Someone mentioned that the Europeans could be expected to take the land because the Native Americans were nomadic and only used specific lands part of the year. The quote that got me was, “Do you get to keep land you only use for, say, four months out of the year?”
This reminds me of several discussions I have had regarding Israel, where I was reminded that the Palenstinans were not using the land well, and it was better off with the Israelis making it fertile.
Am I detecting a trend? Is it really common belief that you have a right to take over resources if another group is not using them wisely? What are the limits of this philosophy? Can I take over your government if you don’t feed your people? Can I take over your house if you don’t mow the lawn?
I’d have to say no , but the strong always seem to knobble the weak , the US certainly does not use its resources effectively (its suggested somewhere for one US child you can have so many children in this country or that country) , nor many western nations so does that give me a right to claim your country no , since you have a major defense network
an example is in sierra leone where the diamond mines are abandoned and driven out , just because they aren’t being mined and used doesn’t automatically give you a right to it , however you can buy certain rights to mine their stuff like in Brazil Many western nations mine the Bauxite to make aluminium but they had to buy the rights to it
Well, as regards the Native American population, I can see how their being nomadic would have facilitated the settlement of land by Europeans. After all, if you are not there for a chunk of the year and then you come back and someone sitting on the land, there’s not much you can do, especially if he’s got some guns and a milita to back him up and you’ve got no one except your small tribe.
As regards the OP…the rationale that “We’re using it better” is just a justification. After all, one might argue that the Native Americans were, in fact, using it more wisely since they weren’t despoiling it.
What it really comes down to is that you can do whatever you want if you have the power to pull it off. If another government isn’t feeding it’s people, feel free to take it over if you think you can take it from them and hold onto power. Same as regards resource use, not mowing the lawn, etc.
even sven, you really aren’t making very good use of the board with this thread. I am therefore hijacking it to talk about a more important topic. So, do you think the Chargers will get to the playoffs this season?
Seriously, once one accepts that resources can be taken away from someone who isn’t taking “good” care of them, then the whole concept of personal property becomes meaningless.
Is wise use the most efficient economic use, or is it the most environmentally wise use, or is it the most culturally wise use, etc.? One person’s wise use is another person’s disaster.
Well, Playground Rules dictate that if you’re not actually in the swing using it, it’s open for the taking. Just because you were planning on using it after you got done on the monkey bars doesn’t mean you have “dibs” on it permanently.
And, if you get up from your place on the couch and go outside to talk to friends on the porch, that means that anyone can sit there, and you can’t come back inside after 10 minutes and say, “Hey!”
'Course when your “friends” claim the couch by killing you, raping your sister, dragging her and the rest of your family on a 600 mile death march while pocketing the money supposed to be spent to feed them, that does go, just a bit, beyond the code of the schoolyard, wouldn’t you say?
But you’re right, you weren’t actually on your couch when it happened.
I like this idea. My brother lives on the property of a multi-millionaire, who is only there for a few weeks out of the year. I think I’ll pay a visit soon…
And damn it, if you were being sarcastic too then ya should’a used a smiley.
Too be even more fair to Jodi she did point out in a post before the one hawthorne quoted that only some of the Natives were migratory or nomadic. She even states that this was true mostly in the Great Plains. In the latter post though she forgets to qualify her remarks and ignores the fact that the Natives along the Atlantic seaboard had, for the most part, been settled agriculturalists for centuries by the time the Puritans showed up. The confederation which is best remembered by whites as the Iroquois League may have already been in existence when Leif Erickson made his visit. Since it is exactly these towns that the English first encountered her argument loses a bit of its force.
Don’t forget the flag, Ace_Face. You can’t claim anything without planting a flag.
And of course you don’t own the swing, or the couch.
If a kid takes your lunch or your pencils or your GI Joe then he’s in deep shit even if you weren’t using it. It’s all about sharing communal property vs. sharing owned property.
Anyway AFAIK most of the Indians never objected to sharing the land, they objected to being prevented from using it themselves one way or the other.
That depends how well you can teach your animals to use the salad bar at the Sizzler.
In all seriousness, the “you weren’t using it well” excuse is the oldest and lamest excuse in the books, and it makes no sense at all. If Person A owns something and is using it for Purpose 1, then by definition that’s its current best use. The fact that Person B would use it for Purpose 2 isn’t relevant; Person A apparently derives utility from its current mode of use and so there it is. The notion that you can externally determine “wisest use” is ludicrous. If I WANT to convert MY resources in a certain way, then that’s what I want. Your opinions on the best way to use them aren’t relevant.
I’ve never heard anyone defend Israel’s occupation of their land on the “we use it better” argument, but if they do they’re nimwits, because the “We use it better” excuse is the same excuse used by every conquering country in the history of the world; at the risk of skirting Godwin’s Law, I would point out that that’s the same excuse Nazi Germany used. After all, according to them, ALL land was put to better use if it was put to use by Germans, right?
However, IMHO, this is a different argument from the nomadic-Indian-argument (We’ll leave aside the non-nomadic Indians for a moment.) In that case it was frequently true that the land was not just put to a lesser use, it was put to no use at all and in fact wasn’t even occupied. The Europeans were coming from a place where international relations were fairly standardized, and their view of what constitutes territorial occupation was not much different from what we use today; clear, demonstrated sovereign power, a permanent population, defined borders. if the land was just there for the taking, well, they took it. That’s neither right nor wrong - it’s just that the European’s definition of national territory differed from the North American’s, for a huge list of reasons, and they were completely incompatible. That doesn’t excuse genocidal warfare by any means, and it’s true that the invading Europeans had little respect for defined indian territory; George Washington ordered the pillaging and looting the Indian “nations.” So they were quick to screw the Indians anyway, nomads or no.
And since the whites had already destroyed the settled Indian nations by the time they reached the nomads ( indeed that’s why many of them were nomads ) the inefficient land use argument is exposed for what it is: cognitive dissonance reduction.
Mom: “Why did you eat all the pies in the fridge?”
Child: “I can’t help myself. You know how much I love blueberry pie.”
Mom: “Then why did you eat all of the strawberry pies as well?”
Child: “They were in front.”
If you arrived at a huge tract of land (no Monty Python quote meant) and no-one was on it, and this land was very fertile, well, you would settle on it wouldn’t you? And then if someone came back and said,“Hey, thats my damn land - i’ve always used it” would you give it back? How would you know they always used it if no-one was on it when you got there? Perhaps THEY are the ones who are trying to steal the land?
I am not defending what the early settlers did in most circumstances but you can understand their feelings regarding land.
You don’t even exist if you haven’t got a flag. Thats how we Brits conquered India anyway!
In all seriousness, can I ask how you all feel about the concept of eminent domain? Does the fact that, in those cases, the taker is compensating the takee mitigate at all the fact your feeling that what the taker wants the property for is not relevant to what the takee is doing with it?
That’s an interesting point, but it sort of goes to the issue of societal vs. individual good, as opposed to the OP, which seemed to be making a distinction between this party’s good vs. that party’s good. In the case of eminent domain, the individual at least derives benefit from the societal good. Eminent domain is a way of trying to strike a balance between the needs of the state and the needs of the individual in an ordered fashion. That’s as opposed to the “The Cherokee weren’t using the lands wisely so we took it” argument, which is closer to me saying I want to take over your house because I don’t like the way you’re using it, and you can go suck eggs.
That said, I would argue that the taker providing compensation partially mitigates the action of taking, but not entirely. I sure wouldn’t be happy if the government knocked my house down, even if they did pay for it. Eminent domain strikes me as being a necessary compromise, not a perfect solution, but it sure beats just stealing. I think the argument of subjective utility is STILL valid; to my mind the government’s opinoin of how Lot 165 should be used has nothing to do with my ownership of it or how I feel it should be used. But here the land is sort of owned by two parties; I own it, but the state also sort of owns it. A soveriegn state has to exercise some control over the land it occupies or else sovereignty doesn’t mean a whole lot. Eminent domain is a formal way of resolving one conflict that arises from the individual ownership vs. state ownership paradox.
Mitsubishi AD250 backs up to thread, unloads truckload of sarcastic smilies…
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Sorry, these got left back at the warehouse, didn’t make it into the previous post. Hey, it’s not MY fault, blame Osama Bin Laden, he’s screwing up ALL the schedules…
