Hi.
I'm in the process of reading your selfsip website and enjoy it very
much (read: I find it of value to me (1) ) and I'm already "field
testing" the ideas on friends by starting "arguments" with them. I am
quite amazed to realize my previous misconceptions during these
arguments (people say stuff I vehemently believed in a few months ago).

[You certainly are not alone in this. During the process of thinking about the
intimate details of what I thought would work, I myself came to some major new
conclusions that were actually quite contradictory to what I had beforehand
considered to be valid and had strongly argued for. --Paul]


I will hopefully post at some point about these experiences,
specifically focusing on what were the points that people find
especially challenging with those "new" ideas and how I respond to it.

[Please do that, since both the points the people rebelled at and your responses
would be highly valuable to me because they would help me to know what I need to
work on harder to explain and emphasize. --Paul]


But for now I have 2 questions that came up for which I have no answers,
though the answers may well be on the website and I haven't gotten to
that point yet:

1. In a Free State, is there such a thing as "public resources"? Seems
like there must be, like air, but I'm not sure about roads, water,
airspace, "parks" etc.

[This first thing to be clear about is that in the society that I am trying to
describe, and for which I am trying to establish the fundamental working
processes of human interaction, there would be no such entity as is now called a
state. However, even now there is no such entity as a "public" that can
evaluate, own, control, possess or utilize real existing things as can
individual human life-forms. If you fully read the Natural Social Contract (NSC)
and understand the manner in which "real estate" (any bounded space) is
established, then you will see that there is nothing to prevent all real estate
from ulitmately being owned by individual humans. Even so, the methods of
establishing and maintaining such ownership have sufficiently resource-consuming
requirements (time, energy and cost) that it is likely that much real estate
will remain unowned within the forseeable future. (see
http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract_annotated.html for complete
definitions). --Paul]


If there are no public resources then things can get pretty ugly, say if
the entire waterfront is owned by persons that do not wish to sell at
any cost and do not wish to create/operate a port on their property then
this state cannot possibly use ships. Since very few people are likely
to agree to move to a state that cannot use ships (just one example), it
seems that there must be *some* public resources in a free state. But
then, what if the Free State was founded before ships were invented, and
the entire waterfront is in private hands, and now ships were invented
and this Free State is turning backwards because the 3 persons that own
the waterfront are not willing in any way to "oblige"? So ok, each
person can decide to "not do business with them" as a way to "help" them
change their minds, but is that enough? And if that's "enough", then
those 3 persons can maybe do business (via their port?) with other
states, thus circumventing the effective financial boycott of their
felloe citizens. Help me out here :-)

[I am going to organize my response as four basically different points that I
think will cover most of your questions.

1) There is no state involved, so let us simply consider by "state" that you
mean a geographical area.

2) If you read the parts of the Natural Social Contract relating to definition,
establishment and maintenance of real estate ownership entitlement, you will see
that a very important part of that definition is the establishment of covenants
(see definition in the Natural Social Contract) with the owners of all abutting
real estate. Access to a body of water that is on the other side of a neighbor's
property should be established by means of covenants at the time when the
properties were being defined. Probably this would be done similarly to now by
one person deciding that he could profit by making his property abut as many
others as possible (ie like a road) and also abut the body of water. In this
manner such a person would serve the valuable function of establishing "egress"
real estate that could be used by many people for the purpose of interfacing to
others. Of course part of their covenants with the owner of such egress real
estate would be the payment of fees to him for this egress service. This egress
real estate could connect to water-based egress real estate (the "space" of
water - and air - can also be owned just as is the space of land) which would
allow even greater interfacing possibilities. When establishing new real estate
or purchasing old, one of the major planning and evaluation factors would be its
connections by egress real estate to as many as possible other pieces of real
estate. The access to this abutting egress real estate would be by convenants on
the real estate, and these covenants could only be changed by unanimous consent
of both owners.

3) Now it is possible that new technology can arise (such as ships in your
example) which have requirements for which the original covenants do not
sufficiently account. If the necessary neighbor will not make the necessary
covnenant change no matter what he is paid (but one must also ask why would he
be this contrary), such a turn of events may certainly not allow a given real
estate owner to make the full possible use of his property that the new
technology allows. However it is clear that this same real estate owner was
beforehand able to live with a reasonable amount of freedom and happiness with
his current covenants in place. Thus, his happiness potential has not been
decreased by the recalcitrance of his neighbor. It has merely been not allowed
to increase as much as is now possible with the new technology. All this means
it that his real estate may not be as valuable as it might have become and he
may wish to sell and move elsewhere in order to have access to this new
technology. And yes, it is even possible he may have to move some distance away
to a completely different geographical area. I see no other possible answer if
ownership entitlement is to mean anything and to be fully respected.

4) On the other hand, if this lack of ability to better their existence, because
of the obstruction of a few individuals, involves sufficient numbers of others,
then there is no doubt that their actions in not interfacing with those few
individuals and in using the same tactics to convince all those with whom they
interface to do the same (who are also likely similarly affected) would be
sufficient to "persuade" the obstructive individuals that their best interest
lies in a cooperative venture.
In your example above, if the shore owners had to purchase all of their goods
and services offshore, this would be far more expensive for them than selling
access to the water and purchasing locally with the revenues gained. This
refusal to sell to such individuals is a form of limited ostracism; this is
discrimination against persons who have not caused culpable harm but are
thoroughly uncooperative. Such methods form the major incentives and
disincentives in a truly free society for "encouraging" cooperation between
individuals. --Paul]


If there are public resources, then I'm also stumped. How does one, well
how does *all* decide what to do with a public resource? I mean, any
non-unanimous vote is going to violate the minority's "property" (thus
effectively reaching a stalemate for every proposition), unless there
was a special contract signed for that resource that defined the process
for making decision upon that common resource. But that would mean that
all the original citizens and the new citizens must sign it upon joining
the state or else... or else what? Not use this "public" resource? That
would mean it's not a public resource, but rather a "private" resource
mutually owned by a subset of the citizens. So it seems like signing the
"public property contract" is a requirement for all citizens. If that's
so, then maybe you can give an example of such a contract? If that's not
so then how do you propose to handle public resources?

[These are all good thoughts and questions that are part of the dilemma faced by
all those who attempt to "salvage" the notion of public property. As I have
stated above, the answer is that the notion of a truly public resource is not
logically tenable. However this does not mean that resources, in particular real
estate, cannot be jointly owned. All that is required is that there is a
contract describing in detail what individual entitlements are gained by
purchasing a share in the joint ownership association, and what are the methods
of decision making about control issues that are not under individual control. I
have a 1/600th share in Harcourt Park, a 7200 acre private park in the
Haliburton region of Ontario Canada. That share entitles me to exclusive use of
a half acre waterfront lot on one of the small lakes in the park and joint usage
of all of the property which is not under exclusive use by any other
shareholder. There is an association that then maintains the jointly owned
property and sets the rules for its use. This association has both a statement
of purposes which cannot be changed except by unanimous consent and a set of
bylaws governing its operations.
Since true public property cannot logically exist under a society of maximal
freedom and minimal restrictions of liberty, most of the problems with current
so-called "public" property (actually better called government property) relate
to how it should become privately owned. My answer to this is really quite
simple. The government should sell it off to the highest bidder(s) and use the
money obtained to pay off the debt. --Paul]


2. non-adults. AKA kids.

[Actually, non-adults are any humans (or even animals) that are not capable of
independently and fully responsibly (with respect to other humans) looking after
themselves. This lack of responsibility for the property and entitlements of
other humans means that such non-adults must have a guardian who is willing to
bear the responsibility for them. With respect to young humans, however, there
is no particular age involved. Any child at any age can declare himself an adult
by signing the DOII and the Natural Social Contract (NSC). Of course, once he
does so his parents no longer have any responsibility for him, and unless he can
negotiate some sort of service contract with them, no one else does either. So
in the rest I will take the word "kid" to mean a human non-adult who is the
dependent of some Freeman who is his guardian (see
http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract_annotated.html for complete
definitions). --Paul]


2.a. if a kid causes restitutable (SP?) harm, are the parents to
restitute? I mean, it makes sense, but it's SACRY.

[Absolutely yes! If you find it "scary" then you better be sure that you raise
your children to be responsible before you let them out of your control to
interface with others and their property. A non-adult is like an appendage of
his guardian. When he interfaces with society it is just as if the guardian
himself did. Think of the responsibility of ownership of a dog or the
responsibility entailed by storing dynamite on your real estate. --Paul]


2.b. since kids are not subject to the DOII (yet), then they can be
effectively physically harmed by say words, or in general by nonphysical
"violence". How can you assess the damage, if at all, for restitution
purposes? Also, if such a thing is restitutable, it seems like kids must
have CLEAR identification of them being non-adults so as other adults
will KNOW they should refrain from, say cursing them or worse: cursing
another adult in their presence.

[Whether and to what extent a non-physical action can harm a kid is entirely
dependent on his guardian. It is not necessary for other Freemen to ascertain
this or to act differently with respect to a kid than to any other Freeman. That
having been stated, there are good reasons why other Freemen should want to act
kindly and considerately towards the dependents of those Freemen with whom they
also normally interface. If some local Freeman is a nasty SOB who berates kids
constantly when they have not caused him any culpable harm, then other Freemen
will censure his behavior by not interfacing with him, and they will certainly
learn to keep their children away from him until he alters his behavior towards
them.
Since a kid has not signed the NSC, the concept of restitution does not apply to
him any more than it applies to a dog. The guardian of the kid may wish to
operate his household under processes similar to those in the NSC in order to
help the kid learn how to become a Freeman, but that is up to the guardian.
Remember that a kid remains the full responsibility of his guardian until he
becomes a Freeman. Therefore, the incentive on the guardian is to do the best
possible to enable him to become a Freeman as soon as possible. This will not be
accomplished by perpetrating any physical or psychological harm unto the child.
In addition, the child can at any time, with the help of other Freemen,
effectively "divorce" his parents by negotiating a contract with another Freeman
for guardianship responsibility. It it in this sense that a guardian does not
*own* a human non-adult, as opposed to owning a pet that is unable to make such
a choice.

It should be noted here that the NSC is incomplete with respect to non-adults.
As I remark at the beginning of the NSC:

"This Natural Social Contract is intended to apply to Freemen (those who execute
it) in their relationships to both other Freemen and to non-Freemen. As written,
it says very little about the relationships between children or other Dependent
humans and those to whom they are in a dependency relationship - their Guardians
(and nothing whatever about relationships of humans to any other lifeforms). The
specification of objective rules of order for such arrangements is certainly
something which needs to be done and can be done in my opinion, but I think that
it is not crucial to the initial effort to achieve more Liberty from government
by Self-Sovereign Individuals. I therefore leave it for other interested
Self-Sovereign Individuals to accomplish. For the purposes of this Natural
Social Contract each Dependent is the full responsibility of his Guardian."

Most of what I have covered above is already made clear in the NSC. The DOII
(Declaration of Individual Independence) is a mere beginning and declaration of
non-sanction of the state. The NSC contains my conception of the detailed
definitions and processes of how a free society without a state can best work.
--Paul]


TIA,
Micky.

(1) I'm still evaluating its value for me, which is definitely not zero :-)
I might send an email describing my thoughts on this evaluation, since
this is something new that requires some education and training, so I
hope others might benefit from this "exercise".

[It would be great if you would also post your thoughts on this evaluation right
here so that others could indeed benefit. --Paul]