At what point does stolen property become legitimate property?
For example, land stolen from Native Americans... how can it rightfully be deeded to a US citizen and then passed on to subsequent heirs?
This is something I've long wondered about. The problem is that almost everything has a history of violence attached to it, so how can there be any rightful property at all?
So, chapter nine in the Ethics of Liberty is entirely relevant to this thread. I suggest that you read the whole chapter (or even the whole book), but I will quote the most relevant portion:
The answer is that the criterion holds as we have explained above: The right of every individual to own his person and the property that he has found and transformed, and therefore “created,” and the property which he has acquired either as gifts from or in voluntary exchange with other such transformers or “producers.” It is true that existing property titles must be scrutinized, but the resolution of the problem is much simpler than the question assumes. For remember always the basic principle: that all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle). We have seen this above in the case of unused land and natural resources: the first to find and mix his labor with them, to possess and use them, “produces” them and becomes their legitimate property owner. Now suppose that Mr. Jones has a watch; if we cannot clearly show that Jones or his ancestors to the property title in the watch were criminals, then we must say that since Mr. Jones has been possessing and using it, that he is truly the legitimate and just property owner. Or, to put the case another way: if we do not know if Jones’s title to any given property is criminally-derived, then we may assume that this property was, at least momentarily in a state of no-ownership (since we are not sure about the original title), and therefore that the proper title of ownership reverted instantaneously to Jones as its “first” (i.e., current) possessor and user. In short, where we are not sure about a title but it cannot be clearly identified as criminally derived, then the title properly and legitimately reverts to its current possessor. But now suppose that a title to property is clearly identifiable as criminal, does this necessarily mean that the current possessor must give it up? No, not necessarily. For that depends on two considerations: (a) whether the victim (the property owner originally aggressed against) or his heirs are clearly identifiable and can now be found; or (b) whether or not the current possessor is himself the criminal who stole the property. Suppose, for example, that Jones possesses a watch, and that we can clearly show that Jones’s title is originally criminal, either because (1) his ancestor stole it, or (2) because he or his ancestor purchased it from a thief (whether wittingly or unwittingly is immaterial here). Now, if we can identify and find the victim or his heir, then it is clear that Jones’s title to the watch is totally invalid, and that it must promptly revert to its true and legitimate owner. Thus, if Jones inherited or purchased the watch from a man who stole it from Smith, and if Smith or the heir to his estate can be found, then the title to the watch properly reverts immediately back to Smith or his descendants, without compensation to the existing possessor of the criminally derived “title.”[7] Thus, if a current title to property is criminal in origin, and the victim or his heir can be found, then the title should immediately revert to the latter. Suppose, however, that condition (a) is not fulfilled: in short, that we know that Jones’s title is criminal, but that we cannot now find the victim or his current heir. Who now is the legitimate and moral property owner? The answer to this question now depends on whether or not Jones himself is the criminal, whether Jones is the man who stole the watch. If Jones was the thief, then it is quite clear that he cannot be allowed to keep it, for the criminal cannot be allowed to keep the reward of his crime; and he loses the watch, and probably suffers other punishments besides.[8] In that case, who gets the watch? Applying our libertarian theory of property, the watch is now—after Jones has been apprehended-in a state of no-ownership, and it must therefore become the legitimate property of the first person to “homestead” it—to take it and use it, and therefore, to have converted it from an unused, no-ownership state to a useful, owned state. The first person who does so then becomes its legitimate, moral, and just owner. But suppose that Jones is not the criminal, not the man who stole the watch, but that he had inherited or had innocently purchased it from the thief. And suppose, of course, that neither the victim nor his heirs can be found. In that case, the disappearance of the victim means that the stolen property comes properly into a state of no-ownership. But we have seen that any good in a state of no-ownership, with no legitimate owner of its title, reverts as legitimate property to the first person to come along and use it, to appropriate this now unowned resource for human use. But this “first” person is clearly Jones, who has been using it all along. Therefore, we conclude that even though the property was originally stolen, that if the victim or his heirs cannot be found, and if the current possessor was not the actual criminal who stole the property, then title to that property belongs properly, justly, and ethically to its current possessor.
The answer is that the criterion holds as we have explained above: The right of every individual to own his person and the property that he has found and transformed, and therefore “created,” and the property which he has acquired either as gifts from or in voluntary exchange with other such transformers or “producers.” It is true that existing property titles must be scrutinized, but the resolution of the problem is much simpler than the question assumes. For remember always the basic principle: that all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle). We have seen this above in the case of unused land and natural resources: the first to find and mix his labor with them, to possess and use them, “produces” them and becomes their legitimate property owner. Now suppose that Mr. Jones has a watch; if we cannot clearly show that Jones or his ancestors to the property title in the watch were criminals, then we must say that since Mr. Jones has been possessing and using it, that he is truly the legitimate and just property owner.
Or, to put the case another way: if we do not know if Jones’s title to any given property is criminally-derived, then we may assume that this property was, at least momentarily in a state of no-ownership (since we are not sure about the original title), and therefore that the proper title of ownership reverted instantaneously to Jones as its “first” (i.e., current) possessor and user. In short, where we are not sure about a title but it cannot be clearly identified as criminally derived, then the title properly and legitimately reverts to its current possessor.
But now suppose that a title to property is clearly identifiable as criminal, does this necessarily mean that the current possessor must give it up? No, not necessarily. For that depends on two considerations: (a) whether the victim (the property owner originally aggressed against) or his heirs are clearly identifiable and can now be found; or (b) whether or not the current possessor is himself the criminal who stole the property. Suppose, for example, that Jones possesses a watch, and that we can clearly show that Jones’s title is originally criminal, either because (1) his ancestor stole it, or (2) because he or his ancestor purchased it from a thief (whether wittingly or unwittingly is immaterial here). Now, if we can identify and find the victim or his heir, then it is clear that Jones’s title to the watch is totally invalid, and that it must promptly revert to its true and legitimate owner. Thus, if Jones inherited or purchased the watch from a man who stole it from Smith, and if Smith or the heir to his estate can be found, then the title to the watch properly reverts immediately back to Smith or his descendants, without compensation to the existing possessor of the criminally derived “title.”[7] Thus, if a current title to property is criminal in origin, and the victim or his heir can be found, then the title should immediately revert to the latter.
Suppose, however, that condition (a) is not fulfilled: in short, that we know that Jones’s title is criminal, but that we cannot now find the victim or his current heir. Who now is the legitimate and moral property owner? The answer to this question now depends on whether or not Jones himself is the criminal, whether Jones is the man who stole the watch. If Jones was the thief, then it is quite clear that he cannot be allowed to keep it, for the criminal cannot be allowed to keep the reward of his crime; and he loses the watch, and probably suffers other punishments besides.[8] In that case, who gets the watch? Applying our libertarian theory of property, the watch is now—after Jones has been apprehended-in a state of no-ownership, and it must therefore become the legitimate property of the first person to “homestead” it—to take it and use it, and therefore, to have converted it from an unused, no-ownership state to a useful, owned state. The first person who does so then becomes its legitimate, moral, and just owner.
But suppose that Jones is not the criminal, not the man who stole the watch, but that he had inherited or had innocently purchased it from the thief. And suppose, of course, that neither the victim nor his heirs can be found. In that case, the disappearance of the victim means that the stolen property comes properly into a state of no-ownership. But we have seen that any good in a state of no-ownership, with no legitimate owner of its title, reverts as legitimate property to the first person to come along and use it, to appropriate this now unowned resource for human use. But this “first” person is clearly Jones, who has been using it all along. Therefore, we conclude that even though the property was originally stolen, that if the victim or his heirs cannot be found, and if the current possessor was not the actual criminal who stole the property, then title to that property belongs properly, justly, and ethically to its current possessor.
But there is far more before and after this portion, and it is even better when read in context. So I highly suggest reading the entire chapter.
jodiphour: Of course, someone will argue that violence requires infringement of property rights, so taking property from a thief is not violent. And that is a valid point too and may solve the conundrum.
Of course, someone will argue that violence requires infringement of property rights, so taking property from a thief is not violent. And that is a valid point too and may solve the conundrum.
That is not the typical understanding of the word violence. Violence is physical force. If you take the property from the thief through force, you have used violence against him.
This is different from aggression, which is the initiation of violence or the threat thereof. Taking the property from the thief is not aggressive (within proportion), so it is in line with the NAP.
Violence can be used to create just ownership.
There is a proper role for the use or threat of violence. The fact that - a priori - we desire the minimization of violence does not flow from violence being in some cosmic sense "immoral" but, rather, from the simple fact that it is impoverishing. Hence, the minimization of violence is not an end-in-itself. Rather, prosperity (individual human flourishing) is the end desired and the minimization of violence is one of the logical preconditions to achieving this. This is why we're not pacifists.
Clayton -
I highly suggest you read about objective vs subjective, abstract vs concrete, and positive vs normative. There is no such thing as objective justice or morality. They are entirely subjective. If there were such a thing as "objective justice" or "objective morality", we would have no way of discerning what they are, as there is no way to derive an ought from an is.
You are misunderstanding. I mean objective in a mathematical sense. That we define a set of objective rules based on the NAP and whatever assumptions are necessary to logically deduct from them. These rules then define objective justice. It is our inability to have complete knowledge of the world that makes it impossible to determine what is, in reality, objectively just according to these rules.
Well I don't know how different their conception was. Certainly not all nations had the same conception, as some were nomadic and some were not.
Ad usum principle seems to apply. It's kind of the oxygene your breath. Can you claim all the oxygene as your property? Here is a piece on Southern Africa, where you suddenly get similar problems:
White settlers never stole any land from Africans: iLIVE Herman Griessel, Cape Town | 11 July, 2011 12:45 A cattle farmer in Mookgophong, Limpopo. Image by: Robert Tshabalala Black Africans never owned any land. Any form of formal ownership is a Western concept. You cannot take something from somebody WHO NEVER HAD IT. In fact, what is it that white people, specifically white men, are supposed to "give back" to black people? LAND: Black Africans NEVER owned any land. Any form of formal ownership is a Western concept. The 'black' tribes of the mid 19th century haphazardly SETTLED in an ad hoc manner - effectively governed by tribal savagery, in other words, the most savage ruled the land (a bit like Hillbrow today). They simply ran away until they could not run anymore - not having ANY grasp of the concept of a horizon or for that matter any measure of finite land mass - eg the boundaries - that is the fundamental concept of ownership. Who "disadvantaged" the 'black' people of the interior in Southern Africa before the (supposed) belligerent 'white' settlers moved inland in the mid 19th century..? As certainly, what the 'settlers' found was not a hugely advanced infrastructure, deep mines, airports, vast libraries of written works, grandiose institutions of learning, etc. No, as little as 170 years ago they found masses of black people (indigenous to the Southern tip of Africa, The San) living on the fringes of the stone age. Beings in skins, wielding sticks, living primitive dwellings, dragging and carrying things around, who had not even invented the wheel yet. Insert by Herman Griessel:- The San were the indigenous people of Southern Africa, if there needs to be any Land Reform it should be with the San, the rest of the Black African tribes as well as the White are and were all immigrants to Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, and from other parts of the world and Northern Africa. The linguistic core of the Bantu family of languages, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family, was located in the region of modern Cameroon and Eastern Nigeria. From this core, expansion began about three thousand years ago, with one stream going more or less east into East Africa, and other streams going south along the African coast of Gabon, Democratic Congo and Angola, or inland along the many south to north flowing rivers of the Congo River system. The expansion eventually reached South Africa probably as recently as 300 A.D Ethiopia - a country that was NEVER colonised. Today one of the most desolate places on the planet - who "disadvantaged" the people of Ethiopia..? Put Zimbabwe and Germany next to each other and please explain the differences. In 1945 Germany was (for all intents and purposes) flattened to the ground and torn in half. Fifteen years later, West Germany was described as an "Economic Wonder". Around the same time as the end of Apartheid, Germany was re-unified. It yanked the (unified) Germany back four centuries in time. Yet, in (around) fifteen years (for the second time in a few decades) it built an 'economic wonder' - today, fast becoming a global leader in almost every aspect. Reminder: a lineage very strongly associated with... WHITE AFRIKAANS SPEAKING people... Insert by Herman Griessel:- I am a third generation White South African semi retired Farmer, my Grandfather arrived in the Cape in 1895, having originated from Southern Bavaria Germany, and took part in the second Boer War (1899 – 1902), against the English off course. I disinvested in Agricultural Land in South Africa in 1994, 16 farms employing ± 2, 000 Black African people, I could see what was coming, and here it now is. Google my name Herman Griessel, and read my story of farming on the borders of Southern Africa from 1975 and onwards. On the 'flip side' - Zimbabwe - was handed one of the wealthiest countries in the WORLD (eg a currency that was worth more than the USA Dollar, etc) - what is it today..? Competing with Ethiopia to be the most desolate hell-hole on the planet..? Please explain... Quote from Ian Johnston an ex Rhodesian, has published a book “Thru Thick ‘n’ Thin, a must read, and who happens to be my neighbour:- Remember '' We won the land from the mosquitoes and the tsetse flies'' And what he is implying here is that the White African Rhodesians, through the technology of the day, won back large tracts of land that was riddled with tsetse fly and Malaria, where before the Black African could not settle or graze their cattle, nothing was ever taken from them, in retrospect their very lives were enhanced and improved to the extreme in comparison. The below insert from just the other day March 2011, this is what Zimbabwe has come to, and no one lifts a finger. By Tariro Madzongwe http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2011/07/11/white-settlers-never-stole-any-land-from-africans-ilive | Post Points: 20
LAND:
Black Africans NEVER owned any land. Any form of formal ownership is a Western concept. The 'black' tribes of the mid 19th century haphazardly SETTLED in an ad hoc manner - effectively governed by tribal savagery, in other words, the most savage ruled the land (a bit like Hillbrow today). They simply ran away until they could not run anymore - not having ANY grasp of the concept of a horizon or for that matter any measure of finite land mass - eg the boundaries - that is the fundamental concept of ownership.
Who "disadvantaged" the 'black' people of the interior in Southern Africa before the (supposed) belligerent 'white' settlers moved inland in the mid 19th century..? As certainly, what the 'settlers' found was not a hugely advanced infrastructure, deep mines, airports, vast libraries of written works, grandiose institutions of learning, etc. No, as little as 170 years ago they found masses of black people (indigenous to the Southern tip of Africa, The San) living on the fringes of the stone age. Beings in skins, wielding sticks, living primitive dwellings, dragging and carrying things around, who had not even invented the wheel yet.
Insert by Herman Griessel:- The San were the indigenous people of Southern Africa, if there needs to be any Land Reform it should be with the San, the rest of the Black African tribes as well as the White are and were all immigrants to Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, and from other parts of the world and Northern Africa.
The linguistic core of the Bantu family of languages, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family, was located in the region of modern Cameroon and Eastern Nigeria. From this core, expansion began about three thousand years ago, with one stream going more or less east into East Africa, and other streams going south along the African coast of Gabon, Democratic Congo and Angola, or inland along the many south to north flowing rivers of the Congo River system. The expansion eventually reached South Africa probably as recently as 300 A.D
Ethiopia - a country that was NEVER colonised. Today one of the most desolate places on the planet - who "disadvantaged" the people of Ethiopia..?
Put Zimbabwe and Germany next to each other and please explain the differences. In 1945 Germany was (for all intents and purposes) flattened to the ground and torn in half. Fifteen years later, West Germany was described as an "Economic Wonder". Around the same time as the end of Apartheid, Germany was re-unified. It yanked the (unified) Germany back four centuries in time.
Yet, in (around) fifteen years (for the second time in a few decades) it built an 'economic wonder' - today, fast becoming a global leader in almost every aspect. Reminder: a lineage very strongly associated with... WHITE AFRIKAANS SPEAKING people...
Insert by Herman Griessel:- I am a third generation White South African semi retired Farmer, my Grandfather arrived in the Cape in 1895, having originated from Southern Bavaria Germany, and took part in the second Boer War (1899 – 1902), against the English off course. I disinvested in Agricultural Land in South Africa in 1994, 16 farms employing ± 2, 000 Black African people, I could see what was coming, and here it now is. Google my name Herman Griessel, and read my story of farming on the borders of Southern Africa from 1975 and onwards.
On the 'flip side' - Zimbabwe - was handed one of the wealthiest countries in the WORLD (eg a currency that was worth more than the USA Dollar, etc) - what is it today..? Competing with Ethiopia to be the most desolate hell-hole on the planet..? Please explain...
Quote from Ian Johnston an ex Rhodesian, has published a book “Thru Thick ‘n’ Thin, a must read, and who happens to be my neighbour:- Remember '' We won the land from the mosquitoes and the tsetse flies''
And what he is implying here is that the White African Rhodesians, through the technology of the day, won back large tracts of land that was riddled with tsetse fly and Malaria, where before the Black African could not settle or graze their cattle, nothing was ever taken from them, in retrospect their very lives were enhanced and improved to the extreme in comparison.
The below insert from just the other day March 2011, this is what Zimbabwe has come to, and no one lifts a finger.
By Tariro Madzongwe http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2011/07/11/white-settlers-never-stole-any-land-from-africans-ilive
oxygen is a resource of a different nature. One might rightfully claim some reasonable airspace around their body... we usually call this personal space. But it is not tied to specific oxygen molecules as we can't control their movement. Same thing with ocean. You can't claim the actual water molecules, but you can claim a body bounded by lat/long coords or relative to the sea floor below. Land is substantially different. It still changes, so we can't truly claim specific molecules. For example, an Earthquake may move the land causing one persons land to grow and anothers to shrink (plenty of other natural processes uncontrolled by man can cause "earth molecules" to move from one plot to another). Are we to not readjust the fences relative to, say, lat/long coords? I'm not sure what the NAP would say about this.
We must be careful in what we say... someone mentioned something about the Africans who were "returned" "their" land squandered it. This contains the symptoms of an interpersonal utility judgment. They may have produced less crops, or changed the land in a what you see unfit, but it is impossible to say whether or not they used it worse or better. They may have gotten quite alot of satisfaction out of their "squandering".
The above article says that people do not own property without having a concept of property ownership. Property is derived from human action. It is not conditional on the human having a particular worldview. It has all sorts of insulting insinuations... unanswered questions which cannot be viewed properly outside of the deeper context of history. Of course, we can't dispute that Africans (and other native peoples), were less advanced in terms of technology and knowledge (generally speaking)... I'm sure they knew things that the settlers didn't. But again, how can we make interpersonal comparisons like that? A lower level of knowledge may easily generate a higher level of satisfaction! It depends on the person, and we can't compare between persons.
Of course you could argue that they have to be a member of a race that has a property ownership concept... say a mentally challenged individual can own land as long as they are of... European descent, for example. But a mentally challenged tribal African would have no property rights, even if they were physically capable of "homesteading".
But is the line drawn at race, nation, or some other social or geographical distinction? Were there any of the African race that did have some (maybe rudimentary) concept of property rights?
Clayton:I think there is great value in really trying to get hold of the magnitude of the crime not so we can self-flagellate with pointless, misguided guilt but so that we can all the more clearly identify the evil of the State.
The evil of the state is no more than the evil of the human heart. The state is run by people; so look within. People cannot be trusted to rule other people. That doesn't mean you couldn't create a state where people control only themselves, one predicated on individualism not socialism. That's why I have trouble blanket condemning the state. Not that I can really blame you since an individualist state hasn't yet existed except as a concept... but if it did it would be a moral entity. Probably it would not be right to even use the same word 'state' for both of them.
Clayton:The settlers didn't steal the land by virtue of their whiteness, they stole it by virtue of the enabling and backing of the US government and Anglo-European money interests. The great-great-...-grandchildren of the very same political Elites who held power at that time are still in power today and it is toward these living, breathing heirs of the colonial plunder of the planet to which our moral condemnation is directed.
True, generally the colonists of the time lived amicably, and dealt fairly with the indians. It was the governments that did some truly two-faced things regarding the indians.
Clayton:Even if there is nothing they can do to right the wrongs that were committed hundreds of years ago, there are a lot of wrongs being committed today which could be righted and, most importantly of all, there is no reason the heirs of this colonial/imperial legacy should be permitted to continue this domination into the future. Moral clarity on this issue is extremely difficult as the very people who we should be criticizing employ all the means at their disposal to befuddle public opinion and discussion on this issue. The problem is insidious but I hope that the LvMI, the Internet, and the "global political awakening" driven in part by cell phones, the Internet, etc. may be building a critical mass to once and for all break the back of this system of blatant exploitation.
That's where we differ, you and I. You still believe that such a 'global political awakening' might eventually occur and thus direct your efforts and hopes there. I don't think it will ever happen. The powers that be have taken over the organs of teaching and communication precisely to keep this from happening, and they have a billion times more momentum than we do.
This hope of an awakening also gets driven by personal bias. It's a bit funny and sad to read you saying the same thing that libertarians like Robert LeFevre said in the 70's, some 40 years ago, who also stated that he thought the world was waking up to these ideas. When we personally have political awakening, it seems to us that the overall zeitgeist itself may be shifting. But this ends up being false.
How long are you willing to wait? He and others like him waited their whole lives and died waiting. I will wait no longer.
I offer Plan B: to walk away and actually build a new society based on libertarian values. That will garner more press and worldwide attention than a million articles on Mises.org. We sit around debating the Austrian business cycle theory--we should be showing what an Austrian-economy looks like. We theorize about legal systems predicated on voluntaryism and the NAP, we should be showing running court systems dealing with problems in real time.
I'm serious about this.
If you really want to convert someone to libertarianism, you could educate them in its ways, pain-stakingly, over a period of years. OR, you could drop them into a libertarian society and let them see the results of our ideas with their own eyes and convert them in a day.
Nothing changes until we do this thing I suggest. We will always be marginalized politically without action in this direction.
If we can show the world Plan B, survive, thrive, and prosper, and begin outcompeting the world, begin brain-draining the world, then we can force the world to change and acknowledge our ideas as superior. The United States did the same thing. Single-handedly converted the world to republican democracies or thereabouts. Monarchy fell to the idea of the democratic republic, beginning with the US and its success.
I want to do an analogous thing, but with libertarianism. We know it would work.
jodiphour:I am postulating that there is a type of justice beyond the action of humans.
Have you read anything by Sowell regarding Cosmic Justice?
THE QUEST FOR COSMIC JUSTICE by Thomas Sowell
Thanks for the link. I'm not suggesting we waste our time trying to pursue perfect cosmic justice. I'm just suggesting that it exists, given a specific set of assumptions on exactly what it is. And if we define our logical rules appropriately, then under a given set of assumptions of history, we can logically determine what is "cosmically" just. Of course, in reality, we can't know what it would be since our knowledge of history is imperfect, even if our ability to apply the logical rules of cosmic justice was perfect.
*shrug - there's FSP, seasteading, (Chile?), etc. for those interested in that strategy. Or start your own. I don't believe this strategy can work because once you nail down a territory and say "here we stand", you've just painted a bullseye on your chest and the moment you start having any meaningful success, you will be causing the political Elites pain and they will come and grind you to powder.
If you want to speak practically, I think the only practical escape is ... money, lots of it. That's really the only way to have "liberty in your lifetime". As far as changing society goes, I don't believe anyone can actually change it. It's like the motion of the stars, all you can do is look and observe. It does what it decides to do. Even the most powerful people in the world can barely bump the needle this way or that way and they lose as many steps as they gain in the pursuit of their pet Utopia.
That said, Bacon's quote holds in the realm of social phenomena - Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. If you understand the laws of the social order, you are in a position to identify major imbalances which are ripe for exploitation by a new idea. Implanting the right idea at the right place at the right time can unleash tremendous social inertia, like removing the last pebble holding back a landslide. I think the Ron Paul movement illustrates this, to a degree.
Clayton: I offer Plan B: to walk away and actually build a new society based on libertarian values. That will garner more press and worldwide attention than a million articles on Mises.org. We sit around debating the Austrian business cycle theory--we should be showing what an Austrian-economy looks like. We theorize about legal systems predicated on voluntaryism and the NAP, we should be showing running court systems dealing with problems in real time. I don't believe this strategy can work because once you nail down a territory and say "here we stand", you've just painted a bullseye on your chest and the moment you start having any meaningful success, you will be causing the political Elites pain and they will come and grind you to powder.
I don't believe this strategy can work because once you nail down a territory and say "here we stand", you've just painted a bullseye on your chest and the moment you start having any meaningful success, you will be causing the political Elites pain and they will come and grind you to powder.
How would I be causing them pain exactly?
If you look at Sealand, they've had trouble with the authorities, yet have been largely left alone.
I expect it will go something like this. It starts out as little more than a curiosity. Makes a little news, w/e. Permanent living off the CA coast with industry, a tiny economy, etc. It becomes known as being libertarian, grows. The point where the elites would be mad is after critical mass is achieved, when mainstream people are moving there en masse.
It's pretty much too late at that point.
The most they could do would be to force us from 15 miles off coast to 150 miles off coast. Wouldn't matter by the point.
The two danger points are the initial establishment, and the critical mass portion. I expect the authorities will laugh me off until it's too late to do anything about us. Heck, they'll probably think we're doing them a favor, attracting away all the libertarians and the like.
Clayton:If you want to speak practically, I think the only practical escape is ... money, lots of it. That's really the only way to have "liberty in your lifetime".
Unfortunately that changes nothing for everyone else.
Clayton:As far as changing society goes, I don't believe anyone can actually change it. It's like the motion of the stars, all you can do is look and observe. It does what it decides to do. Even the most powerful people in the world can barely bump the needle this way or that way and they lose as many steps as they gain in the pursuit of their pet Utopia.
Disruption overturns whole industries. I intend to disrupt modern politics. Foot voting can achieve much. If we can break a million residents by the end of my lifetime, it's established permanently.
Clayton:That said, Bacon's quote holds in the realm of social phenomena - Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. If you understand the laws of the social order, you are in a position to identify major imbalances which are ripe for exploitation by a new idea. Implanting the right idea at the right place at the right time can unleash tremendous social inertia, like removing the last pebble holding back a landslide. I think the Ron Paul movement illustrates this, to a degree.
Sure. I'm willing to gamble this is a receptive historical epoch to the idea :) The US grew massively while Europe was completely distracted with its own problems. With the US about to be embroiled in massive debt, and still active around the world in defense/war actions, they may not respond to a cut little offshore community before it's too far established to counter.
We shall see :)