Comments (1)

• David Heinrich

• After reading Prof. Tideman's working paper, I have several criticisms on his views of secession. For reference, my views on secession are similar to those expressed by Gene Callahan in The Road to Liberty at http://www.mises.org/asc/2003/asc9callahan.pdf.

  Forgive me if my comments appear clipped. I had written an entire response before, but my browser crashed and I lost the response. My disagreement with Prof. Tideman on secession culminates in this passage:

  Quote:
  A minority who wish to secede have a right to a share of territorial resources with a value that is proportional to their number. They do not have a right to fragment their nation in whatever way they choose. The majority has an obligation to provide the minority who wish to secede with territory of appropriate value. They satisfy this obligation when they provide territory with value proportionate to the number of persons who wish to secede, in whatever place is convenient for the majority. -- Prof. Tideman

  Though I am sure that Prof. Tideman was not thinking of it this way, I see this as leading to the same kinds of relocations that took place during WWII. Prof. Tideman has, knowingly or unknowingly, danced around stating exactly what "the majority" will do to those who secede -- relocate the minority.

  The seceding individuals would have to be relocated, under Prof. Tideman's plan, to some continuous unit of land. This would separate them from everything they've come to know and love about where they live, like their family, neighbors, home, and general environment. The effects of uprooting people from their environments are unpredictable and cruel. It is also a basic violation of property rights.

  This relocation creates another problem, which is that those being relocated are going to have to be relocated somewhere else (an obvious tautology). The place where they will have to be relocated will have had people living there. Those people living there will now have to be relocated as well. These individuals will likewise be uprooted and taken from all that they love and have grown comfortable with. Likewise, they will have to endure a costly relocation. Likewise, they will be separated from the property they've worked and come to consider "home". Perhaps worst of all, they will likely be separated from their friends and families. This is because when relocated, the odds that they'll have exactly the same neighbors are nill to none (after all, there won't be streets with exactly the same number of homes waiting for them).

  And these non-seceders being relocated will also have to be relocated somewhere, which will also experience similar problems.

  The other issue which is troubling is that providing them with territory proportional to number will almost certainly result in a redistribution of wealth. What if those seceding have more land on average as those not seceding? The relocation would constitute the transfer of land from them to those with less land. What if they had less land on average as those not seceding? Again, the relocation would constitute the transfer of land. Even if they happen to have exactly the same amount of land on average, there is still a redistribution of resources, as no two plots of land -- even if valued exactly the same in dollar amounts on the free market -- can be said to be "the same". If nothing else, they could have differing emotional value.

  I believe these problems stem from Prof. Tideman's theory of acquiring land, which I believe is a mix between socialistic ideals and free market ideals. Prof. Tideman states:

  Quote:
  Most claims of exclusive access to land or other natural opportunities originate in conquest of peoples who previously conquered other peoples. To regard such actions as generating respectable claims is to condemn ourselves to a world of continual war, as people seek to become the latest, and perhaps the last conquerors. Sometimes the claim is we were here first. This too is an inadequate justification for excluding others. Apart from the fact that virtually no one anywhere in the world can demonstrate that there were no violently dispossessed prior claimants to their territory, there is no universal writ establishing that those who come first have rights to whatever they can grab.

  The proper form of a nation's claim to territory is, We need to live somewhere, we have been living here lately, and what we claim is no more than our share. If a nation does claim more than its share, then it owes compensation to those who thereby have less than their share.

  My first criticism of this is that Prof. Tideman assumes that most claims to land arose from the initiation of violence (e.g., A invades B's territory). This assumes a conclusion that is disputeable. The only way to show that would be to actually produce statistics on the percentage of land today which was violently conquered at one point. His claim, though many may agree with it, is not proveable as a matter of fact. However, even if we accept his assertion that most land claimed today wa at one point conquered, that still does not mean that we should assume that no claims to land are just. Prof. Tideman obviously wrote his paper using a computer. Would it be logical or acceptable for me to assume that he stole that computer, or that he acquired it from someone who stole it, or so-on down the line? The problem here is that Prof. Tideman, though not assuming that all land was criminally possessed (either by the current owner, or historically), is creating a system that functions as if the is to be assumed.

  My second criticism is with his second point, which is that simply being there first does not allow one the right to whatever one can grab. To a large extent, I would agree. I would argue that one needs to homestead land to have a right to it, which means transforming the land in some significant manner (the nuances of what constitutes significant transformation are currently beyond the scope of this discussion, and I will not get into my views on that unless requested).

  Thus, I believe Prof. Tideman arrives at the wrong conclusion regarding secession because he starts from the wrong principles of how previously unowned land can come to be owned. Prof. Tideman seems to be a free-marketeer with a semi-egalitarian view of how land comes to be owned. I had almost argued "semi-socialist"; however, the very acceptance of private property, which Prof. Tideman seems to accept, disavows socialism. I believe the correct way to look at acquiring unowned resources is as Rothbard did. If some piece of land is previously unowned, it can become owned by homesteading (significant transformation with one's labor, or the labor of those one pays). In today's world, this would only be relevant to homesteading the ocean, the air, and outer-space. Confining the discussion to long-ago homesteaded land, I would say we should not presume that the current owner stole the land or that, if traced back far enough, the land was stolen, thus all subsequent transactions were invalid. That is to presume guilt, so to speak. Why should we not presume that? Rothbard simply states "possession is 9/10ths of the law", but I offer some additional argument. Because if we do, and we take the land from it's current owner, we would not be able to justify doing such on the basis of any proof, thus would ourselves be considered aggressors. The individual who's land we were taking would have a viable case against us for aggressing against him, based on actual fact; whereas our case that he owns his land only because of some past invasion is only hand-waving and generalization, but not a specific claim.

  This shows the importance of starting principles. Starting from positions that appear superficially similar (both justify ownership of property), Prof. Tideman and myself arrive at completely different views on secession.

• Published: February 17, 2004 12:13 AM