Dear Mr Kinsella,
I had a question about eminent domain [expropriation] and who becomes the rightful owner of a resource, let’s say a house, after the state has expropriated (stolen) it from the original owner.
I’ve heard you say previously that the rightful/natural owner would be the taxpayer since the original owner has already been compensated. But since the money the original owner of the house has been compensated with is stolen taxpayer money doesn’t this mean that this person never gains title to the money as the state doesn’t rightfully own said money and you can’t transfer title over a resource if you don’t rightfully own said resource? In which case couldn’t you say that he hasn’t truly been compensated and is in reality merely in possession of stolen goods?
KINSELLA:
It’s not a bad question but it’s complicated. It’s complicated ultimately because of the fact of aggression makes full restitution impossible and causes damage, injustice, in part by muddying things up. For example it has turned money which used to be ownable things like gold into fiat money which, in my view, like BTC, cannot be owned as it does not exist as a physical thing.1 All that said, as long as the state maintains it’s coercive violent monopoly over things and screws things up I am not going to oppose the current legal fiction that people can own fiat dollars.
So in a sense no one owns the dollars. The question is what happened when the expropriated homeowner was paid. If we assume he had a right to take the compensation, then I think we can see why my argument makes sense. The people who were harmed were primarily the taxed citizens, whose money was used to purchase the property. The expropriated homeowner has already received a reasonable compensation—a type of restitution.
You could argue that this is not sufficient restitution, since value is subjective, but fair market value (FMV) compensation is far more than any general citizen-creditor of the state can ever hope to receive. Keep in mind that if the state were dissolved tomorrow all its assets would not suffice to compensate all its victims; the wealth has been wasted and lost and destroyed. My guess is the average citizen could not get more than 0.1% of what he is owed (or even less), because the state has destroyed so much wealth over the years and harmed so many people in so many horrible ways that can never be made up for.
Nonetheless, if the state were to dissolve and its assets somehow distributed to the taxpaying citizens it has been robbing—say, by auctioning it all off and dividing the proceeds up among the citizenry—this would be better than nothing and would be a form of justice. While in the case of an expropriated homeowner he has received something on the order of 100% of his fair market value. Even if it’s only 1/3 that, that’s still far more than anyone else could ever get.
The question is when should we take money from the state. I think anytime you have a chance to get restitution you have a right to go for it, unless you yourself are complicit in the state’s theft or have condoned it (e.g., by voting for socialists or working for the state). As money is not ownable there is nothing wrong with taking a monetary payment. It’s not taking anyone else’s property. Plus it’s fungible anyway. If the state’s cops shoot your dog or your son illegally and you can get $1M from them, you are just getting partial restitution from what the state owes you. If the state takes your home and pays you $200k, then at least the harm done to you has been reduced.
Now if you view the money as owned by the taxpayers, then stolen by the state, and thus the expropriated homeowner is in possession of stolen goods, then he has to disgorge his compensation and make it available back to the general taxpayers for everyone to share in pro-rata, including him—similar to a clawback in bankruptcy proceedings when the debtor pays some favored creditor right before declaring bankruptcy and the other claimants can take that money back and put it in the general pot to be split pro rata— … but the problem is we are nowhere near such a general winding up of the state. There is nowhere for the homeowner to disgorge his money to, except back to the state, and then that doesn’t help the state’s general class of citizen-victims. (I suppose one alternative would be to take the money and then burn it, thereby slightly increasing the purchasing power of all the citizens or fiat holders pro-rata, thus preventing the renunciation of his special claim to his home.)
So all you can do now is get whatever restitution you can. But if you say he doesn’t own the money, okay then he has to return it and then he stands in line with the rest of the citizens to get his 0.1% restitution from the remaining assets of the state. I personally think the better view is he lost his title to his home, now the state legally owns it, but it was “purchased” with general stolen taxpayer funds, and thus the general citizens have a claim on that real estate as an asset subject to satisfying general rectification claims. The homeowner himself has no special claim on it since he was already compensated.
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Followup:
Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply.
If I may ask a follow up question, supposing that the money is indeed stolen and the expropriated homeowner doesn’t return it, could we then say that he is himself an aggressor?
In my mind this follows. If we can say that the judge, the cop, the IRS agent, the public school teacher, the company that works primarily for the state must return the money they possess to the taxpayer because as Professor Hoppe has argued these people possess stolen money and are aggressors because of this (among other things of course) then it makes sense in my opinion to say the expropriated homeowner is also an aggressor for not returning the money.
For example if i were to go and try to get my money back from the IRS let’s say, would i be justified?
If I am justified, the reason would be that they are in possession of something that belongs to me and so I have every right to get it back.
If I were to try to do the same with the expropriated homeowner would I also be justified? In my view I would be as he too is in possession of something that belongs to me (a part of it at least) and so I see no definitive difference.Again thank you so much for taking the time to respond.
