On Prison Labor and the Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments

Written on December 2nd, 2015

Edited on December 6th, 2015

The 13th Amendment didn't "outlaw slavery", it merely legalized "involuntary servitude" except as punishment for a crime. So the prison system is modern-day legalized slavery. Incarcerated inmates in prisons work for slave-level wages, and in fact, Georgia and Texas have laws providing for a maximum wage of $0.00 per hour for such prison laborers.

But the rest of us living outside of brick-and-mortar jails and prisons still have to serve others, by paying taxes on our income, and, in some jurisdictions, serving whomever comes into our businesses.

If we do not do so voluntarily, then we are serving others involuntarily. And since that's only legal as punishment for a crime, we have to ask, if we are being punished, what crime did we commit?

How are refusing to pay taxes, and refusing to serve would-be customers on private property, "crimes", in the real sense of corpus delicti (“body of the crime”, i.e., evidence, i.e., a corpse) meaning that a real harm or taking must result from one person's action, depriving another of legitimate property, or harming them?

They're not. One person's labor, and the product thereof, are not the property of anybody else.

On another note, the 5th Amendment says that no property shall be taken for public use, except with compensation. The federal government took the slaves owned by their masters, but did not compensate the masters.

My point is not that it's too bad they weren't compensated, my point is that the slaves were taken for public use. We, the public, are all being compensated for the slave masters' losses, with the funds gained through slaves' descendants' free-of-cost prison labor and involuntary labor in the "free" economy.

The only difference between 1865 and now is that today, people of all races can be commanded to serve people they don't want as customers, and put in prison and forced to labor for the benefit of others (actually, that's a distortion of fact, because many Irish, Scots, and other whites were held as slaves prior to the end of the Civil War).

So we are now faced with the puzzling condition that we, along with our “duly-elected representatives” who wield partial power of attorney over us, are part-owners of ourselves as involuntary servants.

Ah, breathe that free, free air. Isn't it great?

Questions About the Roads, Eminent Domain, and Citizenship

Written on September 10th, 2011

   Say a person is a sovereign individual, and not a citizen of the U.S.. Say he doesn't have a driver's license, and is operating a vehicle that he purchased himself. Say he is driving on a public road, and is not harming anyone (say he cannot be punished unless he harms another person and/or damages their property).

   Say a police officer pulls him over. Does the sovereign individual have the right to resist arrest? Does the fact that he is using roadways which were paid for by the public mean that he must submit to the officer, being that he is taking advantage of government-provided services without contributing to their funding? Should he be obligated to pay road tolls?

   Through the Takings Clause and eminent domain, the government has authority to purchase private property for use and collective ownership by the public. But what are "public" roads anyway; is "public" use only intended for citizens? Why has the notion of "the commons" been abstracted from the notion of the "public"? How can we ensure that citizens and non-citizens alike have free access to the same roads?

   Is the solution to privatize the roads, i.e., by having the government sell off the roads to those who would bid to purchase them? Would the profit incentive which results from such private ownership cause quality to decrease (i.e., poor maintenance of roads)? Would the quality of the roads decrease any more than it has under government management, being that there is an incentive to profit because citizens do not want their tax money tied to failing enterprises which lose money?

   Rather than to privatize the roads (i.e., have the government sell the roads to companies or other private entities which have exclusive, monopolistic right to supervise who uses them), is the solution instead to allow free competition (free competition being antithetical to monopoly, rather than its inevitable result, as so many are apt to claim)?

   How may such free competition arise, while ensuring that citizens and non-citizens alike have free access to the same roads? Should the government only sell the roads to enterprises which agree to allow universal access to them, and also to fairly compete with other road-building, road-maintenance, and road-supervision agencies?

   Do the users of roads have enough vital interest in the relative safety and fiscal responsibility of such agencies as compared to one another to ensure that (through contribution) the agency which has proven itself most capable of being both safe and fiscally responsible is also the agency which builds, maintains, and supervises more sections of American roadways than its competitors?

For more entries on Fifth Amendment property takings, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/private-beachfront-property-takings.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/slavery-civil-war-and-fifth-amendment.html

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/municipal-services-fifth-amendment-and.html

For more entries on transportation, transit, travel, and the automobile industry, please visit:

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/sovereignty-and-secrecy-freedoms-of.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/spencer-stuart-recruited-executives-for.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/economic-policy-for-2012-us-house.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-transportation-security.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/identification-and-travel-documents.html

Private Beachfront Property Takings

Florida beachfront property

It is possible for the U.S. Supreme Court to have jurisdiction over Florida’s private beachfront takings case because the issue under debate in this case is the consistency of state law with the provisions of the U.S. Federal Constitution, and also because the plaintiff contested the decision of a state supreme court, which means that the dispute may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case should be decided in favor of the plaintiff; the Florida property owners.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that private property “shall [not]… be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Florida property has rightfully and legitimately been deemed necessary for the state to condemn, but as long as the decision of the state’s supreme court is permitted to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiffs will not have been justly compensated for the decline in the value of their homes that has resulted from their loss of control over the access to and use of that beachfront property.

In the 6-to-3 decision of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, in the opinion of the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that, according to the majority’s interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, compensation is required in the event that the regulation “compel[s] the owner to suffer a physical ‘invasion’ of his property”. To convert the plaintiffs’ property into a public beach which could also be used by vendors to sell food amounts to a physical invasion because it would make it possible and likely that areas near the plaintiffs’ homes could frequently become mobbed with crowds of people, which would cause the disturbance of the local property owners.

Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment states that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In the 1897 decision of Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad Company v. Chicago, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the opinion of the 7-to-1 majority: “…since the adoption of the 14^th Amendment compensation for private property taken for public use constitutes an essential element in ‘due process of law,’ and that without such compensation the appropriation of private property to public uses, no matter under what form of procedure it is taken, would violate the provisions of the Federal Constitution.”

Justice Scalia also wrote in the Lucas decision that “land-use regulation does not effect a taking if it ‘substantially advance[s] legitimate state interests'”. Issues that will be at contention in this case include whether condemnation for the purposes of mitigating potential damage to property along the coastline constitutes a substantial advancement of legitimate state interest, and also whether the benefits of the protection against damage to property by hurricanes which has been conferred upon the owners by the state constitutes by its own merit a “just compensation” for the owners’ decline of property value resulting from loss of control over access to the newly-appropriated land.

Written in Summer 2008

Originally Published on October 24^th, 2010

For more entries on Fifth Amendment property takings, please visit:

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/slavery-civil-war-and-fifth-amendment.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/questions-about-roads-eminent-domain.html

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/municipal-services-fifth-amendment-and.html