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I tend to think is neither of those, but meant very literally. For that reason I like it and I think it's an interesting subject. What is ownership after all?

I tend to think is neither of those, but meant very literally. For that reason I like it and I think it's an interesting subject. What is ownership after all? The universe does not seem to have any form of ownership embedded in it's fundamental laws. If ownership is a human construct, then it is only meaningful insofar as a group of humans agrees on it. I can stroll up to the White House and declare that I own it, but I'll struggle to convince a sufficient number of other people that this is true. If I can't assert my ownership, then I don't really own it, do I? It doesn't matter whether it is just, or fair (again - purely human constructs), ownership only matters if it can be enforced. Being a human construct, it is also by definition temporary. It is only valid as long as humans are around to enforce it, and humans are fleeting. Humanity might endure, but there's no reason to think we are going to be around for eternity. So it looks like ownership is not only temporary, but it is also fickle. People routinely disagree on ownership and are willing to kill- or be-killed for asserting their claims. It looks like neither the communists, nor the liberatarians are in the right. Things will be owned by whoever has more pointy sticks :D

robertlagrant 2y ago
> Things will be owned by whoever has more pointy sticks :D That sounds like the feudal or socialist systems. Isn't one of the points of modern democracies that we have the pointy sticks for outside invaders, and a legal system that replaces the system of internal-facing pointy sticks with an economic system and a justice system?
- krapp 2y ago
  No. All systems of law, regardless of their "democratic" nature, are based on the principle of the state's monopoly on violence, and that violence is always directed towards the citizenry. No matter how civil your society may seem, resistance to the state will eventually mean you get shot or beaten with truncheons.
  - short_sells_poo 2y ago
    Exactly. Democratic and highly civilized countries still enforce property rights with pointy sticks. They maintain their claim on their territory against outside invaders with the army, and internally they enforce the laws of ownership using the police.
noduerme 2y ago
It's not a human construct. If you have ever spent time around a cat, you can understand ownership completely without any legal constructs. What we as humans are somewhat proud of, or the definition of civilization, is that we spend most of our time trying to create systems to define boundaries and property rights without resorting to violence. Those systems can be fair and well-distributed or unfair and hereditary, or somewhere in-between; they inevitably hand over the violence to some arbiter or government (whether market-driven or communist dictatorship, it's the same in terms of a structure enforcing who gets what, even if the incentives and dynamics are skewed); but the point is that we code them into law so that any arbitrary cat can't just post up inside another cat's borders and terrorize the house. The point of PROPERTY writ large isn't the piracy or acts of violence that people here make it out to be. Property doesn't arise from the law. Legal frameworks arise from the existence of property. And legal frameworks are an unadorned good in a world without them, because normal, domestic, and peaceful life does not exist where laws don't exist.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> Things will be owned by whoever has more pointy sticks :D That sounds like the feudal or socialist systems. Isn't one of the points of modern democracies that we have the pointy sticks for outside invaders, and a legal system that replaces the system of internal-facing pointy sticks with an economic system and a justice system?

krapp 2y ago
No. All systems of law, regardless of their "democratic" nature, are based on the principle of the state's monopoly on violence, and that violence is always directed towards the citizenry. No matter how civil your society may seem, resistance to the state will eventually mean you get shot or beaten with truncheons.
- short_sells_poo 2y ago
  Exactly. Democratic and highly civilized countries still enforce property rights with pointy sticks. They maintain their claim on their territory against outside invaders with the army, and internally they enforce the laws of ownership using the police.

noduerme 2y ago

It's not a human construct. If you have ever spent time around a cat, you can understand ownership completely without any legal constructs. What we as humans are somewhat proud of, or the definition of civilization, is that we spend most of our time trying to create systems to define boundaries and property rights without resorting to violence. Those systems can be fair and well-distributed or unfair and hereditary, or somewhere in-between; they inevitably hand over the violence to some arbiter or government (whether market-driven or communist dictatorship, it's the same in terms of a structure enforcing who gets what, even if the incentives and dynamics are skewed); but the point is that we code them into law so that any arbitrary cat can't just post up inside another cat's borders and terrorize the house. The point of PROPERTY writ large isn't the piracy or acts of violence that people here make it out to be. Property doesn't arise from the law. Legal frameworks arise from the existence of property. And legal frameworks are an unadorned good in a world without them, because normal, domestic, and peaceful life does not exist where laws don't exist.