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The moral basis comes from how the majority have agreed to structure society. A family isn't legally allowed to go to an unoccupied piece of land, start cuttin

The moral basis comes from how the majority have agreed to structure society. A family isn't legally allowed to go to an unoccupied piece of land, start cutting down trees or making mud bricks into a shelter and stay there. We have divided up the land (a limited resource) into parcels of private ownership with government-enforced property rights. With that comes a moral responsibility to make sure that everyone can obtain reasonable shelter. On the other side, for the person that owns the land, they provide access to what they own (as per the legal system that society has agreed upon -- private transfer of property, the banking system, etc). Not only do they provide access, they also provide the service of upkeep to the dwelling, upkeep of fixtures and security (locks, access control, etc). So it isn't like they are sitting back and collecting an income from the air that other people breath.

pydry 6y ago
>We have divided up the land If you dig just a little deeper into precisely how this was done, it gets extremely ugly very fast. The only real argument for not resetting an inequitable distribution of land ownership is that the owners of unearned privilege have a habit of defending that privilege with extreme violence. The US invasion of Cuba subsequent to their land redistribution was one example of this.
chongli 6y ago
moral basis comes from how the majority have agreed to structure society That’s more of a rationalization than a moral foundation. The land we’re talking about (in North America), in a lot of cases, was stolen by means of violent force from the indigenous people who lived here before the arrival of European settlers. If we’re going to call that a moral basis, then we’re back to arguing the account of Thrasymachus [1] and might makes right. It’s a cynical take on justice, to be sure, but also a difficult one to counter. [1] https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/ https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/
- imgabe 6y ago
  If nobody can own anything, why did the indigenous people have any more right to it than the European settlers?

pydry 6y ago

>We have divided up the land If you dig just a little deeper into precisely how this was done, it gets extremely ugly very fast. The only real argument for not resetting an inequitable distribution of land ownership is that the owners of unearned privilege have a habit of defending that privilege with extreme violence. The US invasion of Cuba subsequent to their land redistribution was one example of this.

chongli 6y ago

moral basis comes from how the majority have agreed to structure society That’s more of a rationalization than a moral foundation. The land we’re talking about (in North America), in a lot of cases, was stolen by means of violent force from the indigenous people who lived here before the arrival of European settlers. If we’re going to call that a moral basis, then we’re back to arguing the account of Thrasymachus [1] and might makes right. It’s a cynical take on justice, to be sure, but also a difficult one to counter. [1] https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/ https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/

imgabe 6y ago
If nobody can own anything, why did the indigenous people have any more right to it than the European settlers?