Geo-mutualism Represents a Middle Ground William Schnack’s Reply to Jason Byas on Economic Rent Jason Byas asks Fred Foldvary which territory is due the rent. “Do I owe rent to the territory roughly corresponding with Decatur, Georgia? Or is it something more like the size of DeKalb County? Or is it to something the size…

The Organic Emergence of Property from Reputation Property as a Useful and Necessary Toil, Not a God For centuries radicals have debated alternative property systems, and I’m glad we’re having these conversations. But what has been consistently disappointing about them is how little they generally seek to explore the underlying roots of “property” itself. To be sure, all…

Humans Have a Moral Claim on Land and its Resources … and This Necessitates the Rental of Both Jason asks the important question of who is the relevant community to whom rent would be paid in a geoist (Georgist) system. Land rent comes from three basic sources: Natural features, commerce, and civic works. Regarding the rent due…

The Moral Irrelevance of Rent Jason Byas’s Response to Folvardy, Schnack and Kirchner In my initial response to Kevin Carson, I briefly asserted that rent from land is morally irrelevant in determining property norms. Three of the respondents in particular — Fred Foldvary, Robert Kirchner, and Will Schnack — clearly think differently. Thanks to their…

Occupancy-and-Use Reflects Moral Imperatives …Implied by Land’s Unique Scarcity, Kevin Carson responds to Jason Byas Jason starts out by accepting my blurred lines between Lockeanism and occupancy-and-use, and agreeing that the difference between them is largely a matter of degree: Non-Proviso Lockeanism is just occupancy-and-use with a higher threshold for constructive abandonment. And the proper…

How Rothbardians Occupy Part of the Occupancy-and-Use Spectrum Jason Byas’s Response to Kevin Carson Are We All Mutualists Now? Maybe: Lockeanism as Occupancy & Use The first thing to say in response to Kevin Carson’s opening essay is that he’s largely right. As this exchange’s representative Rothbardian, I agree with his suggestion that the differences…

Georgist System is Prudential Land Ownership Monopoly Results in Enslavement Kevin claims that I deny occupancy and use is relevant to legitimate appropriation. Kevin states that the choice of rules regarding the ownership of land “is a prudential matter.” However, if one believes that there exists a universal morality, an ethic that transcends culture and is…

Community Land Tax Negates True Ownership …and Indirectly Reinforces State Capitalism Fred begins by denying that occupancy and use is relevant to legitimate appropriation, so long as the “person has title to land, and pays its economic rent to the relevant community”; meeting such criteria amounts, “in effect, [to] occupying the land.” So in the…

Georgist Occupancy with Rent Community Rent Results in Fair and Optimal Use If a person has title to land, and pays its economic rent to the relevant community, then that person is, in effect, occupying the land. The economic rent is what a competitive tenant bids for the best use of the land. Suppose a…

Reaffirming Occupancy-and-Use Further Clarification in Response to Robert Kirchner Robert Kirchner is in the unusual position, in a symposium on occupancy-and-use land tenure, of defending it more uncompromisingly than my kick-off essay in favor of it. He emphasizes that he is “somewhat more doctrinaire” than me, and contrasts his position to my own of taking…

Use-and-Occupancy: Practical Issues Robert Kirchner’s Response to Kevin Carson I have no desire to exchange ‘salvos’ with anybody, least of all Kevin Carson, whose work I greatly admire, who has greatly helped me to clarify my own thought on a range of economic and political issues, and who has strengthened my hope in anarchist strategies…

Geo-Mutualism Offers Inter-Community Dispute-Resolution Carson’s Occupancy-and-Use Regime Has No Such Mechanism I’d like to thank Kevin Carson for taking the time to reply to my critique of his original statement. Before I continue to respond, I’d like to also take a quick moment to do something which I should have done in my first response,…

Geo-Mutualist Depictions of Occupancy-and-Use Fall Flat Carson Adresses Schnack’s Criticisms Will begins by questioning the extent to which non-Proviso Lockeanism and occupancy-and-use really do occupy a single “stickiness” spectrum: …[H]e acknowledges … that mutualism and neo-Lockeanism may exist on a spectrum in regards to conventions relating to abandonment and community reclamation. It is implied that capitalists…

Proudhon on Economic Rent An Addendum to William Schnack’s Response to Kevin Carson Due to the unorthodox claims made in my last response, I wanted to give some supporting material for my depiction of Proudhon’s take on economic rent. Think of this as a long footnote, rather than the heart of my argument. My position is…

Panarchy Flourishes Under Geo-Mutualism William Schnack’s Response to Carson’s Arbitrary Occupancy-and-Use Doctrine My position on occupancy and use is a little different than Kevin’s, and I dare suggest that it is the position nearest Proudhon’s original intentions. Though I do believe it is a component of the original mutualism, I have branded my stance “geo-mutualism,”…

The Most Difficult Aspects of Anarchy Response to Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder by Shawn Wilbur At base, Kevin and I disagree about the possibility of, as I put it, “a truly anarchic space, outside the legal order and beyond the realm of permissions and prohibitions.” That’s a serious disagreement, since it amounts, for me, to a…

The Spirit of Dialectical Libertarianism Rejoinder to Shawn Wilbur by Kevin Carson At the outset, before going on to dismiss the “usual” criticisms of occupancy-and-use, Shawn raises some far less common questions of his own — very much in the spirit of dialectical libertarianism — about how the character of an occupancy-and-use system would be…

Limiting Conditions and Local Desires Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks by Shawn Wilbur There is a great deal that could be said in response to Kevin Carson’s opening statement, from the “neo-Proudhonian” mutualist perspective, but I’ll try to keep things at least relatively short. Like Kevin, my introduction to the notion of occupancy-and-use land tenure was through…

Are We All Mutualists? Some General Comments on Occupancy-and-Use It falls to me, in this opening salvo in a symposium on occupancy-and-use land tenure, also known as usufructory property, to write a defense of it. Theoretical advocates of it go back, in some form, at least to Godwin and Paine in the Western tradition. I’m…

Introducing the November 2015 Mutual Exchange Symposium Discourse on Occupancy and Use: Potential Applications and Possible Shortcomings “It’s a shame there’s even a need to say this, but ‘property’ is a word that’s used by different people to mean different things,” reckons Kevin Carson in his opening salvo. Carson’s statement neatly summarizes C4SS’s November 2015…