Comments (138)

• PirateRothbard

  Wow, this article doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

  I believe the market will find a solution to encirclement. The best idea, for me, is for a large developer to sell parcelled property with land covenants so that no encirclement can be practiced.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:04 AM

• Wealth

  This article will contribute to perpetuate the myth that libertarians live on another planet and are delusional fools.

  We need more practical, realistic and down to REAL earth facts about libertarianism.

  Lately, there has been a round of crackpot articles on mises. What have you writers been smoking ?
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:11 AM

• Wealth

  How about create a law that stipulates that there is a public boundary of each private land and that everyone is free to circulate on 10m thick of each private land.

  Therefore you cannot trespass in the land of others, but you can walk on the boundary of that land, right at the edge between two lands to accomodate freedom of movement.

  The area of the land is privately owned but the perimiter is to be publicly owned and only for circulation purposes, not for littering nor dwelling.

  Fair enough ?

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:18 AM

• Wealth

  "Freedom is not served by war"

  So what did the allies fight for ? Are you saying that the french people, the jewish people and the polish people would have been more free had they only cooperate peacefully with their executioner nazi "partners" ?

  The more I read some articles on mises, the more I realize that libertarianism is bullshit and that MIGHT IS RIGHT !

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:26 AM

• Jason

  Encirclement is no objection to a system of pure private property. The first user would already have ingress/egress (unless he had by magic never entered or left his property, in which case he will not be concerened with a lack of ingress/egress), which could not be taken by the person attempting to encircle him. If for some reason an owner carved out an encircled parcel on his own land, a buyer would buy the parcel with notice of the encirclement. He would thus take the property subject to the encirclement, which result is perfectly consistent with freedom and private property.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:33 AM

• Stephen M

  Very good article - and an issue that I myself have thought about before in regards to the privatization of all roads. If all roads are privately owned and all property rights are respected, then freedom can be violated by a property owner who happens to own the surrounding property. If you live in a townhouse lets say, on a certain street - then there is no competition on that street. You can't choose to go on a different street because of the natural placement of your home. If the new street owner decides to hike rates to an unreasonable level, wouldn't he be able to restrict your ability to move? Perhaps charging an unreasonable fee to move your belongings to a new place?

  This is why I cannot accept the anarcho-capitalist position. I think it has to be accepted that a certain level of coercion is inevitable and that all coercion is not alike. There are tradeoffs that need to be considered.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:33 AM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  Wealth is a neo-con tool.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:40 AM

• Michael A. Clem

  This is one of those stickier thorns of libertarianism, but I'm not sure Frank did a good job of tackling it. How can he talk about "freedom of movement" without mentioning the word "easement" even once? I would have thought easements would be exactly what he's looking for.
  
  Instead, he wants to re-create public property in libertarian society. Fine, as long as we fully understand the limits of such "public" property. Generally, public property in today's society is considered to be owned by everybody (i.e. "the public"). In reality, and in the only justifiable sense, public property can only be "owned" by those who actually use the property, as a variant of the homesteading principle. No one is restricted from using it, but no one who is not using it has any justifiable claim on the property, how it is used, or how it is disposed of. An example used by someone to justify public property in a libertarian society would be a path that everyone uses.
  
  Speaking of paths, Frank talks about privately-owned routes, but objects that private route-owners can exclude people from using them, just as any other property owner could exclude others. While this is true, one has to wonder what reasons a route owner would have for restricting use of his route--why would he turn down a source of more income? It would most likely have to be because the excluded person is criminal, reckless, or otherwise dangerous to the route owner's other customers.
  
  Does Frank want to justify freedom of movement for criminals, outlaws, and others who endanger other people?
  
  In short, this article really needs to be fleshed out a little more to adequately cover the issue.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:44 AM

• Gil

  I think it's safe to say every private landowner has to have a easement area around their property.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:54 AM

• Marcus

  encirclement? that problem was solved a long time ago by Roman jurists... never heard of easement?

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:09 AM

• Shay

  Regarding having all roads and paths privately owned, couldn't someone moving in simply contract with the road owners to always have a path out, thus avoiding becoming trapped at a later date? Everyone could contract with the owners to never deny passage, and thus achieve this without any new laws and without having to amend the fundamental principles.
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:18 AM

• tacitus

  anyway that's the problem with theoretical constructs... in the real world there will always be conflict... the real question is what kind of institutions are there to resolve them... territorial monopolistic governments? or voluntary arbitration?

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:20 AM

• Stephan Kinsella

  it's definitely an interesting, thoughtful, and provocative piece, but I disagree with much of it as I explain in Van Dun on Freedom versus Property and Hostile Encirclement.

  As I noted there, Walter Block presents a sort of flip-side of this argument; see my post The Blockean Proviso and Roderick Long's post Easy Rider and the comments thereto, discussing Block's "forestalling" view that someone who homesteads land that "encircles" unowned land must grant an easement to permit potential homesteaders access the unowned property. Van Dun thinks "encirclement" that limits the "freedom" of someone trapped inside the circle, on their own land, is unlibertarian even the encirclement is done consistent with property rights; Block things "encirclement" is unlibertarian if it prevents others from homesteading the unowned resource.

  For an explanation of how the civil law handles the type of encirclement that concerns van Dun See my comments to Long .

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:22 AM

• Joe Keck

  Hello Frank and all:
  Libertarin philosophy is great great great for most practical purposes, but it is in an incomplete
  philosophy.
  One of the great Natural Law bases for social problems is that of the common good. The rights of private property must be subordinate to the common good. And the unreasonable isolation on the part of one property owner does violate the common good. See all the encyclicals on this.Natural law philosophy applauds most of the libertarian utilitarian reasonings, but is more comprehensive. No need for forever redefining private property rights, because there will always appear another loophole. Natural law does it for once and all.

  Murray Rothbard accuses Latin American latifundia owners for violating the indigenous prior ownership of estates taken away from them by royal ukase.
  And so called libertarians seem to be denying the indigenous folk of their natural law rights. Is private property right above the right of freedom there? This is a huge unsolved problem in Latin America.

  Lets keep on discussing and resolving the problem.
  Best to all true integral freedom lovers. JoeK

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:37 AM

• Gil

  I believe the roads would be the easements of the private landowners.

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:46 AM

• Stephen M

  I don't see how "easement" solves the theoretical problem. Easement just describes what could be agreed to between two contracting parties. It doesn't form a philosophical basis by which a person who encircles another with private property can have their property rights violated if he refuses to allow easement.

  What if the property owner charges an unreasonable fee for leaving the property instead of outright refusal? Is that different? What if the fee is reasonable but still unpayable by the individual who has been surrounded?

  Published: October 29, 2009 11:06 AM

• Martin OB

  I think the main conflict this article shows is not freedom vs private property, but freedom vs the homesteading rule in its radical "all-you-can-fence" version. The subject keeps coming again and again, and I think it deserves closer attention.

  See, there's no conflict whatsoever between the need of easement, or public spaces, and the strict respect for private property, as long as an adequate version of the "free movement proviso", among other reasonable conditions, is required for the public recognition of someone's private property to begin with, instead of a blind, "all-you-can-fence" homesteading rule.

  Let's not throw the NAP baby out with the strict homesteading bathwater.

  Published: October 29, 2009 11:08 AM

• Abhilash Nambiar

  Is this a real issue or just a simple thought experiment that is not well thought out? In a libertarian earth all private property will be surrounded by other private property and all property owners will be competing with each other to alleviate each other's uneasiness, because they profit from such arrangements. This situation can arise only if one owner owns all the space in three dimensions surrounding another owner. Since that puts one person too much at the mercy of another, it adds to uneasiness rather than alleviate it. So such a situation will be avoided by market participants and will not come into being through transactions.

  What about encircling un owned property in three dimensions? Well precisely because it is encircled it has no value to any potential owners and thus does not come into the market place at all. That has the impact of hoarded gold. No impact on current economic transactions. The homesteader of the donut shaped land too does not benefit from this arrangement. He is better off if that land is owned by someone who can enter into a mutually beneficial relationship with him. But in order to get there he will have to at least grant the right of way through his land. Which he will. There is no need for philosophical contemplation to resolve this issue. It can resolve itself.

  With private property firmly in place, issues concerning freedom can be resolved through transactions.

  Published: October 29, 2009 11:23 AM

• LightBringer

  If I remember correctly, this issue is much better dealt with in this paper: http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

  In any case, I think the point is rather moot, as few people would have the inclination to act so perversely and irrationally, and those few occasions could be solved on a case by case basis, using the process of libertarian evolution of the law. The Van Dun Proviso assumes a priori knowledge about a society that doesn't yet exist which he simply can't have.

  Wealth: funny that, what I saw from World War II was millions of innocents being slaughtered, the whole of Eastern Europe being sold out to most monstrous regime in history, and my own, supposedly free and liberal country being impoverished, collectivised and doomed to decades of 'social democracy'. Not much freedom from that war. You'll feel right at home with 'Might is Right' though - I'm sure you'll enjoy the company of Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin and the rest of them.
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 11:55 AM

• Inquisitor

  "The more I read some articles on mises, the more I realize that libertarianism is bullshit and that MIGHT IS RIGHT !"

  The more I read idiots like you the more I come to believe that (not the former but the latter...) insofar as dealing with your kind.

  "The rights of private property must be subordinate to the common good. And the unreasonable isolation on the part of one property owner does violate the common good."

  Common good = myth.

  Published: October 29, 2009 12:57 PM

• Inquisitor

  "This is why I cannot accept the anarcho-capitalist position. I think it has to be accepted that a certain level of coercion is inevitable and that all coercion is not alike. There are tradeoffs that need to be considered. "

  Some rape is inevitable therefore rape is to be institutionalised. Indeed. The basis of minarchism. How thoughtful.

  Published: October 29, 2009 12:59 PM

• Larry N. Martin

  Thanks, Inquisitor! I was wondering who this "Common" person was, and why his good is more important than everyone else's...

  Published: October 29, 2009 1:05 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  There seems to be a widespread misconception that easements can only come into existence by being "granted" to an individual. Easements are property just as land is and ownership of easements is established the same way ownership of land is established. If I use and eventually claim ownership of previously unowned land I do not need the permission of any other person. Easements work the same way, for me to get to that land to make it mine I must have travelled there, thus I must own an easement, otherwise I would have violated some other persons property rights by trespassing. Again, the critical point is that I do not need anyones consent to own that easement, if they do not recognise my legally established property rights they are agressing against me.

  Published: October 29, 2009 1:45 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Postulating a theoretical situation pitting property rights against personal freedom is a common ploy by critics of libertarianism. Before contesting the specific points raised in these criticisms one should determine if the scenario suggested can plausibly arise in a free society. In this case the answer is emphatically NO. How did this imaginary piece of land ever become owned in the first place if there was no legal way to get to it?

  Published: October 29, 2009 2:12 PM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  Great posts by T. Ralph Kays.

  Published: October 29, 2009 2:25 PM

• Brian Drake

  I'm sorry if I've missed someone (and I haven't read all the links posted in the comments), but shouldn't we all be focusing on the foundational claim of the essay:

  "Unquestionably, the libertarian answer should be freedom before property"
  supported by:
  "if freedom is the supreme libertarian value" (which the author asks rhetorically, as he demonstrates he assumes the affirmative)

  I'm sorry, but since when was it unquestionable that freedom is libertarianism's highest value? The refutation of this false claim seems fairly easy by just looking at the name:

  "libertarianism" not "freedom-ism"

  Liberty is libertarianism's highest value, not freedom. Liberty is the recognition of self-ownership (and the resulting implications/extensions such as first-appropriator property rights)... nothing more.

  Freedom is one of those arbitrarily defined, feel-good concepts like "equality". I see no desire for "freedom" expressed by the radical Libertarian philosophers, but a desire for "liberty".

  Yes, the words are sometimes used interchangeably, but they also have diverging definitions as the Van Dun essay demonstrates.

  Let's also recognize how arbitrary Van Dun is defining the requirements of "freedom". He's basically confining it to the freedom of movement. If you "encircle me" (an argument mid-stream as Walter Block and others have demonstrated), you're limiting my freedom to go where I want, whenever I want. But what about the freedom to say what I want, wherever I want? Or the freedom to swing my fist whenever I want, wherever I want, at whatever I want.

  Property rights are necessary precisely because of these conflicts. Ultimately, someone has to have final say (exert ownership) over the use of a scarce resource (property). To say that "freedom" is the ultimate value, and that requires preventing property owners from fully exerting ownership, isn't to deny the concept of ownership, it's to usurp it. "Your property can only be used in a way I approve (like allowing people to travel through it)", is really, "it's not your property, but mine."

  I personally see "freedom-ism" as a Trojan horse to libertarianism. It has a superficial appeal (after all, who could possibly be opposed to "freedom"), but once accepted, it reveals itself to be at conflict with genuine property rights (as illustrated in Van Dun's essay) and thus creates an incoherence in the philosophy of liberty that wasn't previously there. "Freedom" as a value cannot be included in libertarianism without sewing the seeds of the philosophy's destruction.

  Van Dun perfectly illustrates how freedom and property are in conflict. His error is in asserting "libertarianism" should side with "freedom".

  Published: October 29, 2009 3:40 PM

• Cosmin

  "Liberty is the recognition of self-ownership (and the resulting implications/extensions such as first-appropriator property rights)..."

  First-appropriator is too vague to be the basis of rights.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:05 PM

• Brian Drake

  Cosmin, if first-appropriator is too vague, how would you establish property rights (if at all)?

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:08 PM

• Micael R Stoddard

  Thank you Stephen Kinsella for a rational response to this Straw Man false dichotomy confusion.
  Some times when i read daily articles and esp. the blogs I feel like I have been dropped into the town meeting at the end of R Heinlein's novel - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. So much unlearned yammering!!! I guess it provides a Rubik's Cube of fallacies on which to sharpen ones thinking. All very frightening compared to reading uber rationalists such as L v Mises.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:13 PM

• Glenn O'Dell

  Thanks to Frank Van Dun for a thoughtful and well written exposition of a very thorny issue of libertarian theory. Yes, he invited ridicule by postulating quasi earth, but the problem is here and now. Every bit of land I have ever lived on was tightly encircled by streets, freeways, railroads, rivers, canals, and other pathways which might be owned privately or by government, and the inescapable commons of the air we breathe and the water we drink. I think we need a lot more serious thought about integrating the commons into libertarian thought without falling back on government, the ultimate parasitic monopoly. Carry on, Frank.
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:14 PM

• Abhilash Nambiar

  T. Ralph Kays

  Easements are not property. They are recorded claims to use property in a specific manner by a non-proprietor. Just like title deeds are not property, they are a record of ownership. When we are exchanging property titles for money no one is under the impression that it is the piece of paper that is being sold. It is the land that is being sold, which is why the record of ownership is being transferred, when the money for the land is obtained.

  Take another example. We say for convenience that shares are bought and sold in the market. But what is really being what is bought and sold is equity. The shares record the ownership of equity in proportion and of course equity represents the money price of assets as recognized by the market.

  So when an easement is exchanged for money by an owner, the owner is selling the privilege of using his property in a manner specified by the easement. The easement is the record of the privilege. If the property in question is un owned, an easement can be obtained through first use, just like homesteading. For example, easement to lay railway tracks or roads on un owned land. Easement to dump garbage on an un owned land. Easement to contaminate air or water in un owned land. Easement to broadcast certain sounds/noises over the own owned land, etc., Future homesteaders have to respect the easement because that is the state they obtained first ownership.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:29 PM

• Cosmin

  I agree with Martin that an "all-you-can-fence" version of homesteading is not reasonable as a way of acquiring property.
  Furthermore, I find it distressing that the status quo is hailed as legitimate property, despite the fact that often it didn't even meet that requirement. Instead, homesteading has been perverted to mean: "whatever this thing I am pointing to on this map represents".
  We are quite far from the "mixing your labor" and "leaving enough for others" proviso.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:33 PM

• Brian Drake

  Great post Abhilash Nambiar .

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:33 PM

• Todd

  Thank you, Brian Drake! That's the most fundamental problem with this article. I haven't read Kinsella's links yet; maybe he covers that point there.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:39 PM

• Brian Drake

  Cosmin,

  "I find it distressing that the status quo is hailed as legitimate property"

  Can you please point to someone (an actual libertarian) who is doing that (hailing the status quo)? I hear this accusation a lot, but have yet to be provided evidence for it.

  Where does the "leaving enough for others" proviso come from?

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:43 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Abhilash Nambiar

  Easements are property, you are confusing the recorded document with the property that is recognised by the document. By your definition land would not be property because it has a recorded title. The fact that they can be bought and sold should make it clear that they are property. Easements are valid even if they are not recorded by the way.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:47 PM

• T.Ralph Kays

  Property is not defined solely as "land", it includes anything that can be owned. An easement is something one can own, therefor it is property. It is not an agreement which one needs to re-negotiate from time to time. If one owns an easement one owns it in the same way that they might own land. Just as ones land is limited in size so is your easement limited, but it is still your property.

  Published: October 29, 2009 4:56 PM

• Cosmin

  Brian, why do you answer questions with a question?
  First-appropriator IS too vague, no if about it. If it wasn't, you could have defined it in less time than it took you to ask me your follow-up question.
  As for those that are hailing the status quo, it's more an impression gathered from scouring through topics where someone looking to raise a point of debate is confronted by arguments that seem to come for apologists for property as it is defined today insofar as they consist of nothing but questions of application in a situation where the present state of things is taken for granted.

  Published: October 29, 2009 5:55 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Abhilash Nambiar

  "The easement is the record of the privilige." Where did you ever get such a misguided understanding of what an easement is? The easement is the, as you put it, "privilige". The record is simply that, a record of what is owned in order to forestall questions of ownership. Easements are owned regularly without being recorded. Recording an easement is no different than recording title to land, the purpose is to clarify ownership so as to prevent challenges to title.

  Published: October 29, 2009 5:58 PM

• Brian Drake

  "First-appropriator is too vague to be the basis of rights."

  Is a statement, not a question.

  And even if I did respond to a question with a question, why is that bad? You're doing it by asking me a question (why).

  Re: status quo. Well, if it's an impression, come right out and make an accusation with some evidence. I personally do not defend the status quo. Nor do any of the Mises Inst. writers I'm aware of. For example, Walter Block has some good commentary about reparations for slavery that fall along these lines. Certainly, displaced Native Americans may have strong claims that a libertarian qua libertarian would have to consider.

  There is the realistic issue of deferring to the current possessor with the burden of proof being on the accuser. If perfect-knowledge was attainable by humans, we could enact perfect justice (restitution of infringed property). Since we are imperfect in our knowledge (and judgment), it's unfortunate, but true, that some property rights violations have been so muddled by time, multiple-inheritance, and State action, that proper restitution is not possible.

  Published: October 29, 2009 6:09 PM

• Alex Davidson

  Quasi earth is a red herring. I don't see how it could ever arise in a fully libertarian society based on self-ownership, private property rights, and contract. Owners landlocked and unable to trade at the whim of others? It is nonsense.

  As others have noted, to claim that freedom is the highest libertarian value is wrong. It plays into the hands of demagogues seeking reasons to place 'the public interest' above everything else. Freedom of movement - what next? Positive rights have no place in libertarian theory.
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 6:24 PM

• Cosmin

  You've seen those videos of skiiers heading out in a helicopter and when they get to the top, the helicopter isn't allowed to land because the mountain is private property, so they jump off and they're allowed to make their way down the mountain for the purposes of getting off the private property?
  First question coming to mind would be: did anyone ever build a fence around that mountain? What kind of fence? A string going from tree to tree, or a 6 foot concrete fence with barbed wire at the top?
  The second, and much more important question, would be: who gives a crap? Let's say there are other people who knew about that mountain. Some already hiked on it a while ago, some others only heard about it from their grandpa, or from other travelers. They either went there or intended to go there, but none of them felt the need to impede others from enjoying the mountain or attempted to "extract rent" for their continued or new patronage. And here comes this guy who starts building a fence around it. Why would society reward his behaviour by accepting his property claim on the mountain instead of offering him a stay at the nearest insane asylum?

  Published: October 29, 2009 6:34 PM

• Brian Drake

  "A string going from tree to tree, or a 6 foot concrete fence with barbed wire at the top?"

  No. Every libertarian knows that the correct, libertarian way to appropriate something is to surround it with a brick wall. The wall must be at least 6 inches thick and be at least as high as the sternum of the average man. The bricks must be red, or at least reddish brown and the mortar between the bricks must be light-beige or white. Every 10 yards along the wall must be marked with a sign that say "This here be private land. Stay off or be shot!" written in Helvetica font at a size no smaller than 50pt. The sign must be rectangular.

  Anyone who hasn't followed these axiomatic guidelines won't have their property claim respected and the land will revert to "unowned" status.

  I mean... duh.

  Published: October 29, 2009 6:54 PM

• Cosmin

  That wasn't so hard, was it? You've removed all vagueness from first-appropriator with your clear, explicit enumeration of the requirements for homesteading. Thank you.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:02 PM

• gene

  cosmin brings out an interesting side note.

  in a society free of state influence, absentee property would have a definite market disadvantage. since "protection" of absentee property would have a cost higher than protection of owner occupied, the cost of production would be higher for the same product from the same quality land.

  if capital was allowed to go where it might, owner occupied property would bring greater return gradually eliminating the "capital sink" that absentee property claims.

  eventually absentee property might revert to homestead, allowing those without property to play the game.

  i don't think ted turner would like that idea.

  if we ever got to this "quasi earth", we may have to completely dismiss our present preconceived notions of items like property.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:05 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  I don't believe that any free society has ever recognised simply fencing property in as use sufficient to establish ownership. At best it would establish ownership of the area necessary for maintaining the fence and nothing more, very probably not even that. Use means USE, simply being the first one there means nothing. Don't confuse the actions of agents of coercive political institutions like Columbus with the actions of free people.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:15 PM

• Brian Drake

  T. Ralph Kays

  "Don't confuse the actions of agents of coercive political institutions like Columbus with the actions of free people."

  Name names or shut up. Who, specifically, is defending European imperialism as the basis of just property acquisition?

  These little snipes are annoying. There is nothing in libertarian theory that justifies the status quo simply since it is the status quo. Show me otherwise or quit it.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:31 PM

• Abhilash Nambiar

  T. Ralph Kays

  You did bring up a good point. And easement can exist even if it is not recorded. An easement is tied to a scarce resource. It is a means of managing scarce resource. I was wrong. Easement is not a record of a privilege it is the privilege in itself.

  But if easements are property, then \stocks, bonds, structured investment funds, options and futures are also property, they are bought and sold. They are tied to real scarce goods and through them some residual claim over scarce goods can be indirectly bought and sold sometimes in a very abstract sense.

  For example, a bond for instance is not tied to any specific unit of good. What does it mean to own a bond? You have conditional claim over an unspecified scarce resource of fixed money price that can be exhausted by paying that money price?

  But does that make financial instruments a scarce good in themselves. After all at least in theory a company can issue as many bonds as they like and equity too can be diluted by share splitting or concentrated by reverse splitting.

  You can sell multiple easements on your land depending on the type of easement. For example an easement to walk across a path in your land can be sold to many people. More likely than not an easement is a financial instrument. And of course financial instruments can be bought and sold. So I suppose that means that they are property. But how can something that is not scarce be property? Unless the instrument is scarce by virtue of the fact that the resource it is tied to is scarce? That is probably it, but this needs more looking into.

  The financial markets have their origins in the classical school of economics. I do not think it has been subject to extensive Austrian analysis yet. Although insurance has. Someone ought to take it up.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:36 PM

• Abhilash Nambiar

  T. Ralph Kays

  You come to own unowned land by teleologically recomposing it. To put it differently by mixing your labor with the soil. Not by fencing it. Never the less fences do help clarify ownership even if they do not determine it. Suppose you fence the area that you have farmed. Then it is unambiguous to the next homesteader where you property line ends. Also it broadcasts the intent that you do not seek to homestead more land but prefers to further develop the land you already homesteaded.

  You are right, building a fence around land that you did not develop, gives you ownership to a donut shaped land the thickness of the fence. I do not think in a libertarian world people would do that.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:49 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Brian Drake

  Gee, wasn't it you and Cosmin discussing fencing property to establish ownership? I believe as part of that discussion the question of being the first to reach a piece of land was raised, and it has been referred to previously on this blog as well. My point is that Libertarian theory says that unowned land becomes owned by using it, neither being there first nor simply fencing large sections of land satisfies that requirement. I don't personally know any libertarians who aren't aghast at the history of violent and unjust acquisition of property that has lead to the current situation. Where it is possible to identify the individuals from whom property is stolen it must be returned to them or their heirs.

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:51 PM

• Cosmin

  But if embordering is not sufficient for homesteading, then we are left with the vague concept of use.
  Does someone use a mountain when skiing on it downhill? Or does he have to build something? And if he does, how far from his construction does his property extend to? And how far in time? If use is required for appropriation, then why isn't it required for continued ownership? Except that's the evil mutualists' position...

  Published: October 29, 2009 7:56 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Do you not have any knowledge of the history of common law establishment of "homesteading"? The question of use has been abundantly litigated and worked out to a very fine degree. It is not at all a vague concept. Interestingly ownership is not necessarily permanent, land that has been abandoned (not used) after a reasonable time becomes essentially unowned again. This also has been adjudicated under common law to a fine degree.

  Published: October 29, 2009 8:14 PM

• Cosmin

  When you say litigated and worked out, you mean on a strictly philosophical level, right?
  Because in real life, the mountain scenario I brought to attention earlier persists...
  Still, I'm glad if libertarians realize that existing claims of private property are disproportionately greater than the area of land that has actually been put to use. Sadly, I'm not convinced that's the case. Didn't Rothbard say that all existing claims of property are legitimate insofar as they didn't result from theft?
  That fails to explain how a whole mountain can become someone's property when it was unowned before.

  Published: October 29, 2009 8:29 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  No, I mean in real actual life, again don't confuse the actions of free people with the actions of the agents of coercive political institutions. Certainly governments have granted people title to land unjustly and that continues. Common law in practise has historically solved these problems as I described, governments have upended these rules. I think you don't understand what Rothbard meant by theft. His definition of theft was theft under libertarian rules, not governmental rules. Undoubtedly many claims to ownership now recognised by governments would be invalidated under the rules Rothbard proposed.

  Published: October 29, 2009 8:43 PM

• Cosmin

  If I may refer to my earlier post, you seem to be stuck on questioning who owns something and if he acquired it justly, instead of questioning whether something CAN be owned. You simply assumed that question to be resolved in the positive.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:05 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  You are completely right, if your position is that land can not be owned then the issue is of an entirely different nature. It is also not one that can be resolved in this limited form of exchange.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:22 PM

• Ribald

  I really enjoyed reading Dun's piece. I mentioned the encirclement problem to my brother, but he, like many others commenting here, believed that without infringement on property, there is no injustice, and that his neighbors would provide easement at an appropriate price in any case.

  The idea that libertarianism cares not a whit for freedom so long as property is respected is an interesting one. Why do libertarians hold fast to the doctrine of self-ownership? Self-ownership is pretty bizarre, if you think about it. No other thing owns itself except for a person (even animals lack it!). Isn't this because without self-ownership, then people can be made into slaves without disturbing their property? Libertarianism rests its foundations upon an interpretation of property rights that guarantees the greatest freedom to individuals possible while restricting the freedom to do harm to the furthest extent possible. Dun highlights the possibility that an absolute respect for property may serve as a cage to limit another's freedom. I would say that libertarianism should not abide by such a situation, but should seek out a way for both freedom and property to be respected equally.

  What is also interesting about this subject is that encirclement does not happen only in spacial terms. As an example, in an area with only one source of a vital resource (say, water), a form of encirclement prevails when the owner of the source refuses to sell it, or provides it only to those who become willing slaves. In this case, however, many would say that there is no intrinsic right to that water (just as some say there is no intrinsic right to movement), and that no violation of freedom or liberty takes place. As one person told me, "You don't have the right to live [in a libertarian world]. You only have the right to try to survive."

  In such a world that is devoid of the possibility of encirclement, all people are self-sufficient in every way that impacts their fundamental survival and freedoms. This is not a very efficient mode of living, as one can guess.

  This represents the impact of risk inherent in human behavior. In order to alleviate this risk, we may either become self-sufficient and not depend on other people for basic necessities, we may stockpile necessities, or we may take a proactive role in reducing the possibility of harm (the function of states and security firms).

  I think the choice between these three possibilities is entirely determined by population density and the level of interdependence in the economy. Highly interdependent economies tend to be more efficient, but also highly managed for this reason.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:24 PM

• Autolykos

  Why couldn't a mountain be owned?

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:31 PM

• Autolykos

  To Ribald:

  As far as I'm concerned, animals do not have self-ownership because they are not moral agents (though they will certainly defend themselves if you (try to) kill them). This does not preclude the possibility of non-human moral agents, such as (humanesque?) AIs, extraterrestrials, etc.

  With that said, I'm not sure if you come out for or against the libertarian concept of self-ownership in your post. Could you please clarify?

  I think the concept of "proportionality of response" is relevant here. Just as shooting dead a trespasser constitutes murder, if he appears to be unarmed and fleeing, someone being blocked from leaving his land constitutes imprisonment, if done as a result of (for example) some social faux pas he committed. Likewise, using one's own handcuffs on someone else may be permissible in certain situations (I will not mention which!), but impermissible when used to chain someone else to his or her desk at work.

  You mention an example whereby one person excludes others from the only source of a vital resource (e.g. water) in "an area", unless they agree to become his slaves. Of course, I consider trying to enslave people to be immoral regardless of how one tries to do it. But in any case, how big is this area that you're conceiving? Are people free to leave this area in search of the vital resource elsewhere? I don't see why not. Furthermore, what else is going on in this area besides the water-excluder? Surely that isn't the only resident economic activity.

  I think most (if not all) libertarians agree with the general idea of "[taking] a proactive role in reducing the possibility of harm". The question is by what means. We consider a monopolist approach to be inherently dangerous, for reasons that Hans-Hermann Hoppe and others have pointed out.

  Published: October 29, 2009 9:55 PM

• Cosmin

  I'm not saying land can't be owned. But if use is necessary for appropriation than you are limited in how much you can own by how much you can use. (I haven't seen anyone use a whole mountain).
  When you claim to own more than you appropriated through use, that is just an artificial limit to the freedom others have to use said resource.
  Plus, use is still a vague concept. If I claim to own an area because I use it for hunting once a year in autumn, does that mean I really own that area and can stop others from skiing in winter if I want to?

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:09 PM

• Mike

  I suspect those who simply dismissed the article with a sentence or two were made uncomfortable on some level by it. It is without a doubt a challenging article.

  However, the problems it presents can be made relative non-problems if you discard the ethical baggage of non-aggression. Ethical systems are always arbitrary, as evidenced by the hoops they inevitably have to jump through when presented with a sufficiently creative thought experiment.

  So why don't we just all admit that we don't like the state and want to limit or remove it? Does it have to be more complicated than that? Even if the goal is to bring others into the cause, showing people how the state hurts them personally is always a better bet than trying to get them to buy into some principled argument, anyway.

  And honestly, sometimes when a person says nasty enough things about your wife, he gets a broken nose, and this is all well and good.

  And so for the article's main thought experiment, here's how I see it playing out: Encircled guy pisses off a whole bunch of people. The people around him decide to encircle him. Attempts to negotiate break down. At this point the guy decides he can't trust his neighbors anyway and decides to ditch the land. He escapes in the middle of the night (with a gun just in case: if he gets killed for trespassing, fine, but he'll shoot back), boards with a friend until he gets back on his feet, and sells the now-useless piece of land to somebody who isn't under a vendetta from the neighbors.

  Clearly, force may come into play in this scenario. Shit happens. Anybody who proposes a utopia is full of illusions.

  The key difference here is the scale of the force. Chances are the guy just escapes unnoticed and nothing happens. Whereas, if you piss off the state, you're simply done for. Also, these private conflicts are unlikely to escalate into a conflict that KILLS 60 MILLION PEOPLE (WWII).
  

  Published: October 29, 2009 10:26 PM

• Bala

  Excellent article.

  The author raises an important point for which he has given a well-reasoned out argument. However, I think that the argument would be greatly strengthened if one goes beyond Libertarian principles and include a couple of very important concepts explained by Ayn Rand as part of the Objectivist concept of Individual Rights.

  Very simply put, the Right to Life is the source of all Rights. The Right to Liberty is a logical corollary - the closest corollary too - of the Right to Life. The Right to Property is a consequence of the Right to Life but is understood best in terms of the Right to Liberty. That is property which is value in the possession of an individual, to take which away from an individual, there are only 2 ways - with his voluntary consent or by initiating force against him. The former implies no violation of the Right to Liberty while the latter does. This creates a very simple inequality.

  Right to Life > Right to Liberty > Right to Property

  However, given the importance of the concept of Property for the sustenance of the Right to Life, it would come a close 3rd in this inequality. It is therefore possible for the Right to Liberty of one individual and the Right to Property of another to appear to clash. There is only 1 way to resolve it - understand violation of which of the two constitutes a violation of an individual's Right to Life.

  The basis of this idea is that Life, Liberty and Property are all concepts of value to an individual. All value is subjective (as the author says). However, value always presupposes a "Standard" by which that value may be measured/evaluated. That Standard, for every individual, is his Life. Every other physical object or concept is of value only if he has his life. A dead man can have no values. Life, then becomes the "Objective" standard of value - true for every individual.

  In this particular case, encirclement that prevents a person from leaving his property is necessarily a direct threat to the encircled individual's life while a person walking through the property of another peacably and not initiating any other form of force against the owner of the property is not a threat to the property owner's life.

  Thus, on the Objective standard of Life, encirclement would be a violation of the victim's Right to life while peacefull passing through of another's property is not.

  This understanding also completely justifies force initiated by an individual to resist encirclement that threatens his Right to Life.

  The important point that needs to be understood is that no code of values is meaningful without a standard of value and for a man who has chosen to live, his life is the standard of value, an Objective one at that.

  Published: October 30, 2009 12:13 AM

• Adam Knott

  Great article Frank.

  "Either way, there seems to be something wrong with equating libertarian law with the rigorous application of the nonaggression principle."

  "That should not come as a surprise. The principle does not refer to freedom, only to property; it would be adequate as the axiomatic law of freedom only if freedom and property were synonymous — but they are not. To paraphrase Anthony de Jasay,[4] we do not need a theory of "freedom as private property" any more than we need any other theory of "freedom as something else.""

  Wow !!

  And all without reference to the concept of argumentation. Hmmm....

  Published: October 30, 2009 12:14 AM

• Gil

  I thought every landowner would have to duty to provide easements or right of passage to prevent encirclement. After all, most people live in homes that are encircled by roads therefore in roads were held in private ownership you would have encirclement right there. I believe everyone instead would have a piece of road that they themselves own and have a duty to maintain lest they get sued but it's an easement and no one can ever be considered a trespasser.

  Published: October 30, 2009 1:09 AM

• pbergn

  Finally. A true voice of reason!

  Well done! Now I do not feel so lonely anymore...

  This article shows that you can have logical reasoning and still love the freedom, and be a Libertarian in one's core...

  Bravo for the courage to think out-of-the-box, without fear of being labeled as "Statist"!

  We need more of this on this site - the logic, and practical, clear thinking...

  Published: October 30, 2009 1:12 AM

• Bala

  Reading some of the comments made me realise that easements are the precise point that I ended up trying to justify, except that my grounds were moral and not utilitarian (nothing to do with avoidance of conflict).

  However, I have a small doubt which I hope someone more knowledgeable than me may help resolve.

  Let's take a hypothetical situation where 9 people own a 3 by 3 plot of land as given below

  ABC
  DEF
  GHI

  For simplicity, let's assume that each plot of land is square in shape and is of area 1 acre. Clearly, E in in the unfortunate position of being encircled. He needs easement.

  However, who is to provide easement? In other words, how will it be decided as to whose property from among A, B, C, D, F, G, H and I should the easement pass through? Since any easement has a cost in terms of loss of value of alternate use of the land identified for easement, who should bear the cost of the easement? To a simple mind like mine, it appears as though all 8 surrounding owners should share the cost, purely from a fairness point of view. How exactly should/does it work?

  Published: October 30, 2009 1:42 AM

• George J. Georganas

  Maybe the choice of land to illustrate the idea of hostile encirclement was an unfortunate one, both for the article author and for the authors of comments.
  Land is too tangible. But suppose the relatively few people who have good ideas, that could benefit the rest of us, decided to keep them to themselves. Leaving the great unwashed outside comes as a natural inclination to those with a better intellectual endowment. Suppose such an elite kept its secrets well. Does that leave the freedom of the others unaffected ? Could we describe a society, such as the one of ancient Egypt, where the professional skills of scribes and priests in reassigning property rights to land after the annual Nile flood gave them a high social position, as free ? And what about this elite passing their secrets to their progeny ? Won't such a society end up with a caste system ?
  Hostile encirclement is, I think, a strong challenge to the idea of property as liberty and has proven itself as such not just in theory, but in actual historical experience.

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:53 AM

• Shay

  Bala, in your 3x3 encirclement example, surely the surrounding 8 owners would make offers to sell passage to the one in the center. One might have lots of things built and thus not be able to make a good offer, since offering a path would be expensive. Another might have lots of empty space on his, and not mind providing a small path at little cost. The potential problem is when there's a single owner of all 8 surrounding plots; if he wants to play tough, what incentive does he have to make a reasonable offer?
  

  Published: October 30, 2009 4:10 AM

• Arend

  I think "freedom" in this article basically comes down to an utilitarian argument for an positive right. On both concepts many has been written and I think combined in above fashion they are besides the point and not a real problem for libertarian theory.

  Van Dun starts with the libertarian axioms, and with logical reasoning proves one thing: he doesn't accept these axioms as long as 'freedom' (whatever he means by that, mostly likely some positive right version of it) is not guaranteed... well yeah but in the negative sense of freedom it is, and in the positive sense while not violating the negative sense (the libertarian axioms) it's pretty, pretty, pretty well almost always an indirect consequence of it.

  Van Dun seems to need a complete blueprint of the libertarian society in order to see if positive freedom (which he doesn't define, that's the main tenet of his story: mysticism) is guaranteed. Well that can be a subjectively legitimate preference of Van Dun's, but nothing general for libertarianism as a political philosophy follows from it as far as I can see.

  Published: October 30, 2009 4:12 AM

• David Roemer

  According to economics, the system that maximizes human welfare at each instant in time is the free market. Suppose you find yourself on an island with one other person. Should you cooperate with that person or make that person your slave? Slavery is indicated if there is a need for a beast of burden or someone to engage in hazardous work. The slave may grumble from time to time, but over a lifetime may be grateful to the master for following his conscience instead of the commandment "Thou shall not use force."

  Published: October 30, 2009 5:14 AM

• Bala

  Shay,

  While it is possible that the 8 surrounding owners may have incentives to sell easement, how is it fair to E? Take the specific case where E takes land-ownership first whereas the others do it later. The outcome is that E could end-up paying a fairly heavy price for no error of judgement on his part. Sounds fairly vague to me.

  Further, even if it is 8 different owners and not 1 as in the extreme case you have taken, the situation is one where there are only a limited number of suppliers. Laws of competition may not apply in a situation where there is this much assymetry. There are only 8 possible suppliers of the specific easement desired by E. What should E do if 7 of them flatly refuse for reasons of their own and the 8th sees an opportunity to hold E to ransom?

  The alternative of staking claim on more land may just not be available to E if he has limitations on his means. It is also metaphysically possible for someone to deliberately lock E in and then hold him to ransom irrespective of what E does.

  Published: October 30, 2009 5:22 AM

• Gil

  Duh Bala - each of the nine landowners whose land is a square should each have a square bitumen road outline easement for everyone to travel through. For somone driving upwards through H-I to B-C it would look like a standard two-laned road. The interjoined H-E-B bitumen easements would the 'left lane' and the I-F-C bitumen easements would the 'right lane'. Simple.

  Published: October 30, 2009 5:43 AM

• Bala

  Gil,

  It's easy to "duh" a simple sounding question, but then you said

  " each of the nine landowners whose land is a square should each have a square bitumen road "

  Why "should" they? Even if they "should", what will ensure that they "would"?

  Unless that is clarified, my question is still unanswered. Actually, your post got me thinking and I think I have some idea. However, your superior attitude tells me that it would be nice to read your answer.

  Published: October 30, 2009 7:54 AM

• gene

  the whole thing depends on where you get your idea of property from: common or collective.

  if you believe that property rights originated in our "common" ownership of earth based on the fact that we all occupy space, then the landlocked owner has a "right" to access his land and also to access the world.

  if you believe that property came from the domain of collective or group force as opposed to the equal rights of all, then it is certainly okay for the collective or group to deny the landlocked owner access based on their right of "collective" ownership of all the parcels surrounding his property.

  it is true one owner could "sell" or give that right but that has no bearing. humans either have a right to "use" landlocked parcels that they own the "rights to use" or not. if they don't, then none of us do. you can't use that which is unusable.

  property rights must pertain to all property, not just those with access.

  Published: October 30, 2009 11:45 AM

• T. Ralph Kays

  The entire question of landlocked property is nonsense. For unowned land to become owned some person must have travelled to that spot, by travelling to that spot they necessarily have established an easement over the path they follow. The only way a property can be landlocked is if a person divides up land he already owns and sells such a piece to someone else. In that case the fact that it is landlocked would be known to all (unless fraud is committed by hiding that fact, in which case the fraud is the real concern) and if someone chooses to buy such a parcel that is their own business and no concern of ours.

  Published: October 30, 2009 1:18 PM

• gene

  excellent point on prior access.

  but, you are ignoring the fact that land, especially marginal land can be naturally landlocked. people choose the more productive surrounding land and leave a parcel enclosed that will eventually be needed.

  if the homestead principle states that "all" land is open to use, then a provision has to be made for land landlocked due to prior choice of surrounding owners. if it is allowed to be landlocked and "ransomed", then all land is not under the homestead theory or you are making a provision that those who landlock land by homestead will eventually obtain the landlocked portion by default, which has little to do with applying labor to the land.

  Published: October 30, 2009 1:55 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  I am not ignoring anything, unless you are from the Star Trek universe and can beam yourself directly to any spot you must necessarily have access to any piece of land to make it yours.

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:02 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  I am not ignoring anything, unless you are from the Star Trek universe and can beam yourself directly to any spot you must necessarily have access to any piece of land to make it yours.

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:03 PM

• 1PoundHouse

  Here’s The Quickest, Easiest Surest Way To Make Extraordinary Profits In The Perfect Property Storm For “Think Outside The Box” Investors http://1poundhouse.co.uk/MassiveCashflowToolsStudyPack.html
  

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:03 PM

• Larry N. Martin

  ...you must necessarily have access to any piece of land to make it yours.
  
  Access isn't really the issue--legal access is. Suppose someone trespasses over someone else's land to get to the land they want to homestead?
  

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:08 PM

• Michael A. Clem

  the whole thing depends on where you get your idea of property from: common or collective.
  
  Neither. The initial acquisition of unowned resources is called homesteading, and everyone has the right to do it, but no one is guaranteed to be able to do so. Of course, once property is owned, it can be sold or gifted to someone else.

  Published: October 30, 2009 2:16 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  I am referring to legal access. There is no legal way in a free society to make unowned land owned if nobody can get to it. The situation described by Dun is an imaginary construct that does not in fact exist in the real world.

  Published: October 30, 2009 3:17 PM

• Thomas McGovern

  Commenter T.Ralph Kays is the only commenter with a consistent and sensible libertarian analysis of this issue; thanks Ralph for taking the time to write and respond so many times on this issue. I suggest that everyone read his comments and learn from him.

  Published: October 30, 2009 3:26 PM

• Martin OB

  I don't see why you have to access a land before you can homestead it. What if you always lived there? More precisely, let's assume that only moral agents can homestead a land, and that only humans are moral agents (with Peter Singer's permission); then, the first human beings to be born from pre-human ancestors must have been born somewhere; then they could homestead this place without having to travel there. Or they may have roamed for a while before settling, but then they only granted to themselves a strictly limited number of easements, probably not too far from their homes, so they could still be blocked from most of the Earth. To deny this is to say that everyone literally filled the Earth with their footsteps. Besides being patently false, this scenario implies that every patch of land is an easement zone, which no-one is supposed to homestead, so homesteading becomes impossible.

  Summing up, the doctrine that the easement zones are exactly those zones where each owner has walked before is either insufficient to prevent encirclement or incompatible with homesteading.

  Published: October 30, 2009 4:06 PM

• liberary

  What is the deal with encirclement? What is so bad about it?

  Nothing!

  Scenario A: Someone is buying already encircled property.
  If someone bought a flat in a house with no windows and access to the flat only over a door on the roof of that house, then so be it. Just imagine someone else is owning the surroundings of that house. Does the buyer have a right to use the property of that person? No. He was not forced to buy that flat.

  Scenario B: Someone homesteads land. Then he automatically has a right to use the paths he has taken regularly over unowned land. His heirs inherit that rights (if he wants them to!). A potential buyer of his property could buy that right later too!

  There is no (positive) right to use or build streets. There is only property based rights.

  Published: October 30, 2009 4:46 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Martin OB
  Even the very first humans probably moved around enough to establish easement rights leading away from their property. Of course people don't have the right to wander anywhere on the earth that they want. We are talking about private property after all and one of the defining characteristics of private property is that the owner gets to decide who can walk on it. Where did these people come from that surround your first person, how did they get there? It is inescable that someone must have gotten to a piece of land in order to homestead it, to deny that is to deny reality. If they always lived there that just means that their parents homesteaded the property, and if their parents always lived there then it must have been the grandparents or some other ancestor. Eventually you get to the person who came upon a piece of unowned land and first used it. Otherwise you are claiming that the land was homesteaded by someone who wasn't there.
  I don't even know what you mean by "easement zones", but you clearly don't understand what an easement is. Easements are an essential part of homesteading and an essential part of any system of private property. It is in fact the existence of easements that makes the problem Dun describes non-existant.

  Published: October 30, 2009 5:58 PM

• gene

  denying access to encircled land removes that land from the homestead principle.

  if land can't be accessed, then it can't be homesteaded or it can only be homesteaded by parties in an "advantaged" position, which means some land is not available to all.

  all land is then no longer equally available and the homestead principle would have to be rewritten........................excepting land that has been encirled by blah, blah, blah. pretty wierd stuff, sounds pretty status quo!!

  author has a good point!

  Published: October 30, 2009 8:30 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Who says the so called "homestead principle" requires that everyone have equal access to the unowned land available for homesteading? Simple physical reality will always give some people advantages over others. Not every human can be equidistant from every possible piece of unowned land for example, those that are closer have an advantage. If the land in question is across a body of water than people who own boats would obviously have an advantage. Complaining that nature isn't "fair" in the opportunities it provides people is a pretty worthless pastime. Equality is a mathematical concept that has no meaning when applied to humans. No two people have ever been equal and they never will be equal no matter what you do.

  Published: October 30, 2009 11:11 PM

• Gil

  Well Bala if you believe landowners have no right to provide easements in which everyone else can through but instead could indeed encircle someone else then hoping the landowners will follow the principles of 'natural law' is even less likely. The only solution for a trapped landowner is to build a helipad.

  Published: October 30, 2009 11:28 PM

• Bala

  Gil,

  " Well Bala if you believe landowners have no right to provide easements in which everyone else can through "

  Where did I speak of "not having a right"??? I only asked 'Why "should" they?' and 'Even if they "should", why "would" they?'.

  Let me be clear that I am no expert on this matter (I am reading about it for the first time ever) and am just trying to understand the issue. It does not help to get smart with me on this.

  " The only solution for a trapped landowner is to build a helipad. "

  Thanks for the clear answer. What if he does not have the resources to build a helipad? Should he die?

  Published: October 31, 2009 12:52 AM

• Gil

  Whoops! You're right Bala - that was supposed to read 'duty' not 'right'.

  Published: October 31, 2009 2:44 AM

• Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light

  T. Ralph Kays:

  Great posts. Would you say that, by traversing previously unowned property to homestead (unowned) property, the homesteader thus establishes a right of return (an easement) across the (still unowned) land? I.e., he makes no claim to the unhomesteaded land as such, only to a particular path for a particular purpose (return to his prior, presumably legitiamately owned location)?

  Published: October 31, 2009 6:54 AM

• Martin OB

  T. Ralph Kays:

  Sorry, but I think it's you who didn't understand my rebuttal.

  You said that "for unowned land to become owned some person must have travelled to that spot". That's incorrect; instead, someone has to BE in that spot. Now, for someone to be in that spot, either he must have traveled there, or he must have been born there. If he was born there, it means his mother was there, which implies that either his mother traveled there or she was born there, and so on. You see, you never reach a point where "being born there" is out of the question and "traveling there" is the only possibility. So, strictly speaking, your claim is incorrect. You even seem to admit as much, but you say that someone's distant ancestors most likely have traveled for a while before settling in some spot. I say this does not prevent encirclement, because the only difference is that now this person has a right to this property, plus an easement along the paths his ancestors traveled, but he can be encircled by homesteading a sufficiently wide circle around him, and even every patch of land inside this circle except his ancestors' paths themselves.

  Not to speak of how difficult it is to determine which those paths actually were. How would you go about it? Let's suppose that everyone in the village agrees that everyone's ancestors may have walked anywhere withing a distance of 100 km of his current home. This would have two undesirable consequences; first, anyone could be encircled by homesteading a circle of more than 100 km around his house; second, no-one can homestead any patch of land inside this 100 km circle, because to homestead is to turn unowned land into property, and property implies the right to exclude, but you can't exclude people from an easement zone. You admitted as much when you say "one of the defining characteristics of private property is that the owner gets to decide who can walk on it". So, an easement zone is not really "private property", at least not one of the same kind as your home, because you don't have a right to exclude people from it.

  Now, they might agree to let people homestead land inside the 100 km circle as long as "enough" easement zone is left, but then they have to decide how much is "enough", and we are back to square one, where we have to decide what the limits of homesteading should be; The idea that ancestors may have wandered for a while before settling proves to be of no help. Moreover, the encircling problem remains, except if we make the "possible ancestor path" circle as wide as the Earth; this absurd assumption would be required to put us back in square one and not worse off.

  Published: October 31, 2009 12:21 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Lord Buzungulus

  Absolutely, that has been my main point all along. Easements are established much as title to unowned land is established, through use, and there is no need for some benevolent attitude on the part of others to provide for free movement. Respect for property rights is all that is required.

  Published: October 31, 2009 12:23 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Martin OB

  Of course you reach a point where someone must have traveled to any given point. Your argument on this point is frankly ridiculous. The only exception would be the direct descendants of the first people, and assuming that in all of history they had remained in the same location. You also missed my point about these theoretical first people moving about. I did not say they wandered before settling, I said that after settling they probably still occasionally travelled off of their homestead and established easements by doing so.
  You keep mentioning "easement zones", there is no such thing as an "easement zone". Easements are property and a person who owns an easement can exclude others from using it, I do so regularly. My home is encircled, it has no frontage at all on any public roadway and I have no problem with access because I have an easement to cross my neighbors private property.
  One more time, you have absolutely no idea what an easement is and that seems to be the source of your confusion.

  Published: October 31, 2009 1:09 PM

• Martin OB

  T. Ralph Kays:

  What seem ridiculous is your refusal to qualify your claim.

  "The only exception would be the direct descendants of the first people, and assuming that in all of history they had remained in the same location."

  So, there IS an exception, so your claim is wrong. It's that simple. How frequent the "exception" is depends on how broadly you define "same location". If you take "same location" to be "same planet" then the exception becomes the rule. If you take it to mean "same continent" then at least all Africans are exceptions (according to current theories).

  You seem to be confuse an easement (which is a right) with what I call the "easement zone", which is a fixed place or route where you can exert this right.

  Let's see the Wikipedia definition of "easement": "An easement is a non-possessory interest to use real property in possession of another person for a stated purpose. An easement is considered as a property right in itself at common law and is still treated as a type of property in most jurisdictions."

  So, an easement is a right to use someone else's property in some ways. There are "floating easements", where "there's no fixed location, route, method or limit to the right of way", and then there are non-floating easements, where there is.

  The kind of easement we are talking about is a non-floating easement, and this particular "route" is what I call the "easement zone". Is it clearer now?

  Again, even if we take a very narrow notion of "same location", this only means that everyone has a right to his homesteaded property, plus a few non-floating easements with their corresponding easement zones (the routes themselves), which solves nothing, as I described.

  Published: October 31, 2009 1:57 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Wow, I am speechless.

  Published: October 31, 2009 2:24 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  I am Belgian, so forgive me my poor English.

  Between reasonable and unreasonable : What real advantage such strategic games really have to offer...

  I think that -in practice- there is a reasonable difference between "theory" and "practice".

  From a theoretical point of view, Van Dun ondoubtably is right, but from a practical point of view, such an approach -the way I see things- is nonsense. Personnaly -having had a mathematical education- I think that I have some affinity with the difference between the purely theoretical consequenses and the practical consequenses.

  When somebody starts playing with a number of narrowly(logically consistend) defined definitions, axioms or postulates. Then it certainly is possible to -using the arts of reasoning and logic- come to a certain number of situations, where in individuals can come to certain (logicaly true) situations, in which "competing parties/individuals" can use their property rights in such a way that they can "destroy" (or encircle, isolate, eliminate, etcetera). As if human beings play somekind of juridical game of chess.

  But even although such anarchistic wargames (I can not think of any other name for this kind of practics) are in theory perfectly feasable (and to be expected) in reality. This would totally neglect the nature of human kind and his nature. Ofcourse, I can get a "direct" advantage by "crushing" my fellow humas between my private property rights, but such an advantage would only be obtained in short term, because in the long run, such stupidities would cost me much more then the short term gain I ondoubtebly get.

  Because an action like that would completely destroy any kind of confidence that could have existed between the "winner" and the "loser". It is not unlikely that such an action would provoke a kind of vendetta. Furthermore this action would destroy all the goodwill I might had build up between myself and other members (which allways are potential partners for mutual beneficial interaction, cooperation) of the community.

  So in theory in the short run, such a "tactic" might "pay off", but in the long run, such tactics will ultimately be self defeating in every possible way.

  No matter what kind of society you live in, such rotten characters would eventually always end up with the shorter end of the stick.

  My excuses again for the bad level of English (English is badly spoken French anyway ;-)).

  Published: October 31, 2009 3:20 PM

• Verdyck

  I would like to defend my point of view publicly. As a criticism on the criticism of Van Dun.

  An old fashoned duel with words. Armed with arguments and reason to battle it out. I miss that in modern society, I would love such a thing.

  Published: October 31, 2009 3:40 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Verdyck

  There is a serious flaw in Duns argument. He assumes a starting position that cannot exist, namely that someone exists somewhere who never travelled to that location.

  Published: October 31, 2009 5:44 PM

• Verdyck Yannick

  Why is that a flaw? You can't close a gate in a libertarian society at a random moment in time?

  Published: October 31, 2009 6:40 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  No, he starts with a person on a piece of land surrounded by land owned by other people who do not want to allow passage across their land, thus trapping the first person. It begs the question, how did that person get there in the first place? (Dun assumes that everyone in this imaginary world respects property rights) They could be there voluntarily, having chosen to buy a parcel that had no easements allowing them to leave, which would be entirely their own choice. The only other possibilities involve this person traveling to that location and necessarily creating an easement when they did so, thus keeping them from being trapped. The scenario Dun describes requires that someone be in a place without ever going to that place.

  Published: October 31, 2009 7:22 PM

• Bala

  Yannick Verdyk,

  Thanks for restarting the (hitherto fading) discussion on this blog in this manner.

  In fact, while I originally thought the article is good, further thinking forced me to change my mind.

  The reason I think the idea behind this article is incorrect is that it assumes pervasive irrational human behaviour in an uncoerced environment. Any rational and self-interested human being will be able to realise that securing an easement all around their own property is the best and only way of securing their own freedom of movement in and out of their own property without violating the property rights of others. That is all they can do. They need to operate on the hope (rather the confidence in human rationality and selfishness) that all others also see the obvious selfish reason for securing similar easements around their respective properties, thus securing a network of fully privately owned but freely accessible pathways that we can call a network of roads.

  If we assume such rationality as being common among human beings, there is therefore a very selfish reason to secure easements around one's own property.

  The reason everyone on the hypothetical planet described in the article is likely to think thus is that in the final equilibrium, everyone is locked into their own property. The only exceptions are those that fall on the border between agglomerations of owned land and patches of unowned land. However, these people too face the prospect of being locked in once someone homesteads land currently unowned and bordering their own. If they are not aware of that risk and continue working as they currently are, they are either acting on the range of the moment or being plan irrational.

  Thus, the article is guilty of ignoring a very basic aspect of human nature - the fact that humans are rational animals capable of thinking of their own long-range well-being and acting not just for the range of the moment but well beyond.

  Published: October 31, 2009 9:36 PM

• pbergn

  The T. Ralph Kays's argumentation is correct in its narrow Libertarian sense, solely focused on property rights...

  Although he misses the main point of this article, where the author is trying to demonstrate that the mere property rights do not guarantee freedom and prosperity to the majority of the population in its classical sense: freedom to move, freedom to choose, freedom to exist, freedom to pursue happiness…

  Here is why:

  With only the emphasis on property rights, and given the inhomogeneous nature of property, and its interconnectedness, some owners of the property will have disproportionately greater advantage in bargaining power over the others, gradually resulting in the extreme polarization of the ownership, i.e. resulting in some owning large percentage of overall property, and others – “encircled” or trapped, in a sense that they are not able to make legal moves to preserve their existence without breaking the property laws of others. This situation will inevitably lead to violence, since those who are deprived of property ownership, and who are unable to leverage their situation via productive means, will inexorably resort to non-productive means such as violence.

  It is easy to see that the hypothetical society on the quasi-Earth, where the property rights are sacrosanct no matter what, will quickly evolve into handful of large land-owners, with the majority of populace forced into serfdom by the basic necessity to earn subsistence...

  This situation is very well known from the Medieval history, where various kings and land-lords owned large parcels of land (possibly very legitimately acquired by purchasing or sending discovery scouting expeditions into the unknown lands, and subsequently proclaiming as their own (homesteading in a way)), leaving all others, the less-fortunate ones no choice but to subscribe into the serfdom, or face the exile…

  It is hard to imagine that a person born into serfdom can be called “free” in Libertarian sense, his or her only fault being simply not having any bargaining chips on the table (since most of the property around is already owned by the others, and this person has no chance to compete)…
  

  Published: October 31, 2009 10:45 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  pbergn

  Excuse me but I am not the one who missed the point of Duns article. Dun begins his description of this imaginary libertarian world by specifically eliminating the possibility of the actions you claim will result. The feudalism of the medieval era with its reliance on violence to establish and maintain that social system is clearly forbidden by Dun in his thought experiment. You are making a very common mistake in assuming that libertarian property rights are equated with property rights as coercive governments have historically defined them. Under a libertarian system kings would be recognised as the thieves and murderers that historically they have always been. Under libertarianism your description of someone "legitimately" acquiring land by sending out scouting expeditions to proclaim it theirs would simply be laughed at, no such claim would ever be recognised. To describe that as "homesteading in a way" is nothing short of ludicrous.
  The major point that you and Dun both miss is that property rights means rights to all types of property. Both of you are describing a world where people have absolute property rights in land and no property rights in easements. Of course if you deny people the right to own easements there will be major problems, but libertarians do not limit property rights that way.
  The problems you and Dun describe have been solved for at least 2,000 years through the common law application of easements as a property right.

  Published: November 1, 2009 5:55 AM

• Yannick Verdyck

  So you deny the fact that one can use his own property rights to make the life of my other fellow people more miserable.

  I can -for instance- go to a market and by all the bread available with the deliberate intention of making it harder for other people to satisfy there basic needs (and destroy all the bread I had bought). Doing that I could quite clearly (theoretically) cleans the world of certain people I dislike.

  You could -quite clearly- use property rights to make life of other people a hell. This is the exactly what Van Dun tries to points out here. In that sense he is right.

  It is quiet easy to make up such examples. I personaly do not bother about the ongoing discussion wether this certain example is absolutely -in every possible way- correct. Such is not the point.

  Published: November 1, 2009 6:56 AM

• T. Ralph Kays

  That is another false example. Simply looking at the history of societies that abandoned private property rights should make that clear to even the most casual observer. Without exception the most prominent feature of such societies has always been widespread hunger.

  Published: November 1, 2009 9:59 AM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Yannick Verdyck

  Do you realise that your last statement amounts to saying that you don't care if your ideas are wrong, you are still going to believe them?

  Published: November 1, 2009 10:06 AM

• Yannick Verdyck

  I'm not saying(and I have not said) such a thing at all. I am in certainly in favor of building a society based on private property rights (an anarcho-kapitalist society).

  But what I do reject, is the statement that "such a society would instantly become a "utopian" state in which no problems or conflicts would occur or continue to exist". (And that is exactly the thesis that you are trying to defend here.)

  The use of logic and reason plus a certain number of welldefined legal principles. Is in my honest opinion not applicable to infinity (that is to say in each and every (unimportant) situation that might occur in reality).

  Man remains a social creature and is thus condemned to interact with other people. Cooperation (production going beyond indivudualist autarky) requires a certain degree of goodwill and understanding.

  The entire concept of capitalism is founded on the principle of free social interaction.

  
  I hope that in a libertarian (anarcho-kapitalist) society, you will not be nagging all day to me about each violation of your property rights committed by my housecat which happens to be walking around in the neighbourhood? (That is not to say that I am permitted to let my Bengalese tiger free to rampage freely on your private property ofcourse, but I do think the point is clear.)

  Is that an unreasonable assumption? There is a difference between the fundamentalist attitude (like you and Van Dun are displaying here on the subject of private property rights). I am not interested in to "who is right".

  So in principle I agree to you and Van Dun. It al depends on the precise definitions and assumptions you make about reality. (Minor changes can make enormous differences in that respect.)

  But such (logically consistent) discussions and conclusions are quiet pointless if you would try to use them to solve your problems in every day life.

  Published: November 1, 2009 11:55 AM

• pbergn

  TO: T. Ralph Kays

  Thanks for your response. I see your point...

  It's just there are two fundamental problems that property rights alone do not address:

  1. Who and how these rights are going to be enforced and arbitrated? And if there is such a thing as "enforcement" in your ideal world, would there not be a conflict of interest among the enforcers? And if not, do we assume that all quasi-Earthlings are very disciplined and ideal?!

  2. The inhomogeneous nature of the material resources and their interconnectedness will inexorably lead to uneven distribution of material goods among the members of the society given sufficient time from its original evenly distributed state, even if (and perhaps because of) they are strictly adhering to property rights alone. This trend is exponential in its nature and self-feeds via positive feedback, which in an electrical circuit would have resulted to a surge, necessarily followed by the overwhelming of the system, leading to a highly imbalanced state with possibility of a complete shutdown...

  Now, I agree with you that the property rights are fundamental to freedom and must be upheld, but the question this article is trying to raise - is whether they are sufficient by themselves, or whether they have to be accompanied by a set of well-defined exceptions and other guiding principles guaranteeing fundamental human rights to the members of the society, such as right to exist, to move freely, to have a fair share of natural resources such as air, fresh water, forests, mountains, oceans, be free from unreasonable cruel punishment and persecution, have rights to express themselves freely, etc, etc.…

  I think the author of this article is trying to point out the non-material, thus subjective, dimension of the intuitive notion of “freedom” that each of us, human beings, subconsciously or consciously cherish and strive for…

  Thank you for upholding an intelligent and civilized dialog. I appreciate it in any case...
  

  Published: November 1, 2009 1:34 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  pbergn

  I like your response and I would suggest that you read Murray Rothbards work on how a free society would handle law enforcement.
  Your second point is one that many people express and again would probably best be addressed by reading Rothbards work on economics although Mises, F.A. Hayek and several other austrian economists would also solve these issues for you.
  I would like to address a couple of points quickly.
  I do not believe that there was ever a time when material goods were evenly distributed, differences between people and their condition in the real world are constant and inevitable in any society. That such a trend is exponential in nature is a wholly unproven point and I would encourage you to see if you can prove it. But I warn you, that specific point is addressed extremely well by austrian economists.
  Finally I would point out that central to libertarian thought is the recognition that human rights and property rights are in fact the same thing.

  Published: November 1, 2009 2:10 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Yannick Verdyk

  I am sorry to be the one to point this out but the last sentence of your latest blog says that rational thought has no place in real life.
  Why would anyone bother to have a discussion with someone who believes being rational is a waste of time?

  Published: November 1, 2009 2:21 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  Praxeology has an enormous affinity with mathematics, the mathematical method is enormously powerfull and offers us many tools.

  But it is a tool to understand reality, not reality itself. Concepts like "justice" and "law" only exist in our minds. Not in "real" life, they are concepts, principles which allow us to solve problems. They offer a variety of logically consistent ways to reason, but they are not reality itself.

  Rationality, logic is not omnipotent, this has been proven by Gödel.

  Look for "Gödel's completeness theorem" on wikipedia.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Relationship_with_mathematics

  The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. — Albert Einstein

  How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? — Albert Einstein

  There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology. — Alexandre Borovik

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences

  So if you wish to insinuate that I totally reject rationalism, you are false. Most of my thinking is rationalistic, but not into infinity.

  So claiming that I think that rationality is a total waste of time is just ridiculous.

  Published: November 1, 2009 3:36 PM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Yannick Verdyck

  Interesting, can you not read what you write? Or do you believe words have no meaning?

  Published: November 1, 2009 3:41 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  I'm not interested in a intellectual Stalingrad or Verdun right now(I have neither time, nor energy to do so).

  I was once like you too I suppose. Keep on looking, never think you know everything and take time to look at the different angles.

  Published: November 1, 2009 3:49 PM

• Bala

  Yannick Verdyk,

  I think Einstein was wrong. Mathematics originates in man's never-ending work of measuring the world around him. After all, what is Mathematics if not the "science of measurement"? Measurement always presupposes measurement of something. In this case, that happens to be the real world.

  No one is claiming that logic or rationality is omnipotent. However, as human beings, rationality is the only tool we have to comprehend the world around us. Either we are rational and human or irrational and non-human. To act irrationally is to deliberately act to harm oneself.

  Published: November 1, 2009 5:01 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  Mathematics is not "the science of measurement". Mathematics is more a kind of abstract-thinking-game so to speak. One must not confuse "high-school mathematics" -so to speak- with real academic mathematics (logic, analysis, algebra, ....). I'm not talking about statistics which are a special case of a special case of mathematics (statistics is one of the most misused mathematical instruments in science).

  The link below is actually quite good (came to read it just now).

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences
  For instance...

  "Hamming gives four examples of nontrivial physical phenomena he believes arose from the mathematical tools employed and not from the intrinsic properties of physical reality.

  "Hamming proposes that Galileo discovered the law of falling bodies not by experimenting, but by simple but careful thinking. Hamming imagines Galileo as having engaged in the following thought experiment (Hamming calls it "scholastic reasoning"):"
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics

  And the link above offers another inside in the controverse, although some of the points made there are complete nonsense.

  Published: November 1, 2009 5:41 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  I think I consider myself adherent to the camp of the "formalists" for now.

  Some of the greatest mathematical minds in history have been puzzled by these questions, so it is not so surprisingly that a clear simple answer is not available.

  Published: November 1, 2009 5:51 PM

• Bala

  Yannick Verdyck,

  I can see why we differ so widely in our conclusions. If you really believe that Mathematics is just a set of abstractions, just ask yourself a simple question. What is the concept "1"? The very concept "number" is an abstract concept. However, any number is an abstraction from reality. A number refers to the quantity of a certain unit that has been identified as being distinct from its surroundings. You could say "4 men" or "3 women" or "5 children", but in each case, the number refers to a concrete number of units of the type being observed. In fact, that is why 3+4 is always 7. 3 men and 4 men together can only form a group of 7 men. That's also why we have the saying "You can't add apples and oranges".

  All Mathematics ultimately has its roots in reality. The sole purpose of Mathematics is the measurement of the real world. Higher Mathematics describes a number of nuances involved in the interactions of quantities, but ultimately has its roots in reality.

  Published: November 2, 2009 3:17 AM

• Yannick Verdyck

  @ Bala

  "I think Einstein was wrong."

  I think that's a pretty ambitious claim to make, If Einstein was wrong, and you are right, then why haven't you figured out string theory yet?

  I honestly don't know for sure, you can't know everything, but life just ain't that simple, clear cut.

  
  With a al do respect, but mathematics is not about "counting". The origins of natural numbers finds its roots theory of sets.

  And 1 meter, 1 yard, what kind of measurement do you have in that department. I have never seen a definition that gives me a 1 meter out of mathematics that always allows me to find the right length (or "measure") so you want. When we need a "unity", we just pick one (at random).

  How "much" is 1 meter?

  Published: November 2, 2009 4:33 AM

• Gil

  Indeed pbergn it's a cop-out to say all Monarchs stole their way to wealth or things would have been considerably different if they never did.

  After all, if a new continent was found there'd be a land rush, the new continent is filled up with l'il sovereign landowners, some succeed in their endeavours whist others don't and those who don't will sell their land to those who have succeeded thus the continent experiences fewer and fewer private landowners, most people keep wealth in the family thus private landowners will bequeath their land to their children thus creating an aristocracy, to help unify the rules between fellow aristocracies the aristocrats create a federation council and vote one aristocrat to be a central figurehead who acts as an arbitrator between debates with fellow aristocrats (i.e. the early feudal era where a king was a central figure but had no real special powers over fellow lords).

  It seem as though what might happen in Anarchtopia will follow pretty much what already has happened. Maybe Libertarians feel society went off the rails when aristocratic wars see the emergence of an absolute monarch and the serfs who have no respect for property rights overthrew the monarchies and replace it with Socialistic structure where power is held by a council and the members are determined by the workers themselves otherwise known as Democracy.

  Published: November 2, 2009 6:10 AM

• T. Ralph Kays

  Gil

  Interesting post, but I would like to hear you explain why events would necessarily play out the way you have described. It may be possible that they would play out that way, but why is that the only scenario you consider? If you would bother to investigate the libertarian position I think you might be surprised to find that it consists mostly of describing a way to achieve a social structure that avoids precisely the scenario you describe.
  I would also challenge you to identify even one monarch whose wealth was not based on the forcible appropriation of other peoples property, in other words theft.

  Published: November 2, 2009 11:44 AM

• Jay Lakner

  Bala said:
  **********
  I think Einstein was wrong. Mathematics originates in man's never-ending work of measuring the world around him. After all, what is Mathematics if not the "science of measurement"? Measurement always presupposes measurement of something. In this case, that happens to be the real world.
  **********

  Mathematics is not a science. Mathematics is a language.

  The usefulness of Mathematics is that there are no ambiguities, no double-meanings and no contradictions. Therefore logical reasoning can occur with exact precision and without bias or underlying false assumptions.

  Unfortunately, one can only reason in the language of mathematics using known quantities. Hence mathematics can not be used for the logical reasoning involved in Austrian Economics because we cannot quantify the unknown constantly changing subjective values of individuals in society.
  Therefore we have no choice but to reason logically in another language. (In my case English)

  Mathematics is the perfect language to use when we take measurements. Logical reasoning becomes so much simpler to perform. Complex calculations become extremely simple if expressed in the language of mathematics.

  But this does not make Mathematics the "science of measurement" as you say. Mathematics is simply the most practical known language to accurately express measurements with.

  Mathematics is a language. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Published: November 2, 2009 12:01 PM

• Bala

  Yannick Verdyck,

  " And 1 meter, 1 yard, what kind of measurement do you have in that department. "

  Ask yourself the question "1 meter or 1 yard. Of what?"

  " How "much" is 1 meter? "

  Once again, ask yourself the question "How much is 1 foot?" and the answer will be obvious.

  The point is that you are confusing the methodological and epitemological aspects of Mathematics. Methodologically, Mathematics is an abstract science. Epistemologically, it is the "science of measurement".

  " The origins of natural numbers finds its roots theory of sets. "

  Try doing this with pre-schoolers. I know how that works because I deal with them. Incidentally, you are (probably inadvertently) debunking all the fantastic work done by Maria Montessori in the teaching of Mathematics to little children.

  Published: November 2, 2009 12:08 PM

• Bala

  Jay Lakner,

  " Unfortunately, one can only reason in the language of mathematics using known quantities. Hence mathematics can not be used for the logical reasoning involved in Austrian Economics because we cannot quantify the unknown constantly changing subjective values of individuals in society. "

  What you are saying is essentially that measurement becomes impossible or perpetually incorrect in Economics because one cannot fix a standard of measurement that can be applied to all objects being measured, i.e., acting humans.

  What you said reminded me of the movie Matrix where the human being making choices is described as a singularity by the Architect of the Matrix who believes in the omnipotence of mathematical modelling.

  Published: November 2, 2009 12:20 PM

• Jay Lakner

  Bala I think you need to have a look at your definition of "measurement".

  I am saying logical reasoning is impossible with the language of mathematics in the field of economics. There is a big difference between measurement and reasoning.

  I can measure things using English too... that table is very long compared to that other table, my finger nails are very short compared to most people's finger nails, my computer is quite slow compared to my friend's computer... but as you can see it's quite a poor language to use for that purpose.

  To be accurate, measurement requires mathematics. But that does not mean that mathematics is exclusively the science of measurement.
  Mathematics is used every day in a non-measurement way.
  If I have $30 and I spent $18 on a meal then I will have ($30 - $18) = $12 left to spend on my lunch tomorrow.
  I am not "measuring" anything here. I am using the language of mathematics to logically deduce if buying the meal I want now will allow me to also purchase the meal I want tomorrow.
  This is not measurement. This is reasoning.

  Published: November 2, 2009 1:23 PM

• Jay Lakner

  Another example:
  When Newton developed the concept of a force, he defined F=ma (Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration) and he defined acceleration as the rate of change of velocity, ie a = v/t (acceleration = velocity divided by time).

  A constant force F applied over a period of time t is Ft (Force multiplied by time). If you now use logical deduction to see what happens you get the following:
  F=ma
  F=mv/t
  Ft=mvt/t
  Ft=mv
  Ft/m=v
  Therefore, assuming the mass is initially at rest, one can conclude that if you apply a constant force F for a time period t to a fixed mass m, the mass will be travelling at velocity v.
  I am not "measuring" the velocity v. I am logically deducing it. If the fundamental assumptions are true then the mathematical conclusion must also be true. It does not matter what units of measurements I use as long as the same units are used consistently.
  I could use units of time called qwerts and units of mass called yoips and units of distance called hilks. Then as long as I measure velocity as hilks per qwerts and Force as yoip hilks per qwerts squared, then the equation will always work regardless of the amounts assigned to qwerts, yoips and hilks.

  What was Newton measuring here? He wasn't measuring anything. He was simply using the language of algebra to arrive at logical conclusions to his fundamental assumptions.

  (Note: I greatly simplified the example above for clarity. I felt it wasn't necessary to go into calculus to illustrate my point)

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:04 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  @ Jay Lakner

  "Unfortunately, one can only reason in the language of mathematics using known quantities."

  This is simply not true. Logic(and not only logic) is not about quantities...it really is about playing abstract "entities". In mathematics, I really have a professional edge on you guys, but I even so, I don't claim, that such and such is the absolute truth about mathematics (for instance formalism). I do not rule out the possibility that I even might be wrong.

  Stop raping the science of mathematics all the time... it is a wonderfull tool, like a kind of Swiss Knife, you use the specific substool of mathemtics which helps you the best in the specific task you wish to accomplish.

  Mathematics has an enormous repertoire of different tools to offer us. It is not because you or Bala know only very little about mathematics(and believe me you both don't know not even one tiny little fraction of the different kinds of tools en tecnics there are out there), that this implies that there is nothing more then your eye can see.

  You guys are simply not qualified to judge on this specific matter.

  Hint: Only make absolute statements about those things you really know well.

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:16 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  It is not because of the fact that Newton used mathematics(an only tiny little fraction of it) for a "measurement-problem", that mathematics is all about "measurement-problems".

  It is not because of the fact that monkeys can ride bicycles, that only monkeys can ride bicycles.

  
  It does not take a genius to figure that out I think.

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:21 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  Newton used in this specific instance mathematics(and only a very very specific part of it) as a tool to solve his specific problem in physics.

  Mathematics is not about physics.

  (By the way, algebra is not about "x + y = z or cos² x + sin² x = 1").

  If you wan't to get an impression of what it's possibilities are... check it out. You can wander around for the rest of you're entire life, not having to see even one subject twice.

  http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:30 PM

• Jay Lakner

  "Unfortunately, one can only reason in the language of mathematics using known quantities."

  Yes Yannick you're right. This statement is very poorly worded. I see and completely agree with your objection to it.

  I not sure how to state what I actually meant by that statement. "known quantities" is certainly not my intended meaning.

  Do you understand my intended meaning of that statement?

  I wasn't really prepared when I entered this discussion and typed my post in haste.

  My apologies.

  I'll have a longer think about it and reword that statement in a more correct way (but later ... gotta sleep now).

  P.S. Yannick, maybe you should tone down the arrogance a bit ... I know a lot more about mathematics than you think.

  P.P.S. While typing this post I just saw your latest post. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by it. I am clearly arguing that Mathematics is NOT the science of measurement ... but it looks like you're criticising me.

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:34 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  Sometime I get a little emotional when people "stigmatize" Mathematics.

  One should not look to mathematics when looking for scientific mistakes, but rather in ourselves, mankind, which has all to often made terrible mistakes and has time and time again tried to misused mathematics to cover those mistakes up.

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:55 PM

• Jay Lakner

  **********
  Mathematics is not about physics
  **********

  I never said it was.

  
  **********
  (By the way, algebra is not about "x + y = z or cos² x + sin² x = 1").
  **********

  Algebra is the study of the rules of operations. Both examples you mentioned are specific examples of algebra.
  But is there any real reason for me to explain the generalisations of addition and multiplication to illustrate my point that mathematics is NOT the "science of measurement"?

  I find it is better to stick to simple examples with simple language if I have a point of view I wish to communicate. After all this is a website about Austrian economics, not complex mathematics.

  Published: November 2, 2009 3:01 PM

• Michael A. Clem

  Praxeology has an enormous affinity with mathematics,
  Is it just me, or is this the first time Austrian Economics has been accused of being too mathematical??
  
  As for mathematics, I may not have gotten beyond calculus, but I have developed a theory about math--maybe you more knowledgeable mathematicians would like to critique it: essentially, mathematics is a system of logic. Thus, a common statement like 2 + 2 = 4 is an analytical statement: it is true because it has been defined so, as the numbers and the equation have been derived.
  
  However, like any logical system, its application in reality is very much dependent upon the premises used as mathematical input. We can say that 2 apples + 2 apples equals 4 apples, and nobody will seriously disagree. But if we try to add 2 apples to 2 cans of applesauce, we're not really going to be sure what that equals, because we have not defined or found the relationship between apples and applesauce, and don't have a common unit to work with.
  
  Thus, a logical system like math can and is indeed be very valuable in the real world, as long as it is applied properly. And this is the essence of the Austrian critique of mainstream economics' use of mathematics--it is often based upon a fallacious premise, like Keynesian consumerism, or it's mixing apples and applesauce, and not really telling us anything useful.

  Published: November 2, 2009 3:20 PM

• Yannick Verdyck

  Indeed, the problem is not the mathematics, but it is the way how it is applied in mainstream economics that is completely fallacious.

  
  As for this:

  "But is there any real reason for me to explain the generalisations of addition and multiplication to illustrate my point that mathematics is NOT the "science of measurement"?"

  Try P-adic numbers, FiniteGroups, Coding Theory, Sudoku, Rubic-cube, Graph Theory, Ring Theory, Fractional Ideal, Manifolds, Quaternions, Set Theory, infintiy, ...

  What those things have to do with "measurement" remains a big enigma to me.

  First you start out assuming that some axioms are true. Then by using logic you can arive to certain conclusions and statements. Some statement is mathematically correct because you have a proof for it, not because you can "measure" it. You know that your conclusion must be "true" if the fact is given that your assumptions were right.

  That's why Newton was not "really right" with his law of gravity. His assumptions concerning reality proved to be false...

  Published: November 2, 2009 5:31 PM

• Bala

  Jay Lakner,

  " I am saying logical reasoning is impossible with the language of mathematics in the field of economics. "

  I agree with you completely on this, but see no need to revisit my concept of measurement. I was just trying to say why I think you are right. I was just identifying the point that human action is not amenable to mathematical measurement because of the inherent subjective nature of value and the fact that it all starts with "choice" which does not have to and probably will never be the same for all people.

  Hope that clarifies.

  Published: November 3, 2009 12:35 AM

• Bala

  Yannick Verdyck,

  " First you start out assuming that some axioms are true. "

  Please... I am not disagreeing with you that methodologically, Mathematics is a set of abstract ideas. However, my point is that epistemologically, Mathematics evolves from our attempts to understand the world around us. I am just saying that the axioms of Mathematics often lie in reality and that we try to grasp that reality through our conceptual faculty. For instance, take the simple concept of the Axiom of Identity.

  1 = 1, not because I randomly choose it to be but because in the real world, 1 apple remains 1 apple (unless of course something happens/is done to it).

  There is also the fundamental point 'What is 1?'. It is a concept of quantity evolved because man can see that one of the differences between objects in his surroundings is in terms of quantity.

  I am not knowledgeable in any of the areas of Mathematics you have identified, but would wager that the source of the validity of the axioms would become visible in the linkages these areas have to other fundamental areas of Maths or in the application of these areas to reality.

  That apart, let me also attempt to bring this discussion back to the original point. I was just saying that rational people acting in their long-range self-interest will clearly see securing easements on their own property is the best way to advance their own Liberty without violating that of others. That's what, in my opinion, makes the article fundamentally incorrect. It assumes a scenario in which none of the land owners on the hypothetical planet is rational enough to see what is obvious even to me.

  Published: November 3, 2009 12:51 AM

• Yannick Verdyck

  "Mathematics evolves from our attempts to understand the world around us."

  No, it does not.

  "Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind, although practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered later."

  Published: November 3, 2009 5:41 AM