By getting the government to stop me from doing what I would otherwise be at liberty to do, if they had never existed. If it gets that far, they get the government to do that for them.
Rightful property is the fruits of one's labor. But land is not the fruit of anyone's labor. Our rights to use it are simply taken from us by force and given to landowners as their private property.
1) What's your Third Option - and how will you get others to do it? How will it work within a Capitalist Democracy? 2) What harm? You've freely chosen to play the slave. No one forced you. 3) I never said you were a Collectivst. Meantime, you're a Capitalist? If you're not a Collectivist, you must be a Capitalist. 4) Do you have the slightest clue of how much WORK and SACRIFICE goes into becoming a master? That lunch is nowhere near free. 5) What rights? Where do such rights exist, other than in your head?
So go buy a thousand acres and give one acre each to 1000 random 'poor' people. Liberate those slaves from their servitude! Set them free to be masters of their own destiny! Let us know how it works out.
So you hate government. There are plenty of Third World nations where lawlessness reigns. What's stopping you?
Well I certainly agree that the government ought not take your property. But that seems to be a different topic.
So without government land would be extremely affordable? How would a central bank exist to print exclusive legal tender without government? You're thinking like a tax collector, and not someone looking to buy land. Land is valuable because of where it is, and the condition that it is in. Improved land is always much more valuable than unimproved.
Liberty and justice. There's the rub. People are so used to tyranny and injustice, have become so emotionally and financially dependent on them, that they can't even imagine things could be a lot better. It's democratic, but not capitalist. No, that's just baldly false, like your other claims. Government agents with guns force me to submit to the privileged owning my right to liberty. False dichotomy fallacy. Socialists and capitalists commit the same mistake -- refusal to distinguish between production and parasitism -- just for opposite reasons. <yawn> It takes a lot of work and sacrifice to run a protection racket, too. That doesn't mean it isn't stealing. Rights are an ideal that just law attempts to codify and formalize. The Declaration of Independence described the situation in terms comprehensible at the time, but a more robust formulation is possible now: our nature as human beings implies that we thrive best when we have secure rights to what we would have if others did not deprive us of it, mainly life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor. The Darwinian character of existence implies that not having such rights, or not respecting them in others, is ultimately self-defeating.
It would be free, as it was for millions of years before government turned it into private property. I don't propose to abolish government, just privilege. No, I'm thinking like someone who cares about liberty, justice, and truth. Someone looking to buy land is not thinking about liberty or justice. No, that is just baldly false. It is valuable because of the expected welfare subsidy giveaway to the owner. Typically that is dependent on the local government and community. No, that's just another bald falsehood from you. Unimproved land whose owner can expect to pocket large subsidies from the local government and community will always be worth far more than improved land whose owner can't expect to pocket such subsidies. Go to some place in West Africa where government is all but non-existent. You can improve the land all you want, but it will never be worth much because you can't count on government to defend it for you. So you are just objectively wrong. You will find that happening a lot, as long as you presume to dispute with me.
No, I hate evil, which includes government that serves the privileged at the expense of the productive. I have not proposed doing away with government. In fact, history shows a government has to be very bad indeed to be worse than no government, just as a diet has to be very bad indeed to be worse than starvation.
If you can't own land, who would ever improve it? You think I've done $200,000 worth of work in 4 years for the government "subsidies" of roads and running water that I paid for?
<sigh> Do you think buying some slaves and freeing them would address the problem of slavery? Contemporary experience in Africa indicates it just increases their price, leading to more people being enslaved.
<sigh> Are you perhaps unaware that there is no private ownership of land in China? That doesn't seem to have stopped them from improving it. There has been no private landowning in Hong Kong for over 160 years, yet it is probably the most intensively improved land parcel of comparable size on earth. Why is the truth the exact, diametric opposite of what you claim....? And every other advantage government, the community and nature -- but not you -- provide at that location. That is the reality.
1) "liberty and justice" mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. spell exactly the mechanics of your third option, please. just the practicalities. 2) No, that's not the reason at all. People don't 'break free' because they know that life is far easier under First World capitalism .. when you can simply pay for the stuff you want/need. You can rest up in your armchair or your air-conditioned office, while others produce your food for you. Even the poorest First Worlder has it far easier than a relatively well off subsistence farmer in the Third World. 3) Again, if you don't like the fruits of your labour lining someone else's pocket, just stop doing it! Become the guy who never lets a single dollar go 'out' unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Complaining isn't going to change anything .. your behaviour is. And FTR, if you're not a socialist, then you're a capitalist. socialism is non-profit enterprise in voluntary collective. capitalism is non-collective for-profit enterprise. if that seems counter-intuitive, think of it this way. For Profit .. or Non Profit. Which are you? Keep in mind that any 'state' programs normally lumped under the word socialism are entirely profit dependent - therefore capitalist.
It also ought not forcibly to strip me of my rights and give them to other people as their private property; and that IS the topic.
I said my property. Land can never rightly be property because owning it implies the owner owns everyone else's liberty to use it, liberty they would have if the landowner had not stolen it from them..
It would indeed provide the POTENTIAL to free those thousand people. Achieving independence by putting that acre to work, would be up to them .. just as in any situation in which a level playing field is where the buck stops. I have to say, your response to actual Third Options tells me you mean none of what you say.
That's kind of what owning something means. It determines who may use a thing. You're proposing no ownership of land?
