The story is fiction and unrealistic.
In reality, there are no untouched pieces of land.
Your continued participation in this thread is irrelevant.
From whom? How did that person come to possess it? It seems like there’s a contradiction built into the hypothetical.
Let’s say that Bill and Jill stood on shore and looked out to sea to an island that neither had ever visited, and Jill said, “My island, I call it!” and Bill said, “I would like to buy your island.” And then he gave Jill the change and lint in his pocket and they called it a deal.
In that case, I would say your objection works.
Suppose instead that Jill had scouted and mapped the island, verified by aerial survey that it’s uninhabited, claimed the land herself, the state recognized that she was claiming unclaimed land, and her intent was to use that registered claim to seek investors to develop the island. However, due to a run of bad luck she needs cash, so she sells the land for roughly the cost of the scouting, mapping, and surveying, and the state recognizes the sale.
In that case, the objection seems less valid. It seems reasonable and expedient to allow people to claim unclaimed land, to have a central ledger of land ownership to avoid disputes, to allow land to be sold and property rights enforced without a requirement for immediate use. And indeed, common law countries do recognize limits to mere ownership-on-paper, in the form of easements and adverse possession, and those exceptions are very valuable in settling ownership of abandoned land and encouraging its development.
The implication behind land ownership is that there is a military to take and hold said land. Without the defense of a military, your land will be captured by anybody with guns and the will to use them. Hence it is implicit that land ownership implies that same force as the ultimate authority behind its claims. So in other words, individuals and people are not merely claiming land, but claiming land on behalf of a larger society, threat of force, and military order.
So that is the ultimate arbiter of said land. If you cannot defend your land then a higher power will take it at their leisure.
Right.
The less you physically occupy your property, the less right you have to it.
There should be a limit to how long you can be absent from your property.
We can democratically and federally or provincially decide how long you can be absent from your property before it’s considered abandoned.
1 month, 1 year, 1 decade?
I say 1 year.
Or alternatively, there can be limits to how much property you can purchase and pay tax on.
Really a person can’t frequently, physically occupy or use, say more than 10 homes, so he shouldn’t be able to own 100 homes, and if he owns 100, 90 of them should be able to be claimed by whoever is frequently, physically occupying them.
The same principle can be applied to factories, offices, any sort of property.
Of course the number 10 seems arbitrary, why 10?
Why not 9, why not 11 or 11000?
But many if not all laws are arbitrary in this way.
Why did x criminal receive 10 years imprisonment, why not 9 or 11?
Why is the age of consent 16 years, why not 17 or 15?
Why is a blood alcohol level above 0.08 considered drunk driving?
But still we should draw the line somewhere, and then we can democratically discuss where the line ought to be drawn in conjunction with the relevant experts: sociologists and so forth.
Property should have something to do with, you know, actually occupying and possessing things.
If we’re to have a state at all, you shouldn’t have to buy land from the state, unless the state itself is occupying it.
You shouldn’t be able to reserve land.
You should just be able to build a home on some land, and immediately start paying tax.
If you haven’t built, or cultivated anything yet, it’s not your land.
So the settlers in this scenario should just start paying a very small amount of tax for their very small settlements, or they may be so small they shouldn’t have to, but no one should be able to make them gather their belongings and move.
Or we could privatize the state, and they wouldn’t have to pay any tax if they didn’t want to, but they also wouldn’t receive any protection.
Also we could do away with tax altogether, and just have the state print its own money within democratically fixed limits in order to fund its projects: police, military and so forth.
Actually there are some parts of North America that’re untouched by people, at least according to some scientists, but they don’t know that for sure.
Nothing has absolutely been touched or untouched, I mean no one has ever touched every square inch of their home or land, no one has ever touched every square inch of an island.
But in the case of Bob, the settlers touched the island before him, so from my perspective, they have more claim to it, particularly the part they’ve built simple settlements on.
A few challenges (or clarifying questions, if I’m misunderstanding you):
Suppose I want to build a sky scraper. To do so, I need to do surveys, inspections, build blue prints taking specific features of the land into account, etc. That all takes time. If I can’t reserve the land, and someone pitches a tent on the land before I complete prep and break ground on my sky scraper, do I just lose out? Isn’t planning disincentivized in that case?
Conversely, could Bill have pitched a tent on the island and then had claim to kick out the settlers?
Can I build a sky scraper in the middle of the grand canyon? On your lawn? In your rose garden? Why not?
Conversely, could Bill have thrown a handful of grass seed on the island and then had claim to kick the settlers out?
From the state.
Doesn’t the state own all land within its borders not privately owned?
I may’ve been confused about that.
I don’t think that’s legitimate 
, for all they know, the island is inhabited, or someone else ‘called’ it.
A piece of land ought to become your property only after you’ve done something with it, like build a home on it, or cultivate it, and only the part you’ve mixed your labor with, not the part around it, unless you’ve built a fence around it.
I don’t think you should be able to claim things in this way, or if you can, you should have to build something on just about every square inch of your claim immediately, otherwise all or the part of it you haven’t built anything on goes back to being unclaimed.
I’m not exactly sure what constitutes immediately, should we give people a few days, weeks or months?
The more time we give them, the more unjust it seems, but of course building sophisticated structures requires a lot of time, energy and preparation prior to commencing, and it’d help to secure the land first, otherwise that time, energy and preparation might be squandered.
I’ll give it some more thought.
Maybe there ought to be laws protecting people who live off the grid from political/economic expansion. But if they don’t pay tax, it’s kind of unfair to government and society to protect them.
I think I’m conceding this point, developers need to reserve land before commencing development.
You can’t claim a whole island with a single tent, only the land underneath and around it within a small radius, perhaps with a thousand tents.
I think we need national parks and nature reserves.
My lawn and rose garden are something I’ve developed, so they’re mine.
I don’t think that’s sufficient development to claim any part of the island, even the part touched by the grass seed.
Have your little hissy fit! Ha.
Nevertheless, your so called redistribution of wealth is simply theft.
theft
noun
- criminal law
the dishonest taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession
Your post smacks of New World Order indoctrination and your little tale is silky smooth and deliberately innocuous. Have you ever wondered why in the surveys one has to fill out when the question is asked, not where you live, but how many rooms you have and how many people occupy the premises. So what will happen if your house is bigger than your need? The one with greater need will get it, but because you own it, you will still have to pay the taxes and expenses on it and don’t think because you keep a manicured lawn that this will protect your ass.
“The complex circumstance of our day make it necessary for public authority to intervene more often in social, economic and cultural matters…”
Pope calls for a New World Order.
You could apply the same definition to any dishonest trade - all trade is a redistribution of wealth due to human decision, just as much as “the bad kind” where it’s the government doing it instead of the obedient employees of capitalists acting on their behalf.
You can steal something of someone’s and replace it with something else of equal market value and it would still be theft, but it would also be a dishonest, or non-consensual trade.
Likewise selling something at a profit is the dishonest trade of something for more than it is worth. The buying party is either naively ignorant that this is the case, or knowledgeable that this is the case and therefore only conducts any exchange with reluctance and therefore a degree of non-consent, because if there was no other option, they would have to go without something they may need. This is therefore a dishonest and skewed expression of value on both sides, that better fits the definition of coercion.
A dishonest taking of property (in this case cash) belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession? If you’d even class “time and energy” as someone’s property, I guess capitalists taking that from an employee with the intention of depriving them of it permanently in exchange for less wages than the employee is earning the employer in order to profit from the transaction, then that’s also dishonest.
I guess profit is theft. Or is that some “new world order” bullshit causing me to perfectly rationally explore criminal law beyond its intentions?
Hi Gloominary, thanks for your response. One thing I’d like to clarify from my earlier comments:
I phrased this as though it supports my position, but really it supports yours. The kind of use-it-or-lose it position you’re proposing is actually the law in much of the western world (though with a longer grace period than you propose). And there’s reason to think that not taking that position causes problems in e.g. Rio de Janeiro, where slums exist in part because the people who are actually living on and using land can’t establish a legal claim to it, and so can’t invest in it fully.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on Georgist land value tax proposals, which could overcome some of the issues you present: people have to pay a tax to society to maintain their claim to any piece of land, so they have an incentive not to let land sit unused. You have said you think that even the state’s claim to the land is suspect, but I don’t think it’s necessary to treat the state as though they are in the same position as any other land owner. If (if!) the state is a proxy for the commonweal, then it is more like society as a whole getting the benefit of anyone who takes control of a piece of land. Everyone collectively agrees to acknowledge Bill’s ownership, and in return Bill pays money that is used for everyone’s benefit.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Things don’t have universally agreed worth, so it’s possible to sell something at a profit provided that the person you’re selling it to values it more than you do. You can think of an exchange of goods for money as one person selling goods and buying money, and the other person selling money and buying goods. I can buy goods for money when the goods are worth more to me than the money, and then sell them again to someone else for more money when that money is worth more than the goods.
Put differently, it’s possible to get a profit by disagreeing with people, without necessarily deceiving them.
Silhouette wrote:
Albert Einstein states - "Mankind’s desire for peace can be realised only by the creation of a world government with all my heart I believe that the world’s present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbaric war and inhumanity and that only law can assure progress toward a civilised peaceful humanity.
There is no salvation for civilisation or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.
Winston Churchill “The creation of an authoritative world order is the ultimate aim toward which we must strive”.
Bertrand Russell…the only possibilities are now world government or death.
Robert Muller, former assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, said
We must move as quickly as possible to a one world government, a one world religion, under a one world leader.
Charles De Gaulle “Nations must unite in a world government or perish”…
How do you do that?
You create so much conflict that everybody will be willing to give up their sovereignty.
The emergence of a new world order is very real, with political and socio-economic ramifications that will personally impact on the lives of all of us.
If only it were bullshit.
@Shield
Arguably taxation itself is theft, whether it’s to fund hospitals and schools on the one hand, or the military and police on the other.
Reserving land is a kind of theft too, from those who were already there, or from those who moved there afterwards.
We may argue taxation and reserving land is a necessary theft, but it’s still theft nonetheless.
How is this new world order?
The new world order, if it exists, is about big business and/or government taking over the world. This is the opposite of that, this is about protecting people who live off the grid from big business and government.
I think either there should be limits on the amount of property you can have, like people can only own one home and one place of business each, or if you haven’t personally, physically occupied your property for over a year say, it should be considered abandoned by you, and go to whoever’s presently living there, or be up for grabs.
If you don’t physically occupy or possess something at least to some extent, than it’s not yours and no one can take or steal it from you.
What I propose here is the opposite of both big business, and government.
This isn’t the new world order this would be the dismantling of it.
It would mean no one could monopolize anything.
It’s unjust to own an entire apartment or hotel with hundreds or thousands of suites, you should only be able to own one suite or say 10 suites at a time, there should be limits to property.
Anyway something has to be done, it’s absurd how greedy we’ve permitted some individuals, families and institutions to become.
Property needs to be redefined, so either essential goods and services like food and housing are partly or fully nationalized by an increasingly direct democracy, or residents and workers begin taking over big housing and big business directly, with, without or in spite of government intervention.
Something needs to be done, this world and its values are absurd, totally unsustainable.
If we’re to have government and tax, in this and similar scenarios, I think the settlers should be protected, but they should have to start paying tax for their protection, a very small tax, considering they’re living off the grid.
If people want to reserve land for construction, they should have to at least build a fence around the land they mean to build on, and they shouldn’t be able to reserve land for very long, less than a year.
Hi Carleas, you’re welcome and thanks.
Do you have any idea how long the grace period is in North America, or does it vary from province/state to province/state, or with what the developer intends to do with the land?
That’s good to know there’s limits on how long unused land can be reserved, I think that’s just.
I just assumed they already had to pay a tax, you mean unused land isn’t taxed?
I think they should pay a tax to government, after all, they want government to reserve and protect land for them, that’s a service government is providing.
Still the amount of time they can leave unused land lying around should be limited.
Actually I’m not so sure high taxes are necessary, perhaps taxation isn’t at all, if government is to exist, it should just print the money it needs, within limits of course, without having to turn to the central banks to fund its projects.
Aside from the military and police, basic education and healthcare, government should either nationalize food and housing, as I said earlier but I’ll say it again anyway, or we could have communism and syndicalism, where residents and workers seize control of big housing and business directly, with, or without the support of government (anarchism).
If things don’t have a universally agreed worth, then what’s a market price?
I do agree that things don’t actually have a universally agreed worth, but prices converge to the same amount for everyone none-the-less out of “fairness” (at any given time at least) because their sale at that price yields the maximum profit as a product of the number of buyers and the value at which the product is sold. This product is an expression of a more fundamental product - of the wants of the wage market to maximise wage expenses to the business, the level of business owner entitlement to a profit that justifies their capital investment enough to them, and the wants of the consumer market to minimise revenues to the business because they want to pay the lowest price. Each of these three parties are at odds with one another and only win or lose out in proportion to the balance of power between each of them.
When power is not equal between these parties as it never is, there is a lack of genuine consent (even if the disadvantaged relent) on the side of the party that is knowingly losing out, or there is dishonesty when the party with less power is not aware.
But yes, this relies on the aggregate of people’s disagreements arriving at a market price as is the case in practice, rather than on a theoretical abstraction of each individual from the system in which they are embedded in order to appreciate their disagreement with others over the value of any one product. At best the latter scenario would require many much smaller markets, as (it could be argued) we used to have when communication was lacking. Communication and information availability is not lacking anymore…
Market prices arrive at some kind of average between all of these differences in individual valuations, such that those who are in a more powerful situation (able to need products less and having enough wealth to be able to turn down sub-optimal opportunities and still get by) actually profit from every transaction they make - in that the money they are required to part with means a lot less to them than the thing they want to buy, and those who are in a less powerful situation have to sacrifice what means a lot more to them just to be able to buy things, or they just have to go without altogether. It’s easy to see how the rich get richer in this way due to market prices, and the poor only suffer from them. The difference in consent should be fairly obvious here - hence why trading is synonymous with thievery when there are the power imbalances that there always will be.
I have toyed with the idea of prices being set at a proportion of one’s wealth, rather than at absolute amounts - in much the same way as taxes are charged. The proportions don’t necessarily have to be uniform across all degrees of wealth, because otherwise it would completely negate any of the incentivising bonus of trying to get rich through being economically valuable, but at least they would offset the power imbalances spiraling out of control like they do with absolute market prices, and thus alleviate the needless suffering of those who aren’t as economically valuable. We can reward people for being better, but we really don’t have to punish people for being worse quite so much.