VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM: Land Tenure and Anarchic Common Law
Posted by Gary Chartier on Jan 3, 2011 in C4SS Events • 34 commentsBetween now and February 17, the Center for a Stateless Society will conduct a virtual symposium, “Land Tenure and Anarchic Common Law.” Please join the conversation; comments on the questions the lead article poses about the nature of optimal abandonment rules will be especially welcome. Publish your responses to the following essay—which synthesizes remarks by Kevin Carson, Brad Spangler, and Gary Chartier—and post links in the Comments section (you may, of course, leave shorter replies in their entirety) before the end of the symposium. The Center may periodically update this page with links to selected responses.
There would likely be a range of legal regimes—commercial and non-commercial, religious and secular—in a stateless society. Some would be largely territorial, while others would serve people in different regions. The rules enforced by a given regime would presumably emerge from multiple sources: from the decisions of arbitrators, from the judgments of religious and other authorities accepted by participants in the regime, and from the specific contractual agreements made by regime participants. (For instance: property owners cooperating to arrange for road maintenance and other shared needs might also agree to frame their property claims in ways designed to formalize the rules governing the recognition of the transfer and abandonment of each other’s claims.) Whatever their sources, a wide variety of land tenure rules could in principle be implemented by these regimes. Disputes among anarchists about the form such rules ought to take have often focused on the differences between what can, for simplicity’s sake, be labeled occupancy-and-use and Lockean positions.
On a common account of the occupancy-and-use standard, if someone who acquires title to land by homesteading it (or by purchasing it from a homesteader or someone linked by a sound chain of title to a homesteader) neither maintains relatively continuous personal occupancy of her land nor sells it to someone else, the land becomes ripe for homesteading. Thus, while someone might rent out rooms in or a guest-house attached to a home she actually occupied, she couldn’t function as an absentee proprietor, renting out land on which she never set foot. (She might, perhaps, be free to rent out property she had occupied but from which she had made clear her intend to be absent from a limited period.) Because there would be no reason to view a would-be absentee proprietor as the actual occupant and user of the land she sought to rent to others, under an occupancy-and-use regime the land would ordinarily be treated as effectively abandoned, and the tenants would be able to homestead it and claim it as their own. Occupancy-and-use standards are especially attractive because they have the potential to preclude the kind of absentee ownership that could create a permanent feudal aristocracy.
Lockean land tenure standards, by contrast, characteristically permit absentee ownership. Proponents of such standards tend to argue that a legal system that didn’t differentiate between occupancy by a property’s legal owner and occupancy by the owner’s designee would operate more simply, require less interference with owners’ autonomy, and create fewer complications for economically beneficial arrangements than one that required occupancy by an actual owner.
Despite initial appearances, it would be a mistake to treat these positions as diametrically opposed or to assume that they could not co-exist in a just stateless society.
Defenders of both Lockean and occupancy-and-use positions view the just acquisition of land title as rooted in labor: one can’t claim to own land, on either view, absent the performance of sufficient labor to establish actual, effective possession of the land. (The Lockean as much as the proponent of the occupancy-and-use standard can agree that, for instance, a real estate developer would be on shaky ground if she claimed to have taken actual possession of a vacant lot just because of the proximity of her sewer or road network to the lot.)
In addition, a majority of the concerns that motivate occupancy-and-use land tenure proposals would be addressed by a range of measures Lockeans could enthusiastically support. Thus, for instance, if titles to land Lockeans and proponents of occupancy-and-use standards would agree was abandoned, stolen, or acquired primarily through the use of stolen goods (as by capitalists in league with the state) were nullified, so that people were free to homestead this land, the resulting changes in the housing market would drive rent downward dramatically. Legal changes that enhanced access to capital, eliminated building codes and zoning regulations, reduced subsistence costs, and remedied past injustices would surely also contribute to ensuring a more desirable pattern of land ownership. And inequities rooted in rent would also be reduced if the cost principle were consistently implemented, so that roads and utilities were unsubsidized and their users were required to fully internalize their costs.
Lockeans might seek to make the rental of property “safe, legal, and rare” by eliminating ongoing legal privileges and instituting remedies for large-scale background injustices. Some Lockeans might also seek, for multiple reasons, to minimize the risk of large-scale absentee ownership by tightening abandonment periods. They might decline to treat property as abandoned if it is occupied by someone acting under the owner’s authority, even if not by the owner. But these Lockeans—certainly a minority—might judge that actual abandonment, with no presence, even the presence of an agent, for two years or even one, constituted legal abandonment and rendered a property ripe for homesteading.
Implementing a set of land tenure rules featuring a brief abandonment period wouldn’t require inquiry into anyone’s motives or intentions (a proponent might note that, even if one didn’t want anyone living in one’s house in one’s absence, one could reasonably have an agent check in frequently enough to ensure continued occupancy: one wouldn’t have to rely merely on a posted sign), and it would feature a clear standard on which would-be homesteaders could rely. At the same time, it would ensure that land wasn’t allowed to lie fallow while the number of landless people continued to increase, and it would ensure that unused and effectively unclaimed land was put to productive use, to everyone’s benefit. Lockeans could thus attempt to achieve many of the goals sought by proponents of occupancy-and-use standards.
The difference between Lockean and occupancy-and-use positions is further complicated by the fact that proponents of occupancy-and-use standards need not be committed to particularly brief abandonment periods (just as some Lockeans might be quite open to them). Since occupancy-and-use land tenure proposals are motivated to a significant degree by the desire to avoid a resurgence of feudal social arrangements, advocates of these proposals could in principle be open to significant vacancy periods when owners’ absence from their property seemed to play no role in a scheme of absentee proprietorship.
Proponents of occupancy-and-use standards might therefore be quite open in principle to abandonment periods as long as those currently favored by the common law, as long as owners manifested plans to resume occupancy, especially for individual and family-sized units. Someone committed to an occupancy-and-use rule regarding land tenure might see a strong case for letting someone board up her house to spend several years away dealing with some family necessity, with the intention of returning to take up residence without losing all of the labor she had invested in her property. Certainly, an occupancy-and-use legal regime could be expected to give significant weight to an absent owner’s statement of intent to resume occupancy in the future, at least if her property was a reasonable family-sized parcel and there was no concrete evidence that she was misrepresenting her intent. In general, such a regime would be likely to avoid enforcing abandonment policies that were consistently inconvenient for a community of small-holders.
By contrast, Lockeans and defenders of occupancy-and-use standards would both be inclined to agree that, if an owner simply leaves her property and disappears without any statement of her intentions, that could reasonably be construed as abandonment, since she has not taken even the most minimally reasonable precautions to provide for continued ownership.
In addition, while an occupancy-and-use regime might be unwilling to use force to compel compliance with a contractual arrangement permitting someone to be an absentee proprietor, the operation of such a regime would pose no barrier to the imposition of non-violent social sanctions on someone who violated a contract the regime declined to enforce. Social pressure could thus broaden the range of agreements effectively honored within communities committed to occupancy-and-use standards. And, of course, in turn, social pressure could limit the enforcement of land-related agreements perceived to be inequitable in communities theoretically operating in accordance with Lockean property rules.
Thus, the actual distance between communities adhering to Lockean and occupancy-and-use rules need not be great. And the persisting disagreement between such communities can be seen as focused not on rules regarding the acquisition of just title to land nor on rules affecting the extent of one’s control over the use of land to which one is justly entitled nor on the desirability of avoiding a return to feudalism. Rather, it clearly concerns one issue: the nature of abandonment.
- After how much time does land become ripe for homesteading?
- Does abandonment require the absence of not only the owner but also her agents from the property for a reasonable period?
- Should property be treated as abandoned if the putative owner herself is absent for a reasonable period, even if her agents have been present during the same period?
- Just how present does the owner need to be to establish continued possession: is a visit acceptable, or must she treat the land as her residence or place of business?
- Is an absent owner’s intent relevant? If so, must it be communicated, and, if so, to whom and in what way?
One salient dispute—orthogonal to the disagreement between Lockeans and defenders of occupancy-and-use standards, but relevant to understanding the institutional arrangements they expect to foster concord between legal regimes committed to their respective positions in a stateless society—concerns the likelihood that such regimes will be linked to particular geographic regions. Those who maintain that they will be emphasize that majority views about legitimate property titles will affect the viability and influence of different regimes, since enforcing a claim will be much costlier in an area in which most people disagree with the rules on which the claim is based. The costs of enforcing a given standard will obviously be higher in a multiple-regime environment—if many of those against whom a standard is to be enforced, and perhaps many of their neighbors, don’t endorse the standard in just the way in which it’s being interpreted and enforced. Those who expect more geographic diversity will be inclined to emphasize that the availability of standard procedures for resolving inter-regime disputes and the obvious advantage to consumers of being able to switch agencies without switching residences could keep multiple agencies serving people in the same region in business.
However their relationships were managed, different legal regimes would doubtless answer some questions about abandonment differently. But the coexistence in a stateless society of legal regimes that answered these questions differently need not pose a serious problem. That’s because a stateless society would feature mechanisms for peacefully resolving disputes between participants in different legal regimes. This legal meta-framework—similar to the one that governs disputes between states and between citizens of different states in the context of contemporary international law—could clearly accommodate both of these approaches (and others) as competing standards. Since—except in the case of outlaws—arbitrators would have to be mutually agreed to by both disputants before a case could even be heard, there would be little occasion for conflict.
And while the market for law in a stateless society will accommodate diversity, it is not unreasonable to expect that, over time, some sort of middle ground—common law standard emerging from the ongoing discovery process that is the market—will emerge. Certainly, if standards tend to be geographically rooted, it’s especially easy to see how particular ones could tend to become sedimented in particular regions. Of course, there might be stable, self-enforcing equilibria in various niches that differed somewhat from each other—it’s not obvious that a middle ground would have to emerge, but there would certainly be pressures that could well lead to some convergence in legal standards.
Lockeans, advocates of occupancy-and-use standards for land tenure, and other anarchists with comparable views of property rights need not be seen as differing theoretically as much as is often supposed, and regimes implementing their preferred property rules could in principle co-exist peacefully in a stateless society.
I'm curious which "common account of the occupancy-and-use standard" allows you to set aside questions of just acquisition, or simply reduce them to neo-lockean homesteading rules. I would have thought that the most common anarchist occupancy-and-use account was the one that begins with "property is theft," and goes from there. It seems to me entirely correct that the differences need not be great on the question of abandonment. But it's hard to talk about the abandonment of justly appropriated land, when the question of just appropriation isn't really on the table.
My recent post Turning a new page
I posted my thoughts on this a while back over at facebook's Anarchism page.
"Ownership versus possession"
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=17275767…
After the fact, I added some additional commentary in response to some questions. This doesn't entirely fit into the tone and scope of the original article which can be viewed at the above link, however I'm including this additional commentary here to enhance clarity and share some additional opinions.
"Further, another key difference I see between ownership and possession is permanence of the claim. "I own X until I voluntarily cede ownership of X" versus "I possess X until I no longer possess X." It allows for more fluidity, and essentially, for more subjective applications of common sense.
At the same time, I don't think we should conflate the capitalism/socialism divide with the propertarian/non-propertarian divide, really. Capitalism effectively means control of the means of production by a capitalist – this requires the capitalist have the ability to effectively "own" the means of production, which requires some theory of property rights – while socialism means the collective control of the means of production. In the context of anarchism, capitalism generally refers to an initial investor or investors, while socialism generally refers to a worker co-op, in control of the means of production. In this regard, I'm not opposed to anarcho-capitalism. I just don't see it as terribly likely – since the workers are the most important human element, it seems more likely that they'd simply want to cut out the middle man (the capitalist) and divide their profits in whatever way they deem fit as in a worker co-op, rather than cutting the capitalist in on a share.
Hence, it isn't that I'm opposed to anarcho-capitalism, but merely that I see it as less likely of a paradigm in an anarchist context. I see socialism in the form of worker co-ops as a much more likely paradigm for workplace organization.
What I am most staunchly opposed to – and what many self-professed anarcho-capitalists advocate in favor of – is the notion of absentee land ownership. The notion, that is, that I can in some manner lay claim to land which I do not need nor use for myself in order to then capitalize on that land. The problem here isn't the absentee land ownership itself, though. It's the potential for what amounts to imperialism that it presents.
Acquire land -> develop rental properties on it to monetize it -> acquire more land -> monetize it -> repeat, until all of the unclaimed land in the world has been claimed and I can effectively assume that anyone else who wishes to have shelter for themself and their belongings will have no choice but to pay me or another land owner rent, at which point that rent can begin to go beyond normal trade/barter and can, for example, entail military service in order to enable me to claim lands held by other land owners. Feudalism and imperialism ensues, and the serfs have no other choice besides homelessness."
My recent post Rent and feudalist practices in an anarcho-capitalist society
Some thoughts of mine on this topic from a few years back:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/20_1/20_1_6.pdf
I fleshed out my responses a bit on the blog:
http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/01…
My recent post Turning a new page
You're correct that given Proudhon's definition of the word property, "just appropriation" is not an anarchic concept, but just as the question of abandonment isn't a black and white issue, neither is the division between possession and property. I think it's entirely consistent to start with "property is theft" and end up in a situation in which a family of five is entitled to a house which they are not currently living in, given good reasons for not doing so. However, I also think it's possible to start with Lockean property rights and chip away capitalism until it exists no more, given the masses are anachistically-minded enough. "Property is theft" in my opinion shouldn't be an axiom if anarchy can come about even without strict adherence to it, but rather a useful guideline in measuring the right to control our surroundings.
Maybe there's a libertarian communist solution to this problem, presumably one that includes some kind of gift economy, but I'm not terribly convinced that such a system could provide the necessary incentives for a good standard of living. Nevertheless, I'm open to all kinds of discussions about this.
Actually, given Proudhon's definition of "justice," "just appropriation" isn't actually a problem. Proudhon thought that the "property" that was "theft" could be put to some good uses, provided forces were balanced. And, of course, there's a lot that can be done with Locke's theory, particularly with the provisos intact. It's just that the important stuff doesn't seem to be on the abandonment end of things.
"Property is theft" was a conclusion drawn from a particular analysis of property, certainly not an axiom (particularly in the way we tend to use that term in this neighborhood.) The importance of bringing it to mind in this context is that, outside the narrow confines of the left-libertarian consensus, virtually all the action has been around appropriation — around the very possibility of just appropriation — rather than abandonment. Heck, I don't think that the more substantial critique associated with Proudhon's "property is impossible" is necessarily a deal-breaker for some sort of just appropriation and some sustainable form of individual property. But, again, broad agreement or compatibility has to address the issues with appropriation before there's any point in talking about issues like abandonment.
My recent post Turning a new page
To discuss a "land tenure" or "property" system in abstract theoretical terms (whether Lockean, Marxian, Proudhonist or Rothbardian) apart from its mechanisms and methods of enforcement– its means– only replicates the fantastical ideological notion of the liberal theory of the consensual state. It makes as little sense for an anarchist as abstract discussions of what social welfare policies or gender identity roles "should" be like. That is, what defines a specifically anarchist understanding of these questions is the *means* by which these questions ought to be decided and enacted, theorized and practiced: always voluntarily and consensually as befits the freedom and autonomy of each individual.
Tolstoy argued that anarchism must be nonviolent since it is, by definition, opposition to coercion and force, and that since the state is inherently violent, meaningful pacifism must likewise be anarchistic. On the opposite side of the property question, Robert LeFevre went further than most libertarians and took a pacifist stance, believing that any use of force is morally wrong. The Voluntaryist keeps this line of thought alive.
The LeFevre and Tolstoy property systems could voluntarily, consensually and peacefully co-exist with one another since there would be no mechanism absent physical coercion to involuntarily force anyone into either system. For the various "propertarian" theories propounded on the site, that would be impossible. A use of "property" by others that fell afoul of the rules/laws/morals of the anarcho-capitalists could be met with violence against peaceable human beings. In absurdist logical ends scenarios a last, universal property owner could have absolute dominion over the entire planet and secure "voluntary consent" backed with violence against peaceable people to demand any form of behavior whatsoever- so long as all property had been "justly" acquired, a question more often begged than argued in authoritarian propertarian politics (notwithstanding an argument from authority based on Locke or Rothbard citation). Needless to say, this is slavery, not freedom.
The value of the individual, of their absolute right to be free of physical coercion so long as they refrain from physical coercion against any other human being, must reign supreme above any particular normative political or social ideals, a view on a "just" system of property acquisition included. If all social relations must be voluntary so must adhesion to any "system" of property be at all times be voluntary and consensual, whether Communist or Capitalist or any other. None can be justly *forced* on anyone.
If Anarchism is, as Ben Tucker said, "the doctrine that all… affairs… be managed by individuals or voluntary associations" then Anarchism must therefore be against all involuntary affairs between humans, against all involuntary social relationships. As the most objective manifestation of involuntary social relations the initiation of violence- physical force against another human being- is the ultimate monopoly and injustice.
Within this space of "equal liberty" let 1,00o flowers bloom! So long as it is peaceable; so long as it is voluntary!
Is a Georgist interpretation of the Lockean proviso not considered compatible with anarchism? I argue it is in my most recent post. It certainly would appear to resolve most issues surrounding abandonment. So long as an absentee "owner" is paying a ground-rent to the community for his continued exclusive possession of the property, it would seem he has not abandoned the property.
My recent post Georgism as a Basis for Anarchic Order
That's my stance as well. Costs prove values. What if someone wants to set up a nature preserve because they like unspoilt wilderness? That poses a problem for a continuous-use system. So long as the wilderness advocate is willing to pay more than people wanting to use that area for other purposes, then people should respect the exclusion.
I'll add that the payment should go to everyone in the entire societal context as a dividend – a payment compensating them for exclusion and an incentive to respect the exclusion. Georgism can work with panarchism – I don't think that communities and groups should have special powers that individuals don't. If someone wants to buy out the geography of an area from a certain jurisdiction then, assuming they pay the costs of any non-movables such as roads and buildings attached to that area, they should be able to.
I must say I disagree with your fundamental premise that warfare has a greater profit margin and is more efficient than peace. While I style myself a socialist, from an austrian perspective warfare is the ultimate broken window fallacy. Some austrians (the originals) and socialists as well wrongly ascribe to the idea that bulk is better and that economies of scale always kick in.
The reality is, if you look at either an austrian or marxist based economy with just the tiniest bits of optimism, forget the bizzaro state version of either economy, you can see peace and freedom will win out.
"What if someone wants to set up a nature preserve because they like unspoilt wilderness? That poses a problem for a continuous-use system."
what this guy said. kind of ironic that the leftist equivalent of ownership is more likely to allow people to bulldoze whatever part of the woods near them they feel like
Well, here's the obvious problem with limiting the discussion to abandonment. If the "leftist equivalent of ownership" means a proviso-lockean system that takes ecological concerns seriously, then the bar for acquisition without the invasion of others' rights would certainly be set a lot higher than in neo-lockean systems.
My recent post Elements of appropriation
And here are some further comments, in response to objections:
http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/01…
My recent post Elements of appropriation
And here are some further comments, in response to objections:
http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/01…
My recent post Responses on mutualist property theory- Self-ownership
Tolstoy was a Georgist by the way, although also influenced by Proudhon.
Thanks for posting the link to this article, which I read in its entirety and found highly informative.
My recent post Ideas Have Consequences
I remember reading this a couple of years ago, and not being terribly impressed. A lot of the debate between individualists and single-taxers took place in hard-to-access papers like "The Irish World," but the long-running debates among the individualists were in "Liberty," which are a lot easier to access. In trying to defend George against "the individualists," Schwartzman neglects an awful lot of specific differences and individual evolutions in order to put together his little comparative table. Rereading it, I'm struck by how many details he has wrong–details for which his citations simply don't give support. If you're going to use this, then at least check the footnotes carefully.
My recent post A note on Bastiat and double inequality
And, since the topic of occupancy and use came up on the LL forums:
http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/01…
My recent post A note on Bastiat and double inequality
What would Stefan Molyneux say about this?
Thanks for the insights, Shawn. I trust your judgment on this. I will have to study the actual debates more thoroughly.
Some thoughts:
Often in this debate, the idea of homesteading evokes images of a rural landscape (at least for me). We should, perhaps, consider the unique problems of an urban landscape. I'm not sure how big of an issue this is, but there are significant differences. Additionally, since we are talking about land, I think a more explicit ecological dimension is needed in our debates.
I also want to suggest that we observe different land tenure systems in the world around us and see what we can learn from them. In particular, Robert Neuwirth's studies of squatter cities is very interesting. These squatter cities seem to approximate an occupancy-and-use standard. Here are some presentations by Neuwirth, if interested:
"Shadow Cities" – http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_neuwirth_on_our_s…
"The 21st Century Medieval City" – http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-87798591…
I think much of discussion focuses too heavily on creating a meta-structure of law. The real issue of "abandonment" should be whether the person, you know, intends to abandon. Certain presumptions can certainly arise (not in possession for 5 years, etc.), but I think it is a mistake to engage in verbal and legal subterfuge by calling something "abandonment" when you don't ever even attempt to ask whether that was the intent.
If one is worried about land speculation, etc., that should be its own test/standard/principle/whatever. If you want to consider whether property has been "lost", again, that can be a different inquiry. Don't hide the ball. An ideal justice system should not allow people to advance cynical interests through obfuscation.
As far as homesteading, I think Shawn Wilbur is on the right track. What constitutes just appropriation is the question that is often skimmed over, but is really *the* question to be addressed. Until you answer that question, how can you possibly build a coherent morality of property relationships?
I present my understanding of natural rights and why it conflicts the occupancy-and-use theory at http://whoplanswhom.com/moral-conundrums-of-occup….
I addressed Gary's questions in a seperate post at http://whoplanswhom.com/c4ss-symposium-land-tenur….
Values are, in fact, instinctual; occupancy-and-use does allow for later use, if a credible plan can be justified to the community; and we should have ethics, not morality: Ethics refers to how you interact with others, morality refers to how you act in isolation- for example, religious people are against homosexuality because of morality, but there is no credible argument against homosexuality from a perspective of ethics.
Overall I think you just have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of property, and are presupposing title when critiquing occupancy- a complete logical fallacy.
Referring to occupancy/use-based ownership
■After how much time does land become ripe for homesteading?
Mu. It could be one second or never. Time has nothing to do with it.
■Does abandonment require the absence of not only the owner but also her agents from the property for a reasonable period?
Again, never mind the time period. An owner cannot be an owner if they have 'agents' maintaining their 'ownership'- those agents would then be the owners!
■Should property be treated as abandoned if the putative owner herself is absent for a reasonable period, even if her agents have been present during the same period?
Again, the 'agents' are the owners. If they aren't actually using it, then it's up for grabs.
■Just how present does the owner need to be to establish continued possession: is a visit acceptable, or must she treat the land as her residence or place of business?
This may be a sticking point. I think there should be no solid rules, but rather the use has to be justified to the community, which is the enforcer of property rights in a possession/use system. If you are obviously living in a house or working at a place or using a vehicle or tool, it's yours; there is a great deal of space below that, probably depending on how scarce/abundant resources are. If there are only three people and six homes, each having two would probably be justifiable; with six people and six homes, anyone having two might be a tougher case. But it might be that it's justified, depending on the specifics circumstances.
■Is an absent owner’s intent relevant? If so, must it be communicated, and, if so, to whom and in what way?
Yes; yes; to the community and anyone who inquires; by whatever means the owner deems sufficient. If a person wants to take possession of something which is apparently abandoned, they should make every effort to determine if it is in fact abandoned, such as by asking neighbors; and in turn it's in people's best interest to form communities for just such a purpose. Luckily, people naturally form such communities, and have done so for hundreds of thousands of years… hmm, almost as if Anarchism was formulated based on human nature, what a coincidence.
The problem with occupancy and use based land ownership rules, lockean or other wise, is that it creates a possibility they by simply preventing occupancy by some means the land may be stolen. There were many cases in the early days of colonisation of both the US west and Australia where such rules were applied and many were driven off or tricked off by various means and/or prevented from returning. In many cases regulations and law suits were used to to prevent people from using the land at all. Most abandoned urban land is not really abandoned; the owner is simply mired in a dispute with government or other entity over what he or she is not allowed to do with the land. The building or farm is empty because of an injunction or something. In a non state this would/could still occur particularly during long legal disputes.
What bureaucracy logs your every visit to your land? Defines the difference between fallow (for soil recovery purposes) and abandoned. If it 'looses' documents do you loose the land? Is a private nature reserve or deer farm abandoned?
If a dispute arises, what is to prevent the judge from finding in favour of his mates or fellow club members and if it is a jury case what prevents those sympathetic with the minority case being excluded from the jury by law, mob or simply not sending jury notices to them.
If granny smith breaks her hip and is in hospital how long does she have before she is deemed to have lost occupancy and use of the home? If her doctor is in the same club as the most likely (squatter) usurper of her home who is empowered to find out, say so, and bring rescue, aid and restitution to this poor bankrupt widow? What bureaucracy holds disputed land while the dispute is debated? If a panarchy or virtual canton 'owning' land fails and falls apart, who gets what and who pays its out standing debts?
The above document is rich in ideals but devoid of the nuts and bolts needed to get anywhere. I was part of the Oceania law project [Atlantis Papers]. We have advanced backwards. We need nuts and bolts!
It comes down to 5 things:
*What are the barriers to land access and panarchy entry?
*How are disputes resolved without granting power to become a de-facto state to any party or referee or jury selector?
*What are the rules to deal with a failed anarchist group within our non state commonwealth?
*If Bill joins a hedonist community that does not save for his old age, who's gutter does he die in?
*Who records and gazettes land ownership and uses so other know its not abandoned?
I'm being intentionally provocative because after 20 years I still can't see solid answers.
I'm optimistic that when we get them the states of the world will end quickly.
Matt I like your arguments but I tend to be Austrian. The problem I see is that there must be some way to differentiate between kicking lumps of earth and improving the land or mixing your labour inextricably with the land. Where ever homesteading was sanctioned in the past minimum requirements were in place and not all cases were states setting the rules. In the absence of states the profit margin and rental price would be near zero for unimproved land.
If your effort becomes tied to the land then it must be your property because it can't genuinely be untangled. In your context Acquire land -> develop rental properties on it to monetize it -> acquire more land -> monetize it -> repeat your assuming there is only one rent category. Improve it for what? This always changes. The real process in a real free market is Acquire land -> develop rental properties on it to monetize it -> acquire more land -> monetize it -> repeat until you discover that you can't rent the land then your forced to sell to someone else at a huge loss. The buyer has Aquired the land cheaply in his eyes because he or she is developing it for a form of rental or monetisation that you may not have thought of or may not be skilled in developing. In the absence of states the loss price can be zero. If your getting the right price signals you will stop acquiring the land [homesteading] before you spend any money, gold or effort on it. I.E. in a true freemarket there is always land to be acquired because no one can know how to profit from every possible current and future land use. Feudal landowners can't avoid bankruptcy in a free market if their land is unproductive or their rents are unreasonable.
The public collection of land rent would trigger the world you are all discussing. Nothing else could do that. This is why land is such a topic of interest to the statelessly inclined. With equal access to land, a meritocracy will evolve, without it, never. In the relationship between nature and society, ultimately, nature is more powerful. Anarchy is when nature runs things. Isn't it true, seekers of statelessness?
I want to find information or guidelines to organizing a symposium. Are there such sources online?
http://www.domenicoletizia.eu/index.php?option=co…