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The Forum > Article Comments > Our fragile liberty > Comments

Our fragile liberty : Comments

By Bruce Haigh, published 25/2/2013

As long as Australia does not have a bill of rights, transgressions against individual freedoms are made easier.

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Jardine,
OK I take your point on the idea that “needs are things without which life ends”. My crude definition assumed you would try to interpret it with understanding.

I’ll try again, still hoping for your effort to understand.

In Australia’s Christian tradition we are told in symbolic language (not literal fundamentalism) that we once had a garden of Eden – but that man believed that he knew better. So Cain killed Able over a block of land and the war over land, the establishment of boundaries has continued. In spite of this, or perhaps even because of it, life has multiplied over the years. On that measure you are right – “life” as measured in numbers has thrived on the back of murder, oppression and wealth creation based on property theft. – but this war was always a dead end model, the antithesis of the message of love.

In this continuing war over land we are no longer limited to throwing stones at each other and the earth itself is revolting at the consequences of our ignorant pursuits. The consequence of our ignorance are becoming more dangerous and more apparent. As some Christians say, we must repent .. be born again as it were.

Now I’m no fundamentalist – I’m not even religious - but I understand the truth of all this.

The fact that all the good land is taken doesn’t make the taking now right. It’s true that it has also been “improved” with fences etc, but the “ownership” can be traced back to theft. The fact that the richest (or the fittest) got there first and put up fences doesn’t make it theirs. Those deprived by this (the landless) must have their rightful access restored if we are to have a chance to avoid further war. The poor can’t even collect and store rainwater without stable and secure access to land!

I’m not going to convince you I see, but the conversation has allowed me to understand a way of thinking that is quite alien to me, so thanks, and all the best for your life.
Posted by landrights4all, Saturday, 9 March 2013 12:50:53 PM
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We agree that much “title” to land originates in theft, murder etc.; on the desirability of the message of love; and the need for an ethic of sharing in scarce goods that avoids war and injustice.

However I submit that your principle would have the opposite effect than you intend, both in ethics and in practice, for the following reasons.

Even in a garden of Eden situation, there is still the radical scarcity of the physical stuff of one’s own body. I cannot make use of the molecules that you have taken from unowned nature and incorporated into your own body without violating you. Without your consent, I cannot make use of the physical space that you occupy without violating you.

Therefore there is still scarcity, there is still the need for an ethical rule as to how society is to rationalise that scarcity with minimal aggression, and that ethic must necessarily be on the basis of private property rights. (By which I mean a right – an ethical principle that is enforceable – to exclusive use and possession.)

This must be so, because you either agree; or by denying it you perform a self-contradiction. For if you deny this radical principle of self-ownership, you deny your own right to participate in the discussion, quite apart from the further problem that you accept the possibility, even in theory, of one person owning another.

This radical right must entail the right to appropriate unowned goods, unowned matter, from nature, without which we could not even breathe – as you yourself argue.

And it must entail the consequential right to enter into voluntary transactions with others, without which, the fruits of human society would be denied to us in favour of … what? The idea that the most powerful party owns himself and us, while we do not even own ourselves, let alone someone else?

Therefore
a) by participating in the discussion you acknowledge the principle, and the right, of private property
b) there is no other way this could come about but on a first-come first-served basis.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Saturday, 9 March 2013 7:54:13 PM
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Any other way requires you to perform a self-contradiction, which is what you have done.

Past wrongs create a defect in title, BUT ONLY as against the earlier wronged owner. The Normans took from the Saxons, the Saxons from the Celts; the later waves of Aborigines took from the earlier, the Romans from the Gauls, and so on. If your principle held true, no-one would be entitled to the use of land anywhere at any time, while the true title holders would be lost in the mists of time and we would all starve.

Therefore the owner or his successor has a right good against all the world, except the original owner or his successors in title. There’s no other way it could be without
a) self-contradiction, and
b) a result absurd in practice. That’s why you’re sitting where you are today.

Hence the right of private property in land.

If your principle were granted, the new owner would himself have no secure right to land because, as soon as someone new was born, his rightful share would be open to challenge as you have admitted, and the new-comer would have a right to use force (= aggression) to get someone else’s land. Furthermore, obviously Australia would have no right to enforce it; the poorer Chinese, Indians and Africans would have a right superior to Australians’.

This means that, ethically, there is a right to free land ONLY if it is unowned. There is no more right to use force – the law - to take owned land for “free”, than there is a right to own a person, because both entail using aggression to steal the fruits of someone’s labour.

The ethical and practical solution to the problem you pose is not forced redistribution of land titles. It is peaceful sharing based on private property and voluntary exchanges, which is precisely why the poor, in reality, don’t need to collect their own rainwater – they can buy it much cheaper!

The only alternative is ethically unjustifiable aggression, and practically unjustifiable mass starvation based on self-contradiction, as I have shown.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Saturday, 9 March 2013 7:55:43 PM
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Jardine,
Why would you want to take what I need when there is plenty for all – yes for all 7bil, or double or triple that if done sustainably. Scarcity is created by fear and greed.

You believe in first come first served. You believe in war to protect what you say you own. You believe in borders. As all land is now owned you believe that those who come late can have no right, but must hope for the “charity” of those first come first served master families who own, hold and pass on the ownership of the land to their own – who protect their privileged position with force.

This is clearly a world of slavery, not the plan of love.

You have shown a lot, but nothing worth embracing.

In your fear you jump to the assumption that I am talking about forced redistribution of land titles. You will not find anything I said that suggests that because that is not what I believe – so where did you get it from? – fear! You talk of love and peacefulness but what is evident is your determination to put yourself first, and above others. Sorry Jardine, I’m not at all with you, so can we should end this now as it is pointless and disturbing to go on.
Posted by landrights4all, Saturday, 9 March 2013 8:52:57 PM
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Dear Landrights4all,

I see that so much transpired here while I was away, so I can't catch up with it all soon, but I'd like to relate to one item of yours:

<<They are treated as bludgers, are socially isolated and increasingly resentful... or they can choose to stay on welfare and be demonised, isolated and hassled by Centrelink to look for work they will find less and less likely to get.>>

My heart goes out to those miserable ones who must attend that horrible building. What goes on there is pure sadism. That institution must be bulldozed and the remaining bricks ground to dust and buried in the deepest part of the ocean.

"But what about the dole?" you ask - well, EVERYONE should receive the dole, young and old, employed and unemployed, healthy and ill, rich and paupers - no questions asked. It shouldn't be regarded as a favour, but as rightful compensation.

Society has done all of us wrong by creating conditions, laws and by-laws where we are practically not allowed to live on the land undisturbed without recourse to money (turning land into property is part of it, but not the whole story). Society is responsible for the scarcity of resources because it recklessly created conditions conducive to overpopulation. The damage may take centuries to repair, so the least society can do now is compensate us all, and since it turned money into the only means of survival, it should compensate us with money.

Those (but only those) who wish, may then convert that money into property-rent, perhaps even in some NTW-like model.

Technically, this is called negative-income-tax. Everyone gets a fixed, subsistence-level sum per-annum (those in need may receive it in instalments), which is covered by a flat income-tax paid from the first dollar earned. For middle-income-earners, the outcome is about the same.

This approach both respects the unemployed's dignity while removing their incentive to not work. It also goes well with removing minimum-wage restrictions, since subsistence is assured irrespective of employment and one needs to work only for their extra comfort and luxuries.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Saturday, 9 March 2013 11:25:39 PM
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Hi Yuyutsu,
So good to find some in principle agreement! (

Compensation is due, but I don’t think money is enough, appropriate, or sustainable. More & more dependence on money means unsustainable growth.

What’s been “stolen” by commodifying the land is our independence, freedom and our role as caretakers. We’ve been enslaved and made disposable. Everybody is paying a big price for this, and nature itself is revolting.

While the poor have every reason to complain, others see no problem this system – some even still deny man made climate change. It’s up to them – you can’t force anything on anyone, but they don’t need compensation for something they support.

So the idea of a universal basic wage is problematic, just as more land access for those who already have more than their share would be too.

Basically it comes down to “compensation” for the unemployed & restoration of freedom.

We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. We already have the dole which is distributed only to the right people. So mechanisms are in place, but the philosophy of it is all wrong because the dole isn’t seen as “compensation” – it’s a way to whip people into subservience by threatening withdrawal of the food and shelter it can buy.

Many people I know on the dole are in a slow decline, not because it’s too little but because of stigmatization, lack of a meaningful role (not necessarily meaning paid employment) and social isolation.

For taxpayers to agree to a basic wage would represent a change in philosophy, but a basic wage would not give people the dignity of taking responsibility for their life – it would be “sit down money”

Since the problem of loss of freedom and dignity originates with the loss (the theft actually) of access to land for shelter and food, payment of compensation needs to be paid in the context of the recipient taking up responsibility for a rightful access to land. In this combination freedom and dignity can be restored, and I see NTW as fully suited for this.
Posted by landrights4all, Sunday, 10 March 2013 10:56:24 AM
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