The Tao of Arizona Atheist: Prime and Private Property

The subject of this Tao of Arizona Atheist is about how Prime is linked to private property and other issues that go along with that, such as surveillance on a piece of property.

Prime and Property

Due to the fact that Prime assumes personal privacy, autonomy, and all other rights that an individual has as a birth right, private property is among those “natural” rights. This is because a person needs a place of their own in order to have that privacy and freedom to pursue whatever they want to accomplish and whatever activities they’d like to engage in (so long as they do not violate the Primacy of other individuals of course). Without private property anyone could come into the personal space of another creating many problems. That is how property is linked to Prime.

Anarchism and Property

Traditionally, anarchists have rejected private property because they believe land ownership leads to inequalities. However, because my philosophy is based upon the Primacy of the individual I must include private property for the reasons I outlined above.

The following is one example of property rights being organized in an anarchist society and how this could apply today. In the mid 1800‘s Josiah Warren created an individualist anarchist society in Ohio called “Utopia” in which settlers agreed to buy no more than two quarter acre lots, which was believed to be more than enough to ensure a families’ privacy and freedom. [1] I do not see why a social contract could not include such provisions today, and the size of the lots could vary as well. Of course, property could also be bought and sold on the free market, perhaps with caps on land size limits to prevent power grabs, monopolies, etc. Naturally, this provision would have to be agreed upon by all who decided to live in said society.

Private Property and Surveillance

Some have expressed their complaints about how I rage against photo and red-light cameras but not other forms of surveillance, such as cameras at stores, camera phones, ATM’s, private residences, etc. The reason is very simple. Those cameras are located on private property and the owners of ATM’s, businesses, and private individuals, etc. have every right to protect their property from theft and tampering and have every right to place whatever forms of security on that property as they see fit.

As for camera phones and other portable video recorders and cameras, probably 99.9% of the time these cameras are not being used to spy or track your movements, but is usually accidental if you end up in a shot. Because there is no network of cameras, as there is with the government’s spy camera network, these cameras are very difficult to use to track someone. As for cell phones specifically, the phones have only a few minutes recording time and so would be a poor tool to track or surveil someone.

An Objection Answered

It may be objected that because the government owns the majority of the property the photo and red-light cameras they’ve installed is perfectly within their rights therefore I have no right to complain. Sorry, but if anyone uses this argument they have not been reading my blog.

The problem with this argument is the simple fact that any action that is done by coercion is deemed illegitimate and non-binding, including the usurping of land, and does not apply since it was not agreed upon through a contractual basis. After all, I view the state and governments in general to be illegitimate institutions to begin with, making any and all actions they perform also illegitimate and non-binding.



1. Men Against the State, by James J. Martin, Ralph Myles Publishers, Inc., 1970; 58