walling people into their own property

[Jonathan13]

Yes, we can all agree that property ownership legitimately prohibits trespassing, but only to the extent that trespassing doesn't sanction confinement...

All property ownership is "confinement" in the sense that you'e using the term: I am "confined" to using only my property and that of those who voluntarily consent to allow me to use theirs. I am "confined" from entering others' homes without permission.

...i.e. you have the liberty to deny access to your property so long as your property doesn't deny access to mine.

In this thread's scenario, the walled-in property owner has nothing but access to his property. He is on the property and in full possession of it. He is not being denied "access" to it. He is only being denied access to others' property. It really is an act of mental gymnastics to claim that he is being denied access. Why are you making such a blatantly false claim?

A right to self sustaining action doesn't subsume others right to self sustaining action, except in legitimate defense your life.

Sorry, but I'm not grasping what that sentence means. It appears to me that you might be misusing the word "subsume," or that the sentence is missing a word, or words, that you intended to include. Are you saying that a property owner's right to use his property to sustain his life doesn't include the right to deny other property owners the right to use their property to sustain their lives? If so, then, as I've said repeatedly, the surrounded property owner in our scenario is not being denied his right to use his property to sustain his life. He is on his land and in full possession of it, and he is free to use it to sustain his life.

Your position appears to be that the property owner's life depends not on his productive, self-sustaining use of his property, but on leaving his property and trading with others, and therefore you want to create a "right" of access to others. In effect, you appear to see property as a place where one sleeps and watches television and engages in other non-productive activities, and then leaves his property to engage in productive, life-sustaining activities.

Basically: "But I don't want to or know how to grow a garden, or raise livestock, or mine, or smelt metals, etc. I only know how to work in a cubicle and shop at grocery stores. Since I, personally, don't have the knowledge or competence to directly sustain my life from a plot of land, be it one or one million acres, I am therefore being "confined" and "imprisoned," even on a billion acres, if another landowner is between me and a grocery store and business which will employ me. I need access to the employer and the grocery store in order to survive, and therefore I'm going to claim that I am being denied acces to my property, even though I'm physically on my property and in full possession of it.

Walling in your neighbor isn't legitimate unless he's initiated some action that threatens your life...get it?

Your position is that walling in your neighbor is acceptable if he has threatened your life? Your notion of property rights somehow grants you the right to come up with whatever punishment or act of vigilantism that pops into your head?

What you are failing or purposefully omitting is that any definition of a right to property presumes some kind of buffer zone for egress, either by government, or by tacit consent among neighbors.

False. Any definition of a right to property does not presume a buffer zone for egress. Your personal definition of property rights apparently does, but your definition isn't the only possible definition. Ayn Rand's definition of property rights did not include the notion of free egress. She opposed the idea of public streets and highways. She supported private ownership of them. She was quite passionate in her opposition to the idea of eminent domain. It angered her immensely that the party forcefully seizing the private property didn't have to negotiate a price, but could dictate 'fair market value' to the forced "seller." And, as I've mentioned earlier, eminent domain at least offers some compensation for the seizure of the property, where forced easements do not. All they do is seize one person's property, give it to another to use, and pretend that original owner still owns and controls it, thus skirting the need to compensate him at all. Rand would have seen it as outright theft, with insult added to injury.

The moment I (or any combination of my neighbors) surround a particular property, confining the occupants of their rightfully owned property against their will, and preempting any action on their part to intentionally trespass, I (and my cohorts) have become the aggressor and lose whatever justification I have to legitimate defensive action.

You've asserted that one has the "right" to "access" his property. How wide of a strip of the surrounding owner's property is philosophically and legally sufficient to meet the requirement of "access"? Woud a walled-in 16-inch strip suffice? After all, 16 inches is wide enough to accommodate a human and to allow him passage. Or would you assert that he somehow has a "right" to wider access? When forcing the surrounding landowner to give up a piece of his land for another's usage, who gets to decide which strip of the land will be used? Do you think that the surroundee has some sort of "right" to have control or partial control over the decision?

J

[DonAthos]

While we continue to assess the substance of the issue before us, I think it's important to also examine some of the ancillary issues raised -- and specifically some of the claims which I believe either amount to, or support, what I've come to call the "right to egress" that I contend some have advanced as the solution to the "problem" of being denied access to another person's private property.

Though I'm not much interested in "conversation" with Grames-the-man, for reasons which I hope will be clear to those who have followed this thread, he has made certain claims, here and elsewhere, which I think need to be carefully considered and addressed. For instance, there is this:

Within the limits of one's right to act one can do whatever he wants with his own property, but only within the limits. The limit is where other men's rights begin. Rights and property rights are not context-free absolutes.

This cannot help but be correct. Within the limits of one's right to act, one has the right to act, but only within those limits -- indeed. Rights are not context-free absolutes? Agreed. But what is the context within which they are absolute?

I contend that the context within which rights and property rights are absolute is: human societal existence. I believe that this is what is meant when Ayn Rand said (from Textbook of Americanism, per the Ayn Rand Lexicon, as are all of the following quotes I provide):

When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate—not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.

You cannot say that “man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday,” just as you cannot say that “man has inalienable rights except in an emergency,” or “man’s rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose.”

Either man’s rights are inalienable, or they are not. You cannot say a thing such as “semi-inalienable” and consider yourself either honest or sane. When you begin making conditions, reservations and exceptions, you admit that there is something or someone above man’s rights, who may violate them at his discretion. Who? Why, society—that is, the Collective. For what reason? For the good of the Collective. Who decides when rights should be violated? The Collective. If this is what you believe, move over to the side where you belong and admit that you are a Collectivist.

Please note Rand's language. She does not say that we can expect certain contexts wherein rights apply... and other contexts where they do not. In fact, it seems that she is saying precisely and vehemently that such an approach is wrong, and is the soul of collectivism.

When she proclaims that "you cannot say that...'man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose," she is saying that there exists no context for men on earth where man's rights can legitimately be violated. That there can be no good purpose for it.

And yet I contend that Grames, in citing that "[r]ights and property rights are not context-free absolutes," means precisely the opposite. Indeed, in the "Trapped Man" thread Grames has directed us to, he responds to a portion of what I've quoted of Rand thus:

Ayn Rand derived, defined and justified rights. When the conditions that justify rights are absent they cannot apply. Nothing is above rights, but there are things before rights.

A man's right to act to his own advantage for his own life is the fundamental right. Setting a derivative right such as property rights against the right to life is a contradiction, in fact it is the stolen concept problem.

Please note Grames' clear contention: "When the conditions that justify rights are absent they cannot apply." Compare this to Rand's statement: "When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate—not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever."

Is Rand unclear in her language? Does she seem to allow any room for times and places, in life on Earth, where "the conditions that justify rights are absent" and thus "they cannot apply"? Did Rand mistake herself when she said "not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever"? Did she not know what those words meant -- or at the least, what they appear to mean (i.e. that "not ever" means "not ever")? If Grames response comes directly after this Rand quote, and directed at the post that contained it -- and it does -- can it possibly be that he does not understand that his "interpretation" seems to be completely in conflict with Rand's statement?

As for the Rand quote that Grames had himself provided, it says that all rights (including, presumably, property rights) are "consequences or corollaries" to "a man’s right to his own life." I take these as being inescapable addenda, as for instance geometric corollaries which follow inescapably from previously established theorems. It would never make any sense that such a theorem could ever come into "conflict" with one of its own corollaries. And I believe that Rand accordingly holds that rights may never come into conflict with one another. But Grames seems to hold here that property rights may at times come into conflict with "the right to life," and when this happens, "the right to life," being "fundamental," should somehow win out.

But Rand does not hold property rights and the right to life as two separate considerations (from Man's Rights):

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

To violate the right to property -- the only implementation of the right to life -- is to violate the "fundamental" right to life. There is no such thing as curtailing the right to property in the name of the right to life, and to suggest that we do so runs afoul of precisely what Rand meant when she said that "[individual rights are] that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate—not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever."

But Grames proposes that we restrict property rights in the name of a supposedly more fundamental "right to life" -- it is what Rand was referring to when she described (in "The Property Status of the Airwaves") "the fraudulent alternative of 'human rights' versus 'property rights'.” And on what basis? Need. Here is Grames' resolution of "the trapped man problem":

The correction of this situation is an easement by necessity, issued by a court order. It is exactly this situation which justifies the easement.

The position being expressed here is essentially this: a man needs certain things to survive -- here, travel -- and thus, in accordance with his "right to life," he must be allowed to make use of other men's property, whether they agree to it or not, as dictated by the state.

Now follows a much cited, yet so far as I can tell much abused Rand quote (again from "Man's Rights"):

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

While man does indeed have a "right to life," which is implemented alone through property rights, including the right to food, to water, to travel, to shelter, and so on, he has no guarantee that he will earn food, and no guarantee that he will earn water, though he will certainly die without them. Similarly, there is no guarantee that he will earn the right to travel across his neighbor's land. Only that he will own it if he earns it, which means: by trade.

In "What is Capitalism?", Rand expands on this idea (bolded emphasis added):

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort . . . .

And thus, even if we grant a "right to egress," it would not include the material implementation of that right by other men -- which here means the granting of either temporary passage or a permanent easement across the property of any other man by State fiat. It would only be the freedom to earn such by one's own effort which, again, means voluntary trade and nothing but.

Insofar as the "trapped man" is "trapped" due to surrounding property holders denying permission to use their property, the solution is this: the trapped man must trade with his neighbors to secure passage across their land.

[tadmjones]

Well that kinda just sucks the speciouness out the thread.

A well presented arguement with great quotes. But..I still have to chew the whole egress idea, I think there is an aspect of real estate being a particular species of property.

[softwareNerd]

Please note Rand's language. She does not say that we can expect certain contexts wherein rights apply.

It is not really a context where rights do not apply. You have no right to imprison someone and tell him to trade with you to get out of jail.

The second half of your post addresses so-called negative/positive "rights" (e.g. right to food etc.) and I don;t think anyone here would claim people have such "rights".

Edited November 19, 2012 by softwareNerd

[thenelli01]

It is not really a context where rights do not apply. You have no right to imprison someone and tell him to trade with you to get out of jail.

The second half of your post addresses so-called negative/positive "rights" (e.g. right to food etc.) and I don;t think anyone here would claim people have such "rights".

If you take that position, shouldn't you be for public roads or walk ways to make sure people aren't "imprisoned." What is the difference?

[softwareNerd]

If you take that position, shouldn't you be for public roads or walk ways to make sure people aren't "imprisoned." What is the difference?

Okay, and if some eccentric billionaire buys up property from New York to SFO and says nobody by cross his walkway going North/South, do you think he has the right to do so?

[Jonathan13]

If you take that position, shouldn't you be for public roads or walk ways to make sure people aren't "imprisoned." What is the difference?

Indeed! That is precisely the anti-Objectivist position which is being advocated here! They are asserting that not providing others with free access via public roadways is an act of imprisonment and a violation of rights!!! They are saying that even if person X were own to 98 percent of the land in the U.S., I would be "imprisoning" him if I owned one percent of the land but my land prevented him from traveling to the remaining one percent which was owned by person Y. People here are inventing the "right" to have access to all other people and properties.

J

[DonAthos]

You have no right to imprison someone and tell him to trade with you to get out of jail.

Of course you're right. But we're not talking about a "right to imprison." Your use of that language is a mischaracterization.

Imprisonment is a limitation on someone's right to travel, and thus generally their liberty. But I'm not affirming anyone's right to limit anyone else's right to travel. What I am affirming is the right to refuse access to others to one's own property. This may well leave some person without the means to travel... but there was never any guarantee that everyone would have said means.

Were I "surrounding" you, I could not take away your right to travel, but I could tell you that you may not make use of my property as your means.

Just as I cannot "imprison" you, so too I cannot starve you. Yet, though you need food (in a far surer sense than your "needing" travel to... somewhere), that doesn't mean that if I have food while you have none that I am forced to share my food with you, or sell it to you. Your need is not a claim to my property.

[New Buddha]

Jonathan and I seem to be the only two persons on this post to understand that the issue has nothing to do with "walling" in a person. The issue is, What right does one person have to traverse another individual's property? And even more important, what right does one person have to force another individual to record an easement which would dramatically curtail his further development of said piece of property.

Even our current government supports a greater respect for individual property rights then most who have been trying to answer this question.

[Craig24]

Of course you're right. But we're not talking about a "right to imprison." Your use of that language is a mischaracterization.

Imprisonment is a limitation on someone's right to travel, and thus generally their liberty. But I'm not affirming anyone's right to limit anyone else's right to travel. What I am affirming is the right to refuse access to others to one's own property.

Mischaracterization of what? Does the wall as built imprison the property owner surrounded by that wall or not?

Edited November 20, 2012 by Craig24

[tadmjones]

SPECIES of property

[tadmjones]

Don quoted Rand as to rights

I think in that specific quote Rand was justifying the concept of inalienable rights, the idea 'rights' are inviolatable as such, not defining rights piecemeal or en toto.

And I think that is where the examination needs to re-establish context. All here would agree that righs are inalienable, but in a societal context , how does one define rights as they concern different 'things' .

Edited November 20, 2012 by tadmjones

[DonAthos]

Mischaracterization of what? Does the wall as built imprison the property owner surrounded by that wall or not?

No it does not. My putting up a wall on my property, telling you that you cannot trespass on that which is mine and not yours, is not putting you in prison.

[softwareNerd]

The issue is, What right does one person have to traverse another individual's property?

No, that's not the issue. The issue is: when it comes to law, what concrete property rights should the law recognize.

This issue comes up in so many ways. In an earlier post, I pointed out that a claim to a piece of land does not mean you can claim all the air space from there going upward into space for miles. One has certain concrete rights to what it means to enjoy that property in peace, and in doing so use the law to stop people from doing things on their physical piece of land. When homesteading, one cannot land in Antarctica and claim the whole continent is your property.

It is perfectly legitimate for the concrete property rights to specify parameters about what and how people can make claims to property, as long as those parameters are grounded in the right philosophical principles. I understand that this scares libertarians who think this type of thing is completely subjective and who think that such subjectivity invalidates the whole. So, if copyright lays down a certain number of years for which a copyright is valid, that can be legitimate. If the law lays down certain restrictions on gun ownership, that can be legitimate. I provide those two examples to illustrate Rand's views.

Edited November 20, 2012 by softwareNerd

[DonAthos]

No, that's not the issue. The issue is: when it comes to law, what concrete property rights should the law recognize.

If you believe as I do -- that rights are not sourced in law, but only protected by legal institutions -- then I think that the answer should be: the law should recognize every property right that a man has. To do less than that -- to refrain from recognizing every right down to the last -- is what it means to "take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate" a man's rights.

From Galt's Speech (again, as cited in the Lexicon):

The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity.

But let's explore your position further (at least, so far as I understand it):

Does a man who "owns" property ordinarily have the right to insist that no one trespass against his property? I would hope so. You say that there is an exception, however, if this claim against trespass has the effect of "imprisoning" some third party. At such a point, it is no longer one of the "concrete property rights" that the law should "recognize."

If I own property which is adjacent to yours, though I do not surround you, presumably I would be allowed to insist against trespassing -- perhaps even simultaneously allowing me to build even some physical barrier against your intrusion, like a fence, or wall. If there were ten such neighbors to your land... we would all enjoy the same right... unless or until all ten of us were to simultaneously insist that you not trespass, at which point what had been my right now evaporates. So I may have the "concrete property right" to construct my wall on my own property on Monday... but depending on what your other neighbors do on Tuesday, I may no longer have that same right, to use my own property in that fashion, on Wednesday.

I cannot see this as other than what Rand described as "permission" in "Textbook of Americanism" when she said:

A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone’s permission.

[...]

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.

You are describing my socially authorized use of property -- the "concrete rights" that you believe the law, in certain cases, on Monday but not on Wednesday, ought to "recognize" (as apart from those rights I actually have) -- as being contingent on what my neighbors supposedly "need," and what society permits.

As I see it, the only case that you could possibly make is that, by insisting that you not make use of my property for your own ends, I am somehow initiating force against you and thus violating your rights. But then we need to know: what right do you have that I am violating? The right to egress/travel? Egress to/travel to where? "Anywhere"? Where specifically do you believe you have the "right" to go, such that I'm not within my rights to insist that I -- and my property -- not be made the means to your end? Your position amounts to a claim that somebody (anybody, so long as it is one of the ten surrounding your property) must provide you the means to achieve your ends, and satisfy your "needs"/desire to travel to destinations unknown.

But if we're talking about traveling across that property which is mine by right, and if I have not agreed to your travel without coercion, then you have not earned any passage across my property. If you then have the law intervene, coercing me into giving you that which you have not earned, then you are striking a blow against rights and against freedom generally, which Rand defined thus (in "Conservatism: An Obituary"):

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else.

[Jonathan13]

No it does not. My putting up a wall on my property, telling you that you cannot trespass on that which is mine and not yours, is not putting you in prison.

Exactly. Putting our opponents' argument into the form of a syllogism makes it clear what the mistake is:

The act of initiating force to confine a man is immoral.

Jim has become confined to his own property due to the sales of surrounding properties.

Therefore the immoral act of initiating force has been used against Jim.

It's an example of the logical fallacy known as "Affirming the Consequent." It overlooks or ignores the fact that a man can become confined without others initiating force against him.

J

[New Buddha]

softwareNerd @ 214:

I meant that the specifics of this post are, What right does one have to traverse over another's property? I'm merely pointing out that you neighbor doesn't have to construct a brick-and-mortar wall to "wall you in" .

[dream_weaver]

I'm still missing something here. If -- [a] "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context, and there is only one fundamental right (all the others [including property rights*] are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life, [. . . where the only restriction lie in regard . . .] to his neighbors, [that] his rights impose no obligations on them [and their rights impose to obligations on his'] except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights [or his to abstain from violating their rights'].

["bold italics added]

Property rights are a derivative of individual rights, Easements, written or grandfathered, are a recognition that an individual's right to his own life sanctions the actions necessary to that right, providing that they impose no obligation on his neighbors, nor they on his, to that end.

[New Buddha]

Property rights are a derivative of individual rights, Easements, written or grandfathered, are a recognition that an individual's right to his own life sanctions the actions necessary to that right, providing that they impose no obligation on his neighbors, nor they on his, to that end.

I'm not quite following your argument. Are you saying that easements impose no obligation on a property? and thus by extension, impose no obligation upon a property Owner? And by easements, I don't mean easements that have accrued over time under our current land use laws -- I mean specifically, easements that one might be obligated to provide by an O'ist government, as some appear to be arguing on this post.

[Devil's Advocate]

This argument remains too two dimensional...

Consider the lines that divide property. If you push title to the limit, doesn't ownership of the line itself create a conflict between property owners. Suppose property owner 'A' allows transient passage around his property along his property line, and his neighbor, property owner 'B' considers touching his line trespassing...

Which owner has a valid claim according to his right to property?

[tadmjones]

Why in a Oist society(still not comfortable with that term but..) would or could not there be the principle of species of property?

Edited November 22, 2012 by tadmjones

[dream_weaver]

I'm not quite following your argument. Are you saying that easements impose no obligation on a property? and thus by extension, impose no obligation upon a property Owner? And by easements, I don't mean easements that have accrued over time under our current land use laws -- I mean specifically, easements that one might be obligated to provide by an O'ist government, as some appear to be arguing on this post.

If property rights are a derivative of individual rights, then property rights cannot be used to deprive another of their individual rights. An O'ist government that upholds individual rights should be prohibited from promoting property rights over individual rights. If easements, as currently understood provide for this, then why not?

[New Buddha]

property owner 'B' considers touching his line trespassing...

I believe the answer is that the line is mathematically '0' (non-dimensional?) and cannot be inhabited or owned by anyone. It's infinitely divisible.

[New Buddha]

If property rights are a derivative of individual rights, then property rights cannot be used to deprive another of their individual rights. An O'ist government that upholds individual rights should be prohibited from promoting property rights over individual rights. If easements, as currently understood provide for this, then why not?

I'm reluctant to put words in your mouth, but it appears that you do believe that in an O'ist society, property owner A could show "need" and demand of property owner B that he record an easement on his property?

[Devil's Advocate]

I believe the answer is that the line is mathematically '0' (non-dimensional?) and cannot be inhabited or owned by anyone. It's infinitely divisible.

I think this is the most correct answer...

Either the lile is common to both property owners, or in neither's possession. Unless both owners agree that stepping on the line is trespassing, then property lines appear to provide a legitimate means of avoiding becoming trapped by someone's right to property.