You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: But Anarchism is LAWLESS CHAOS! Clearing up some common misconceptions about Voluntaryism/Anarcho-Capitalism.
If land belongs to no one - that is, no one can claim exclusive use - who gets to use a particular plot for what end?
That could be up for discussion in the community or between different communities. When there's a dispute other communities could be invited to mediate
So then one of the communities owns the land in question. Either way, the land is not open for anyone to come into and claim to use exclusively if its being currently used. Ownership doesn't denote that you somehow have physical possession of the land and you can take it with you. It just means that you have established that you exercise exclusive control of it. Nothing I've described would prevent what you're suggesting; it would actually facilitate it. It is likely, and advantageous, that private property owners would come together to create covenant communities like you're describing.
Private property norms seek to mitigate and help resolve disputes over the use of scarce, rivalrous resources. That's the purpose that ownership serves.
Ok but what if the ones who would like to start these kind of communities don't have access to land? Is it really hard to imagine why some people coming from the old would paradigm would want to hoard land in various ways for various reasons? How do you prevent those who are coming into this new paradigm with old world values from acting this way?
What's wrong with softening the concept of private property rather than relying exclusively on it?
You understand I'm not arguing, right? I'm curious.
Well, by virtue of the fact that you're engaging in a debate between opposing points, you're engaging in argumentation. Arguing doesn't mean yelling at each other :)
Again, hoarding land requires enormous use of resources unless that land is being utilized. Maintaining a nature preserve like Yosemite privately, for example, would be enormously expensive. The cost of hoarding land puts an upper limit on how much land can be hoarded just to keep it. If your concern is buying up the land to drive up the cost, developed areas would compete with those people hoarding land to provide housing for people, driving down the cost. Market forces exert a downward pressure on costs and an upward pressure on quality.
Access to land isn't a right. The only right you have is to not have your consent violated; it's the only so-called right that can be universalized to everyone. It's the reason why acts like murder and rape are always going to be immoral. Since private property extends from that (based in the exclusive control you exercise over your body, which is itself a scarce, rivalrous resource), softening on that opens the door to soften the ethical limits on trespass against individual human beings.