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Intro
Alright so... Before I start, I want to say that I was motivated to post this by Waldron's paper, Superceeding Historical injustice.
Here is a link, and I highly recommend reading it, for fun of course!! ^__^
http://www.polthought.cam.ac.uk/seminars/intros2008-2009/Waldron-Superseding-Historic-Injustice.pdf
Property Rights
Alright so, the point of this post will be determine property rights. How do we claim that something is ours and that we have a right to it and no one is allowed to take it? In waldron's paper he mainly deals with aboriginal claims to property rights, but in doing so he also formulates a way to determine property rights which goes something like this.
"An individual who takes possession of a [previously unowned] object or a piece of land and who works it, alters it, and uses it, makes it in effect a part of her life, a pivotal point in her thinking, planning, and action(271)."
So.. in order to claim you own something, you pretty much have to actively use it. Which means... all the junk you don't use on a regular or reasonable basis... doesn't really belong to you, since you don't use it.
Do you guys agree with this theory of property rights? I personally feel it's quite good and should help our consumer society reframe from wasting resources and from people owning things that they don't really benefit from or take advantage of. For example, owning many many different pairs of shoes or clothing. Or owning two cars or something.
Summary
How do we really determine if we have a right to an object or property?
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*Refrain from wasting resources
No it is not necessarily good. Look up Fracking. It basically destroys the land in order to harvest natural gas out of it. They are literally running ads here in Upstate New York telling us that "Fracking is not dangerous... How do we deal with a possible spill? Surround your well in a steel tub for starters..." run by the Fracking companies trying to soften us up.
They are trying to gain rights to use what is BENEATH a farmers owned land, fully knowing it will destroy his crops and livelihood, on the premise that you do not own what is underneath your property.
According to Waldron's theory, in my region we would all be FUCKED! So no, I do not agree with it.
We should determine the owner of an object or property by a contract with incredibly specific requirements. Sadly, leaving vague terms up to a judge's discretion sometimes leads to dangerous precidents being set.
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something is my property if i have more power than you to secure it, whatever is it.
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On January 12 2012 17:53 GatorGar wrote:
*Refrain from wasting resources
No it is not necessarily good. Look up Fracking. It basically destroys the land in order to harvest natural gas out of it. They are literally running ads here in Upstate New York telling us that "Fracking is not dangerous... How do we deal with a possible spill? Surround your well in a steel tub for starters..." run by the Fracking companies trying to soften us up.
They are trying to gain rights to use what is BENEATH a farmers owned land, fully knowing it will destroy his crops and livelihood, on the premise that you do not own what is underneath your property.
According to Waldron's theory, in my region we would all be FUCKED! So no, I do not agree with it.
We should determine the owner of an object or property by a contract with incredibly specific requirements. Sadly, leaving vague terms up to a judge's discretion sometimes leads to dangerous precidents being set.
ahh I see!! I guess this sort of style of property rights would definitely be better suited for some societies rather than others, but hmm it is pretty idealistic and logistically difficult.
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Canada11320 Posts
So.. in order to claim you own something, you pretty much have to actively use it. Which means... all the junk you don't use on a regular or reasonable basis... doesn't really belong to you, since you don't use it.
So, would this give legitimacy to squatters on crown land or private land before the logging companies get there? Or when the land is for sale for several years until another company buys it for future development, but a squatter builds his cabin there first so he get's it?
On what side does this fellow fall in regards to Aboriginal land claims? Because historically property rights arguments seemed to be defined specifically to exclude Aboriginals from owning land title. Our Joseph Trutch denied that Aboriginals had any title to the land and reduced almost all the reserves to a tenth the size. Terra nullius and all that
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There are a fair few number of ways property rights are defined. For brevity, I'll list two extremes.
1: A bunch of people come together and split the land equally. This will generally happen when everyone can commit violence equally, or when nobody knows just how much violence the other guys can commit.
2: One guy comes in and gives himself the land. This happens when one guy can disproportionately commit violence.
Of course, there's a lot of variants on this idea. But typically, the philosophy happens after the action, so to speak.
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On January 12 2012 18:08 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +So.. in order to claim you own something, you pretty much have to actively use it. Which means... all the junk you don't use on a regular or reasonable basis... doesn't really belong to you, since you don't use it. So, would this give legitimacy to squatters on crown land or private land before the logging companies get there? Or when the land is for sale for several years until another company buys it for future development, but a squatter builds his cabin there first so he get's it? On what side does this fellow fall in regards to Aboriginal land claims? Because historically property rights arguments seemed to be defined specifically to exclude Aboriginals from owning land title. Our Joseph Trutch denied that Aboriginals had any title to the land and reduced almost all the reserves to a tenth the size. Terra nullius and all that
ahh you need to really read the paper to get his perspective. He goes into detail on a lot of different perspectives and I can't really do him justice. The key point he makes is that, other theories property rights don't really do a good job.
As for squatters building a cabin on crown territory... I think it's kind of unreasonable because they didn't really have a right to live there in the first place and when considering the utilitarian outcomes and absolutist intuitions... this picture just doesn't look right. But I guess that is just another weakness of my suggestion =\
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It is indeed something very important to define well, how it is defined may differ in the details from country to country. The correlation between countries (or groups within countries) that have prospered and strong property rights and protection against government expropriation is very high.
Concerning stuff 'under' land, I was always under the impression that in the states the stuff would also count as your property. I'm thinking of texas oil etc. I'm not sure of the Netherlands, they find gas in the north from time to time but you never hear if the people that live there get anything for it. I believe it belongs to the state
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On January 12 2012 19:37 Flyingdutchman wrote:
It is indeed something very important to define well, how it is defined may differ in the details from country to country. The correlation between countries (or groups within countries) that have prospered and strong property rights and protection against government expropriation is very high.
Concerning stuff 'under' land, I was always under the impression that in the states the stuff would also count as your property. I'm thinking of texas oil etc. I'm not sure of the Netherlands, they find gas in the north from time to time but you never hear if the people that live there get anything for it. I believe it belongs to the state
Well in some countries state owns all the lend and just "leases" it to people. In practice 99.99% of the time it is the same as you would own it as you can sell it and all the related stuff, but in the end state is the owner. The point of the system is probably that it makes justifications for public use of privately owned land much easier to argue. And it allows state to easily decide who owns the oil that is 100km below your land.
As for OP, I am not a big fan of using just one approach to define property rights. I think usage of property should be one of guiding principles in determining who owns what, but I do not think that approach is enough to define them in completely satisfactory way. But i just skimmed through the linked document so I will comment more when I read it more carefully.
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The OP makes it sound like Waldron came up with a new theory of property. What he formulates is more or less identical to what Locke did over 300 years ago and is clearly based on it.
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EPT
