It has come to my attention recently that some people consider Shrek to be a model libertarian, because he sets up his home in a swamp and defends his private property against all comers. Of course, in the sanitized version of this private property myth he doesn’t repeatedly sign and then break treaty agreements, kill the original occupants of the land and call on the full power of the state to defend his property “rights” when the relatives of the original occupants come to get him; but this strengthens the value of the story as a libertarian model, rather than weakens it. Presumably somewhere on earth there is a society of private property that isn’t based on killing people and stealing their stuff, and it’s in that place that we might be able to look for a libertarian model. So let’s suppose that such a model is possible, and look at whether or not in this case Shrek provides us with a good example of the possibility of private property as a concept of political value.
I think Shrek’s unilateral decision to expropriate land previously held for the common benefit is a good example of some of the problems with the libertarian romanticisation of private property. I believe libertarians call Shrek’s expropriation of land “homesteading,” but even assuming he didn’t “Homestead” over someone’s grave, there are still important issues of consent and community cohesion to be considered. For example:
- it’s well established that in setting up his swamp, Shrek drove a small number of will ‘o wisps and troglodytes away from the area, increasing the rate of attacks by these pests in other, nearby communities. It’s well-established that one should drive these creatures away but there are also systems in place for balancing the risk and coordinating activities with other communities that Shrek ignored.
- run-off from his farming activities is known to have contaminated valuable stocks of fairy floss in nearby forested areas. Communities of boggarts that market products based on fairy floss have been dislocated and may have to move to urban habitats, which both reduces their wealth and creates costs for urban communities. Everyone knows that boggarts are particularly difficult to integrate into complex multicultural (and often multidimensional!) fairysteads
- he will undoubtedly start producing children soon, and this will place a heavier burden on the fragile swamp ecosystem. This swamp provides an important component of downstream water supplies for a community of sylphs, who you are no doubt aware cannot move away from the river they are born in due to their ethereal connection. Thus Shrek’s “individual” decision to set up his home here may lead to the destruction of a community of (admittedly slightly pesky, but no doubt still sentient) fairies
- his decision to move there led to significant social order problems for his immediate neighbours, in the form of (amongst other things) dragons, crazy donkeys, kung fu princesses and, ultimately, war. When the neighbours are rebuilding their homes after the strife he brought with him they probably won’t be thinking about how admirable his rugged individualism is
- due to unfortunate and unavoidable aspects of Ogre personality, it’s well known that property values go down after an ogre moves nearby. I think we can see why clearly from the available documentary material. I’m not racist, but the neighbouring fairies should gain some compensation from this, and from the environmental effects of his decision to set up a small band of adventurers and launch a violent attempt to overthrow the fairly appointed leader of a neighbouring state.
Surely the fairies should be allowed to consult with him and others, and perhaps to levy some kind of compensation for the imposition of this situation on their previously ordered lives? Just as in real life, in the fairyworld there is no such thing as genuinely private property.
Compromise and Conceit 
May 9, 2011 at 1:14 am
This post seemed to have an enormous amount of potential that you then let fall flat at the end. I was excited, then disappointed at the loose ends.
Maybe you should be more explicit and theoretical in your conclusions instead of going for the laugh.
May 9, 2011 at 6:38 am
To make a serious point, this is the great problem with modern libertarians. They’ve read too much Rand and Rothbard – both of whom were, frankly, psychopaths – and have grasped the self-reliance thing without also understanding the importance of cooperation. As anyone who’s read Adam Smith knows, cooperation is just as important to a purely capitalist society as competition is.
Shrek learns this lesson during the course of his adventures, of course, thanks mostly to Donkey, who clearly read The Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as The Wealth of Nations.
May 9, 2011 at 9:41 am
Good point Noisms! Of course I should have recognized this aspect of the movie. Donkey is played by Eddie Murphy, so like all of Murphy’s characters must be a philosopher. No doubt Murphy brought his extensive knowledge of those (and many other!) texts to the role, and no doubt Murphy was aware of the flaws of the Shrek-as-libertarian framework when he took the part. Well spotted.
Another big problem with casting Shrek as the libertarian model is that his situation throws a light on the contradiction between the libertarian movement’s political goals (opposition to tax; defence of colonialism), its rhetorical goals (maximization of “liberty”) and the underlying principles claimed for the movement (property rights). In Shrek the ultimate landholder and owner of all property rights is the King, and Shrek in setting himself up as a landholder with full property rights is simply a bandit or thief. The King owns all the land, even “unclaimed” land and Shrek can’t just squat it. From a libertarian perspective it’s a tale about a thief and nothing more. If libertarians want to posit Shrek as a libertarian hero in his gulch, they need to prove that the King is a form of unjust government. But under libertarian principles Monarchism is a legitimate form of social organization, since it simply represents a single property owner (the King) asserting property rights over his tenants (Lords) and their sub-letters (serfs). Libertarians can’t even argue that he has unjustly acquired the land and thus is not a legitimate landholder, since in pursuit of their political goals (defence of colonialism and opposition to recognition of indigenous prior ownership of land) they have carefully written out any form of historical claims to unjust acquisition except by direct descendants of those originally disenfranchised. There’s no evidence in Shrek that Shrek was a descendant of an original landholder over his gulch.
This leaves libertarians in a political bind, since any ideology which leads to the acceptance of monarchism as a political framework is never going to be considered legitimate in the modern world. The easy way to get around this is to dismiss monarchism as being in contradiction of the rhetorical goal of libertarianism (maximizing liberty), but here we have a problem too, because that is exactly what historically happened. The renters (lords) rebelled against the restrictions on their liberty imposed by the property holder (the King) and demanded increased rights, in the form of a parliament to oversee the property holder’s rights. In time this parliament was assigned title to the land that was previously owned by the King, but if libertarians accept this solution to their monarchist quandary then they have to accept that modern democratic government is legitimate, as are all the taxes it levies, because these taxes are really just royalties on property ownership levied under another name. Now, libertarians could argue that this property title currently owned by government was unjustly acquired (e.g. the serfs never got a proper say in the redistribution of land post-enclosure). But again, libertarians have carefully argued away the right to claims on historical justice, in order to dismiss indigenous rights. As soon as they start making these claims in order to argue that modern government is illegitimate, they also need to accept all sorts of claims by ex-colonies and indigenous peoples to the same form of unjust property seizure. Alternatively, they could ignore this problem and just argue that government claim to title within, say, the UK is illegitimate. But even then they end up with a crazy mishmash of claims to justice, very few based on descent from original property owners, and their libertarianism collapses.
So the only way that libertarians can argue for property rights as the foundation for society without being monarchist is to accept the legitimacy of government. But in this case they have to either accept that any and all taxes are legitimate, never protest against anything the government does, and give in; or they need to accept that indigenous peoples and ex-colonies have large and powerful claims to compensation for unjust dispossession. Basically, if you’re going to dismantle the British government as an illegitimate force, on the basis of property rights only, then there’s a very large diamond sitting in the Tower of London that needs to be returned to Pakistan – and that’s just for starters. If libertarians can’t stomach this, then they need to accept that libertarianism is the ultimate justification for either a) Monarchy or b) the ultimate colonialist, war-mongering state with unlimited rights to abuse its citizens or c) both. And in the process of reaching this goal they need to also be arguing that Shrek is a land-thieving bastard who needs to be locked up forever.
May 10, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Fantastic, once again we get to hear from Faustus about how Libertarian societies are built on the bones of displaced people and must never be allowed to forget that, while more socialist societies (including social democracies) are allowed to replace eternal shame with regular hush money payments. Of course, if we look at the real world we see that societies built with strong libertarian leanings (like, say the West) have vastly better outcomes for everyone than societies that lack those libertarian leanings (like, say the USSR, China, and every tin pot dictatorship under the sun).
But once we get past Faustus’s ritual abuse of a school of thought that has consistently moderated the tendency towards vast numbers of truly terrible ideas we find the meat of his complaints where he can only be regarded as taking the truth and then (to paraphrase him) homesteading his arguments on its bones. In order, these egregious lies are:
1. ”it’s well established that in setting up his swamp, Shrek drove a small number of will ‘o wisps and troglodytes away from the area, increasing the rate of attacks by these pests in other, nearby communities. It’s well-established that one should drive these creatures away but there are also systems in place for balancing the risk and coordinating activities with other communities that Shrek ignored.
No one argues that Shrek didn’t upset the balance of nature, but Faustus ignores the massive benefits accrued to the wider community from these actions. It’s well know that many adventurers get their start when will’o’wisps and other pests invade their home towns. These adventurers go on to have massive positive impacts throughout the region and indeed onto other planes of existance. Would Faustus deny us the demigods and major deities that have started in exactly this way? How many would die without their priests being empowered to case spells from the Healing sphere?
2. “run-off from his farming activities is known to have contaminated valuable stocks of fairy floss in nearby forested areas. Communities of boggarts that market products based on fairy floss have been dislocated and may have to move to urban habitats, which both reduces their wealth and creates costs for urban communities. Everyone knows that boggarts are particularly difficult to integrate into complex multicultural (and often multidimensional!) fairysteads ”
Again we see all the blame slated home to Shrek and the benefits ignored. Faustus talks a good game about social integration, but when it comes to boggarts he’s nothing but a racist of the lowest order. Why not just say “I’m OK with boggarts. Some of my best friends are boggarts. But I don’t want them living near me.” Frankly it’d be more honest if you picked up a sword and attempted to level up in Boggart town.
Additionally, boggarts are known as hard workers and active union members. But Faustus just want’s there member dues, not their company!
3. ”he will undoubtedly start producing children soon, and this will place a heavier burden on the fragile swamp ecosystem. This swamp provides an important component of downstream water supplies for a community of sylphs, who you are no doubt aware cannot move away from the river they are born in due to their ethereal connection. Thus Shrek’s “individual” decision to set up his home here may lead to the destruction of a community of (admittedly slightly pesky, but no doubt still sentient) fairies ”
*Sigh* So again we get to hear that sylphs and dryads have superior rights to living quarters than everyone else. It’s a well known fact that ogre poo is highly toxic, with one study comparing it unfavourably to being hit by a fireball cast be a wizard of not more than 9th level. But ogres have a right to live too, or are you convetig to Lawful Good and proposing genocide? Or are you willing to settle for banishment away from the region so you can continue your sylph-fiddling?
4. ”his decision to move there led to significant social order problems for his immediate neighbours, in the form of (amongst other things) dragons, crazy donkeys, kung fu princesses and, ultimately, war. When the neighbours are rebuilding their homes after the strife he brought with him they probably won’t be thinking about how admirable his rugged individualism is.”
Sorry. I’m aware of your drinking habits (and share them), but what were you drinking when you wrote this? The totalitarian monarchy next door was the source of all those problems. Shrek’s resolution of these is an example of why Libertarians are a critical check and balance on other schools of thought. Can you imagine a neighbouring social democracy intervening to resolve the problem? Can you imagine them possessing the rugged individualism to achieve it with no bloodshed (people we’re all aware would fail a Detect Evil check aside).
And the war I think you’re speaking of was in an alternative reality where Shrek was tricked into renouncing his right to existence through corporate malfeasance. Hardly an example of allowing informed individuals to make free choices.
Finally:
”Surely the fairies should be allowed to consult with him and others, and perhaps to levy some kind of compensation for the imposition of this situation on their previously ordered lives? Just as in real life, in the fairyworld there is no such thing as genuinely private property.”
Yeah, the fairies say that now, but you ask for a mushroom to eat or fairy dust to fly and it’s all “It came out my ass, it’s mine. Get lost.”
Screw those guys.
May 10, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Paul, your points about Shrek’s particular case are well put and I don’t dispute them, though I take offence at your accusations of racism – some of my best friends are Boggarts. But your examples just serve to reinforce my point that “private” property is never truly private. The benefits and drawbacks of people’s use of private property are unevenly distributed, and capricious (as every Monk or Paladin knows!) and the proper disposal of private property cannot be conducted in isolation. Hence the need to tax faeries up the wazzooo.
However, some of your claims about the general theory demand dispute, nay, satisfaction!
I think I made it clear in the OP that I don’t believe Shrek displaced anyone. He drove out some will ‘o wisps and troglodytes but everyone knows these are animals, not people. You’re not some kind of will ‘o wisp rights activist are you? Because that kind of ectopomorphism has no place in rational debate. In fact, Shrek is a particularly good example of the complexity of private property precisely because his case enables us to avoid the fraught issue of original ownership. As we have seen, modern courts have acknowledged native title in Australia, so even countries with strong property rights (like Australia) have been forced to recognize that native title once existed, even where its extinguishment is no longer subject to redress by common law. But in Shrek’s case this is not an issue and we can proceed to the less controversial issue of his personal use of his land and its effects, without worrying about troublesome issues of historical justice. I should also point out that *I* didn’t mention “shame”, nor do I make any claims to superiority of socialist or social democratic societies over libertarian ones when it comes to the extinguishment of native title. We both know that social democracies were heavily involved in the dispossession of indigenous Australians, and (probably just by historical coincidence, though there’s an interesting debate about modernism to be had here) social democracies have hardly been immune to the siren song of racialism. This isn’t just an Australian phenomenon – Sweden ran a nasty program to extinguish the Roma, and Switzerland was big on sterilization of minorities. So don’t tar me with that trotskyite brush, you ectomorph-loving hippy.
Next, your most egregious insult:
The King is not a “totalitarian monarch.” He is the title holder to all the land within his realm (that’s why it’s called “his realm”) and entitled to dispose of it how he pleases. It’s in this phrase that we begin to see your true political motives – to seize power for yourself and your ectopomorphic friends under the cover of that old Trotskyist canard, “land redistribution.” Or perhaps you just don’t understand the definition of private property? The King owns all his land, including the piece of swamp that Shrek decided to set up on, and he allows some people (“Lords”) to rent his land in exchange for royalties and some additional services, and to sub-let to their tenants (“serfs”). No one on the King’s land is there by force, and they’re welcome to leave. Well, except the serfs, who live under quite strict conditions, but they’re sub-lettors – their living conditions aren’t the King’s doing, and in fact he established a quite reasonable rule to enable them to move from city to city and become Freemen. So it’s unreasonable to accuse him of being “authoritarian”. No, the only bad guy in this story is Shrek, who decided that he had the right to set up his own land on the King’s swamp, without so much as a by-your-leave, no contract signed, and no regard for his neighbours, all of whom were obeying the property rules of the Kingdom.
The only way you can accuse the King of authoritarianism is if you think he has no right to the land he lives on, but I have seen the land titles and he definitely owns, solely and completely, his entire demesne. So unless you have some other reason to think he’s not entitled to behave how he likes on his property, I’d love to see it. As it is, Shrek is a thief and a bandit, aka a squatter, and undeserving of any rights.
I agree about the fairies though.
May 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
Faustus, you’re fundamental belief that taxation is the source of all goodness is why you’re going to rest in Mechanus after death instead of the Seven Heavens or Twin Paradises. Of course outcomes are unevenly distributed, but careful analysis of souls post-life reward/punishment have clearly shown that it’s how you play the hands that your dealt that determines whether you get massaged by Seraphim or abused by Tanar’ri.
But even if we restrict our investigations to the here and now I must submit you couldn’t beat a gelatinous cube (Int 0) in a battle of wits.
My motives in all of these arguments are quite transparent and I’ll freely own up to them. I seek to maximise the discord in the world while acting in a lawful good manner so as to maximise my chances to earning precious XP and level up. All of this is conducted with an eye towards achieving godhood and finally having the power I need to inflict an ogre genocide on the world. In pursuit of that, and until that day comes, I need to give the blighters a far chance to breed before I thin their numbers.
As I’m sure you’re aware, I am regularly tested for an Evil (or even Neutral) alignment and I’m happy to provide these test results and my birth certificate on request.
“So unless you have some other reason to think he’s not entitled to behave how he likes on his property, I’d love to see it.”
The King can claim ownership of the swamp all he wants, just as I can claim ownership of the moon. But in both cases the failure to enclose and develop the land renders out claims so much bum fluff.
Furthermore, this example shows your own failing to appreciate how libertarianism actually works. It’s been a while since I read Locke’s First Treatise on Government, but my vague memories are that homesteading actually involves doing some work on the land, rather than writing up a fancy document and pointing to it when a hardworking ogre actually uses it for something other than your planned concentration camp.
This shows a flaw in the outputs of libertarian arguments, in that they frequently are bent to support the status quo. Even luminaries such as John Stuart Mill (a person of such good character we can safely presume he only took PC class levels), suffers from a failure to follow their arguments to logical conclusions due to their personal inclination to succour the current system.
But this flaw in outputs does not show a flaw in the fundamental logic of the arguments, only a flaw in their proponents. Under true libertarian thought, monarchy is unattainable save through the free consent of the governed. Given that ownership of the land is derived from actually working it [1], the so called “King” cannot claim any ownership till he has improved the land. Therefore he can’t rent it out either to lords nor to “free” men [2]. Nor can he forcibly inflict his rule on the people, due to the ancient libertarian principal of “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins”, which prevents him forcing himself on others.
As such, all monarchies that are not freely agreed are invalid totalitarian governments. An example of a flawed libertarian argument is saying that because the English monarchy has been around so long it has been agreed to by default. Such an argument that inaction is consent is not totally without merit, but is used too readily in this case.
[1] Which does provide for the extinguishment of native title
[2] Who’s freedom derives from their own person and the assembled gods of good [3], not a grant from above
[3] Clearly the gods of evil oppose this, and as always the gods of neutrality don’t have anything to say worth listening to.
May 11, 2011 at 9:23 pm
I’m guessing that the internet access is better in mechanus (as is the mechano!) so no problems…
Btw, which edition of D&D is this debate framed against? I have to point out to you that if we’re in any version before 3rd (?), you get xp for gold, and it’s much more sensible for you to open a brothel than go adventuring. If you open a brothel you’ll be 20th level in no time. It’s only this new-fangled breed of adventurers who think you actually need to go out and have experiences and stuff, just to get experience points. Wankers!
Anyway, regardless of that I’m pretty sure I’m having a lot of fun arguing the Neutral gods’ perspective here, and it’s not often one gets to say that, so indulge me.
Are you seriously arguing for a libertarian definition of property that operates on the basis of “fair use”? In your penultimate paragraph, do you seriously propose a libertarian definition of property that doesn’t allow for rental income? Does this mean that if I discover oil under your house, I can take it because you didn’t work the land that deep? After all, you only have some piece of paper claiming title to the land, but it was me that did the hard work to uncover the resource beneath your land. More seriously, no other libertarian credits this definition of private property – it’s an anarchist, not a libertarian definition. Boaz, for example, defines property rights as “A property right means the freedom to use, control, or dispose of an object or entity.” i.e. he doesn’t speak in terms of just use. He speaks of the need “to be confident that our property right is legally secure,” i.e. he defines property rights in terms of a legally binding contract (i.e. a piece of paper), not just “use.” The obvious corollary of your definition of property is the loss of inheritance rights. Because you didn’t use, cultivate or improve the property your family owns, you don’t have any right to it. If you’re out of the country or just out having a beer when your family die, then the nearest person can just walk in and claim your inheritance, and you have to fight them out of it. This is genuinely Locke’s “state of nature,” isn’t it?
You have to do better than that: the King owns his land, and he doesn’t have to work every party of it to define it as his land. In fact, there are some parts – e.g. the swamps near his castle – that need to be left fallow as a water catchment for one of his major rivers. It’s trivially easy to redefine “not using” as “using,” and he has the Knights to back up this definition if challenged. So you need to come up with a definition of property that’s a little less barbaric than that[1]. The King has this definition in the form of property titles. What’s your alternative?
—
fn1: Actually as I remember it, the Mabo decision on native title explicitly defines native title – as opposed to non-native title – in terms of use[2]. That is, in order to claim native title a tribe of Aborigines has to prove that they a) have an ongoing cultural connection to the land and b) continue to use that land. Admittedly the definition of use doesn’t (to the best of my knowledge) restrict itself to economically productive use (wandering through is included, I think) but living temporarily on land is obviously a formal definition of “use.” Some activists at the time (and Mabo was a long time ago so I could be wrong about this) claimed that Mabo didn’t go far enough because it didn’t treat native title in the same form as “western” title, that is it didn’t enable people to just “claim” a “right” to land – they had to prove a connection. In some senses this is a stronger condition than “western” title, where you can contest a will even though you’ve never met your dad. Also, an interesting aspect of the Mabo decision (much decried a few years later, with the Howard Government’s response to Wik) was that native title rights weren’t judged by the High Court to extinguish the subsequent titles of farmers. The High Court explicitly left this to the government to resolve, and allowed the rights to exist simultaneously. Keating’s response was to deal with the most immediate issues (freehold title) and then left it to the High Court to rule on the 99-year leases (which was what Wik was about). Some activists at the time of Mabo claimed that although Mabo was legally a huge leap forward (for extinguishing terra nullius) it was practically irrelevant to many indigenous communities, because generally those communities who met the conditions sufficient for recognition of native title were already coexisting with the farmers who held freehold leases, and so practically nothing changed. Mabo was an interesting example of a legal decision that is simultaneously revolutionary and irrelevant. But to the best of my memory[3] it depended on a kind of definition of use. Your footnote 1 suggests that the definition of use that would extinguish native title is one that is limited to “economic use” (a justification often given by libertarians for why Aborigines had no concept of property rights[4]) but I don’t think you can go down that path – it would mean that there is no libertarian definition of a right to property for people who live on their land 6 months a year (for example). I think it’s pretty clear that a definition of land ownership based on “use” would be open to an awful lot of dispute…
fn2: I think there might have been some additional points about proving historical common ownership, but I don’t know if they were very important
fn3: And I should repeat the caveat, everything I just spouted is based on my memory of the time, not on any extensive research.
fn4: An interesting rhetorical trick, since libertarians generally propose that hunter-gatherer societies very quickly move from common ownership to private ownership of land, and use this transition as the basis for their argument that property rights are a fundamental concept; yet they seem to think that property rights spring from nowhere, that there is no prior concept of property that might inform the transition to private ownership…
May 12, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Gygax’s reasoning re: Gold pieces and xp was sound. You’re a 4hp mook in a subterranean fantasy Vietnam. Given a choice between fighting the goblins and just robbing them blind you should be rewarded for taking their stuff. Which just shows that Gygax is also less omnicidal than he’s generally credited as being.
The key point I was making (based off dusty memories) was that ownership is established through use. But once you’ve got ownership I don’t recall any statements on where the bounds of ownership end, which opens up renting/contract law as an outgrowth of people being able to strike deals with each other.
And I’d need to re-read the first treatise on government to have more to go on, which is unlikely to happen in the near future. Too busy at work and I need to read the new Exalted Celestial Compass:Authchton book.
May 12, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I think your interpretation goes against all the basic texts. Here’s Boaz again:
That’s as close to defining property rights in terms of title as you can get without finding a libertarian who says explicilty “property is defined by title not use.” There’s a clear need in libertarianism for a definition of property based on titles, and the use of state coercion to defend those titles (this is made clear repeatedly in libertarian ideology – the only use for state power is the defence of property rights). Wikipedia claims in its section on homesteading in let-libertarianism that
in the context of homesteading wilderness; but there is an implication here that unused land owned by someone, and wilderness, are two different things. The Wikipedia entry on libertarianism states that
Again it doesn’t distinguish the libertarian concept of private property from the standard concept, as you and I would normally understand it in modern liberal society. Additionally, right libertarians like Nozick argue that any form of taxation violates the right to property (even taxation of capital gains from the sale of unused land). You can’t stack that up against a definition of property based on “use.”
So basically, Shrek is a thief unless you can prove that the King has no right to hold land title over the swamp.
May 12, 2011 at 8:25 pm
But how are titles created? I’m pretty sure that the theory of “With paper and pen” that you’re putting forward would be anathema to a libertarian as it actually removes certainty from property titles.
I mean every you’re capable of writing, so that’d lead to the horrible idea of you being able to own properties. And if things slipped that much I’d have to accept that Brownies could too!
Getting back to your king, who we can safely assume is only ruling the kingdom for the tax on brothels and the associate xp, can you explain how the king mixed his labour with the unowned object? If not, then all the fancy documentation in the world don’t make him owner of the kingdom. And in fact the old valid use of his power is to protect Shrek’s property rights.
Frankly, the quotes you’ve dug up illustrate that pretty well. Thanks for finding the quotes needed to support my argument. [1]
Also “unused land owned by someone” isn’t a valid concept. It’s either “land I have invested labour into in the past and now own” or “wilderness”. Stuff I put down for a minute doesn’t become wilderness.
Presumably if your labour can no longer be discerned in the land it reverts to wilderness. Otherwise it’s just a case of claiming that you invested effort into painting the entire world yesterday and it must have all washed off – but you still own it. [2]
[1] You’re welcome to claim ownership of it. Apparently I haven’t improved it at all 😉
[2] By that I mean that without the ongoing proof of your effort having made a difference it’s just a case of your baseless claim against another persons claim (which may or may not have evidence).
May 13, 2011 at 8:16 am
Libertarians don’t care how titles were created. Their only interest is to defend their use and disposal through strong property rights and the rule of law. Libertarians consistently claim that this is the only legitimate use of state violence – the protection of property rights (including “self-ownership”). This state violence is what enables someone to pass property down to their children (through a title, i.e. “with paper and pen”) rather than having the nearest interested party simply squat the dead person’s land and claim “use.” Sure, property rights based on title deeds without the rule of law would be madness, but libertarians consistently argue that they support the rule of law and specifically (usually only) its application to property rights.
So the king doesn’t have to “mix his labour with the unowned object.” Some previous king did this a long, long time ago and set up a system of title to property. That title enables the king to pass the property (including the “unused” swamp) down to his descendants. So now within the land he owns there is no unowned object that anyone else can mix their labour with. The only valid use of his power is to protect his property rights from external aggressors against them, and to ensure good behaviour by his tenants. In the UK all the tenants agreed explicitly to this set of conditions in the magna carta – which is a classic example of a tenancy contract setting out the terms under which the landowner (the king) can rent his land to his tenants (lords).
I can’t believe you’re arguing this “use” concept as a libertarian one. Look at this for example:
This means that the piece of land next to my old home in Sydney, that was owned by an old guy who didn’t have the funds to develop it, was free for anyone to make their own simply by “using” it. Are you seriously maintaining that libertarians would tolerate such a definition of land title? A definition in which there is a) no inheritance, b) no right to let land lie fallow or undeveloped, c) no right to pause on development due to lack of capital/personnel, d) no right to retain ownership of land if you travel overseas/become sick, e) no right to own multiple plots of residential land, f) no right to have tenants. Are you serious? Do you really believe that this is the much-vaunted “strong property rights” that libertarians think will make the world a better place? I think you’ve seriously misunderstood libertarian concepts of land ownership if you believe this.
Furthermore,
but without a system of titles, anyone can do this and claim they “used” the land. This is why libertarians support the rule of law – because there’s no other way to resolve disputes over ownership, and because people can make up any claim to ownership they want if there isn’t a consistent legal system for defining what is and isn’t owned.
I think you’re confusing libertarian theory about the original source of property ownership (what happened when people “left the state of nature,” according to Locke), libertarian theory about what to do with new land that everyone recognizes is unowned (“Homesteading” and the theory of just dispossession of indigenous peoples as propounded by e.g. Nozick) and libertarian theory about property rights in established modern societies (“strong property rights supported by the rule of law” as espoused by every libertarian).
May 31, 2011 at 3:23 pm
OK, I’ve finally dug my Locke out and waded through some of it. [1]
“Libertarians don’t care how titles were created.”
You keep saying this, but looking at Locke’s two Treatise on Government shows that he was actually obsessed with saying how titles were created. One entire treatise is on how the King of England inherits his rule from Adam and thus from God (no I haven’t read that one).
The treatise that isn’t obsessed with defending his monarch is just as obsessed with saying how titles are created. He’s actually very explicit in saying that the input of Labour is what turns a common good into an good owned by one person.
So please stop saying it. Or alternatively find a quote from a more up to date Libertarian saying “I don’t give a shit about titles were created. I’m just interested in crushing the little guy.” Good luck.
“This state violence is what enables someone to pass property down to their children”
This is another point where you’re apparent need to misrepresent the opposing point of view is making you make pants-on-head stupid comments. Libertarians talk about natural and societal law. Natural law allows you to make stuff yours by working on it and beat up people who try to steal it. Societal law allows society to do that on your behalf. So even under natural law you’re able to give your stuff away to whoever you want.
“This means that the piece of land next to my old home in Sydney, that was owned by an old guy who didn’t have the funds to develop it, was free for anyone to make their own simply by “using” it.”
I can’t claim to have read the sections of Libertarian thinking on societal law for this, but under Locke’s natural law, yes. If you gather more than you can use and it’s going to waste then you’re stealing from everyone else. I can provide the page number references on that if you’d like when I get home.
Now I suspect that the principle that people can agree to be bound by societal law suggests that societal law would allow whatever rule the society wanted. So the old man gets to hang on to land he’s not using, even though it violates natural law. But again, I haven’t read up on that. On this one I think I’ll put the burden of proof on you. I’ve had enough reading 17th centuary language to last me a while.
“without a system of titles, anyone can do this and claim they “used” the land.”
That’s why a system for governing what is no longer “your” property is very important. Locke wrote that anything you put effort into, but didn’t use, was something that you’d stolen from everyone else. For example, if you went to a natural grove of apple trees you’re allowed to gather as much as you want. If you eat everything you take then it was your by right. If you waste any of it then you stole that from the next guy who comes along and he has a right to punish you.
Locke also writes about the importance of being able to transfer goods you own, but can’t use, to others in exchange for stuff. That stuff does include money as an option.
As for things like tenants, it’s only your mindset that sees a discrepancy between owning a property and “using it” be leasing it to others. I don’t see that as a problem and I can’t see any evidence that anyone other than you does.
[1] If you want to criticise it, recommend focusing on the heavy biblically based approach to logic in it. Referencing God’s deeding of the world to Adam ain’t the strongest starting point for an argument that’ll satisfy me. [2]
[2] Though in it’s defence, if you just ignore those sentances or replace them with a (projected) narrative about evolution of the species and society then it stands up much better.
May 31, 2011 at 3:56 pm
By the way, I found an interesting resource on Librtarianism at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/#Bib
that demonstrates your narrow view of what consistutes libertarianism is a large part of the problem we’re experiencing here.
June 13, 2011 at 12:02 am
Sorry for not getting back to this sooner… I think I may have been misleading in my statements about “libertarians don’t care how titles were created.” What I mean to say is, libertarians care very much about the historical reasons for the emergence of private property as a concept (Locke’s emergence from the “state of nature”) because it’s essential to their political theory to present private property as a natural progression from prior states. However, they don’t care how particular private property rights were created. e.g. Bill Gates buys an Island; the Island was previously owned by a French millionaire; libertarians don’t care that the island was depopulated by a slaver in the 17th century and then bought from that slaver by a French millionaire[1]. What you are referring to is the libertarian prinicple of “original acquisition.” This defines the original source of ownership through labour mixing; but after this libertarianism generally uses the principle of voluntary transfer to identify the right of property owners to control the disposition of their land, including by handing it on to people who haven’t mixed their labour with it (e.g. trust fund kids). But modern libertarians generally have to accept that most property rights were not obtained by just mixing of labour, but by through appropriation of theft; they therefore apply a statute of limitiations to dsecendants of those whose land was appropriated, in order to balance modern concepts of justice in land acquisition (you can’t claim to own my property just because you set up started ploughing it when I was on holiday) with the real acceptance that historically land was stolen (William the Conqueror invaded Britain and stole all the land).
The problem with privileging the labour mixing theory of property rights over title rights is that anyone can then easily steal property. e.g. you go away to Europe for a month, and while you’re gone some punk sets up a jewellery selling store on the bonnet of your car. When you come back and want to drive the car, he says “no, that’s my car.” “Why?” “I’ve mixed my labour with it by using it as a table.” You weren’t using the car, what can you do?
We see this tension at its most vivid in the role of tenants and land owners. You claim you don’t see it as a problem that a person can be owning a property and “using it” by leasing it to others, but the contradiction is obvious. The people living in the property – the tenants – are using it, and the landowner is also using it (by renting it to them). So which one owns it? How do libertarians decide between the competing labour mixing rights of the two claimants? Given that the contract they signed involves an implicit admission by the landlord that he is not “using” the land (otherwise he would be living in it), can the tenants not claim that in signing the contract he has endorsed explicitly his non-use of the land? If so it’s theirs. But then he can claim that in signing the contract he explicitly endorsed his use of the land. In practice of course this is resolved through reference to a title which transcends the tenants rights and which enshrines the landlord’s right not to use the land. The tenants could stop paying rent, and thus point out that they’re using the land and the landlord obviously isn’t (he isn’t even making money on it!) but they can’t do this because the contract annuls their labour mixing rights, even though the existence of the contract depends on the landlord not mixing his labour with the land.
So for our monarch, all that is necessary is that in some historical state all land was acquired justly through labour mixing. After that a series of contracts and titles enabled all this land to slowly be acquired under the possession of one person; tenants of that land, lacking the right to convert their partial ownership to full ownership (under the concepts necessary to allow landowners to have tenants at all), could not reverse the process of land acquisition; and at some point the monarch became the sole owner of all land in the kingdom. The only way this could not happen is if tenants could resist land acquisition through their labour use having greater importance than that of the owner of the land; but any such system prevents property rights from existing in any libertarian sense, since it inherently prevents property owners from using their land as they see fit. Another way that it could happen is through a system of property rights that explicitly allows squatting, that is for the tenants to just up and leave their land and go sit on some fallow land owned by someone else and claim it is theirs through labour mixing; but no modern society based on property-rights can allow this.
Your only defense here is to argue that natural law trumps societal law, and anyone should be able to squat anyone else’s property. But this essentially means that I can just walk into your house and take your 4th Edition D&D books, even though you paid good money for them[2]. I really don’t think you seriously believe that such a system is a libertarian system of property laws. Libertarianism is explicitly about the right of a land owner to dispose of their property however they see fit, including by not using it. I really think you’re arguing against the entire current of modern libertarianism if you think otherwise; and not only that, but you’ve become an anarchist, not a libertarian. An important difference, since you need to invest in black bandanas and rescue remedy.
So, try again! How is it that the tenants and the landowner can both be using the property, unless there is an overarching system of contracts and titles that basically says “living in a house” is not “use” but “not living in a house but renting it out” is?
—
fn1: perfidious Frenchies!
fn2: some might argue that money spent on 4th Edition D&D cannot, by definition, be “good” but this is a deeper philosophical argument about the meaning of money.
June 14, 2011 at 1:23 pm
And I somewhat apologise for my harsh tone. But I reserve the right to use it again in a way I will regret soon after posting. THIS! IS! THE INTERNET! 😉
As for ”libertarians don’t care that the island was depopulated by a slaver in the 17th century and then bought from that slaver by a French millionaire” As you note, it might be more accurate to say that Libertarian thought tends to assume an endless list of misdeeds stretching back to when Cain killed Abel and then shrug and decide it’s not worth spending time on to undo given an unknowable set of history. If you think of European history over the last couple of millennia you can understand why they tend to not worry about who killed/stole from whom most recently.
”You claim you don’t see it as a problem that a person can be owning a property and “using it” by leasing it to others, but the contradiction is obvious.”
I can see how Rain Man would have a problem with this. I can’t see how a reasonable person would. And if the test you’re using is “Would a monomaniacal idiot savant be unable to see the obvious solution?” then it’s not Libertarianism that has a problem, its almost everything save for tyranny and it’s variants [1]
”The tenants could stop paying rent, and thus point out that they’re using the land and the landlord obviously isn’t (he isn’t even making money on it!) but they can’t do this because the contract annuls their labour mixing rights”
In this case, what problem do you see with everyone not renting the land and the landlord having to either pay to maintain it (continuing to mix effort into it), or it falling into disuse where the first person to come along can claim it? It’s a logical way of solving the conundrum you present. It relies on the axioms that have been laid out. It uses a valid market based approach. It seems you just dislike it because “scabs” will come along and outbid the price you were looking to gain the property for (i.e. you want free, they’ll rent at some decreased rate).
For our theoretical monarch, we have two options:
1. I presuppose that there is no valid way for a monarch to have validly accumulated title to all land in the kingdom, though it is possible to do so theoretically. In this case I can invoke the principles of natural and societal law to claim recompense, which I will take in the form of claiming ownership of some of the land. This process is likely to be messy and involve phrases such as “first up against the wall”
2. If society at large agrees, then it could dissolve itself and move everything back to a state of natural law. Under this state the monarch is required to keep using his land in order for it to not fall back into the “unused” category that anyone can grab it out of. Given that there is no societal law leases and the like don’t apply and there may be no valid means of exchange [2], though the monarch would be able to claim recompense from anyone he can get his hands on. In practice this is also called societal collapse and tends to lead to those circumstances you referenced where X kills Y, sells the land to Z who dies of the plague and has the land taken over by squatter A who eventually receives a claim from Y’s grandchildren [3].
To return to the original problem, in practice, if I was the 800 pound ogre, I’d declare that society was dissolved in the confines of the swamp and hold a meeting to canvass dissenting opinions. If no one showed up, I’m free to take the swamp through squatter’s rights under natural law. If anyone showed up, I’d get a free meal, complain about the societal collapse then claim it.
What my example here shows is that old D&D conundrum: Genocide works as long as you’re thorough enough [4].
”So, try again! How is it that the tenants and the landowner can both be using the property, unless there is an overarching system of contracts and titles that basically says “living in a house” is not “use” but “not living in a house but renting it out” is?”
I reject your challenge and substitute my own. “Provide any philosophical system where a legalistic interpretation of the principals combined with edge cases does not result in a paradox.” In the event you can provide such a system, I will accept that the “reasonable person” check that’s used in so many of our current laws and in interpreting the world is invalid and we should instead have “obstinate blogger” set as the check that most be passed. Otherwise, you should accept that contradictions are inherent in political thought and that most people just drink till it makes sense.
[1] Where “Because I said so” is a valid reason that contains and answer that rests directly and easily on the core assumptions of the system.
[2] I’m fairly certain that fiat currencies couldn’t survive this move for example.
[3] Good times.
[4] Talk about a family unfriendly Aesop!
June 19, 2011 at 8:39 pm
This is how you resolve conflicts over land based on usage rights…
July 23, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Libertarians care about thefts– to the extent that the person stolen from is the one complaining about them. If the guy from the 17th century somehow shows up as soon as he reasonably can and says “Gates, your purchase of that island wasn’t legit, he bought it from a guy who stole it from me”– well, Gates is out of luck, let him sue the guy he bought it from if he wants but , despite the reality of his claim, he took on the risks of assuming that the seller was legit– the original owner did not take on those risks.
But to introduce inheritance into this mess would create utter chaos, becoming an effective abolition of property consistently rendered. Sorry, if you wanna will your stuff to your kids, you’ll have to get justice from any thieves before you’ve been dead a few hundred years and the land has passed from the thieve’s hands to an honest buyer’s, your grandkids don’t have any real claim to it after all, inheritance only works before anyone but the bequeather has any “real” claim.
Now, in cases where there is adverse possession in the absence of the original buyer being deliberate, just because the owner failed to demarcate the property line, I think the common law on adverse possession has some merit, though that isn’t the scenario you’re addressing.
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