[ExI] Privatization and so called public "ownership"

[Dan]

--- On Thu, 7/9/09, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/9 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>:
>> While it can happen that way, there is nothing
>> "natural" about it.  A better path to privatizing a
>> government owned resource -- since "public ownership" really
>> means government ownership and is, for the most part, merely
>> rhetorical cover for taking stuff away from the original
>> owners -- would be to find from whom the resource was first
>> taken.  In some cases, this might be a group, but then
>> ownership is no different from any other form of private
>> group ownership.  And there's no reason in that sort of
>> case to believe or support the view that individual members
>> of such a group would have no ability to sell their shares.
> 
> You could make an argument for giving public land back to
> the
> aboriginal inhabitants, but then there would still be the
> issue of
> what to do with the improvements to the land, paid for by
> taxpayers over centuries.

I mentioned just this later in my post:

"There might be some dispute over whether any betterments or improvements were made, but the grounding principle is to return the property to its original owners.  In some cases, this might involve removing changes or having some form of division.  E.g., the factory is returned to its original owners but the new machine installed at taxpayers' expense is given back to the specific taxpayers who paid for it."  

I don't have an armchair solution to this issue.  Also, I'm not sure about the centuries long spans here.  In most cases, it'd be extremely hard to trace ownership over such spans.  In the US and more recent colonial cases (e.g., New Zealand), it might be a little easier because it's easy to trace some claim back a century or maybe a bit longer.  But I wouldn't say this is easy or even possible in many cases.  But, again, the general bent should be on returning, as far as possible anything to its original owner.  Where's that's not possible, then the thing should be opened for homesteading.  Where improvements have been made, I think a case can be made for those forced to make the improvements being paid back or getting ownership over the improvement.  (And, in this case, the goal should not be to create a mess so that statists and their seconds can pretend some sort of public ownership.)

A case could be made, too, I think for occupants, when no other party with a just claim exists having the first right to homestead, but, again, these occupants can't be people who would be justly excluded.  For instance, a government employee can't have that right, since she or he would be receiving stolen goods or goods not justly homesteaded.  (There is no right of conquest.)

> As for what type the shares will be, that
> should ultimately be up to the shareholders.

And you seem to have definite ideas on just what shareholders would decide and how they should decide it.  I think, instead, the common law property approach would be best.  Yes, in some cases, it might mean an ownership arrangement that's entangled, but I doubt that'd be so in every case.  And I think it would almost never be the case that people wouldn't be allowed to sell shares.  In fact, I would think any case where a publicly stolen property were returned or turned over to a group -- say, a group of taxpayers who were forced, over the years to pay for that property -- with the stipulation that each shareholder (and I'd expect shares to be held by the level of taxation -- not equally unless all suffered equal taxation) could not sell her or his shares that this was not actually turning property back to its original owners was illegitimate.  If, afterward, all such owners -- not the majority, but all -- decided no one could sell her or his
 shares or could only do so with majority consent is another matter.

> You seem to hold as a basic
> moral principle, "free trade is always right".

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "free trade" in this context.  I've not made any secrete here of my core principle for social interaction: noninitiation of force.  This, of course, requires some fleshing out for context -- viz., to understand just what is meant by initiating force here.

> But this is just
> something that you have taken a fancy to;

How would you know that?  I presume, e.g., that whatever principles you have that you earnestly hold are ones you believe to be correct and not ones you've merely taken a fancy to.  (That said, when I think your principles make no sense or are otherwise wrong in a sort of obvious (to me) way, I mgiht think you've not thought about them closely enough.  But I'm not sure I'd believe you merely woke up one day and said, "Well, my views don't have much grounding, but I feel like it'd be fun to hold the view that the public should own things and I fancy I'll pretend it makes sense.  It'll be such fun to mess with Dan!":)

> it isn't like a scientific law or a mathematical theorem.

I would argue that the core libertarian principle is something akin to a mathematical theorem.

> For example, most people would not
> support the idea that you should be able to sell yourself
> into
> slavery, or that you should be able to sell the atmosphere
> and cut of the oxygen supply to anyone who can't pay.

I'm not sure how this applies to either free trade or to noninitiation of force.  To wit, the usual libertarian take on slavery is that it's forbidden tout court.  To wit, the usual libertarian take on selling air is that, under most circumstances, it's a free good and people just have a right to it as is.  (That said, there are special circumstances where it becomes an economic good -- i.e., a good one would economize and so possibly buy and sell -- such as at high altitudes, in space, and underwater.)  This means, it's just a ground condition no one can take away from someone else.  Yes, someone might be able to someday buy the sky, but they wouldn't likely have the ability to say, "I own the air around you, so you must pay me if you plan on having any."

One way to examine this issue is perhaps to look at the case of water rights on a river.  Imagine a bunch of people homestead property on a river.  Let's say they use the river as a source of water -- say, for drinking, washing, and farming.  Someone upstream from them can't decide she owns the river up there and dam it without their approval and then charge them for water.  That would cut off their water supply.  In a sense, and this lines up with common law notions of property, those people don't just have a right to the land along the river, but also to the water supply from it.  One could make a similar argument for air.  Someone couldn't homestead all the air and then cut these people off and charge them for air.

> Moral or economic principles should not be established
> a priori and followed to ridiculous ends, no matter what.
> That was the mistake of the Soviets.

The Soviets had a completely different stand in regards to both moral and economic principles.  They did not hold any a priori principles in this regard -- and took a firm stand against apriorism.  IIRC, their actual view was the Party itself decides which principles are to hold at any time -- kind of negating the notion of principles or of any principle other than obedience to the Party.  Also, purely in terms of economics, Marxism -- and Soviet ideology followed it in this respect -- does not hold any a priori economic principles.  IIRC, Marx and Engels sided with the German Historicist school -- a school famous for believing that there are no economic laws aside from particular regularities for specific historical settings.  In other words, economic laws are not eternal or immutable, but determined purely by historical context.  (This view of economic laws was used by socialists and nationalists (later on, fascists) to argue against things like
 the
 Law of Supply and Demand or any critique of their specific economic policies.)

Also, with Marxists in general, and the Soviets in particular, wasn't the belief here that economic regularities were, at best, merely manifestations of a given stage of social development?  I.e., primitive communism had its economics laws, ancient slave societies theirs, feudalism its, various stages of capitalism its various laws, and later stages -- socialism and eventual communism -- its newer laws that would not fit the earlier stages?

I would also distinguish between moral and economic principles.  The former are normative -- telling one what should be done; the latter are descriptive -- telling one what happens under such and such conditions.  For instance, there might be a moral principle to not to coerce, but there is no such economic one.  Instead, as an economist, one might ask what happens when there is coercion.  In fact, many economic analyses of old were examinations of just what happened under different forms of coercion.  For instance, how rent control causes housing shortages.  Now, from a purely economic standpoint, one can recognize that rent control causes housing shortages, but economics as economics does not tell one that one should be for, against, or indifferent to rent control.  (Of course, one could make an argument against coercion based on it having undesireable unintended consequences.*  But this requires the person actually disvalue the undesireable
 unintended consequences more than she or he values other aspects of coercion.  For instance, I've heard many statists argue that, yes, public schooling really does suck, but they still value it because they value things like molding people to the national ideology or having most or all have a common experience of that institution.)

I bring up this distinction because whatever our disagreements on moral principles, I think there are valid economic laws and a valid economic science regardless.

>> Also, in the case of roads, where former private
>> owners can't be found -- as in the case where they and their
>> heirs are dead or untraceable -- then the proper thing to do
>> is to put them back into the state of unclaimed properties
>> and allow them to be homesteaded.  (And not everyone would
>> have an equal right to homestead here -- unlike with purely
>> unowned items.  Why?  Some -- specifically, those in
>> government and those, more or less directly connected to
>> government, cannot have an equal claim to homestead as their
>> actions or the actions of their criminal organizations
>> served to place or maintain such properties in a state where
>> their original owners lost them or could not get them back.
>> Thus, in former socialist nations, the party members
>> should NOT have any claims on factories or other stolen
>> property.)
> 
> Homesteading is one way of distributing public land.

No.  It's the way unowned land becomes owned.  A state may claim to own land and then use something like homesteading to parcel it out, but it doesn't really have a just claim and thus can't really have a just claim to parceling it out.

> Perhaps there are other ways. Who should decide what is the
> best and fairest thing to do?

Becuase other principles of turning unowned land into owned land suffer problems that homesteading (also known as first appropriation) does not.  Also, homesteading grounds self-ownership.  So, while not perfect, it does have a certain seamlessness that other principles do not have.
 
> > Add to this, members of the government should NOT be
> allowed to have ownership.  They must be excluded just as a
> thief would be excluded.  This would also go for
> non-tax-paying members of the populace who had nothing to do
> with the original ownership.  For instance, were I to move
> to, say, Nova Scotia, where I've never paid taxes (viz.,
> never had the Nova Scotian government steal from me) and
> never had any just claim over property there, I could not
> claim that, since I'm now a member of the public there, I
> have a just claim over any privatized roads or similar
> properties.  (Granted, if people who justly owned these
> decided to give me some claim to the properties, that's
> another story.  But this requires them to do so -- not my
> merely moving there and making the claim as a new member of
> the Nova Scotia public; it is NOT the default state of
> things.)
> 
> The people of Nova Scotia would decide what to do. They may
> decide to
> charge outsiders, but not citizens, a fee for using the
> roads, or they
> may decide to charge all citizens a flat fee, or they may
> decide to charge only drivers a fee per kilometre driven.

As I said, "Granted, if people who justly owned these decided to give me some claim to the properties, that's another story."  If the people who actually justly own Nova Scotia -- who actually own it and NOT who merely are members of the public or citizens or whatever entity (or alternate classification) you prefer to repair to -- decide on a particular process (one that doesn't, of course, violate rights), that's their call.

>>> After all, this is why publicly
>>> owned resources and companies exist, although from
>>> time to time they are privatised.
>>
>> I think the matter is more complicated than this and
>> doesn't fit your view -- at least, not outside of rhetoric
>> used to legitamize such claims.  In most cases of public
>> companies and resources, these were stolen from their
>> original owners or, in the cases of unowned things, were not
>> justly homesteaded.  In the former case, the just choice,
>> where it's possible, is to return the property to its
>> original owners.  E.g., a factory nationalized must be
>> returned to its original owners.  (There might be some
>> dispute over whether any betterments or improvements were
>> made, but the grounding principle is to return the property
>> to its original owners.  In some cases, this might involve
>> removing changes or having some form of division.  E.g.,
>> the factory is returned to its original owners but the new
>> machine installed at taxpayers' expense is given back to the
>> specific taxpayers who paid for it.)
>>
>> In the latter case, merely having the government
>> decree that some such
>> hectares belong to it or the public is not
>> homesteading.  In fact, it merely prevents others from
>> justly homesteading the hectares.  This can be applied to
>> large sections of the United States -- where the land was
>> not formerly owned by the aboriginal peoples.  I.e., that
>> land -- the unowned land that the US or state governments
>> took -- would be open for homesteading.
> 
> Why insist that homesteading is the only just way to do
> things? Why
> not say, for example, that land belongs to the collective,
> and anyone
> who uses land must lease it from the collective, as per
> Henry George?

Any collective is only composed of individuals.  Collectives do not have any special rights apart from their individuals.  Yes, a particular collective could come to own property -- just like individuals.  But it has claim over and above individual claims.  And a collective would still have to obtain property via just means -- viz., via either homesteading, trade, or gift.

Georgism's problems in this respect are manifold, but can, I believe, be divided into two sets: moral ones and economic ones.  A major economic one is how to figure out rent on land and who gets it.  Elsewhere, others and I have shown, I believe, this to be an insoluble problem.

The main moral one, from a libertarian standpoint, is the view that all land is held in common or collectively.  This claim seems to not follow from anything -- save for maybe underlying egalitarian sentiments -- and is just laid out there.  Also, if one agrees with an egalitarian underpinning, it's hard to see why this would and should be limited to land.  Why not to labor and even to people?  Georgists tend to hold views that land is special in this case, but often this goes back to economic arguments or ad hoc moral ones.  (Of course, I'm speaking as a critic of Georgism (and its supposed libertarian variant geoism).)

Regards,

Dan

*  Note that not all unintended consequences are bad.