Property is the only way that we can build complex things.
We couldn't have airplanes if property didn't exist. Anyone could just walk away with parts off the airplane if they felt like it. And in fact that's exactly what happens if you leave an airplane unprotected for too long.
Hydroelectric dams would be impossible. You couldn't even have light bulbs or computers because their production methods require so much coordinated effort as well as protection from theft and damage.
Without property, all you'd have are bands of foragers because without the ability to control access, any group efforts could be undone overnight by anyone.
I wasn't talking about about stuff you can walk off with, nor was the article author, nor was Proudhon in 1840. This is about the difference between owning things made my people versus owning people who make things.
Used to be that the people themselves were property, then it was the machines they used, now it's some abstraction related to shares and companies, but it's all the same: what you're doing belongs to me not because I bought it from you but because of something to do with my position in society as it relates to yours.
> Property is the only way that we can build complex things.
This assertion needs to be substantiated, even if it is true. You give an example of how property "allows us to build complex things", but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that.
> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that.
You can’t prove a negative, so the onus is actually on you to show an example of a working alternative that does not rely on property.
And it has been tried in the 20th century. Several times, in fact. Despite all the industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union (which saved them the resources to do the research themselves) and the slave labor of people who spoke or wrote about the “wrong” ideas (which surplus was given to the rest of the population), ordinary people in the USSR had much worse lives than those in the West.
Yes, it did[1]! Because they rather quickly discovered that you can’t build complex things without it. Which brings us back round to the original point!
[1] But… they did make a go of it without property before discovering that it wouldn’t work. It turns out (shockingly!) that indentured serfs (who make the food) like the idea of land reform when it means they own the land. But they don’t like it so much when it means nobody owns the land. And when they are not happy then you have no food. And then those quotes about “x meals until y” start to have some salience. And then you start to think about the most effective way to use the number of bullets you have on hand (which is smaller than the number of mouths you need to feed).
Fine. It's the only way we know of that unlocks the potential of building complex things. If you know of an alternative that is better, please tell us!
Please look up the difference between private property and personal property. When people decry "property is theft", they're not talking about personal property, they're talking about private property.
Also, socialist states with advanced economies built airplanes, hydroelectric dams and all kinds of complex things. This is a joke of an argument. Say what you will about the living conditions, fairness, corruption or other issues with socialist states, but to pretend they "didn't build complex things" is ridiculous when you look up the number of scientific achievements made first by the USSR.
The person who coined the "Property is theft" quote (Proudhon if I recall) clearly made a distinction between capital-p Property and personal possession. And I think most regular people do, too.
I don't necessarily think of my stocks and bonds in my retirement funds in the same category as my toothbrush, suit jacket, or even my house or garden or whatever.
Classical liberalism and its descendants want to blur the distinction between the two. And you're welcome to adopt that view. But you shouldn't assume there aren't legitimate challenges to that point of view.
Proudhon himself wasn't terrible coherent. Marx I think clarified the distinction between dominance and control of capital and production vs personal private property better.
From a certain perspective, capitalism has been the process of enclosing things that were once common, or could be common, into "private" property. And despite the rhetoric of free exchange and liberty, it has mainly done this by force and coercion since the acts of enclosure and the age of colonialism until now.
My 6 acres of "private property" that my house sits on here was acquired mainly by force from its prior inhabitants two centuries ago. What does that do its status -- and to me -- now?
> my house sits on here was acquired mainly by force from its prior inhabitants two centuries ago.
This argument can be used for practically any piece of earth, it's nonsensical to fixate on it.
The issue has always been that capital (and it's quiet sibling power) can compound itself endlessly absent any checks against it. Societal unification against power and wealth consolidation should be the same as it would be against a plague or cancer in a body.
If you're trying to argue "Group X should own it instead of Group Y" then you're right - there is no good argument to fix any particular Group X - there's only special pleading. Why should it be the group who controlled it in 1600 AD, not the group who controlled it in 1600 BC or the group who controls it right now?
But there are other philosophies that don't have this problem. Philosophies where there's no notion of ownership at all, or ownership is by the entirety of humanity/the world (which makes it meaningless), and one person can only borrow something for an extended period of time. This is how a lot of native peoples viewed land, which makes sense since it cannot be created or destroyed. Or philosophies where, for example, all humans collectively own all land and houses, but it's very practical to uniquely assign one human to each house, but there's nothing special about that connection, and it doesn't give the rights to, say, hold that object hostage for money. (This is how socialists view toothbrushes, I'm told.)
I'm not fixating on it really. My point is just that classical liberal arguments about free exchange and the market and property don't hold up to historical scrutiny.
My point is you can't form an ethical framework around property as intrinsic right because really property is less "theft" than it is power, so you end up at the end of the argument having to actually defend might makes right as your world view. (Which is why I see the logical end point of radical libertarianism as being a kind of fascism.)
Capitalism is an incredibly efficient machine. All that is solid melts, etc. etc. It is beautiful in its own way. I agree about the compounding. I suspect we mostly agree generally.
> My point is you can't form an ethical framework around property as intrinsic right because really property is less "theft" than it is power, so you end up at the end of the argument having to actually defend might makes right as your world view.
Personally, I'm thinking the whole point of libertarianism is to obscure a genuine belief that might makes right on behalf of some people who have a lot of might, and sell it to a bunch of rubes.
> (Which is why I see the logical end point of radical libertarianism as being a kind of fascism.)
That's especially clear with things like "anarcho-capitalism," where it's obvious that the kind of social relationships its proponents go on and on about at book-length are impossibly unstable and wouldn't last a nonosecond before decaying into something like feudalism.
