Yeah, I don’t know where the notion of owning “space” came from. I presume that it is of feudal origin. Clearly, if you owned the space above your property, then you would own a substantial number of galaxies as well that fall within the infinitely expanding cone of space.
There is nothing magic about real estate in terms of ownership. If you owned a trinket, say a necklace, then would you apply the space rule to it, and claim to own the infinite torus? If you step on your neighbor’s land, and assuming you own your body, do you now own that part of his land that your space takes up?
It is indeed a weird notion.
Now, things that are a part of your property, you own. Your house for instance, or your trees.
With respect to both the commons and the donut, it sounds to me like your analysis is substantially correct.
At the Free-Market site, much has been written about all these scenarios, and my favorite for dealing with the donut is simply to settle among neighbors who have rules of land ownership that you find palatable.
But I would recommend that as simply general common sense. Select a neighborhood that best represents your own values and, failing that, start one of your own.
Lib:
Thank you for answering one of my questions. Your position, then, is that it is the individual’s responsibility to protect himself against the predatory advances of those with significantly higher capital resources. I, as a private citizen, must take the initiative in preventing Donald Trump from driving me off desireable property through the acquisition of restrictive resources, be it land, roads, water mains, whatever. Now, since I obviously cannot compete with Mr Trump financially in the competition for those resources, I must find another means. I could make an impassioned argument to my neighbors and count on them to act against their own self-interest (selling at a very favorable price) in order to preserve my rights, but then I am relying not only on their good will but on their constancy and their continued health/well-being/ability to fend off economic pressures. This, of course, is hardly a secure formula. Now, being a reasonale man and wishing to protect myself and my heirs from such predation I must therefore search for a more lasting solution. One possibility is to found a constitutional form of government which is granted the power to restrict the rights of property owners in certain cases where it is determined that they are detrimental to the welfare of others. Thus we gain easements for acess to roads, water and electricity. Thus people upstream are revented from spewing their wast indiscriminately into the river. Thus people are prevented from burrying toxic wast in paper bags in their back yard. Thus your neighbor is prevented from turning his suburban home into a pig farm if the area has been zoned residential only. For many people, it has been long understood that what happens on your property can have effects that extend far beyond the reaches of your property, and that making property rights absolute means that individuals have no protection against such abuses.
As to the questions of the commons, it is very convenient to answer "in Libertaria there has never been and will never be public property so the question will never come up. If, in fact, you wish t argue a pure hypothetical without reference to the present world that is entirely onsistent. I would just like you to state so clearly so that we can all stop wasting time with irrelevancies like the US Constitution, the existence of states, etc. If, however, you are discussing a system which might be beneficial for us to work for/strive toward, then you need to deal with issues like how all of the existing public property will become privatized. I would also like to know how water rights and control of air space are regulated (or not) in a country without public resources. For that matter, who will own the tanks, warplanes, ICBMs, nuclear stockpile, etc.
Note: this was posed to Lib only because he was the one who attempted an answer for this issue. I welcome responses from Meara, Techchick or anyone else as well.
Note2: It sems to me that Scylla’s question really boils down to how rights are balanced against each other. If someone intitiates force by trying to kill me, I am justified in ending his life. If someone initiates force by dropping a candy wrapper on my driveway, am I similarly entitled? If not, why? I do not recall seeing a methodology proposed for categorizing these distinctions within a libertarian system.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Uh, no. Which you would have realized if you had read me post, and observed this:
Erratum: “While the literal “Tragedy of the Commons” is framed in terms of communally owned property, I assumed that the Libertarian response (and the perfectly correct response, given their philosophy) would be to dismiss the notion of public property altogether. That is why I provided my example of military defense. Environmental protection might be another example. It is the general class of problems in which “self-interest” is counterproductive that would seem to me to be the bane of a Libertarian society.”
Shouldn’t the fact that I already explained that the lack of community property was not an answer have persuaded you to not post that lack of community property was the answer?
Libertarian: “With respect to both the commons and the donut, it sounds to me like [RTFirefly’s] analysis is substantially correct.”
RTFirefly: “With respect to the common, Erratum clearly had the military in mind. I believe that you’ve clarified this elsewhere; people who wanted a military would get together and hire one, right? Ditto police and courts?”
I had more in mind than just the military, but that is one example. Private police might be another – with less than full participation (because no criminals would support the police and nobody who thought they could do a better job themselves would support them) the price per customer of an equivalently powerful police force would be “higher” than if everyone were compelled to support the police. This might cause some people who were sitting on the fence to “opt out”, driving the price further up, etc. Isn’t there a danger that police protection is not a profitable business, and that vigilanteism, or simply having your own guns and a reputation for shooting tresspassers, is more cost effective? This may or may not be the case, but there would seem to be no mechanism within Libertarianism to safeguard against this. Similarly with the military. There are a whole class of problems like this. Pollution is a good example – how do you keep an unscrupulous factory owner (and, by the way, note that I am not saying that all factory owners are unscrupulous, which you probably want to accuse me of, you only need one for it to be a problem, although he would probably then have a competitive advantage over his competitors, and be more profitable, and expand his polluting factory…) from poisoning the air? (And I would like an answer to how Libertarianism solves this problem, not whether or not any other system or philosophy solves it better or worse, or anything like that. How does Libertarianism solve this problem, or any in this class of problems).
Libertarian: “Yeah, I don’t know where the notion of owning “space” came from. I presume that it is of feudal origin. Clearly, if you owned the space above your property, then you would own a substantial number of galaxies as well that fall within the infinitely expanding cone of space.”
Oh, so you have no objection to me shooting machine gun bullets over your property, as long as they land on my property? I think you’re throwing away too many concepts too quickly.
I’m not sure I see the point in debating “Pure” Libertarianism. No pure political ideology has ever been, or will ever be, sucessfully implemented in a human society.
The Utopian Libertaria is not possible.
People are selfish, violent, and numerous.
People will take advantage of any system and exploit all weaknesses.
In a pure capitalist, libertarian society, the rich will be titans and the poor will be nothing. Huge, powerful private monopolies WILL control every waterway, highway, park, school and utility without governmental regulation or supervision. There will be no recourse against these giants as they will be freely exercising their God-given right to use their talents and money to suceed.
Wouldn’t you enjoy taking a trip to the Grand Canyon? The GrandCanyon.com Corporation of America would love you to take in the scenic splendor of this unique American landmark - for a mere $2,595.95!
If you are enjoying that fresh, clean drinking water, please send $492.21 to the MidWestern Water Conglomerate ASAP - otherwise we cannot guarentee your water’s purity or supply!
Due to an increasing statistical possiblity of violent crime in your community coupled with your neighbor’s failure to pay their dues, the stockholders of Policing, Incorporated have voted to suspend all services from Maple Street to Main Street and from 2nd Avenue to 23rd Avenue. Thank you very much for your attention in this matter.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
Seeing as how you have, once again, decided to begin ignoring my questions (as you did in the last Libertarian thread), I will again assume that you are without the ability to effectively defend the system you purport to advocate. I do not know what I may have posted that would lead you to believe my questions are “disengenuous,” and frankly I don’t care. You may use whatever excuse you like to dodge the legitimate concerns I have raised, but I will take you refusal to respond – as indeed I must – as an inability to respond. But I warn you: If you continue to advocate Libertarianism in virtually every thread you post to (regardless of subject matter), I will challenge you on it every chance I get, because it seems to me that if you can’t defend your philosophy, you ought to just shut up about it.
TECHCHICK says:
That’s your opinion, and I respect it. Personally, I live in a community, and I volunteer my time, effort, and money to causes I believe in.
Well, what if you lived far inland, away from the borders of your country and therefore probably immune to assault from invaders, and you decided you didn’t want to pay for civil defense? Should you have to pay for that even though you don’t “believe in it,” and even though you personally are unlikely to reap the benefit of it? Again, under the Libertarian system, who decides what services are necessary for the common good and therefore subject to assessment or tax, and which services are not necessary?
I think that’s true; I just am not convinced it’s bad. I don’t think we have to worry about “somebody’s” moral agenda; I think we can come to agreement regarding a nearly-universal moral agenda, which, in my opinion, would be something like: “People are expected to fend for themselves and support themselves, to be responsible and contibutory members of society, but we as a society do not allow our members to die in the streets while we stand by and do nothing.” And, just so we’re clear: I do not think the average person lacks morals or the desire to help; I think the average person tends to benignly delude him- or herself about the amount of help needed (because we can all assure ourselves that “others will help instead”) and I think letting each person individually decide if they want to support necessary services, such as hospitals and schools, would lead to underfunding of those services, because we could never reach a consensus regarding what services are “necessary” and what services are not.
Because, as I’ve said before, people are a complicated mixture of good and bad. They are not solely “good,” as I believe they’d have to be for pure Libertarianism to work, and they’re not solely “bad.” Representative government allows the better impulses of a society as a whole to over-ride the more selfish impulses of the individual. We need schools; we’ve decided everyone should chip in for schools. You don’t want to chip in for schools? Too bad; society as a whole needs them for its advancement; you are a member of the society that benefits from that advancement; you should chip in.
TECHCHICK says:
I actually think this is the crux of the disagreement. You think I have too little faith in my neighbors; I think you have far too much. The difference, as I see it, is that a majoritarian democracy still can function is society is made up of both “good” people and “bad” people, because the “bad” people’s desires can be overridden, if necessary. Libertarianism requires every citizen to be “good” – to be “peaceful and honest” – in order for it to work. I just don’t think people are that peaceful or that honest.
In my town, as in many, the wealthy are neighbors to the wealthy; the middle-class are neighbors to the middle-class; and the poor are neighbors to the poor. This means that the people most likely to need assistance or charity are the same people whose neighbors are least likely to be able to provide it, even if they wanted to.
SCYLLA says:
and
Isn’t it, though? If you have a specific question, Libertarian will not give you a specific answer, either because he chooses not to (which makes no sense) or because he can’t. If you persist in asking you questions anyway, he will accuse you of being “disengenuous” and begin ignoring you.
MEARA says:
I will ask again: Under Libertarianism, who decides what actions are to be “prohibited” and what actions are to be allowed? How does the society make these decisions? What if I, either through willfulness or inability, fail to give my children the basic necessities of life – am I culpable? If so, under what theory? I haven’t committed a murder, or an assault, or an theft, or a trespass. In other words, how does a Libertarian society deal with the failure of some of its members to meet their responsibilities, and that failure injures innocent members of the society, such as children?
LIB says:
The reality, of course, is that all the land available has been settled. It might therefore be practically impossible for a person of a particular ideology to “settle among neighbors who have rules of land ownership that you find palatable.” If you consider this valid advice, however, why don’t you take it yourself? Off with you! Go find some Libertarian neighbors to dwell amongst.
jodih, here’s a stab at your question, tell me what you think. If coercion is the initial use of force, then it has to be decided who initiated the force. In the case of the squatters, they initiated force. Therefore when you toss them off, or kill them because you are afraid, you didn’t coerce since it wasn’t you that initiated the force. Of course, this begs the question of who decides who initiated force (i.e. who coerced). I would assume that a jury of your peers would, but I’m sure there’s other systems that might work.
Peequeue:
Thanks for that clarification. My own question deals with the escalation of force. Someone who litters on my property may be seen as initiating force, if we use a very broad interpretation of th eword force, but if I then beat that person to death with a frozen carp I have escalated the level of force. Is that not coercion? If so, who determines what levels of force are equivalent?
RTE:
from what I understand from these discussions the indigent in a Libertarian society are deemed to be failures and gain no protections beyond what their meager means can provide. This, of course, applies only to those strict libertarians who oppose all taxation, even for the purposes of establishing a system of justice open to all citizens.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Actually, prior to that, I think we have to decide what we mean by “force.” If someone violates your property rights (as opposed to your personal rights) peacefully, and squatting is actually a good example of doing that, then I don’t think we’re talking about “force” unless we’re using a term in a way it is not generally used.
How so? They just wandered over and set up camp. Maybe you didn’t even know they were there for quite some time, because you own a lot of land. Where is the force they are using against you? They are violating your rights, certainly, but I don’t think they’re doing it in the context of “force.” And, again, the necessity of “force” as an element of “coercion” is pursuant to the Libertarian definition, not mine.
Exactly. I would theorize that the squatters invaded your absolute property rights by using your property without your permission. I don’t see how we can frame this in terms of “coercion” or “force,” however, without torturing those terms.
The problem is that people have an obvious reasonable right to know what conduct is okay and what conduct is not in a given society (and speaking in the broadest of terms). This is what Spiritus Munidi is asking about as well. Arguably, it’s okay to compel the squatters to leave by non-violent means, but not okay to “beat their heads in with frozen carp.” But who decides what is okay (ie, lawful) and what is not? If I read the Libertarian party line correctly, anything that is a responsive force, as opposed to an initiative force, is okay. But it seems that most of the posters here have at least tacitly agreed that purely responsive force is not okay if it is not proportional – meaning that it is not okay to murder the squatters right off the bat even if they are technically in the wrong to be squatting. So who decides what use of force is okay, and when? It seems to me people must be advised of this before they act, not after, so leaving it up to jury to decide whether the action is okay after the fact would not work. Do you see what I’m saying?
At first, I read this thread to check out the arguments pro and con. Then, I continued reading it just to amuse myself spotting the logical and rhetorical flaws displayed by both sides.
But now a question has occured to me that, as far as I can tell, demonstrates the essential flaw of libertarianism. I would appreciate the pro- side’s explanation:
You and I own adjacent parcels of land. You live on yours, I decide to construct a slaughterhouse on. But not just any slaugherhouse-- one that produces ear-splitting noise day and night, generates a horrible stench, and attracts all manner of flies and vermin. The net effect of these nuisances is such that your property becomes effectively unusable for any purpose whatsoever.
Is it correct to say that I am conducting myself in an entirely lawful manner? If not, explain how my actions violate an enforcible law that would exist in a libertarian society.
If I am acting in an entirely lawful manner on my own property, what recourse, if any, do you have against me? (I’m am expecting that a lawsuit is not contemplated by the libertarian ethos. Isn’t that a form of coercion as well?)
The non-coercion principle would not seem to offer you any relief, since I am neither using any “force” on you, as that term is typically defined, nor am I “coercing” you in any way.
Any of the libertarians out there care to explain how we can both enjoy our property rights in this scenario?
Boy, them’s fightin’ words!(Me, a Communist?!?!? It is to laugh!)
Bother me, bother me! I have never read the Communist Manifesto. I guess I don’t hold those views honestly then. If I ever did express a philosophy that was in any identical to the Manifesto, it was a coincidence and nothing more. (Was it “public property?” I truly do not know.)
I fully agree with the objections posted by Spiritus and Sake on this page. They expressed them far better than I ever could. Nurlman, welcome to the Straight Dope. I don’t think you’ll have any more luck getting a response out of Libertarian than Scylla has. Maybe you’ll get something from techchick; she seems to have no fear of responding to direct questions. I like her.
The strength of libertarianism is best illustrated by those who must go out of its context to find a flaw.
Libertarianism allows you, if you wish, to settle in a community of anarchists who rape and pillage one another in pursuit of their happiness.
It also allows you, if you wish, to leave to politicians where the slaughterhouse will be put — typically, beside whoever has the least political clout.
But it also allows you, if you wish, to give sober thought to your family’s future, and settle in a community of neighbors whose own bylaws prohibit whatever activity they deem undesirable.
Libertarianism doesn’t prohibit communism; it only prohibits communism that is forced upon people against their will. It doesn’t prohibit anarchy; it only prohibits anarchy that is forced upon people against their will.
And it doesn’t prohibit the inevitable gathering of sensible, freedom loving people, who seek nothing more than to conduct peaceful commerce and to pursue their own happiness in their own way.
I think that the trouble with Libertarianism is that, to stop people of a different political bent, an incredibly large police force and army would be necessary. The pholosophy is great on telling people what they should do, but knowing people as we do, the only way to ensure this form of government would be by incredible force.
It’s one thing to say that you could live in a community of anarchists if you want to, but its another to stop them from coming to “free” your community.
Are you saying that you believe a group of anarchists without the first scruple or modicum of trust for one another can somehow manage to put together an army superior to that of a group of reasonable, intelligent, and vigilant people, positively swimming in entrepreneurship and technological advancement, who love their freedom and their way of life?
I think courts are allowed (and necessary) in Libertaria. Examples of what is acceptable and what is not could be determined through various court cases and the precedents they set. If the people decide it would be helpful to have a set of guidelines before there are any precedents, they can feel free to set them up before hand. How they do this is up to them; they might decide to vote on each issue, or appoint a king to set up what he thinks is right.
It seems like you are trying to prod me to admit that a set of laws are necessary. I’m not sure if they are, but the people could decide to live under laws if they wanted. Or they could just have the one law, and judge each case on a case by case basis (hmm weird sentence…).
I do have to admit that the use of the word force in the contexts mentioned above is a stretch. A nicer way to put it is that in this context it has a very abstract meaning. I don’t see what the big deal is though, if everyone understands what is meant by it. Maybe the English language doesn’t have the proper word - shall we call it plughy? Coercion is the initiation of plughy. Ploughy is a verb meaning to cause harm to or damage another’s person or property without consent; to forcibly insist on a behaviour that is not consistant with the insistee’s desire without their consent. (Ok, someone else can write a much better definition than I.) The word coerce is being used because it is closest to this meaning. It is being used in a rather broad sense, but it is the idea that counts.
After the slaughterhouse next door has reduced the worth of your property to zero, but you still need to pay the mortgage, so you can’t move. Coercion is a flexible concept, it seems.
That’s my expectation too, Spiritus, but I’m still hoping to hear, one way or the other, from the libertarians. I’m also wondering about indigent children - whether they are unprotected by the law because they didn’t give sufficiently sober thought to their choice of parents.
No, but a group of Mafiosi, OTOH, yes. The entrepreneurs may well not have much interest in forming an army, until it’s necessary - and by then it might be late in the game. Or the army might notice that while their entrepreneurial employers have the money, the army has the force, and become entrepreneurs of a different sort - extortionists, if you will. Or just plain conquerors.
Since variations on this scenario might easily happen in several different parts of Libertaria at once, that’s why I believe Libertaria would degenerate into warlord substates, with coercion abundant, as I mentioned in the What’s with the Libertarians? thread. (Do we have enough libertarian threads, ya think? ;))
Which people are you referring too? Surely you do not imagine that every citizen is going to achieve unanimous agreement upon the laws and court system for your nation. Do you argue that a libertarian government should force some of its citizens to follow laws that they disagree with? The property owner may not agree that bludgeoning litterers is beyond his rights. What right does a libertarian government find to compel his acceptance of somebody else’s moral standard?
Lib:
You are confusing me here.
(1) seems pretty evident.
(2) seems to be arguing that libertarianism supports the idea of elected officials restricting the property rights of citizens. How does that differ from our present, non-libertarian, representatve republic? To paraphrase your own statements: if the government can restrict the uses of your personal property then how can you be said to own it?
(3) seems to rely on a community in which unanimity of opinion holds not only for the resent, but into the future. It also seems to rly pon the ability of a community to not only forsee every possible conflict and create appropriate bylaws to deal with them but also to forsee the conflicts which might arise from future technological and social developments. Do you really expect that such a community can ne formed so that no conflict will arise between the desire of an individual to use his property and the desire of the neighborhood to preserve the quality of their life/the value of their land?
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*