The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[Steven Douglas]

<sigh> Question-begging fallacy. If recognition and codification created rights, there would never have been any basis for challenging slavery.

No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds. Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them. Without exception.

I have stated repeatedly that there is no way to allocate exclusive land tenure but by force. You know that.

Ah, but my point was that what YOU are advocating is no different, as there is no way to implement LVT except by use of that exact same force, and yet you attack landownership on the basis that force is used -- as if you've actually said something meaningful, or that distinguishes it in some way from LVT, when it does not.

ROTFL!! By that "logic," the protection racketeer and the police both use force, so that's a wash, too, and not at issue.

You don't get it, do you? To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers -- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT. So yes, if the protection racketeer became organized enough to defeat both the police and the military - to stage a coup that overthrew the existing government, a new "government" would be born, as might makes, not right, but new "rights". Nothing magical or mysterious there.

You could with equal "logic" claim that you are deprived of a "right" to own slaves.

Yes, I could, and with that exact logic. If I had a mental seed planted that made me feel entitled to someone else's labor, I could push for it to be a right - including slavery (in all its myriad forms). That would not make it right (or wrong), as those are moral pronouncements. But it could be the basis of a newly recognized and codified legal right.

I think it is more accurate to call it what it is: a forcible, uncompensated removal of my liberty.

That would make it precisely accurate to yours and others' paradigms, and contrary - wholly inaccurate - to mine.

No, you are just trying to play it deuces wild by claiming that rights are not based on anything, merely "codified and recognized." That is the legalistic fallacy.

I'm pretty much stating reality. In China I have the right to do things that I do not have the right to do in the US -- and vice versa. There is no universal standard when it comes to rights, nor can there be. At best we try to persuade using our normatives, and hope that it will eventually equate to enough force (a plurality of votes even) to have them recognized and codified despite the dissenters who see it otherwise. Again, no magic, no mystery to it. It's all subjective normatives and brute force.

But I can support my views with fact and logic, while you cannot.

Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic. Can't accept that at all. How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?

My views are based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their logical implications, while yours are based on nothing but your desire for unearned wealth.

Is this where I'm supposed to say I'm rubber and you're glue?

Right is not subjective, it is merely an aspect of objective reality that may change according to circumstances, and is difficult to discern.

Yes, and you keep telling yourself that. The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up. I personally "believe" in the concepts of right and wrong - and I personally don't think they are difficult at all to discern (not even a tiny bit). I even "believe" (note the root - belief) in such a thing as universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc.,. However, I also "recognize" (acknowledge, stipulate) that my discernment, my conclusions about what is right and wrong differ from those of many others, including you, whom I "believe" also hold their differing, often contradictory, views in earnest. That alone is evidence to me that while "right" may not be subjective, our human discernment most definitely is. You and I each have taken the position that our view is "right" and the others' wrong/evil. Big deal, what's new? Welcome to politics, as you try to manifest your mental seed - what you believe to be "right" - as something that is recognized and codified by others, and defended by force.

Exactly my point: the "force" that the prospective user of the land under the bank would have to use is not the kind of force the armed guards and police use to stop him from doing so.

Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime. Suddenly the same police, the same guards which kept him out under a non-LVT regime, are potentially on his side. Where they were once keeping him out, now they are there, potentially, to remove the previous owner and let the new occupier in. Happens all the time, as would-be criminals become patriots and heroes, and vice versa, as power shifts, and might makes a whole new set of rights.

A classic example: Eisenhower federalizes the entire Arkansas National Guard in one day. The very troops used to block integration are suddenly the same troops that are there to enforce it. No equivocation to it.

There must be something in reality to create that mental seed. It can't and doesn't come from nowhere.

Yes, there is external stimulus from which all mental seeds are derived. We both look at the same thing and come away with different, not always incorrect or mutually exclusive, conclusions. So what? You could even say, "Yes, but my conclusion is based on indisputable reality and logic, while yours is not." And it wouldn't mean a thing in and of itself (even though you make this very assertion ad nauseam).

I see land, and the need for land to survive on Earth, and I want the capacity for access to and OWNERSHIP of land - recognized and codified as a right - not a conditional privilege - for everyone. You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right - one that is mutually exclusive of landownership. But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS). You seem to believe that your concept of right and rights are matters of objective physical reality - and I see that as delusional on your part. Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.

Yes, actually, you do. You believe forcible appropriation of land confers a moral right to deprive others of their liberty to use it. That is the only basis for your claims.

Wrong. I always, without fail, draw a sharp distinction between what I know is a legal right, and what I believe to be morally right or wrong. My ability to forcibly appropriate land is a legal right that I have now - one that I only HAPPEN to believe is a moral right. But I do not believe the legal right CONFERRED the moral right. In my mind, as in yours, I believe, the "moral right", whatever we each believe that it to be, is always independent of the legal right. So you are incorrect in the absolute, and have it completely backwards. I do not believe that forcible appropriation CONFERS a moral right. Rather, it was the belief in a moral right that CONFERRED my willingness to forcibly appropriate.

Exclusive LAND tenure -- which is NOT a right -- can only be instituted and defended by force.

No, it is not a LEGAL right (be specific in your meaning - don't conflate moral and legal as if they were one and the same). Not yet. But it may become such in North Dakota. The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.

The genuine and valid property right in products of labor is instituted by recognition that it is in the interest of all.

"genuine and valid" and "interest of all" - both collectivist gibberish sentiments - both absolutely, completely, and at all times subjective.