What's wrong with join ownership?

Economics Political Theory
1

I have two questions: one general and one specific. Both questions are asked from natural rights perspective, not economics perspective.

  1. In the exchange with Bryan Caplan on fractional-reserve banking, Walter Block argued quite strongly that under libertarian rights, there is no such thing as joint ownership. My question is: a) does everyone in the libertarian community agree with him? b) why does that make sense?

For instance:

Caplan:

You’re just being difficult, Walter. If you asked a married couple “Who owns your car?” many people would say “We both own it. Fully.” You can either berate them for self-contradiction, or interpret their statement charitably through the usual lens of marital property.

Block:

It is merely “vague” when two different people have full property rights over the same identical thing? I don’t think so. Look, you and I can both be PART owners of a car: you use it on odd days, me on even ones. But we both (logically) cannot be FULL owners of one and the same car. That is a logical contradiction, an utter impossibility.

But why can’t two people be full owners? If ownership = ability to deny others use of the property, then both are in a position of a denier.

It seems like the wife should be able to deny the husband to make any alterations to the car that she doesn’t agree with. For instance, if the wife is an anarchist, and the husband is a minarchist, she should be able to veto his adding a “Ron Paul 2012” bumper sticker to the car. If the husband did that without her permission, arguing that “it was his turn to own a car”, that would be very strange.

Also, what about parenthood? Isn’t that a case of joint ownership (or parental rights)? What about a corporation?

  1. Specific question:

If we assume that joint ownership (in some form) is ok, then imagine the following scenario:

A group of people leaves main civilization and settles on an uninhabited island (or creates a colony on a different planet). They create a corporation called New Earth. Each member owns the piece of property he homesteaded and his own stuff (e.g., clothes, tools, etc.), but the corporation, of which each settler is a member, owns some land: e.g., the land between the houses (the “road”), the wall that encircles the settlement, etc. The members decide how to create a governing board for the corporation: maybe they will elect a CEO whose position will be passed down to his children, or maybe they will elect a board whose membership will change every few years.

Would there be a problem with such a setup from natural rights point of view?

Next, imagine the same scenario, but in this case, the members decided that the corporation owns everything: including the people themselves (i.e., they sold themselves to slavery to the corporation), their clothes, their houses, etc. I.e., all member cast all their possessions in a common pot.

Then the corporation votes that for economic reasons, it makes sense to re-institute the idea of private property. In the sense that everyone still gets “rights” (granted by the corporation) for everything he owned before the “casting in the common pot” event, and people may not steal from each other, etc.

So, this colony behaves in a way identical to the first colony, with one exception: when the whole corporation (or its CEO or the governing board) decides that, for instance, all houses in the colony must be painted blue, then all the members must comply, since they don’t really own the houses. If the corporation decides that a house must be destroyed to build a granary, the owner of the house must comply, since the corporation owns the house.

Again: would such a situation be problematic from natural rights point of view?

A friend of mine claims that the second scenario is what a society is. The whole society owns all the land and everything on it, but for utilitarian/economic reasons, a particular society may agree to people having “rights”, but such rights are not natural rights, they are rights granted by the society to individuals to avoid the tragedy of the commons, the calculation problem, etc., etc. But, if the society decides to exercise eminent domain over someone’s “property”, it may.

Besides the problem from historic point of view (i.e., we have to point to a moment at which the “casting into the pot” event happened for a particular community, where every single member agreed to the casting of his own property), I was wondering if there is a problem with such a set up in principle from natural rights morality.

2

The crux is here, " But we both (logically) cannot be FULL owners of one and the same car. "

EDIT: Maybe I should’ve highlighted “FULL” originally.

3

I understand. And my question was: why not? Do you think joint ownership of objects and parenthood rights as practiced by many couples is a legal fiction?

4

Because 100% plus 100% equals 200%. It wouldn’t make any sense for two people to each have 100% ownership over the same thing because 100% ownership means complete ownership.

5

It’s still only partial ownership. In the example of children each parent has their own input into raising the child and has a specific domain over different aspects of the child’s activities, etc. A legal fiction? I’m not completely sure what you mean, but I think so yes. As far as the law is concerned when parents are still married the children are considered to “belong” to them together, but this doesn’t mean they both have FULL ownership rights.

6

Mel Brooks provides an excellent analysis of this in this thought experiment.

7

This.

8

@FlyingAxe: Both Caplan and Block are correct because they are each using different senses of the word “to own.” The Rothbardian/Hoppean theory of property is based on a very metaphysical conception of the material world being parceled up into lots consisting of definite spatial boundaries. There is a spatial region corresponding to the position of the material that comprises your body and this spatial region is owned by you, it is your property. To deny ownership of your body is to contradict yourself (on this theory of property) because in order to do so, you must take up the space in which your body resides and exert control over the things within that space (e.g. your vocal cords).

Then, we posit the ideas of homesteading and voluntary exchange to enable “conflict-free” extension of property from the originary or inalienable property (your body). In this way, all the things that are rightfully owned came to be owned.

The attempt to extend this theory of property to intangible rights - such as easements, parental rights, children’s rights, marriage obligations and so on - becomes ad hoc, in my opinion. This “ad hocness” suggests that there is a fundamental problem with the theory and it is this fundamental problem that Caplan is banging up against: people simply don’t use the concept “to own” in the Rothbardian/Hoppean sense. This is strange since ownership is supposed to be part of human nature, so we would expect that the intuitive notion of ownership - sans the influence of State propaganda - should at least roughly correspond with theoretical notion. But the fact is that - without an indefinite list of hoc exceptions - the Rothbardian theory of property is simply incongruous with basic human intuitions regarding property and ownership.

I didn’t look at the larger point that Block and Caplan were arguing but I would simply make the following two points:

  1. Control of rights must always be exclusive in order to be efficient and amenable to the settlement of disputes. A settlement that specifies a set of rights in which multiple parties have equal, controlling interests in the very same resources (property) is a self-defeating way to settle a dispute. Ultimately, the terms of such a settlement have been left vague.

  2. However, such a “vague” settlement could simply be an efficient way of spelling out the terms of a settlement where the social norms regarding decisions in such resources are sufficiently well-known and binding as to obviate the need for further specification (as in sharing the marital minivan).

So, on point (1), Block is right. On point (2), Caplan is right.

Clayton -

9

That’s not true. Both parents decide equally on each issue (one some issues a parent may give the other full authority willingly, simply because he doesn’t care and trusts the other parent’s expertise, but he may always take it back). For instance, it’s not the case that the mom decides what vaccination shots the kid gets, while the dad decides which vitamins he will take. Both decide on both, and before they go forth, they need to reach a consensus.

First of all, that’s the case when ownership is exclusive or scarce. That’s immediate ownership. I agree that each person cannot be using his article immediately as much as the other person. But in terms of ownership of a claim, there is no scarcity. Just like I can use an idea 100% and you can use an idea 100%, and that doesn’t add up to 200%.

I think arguing 50% vs. 100% is semantics. If my wife and I jointly own a car, we jointly own every single molecule of the car. Whether that means we each own 100% of the molecule or each owns 50% of the molecule… who cares? I may not sell the car and give my wife half the value without her consent. I may not change some part of the car without her consent. In theory, she could deny me the usage of the car in a way that she does not approve of and vice versa.

Also: if three people own a car, the same way, the two people cannot gang up on the third person and force upon him a decision of what to do with the car (arguing that both of them have 66.6% of the ownership, while he only has 33.3%). He has a power of veto. (Of course, in a situation when it’s either-or, the majority wins. But in a case of disturbance of status quo, the status quo can be forced by a single vote.)

10

That may be true, but situations oftentimes arise, when pooling together resources is necessary for a project to go on. And the parties contributing resources expect to have equal control of the project.

11

“Equal control” does not mean “equal full control”. They cannot both have full control at the same time. If someone has full control, then he has the final say about it. They cannot both have the final say. That is the contradiction.

12

Well, the final say on the matter must come from them as a team. I suppose you could say that it must consist of their equal input (unless one of them declared that he agrees a priori with whatever the other says on the matter).

I mean: if we define ownership as being able to prevent others from using an item, and three people own a pool, one person decides he doesn’t want it to be open on Sundays, and the other two think it should be open on Sunday, what does the natural law say we should do? Can the first person keep 33% of the pool closed on Sunday? Can he force the others to keep the whole pool closed? Can they force him to keep the whole pool open? (In that case, what happened to his natural rights to the pool?)

13

Equal input is irrelevant to the point Block was making. He even stated that people can be part owners. His point was that it is not possible for their to be more than one full owner. There can be many part owners, but there cannot be more than one full owner. That was exactly what Block said.

I have no idea what would be consistent with natural law. This is the kind of nuance where social norms are useful. I would hope that before any 3 people (or any amount for that matter) go into business together or buy property together, that they would sort out the contractual obligations before they make the final purchase. Not doing so is just asking for trouble.

14

Then what’s the point of this thread?

15

Despite the nonsensical nature of your example (I’m not sure what their difference in political philosophy has to do with her having the ability to prevent him from putting a sticker on the car), it doesn’t make sense to say they are both “full owners.”

“Joint ownership” does not imply “joint FULL ownership.” Indeed, what happens during a divorce? If they each have FULL ownership, why does one person keep 100% of the car, and the other gets 0%? Or, perhaps the car gets sold and they each get 50% of the proceeds? If they are both FULL owners, should they not each get FULL value for the car?

Same as above.

I don’t see how.

Impossible. You’re asserting that the collective owns the individual. See here (and the link for “these resources” as well) for an explanation of “inalienable rights” and why you cannot give up your ownership of yourself.

Absolutely. Everything would come to a halt, quite literally, because no one would be able to even breath without getting permission from everyone else to do so…which of course, they would not be able to grant such permission because they themselves would require permission from everyone else to be able to move their mouth and communicate that they grant such permission. So basically everyone would all die out in a matter of minutes from asphyxiation. (Although the more realistic scenario is that no one would abide by such a ridiculous arrangment.)

As explained above, obviously your friend couldn’t be more wrong.

16

I was giving a humorous explanation of why they’d disagree. Sorry you didn’t get the joke.

Once they dissolve the full ownership, they each get a half of what they owned. But I already agreed that you can say that they own 50% of each molecule of the car. Practically, it makes no difference and raises the same questions. (E.g., if three people own a car, can two people compel the third person to do something with it? Does the third person always have a power of veto?)

If I have an inalienable right to my body, how come I can sell my kidney? Wouldn’t that be an alienation? Also, I have heard libertarians argue that one can sell oneself to slavery.

Anyway, we don’t have to include a scenario that includes ownership of bodies. Barring that aspect, is there a natural-rights problem with the community (corporation) owning all objects in the community besides the bodies after people have given them up to the corporation?

Also, I have another question. From what I understand, the concept of rights and the concept of law are ought concepts, not is concepts.

Imagine a system in which the society owns everything in principle, but in practice, it allows people to keep their “property” (i.e., whatever a person “homesteaded” by following whatever rules one would follow in a free society). The only difference is: the society exercises the right to eminent domain. I.e., basically, it’s the second model I described in my post, but instead of arriving to it from a natural rights perspective, we build it a priori.

From strictly legal (i.e., non-utilitarian) perspective, why ought not such system of rights exist? If we say that the purpose of the law is to resolve conflict of claims, then even in such a system, the conflicts are resolved easily: the rule is that whatever you’ve homesteaded belongs to you, but whenever the society in which you live wants to revoke that ownership for the communal use (or to redistribute the property), it can. Strictly in terms of conflict resolution, such a system doesn’t seem to contradict the purpose of law. Where is the problem?

17

Oh. You’re saying an anarchist wouldn’t vote for Ron Paul because an anarchist wouldn’t vote. Lot of people around here would disagree.

What? When did full ownership get “dissolved”? Why the hell would you do that? When was the last time you “dissolved” your full ownership of something?

Why not 50% of each atom?

I don’t see how.

Depends on the nature of their joint agreement…and what exactly the two people did with the car. One of the main issues is whether the physical integrity of the property has been altered in some way.

Your kidney is not your body. Once an organ is removed from your person, it is no longer part of your body anymore…is it.

Again, please see here, here, and here.

I’ve also heard self-proclaimed libertarians argue that property is exploitative and immoral. That doesn’t make them right.

You can contract in anything that is alieanable property. I don’t see where natural rights would conflict with such a contract.

I’m not exactly sure how you do that, but okay.

Because it is illogical and inconsistant. Again, please see here (and for more, here.)

I would argue law is more important in avoiding conflicts…the “resolving them as they arrise” part is secondary.

So basically, whatever the majority says, goes. He who has the might makes the law. Mob rule. Yeah that’s always been a great recipe for avoiding conflict, as well as resolving it.

If you want to break it down that way, we could argue that anytime there is a conflict, the law says whoever dies first loses. That’s a pretty easy method of conflict resolution too. If you have a disagreement with someone, just shoot them. Problem solved. Conflict resolved. Sure would save a lot of time and money on judges, and arbitrators, and investigators, and all that other gobbledygook that comes with this overly complicated system of law you’re talking about where people have to get together and vote on things.

18

I dissolved my full ownership of an item every time I threw something in the garbage. I.e., I told the world: “It used to be that I could restrict others’ use of this item. That’s no longer the case. I give up that right.”

Also: I used to co-own a car with my mom. Both our names were on the title. A few days ago, my wife and I bought a new car for ourselves. I removed my name from my mom’s title. Now only she can restrict others’ use of the car; I can’t.

Because a molecule is the smalled unit of substance. But you can go all the way down to a string. Or all the way up to the smallest chunk of the car that would matter. A mole. Whatever. The point is: If I co-own a car with my wife, it’s not that I own it at some times, but she owns it at others, or I own the front of the car, and she owns the back of it.

If you define ownership as:

  1. right to restrict others’ use of an item (I believe this is a better definition, since it differentiates between owned objects and ownerless ones) – and/or:
  2. right to use the item,

then both of use have this right. We have 100% of this right in the sense that either of us can at any time restrict a third party’s use of the car and either of use has at any time the right to use the car. Now, how we share the car is another question. It’s probably the case that we have veto power regarding each other as well. (Which is another reason why I believe that the first definition of ownership is more correct.) I don’t know what happens when three people co-own a car from natural rights point of view. Can two people force a third as to what they can do with the car? Does the third person always have a power of veto? A number of answers above said: “The better have specified that in a contract.” But that would be a case of contractual rights, not natural rights.

The relevance of the last point has to do with a situation when things are co-owned in a corporation. Can the majority force the minority to a decision? Or does it need to ask the minority’s permission every single time?

They want to put a sticker on the car, but the third person doesn’t want to. They want to change the muffler at a private mechanic, but the third person wants to change it at a dealership. They want to take the car to the mountains for a trip, but the third person needs it to drive to work.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to all of Hoppe’s talk yet. I am hoping to finish it soon. But here is my question so far:

Hoppe’s argument is based (among other things) on universability. We shouldn’t make ethical rules that favor one group of people over another. Questions:

  1. Why not? If ethics is an ought system, and we believe that favoring one group of people over another creates a better society, why shouldn’t we? Also: if the purpose of the law is to resolve a conflict or to prevent a conflict from happening, then a descriminatory rule adopted by a society would be as clear. For instance: in any dispute between a man and a woman, the man wins. That’s very clear.

I agree that this sounds absurd. As do the mob rule or “might makes right” rule that you have used as ad absurdums in your response. I agree that they do not jive well with my inner sense of justice (which is not to say that that means anything). But that’s the evidence against the idea that resolving/preventing conflict in a clear way is the only purpose of the law. There must be something else to it.

  1. Don’t we use non-universal rules in natural or common law anyway? For instance, the person who finds an object first owns it. That descriminates against those who did not find the object. Also, there could be a common law rule that when two people come to an intersection, the first person who arrived has the right of way (assuming we live in a society where roads are common). But in Russia, if I am not mistaken, the rule is that the person to the right or who is turning right has the right of way. Both rules seems somewhat arbitrary.

OK, so imagine that we are trying to create rules of common road use for our Earth II colony. The goal of the rules is to avoid conflicts on the road. The rule says that whoever is driving on the road has a right to continue driving, no matter what the size or quality of his car. I.e., a guy in a Ford does not have to give way to a guy in a Mercedes. When both come to a stop sign, whoever came first has the right of way, etc.

But, there is an exception to the rule. Whenever there is a vehicle hired by Earth II that responds to an emergency (a police vehicle, a fire-fighter vehicle, or an ambulance) on the road, and its sirens are on, it gets the right of way. All the vehicles in front of it have to pull to the right and let it pass.

This rule is very clear. It is arbitrary, but so what? It works well to avoid conflict. If I am trying to decide whether I have a right of way vs. a Mercedes, one set of very clear rules applies; if I am trying to decide whether I have a right of way vs. an ambulance with sirens on, another very clear set of rules applies.

The same way you can say: If a “private” individual wants to take away my house, natural rights rule applies (if I homesteaded it first, he violates the law, and I have a right to defend my property), but if the government wants to take my house away, another set of rules applies. The set of rules is clear, and according to Clayton’s definition of the law, it passes. But since our inner sense of justice revolts against such an concept, there must be more to the law than just “creating a clear set of rules to prevent/resolve conflict”.

19

@FlyingAxe

I suggest you read my post above, as many of the questions you are posing to JJ I have already answered with that short post.

20

Well, I don’t know what part ownership means. If ownership = right to restrict others’ use of an item, then what does it mean that I have 50% of this right? I understand if I have 100% of the right, and another person also has 100% of this right. So, let’s see, if my wife and I own an object and Joe doesn’t:

  1. I have a right to use the object and have a right to restrict others’ use of it (including my wife’s)
  2. My wife has a right to use the object and has a right to restrict others’ use of it (including mine)
  3. Joe has no right to use the object and has no right to restrict others’ use of it.

Well, all things being equal, social norms may be helpful (for instance, social norms might say that two people’s right to use of the object trumps the third person’s right to restrict use of it), but it could be the case that social norms would violate people’s natural rights.

Also, I agree that it would be smart to create a contract, but that would be the case of contractual law, not natural law.