Defining Private Property

[BasketCase]

The current system of private property is simply what we humans end up with when we CAN'T agree on how property should be allocated.

 

[Traitorfish]

I agree about the last paragraph. I just replied to your quote above because it sounded a little as if you were saying that the level of coercion in our society exists in a vacuum. Surely everyone would agree that less coercion is always better than more, however, sometimes coercion is necessary for organization. It's not as if peoples' well-being depends solely on their freedom. Allocation of resources plays an important part here, too, and I don't buy the laissez-faire argument (and I think neither do you) that it follows automatically from their freedom.

So I think it first has to be shown how coercion can be removed without losing the general well-being the current conception of private property provides. Simply criticizing coercion with the implication that this can be maintained without it sounds a little like the perfect solution fallacy to me.

Well, I'm wandering away from my argument a bit talking about inferior and superior societies, so I should retain to the core point, which is the critique of private property.

In response to what you say above, I think that a critique of a certain practice or institution can be made in itself, as grounds for resistance to that practice or institution, without developing an alternative blue-print for social organisation. You wouldn't go to the Southern US c.1850 and declare that no slave could expect to be granted freedom unless he could submit a detailed program for the economic reorganisation of the cotton belt, you would simply say that the slave has every right to resist the slave-owner by whatever means are necessary to gain and preserve his freedom.

I do not think that private property represents a fundamentally different question. Both represent the institutionalised use of coercion to control how an individual interacts with certain material or immaterial things, to ensure that individuals can only safely interact with these things through a given mediator. In the case of slavery, that mediation is total, the slave-owner acting as an absolute mediator between the slave and the world, right down to the slaves own body, while in the case of private property, the mediation is limited, between individuals and certain specific things. Both represent forms of control through coercion.

What I argue, then, is that it is not in any sense immoral for an individual to resist the coercion implicit in private property, to elect for himself what distribution of things he accepts and what he does not. It's not a program for any particular rearrangement of society, but a claim of the moral legitimacy of resistance to private property. Put very simply, nobody has the right to my obedience.

The current system of private property is simply what we humans end up with when we CAN'T agree on how property should be allocated.

That's a bit of a bizarre conclusion to reach, given the sheer weight of violence which was required to convince the majority of the human race to accept private property in the first place. It seems to me that a compromise would involve rather more, well, compromise...?

 

[innonimatu]

Property is that which you are willing and able to use violence to control the use of.

Succinct and to the point!

 

[Berzerker]

so if I lay claim to the widget I just built, thats coercion against you, but if you and Joe agree to "re-negotiate" that arrangement and take the widget its not coercion against me?

what about "property" people spend years from their lives building or creating?

you said pirating a CD doesn't deserve punishment (well, that aint what you said exactly), but what did you do to "earn" that music? Somebody else gave up part of their life to make it, are you not "enslaving" them after the fact if you and your neighbor "agree" to take it?

 

[innonimatu]

you said pirating a CD doesn't deserve punishment (well, that aint what you said exactly), but what did you do to "earn" that music? Somebody else gave up part of their life to make it, are you not "enslaving" them after the fact if you and your neighbor "agree" to take it?

You don't want other people to repeat some information, you don't share it. Copying some music score is exactly the same as repeating any other piece of information. Expecting to be able to forbid its uncontrolled spread after you've shared it is delusional.

 

[Berzerker]

whether or not its enforceable, it sure aint coercion against me if I dont get to pirate the music you spent a lifetime creating

 

[Hygro]

If I make music, which I do, and someone hears and and recreates it, the only coercion going on is if I try to use (state) power to punish them. It's my asserting my right to intellectual property that is the coercion or force.

If you just built a widget, what did you build it with? Did you build it by extracting resources out of the land and then using tools made by others? What gave you the right to take material from the land, material someone else could have used? Why not then can't the tool maker lay claim to your widget because, after all, it was the tool maker's labor that made your widget happen.

 

[innonimatu]

whether or not its enforceable, it sure aint coercion against me if I dont get to pirate the music you spent a lifetime creating

What's this "pirate" thing? you mean copy? How on earth can you prevent someone who wishes to copy public information from doing so without using coercion?

 

[timtofly]

Seems no one has pointed out that there is a high percentage of people who do not even have an interest in holding, maintening, and producing enough violence in private property.

In that case "forcing" people to even have private property is just plain wrong. Wide open spaces are considered governmental here in the US, until a party claims and is given a deed by the government to private ownership. Private property was never forced. It was a privilege and a right to those who willingly took pride into keeping that property private. Even with that mindset and the newly ecological impact on how property can be developed, the US has not changed it's workable legal privelege of owning private property. Even the heavy regulations have not changed that. It has just changed the way capitalist look at property as an investment and the work involved to keep that investment making money for them.

 

[Cutlass]

You don't want other people to repeat some information, you don't share it. Copying some music score is exactly the same as repeating any other piece of information. Expecting to be able to forbid its uncontrolled spread after you've shared it is delusional.

If a person makes music as a means of earning food and shelter, and you take that music so that he can no longer make money from it, then you have deprived him of food and shelter. How have you not committed an act of violence?

 

[ParkCungHee]

If you're going to use such an expansive definition of violence, you'll get nowhere. Because he has already done violence to me.

By making new music, he has made harder for me to make my money through music, thus depriving me of food and shelter.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Also, what about all the people who voluntarily adhere to the private property principle, and would do so even if they had a choice.

If their opinions are not taken to be binding on those who reject their ideas, the private property system isn't going to be much practical use. Any outsider can just come along and re-purpose "your" stuff.

By making new music, he has made harder for me to make my money through music, thus depriving me of food and shelter.

Yes, there's a difference between making music, which is non-coercive, and pushing somebody off a bit of land you say is "yours", which is. But on the other hand, there's more to quality of life, and quality of a society, than how much coercion it has/lacks. Where's my option for "coercion relating to property is inevitable, let's hash it out in a rational and democratic discussion, instead of trying to justify everything a priori"? Cause that's for me.

 

[Traitorfish]

If a person makes music as a means of earning food and shelter, and you take that music so that he can no longer make money from it, then you have deprived him of food and shelter. How have you not committed an act of violence?

He still has the music, doesn't he? His ability to make money from it is in no sense diminished. Just because you have not volunteered to give him the money that he seems to believe he is owed doesn't suggest that you're committing an act of violence, any more than you not volunteering to pay me the ten dollars that I've decided you owe me for getting out of bed this morning means that I have suffered an act of violence. It would only be violence if he you had acted in such a fashion as to permit him no choice but to accept dependence on you- and in that case, it would simply be the realisation of a violence already implicit in your relationship.

 

[innonimatu]

If a person makes music as a means of earning food and shelter, and you take that music so that he can no longer make money from it, then you have deprived him of food and shelter. How have you not committed an act of violence?

If a mob boss was getting "protection money" from me as a means of earning food and shelter, and I refuse to give him any more money, then I have deprived him of food and shelter. Have I not committed an act of violence?

 

[Cutlass]

If you're going to use such an expansive definition of violence, you'll get nowhere. Because he has already done violence to me.

By making new music, he has made harder for me to make my money through music, thus depriving me of food and shelter.

If you're going that route, then there's no action which is not violence. So talking about a world without violence is entirely pointless.

He still has the music, doesn't he? His ability to make money from it is in no sense diminished. Just because you have not volunteered to give him the money that he seems to believe he is owed doesn't suggest that you're committing an act of violence, any more than you not volunteering to pay me the ten dollars that I've decided you owe me for getting out of bed this morning means that I have suffered an act of violence. It would only be violence if he you had acted in such a fashion as to permit him no choice but to accept dependence on you- and in that case, it would simply be the realisation of a violence already implicit in your relationship.

But you have stolen his music. And in doing so you have condemned him to death. Because he no longer has the ability to make money from that. You have violently appropriated his means of substance. His death will be the result of your actions.

If a mob boss was getting "protection money" from me as a means of earning food and shelter, and I refuse to give him any more money, then I have deprived him of food and shelter. Have I not committed an act of violence?

These situations have no basis of comparison.

 

[Traitorfish]

But you have stolen his music. And in doing so you have condemned him to death. Because he no longer has the ability to make money from that. You have violently appropriated his means of substance. His death will be the result of your actions.

How can you steal music? He still has it. I haven't deprived him of it. I may not have paid him for it, but I don't pay a lot of people for music. Am I committing violence against all of them?

 

[Berzerker]

What's this "pirate" thing? you mean copy? How on earth can you prevent someone who wishes to copy public information from doing so without using coercion?

the OP used pirating CDs as an example, and it aint public information - its a musician's creation after years of effort...

 

[Cutlass]

How can you steal music? He still has it. I haven't deprived him of it. I may not have paid him for it, but I don't pay a lot of people for music. Am I committing violence against all of them?

Copyright is a tool used to make creative work remunerative work. Taking away the tools needed for a musician to earn his daily bread is no different from taking away the tools of a farmer or a craftsman. You render them unable to work effectively enough to feed themselves.

 

[Traitorfish]

Copyright is a tool used to make creative work remunerative work. Taking away the tools needed for a musician to earn his daily bread is no different from taking away the tools of a farmer or a craftsman. You render them unable to work effectively enough to feed themselves.

Would it not be correct to say, however, that the reason he the musician needs copyright to sustain himself is because he lives within a world of private property? That his dependence upon his monopoly on the distribution of the music he produces is a product of his dependence on a system of commercial exchange, a system which is maintained a defended through, at the most fundamental level, the systematic use of violence. So is the violence which the musician suffers really to be attributed to me, or to those who have made him dependent on a system of market exchange?

 

[GhostWriter16]

If a person makes music as a means of earning food and shelter, and you take that music so that he can no longer make money from it, then you have deprived him of food and shelter. How have you not committed an act of violence?

He still has the music, doesn't he? His ability to make money from it is in no sense diminished. Just because you have not volunteered to give him the money that he seems to believe he is owed doesn't suggest that you're committing an act of violence, any more than you not volunteering to pay me the ten dollars that I've decided you owe me for getting out of bed this morning means that I have suffered an act of violence. It would only be violence if he you had acted in such a fashion as to permit him no choice but to accept dependence on you- and in that case, it would simply be the realisation of a violence already implicit in your relationship.

I wouldn't recommend the world "Violence" since pirating isn't violent per say, just as pickpocketing isn't violent. Doesn't mean it should be legally acceptable.

If I create music, then you have no right to illegally copy it and sell it without my permission, or to illegally pirate it, in either case you are preventing me from making money off something I CREATED and doing so yourself instead, either by getting something free or making it a sale. I'll never be able to sell said music to those people again.

So, other than the technical wording, I agree with Cutlass.

Now, I do think it should be totally legal to copy things that you DON'T plan to sell, as backups, as long as you don't sell or give away the copies. I also think it should be acceptable to install a game on your computer and use a no CD crack, but it shouldn't be legal to do so and then sell the game without taking it off your computer, or to allow friends to borrow the game, install it, and use the crack themselves.