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Freeloaders of government; being surrounded by private property

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Xall

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Firstly, I would like to apologize if the topic has been discussed before, but the search function yielded no results (or pertinent ones) regarding my question.

I am quite familiar with Objectivism, having read Ms. Rand's fiction works and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (the rest of the non-fiction works are on my to get list); I have also listened to some interviews on the Ayn Rand Lexicon and have followed some topics on this forum as well (the one regarding the morality of taxation, and the one regarding government corruption by individual's donations spring to mind).

If I understood this correctly, in a capitalist society, men would engage one another under free trade, and differences, as well as the initiation of force would be mediated and dealt with by the limited government set in place by individuals for the protection of their freedom. Under such a system, taxation is impossible (since it implies the use of force by the government) and the government exists due to the individual's donations.

I have no problem with that; however, Ayn Rand argued that donations for the functioning of proper government would be obvious to rational people, since the use of one would also appear as obvious to them. Else said, rational individuals, aware of the necessity of proper government, would contribute to it voluntarily (and thus no need for taxation, since the government, acting only by its proper functions, would be sufficient in doing so).

All this follows, and my question arises subsequently: since we cannot rely on all the individuals to act rationally (their, goodwill if you like, hence necessitating a government), how would an individual that refuses to donate benefit from the government's functions? Ayn Rand spoke of a fee on the signing of any contract that would ensure its enforcement at any later date. However, in that case, if the individual refuses the fee, he would also be refusing the contract, so the situation does not apply; rather, speaking of the function of police, would he be protected by the government from another's initiation of force, and thus receiving assistance for free? I'm unclear on this.

And on a side note, just to clear up a confusion, I have another question. What is now provided by the government (say, parks and sidewalks for the purposes of this example) should be undertaken by individuals. However, a confusion arises in my mind: if one or more individuals would make undertake the construction of parks and sidewalks (both for the profit resulted from charging those who would want to enjoy the park and their necessity of walking on the sidewalk, as well as their own use of it), it would be the government's function of enforcing that any one that did not agree to the price who would trespass nonetheless be sanctioned legally (I gather :confused: ); however (assuming the scenario forthwith), if one's own property would be surrounded by parks/sidewalks that are privately owned to the point that he would need to pay to go anywhere off his property, should his refusal to pay be the consequences of irrational acting (and thus suffer from acting so, by not being able to remove himself from his property without infringing on someone else's), or ... not? (here's the confusing part which I find hard to argue)

Thank you for your time.

Edited by brian0918
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if one's own property would be surrounded by parks/sidewalks that are privately owned to the point that he would need to pay to go anywhere off his property, should his refusal to pay be the consequences of irrational acting (and thus suffer from acting so, by not being able to remove himself from his property without infringing on someone else's), or ... not? (here's the confusing part which I find hard to argue)

In principle, there is nothing wrong with that. In a way, if you accept that a person can virtually do anything they want on their property, you'd also accept that you have to pay to leave your property no matter what. After all, in the sort of world you are describing, all property would be private. Really though, I would find it unlikely you'd ever find yourself trapped on all sides unable to get out (the only objection I could imagine you might have).

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Really though, I would find it unlikely you'd ever find yourself trapped on all sides unable to get out (the only objection I could imagine you might have).
And holding a person prisoner thus would be against the law. If I do not pay my bill at a restaurant, there I sit in the middle of private property. Yet, the restaurateur cannot imprison me in his restaurant forever, only until the cops arrive.
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And holding a person prisoner thus would be against the law. If I do not pay my bill at a restaurant, there I sit in the middle of private property. Yet, the restaurateur cannot imprison me in his restaurant forever, only until the cops arrive.

I may understand what you're saying, but I'm still a bit unsure. A person who is trapped on his own property, because someone else's property surrounds him on all sides, is different than the restaurant example, in that he is on his own property. Would it be illegal for the man surrounding him to refuse him service or passage?

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A person who is trapped on his own property, because someone else's property surrounds him on all sides, is different than the restaurant example, in that he is on his own property.
If anything, the person in the restaurant is on more shaky ground, since he does not even own the land he is on.

Would it be illegal for the man surrounding him to refuse him service or passage?
Yes, if it actually means making the person a prisoner, it ought to be, under a proper system of property rights. Many of the easements and rights-of-way that were formulated when commons land was first moved into a property rights system, were put there for good reason, and ought to stay.

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Yes, if it actually means making the person a prisoner, it ought to be, under a proper system of property rights.

You've made the argument for not allowing the surrounding owners to prevent the enclave owner from leaving, but can you make the same argument for not allowing him to return?

Suppose the enclave was not a single owner, but a group of owners; would the surrounding owners rightly be forced to provide a transit route within their property, for the purpose of allowing the enclave dwellers to pass safely?

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Yes, if it actually means making the person a prisoner, it ought to be, under a proper system of property rights. Many of the easements and rights-of-way that were formulated when commons land was first moved into a property rights system, were put there for good reason, and ought to stay.

I understand this and agree, but would it mean that he would be also able to walk on sidewalks made by other individuals free of charge? Say, going to the pharmacy, 3 blocks away from his property, passing through 2 or more privately own roads (sidewalks, streets, name it).

Also, relating to the other issue, from what I've gathered from the topics you have pointed out, in case of war (so to concretize the situation where the government would protect you from abroad initiation of force), those who pay for the war effort, voluntarily of course, treasuring their freedom, would also consequently entail the protection of those that have contributed nothing, which would mean they receive said service (the protection of their rights by another party, which may not necessarily consider them 'of value', as a side effect) free of charge. This, by and large, confuses me, as it violates the principles of free, uncoerced interaction between individuals (confusion insofar as it prevents me from further being able to argue into its details; to put it more simply, I find a contradiction in everything and I don't know how to go about it).

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On the first issue, of “freeloaders of government,” the second thread SN linked to is long, but near the end it strikes at the heart of your question and features good posts from different perspectives. In brief, it appears Ayn Rand was asserting that government should maintain a link between payment received and services rendered in civil matters, and general access to the criminal justice system. If one did not pay for the government, one would not have recourse to the civil court system, one would be free to make contracts for example, but one's contracts go unprotected by government unless insured by payment of government services. Essentially, services follow from support, except in criminal justice.

Other Objectivists such as Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook uphold that irrational noncontributors or freeloaders can just be boycotted or ostracized by the otherwise rational people who recognize the importance of the government's functions.

On the matter of having one's property surrounded by someone else's property, there are several usual responses, to this phenomenon called “encirclement.” First, it is pertinent to point out that under the status quo (statist quo?) that is the exact reason, historically, (and despite the usual reasons provided to the contrary) that government has monopolized roads and highways in the first place: to surround our property with easy access for the government's agents, viz. tax collectors. Technically, we can't go anywhere without paying for it already, whether we want to or not, since these public thoroughfares are funded by taxes.

Which brings us to the second point, that in a totally private property society, the fact still remains that our property will always generally be surrounded by other private property. Perhaps not in the way you are thinking, as in a person literally cannot get off his land to go anywhere, but nonetheless the fact still remains that in this hypothetical private property society, every point in the country is privately owned by one or another individual person in such a way that every owner of a piece of the surface of the United States finds that his property is surrounded by the properties of other persons.

Now as to the meat of your question, let us suppose that someone is literally surrounded in such close quarters by one piece of property, such that it is like a small island. And let us further suppose that those individual(s) that own the property surrounding his are his personal enemies or otherwise particularly mean and spiteful people. Our poor victim is trapped literally under imposed isolation.

As in any conflict, we must ask, how did this situation come about? One conceivable answer would be that the access way was previously public property which was “privatized” into the hands of our villains, who then proceeded with their vendetta against the poor trapped man. An obvious solution then would be that we must make sure to guarantee a stake in ownership and access to adjacent public roads during the transition program, so as not to create any such situation.

Which brings us to the next point, that whenever a property changes hands, we have a “title search” to determine the relevant facts about the property, namely what kind of restrictions or allowance pertain to the use of the land, so therefore we would have an “access search” in regards to road usage to ensure access and egress.

Another thing, is that this cannot happen on any sort of wide scale, as it would be in the financial interest of road owners to attract customers, so usually this kind of objection belongs in the category of those kinds of objections that go much like: “What if private road owners never allowed anyone to use the roads and we all couldn't go anywhere?! Or, what if private road owners allowed destruction derbies on their roads and we all wrecked all the time?! Or, what if private road owners charged a million dollars to leave your house, we all would be stuck!” etc. For these objections we can only point to the fact that on the market such behavior would be nonexistent because prices are not arbitrary and such activities would have so high an opportunity cost as to render it impossible, especially for any profit-maximizing individual.

But let us proceed to your actual hypothetical. Suppose there is no such wild scheme at hand, and these are simply mean people who block a man's exit forth from his property (or a man might refuse to pay the price they set, or what have you) in a single isolated case. (Or perhaps he is one of the freeloaders who refuses to fund government and the people are boycotting him, or some such thing?) In this type of case, it may well be that they are entirely within their rights. Denying someone use of your property is not an initiation of force onto them, not an invasion of their property. Secondly, this does not constitute actual imprisonment because you do not have three dimensional control over the person, there are any number of ways he can get out, just not over the adjacent land. Actual hostile encirclement cannot be any kind of widespread practice any more than torturing animals or espousing disgusting and perverted behavior or being a mean personal in general or what have you because those who engage in it can simply be counter-boycotted or otherwise ignored by other people who judge their actions to be unjust.

Civil law already takes a similar approach:

“Art. 693. Enclosed estate; voluntary act.

If an estate becomes enclosed as a result of a voluntary act or omission of its owner, the neighbors are not bound to furnish a passage to him or his successors.”

If all else fails, the individual can of course take his situation to a court of law and proceed to make his best argument for an easement or of some circumstance whereby the mean people have unjustly delimited his control over his own actual property by some fraudulent or indirectly invasive means. People would certainly be sure to guarantee access in contractual agreement when engaging in any kind of business regarding property relationships, therefore suing for fraud or breach of contract would always be an option in that kind of instance.

To wrap this post up, we must make clear that owning property rights in handcuffs does not grant you the right to go around and place them on someone else's hands at whim or arbitrarily. In short, in most cases, the isolated owner has already homesteaded access and egress to his property during the time that the government owned the public roads or otherwise and hostile encirclement of him would be a violation of his rights. The problem of enclosing others' property is not a new one only recently realized with Ayn Rand's political philosophy, but have been around as long as private property has been around and the law has found ways to deal with it objectively.

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Xall, There is one more thing I'd like to add. It's a "meta point". Do not assume that we need detailed answers in all or even most areas of law before we start changing for the better. For instance, beware of the notion that we cannot advocate the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare and the Welfare state and public schools and government funding of universities and government funding of research until we have all the detailed solutions to every so-called "commons" and 'free-loader" problem.

Edited by softwareNerd
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I didn't assume so; it was more of a thought exercise to clarify some confusions I was having.

Moreover, in my country (Romania) the political imaginarium of "absolute details" for anything worthwhile to be done is dazzling; if any decision does not suit the immediate greedy irrational need of the decision-makers, then nothing would most likely be done...and nothing is being done, while the country slides into anonymity and collapse.

Speaking of implementation, my above statement was inspired by something Jake_Ellison said on the "Spending Cuts" topic, namely that "some formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, transformed from 100% socialist economies into countries with smaller governments than most Western nations". I would only wish it were so :)

Edited by Xall
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Speaking of implementation, my above statement was inspired by something Jake_Ellison said on the "Spending Cuts" topic, namely that "some formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, transformed from 100% socialist economies into countries with smaller governments than most Western nations". I would only wish it were so :)

Government spending in Romania equaled 36.6 % of the GDP in '09. Estonia 35.5%, Lithuania 34.9%, Russia 33.4.

The USA had 37.4% and rising fast, the UK 44%, Gertmany 44.2%, The Netherlands 45.3%, Belgium 48.3%, France 52.3%.

I'd say what I wrote is true (I did say some East-E. countries have smaller govs), but it doesn't contradict your point (that they're still not very Capitalist). Obviously, these figures don't make Eastern Europe more free or business friendly than the US or Germany (there are other factors, discussed in great detail here: http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking.aspx) , but it makes their governments a hell of a lot smaller, and backs up the point I made in the other thread: that reducing the size of government can be done in under a decade.

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I would imagine that transversal and access rights could be part and parcel to property deeds, like mineral rights.

Imagine that only one person owned say Australia, that person was interested in selling land to raise capital. The price they could get would greatly depend on the details to such practical considerations as ability to access the said parcel. The persons desire to maximize his investment would lead the most advantageous arrangement of parcels and access means, be it rivers, rails, roads or heck tunnels or airfields whatever makes sense. The deeds could also come with stipulations on what is required in terms of maintaining the transportation infrastructure on the land or a land owner transportation fee akin to homeowners association fees used to maintain the neighborhood roads. I have had people object saying this is the same as a tax, not even close, I don't have to buy that parcel if I don't like the details, it is entirely a voluntary purchase.

It really would not be a profound problem.

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