The Difference

The difference between labor and land is that land is conserved while labor is subject to erasure by the second law of thermodynamics. That is one quick way to differentiate between the two. You may have added improvements to land, and so you validly own the labor in those improvements, but all those decay with time. The space however remains.

Hence to say you own the space, because you found it and put a fence around it at some point in time is bogus. You were free to use it, but when there's no more space for others and people start becoming landless, then principles of liberty (in contrast to mere "freedom") have to kick in.

Rich people have no more rights to Nature than poor people, and people who are "there first" have no more rights to Nature than people who come later. Life isn't fair, and we all have different capabilities, but Nature was given to us with no partiality.

"If we are all here by the equal permission of the Creator, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his bounty -- with an equal right to the use of all that nature so impartially offers.1 This is a right which is natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in every human being as he enters the world, and which during his continuance in the world can be limited only by the equal rights of others. There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in land. There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they could not grant away the right of those who follow them. For what are we but tenants for a day? Have we made the earth, that we should determine the rights of those who after us shall tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who created the earth for man and man for the earth, has entailed it upon all the generations of the children of men by a decree written upon the constitution of all things -- a decree which no human action can bar and no prescription determine." Henry George - Progress and Poverty.

The core Georgist principle

The core Georgist principle is the equal right to use Nature (or Land, which therefore includes land). This is sometimes referred to as “common property.” From this principle, it follows that the economic rent of Land (matter, energy, space - anything natural) is for the benefit of all. This is apart from Labor (man made entropy changes to Nature). Labor is therefore what's true property.

With that laid out, we can see what is justly private and justly common. Crops don’t just grow. They involve labor (entropy changes). What natural is in them are in a configuration in space and time because of the laborer’s labor (entropy changes). Crops get to the marketplace because of labor (entropy changes). The things of Nature in the crop are merely borrowed but there is justly privately owned labor mixed in it. Usually for convenience we just say the crop is privately owned because the borrowed Nature has almost no economic rent - or as Locke puts it, there is enough and as good (of the matter, energy, space used) for others.

Certain aspects of Nature however generate economic rent. Consider the land the crop was raised in. If it was land where there are no developments, the market rent of comparable empty land may be zero. That is, someone who wants to build a house or grow crops can find land freely. This is not the case in highly developed areas where there may be only a few empty lots available. The market rent of land (in its natural state or raw) is therefore what a user owes everyone else for using the land. It is the value that he enjoys for himself to use and is denying others while he is using it.

The right to use nature vs. private property on nature

Natural law can be distilled to two things: the right to life (equal in dignity) and the right to use nature (also referred to as common property). Without these two assumptions, there can be no liberty. Other derivative true rights come from these two. For example, the right to speech comes from the right to use nature - consider, vocal speech is the right to use the air to generate sound waves to convey ideas to another person. Hence temporal and intermittent possession, control, exclusion, enjoyment are already covered by the right to use.

However, a property right to land (and Nature in general) indefinitely entails: the right of possession + the right of control + the right of exclusion + the right of enjoyment + the right of disposition. There's no universal natural law that says people may have this "bundle of rights" to land - but many here pretend it is natural law. In fact, property rights on land is merely a claim backed by a threat of force, and therefore by aggression and nothing else.

The problem is that property rights on land harms others; this is measurable by market means as it is the economic rent a title holder demands from others either to use the land (rental), or to have the title transferred to them (exchange), or without the payment of rental or the full amount of the market price, the denial of others from the economic benefits of the land. It's as if the title holder of land should take the credit for the activity around the land and even the weather.

Henry George gave a succinct solution to this problem - common property on land means its economic rent should remain common. 

In reply to a "A middle class letter to the poorest of the poor"

Dear Middle Class:

I don't think you have thought about your ire for the 'poorest of the poor' too thoroughly. Let me enumerate the points that you might have missed.

1. The poor have little to do with the broken system that is taxing you of your income. It is a system offered as a solution by the middle to upper classes to fund society. Sure, they have voted for it, but the upper class and the middle class offer them no other better choices. It is the middle to upper classes that decided to tax income.

2. There is little upward mobility for them. Anecdotes about certain people making the hop from the lower class to classes above do not negate the fact that the vast majority of the poor will remain poor not because they cannot be hardworking but because there is no incentive to be hardworking.

3. It is said that the Philippines is a rich country or that it has lots of natural resources. But where is all this wealth going to? Think about this. It goes to a few private individuals. But to whom should these natural resources belong? Shouldn’t it be everyone? But the returns are not there. Had it been so, you would have been able to feed everyone and provide wealth that everyone could pay for their healthcare. The Philippines is rich enough in natural resources to feed and care for everyone.

4. What is the most useful natural resource to everyone? It is not gold. It is not beaches. It is not coral reefs. It is geographic space - or in other words the land itself. In fact, it is the natural resource that the poor is denied of and whose value the poor is denied of. They are not only unable to access it (forcing them to live in slums) they are also denied of its value (forcing them to beg for dole outs and vote for the next politician handing them a lifeline). But the access to land and therefore its value is their common right as human beings.

5. What then is the solution that would be equitable to everyone? Remove or diminish income taxes, collect the rent of land, streamline government, and use the funds to provide services and/or a UBI to everyone. This is not new. The classical liberals have talked about this centuries ago. Collecting the rent of land has the effect of land being returned to its natural state - common. Has this ever worked? See how much land is privately owned in Singapore or Hong Kong. Most of land is leased/rented with the rent funding government services.

When the poor are not worrying about how to get the basic things needed to survive, they would have more time to spend for upward mobility. Don't beat on them too much.

Sincerely,

A Just Nation


Re: https://www.facebook.com/rodolfo.caparino/posts/2995485123828135

Thermodynamics and Ownership

We assert that you own your labor since you own the activity resulting from your living. The act of acquiring already pre-existing matter and energy around is ones own and thus we say one owns his body; the act of acquiring itself is labor. It is not the pre-existing matter and energy itself that is owned, but the activity that got mixed into it producing higher orders of organization. This activity is not a vague notion but rather can be described scientifically through entropy and information. "As entropy quantifies the degree of disorder in a system, any envisioned lifeform must have a higher degree of order than its supporting environment." (Azua-Bustos, Vega-Martinez, 2013) This is how we recognize the existence of life in other planets.

When people say they own Land however (for example, because of scarcity), they are making a claim that is quite different. They are claiming that the already pre-existing matter and energy itself is owned. But how do you do that without employing mere force or threat of force? It is a kind of ownership that is through aggression or backed by aggression rather than an ownership through created labor. How does one reserve land for ones self indefinitely without a guarantor who is willing to exact force on behalf of that person? Or how do you own land absolutely, in the right-libertarian sense, without a monopoly of force - or ironically, a State?

The Ownership of Labor and Property

It all starts with life. Life acquires from Nature what it needs to make itself survive. You can think of life as having its own will. It accumulates matter and energy from its surroundings borrowing from it to lower entropy, and thus higher order. So our bodies are composed of borrowed matter, and energy, in higher order of organization. The organization and the will are key. Our physical makeup is borrowed. Labor is not mere energy. It is directed energy by the will, our free will. This willful transfer of energy is a decision of the will to go from a lower entropic state to a higher entropic state. An exertion of work is a sacrifice of your internal body order to perform that work. This sacrifice to perform that work is why you own that work.

To get the lower entropy, life acquires energy from its surroundings as Nature provides. Here on Earth, the energy comes from the Sun, to photosynthesis, and to other life forms. Borrowing is the most precise term when describing your relationship to your physical makeup. Just as while you are borrowing anything, it is a tacit agreement among everyone that it is yours to use for the time being, it is also a tacit agreement in a just society that your body’s physical makeup is yours. You are borrowing atoms and energy from nature. Furthermore, you are taking and releasing matter and energy as you live. And after death you give it all back.

The necessity for matter and energy to be seen as borrowed from Nature rather than absolutely owned arises from the consideration of liberty: all human lives individually are of equal importance and of equal dignity. We cannot start from anywhere else. To decide otherwise leads to tyranny, which is exactly the opposite of liberty. Because all human life draws from Nature to survive, it follows that all human life has as much right to Nature as any other. To strengthen this argument, consider the opposite scenario where one life can absolutely own Nature. It can be seen by induction that if a part of nature can be absolutely owned by one, then all of nature can be owned. When all of nature is owned, human life is born in a world where all nature that is within proximate distance is already owned by others, but who themselves can access nature freely. It would be a situation where there’s haves vs. have-nots as far as Nature is concerned. If one considers that no one made Nature, then there’s clearly an injustice: the haves tyrannizing the have-nots.

For all useful purposes, the body is owned because life has mixed its processes (labor) with the atoms and have bound them together with energies in high organization and structural order. This provides a key to how we come to an equitable way to find ownership of Nature outside our bodies, it is by labor. Labor itself is owned, and one mixes labor with Nature to have an owned item. This is in fact merely a restating of Locke. But what about the injustice and tyranny mentioned in the previous paragraph? And don’t we just have the same thing? No, because if we treat Nature as only borrowed, we can measure how much infringement we have on each other. Thus, if we can measure how much infringement happens, then we can employ restitutions.

Consent and Duty

You often hear libertarians, particularly the right leaning ones, to a mention that 'taxation is theft' because there is no Consent. But this argument is faulty. If consent was the main argument, then one consenting to taxes makes it legitimate. 

The key word is Duty, and Duty precedes Consent. 

Sex is not rape because Duty requires that sex is consensual. 

A job is not slavery because it is the Duty of the employer to pay an employee. 

A transaction is not robbery, because it is the Duty of the two parties to uphold what was agreed upon. 

A tax is an assertion that there is money owed. If there is money owed, then it is ones Duty to pay. If there isn’t, there is no Duty to pay. Where there is money owed, consent is only applicable in some cases because one can owe money through other ways - for example as in a tort. A collection of a true debt does not need consent. In frequent cases, it may need force.

Deciphering the Political "-isms"

I was first introduced to libertarianism through the Nolan chart. For those who are not acquainted with this chart, it is a rather simple two dimensional chart where personal and economic freedoms are at the axes. If you value personal and economic freedoms the most, you'll end up on the upper corner which is libertarian, if you value personal freedoms primarily then you are considered a "liberal," and if you value economic freedoms primarily then you are a conservative. Finally, if you value neither, then you are an authoritarian. (I put quote marks on "liberal" because I think it is a gross misnomer and perpetuates the misconception of what a liberal is.) The chart is accompanied by a ten point questionaire and is cleverly designed to point out to most Americans that they in fact have libertarian inclinations. The purpose of the chart was for use as a recruitment tool for the Libertarian Party. 

Nolan Chart

The chart is itself not dishonest and many Americans indeed value liberty and individuality; many have been led to realize that they are in fact libertarian in their beliefs. The main drawback of the chart is it oversimplifies things. Not everyone who falls under the libertarian field believe in the same thing regarding liberty and one often finds himself disillusioned once he joins the libertarian movement. To give an analogy in Christianity, one realizes that there are so many denominations to choose from - and worse, they despise each others beliefs if not each other. The Nolan chart does not convey that within libertarianism, there are many views and its adherents hold on to them as close as the religious do to their denominations. After all, the intention of the chart was to bring libertarians together and not to build walls between them.

If disillusionment does not settle in and they remain around long enough, they will eventually come across another chart - the Political Compass. 

Political Compass

This is arguably the most popular classification chart currently. The Political Compass is essentially equivalent to the Nolan Chart, if you flip it over the horizontal and perform a 45º coordinate transformation. The x- and y- axes have been replaced by the new coordinates namely, Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian. Similar to the Nolan chart, the Political Compass also comes with a questionaire; and because of the granularity of the chart, which consists of 20x20=400 squares, the questionaire that accompanies it is much longer. 

One cannot arbitrarily assign themselves in this chart or seek to fall in one of the fields with ease. On the horizontal, i.e., left and right, it is not immediately obvious how one plots on the field. One can perceivably aim to be more or less authoritarian (vertical). The purpose of the chart is classification and is unidirectional. It does more for self-reflection than self-improvement. 

Above are the two most popular ways of classification. Here I propose a new chart that has simplicity as a feature, taking after the Nolan Chart, but with clear indications on how one goes from left to the right, and with different levels of authorities of force. The intention is to give concise differences among the different views while being consistent with previous labels. 

Rather than continuums, discrete categories will be used. The coordinates along the horizontal use the classical economic factors of production and the vertical uses varying organizations of force. How does this classification work? To get to each distinct field, one asks himself or herself these two questions: 

1. Of land, capital, and labor, what would you consider commonly held? 
2. At what organization of force are you willing to uphold your beliefs on private and common property? [None, individual, mutual associations, or Government]

The resulting chart looks like this. 

It is worth noting that the phrase "factors of production" is not synonymous to the "means of production," which refer to land and capital taken together. Capitalism extends to that where capital is not taken as common, that is where it is considered privately owned. 

Let us discuss briefly going by rows. At the bottom row would be the pacifist row. These are beliefs that are held but are not defended by force, but rather only through non-violent means such as civil disobedience, civil resistance, protest and counter economics. Societies such as these tend to be small and limited in scale. The second row from the bottom are the anarchic societies. These do not preclude the use of force but will only employ them defensively and individually for the maintenance of what they believe in. The third row from the bottom are the minarchies. Here, the collective means or organized bodies such as police and justice systems are assembled and utilized by members of society. Finally, the uppermost row is where societal order is through a State. 

A surprising result, especially to American libertarians, is that the rightmost anarchic field is what can accurately be called right anarchism and not anarcho-capitalism. This is because in anarcho-capitalism, violence is explicitly not precluded in defending its views on property. Hence, anarcho-capitalism is not the "logical conclusion" of libertarianism nor is it the logical extreme. Furthermore, it depends on what one considers as common as we analyze next when we look at each column. 

Let us now discuss briefly going by column. At the far left is communism, where all three factors of production are held in common. This is consistent with common usage of the word, although it is often not described in these terms, and so the chart makes it clear how communism can be distinguished from the rest. The second column is socialism. Here, the state form of socialism, as practiced, tends to differ with its anarchic form in its views on labor. That is, state socialism tends to socialize labor as well and this is represented with dashes with state communism. The socialization of labor often comes in the form of the taxation of labor. This is consistent with the opinion that socialism is merely a path to communism. This is also consistent with the view that capital is merely accumulated wealth from labor. The third column is Georgism where land alone is held common. This became a popular idea during the American guilded age and is gaining resurgence in popularity especially with economists. Finally, in the far left is monarchism. This makes the left-right distinction clear although a bit archaic. In more modern forms, monarchism has been replaced by corporatocracies although in functionality they are often the same - private parties control all factors of production. 

This leaves us with the common question: where does the Unites States fall under all this? Note first of all that the diagram is meant to classify individual ideals, inclinations and preferences. They are not meant to describe governments; governments are complex entities. While the US dissimulates strong adherence to property rights on the factors of production - land, labor and capital - it has been for over a century taxing and therefore socializing these. It has partially socialist and partially squirearchical and corporate capitalist elements to it. How much socialism is there, one may ask? By the amount of capital and labor it taxes its citizens - these are the distinguishing features of communism and socialism. This is a rather disheartening and sombering finding, especially to Americans, who see the United States as the bastion of capitalism and unfettered free trade. 

In conclusion, the distinctions between the Right and the Left can easily be analyzed by considering how the factors of production are viewed. The right views the privatization all factors of production as ideal while the left views the commonization of the factors to be the ideal. In between these two warring extremes is Georgism.

On Anarchy II

Anarchy does not mean no State. It means no rulers over you. Taking away a State does not mean that there would be no one who would rule over you. In fact, the State exists because the other parties that vie to rule over you have lost the public bidding. If you want a competitor to the current State, you can set one up right now. However, the rules of the current State will demolish that competitor you have immediately. A State is a monopoly of force on a given territory. 

Therefore, it all boils down to territory and its monopolization and this is where justice comes into play in gaining back liberty. If you can only monopolize a territory subject to the condition that you compensate those whom you exclude, then there will be no real rulers. It would be a competition of rulers on who can make as much productive use of the land. This principle can be consistently used on differents scales, from a square meter of land to a nation.

Georgism is the closest you can get to a true anarchy.

Systematic Libertarianism I

Systematic Libertarianism I

1. Definition. A libertarian is one who seeks the maximum liberty possible for all.
2. Postulate 1. A libertarian holds that life and liberty, in that order, are of utmost importance.
3. Discussion. Life is immaterial. It is a process. One can have life without liberty. However, one cannot have liberty without life. Life is therefore more fundamental. The order of importance is therefore life then liberty. 
4. Postulate 2. Liberty makes no preferences over individuals. 
5. Discussion. There are no special classes of people. Everyone is deserving of the same degree of liberty. 
6. Theorem. Violations of Postulates 1 and 2 are inconsistent with libertarianism. 
7. Explanation. To end life and to curtail liberty are violations. To offer liberty to some but not another given all things the same is a violation.
8. Definition. Property is a thing in possession kept without aggression.
9. Theorem. Property is a derived concept. 
10. Explanation. One can have life without property. One can have liberty without property. Therefore, property only follows from life and liberty.
11. Example. Livestock do not own themselves. 
12. Definition. Land is natural resources. 
13. Definition. Natural resources is ultimately nature itself. 
14. Discussion. Nature includes matter, space, energy, frequency spectra, etc. 
15. Discussion. All living things merely borrow from nature from the composition of their bodies to the space they occupy. 
16. Definition. Property is taking possession of nature.
17. Discussion. Property is taking portions of nature and treating it as if owned. Property is only by appropriation. Frequently, treating it as if owned is stated as merely "owned." 
18. Definition. Labor is work performed by or directed by human life.
19. Discussion. One owning any part of nature is a violation of others access to that same part of nature, be it an atom of air, or a continent, or a planet. Property is therefore immediately a violation of Postulates 1 and 2. What makes the violation tolerable is when the violation is negligible. This is what John Locke describes as "enough and as good." Thus, one owning the C, H, and O atoms in their body is tolerable because there is enough C, H, and O atoms around in nature for others to have. 
20. Theorem. Violation of Postulates 1 and 2 is measured by the market rent. 
21. Discussion. How much is one willing to pay to have the C, H and O atoms of another person? This is the rent. Apparently, the answer is not much since these atoms, in arbitrary form, are abundantly available elsewhere. 
22. Discussion. How about precious metals such as gold? Does ownership of it impede another's access to life and therefore liberty? Definitely, not life. And for the most part it does not impede liberty, for there is enough gold in the ground for one to concentrate given enough labor. If one however is taking more concentrated gold ore out of the ground and making it unavailable for others, there is good justification for severance fees or royalties. 
23. Theorem. Self-ownership is a derived concept. 
24. Explanation. Ones owning of his or her body is of negligible violation to the life and liberty of others.
25. Discussion. Because this is almost always the case, self-ownership is taken as a self-evident truth and treated as a postulate.
26. Discussion. When LVT is talked about, it is usually in reference to the value of geographic space. 

The Ownership of Labor

I had an interesting conversation with someone in a libertarian internet group yesterday. We were having a debate on the ownership of labor. My antagonist was arguing that labor cannot be owned by anyone. The argument goes somewhat as follows: "labor is an action and actions cannot be owned or else the owner has sole right to exclude others from that action." On a cursory consideration, this assertion seems to makes sense. If Sam does indeed own "singing," then he can assert his ownership rights to the action of singing.  He can stop others from singing. He could ask for licenses for singing. He'll be a very rich human being!

How popular this kind of argument is, or if any of the big-name libertarian writers advocate for this thought process, I could not immediately reckon; but it seems to have a following in right libertarian circles. Remarkably however, a casual examination of everyday affairs readily reveals that this idea goes counter to everyday exchanges. We pay for services all the time. When a bar hires a four man band to play for $500 for two and a half hours, that is a legitimate exchange of goods, in the form of money, and services. How is this resolved? Who owns our labor?

Apparently, the solution is rather simple. When we talk about who owns labor, we are not talking about labor in the abstract. We are talking about labor being performed by an actor. When we talk about "labor," we do not consider it headless. Hence in the example above, Sam owns [singing by Sam]. No one else owns [singing by Sam] except Sam. It becomes clear now who owns what. Note that it is perfectly legitimate for Sam to have complete control of [singing by Sam] for why should someone else dictate his actions. Likewise, the band owns [playing by band]. Therefore, it becomes clear that ones labor is the ownership of the actor.

Demanding services from others is slavery.