Comment by aalleavitch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aalleavitch | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I would argue that there's an incredibly powerful force that drives the consolidation and centralization of systems in modern society: the wholly artificial legal concept of property. We are given a legal right to accumulate control over as large a swathe of material goods and organizational structures as we can within the confines of the law, and this ownership is backed by the promise of state violence should it be violated.

The concept of property, and the fact that our laws and government are built around protecting it, is the sole mechanism through which massive disparities in power are achieved and maintained in society. It centralizes wealth through avarice, making our stomachs unlimited in size. It also creates the dilemma of externalities, as we differentiate the value to us of the things we "own" versus the things we hold in common with others or that are "owned" by the state.

Property is also a entirely artificial concept. It takes the practical concept of use and possession and extends upon it to completely absurd extremes. It ties our society up in knots wasting a massive amount of human energy in the activity of determining and enforcing property ownership, and leads to incredibly convoluted structures in laws and markets, often leading to huge structural failures.

For instance, intellectual property law is completely absurd, on every level. It is an effort to force something that is fundamentally free and infinitely available to everyone to become scarce exclusively so that we can properly ensure it fits into a property-based system. The amount we lose as a society from the fact that all software is not simply open source is incalculable.

>wholly artificial legal concept of property

Property is an informational concept more than a legal one. The concept of "mine" is present at a very young age, and clearly present in various animal groups. The data-structure is a simple association of objects with an owner, and for the substrate animals use only their brains, but humans use paper and, increasingly, bits. Banks and local government agencies keep the most official of these records, but informal records count too. (My son may think my daughter's blanket is his, but she will protest loudly and vehemently, and there is not really a formal reason for her claim).

concept of property...is the sole mechanism through which massive disparities in power are achieved and maintained

Property is a necessary, but insufficient condition for inequality. Property is how you keep score; the reason some players win far more than others is not entirely known, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with personality, talent, and luck than the jurisprudence of property rights.

It's not clear what a society without property would be like, BTW.

> Property is an informational concept more than a legal one. The concept of "mine" is present at a very young age, and clearly present in various animal groups.

All money and contracts indicating ownership of property mean nothing without either the consent of all involved or the backing of violence (mind you, our system very much relies on violence, we have people who are empowered to enact violence to enforce property law).

There's also a huge distinction between possession (physically having and using something) and owning it (having the enforceable legal right to control how it is used).

And while this concept of control/territoriality might be naturally present in human psychological development, so are things like trying to use violence to resolve disputes and other asocial aspects of human psychology that we actively discourage. The idea that we should use property as the basis for how society functions is something we seldom interrogate regarding whether it creates the kind of world we actually want.

> It's not clear what a society without property would be like, BTW.

Try reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. It really opened up my mind regarding the way our society is shaped by the idea of ownership.

The "natural" concept of property is much more narrow than our abstract notions. Animals, and human societies before they develop the abstract property theory, generally define property through possession or use - your house is yours because you live in it, that sort of thing. You can't establish an association simply by saying, "this is mine". This puts a natural limit on how much property can be accumulated.

Once you have abstract property as a concept, it's all about tracking the association in and of itself, separated from any physical manifestations of it (possession and use). Your house is yours not because you live in it, but because there's a title on it in your name, and a record in the registry. This makes it possible for one person to have ten houses, live in one, and rent the rest out to those who don't have any. If they accumulate the rent, they can eventually buy more houses, and it becomes a positive feedback loop.

But there's no particular reason why any given society has to adopt such a system of property, and not all societies did or do today - especially with respect to land and other immovables. This can often be seen in the colonial history, where the colonizers expected to be able to buy and sell things that the indigenous population didn't even consider property, or at least the kind of property that could be bought and sold. More often than not, the colonizing power would then declare that in the absence of a "proper" abstract property claim on e.g. the land, it's there for the taking of anybody who is willing to make one. And that is how we ended up in the present situation, where that system of abstract property rights is mostly enforced throughout the globe - but I don't see how it follows that it's a system that is inevitable for any human society.

"But do you have a flag?"

The concept of property is highly important in terms of giving us a framework by which we can resolve conflicts over who has legitimate use or possession of things. Without the idea of property, you devolve into a might makes right scenario where the strong or sneaky can steal from anyone without recourse. That doesn't sounds like a society anyone would feel motivated or happy living in. Why try when someone can just steal away your hard work? It's why countries or communities that have gone down the road to socialism and communism have always invariably collapsed. Every anti-property proponent I have ever asked about where the vague lines of what counts as legitimate "use" or "possession" has never been able to provide a clear and consistent answer. Where does my use or possession end? For example, I trade two sheep for a bicycle which I need for transportation to get to my job. Can someone come along and take my bicycle any time I'm not using it? If so, how is this theft justified?

As a side note I'd like to add that I agree with your assessment of intellectual property. The arguments defending IP law are indeed weak, but when it comes to real things like money, goods, and land, property rights are a necessity to keep humanity from devolving to barbarism.

> Where does my use or possession end? For example, I trade two sheep for a bicycle which I need for transportation to get to my job. Can someone come along and take my bicycle any time I'm not using it? If so, how is this theft justified?

You either work out an agreement with the people who might take it that a bicycle be available for you after work or you just go and find another bicycle. It's funny you say this because bicycle and scooter sharing systems have become incredibly popular, because it's far more efficient than everyone having to keep their own vehicle for the long amount of time that they're not being used. Imagine if we didn't need to have parking for storing so many vehicles. The fact that you need a vehicle to be in a certain place at a certain time is a logistical issue that needs to be solved, but owning it as property that everyone else is excluded from using is not nearly the only solution.

If we structured society such that the accumulation of material wealth was infeasible, there would be far less need to worry about people going around and taking things they didn't legitimately need.

> It's why countries or communities that have gone down the road to socialism and communism have always invariably collapsed.

I'd argue this statement is completely unsupported. There has been no form of communism that hasn't been embattled by attacks from established capitalist systems at their outset, causing them to either consolidate into authoritarian centralized regimes in order to survive or to get wiped out in their infancy, and this centralization is what leads to failure. Socialist nations who have transitioned smoothly from capitalism have done so very successfully (take Norway). This may say bad things about the ability for a property-less system to survive in a capitalism-dominated system, but it doesn't say whether it would be capable of staying stable and successful in a less hostile environment.

> Socialist nations who have transitioned smoothly from capitalism have done so very successfully (take Norway).

Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty certain Norway (and other Scandinavian countries) are not socialist and more of a social democracy, where they simply provide a large social safety net through heavy taxation.

I believe they still very much are in favor of a free market economy.

The sovereign wealth fund, which is the real champion of Norway's current situation, is the result of nationalizing their natural oil reserves. Effectively, making the natural resources of Norway the property of all the Norwegian people.

> If we structured society such that the accumulation of material wealth was infeasible, there would be far less need to worry about people going around and taking things they didn't legitimately need.

Is there anything to stop people from just moving into and taking over my house when I go out for the day?

Also, I like having a car set up exactly how I like it, with music I like, the mirrors where I left them, and also with a few things in it that I might need even rarely.

Call me selfish but I don't want to deal with a dirty public car that may or may not be available when I want it. All other public things are dirty and unpleasant, I don't see why shared cars or bicycles would be any different.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com