Failed State - Breadlines of Capitalism

I have long suspected that those who believe in shared possessions do so
because they don't any themselves. Certainly John Lennon wasn't about to
give up his properties and his fur coats to the common good of all mankind.
His memorial is in Central Park. I doubt his followers would want anyone
camping on top of that memorial.
I presume if a farm was common land, and someone grows a crop, but
others want a Woodstock style festival on top of his crop, then someone
is going to be pretty upset. Wonder if there would be ANY agriculture if
someone can just trample on what was once was considered your own
land.

 

See? You immediately have to pretend there is no difference between possessing the fruits of one's labor and possessing others' rights to liberty.

Disgraceful.

See? As I knew was the case, you have no facts or logic to offer, just your despicable and disingenuous ad hominem "suspicion."

Disgraceful. Few acts that a human being can commit are more evil than to accuse those who oppose injustice of envy for those who profit by it.

See? You have no facts or logic to offer, so you have to try to change the subject from my views to John Lennon's.

Disgraceful and pathetic.

See? You have to pretend the just and economically efficient method for granting secure, exclusive land tenure such as to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all -- just compensation from the exclusive landholder to the community of those who are thus excluded (which not coincidentally also secures the landholder's exclusive tenure for him and makes it advantageous through the services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities it provides at that location), and from that community to every individual citizen for their exclusion from that opportunity -- does not and cannot exist.

You presume wrong, as I have already explained to you so very clearly and patiently (see above), and you ignored. Exclusive tenure is rightly secured by just compensation to the community of those excluded. You merely prefer to take from the community and not make just compensation for what you take. I.e., you prefer to steal. Simple.

See? You immediately have to pretend that China, which has the largest agricultural production in the world, doesn't have ANY agriculture because the farmers do not own the land. You have to pretend that if a tenant farmer were paying the community for the benefits it provides to him instead of a private parasite, anyone could just trample on his crops.

Disgraceful, disingenuous, and despicable.

 

As I see it, you are saying that me owning a house and a block infringes someone's liberty.
At the same time I am not imposing on this infringed person's OWN land. We respect the
right of each other to own our little bit of the earth.
Lots of land is public domain, freehold, reserve, wilderness etc.. We make that balance.
What nation comes the closest to your ideal? And I don't just mean a single policy on land
but the overall economic ethos (China might have public land, whatever that means, but she
does not respect the overarching philosophy of private property, the right to free speech etc..)

As an aside. My family own a block of land NO-ONE WANTED in 1900. We came from America
and settled in a riverport town. Our land was described as 'swamp' and 'flood land'. Today it's
called 'River frontage.' And a lot of people have tried to take it off us as we are in a prime spot.
But unlike the rest of the prime spots, we refused to develop ours. It's still virgin land.

 

No. I am identifying the fact that owning land forcibly abrogates the liberty rights of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it.

No. Those whose rights to liberty you have taken away have no more right to forcibly strip others of their rights to liberty than you do.

Neither you nor anyone else has any right to forcibly dispossess others of their rights to liberty without just compensation.

That "balance" forcibly strips the landless of their rights without just compensation, and makes them into the private property of landowners. The consequence is that the landless must work all their lives just to pay landowners for permission to exist.

That's a difficult question, as there are many dimensions to economic and social policy, and you can't choose a la carte. I'm Canadian, and find Canada quite congenial. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands are also good places to live. I have lived in Japan, and would prefer it to the USA. I haven't been to Hong Kong, but know people from there, and HK before the transfer to Chinese administration was close to the kind of government I would prefer. Also Taiwan and Singapore, though the latter is rather authoritarian.

That is false. At a minimum, the aboriginal population had to be forcibly dispossessed of their liberty to use it.

I.e., government and the community have been shoveling money into your family's pockets in return for nothing for over a century.

I find that utterly despicable, and typical of the dog-in-the-manger attitude of the very lowest sort of greedy, self-righteous, parasitic landowner.

 

Our block is super-interesting. Two councils vied over the land - our council defended us
and the council on the other side of the river wanted this land to be taken from us. We have
the only bit of land not developed, still bushland: no caravans, jetties, restaurants etc.. And
no aboriginals lived in our area - they were 30 km upstream of us. We leave our river frontage
open for hikers (otherwise some council might get antsy and remove our foreshore.)
Not sure who we have oppressed.
You can say that freeways and roads are oppressive because at one time these strips of land
belonged to farmers, towns or native peoples.
The person who is 'deprived' of walking in my back yard can appeal to the same common
law to stop me walking in their own back yard. And homeless people also avail themselves of
the benefits of common law, free speech, private property etc which have made us rich - rich
enough that such people can have generous welfare payments.

 

So the other council tried to serve the public interest, while your council was bought and paid for by rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning interests. Got it.

And what's worse, you are actually proud of having impoverished everyone else in the community by forcibly depriving them of access to that economic opportunity. Disgraceful.

Garbage. By the time your family arrived, the aboriginals had already been forcibly dispossessed for you by government.

How magnanimous of you. Noblesse oblige and all that, what?

Because you refuse to know, even though I have told you multiple times: everyone who would otherwise be at liberty to benefit from the advantages government, the community and nature provide at that location.

"Belonged" to them? How did they come to own everyone else's liberty rights to use the land?

They are deprived of the economic opportunity that the land's market value represents, and I will thank you to remember it.

Honor among thieves?

Yes, they can "avail themselves" of such benefits -- by paying you full market value for your kind permission to access them. Which is what made you rich.

Welfare payments that do not come close to just compensation for the liberty rights that have forcibly been stripped from them and made into your private property.

 

Exactly how do I "deprive" the locals of economic opportunities? If someone puts in house boat moorings, that
spoils the area and benefits the house boat owner only. A Marxist style collective house boat co-op won't cut it
either. In fact our undeveloped property since 1900 has benefited the town, particularly those across the river as
we provide the 'native bushland' settings for the tourist facility.
Neither of the councils are rich enough to buy us out - I hope.
No govt' I know of forcibly remove aborigines in our area. The local aboriginal community is Barmah and these
guys have been there since the day the explorer Charles Sturt floated past them. Going by the number of SUV's
they own, while doing basically nothing, speaks to me a parasitic arrangement somewhere.

 

By not letting them have access to them at the location you control unless they pay you for permission.

No it doesn't. It merely enables a productive use that you don't happen to enjoy.

No, it helps relieve the general scarcity of accommodation in advantageous locations, reducing housing costs for all.

You don't seem willing to know the fact that I oppose Marxism/socialism even more than capitalism, even though I have explained why.

Garbage. Unless it's a public park with open access for all to use, your family's dog-in-the-manger parasitism has impoverished the town.

BWAHAHHAAAAAA!!! You "provide" something that was already there before your parasitic family ever saw the place, do you? Run that one by me again.

Right: it is you whom they have made rich enough to buy them out.

Oh? What stops them from using "your" land?

And were at liberty to use the land you claim is yours, until your land-thieving family showed up.

I see. So, white landowners should be paid for doing nothing, just not black ones....?

 

Like, if they want to graze sheep and cattle? But won't that interfere with those who are
setting up caravans and tents, or wanting to grow a vineyard or some barley? Won't all
the hoons with speed boats disturb all the old foges who want some quiet fishing? Can
someone removing the timber for wood carving impact on someone who loves trees?
Thus we have the 'tragedy of the commons.' No one owns this land, everyone abuses
it.That's human nature.

 

Yep.

Certainly. That is why anyone who wants to exclude others from what nature provided for all rightly makes just compensation to the community of those excluded. Whoever offers the most compensation gets to exclude all the others, and the community secures his exclusive tenure for him. That way everyone gets what his contribution to production earns, and no one gets to take from others without earning. It's quite simple, really, if you can find a willingness to know facts. That's always the sticking point.

Watercourses are generally considered common property, and their use regulated by the community as such.

No doubt. But are the folks who love trees willing to pay more to keep them there than the wood users are to cut them down? The community has to decide if the current market value of the standing timber is more than the ongoing value of leaving the trees there. In most places there is an equilibrium amount of nature that can efficiently be left as parkland because it increases the value of the surrounding locations by more than the resources there are worth. Those who like trees can enjoy them to their heart's content in such places. The community that administers possession and use of the land merely has to strike a balance between parks and resource use through its democratically accountable public process.

No, that's false, as I have already explained to you so very clearly and simply, and you have ignored. The community, through its democratically responsible public policy process, simply administers possession and use of the land to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all its members to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Simple. But somehow, so difficult for some people to understand...

No, because the community administers its possession and use in the general interest.

So you are saying people are generally too stupid to understand how their rights to liberty would work in a free, just, prosperous and democratic community? You may be right. In my experience a lot of people do seem to be that stupid. But I'm saying not everyone is that stupid.

 

So we could get the shooters party to 'buy' the land and blaze away merrily. This will offend the nature
lovers, the retirees, the artists, the fishermen etc.. who don't have the money. We only have 10 acres.
Usually the 'most compensation' is reflected in auctions.
Our 'watercourse' extends to the other side of the Murray River. We are NSW and 'own' the entirety of
the river. I would like to exclude boats as there are too many of them.
Tragedy of the commons is real. We have commons in our town, or used to, and people would overgraze
them. I think cattle are banned now so they aren't really commons anymore.
What we call the 'community' means a political structure. ALL political structures fall fowl of human nature.
Look what has become of the WHO with China and the Corona Virus, or the UN Human Rights Commission,
expeditiously taken over by the likes of Russia, China, Iran etc..

 

They would not own it any more rightly than you do.

That's not really enough for safe shooting anyway.

But it is paid to a private parasite, not the community of those who are forcibly stripped of their rights to liberty.

"We"? You mean the state?

Then you should make just compensation to those whose rights to liberty you seek to abrogate.

But does not occur when commons are competently managed by a democratically accountable government.

Because rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic, evil landowners deprived everyone else of their liberty to use "their" private land, without making just compensation.

Commons work just fine when they are managed according to simple democratic principles, as history has shown.

But democratically accountable ones at least do not fall foul of human nature as often or as thoroughly as privately owned ones.

The UN is not democratically accountable, and neither are most of its member governments.

 

Your quote - "That is why anyone who wants to exclude others from what nature provided for all rightly makes
just compensation to the community of those excluded"

So the shooters pay 'just compensation' for the land, and blast anything that moves. They don't 'own it' somehow
but they have the rights. Can one rich guy, say from the NRA, buy this land for the good of all shooters? And how
do we determine 'just compensation' when we have no market mechanism in place?

 

Yes. And your point would be....?

Their money. As long as the bullets don't leave the property, it's their business.

Why not? Unlike a landowner, they are at least paying the right party for what they are taking.

No one can rightly own land. The compensation is for secure, exclusive tenure.

The market mechanism is in place. It's merely a usufruct market instead of a market in other people's rights. So you are just makin' $#!+ up again.

 

So... I go to Palestine and buy a block of land in Jericho, okay? This town has been settled
for about 11 millennium. Who should I pay my 'rights' to? I mean, here we can't even agree
if it's Jew or Arab land.

 

So you pay a thief who paid a previous thief, who paid a previous thief.....

And like every other town and place on earth where land is held as private property, the title of ownership is and always has been based on nothing but forcible dispossession of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it.

The community of those whom you deprive of it, as I have told you multiple times and you always pretend not to know.

How could land be Jew or Arab? Possession and use of land is administered by government everywhere there is a government because that is what government is: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.

Let me know if you ever want to stop trying to evade the facts.

 

re Paying a 'thief' who pays a 'thief.'
In your universe the second person, if he or she paid a sum for the land, is a 'thief'
but not in common law calculus. The first owner was the settler and the second
owner purchased this land by a commonly agreed formula, as per the law of the
prevailing culture. The second owner is a 'thief' to an ideologue only.
In Palestine the Canaanites 'owned' the land. Abraham sought to purchase a
parcel of land as a family cemetery at Machpela. He accepted the opening bid
which was 400 shekels - an extraordinary amount. Many blocks, centuries later,
were selling for 40 shekels or less, even a lot less than this.
This was the custom in the Bronze Age with itinerant people. You did not want to
share your family cemeteries with strangers pursuing activities disrespectful to the
purpose of your land. Abraham was no thief.

 

No, every landowner is a thief. All but the first one pays a previous thief for the legal right to steal.

I'm talking about facts, not law. Laws just say whatever some gang of crooks, narcissists and toadies think they can get away with, and common law just says whatever the powerful of former times did get away with.

That is ahistorical garbage with no basis in fact. In the Americas, the first owner was typically a political favorite of some European despot. No private title of land ownership has ever been based on anything but forcible dispossession of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land, and none ever will be.

In exactly the same way slaves were purchased. Right.

No, he is a thief because he is forcibly taking from others and not making just compensation for what he is taking.

According to less-than-reliable illiterate Bronze Age nomad sources, that is....

The changes in land prices are irrelevant to the principle.

Like slavery. Right.

You mean your purposes for the land that nature provided for all...

He was most definitely a thief, just not a very clever one. Watch and learn:

 

So some guy settles on a nice parcel of land in 'Palestine' and he's the only one around.
He sells this land later to someone who wants it for a cemetery.
A third guy comes along and wants it also - claims he's been cheated out of good grazing
land for his cattle. Should we dig up the bodies? What happens when a shepherd comes
along and wants to graze his herd? And then someone wants to grow barley?

They can't all have it for these reasons. So we either
1 - fight over it (as per the neat cartoon video)
2 - buy and sell it.

 

He was never the only one around because people did not, do not, and cannot survive alone. All appropriation of land as private property has always been effected by forcibly depriving others of their liberty to use it. No exceptions, ever.

Like someone selling a slave, he is selling others' rights to liberty.

Robbed, not cheated.

Why are you trying to evade the facts with such nonsense?

If anyone wants to exclude others from using it, he should make just compensation to them for what he is taking.

Before the advent of settled agriculture and significant fixed improvements, everyone among our hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding ancestors was at liberty to use all land non-exclusively. But more advanced economies require secure, exclusive tenure. The only just way to obtain it is for the exclusive landholder to make just compensation to the community of those whom he excludes (and which secures his exclusive tenure for him), and the community to compensate all its members for the liberty rights being taken from them.

You seem unaware of the fact that buying and selling it has never been inconsistent with fighting over it. In fact, forcibly appropriating it as private property guarantees people are going to fight over it, because it guarantees the unjust victimization of those whose liberty rights are forcibly removed and made into others' private property. It's just a matter of who does the fighting, when, and how.

You are also (obviously) committing a false dichotomy fallacy. A third and incomparably superior option is justice: i.e., for those who enjoy secure, exclusive tenure to make just compensation to the community of those whom they exclude, and the community to then make just compensation to its members for what is being taken from them.

The only remaining question is, why do you hate justice so much? Why do you prefer injustice to justice, evil to good? Why do you want evil to win and good to lose?

 

The concept of a safety net is not founded upon morality or notions of fairness. It is pragmatic. It is not good for private markets when participants see, or even are, starving people in the streets. When the econ contracts, or is more or less stagnant as it is now, we have transfer payments such as soc sec and aid to buoy consumer demand for essentials.

Savings by people who are not in the investment class besides probably having some retirement planning seem to be high.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/the-2021-post-pandemic-prediction-palooza/617332/

But there's no doubt the econ is shuttering … again. It may not be supported by the above link, but it seems today that most of us are OK. Even if we've seen some employment loss … we're OK. Still it seems irrational that congress can't pass temporary relief from rent (and help landlords) and student loans, and extend unemployment at least till summer, and hopefully the Moderna vaccine. I thought today's idea of a $600 per person stimulus was a good idea, because as the above link says … we could come out of this in the latter half of 2021 with an econ going like a bang and the min wage workers actually seeing employers COMPETE for them with higher wages.

 

First guy IS the exception.

 

In Abraham's case he paid an exorbitant sum for the sake of a family cemetery.
Didn't he pay 'just compensation'?
What if someone wanted to New World potatoes there? Wouldn't there be an
issue with digging someone up? Wot if the descendants of those buried objected?
How do we determine a 'justice' price for land, and who does this sum go to?

 

No, because he paid the wrong party, and a one-time payment can only compensate those whose rights are abrogated at that time, not all the future potential users whose rights are also abrogated by private landowning.

If they want secure, exclusive tenure, they should make just compensation to the community of those excluded.

If they want to indulge their absurd superstitions by abrogating others' rights to liberty, they should make just compensation for what they are taking.

As I have already told you multiple times in clear, grammatical English, and you always ignore, it is the market price (high bid) for secure, exclusive tenure, and it goes to the community of those excluded.

 

No, he is not. Every initial appropriator of land forcibly dispossesses all those who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land. There has never been an instance in all of human history when an initial appropriator of land appropriated as his private property land that no one else wanted to use. The whole purpose of appropriating land as private property is to exclude others from using it.