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walling people into their own property

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Puzzle Peddler

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au contraire, I'm actually an attorney in real life (whether if you believe me is up to you), I object to what they said exactly because I do know the contents of what they have pointed to.

Two types of attorneys come to mind. Those who adhere to and those who shun the principle of justice.

Edited by dream_weaver
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or maybe it means the other guy should call in a helicopter, because he doesn't have the right to pass through my property.

No, it is the other thing. Property predates helicopters, and you have no right to impose that expense.

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Intent is not a factor in civil law cases. Mens rea applies to criminal law. Controlling your animals is a separate matter, and it can be that you are required to perform both a provision of access and control of your livestock.

Edited by Grames
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Intent is not a factor in civil law cases. Mens rea applies to criminal law. Controlling your animals is a separate matter, and it can be that you are required to perform both a provision of access and control of your livestock.

It is not, I only raised it because you said "I had no right" to do it, I was addressing the possibility that you meant I was intentionally claiming some kind of right to impose an expense.

Look, the problem is this: my property right vs your right to mobility.

I don't think it will be disagreeable that people shouldn't be allowed to invade another person's home in the name of right to mobility, but the question is: what if you run into this kind of extreme situation? does the scale tip over? intuition would suggest it does, so even if I do own all the land around you, you should still be allowed to leave.

so what does this mean? it means you have to balance property rights and the right to mobility. But that means determining whether the correct balance, which seems only doable on case by case basis, which is not a very principled approach.

So on a practical level the problem can be fixed, but in my view it just can't be done using a 'clean' principle based approach.

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What justifies the existence of the concept 'easement' is the problem it solves.

By that reasoning, any solution to the problem justifies itself. For example, another solution to the problem would be for the government to confiscate a thin strip of property from the owner of the surrounding land and give it to the owner of the surrounded land. Yet another solution would be for one party to kill the other party and seize his land. Grames' "justification" would apply to both: "What justifies the concepts of confiscation or the killing of one of the parties involved is the problem it solves." And both solutions would be as lacking in Objectivist philosophical justification as the solution of the owner of the surrounding property being forced to grant an easement to the owner of the surrounded property.

In effect, Grames has offered nothing but a pragmatic solution in which the ends justify the means, but he has not offered an Objectivist philosophical justification. Basically: One party needs another's property to access his own, and he has the power of the initiatory force of government behind him, therefore his need and willingness to initiate force takes precedence over the other owner's property rights.

I think a more rational approach to the issue would be to ask what type of punishment or restitution for trespassing is justified according to Objectivism. If I cross your property without your permission, and you take me to court for doing so, what is a just punishment? Probably a fine? If so, then the cost of my accessing my surrounded property is the amount of the fine.

J

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It is up to you to read the sources provided by mdegges and Grames. Your questions have been addressed, and requires the next step of reading.

I disagree. His questions have not been answered. He has been asking for philosophical justification, but Grames has been offering a mere current legal justification without addressing how that mere legal justification could possibly be consistent with Objectivist philosophy and its notion of property rights.

J

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So in essence, you are saying that an individual who has the financial wherewithal acquires the right to imprison or establish "toll-roads" (note, also via governmental force) on other person(s) within their acquired domains. In short, property rights trump individual rights, neverminding that individual rights is that to which property rights is derived from under a capitalistic system.

Edited by dream_weaver
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I disagree. His questions have not been answered. He has been asking for philosophical justification, but Grames has been offering a mere current legal justification without addressing how that mere legal justification could possibly be consistent with Objectivist philosophy and its notion of property rights.

J

True on the Grames end, but in fairness, Eiuol pointed to the links wherein philosophical justification has been provided. Surely such a learned scholar as our guest can appreciate the need to make oneself familiar with the most basic literature on the topic, especially since the encirclement phenomenon has been addressed several times before on these forums, much less in the most basic of libertarian literature.
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It is not, I only raised it because you said "I had no right" to do it, I was addressing the possibility that you meant I was intentionally claiming some kind of right to impose an expense.

Look, the problem is this: my property right vs your right to mobility.

I don't think it will be disagreeable that people shouldn't be allowed to invade another person's home in the name of right to mobility, but the question is: what if you run into this kind of extreme situation? does the scale tip over? intuition would suggest it does, so even if I do own all the land around you, you should still be allowed to leave.

so what does this mean? it means you have to balance property rights and the right to mobility. But that means determining whether the correct balance, which seems only doable on case by case basis, which is not a very principled approach.

So on a practical level the problem can be fixed, but in my view it just can't be done using a 'clean' principle based approach.

Justice can only ever be meted out on a case by case basis, AND it requires the use of principles. Do you have in mind some kind of alternate legal system does away with case-by-case fact finding and judges?

I wonder by a 'clean' principle based approach you mean something absolutist like "one can always do whatever one wants with one's property without any restrictions whatsoever". Sure that is clean and easy, but the objection to that is it ignores the real existence of other people and their property rights.

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By that reasoning, any solution to the problem justifies itself.

Our learned legal interlocutor is firing a series of one liners, so I confine my answers to one liners assuming a context for the question. By all means spend all the time you want perfecting answers to his questions, but I was and am hesitant to commit time and effort to a possible troll who on another thread is seriously entertaining the notion of abandoning his (I hope hypothetical) small children because they are too expensive to raise to adulthood. If you can help out do so.

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While entertaining thought problems, my basic issue is that people take these artificial constructed thought exercises to seriously and end up trying to make a point about the subject being invalid at worse or some form of “non-absolute” that requires compromise with something. It is as if a state of extreme circumstances and emergency states are to be planned in advance since practical living cannot afford us the chance to deal with these rare and unique oddities rationally, if they even happen, but the same minds can evidently central plan in advance every contingency.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be curious to see how it works but it is in the same scope of how I would deal with having to land a commercial airplane if the pilots got food poisoning. It’s a fun though exercise but don’t expect me to treat it more than that since the odds of it happening approaches zero.

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Well, I regret to announce that moderators have indeed put me on the posting queue. As such the number of posts I will be making (for better or worse) will be dramatically reduced (I'm not fond of delay).

I will try to use this opportunity to clean up a few final issues:

1) In terms of a 'clean' principle approach, I was actually thinking of something like this:

If you force people to bite the bullet and accept an otherwise seemingly extreme legal position, sometimes people can actually come up with their own solutions to mitigate the problem.

For example, people might start contracting with their neighbours to require mutual consent before real estate sales so as to prevent encirclement. In this way we might be able to end up with a simplified/consistent set of principles on paper,
and
we'll be able to avoid absurd scenarios on the ground (or something like that, might work or might not work for this situation, I'm just speculating).

2) While it would have been nice to have kept up with libertarian literature on the subject, one has to admit that this kind of stuff is not prevalent in our current academic environment, so there are exposure difficulties. But I will try to look into it more if I have time.

3) of course I'm not abandoning my own kid, are you insane?

4) yes I admit my posting style can be peculiar, but my hope has always been that people would find it to be more amusing than offensive.

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This issue is not even close to being resolved by a link to Wiki.

Typically an easement is across a property to a Public Way. Either to provide access (ie a road or drive) or to route underground or overhead utilites. However, in a pure Objectivist society, there would be no such thing as a "Public Way" to route to -- because the State would not own any property. By definition, all properties in an Objectivist society would be "landlocked".

Also, under Objectivism, no one could be compelled to grant an easement across their property -- that would be a use of force by the State. Even in today's society, a property owner can refuse to establish a private easement.

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This issue is not even close to being resolved by a link to Wiki.

Typically an easement is across a property to a Public Way. Either to provide access (ie a road or drive) or to route underground or overhead utilites. However, in a pure Objectivist society, there would be no such thing as a "Public Way" to route to -- because the State would not own any property. By definition, all properties in an Objectivist society would be "landlocked".

Also, under Objectivism, no one could be compelled to grant an easement across their property -- that would be a use of force by the State. Even in today's society, a property owner can refuse to establish a private easement.

Everything you wrote here is false in every last detail.

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Grames, I typically enjoy your insite on various topics and have learned a great deal from you -- so I'm a bit perplexed by your response to this topic.

FYI, I work daily with developers from both the architectural and general contractor angle. I have two projects on my desk that have complex issues regarding property lines and easements, and have worked on numerous projects which require establishing or adjusting property lines, ROW dedications, access agreements, shared parking agreements, easements, etc. I've hired surveyors to establish easements and have taken the documents to the County to have them recorded. I've reviewed numerous title reports.

Your blanket statement that "everything you wrote here is false in every last details" is not only wrong, but is beneath you.

With that, I'll log off from this topic.

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FYI, I work daily with developers from both the architectural and general contractor angle. I have two projects on my desk that have complex issues regarding property lines and easements, and have worked on numerous projects which require establishing or adjusting property lines, ROW dedications, access agreements, shared parking agreements, easements, etc. I've hired surveyors to establish easements and have taken the documents to the County to have them recorded. I've reviewed numerous title reports.

In a laissez faire capitalist free society you would still have all of that, with the sole exceptions of the problems caused by eminent domain and zoning.

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So in essence, you are saying that an individual who has the financial wherewithal acquires the right to imprison or establish "toll-roads" (note, also via governmental force) on other person(s) within their acquired domains.

How have you possibly come to the conclusion that private toll roads must be established via government force?

In short, property rights trump individual rights, neverminding that individual rights is that to which property rights is derived from under a capitalistic system.

No, property rights don't trump individual rights. Property right derive from individual rights. I think the problem is that you haven't established that there is a conflict of rights in this scenario, but rather only accepted the unsupported assumption or assertion that there is such a conflict -- that one has the "right" to access his property via someone else's without permission.

J

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True on the Grames end, but in fairness, Eiuol pointed to the links wherein philosophical justification has been provided.

Is there some reason that the alleged philosophical justification can't be presented directly or summarized here? This is, after all, a conversation, isn't it, and not a lecture in which one side assigns the other reading assignments? I'm not interested in hunting through entire previous threads or lengthy essays or other documents in which someone else thinks that philosophical justification has been established.

Surely such a learned scholar as our guest can appreciate the need to make oneself familiar with the most basic literature on the topic, especially since the encirclement phenomenon has been addressed several times before on these forums, much less in the most basic of libertarian literature.

And surely our learned scholar's opponents in this discussion have already spent significantly more time and effort and words and sentences blustering than would have been required to offer a summary of philosophical justification for their position.

J

Edited by Jonathan13
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Our learned legal interlocutor is firing a series of one liners, so I confine my answers to one liners assuming a context for the question. By all means spend all the time you want perfecting answers to his questions, but I was and am hesitant to commit time and effort to a possible troll who on another thread is seriously entertaining the notion of abandoning his (I hope hypothetical) small children because they are too expensive to raise to adulthood. If you can help out do so.

You appear to the one who is trolling and firing a series of one-liners. I currently don't have the time or interest to review the other thread on abandoning children that you mentioned, but perhaps you're allowing your emotional reaction to it to taint your participation on this thread?

J

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How have you possibly come to the conclusion that private toll roads must be established via government force?

No, property rights don't trump individual rights. Property right derive from individual rights. I think the problem is that you haven't established that there is a conflict of rights in this scenario, but rather only accepted the unsupported assumption or assertion that there is such a conflict -- that one has the "right" to access his property via someone else's without permission.

J

The 'conflict of rights' was established by the OP. Edited by dream_weaver
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False. A conflict was established, but it has not been shown to be a conflict of rights.

J

That probably explains why you're bandying about terms like 'punshment', 'trespassing', 'restitution', 'private property', 'taking to court', and 'fines'. Edited by dream_weaver
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