People need lots of things. The principal constraints on real estate are political. (The entire concept of real estate is a social construct.) Not physical space.
And surely then every idea of any category is dissolved as meaningless and arbitrary, and then reason itself is absurd?
Social constructs have developed over time under evolutionary pressure. Useless or damaging constructs eventually disappear since they contribute negatively towards survival.
The constructs that remain have demonstrated a certain level of fitness towards the environment.
Social constructs likely follow the Lindy effect.
The longer one exists, the longer it can be expected to continue to exist.
Old constructs have proven their fitness simply by persisting over a long period time.
I think it's easier to make the mistake the other way around, to wrongly assume that a relatively new social construct will remain "fit" far into the future.
Even if (the amount of) physical space isn't one of the main constraints on real estate, any particular location may be more desirable relative to others, e.g. a gorgeous view, away from factories or highways.
A bear's den isn't its property any more than a park bench slept on becomes the slumberer's own.
Property, specifically, the system that relates a person to some land via a bundle of use rights, is a deep human construct. It likely goes back to the dawn of agriculture and civilization [1].
A bear, however, will use (and indeed seek to monopolize) violence to defend its den. That makes it property, at least until the bear relinquishes its claim (or something - or someone - else challenges its monopoly on violence).
That makes it territory. The simplest definition of property might be use rights one doesn’t need to use violence to defend. (Countries don’t have property.)
For something to be property entails all of:
- usus: the right to use it;
- fructus: the right to profit or otherwise benefit from it; and
- abusus: the right to destroy it, alter it, or otherwise exclude others from it
Abusus is in and of itself violence (specifically, theft) unless consented to by all other members of society. By "use rights" you might be thinking of something like usufruct, which is distinct from property and (as you correctly assess) does not necessarily entail violence or the monopolization thereof.
> Countries don’t have property.
Of course they do: their sovereign territory. It is indeed that property, enforced via a country's / nation-state's monopoly on violence - from which all land ownership derives (hence: that piece of paper called a "deed" that would be useful only as kindling or sanitary napkins if not for the state enforcing it).
It's politics, usually, keeping the factories and highways away. More fundamentally, the notion that a piece of paper (the deed) gives you certain rights (but not others) over some land is totally made up.
Chattel slavery underlines the point. What is and isn’t property is decided, arbitrarily, by people. Because property is a social construct.
What is and isn’t someone’s body does not depend on others accepting it has meaning. How it’s treated does. But my body has inherent value to me independent of others’ perceptions of it. This is, at its core, the problem with slavery.
If we reject property being a social construct we reject the fact that the government, a social construct itself, could have legalised and then outlawed slavery. Because if property is inherently meaningful, how can the government poof it away?
I don’t see how this changes the fact some locations are more desirable than others.
> More fundamentally, the notion that a piece of paper (the deed) gives you certain rights (but not others) over some land is totally made up.
It is very useful though, otherwise how would I know where to sleep tonight? By lottery a few hours before the sun sets?
Totally agree! Most social constructs are! That’s why we keep them. Something being a social construct isn’t a diminishment of it. Governments, laws, families and religions are all social constructs and all highly useful.