BorisM

Another "desert island" scenario that I hope will further illustrate my point.Imagine a ship sinks in the ocean. There are two lifeboats on the ship, both capable of carrying five people. Five passengers get on one. Five on the other. The lifeboats drift around at sea for a while & eventually get seperated. By mere luck one lifeboat washes ashore on a small island. Fortunately there is enough resourses on the island for all of them to sustain themselves(actually more than enough). Each of the five castaways finds their own little section of the island & calls it his own. Maybe he builds a hut, clears a bit of land, or harvests some of the existing coconut trees. basically he "homesteads" his own section of the island. Seems fair enough. Everything seems to work fine.Several days later, the second lifeboat washes up on the same island. Of course, after being lost at sea for several days the five passengers on the second boat are tired, hungry & in desperate need of shelter. One of the newcomers(let's call him Pete) runs up to the nearest coconut tree and attempts to pick a few coconuts to eat. "Hold it just one minute" comes a voice. "I own this land, including that tree & it's fruit". You see that's the part of the island that one of the guys on the first boat(let's call him Bob) "homesteaded".Of course, Bob's not an unreasonable man. he can see that Pete's hungry & has no desire to see his fellow man starve. "I'll tell you what" Bob says. "Pick me 10 of them there coconuts from that there tree of mine & I'll let you keep 5 for yourself!" Pete's starving & realises he has no leverage here(after all, all of the other sections of the island are owned by someone else too), so he reluctantly agrees. Pete get's himself a belly full and feels much better. Several hours go by & Pete realizes that he's gonna need a place to bed down for the night. He proceeds to gather some sticks & branches in order to put together some kind of structure to sleep in. "Wait" says Bob. "Those sticks & branches are mine. They're on my land!" "Oh shit! what now?!" thinks Pete. Of course, Bob being a reasonable man has no desire to see poor Pete sleep out in the cold. Bob says "I tell you what, Pete. I got this little bitty hut I built here a few days ago & I'd really like to have a bigger one. You build me an addition onto this here hut & I'll let you have enough sticks & what-not to build your own self a hut". Once again Pete reluctantly agrees. After all this is Bob's property & Pete doesn't want to be a trouble-maker.Several days go buy & pretty much any time Pete gets hungry he has to give a share of everything he gathers to Bob. If he wants to build a bigger hut, or a tool, or anything else for that matter, he first has to do some kind of labor for Bob in exchange for the resources he needs. After a while he realizes Bob really doesn't do much of anything on his land. He mostly just lies around in the sun drinkin' coconut juice & ordering Pete around.Pete is really starting to feel like he's being taken advantage of and appeals to Bob's better nature. "Bob" says Pete. "I really don't think this arrangement we have is fair. I'm doing all the work around here while you lay around in the sun all day." "Well," says Bob. "This is my property, surely you don't expect me to allow you to stay here for free? There's no free lunch, ya know... I'm not telling you what to do. You're free to see if one of the other land owners on this island will cut you a better deal." Bob approaches some of the other landowners, but soon sees that they all have someone working for them as well(after all there were 5 newcomers on the second boat that all needed jobs in order to povide fo themselves too). None of the other landowners need any more help, and none give him a better offer.Pete goes crawling back to working for Bob, but deep down feels something's just not right. He once again attempts to appeal to Bob''s better nature. "Ya know Bob I've looked around and ther just doesn't seem to be any oppourtunity around here for me to work & keep the full value of my labor. Surely you can see that this isn't fair" says Pete. Bob replies "Life isn't easy, maybe you just need to work a little harder, if you want more in life. After all you are a free man. There's no cage around this island. You're more than welcome to leave the island and try and find another place to live, if you don't like it here. Of course there's lots of sharks and other nasty critters out there and who knows how far it is to the next island."Questions:Is Pete really free?Who is re-distributing the fruit of someone else's labor?Doesn't this scenario more closely resemble a master/slave relationship than true freedom? Ok, but if all the trees on the island have alreedy been "homesteaded" any newcomer would not have the oppourtunity to compete. If all have equal opportunity to compete, there's more competition. Isn't competition good in a free market?Your arguments make sense only if natural resources are unlimited. They're not. At least not here on earth. Once all of the resources are "owned" or monopolized, there are no more oppourtunities to homestead, thus REDUCING possible competitors. The more concentrated land/resource ownership becomes. The less competition there is to use those resources efficiently.

We can agree to disagree on this issue, and that's fine, but you can't say you believe in equality of rights, if you believe some have a right to free land(via the homesteading process) and others don't, simply because they didn't get there in time."All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others" - I forget who said that, I think it was from Animal Farm. Depends on what exactly you mean by "found". If he went foraging through the woods for hours to find the coconut, while the other guy sat on his ass, then yes the coconut would be his rightful property.Suppose though, both men on the island came upon a tree full of coconuts at the same time(let's assume for the sake of argument they're of similar height and are both able to reach the fruit). Would they not both have an equal right to the coconuts, or would the first guy to yell "mine!!!" be entitled to all of them?

Wdiaz03, "You assume people have a right to natural property." -Yes I do. If no one did the human race would not exist(but, I repeat myself). No offense, but if you think the human race can exist without a right to "natural property"(i.e. land, air, water), you are so detatched from reality that there's really no point in debating this issue any further. The only rational question is: Is this an equal, universal, right, or a right applied only to those who got here first? Comparing a world where there are resources a plenty, to two starving guys on an island fighting over the last coconut is again apples to oranges. I suppose the moral thing to do would be share the coconut, or better yet come up with a way to co-operate & grow more coconuts. I doubt that this would happen once the instinct for survival kicks in. In the real world there are plenty of natural resources to go around. I really need to learn how to work this "quote" function, don't I(lol!)

Wdiaz03, "Some people are prettier than others, smarter, stronger, bigger, I could go on & on, are these unjust?" - No, how does being prettier, smarter etc,...harm anyone else? It doesn't. If I exclude other people from something that they have a right to, I'm doing harm. Denying someone the right to benefit from their "prettyness" Smartness", etc... would be an obvious violation of the right to self-ownership. Does claiming that all have an equal right to something that no-one produced violate self-ownership? No. Loveprevails, "I am of a view that this is something which could be arbitrated without the state" - agreed, 100%! Like any other issue involving principle, the problem is in peoples heads. People have been taught to view natural property the same way they view man-made property since they were little kids, much the same way they've been taught that government is a necessity since childhood. Once people understand that they do have some right to the natural world, I see no reason why they could not voluntarily organise to protect that right.

People survive & sometimes even thrive despite many injustices. People survive & sometimes thrive under fiat currency. People survive & sometimes thrive under ecxsessive goverment regulation. When chattle slavery was legal some slaves were able to save enough money to buy their own freedom and lead a better life. I could go on & on, however that doosn't change the fact that these things are unjust. Think of how much more prosperous an immigrant, or anyone else might be without these injustices to overcome.

I would certainly agree that the homesteading principle is far superior to what we have now, however problems arise when we get to the point where there's nothing left to homestead. Problems also arise if/when most of the good land is bought up by a few individuals. Don't think so? Imagine hypothetically that one person eventually bought up the whole earth(I know this would be very improbabable, but it illustrates a point). Would that person not be the ultimate ruler of the world? Highly concentrated land ownership can distort the economy as well. Keep a significant amount of land out of productive use & you have a surplus of labor chasing an artificially reduced supply of land & resources. Wages go down. Land price goes up. A windfall for land speculators, hard times for working people. So what might be done regarding land in a stateless society? Scrap all land titles & start the homesteading process again from scratch? Might work for a while, until the point when it's all been homesteaded again. probably piss a bunch of people off in the process too!

Darskyabove,..."Are you implying that rights are a positive obligation on others?"...Absolutely not! I'm implying the exact opposite. I was making the point that "if" we are not entitled to a right that is a positive obligation on others, "then" we must have a right to provide for ourselves. Otherwise we're dead! A man that owns nothing but his labor cannot provide for himself because labor itself can produce nothing without resources. In other words we either have rights that ARE obligations from others(NO!), or we have the right to use natural resourses to provide for ourselves(YES!). If we have neither we're dead! It has to be one or the other. I choose the latter. The first option is incompatible with the non-agression principle.

We may be getting a bit off topic, but I believe parents have a moral obligation to provide for their children up until they are capable of providing for themselves. I don't believe that anyone in society has a moral obligation to sell, rent, give, or let me use any of their "legitimate" private property. I do believe I have a right to live. In order to live, I MUST have some resources, or I MUST be allowed to use someone elses resources, which requires "permission". I either have the right to some of the resources provided by nature, or I have the right to resources that someone else produced, or I DON'T have a right to life. Which one is it?

Mike Larson, Ownership of natural resources IS necessary for survival. As I stated earlier: Labor by itself is worth nothing. Labor without resources to interact with can produce nothing. A man that owns nothing but his labor can only produce what he needs for sustainance, if someone that owns resources gives him permission to produce. He is not free and independent. He is subservient to the person owning the land and/or resources. He may ask the land/resource owner to allow him to work/produce, but that is not the same of having a right. A job is not a right, because it requires someone else to provide said job. Ask yourself this: If a man does not have a right to be provided a job and he doesn't have a right to produce that which he needs to provide sustainance himself(because he only owns his labor, which can produce nothing without resources), then does he have a right to life? You can't have it both ways. If you don't have a right to produce what you need to live, and no-one is obligated to provide you with the means to live, you're dead. Period. End of story.

I haven't experienced it myself, but I've heard that in the early days of the U.S., back before the Flexnor Report, the AMA, and extensive government regulation of the medical profession, Doctors actually made house calls to better serve their valuable customers. If you coudn't afford to pay cash, you might offer the doctor a chicken for payment. I've also read that back in the (somewhat)free market days of medicine that many fraternal organizations provided medical care for their members. The fraternal organization(i.e. Elks, Moose, Eagles, etc...) would hire a doctor on a flat salary, and for a small membership fee, members could see the doctor for free when they needed to. Kind of a free market type insurance that worked quite well. I believe the medical cartel lobbied and made this system illegal.

For the record, I consider myself an anarchist. I am in no way advocating that the "government" owns the land, or even that the "government" should decide who gets to use the land, as some Georgists do. I am simply stating that that I believe we all have an inherent and equal right to live on the planet we were born on. Is this unreasonable? Obviously, if something is fixed in supply, then the only way one can own a larger share is for someone else to own a lessor share, or no share at all. This is basic math. It's also obviously impractical to re-draw property lines every time a new person is born, or enters into adulthood. How then would a stateless society reasonably insure that no-one is denied their "equal right" to live off the bounty that nature(not man) has given us?

True in an anarchistic society no one would technically have a "legal" title to land any more than they would have a "legal" title to a car, boat, etc... However just because there is no "legal" title to a car, or anything else does not mean someone doesn't have a moral right to own it. Does the man that claims to own that 1000 acres of wilderness have a "moral" right to own it? If so, what justifies his claim. Does putting up a sign warning the vagrant that it belongs to him justify his ownership? does putting a fence around it? That's the point I'm trying to make. What morally justifies ownership of something that one did not produce? I apologise, if I implied that all anarchists are in agreement with our current statist system. I don't mean to imply that. I'm just saying that the homesteading principle, that many anarcho-capitalists support does not make sense once all of a finite supply of land and resources has alredy been homesteaded, leaving newcomers without the option of homesteading that their predecessors had.

Mysterian Muffles, I'm not assuming that all land-owners are dicks, I'm just stating that "under our current system", landowners have the "legal" right to be dicks, if they so choose. I'm also not assuming that in a stateless society land ownership would be viewed the same as it is in today's statist society. Quite the contrary, I believe it would be viewed quite differently. What I'm trying to do is get people thinking of how we might view land ownership in a stateless society. How might we allow "exlusive use" of land & resources in a way that optimises it's productivity, while at the same time allowing everyone the "equal right" to use land and resources productively. This post is more of a question than a statement. Hopefully it's gotten some people thinking.

Proffessional Teabagger, Here's a scenario: Bob is homeless. Standing before Bob is 1000's of acres of unsettled wilderness. Bob ventures into the wilderness, works hard, builds a cabin, clears some land, and grows some crops. Bob becomes self-sufficient. A primitive lifestyle perhaps, but better than being homeless on the street.Several weeks go by & the man that has a "legal" title granting ownership of that 1000 acres of wilderness catches wind of Bob's tresspassing. He calls the police, shows them the deed to the land, has Bob evicted, burns the cabin & the crops Bob planted. Bob, who worked dilligently to build a cabin & grow crops in the wilderness is now once again homeless & hungry.Is this just? Is this liberty? If not, what's the solution?

To: Mysterian muffles. I'm not sure that I completely get your point, but I certainly like the idea of two people peacefully negotiating who gets the leaves & who gets the lumber in a given forest. Unfortuneately, that's not the system today. In today's society someone has a government granted title to that forest stating that he's the legal owner. NOT based on self-ownership & the fact that the the forest is the fruit of his labor. Now maybe he bought the land with legitimately aquired money, but did the previous owner have any more legitimate right to it than you, me, or anyone else? Fact is you can trace the buying and selling of that piece of land back as far as you want & you will never trace it back to the person that produced it, because no human being did. If we base property rights on the the theory that everyone has property rights to that which he has produced(based on self-ownership) than this principle does not apply to land and natural resources. In your scenario(given today's rules), if the guy that was harvesting the leaves has title to the land, he can refuse to negotiate with the guy that wants the lumber. He could demand an outragious price. Hell, he could even tell the lumberjack "screw you" and kill all the trees & let the lumber rot on the ground! Why?...Not because he produced the trees, or purchased them from the person that originally produced the trees, but because he has a states issued title based loosely on the principle "I got here first".

I don't claim to have the perfect solution to the problem, all that I am saying is the system that we have now whereby an individual or organization can own unlimited amounts of land whether they're using it productively or not, thus denying other individuals any land at all is inherently unjust. Libertarians claim the right to life is sacred, but without some access to land/air/water, etc... the right to life does not exist. Don't believe me? catapult yourself into outer space where there's no air/water/land & see how long you can survive. I'm also trying to point out the fact that private property in the fruits of ones labor is inherently different than private property in something that is a gift from nature. Private property in gifts of nature is NOT based on the principle of self-ownership. Once again, I don't have all the answers. There are some ideas in the links I provided. Some I agree with more than others. Basically I just want to get people to start thinking differently and realising that land & natural resources are a different type of "property" than are the fruits of human labor, and that maybe, just maybe, we ought to look at them in a different way.

To Masonman, you say: "What about food? Healthcare? If somebody is dying of a disease, if others do not provide medical treatment are they denying his right to exist? If somebody doesn't provide the person with food is he denying that persons right to exist? Land and oxygen and water ALONE are not enough to live, either. Why set the bar at that exact point?" Comparing healthcare to access to natural resources is comparing apples to oranges. I have no right to healthcare, because that would imply that someone else has an obligation to provide me with healthcare, which would be a violation of their rights. No person has to provide land/air/water as nature has already provided it. a landowner does not "provide" land, he only monopolizes a particular piece of land. The land was there long before he even existed. BIG difference.

It has to do with property rights. a not so obvious mis-understanding of property rights. Three of the basic principles of libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosiphy, as I understand it are: "self-ownership" & "The non-agression principle" and "equality of rights". The concept of private property is based upon the notion that if one owns oneself, then it reasons that he has a right to own that which he produces, or that which would not have existed had he not created it(i.e. the fruits of his labor). This is the basic moral justification for property rights based on self-ownership. The non-agression principle says that no one may use agression to forcibly deprive anyone of their rightful property(among other rights as well). On these principles, I am in full agreement. However, how do these principles apply to forms of "property"(for lack of a better term), that are not a product of human labor? for example: the air we breath, unimproved land, undiscovered natural resources, bandwidth, etc... This is a complicated question, because if one cannot "own" or at least "exclusively control" these valuable resources which are a necessary factor in the production of wealth & capital, then obviously no wealth, or capital can be produced. For one to be able to "create" legitimate private property one must be able to access these resources.(for example: put the most ambitious, hard-working man in an empty room for several hours, come back and ask him what he was able to produce and the answer will be nothing. It is physically impossibe to create something from nothing. Labor itself can produce nothing tangible without resources to work with.) The question is "who" is entitled to these necessary resources, and "how much" are they entitled to, being that no human being created them(i.e. they are not the fruits of anyones labor)? The typical libertarian/anarcho-capitalist response for the justification of private property in previously un-owned land & natural resources is the homesteading principle, or the Lockean principle that when one mixes his labor with the land or natural resources he creates something previously non-existent that is rightfully his private property. After this homesteading has ocurred, this rightful property may be voluntarily bought, sold, or traded, indefinately. While this sounds reasonable on the surface, I intend to prove that this principle is inherently flawed and inconsistent with self-ownership & equality of rights. The biggest problem with the homesteading principle is that valuable land and natural resources are fixed in supply(at least those accessible here on planet earth) and once all the land and natural resources have been homesteaded, homesteading no longer becomes an option. All of a sudden we have property rights based on "first come, first-served", rather than on the principle of self-ownership and equality of rights. If we are all truly created equal, and have equal unailienable rights, do we not all have a common and equal right to access natural property without which legitimate man-made property can not exist? Can private property in "the fruits of one's labor" exist if the right to create such property does not exist? Can the right to private property even exist at all, if there is no inherent right to create private property? If "first come, first served" trumps equal rights then only those who got here first have property rights, and those that did not "get in on the ground floor" have no rights at all. To deny any person the right to some land, oxygen, water, etc... is to deny said person's right to even exist at all! Is a right to life at all possible without an inherent right to live off the land, to breathe the air, to drink water, to produce and consume food? Without some access to the earth, one may only exist by permission of those that do own the earth. The moral question being: Is the right to access the land & natural resources that are necessary for life an equal right applicable to all human beings, or is it a conditional priviledge based on first-come first served? One may argue that there is still some land available for homesteading somewhere(though I'm not sure that this is true), but is it fair that someone be required to leave the land he was born on and travel many miles, in order to search for inhabitable land somewhere else? Isn't it very likely that any un-owned land is of inferior quality to that which has already been homesteaded? Does not the person who has first access to a plot of land containing valuable minerals, or crude oil have an obvious advantage over one who's only option is to homestead a plot of near worthless land in the desert? Does mixing one's labor with the land for a short period of time give one a perpetual monopoly over that piece of land forever? There are many books and articles adressing this issue, and I have linked to many of them below. Unfortunately, most come from a minarchist perspective allowing for a certain amount of government to enforce a solution. I believe there are better ways to correct this injustice without using the coercive force of "government", however this issue does need to be addressed, for without a proper understanding of our equal right to access the natural world, we allow for a new state to come into existence in the form of the land monopolist. A "government" by any other name is still a "government"(a government being defined as an entity presumed the right to initiate force over a certain geographical area). Read: "a landlord is a government" linked below. What it all really boils down to is this: Which is a higher moral principle "equality of rights", or "first come first-served"? Is a person not justified in using defensive force against anyone attempting to aggressively infringe upon his right of access to land, air, water, & other natural resources? Links: A Landlord is a government: http://libertythinkers.com/education/a-landlord-is-a-government-the-libertarian-basis-for-land-rights/ Are you a "royal" libertarian, or a "real" libertarian?: http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html Progress & Poverty: http://mises.org/books/progress_poverty_george.pdf Libertarian party at sea on land: http://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Party-at-Sea-Land/dp/0911312978