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.

[furface]

Roy's right to a certain extent. Land has a natural collective aspect to it. However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership. Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.

What's the alternative? Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats? Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats?

In a sense it all has to do with control. Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually. Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.

Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time. I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals. I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though. And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.

This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles. For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you. Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either. They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help. It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.

[Roy L]

However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership.

Oh, really? Does it benefit slaves to enforce private property ownership? If the government decided to issue a title deed to the atmosphere as well as the land, so the airlords could charge us all rent for air to breathe, would it benefit everybody to enforce private ownership of that property?

You need to stop typing and start thinking.

Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.

That depends entirely on what those possessions are, as proved above. Hong Kong proves that society does just fine without any private property in land. In fact, it does a lot better than many societies where private property in land is well established and enforced, such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Guatemala, Pakistan, etc.

What's the alternative?

Liberty, justice and prosperity are one alternative I would support.

Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats?

No, let the free market decide the most appropriate and productive use.

Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats?

<sigh> There are, in this world, certain people who like to claim that tax revenue is "given to" government officials, as if they were spending it on themselves rather than for public purposes and benefit as determined by (however admittedly imperfect) democratic processes. Those people are called, "stupid, evil, lying sacks of $#!+."

Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually.

Like control of WMDs....?

Stop typing. Start thinking. It's time.

Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.

Nope. Flat wrong, as the contrast between Hong Kong and Third World $#!+-holes like Pakistan, Guatemala and the Philippines proves.

All governments administer possession and use of land. That's what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The only question is, will government exercise that authority in the interest of, and to secure and reconcile the equal human rights of, all the people, or will it do so only in the narrow financial interests of a small, idle, wealthy, privileged, greedy, parasitic landowning elite?

Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time.

That's OK. I can fix ignorance. Stupidity and dishonesty are the problems I can't fix.

I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals. I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though.

See above. The claim that government revenue is "given to" government bureaucrats is not only false and absurd, it is cretinous and dishonest.

And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.

OMG. You saw the answer, you even specifically IDENTIFIED it, and you didn't even notice: the cost of land rent is FIXED. You cannot increase it or reduce it by government fiat. All you can do is give it away to private landowners in return for nothing, or recover it to pay for the public services and infrastructure that create it in the first place. And giving it away to landowners just means the productive not only have to pay that much more for land, but must also pay that much more in other taxes to make up for government's failure to recover the land rent its spending creates. Look at what has happened in CA since Prop 13 slashed property taxes: not only has the cost of buying a home soared out of reach of ordinary working people, the cost of all taxes other than property taxes has soared by a similar amount. AND THAT WAS INEVITABLE.

ANY LAND RENT THAT IS LEFT IN LANDOWNERS' HANDS DOES NOT REDUCE TOTAL COSTS FOR HOMEOWNERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES, IT INCREASES THEM.

This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles.

Giving money to the idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic rich in return for nothing is far from being a novel economic concept -- though I suppose the kind of big, greedy, evil corporate real estate interests that have profited so astronomically at the expense of ordinary Californians since Proposition 13 could be considered "interesting" circles.

For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you.

But somehow, it should help corporate landowning interests and mortgage lenders take it away from you...?

Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either.

LVT would be enormously favorable to the productive, including small farmers and small business people. You just don't know enough economics to understand why. As for "targeting homeowners," which California homeowners do you think have been "targeted": the few dozen a year who decided to pocket large, tax-free capital gains by selling their homes and seeking accommodation better suited to their needs and means before Proposition 13, or the MILLIONS who are literally losing not only their homes but their life savings and being booted into the gutter since Prop 13 slashed property taxes? You don't know enough economics to understand why Prop 13 made the current disaster for CA homeowners inevitable, but I do.

They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help.

Wrong. As landowners, they are being parasites on government and the community, because the value of land is precisely equal to the minimum value of what the landowner expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.

It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.

Stop lying. If people didn't want those services, they would not be willing to pay landowners such astronomical sums for access to them.

[furface]

Note to thread. I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.

[Roy L]

Note to thread. I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.

Is that your way of saying that you know you have been refuted and have no answers, but you decline, merely on that account, to reconsider your proved-false beliefs?

[Roy L]

No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds.

No, I proved they can't begin as "mental seeds." They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds." There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact. If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.

Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them. Without exception.

<yawn> I thought we had agreed that legal rights are not relevant, as slavery proved?

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.

No, you are just lying again, Steven. I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used. I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them. What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk. Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.

To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers

No, of course they weren't. You are just lying again.

-- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT.

That is not what protection racketeers do, and you know it.

You just always have to lie.

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.

Nothing truthful, either. Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military. They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable. They have no interest in overthrowing or being the government, because unlike you, protection racketeers are honest enough to know the fact that takers depend on producers to produce something worth taking.

Yes, I could, and with that exact logic.

?? Right. And as we already know there can be no right to own slaves, we know that logic is fallacious, with no further argument needed.

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.

Thank you for admitting that you have no more basis for your claim of a "right" to own land than there is for a "right" to own slaves. You just conceded the whole debate.

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

So in fact, you also agree that your "paradigm" is contrary to objective fact. Good.

I'm pretty much stating reality.

No, you are dodging the issue and the facts by using the legalistic fallacy.

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.

OK, so you also agree that your views cannot be reconciled with any universal standard of human rights. You intend to violate others' rights, and you see nothing wrong with that. Check.

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.

OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.

What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.

Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic.

No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

Can't accept that at all.

I know. I have told you many times that you refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.

How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?

That's what we're doing, Steven. And you have been demolished, utterly.

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

That would be a step up from the standard of your usual "arguments."

Yes, and you keep telling yourself that.

If it were not the case, our discussion would make no sense. There would be no point in just shouting our arbitrary opinions at each other. You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.

The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up.

No, it trips up those who are not as discerning as I.

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).

Oh, really? How do you discern when someone is capable of giving consent to sexual relations? How do you discern the difference between a victim of fraud and a victim of their own foolishness and greed?

I even "believe" (note the root - belief)

I note that claiming belief is the root of belief is a blatant circular reasoning fallacy.

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.

As above. You have realized you cannot defend your views, and have retreated to a position that others' views can be no more defensible than yours. But they can.

Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime.

No, you are just trying to change the subject to get away with your equivocation. He has no interest in LVT. He just wants to use the land, and has the equipment needed to do so. You just have to refuse to know the fact that the force he proposes to use -- the bulldozer, excavator, etc. -- is entirely different from the force the police and guards propose to use: violence.

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.

You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.

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.

Of course there is an equivocation. See above.

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?

So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.

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 make that "assertion" because it is in fact correct.

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.

But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive. Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it. People need land to survive on earth, just as you said; but when the land is owned, they must pay a landowner for that access, or die. They therefore can have no recognized or codified right of access to or ownership of land. They have nothing but the conditional "privilege" -- actually an unchosen obligation forced upon them by violent, aggressive, physical coercion -- of paying a landowner for it.

You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right

No, you are lying about what I have plainly written. I want the right to liberty codified because of the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective reality I perceive, not the other way around.

- one that is mutually exclusive of landownership.

For the logically indisputable reason given above.

But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS).

No. I have based my normative views on positive facts.

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.

OTC, it is self-evidently and indisputably delusional to think you can recognize and codify a right by recognizing and codifying a "right" to remove it.

Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.

See above. The fixity of land's supply is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality. The fact that owning land removes others' liberty to access and use it is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality. These are merely facts that you have decided not to know, because you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

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.

No, you merely assert that there is a difference, and then proceed to base the latter on the former.

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.

But as we have seen, your belief in that right is logically self-contradictory, and in fact, it is based on nothing but your own desire for unearned wealth.

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).

You know I meant it's not a moral right.

But it may become such in North Dakota.

Nonsense. Do you really imagine that if ND abolishes property taxes, land titles will somehow become immune to legal process for satisfaction of debts, including OTHER tax liabilities and (especially) mortgage payments? Talk about delusional.

The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.

Right. The only question is, will that force be exerted to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all, or only to serve the narrow financial interests of a small, wealthy, idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite?

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

That is an absurd lie.

[Steven Douglas]

No, I proved they can't begin as "mental seeds."

You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.

They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds." There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact.

Let me unravel your confusion. There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective). For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact. What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.

If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.

LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.

A mental seed is nothing more than "taking thought" - making an observation and drawing a conclusion about a thing. It can happen before or after the fact. Before the fact: You see something, find it desirable, and conclude that you want it. After the fact: You take/have something without having taken prior thought (you find a gold nugget on the ground), and afterward concluded why you should keep it. Before or after, it doesn't matter. It takes a mental seed to establish ANY right. And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.

I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used. I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them. What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk. Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.

• Compensation (a "right" thereto) not established
• Rights violated (not established)
• Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)
• "Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)
• Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.

Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military. They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable.

Protection racketeers that are able to DEPEND ON the police and military have, in a very real way, defeated them, making the police and military part and parcel to protection racketeers. In your mind defense of landownership is a protection racket (for landowners), while in my mind LVT is a protection racket (for elitists that control and suckle on productivity in the name of a nebulous collective).

OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.

That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one. To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned". That's your "deserving" trap. "Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land, and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively. That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing.

What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.

Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?

Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership). Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT? And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic.

No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other. But it's gibberish.

BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.

You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.

Actually, that's my charge to you. I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane. You, on the other hand, are. That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from.

You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.

Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede. Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force. You just happen to believe that in your particular case the end justifies the means. Welcome to the club, nothing special about that, nothing to see here.

So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.

I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR CONCEPTS of right and wrong. That's your error, not mine. If either of us have a FALSE CONCEPT of right and wrong, it can hardly be considered "objective". I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong, and that they are INDEPENDENT of OUR CONCEPTS, our conclusions about them. So you're wrong. I don't engage in false choice fallacies. Even if I proved you were "wrong" about a thing I am not so dense as to suppose that would make me "right by default - as if my concept was the only alternative left. So no, it's not that we both can't be right - more that we could both be wrong. Capice?

But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive. Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it.

At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removed. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION. It is neither recognized nor codified, and therefore not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do. So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:

"Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it."

Remove the words "rights of" and the statement is factually correct. Landownership does inherently remove others' ACCESS to that land. Leave the words "RIGHTS OF" in there, and it is a complete, bald-faced lie - absolutely, objectively, indisputably, factually incorrect wherever no such "RIGHT" exists (except in your mind - as a "mental seed"). Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.

[Roy L]

You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.

You are lying. I have proved my statements derive from objective fact while yours are objectively false.

Let me unravel your confusion.

Prediction: you will now lie.

There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective). For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact. What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.

There is no "qualifier" there. You just have to refuse to know the facts, and ignore the logical contradictions in your position. It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land. If you believe, as I do, that people have a right to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right. You just do not believe in the right to liberty. It's that simple.

LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.

Lie. Religions are not based on facts of economics, and you know it.

And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.

No. Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies. They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, especially conceptual language and economic exchange. But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.

[*]Compensation (a "right" thereto) not established

Denying is not refuting. Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.

[*]Rights violated (not established)

If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.

[*]Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)

Refuted above. Our hunter-gather and nomadic herding ancestors had to have rights to own the fruits of their labor and to use land, or they could not have survived. Once fixed improvements become a significant factor, those rights need to be reconciled. You need to explain why our ancestors had rights to use land, but we don't. And you can't.

[*]"Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)

You are just lying. Any ordinary understanding of the English word, "justice" includes the concept of just deserts: rewards commensurate with contributions, and penalties commensurate with deprivations. Landowning violates the basic principle of just deserts by enabling the landowner to deprive others of their liberty without suffering any penalty, and to obtain wealth without making any contribution to its production.

[*]Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.

Lie. The conclusions are objective facts. It is an objective fact that the landowner qua landowner takes a portion of production without contributing to production. It is an objective fact that he deprives others of the liberty they would otherwise enjoy.

A protection racketeers that is able to DEPEND ON the police and military has, in a very real way, defeated them.

Nonsense. You are just trying to equivocate on the word, "defeat," which you intended in the military sense.

That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one. To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned". That's your "deserving" trap.

Justice is about nothing but deserving. You just want to ignore considerations of justice, because your beliefs are diametrically opposed to justice.

"Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land,

That is nothing but an arbitrary and subjective assertion on your part, with absolutely no basis in fact. Indeed it is contrary to fact. In the only reliably attested historical examples of homesteading, earning was most definitely a criterion for homesteading.

and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively. That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing.

It definitely means something, and you know it. It is just something that you have to keep out of your brain, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?

I will continue to identify the facts and their logical implications.

Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership). Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT?

Because to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor is government's JOB.

And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic.

There is nothing circular about it, and you might want to have a look at what the American Founders said about liberty, rights and justice. Thomas Paine, for example.

With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other. But it's gibberish.

No, combining the positive and normative is the only way society can function. That is exactly what law does. Hello?

BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.

Lie. One line is often sufficient to identify and refute your fallacies.

See?

Actually, that's my charge to you. I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane.

But they are accurate, so I will continue to use them.

You, on the other hand, are. That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from.

<yawn> Google "emotivism" and start reading.

Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede. Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force.

I have disproved that claim many times.

You just happen to believe that the end justifies the means.

Arbitrary and unsupported claim.

I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR concepts of right and wrong.

I know you didn't. But there is.

That's your error, not mine.

It is not an error. If you think about it, it's self-evident (unless you deny evolution, and think human nature is simply a decision taken by God for His own reasons).

I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong that is INDEPENDENT of our concepts, our conclusions about them.

Now that really is gibberish.

So you're wrong. It's not that we both can't be right - more that we could both be wrong.

That was implied by my statement. You just don't know enough logic -- and it's not much -- to realize that.

At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removes. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION. It is neither recognized nor codified,

False. Law is full of recognized and codified rights of access to land, such as easements, rights of way, etc. You are just objectively wrong. As usual.

and therefor not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do. So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:

"Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it." - that statement is factually incorrect - a complete lie wherever no such "RIGHT" exists. Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.

That's the legalistic fallacy again. By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.

[Steven Douglas]

It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land.

Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others. I believe justly so, you believe unjustly so.

If you believe, as I do, that people have a right to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right. You just do not believe in the right to liberty. It's that simple.

Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact. This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to this type of liberty, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I believe it should be, is not.

So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours) that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to that kind of liberty. See that? Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.

You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word. I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket. I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty". That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.

I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage. I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will. I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.

Does that mean I am opposed to liberty? No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.

No. Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies. They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, especially conceptual language and economic exchange. But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.

Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement, and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions. Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum. Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion.

Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.

Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum? You didn't. Go back up and read. Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.

If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.

Again, stop trying wriggling past that one. Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty". You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good.

That's the legalistic fallacy again. By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.

Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- normatively speaking (the OUGHT of it all). They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy, because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force). I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote). That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.

[Roy L]

Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others. I believe justly so, you believe unjustly so.

Right. You believe that the bandit in the pass is simply exercising his valid right of landownership when he demands money from the merchant caravans to let them proceed.

Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact.

Why even bother with such silly lies, Steven? I've never said the right to liberty is an indisputable fact. Clearly it isn't, as many people, including you, do not believe in it. I have stated that the right to liberty is BASED ON objective facts of human nature, and that is not a "face plant" or "attempt to slip in what I believe."

This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to this type of liberty, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I believe it should be, is not.

Right. Just as, 200 years ago, the slave's right to liberty of any type was not recognized or codified.

So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours)

That is an attempt to pretend that you have offered facts and logic in support of your views with weight equivalent to the facts and logic I have offered in support of mine. But you haven't.

that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to that kind of liberty. See that? Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.

I know you do not believe people have a right to "that kind" of liberty, because that is the kind of liberty that honest people and good dictionaries mean when they use the term, "liberty." The "kind" of liberty that you mean by "right to liberty" is the kind that enables greedy, idle, privileged parasitic landowners to rob the productive of a quarter of their rightful earnings, and to murder 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year. You believe the right to liberty is a "right" to pay an extortionist for not exercising his legal authority to prevent one from doing what one would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to do.

You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word.

No. You merely oppose the human condition that the word, "liberty" denotes.

I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket.

No, that is one of your fundamental errors, where you always do a face plant. You are NOT at liberty to pick my pocket, because I have to be there with a pocket before you can pick it. I HAVE TO PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY for you to pick my pocket. If I don't provide you with that opportunity, you physically can't pick my pocket. There can be no such thing as a "right" to something others have to provide, because if others aren't there to provide it, you don't and can't have it. That is why there is a liberty right to use what nature provided (a right our ancestors indisputably exercised for millions of years), but not to use what other people must provide.

You just have to refuse to know these indisputable facts, as you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty". That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.

It is you who are playing fast and loose -- and dishonest -- with the term, as proved above.

I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage.

There is nothing false about it, as the invariably slave-like condition of the landless proves in countries where landowning is well established but government does not intercede on behalf of the landless to rescue them from the full effects of landowner privilege. It is self-evidently and indisputably true in the case of a single landowner:

"Place one hundred people on an island from which there is no escape. Make one of them the absolute owner of the others -- or the absolute owner of the soil. It will make no difference -- either to owner or to the others -- which one you choose. Either way, one individual will be the absolute master of the other ninety-nine. Denying permission to them to live on the island would force them into the sea." -- Henry George, Progress and Poverty

And it further makes little difference if the island is all owned by one man or two, or three, or a dozen, save that under several owners the landless would at least be able to escape the arbitrary caprice of a single owner. But assuming the owners -- one or several -- were rationally self-interested fellows who only wanted the maximum income their ownership of the land could afford, there would be no difference between the one owner and the dozen "competing" owners. The land market is always a monopoly market, so none of the landowners can do better than to charge the full market rent for all the land they own. Any attempt to get more just results in some land remaining unused, and his total income declining. That is in fact what happened in many places where landowners sought to reduce their tenants to absolute poverty and servitude, such as czarist Russia, France under the ancien regime, and Ireland under the English landlords (who committed genocide by starvation against their Irish tenants in the 1840s), and many other historical cases: good land remained vacant, the landowners got less income than they could have, and the tenants were reduced to utter, slave-like destitution. The good ol' USA provides another example

"During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal army. When the war broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky home for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old negroes, who said to me: "Mas George, you say you sot us free; but 'fore God, I'm wus off than when I belonged to your father." The planters, on the other hand, are contented with the change. They say: "How foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper now than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him well, and were compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their interest and responsibility cease when they have got all the work out of him they can."
-- From a letter by George M Jackson, 1885

I know you have seen that letter before, more than once. You just have to refuse to know the facts it identifies -- facts which, btw, were well known and widely remarked at the time.

I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will. I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.

Oh, but you do, Steven. You definitely believe that landowners have a right to steal. I already proved that by the example of the bandit in the pass. There is absolutely no moral difference between the bandit stealing from the caravans, and the same man proclaiming himself the "owner" of the pass -- or the government proclaiming him the owner -- and making the same demand for the exact same amount of money. You know this. Of course you do. You just have to refuse to know it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

Does that mean I am opposed to liberty? No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.

You are only in favor of the type of "liberty" that results in the privileged being legally at liberty to rob the productive by forcibly depriving them of their liberty.

Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement,

Lie.

and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions. Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum.

When observed empirical facts prove your beliefs are false and evil, you delete those facts from your brain. Simple.

Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion.

Do you believe animal behavior can be studied scientifically, and understood by establishing how it confers a survival or reproductive advantage? Well, human beings are animals.

Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum? You didn't.

More accurately, you didn't show there was any "original conundrum" in anything I said. OTC, the "original conundrum" is all yours: you can't justify the forcible removal of people's rights to liberty -- rights they indisputably had and exercised before they were removed by landowning -- and neither can anyone else, and lots of people much smarter than you have tried.

Go back up and read.

The stench of your evil, dishonest garbage is not lessened by repeated exposure.

Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.

Legalistic fallacy again. A "right" to "liberty" that denies one the liberty to breathe atmospheric air, to drink from a natural spring, or to use the land and resources nature provided to provide oneself with food is a right without content, and nothing but an evil lie.

Again, stop trying wriggling past that one.

Again, stop lying about what I have plainly written. I can be accused of many things, but "wriggling" is not one of them. And you know it.

Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty". You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good.

I realize you oppose liberty.

Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- normatively speaking (the OUGHT of it all).

Based on what? Why did they have a right to liberty?

They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy,

It is a legalistic fallacy when you claim the landless's lack of a legal right to liberty means they have no right to liberty.

because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force).

Throughout this and the previous LVT thread, you have done nothing but confuse them.

I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote).

You are lying, Steven. I have never had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make the distinction between legal and natural rights. OTC, I have had to remind you dozens of times that legal rights are IRRELEVANT to this discussion, because it is about CHANGING THE LAW, and any appeal to legal rights is automatically a question-begging fallacy.

That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.

It's the other way around, duh.