Support ACORN’S foreclosure resistance campaign
From Infoshop News we learn that:
ACORN is taking a page out of the anarchist playbook, following the example of Boston area anarchists who recently stopped evictions of foreclosed homes, and is starting a campaign of neighborhood resistance to evictions in cities hard-hit by the mortgage crisis. Text messages and phone trees will call volunteers to eviction sites to block Sheriffs from carrying out evictions. This has the potential to begin demonstrating the power people have in determining their own lives, and in recognizing that the only laws we must follow are the ones the system can enforce on us.
ACORN Initates Civil Disobedience to Stop Foreclosures
This is a case where real property rights don’t agree with property titles as recognized by the state. The banksters are a government-backed cartel whose profits principally accrue from their illegitimate (government granted) monopoly privileges — so claims that the homes in question are property of the banks have no merit in terms of libertarian theory. Resistance to foreclosures is thus fully libertarian. Please support ACORNs foreclosure resistance campaign.
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Brad, why the moral distinction between the borrowers and the lenders suchthat the borrowers are determined to be the rightful owners? Aren’t the borrowers the recipients of privileged state subsidies as well? In fact, isn’t ACORN itself a privileged net recipient of state subsidies?
I’m a little confused as to how or why you’re not equally applying libertarian property theory to the borrowers and ACORN.
Resistance to foreclosures — in the form of “homesteading”, especially — is most certainly not libertarian. Let’s call a spade a spade here, if anything, it fits more into the socialist anarchist mindset of “people with money are evil,” and “people should get what they want, even if they can’t pay for it,” etc.
Libertarians believe in private property rights. A foreclosure is the rightful reclaiming of property by the bank, because the borrower didn’t pay his debts to the lender, or uphold his obligations to the lender (that he accepted by signing his name on the dotted line, by the way). If you cannot pay the mortgage, or you otherwise fail to uphold your end of the mortgage contract, the bank has every right to reclaim its property. To forbid this from happening is so far from libertarian it’s not even funny, because you can’t forfeit your obligations to the lender and just assume ownership of the asset without fully paying for it.
@Bob — Massively state-subsidized enterprises are de facto arms of the state and share the state’s same inability to be a legitimate owner of any property in terms of libertarian theory.
Followup here:
http://bradspangler.com/blog/archives/1212
Brad, I understand the theory. My question is, why does it not also apply to the borrowers
facing foreclosure?
If the banks are “Massively state-subsidized enterprises”–and I’m aware that they are–then
doesn’t it follow that their customers, to whom they made mortgage loans with which to buy property,
are themselves beneficiaries of those same state subsidies? I don’t understand how they’re any more
entitled to the property than the bankers are when applying libertarian property theory.
@Bob — You need to read my followup piece where I acknowledged (as a matter of course) that there may be superior claims by third parties and that I was looking at the matter in terms of how should an arbitrator find in a dispute between the two sets of claimants under discussion.
http://bradspangler.com/blog/archives/1212
OK. Is that ACORN’s policy?
@Bob — Additionally, I should add that there are degrees of “cui bono”. If you want to point to any one particular mortgagee that unjustly benefits from state subsidies/privilege MORE SO than the bank which holds their mortgage, I would be glad to take a look at the case. That very well may be the case in commercial real estate cases. Major defense contractors come to mind as one possibility, at least in theory.
@Bob — re: “ACORN’s policy” — Since when does the ethical validity of a property claim depend on the correct understanding of libertarian theory by third parties who might wish to aid the claimant? Are free speech cases to be thrown out the window just because the ACLU are a bunch of social-democrats?
Brad, I’m not a Kinsella or a DeCoster trying to tar you with the “Marxoid” “vandanarchist” smear. It just seems to me that you were inconsistent in your initial post promoting ACORN’s anti-foreclosure activity as something worthy of libertarian support.
Now, in your follow-up you seem to be qualifying your initial post, that those situations are a bit more complicated from a libertarian property rights point of view than you originally implied. And if that’s what you’re saying, then I agree. And that, it seems to me, should NOT lead libertarians to support the ACORN project since there’s absolutely no indication whatsoever that THEY have any intention of determining who the just and rightful owner is under libertarian property theory, especially considering that they have typically received between $1-$2 million in tax-funded grants on an annual basis. It looks like that they have decided that the defaulting mortgagees should simply be made every accommodation to stay in the houses and that’s that. I don’t see any reference to ACORN wanting to determine who the legitimate, just owner under is in anything that they’re saying. If you can show me otherwise, then I might tend to agree with you that the ACORN project is worthy of libertarian support. But I’m not holding my breath.
“If you want to point to any one particular mortgagee that unjustly benefits from state subsidies/privilege MORE SO than the bank which holds their mortgage, I would be glad to take a look at the case.”
Brad, each and every one of those borrowers VOLUNTARILY signed a promissory note that explicitly stated that in so doing they were agreeing to repay $x plus x% interest in x period of time. They were fully aware that not doing so would eventually result in foreclosure.
You can point out all you want that the business with whom they entered the contractual agreement is a massively state-subsidized enterprise–no disagreement from me there–but nobody held a gun to their head to coerced them into taking a loan they couldn’t afford to repay. No doubt a lot of those lenders had no business making the loans they made to people who couldn’t afford them, but both sides know full well that it takes two to tango.
In freely and voluntarily accepting a loan from the privileged, subsidized banking cartel, the borrowers themselves shared in the benefits of the subsidy since it privileged them the use of a property they may not otherwise have had (especially considering expanded CRA mandates), however temporary it may have been. So if you’re going to apply libertarian property theory consistently, I don’t see how these borrowers are any more the legitimate owners of those houses than are the bankers.
So let’s say that the original owner of the house, Joe, sells his house to new owner Eric. Bank X lends the money to Eric so he can pay Joe. So now Eric can exchange his money for Joe’s house. Now Joe has more money, Bank X has less money, and Eric has the house, but he is obligated to repay Bank X for the loan.
Now, let’s say Bank X, as you suggest, engaged in some fraudulent activity — it could only lend the money due to the fractional reserve system, or the government has granted it special privileges, or whatever. You’re saying that if this is the case, Eric doesn’t have to fulfill his side of the bargain because the bank did something “fraudulent,” and that he is entitled to cease fulfilling his obligations and to get a free house.
But how is that? How does Eric have more of a right to the house than anyone else if he fails to fulfill his obligations? As Bob Kaercher stated, didn’t he benefit from the fraudulent activity? If anything, if Bank X was determined to be involved in fraudulent activity, the contract should be null and void, Bank X should give back the money that Eric payed each month, and the asset (the house) should be returned to the former owner, Joe… OR, it should be sold by the courts or some other third party and all proceeds should be used to pay back any defrauded parties.
A borrows money from B. A pays C for house. A must now repay B. Until A pays B back in full the house is still the rightful property of B. However, if B was engaged in fraudulent activity, B did not rightfully own the property, so B obviously could not transfer the property to the new owner, A.