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A good time to read Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?[1] Most people who fly the economic libertarian banner are actually Royal Libertarians,

A good time to read Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?[1] Most people who fly the economic libertarian banner are actually Royal Libertarians, which is to say they aren’t really Libertarians at all. [1]: http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

Psychlist 4y ago
What struck me about that is that it could perhaps be reworded as a conflict over what 'property rights' mean. One of them is "right to destroy" and the other is "obligation to protect". Viz, the "common lands" are lands which everyone has an obligation to protect so they can be shared not just with those currently alive, but with future generations. The "royal lands" is land where the owner has the right not just to deny others the use of it, but can choose to destroy it. Those property rights can encompass more than just land, and generally includes people (conscription is the exertion of 'right to destroy' over people, for example) In Australia this has led to utter incomprehension on the part of the colonists when locals choose to be killed rather than let their property be destroyed. Their lives are so bound up with the obligation to care for country that without that obligation their lives don't exist. The colonialists found this convenient although their short term approach obviously leads to their own demise. Traditional lands rights preserved the country for 50,000 years, royal rights look to destroy it in less than 1000. Ooops.
imtringued 4y ago
"But according to royal libertarians, land belongs to the first user, forever." I think this is the essence of capitalism. It's not like Marx said that private property is the problem. It is this first mover advantage that is carried forward into the future forever. The solution is quite simple, you limit landownership to a finite amount of time, it could be 20 years like patents or it could be a public landownership system like Singapore or it could just be a land value tax. The problem is that you cannot replicate being first without urban sprawl, which exists because the privilege of others being first forever. So future generations are in debt to past generations and their descendants, simply because they were first to settle. We are born poor because the first thing we have to do is negotiate with those who own our surroundings. Also, one particularly perverse situation is where indigenous communities don't register their land and some foreign investor comes along and registers it without their consent and often the compensatory payments are purely symbolic like a dollar per hectare for land that leases for at least $20 per year.
- eevilspock 4y ago
  Capitalists claim to believe in free markets but private ownership of land is completely antithetical to the basic idea of a free market. In a market you cannot buy an infinite amount of something for a finite amount of money. But that's what land ownership is: control of a finite resource in perpetuity that you bought for a finite sum. You can buy some land for $10,000 then you and your heirs can collect an infinite amount of rent from it since you own it in perpetuity. Property and inheritance taxes are society's weak attempts to correct for this, but weak they are. This absurdity doesn't even include the absurdity of how the first "owner" of the land from which your ownership derives just took it, as you and the article I linked point out.

Psychlist 4y ago

What struck me about that is that it could perhaps be reworded as a conflict over what 'property rights' mean. One of them is "right to destroy" and the other is "obligation to protect". Viz, the "common lands" are lands which everyone has an obligation to protect so they can be shared not just with those currently alive, but with future generations. The "royal lands" is land where the owner has the right not just to deny others the use of it, but can choose to destroy it. Those property rights can encompass more than just land, and generally includes people (conscription is the exertion of 'right to destroy' over people, for example) In Australia this has led to utter incomprehension on the part of the colonists when locals choose to be killed rather than let their property be destroyed. Their lives are so bound up with the obligation to care for country that without that obligation their lives don't exist. The colonialists found this convenient although their short term approach obviously leads to their own demise. Traditional lands rights preserved the country for 50,000 years, royal rights look to destroy it in less than 1000. Ooops.

imtringued 4y ago

"But according to royal libertarians, land belongs to the first user, forever." I think this is the essence of capitalism. It's not like Marx said that private property is the problem. It is this first mover advantage that is carried forward into the future forever. The solution is quite simple, you limit landownership to a finite amount of time, it could be 20 years like patents or it could be a public landownership system like Singapore or it could just be a land value tax. The problem is that you cannot replicate being first without urban sprawl, which exists because the privilege of others being first forever. So future generations are in debt to past generations and their descendants, simply because they were first to settle. We are born poor because the first thing we have to do is negotiate with those who own our surroundings. Also, one particularly perverse situation is where indigenous communities don't register their land and some foreign investor comes along and registers it without their consent and often the compensatory payments are purely symbolic like a dollar per hectare for land that leases for at least $20 per year.

eevilspock 4y ago
Capitalists claim to believe in free markets but private ownership of land is completely antithetical to the basic idea of a free market. In a market you cannot buy an infinite amount of something for a finite amount of money. But that's what land ownership is: control of a finite resource in perpetuity that you bought for a finite sum. You can buy some land for $10,000 then you and your heirs can collect an infinite amount of rent from it since you own it in perpetuity. Property and inheritance taxes are society's weak attempts to correct for this, but weak they are. This absurdity doesn't even include the absurdity of how the first "owner" of the land from which your ownership derives just took it, as you and the article I linked point out.