[ExI] Privatization and so called public "ownership"

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/7/10 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>:

>> 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.

I gave this as one example of what might be done if people are quite
happy to continue managing a public resource as a public resource.
They might decide that roads should be treated differently to a
telecommunication company or airline that is being privatised, for
example, with a different share structure. If these really were
"stolen" from an individual or corporation then there may be a case
for returning them to the previous owner, but if they were built up on
public land with public funds, then they should be returned to the
public, or if privatised the money thus obtained returned to the
public.

>> 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.

That's the part that worries me. An a priori truth is not changed if
people suffer.

>> 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."

I can freely sell you the atmosphere above my house, and lease it back
from you. If the lease expires you can freely increase the air rent to
whatever you want, and I can freely agree to the price or else stop
breathing. If I continue to breathe then I am stealing your property,
and you are within your rights to prevent me from doing so, using
violent means if necessary. If I can't pay and wish to continue
breathing you might agree to let me be your slave for life, and I can
freely accept or reject your offer. Is there anything wrong with any
of this?

> 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.

But if I sell or give you my part of the river, I lose my right to it.

>> 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?

Marx believed in historical progress towards communism as a scientific
law, which I suppose does make it a posteriori rather than a priori.
But the point I was making is that the Soviets believed this so
completely that they ignored any evidence to the contrary; for
example, they ignored any evidence suggesting that the working class
in their capitalist neighbours were better off and their lot
materially improving, because, well, you can't argue with a scientific
law! I see something similar happening with those who worship the free
market. Faced with evidence that people are happier and better off
with (for example) public health or public education, they *know* that
this can't be right, and their challenge is to find the flaw, like
finding the flaw in a design for a perpetual motion machine.

> 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.

Yes, although in practice economists tend to be prescriptive in a way
that scientists generally are. I also have an issue with your
definition of "coercion". If an economic or political system leads to
an impoverished underclass at the mercy of the wealthy capitalists,
then you might think that's OK because they weren't "coerced" into
this state, but I would disagree. A gross maldistribution of the
world's resources is evidence that the haves have stolen from the
have-nots, even if they have done so by cleverly adhering to the laws
relating to voluntary exchange. My example of selling the atmosphere
and debt slavery is a case in point.

> 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.

You're fixated on the idea that someone must own everything. What's
wrong with the idea that some land might be held in common by the
people who live there?

> 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.

If you push the definition of homesteading then you can say that
public land is owned by the public by means of homesteading. For
example, you can apply this to a town hall erected on previously
unowned land using public money.

> 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).)

There may be practical arguments against Georgism, but the position
that all land is the common property of humanity is no less ad hoc
than your contention that everything has to be owned by someone. In
fact, in Australian and North American aboriginal cultures the idea
that land could be owned by an individual was considered bizarre.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou