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From: mwm@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: FORCE, Democracy and Libertarian
Message-ID: <665@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 19-Jan-85 20:46:23 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbtopaz.665
Posted: Sat Jan 19 20:46:23 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 02:29:21 EST
References: <1881@inmet.UUCP> <416@klipper.UUCP>
Reply-To: mwm@ucbtopaz.UUCP (Mike Meyer)
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Berkeley CA USA
Lines: 33
Summary: 

In article <416@klipper.UUCP> biep@klipper.UUCP (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) writes:
>If one considers the world countries being the owners of all their territory,
>granting people right to live there as long as they kept to their laws, then
>the world is a libertarian country (except that countries like the USSR don't
>give their people a chance to leave, and there is no go[u]vernment.) 

No, the world is an anarchy. The definition I use (which may not correspond
with any other definition) is that a libertarian society has a final
arbitrater (which we call a government) for disputes between members, but
an anarchy has no such arbitrater.

>Why would it be different in a "true" Libertaria? Some people will acquire land,
>and make laws for people who want to be on it. That people will have legal
>power to do so, so one might call it a country. Perhaps the mistake liber-
>tarians make is to suppose that "their" lot is *theirs*. It's not. It's
>state property. You are born too late: all the land of the world is already
>divided. In Libertaria this will happen too, sooner or later.

Ah, but saying "this is my land" isn't sufficient to give you control over
it in Libertaria. You have to *use* it. When all the land is in use, you
are out of luck, no matter what system of government you have; you can't
get any more land without displacing something.

To provide yet another fable, suppose I find some land that is obviously
unused (no structures, and no roads leading to the area) and homestead it.
In Libertaria, the land is now mine until I quit using it. In the anarchy
we have now, the government that claims to own the land will either throw
me off, or start charging rent (maybe calling it "property tax").

Final comment: in the anarchy we live in, most countries claim not only the
land, but also the people living on it as their property.