Spiral Architect

And welcome to the board!

I know your pain as I've been round this to. I have a friend who is a socialist and it's at the point we simply don't talk politics or philosophy or we wouldn't be friends. This is the classic collectivist argument in that you do have a choice in your taxes because you vote. Or basically mob rules. We are not individuals part of the group therefore we exercise choice by group. Ultimately it is an assault on free will since they have to deny it in order to ignore the fact they are imposing their choice on you and forcing you to obey their edicts. Group think normally allows them to get around this. In my experience you are done as either they don't have a leg to stand upon or they deny free will which disqualifies them from conversation at that point (since volition is required for cognition). Since I live in Michigan and until recently we had a ban on gay marriage I would just say that "Sam [a gay friend] chose to not get married then"? Of course that is different when it's your pet talking point. Put some times a concrete example sets up the abstract argument for those who are not use to such level of debate. As for Marxists - Don't bother. If they really want to support a monstrosity that recorded 140 million dead "workers" enforcing the "worker's paradise" through social policies so everyone can own nothing and everything at the same time, in one century... Well they are in Walt Disney Land and not worth the time. They have already insulated themselves to reality.

I have a second issue that is confusing me: Are you claiming that all property ownership is bad or only land that is owned but not used for some productive effort?

I hate to say this but it confuses things for me greatly. In answer to your point 3 with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek replay: Who cares? If someone is being an ass I can simply walk away and do business with someone else. I do it every day. Governments monopolize. People cannot unless they are criminals which is a separate topic. I see reason to separate property into sub categories and have government control of them because a few people can man up and walk away. ... In retrospect that last line explains a lot of Government intervention in economics today.

That was what I was trying to think of - The Homestead Act. A Perfect example of a rare case where property is public and turned into private.

Principles are derived from facts and causal relationships, as you have said, not contextual circumstances that happen at random. As an aside, that is why we do not have to be honest to a criminal who threatens us - The context of a unique situation requires us to apply the principle to that situation. You wouldn't build the concept of honest trying to take into account every odd circumstance you think of nor do you build on the principle of productivity and property by including unique events. You build it based on man living a normal life, not one of crisis management. You apply the principles and manage the situation back to a state of normal. Politically the odd exceptions are called implementation details at best or civil suits at worse. That is why you have specialists in areas. I'm not a legal expert but my best guess would be the lump of iron would be taken to court to divide who has ownership of it. The land, assuming it was just sitting their un-owned somehow in today's age, would be sold by the governing body with jurisdiction, much like the Louisiana Purchase was, from there we are back on track to exchanging value for value.

Man creates wealth in some form and trades for it. Value traded for value. It is no different than the lump of iron. We didn't create it but once we trade for it, it becomes a value no matter how we dispose of it. In a free country, we are free to create or trade values. *** I will also add that at this point we are violating the principle which I laid down in part one. Part three is simply demonstrating the consequence of violating the principle within the context of this argument (and several other arguments I provided). My original problem in this thread was that I saw the issue immediately as an ethical violation of pointing a gun at me and telling me what to do with my life - Because it is - And I reacted accordingly. Once I grasped that you in no way thought that since you agreed with me, but didn't, since you "compartmentalized" the concept I saw the error. If anything the process was illuminating as it clarified a few points to myself too. .

You know, I had actually forgo this thread when writing that. Goes to show the power of integrated thinking! And thank you.

I have conservative and liberal friends, even religious or socialists which are two philosophies I take to task. You can be friends with anyone as long as they are of value to you, and you to them. In this case our mutual interests lie elsewhere.

You'll find good people here to chew on ideas with, so do not be afraid to ask. Welcome!

Property Rights Part 3 – The Error In Question and Unethical Consequences The proposal before us is not to question the efficay of Property Rights but to say they need to be quantified into categories. The proposal is that 1) Property that man develops or uses fits into the discussion above, and 2) Property not used is outside of this definition and leads to the violation of rights of others. The proposal in effect smashes the concept of property into subcategories (which is so similar to other ongoing instances of dis-integration in integrated thinking that it deserves a nod). Land is to be parceled into categories of use much like guns are to be treated as a category different then knives or cars or even the previously mentioned lump of iron. By reference I would assume at this point the lump of iron cannot be owned either until turned into something but this is conjecture on my part. Property it is claimed here has an intrinsic value defined by its nature and independent of man and from there defines man’s rights of access to it. This is the paradigm switch prevalent today where we categorize objects and subjects first, then define political consequences secondarily, and finally, almost as an afterthought, we let man into the equation to see what we will allow him to do. At this point the Government no longer serves man to protect his rights to action, but man serves the Government in what rights he is allowed to act upon. Egalitarianism in the natural result… It may not be the goal but when you are not equal before the law but after the law that is the consequence. Every time. It has to since Government is not dictated by man’s ethics but man’s ethics are now subject to political categorization. But worse, let’s look at the natural consequence of this idea. If land rights was conditional based on if one used the property or not, the logical consequence would be for each person to buy land from the Government then immediately develop it. Overdevelopment and sprawl would develop instantly and malinvestment to maintain land ownership would cause a huge bubble to expand then break in the economy. Man, not wanting to have revoked his investment in the land he does not have title till developed, would have to do this. I shudder to think of the ghost buildings that would exists and the wealth squandered to develop land not to be used for a purpose other than an unfunded mandate to own. Also, since we have established that man doesn’t dictate his political rights over property, but property dictates ownership rights over man, one can project the consequences in politics to come. Each object can be investigated to determine its nature and how it imposes regulation on man. Certainly gun control advocates have a point as this has been their case all along. War on drugs has a new scientific backing. Certainly private transportation is bad on the environment so man as no right to that – He can use public transportation that passes by public land someone once owned but overdeveloped then went public domain when he went broke and could no longer keep up with investment mandates to maintain use ownership requirements. That may sound outlandish, but all you need is a special interest group with a scientific study and a Government given the power to enforce rules on the other groups. That isn’t science fiction but America today. We are just taking it to the next level, much like people in the early 90’s thought Government mandated healthcare died with the ‘94 elections so today we can project how we act now can proceed when new ideas are injected into the current political landscape. And what of Individual Rights? They are no longer determined by the nature of man, but by nature and enforced on man. That is not Individual Rights but any form of totalitarian rule since man is determined by something other than himself. Environmentalists, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Fundamentalists, and even modern Feminists all agree with this proposed argument in abstract form, but simply impose their own fact of nature that restricts man. Instead of land use it is ecology, production, property, society, God, or sex respectively that has a nature that supersedes individual rights and imposes duties on the individual. Summary Politics is a consequence of ethics applied socially. Ethics has to be understood by man’s nature and what is required of his life. Only when we understand what is good for man and his life can we then proceed to politics to define how man can thrive in a social setting. Every instance of political policy is first decreed by man’s Individual Rights which was derived from man’s nature and those first ethical questions. Any attempt to ask first what any object imposes on politics is to put politics first, with man’s nature in the realm of ethics coming in second place. This is a foreseeable consequence of inversing the proper order by making man secondary to his environment or politics. Only a rational system objectively defined by ethical considerations of man qua man leads to a moral system that man can thrive under. Everything else is man qua [insert Object Here] and will result in the devaluation of man.

Property Rights Part 2 – The Political Consequence It is the necessity of man being able to act upon his ideas that necessitates the concept of rights. Rights are a right to action. Ethics is the answer to the questions regarding how a man interacts with nature. When we put two men together the issue becomes how men interact with each other. From here we come to the concept of politics as to apply ethics to how a group of men interacts. Man alone needs ethics, but he does not need politics. A group of men will find the need to apply ethics into defined principles to act is guides for interacting together. It is in man’s rational self-interest to do this otherwise he would be required to exponentially dedicate more of his time from work that benefits his life to work dedicated to protecting his life. This could be protecting himself or settling agreements with others. This gives rise to the science of politics and defining a moral system of governance defined as Capitalism. A full discussion of the Objectivist position on Capitalism is beyond this presentation so I will refer the reader to Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand for the full chain of proof. What is important for this presentation is that man agrees to work together and imbues a government with moral principles that protect his rights, which are rights to action, and only uses its monopoly on force to protect man’s rights and settle disputes. Government protects man’s rights, not dictate them. As discussed under the first part, the ethical reason for man’s ownership of property is that it is a metaphysical requirement of man’s nature to use reason and act upon nature to create his means of survival. The less man is the rational animal the more he becomes just an animal. The physical representation of his mind is when he acts to use nature for his purpose. Property is the consequence. Without property acting as for man’s physical manifestation of his values he regresses like the other animals that survive without the concept of property. Property Rights are enshrined in a moral society precisely because such a society realizes that for man to live qua man they are a requirement. In is not in man’s interest to form a government that restricts his ability live as a man no more than if a bird could think would it form a society that put terms on the use of its wings. Such a thing would be outrageous to the bird as sit is to men who realize that this is the same action as putting a hand between thought and action. Human history is a process of setting man free of other men and to the extent societies have protected man’s ability to dispose of his property and himself, those cultures have grown. To the extent that societies have allowed one man to impose on another and restricted man’s ability to dispose of his property or self, they have slowed, stunted, and regressed. This is a simple historical application of the ethical idea that a man is free by his nature in mind and body, and that a society that embrace the mind-body dichotomy stunts itself. Why a man holds property a value is his judgement. By the definition above a society that tells a man otherwise is not treating him as a man, but an animal and attempting to rule him. Human history is filled with societies where one man’s judgement is nullified in thought if not in action by those who claim their judgement is superior, and the results are nothing but predictable.

Property Rights Part 1 – An Ethical Foundation For the purpose of this discussion it needs to be stated that the following contexts are a given and assumed for the discussion. 1. Metaphysics – Reality is real, man has consciousness that perceives reality, and reality has an identity. 2. Man has free will and uses it to focus his consciousness in reality and identify it 3. Epistemology - Man uses reason, a process of non-contradictory identification to identify facts of reality and integrate them into concepts. Thus large amounts of data become practical and usable on a day to day basis for living and building more advanced knowledge. 4. Knowledge is Objective: Concrete facts are integrated to abstract ideas and abstract ideas are proven in reality. Politics is not the first question as politics is simply a social application of ethics, or ethics applied to how humans deal with each other. Ethics is the first question and political questions are derived from there and much later in the thinking process. When dealing with ethics, the first question is “Why we have ethics?” We have ethics due to the nature of man. Man has free will, so he always faces alternatives and choices. But which choice is right? This is determined by the same epistemological method we form concepts, taking vast amounts of data and integrating them into our known knowledge. Principles are in effect very complex concepts that reduce vast amounts of data into a fact we know to be demonstrated true and can predict the probable outcome of an action. Principles allow us to predict the future of an action. Thus, we do not need to start each day going through the long arduous process to figure out if it is a good idea to have a job. We know as a matter of principle that if we want to eat we need to do something about it. Property is an aspect of man’s need to be productive and do something about the fundamental choice to live. Animals have tools they use to survive, like speed, flight, or superior eye sight. Humans have the faculty of reason and it is this they use to survive. If man does not use his mind he reduces himself to the state of the other animals and actually he will be on a lower level since he will not be able to maintain himself, much in the same way if a bird was suicidal enough to decide to not use its wings. Man uses his mind to change his environment, whether it is the creation of tools or the cultivation of land. To think is man’s unique tool to survive but an idea is just a thought unless given form. Property is the consequence of an idea given form. This is also why Intellectual Property is a right, if not then you have cut a man’s mind off from his actions since both are required to live in reality. A mind without acting is a ghost while a body without thought is a zombie, which explains a lot about the popularity of zombies. Man’s history is a process of developing better ideas and turning those ideas into something useful. He hunts better when he develops weapons. He eats better when he learns to farm the land. He farms the land better when develops tools to farm. He develops more food when he develops away to preserve food or save stock for future use. He specializes when he develops tools to move the stock he saved to other like-minded people. Etc, etc, etc, until one day he buys something in France with a piece of plastic and the value is deducted from his savings half a world away… instantly. Man has to think if he wants to live, then he has to act in order to do something with those ideas. Action is necessary for man to live and it’s his actions that bring these virtues into reality. The more he does this the more he improves his life. The more he improves his life the further he reaches to live by the fullest form of the term and that is thrive and achieve happiness, happiness being the ultimate goal. Happiness is the purpose of ethics, necessary for man as a creature of volitional consciousness, but for the purpose of this discussion is not covered in further detail outside to state if man wants to achieve happiness he needs to do something about it. Property is the consequence of man taking his ideas and acting upon nature to bring those ideas into reality. Property is man’s mind and values given form. What that form is going to be is up to man based on his values and decisions. It has to be his individual values and decisions or ultimately they are not his values and decisions - He is not dictating his life but his life is being dictated to him. Property in this case is the physical expression of values given form so an individual can thrive by his own choice as a man. Property can be any physical form. Early in man’s existence is was tools to help survival. Later it was tools to advance his life. It was land to be developed or animals to be eaten or provide power/transportation. A man who did not own his spear or the land he tilled was not in control of his life. He was a serf and mankind lost a Millennium to this in practice. A curious development in the process was that property also became not a tool for action NOW but a tool for action LATER. Man could store value for the future. A hunter could save his kill for tomorrow and a farmer could save his stock for next season. Early man as hunter-gatherer had to consume his work today as his survival depended upon it, much like most animals. But as man evolved into a human greater than the animals his ability to thrive was goal directed by his ability to think and save work one day to be consumed at a later day, thus saving time and being able to plan and specialize. Savings is unconsumed work saved for the future, once a few fur skins and a good harvest and lauded as a virtue is today seen in investments and profits which is now seen as a vice – Exposing the true ethical violation of those who damn such primal life giving activities. Eventually this store of value would give rise to a need for a more transferable and durable form of exchange, eventually barter property would become money. This does not change the fact man still stored value in property. As civilization advances and free exchange is allowed, stores of value become complex, subjective, and even abstract at times. Man today is just as likely to have savings accounts, gold bars, expensive pictures, land, small fractions of corporations, or even a bit coin in virtual reality. Land is the subject, and once man had to use land as if his life depended upon it, because it did depend on it. The closer we come to a Bronze Age level culture we see the absolute need to farm, gather, or at minimum contain livestock. As man advances however his need to act and consume daily like his Bronze Age brethren falls to the side as he can act in one part of his life and save/enjoy in other parts of his life. Property had to be used; today it can simply hold values until one is willing to use it or trade it away. Such is the benefit of living above the hunter-gatherer stage and not having to use it or lose it. Land, like any property, is simply man’s work given value in physical form for the benefit of his life. Like a lump of iron it may have pre-existed before man but it is man that gives it value, whether he uses it or not. Objects hold no intrinsic value but require a valuer to deem them a value. Only man makes an object valuable, or even useful. For Land, man had to work to earn the values that allow him to trade for it, and in the end as a representation of his values given form through work, it is his to dispose of as he sees fit. How or why is his judgement. It can hold value now or be held as value for later. If not then the ethical connection between mind and body, thought and action is severed and values are determined intrinsically by inhuman means to inhuman ends.

As for the second comment - I got you. I can see your point better. This is more nuanced then I admittedly gave it out of hand . I'll write when I have time to give it a more thorough review. I still think your falling into the egalitarian trap but it's by a side door of not your choosing, and that requires time to dig into this.

So forming concepts and principles so reduce vast data for ease of use is lazy. Got it. I'll consider this a disagreement and closed so save bandwidth since this isn't the point.

It's not in her biography, but her non-fiction work. She was a staunch individualist and denounced egalitarianism in all it's forms. It's good reading.

This argument is going in circles because we are skirting the real issue - The egalitarian premise that we didn't start out on equal footing so it was never free/fair/equal so we cannot have free property rights now. Specializing it into subcategories doesn't evade the premise. This is the classic "We didn't start free/fair/equal so we cannot be free now". I get this a lot on property, income, and even "social justice" when I debate my liberal friends. Except I no longer debate them and just tell them to Google the definition of "Statue of Limitations". Telling me that once upon a time hundreds/thousands of years ago it was un-owned and someone committed a crime and took it, if it was a crime, still matters thousands of years later today is ridiculous. Original Sin is not a valid concept. Telling me that if I took that land and built a farm or whatever makes it into OK property is also ridiculous. I would also be scared of the China styled over-development that would cause as a consequence as people rushed to build. Conditional property is also not a valid concept since man's life requires property to live then conditional property would equate to conditional life. If the property was actually stolen recently (Russia invade Ukraine/EPA takes land to protect some dirty water) then I agree that it is an issue but by definition if that is happening we are not discussing property rights since we are not discussing a free society. We are in the context of a mixed/controlled society. There IS problems there but it is not one of property rights and free trade. It's the controls and special interest groups benefiting at the expense of others. If anything, if you really, really, want it to be fair you should advocate land as property and a free society because it will enter the ownership cycle and will be exchanged for free and voluntary agreement. Then any claims to the ancient past are buried with the rest of history for freedom and thriving now. Each generation will deal with each other in equal terms instead of a never ending cycle of chains to the past.

Thinking and responding in principle because I refuse to accept the wrong premise and argue from that strand point... Is lazy? That is a new smear tactic to me. Fascinating.

What reason did you buy the land for? Was it an arbitrary, instinct driven impulsive purchase? If not, how did you imagine it would serve your rational self-interest? It doesn't matter - I wanted it so I bought it. But you have to buy the land from someone. How did they get it? Don't know and don't care - Unless the owner is committing fraud in giving it to me and we have a court system to deal with that. They paid for it like you did. Who did they pay? At root it was either a homesteader or a conqueror. If it was a conqueror, the chain may now be so long that achieving justice now would be impossible and disruptive, so for practical reasons perhaps you will disregard the fact you are trading property that doesn't rightfully belong to you. Straw Horse - It doesn't matter where he came by it. By definition if it is land in the legal jurisdiction of a Free Country. Conquerors, the EPA, and other means to take land by force are by definition not a free Country and are a different discussion. Moral of the story: If I by land in Michigan I am fairly certain the status of limitations on the French-Indian war have expired If it were a homesteader, what did you pay him for? Was it the cultivated farmland (a type 1 existent), or maybe you wanted the land for its location and potential (type 2). The price may have been a combination of the two factors. What you pay him in respect of what constitutes type 1 I am not interested in. That is a completely legitimate trade between the two of you. What I am interested in is the trade of the type 2 existent - the uncultivated land value the location attracts. My view is that the homesteader ordinarily will have no entitlement in natural justice, to retain what you paid him for the value of the uncultivated land. So basically your argument is somewhere once upon a time centuries ago land was not owned and someone moved on to it, therefore it is not litigate property? To understand why you will have to go to the root of what gives a location its value. The owner, in this case me. Finally your point about irrationality. You're right, I didn't mean voluntary trade is irrational. There is nothing wrong with voluntary trade. However the fact that the trade was legitimate doesn't make the reasons for buying or for selling necessarily sound or legitimate. Your argument seems to be that so long as a decision to buy land meets a decision to sell land, it confers rationality upon all aspects of the transaction. My point is that the validity of the transaction is secondary to the validity of each participant's property rights. The rationality is really irrelevant. If I buy something and if you sell it there is many good or bad reasons you or I might do it. There is a reason the concept "buyers remorse" was invented. If Ben buys a watch from Ian for £50 and sells it to Louise for £100, then the transaction between Ben and Louise is completely valid. However this is irrelevant if it turns out the watch Ben got from Ian was stolen, or that Ian mistakenly thought it was his watch but it wasn't. Ben and Louise's transaction rested on the false premise that Ian owned the watch legitimately when in reality he didn't. It wasn't in their rational self-interest to buy the watch from Ian, that they originally misjudged it to be based on incomplete information and traded voluntarily doesn't change that fact. Reason or rationality has nothing to do with this. If you buy a stolen good there us a legal process to be followed. That many people trade (type2) land all the time similarly doesn't make it a rational or just practice, just because the trade seems voluntary and legitimate to the market participants. Yes - It does by the reason I listed previously. And by the way - it is 100% justified by the market participants. To be justified by a non-market participant is not a free market but a permission-market.

I better take these one at a time to not cause a miscue: Are you saying that land has intrinsic value? No - It takes a valuer - In this case me. I obviously bought it for a reason. If not, what do you think gives land value (not land titles but land specifically)? I do - I bought it because I valued something in it. "Choice to use some one's land = Voluntary exchange" My arguement is that land as a type2 existent can't be private property by just means. I.e. it was not and cannot be earned. I earned the money and I paid for it - Case closed. Handling stolen goods may seem voluntary when both parties are ignorant of that, but it does not give either party a right to that property. If the property was stolen it would naturally be returned to the original owner. This is a common issue with property and as an example why Pawn Shops have a delay period before they can sell something they bought. A free society has a system in place to deal with this already and has for years. Unless your taking the Marxist/Diggers position that all property it theft (which I do not think you are). It is like two people dealing with eachother, reasoning from false premises but reaching an overlapping consensus. They may act voluntarily in an exchange, however what they do decide to do is still irrational. Me saving my money and buying something from someone who voluntarily agrees to sell it to me is irrational? I do not even know what kind of society that would be but it sounds communal without even the barter system. Yikes. I don't think you mean that by the way but it is the picture I get.

Extinction or "over consumption" is largely an issue of the "Tragedy of the Commons" which is a problem of communal ownership, not property rights. The Price mechanism alone solves the problem when it is allowed to flow free. If something becomes scarce (short supply) but is valued highly (in demand) it will naturally go up in price and in a free society you can count on a lot of people rushing in to take advantage of that higher price. Example: When I was a kid my mom would buy chicken wings while my father (who worked concrete construction) was laid off in the winter becasue they were cheap and a bag would go a long way (early 70's). Today they are the most expensive part of the bird. Why? Demand. It is also why there are significantly more chickens then elephants. You want to save Stampy? Harvest him for parts and let the market work.

The value is in the land and what someone chooses to do with it. There is value there by definition or someone wouldn't pay to use it. Probably why the first person voluntary paid for it in the first place. Taxes = Forced Exchange Choice to use some one's land = Voluntary exchange This is very simply. I fail to see how you keep calling this exploitation or force. I ignore other people's property every day with incredibly simple ease.

I would not be a Safety Manager working on a computer in the trucking industry if someone did not invent the automation many times over to remove me from the need of tilling a farm by hand until I dropped at 36. For science and automation I am very thankful. Cursing automation is a luxury of citizens in wealthy countries who benefit from it - Ask a Cambodian how much he enjoys his so called full employment.

But honestly, and this is meant to be constructive, but why would I spend my time reading a whole book arguing against what I pointed out in one small paragraph in my last post. I can reduce it further: If I own land anyone and everyone can easily use their free will to choose to have a voluntary exchange with me, or not. If someone thinks Voluntary Choice = Exploitation then we have a whole different discussion.

I honestly do not understand the connection or the steps you would follow to even come to that conclusion. I own land. I may use it or not. If I charge someone to use it they may choose to do so or not. I do not see how I'm looting someone at any step. I'm not forcing them to do anything, if at all. Feel free to fill in what I'm missing there.