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Comment by hadrian82 | Hacker News Reader

Because then the government doesn't own your land and can't take it from you when you don't pay them off. Property "tax" is their way of forcing you into agreeing that they own your land and they sell it as giving you better schools in the area or some crap. And if people feel they REALLY own something and it can't be taken away from them then they will fight for it. We can't have people fighting for their land when the government comes to auction their house off to the highest bidder.

We have been moving more and more toward a Capitalist Communism where the government owns everything and you are merely renting from them (this is just straight up how it is in China, they don't even pretend), but we still sell it as Capitalism because businesses aren't owned by the government.

This is not the way life should be and all property taxes (i.e. government owned property rentals) should be outlawed.

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When you say "government" or "they", you are talking about your fellow citizens and members of the community. Consider a hypothetical in which there is beautiful beachfront property in your town. Would you rather it be owned by a few wealthy citizens who pay no property tax or the government?

I would rather the beachfront property be owned by those who bought it out of their own savings, which they earned by providing goods and services to others. Not an organization defined first and foremost by its claim to possess a license to practice aggression, which transparently operates in a manner indistinguishable from a protection racket. (Nice property you have there... it'd be a shame if someone took it from you by force... Someone like us, if you don't pay up.)

Who do you think enforces property rights? And by what basis do they lay claim to make other people respect those rights?

> Who do you think enforces property rights?

I assume that you intended this as a rhetorical question, but the answer is not "the government". Governments do not exist to defend property rights—that is merely propaganda. No criminal organization violates property rights more brazenly or systematically than governments do on a routine basis. Every tax, every regulation, every disproportionate punishment, every victim prevented from pursuing justice while those ostensibly granted that role do nothing—almost everything the government does involves violating property rights in some form. The only point in their favor is that, like any other protection racket, they are jealous of their monopoly and not very tolerant of lesser criminals setting up operations on their turf.

> And by what basis do they lay claim to make other people respect those rights?

There is no need to "make" other people respect anything. That is what makes property a natural right; the very act of violating a property right naturally justifies a proportional response in kind. That is simple universality and reciprocation at work, the basis for any self-consistent system of rights, and it is more than sufficient to ensure that most individuals will respect others' property rights without being coerced, because they in turn need others to recognize their claims to property as valid. Those who chose otherwise cannot rationally object if their victims respond in kind, taking back their own property plus a proportional amount as retribution.

If you are interested in further reading on this subject, I can recommend Stephen Kinsella's "Punishment and Proportionality: the Estoppel Approach" (https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/12_1_3_0.pdf?file=1&typ...).

What happens when a group of people with no property decide to come and take yours and kill you and your family?

As a side note, in regards to your original point about beach front property, the paper you linked only recognizes property rights of property that has been homesteaded. So there would be no way of some rich person purchasing acres of land for their own private use (using the structure definition of homesteading).

As might happen if you decide to stop paying the fee on your land to the government? Well, sans the killing. You'll just have your family split up, be imprisoned, and forced to live in dehumanizing conditions for years, while your property is taken and sold off for 'revenue.' It's much more civil...

For what it's worth I'm playing devil's advocate here, as usual, but I don't think this particular issue is so easy to defend. Something I was surprised to learn is that in the US, the police didn't even exist until 1838. Prior to that there were volunteer community watch and other such programs. I think the proper balance is probably one we've gone long past that's somewhere in between community efforts and heavily centralized paramilitary law enforcement.

The government doesn't have to own something to tax it.

If they claim the right to tax it, then they're claiming to own it. Only the owner of the property has the right to set conditions on its use.

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