RoR: Forum

I asked:

Jim, was the Louisiana Purchase illegitimate?

Given that the purchase was made, until such time as private parties should wish to acquire all the land of the Louisiana Purchase at some reasonable rate, would it not be legitimate for the land to be held in public trust, so long as it was responsibly administered by private enterprises, at the highest bid?

You answered

Ted, what do you mean by "illegitimate"?

Do you mean the purchase was outside the powers granted the U.S. federal government by the Constitution?

Do you mean that France did not own the land they were selling?

Or do you mean something else?

This is not a pop-quiz or a trick question, Jim, and I am not interested in whether you happen to agree with my definition, but rather I want you to define "legitimate" yourself when you answer. And the second question ("Given that the purchase was made") applies whether legitimate or not.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 3/17, 5:31pm)

Post 21

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 5:48pm

Wait - Minarchy is an unstable form of government? Compared to what? Other governments are not "stable" either. Name a form of desirable and stable government then?

Post 22

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 5:53pm

Ted, I was trying to determine what you meant by "illegitimate", since that could have various meanings in this context, so I could answer the question you posed.

My answer? It doesn't matter. The Lousiana Purchase happened a long time ago, and property rights to that property have been established, and it would be thoroughly disruptive, not to mention unjust, to void all those titles and start from scratch.

That question is very similar to all the pissed off native Hawaiians longing for "restoring" the Kingdom of Hawaii on the theory that the overthrow of the monarchy was illegitimate, and thus all the title to the land is thus invalid.

At some point a statute of limitations has to kick in.

Post 23

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 5:59pm

Kurt -- ANY form of government is unstable, since the people running it change over time, and will try to "reform" it to their own ends.

I think minarchies, while they last, are a desirable form of government compared to what we have now. But, name one minarchy that hasn't deteriorated into something closer to a "maxarchy", bit by bit, thus the comment about the instability.

Post 24

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 6:07pm

Jim, I am asking you to think in principles. I am not particularly interested in the LA Purchase per se, but it is a good example of the state acquiring a large amount of non-privately held land. Why don't you pretend it does matter, and answer me within the context of your prior statements, rather than finding ad hoc reasons with each post not to answer me?

You said "I've got no problem with people who own an asset setting terms and conditions and rules for others who want to use their asset. It's more the enormous scope of public assets -- the UNNECESSARY scope of assets that could easily be privatized -- that I object to."

So, I repeat:

(1) Was the Louisiana Purchase illegitimate?

(2) Given that the purchase was made, until such time as private parties should wish to acquire all the land of the Louisiana Purchase at some reasonable rate, would it not be legitimate for the land to be held in public trust, so long as it was responsibly administered by private enterprises, at the highest bid?

(Edited by Ted Keer on 3/17, 6:13pm)

Post 25

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 6:29pm

Steve, in post 19, you malign near anarcho-capitalism by comparing it to organized crime, when those descriptions could in fact more aptly apply to most monopolistic government as actually practiced. Whereas, what I described amounts to the equivalent of insurance companies competing against each other. Apparently you prefer a government monopoly of force, to a free market of competing providers of personal security offering you coverage you can accept or decline. We disagree on whether competition results in better outcomes than a gang of elites imposing their views on us without our consent. I believe the former, you the latter.

Further rebuttals:

Governments often have meetings to form non-aggression pacts against one another -- none are binding, as the experience of Stalin with his pact with Hitler illustrates. Intergovernmental pacts are only as good as the intention of both parties to adhere to them.

government-run gang warfare - If SCOTUS rules against your rights, there is no higher court with authority to appeal to for the person accused of aggressing. And, like a gang, a monopolistic government tries to force you to give them money without your consent, under the threat of harming you.

"The agreement upon the NIOF terms is pure fantasy - they came into being and are guaranteed by what? Blank-out." The Constitution came into being because a group of fed-up people revolted against the existing government. That piece of paper is guaranteed against being ignored or reinterpreted only by people who fight to maintain it against those who would creatively interpret it to fit their own means. And if you stand up to some of the current usurpations of our rights by our monopoly government, you can easily become an outlaw.

So, yes, a group of what amounts to insurance companies could formulate the equivalent of a Constitution, except one based on a formal recognition of, and adherence to, the NIOF principle, in much the same way the original U.S. Constitution came into being. And as for your desire for a guarantee -- nothing is forever guaranteed against encroachments. It takes generation after generation fighting against the forces of statism to prevent them from reasserting that malignant principle.

"It is a form of cultural relativism to brand all governments as the same - and not recognize the fact that some forms of government are the enemies of NIOF and of peace while others are not."

Strawman. I did not engage in such cultural relativism. All existing governments are, to a greater or lesser extent, enemies of NIOF. Some, like the U.S. government, adhere to at least some portions of NIOF. Some, like North Korea, are hellholes that completely ignore NIOF. There is a gradation between these two poles, with many points in between represented by various governments. Not one government in existence actually practices the NIOF principle in full. The Constitution and Bill of Rights was a good, rough approximation of NIOF, but huge chunks of those documents have de facto been nullified or changed for the worse.

Human beings are not angelic, and any form of governance that assumes they must be in order to work is destined for failure.

Post 26

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 7:10pm

Ted -- not sure what you are driving at. Until I know what you mean by "illegitimate" -- until I know what the heck you want answered -- it is really difficult to give a detailed answer. I genuinely don't know what you are getting at, and am genuinely seeking clarification. This is not "finding ad hoc reasons with each post not to answer me".

Take two at trying to answer what I think you might be asking:

1) "Was the Louisiana Purchase illegitimate?"

I'm not a Constitutional expert, but I'm not aware of any provision in the Constitution that specifically empowers the federal government to buy large tracts of land such as what occurred in the Louisiana Purchase. From a googling of this issue, I got this quote:

"Jefferson was astounded when presented with the details of the purchase. He had severe doubts about the constitutionality of acquiring land through purchase because the Constitution did not address that issue. However, he feared that Napoleon would change his mind if America waited to ratify a constitutional amendment. Demonstrating great flexibility, Jefferson ignored party considerations and submitted the treaty to the Senate where it was overwhelmingly ratified."

So, if by "illegitimate" you mean "does not adhere to the strict limitations on expressly granted powers of the federal government laid out in the Constitution", then by that definition it was illegitimate -- though in my opinion, it was nonetheless a wise move by Jefferson.

2) "Given that the purchase was made, until such time as private parties should wish to acquire all the land of the Louisiana Purchase at some reasonable rate, would it not be legitimate for the land to be held in public trust, so long as it was responsibly administered by private enterprises, at the highest bid?"

There appear to be some unwarranted assumptions embedded in this question, so let me try and address them.

First, currently there ARE plenty of private parties that "WISH to acquire all the land of the Louisiana Purchase at some reasonable rate" piece by piece, but I'm not aware that the federal government has any intention whatsoever of accommodating those wishes. Quite a lot of that land is not up for sale any time in the foreseeable future.

Second, "ALL the land"? You mean sell off the roads, the land under public buildings, the public parks, and every other scrap of land within the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase currently owned by the federal government? I wasn't aware you were such an anarcho-capitalistic devotee, Ted. ;) Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by "all".

Third, again, I don't know what you mean by "legitimate" here. If you mean "Constitutional", I'm not aware of any specific defined powers of the federal government to own such vast tracts of land, and especially for the many blatantly unconstitutional purposes many parcels of it are being used for.

If we were to stipulate that the federal government should act in strict accordance with the Constitution in order to be "legitimate", then IMO the proper action to bring the feds into compliance would be to sell off all the land that is not being used for a purpose strictly allowed it by said document, not rent or lease it out. I'm not aware of any Constitutional provision that allows the federal government to be a landlord renting out land.

Post 27

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 7:13pm

Jim,

I'm sympathetic to some of what you say, e.g., competing agencies of enforcement and protection. We have that now, to a limited degree. But I think Ted raises a good point as well. How do private parties acquire ownership of previously unowned land? There have to be some criteria -- some rules -- for doing so. The Homestead Act during the American frontier was one example. Quoting from Rand's article, "The Property Status of Airwaves,"

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

The only place I would part company with Ted is his suggestion that private parties would bid on the land, i.e., pay for it. The government, as a custodian, does not own the land and should not therefore be able to charge money for its acquisition. But you get the main point, right? -- that there has to be some agency that sets the rules and oversees their enforcement. That agency is the government. Whatever you want to call such a system, I wouldn't call it "anarchism" or "anarcho-capitalism."

- Bill

Post 28

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 7:40pm

Bill -- thanks for clarifying what you think Ted was driving at. Perhaps I was being more than ordinarily obtuse about what he was inquiring about. Re: the issue you raised: "How do private parties acquire ownership of previously unowned land? There have to be some criteria -- some rules -- for doing so."

I either don't understand or I don't agree with your assertion, "The government, as a custodian, does not own the land". I work in state government, and I can assure you that the politicians here repeatedly assert the state's ownership of land, and the federal government does likewise. And, in the case of the Louisiana Purchase that Ted brought up, the federal government formally purchased the land, which would certainly seem to make them the owner of that land.

So, my POV is that other than really remote places like Antarctica or the moon, every scrap of land on earth is owned (or claimed) by some public or private entity, however much one might dispute the legitimacy or lack thereof of any specific governmental claim of ownership. The best way IMO for public owners -- governments -- to dispose of such lands and allow private parties to acquire ownership is to put them up for bid to the highest bidder. This approach creates the highest value for the land -- and Objectivists are all about not sacrificing higher values for lesser values -- and discourages the rent-seeking behavior involved in "giving" it away.

If that was the question Ted was driving at all along, hopefully this answers it, rather than provoking a crescendo of follow up questions.

Post 29

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 8:08pm

Bill -- re: this assertion: "But you get the main point, right? -- that there has to be some agency that sets the rules and oversees their enforcement. That agency is the government. Whatever you want to call such a system, I wouldn't call it "anarchism" or "anarcho-capitalism." "

I do understand, and agree with the POV, that there needs to be some form of rules and means of enforcing them. I understand the classic Objectivist POV that this is best done by a minarchy, and that this POV regards anarcho-capitalism as literally impossible to implement.

I don't, however, agree with sentiments in the last sentence above. I believe that it is possible to generate workable, enforceable rules by a more bottom-up, "spontaneous order" process than the top-down monopolistic government approach espoused by the classical Objectivist POV.

I agree that CURRENTLY that agency, in many instances, is the government. But, even a brief bout of reflection would allow you to recall the many ways in which parts of our society generates rules and effective enforcement without government's heavy hand.

For example, in the recent tsunami alert in Hawaii, a bunch of people including my family fled for protection from this (as it turns out, largely illusory) threat. In our particular instance, via a series of phone calls we arranged to meet up with some friends at the hairpin turn on the Pali, where a bunch of groggy people from 3 am and on managed to allocate the available space for parking cars, provide entertainment, cook meals and distribute them, and in general cooperate and create a workable and friendly sharing of available resources without any government involvement. In fact, the government sent some people out to break up this efficient spontaneously generated setup, but in an uncommon burst of common sense the officers who cruised by the scene saw it was working well and harmoniously and left us alone.

That is, at best government is a hired proxy that acts as a subcontracted provider of services that people could arrange for on their own if they so desired, and is not an absolute necessity that can't be dispensed with, and in fact often acts as an oppressor that doesn't even perform these delegated tasks.

Post 30

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 8:49pm

Jim,

You said that I "...malign near anarcho-capitalism by comparing it to organized crime..." No. I malign the relatively more honest organized crime by comparing it to the bizarre and dishonest recipe for disaster proposed by anarchists. The phrase "anarcho-capitalism" is self-maligning. And a contradiction in terms since you could never have capitalism under any form of anarchy.
------------

You say, "...what I described amounts to the equivalent of insurance companies competing against each other." Not unless your typical insurance company "competes" with guns and uses force not persuasion.
------------

You have never given a satisfactory answer to the vital question that anarchy must answer, and can't. How do you have FREE market competition when you don't have a FREE market. A free market requires the enforcement of a single set of laws based upon individual rights to create the environment where FREE (free of force) market transactions can take place.
-------------

Writing to me, you said, "...you prefer a government monopoly of force..." and the answer is yes, in that I insist on a single set of laws based upon individual rights and not a chaotic anything goes competition to rob or kill - there is no protection for individual rights beyond my gang against yours or everybody defend them selves when you can have competing sets of laws - that treats objective law based upon individual rights as equivalent to subjective law or just whims backed by force. To be more precise, I say that force can be outsourced, privatized, etc. But the law that it has to answer to can not be.
---------------

You said, "I did not engage in such cultural relativism [refer to my statement in #19]. All existing governments are, to a greater or lesser extent, enemies of NIOF." Minarchy is the exception to that, but you ignore it. And, you have conveniently ignored the point these different governments have jurisdiction over individual geographic areas. Only the Utopian wonders of the world like Somalia have competing sets of laws inside of the same geographic boundary.
-----------------

As long as you think that there can be any kind of bottom-up, spontaneous evolution or ordering of a market place that will provide the best form of "governing" by evolving what works best for people, despite the cultural presence of initiatory force as openly permitted (no single set of laws), you will be deaf to all of the arguments for minarchy and continue to try to mash everything to fit that concept. But the problem is that this cannot work. Market place evolutionary pressures and the resulting changes are all adaptations to existing conditions. All of the resulting changes will not change the very base of the conditions. You can't evolve NIOF out of initiated force. Saying that "It is in people's interest to honor NIOF" is begging the question, and it is a futile and historically proven non-starter. You can't give initiatory force an equal status with freedom as the two competing forces - not at the political level - not if you want freedom.

Post 31

Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 2:35pm

I wrote (to Jim), "But you get the main point, right? -- that there has to be some agency that sets the rules and oversees their enforcement. That agency is the government. Whatever you want to call such a system, I wouldn't call it 'anarchism' or 'anarcho-capitalism'."

Jim replied,

I do understand, and agree with the POV, that there needs to be some form of rules and means of enforcing them. I understand the classic Objectivist POV that this is best done by a minarchy, and that this POV regards anarcho-capitalism as literally impossible to implement.

I don't, however, agree with sentiments in the last sentence above. I believe that it is possible to generate workable, enforceable rules by a more bottom-up, "spontaneous order" process than the top-down monopolistic government approach espoused by the classical Objectivist POV.

Suppose that someone disagrees with the rules set up by a particular agency and wants to claim a right to the ownership of a stretch of land or of a natural resource without performing the stipulated work or production necessary to earn it. If he tries to claim a right to the land without fulfilling the requirements of ownership, who is to stop him? Do we then have rival agencies or "governments" vieing for the right to enforce their particular rules in preference to those of other agencies or governments? Don't you need a uniform set of laws in order to avoid this kind of conflict?

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/18, 2:39pm)

Post 32

Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 6:31pm

Jim: "I am in favor of having a uniform body of "laws" strictly limited to addressing NIOF violations. This does not necessarily imply a government, at least not in the sense that the word government is used now, nor does it imply a monopoly on the use of protective force against aggression, nor does it imply "laws" in the sense we use that term now."

A uniform body of laws logically implies one government in a given area that establishes that single body of laws and, following an objectively defined procedure, uses retaliatory force against individuals who violate any of them. Defensive force during a physical attack is legal for anyone, which is why that task may be delegated to a third party.
(Edited by Jon Trager on 3/18, 6:34pm)

(Edited by Jon Trager on 3/19, 1:47pm)

Post 33

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 5:23am

Jim:

Your Hawaii example was an illustration of 'self-government', not an argument for any form of anarchy, right?

There was a theory at one point that the American experiment was an experiment in 'self-government.'

The current noise, emanating from the center, is an encouraging sign that folks are realizing that our experiment has atrophied from 'self-government' into a 'government.'

Something more akin to a soft fascism, a crony cozying up by interests of all types, including business interests, to the guns of government. The inbred crony connections between Wall Street and K-Street can't even be hidden any longer.

Which is a far cry from a self-organizing group of people just trying to live their lives under some set of decent principles. The principles evident at the CronyFest amount to labor leader A. Philip Randolph's "At Nature's Table, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, you keep what you can hold." IOW, the jungle, a graceless, clawing mess. That is some men's view of 'government' in our mixed modernity.

Any concept of 'government' in modernity -- even self-government -- needs an underlying principle, or axiom, or even 'self-government' is retaken over by the jungle and the same old tribal nonsense. If we could get that right, then the rest would easily follow. Another example of Wolfram's NKS. (From simple rules, complexity.) When those simple rules are missing or ad-hoc, we still get the complexity. And, we got the complexity, a Hellin'.

In the gedanken of FredianoLand, I've long ago hypothesized my own utopic axiom: "One skin, one driver." Neither one skin uber alles(crime), nor most skins uber alles(statism.)

I shudder at all the non-utopic alternatives which have evolved spontaneously.

regards,
Fred

Post 34

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 1:02pm

On the Regulation of Public Property

First, to address the Louisiana Purchase, I hold that it was both constitutionally legitimate and in the national interest. That it was in the national interest is obvious, given that it increased the value of land in the west bordering the Misssissippi and its tributaries, given that it acquired New Orleans, securing the mouth of the Mississippi, and given that it removed the threat of a future hostile European power on the plains.

While I do believe it would have been better if the constitution had dealt explicitly with provisions for the acquisition of territory, Jefferson's making the purchase was legitimate. The Constitution makes provision for the regulation of territories by the congress. It makes provision for the admission of future states. And it allows the ratification of treaties with foreign powers. There is no prohibition of expansion beyond the national boundaries set by the Treaty of Paris. There is no limitation of the regulation of territories to the regulation of the North West Territory. One of the traditionally accepted types of treaties, not forbidden to congress, would be the cession of land by conquest. The acquisition of the North West territories from Britain as part of the Treaty of Paris fits that mold. It would seem bizarre that the Constitution would make provision for the future acquisition of territories and admission of states but not include the implied power to purchase land peacefully.

As for the public ownership of land, the only way I can interpret Bill's stance is not that he denies it in fact, but that he prefers to describe it as something other than ownership.

Publicly held land should ideally be privatized, but on favorable terms. For example, land that has not been given away or sold below market value to private persons can be held as reserve by the treasury for future sale at a profit or in order to face fiscal emergency. (One wonders what the market value of all federally held land is now, and how selling it could be used to pay against the national debt.) It is absurd to require that publicly held land be given away to private interests at below market prices simply because one holds that in principle land should be privately held. The principle that land should ideally be privately held does not override the principle that the government is not a charity. If land is given away or sold below cost, the effect is to enrich certain private interests, likely those with pull, at a loss to the treasury and hence to the citizenry at large.

Public property would hence be of two types, lands that are used for legitimate public buildings and agencies such as the military and courthouses. Such lands should be managed, so far as possible, by qualified lowest bidders who satisfy contractual terms set by the legislature. Other public property such as as yet unsold land which may be wastelands or so forth should again be managed by private agencies which promise the treasury the highest return on the value of the land, whether through actual sale or, if such is not possible at a reasonable return, the use of the land for grazing, hunting, recreation and so forth.

The private ownership of land is ideal, but not at a loss to the public.

Post 35

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 1:21pm

Bill,

You said, "The government, as a custodian, does not own the land and should not therefore be able to charge money for its acquisition." Granted that "public ownership" is a problem and different in principle from private ownership, but even if you call the government a custodian, they still have the right to sell. For example, a court house is not going to be used any more in a city that has grown and will be moving those functions to a new, larger city center building. Certainly that city government should get the best price possible for the old court house and use the funds to reduce the need for future taxation by that amount. What we need are restrictions and disincentives for government acquiring more property - expanding, but fewer restrictions and incentives for them getting rid of property at the best price (shrinking government). The custodian, if you will, would be exchanging a capital asset for a liquid asset - not, by itself, an issue that I find objectionable. And if they apply that cash to the operating expenses, reducing the need to borrow, print or tax, I'm very happy.

I don't think that government should be holding any land for a long time unless it is in use serving an appropriate government function (White house, court houses, military bases, etc.) It's custodial function for land not in such use should be limited to getting rid of that land at the best price possible.

Post 36

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 2:04pm

Custodianship means custodianship on someone's behalf. To say that the government is the custodian of land implies that it is the custodian for the public. The government has no more right to give away the public's land for free than does a thief have the right to take it without paying.

The fallacy here is the same one I have mentioned before. The government in a republic is not some other agency separate from the people. The government in a republic is like Soylent Green. It's people. The government is the people.

Post 37

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 2:25pm

The government 'is' the people, but if it is constitutionally limited, then it is also an agency somewhat separated from the people. Because it cannot do all of the things that they, in an unlimited, majority-rules democratic expression of will could do.

Land (or any asset) in the hands of the government should be auctioned to the highest bidder if it is not related to the protection of individual rights and the money used to pay down debt or reduce taxes.

Buying land for the expansion of the geographical area that makes up our nation is really an additional and somewhat separate issue. If some country, say Finland, or Taiwan, or Canada applied to become a territory of the United States what would be the principles we would apply to answering that question?

Post 38

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 2:47pm

Does the fact that it is constitutionally limited require the government to offload public property at a loss, or at below market value?

If the government holds land which cannot be sold at a reasonable value but which can be managed, say, as grazing land, by a private agency which bids to pay the treasury for that right, until such time as the land can be sold for a good return, is this somehow a violation of my rights? Of yours?

There is no right to force the government to offload public land which is not a drain on the treasury simply because the mere notion offends absolutists. Selling public land at a loss would be the only real crime.

Post 39

Friday, March 19, 2010 - 4:27pm