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Jon Southall

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The landlord examples would be just as applicable to fallow land being let out for farming ventures, or charging a fee to set up a tent and camp overnight or for a week.

 

The landowner still has to eat. The prospective farmer evaluates the price to rent the land versus his expectations of a return a a crop in the market. No profit for the farmer equals no rent for the landowner. Sounds like a hungry proposition to me.

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Are you telling me that those 0.6% are not, in no small part, extremely rich due to the land they have control of?

Today, those people are not rich because of the land they own now. it is the other way around: they own lots of land because they are rich.

 

If they or their ancestors bought the land, the reasoning is obvious.

(They might well have been more rich if they or their ancestors put their wealth into something other than land.)

 

If they've had the land for many generations, going back to aristocracy, then they got their wealth because of the power they wielded. The fact that this was in the form of land reflects the types of wealth of the times. The smartest ones sold large tracts of their estates and put money into the East India company and the Bank of England, and avoided the South Sea bubble. 

 

So, if you have a complaint, it should be about the problem of wealth inherited by families because of their aristocratic roots, rather than about land as such.

 

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Well actually your examples are not as clear as you make out.

It is not clear in either the farmland or camping case whether the land receives any services or if the charge is just for access.

The landowner has to eat, so he will have to do what every independent man has to do. He will have to source the food himself or trade something he has produced in exchange for food others have sourced. Rather than dispose of the wealth others have created, for nothing more than moving out of their way.

Why should the farmer have to dispose of any of his wealth? Without your clarification about services or (tangible) capital provided, I can't see any reason why the farmer should have to pay the land owner to get out of his way.

Edited by Jon Southall
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"Today, those people are not rich because of the land they own now. it is the other way around: they own lots of land because they are rich."

What is your evidence to support such a wild assertion?

"If they or their ancestors bought the land, the reasoning is obvious.

(They might well have been more rich if they or their ancestors put their wealth into something other than land.)"

We can go over this again. And again. And again. No-one ever had the right to own it privately no matter how many times a claim to it has passed hands.

"If they've had the land for many generations, going back to aristocracy, then they got their wealth because of the power they wielded. The fact that this was in the form of land reflects the types of wealth of the times. The smartest ones sold large tracts of their estates and put money into the East India company and the Bank of England, and avoided the South Sea bubble."

No-one ever had the right to own the land privately so this is irrelevant. I have no issue with inheritance, provided that what is passed down is legitimate private property.

"So, if you have a complaint, it should be about the problem of wealth inherited by families because of their aristocratic roots, rather than about land as such.""

I can see no new reason here which prompts me to redirect my complaint.

Edited by Jon Southall
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Well actually your examples are not as clear as you make out.

It is not clear in either the farmland or camping case whether the land receives any services or if the charge is just for access.

The landowner has to eat, so he will have to do what every independent man has to do. He will have to source the food himself or trade something he has produced in exchange for food others have sourced. Rather than dispose of the wealth others have created, for nothing more than moving out of their way.

Why should the farmer have to dispose of any of his wealth? Without your clarification about services or (tangible) capital provided, I can't see any reason why the farmer should have to pay the land owner to get out of his way.

I gather you're a younger city folk.

You go to the grocery store to buy you food. Consider many of the factors that go in to determining that price.

Let's take two farmers. Farmer A owns his farm, free and clear. Farmer B has a 30 year 80/20 mortgage.

Farmer A owns his tractor. Farmer B has a 20 year note with interest on his.

Farmer A owns his plows, planting machinery, harvesters etc. Farmer B is leasing or purchasing his on time.

Both have fixed fuel costs. Both have fixed seed, fertilizer and pesticide costs.

Again, Farmer A has the benefit of no interest or principle charges. Farmer B has to take these costs into consideration.

 

Farmer A can charge less than Farmer B and still realize a profit.

Farmer B has to find economical ways to keep his costs down to compete with Farmer A.

 

At the end of the year, the price fetched for the harvest needs to be larger than the cost of producing it or a loss will be incurred. Too many losses in a row spells bankruptcy.

 

Farmer C broke both his legs in an accident over the winter. He was unable to reassemble his tractor and other farm equipment he had torn apart in his barn for maintenance. His mortgage payments are still due. He makes an offer to Farmer's A and B to let them use his acreage this year, for a fee. If he sets the fee too high, neither Farmer A nor Farmer B will likely take him up on it.

 

Landed gentry D (retired farmer, but not necessarily) has an equal amount of acreage that that he has rented to Farmer's B and C in the past after it had sat 10 years fallow. Farmer C has a good idea of how much fallow farmland rents for.

Without getting more complex than this, the whim of the landowner does not solely set the price. The market in England for fallow land in this regard is reigned in by other farmers in both England and anywhere else that farming as a productive enterprise is pursued. If the rent does not make a farming venture viable, then it does not get rented to farmers. The aggregate of farming rewards the most efficient, and bankrupts the less efficient. Without getting into welfare politics, nature is such that one acquires food by growing, hunting and gathering, or produces a good or service to trade for that necessity.

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Dream,

I know about the price mechanism.

The latest post is still unclear. When farmer C rents out the farmland, what is he renting out? Is he renting out farmland? If someone rents farmland, then it is not relevant to my argument because farmland (as opposed to uncultivated land) is man-made. If some of the rent he collects is economic rent, this is relevant to my argument. I'm not sure if you are referring to both or just the rent in relation to the farmland.

In the case of D, my evaluation would really depend on whether after 10 years the farmland can still be considered farmland or has returned to an uncultivated state. I'm not a farmer so couldn't say.

In terms of the profitability or what level the market sets the rent at, it is really a side issue.

Edited by Jon Southall
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What a lazy response. I disagree with you and there's no value for me in us discussing it further.

 

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.  

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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.  

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Spiral,

Not a smear tactic but calling it what it was. When you refuse to consider a premise because you have arbitrarily rejected it, is sufficient evidence for me that your case does not rest on reason. It is sufficient evidence that you are choosing not to think. Your response was full of flippant comments with disregard for fundamentals. That is lazy.

Edited by Jon Southall
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Spiral, your previous post is an improvement, thank you. It still misses the mark.

This is not about egalitarianism. My argument is about the fundamentals of private property, and what it means to earn it. It is an exploration of the mechanism by which one can justifiably call something his own. My distinction separates out what man was the cause of and what man wasn't the cause of. A farm is man-made - it is private property. The air in the atmosphere exists naturally and does not belong exclusively to anyone. Someone who discovers a natural phenomenon owns the discovery, but not the natural phenomenon.This is nothing to do with equality but all about distinctions between what we are the cause of and what we aren't.

If we arrive at a faulty mechanism of ownership, we will end up claiming private ownership of things we cannot own privately. Practices which violate people's inalienable rights are concerning to me. I am concerned that our false beliefs about private ownership of land are violating people's inalienable rights. It is this concern that drives me to raise this argument. Eventually there can be collaboration to address the issue.

The argument is that land cannot be categorised as private property because man was not the cause of it. It was miscategorised initially through conquest or through monopolisation wrongly granted to homesteaders. Miscategorised. The injustice comes about from what happens as a result of that miscategorisation - it is not the miscategorisation itself which is unjust.

Rand agreed with the homesteading principle as a way of making the land man-made or at least enhanced by man in order to justify his ownership of it. Private property, according to her philosophy, results from human endeavor so how could she conclude otherwise without contradiction. What does the transformation give us of value that we didn't have before? A farm where there was once uncultivated land. The value created is in the farm. The farm is also the only element that is private property because it was created by man - it belongs to the individual/s responsible. I am applying the same fundamental criteria, only stringently.

Why would uncultivated land ever have any value whatsoever? I know the answer to this but I ask it to encourage reflection.

Edited by Jon Southall
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Maybe we should just begin with the question: What must one do to obtain land and make it one's own property?  Unless we know what you, Jon, thinks must be done with or to land before it qualifies as someone's property, I and everyone else runs the risk of debating a straw man.  It's possible that your criteria covers every example of land ownership in existence and you are arguing against nothing or perhaps your criteria simply isn't broad enough to include legitimate land ownership in some cases. 

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Spiral,

Not a smear tactic but calling it what it was. When you refuse to consider a premise because you have arbitrarily rejected it, is sufficient evidence for me that your case does not rest on reason. It is sufficient evidence that you are choosing not to think. Your response was full of flippant comments with disregard for fundamentals. That is lazy.

 

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. 

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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. 

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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.  

Edited by Spiral Architect
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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.  

Edited by Spiral Architect
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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.  

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A nicely articulated piece Dan, thank you for enriching this discussion. I obviously disagree with your conclusions in Part 3.

 

Let's explore your thinking a bit. To start with, in an earlier part you quote:

 

"Land, like any property, is simply man’s work given value in physical form for the benefit of his life"

 

Can you explain how land is man's work? I can understand how a gun might be man's work, or a house or farmland. How is a pre-existing location man's work? How is uncultivated land man's work?

 

I believe your part 3 piece, which critiques my separation of private property and common property is based on a faulty conceptual understanding, as demonstrated by your statement I've quoted above.

 

My criteria is the Law of Causality. What man is the cause of qualifies as private property, what he isn't is un-owned.

 

You are stating land is man's work. If it is, meaning man was the cause of it, then under my definition we would agree that the land is his private property. The extent of his claim is limited to what he is the cause of. So for example, your example, if someone farms the land and creates farmland, the farmland which he created is therefore his private property. The extent of his claim is limited to what constitutes "farmland".

 

However you are implying that his claim extends beyond what he has created, to the location value, which through economic rent he can collect and keep. This takes us back to my questions:

 

Can you explain how land is man's work? I can understand how a gun might be man's work, or a house or farmland. How is a pre-existing location man's work? How is uncultivated land man's work?

 

I believe this is a fundamental issue. I would like to discuss some of your imagined consequences of the implementation of a land value tax. 

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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. 

 

.  

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We need to explore this a bit more as we both suspect each other of making a conceptual error. Let's see if we can reach a shared understanding.

 

Let me focus on your lump of iron example.

 

A lump of iron has to be taken into someone's possession - it has to be gathered up in order to be traded. It's not unlike picking an apple off of a tree in the wilderness. The apple (or the lump of iron) is the natural wage for the effort of gathering it.

 

To illustrate why this matters, consider a strange scenario where Mr Smith and Mr Jones meet and start to discuss trading a lump of iron. However neither of them has collected the lump of iron (assume its just sitting on the floor and there is no ownership history). Who in this exchange would be the rightful buyer and who would be the rightful seller? It hasn't been established, there is some missing action before it can be. A causal action which causes one to be the seller and the other the buyer. The act of gathering it establishes who the seller is, as by gathering it, the ore becomes their natural wages.

 

Land is fundamentally not something that can be gathered up. Of course you can try to dig it up, but what you will get is the dirt, so-to-speak. The dirt would be your natural wage and therefore your private property, but this does not extend to cover the remaining land.

 

Do you understand this point? It's as I said before about how one justly comes to call something his own. I think the question I put to you before needs more attention accordingly. I feel we are otherwise very close in our views.

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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.  

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Jon, the law of causality is generally considered a metaphysical principle. The reference in Galt's speech, as you have used it, does not hold much water when you consider it against The Property Status Of Airwaves in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

A notable example of the proper method of establishing private ownership from scratch, in a previously ownerless area, is the Homestead Act of 1862, by which the government opened the western frontier for settlement and turned "public land" over to private owners. The government offered a 160-acre farm to any adult citizen who would settle on it and cultivate it for five years, after which it would become his property.  Although that land was originally regarded, in law, as "public property," the method of its allocation, in/act, followed the proper principle (in /act, but not in explicit ideological intention). The citizens did not have to pay the government as if it were an owner; ownership began with them, and they earned it by the method which is the source and root of the concept of "property": by working on unused material resources, by turning a wilderness into a civilized settlement. Thus, the government, in this case, was acting not as the owner but as the custodian of ownerless resources who defines objectively impartial rules by which potential owners may acquire them.

 

By this method, an individual could have headed out west and at age 20, work 160 acres, for 5 years, at age 25, work another 160 acres for 5 years, etc. These 160 acre tracts would have met the condition of what Miss Rand considered the proper method of establishing private ownership from scratch.

 

Applying the law of causality to man one can derive that man is an entity that can cause productive actions. Reasoning is another action that can be caused by the entity, man. The law of causality being the source of property rights is a recognition of man as an entity, and has to flow from the identification of man's nature as a rational animal, with further identifications of what is right along each step of the way.

 

Miss Rand wrote Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal after Atlas Shrugged. In "What Is Capitalism" she phrases the issue of property rights somewhat differently:

I shall remind you that "rights" are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context, that they are derived from man's nature as a rational being and represent a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival. I shall remind you also that the right to life is the source of all rights, including the right to property.


In regard to political economy, this last requires special emphasis: man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.

 

You would need to go back to the beginning of this article to discover that prior to America, and the implementation of individual rights, all property belonged to the king, held by the king's permission, and could be revoked at the king's pleasure at any time.

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