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What are property rights? How do they begin?

vasuderatorrent

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This is a topic that really puzzles me. Living in a society that is heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian principles we probably take property rights for granted and give it little thought.

When someone wants your computer, they are forbidden from taking it for their own use no matter how bad they want it. Why is that? Well. It's yours. It belongs to you. It is immoral, unethical, illegal, disappointing and annoying for you to steal it. Why is it yours? The owner of the store gave it to you in exchange for pieces of paper or a credit card or debit card swipe or a promissory not which is a manifestation of your present or future labor which you have traded in exchange for the computer. Who gave the computer to them? Well. They obtain the parts to build the computer through voluntary transactions with their previous owner. That argument works really good until you take it to the point of land. The land is where all natural resources originate. These natural resources are responsible for every single non-living thing in existence. Even the living things can be considered a natural resource. Who owns the property and why? That's easy. The person holding the deed.

This is where it gets tricky. When did the first transaction of real property occur? Who was the first entity to own the land and what was their justification of ownership? It seems like the concept of property rights had to be violated in order to begin the tradition of property rights.

This is where our discussion begins.

Any thoughts?
 
Right to land by conquest or occupation has been recognized since ancient times. Where no one else is occupying land or otherwise making use of it, anyone who wants to has a right to that land.

That's why I've always thought the claim that whites "stole" the Indians' land is simplistic. How few people can occupy an area of land, and how temporarily or sporadically, and still have a valid claim to it? In the West, especially, vast areas were not being permanently inhabited by anyone.

If a group of one hundred people wandered around an area of one thousand square miles all their lives, stopping for a few weeks here and there, maybe never visiting the same place twice, or even not visiting some parts of the area at all, and never improving any of the land through agriculture or building, and yet claimed to own the one thousand square miles, how valid would their claim be?

If some parts of the area had such fertile soil or such good timber that even a single square mile there, if well managed, could yield large amounts of food or lumber, should no one else have a right to use even that much of it for those purposes? What if people nearby needed food or shelter?
 
At the dawn of the agricultural revolution (~14k yo), when man first discovered that seeds could be used to grow food, as noted in the Bible ~"getting too close to God" (the ability to apparently create life), mankind was suddenly able to support huge families and without constant migration. This lead to a population explosion, a spreading out of people as large families expanded ever outward, resulting in a diversification of language brought about by geographic distance and a sedentary life. The tower of Babel was agricultural knowledge.

We continued to expand with a policy of 'finders keepers' (and war spoils) until all the frontiers were occupied.
 
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Right to land by conquest or occupation has been recognized since ancient times. Where no one else is occupying land or otherwise making use of it, anyone who wants to has a right to that land.

Yes, that is the traditional western view of how one comes to own land that was previously unowned. Another view is that such land belongs to the commons, so therefore no individual can come to own it simply by moving in and making use of it. Instead, they would need the approval of the people and be subject to whatever terms and conditions the people imposed in order for the transaction to be completed.
 
We continued to expand with a policy of 'finders keepers' (and war spoils) until all the frontiers were occupied.

Right to land by conquest or occupation has been recognized since ancient times. Where no one else is occupying land or otherwise making use of it, anyone who wants to has a right to that land.

One time I ran into a Libertarian in the forums. He claimed he was from some special strain of thought that believes real property should never be owned by individuals because natural resources are so chaotically distributed by nature. He argued that real property is owned by the conquering nation thus all materials in their raw form are owned by the state collectively on behalf of all citizens of that nation.
It seems contrary to everything I know about Libertarianism. :shrug:

Anybody ever heard an idea like that in this forum?
 
One time I ran into a Libertarian in the forums. He claimed he was from some special strain of thought that believes real property should never be owned by individuals because natural resources are so chaotically distributed by nature. He argued that real property is owned by the conquering nation thus all materials in their raw form are owned by the state collectively on behalf of all citizens of that nation.
It seems contrary to everything I know about Libertarianism. :shrug:

Anybody ever heard an idea like that in this forum?

That 'strain' would be anarchism.
 
Yes, that is the traditional western view of how one comes to own land that was previously unowned. Another view is that such land belongs to the commons, so therefore no individual can come to own it simply by moving in and making use of it. Instead, they would need the approval of the people and be subject to whatever terms and conditions the people imposed in order for the transaction to be completed.

That's what happened. Sons were not permitted by the community to just go grab whatever they wanted. Land was distributed according to the rules of society. Later, in the western expansion of the US, land considered "unoccupied" was still distributed according to regulations. Land expansion was never really a matter of chaos. For example, female rights to land were severely limited until recently.
 
Yes, that is the traditional western view of how one comes to own land that was previously unowned. Another view is that such land belongs to the commons, so therefore no individual can come to own it simply by moving in and making use of it. Instead, they would need the approval of the people and be subject to whatever terms and conditions the people imposed in order for the transaction to be completed.

That traditional western view is the one that counts, since it informs the laws in this country. The other view is of interest chiefly to Mr. Garrett Hardin and leftist professors who require their students to suffer through reading his "The Tragedy of the Commons."

Awfully rude of Francis Drake to have landed up by San Francisco and left a plaque claiming the land in the name of the Queen. If he'd been a good little communist, he would have asked for someone's approval--except that there was no one around. If there had been, though, I'm sure pointing the ship's guns at them would have secured their approval pretty quickly.
 
One time I ran into a Libertarian in the forums. He claimed he was from some special strain of thought that believes real property should never be owned by individuals because natural resources are so chaotically distributed by nature. He argued that real property is owned by the conquering nation thus all materials in their raw form are owned by the state collectively on behalf of all citizens of that nation.
It seems contrary to everything I know about Libertarianism. :shrug:

Anybody ever heard an idea like that in this forum?

No--but I've heard plenty of similar collectivist drivel on forums like these. The people here who believe in collective, national ownership of property often seem to masquerade as libertarians, apparently to hide their communist views.
 
This is a topic that really puzzles me. Living in a society that is heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian principles we probably take property rights for granted and give it little thought.

When someone wants your computer, they are forbidden from taking it for their own use no matter how bad they want it. Why is that? Well. It's yours. It belongs to you. It is immoral, unethical, illegal, disappointing and annoying for you to steal it. Why is it yours? The owner of the store gave it to you in exchange for pieces of paper or a credit card or debit card swipe or a promissory not which is a manifestation of your present or future labor which you have traded in exchange for the computer. Who gave the computer to them? Well. They obtain the parts to build the computer through voluntary transactions with their previous owner. That argument works really good until you take it to the point of land. The land is where all natural resources originate. These natural resources are responsible for every single non-living thing in existence. Even the living things can be considered a natural resource. Who owns the property and why? That's easy. The person holding the deed.

This is where it gets tricky. When did the first transaction of real property occur? Who was the first entity to own the land and what was their justification of ownership? It seems like the concept of property rights had to be violated in order to begin the tradition of property rights.

This is where our discussion begins.

Any thoughts?

Every chain of transactions (which are just continuous exchanges of liquidity - you trade your liquid cash for an illiquid computer) eventually results assets being stripped from the earth. As you say, take it far enough and you end up coming to land. Even human labor requires some kind of resource to work with. The 'original' transaction then, is not between a person and a person but between a person and the Earth, whether it's chopping timber, hunting game or building an oil rig.

Obviously the Earth cannot speak for itself when it comes to this transaction, it's inherently one sided. What that means is that without the ability to choose who it will make a trade with, the first person who can say 'I am making (or will make in the future) a transaction with this particular part of the Earth' is the one who gets to make a claim to that land. Hence right to land by conquest or occupation.

This used to work fine, but we are now realizing that the Earth is finite. There is only so much land/natural resources, something that we've only figured out recently in the grand scheme of things. One consequence of this is conflict over who gets to make that first claim to land. Another (although not as much the subject of this topic) is that a finite Earth from which all transactions eventually stem from cannot support ever growing consumption, and eventually the earth won't be able to keep up with all of the one sided transactions we make with it.
 
At the dawn of the agricultural revolution (~14k yo), when man first discovered that seeds could be used to grow food, as noted in the Bible ~"getting too close to God" (the ability to apparently create life), mankind was suddenly able to support huge families and without constant migration. This lead to a population explosion, a spreading out of people as large families expanded ever outward, resulting in a diversification of language brought about by geographic distance and a sedentary life. The tower of Babel was agricultural knowledge.

We continued to expand with a policy of 'finders keepers' (and war spoils) until all the frontiers were occupied.

This is kind of interesting because there's a lot of research that indicates that a lot of people didn't want this. It was more...forced on them. Not just by other humans, but also by circumstance.

The first idea of "property rights" started, I guess, the first time people, having already decided that they could harness the power of the sun via working the earth, decided that the work they had already put into the ground entitled them to have the right to reap the rewards. Of course, there wasn't a real "right" at all until some generally respected (at least within the confines of its own power) authority decided that they would protect that claim by threat of force or force itself.

Every chain of transactions (which are just continuous exchanges of liquidity - you trade your liquid cash for an illiquid computer) eventually results assets being stripped from the earth.

I'll take it a step further and distill it down to the sun, really.
 
I don't have any studies to point to. But it has occurred to me that at some point a good hunter who had more meat than he needed met a good gatherer who had more potatoes and beans than he needed made some mutually beneficial trades. In order for this enterprise to work each would have to recognize when the hunter killed the beast and when the gatherer picked or dug the vegetables that action and effort resulted in ownership. It wouldn't be much of a stretch from there for the gatherer and hunter to claim property to raise their meat and vegetables or to use excess property as means to trade, purchase items of need and desire.
 
This is kind of interesting because there's a lot of research that indicates that a lot of people didn't want this. It was more...forced on them. Not just by other humans, but also by circumstance.

The first idea of "property rights" started, I guess, the first time people, having already decided that they could harness the power of the sun via working the earth, decided that the work they had already put into the ground entitled them to have the right to reap the rewards. Of course, there wasn't a real "right" at all until some generally respected (at least within the confines of its own power) authority decided that they would protect that claim by threat of force or force itself.

I would agree that land ownership is not a natural social construct (a natural right), as there is not universal expectation and agreement of such.
 
That traditional western view is the one that counts, since it informs the laws in this country. The other view is of interest chiefly to Mr. Garrett Hardin and leftist professors who require their students to suffer through reading his "The Tragedy of the Commons."

Awfully rude of Francis Drake to have landed up by San Francisco and left a plaque claiming the land in the name of the Queen. If he'd been a good little communist, he would have asked for someone's approval--except that there was no one around. If there had been, though, I'm sure pointing the ship's guns at them would have secured their approval pretty quickly.

You know, I feel the same way about the little strip of the Hudson River I live on. A huge chunk of it is unused and unoccupied and I really think I should be able to lay a plaque down and declare it mine.

BTW, I wonder what would have happened if it was Mrs. Drake who wanted to go sailing around claiming land? I'm sure they would have let her do that, don't you think?
 
Right to land by conquest or occupation has been recognized since ancient times. Where no one else is occupying land or otherwise making use of it, anyone who wants to has a right to that land.
No, that's a Colonial-era invention. Ancient societies didn't expand into unoccupied or low-density territory because no one was there; they attacked areas that were already occupied, because that's how agrarian societies frequently increased their wealth and influence. E.g. in its earliest years, Rome didn't expand into barren areas of Rome; they attacked their neighbors, such as the Etruscans.

In particular, during the Colonial era it was used to deprive indigenous populations of the territory they inhabited. As far as the Europeans were concerned, "no one" was living on or cultivating that land. The reality is that the various tribes were living there, and did cultivate much of that land, just in a way the Europeans didn't understand or recognize. (E.g. they often used companion planting, which the Europeans didn't recognize as cultivated areas.)


That's why I've always thought the claim that whites "stole" the Indians' land is simplistic. How few people can occupy an area of land,
and how temporarily or sporadically, and still have a valid claim to it? In the West, especially, vast areas were not being permanently inhabited by anyone.
Yes, the various Indian tribes went to war with European interlopers because they didn't like the color of their shirts. :roll:

How is that supposed to work, exactly? Anyone can walk up and grab land, if the population density is sufficiently low?


If a group of one hundred people wandered around an area of one thousand square miles all their lives, stopping for a few weeks here and there, maybe never visiting the same place twice, or even not visiting some parts of the area at all, and never improving any of the land through agriculture or building, and yet claimed to own the one thousand square miles, how valid would their claim be?
That's exactly the kind of rationalizations the Colonists used. In their view, the "needs" of starving European peasants (who probably could have been supported by more equitable distributions of agricultural resources) justified the seizure of, well, the entire continent.

Why does someone need to "improve" the land in order to have a valid claim to it? If I have a farm, and a developer wants to put a bunch of McMansions on my land, does that give them the right to seize my property?

We hold large swaths of land in trust as state and national parks. Is that claim "invalid" because it isn't being used for agriculture or skyscrapers?

Why would we apply your standards only to indigenous populations, and not to farmers of European descent?
 
This is kind of interesting because there's a lot of research that indicates that a lot of people didn't want this. It was more...forced on them. Not just by other humans, but also by circumstance.

The first idea of "property rights" started, I guess, the first time people, having already decided that they could harness the power of the sun via working the earth, decided that the work they had already put into the ground entitled them to have the right to reap the rewards. Of course, there wasn't a real "right" at all until some generally respected (at least within the confines of its own power) authority decided that they would protect that claim by threat of force or force itself.



I'll take it a step further and distill it down to the sun, really.

Groups who adopted sedentary agriculture saw populations increase until "their" land couldn't support them. Then they took more land from others by force. They were generally successful because stored food allowed them to fight 24/7 while their hunter/gatherer opponents had to stop to find food.

Groups from areas rich in domesticable plants and animals had a massive advantage over groups that didn't. Europeans vs new world peoples for example.

Land was originally communal as was what that land produced. Eventually problems developed and the food was locked up and doled out, creating "paid" labor and the management class. Land ownership followed, with the lions share of its output going to the owner.
 
No, that's a Colonial-era invention. Ancient societies didn't expand into unoccupied or low-density territory because no one was there; they attacked areas that were already occupied, because that's how agrarian societies frequently increased their wealth and influence. E.g. in its earliest years, Rome didn't expand into barren areas of Rome; they attacked their neighbors, such as the Etruscans.

In particular, during the Colonial era it was used to deprive indigenous populations of the territory they inhabited. As far as the Europeans were concerned, "no one" was living on or cultivating that land. The reality is that the various tribes were living there, and did cultivate much of that land, just in a way the Europeans didn't understand or recognize. (E.g. they often used companion planting, which the Europeans didn't recognize as cultivated areas.)



Yes, the various Indian tribes went to war with European interlopers because they didn't like the color of their shirts. :roll:

How is that supposed to work, exactly? Anyone can walk up and grab land, if the population density is sufficiently low?



That's exactly the kind of rationalizations the Colonists used. In their view, the "needs" of starving European peasants (who probably could have been supported by more equitable distributions of agricultural resources) justified the seizure of, well, the entire continent.

Why does someone need to "improve" the land in order to have a valid claim to it? If I have a farm, and a developer wants to put a bunch of McMansions on my land, does that give them the right to seize my property?

We hold large swaths of land in trust as state and national parks. Is that claim "invalid" because it isn't being used for agriculture or skyscrapers?

Why would we apply your standards only to indigenous populations, and not to farmers of European descent?

A big part of the "empty land" thing had to do with plagues that wiped out the advanced Mississippi valley tribes who burned their wooden cities to stem the plagues between first contact and later settlers.
 
Groups who adopted sedentary agriculture saw populations increase until "their" land couldn't support them. Then they took more land from others by force. They were generally successful because stored food allowed them to fight 24/7 while their hunter/gatherer opponents had to stop to find food.

Kinda. In a small enough population, hunting and gathering seems to have supplied more free time, not less. I say seem because the research still isn't conclusive. Regardless, yes, as populations grew to sizes that could only be created in the first place by way of the agricultural revolution...obviously it continued to need agriculture to sustain it. That much is clear.

Groups from areas rich in domesticable plants and animals had a massive advantage over groups that didn't. Europeans vs new world peoples for example.

Yes.

Land was originally communal as was what that land produced. Eventually problems developed and the food was locked up and doled out, creating "paid" labor and the management class. Land ownership followed, with the lions share of its output going to the owner.

This, not so much. It's not hard to imagine the people that worked hardest on a piece of land felt that they were more entitled to the benefits of the land than those that didn't as hard or didn't as all. I guess that could be the "problems" you described, but it's not so much as the land was locked up so much as the strongest force, with the greatest threat of force to lord against others in order to keep them in line, took over control of it so as to defend it. Now, once a person wielding "actual" power, ie the power to force others into doing things physically, if need be, gets infirm and wants to pass this power onto his weaker prodigy...well, that's how we ended up with familial power structures, which have waxed and waned throughout human history but basically still exist now.
 
Kinda. In a small enough population, hunting and gathering seems to have supplied more free time, not less. I say seem because the research still isn't conclusive. Regardless, yes, as populations grew to sizes that could only be created in the first place by way of the agricultural revolution...obviously it continued to need agriculture to sustain it. That much is clear.

I don't think that saving a few hours a day for a particular individual was all that important. What was critical was the agriculture allowed people to create a surplus of food, particularly grains which are amenable to storage. Because there was a surplus, there was no need for everyone to work at producing food. Some could devote their time to other pursuits

Like soldiering. It's impossible to have a trained, full time army without a surplus of storable food.
 
The origin of property rights? A long ago ancestor lifting up his hind leg and pissing on a bush.

We have been "owning" things since long before we were homo sapiens and long before we had the capacity to grasp any such notions.
 
No, that's a Colonial-era invention.

That is not accurate. The right to acquire property by conquest was well established in English common law long before there were any American colonies.

Anyone can walk up and grab land, if the population density is sufficiently low?

Of course. That is just what has been done with large areas of Antarctica.

If I have a farm, and a developer wants to put a bunch of McMansions on my land, does that give them the right to seize my property?

A person may acquire another person's land by adverse possession, but only under certain conditions. Someone would have had to been occupying your land openly, with your knowledge and against your interests, in a way that excluded you from it, and have done it continuously--usually for twenty years.
 
When someone wants your computer, they are forbidden from taking it for their own use no matter how bad they want it. Why is that?
I'm not sure this is a universal attitude. I suspect that more communal societies don't have such Western ideas about property.


This is where it gets tricky. When did the first transaction of real property occur?
That depends on what piece of land you're talking about.

If you go back early enough, obviously you'd have the initial settlers. Since those times, many sections of land have been seized by force. That doesn't always displace populations, but it can often scramble what we would regard as ownership.

For example, in theory we might think of the Gauls as occupying most of what we now call France. But most of the land was considered to be "owned" by Roman elites, who slowly became feudal lords, who attacked each other on a semi-regular basis for several centuries (and in some areas were taken over by English or Germans or others), and who knows what happened after the French Revolution and subsequent turmoil.

We should also keep in mind that lots of societies don't have such a highly individualized concept of land rights as we do today. Nomadic tribes didn't view land as something they "owned." Communalist societies didn't divvy up chunks of property and issued titles. For the pre-Diaspora Jews, land wasn't something you should buy or sell or trade; it was a religious and family obligation to care for that territory.

Figuring out when the earliest relevant land transaction happened will vary based on what territory you're talking about....
 
Kinda. In a small enough population, hunting and gathering seems to have supplied more free time, not less. I say seem because the research still isn't conclusive. Regardless, yes, as populations grew to sizes that could only be created in the first place by way of the agricultural revolution...obviously it continued to need agriculture to sustain it. That much is clear.



Yes.



This, not so much. It's not hard to imagine the people that worked hardest on a piece of land felt that they were more entitled to the benefits of the land than those that didn't as hard or didn't as all. I guess that could be the "problems" you described, but it's not so much as the land was locked up so much as the strongest force, with the greatest threat of force to lord against others in order to keep them in line, took over control of it so as to defend it. Now, once a person wielding "actual" power, ie the power to force others into doing things physically, if need be, gets infirm and wants to pass this power onto his weaker prodigy...well, that's how we ended up with familial power structures, which have waxed and waned throughout human history but basically still exist now.

This period has always fascinated me so I've read a lot about it.

The progression I was speaking of went something like this:

People stop wandering, settle down and start growing food.(fishing groups settled down first).

Food must be stored for the winter. Pests are a problem. Its easier to build one storehouse. Remember hunter gatherer groups were generally communal, so early agricultural groups were too. Then one winter the food ran out and everybody noticed the people who loved right next to the storehouse were suspisciously fat. Further, some were lazy and larger populations tend to limit social pressure to contribute. These factors led to the food being locked up and doled out. Which created work for "pay" and the bean counters (literally) and the management class to determine how much each person got and then how much work was required to get ones "dole".

This was the birth of our current system of "property". And the management class. With all their benefits and drawbacks. (The guy who doled out the food of course deserved extra for his efforts so he could keep his wife happy, etc. soldiers became necessary, etc.)
 
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