Property is theft (or, at least, based upon theft in its historical origin)

note: I do not advocate either theft, or the socialization / communalization of land and property. My argument is with those who imagine they have some innate "right" to the land, or that the "coercion" of directing the propertyholder to comply with this or that govt regulation is somehow distinct from the "coercion" of ensuring that same propertyholder's right to exclusive usage of that land.

This is not a matter of "rights vs coercion" - this, like all of politics, is a matter of collectively deciding what the greatest social utility of distributing resources is.

And, on that note, I will say that I do absolutely support the rights of people to live and work upon the land - and for private enterprise to invest and profit from their labors upon it. Provided that all of this is done with an eye toward all of collective responsibility to the community and the long term stewardship of our environmental resources.

You can thieve something that's not property?

"Ownership is based upon labor being applied to a resource not yet owned. Here is land, I will work it, I will sell the fruits of my labor, I will seek profit."

Maybe in a moral sense, which I absolutely support. But not in anything like a legal sense.

"A rich daddy's child is soon parted from his daddy's money. "

Actually class stratification and stability in the united states has always been strong and stable across generations. The divide between rich and poor is widening. Unfortunately, I don't have access to comparative international statistics on class mobility. I would be surprised, however, if the US actually did have the greatest amount of such. We're much higher up on the list of "greatest concentration of wealth in the fewest hands."

That being said, one of the reasons I love America is that spirit of freedom, of worthy labor and of infinite potential. However, I also see within our national virtues a dedication to family, community, progresss that doesn't leave anybody behind and the responsible stewardship of those who love the land and wish to preserve it for our posterity.

Your objection addresses none of the points I was making in my Claim. I'm sorry you don't think I'm nice, but... I suppose I would rather be thoroughly and relentlessly rational than accomodating and blind to the errors of myself and others.

keturn: by taking somewhich which belongs to everybody and making it belong only to yourself - you are stealing it from everybody else.

Now, if you're walking by an apple tree on an abandoned and unowned lot and take an apple because you're hungry... perhaps you are stealing, but nobody is harmed or loses anything from it. If you then camp at its base and say "Even though I am full and you are hungry, and even though this tree belonged to nobody yesterday - by right of my sitting here, this is mine" - well, then you're a jerk.

(careful note is taken that I do believe that those who work the land deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labors, the above example is meant only in the sense of privatizing some previously communal resource)

Morgan:

me: property is theft.
you: no. property rights stems from work applied.

me: Perhaps in a moral sense, which I support, but not in any LEGAL sense.

I did respond. Right there. The first time. I'm looking at it now. Don't tell me to read deeper if you're not reading me at all.

You go planting a field in some rich guy's pasture he inherited from his granddaddy, who bought it from the govt for a dollar because he knew the right guy... well, it doesn't matter if your sweat and blood is in that soil. You'll go to jail.

My point is that there all the land on the earth is currently owned by the perpetuators, or inheritors, of coercive force.

Your point is that a worker should enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Perhaps if you were willing to read as deeply as you're asking me to - you'd see our points are not in conflict at all.

But to continue on the appletree analogy - let's say you didn't just have one tree, but whole orchards. In fact, you own all of the arable land in the region - and your employees work it all. Sure, you might be working too - part time in the fields and partime as management. But what if those workers are putting in longer, harder hours?

What if, as in the case in many places in California - those workers and their families might have been working this land longer than you and yours have owned it? Since when "this land" was part of their country and not yours.

In every comment, in every thread I have supported a worker deserving the fruits of their labor and a human deserving the sanctity of their home.

I just don't believe that conflicts, at all, with the notion that the land is a collective trust which must be cherished and preserved for our posterity and that everybody in a community has a responsibility to help maintain and support that community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

"Despite this opportunity for social mobility, recent research suggests that Britain and particularly the United States have less social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada."

I don't like the property rights stem from work argument, because then what if what I really want is some land left in its natural state? How am I supposed to get that property for that use? Isn't wanting land to just be pretty a reasonable use?

Wow... Deep philosophycal undertones... Hyper-morality at it's best. Here's this important issue and we don't have a solution! The whole world's against us... But at least we know...

OK, I know that many people abuse the concept of property but it doesn't make the whole thing a synonim for "theft." If I grab a piece of stone, work on it for a little, then say it's my own... It doesn't make me a thief, does it?

Tim: in modern legal terms, it sure would, depending on if you owned the land the rock was on.

In philosophical terms - any privatization of common goods could be seen as theft from the universal stockpile... but to pursue that line of thinking to its conclusion results in absurdities.

Really, the only philosophically valid considerations are those of responsible stewardship of the land vs the reasonable requirements of individuals and society to live and work upon it.

Xavier, in a lawyer-driven country like the US it might be theft, but in other, saner, parts of the world everybody would laugh at such a claim.

Besides, it's possible, that the owner of the land gave it to me, so it's not a theft. Not mine, at least, as the owner might have stole it from someone else... However, it is possible, that at one point in time we could reach to a place where this land didn't belong to anyone other than "Mother Nature."

On a more personal level, I do believe that God gave the whole shebang to Adam and his descendants to use it.

"other, saner, parts of the world everybody would laugh at such a claim."

Really? If I own a mine and you go into it, work out a rock and refine it into gold - there are parts of the world where the legal system won't smack you for that?

As the claim says - even if they landowner gives you the rock, they got the land from (historical chain of however long) somebody who took it, by force, from somebody else.

I believe that in an state where nobody has property rights over a thing, to individually claim it for yourself is a means of stealing it from everybody else. Unless you believe in a first come first served policy.

Doesn't matter, the whole of the earth is a series of conquests over time.

My point was the value of the object in question (or the lack of it.) Nobody considers stealing something that doesn't worth keeping.

But they do consider wandering across my property without permission to be trespassing.

You see, you're arguing my point for me. By saying that it is sometimes acceptable to cross another's land and take from it - you are arguing against the notion that private property rights are absolute and that to abridge them in anyway is unethical coercion.

What I've been saying all along is that private property rights are NOT absolute, because they are ALL based on unethical coercion.

With the notable qualification that this does mean I would abolish them, either. Just that there needs to be a reasonable balance between the individual and collective, present and future.

I'm arguing that 1) trespassing is not necessarily unlawful -- I might own a forest, yet let anybody tresspass, 2) private property rights are not always practiced (by the owners themselves) to the extremes.

1) trespassing is unlawful, by definition. If you let people cross, it's not trespassing.

2) Sure, okay. And the government's demands upon property owners regarding their property are not always unreasonable.

But neither of those relate to the claim at stake, which involves deconstructing the notion that there is some intrinsic property "right" not conferred by some form of coercion.

OK, then I might have been able to obtain that stone from a private property without tresspassing... Great, I was not committing a crime.

But man, can you make complicated sentences :) OK, at this moment all I can go is to go back to Adam whom God, creator of all this from nothing, conferred the property rights, and it was done without any kind of coercion.

I don't think you believe in this story, so you are hardly satisfied with the explanation. And without it, you are probably right about the "property comes from some kind of theft" claim (even if it involves Nature, or what.)

However, I'm not sure that the father's sin can be called upon the child, so I guess I'm not guilty because of daddy's (or granny's) thefts, even though I might enjoy 'em fruits. What do you think?

That's something I've thought a lot about. If my father stole a bunch of money and used it to pay for my college education, as a result of which I became very wealthy while the child of the person he stole it from had a child who was forced to drop out of school to work crap jobs and might have done quite well if not for that, what do I owe that child now adult?

And, I think the answer is - a hell of a lot.

So, while the sins of the father do not belong to the child, the benefit from the ill-gotten gains and the detriment caused by it does require you to share some of that benefit with those hurt by the very thing which immorally aided you.

Rachel, I talked about those long forgotten, untracable things that the "or, at least, based upon theft in its historical origin" part refers.

The case you're talking about is pretty clear, I couldn't agree more.

Oh, I'm not saying you are morally culpable for the theft.

But, if, say, Mexico somehow managed to invade the USA and give all the land to its own citizens - could any of us living in California really say it was /unfair/?

It's like those Native Americans who have stickers that say "Fighting illegal immigration since 1492." Well, yeah, they have a point. I'm not leaving, but still.

And if I own a small plot of forest... well, maybe I do have the right to cut them all down to build a house. But I don't have the right to truck in a bunch of tires and light them on fire.

We all have to compromise to get through.

Wow, M, you really had me going there. I thought you were on the level, and seriously pissed, right up until I got to
you need to watch "Team America: World Police"
You're hysterical.

Morgan, great solution. Let the poor die young from overusing their bodies while the rich tell themselves how happy the poor are that they get to have jobs and barely survive. Until, of course, they become ill or injured or somesuch.

"Guys like you always want to be involved in the deciding who gets what and why."

You're right, I believe it is every citizen's duty to pay participate in our civic culture and in helping make our society as prosperous and just as possible.

"I'm wary of those guys, because the guys I meet who haven't got squat - they want nothing more than to be able to buy apples, pick apples, and use their hours, brains, and muscles to work harder than the lazy guys - and there are many."

You know, America actually has a rich history of proletarian uprisings. You ever hear of Cesar Chavez? Not that we have a lot of proletarians anymore... no we shipped them all overseas, to where oppression is cheap.

But, you're right, when you work all day and your body is tired, it's hard to put much of your mind to why every day is like the one before. I've had that job, actually, it sucks.

"HAVE met MANY guys like you Xavieram, who are PISSED - but they never say they want to kill the rich, they say they are upset SOME OTHER GUY has to pick apples."

Actually, I'm not so much pissed as I believe - along with the vast majority - that a society has an obligation to help its least fortunate move on, so they can contribute more fully to society. I believe that the those who prosper most from the way society is constructed can afford to contribute to that end. I'm hardly the busybody know-nothing revolutionary you paint me as.

"The more greedy your "example horror story" the more violent and aggressive the snap back of the markets rubber band is."

You're way off on a tangent here. Nothing about my claim is attacking capitalism. Though, since you brought it up... it may be possible that the market is self correcting, if everybody plays by the rules. But, in your apple v grapple scenario - well, the apple monopolist would probably just buy out, blackmail, make illegal or kill the inventor.

Your "violent and aggressive" snap back is measured in people's lives and in the ability for the government to maintain social order as apple mercenaries battle grapple partisans.

What is it about guys like you - who think the purity of your market ideology is worth the sacrifice of so many?

"You DID NOT respond. GO READ."

It is clear that I believe I did respond, and that whatever specific sense you believe I failed to is not going to be made more clear by going back and forth with you "Yes I did" "No you didn't"

So why don't you actually elucidate exactly which point you were making that you believe I did not respond to and we'll try again.

"In a legal sense?" The law specifically forgoes the past evils, and we are put into danger everytime some goofball wants to screw with things to fix the past.

Except when it doesn't.

For example, the privileges granted the Native Americans.

THEFT in a legal sense PRESUMES ownership. Ownership PRESUMES the atomic (watch what happens to the DMCA), so digital theft is legally and morally a grey area.

Well, if you're saying that it is the law which defines what is theft and property, then you can't complain when the law defines the limits of what you can do with it. If you're arguing for some moral primacy, you can't deny that it's based on some historical theft. If you're arguing from coercion, then when somebody coerces you - you've no right to deny it was coming to you.

"But to cavalierly claim, Property is Theft and fill in (historical origin) as a "out" - is dumb, you got called on it - because EVEN or Historical Origin part got fed back to you - and you just skipped over it..."

You know, I asked three other people if this paragraph made sense - and it doesn't parse for them either. Please try and use something akin to English spelling and grammar.

"Yes we got that in your claim - my response was - that has nothing to do with TODAY's LAW, and it didn't violate the law back then -

Decalring with a gun, I'm coming to take your land - get out of the way - AIN'T ILLEGAL. It MIGHT be immoral."

Well, according to today's law, that would be pretty illegal.

"Real ownership started with some guy working on some unclaimed resource."

And you define real ownership by saying, what?, exactly that. Defining something in terms of itself is meaningless - a tautology.

Whereas what I am saying is that taking something which belongs to somebody else is theft. And that prior to the division of the world into private property, it was all public property.

But it doesn't even matter if you believe in a "first come first serve" policy regarding land - in which case the Soviet Union owns outer space - because whatever "first guy" did work unclaimed land and make it his own... that land has been conquered over and over.

"And along you come wanting to say the first guy - the guy who worked, well he was a theif, so now xavieram should be incharge of who gets what."

Wow, what an imagination you have! Suddenly, because I think that property rights exist in a social context, I want to rule the world!

Well, I suppose, if I did conquer the Earth - that would be perfectly legal. Good for me.

"some are assholes who keep you from trying to take over"

No! That's just wrong! Fortunately, I have my own assholes! Legions of assholes! Assholes everywhere, under your bed, in your sandwich!

"I do think we should sell off all the public lands though - the future kids will forgive us, just like no one us are pissed we don't have an appple tree."

Yeah, you know, I'm still kind of of pissed they flooded the hetch hetchy valley.