Two Conflicts of Mine Relative to Objectivism

Can Anyone Define Zollverein?

This discussion, minus historical context and understanding of current law as regards property in land and the concepts of easements, variances, and rights of way, etc., is a mere congregation of floating abstractions. I suppose reality would be much more manageable were it all included in those non-fiction books published by Rand during her lifetime. Unfortunately, it isn't.

Defining feudalism ad hoc as an economic system (and hence placing my assertion outside the discussion) is about as valid as the liberal tendency to define freedom as freedom in the intellectual sphere, economic liberty be damned, and the conservative tendency to do the converse. Feudalism and Capitalism are not merely political nor merely economic systems, but involve both economic and government structures.

The private ownership of all land is not minarchist capitalism, it is feudalism.

(This map shows a relatively unified Holy Roman Empire of the 17th century.)

Ted Keer

Post 21

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 8:21am

Well, Ted, the thing is there have been cases of private highways in human history. In England, during the 19th century, factory towns needed roads to get their goods out to port. The governments and counties didn't get a crap, so the factory owners built the roads themselves. I believe a few did charge for passage, but the majority didn't, because it wasn't profitable, nor was it profitable to block anyone from access to these roads. Roads, private or public, are the consequence of necessary infrastructure. And such infrastructure operates best when left open. In many cases, this would fall under the Bazaard model of open source software, where the largest number of individuals contribute, freely, the advancement and production of the given product, in this case, the roads.

Also, many suburban projects build their own roadways. The only difference is that they turn them over to the government after completion unless this is a gate community. And we know how well the government maintains roads, which is rather poorly. And they do favor one company over another, not because of efficiently, low cost, and better results. Rather, because that company lines the pockets of that government (here in Wichita, we had that problem with a local company called Cornejo and Sons, which magically got the majority of road and highway work in the city despite the vast number of road construction companies situated here). I suspect, that a private model, like I said before, would become open, where individuals could buy in and out of the "road fund," where a large number of companies and individuals would funnel their funds, and a large set of contractors could be selected based on merit and not on government kick backs. It could even be instituted within the government as well, and still provide the same benefit of more efficient road building and maintanence. But I could be wrong.

-- Brede

Post 22

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 10:39am

Merriam Webster's Law Dictionary Costs Less Than $20.00

I have no opposition to private toll roads. Since I have no opposition to private property, how could I? My concern is with the concept of the right of way. Under a minarchist system, law enforcement must have access to any property (with a warrant) without having to get special permission to pass through other properties to get there. Under common law plots of land may not be subdivided in such a way that they do not either border on an existing public right of way or create an easement of necessity establishing a new right of way. Merriam Webster's law dictionary costs less than $20.00

As for the maintenance of roads, that is a separate issue, and I have said that contracting such out is no problem.

Until someone invalidates the concepts of the commons and the right of way, which Rand implicitly accepted by saying such things as that actual air polluters could be punished for real pollution, I don't believe there is any need to make a further argument on my behalf. Rand worked from the premise of reforming the current system, and she admitted that she did not have her own full or original theory of jurisprudence. Until someone does come up with such, common law and (strictly) constitutional law should be treated as valid until proven invalid.

One simply cannot begin with no historical knowledge, no knowledge of the law as it stands, and the incorrect premise that all property must be private and build anything other than a floating abstraction.

Ted Keer

Post 23

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 12:22pm

There is little thought given here on the subject of right-of-way of how people would behave and organize themselves under a minarchist state. First, the population is mobile and tend to congregate in areas where they have common values with their neighbors � witness the Mormons in Utah. They tend to stay in their state and non-Mormons tend to stay away, as I did when I was relocating. That was also the case for me with the Deep South with their hard-line Christianity.

I believe that if a minarchy was established that very big developers would begin to buy up existing tracts and also undeveloped ones. They would act as local governments do now but without any direction from those who lived under their purview. Their only motive would be profit but in order to realize it they would have to provide services that would satisfy their customers. So, in each limited area there would be a legion of temporary monopolies providing police, fire services, etc. with no impediment of access to private residences or commercial establishments. The developer would replace services that weren't cost-effective when their contracts run out.

People would move to areas where the developers would give them the best value. The free market.

I envisage a whole nation built on this model. Could NewYork or other big cities have such a giant scheme? I don't know. Maybe someone else can resolve that.

I see this kind of action every day in my small (6,000 population) community just outside of Santa Fe. We have covenants that restrict many small details of house appearance. People bought here because they liked how the houses blended into the desert landscape � I'm sure others stayed away in droves, but nobody here has reason to complain on that account. On the other hand, socialists took over the water utility and are really, really botching it up. As the rates increase this will deter some from locating here and others will gravitate away to more affordable areas.

Sam

Post 24

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 4:18pm

Guys, thanks for the very thoughtful responses to my post. I'm in the process of digesting and considering the information and opinions presented.

Post 25

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 5:13pm

And if a billionaire were interested in profiting off his
pristine expanse of land, he sure wouldn't turn into a small-income generating park; he't turn it into a full-fledged commercial development, thus ruining, or at least severly compromising, the natural beauty and energy of the land.

Ronald,

There's something about this idea, the idea that if someone were rich enough to buy a national park, that they'd have no desire whatsoever to share it with anyone. I'm not talking about the kind of sharing we understand from the Bible. I'm talking about the kind of sharing that makes "good" worthwhile.

Humans are especially social. Only those with mental disorders enjoy loneliness. It wouldn't be possible to enjoy a national park completely alone for very long. I just isn't possible. A normal person would crave to share it with whomever could appreciate it with him/her.

The idea that some human being would buy a national park to destroy it is non-sense. The idea that one would buy it for hoarding is also non-sense. Ideas like this are offshoots of Christian dogma: Humans are depraved at the core, and will destroy one another if not for some grander scheme.

I'll have more time soon, but I'm crazy busy right now. My point is that the state isn't the only entity that appreciates the natural world, and thus must make way for popular appreciation. We all want to share what we love with others.

Post 26

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 6:20pm

This discussion, minus historical context and understanding of current law as regards property in land and the concepts of easements, variances, and rights of way, etc., is a mere congregation of floating abstractions.

To say that all property should be privately owned is simply to say that a product should belong to its producer or to whomever the producer passes title voluntarily. As Rand so eloquently puts it, "The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave." How does an understanding of the legal and historical context regarding easements, variances and rights of way enable us to pass judgment on that principle? Are you suggesting that the morality of property rights and therefore of slavery can be evaluated by an understanding of legal precedent regarding the ownership of land?

I suppose reality would be much more manageable much were it all included in those non-fiction books published by Rand during her lifetime. Unfortunately, it isn't.

And I suppose that your posts would be much more manageable if they included less sarcasm and more argument. Unfortunately, they don't.

Defining feudalism ad hoc as an economic system (and hence placing my assertion outside the discussion) is about as valid as the liberal tendency to define freedom as freedom in the intellectual sphere, economic liberty be damned, and the conservative tendency to do the converse. Feudalism and Capitalism are not merely political nor merely economic systems, but involve both economic and government structures.

The private ownership of all land is not minarchist capitalism, it is feudalism.

First of all, it is not essential to (laissez-faire) capitalism that all land be privately owned; what is essential is that all property be privately owned, which simply means that the producer has the right to the product of his effort. Unowned land may still exist, if it has yet to be used for a productive purpose.

Secondly, even if all land were privately owned in the sense that those who used it for a productive purpose acquired ownership of it, this would not be an example of feudalism.

Feudalism was a system in which Roman emperors granted land to nobles in exchange for their loyalty. These lands were not the rightful property of the emperors, who acquired them by force instead of by the application of productive labor, and they did not therefore become the rightful property of the nobles. Instead of legitimate private property, these parcels of land were the moral equivalent of government largess.

Furthermore, under feudalism, most of the serfs who worked the land for the lords who "owned" it could not leave without buying their freedom, and in most cases did not have the money or resources to do so. Hence, their lives were not much better than those of chattel slaves.

To call the kind of system that Rand advocates -- one in which everyone has a property right to the product of his effort -- "feudalism" is worse than false. It is a disgraceful misrepresentation of the moral meaning of capitalism.

- Bill

(Edited by William Dwyer on 10/11, 11:48pm)

Post 27

Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 6:43pm

OK, here's a scenario. In the transition period to a minarchy, I, Sam Gigabucks and my friends Bill Wampum, Ted Filthylucre and Joe Gottabundle, all successful investors, get together and form a consortium. Because of our reputation there are thousands of other small investors who join us. We look at the little community of Eldorado and scrutinize the balance sheets of the municipality and make an offer to the local council for the purchase of all the publicly funded infrastructure such as the local roads, sewerage system, water utility, etc. that don't have a component that the Federal government would control after the transition. We would take into account the bonded municipal debt (presumably less than the value of the assets we would take over.) The council would present the offer to the electorate in the form of a referendum. We would promote our proposal on the basis that we could run the municipality far better than those who had no monetary interest, i.e. the incumbents, and that, even though we would be making a handsome profit, they would be more than pleased with the result.

After the take-over we would charge access fees for our roads � with modern technology it's not cumbersome. We'd set fees for utilities and so on, just as elected managers do now. In fact, this whole take-over could be done tomorrow if it weren't for the regulations imposed by county, state and Federal governments requiring elections for municipalities.

If there were an excess of the amount bid over and above the municipal debt the remainder could be apportioned to individual residents according to some "fair" formula such as the amount of taxes they paid in the last 5 years.

Other consortia could bid for county roads, portions of Interstate highways and so on until all the publicly owned, non-minarchical assets are in the hands of investors.

Where would all this capital come from? Well, I and my buddies have a bundle and so do the smaller investors but the bulk would come from the existing bond holders � individuals and institutions. They would be paid off and those funds would then be freed to join the new investments.

Sam

(Edited by Sam Erica on 10/11, 6:47pm)

Post 28

Friday, October 12, 2007 - 1:51pm

Bill,

SANCTIONS!

Friday, October 12, 2007 - 5:11pm

Competing governments is what we have had and currently have. Competing governments means war -- that's how governments compete. Competing governments have absolutely nothing to do with anarcho-capitalism. Anyone who claims that competing governments is in any way an aspect of anarcho-capitalism merely demonstrates his ignorance of anarcho-capitalism. This includes Rand.

Post 30

Friday, October 12, 2007 - 9:47pm

Rick Pasotto writes:

Competing governments is what we have had and currently have. Competing governments means war -- that's how governments compete. Competing governments have absolutely nothing to do with anarcho-capitalism. Anyone who claims that competing governments is in any way an aspect of anarcho-capitalism merely demonstrates his ignorance of anarcho-capitalism. This includes Rand.

As I understand it, what Rand means by "competing governments" is the enforcement or attempted enforcement of different legal systems within the same geographical area, which I think, is a fair characterization of anarcho-capitalism. Rick can correct me if I'm wrong, but according to anarcho-capitalism, no system of law or justice should have a monopoly over a given area of jurisdiction, on the grounds that any such monopoly would constitute a government.

What anarcho-capitalists are overlooking, however, is that insofar as there exists an agency that seeks to define and enforce a code of laws, that agency is acting as a government. Therefore, if more than one such agency is operating within the same geographical area, which is what anarcho-capitalists advocate, then each of these agencies is a de facto government, because it is attempting to enforce its own code of laws in opposition to the other agencies, which are attempting to enforce theirs. The result is a state of competing governments, whether anarcho-capitalists would refer to it in those terms or not.

- Bill

Post 31

Saturday, October 13, 2007 - 4:25pm

You can look up my prior posting here from a year or so, I think, in which I describe exactly how and from whom Rand got that term "competing governments."

In brief, it was created and used for a short period of time in the 60's by Andrew J. Galambos, founder of the Free Enterprise Institute, a radical capitalist school and think-tank at one point larger than NBI at its peak. Galambos traveled to NY to meet Rand to discuss filming Atlas Shrugged. In the course of their discussion, he described his own theory of how to efficiently organize a truly free society, which he called "competing governments." He told me that Rand said that she found the concept interesting and was willing to consider the idea he in more detail.

Then Galambos, being who he was - absolutely oblivious to the emotional impact on otheres of anything he ever said or did, told Rand that his only caveat for filming Atlas Shrugged was that THIS TIME they get a decent screenwriter, so that it wouldn't be BOTCHED like "The Fountainhead."

End of discussion. End of any serious examination of "competing governments" by Rand. Publication of what is the closest thing to a pure emotional tirade, I think, that Rand ever wrote. And, finally, a virtually religious division of the objectivist movement, as the ideas promoted by Rothbard and other anarcho-capitalists spread through the proto-libertarian movement.

BTW, here's an interesting piece on the subject which appears to resolve many of the difficulties of the competing governments position by pointing out simple errors in people's assumptions: http://members.aol.com/REBissell/mmGovernment73.html

Post 32

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 11:12am

Short of 'underground' and bartering, all economic 'systems' are political systems; took me a while to see that 'Capitalism' is a political system defined by the economics it's always superficially seen only as.

Re 'feudalism', doesn't that require living-on-the-land 'serfs'? If not, then Microsoft is as fuedal as you can get; the serfs just aren't required to live there.

LLAP
J:D

Post 33

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 12:10pm

Short of 'underground' and bartering, all economic 'systems' are political systems

Actually, don't you have that backwards? Can you have any political system which is not economic?

Post 34

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 1:26pm

Phil,

I read the essay by Roger Bissell, which you linked in your post. Even though I have great respect for Roger, who happens to be a close friend, I disagree with his analysis. The example he gives of the U.S. and Canada cooperating in order to avoid a conflict over legal issues arising on the border separating these two countries does not vindicate the anarcho-capitalist model from Rand's criticism.

Yes, it is possible for the two countries to cooperate in solving a legal conflict. But in reaching a cooperative decision, both legal systems have in effect merged into one. There is essentially one rule of law operating here -- which is what a governmental monopoly is designed to ensure in the first place. The purpose of a legal monopoly is precisely to avoid this kind of conflict. If the anarcho-capitalists want to say that any conflict arising between two different agencies of force would be always be resolved in a cooperative manner, then what they are advocating in effect is a legal monopoly arising from a collusive agreement.

Moreover, the enforcement of the law that these agencies ultimately agree on is assumed to be binding on anyone else who disagrees with it. To say that more than one political system can operate legitimately within the same geographical area of jurisdiction is to say that anyone can enforce whatever law he or she deems appropriate on anyone else. But if that's true, then on what grounds does a collusion of two governments enforce its version of law on a third party who disagrees with it? In that case, isn't the third party denied the right to enforce its own law?

Rand states that "a government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographic area." Roger asks, "Does exclusivity of power necessarily rule out the possibility of competing governments in the same geographical area? Does the notion of competing governments in the same geographical area even make sense?"

It makes sense only insofar as each competing government assumes the right to enforce its own laws against dissenters and will do so if it can. It does not make sense insofar as each competing government must recognize the right of other governments to compete with it, for in recognizing that right, it would have to allow other governments to enforce their laws in opposition to its own, while claiming the right to enforce its own laws in opposition to theirs. In that respect, the notion of competing governments is incoherent. But it is what the anarcho-capitalists are advocating, for they argue that a monopolistic government has no right to prevent competition from other agencies seeking to enforce a different body of law within the same geographical area.

It is in this respect that anarcho-capitalism does indeed endorse a system of "competing governments," and as such is vulnerable to Rand's criticism.

- Bill

Post 35

Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 4:40pm

Ayn Rand said that she wanted to see complete laissez faire capitalism, including private roads, private post offices and private schools.

See here, near the close of the 3rd installment:
MIKE WALLACE'S 1959 Interview of Ayn Rand in three parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-pHxlwFgOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wsr768hdk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poUSQ4L8pY

Railroads successfully managed the problem of owning the roadbed and leasing the right of way -- even to one's competitors.

Despite the confusions caused by public ownership, airports are another example of privatized transportation.

If "roads" (per se and so-called) had not been built by governments, then other forms of travel might have been implemented in other ways: personal air vehicles, for instance, or roadless groundcars (surface effect; air cushion; maglev).

Electronic transmission might be far more advanced than physical transportation. Futurists of the 19th century saw the telegraph and telephone as offering services that never came to fruition. "Telephotos were facsimiles that were possible via dit-dah-dit 60 years before they actually were implemented by newspapers. Imagine if everyone home had a fax machine in 1930... I believe that it was September 1929 that RCA ran an ad on the back of Scientific American offering television. Television via selenium crystal array had been demonstrated by 1890. Television was simulated in Charlie Chaplain's Modern Times (1936) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

With the possible exception of Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll," (which had a different point, entirely), superhighways were the delusions of Adolph Hitler and Judge Doom (from Roger Rabbit). Surface roads have their place in the transportation matrix, but does what we have today seem rational to you?

Year	Fatalities	Vehicle Miles	Rate/100M Vehicle Miles
1957	38,702	646,915	5.98

1967

51,559

965,132

5.34

1977

47,878

1,467,027

3.26

1987

46,385

1,921,000

2.41

1997

41,967

2,560,373

1.64

Addenda: Total 2003 = 42,884; 2004 = 42,636

I guess you might say that after 50 years and two generations, we only kill the same 40,000 every year, though the population has increased from 200 million to 300 million and we are all driving a lot more, getting in good practice on those 30-, 60-, and 90-minute commutes (as if that were rational), so the percentages are improving, i.e., more people are actually learning how to drive...

Instead of being crammed together in cities and suburbs, we might be more thinly distributed with aircraft the dominant mode of transport. Human-powered flight today is where the steam engine was in 1750.

The original Gossamer Albatross is best known for completing the first completely human powered flight across the English Channel on June 12, 1979. Dr. Paul McCready was later awarded the most prestigious prize in American aviation, the Collier Trophy for his work in the record breaking project.
http://www.byrongliding.com/gossamer_albatross.htm

Just imagine!

(The belief that you "own" all property rights in a spherical wedge from the center of the Earth through your home and out to infinity ... and beyond... is mystical nonsense.)

We are locked into petroleum, rubber and asphalt for reasons that have nothing to do with the physics of transportation. Think about this: The Romans lacked an industry of road maintenance lobbying their Senate, so they built roads to last without constant reworking... some of them are still in use... 2000 years later, how are those government highway departments doing? Oh, they are fine! It's just the roads that suck.

Post 36

Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 9:17am

If Roads did not Exist, Could we Shoot Down Air-Cars?

I do not have they time at present to address all the posts on this thread since my last, but I think Michael Marotta's last post shows some of the lack of thought behind the "no public property" position.

If there were no public roads, how would one get to the air-car store? Would air-cars be allowed to fly wherever they like, making the airspace over everyone's land an unregulated right-of-way? If the existence of air cars implies the necessity of a right of way, then is this concept then still not indispensable and indeed prior to the idea of a fully free state?

If one denies the existence of a right-of-way, then could one not simply shoot down any air-car that trespassed one's airspace?

The problem of rights of way and public property does not disappear in these arguments, it simply gets pushed back one step.

Ted Keer

Post 37

Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 2:05pm

Ted,

When will you bother to read other people's posts and actually address what they have to say?? In a previous post, I explained Rand's concept of property as the right to the product of one's (intellectual or physical) labor. Since when did people produce the air above their homes or above their land? And if they didn't produce it, then on what grounds can it be considered their property? The answer is: it can't. In fact, since no one produced it, it isn't anyone's property, private or public.

Of course, people didn't produce the land on which they live either, but to the extent that it has been altered by the present or previous owners, such as through farming, mining or other forms of development, it can be considered private property, because it is now transformed natural resources. But nothing like that has been done with the air above someone's house or land, so it makes no sense to consider it property.

Besides, "public property" is a contradiction in terms. The public cannot own property, which implies the exclusive right of use and disposal. Property implies the right of some people rather than others to determine its disposition. What is considered "public property" is really government property that has been expropriated from private owners. The government sets the terms and conditions for its use.

Now obviously, excessive noise as well as reckless endangerment can properly be prohibited. So a plane cannot buzz your house. There has to a reasonable distance between the flight path and your property, but that's not because the air is public property; it's because no one, including an airplane pilot, has a right to threaten other people's health and safety.

- Bill

Post 38

Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 6:23pm

If one denies the existence of a right-of-way, then could one not simply shoot down any air-car that trespassed one's airspace?

Whoa, I just found a context here on the ground! Did you drop it, Ted?

I have this class in cultural anthropology. I just wrote a quiz based on the journal article, "Shakespeare in the Bush" by Laura Bohannon. Before Bohannon left England, one of her British friends gave her a copy of Hamlet to read and re-read while among the Tiv of western Africa. Americans do not understand Hamlet, he said. Bohannon demurred: Hamlet is universal. Well, during the rainy season, all the men, women and children were brewing and drinking beer. She ended up drinking with some tribal elder guys and they wanted to hear about Hamlet. Funny thing, but they deny that people have eternal spirits, so they do not believe in ghosts. But they do know for a rock solid fact that witches can bring a corpse to animation: the zombi. Bohannon wants to argue the point, but they tell her: Look, we understand that you have different clothes and different marriage customs, but, really, people are the same everywhere, and when it comes to zombis, there is no argument.

So, Ted, you can claim 100 miles on a side of the open sea and if you can patrol it, you can keep it, but then there are guys with submarines that you can't get to and even if you could, people are the same everywhere. They might not believe in zombies, but they are going to think poorly of you if you go shooting people for trespassing. Someone might just do something equally reciprocal to you and if so, it just might be that no one would shed a tear.

Rights exist in nature, to be sure, but they are implemented to facilitate human action. You go shooting air-cars and you are going to be in a world of hurt. Guaran-fucking-teed. Now, if the air-cars killed your cows or something, it might be closer to your point of view, but short of some actual damages, I think the guys with the millet beer are going to remain skeptical.

Post 39

Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 6:30pm