Tucker's big four + one

[Hierophant]

Tucker identified four legal monopolies, privileges on which capitalism rests.

1. The land monopoly.
* By giving off land already occupied.
* By withholding land from ownership, raising the price of land for landowners.
* By giving capitalists preferential access.
* By permitting "ownership" of vast unoccupied amounts of land to the government.

2. The money monopoly.
* The gigantic barriers to entry to the banking market create usurious interest rates.
* Because individuals have tremendous capital available to them at home, mutualist banking could on its own overturn capitalism.
* Near-zero interest would ensure financial security for everyone.
* Reinforces the land monopoly by making renting more affordable than buying.
* Creates the unemployment necessary to keep labour enslaved.

3. Patents.
* Ensures monopoly pricing for protected goods.
* Suppress innovation, and thus competition.
* Keeps third-world commerce enslaved and indebted to Western commerce by making innovation impossible.

4. Tariffs.
* Permits the sustenance of business oligarchies and keeps profits high.

5. Infrastructure.
* The cost of infrastructure is socialized but the benefits of infrastructure to corporations is private. This subsidy is so massive that it drives the concentration of capital all by itself. Without it, the extreme concentration of modern capitalism could not exist.

From http://www.mutualist.org/id72.html

[MustangGT]

I do not believe that ownership of land (or any kind of property) somehow must be transferred to the regular users of that property if the current owner of that property does not wish to do so, or his asking price has not been met.

Forced transfer of ownership to the current user of a piece of property is COERCION. And I still say that coercion is a no-no.

WHOS WITH ME?????

[Hierophant]

Aaron, how is it coercion when the user has the legitimate property rights over it?

[MustangGT]

Aaron, how is it coercion when the user has the legitimate property rights over it?

Begging the question. How does the "user" have legitimate property rights over something that was rented to them; something that was built -not by the user, but by the original owner- at great cost both financially and time-wise?

How does the property right magically transfer to whoever happens to be occupying and using the piece of property?

[Hierophant]

Actually, it's almost always true that neither of them actually built the place.

He has legitimate property rights because renting is illegitimate and he's the one who's actually occupying the place. (you already know this, so I don't know why you're asking)

[PlatypusOfCarnage]

What if he did build the place... like my parents, who built their home (with some help from friends)? Or what if a single home is very very large, but still one unit. Do certain areas of the house that are not regularly used count as occupied? It's just very hard for me to see where the cutoff is drawn in what remins one's possessions and what is not.

[Dan Mac]

What does it matter who built it?

What if the original builder sold it? The new owner is illegitimate?

This smells really bad.

[Hierophant]

What if he did build the place... like my parents, who built their home (with some help from friends)? Or what if a single home is very very large, but still one unit. Do certain areas of the house that are not regularly used count as occupied? It's just very hard for me to see where the cutoff is drawn in what remins one's possessions and what is not.

That's a very silly question. If you live in a house, you'd obviously call the whole house "occupied," wouldn't you? You wouldn't let someone sneak into your attic.

[Thorsmitersaw]

Actually, it's almost always true that neither of them actually built the place.

He has legitimate property rights because renting is illegitimate and he's the one who's actually occupying the place. (you already know this, so I don't know why you're asking)

'why is the rented space belonging to the resident merely because he occupies it?'
'because he occupies it'

[Hierophant]

Occupancy/use is the land standard that mutualists support. That is the fundamental principle in play here. There is nothing to say beyond that.