Category Archives: Property

Christian Libertarianism, Democracy, Freedom, Justice, Local Government, Property

Public Property

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The relationship between public property, government and the public is the same as the relationships of a trust.

The public are the beneficiaries and the government officials should act as trustees by managing the public assets according to the interests of the public.

The rights and wrongs of government property management are similar to the rights and wrongs of personal property management. In the case of property management the mandate of the majority is as legitimate as the will of an individual property owner.

This means that it is not wrong for government officials to manage fishing quotas, forests, Boobs on Bikes, littering and much more.

Freedom is not an overriding principle.

Apartheid, Ecclesiastes, Keep it Metal!, Property, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, The Morningside, Treaty of Waitangi

Chasing after the wind

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Can I sue Ngāti Toa for compensation for the storm damage incurred by their deity?

Wind To Be Subject Of Next Treaty Claim

As the Government prepares to negotiate with Maori over ownership of rivers, a Waitangi Tribunal claim is being finalised for Maori to earn a dividend for the use of wind for commercial electricity generation.

Ngapuhi political commentator and Hone Heke Foundation chairman, David Rankin, has been approached by a cohort of hapu representatives to act as spokesperson for the claim.

“I’m not yet convinced about the full merits of the claim,” says Mr Rankin, “but in my preliminary discussions with the hapu representatives, they make some good points and I am hopeful that they will be able to get their claim finalised over the next few months.”

According to Mr Rankin, the planned claim will insist that a pan-tribal body be established to manage shares in commercial wind-generated electricity, and to exercise a casting vote on where wind turbines can be located.

Mr Rankin says that Maori entitlement to the wind can be justified under article two of the Treaty of Waitangi, which guarantees Maori full and exclusive ownership of all their properties. “Traditionally, the wind was regarded as a deity in Maori society, and Maori do not consider the Crown have the right to use it without Maori consent.”

Mr Rankin is encouraged by the recent Tribunal claim for water, and believes that the claim to wind will lead on to other areas of property rights such as aerospace.

Everyone’s toil is for their mouth,
    yet their appetite is never satisfied.
What advantage have the wise over fools?
What do the poor gain
    by knowing how to conduct themselves before others?
Better what the eye sees
    than the roving of the appetite.
This too is meaningless,
    a chasing after the wind. (NIV)

Fish, Fruit, Property, Regulation

Killing Whales To Save Them (Part 2)

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Killing Whales To Save Them (Part 1), was about animal welfare. Part 2 is about conservation. It’s about not depleting our ocean fisheries of fish. And it’s about not driving species (such as whales) to the verge of extinction.

Today’s post was partly triggered by TVNZ 7: Freedom has a Price, a recent post by atheist Mark Hubbard on his blog Life Behind the IRon Drape. Damien Grant has it exactly right in his comments on Mark’s post. Since he’s pretty much pre-empted what I was going to say, I’ll copy and paste.

But I like fish!

I do not want them to die and I have no faith that fisherman will act in their own best interests.

Save the Flake! Regulate! (repeat)

If the fish had an owner they would not be farmed to extinction. The solution is simple, they need an owner.

It does[n’t] really matter who, but if there is an owner the market can work. If there is no owner you get the tragedy of the commons.

Getting the fish an owner may require some impure statist intervention, but all property, historically, has been acquired … with some impure statist intervention.

Once done you … have fish and freedom!

Well said, Damien. If the price of freedom is no fish, then freedom is unaffordable! Mark says that no fish might, indeed, be the price of freedom, but, thankfully, he’s wrong. And Damien is wrong about the statist intervention being “impure,” for reasons I briefly alluded to.

We need privatisation.

… ocean fish are not the products of men’s minds. But they’re scarce. Scarcity, not production, is the basis of property rights.

I’ll spell this out explicitly … after lunch.

So, yeah. Scarcity, not production, is the basis of property rights. (There are more than two theories of property and property rights, and variations of each, and hybrid theories, but this is a blog post, not a doctoral dissertation.) Let’s compare the scarcity theory of property with the production theory of property.

The production theory of property says that if you produce something, or add value to something, it’s yours. The scarcity theory says that if it’s a scarce commodity, and the prevailing social convention says it yours, it’s yours.

If you’re shipwrecked and find yourself alone on a tropical desert island, the production theory of property says that the mangoes you pick from the tree, or the fallen mangoes you pick up off the ground, are your property, but the mangoes you leave on the tree or leave on the ground are not your property. The scarcity theory of property says that none of the mangoes is your property, simply because there is no need for a social convention to allocate mangoes.

The scarcity theory of property, you see, is the answer to a pressing question, viz., how do we allocate scarce resources in a free society? Whereas, the production theory of property is not the answer to anything. It says that if you produce something, or add value to it, then it’s your property, whether you like it or not. I don’t know about you, but if I found myself alone on a desert island, I would eat mangoes. It wouldn’t worry me, or anyone else, in the slightest that they either were or weren’t my mangoes. (Actually, it would worry me if they were my mangoes. I’d be asking myself, why on earth are these my mangoes? And then I’d eat them. To ease my metaphysical anxiety.)

But let’s get back to fish … before I get the urge to pop across to the supermarket for some mangoes.

So, yeah. Two common types of property are tangible goods and land. Both are in scarce supply. The scarcity theory of property handles both types of property. The production theory of property, however, struggles with land. Either it relies on “improvements” to the land to make it property, or it relies on an ad hoc “finders keepers” add-on to the theory. Elegance is an epistemic virtue, and either version of the production theory applied to real estate is inelegant, don’t you think?

Now let’s go to the fish. Ocean fish are not the products of men’s minds. Someone who subscribes to the production theory of property plus the “finders keepers” add-on can say that ocean fish become property as soon as they’re caught. They can say that the fish belong to no one until such time as they’re caught. But this way of thinking leads quickly to the tragedy of the commons. Like a gold rush, there’s a fish rush. And, soon, there are next to no fish left. Casting a net for fish becomes like panning for gold. There’s an occasional fish here or there in a net full of nothing. Seemingly, only the heavy hand of statist intervention can rectify the situation and save the fisheries. And libertarianism is severely compromised.

It need not be so! The scarcity theory of property tells us that ocean fish are a scarce commodity and should, therefore, be privatised! How this privatisation is implemented is not as important as the privatisation itself. Allocating quotas, or particular species, or geographic areas of ocean, to interested parties who apply for commercial fishing licences solves the problem of the tragedy of the commons which is the natural outcome of applying the production theory of property to ocean fish. A Ministry of Fisheries (albeit, a very small one) is a legitimate arm of government.

Privatise the whales, too! This can be done by literally tagging whales, there’s so few of them left. And privatise kiwis! If private enterprise was permitted to farm kiwis for food the kiwi would no longer be an endangered species. (Imagine what a hit real kiwiburgers would be with the tourists!) It’s all so common sensical it’s no wonder the government hasn’t seriously considered the proposal.

ACT, Ayn Rand, Birds, Green Party, Metaphysics, Property, Regulation

Killing Whales To Save Them (Part 1)

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I got this in my email today.

ACT

 
Killing Whales To Save Them
Press Release by ACT Leader John Banks
Thursday, July 5 2012

The proposition that South Korea could begin so called ‘scientific’ whaling is an international outrage, ACT Leader John Banks said today.

“Like Japan, it remains ludicrous that they believe you need to kill whales to save them,” Mr Banks said.

“This thinking is as lamentable as it is obscene.

“It should be condemned and stopped before it even begins,” Mr Banks said.

ENDS
 
Media Contact: Shelley Mackey, Press Secretary, 04 817 6634/ 021 242 8785
(shelley.mackey@parliament.govt.nz)
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ACT

Animals have rights. Yes, even feral conservatives like John Banks.

This PR may seem like one out of left field to some, but John Banks has a long history of campaigning for animal rights and supporting animal welfare legislation. It may seem that he and (former) Green MP Sue Kedgley make strange bedfellows, but a SAFE media release in (pre-election) October last year had this to say.

Greens Lead the Way against Colony Cages

If the nation’s three million caged hens could vote, the Greens and Act’s John Banks would be ruling the roost come this year’s election, says leading animal advocacy organisation SAFE.

Outgoing animal welfare spokesperson and Green MP Sue Kedgley, announced yesterday that her party will pledge against cruel colony cage systems and Act Party candidate, John Banks, also says he will pledge his personal support to help caged hens.

…

I say (and I am afraid this is going to be very unpop­u­lar), good on them both. Many libertarians are conflicted about animal welfare legislation. They think such legislation is unprincipled, while at the same time they abhor animal cruelty. I find their arguments, that the way to prevent animal cruelty is through social rather than legal sanctions, feeble at best and unconscionable at worst.

My defence of my seemingly unlibertarian views on the matter of animal welfare legislation is this. Animal welfare legislation is not a moral issue. It is a metaphysical issue.

(Almost) all libertarians I know subscribe to the view(s) that

human beings are individually possessed of certain inalienable rights, which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of … happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers – and only such powers – from the consent of the governed; that all laws legislated by governments must be for the purpose of securing these rights; that no laws legislated by government may violate these rights …

If you believe, as I do, that non-human animals also possess some (limited) rights, then it is within the proper scope of government to secure those rights. Animal welfare legislation is not necessarily unlibertarian. Whether it is or not depends on whether or not non-human animals possess rights. And that is a metaphysical question, not a moral one.

Compulsion, Justice, Meta-ethics, National Party, Property, State Rape

Don’t crush state assets!

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From go …

… to woe.

19-year-old Daniel Briant’s car, a Nissan Laurel, was crushed yesterday. It became the first car to be crushed under National’s “boy racer” legislation—the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, 2008.

Why crush? According to Judith “Crusher” Collins (via NZPA)

Cars could be confiscated under current law and courts could order them to be sold, she said, but they were bought by other boy racers and the problem was recycled.

Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the car review website dogandlemon.com, says the law is a waste of time.

“Yesterday, the owner of the first crushed car was just another boy racer with an attitude problem. Today he will be a hero to his fellow boy racers.”

“The idea that this car seizure will stop other youths offending is basically wishful thinking.

I love how he flat-out contradicts himself in the next two paragraphs (although what he’s trying to say is basically right, I think).

“Young females are attracted to young males who take risks. That’s one reason young males are so reckless. A young male would rather lose his car and be attractive to young females than obey the law and sleep alone.”

“The part of the male brain that links cause and effect doesn’t fully develop until the early 20s. That’s why young males often do silly things without thinking of the consequences.”

Stuff.co.nz has a photo of the boy-racer hero Briant, informs us that

A Facebook memorial site has been created for the souped-up car.

and helpfully links to Briant’s Facebook page, where we learn that Daniel’s interests include

Doing your mate’s ex to see what the problem was
Not dumping your girlfriend cause she’s a fucking hectic root
Being a cheeky cunt to everyone you know. Because, wtf else is there to do?
I wish I was on E as often as my gas tank
Never underestimate a guy’s ability to not give a shit
Going out for a Quiet One and Coming Home with a Court Date

While Daniel mourns the loss of his Nissan Laurel, we can mourn the misspent youth of today. Or mourn the misspent youth of yesteryear. (I don’t ever recall having that much fun! Well, not at that age, anyway. Oops, I think I’ve said enough. Time for a closing parenthesis.)

This is not a pretty picture. (It’s Minister of Police Anne Tolley, standing atop the crushed Laurel.)

The NZ Herald tells us

A grinning Police Minister Anne Tolley pressed the button to crush the Nissan Laurel at a Lower Hutt scrap metal yard.

Ms Tolley said it sent a “graphic” deterrent to illegal street racers.

But Stuff.co.nz reports

Tolley said less than three hours after receiving his third strike from the court Briant was back behind the wheel performing a burnout.

He lost control and crashed into a fence. It is understood he and a passenger fled the vehicle on foot.

There’s every sign that Briant is undeterred. (And, you know, I could have done with a souped up Nissan Laurel to replace my ground down Nissan Maxima.)

I’m against the whole idea of the government using cases like this to make “an example” and destroy property as “a deterrent to others”. It’s an unjust, utilitarian way of going about things. As philosopher Immanuel Kant rightly remarked

Juridical punishment can never be administered merely as a means for promoting another good either with regard to the criminal himself or to civil society, but must in all cases be imposed only because the individual on whom it is inflicted has committed a crime. For one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another…

Ayn Rand, Ecclesiastes, Intellectual Property, Property

God creates. Man makes alternative arrangements.

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Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Ayn Rand

The power to rearrange the combinations of natural elements is the only creative power man possesses. It is an enormous and glorious power—and it is the only meaning of the concept “creative.” “Creation” does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. “Creation” means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before. (This is true of any human product, scientific or esthetic: man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.)

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun[c].

Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?

Freedom, Intellectual Property, Property

If ‘property rights’ is the answer, what’s the question?

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If ‘property rights’ is the answer, what’s the question?

The question is, how do we allocate scarce resources in a free society?

Here are two common examples of scarce resources.

(1) Tangible, “value added,” goods.
(2) Land.

The answer in each case is the same: privatisation. The institution of private property—which is a societal convention—accords people property rights in tangible goods and land.

Tangible goods to which value has been added are the products of someone’s effort. Other things being equal, we give ownership of the goods to the person who produced them. According to our property conventions, you get to keep the fruits of your labours.

Land is already there. It’s not the fruit of anyone’s labours. So, as a very general rule, we give ownership of land on a “first come, first served” basis. If you’re the first to stake a claim (by planting a flag, perhaps), then it’s yours. (There may be qualifications, for example, it may be deemed necessary to “improve” the land, or to “occupy” it “continuously” for a period of time.)

What about so-called “intellectual property”? Should a free society give ownership of ideas? There’s no disputing the fact that good ideas are (almost) always products of someone’s intellectual effort. And there’s no disputing that good ideas are (almost) never thought of simultaneously. Take any good idea, and there’s (almost) always someone who thought of it first. And, what’s more, it’s (almost) always the case that the person who thought of the good idea first is someone who put in the intellectual effort required to come up with the idea. So, other things being equal, why not give ownership of the good idea to that person, perhaps by way of copyright or patent?

Why not? Because, in the case of ideas, ‘property rights’ is the answer to a question we don’t need to ask. In a free society, ideas are not scarce resources. Tell me what your good idea is, and I have it too. Ideas can be copied. They can be copied ad infinitum. Ideas aren’t scarce.

The notion of “intellectual property” is bogus. The correct account of the nature of property is the scarcity theory of property. The production theory of property is flawed.

Here’s a counter-example to the production theory of property, a third, less common, example of a scarce resource.

(3) Radio frequency transmission bands.

If you and I broadcast our radio shows on the same radio frequency band in the same geographical area, our transmissions interfere with one another. The solution to the problem is, again, privatisation. There’s actually a legitimate role of government here—to endorse, and to enforce the rulings of, an independent body that grants exclusive use, in a given geographical area, of scarce radio frequency transmission bands. On the basis of … what? Fairness? Not on the basis of first come, first served. And certainly not on the basis of the production theory of property. You can’t produce a mathematical range. And you can’t be first to use a set of numbers.

[Cross-posted to SOLO.]

Black Sabbath, Intellectual Property, Intelligent Design, Old Testament, Property

Nothing new under the sun

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What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them. (NIV)

Intellectual Property, Property

Boy takes swing at US patents

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Boy takes swing at US patents

A five-year-old kid from Minnesota has patented a way of swinging on a child’s swing. The US Patent Office issued patent 6,368,227 on 9 April to Steven Olson of St Paul, Minnesota for a “method of swinging on a swing”. Olson’s father Peter is a patent attorney.

The award has generated a mixture of chuckles and frustration at an overworked patent system unable to catch absurd applications. The patent covers moving a swing side to side or in an oval pattern. Children can get bored by swinging back and forth, or by twisting the swing to make it spin, the patent says.

“A new method of swinging on a swing would therefore represent an advance of great significance and value,” it reads. Olson’s alternative is to pull on one chain at a time, so the swing moves towards the side being pulled.

Peter Olson told New Scientist: “I had told him that if he invented something he could file a patent.” His son had not seen sideways swinging because the swings at his school are closely spaced, so he asked his father to file the application.

The patent office initially rejected the application for prior art – citing two earlier patents on swings – but Peter Olson appealed, noting that neither was a method for swinging sideways. The patent was then issued.

The US swing patent does not match an Australian patent on the wheel for sheer absurdity. However, in that case, an Australian lawyer was able to sneak the wheel patent through a fast-track application system. The US patent went through the full application procedure.

Peter Olson says he was not trying to prove anything, just show his son how inventions and patents work. The Australian lawyer who received a patent on the wheel was trying to point out how poorly the system operated.

The US Patent Office says it does not comment on individual patents, leaving it unclear how such an obvious idea won approval. A spokeswoman did say that the patent office uses a legalistic definition of obviousness: “That is not necessarily the conventional definition.”

The swing patent could face reconsideration at the request of the inventor, third parties, or the patent director.

When the laughter stops, silly patents filed by individuals are less a problem than trivial ones filed by large corporations, says Gregory Aharonian, publisher of the Internet Patent News.

As an example, he cites US patent 6,329,919, a business-method patent issued in December 2001 to four IBM developers for a system that issues reservations for using the toilet on an aeroplane.

Intellectual Property, Intelligent Design, Property

Lawyer moves to patent wheel

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Lawyer moves to patent wheel

An Australian man has registered a patent for a “circular transportation facilitation device” – more commonly known as the wheel.

Melbourne patent lawyer John Keogh said he registered the patent to show flaws in an intellectual property law that came into effect in May, the Australian newspaper The Age reported.

The new law established the “innovation patent” system, which Mr Keogh said did not require sufficient oversight from the patent office.

The new innovation patent can be prepared without professional help and only requires claimants to show “innovation”, not “invention”.

Mr Keogh said it represented the government caving in to claimants who said it was too expensive to obtain a standard patent.

“The government decided to find a way to issue a patent more easily,” he said.

“The patent office would be required to issue a patent for anything. All they’re doing is putting a rubber stamp on it.”

But Commissioner of Patents Vivienne Thom said: “To obtain the patent the applicant must make a declaration that they are the inventor.

“Obtaining a patent for the wheel would require a false claim, which would certainly invalidate the patent,” she added.