Geek Speak — HabitableZone

Geek Speak » in reply to Jared Diamond deserves the credit

Property rights.
Tom Brosz — (archived)

Like most big questions, the idea of property rights has a simple answer. The creation of value by human effort and skill implies the ownership of what has been created.

This could be making pies out of apples, farmland out of wilderness, a thousand dollars out of five hundred, or a concept or idea where no concept was before.

Granted, once you get past the abstract, the details need to be objectively fixed, which is where property and copyright laws come in.

Once you have the concept of ownership, the concept of trade comes in, and there you go.

I have found that almost every attempt to philosophically obliterate or just muddy the idea of property ownership is from people who would like a piece of the action without having to work for it.

All societies have had some concept of property at various levels. You might talk to a Sioux and he would tell you about how the land can belong to nobody--a perfectly reasonable concept for a nomadic culture--but grab his lucky hunting lance out of his hand and walk off with it and see how far you get.

At the other extreme were Europeans who thought you could just come to a country, stand on the shore, and own the whole damn continent just because you said so. That doesn't fit into the true definition of property or ownership.

A rational method of creating private property out of unowned land can be developed. Some examples include mining claims and homesteading, where ownership can only be had if one can show that value is being created on the land by your efforts.

Defense of property is one of the proper functions of a government, as is setting up objective rules and laws on the subject such as the ones on mining and homesteading I just mentioned. With no government at all, you fall back into ownership by the guy with the biggest guns.

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