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Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

> If you exclude others from a rectangle of land, you are imposing that exclusion on others and the others are due consideration.

I don't think this is a reasonable deformation of the notion of ownership nor externalities.

Use of owned assets, within legal boundaries, allows exclusive of use.

If you're complaint is about the current asset allocation, that's wildly different than either Georgism/LVT or externalities. There is a philosophical there-there, but I really don't grok a feasible defense of your claim; your supporting points are reasonable under a Rawlsian veil defense.

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It is the notion of land ownership as a fundamental right that is the deformation.

If you make the legitimacy of property rights over land foundational to your philosophy, then of course they can't be challenged within that framework, but that's tautological and uninteresting -- I simply challenge your framework instead. Why should I accept it? In centuries past, a structurally identical framework -- ownership over human beings -- was used to rationalize and administer the institution of slavery, so unless you want to defend slavery then you must accept that the legitimacy of property rights is contingent on their specifics.

Eh, I get where you are coming from. However, you should accept it because the people with the social authority to coerce through guns or imprisonment require you to do so, instead of operating in a vacuum. Plus, land ownership makes for a much clearer system of institutions (which economists of all stripes agree are fundamental to prosperity).

Further, relaxing land ownership doesn't make current occupation an externality, which was the original claim. It's a categorical error to mix externalities with morals.

Really? Argument from authority? If (actual) communists had the guns, would might make them right about property? For someone who wants to throw categorical stones, you sure seem to have a loose grip on the is/ought distinction.

Thanks for trying to explain how owning land imposes an externality on others. I still don't see a clear case made, so I'm moving on. Have a good evening.

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