Originally Posted by
Roy L
That's not the next part of the argument, so you can relax (and stop lying).
Those of us who are not stupid, ignorant, greedy, evil, lying sacks of $#!+ are aware of the fact that the sun, the oceans, the earth's atmosphere, the alphabet, mathematics, etc. can never rightly be anyone's property. All who refuse to know that fact ARE in fact stupid, ignorant, greedy, evil, lying sacks of $#!+. However, as all have equal liberty rights to use those things, honest people need a way to protect themselves against evil, greedy rent seekers who will never leave off contriving ways to charge others for what nature and their cultural heritage provide for free. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Calling such a government "one particular gang of thieves" that "anoints itself as the owner of all the land and charges us rent to use it" is just filthy, despicably dishonest "meeza hatesa gubmint" $#!+. We need government to administer use of the land to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to use it, just as we need government to administer the atmosphere, the oceans, etc. to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to use them.
There is no way for anyone, or any group, or any government, or any corporation, or any church, or any other legal entity whatsoever rightly to own land. It is impossible, as it inherently removes the liberty rights of others to use the land. The only difference between owning land and owning a slave is that when you own a slave, you remove all of one person's rights. When you own land, you remove one of all persons' rights. The more of the land is owned, the fewer rights remain. In the limit, if all the land is owned by one man, all the rest are in exactly the same position as if they were also all his property. He has absolute power of life and death over them. If two people own the land, or three, or 300, or 3 million, the others are only "free" to choose which master owns them, for whose benefit they will labor rather than their own. They are not free not to be owned: their rights to liberty have been removed by force.
A good man might own land, just as a good man might own slaves. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, as did most of America's other Founding Fathers. But the fact that a good man might own land does not justify landowning any more than a good man owning slaves justifies slave owning. And landowning is inherently an instrument of theft, oppression and murder that serves the greedy and evil no matter who else participates in it, just as slave owning is. Landowning is like the One Ring of Sauron: it is evil in its inherent, fundamental nature, and so ultimately it can serve only evil.
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