[BluffTHIS!]

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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.

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The trick here is in the conflation of "common objects" with "potentially other-owned objects". Saying that owning something is "bad" or "undesirable" because someone else could own that thing makes as much sense as saying that killing Mr. X is bad because someone else could have potentially killed him.

Now, specifically why that conflation is bad:

Taking "ownership" of something that is "owned" by some group of people is "bad". I will no doubt agree with this. But to make this argument you have to accept that the group owned the thing that is being stolen. Property can't be theft without property already existing!

Taking ownership of something that is unowned cannot be objectionable. If nobody owns it, what objection can they have? If they DO have an objection, they must have an ownership interest (or at least *believe* that they do - and if you can explain how you can believe that you have an ownership interest without believing in property, then we can go a little further).

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pvn,

Thanks for addressing the "first taking" argument. For the purposes of this discussion, I would give the following two premises, the first of which you will of course agree with:

1) property does exist (and it is silly to object to someone taking something if it doesn't)

2) in the beginning all property was owned in common


#2 is part of that first taking argument, and seems obviously true if one takes a timeline back far enough. In fact this is similar to using the paradigm that all property is part of a share corporation called EarthInc. Thus all own an indivisible part of everything. Of course this ignores the fact that any individual must be wearing and using articles in daily life himself alone in order to function, like clothes, food, etc. So I am excepting that part of food/clothes/shelter that is *minimally* necessary to individual survival. However when you die, any such unconsumed individual articles revert back to the common moiety.

Do you object to #2 and my further explanation of same and caveat on minimal personal property used in daily life?