What is "private property"?

Economics Political Theory
1

I went Wiki.

Property is any physical or virtual entity that is owned by an individual. An owner of property has the right to consume, sell, mortgage, transfer and exchange his or her property. Important types of property include real property (land), personal property (other physical possessions), and arguably intellectual property (rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.). A title, or a right of ownership, is associated with property that establishes the relation between the goods/services and other individuals or groups, assuring the owner the right to dispense with the property in a manner he or she sees fit. Some philosophers assert that property rights arise from social convention. Others find origins for them in morality or natural law .

Ok , so we need ownership.

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate, intellectual property (arguably) or some other kind of property. It is embodied in an ownership right also referred to as title.

Ownership is the key building block in the development of the capitalist socio-economic system. The concept of ownership has existed for thousands of years and in all cultures. Over the millennia, however, and across cultures what is considered eligible to be property and how that property is regarded culturally is very different. Ownership is the basis for many other concepts that form the foundations of ancient and modern societies such as money, trade, debt, bankruptcy, the criminality of theft and private vs. public property.

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex since one can gain, transfer and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, receive it as a gift, steal it, find it, make it or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, being robbed of it, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one’s ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure and seizure. Ownership is self-propagating in that if an object is owned by someone, any additional goods produced by using that object will also be owned by the same person.

Sounds good,but how about wardsip? CEO, for an example can use the property without owning such.

2

Isn’t that handled via the agent-principle theory? CEOs are delegated the right to control the assets of the shareholders, though like any other employee they can be fired at will. Not sure how the current system works, though.

3

What I had in mind is non-coersive (non-fiscal that is) ways to fund the public sector. Why can’t goverment own things thru blind trust, and get it’s budget the way any holding corporation does?

4

Charity is the only method I am aware of.

Government is not a corporation with shareholders. A citizen cannot liquidate his ownership stake in the state and join another government.

5

It is not indeed. Yet if you look at earlier states, you clearly find that the King had finances of his own, thoroughly mixed with taxes, yet defently owned by the King. Now, as goverment went democratic, creating the “state are us” fallacy Rothbard speaks of in his “What is State”, owneship of property by goverment became equal to nepotism of some sort.

I thought that there was somthing positive in prevoius model, in which the King ( the goverment) was semi-self sustainable. Should all public sector act loke M. Bloomberg, the tariffs and taxes could be cut tremendously

6

It’s “Anatomy of the State” of course.

7

You’re going in circles.

Why do we have a state? I presume you feel it is necessary to have a state to… maintain the monopoly on justice, creation, enforcement and interpretation?

If so, why would we want that entity to also be a market actor competing against businesses that do not have a monopoly on justice, but are rather subservient to the state?

Take a simple example my friend Mike used.

The Penalty is always Death

So let’s go to about halfway through the post where he has a hyperbolic example of a vendor named Bob the state eventually kills because it changed the rules on how he could do business.

In your scenario, since the state would have a profit motive in order to grow (because it has to grow itself through commercial activity), and the state can fix weights and measures, regulatory costs, tax rates, fees, give grants etc it would have to either lose in the free market (and maintain justice above itself) or succeed in the free market by subverting justice.

I’m not sure where you are coming from in particular, but many of us have come to the conclusion that the state is not desirable. And hence, a state that is independent of taxes (and thus, eventually, independent of democracy - ie. who cares how the people vote, we can still pay ourselves and do what we want) is even worse.

Kings only got away with what they did because of the notion of Divine Right. That the King was morally and spiritually above all others. Once divine right was debunked, he just because a dictator.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to keep the state? Do you feel there is some aspect of it’s operations which could not be provided in the free market?

8

I’m sorry for not being a normative anarchist.

That’s why I mentioned a) Nepotism b) Blind trust

Sorry to mention Kings. Only reson I had was that they had explicit non-fiscal sources of income.

Well, I just don’t subscribe to utilitarian ethics.

9

Instead of apologizing for not being an anarchist, perhaps you could defend your position?

The questions I have are,

Do you feel the government does something that could not be provided in the free market?

And if so, what is it?

And even if the free market could provide it, why do you feel the state would provide it better?

10

Goverment provides services of a kind you mentioned before to people who consider goverment to be better provider of such services than the free market.

The best example (although 3000 years old one) is here:

Rise and Fall of Bibleic Anarchy

11

How does my property being stolen lose me my ownership of it, I wonder? [:P]

12

So, if government is ‘better’ than the market, why is it that government kills people who try to compete with it ? If government is better people would naturally choose it…yet they don’t.

Maybe you’ve some mystical, supernatural and divinely revealed explanation for such a curious fact…?

13

We love Wiki.

Nevertheless, because ownership and usage are unseparateable (or in Wiki’s definintions), it rejects the “Ragnar Danneskjold” argument made by Dr. Block in some of his lectures. He says that Ragnar can take the stolen goods, because the thief holds no right over them. But if you connect ownership and usage, thief can posses an ownership. Now, I subscrib eto the later, because

A) endosing vigilante theft doesnt’ encorage law.(Russian Bolsheviks considered it fit to rob banks, bacause the money stired there was " unlawfully expropriated")

B) I buy a good from the market. But then it is found out that the good is stolen from Joe by Pit, who sold it to Bob, who sold it to Jedidyah, who sold it to Habib, who sold it to Vladimir, who soldit to me. " Danneskjold" argument calims that none but Joe owns the good, so I have no rights over it, despite the fact I bought it fair and square. I’d say that I do own the good, but it is up to Pit to amend the damage done to Joe by his act.

14

Then it’s conflating normative with factual ownership. Just because someone controls something it does not necessarily follow they ought to be doing so.

15

And I defenetly say “Hello Nozick”!

If I think goverment better than anarchy, then I value goverment more then anarchy. In given system of means I 'll choose those that I consider to lead to goverment over those that lead In my view to anarchy. Mystical enough?

16

Indeed. How do you decide who’s right, Ragnar Danneskjold or me?

17

People also thought women shouldn’t have property rights, that slaves were property and that the punishment for engaging in voluntary and consensual actions could be punished with stoning.

I don’t see a point here. People think all sorts of stupid things. I’m fine with them living stupidly, so long as they don’t require I have to live by their ignorance and violence.

A government necessitates violence and monopoly (or at least monopolistic behaviour).

Do you disagree with anything I have written in this post?

18

Why would I be “deciding” anything here? That’s up to the courts involved. If the claim is too far removed from the original owner, then ownership does not revert to them. If they’re alive and identifiable their property is theirs, and that is the end of it.

BTW, if it involves coercion over non-consenting third parties would you still abide by government? Because in that case I’d have to treat you no differently to any common criminal.

19

No.

20

Rights theories are not my strongest subject. However, I’ll give it a go.

Why would you not separate ownership and usage? It is a sincere question (In any case, if you are of the view they cannot be separated, I can see why you wonder how to fit in wardship)

Nevertheless, I’m having trouble understanding how A and B support your view.

In regards to A it seems it does all but endorse vigilantism; if ownership and usage are the same I never have to establish my claim of ownership of the property that was stolen, I can merely steal it back, i.e. become a vigilante. If, however, ownership and usage are separated I cannot just steal it back, because I would have trouble getting public support for this unless I could prove my claim of prior ownership.

In regards to B it seems you misunderstand the “Ragnar Danneskjold” or Walter Block argument. Pit has not only stolen Joe’s good, Pit has also “stolen” Bob’s money, because he has frauded* Bob into believing he has traded ownership of money for ownership of the good. As I recall Block’s argument Bob has actually committed fraud against Jedidyah who has committed fraud against Habib etc. This does not entail that Pit should only amend damages to Joe. In fact you have a claim against Vladimir, who has a claim against Habib, who has a claim against Jediyah, who has a claim against Bob, who has a claim against Pit. The idea is to trace original ownership and have the original perpetrator pay for restitution along the “chain”.

  • Is that even a word? You get the idea, I hope.