Common, Real World Questions for Libertarian

Great Debates
1

I have always been fascinated with libertarianism, and even describe myself as a semi-libertarian (i.e. I am sympathetic to the commonly held views of libertarianism, loosely stated: less government is good government). However, I admit to being one of those who believe that it would never work in the real world (although I admit I cannot prove this assertion to be true, and I could be wrong).

In that vein, I have a few very common, real world situations in which I fail to understand how the libertarian principles you advocate could be implemented and remain internal self-consistent. This may simply be my ignorance, I have tried to follow what you have written by have not read it all.

  1. I choose to opt out of your government by association. My neighbor does not. It is my belief that small amounts of pesticides (or say EMF) are hazardous to my health. I want my neighbor to cease and desist from use of said materials. He refuses. I shoot him (after all, he is trying to kill me by giving me cancer). How does the association respond? Can I shut down us of electricity throughout the world, as EMF does not have a limit, but travels onward forever, albeit at a reduced magnitude?

  2. I am an astronomer. The light pollution from my neighbors is preventing me from observing the heavens. I ask for the sky above my land to not be illuminated by their lights. They refuse (In fact, they cannot comply without turning off said lights and living in the dark, because of problems with atmospheric diffusion of photos). I shoot their lights out. How does the association respond?

  3. I purchase all the property around someone else and refuse access across my land. I offer to buy them out for ten cents on the dollar. Don’t laugh; this happens all the time (think range land and water access).

  4. I refuse access to any aircraft that want to fly across my land. Keep in mind that in the US commercial air travel was not possible until the US seized all airspace using eminent domain. Make this harder: I refuse permission for satellites to enter my airspace. Will the association shoot them down for me?

  5. Nuclear power plants. I think I can posit it as a fact that there is no nuclear operator that could afford the cost of remediation if a worst-case event occurs at a nuclear power plant (and also that no insurance company is going to sell insurance for it). Can I prevent a plant from opening for this reason, i.e. they are moving the cost of said event to me, since they will not be able to pay for it?

  6. Everything seems to be run by contract, and you suggest that we can get rid of the lawyers. Do you see a problem here? I would have to retain an attorney every time I went to the bathroom :-).

I appreciate your consideration of my questions, and I sincerely want to see a reply that shoots me down.

2

Sorry, this should not be in the BBQ pit. It is intended to be a serious discussion. OTOH, I am sure some cretins will eventually turn it into a BBQ post even though I woudl prefer otherwise.

3

I guess I should have spell-checked the title also.

4

Well, lemme just move it 'fore the cretins show up. And FYI generally, e-mailing a mod or six will get you faster results to your requests than posting them. I’ll fix that title, too.

5

who are you and what have you done w/the real Uncle Beer??:dubious:

6

Don’t worry. I’d rather see a sincere inquiry that is misspelled and in the wrong place than a disingenuous inquiry that is basically fraudulent in its conception no matter where it’s put or how well it’s spelled.

I don’t really understand the question. Could you rephrase it? How did you get from your neighbor’s pesticides to what I assume is a global blast of electromagnetic radiation. (Not sure what EMF is. Also don’t know what you mean by withdrawing “by association”.)

I’m going to assume here that you meant diffusion of “photons”. (Correct me if you really meant photographs.) I’m also going to assume that by “association”, you mean government.

It responds by forcing you to restore the property you destroyed.

Okay. What is your question?

You cannot own what is not containable or possessable. The only way you could own air is something like compressed air that you could sell for a quarter a minute or something. Authoritarian ideology does not apply in Libertaria. The only way an aircraft could have an ethical effect on your property is if it harms it physically in some way. Like crashing on it, for instance. If that happens, the owner of the aircraft must restore your property. (If you are governed by Libertaria.)

A threat of force is tantamount to an exercise of force. And nonremedial force is definitively initial and coercive. If you can demonstrate to the arbiter’s satisfaction that you are a victim of these, then you can stop the plant from opening.

You would have to do that if there were thousands, or even millions of laws. But when you present a case to a Libertarian arbiter, you are not citing an array of obscure statues. There is only one law. You are making a common sense argument that you did not coerce or that someone coerced you. The arbiter is a fact-finder. You may therefore present all information that you believe to be relevant.

I can’t give you such a reply. Libertarianism is merely my own preference. I do not attempt to proselytize. I don’t ask for anyone else to sign up with Libertaria. I ask only for the freedom to do so myself. All of my debates here are defensive in nature, and are in response to questions or probes.

Libertarianism does not require your submission. You may remain in an authoritarian regime if you like eminent domain. I guess that’s why I’m always surprised at some of the intense ridicule that I get. If I were trying to force someone to be a citizen of Libertaria, I could understand. But since I’m not trying to tell anyone else what to do, the ridicule always comes across to me as bullying in an attempt to deny me my right to pursue my own happiness in my own way so long as I am peaceful and honest.

7

Sorry, I was being technically obscure:

By association, I refer to the libertarian government, since it is non-coercive (you don’t have to join) it seems to me best described as an association. Maybe this is not the right term.

  1. My question was poorly worked. EMF (electromagnetic field) is the electromagnetic radiation that occurs as a result of the flow of electricity. This field propagates an infinite distance from the source (although its strength decreases to the forth power of distance). Many people believe that these fields are responsible for a wide variety of illness including lupus and cancer. The important point is that if you use electricity, you expose you neighbors to EMF. The same is true with pesticides; you cannot prevent there movement off you property. Therefore, how do you control use of said materials?

  2. The light pollution question is similar. Use of outdoor lights causes the sky to brighten as a result of atmospheric diffusion of the light. This is a real, serious problem and is why you cannot see the Milky Way in most of the US. Can I prevent my neighbors from using outdoor lights? Why not, they are decreasing the usefulness of my property by allowing there light to move onto it. I have some neighbors right now where I would love to shoot out there lights (I have been sorely tempted).

  3. I purchase all the property around someone else and refuse access across my land. I offer to buy them out for ten cents on the dollar. Don’t laugh; this happens all the time (think range land and water access). What is going to keep this from happening in a libertarian society? Currently, the government forces you to grant access to the in parcel. However, without this, anybody could eventually buy up all the land for a pittance by surrounding and squeezing out other owners by removing access. This really happened in the US before laws were changed.

  4. If I have to review a contract every time I do something, I will need a lawyer. Trust me, I deal with this now, and it drives me crazy. The problem is not the government’s laws, it is the private contractual terms. If your relationship is contractual, you had better have a lawyer review it or you WILL be sorry. The law actually makes things better by preventing abusive contracts.

Thanks! I appreciate you reply.

8

You’re entitled to your beliefs, but your beliefs do not constitute my obligation. You must show the damage or threat of damage to your property.

You can’t define something into existence, otherwise we could make pigs fly by defining “fly” to mean “wallow in mud”. You can’t shut down Straight Dope by accusing it of “word pollution”, and you can’t shut off your neighbor’s lights unless they damage you physically (as in laser beams or something) or are used to defraud you.

You forgot the other side of the context. Government could (and did) legislate property transfer. Thus, you were forced to forfeit your land to benefit Senator Fatcat’s friend, Mr. Railroad Tycoon. Government might offer you what it declared to be a “fair” market value, but it might not. It didn’t offer my ancestors any compensation at all when it seized their property and moved them from North Carolina to Oklahoma.

Advantages in Libertaria are acquired economically, not politically. It doesn’t make sense to squeeze the life out of the people who comprise your customer base. It is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Nevertheless, if you find yourself in the position that you have somehow witlessly allowed a crazy man with unlimited wealth to buy up property all around you while you (and every single one of your neighbors) did nothing but agree to his 10 cents on the dollar offers of your own free will, then you will need a helicopter to get out.

Not all contracts are written documents. A contract is implied by the voluntary and volitional giving of consent by two or more parties, or in the case of unary contracts, of one party. And I’m not sure what you mean by “abusive” contracts, but any contract in Libertaria is void if you were forced against your will or defrauded into entering it.

9

Interesting – does this mean that I could try to “force” my neighbors off their property by playing Stryper at full blast on speakers that face their house from midnight to six every morning? This would not physically damage them, I’d think, and I wouldn’t be defrauding them; indeed, sound pollution seems analogous to light pollution to me.

What about hog farms? If you build a hogfarm upwind of me, do I have any recourse?

With the property example, I don’t think that the person whose property becomes encircled is necessarily “witless.” Imagine I’m a poor person on a family farm that’s been in the family for 100 years. It’s near a city, and a developer wants to build a condominium there. I want to keep the land in farming.

The nearby farms are owned by corporate conglomerates, so the developer offers them a price slightly above market rate. Score, they say. They’re acting intelligently.

And soon, I find that all the farms around me are owned by the developer. Neither party told me about their transaction – they weren’t required to, and the developer acts intelligently if he keeps the transactions secret. But even if I knew about them, I’m a family farmer. I don’t have the money to outbid the developer. I didn’t act stupidly when I failed to outbid him.

Finally, the developer pulls the noose tight: he tells me that I’m not allowed to drive across that road that I always drove across, the one that the previous owner let me use because she liked to keep good relations with her neighbors. In fact, there’s no access to my property. He’ll buy it from me for ten cents on the dollar, if I bend down and kiss his hairy pink ass first.

Where did I act foolishly? Where did anyone act in a way forbidden by Libertaria?

For me, at least, this situation is nonetheless intolerable. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t think a Libertarian society is practical.

Daniel

10

Loud noise can be demonstrated to cause physical damage to the ears. In some people, it also can cause damage to the heart via palpitations and arrhythmias.

As for your farm, how would you be any better off when a government has eminent domain and powers of asset forfeiture? Why do mean old Giant Squids turn up everywhere but in authoritarian government?

At least in Libertaria, had you been diligent, you could have know what was coming and acted. But when Mr. Tycoon wants to build a condominium, once he reaches under the table at dinner with Senator Fatcat, all the vigilance in the world won’t help you.

11

Your scenario seems a bit inconsistent. You have a farm surrounded by corporately owned land, but one of them is a friendly neighbor who allows the farmer to drive on her corporation’s land. Then, when money is offered she becomes mean and doesn’t let your isolated farmer know what is coming? She doesn’t even bother to see if he might want to bid on the road he drives? Why doesn’t your rational, surrounded farmer ever think to make a deal with friendly neighbor to buy access?
This seems to me a commonly encountered land problem - I should think that a landowner in Libertaria would consider taking steps to alleviate it.

12

Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum, “whose is the soil, his also is that which lies above it.” This is the traditional common law principle that applies (the full version of the maxim also extends control down to the center of the earth, though one would have to carefully measure the angles involved and determine an appropriate conic figure, as the earth isn’t flat.)

The government did not really need to seize all airspace with “eminent domain”, the common law adjusted through a few influential rulings in the last century to make the point nil. One is only allowed under the common law to exclude from the area of the skies that one has reasonable control over. So for a normal person, this means you cannot exclude anybody from your airspace above a certain height which you might reasonably be expected to use for your enjoyment of the land (kite-flying height perhaps.) Government doesn’t enter into it, there simply is no property right to be protected.

If I were to twink this common law principle (remember, this is not a statute or government policy, it is the common law of judicial decisions) I would require that airplane operators purchase an easement to fly over private property at or below any height in which the noise is noticable. I would define that altitude as the far reach of the private property interest.

13

Perhaps this is why I am not allowed to fly my remote controlled airplane or launch my model rockets at my house, which is about two miles from an airport?

Therefor, I beg to differ, but society has taken airspace I would like to use, and could use, and removed it from my control to give to others.

14

At common law, in some cases buying all the land around somebody creates an easement such that the enclosed parcel of land is not cut off. Remember that common law principles are unaffected by the libertarian revolution, since they are not statutes, and are not connected to any governing body. These principles define what is property, then it is Libertaria’s jon to protect those interests. It won’t protect an interest that doesn’t exist.

If you always had used the road through agreement with the previous owner, you have an even better common law claim. An easement, an agreement by which you are given a particular sort of use of another’s land, is a covenant burdening the land. Burdens run with the land, meaning that they continue to exist even after land changes hand. When the new owner bought the land, he acquired only that title which the previous owner had. That title is subject to an easement. Therefore Libertaria again protects only that property interest that the owner actually possesses. Because of that covenant and the defect in the title, there is no right to exclude in this particular case, and so Libertaria will not protect such an exclusion, and in fact will protect your right to use the easement.