Debt Rattle April 25 2016

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Mathew Brady Three captured Confederate soldiers, Gettysburg, PA 1863 • The Revenge Of Globalisation’s Losers (Münchau) • Obama and Merkel Unite Over
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 25 2016]

[Dr. Diablo]

Definitions of property are fluid and have changed, but it’s nowhere near what this author claims. Depending on the species and individual, many animals are just as fiercely territorial–to the point of murder if necessary–as human beings. And amongst human beings, there is always, everywhere, personal property.

Even among the vaunted Native Americans and other tribal cultures, which it is claimed “don’t own the land”, ownership was sharply defined and fiercely defended. While a single individual didn’t “own the land”, don’t think that you could just come in and take his pot and house, steal his horse or his garden or whatever. While at the same time, the land was held nationally in common with borders so well defined that a tribal raid could be chased to a river and no further–if the invaders made it back across the border, they could not be chased into foreign territory without creating an international incident…just like today, with modern nation states.

So if everybody does this, species, cultures, then doesn’t it invalidate his premise that it’s “unnatural”? We should think about that. Private property: food, houses, tools, keep you alive. Private property is life, or more specifically life not as a prisoner or slave. Remove it, and you take a huge step closer to dying, as your food is stolen, your means of making it, or sleeping, of staying warm, are compromised and taken away. Be careful here. Men have spent a great deal of time and thought on this question, we might review what they said, what they did, and what worked best in reality, not in theory.

[rapier]

The story of property, of the land sort, is not much considered by people. The article mentions tribal groups in a couple of contexts but he misses an important point. The arrival of land as property was coincident with the rise of what is called civilization. States, nations use your term, and as they arose it was always under kings, the sovereign. Sovereign over the land. Kings gave or ceded land ownership to others and gave them title to it and establishing that ownership as a matter of law. Not of force but of law.

Tribal societies may have had a sort of ownership but it was not a matter of law.

The New World, America, especially a recent event in Oregon, provides the very simplest example. England and Spain claimed sovereignty over North America. Americas revolution against England and subsequent formation of a national government meant first and above all that the United States government claimed sovereignty over all land that had not been assigned title to previously. Period. The USA gained sovereignty over western lands by purchase, war and in Oregon, simply decree, Much of the Western US, desert and mountains, which American claimed sovereignty over was never subsequently acquired by individuals. Nobody was ever given title to it. Then a bunch of yahoos declared that the US government does not really have sovereignty over a certain portion of it. No?

Their mixed up claim on the land was part force and then special pleading. In part these sorts of people long for the day when ownership was established by simple force. It’s mine, take it if you can. But then they want title to it, somehow. Or they want a local government, which they may happen to have strong influence on to be given sovereignty over the land. Well it isn’t thought out really. They sort of think that there should be no sovereign. Any sovereign is to them tyranny. However if there is no soverign then who will enforce their claim of title to the land. It’s all mixed up and so it is to some extent with many people.

[Nassim]

“The world’s failure to prepare for natural disasters will have “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change fuels a huge increase in catastrophic droughts and floods and the humanitarian crises that follow”

I would have thought that wars of convenience should be top of the list. Earthquakes are not something new. Doubtless, much of California will succumb one day – no one can say when.

As for hurricanes in the USA, they seem to occur far less often than used to be the case:

” In a stroke of luck, no major hurricanes rated Category 3 or higher have struck U.S. soil during the past nine years, a new study finds.
This is the country’s longest “hurricane drought” in recorded history, or since 1851, the researchers said. The previous record lull lasted eight years, from 1861 to 1868, they said.”

https://www.livescience.com/50704-hurricane-drought.html

Since this article appeared last May, the “drought” should be 10 years.

I guess the global warming lobby puts it down to increased CO2 🙂

[Dr. Diablo]

Sort of. As you say, it’s complicated. The Oregon tribes had law, of course they did. All human cultures have law, even if it’s verbal, even if it’s cultural, and even if it’s subject to wider vagaries such as “popularity” or “political influence”. Why? Because our law is identical. Case law is your verbal memory, and popularity and political pull are overwhelmingly clear, if not the primary driver of court decisions. Think your local judge or mayor would go to jail for a DWI stop? Ms. Clinton, Mr. Cheney? How about Lindsay Lohan, flouting judges for years? Can you do that? “Law”, as it’s advertised, doesn’t exist, if it ever did. It’s no different than expedience, popular pull, and public memory tribes used.

The title of land and who issues it is certainly sticky, but primarily it is gained by right of conquest, which the law recognizes. This is how the U.S. took title to the colonies and later the continent via the Indian wars, wars with Spain. The only exception was the purchase with France, wherein they claimed title over the native land by the same means. All titles stem back to violence. Or should we give title back to Caesar and the Picts, and caveman Ug? The agency of the violence, who can defend it against the violence of others, is the “owner”, which we call Government, and pay that protection money to, which we call “taxes for the national defense.”

But for the United States, the situation is a little different. There was a legal form embedded in several states to grant alloidal title, meaning owned free and clear and not granted by the state, too complex to explain here. The misunderstanding with the U.S. is that the Federal government is not a body of its own, but a standing committee of states. It owns–or rather oversees ONLY the fine, crime-free District of Columbia. Because it doesn’t exist as its own body, or wasn’t designed to. The states exist, and they are basically national sovereign governments, so all land, be it military bases, post offices, federal buildings, are loaned to the federal government at the State’s discretion and in legal structure can be re-claimed by the states at any time. This is likewise true of territories such as the West, which are held in legal trust until they reach statehood, at which point the state owns it, and all western land is so defined as having statehood. Because the Federal government is not allowed to own land. This status still exists legally, even if everyone has forgotten and ignores it in practice. And that’s fine, there are a lot of laws and customs like that. But since the Federal government *manages* the land, it does not own it, it has been requested to manage the land **on behalf of the real owner, the states.** Everyone’s forgotten, in Nevada, in Oregon, but now that some remember, obviously the Federal government doesn’t want to relinquish their 100-year control of that valuable, leinable asset, millions of square miles of western land, and all the water, oil, and minerals therein.

We’ll see how it plays out, but in this case, it’s difficult to determine who’s deluded. The western people, who are referring to a law and custom unused for 100 years, or the Federal Government, which has taken de facto control of the states and their land, but technically does not have legal rights. That’s a power struggle, which will define the law itself. Using violence, or the threat of, as above, as law always does.

In addition, I don’t think many people want or recognize no sovereign; it’s been complained in alternative circles of the complete and total lack of American anarchists. But they have competing sovereigns (state v federal), with competing ideas of their powers, duties, and limitations. The pendulum has swung so far that saying local people should have control of their affairs to bake a cake or build a stairway without outside interference is considered anarchy. But this level of local decision, with nearly no state and absolutely no federal would be the legal norm until as late as the Progressive movement in 1900. Now what was law for 120-140 years is now anarchy, insanity, and open rebellion. Strange how times change, isn’t it? With most of the same laws and structures remain on the books, unused.

[Author]

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