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Doug, I don't buy the Socratic/Lockean argument that, simply by occupying space, you have consented to anything. I deny that the State owns the land it claims, since that land was taken by aggression from the people who really own it. I believe people and groups of people own the land - not the State, who's only claim rests on aggression, brute force, and past plunder. I hold an entitlement theory of justice (cf Nozick in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"), where things are legitimately owned by a sequence of homesteading and voluntary trade/gift.

There is no fraud in keeping what you legitimately own, and refusing to give it to thieves. The claim that Hovind defrauded the State is ridiculous. I sympathize with the victims of plunder, not the plunderers.

While "love it or leave it" is usually associated with the "right," we see that "liberals" share that view. Both Doug and Barbara say that, if you want to keep what is yours and not get robbed by State, you should move. While this is weak ethics, it may be a good tactic (and why e.g. so many Americans bug out to Costa Rica). But there are other tactics, such as living "below the radar" of the State, making your assets unreachable by State, or by simply not having enough wealth to be a worthwhile victim.

Bottom line: There is no moral obligation whatsoever to pay tribute ("taxes") to the State. The consent by bodily location argument doesn't hold water. Refusing to be robbed is not fraud by natural law or any reasonable theory of justice; it is deemed fraud by of course by those who want to rob you, i.e. by decree of rulers.

ALL ownership of land originated with aggression - and nobody "really" owned it. All the original peoples knew you can't own land, which is how they were defrauded out of the land they lived on. Whether it's the state or a group of thugs, the concept of land ownership started with theft. I'd rather the state control the licensure of ownership than the local warload. I have a chance of keeping the home I'm paying for (and paying taxes on) that way.

Hogeye, you aren't simply occupying space. You are using services and protections guaranteed by the state. That guarantee is not without cost and taxes are the payment of that cost.

Hogeye wrote:Doug, I don't buy the Socratic/Lockean argument that, simply by occupying space, you have consented to anything. I deny that the State owns the land it claims, since that land was taken by aggression from the people who really own it. I believe people and groups of people own the land - not the State, who's only claim rests on aggression, brute force, and past plunder.

On your view, land can only be owned by those who:

a. inhabited the land before anyone else ever inhabited and claimed it.
b. bought land in an undisputed fashion from people in category (a) above.

No society has ever recognized these two criteria as necessary conditions for ownership of land. Can you prove that land you or your family own satisfy conditions (a) or (b)?

Hogeye wrote: While "love it or leave it" is usually associated with the "right," we see that "liberals" share that view. Both Doug and Barbara say that, if you want to keep what is yours and not get robbed by State, you should move. While this is weak ethics, it may be a good tactic (and why e.g. so many Americans bug out to Costa Rica). But there are other tactics, such as living "below the radar" of the State, making your assets unreachable by State, or by simply not having enough wealth to be a worthwhile victim.

Red Skelton's "Freddy the Freeloader" character
DOUG
But if the land is part of a state, and everyone in the society recognizes this but you, by what right can you simply "opt out" of the system? Paying taxes is society's precondition for living on that land.

After all, even those who pretend to be "below the radar" use roads, schools, libraries, etc. and take advantage of those who pay taxes. It's called freeloading, and freeloaders are always a drain on the system.

Barbara wrote:All the original peoples knew you can't own land, which is how they were defrauded out of the land they lived on.

Au contraire! Virtually all "original peoples" asserted property rights in land once it became scare. Generally, this scarcity became clear once they reached the agricultural stage, but even hunter-gatherers often had collective (tribal) ownership of hunting grounds. In American history, though much land was simply taken by force, there are some honorable exceptions: Roger Williams bought land consentually from the local tribes, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania did, too. (You're a geoist, Barbara?)

Doug> After all, even those who pretend to be "below the radar" use roads, schools, libraries, etc. and take advantage of those who pay taxes. It's called freeloading...
and similarly
Barbara> Hogeye, you aren't simply occupying space. You are using services and protections guaranteed by the state.

Yeah, right - after the State has outlawed competition and/or subsidized its own version of the service by plundered loot! By your logic, if the State puts me in a cage and occasionally provides me with bread and water, I thereby consent since I use its services for food and housing. (Then there's the issue of whether aggression is justified to prevent someone using a public good...)

Doug wrote:On your view, land can only be owned by those who:
a. inhabited the land before anyone else ever inhabited and claimed it.
b. bought land in an undisputed fashion from people in category (a) above.

That is close, but not quite my view. Your (a) is too strict, e.g. it ignores abandonment. I propose

a') Using (in some significant way) an unowned scarce good makes it legitimate property.

Sometimes land may be used and owned, but later abandoned. I don't agree with your formulation of (b) either, since it introduces the irrelevant "undisputed." What matters is whether it is voluntary, i.e. by consent. And it may be gifted rather than bought. Thus

b') A good aquired by voluntary consent from legitimate owners is legitimate property.

(Now I'll go to Nozick and see how I did...)

Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia wrote:1) a person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.

2) a person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.

3) no one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) application of 1 and 2.

BTW, here's an online summary of Nozick's entitlement theory I just found: Robert Nozick's Libertarian Framework for Utopia.

(Not too bad. Nozick doesn't attempt to simplify and encapsulate like I did, instead referring to "principle of justice in acquision/transfer." And of course he is right that the homesteading and trade issues are more complex than can be put in one sentence. And Nozick makes the recursiveness explicit with his #3.)

Doug wrote:But if the land is part of a state, and everyone in the society recognizes this but you, by what right can you simply "opt out" of the system?

("But if the land is part of a state") Petito principii. ("and everyone in the society recognizes this but you") But many people don't recognize the State's ownership; on the contrary a lot of people think they own their land. Private property (aka freehold) is incompatable with leasehold, where the State owns the land and individuals only keep it so long as they pay property taxes (lease) on it. ("Paying taxes is a precondition for living on that land.") Or a tribute extorted by the State - that is the issue under discussion. Does the State own the land, or do individuals?

Hogeye wrote:Yeah, right - after the State has outlawed competition and/or subsidized its own version of the service by plundered loot! By your logic, if the State puts me in a cage and occasionally provides me with bread and water, I thereby consent since I use its services for food and housing. (Then there's the issue of whether aggression is justified to prevent someone using a public good...)

DOUG
You aren't in a cage. You can leave. That is the very issue brought up earlier. If you don't like the way the state is set up, you are free to leave. If you stay, you are consenting to its laws. That is the way people in the United States have organized this land.

And you can't just declare that you won't participate. You DO use the roads, etc. You CAN build your own roads. That is not outlawed. You CAN have your own police force. There are thousands of private security firms. That is not outlawed.

Doug wrote:On your view, land can only be owned by those who:
a. inhabited the land before anyone else ever inhabited and claimed it.
b. bought land in an undisputed fashion from people in category (a) above.

Hogeye wrote: That is close, but not quite my view. Your (a) is too strict, e.g. it ignores abandonment.

DOUG
OK, can you show that you own land by one of these means?

Doug wrote:But if the land is part of a state, and everyone in the society recognizes this but you, by what right can you simply "opt out" of the system?

Hogeye wrote: ("But if the land is part of a state") Petito principii.

DOUG
The land IS part of the state by declaration of the members of the state. Arkansas agreed to abide by the rules of the nation. There is a state. It contains the land. Then YOU come along and somehow get land within the state that does not belong to the state. Show how this has happened.

Hogeye wrote: ("and everyone in the society recognizes this but you") But many people don't recognize the State's ownership; on the contrary a lot of people think they own their land.

DOUG
Then why do they bother to get titles to the land from the state if the state has no authority in this matter?

Hogeye wrote: Private property (aka freehold) is incompatable with leasehold, where the State owns the land and individuals only keep it so long as they pay property taxes (lease) on it.

DOUG
In our society, ownership is not leasing. People pay property taxes because those are the rules of ownership. Landowners contribute to the general welfare so people like YOU can use roads, etc. Owning land in our society does not mean that you just have it without any obligation to your society.

Hogeye wrote: ("Paying taxes is a precondition for living on that land.") Or a tribute extorted by the State - that is the issue under discussion. Does the State own the land, or do individuals?

DOUG
You have a definition of ownership that is different than what your society uses.

There are two overlapping issues here; let me clarify both. First, there is the monopolization by plunder issue. In the stateless society of the Ozark hills, before government intrusion, the early pioneers built their roads without resorting to statist plunder (aka taxation). Road builders could build roads, and charge for their use if they wanted, etc. Later, a criminal organization (i.e. that gained values by the political means rather than the economic means) came in and built roads and other amenities, generally forbidding or severely regulating competition. I fail to see how I have consented in any way to paying tribute to that organization.

Second is the free-rider issue: If someone gives me services or goods without charging me, then later claims I owe allegiance or compensation, do I really owe anything? I would say 'no;' if the giver (whether individual or firm or corporation or government) wants to be compensated, they should get my consent first. Someone can't e.g. give me a horse as a gift, and then come along later and claim that, since I benefitted, I am obliged to pay them - or that I am obliged to pay for feeding the horse.

A third point I would make is definitional. The very fact that I deny consent (and have never given consent to be robbed by the State) shows there is no consent. To claim otherwise is denying the very meaning of consent. Locke's (and your) mistake is to give lip-service to the concept of consent, and then negate the very concept by claiming that one "really" consents whether they consent or not due to some handwaving doctrine of implied consent. You claim, despite my denial of any consent, that simply occupying turf claimed by a State, that I consent to the State. Why? You claim that, despite my denial, that using amenities built by the State constitutes consent. Why? Is what sense can this be construed as consent?

The "love it or leave it" argument also seems to be flawed due to petito principii. It assumes that the State (as opposed to individuals) is rightful owner of all the land, and of the roads, etc. I deny that. I see the State as the holder of stolen goods, since everything it has was taken by conquest and plunder. It has no more rightful ownership than a fence with a bunch of stolen TVs in his garage. Your response, "The land IS part of the state by declaration of the members of the state," has no more validity than saying that the TVs are owned by the burglary ring by declaration of the burgulary ring. Specifically, neither roads or TV satisfy Nozick's criteria for entitlement.

Doug wrote:There is a state. It contains the land. Then YOU come along and somehow get land within the state that does not belong to the state.

You have it backwards. People (homesteaders) owned the land first. The State, contrary to Nozick's (1) the homesteading principle, simply decreed that it had some claim. But it neither homesteaded, nor gained legitimate ownership by voluntary trade (and in the rare case of the latter, it used stolen loot and often aggression like eminent domain to get it.)

Doug wrote:Can you show that you own land by one of these [Nozickian entitlement] means?

You seem to already understand the means - property conventions, deeds, and such. The only thing you seem to be missing is that property conventions spring from society, and preceed the State. (Like most people who have not studied the issue, you seem to fall for that ol' government solipotence assumption.) States only came along after the social fact and coopted deed registration. A good illustration of how property is a convention of society is American pioneers. They had tomahawk rights (marking the corners of property with cuts), homesteading and cultivation rights, and so on long before formal government ever arrived. They had mining associations and cattlemen's associations that registered and arbitrated claims before the govt got there. In short, property preceeds State. Property is a phenomena of society, not State. The State is perhaps the worst enemy of property, with kings and presidents granting land they've never seen in violation of "justice in acquisition," and outright confiscation and destruction of rightful property claims. Did you know that people like Daniel Boone were considered to be squatters stealing the "public land" until the US State realized that it was futile to exterminate them or burn their settlements down? (And govt forces did burn squatter/homesteader settlements down for a while, e.g. in the Ohio territory.) BTW a good history of property rights wrt settling (north) America can be found in "The Mystery of Capital," available in the library.

Doug wrote:In our society, ownership is not leasing. People pay property taxes because those are the rules of ownership.

Please review the pertinent definitions. Freehold means you own something free and clear; leasehold means you have to pay to keep it. If people can have their land taken when they don't pay property taxes, then that land is leasehold, not freehold. The US has, in effect, reverted to feudal land tenure.

Good discussion. If you'd like to borrow my "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," you may.

Doug wrote:Can you show that you own land by one of these [Nozickian entitlement] means?

Hogeye wrote: States only came along after the social fact and coopted deed registration. A good illustration of how property is a convention of society is American pioneers.

DOUG
So?

Hogeye wrote:Property is a phenomena of society, not State.

DOUG
The society created the state and appeals to the state as arbiter of rights, including property rights.

Your eccentric understanding of property ownership has no basis in our society. You can't just invent a concept of definition in the midst of a society teeming with legal precedent and expect your view to trump what everyone else uses as their view of property.

Doug wrote: You can't just invent a concept of definition in the midst of a society teeming with legal precedent and expect your view to trump what everyone else uses as their view of property.

DAR
Good point.

I was thinking today how if only Hovind had some guns and had resisted, maybe we wouldn't be sitting around waiting for sentencing...

Not to suggest that he would have died. Perhaps he would have won and the government would have lost.

D.

Doug wrote:Can you show that you own land by one of these [Nozickian entitlement] means?

I decline to answer personal questions about my assets on a public forum. Earlier I assumed you really wanted to know how someone would "prove" their ownership, and I answered that you already seemed to know - by documenting property history, deeds, and such. Perhaps you expected some elaboration. Okay.

Demonstrating ownership is not generally done by proving Nozickian entitlement steps from original homesteading to present. For most property the history from first homestead is long forgotten. Instead ownership is maintained by imperviousness to challenge. If a challenger can show a) a step in the sequence was invalid, and b) he was the owner before the invalid step, then he is the rightful owner. (Note that this is also recursive.) There is one further complication: property conventions generally involve an abandonment criteria, in effect a "statute of limitations" on challenges. Thus, e.g. an American Indian who claimed that his great-great-great-great grandfather owned Seattle would not have an effective claim by any known legal system. This "complication" is not a part of Nozick's "pure theory" of entitlement, but rather an apparent necessity for application of the theory.

Doug wrote:The society created the state and appeals to the state as arbiter of rights, including property rights.

I disagree with your theory of State. Society is the sum total of voluntary human interaction. The State is a predator on society - the organization of "legal" theft. It has co-opted certain functions of society in order to facilitate its predation. Two of these captured functions are arbitration and property definition.

To anarchists like me, liberty and authority are conflicting. Society and State are players in a zero-sum game. Every increase in State power is a reduction in social power; every increase in social power is a decrease in State power. History is the story of this conflict between liberty and authority.

Doug wrote:Your eccentric understanding of property ownership has no basis in our society. You can't just invent a concept of definition in the midst of a society teeming with legal precedent and expect your view to trump what everyone else uses as their view of property.

This is a bizarre thing for you to say, since virtually all legal systems, even the statist one, appeal to the entitlement theory of justice. Thus, contrary to what you say, it is conventional, not eccentric. The entitlement idea was not "invented" by me or Nozick, but developed from Anglo-Saxon Common Law into current American law, and the precedents support entitlement theory. Virtually everyone I know views stealing as wrong, and essentially supports voluntary exchange per Nozick (2) as the legitimate way to transfer property. What are you talking about?

Doug wrote:The society created the state and appeals to the state as arbiter of rights, including property rights.

Hogeye wrote: I disagree with your theory of State. Society is the sum total of voluntary human interaction. The State is a predator on society - the organization of "legal" theft. It has co-opted certain functions of society in order to facilitate its predation. Two of these captured functions are arbitration and property definition.

The state IS the society. Where do you think politicians come from? Property definitions and institutional practices are created by society. You see the state as some sort of extra-social construct. We are the state and the state is us.

Prior to the government surveyors in 1828 defining the boundaries of Fayetteville and surrounding communities there were no "settlers" here. The land was "owned" as hunting grounds by several tribes who used it at different times of the year (the original "timeshare") - and in fact the surveyors hid from a band of hunters during the survey and completed the job after the hunters were gone. Any "original settlers" using "tomahawk" or any other kind of markings to claim land were thus thieves and, like Hogeye's fence of stolen TVs, they and their "heirs" have no legal claim. In reality, unfortunate or not, settlers made their boundary marks - and then recorded their claim in the nearest governmental land office. Society is the state.

As to implied consent - you use goods and services. Your choices are either consent, implied or otherwise, to be taxed to provide those services or be charged with theft. You used them. You pay for them one way or another - via taxes or via fines and time in jail.

Blurb. From Wikipedia on compound interest:

"If the Native American tribe that accepted goods worth 60 guilders for the sale of Manhattan in 1626 had invested the money in a Dutch bank at 6.5% interest, compounded annually, then in 2005 their investment would be worth over €700 billion (around US$820 billion), more than the assessed value of the real estate in all five boroughs of New York City."

Darrel wrote:Blurb. From Wikipedia on compound interest:

"If the Native American tribe that accepted goods worth 60 guilders for the sale of Manhattan in 1626 had invested the money in a Dutch bank at 6.5% interest, compounded annually, then in 2005 their investment would be worth over €700 billion (around US$820 billion), more than the assessed value of the real estate in all five boroughs of New York City."

Big deal. Imagine what they'd have it they'd accepted REAL OZARKIA MONEY: a bag of pot!

Of course, they'd still be living in their mothers' wigwams...

Barbara demonstates her understanding of entitlement theory, and illustrates it very aptly in her analysis of settlers around Fayetteville. Well done!

Perhaps I shouldn't take silence for agreement, but apparently Doug realized that US law and most legal systems are based on the entitlement theory. Apart perhaps from hard-core libertarians, lawyers seem to grok the notion best. And why not? They are trained in its subtleties and application when they study property law.

As for the absurd we are the government/the state IS the society blather, I'll address that where it's more appropriate - in the Against Authority thread. Sav doesn't like performing transplants!

Hogeye wrote:Sav doesn't like performing transplants!

Wrong. Splitting a thread is not that difficult to do, but it can be confusing for the participants. What I dislike is having to split threads because people have derailed topics even though they know perfectly well that they shouldn't.

What I'm saying is all land ownership claims are bogus - you could call them theft. Our society recognizes land ownership and records the ownership officially to stand up to claims in courts of law - which are also governmental services. Even if their claims where originally "tomahawk markings" they still record them with the government land office. If they do not, someone else can - and probably will - come along and make their own markings of some sort, register it with the government land office, and have legal ownership. It's as simple as that. The government registers and protects your claim to property. For this service, you pay taxes.

Barbara wrote:What I'm saying is all land ownership claims are bogus - you could call them theft.

Oh. I thought you were saying that certain Osage tribes around Fayetteville were the rightful owners due to use as hunting grounds, and the white illegal immigrants stole it. That assertion rests on Nozick's entitlement theory notions. If you call it "theft," then you are denying that "all land ownership claims are bogus." But I suspect you probably meant current ownership claims.

Barbara wrote:Our society recognizes land ownership and records the ownership officially to stand up to claims in courts of law...

We agree on this. In particular, we agree that land ownership rests originally on society, and not State. We agree that later the State came along and co-opted the land registry function. We agree that under our current statist system, "the government registers and protects your claim to property." We disagree on whether this goverment monopoly on ownership determination is better than a private market-generated legal regime. You think it is - and claim I should pay for the "service" even though I didn't consent to it. I claim it isn't, and if anything, the State should pay me damages for destroying polycentric law and creating its coercive monopoly.

I'm say ALL claims of land ownership are bogus. You can't make it, and while you can poison it, you can't break it, and you most assuredly can't put it in your pocket or the back of your pickup truck and take it with you somewhere else. That said, if you buy into the idea of land ownership and the first come idea, then the Osage and others who used this land first for seasonal hunts "owned" it when white settlers came in, claimed it - and registered the claim with the government, giving them nominal ownership but which would, by these ideas, be theft.

Hogeye, I wish you luck in finding a land onwhich to live where the society agrees with your beliefs.

Barbara wrote:I'm say ALL claims of land ownership are bogus.

Thanks for clarifying that. Something tells me that if someone came to land your home is on and took it by force, you would object on ethical grounds, thus making a claim of ownership.

I believe that ownership is a convention of society. Ultimately, property is based on what the neighbors think. Most societies have evolved an entitlement theory, like that which Nozick formalizes. Some of these socially-developed property systems have a Lockean proviso, some don't. There are varying conventions regarding homesteading, abandonment, and other details of implementation.

Most societies developed conventions regarding property in land when they entered the agricultural age. Before then, land was often not scarce enough to justify property status. The land ownership conventions are based on the idea that, if one builds and cultivates, in general produces, then it would be unjust for someone else to come along and reap, or take away the cultivated land. IOW it is a convention who's purpose is to favor production over plunder, an attempt to solve the age-old problem that, if it is easier to plunder than produce, some people will choose to plunder.

Frederic Bastiat wrote:Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder. Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain-and since labor is pain in itself-it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder. - Frederic Bastiat, The Law