I completely adore the idea of Private Property. However, when I was in an argument just now where the point argued was how.
If you allow someone complete ownership of the property, mostly with corporations they will deplete all of its resources and abuse it until nothing is left of it, causing environmental damage, and for the property to be worthless.
First of all that is hardly an argument.
In reality we find that the opposite is true. People seem to be more careful and thoughtful in managing their own property since they have to account for its cost. It is when people are allowed to consume goods at no cost to themselves that goods are depleted. One example of this is the American Bison, which was hunted to near extinction–private Bison farms are actually what have protected this species. Another example is government, which wantonly spends stolen money…this example is a bit on the nose though :).
Why would they do that?
But they would be violating the rights of anyone else. Beside, why would they do that?
Property does an not have intrinsic value, only individuals can value it.
Well if that corporation you’re talking about has been build only to make profits for a period of say 4 years, that might happen. In fact it always happens in the corporation we call the state (at least in those where the beneficiaries of the looting only have one election period to get out as much as possible).
On the other hand a business corporation does not have to expire, it can exists, and earn profits, for an infinite time,almost. What incentive could there be for a corporation to canibalize on its own factors of production, which are the sole source of future profits? None I guess.
So,devastating resources is not a goal for a private business, with some exeptions if they rented the resources for exploitation from a third party. Exploiting resources is the way of public property.
That’s completely the way government and governmental/private concessions tend to act: short-sightedly. Private companies, in a free market, having lots of resources at their disposal, will actually see more benefit in restricting output and increasing prices (in fact, this is one of the things socialist most hate about free markets). So demand will decrease due to the increment in prices, and natural resources would be much more protected. There’s no economic incentive in depleting all their resources. The lack of private property makes this.
Here is a utilitarian argument for all your eco-communist friends:
if personal self-interest is more reliable than altruism at motivating personal labor, and
if personal self-interest will generate a higher quality of labor than coercion, and
if personal self-interest cannot be relied upon to motivate people to provide the labor needed to maintain communal areas, and
if the Earth would benefit by being carefully and lovingly maintained,
then, it’s in the best interest of the Earth itself that all property be private.
I think all of the premises can be fairly easily proven.
I am fairly new to ancap and have not had an opportunity to read much more than Rothbard’s In Defense of Liberty, and I find that the justice of a societal system derived from the notion of the sovereignty of the individual is hard to denounce.
However, I did have a problem with the notion that all of the land would be privately owned. Initially I felt that it was somewhat unjust for future generations that some would be born as heirs to great estates and others would be born as renters. Plus, the notion that this world belongs to all of us equally, in the same way as air and water, seems to be ingrained in me as a default position.
But, I cannot help but think that the argument above, while utilitarian for the current inhabitants, also protects the rights of future inhabitants to be born on a healthy planet. Do we not owe future generations an obligation to take care of the planet the best way we can? And if private ownership of all land is the best way to ensure that Earth will receive the best care, and I am convinced that it is, then does private ownership then not become the only morally correct answer? I suppose an argument could be made that the individual has no obligation to any future generation, but personally, I feel a great obligation to my offspring, so even if such an argument proved to be more valid, I would still reject it personally.
In a stateless society, it would be in the best interest of the corporation to keep the value of the property up. Also, any environmental damage that harmed others or their property would be grounds for legal action by the affected parties. It’s only the state that allows corporations today to pollute with impunity, by externalizing the costs of pollution and making legal action seeking damages against polluting firms difficult (there is a recent trend towards an greater number of such suits, but I think that is balanced out by the fact that states have tended to side with the polluters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution).
Different people have different hobbies. Have you ever met a person whose hobby was destroying the worth of things he owns? But maybe. In any case, the response is “as opposed to if one huge organization effectively owns everything…”