They expect people to build and maintain homes for them while doing nothing in return.
If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.
These misguided ideologies can only live parasitic ally on the fringe of a otherwise functional society. If they got their way, the society would be destroyed.
How is the current system not strong taking whatever they can? Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas, they are rebels that created a stateless society of 300 000 in Chiapas, Mexico without private property with structure that is based on decentralized, horizontal, federated institutions.
Anarchism is not a misguided ideology, it's a product of highest levels of freethought that inspired many people to fight for liberation from oppression and for a world where every human can develop the the heights of one's potential.
There were breif periods where humans entered virgin land, but these people migrated because other land and resources were spoken for.
>Private property is just a legitimized theft, because it leaves some people without access to land or natural resources that is required for survival.
This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
My wanting a pony does not give me a natural right to a pony. My hunger does not give me a natural right to food
>It's not true that without private property you get state slavery or a strongman situation, you may check Zapatistas
The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
I don't agree with you, there are books such as The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity that counter your rhetoric. Private property norms did not exist for most of human history.
> Even chimps will kill others for infringing on territory.
On the other hand Bonobo is not so territorial and is too one of the species that is the closest to us.
>This is reverse reasoning. people lacking resources doesn't imply it was stolen from them. The alternative is that they simply didn't start with any.
Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
> Rights don't derive from wants or needs.
From what they derive? If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
> The zapititistas did not acquire all their land, people, and resources through free choice, nor were people free to stop collaborating if they chose.
Please share your sources for this statement.
Groups of humans have always organized for Mutual Aid, but it has never been unilateral or not subject to the approval of the group.
Norms around private property are different across time and depend on the level of abundance. At no point could a strange human come and take your possessions huts, or food without permission.
Re: The Dawn of Everything
You're saying you don't agree with him because of a book you read - but that book has legitimate historians making some pretty bold criticisms: "cherry-picked and selectively presented examples", "perilously close to scholarly malpractice."
There is some positive feedback as well, but in general, if a book claiming to be historical elicits this kind polarization, it's probably not something to base a strong belief on.
I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
> Why then some people usurp land and natural resources and not let others use them?
You're question here doesn't really do accomplish anything re: property somehow being theft. I would suggest that "the reason" some people aquire land and don't let others use it can simply be because they don't want to. Sometimes the answer is that it's not financially viable to share it. Sometimes the answer is that they fear the destruction of the land or resource if they just open it up to anyone. Any of these reasons is sufficient, because they don't actually need a reason.
> If you agree that there is no natural rights, then how do you justify private property rights?
To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit. They needed to agree on some fundamental protections that enable an actual net benefit of their organized society, and giving people rights to own and protect their property is generally needed for people to feel confident that effort they put in to improve the land is effort they will be rewarded for. It's a nice idea that people will improve land for the good of humanity, but in reality, people are not motivated by that enough to overcome the people who would abuse that system by "free-loading". It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
> Please share your sources for this statement
I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
"Rebels wore ski masks and used furniture and other office materials to barricade themselves inside of buildings once they had taken them over.[11] During the occupation of the city, rebels also painted pro-Zapatista statements on the walls of buildings.[12] While raiding San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Zapatistas released 230 predominantly Indigenous prisoners from jail and also demolished land records in protest"
And the source you're asking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_uprising#Events
I like precise logical argumentation, that's not idealism, I don't make any unnecessary assumptions
> I'm also not quite sure why you would find it hard to agree with the notion that, throughout history, humans have been protective of their territory. The list of examples you could point to for this is unending.
Oh, that's very simple, for most of human history humans lived as hunter gatherers and they did not have private property or rent relations.
>To start, the other guy never claimed private property was a natural right. The rights we have emerged from people wanting to self organize for their mutual benefit.
No, there was an enclosure of commons that happened to exploit farmers as factory workers. Those rights were always about naturalizing oppressive human relations.
>It should tell you something that private property + property rights have consistently emerged, whenever people have tried to put together a society.
This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal, they are even not universal in this worlds, even if they exist in most places around the world.
>I admittedly didn't know much about this, but on some cursory research, it seems pretty obvious to me that this was not an entirely "free choice" based movement..
No one is coerced to join those rebels. And rebels are rebelling against unjust genocide of Indigenous Americans among others.
Only in places of complete abundance did people not make claims.
That's not quite how your comments elsewhere in this thread read lol
> This is not true, many civilizations were against private property rights and private property rights were never universal
Wanna name a couple of those civilizations that didn't have property rights that managed to thrive and grow beyond a population of like 10,000? If you're going to point towards something like Greenland or China where land is owned exclusively by the state and leased out.. that's the same thing as private property rights, the people who lease that land out have rights with respect to that land. Countries literally can not exist without property rights, and if you're gonna say "yea and countries shouldn't exist it's all just made up borders anyway, mann..." then you're username is incredibly fitting lmao
I also never said that these rights were universal, just that they show up. A lot. And if you want to claim that reason is because of some oppression, go for it. I happen to think this is wrong, and the fact that basically every time these rights are revoked things go to shit tells me that's because they exist for a reason. See
> No one is coerced to join those rebels.
Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is? Please recognize that you may just be enamored with the ideals of what the group said on paper, and are therefore rationalizing their extremist actions that end up being counterproductive to any positive goals.
> That's not quite how your comments elsewhere in this thread read lol
What do you don't understand? I can try to explain in more elementarily if you have problems with understanding something.
> Wanna name a couple of those civilizations that didn't have property rights that managed to thrive and grow beyond a population of like 10,000?
This list can be quite relevant, some of those project existed for a short time, some for longer: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1wWjWNXhvHjMzzyxT5z5Es_...
>Brother, they showed up with guns and took over buildings by force; they destroyed the land records for everyone, not just their specific "members" - if that's not coercion, what is?
What do you think about genocide of Indigenous Americans? Is it okay? Or can they defend themselves?
Hope you have a nice rest of your day.
What is the vision for this scenario that doesn't just turn into new groups taking power and enforcing their rules?
Did you realize you just came up with the system you were opposing?
We can organize into some groups, let's call them countries, with an organized self-defense groups, we can call them police and military, to prevent our yurts from being stolen.
In those same times, anyone that wandered by who was stronger could simply kill them and take over the yurt, until someone stronger showed and killed them in turn.
Not a great way to live, and not a very long life.
1- https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/publications/why-chiapas-p...
Of course, the corrupt ruling bandits always enjoy a higher standard of living than their subjects. The same story in every anarchist and communist society.
You can still put up your yurt or hut in many places of the Earth, probably including Chiapas, but it seems that more people want to live in London, Munich, Tokio or Barcelona.
Show me a place with a stateless society and without private property that actually attracts nontrivial amounts of people. You speak of such places highly and reverently, but for all their highest level of freethought, they don't seem to compete well with traditional urban centers of the capitalist world.
When voting with their feet, people mostly move to wealthy countries that protect personal property, not away from them.
I'm pretty sure they're talking about real property. Land and improvements. Not the strong taking away everything you have.
And there are reasonable ways to manage land and housing other than private ownership. There's also the option of limiting it to personal use.
An individual has to be very careful not to create any real property value or improvements, otherwise it will be taken from you.
Conceptually there are lots of solutions to managing this problem. Historically, they rely on a state institution that goes around stripping people of what they create, forcing people to create things they don't own.
Communism almost always devolves into totalitarianism for this reason.
This is the experience of the vast majority of renters. It's not too bad.
And something like "you can own X amount of house" doesn't require going anywhere near communism.
I think it is terrible. I like to be productive and crate value. Absolutely miserable without it. I hated being a renter for this reason.
>And something like "you can own X amount of house" doesn't require going anywhere near communism.
There are so many better ways to solve this problem than putting a cap on value creation.
You can create value in the 99% of the world that isn't attached to your house.
Also a more conservative set of rules, like the limits I was talking about, would still let you own a house and upgrade it a lot in a way that you fully own.
> There are so many better ways to solve this problem than putting a cap on value creation.
Does "value creation" here specifically mean adding more living space?
Only a very tiny fraction of homeowner construction projects would be an issue. And if you want to do something like build a third house on your property, a rule like that would say "go ahead, but then you have to sell it when you're done". You can create tons of value and profit from it, you just can't own three houses.
I like building and improving houses. I have one in the bay area I work to improve.
I have built a mountain home in the Sierra Nevada, and am working on a desert home in Nevada. These take nothing away from anyone. They were empty land surrounded by more empty parcels before I did something with them.
There is no shortage of land and nothing is stopping someone else from doing the same. When I die, they will probably be sold off, and there will be more options. until then, nobody is worse off. I have thought about renting them out, which is still better than if they never existed.
Who am I hurting, and why should I be forced to sell?
If there was a law I couldnt own three houses, I simply wouldnt build them.
But also in economic terms, if that house is in a zero-demand area and won't be on the market for decades, then it would be better if you don't build it, and instead either spend that money elsewhere or invest it.
Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
You're the one that brought up value creation, not me.
If it's a "who cares" when it goes against how you want to spend, then it's also a "who cares" when it aligns with how you want to spend.
> Furthermore, sweat equity is real. You can put sweat, blood, and 100k of materials into something and have an 300k asset. It doesnt matter if a desert lot was dirt cheap.
> I find it funny when people forget you can create value yourself instead of passively investing in someone else who creates it.
A house nobody else wants has a value of zero dollars, and you didn't create value.
If that house is worth 300k, then I misunderstood your earlier description.
But this kind of situation is not what normally happens. Whether it's allowed or not doesn't really matter. The important case is what happens when people build/buy in areas with more than negligible demand.
If you could see the extent of organization that such a life requires, you wouldn't say that. Especially when the alternative is "I bought this place and now you have to pay to live there" which is the highest form of doing nothing.
It is when you skip out the bit where you have to pay the mortgage or had to save up to buy the place.
If you can show me how to pay the mortgage by doing nothing, I'd love to know.
How can that be worse than "I didnt even buy this place, and now I get to live here"
It's not just about you
Working, saving, and buying a house is doing a lot more than doing nothing and expecting something
Holding other people's basic survival need for ransom is simply theft and entitlement.
What makes you think that people are going through all the complexity of squatting if they have the options of paying for a place to live?
> If you abolish property rights, your two options are state slavery or anarchy where the strong take whatever they can.
Anarchy where the strong (rich) take whatever they can is the situation we have now. Property rights as they currently exist are that rich people have property rights and nobody else does.
Unless you start talking solutions to homelessness, it starts to sound like you just don't care about the homeless and you're only interested in maintaining the power that exists.
Do they actually? Would they allow the previous homeowner to come live with them? Usually they seem intent on kicking/keeping the previous homeowner out, which is enforcement of their own property rights.