Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by khalling 10 years ago
    The way property works in any common law country, is based on Locke's idea of owning yourself and so when you create something or make something productive that was just" in nature" then it becomes your property. For instance using your sailor example, just landing on the island, gives you no claim to the property. IT is only if you make it useful, ie start framing, build a harbor... Original property is created every day. Most of us have a contract with our employers to immediately take ownership of original property you create and they give you currency. Interesting questions posed in the article.
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    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years ago
      You agree with Ayn Rand on a point not often cited: you have _no_ right to THINGS but only to the USE of things. The problem is that this would allow me to take your ounce of gold you bought in 1972 and did nothing with, make jewelry from it, and claim it as my property. I disagree, of course. In this case, Ms. Crusoe cannot possibly live on the island in any way without using it. So, she does have a right to possess it without farming or building a harbor. As for farming, how it that not the same as her selectively _harvesting_ the plants and animals already there, i.e., managing the resources.

      My real interest, though, is in the "undiscovered country." You are enamored of black holes. No one now uses gravitons the way we use photons. By Ayn Rand's theory, the person who puts gravitons to work could morally deprive everyone else of their passive occupation of gravity fields.

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      • Posted by ewv 10 years ago
        That is not Ayn Rand's theory.
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        • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years ago
          I look to her essay, "Man's Rights" in which she wrote: "Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values."

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          • Posted by ewv 10 years ago
            That has nothing to do with your previous characterization of her views. The right to use of what is yours is in contrast to entitlement to be provided with something by someone else, and the exclusive right to use and dispose of something does not permit trespassers with a "right to action" using your property.
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  • Posted by terrycan 10 years ago
    Very interesting subject. If a private company builds in outer space does any government have claim to it? Who will enforce law in space? These pioneers may be on their own.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years ago
    Legislation should come after adjudication. Once a sufficient body of case law has been developed, then the legislature can define the accepted modes of conduct. Attempting to write new laws as fast as new property is invented leaves the courts with unenforceable tangles as the technology outpaces the legislation.
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    • Posted by ewv 10 years ago
      Courts are supposed adjudicate with respect to existing law, not make up new instances deemed to be "acceptable" that the legislature then accepts and codifies into law acknowledging what courts say, which is backwards. When new forms of technology are not covered by existing law, the courts are only to say they have no grounds on which to make a ruling on the plaintiff's claim, not decide on their own what is "acceptable". Legislation is the exclusive responsibility of the legislature. "Activist" judges have usurped that power on their own as they vview their role, improperly, as courts pursuing political agendas for new rules in competition with the other branches of government. That is especially ugly in that they are usually appointed for unlimited terms.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years ago
        The purpose of philosophy is to discover truths, not (necessarily) to defend whatever is here and now. Can you show any objective reason why the courts must follow the legislature, rather than having the legislature examine the courts? In other words, the legislature would act like West Publishing, except that rather than merely reporting, they would codify the rulings. That would allow a check and balance on any one or a few courts that were outside the norms of justice.

        In John Locke's _Second Treatise_, he gives the three branches of government as Legislative, Executive, and Diplomatic. To Locke, the courts were _not_ a branch of the government, but the community's protection against government. The king's men had to come to a court of competent jurisdiction, get a writ, and then be accompanied by an officer of the court. Nice as that was, it was not written in the stars, but just another way to achieve and maintain justice in society.

        One man discovers a way to modulate gravitons and lowers the field at his home. His neighbor complains that now his chickens quit laying eggs; and he wants the gravitator shut off. In your system, the court says, "We have no basis for a ruling." So, the two guys shoot each other because they had no means of adjudicating their dispute.

        In terms of the _present_ system, the legislature is forbidden from _ex post facto_ laws, hence, they "grandfather in" existing circumstances, which, of course, leaves the chickens gravitated and the neighbors still at war.

        Original property is perhaps the sine qua non expression of capitalism because capitalism defends invention and creation. In one century our capitalist society outstripped thousands of years of slow progress. The work is not done. New ideas in political science can provide guidance in promoting the material progress of capitalism.



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        • Posted by ewv 10 years ago
          When judges can decide your fate with the power of making up new laws as they go along there is no objective law. Judges become the equivalent of today's bureaucrats operating under their own discretion. You never know whose whim you will be accountable to or what you are allowed to do.
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