Stuck at the Hospital: Recap of the Larken Rose/Chase Rachels "Public Property" Debate (nobody really "wins" when self-ownership is off the table)
Debate Resolution:
IT IS SOMETIMES JUSTIFIABLE TO USE VIOLENCE TO FORCE SOME PEOPLE OFF, OR KEEP PEOPLE OFF, OF EVERYWHERE IN A COUNTRY WHERE THE STATE HAS DEVELOPED OR IMPROVED UPON THE LAND.
NOTE: I think it is important to first define "violence" in the sense in which both debaters use the term throughout the course of the discussion. "Violence" (in the legitimate sense) is used by both Rose and Rachels in reference to defending what they perceive to be legitimate property. While I do not use this term simply because self-defense is not a violation, no issue should be taken here with semantics regarding "violence," as its understood meaning in the context of the debate resolution is "self defense."
Stuck at the Hospital: the kernel and crux of this whole debate.
For me, the central problem of the whole debate is illustrated perfectly by the example of publicly owned hospital. Rachels argues that it would be ludicrous to assert that anyone and everyone should be allowed to descend upon a hospital (a public good) and make use of its services, resources, and materials. The reason for this, he maintains, is the the hospital is exclusively owned, if in a diffused fashion, by the group of taxpayers who funded it, voluntarily or otherwise.
Funnily enough, Rose concedes that not just everyone and anyone should be allowed to flood into a hospital, but that it is conversely impossible to settle said "ownership"--in regard to decision making and policy--without some centralized, violence-backed authority calling the shots. The reason? Multiple owners will, by all rational estimations, not always agree on how the good known as the hospital should be used.
EXAMPLE: If Joe Smith wants to use his partial ownership to allow Juan Rodriguez into the hospital, and to avail him of its services, while at the same time Bob Maxwell says that his stake says Juan should not be allowed in, we have a problem.
Rachels attempts to solve this potential problem by saying that whoever has the most "shares" of ownership in the hospital should have the most say in how it is used. Rose understandably inquires as to the method by which the amounts of these shares for each person ("partial owner") are determined, and Chase Rachels says it is not his job to go into technicalities.
A doctor, trying to figure out why the state is such horse shit.
Extrapolation breeds more problems.
If we extrapolate Rachels' hospital argument (which he does in the debate) to a national context, the problem becomes exacerbated. We look at the United States as a whole. According to Rachels, a man born "randomly" into a particular geographical region in the United States is subject to the will of "highest shareholders" in that area, by default, regarding the use and disposal of "public goods" such as roads, hospitals, libraries, parks, national forests, and the lot. This all sounds nice and pretty, when described hypothetically: The ones who have been stolen from most in the form of taxation (or other damages by the state) should be considered the largest shareholders in the good when it is time for compensation for damages.
Show me your papers!
Rachels ends up comparing "publicly owned" state property to a privately owned country club. He maintains that individuals coming in to a "publicly owned land" they have not paid taxes for, are akin to non-dues-paying individuals barging into a country club uninvited. He states that in his hypothetical plan, individuals immigrating to "public areas" (which could be defined in myriad ways, and is not defined clearly, in my opinion, by Rachels) must come on an "invite only" basis, and that all invites must be "approved."
This is a huge metaphorical disaster, since a privately owned country club's dues are paid VOLUNTARILY! I am sure most libertarians can agree that paying "dues" (taxes) for public goods is categorically not a voluntary affair. This is where, I feel, Rachels has turned his own gun of logic toward his foot, and pulled the trigger.
He states, at approx. 1:04:53:
I know that you [Rose] didn't actually choose to live here, but you're still beholden to the terms of use that are dictated by who are the actual private property owners. [Here Rose interjects and says "I am one."] And if the majority of shares of this property ownership to what's property says that we want to institute a policy to where you need to carry around a piece of paper, or maybe you can memorize a number, or maybe a cell phone, whatever it is--again, I don't know the details in advance. BUT IF THEY SAY THE CONDITION OF USING THIS JOINT PROPERTY AND THE MAJORITY OF SHARES SAYS THIS CONDITION NEEDS TO BE MET, THEN YOU NEED TO DO THAT.
(emphasis mine)
Rachels basically asserts here that he doesn't know how it will happen, but that somehow proportional shared ownership of public goods can be approximated fairly, and that even if you disagree with the methodology of this approximation, by virtue of being born into a certain region where some individuals have been judged--by some unnamed method and group--to have been damaged by the state "more than you," you must submit to these "high shareholders'" wishes and not use the land or good you partially own as you see fit. If you try to, violence against you is acceptable.
Am I partial owner of this equipment?
In short, if you try to invite Juan to the hospital, and someone who has been "approximated" to be a larger "shareholder" than you disagrees, and says you cannot use your share that way.......You lose.
Wow. That is so libertarian it almost sounds fascist.
Rose and Rachels waiting for the debate resolution to not be convoluted as hell.
Conclusion, and one issue I take with Rose's argument.
In conclusion, one party arguing to restrict access to a hospital based on partial ownership, and another arguing to allow access via partial ownership, doesn't work. Rachels makes a lot of good points in asserting that forced integration is wrong. The hospital illustration most vividly depicts this for me. Even Rose agrees, hospitals should not just be "wide open" to anyone. Why? Because there are resources there that are "owned" (paid for by taxpayers), and the doctors and staff own themselves, and cannot be "used" at will by anyone to whom they have not contractually agreed to offer their services. Rose argues that the hospital scenario is different from vague generalizations about borders and other areas, etc. I tend to agree. Rachels says the principle is the same as the principle behind not letting just anyone into the private country club.
The issue I take is that to define all of this (proportional shares in public goods, boundaries of public property versus private property, how roads can and cannot be used in cases where an "invite" is approved by specific owners of the hospital and the road connecting to it, but not other owners of both the road and hospital), a centralized body of arbitration is necessitated. This, in and of itself is actually fine, theoretically.
The problem is, it is not only a centralized body that is necessitated, but a coercive centralized body which, by very virtue of its approximations and litigations in regard to public goods, must subjugate some individuals in the name of "the collective."
Voluntary democracy is fine. Denying someone (even partial) use of what you say is their "property" is nonsensical. If something is partially owned, then it can partially be used. If it cannot be used by the owner, it is not owned. Partial ownership in a company is valid, if the buy-in was VOLUNTARY. Your vote may be rejected. You knew that from the start. Being told you "own" something and then being told you cannot use it (even partially) is an absurdity, and is coercive and violent when--in attempting to use your share anyway (as with the case of inviting Juan to the hospital)--you are sanctioned and punished with force.
It is also interesting, as somewhat of a tangent, to note that Chase says foreigners who come into a country cannot use the infrastructure because they did not pay for it. Does he think governmental extortion is kept and held neatly behind national lines? He doesn't realize that violent government policies--both economic and otherwise--cross national borders and extort, violate, murder, and maim "foreigners" as well? Aren't they entitled to their fair "share"? How he misses this is beyond me.
The final point is a simple one:
IF IT IS NOT VOLUNTARY IT IS NOT LEGITIMATE. THE END.
Here's the video to accompany this transcript:
(One final note. Toward the end of the debate Larken mentioned, in rebuttal to Chase's "invite-only" argument, that a world where you had to ask permission to go anywhere would be disastrous, and a Fascist nightmare. While I understand the basic intent of this statement, I have to note that actually, in a society where everything is privatized, technically one always will need contractual permission (whatever form that may take) to move across privately owned property and roads, and to use privately owned services. Larken also mentioned the hypothetical danger of encirclement, which I find strange, given the obvious negative market consequences for such actions and the presence of contractual safeguards against such things happening prior to purchasing land. There is no such thing as a "right to free movement" independent of property rights, as Rachels correctly notes.)
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
The argument that a publicly owned hospital is collectively "owned" by the group of people in the area is shaky at best. How on earth do you determine who has a share. and how much?
Does the family who live off-grid and do not pay taxes have a share? Do they have more of a share than a family who lives on welfare (effectively paying negative taxes). What about the billionaire factory owner who employs 10,000 people - what if he is the only significant employer in town? Certainly the billionaire is responsible for most of the cost of the hospital, so he should be able to choose who uses it, right? What about the factory worker, does he have less than the factory owner, and more than the off-grid family? Now where does the immigrant fit in? If he pays zero taxes, and also receives no public money - he should have the same share as the off-grid family, but more than the welfare family right?
Now what if the billionaire builds her own private hospital and offers free hospital services to all her factory workers and their families? Can she, and all the factory workers ask to be taxed less? (As they no longer have any use for a public hospital?)
A publicly owned hospital is a wealth redistribution machine, and by definition only exists through the initiation of violence (forcing people to fund it). The argument should not be who gets to use it, but should be about how to transfer ownership to the private sector.
This was my question for him as well. Somewhere in the course of the debate he expressed that anyone with a legitimate claim of victimhood at the hands of the state is owed restitution in the form of access to "public" infrastructure. If that's case, there are people that have never stepped foot in the US who's claim would grant them more shares than the billionaire has.
"My family was collateral damage in a drone strike, I have a legitimate claim to victimhood at the hands of the state."
If you take a portion of my paycheck without consent, and use it to build tomahawk missiles, and then put those missiles on a drone, and then send that drone to another part of the world, and start blowing things up with no regard for innocents who may be in the area, I certainly have no responsibility to those innocents, do I?
I am also the victim of the state in this scenario, so taking more money from my paycheck in order to pay restitution to this family only furthers the violence. If anyone, the only person who should be liable is the person who fired the missile.
I was talking about Chase's comments during the debate, I just used your example to extrapolate on that. I do agree with the sentiment of your comment but it doesn't really respond to his claim that the closest approximation of justice (in a circumstance where the state is not divvying up it's assets) is use of public infrastructure by those with a legitimate claim of victimhood.
Sure it does. By giving away the services of the hospital, you are taking even more away from the taxpayers who are having to continuously fund it...
You have a hospital that is giving away services? Do you live in the US?
(The question posed was suppose to be for Chase, but continuing on as if you were him)
The question was about use of the infrastructure, not necessarily using it for "free."
Assuming they are paying for everything themselves, is it immoral for them to occupy the hospital, and thus potentially deprive someone else of a room? What about if there is space available?
Exactly.
Yes. Extremely well said. Thank you.
Thank you for the thought provoking post in the first place.. I do enjoy that there are so many anarchists in the crypto community..
Well said. check below to see what I said. I would appreciate your thoughtful criticism.
While I agree with Chase's premise (net taxpayers and victims of government aggression, where government is the real people claiming to be the state), I disagree with his conclusion that this is how the property should then be managed. Instead, I'd argue that, once stakes are established, these partial owners should then be able to trade their stake between each other however they please, or manage them in common if they so choose. Absent that, the next best method would be to auction off the capital assets of the state to private parties and remunerate the victims of government aggression from the proceeds. While this would require an unprecedented scope of arbitration, this is not only possible right now but happens when corporations are sued to the point of insolvency. Without money to pay the claims, corporate assets are then auctioned off and used to pay restitution claims. While not exactly analogous given that corporations are voluntary, this process provides a fairly straight-forward model that could work on government-controlled property. The only issue I have with it is that it divests the property away from those most likely to use it (the people in a given jurisdiction who were taxed to pay for said government property).
Good stuff. Yes, I agree that that plan divests property away from those most likely to use it. In general, though, I love that you point out how people say all this would be "so complicated" but fail to look at the legal world as it exists and functions NOW!
Seriously! We have present day private examples of how you can divest capital assets. Would it be an extensive and difficult process to not only track down all the people that have a claim but establish what kind of claim they have? It certainly would be, but surely aggression of this magnitude warrants the additional care and consideration. To throw your hands up and say "nope, this is impossible" does an enormous disservice to the principle underlying the task.
Thank God someone on the other side of this issue from me understands this. I take Chase's general premise about net taxpayers and victims of aggression (though I disagree with his conclusions as to what to do), and you are the first person who I've read or spoken to that disagrees with his premise but acknowledges that private property societies would necessarily be more restrictive to movement.
Guys please follow @kafkanarch84
Many to be learned from him
I am your new follower
Best Regards Andrei
Absolutely agree. If it is not voluntary, then it is Illegitimate and immoral.
This creates situations where violence seems inevitable, as in the example with the hospital. But I think a solution in the spirit of voluntarism is in this case. The owner (regardless of his share in the property) will be right if his actions and intentions allow him to do without violence.
That is, in the case of the hospital, each "shareholder" can invite anyone to the hospital. And he will be right.
In the case of borders, at least one "citizen of the United States" should be willing to freely cross borders). And he will be right.
You're an "an"cap, aren't you?
That works out fine, and that's how I said it.
But when you have employment and no baseline ability to live, as well as private property, it is inherently involuntary as the only other option is to die, which is irrational.
Unless there was ample public land for homeless folks to go to and grow food, then the system is inherently not voluntary as you're forced to work for someone else to live.
Sorry, but English is not my native language. I can not catch what you are trying to say.
Heh, don't worry most English-speakers have no clue what I'm talking about :^)
I agree with what you said, however on the other hand I think I disagree on private property (property you claim to own but do not use) because in a world of private property you could essentially set up your own little state and generally be unjust and restrict travel and basic human needs simply because you don't want to.
To me that violates the NAP because it makes the traveler have to defy you to simply make it through your territory alive.
I think I understand what you're talking about. I think the questions arise because of the fuzziness, uncertainty, ambiguity of the term property.
Respect your word's
Trying to use logic and reason to create the objective society rapidly becomes a discussion about who is going to benefit from coercive force and not how can the force be eliminated. Taxes cannot be theft not levied and the ideal everyone needs are met and achieved. Sadly begin a society based upon theft and everyone will eventually be a thief.
At the foundation of society is ethics. The problem is that ethics have always been a limitation imposed on those who have not. If you don't have much it is unethical for you to steal. The truth is those who support such drivel do so because they don't wish to work and if everyone is a thief nothing gets produced and therein lies the truth as to why society is not civilized.
There are at least two factors that create this situation. One is the use of money to trade. The other is a fact of the system. The system enslaves us all because everyone needs food, shelter and clothing. The system favors corporations based on the fact that food,shelter and clothing cost life energy (money). Thus corporation can pay less than the life energy is worth, because it is not about choice.
Thus the system is pitting our subjective needs against the individual and as a result the ideal social cultural context cannot be achieved. The only way to fix this is to find a way to make food clothing and shelter a duty for society as a whole to meet for all individuals. This forces the corporations to compete for the individuals time instead of the individual being forced to work.
It is not economic communism because there would still be private enterprise, private property and things produced in a corporate fashion with money used to merely trade and not to be the chains of enslavement. The difference is in the advantage for the individual (the many) instead of the advantage for the few (corporations). It changes the system in a way that allows anarchy in a civilized manner. It means civilization would become civilized. That is what the private enterprize has been afraid of all along.lol ALOHA!!!
....what? Things that don't belong to you cost money because money is easier to utilize than barter. No one has any obligation to any other individual unless they choose to have one. Suggesting that people necessarily have to provide for each other and that refrain from doing so is unethical is the basis for de facto slavery.
I agree that society can't be established on theft. However, you seem to be saying that, if I am hungry, I can take food items that belong to other people to sustain myself and that isn't theft because I'm hungry. That isn't a universal ethic and runs into numerous logical contradictions and problems if you expand it to include everyone.
Everything has a cost. Food, clothing and shelter have a cost in life energy. The question is how are we going to pay. In the past mind control (government) it was thought could create solution that were needful. We see where that has gotten us. The thing is that privatizing how we create food clothing and shelter provides the opportunity for corruption we have today.
I don't think society should tax people money for the duty that society would have in providing food, shelter clothing. I think people will be willing to give say 3 hours a week as their reciprocal duty to society. That way it is capitalism with the chaining of people power taken away from money. It makes money the trading exchange it is supposed to be. This can be done with public land to grow food, public factories producing a variety of clothing. Public contractors building shelter. All funded with the life energy of the volunteers. who want the advantage of not having to worry about those life necesites.
Of course if you can find a non-violent alternative I would be all for it. However I suspect any other type of system is going to have some form of coercion. While my idea incorporates volunteerism with the current economic system with the change being where the advantage is. Instead of corporations applying the hidden coercion of lack of food, shelter, and clothing, and using the fact that everything requires life energy to obtain such, the individuals produce voluntarily the food, shelter and clothing for one another. No participation in the necessary production of the necessities is voluntarily opting out of the benefits. No force of anything needs to be applied. That is what I like about the idea. Thanks for you comment and I recognize that all of the bugs in my idea are not worked out. I also recognize your comments as necessary to flesh the idea out or decide it won't work and move on to the next idea. Thanks for you valuable comment.
Not having something isn't coercion. You aren't entitled to anything. Even absent capitalism and corporations, you aren't entitled to anything. You have to work for yourself, or you'd starve to death, or freeze to death, or anything else.
I'm not sure what you mean by life energy. Do you mean effort expended to pursue a certain goal? If that's the case, then what you're talking about are opportunity costs. Or do you mean something else? Cause right now all I'm hearing is that "society" should provide for "everyone" by producing "food, shelter, and clothing."
Can you also clarify what public means? Because right now, your idea would require force to be used in order to exclude individuals from homestead unused land or, worse, taking land and property from others to be used for "public factories" and "public lands."
We are not even entitled to life really. "You have to work for yourself, or you'd starve to death, or freeze to death, or anything else." Yep this is true and I can't help but think that this is the natural law and order of things. What I am against is the leveraging of our life energies (labor) in favor of corporations.
The idea that people won't work if there is nothing to force them ie the fact that they need food, shelter, and clothing is frankly bull. What they won't work for is peanuts or corporations producing military hardware or corps like Monsanto. The excuse that "I have to feed my family" by destroying the land or producing death for other human being won't fly anymore for obvious reasons.
"Cause right now all I'm hearing is that "society" should provide for "everyone" by producing "food, shelter, and clothing." I wouldn't say it that way simple because this kind of thinking was predictively programed into us. Society right now is in theory providing so called employment for everyone through commerce. Check the constitution and you will find the mind control (government) has the right to police commerce. How they do it is really back door welfare for corporations.
How I would put it is that society has to learn how to feed, shelter, and cloth themselves. This transfers the leverage to the individual by taking away the ability of industry to force cheap labor. It makes it so that people will be able to decide what they want to do to buy the extras of life.
" Because right now, your idea would require force to be used in order to exclude individuals from homestead unused land or, worse, taking land and property from others to be used for "public factories" and "public lands.""
Actually the idea is being put to use by a really communistic community called Ubuntu. They want to take commerce away from private industry. They want to do away with money altogether. They have gotten people to agree voluntarily to produce exclusively for their political ideology for free labor. This shows that the idea that we would have to rob and steal from people to be a falsely planted predictive programed response. Another fact that proves this is the fact that there are enough public lands to feed everyone in America without asking anyone for their property.
Another obvious fact is that we would not have to implement the idea on a massive scale, but could do some small scale testing. This of course depends on people getting past the predictive programming of this very monopolizing system and start working for ourselves instead of the very small elite.
Thanks again for your comment. It required me to think of ways of expressing things I have had in the back of my mind for a very long time. To me the truth is the welfare for the people is meant to divert people from taking care of themselves and thus not threaten the monopoly or elite. The welfare for the corporations is actually designed to enslave us to corporations and mind control. We as a society have to learn to work for ourselves.
Nice one broooo
Uhhhhhh....in collectivism the opinion on the individual who doesn't want immigrants to use the service doesn't matter as one of two things would likely be the case.
1.) The vote was conducted and those who voted for immigrant acceptance will have the cost of treatment dictated to them and not the others if there's a minority.
2.) Health care is a human right and unless a resident needs the treatment the immigrant can have the treatment.
Oh well, there's one more...uhmmmmm...there are no immigrants in collectivism?
I'm not sure what you mean by "in collectivism," as there are both voluntary and involuntary forms.
In involuntary collectivism you get a bullet in the head if you step out of line because it's not collectivism, it's just aggressive and up front human farming.
So no, you're beating around the bush as it's clear what I was speaking of.
I agree. Did you think I didn't? you did not differentiate in you original comment between voluntary and coercive collectivism. I just wanted to make that differentiation. Not disagreeing here man.