Defining Private Property

[Angst]

Patents for an invention is 17 years IIRC. I don't see why we couldn't limit music copyright to that long as well.

Let's slow down progress for the profit of overtly influential corporations!

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I'm a musician btw.

 

[lovett]

This isn't at all unfair, but in this thread I haven't really been arguing that property is a bad thing, as such, but that it is a violent imposition that we have no self-evident moral obligation to accept; not that it is right to reject private property, but that it is not wrong. The former would certainly require a degree of elaboration- and I could certainly take a shot at it, if that was necessary- but so far it's the second which has been the thrust of my argument. (Admittedly, I've not been a paragon of precision in this thread, so I don't think it's an error of interpretation on you part to pursue the second point, but rather my fault for allowing the two to bleed into each other.) I don't feel morally obliged to accept any conclusions that cannot be demonstrated to me as thoroughly legitimate, and that includes to a given distribution of possession-rights, so I reserve the right to resist any attempt to impose such a distribution upon me, much as I would resist the imposition of an attempt of a person to extent their claim to possession over me when I considered it unjust- something which would, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume, be thoroughly non-controversial to most liberal property-advocates.

Fair enough. I am also no friend of the idea that property rights are in some way naturally binding or self-evident. However, I note you do imply something rather similar to a property claim in your last sentence. You claim that you reserve the right to resist any claim of possession over you. I'm sure nobody (as you say) will disagree with this sentiment. But it strikes me that if you construe that right from stemming from comprehensive self-ownership (comprehensive property rights over oneself) positions can be adduced which I doubt you would agree. Is this where you construe that claim from stemming? If not, from whence do you have this claim?

If the purpose of the land is to provide for the well-being of people, then the land should go to whoever can get the most results out of said land.

This is false. It is certainly false as a general principle, which is how you put it, and probably false as a contingent statement about actual society. I shall construe 'most results' as 'most production'.

The falsity of it as a general statement is easy to see. A general statement is true if and only if it is true in all possible (relevant) situations. We can easily imagine a situation in which some people can produce a lot from any quantity of land, whilst some people can't produce very much at all. According to this, the first set of people should possess the entire quantity of land. The second set, nothing.

Suppose the first set have no inclination to give charity to the second set. Is this going to provide for the (maximal?) well-being of people? That seems highly unlikely. The second set will be completely impoverished. The first set, relatively rich. Assume marginal utility decreases with assumption (you get less from improving your position from 'well-off' to 'very rich' than you do in the improvement from 'impoverished' to 'well-off'). In that case, this property distribution is clearly not conducive to the well-being of people. Although gross output is at its highest possible point, inequality means welfare is not at its highest possible point. The suffering of the poor outweighs the luxury of the rich. Consequently, in the general case, the proposition you put forward is false.

In the actual case many of the assumptions in the above paragraph surely hold. Some people actually are more talented than others; they are able to do more with capital (/land). This is, of course, exacerbated by inherited inequalities (in terms of wealth, education, upbringing so on and so forth). These people are not altruists; although they probably give to charity they rarely work 'for the good of society'. They generally give a small fraction of their income to charity. Moreover, in the actual world marginal utility is definitely decreasing with respect to material consumption. Consequently, the reasoning I run through above presumably holds. In the actual case, we can say that it is unlikely that distributing land according to who can get the best results from said land will be the best policy for the well-being of people. It will lead to some being very rich, and some horribly impoverished.

 

[BasketCase]

A general statement is true if and only if it is true in all possible (relevant) situations.

Only if said statement has the word "always" in it. Note that I didn't include the word "always". A general statement is true if and only if it's generally true. And, generally, we humans want to get the most stuff for the least work. So (generally) we want to give land to the people who can get the most stuff out of it.

We can easily imagine a situation in which some people can produce a lot from any quantity of land, whilst some people can't produce very much at all. According to this, the first set of people should possess the entire quantity of land. The second set, nothing.

Very true. People who are poor at farming should not farm. The farmland should go to the best farmers, the mineral-rich land should go to the best miners, the land with oil should go to the best drillers.

How do you find out which people are the best farmers/miners/drillers?? Now we get into a bit of a problem. You can't simply ask; a bunch of people will lie about it. The Bernie Madoffs of the world will never admit to you that they're lousy investors. The best we can do is reward the people who actually turn out to be skilled at farming/mining/drilling, and not reward the people who are lousy at farming/mining/drilling.

And already we've got modern-day private-property capitalism on our hands. What a bummer.

Suppose the first set have no inclination to give charity to the second set. Is this going to provide for the (maximal?) well-being of people?

Probably, yes.

Charities of any kind (including all forms of "redistribution of wealth") don't improve the well-being of poor people, by any standard that's actually measurable. The cycle of poverty Mexico is currently trapped in makes a good example. Charity is given to the poor; the poor spend it; and once spent, it's gone. At which point the poor are still in the same hole they were always in.

It's a case of giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish. The poor need the education and sensibilities to get themselves out of their hole, so that once they're out they don't fall back in. The reason we still have poor people is because education and common sense can't be forced.

 

[G-Max]

Ownership is properly understood not as something that exists between people and things, but rather between people. It's an agreement not to touch stuff which we attribute as "belonging" to other people, and for them to similarly avoid messing with things that are attributed to us. If this takes the form of a truly voluntary agreement, then it is constantly renegotiable, the distribution of ownership being determined by a consensus of concerned parties, which in most cases means through the consensus of a given community. Communal peasant societies, for example, would redistribute land on a yearly basis to the extent that it was divided, and utilise what remained collectively. What's mine is mine because we have agreed that this is so.

Private property, however, is not renegotiable; that is what makes it historically significant. It is not a claim of access or utilisation derived from the community, but a claim of absolute disposal; it is in principle asserted by the individual, rather than agreed upon by the community. Because this is not a consensual form of ownership-attribution, not something that we actively volunteer to participate in, it is therefore something that must be enforced; an agreement that we are threatened with or subjected to violence if we fail to adhere to. If I pirate a CD, for example, I may have violence levied against me in the form of arrest and even imprisonment, regardless of whether or not I ever gave the barest suggestion that I accepted the authority of the publisher and the state to impose its intellectual property legislation upon me.

Thus, property is a relationship of domination, a command to act in a certain way- to respect certain property claims- backed up by violence. As a libertarian, I oppose all forms of domination, regarding only voluntary relationships as acceptable for human beings, and so cannot but reject property is a petty tyranny.

Unanimous consent among a group of people is difficult. The larger the group gets, the more difficult it is to get them all to agree on anything, until it becomes arbitrarily impossible and this concept of ownership fails to hold any use.

Physical force, by contrast, is always an option for most of us, and will always be useful as a means of enforcing property rights. Therefore, this concept of private property always holds use.

There is no way for all interaction between humans to be purely voluntary, so don't bother chasing that pipe dream.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

so don't bother chasing that pipe dream.

I'm not against private property for a second and I'm quite pro capitalism .

However , the validity of pursuing any cause is not determined by the difficulty of the chase , it's by the worthiness of the dream .

 

[BasketCase]

Unanimous consent among a group of people is difficult. The larger the group gets, the more difficult it is to get them all to agree on anything

True, but it's still possible to get most of them to agree on things. Most Americans agree we should be a Republic instead of a totalitarian state, for example.

 

[GhostWriter16]

I don't think that's true...

 

[BasketCase]

Based on what?

I say America's past record proves my case. For two centuries, various radical factions have advocated turbo-powered jackboot government, many times. They always fail. And they never make any headway in presidential or Congressional elections.

 

[Traitorfish]

Unanimous consent among a group of people is difficult. The larger the group gets, the more difficult it is to get them all to agree on anything, until it becomes arbitrarily impossible and this concept of ownership fails to hold any use.

Physical force, by contrast, is always an option for most of us, and will always be useful as a means of enforcing property rights. Therefore, this concept of private property always holds use.

There is no way for all interaction between humans to be purely voluntary, so don't bother chasing that pipe dream.

Like a lot of other posters, you seem to be misunderstanding me: I am not proposing any particular scheme for a world without private property, but merely observing that I feel no moral obligation to respect private property itself. Perhaps you are right, perhaps a world of free association is simply impossible, but I do not see why that implies that I should willingly enserf myself to the man with the biggest gun. Even if I were to be as surely convinced as you are that a just world is impossible, there is nothing which means I cannot be outraged by each and every injustice.

After all, if you think it's foolish to expect people to volunteer for communism, why on earth should you expect me to volunteer for capitalism?

Fair enough. I am also no friend of the idea that property rights are in some way naturally binding or self-evident. However, I note you do imply something rather similar to a property claim in your last sentence. You claim that you reserve the right to resist any claim of possession over you. I'm sure nobody (as you say) will disagree with this sentiment. But it strikes me that if you construe that right from stemming from comprehensive self-ownership (comprehensive property rights over oneself) positions can be adduced which I doubt you would agree. Is this where you construe that claim from stemming? If not, from whence do you have this claim?

I wouldn't describe it it as a "right", but just a simple statement of fact; not that I believe myself entitled to resist, but that I'm not aware of any reason why I shouldn't do so if it seems like a good idea to me at the time. To the extent that I would offer any justification for it, I'd say that resistance is implicit in any form of domination, that the subaltern is in possession of an inherently revolutionary potential, so the realisation of that potential cannot be seen as anything more than the "natural" (for want of a better word) consequence of the initial pursuit of hegemony. At the risk of sounding reductive, if I push against a wall, it doesn't require a right to push back, it simply will.

 

[Berzerker]

I feel no moral obligation to respect private property itself

That 'private property' represents the time and effort of the owner, sometimes their very existence...

 

[G-Max]

if you think it's foolish to expect people to volunteer for communism, why on earth should you expect me to volunteer for capitalism?

We offer better pay and benefits

 

[Borachio]

This is a very important issue. Forgive me for butting in possibly inappropriately. Two ideas that I have found particularly striking on this have been William Morris News from Nowhere and Ursula de Guin(? I may have that slightly wrong) The Dispossessed. Has anybody got any insights on these two that they can let me have please? Thank you.

 

[Traitorfish]

That 'private property' represents the time and effort of the owner, sometimes their very existence...

I didn't say I don't feel a need to respect people, just that I don't feel a need to respect property as property. In fact, I would tend to say that the two are generally incompatible, which is a large part of the reason for my dislike of private property.

 

[Berzerker]

your respect for people is incompatible with a respect for their property?

trust me on this if you walk up and burn down the house I've spent decades saving for, you aint respecting me.

 

[timtofly]

your respect for people is incompatible with a respect for their property?

trust me on this if you walk up and burn down the house I've spent decades saving for, you aint respecting me.

It would prove that property is violence though.

 

[Traitorfish]

your respect for people is incompatible with a respect for their property?

trust me on this if you walk up and burn down the house I've spent decades saving for, you aint respecting me.

I didn't mean in every instance, I mean uniformly. If I always respect people, then I cannot always respect property, and vice versa. Ultimately, I'm forced to choose whether to occasional act like I respect property, because it is the best way to show respect for people, or to occasionally act like I respect people, because it is the best way to show respect for property. Not burning your house down is an example of the latter; not evicting you as long as you keep the mortgage payments up is an example of the latter.

 

[Borachio]

It would prove that property is violence though.

I'm sorry? I don't recall a house ever attacking anyone. Perhaps this is not what you mean. Don't mean to be flippant. Elucidate, please.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I'm sorry? I don't recall a house ever attacking anyone. Perhaps this is not what you mean. Don't mean to be flippant. Elucidate, please.

That if property (stuff , not just land)is not distributed by mutual consent , it is by definition appropriated and possession maintained by violence . i.e....this is only mine and not yours by my ability as possessor to prevent you from obtaining it . It is not necessarily by violent physical act , but by the ability to imprison , sue etc.

How am I going with this Traitorfish ? Come the revolution if I have to make an urgent switch of teams do you think I could bluff my way in ?

 

[Berzerker]

how do you distribute stuff via mutual consent outside of the market?

 

[ParkCungHee]

your respect for people is incompatible with a respect for their property?

trust me on this if you walk up and burn down the house I've spent decades saving for, you aint respecting me.

To give you a counter example, suppose I see you hurt and lying in the gutter, outside another man's empty house on a lonely road. I am walking along the road, and it is getting dark, and cold. You seem to be suffering from it badly and might have hypothermia. If I try dragging you all the way to my destination, you might freeze to death. Contrived scenario, but you get the idea.

Now, I can respect that man's property, and refuse to trespass, or I can kick his door down and get you in side and hopefully next to a fire. One action respects people, and one action respects property.