Owning land and conditional residence (for ACs)

[pvn]

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Who owns land legitimately? In the US most of it was stolen from the Indians, if they can be considered to have owned it legitimately in the first place.

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Most natives didn't claim ownership (I'm not sure if *any* did). ANd they certainly didn't "own" the entire continental US.

[mdob]

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Now all you have to do is demonstrate how the entity known as "The United States" has legitimate property rights to all of the territory it claims.

States acquire land either by buying it (with stolen funds), by decree (which does not confer a legitimate property right) (also note escheat would fall into this category), by conquest (effectively robbery), by emminent domain (a subset of conquest), or by "working" the land (which would not confer property rights in the case of government, since they are working the land either with conscripted labor or they are purchasing labor with stolen funds).

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I've already said that I'm not arguing that the US obtained the land legitimately, so I'm not sure what this adds.

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That's the entire crux of the issue! Ownership of the land is what seperates legitimate rule from illegitimate rule.

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Who owns land legitimately? In the US most of it was stolen from the Indians, if they can be considered to have owned it legitimately in the first place.

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Just because theft exist does not mean that ownership does not.

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I was replying to an argument that the state does not legitimately own land and is thus fundamentally different from a corporation. But if the corporation bought the land from someone who didn't own it legitimately, we're at the same place.

[mdob]

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Who owns land legitimately? In the US most of it was stolen from the Indians, if they can be considered to have owned it legitimately in the first place.

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Most natives didn't claim ownership (I'm not sure if *any* did). ANd they certainly didn't "own" the entire continental US.

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Well, they fought for it, right? That would imply they thought they owned it in some sense.

[Borodog]

Your question appears to rhetorically imply that no land could be owned legitimately, which is all my comment was addressing. I should have explained more fully.

[Borodog]

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Who owns land legitimately? In the US most of it was stolen from the Indians, if they can be considered to have owned it legitimately in the first place.

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Most natives didn't claim ownership (I'm not sure if *any* did). ANd they certainly didn't "own" the entire continental US.

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Well, they fought for it, right? That would imply they thought they owned it in some sense.

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This is a very deep and complex topic, and I don't really think either side is doing it justice.

In short, native Americans often did own land and sell it. They sold a lot of it to settlers. Other times they did not homestead the land because they did not transform it, but that doesn't mean that whitey could just come in and homestead it and exclude the natives from traditional hunting grounds without compensation, for example, because the natives, while not owners, had a re-existing easement to hunt the land. And the forced removal of the natives was done almost entirely by the US government, and was the next closest thing to genocide that you could get. And while that forced removal and non-recognition of easements were violations of property rights, those violations of property rights occured over a hundred years ago, by and to people who are all now dead. The government cannot make reparations to the descendants of the wronged without first wronging a whole new generation now to pay for it who had nothing to do with the original wrong, which does not seem like "justice" to me.

[pvn]

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And while that forced removal and non-recognition of easements were violations of property rights, those violations of property rights occured over a hundred years ago, by and to people who are all now dead. The government cannot make reparations to the descendants of the wronged without first wronging a whole new generation now to pay for it who had nothing to do with the original wrong, which does not seem like "justice" to me.

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Right. Defects in title can be the basis for damages claims, but the *damaged party* needs to make the claim. By not pursuing the damages claims, those damaged parties are effectively abandoning their claims. Now in this case, it may very well be that the original "owners" in cases where there was ownership that was violated may have bequeathed their claims to heirs, and those heirs could continue to pursue claims, but the damaging party (i.e. the government) unjustly suppressed their attempts to pursue such claims (the government immunizes itself from liability all the time). In such a case, this suppression may actually cause the ownership of the property to legitimatly be abandoned, but in doing so actually create NEW actionable claims against the government.

So let those who have greivances pursue them. But don't think they're getting "all the land" back.

[foal]

Vhawk:
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Maybe an AC world would result in something very much like a state, a nice comfortable place to live, except it wasn't based on violent coercion.

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Can you explain what you mean by “based on coercion”? And if AC could result in something almost the same as a state then why is it such an improvement?

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The fact that they do not ever claim to own the land and could never legitimately claim to own the land is exactly the problem. Take a look at the "if you don't like it, leave!" arguments. These are predicated on the idea that the US owns the land legitimately, but they do not. And since they do not, the argument "if you don't like it, leave" is inherently flawed. And so, if I don't like it, I DONT HAVE TO PARTICIPATE. This is the main point. If I don't have to participate, I don't have to pay taxes, people can't vote to take my money or subject me to laws, and we live in an AC world. The fact that it looks a lot like a statist world is irrelevant.

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So it really boils down to a question of justice, the way you’re describing it. For the practical minded individual I don’t think this is very convincing. The US, no matter what they say, treats the land as if they own it. The fact that they obtained it illegitimately in some people’s eyes (hundreds of years ago) is not really of pragmatic concern.

Borodog:

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Think of it this way. Say you own the land and you work it yourself, and you have no other workers. Who owns the product of the land? You do, of course. Then lets say that you become so prosperous working your land that you want to hire some hands to help you. You pay them a portion of your profits as wages. Eventually you hire enough people that you don't have to work at all. It's still your profit from your land, and you are paying the workers wages deducted from hose profits.

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No, they aren't the ones with "initial access to the profits." That would be the homesteader, or whomever holds the land in an unbroken chain of voluntary exchange therefrom. The fact that you hire workers doesn't change this. Think about what you are suggesting. You are suggesting that if a cobbler makes shoes, and then wants to hire a worker to make more shoes, using the tools and materials belonging to the cobbler, that suddenly the shoes belong to the worker and not the cobbler. Not only is this crazy, but if everyone believed this, nobody would ever hire a worker.

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That isn’t the situation I’m describing. I’m not hiring them to do specific work. I’m letting them live on my land and do whatever they want (as long as they’re not breaking my rules) as long as they give me a cut of profit from any work they decide to do.

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How about part of the agreement I have with them is that the profits resulting from their work will be theirs as long as they give me a cut.

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I suppose you can do that, but I have no idea why you are bending over backward to avoid the fact that the product of the land belongs to the landowner and that he simply pays his workers an agreed upon wage.

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I’m not bending over backwards. I’m charging them to live there, I’m not paying them to work for me. It’d be like if I bought a condo which I rented out and made tenants sign a contract saying “I will pay you 20% of my yearly income while I live here”.

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Your claim is essentially that the government owns *everything*, and pays us a wage (including temporary use of things like houses and cars) to work its capital. However, this is still coercion on a massive scale since none of us have ever signed a contract.

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If you’re born on land someone else owns you still have to respect the rules set forth by the land owner, do you not?

[mdob]

States acquire their property illegitimately. That AC corporations do not was mentioned as a fundamental benefit of AC. I'm arguing that both have illegitimate claims to the property. In many cases the state would have conquered the land then given/sold it away anyway. If the state's ownership is illegitimate, much private ownership is illegitimate.
Reparations or whatever certainly seem like a ridiculous way to try to right old wrongs, but that's besides the point. The point is that historical legitimacy is not a benefit of AC. I'd agree that preventing future illegitimate land grabs is a benefit.

[Borodog]

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AC corporations

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I would just like to point out that these would almost certainly not exist in a free market. There would certainly be be organizations, companies, firms, but there would not be "corporations", which are a government enforced scheme to shield individuals from liability for their risky, dangerous and negligent actions.

[mosdef]

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AC corporations

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I would just like to point out that these would almost certainly not exist in a free market. There would certainly be be organizations, companies, firms, but there would not be "corporations", which are a government enforced scheme to shield individuals from liability for their risky, dangerous and negligent actions.

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I disagree. I think there will still be place for limited liability corporations in the sense that business organizations will want limited liability, and some people will engage in business transactions with them voluntarily (presumably for a better price than can be offered by companies that are not limited liability and would need to buy insurance against such losses). In fact, it's entirely conceivable that the price of the risk associated with not being a limited liability organization is so prohibitively high and/or uninsurable that ALL companies active would demand that consumers agree to grant them limited liability status as part of any transaction.