Re: On Property Ownership -- LIFEBOAT

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Date Posted: 12:03:31 07/18/00 Tue
Author: SwimmingUpstream
Subject: Re: On Property Ownership
In reply to: OWK 's message, "Re: On Property Ownership" on 12:02:28 07/18/00 Tue

Dear OWK,

Your question about what it is that motivates an investment of labor in the
land and your previous statements that private ownership of land is not
necessary to an individual in order for him to obtain material necessaries
ought to be pointing you in the direction of this idea: That beyond the very
limited scope of natural need for a domicile there is very little natural
need for an individual to exercise exclusive and continuous control of land.

The division of labor that exists in most societies is indicative of the
fact that rare is the individual who is wholly self-sufficient-- that is,
who personally produces everything he utilizes or consumes. In most
societies the adult individual works cooperatively and often collaboratively
on the land (or with material produced from the land), and it is this
cooperation that accounts for the increase of wealth that an individual may
acquire beyond that which he can acquire as an isolate. As John Locke
pointed out, once there is no longer "enough and as good" land left for
appropriation, the control of land is a matter of convention, and of the
legal frameworks granting legal PRIVILEGES of ownership. This is something
quite different from NATURAL RIGHT based on moral principle.

There is much to be said for the utility of convention and legal privileges,
and they ought not to be abandoned merely because they do not rest firmly on
moral principle. But they do not compel the assent of the intellect based on
a logic flowing from self-evident moral first principles.

Conventions rest on SOCIAL accords between persons that pre-date the LEGAL
FRAMEWORKS that are used to codify these conventions. This means that
anytime a community of persons finds a convention to be no longer mutually
and ADEQUATELY beneficial to them, they may abandon it without necessarily
violating either NATURAL RIGHTS or MORAL PRINCIPLES.

The means of abandonment ought to be as gentle as is practicable,
"evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary". And always it ought to be kept
in mind that the individual can act only for his own happiness, and never
for the happiness of others -- for the good of others, yes -- but not for
the happiness of others. The good that is community is a good shared by all
because of our shared nature, and the individual has an obligation to
himself to work for the good that is community because it is vital to his
happiness, and in working for that good he will be doing good for others.
But the individual's happiness can never be subordinate to the Common Good
which is community.

So far you have failed to provide a solid reasoned argument based on a
self-evident truth that supports absentee ownership as a NATURAL RIGHT, nor
large-scale property ownership by an individual as a NATURAL RIGHT, nor
charging others for the use of land one cannot work personally. I contend
these things are not natural rights, but rather legal privileges granted by
community assent, and I have provided a closely reasoned argument flowing
from a self-evident truth in support of my contention. When these privileges
no longer serve the community well, it is a NATURAL RIGHT to throw them off,
and to seek other guards for our true NATURAL RIGHTS.

Thank you for your efforts, and I look forward to your further efforts
should you make them.

Regards

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