The problem of Capitalism

You are disagreeing with a tautology. For landownership to exist at all, there must be an authority that can secure exclusive tenure to the owners. That authority is the state.

You don't seem to understand what ownership is. You also haven't given a coherent or defensible account of how those millions of different owners could come to own everyone else's rights to liberty.

 

Yep, the arbiter of disputes. Perhaps not the state.

Are you talking about the right to having the right to the liberty of having the right to liberty?

 

Neither are the earth's atmosphere and people. But if someone owned the earth's atmosphere, and was legally entitled to charge everyone rent for air to breathe, they would effectively own all the people. So even though the earth's atmosphere and people are not comparable, OWNING the earth's atmosphere and OWNING people are not only comparable, not only similar, but equivalent. Likewise, a spring in the middle of a desert is in no way comp[arable to people. But if someone owns that spring, and they require a man dying of thirst to labor his whole life in return for permission to drink from the spring, then OWNING the spring and OWNING the man are not only comparable, not only similar, but equivalent.

<yawn> If you can't figure out how owning the land enabled English landowners to legally treat landless Irish peasants as their property, and even starve millions of them to death, then you have no business in an adult discussion.

GET IT???

But then, we already knew that, didn't we?

 

If the arbiter has the power to secure exclusive tenure, how is it different from the state you falsely claim owns the land?

No. I'm talking about the natural individual liberty to do what one would otherwise be at liberty to do.

 

I think that my term arbiter and your term state are not matching up. What is your definition of your term state?

Like kill someone?

 

The state is the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.

That would abrogate a different right. There cannot be a right to abrogate others' rights. That's an oxymoron.

 

Like someone who feels they are a big bossypants. Okay, I understand your definition.

Like the right to have people stay off your land.

 

No, of course you don't, because you refuse to. There can be no secure, exclusive tenure unless someone has the power and will to enforce it, which has nothing to do with anyone feeling like a big bossypants, and you know that.

No, because there can be no right to abrogate others' rights. Claiming land as your private property merely announces your intention forcibly to abrogate others' liberty rights to use it without making just compensation for what you are taking from them by force.

 

So you're saying that we all need to agree that some person owns a bit of land. Okay, and where it the state involved???

Yeah, they no longer have the liberty to stroll into my living room. Why do you find this odd?

 

That has to be one of the most perfect definitions of "state" that I've ever heard.

 

How many people have access to your property? If you're not giving your neighbours access, how much are you paying to compensate them for your exclusive use of the property?

 

Just give up. This is nothing but a bunch of spoiled brat excuses. BE THE CHANGE.

 

I own 2 acres of land. I am that land's sovereign authority.

Popular sovereignty is a myth. Since Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique was written in the mid 1700's, elitist ruling classes have shifted from the Divine Right of Kings based "nobility" to the illusion of being "representative" in a tyrannical democracy. They are elite ruling class, nonetheless, and will always be as long as popular sovereignty is indoctrinated as legitimate by the masses. As long as governments exist, this will always be the case and yours will be no different. However, the difference is that since you are handing over control of ALL land to the elite ruling class, the degradation will be much quicker.

Now please, tell me "But my government will be different because...." and then repeat every trope that every statist has ever regurgitated. Here is how the filthy evil of popular sovereignty can be avoided. This is an excellent chapter from David Friendman's book "The Machinery of Freedom"

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html

 

How nice that you are soooo pleased with yourself ...

 

Indeed!

 

No you are not.

I'm not talking about popular sovereignty. I'm talking about the power to administer possession and use of land, which is government's most fundamental function.

There is a difference between an elite based on nothing but power and an elite based on competence as judged by the people.

Claim contrary to fact. We have historical examples of democratically accountable government, and the plain fact of history is that a government has to be very bad indeed to be worse than no government.

That's just false. The sovereign administers possession and use of land in any case, as already proved. So I'm not handing over anything. I'm just proposing that it discharge that function justly instead of unjustly.

<yawn> Like in Hong Kong....?

<yawn> Here's the only "trope" I need: states -- societies with governments -- reliably outcompete and extinguish stateless anarchies. That will continue to be the case. So we had better figure out how to use the machinery of the state for the general welfare.

So, you say Switzerland is filthy evil, but places without effective government, like Somalia and much of West Africa, are heaven on earth...?

I don't need to say anything more. You have refuted yourself more eloquently and conclusively than I ever could.

<yawn> Many years ago, I had a long discussion with David on Usenet. I owned him, and he finally admitted he could not justify property in land.

 

Several.

It's not a reciprocal situation. If they were paying me, I'd gladly be paying them. They're not, so I'm not about to make an unrequited donation to them. The situation is that I have been made a victim of landowners, along with everyone else. Justice never consists of the victims giving compensation to the perpetrators.

 

You know you are able to buy a piece of land upon which to live, right?

 

<yawn> You have chanted that claim many times, like a mantra, but have never supported it. By contrast, I have supported -- in fact demonstrated conclusively -- the opposite claim.

<yawn> I just proved they are not only comparable, not only similar, but equivalent.

<yawn> I do if that property consists of my rights, taken without consent or just compensation.

<yawn> Is that what happened when the abolitionists took slave owners' property...? Oh, no, wait a minute, that's right: if the owners of "property" that consisted of others' rights tried to stop they abolitionists from taking that property, it was the property "owners" who were rightly killed.

All you are doing when you repeat those claims ad nauseam without any supporting facts or logic is the forum equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting, "LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALLAAA..."

It's just infantile and beneath contempt.

 

Sure. Just as slaves were able to buy their rights to liberty from their owners.

Having the "freedom" to pay someone else for permission to exercise your rights is not the same as actually having those rights.

 

I would rather millions of my neighbors each own a piece of land as opposed to a small set of people "administering" all the land. I don't like monopolies imposed by force.

 

The state is involved because without it, we don't all agree who owns which bit of land. Which means rival claimants fight over it. See how that works?

You are again, as usual, disingenuously trying to substitute a product of labor -- your living room -- for what no one's labor ever produced.

 

Disputes over ownership could be settled by judges. No need for a state.

I would rather that millions of people each own a bit of land as opposed to a single person owning all the land.

 

Then you -- idiotically, IMO -- prefer the Hobbesian war of all against all to civilization.

 

No I don't. I don't prefer any hobbits.

I prefer millions of my neighbors each owning a piece of land rather than a small set of people owning all the land. I don't like monopolies.