A question about property rights

Political Philosophy
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Let’s say that I build an abacus and write some instructions and then just leave it tethered to the ground someplace. […] anyone can walk up to the thing and do a little math and walk away.

Gosh, Wonder, you’re the most hopelessly collectivist-idealist person I’ve ever talked to!

I have to ask: What do you consider your goal in life? Do you want to be successful and free, enjoy your life, have friends who respect you and love you, and live in a happy marriage? Or is it something else … perhaps something involving “society” or your “brothers” ?

I am asking this because your idea of your goal in life fundamentally influences all aspects of your thinking. If we want to have any fruitful debate, we need to make sure that our thinking rests on the same fundaments, or at least compatible ones.

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“Things don’t tend to go well if people don’t think they can own property” is a very poor reason to believe that property exists.  Moreover, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the “slaves” aren’t surviving qua man.  After all, you’re a slave right now, and you’re probably not doing too badly.

You think slavery is a state appropriate to man? And as for my being a slave, all I can say is, it’s not total. For all its faults, America still recognizes property rights to a greater extent than most any other country. Does the fact that it’s incomplete make slavery okay? Of course not! A little bit of evil is still evil. How much better could I be doing if the government wasn’t expropriating a chunk of what I produce, either to give it to someone who’s done nothing to earn it except to be incapable of earning it, or to spend it on some pet project (which, incidentally, amounts to the same thing)?

I notice that you don’t suggest that the parasites are living qua man. There are no parasites without slaves to feed off of. The existence of one requires the existence of the other. By “parasite” I don’t mean the object of voluntary benevolence or charity. A rational man values other people for the potential they hold as human beings, until and unless they demonstrate otherwise. A parasite is someone who feeds on the coercive expropriation of the produce of others.

I also think that this is a very western idea.  Honest White Folk tend to behave in the way you’re describing, but there are lots of other places in the world that aren’t populated by assholes, and where people really will kick in their share and are able to live collectively.

And of course all western ideas are bad because all us “Honest White Folk” are just a buch of assholes? Since there are lots of examples of people living in collective harmony, you’ll have no trouble giving some concrete examples. And I’m not talking about strong communities, which coercively enforced collectivism destroys, I mean true collectivism.

I’d like to restate my conclusion from the previous post that may (but probably won’t) be more to your liking: property rights are the recognition that neither slavery nor parasitism is a state appropriate to man’s nature.

Finally, it occurs to me that maybe part of the problem here is that we don’t agree on what a right is. I’ll suggest the dictionary definition, as applicable here, which is: something to which one has a just claim; the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled. (Merriam-Webster Online) The concept of rights implies the concept of justice. The concept of justice implies a standard, something against which to evaluate what is just. A standard of justice implies a standard of value. Objectivism holds man’s life, i.e. the life of each individual man, as his ultimate standard of value. This follows from the fact that life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action, and that each man must take the steps required to sustain his own life. (It can be demontrated that each man may hold his own life as his ultimate standard of value wihtout impairing the ability of others to do the same, but I won’t go into that here.) Your standard of value, it seems, is that described as “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” This viewpoint has been held by some very intelligent people, who suggest, as you do, that rights may not exist in reality, but it would be just as well to behave as if they did. The problem with it is two-fold: first, that it ignores the facts set out above, and second, it is incredibly easy to slide from “the greatest good for the greatest number of people” to “the greater good of society” at which point it becomes acceptable to sacrifice any number of people to slavery, or worse, so long as it is intended “for the common good.”

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Excellent points, makemore!

And also a wonderful combination of screen name and avatar!  :slight_smile:

Im glad you liked it :wink: I love the image myself :smiley:

With your screen name perhaps you should be looking for something similar? :wink:

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After skimming through this lengthy thread, it occurs to me that this isn’t really a debate about property rights at all. It’s a debate about a more fundamental right: the right to life.

If a man has a right to his own life, then property rights follow pretty easily as a corollary. As Rand said, a man who does not have the right to the product of his own effort, is a slave, whose life may be disposed of at the whim of whoever disposes of the product of his effort. To deny property rights is to deny the more fundamental right to life, which can only be implemented by means of property rights.

It’s pretty obvious at this point that One Shot Wonder does not recognize rights as such, be it the right to life or any of its corollary or derivative rights. That being the case, one would have to demonstrate the existence of rights as such and the right to life in particular before one could convince him of property rights. Personally, however, I think that he has aptly demonstrated his irrationality, and that it is pointless to engage in a debate with him on the subject.

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Ash, I’ve always conceived of property right and life right as being virtually the same, for two reasons.

  1. I consider one’s property to be an extension of one’s self, one’s life.

  2. I consider one’s life to be one’s primary posession.

Show (not tell) how I am wrong, if that is the case.

And, it is not necessarily pointless at all to engage in debate with irrational people: the point depends on the objective (in this case I mean goal, hoped-for end-result). To convince them of the rational, perhaps the chance of success is infinitesimal. But to sharpen one’s own mind, the chance of success is 100%.

Of course, I say that because it applies very well to me, as I’m somewhat (or very) new to philosophy.

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Ash, I’ve always conceived of property right and life right as being virtually the same, for two reasons.

  1. I consider one’s property to be an extension of one’s self, one’s life.

  2. I consider one’s life to be one’s primary posession.

Show (not tell) how I am wrong, if that is the case.

Well, that’s basically right. Except then I would not characterize them as being “virtually the same,” but rather more along the lines that I did in my previous post–property rights are a closely-related corollary of the right to life. They are not identical, but they pretty much self-evidently imply one another.

And, it is not necessarily pointless at all to engage in debate with irrational people: the point depends on the objective (in this case I mean goal, hoped-for end-result).  To convince them of the rational, perhaps the chance of success is infinitesimal.  But to sharpen one’s own mind, the chance of success is 100%.

I agree, but that only works to a certain extent in any given debate. I don’t know exactly what personal benefit you have derived from the discussion with One Shot Wonder, but to an outside observer after a while it just seems like you’re shouting at a brick wall. :slight_smile:

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I don’t like this definition for a number of reasons.  But first, I might as well point out that I was the one “Wonder” originally debated, and pointed him to the property thread.  However, I quickly realized that the root of his error is not a mistaken view of property or even capitalism, but a mistaken view of concepts and deeply entrenched collectivism.  Until he drops his nominalism and utilitarianism (which is very doubtful) any debate on the nature of property is pointless.  I would also point out that I haven’t yet read more than one or two essays from CUI, VOS, or ITOE, but that I’ve found the ethical and political philosophy of Objectivism by far the most accessible.

Regarding your definition, it’s both non-essential and overly specific.  First, the meaning of property does not differ according to context.  Second, property rights may not necessarily be exclusive.  Third, exclusivity of property is a non-essential.  Fourth, not “anything” may be property.  Fifth, the use of property to initiate force goes beyond its definition.

Property rights are not always exclusive because one can have both the complete rights to something, or partial rights: for example, mineral rights, water rights, or air-space rights.  Property may even be shared: for example, air-space and right-of-way rights.  Sure, within a certain context property rights are exclusive, but ownership does not necessary mean absolute control of any particular object.

Property is also limited to particular entities: material objects and ideas which are limited, can be exclusively assigned to a party, and the property assignment of which may be recorded.  For example, words, laws of nature, and commonly-known facts cannot be property.  Air may be property on Mars or the Moon (where it can be assigned to particular party) but it cannot be a property on Earth, where we cannot assign X cubic feet of air to any one individual.  (There may be exceptions, but you get the point.)

The most important point is that property must be defined by its essentials, not by aspects which follow from those essentials.  I like RadCap’s definition (which Wonder mistakenly attributed to Ayn Rand): “Any material element or resource to which mental and physical effort have been applied.”

In other worth, a possession is essentially a value brought forth into a tangible form.  As Ayn Rand said, “Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form.”  This is the basis of the concept of property: the application of reason to labor in order to create the material and intellectual objects needed to achieve our values. 

As an aside, while de jure recognition of property requires a government that recognizes individual (including property) rights, de facto property ownership exists in any human society.  Property is such a basic necessity of human life, that human life is virtually impossible without it.  Even primitive African tribes and Neanderthals have/had de facto ownership of (for example) their tools, clothes, and hunting/gathering grounds.  Property is not merely a social invention, but a pre-condition for any society.  The recognition of de jure property-rights on the other hand, is a prerequisite for any civilized, human society.

The meaning of property does differ according to context. Property can be physical characteristic–such as weight, height, etc…known as physical properties.

Aside from that, I do realize that my definition was rather specific and full of inessentials, but as I said in my disclaimer, I am not a expert but a student; and my cognitive context certainly varies from yours greatly.

Didn’t John Locke say in his Second Treatise that the security of property rights is the foundation of society? I think read that somewhere in there…

1 Like
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Ash, you’ve got to be the one doing the shouting to see how your own understanding’s changed. Mine tripled in the course of the brick wall thing. Brick wall or devil’s advocate, practice is practice.

Also, one could perhaps characterize this thing as a dual right then, ie each corollary implies the other and depends on the other to lend it meaning, and is meaningless without the existence and presence of the other.

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Well, that’s basically right.  Except then I would not characterize them as being “virtually the same,” but rather more along the lines that I did in my previous post–property rights are a closely-related corollary of the right to life.  They are not identical, but they pretty much self-evidently imply one another.

Also, one could perhaps characterize this thing as a dual right then, ie each corollary implies the other and depends on the other to lend it meaning, and is meaningless without the existence and presence of the other.

Everyone seems to agree on how the Right to Life and the Property Right is closely related, yet it seems as if you still belive that there is a difference between them two.

In my understanding of the Property Right I have come more and more to the conclusion that the Property Right (using a property relation to yourself) serves all the need that the Right to Life is adressing and thus makes the Right to Life more or less redundant.

So in my language I only talk about the Property Right now days and therefor Im very interested to hear what you belive the Right to Life includes that the Right to Property doesnt?

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A request: Please abstain from quoting large blocks of text in their entirety whenever possible. It wastes server space for me, and bandwidth for everyone else.

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Except, the right to life is the philosophic underpinning of the right to property … ?

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Except, the right to life is the philosophic underpinning of the right to property … ?

Basically.

To say that we don’t need to recognize the right to life, since everything it implies is also contained within property rights (and thus using both is redundant) and all the other derivative rights, would be sort of like saying that we don’t need to recognize the Law of Identity since the Law of Non-Contradiction and all of the other derivative principles of logic say basically the same thing. But the Law of Identity is the philosophical basis for the Law of Non-Contradiction. It’s the more fundamental principle, without which all of the derivative principles would not be true. The same goes for the right to life and property rights. Even if they’re so closely related as to basically be just different perspectives on the same actual facts in reality, those differences in perspective are still philosophically relevant and important.

You can’t just do away with the right to life on the grounds that property rights cover the same facts, first of all because I don’t think that that’s entirely true, but also because the right to life is the foundation for property rights. Without the right to life, there are certainly no such things as property rights. And you need to be able to see it from the more fundamental perspective before you can fully justify all the derivative principles.

The right to life names the fundamental fact that man’s nature as a rational being requires that he be free to act according to his own judgment, free from the threat of physical force from his fellow men, in order to survive. Property rights name the basic means of implementing this fundamental fact. But without first recognizing the right to life, there can be no reason for or means to implementing it.

It is true that we don’t want to multiply concepts beyond necessity (I believe this is the principle commonly referred to as Rand’s Razor). But that can be taken overboard. If we said that we don’t need to recognize any concept that is already implied by another, well, carrying that out to its logical conclusion would take us in one of two directions: either we would take the most basic fact of all, existence exists, and say that everything else is implied by that, since that abstraction subsumes everything that exists; or we would take only the most derivative facts yet discovered in every field and say we can do away with the preceding chain of principles, since they are all implied by the truth of the derivative ones. Or a third option would be, I guess, to do away with all concepts, since they are, in a sense, “implicit” in concrete reality. But obviously, all of these options ignore the function of our faculty of reason.

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There is a short animated movie that also demonstrates this quite well:

http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.html

Cute video. It automatically assumes you own yourself because… well, it didn’t exactly say. Just that’s the way it is. Very informative, huh?

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Cute video.  It automatically assumes you own yourself because… well, it didn’t exactly say.  Just that’s the way it is.  Very informative, huh?

It do point out the connection between the Right to Life and Right to Property. That is, it says that if you dont have the exclusive right to the use of yourself, someone else has the right to the use of you. And that means that you have no right to not be killed.

Most people do belive that one has a Right to Life and thus the maker to this movie didnt thought it was necesary to explain this. Secondly this movie is an introduction to libertarian philosophy so its not as complete as objectivist philosophy. So if you want to know how to deduce the Right to Life read some objectivism or perhaps start a new thread named “A question about the Right to Life” or “My case against the Right to Life”, and perhaps you will get an explanation there.

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Property rights are such because they are a condition for the survival of human beings.

To live a man must work.

To benefit from “work” he must keep that which he has produced.

If he is denied that he, essential, is denied the work of his mind and thus, his mind itself. As a rational animal if he is denied his mind, he is denied his life.

Property is the product generated by the work of mans -each individual man’s- mind and effort.

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To live a man must work

To live a man must produce - ie, create.

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how do we know that ownership is a real thing in the world – a valid concept – and not a human invention?

“Ownership” designates a relationship between a person and property necessary for human existence in a social context.

There is no entity out there called “ownership”.

Nor can ownership be taken away without (very real) consequences.

Human beings need ownership for the sake of existence in any sort of human society. After all, you still need to possess resources and the fruits of your labors in order to maintain your existence, even if the local government doesn’t protect such relationships.

Clear?

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Concepts are human inventions - the “essence” of soup is not an entity in this world, though there are many entities which are soup.

The question should have been - what kind of thing is ownership, ie entity or relationship, and do there exist any real-world instances of the concept?

The answer to which is relationship, and very many.

The question may have been meant to be - does the existence of ownership affect men, and if so how and to what extent?

The answer to which is yes, by enabling him to survive as a rational animal, and fully.

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Does anyone remember the communist chant of “All property is theft.”? Is that not too the slogan of the “looters” in Atlas Shrugged? But why is property theft?

Property is Theft, they say, because Sam, a colonial master, took a ride on his carriage and horse in a colonized and conquered land, and declared that the entire area which he saw His.

Property is Theft, they say, because R, a corporation, gave jobs to millions of citizens of third world countries by building factories. This took away them from their traditional livelihood and introduced them to modern ones. When the Cost of labour rose, R moved the factories to another country. Unemployment erupted, and other “modern” illnesses. They had forget their old ways.

Property is Theft, they say, because millions are dying of various diseases because T, another Corporation refuses to subsidize essential drugs.

But now we have all been enlightened, have we not? Capitalism reign supreme, at least as AR says.