30 September 2011

Feudal Libertarianism

I've posited that feudalism falls naturally from libertarianism more than once.

I'm going to try to explain it.

To me it falls from property rights.

Under libertarianism, I own my property completely and fully.  As long as my outflows don't hurt the neighbors I can do anything I want.

There is no government to appeal to if I have a problem with a neighbor, so entering into contracts with other land-owners in the neighborhood for conflict resolution makes sense.  Neighbor A turning the stream from clean water in to raw sewage out and that sewage entering my property is initiating force, so we can use force to stop his pollution, right?

The reason we band together is to be sure we have enough force.  There would have to be banding together to decide what to do about things like streams.  Do I have to let the water out?  Can I cut off the flow to the dude downstream and then sell him water from my reservoir?  How about access to my property through someone else's?  Do we pool our resources to make a road to the harbor or are we each responsible for the section that actually sits on our property?  It's simple and complicated all at the same time.  If the road, and the land it sits on, is owned by a third party what are the terms of use?  Do we wish to jointly hold the entity that owns the road?

At the core, this is how baronies united to become kingdoms.  This was Germany under all the various principalities.

Under libertarianism there's nothing to keep me from contracting people to do farm work in exchange for a place to sleep in abysmal conditions.  As long as they are not forced into the agreement, it's A-OK.  If all the land is owned and this is the only deal a non-landowner can get, while we didn't technically force them into being a peasant, they don't really have another option, do they?  Still free to starve or be shot trespassing; right?

Land ownership will tend to be consolidated by entities that don't die.  It's why the catholic church is so wealthy.  Marriage between families will make two properties into one.  This will continue until there's just one land owning family (shall we call them Royal?).

The larger properties can be subdivided and parceled out to the children, but this will be a use contract not ownership; the family still retains title.  Shall we call the kids and grandkids vassals?

When ownership of something is power, you do everything you can to own some.  Once you own some, you do what you can to own more.  The corollary is to keep others from getting it and to prevent them from getting more as well.

It really sucks to live someplace where you cannot buy, beg, borrow or steal ownership of that key item.  Peasants, serfs and slaves are a natural side-effect of consolidated land ownership into ever fewer entities.

By the way, those issues about water and roads were real in the 19th century US.  The libertarian solutions were attempted and ABANDONED because you need to be very powerful yourself for the very powerful to respect your rights.  The cattle barons took the land upstream and starved those downstream until they owned that land themselves and restored the flow.  Land that was valuable only with water on it was made worthless because the land-owner upstream controlled the water utterly.  Who owns the water, Libertarian?  Is it initiating force to cut off the flow or is that just exercising control over your property?  What is the conflict resolution?  In the real world it took the state to assert control over the water to end the conflicts and bloodshed.

1 comment:

  1. Well done. Just about any model of government is dangerous when taken to extremes. We are so lucky to have our Constitution; it's sickening that we take it for granted and trample all over it.

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