My Thoughts on The Net Taxpayer Argument

The purpose of property rights, i.e. the exclusive justifiable use of a rivalrous resource, is conflict avoidance. The only thing which can possibly have physical conflict over it is a rivalrous resource when there is a disagreement. If there is agreement, then there is no reason for property rights. (And if there could never be disagreement over the use of rivalrous resources, then property rights would be useless even if there were disagreement over, say, whether God exists.)

Disagreement doesn’t necessarily mean a physical disagreement over how to use a specific rivalrous resource; it includes disagreements over things other than a specific rivalrous resource^[1]Check out Neo-Hoppean Argumentation Ethics for a refinement of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics. There’s still some polishing to be done on that argument, but it is a great start.. That is because during the disagreement we have 4 courses of action we can take. (1) Physically initiate force upon the other or enter into some consented fight. (2) Enter into an argument. (3) Do neither, in which case conflict is avoided. Rather all parties simply walk away and agree to disagree. (4) Yell or do some other non-violent action, but do not walk away or agree to disagree, e.g., cuss and name call. Only in scenario 2 can anything be justified. ^[2]Yes, technically you could enter into a monologue and attempt to justify some truth-claim, but it all goes back to argumentation. Either you make a monologue that can be justifiable in argumentation, … Continue reading Rather, two or more speakers say truth-claims to try to find the truth, i.e. find which truth-claim(s) is really true. So, any statement must be justifiable in argumentation and not just in monologue.))

It follows from this that every particular rivalrous resource must have a specific owner. If this is not so, then property rights would not serve its essential function.

Considering this fact, we can then look at the external rivalrous resources, i.e. non-human body rivalrous resources, that are claimed by those individuals claiming to be the state.^[3]I am not talking about unowned resources, i.e. non-rivalrous resources. This would include resources such as virgin land, resources which were used in the past but now do not have a traceable owner … Continue reading

The first kind of rivalrous resources claimed by the state are those that were stolen. The original owner or the heir(s) are the justifiable owners of those particular rivalrous resources.

This becomes a problem if two or more resources stolen by that state are combined or altered in some way that transforms them into something that physically has parts from both. The two claimants would have to be called co-owners since both have a claim to it. This would have to be resolved by some sort of negotiating.

It also becomes a problem when there are multiple heirs to the rivalrous resource. Again, how the resource is to be used must be negotiated.

The second kind of rivalrous resource are those resources that were not necessarily stolen. These are the roads, the public schools, city halls, etc. The resources used to build these things and maintain them are not necessarily stolen, e.g. cement that was previously owned by some construction company, but the funds used to build them were stolen via taxation.

The problem comes when we must answer the question, “Who owns these types of rivalrous resources?” We must search for the person (or those people) who has the best objective, intersubjectively ascertainable claim (link) to the rivalrous resources.

The link must be action (use of means for an end that is objective and intersubjectively ascertainable as intentional) that was carried through with the intent to own. If there were no intent to own, then there would be no conflict if somebody came afterwards and used it with the intent to own it.

There are 3 libertarian methods to gain property rights in a rivalrous resource. The first is the first-use-first-own rule, the second is the contractual rule, and the third is the restitutive rule.

To some extent, some rivalrous resources may have been homesteaded in some way; for example, those who drove on the roads would have right-of-ways on them. Or those ranchers who let their cattle graze specific parts of plains would have grazing rights.

I can’t see how contracts factor into this question unless somebody for some very strange reason sells their right-of-way.

So, we need to look at restitution then, since the other two methods did not provide us a full answer to the question.

The objective, intersubjectively ascertainable link here would be an act of aggression. ^[4]This is shown through Kinsella’s Estoppel theory of punishment.

While the argument is often called the “net taxpayer” argument, at its core it is really about restitution.

Let us first look at “public roads.” What would be the act of aggression most closely associated with these roads? It could be argued that it is taxation, i.e., the method that funds the creation and/or maintenance of the “public” roads.. After all, except in some exceptional case, you can’t use a road to physically harm somebody.

With regard to other rivalrous resources of the second type it could be some other act of aggression. For example, an Iraqi whose parents were killed by U.S. troops could justifiably come to own some tool of the military like a tank. Another example could be some person who was hit by a cop car could justifiably take ownership of the cop car.

Going back to the “public” roads, I need to discuss this bit a little more. Some would claim that I am invoking the idea of “collective ownership,” but I am plainly not. I am talking about specific victims. This is no more collectivist, anti-libertarian ownership than when somebody passes away and their heirs inherit their land. There are multiple co-owners that must negotiate the ownership of the land.

One way to find how many “shares” one would have in these roads would be to look at whether they are net taxpayers or not. After all, if they are not, then they have received restitution in the form of money. Those who have not taken in more from the state than they have paid in taxes would, prima facie, still have a claim to these roads via restitution claims. This could be different and not true if they have received restitution from the state in some non-monetary way, e.g., the state giving them land, or if they have employed the state to aggress upon others.^[5]On causation and aggression see Kinsella and Tinsley’s Causation and Aggression. An owner of a company who lobbied for their competition to be shut down could justifiably be stripped of any and all of his shares by his competition.

I am not saying there isn’t a problem still yet because there is a problem. Thanks to the state these taxpayers, residents or not, have come to be owners of these roads that their stolen tax dollars funded to create or maintain. This situation is ripe for physical conflict creation.

To object to this and say it is collectivist is like objecting to restitution in any form or manner because it can cause conflict. We know that that is not a legitimate objection because a restitution theory is justifiable on libertarian grounds. Aggression has caused this deviation from pure peace, and the fault should not be placed on restitution.

So, finding who has the best claim to these “public” roads is just part of the solution as, I said before, it is prone to conflict.  Hoppe, too, thinks this is so. That’s why, in “The Rationale for Total Privatization,” he says:

Once all net taxpayers have been allotted their appropriate number of public-property shares, how do they take hold of this property and exercise their rights as private-property owners?
…
This difficulty can be overcome by bringing the idea of original appropriation back into play. The titles in the hands of net taxpayers are not only saleable tickets. More importantly, they entitle their owners to repossess formerly public and now-vacated property. Public property is opened to original appropriation, and the tickets are claims to vacated, momentarily unowned public property. Everyone can take his titles to specific pieces of public property and register as their owner.

Rather, to resolve this unavoidable conflict of everybody holding shares to the “public” roads people would need to homestead the roads.

This does not, however, imply non-shareholders can homestead these rivalrous resources. They have no claim whatsoever to the “public” roads. It’s all about who has superior claims to rivalrous resources compared to others. The shareholders have superior claims compared to non-shareholders, and the shareholder-homesteaders have superior claim to specific pieces of roads as compared to just shareholders.

A Konrad Graf says in, “Action-Based Jurisprudence“:

Under the homesteading principle, it is not necessary to establish a first appropriation claim that lives up to any absolute standard of evidence of what is “sufficient” to be a valid claim. It is only necessary to establish that one party has the better or best claim when compared with conflicting claims.

This is analogous to Mises’s conception of ordinal valuation. The praxeologically defined act of choice means preferring “this” to “that” in a specific rank order, which carries no implication of any cardinal valuation scale. It is a criterion concerned with relative order only. Any alternative to this ordinal approach would require a claim to meet some devised standard of evidence showing some objectivistically defined degree of linkage. However, the legitimacy of an appropriation claim requires no such technocratic approach.

Assuming a competition among claims, each of which are based on some objective links between claimant and resource (some act of appropriation), the first such claim in time is likely to be superior to any later claim.

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I couldn’t find quite the place to put these in that, so I’m just making them separate.

If a non-taxpayer, non-victim of a state is stopped from entering on “public” roads created and maintained by taxpayer money, then their rights are not violated (unless enforcement isn’t simply stopping them from using the “public” roads, e.g. their kids are taken from them or they are shot.) If they were invited, then yes, their rights were violated as they were granted permission to use the “public roads” by the host.

However, it is a mistake to use this as a critique against (some of the) bordertarians and say, “Ah, what if one person invites everybody?” The purpose of restrictions of movement by non-shareholders would be to reduce conflict. One cannot find a restriction that is conflict-free^[6]In fact, one cannot find a solution that avoids conflict. The state creates this situation by “socializing” rivalrous resources., but its purpose would be to minimize physical conflict as compared to open borders^[7]Some might consider this a misnomer, but most people know what general view I am referring to here.. The principle isn’t “Let anybody invite any and everyone.”

The second thing I couldn’t fit into this was concerning street workers. One might argue the best objective, intersubjectively ascertainable link to the roads would be the construction and maintenance of the roads. The problem with this is that they did not act with intent to own the roads, and therefore they do not own it. The taxpayers too did not intend to own the roads by being stolen from, but that is the nature of aggression and restitutive claims. It is because of somebody else’s intent to assert ownership over some other’s justifiably owned rivalrous resources that the “link” is created. It is in spite of the victim’s original wishes.

This was originally a message to a friend concerning “bordertarians” and the ownership of “public” roads. I edited it, and I added some parts to the original message. To be clear, I am not in support of immigration restrictions. I have went full circle in this regard. As I said in “Immigration and Closed Borders,”:

Contrary to Hoppe, however, the correct policy recommendation is an open border policy. While there might be more aggression committed if borders are left open, a closed border policy requires institutional infringement of rights. Possibly, at this moment, the aggressions committed under an open border policy might lead to more aggressions overall, but the likelihood of aggression tomorrow, the day after, the year, or a decade after is lower than under a closed border policy . A state policy, e.g. taxation, is more likely to keep recurring than an individual aggression.

As libertarians, we must oppose any and all aggression, and, foremost, we must oppose institutional aggression. This type of aggression is more difficult to rid ourselves of, and is more permanent than one guy jumping a fence.