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| MTZehvor said: This last statement I find particularly questionable, because it blames the enforcement mechanism rather than the rule itself. If you wish to blame the system of government and its methods of land distribution (and I'll fully support you when it comes to eminent domain), then that's all well and good, but blaming violence for that seems misguided. State violence is, at some level, the enforcement mechanism for every law in every country that I can ever think of. Murder someone? Arrested and put in jail. Rob a store? Arrested and put in jail. And even for smaller offenses that don't warrant an arrest at first, if you continue to resist and trying to avoid the state implemented penalties, you will, eventually, be arrested and forced into prison against your will. Saying that violence is the reason why there hasn't been a more fair system of land ownership is like saying that violence is ultimately the reason why healthcare is a massive problem in the US. Sure, maybe if the state didn't have a monopoly on violence, the current form of government could have been overthrown and a more equitable system of healthcare put in place, but that's less an explanation of why this problem exists in the first place and more why the problem hasn't been solved yet. |
The enforcement mechanism and the rule are intertwined. A rule that is not enforced, isn't much of a rule, and whether or not something that enforced is detrimental depends on the contents of the rule and the aims of the individuals whom the rule affects. I am blaming both the mechanism which makes the unilateral enforcement of the rule possible (the state) and the contents of the rule itself (absolutist private property.)
"Murder someone? Arrested and put in jail. Rob a store? Arrested and put in jail. "
Prisons are pretty modern inventions and it isn't clear that they are all that great at preventing murder and theft. There is also a question about whom prevents the state from murdering and stealing? So there is obviously a greater dynamic necessary to prevent murder than to institute a monopoly on the legitimization of violence. Why is a monopoly necessary? My criticism of the state isn't merely that it is violent, violence is necessary. My criticism is that it declares itself as the ultimate authority of what violence is and which violence is legitimate.
Foucault's Dicipline and Punishment is an eye-opening book about the modern penal system and how punishment changed during the enlightenment.
"Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)"
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"Saying that violence is the reason why there hasn't been a more fair system of land ownership is like saying that violence is ultimately the reason why healthcare is a massive problem in the US. Sure, maybe if the state didn't have a monopoly on violence, the current form of government could have been overthrown and a more equitable system of healthcare put in place, but that's less an explanation of why this problem exists in the first place and more why the problem hasn't been solved yet."
I am not saying that violence (in general) is the reason why there hasn't been a more fair system of land ownership, I am saying that the authority whom determines the land ownership norms in our current society (the state) is the reason why there hasn't been a more fair system of land ownership. It is through the state's violence that the inequality arises.
In a system where violence is not centralized into the hands of one entity, the social forces cancel out of an interest in cost-reduction. Violence is only a good solution to conflict, when the risk of it being costly are low, and by monopolizing the legitimization of violence the state is able to unilaterally set the conditions of society.
So ideally, the capacity to induce violence would be as evenly distributed as possible, so that there be large individual costs to inducing violence on others, and so that said costs be internalized by the one inducing the violence themselves, rather than put onto others.
It's much easier to permit violence when another is doing it on your behalf.
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On top of that, in regards to high rent prices, the explanation of violence seems a little disingenuous, or at the very least, incomplete, given the myriad of other factors that are involved in rent prices, which can all be boiled down to supply and demand. Obviously what is "expensive" and what is "cheap" is highly subjective, but what isn't is the discrepancy of rent prices between different areas or even states. For instance, South Africa has the cheapest rent in the world; the average apartment is 87.5% cheaper than the average apartment in New York City. Does that mean that South Africa somehow has less of a monopoly on violence, or that perhaps there are fewer instances of state violence? Certainly not. Rather, rental prices are heavily based in supply and demand; i.e. how popular the place is to live and how much space there is to live. The first factor certainly isn't controlled by the state or what we'll call the "elites," and while the second could be in theory, in practice it rarely plays out that way. |
Certainly the property norms of a society affect said supply and demand curves. A society where landed property can be held as a commodity independent of whether or not one uses or occupies it will have more scarcity than one which doesn't unilaterally enforce such a norm (all other things being equal.) The concern isn't about natural scarcity (the distribution of resources independent of human activity), there isn't much one can do about that other than maximize the way we utilize the land. The concern is about artificial scarcities, imposed by arbitrary rules created by those whom hold the capacity to induce violence. If everybody had the capacity to induce violence more equally, then more equitable rules on property would come to exist, a compromise among all those involved in the property. When one institution has the say (the state) then whoever controls the state can create norms that absolutely benefit them at the detriment of others. The argument is that the state artificially limits the supply of usable land by protecting it for those who aren't using it.
There is also the issue where rules reinforce one another. The rules of the banking system which affect the distribution of capital are reinforced by and reinforce the land monopoly. Likewise rules on population movement, trade, etc also affect these distributions.
The 19th century libertarian socialist Benjamin Tucker addresses your concern in State Socialism and Anarchism.
"Second in importance comes the land monopoly, the evil effects of which are seen principally in exclusively agricultural countries, like Ireland. This monopoly consists in the enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation. It was obvious to Warren and Proudhon that, as soon as individualists should no longer be protected by their fellows in anything but personal occupancy and cultivation of land, ground-rent would disappear, and so usury have one less leg to stand on. Their followers of today are disposed to modify this claim to the extent of admitting that the very small fraction of ground-rent which rests, not on monopoly, but on superiority of soil or site, will continue to exist for a time and perhaps forever, though tending constantly to a minimum under conditions of freedom. But the inequality of soils which gives rise to the economic rent of land, like the inequality of human skill which gives rise to the economic rent of ability, is not a cause for serious alarm even to the most thorough opponent of usury, as its nature is not that of a germ from which other and graver inequalities may spring, but rather that of a decaying branch which may finally wither and fall."
The question to be asked is, which factors predominate?
