Why Im no longer an ACist

[bills217]

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Do you really think ownership of 100,000 acres is some wild-eyed fantasy?

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No, but hoarding 100,000 acres of unowned (and presumably valuable) land without mixing it with any labor and shooting all trespassers is.

[Kaj]

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Do you really think ownership of 100,000 acres is some wild-eyed fantasy?

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No, but hoarding 100,000 acres of unowned (and presumably valuable) land without mixing it with any labor and shooting all trespassers is.

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You really think that is a fantasy?

So in AC land, if you aren't working on your land or using it in some way, then you believe that others can move in and take it from you against your will?

Okay then. This is a whole new side of the debate.

So, if I inherit my father's 100,000 acre estate in AC land and sit around living the life of luxury, you are hereby declaring my claim to the land null and void? And what mechanism enforces this proclamation of yours? Everybody grab what they want from me? Wow, this is really news and I eagerly await your rationale of how my claim suddenly became illegitimate.

And once you make that case, you'll have also made the case why its okay for me to homestead in the backyard you rarely use, and if you try to force me off....well, you already have stated that shooting trespassers is against your beliefs.

[bills217]

Kaj,

It seems to me like those kinds of arguments assume that someone who does not own any land in a society with property rights is somehow being disenfranchised, and the implication seems to be that even staying alive under this arrangement should be difficult, since you will always be trespassing on someone else's property and of course they are going to be shooting at you for these indiscretions.

How do the millions of US citizens who do not own (or claim to own) any land survive? Why aren't they constantly dodging bullets?

[owsley]

My impression of your scenario was that someone came across untouched land and just said "Oh hey this is all mine, now I will defend it with a gun." That the land would be theirs just because they said it was and they had an absolute black and white right to it. Sorry but I don't think you did a very good job of explaining yourself at all and that's why I commented that it was a worthless point and was never going to convince anyone. Obviously if someone exchanges goods for different parcels of land they can ultimately accumulate 100,000 acres of land, there is no "cap".

You said the guy had a gun (obviously implying he was going to shoot people if they didn't respect his property claim), I said sniping. That's a pretty nit point if I've ever seen one. It makes zero substantive difference whatsoever. It's late and this is not one of the more productive discussions I've ever had so I think I'm done with this. Property rights are definitely one of the things that have been hardest for me to formulate my views on.

[bills217]

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Do you really think ownership of 100,000 acres is some wild-eyed fantasy?

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No, but hoarding 100,000 acres of unowned (and presumably valuable) land without mixing it with any labor and shooting all trespassers is.

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You really think that is a fantasy?

So in AC land, if you aren't working on your land or using it in some way, then you believe that others can move in and take it from you against your will?

Okay then. This is a whole new side of the debate.

So, if I inherit my father's 100,000 acre estate in AC land and sit around living the life of luxury, you are hereby declaring my claim to the land null and void? And what mechanism enforces this proclamation of yours? Everybody grab what they want from me? Wow, this is really news and I eagerly await your rationale of how my claim suddenly became illegitimate.

And once you make that case, you'll have also made the case why its okay for me to homestead in the backyard you rarely use, and if you try to force me off....well, you already have stated that shooting trespassers is against your beliefs.

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Again, non-sequitur?

Hoarding unowned land =! inheriting/trading for legitimately owned land.

I guess this debate really isn't all that interesting to me since most of the world currently has some system of property rights as a social norm, and for the most part (to my knowledge) there are not huge swaths of unowned land out there littered with valuable resources. (Well, maybe the ocean - maybe I could be interested in that aspect.) I am not making an argument ad status quo here - it just seems like the most difficult hurdle (initial land distribution) has already been done, and even if it has been done unfairly, unless there is some individual who has a more legitimate claim than the current owner, there is no reason for a change to current ownership rights. This was addressed at length in a recent thread with regard to land being taken away from Native Americans 500 years ago.

[pvn]

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do u guys think that the move from minarchist to anarchist is an incremental change or a monumental leap in thinking?

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I think it depends if you're a moralist, utilitarian, or both. I'm mostly a utilitarian, and just need to be convinced government < free market for quality of life purposes. I think moralists have a bigger leap from coercion to no coercion.

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Do you mean you need to be convinced government < free market for you personally, or that you need to be convinced that government < free market for everyone in general?

[Kaj]

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Kaj,

It seems to me like those kinds of arguments assume that someone who does not own any land in a society with property rights is somehow being disenfranchised, and the implication seems to be that even staying alive under this arrangement should be difficult, since you will always be trespassing on someone else's property and of course they are going to be shooting at you for these indiscretions.

How do the millions of US citizens who do not own (or claim to own) any land survive? Why aren't they constantly dodging bullets?

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I am making no such argument.

Again I am only pointing out that what one might perceive as a "universal" (the golden rule) does not necessarily imply a respect for all property rights ("legitimate" ones by capitalist definition).

The rest of the implication you are making is your own imagination, not mine.

[Kaj]

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Again, non-sequitur?

Hoarding unowned land =! inheriting/trading for legitimately owned land.

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Why because you say so?

And I never said anything about "unowned land". You inserted that adjective and then attempted to tear down something I never asserted. (And it doesn't really matter as you yourself have admitted that claims of legitimate ownership are murky anyway.)

So is your claim that inheriting 100,000 acres from your daddy and doing nothing with it is "not hoarding". Why? Who are you to define what one views as "hoarding" for the rest of the species? What is your objective rationale to make such a statement other than your personal (subjective) value system?

And yet again we see an ACist portray his personal values as objective truths.

[pvn]

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Edit: The above does not apply to all ACists or even to AC theory itself. But applies to many of the preachers of ACism on this board. Like Christian fundamentalists, these AC disciples will too often use arguments for ACism that are not necessary, they refuse to acknowledge that some things are unknown and make assertions as fact, and when challenged on any point they simply regurgitate their subjective values as if they are absolute truths (which they are not) rather than just stick to making the case why others should adopt their subjective values based on their own merit.

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Perhaps you should read some libertarian/AC property rights theory before rants like this. None of them include ownership simply by staking out land for themselves.

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Search pvn.

And then explain how if one discovers a new land (or buys it from someone) and stakes it out as their own property, how does this not imply ownership in AC/libertarian theory? And I ask this as someone well steeped in libertarianism as I have been active in libertarian thought for years.

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Please do search my posts. You'll find that I state over and over that simple decree does not confer a legitimate property right. It's one of the primary reasons that states cannot legitimately own property.

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You are avoiding the issue by playing on this "simple decree" semantics issue. You believe that legitimate ownership can be inferred on one individual for exclusive use of land -- whether that be by staking it out, discovering it, using it, whatever (and irrelevant). Then you use this concept of "legitimate property rights" as if it was an actual thing, some actual objective standard. Well it is not. It is merely an abstract concept that only has subjective meaning if people accept such a notion. Most ACers here refuse to accept that this concept is just a human abstraction and flies in the face of nature.

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Um, no. From the practical standpoint, i've acknowledged countless times that the concept is not some absolute standard. I've acknowledged that force can unseat legitimate owners. This is just a sophisticated variant of the death star objection.

Nobody suggests that people who say murder is wrong "refuse to accept" that murder occurs.

If one man believes in property and 1000000 don't, the one guy is going to lose. It's obvious. Nobody disputes it.

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And they have already demonstrated in this thread that they believe in some "morality" regarding property rights once they are established as "legitimate" -- failing to realize that "legitimate" and "morality" are wholly subjective terms which have no meaning whatsoever unless others want to recognize your "morality" or "legitimacy", which they are free to not do.

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This has been covered. It doesn't matter if morality is subjective or not.

If it is, then as you point out, transactions cannot be legitimate without recognition - consent from both parties in the transaction. They have to agree on the rules of legitimacy. if they do not, the default position must be that transactions are illegitimate. This is 100% in line with the AC position.


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There are no [censored] rights. None. Period. Get the [censored] over it. You aren't entitled to [censored] on this earth. I don't give a crap how much labor you mix with your land, it will never confer any objective "legitimacy" unless others choose to recognize it as legitimate (or you have enough force then to at least force them to accept your use).

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Are you done tilting at windmills yet?

[pvn]

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a free-market but just not that free, I dont have the exact amount of freedom required in the market but I think that the amount of freedom proposed by ACists is way too much.

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This is upside down thinking. ACists don't propose any "amount of freedom". Freedom is not something that is provided.