Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Economics Political Theory
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An attack upon Lockean right to absentee ownership. No. It is not mine, though I do think it is challenging.

As for the original question about second homes, I think the basis of any property system must rest simply upon the right of human beings to engage in ongoing projects with material things. This principle is similar to the “mixing your labor” principle in that labor is usually a part of an ongoing project, but the “ongoing project” principle covers both the ideas of initial appropriation and abandonment. That said, the idea of “ongoing projects” is vague, just like the idea of “mixing labor” - but its vagueness is a strength in that it avoids the slide into rigid moral absolutism. With regards to second homes, the claim that the second home is part of an ongoing project is quite reasonable. It’s a bit less reasonable than the claim to the first house, but it’s not nearly as absurd as claiming unused land. As long as they regularly maintain both houses, they’ve shown by their actions that the houses are part of their ongoing projects.

However, I think it’s a relevant point to add that there are 1 billion squatters in the world, but much few second-home owners. Even if mutualism means that no one can own a second home (and even that claim is suspect,) I think the billion squatters of the world have much higher moral priority.

Even so, the more pertinent question is not whether one can own a second home, but what happens when the owner of two homes decides to rent the second one out. There, to me, the answer is clear - the home belongs to the tenant, and the previous owner has simply received a rental contract - which is subject to social approval/disapproval by the boycott process I described above. One could say that the act of renting out the house is an “ongoing project,” but this leads to a paradox - if the owners had simply left the house sit there without maintenance or use for years, then it would fall back into the unowned domain even by Lockean standards. But if they rent it out, they not only get rent money - they get an extension of the time for which they can claim to own the house without using it! This seems like nonsense - they keep their property because they charged money for it.

For this reason, I propose the principle that property applies to ongoing projects with things, while contracts apply to ongoing projects between people. The claim that collecting rent from the house is an ongoing project is true, but it’s an ongoing project between people. The tenant, on the other hand, can claim to have an ongoing project involving the house itself. In my last post I went over some consequentialist reasons why contracts shouldn’t be violently enforced. Now, I offer a moral argument - to enforce a contract the same way one enforces property is to treat people like things, to treat people as means to an end. If people are ends in themselves, they should be able to terminate the contract at any time…they should not be coercively enforced. They can be enforced through boycott, but even if they aren’t, the parties to the contract can still engage in them.

I have to admit that I am not exactly sure how to answer this. I don’t really think it necessarily follows from Lockean rights to property that non use constitutes abandonment law. I think that is a creation that does not need enforcement or can simply arise from people refusing to help you take it back or what not. I consider the object MINE until such time that I renounce any intention to keep it for future use. I think renting it might be a sign that we are indeed keeping it for some reason and not abandoning it. Is the problem then for them that I am keeping it solely to charge others for its use?

Any thoughts would be more than appreciated. thank you.

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Thanks for posting this. To look at it differently, how would we look at the abandonment issue if the property was a car? Or a second lawnmower? The rental model is an important part of capitalism. Being able to rent rather than buy, particularly for one off uses is very important IMO.

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Here’s my thought on this.

If it was true that you, yourself have to be the one continuing the “on-going project” that would imply that having employees is essentially releasing your right to certain things. For example, if you have a maid, then you “abandon” all your cleaning supplies. If you have field workers for your farm, then you are “abandoning” both the crops and the land itself. If you have a business where you hire a manager to run the store, you “abandon” the business. Furthermore, you might come to the conclusion that the owner of a park “abandons” it by opening it to the public. This seems absurd on its face (at least to me), so it is equally absurd that a landlord abandons his property when renting it. Think of the tenant as an employee of the landlord if it helps, as someone who keeps the property in order, to the specifications of the rental contract, and is given compensation in the form of being allowed to live on the property. Or think of the renter as someone visiting a park and paying a fee. Either way, we can reformulate our thinking on what a renter is to make it very clear that absentee ownership is perfectly legitimate.

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Well I think you would find that they would not be very opposed to the manager and store or boss and employee scenario at all.

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If you rent it out, you are using a contract with the renter to rehomestead the property for you in return for pay. In other words, the house, apartment, factory, whatever still remains in your possession as long as you contract someone to keep it in your possession.

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Ok I am not quite sure I understand this. Perhaps you could rephrase it for me?

From what I THINK you are saying:
I feel as if this is sort of assuming you still retain the right to the property. The criticism quoted above says that I have shown no intention to use the home to further some goal or end of mine and so have no right to it.

I think perhaps a criticism I have come up with for the criticism itself is that it assumes that I must demonstrate my goals with all of my property. I also believe it might be assuming that abandonment is neccesarily apart of Lockean property rights, confusing it with court ruling and customary law. I do not for one find that any amount of time between me creating something and using it disqualifies my right to use it or exclude others from its use. I would be quite angry if a man broke into my basement right now and stole my television. Its true I probably will never use that old TV again, but that is not a definite. If I express no concern with wanting to use an item for my ends, then how can I justify selling anything? Its obvious that a mutualist believes in the right to sell their stuff they create. But the sale indicates no intention to use the product towards one own creative ends. If they hold this standard for land and the renter then it seems they have no right to SELL as well as RENT.

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Seems arbitrary. Why is renting not putting it to use? Homesteading can only occur with unused resources, meaning the renter is using homesteaded resources on my conditions. Why should this undo ownership? Why the hell can I not use my property anyway I want, save harming others? The condition (of ownership) is that I perform some physical alteration on unused resources, to incorporate them in whatever schemes I might have. Once that is done, and unless there’s genuine abandonment, it’s done.

-Jon

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His argument rests on his assertion that “the billion squatters of the world have much higher moral priority” than does the property owner, who exchanged money that he presumably earned for the property. On this false assumption he makes the false inference that therefore ONE squatter has a higher moral priority than does the property owner. From a rhetorical standpoint is a flawed (if not dishonest) argument, and in any case all of this involves the measuring of subjective values and is therefore economically meaningless. I don’t see how taking property from owners to satisfy those of “higher moral priority” is anything other than socialism. We all know the theoretical strength of THAT position, I hope.

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Since when?

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Well I think he is confusing Lockean property rights with legal enforcement or aid. Common law supposedly has statutes dealing with apparent abandonment where not explicit, but that is not the same as the Lockean view of property ownership in a totally normative ethical sense I think.

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This article seems to be jibberish.

All contracts involve property, so they must be enforced the same way that property is enforced. If someone breaks a contract they have stolen from me. This is fundamental to all contracts; if an agreement can be broken without a violation of ownership then it was not a contract.

Non sequitur. His reasoning for why the tenant is the new owner is because the contract to rent is invalid, but that does not follow. If the contract is invalid then the tenant has no right to be there!

Yes, this person is clearly operating from the assumption that rents are illicit. Notice his reference to a billion squattars, meaning land lords.

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I think it’s clear that there are some scenarios of genuine absentee ownership based on non-provisio lockean principles of property rights (what is the state but a gigantic absentee owner of its claimed territory?), it’s just that there are complications in the process of properly determining abandonment and how to deal with intergenerational issues. So I think it is false to accuse non-provisio lockeans of inherently justifying absentee ownership, when a proper application of it renders institutionalized absentee ownership illegitimate. I see no need for one to lapse into Georgism in order to come to such a conclusion, since in some sense it’s reduced to practical considerations with respect to dealing with abandonment, and obviously noone is entitled to perpetual ownership over something that clearly isn’t theirs to begin with, and hence it’s an issue of legal privilege.

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ThorsMitersaw, I’m referring to this quote:

It is clear that if you let someone live there while you still remain in possession of the house and require rent, they are paying for using your property. When you move away, they are essentially reenforcing your property rights over the house. From a natural rights perspective, there is nothing wrong with the “Lockean” view.

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In order for it to be abandoned you have to do more than merely “let it sit there without maintenance or use for years”; you have to have to demonstrate no interest in it for that time. If someone is living in your house and not paying rent (or doing something else that clearly acknowledges your ownership), and you don’t kick them out for a suitable period of time (e.g., 20 years), that’s the demonstration needed that you’ve abandoned it and they can claim it. Hence the charging of rents like $1/yr to let someone use your house without giving up ownership, etc.

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Theres no need for such a thing.

If a home owner lets a person live in his house for free this can still be an exchange, house sitting would be an example. The sitter gets a place to stay while the home owner gets a watchman for his property. Letting a specific person live in your house for free is not the same thing as letting any random person live in your house.

The fact that people need to include a monetary exchange in the deal just demonstrates one of the many flaws in our current legal system.

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House sitting for twenty years?

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Letting someone stay in your house for 20 years for free as a gift would be a different example.

Let me repeat the part you excluded: Letting a specific person live in your house for free is not the same thing as letting any random person live in your house.

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It’s not just “letting someone live there”, but “letting them treat it as if it were theirs”; and there’s no difference except in your head - it may be your intention that if this specific person leaves someone else can’t just move in, but as long as he doesn’t actually leave that’s not an issue: nobody can determine your “intent” by looking at the situation that exists - i.e., as far as any third party (judge) can tell, simply from the facts, you have abandoned the house and don’t care who lives it or what happens to it.

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Then you’ve changed the issue at hand.

To the point, if a stewardship of two weeks is allowable then a stewardship of 20 years must be as well.

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Its my thread so I am allowed to necro it. ARISE ZOMBIE THREAD! RISE!!

Anyhoo…

To my understanding, Lockean property rights exist for an infinite amount of time. I own the products of my labor from the moment I create them till the end of time.

Salvage and abandonment as they exist in a Lockean framework exist in man made laws. They are not necessarily apart of the principle of property acquisition, transfer, and abandonment in a Lockean theoy of property. Abandonment in a Lockean theory exists only where property is explicitly abandoned.

Abandonment in common law and the like if I am not mistaken is based on what an arbiter of some sort is willing to enforce in the realm of implicit abandonment and what they are willing to enforce or back up as far as legitimate proof of the original acquisition of the property goes. If you leave a factory for 20 years and come back to find a bunch of smelly hippies have squatted it, well good luck prooving that it wasnt abandoned and you simply failed to recind the title or some such. Again I believe Rothbard covered some sort of duty to mark your property. So in other words good luck getting anyone to agree with you and help you.

Am I correct in this so far?