tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2197051945822486684.post3277187054985708059..comments2024-03-29T05:05:01.273+11:00Comments on Thinking Out Aloud: What is this thing called property?Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00305933404442191098noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2197051945822486684.post-51123094347507520812012-05-23T17:31:00.206+10:002012-05-23T17:31:00.206+10:00(1) If property requires "sentience and aware...(1) If property requires "sentience and awareness of rules" then it is not created by labour; at the very least it requires labour and something else. The later epistemic point (we acknowledge property that we have no idea how you required) perhaps needs to be cited to complete the point. <br /><br />(2) Surely mutual constraint is ethical, or at least at the heart of ethics. Your examples seem to rely on the acknowledgement being suspended, which hardly rebuts my point.Lorenzohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00305933404442191098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2197051945822486684.post-28032579585522052022012-05-23T08:06:31.939+10:002012-05-23T08:06:31.939+10:00> This is nonsense. Animals engage in “mixing t...> This is nonsense. Animals engage in “mixing their labour” with things all the time, they do not thereby create property.<br /><br />Yes, but animals engage in killing each other all the time as well, and they do not thereby commit murder.<br /><br />Human concepts require sentience and awareness of the rules.<br /><br />When an action takes place we regard it as either human caused (in which case it has a moral content) or an "act of God" (in which case it does not).<br /><br />Thus, "animals don't create property by labor" is not a disproof of the maxim "labor creates property". You may - for the purposes of this sentence - be correct that "labor does not create property", but you have not yet proved it.<br /><br />> For once you have a concept of mutually acknowledged control of things, then you can engage in exchange. <br /><br />Yes, you can, but with out a moral, normative stance, we still haven't created property. I can acknowledge your control over a peach and you can acknowledge my control over an apple but <br /><br />(a) we have not yet created an ethical framework that allows you to walk away from the peach (thus temporarily surrendering active control) and retain the concept of property.<br /><br />(b) we have not yet created an ethical framework that prevents me from reaching out and taking your peach sans your permission. If "property" is nothing more than "control" you have LITERALLY defined a system based on "might makes right". After I take your peach, and push you away each time you attempt to reclaim it, do we not settle down into a new equilibrium where you acknowledge that I exert control over both the apple and the peach, and I acknowledge that you exert control over neither?<br /><br />I think you're on a good mission to try to debate at the roots before "mixing labor with land" gives birth to the labor theory of value, but I think you're going at it the wrong way.<br /><br />What ** I ** would say is that in a state of nature all things are without ownership, and mixing labor with matter only confers ownership in cases of unclaimed labor.<br /><br />Once you've claimed a branch, claimed a rock, knapped the rock into a knife and then used the knife to whittle the branch into a spoon, I can rent your spoon or knife for a few berries and do work with it, but it does not become mine.<br /><br />Further, I can see your example, claim my own previously unclaimed rock and stick, and then make a total hash of things and end up with a splintered rock and a mangled branch. I have, perhaps, created OWNERSHIP but I have not created VALUE.TJIChttp://tjic.comnoreply@blogger.com