3 ms·

> exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources that you've appropriated and applied work to in order to turn it into something highly

> exclusive control over abundant and practically free natural resources that you've appropriated and applied work to in order to turn it into something highly valuable Things like land, mineral resources, and water are definitely not "abundant and practically free", but in most places, scarce and highly contested. Furthermore, the people who control them to a large extent did not work for them, but inherited them. So to what extent you have access to some portion of these scarce resources doesn't depend on your own labor, but on whether you happened to get lucky in the birth lottery and get born to someone who, in the 19th century, signed a favorable water-rights contract in California, or a favorable ranching/mineral-rights contract in Texas. You'd have to have quite some metaphysical faith in the "labor mixing" theory to believe that because some pioneer in the 1850s got a good deal on land or water, it metamorphosized into "his land" in perpetuity, even though he didn't create it. Or, in many cases, even put any actual labor into it in the first place (many of these deals were "paper" deals where east-coast financiers acquired Western land holdings, and sent other people to work them).

aminok 10y ago
Natural resources that are scarce can be justifiably taxed, but the argument the parent comment paraphrased is not a Georgist one of taxing only land and other natural resources. It is claiming that no form of property rights are legitimate, and that all enforcement of property rights is a violation others' rights.
- vidarh 10y ago
  No, I did not claim that no form of property rights are legitimate at all. If you think that, then read again. What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others. That does not mean it can not be legitimate - we reduce the liberty of others for various legitimate reasons all the time. It does mean that whenever we enforce property rights we are making a tradeoff between the liberties of differents sets of people.
  - aminok 10y ago
    You quoted Proudhon who considered none-natural-resource classes of property theft as well. But your argument is also absurd: >What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others. All property is scarce, which is why it has market value. You're saying people have no right to the property they create, if it happens to be scarce (which it always is). Maybe you have some vague arbitrary definition of "scarce" that allows you to claim that the property rights you exercise over your possessions are legitimate, while the property rights of those with much more than you are not.

aminok 10y ago

Natural resources that are scarce can be justifiably taxed, but the argument the parent comment paraphrased is not a Georgist one of taxing only land and other natural resources. It is claiming that no form of property rights are legitimate, and that all enforcement of property rights is a violation others' rights.

vidarh 10y ago
No, I did not claim that no form of property rights are legitimate at all. If you think that, then read again. What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others. That does not mean it can not be legitimate - we reduce the liberty of others for various legitimate reasons all the time. It does mean that whenever we enforce property rights we are making a tradeoff between the liberties of differents sets of people.
- aminok 10y ago
  You quoted Proudhon who considered none-natural-resource classes of property theft as well. But your argument is also absurd: >What I did claim is property rights over any scarce resource inherently reduces the liberty of others. All property is scarce, which is why it has market value. You're saying people have no right to the property they create, if it happens to be scarce (which it always is). Maybe you have some vague arbitrary definition of "scarce" that allows you to claim that the property rights you exercise over your possessions are legitimate, while the property rights of those with much more than you are not.