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KOL468 | Is Group Ownership and Co-ownership Communism?

by on July 26, 2025
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 468.

From a Twitter Space organized by @Kasimir, joined by LiquidZulu and others. I believe I was supposed to host a Zoom call at 8am this Sat. morning but I overslept (since I am dealing with a family issue) so joined this conversation late, about 90 minutes in, and chimed in sporadically.

Related:

Update: Co-ownership is quite possible in the law. It’s not especially magical or difficult. See La. Civ. Code arts 477, 797, et pass. See excerpts from Gregory W. Rome, Civil Law Property Outline & Case Briefs: Keyed to Yiannopoulos’ Civil Law Property Coursebook 10th edition (2025):

  1. Co-ownership.

a. Ownership in indivision is “[o]wnership of the same thing by two or more persons.” La. C. art. 797. The right of each owner bears upon the whole of the thing held in indivision. The fundamental rules of co-ownership in indivision include:

  1. Co-owners own the entire property with one Each co-owner’s share does not have to be equal.
  2. Under Louisiana law, a co-owner is prohibited from unilateral acts concerning the property except for acts of use and acts of preservation. Other acts require unani- mous consent or a court order.
    1. “The use and management of the thing held in indivision is determined by agreement of all the co-owners.” La. C.C. art. 801.
    2. “When the mode of use and management of the thing held in indivision is not determined by an agreement of all the co-owners and partition is not available, a court, upon petition by a co-owner, may determine the use and ” La. C.C. art. 803.
    3. A co-owner may petition the court for an order regarding the use and manage- ment of co-owned property where the co-owners cannot agree and the property is already being offered for sale because the normal remedy — partition — is practically unavailable. Succession of Miller.
  • “A co-owner may freely lease, alienate, or encumber his share of the thing held in indivision. The consent of all the co-owners is required for the lease, alienation, or encumbrance of the entire thing held in indivision.” La. C.C. art. 805.
  1. A co-owner may freely use the entire property for its customary purpose but may not interfere with the other co-owners’ right to use it La. C.C. art. 802. If the co-owners cannot agree on how to use the property, their remedy is partition.
    1. One co-owner may receive an injunction prohibiting another co-owner from deliberately denying her the equal and coextensive use of a part of the com- monly held property. LeBlanc v. Scurto.
  2. “A co-owner may without the concurrence of any other co-owner take necessary steps for the preservation of the thing that is held in ” La. C.C. Art. 800.
    1. Preservation implies a danger of decay, deterioration, or impending
    2. The acts should be taken to preserve a thing rather than to alter it or its eco- nomic purpose.
    3. The necessity of the acts, their sufficiency, and their proportionality to the dan- ger should be judged by an objective prudent-man standard.
    4. Acts of preservation may be taken without the consent of the other co-owners and over their objections.
    5. Acts taken under this article are taken in the actor’s own name, and not in the name of his co-owners without their consent.
  3. A co-owner may not substantially change the property or devote it to a new use without the unanimous consent of the other co-owners. A co-owner’s failure to ob- ject to an exceptional use or activity on the property after learning of it ordinarily constitutes his tacit consent to those A co-owner who makes an unsanc- tioned use of the property may be liable to the other co-owners for any damage he causes — for example, diminution of the value of the property.
  • “Co-owners share the fruits and products of the thing held in indivision in propor- tion to their When fruits or products are produced by a co-owner, other co-owners are entitled to their shares of the fruits or products after deduction of the costs of production.” La. C.C. art. 798. But a co-owner is never liable for losses or

 

expenses incurred by the other co-owners in connection with activities on the land in which he has not agreed to participate. In any case, a co-owner may not charge his co-owners for his personal services in producing or gathering the income.

  • A co-owner must pay his proportionate share of the reasonable costs for maintain- ing and preserving the property.
  1. A co-owner may seek to partition the property at any time, and agreements to the contrary are valid only under certain circumstances and for limited times.
    1. Expenses. “A co-owner who on account of the thing held in indivision has incurred necessary expenses, expenses for ordinary maintenance and repairs, or necessary man- agement expenses paid to a third person, is entitled to reimbursement from the other co-owners in proportion to their shares.” La C.C. art. 806.
      1. Necessary expenses include expenses incurred for the preservation of a thing and for the discharge of private or public burdens, other than those incurred for ordinary maintenance and repairs — e.g., property taxes and assessments, indispensable repairs and maintenance costs, litigation costs for the preservation of the property, and insurance costs.
      2. Useful expenses, which are expenses that are not needed for the preservation of a thing but enhance its value — e.g., ordinary repairs.
  • Contrast Luxurious expenses, which are expenses made to gratify one’s personal
  1. Unjust enrichment. Article 806 does not override the doctrines of unjust enrich- ment or negotiorum gestio, and one co-owner may be able to recover the enhanced value of the thing from the others if the requirements of either doctrine are met.
    1. There is some authority to suggest the doctrine of negotio gestorum does not apply between co-owners.
    2. Some of the jurisprudence interpreting article 2297 reads it to require reim- bursement only for expenses that are both “necessary and ” But there is also jurisprudence to the contrary.
  2. Indirect rent. “If the co-owner who incurred the expenses had the enjoyment of the thing held in indivision, his reimbursement shall be reduced in proportion to the value of the enjoyment.” La. C.C. art. 806.
  3. “A co-owner is liable to his co-owner for any damage to the thing held in indivision caused by his fault.” La. C.C. art. 799.
  4. “Substantial alterations or substantial improvements to the thing held in indivision may be undertaken only with the consent of all the co-owners. When a co-owner makes sub- stantial alterations or substantial improvements consistent with the use of the property, though without the express or implied consent of his co-owners, the rights of the parties shall be determined by Article 496 [as if he were a good-faith possessor]. When a co- owner makes substantial alterations or substantial improvements inconsistent with the use of the property or in spite of the objections of his co-owners, the rights of the parties shall be determined by Article 497 [as if he were a bad-faith possessor].” C.C. art. 804.
  5. Property held by spouses under a community property regime are subject to many spe- cial rules of co-ownership.

 

  1. Partition. “No one may be compelled to hold a thing in indivision with another unless the contrary has been provided by law or juridical act. Any co-owner has a right to demand partition of a thing held in Partition may be excluded by agreement for up to fifteen years, or for such other period as provided” by law. La. C.C. art. 807. Partition may be made by agreement — a conventional partition — or judicially.

Update: In response to the criticism by some of co-ownership, they mention some critiques of Hoppe and Rothbard of egalitarianism. See e.g.:

I will quote some of the relevant material below but it suffices to observe that the problems to noted by Hoppe and Rothbard below, of egalitarianism or “universal equal and other-ownership,” are simply not present when two or more people distribute rights between each other by contract. Even Rothbard acknowledges this by accepting the “bundle of rights” view of rights in his confused argument for IP rights. 1 If there is a clear contract between co-owners, there is no problem of everyone dying because everyone has to wait for everyone else before using a resource, for example.

From Stephan Kinsella, “How We Come To Own Ourselves,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) [LFFS]:

In the text above, I noted that “first use” is not the ultimate test for the “objective link” in the case of body ownership, but that rather it is a person’s direct and immediate control over his body. See also, on this, Rothbard, who argues in favor of self-ownership because the only logical alternatives are “(1) the ‘communist’ one of Universal and Equal Other-ownership, or (2) Partial Ownership of One Group by Another—a system of rule by one class over another.”[26] However, Alternative (2) cannot be universal, as it is partial and arbitrary; and Alternative (1) either breaks down in practice and reduces to Alternative (2), or, if actually implemented, would result in the death of the human race. As Rothbard writes:

Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyone else in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on earth.[27]

Hoppe also writes on this:

If a person A were not the owner of his own body and the places and goods originally appropriated and/or produced with this body as well as of the goods voluntarily (contractually) acquired from another previous owner, then only two alternatives exist. Either another person B must be recognized as the owner of A’s body as well as the places and goods appropriated, produced or acquired by A, or else all persons, A and B, must be considered equal co-owners of all bodies, places and goods.

In the first case, A would be reduced to the rank of B’s slave and object of exploitation.… such a ruling must be discarded as a human ethic equally applicable to everyone qua human being (rational animal). From the very outset, any such ruling can be recognized as not universally acceptable and thus cannot claim to represent law. For a rule to aspire to the rank of a law—a just rule—it is necessary that such a rule apply equally and universally to everyone.

Alternatively, in the second case of universal and equal co-ownership, the requirement of equal law for everyone is fulfilled. However, this alternative suffers from another even more severe deficiency, for if it were applied, all of mankind would instantly perish. (And since every human ethic must permit the survival of mankind, this alternative must be rejected.)

… This insight into the praxeological impossibility of “universal communism,” as Rothbard referred to this proposal, brings us immediately to an alternative way of demonstrating the idea of original appropriation and private property as the only correct solution to the problem of social order.[28]

And in another work, Hoppe adds:

What is wrong with this idea of dropping the prior-later distinction as morally irrelevant? First, if the late-comers, i.e., those who did not in fact do something with some scarce goods, had indeed as much of a right to them as the first-comers, i.e., those who did do something with the scarce goods, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything, as one would have to have all of the late-comers’ consent prior to doing whatever one wanted to do. Indeed, as posterity would include one’s children’s children—people, that is, who come so late that one could never possibly ask them—advocating a legal system that does not make use of the prior-later distinction as part of its underlying property theory is simply absurd in that it implies advocating death but must presuppose life to advocate anything. Neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny could, do, or will survive and say or argue anything if one were to follow this rule. In order for any person—past, present, or future—to argue anything it must be possible to survive now. Nobody can wait and suspend acting until everyone of an indeterminate class of late-comers happens to appear and agree to what one wants to do. Rather, insofar as a person finds himself alone, he must be able to act, to use, produce, consume goods straightaway, prior to any agreement with people who are simply not around yet (and perhaps never will be).[29]

Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen acknowledges:

people can do (virtually) nothing without using parts of the external world. If, then, they require the leave of the community to use it, then, effectively…, they do not own themselves, since they can do nothing without communal authorization.[30]

Regarding this remark by Cohen, libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson comments: “It is testimony to the strength of our position that even someone so ideologically opposed gives it clear recognition as an argument that must be confronted.”[31]

John Locke also rejected the idea that people can only use unowned resources by getting the consent of everyone else as absurd:

By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to any one’s appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or master had provided for them in common, without assigning to every one his peculiar part.[32]

For a point related to those mentioned above, see Hoppe, in the Foreword:

[It is] clear what a human ethic or a theory of justice worth its salt must accomplish. It must give an answer to the question of what am I and what is every other person permitted (or not permitted) to do, right now and right here, wherever a person may find himself and whatever his external surroundings of men and materials may be.

[26] Murray N. Rothbard, “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” in The Ethics of Liberty (https://mises.org/library/crusoe-social-philosophy), p. 45.

[27] Ibid., p. 46.

[28] Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Rothbardian Ethics,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 383–84. See also similar comments in David Boaz, The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), p. 140. See also related discussion in “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society” (ch. 14), n.27 and “Defending Argumentation Ethics” (ch. 7), at n.31. See also R.W. Bradford’s inane criticism of this reasoning in R.W. Bradford, “A Contrast of Visions,” Liberty 10, no.4 (March 1997; https://perma.cc/7FDT-G7FD): 57–63, at 57–58.

[29] Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, pp. 169–70 (emphasis added). See also idem, “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property,” in The Great Fiction, p. 17.

[30] G.A. Cohen, “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality,” in Frank Lucash, ed., Justice and Equality, Here and Now (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 113–14; also in G.A. Cohen, Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 93–94.

[31] Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea, reissue ed. (Broadview Press, 2001), p. 74.

[32] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690; https://www.johnlocke.net/2022/07/two-treatises-of-government.html), §29.

From Kinsella, “Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan,” in LFFS, n31:

See also Rothbard’s criticism of the “communist” rule of universal equal and other-ownership:

Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyone else in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on earth.

Murray N. Rothbard, “Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression,” in The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 45–46, at 46, reproduced in substantially similar form in idem, “A Crusoe Social Philosophy,” Mises Daily (December 7, 2021; https://mises.org/library/crusoe-social-philosophy). See also related discussion in “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4), n.14 and “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society” (ch. 14), n.27.

For a related insight regarding the importance of the prior-later distinction and the necessity that property rights be able to answer the question of who can use what resource now, rather than waiting for some future information, otherwise people would not be able to survive because they could not use resources to produce and consume in the present, see Hoppe, “From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 328–30; Hoppe, “On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 345 (“Nobody advocating a wait-for-the-outcome ethic would be around to say anything if he took his own advice seriously. Also, to the extent that utilitarian proponents are still around, they demonstrate through their actions that their consequentialist doctrine is and must be regarded as false. Acting and proposition-making require private property rights now and cannot wait for them to be assigned only later.”); Hoppe, “Appendix: Four Critical Replies,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 407; idem, “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property,” in The Great Fiction, at section III, “Misconceptions and Clarifications.” See also Rothbard, “Beyond Is and Ought” (emphasis added):

In the modern libertarian movement, only the natural-rights libertarians have come to satisfyingly absolute libertarian conclusions. The different wings of “consequentialists”—whether emotivists, utilitarians, Stirnerites, or whatever—have tended to buckle at the seams. If, after all, one has to wait for consequences to make a firm decision, one can hardly adopt a consistent, hard-nosed stance for liberty and private property in every conceivable case.

See also Hoppe, “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, at 337:

While every person can have control over whether or not his actions cause the physical integrity of something to change, control over whether or not one’s actions affect the value of someone’s property to change rests with other people and their evaluations. One would have to interrogate and come to an agreement with the entire world population to make sure that one’s planned actions would not change another person’s evaluations regarding his property. Everyone would be long dead before this could ever be accomplished.

For more on the prior-later distinction, see “What Libertarianism Is” (ch. 2), at notes 32–36 and accompanying text, et pass.

From Kinsella, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” in LFFS, n. 27:

As Rothbard argues, there are only two alternatives to self-ownership either:

1. a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or

2. everyone has the right to own his equal quota share of everyone else.

The first alternative implies that, while class A deserves the rights of being human, class B is in reality subhuman and, therefore, deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, allowing class A to own class B means that the former is allowed to exploit and, therefore, to live parasitically at the expense of the latter; but, as economics can tell us, this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for human survival: production and exchange.

The second alternative, which we might call “participatory communalism” or “communism,” holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quota share of everyone else. If there are three billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one-three-billionth of every other person. In the first place, this ideal itself rests upon an absurdity—proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else and yet is not entitled to own himself. Second, we can picture the viability of such a world—a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in this sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.

Murray N. Rothbard, “Justice and Property Rights,” in Samuel L. Blumenfeld, ed., Property in a Humane Economy by (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974; https://mises.org/library/property-humane-economy), at 107–108 (emphasis added) (also published in Murray N. Rothbard, Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011; https://mises.org/library/economic-controversies)). A similar version of this article under the same title was published in Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, 2d ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2000 [1974]; https://mises.org/library/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays). Interestingly, the former piece, published shortly after the latter piece, appended a crucial final paragraph distancing Rothbard from some of the more leftish implications from the latter piece. See Kinsella, “Justice and Property Rights: Rothbard on Scarcity, Property, Contracts…,” The Libertarian Standard (Nov. 19, 2010) and idem, “Rothbard on the ‘Original Sin’ in Land Titles: 1969 vs. 1974,” StephanKinsella.com (Nov. 5, 2014). See Hoppe’s similar argument, discussed in “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4), n.14, and similar comments in David Boaz, The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), p. 140.

On Rothbard’s critique of this “communist” approach to property rights assignment, see also “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4), at n.14; “Defending Argumentation Ethics” (ch. 7), at n.31; and Kinsella, “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” Mises Daily (May 27, 2011), at n. 1.

GROK SUMMARY:

Summary of KOL468 | Is Group Ownership and Co-ownership Communism?

This YouTube discussion, hosted by Liquid Zulu and others, examines whether group or co-ownership equates to communism from a libertarian perspective. The conversation explores property rights, conflict avoidance, contracts, homesteading, and practical implications, with a focus on rejecting group ownership as inherently conflict-prone. Below is a summarized breakdown of the key topics, with time markers from the transcript and a more detailed segmentation of the expansive Part 6.

1. Introduction and Technical Setup

Time: 0:00 – 13:16

The discussion opens with logistical hurdles, including setting up the live stream, managing thumbnails, and troubleshooting audio issues. The absence of expected participant Stephan Canella leads the hosts to pivot to a Twitter (X) space format. They introduce the core topic: whether group ownership aligns with communism, emphasizing libertarian principles of property rights and conflict avoidance. The casual, impromptu nature of the setup is highlighted as the hosts navigate technical challenges while inviting audience participation.

2. Defining Group Ownership and Its Issues

Time: 13:52 – 22:56

The speakers outline society’s intuitive understanding of group ownership, such as a married couple jointly owning a house or shareholders co-owning a company. They argue that group ownership inherently generates conflicts due to competing claims over scarce resources, which undermines the libertarian goal of conflict avoidance. For example, if two parties claim simultaneous use of a resource (e.g., one wants to paint a wall blue, another yellow), mutual exclusion results in a stalemate, negating the purpose of property rights. They assert that true ownership must be singular and exclusive to prevent such conflicts, rendering group ownership conceptually incoherent.

3. Shareholders and Misconceptions of Ownership

Time: 11:31 – 39:00

The discussion addresses the misconception that shareholders are co-owners of a company. The speakers clarify that shareholders lack ownership rights in the libertarian sense, such as the right to use or exclude. For instance, owning Amazon stock does not grant control over Amazon’s assets, as illustrated by Liquid Zulu’s anecdote about his minor stake in racehorses, where he has no control despite being called an “owner.”

Shareholders hold contractual claims to dividends or voting influence, not direct ownership. The speakers emphasize that such arrangements are mislabeled as ownership, reinforcing that true ownership involves exclusive control, not merely financial stakes or colloquial labels.

4. Contracts and Property Rights

Time: 23:03 – 56:11

The speakers counter the argument that contracts can establish group ownership, asserting that contracts presuppose a clear theory of property. If group ownership inherently leads to conflicts, no contract can validly create it, as this would involve a “stolen concept fallacy” where contracts about property rely on a flawed property theory. They discuss time-sharing arrangements (e.g., alternating use of a camera) as sequential single ownership, not co-ownership.

Complex contracts, such as those with conditional title transfers, can simulate shared arrangements but maintain singular ownership at any given time. The speakers argue that these contractual mechanisms reinforce the necessity of exclusive ownership to avoid disputes, dismissing group ownership as a misnomer.

5. Homesteading and First-Comer Principle

Time: 41:58 – 50:22

The discussion defines legitimate ownership through homesteading, specifically the “first-comer” principle: the first person to objectively claim and use a resource (e.g., by fencing land) establishes ownership. The speakers reject the labor theory of ownership, which posits that labor (e.g., clearing a path) confers ownership, as it fails to address scarcity and competing claims. They address Roderick Long’s example of a village path built by collective labor, arguing that without explicit intent to claim and exclude, such actions do not constitute ownership.

The concept of “forstalling” (preventing access to owned property, e.g., by surrounding it) is introduced as a potential aggression. Easements may be necessary to ensure access, highlighting the complexity of applying homesteading principles to interconnected properties.

6. Practical and Legal Implications

6.1 Corporate Structures in a Libertarian Framework

Time: 50:36 – 1:59:20

The speakers explore how corporate structures could function under libertarian property principles. They propose that corporate ownership can be simulated through contracts, such as voting rights for “ticket holders” (shareholders) or conditional ownership rules (e.g., a majority ticket holder becoming the sole owner). These mechanisms avoid state-enforced group ownership, which the speakers equate with communism due to its reliance on coercive structures like trade commissions. They argue that such contracts can replicate corporate functionalities without compromising the principle of singular ownership.

6.2 Easements and Forstalling Issues

Time: 1:59:21 – 3:00:49

The discussion delves into forstalling, where a property owner restricts access to another’s property (e.g., building a “donut” of property around another’s land). This is likened to imprisonment, as it controls another’s property without ownership, constituting aggression. The speakers reference Block and Dominiak’s work on easements, suggesting that certain pathways must remain accessible to avoid violating prior ownership rights. They acknowledge that resolving such disputes may require context-specific judicial decisions, as seen in hypothetical cases like a maze trapping a trespasser or a spaceport requiring multiple properties.

6.3 Abandonment and Property Reclamation

Time: 3:00:50 – 4:00:49

The concept of abandonment is discussed as a mechanism for transferring ownership. If an owner fails to enforce exclusion (e.g., not responding to inquiries about a property), another may homestead it after due diligence, provided the claim is objective (e.g., recorded attempts to contact the owner). The speakers address scenarios where abandonment laws in current systems (e.g., squatters gaining rights after years) are seen as flawed, reinforcing that libertarian ownership requires active, visible exclusion. They stress that unclear ownership claims, such as those in co-ownership, lead to disputes that a robust legal system should prevent.

6.4 Moral Offenses and Dispute Resolution

Time: 4:00:50 – 4:09:01

A participant proposes addressing non-property-based disputes, like maliciously restricting access (e.g., building a maze), as “moral offenses” rather than property violations. This would involve courts recognizing harms that are not strictly property-based but still require resolution, such as compensation for unethical behavior. The speakers see this as a fallback for unresolved cases, suggesting that ostracism or social pressure could deter undesirable actions in a libertarian society, though this idea remains underdeveloped.

7. Philosophical Considerations and Concept Formation

Time: 4:11:46 – 4:30:40

The conversation shifts to philosophical underpinnings, rejecting essentialism in defining concepts like ownership. The speakers reference Richard Boyd’s “homeostatic property cluster,” arguing that ownership is defined by a cluster of observable factors (e.g., visible claims, exclusion) rather than a single essential trait. This requires objective, intersubjective communication of claims to avoid disputes, as ownership exists in relation to others who recognize it.

They discuss the challenge of defining ownership across contexts (e.g., with aliens or differing cultural norms), emphasizing that claims must be decipherable to latecomers. The conversation concludes with a nod to unresolved issues, like forstalling, suggesting future debates to refine these concepts.

Conclusion

The discussion firmly rejects group ownership as akin to communism due to its conflict-generating nature, advocating for singular, exclusive ownership based on the first-comer principle. Contracts can simulate shared arrangements but do not constitute co-ownership. Practical issues like corporate structures, easements, and abandonment are addressed through libertarian principles, though edge cases require further theoretical work. The space ends with plans to edit the recording and continue the debate, acknowledging the nuanced opposition presented.

YOUTUBE TRANSCRIPT (cleaned up by Grok)

KOL468 | Is Group Ownership and Co-Ownership Communism?Transcript from YouTube[Unknown Speaker]
0:00
Testing, testing. I can hear you.[Unknown Speaker]
0:53
Sent you co-host. Cool. Accept co-host.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
1:00
Just throwing together a quick thumbnail for this.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
1:13
I’m an absolutely noob host. I’m trying to figure out how to get the link to advertise it.[Unknown Speaker]
1:23
Share. There’s a button on the top. That’s the little ball with an arrow coming out of it.[Unknown Speaker]
2:11
Let’s bring everybody in. Something about invites.[Unknown Speaker]
2:50
Oh my god.[Unknown Speaker]
3:07
There we go. The link is sent.[Unknown Speaker]
3:27
Questied. Oh, someone was requesting there for a second, but I wasn’t able to catch it in time.[Unknown Speaker]
3:37
Never mind. I am on the ball.[Unknown Speaker]
3:48
We gave Monop co-host as well. Nice.[Unknown Speaker]
4:00
How’s it going, guys? Pretty good. Pretty good.[Unknown Speaker]
4:05
Shame. Shame Canella fell asleep or forgot to wake up or whatever. Anyway,[Unknown Speaker]
4:16
Look, you can always jump in. It’d be still cool to do a live stream at some point, but he’s obviously active on this platform, so hopefully he sees this and maybe decides to jump on at some point.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
4:30
Yeah. Sorry, I’m not being very talkative. I’m just trying to throw together a thumbnail in about five seconds here.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
4:40
Oh my god, it’s so annoying. The way I’ve chosen to do this is just the worst thing in the world.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
4:48
Somebody needs to take away my image editing permissions. First world problems.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
4:55
It’s 9:00 a.m. on a weekend and I threw on a shirt and set up my camera.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
5:03
Effort wasted.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
5:09
Can you guys hear any of my background noise? I don’t know how good Twitter’s audio detection is. Their audio cancelling.[Unknown Speaker]
5:15
Yeah, it sounds fine. You’re good. You seem pretty fine to me, man.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
5:21
Alright. Cool. Cool. I know there’s some way that you can actually mute X faces does give you the ability to mute background noise, but I don’t know how to do it if I’m honest. Okay.[Unknown Speaker]
5:33
But it doesn’t seem like it’s an issue at the moment anyway for your ace. So,[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
5:43
Oh, get off.[Unknown Speaker]
5:48
Welcome to the group ownership space, guys. Listen to Liquid Zulu get shitty with technology.[Unknown Speaker]
5:56
Yeah. Yeah. He’s throwing up a thumbnail. This is all sort of a bit impromptu. But what we’ll do is as soon as Zulu is ready, we’ll figure out who wants to do the intro, introduce the topic, the issues and so on. We’ll go from there. It’ll make a fun space.[Unknown Speaker]
6:12
You should just use your old original thumbnail and just whack a big hammer and sickle over Stephan Canella’s face and just put that up. That’ll make him try again.[Unknown Speaker]
6:25
I’m just kidding. We love Stephan. We would never do something like that to him. Never. Ever.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
6:32
Alright. Finally. Copy that. Paste that.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
6:40
Rotate that. Terrible.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
6:46
Scale it up. Reticulating splines.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
6:56
Can throw a goddamn drop shadow. Who cares?[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
7:02
This joke aged. Sorry, this joke probably aged me.[Unknown Speaker]
7:11
I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn here, but if there’s anyone in here that’s in the listeners that disagrees, I feel like you should feel free to jump up and, you know, if you want to.[Unknown Speaker]
7:22
Exactly. Because otherwise it’s just going to be us all circle jerking about how much we all agree with one another.[Unknown Speaker]
7:27
No. No. This is definitely as announced a circle jerk space for sure because this is what libertarians do. To be a true libertarian you have to have 90% of other libertarians blocked and you have to circle jerk and only debate lower loomer.[Unknown Speaker]
7:58
That’s mandatory. We got to be build cliques, otherwise how will we progress politically? You’re not wrong.[Unknown Speaker]
8:09
Liquid Zulu, I came here just to tell you that your content is Gerald. Thank you. Whoever that was,[Unknown Speaker]
8:18
it was Sir Cheddy Cole something. Anna Chud Capjack Jawhead MC Chutty Pants Truth Nukes. This is pretty much Liquid Zulu’s prime target audience.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
8:38
Okay. Upload thumbnail. Oh my god. Where’s recent thumbnails? Liquid Zulu, are you pro borders or against borders?[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
8:50
Stay borders. I’m against them.[Unknown Speaker]
8:55
Private borders. We can actually bring that discussion later on maybe.[Unknown Speaker]
9:01
Yeah, it is somewhat related. Who doesn’t love another boritarian discussion like that? You know, if there’s one topic on X that hasn’t been discussed enough, it’s immigration restriction.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
9:13
Oh, for sake. God damn it. I need to make the live stream post on YouTube or else it’s going to slap a watermark over it.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
9:25
Hell. Reream. I hate you so much. I can’t stand Reream at all.[Unknown Speaker]
9:30
So the title says group ownership is communism. Would you say that governments are a group?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
9:41
Yeah, no, we’ll get to it. We’ll get to it. I mean, I can start introducing the topic, but so I’ll tell you some meta. So, I’ve been in I’ve been manipulating the hashtag debate in Liquid Zulu’s server, Discord, trying to make it a nice space for debate. And the way I did this is because I’m super lazy is I every 15 days I walk in there and I created a rule set that AI can understand more or less. And so I scan 15 days worth of conversation into a text file, upload it to a couple of nice LLM helpers and they produce a top 10 list of the most annoying people according to my rules and then if they all align on one person he gets read only for until I care to reverse it. And so we actually had started to have decent debates there as a result because all the spam disappeared into other channels. And for the past week we’ve had a super heated debate partly in preparation for the stock that didn’t happen with a guy who was very, very insistent that co-ownership can work. And we chiseled at it, chiseled at it, chiseled at it until the disagreement became basically semantic. So there are people that want to call a certain type of shareholder an owner and I should probably say broadly we don’t. This is why group ownership is absolute communism but we will get into the details.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
11:31
Yeah. I just wanted to say real quick that that seems to be the key point is whenever this topic gets brought up the first thing that someone will say is what about shareholders? And it’s like, well, if you actually think about it even today properly understood shareholders do not have ownership rights the way libertarians would understand what ownership is. So it’s just as far as I’m concerned the I mean first of all it doesn’t matter whether shareholders exist or not is irrelevant to the theory. It shouldn’t be a factor we consider but even as it stands it doesn’t seem to be the case that there would be any issues with how shareholders work. They don’t seem to have ownership rights as libertarians would understand them. Like just because I own stock in Amazon, just because I own stock in Amazon doesn’t mean I could exclude people from Amazon warehouses that I don’t like. It’s like, you know, if I rocked up and said, “Hey, I have $1,000 worth of Amazon stock. I now get to, you know, fire your workers.” Amazon would be like, “No, you don’t. Get off.”[Unknown Speaker]
12:37
I’ve got the whole shareholder thing. And who the hell cares? Shares are stupid and all companies should be private like Valve.[Unknown Speaker]
12:49
Indeed. Alright. This should be good. So, let’s start streaming.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
12:57
Let’s get the link. Oh my god, it’s looking so annoying.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
13:07
Alright. If. Oh my god. Let me click on that.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
13:16
Alright. Yes, we are live now. So, yes, a little bit of a mix up there. It seems Stephan Canella either forgot or, you know, just slept through his alarm or whatever. So, we’re not doing with Canella. We’re doing instead just a Twitter space here. We got a thankfully Kasmir was able to host it and it’s the topic is group ownership. So if somebody wants to introduce the topic, how about Casmir? You go ahead and introduce the topic whilst I get this link.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
13:52
Alright. So let’s just start with what we have right now. The general understanding in society is that you can sort of intuitively that’s how people think they can jointly own things. The most common examples are, you know, the husband and wife jointly own their house. There are two neighbors and they jointly own a driveway. People mention companies with shareholders where two people invest in a company and so now they are co-owners of that company and they have 50% share each or something like that. There is the government, sorry, the states, the federal incorporation law where you can create a corporation with shareholders that have some kind of an ownership-like relationship. And the general defense of this idea is that all of these people are separable from outsiders. So clearly somebody walking down the street is not the husband and the wife and not the neighbor and not one of the company owners and not even a member of the corporation. Therefore, it’s very obvious for most people it’s common sense that those people are excluded. You know, they’re not the owners. But our interest in this topic is more jurist and we have foundational principles and when our foundational principles tell us something we basically we would want to adjust the language to be true to the logic and to the conclusions that we reach. So what are these? Well, I’ll cut it very, very short. We are interested in avoiding conflicts. And this is our understanding of the purpose of the concept of law. There is a way to argue around this. There’s a way to explain you can refer to Liquid Zulu’s videos why that is the only point that stands and why other opinions are likely excluded.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
16:09
So see how does it connect to group ownership. If we have the goal of conflict avoidance and I’ll elaborate on this term shortly then ownership as a concept, as a subset of the idea of or correlated to the idea of law, must also be conflict avoiding. If I emborder a territory it must be either virgin or previously abandoned. If I pick up a stick it must be no one else’s stick. Then I have become the owner of that stick. And the fundamental issue with group ownership with this idea is that it immediately introduces what we’re trying to avoid. It introduces competing claims. The definition of a conflict in most, I think most people will agree here, is that at least it’s a competing claim over something where one person says it’s mine and the other person says it’s mine and in certain cases there’s a potential case where they both try to exclude each other. Famous example: one of them tries to use the stick to fish with as a fishing rod and the other one wants to throw it simultaneously into the fire and those actions are mutually exclusive. So those claims are mutually exclusive. Therefore, a conflict is there. Now group ownership implies that there’s a certain time in which people might disagree and as soon as they disagree that is the definition of a conflict. And the problem for us is that our legal system cannot solve things post facto. And I’ll explain that too. So when I said earlier it must be conflict avoiding, what does that mean? Think about it this way: there are two domains of conceptually one of them is your observations about reality, you see yourself, the space, things that you can emborder, so on and so forth. Another domain is the domain of, which is also part of reality, of concepts and logic, and let’s say mathematics and legal structures. So our interest is in that other domain, in domain of concepts, to have logical consistency and within that. So within the frame, within the domain of the law, conflict must be avoided, meaning impossible. It is impossible to do something legally and initiate a conflict. Those are mutually exclusive. That is how we frame the system. Now there could be conflicts outside of the domain of law. For example, I believe that I’m the first comer and Monarchian here believes that he’s the first comer. This is a factual disagreement and we don’t know who is right, but then, you know, we check the camera feeds or whatever or we have some other empirical way to test it and we resolve this. We don’t have a conflicted understanding of the law, we have a conflict about the facts. Now another possible thing you cannot avoid in any system is a jurist conflict, meaning we both agree on the law, we both agree on the facts, but this is some unique edge case where the jurists have not yet decided who’s the first comer and who then necessarily is deliberate or accidental aggressor. There could be a hypothetical which we just didn’t think through before. Now this is again, this is not a conflict that is inherent to the law. This is just something that is very similar to a factual disagreement. Once it is resolved, once the judge or our jurists decide one way or the other and support their decision via some logical structure from first principles, then it’s like the conflict didn’t exist. One of the parties is right. So this is what we mean when we say to avoid conflict. It’s to make it legally impossible while within the realm of the law, while agreeing on the facts and while agreeing on matters of jurisprudence. And the last way to think about it is that ownership should work as a function. Meaning you can give it to an AI or a computer algorithm and say, according to this formula, for every time t, you know, there is an owner x and every time you input a time into the function, it should tell you who the owner is. And this is basically how there we can explore the reasons why this is the case. So questions or that was a really long monologue.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
21:33
Sorry. I think I introduced that by saying I’ll just go over it quickly like five minutes later or something. Typical caster.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
21:46
But yeah. So I mean, yeah, if anybody disagrees, I think just the upshot there is that if you have to whatever extent you have this thing called group property where everybody is said to own something, then you don’t actually have property rights anymore. They don’t have the ability to avoid conflicts. Like just imagine the easy case of there’s Crusoe and Friday on the desert island and through whatever means you think that somebody can group own something, they come to group own everything on the island. Well, then they’re just in the identical situation as if they didn’t have any property rights at all. They don’t know how to avoid conflicts over anything anymore. It’s identical. And this is like the kind of realization you can have to where, okay, well then this thing called property actually doesn’t work. It doesn’t make any sense.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
22:39
Does anybody have any disagreements? I don’t know if I can see if somebody’s requesting. So if somebody is, then I don’t know, somebody else at the moment.[Unknown Speaker]
22:56
I don’t see yet. I suppose it’d be worth mentioning. So because one of the most common disagreements will be typically regarding contracts and people will say, well, if people just agree to a contract that stipulates group ownership, then like what’s the issue? Why, you know, aren’t we like volunteerists or whatever where people should be free to contractually associate with one another however they want? But, you know, and this has been said numerous times by Zulu and that again the problem is at the end of the day that contracts are contracts about property, so in order to have a proper theory of contracts, you need to have a proper theory of property. And so if your theory of property, if the correct theory of property can’t get you to a situation where group ownership is possible or satisfies the requirements of law, if it can’t do that, then there’s no amount of contractual goings-on that you can build up on top of that that is going to allow it to occur. Because, you know, as Zulu has referenced, it’s a stolen concept fallacy. Contracts are contracts about property. So, you can’t just, similar to how, you know, me and Kasmir can’t mutually agree, “Hey, we’re just going to voluntarily agree to enslave Zulu and that’s going to be fine,” because, you know, our theory of property tells us that we can’t do that. And no amount of agreement between Kasmir and I about how Zulu should definitely be our property is going to fix that problem.[Unknown Speaker]
24:31
It’s the thought that counts, I guess. To kind of, if there’s no one that agrees with that position, to just kind of steelman it, the reason that I’ve heard most of them give for why it is coherent to talk about group ownership is that ownership is about the right to exclude, and if you have two owners, you know, there isn’t necessarily a conflict between the right to exclude because they can both just exclude each other. So, I mean, that’s usually where I’ve seen most of it go. So, I guess if you want to move towards addressing that point,[Unknown Speaker]
25:12
Can I tackle that point or if anyone else wants to speak, feel free. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.[Unknown Speaker]
25:18
So this is just how I would sort of answer, and everyone else here might disagree a little bit with what I’m about to say, but if they do, please, you know, speak up. I think that oftentimes, you know, Zark, you and I have talked about this before, but I think like the right to exclude that is certainly a very important aspect of property rights, right? That’s sort of how they manifest when a conflict arises or optimally arises when there’s a conflict. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the whole of property rights. I think that the idea that you only have a right to exclude and meaning that you do not have the right to use the property in any way, which I’ve heard some people actually argue, that seems to lead to some very odd conclusions that the libertarians would normally not agree with otherwise and even the people making the argument would not agree with. Right? So like one reductio ad absurdum I can just think of right now is like if all you had was the right to exclude from your property and not the right to use it, it seems like someone else could exclude you from your property not by using force on you but merely by like let’s say blockading the pathway back to your home or something while you’re out. And you would essentially not have your rights violated because they are not trespassing on your property. They’re not trespassing on you. They’re merely excluding you from your very own property. So I think that’s just one case where it’s a reductio. And also another case, I can’t, the right to exclude implies the right to use in some way, right? I have to be able to use my body first off before I have the right to exclude. And normally we think of property rights or we think of rights in general as if I have the right to do something, that means it is non-aggressive. And if I don’t have the right to do something, that means it is aggressive. And that serves such a tautology really. I’m really just saying the same thing and expressing it in a different manner. So to say I don’t have the right to use my property, but I just have the right to exclude would almost to me at least imply in linguistic terms the idea that well, by using my property I’m actually aggressing if you tell me I don’t have the right to use it and I only have the right to exclude.[Unknown Speaker]
27:17
Yeah, I would just say on top of that, just real quick, sorry. Just on top of that, this whole idea that you know you can have a right to exclude or not to use, well, that seems to work in the scenario. So you’ll come up with a hypothetical and you’ll say, well, what if one person wants to paint the wall yellow and one person wants to paint the wall blue and it’s currently white, and basically what they’ll say is, well, in that scenario then neither should be done. They can exclude each other and the wall remains white. The problem is when you actually take the core of it and you use a proposition and its negation, you use P and not P. So someone wants to paint the wall a new color and someone doesn’t want that to happen. And basically the claim is being made that if they just exclude each other, then this doesn’t have a, this means that both people still own it and neither is winning the conflict. But surely if one person’s desire is for the wall’s color not to change, then that person is winning the conflict, has won the conflict. If that’s the result of the dispute is that the wall doesn’t get painted, then whoever desired for that state of affairs to continue seems to be winning the conflict over that piece of property.[Unknown Speaker]
28:38
I will say on this point of exclusion, it is a valid way of defining what property rights are. I agree with Day on that. But, and I think it comes from the fact that like if I were to go out into nature and I pick up that stick and I fashion it into a spear, I just factually am preventing other uses of that spear. That is, I’m excluding others from the spear because of the fact that I’m controlling it. So I think I regard the right to control as being identical to the right to exclude because excluding, what does that mean? It means preventing other possible uses of that stick in this case. But this doesn’t actually get out of the hole. In Canella’s article, they seem to be hinting that this gets out of the hole of group property, but it actually doesn’t. Because if exclusion means preventing someone from using a property as a means in some way, right? But if A wants to spearfish and B doesn’t want that to happen, well, A can’t exclude B’s use of keeping the stick absolutely still at the same time that B excludes A’s use of moving the stick towards the ocean, right? Because that’s what scarcity means. That’s what conflict means. So one person is just factually going to end up winning this dispute. They can’t exclude each other, and that’s sort of the point that Monop was bringing up.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
30:07
There’s a bigger problem here. We’re all discussing, you know, what the result, the consequence, but we established first that if we’re within the domain of law and we’re discussing a legal concept, then conflict avoidance was supposed to be the goal to begin with. As soon as there is a conflict at time t, as soon as there is some ambiguity about who is the owner towards a particular task, painting or not painting, moving or not moving, that’s it. Game over. That’s already the problem we’re trying to avoid. That’s why we establish the first comer principle. And so, I actually wanted to bring in some other ways that people try to sort of weasel around this problem.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
31:02
Let’s say we convince somebody that it is important from the definition, from the first principles, to have a single owner at every time t, and then you start observing these types of contract ideas. For example, we will have two people that quote-unquote jointly purchase a camera, and one of them is going to use it on odd days and the other one is going to use it on even days, and they have a full mathematical function that tells them when it’s going to be used. Let’s make it as strong as possible. They even have an escape clause where they have this process that happens whenever they disagree. Let’s say a disagreement means that they sell the item immediately and split the proceeds. All of this can be written in the contract, and what happens to them is the way the contract functions is that the person is the full owner of the thing during that day where they’re assigned ownership. Now there are two versions of this contract. So, the one I just vocalized, if it doesn’t have a provision against selling, then this is a point I got from Liquid Zulu, very good one. You can just sell it. And then what happens? You sold the camera, you got 100% of the money paid to you, whatever the value in the market was, and the other person gets nothing. They have absolutely no rights unless they were written in before the fact in the contract, and it’s perfectly consistent. So again, this immediately showcases how it’s not joint ownership in any sense. This is just mislabeling of a concept. Now let’s say that they even wrote that in, that if you’re trying to sell it, then the ownership gets transferred back to the other person or some other condition that’s applicable and it’s logical. Even if they make it work functionally, still in terms of language, we will insist that the other person is at best, if that’s outlined in the contract, a manager while it’s not theirs during the time when they don’t have ownership rights. And so there is only one owner still. And so it’s basically back to most of these examples, once we chisel them enough, they will come back to our language where no co-ownership actually exists there. There is a simulation of some relationship, but it’s not the thing that they call it, and it’s very important for language to be clean and pure as Canella himself very often lectures.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
34:13
Yeah, it’s like, you know, you can have this sort of contract where the title of the piece of property ping-pongs between two people party to the contract. You can write up very elaborate conditions for how it will ping-pong, how and when it will ping-pong between the two owners at distinct times, the one owner at any given time. You can have contracts like that, but that’s still not what we’re really chiseling at, as you said.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
34:42
So, I may just try and concretize this with an actual personal example. So, I’m involved in horse racing. Like, I have minor stakes in a few different horses that have won a lot of money. And, look, basically the way it works is when a horse goes on the market for buyers, you pay an upfront fee and then you pay a monthly fee that goes towards the trainers and the various stuff that goes into looking after a racehorse. And so I have a stake that’s worth at most 1% of a horse. And, you know, people will describe me as an owner, a co-owner of the racehorse. But if you think about it, in libertarian terms, I don’t have any of the rights that are associated with ownership. You know, when we talk about ownership, as we’ve kind of covered, I have a right to use. I have a right to exclude. Okay? If I was to rock up to one of the stables where one of the horses that I again allegedly own and was to start taking it out for a ride or telling people what to do, they’d all go, “What the hell are you doing, man? Get off.” Like, I have absolutely no right or ability to make any kind of decision about what happens to this horse whatsoever. There’s absolutely no way that I can do any of that. So in this context, it’s not really, it’s not correct to call me an owner in any legitimate sense. Really, what I just have is a contract which stipulates that while I continue to pay the monthly fees that are associated with maintaining the horse, I have a claim against a certain percentage of its earnings. So if I own 1% of the horse, again, you know, “own” in scare quotes, essentially all that means is that I pay for 1% of its maintenance costs and in return, I get 1% of the returns that it makes when it wins or places in races. So it’s not really ownership. It’s just a contract that stipulates that I get some money in return in exchange for doling out some money to the people that look after it. So, yeah, I just think that just kind of concretizes what we’ve been talking about where, you know, just because people might colloquially refer to me as an owner, I don’t actually have ownership rights in the libertarian sense.[Unknown Speaker]
37:18
Yeah. Yeah. I think this is related also to a point Canella made in his article where he was talking about how you can sell some rights of a property to, for instance, a renter. But this is in contradiction, at least it seems to me, it’s in contradiction with his point in against intellectual property, against, I believe, Murray Rothbard’s argument for IP, where you sell a book but not the right to copy that book. That you can somehow, a property right is somehow a bundle of different rights, and you can sell off some of them but not all of them. So like, you know, how you might sell off some rights to the horse but not all rights, but really that’s not possible. It’s nothing to do with ownership. So I think that’s the correct way to think about it. Ownership is all or nothing, really.[Unknown Speaker]
38:12
I’m sorry. No, I’m sorry. Go ahead. You were speaking.[Unknown Speaker]
38:19
No, no, I just wanted to quickly add on to that. I think a lot of modern-day stock trading and all that has kind of ruined the perception of ownership for a lot of people because people assume, “Oh, I bought the stock of Apple, I’m like a co-owner,” but essentially what you are is, I own this percentage of what do you call it, their net worth essentially, or I have the right to take back this percentage of their net worth. That’s the contract you’re signing, and you’re also buying what is essentially the ability to vote in a board director’s meeting. You have the right to influence the people. That’s essentially what you’re doing. You’re buying the ability to influence people. You’re not actually owning anything. So, yeah.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
39:06
Yeah. I mean, I said this before you got here, like, you know, I own some Amazon stock. If I went and blew up an Amazon factory, I’d probably be charged with a crime over that. And I couldn’t just be like, “Well, you know, I own 0.00001% of, I have a claim against 0.001% of Amazon’s net worth. Therefore, I can do whatever I want to your factory.” Like, it doesn’t really work that way.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
39:32
Let’s make it sharper. So, in the example, let’s say you own 1%, and 1% of Amazon is precisely, maybe even double the value of one of their assets, let’s say an Amazon car, and you show up as a shareholder that owns enough to be able to trade your shares for that car. If you just start doing that willy-nilly, you are still going to be, well, at least within the state, you’re going to be considered a thief, but probably within our system as well because your relationship is contractual. You’re not an actual owner of any of the assets of whoever owns the company. And I just wanted to discuss this idea. There is going to be these gigantic companies in anarcho-capitalism. There is a way to simulate voting, to simulate all those socialist tendencies of corporations, and you can even refer to it as influence over the owner. And as, I don’t know, maybe the language of partial ownership will not be, no, that’s still too toxic, ticket holders, right? So, I think a contract claim is the specific concept we’re referring to, basically a contract that has a specific claim inside of it that you have.[LiquidZulu

@liquid2ulu

]
41:07
Yeah, I’m just going to real quick, I think the space is getting a bit bigger now. So, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but might be worth going to like hands. So, like, if you’re a speaker and you want to jump in and say something, just chuck up a hand and we can kind of call names just so that makes it so that we’re not just speaking over one another whenever someone finishes up a thought. I think that would be worth doing just for the sake of making it so that, you know, we don’t have a situation like what happened with Zulu and Sandman where they’re just interrupting one another back and forth until someone finally takes fun.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
41:38
I agree in principle. But the only problem is that this pop-out window that I’m using does not have an emoji button. So I’ll have to just insert myself and talk over you if I want to speak.[Unknown Speaker]
41:50
Everyone else, they have to use hands. Everybody else has to use hands, not me. Yeah, he has special privileges. He’s the co-owner of the space.[Unknown Speaker]
42:04
Zach, go ahead.[Unknown Speaker]
42:11
Alright. Two things. Back just to the exclusion thing, you guys were using the example of the house and the two so-called owners. One wants the wall painted. The other one doesn’t want it painted. Obviously, lots of the advocates of group ownership can kind of see how that one’s going to get them into the dead end that you guys brought up. So they’ll usually say something like one wants to paint it red and one wants to paint it blue, so they can at least do the whole like they can mutually exclude each other and just not paint it. But even in that example, I think it runs into issues because, like we were talking about with the whole right to exclude and a right to use thing, in a typical just like single property owner, which I would just say is all ownership, the conflict is over the two competing claims of usage, and the justified result is the justified owner continuing with his use of that property. And so when we have this sort of situation where there’s two owners, you end up at a result where these two so-called justified owners are unable to continue to incorporate the resource into their ongoing projects, which I would say the correct result of a conflict is the just owner getting to do so. But we can talk about that. But I did want to point out that in the comments like maybe 10 minutes ago, Uncultured Swine did ask us to address Rodri Long’s specific arguments for group ownership, specifically the example of a lake with a pathway where villagers over time kind of construct the pathway, and so who owns the path. And then also the actual historical examples in the 18th century of businesses building roads and then just sort of donating them at large to the public for their use. So like how do we account for that actual historical example, like what did actually happen there. I would just say that those businesses technically still retained ownership. They were just opening up free use for their property because obviously they wouldn’t want someone to come in and like break the roads and just, you know, reclaim them for something else. They still wanted them used as roads. So, I would say they’re owners and just letting people use them.[Unknown Speaker]
44:30
Alright, we’ll go to Sandman now if you want to jump in.[Unknown Speaker]
44:38
Yeah. I just wanted to quickly give you the word I think you would be best suited for in the terms of like partial owners instead of the word partial owners. I would just say voters, paid voters, because that’s essentially what you’re doing. You’re paying to vote and try to influence the decision-making process of a given company. And to address Zark’s point, yeah, I would agree with you, just saying that these pathways are owned by the companies or the business people. Because they’re still pathways. Some other comer can’t come in and build like an apartment complex on there. You’ve just kind of made a free-to-the-public pathway, similar to how some businesses have free-to-the-public lobbies or whatnot.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
45:31
So I think we have our first official disagreement, and that’s why I’ll take my hand. So, I’m reading Long’s article here. Very nice that you linked it. And he says, “The cleared path is the product of labor, not any individual’s labor, but all of them together.” So, this is the labor theory of ownership clearly implied here. You know, the retroactive slavery idea that I actually used to believe in. But I, so here’s this agreement. We no longer believe it. And Stephan Canella has a brilliant lecture about, I think it’s “Locke’s Great Mistake” or some similar name to that.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
46:25
The basic point is that labor is sort of a mystical concept, and it’s not how we define ownership. For us, the owner is the first comer to the claimment of a resource, and the claim has to be objective, meaning it has to be consistently and permanently visible to other people. So if you build a home, that’s a visible claimed object, and if I arrive and I see a house that’s built, and I know I didn’t build it, therefore, unless there is evidence of abandonment, I immediately know that it’s owned by somebody else. If there is a fence and something is fenced in, then I know that inside the fence is probably owned by someone else unless I get contrary evidence. And so this idea that people just using something become the owners of it because they clear a path and they’ve invested into it, they’ve modified it. That is something that we reject. We have other solutions to this problem, but I believe we should just outright reject it. If somebody does not have the intent to emborder a perimeter and to start excluding others visibly, meaning objectively, meaning within the realm of possibility of the detection of others, then that is not a legitimate claim. The embordering simply failed, and there is nothing there unless there is an explicit contract of sorts. So that’s first. So the answer is that’s not the solution. The hint is that, and this is where Canella will probably disagree, is that we do have a concept of forestalling, that certain pathways are required to reach your property to be able to reach what you own, to be able to use it and exclude from it. And therefore, there are certain, not all, certain roadways that just will not be able to be embordered in the sense of they have a built-in, maybe easement, that can never be excluded from because it would contradict some previously owned assets. And this is a very, very complex topic, which is, you know, Hoppe has a recent quote responding to Prags Ben where he says theory is over now, it’s time to just popularize it. I strongly disagree because of this precise topic of forestalling in roads. It’s a hot topic for disagreement and debate, and I’m not sure I even have the right answer yet.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
49:19
I do want to give a hint of why it would be the case that there would have to be this easement because people think, well, can’t I just have whatever property arrangement I want? It doesn’t matter. Well, this is related to if I build like a donut of property around your property, then I’m in effect controlling your property even though I don’t own it. I’m controlling that which I don’t own, acting as if I own something that I don’t own. It would be equivalent to if you’re just walking along in the woods, and I were to drop like a Looney Tunes cage over top of you. It’s like, well, I’m not touching you. I just put a cage there, and you happened to be there. But it’s like, no, that’s actually enslaving that person. I’m controlling their body by building this border around them. So that’s sort of why this kind of drops out of the theory.[Unknown Speaker]
50:14
I’m going to continue to assume my post is the unofficial caller of the hands. We’ll go to Legionaire Anon next because I know he’s been waiting for a while. So, go ahead, my friend. What do you want to say if he’s still here?[Legionaire Anon]
50:36
Okay. Gen, is my audio good?[Unknown Speaker]
50:42
Yes, sir.[Legionaire Anon]
50:48
Okay. So, what I wanted to say is Canella has this article, right, that he wrote for the Mises Institute about title claim of property. Oh, I mean, property dollar property. It’s like a transfer triital, right?[Legionaire Anon]
51:04
So the issue is, if we’re assuming co-ownership, does this mean that both parties or, you know, however many parties are here have the title claim, the exact same title claim to the property, or is it that like they own a fourth of the property or something, which, how does this make sense? And also, as he writes in his article, which I might post like on the chat or comments, a contract to be binding has to, a contract to be binding has to, one, both parties have to be transferring a property from to one another. So how would this work? How would this contract between these two or more parties be binding?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
52:03
Well, actually, I’ll answer that briefly. That immediately seems wrong. A contract has to be, only one end of it has to be a transfer. The other end could be a promise of anything. So the other end of it is just a condition. So, for example, on the condition that I mow your lawn, you know, one of your silver coins becomes mine. That’s, there’s ownership on one end, and there’s nothing but action on the other.[Unknown Speaker]
52:33
I’m my own lawn bro.[Unknown Speaker]
52:39
Just muted it because we’re not going to let people just jump in kind of willy-nilly. So just please don’t, Legend, jump back in.[Legionaire Anon]
52:54
Okay. I actually agree. That’s communism, man. That’s problem.[Unknown Speaker]
53:06
Yeah, I just kicked him. So, yeah, sorry, Legion. Yeah, go ahead again, man.[Legionaire Anon]
53:16
What happened? What happened? We just freed Tibet. Okay.[Legionaire Anon]
53:22
Yeah, but I might link the article here for you guys to see what he has to say because I think it kind of contradicts what he’s saying about co-ownership. This kind of seems with what he’s saying.[Unknown Speaker]
53:33
What’s important, Jer, I don’t know if you were here, but we went through your question. So I would say the shortest answer is check the recording, and we went through that idea of the main problem of co-ownership thoroughly.[…][Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:37:31
Promises of title transfer, like a contract says that on this condition, if at time t I have the house and you have the money, then I sold you the house. That’s a future contract that’s perfectly fine. I don’t see how that creates, why that would create an obligation. I see the quote-unquote market demand and the desire for such obligations to exist in society. They could possibly make things easier, but I want to see the theoretical, whether I can support it theoretically. I’m not sure yet. Because my natural response moment is to say tough luck. For example, you loan money to somebody, and, well, they don’t have it in the moment where you have to pick it up. So maybe it’s tough luck. Unless I can prove that it’s a crime and they stole from me. But if it’s not a crime and they didn’t steal from me, then tough luck. And what does tough luck mean? It means in the loan market, there will be other things that would be required for it to function. It would be like a gambling market in some sense. Part of it will be resolved through gambling and reputation. So it’s just gambling. You gamble on the person giving you back more money, and the person is gambling on the reputation because they want to return the money so they can borrow some more from someone else. That’s one way to resolve it. Another way could be some, you know, the market will introduce collateral, and collateral will be used a lot. And it would be conditional collateral such as that you can’t try to sell it until the duration of the other contract. So the future sale contract could actually be written correctly. It could say, I agree to sell you the house in one year. And also I agree that if I try to sell it to anyone else, then I have to call you and ask you if you want to buy it now. That could be a legitimate agreement. Or it could be even more brutal. It could say if I try to sell it before that date, then the title transfers to the other guy if you want to agree to something that’s ridiculous, meaning he doesn’t even have to pay me, you know, that could be written in the contract. It’ll be a conditional title transfer, so totally legitimate. So we don’t need co-ownership or any future obligations, quote-unquote, for this to exist. It could be explicitly written within the contract. And the other thing is any attacks.[Unknown Speaker]
3:40:10
Yeah, one question. I’m not super good at contract theory, but like if you do the call thing, but if you forget to do that, then you need to have a clause for that too, like you’d have to transfer this amount of money to that person, right?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:40:24
No. Yeah, it could be that if you forget to call, then it just, the contract might say an even heavier penalty, which is they just get it.[Unknown Speaker]
3:40:37
Could that penalty just be like spanking or some physical punishment?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:40:46
That’s funny, actually. Actually, those could happen because, unless the person dies, and pony point is moot, but yeah, there’s no way their ass gets displayed in one year.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:41:02
Legioner, go ahead. Sorry, I was rambling.[Legionaire Anon]
3:41:08
This is me just kind of spitballing, who can I, I can be completely wrong about this, but if co-ownership is true, right, if it is valid, doesn’t that kind of mean that both parties can be homesteaders, but how does this make any sense given that resources are scarce?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:41:19
Sorry, sir, please repeat that, my bad.[Legionaire Anon]
3:41:28
I’m saying that if co-ownership is true, it’s something that’s valid, right? Doesn’t that kind of mean that two parties can both be homesteaders at once, but how does this make sense considering that resources are scarce? This could be me completely spitballing, but it’s just kind of what I’ve been thinking while you’re listening.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:41:46
So, this was brought up in discussions. There are forms of homesteading that maybe the answer to them is that they’re not homesteading, meaning people are doing something, and they’re intentionally building a contradiction right into it, and then they’re asking others to sort of fix that for them, and others could just say no, or we’re just going to decide that one of you is the owner, and you sort it out later. Like, it’s not on us. It’s on you to make homesteading make sense. If somebody makes an over-complicated homesteading structure where the owner is unknowable, well, they’ve built something, they just wasted effort. We can’t protect other people from wasting their effort or doing things incorrectly. And there is even a worse case, if somebody emborders around something that somebody already owns, if they’re exercising control over something they don’t own. Well, we don’t call that ownership. We already say that’s generates a conflict. Therefore, it’s null and void. So, if there are competing claims between the first comer and somebody who claims is a first comer, but we find out they’re a latecomer, tough luck for the latecomer. Yes, they built a fence, but now they have to think what can I do with it. Maybe they find a technical solution, for example, they will leave a passageway to the other property, and then things work, or maybe that’s not enough. This would have to be judged within local context. I’ll give you, in the back of my mind, there is an example that I believe is very annoying for the essentialist view of our theory. Let’s say that you invite somebody to your home. No, even worse. I’ll make it worse. Somebody falls into your backyard, and you have a normal door to walk outside, and you have a maze that takes a year to bypass to walk through to also exit your property, and you tell them, “Oh no, no, don’t use the front door, use the maze.” And so there is some skitso argument that technically you’re letting them leave, but in reality, you’ve exercised control over their body. And so now a judge will have to decide that it’s probably not synthetically decided upon within the clear theory. Things like principle of gentleness will apply. Maybe you have an obligation to let them seize their aggression in their fastest way possible, while they have an obligation to seize their trespass in the fastest way possible as well. There’s mutual obligations there that could be established. But you understand what I’m talking about, right? So, like, I don’t understand if I surround somebody’s property, but I leave the dollar through.[Legionaire Anon]
3:45:22
Yeah, the dollar example would be arbitrary imprisonment, as we put it, because you’re not letting them any way out. You’re kind of just exercising control of them despite not having control of the property. I actually completely agree with what you’re saying, right? But I just wanted to, I just kind of spitball that because that’s kind of the reason why I think collective ownership is kind of nonsense, co-ownership, whatever you call it.[Legionaire Anon]
3:45:55
Can you link the article where Dominiacs and Wall Block say these things?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:46:01
Yeah, if you don’t have it, I have it. If you have it though, it’s all good. If you have it immediately right now, do it.[Legionaire Anon]
3:46:07
Oh, wait. No, no, sorry. I don’t have the one where it’s Walter Block and Dominiac. I have one where it’s just Dominiac. But he’s referring to…[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:46:13
Yeah, just the Dominiac article. It’s, okay, okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Alright. Yeah. Let me get that copied real quick. Has a lot of interesting tools to discuss this.[Legionaire Anon]
3:46:29
I’m just, I’m very sad because, sorry, I’m very sad because I wanted to build a maze in my home and make people go through it.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:46:41
Maybe I had a bad example. Even, let’s say in the donut example, if you cut a slice through your donut and they can leave through that slice, is that enough? That would be my question that I don’t think theory, I’m very clear on, because you’re still exercising control like you’ve changed the situation already. They used to be able to leave their property from anywhere, and now you’ve created like they now have to bypass yours. Is this inconvenience sort of their fault or your fault? My response to that would be just kind of tough luck. You’re going to have to exit through the gap. That’s it, I think, but I’ll have to think about that later. Maybe it’s tricky because sometimes you can come up with some formulations where it almost seems like what’s known as malicious compliance. That is a bit of a tricky one.[Unknown Speaker]
3:47:26
I don’t think that is the kind of response you just tough luck there. I posted the, I don’t know how to link comments in the space, but I posted underneath your group space post.[Unknown Speaker]
3:47:43
Wow. This is the most brilliant you ever created. Totally not a patchwork of insane decisions.[Unknown Speaker]
3:48:04
Where is it? If you go to Casmir’s account, it will be right under where the space is. If you click on the most recent space post he posted, it’ll be right under there.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:48:18
Oh, wait. I’m locked. He can’t see it. Hold on. Yeah, I can’t see your post. I’m sorry.[Unknown Speaker]
3:48:24
Yeah. Casmir, can you just link it, forward that link to him?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:48:32
Oh, you’re self-blocked. Yeah. No, no, I’ll thank you. Sorry about that. Forgot about that. I definitely did not block you. You’re locked, right?[Unknown Speaker]
3:48:37
No. Yeah, I’m blocked. I’m blocked.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:49:02
Okay, I found it. It’s the direct link. This is in Libertarian Papers, the Block and Proviso. Even if you disagree with it, it has some interesting ideas of how to think about things.[Unknown Speaker]
3:49:15
Wait, so I posted my space twice. Interesting. I didn’t know that existed.[Unknown Speaker]
3:49:21
Alright. I replied to the one with the most replies.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:49:32
I remember parts of Kinsella’s argument against this concept. It’s sort of tangential to group ownership questions and to easements. And maybe his most common answer is literally you have to have a judge. It’s context-related. So, you’re trying to make somebody leave your property, your house or whatever, your yard, and they just blew up and became fat and they can’t pass through. Are you obligated to destroy a piece of the wall to let them through or something like that? All of these ridiculous-seeming hypotheticals, but they apply very heavily with forestalling because the main idea of forestalling is that you’re actually aggressing by stopping them from coming through.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:50:19
Yeah. And there’s a question of whether it’s enough to have like a common sense or local law resolve it or if it’s just a null and void concept period. So I will definitely return to Kinsella’s article arguing against that. I think there were arguments like if you own something on another planet, and the only way to get there is to build a spaceport to launch a rocket, and you have to have multiple people’s properties to do it, ownership land to do it, and they just disagree, and you can never build that ship, so you can never reach that planet, so you can never exercise exclusion over what you hypothetically got to own there. Maybe the answer in that case is tough luck. You probably obtained it via an agent, and that’s the only way you can manage it. And if you lose contact with that agent, then that might be effective abandonment. I don’t know.[Unknown Speaker]
3:51:31
By the way, that link you sent, Lucas Dominiac paper, it’s listed as probable spam just so you know. So you have to like…[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:51:43
Wait, really?[Unknown Speaker]
3:51:48
Yes. On the post. Yes. If you just scroll down, you have to show probable spam, and then you can find it.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:51:59
Ah, this is horrible. I just noticed you’re sending me messages in private. I will respond to them. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it live in the space. Canella, these are footnotes. I will definitely read them. So let me see if I can vocalize those.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:52:17
You’re right about the title transfer penalties, but that would mean that you could end up having a way to grant somebody a life easement or a life estate that you cannot revoke by will.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:52:29
I will think about that, whether was in response to what I said.[Unknown Speaker]
3:52:36
No, I don’t know actually. That’s the trouble. I just detected those. I’m a bit all over the place.[Unknown Speaker]
3:52:42
I mean, it would be weird if it was like the penalty clause was to like killing the person. That would be strange if you just got the title ownership to for a right to…[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:52:55
No. No. Fees. Okay, let me explain this possibly. So there is, I own the home, and I give the home to my son, and in the contract, there is a demand by me to implement a life easement so I get to live in the home permanently. Okay, never mind. So the way I would write the contract within my current understanding of the law would be as follows. It would be, so the son owns the home. However, before he gets to own the home, he signs a title transfer contract with the father that states that the father is allowed to live and exercise this range of rights and act as a manager on the son’s behalf of that property, of home. And there may be even written some idea of substantial or insubstantial changes, which may or may not require approval. And so all of this complex contract would come under the clause that if the son fails to abide by these clauses, then the ownership, full ownership reverts back to the father, and I think that would function, and that would prevent that would make it into an actual contract and not just a promise, and I don’t need to use any title-related obligations to it. I’m simulating them though. I could say as much. And this simulation could extend to potential sales. So you could, for example, say it like two people, one of them owns a home and wants to transfer ownership to another person. I say, okay. So Crusoe wants to transfer ownership to Friday. But he places conditions on the transfer, on the transfer that they will also have a contract to transfer it back in certain conditions that might involve anything, anything that’s measurable, I guess.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:55:40
Oh, sorry, this is where I was going to, let’s say there’s a third person, Joshua. And so the entailment part of the contract Friday might have to sign is, if he sells the house to Joshua, he’s allowed to as long as Joshua signs the same exact contract with Crusoe. And so that provision would propagate from owner to owner and allow Crusoe to maintain whatever he wants to maintain his quote-unquote life easement. That could work. So I don’t need to change my system in order to accommodate this. And then the question is, why would I change my system?[Legionaire Anon]
3:56:19
I’m assuming that I, that in a later article or media, I will be able to disprove bundle of rights theory must be refuted logically, like I will be able to offer the full refutation. Assume I assume Zulu does have that, like he’s written on it and such. I would definitely like to see them debate once more, like just them two, just input said.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:56:56
Yeah, this was a really good opening shot because we got to see what we agree on and what we disagree on, and it’s more nuanced than I believed. I did not see this, did not foresee this type of opposition. And I don’t want to dismiss it off hand. I want to analyze it. So there it goes. Cool.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:57:21
So I don’t want to change the topic of the recording too much. We had an intermission for technical difficulties where we spoke about IP and spoke to guests. I’m going to check to see who I’m on hand. So there’s Legionnaire. I’m going to bring you back up. Okay, Kareem wrote that he has some kind of a theory. Let me analyze this for a moment and see if we continue the space or maybe I’ll gradually bring it to a close.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:57:51
Because raising another topic should be done with a new space probably. I don’t know.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:57:59
One moment. Okay. So Kareem wrote, I was basing off of multicontract theory versus exclusive contract theory. Think of a virtual property when multiple people can access a file. So I reject it on other grounds. I don’t need to address it. This becomes an IP question. Sorry, don’t believe in IP. Falls outside of the context of this conversation. So no, not this time, my friend. My communist friend who will definitely not be the first in line.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:58:32
I’m just going to say the obvious, like you need to reduce this to a conceptual hierarchy and propositions to just see the full picture and structure.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:58:45
Not that I’ve fully listed it all out myself, but I’m just saying.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
3:58:56
Oh yeah, there were questions earlier. I don’t know if I answered that. Maybe somebody remembers, stop me then if I didn’t, if we did about Apple and all the corporations that exist and X, how will that function within the system, the system we’re currently proposing, the changes we’re proposing to the law? I think many of the things that work will be able to be quote-unquote simulated, meaning they are already part of the contract theory. So you could have a whole list of ticket holders, and you could have a rule that if a ticket holder has 50% of all the tickets, they become the owner of the title. It’s completely legitimate to write a condition like that. You could write in voting in council, and the owner has to abide by the council. If they don’t, then the condition gets triggered. So that is possible. I’m not saying that it’s actually desirable. I think it’s probably undesirable. These are weaker structures. But we can simulate them. So if we can simulate a lot of the even some of the worst aspects of corporatism, why would we need the state to do it? Why would we need a violently monopolized and enforced version of group ownership, which is all the trade commissions and codes of incorporations of all the states and the federal government.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:00:49
Now what might become more difficult in liability evasion might become more difficult under this worldview, or maybe not. So all of these questions deserve to be resolved and analyzed. But I think that the form of corporatism could exist just without obviously the state and without any lack of, without this unclear idea. The shareholders will definitely not be called owners within the court of law, even if Canella, right. And they will remain such in colloquial understanding.[Unknown Speaker]
4:01:52
Could I just make a tangential comment about group ownership?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:01:58
No, no, go ahead.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:02:04
I’m seeing in next five minutes, if we don’t get something lively, then I don’t like, yeah, I’ll put a stop to it.[Unknown Speaker]
4:02:07
Okay. Yeah. I was just saying, there’s some, I remember, I think Canella or someone else brought up, like if you work on something, like if you do some labor with something, even if it’s someone else who owns it, it sort of becomes yours. And that’s, and I agree, that’s a dumb theory of property. But that’s how it is somewhat here where I’m at in Norway. I know someone who has the issue of like there’s someone living with them, and there’s some, like since they have invested a lot of time into the property, even if they don’t own it, like when it comes to inheritance for his children, it will basically, like he will sort of get some ownership claim over that according to state civil, basically. And yeah, I just want to say, that’s kind of stupid, you know.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:03:11
There, I mean, it could, it could, I would just tell you that my immediate, you would have to consent to it, and you can consent to quite a lot of things. Consent meaning you can move to a place where, in order to live there, you pre-agree to a whole bunch of implied traditions and customs.[Unknown Speaker]
4:03:33
Yeah. And recognize them.[Unknown Speaker]
4:03:40
But the point was that it wasn’t the case. That’s basically imposed on by the corrupt lawyers, basically.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:03:52
Yeah. What normally happens is people have peaceful relationships, and they have existing customs, but then other people gain power, and they say, “Oh, we’re going to modify what owning things means in the society now,” you know, here, seizures, here’s public domain, enjoy yourselves. So that there is that problem for sure, and that problem actually exists within ancap as well, potentially, if you join a covenant that has a voiding system that can change the rules of the covenant. Well, congratulations. That covenant, not just likely, but probably, by some of the right-wing ideas about power, will gradually become an oligarchy, and you will gradually lose your rights unless you’re at the top. Rights to everything except your body, obviously, rights to that thing that you joined. So, we’re not eliminating corruption totally. We’re just making it more difficult to hide. I would say, I’d prefer when in a free society to not have a covenant community and just live freely myself with my own property.[Unknown Speaker]
4:05:05
My prediction is to totally disagree. As a very, I don’t know. Yeah, I’m still, I’d still call myself a right-winger on the cultural issues. I think that we, when I…[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:05:18
Okay, this is a separate conversation. This is probably the next space I want to have or next conversation I want to have, maybe next video I should produce. The first produce is on this idea that a lot of the ways things are right now is not a product of some individual will but more of a product of topography. Meaning what exists in society is what can exist within the combination of technology, culture, region, and history. And so when the United States had the combination of these factors, let’s, when it had this meta topography for promoting freedom, it was more free. And now that it has the reverse, it will gradually become less and less free unless the conditions, the underlying conditions change.[Unknown Speaker]
4:06:29
Okay. Hi. Do you mind if I pip in real quick?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:06:35
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then Legion afterwards and others before the space.[Unknown Speaker]
4:06:41
I mean, yes. Yeah. In regards to some of the settlement in regards to some of these issues where there’s not a clear answer as to how some of these things should be resolved regarding like crossing over property and things like that. I’ve had this idea baking of what if we have these clear property rules on what you have the right to do and what you don’t have the right to do. You know, basically conferring the absolute control over property to individuals, but then considering what you choose to do with that property. So let’s say you build the maze or you block somebody in, the idea of still settling that within a court, but instead of making it an issue over property rights, making it an issue over some kind of, we’ll call it like a moral offense. The idea that you’ve done something that is causing a not necessarily a property right harm, but certainly a moral one, like you’ve done something that is clearly a dick move. And you might have a claim to some type of compensation or resolution as a result of being mistreated in a moral sense. Even if the property owner hasn’t technically violated your property rights, at least not in a way that can be clearly defined within the courts.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:08:56
In short, I think that’s the assumed fallback. If we don’t find the answer, then we can like ostracize undesirable behavior. We’re not there yet, but let me get Legionarian if he wants to come back.[Legionaire Anon]
4:09:07
So, I’m just going to kind of try to add to what the other guy was saying. You can always change your mind about this property right now. Right now, I don’t know what the name of the laws are, but generally in countries right now, if a robber, for example, spends an arbitrary amount of crimes, I think it’s 15 years, in your property, and he maintains it in such and such, then he is considered now the new owner, right? This is assuming in that meantime you have never enforced your property rights. Now, I think that’s completely, I think that’s completely legitimate, but I think there is a kind of case in hand in society where, let’s say I abandoned my house, and for like, it’s growing moss and all, it looks dead, it may as well be something you can just go ahead and homestead.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:10:00
I think what you described as sort of dangerous, the question is abandonment is the idea that you can exclude, and you willfully choose, have chosen to stop excluding. And so a person showed up on your property, and they said, “Can I move in?” And they didn’t hear an answer, and so they assumed it’s abandoned, and then they moved in. Now then they actually found you, they’re doing their due diligence, and they realized that, oh, they could have made a mistake. So they found you, they called you up, and they said, “Can we stay at your home?” And if you don’t respond to that, then they can say he has effectively abandoned it. And they would possibly, I don’t know, record, have a record of this. And they would try to get witnesses for this to be able to enforce it. But that would be effective abandonment because the person does not, given the choice and the option, the person does not exercise exclusion. So maybe that would be objective abandonment. You don’t even need anything else. You need a reasonable amount of time to respond, of course, right? But yeah.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:11:26
So that’s that part is okay. We had a lot of moments in this discussion. This is where I can bring in an important concept, which I don’t think we voiced, and I would love to voice towards the end of the conversation. There is an article that I believe everybody should read, and I’m like a broken record about this. It’s not a really good article. Maybe it should be rewritten, but it’s called “Species.” And it’s written on the website of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I hate that website.

[Kasimir @FreeKasimir]
4:12:15
Yeah. It has an entrance on species. What’s important about it is to understand it as like a philosophical term. Not necessarily animals is one example of species, like animal types. And what we did a lot in this conversation is we engaged with concepts that are not sharp concepts. They are identities that, the name for them from Richard Boyd is homeostatic property clusters, where homeostatic means they’re sort of keeping themselves steady over time. They don’t change more than they change, if you want to think about it this way. So we can see that it’s the same ship of Theseus. We can see that it’s the same identity of our friend or the local, you know, or the dog that you own, even though technically, you know, every few years all their cells get renewed or whatever, that every single moment their organism changes. So there’s nothing essential about the totality of their structure. The quote-unquote, so it’s not an essential identity. It’s an identity of a whole group of factors that you consider all at once. And if they mostly match up, you say, “Oh, that’s, you know, my friend Liquid Zulu or Canella or, you can always change your mind.” Right? So a lot of these concepts we talk about, when you hear an answer, a judge will decide, or like we need to know the circumstances. What it means is that we’re most likely dealing with a probability, like a Bayesian analysis case, where the court will accept evidence until everybody involved is certain of the reality as it is, and that means gradual introduction of evidence that no piece of evidence is sufficient to provide an answer on its own. You can’t nitpick at and say, “Oh, this is not enough.” Because it’s the totality of the evidence of various factors that will tell you who did what. So, for example, the totality of the evidence might include that you didn’t just say, you know, hit me in the face. You also walked into a bar that says if you say “hit me in the face” in this bar, then people will hit you in the face. It’s like talked about this in his article. It’s like a fight club, right? So all of that context will build into the understanding of whether we explain your words as a joke or a serious, and it’s not like a sharp definition necessarily. It’s a combination of factors. But at a certain point, you can reach certainty, and I also don’t think, like the agreement is the standard. It has to be objective, and of course, the judge should be objective. They, of course, can make mistakes, but ideally should be objective about it.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:15:44
Yeah. So a good example is, it could be that there are, you know, a society or a group or a village might have some base assumptions of what it means to own land. Meaning how high above it do you also claim? And another society might say, no, you have to build a flagpole, and anything above that flagpole is basically not yours. You don’t have any claim on it. Well, if I make society, I don’t care what they think. I own it, right? But your ownership is a relationship with the people you exclude. Your ownership must be knowable.[Legionaire Anon]
4:16:33
That’s what I was getting at earlier when I said that thing, like they can’t just have their own theory of ownership that’s just arbitrary.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:16:49
No, no, no, wait. No, no, no. It’s not theory. It’s fact. Go ahead, Leg.[Legionaire Anon]
4:16:55
What? It’s not necessarily really a theory. It’s just, you know, the way which we determine things, like if I build a fence around some empty plot of grass, do I own it? That’s kind of something that’s introsively ascertainable, right?[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:17:15
Yeah. Yeah. So objective, you don’t say inter, like objectively, no, no, it is, no, okay, so intersubjective understanding is objective in an important sense. There is, sorry, there is a reality of that affects humans, their language, not humans, any sentient beings, aliens, whatever, what have you, that affects language and it defines what communication is in the broadest terms. So you could have an implementation of our theory of ownership on Earth within most of our languages are convergent and translatable, and but if you started to have interactions with aliens that you have some language barrier with, you might have to be more explicit about what you own. For example, it might become the standard to have a spherical object around what you own be the standard of what’s sufficient to identify it, or, you know, whereas currently it’s a fence, like if you live in a society where everybody can fly, communicative, you’re talking about norms, right?[Legionaire Anon]
4:18:49
No, I’m talking about communication that, I thought about this a lot. My problem with, so the labor theory of ownership doesn’t work. The decree theory of ownership doesn’t work either. When I say that I’m excluding you, that’s not enough.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:19:15
Correct. But I’m saying it’s wrong. But then what remains, and what remains is not just an inner monologue, like an inner truth. Ownership exists within the concept of law, which exists within there being two parties minimum with the hypothetical judge. So maybe even three parties have to exist for it to make sense. There is an implied idea that there’s someone else who’s going to be judging, there’s a latecomer. So if the latecomer cannot decipher what the first comer did, then he’s not a latecomer anymore. He’s a homesteader if he makes it decipherable to you. So you have a responsibility as the homesteader to do something, and to make the other party accept as more than a verbal decree. And I think, it be, let’s say, let’s just say it becomes complicated of what is enough. Maybe it’s enough to plant a square made out of flags around, you know, a little clearing or a forest, and the forest or the clearing becomes yours. Maybe that’s effort enough in a society. And so we’re seeing how what is the minimal action to claim something. Maybe it becomes a competition for arbitrarily smaller and smaller physical actions, and then there’s a certain point where they stop communicating, and they become very weak. Do you see what I’m talking about? How there could be a gradient of communication where it becomes more and more vague?[Legionaire Anon]
4:21:03
Yeah, I guess. But there’s a threshold, right? There has to be a threshold.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:21:09
And yeah, no, the threshold is what I’m telling you is that the threshold doesn’t exist. It’s like the problem of the neck or the beard. Where does your neck begin? Where does your beard begin? And you clearly see that there is some point, but there’s no clear threshold. So that’s why we have objectivism. We have like the we kind of like solve that problem with concept formation. Yes you do. You do wait but wait the way you solve it is through a Bayesian-like inference. You infer that you have this one group that has a focal point where it’s all the way there and another point where it’s a gradient, and you assert that your face is here, your beard is here, and there’s this middle ground that you don’t care to adjudicate about.[Legionaire Anon]
4:22:04
Yeah. Yeah. You have to just speak legion. I’m not, I think this kind of can bring us back to, I’ve kind of lost what you guys were saying here, but I’m not going to bring that up again. That will…[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:22:17
So, let me explain because I’m using terms that I’m not explaining. it as the issue. So, I kind of want to make a point before anything else.[Legionaire Anon]
4:22:31
Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, change. I think this kind of brings us back to like the whole thing of co-ownership because okay, how do I ascertain which person of the A and B parties which supposedly co-own the property are exerting the rule over it. Assuming that’s how it goes.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:23:01
Hello. Sorry. I was responding to someone else multitasking. Could you please repeat the core point if you ask me?[Legionaire Anon]
4:23:07
Yes. Okay. So, we have this idea of co-ownership, right? And okay. So how do I ascertain for example intersubjectively ascertain that party A is exerting the rule of their property or party B which party A and B supposedly co-own the property how do I ascertain which rules are applying here which, how, who is homestead with a homesteader here that kind of makes no sense to me.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:23:36
No, I know. I actually gave court case like I tried to imagine court cases for one of my previous debates and I highlight possibly some of them like there’s a co ownership situation and one person sells the property and the other person says I don’t want it sold, there’s, if there’s no prior agreement then what actually happens so one answer could be is that the sale goes through and the other person was the actual owner or the sale might be null and void or the sale might be an active homestead head. That could be the case like that. The ownership previously was incoherent, but the person that purchased it like the act of purchase is sufficient to embroider it to say those borders are now mine. And so is it actually the first comer there? That could be the legal analysis. But yes it is confusing and this is why for every time t there has to be an answer x so that you can it has to be either explicit or explicit within the region.[Legionaire Anon]
4:24:49
You can explain what you were saying earlier then now that we got that over.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:24:56
What, so the simpler example is that that’s provided in the text is let’s say you have a concept a duck, what’s a duck and there is no essential quality there, there’s no trait that makes a duck a duck. Anyone any particular essence you point to, any particular trait you point to is either going to be mystical, meaning like Plato’s world of forms. So it’s not accessible, therefore show me evidence or I don’t believe it exists. Or if it’s a trait that you observe, it’s not exclusive. There are other things that have that trait that are not ducks. So essentialism is dead in terms of defining such concepts and reality such identities and so what do we have instead? One of the proposals which I subscribe to is Richard Boyd’s proposal and others which is the homeostatic property cluster. There’s a colloquial phrasing of this. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it’s a duck.[Legionaire Anon]
4:26:12
Yeah. But you haven’t answered what the duck is. You’re just saying words like you haven’t defined. So okay. Okay. I have to ask why is it one particular trait that makes a duck a duck? Why can’t it be like it’s not? So if essentialism is wrong, there is no single trait that’s necessary and sufficient to identify the entity. There is no such trait that’s necessary and sufficient. There’s no essence. That’s the answer of people who believe that essentialism is dead. If you read the article, there will be like arguments quoted that refute essentialism. And then you go down to this idea of the property cluster. Well, how imagine a word a word cloud, right? That it has a beak. It has webbing on its feet. It has the outline of a duck. And then you can look at the DNA and it shares a DNA grouping with a duck. So you have the DNA of a particular duck and if you test, you know, 10,000 ducks, their DNA will be distinct from another species. An LLM will be able to find it. There’s a visual way to imagine this. Imagine like a wave function on a plot that goes up and down, up and down, up and down. You can identify the peaks and maybe there’s an essential quality of the peak. The peak exists but the whole the concept of the hill in the data there is like a hill and a valley. Where does the hill begin is could be like depending on your definition because you know there is no there is no possibly clear border there. Maybe in math there is, but there are examples where there isn’t.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:28:06
I think it’s the wrong way of looking at like concepts and concept formation. Like I’m not an expert but I have read most of like how we know and I might butcher some of it but so the way you like form concepts is like you observe similarities and a very different distant thing when all of these are in like the same category of like things like you can have like two dogs and you can have a tree both are like physical things that you can and then you then you can form the concept of dog. Basically you can see the these two are very similar and you see also this tree that that gives you a reason to like group these together and then you have like a primitive concept of dog and then you can identify further like include or dogs into that list. But then you might encounter something that is like a borderline case maybe like a wolf or something. Is that still a dog and you might argue it is still a still a dog or maybe it has like evolved very differently from it. So like very different. So then you’d have to like add in like a different concept or a different like you say it’s a different animal then or like a good dog certain type of dog I guess. Yeah. So look, I have to describe it basically. Yeah.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:29:51
Yeah, you can answer, I guess.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:29:58
Alright, I’m getting ready to close the space. I think I already pretty much left the topic changed, so I’m going to rename it and there’ll be a recording.[Legionaire Anon]
4:30:04
Alright. I’m not good that good at concept formation. Need to read more.[Kasimir

@FreeKasimir

]
4:30:16
Was fun. Oh god, I managed I managed to get everybody’s name in in the name. That’s it. Alright. Thank you very much. I think I’ve dragged it very long and off topic. So we’ll see if we can edit it down and break it down into sections. Have a great day. Goodbye.

  1. The Problem with Intellectual Property, Part III.C.2. [↩]
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Kinsella profile-head - 1Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His  publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), and International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020).

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