/liberty/ - Liberty

It was Facebook tier.

>>13113

no

>>13113

You can only extend homesteading so far back into the past. Drawing a line non-arbitrarily is hard, but taking the land from white colonizers, giving it back to the ancient tribe that lived on it and then taking it from them and giving it to the people this tribe conquered 8000 years ago sounds absurd to me.

>>13131

Homesteading is probably the libertarian/anarchocapitalist idea that I understand the least (though it seems pretty simple), but I believe there's also the matter that you need to be combining land with your labor in order for homesteading to really apply. In other words, you've gotta be doing something with it in order for your claim to the land to remain legitimate. I may not know much about the Native Americans, but I'm pretty sure a vast majority of the land wasn't being used by them. Hell, I think some tribes didn't even settle down at all and just followed herds of whatever animal they hunted.

Basically, the Native Americans, as a people, had no more claim to the entirety of America than the colonists did, unless it was specifically land that they were currently using. They certainly don't have more claim to it than the federal government does now. The only land they could claim as their property was the land they were using when the colonists arrived to set up shop.

So if you want to give the descendants of the Native Americans "their" land back, you'd need to isolate the specific land that they were using at the time, define its borders, figure out who was using it, figure out who qualifies as their "descendants", then find them and give it back. I find it difficult to believe that this is a workable solution or in any way worth it.

>>13113

>>13113

>>13113

>Just learned about the Homestead principle… So you guys want to return the Americas to Native Americans, and GTFO back to where your ancestors came from?

If the natives had enclosed the land and improved it, yes. But just hunting on land, cutting back some undergrowth, and living on it? That's not homesteading.

As much as the natives did get fucked, most places people live in were stolen from someone else. Going on about only the natives is ignoring a lot of other places in a similar situation.

>>13113

> So you guys want to return the Americas to Native Americans, and GTFO back to where your ancestors came from?

I wouldn't be opposed to returning some land back to them. Even if they were allocated 1% or 2% of the continental US, that's still vastly vastly larger than they have today.

>>13142

I find it rather heartwarming that some of you guys start realising that the world we live in is largely the product of centuries of collective effort, making concepts such as "private property" and "homesteading" completely baseless and irrelevant. Really, the latter is even so vague and open to interpretation (how does living on a land doesn't qualify as homesteading for example?) compared to how rigorous you anarcho-capitalists usually are in your reasonings that it just seems to me like an ad-hoc solution when confronted with Proudhon's idea of "personal property" and the need to come up with something similar. It's too bad you're clinging to private property so much though, instead of accepting that its recognition only leads to weird mind tricks to justify its existence, when your philosophy would remain exactly the same with "personal property" in place of all occurences of "private property", and it would instantly get rid of its paradoxes, like the impossibility to trace back the rightful owner of anything, or the leap of faith making you equate "I own my body" and "I own my things" as if the verb "to own" described identical relationships between me and the object in both cases.

Personal property is the continuous and objective relationship between someone and the stuff he uses or occupies. Private property merely the idealisation of said relationship, when it somehow keeps existing even once previous conditions of existence apply no more. The problem is, you base your philosophy on the former, but extend it to the latter because in English both concepts aren't clearly separate (as opposed to French for example, thanks to a different anarchist tradition in this language), so you're proving the validity of a word ("property") without noticing that it entails two different ideas, and validating one doesn't automatically validate the other (I'd even go as far as to say that they are almost incompatible, and not accounting for this is the source of many incomprehensions between us anarchists and you libertarians). And then you go on and on, with very sound logic I have to admit, reaching conclusions that are fallacious, not because of weaknesses in the demonstration, but because its premises themselves are flawed. To this purely semantic issue, you add the cultural one that America was based on a pioneer's mindset, probably recreating for millions of people the feeling of building something all by themselves, while it had been self-evident for centuries in Europe that we were merely improving on other people's work, and I believe you can understand why anarcho-capitalism is primarily an American ideology.

You should read Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, it's a classic but I'm pretty sure it would be extremely interesting for ancaps since it shows how the ideal society as thought by ancoms is extremely similar to the one you advocate for as well, except for the private property-issue that ultimately leads us to almost hating each other.

>>13147

>world is result of collective effort (somehow)

>nobody invented electricity, the motor, and other shit that practically turned our loves around

>Let everyone use everything I have

>oh yes, private property is bad because it does not profit the greater good!

>treating humans like cattle

>>13152

*lives

fugg forgot to sage

>>13147

Thanks for the suggestion, and for actually seeking a dialogue between left- and right-libertarians. Like I always say, ancaps and ancoms/ansocs wouldn't need to be enemies. Benjamin Tucker would rather drink a beer with an ancap than with a modern marxist, I'm sure, whereas many anarchists today seem to be best buddies with leftist statists.

Downloaded "The Conquest of Bread" now.

>>13152

Come on. What you just said had little to with the actual content of his post, even though it applies to 90% of all leftists on thsis board.

>>13159

IDGAF anymore

I discovered reddit 4 months ago and migrated to *chans 3 days later. All I see are rehashed threads, rehashed opinions. Can't be assed to give a reply, tbh fam.

I know I'm right and repeatedly countering fools is not how I wish to spend my free time anymore. This place is a time sink.

>inb4 something

I have a well-paying job and, and I don't have a social media account.

>>13165

can't inb4, faggot

something

>>13152

>nobody invented electricity, the motor, and other shit that practically turned our loves around

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

>>13169

>If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

how would you feel if some little imp was standing on your shoulders

>>13152

>world is result of collective effort (somehow)

Well… yeah, of course it is? Or do you seriously believe some guy built all by himself the city you live in? Invented every single thing we enjoy? I'm not sure to get your point actually. Unless you thought I was using the word "world" as a synonym for "the planet Earth" in its astronomical sense, in which case I apologise for the confusion…

>nobody invented electricity, the motor, and other shit that practically turned our lives around

But it doesn't make any sense giving all credit to "the one" who inventend something, when in practice discoveries are always the result of a collective work. Science is probably the field where it's the most evident that all innovations are intertwined. You're saying "the motor" as if someone came up with it on his own, when in reality scientists from various places of the planet all added their own improvements to pre-existing models, taking into account new discoveries and known failed attempts, leading to roughly the basis of the systems we use nowadays. It's just as silly as trying to find the inventor of "maths", whose heirs should inherit the patent…

>let everyone use everything I have

I never said that, and send you back to the distinction between personal and private property. It's easy saying you know you're right when you're not even paying attention to what others believe…

>oh yes, private property is bad because it does not profit the greater good!

Never used that argument either… I believe private property is baseless because it doesn't account for anything real, and is merely a social contract mistaken for a natural right. It's a matter of law passing in your mouths as a philosophical concept.

>treating humans like cattle

I'm starting to wonder if you actually read my post honestly…

>>13158

You're more than welcome! Well, it's either dialogue or straight to the Gulag, so it's up to you… ;) Thing is, abolishment of private property is the bread and butter of communist thought, so even though it might be the only difference between our philosophies, it eventually leads to so many disagreements that each side sees the other as frightening proponents of some crazy dystopia. It serves for me as as proof that it is indeed a very crucial issue, and the necessary condition for any other leftist policy to make sense (which is why, despite many other shared values, we can't consider ourselves to be "allies" unless one of us convinces the other on that precise matter).

I doubt anarchists would be that friends with statists though, be them leftist or not by the way, given the long history of conflicts and treasons between us. We all end up browsing the same /leftypol/ but even there dissent remains particularly strong. And it really depends on whom you call "modern marxist": communism was always supposed to be stateless… Have a nice read regardless! It's really easy to go through if I recall correctly, because it largely focuses on a number of practical matters rather than long theoretical rants; serves as a great introduction to leftist thought.

>>13170

Pretty good to be honest (tbh)

>>13171

>But it doesn't make any sense giving all credit to "the one" who inventend something, when in practice discoveries are always the result of a collective work.

>always

Since you said "always" you are undoubtedly wrong. Secondly, I'm not going to bother innovating if I receive artificially reduced benefits for doing so.

>I never said that, and send you back to the distinction between personal and private property. It's easy saying you know you're right when you're not even paying attention to what others believe…

>baaaawwww people don't recognize my arbitrary distinctions betwen types of property ;_;

Truly tragic.

>It's a matter of law passing in your mouths as a philosophical concept.

Property is the result of the labor of a privately owned body being applied to some end. Whether that property can then be used to produce further property is inconsequential, unless you're a faggot who is a big fan of arbitrary distinctions.

Arbitrary: "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference:"

Whereas the an-cap view of property is simply derived from the axiom that individuals own themselves, are therefore responsible for their actions, and therefore own the results of their actions (of course, you can give up some of the results of your actions in, say, a contract for employment.)

>>13173

reported, family (fam)

>>13174

>Since you said "always" you are undoubtedly wrong

I'm glad I also said "in practice" to emphasise on the fact that I know it's theoretically possible to invent something out of thin air, but it's just not the sort of thing that happens. Unless you were left alone in the jungle right after your birth, found a way to survive on your own and came up with novel discoveries without owing anything to society, which most likely happens daily.

>Secondly, I'm not going to bother innovating if I receive artificially reduced benefits for doing so.

Good for you, I'd rather get rid of Edisons and Steve Jobs if they can give room for a few more Teslas and Linus Torvalds. Believe it or not, lots of scientists don't do science half-heartedly for the sole purpose of profit. Moreover, I'd say patents are more artificial than their absence, and reasoning in terms of benefits doesn't mean much outside of capitalism anyway. What sort of benefits are you talking about? Money, secondary houses, power, social recognition?

>baaaawwww people don't recognize my arbitrary distinctions betwen types of property ;_;

I'm sorry if you don't see the difference between two ideas, but it doesn't make their distinction "arbitrary", especially when I argued already that them not being considered as distinct is a matter of language more than philosophy.

>Property is the result of the labor of a privately owned body being applied to some end.

So I see no reason for property to keep existing when said labour stops, if it's the basis of your definition. If I carve my initials into a tree, does it become mine forever? I don't see how manipulating tools in order to transform an object wouldn't qualify as labour, albeit so small.

This conception of private property is just as flawed as your syllogism. You could just say that property derives from use and/or occupation (which is basically your Homestead principle, as well as the definition you provided earlier), hence individuals indeed own themselves since they use and occupy their body all the time, and you don't even need to pull an axiom out of your hat. Therefore they are responsible for their actions, and own their results just the same, except the owning stops the moment its conditions aren't met anymore. Which makes much more sense, and all in all is just simpler, the only arbitrary left being the definition of property; instead of the definition of property in your case too, your "individuals own themselves" that is self-evident but needs to be artificially forced into your reasonings since you can't deduce it from said definition (and I'd argue there's a problem when a definition of *property* isn't able to tell you if you *own* yourself or not), and the leap of faith leading you to equate "This stuff is mine for one second" with "This stuff is rightfully mine forever even though the reasons why it was mine in the first place apply no more".

>>13165

>IDGAF anymore

>I discovered reddit 4 months ago and migrated to *chans 3 days later.

>All I see are rehashed threads, rehashed opinions.

If only there weren't so many newfags who can't do anything but shitpost.

>>13171

>But it doesn't make any sense giving all credit to "the one" who inventend something, when in practice discoveries are always the result of a collective work. Science is probably the field where it's the most evident that all innovations are intertwined. You're saying "the motor" as if someone came up with it on his own, when in reality scientists from various places of the planet all added their own improvements to pre-existing models, taking into account new discoveries and known failed attempts, leading to roughly the basis of the systems we use nowadays. It's just as silly as trying to find the inventor of "maths", whose heirs should inherit the patent…

This is why I'm against intellectual property, among other things. If you build an object, the proximate cause for why this object exists is easy to pin down. The same can't be said about writing a novel, for example. Kids learn how to use magic in a mysterious school? Good luck finding out who came up with this idea first, especially when two guys had a similar idea at the same time.

>>13176

>and the leap of faith leading you to equate "This stuff is mine for one second" with "This stuff is rightfully mine forever even though the reasons why it was mine in the first place apply no more".

This is a pretty good argument, tbh. Not saying you have convinced me that private property is a spook, but this at least deserves addressing.

>>13176

>So I see no reason for property to keep existing when said labour stops

The time infused did not evaporate. If I spend 40 years perfecting a giant marble statue, it would not stand to reason it is no longer mine the instant I stopped using it, or in the intervals of time where I was perfecting it.

>If I carve my initials into a tree, does it become mine forever?

>DURR IF I SHIT IN THE SAHARA DESERT DO I OWN IT

No, you have to actually infuse some relevant quantity of labor to improve value, piling bottles on land doesn't increase its value so is irrelevant.

If you enclosed like 300 square feet of trees and made a bunch of carvings requiring dozens of hours of work I would say yes you homesteaded those trees if they were unowned. But walking up to an owned tree and saying "but lol I infused my labor?" don't real.

>hence individuals indeed own themselves since they use and occupy their body all the time, and you don't even need to pull an axiom out of your hat

Actually, I have pretty lengthy arguments about why potential alternatives to self-ownership (no self-ownership, ownership of one by another, partial ownership) are le dumb, but you aren't retarded enough to dispute the simple idea that people own themselves and are responsible for their actions.

>except the owning stops the moment its conditions aren't met anymore.

Right so if you accidentally drop your wallet for 3 seconds you aren't using it anymore so why should your property rights matter after any length of time xddd? Sure, you might have spent hundreds of hours accumulating the value contained in that wallet, but why should that property claim last for any length of time xdd?? Why should we recognize peoples' claims to what they produced through blood, sweat, and tears when it doesn't quite suit my fancy xdd?

>"This stuff is mine for one second" with "This stuff is rightfully mine forever even though the reasons why it was mine in the first place apply no more".

Again, if I go into unclaimed territory, build my own tools from stone, spend 10,000 hours building a house and enclose some land around it, it stands to reason that the labor I infused into that land and house and that value I produced does not evaporate the moment I leave the front door.

>>13443

>No, you have to actually infuse some relevant quantity of labor to improve value, piling bottles on land doesn't increase its value so is irrelevant.

The problem is that value is completely subjective. If you grind a stone into pebble, than someone who wants to crack a coconut would say that your labor decreased the value of the stone, whereas someone who for some reason really likes pebble would say its value increased.

Other than that, everything you said sounds reasonable. What we need is a better theory of homesteading and one on how long ownership lasts. If you spend a thousand hours building a house to live in, then yes, it's unjust for you to suddenly lose your property rights over it as soon as you walk away. If you don't come back for fifty years and then find that your house was taken over by a family who thought it was derelicted and renovated it, keeping it from falling apart completely, then it would be more unjust to take the house from them.

With that in mind, I think you should lose your property over an object when the form you forced it into has ceased to be. So when you build a wooden shack, you lose your property when it withers and falls apart.

As for how to acquire property, what I had in mind is that you do so when you significantly change an object. Only problem is that you can do that by completely destroying it without even collecting the pieces afterwards, and it would be a bit retarded if you could own a forest by setting fire to it. Maybe acquiring power over an object could be a workable criterion. If you set an abandoned house on fire, you definitely do change it, but you also lose all your power over it, being unable to extinguish the fires or to undo its effects.

>>13471

>The problem is that value is completely subjective

If people could not resolve their disputes between themselves, but could agree to settle their disputes non-violently (like they allegedly would in a state system) then they can agree to non-violently choose an impartial arbitrator to help settle the dispute.

>What we need is a better theory of homesteading and one on how long ownership lasts.

There's no real objective way to settle this issue. Why 1 year instead of 1 year and a day? To clarify, libertarians that say you lose right to land for not using it do not preclude the possibility. I think the best way for people to resolve this is just go off a system of regional common law.

I think people wouldn't mind saying "okay, if I do literally nothing with this house for 12 months I lose it" as long as everyone else was held to that standard.

>If you don't come back for fifty years and then find that your house was taken over by a family who thought it was derelicted and renovated it, keeping it from falling apart completely, then it would be more unjust to take the house from them.

Oh, I'd agree, if you abandon something for 10 years there's pretty much no libertarian that's gonna say "lol guys come on somebody might own it we have to leave it alone if they ever come back."

>I think you should lose your property over an object when the form you forced it into has ceased to be.

Sorry, but that's a shitty idea.

>Storm destroys state of property

I would still have a claim to the homestead, if I had had a claim in the first place

>Someone fucks with my shit

It's no longer in the state I made it to be, someone fucked with that state of being

>As for how to acquire property, what I had in mind is that you do so when you significantly change an object.

I mean, for something like let's say a piece of rock on unowned land I'd be perfectly happy to say you owned it if you picked it up, or you owned the apple you picked on unowned land and brought back in. But I couldn't reasonably accept that someone had homesteaded an entire forest because they walked through it and cut some undergrowth on a regular basis.

>you could own a forest by setting fire to it. M

That's what the indians did to the great plains, largely. Not saying they owned it because of that, just saying there could be practical reason to do so.

>>13472

>If people could not resolve their disputes between themselves, but could agree to settle their disputes non-violently (like they allegedly would in a state system) then they can agree to non-violently choose an impartial arbitrator to help settle the dispute.

Arbitrators still need guidelines of some sort to settle disputes.

>I think the best way for people to resolve this is just go off a system of regional common law.

>I think people wouldn't mind saying "okay, if I do literally nothing with this house for 12 months I lose it" as long as everyone else was held to that standard.

I can live with that.

As for the rest of what you said, I can live with it, too. The example with the storm was a pretty good counterargument. Maybe I can fix my idea, if not I'll go with what you said, about regional common law. Not exactly a conflict that needs urgent resolving.

>>13443

But you do realise that the "relevant quantity of labour" needed to make an object yours is completely subjective and in no way can serve as ground for a whole moral and political system? It's only a matter of law and jurisprudence, that we should solve using philosophy, but whence you're unable to derive any philosophy itself. And discussing private property as dictated by tribunals and collective decisions is exactly what the anons following your post did, since it's the only way it can possibly make sense.

Which comes back to what I wrote earlier: private property is an idealisation of personal property. The latter is the objective description of some guy using his hammer right now or currently inhabiting his house, the former the generalisation of this relationship in front of tribunals and the community, designed in the way seen fit by each society and subjective by essence. It might all be for the best that we recognise the existence of private property if it proves to efficiently protect people, but it is in no way anything else than a convenient social contract, derived from but not equal to personal property. Therefore I stand my ground that confusing those two leads to your political and philosophical system being flawed from the very beginning, and failing to properly account for a number of situations where the distinction is crucial (between a house and a factory for example, regardless of their status as a means of production or not). My conclusion being that it simply isn't the moral absolute you're making it to be, but nothing more than a useful judiciary tool. You'll see that accepting this fact will, as a side-effect, also save you from having to discuss trivial issues such as whether or not you own the tree you carve or the forest you burn, all in all giving credibility and consistency to your system.