I don’t think that there’s anything really wrong with communal property. As long as it’s completely voluntary… and it’s not owned by the state I don’t see what’s wrong with it. Communal property- collective property in a market society… it would be like joint ownership. It would take joint action… I mean I just think that for like some things like roads… if a group of city industrialists want to get together and build a road they can have communal property that way… we can have group ownership (completely voluntary ownership too).
I’m not suggesting that everything be owned by the state… but this would be without the state ownership of it. I know that most people are against it if it’s public property owned by the state- but if we could have communal property owned by a group of individuals… who make the choice to do it themselves and have some sort of framework for how they would have a joint committees to deal with the property that wouldn’t be wrong would it? I just want to know what other people think of my idea… because like I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with communal property as long as it’s voluntary and not coercive and people want to do it. Is there anything wrong and contradictory with that? A lot of criticisms from the left on libertarianism comes on this front but I’ve thought of this as a solution to it… and… like this would be okay right? Unless I’m misunderstanding something I don’t see why this wouldn’t be consistent with austrian economics- and just again- I’m not advocating for state coercion… but a voluntary partnership by a group of individuals.
Theoretically, yes, communal ownership could occur. It is possible an owner may decide to open his lake, etc up to anyone who lives in his “commune”.
Whether or not such an idea is likely to work, of course, is an entirely separate idea. But that’s besides the point; if the commune’s little experiment fails, so be it. As long as it’s voluntary, there’s nothing ethically wrong.
Just today, I wrote a blog post that talks about voluntary socialism briefly, under the guise of a post about “Buy Nothing Day”.
Of course communal property is possible, and moral, so long as it is voluntary. However, it is extremely inefficient, and does not propagate the rational allocation of goods and resources.
I thought that paper was terribly written and of little to no theoretical value.
The joint-stock company is a much better analogy, since the only way joint ownership could work is if each individual joint-owner has clearly defined rights to the land.
There’s no reason why a group of people shouldn’t be allowed to live on a commune. And there’s no reason why (assuming they could kick people out) that it couldn’t be ok.
There are examples of communal property in free-market instances. Look at corporations, which have their ownership split between all the stockholders. And perhaps a better example, is a family house. The parents jointly own the house. Do these examples make sense/apply?
I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion that common use of a scarce resource will always lead to capital consumption. In small groups, social control can mitigate overconsumption. It’s also possible to have joint ownership of a unit of land with the obligations and rights of each owner legally enforced.
Yeah, but each shareholder has private contractual right’s to the business unit. It doesn’t make sense to speak of a corporation as a commune. Nor a partnership. Any contractual arrangement could fit the bill if definitions are used that loosely. Most of the arrangement of a household is informal and implicit. I would still say that each member has implicit obligations and rights which are individual.
Let me ask you this. What is the difference, in your opinion, between individual/private ownership and collective/communal ownership?
Nothing is wrong with it. It is not very efficient, but if they can make it work among themselves then who cares. If 10 people went as far as to register themselves as a single person it`s totaly fine by me.
The reason we insist on induvidualism is that it is the only thing you can build a coherent theory of justice on. But it is not a requirement for a small, close knit community where people genuinley care for one another to have a very sophisticated theorethical understanding of rights in order to resolve disputes in a just way. There is no reason a Marxist-Leninist parent can not arbiter a dispute between his underage children over a toy as well as an Ancap parent could.
As I’ve said before, ownership is the privilege to exclude. For that matter, non-exclusivity is not possible. A commune in reality is merely arbitrary sharing by the owner of the communal land with others and can as such be revoked by him at any time. Ultimately, everything that transpires on what outsiders regard as his property must pass his inspection. It is the same as my cousin letting me stay in his house when I went to Britain.
Did they utilize praxeology, or did they use mechanical measures of ‘efficiency’ ? I’m not opposed to their work; P Klein, seems to be a fan on some levels. I’m just asking questions.