Natural rights problem
 

In many countries, people live in shantytowns with no permanent dwellings. This is a terrible way to live, with no clean water or sewage control, no permanent marketplace, etc.

It's not all that hard to build roads and sewage pipes and to build the homes to be more permanent. Griff did it, although he had access to a modern westernized society with power tools and such. But the Amish manage without these things. So why don't the folks in Africa?

In some countries the government doesn't respect property rights and will nationalize anything left standing after a stiff wind.

But it's more common for countries to not respect property rights by simply not maintaining them. Without a system of deeds and police to watch over such property, without a system of courts to manage disputes in a systemic manner, the property rights fall apart.

Or so it seems.

I believe there are natural rights, but I wonder about the status of rights that can be taken away from us at a whim... not by governments, but by just anyone. Natural rights can't just die away, but do they become meaningless if they can't be upheld? I have a right to the property that I own, but if it can be stolen easily without reparation, it scarcely matters that I have that right. Eh? If my money is stolen, it's still "my" money but if I have no chance of getting it back and the thief has no chance at punishment, the real live result is that I'm poor -- the rights are nice to have had, but they did nothing.

If the people don't fund the police or government, or if the people/government do not respect property rights and fail to give police the job of maintaining them, ...

There are so many things to say on this topic... I hardly know where to start except to suggest that we all [re]read "The Lord of the Flies!" :cool:

I think it comes down to money. We live in an age of great specialization. I have certain skills that fortunately are valued enough that I get paid for using them. So in that way I provide necessities for myself and my family. If I had to grow food myself, or build my own house, or stuff like that, instead of using my money that I've earned to pay other people to do it, I'd be up the proverbial creek. (OTOH I would probably have also bothered to ACQUIRE those skills somewhere along the line.)

And, I think, in a specialized society, you have to have some kind of government to mediate the currency. We all know there's nothing to stop me from printing up "Steve Dollars" and using them to pay for my groceries. And there's nothing to stop the grocery store from taking them. But they won't, because they don't trust me. But they do trust the government, so the grocery store will take government-issued money from me. And part of that guarantee behind the currency--it's implicit but I think it's there--is that the government honors your right to make those purchases and keep them. In other words, once I've paid over money for a bag of potato chips, those are MY potato chips and the government will enforce those property rights on my behalf.

If there's no central currency-issuing body that everybody trusts to provide a common means of exchange and back it up, then it becomes much harder to "do business" and people end up being more self-sufficient. Each unit (family, or whatever) holds onto whatever they can hold onto. And it's much easier for a more powerful (usually in the physical force sense) entity to take your stuff. And if that entity is actually the government well then, forget it.

There are countless ways to protect property. In Somalia they are developing a system based on tribal relationships. As I understand it, the land belongs to the tribe but you own your improvements. They are developing relationships with corporations based on this idea. Free ports are part of the deal, companys apparently build their own infrastructure. Next step the stars! sorry thats a bit of a leap Anyway the tribal law around it is developing organically as needed. I've heard it described as a Kritarchy, but I'd have to look it up.

Unfortunately much of Africa is in part a casualty of the Cold War. The Soviets supported Black Nationalism so the communist contempt for personal property is being acted on by the likes of Robert Mugabe. His land redistribution is now starving his people. You can't really blame them for wanting to toss the whites but the bottom line is their government has a history of negating property rights which will probably be used against dissenters. Africa was cut off from its past by colonialism, communism, and nationalism, now they need to cut their own path, hopefully in a way that fits their culture.

If you're going to have a "hunter / gatherer" lifestyle, you need a lot of land for it. As people are societal by nature, they form groups or tribes and the need for land grows exponentially. When the land is poor, they need even more. An increase in population (as people are wont to do) eventually will lead to conflict. This can be remedied by reducing population or changing lifestyles to agriculture and (semi)skilled trades.
changing lifestyles requires organization that can only come from forming some type of government or religious control. We've seen all to often what comes of religious control:vomit:
A government that establishes rules, no matter how harsh, and enforces them, is the first step. People adjust to almost any rules, if they remain constant. And they'll form a stable society no matter how poor they are. Once stable, wealth can be generated and the standard of living raised. But without enforced rules(law) there is no hope for the poverty stricken.
The only right you're born with is the right to struggle to live as well as you can until you die.

One problem is that the government really doesn't know who owns what. They don't have the library/IT infrastructure to manage all of that knowledge and some of them don't evem care.

I don't live in Africa and haven't read enough about it, so assume that a lot of this post is conjecture. I'm trying to base this off of Hernando deSoto's "The Mystery of Capitalism", but I can't remember enough of it and I'm probably mangling the message horribly. He did a lot of research on property rights in various countries, and is apparently working with the Peruvian government to change the way their legal system deals with the issue.

If you're going to make improvements in a town's infrastructure, you need to know who's paying for it, which would be the people living there: if you don't know who they are (and can't tax them) you might be much less likely to make such improvements. If they do know who owns the land, it's usually obsolete or uninformative, because whoever did own the land might have sold it to someone

What they need to do is map out who lives where and say that; "okay: if you have lived here for five years or so and you have made improvements to it (think of America's Homestead Act), you will be marked down as owning this land and you will be given a deed to it. You can sell this house and your land to whoever you want (and we will make it easy for you to record that on our servers*.)."

*In most places, you have to go through such a ludicrous number of bureaucratic steps to transfer the deed to your property that people don't even bother informing the government that someone else now owns it.

Unfortunately, even in the United States, property rights are not absolute. Eminent domain can be used to take away property. Probably the most egregious case of this is the town of Coatesville's attempt to seize a farm (of course they will offer compensation) in an adjoining community in order to build a public golf course.

Now eminent domain was considered necessary for railroads, highways, pipelines, etc. But when we begin talking about using it to seize land for golf courses, or worse yet, private businesses, then we have gone too far. If I remember correctly, I have heard that the Supreme Court is watching the situation and that if things go too far they might get involved.


Save Our Farm Site

Editorial from Philadelphia Inquirer

I find that very, very funny. It strikes a chord as "that's _wrong_!", but I still find it to be funny.

Middletown Twp in Delaware County took Linville Orchards by E.D. for "open space" They told the Linville family they would receive $13k per acre in compensation. 1/2 mile away, the 1/3 acre building lots were selling for $ 60k. :(

Was the land seized or was there an agreement. I don't feel that land used for 'open space' should be priced the same as building lots. I do have a big problem with siezed land ending up in the hands of private developers, either immediately or when the public structure built is torn down.

A forced agreement whereas Linvilles will continue to farm until(I think) 7 years after the death of the oldest son. At that time it will be seized. If you have land zoned R1 (residential-single family homes) you should be compensated at fair market value for the same, regardless what they do with it. What they do with it is a whole other question as to the moral and legal propriety.

Did they pay the 13k now? If they paid 13K for the land now, and agreed not to take it until at least 7 years in the future, then the value of the agreement is greater than 13k. Especially if title has been transferred and they no longer have to pay property taxes. Since property taxes are local I will bet this is the case. This will also mean no state inheritance taxes, or federal if they continue to have federal inheritance taxes.

It's not always a black and white issue. Some authorities can be creative in positive ways.

Not creative or positive enough to make up for paying $2m for $27m worth of land. And nothing for the buildings.

Wait, is this *Linvilla* orchards? That sucks, they've got a nice place, and I'm willing to bet it won't stay"open space" for long."... when did this happen?

A couple years ago. Same time they grabbed Darlington Farms