Mises Wire |
- How Facebook and Friends Used Capitalism to Wage an Ideological War on America
- Canadian Secession: Then and Now
- The Economics of the Extended Family: From Risk Management to Human Capital
- Forget Hemlines. Mom Jeans Are Now an Economic Indicator.
- Why Is the French Government Running Off Foreign Investors?
- A Libertarian Approach to Disputed Land Titles
| How Facebook and Friends Used Capitalism to Wage an Ideological War on America Posted: 04 Jun 2021 03:00 AM PDT In twenty-first century America, millions of Americans—Christians and social conservatives especially—are finding that the nation's most influential institutions appear to be implacably hostile toward them. These institutions include universities, public schools, the news media, and government bureaucracies. Moreover, corporate America has increasingly embraced a posture of hostility toward groups considered to be "right wing" or conservative. Recent examples are numerous, to say the least. Major League Baseball, for instance, recently moved its all-star game out of the state of Georgia with the explicit purpose of punishing voters and policymakers who supported policies MLB didn't like. These "objectionable" policies were mostly supported by conservatives. Meanwhile, YouTube—owned by Google corporation—bans content creators who express opinions Google's employees and leaders disagree with. These opinions are usually ones we would consider to be "conservative" or at least "anti-Leftist." Twitter and Facebook employ a similar bias when actively intervening to ban users and opinions deemed unacceptable by corporate personnel. In other words, corporate power is being used to wage ideological battles far beyond the usual issues of minimizing the firm's tax burden or avoiding regulatory compliance costs. Corporate America has chosen a side in the culture war. This evolution from market entrepreneur to exploitive plutocrat illustrates a problem with the interventionist state in a mixed economy: economic power tends to be converted to political power. Moreover, so long as consumers continue to pour resources into powerful firms through the marketplace, these firms' exploitation of competitors, taxpayers, and ideological adversaries is likely to continue. Market Democracy: How Firms Get Rich in the MarketplaceLudwig von Mises understood that in a market economy, the firms that are most successful are those that succeed in the "democracy" of the marketplace. Mises describes this "consumers' democracy" in Socialism:
In other words, the money goes where the consumers want it to go as directed in their daily spending decisions in the marketplace. Those business owners who convince consumers to willingly hand over their money are the business owners who end up controlling the most resources.1 This is a frequent theme in Mises's writing. If we imagine the market economy as an immense seafaring ship, Mises notes, the capitalists are only the "steersmen" of the ship. If they wish to succeed, the capitalists must ultimately take orders from the consumers who are the real captains of the ship. This is generally the case with most of the firms which we today find are increasingly and openly political and ideological. Firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the like became mega-companies by delivering a product or service that a large number of people freely chose to use. This doesn't make these firms superior on a moral or philosophical level, of course. Just because a firm is good at delivering what the consumers want doesn't mean it is spiritually edifying, or morally upright. These firms' success merely means people like to use their products. The end. That's it. After all, we can point to plenty of successful enterprises that aren't exactly laying the foundation for a virtuous and prosperous commonwealth. Pornographers, for instance, make boatloads of money. They're very popular with consumers. At least with male ones. This doesn't make pornographers national treasures. Corporate Welfare Is Only Part of the PictureBut it is hard to deny that firms like Google and Facebook got to where they are by winning "votes" in the "consumers' democracy." Nonetheless, some critics of today's corporate jihad against ideological adversaries insist that these firms are only successful because they are "monopolies" or that they only gained so much market share by dirty tricks and corporate welfare schemes. These claims are generally unconvincing. Certainly, these firms are today able to gain some advantages by manipulating the policy environment through lobbying and other political efforts. Yes, these firms have likely managed to increase profits and diminish competition through intellectual property laws, through tax breaks, and through regulations that favor large firms over small firms. These are bad things, and these firms increase the profitability of their companies at the expense of both competitors and taxpayers. [Read More: "The Plutocrats of Wall Street and Silicon Valley Are Scamming America" by Ryan McMaken] But the primary and most fundamental reasons that these firms became large and powerful in the first place is the fact they were skilled at the game of market democracy. Direct competitors to Google and Facebook and Twitter exist. Few people choose to use them. There are plenty of things to watch on television other than major league baseball—many of which are a lot less boring than baseball. Yet countless consumers continue to watch MLB games anyway. Those who dislike these companies don't like to hear it, but this is the reality: Google, MLB, Facebook, et al are powerful companies not simply because they are big and enjoy some regulatory advantages. They're winning mostly because the general public either actively likes them or at least can't be bothered with finding alternatives. If we are upset with the fact that these companies command immense amounts of resources and can use these resources for political purposes, it's easy to find who is most to blame: the American consumer. The Losing Side of Market DemocracyIn a system of market democracy, the consumers chose the winners. But since we live in a mixed economy and under an interventionist regime, those winners are now using their resources to crush their ideological opponents. This is very frustrating to those on the receiving end of this corporate political aggression, of course. Perhaps even more discouraging is the fact that everywhere they look, conservatives and Christians see relatives and neighbors continue to voluntarily pour their own money and resources into the firms that are avowed enemies of anyone skeptical of today's corporate ideological zeitgeist. No matter how hostile of condescending these firms and their leaders get, hundreds of millions of consumers of all ideological bents just keep slavishly logging in to Facebook and watching many hours of videos on YouTube. What Can Be Done?For those who keep losing to their ideological opponents in the marketplace, this raises a question: if a large number of consumers insist on supporting firms and CEOs who are openly hostile to a certain segment of the population, what can be done? There are three possibilities:
The first option is the most attractive to the average American playing a short-sighted game. It's the usual political "solution": I see a problem, so let's pass new government regulations to "fix" things! In this case, we might envision laws designed to make social media companies be "fair." Of course, we've seen attempts at making media be "fair" before. Federal regulators spent much of the twentieth century regulating "fairness" in media. To see the success of that effort, we need only look at most TV news. Regulation fails again and again. Moreover, it only paves the way for larger amounts of bureaucratic control over the lives of ordinary Americans. When the other side again gains control of the regime, these regulatory powers are then used against those who naively thought the regulations would fix anything. The second option is more promising. It is always a good idea to seek out and destroy any regulations, statutes, or taxes that favor large firms over smaller firms and potential competitors. This means abolishing any tax "incentives" that can be accessed by large firms, but not by smaller firms. It means slashing the duration of patents and other forms of intellectual property. It means ending any special legal protections enjoyed by these firms—such as those in so-called Section 230. But even with all those legal advantages and tricks removed, these firms may continue to be successful and influential firms for many years to come. So long as these firms enjoy the votes of consumers in the "consumers' democracy" the firms are likely to be profitable. The firms will consequently have access to immense amounts of resources, with which they can buy political influence and promote their own vision for American society. Only when these firms face real competition from successful competitors—or when consumers change their buying habits in other ways—will the situation change. That's bound to happen eventually. But for those who fear the political clout of these corporate behemoths, it's imperative to speed up the process.
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| Canadian Secession: Then and Now Posted: 03 Jun 2021 12:00 PM PDT In November 1837, rebellion stirred in the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada (modern-day Ontario and Quebec). In Lower Canada, the rebel group the Patriotes had just won the Battle of Saint-Denis against British forces and, with the news of rebel success, William Lyon Mackenzie called on rural Upper Canadians to follow suit. He distributed a handbill with the title Independence!, which began with the following passage:
The handbill goes on to denounce the administration of then lieutenant-governor Sir Francis Bond Head before ending with a call to arms:
The rebellion that was mounted in Upper Canada failed to live up to the revolutions of 1688 or 1776 as Mackenzie had hoped. The rebels were a poorly organized militia of farmers that didn't even have enough muskets for everyone who volunteered. After less than a week of fighting, the rebels were defeated. Mackenzie escaped to the US, where he attempted to invade Canada, but with no success. The better-organized Lower Canada Rebellion would also see defeat less than a year later. For now, Canada would remain under the control of Britain. While Mackenzie failed to liberate Canada from British control, the question of the crown's role in Canada was not yet answered. In 1838, John Lambton, earl of Durham, was appointed governor general of Canada with the task of creating a report on the rebellions in both colonies. In 1839, he produced the Report on the Affairs of British North America, which has become colloquially known as the Durham Report. The report offered two major pieces of advice for Britain to heed: the first was that the two colonies be united into one and the second was that Canada be granted responsible government. At the time, both Upper and Lower Canada were under colonial rule. While there was an elected legislative assembly in Upper Canada, they had very little power, as the lieutenant governor, Executive Council, and Legislative Council, all of whom were appointed by the British crown, had the right to veto legislation passed by the assembly. Lower Canada had the same parliamentary system until the assembly and Legislative Council were dissolved during the rebellion and replaced with an all-Crown-appointed special council. Responsible government meant that the government would be responsible to the people of Canada, not to the crown, and was the aim of reformers Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, the fathers of responsible government. In 1840, with the passing of the Act of Union, Upper and Lower Canada were united into the Province of Canada, with a house of assembly with an equal number of elected seats from both Upper and Lower Canada (then referred to as Canada West and Canada East, respectively). It was thought that the Act would also bring about responsible government. When parliament opened in 1841, it was "the first time in the history of empire that a colonial assembly had come together with the expectation that it could and would instruct the government," according to historian John Ralston Saul. But it was not to be, as the executive branch of the government, the Executive Council, was still appointed by the crown and thus failed to maintain responsibility to Canadians. It would not be until the election of 1848, known as "the great Responsible Government election," in which Baldwin and Lafontaine were returned to power and were able to pass amendments to the Act of Union, that the Executive Council was replaced with the Cabinet of Ministers, made up of members of the elected assembly. Ten years after the defeat of the rebels, Canada would finally control its own legislative and executive branches of government. In 1867 the Province of Canada and the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia entered into confederation under a new constitution, the British North America Act, and over the next half century, five more provinces would join the confederation. In 1931, the Statute of Westminster was passed in the United Kingdom, giving Canada legislative autonomy and disallowing Canadians from appealing to British Commonwealth courts, but gave the UK the right to amend the Canadian constitution. In 1982, Pierre Trudeau led a charge to patriate the constitution and passed the Constitution Act, which stripped the UK of the right to amend the Canadian constitution. This was the last step in removing all the legislative power of Britain over Canada. With Canada finally sovereign over itself and free from British legislation, some provinces within the country have tried to secede themselves. If Canada could secede from Britain, why cannot provinces secede from Canada? As Murray Rothbard asks,
Most famously, Quebec, the sole majority French-speaking province, has seen many attempts to secede from Canada. Though it has been an influential idea since New France's capture by Britain in the French and Indian War, the question of Quebec sovereignty became increasingly prominent in the latter half of the twentieth century. During the 1960s, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a militant separatist group who, according to their manifesto, "want[ed] total independence for Quebecers, united in a free society," executed several attacks on federal property. The height of their infamy was reached during the October Crisis of 1970, when they kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Richard Cross, and the vice-premier of Quebec, Pierre Laport, killing the latter. While the FLQ did not achieve independence, the sovereignty movement evolved and became interested in peaceful routes to independence. In 1976, René Lévesque, leader of the Parti Québécois, was elected premier of Quebec and issued a referendum in 1980 asking, "Do you give the Government of Quebec the mandate to negotiate the proposed [sovereignty] agreement between Quebec and Canada?" The referendum was defeated, with 60 percent of voters voting no. In 1994, the Parti Québécois returned to power under the leadership of Jacques Parizeau and in 1995 another referendum was held, once again asking if Quebec should become sovereign. This time, the mark was even more narrowly missed, with 50.6 percent of voters voting no. Today, the cry for independence can once again be heard in Canada, this time from the west. Alberta, a province carved out of the North-West Territories in 1905, has seen an increased interest in independence since the election of Justin Trudeau in 2015. Their grievances are many, including Trudeau's veto on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, his proposed ban on single-use plastics, and a carbon tax. Perhaps the most pressing issue for Albertans is equalization payments. In 1957, Canada's Equalization Program was implemented, which, according to Canada's 1982 constitution, exists to "ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation." Since Alberta is relatively productive compared to other provinces, they have paid while other provinces have reaped the rewards. As the premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, pointed out in 2018, "Since equalization was created [in 1957], Alberta has received 0.02% of all payments, the last of which was in 1964–1965. In contrast, Quebec has received equalization money every year of the program, totalling 221 billion dollars or 51 per cent of all payments." Recognizing that Alberta has been consistently abused by the federal government, four members of the Conservative Party have put forward the Buffalo Declaration, a plea to the federal government for better treatment. The authors suggest that "[o]ur federation has reached a crossroads at which Canada must decide to move forward in equality and respect, or people in our region [Alberta] will look at independence from Confederation as the solution." Just as Canada had the right to secede from Britain, so too do the provinces and territories have a right to secede from Canada. Secession was Canada's remedy against British abuses during the nineteenth century. Today, secession may be Alberta's remedy against Canadian ones.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The Economics of the Extended Family: From Risk Management to Human Capital Posted: 03 Jun 2021 09:00 AM PDT When we think of analyzing economic organizations, we generally think of firms and corporations. But there is another organization that is just as critical to economic development: the extended family. Indeed, the advantages offered by this institution are numerous and include risk sharing, mutual aid, human capital building, social capital building, and resource complementarity and coordination. Risk Sharing and Mutual AidOne of the most important roles of the extended family is to act as a risk-sharing organization. Life is unpredictable. In a nuclear family separated from the extended family, the parents only have one another to rely upon. A single accident, sudden illness, job loss, etc. reduces half of the productive capacity of this unit and can spell disaster for both spouses and their dependent children. This is where grandparents, uncles, aunts, and even family friends and close neighbors serve a crucial societal function. The members of this large group can chip in when things are going well for them to help their family members who are going through hard times. And those who contribute know that if one day it's their turn to go through a rough patch, the rest of the extended family, with its large collective pool of resources, will be there to get them through it, too. This works like and is a supplement to insurance purchased on the market, except that in the extended family there's an affectionate thumb on the actuary's scale. Moving from a small group like the nuclear family to a larger group like the extended family protects against risk, because while it only takes one misfortune for half of a nuclear family to be debilitated, it would be an unlikely coincidence for half of a thirty-person extended family to simultaneously be stricken by misfortunes. The mutual-aid capacity of the extended family doesn't just apply to extraordinary cases such as sudden illness, unemployment, or death, but also to everyday matters such as taking care of the very young and the very old members of the family. We see this, for example, in the familiar case of grandparents caring for and instructing their grandchildren when the parents are at work or running errands. The extended family is like a company that provides health insurance, unemployment insurance, life insurance, childcare, and eldercare all in one and in which everyone on the board of directors loves you. Human and Social CapitalThe benefits hardly stop there. The extended family is also an engine of human and social capital, that is to say skills and connections that boost the career opportunities of its members. Imagine a young man, Smith, who in addition to his parents has a grandfather who runs a vineyard, another grandfather who's a carpenter, an uncle who owns a mechanic shop, another uncle who's a lawyer, an aunt who's a nurse, and older cousins with their own occupations and businesses. To an outsider with no such relatives, each one of these occupational or entrepreneurial paths is to varying extents a black box. Is this the right path for me? What skills do I need? How do I get started? Who do I need to talk to? And so on. But for Smith, each of his relatives can provide an apprenticeship opportunity and be a fountain of insider knowledge and connections. The extended family members in question can offer advice, describe what the occupation is like, take him in as an intern and teach him the craft, recommend him for job openings, or hire him themselves. All of this can save Smith a world of time, money, and anxiety and missteps. According to Julia Fisher, the director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, "Research shows that 70% of all jobs are not published publicly on jobs sites and as much as 80% of jobs are filled through personal and professional connections." This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Parents pay large sums of money for their children to make the social connections provided by elite universities, for example. Having a devoted extended family presents many of the advantages of a vocational school, country club, or recruitment agency. Complementarity of ResourcesIn a prior article I discussed how specialization and the division of labor make the family a powerful economic unit. Jörg Guido Hülsmann provides an insight about resource complementarity within the family that extends this analysis:
The young and the old tend to have complementary resources within the family: energy and money, respectively. There may be plenty of people in the world ready to offer money to finance investments, and there may be plenty of people in the world ready to execute business plans once they have the money for it, but solving the coordination problem of bringing together these groups of people and fostering enough trust between them to breathe life into these potential investments is a herculean task. It's part of the reason why there's a multitrillion-dollar global banking industry. Within extended families, the fact that the young and the old develop affection toward, trust in, and knowledge of one another helps solve this resource coordination problem. Consequently, investment ideas become actual investments. ConclusionThese benefits can't be taken for granted, however. Merely having biological grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. is not the same as being a part of a functioning extended family if this group of people is scattered across different states, or doesn't labor to maintain warm relations and fulfill their reciprocal obligations toward one another. That's up to us.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Forget Hemlines. Mom Jeans Are Now an Economic Indicator. Posted: 03 Jun 2021 06:00 AM PDT Many have long speculated that there is a correlation between economic prosperity and the length of women's hemlines. But perhaps it's now "mom jeans," with their high waists and ample fit, that indicate the true state of the economy. Original Article: "Forget Hemlines. Mom Jeans Are Now an Economic Indicator." This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.  |
| Why Is the French Government Running Off Foreign Investors? Posted: 03 Jun 2021 06:00 AM PDT Most people understand that it's a good thing when others invest money and capital in your community. But when Canadian investors offered to pour money into France as part of a deal to buy a French company, the regime said no thanks. Original Article: "Why Is the French Government Running Off Foreign Investors?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.  |
| A Libertarian Approach to Disputed Land Titles Posted: 03 Jun 2021 04:00 AM PDT The recent spate of bombing violence in Israel's West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza demonstrates the enduring attachment both Israelis and Palestinians have to physical land in the country. Both sides make claims—legal, moral, and political—to land within Israel, from the southernmost tip of Gaza to the northernmost tip of the Golan Heights. This ongoing and often violent dispute is based on interrelated historical and religious events reaching back thousands of years, even before the origins of the biblical Holy Land. And while ancient disputes are inherently more difficult to resolve, twentieth-century events also weigh heavily on the current conflict. The Balfour Declaration in 1917, the official establishment of Israel by UN resolution in 1948, decisive domestic land wars in 1967 and 1973, and even recent peace accords all failed to settle the issue or at least bring an end to violence. Fights over land are the norm in human affairs, and the impetus for most wars across time. This is unsurprising, because for most of human history land and wealth were virtually synonymous. Today the ultimate landowner, Queen Elizabeth of England, at least symbolically controls 6 billion acres of British territories far beyond the Crown Estate. In theory the wealthiest elites today, people like Jeff Bezos, derive most of their net worth from equity ownership in public or private companies. And unlike the blue-chip companies of fifty years ago, today's big tech firms operate mostly in the digital sphere—owning lots of servers, intellectual property, and lines of code, but little in the way of factories, offices, or fields. Yet several tech titans, including Bezos and Bill Gates, are found among the old-money crowd in The Land Report's list of top American landowners. The richest people in the world tend to hedge their bets, and one way they do so is selling stock to buy land rather than the other way around. This should tell us something. So long as land remains valuable, we should expect people to fight over it. And not only in Israel. Similar disputes over historical claims are simmering in the West, including claims by American Indian tribes against the US federal government for land restoration and black Americans seeking land as partial reparations for slavery. Yet we view these claims almost entirely in political terms, as matters to be settled by legislatures representing "the people" and using public appropriations. Why should this be so? Why does modern positivist "land law" focus primarily on zoning issues and land use rather than defining ownership? Black's Law Dictionary appears to provide more guidance than the Supreme Court or international pseudotribunals. Why do we lack a method or road map for resolving land disputes in the modern context when land has been such a fixture in common law? One would think the basic rules of property titles would have been settled centuries ago. What Land Titles Are "Just"?So how do we address thorny land disputes in Gaza and elsewhere? Fortunately, both the late Murray N. Rothbard and his mentor, Ludwig von Mises, wrote at some length on the question of property titles, though from two different perspectives. In particular, we can look to Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty1 and Mises's Socialism2 for their fullest treatments of law and justice as they relate particularly to real property. Rothbard's approach is normative, based strictly on natural law justice principles rather than economic efficiency. Mises, by contrast, is a strong critic of natural law. His "rule utilitarianism" views markets as a form of social cooperation, and seeks rules of conduct which encourage such cooperation for land disputes. But both men recognize the role that earlier aggression, whether force or fraud, played in creating property titles held today. Invasion, war, seizure, theft, trickery, and general violence are at least as prevalent in human history as heroic homesteading. Mises, in Socialism, does not sugarcoat this reality:
Rothbard, in The Ethics of Liberty, rejects the notion of accepting current settled land titles under color of state authority. Defending things as they are, he says, causes the utilitarian to smuggle in an implicit ethic:
So how, then, does a Rothbardian apply natural law theory to determine just land titles? We start with self-ownership, the idea that humans have an absolute right to own and control their bodies. From that right, we derive the right to find and transform unowned resources into owned property. Finally, owning property means having right to alienate such property, by exchange or gift. So humans justly acquire property by mixing their labor with unowned resources, or by contract and gift. All other methods of ownership, variants of theft or fraud, do not create just property titles. This is Rothbard's theory of the rights of property distilled:
Mises alludes to the "is" and "ought" of later versus original ownership, but takes an analytic rather than normative view:
The point here is not to reconcile Rothbard and Mises on just property titles, but rather to demonstrate their understandings of how and why property derives legal title. Any argument for the undoing of current land ownership starts with an understanding of the specific history of titles in question. Four Scenarios for Land Title DisputesAs an analytic framework for considering the validity or criminality of land titles, Rothbard lays out four possible scenarios. He does so with the proviso that merely proving a title is criminal does not answer the question of to whom it should transfer:
That said, each scenario suggests a remedy to Rothbard.
These four examples, at least in theory, give us the clearest possible approach to working out land disputes. They apply to any scenario, including the worst atrocities in human history, provided proof can be produced which both identifies the original theft and the perpetrators and victims involved. Who Bears the Burden of Proof?In The Ethics of Liberty Rothbard does not discuss the burden of proof that plaintiffs should bear in disputes over land. Burden of proof requirements arise from common law, and require a suing party to put forth evidence at a certain level to prevail in their claim. This is not merely a technicality, but an evidentiary standard which often determines the outcomes of cases. In civil suits today, a plaintiff seeking money damages generally must demonstrate liability by a preponderance of the evidence, which means the judge or jury believes that the evidence shows the defendant "more likely than not" bears responsibility. By contrast, a prosecutor seeking to jail a defendant must demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Since Rothbard advocates "collapsing tort into crime," which is to say basing all actionable lawsuits on aggression against persons or property, is a much higher burden of proof required in land disputes? Writing in the Cato Journal several years later on property rights and pollution, Rothbard appears to answer in the affirmative:
This evidentiary burden decidedly colors the larger argument about justice and land titles. In this practical sense, Rothbard partially concedes Mises's view on the utilitarian value of continuity and the general sentiment that "possession is nine-tenths of the law." Rothbard is willing to overturn the apple cart, but only if and when a party seeking title to land makes a thoroughly persuasive case. Is There a Statute of Limitations for Land Claims?That persuasion may well depend on the age of such a claim: as years, decades, or even centuries go by, witnesses die and written records are hard to find. This is certainly the case in Israel, where current land titles are often traced to very old or even ancient provenance—with little in the way of official deeds. As evidence become harder to adduce with the passage of time, disputed title claims become harder and harder to prove. To be sure, Rothbard takes pains to deny any concept of a statute of limitation in libertarian legal theory. After all, statutes require legislatures, which he rejects altogether. And he is not the kind of thinker whose sense of normative justice shifts simply because an injury is long in the past. Yet Rothbard's four scenarios, outlined above, create bright lines for determining just outcomes for proven claims. Neither Rothbard nor any other theorist can solve the issue of proof, which means no system of justice is perfect. And it's important to repeat that Rothbard's analysis is based on individual cases and specific claims, not generalized calls for redistributive justice for past actions. For Rothbard, there is no generalized political justice for slavery, genocide, military land grabs, or groups with historical grievances. Should Lineage Matter?Finally, we have the difficult question of whether and why genetic lineage should allow any person to make (or collect on) a claim on behalf of their ancestor. At several points, Rothbard discusses victims and their heirs, as contrasted with criminal aggressors and their ancestors. This clearly indicates his agreement with the idea that property rights adhere to successive generations, as does the taint of theft. Certainly, an individual who dies with a successful legal claim to land (but who has not yet taken possession) can assign that claim to heirs (or anyone else, of course). In many US states the operation of law effectively achieves this if the individual died without a will or without making such an assignment. But in a scenario like Israel, lineal heirs to people with just Rothbardian claims to land may be dozens of generations and thousands of miles removed from the dispute in question. Especially in Rothbard's fourth scenario above, why should a bona fide innocent purchaser (or the purchaser's heirs) not have a better or equal claim to the land? What if the heirs have no familial, geographic, or cultural ties to the original victim whatsoever? Why should they, in effect, step into the shoes of a long-dead and long-forgotten ancestor, even when the ancestor is a complete stranger? Why does the hyperindividualist Murray Rothbard think family relations should matter so much in legal theory? The short answer is because we don't have a better way. Channeling Thomas Sowell, we must ask, "Compared to what?" Are hereditary rights to claims the best imperfect system we can devise? Do they give us a way to identify worthy claimants that no other system can? Yes and yes. ConclusionHenry George was correct: the amount of physical land on earth is inherently fixed and finite. Mark Twain told us to "buy land, they're not making it anymore." Of course, the amount of "usable" land (inhabitable, arable, reachable by humans) increases with technology, along with the amount of extractable resources and economic value. Someday the vast sea floors may be widely available to us. But land is indeed exhaustible, in a purely possessory sense. This simple reality inescapably benefits earlier generations, which came to possess land by dint of discovery, homesteading, legitimate purchase, inheritance, war, colonization, force, fraud, or just the sheer luck of being born at the right place and time. Young people may well resent this state of affairs. They may wonder if they'll ever be able to afford even modest property like their grandparents could, much less hellishly expensive homes in New York City or Singapore or Vancouver (never mind the role of central banks in this). They were late to the party—through no fault of their own—and now find themselves landless in a crowded world of over 7 billion people. But does this apparent cosmic injustice make the case for upending and redistributing existing land titles? No, because a generalized sense of fairness, even if such an ideal were remotely possible to determine, would require mass injustice to implement. Justice should always be specific, individual, temporal, and local to the greatest extent possible. This is why Rothbard requires a great degree of specificity in identifying both perpetrators and victims of land appropriation, while Mises argues against abolishing current ownership simply because of the injustice or indifference of past legal orders. Land, like any capital good, will tend to move toward those who can find its best and highest use. Thieves and squatters, however much unjustly enriched, are unlikely to maintain ownership forever under a better system of market liberalism (i.e., a more just and less barbaric system of land acquisition). In the view of both Rothbard and Mises, markets tend toward justice in allocating titles to land over time, however imperfectly and slowly. Rothbard gives us the rough foundation of justice, but only common law juries—temporalized and local—can fill in the gaps. Justice is often found in the details, and this sets natural limits for any overarching theory of justice. In this sense the here and now always has the upper hand over the past. Yet life is unfair. No legal code based even on the best libertarian principles found in common law can fix this entirely.
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