Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • What Is The Justification For Political Authority Enforced By Force?

    I’m going to try to clarify the “Monopoly Of Violence” argument in Propertarian terms:

    All human existence can be reduced to property rights.
    • 0. All human beings object to involuntary transfer of what they worked to obtain, by theft, fraud, or violence, and whether that transfer be direct or indirect.
    • 1. All societies have collections of property rights.
    • 2. These rights exist along a spectrum that consists of individual, shareholder, and collective property rights.
    • 3. Those property rights can be constructive, neutral or destructive. They can be just or unjust. They can be dominated by egalitarianism, expropriation, or meritocracy or a combination thereof.
    • 4. Those rights are met with corresponding obligations we call norms: forgone opportunities, manners, ethics, morals. They are, in large part, prohibitions on involuntary transfers of property.
    • 5. And these obligations are costs. They are the cost of the institution of property. People feel that they ‘own’ their institutions because they ‘pay’ for them.
    • 6. Since any foreign group’s portfolio, upon interaction with the home group’s portfolio, will by definition and necessity cause involuntary transfers from any home group, and the inverse, then groups use violence to both to institute their property rights and obligations and to prevent involuntary transfers both inside and outside of the group.

    Groups have different property rights. Even among libertarians, we disagree upon warranty, symmetry, external costs and the right of exclusion. All groups, regardless of their portfolio, pay for property rights with forgone opportunities for violence, theft, and fraud. And the promise of violence remains whenever violence, theft, and fraud are committed.

    Therefore, people are ‘justified’ in protecting their property. Their property rights themselves are a form of property. They are justified in forming a group that mandates those property rights. They are justified in combating a government that abridges or abrogates those rights.

    You can run on with this reasoning and answer almost all political questions. However, to answer yours, directly, we need to understand that one does not ‘justify’ power. One exercises it to achieve one’s preferences, and either has the power to achieve them or not. Justification is an attempt to achieve one’s preferences at a lower cost, or to lower the cost of maintaining those preferences. But that is all.

    So your question implies a universalism that is not present in political action.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-justification-for-political-authority-enforced-by-force

  • Geopolitical Conflicts: From An Ethical Standpoint, How Long Back Should One Look To Decide Who Is The Rightful Owner Of Land?

    This only appears to be a complicated question. It really isn’t.  If a judgement will be made, how will one make such a thing?

    1) Property Rights. Property rights of any kind are derived from the portfolio of those rights within any given jurisdiction (country/state). Property rights exist in order to prevent disputes, and to permit cooperation.  Military conquest is not a subject of property rights. The very purpose of military conquest is to abrogate and redefine property rights.  There is no other reason to conduct military conquest.  In that sense, both the israeli and amerindian conquests are settled matters, because they were settled by conquest.  So to some degree to make a legalistic argument over property rights on a military matter is simply irrational. 

    2) Arbitrary Time Frames.  We have all been conquered people.  None of us can return to our homelands and our traditions. Even Northern europeans cannot go home any longer. The problem is infinitely recursive. These matters are not possible to solve by other than military means. That is why we solve them so.  It is an arbitrary and illogical statement to prefer one time and state of affairs to another time and state of affairs, because each state of affairs is predicated on the prior state of affairs and those conflicts. SO why, should we not take over Istanbul and rename it Byzantium, because the muslims conquered and stole if from Christians?  Where does this end?  Must we try to return Rome to the Etruscans?  Or are you just arbitrarily biased in favor of amerindians at the expense of everyone else?

    3) Practical Matters: it is not practical to displace a people, and they would simply go to war to stop it.  So it is an absurd parlor game of a question.  Israel is doing two things: building walls, and building settlements in order to expand it’s defensible boundaries. There is nothing new about what they’re doing.  The germans put them in concentration camps and killed them. There is a difference. The displaced peoples have a choice, the executed people’s do not.

    The English conquered (mostly) the amerindians in north america and the spanish and Portuguese in south america.  But, for example, if we quote George Washington, it’s because  (roughly quoting) they will be conquered by someone who we will have to defend ourselves against if we do not conquer them ourselves.(end roughly quoting). It is not that the English (Americans) were any different from anyone else.  Should the Kurds get their own territory? Should we go to war with china to give Tibetans their land back?  Should the russians drive out the chinese that have invaded eastern russia like the mexicans that have invaded the southern united states?  Land and the property rights imposed on that land are in constant flux everywhere in the world.


    SUMMARY
    So, these are not moral questions.  They are not philosophical questions. They are not legal questions. They are practical questions because in the end, the action necessary to alter the existing property definitions could only be resolved by military conquest.  THat’s what military conquests do: reassign property rights.

    Property assignments in any state are dependent upon a set of definitions established within that state using a monopoly on violence by that organization we call ‘government’.  Those assignments may be capricious (Asia), they may be nearly non-existant (muslim world and south america), they may be collective and corrupt (Romania) they may be collective and uncorrupt (sweden) they may be individual and utilitarian (the USA).   But they are meaningful ONLY within those jurisdictions during the life of the entity that enabled them. 

    This is a complex topic so if some other libertarian wants to challenge me, please understand that I’m erring on the side of brevity no on the side of incomprehension.  Liquid Personal property may be immutable. But land and fixed structures are not. That is not a moral statement. It is an historical one.

    https://www.quora.com/Geopolitical-Conflicts-From-an-ethical-standpoint-how-long-back-should-one-look-to-decide-who-is-the-rightful-owner-of-land

  • Geopolitical Conflicts: From An Ethical Standpoint, How Long Back Should One Look To Decide Who Is The Rightful Owner Of Land?

    This only appears to be a complicated question. It really isn’t.  If a judgement will be made, how will one make such a thing?

    1) Property Rights. Property rights of any kind are derived from the portfolio of those rights within any given jurisdiction (country/state). Property rights exist in order to prevent disputes, and to permit cooperation.  Military conquest is not a subject of property rights. The very purpose of military conquest is to abrogate and redefine property rights.  There is no other reason to conduct military conquest.  In that sense, both the israeli and amerindian conquests are settled matters, because they were settled by conquest.  So to some degree to make a legalistic argument over property rights on a military matter is simply irrational. 

    2) Arbitrary Time Frames.  We have all been conquered people.  None of us can return to our homelands and our traditions. Even Northern europeans cannot go home any longer. The problem is infinitely recursive. These matters are not possible to solve by other than military means. That is why we solve them so.  It is an arbitrary and illogical statement to prefer one time and state of affairs to another time and state of affairs, because each state of affairs is predicated on the prior state of affairs and those conflicts. SO why, should we not take over Istanbul and rename it Byzantium, because the muslims conquered and stole if from Christians?  Where does this end?  Must we try to return Rome to the Etruscans?  Or are you just arbitrarily biased in favor of amerindians at the expense of everyone else?

    3) Practical Matters: it is not practical to displace a people, and they would simply go to war to stop it.  So it is an absurd parlor game of a question.  Israel is doing two things: building walls, and building settlements in order to expand it’s defensible boundaries. There is nothing new about what they’re doing.  The germans put them in concentration camps and killed them. There is a difference. The displaced peoples have a choice, the executed people’s do not.

    The English conquered (mostly) the amerindians in north america and the spanish and Portuguese in south america.  But, for example, if we quote George Washington, it’s because  (roughly quoting) they will be conquered by someone who we will have to defend ourselves against if we do not conquer them ourselves.(end roughly quoting). It is not that the English (Americans) were any different from anyone else.  Should the Kurds get their own territory? Should we go to war with china to give Tibetans their land back?  Should the russians drive out the chinese that have invaded eastern russia like the mexicans that have invaded the southern united states?  Land and the property rights imposed on that land are in constant flux everywhere in the world.


    SUMMARY
    So, these are not moral questions.  They are not philosophical questions. They are not legal questions. They are practical questions because in the end, the action necessary to alter the existing property definitions could only be resolved by military conquest.  THat’s what military conquests do: reassign property rights.

    Property assignments in any state are dependent upon a set of definitions established within that state using a monopoly on violence by that organization we call ‘government’.  Those assignments may be capricious (Asia), they may be nearly non-existant (muslim world and south america), they may be collective and corrupt (Romania) they may be collective and uncorrupt (sweden) they may be individual and utilitarian (the USA).   But they are meaningful ONLY within those jurisdictions during the life of the entity that enabled them. 

    This is a complex topic so if some other libertarian wants to challenge me, please understand that I’m erring on the side of brevity no on the side of incomprehension.  Liquid Personal property may be immutable. But land and fixed structures are not. That is not a moral statement. It is an historical one.

    https://www.quora.com/Geopolitical-Conflicts-From-an-ethical-standpoint-how-long-back-should-one-look-to-decide-who-is-the-rightful-owner-of-land

  • Are There Any Arguments Against Immigration That Are Compatible With Libertarian Thought?

    1) Hoppe has put forth an argument (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han…)  But hoppe would also argue that if a bunch of neighbors made a contract that no one without red hair could move into a neighborhood/village/city that was all privately owned, even by the use of shares, that since that contract was vountarily entered into by members that they would all have to respect it.  (This is called the “right of exclusion”.)

    2) When libertarians talk about any given issue, they do so within the libertarian context: the inviolability of private property. The inviolability of private property requires that no involuntary transfers occur. This tenet of in turn requires the absence of redistributive programs that allow immigrants to transfer weath by moving into a geography and obtaining redistribution (theft).  Theft which therefore is used to fund the growth of the bureaucratic (parasitic) governmnet. This argument is that OPEN immigration is incompatible with the welfare state.
     
    The alternative solutions are that a) people pay their way in, or b) they borrow and pay back their way in c) or that they are ‘sponsored’ by someone who is financially responsible for their productivity or loss (as was common in history). Further that they conform to norms that are expressions of property rights. Any one of these solutions makes immigration possible without violating property rights. Open immigration under redistribution doesn’t. I think this argument is pretty hard to refute.

    https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-arguments-against-immigration-that-are-compatible-with-libertarian-thought

  • Are There Any Arguments Against Immigration That Are Compatible With Libertarian Thought?

    1) Hoppe has put forth an argument (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han…)  But hoppe would also argue that if a bunch of neighbors made a contract that no one without red hair could move into a neighborhood/village/city that was all privately owned, even by the use of shares, that since that contract was vountarily entered into by members that they would all have to respect it.  (This is called the “right of exclusion”.)

    2) When libertarians talk about any given issue, they do so within the libertarian context: the inviolability of private property. The inviolability of private property requires that no involuntary transfers occur. This tenet of in turn requires the absence of redistributive programs that allow immigrants to transfer weath by moving into a geography and obtaining redistribution (theft).  Theft which therefore is used to fund the growth of the bureaucratic (parasitic) governmnet. This argument is that OPEN immigration is incompatible with the welfare state.
     
    The alternative solutions are that a) people pay their way in, or b) they borrow and pay back their way in c) or that they are ‘sponsored’ by someone who is financially responsible for their productivity or loss (as was common in history). Further that they conform to norms that are expressions of property rights. Any one of these solutions makes immigration possible without violating property rights. Open immigration under redistribution doesn’t. I think this argument is pretty hard to refute.

    https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-arguments-against-immigration-that-are-compatible-with-libertarian-thought

  • CAPLAN FAILS TO JUSTIFY OPEN IMMIGRATION (*HIGHLY UN-PC PAINFUL TRUTH WARNING*)

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/06/six_theses_on_e.htmlBRYAN CAPLAN FAILS TO JUSTIFY OPEN IMMIGRATION

    (*HIGHLY UN-PC PAINFUL TRUTH WARNING*)

    1) Do a group of people have the right to exclusion? To deny trade, habitation, and spatial access, to others based upon some property of the others’ group?

    Moral norms, traditions, and even differences in language and ability impose a cost on groups. Morals are largely expressions of property rights, and differences in morals are expressions of conflicting property rights. Norms are a form of shareholder property in themselves. So differences in norms impose costs on both sides and in many cases constitute attempts at fraud and theft.

    For example, I regularly write about the difference between Bazaar Ethics and Warrior Ethics, and how externalities and implied warranty are a product of high trust warrior ethics and not a property of low trust Bazaar Ethics. And a high trust society is very rare, and very complicated to build. It’s also very productive and innovative. But it requires that sellers exhibit symmetrical transparency, be constrained from imposing external costs and required to provide limited warranty.

    While I’m a pretty big fan of Brian’s I just see this post on immigration as yet another attempt to express jewish cultural bias as a truth or moral principle when it’s just a byproduct of the fact that jews are a diasporic people with a small population and the memes, morals and narratives of a diasporic people that are unable to hold land, when land holding is necessary for the establishment of norms and formal institutions, and land holding is necessary in order to enforce the right of exclusion, in order to reduce the costs of cooperation.

    So no, immigration poses high costs on host countries and peoples where there is a high trust moral code including a requirement for symmetric honesty, warranty, and a prohibition on external involuntary transfers, a nuclear family, with a homogenous language.

    I realize that this is a painful truth. But it is a truth none the less.

    2) Secondly, norms are not governed as brian suggests by extreme examples. This is just faulty logic in the extreme. In fact, using extreme conditions as examples of norms is the source of most false criticism of moral statements using moral dilemmas – which turns morality into a victorian parlor game.

    I agree with Brian on a lot of things. But on this topic both his argument and it’s justification are nonsense. People have the right of excluding in both personal and political spheres. They must have it. They demonstrate it. And it’s the only way to force people to adopt high-trust norms.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-18 08:09:00 UTC

  • What Is The Libertarian Position On Laws About Filming Up Women’s Skirts Without Their Consent?

    Anon is correct.

    The reason that someone can violate another’s privacy is because there are insufficient property rights due to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in ‘public’ areas.

    However, we don’t need to get that complicated.  If all citizens of a village are shareholders, and shareholders vote to create a contractual obligation that we don’t look up women’s skirts, then there is nothing that violates ‘libertarian’ principles.  It’s a private corporation.  The shareholders determined the rules.  The people can voluntarily go to that village or not.

    The problems for libertarians are a) that we don’t have the right of exclusion (we can’t randomly forbid people from shopping malls or city streets), and b) we don’t have the right of secession, which means we can’t set up our own rules for our own neighborhoods.  This amounts to the government causing and subsidizing bad behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-position-on-laws-about-filming-up-womens-skirts-without-their-consent

  • What Is The Libertarian Position On Laws About Filming Up Women’s Skirts Without Their Consent?

    Anon is correct.

    The reason that someone can violate another’s privacy is because there are insufficient property rights due to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in ‘public’ areas.

    However, we don’t need to get that complicated.  If all citizens of a village are shareholders, and shareholders vote to create a contractual obligation that we don’t look up women’s skirts, then there is nothing that violates ‘libertarian’ principles.  It’s a private corporation.  The shareholders determined the rules.  The people can voluntarily go to that village or not.

    The problems for libertarians are a) that we don’t have the right of exclusion (we can’t randomly forbid people from shopping malls or city streets), and b) we don’t have the right of secession, which means we can’t set up our own rules for our own neighborhoods.  This amounts to the government causing and subsidizing bad behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-position-on-laws-about-filming-up-womens-skirts-without-their-consent

  • Why Is Socialism Such A Bogeyman?

    You would need to understand the term “Socialism”
    1) Original meaning: central control of the means of production.
    2) Current meaning: redistributive democracy -central ownership of the profits from individual actions.

    The first It has a bad name because:
    In the name of socialism nearly a hundred million people died (disruption of incentives). Because it’s economically impossible (economic calculation debate).  And because it held people in poverty.

    The second is just a slow means of achieving the first.

    Small homogenous Germanic countries who’s strategic needs are subsidized by the united states or whose economies are subsidized by natural resources appear to be egalitarian. (It’s called ‘getting to denmark’ in political economy.) This is because they have a rigid normative structure and the different groups are not large enough to create a bloc.  The usa is a large heterogeneous economy with many factions in direct opposition, and unenforced norms, racial and cultural conflicts, facing both internal and external strategic threats that subsidizes much of the world, and where access to government allows access to power over other groups. The USA also has dramatic redistribution through inefficient benefit programs rather than directly via money.   People are not charitable to others who they feel they are in competition with.

    (And before you get too impressed with those countries go live there for a year. It is extremely expensive and you will be able to consume only a fraction of  what you do in the states.)

    It is entirely possible to have a great deal of redistribution if norms are consistent and there is no access to poliitcal power.  But that means ‘small is good’.  And ‘small is good’ is what you should learn from the nordic countries.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-socialism-such-a-bogeyman

  • LAWS CREATE PROPERTY RIGHTS EVEN INDIRECTLY We often confuse ourselves that we c

    LAWS CREATE PROPERTY RIGHTS EVEN INDIRECTLY

    We often confuse ourselves that we create laws to produce the declared ends. But when we create laws we create a portfolio of property rights — from the prohibition of them under communism, to the centralization of them under socialism, to the lending of them under democratic socialism, to the individual ownership of them under libertarianism, to the abandonment of them under totalitarian thievery. As such land requires taxes, because any composition of the institution of property requires laws by which to exclude other compositions of property, and that we bear the cost of prohibiting those alternative compositions of property by the threat of violence. The government is a monopoly on violence for the purpose of creating the institution of property rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-16 15:51:00 UTC