Political Theory

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

ThorsMitersaw — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:29:49 GMT

MacFall:

ThorsMitersaw:

Morty:

Here's my thought on this.

If it was true that *you, yourself* have to be the one continuing the "on-going project" that would imply that having employees is essentially releasing your right to certain things. For example, if you have a maid, then you "abandon" all your cleaning supplies. If you have field workers for your farm, then you are "abandoning" both the crops and the land itself. If you have a business where you hire a manager to run the store, you "abandon" the business. Furthermore, you might come to the conclusion that the owner of a park "abandons" it by opening it to the public. This seems absurd on its face (at least to me), so it is equally absurd that a landlord abandons his property when renting it. Think of the tenant as an employee of the landlord if it helps, as someone who keeps the property in order, to the specifications of the rental contract, and is given compensation in the form of being allowed to live on the property. Or think of the renter as someone visiting a park and paying a fee. Either way, we can reformulate our thinking on what a renter is to make it very clear that absentee ownership is perfectly legitimate.

Well I think you would find that they would not be very opposed to the manager and store or boss and employee scenario at all.

In that case, they contradict themselves.

mind elaborating?

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

MacFall — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:49:51 GMT

ThorsMitersaw:

Morty:

Here's my thought on this.

If it was true that *you, yourself* have to be the one continuing the "on-going project" that would imply that having employees is essentially releasing your right to certain things. For example, if you have a maid, then you "abandon" all your cleaning supplies. If you have field workers for your farm, then you are "abandoning" both the crops and the land itself. If you have a business where you hire a manager to run the store, you "abandon" the business. Furthermore, you might come to the conclusion that the owner of a park "abandons" it by opening it to the public. This seems absurd on its face (at least to me), so it is equally absurd that a landlord abandons his property when renting it. Think of the tenant as an employee of the landlord if it helps, as someone who keeps the property in order, to the specifications of the rental contract, and is given compensation in the form of being allowed to live on the property. Or think of the renter as someone visiting a park and paying a fee. Either way, we can reformulate our thinking on what a renter is to make it very clear that absentee ownership is perfectly legitimate.

Well I think you would find that they would not be very opposed to the manager and store or boss and employee scenario at all.

In that case, they contradict themselves.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Jon Irenicus — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:41:36 GMT

It would seem so.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

ThorsMitersaw — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:43:12 GMT

Its my thread so I am allowed to necro it. ARISE ZOMBIE THREAD! RISE!!

Anyhoo...

To my understanding, Lockean property rights exist for an infinite amount of time. I own the products of my labor from the moment I create them till the end of time.

Salvage and abandonment as they exist in a Lockean framework exist in man made laws. They are not necessarily apart of the principle of property acquisition, transfer, and abandonment in a Lockean theoy of property. Abandonment in a Lockean theory exists only where property is explicitly abandoned.

Abandonment in common law and the like if I am not mistaken is based on what an arbiter of some sort is willing to enforce in the realm of implicit abandonment and what they are willing to enforce or back up as far as legitimate proof of the original acquisition of the property goes. If you leave a factory for 20 years and come back to find a bunch of smelly hippies have squatted it, well good luck prooving that it wasnt abandoned and you simply failed to recind the title or some such. Again I believe Rothbard covered some sort of duty to mark your property. So in other words good luck getting anyone to agree with you and help you.

Am I correct in this so far?

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

JonBostwick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:22:05 GMT

Paul:
It's not just "letting someone live there", but "letting them treat it as if it were theirs";

Then you've changed the issue at hand.

To the point, if a stewardship of two weeks is allowable then a stewardship of 20 years must be as well.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Paul — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:41:02 GMT

It's not just "letting someone live there", but "letting them treat it as if it were theirs"; and there's no difference except in your head - it may be your intention that if this specific person leaves someone else can't just move in, but as long as he doesn't actually leave that's not an issue: nobody can determine your "intent" by looking at the situation that exists - i.e., as far as any third party (judge) can tell, simply from the facts, you have abandoned the house and don't care who lives it or what happens to it.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

JonBostwick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:30:16 GMT

Paul:

JonBostwick:

Paul:
Hence the charging of rents like $1/yr to let someone use your house without giving up ownership, etc.

Theres no need for such a thing.

If a home owner lets a person live in his house for free this can still be an exchange, house sitting would be an example.

House sitting for twenty years?

Letting someone stay in your house for 20 years for free as a gift would be a different example.

Let me repeat the part you excluded: Letting a specific person live in your house for free is not the same thing as letting any random person live in your house.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Paul — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:52:18 GMT

JonBostwick:

Paul:
Hence the charging of rents like $1/yr to let someone use your house without giving up ownership, etc.

Theres no need for such a thing.

If a home owner lets a person live in his house for free this can still be an exchange, house sitting would be an example.

House sitting for twenty years?

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

JonBostwick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:27:16 GMT

Paul:
Hence the charging of rents like $1/yr to let someone use your house without giving up ownership, etc.

Theres no need for such a thing.

If a home owner lets a person live in his house for free this can still be an exchange, house sitting would be an example. The sitter gets a place to stay while the home owner gets a watchman for his property. Letting a specific person live in your house for free is not the same thing as letting any random person live in your house.

The fact that people need to include a monetary exchange in the deal just demonstrates one of the many flaws in our current legal system.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Paul — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:19:02 GMT

krazy kaju:

ThorsMitersaw, I'm referring to this quote:

if the owners had simply left the house sit there without maintenance or use for years, then it would fall back into the unowned domain even by Lockean standards. But if they rent it out, they not only get rent money - they get an extension of the time for which they can claim to own the house without using it!

It is clear that if you let someone live there while you still remain in possession of the house and require rent, they are paying for using your property. When you move away, they are essentially reenforcing your property rights over the house. From a natural rights perspective, there is nothing wrong with the "Lockean" view.

In order for it to be abandoned you have to do more than merely "let it sit there without maintenance or use for years"; you have to have to demonstrate no interest in it for that time. If someone is living in your house and not paying rent (or doing something else that clearly acknowledges your ownership), and you don't kick them out for a suitable period of time (e.g., 20 years), that's the demonstration needed that you've abandoned it and they can claim it. Hence the charging of rents like $1/yr to let someone use your house without giving up ownership, etc.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

krazy kaju — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:59:26 GMT

ThorsMitersaw, I'm referring to this quote:

if the owners had simply left the house sit there without maintenance or use for years, then it would fall back into the unowned domain even by Lockean standards. But if they rent it out, they not only get rent money - they get an extension of the time for which they can claim to own the house without using it!

It is clear that if you let someone live there while you still remain in possession of the house and require rent, they are paying for using your property. When you move away, they are essentially reenforcing your property rights over the house. From a natural rights perspective, there is nothing wrong with the "Lockean" view.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

Brainpolice — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:37:37 GMT

I think it's clear that there are some scenarios of genuine absentee ownership based on non-provisio lockean principles of property rights (what is the state but a gigantic absentee owner of its claimed territory?), it's just that there are complications in the process of properly determining abandonment and how to deal with intergenerational issues. So I think it is false to accuse non-provisio lockeans of inherently justifying absentee ownership, when a proper application of it renders institutionalized absentee ownership illegitimate. I see no need for one to lapse into Georgism in order to come to such a conclusion, since in some sense it's reduced to practical considerations with respect to dealing with abandonment, and obviously noone is entitled to perpetual ownership over something that clearly isn't theirs to begin with, and hence it's an issue of legal privilege.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

JonBostwick — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:50:44 GMT

This article seems to be jibberish.

In my last post I went over some consequentialist reasons why contracts shouldn't be violently enforced. Now, I offer a moral argument - to enforce a contract the same way one enforces property is to treat people like things, to treat people as means to an end. If people are ends in themselves, they should be able to terminate the contract at any time...they should not be coercively enforced. They can be enforced through boycott, but even if they aren't, the parties to the contract can still engage in them.

All contracts involve property, so they must be enforced the same way that property is enforced. If someone breaks a contract they have stolen from me. This is fundamental to all contracts; if an agreement can be broken without a violation of ownership then it was not a contract.

Even so, the more pertinent question is not whether one can own a second home, but what happens when the owner of two homes decides to rent the second one out. There, to me, the answer is clear - the home belongs to the tenant, and the previous owner has simply received a rental contract - which is subject to social approval/disapproval by the boycott process I described above.

Non sequitur. His reasoning for why the tenant is the new owner is because the contract to rent is invalid, but that does not follow. If the contract is invalid then the tenant has no right to be there!

ThorsMitersaw:
Is the problem then for them that I am keeping it solely to charge others for its use?

Yes, this person is clearly operating from the assumption that rents are illicit. Notice his reference to a billion squattars, meaning land lords.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

ThorsMitersaw — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:11:51 GMT

GilesStratton:

ThorsMitersaw:
- if the owners had simply left the house sit there without maintenance or use for years, then it would fall back into the unowned domain even by Lockean standards

Since when?

Well I think he is confusing Lockean property rights with legal enforcement or aid. Common law supposedly has statutes dealing with apparent abandonment where not explicit, but that is not the same as the Lockean view of property ownership in a totally normative ethical sense I think.

Re: Criticism of Lockean absentee property right

hayekianxyz — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:46:12 GMT

ThorsMitersaw:
- if the owners had simply left the house sit there without maintenance or use for years, then it would fall back into the unowned domain even by Lockean standards

Since when?