Ownership Of Public Property In The South example essay topic

1. Essentially, two positions have been put forward regarding the correct libertarian attitude toward public property. a. There is the view put forward by Salerno, Hoppe, and others thats long as public property exists, the de facto controller of the property (I can't tell who this is - the state, the majority, the most local unit of government have all been suggested) can and may prescribe rules for the use of that property just as if the de facto owner were the legitimate owner. b. The view I have put forward, which is that public property should be treated as unowned property in a state of nature. Hence, the only rules that apply are the same rules that apply in a state of nature: people may not aggress against other people; may not take their legitimate property; and may not stop them from homesteading unowned property.

The argument against my view, so far as I can tell, is simply that it would lead to chaos. People would quit wearing clothes, try to sell soccer balls on the NJ Turnpike, etc. I answer that... i. For standard coordination game reasons, most such bizarre uses of public property are highly unlikely. No one will set up tents onthe Turnpike because they would get run over. Most people won't runaround nude because they would be embarassed.

(The latter is subject to empirical proof - in Berkeley the failure of the city to arrest the Naked Guy did not lead to a breakdown in the wearing of clothes, even among drugged-out Berkeley residents.) ii. Moreover, you are merely pointing out the negative effects of respecting people's right to use unowned property in bizarre ways. But why should the negative effects have any bearing upon their right to do so It has no more relevance from a rights-based perspective than the negative effects of promoting illegitimacy.. Finally, strictly adhering to my view would have the effect of making privatization vastly more attractive. You, in contrast, seem to want to do everything possible t make public ownership "work". I see nothing nihilistic in wanting to see illegitimate methods of ownership become very unattractive to everyone.

It would only be nihilism if I wanted to see legitimate methods of ownership become unattractive, which I do not want to do. My argument against the "de facto owner can treat public property like private property" is rather stronger than the worry that nudists will run amuck. My argument is that your principle would justify every and all acts of state intervention which ever occurred and ever will occur. In short, your argument is compatible with (although it does not necessarily imply the advocacy of) the most hellish forms of totalitarianism which can be imagined. For example... i.

The Nazi Party, the de facto owners of Germany's streets, declares that Jews may not travel on German streets, nor enter German airports, nor German ports. Nor may anyone travelling on Germany's roads, airports, or ports do so with the intent of supplying goods to Jews. Your principle thus gives the Nazi Party a foolproof means of starving all Jews to death. ii. The government of the U.S., the de facto owners of the streets of the U.S., declares that no libertarian may use the streets, except for the purpose of leaving the country. Your principle thus gives the U.S. government a foolproof means of enforcing the mass expulsion of people based upon their political beliefs.. The government of the U.S.S.R., the de facto owner of everything in the Soviet Union, declares that no member of the bourgeoisie may use ANYTHING in the country.

Your principle thus gives the CCP a foolproof method of exterminating undesired social classes. I will leave aside the tenuousness of the "de facto ownership" concept. Suffice to say that if de facto ownership justifies whatever rules the de facto ownership chooses to enforce, then there is every reason to acquire de facto ownership by any means necessary. Thus, if the South asserts de facto ownership of public property in the South, the North can acquire the "right" to rule the public property of the South merely by successfully crushing the de facto Southern owners.

In short, while my view of public property justifies some minor inconveniences, your view justifies ANY status quo whatever. Ofcourse, you need not favor the aforementioned murderous uses of public property by de facto owners. But as I am sure you know, advocating an action and advocating a person's right to perform an action are two conceptually distinct advocacies. Secondly, I wish to answer this charge of "nihilism" and "seventies-style libertarianism". I cannot directly comment upon what libertarians were like in the 1970's because my youth precludes it. I have however intensely studied many of the libertarian periodicals of the period, fromthe Journal of Libertarian Studies to Reason to Libertarian Forum, and I judge it to have been a time of great progress for libertarian scholarship along a number of dimensions.

If it was a period of drug-induced stupor and hatred of the good for being good, I can only assume that this was not reflected in much libertarian writing. (Incidentally, a large fraction of the sympathy for the left-wing counter-culture came out of Rothbard's Libertarian Forum.) Finally, I come to the charge of "nihilism". If someone says that is good and I say it is bad, you can hardly accuse me of nihilism. Even if I am wrong, I do not want to destroy the valuable qua valuable. What you actually mean, I think, is that I disagree with you about what is valuable. For example, if I want to see public property abolished, it is not nihilism unless I simultaneously hold that public property is good.

And I don't. Incidentally, the same goes, a fortiori, if I declare that religion, nationalism, and deference to tradition are evil. It is not nihilism because I attack them in the name of other positive values in which do believe.