Break-out from the low content thread where it was claimed that libertarians don't consider the rights of Indians when settlers moved in to to do mining.


You have claimed (see above) that you can't move someone off a piece of capital simply because one believes you can be more productive with it. However, I didn't claim that. I claimed the Indians weren't productive with it at all (with the things outside of their settlements and small-scale cultivation). Production is altering something to make it more valuable in the future.

This is why I asked you if plucking an apple from a tree gives you ownership over the forest it's in, or if it gives you ownership over the tree it's from. (I'm talking about an unowned forest here because we have to establish what brings about ownership in the first place)

As Indians were hunter-gatherers, they were simply plucking from the land. Now, does plucking things from nature give you the right to exclude others from also plucking things from nature?


This ->

is a straw-man, as I've explained here.

You arent talking about not being able to pluck an apple from a tree someone has already plucked an apple from.

The question here is can you chop down a tree if someone already uses that tree for its fruit. Barring something to legally codify a change in ownership, no. The act of modifying nature does not equal ownership, thats just insane for very easy to see logical reasons.

Also this:
is not at all a strawman. Or at the very least the question leading off it of how you define a productive use of land sure isnt.

Whilst YOU may see no value in using land as the native Americans did does not mean they werent using it and it certainly doesnt mean the land is up for grabs, first come first served.

Someone PM me when we get to the lasersharks thx.

Hunting, clay acquisition, foraging (gathering) -> see above about plucking apples.

It's a bit late and I want to give myself the best chance of understanding your position correctly before spewing my wad, so i'll revisit this in the morning. My initial impression is that I agree with you, with two major caveats. One, you have to assume that the resources available to be harvested are infinite (ie you taking an apple is not ever going to mean I must go without an apple), and two that your presence is not going to adversely affect my ability to use the land in the way I want.

(I suspect your oafish european colonial ways will scare off the rabbit i'm hunting.)

Also now that I think about it, i'm not sure I agree that the native Americans were not improving the productivity of their land over time, or that they need to be doing so to have the right to exclude others from it.

Dude, any group of people cordoning off land are... wait for it... statist! The reason the critique applies equally to ACists and governmentalists is because they are both the same thing: statism. The only difference is the size of the states.

And you did that good ol' neo-Randian thing: =EITHER= ACist homesteading =OR= starting a government. Do you dudes go to special classes to learn to turn everything into a false dichotomy?
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Also moved over from the low content thread. I have rephrased my question however, as my previous poorly worded question was answered (social norms was correct).

The real question is: How do ACists and governmentalists morally justify going around cordoning off land, and then passing it on to their heirs or assigns forever?

facepalm.jpg

Is fishing a productive activity?

Is subsistence farming productive?

You want to define things in such a way that you don't need to make a value judgment about "productive enough" by simply asserting that they "weren't productive with it at all" but I don't see how you can make that assertion stick (without seriously altering the meaning of the word "productive").

.

Besides the fact that productivity can't be meaningfully defined here (or so it seems) - why is productivity even a necessary condition?

So let me see if I got poaster Neilsio argument straight:

Farmers and Miners should be able to steal land from Fishermen and Hunters because they are more productive. Furthermore the Farmers, Miners, their heirs and assigns, are morally and legally justified using violence to defend the land they steal, forever.

OK, care to explain why?

I say that I am more productive than you, therefore I am more productive than you. Delusional self answering a begged question using only my criteria. It can't be refuted because its all perception based.

goofy,

That part of nature that you turn into valuable use becomes yours. So if you pluck an apple (an act of production), that's your apple. But you haven't done anything to the tree to make it valuable in the future, let alone the forest.

So if you pluck an apple, take out the seeds, prepare an area of land, plant the seeds, protect it from animals, irrigate it when it's dry, etc, then you've got yourself a valid claim.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_%28economics%29
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricul...tion_practices

OK, so are you saying, or not saying, you can come along and chop down that same tree to make paper?

Why? How do you justify this? And why do you feel it also makes your heirs and assigns morally justified to use violence to enforce this ownership, until the end of times?

You are allowed to pluck a tree just as you are allowed to pluck an apple. If some person wishes for there to be enough trees in the future that he can live off them, then he should cultivate them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard

Why is your right to pluck the tree superior to my right to pluck the apples? (Can I prevent you from destroying the tree to secure the supply of future apples? If not, why not?)

Also this.

if you come and build cement urban playgrounds on hunter gatherer lands this kind of uhh ****s their way of life in obvious ways. oh well they can always man the cash register.

From your link:
Does the person from the 1920 still need to be alive to stop you from stealing the trees?

How do you prove a tree wasnt planted by someone?

That'll teach 'em for not being more productive.

Are you explaining some kind of ACist Catechism for us? Some kind of playbook that we can use to align our moral compass and light our way? So we have learned here that Murray the Jeebus allows us to cut down trees. Hallelujah we have been allowed! And we learned that to live off of the fruit of trees, thou must cultivate an orchard, thou must not gather, for in gathering lies sin of "collectivism", so Murray the Jeebus has declared.

WTF, where are you getting these LOLarded rules, are you rolling 20 sided dice on some rando list of idiotic rules, and this is what came up?

The questions people are asking is why? How do you justify these goofyarded rules? Why is it OK to unilaterally cut a tree down in a wild orchard that people use to gather. Why are the Cultivators morally superior and are justified destroying the wild orchard, an act of violence? And why does the simple act of cultivating entitle your heirs and assigns the ability to rent or sharecrop that orchard without ever doing productive work themselves? Forever?

This (Quoted from the Low Content thread)

llike apparently it is not an act of aggression to come into the lands where hunter gatherers live off the land and literally bulldoze every square inch of it, but were they to be like "uhh wtf no" and sabotage the bulldozers they have now broken the laws of nature

Am I allowed to fill the hole from the tree I plucked with toxic waste while I'm out enjoying the unowned land. How about large scale dumping? Can I abandon my homesteaded land about as easy as I can homestead it?

If I clear cut or strip mine the land, I am transforming the land and being productive, correct? So now I have a claim on all that land right? But nobody is going to "use force" to make me actually exercise my claim, correct? I am at the liberty to claim a homestead or not (and can always abandon my homesteads in the future, just as easily).

So I gotta business plan for you: we hire a bunch of lumberjacks and miners, order them to do a Sherman's March to the sea through some virgin wilderness area. When they finish we hire a bunch of waste management workers to run a toxic and industrial dumping business using the inaccessible or hard to develop areas as dumps, and obviously decline our homestead claims there. The easy to develop areas we exercise our homestead claims, and hire a bunch of construction workers to fill with rental strip-malls units and apartment buildings. Sound cool to you?

Crosspost from LC thread:
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Why is it so difficult for people to wrap their heads around the fact that 'ACism' does not refer to a absolute, specific body of ideas? Defining it isn't easy but I'd say it is the rejection of the idea that states must exist and regulate the actions of individuals to maintain a free society and prosperous economy, accompanied with the ideas that markets do not need to be regulated by the state to function in a stable manner and that no one has the right to coercively interfere with the voluntary interactions of others.

Property rights isn't exactly a simple issue. I can't fathom any way to justify homesteading in any sort of logically rigorous manner, or any theory of property rights for that matter. Even if it were "right" for land to be allocated to individuals in accordance with the homesteading theory, the determination of whether or not land is used productively is entirely subjective. I challenge you to show me a theory of property rights that isn't ambiguous or arbitrary.

And in case my first paragraph didn't make it clear, I do not "subscribe" to homesteading in any way. Stop assuming ACists are one ideologically uniform group.
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I was going to just chop the middle paragraph but then I saw the MissileDog post above me. People really do have a hard time with this.