Bitcoin Forum

I don't agree with much that you've said. When you say "By staying on your property", are you confusing owning a parcel of land with owning a book or a sofa?

I take it that's your roundabout way of asserting that owning land and owning other kinds of property is different? Fine, what's your argument for that?

Ownership of land does not correlate with ownership of a sofa. Please indicate to me where you have received information that exactly states that ownership of land means what you think it might mean. I'm assuming that you believe that because it has been recorded that you own a parcel of land, you are granted a certain set of rights, but that quite possibly is not the case.

Feel free to show that the rights you believe you should have been granted are in fact the responsibility of some entity. Who in fact is granting you the rights you believe you are entitled to? Don't make the mistake of claiming you simply deserve said rights by virtue of acquiring said property. If you make that mistake, then you're only admitting that you entered into a contract with false assumptions.

Why not?

Because those aren't the laws. Did you mistakenly think they were? Furthermore, there is no moral justification for there to be any laws which make ownership of a sofa the same as owning land. None.

Let's be very clear on something. There is moral justification for there to be laws which make ownership of a sofa the same as ownership of a sofa.

Sofa != gun != land != animal != automobile != human != WMD != atmosphere != ocean != aquifer

Dig as deep as you want into your philosophical thoughts, but that will not allow you to come up with an argument that you are morally justified in claiming that ownership of one class of thing is equivalent to ownership of another type of thing. You need to seriously question the assumptions you are building your arguments upon.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the way things should be, not the way things are.


LOL

Genius insight.

Start digging into your philosophical thoughts.

Because the only reason you "own" that land is because the established state has recorded you as owner, thus preventing any other person from claiming that land.  That's one of the reasons you pay taxes to the state and follow the rule of the state, because if it wasn't for the state then you wouldn't own the land.

So, when you own land in California, is it really your land like, say, a sofa is? I know that I can remove a cushion from my sofa. But can a landowner remove any oak tree from their parcel of land anywhere in California? If not, why not?

Hmm. Something is going on here. Maybe owning a parcel of land in California is not like owning a sofa.

Mr. forum moderator, your thoughts?

If you could, and did, build a sealed box surrounding/within your land, with the contents making you selfsuficient and without producing anything sent to the outside; would that give you any more rights on what you can do inside "your" land?

Are you boxing off right to the center of the earth?

Bitcoin2Cash uses strawman arguments every time, just stop arguing with him.

Dunno how he got to be mod

Good question...when you "own" land, how deep does your ownership goes?

Not very deep.

Zoning laws will often prohibit you from doing the box thing, but let's say there are no such zoning laws, or we can assume that within the context of some zoning laws, you could build a smaller box somewhere on your property. Now, let's establish why:

- What you do on your soil won't contaminate everyone else's soil
- What you do to your atmosphere won't contaminate everyone else's atmosphere

However, your box is fragmenting the ecosystem. We can admit that a house, building or road does as well, so we can't use that as an argument if you're allowed to construct a building or driveway.

Does your box have an airlock? Does it measure the components of the atmosphere outside before venting, and then run a filtration process to match the outside before venting?

The point is, the box idea is kind of absurd. What's important is to realize what ecosystems are in all their complexity, and then address those issues.

Basicly i'm trying to understand how much your influence, or lack of, into the environment affects your rights in your land.

Can you reword this, or add more to what you're asking/developing here?

More than the libertard crew here wants to believe.  They'll all give ultra-simplistic lines like "well obviously you can't dump toxic waste because that's damaging to the water table and people will sue."

But as firstascent pointed out, environmental effects can be infinitely more subtle than that.  In fact, there can be things you're doing that you and I don't even realize are having a negative effect on me and the world around you.


Let's go back to the box idea and the ground.  When you own a piece of land, do you own just the surface of the ground?  Do you own the airspace above your land?  If you do, are planes going to have to pay tolls to the owner of each and every parcel of land they fly over?  Do you own the subsurface under your land?  How far down?  Is your land ownership a cone shape that extends from the earth's core into space?  How about things moving through your land... do you own the air particles floating around your cone of ownership?  We'd assume you do if your land is in a sealed, self-sufficient box, but what if it's not?  If part of a lake is on your land, do you own a portion of the water itself or is it just the general surface area?  Can you rightfully drain your portion of the water out of the lake, even if it'll do damage to the remainder of the lake?  If you own 1/4 of the lake's area, does that mean you can rightfully only fish out 1/4 of the lake's fish?  How will you keep track of that?  What about a moving body of water like a river that passes through your land... how much water can you drink out of the river before you start stealing someone else's water?

That's just the simple stuff.  Then we can into complex environmental interactions that come with owning land.  If you own 2/3 of a forest, which is a total, connected ecosystem, can you level 2/3 of that forest, thus altering the ecosystem of the 1/3 that your neighbor owns?  Can you hunt and kill 2/3 of the rabbits in the forest, thus leaving no food for the foxes and wolves, something that negatively affects the entire forest, including the 1/3 that your neighbor owns?  Maybe you own the entire forest.  Can you level the entire thing, thus effecting the air quality and infinite other environmental variables for everyone within hundreds or more miles?  If own part of a river that just happens to be the section that salmon spawn in, can you harvest all the salmon eggs because they're on your property, thus leaving no new salmon for everyone else that owns other sections of the river?  

How about even more subtle issues... can you paint your house neon orange and put neon green plastic spikes all over the roof?  I live nextdoor and it'll kill my property value because I'm right next to that eyesore... but you should be able to do whatever you want with your property, right?  Can you manufacture fireworkers in your basement?  You don't mean any harm by it, it's your family business and how you put food on the table, but my house is twenty feet away and if you have an accident we'll all get blown up.  So should you be allowed to do it?


That's just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.  Those are a miniscule sampling of some of the simpest issues we have to deal with in the real world in relation to land ownership and property rights.  As was pointed out, owning a piece of land is NOT at all like owning an object such as TV or couch, even as much as these libtard guys would like it to be.

Thank you for posting what I would've posted.

I can point you to people that have already answered these questions. Did you actually think that you were the first person to come up with these questions? Did you really think you could pull something out of your ass that decades of thinkers never considered? I'll give you a summary of how homesteading works. You've never been to the center of the Earth, you don't own it. You don't have anything built in the sky, you don't own it. You only own the land insofar as you're using it. I can dig under you as long as I don't cave you in.

As for moving air particles, water molecules, etc. That's where things get a little more subtle. I'm sure FirstAscent will love that since he's always raving about how complex reality is. Let him try this out for size. You homestead usage rights based on who was there first. If nobody else is using the river, you can damn it up. If someone else has been fishing there and suddenly you cut off river, that's interfering on with his rights. Is it cut and dry like a property line? No, it's complicated, like I said. I'm sure that doesn't matter though. Only statists get to play that card when it suits them. Right?

Oh really? And did you do a soil test of the land underneath my property? To whom did you go to to get a report on the existing network of tunnels and underground infrastructure underneath my property?


Then according to what you propose, 5 billion people were using the Earth's atmosphere prior to you, and since they established rights to it prior to you, you must forfeit any use of it yourself. Clearly, you're stating that you can't engage in activity that will modify that which others have already established use of, and since emission of carbon dioxide generally travels as far as another continent within a week, and can be anywhere in the world within a few months, you therefore cannot engage in any polluting activity due to not establishing first use.


I despise dams. They destroy ecosystems above and below where they are sited. So tell me, how do you know someone's been fishing there before you? They might not be fishing in the spot you investigated the moment you checked, but that doesn't mean they don't fish there. Prior usage can mean a lot of things.

You sure are big about prior usage. And I know you're big about morality. If you wish to discuss this from the perspective of morality (which I'm all for), then you're going to have to factor in future usage as well. Understand? Prior and future usage.

I'll be happy to discuss with you at anytime the moral basis of your arguments.

The market will sort that out. I can give you some suggestions but I can't predict how people will voluntary decide to tackle the problem, especially with all the different technologies available. You know they can find oil and minerals without digging, right? Mapping tunnels would be easy. Perhaps there would be some private agency to register those kinds of structures. Call before you dig.


Usage rights are not total. You were using it to breathe, therefore I can't make it unbreathable. If you spit in the ocean, the ocean doesn't become yours.


That's yet another issue for the market to sort out.


There would need to be some kind of evidence, otherwise, anyone could say they had been fishing there when they hadn't really. Some sort of witnesses, etc. There will still be courts to settle things that aren't perfectly obvious.


Why?

The market will just sort it out?


Voluntary, no doubt? In your world, I am under no obligations to disclose what I've done. Gosh, in your world, maybe I have vast infrastructure already underneath your property. What happens when you start tunneling underneath your property and your house caves in?


Again, your lack of thinking things through becomes evident. I wasn't just using the atmosphere to breathe. It regulates climate, sea level, weather systems, biology, the production of food, water supplies, and other things.

Agreed that if I spit in the ocean, it does not become mine. Please tell me, how much damage and exploitation must I do to claim the ocean as mine. As I understand your viewpoint, the more I use, abuse and exploit, the more I can establish my claim on something if I was there first.


The market will just sort it out?


So you're an expert on forensics now? In all honesty, more people than you know depend on the ecosystems of the river or creek than you know, even if they have not personally left their mark there.


Because the future exists.

Whether the cave below your property is a man made cave or one made by an underground river is irrelevant. You'll need to do some kind of checking, either way.


Then all you need to do is show that what I'm doing is violating your rights.


You don't have to damage it. In fact, pollution is usually a result of people that don't have a long term interest in the property.


There must be some witnesses. Something that can provide evidence to their claims or do you think these people are doing it secretly, in the middle of the night without ever leaving any kind trace?


And? Why don't you present a complete argument with some kind of thesis, some backing claims and perhaps draw some sort of logical conclusion? This piecemeal business smacks of intellectual laziness.

You just don't get it, do you? It may be the case that your pollution output is not violating my rights significantly. After all, the pollutants you emit into the atmosphere are over another continent within a week. Collectively, though, you and your ilk are polluting. By what metric should your output be factored?


Confusing pollution with other types of local ecosystem damage, again, are you?


Not even close to what I said. Reread what I said.


And nothing. I thought I was having a discussion with someone who could grasp concepts. Tell me, when did you decide the future was of no consequence? Was that about the time you decided consequences aren't relevant? Try to wrap your head around this: consequences are everything, as they lie in the future, and that's where you'll be spending the rest of your life.

Let's say that you're tied up in a large tank with water up to your neck. Me and 9 other people start adding 1 cup of water at a time. Eventually the water goes up over your mouth and nose and you die. Am I liable for 1/10th of a murder? No, I'm liable for the whole thing even though I only contributed to it and there's no way to prove it was me that poured in the final cup of water that killed you.

The rest of your post is pointless garbage so there's nothing else to address. Notice how every time you put forth an argument like you just did above it gets demolished, is that why you're so hesitant? Is that why you like to play it aloof? I think it is.

That's more contrived than anything else on this board, fails to address the kidnapping aspect, fails to address the accomplices' role in the event, and is really out there as far as trying to argue against regulation of those who pollute. I asked you by what metric your pollution output should factor into all pollution emitted. Is the above supposed to be an answer to that?


I'm failing to see where you have demolished my post - where is it? As for my post being garbage, it's not clear to me how cause and effect has been thrown into the garbage can.

This argument reminds me of the Lockean Proviso.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockean_proviso

IMHO you own yourself and the things you create. No one labored to create land, so land belongs to everyone equally. "Property is theft!"
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!

... But like bitcoin2cash said, this has been argued to death, in this case for over 100 years. At this point actions speak louder than words. The battle for tax-free land is over, but cryptocurrency presents the opportunity to eliminate taxes (and thus restore full ownership) of almost all other goods. Hooray!

What if instead of being kidnapped, the drowner just tripped and fell into some sort of well with waterproof walls and instead of being tied up they just got a foot stuck into some dent at the bottom when they fell?

That's a possibility but the how and why of it are ultimately irrelevant. It's simply a thought experiment meant to illustrate how one person can do something alone and not cause harm. Let's say that the water evaporates at the same rate water is being added. But, if many people contribute then real damage is being caused.

As a thought experiment, your water tank/well falls woefully short of modeling reality. There's nothing wrong with thought experiments that analogize well. Feel free to improve your water tank/well thought experiment, and I might accept it.

Irrelevant. If you can explain to me how it fails to capture the essence of one person doing something that's benign yet when joined by others causes real damage then do so.

Funny. The only reason I delay explaining such things is to prolong how foolish you look. Seriously. You will get the explanation, but I do enjoy giving you the opportunity to refine and improve your position, because I know you won't. Now watch as you commence to come back with a retort claiming I have nothing and am only bluffing, while you act all smug that I have nothing.

I'm giving you a second chance here. I'll even help you out with some hints. How many people should be in the well, and how many should not be in the well?

Your post is exactly the kind of smug bullshit that makes the politics section such a miserable place. It's fine if you think I'm wrong, disagree with me, whatever, but to do so in such a matter-of-fact, smug and arrogant way is why I don't enjoy talking to you or AyeYo. Why can't we have a spirit of openness and coming together with these debates? Why does every post you make have to stroke your own ego and score "points" as if anything we say on these forums actually matters? It would be nice if, even if our differences our irreconcilable, we could understand each other and agree to disagree. Instead I get only this air of superiority.

I'll ask you again. Please improve your analogy. I've given you a big hint in my last post in the form of a question that should get you thinking. You're the one presenting an argument to me. I think it's weak. Fix it.

And on a side note: I've recommended books and reading material to you, and you told me flat out that you wanted me to explain in my own terms the relevant statistics, facts and arguments. I have done so in the past. Then you told me in no uncertain terms that you'll never come around to my point of view based on my arguments, but you would read books if I recommended them to you. I then did so, for the second time. And did you read any of them? No, you didn't. You then made some excuse that you had no interest in reading such material. Don't make me dig for the posts, but I will if necessary. And you have the gall to complain about what I patiently try explaining to you in numerous and different ways?

bitcoin2cash,

Once again, regarding the water tank/well, how many people should be in the well, and how many should not be in the well?

I have an excellent memory. You've only recommended one book by E.O. Wilson which I had already listened to on audible.com before you suggested it and you linked me to a bunch of quotes on a blog, which I did read.

We have discussed plenty of books in the past. Furthermore, after recommending Wilson to you, you said that you weren't interested in any more book recommendations, despite asking me for them prior to my Wilson recommendation. And based on your various arguments, it appears that nothing Wilson said matters to you. No surprise there.

Now, does the following question give you pause for thought regarding your water tank/well analogy? How many people should be in the well, and how many should not be in the well?

No, I did not. I said that if all your recommendations were going to be arguments from consequences that they wouldn't do any good since I'm not a utilitarian.

As for your question, can you be a little bit less vague?

Yes. I can be a little less vague. But if I choose to be less vague, then I'm demonstrating that you're not able to think it through. That's not good for you, is it? My point is, you had (and still have) the opportunity to build up and refine an analogy that more accurately models the scenario we're arguing. It's very important to get the analogy right, if you want it to be illustrative.

You do nothing for your arguments when your analogies are poor models. It would be to your credit to get the analogy correct. You've chosen to put me in the well, and keep yourself and your friends outside the well. I'm suggesting you reevaluate that choice.

I'm not a mind reader. In the future, unless you make your own arguments, I will simply disregard you. You must think I'm an idiot if you think I can't see that you're just being intellectually lazy.

How am I being intellectually lazy? I honestly didn't think it would take mind reading on your part to to go back over the argument, see the obvious shortcomings of your analogy, take my rather generous hints, and put together a better analogy. And you call me intellectually lazy?

I'm being patient with you, man! I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Stop wasting my time.

You do have a history of getting cranky when your arguments are called into question. Let's review your own analogy and its components:

• The cups of water being poured into the well are analogous to pollution, in this case, carbon dioxide.
• The rising water level is analogous to a rising level of atmospheric pollution.
• You and your friends, by pouring cups of water into the well, are analogous to emitters of carbon dioxide.

Now, as stated many posts back, and before your presentation of the water tank/well analogy, carbon dioxide emitted here can be on another continent within a week, and anywhere in the world within a few months. Therefore, it is rather obvious that your analogy, where the water cups affect me, but not you and your friends is rather unrealistic. Really, who should be in the well? Once we've answered that rather simple question (which you neglected to do after repeatedly being asked), we can then choose an appropriate and analogous process which causes the rising water level in the well, can't we?

Finally, you get to the point. You're the one talking about carbon dioxide. I was talking about pollution in general. There are examples were my pollution doesn't affect me but does affect you. As just one example, if I own a coal burning plant and soot and ashs get dumped everywhere, including my property, I don't care. I'm sure you can think of other examples but that's ultimately irrelevant. Let's say me and 9 other people are doing something that's causing damage to all of us, you're still being damaged and you still have a legitimate complaint against us. Whether or not we take damage is irrelevant. If you think it's relevant then please explain how. Be quick about it too. Let's not have another half-dozen posts of meandering "I'll give you a hint" smugness.

Do we need to quote the original post in which you created the analogy?


It's quite clear that we were talking about carbon dioxide. Notice the question I asked you that prompted you to analogize pollution to the water tank/well? It followed a discussion about carbon dioxide. However, if you choose to be so wormy, and claim that we were talking about pollution in general, then that would include carbon dioxide, and many other pollutants and environmental effects which would also affect you and your friends in addition to me.

Why is it relevant that you and your friends are taking damage as well? Because by putting you and your friends in the well along side me, we've clarified to you who is really being affected. Based upon your analogy, you failed to clarify that you understood all who were affected, which makes your analogy weak, and calls into question the justification of your beliefs.   

Once you're aware that you are taking damage, it influences your decisions in a way that is different than if you are not aware of it. By placing the burden upon me alone to demonstrate that everyone is taking damage, you have delayed mitigating the damage done. In other words, the water level rises more than necessary, and possibly results in irreversible damage. Your friends, by being stubborn, or ignorant, are in fact the embodiment of a libertarian think tank engaged in either brownlash or ignorance in the defense of a political ideology.

Your argument, and your analogy, must factor in as much knowledge and truth as possible, if you don't want to be accused of being either willfully ignorant, just plain ignorant, or willfully deceitful.

On a sidenote, it's interesting to note that in your analogy, I am constrained such that I cannot leave the well. This is accurate, as it represents either the fact that we cannot just leave the Earth, or that it is not always easy to relocate. You might want to also consider that we are all constrained within the well. As for the cups of water being poured in, you might want to consider that it's actually our piss and shit, which affects the fish which swim in the well with us. When we've fished out all the fish, we hunt the birds above us, which accounts for how our piss and shit is additive to the water within the well.

Feel free to apply your homesteading logic to fishing within the well if you want. We'll see how that works out.

The well analogy, if properly fleshed out, is in fact an excellent example of a closed ecosystem. It's too bad you thought you and your friends weren't a part of it, as if they lived on Mars.

Red herring.

My point stands, you're still being damaged and you still have a legitimate complaint against me. If you can show that I'm contributing to the damage of your property then you have a complaint. You can sue me and force me to stop damaging your property, with force if necessary, just as you could if I were throwing rocks at your house.

The analogy works better if all parties find themselves at the bottom of a large vessel from which they cannot escape. The vessel features two taps (with valves), one for water and one for food, like that stuff in The Matrix, but lacks any kind of drainage. Whatever comes out of those taps stays in the tank, in one form or another.

So let me understand what you've just said within the context of the developing analogy. You're declaring we each have a claim on two or three square feet within the well, is that correct?

That analogy is flawed, it doesn't contain any aspect of real choice, either you drink and eat and end up drowning everyone in your shit and piss, or you die of starvation or dehydration and leave the other people with a rotting corpse that eventually either putrefy and become a serious health treat to everyone, or will be used as food and result in piss and shit everyone will have to live in.

The analogy is only supposed to illustrate that I can do one thing by myself and not harm someone but in doing the same thing along with multiple others, I cause real damage. The analogy works perfectly well to show that. There's nothing flawed about it insofar as I meant it to be applicable.

Just one person pissing and shitting, or dieing, inside a small confined space with a bunch of other people also stuck in there is already too much.

When explaining an idea to a receptive audience, analogies can be useful. They form a conceptual bridge to something that would be too complex to grasp otherwise.

In political arguments they are always always always useless. The other party will always dispute the model because your analogy always supports your main thesis. Or worse yet, sometimes the reality  IS more complex than your analogy in an important way. It never helps. The other party doesn't need simplification, they need more detail that you can back up with facts.

Fair enough. Let me explain the details and perhaps you can make something of it. FirstAscent claims that enforcing property rights aren't enough to prevent pollution because certain types of pollution are a combined result of many people, not a single person e.g. dumping trash on your property. What I'm trying to explain is that even if they are only one of many contributors, they all share equal culpability and can be individually forced to stop their activities much as if they were the only person causing the pollution. What do you make of this?

Here's where I am so far (correct me if needed).

Pollution, including carbon dioxide, is a "tragedy of the commons" and behaves as an externality. If transaction costs are relatively low and most participants are rational, they should be able to resolve it on their own - I don't think anyone is disputing that. It gets tricky when transaction costs are higher or many participants are irrational.

So yes, in theory you should be able to employ force against a polluter overseas, and even collaborate with other people who perceive the threat. But in reality this can prove so difficult that strong property rights on their own might not be the most efficient solution (for now). I'm not disputing that a non-aggressive solution exists, but we're not quite there yet and might not survive a sudden transition.

Has anyone attempted a vigilante libertarian solution to carbon dioxide emissions yet? Or some smaller-scale externality resolution using strong property rights? Maybe I just need to educate myself.

Doesn't Greenpeace do that? (or tries to anyway)

The problems:

1. The free market perpetuates that which is really profitable to a few at the expense of the rest of us. They employ heavily funded misinformation media campaigns and pseudoscience quite successfully to uneducate the public. There is a well documented history of this going on at least back to the tobacco industry, and although the misinformation being spread relates to undermining scientific research, if one looks at the real agenda, it can be attributed to libertarian think tanks whose primary goal is to eliminate regulation. It's interesting that they're generally unsuccessful at selling the idea of deregulation and pure free markets directly, so they have to resort to campaigns which distort and mislead.

2. The uneducated public, the ignorant, the naive and so forth, often the result of the above mentioned media campaigns, do not collectively sue everyone to keep everyone regulated.

3. Additionally, there's a lot of neighborly "I'll look the other way if you do."

4. Nobody wants to be hated by their neighbor. That's understandable, but it allows for an inconsistent and ineffective reduction of pollutants or environmental destruction - it's better if a centralized agency regulates, thus neighbors don't have to adopt the burden of feeling like a tattletale.

5. For every type of pollution or negative effect which affects the environment that most are aware of, there are ten more that the average Joe is not aware of. The cascading effects of anthropogenic environmental change are complex, despite what bitcoin2cash says. As just one among many many effects, consider the temperature that is required for female alligators to be born vs. male alligators. It takes only a few degrees to tip the balance to 100 percent male or 100 percent female. Factor in the fact that species in the Northern Hemisphere are relocating northwards at an average of four miles per decade to compensate for temperature changes. However, this is increasingly difficult in today's environment when the habitat is not available for relocation - i.e suburban sprawl, differing northward relocation rates of symbiotic environmental features, etc.