A thought experiment for Libertarians

[Cavemonster]

Once the landlord/tenant contracts have been entered into, the landlord has no right to unilaterally change the terms.

He can if a process for changing the terms is stipulated in the contract itself and that process is followed.

He can not arbitrarily change the rents, the rules of the apartments or the trade stands. If a landlord or tenant wants changes to an existing contract, they need to negotiate then sign off on the changes. If the negotiations are not successful then the existing contract stands.

We have all kinds of contracts that allow for terms to be changed without a new contact being signed. As long as both parties agree to the process, the contract is valid.

Children born in the complex have no obligation to the landlord - they are solely the responsibility of their parents. When a child reaches the age of majority the landlord would have to negotiate a separate set of contracts with that child if it is his hope that the child will remain in the complex.

What's this "negotiate"? In the majority of businesses in America, there is no haggling. If you want a MacDonald's hamburger you don't negotiate a new contract, you either engage in the standard contract they offer, or you get your hamburger somewhere else.

Similarly, if a child does not want to sign the standard apartment lease, he can move out. If you don't want to abide by the laws of this country, you can leave. In what way are the situations not analogous? In what way are they coercive?

Contrast this with government. Governments constantly make up new rules (laws) or change existing laws (if they weren't constantly fiddling with the laws then we wouldn't need so many politicians). Governments are constantly making up new taxes and changing existing taxes - all despite what the public thinks about it. If anybody doesn't like it then the politicians sneer and say, "so what are you going to do about it? Vote for the other mob?"

Again, when you agree to live in this country, you agree that the terms may be changed by a certain process. You can leave the country whenever you want, which is much more freedom than you have with an apartment lease.

And if you think the government has no right to tell you how to raise your children, try doing something innocent like home-schooling them (that's right - you can only home school your children if the government lets you and then only if they approve of your curriculum). Government actually tend to believe that they own your children. If they don't like the way you are raising your children (or you are a thorn in their side in some other way) then they will take your children off you and put them in some institution that will do the job properly.

If you don't like any of the terms of living in the apartment building, you can move out.

 

[ravdin]

At this point, in my mind either at some point we've crossed a line where this property owner can't use force to protect his property, or the government can use force to levy taxes and protect their citizens. if there's a meaningful difference, please point it out to me.

That's where you lost me. The analogy might hold up if we were all the personal, private property of the US government. Fortunately, we're not.

I'm not anti-taxes, by the way- but if I were I wouldn't be convinced by your argument.

 

[Cavemonster]

Could you please clarify the bolded?

Although I'm not a Libertarian, I don't see the problem. There are children who live their entire adolescent lives inside a single apartment home. That you've expanded it into some kind of arcology doesn't change the issue of ownership. Unless each individual/family living inside owns their own apartment (and/or trade table space), I would think the contractual obligations of renting would hold as if it were a normal apartment building.

If you rent space in a building/office/arcology I own, then no matter how long you've lived or worked there, how many children you've raised or your childrens' children have raised - it's still my building. Why wouldn't it be? Just because you and everyone else managed to successfully procreate for a couple generations, I lose ownership of my building?

The only thing I can see is that by age 18 (or some other agreed upon year), every child born into the building must sign a contract stating that they understand and will comply with the rules laid out in said contract or he/she must leave.

I think you agree with me

At this point, in my mind either at some point we've crossed a line where this property owner can't use force to protect his property, or the government can use force to levy taxes and protect their citizens. if there's a meaningful difference, please point it out to me

In this statement I'm trying to say (a bit awkwardly) that you cannot be consistent and condemn government while supporting any right to use force to enforce a contract, because there is no meaningful difference I can see between the apartment I describe, and a government.

You can't condemn taxes because you feel they are coercion while at the same time supporting the use of force in defense of contracts and property, because taxes are not any different from the fees I've described in my model.

I fear I'm having a hard time constructing this sentiment, let me try one more go to make sure I've got it.

Government with laws and taxes == Apartment building with fees and rules

Libertarians often claim one is violence and one is freedom, I think the distinction is false.

 

[Cavemonster]

That's where you lost me. The analogy might hold up if we were all the personal, private property of the US government. Fortunately, we're not.

I'm not anti-taxes, by the way- but if I were I wouldn't be convinced by your argument.

We're not property of the government, but the land we're on is.

I can make a rule that there's no screaming in my store, or no smoking. I don't need to own the people to do that.

Most libertarians hold that a person or business can have control over what happens on their property.

EDIT:
The force I'm referring to is enforcing the contract.
Going back to my apartment building. Let's say someone signs a lease for an apartment, doesn't pay, and won't leave, or damages the walls in violation of the lease agreement, Most libertarians agree that the use of force in response to the breaking of a contract or a threat to property is justified. In the US, that force would be police and the rule of law. In libertopia, it would be a private security firm.

 

[psionl0]

He can if a process for changing the terms is stipulated in the contract itself and that process is followed.

Sure. The landlord could also stipulate in a contract that you must build a shrine in your apartment and worship him every night. If you are silly enough to agree to such terms then you have no right to complain that you don't like the way the landlord does things.

It doesn't change the fundamental difference that the landlord is essentially someone you do business with while the government (believes it) is your ruler. The government can not only unilaterally change the terms of a contract it has with you, it can do so retrospectively. It doesn't matter that they can't change the past, they just appoint a judge who says, "yes they can".

 

[theprestige]

What claims specifically do you need a reference for?

How about the claims I specifically quoted immediately above the part where I specifically asked you for references for those specific claims that I specifically quoted?

Could you start with those?

 

[ravdin]

Just to expand a little on my previous post- I have no problem whatsoever with the government collecting taxes in order to raise money for things we need- roads, schools, police, public services, national defense, etc. I'm even in favor of publicly funded health care!

My main objection is with using taxes to fund social engineering projects that are a well liked tactic of both parties to pander to their base- don't smoke, drink, eat fatty food (or consume too much high fructose corn syrup, although strangely we also heavily subsidize it), have gay sex, or for that matter have sex with anyone you're not already married to. Make sure you go to church. And buy a house while you're at it- it's the American Dream!

 

[Cavemonster]

You're wrong because you would lose control of your apartment building to tenants who decide to vote to take it away from you.

That's a bit of a tangent.

My model has nothing to do with democracy (Although you could derive democracy with a few more steps) it's just a country derived from nonaggression and contracts. In the OP, it's pretty analogous to dictatorship.

 

[ravdin]

We're not property of the government, but the land we're on is.

Excuse me, what?! Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean that we're essentially serfs working the land at the government's pleasure. It's a small step up from being personal property ourselves, but not much of one.

 

[theprestige]

I thought the similarity between the apartment and a country was pretty self explanatory. It isn't begging the question to supply an analogy without exhaustively cataloging why it's appropriate.

It's not self-explanatory, though.

It begs the question because you assume certain things to be true about government, and then use the terminology of the apartment building to get your audience to agree with those assumptions without questioning them.

Say a government is like a landlord, and you have your audience agreeing with you about all sorts of things that are true about landlords, but may not actually be true about governments.

Why not discuss governments themselves, in their own terms, rather than in terms of landlords?

I tried to include all the relevant facets and all the typical libertarian objections, working and living, being born there. If you see an element of the business I've described that's not analogous to a country in a meaningful way, please point it out.

See, here you're citing "typical libertarian objections". Do you have references for this? Can you give us examples of "libertarian objections" in the real world? Can you demonstrate that these examples are "typical"?

If you can provide references, then the analogy--and the thought experiment--are probably unnecessary: We can simply discuss the thing itself, in its own terms, referencing and responding directly to your source material.

If you cannot provide references; if you yourself have no idea if the analogy address "relevant facets" and "typical libertarian objections", then what's the point of the thought experiment? Isn't really just an apartment building inhabited by and presided over by straw men?

 

[Cavemonster]

How about the claims I specifically quoted immediately above the part where I specifically asked you for references for those specific claims that I specifically quoted?

Could you start with those?

I apologize if you were confused, in this quote:

I'm deriving a model from the rules that libertarians espouse. The agreement I mentioned was their agreement that I haven't misrepresented their premises or committed a logical error in working from those premises.

I don't really see anything I'd call a claim.
If you're challenging whether my model is derived from rules libertarians espouse, of course I don't speak for all libertarians, but I tried to construct a model in line with accepted market practice and adhering to the nonaggression principle.

If you misread the following statement as a claim that any libertarians agreed with me, then you read it without noting it's context as a response to a poster who was confused about what kind of agreement I was talking about. He thought I was referring to a contractual agreement, when I was making a statement that IF libertarians agreed that my system was within the parameters described above, the difference between my model (which describes a dictatorship) and a democracy could be covered in a few steps.

It's an odd quote for you to pull and demand proof of because it's a correction to a simple misreading I was offering in the middle of a conversation that itself was tangential and based on another misreading. Basically it has absolutely nothing to do with the point of the OP, and was from a side conversation.

So I'm not sure why you're so specifically needing verification, but I hope I've cleared it up.

I responded to the rest of your edits already,
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7170691#post7170691

 

[Cavemonster]

Excuse me, what?! Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean that we're essentially serfs working the land at the government's pleasure. It's a small step up from being personal property ourselves, but not much of one.

In a dictatorship, you bet.
In a democracy? No because we actually are the government as well. It's a collective.

But again, this is a tangent. Call it ownership and renting, call it ownership and metaownership, call it what you want. The government has a claim to the land and your personal claims to use it are a contract with that government. I'm not making a rhetorical emotional case for why government is great, I'm making a case for why it is consistent with nonaggression.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

What you describe in the final example sounds a lot like the arcologies and seasteadings that some folks on the fringes of libertarianism have talked about setting up. They make/own the land or the building, they make the rules, and if you like their rules and follow them you can live there, otherwise pack your bags. The seasteading thing is because there really isn't anywhere on land where there are no preexisting rules that take precedence.

I'm actually all for that sort of thing; I grew up as part of the culture that experimented with different living systems, rules and arrangements. Some few were successful, plenty were failures, but in the end there was a body of knowlege generated on things like just how stoned a bunch of guys can be and still get all the work done, how much of your income you should tithe to the guru who runs the place, and just how many limos are too many for the leader, when the populace lives in medieval conditions. I'd be all for giving a square mile of wilderness to any organization that wanted to set up a charter and try out a system of living. Your own personal galt's gulch, just you and a bunch of whoever you can convince that you've got a good idea.

It's like culturing bacteria. You want to select for a certain trait, like growth in the presence of poisons, growth in the absence of certain nutrients, etc, so you inoculate your plate with a diverse population, lots of different variations on the genome, and after a while you see which ones survive and which ones die. Most will die. A few will thrive and make successful colonies. Afterward you can pick off one of the successful colonies and inoculate a whole plate with just that strain, or by analogy, start other communes with the living arrangement of the successful ones.

 

[Cavemonster]

If you cannot provide references; if you yourself have no idea if the analogy address "relevant facets" and "typical libertarian objections", then what's the point of the thought experiment? Isn't really just an apartment building inhabited by and presided over by straw men?

I'm not here to make a case about what libertarians believe.
I just wanted to make a case that government does not violate nonaggression in a way that I hoped would answer objections to such arguments I've heard in the past.

The idea of a straw man is kind of absurd with the amount of "Please correct me if I'm wrong's" I've been using.


You seem to be very angry about something.

If you're really interested in communicating, tell me specifically how I've misrepresented you and how my model could better address your concerns.

 

[michaelsuede]

Michael,
I think you misunderstand the analogy.
The entire country is the apartment complex and the trade floor. As the owner, I'm only charging people who work on my trade floor or live in my apartments, they are perfectly free to live and work elsewhere, another country, and I don't in fact have any sway over them when they move to another country.

Does the US prevent residents from moving to other countries?

Your analogy doesn't work as a comparison because an apartment complex is localized unit owned by a private citizen. In reality, people would be able to simply move across the street as you suggest.

This is obviously entirely different than moving across international borders which entails moving into what could be considered simply another version of your complex, which would be owned by you (the government).

If you are playing the role of government, then we have to consider the fact that you own every piece of real estate on the planet and no one can be free from your control. You might have different rules in each of your complexes, but ultimately you (the government) owns all of them.

On top of that, the people in the other complexes live entirely different lives, speak entirely different languages, and have entirely different customs.

This makes moving a radically difficult and risky venture for those who want to try and be free from your control.

The moral thing to do is allow competition across the street, not just across international borders.

 

[Cavemonster]

Your analogy doesn't work as a comparison because an apartment complex is localized unit owned by a private citizen.

So a group of people, or a company can't own a building? How is a country not localized?

In reality, people would be able to simply move across the street as you suggest.
This is obviously entirely different than moving across international borders which entails moving into what could be considered simply another version of your complex, which would be owned by you (the government).
If you are playing the role of government, then we have to consider the fact that you own every piece of real estate on the planet and no one can be free from your control. You might have different rules in each of your complexes, but ultimately you (the government) owns all of them.

You do understand that there's more than one government? right?

That said, your objection seems to be based on what the neighbors are doing. There's nothing wrong with my apartment building except that too much of the land is already apartment buildings.

I don't see the difference in cultures between countries as relevant to aggression, any company you choose to do business with will be different. Different apartments I lived in had different roomates, different cultures, different landlords, that's part of the market.

Is there anything you find inherently wrong with the apartment building, as long as you understand that each building, has a separate owner. There's no monopoly, you can move to any country who'll have you. If none of them will have you, that's the market at work. If there's no land available without an apartment building on it, that's the market too. They beat you to homesteading.

 

[michaelsuede]

You do understand that there's more than one government? right?

That said, your objection seems to be based on what the neighbors are doing. There's nothing wrong with my apartment building except that too much of the land is already apartment buildings.

I don't see the difference in cultures between countries as relevant to aggression, any company you choose to do business with will be different. Different apartments I lived in had different roomates, different cultures, different landlords, that's part of the market.

Is there anything you find inherently wrong with the apartment building, as long as you understand that each building, has a separate owner. There's no monopoly, you can move to any country who'll have you. If none of them will have you, that's the market at work. If there's no land available without an apartment building on it, that's the market too. They beat you to homesteading.

No, there is only the State or no State. If you represent the State in your analogy, then you own everything on the planet, because the entire planet is controlled by States.

An analogy would be you personally own everything, but have different managers running your buildings.

Currently there are no regions of the world that have no State. The closest country in the world to having no State is Somalia, but it is actually a tribal State, much like Afghanistan. Property rights and the rule of law are not enforced by private citizens in a free market in Somalia, which is what libertarians advocate for.

 

[Cavemonster]

No, there is only the State or no State. If you represent the State in your analogy, then you own everything on the planet, because the entire planet is controlled by States.

An analogy would be you personally own everything, but have different managers running your buildings.

That only holds if you believe that all governments are run by the same people. If you do believe that, further discussion will probably be tricky.

 

[psionl0]

What is legal today could suddenly become illegal tomorrow (or yesterday) at the whim of the government. They don't even have to say "agree or leave". They can just say "obey or we will throw you in the clink"!

A landlord simply doesn't have that power.

Suppose that in some of the apartments there is drinking/drug taking/gambling/prostitution going on and the other tenants object. What can the landlord do? The answer is nothing if the contract does not mention these activities - until the lease is up for renewal. Even then, if the tenant is a good payer who otherwise causes no problems, the landlord may be reluctant to include terms in a contract that the tenant won't agree to - especially if he is not certain to get another tenant in a timely fashion.

Many in the CT brigade have tried to argue that the government has no authority over you unless it has a contract. They even go further and argue that the government can only deal with your "strawman" and if you can break the nexus between you and your strawman then you are free of all government regulations and charges.

None of it is true. A country is not an apartment complex and the government is not a landlord. You are comparing apples with oranges.

 

[michaelsuede]

That only holds if you believe that all governments are run by the same people. If you do believe that, further discussion will probably be tricky.

No, you're missing the point.

The State (you) exert control over a region or you do not.

If you play the role of the State in your analogy, then you own everything and no one can be free from your control.

The best they can do is change apartment managers, they can never be free from you totally.

Further, if someone wants to change buildings in your analogy, they have to learn an entirely different language, change all the customs they are accustom to, and leave all of their extended family behind. Clearly this is ridiculous.