Can a Man Do Whatever He Wants on His Own Land?

A man should be free to do whatever he wants on his own land. We both disagree. Yeah, I mean, of course, I mean, of course, again, it's one of these sort of absolute statements where it's like, of course, but it's, I think, for the libertarian question here, it's um it's once again, I think that the thing we have to bring to the level of consciousness, in my opinion, for like any kind of liberty movement, is that different groups of people, different individuals, and then uh uh ideally uh sort of uh coarse-grained into groups. This is your most unpopular answer each, by the way. Oh, interesting. Um so um you what you do on your land doesn't stay on your land. There are causal effects that propagate out necessarily. So you can't be free to do whatever you want on your land because the things you do on your land don't strictly stay confined to your land.

To the extent that they do, sure, I'm in favor of that. You know, I don't personally feel like oh, they want to build a cabin, but like, you know, there's all these codes and things. It's like, yeah, in my personal opinion, you know, build the cabin on your land, whatever. But if you build uh actually, I remember a few years ago, you've had a thing where someone put up a like I don't know, a pole barn or something like that, really like obnoxiously, and that's an externality that is imposed upon you. And so that person probably felt like it's my land. Yeah, that's the only thing. And it's like, yeah, well, it's my life, and this is and I'm on my land. And so uh we live in a uh like I said before, the like causality kind of an event happens, causal chains spew in all directions, and they go and go, go and go.

And so we have to like face that and understand that like my idea of what I should be free to do might be in uh tension with my neighbors' uh freedom of enjoyment, and we have to negotiate that. And the best way to negotiate that is to find the people that you have the most uh harmony with around those externalities and and to live near them and not near the people that you're gonna annoy when you're doing what you want to do, and not near the people that are gonna annoy you when they're doing what they want to do. And and then in the finer grain details, you have to just negotiate those those boundaries out with your you're saying your adjacent neighbors or things like that. So your argument, so I agree with you that there are such a thing as externalities, and there's a sort of very annoying argument pattern that I get into with people when I'm trying to explain.

Do you understand what an externality is? Do you and um there I think is sort of a temptation to ad hoc the response, where I will say, if I paint my house an ugly color, is that an externality? No, it is absolutely not at all an externality. So, you know, it sort of snaps to grid, it's zero. Right. And if I'm shooting laser beams across the property line that light your house on fire, yes, that's a violation of the nap. Right. And then you sort of work into the middle to find where does this phase transition where it suddenly becomes a violation of the nap. Right. And it becomes very arbitrary. Yeah, it's and you know, they they will just say, well, everyone can tell that five broken cars is your right, but six is a junkyard. Exactly. And you know, I and I I I do tend to agree, right? That that you know, and this gets back to calculus when you're you know looking at a function and you want to figure out what is the min and the max of the function, there's like a couple of places you look.

You look at the minimum end of the range, you look at the maximum end of the range, you look at any point where the derivative is zero, where the slope is, and and so you know, I sort of bring this process where like, okay, let's investigate where the phase change happens for you. And I think there is no coherent answer. They're arguing on the fly because they do not have a pre-existing mental framework over it. Um I I I think that this actually points to something interesting. There is actually no place where it snaps from zero to one. And once again, I come back to price mechanisms. So we could come up with something arbitrary where you know everyone has a constitutional right to three broken vehicles on their lawn. But if you want to go beyond that, then we need to engage in some sort of tradable easement or buying permissions off of people within 300 feet.

And the whole you know concept of buying permissions is quite interesting in the same way that you know, taking away second amendment rights, but do it with price mechanisms. Because it might turn out that, like, oh, I really don't much care. You know, yeah, it's a little bit of a nice sword, but if you gave me 10 bucks, I'd be happy. Okay, interesting. And so he's, you know, this guy's almost certainly gonna do that. Maybe it turns out for the next 10 cars, 10 bucks a piece. Um on the other hand, I you know might have an arbitrary set of preferences, and like everybody's preferences are arbitrary. The Gustabus nonest disputandum, you can't tell somebody that their preferences or their utility function is wrong. Um, but if I say, look, you know, uh, when I was a kid, I was beaten up by an abandoned car.

I hate them more than anything. Uh I will not let you have an abandoned car on your lawn for less than 300,000. If we just accept that as a fact, he's like, well, it's worth a lot to me, but it's not worth 300,000. So again, you know, the market has cleared. Yeah, I think what you're saying, I think there's a certain class of extra galleys that's true for, and then there's other ones that do have the kind of phase transition and immediate snap effect that does vary across populations. You know, go back to your your guy with with the with the uh Pierce nipples and whatnot. Like some populations uh so so that where what class is that in, right? And for some that's an instant snap, zero to one. Yeah, and for others, it's like great, like, can we get more in here? And and some uh and then and then there's the preference works in the opposite way.

I'll pay each leather daddy a hundred dollars to my neighborhood. So uh and then there's some where there is sort of a price. Well, everyone's got a price, you know. So um I don't think that it's true that it's always the case that sort of this uh this sort of buying your way into the externalities you impose is always the right thing, or it's always always continuous and there's no snapping, especially when we enter the moral domain, what this kind of sort of thought experiment gets to is like there's a moral domain, and that's actually one of the interesting classes of externalities in my mind that's not usually considered as one because it's not like economic, uh, but it's like sort of moral externalities. And what do I want, you know? I think one of the again, uh we're kind of bringing this back to what I'm attracted to about this free state party thing, and one of the major things about it that to me uh is like okay, I want to be involved in this, I want to be part of this, is pro-family, and that pro-family is pro-kids and pro-kids being around.

And not universally true, but there is a tendency that once people have children have a family, uh, you start to become sensitive to different things that maybe you weren't so sensitive to before. And a lot of these kinds of moral externalities involve like, well, I'm like an adult, I can kind of like contextualize this and put it in its place and deal with it, but my kids aren't. And for a time, my job, in my opinion, is to shelter them. Yes, it's not to uh isolate them or never uh introduce them to the world or anything like that, but it's like the younger they are, the more they shelter them, and the older they get, the more I kind of introduce them to what what's in the world and things that that aren't so great sometimes. And so um, yeah, I think this idea uh uh of moral externalities are where the if people truly are holding on a moral principle, then there's no price.

Well, but in a sense, there is if we tie it to the earlier proposition about you're free to leave the town, right? Um, so at some level, uh, you know, there are so many leather daddies, and each one is willing to pick in five thousand dollars, and you're like, hell, uh, you know, for five million dollars, I can pack up and leave and buy a farm somewhere else. And so this is where I think that um compensating for externalities with cash bidding and tying in with localism. You know, I talked earlier about the problem with you can just leave is that leaving imposes a tax unless you get a dead weight uh loss.