The Serpent's Wisdom

It dawned on me this morning the magnitude of suffering that has been caused by the simple assertion, "I have a piece of paper that says the land you're on is mine."

This was brought home again for the Starfish Menagerie last night as we met with our landlady to discuss the lease renewal. Dealing with her is not onerous, but there was some tension a month or so ago and that hangs over our heads now every time we deal with her. Underneath it all, though, by accidents of our individual histories, we are in debt to her. Fair or not, the five of us (my three partners and I, and the landlady) buy into a number of concepts underlying our interaction, including the commodification of land.

To draw from the aphorisms attributed to Proudhon, property can be theft, or property can be freedom. This depends, really, on the way society defines property.

Property might represent the freedom to determine your own future, since it means having unfettered access to a piece of land, whether that be land which you farm, where you house your craft equipment, where your store is based, or where you eat and sleep when not working for an employer. For this to be possible, any institution which governs the area must have fundamental respect for each person's right to "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." This right has to be a concern that comes before others.

Or, property might represent the way in which the future is taken from you. When there's no open land left to settle, the concept of land ownership creates a sharp divide between those who own land and those who don't. The people in the latter class are kept in a state of debt to the former.

Claims of land ownership can be traced back to people who said, "This land is mine," and who were willing or able to enforce this by violence. The violence of the land ownership claim was sublimated into a meme which I call "the tyranny of the written word." The owners of property in an area came together to establish an authority which would track people's ownership claims on tablets of clay. The concept of legitimacy was developed to defend their agenda. A "legitimate" claim is one that can be tracked to bits of writing recognized as "valid" by the governing authority.

The agenda of land ownership can be a route to social happiness, or it can be a highway to injustice. Land ownership in itself is not necessarily the evil here; the problem is the commodification of land. Virtually all injustice can be tracked back to commodification.

Throw "intellectual property" into the mix, and you get a whole new dimension for potential happiness or injustice.

The only way to rectify the injustice of commodification is to prioritize "the right of pursuit of happiness" before "the tyranny of the written word." That means that people's freedom to self-determination has to come before the legitimacy of contracts and deeds. People can own the land they need to determine their own future; but the government should not assist when people take land.

Not sure whether or not this is some kind of joke, but it has me giggling evilly.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements faxed a request to Chip Meany, the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire, seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road.

This is the present location of [Supreme Court Justice David] Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

... "This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

Clements' plan is to raise investment capital from wealthy pro-liberty investors and draw up architectural plans. These plans would then be used to raise investment capital for the project. Clements hopes that regular customers of the hotel might include supporters of the Institute For Justice and participants in the Free State Project among others.

from a press release by Freestar Media (thank you conuly for the link)

Here's an issue I wish would get a lot of attention, but I'm not too optimistic.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide when local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will to make way for projects like shopping malls and hotel complexes that produce more tax revenue.

The court already has given governments broad power to take private property through eminent domain, provided the owner is given "just compensation." This often involves blighted neighborhoods residents are eager to leave. But in recent years more cities and towns have been accused of abusing their authority, razing nice homes to make way for parking lots for casinos and other tax-producing businesses.

... In the latest case, Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed a lawsuit after city officials announced plans to bulldoze their homes to clear the way for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices. The residents refused to budge, arguing it was an unjustified taking of their property.

The Fifth Amendment [to the US Constitution] allows governments to take private property for "public use." The appeal turns on whether "public use" involves seizures not to revitalize slums or build new roads or schools, but to raze unblighted homes and businesses to bring in more money for a town.

"I'm not willing to give up what I have just because someone else can generate more taxes here," said homeowner Matthew Dery, whose family has lived in the New London neighborhood known as Fort Trumbull for more than 100 years.

from Court Takes on Question of Seizing Land

Most Americans are willing to pay taxes if they know that this tax money is going to be used for good cause, to suit the public interest. Ideally, then, taxes are something we pay voluntarily to the government, whose authority is rooted in the consent of people to be governed, in return for things which will benefit us.

What we're seeing here, though, is what happens when a city is ruled by an entrenched elite who see tax revenue as something which government is inherently entitled to demand. Furthermore, the greed in operation here is sickeningly blatant -- wealthy developers wink and nudge at city officials about the nice tax payoff they can expect from a swanky resort, but, sigh, there are commoners in the way.

How, I wonder, can the developers reasonably expect their project to be a success if they do not have the support of the people who live in the town?

If the Supreme Court rules against the residents of Fort Trumbull, then no American citizen, anywhere, will be safe in the assumption that the scenic property they've purchased for their home and for their children is secure against greed disguised as "eminent domain." This is, in short, one of the most important issues we face today.