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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 a

by 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.

by ABCLAW 4y ago

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.