Re: Why Devolution? (mayoral race)
Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Sun, 8 Feb 1998 20:36:32 -0800
On 9 Feb 1998, Daniel C. Burton wrote:
>Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@autobahn.org> wrote in article
>> In general, it's based on the idea that a city can be regarded as a
>> community, while the country is at best a society, or grouping of
>> communities. I know Seth recognizes that a voluntary commune is a
>> legitimate entity, so I'll start my argument from there. To remain a
>> commune, it would have to have some sort of property rights over an area.
>
>> This can be interpretted as private property ownership by the commune
>> itself, and management by all the people in the commune; or as ownership
>> of some things by the commune, and other things by individuals. For
>> example, a commune could own farmland, a solar power grid, and a car for
>> community use. Members of the commune would own the houses they live in,
>> their clothes, and other things. In return for labor in whatever method
>> the commune uses to support itself, they get a portion of the profits.
>
>The European city did originate in the Medieval "commune," but these
>communes were not communal or voluntary. They were a right granted by the
[...]
>The Medieval commune is much closer to the cities of today than the
>voluntary modern commune, and it's their actual ancestor.
I'm not claiming that modern cities are communes, only that if we
recognize communes as legitimate government, then we must recognize teh
possibility of a legitimate city government. Proving that a commune is
inefficient and hell to live in doesn't prove that it's illegitimate.
The origin of the city is a valid criterion to determine the legitimacy
of the government, but we can't really say for sure whether modern
cities were volutary or not. Spanish (pre-1820) San Francisco was, in
my opinion, a legitimate government because everyone who lived there
chose to accept the authority of the government, or was decended from
someone who chose to accept the authority. (descent is expanded below)
>> I would say that the commune can "own" certain rights that go along with
>> property rights in the real property owned by the members, like the right
>> to decide who to sell it to, though the owner still owns the right to the
>> profits from the sale. This implies that the commune "owns" the right to
>> "govern" a given area of land.
>>
>> I think that this same principle can be applied to a city, in that by
>> founding a city (on land previously unoccupied), the founders
>(government)
>> assume the ownership of the right of governance, and when people settle
>> there, they can only claim the right to use the land and the right to
>> participate in the government. When the land is sold, only those rights
>> owned by the "owner" of the land can be transferred, and the right to
>> govern it is still controlled by the city government.
>
>But the founders of a city aren't the government! They're individual
>homesteaders who settle in a region. The government comes later after they
>already own property.... And if this is not the case it should be. The
>government should not go claiming large unused tracts of land or other
>resources. It should leave those up to individual claims, because when
>resources are controlled privately, they're managed in ways that maximize
>their value. When they're controlled by government, they aren't.
But that leads to high transaction costs. My thesis is that people can
delegate certain decisions to a central agency (the government) so that
I don't have to negociate with the owner of each business whether I can
walk on the sidwalk that happens to fall on his property.
>This really is an inefficient form of organization. Conflicts over things
>like neighborhood noise and all the things that make up the local
>environment are best handled by the negotiations for rights held by private
>parties. The local economy is best left to the free market. Protecting
>the unique local values of a community is best left to the people who value
>them -- community organizations, etc. If this isn't enough, then these
>values are being protected at the expense of other ones worth more to
>people.
Inefficiency isn't a valid argument against the legitimacy of
government. It is more economically efficient for me to sell the
picture that is hanging on my wall, but I choose not to. This doesn't
demonstrate that I don't have a legitimate right to determine what's
done with the picture.
If the rights are ineffiently allocated, it's either because the people
have chosen to delegate the allocation to a poorly managed agency, or
because an agency has seized control. In either case, it comes down to
whether the agency legitimately has control of those rights.
>Okay, one more thing: You say membership in a community is voluntary, but
>I didn't choose to be part of this community -- I was born around here.
>(Okay, it would be a little clearer if I stayed in Oakland.) I didn't
>choose to be born here any more than I chose to be born in the United
>States. Sure, I could choose to join another community, but I would only
>do so to leave the other community which I didn't voluntarily choose to
>join. Ultimately, where ever you end up, it's the result of a chain of
>moves to better your situation, starting with one you didn't voluntarily
>choose. In other words, choosing to be under a city government is not
>because you decided it would be better than a city with no government, but
>to leave a city with a worse government. (There are "cities" like
>Kensington that aren't incorporated as cities, but they still do have
>"government" in general, and there still are laws governing local economic
>activity.)
But your parents (or more distant ancestors) chose to join the
community. All the costs of moving to another area are caused by the
fact that you have things within this area. We can probably describe
these things and probably put a price on them. Like, you have an
arrangment to live somewhere at some cost (okay, I know you are now
living with your parents, but you get the idea), and that already
existing arrangement has a value. But the value of that arrangement is
based on trading rights (right to use an apartment) that are based on
the community. I'm not sure if we have to assume that there is a "right
to govern" in property for this, but if so, the community owns the right
to govern that apartment, and this is implicit in your agreement to use
it. Whoever owns the property you rent has that property either because
they bought it from someone who is a member of the community, or
inherited it. So the property has a lineage going back to someone
voluntarily agreeing to join the community.
The costs of moving out of an area which you didn't choose to be in are
actually the costs of reacquiring the preexisting arrangements that have
been given to you or bargained for within the community. All
arrangements within the community are predicated on being a member of
the community.
So, I don't actually own the value of the convenience of having a job in
this community, because my having a job is an agreement between members
of this community, and has no validity outside of it. If I move, I lose
the value of the convenience of having a job because this was one of the
values the arose from the value provided by the community.
This isn't very clear. Sorry. What I'm saying is that you don't have
the inherent right to leave a community without cost.
>Besides, my real community isn't the people who happen to live in a 3 mile
>radius of me. It's a far-flung group of people around the Bay Area with
>similar interests and goals as me, and most of them are anarchists of some
>sort or another. We may not be geographically contiguous, but why does
>that mean we should be denied self-government?
Not sure:
1. The right to govern is associated with real property.
2. A community can be any group, but we don't have teh mechanisms to
handle non-geographic groupings right now.
3. I'm wrong and the community has no right to govern. Of course, this
implies that there is *no* basis for government, only voluntary
agreements.
4. There are more possibilities I don't see.
1 seems clear and workable. All we have to do is make sure that the
right to govern is voluntarily transferred (not stolen). 2 leaves it
unclear what the basis of government is, and therefore what rights can
be ceded to a government and what powers a government can have. I
suppose this obscurity actually supports the idea that we just don't
have the mechanisms to do it right now. 3 I don't like, but it seems
possible. 4 is likely.
I think one of the questions is whether there exists a negotiable right
to govern, or if people cannot be morally bound by agreements they
haven't explicitly agreed to. I think that if there is no right to
govern, then that means people no moral obligations at all. I think we
can all agree that any legitimate government must be based on a
volunatry agreement, though we are still disagreeing on whether that
government can have power over people who haven't explicitly agreed to
that agreement.
-Kevin