Re: Historical comparisons


royls@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 19 Mar 2006 08:54:10 -0800, "William Mook"
<william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I know you've stated that there's no way natural resources can become
property Roy. Its just that I disagree with your contention, despite
your appeals to authority!.

You are either willing to know the difference between rightful
property in products of labor and wrongful violation of others'
rights, or you're not.

Bull***. Your 'wrongful violation of others' rights' so-called derives
from your bogus 'definitions' and nothing else!

Your refusal to debate me directly on just why we should use YOUR
definition of rights and property shows you are incapable of having a
rational discussion on this topic. hahaha

To recap, here's the short list of problems I have with your defintion:

If products are made from materials extracted from property - and this
includes all material products - there is no way by your definition
that that material can be owned by anyone.

Further your proposal to have some sort of central committee take
possession of the natural world and charge rents for the use of it -
but provide no way people could own natural resources to make material
products IN the natural world, smacks of communism and by operation of
Ricardo's law, IS communism.

Finally, your definition of things giving everyone rights to something
having no practical value to the community eliminates the possibility
of any individual or company developing new uses for resources in the
natural world.

For example, there could exist something of tremendous value somewhere
in the natural world of which we today are totally unaware, and
wouldn't know how to make use of even if we were to know of it. But,
due to the confused and foolish nature of your definitions this thing
would never be discovered or developed by anyone because doing so would
be a 'wrongful violation of others' rights' so-called.

Clearly if someone discovers something of tremendous value and figures
out a way to make useful products out of it for the rest of humanity
that person or persons has a rightful claim to profit from those
products - even though those products use materials found in the
natural world and is 'taken' (by your definition only) from the rest of
humanity, who knew nothing of it, and nothing of its potential value in
the hands of this dveloper.

Plainly in this situation it makes sense for humanity to give
possession to that developer since humanity is richer because of it.

Obviously, this same argument can be made for any developer, and so,
clearly, there is no need for humanity to take possession of the
natural world in the way you describe.

Once a region or a process is maturely developed, then one can imagine
some sort of system of taxation that supports the efficient use of a
known resource. But such a system of taxation shouldn't become a
barrier to development of more efficient methods or new resources at
present unknown.

And so does everyone else afaict!

Wrong.

No, look around you dude! lol. The world is OWNED by people, not a
central committee. LOL. There is a reason for that, and that has to
do with the efficiency of ownership as a means of organizing human
affairs. lol.

If central ownership of property was more efficient than private
ownership centrally organized economies would have kicked freely
organized economies butts. THEY DIDN'T and no amount of redefining
things will change that. That's the discussion I want to keep having
with you - and one you consistently avoid appealing to authority, made
up definitions, and avoiding entirely common sense and the bald fact
that markets and private property works.


I could cite you dozens of eminent people agreeing with me.

I can point to billions of people who buy and sell property and
products made with natural resources privately owned every day. Its
the way the world works dude. You and your dozen eminent people have
got to wake up and live with it!

Your appeal to authority is meaningless and reflects the fact that you
have not the slightest bit of rational support for your baseless
definition.

And, appeals to authority are at root useless. Plainly, I can point to
hundreds of eminent people who agree that ownership of ANYTHING is
theft. That doesn't make it right. This is what is known as appealing
to authority. Its a last ditch effort of a person who doesn't have a
snow ball's chance in hell of honestly winning an argument on its
merits. lol.

"Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed
poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended
as to violate natural right."
-- Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison), 1785

Half truths and lies.

Dude,

You are twisting the meaning of Thomas Jefferson's words! HE WAS
DEFENDING THE RIGHT OF THE COMMON PEOPLE TO PRIVATELY OWN PROPERTY in
this message! And, he was right! Look at countries where the laws of
property have violated the natural right of people to own it. Look at
countries like the former Soviet Republics, China, Cambodia, Vietnam.
all these countries have violated the natural right of individuals to
own property. And guess what? They are the poorest nations on Earth
despite the fact that the people who live there are some of the
brightest, hardest working, and creative people on the planet. lol.

Since Roy will likely bitch that I'm misreading Jefferson, here are
some other quotes that make it clear that Jefferson DEFENDED PRIVATE
PROPERTY RIGHTS quite in keeping with what I'm saying about it:

"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of
every citizen in his person and property and in their management."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:36

"A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with
which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we
acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other
sensible beings." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de
Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490

See? Jefferson wasn't defending a central committee. He was attacking
absentee landlords! Jefferson clearly states that what he is talking
about is the right of EVERY citizen IN HIS PERSON to own property and
manage it for his own benefit.

This is distinctly different than what Roy proposes - a central
committee laying claim to all of the natural world to which we common
citizens must appeal to to exercise our natural right and pay tribute
to so that we may fulfill our natural wants - and according to his
definition can not extract one gram of material from that world for our
own wants.

Roy doesn't want to have an honest discussion on the core issue of his
foolish defintion because Roy knows he would lose any honest
discussion.


"While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of
property is derived from Nature at all ... it is considered by those
who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural
right, a separate property in an acre of land ... Stable ownership is
the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Half truths and lies. You again are misquoting Jefferson for your own
ends.

Let's put this in context shall we? Jefferson was talking about
Indians and their use of land, and the right of the US government as an
advanced culture to establish deeds over the lands the Indians used
despite their claims.

Check it out;

Here's a more complete rendition of what Roy attributed to Jefferson;

"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is
derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously
considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a
separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal
law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men
equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who
occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes
with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late
in the progress of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson,
1813. ME 13:333

And here's an amplifcation of what Jefferson was getting at;

"A right of property in moveable things is admitted before the
establishment of government. A separate property in lands, not till
after that establishment. The right to moveables is acknowledged by all
the hordes of Indians surrounding us. Yet by no one of them has a
separate property in lands been yielded to individuals. He who plants a
field keeps possession till he has gathered the produce, after which
one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be
established and laws provided, before lands can be separately
appropriated, and their owner protected in his possession. Till then,
the property is in the body of the nation, and they, or their chief as
trustee, must grant them to individuals, and determine the conditions
of the grant." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME
18:45


And here's a statement by Jefferson defending PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of
property as civilized;

"The laws of civil society, indeed, for the encouragement of industry,
give the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most
civilized countries permit him even to give it, by testament, to whom
he pleases." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Earle, 1823. ME 15:470

Do you doubt this? Lookie here - Jefferson considered directly the
communal ownership of property by a group of people. In this letter,
Jefferson clearly states that communal ownership of property cannot be
happily extended to all of society;

"That, on the principle of a communion of property, small societies may
exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently
in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out
to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen
its proofs in various small societies which have been constituted on
that principle. But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these
that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an
individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle."
--Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly, 1822. ME 15:399

So, IN YOUR FACE ROY - you think by misquoting Jefferson your lies and
distortions can stand? lol. Not by a long shot sir.


If a coal seam exists underground and no one knows its there, or how to
get at it, or what its good for even if they did get at it - then
people are not enriched by claiming the coal seam on behalf of humanity

Yes, they are, because that makes it freely available for use once
discovered. Whereas its private appropriation unquestionably
impoverishes humanity.

Only by your definition. In any practical sense humanity is
impoverished when you undercut the motivation of developers to go out
and develop natural resources by removing their NATURAL RIGHT TO OWN
THE PRODUCTS OF THEIR EFFORTS.

Now, if people come along lets call them Bessemer and Watt - and they
invent new things that require coal for their production, and if
others as a result come along after and figure out efficient ways to
produce and process coal to feed the processes invented by Bessemer and
Watt - lets call them Carnegie - then, they have done something to
enrich humanity using this coal resource that previously contributed
nothing to the human condition.

But nothing in what they have done in any way requires that they be
given a property right in all the world's unmined coal.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about their ability
to acquire coal once they figure out a use for it. Your proposal
removes that ability and removes the motivation for anyone to develop
undeveloped resources.

Plainly, Bessemer, Watt and Carnegie became very wealthy. But that
wealth DID NOT come at the expense of humanity. Humanity was enriched
by their efforts.

That is a bait-and-switch.

No it isn't. They would never have done what they did if they were
told by the King of England that they didn't have rights to the natural
resources they needed to make a buck.

Humanity was enriched by their _efforts_,
but not by any privileges whereby they became wealthy.

You're avoiding the point - they wouldn't have made the effort if they
didn't have the right to own what their efforts produced. That's the
point.

That's because creating uses for coal and creating
methods of extracting and processing coal are CREATIVE PROCESSES - that
just happen to have part of their value associated with a natural
resource.

None of their value is associated with a natural resource.

Bull***. If I figure out how to efficiently mine, shape and transport
granite blocks from a mountain of granite, if I cannot own and then
sell the granite I have absolutely no incentive to put any effort in
CREATING these processes that DEVELOP this resource. And the
mountain of granite stays there enriching no one in a practical
material sense.

Natural resources have no intrinsic value unless and until someone
creates a use for that resource and a method for extracting and
processing and bringing that resource usefully to market.

There is no such thing as intrinsic value in any case.

Then we agree, all practical material value comes from the creative
acts of an individual. Now, all you have to do is see that what
motivates the individual to this creative act is the prospect of
becoming very wealthy from this creative act - and this requires that
he or she own the resource he or she develops. Without private
property in the hands of individuals, there is no incentive to develop
those resources and so we all suffer in poverty because of it.

And the notion
that inventing a use for a resource makes all of that resource that
exists in the world

Now you're twisting the meaning of MY words for your own ends. I
didn't say that a developer had the right to ALL of a natural resource.
You're avoiding the point - a developer has the right to the natural
resources he brings to market.

the inventor's property is plainly just stupid.

No, you're the stupid one, who misquotes me and others to suit your
ends.

As well as evil.

Oooooo! Now I'm evil! Right, and if you could I'm sure you'd dispatch
the NKVD to silence me and everyone like me who believes it is a
natural right of people to own property and use it for their own ends
to fulfill their natural wants without paying tribute to a central
committee. hahaha...

I'm sure Stalin thought the farmers who witheld food from the cities
because he couldn't figure out how to pay them were evil too! That's
why 20 million of them were killed. And that's why Russia has to
import food even to this day! lol.

What is evil dude is trying to fool people by misquoting defenders of
property rights and appealing to bogus authority to maintain the
fiction that your definition of bogus rights held in common by humanity
over all of nature makes an ounce of practical sense.

lol.

.

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