Property rights are interesting to think about.
"This is my land!" someone may say.
Then, die and may not even be legally allowed to be buried on that land or be allowed access to resources if discovered.
Property rights and the rule of law help an economy, but land/ nature don't care and keep on going. Hmm...
There is no spoon? 😄
🧡🫂💜
It’s tempting to say that property rights are not a real thing and should not be considered to be.
I’d definitely say that property rights in an absolute sense (like you seem to allude to) don’t really exist. There’s always a state that has a higher level of claim. And then, at the international level it’s all very vague. Like the United States claims it owns New York - California. But in what sense is that claim legitimate?
Agree. Any claims' legitimacy to land, at the absolute sense, are weird when you think about it.
Property rights are fundamental to individuality are natural. Even in natural law, animals claim territory and defend it to the death. In some species, we see generations maintaining the same environment.
t’s no different than owning farmland and passing that to your children. There is nothing more natural.
The more interesting thought is having all things in common and the lack of personal property rights. We’ve tried it. It fails miserably every time. Resources are squandered and care for the environment is neglected. When everyone owns something, really, no one owns it. When no one owns it, someone must be forced to care for it which is why communism always turns authoritarian. By necessity, it must.
Right, it feels natural. Also, interesting you point out that it's like wild animals that fight to the death.
Also right that if no one owns it people are less likely to care for it.
Guess I'm wondering if it's a flaw in our DNA to currently be that way. Maybe we'll evolve? Maybe it was meant to stay that way?
Why would self preservation be a flaw in our dna? We derive our well-being from the land. Literally all of the wealth in the world is derived from the land. It feeds you, it clothes you, it provides all of the minerals and materials necessary for the modern world. Even the little computer in your hand.
Why wouldn’t you fight for your little piece of it? If you don’t have any, then you don’t have the ability to do any of the above for yourself.
You become a kept slave. Someone that works for someone and never owns anything. You are dependent on what that “someone” is willing to provide you.
We have a word for that…
Missed this reply.
Think I was getting at how people have the potential to not need to fight like animals for property. Especially since throughout time people don't need much to fight the "other" for anything, like property. There's religion, race, ethnicity, eye color, freckles, etc... people always find a reason to fight. On the one hand it preserves humanity, but on the other it destroys it.
Speaking of, I wonder what the main reasons are for the current wars in Ukraine and Hamas?
Money laundering, mainly.
And I’m not saying that we should fight like animals, I’m just saying that property rights are foundational to individuality. It’s not a mental construct and it’s not negative.
Quite the opposite. The idea that we should own nothing or feel no attachment to the environment that sustains us is the concept that’s foreign and unnatural.
Why would people be less likely to care for it, if no one owns it? If that were true all public land, crown land, BLM land would be completely destroyed? Which it is not? People’s have used, cared for, and sustained land for thousands of year without “owning” it, in the western sense, based upon Locke’s two treatises.
Good point! Perhaps I was getting at that land that is used to live on can eventually be uncared for if it isn't "owned" by the individual/group or if it isn't secured by a group.
Culture & customs is definetly a factor too!
It also primarily untouched. Contrast that with a public park in a city, where there are actually people.
Unless there is staff to keep the park clean, it isn’t long before it’s trashed. Same with beaches. Look no further than the “adopt a hwy” or “keep xyz city beautiful” programs and the literal mounds of trash they pick up. There’s always a handful of people that care among a vast sea of those who don’t give a shit.
That doesn’t really compare with a handful of ranching families that collectively maintain 100’s of acres federal lands to graze their cattle.
What of the great cathedrals, churches, and mosques of the world, which are situated within dense and populated citties? Does anyone own them? Are they taken care of? Are they maintained? By whom, the owners? Or by the individuals who believe in the sacred, as a community?
When we view things as sacred we do not need to own them to take care of them. The land to me is sacred. It is my church. It is the keeper of my stories and my culture. I do not need to own it to take care of it.
Yes, cathedrals are Catholic. They have full time clergy and staff.
Yes, mosques are Islamic. They have full time clergy and staff.
I’m glad you feel this affinity to the great lands. Your feelings toward the lands are not the norm.
It’s why we have dumping laws, lawsuits, the EPA and the BLM. There are legal rules and protections put in place precisely because your feelings of sacred space are not the norm.
In the end, ownership (and that does not necessarily mean titled) is the best stewardship of a territory.
That’s my point, it’s not the norm. Why is it not the norm? Who’s definition of ownership and property do you abide by? That of Locke, I assume? The same definition which was used by colonial powers to displace indigienous peoples from their land, which they cared for without ownership or title.
Nice! Changing self to change environment is the ultimate goal. Eventually creates social norms, culture, or a common accepted understanding.
The counter is rules and regulations are needed to enforce the new paradigm. Maybe it's a bit of both? The pendulum keeps swinging. 🫂
Aboriginal (a broad generalization I know) ways of understanding property have resulted in direct conflict with the modern forms of land-use that pose the greatest threat to the environment.
Whether they are the Maori of New Zealand, the aboriginal peoples of the Amazon rain forests or the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the 250 million aboriginal peoples are at the forefront of the ecological movement.
The ecologically benign forms of land use, attitudes to nature and property relations they seek to preserve seem to offer an alternative to the ecologically destructive forms of property and attitudes to nature that have gradually elbowed theirs aside over the last 400 years.
I mean that aboriginal land use and property relations offer an alternative, not in the sense of a solution, but in the sense of a contrasting concept of property that is different enough from our own to give us the much needed critical distance from the basic assumptions that continue to inform our debates about property and ecology.
