The official "what about the roads?" thread

[Hawker]

Since Elwar is censoring his thread, I will repeat my reply here.

If you want a new road built in a city like London, you need eminent domain to take possession of the 10s of 1000s of plots of land that will be paved over.  If there is no eminent domain there is no new roads in urban areas and that effectively kills off the silly idea of all roads being private.

[beetcoin]

Since Elwar is censoring his thread, I will repeat my reply here.

If you want a new road built in a city like London, you need eminent domain to take possession of the 10s of 1000s of plots of land that will be paved over.  If there is no eminent domain there is no new roads in urban areas and that effectively kills off the silly idea of all roads being private.

that's the point when you invest in building up an army to take control and dominate a group of people.. so you can use their land. you then take your newly found resources from building the road, then invest it in your army and eventually take over other properties or assets. but no, everything is peachy because people will behave when there are no rules to play.. right.

[Mike Christ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

[Hawker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

Yes.  There are situations where agreement is impossible.  For example, lots that are owned by people with mental illnesses, lots that are owned by agarophobics who can't face leaving their homes and lots where the owners are abroad and dont' reply to contact.

That's the way the world works.  Its why things like eminent domain exist.

[hawkeye]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

Yes.  There are situations where agreement is impossible.  For example, lots that are owned by people with mental illnesses, lots that are owned by agarophobics who can't face leaving their homes and lots where the owners are abroad and dont' reply to contact.

That's the way the world works.  Its why things like eminent domain exist.

So, are you in favour of violating property rights in general, or only in specific cases?  Afaik, eminent domain doesn't discriminate in the way you talk of above.  And more over, why is forcing people the only solution in the above problems?   Mentally handicapped people often have someone who has power of attorney.  The agraphobic person thing where they can't be reached seems to be you reaching a bit imo.

[hawkeye]

Since Elwar is censoring his thread, I will repeat my reply here.

If you want a new road built in a city like London, you need eminent domain to take possession of the 10s of 1000s of plots of land that will be paved over.  If there is no eminent domain there is no new roads in urban areas and that effectively kills off the silly idea of all roads being private.

that's the point when you invest in building up an army to take control and dominate a group of people.. so you can use their land. you then take your newly found resources from building the road, then invest it in your army and eventually take over other properties or assets. but no, everything is peachy because people will behave when there are no rules to play.. right.

Why does this sound so familiar?

[Hawker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

Yes.  There are situations where agreement is impossible.  For example, lots that are owned by people with mental illnesses, lots that are owned by agarophobics who can't face leaving their homes and lots where the owners are abroad and dont' reply to contact.

That's the way the world works.  Its why things like eminent domain exist.

So, are you in favour of violating property rights in general, or only in specific cases?  Afaik, eminent domain doesn't discriminate in the way you talk of above.  And more over, why is forcing people the only solution in the above problems?   Mentally handicapped people often have someone who has power of attorney.  The agraphobic person thing where they can't be reached seems to be you reaching a bit imo.

Mentally handicapped and housebound people often do not have someone with a power of attorney.  They may have dementia or they may be hoarders and hate the idea of having to move.  If you are building a road though a city, you will find that there are people who just can't be gotten to agreement.  You will also find greedy people who think that they deserve a "special" price because they are tough negotiators.  

eminent domain is not a violation of property rights.  All land is ultimately owned by the state and when you buy land, you buy it knowing that eminent domain exists just like easements and rights of way that may exist over the plot.

[EntropyExtropy]

The fact that Elwar deleted our posts is astounding. We were engaging in healthy debate.

I'm including what I said below, for posterity.

Eminent domain, even as it exists in civil law, is a vestige of the monarchic
structuration of society and law; the thought that a governing entity (initially, in
the monarchic sense, derived from divinity) and compel a transaction on the part of
the state. If we're talking about a new protocol for building infrastructure,
statist artifacts such as eminent domain will have to go out the window.

In retrospect, I'm afraid that my argument will be misconstrued with a reapplication
of communism/profit-sharing, but I was thinking that III's DAC model could have some
use in the non-cryptocurrency realm. Why do urban planners, engineers, and
construction workers come together to build roads? What compels them is primarily
the goal of making a salary, which is provided to them by a government in exchange
for work. They operate within a legal safety and specification framework to carry
out their work and thus we get roads and bridges and a transportation
infrastructure.

I think that reducing all major thoroughfares to toll-roads is a rather simplistic
way to go about it (and reminds me of Neal Stephensons Snow Crash; is that the path
we're on?). But borrowing from the DAC model, maybe tolls could be replaced with a
membership system. Consider that the nexus of workers need a pool of money from
which to be paid; I can't see any better way than to provide payment from a central
collection. In the vacuum of a state, if we replace compulsory taxes with a
voluntary levy that goes to a DAC group made up of DACs that provide a fleet of
services from certain sectors (member DACS from the medical services, farms,
schools, etc), that voluntary payment now becomes a membership grant that permits
the buyer access to the use of the services of the member DACs while providing a
pool from which to distribute resources to the DACs for their operation.

Or, we could replace the tax/levy structure entirely by going the protoshare route,
in which consumer membership in a master DAC would be granted upon the purchase of
securities from that DAC, the upfront capital going to the 'pool' for the
service-providers and continuing membership being provided on the basis of dividends
made on the trading or growth of the securities.

There are still a number of questions to hash through. Who determines the
attribution of resources? (do member consumers get a say?) In a DAC (distributed,
autonomous corporation), who decides where to build what road? Who provides a
regulatory framework for safety (and can impel compliance)? The DAC model, if writ
large, would require a vast rewriting of our current legal system and the creative
invention of a new legal framework for non-centralized service.

Just my $.02.

I do want to point out that I'm not a free-market solutionist. Actually, in many cases, I'm more of a statist. But I see eminent domain as having been glossed over by the Enlightenment, which gave us a legal foundation for 'inalienable rights'; in my country, which practices civil law, there are explicit protections against the government compelling a private citizen to do certain things that would be usurious to them. To me, eminent domain falls into this category.

As I said, I can't acccept the argument that we need eminent domain because it's too hard or unpractical to convince multiple landowners to lease or sell their property for infrastructure purposes. I do understand that's how it works nowadays as a practical solution for a traditionally difficult problem, but what I was saying in my other responses is that we're living in a new paradigm of communication (if you want to go so far as to say we're living in a new paradigm of compressed space-time as some anthropologists like Harvey say, I'd go along with that becuase I'm an anthropologist), we can build the tools to do it better.

One model that is initially of interest is the legal framework around the leasing of land for the purpose of hydrofracking in the US; this breaks down when we realize that, for roads, we need contiguity, but it does bring up a case of land being leased for projects on a mass scale without eminent domain and, often, to the benefit of the land-owner.

Another model could be developed that takes a consensus based approach that distributes the decision-making apparatus of landowners into overlapping pools of proximal landowners and only permits transaction once the pool has reached consensus over a course of action, but I haven't thought this through all the way.

Edit:

(for once, the 'a new reply has been posted' is useful)

All land is ultimately owned by the state and when you buy land, you buy it knowing that eminent domain exists

I think this is a source of our split in perspective. You are right: in the current climate, all land almost anywhere is owned by the state. That's why they can levy property taxes. But I think that this is something that is going to change in the next century. Again, state ownership of land is an artifact of aristocratic notions of property rights and, for most of it's legal history, was relatively unenforceable due to the existence of terra nulla. If you didn't want to participate in feudal/state taxing schemes, you moved out to where nobody was. Sure, you lost all of the protections given by the state/Lord, but that's the nature of the Social Contract. It's only in the last century that the boundaries of the nation-state have solidified and terra nulla has ceased to exist, as nations butt up against one-another. As the role of the state begins to be renegotiated in the 21st century, so will property rights. I doubt that this is going to happen any time soon in the Western nations, but it's extremely likely in developing/failed states and, interestingly, we may be able to look at them for examples of new, novel forms of governance.

[hawkeye]

eminent domain is not a violation of property rights.  All land is ultimately owned by the state and when you buy land, you buy it knowing that eminent domain exists just like easements and rights of way that may exist over the plot.

If all land is ultimately owned by the state why do we perpetuate the myth that people can buy land?  Surely, in reality, the land is just being rented if what you say is true?
 

The fact that Elwar deleted our posts is astounding. We were engaging in healthy debate.

Props to hawker for starting a new one.  I had my comment censored too on the other one.  I'm not participating in self-moderated threads.   You have to be pretty insecure to want to censor people.

[beetcoin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

[Hawker]

eminent domain is not a violation of property rights.  All land is ultimately owned by the state and when you buy land, you buy it knowing that eminent domain exists just like easements and rights of way that may exist over the plot.

If all land is ultimately owned by the state why do we perpetuate the myth that people can buy land?  Surely, in reality, the land is just being rented if what you say is true?
 
...snip...

Can you buy land as in completely take a plot outside the legal authority of the state? 

In the US and UK, all you can buy is the freehold estate in land. 

http://www.wwlia.org/LegalResources/UK/LawArticle-258/History-of-Real-Estate-Law-The-Old-English-Landholding-System.aspx

If you die intestate and you own a freehold with fee simple, your land reverts to the state much like a leasehold land would revert to the landlord.  So I assumed that means the state is the ultimate owner of the land and that all a citizen can own is an estate in land?

I could be wrong on this.

[dank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

Anarchy is not a flawed system, it is not a system.

[beetcoin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

Anarchy is not a flawed system, it is not a system.

here is wikipedia's definition of the word "system"

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole[1] or a set of elements (often called 'components' ) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.

interpret it the way you want, but that's the consensus on what a system is. anarchy fits into this definition.

[dank]

There are no components to anarchy, a rather lack of components.  Which is why it's perfect.

[Hawker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

Anarchy is not a flawed system, it is not a system.

here is wikipedia's definition of the word "system"

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole[1] or a set of elements (often called 'components' ) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.

interpret it the way you want, but that's the consensus on what a system is. anarchy fits into this definition.

You do know you are feeding a troll don't you?

[beetcoin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

Anarchy is not a flawed system, it is not a system.

here is wikipedia's definition of the word "system"

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole[1] or a set of elements (often called 'components' ) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.

interpret it the way you want, but that's the consensus on what a system is. anarchy fits into this definition.

You do know you are feeding a troll don't you?

i don't know enough about him to know whether he is a troll, but so far it seems like he's someone who takes a position and then looks for supporting evidence rather than vice versa.

[dank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Your ideal society exclusively involves people who cannot reach agreements.

“Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength”

anarchists use ad-hominem retorts.. i don't know why i keep arguing with them. every time i come with a question that isn't answerable, they just say "BUT GOVERNMENT DOES THAT TOO." so fixing a flawed system with a flawed system magically fixes everything?

now they're saying that if i think that people can be bad, that i must be one of them. yeah, nevermind what history has to say  

striking a position, and then looking for evidence to support it is just backwards to me. you look for the evidence first, then you come to a conclusion.

Anarchy is not a flawed system, it is not a system.

here is wikipedia's definition of the word "system"

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole[1] or a set of elements (often called 'components' ) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.

interpret it the way you want, but that's the consensus on what a system is. anarchy fits into this definition.

You do know you are feeding a troll don't you?

Okay mr. shill.

Let's examine the situation.  You are proposing an elite group of people rule the earth.  You propose inequality.  You propose greed, kidnapping, imprisonment, and mass murder/genocide (war).  You propose the suppressant of human evolution for economical and material gain.  You propose a path that will inevitably destroy the world, we are on a finite planet, we cannot avoid destroying it and ourselves surely if we maintain the mindset of hate.

I propose equality amongst all human beings, complete freedom from any monopolized force, the sharing of earth's resources rather than the hoarding of.  I propose a world of peace,  true happiness, and all we need to do to enable this revolution is stop fearing a parasite that's only power is an illusion.

Who's the troll?

[beetcoin]

I propose equality amongst all human beings, complete freedom from any monopolized force, the sharing of earth's resources rather than the hoarding of.  I propose a world of peace,  true happiness, and all we need to do to enable this revolution is stop fearing a parasite that's only power is an illusion.

Who's the troll?

amd yet a crying rally for anarchism is "people misunderstand anarchism.. they think it's a utopia." well, that my friend, is utopian thinking. people who do not support your ideology would love to live in a utopian society too; the difference between you and them is that.. they don't think it's quite possible given the nature of man.

every time i say that people are corrupt and given the opportunity, they will always be.. and anarchists always respond with a "yeah, so government is too"! well, that doesn't prove that anarchism is a solution.

[dank]

People are not all corrupt and do not always act on greed given the opportunity.

I saw dollar laying around at a frat party with, I figured one of the drunk people would be more happy to find it.

Everyone does have some love in them, deep down or not.  The government creates conflict all over the world, even domestically, so it makes it harder for humanity to all love each other.

[herzmeister]

oh look, a thread split

I think this also should belong in this one:

Wenzhou - http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/15/chinas-black-market-city

Do we need roads at all? - http://www.thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars

[oakpacific]

oh look, a thread split

I think this also should belong in this one:

Wenzhou - http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/15/chinas-black-market-city

Do we need roads at all? - http://www.thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars

Someone actually brought up Wenzhou! Those folks not just build roads, they build private railways!

It's no surprise they are behind the surge of Chinese investment in bitcoins: http://www.techinasia.com/whats-chinese-bitcoin-community/8/