4 ms·

This isn't true. All settled agrarian societies need property rights, and allow for the accumulation of capital. You need to be assured the grain you grow will

This isn't true. All settled agrarian societies need property rights, and allow for the accumulation of capital. You need to be assured the grain you grow will be yours to eat. You also need to be assured that the grain you've stockpiled for the winter will not be redistributed to people who may be staving now, otherwise you'll starve in the winter. Everything else flows from here.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> all settled agrarian societies need property rights Perhaps, but the upthread discussion doesn’t hinge on merely the existence of property rights, but the very specific capitalist model of property rights, which obviously, not all settled agrarian societies have needed, since it is several millenia newer than settled agrarian societies are. Defenders of capitalism love to argue about the need for “property rights” and then just leap from there to “and, therefore, capitalism”.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism. The right to accumulate capital, and the freedom to voluntarily transact with others without outside interference is all that's needed to accumulate enormous wealth. There is no dismantling of capitalism without compromising either property rights (ownership of land/stuff) or individual liberty (labour regulation).
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism. No, one very specific model of property rights (plus no individual liberty not subsumed within that model) = capitalism. But, again, the capitalist model of property rights isn’t the only one, and the developed West, where capitalism first became dominant, has been drifting away from the capitalist model of property rights for about 100 years now. (While at the same time rejecting alternatives that much more stridently oppose the capitalist model that grew up in places that attempted to avoid capitalism entirely.)
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      Can you describe the difference between the "capitalist" model of property rights and the common law model? I wouldn't classify ancient Roman property law as fundamentally different from ours today, would you? Would you say that the ancient world practiced capitalism? Surely they had wealthy classes of merchants, landowners, bankers, etc. who accumulated capital and did stuff with it.
      - junofan 4y ago
        It’s just communist flim-flam.
ABCLAW 4y ago
I'm not going to discuss any of the tie-ins with capitalism, because frankly I don't care to, but I'm going to point out that as a historical note this is not an accurate representation of legal history. In fact it largely ignores it. Our current system of real property ownership is a result of adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments on land during the advent of industrialization. The 'fee' in fee simple is etyomologically derived from 'fief', a system in which land titles were granted to people in exchange for fealty and servility. Agrarian societies had significantly different needs and organized their affairs differently and they didn't starve during the winters. Except for those that did, like the settlers in iceland, who died from potentially too many property rights as landholdings became concentrated in the hands of a few small families which left their society brittle enough to be wiped out by inuit raids. Anyways, the naturalistic fallacy isn't good support for current property rights, which are about as artificial as any law gets.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  > adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments I would agree with the former, and not the latter. As soon as dispute resolution and contract negotiation became sufficiently formalized, and our societies became sufficiently nonviolent, a class of people emerges who are able to accumulate capital legitimately (merchants, bankers, landowners). This all happens prior to any sort of industrialization, and can rather be seen as a prerequisite for it. Nowhere is this more clear than in Edo Japan, which was hardly industrialized, yet saw the emergence of a wealthy merchant class due to the legal structures which protected their assets from arbitrary seizure and redistribution. Wealthy non-ruling classes also existed all over Europe prior to industrialization. > the naturalistic fallacy The assertion that property rights ought to exist isn't a naturalistic one. I was simply pointing out that property rights are hardly a new development in civilization. Property rights can be asserted morally, without any naturalism, by equating the outputs of one's labour with an extension of one's self. If you have produced something for yourself, with your own time and labour, it should be yours do dispense with as you see fit, in the same way that your body is. A claim over one's property must therefore be justified as though it were a claim over one's own person, and this rather reduces the scope of legitimate claims.
dublinben 4y ago
This is an ahistorical retelling of the development of property rights and capital. Agrarian societies existed for thousands of years[0], before the enclosure movement turned to commons into capital that could be privately owned.[1] [0] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol4/pp20-26 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol4/pp20-26 [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  I'm aware of enclosure, but it doesn't conflict with the notion of accumulated capital. Aside from precious metals, wealth in the agrarian world was often measured in fixed quantities of organic outputs - mostly grain, but also raw textile, etc. This is capital. It can be exchanged for goods, services, and real property. A 10th century merchant was a capitalist. He accumulated wealth and used it to expand his enterprise. This had a compounding effect and made some people very wealthy. Owning a fleet of trading ships is a business.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> all settled agrarian societies need property rights Perhaps, but the upthread discussion doesn’t hinge on merely the existence of property rights, but the very specific capitalist model of property rights, which obviously, not all settled agrarian societies have needed, since it is several millenia newer than settled agrarian societies are. Defenders of capitalism love to argue about the need for “property rights” and then just leap from there to “and, therefore, capitalism”.

thegrimmest 4y ago
Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism. The right to accumulate capital, and the freedom to voluntarily transact with others without outside interference is all that's needed to accumulate enormous wealth. There is no dismantling of capitalism without compromising either property rights (ownership of land/stuff) or individual liberty (labour regulation).
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism. No, one very specific model of property rights (plus no individual liberty not subsumed within that model) = capitalism. But, again, the capitalist model of property rights isn’t the only one, and the developed West, where capitalism first became dominant, has been drifting away from the capitalist model of property rights for about 100 years now. (While at the same time rejecting alternatives that much more stridently oppose the capitalist model that grew up in places that attempted to avoid capitalism entirely.)
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    Can you describe the difference between the "capitalist" model of property rights and the common law model? I wouldn't classify ancient Roman property law as fundamentally different from ours today, would you? Would you say that the ancient world practiced capitalism? Surely they had wealthy classes of merchants, landowners, bankers, etc. who accumulated capital and did stuff with it.
    - junofan 4y ago
      It’s just communist flim-flam.

ABCLAW 4y ago

I'm not going to discuss any of the tie-ins with capitalism, because frankly I don't care to, but I'm going to point out that as a historical note this is not an accurate representation of legal history. In fact it largely ignores it. Our current system of real property ownership is a result of adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments on land during the advent of industrialization. The 'fee' in fee simple is etyomologically derived from 'fief', a system in which land titles were granted to people in exchange for fealty and servility. Agrarian societies had significantly different needs and organized their affairs differently and they didn't starve during the winters. Except for those that did, like the settlers in iceland, who died from potentially too many property rights as landholdings became concentrated in the hands of a few small families which left their society brittle enough to be wiped out by inuit raids. Anyways, the naturalistic fallacy isn't good support for current property rights, which are about as artificial as any law gets.

thegrimmest 4y ago
> adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments I would agree with the former, and not the latter. As soon as dispute resolution and contract negotiation became sufficiently formalized, and our societies became sufficiently nonviolent, a class of people emerges who are able to accumulate capital legitimately (merchants, bankers, landowners). This all happens prior to any sort of industrialization, and can rather be seen as a prerequisite for it. Nowhere is this more clear than in Edo Japan, which was hardly industrialized, yet saw the emergence of a wealthy merchant class due to the legal structures which protected their assets from arbitrary seizure and redistribution. Wealthy non-ruling classes also existed all over Europe prior to industrialization. > the naturalistic fallacy The assertion that property rights ought to exist isn't a naturalistic one. I was simply pointing out that property rights are hardly a new development in civilization. Property rights can be asserted morally, without any naturalism, by equating the outputs of one's labour with an extension of one's self. If you have produced something for yourself, with your own time and labour, it should be yours do dispense with as you see fit, in the same way that your body is. A claim over one's property must therefore be justified as though it were a claim over one's own person, and this rather reduces the scope of legitimate claims.

dublinben 4y ago

This is an ahistorical retelling of the development of property rights and capital. Agrarian societies existed for thousands of years[0], before the enclosure movement turned to commons into capital that could be privately owned.[1] [0] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol4/pp20-26 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol4/pp20-26 [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure

thegrimmest 4y ago
I'm aware of enclosure, but it doesn't conflict with the notion of accumulated capital. Aside from precious metals, wealth in the agrarian world was often measured in fixed quantities of organic outputs - mostly grain, but also raw textile, etc. This is capital. It can be exchanged for goods, services, and real property. A 10th century merchant was a capitalist. He accumulated wealth and used it to expand his enterprise. This had a compounding effect and made some people very wealthy. Owning a fleet of trading ships is a business.