I want to study the subject of property a little more in depth, and now that I realize, Ayn Rand wrote so little about it as such. I mean, it is usually mentioned along with some of the other basic rights, and occasionally it’s given a little paragraph of its own here and there. Now, I know she didn’t have to write a treatise on every subject, I am not complaining, but I was wondering if you know any good sources where I can find mostly about the nature of property, and then property rights, apart from the Lexicon entry and the few lines in OPAR’s chapter “Government.” I’ve read John Locke’s chapter “Property” from his Second Treatise on Civil Government (that may be a good example), and Bastiat’s “Private Property and Common Wealth” from Economic Harmonies. I know they’re good, but I’m not sure of how accurate they might be, since both hold wrong philosophical basic premises. So I wanted to know if there any Objectivist sources that I may be missing? Or any other reliable source, if not.
I want to study the subject of property a little more in depth, and now that I realize, Ayn Rand wrote so little about it as such. I mean, it is usually mentioned along with some of the other basic rights, and occasionally it’s given a little paragraph of its own here and there. Now, I know she didn’t have to write a treatise on every subject, I am not complaining, but I was wondering if you know any good sources where I can find mostly about the nature of property, and then property rights, apart from the Lexicon entry and the few lines in OPAR’s chapter “Government.” I’ve read John Locke’s chapter “Property” from his Second Treatise on Civil Government (that may be a good example), and Bastiat’s “Private Property and Common Wealth” from Economic Harmonies. I know they’re good, but I’m not sure of how accurate they might be, since both hold wrong philosophical basic premises. So I wanted to know if there any Objectivist sources that I may be missing? Or any other reliable source, if not.
I am not sure that philosophy has much to say about the ownership of property other than what you have already seen. Property should be owned privately. Even the question about what could be considered property, e.g., water rights, would be a legal matter. Law has a lot to say about property.
Perhaps you have some specific issue or concern that we might address?
Perhaps you have some specific issue or concern that we might address?
Thank you. Yes, I have a few questions to begin with:
-
What would be the correct definition of “property”?
-
Do you agree with Locke’s theory that a man can only possess property in the quantity that is usable by him?
-
Why does an object become yours when you work on it (if you agree with Locke)?
-
What types of property exist?
-
In what ways can a man acquire property (mixing his labor with an object, inheritance, trade, as a gift, etc, others?)?
-
When X belongs to P, and X is a memory, event or experience, can X be considered property?
Interesting questions. I don’t think they’ve been treated in depth in the Objectivist literature, so I wouldn’t take anything anyone (including me) says here as the “Objectivist” position. These strike me more as questions in the philosophy of law than in philosophy proper.
A few random thoughts.
First, on the Objectivist understanding of rights, all rights are protections of the individual’s freedom of action in a social context. This would include property rights. This implies that the normal way of speaking – that one has a right to an object – is really a shortcut. Property rights are rights to engage in certain kinds of action – to live in a house, to drive a car, to vote in a shareholder meeting, to drill for oil on a piece of land, to publish a novel. This way of thinking of property rights can be clarifying when it comes to issues of so-called ‘intellectual property’. Many people try to ground property rights in scarcity: you and I can’t use the same toothbrush, so we need some way to determine which one of us gets it. These people then get into difficulty when the inherent scarcity of physical objects no longer applies, as in the case of informational constructs like music and software. Understanding that property rights are rights to action diminishes the significance of the physical/informational divide and opens a path to a unified theory of property rights that applies to both.
I don’t think I agree that a man can only possess property in the quantity that is usable by him. The question is who decides whether something is ‘usable’ or not? If a person decides himself that something he owns is no longer of use to him he will sell it, give it away or abandon it. But what would be the effect if I could decide that you had no use for something you owned, and then take it away from you? Your property rights would no longer be absolute – you would retain ownership only by my permission. The problem doesn’t go away if you say that ‘society’ decides how much property is ‘usable’ by a man. ‘Ownership’ would still be by permission, not by right.
Not all objects ‘become yours’ when you work on them. It depends on the terms under which you are working. I’m a software engineer by profession. The ‘object’ I work on is a complex system of information, owned by my employer and the vast majority of which I did not write. This software object is the aggregate product of many individuals trading their labor to my employer in exchange for salaries, stock shares and the like. The nub of truth in Locke’s view, I think, is that value is created. People look out at the world and, by thinking, identify ways in which what they see can be made more conducive to human survival and flourishing. They act on those identifications, which creates value. That value would not have existed had the thought and effort required to identify and embody it not been exerted by the creator. This is the base on which the creator’s ownership rights rest. This kind of ownership doesn’t violate the rights of other people because the kinds of action they are not permitted to take were not possible to them before the value was created. If I write a novel, for example, my ownership of it means that somebody else with a printing press cannot print copies of it without my consent. But before I wrote the novel, he still couldn’t have used his printing press to print copies of it – the novel didn’t exist. He has lost nothing as a result of my ownership of the value I brought into existence.
I would not consider states of consciousness (memories, experiences) to be property because there isn’t any way for others to interfere with the actions one can take with respect to them. What, at root, can I do with a memory other than remember it? And how can anybody else prevent me from doing so?
Thank you. Yes, I have a few questions to begin with:
What would be the correct definition of “property”?
Do you agree with Locke’s theory that a man can only possess property in the quantity that is usable by him?
Why does an object become yours when you work on it (if you agree with Locke)?
What types of property exist?
In what ways can a man acquire property (mixing his labor with an object, inheritance, trade, as a gift, etc, others?)?
When X belongs to P, and X is a memory, event or experience, can X be considered property?
Nearly all of these questions are ones that would be decided in specific contexts, i.e., societies, through legal processes. That isn’t to say that the answers would be different in any degree, but that context matters.
No. 3 has been discussed by AR. Your use of the term “object” makes your question a little ambiguous. The issue has historically referred to land. Developing the land, e.g., planting crops, has made the land more than just a part of nature and would belong to the developer. This issue would be rare today. Maybe on the Moon.
No. 2 is out. It really makes no sense.
No. 4 keeps changing.
What you mean by No. 6 I do not know. If the memory were written down, then you have property, obviously. If you mean some future capability to harvest memories somehow, then you go back to the issues of Nos. 1 and 4. But that would be a legal matter.
What philosophy has to say is that whatever property is, it must be privately owned. It says why, of course.
What Locke and others were doing was continuing the tradition from the early Greeks of discussing areas of interest without clear divisions between sciences and areas of study. There was no division of labor. As we know, the universe does not have divisions. The divisions are in our knowledge for our cognitive benefit. The science of philosophy provides a floor, a foundation for knowledge of the world. Outside of ethics and method, it doesn’t have much to say. Rather, it is the function of all of the other sciences and fields to go out and discover the nature of the world. Thus, there is no Objectivist position on what things would be property. The mind of man will come up with new things to own constantly.
… I realize, Ayn Rand wrote so little about it as such. I mean, it is usually mentioned along with some of the other basic rights, and occasionally it’s given a little paragraph of its own here and there. Now, I know she didn’t have to write a treatise on every subject, I am not complaining, but I was wondering if you know any good sources where I can find mostly about the nature of property, and then property rights, apart from the Lexicon entry and the few lines in OPAR’s chapter “Government.”
…
So I wanted to know if there any Objectivist sources that I may be missing? Or any other reliable source, if not.
You didn’t mention this article, so perhaps you haven’t seen it. It touches on specifics in relation to airwaves as well as a few principles with regards to property rights in general: The Property Status of Airwaves by Ayn Rand. (can also be found in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal)
Not all objects ‘become yours’ when you work on them. It depends on the terms under which you are working.
Yes, I guess I was referring to the first occupancy of land or first use of natural resources. That leads me to another question: Can then nomadic groups, for example, be properly regarded as owners of the land over which they roamed (considering they produced some work over them, at least for a while)?
Can then nomadic groups, for example, be properly regarded as owners of the land over which they roamed (considering they produced some work over them, at least for a while)?
Not if they are just walking across it and maybe drinking some water or picking some fruit and then moving on. Being a nomad means that you don’t stay in one place and work the land, you travel across it, and that is insufficient to say it is property. Property has to be some physical thing that you can own by right, which means you either found it or you made it (before anyone else did). Property is some material thing that you have (even a recipe) that you created from your own mind as a primary; mixing your labor with the land means that you are making it valuable more so than it would be in nature alone. In order for something to be property, I think there has to be thought work mixed in with it. A grassy field out in the middle of nowhere is not property until someone does something with it, such as fencing it off to let his cattle eat it. And even intellectual property must have some physical form that you can prevent others from using without your permission – if it is just in your head, it is not property, but no one can see what is just in your head so you don’t need protection for that anyhow.