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Old 11-30-2007, 02:17 AM
BigLawMonies BigLawMonies is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 22
Default Argh property rights debate

So I go to school with numerous new dealers and semi-socialists with whom I regularly argue. I run into the following theoretical arguments about the nature of property all the time, and I am sure many of you do as well. Help me out plz – What are some of your responses? Long post but I tried to give a full outline of the arguments I hear weekly. Here it goes:

1. The idea of Property is inherently in contradiction with itself


a. There was no property in the state of nature: property is a legal institution that differs from both possession and use.


b. The first owners converted common objects or potentially other-owned objects into personal property. They took objects in the use of all or to others and made them their own. This conversion without compensation of other community stakeholders is theft.



c. All property today derives from these first takings, or from intermediate conquests, murders, pillages, etc. (i.e. colonization of North America, Arabic conquest of the Byzantine Empire). As an aside, this is why in the U.S. no one “owns” any land free and clear but rather we are tenants holding a fief of the Sovereign (we pay rent in property taxes ldo).


d. Therefore all property is theft in theory and in fact. Thus there is no basis for the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate possession and use. But property simply is the distinction between legitmate and illegitimate posession and use. Contradiction Q.E.D.


2. The nature of Property implies social ownership.


a. Property is not a naturally fact. Ownership prior to legalism was merely use and possession. There is nothing about an object that makes it property of Person A or Corporation B.


b. Property as a social fact exists only at the sufferance of social acceptance – i.e. acquiesce of social institutions or non-owners to the owners’ claim of exclusive use and possession. This is the like case where if we all stopped believing that there is a president of the united states, then there is no president of the united states.


c. Property relies on positive externalities of others,
such as a system of contracts, debts, marketable titles, policing, etc.



d. Thus since all participate in the ‘creation’ and maintenance of ownership, all own property.



e. [Note: at bottom I think this objection comes down to the assertion that assignment of property rights over an object to A and not B is in some sense arbitrary and needs independent social justification for support].



3. Property is a socially created right, not a human or natural right, and thus is subject to modifications for the social good and human happiness. Property rights have to be balanced against the needs of all and other utilitarian concerns; insofar as property rights run counter to the best scheme of social cooperation we should reject the maintenance of property as a social fact.



4. As a default position we should be wary of all claims asserting the absolute inviolability of a social institution (property rights in this case) absent a strong showing of proof that such rights should be recognized and held inviolable.
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