What makes a person own something? What are the requirements for ownership?
After the first question is answered, I’ll procees to asking about the second part of natural resources (limited and unlimited, easily available or unavailable).
Abstractly, ownership of resources comes by expropriation and use of something that is not yet expropriated or used. Of course, when it comes to implementing this in actual laws, one has to specify what this means for a particular domain. So, it’s clear, for instance that one should not be able to claim ownership to the moon by being the first to say “it’s mine”; but, what if a person goes settles on the moon and starts a mine there, does he own the whole moon? If a part of it, then how much? Just the part he is using today, or more – say what he expects to get to next year or the next? One has to figure out what extent of ownership is reasonable under the idea of expropriation for use.
Personally, I can’t say much more about this, but one would have to study the history of homesteading laws in the U.S. (and perhaps Australia) to see how people came up with what was reasonable, what problems occurred and how they were resolved, or what could have been done (in hind sight) to prevent them. Such a study would also provide a notion of the types of easement-type rules and limitations to rights that were used, and what issues arose etc. For instance, property rights to land can reasonably come with certain conditions that respect prior use (e.g., allow a certain amount of water to be draw from your well). Also, they can be delimited to reflect real use: e.g. ownership of land could mean the land and everything up to 100 meters below it, but nothing else.
The problem is far more difficult if the resource is already in use under some type of non-ownership system. I know Britain and India went through this: in many villages, large areas were un-owned, but used… “the commons”. They went through a conversion of much of this land to private property, retaining certain easements that allowed for prior use, and also paying off some of the prior users. There is a book by T.S.Ashton, “An Economic History of England” which talks about some of the details.
What makes a person own something?
I have always thought of ownership as the final right of control of the use or disposal over something. Some of those prerogatives can temporarily be reqlinquished through contract, such as in leasing agreements, but at the termination of these contracts the full rights revert to the actual owner.
The right to property only has relevance in a social context - in the natural world, apart from dealings with other men, it’s just procurement and defence against predators, parasites and the elements. Taking for granted the validity of the right to property as such (see OPAR chapter 11 for the details), what makes someone own a particular something is then whatever makes it morally right for that someone to exercise and protect that right in the face of those who would put the something to other uses against the first someone’s will, and hence by extension what makes it morally obligatory for others to recognise and abide by that right in regards to that particular something. That right exists, primarily, when the something in question is the product of the owner’s work (whether by direct production of it or production of something else subsequently traded for it), and secondarily, when the something is received as a voluntary gift from someone else who did the work and transfers the attendant right as part of that gift. The second is just a variant on the first, and so need not be further addressed.
What are the requirements for ownership?
Continuing from the above, this means you are asking when does one become properly entitled to say that one is right to control the something and that others are wrong to try otherwise, and similarly that when one becomes properly obligated to recognise the same in relation to another. The general answer is, when someone has carried out labour with intent to create value then what has actually been created is the property of the creator, be that creation a particular physical item or intellectual item.
In practice it is not that simple. The ‘requirements for ownership’ are the concrete steps and indicia in between the first moment of effort and a tipping point that leads to what everyone rational and in possession of the facts would identify as an instance of a value (and hence ownership thereof) having been created. For example, to take first ownership of land as below it is not as though digging up a single shovel-full of soil would be sufficient and it would be unreasonable to require a lifetime’s effort moving every single pound of that soil, so there is a concrete point in between these that says “Okay, so and so owns that land.” Add to this complications such as who owns what when someone labours on behalf of another. On top of that, you are also asking about such things as time frames (particularly but not exclusively for intellectual property), and whether or not ownership can lapse (eg through abandonment that is presumed rather than formally stated). For an encore, toss in hairy things such as ownership of weaponry and the line between defensive and offensive.
After the first question is answered, I’ll procees to asking about the second part of natural resources
You mean what you’re most asking about is the requirements of first ownership of previously unowned resources. Fair enough. To start with, you may find value in “The property-status of the airwaves”, which is CUI chapter 10 (also in The Objectivist Newsletter, April 1964.
A notable example of the proper method of establishing private ownership from scratch, in a previously ownerless area, is the Homestead Act of 1862, by which the government opened the Western frontier for settlement and turned “public land” over to private owners. The government offered a 160-acres farm to any adult citizen who would settle on it and cultivate it for five years, after which it would become his property. Although that !and was originally regarded, in law, as “public property,” the method of its allocation, in fact, followed the proper principle (in fact, but not in explicit ideological intention). The citizens did not have to pay the government as if it were an owner; ownership began with them, and they earned it by the method which is the source and root of the concept of “property”: by working on unused material resources, by turning a wilderness into a civilized settlement.
The details in any instance would be a practical point. The 160 acres mentioned was for farms, while mining claims are often for considerably smaller lots. 160 acres in the 19th century would be what could reasonably expected to be managed adequately by an agrarian family in those days, while nowadays viability for some types of farms starts in acreages in the thousands so as to get sufficient economic scale out of the capital-intensive machinery. In this latter vein, I ran across the idea (from Objectivists I think) to incentivise private space flight by awarding ownership of the entirety of Mars to the first outfit to set foot on it and send back a broadcast after a year’s continuous presence (or something along these lines). That one I think is pushing it a weeee bit too far, but do you get the idea of the particulars being important?
(limited and unlimited, easily available or unavailable)
I don’t see how the quantity or accessibility of the resources in question has any bearing on the matter at this level of inquiry. Either ownership is earned, through labour, or it is not. I do not subscribe (and I doubt others here would either) to any notion of “not enough to go around” being a valid excuse to throw property rights out the window for a normal civil society.
JJM
I have a slightly different answer from SN’s. Unowned resources become property by expropriation and use; property entails an owner, and property can be both created and transferred by voluntary agreement.
Property derives from a causal connection between a specific individual and the values created as a result of his action. An unkown nugget of gold buried in the ground is valueless. In discovering that a certain area is a gold deposit, a prospector has created value. His property over the claim is a result of that causal connection.
Once ownership is established, property can be transferred by voluntary agreement. If the prospector sells his claim to another person who will work it, the new owners right to property is a consequence of the original owner’s right. To question the new owner’s right is to question the first owners right to dispose of his property as he saw fit (in this case, transfer it).
According to my view, if a farmer owns a tract of land and someone discovers there is oil deep below, the discoverer owns the oil deposit including the oil under the farm. He obviously cannot enter the farm, drill on the farmers ground or interfer in any way with the farmer’s activities without his agreement. But if he can access the oil from another location, it is his right to extract every drop.
So, to sum it up, turning matter into useful materials (by discovering it, extracting it or processing it) establishes a right to the values created. This is no more than recognizing causality in man’s action.
one would have to study the history of homesteading laws in … perhaps Australia… to see how people came up with what was reasonable, what problems occurred and how they were resolved, or what could have been done (in hind sight) to prevent them.
These are a good start: Squatting, selection, and Torrens Title. The history of the same issues in Canada would also possibly be of interest in such a study.
The problem is far more difficult if the resource is already in use under some type of non-ownership system. I know Britain and India went through this: in many villages, large areas were un-owned, but used… “the commons”. They went through a conversion of much of this land to private property, retaining certain easements that allowed for prior use, and also paying off some of the prior users. There is a book by T.S.Ashton, “An Economic History of England” which talks about some of the details.
One other book you may be interested in on global advocacy of ownership law reform is “The Mystery of Capital” by Hernando de Soto. Professor de Soto speaks highly of the Torrens Title system to that end. However, I am not a lawyer so I can’t comment on the benefits and downfalls of Torrens over other systems.
JJM
As I understand, sNerd and David, you’re saying that ownership arises from using a previously unowned resource.
mrocktor, (great post btw), you’re saying that ownership is a result of creating a value from some natural resource or from getting the object in question from a previous owner.
(JJM - I’m not sure what you are supporting actually).
In Ayn Rand’s writings, I’ve never seen any mention of ownership by use. It’s always ownership by creation. (See the Ayn Rand lexicon)
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence.
As I understand it, Ayn Rand says that ownership is achieved by creation, not by use. If you produce a value from something - that value is yours. If you want to use a value or you are using it - the use does not automatically make it yours.
All humans need air for our existence. We did not create air. We did not think or make any effort that brought air into existence. Does any of us own air?
I think not. But yet we all need air for our survival, and if someone hypothetically decides to suck all the air to produce something from it - they violate my right to life (not my right to property).
If I live by a lake - I do not own the water (I just own whatever I have created). Yet if this lake is pretty much the last one left on earth, or if it is in a desert, at an age where desert travel is highly dangerous, then if someone decides to use all the water - they are violating my right to life (again, not my right to property).
For now, I wait to get an answer to the question “Does any of us own air?”, and also, David and sNerd: Can you explain how use gives rise to ownership?
As I understand, sNerd and David, you’re saying that ownership arises from using a previously unowned resource.
I’m saying that property comes into existence, and that property can be transfered, thus creation of an object is not required for the particular individual to own property. You use a resource to create something, so use is the metaphysical foundation of creation. For example, you use a pile of mud to create a pot. Note that expropriation is also necessary. Thus you don’t own a wild berry bush just because you use it to gather berries, but you can own it by expropriating the bush, perhaps by claiming the land and protecting it from predators with a fence, and tending to it. This requires you to create a value, by recognizing what you can do with the berry bush that enhances your life, and that entails you creating a plan of action that results in you acting to preserve this value.
You can expropriate mud in a number of ways. One is, you can simply take a particular sack of mud from the unowned mud-pit, and haul it back to the shop for shaping. That particular mud-sack is yours to do with what you want, and it is right for you to decide whether to turn it into bowls, plates, or medicine. You can also expropriate the land itself, so that you can continuously return to remove mid from the pit for your individual use.
I own a small amount of air, which is in a can. I bought it at a store, so my ownership is via transfer, not creation. But some guy down the line took free air that is everywhere-present, and enslaved it in a can, forcing it to do my bidding.
Can you explain how use gives rise to ownership?
To be fair (to me :lol: ) I said " expropriation and use", not just use (as David clarified above).
I’m not sure I understand how the idea of “creation of a value” is any different from “use”. If someone is walking in the unowned wilderness and picks up a stick, that could be made the basis of ownership. To my mind, he has created a value in the sense of changing a stick into a (let’s say) weapon; or, to use my earlier terms for the same act, he has expropriated and used the stick.
Strikes me, it is important to clarify what you mean by “ownership” in the context of this discussion. Is ownership the right to use or to control the use of some thing? Or, do you mean it as an actual property-right spelled out by law? Or do you mean something else? What do you mean by “ownership”?
Added: For instance, I understand that the way you’re using the term, people do not have ownership in the air around us. Are you also using the term in a way that says that people living in a village that has a common grazing ground have no ownership in that commons?
In Ayn Rand’s writings, I’ve never seen any mention of ownership by use. It’s always ownership by creation.
I have always interpreted this as her focusing on the creation of values, which does not always mean physically creating or altering something. As I tried to illustrate in my prospector example, the mere act of finding something creates value. Use also creates value - and the value of the thing used is derived from the value of what can be gained by using it.
I said " expropriation and use"
SN, I think you mean _a_propriation there.
SN, I think you mean _a_propriation there.
Yikes, definitely, I meant that and not expropriation.
SN, I think you mean apropriation there.
Yup. I meant to use it in with reference to nature, analogous to how one might say “exploitation of nature”; but I checked, and it seems that it can’t be used that way. Therefore… oops!
Yes, “appropriation”, or “claiming”, or “reserving for oneself” would be the right way to put it. If one uses “creation of value” to cover all the referents covered by “use and appropriation”, I’m fine with that too.
(JJM - I’m not sure what you are supporting actually).
As many have pointed out now, first-ownership of something comes from creating value where that something bears that value. Creation of value means the work of turning a physical something from a low level of worth (including no worth) to a higher one. What is created is better able to serve genuine human purposes than what it was created from. What creates the difference is labour by a person. OPAR explains why this is a fundamental right and what it is derived from.
That much is fairly easy to see for individual objects you can pick up and move about - chattels. For example, you pick up some material that nobody previously owned (say some pottery-grade clay mud, before David gets his paws on it) and do all the steps necessary to create things with it. Those things are yours by right, because you took the previously unowned material and performed physical labour to create values. But how is this applied to land? It’s not that easy, because the production process is much longer and involved, a large proportion of what makes the land as land is being untouched (it’s still soil of a certain type in a certain location etc), and, most importantly, the land is far more open to being co-opted by someone else without there being direct personal contact between that person and the first. This latter is important because with simple objects it is usually patently obvious that someone owns it and so interference can often be taken for granted as an instance of initiation of force – this does not hold so easily for land.
Say someone, A, goes into a new territory and stakes out a tract of land. Is that action alone sufficient for A rationally to demand recognition from others of A’s ownership of that tract? For full ownership, no. This A has no automatic right to take action against someone else, B, who doesn’t take that claim seriously or doesn’t even know about A’s claim and begins putting a portion of the land claimed by A to B’s own use. But at the same time, the legal system cannot allow B easily to say that A hasn’t done sufficient ownership-creation labour when the problem is only that A will genuinely attend to it in time and just hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Without that, B could wreck A’s preliminary work before A has a chance to complete anything and thereby achieve ownership. All this only arises in a social context, so in that society there has to be a formal law for the whole process of ownership generation whose basics cover:
-
what is a reasonably-sized piece of land to make a tentative claim on
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what kind of and how much work is required to convert a tentative claim to proper ownership
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what is an appropriate time period to allow for the completion of the required work
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adjudication of disputes between rival claimants
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all the technical procedures for above, and so on.
The first three are strongly related both to each other and the concrete particulars of the land type and intended usage. For example, under the Homesteading Act, a claimant was required to place a house upon and farm 160 acres of land for five years for the tentative claim to become full ownership. That sized tract of farm would be perfectly fine in the 19th century given techniques and economic viabilities at the time, but they could be inadequate for the same crops today with different techniques and different economic viabilities. Similarly, 160 acres is fine for farming the whole tract, but a tract that size would be inappropriate in the 19th century for mining claims - and again, what was appropriate for a mining claim in those days would be inappropriate for a mining claim today.
I believe the appropriate principle would be this: for each class of claim-type and in the context the economic circumstances of the era pertaining to that claim-type, first discover the maximum size that is appropriate for a tentative claim for the intended use, then discover what is sufficient work to be done and within an appropriate time-frame for a claimant to establish a bona-fide creation of objective value in the land itself apart from what is drawn from it (eg David’s bush itself versus the berries taken from it). Answering it in any given case requires knowledge of the state of the different industries with different land-use needs. Some of it is going to be the drawing of lines dividing up what is otherwise a continuous spectrum, but that of itself does not make the law automatically non-objective.
All humans need air for our existence. We did not create air. We did not think or make any effort that brought air into existence. Does any of us own air?
SNerd is correct - I think it best you get the basics sorted before you move to complicated things like air and waterways.
JJM
I’m not sure I understand how the idea of “creation of a value” is any different from “use”. If someone is walking in the unowned wilderness and picks up a stick, that could be made the basis of ownership. To my mind, he has created a value in the sense of changing a stick into a (let’s say) weapon; or, to use my earlier terms for the same act, he has expropriated and used the stick.
I agree about the stick example. But I don’t think that the reason why the stick is his is the fact that he uses it, rather the fact he has created a value which did not exist before (in the exact way that you explained).
Here is something to clarify the distinction: If I breath air (I did not find it, I did not create it) I do not own the air. The air itself is the value, but I had nothing to do with it’s creation. (so here is an answer to one of your questions)
However, if I take air and filter it, then I own the result. I can sell it, use it, whatever.
If I am a land discoverer (in the past), and I discovered a new land, I own the knowledge of the existence and location of the place. I can trade it. However, I do not own the entire continent. I own whatever part I manage to process and use for production.
My problem is with natural resources that are limited. Obviously, if some dude somehow replaced all the air in the planet (sucked all the oxygen out continuously, in some very powerful way 
), and sold us a filtered version, everyone would rise against him. Because, before the bastard showed up, we had air, we did not have to pay a cent to use it. So even though he has created a value, while we were just using air, now we have to buy the air from him. So it’s not much of a value, what he is proposing (it is only a value to him maybe).
So if the resource is limited, I sense that the rules of the game change, though I can’t quite explain why yet. A limited resource in the extreme sets metaphysical conditions of what woud be an “emergency situation” under current conditions of abundance.
Here is another example:
If a tribe lives in a desert next to a lake, and that lake is the only source of life for these people; suppose they discovered it at the same time - They all use the water without producing any value from the water. Then one day one of them decides to use almost all the water for some personal purpose. What he does would force the other people to abandon their settlement and go look for another source of water, risking death in the desert. (yes, a nice story, I know ).
So I don’t think this dude has a right to use all the water in that case. It doesn’t matter what value he produces from it. Because his actions are also an attack on the life of other dwellers of the lake.
Ifat, If I were to summarize my understanding of your position, you want to draw one particular distinction between “right to life” versus “right to property”. What you’re saying is that when someone uses a resource in common with others, then he is exercising his right to life, while if he owned it he is exercising his right to property. Is that an accurate summary?
Because, before the bastard showed up, we had air, we did not have to pay a cent to use it. So even though he has created a value, while we were just using air, now we have to buy the air from him.
Things change: today’s apparently infinite, free resource becomes tomorrow’s precious commodity. It’s the same with land – in the good old nomadic days, nobody owned the land and nobody could charge a fee to use the land. So plan accordingly.
There are a lot of objections to your air-sucking scenario which have to be addressed. For starters, where does he store the air? There is a *huge* amount of air out there. Why is he the only air-bottler? Why don’t other people get on board with this clever new idea, especially given how long it will take him to suck up all of the air? How exactly does he even exist on Earth once he has sucked up enough air to make atmospheric pressure low enough that people can’t survive? I think that’s about 2,500 trillion metric tons. Is it even marginally plausible?
So if the resource is limited, I sense that the rules of the game change, though I can’t quite explain why yet.
I don’t understand that. If a resource were to be virtually unlimited, then there would be no rational basis for prohibiting people from taking some of that stuff and owning it, even selling it if they can find a buyer (think scuba divers). It a resource were highly limited, then that is the architypical case where private ownership and profit-making are called into play (think diamonds).
At best, if you want to restrict people from canning air, you’d have to do that based on air being an “essential resource”. Other essential resources would be water, shelter, food, medical care and internet connections (maybe not the latter). In other words, I don’t see any reason to prohibit a person from compressing air into cylinders and selling it. I also have a sneaking suspicion that air is not a truly fixed resource – there are various ways to create the essential components.
If a tribe lives in a desert next to a lake, and that lake is the only source of life for these people; suppose they discovered it at the same time - They all use the water without producing any value from the water. Then one day one of them decides to use almost all the water for some personal purpose.
Nice argument against the collectivist assumptions that underlie the tribal lifestyle. In a society with individual ownership of property, this is a non-issue.
Ifat, If I were to summarize my understanding of your position, you want to draw one particular distinction between “right to life” versus “right to property”.
Yes, so far it’s true.
What you’re saying is that when someone uses a resource in common with others, then he is exercising his right to life, while if he owned it he is exercising his right to property. Is that an accurate summary?
No, it’s not a good summary.
I actually have more questions than a solid position right now. It would help if you answered the hypotheticals I wrote so far, and also if you think that by using air (breathing) people gain ownership of the air around them (like the air they are about to breath that surrounds them).
David: I am aware that the sucking-air example is preposterous. I can try to come up with solutions to all your questions, might be a funny game, but it would miss the purpose of it. If you can answer the problem with the lake that I presented with more details that would be good.
If you can answer the problem with the lake that I presented with more details that would be good.
I did, but maybe too briefly. The answer is, it’s not a fundamental problem of principle. My suggestion is that the tribe should grasp the consequences of primitivism and should act accordingly. The correct primitivist solution is to fold up the tents, and move granny and the goats to the next available lake. The civilized solution is to develop the concept “private property”, which entails exclusive control by right. The lake and surrounding land should be claimed as property, and rights to the water should be governed by an agreement, such as a contract. Exclusive ownership of the lake precludes some third part from coming in and sucking the lake dry. Whether the lake is held by a single man or via a partnership-type agreement is not particularly important, and the rights of the individual tribe-member to access the water will be spelled out in the agreement.
I think the absurdity of the air example is a fundamental problem with the hypothetical; the lake example is not absurd, and definitely a real issue. Presumably you see that the two resolutions above don’t require any special theory of property rights based on the nature of the property.
The answer is, it’s not a fundamental problem of principle.
I think it is. I’ll soon explain why.
My suggestion is that the tribe should grasp the consequences of primitivism and should act accordingly. The correct primitivist solution is to fold up the tents, and move granny and the goats to the next available lake. The civilized solution is to develop the concept “private property”, which entails exclusive control by right. The lake and surrounding land should be claimed as property,
OK, here is the problem: just by claiming, declaring something, you do not rightfully own it. So my question is where does the ownership come from? Does it come from the declaration? Obviously not. So from use? What makes these people owners?
Exclusive ownership of the lake precludes some third part from coming in and sucking the lake dry. Whether the lake is held by a single man or via a partnership-type agreement is not particularly important, and the rights of the individual tribe-member to access the water will be spelled out in the agreement.
What if one of them does not want to make an agreement on equal division - he wants all the lake to himself. Does he have a right to such thing? If not - why not? What makes someone own or not own the lake?
For a new comer, these people have not created any value. He already know what water can be used for. He found this lake on his own. Why do the people who found it before him own it any more than he does (assuming they just use the water, for drinking)?
… also if you think that by using air (breathing) people gain ownership of the air around them (like the air they are about to breath that surrounds them).
It depends on one’s notion of “ownership”, which is why I asked about it. At the most concrete level, property rights are formally established, and recognized by law. At the more abstract level property rights are the right to use certain property in a certain sense.
When it comes to air, I think people have what might be called “an interest” or “an ownership interest”, yes; but, by it’s nature this is held in common with billions of others and is very ill-defined. When I think of property rights at this level of abstraction, it is not very different to the right to life: it merely means the right to use material means (property) to support one’s life. Fundamentally, this is what underlies the more concrete, well-defined property rights that must be laid out in law and deed.
For the sake of discussion, I’m fine calling the former concept “the right to life” while calling the latter “the right to property”, but I think it obscures the fact that there exists a specific right to use some material thing. If someone sucks up all the air, I would hold that it is violates the implied, not-clearly-defined, not-coded-into-law right to property (i.e. the assumed right to use a certain part of air for breathing) that pre-dated the guy with the huge suction pump. Still, I don’t think the terms are that important. Maybe one can call one “implied usage rights” and the other “property rights”.
As more people start to want to use some resource, and contention sets in, then it is time for the law to lay out more concrete rights. In essence, one is codifying the pre-existing but undefined rights of the lake-residents, i.e. by laying out in concrete terms what they can expect. The move is then from a vague notion of the right to use the lake to a more concrete notion of property rights. Sure the newcomer could have found the farm on which my house is built, or the lake that I use, but he didn’t. He cannot build a house on my land, nor can he undercut my established use of the lake. However, nothing here implies that the people who live around the lake rightly have total exclusive ownership of the entire lake. That depends mostly on the size of the lake, but also on other prior uses. For instance, if some other people regularly use the lake to fish, or to boat, etc. then that is a prior use that might be respected too.
As you note, when such rights are initially established, some can hold out; but, the question is: by what right do they hold out? These problems have been faced in old attempts to move from vague rights of usage to concrete property rights. For instance, many farms in Britain are owned with the condition that the farmer always provide a path of a certain width from one end of his field to the other. There are other solutions too: e.g. the person getting certain codified rights pays an amount that is used to create something that provides for some uses that are being extinguished. All this can often be messy, but it is messy only to the extent that prior use was implicit, assumed and not codified.