The Valley of the Property Dolls

[Selene]

Once upon a time there was a valley one hundred miles long and forty miles wide. No humans had ever entered the valley.

One spring two families entered the valley from opposite sides and were each stunned by it lush greenery which was fed by a crystal clean river.

Exhausted from their trek to find a place to raise their family and build their life together, they pitched their tents on opposite sides of the valley.

They began to build their homes each unaware of the others existence.

First hypothetical question?

Do they each own the property they are using?

[kiaer.ts]

First step, shoot Martin Radwin.

Either the settlers come from the same society, in which case there is an established method for them to settle the land claim, or they are foreigners to each other, or savages, and just don't realize that they are at war yet. Maybe someday they will negotiate a peace settlement.

This is really not all that difficult, unless you arbitrarily ignore precedent and history and assume an evil God created from scratch for his entertainment. Anyone who has read Tunnel in the Sky knows you do not go on a camping trip without Robert's Rules of Order, and a loaded gun.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Ted Keer

[Selene]

One of my favorite juvenile Heinlein stories with lots of adult themes.

"Tunnel in the Sky is a science fiction book written by Robert A. Heinlein and published in 1955 by Scribner's as one of the Heinlein juveniles. The story describes a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal."

Tunnel in the Sky Heinlein Wiki

In this iteration of the Valley of the Property Dolls, they do not come from the same society, nor the same race, nor do they speak the same language.

Do they each own the property they are using?

[kiaer.ts]

One of my favorite juvenile Heinlein stories with lots of adult themes.

"Tunnel in the Sky is a science fiction book written by Robert A. Heinlein and published in 1955 by Scribner's as one of the Heinlein juveniles. The story describes a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal."

Tunnel in the Sky Heinlein Wiki

In this iteration of the Valley of the Property Dolls, they do not come from the same society, nor the same race, nor do they speak the same language.

Do they each own the property they are using?

"Own" is a political concept and you have specified that there is no polity. I.e., you have specified two troops of furless chimpanzees, intentionally without specifying their habits, eductaion, or disposition. The default state of man is war. Let me know the result of their encounter.

[Selene]

Ted:

I understand your default position. However, since they were seeking a place to settle and raise a family, they have a sense of purpose and structure.

I believe each of these families would presume that they own the land that they are using and possibly they might believe that they own as far as they can see.

Adam

[kiaer.ts]

Ted:

I understand your default position.

To shoot Martin Radwin?

However, since they were seeking a place to settle and raise a family, they have a sense of purpose and structure.

I believe each of these families would presume that they own the land that they are using and possibly they might believe that they own as far as they can see.

If a person asks you whether it is right for a man hanging from a window ledge to kick out a window to save himself, the proper answer is, "How did he get there in the first place?"

Again, do they come from civilized societies with the concept of land ownership? Both Jews and Romans for instance, were big on (even religious about) marking out their territories with physical markers. Are they entirely ignorant of the existence of other people, to the point of not having any traditions on how to mark land ownership? Who sets off to colonize land without having worked this out ahead of time? Although, of course, we are a dying culture, losing contact with such essential concepts, historically, survey has been sufficient for states to make claims, and enclosure and improvement sufficient for individuals. Ownership is an inherently political concept.

There's also the question of the need to integrate new knowledge. There is a difference between saying, "This is our valley," (we discovered / settled it), and, "We own this Valley," (we have a deed which the constabulary of the fatherland will use for to protect). The idea of owning the land in any real sense is meaningless if there are no other claimants and no state behind you to defend your claim to it. Inhabit, claim, control, improve, defend, and hold title to are all separate concepts, each useful, and each reflecting a certain level of cognitive and cultural development. The last is what is meant by own land in our society. To use the word own without specifying all these circumstances and presuppositions, as if it had its own intrinsic meaning, is what has classically been called to equivocate, and what Rand would call to speak in floating abstractions.

Ownership presupposes a polity. If the settlers cannot form their own compact voluntarily, then the answer depends on which state wins the war.

[Dennis Hardin]

Ted:

I understand your default position. However, since they were seeking a place to settle and raise a family, they have a sense of purpose and structure.

I believe each of these families would presume that they own the land that they are using and possibly they might believe that they own as far as they can see.

Adam

Adam,

If the valley was previously unsettled, each would own the parcel of land they are actively using. They have no claim for the land "as far as they can see."

[Philip Coates]

I agree with Dennis and would say more: The doctrine of ownership by making use of is "mixing your labor with the land". If you are not making use of it, but can just 'see' it you can't prevent others from setting their and building their own farm or ranch or business (within 'interference' limits). It also extends to certain other access rights. You don't own the untapped river than runs nearby in perpetuity or in whole, but you have the right to access the clean water you need to drink, to irrigate, and so on. You don't (or shouldn't) own all the mineral resources accessible under your land, when someone can access them without stepping on your land, unless and until you start digging for them.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787**, the Homestead Act and various mining acts in U.S. history allowed obtaining property by first use and they limited the extent of what a single person or small family could claim to be making use of to some reasonable acreage, in many cases.

(I suspect there may have English predecessors of these in the common law, but I've not researched this.)

**one of the most important laws in American history.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Guyau]

.

Property rights for two parties and more.

Follow-on: a, b

.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Stephen Boydstun

[Mike11]

The following is not trolling, it is an honest question on my part -

In the Canadian prairies during the nineteenth century there were roughly 30 thousand aboriginals stretched over about a tenth of the continent, hunting the buffalo, their sole resource. They had no permanent settlements in the prairie, living a completely nomadic life.

Just how much "mixing your labour" is enough? I think its a stretch to say so few could own so much but to say they had no property rights (as the ARI crowd love to harp on about) seems equally a stretch.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Joel Mac Donald

[Guyau]

Joel,

Good issue. The earlier posts in this thread are also thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Not only “the ARI crowd” comes to the no-property-rights answer concerning the nomadic hunters. Murray Rothbard and the other thinkers in my first link in #9 are together in that verdict. (Note here concerning a people both farming and hunting.)

Ted’s historical sensitivity is right on. War* and treaties (e.g.) were the more general setting of property rights in land of Native Americans. What was the story in Canada?

Edited March 26, 2011 by Stephen Boydstun

[Mike11]

There are a few relevant examples in Canadian history to this debate.

When treaties were struck between the Federal Government and the Aboriginal tribes (Cree, Blackfoot, and others) they had different understandings of their meaning. To the Federal Government it was a one time transaction - some developmental aid in return for ownership of the West. To the tribes it was an offer to rent their land in exchange for permanent support. Some have claimed the aboriginals did not understand the idea of selling their country. They understood the idea but simply believed they had not sold it so much as agreed to rent it. Needless to say the Federal government's narrative was the dominant one.

Canada also has a history of using different levels of development as a reason for theft. Our earliest history, during the settlement of Mount Royal (Montreal) the French assumed only they had property rights, despite the aboriginals' superior numbers and urbanization. Peace was kept simply because to much theft would spark an aboriginal uprising.

In Manitoba the mixed blood Metis population was pushed out by Ontario farmers. The farmers insisted their agricultural way of life had ontological priority over the Metis semi-nomadic lifestyle. Property law was altered to strip the Metis of their land titles and acts of out right theft and extortion were common.

In British Columbia aboriginals were simply assumed not to own land. Despite the aboriginal history and numerical dominance they were seen as squatters who occupied land until a white wanted to use it.

The aboriginals generally were considered without collective land rights, their reservations moved as resources dictated. Any reserve with nearby resources was simply moved to make way for white settlement.

This is why I am suspicious of Locke's ideas. While they work well for developed societies they seem an excellent excuse for the above shennanigans.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Joel Mac Donald

[Philip Coates]

Great, very informative post about what happened in Canada, Joel!

There are a number of parallels with varying ways "the Indians" have been treated in American history from Jamestown and the Pilgrims up to and including today, but I like how you've separated out and essentialized** the different cases. I want to reread it before responding...

** it really helps on an internet forum -- since we all have limited time and are browsing multiple issues -- to essentialize, and not to be too 'academic', too exhaustive, or too footnotey (if that's even a word... )

Edited March 26, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Xray]

Do they each own the property they are using?

No. For at this stage, they have merely settled down on the land, that's all. I suppose before long, they will claim ownership though.

Imo claim of ownership is rooted in the wish of us humans to possess security.

There exists no "natural right" to ownership though.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Xray

[Philip Coates]

> Imo claim of ownership is not rooted in any natural right, but is rooted in the wish of us humans to possess security.

Xray, one of the big reasons for the perpetuation of poverty all across the third world is that the poor don't have title to their land, their farms, even their homes. If they did, they could work hard and accumulate capital, could sell, could lease, could get a loan based on the value of their property, etc.

Throughout history and all across the world, the men with guns and swords -- the powerful, the nobility, the aristocrats -- have always wanted to keep the lower classes as 'tenants' who have to pay rent. Even if they had the land first, like the aborigines or natives in many parts of the world conquered by the Europeans and other invaders.

(The Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto wrote a good book on this, called "The Other Path".)

Edited March 26, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Joel,

As I understand the Indian mentality back during pioneer settlements, they had no concept of private property like the white man did. In the things I have read, they were not all peaceful, either. Just like with cultures all over the world throughout all of human history, they made war on each other. Some practiced slavery, too.

So they were not innocent victims leading peaceful lives in the Garden of Eden until the evil white folks came along and destroyed their paradise. They were no better and no worse than other nomadic civilizations.

Once they struck deals with the respective federal governments, it took a long time for them to understand what a deed was. In their thinking (once again, based on things I have read), their idea of land ownership was more, "You are busy over there, you get angry when we come around, but you will leave us alone if we go over here. OK."

The shameful part of the governments--to me--was not in "theft" between contractual parties, but something even more deep. They forced contractual agreements on people who had no culture of such things and no real understanding of what they were getting into, then violated the very contracts they imposed.

Like I said elsewhere, all property rights I have seen in human history start with a tribe (or organized group of people) claim-staking some land, setting boundaries and establishing a condition that if anyone tries to take it from them, such person will be killed or imprisoned. This holds for conquered lands, too.

The real sin I see of the respective federal governments is by using a standard that was not relevant at the time, but instead, the sleazy way they tried to paint conquering the lands. It was an outright case of using sanction of the victim to make it look better than it was.

Establishing boundaries throughout the world is starting to become more peaceful than in times past, but there is still a long way to go. At least slavery as a formal government-sanctioned practice is no longer part of human society.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Joel,

As I understand the Indian mentality back during pioneer settlements, they had no concept of private property like the white man did. In the things I have read, they were not all peaceful, either. Just like with cultures all over the world throughout all of human history, they made war on each other. Some practiced slavery, too.

So they were not innocent victims leading peaceful lives in the Garden of Eden until the evil white folks came along and destroyed their paradise. They were no better and no worse than other nomadic civilizations.

This is a very naive Hollywood movie view of Indians. The nomadic lifestyle requires horses, which did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced by the Europeans. Only some of the Sioux and the Apache in the Great Plains took up a horseback raiding lifestyle, and they were both descended from maize farming cultures. Settled farming societies were the rule throughout most of the Americas, with hunter-gatherer societies with established fishing rights among the Algonquins of the Canadian north and highly advanced salmon fisheries in the North West. Acorn groves in California were tended with great care. The Tlingit were so wealthy and Advanced that they were never conquered by Europeans.

[Mike11]

MSK,

I agree with basically 100% of what you have written. I did not mean to paint the Avatar picture of the Canadian aboriginal, my intent was just to show how Canada's ideology of property rights (derived from Locke and other European thinkers) and betrayal of treaties were used to strip aboriginals of their dignity, lifestyle and self determination.

The Canadian aboriginals were people like anyone else on the planet. Hell, even before the Canadian government turned treaties into systematic plans of mass starvation the prairie aboriginals were killing each other.

[Mike11]

My apologies for hijacking this thread from Selene but my point is to stress how hypothetical scenarios and abstract moral systems can allow the dominant society to justify itself with an "absolute moral law". As Phillip and others have said, these issues often come down to who has the most guns and elegant excuses. When we talk about these issues I think we need to stay down to Earth with concrete situations, it keeps us self critical and cuts down on the excuse making. I have seen many people over at OO.net starting with Man qua Man, progressing through inane abstractions and ending with "and that's why the Muslims have no right to life, as such."

I am not accusing Selene of any dishonesty or maliciousness. I simply want to stress how easy it is to make these debates entirely self serving. Eurocentrism does exist, often is a problem and needs to be kept in check.

[bmacwilliam]

First step, shoot Martin Radwin.

Either the settlers come from the same society, in which case there is an established method for them to settle the land claim, or they are foreigners to each other, or savages, and just don't realize that they are at war yet. Maybe someday they will negotiate a peace settlement.

This is really not all that difficult, unless you arbitrarily ignore precedent and history and assume an evil God created from scratch for his entertainment. Anyone who has read Tunnel in the Sky knows you do not go on a camping trip without Robert's Rules of Order, and a loaded gun.

But if morality includes the fundamental concept of non initiation of force, then isn't a morality that doesn't apply in this situation incomplete or fundamentally flawed? Doesn't morality come from a deeper place than "established method" ?

Bob

[syrakusos]

If a person asks you whether it is right for a man hanging from a window ledge to kick out a window to save himself, the proper answer is, "How did he get there in the first place?"

Stolen property!

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4957

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1137.shtml

Aside from that... I have to agree with Ted and pretty much everyone else. Like the blind men and the elephant, we each know a little part of the complicated thing. I agree that the original question is arbitrary. There are enough real world examples without making up a new one with no prior context.

I agree that the native Americans did have an understanding of territory, though not of property. However, I must also point out that by this same objective standard, the Athenians had an understanding of law but no idea of rights. In fact, I point out further that we call land real estate because it was the only real property and title to it came ex-state and could be taken ex-state, as well (eminent domain). By the primitive savage uncouth illiterate smelly lousy understanding of anyone who never read the same books we did, even people here and now do not understand property rights. So, I must also disagree with those who say that if you see something you want, the moral way to steal it is to engage your victim in a riddle game to prove his ignorance of property rights.

(Oh, well, yes, that would be called a "civil suit" in a "court of law.")

Edited March 26, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[kiaer.ts]

First step, shoot Martin Radwin.

Either the settlers come from the same society, in which case there is an established method for them to settle the land claim, or they are foreigners to each other, or savages, and just don't realize that they are at war yet. Maybe someday they will negotiate a peace settlement.

This is really not all that difficult, unless you arbitrarily ignore precedent and history and assume an evil God created from scratch for his entertainment. Anyone who has read Tunnel in the Sky knows you do not go on a camping trip without Robert's Rules of Order, and a loaded gun.

But if morality includes the fundamental concept of non initiation of force, then isn't a morality that doesn't apply in this situation incomplete or fundamentally flawed? Doesn't morality come from a deeper place than "established method" ?

Bob

As I said in a later post, there are all sorts of different concepts with different meanings and presuppositions. The contemporary concept of title to real estate is the result of a very long process of cultural, intellectual, and historical evolution. The way things are now didn't just happen overnight or follow ipso facto from moral concepts. Had collective farming or the hunter-gatherer lifestyle proven superior, we would not have individually owned plots of land. (We ourselves wouldn't even have been born.) The same with how ownership is demonstrated. Title to land can and has been established in many different ways both throughout time and in different geographical areas. Land title in the US is defined according to common law principles informed by legislation passed by the states and federal government. That would be different had various wars in the past gone differently - and the difference would be historical, not moral.

Selene's farmers might use the word "own" the valley, but if they do so it is because the concept of land ownership is already something known to them from their prior history. This sort of contexual/historical selective blindness affects a lot of debates, from this to the "gay marriage" debate and beyond. Had Selene's farmers simply been created from scratch, the concept of land ownership would never have occurred to them, they would simply have used what they used and travelled where they wished to travel. Or, if one family had come from a culture where only fenced in land could be owned, they would reject a claim by the other family to own land which had been surveyed with, say, boundary stones having been placed to define the property. What in nature would make one sort of claim more valid than the other?

Legal concepts develop over time through use and success. They did not spring into being based on someone's positing A=A with all else following. We validate (show the reasonableness of) such concepts using moral philosophy. But philosophy doesn't create the law or the state from scratch. The state and the law are entities we inherit whose origins lie in the struggles of real men throughout history, not in the validating arguments of Ayn Rand.

[Selene]

My apologies for hijacking this thread from Selene but my point is to stress how hypothetical scenarios and abstract moral systems can allow the dominant society to justify itself with an "absolute moral law". As Phillip and others have said, these issues often come down to who has the most guns and elegant excuses. When we talk about these issues I think we need to stay down to Earth with concrete situations, it keeps us self critical and cuts down on the excuse making. I have seen many people over at OO.net starting with Man qua Man, progressing through inane abstractions and ending with "and that's why the Muslims have no right to life, as such."

I am not accusing Selene of any dishonesty or maliciousness. I simply want to stress how easy it is to make these debates entirely self serving. Eurocentrism does exist, often is a problem and needs to be kept in check.

Joel:

I do not believe there can ever be a "hijacking" of a thread. I love the free flow of threads on OL. Must be the anarchist in me.

Additionally, the Canadian Indian tribes could be one of the "families" in the hypothetical. Canada could be the "valley" with the Europeans as the other "family" at the other end of the "valley."

It is the conceptual aspect of "territory," "property" and "ownership" that I am seeking to address in this discussion. So far, the discourse has been excellent.

NY City rules, no harm no foul.

Hijack away, as long as it is not to marxist Cuba!

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is a very naive Hollywood movie view of Indians...

It's not worth doing a whole rebuttal to this. Here's the first thing that popped up on a Google search--with oodles of more results like it:

Native American Clashes with European Settlers

West Virginia Division of Culture and History

Here's a quote from that article:

Native American Concept of Land

A major factor in the treaty disputes was Native Americans' concept of land. Indians fought among themselves over hunting rights to the territory but the Native American idea of "right" to the land was very different from the legalistic and individual nature of European ownership. John Alexander Williams describes this in his book, West Virginia: A History for Beginners:

"The Indians had no concept of "private property," as applied to the land. Only among the Delawares was it customary for families, during certain times of the year, to be assigned specific hunting territories. Apparently this was an unusual practice, not found among other Indians. Certainly, the idea of an individual having exclusive use of a particular piece of land was completely strange to Native Americans.

The Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived. . . ."

Such naivety! Such Hollywood crap!

Let's talk about horses or something and try to show off...

Michael

[bmacwilliam]

First step, shoot Martin Radwin.

Either the settlers come from the same society, in which case there is an established method for them to settle the land claim, or they are foreigners to each other, or savages, and just don't realize that they are at war yet. Maybe someday they will negotiate a peace settlement.

This is really not all that difficult, unless you arbitrarily ignore precedent and history and assume an evil God created from scratch for his entertainment. Anyone who has read Tunnel in the Sky knows you do not go on a camping trip without Robert's Rules of Order, and a loaded gun.

But if morality includes the fundamental concept of non initiation of force, then isn't a morality that doesn't apply in this situation incomplete or fundamentally flawed? Doesn't morality come from a deeper place than "established method" ?

Bob

As I said in a later post, there are all sorts of different concepts with different meanings and presuppositions. The contemporary concept of title to real estate is the result of a very long process of cultural, intellectual, and historical evolution. The way things are now didn't just happen overnight or follow ipso facto from moral concepts. Had collective farming or the hunter-gatherer lifestyle proven superior, we would not have individually owned plots of land.

Interesting, thank you. What constitutes 'proven superior'? What main factors are at the base of one concept supplanting another?

Bob