vs mixing labor

Linda and Morris Tannehill opine in The Market for Liberty that physically claiming the land (e.g. by fencing it in or prominently staking it out) should be enough to obtain good title:

An old and much respected theory holds that for a man to come into possession of a previously unowned value it is necessary for him to "mix his labor with the land" to make it his own. But this theory runs into difficulties when one attempts to explain what is meant by "mixing labor with land." Just how much labor is required, and of what sort? If a man digs a large hole in his land and then fills it up again, can he be said to have mixed his labor with the land? Or is it necessary to effect a somewhat permanent change in the land? If so, how permanent?...Or is it necessary to effect some improvement in the economic value of the land? If so, how much and how soon?...Would a man lose title to his land if he had to wait ten months for a railroad line to be built before he could improve the land?...And what of the naturalist who wanted to keep his land exactly as it was in its wild state to study its ecology?...[M]ixing one's labor with the land is too ill-defined a concept and too arbitrary a requirement to serve as a criterion of ownership.^[3]

^{This is the spirit of my question, worded more succinctly.}

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Stephen Adkins — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:19:13 GMT

I feel that there is a little too much here to choose specific quotes, so I'll offer some clarification on what I was going for with this question.

The title may have been poorly worded. The substance of my question was not about size per se, even though I used the word "big". I was asking, as Autolykos pointed out, about the logical principles which undergird homesteading. I chose a specific example of what seems to be a limitation of homesteading. It seems obvious that one would not be able to claim an entire continent ("For Spain!"), that this would not be homesteading. Some say this is because simply standing on a place isn't using it, let alone mixing labor with it, and for this reason this cannot be considered homesteading. But that seems weird. If I own something, I'm the one who determines whether I'm using it or not. I can leave my car in my garage without touching it for an entire year without having my ownership over it threatened in any way. One couldn't tell me that since I'm not using it enough, it shall recede back into the commons.

So it leads me to consider homesteading. If I own some acres in a remote wilderness based upon some purchase of title from somebody else, I don't need to "use" the land in order to maintain ownership. I don't need to put up a fence, till the land, etc., for this land to be forever recognized as mine. Yet if I stumble upon this same plot of land and it happens to somehow have been overlooked and I'm the first person to claim ownership, I suddenly have to use it in order to establish that it's mine? Seems weird. Unless one takes such a broad definition of use as to include bird watching and day dreaming about what I may one day do with my land.

So maybe a rewording of the question would look something like "what are the logical limitations of the homesteading principle, if any? For example, how big an area could one claim to be homesteading/'using'? Is 'use' to be understood only as a physical process, or can entirely subjective, internal, psychic enjoyment also be considered as use? I understand that specifics are difficult, if not impossible, to enumerate a priori, and even if they could be, libertarians are against imposing subjective preferences upon the market as though they were objective features of the universe; however, perhaps some principles can be established in this thread." Too wordy? : )

I think part of the reason the premise of the post has been criticized is that it sounds like I'm implicitly arguing for the state in the realm of land ownership (contract enforcement?). I'm not. I'm perfectly comfortable accepting the answer that "the market will figure it out". But if we choose to shrug it off and say 'however it will be, it will be fine' then why study economics in the first place? The market will always figure it out, and in the absence of aggression, any outcome is necessarily the optimal one; yet libertarians have obviously done excellent work in numerous fields enumerating logical principles and proceeding to deduce an edifice which can illuminate specific issues. This is what I'm searching for here. Not "homesteading can't be right if you can't tell me exactly how big an area will be acceptable."

To reiterate, I'm not asking what the Libertopian norm would be if it ever had the chance to exist, because the market is a dynamic process and one can't know a priori. I'm essentially asking, based upon the Rothbardian/Hoppean etc vision of homesteading, what constitutes use when, like in the Wikipedia entry on homesteading, it is said that "[t]he homestead principle in law is the concept that one can gain ownership of a natural thing that currently has no owner by using it or building something out of it."

Thanks.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:07:26 GMT

In case someone is replying to my previous post, I will make a new one here.

Anthony de Jasay has argued that the only valid source of rights is a contract, which is a 'meeting of the minds'. A contract because it consists of a meeting of the minds is the only unambiguous source of rights; it bestows a right on one party and a duty on another.

Liberties are extant simply because of the presumption of liberty argument outlined above. This is why I do not much care for 'natural rights' arguments or Constitutional rightsism - aside from the question of whether they are valid, they are a legally confused way of using the term 'rights'; which stems from superimposing the contractual obligations of feudalism onto bureaucratic states and political philosophy.

In the case that someone fails to act in accord with contract and liberties such a person is, by definition, outside the law. An outlaw is estopped from complaining if he is robbed because he recognizes no coherent claim to property or liberties.

Now, let us take conflicting standards. We have the region of Ruritania, which is adjacent to Ancapistan. In Ruritania it is generally accepted that a light sprinkling of salt serves to establish a claim to a region of property. In AnCapistan they a rigorous test of land transformation. If an Ancapistani goes into Ruritania and complains that people have established huge tracts of land by scattering salt an arbiter will tell him 'this is how they do that there, and due dilligence would have made you aware of this'. Even so, the practices of Ruritania are likely to rapidly collapse. Why? Because the incredibly low-cost of gaining control of Ruritanian land will allow AnCapistanis to buy up economically valuable land and farm it out to subsidiary sales. Quickly the norms in Ruritania will become transformed into those of AnCapistan. This is why crazy or bizarre standards will only persist in relatively confined communities where agreement to them is strongly implicit or explicit; i.e. Sharia law will persist among devout Muslims but that is hardly cause for concern by their cosmopolitan neighbours.

Customary law thus tends to gravitate towards the values of the population, ease of dispute resolution and economic profitability. Boundary zones will rapidly become normalize either by norms among groups living in close contact or by standard procedures adopted by their representative legal agencies and agreements between them. The only time this does not happen in customary societies is when there is not a rationalistic legal tradition and/or commercial structure to support them. Hernando de Soto is good on this in his book The Mystery of Capital.

Somalia, despite having a strong customary system, has trouble protecting the property rights of foreigners because their system is based on Somali tribes; while Somalis can shift tribal allegiance there is no established way for a non-Somali to join a tribe or for a non-Somali 'tribe' to be established. Likewise the case is much worse on the boundaries between customary law and statute-fiat societies; the Roman settlers and Germanic tribesmen of the areas they moved in to had incompatible systems of legal resolution which led to frequently bloody conflicts. But such is not a serious problem for a developed country with a humanistic (rather than exclusionary) customary system, such as was found in European international trade and sea law; despite centuries of fiat-legislation customary and civil law remain strong in European civilizations, and Confuscian law serves a similar role for the Chinese, who are able to conduct business all around the world with little trouble except from the government.b

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:27:12 GMT

Why? Are you simply defining "theory of justice" that way? Or what?

That's what it means. Fiat or statute is something completely different. Justice is not morality, it is not legislation, it is juridical practice and legal theory. Whatever relationship fiat and morality may have to justice it is something else. If you don't understand that aggression is inherently unjust then you don't know what justice is.

Again, you really need to read de Jasay and Fuller.

And when someone doesn't agree to that?

Then they find a arbiter.

Or when he changes his mind?

You are estopped from doing so. This is basic contract law.

Sure, they can be, but logical impossibilities don't preclude people from foregoing things like the presumption of innocence.

Then it's not justice. You can't have an arbitrary system. That's a non-system.

Logic is a process, not a result.

And norms and bounds are results, not logic. They are channeled by logic, but they do not consist of logical deductions or praxeological realities.

Doesn't logic deal with classification?

Obviously logic is involved with all ratiocination. That does not mean there is any a priori way to decide how many hectares you can claim by digging a ditch. And classificationism is not classification, it is a particular quart of statute legislation because there are no norms of practice, only some doofus with a pen and too much free time.

With that in mind, I'd argue that allowing a person to claim an entire continent, let alone an entire planet or moon, just by seeing part of it and voicing a claim would cause more disputes than it would solve.

Yes, so long as we aren't flying around in space with supertechnology this would be absurd and no one would recognize it. So it's a non-issue, in real life. These things only become relevant when you get to more feasible sizes, like two cattle ranchers arguing over grazing pastures. Then people have real disputes. In our present, real world only lunatics claim to own the moon.

I understand that. Many people, especially newcomers to libertarianism, don't. They think leaving it up to people to decide is "mob rule", and they come up with all sorts of objections like "What if everyone else decides to take my land?" Explaining customary law to them is all well and good, but I think it's also important to explain to them how and why customary law has a risen and (most likely) will arise where it's allowed to. Hopefully that makes sense to you.

Well, customary law, markets and civil society in general are a kind of 'mob rule'. It is the pressure of majorities exerting what control they can to force other people to serve them. That being said it is a highly constrained, rationalistic mob rule. The trouble is that agencies like the state or rampant warlordism (I would not say there was a 'state' in the middle ages) break apart the constraints of customary and civil law, and unleash mob rule and fiat against the individual without providing feasible protections or recourse. The fact that the majority basically determines what is going on is inevitable, the question is how can we keep them from running roughshod over one another in the process.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Autolykos — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:20:20 GMT

Ricky James Moore II:
Any theory of justice (not fiat) has a ban on aggression.

Why? Are you simply defining "theory of justice" that way? Or what?

Ricky James Moore II:
Aggression is by definition not permitted under justice, even if the system allows for exceptions to punishment (makes aggression non-actionable in some cases) it is nonetheless verboten by being aggression.

Why must "justice" be defined such that "aggression" is not permitted under it?

Ricky James Moore II:
The question is: what counts as aggression? Now, our answer would be 'violation of property'; but here the question becomes 'what counts as a violation of property?' You can only answer this by developing customary are contractual norms on what people consider a violation, and a large part of this will be whether or not it pays to sue the company which bonds you (inaccurately called 'legal' or 'criminal' insurance) for the damages which can be found for it. Thus, people would not sue for shining a flashlight on their door unless it can be proven that a flashlight causes serious damages; otherwise it would be in their interest to just ignore the matter, or bitch you out about it.

I do agree that what counts as aggression is a pivotal question. I also understand that all of this is subject to boundary conditions (i.e. "where to draw the line"). Economic considerations aside, I think an interesting mental exercise is to see which (if any) particular boundary placements will ultimately lead back to statism. With that in mind, I'd argue that allowing a person to claim an entire continent, let alone an entire planet or moon, just by seeing part of it and voicing a claim would cause more disputes than it would solve.

Ricky James Moore II:
Whatever suits the people involved. It's really none of my business how two Frenchmen decide what counts as appropriation, or what norms some legal company or another adopt as standard policy. As long as everyone involved agrees to be bound by the arbitration results, who cares?

And when someone doesn't agree to that? Or when he changes his mind?

What if the two Frenchmen think it's okay to appropriate property that other people have already appropriated?

Ricky James Moore II:
Then it's not law. People don't have to make arguments; but they're not arguing. So?

How are you defining "law" then?

Ricky James Moore II:
No, it doesn't, for the above reasons and for the simple concept of voluntarism: if everyone involved agrees, mind your own business.

That depends on who "everyone" is, right? If you don't agree but everyone else does, what then? What obligates you to follow the simple concept of voluntarism?

Ricky James Moore II:
Procedural norms can be established deductively (asking a person to prove that there is no reason he should be prevented from doing something is a logical impossibility, ergo the presumption of innocence).

Sure, they can be, but logical impossibilities don't preclude people from foregoing things like the presumption of innocence.

Ricky James Moore II:
Substantive matters - metrics and norms of practice - are ultimately a matter of whatever people involved recognize and accept, there is no alternative possible: either some company they contract or bond to sets norms or people just accept norms that are used. It used to be in the West that they'd shave the bark off of trees to show their bounds; when there is a lot of land this is all you need. When there is less free land or the land is more valuable and thus more likely to be hotly disputed they develop more precise norms. But there is no way to decide, it depends on what people are familiar and comfortable with.

I understand that. Many people, especially newcomers to libertarianism, don't. They think leaving it up to people to decide is "mob rule", and they come up with all sorts of objections like "What if everyone else decides to take my land?" Explaining customary law to them is all well and good, but I think it's also important to explain to them how and why customary law has a risen and (most likely) will arise where it's allowed to. Hopefully that makes sense to you.

Ricky James Moore II:
What is your universal reasoning on how many seats there should be in a car? There is none - it's arbitrary'.

Logic is a process, not a result. For example, modus tollens is universal, but not arbitrary.

Ricky James Moore II:
There is a difference between substantive norms and bounds, procedural logic and the very meaning of words. The three of these are all components of a juridical system, but they all derive from different considerations and facts. A basic familiarity with legal theory (which is NOT the same as libertarian morality, even if you ARE a a libertarian) would tell you this.

I don't see how this addresses my contention. Can you please explain?

Ricky James Moore II:
Ironically, the approach you are taking to this ('how much land can you homestead?') derives from the same sort of anti-juridical reasoning that drives fiat positivism.

I don't see how I'm taking any approach to the question "How much land can be homesteaded?" Rather, I'm taking an approach to the question "What constitutes homesteading?" Do you consider these two questions to be equivalent? If so, why?

Ricky James Moore II:
For simple speculation, based on the origins of European legal systems and the nature of our high-order derivative contracts and equity claims in commerce it would probably look like a combination of North Germanic tribal law, the Law Merchant, the American Arbitration Association and Roman Civil Law.

I agree and I think I've looked into those rather extensively already.

Ricky James Moore II:
Because all norms and bounds are effected by legal dispute resolutions they are ipso facto those between the specific parties involved; and will derive from consuetudinary law (shooting someone in the face is prima facie a tort), customary law (the standards and practices generally recognized), case law (a review of relevant rulings, their arguments and results) and the specific rulings and contracts come to between the arbitration agency and its cusomers. It is not even conceptually possible for it to be anything else; saying, "X definitively counts as appropriation" is classificationist fiat, not law.

Doesn't logic deal with classification? I could give you the famous syllogism about Socrates being mortal, but I'm sure you already know of it. Even the different forms of law you mention above are classificatory. If Harald shoots Erik in the face, is it a tort? Only if it's customary or if one or more analogous cases have been ruled as such. I guess this again raises the question of how you distinguish between "law" and "fiat".

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:53:42 GMT

I have revised and added some links to this since I first posted it.

What do you mean by "legally tautological"?

Any theory of justice (not fiat) has a ban on aggression. Aggression is by definition not permitted under justice, even if the system allows for exceptions to punishment (makes aggression non-actionable in some cases) it is nonetheless verboten by being aggression. The question is: what counts as aggression? Now, our answer would be 'violation of property'; but here the question becomes 'what counts as a violation of property?' You can only answer this by developing customary are contractual norms on what people consider a violation, and a large part of this will be whether or not it pays to sue the company which bonds you (inaccurately called 'legal' or 'criminal' insurance) for the damages which can be found for it. Thus, people would not sue for shining a flashlight on their door unless it can be proven that a flashlight causes serious damages; otherwise it would be in their interest to just ignore the matter, or bitch you out about it.

"Finders, keepers" is all well and good, but the issue there is with what constitutes "finding". Likewise with "first come, first serve" -- what constitutes "coming" there?

Whatever suits the people involved. It's really none of my business how two Frenchmen decide what counts as appropriation, or what norms some legal company or another adopt as standard policy. As long as everyone involved agrees to be bound by the arbitration results, who cares?

Yet people don't have to come to agreements which make logical sense, do they?

Then it's not law. People don't have to make arguments; but they're not arguing. So?

Simply saying that law is whatever people agree to takes logic out of the picture, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't, for the above reasons and for the simple concept of voluntarism: if everyone involved agrees, mind your own business. Procedural norms can be established deductively (asking a person to prove that there is no reason he should be prevented from doing something is a logical impossibility, ergo the presumption of innocence). Substantive matters - metrics and norms of practice - are ultimately a matter of whatever people involved recognize and accept, there is no alternative possible: either some company they contract or bond to sets norms or people just accept norms that are used. It used to be in the West that they'd shave the bark off of trees to show their bounds; when there is a lot of land this is all you need. When there is less free land or the land is more valuable and thus more likely to be hotly disputed they develop more precise norms. But there is no way to decide, it depends on what people are familiar and comfortable with.

Are you equating "universal" with "arbitrary" there?

What is your universal reasoning on how many seats there should be in a car? There is none - it's arbitrary'.

"All we need to do is understand what it means to appropriate property [...]". If you're implying that there's a correct meaning for "appropriate property", that would imply a universal standard, wouldn't it?

There is a difference between substantive norms and bounds, procedural logic and the very meaning of words. The three of these are all components of a juridical system, but they all derive from different considerations and facts. A basic familiarity with legal theory (which is NOT the same as libertarian morality, even if you ARE a a libertarian) would tell you this. You seriously need to read works such as Lon L. Fuller's The Morality of Law and Anthony de Jasay's Justice and Its Surroundings before your speculations are going to be anything but nonsense. If you want a professional opinion you could just bother emailing someone like Stephan Kinsella, who is a professional lawyer and will tell you exactly what I am right now.

Ironically, the approach you are taking to this ('how much land can you homestead?') derives from the same sort of anti-juridical reasoning that drives fiat positivism.

For simple speculation, based on the origins of European legal systems and the nature of our high-order derivative contracts and equity claims in commerce it would probably look like a combination of North Germanic tribal law, the Law Merchant, the American Arbitration Association and Roman Civil Law.

Because all norms and bounds are effected by legal dispute resolutions they are ipso facto those between the specific parties involved; and will derive from consuetudinary law (shooting someone in the face is prima facie a tort), customary law (the standards and practices generally recognized), case law (a review of relevant rulings, their arguments and results) and the specific rulings and contracts come to between the arbitration agency and its cusomers. It is not even conceptually possible for it to be anything else; saying, "X definitively counts as appropriation" is classificationist fiat, not law.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Autolykos — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:35:09 GMT

I hope you don't mind if I break up your rather long paragraph.

Ricky James Moore II:
The NAP is legally tautological, and 'finders, keepers' and 'first come, first serve' are a lot less confused than the Lockean principle.

What do you mean by "legally tautological"?

"Finders, keepers" is all well and good, but the issue there is with what constitutes "finding". Likewise with "first come, first serve" -- what constitutes "coming" there?

Ricky James Moore II:
There certainly are restrictions on what law is (something which is arbitrary is not justice, it is fiat), what sort of jurisprudential procedural norms make logical sense.

Yet people don't have to come to agreements which make logical sense, do they? Simply saying that law is whatever people agree to takes logic out of the picture, doesn't it?. What I (for one) have actually tried to do, here and elsewhere, is do exactly what you describe here -- investigate what sort of juristic norms and principles make logical sense.

Ricky James Moore II:
But that in no way bounds specific provisional norms, nor should it. The point of a market in law is to serve the customers. That is not done by having universal, arbitrary standards.

Are you equating "universal" with "arbitrary" there? If so, why? Logic is (as far as we can tell) universal -- does that make it arbitrary?

Ricky James Moore II:
Even Walter Block has said this - the arithmetical and standards of conduct for law are products of the market, not something one can dream up sitting in an office. Such a legal system would be ridiculous, and no one would actually use it. Why should they? Why should there be some universal standard on how property is appropriated? All we need to do is understand what it means to appropriate property, what sorts of questions are relevant to title and infraction and then let people work it out among themselves what boundaries best suit them. I can not believe this seems to be such a difficult concept for many libertarians to understand, and I suppose the general ignorance of customary law is the cause of it.

You seem to contradict yourself between asking "Why should there be some universal standard on how property is appropriated?" and saying "All we need to do is understand what it means to appropriate property [...]". If you're implying that there's a correct meaning for "appropriate property", that would imply a universal standard, wouldn't it?

Regardless, I think it's important and good to realize that speculations are speculations. They aren't claims or demands on the future -- they're simply ideas on how things could work. Sometimes people find it difficult to understand abstractions and pure concepts without "real-world" examples. The speculations I and others might engage in are done for that purpose.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Autolykos — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:25:01 GMT

Ricky James Moore II:
The assumptions of the original discussion were mistaken.

What, in your opinion, are the assumptions of the original discussion?

Ricky James Moore II:
These things can not and should not be drummed out on the basis of floating theories. The whole point of market law is to make things conform to the wishes of the consumers; if you want historical examples of norms then look at customary law but even this is just past data - we are not any more likely to replicate Germanic tribal customary norms on boundaries and appropriation than we are to copy the Commune system of defense.

Of course, but I think that's all rather beside the point here. The OP was about further refinement and delineation of the Homesteading Principle -- also known as taking a principle to its logical conclusion(s). If you don't like such things, that's fine. But please don't try to prevent others from continuing to engage in them.

Ricky James Moore II:
The answer to 'how much land can you homestead' is 'as much as people will generally accede to without fear of being estopped on their own claims'. That's it. There is no cubic measurement, no formula, no theory that will give you an answer any more precise than that.

The OP wasn't talking about how much land one can homestead. He was talking about what constitutes homesteading. The amount of land involved is irrelevant. Given the OP, I don't think the thread title was well-chosen, but it is what it is.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:10:09 GMT

Where you say that "there are no a priori principles of boundaries or restitution claims", it seems you mean that no one is prima facie obligated to follow any particular principles. You're right about that. However, that doesn't mean that a priori principles can't be posited and discussed. The heart of libertarianism is all about principles -- the Non-Aggression Principle, the Homesteading Principle, etc.

The NAP is legally tautological, and 'finders, keepers' and 'first come, first serve' are a lot less confused than the Lockean principle. There certainly are restrictions on what law is (something which is arbitrary is not justice, it is fiat), what sort of jurisprudential procedural norms make logical sense. But that in no way bounds specific provisional norms, nor should it. The point of a market in law is to serve the customers. That is not done by having universal, arbitrary standards. Even Walter Block has said this - the arithmetical and standards of conduct for law are products of the market, not something one can dream up sitting in an office. Such a legal system would be ridiculous, and no one would actually use it. Why should they? Why should there be some universal standard on how property is appropriated? All we need to do is understand what it means to appropriate property, what sorts of questions are relevant to title and infraction and then let people work it out among themselves what boundaries best suit them. I can not believe this seems to be such a difficult concept for many libertarians to understand, and I suppose the general ignorance of customary law is the cause of it.

Re: How big an area could one claim to be homesteading?

Ricky James Moore II — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:01:49 GMT

The assumptions of the original discussion were mistaken. These things can not and should not be drummed out on the basis of floating theories. The whole point of market law is to make things conform to the wishes of the consumers; if you want historical examples of norms then look at customary law but even this is just past data - we are not any more likely to replicate Germanic tribal customary norms on boundaries and appropriation than we are to copy the Commune system of defense.

The answer to 'how much land can you homestead' is 'as much as people will generally accede to without fear of being estopped on their own claims'. That's it. There is no cubic measurement, no formula, no theory that will give you an answer any more precise than that.