/liberty/ - Liberty

And say for example you have a group which creates and settles contracts for ownership disputes such as the people squatting on unused land. They could have prior made a contract that declared the landowner owns it.

It would make sense for these contract groups to have their own police forces so that they have a group to enforce decisions in a way which is not beholden to the parties in a property dispute.

If we have a group which can act as a legal system and has its own police to back up legal contracts, then we're 70-is percent of the way back to having a government.

>>16214

>But in an ancap system, what would occur to utterly unused land and capital? Take for example, a person owns vast stretches of land. And on a part of this land, a group builds a house and starts farming the land. How would they be evicted without violating the NAP?

By trespassing on the land of someone else, they have already violated his property. Evicting them would be a reaction with force, not the initiation of force, and the former is not prohibited by the NAP.

>If the mans right to own the land is based on a contract, what is guaranteeing that contract without a government?

Ownership already is a right. The contract is guaranteed by the rule of law and the force that upholds this law. It's just that the law isn't statutory law, and no one has a monopoly of force.

>It seems to me that really only a privately owned police force is capable of enforcing ownership of unclaimed land.

If the land is unclaimed, then it does not belong to anybody. Also, look at the theory of homesteading. Merely claiming land gives you no rights over it. Nor does planting signs, or even building a wall. Building a house, growing plants or mining resources would do the trick, but then the land isn't unused.

>>16216

If he hasn't used the land, then what's to stop him from claiming all of the unused land? If people can just claim unclaimed land, then there's quickly going to be no unclaimed land left.

> It's just that the law isn't statutory law, and no one has a monopoly of force.

So in this you would have a state which guarantees these contracts and creates a rule of law? If no one has a monopoly on legal force, then what's to stop a larger and more powerful group from declaring that they're the only legal force? Assuming they're strong enough that no one can push back against them.

>. Merely claiming land gives you no rights over it.

So what you're saying is. Land and capital has to be developed and used at some point to be able to assert ownership of it?

If building a house and mining would be necessary to assert ownership, then a contract isn't enough to assert ownership of unclaimed land. The deed holder can't just get someone to make contracts to "hurp, I own these 80 miles of pure wilderness, everyone has to stay out of it nao!", he would have to assert ownership by somehow using or developing the land.

If this is true, then the squatters who go into an area of pure wilderness, develop and make productive that area; the prior deed holder doesn't have an unshakable claim to the land.

>>16217

>If he hasn't used the land, then what's to stop him from claiming all of the unused land? If people can just claim unclaimed land, then there's quickly going to be no unclaimed land left.

No. From my post:

>Merely claiming land gives you no rights over it.

He needs to have used the land, at some point. If he stops using it, then sooner or later he will lose his property over it.

>So in this you would have a state which guarantees these contracts and creates a rule of law?

No. There are many defining characteristics of states: Territorial sovereignty, monopoly of force, having the last word in settling disputes… merely applying, interpreting or enforcing the law is not the exclusive domain of the state.

>If no one has a monopoly on legal force, then what's to stop a larger and more powerful group from declaring that they're the only legal force? Assuming they're strong enough that no one can push back against them.

What prevents a larger and more powerful group from doing this now? What prevents the USA from taking over the Ivory Coast and declaring martial law? A bunch of things do, actually, but these would apply in a stateless world just the same. The global players would be much, much weaker, have no special legal privileges and they could get away with a lot less.

>If building a house and mining would be necessary to assert ownership, then a contract isn't enough to assert ownership of unclaimed land. The deed holder can't just get someone to make contracts to "hurp, I own these 80 miles of pure wilderness, everyone has to stay out of it nao!", he would have to assert ownership by somehow using or developing the land.

Sure you can make contracts to transfer ownership, but that only works with land that is already owned, for obvious reasons. So at some point, someone needs to have used this land.

>>16218

Well 40ish to 70ish percent of the way towards a state.

What I'm getting at though, is that in a stateless society land and capital has to be used to be owned. Obviously it's nonsensical to say a business loses ownership when the business closes for the night but if a business goes bankrupt and then the lot sits unused for 20 years, it would be difficult to justify kicking out squatters who decide to make use of the building. Would it even then be impossible for vast swathes of unused and unclaimed land to be "owned", thus denying their use to other people.

It seems that what you're describing is use ownership. It's use of capital and land which makes a person own it, the whole contract thing just formalizes that ownership and helps settle property disputes.

>>16221

>What I'm getting at though, is that in a stateless society land and capital has to be used to be owned.

And why? You haven't substantiated this claim so far. An anarchist society depends on people respecting the property of others. The difference between ansocs and ancaps in that regard is that ancaps have a wider understanding of property. And that's it.

>Obviously it's nonsensical to say a business loses ownership when the business closes for the night but if a business goes bankrupt and then the lot sits unused for 20 years, it would be difficult to justify kicking out squatters who decide to make use of the building.

If you want to tie property to use, then what you're suggesting is not nonsensical at all, it's the logical consequence of your opinion: Once you leave your business for the night, it stops being your property, period. If this seems unjust or nonsensical, then that just means tying property to use is an unsustainable principle.

>It seems that what you're describing is use ownership. It's use of capital and land which makes a person own it, the whole contract thing just formalizes that ownership and helps settle property disputes.

Really, just look up the theory of homesteading.

>>16224

> You haven't substantiated this claim so far.

Just getting at your claim that at some point in the process, someone has to use the land to be able to assert ownership of it.

>If this seems unjust or nonsensical, then that just means tying property to use is an unsustainable principle.

I guess a better principle would be "able to assert ownership". So in the case of a bankrupt companies building rotting for 20 years, they'd lack the funds or interest in asserting their ownership if squatters come in. So then we're back at the "thugs and money" criticism where a basic degree of power is required to enforce ownership of large capital and once someone has enough power, they could theoretically "assert ownership" of things they blatantly don't own. I wonder though, would having to pay for those contracts and policing privately actually make it harder to accumulate massive amounts of capital than paying taxes for a government to do it for you?

With a state, the government can enforce truly absentee ownership and "lock up" a piece of property even after the death of a business since abandoned property is owned by either a bank or if unsold long enough, owned by the local government.

If it's now up to the owner of capital to enforce their absentee ownership through private security, litigating a contract, etc. Then once they lack the funds to do so; go completely bankrupt and fail to sell the property, now it would in effect revert to unclaimed land.

As far as homesteading, I understand the idea behind lockean property but without a government, enforcing absentee ownership becomes a constant drain of resources rather than enforcement of absentee ownership being enforced by the government.

I'm figuring that looking into how property works in absence of government will get me an idea of how ownership works. I don't think everyone will be a moral superman who follows libertarian principles in the absence of government so I'm trying to figure this out without assuming people will behave in anything other than their best interests. Ay randish libertarians I've met seem to not understand how much of modern capitalism protections depends on the existence of a state. As well, ancoms I've met seem to make great leaps in assuming free trade or wage labor disappear without a state.

>>16214

You can't own land in AnCapistan unless you show a clear plan to use it in the near future, and are defending it. Similarly, you can't own a factory if you're not using it and don't actively defend it.

This is why most of us believe in Homesteading and Squatter's Rights.

You could claim to "own" that land, but if you aren't posting guards to inform you of trespassers, and don't try to kick people off your property when you find them on your property, then that farm they built in bumfucknowhereistan is officially theirs, not yours.

Property implies both ownership and use of the property, not just ownership.

>Is private property without a government merely whoever can enforce through violence the ownership of capital or is there something else to it?

In simple terms, yes.

In more complex ways of expressing it, partially. As I said above, you must be using the land in order to claim land- otherwise you can only own structures you've built (and even then a judge might decide to transfer ownership if you've abandoned the property for more than a certain amount of time).

The "violence" part is simply social norms/structures at play. AnCaps don't claim that people will always respect private property; we just claim that private property is the best way for a society to function.

>>16232

Well the violence is just force in general. Even without it, forms of coercion would exist.

Without truly absentee ownership, then the hypothetical society avoids a main criticism many lefty types have of capitalism. That absentee ownership is enforced by the state to create artificial resource scarcity so as to drive up capital owner profits. The whole "we have more empty houses than homeless" type thing. Which is sorta the marxist line as to one of the inefficiencies of capitalism. It seems to me that without a state, many of the old marxist criticisms of capitalism don't apply as much.

For example, if the capital owner rather than the state has to bear the brunt of maintaining capital ownership then you avoid the problem of "the costs of maintaining ownership are socialized but the profits of it are privatized". Seems to me that without a state, capitalism would act in a radically different way from how most folks describe capitalism.

So then ownership is based in a materialist manner. In that the core of it isn't some social construct or folks respecting your rights so much as using the capital and ability to limit access. If not using capital for long enough can cause the capital to be reverted to unclaimed, then the whole "private property is theft" claim doesn't work unless someone has a very different definition of private property.

>>16214

>Take for example, a person owns vast stretches of land. And on a part of this land, a group builds a house and starts farming the land.

I don't think people should be able to own vast stretches of land unless they improve the land and mix labor with it.

Just enclosing things isn't enough. Enclosure should only be respected as far as it encloses other properties and is a warning.

Just enclosing vast tracts of unimproved land does not legitimate property make. That property is still unowned, and anyone claiming to own it wouldn't have a claim.

Otherwise, I could just be the first to say "Lol. Now I own the Siberian wilderness and all of Europe's forests" just because I'm the first guy to do so.

>>16249

So, in other words, the claimant to that vast track of land has a bullshit claim, and the group building the house has the actual claim.

>>16250

Also, you have to consider easement rights, which is why you can't just stick fences everywhere without improving what's inside them and actually doing some work.

All property initially derives from work.

If it's abandoned, it's yours. Just don't act surprised if the owner finds you on his property that you mistook as abandoned and shoots you.

And a follow up question. This one on rentier ownership.

Say for example we have a man who has a business. Let's say sock manufacture.

He grows large enough that he creates employees to run more sock making factories. He goes on unclaimed land, hires a bunch of people to make the factory and then hires the best sock makers in the world.

Then he uses the profits from his ownership of two sock factories to make another sock factory.

Lets say that he gets tired of hiring people to assert his ownership, to patrol security and protect his property. So he tells each of his individual factories that they now are in charge of enforcing ownership on behalf of the capitalist. The individual factories in fact, are given full reign to make socks. They'd damn good sock makers with good plant managers. The original capitalist sock maker is now providing no services to his factories and shows up once every four or five months while getting to decide how profits are distributed. His sock factories are good enough that he doesn't have to really manage them or invest in them anymore. Hell, he likely gives them a free cut of profits as investment money that the plant managers get to decide how to use.

At this point they're essentially rentier capitalists. They perform the labor to assert ownership so that some of the profits can be funnelled into a party which is unrelated to them. The plant managers would rent capital but overall act like capital owners.

At this point, what would stop the plant managers from "seizing the means of production" and cutting the original sock dude out of the equation. If the sock factories are in charge of asserting ownership through protecting their factories from theft, then they don't have any real reason to keep funneling profits to the sock capitalist. He serves no purpose to them and is in fact draining their profits. It would be in their rational self interest to simply stop paying parts of their profits to someone because long, long ago he invested capital. In fact, given enough time the sock factory workers would likely view the sock capitalist as a thief.

If it's theft, then what happens if the sock capitalist stops doing any work entirely for his sock factories and lives on it? For 20 years. Or his son owns it after his death. We don't have a government so the sock capitalist is really unable to fully parasite off his factories. He needs to provide some sort of reason for the sock factory workers to not up and steal his shit. Either the sock capitalist is directly enforcing his ownership of the sock factories rather than letting the sock factories enforce it for him or he's using connections and contracts with his wool capitalist friend to provide cheaper costs than the sock factory would get on its own or he owns stores to sell the socks in, etc.

I don't see a way for a classic "parasite slumlord" capitalist to really survive in ancapistan. If a person owns a bunch of slums and tells everyone in it "fuck ya'll, your responsible for your own security, protecting your shit, enforcing my ownership of it and repairing anything that goes wrong; but imma have to ask 400 a month for you" then I don't see that as something that's sustainable long term since there's no state to protect his property rights on his behalf.

>>16262

Of course if I go on abandoned land and a crazy person with a gun comes claiming that he owns this land.

Why would I believe him? He could be one of a myriad amount of people trying to steal the items I created with my own labor.

>>16263

>At this point, what would stop the plant managers from "seizing the means of production" and cutting the original sock dude out of the equation.

If there's a contract in place, the contract since the sock factory owners are still under the original owner.

If it's stock or share based, nothing so long as the ones doing the seizing own the shares/stock.

If the sock factory owner didn't think this far ahead, he's an idiot.

If the sock factory owners used their money to build a new factory though, sock owner 1 can't do jack shit.

>>16263

>I don't see a way for a classic "parasite slumlord" capitalist to really survive in ancapistan.

Your argument has actually made Ancap more appealing to me.

>>16264

> Why would I believe him?

Because he has a gun.

>>16267

The contract would only work if the terms of it can be backed up by force. A contract is only as good as its ability to be enforced. If the sock capitalist has the contract backed up by a third party, then he would have to have paid resources to the contract agency. Then the sock capitalist is enforcing his ownership of the sock factory and therefore still providing some sort of service to them.

What I'm getting down to is that enforcing ownership is done by the owner rather than having socialized costs by the government. So the sock capitalist would always have to spend something to keep his ownership enforcable. It puts a bit of a hamper on runaway capital accumulation.

>>16311

What if I have a gun? Then this whole scenario is self defense from the perspective of the squatter.

>>16323

Gun makes right

>>16371

no, property papers signed by the state do.

>>16381

Because they are backed by the guns of the police.

>>16394

and those count only if people sign up for them voluntarily

>>16408

Yeah they voluntarily join the police

But enforcing the law is not voluntary

>>16442

elaborate.

>>16452

they will hurt you if you break their laws

>>16517

not if the laws are just.

Plus you can leave if you wish, and you vote for the laws.

reminder:we're considering an ideal scenario here

>>16214

>It seems to me that really only a privately owned police force is capable of enforcing ownership of unclaimed land. If the private police force starts stealing on behalf of their employer, then other folks create a private police force and it ends up being the war of whoever can afford a larger police force owning the most

Welcome to how the first wars in recorded human history started 10,000 years ago.

>>16536

what is just for you might be an injustice for others

>>16571

Sauce?

>>16577

Examples, please?

>>16577

>t. Bernie Sanders

like what?

In the real meat sense people only own what they can defend, and that's true in any system, but as far as I see it philosophically if you buy and own a piece of land you should be allowed to let the fields go to weeds and the dirt go fallow and that doesn't mean some faggot can erect his shantytown on it because hurr hurr UNUSED. Fuck off, squatter.

>>16588

>Sauce?

Basic logic + grade school level history.

>>16616

this tbh fam

It's my fucking land, don't spoil the definition of private proerty by including commie bs

>>16214

I know to some this violates the idea of the NAP but Geolibertarianism has the answer with its 'Agrarian Justice'.

This logic is just a summary of Thomas Paine's thoughts on this so it might seem a little crazy.

>assume the position that man can only own his body and that which comes out of it (his labor and its products)

>this means that man cannot 'own' land, he only owns the improvements to it

>therefore in order to claim exclusive use of the land it is only fair to pay a ground rent back to the community based on the potential productivity of the land

>this ground rent is based on the unimproved value of the land (property value minus the value of the improvements to it)

>this small fee discourages people from claiming more land than they can productively use, freeing it up for other people to come along and use it

>the total collected funds would be distributed equally amongst the community

In an AnCap society this could be achieved through a gentleman's agreement similar to how everyone would voluntary adopt the NAP, the collection and distribution of the funds could be done through various private means. Provisions would be in place to provide exceptions to commons under private management and potentially non-profit organizations.

>>16649

>ownership is contingent on use and productivity

Why not?

Ancap says ownership is contingent on the mixing of labor. You can't just say you own things. You should have to do something.

Otherwise, I call dibs on all the property currently owned by existing governments worldwide. Too late. I own that shit now, and if you step on that property I can shoot you.

>common ownership

I agree that this part is wonky. Better to say that you pay for common defense.

After all, in practical terms, if you didn't pay for defense, a band of people could gang together and take your property anyway. You can defend it yourself, but you won't win against a group, so you'd need to pay a defense agency.

A land value tax is basically protection money, but there's nothing you can do about that, because property is entirely contingent on other people's social respect for it.

>>16652

commie in disguise

>>16653

That's not an argument.

>>16652

>Ancap says ownership is contingent on the mixing of labor.

No, nobody says this.

>A land value tax is basically protection money, but there's nothing you can do about that, because property is entirely contingent on other people's social respect for it.

No. The right to property is basically the right of discretionary use and discretionary dispensation. It's not contingent on anything because as a natural/elementary right, it's claim regarded as being axiomatic. You can either accept it or reject it in principle, and it has no prerequisites. A right's efficacy however is contingent on its public recognition but that's not the same.

Now, it's a different thing to expect the respect of property and quite another to be required to pay people to respect it. Your proposal a makes a land owner beholden to a group which must necessarily claim rights over who can or can't exploit a given area of land.

I'm the anon who is critical of most "anarchies". I call them primitive governments because nine times out of ten, that's what the anarchist describes. If I may render "geolibertarianism" another way, the system is basically land rental. The trick is that individuals can never actually own land, they must rent it from the commons. Their payment to the commons takes the form of either the productive use of land or taxation. Its application would creates two serious moral questions:

- what is and isn't a productive use of land (what if I produce but won't/can't sell? do I have discretionary rights over the natural environment or just the capital I develop on the territory? can I relet and charge on another's productive use?)

- what group can claim (i.e. be sovereign over) the returns from land rental?

I will argue that the authority who acts and redistributes on the behalf of the commons is a government so your system is not an anarchy.

It's not communism but I still don't like it. It don't like it because it's impractical and ill-conceived. It has obvious illiberal elements and can easily mutate into a more intrusive socialism. It don't have problems with land ownership and it is. It works and it's just.

>>16616

Squatters rights involve actively and aggressively informing the property owner (if they're around) that you're trying take their land. They have an obligation to respond with force in that scenario.

E.G. they have to be able to afford to protect land they claim as theirs.

>>16663

Semi-Commie or not, no one will respect a claim to property if it's over a large plot of land and being misused. This is one of the reasons people shout "crony capitalism" in the first place.

Property must have the properties of being…

Definable (I can prove what is mine in a court of law via fences/contracts/etc.)

Defendable (What's mine is mine)

Excludable (I control who can use what's mine)

Appropriable (I can choose how to use my property, whether it's building or leasing)

Liable (I am liable if my property/the use of my property causes damage) This is the one Libertarians flax over/forget about far too often.

Under the above definitions, if you aren't defending your property, and you aren't excluding from your property, or you aren't appropriating your property, or god forbid you refuse to claim liability for the damages caused by your property (this is how subterranean, flying, and water rights are born, btw), then it's not your fucking property!

The above property definition was created and accepted by a number of freemarket economists and philosophers- I didn't just pull it out of my ass.

>>16666

>Semi-Commie or not, no one will respect a claim to property if it's over a large plot of land and being misused. This is one of the reasons people shout "crony capitalism" in the first place.

wtf is "misuse"? Their gripe is with disuse. "Misuse" is a subjective accusation. You're one of the people who was defending the right for ancaps to nuke their own land. How consistent are you?

People will shout just about anything even when it's not there. This is an example. Let them call it what they want. A is A.

>I am liable if my property if my actions or property cause damage to another person or their property.

You can damage what you possess hence Ellis Wyatt. It's not a blanket prohibition on damage.

>>16675

I have been known to whisper "hail satan" into people's ears when getting on airplanes.

Actually did it to Brother Nathanael once up at the Denver Airport. We laughed it off.

>>16680

kill yourself irrationalist

>>16692

>if i disagree with you then you're an irrationalist

>>16696

No, you're an irrationalist because you're religious.

>>16214

>what is guaranteeing that contract without a government?

there certainly have to be other people who agree that the land is owned

however there doesnt have to be a government enforcing it

think of it as decentral law enforcement / judical system / everything

basically anyone 'can' enforce the law (NAP)

wich also means the owner has the right to do it

but yes I think it is most sensible to have something like constituation among all land owners detailing these 3 laws – note this is different from having a government or state

1. what is a human

2. humans can own property. also how they can own it and how to claim unclaimed property

3. NAP

so basically if you own the land you can do anything you want (literally). if what you do is supremely excessive the other sovereign might kick out of their union (consitution) in a decentral way i.e. individually recognizing you or not.

>it ends up being the war of whoever can afford a larger police force owning the most

I think whatll happen is, lets say everyone in america has somehow agreed to a consitution (something that did happen). this constituation entails the stuff above.

and one person/group gets out of line and decrees they now own the land

- whos stopping them?

and the answer is basically anyone that wants to

probably organizations will form, people will get insurance for this kind of thing. but this all voluntary

dont fall for propaganda of any form of management = government = state

the big difference is voluntarism

>>16214

>Is private property without a government merely whoever can enforce through violence the ownership of capital or is there something else to it?

In my view, ancap is (as the name suggests actually) just a higher form of anarchy

basically still anarchy, but the people participating ahve also agreed to NAP etc. see my consituttion in the post above

and yes, of course, you can enforce things only if you ahve the means of enforcement

another reason a 'federation' (but extremely light weight, with no state) makes sense is that the world wont onvert at the same time. so theres still going to be roosky / muslim / chinese (-statists) that would take the stuff by force if not defended otherwise.

>If we have a group which can act as a legal system and has its own police to back up legal contracts, then we're 70-is percent of the way back to having a government.

dont fall for the propaganda

voluntary management system =|= government/state

the biggest lie is that we need government to facilitate the institutions that form a higher society (education, community services, law, order, legislation, science)

>>16214

>So how does ownership of unused capital work in the absence of a government?

probably the neighbours will care that you broke the law

like when you report somebody for murder / help another person beeing beaten

heres an interesitng thought

can the government enforce things citizens cant?

does slapping on a badge/flag grant them magic powers?

is it perhaps the case that 'the government' is just a bunch of regular civilians wearing a badge / imaginary special rights?

>>16217

>If this is true, then the squatters who go into an area of pure wilderness, develop and make productive that area; the prior deed holder doesn't have an unshakable claim to the land.

there needs to be a reasonably defined threshold for what constiutes a claim for previously unclaimed land i.e. what does it take acauire a legit title

beyond the reasonable defintion and quabbels are resolved to be resolved by arbiters

note: how can you force somebody to do that?

you dont. arbiters are voluntary. its a way for both parties to voluntarily settle their dispute via a third party both agreed upon.