The Philosophy of Ownership

While many stoutly aver their antipathy to sharing anything, the facts speak to the contrary. While it is true that at the outset, the desire to own property privately must result in an exclusive relationship in which the whole world is excluded from the property owned, there is a countervailing desire which exists in us all. Having acquired a property which is valuable to us, we wish to share it with others so we may win their admiration in respect to what we have acquired. This is the drive that moves us toward becoming businessmen or hosts. If we produce a product that we believe to be beneficial or useful, we cannot wait to get it into the hands of others as rapidly as possible. We want them to share in what we have acquired.

As businessmen, we exchange the products we have created with money others have earned. As professionals, we exchange certain learned skills for money in the market. All of this desire on our parts to let others benefit by what we have learned or what we have produced is a part of our urge to share what we have with others. Of course, sharing becomes meaningless unless we are first the exclusive owners. It we own nothing, then we can share nothing. This is nowhere more clearly shown than when we consider man’s enormous drive to act as a host.

A man acquires a home, be it modest or lavish, and he can hardly wait to invite his friends so they may see what he owns. He wants to feed them and to share with them the results of his efforts. He wants to display objects of art he has acquired, share with them ideas he has thought through, and in many ways obtain the satisfactions that can come only through this process.

One of the basic reasons property is so important to us lies in the fact that we do not really intend to make that property entirely exclusive. It must be exclusive at the outset or we can share nothing. But having secured the property so that we can claim ownership rightfully, we at once wish others to experience something of our own joy of attainment.

This is one of the deep and underlying motivations toward charity and voluntary giving. The fact that a man may be able to give away some of his substance is a remarkable satisfaction that he can receive from his own action. If a man is in a position to give away something that he owns (whether in hospitality or in charity), he can only accomplish this giving when he has sufficient surplus so that he does not reduce himself to penury by such open-handed procedures. All actions as a host or other benefactor are based upon the deeply rooted desire for self-satisfaction. It is claimed, in certain quarters, that when a man gives something, either a property, an idea, or something of himself to another, it is because he values the other more than he values himself. This is an absurdity. To be able to share, as a host or benefactor, is one of the deepest and most meaningful experiences he can have insofar as his own value of himself is concerned. All gifts are expressions of self-realization. The man in a position to give is in a position to satisfy himself. That another may experience joy in receiving a gift does not in any way reduce the joy of the donor. On the contrary, the more the recipient experiences honest satisfaction from the gift, the more the donor experiences honest satisfaction from the act of giving.

No man can give away something he does not first own. It is only when his authority and responsibility in ownership are fully seen that he can truly give.

It is probable that this urge to share is one of the dominating emotions which grip virtually all holders of political office. Politicians are so eager to share that they are willing to take property not belonging to them so they can bask in the glow of having given it away. This Robin Hood emotion of sharing stolen goods with others is obviously a problem. If we can begin in childhood to teach the pre-adult the necessity of honestly acquiring property first before sharing, we will go a long way toward eradicating this tendency.

One of the reasons there is such a strong feeling against taxation in general, or any other kind of theft however legalized, relates to the fact that all individuals wish to be in a position to exercise their own judgment in respect to giving. The person who is robbed to the point of poverty may not be able to be as generous a host or benefactor as he would like to be. A man who might be able to be generous in many cases, were he left in undisputed possession of what he has rightfully acquired, but who is reduced to a mere subsistence level by repeated forays against him, will one day rebel at this usage. It is not that he “needs” more than a rather minimal requirement for his own survival and personal well-being. It is that the self-satisfaction he might otherwise obtain is kept from him by the intrusion of others who take from him so they can be generous with what he himself has produced.

Thus, taxation and theft generally are intrusions against this area of self-satisfaction. No productive people will endure such practices forever. Unless they are halted, those who are productive will either stop producing, flee to a territory where they can enjoy private ownership, or rise up to overthrow those who impose such usages upon them. Curiously, it is not the drive to acquire subsistence that will motivate them. Rather, it is the drive to obtain that ultimate satisfaction as a host or benefactor that will bring about drastic remedies. The non-producing dividers of the property of the productive are always their own worst enemies.

Much joy can accumulate to the professional who learns difficult and demanding skills and, as a result, may acquire wealth and fame. But however large the production or the demonstration of skill, and the joys attendant thereon, a failure to bring others into one’s area of surplus on a voluntary basis stunts the personal development and eliminates an area of intense personal realization.

Thus, actually, as government largesse grows, satisfactions arising out of personal sharing diminish as opportunity for individual voluntary acts of personal sharing diminishes. One of the greatest enemies to charity is enforced charity. This stimulates resentment, causes men to isolate themselves in fear, and encourages the very type of narrow and provincial behavior which government often claims to be seeking to discourage. In time, it breeds distrust and societal disintegration. It encourages theft, both public and private. Crime increases in every category. And as government programs intensify to bring about integration, social union, and harmony, the opposite results manifest.

While government poses as the inescapable essential to a lawful and orderly social system, the fact is that government itself sets into motion those very factors which are the root of societal malaise and destruction. A society built upon the solid foundations of private property and respect for the property boundaries and values of others, becomes an orderly and peaceful society of necessity. Here, the market dominates and voluntary exchanges leading to human satisfaction become the rule. Cancel this by the imposition of government exactions and regulations, and involuntary exchanges take the place of voluntary exchanges, while dissatisfaction, discord, demonstration, riot, and ultimate chaos ensue.

Societal order is only possible in a territory where private ownership of property is the recognized and supported stabilizer. A society built upon retributive justice invariably tips the scales of voluntary cooperation and benefits the unworthy, the careless, the non-productive, and the dependent.

There are, to be sure, such persons as kleptomaniacs. These are no real problem, since they have a compulsion to steal which is such a dominating influence in their lives that they are almost universally detected.

With this exception most thieves do not practice theft regularly. They steal at a given point so they may exercise their ability to share with others at almost every other point in their lives. Thieves are notoriously open-handed. Since they have not produced what they now lavish upon others, they tend to value the money or the products of their theft far less than those who have honestly created or produced the money or goods.

This is one of the factors which make politicians attractive to many people. Politicians are prone to be open-handed and generous. They appear to be desirable companions because of this fact. By associating with them, one may fancy an immediate improvement in one’s standard of living since politicians and thieves tend to discount or completely disregard costs. Further, there is a great romantic attachment to arch-criminals in the minds of young and immature. A swashbuckling pirate is the object of much youthful enthusiasm and veneration. A life of crime seems attractive and exciting. And the affection of others seems so readily obtainable in this fashion that many young people are lured into a life of politics or other crime for these reasons.

The same kind of romance surrounds a Robin Hood, a Jesse James, a Murietta, or a member of the Mafia, as surrounds a government official. These are all men who live beyond the normal moral rules against theft. They are untouched by property considerations. They do not have to live by personal self-discipline, or so it appears. Rather, they can parade about, winning the admiring glances of young and old by their careless disregard of the property rights of others, and their ready sympathy for those in distress. Yet nothing distresses a thief quite so much as being reminded of the fact that his open-handedness is only made possible by the diligence, sweat, and toil of others whom he has despoiled. He attempts constantly to focus attention on the generous acts which he performs, and hopes you will not see the misery and degradation and the thwarting of individual satisfactions he leaves in his wake.

In the foregoing pages I have attempted to set forth a philosophy of private ownership of property. Many of the ideas expressed will be familiar to most but there are some that will be revolutionary. My concern has been to develop a philosophy of private ownership, fully consistent with reality, containing the highest moral concepts, which requires neither violence nor major social disturbance to implement. No claim is made that the task undertaken has been accomplished. But perhaps some ideas offered will prove to have merit and, in any case, I hope some of them will stimulate additional examination of the area.