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Control of streams of income from selling reproductions of something is clearly also zero-sum, and much physical property is non-rival. If I don't pay a toll on

Control of streams of income from selling reproductions of something is clearly also zero-sum, and much physical property is non-rival. If I don't pay a toll on your bridge, you still have a bridge (of course you may not build the bridge if you are unable to extract tolls from it, but the same arguments justified intellectual property laws). If I stay in your apartment when you're on holiday, you still have uninterrupted enjoyment of your apartment on your return: the only thing you have lost is a possible income stream from selling it to others. A freeholder isn't even allowed to enter apartments whose freehold he owns without permission of the leaseholder; and yet he has the property right to extract ground rent and maintenance fees from leaseholders. Modern world physical property rights - centred around permanent or fixed term tradable exclusive rights of economic exploitation - bear more resemblance to intellectual property rights than the relatively universal notion that people shouldn't have the stuff they're using taken away from them, as do the practical and moral arguments about people deserving fruits of their labour and being more productive when given exclusivity over them.

brookst 4y ago
You’ve conflated ownership and rent. Once we’re into second- and third-derivatives (like A paying B for the exclusive right to rent property owned by C), it’s all more complex and blurs the line between real property and IP. But at its heart, the concept of physical property ownership is fundamentally different from IP. The fact that there are hybrids doesn’t change that.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Most of "ownership" is the right to extract rent or deny others from using something. Arguments that the original owner now has the ability to use the thing and always did have no validity as a defence whatsoever against any sort of property crime, because modern ownership is defined by rules artificially enforcing exclusivity claims, not whether the original owner has the use of a thing. If property actually pertained to owners not being prevented from using things, property law would be a very short set of guidelines entirely approved by the author of Property is Theft. The fact that modern physical property law is - like IP - almost entirely about creating artificial restrictions on other people's use of stuff and the right to charge for its use obviously changes the concept that actually it's fundamentally different.

brookst 4y ago

You’ve conflated ownership and rent. Once we’re into second- and third-derivatives (like A paying B for the exclusive right to rent property owned by C), it’s all more complex and blurs the line between real property and IP. But at its heart, the concept of physical property ownership is fundamentally different from IP. The fact that there are hybrids doesn’t change that.

notahacker 4y ago
Most of "ownership" is the right to extract rent or deny others from using something. Arguments that the original owner now has the ability to use the thing and always did have no validity as a defence whatsoever against any sort of property crime, because modern ownership is defined by rules artificially enforcing exclusivity claims, not whether the original owner has the use of a thing. If property actually pertained to owners not being prevented from using things, property law would be a very short set of guidelines entirely approved by the author of Property is Theft. The fact that modern physical property law is - like IP - almost entirely about creating artificial restrictions on other people's use of stuff and the right to charge for its use obviously changes the concept that actually it's fundamentally different.