Comments Elsewhere

What is being "set aside" here? If (ex hypothesi) someone has a legally-recognized title but has not really done anything that would earn them a moral claim over the land that the title covers, then (ex hypothesi) they have nothing to sell in the transaction. Voluntary transactions may transfer claims over things you already have a valid claim on. They don't transfer claims over something that you never had any claim on in the first place.

Now, in many cases -- at least, hypothetical ones, although in actual historical cases the issues were much more complicated -- the "buyer" might use the transaction to buy off a legal claimant (such as a colonial authority or the state), and then also go and do some work that would earn them a moral claim on the land that they had "bought." No doubt in such cases the "buyer" does establish a "valid moral claim to this land." But not in virtue of the "transaction;" the claim derives from having done the work.

If on the other hand the "buyer" pays off somebody who (ex hypothesi) hasn't earned any right to the land, and then does not or cannot show up to work it, or arrange with someone else to work it for them, then it seems obvious to me that (granting a labor-mixing theory of the basis of ownership *)  they have not earned any more right to the land than they had before the "purchase." (So, for example, suppose that Norton, as Emperor, claims legal ownership of the entire Colorado River valley; and Twain pays Norton for a parcel of it, but does not or cannot take possession of it. At the same time, or some time later, an old prospector shows up and squats on the parcel. Now, on Roderick's theory Twain is not going to have any right to grab the land out from under the old prospector; he made a transaction with the "legal owner," but the "legal owner" didn't have a claim on the land, and didn't have right to grab the land out from under squatters either, and they can't transfer claims or rights that they don't have. You seem inclined to say that Twain does have a right to do this; but if so you'd have to explain what got him the right. The law? If so, I hope you can anticipate why Roderick's not going to be moved by that suggestion.

(* Which you may of course want to reject. But then you can hardly claim to be asking Roderick a question about what happens "on his theory;" your suggestion is rather that he ought to give up his theory and adopt yours instead.)

is kind of psyched to have run into a lightbulb joke I made up being reposted on Facebook without attribution. I’m famous enough to become anonymous.

Derek Wittorff via Alex Strekal

April 10 at 3:32pm

‎Boinks Ayn Rand

http://anti-libertarian-libertarianism.blogspot.com/2012/04/rand-as-philosophical-fascist.html?spref=bl

Charles W. Johnson

There are many different ways to respond to Ayn Rand and her legacy. I’m not sure necrophilia is the best.

April 10 at 3:32pm

Nick Ford

“I’m not sure necrophilia is the best.”

What?

April 10 at 3:33pm

Derek Wittorff

lol

April 10 at 3:33pm

Charles W. Johnson

“Boinks” is sometimes used as if it means the same thing as “Bonks.”

It doesn’t.

April 10 at 3:33pm

Daniel Patrick â’¶

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=boink

April 10 at 3:34pm

Nick Ford

Oh yeah, right I knew that but I’ve used it in the Strekelian sense so long I’d forgot about the other connotations.

April 10 at 3:35pm

Derek Wittorff

Its a great analysis.

April 10 at 3:41pm

Charles W. Johnson

I can’t say I agree. Most of the things that Alex finds troubling or flat wrong in Rand are also things that I find deeply troubling or flat wrong, but as far as the article goes, there’s not at lot of analysis there; mostly polemic. Some mention of conclusion, none of arguments, not even any quotes. If anything, what it reads most like is one of Rand’s own sweeping rhetorical assaults on, say, Kant or Plato. Those may or may not be correct on any given point, but they are certainly not the place to go to learn very much what Kant or Plato is about.

April 10 at 3:53pm

Daniel Patrick â’¶

It’s true. I have trouble being open to Kant due to exposure to Rand’s ideas at an impressionable age.

April 10 at 3:56pm

Charles W. Johnson

Utah had a story about alternative health in northern California around Nevada City: “You gotta be open to these things. If you don’t they’ll pry ya open.” Which is about how I felt about Kant after the second half of my 18th Century Philosophy course.

April 10 at 4:01pm

Derek Wittorff

‎”I can’t say I agree. Most of the things that Alex finds troubling or flat wrong in Rand are also things that I find deeply troubling or flat wrong, but as far as the article goes, there’s not at lot of analysis there; mostly polemic. Some mention of conclusion, none of arguments, not even any quotes. If anything, what it reads most like is one of Rand’s own sweeping rhetorical assaults on, say, Kant or Plato. Those may or may not be correct on any given point, but they are certainly not the place to go to learn very much what Kant or Plato is about.”

I can agree there, but it is a paper about Rand, not Kant or Plato.

April 10 at 4:09pm

Derek Wittorff

A little explanation could help, but it’s more than easy to get off track when you’re engaging in philosophical discourse.

April 10 at 4:12pm

Charles W. Johnson

This is an example of what I would take to count as an analysis of Rand and her philosophy (sometimes a good analysis, sometimes not as good, but always an analysis): http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand.htm. The article here is not an analysis or a philosophical discourse; it’s a denunciation. Which may very well be merited, but which is something different.

Why I’m not an objectivist
home.sprynet.com

‎(2) One should always follow reason and never think or act contrary to reason. (I take this to be the meaning of “Reason is absolute.”)

April 10 at 4:12pm

Charles W. Johnson

‎Derek Wittorff: “it is a paper about Rand, not Kant or Plato.”

O.K., I’m not sure what you mean here. Is this a joke about slipping antecedents? Or do you mean to suggest there’s something about Rand that makes this kind of treatment of her more useful or less of an injustice than a similar treatment of Kant or Plato (e.g. that the latter are better or more sophisticated philosophers or something like that)? Or something else?

April 10 at 4:16pm

Derek Wittorff

I see, you think the analysis part is lacking, not the paper itself. I wouldn’t know where to start if I was gonna critique her whole philosophy.

April 10 at 4:27pm

Charles W. Johnson

I’m not sure I’m being clear. My view is that setting out to critique her whole philosophy is almost certainly the wrong goal. I think that if Rand is worth an analysis at all (and I happily leave that as an open question), then everyone involved would benefit more from a focused discussion of a single argument, from premises to conclusion, than from some kind of broadside against the totality of her thought.

April 10 at 4:34pm

Charles W. Johnson

The reason I linked the Huemer piece is because that’s a thing that he does — although he’s actually covering a fairly broad stretch of territory, at each stop he sets out specific arguments in detail and then tries to see, first, how they work on their own, and then, second, whether there’s something wrong with them and if so what a better alternative would be. That’s what I feel like I can recommend as “analysis” of a philosophical position. It is for good or for ill a different thing from assembling a hodgepodge of summaries of her conclusions, wrapping it up in a package, and denouncing that as destructive or poisonous. I mentioned the bit about Plato and Kant because Rand herself is constantly approaching other thinkers this way, and Objectivists tend to eat this stuff up, but whatever value that kind of thing may have, it’s not as analysis, because there isn’t any serious analysis of the philosopher’s arguments, only a denunciation of the perceived downstream consequences of those arguments. But to the extent that there isn’t any analysis of the philosopher’s arguments, there isn’t any analysis of the philosopher, either. Of course whether analysis is really what’s wanted in the first place, or whether something else is (denunciation, disavowal, parody, scurrilous satirical poetry, a sharp whack upside the head, whatever) is a separate question.

April 10 at 4:46pm

Huh. So I suspect the now-current issue of the Anarchist Classics Series is the only instalment that I’ve ever been able to cut with my horizontal paper-cutter instead of my big, 500-sheet capacity guillotine stack cutter. Publishing poetry does I guess make for much smaller booklets.

OK, fair enough, and thanks. I figured that’s about what you meant but wasn’t sure if there was more detail being packed in. My understanding is that real property that law would treat as having those features could in principle be either allodial or fee simple, depending on the breaks (allodial titles are supposed to give more or less absolute discretion to the holder; fee simple is different from non-simple kinds of fiefs in that it is among other things completely alienable and divisible). In practice it is virtually always a fee simple and not an allodial title, because governments usually insist that they, and only they, have allodial title over all the land within their borders.

Of course, all this mumbo-jumbo I guess also emphasizes another important aspect in addition to the obsessive overemphasis on sole, alienable and divisible ownership — all that goes along with a corresponding obsessive overemphasis on highly formalized and legally complex forms of “title,” rather than on messier, fuzzier, more ad-hoc or more conventionally-bounded forms of possession which are mediated more through constantly-negotiated social relationships rather than through charters, contracts or other legal paperwork. States obsessed with legibility love this kind of stuff, perhaps for obvious reasons (their love of it is part of what makes up their obsession with legibility).

Of course these two overemphases, on the most simplistic and atomized forms of ownership claims, and on a legalistic or formalistic picture of title, may have something to do with each other — traditional common ownership may just be necessarily messier and harder to wrap up in precise paper titling than sole ownership is. (To the point that the main form of non-severable shared ownership on offer — corporate ownership — now involves the legal fiction of an invented person, just so you can have some one thing to sit in as the sole owner.) But while they may be related, they need not be the same — legalistic title and arbitrary procedural requirements have certainly been used to fence people off of their commons, but they’ve just as much been used to throw squatters off their honestly-homesteaded freeholds, etc. etc.

is futzing around with PHP 5 Reflection and WordPress custom types. Wee-ha.

Kevin,

I’m a bit confused about what distinction you’re trying to track here. I get the overwhelming stress on individual title, to the exclusion of common title, etc. (Although I’m less sure that that’s a feature that distinctive of mainstream modern libertarians as opposed to classical liberals…) But what do you mean by “allodial, fee simple” property? In real estate, isn’t allodial ownership normally contrasted against fee simple ownership, not a condition that can be conjoined with it? (*) What kind of property rights claims is it that you’re taking to be distinctive here of mainstream modern libertarianism?

(* Such that allodia are often said to be available only to governments and sometimes their jurisdictionally autonomous peers, e.g. the premodern Catholic Church; whereas fee simple is held as a fief from the sovereign and so is supposedly subject to conditions such as taxation, eminent domain, etc.)

Also from Innovator (Sep 1965): “I/t/a — Alphabet of the Future?”, an article by El Ray on “the exciting educational possibilities” of English spelling reform, based on a 44 character phonetic alphabet. Illustrated with a hand written quotation from Bastiat’s “The Law,” transliterated into the new system.

is digging through some old copies of the later issues of Innovator (ca. 1969 at the moment), including a short little article on ecology without/beyond statism, by “Ho Chi Zen” (one of Kerry Thornley’s counterculture alter egos).

is also missing Adrienne Rich today. 1929-2012. R.I.P. Today is a day for sad news, I guess.

“… [T]he very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration … [art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.” – Adrienne Rich, 1997

“… Crossing the bridge I need all my nerve to trust to the man-made cables.

The blades on that machine could cut you to ribbons but its function is humane. Is this all I can say of these delicate books, scythe-curved intentions you and I handle? I’d rather taste blood, yours or mine, flowing from a sudden slash, than cut all day with blunt scissors on dotted lines like the teacher told.” – Adrienne Rich (1968), “On Edges”