Second Vermont Republic revises principles...

[Lex]

what is so hard to understand?

It's still impossible to make any sense of what you are saying. But I do understand economic rent so you don't have to try to explain it to me, I think it's better if you don't try to explain it, otherwise I may get confused.

[FrankChodorov]

what is so hard to understand?

It's still impossible to make any sense of what you are saying. But I do understand economic rent so you don't have to try to explain it to me, I think it's better if you don't try to explain it, otherwise I may get confused.

sorry - you can't understand economic rent if you don't know what I am saying...

[Lex]

sorry - you can't understand economic rent if you don't know what I am saying...

I understand this:

Natural rent is the economic manifestation of conflicting desires for land. It is an expression of what people without a particular parcel of land are willing to pay in order to hold it. It exists without government and existed prior to government. The only question before government is that of who is the rightful recipient of rent.

Consider three fair-minded people who have come to inhabit an island, where sustenance is derived from fishing and from a small coconut grove. As there are plenty of fish and plenty of fine places from which one can fish, no conflict, and, therefore, no rent, arises. However, as the coconut grove is small, and all three people have an interest in possessing it, it becomes a matter of dispute, which can be most equitably resolved by the utilization of rent.

They could, of course, divide the coconut grove in three, but if it is inefficient for each to tend a third of the grove, they might resolve the dispute as follows:

One might say, "If you give me exclusive access to the grove, I will give you four coconuts per week per week to divide between you."

Another, who believes he is more talented at maintaining a coconut grove, offers five coconuts per week. Ultimately, the highest bidder gets the grove, and the other two get the rent. This rent is a natural rent, and is used to equitably resolve the clash of conflicting rights to land. Thus, the rent does not belong to "society," but the individuals who have given up their rights to the land itself. The role of government as an intermediary arises only when there are so many people that direct resolution becomes impractical.

Rent-sharing also lends itself to renegotiation should conditions change. That is, if one person dies, or a fourth person appears, or if it is realized that the coconut grove is more or less valuable than initially thought, rent can be adjusted accordingly.

However, a central principle is that each person rightly owns the fruits of his labor. It is therefore necessary to separate the value of improvements the holder had made to the coconut grove from the value of the grove itself. The technology of this is addressed elsewhere. Here we are concerned with ethics, and with the idea that unequal distribution of land can be made to conform to equal rights through an equal distribution of rent, leaving to the landholder the value of his improvements.

Source: http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

[FrankChodorov]

spot on - bravo!

just a more elaborate way of saying inorder to have absolute rights to labor you must have conditional rights to land.

now the question is do you agree or disagree with it?

[Lex]

spot on - bravo!

just a more elaborate way of saying inorder to have absolute rights to labor you must have conditional rights to land.

now the question is do you agree or disagree with it?

As I have stated in another thread I believe that "existence is a positive liberty because in order to exist you have to take land away from someone else who was homesteading it before you were born."

[FrankChodorov]

As I have stated in another thread I believe that "existence is a positive liberty because in order to exist you have to take land away from someone else who was homesteading it before you were born."

I believe you'v either initially got it backwards...

homesteading is a negative liberty so long as your individual use does not infringe upon the equal access opportunity rights of everyone else...infringement being economically harming someone else initially or at some time in the future.

positive liberty means that you have to provide something that is the result of human labor (food, clothing, shelter, etc) to someone else.

a place to occupy can not be based on positive liberty because there is no labor involved in creating it.

[Lex]

homesteading is a negative liberty so long as your individual use does not infringe upon the equal access opportunity rights of everyone else...infringement being economically harming someone else initially or at some time in the future.

You are arguing that people that do not exist yet have rights?

Before all land is owned people could homestead and practice negative liberty. After all land is owned you can't practice homesteading because there is no land to homestead. It follows that homesteading is ALWAYS a negative liberty (unless you are on someone else property, and then it's stealing and not homesteading).

positive liberty means that you have to provide something that is the result of human labor (food, clothing, shelter, etc) to someone else.

Claiming something to be yours and defending it as yours mixes your labor with your private property, be it land, etc. Thus resources can be owned by virtue of being claimed.

a place to occupy can not be based on positive liberty because there is no labor involved in creating it.

Defending property is labor.

[FrankChodorov]

You are arguing that people that do not exist yet have rights?

no, I am saying if not today then eventually exclusive use of land will result in infringement of labor-based property rights as population rises and supply is fixed.

Before all land is owned people could homestead and practice negative liberty. After all land is owned you can't practice homesteading because there is no land to homestead. It follows that homesteading is ALWAYS a negative liberty

the salient point is that you can still practice negative liberty by sharing the economic rent so no one is economically harmed...

as a hypothetical if you pay out $5K of economic rent to your neighbors and they pay you $4K as their share then in essence you have an 80% "homestead exemption" on the economic rent that attaches to the location you occupy.

Claiming something to be yours and defending it as yours mixes your labor with your private property, be it land, etc. Thus resources can be owned by virtue of being claimed.

anything that you mix your labor with is by definition not "unimproved land value" (economic rent).