It seems that discussions of unowned land are moot, since there is none.
While areas of land unclaimed by any government as part of their territory exist (Terra nullius), the liberland project demonstrates that de-facto ownership is well established, as the two governments nearby, while not claiming the land as their territory, excluded t…
It seems that discussions of unowned land are moot, since there is none.
While areas of land unclaimed by any government as part of their territory exist (Terra nullius), the liberland project demonstrates that de-facto ownership is well established, as the two governments nearby, while not claiming the land as their territory, excluded them from it either by preventing access or arresting persons who gained access. The arrests seem odd, since they occurred outside of the governments' claimed jurisdiction, but the bottom line seems pretty clear - exclusion implies de facto ownership.
Maybe there is some sort of opportunity to maneuver between de jure and de facto ownership, but it doesn’t seem obvious or very relevant.
So it is more relevant, though perhaps less puzzling, to pursue the idea of how to resolve competing claims. Arbitrators have been doing so for all of history. This doesn’t lend itself so well to the sort of first-principle reflection/revision desired by the Georgists, though I suppose they could try to persuade everyone to switch over to their way of thinking even so.
Perhaps their response would be that all previous land claims have been unjust and illegitimate, and so are subject to confiscation or at least taxation. I am not yet persuaded.
The idea that creation is relevant merits discussion. If I make something from materials owned by someone else, I do not own the product. (Philosophers have contended over this a bit, but only one of the possibilities makes sense - one cannot legitimize a theft by modifying the loot.) So if I own my product but no one owned the materials, it seems that by using unowned things I made them mine. If no one owns them, no one has the right to exclude my use. If there is some way to exclude my use as illegitimate, they are not unowned. So by this logic, the Georgists must claim that everybody always owned everything, and there never was any unowned land. Perhaps they would be satisfied with this. It seems to require a new category of ownership, beyond de jure and de facto. Ab initio? What established that?
The alternative is to say that no one can legitimately own anything. But can we use things legitimately without someone owning them? Legitimacy implies some social norms governing use. But if there are legitimate uses and illegitimate uses, someone must decide which is which. This is the owner, perhaps. If we say it is a principle, and an arbitrator must interpret it, who established the principle? Is that the owner?
Social norms are pretty flexible, people can use a wide variety of norms and rules. Does justice uniquely and transparently determine what ought to be done? Or do people have to use some judgement to decide what is just? And might they learn something that indicates their decision was wrong? The Georgists must assume this is possible, else we should reject their proposal, as it claims prior decisions were mistaken. But why should we think that their proposal is immune to the same flaw?
>So if I own my product but no one owned the materials, it seems that by using unowned things I made them mine. If no one owns them, no one has the right to exclude my use. If there is some way to exclude my use as illegitimate, they are not unowned. So by this logic, the Georgists must claim ...
We need to distinguish between the originally unowned material and the qualities you imparted into that material. You created the qualities, so you own the qualities, and may legitimately exclude others from benefiting from them. But, of course, they are inseparable from the material in which they inhere. What to say? You say that, in that case, since you own the qualities, you have come to own the material as well. Other people say that, since you did not own the material, you do not now own the product (just as if you labored on someone else's material).
But we can also say something in between. After all, I might have no interest in the qualities you have imparted, and might have a much better use for the material—so why can you stop me from taking your material, and re-fashioning it into something more useful? (The conflict between miners and farmers is like this.) Why not say—as 10240 above suggests—that, in order to continue to own your product, you need to have others for excluding them from the material? If you really have improved the material so much, then there will be no problem paying.
The value of the materials is 1, the value of your improved form of your materials is 10. But there are a hundred people who have another use for the materials. If you have to compensate each of them you will have a problem paying.
Yes, I had better not imply that I owe each of the 100 excluded others (let's say) $1. Now, if only one person (A) is excluded from the materials, then I would clearly owe them $1, since—A's complaint—how she would fare were I to exclude others is $1 worse than how she would fare were I not to do so, this being the "value" of the materials.
But what if there were someone else (B) as well, then how much do I owe her? In this case, A's complaint may or may not be true, since that depends on what B would do were I not to take the materials. On the one hand, it might be that B would appropriate the material instead of me, so A still misses out, in which case she fares no differently whether I exclude her or not, so that, if that's what would happen, I owe her nothing. On the other hand, it might be that B would NOT appropriate the material, and leave them for A to use, in which case her complaint would be true, so that if /that's/ what would happen, I owe her $1.
Of course, B may or may not appropriate it instead. Suppose there is a 50% chance. It follows that I owe A 50% x $1 in compensation, and, of course, the same for B, making for a total compensation cost to me of $1. No problem paying that, if my improved form of the materials is $10. [Something like this might work for your objection to compensating for loss of ability to appropriate.]
The question is not whether I have a problem paying or not, but the basis of your claim to be able to exclude my use of unowned things. If you can’t exclude this use, you can't dictate terms for use. You are saying I have no basis to exclude others, but you, or the government, or someone has a basis for excluding me. How is this the case? What principle distinguishes our claims? Or can I just call myself the government and tax myself and spend it however I like?
The practical consequences have been discussed. Sure, the government *can* do lots of things, including things they have no excuse to do. I need an excuse to exclude, they do not. Why?
>the basis of your claim to be able to exclude my use of unowned things
I don't claim that anyone can exclude you from the /use/ of unowned things, just that there are problems if you wish to /appropriate/ them. So, sure, take the stick and make a spear from it. Further, I can't use the stick /as a spear/ without your consent, since /you/ made it a spear. But, without further argument, you still don't own the material. And you can't exclude me from using unowned things, like the material out of which the spear is made, which, frankly, I would find more useful as firewood. Why does your use prevail over my proposed use, if the material really is originally unowned?
So we need the further argument. They may not endorse it, but 10240 expresses well an idea I am inclined to agree with, so I am just going to quote them (with some word changes): "if you turn $10 worth of raw materials into a tool worth $1000, you can keep the extra $990 of value. But it's consistent with this to argue that [you] first buy or rent the $10 worth of raw materials [from everyone else, perhaps in the agent of the government], in order to possess (and, optionally, transform) them, rather than let you take them for free on account of being the firstcomer. And if you've paid $10 for the raw materials, you do fully own whatever you turn them into. Now, some natural resources are so abundant that their market value is 0". . . . including the stick you took, since there are so many others lying around for me to use as firewood instead (IF that is really true, which it isn't, sometimes).
First Try is closer to what I am thinking. But consider: "The surface of the earth was not created by any human being, so nobody starts with a right to exclude any other human from any part of it. It follows that such exclusion is a rights violation". Agree with first inference, not with the second, /if it is unqualified/. Suppose—motivated by Locke's proviso—our only obligation in the state of nature is never to better our own position by worsening that of others (so I agree that we are not just talking about past exclusions). Excluding others from land benefits me and worsens the situation of others, and this is no accident, so, nothing else considered, I benefit myself /by/ worsening others, which is prohibited. Unless I provide compensation so that they are NOT made worse of by the exclusion. So, strictly speaking, all that follows is that exclusion /without sufficient compensation/ is a rights violation. This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you.
I agree that quasi-Lockean principle does not have kind things to say for someone who is blind or crippled. FWIW, libertarian though I am, I still think there is an (enforceable) duty of easy rescue, and I presume they will fall under this additional principle. (Even Locke thought that the destitute required support).
Second Try I think is less plausible. I agree that you have the (temporary) right to the land upon which you are standing (on the basis, as you say, of self-ownership), and ultimately on the same basis a right to the land upon which your wheat is growing (though people can still walk gingerly between the plants, no?). But not this bit: "I build a fence around my wheat field. ... You have a right to be on the land but not a right to damage my fence—mine because my labor produced it". Suppose you build a really good fence, that keeps everyone out. This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. You cannot use your fist (which you own) to violate anyone's rights (and if you try others can do unfriendly things to it), and nor can you use your fence (ditto). You need to provide compensation, but, in that case, it is the compensation that justifies your exclusion, not the labor you put into the fence.
"This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you. "
You have a house which is worth $100,000 to you, $150,000 to me. A bargained sale will end up with a price somewhere between those numbers. Instead, following out your logic, I seize the house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you.
Is that your position?
"This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. "
My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights — bidding against B for the house B wants to buy or courting and marrying the woman B wanted to marry and would have if A didn't exist. My claim is that my fence is in the same category. You are worse off because I have arranged things such that you cannot do something you want to do without violating my rights. It doesn't follow that I owe you compensation.
>I seize [your] house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you. Is that your position?
No, since my argument relates to original acquisition of hitherto un-owned things, not to the house you mention, which I presumably own.
>My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
This is not true, at least as I meant my neo-Lockean Proviso. The crucial difference is that my standing where I am is not /intended/ to prevent you standing there (though it has this side-effect—unless, of course, that /is/ what I intend, in which case you may or may not have the right to physically move me on). By contrast, your building your fence /is/ intended to prevent others from entering "your" land, and is in that sense an /act/ of exclusion.
>There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights
My view is certainly not that it is never permissible to make others worse off, just that, in the state of nature, you cannot make yourself better off by intending to make others worse off. No-one marries with the intention to exclude others, so the fact that others miss out is their bad luck. However—admittedly—plenty people pollute without intending make things worse for others (though the polluters know that this will be the effect), so, according to the Proviso, that /is/ permitted. Another inconvenience of the state of nature, I guess.
"No-one marries with the intention to exclude others"
On the contrary, nearly everyone who marries does.
More relevant, why is intent so important in your view? And does "by intending to make others worse off" mean "the objective is to make others worse off" or "the objective is to make yourself better off but you know that one result is to make others worse off"?
Only the latter applies to my fence and it applies to my marriage as well if I know that there is another suitor who might succeed if I drop out.
I'm drawing on the familiar distinction between benefiting oneself by intentionally targeting someone with a harm (eg, terror bombing), and doing so while merely foreseeing that the same harm will be a side-effect (cf, strategic bombing). So understood, it is easy to see why one may think that the first is wrong, even if one accepts the second, since it involves /targeting/ someone—with all the connotations of that term.
So—au contraire—this is exactly what your fence is like, since (like the terror bomber) there is no benefit of building it if there is no-one else around, and you would strengthen it if it failed to deter people, etc etc. Its objective is to keep people out, and (unlike the strategic bomber) this harm to them is not some coincidental side-effect, that you would be happy not to occur if only it could be managed. And you want to do this to keep them from land that you admit is not yours. This exclusion can be made good only by nullifying the harm through compensation.
Yes—whoops!—marriage /is/ an exclusive relationship, so that complicates things. Same applies, though. What I /meant/ was that, in this case, your attitude to third parties during your pursuit of your beloved is the opposite. Presumably, you would still have pursued her even if he was not interested, and you would not have tried to prevent him from pursuing her, etc etc [OK, I admit it, for some people these things are false, but, I want say, they are behaving badly]. The complication is that you are pursuing an /exclusive/ relationship with her, but this overall pattern occurs in other contexts. When you eat some fruit (say), you engage in a particularly intimate relationship with it that necessarily excludes others, but your intention is strictly to eat the fruit, not exclude others from it (eg, you'd still eat the fruit even if no-one else wanted it, etc etc). So too when you seek an intimate relationship with your beloved. I /think/ this is all consistent.
Suppose some of my courtship tactics are designed to demonstrate my superior suitability as a husband vis a vis my rival. I wouldn't do those particular things if he wasn't also courting her. My objective isn't to make him worse off — that's a side effect of achieving my objective.
Similarly with my fence. My objective isn't to make him worse off, it is to keep him from doing things to the land, such as building a house on it, that would prevent me from planting wheat on it. If I could achieve my objective without making him worse off, perhaps by pointing out a better location for his house, I would do so. Making him worse off is a side effect of my means for achieving my objective.
>I don't claim that anyone can exclude you from the /use/ of unowned things, just that there are problems if you wish to /appropriate/ them. <
This is a distinction without a difference. I can’t use things reliably if it violates social norms for me to exclude others from using them in incompatible ways.
>without further argument, you still don't own the material.<
I gave further argument elsewhere. Use is a claim. It can be used as evidence of ownership. It is a weak claim, but not as weak as non-use.
A consequentialist argument could also be made.
And there are various arguments against the alternatives. E.g., against Georgist, do I owe compensation to everyone or only to those who are actually excluded? I cannot pay compensation to everyone, and who is actually excluded depends on a counterfactual, so can’t be determined. We could fall back to heuristics or approximations, and say these are less unjust than the status quo. But this depends on establishing that Georgian is more just than the status quo, and that a rough approximation would be sufficient to improve things. This has not been shown.
I’m still waiting for the analogous argument from the Georgists.
That switched from land to spears. In most cases, one sort of land use will exclude most others. Did you answer the question about why my excluding others is a problem, but the Georgists' exclusion of me is not?
I take it this relates to your comment above "You are saying I have no basis to exclude others, but you, or the government, or someone has a basis for excluding me. How is this the case?" Well, first, I want to say that the same principle re original appropriation applies to all actors, individuals and governments alike. And, second, my quote from 10240 explains how one might justifiably appropriate something initially unowned. I don't think the switch from land to sticks is a biggie, since one sort of stick use (eg, as a spear) will also exclude most others (eg, as firewood).
“if you turn $10 worth of raw materials into a tool worth $1000, you can keep the extra $990 of value. But it's consistent with this to argue that [you] first buy or rent the $10 worth of raw materials [from everyone else, perhaps in the agent of the government], in order to possess (and, optionally, transform) them, rather than let you take them for free on account of being the firstcomer. And if you've paid $10 for the raw materials, you do fully own whatever you turn them into. Now, some natural resources are so abundant that their market value is 0"
If so, where is the discussion of how one might justifiably appropriate something initially unowned? One cannot rent or buy something that is unowned. If it is to be rented or bought, this involves a transaction between the owner and the renter or buyer. How did the owner acquire it, if it truly was unowned previously?
"One cannot rent or buy something that is unowned"—yes, that is a fair point, for exactly the reason you say, that the resources are initially unowned. And so that bit of the passage is not as well expressed as it should be. It should be: "you first give $10 for the raw materials to others as compensation to them for taking the materials, in order to process ...". You give others the money, not because you are buying the materials from them (since they do not own them), but as compensation for your excluding others from the materials (since, initially, you don't own them either). That should make it clearer.
This is just a use of the concept of ownership without using the word. Swapping the definition for the word doesn’t change anything.
We shouldn't argue about names; we are arguing about exclusion, who can do it justly, and under what circumstances compensation is owed (and to whom) for use without permission. If one must pay compensation to some person for the use of a resource, there should be a reason, not just a command.
Georgist norms, if they are just, should be the conclusion of an argument about justice, not the premises. Is the idea that existing norms are unjust, so everyone must submit to the innovation to serve justice? That is a hard sell. Or does the innovation have some beneficial qualities, and so while we are not obligated to do so, we might be persuaded to switch? Or something else?
That only makes sense if everything was always owned. If I can’t own it, why can “everybody”? When/how did they gain ownership so that their claim is better?
The line of argument I am exploring holds that uncreated property starts out as a commons. Nobody owns it — has the right to exclude others — but everyone has an equal right to use it. When someone appropriates some of it he is violating that right by forcibly keeping other from using the land.
Yes, I understand. Perhaps you found some clever argument that defeats the idea even after stipulating one-sided assumptions. I am challenging the assumptions. I want to explore a broader question. If this seems like an unwelcome digression, I apologize.
Why is it interesting to simply assume a framework, as opposed to comparing rivals? The objection is that ordinary property excludes those who have rights under the commons assumption. Why can’t the opposition simply assume ordinary property rights, and object to Georgist taxation? For the argument to reach common ground, we have to find common premises. One side can’t just beg the question and declare checkmate.
Perhaps the answer is that’s Georgists find their assumptions very intuitive, and do not,feel a need to argue for them. They seem confused by the idea that this might be necessary to persuade someone with different intuitions.
If I make a spear, and you admit I made it, and make no claim to have owned the materials I used, how can you claim it as firewood or spear? If we take this dispute to arbitration, my ownership claim based on use is pretty weak. But a weak claim is better than no claim. Why should the arbitrator rule in favor of your taking the spear for firewood?
There is a difference between sovereignty, and land ownership as defined by each country's domestic laws. There is practically no usable land not administered by any country, but there is plenty of land owned by governments. There is an interesting question what governments should do with it: let people homestead it, sell it for a one-time payment, rent it out, hand it out with the expectation of a land value tax payment (similar to renting it out under a perpetual contract)?
I'd perhaps support taxing away existing private land ownership (based on its value as unimproved, agricultural land) if it had been widely accepted for a long time that Georgism were right, or at least more generally that land ownership is less legitimate than ownership of man-made property. The main reasons I oppose it derive from the fact that, historically, in many places, land ownership has been considered as legitimate as any other property ownership, for centuries if not millennia. If Georgists managed to convince people to de facto expropriate land value, it would reduce people's confidence that people won't make up some excuse to confiscate some other asset classes as well, where such worry would be highly distortionary; at the same time, a Georgist land tax (if assessed on the agricultural value of land) would yield too little revenue to be worth that cost. And even from an angle of fairness, it doesn't feel fair to leave someone who invested his savings in land much worse off than someone who invested in other property, when in our existing societies he had no reason to expect that land was likely to be expropriated.
As for your points about initial ownership: one possible position is that natural resources are initially considered owned by society, as represented by the government. Government can, then, give, sell, or rent it out. Perhaps with an expectation that it must take everyone's interests into account equitably when doing so; so people who get them must properly compensate those who are excluded.
You seem to be asking “what is just?”, rather than “is it owned?”.
If one argues that natural resources are initially considered owned by society, one should explain how they gained ownership. If it is just by decree, why is my decree not as good as yours or anyone else's? It makes sense to say that a group could decide to treat things that way among themselves, but not that this would justify them confiscating or taxing someone who did not agree.
Somehow when I follow the link it boots me out to my browser and asks me to log in again. So I will respond here.
You said it's not one or the other. Then you described something indistinguishable from the other as if demonstrating your point.
For the government to own the land is no different from the latecomer owning it. The government is or represents the latecomer. Why is their claim more valid according to the Georgist?
The government represents both the firstcomer and the latecomers, and distributes the eventual tax revenue to all.
As for why it's more valid: likely many people's intuition is that it's more fair for everyone to benefit from the value of a natural resource equally than for the first user of any given resource to get all the benefit.
That is not what representation means. You are saying the others are justified in forcing the firstcomer to go along with the scheme. What is their justification? Why isn’t the firstcomer similarly justified in making them go along with his?
"It seems that discussions of unowned land are moot, since there is none."
What principle are you using to determine who legitimately owns what? Most governments aren't even claiming they own all land in the territories they operate, I'm not even talking about proving that.
"While areas of land unclaimed by any government as part of their territory exist (Terra nullius), the liberland project demonstrates that de-facto ownership is well established, as the two governments nearby, while not claiming the land as their territory, excluded them from it either by preventing access or arresting persons who gained access."
You're conflating normative with descriptive. Ownership is a normative concept. If I own a bicycle and a thief steals it and now he has control of it and doesn't allow me to use it, I still own it and he doesn't. Observing who controls it isn't enough to determine who owns it. For the latter you have to have a theory of property rights.
I’m using the principle that if you try to use something someone stops you, it is de facto owned. Whether that amounts to legitimacy or how those are related is a separate issue.
I do not think I am conflating normative and descriptive. I suppose we could conjecture that it is possible to establish de jure ownership of some kind without first having de facto ownership, but it seems like a problem. E.g. you and I could agree that I own the northern half of liberland, and you own the southern half, and the pat could settle disputes between us. It seems unlikely to have any significant other effect.
Liberland seems to still exist as a project, so maybe Croatia and Serbia have decided to stop harassing them. But that doesn’t establish the existence of unowned land, either de facto or de jure.
There's no difference between possession / control and ownership in your position, which is conflating normative (ownership) with descriptive (possession / control).
My basic point is that there may be bits of land where technically no person or organization is listed as the de jure owner, but if you go there and start using it, someone will show up and kick you off. So if some abstract principle of justice allows homesteading, in practice it is useless. There is no place to homestead any more.
Maybe Liberland will prove me wrong. Maybe they will allow homesteading. But if it requires permission from someone, isn't that the owner, giving it away?
There is. De facto ownership means someone is able to exclude others from using it. This is descriptive. De jure means that there are laws or property norms that establish someone as the owner, whose consent is required to use the land and so may exclude persons from using it legitimately. This is normative or prescriptive. It is also social rather than physical.
It seems that discussions of unowned land are moot, since there is none.
While areas of land unclaimed by any government as part of their territory exist (Terra nullius), the liberland project demonstrates that de-facto ownership is well established, as the two governments nearby, while not claiming the land as their territory, excluded them from it either by preventing access or arresting persons who gained access. The arrests seem odd, since they occurred outside of the governments' claimed jurisdiction, but the bottom line seems pretty clear - exclusion implies de facto ownership.
Maybe there is some sort of opportunity to maneuver between de jure and de facto ownership, but it doesn’t seem obvious or very relevant.
So it is more relevant, though perhaps less puzzling, to pursue the idea of how to resolve competing claims. Arbitrators have been doing so for all of history. This doesn’t lend itself so well to the sort of first-principle reflection/revision desired by the Georgists, though I suppose they could try to persuade everyone to switch over to their way of thinking even so.
Perhaps their response would be that all previous land claims have been unjust and illegitimate, and so are subject to confiscation or at least taxation. I am not yet persuaded.
The idea that creation is relevant merits discussion. If I make something from materials owned by someone else, I do not own the product. (Philosophers have contended over this a bit, but only one of the possibilities makes sense - one cannot legitimize a theft by modifying the loot.) So if I own my product but no one owned the materials, it seems that by using unowned things I made them mine. If no one owns them, no one has the right to exclude my use. If there is some way to exclude my use as illegitimate, they are not unowned. So by this logic, the Georgists must claim that everybody always owned everything, and there never was any unowned land. Perhaps they would be satisfied with this. It seems to require a new category of ownership, beyond de jure and de facto. Ab initio? What established that?
The alternative is to say that no one can legitimately own anything. But can we use things legitimately without someone owning them? Legitimacy implies some social norms governing use. But if there are legitimate uses and illegitimate uses, someone must decide which is which. This is the owner, perhaps. If we say it is a principle, and an arbitrator must interpret it, who established the principle? Is that the owner?
Social norms are pretty flexible, people can use a wide variety of norms and rules. Does justice uniquely and transparently determine what ought to be done? Or do people have to use some judgement to decide what is just? And might they learn something that indicates their decision was wrong? The Georgists must assume this is possible, else we should reject their proposal, as it claims prior decisions were mistaken. But why should we think that their proposal is immune to the same flaw?
>So if I own my product but no one owned the materials, it seems that by using unowned things I made them mine. If no one owns them, no one has the right to exclude my use. If there is some way to exclude my use as illegitimate, they are not unowned. So by this logic, the Georgists must claim ...
We need to distinguish between the originally unowned material and the qualities you imparted into that material. You created the qualities, so you own the qualities, and may legitimately exclude others from benefiting from them. But, of course, they are inseparable from the material in which they inhere. What to say? You say that, in that case, since you own the qualities, you have come to own the material as well. Other people say that, since you did not own the material, you do not now own the product (just as if you labored on someone else's material).
But we can also say something in between. After all, I might have no interest in the qualities you have imparted, and might have a much better use for the material—so why can you stop me from taking your material, and re-fashioning it into something more useful? (The conflict between miners and farmers is like this.) Why not say—as 10240 above suggests—that, in order to continue to own your product, you need to have others for excluding them from the material? If you really have improved the material so much, then there will be no problem paying.
The value of the materials is 1, the value of your improved form of your materials is 10. But there are a hundred people who have another use for the materials. If you have to compensate each of them you will have a problem paying.
Yes, I had better not imply that I owe each of the 100 excluded others (let's say) $1. Now, if only one person (A) is excluded from the materials, then I would clearly owe them $1, since—A's complaint—how she would fare were I to exclude others is $1 worse than how she would fare were I not to do so, this being the "value" of the materials.
But what if there were someone else (B) as well, then how much do I owe her? In this case, A's complaint may or may not be true, since that depends on what B would do were I not to take the materials. On the one hand, it might be that B would appropriate the material instead of me, so A still misses out, in which case she fares no differently whether I exclude her or not, so that, if that's what would happen, I owe her nothing. On the other hand, it might be that B would NOT appropriate the material, and leave them for A to use, in which case her complaint would be true, so that if /that's/ what would happen, I owe her $1.
Of course, B may or may not appropriate it instead. Suppose there is a 50% chance. It follows that I owe A 50% x $1 in compensation, and, of course, the same for B, making for a total compensation cost to me of $1. No problem paying that, if my improved form of the materials is $10. [Something like this might work for your objection to compensating for loss of ability to appropriate.]
The question is not whether I have a problem paying or not, but the basis of your claim to be able to exclude my use of unowned things. If you can’t exclude this use, you can't dictate terms for use. You are saying I have no basis to exclude others, but you, or the government, or someone has a basis for excluding me. How is this the case? What principle distinguishes our claims? Or can I just call myself the government and tax myself and spend it however I like?
The practical consequences have been discussed. Sure, the government *can* do lots of things, including things they have no excuse to do. I need an excuse to exclude, they do not. Why?
>the basis of your claim to be able to exclude my use of unowned things
I don't claim that anyone can exclude you from the /use/ of unowned things, just that there are problems if you wish to /appropriate/ them. So, sure, take the stick and make a spear from it. Further, I can't use the stick /as a spear/ without your consent, since /you/ made it a spear. But, without further argument, you still don't own the material. And you can't exclude me from using unowned things, like the material out of which the spear is made, which, frankly, I would find more useful as firewood. Why does your use prevail over my proposed use, if the material really is originally unowned?
So we need the further argument. They may not endorse it, but 10240 expresses well an idea I am inclined to agree with, so I am just going to quote them (with some word changes): "if you turn $10 worth of raw materials into a tool worth $1000, you can keep the extra $990 of value. But it's consistent with this to argue that [you] first buy or rent the $10 worth of raw materials [from everyone else, perhaps in the agent of the government], in order to possess (and, optionally, transform) them, rather than let you take them for free on account of being the firstcomer. And if you've paid $10 for the raw materials, you do fully own whatever you turn them into. Now, some natural resources are so abundant that their market value is 0". . . . including the stick you took, since there are so many others lying around for me to use as firewood instead (IF that is really true, which it isn't, sometimes).
You might find the argument in Chapter 57 of _The Machinery of Freedom_, linked to in the article, relevant to some of this.
Yes, it is interesting.
First Try is closer to what I am thinking. But consider: "The surface of the earth was not created by any human being, so nobody starts with a right to exclude any other human from any part of it. It follows that such exclusion is a rights violation". Agree with first inference, not with the second, /if it is unqualified/. Suppose—motivated by Locke's proviso—our only obligation in the state of nature is never to better our own position by worsening that of others (so I agree that we are not just talking about past exclusions). Excluding others from land benefits me and worsens the situation of others, and this is no accident, so, nothing else considered, I benefit myself /by/ worsening others, which is prohibited. Unless I provide compensation so that they are NOT made worse of by the exclusion. So, strictly speaking, all that follows is that exclusion /without sufficient compensation/ is a rights violation. This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you.
I agree that quasi-Lockean principle does not have kind things to say for someone who is blind or crippled. FWIW, libertarian though I am, I still think there is an (enforceable) duty of easy rescue, and I presume they will fall under this additional principle. (Even Locke thought that the destitute required support).
Second Try I think is less plausible. I agree that you have the (temporary) right to the land upon which you are standing (on the basis, as you say, of self-ownership), and ultimately on the same basis a right to the land upon which your wheat is growing (though people can still walk gingerly between the plants, no?). But not this bit: "I build a fence around my wheat field. ... You have a right to be on the land but not a right to damage my fence—mine because my labor produced it". Suppose you build a really good fence, that keeps everyone out. This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. You cannot use your fist (which you own) to violate anyone's rights (and if you try others can do unfriendly things to it), and nor can you use your fence (ditto). You need to provide compensation, but, in that case, it is the compensation that justifies your exclusion, not the labor you put into the fence.
"This answers your question: "If I violate your rights in a way that gives me a very large gain, why should you be just barely compensated while I get all of the difference between benefit and cost?"—I simply don't violate your rights, if I compensate you. "
You have a house which is worth $100,000 to you, $150,000 to me. A bargained sale will end up with a price somewhere between those numbers. Instead, following out your logic, I seize the house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you.
Is that your position?
"This is clearly an act of exclusion, which, in my view, is unjustified without compensation. "
My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights — bidding against B for the house B wants to buy or courting and marrying the woman B wanted to marry and would have if A didn't exist. My claim is that my fence is in the same category. You are worse off because I have arranged things such that you cannot do something you want to do without violating my rights. It doesn't follow that I owe you compensation.
>I seize [your] house by force and give you $100,000. According to what you wrote I haven't violated your rights since I compensated you. Is that your position?
No, since my argument relates to original acquisition of hitherto un-owned things, not to the house you mention, which I presumably own.
>My standing where you would like to shoot is an act of exclusion too. If I don't compensate you are you entitled to shoot in my direction?
This is not true, at least as I meant my neo-Lockean Proviso. The crucial difference is that my standing where I am is not /intended/ to prevent you standing there (though it has this side-effect—unless, of course, that /is/ what I intend, in which case you may or may not have the right to physically move me on). By contrast, your building your fence /is/ intended to prevent others from entering "your" land, and is in that sense an /act/ of exclusion.
>There are lots of cases in which A makes B worse off without violating any rights
My view is certainly not that it is never permissible to make others worse off, just that, in the state of nature, you cannot make yourself better off by intending to make others worse off. No-one marries with the intention to exclude others, so the fact that others miss out is their bad luck. However—admittedly—plenty people pollute without intending make things worse for others (though the polluters know that this will be the effect), so, according to the Proviso, that /is/ permitted. Another inconvenience of the state of nature, I guess.
"No-one marries with the intention to exclude others"
On the contrary, nearly everyone who marries does.
More relevant, why is intent so important in your view? And does "by intending to make others worse off" mean "the objective is to make others worse off" or "the objective is to make yourself better off but you know that one result is to make others worse off"?
Only the latter applies to my fence and it applies to my marriage as well if I know that there is another suitor who might succeed if I drop out.
I'm drawing on the familiar distinction between benefiting oneself by intentionally targeting someone with a harm (eg, terror bombing), and doing so while merely foreseeing that the same harm will be a side-effect (cf, strategic bombing). So understood, it is easy to see why one may think that the first is wrong, even if one accepts the second, since it involves /targeting/ someone—with all the connotations of that term.
So—au contraire—this is exactly what your fence is like, since (like the terror bomber) there is no benefit of building it if there is no-one else around, and you would strengthen it if it failed to deter people, etc etc. Its objective is to keep people out, and (unlike the strategic bomber) this harm to them is not some coincidental side-effect, that you would be happy not to occur if only it could be managed. And you want to do this to keep them from land that you admit is not yours. This exclusion can be made good only by nullifying the harm through compensation.
Yes—whoops!—marriage /is/ an exclusive relationship, so that complicates things. Same applies, though. What I /meant/ was that, in this case, your attitude to third parties during your pursuit of your beloved is the opposite. Presumably, you would still have pursued her even if he was not interested, and you would not have tried to prevent him from pursuing her, etc etc [OK, I admit it, for some people these things are false, but, I want say, they are behaving badly]. The complication is that you are pursuing an /exclusive/ relationship with her, but this overall pattern occurs in other contexts. When you eat some fruit (say), you engage in a particularly intimate relationship with it that necessarily excludes others, but your intention is strictly to eat the fruit, not exclude others from it (eg, you'd still eat the fruit even if no-one else wanted it, etc etc). So too when you seek an intimate relationship with your beloved. I /think/ this is all consistent.
Interesting response but I'm not convinced.
Suppose some of my courtship tactics are designed to demonstrate my superior suitability as a husband vis a vis my rival. I wouldn't do those particular things if he wasn't also courting her. My objective isn't to make him worse off — that's a side effect of achieving my objective.
Similarly with my fence. My objective isn't to make him worse off, it is to keep him from doing things to the land, such as building a house on it, that would prevent me from planting wheat on it. If I could achieve my objective without making him worse off, perhaps by pointing out a better location for his house, I would do so. Making him worse off is a side effect of my means for achieving my objective.
>I don't claim that anyone can exclude you from the /use/ of unowned things, just that there are problems if you wish to /appropriate/ them. <
This is a distinction without a difference. I can’t use things reliably if it violates social norms for me to exclude others from using them in incompatible ways.
>without further argument, you still don't own the material.<
I gave further argument elsewhere. Use is a claim. It can be used as evidence of ownership. It is a weak claim, but not as weak as non-use.
A consequentialist argument could also be made.
And there are various arguments against the alternatives. E.g., against Georgist, do I owe compensation to everyone or only to those who are actually excluded? I cannot pay compensation to everyone, and who is actually excluded depends on a counterfactual, so can’t be determined. We could fall back to heuristics or approximations, and say these are less unjust than the status quo. But this depends on establishing that Georgian is more just than the status quo, and that a rough approximation would be sufficient to improve things. This has not been shown.
I’m still waiting for the analogous argument from the Georgists.
That switched from land to spears. In most cases, one sort of land use will exclude most others. Did you answer the question about why my excluding others is a problem, but the Georgists' exclusion of me is not?
I take it this relates to your comment above "You are saying I have no basis to exclude others, but you, or the government, or someone has a basis for excluding me. How is this the case?" Well, first, I want to say that the same principle re original appropriation applies to all actors, individuals and governments alike. And, second, my quote from 10240 explains how one might justifiably appropriate something initially unowned. I don't think the switch from land to sticks is a biggie, since one sort of stick use (eg, as a spear) will also exclude most others (eg, as firewood).
Is this the quote?
“if you turn $10 worth of raw materials into a tool worth $1000, you can keep the extra $990 of value. But it's consistent with this to argue that [you] first buy or rent the $10 worth of raw materials [from everyone else, perhaps in the agent of the government], in order to possess (and, optionally, transform) them, rather than let you take them for free on account of being the firstcomer. And if you've paid $10 for the raw materials, you do fully own whatever you turn them into. Now, some natural resources are so abundant that their market value is 0"
If so, where is the discussion of how one might justifiably appropriate something initially unowned? One cannot rent or buy something that is unowned. If it is to be rented or bought, this involves a transaction between the owner and the renter or buyer. How did the owner acquire it, if it truly was unowned previously?
"One cannot rent or buy something that is unowned"—yes, that is a fair point, for exactly the reason you say, that the resources are initially unowned. And so that bit of the passage is not as well expressed as it should be. It should be: "you first give $10 for the raw materials to others as compensation to them for taking the materials, in order to process ...". You give others the money, not because you are buying the materials from them (since they do not own them), but as compensation for your excluding others from the materials (since, initially, you don't own them either). That should make it clearer.
This is just a use of the concept of ownership without using the word. Swapping the definition for the word doesn’t change anything.
We shouldn't argue about names; we are arguing about exclusion, who can do it justly, and under what circumstances compensation is owed (and to whom) for use without permission. If one must pay compensation to some person for the use of a resource, there should be a reason, not just a command.
Georgist norms, if they are just, should be the conclusion of an argument about justice, not the premises. Is the idea that existing norms are unjust, so everyone must submit to the innovation to serve justice? That is a hard sell. Or does the innovation have some beneficial qualities, and so while we are not obligated to do so, we might be persuaded to switch? Or something else?
That only makes sense if everything was always owned. If I can’t own it, why can “everybody”? When/how did they gain ownership so that their claim is better?
The line of argument I am exploring holds that uncreated property starts out as a commons. Nobody owns it — has the right to exclude others — but everyone has an equal right to use it. When someone appropriates some of it he is violating that right by forcibly keeping other from using the land.
Yes, I understand. Perhaps you found some clever argument that defeats the idea even after stipulating one-sided assumptions. I am challenging the assumptions. I want to explore a broader question. If this seems like an unwelcome digression, I apologize.
Why is it interesting to simply assume a framework, as opposed to comparing rivals? The objection is that ordinary property excludes those who have rights under the commons assumption. Why can’t the opposition simply assume ordinary property rights, and object to Georgist taxation? For the argument to reach common ground, we have to find common premises. One side can’t just beg the question and declare checkmate.
Perhaps the answer is that’s Georgists find their assumptions very intuitive, and do not,feel a need to argue for them. They seem confused by the idea that this might be necessary to persuade someone with different intuitions.
If I make a spear, and you admit I made it, and make no claim to have owned the materials I used, how can you claim it as firewood or spear? If we take this dispute to arbitration, my ownership claim based on use is pretty weak. But a weak claim is better than no claim. Why should the arbitrator rule in favor of your taking the spear for firewood?
There is a difference between sovereignty, and land ownership as defined by each country's domestic laws. There is practically no usable land not administered by any country, but there is plenty of land owned by governments. There is an interesting question what governments should do with it: let people homestead it, sell it for a one-time payment, rent it out, hand it out with the expectation of a land value tax payment (similar to renting it out under a perpetual contract)?
I'd perhaps support taxing away existing private land ownership (based on its value as unimproved, agricultural land) if it had been widely accepted for a long time that Georgism were right, or at least more generally that land ownership is less legitimate than ownership of man-made property. The main reasons I oppose it derive from the fact that, historically, in many places, land ownership has been considered as legitimate as any other property ownership, for centuries if not millennia. If Georgists managed to convince people to de facto expropriate land value, it would reduce people's confidence that people won't make up some excuse to confiscate some other asset classes as well, where such worry would be highly distortionary; at the same time, a Georgist land tax (if assessed on the agricultural value of land) would yield too little revenue to be worth that cost. And even from an angle of fairness, it doesn't feel fair to leave someone who invested his savings in land much worse off than someone who invested in other property, when in our existing societies he had no reason to expect that land was likely to be expropriated.
As for your points about initial ownership: one possible position is that natural resources are initially considered owned by society, as represented by the government. Government can, then, give, sell, or rent it out. Perhaps with an expectation that it must take everyone's interests into account equitably when doing so; so people who get them must properly compensate those who are excluded.
You seem to be asking “what is just?”, rather than “is it owned?”.
If one argues that natural resources are initially considered owned by society, one should explain how they gained ownership. If it is just by decree, why is my decree not as good as yours or anyone else's? It makes sense to say that a group could decide to treat things that way among themselves, but not that this would justify them confiscating or taxing someone who did not agree.
See my comment here: https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/georgist-thoughts/comment/55132221
Somehow when I follow the link it boots me out to my browser and asks me to log in again. So I will respond here.
You said it's not one or the other. Then you described something indistinguishable from the other as if demonstrating your point.
For the government to own the land is no different from the latecomer owning it. The government is or represents the latecomer. Why is their claim more valid according to the Georgist?
The government represents both the firstcomer and the latecomers, and distributes the eventual tax revenue to all.
As for why it's more valid: likely many people's intuition is that it's more fair for everyone to benefit from the value of a natural resource equally than for the first user of any given resource to get all the benefit.
That is not what representation means. You are saying the others are justified in forcing the firstcomer to go along with the scheme. What is their justification? Why isn’t the firstcomer similarly justified in making them go along with his?
"It seems that discussions of unowned land are moot, since there is none."
What principle are you using to determine who legitimately owns what? Most governments aren't even claiming they own all land in the territories they operate, I'm not even talking about proving that.
"While areas of land unclaimed by any government as part of their territory exist (Terra nullius), the liberland project demonstrates that de-facto ownership is well established, as the two governments nearby, while not claiming the land as their territory, excluded them from it either by preventing access or arresting persons who gained access."
You're conflating normative with descriptive. Ownership is a normative concept. If I own a bicycle and a thief steals it and now he has control of it and doesn't allow me to use it, I still own it and he doesn't. Observing who controls it isn't enough to determine who owns it. For the latter you have to have a theory of property rights.
I’m using the principle that if you try to use something someone stops you, it is de facto owned. Whether that amounts to legitimacy or how those are related is a separate issue.
I do not think I am conflating normative and descriptive. I suppose we could conjecture that it is possible to establish de jure ownership of some kind without first having de facto ownership, but it seems like a problem. E.g. you and I could agree that I own the northern half of liberland, and you own the southern half, and the pat could settle disputes between us. It seems unlikely to have any significant other effect.
Liberland seems to still exist as a project, so maybe Croatia and Serbia have decided to stop harassing them. But that doesn’t establish the existence of unowned land, either de facto or de jure.
There's no difference between possession / control and ownership in your position, which is conflating normative (ownership) with descriptive (possession / control).
My basic point is that there may be bits of land where technically no person or organization is listed as the de jure owner, but if you go there and start using it, someone will show up and kick you off. So if some abstract principle of justice allows homesteading, in practice it is useless. There is no place to homestead any more.
Maybe Liberland will prove me wrong. Maybe they will allow homesteading. But if it requires permission from someone, isn't that the owner, giving it away?
There is. De facto ownership means someone is able to exclude others from using it. This is descriptive. De jure means that there are laws or property norms that establish someone as the owner, whose consent is required to use the land and so may exclude persons from using it legitimately. This is normative or prescriptive. It is also social rather than physical.