Re: Relative Appropriation of Economic Rents

On Jan 28, 9:08 pm, r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 25 Jan 2007 16:50:09 -0800, "Beal" <bealrabbitsla...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jan 25, 3:02 am, r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 24 Jan 2007 16:04:13 -0800, "Beal" <bealrabbitsla...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jan 24, 4:10 pm, r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 23 Jan 2007 22:26:46 -0800, "Beal" <bealrabbitsla...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jan 23, 6:17 pm, "Mark M." <m...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Beal wrote:

On Jan 23, 5:08 pm, "Mark M." <m...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Beal wrote:

r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:31:55 -0500, S. Doo <n...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip a bunch of stupidity>

What do you think "public domain" means, genius?

It means not privately owned. As I said above, you are obviously
claiming that anything not privately owned is communally owned.

No, it means publically owned.

even Morse code, the French language, standard
scientific notation, etc. are communally owned -- all of which is
clearly nonsense, and makes your claim that Georgists advocate
communal ownership of land true enough, but devoid of meaning.

If, (gasp) someone happens to disagree on this point, then to
them, the Georgists are the thieves, not the land owners.

Right. Just as those who believed in slavery considered those who
freed slaves to be thieves.

Exactly. It is a matter of opinion...just as those who owned farms in
Russia considered Stalin to be a thief. See how that works?

People who _didn't_ own farms in Russia _also_ considered Stalin to be
a thief.

See how _that_ works?

Er, ok. Anyway, the point is that it all depends on whether you
believe in private ownership or public ownership of the asset in
question.

You again confirm that you consider everything either privately or
publicly owned.

For certain assets, yes. Not all.

<snip more stupidity>

Do you believe in any basic human right, other than the right forcibly
to deprive others of their liberty to use natural resources without
compensation, by force of violent, aggressive coercion?

Of course. Association, press, etc..

Life, liberty, property. (I just have not tried to edit that last
part.)

Right, because you do not want the actual content of your notion of
property rights (specifically, that it includes property in privileges
of violating others' rights to life and liberty) identified with any
clarity.

See below.

except by those who
consider robbery, slavery, torture, etc. to be defensible.

Since I was not entitled to part-ownership of all land when I was born,
I do not consider private property of land to be theft.

Do you think people are entitled to a right to life when they are
born?

Depends on what you mean by the right to life. Do they have the right
to compel others to die so that they may live? No. Do they have the
right not to be killed? Sure.

OK, so you don't want the right to life defined with any clarity or
precision, either. Check.

The question is too vague and your attitude is just plain amazing.
How can someone go through life like this? I guess it is true that
the dumbest people are the most likely to overestimate their own
intelligence.

Or would you care to specify exactly what you think the right to life
consists of?

Is there something about "the right not to be kill" that confused
you? How the hell else can I answer that question, ya big fat moron?
For some people, the right to life means outlawing abortions. For
environmentalists it might mean the right to ban industrial activity
that creates toxic pollution. For me, it means "the fucking right to
not be fucking killed."

What would that right mean, if it did not include a right to
access and use the natural resources needed to sustain one's life,
such as air to breathe, water to drink, and land from which to obtain
one's food?

So because good is a necessity of life, we have a right to own land so
that we can grow food on it?

You already know I do not claim there is any right to own land. Only
to use it.

Own, access, the sentiment is the same. We have a right to access
land so that we can grow food on it, even though 98% of the population
doesn't grow a damned thing? That makes no sense.

What about clothing? Do I have the
right, by virtue of my birth, to walk out to a racher's field and sheer
a few of his sheep so that I can make my clothing so that I don't
freeze?

His sheep are not natural resources.

So they are made out of clay or something? His sheep represent a
mixture of gifts from nature as well as labor and capital. But in
either case, if your right to eat does not override his right to the
product of his labor, then why does it override my right to own land?
The answer? Land, according to you, should be communally owned. I
disagree and in the end, it all comes down to a big, fat value
judgement.

But of course, you knew that.

Oh, and btw, when you were born, did your family by any chance already
happen to own quite a bit of land....?

No.

Then you are in the category of slaves who kiss their fetters and
admire their welts.

And judging by the fact that you post 18 hours a day, you are in the
category of losers who cannot hold down a job but has the time to
bitch about social injusticed on message boards and Usenet all day.

Some people
_do_ consider private property (of some or even all conceivable assets)
to be theft.

Yet some forms of private property -- slaves, for example -- clearly
_are_ theft. Do you consider slavery to be wrong or not? If so, why
do you think it is wrong?

Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness (property.)

Which is exactly why I think private property in natural resources is
wrong. Clearly, at least one of us doesn't understand what those
rights mean. On form, I'd say it's you.

_You_
certainly have not challenged the Georgist assumptions about human
rights. You have simply bleated that you don't like the implications
of those assumptions in combination with certain self-evident and
indisputable facts of objective reality.

That we have an inalienable right to communal ownership of land is not
self-evident.

Indeed. Which is why Georgists do not claim we do

That is exactly what Georgists claim. They just try to pretend
differently.

No, you just lie about what Georgists say. You have never offered any
evidence that Georgists advocate communal ownership of land, other
than your redefinition of "communal ownership" to cover anything other
than pure private ownership with no government regulation.

I have never defined communal ownership as the absence of
private-ownership. You have made that up on your own. If the
government does not act as an owner, determining who gets what rights
to it, getting paid for it, etc.. then the government (thus community)
does not really own it.

But government does that _now_, so your claim that Georgism is any
more communal ownership than the current system is just so much hot
air.

Some things are just unownable.

Land isn't one of them.

Why not?

Blank out.

Blank stare. Why is it not unownable? Because it is owned right
now. You know, objective facts and ***? If someone claims that
something is unownable, that means it is impossible for it to be
owned. The fact is that it is indeed owned. Quite a lot of it is
owned by quite a lot of people. Therefore, it is ownable.

"Could you cite his exact words to that effect, please?"

I did in my last post, but here is his full post:
"No, I don't believe in communal or collective ownership rights to all
land. I believe in individual right to USE all land, bounded by
others' right to USE all land. Each person born on this planet has an
inalienable right to USE the earth. This is not a right to own the
earth. Ownership is the right of exclusion. You can own something and
never use it. The right to the earth is the right of USE. There are
many examples of natural resource USE without OWNERSHIP. Each of us
has the right to breath the atmosphere. Nobody has the right, either
individually or collectively, to exclusive ownership of the atmosphere.
Should somebody operate a machine that consumes oxygen on a such scale
that global levels of oxygen drop dangerously, the crime would not be
theft of collective property but theft of natural opportunity to
individually USE air."

"No, you also know it is true, because there is no way land can become
private property in the first place except by being forcibly
appropriated from all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it."

How can it be appropriated from them if they didn't own it in the first
place?

By forcibly depriving them of their rights to use it.

We weren't discussing whether their rights were appropriated. We were
discussing whether the LAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNND was appropriated. Did
you see that? The tennis ball just sailed past your head.

Game.

Set.

Match.

It's over. You lose. Now you are going to try and redefine
"appropriation." Good luck. I'm laughing at you.

You appear
either not to have read, or to have totally ignored, Mark's argument
above. Here, I'll repeat it for you:

"The right to the earth is the right of USE. There are
many examples of natural resource USE without OWNERSHIP. Each of us
has the right to breath the atmosphere. Nobody has the right, either
individually or collectively, to exclusive ownership of the
atmosphere. Should somebody operate a machine that consumes oxygen on
a such scale that global levels of oxygen drop dangerously, the crime
would not be theft of collective property but theft of natural
opportunity to individually USE air."

-- Roy L


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