Political Theory

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Minarchist — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:41:31 GMT

I don't see why the rights of restitution of the victim of a theft should be abridged (he be denied the return of his stolen log) for the convenience of third parties (current owners of the apartment). That said, he doesn't have to exercise his rights in that way. I imagine that almost anyone in the situation of the victim would be happy to accept monetary restitution in place of demanding the destruction of the building so that he could have the log itself returned to him. Moreover, if that much time has passed, odds are he can't prove it was his log anyway, otherwise why did he wait so long to demand restitution? So, in practice, I wouldn't anticipate many instances of "destroying the world over one stolen log,"but the victim of the theft would nonetheless have the right to do so. The principle that property has no expiration date has a self-limiting mechanism re practical problems such as you've raised, in that, with the passage of time, it becomes increasingly difficult to prove ownership. As an ethical matter, we only care about what is the case. As a practical, legal matter, however, what's important is what can be proven to be the case.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

FlyingAxe — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:23:07 GMT

Minarchist:

As you say, documents just record ownership, they don't establish it. The aggressor is in the same position as anyone else who finds some property which he believes might be unowned. He could just take it right away, assuming there's no one out there with a claim on it. He could try to do some research so that he can be confident that no one else owns it already. Either way, if someone comes along at a later date, and can prove that it was their land, the aggressor is out of luck. I don't believe that property rights should have an expiration date. Even if it's 100 generations later, if somebody can prove some property is rightfully theirs, it should be recognized as such.

There is an idea called "we don't destroy the world because of one stolen log". I.e., if someone steals a wooden log of yours and sells to me, and I build an apartment building, into basement of which this log is incorporated, and then sell the apartments to a bunch of families, who move in, etc., etc., we don't destroy all of this because of one log that was stolen from you. You need to be returned the value of the log — ideally, by the guy who stole it, but second-best by me or the owners of the apartments. Simply because, as mentioned above, all the (inhabited) world is unfortunately built one way or another using stolen goods of some sort.

So, the rule sounds somewhat normative, but I suppose all rights are normative, aren't they?

Any response re: my government (devil's advocate) argument from anyone?

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Anenome — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:06:03 GMT

As they say, possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Minarchist — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:51:44 GMT

As you say, documents just record ownership, they don't establish it. The aggressor is in the same position as anyone else who finds some property which he believes might be unowned. He could just take it right away, assuming there's no one out there with a claim on it. He could try to do some research so that he can be confident that no one else owns it already. Either way, if someone comes along at a later date, and can prove that it was their land, the aggressor is out of luck. I don't believe that property rights should have an expiration date. Even if it's 100 generations later, if somebody can prove some property is rightfully theirs, it should be recognized as such.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

cab21 — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:49:23 GMT

so how would the agressor determine if the land is unowned or owned? ownership comes from homestead, paper trail is just recording ownership and not creating ownership. so no paper trail needs to be there, so why should there need to be a paper trail to have others rightfully inherit the land who are not the agressor?

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Minarchist — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:12:22 GMT

My point was that the aggressor can legitimately homestead the unowned land of his victim, he becomes the rightful owner of the land. He is liable for the murder, that is all. His homesteading of unowned land is a separate issue. He cannot be considered to be stealing it, precisely because it has no owner.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

FlyingAxe — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:49:54 GMT

Minarchist:

FlyingAxe:
If A aggresses against victim B, killing both B and all his descendants, what is the status of B's property? Presumably, it is ownerless. If C occupies/finds it, he can keep it, right?

But what if A (the aggressor) occupies it? Although it's true that his murder of B was a crime, his appropriate of B's property is not.

A's commission of a tort against B does not strip A of his rights to homestead unowned property: whose property it once was is irrelevant.

As for the larger problem of how to deal with aggressors whose victims and their heirs are dead, and therefore unable to collect restitution, I'm in favor of viewing the right of restitution as property like any other, which therefore becomes unowned and open to homesteading upon the death without heirs of its owner. How would one homestead B's right to restitution? By being the first person to successfully prosecute A for his crime. Thus the self-interest of otherwise disinterested third parties would ensure that B's murderer doesn't away with it.

But what about the aggressor's descendants who inhertied the (originally stolen) property? Should anyone who discovers this fact be free to take the property away from them? (We are still dealing with the situation where the original owners' descendants cannot be identified.)

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

FlyingAxe — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:47:56 GMT

Also, I agree that the government itself does not claim to own the land. The official line is that the public owns the land, and the government is merely the public's representatives.

But we, as libertarians, consider this to be a fallacy. We claim that the government should be treated not as an extension of public, but as an independent organization. Also, we might imagine that the government did claim to own the land, rather than being an extension of the public. In fact, that is the case in the UK, where the Queen de jure claims to own all the land, with the "government" being only her ministers. So, from the Queen's claim's perspective, all English citizens are merely her tenants.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

FlyingAxe — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:26:13 GMT

Anenome:

You can't conflate a government with a corporation.

Go try to sell your shares in ownership in a government.

In our example, the corporation would be holding title. Governments don't hold title to land, they simply declare it theirs, using the law. It's not even pretext at voluntary exchange.

Sorry, I feel like you're splitting hairs. We can imagine a private organization whose charter says that its membership changes every four years, and the members are voted in by the public. Once someone is a member, he can resign, but he can't sell his shares or seat to someone else. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement from libertarian point of view, is there?

Can such an organization own land? We can say that its members own land, or whatever version of land-ownership-by-an-organization you prefer.

Next, this organization "goes rogue". Let's say it seizes land from a nomadic tribe living nearby. It homesteads the land and then rents it out to a bunch of people. The land presumably still belongs to the nomadic tribe, right?

300 years pass. Nobody from the tribe's members' descendants can be identified anymore. Meanwhile, the membership in organization passed from one group of members to another. Question: who owns that piece of land today?

a) the current members of the organization
b) the current renters (descendants of the original renters or some new renters)
c) nobody — whoever wants to, can come and grab it

Note: it's clear that the renters signed a document saying they were renting, not buying, land from the organization.

Also, imagine that the organization really homesteaded the land somehow. I don't see why we are stuck talking about national parks, which may or may not have been homesteaded (btw, park rangers clearly work for the government). What about D.C.? What about public roads in every city vis-a-vis state governments? What about the vast majority of other countries' land that the countries' governments claim to own? "Federal land" is just an American (and few other societies') peculiarity. True, we may not be able to say that Putin owns all of Siberia, but what about the Red Square?

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Minarchist — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:34:07 GMT

FlyingAxe:
If A aggresses against victim B, killing both B and all his descendants, what is the status of B's property? Presumably, it is ownerless. If C occupies/finds it, he can keep it, right?

But what if A (the aggressor) occupies it? Although it's true that his murder of B was a crime, his appropriate of B's property is not.

A's commission of a tort against B does not strip A of his rights to homestead unowned property: whose property it once was is irrelevant.

As for the larger problem of how to deal with aggressors whose victims and their heirs are dead, and therefore unable to collect restitution, I'm in favor of viewing the right of restitution as property like any other, which therefore becomes unowned and open to homesteading upon the death without heirs of its owner. How would one homestead B's right to restitution? By being the first person to successfully prosecute A for his crime. Thus the self-interest of otherwise disinterested third parties would ensure that B's murderer doesn't away with it.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

gotlucky — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:32:24 GMT

So, I still don't see a difference with the state. Why would you expect the federal government to let others homestead the parks? They own the parks, as per our analysis.

They own the parks, but they haven't homesteaded the parks. Declaring thousands of acres of land to be yours is not equivalent to homesteading. Furthermore, the only people who could possibly homestead it are the park rangers and other employees that take care of the land and possibly any other patrons of the park. What the government does is declare, by law, that they own the park, as Anenome pointed out above.

If future members of the corporation X, whose past members have violently seized someone's property, inherit the property, they are also preventing others from homesteading it since the moment they inherited it. Of course they are preventing — it's presumably their property, as we have discussed. Just like if I am wearing a watch given to me by my diseased uncle who had stolen it (with the original owner impossible to find) — I will be preventing others from homesteading the watch, since it's mine. It was ownerless for the moment my uncle died, but then I automatically homesteaded it.

The government acquires the land through aggression, and then proceeds to prevent others from ever homesteading it legitimately. The POTUS and Congress do not homestead Yellowstone National Park. If any was to homestead it, it would be the people who run and take care of it. Almost the entire federal government has nothing to do with it. Yet the federal government is the one that claims ownership of it, not the people who actually use it.

In the case of the watch, should the owner never be found, then you would homestead it. Your family doesn't homestead it. You do.

Aye, the "corporation X" is just a legal construct. So what? That doesn't prevent us from saying that its members inherit the land it had seized in the past eventually, once all the old members die out.

Individual members can homestead the land. The corporation doesn't homestead anything. The members could homestead on behalf of the corporation, but the property in question has to actually be used in order to be homesteaded. It's one thing to be the new first user of a watch, but it's quite another to be the new first user of Yellowstone National Park or the USPS.

But as Anenome said above, the main difference between a corporation and the state is that the state doesn't generally homestead (especially large areas of property). The state just decrees by law that it owns X. A corporation has to actually go out and use it.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Anenome — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:28:46 GMT

You can't conflate a government with a corporation.

Go try to sell your shares in ownership in a government.

In our example, the corporation would be holding title. Governments don't hold title to land, they simply declare it theirs, using the law. It's not even pretext at voluntary exchange.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

FlyingAxe — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:20:36 GMT

So, I still don't see a difference with the state. Why would you expect the federal government to let others homestead the parks? They own the parks, as per our analysis.

If future members of the corporation X, whose past members have violently seized someone's property, inherit the property, they are also preventing others from homesteading it since the moment they inherited it. Of course they are preventing — it's presumably their property, as we have discussed. Just like if I am wearing a watch given to me by my diseased uncle who had stolen it (with the original owner impossible to find) — I will be preventing others from homesteading the watch, since it's mine. It was ownerless for the moment my uncle died, but then I automatically homesteaded it.

Aye, the "corporation X" is just a legal construct. So what? That doesn't prevent us from saying that its members inherit the land it had seized in the past eventually, once all the old members die out.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

Anenome — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:36:50 GMT

The 'state' is an abstract referent meaning those individuals elected and imbued with certain official powers. It cannot homestead anything. At best officials could homestead things, take title, and then confer that title to the state.

Re: Property ownerless as a result of aggression

gotlucky — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 20:00:59 GMT

Your analysis is wrong because the state prevents others from homesteading it. Consider a national park. The state owns that land. You are not allowed to homestead it. But agents of the state never homesteaded it. They took it by force and prevented others from homesteading it. They own it by decree. If there are buildings on that land, it may complicate the analysis, but the principle remains that the state owns land by decree. You are never allowed the chance to homestead it. The state will aggress against you if you attempt to.

Let's look at the post office, since that has not just land but capital through buildings, machines, etc. Who homesteads the post office? Firstly there are the taxpayers that are robbed. but it does operate a business to an extent, so taxpayers aren't the only owners. The people who work there actually use the property that makes up the post office. So the owners would be a mixture of taxpayers and post office workers, not the state in general. The state doesn't homestead it. Only agents of the state can homestead, and as I just pointed out, the people who homestead it are the people who work for it and we can assume that taxpayers ought to be given ownership as the post office's capital is made up of taxpayers' capital.

But the state doesn't allow you to homestead the post office. If the people who run the post office were to say, "Screw you, USA, we work for ourselves now", what would happen? The state would send in the police or the national guard or even the army in order to reclaim its property. The actual homesteaders are prevented from homesteading.