Ariadne's Thread on Property
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On Property

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  Vera Speaking

Speaker The possibility of loss to non-owners is key here. They lose in two ways:

      • They lose when the Lockean proviso is no longer fulfilled. In other words, they lose when the good land or other resources have been taken and there is nothing left for others.

      • They lose because once the regime of private property in natural resources has taken hold, the possibility of organizing the control and use of resources in some other way has been lost.

Think what it would have meant for the peasants who have worked the fields and the men who have worked in the mines if some other form of economic organization had been the rule!! I'm thinking of an organization in which they had a larger share of control and profit.

Or consider the fact that in some countries the nation owns certain valuable resources. In Israel, for example, a person who owns land does not own the oil beneath it, if there is any. The nation owns that oil and can use it for the common good. In a libertarian regime private individuals would own the oil. There can be a huge difference in the outcome because of a difference like that in the way things are controlled. It could be especially important for the poor, depending on state policies. My point is that once a regime of strong private property rights is put in place, the non-owners lose the option to organize property differently. That's a major loss.

It seems to me that these considerations are fatal to the strong property rights that classical liberals and libertarians advocate. Furthermore, if those strong rights are established, the owners owe some sort of compensation to the non-owners because of the losses I've mentioned.

Let me just say this as well -- In my opinion, the whole idea of distributing natural resources on a first come first serve basis is absurd. We aren't talking here about handing out party favors or ice cream cones. We're talking about distributing the most important economic resources that a society has at its disposal. These are the resources on which people's lives depend. The distribution of these resources will decide the fate of most of the people involved. If we can't come up with something better than 'first occupancy' we're too stupid to breathe.



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