OccupySF: Dog Fights and Property Rights

Friday night at OccupySF was a comedy of errors. The drama unfolded much the way it does in James Joyce’s Ulysses. No one character in the story was witness to the entire causal chain. But a spectator, viewing the events of many characters may see the thread of unintended consequences.

First some back story. There is a split occurring within OccupySF, as I imagine is occurring within every occupation, between democracy and let’s say “do-ocracy.” There are those who believe in the consensus process of the General Assemblies and there are those who prefer decentralized autonomous action. Before a General Assembly you’ll hear someone from the first group walking around yelling, “If you’re not at the GA you’re not part of the movement,” and then you’ll hear those from the second group laughing at them.

A portion of those in the do-ocracy group constructed something that was loosely being referred to as, “the punk house.” A lattice of ropes crisscrossed between light posts and palm trees lent support to a shanty structure of tarps and miscellaneous lumber. It was huge, housing at least a dozen Occupants with room enough to even pitch individual tents within the greater structure.

Last week the SFPD issued demands that OccupySF dismantle a considerable portion of the camp including but not limited to the punk house. The police threatened a raid if their demands were not met by Saturday at noon. So, of course the demands were discussed at the General Assembly, who essentially agreed to comply. Of course the actual Occupants of the punk house weren’t at the General Assembly. Conflict ensued. An agreement was negotiated where the punk house could be dismantled if it was replaced by tents that met the demands of the police. Basically they could stay there, but they couldn’t attach ropes to the light posts or palm trees. So two new deluxe tents were purchased from the Occupation’s general funds.

Just one problem. When the organizers from the General Assembly arrived with the new tents the majority of the Occupants of the punk house were not present. After a short shouting match between the organizers and the 3 or 4 Occupants who were present they began dismantling the punk house and piling all the Occupants’ personal possessions on the sidewalk. And incidentally they let out a dog.

The dog, a pit bull I think, was being kept in the tent while it’s owner left to go get a muzzle. Apparently it has an aggression problem, which the organizers would have known if they had waited for the Occupants before they dismantled the structure… but then they only had until noon the next day. In less than an hour the dog attacked another dog in the camp causing a huge scene with yelling and punching as a half dozen Occupants tried to pull the dogs apart.

Enter the SFPD as the owner of the dog that was attacked issued a statement and allowed the officer to inspect his animal to see if it needed medical attention… as if some random beat cop has any expertise in veterinary medicine. When the owner of the pit bull arrived back at camp there was a cop waiting to talk to him.

There’s so much to say about this incident about unintended consequences, property rights and self regulating spontaneous order.

It’s interesting to me that the chain begins and ends with the police. It’s as if the police sent a little spark of aggression into an otherwise peaceful scenario and caused a chain reaction of hostility within the encampment. Then in the end they come in to take a police report which appears completely unrelated, but which they indirectly caused. In a way it’s similar to an instance of the calculation problem in centrally planned economic systems. The purported purpose of the police demands is public safety, and from the perspective of a central planner a store bought pop-up tent is safer than a haphazard amateur construction. But in this specific instance, with this particular tent, leaving the punk house standing, at least until the dog is muzzled, is better for public safety. It’s those kind of nuances in individual instances that make central planning completely untenable, and make those closest to the situation the best decision makers in the vast majority of cases. Also, it’s unfortunate that the owner of the dog that was attacked would agree to make a statement to the police. The individual officer may have had the best of intentions, but when a police report of dog fighting weasels it’s way through the bureaucracy onto the desks of the decision makers it can only hurt the camp. Surely the owner, or even one of the volunteers in the medical tent were better suited to assess whether or not the dog was injured.

The whole fiasco raises the specter of property rights as well. There is a considerable contingent at OccupySF that doesn’t believe in ownership, especially amongst the do-ocracy and punk house crowd, but you can sure bet they’re upset when their personal possessions are violated by the democracy crowd. The fact is no police liaison should ever have agreed to convey the police demands to the group, because the General Assembly should not have the authority to unilaterally dismantle people’s tents or to throw their property into the common area. Fundamentally, this flaw of direct democracy is why many of us have no confidence in the General Assemblies. If police had a problem with the punk house they should have been told to bring their problem to the individuals involved without threatening the others.

Fundamentally the question that needs to be answered by this incident and incidents like it is: Can spontaneous orders self regulate or do they require outside aggression to regulate them? If spontaneous orders require outside aggression to regulate them the General Assembly was right to agress against the punk house, and the police are right to agress against the Occupation. But if spontaneous orders do self regulate, if a dog owner is capable of confining and muzzling an aggressive animal, than we should expect the General Assembly agressing on the punk house to have unexpected consequences, just like we should expect the police agressing against the Occupation to have unexpected consequences.

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