Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

So you agree that you advocate private ownership of others' rights to liberty -- i.e., slavery and/or feudalism.

Yeah, see, I'm not a feudalist or advocate of slavery. I think rightful private property is what someone produced, not individual rights that the state has forcibly stripped from others and given to the privileged as their private property. I'm not a fan of your idea of landowners being legally entitled to charge others for permission to live.

I just can't agree with your plan to own other people's rights to liberty so you can charge them for permission to live, or starve them to death if they don't do whatever you tell them to do. I don't agree with slavery.

I prefer everyone having equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. I don't agree with your view that their rights should be stripped from them by force and given to the privileged as their private property. I'm not a fan of slavery or feudalism. I think Hong Kong, even with all its imperfections, is a better model than Bangladesh, the Philippines, Honduras, Pakistan, Paraguay, and all the other countries that use your system of landowners' property "rights" having priority over people's individual rights.

 

So the consensual exchange of land between individuals with the fruits of their labor violates your right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...how? Because you don't get to use to land also? Exactly how is that any different then your clothing? You claiming ownership of it means that I can't use it.

 

Why does any trustee? That is the job it is paid to do.

 

And their acts do not benefit them?

 

That is no more a consensual exchange than the sale of a slave is a consensual exchange: in both cases, it is other people's rights that are being exchanged without their consent.

Slaves were also bought with the fruits of labor. But like land, they were not themselves the fruits of labor, and thus not rightly owned.

It is not the exchange that violates my rights, but the ownership. My rights were violated just as much before the exchange as after it.

That's right.

My clothing had to be provided by someone's labor. The land was already there, ready to use, with no help from the owner or any previous owner. You just have to find some way of not knowing that fact, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

I didn't just "claim" ownership of it. I paid someone who paid someone who paid someone.... who CREATED it. Therefore, my ownership of it, unlike ownership of land, does not deprive anyone of anything they would otherwise have. The clothing wasn't already there with no help from anyone. The land was.

How are you going to prevent yourself from knowing that fact?

 

Their ACTS do, the trust ASSETS don't.

GET IT???

BTW, in the last few posts you have not deliberately made false claims about what I have plainly written, and as a result we can communicate respectfully. It's not that difficult. Try to keep it up, OK?

 

Slavery has nothing to do with this conversation, as much you would like it to. We are not talking about unwilling labor, we are discussing 'ownership' of land.

So your 'right' to use land prevents others the right to use the land, therefore you are violating other people's rights by demanding to use the land. And how much land can you use at any given time?

The item that your clothing is made of, came from somewhere. All goods are created from something that previously existed. By what rights, according to you, did people have to harvest those base materials that create the clothing you wear? The seed that grows cotton, needed someone's land to grow. The synthetic fiber needed to be extracted from the earth in different forms. Hemp is grown on the land, the steel that makes the hoe for weeds, is extracted from the earth. The pulp from paper, comes from the trees grown on the land.

Your theory as put forth has huge holes in it. Perhaps you are the one who needs to think through the basis of your beliefs.

 

When you are claiming to own other people's rights to liberty, slavery has very much to do with this conversation, as much as you would like to pretend it does not.

We are talking about forcible removal of others' rights to liberty via a claimed property "right." If I have to pay you for permission to sustain my life using what nature nature provided for all, how is that different from labor compelled by force?

Read and learn:

"A man dying of thirst in the desert stumbles into an oasis fed by a natural spring. He stoops to drink from the pool nature provided when he hears a revolver being cocked behind his ear, and a quiet, menacing, sibilant voice intones, "Uh-uh. I know what you're thinkin'. 'Will he charge me six years' labor for a sip of water, or only five?' Well to tell the truth, in all this excitement, I haven't quite totaled up the rent myself. But bein' as it's 44 miles to the next waterhole, which might as well be the other side of the world, and I'd as soon kick your sorry butt CLEAN OFF my land, you've got to ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel thirsty today?' Well, do ya, slave?"

So you are again just making factually false claims. The equal liberty right of all to use land is the non-exclusive liberty right that our ancestors exercised for millions of years to survive.

No, your claims are again just flat, outright false as a matter of objective physical fact. My non-exclusive use of the land does not stop anyone else from using it non-exclusively, as our ancestors did to survive for millions of years before landowners came along and demanded to be paid for their permission to use what nature provided for all.

That depends what I am using it for.

Well! You made a true statement! Congratulations! Let's see how long you can keep that up, shall we...?

So far, so good...

They grew the cotton. They produced it by their labor. They did not take it from anyone else.

Conspicuously unlike the landowner...

Awwww, and you were doing so well, too...

No, it did not need "someone's" land to grow. It just needed land, the same land that was there before anyone owned it.

How do you imagine our ancestors survived for millions of years, with no one to own the land for them, hmmmmm?

Go look in a mirror. If your face is not very red right now, it might mean you have no shame.

And just think, before there was a Hero of Production to own the land while working people did all that, none of it was possible!

No. It does not. Please understand: I have been doing this for decades, and can demolish and humiliate the likes of you with my eyes closed.

Hehe. Yeah, perhaps not.

 

While your posts are rather entertaining, you really have a skewed view of things when you combine ownership of land and slavery. Your attempt at humor regarding a sip of water isn't about land ownership, or violating someone's liberty. It's a poor attempt at humor.

Once you understand that being able to call a plot of land 'home' means you've worked and paid for it with the fruits of your labor. While I disagree with taxation of a property a person already has paid for, I can understand the basis that is necessary to apply a tax for services related to that land.

Pretty much the rest of your post is hogwash.

and they used the land to do so, the resources available IN the land, the nutrients, the soil, all belong to the land. Now they are gone. They took the land to create something to benefit them materially, yet you say the have no right to the land. Contradict yourself much?

Why do I get the impression that you have no clue what is involved in producing all that you consume, wear, own, drive, ride or stroll across. Your belief that your liberty is violated by someone else reaping the fruit of their labor, is based on the fact that because you don't have it, no one should have it. There is no logic or reason to your claim.

I stand by my statement. You need to access your position. I disagree with your point of view, and I've stated why. You haven't 'proven' anything, nor supplied facts.

I have nothing to be ashamed or humiliated about, but find it humorous that you believe I would feel so, as sanctimonious people will believe themselves superior.

 

Gentle readers, as I have said before and will no doubt say again, evil must always be justified, and the only way to justify it is with lies. Kindly peruse the following, and decide for yourself if CD is trying to justify evil:

They are similar in many ways. Read and learn:

"During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal army. When the war
broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky
home for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old
negroes, who said to me: 'Master George, you say you set us free; but before God,
I'm worse off than when I belonged to your father.' The planters, on the other hand, are contented
with the change. They say, ' How foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper
now than when we owned the slaves.' How do they get it cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents
they take more of the labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him well, and were
compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, to keep him when he
could no longer work. Now their interest and responsibility cease when they have
got all the work out of him they can."
-- From a letter by George M. Jackson, St. Louis. Dated August 15, 1885.

Do you understand what just happened, CD? A man who unlike you ACTUALLY WAS A SLAVE just told you that landowning and slavery are not only comparable, not only similar, not only equivalent, but that landowning is actually worse; and other people who actually OWNED slaves AGREED with him.

Yes, of course it is, no matter how frantically you have to refuse to know the facts it identifies. It proves that owning land is equivalent to owning slaves, as the letter quoted above also proves.

No, it proves that owning land is a grotesque and evil violation of people's rights equivalent to slavery. I'll let my readers judge the humor value of the example.

It means no such thing. You are just makin' $#!+ up. The fruits of one's labor are the things produced by that labor. The land was never produced by anyone's labor, and therefore by definition cannot be the fruits of anyone's labor. There is no valid way to purchase other people's rights to liberty without their consent, no matter how much labor you put into the deal, and no matter how small a slice of their right to liberty you are buying.

Because you believe you should be legally entitled to take from others, and not pay for what you are taking. Simple.

The land's unimproved value is nothing but the market's estimate of how much the landowner can expect to steal from the community.

What a gracious concession that you have been comprehensively and conclusively demolished, you know it, and you have no answers.

I said no such thing. You just made that up and falsely attributed it to me. What they have a right to is liberty, the liberty to use the land non-exclusively, as our ancestors did to survive for millions of years before greedy, evil thieves figured out that if they could just get ownership of the land, they would be legally entitled to take everything from everyone else. So they have a right to USE the land, but no right to OWN it, and thus remove everyone else's liberty rights to use it. Clear?

No. And unlike you, I don't make a habit of advancing self-evidently false claims, either.

You don't. That's just some infantile, disingenuous nonsense you have made up as a despicable and utterly unsupported form of name-calling.

Again, that is simply something you have made up and falsely attributed to me. Land is not the fruit of their or anyone else's labor, and neither are others' rights to liberty. My liberty is violated when others forcibly deprive me of access to opportunity that would otherwise be accessible, and so is everyone else's when they are thus forcibly deprived.

The fruits of people's labor are the goods and services they have produced, and the goods and services they have consensually traded for that others have produced. As neither land nor the right to liberty that you claim to own are goods or services that anyone ever produced as the fruits of their labor, there is no possible way they could consensually have been traded for, and there is therefore likewise no way anyone could ever come to own land or others' rights to liberty by reaping the fruits of their labor. Only by forcibly taking them.

Again, you have disingenuously fabricated a statement out of whole cloth and falsely attributed it to me as a form of name-calling. Despicable.

Because you made it up to deceive your readers as to what I plainly wrote in clear, grammatical English.

Right: you stand by it even though you know I have already proved it false.

Meaningless gibberish.

Yes, and I have proved that what you are no doubt pleased to call your "arguments" are factually incorrect, ethically disingenuous, and logically fallacious. You just decline, merely on that account, to reconsider your proved-false opinions.

That is just another bald falsehood from you.

See above.

I said you would feel that way if you had any shame. I didn't speculate as to whether you actually had any shame or not -- though with your latest post, I'm leaning to the latter.

As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"

 

1. the right to use the good
2. the right to earn income from the good
3. the right to transfer the good to others, alter it, abandon it, or destroy it (the right to ownership cessation)
4. the right to enforce property rights

This is what determines property ownership, including land. So no, consensual exchange of land violates no one's rights as I am sure you already know. I just wanted to delve further into it a bit.

Now, I am sure you're going to get some prattle about land ownership being akin to slavery, but that is a ridiculous notion. Slaves have a natural right of self ownership that is violated. The right of self ownership is where all property are derived. No property right (and by extension self ownership) is violated by the consensual exchange of land.

 

Ah, you actually think that 'land ownership equates to 'slavery'. How quaint.

So that quarter acre or a half acre, requires who to work it? The person who owns it.

That land that the cotton grower grew his product on, some goat farmer was prevented from using (out of courtesy) or, he could just let his goats have a go of it, hmmm?

Again, the whole basis of your post is hog wash. Think back to the far ancestors time. Declaring one's territory in order to protect their families was innate. Perhaps that fact escaped you?

Excess words from you, don't change the facts that people need to use the land to create a product that they exchange or barter so they may have access to more diverse foods or material goods. In order to secure their use of the land (so they don't have a goat problem) they pay something for permission, because the land has intrinsic value. That's called the cost of doing business, aye?

You go on thinking your way, I'll stick with mine.

 

In any event, access to land needs to be managed, otherwise, as you say, someone could run goats thru your garden.

Me, I prefer that access be managed by a system of private land ownership. The alternative is ownership by the state, and I am not a fan of such a monopoly by the elite class.

 

No. You are again just factually incorrect. The first three rights -- normally called control, benefit and disposition -- are part of the definition of ownership, but there is no "right to enforce property rights." The fourth right of ownership is the right of exclusion. Not "enforcement." Clear?

Wrong. I have corrected your erroneous claim, above.

<yawn> By that "logic," neither does "consensual" exchange of a slave, as I am sure you already know: a slave's rights are ALREADY being violated, whether there is any exchange or not, just as everyone's rights to liberty are ALREADY being violated by the landowner whether there is any exchange of land or not -- as I am sure you also already know.

Hehe. Come into my parlor...

Dismissal, no matter how elaborate, is not an argument, sorry.

I just got finished proving it isn't.

No they don't. That's nothing but ridiculous propertarian tripe. There is no right of "self-ownership," as it is incoherent. Proof: as everyone is immutably under their own control, there is no possibility of disposition (transfer), and therefore one cannot own oneself. QED.

What people have rights to are life, LIBERTY, and property in the fruits of their labor. It is the right to LIBERTY -- a word you could look up, if you were interested in it (you're not) -- that both slavery and landowning abrogate.

No, that is nothing but more of your fallacious and absurd propertarian garbage, as proved above. All valid property rights are founded on the act of PRODUCTION, as only ownership of what has been produced does not violate others' liberty rights. As land is not produced, it cannot rightly be property.

Fallacious and disingenuous garbage refuted above. It is not the EXCHANGE of land that violates people's rights, any more than it is the SALE of a slave that violates his rights. You know this. Why are you pretending that you do not? Is it because you are trying to rationalize and justify evil?

 

The idea that controlling access to a piece of land is akin to slavery is absolutely absurd.

 

Ah, you actually think that is an argument. How sad.

You just can't help yourself, can you? You know that if you are going to justify evil you have to advance transparently false claims, so you just do it willy-nilly, incontinently, hoping that somehow, sometime, I will miss one, and you will be able to sneak in your whole evil belief system.

Quite likely that has worked for you before.

Sorry, it is not going to work with me.

YOU KNOW that the producer can work a quarter or half acre, or any other amount of land without owning it, and without anyone else owning it, as our ancestors did to survive for millions of years. Ownership of land contributes absolutely nothing to production but a parasite who demands the producer pay him for permission to produce.

So you are saying that optimum productive use requires secure, exclusive tenure? True enough. The community provides that to secure the producer's rightful property in fixed improvements.

Still waiting for the land owner's contribution, though....

<yawn> Maybe you can convince yourself...

No it wasn't. It never even happened. You are just makin' $#!+ up again. Communities would compete for, try to control, and in many cases fight over territory and resources, but not individuals or families. There was never any "declaration of ownership" because there is a difference between brute, animal territoriality and property. The anthropological evidence is clear: the territorial rivalries of hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding societies are quite similar to, though normally less sanguinary than, those of chimpanzee troupes. Until a few thousand years ago, to declare an area of land as one's property was not only not innate, it was literally inconceivable.

Your claims are just objectively false.

It's not a fact. It's nothing but another bald fabrication on your part, a claim you have made up out of whole cloth, with zero (0) basis in anthropological or ethological fact.

Why are you falsely and disingenuously pretending I have said anything to the contrary? Of course people have to use land to produce things they need to sustain themselves, exchange with others, etc. And they have a natural liberty right to do so, as our ancestors did to survive for millions of years without any help from landowners. The landowner just forcibly strips them of that right to liberty and demands they pay him just for his permission to produce.

So, the landowner's contribution to production is what, exactly....?

Right: to the community, because it is the community that secures their exclusive tenure, not the landowner. That certainly makes sense.

Oh, no, wait a minute, that's right: you're saying they should somehow pay the landowner for... doing and contributing exactly nothing. That about it?

No, because it confers an economic advantage -- i.e., a rental value -- on the user. There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Value is what a thing would trade for, so it is always determined in the context of a given market at a given time. Land's unimproved rental value -- the economic advantage to the user -- comes from the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location.

But you will search that list in vain for anything the landowner provides. That is why you cannot answer The Question:

"How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay him for what government, the community and nature provide?"

And no one else can answer it, either.

Indeed. Just like paying off a protection racketeer is a cost of doing business...

Are you starting to get the picture?

Right. And it won't matter how many times, or in how many different ways, I prove yours is false and evil.

 

Yes, and it IS managed. By the community. Which rightly charges a fee for that service.

So, the fee charged by the landowner is for what, exactly....?

I.e., feudalism. That is what feudal landowners do: privately manage access to land without any state administration.

Why do you insist on repeating the same false dichotomy fallacy I have refuted for you literally dozens of times over a number of years?

Land is always a monopoly, as we have established. You just want the monopoly to be held by an elite class of private landowners answerable to no one but themselves -- i.e., feudalism -- rather than by a democratically accountable community land administration office entrusted with securing and reconciling the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

 

So who or what will prevent a wandering shepherd from running his herd of goats thru my vegetable garden?

 

I have proved it isn't. Remember?

"A man dying of thirst in the desert stumbles into an oasis fed by a natural spring. He stoops to drink from the pool nature provided when he hears a revolver being cocked behind his ear, and a quiet, menacing, sibilant voice intones, "Uh-uh. I know what you're thinkin'. 'Will he charge me six years' labor for a sip of water, or only five?' Well to tell the truth, in all this excitement, I haven't quite totaled up the rent myself. But bein' as it's 44 miles to the next waterhole, which might as well be the other side of the world, and I'd as soon kick your sorry butt CLEAN OFF my land, you've got to ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel thirsty today?' Well, do ya, slave?"

The only difference between landowning and slavery is that slavery removes people's rights to liberty and makes them into others' private property one person at a time, landowning does it one right at a time.

 

Lifeboat scenarios are so lame.

 

The same community law enforcement system that does it now, except that the something-for-nothing welfare subsidy to the landowner will be eliminated.

 

But they can, as in this case, illuminate basic issues that are normally obscured by extraneous factors. And it's not like that is the only proof I have given, both theoretical and historical, of the equivalence of landowning to slavery.

 

So they will keep the goat shepherd from accessing what he would otherwise be at liberty to access. They will steal his right to liberty?

 

So when the states prevents the goat herdsman from running his herd thru my garden they are enslaving him?

 

Indeed. It goes beyond absurdity straight to irrationality.

A slave has an inherent right of self ownership. By being enslaved, that right is being Infringed upon.

Land has no inherent right of self ownership, so by owning a parcel of land no right to self ownership is Infringed upon.

It is evil and disingenuous to say that owning land is akin to slavery.